SitRep: How War in the South China Sea Might Start

BY PAUL MCLEARY-APRIL 7, 2016

Why we fight. There are plenty of ways for the nations ringing the South China Sea to stumble into war, but there’s one that doesn’t receive the attention it deserves: fish. FP’s Keith Johnson and Dan De Lucedeliver a smart piece looking at how and why the massive fishing fleets from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines are butting heads over this critical resource, and why things are only likely to get worse as China continues to destroy reefs in its rush to build — and defend — islands hundreds of miles from its coastline.

Fear of flying. The Obama administration placed a muzzle on military leaders in the run-up to the nuclear security summit in Washington that took place late last month, worried that too much loose talk about Chinese land grabs in the South China Sea would hurt the dialogue between President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The directive from National Security Advisor Susan Rice came after the U.S. military’s top commander in the Pacific, Adm. Harry Harris, argued forcefully for “a muscular U.S. response to China’s island-building that may include launching aircraft and conducting military operations within 12 miles of these man-made islands,”writes the Navy Times’  David Larter.

More forever wars. A senior Defense official confirmed to Foreign Policy that U.S. aircraft struck another al Qaeda target in Syria on Tuesday. The hit occurred in Idlib in northwest Syria where U.S. aircraft rarely fly, but it’s a new day in Washington’s long war with al Qaeda.

The Defense official told FP’s Paul McLeary that members of the Khorasan Group were the target of the strike, but they’re still trying to figure out who, exactly, was in the car they blew up. Local reports say three militants were in the vehicle, one woman nearby was killed, and 10 civilians were wounded. The hit comes just two days after U.S. aircraft killed Firas al-Suri, a spokesman for al-Nusra and longtime al Qaeda member. The strike on Sunday killed about 20 other fighters, the official said. Al Qaeda militants have also been under the gun recently in Somalia, where an attack by U.S. drones and fighter planes recently wiped out about 150 al Shabab fighters at a training camp, and another strike last month took out dozens more at a camp in Yemen.

Remember this? If the nature of these attacks against large groups of men whose identities are unknown sounds familiar, it’s because FP’s Dan De Luceand Paul McLeary wrote about how President Obama’s “signature strike” drone program never really went away.

More bases for Iraq. Here it comes. A senior U.S. military officer said Wednesday that the Pentagon is considering opening more U.S.-manned small outposts in Iraq to support Iraqi troops as they push toward the Islamic State-held city of Mosul. The bases would be modeled on the small firebasecurrently manned by a company of Marines in northern Iraq, which has been launching artillery volleys at Islamic State forces for weeks. Rear. Adm. Andrew Lewis, the Joint Staff’s vice director for operations, told reporters at the Pentagon there may be situations where the U.S. would either open a new base or reopen one that was used during the U.S. war in Iraq. He said the bases would remain behind the front lines.
The Marines were secretly shipped to Firebase Bell earlier this year, and their deployment was made public only after a Marine was killed and several others were wounded in an Islamic State rocket attack.

What’s that? What was billed as a huge win for privacy advocates has emerged as a setback for U.S. intelligence agencies. And Hillary Clinton is at the center of the whole thing. WhatsApp’s move this week to fully encrypt its popular messaging service was funded in part by the Open Technology Fund, a small, government-backed nonprofit that is part of Washington’s efforts to promote free expression and security online, writes FP’s Elias Groll.

Sorry, Jens. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg got an earful Wednesday from Republican senators on Capitol Hill who backed up Donald Trump’s complaint that too many European countries have been “ripping off” the American taxpayer by failing to contribute to the world’s most powerful military alliance.

FP’s John Hudson spoke with several sources inside the room, reporting back that “for under an hour, senators grilled Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, about why only five members of the 28-nation club spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, the official amount NATO recommends each nation set aside. Some expressed particular dissatisfaction with Germany, the fourth-largest economy in the world, which does not meet the 2 percent threshold.”

Thanks for clicking on through this morning as we work through another week of SitRep. As always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national  security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.
Islamic State

A new investigation by Vice pulls the curtain back on London’s involvement in the CIA’s covert drone war in Yemen. “The U.K. played a crucial and sustained role with the CIA in finding and fixing targets, assessing the effect of strikes, and training Yemeni intelligence agencies to locate and identify targets for the U.S. drone program,” Namir Shabibi and Jack Watling write. “The U.S.-led covert war in Yemen, now in its 15th year, has killed up to 1,651 people, including up to 261 civilians, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Iraq

War is hard. And it can be slow. The Iraqi army is discovering these painful lessons in a major offensive operation meant to begin clearing the towns and villages surrounding the Islamic State-held city of Mosul. Baghdad desperately wants Mosul back, but the start and stop march to its doorstep is proving to be a heavy lift that won’t get any easier.

Unlike

Say you’re a terrorist itching to purchase an anti-aircraft weapon. Where do you go? Turns out, some head to Facebook “which has been hosting sprawling online arms bazaars, offering weapons ranging from handguns and grenades to heavy machine guns and guided missiles,” the New York TimesC.J. Chivers reports in a sobering new article. The Facebook posts “suggest evidence of large-scale efforts to sell military weapons coveted by terrorists and militants. The weapons include many distributed by the United States to security forces and their proxies in the Middle East. These online bazaars, which violate Facebook’s recent ban on the private sales of weapons, have been appearing in regions where the Islamic State has its strongest presence.”

The business of war

Egypt and France are about to sign off on a series of agreements for the purchase of well over $1 billion in new weapons, including fighter aircraft, four ships, and even a military satellite communication system. The signing ceremony will come later this month when French President Francois Hollande visits Cairo.

Photo credit: TED ALJIBE/AFP/Getty Images

The Panama Papers leak could hand Bernie Sanders the keys to the White House

For some Americans, Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of a global elite which benefits from tax avoidance schemes. Bernie Sanders, her opponent, is its antithesis

The Panama papers have given Bernie Sanders a platform on which to appeal to angry undecided voters. EPA

• Matthew Turner -Thursday 6 April 2016

The revelation that the rich and wealthy are shovelling money in overseas tax havens is not a particularly surprising one. Nevertheless, the sheer scale of the 11.5 million document leak from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has whipped up an overdue storm and forced the issue of tax justice back on the agenda. It is likely that the Panama papers is just the tip of the iceberg, and if even more is revealed about the financial affairs of world leaders, the implication for global politics will be huge.

The Democratic presidential primaries in the US have been characterised by surging anger at the global elite. The Panama papers scandal will only fuel popular indignation at the actions of perceived establishment figures – those who have stood idly by and allowed this huge miscarriage of justice to take place.

Although there have been no major American casualties over the leak at this stage, all of the presidential candidates will be questioned about the scandal. And nobody is going to be under more pressure than Hillary Clinton. For some Americans, she is the embodiment of a “global elite”, while Bernie Sanders is its antithesis.

The huge leak exposes governments across the globe wilfully ignoring tax avoidance by the rich. Although Clinton has not been linked to any malfeasance in the leak, there is a sense that she is among the elite rich, some of whose members have benefited from such schemes.

It has been revealed Clinton pushed through the Panama Free Trade Deal at the same time that Sanders vocally opposed it, citing research warning that it would strictly limit the government’s ability to clamp down on questionable or even illegal activity. Even if the Clintons remain unmentioned in future tax bombshells, Sanders can continue to exploit the narrative that Clinton is part of the demographic responsible, and has assisted in flagrant abuses of the system through trade deals.

As this scandal looks intent on dragging on, it is now increasingly likely that undecided voters will swing towards the Sanders camp in the vital primaries coming up, including New York. In a general election, Republican favourite Donald Trump’s alleged historic tax dodging will leave him in hot water in comparison to Sanders' squeaky clean record. He is the only candidate who even speaks in terms of the 1 per cent vs the 99 per cent. Should he secure the Democratic nomination, early general election pollssuggest Sanders would knock Trump out of the park.

But this more than a battle of candidates, it is a battle of ideas. Globalisation, heralded by the likes of Hillary Clinton, has enabled the richest in society to exploit the system while ordinary working people pick up the tab. This has been going on for decades; as a political family, the Clintons have done nothing about it. Hillary continues to describe her opponent’s policy platform as ‘pie in the sky’, yet corporations paying their fair share of taxes could easily fund many of Sanders’ proposals.

The longer this scandal is kept alive the more beneficial will be for Sanders. And if any more skeletons in the Clinton closet see the light, it will parachute Bernie Sanders into the White House.

World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers'

Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption

Millions of documents show heads of state, criminals and celebrities using secret hideaways in tax havens

Chinese President Xi Jinping and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Photo: UK Government / Georgina Coupe

Files show a number of luxury yachts bought and sold through offshore companies. Photo: Twiga269 / Flickr

Mossack Fonseca co-founder Jürgen Mossack.----Mossack Fonseca co-founder Ramón Fonseca.

In this story

• Files reveal the offshore holdings of 140 politicians and public officials from around the world
• Current and former world leaders in the data include prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the president of Ukraine, and the king of Saudi Arabia
• More than 214,000 offshore entities appear in the leak, connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories
• Major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens

By The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists-Apr 3, 2016
A massive leak of documents exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and reveals how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies.


The leak also provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world.

The cache of 11.5 million records shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars.
These are among the findings of a yearlong investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations.

The files expose offshore companies controlled by the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the king of Saudi Arabia and the children of the president of Azerbaijan.

Read More

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal gets bail in slander case brought by Arun Jaitley

Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party (AAP) chief and its chief ministerial candidate for Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal gestures to his supporters after casting his vote outside a polling station during the state assembly election in New Delhi February 7, 2015

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley speaks with the media in New Delhi November 23, 2015.

Thu Apr 7, 2016

A local court granted bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday in a slander case brought by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley which deepened the rivalry between the ruling party and the opposition.

Kejriwal, who routed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi state elections last year, accused Jaitley in December of allowing fraud at a cricket association he ran from 2003 to 2013.

Jaitley, a top member of the BJP, has denied any wrongdoing and sued Kejriwal for 100 million rupees ($1.5 million) for slander.

The court granted bail to Kejriwal and five members of his Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday. The case will be heard on May 19, said Pinaki Mishra, one of Jaitley's lawyers.

A spokesman for the AAP declined to comment, saying the matter was sub judice.

Kejriwal and the BJP have been at loggerheads since the self-styled anti-graft crusader won elections in the Indian capital.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra, Tommy Wilkes and Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Disgraced leader’s daughter leads in the run-up to Peru’s presidential elections

By Simeon Tegel-April 7

LIMA, Peru — As Peru’s former president Alberto Fujimori serves a 25-year jail term for kidnapping, directing death squads and other crimes, his family is poised for an improbable political comeback.

His 40-year-old daughter, Keiko, is the clear front-runner going into Sunday’s first-round presidential vote. Treading a delicate line between distancing herself from her father’s offenses and taking credit for his accomplishments — including taming hyperinflation and crushing the Shining Path rebels — she has around 35 percent support and a double-digit lead over her nearest challengers.

Weary of entrenched corruption and distrusting the political class, Peru’s electorate is notoriously volatile.

 But it is almost certain that Keiko Fujimori will miss the 50 percent needed to win outright and instead will head as favorite into the June 5 runoff against the second-place candidate.

The family’s likely return to power has many Peruvians concerned for their fragile democracy. Critics fear the country could return to the sort of abuses that occurred during Alberto Fujimori’s 1990-2000 presidency, when the government shuttered Peru’s congress and the courts, harassed critics and ordered the extrajudicial killings of terrorist suspects — some of whom had nothing to do with the insurgents. The anti-graft group Transparency International has calculated that $600 million vanished from public coffers on Fujimori’s watch.

[Peru fights gold fever with fire and military force]
Demonstrators shout slogans against Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori during a march in Lima. (Esteban Felix/AP)

Keiko, who is widely referred to in Peru by her just first name, has moved to head off those concerns and present her Popular Force party as a modern democratic center-right movement. “I know how to view the history of my country. I know which chapters should be repeated and which not,” the former congresswoman said during a TV debate Sunday evening. “I promise to respect absolutely the democratic order and human rights.”

But many are unconvinced. “The revanchist current within ‘Fujimorismo’ could come to the fore, especially if they get a majority in congress,” said Eduardo Dargent, a politics professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. “Peruvians and the international community will need to respond at the first sign of authoritarianism.”

Others, however, especially poor Peruvians, revere Alberto Fujimori forrestoring order to a country racked by annual inflation of more than 12,000 percent and the bloodlust of the Marxist Shining Path, which launched an internal conflict that claimed 69,000 lives.

“Fujimori saved Peru,” said Jorge Pérez, 42, a Lima taxi driver. “That’s why we should give Keiko a chance. He was the only president who ever did anything for this country.”

Meanwhile, rampant corruption, rooted in part in Fujimori’s weakening of institutional checks and balances, is contributing to his daughter’s popularity.

[She was a typical D.C. 30-something. Now she might become Peru’s first lady.]

“Since Fujimori stepped down, it has been one scandal after another,” said Walter Albán, head of Transparency International’s Peruvian branch. “People are disappointed with the return to democracy and are being pragmatic. They think ,‘If all politicians are corrupt, then I should at least vote for one that gets things done.’ ”

Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori. (Janine Costa/Reuters)

Since narrowly losing out on the presidency in 2011 to leftist former army officer Ollanta Humala, Keiko has rebuilt Popular Force, crisscrossing the country to give stump speeches to small audiences while holding the media at bay. She has given no interviews to foreign journalists during this campaign.

Taking a leaf out of her father’s book, she promises to crack down on crime, using the army to guard official buildings, thus freeing thousands of police officers for street patrols, and to build high-security prisons in the Andes.

Yet she is also widely expected to free her disgraced 77-year-old father, whose2009 trial Popular Force regards as illegitimate.

“We believe that all those who were justly convicted should serve out their sentences,” said Cecilia Chacón, a prominent Popular Force congresswoman, making it clear that the former president falls into a different category. Chacón insisted he will be released through court appeals, obviating a presidential pardon.

Keiko’s other policy proposals include a “shock” of infrastructure spending to kick-start Peru’s slowing economy, which is heavily dependent on the export of minerals whose prices are falling.

In a bid to attract more voters, she has also backed same-sex civil unions and access to legal abortion when the mother’s life is at risk, both anathema to the conservative Catholics and evangelicals who make up much of the nucleus of her support.

But those pledges have been overshadowed by questions about her murky campaign finances, frequent corruption scandals involving prominent Fujimoristas, and rumblings over the electoral authorities’ alleged uneven treatment of the candidates.

Last month, Peru’s National Electoral Tribunal pulled two of Keiko’s rivals from the presidential race, ruling that centrist economist Julio Guzmán had committed minor violations of his party’s internal democracy processes and populist businessman César Acuña had given money to voters. Guzmán’s exclusion came just after the outsider had surged into second place.

[A rare conviction for the slaying of a Latin American environmentalist]

The panel then cleared Keiko of the same violation committed by Acuña, despite a video showing her presiding over the distribution of envelopes of prize money at a break-dancing competition. In the eyes of many, that has called the election’s legitimacy into question, leading to street protests.

Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, last week called on the tribunal, via Twitter, to “reestablish the rights of political participation for all and avoid semi-democratic elections.”

With a quarter of the electorate considered undecided, pollsters warn that Keiko could be vulnerable in the second round. “The question will be whether anti-Fujimoristas, from left and right, coalesce around her rival,” said Alfredo Torres, head of the Ipsos polling company in Peru.

That rival is likely to be Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 77, a free-market champion and former prime minister, or Verónika Mendoza, a 35-year-old leftist congresswoman who has focused on the country’s inequality.

Depending on Sunday’s results, new battle lines will be drawn around the fiercely contested legacy of Peru’s most influential president of the last half-century.

History has knocked very loudly on our door. Will we answer? 

World Future Forum 2016 – Opening Speech by Jakob von Uexkull

March 15, 2016
We may all be doing our best but, as Winston Churchill said: “In a crisis, it is not enough to do our best – we have to do what is necessary”. Today we are heading for unprecedented dangers and conflicts, up to and including the end of a habitable planet in the foreseeable future, depriving all future generations of their right to life and the lives of preceding generations of meaning and purpose.

This apocalyptic reality is the elephant in the room. Current policies threaten temperature increases triggering permafrost melting and the release of ocean methane hydrates which would make our earth unliveable, according to research presented by the British Government Met office at the Paris Climate Conference.

Long before that point, our prosperity, security, culture and identity will disintegrate. A Europe unable to cope with a few million war refugees will collapse under the weight of tens or even hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

While scientists are increasingly in a state of panic about the state of the environment, the media – prone to exaggerate other news – downplay catastrophic threats to the planet. When the London “Times” provided a realistic overview recently (15.04.2015), it felt obliged to include the phone number of the Samaritans for those feeling distressed after reading it. One wonders how the Samaritans dealt with those calls!

Last month, N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman, after noting that climate change “just keeps getting scarier” asked: “So what’s really at stake in this year’s (US) election? Well, among other things, the fate of the planet.” A study by the US National Academy of Sciences last year concluded that claims of “de-coupling” economic growth from growing CO2 emissions and resource consumption, i.e. that we can consume more and conserve more at the same time, have been based on false accounting, 

underestimating the raw materials required to create the products counted. (The Guardian, 25.11.2015).

So why have we not already formed an emergency alliance to do everything humanly possible to stop and reverse course?

Why have we not identified a hierarchy of risks and developed a common narrative and strategy? These are questions I often hear, especially from the young, for whom the work of the World Future Council (WFC) and its members provides rare hope that they still have a future.

Read More

UNESCO World Heritage sites under threat by industry: WWF

Great Barrier Reef, Machu Picchu among sites reportedly in danger

In this April 1, 2010, file photo, the citadel of Machu Picchu is seen during its reopening in Cuzco, Peru. The UNESCO World Heritage site is threatened by development, according to a new WWF report. (Karel Navarro/Associated Press)

The Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russia's far east region, contains 160 volcanoes, 29 of them still active. WWF's website cites an increase in mining, oil exploration and gas drilling as a threat to the region. (Sergey Krasnoshchokov/Shutterstock)

 Apr 06, 2016

Industrial activity such as mining and logging threatens almost half of the world's natural World Heritage sites, from Australia's Great Barrier Reef to Canada's Wood Buffalo National Park to the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru, the WWF conservation group said on Wednesday.

It urged companies to obey U.N. appeals to declare all heritage sites "no go" areas for oil and gas exploration, mines, unsustainable timber production and over-fishing.

• VIDEO Northern Great Barrier Reef experiences worst coral bleaching on record, researchers warn
• Alberta's Beaver Hills, Great Bear Lake in N.W.T., join UNESCO biosphere network
• 10 iconic natural landmarks in Canada

A total of 114 World Heritage sites out of 229 worldwide that are prized for nature or a mixture of nature and culture were under threat, according to the study by WWF and Dalberg Global Development Advisors, a U.S.-based consultancy.

"This is staggering. We're trying to raise a flag here," Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, told Reuters. "We're not opposing development, we're opposing badly planned development."

The WWF findings are far higher than the 18 natural sites listed as "in danger", a more severe condition, by the World Heritage Committee of the U.N.'s cultural agency UNESCO.

The WWF rates the Great Barrier Reef, for instance, as under threat from mining and shipping, while last year, the Heritage Committee stopped short of an "in danger" listing. And the WWF says Machu Picchu in the Andes, also not on the U.N. list, is under threat from logging.

Other sites under threat include the Everglades in the United States, Ecuador's Galapagos islands and Russia's Kamchatka volcanoes, it said. Of those, only the Everglades were rated "in danger" by the Heritage Committee.

Mechtild Rossler, director of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre in Paris, said she welcomed such non-governmental reports as an aid to raise awareness of risks.

Not every company heeds no-go calls

Only some companies have heeded repeated U.N. calls for no go zones.

The International Council of Mining and Metals, grouping major companies, agreed in 2003 to stay out of World Heritage sites. Some oil and gas companies, such as Total and Shell, have made similar commitments.

"Oil and gas is more an individual discussion. We lack the overall organised approach," Rossler told Reuters.

The WWF study said that more than 11 million people depended on the heritage sites for food, water, shelter and medicine.

Lambertini said that the economic value of nature was too often ignored, even though the sites created jobs, for instance from ecotourism worth billions of dollars. "Nature continues to be taken for granted," he said.

The study expands on a report by the WWF last year that said about a third of sites were threatened by mining and oil and gas. It adds threats such as over-fishing, harmful logging and disruptions of water supplies from dams.

Aussie man dies after cosmetic surgery in Malaysia

Australian coroner launches investigation into the death of a 31-year-old man who underwent an extreme makeover.

April 7, 2016

PETALING JAYA: Australian authorities are probing the death of a 31-year-old man who died after undergoing an extreme makeover in Malaysia.

Australia’s The Age reports that Leigh Aiple had spent AUD35,000 (about RM104,000) on several procedures, including a 360-degree tummy tuck, extensive liposuction, an upper eye lift, a chin tuck, lip filler, thigh lift and chest sculpting at the Beverly Wilshire Medical Centre in Kuala Lumpur, back in May 2014.

He underwent two marathon surgeries within a week, including one which lasted more than 11 hours, and was allowed to fly home without having his post-surgery complications rectified here.

Aiple died of pulmonary thromboembolism associated with deep vein thrombosis, hours after landing in Australia.

“A blood clot in his calf had travelled to his lung and the pathologist found recent surgery and aeroplane travel had been risk factors,” said the report.

His mother, Grace Muscat told the daily that complications arose even after her son’s first surgery. Stitches burst open and wounds seeped for weeks, she claimed. He wrote to her about suffering from fainting spells, blacking out in the bathroom once, lying in his own diarrhoea, as well as experiencing breathing complications.

He flew back on May 11, 2014, and within hours, he was dead.

Aiple, who was bullied as a child for being overweight, was self-conscious after a weight loss left him with loose skin.

The Victorian coroner has now launched a full investigation into Aiple’s death.

A spokesman for the Beverly Wilshire told The Age that Aiple’s case was “extremely rare and complicated”, and reserved comment until a full probe into the matter is concluded.

GOVT STALLS CONSTRUCTION OF 65000 HOUSES FOR IDPS: PRESIDENT, PM TO REVIEW PROJECT

(War destroyed thousands of houses in the North)

06/04/2016

In an unexpected turn of events, the Sri Lankan government has now decided to temporarily suspend the project to construct 65000 houses for IDPs in the Northern province.

Before making the sudden decision on Wednesday morning, the government almost finalized an agreement with Arcelormittal – an Indian steel giant owned by businessman Lakshmi Mittal – with regard to the construction of houses.

However, highly placed government sources said a special committee, headed by the President and the Prime Minister, would review the project.

The project came under criticism from various sections on many grounds. While C.V. Wigneswaran, Northern Province Chief Minister, questioned the project on the alleged poor quality of sample houses, several local contractors tried secure a stake in the deal.

Among the local contractors who tried to secure a stake were MTD Walkers headed by businessman Jehan amaratunga and Daya Gamage Constructions, owned by Primary Industries Minister Daya Gamage.

It was widely speculated that MTD Walkers was heavily backed by an influential Cabinet minister who had close links with the Prime Minister.

To arrive at a ‘compromise agreement’ with local contractors, the government even promised local bidders that they would be given a chance to build 65000 houses elsewhere.

“With this fresh development, it is now clear that the view of the political arms backing local contractors has prevailed,” a senior Cabinet Minister told Asian Mirror on Wednesday.
Asian Mirror

CID summons Wagista who acquitted Lasantha killers!

Apr 06, 2016

The CID has summoned the then TID chief, now retired DIG C.N. Wagista to obtain a statement from him with regard to his having concealed evidence and got killers of Lasantha Wickamatunga acquitted and discharged from TID custody, reports say. In addition, the OIC of the TID at the time, presently Tangalle ASP Prasanna Alwis too, has been summoned by the CID.

If a suspect is acquitted and discharged by a court, that suspect cannot be summoned again, but investigations can be relaunched on the basis of newly-acquired evidence.

By now, the CID has been able to gather evidence previously unavailable with regard to the Wickramatunga murder, and all suspects freed by courts have been summoned to the CID.

After Wagista and Alwis are questioned, several arrests are likely, the CID has informed courts.

US state dept officials conclude visit to North-East and Sri Lanka
Special Coordinator for the U.S. Department of State Office of Global Criminal Justice Todd Buchwald meeting opposition leader R. Sampanthan and Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran 


 06 April 2016
The US state department's special coordinator for global criminal justice, Todd Buchwald, and the deputy assistant secretary of state for south and central asia, Manpreet Anand, concluded their visit to the North-East and Sri Lanka this week. 

Meeting with the chief minister of the northern province, C V Wigneswaran, the US officials discussed challenges to reconciliations and livelihoods in the North. 


They also met with the leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), R Sampanthan, and the TNA MP, M A Sumanthiran, as well as travelling to Jaffna and Trincomalee where they met with local government representatives, inter-faith groups, students, and civil society members. 

“It has been useful for us to hear from different voices that provide perspective on the situation in Sri Lanka today,” Mr Buchwald said. 

“We were privileged to travel to a number of places in Sri Lanka and hear first-hand about the progress made and challenges remaining.” 

The US ambassador to the island, Atul Keshap said, “The United States seeks to support the Sri Lankan people at this critical juncture as they pursue constitutional reform and a peaceful, prosperous, and reconciled future,” 

“Hearing a wide variety of Sri Lankan voices on reconciliation will be critical for these visitors as they help shape U.S. government assistance and policy in Sri Lanka in the coming years.” 

See here for more information and photographs of the visit. 

SRI LANKA: Electoral change beyond mere placebo effect

April 5, 2016\

In medical science a placebo effect means a remarkable phenomenon in which a placebo–or a fake treatment, an inactive substance like sugar, distilled water, or saline solution, can sometimes improve a patient's condition simply because the person has the expectation that it will be helpful. These days many people question as to whether the electoral changes achieved in 2015, had only a placebo effect, or whether it is possible to achieve something rather substantial instead.

Now the time is ripe for the new government to give a satisfactory answer to this question.

In the context of over 40 years of continuous political chaos in Sri Lanka, it is not surprising that any change of government causes a placebo effect on most people. People who suffer from seemingly incurable diseases often fall prey to any fake medicine and for some time enjoy the happiness created by the effect. The political crisis of Sri Lanka during the last 04 decades has made people so despondent that they may feel good by seeing the fall of any government, as these governments have failed to produce anything other than greater misery.

The fall of a government that is as repressive as that of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s would naturally cause a placebo effect. However, as the months go by,it is natural for people to ask whether there is a real change and this is basis of the conversations that are taking place now.

If the people are to believe that some real change is being initiated then, genuine hope may be generated. Otherwise, people may fall back into their normal habits of recovering from the placebo effect by dreaming about yet another change.

The test of a real change is the policies that a ruling government can place before the people which will indicate that the government has understood the real problems that beset the country and that it has thought out ways to resolve them.

What then are the real problems or at least some of the major problems faced by the country?

For a long time now, people have identified that one of the major problems of the country is the widespread lawlessness. We have witnessed already in the year 2001 when the parliament nearly unanimously voted for the 17th Amendment to the Constitution the entire country identified that there had been a collapse of all the basic institutions of the state, and the first step towards recovery is to bring these institutions back to life.

This government, when it campaigned as the common opposition,promised again to revitalise the basic institutions of the State and to establish the rule of law.

However, any hope that the people had for their country, towards establishing the rule of law is now fast being lost. The government has done almost nothing to re-assure to the people that the promises made on that score was made seriously.

Any observer may ask what plans the government hasto ensure the law enforcement capacity of the Sri Lankan policing system and for strengthening the administration of justice. What plans can the government show, which would result in any substantial improvement of the protection of the people? It is time, for the government to set their minds to answer these questions in a convincing manner.

Why Trying To Protect Religion Often Does More Harm Than Good

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By Navam Niles –April 6, 2016

Navam Niles

When asked whether religion is important in life, reportedly 99% of Gallup survey respondents in Sri Lanka answered ‘yes’. Leaving aside questions of what religion means or how it is perceived here, it is reasonable to say that many people use religion to guide their worldview in some way or form. Moreover, religion plays an important role in contributing to ethnic identities. Naturally, there is a strong political incentive to appeal to religious institutions to reach out to constituents. This incentive became stronger when the previous government led by Mahinda Rajapaksa put an emphasis on puritan Buddhism to forge a nationalist identity in lieu political-economic reforms. Perhaps in an effort to compete, recently Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, the justice minister, suggested a constitutional amendment to protect ‘religious leaders’ from criticism, even in Parliament. The irony of the justice minister proposing serious and ill-advised restrictions on free speech aside, his suggestion leaves everyone – the public, the government and the religious institutions – worse off.

There are clear political incentives for governments to align themselves closely with religious institutions. Governments have the power to confer recognition and privilege upon religious institutions and particular leaders. In exchange, religious institutions are expected to provide a moral mandate and politically compatible sermons. This phenomenon is common throughout the world. In the Middle East and the wider Islamic world, across the Sunni-Shia spectrum, governments of all stripes use religious authority to compensate for their lack of a democratic mandate. Governments ranging from Saudi Arabia (a conservative Sunni-dominated state) to Iran (a conservative Shia-dominated state), allow religious authorities to dictate social and moral norms in exchange for legitimacy. This isn’t limited to one particular religion either.

During the Cold War, many right-wing dictatorships in Latin America and Eastern Europe often formed compacts with the Catholic Church and in exchange for allowing conservative catholic social policies, governments would enjoy implicit or even explicit approval and assistance in suppressing dissent. Dictatorships aren’t the only ones who try to leverage their political power by aligning to religious institutions. In the US, a country that prides itself for a constitution that separates state for religion, every political candidate is expected to demonstrate their religious affinity. In all these cases, a political-religious alliance cuts both ways.

When governments embrace religious authority and vice versa, they must swim together and sink together. For governments, this means that any political project, that goes against the fundamental interests of religious leaders is politically impossible. In Saudi Arabia, for example, efforts to create socio-economic reforms to empower women, improve education, reduce religious radicalisation and liberalise the economy have met strenuous objections from religious authorities. As a result, the monarchy had to water-down even its most modest reforms. Today, women still cannot drive, education is still dominated by religiously inspired curricula and Islamic radicalisation is an existential threat to the stability of the monarchy. Moreover, instead of liberalising the economy, the Saudi government is forced to spend billions duplicating infrastructure and resources (to adhere to a strict code of gender segregation) and supressing any creative industries lest they offend religious leaders.

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