A demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a protest against administrative detention in 2013 (AFP)
Monday 29 February 2016
Over the past 10 days, Israel has given "administrative detention" orders to 84 Palestinians, bringing the total number of Palestinians held under the controversial procedure to its highest level since 2009, a Palestinian NGO said on Monday.
The Palestinian Prisoners' Club said 39 Palestinians had been arrested and placed under administrative detention for periods of between two and six months, while the other 45 had their detention prolonged.
The latest orders, according to the NGO, bring the total number of Palestinians held under administrative detention - a British Mandate- era procedure which allows Israel to hold suspects without trial for renewable six-month periods - to more than 700.
News of the figures comes just days after Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq ended a 93-day hunger strike in protest of his administration detention after Israeli and Palestinian officials struck a deal that will see him a month earlier than originally scheduled.
Activists said Qiq's case ended in victory and had been a "big embarrassment for Israel", but will likely view the record number of Palestinians held under administrative detention with disappointment.
Qiq, a father of two and correspondent for Saudi Arabia's Almajd TV network, was arrested at his home in Ramallah on 21 November for what Shin Bet described as "terror activity" on behalf of Hamas.
He had refused food since 25 November in protest against the "torture and ill-treatment that he was subjected to during interrogation," according to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organisation.
“Those who haven’t suffered wounds can make light of scars on others.” – Freely adapted from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
Few of us have spoken with a torture-victim, much less witnessed torture, and the phrase “torture-victim” tends to remain a label which conceals rather than conveys a sense of the hapless individual who remains permanently crippled, mentally and emotionally, if not also physically. It “wasn’t me anymore, and I would never be the same as before” (p. 258). Language, as Orwell pointed out, can be used not only to express but also to sanitise reality: “enhanced interrogation techniques” sounds positive, a welcome improvement.
In ‘A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms’, it’s observed that human beings possess intelligence, but if that intelligence suffers “corruption” then the result will be “worse than brutality” (Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels). Lacking the rational faculty, no other species is able to inflict suffering (in terms of methods, intensity of pain and duration) as we can and, most unfortunately, do. Animals do not torture and gang-rape, humiliate and degrade; and to say, “They behaved like animals” is unjust to animals. Fellow human beings are degraded, and then that degraded state is used as justification for contempt and further diminuition. Having destroyed their humanity, we use the effect to justify the cause; to claim ‘they’ are not equally, fully, human, and therefore do not merit humane treatment.
Incarceration sometimes results in the writing of a book. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (executed 524 CE), The Story of my Experiments with Truth by Gandhi, Discovery of India by Nehru, Letters from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Long Walk to Freedom by Mandela, The Roots of Civilization by Abdullah Ocalan are some titles that come to mind. The Kurdish leader Ocalan and Slahi are at the time of writing (February 2016) both still in prison. Read More
BY MICHAEL CECIRE-FEBRUARY 29, 2016
A prominent Georgian opposition leader, Aleksi Petriashvili, was shot and wounded on February 26 at a cemetery in central Tbilisi. While he is expected to make a full recovery, the attack is likely to aggravate Georgia’s worsening political divides. At the very least, it will raise questions about the government’s ability to maintain pubic security just months before October parliamentary elections. Petriashvili’s attackers, reported as “well trained,” remain unknown and at large.
The attack has prompted a number of theories, most of which assume that the primary motive was not political. The most broadly circulated explanations focus on clan rivalries mixed in with various rumors about personal vendettas and conflicting business interests. Even so,Petriashvili’s prominence virtually guarantees that the attempt on his life will have political ramifications.
A former Minister for Euro-Atlantic Integration, Petriashvili is a leading figure in the Free Democrats party, which broke away from the ruling Georgian Dream coalition in November 2014 after its leader, Irakli Alasania, was dismissed by then-Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili from his post as defense minister. During their period within the Georgian Dream coalition, the pro-western Free Democrats were outspoken supporters of liberal reforms and deeper ties with Euro-Atlantic institutions.
“Until the investigation is complete and the perpetrators are apprehended, the security of the nation and of average citizens is under threat,” Alasania told Foreign Policy, criticizing the government’s handling of public safety. “We need to take emergency action to start better managing Georgia’s problem of organized crime. Law enforcement simply needs more resources.”
India faced criticism of skimping on efforts to bail out ailing state banks in the annual budget on Monday, but sparked a big rally in the shares of one state lender, IDBI Bank, by saying it would be ready to cede majority control.
Finance Ministry Arun Jaitley, in his budget speech, stuck to earlier plans to provide $3.7 billion in new capital next year towards the escalating cost of a sector-wide bailout that the government estimates at $26 billion over four years.
That pales by comparison with the $117 billion in stressed loans on their books, but Jaitley, by saying that he would commit unspecified further funds if needed, gave some heart to investors who sent banking stocks higher in a weaker market.
"We stand solidly behind these banks," Jaitley told lawmakers in his 100-minute speech in which he also said he would lay out a road map for banking sector consolidation.
Two dozen state-controlled lenders, led by State Bank of India, control more than two-thirds of the nation's banking assets. A history of political interference, weak management and the lack of a bankruptcy code have created a mass of unrecoverable debts.
Lenders have been hit hard by a surge in bad and troubled loans even as the economy has grown quickly, increasing their capital needs beyond the 1.8 trillion rupees ($26 billion) the government estimates they must raise to meet global bank capital rules by 2018.
In his budget speech, Jaitley said the government would inject 250 billion rupees ($3.65 billion) into the state-run banks during the 2016/17 fiscal year that starts on April 1 - unchanged from previously.
"The requirement is much larger, considering the current stress level disclosed by the banks," said Kalpesh Mehta, a senior director at consultants Deloitte India.
The banking sector index bounced back to close 1.12 percent higher in a Mumbai market that fell 0.6 percent. Hopes of a rate cut also helped banking stocks, traders said.
Some bankers drew comfort from Jaitley's statement that the government would back the lenders when they need capital.
"He has given a statement that they will be providing all sort of additional support wherever we require. That's great news," said R.K. Gupta, executive director at state-run Bank of Maharashtra.
"Of course we were expecting he will quote some number."
Jaitley said separately that the government would consider cutting its stake in state-run IDBI Bank to below 50 percent, sending the bank's shares up to 16.5 percent higher.
Government ministers and officials have previously said that they were open to bringing in a strategic investor in IDBI Bank as a test case.
Jaitley also said the government would allow asset reconstruction companies, which buy bad loans from banks, to be fully owned by their sponsors, a measure aimed at bolstering the capital-starved sector. He also planned to allow foreigners to own 100 percent of these companies without having to seek prior government approval.
($1 = 68.455 rupees)
(Additional reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal in New Delhi; Editing by Douglas Busvine)
Supporters of Myanmar nationalist groups raise their hands in support of preserving a constitutional clause barring Aung San Suu Kyi, the popular leader of the country's new ruling party, from becoming head of state, in Yangon, Myanmar Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016. Sunday's rally drew at least 350 people. The clause disqualifies anyone with a foreign spouse or children from assuming the presidency. Suu Kyi's late husband was British, as are her two sons, leaving her ineligible despite her mandate as the head of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which secured a landslide victory in a general election last November. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
A Buddhist monk walks as others sign an attendance register during a rally by Myanmar nationalist... Read more
Feb. 28, 2016
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Hundreds of nationalist Buddhist monks and their supporters rallied in Myanmar's biggest city Sunday in support of retaining a constitutional clause barring Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the country's recently elected ruling party, from becoming head of state.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party is set to take over government in March after winning November's election in a landslide. But Suu Kyi cannot become president because an article in the military-dictated constitution bars anyone whose immediate family members are foreign nationals from holding the office. Her two sons are British, as was her late husband.
The National League for Democracy, or NLD, floated the idea of trying to have the article suspended, but seems to have abandoned it due to apparent opposition from the military.
Suu Kyi is likely to go ahead with her previously announced plan of having a proxy for her serve as president, while she makes all the executive decision
Sunday's rally in Yangon was believed to have been organized by the Buddhist nationalist group Ma Ba Tha, which is led by monks. The group is notorious for stirring up the anti-Muslim sentiment that has led to bloody sectarian violence.
Ma Ba Tha also had favored the incumbent military-backed government party over Suu Kyi's NLD during last year's election campaign, but had minimal influence on the vote. It is seeking to reivigorate its political power after the setback.
Sunday's rally drew at least 350 people, many donning T-shirts reading "Section 59(f) of the constitution is untouchable. It must be protected from a national security angle."
The demonstrators defended retaining the article for nationalistic purposes, claiming their position was unrelated to Suu Kyi's possible bid for the presidency.
"We support this event ... because we don't want outsiders, foreigners, overwhelming our country," said organizer Thant Myo Oo. "Not only Suu Kyi, whoever is connected with the outsiders, we cannot accept."
Myanmar began a shift to civilian rule in 2011, when a quasi-civilian government took power under President Thein Sein, a retired general. The country's fragile transition has been marred by ongoing civil conflict and several bouts of deadly riots between the Buddhist majority and minority Muslims.
Ethno-religious tensions gave rise to growing nationalist sentiment and organized efforts to "protect the national race and religion," mobilizing masses nationwide and enacting legislation widely viewed as discriminatory.
Event organizers denied Sunday that they were members of Ma Ba Tha.
"Ma Ba Tha is a religious organization; it's not a nationalist organization," said Win Ko Ko Latt, an organizer and speaker at the rally, who said his intention was to protect Myanmar's 135 officially recognized ethnicities. "Anything representing nationalism, we will support fully."
When I think of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge today, what springs to mind is how their politics reflected their poetry. Wordsworth was 19 and Coleridge 17 when the French Revolution broke out. It was in their youth, in other words, that France underwent the Fall of the Bastille and the execution of the monarch. The youthful idealism that greeted the former incident – so full of promise in its vision for the future, free of injustice – couldn’t survive the shock of the latter event, after which the Revolution congealed into a harsh political actuality that England and Europe had to combat.
What happened to Wordsworth and Coleridge during this time was inevitable: lost initially in their youthful ardour over the Revolution, they regressed to jingoism and conservatism in later years. This was to be seen most in Wordsworth: when in his early poems he could write of his sympathy for the downtrodden, in later years (particularly in the period in which he wrote “England”, “The Excursion” and the sonnets on the English Church) he reversed that sympathy. He was no longer contemplating on poverty and injustice as though they could only be “resolved” by overthrow of tyranny. He wrote of them as inevitable, as finding resolution only through an almost mystical tranquillity (“She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here”).
Contrast these two against Lord Byron and Percy Shelley (who were born after them), and you will realise how easy it is to categorise their poetry in the face of what happened in France. The latter two weren’t born during the Revolution. They were the “children of the Revolution”, so to speak, which meant that they didn’t take the usual route idealists took before recapitulating. They were born of the Revolution, and hence in their hands the personal was closely intertwined with the political. In the end, they became heretics and rebels (“And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night / In the van of the morning light”).
It’s difficult to compare John Keats with either of these poets, particularly when we consider that he was a contemporary of Byron and Shelley. He was the youngest in their generation (Shelley was three years older than him). And yet, to my mind, Keat’s best poetry shares some affinity with Wordsworth, particularly in the latter’s idealisation of nature and beauty. The irony of course is that Keats was no Wordsworth when it came to the ideology he articulated through those poems of his, and in this regard he is more at home with Byron (more than Shelley, I should add, for Shelley could at times give into political rhetoric, which almost never happened with Byron).
Police fire teargas at migrants who threw stones, and shelters set on fire, after authorities dismantle dozens of makeshift shacks in refugee camp Workmen start to dismantle a section of the camp. Photograph: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters An anti-riot policeman throws a tear gas grenade during the dismantling of the camp Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
Clashes have broken out in Calais between migrants and riot police after authorities began to dismantle parts of the sprawling refugee camp known as the Jungle.
A British refugee aid group said it believed the homes of up to 200 people of the approximately 3,500 living in the camp had been demolished so far, and that a number of other makeshift shelters were burning.
Some homes appeared to have been set alight by the heat of teargas canisters fired at crowds by riot police, said a spokeswoman for the British volunteer group Help Refugees, while some residents seem to have set others on fire in protest.
“Police are still periodically firing teargas to keep back the crowds,” she said. “We can see six homes on fire now.”
Video footage from a volunteer inside the camp showed residents running away from clouds of teargas. Reuters said police fired teargas at about 150 migrants and activists who threw stones, and at least three shelters were on fire.
The work began calmly in the early morning, with orange-vested work crews painstakingly dismantling several dozen makeshift wood-and-tarpaulin shacks by hand before two diggers loaded the debris into large trucks. Police in riot gear shielded the work, and initially there were no reports of unrest beyond a report of one British activist being arrested.
The 2014 outbreak is helping doctors find answers to questions that once eluded them. (Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images)
The Ebola virus. (CDC via Getty Images)
By Leigh Cowart-February 29
When it comes to Ebola, new research suggests that the risk of catching the virus from a survivor is very low.
The recent Ebola outbreak happened at an unprecedented scale. Previously only seen in comparatively small clusters of cases, the virus erupted in a significant fashion in 2014, affecting thousands and easily launching the largest Ebola epidemic on record. Until now, the limited data regarding the disease had restricted the number of questions scientists could hope to answer about the infection. Simply put, cases of Ebola were so rare that we really hadn’t gotten the chance to learn a whole lot about it.
But 2014 changed that.
With the enormous influx of cases that occurred during the West African outbreak, scientists have started mining the resulting data for answers to questions critical to public health safety now and in the future. And, without reservation, one of the most important questions to be addressed is this: How likely is it for an Ebola survivor to spread the virus in the long-term, specifically, the period of time after the person is no longer actively sick with Ebola?
A new study published Monday in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseasesexamined the presence and persistence of Ebola virus in various bodily fluids of survivors. Researchers from the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School compiled patient data from nearly 6,000 articles, papers and case reports from the outbreak. They pulled test results relating to the presence of Ebola virus in various bodily fluids, such as blood, sweat, urine, breast milk, semen, vaginal secretions, feces and vomit.
The Ebola virus. (CDC via Getty Images)
And what they found is fairly good news: It appears that the risk of catching Ebola from survivor bodily fluids is very rare, with the exception of sexual transmission via semen. (There was not enough data regarding the infectivity of breast milk to make a definitive conclusion.)
The results of the study are promising, though the data was difficult to compile. Testing methods for the presence of the virus varied due to discrepancies in technological capabilities among treatment centers, which spanned everything from bare-bones field hospitals to state-of-the-art medical facilities.
As expected, infected blood appears to be the most infectious body fluid for Ebola, virtually teeming with the virus while the patient is in the throes of the disease. However, 95 percent of the patients included in the study who survived had cleared the virus from their blood by day 16 — though personal-protection measures for handling potentially contaminated blood might still be recommended.
A majority of other fluids tested appear to pose low infectious risk, with one glaring exception: semen. In fact, 70 percent of semen samples from survivors tested positive for the virus in the first seven months after the illness.
This may have had serious implications during the latter days of the epidemic, when areas thought to be clear of the virus saw new cases of the disease cropping up.
“It’s certainly plausible that some of the cases that occurred after the outbreak was over were the result of sexual contact,” said Paul Hunter, professor of health protection at the Norwich School of Medicine and lead author on the paper.
These findings raise another interesting question: Why is the Ebola virus persisting in semen, especially when it seems quick to leave other fluids?
Hunter shared his purely speculative take on the matter, stressing that this was his personal theory based on pattern recognition, rather than an expansive expertise in physiology. He explained that semen (along with some of the other bodily fluids that Ebola is found in during the illness, such as breast milk, saliva and vaginal secretions) is known as an exocrine fluid. These are fluids excreted by the body and are each the result of a kind ofmodified sweat gland. Perhaps, then, Ebola is “going to ground in the modified sweat glands,” he explained over the phone, commenting on the pattern of distribution of Ebola in the body.
Hunter added that he didn’t know why Ebola would be camping out in these areas, but that it was interesting that these were the fluids most affected.
Regardless, in light of reports of late complications in Ebola patients, this new research provides critical insight into the nature of Ebola virus infectivity in survivors, with the goal of informing public health campaigns and safe sex policies.
Leigh Cowart is a freelance journalist covering science, sex and sports. She is fully vaccinated for rabies.
Puthukudiyiruppu – civilian shelter in school – Sri Lanka
(Left) Puthukudiyiruppu – school shelter mural / (Right) Mullaitivu – final battle zone – Sri Lanka-
Puthukudiyiruppu – child’s slipper in bombed school – Sri Lanka
By Mariyahl Mahilmany Hoole, Grant Proposal Specialist, Generations For Peace-February 25, 2016
It is 2010, and we are travelling down a silent road. This road is as old as my parents, my grandparents, and their parents before them, and yet is has been built anew again and again over the scars and craters of Sri Lanka’s civil war. There is no one else around us. Not a single tree stands, no birds remain to sing. Soldiers flicker by at short intervals, standing watchfully against a deceased enemy. As the sun sets, the dying fields begin to glow red. Beneath them, soaked into this soil of my home, is the blood of a people, trapped and killed without reason in the final months of war. They died together by the thousand, and yet blanketed in the distracting silence of war, they died alone.
These are the fields where peace building failed.
As the miles pass, its broken pieces press into my memory. The 3-year old girl, learning to pray every night over the shoes of her abducted father. A circle of bereaved mothers in a detainment camp, tears forming in their eyes as they stroke my face, each one telling me in numbed pain that I look exactly like a lost daughter. Visiting my former schoolmates being held without cause in a high-security prison, to learn their father had been killed and their mother was being tortured.
I am sitting in a school afterhours with a young woman my age, as the light dances in to the room through the shrapnel holes in the wall. She is telling me her great love story – of the young man who picked up and followed her with each displacement, until her father finally gave his permission for their marriage. They had a few happy years together as husband and wife. When she returned to her mother’s home to give birth to their third child, she could not have known that the road – this very road – would be closed at the border to separate them, nor that she would never see him again.
A few months after the war ended, she received a call from a stranger who had been one of the trapped civilian crowd. He told her of an arm he had stumbled on in the bloodied dirt. A phone number was scrawled on it in ink. Above it was a message, asking, “If I die here, please tell my wife.”
I have wandered many roads since then, trying to remember the meaning of peace.
How do we, as peace builders, make sense of war? How do we confront the wearying weight of history, and choose every day to take on the responsibility of change? How do we maintain hope and purpose when we are, quite simply, exhausted? How do we encounter the human consequences of our failure and continue untarnished in mind and heart?
I have been working for a while now at Generations For Peace (GFP), where I found myself among a family of young peace builders for the first time. Many of them have experienced violence and conflict, and seen the devastation it leaves among those we care deeply about. Yet still this team of global volunteers – 8900 strong and counting – continues unyielding in its commitment to create change in our own communities. So before the road once again rises before me, I would like to share a few lessons I have learned among you, my fellow peace builders, as we try to make peace with our legacies of war.
From “Fixer” to “Changer”: When we see human suffering in our daily lives, we react with an overwhelming need to fix broken systems, to right the world’s wrongs. We soon realise that this is a work that has no end. And we find that not everything can be fixed. A mother cannot reclaim her daughter from the earth, a people’s history of injustice cannot be undone. But – everything can be changed. Sorrow can find meaning in being heard, injustice in our past can lead to resilience in our tomorrow. And that is our role as peace builders. That shift in our thinking – from fixers to changers – is small, but it makes the difference between frustration and possibility, paralysis and growth.
Hope big but plan small: We as peace builders exist on the sustenance of hope. Over time, however, the relentless weight of violence can cause even our strongest hope to bend low. Those volunteers who have completed GFP’s conflict analyses know that changing our societies’ large intractable conflicts is more manageable when this is broken down into small pieces – communities, relationships, human needs. This is because peace becomes more real when you hope big but plan small. We soon find that the most important changes for peace come from small things – an open ear that reminds someone of their humanity, a conversation that creates an alternative vision of the future, or simply an encouraging word that helps another find the potential within themselves. Our small acts, so easily overlooked amidst the demanding pressures of conflict and violence, do indeed have the power to create concrete shifts and changes in our communities, which find life in this transforming hope.
Create Space for Possibility: Peace building, by nature, asks us to work amidst forces like violence, suspicion, and instability. The intensity of this conflict environment means that opportunities for peace building remain rare, while those we pursue may often be met with defeat. Seeing our hopes fail again and again can fill us with despair, especially if we witness our failures affect those in our communities. If we simply wait for the right opportunity, therefore, we will not succeed in our work. Instead, we need to actively cultivate an environment of possibility. At GFP, we do this by trying new methods, exploring new alliances, inviting feedback, learning broadly, reflecting collectively, and discussing our work with as many people we can reach, knowing that a tipping point will come and a moment of change will catch hold. As we do this, we gradually also evolve to meet our challenges, and build a community to support our effort. Creating space for possibility asks us to be open-minded and available; while the uncertainty that coexists with possibility demands both resilient faith and hard work. But through exploration, we expand our limits, discovering creativity, persistence, growth – and new opportunities for peace – in even the most difficult of times.
The Value of Time: This, for me, has been the hardest lesson to learn. I think it is difficult for many of us who witness intense suffering in our communities, especially when we understand the power that causes it and the potency of its effects. But as I look back, I have come to appreciate the value of time. I’ve seen how time can bring forth changes we cannot even anticipate, our vision bounded as it is by the here and now. With time, I’ve watched with relief as the work of years past has gradually yielded changes of consequence – policies rewritten, homes returned, the vulnerable protected, divisions overcome, and lives saved. I understand now that the immediacy I so desperately wanted was not made for lasting peace. Whether in systems, communities, or individuals, peace must develop its roots slowly and naturally, so its changes can grow strong through generations. Perhaps this is a lesson that each of us must learn on our own, in our own time. But with this perspective, painful experiences of the past have quietly found their purpose, by grafting it back on to this work we do.
Being Human is OK: As peace builders in war, we are often needed to be strong for others, or asked to confront situations of violence that we can barely comprehend. This is how we give of ourselves in our communities. Unless we are careful, however, our openness to sharing the pain of others can irreparably wound our own minds and hearts. There is no perfect boundary between caring for others and safeguarding ourselves. But if we are to remain resilient enough to responsibly bear witness to war, then we must also giveourselves the right to be human. We should allow ourselves to step back when we are overwhelmed, respecting our vulnerabilities and giving ourselves space to heal. We need to make time for the things that refresh us and make our hearts whole. Most importantly we need a community of people among whom we will not be alone. This, for me, is GFP. I cannot say how much it has meant to find this family of pragmatic young idealists who are equally determined in their commitment to making peace from war. Sharing our effort has relieved the weight I carried from Sri Lanka; sharing understanding, I can express the sorrow that I keep silent in the outside world. Here, among them, I have learned how to return to myself.
The athlete and artist Donald Brown visited us at GFP recently, leaving his words resounding amidst our stories of war. “If we search for peace without having peace within,” he told us, ‘we leave our quest for peace in pieces.” Our work as peace builders cannot be separated from our hearts. By striving to create peace in the world, we hurt, grow, and change in response; but gradually, we develop strength to give from the peace we keep alive within. This is how we become our own stories of change. Our privilege as peace builders, however, is that our stories do not have an end. They join the stories of all those who come together with the same hope, creating something bigger than ourselves which, we know, will truly last.
*Before arriving at GFP, Mariyahl worked in peacebuilding during active conflict in Sri Lanka; and in its immediate aftermath, she conducted ethnographic fieldwork among communities which had been trapped in the final battle zones.
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Building peace in Sri Lanka: find out how our volunteers are utilising the power of sport-based programmes and activities in efforts to strengthen relationships in the post-conflict era. Interviews and footage were filmed in Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi, some of the worst-affected districts during the war.
The regime has changed, but the system remains the same; how can we expect justice from them?,” asked a Tamil nun who survived the brutal conflict between the Sri Lankan Government and the Tamil Tigers in Vavuniya district in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province.
Her sentiments echo a growing sense of skepticism shared by many in the country’s north and east in the willingness and ability of the Sri Lankan State to deliver justice and accountability for victims of the conflict and their families.
Interviews with local lawyers, activists, victims and victims’ families during my recent visit to the north and east reinforced the importance of ensuring a credible transitional justice process that will provide a genuine remedy to victims and survivors, and in so doing restore public confidence in the State.
Achieving this credibility requires, among other things, the participation of a majority of foreign judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators in any proposed special tribunal created to address alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations committed by all sides during the conflict.
Since the new government came to power a little over a year ago, Sri Lanka has taken some important and welcome steps towards national reconciliation. Particularly, victims’ hopes for justice were bolstered by the government’s apparent acceptance of the September 2015 report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documenting alleged serious human rights violations and abuses committed by all sides to the conflict. The Sri Lankan government even co-sponsored the subsequent Human Rights Council resolution, which affirmed the importance of the participation of foreign judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators to ensure the credibility of a “judicial mechanism” as part of the justice and accountability process.
But the government has yet to demonstrate any concrete initiatives towards fulfilling this promise of accountability. Recent statements emanating from various quarters of the government have fed mistrust among victims in the war-affected north and east. President Sirisena’s January 2016 BBC interview, in which he emphatically rejected the possibility of foreign participation in a proposed accountability mechanism, alarmed many. Equally troubling were his comments expressing full confidence in the existing justice system and questioning the UN report’s allegations of war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan Army.
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s statements only a few days later during his visit to Jaffna to mark Thai Pongal, that the majority of missing persons should be considered deceased, also did not go unnoticed. Families of the disappeared have the right to know, to the extent possible, the whereabouts of their family members. The PM’s message suggesting knowledge and admission of their fate, but without further details, left families wanting; I was told more than once that the PM’s statement on the missing was “hurtful” to the families of the disappeared.
Lawyers, activists and medical officers dealing with ongoing human rights cases complained that it is common for such cases to drag on for as much as 10 years due to delays in the police investigative stage, as well as further delays in prosecuting the case by the Attorney General’s department if and when the investigation is concluded. When asked whether these delays were due to lack of political will or capacity, I consistently received some form of non-verbal response amounting to: “Take your pick.”
Police also remain inadequately trained in investigative methodology, continuing to rely almost exclusively on confessions, often elicited by torture or other forms of coercion.
Under the current government, the climate of fear in the north and east has no doubt markedly improved; under the prior regime, for instance, I myself would not have been able to visit, move around and conduct interviews as freely as I did. At the same time, surveillance, threats and intimidation have not ended completely. Victims and lawyers in cases involving the armed forces as alleged perpetrators still face intimidation and obstruction of investigations.
Sri Lanka has had a long and well-documented history of creating domestic commissions of inquiry into serious human rights violations during the conflict, none of which has been successful in adequately addressing issues of impunity, justice or truth-seeking. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has for the past thirty years documented the gradual erosion of judicial independence under successive governments, and the resulting culture of impunity in the justice system. In its 2010 report, for example, the ICJ highlighted the failure of the criminal justice system, as well as the many commissions that have been established, to satisfy the State’s obligations to its citizens due to an absence of State accountability, limitations in the investigative and prosecutorial system and limitations in the law. While the new government has taken some steps to address this, most notably with the restoration of the Constitutional Council, much more work remains to be done.
In such a context, the existing justice system is poorly equipped to handle cases of gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law, including alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, that will require not only highly technical forensic evidentiary and investigative expertise, but will also involve specific prosecutorial and judicial capacity to deal with issues of modes of liability such as command responsibility for superior officers.
The nun in Vavuniya told me: “We want them to accept responsibility, tell us the truth, and then we can have reconciliation; it is not about revenge.”
The call by domestic and international human rights activists and observers for an accountability process that involves, as a minimum prerequisite, the meaningful participation of a majority of foreign judges and other personnel is very simply a matter of restoring public trust in the rule of law in the country, through a credible, impartial, independent, victim-centric transitional justice process that effectively addresses victims’ right to truth, justice, remedy and reparation, and on whose foundation the country can move forward with genuine reconciliation.
The GOSL can take a significant step towards bridging this trust gap in the immediate term by reaffirming in no uncertain terms its commitment to the promises to which it voluntarily agreed in Geneva last year, including its recognition: that “accountability is essential to uphold the rule of law and to build confidence in the people of all communities of Sri Lanka in the justice system[;]” that “a credible justice process should include independent judicial and prosecutorial institutions led by individuals known for their integrity and impartiality;” and, of “the importance of participation in a Sri Lankan judicial mechanism, including the special counsel’s office, of Commonwealth and other foreign judges, defence lawyers and authorized prosecutors and investigators”. (Groundviews)
(Nikhil Narayan is the International Commission of Jurists’ South Asia senior legal adviser)
Monday 29 February 2016
Monday 29 February 2016
