They Came to Fight for Ukraine. Now They’re Stuck in No Man’s Land.

When separatists started a war in eastern Ukraine, hundreds of Russians, Belarusians, and other foreigners came to Kiev’s defense. Now they’ve been abandoned.

BY MARIA ANTONOVA-OCTOBER 19, 2015

KIEV, Ukraine — In May 2014, Rudolph, then a 19-year-old student in Gomel, in eastern Belarus, saw a post on Facebook that inspired him. “This is not a war of Russia with Ukraine; this is a war between freedom and lawlessness,” wrote Semen Semenchenko, a prolific Facebook blogger and the commander of the Donbass Battalion, a volunteer paramilitary unit fighting against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The commander called on sympathetic Russians and Belarusians to come help their neighbor in its time of need, announcing that he was recruiting foreigners “who share our views and want to help.”

They Came to Fight for Ukraine. Now They’Re Stuck in No Man’s Land. by Thavam Ratna

Bus blast kills 11 in Pakistan's Baluchistan province

A man who was injured in a bus blast, lies at a hospital in Quetta, October 19, 2015.

Tue Oct 20, 2015

A bomb killed at least 11 people on Monday on a crowded bus in Pakistan's western city of Quetta, capital of a province racked by years of separatist violence.

The bomb exploded as the bus was bound for the city suburbs, carrying dozens of passengers home from work, police official Abdul Waheed Khattak said.

Baluchistan province has seen almost a decade of separatist violence against government personnel and security forces as well as non-Baluch ethnic groups.

Security forces have, in turn, carried out a security crackdown that Baluch activists say has resulted in thousands of disappearances and hundreds of extrajudicial killings.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday.

The bomb was probably planted on the roof of the vehicle and set off through a timed detonator, Khattak said.

"This is a cowardly act that has targeted innocent people,” said Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti, Baluchistan's home minister. “We are fighting against terrorism here. And we will keep fighting until the last terrorist is killed."

At least one child was among the dead, Bugti said.

Baluchistan chief minister Abdul Malick said at least 21 people were injured and a state of emergency had been declared at the city's hospitals.

Baluchistan has also seen major attacks by the banned Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jangvi, which wants to impose a Sunni theocracy in U.S.-allied Pakistan by stoking Sunni-Shi'ite violence.

Lashkar has in the past bombed religious processions during the Shi'ite mourning month of Muharram, which is currently under way, and shot civilians.

Such attacks have raised doubts about the feasibility of a new economic corridor Pakistan wants to build with billions of dollars of Chinese investment.

The much-vaunted project, announced when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan in April, envisages an eastern and western route, with the latter passing through Quetta to Gwadar port in the south.

(Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Asad Hashim and Andrew Roche)

Hunt for Israelis who killed Eritrean man falsely implicated in bus attack

Haftom Zarhum shot by security guard then attacked by mob in Beersheba after another man attacked bus in latest outbreak of violence
An injured man is taken away on a stretcher from the scene of an attack at the central bus station in Beersheba, Israel. Photograph: Jini/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Peter Beaumont in Ein HaBesor and Beersheba-Monday 19 October 2015

Israeli police are hunting members of a group of Israelis who killed an Eritrean migrant after mistakenly identifying him as a terrorist involved in an attack at a bus station.

Aftermath of the attack

Hunt for Israelis Who Killed Eritrean Man Falsely Implicated in Bus Attack by Thavam Ratna

Israel reacts angrily to Hamas leader's visit to South Africa 

Monday 19 October 2015
Israeli officials say South Africa is providing support to terrorism by welcoming Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal 

Israel reacted angrily on Monday to news exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is visiting South Africa and meeting officials from the governing African National Congress (ANC).

Meshaal met with South African President Jacob Zuma on Sunday and will address a rally in the capital, Cape Town, on Wednesday.

 Follow

Palestine Info Centr @palinfoen

Khaled Meshaal &Hamas leaders on official visit to South Africa. He calls for support to Palestinian ppl #HamasInSA

9:35 AM - 19 Oct 2015

The Hamas leader is being accompanied by senior members of his movement Musa Abu Marzuq and Mohammed Nazzal among others.

“We are insisting with our people to finish this apartheid regime. This racist occupation should be put to an end,” Meshaal said during a press conference in the country on Monday.

cThe Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it was “angry and shocked” that the ANC had received Meshaal, who they said was head of a “terrorist group”.

In a statement, the ministry said South Africa’s ambassador to Israel had been summoned to discuss the visit which “provides support for terrorism”.

Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation by the US and EU.

Nelson Mandela, the late South African president and ANC leader, was an ardent supporter of the Palestinian cause and a champion for Middle East peace.

Monday's press conference can be viewed in its entirety below:

Turkey – Success Story Turn to Disaster

One hears rumbles of a Turkish conflict with Armenia over its conflict with Turkish ally, Azerbaijan. Greece is nervous and moving closer to Israel. Oil and gas finds in the eastern Mediterranean are heightening tensions.

by Eric S. Margolis

( October 18, 2015, New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) Turkey, once a pillar of Mideast stability, looks increasingly like a slow-motion truck crash. What makes this crisis so tragic is that not very long ago Turkey was entering a new age of social harmony and economic development.

Today, both are up in smoke as this week’s bloody bombing in Ankara that killed 99 people showed. America’s ham-handed policies in the Mideast have set the entire region ablaze from Syria to South Sudan and Libya. Turkey sits right on top of the huge mess, licked by the flames of nationalist and political conflagrations and now beset by 2 million Syrian refugees.

As Saddam Hussein predicted, George W. Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq opened the gates of hell. Attempts by Washington to overthrow Syria’s Alawite regime – a natural US ally – have destroyed large parts of that once lovely nation and produced the worst human disaster since the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the late 1940’s and 1967.

Washington’s bull-in-a-China-shop behavior in the fragile Mideast came just as the Turkish government of Recep Erdogan had presided over a decade of stunning economic growth for Turkey, pushed the intrusive armed forces back to their barracks, and achieved friendly relations with neighbors. No Turkish leader in modern history had achieved so much.

Equally important, the Erdogan government was on the verge of making a final accommodation with Turkey’s always restive Kurds – up to 20% of the population of 75 million – that would have recognized many new rights of the “people of the mountains.”

This was a huge achievement. I covered the bloody guerrilla war on eastern Anatolia between Turkey’s police and armed forces, and tough Kurdish guerrillas of the Marxist-Stalinist PKK movement. By 1990, some 40,000 had died in the fighting that showed no hope of resolution.

Thanks to patient diplomacy and difficult concessions, PM Erdogan’s Islamist –Lite AK Party managed to reach tentative peace accords with the PKK and its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan in spite of fierce resistance from Turkey’s generals, violent semi-fascist nationalist groups and equally dangerous leftist revolutionaries.

Peace with the Kurds went down the drain when the US intensified the war in Syria and began openly arming and financing Syria’s and Iraq’s Kurds. Various Kurdish groups became involved in the Syria fighting against the Assad regime in Damascus and against the Islamic State – which had been created by Saudi Arabia and the CIA to attack Shia regimes. Turkey struck back, and the war with the Kurds resumed. A decade of patient work kaput.

Turkey’s prime minister – and now president – Erdogan had led his nation since 2003 with hardly a misstep. Then came two disastrous decisions. First, Erdogan dared criticize Israel for its brutal treatment of Palestinians and killing of nine Turks on a naval rescue mission to Gaza. America’s media, led by the pro-Israel Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Fox News have made Erdogan a prime target for savage criticism.

Second, for murky reasons, Erdogan developed a hatred for Syria’s leader, Bashar Assad, and allowed Turkey to serve as a conduit and primary supply base for all sorts of anti-Assad rebels, most notably the so-called Islamic State. Most Turks were opposed to getting involved in the Syrian quagmire. Doing so unleashed the Kurdish genii and alienated neighbor Russia.

Turkey’s blunder into the Syrian War has enraged the restive military, which has long sought to oust Erdogan and return the nation to Ataturkism, the far-right political creed of Turkey’s anti-Muslim oligarchs, urban and academic elite. Now, Turkey’s long repressed violent leftists are stirring trouble in the cities. Fear is growing that Turkey might return to its pre-Erdogan days of bombings, street violence, and assassinations – all against a background of hyperinflation, soaring unemployment and hostile relations with its neighbors.

One hears rumbles of a Turkish conflict with Armenia over its conflict with Turkish ally, Azerbaijan. Greece is nervous and moving closer to Israel. Oil and gas finds in the eastern Mediterranean are heightening tensions.

With the biggest and best armed forces in the region save Israel, Turkey may yet intervene in Syria – which used, before 1918, to be part of the Ottoman Empire.

The US often accuses Erdogan of wanting to be an Ottoman Sultan, yet is pushing him to use his army in Syria.

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2015

Steel firm Caparo expected to cut 1,800 jobs

MONDAY 19 OCTOBER 2015
Steel firm Caparo is expected to go into administration, with the loss of around 1,800 jobs in the UK.

The cuts will hit several parts of the UK, particularly in the West Midlands.

Caparo is the latest UK steel producer to hit troubled times in recent weeks. Last month, SSI announced it would mothball its Redcar plant with the loss of 1,700 jobs.

Unions said ceasing production would have a devastating effect on Teesside after a 170-year history producing steel.

Tomorrow the steel firm Tata is expected to announce the loss of 1,200 jobs at plant in Scunthorpe and Scotland.

Global steel prices

Steel firms blame the closures on a worldwide reduction in steel prices.

In the late 19th century, Britain led the world in steel production. But it has been in rapid decline since privatisation in the 1980s, when the government stopped subsidising loss-making plants.

The job losses come at the start of a four-day visit to the UK by Chinese President Xi Jinping. China is selling steel to international markets at discounted rates in order to maintain production.

UK imports of Chinese steel were 2 per cent of UK demand in the first half of 2011. That figure is expected to rise to 8 per cent this year.

The steel firm Caparo is owned by Labour peer Lord Paul.

Malaysian universities are turning a blind eye to rampant sexual harassment

By Murray Hunter Oct 19, 2015

University authorities around Malaysia appear to be turning a blind eye towards what appears to be a growing incidence of sexual harassment throughout their respective institutions. This appears to be a growing problem, however very few statistics exist, andmost cases are not reported.

A study of undergraduates at Universiti Sains Malaysia found that up to 50 percent of students claim to be harassed, mostly females harassed by males. The study further disclosedthat up to 60 percent of respondents to the survey reported being victims of sexual jokes, 20 percent of unwanted sexual attention, and 8 percent of unwanted sexual coercion.

Out of the few cases that are reported, information is suppressed due to fears by vice vhancellors’ that these cases will affect the reputation of their respective institutions.

Sexual harassment covers a diverse range of activities with various degrees of seriousness, ranging from jokes and innuendo to violent sexual attacks and rape.

Very few cases of sexual harassment are ever reported within Malaysian universities and those that are reported rarely receive publicity.

With the increase of foreign students into Malaysian universities, it is becoming more common for Malaysian academics to have affairs with vulnerable students from China, and some of the old Soviet Republics. These affairs seem to start with intimate supervision which lead to excursions outside the university. One university vice chancellor is rumoured to have taken a Chinese student as a second wife and put her on staff.

SEE ALSO: The growing gender imbalance in higher ed: Where have all the boys gone?

It is not uncommon to hear stories of lecturers having affairs with post-graduate students. There are many stories within the corridors of most of the universities within Malaysia of lecturers taking students for a second wife. Some undergraduate students have purportedly even ended up getting pregnant from lecturers. It is difficult to confirm any of these cases as, usually, the student quickly disappears from the university campus.

In addition, there have been stories of a few exposure cases of lecturers to female students, and student gossip about the odd lecturer who likes to touch students in suggestive manners.

Sexual jokes and innuendo are not uncommon in Malaysian universities today. Institutional power-sexual dynamics within Malaysian universities can be sexist and intimidating. There tends to be a chauvinistic manner from male staff towards female staff, who are often treated as being subordinate to males. There also appears to be an ignorance of what constitutes sexual harassment among staff at Malaysian universities.

At the student level, wolf whistling by male students at female students is extremely common around universities in Malaysia. It’s almost cultural, where groups of male students ‘hang out’ and show their prowess to their peers through their whistling and comments to those of the opposite sex. Most female students, particularly the Malays, are very forgiving in this environment and take it in their stride, rather than make any reports.

At a more serious level, peep holes in public toilets are common in female toilets around Klang Valley. Stalking on social media is another growing concern, subject to many complaints with peers, but not to the authorities.

These remain unreported, mostly because of the ignorance students have about the laws and rules of sexual harassment, and the reluctance of staff to make reports, in fear that this may lead to retribution against them within the workplace, and hinder chances for promotion.

The common thread among all these stories is that they never make public news. Malaysian university authorities would prefer a clean appearance to the public, rather than go through the potential scandal of dealing out justice to the perpetrators of any sexual harassment. As a consequence, few victims ever come forward, and harassers get away with their actions.

SEE ALSO: Why Malaysian university research has a long way to go

Little is done to stamp out this slur on the integrity of Malaysian higher education institutions. All Malaysian universities have sexual harassment regulations. However, although they exist, these regulations are rarely publicized, and very little is done in the way of conducting workshops to educate students and staff about the issue.

Under the Malaysian Employment Act, sexual harassment is a major offence and punishable by dismissal.

Although there is no specific sexual harassment legislation in Malaysia, it is covered within the penal code. Section 351 covers assault, Section 354 outraging modesty, Section 376, rape, using gestures and language, Section 509, and outraging decency in Section 37-DD.

However, even with all these laws and regulations in place, it is usually the victim who is usually punished by having to leave that particular university, rather than the offender.

Institutes of higher education lack the compassion needed to deal with the victims of sexual abuse, and worry about their reputations more. Investigations are not systematic or fair, and there is a lot of institutional intimidation towards those who lodge reports. This is a major failing of Malaysian universities in their quest to look immaculate to the Malaysian public at large.

Malaysian academics have suggested a number of reasons why sexual harassment is occurring within Malaysian universities, including mproper dress, exposure to pornographic materials, close proximity and intimacy during work, and drugs. But the researchers didn’t provide any evidence to support this. The ‘indecent dress’ argument shifts the blame for sexual harassment towards the victim, while ‘close proximity and intimacy’ with students and ‘drugs’ also appear to absolve the perpetrator of total responsibility for his or her actions.

The author believes that part of the problem is the repression of sexuality in Malaysia today. There is also an element of power and the belief by the perpetrator in his ability to take advantage without fear of punishment is related to the incidence of sexual assault in Malaysian universities. One researcher made the observation that “a corrupt system is likely to tolerate high levels of student-on-student violence as well as abuses of power by staff”.

The basic problem is a denial that the problem actually exists, with chauvinistic vice chancellors in Malaysia trying to sweep this problem under the carpet.

Malaysian universities are only a microcosm of the rest of the nation where bullying and sexual harassment is rife.

Sexual harassment within universities is a worldwide issue. However if Malaysia is going to face this problem, university authorities must be open about it and punish the culprits, rather than suppressing these cases.

This is particularly the case in a time when the Malaysian education sector is pursuing more enrolments from foreign students. The academic environment within Malaysia must be seen to be safe.

Becoming Nicole

They were born identical twin boys, but one always felt he was a girl

Jonas and Nicole Maines are first-year students at the University of Maine. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Wyatt — who later became Nicole — and Jonas Maines as babies. Scientists say that differences in biological sex are not necessarily hard-wired or absolute. (Courtesy of Maines Family)

Story by Amy Ellis Nutt-October 19, 2015

They were identical twin boys, Wyatt and Jonas Maines, adopted at birth in 1997 by middle-class, conservative parents. Healthy and happy, they were physically indistinguishable from each other, but even as infants their personalities seemed to diverge.

By the age of 2, when the boys were just learning to speak, Wyatt asked his mother, “When do I get to be a girl?” and “When will my penis fall off?” It was the beginning of a journey through questions of gender that would challenge a mother to find ways to help her child, even as the father pushed back. The father would learn the truest meaning of family only after his wife felt forced to file a lawsuit against the twins’ elementary school, and when Jonas told him, at age 9, “Face it, Dad, you have a son and a daughter.”

Becoming Nicole by Thavam Ratna

The OISL Report: Need for introspection and 

State responsibility 

The Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), report

2015-10-19

ix valuable years have been lost since the end of the war, as the previous Government undermined efforts to seek the truth about the tragic past, stalled institutional reforms necessary to rebuild a divided society, and failed to deliver a political solution to ensure the dignity and co-existence of all communities. Instead an anti-democratic political culture with impunity continued. This is the context for the report of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL). The report, which  documents patterns of grave human rights abuses by the State, State-linked actors and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), should be a wake-up call to all of us as citizens, and for the new Government which has promised to give political leadership in resolving outstanding national problems. 

The OISL Report Need for Introspection by Thavam Ratna

MS & RW Have A Secret Agreement With TNA To Release Tamil Political Prisoners: Weerawansa

October 18, 2015

UPFA MP Wimal Weerawansa today severely criticized a government decision to release a group of Tamil political prisoners, who recently engaged in a five day fast.

Calling the prisoners as former LTTE cadres detained on Terrorism charges, Weerawansa today said he had reliable information that President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had come to an agreement with the TNA and several other Tamil politicians to grant a general amnesty to the prisoners.

Weerawansa said that this agreement included some ex-LTTE cadres becoming witnesses for the state in trials which will be carried out against the military officers at the proposed Hybrid Court.

“This is a slur on our security forces who sacrificed their life and limb to save the country from the clutches of terrorism” he said

Weerawansa challenged the President and the Prime Minister to reveal how the government was going to release prisoners with serious criminal charges against them, without any judicial process.

The UPFA MP questioned whether the government was prepared to release other prisoners as well if they engage in a hunger strike.

Meanwhile the hunger strike commenced by the prisoners on Monday was called off on Saturday following an assurance by President Sirisena that the prisoners grievances will be met before November 07.

During a recent Cabinet meeting the President had tasked Minister Mano Ganesan, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and Law and Order Minister Tilak Marapana to meet the Attorney General and discuss the issue and submit a report to him.                     Read More

War Has Had Severe Psychological Effects on Kids in Lanka's North: Psychiatrist

In his Anandarajan Memorial Oration delivered at Jaffna recently, Somasundaram quotes a 2009 study by T.Ebert, M.Schauer and others to say that 57 percent of North’s children had a “functioning disorder” and 29 percent were “full” cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). | EPS 

By P.K.Balachandran-17th October 2015

COLOMBO: The thirty year war in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province has  had a severe psychological effect on the children there, says Dr. Daya Somasundaram, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Jaffna.

In his Anandarajan Memorial Oration delivered at Jaffna recently, Somasundaram quotes a 2009 study by T.Ebert, M.Schauer and others to say that 57 percent of North’s children had a “functioning disorder” and 29 percent were “full” cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Some of the symptoms of functioning disorder are fright, anxiety, a feeling of disconnect and depression. Among symptoms of PTSD are migraine, epilepsy, stomach ulcer, and chronic fatigue.

Somasundaram’s own researches reveal that 79 percent of the children in the districts of Kilinochchi, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu and Mannar were exposed to armed combat; 58 percent had seen bombing;  40 percent experienced artillery and mortar shelling; 30 percent had experienced attacks on their home; 40 percent had seen people being killed; and 77 percent had gone through multiple displacement.

Describing the effects of such a traumatic background on the mental make up of kids, Somasundaran says:  “The hopes, trust, and feelings of security that children need to develop normally, would have been destroyed, causing permanent scarring at an impressionable age.”

A study of medical students from the districts of the Wanni revealed that 63 percent had witnessed the unnatural death of a friend or a family member; 67 percent had escaped from the jaws of death; 43 percent had witnessed killings of strangers; and 80 percent had been in the midst of armed combat. 

Parents too had been disturbing the minds of the young for 30 years by feeding them with horror stories of war, deprivation and right abuses. Family elders and school teachers continue to brutalize kids by relying on corporeal punishment to secure compliance.

With traditional control systems collapsing after the war, child abuse has gone up in Jaffna district from 32 to 99 between 2007 and 2014. In the Northern Province as a whole, in 2013,  19 percent were suffering from mental disorders and  17 percent were victims of alcohol and drugs abuse, Somasundaram says.

Our profound failures have resulted in national shame

• Sunday, October 18, 2015

In its September 2015 report on Sri Lanka, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) quotes immensely interesting asides from the (yet unpublished) report of the Udalagama Commission of Inquiry (2006).
We have been promised by the Prime Minister that the Udalagama report will be tabled in Parliament next week. Informally however, the report has been in circulation for some time.

Involvement of armed personnel in crimes
But let us revert to the OHCHR’s quotation of the Udalagama report. Paragraph 1240 of its report, for example, discusses the heinous extra-judicial executions of five Tamil students in Trincomalee in 2006. The students hailing from professional and well to do families, many of whom had either been admitted to university or were awaiting university admission, were killed as they were casually chatting to each other near the beach front. The OHCHR report cites the Udalagama Commission as stating that ‘there are strong grounds to surmise the involvement of uniformed personnel in the commission of the crime.’

This is of course, saying nothing very new. The involvement of state officers in the murders of the five Trincomalee students had been widely known for years, with specific details contained in reports of the University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR). These analytical reports were distinguished for their fierce denunciation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as well as the Government.

But the question remains actually less with why the Government at the time preferred to push even these minimalist findings of the Udalagama Commission under the proverbial carpet. The answer to that is self-obvious. Rather, it is as to how, as decent men and women professedly with consciences, we allowed this farce to continue? It is the same question in regard to the death of Sri Lankan ruggerite Wasim Thajudeen. Could sane human beings have allowed these atrocities to happen in full view as it were and yet looked away?

Need to go beyond the superficial
The Udalagama Commission had been tasked to inquire into several grave human rights violations of the time including the Trinco murders and the killings of aid workers in Mutur. Repeatedly undermined by state actors, it was prematurely wound up without being able to complete its mandate.

In a fundamental sense, the fiasco to which this Commission degenerated captures in a microcosm, exactly what is wrong with us. I use the present tense quite deliberately for the reason that despite our greatest expectations, two ‘yahapalanaya’ election victories cannot guarantee concrete change in our democratic institutions if weourselves do not go beyond the superficial. No automatic solutions can be offered by the 19th Amendment or indeed, an entirely new Constitution that people are now feverishly running around with.

The issue in question goes far deeper than pure legal or constitutional reform. It must not be forgotten that during 2001-2004, a Constitutional Council did function. Its composition was vastly better than the one that we have now. ‘Independent’ constitutional commissions were established, excepting the Elections Commission. Yet, was there significant change in Sri Lanka’s democratic functionality? One thinks not.

Explaining away our complicity
Granted, if one compares that period with the darkness of the Rajapaksa decade that followed, things were infinitely better. But the bar is set so low that anything would seem better than the systemic degradation that took place between 2015-2014. Rather, the basic question that should concern us is whether structural reform of institutions took place. For example did the National Police Commission and the National Human Rights Commission actually achieve a better functioning of the institutions that they dealt with? The answer to that question must unequivocally be in the negative.

But to return to the Udalagama Commission, the propaganda around its functioning was beautifully choreographed precisely to obscure and prevent justice rather than achieve it. The role of the Attorney General in ‘assisting’ the Commission only resulted in stirring up controversies. Indeed two (retired) Justices of the Supreme Court noted for their integrity gave an opinion at the time to the effect that if a particular state law officer had been involved in any way whatsoever in regard to any of the violations being investigated by the Commission, that officer was duty bound to excuse himself from participating in the Commission proceedings.

Witnesses and family members of those who had suffered the most atrocious wrongs were badgered as they gave evidence to the extent that they broke down in tears. This was to be expected of the government and its defenders. But what of the other seemingly honourable men and women who participated in or counseled the deliberations of this Commission? How can one explain away their silence or their complicity when the process of justice was so ruthlessly subverted?

The prevalence of sheer self-interest
The extent of this subversion was such that an ‘embedded’ journalist of the private media published extracts from the submissions of defence counsel for the army, claiming that these were extracts from the Udalagama Commission report itself. Those who challenged this shameless propaganda (including this columnist) were, in turn, repeatedly attacked. The Udalagama report itself continued to be hidden away, doubtless in a desk of a Rajapaksa minion.

But it again needs to be asked as to if, in the minimum, a formal refutation of mischievous and false news reports could not have been issued by the Commission or at least one of the Commissioners possessing a tad more courage and conscience than the others? Surely it was not to be expected that such action would lead to the person in question being ‘white-vanned’ to use the popular colloquialism in regard to enforced disappearances? Rather, it was sheer self-interest that dictated much of the silence of those who should have spoken out at the time.

Profound failures of this nature have propelled Sri Lanka to now face the eventuality of a (veiled or otherwise) ‘hybrid court’ proposal to our utter ignominy. Quite apart from the rank stupidities of politicians in bringing about this state of affairs, there is a historic responsibility that we need to bear for our silence at a time when it would have mattered.

Are Sri Lankans Served Fairly By The Supreme Court?

By Ananda Markalanda –October 18, 2015

Ananda Markalanda

The second case filed by public interest attorney Naganada Kodituwakku is an eye-opener. The Supreme Court has a special critical role to play in a democracy and we claim Sri Lanka a democracy. The Constitution gives it the power to check, if necessary, the actions of the President and House.

It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed by the Constitution. It can tell the house that a law it passed violated the Constitution and is, therefore, no longer a law. It can also tell the government of that one of its laws breaks a rule in the Constitution.

The appointment of defeated candidates made through the National List provision of the Constitution is unconstitutional and can declare void all such unlawful appointments made through the National list. Here the constitutional relief sought by the people was not recognized giving more power to the President merely on a request.

The Supreme Court is the final judge in all cases involving laws, and the highest law of all — the Constitution. Although it is the courts’ duty to say what the law is, the other branches of government have an independent obligation to uphold the Constitution.

How important is the Supreme Court to the advancement of individual rights? Very important, many would contend, when the people whose rights are being compromised to advance the political power, the independence of the Supreme Court has suffered. Our constitutional democracy rests, after all, on the notion that people disdained and disfavored by the majority and elected representatives can still find justice before an independent Supreme Court. The current Supreme Court in general has failed in maintaining this trust. The judicial role in protecting individual rights and limiting the other branches of. where government is allowed to exceed the limits of its expressly delegated trust, it loses it’s recognition and respect. This is what happened in this case as pointed by attorney Kodituwakku.Read More