Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Tamil Nadu and Kerala dance to a different tune from the rest of India

Coimbatore: bobbin and weavin’

May 28th 2016

MAHATMA GANDHI would not have enjoyed Texfair 2016 in Coimbatore in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The man hated machines and factories, and promoted Indian independence by urging every household to spin its own cotton yarn. But on display at the textile fair were bobbins, rollers, waste balers, quality-control sensors and much, much more.

Indeed, India is vying with China to be the world’s biggest producer of yarn, with over 45m spindles twirling around the clock. But what is striking about the trade fair is how so much of the modern wizardry on show is made not in better-known industrial centres around the world but in Coimbatore itself, a city of just 1.6m some 500 kilometres (310 miles) south-west of Chennai, the Tamil Nadu capital.

The fast-growing city is an inelegant sprawl stretching into groves of coconut palms. It teems with technical institutes, bustling factories and civic spirit. Earnest and ambitious, Coimbatore evokes the American Midwest of a century ago. A regional manufacturers’ group that was founded in 1933 during Gandhi’s homespun campaign has now designed, built and marketed a hand-held, battery-operated cotton picker that it claims is six times more efficient than human fingers.

Gandhi would have been appalled. But the gadget says something about the quiet success of parts of India’s deep south. Mill owners worry that with day wages in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Kerala to the west now far higher than those in northern India, local cotton may grow uncompetitive. Tea planters in the hills west of Coimbatore are already squeezed. One landowner, in Kerala’s Wayanad region, where silver oaks shade trim ranks of tea bushes, says that his pickers get 300 rupees (about $4.50) a day, nearly three times the wage in Darjeeling in India’s north.

It may not sound like much, but it is also more than the average Indian earns. And as a whole, GDP per person in Tamil Nadu and Kerala is 68% and 41% higher respectively than the national average of $1,390 a year. With the south’s booming new industries, better education and higher wages contrasted with declining industries in the north and east, India is undergoing a shift a bit like the American one from the rustbelt to the sunbelt in the 1980s. Kerala shares in this new industrialisation less than Tamil Nadu, but that is balanced by another source of prosperity: remittances from abroad. As many as one in ten of Kerala’s 35m people work in the rich Arab countries of the Persian Gulf. Their remittances boost local incomes, property prices and demand for better schools. Kerala, under leftist governments for the past six decades, already has India’s best state education and its highest literacy rate. Its school district has again topped nationwide exams for 17-year-olds, followed by Chennai region, covering the rest of southern India.

Yet India’s deep south has not transmuted growing prosperity into greater political clout. It remains largely aloof from broader political trends, including a slugging match between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in office nationally under Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and Congress, the once-dominant centre-left party that worships Gandhi. In elections across four Indian states that wrapped up on May 19th, attention elsewhere focused largely on the fortunes of those two parties. The BJP’s capture from Congress of Assam in the north-east was seen as a big boost for Mr Modi. Congress’s failure to take any state was seen as a sign of decay.

Voters in both Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which has 72m people, paid hardly any attention at all. In both states the contest was between long-established state-level parties. Keralites and Tamils alike admit that in terms of policy not much distinguishes the rival parties. For a generation, power in Kerala has alternated between two left-of-centre coalitions. Tamil Nadu, meanwhile, has been in thrall to parties that both make “Dravidian progress”—a reference to South India’s linguistic and racial separateness from the “Aryan”, Hindi-dominated north—part of their name.

A continent masquerading as a country: Explore India in our interactive map

Elections are often bidding wars. In Tamil Nadu this has meant offers of household goods or simple cash. The favoured lure in Kerala, where politics is so staid that rival party bands traditionally deliver a joint crescendo in village squares to mark the end of campaigning, has been promises of ever more generous welfare.

In practice, voters often punish the party in power. But this year voters in Tamil Nadu re-elected the incumbent government for the first time in a generation. The AIADMK, whose boss is a former actress known as Jayalalithaa, had the stronger party machine and a track record of generosity. It secured victory over the DMK, from which it split in 1972. The outcome in Kerala was more traditional. The corruption-tainted ruling coalition, led by a local affiliate of Congress, was trounced by the communist-led Left Front.

Interestingly, gains were made by a newcomer to Keralite politics since the last state elections in 2011: Mr Modi’s BJP. It picked up just one seat in the 140-member state assembly, but almost doubled its proportion of votes, to 15%. To some, the Hindu-nationalist party’s entry reflects the impatience of Kerala’s growing (and mostly Hindu) middle class with the handout politics that tends, on paper at least, to favour religious minorities in a state that is 27% Muslim and 18% Christian. But Keralites fed up with both Congress and the hammer-and-sickle mob, both of which have failed to foster industrialisation and jobs, may have felt they had nowhere else to go.

Japan PM to postpone sales tax rise, snap election off table for now

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) and Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso attend a parliament session for a no-confidence motion against Abe's cabinet, submitted by four opposition parties at the parliament in Tokyo, Japan May 31, 2016.REUTERS/TORU HANAI

Wed Jun 1, 2016

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to announce on Wednesday that the government will delay a scheduled sales tax hike by two-and-a-half years, but will likely bow to pressure from his coalition partner not to call a snap general election.

The tax delay, which had been widely expected, will be welcomed by voters, who will cast ballots in an upper house election in July. But it is fanning doubts about Abe's plans to curb Japan's huge public debt and fund ballooning social welfare costs of a fast-ageing population.

It would be the second time that Abe has delayed the increase in the sales tax to 10 percent from 8 percent, after a rise from 5 percent in April 2014 tipped the economy back into recession. Abe took office in December 2012 pledging to beat deflation and reboot the moribund economy with his "Abenomics" revival recipe, but has made little headway amid stubbornly weak domestic and export demand.

"From an economic standpoint, the market is likely to view the delay as a positive surprise for domestic demand," said Lee Jin Yang, macro research analyst for Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore.

Abe, whose term as ruling Liberal Democratic Party president and hence, premier, ends in September 2018 unless the LDP changes its rules, has repeatedly said he would implement the tax rise as planned unless the economy faced a shock from a financial crisis or natural disaster.

But he laid the groundwork for a delay at last week's Group of Seven summit, insisting his G7 partners shared a "strong sense of crisis" about the global economic outlook and drawing parallels to the 2008 world financial crisis that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.

Government officials have said Abe has not abandoned a pledge to bring the country's primary budget balance into the black by the fiscal year from April 2020 to rein in public debt which is already more than double annual economic output.

But that target had already looked elusive, even with the government's rosy forecast of real economic growth of 2 percent on average in coming years.

Abe will also need to explain to voters how he plans to make up for the funding gap from the tax hike delay to October 2019, and keep pledges to beef up support for the elderly.

Speculation had simmered that Abe would call an election for parliament's powerful lower house as he did in 2014 after announcing the first tax hike delay, aiming to lock in his ruling bloc's two-thirds "super majority" in the lower house and win a similar grip on the upper chamber.

No lower house poll need be held until 2018.

(Reporting by Linda Sieg, Tetsushi Kajimoto and Leika Kihara in Tokyo, Masayuki Kitano in Singapore; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Trump's 'playbooks' offer a glimpse into his ruthless business practices

More than 400 pages of released Trump University files describe how staff should target financial weaknesses to sell high-priced real estate courses

Donald Trump attacks judge overseeing Trump University case

Rupert Neate and Lauren Gambino in New York-Tuesday 31 May 2016

A federal judge has given the world an unprecedented glimpse into the ruthless business practices Donald Trump used to build his business empire.

US district court judge Gonzalo Curiel on Tuesday made public more than 400 pages of Trump University “playbooks” describing how Trump staff should target prospective students’ weaknesses to encourage them to sign up for a $34,995 Gold Elite three-day package.

Trump University staff were instructed to get people to pile on credit card debt and to target their financial weaknesses in an attempt to sell them the high-priced real estate courses.

The documents contained an undated “personal message” from Trump to new enrollees at the school: “Only doers get rich. I know that in these three packed days, you will learn everything to make a million dollars within the next 12 months.”

The courses are now subject to legal proceedings from unhappy clients.

Judge Curiel released the documents, which are central to a class-action lawsuit against Trump University in California, despite sustaining repeated public attacks from Trump, who had fought to keep the details secret.

Curiel ruled that the documents were in the public interest now that Trump is “the front-runner in the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race, and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue”.

Trump hit back calling Curiel a “hater”, a “total disgrace” and “biased”. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump. A hater. He’s a hater,” Trump said at a rally near the courthouse in San Diego. “His name is Gonzalo Curiel. And he is not doing the right thing ... [He] happens to be, we believe, Mexican.”

Curiel, who is Hispanic, is American and was born in Indiana.

Trump went on to attack Curiel further on Twitter on Monday and at a press conference in New York on Monday.

The playbook contains long sections telling Trump U team members how to identify buyers and push them to sign up for the most expensive package, and to put the cost on their credit cards.

“If they can afford the gold elite don’t allow them to think about doing anything besides the gold elite,” the document states.

If potential students hesitate, teachers are told to read this script.

As one of your mentors for the last three days, it’s time for me to push you out of your comfort zone. It’s time for you to be 100% honest with yourself. You’ve had your entire adult life to accomplish your financial goals. I’m looking at your profile and you’re not even close to where you need to be, much less where you want to be. It’s time you fix your broken plan, bring in Mr. Trump’s top instructors and certified millionaire mentors and allow us to put you and keep you on the right track. Your plan is BROKEN and WE WILL help you fix it. Remember you have to be 100% honest with yourself!

Trump University staff are instructed in how to persuade students to put the cost of the course on their credit cards, even if they have just battled to pay off debts.

Do you like living paycheck to paycheck? ... Do you enjoy seeing everyone else but yourself in their dream houses and driving their dreams cars with huge checking accounts? Those people saw an opportunity, and didn’t make excuses, like what you’re doing now.

Trump staff are told to spend lunch breaks in sign-up seminars “planting seeds” in potential students minds about how their lives won’t improve unless they join the programme. They are also told to ask students personal questions to discover weaknesses that could be exploited to help seal the deal.

Collect personalized information that you can utilize during closing time. (For example: are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food? Or are they a middle-aged commuter that is tired of traveling for 2 hours to work each day?)

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who has also sued Trump University, renewed his attacks on Trump on Tuesday. “You are not allowed to protect the trade secrets of a three-card Monte game,” Schneiderman said ahead of the document’s release. “If you look at the facts of this case, this shows someone who was absolutely shameless in his willingness to lie to people, to say whatever it took to induce them into his phony seminars,” Schneiderman said.

Referendum:Decision under Uncertainty

By S. P. Chakravarty-May 29, 2016, 12:00 pm

(Emeritus Professor of Economics,The University, Bangor, Wales, UK)

The referendum on British exit from the European Union is a symptom of the rise of the politics of identity over the politics of prosperity. Both sides in this debate have made forecasts of the economic outcome. Forecasting organisations, barring a couple of dissenters, have expressed fears of a sharp decline in the economy, at least in the short run, if the Brexit camp wins. The Brexit camp counters these gloomy forecasts arguing that the economy would adjust to a new pattern of trade in no time and enter into a new era of prosperity by leaving the EU. In any event, these arguments about economic forecasts are simply a distraction for those that wish to leave. The Brexit camp places greater store on sovereignty -- taking control over the legal definition of human rights, dispensing with much of the regulations governing commerce and industry, and setting rules for immigration. Once the vote is cast to leave, there is no point of return. The decision criterion of minimising the maximum potential disruption to the economy is the only rational choice given the impossibility of computing the probabilities of predicted consequences of the outcome of the vote. This criterion favours a vote to remain a member.

We know what it is to live with membership, and we have some idea about the likely success of agitating for change to make institution within the UK and also in the EU more responsive to the voter. Institutions of governance are always under the scanner in a democracy. Within the UK, composition and selection rules of the upper chamber and devolution of power between regions is not a settled matter. Likewise, the question of democratic legitimacy of distribution of powers amongst various institutions within the EU is being debated, and not just in the UK. In a pluralistic democracy, not all citizens wish to subscribe to the same agenda for change, and even an encompassing view which might emerge would remain under scrutiny. A referendum is not the best way to proceed.

A difference between parliamentary elections in a system of representative government and voting in referenda is that the voter imposes on herself and the rest of society a greater burden of any unintended and unwelcome consequence of the outcome. This is especially so when the status quo is severely jolted in pursuit of ideas which cannot be measured in terms of their impact on our living standard.

In electing representatives to govern, the voter has the luxury of voting for government on a policy platform, but judging the government on consequences of that policy. Casting a vote for candidates expounding, for example, a tough stance on immigration does not constrain the voter from criticising a government thus elected if food prices rise in consequence or if the availability of medical care is compromised due to lack of qualified staff.

Mrs Thatcher secured a parliamentary majority in 1979 on a policy platform comprising, inter alia, a vow dramatically to reduce the share of government expenditure in the GDP. The ratio had climbed to 45 per cent. Notwithstanding this harsh rhetoric, government expenditure and its share in the GDP continued to increase in the initial years driven by unforeseen fiscal pressure of a sudden and sharp rise in unemployment. The ratio finally came down, but only to 40 per cent of the GDP, when she left office a decade later.

This is not to say that representative governance entails cavalier disregard of promises made at election but to suggest that the promises need to be interpreted in context. The context is the need for elected representatives to engage with complex technical issues and tedious details of policy coherence once in government to avoid chaos.

Those that have voted for a government which commands a parliamentary majority by expounding policies which appeal to the voters’ gut feelings have the option of defeating the government in the next election if the outcomes of following these policies turn out to be unappealing. This paradox is understood by representatives and they moderate in application promises made at election.

Governance by referenda, where policies are prescribed by the electorate, is a different matter altogether. Unforeseen consequences can be more disruptive in a referendum than in representative democracy. That is why stable democracies choose representative forms of government, and governance by referenda is shunned.

A textbook example of the disruptive nature of referendum politics is the story, reported in the New York Times on the 5th of March 1995, of the three strike sentencing referendum in California. A woman was brutally murdered by a repeat offender recently released on parole after a period in jail. In the background of emotive press reports, a referendum was held on whether to mandate a harsh prison term of 25 years to life, without any possibility of parole before 20 years, for all repeat offenders. Professionals engaged in the maintenance of law and order advised against voting for a law imposing such an inflexible mandate on the judiciary. The advice was ignored by a majority of the electorate. Soon after the referendum was passed, a young pizza thief, he was in the habit of going into restaurants eating a slice of pizza and then escaping without paying, was sentenced to a term of 25 years to life with no hope of parole before 20 years. Even those that had voted for the referendum mandating this harsh punishment were aghast. The law was eventually repealed but not before causing disruption to the criminal justice system.

The ensuing referendum on continuing British membership of the European Union is an exercise in making decisions under uncertainty. Whilst the referendum ballot provides a binary choice, whether to remain in or to exit from the EU, the voter is not faced with a binary decision. There are multi-dimensional effects of the decision. The protagonists have forecast vastly different consequences for British trade and prosperity and also for world peace. They seldom emphasise that the probabilities of potential outcomes of the vote for economics can only be assigned subjectively. In our view, even the assignment of subjective probabilities requires knowledge of the unknowable, and the best course of action is to minimise the potential for maximum harm. That is to stick to what we know and shun the temptation to take an irreversible plunge into the unknown that is also unknowable.

Britain is a trading nation where international trade counts for slightly less than a third of its GDP. Roughly half of that, 45 per cent to be precise, is trade with the EU. The EU aspires to a single market which entails companies being able to compete for government contracts across frontiers within the EU without discrimination.

Those in favour of withdrawing from EU membership discount the prospect of any adverse effect on British trade. Their argument is four-fold. Firstly, they assert that access to European markets could be swiftly negotiated without necessarily having to comply with the rules for free movement of labour within the EU and without having to follow EU directives specifying, for example, labour rights at work and environmental conditions in production. A second line of argument is that it does not matter if negotiations stall. Any adverse consequences of disruption to trade with the EU could be ameliorated through improving trade relations with countries outside the Europe. This assumption is oblivious of the fact that the leaders of some of the largest economies outside the Europe with whom the Brexit camp aspires to increase trade have advised against British departure from the EU. A third line of argument derives from the belief that hitherto untapped energies would be unleashed in the British economy freed from EU regulations. A fourth line of argument from Brexit, put forward by some in the left, is a modified version of the above. It is the EU bureaucracy which holds back the ability of a British government to determine for itself policies on selective subsidy to make the economy flourish. Some in the Brexit camp would be prepared to accept a reduction in prosperity to get back sovereignty, but leaders campaigning for leaving the EU, on the whole, do not accept the premise of a trade off between sovereignty and prosperity.

(To be continued tomorrow)

Ex-Gitmo Prosecutor-Turned-Critic Settles Free Speech Case for $100,000

BY DAVID FRANCIS-MAY 31, 2016

The six-year free speech fight between Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo Bay military commissions, and the Library of Congress has been settled.

After leaving the commissions, Davis had worked as an assistant director for the Library of Congress. He was fired in 2009 after penning opinion pieces in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal that were critical of President Barack Obamas decision to use both federal court and military commissions to prosecute detainees. He sued the library in 2010, with help from the ACLU, for violating his right to free speech and due process.

Under the terms of the settlement, Davis gets $100,000 and a correction of his employment record to show that the Library of Congress had no reason to fire him.

Davis served as the third chief prosecutor in the Guantánamo military commissions from September 2005 until October 2007. He quit after objecting to evidence obtained through waterboarding was used in trials against detainees.

“The guy who said waterboarding is A-OK, I was not going to take orders from. I quit,” Davis testified at a 2008 hearing at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He was called to the stand by lawyers for Osama bin Laden’s former driver.

Davis was named an an assistant director at the Congressional Research Service in 2008. The next year, he published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal critical of the White House’s decision to use dual venues to try prisoners. Davis argued, “The administration must choose. Either federal courts or military commissions, but not both, for the detainees that deserve to be prosecuted and punished for their past conduct.”

“Double standards don’t play well in Peoria,” he wrote. “They won’t play well in Peshawar or Palembang either. We need to work to change the negative perceptions that exist about Guantánamo and our commitment to the law.”

Davis has since continued to be a critic of Obama’s Guantánamo policies.

“Injustice at Guantánamo Bay is every bit as relevant today as it was more than six years ago when I spoke out about it,” Davis said in a statementTuesday.

Obama has vowed to close the prison, located in Cuba, before he leaves office. According to the ACLU, as of April 2016, there are 80 prisoners still at the facility.

Photo credit: MANDEL NGAN/Getty Images

Thailand: Chiang Rai school reopens a week after fire kills 17 girls

Rescue workers on the scene of the fire. Image via Thairath Online.

31st May 2016

THE boarding school in northern Thailand that was razed by a fire that killed 17 girls last week has reopened, a volunteer at the school said.

However, only a third of the students returned to the school as families remain concerned about their children’s safety.

Thuenjai Thanachaikan, who helps out at the Pithakkaiat Witthaya School outside Chiang Rai, said that of the 142 students enrolled, less than 50 returned to classes Monday

SEE ALSO: Thailand: 17 schoolgirls killed in fire at school dormitory

She said parents are having a difficult time deciding whether to allow their young children to return.

The May 22 fire claimed 17 lives at an all-girls dormitory at the school, which provides free housing for impoverished children who are members of hill tribe minorities.

The bodies have slowly been returned to their families following DNA analyses to confirm their identities.

Investigators said the fire was most likely caused by an overheated neon lamp, The Nation reports.

Forensic Science Centre 6 commander, Pol. Maj. Gen. Sant Sukhawat, said the lamp became overheated and melted, and dropped into a pile clothes in the recreational room. The clothes were meant to be donated to the poor.

According to the news site, the heat of the melted lamp had lit up the clothes and spread across the dormitory quickly.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

Frontex denied help to refugees including 'unresponsive' baby: Witnesses

Reports of botched rescue in Greece come as UN says 2,500 people have drowned in the Mediterranean this year

Refugees and migrants come ashore on the Greek island of Lesbos (AFP) - A refugee and migrant boat arrives in Lesbos (Credit: Platanos Refugee Solidarity)

Calm returns to Skala Skiaminias harbor in Lesbos where 50 refugees and migrants were brought ashore (MEE / Lizzy Porter) - Handout photo released as courtesy by German humanitarian NGO Sea-Watch shows acrew member holding a drowned baby as dead bodies were recovered after a wooden boat transporting migrants capsized off the Libyan coast on 27 May, 2016 (AFP)

Lizzie Porter-Tuesday 31 May 2016 23:39 UTC

LESBOS, Greece - Frontex denied aid to refugees including a baby and kept them floating in the sea off Greece for nearly two hours, according to aid workers.

Eyewitnesses told MEE that Frontex officers prevented aid workers helping 50 people as they landed on the northern shore of the Greek island of Lesbos early on Monday.

Their tactic was to take them directly into detention "without any aid, even the injured" one aid worker said.

Witnesses also told MEE that officers from the Maltese branch of the European border control police prevented a doctor tending to a baby that was "unresponsive".

In a written statement to MEE, Frontex said the crew on the Maltese ship had followed an Hellenic Coast Guard officer's instructions and that none of the volunteers identified themselves as a doctor.

The reports come as the UN says that more than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe so far in 2016, a sharp jump from the same period last year. In the past week alone, at least 880 people are believed to have died in a series of shipwrecks - but thousands of people have also been rescued in the last seven days, with some 90 rescue operations launched.

Frontex, supported by a series of national fleets and coast guards as well as several NGOs and some private volunteers, is charged with carrying out rescue operations in the Mediterranean.

However, witnesses told MEE that the boat crammed with refugees was made to float out at sea until Frontex ground units came to take the passengers away in buses, after the Greek coastguard granted permission for the landing at the fishing hamlet of Skala Skiaminias on Lesbos's north coast.

Esther Camps, from Spanish NGO Proactiva which provides aid and rescue operations at sea, was at the scene. She said the incident took place at around 01:00 on Monday morning - the arrivals, she said, included around 10 children, as well as women who were crying out for help.

"We were told to do nothing and to 'stay away',” she told MEE.

"As they [the refugees and migrants] were disembarking we saw there was a baby that was not making any noise. One of the officers said the baby was 'fine' and kept us away. We said, 'how do you know it is OK? You are not doctors.'"

Camps, who has been working with Proactiva since December, said that babies normally cry when they are brought ashore, but that in this case the child was not making any noise.

MEE understands that a doctor from the aid organisation Waha was also at the scene but was denied access.

"The baby was not responding and a doctor tried to approach - he was very anxious to see the child but was pushed away," said Iasonas Apostolopoulos, from the aid organisation Platanos.

The doctor declined a request for interview, but Waha has since confirmed to MEE that the baby survived and that all those rescued were taken to Moria camp in Frontex buses.

The child's sex and nationality remain unknown, but most of the refugees and migrants were believed to be from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Eritrea.

Apostolopoulos said that police formed a line to prevent emergency aid being administered once the refugees were brought ashore.

"The people were soaking and some were without shoes. There was one injured man with two other people supporting him" he said. "The cops formed a human chain to keep [around seven of] us away from them."

He said that they couldn't distribute "anything" until the police chain broke up during the 300 metre uphill walk to the waiting buses that would transport the new arrivals to the Moria detention centre.

"They told us that these people are prisoners and have been detained, and that we [the police] are accountable for them."

UNHCR's spokesperson on Lesbos would not comment on specific reports that the agency's officer, who was present at the scene, had also been barred from speaking to the arrivals.

But he did say: "I have been following communications and it does not appear that there was a serious incident related to UNHCR being denied access to its work, or one that requires investigation."

On Monday, a photograph of a migrant baby who drowned in the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy was distributed by a humanitarian organisation in hopes of persuading European authorities to ensure safe passage to migrants, more than 200,000 of whom have already crossed into Europe since the start of the year.

Although arrivals in Greece have declined since the introduction of a refugee deal between the EU and Turkey in March, several hundred people a week are still making the journey.

The arrivals on Lesvos on Monday night mean that more than 200 people have landed on the island in the past 10 days, according to the latest UNHCR figures.

The UNHCR's spokesperson on Lesvos said that since the refugee exchange deal between the EU and Turkey came into force in March and the facility in Moria turned into a closed camp, Frontex and the Greek coastguard have taken over emergency aid and transportation provision.

"Since 20 March the UNHCR has discontinued services and it is up to Frontex and the coastguard to bring people in and provide transport," the spokesperson said.

Apostolopoulos said that since the introduction of a deal that sees unsuccessful asylum seekers who arrive in Greece deported back to Turkey, it has been difficult to provide aid.

"Everything started after the EU agreement", he said. "These people are no longer refugees to them [the authorities]. They are prisoners and are being detained. But they have left the humanitarian aspect out of the story."

India hospital transfusions infect thousands with HIV

A sculpture by Indian sand artist Sudersan Pattnaik on the eve of World Aids Day on Golden Sea Beach in Puri, in Orissa state, on November 29, 2013

India has around 2.09 million people living with HIV/Aids

31 May 2016

At least 2,234 Indians have contracted HIV while receiving blood transfusions in hospitals in the past 17 months alone, say officials.

The information was revealed by the country's National Aids Control Organisation (Naco) in response to a petition filed by information activist Chetan Kothari.

Mr Khothari told the BBC that he was "shocked" by the revelation.

India has more than two million people living with HIV/Aids.

The highest number of patients who had been infected with HIV as a result of contaminated blood in hospitals, were from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh with 361 cases, Mr Kothari's RTI (Right to Information) query revealed.

The western states of Gujarat with 292 cases and Maharashtra with 276 cases rank second and third respectively.

The Indian capital Delhi is at number four with 264 cases.

"This is the official data, provided by the government-run Naco. I believe the real numbers would be double or triple that," Mr Kothari told the BBC.

Under law, it is mandatory for hospitals to screen donors and the donated blood for HIV, hepatitis B and C, malaria and other infections.

"But each such test costs 1,200 rupees ($18; £12) and most hospitals in India do not have the testing facilities. Even in a big city like Mumbai, only three private hospitals have HIV testing facilities. Even the largest government hospitals do not have the technology to screen blood for HIV," Mr Kothari said.

"This is a very serious matter and must be addressed urgently," he added.

Monday, May 30, 2016

These Lankan refugee sisters graduated from school, but they need your help

Image: Sri Lankan refugee camp/ By European Commission DG ECHO - Flickr

It was their father who had encouraged the girls to attend an English medium school.

Pheba Mathew| Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Eighteen-year-old Vashini lives in the Puzhal refugee camp on the outskirts of Chennai with her 17-year-old sister Yalini and mother. Fearing for their lives, her family had fled Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka during the civil war ten years ago.

“We were staying at our relative’s house in Jaffna and people started saying that Sri Lankan Tamils were being burnt alive by Sinhalese. Only our family escaped from there and reached India,” narrates Vashini.

Tragedy followed the family in India. Last Tuesday, Vashini’s father died after being electrocuted. It was also the same day the Class XII results were announced. Vashini scored 84.4 per cent in the Board Exams while her sister scored 887 out of 1200. A day of joy and celebration turned to one of grief and mourning.

It was their father who had encouraged the girls to attend an English medium school. With no permanent job, he worked as a driver to pay for his daughters’ education, dreaming of a bright future for them.

But his death has crushed their dreams, as Vashini and Yalini feel a sense of hopelessness. Vashini had hoped to become a doctor but with their father being the sole breadwinner, she has to abandon her childhood ambition, unable to support her dreams. “Now, I want to just get a degree, I want to get into an engineering college or do microbiology,” says Vashini.

While a social worker at the Martha Foundation have promised to help the two students, financial problems are a major issue for those in refugee camps. “The youth who have graduated are not able to find jobs here. Many of them also drop out of schools and colleges in the camp due to peer pressure,” said a social worker.

Vashini and Yalini plan to move back to Sri Lanka after their graduation. They hope to re-unite with their family in Jaffna and rebuild their future in the country that was once home.

To help the students, please call: 9677212477

Note: Sri-Lankan refugee sisters did not want their photograph to be published.

Winning For Whom?

[Featured image courtesy Amantha Perera, IRIN News

INDRANI BALARATNAM on 05/30/2016

Editor’s note: This poignant piece is the final of a series of poems submitted by the author as entry criteria for the Write to Reconcile Programme, which brings together emerging writers with the goal of writing fiction, memoirs or poetry on issues of conflict, peace, reconciliation, memory and trauma in Sri Lanka, post-war.]

“Catch it!” Two words that snap me into action,
The crowd cheering, my team turns and looks at me.
The adrenaline surges and I am out of my daydream.
Catch it, and we win,
Miss it, and nobody goes home.
Amma cooks for me after every match,
The smell of her food takes over my legs and I run.
So fast, I can never remember,
So determined, nothing else matters.

The cheer blurs into a loud, repetitive clap,
Edging me closer to victory, as I leap,
Slide across the grass, look up at the sky
and throw my hands out.
I can never see the ball against that bright sun.
I close my eyes.
Did I catch it? Did we win?

I’m in the temple.
Abandoned, empty, I try to silence
the thud of my boots against this mud floor.
My team are scattered.
My clothes give me belonging,
My gun gives me purpose.
“Be a better version of yourself,” they told me,
So I signed up and I never looked back.
I go home next week – my wife is due
It’s a boy, she told me; I will teach him to catch like I do.

A stream of light plays shadows with the statue beside me,
And through that light, a ball glides in silently.
The sound of the crowd is muffled
as it comes straight towards me.
I stare – this time, my legs won’t move.
This time, nobody shouted, “catch it!”
This time,
I’m frozen.

The crowd’s chanting rises, I know I have to run.
But I stare, I don’t blink and,
I don’t know how to flee.
The beat of the claps flood my ears,
a waft of Amma’s food hits me and I’m nauseous,
My son is laughing, catching a six…
Darkness.

I open my eyes to a flashlight above me
When I became a soldier they told me
I would be a better version of myself, and yet,
Here I am now.
They amputated both of my legs.
Cut off two of my limbs.
Everything else the Doctor said, faded,
And merged, with the distant cheer of the crowd.

My wife is nursing my wounds,
My son cries in the next room.
I can’t walk to him,
I can’t teach him,
I can’t protect him.
He looks after me.
As for my team – Where are they now?
Where is the crowd that once cheered so loud?
I can’t take anymore.
With the flashlight still shining above me,
I close my eyes.

Did I catch it? Did we win?