Warsi condemns 'divisive and xenophobic' Brexit campaign

The Conservative peer Baroness Warsi is warning that immigrants and their descendants are being targeted on the streets following the vote to withdraw from the EU.

SUNDAY 26 JUNE 2016

Baroness Warsi, a former minister and co-chair of the Conservative Party, said she wanted Leave campaign leaders "to come out and say that the campaigning was divisive and was xenophobic and give a commitment that future campaigning and the way that they intend to run this country will be united, will make people from all backgrounds feel like they belong".

She told the Murnaghan programme on Sky News: "I've spent most of the weekend talking to organisations, individuals and activists who work in the area of race hate crime, who monitor hate crime, and they have shown some really disturbing early results from people being stopped in the street and saying 'Look, we voted Leave, it's time for you to leave'.

"And they are saying this to individuals and families who have been here for three, four, five generations.

"The atmosphere on the street is not good. This is what I said before the campaign - that long after the political bus moves on we leave problems on our street."

'Lies and hate'

Baroness Warsi switched sides during the referendum campaign from Leave to Remain because she said "lies and hate" were being spread by pro-Brexit politicians.

Her comments coincide with reported incidents in which Poles appear to have been targeted that are being investigated by police.

Cards saying "Leave the EU, no more Polish vermin" were reported to have been found outside schools in Huntingdon, while there were claims that the words "Go home" were smeared over a Polish community centre in west London. Police said they were investigating the claims.

Baroness Warsi said it was "important for politicians to come out right now, talk about the vision that they have for the country, a united country, and then take that forward for a positive vision of this country which is both stable and secure".

Do We Really Want War With Russia?

by Eric S. Margolis

( June 25, 2016, New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) War with Russia appears increasingly likely as the US and its NATO satraps continue their military provocations of Moscow.

As dangers mount, our foolish politicians should all be forced to read, and then re-read, Prof. Christopher Clark’s magisterial book, ‘The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.’ What is past increasingly appears prologue.

Prof. Clark carefully details how small cabals of anti-German senior officials in France, Britain and Russia engineered World War I, a dire conflict that was unnecessary, idiotic, and illogical. Germany and Austria-Hungary of course share some the blame, but to a much lesser degree than the bellicose French, Serbs, Russians and British.

We are seeing the same process at work today. The war party in Washington, backed by the military-industrial complex, the tame media, and the neocons, are agitating hard for war.

US and NATO combat forces are being sent to Russia’s western borders in Ukraine, the Baltic and Black Sea. NATO is arming, financing ($40 billion so far) and supplying Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. 

Prominent Americans are calling for the US to attack Russian forces in Syria. US warships are off Russia’s coasts in the Black Sea, Baltic and Pacific. NATO air forces are probing Russia’s western air borders.

Some of this is great power shadow boxing, trying to cow insubordinate Russia into accepting Washington’s orders. But much appears to be the work of the hard right and neocons in the US and Europe in spite of the desire of most Americans and Europeans to avoid armed conflict with Russia.

Hence the daily barrage of anti-Russian, anti-Putin invective in the US media and the European media controlled by the US. Germany’s lapdog media behaves as if the US postwar occupation is still in force – and perhaps it is. Germany has not had a truly independent foreign policy since the war.

In an amazing break with Berlin’s normally obsequious behavior, German’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, just demanded that Washington and NATO stop their ‘sabre-rattling’ against Russia. He speaks for many Germans and other Europeans who are deeply alarmed by the alliance’s provocations of Russia.

In fact, many Europeans want to see the end of NATO-imposed sanctions against Russia that were ordered by the US. No one in Europe cares about Russia’s re-occupation of Crimea. The sanctions have been a big backfire, seriously hurting EU exports to Russia at a time of marked economic weakness. Nor are any Europeans ready to fight a war, or worse, even court nuclear war, for such dark-side-of-the-moon places as eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk or Mariupol.

America’s numb-brained Republican members of Congress, who could not find Crimea on a map if their lives depended on it, may be counted on to beat the war drums to please their big donors and hard right religious donors.

The only Republican to buck this trend is Donald Trump who, for all his other foolish positions, has the clear sense to see no benefit for the US in antagonizing Russia and seeking war in Europe or the Mideast.

What the US and its sidekick NATO has done so far is to antagonize Russia and affirm its deeply held fears that the west is always an implacable enemy. But it seems very unlikely that the tough Vlad Putin and his battle-hardened nation is going to be cowed into submission by a few thousand US and NATO troops, a few frigates and some flyovers. Ever since Frederick the Great, wise European leaders have learned not to fight with Russia.

Not so President Obama’s strategic Walkures, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and, until recently, Hillary Clinton. They proved the most bungling military-strategic leadership since Madame de Pompadour was briefly given command of France’s armies by King Louis XV and proved an epic disaster.
One shudders watching Hillary Clinton aspire to be a commander-in-chief.

It’s also inevitable that land, sea and air provocations against Russia will eventually result in accidental clashes and a stern Russian response. All one needs is a Sarajevo II terror incident to spark a big shooting war between nuclear powers.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2016

China’s Pivot to Putin’s Friends

The Moscow-Beijing partnership is stalling. But Xi is winning over the Russian president’s inner circle with favorable loans and sweetheart energy deals.

BY ALEXANDER GABUEV-JUNE 25, 2016

When Gennady Timchenko — a Russian oligarch and close friend of President Vladimir Putin — was appointed chair of the Russian-Chinese Business Council, an association of more than 100 Russian and Chinese corporate players involved in bilateral trade, the longtime businessman cemented his role as the Kremlin’s point-person on China.

That same year, during Putin’s May 2014 visit to Shanghai to sign a massive $400 billion gas deal, the Russian president introduced Timchenko to Chinese President Xi Jinping as “our man for China.” Since then, Timchenko has been at the forefront of Moscow’s push to shore up economic ties with China, primarily centered on energy deals.

But more than two years after the watershed energy deal, the Kremlin’s so-called “pivot to China” has stalled. Chinese firms have been reluctant about investing in new Russian energy deals following the fall in commodity prices in 2015 and China’s own economic slowdown has seen GDP growth drop from10.3 percent in 2010 to 6.9 percent in 2015. This has led to growing disillusionment among the Russian elite who had hoped that China might replace Europe as its top energy customer, leaving the Kremlin’s turn to Asia hanging in the balance.

It’s against this bleak backdrop that Putin will travel to Beijing on June 25 for a three-day visit to meet with Xi and discuss the future of Beijing and Moscow’s relationship, where they are expected to talk about bilateral trade, how to deal with an erratic North Korea, and “One Belt, One Road” — a massive infrastructure project championed by Xi to revive to the old Silk Road trade route.

But beyond the pomp of Putin’s visit, a different aspect of the Russia-China relationship is unfolding on the sidelines. Timchenko and a small set of elites from Putin’s inner circle have been the recipients of a series of multibillion-dollar sweetheart deals from Beijing designed to keep Putin’s clique both happy and looking east. China doesn’t look ready to invest heavily in Russia anytime soon — Russian-Chinese bilateral tradeplunged from $95.3 billion in 2014 by 28.6 percent to $63.6 billion in 2015, just 1.5 percent of China’s international trade that year. But Beijing has realized that winning allies among the small group of Putin’s friends is a good way to influence the Russian president’s judgment — and keep a secure source of cheap hydrocarbons and sophisticated weapons close-by.

Timchenko — with an estimated net worth of $13.4 billion largely made in the energy sector and one of the few men believed to have Putin’s ear — is a key player in this strategy deployed by Beijing. While Chinese companies have approached investing in Russia with a cold attitude, such as the stalled Udokan copper mine and Vankor oil field projects, Timchenko has been linked to energy deals in Russia with Beijing on very favorable terms.

One such deal involved SIBUR, the dominant player in Russia’s lucrative petrochemical sector and a company co-owned by Timchenko, and Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned company and the country’s largest oil refiner. In December 2015, SIBUR sold 10 percent of its shares for $1.3 billion to Sinopec, earning Timchenko and other shareholders a welcome payday. Investing in SIBUR was particularly strategic by Beijing when considering that the company’s shareholders include Leonid Mikhelson, whom Forbes called Russia’s richest man, and Kirill Shamalov, who is Putin’s son-in-law.

Timchenko and Mikhelson have also been involved in facilitating other China deals in Russia. In March 2016, the two oligarchs sold a 9.9 percent stake in Yamal LNG, a natural gas project in the Russian Arctic, to China’s Silk Road Fund, a $40 billion fund established in December 2014 to finance One Belt One Road, for $1.2 billion. Moreover, in April 2016, both oligarchstook out $12.1 billion in long-term loans for Yamal LNG from China’s two political banks, the Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank, at very favorable interest rates.

Such complimentary deals raised eyebrows among Russia watchers. Sinopec and the China Development Bank have been at the heart of an anti-corruption campaign Xi launched in 2013 to clean up the image of Chinese firms, and have recently been very conservative about their overseas investments. This is even truer for minority stakes in energy projects, particularly after the collapse of oil prices. Moreover, Timchenko and Yamal LNG were included on the U.S. sanctions lists in March 2014 following the annexation of Crimea, making them risky business partners for a bank, as BNP Paribais, which was fined in July 2014 for violating U.S. sanctions on Cuba, Iran, and Sudan, can attest.

And while Beijing has pursued Putin’s inner circle to cement Russia’s turn to the east, Putin and Xi’s relationship has blossomed too. It’s well-known that Putin, a former KGB operative, attaches great importance to individual diplomacy, preferring to rely on a friendly personal relationship with other leaders to build stronger country-to-country ties. But with figures like former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi no longer in office, and once-close links to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan destroyed by the ripple effects of the wars in Ukraine and Syria, Xi remains the only world leader of a major country that Putin can call a friend. Putin is arguably also the foreign leader with whom the Chinese President gets along with best. According to Russian and Chinese officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the two 63-year-old leaders’ became friends on Oct. 7, 2013, as they met on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Bali. It was Putin’s 61st birthday and the last meeting of the day for both leaders, which quickly turned into a private birthday party with celebratory toasts by Putin, Xi, and a few close aides.

But how far favorable business deals and birthday toasts can go in masking unfulfilled promises of win-win economic cooperation remains to be seen. Despite volumes of crude oil deliveries from Russia to Chinaincreasing by 33.7 percent, few benefits have been delivered. Russia has only managed to attract $560 million in foreign direct investment from China, less than 0.5 percent of China’s total outbound direct investment in 2015 and much less than the $4 billion in Chinese investment Russia received in 2013, before the Ukraine crisis. The biggest bright spot is that loans from China to Russia totaled $18 billion in 2015, making China the largest source of external financing that year, according to the Russian Central Bank. But even that is still a far cry from $261 billion that Russia was able to attract from the European Union and the United States in 2013, up until the Ukraine crisis.

Moscow is also divided on anchoring itself so firmly to China. The Kremlin has long seen Central Asia as its backyard, but China’s growing economic clout has dwarfed Russia’s in recent years. Beijing’s One Belt, One Road is undermining Russian influence in the region and edged out a Moscow-led economic project, the Eurasian Union, in the process. Beijing is certainly a much-needed partner for Moscow, but China is also a powerful competitor.

Despite this far from rosy picture of cooperation, Beijing’s cost-effective strategy of winning over the Russian president’s friends appears to be working, as Putin is believed to be discussing a long proposed free trade zone between Russia and China with Xi during his visit. The proposal has long been met with resistance in the Kremlin, but given Russia’s dire need for investment to mitigate its economic pain, Putin is looking more bullish on China than in the past. Whether Beijing can actually bring the Russian economy any financial relief is still uncertain, but in the meantime, Putin’s friends like Timchenko appear to be the major winners from the Kremlin’s “pivot to China.”

Photo credit: HOW HWEE YOUNG – Pool/Getty Images

China to regulate paid search results after cancer patient dies

A photographer walks past the logo of Baidu Inc., which operates China's dominant search engine. Pic: AP.

25th June 2016 

THE Chinese government issued new rules that make it compulsory for search engines to identify paid-for search results (or ads) and to limit their number.

This comes after the death of a cancer patient who underwent questionable treatments after he learnt about them using Baidu, China’s top search engine.

21-year-old student Wei Zexi succumbed to a rare form of cancer in April. He had claimed that he was led to dubious and expensive cancer treatments after searching on Baidu. His case sparked considerable outrage among members of the Chinese public.

The Cyberspace Administration of China announced the new regulations on Saturday, which also ban search engines from showing subversive content and obscene information. Such restrictions have been long in place.

It is the first time China explicitly regulates paid search results. The administration says search engines must review the qualifications of paying clients, clearly identify paid results, and limit the number of paid results on a web page.

“Internet search providers should earnestly accept corporate responsibility towards society, and strengthen their own management in accordance with the law and rules, to provide objective, fair and authoritative search results to users,” the administration said, according to Reuters.

“Some search results lack objectivity and fairness, go against corporate morals and standards, misleading and influencing people’s judgement.”

Additional reporting by the Associated Press

This Fat Burning Drink Will Give You Visible Results In 4 Days

by CureJoy Picks-Jun 23, 2016

Weight loss tends to be a really painful and arduous process for many. Most quit mid-way when their patience and persistence fades off. But luckily, not all weight loss techniques requires that much perseverance. There are things you can do at home that can speed up weight loss.

Here’s a simple and unique drink that is simple to make and provides amazing results.

Ingredients

• 8 glasses of water
• 1 tbsp grated ginger root
• 1 fresh cucumber peeled and cut
• cut lemon pieces
• 12 leaves of mint

[Read more here: Bedtime Drink For Detoxification And Fat Burn]

Instructions

• Mix the ingredients in a jar a night before consumption and consume the following day.
• Repeat the process for 4 days for visible results.

This drink when paired with a controlled diet may result in a flat stomach without any starvation. With water being the base ingredient, this drink will help flush out fat deposits by boosting metabolism and causing no side-effects.

RTI ACT: POLITICIANS SHOULDN’T FIDDLE IN IMPLEMENTATION IF THE TRUE OBJECTIVE TO BE ACHIEVED

By  R.Sampanthan.-26/06/2016

Thank you, Hon. Presiding Member.

We are debating an important Bill, the Right to Information Bill in the House today. This Bill should have been brought to Parliament a long time ago, but unfortunately, that did not happen. The Right to Information Law has been passed in many countries world over and is considered as a very important piece of legislation. I am happy, Sir, to speak a few words when this Bill is being debated in our Parliament.

The right to information, Sir, strengthens Fundamental Rights. It strengthens democracy and consequently it strengthens the citizens. I would like to say a few words behind the rationale of this Bill. It is the people who are sovereign and sovereignty is vested in the people.  Sovereignty includes the powers of government, legislative power, executive power and judicial power. It also includes franchise and Fundamental Rights. Various institutions exercise these powers on behalf and in the name of the people. 

The doctrine of separation of powers is meant to ensure that these powers of governance are exercised by the different institutions of governance: the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary, independent of each other and without any interference with each other. That is fundamental to preserve democracy. It is also fundamental to preserve the sovereignty of the people.  If the people are to meaningfully contribute towards the preservation of their sovereignty and the preservation of democracy, they need to be properly informed of all that is happening in the country, particularly in relation to matters of governance. It may not be practical for all of them to be well informed. But it is important that at least those amongst them, who are more civic conscious than others, who may be more enlightened than others, should be able in the name of the people to obtain reliable and accurate information pertaining to matters of governance.

The Government, Sir, is a trustee for a period of time performing certain functions and duties in the name of the people, for and on behalf of the people, and these duties cannot be performed shrouded in a veil of secrecy, away from the public eye and away from public scrutiny.

Such scrutiny is possible only when the public is well informed and correctly informed. Therein lies, Sir, the rationale behind this Bill, the need for this law, which gives the right to the public to such information.

For far too long in this country have Governments carried on as if they were not answerable to the people who placed them in that position of trust. They only became answerable to them, perhaps at the time when elections were held. So, this law should substantially contribute towards the reversal of this trend. This law should facilitate effective curbs being imposed on extravagance, waste and corruption. It will also help to ensure that public finance voted by this Parliament is expended for the purpose for which such expenditure was sanctioned by this House and is not misspent in any way. We have good reason to believe, Sir, that this had become a frequent practice in the past.

This law can prevent the concealment of information, the revelation of which would be in the public interest. I would like to say, Sir, that if this law is to achieve its objectives, certain values and principles must be observed by persons responsible for the implementation of this law. It is the culture in our country for every institution to be politicized. Even the Judiciary in this country, which was held in high esteem, in fact, held in the highest esteem at one point of time, no longer enjoys the same reputation for its independence and impartiality. The rule of law has consequently become a casualty and consequently, the country has suffered much damage.

 Today, there is even a demand for foreign judges to ensure that justice is done and many people seem to think that justice can be done only if there are foreign judges.

The institutions established under this law should be able to function independently and fearlessly. If the objective of this law should be achieved, politicians should refrain from fiddling with the implementation of this law. If the true objective of this law should be achieved, that should not happen.

Soliciting information can relate to many matters of public activity in several areas, commencing from even non-observance of constitutional provisions to callous discrimination and injustice in several functions of Government, which the public of this country would definitely frown upon, if they were well informed. Of course, the Bill itself provides for certain types of information pertaining to specified matters which cannot be disclosed and which are exempt from the right to information. Such exemptions would largely be, however, only in the national interest. I have with me, Sir, a copy of the Right to Information Act of 2005 passed by the Indian Parliament, the law that prevails in India, where they have referred to this question of exemptions.

The law prevails in India where they have referred to this question of exemptions and where they say in the Preamble “………democracy requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information which are vital to its functioning and also to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed; and whereas revelation of information in actual practice is likely to conflict with other public interests including efficient operations of the Governments, optimum use of limited fiscal resources and the preservation of confidentiality of sensitive information; and whereas it is necessary to harmonize these conflicting interests while preserving the paramountacy of the democratic ideal; now, therefore, it is expedient to provide for furnishing certain information to citizens who desire to have it.”

In other words Sir, while emphasizing that there is a need to exempt from the right to information certain activities in the national interest they also specified the fact that while that is done you must necessarily preserve the paramountcy of the democratic ideal, which means that the sovereignty of the people must be preserved and there should be harmony between these various interests in such a way that the national interest is not harmed, but at the same time, the public’s right to know the truth is not concealed, is not done away with.

Revelation of information should not result in harm to the public interest. But, at the same time, the immense good to the public interest that results from revelation of information must not be sacrificed. That would be Sir, the correct balance that can be drawn.

Institutions established under this law have a very responsible task. One can only hope that in this country’s interest this law will be fearlessly and impartially implemented by the institutions responsible for the implementation of this law and that consequently the people of this country would be able to realize good governance, clean governance, transparent governance, and this country would be set on a different course in the future, as a result of all aspects of governance becoming a matter of knowledge to the public on the basis of information that can be elicited under this law.

 Sir, the Sri Lanka Press Institute has given me a list of certain discrepancies that prevail between the English text and the Sinhala text and since eventually it is the Sinhala text that will prevail, I am tabling* that document to enable the Hon. Minister and his staff to look at these various discrepancies that have been referred to between the English text and the Sinhala text so that they make the necessary corrections when we meet at the Committee Stage, tomorrow. I thank you, Sir.

- Speech made by Hon. Sampanthan on the RTI bill in Parliament on the 23rd of June.

Right to Information: A new journey begins

When the new Act comes into effect six months from now, any citizen of any age should be able to seek and receive information held with a public authority at central, provincial or local levels.

by Nalaka Gunawardene

( June 25, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) On June 24, 2016, Parliament unanimously adopted the Right to Information (RTI) law.

This marks the culmination of over two decades of advocacy by civil society groups and journalists. It also fulfills a key promise of the yahapalana government.

Passing the law was no easy task, as it went through a year of drafting, judicial review by the Supreme Court, and considerable political scrutiny. The government and other political parties in Parliament – who rarely agree on anything – came together to pass the law without a vote.

However, our challenges are far from over. Now begins the daunting task of implementing the new law. RTI calls for a complete reorientation of government in how it handles information and promotes openness. This is unfamiliar ground.

As one skeptical citizen, Harindra Dassanayake (@HarindraBD) said on Twitter within hours of the law being passed: “Lanka has many good laws, with hopeless or zero impact. Hope RTI [would] be different. 

It’s time to act and not celebrate.”

Indeed, there is much to do. The law’s adoption is only a fresh start. Proper implementation needs political will, administrative support and sufficient public funds.

We would also need on-going monitoring by civil society groups and the media to guard against the whole process becoming mired in too much red tape.

Late comers, quick learners?

With the new law, Sri Lanka becomes the 108th country to have introduced RTI laws, also known as freedom of information laws.

That leaves only Bhutan in South Asia without a national RTI law, according to Venkatesh Nayak, Programme Coordinator with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) in New Delhi.

Nayak, a noted RTI expert and activist, says that countries without RTI laws are becoming a smaller and smaller minority on the planet.

He adds: “But for the long drawn ethnic conflict, Sri Lanka would have been the second country in South Asia to enact a national RTI law if efforts made in 2003-4 had reached fruition.”

In the event, Sri Lanka took the belated first step in April 2015, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution made the right to information a fundamental right. The RTI Act puts in place the administrative arrangement to enable citizens to exercise that right.

Sri Lanka is certainly a late comer to the global RTI community, but we can exploit this to our advantage. Our neighbours and other countries have so much experience in this respect that can help us in implementation.

For example, RTI has emerged as a powerful tool in the hands of Indian citizens since the national law came into effect in 2005. So much so, it has now become a verb (as in “We will RTI this information” when confronted with a problem).

Across India, young schoolchildren and grandmothers with no formal education are using RTI requests to solve local level problems – from overdue scholarship payments to restoring suspended rural bus services.

In Bangladesh, which adopted its RTI law in 2009, citizens and NGOs are creatively using public information to combat poverty and counter corruption.

RTI needs imagination

What transformative impact can the RTI law have on Lankan society, politics and governance? The answer is in everybody’s hands.

Unlike most other laws, RTI is one for citizens to seize and use. That, in turn, requires a commitment to the public interest, plus plenty of imagination and tenacity.

When the new Act comes into effect six months from now, any citizen of any age should be able to seek and receive information held with a public authority at central, provincial or local levels.

The law covers all organs of the State – Parliament, Executive (President and Cabinet) and the Judiciary. 

This includes the police and public sector corporations, local government bodies, as well as private entities carrying out public functions or providing public services under contract or license from local authorities (to the extent such work is concerned).

Problem solving

To be sure, the law has some exemptions when the right of access to information may be denied on legitimate grounds such as protecting the privacy of individuals, safeguarding national security and preventing the premature release of vital economic data (e.g. exchange rates, regulation of banking and taxation). These are common to RTI laws the world over.

Some are not happy with the extent of exemptions. But in my view, we should focus on so much information that now becomes our right to ask for — and receive within 21 days or less.

On the part of public authorities, they will no longer be allowed to release information as and when they wish. RTI law defines how it must be done and failure to do so has consequences for public officials.

Citizens, on their part, must find sufficient purpose and focus in information they can demand and receive. RTI is not a mere political slogan, but a practical tool for solving problems.

For example, how does our local body spend our tax money? On what basis are Samurdhi beneficiaries selected? Or how are government jobs given to some and not others?

RTI will prise open the hitherto closely guarded ‘reservoirs’ of information.

A five member RTI Commission appointed by the President — on the recommendations of the Constitutional Council — will monitor and process and investigate citizen’s complaints and appeals. The Commission’s decisions can also be challenged before the Court of Appeal.

All this concerns the ‘supply side’ of public information, which is surely going to be enhanced. But what about the demand side? Are we ready for active citizenship armed with more information?

To draw an analogy from water management, opening the sluice gates of a water reservoir can benefit only if the downstream systems are in place and the users are ready. With both water and information, recipients need to know how to make the best use of what comes through.

Bigger picture

In the coming weeks and months, much needs to be done to ensure RTI readiness among public officials, and RTI awareness among the public.

As we get busy with the nitty-gritty operational details, let us not lose sight of the bigger picture. RTI signifies unleashing a new potential, and a major change in the status quo.

First, we must shake off a historical legacy of governments not being open or accountable to citizens. For over 2,000 years of monarchy, over 400 years of colonial rule and 67 years of self-rule since independence, all our governments have restricted public information – even mundane things unrelated to any security or sensitive issues.

The ‘default setting’ in most government agencies is to deny and restrict information. To change this, both public servants and citizens will need a paradigm shift in their minds.

As long-standing champions of RTI, Lankan media and civil society must now switch roles. While benefiting from RTI themselves, they can nurture the newly promised openness in every sphere of public life. They can show, inspire and equip other citizens how best to make use of it.

However, RTI is not just a piece of law or changing how governments share public information. At its most basic, RTI is a collective state of mind. With its adoption, our society can start moving along a more open, informed and inquisitive pathway.

Science writer and columnist Nalaka Gunawardene has long chronicled the rise of Sri Lanka’s information society. He tweets at @NalakaG 

Trust Takes Years To Build, Seconds To Break, Forever To Repair

By Suren Surendiran –June 25, 2016 

Suren Surendiran

“Don’t judge us by the broken promises, experiences and U-turns of the past…. My plea to you Ladies and Gentlemen, is trust us and join us to work together and create the momentum required to move forward and take progressive, meaningful and transformative steps to create a new Sri Lanka.” – Yet another remarkable speech by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka at the UNHRC in September 2015 and speech that all it was, it seems.

Barely four months since that speech and Government of Sri Lanka internationally committing by co-sponsoring Resolution A/HRC/30/L.29 in Geneva, the U-turn came in spectacular fashion from the highest authority in the country, the President himself. The President had said foreign judges and prosecutors should not be involved in an investigation into allegations of war crimes to the BBC Sinhala Service on 21 January 2015.

As if there wasn’t enough trust deficit between communities in Sri Lanka, this major let down, haemorrhaged the trust of Tamils in the new President and in his new coalition government.

Tamils were seeking an international independent investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by both sides to the armed conflict that ended in May 2009.

The High Commissioner of the UNHRC said in September 2015, “The levels of mistrust in State authorities and institutions by broad segments of Sri Lankan society should not be underestimated. It is for this reason that the establishment of a hybrid special court, integrating international judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators, is so essential. A purely domestic court procedure will have no chance of overcoming widespread and justifiable suspicions fuelled by decades of violations, malpractice and broken promises.”

Item 93 of President Sirisena’s manifesto in January 2015 expressed the intention of the common candidate, if elected, to address issues of accountability through national independent judicial mechanisms.

Through a series of negotiations between the Core Group of Members at the UNHRC, Government of Sri Lanka and Representatives of Tamils a collectively agreed text of the resolution which was widely commented as a watered down, stated: “…affirms that a credible justice process should include independent judicial and prosecutorial institutions led by individuals known for their integrity and impartiality; and also affirms in this regard 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”

As the Tamils negotiated down from their original position and by co-sponsoring the resolution the President and his government committed to all its conditions as stipulated, it will be inconceivable that the High Commissioner, The Core Group of Nations at the UNHRC and the rest of the members won’t publicly state in artful phrases that the text of the resolution is not for re-negotiation.

The lack of political will and courage demonstrated by the Sinhala leaders including the President and the Prime Minister to engage in discourse among the Sinhala people for the need to establish the truth of what happened and the importance of accountability for the wrongs that were done against another community of their own citizens is the main reason for this fickleness.

Expectations were set high especially within the minority communities and the Sinhalese when President Maithripala Sirisena was elected as President and the new coalition government won the general election in August 2015.

Read More

The Case against Devolution 

By Izeth Hussain-June 24, 2016, 9:19 pm 

Should the Government come to an agreement with the TNA over a modified version of 13 A, we would come to an important new phase in our decades long struggle to find a political solution for the ethnic problem. However that agreement, reached at an elite political level, would mean nothing at all if it finds no acceptance among the mass of the Sinhalese people who have a deep ingrained allergy to any substantial measure of devolution because of their conviction that it will lead ineluctably to Eelam sooner or later. Is the alternative a less substantial measure of devolution? But that would not be acceptable to the Tamil people who also have a deep ingrained conviction: they have the inalienable right of self-determination, inclusive of the right to set up the separate state of Eelam, in lieu of which they can accept nothing less than a very wide measure of devolution. Those alternative convictions have been at the root of the ethnic imbroglio that has been dragging on for decade after decade after decade.

What options would be left to us if the Government finds itself unable to deliver on an agreement reached with the TNA? I believe that the only option would be to jettison devolution altogether, consigning 13 A to the place where it properly belongs: the wpb (the waste paper basket). The position of the Tamils would then be more or less identical with that of the Muslims. Some Muslims have prospered mightily, others have done well enough to lead reasonably contented lives, while a very substantial proportion have to reconcile themselves to leading lives of quiet desperation in more or less indigent misery. That is the consequence not of Sinhalese wrongdoing but of the limitations of contemporary capitalism as established by Thomas Picketty and others. Many Muslims enjoy the immeasurable benefit of fluency in English – a benefit conferred on them by the Sinhalese political masters. Certainly there has been discrimination against the Muslims – the discrimination against me under the 1977 Government was grotesque by international standards, much worse than against my Tamil colleagues. But on the whole anti-Muslim discrimination has been tolerable, not of the intolerable order that compels emigration. Last year there was the BBS Islamophobic campaign, with huge foreign funding and enthusiastic though covert State backing, but it failed to ignite another 1983 pogrom. We must note that the largely Sinhalese civil society was admirably active in combating that racist idiocy. Today the Muslims have to confront what looks like a dangerously rising propensity to regard the Muslims as the scapegoats for the many ills afflicting Sri Lanka. Many Tamils in particular – as can be seen from the Colombo Telegraph columns – seem to be relishing the prospect of getting together with the Sinhalese and mercilessly whacking the Muslims.

So there are pluses and minuses in the relationship between the Muslim minority and the Sinhalese majority. Very probably the problems confronting the SL Muslims are not much different from the problems confronting a great many ethnic minorities all over the world. The sensible pragmatic solution for their problems should be through the Western model which is successfully integrating immigrant ethnic minorities in the West, inclusive of the Muslim minorities contrary to what is made out in idiotic Islamophobic propaganda. The model is that of a fully functioning democracy together with adequate safeguards for the legitimate interests of the ethnic minorities. There is nothing unrealistically utopian about what I am proposing. We did have a fully functioning democracy at one time; presently we are well on the way to establishing it again and entrenching it in a new Constitution; and as for ethnic harmony we Sri Lankans were famous for it while India was being rent apart by ethnic riots. But our Tamils won’t agree, at present, to anything other than an attempted political solution through a wide measure of devolution, which may not be acceptable to the majority of the Sinhalese people.

How do we get out of this imbroglio? I believe that the only way is by persuading India to abandon 13 A, and indeed the very notion of finding a political solution through devolution. We cannot do this – I mean "persuading" India – by putting it in the dock and charging it with a neo-imperialist drive which created the ethnic problem and has kept it going because of a secret objective of establishing Eelam or reducing Sri Lanka to total satellite status. That would be sheer nonsense. Instead, we must acknowledge our own responsibility for contributing to the ethnic problem, meaning by "we" all three of our politically important ethnic groups. The Sinhalese created the problem in its militant form by grotesque discrimination against the Tamils and State terrorism from 1977 to 1983. The Muslims aided and abetted the creation of the problem by siding enthusiastically with the Sinhalese in every bit of racist idiocy perpetrated against the Tamils. The Tamils kept the problem going after 1994 by rejecting every offer of a political solution because of their conviction that they could establish Eelam through force of arms. We must begin, therefore, not by putting India in the dock but by acknowledging that we ourselves have been our own executioners.

Next we must make a just and fair-minded assessment of the contribution made by India and the rest of the international community to the ethnic problem. We must first of all acknowledge that Norway and other countries that were involved in the peace process were actuated by the noblest motives without any ulterior motives or secret agenda behind them. But they made a grievously wrong assessment of the LTTE. First of all they believed in and fostered the myth of the military invincibility of the LTTE. Secondly they failed to recognize that because of that myth the LTTE would accept nothing less as a political solution than a very loose confederal arrangement amounting to a de facto Eelam. That was something on which no Government in Colombo could be expected to deliver. It seems plausible to hold that by those mistaken assessments Norway and the others contributed in no small measure to the prolongation of the war. It becomes arguable that Norway and the others now how a moral responsibility to help Sri Lanka find a way out of its ethnic imbroglio. They can do this by persuading India to accept a political solution other than by devolution.

Finally, and most importantly, we must make a fair assessment of India’s role in the ethnic imbroglio. In terms of international law, it most certainly put itself in the wrong by training and arming the Tamil militants in the aftermath of the 1983 pogrom. That amounted to outrageous interference in the internal affairs of a small and powerless neighbor. But in its own eyes, and very probably in the eyes of most of the rest of the international community, it had a moral justification for what it did: Delhi could not have ignored the fall-out in Tamil Nadu of the horror perpetrated against the SL Tamils without alienating Tamil Nadu, and perhaps even the entirety of the Dravidian South, from the Aryan North. To understand this we have to take count of the full horror of the 1983 pogrom. Tamils were burnt alive in the streets of Colombo with total impunity, a demonstration that they could be treated as subhuman, as worse even than pariah dogs. There was no reaction from the civil society, nor from the political Opposition, worth speaking about. A bestialized racist Jay Gang was seen to ride supreme over the Island. In India the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and the Gujarat riots of 2002 led to official enquiries and judicial action, while there has been nothing of the sort in Sri Lanka over the 1983 pogrom. It is arguable therefore that there was a moral justification for India training and arming the Tamil militants. It remains however, irrespective of whether or not there was a moral justification, that India bears the major responsibility for enabling the start of a war that lasted for a quarter century and cost a hundred thousand deaths. Consequently India also has the major responsibility for enabling us to find a way out of the ethnic imbroglio. The way out has to be – as I will argue in the next part of my article – on the basis that the Tamils have no case, none whatever, for even the slightest degree of devolution.

izethhussain@gmail.com

The Heat: Is reconciliation possible after Sri Lanka’s civil war?

Anand Naidoo-June 23, 2016

After a bitter 36-year civil war, can the people of Sri Lanka be reunited?

The United Nations estimates that as many as 40000 people were killed in the final phase of a war between Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority.

The hostilities finally came to an end seven years ago when government forces overtook the last area controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Fast forward to the 2015 election when, amid charges of corruption, human rights abuses and growing authoritarianism, former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapasksee lost his bid for a third term in a stunning upset.

The winner, former Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena, has pledged to persuade his Sinhalese followers to support a new Constitution that shares some central government powers with minorities. But considering the lingering animosity between the Tamils and majority Sinhalese, the question is – after a quarter century of conflict – can true reconciliation be achieved?

To discuss the situation:

• Prasad Kariyawasam, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the United States

For more on Sri Lanka’s future:

• Elias Jeyarajah, vice president of the United States Tamil Political Action Council
• Nimmi Gowrinathan, former director of South Asia programs and UN representative for Operation USA