Three helicopters sent to 'kill or capture' Erdogan at hotel during coup, leaks say

Turkish police officers detain soldiers who allegedly took part in military coup as they are leaving courthouse at Bakirkoy district in Istanbul on Saturday (AFP)

Karim El-Bar- Sunday 17 July 2016

Information leaked to both Turkish daily Hurriyet and Al-Jazeera on Sunday confirmed an attempt to kill or capture Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and unveiled further details about the inner workings of the attempted coup.

Hurriyet reported that First Army Commander Umit Dundar contacted Erdogan on Saturday night, about an hour before the coup began, to inform him that putschists had started to move on his position, allowing time for the president to escape before soldiers stormed his place of residence.

The Turkish newspaper published the new leaks, obtained by a writer close to decision-making circles, which said Dundar called Erdogan while the president was on vacation at a resort in Marmaris, southwest Turkey.

“You are our legitimate president,” Dundar told Erdogan. “I am at your side, there is a huge coup and the situation is out of control in Ankara. Come to Istanbul and I will secure your access to the roads and accommodations there."

Video from 15-16 July night: Tank seen advancing rolling over cars and people. #Turkey pic.twitter.com/m6GcXKEGv9

— Gilgo (@agirecudi) July 17, 2016

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Video from 15-16 July night: Tank seen advancing rolling over cars and people. #Turkey

1:40 PM - 17 Jul 2016

The newspaper said that special units backed by helicopters stormed the hotel to arrest or assassinate the president, about a half hour after he left, but by that time he was on his way to Istanbul.

Details of the story were confirmed by Al-Jazeera Istanbul bureau chief Abdul Azim Mohammed, who added that the three helicopters from the military’s special forces that arrived at Erdogan’s hotel in Marmaris were carrying 40 soldiers with the intention of killing or capturing the president.

The presidential guard clashed with the coup soldiers before a number of them fled through the mountains after one their helicopters broke down.

Al-Jazeera also reported that the commander of the gendarmerie in Bursa, Colonel Muharrem Kose, was arrested three hours after the attempted coup.

Kose was in possession of a list of more than 80 people who were supposed to administer the country in the next stage of the coup, after a state of emergency was declared.

The list included military officers, ministers, judges, prosecutors and governors.

Inside the coup

Al Jazeera also received leaks of a series of WhatsApp messages between the coup leaders and participants.

They had created a group on the smartphone application to communicate and send commands to their fellow conspirators. The leaks show that the group was active, with the coup leadership receiving responses from their subordinates.

According to the leaked messages, the coup was planned to start at 03:00am (local time), but an emergency forced them to bring forward the start of their plot in Ankara and Istanbul.

They then set about controlling key government buildings, bridges and airports.

The messages show that the coup began at 21:30pm. Military units were sent to the two cities and within 15 minutes they had taken control of the bridges that cross the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul. Ten minutes later they took control of the building of state-run broadcaster TRT.

The leaks also indicate that military units arrived at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul to surround it at 22:00pm, and that the putschists faced resistance from police in Bayrampasa district of central Istanbul.

The correspondence included evidence of some police officers’ willingness to join the coup.

Turkish authorities became aware of the plot at 22:00pm, prompting the coup leaders to send orders to their soldiers to shoot any members of the security forces who resisted them.

The leaked messages include an order to the coup forces present on the Bosphorus bridges to allow some stranded citizens to leave and to kill any resisting police officers trying to cross the bridge.

Copies of the leaked messages and confirmed that former air force commander General Akin Ozturk was the mastermind of the attempted coup, and that the original plan was to declare of a state of emergency and curfew and halt air traffic at 06:00am.

CIA, CNN & Coups

Hurriyet also reported that two months ago, a former US intelligence agent revealed he had discussed with Turkish officials "the possibility of a coup.”

On Friday evening, CNN hosted several former CIA agents to discuss the coup attempt.

Among them was former officer intelligence Robert Baer, who said that he had participated in successful coups in other countries.

Baer said the coup attempt in Turkey was "not professionally done". He added that the putschists should have occupied CNN Turk’s building, where Erdogan appeared that night via Facetime and asked the Turkish people to protest against the coup.

Turkey widens crackdown on military, judiciary after failed coup

BY NICK TATTERSALL AND DASHA AFANASIEVA-Mon Jul 18, 2016

Turkey widened a crackdown on suspected supporters of a failed military coup on Sunday, taking the number of people rounded up in the armed forces and judiciary to 6,000, and the government said it was in full control of the country and economy.

Overnight, supporters of President Tayyip Erdogan rallied in public squares, at Istanbul airport and outside his palace in a show of defiance after the coup attempt. The Foreign Ministry raised the death toll to more than 290, including over 100 rebels, while 1,400 people were injured.

With expectations growing of heavy measures against dissent, European politicians warned Erdogan that the coup attempt did not give him a blank cheque to disregard the rule of law, and that he risked isolating himself internationally as he strengthens his position at home.

Broadcaster NTV cited Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying that more arrests were expected on top of the 6,000 people already detained.

Authorities have rounded up nearly 3,000 suspected military plotters, ranging from top commanders to foot soldiers, and the same number of judges and prosecutors after forces loyal to Erdogan crushed the attempted coup on Saturday.

Among those arrested is General Bekir Ercan Van, commander of the Incirlik air base from which U.S. aircraft launch airstrikes on Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, an official said. Erdogan's chief military assistant was also detained, broadcaster CNN Turk said.

Erdogan told crowds on Sunday that the coup attempt had been put down by the "national will", blaming "those who cannot bear the unity of our country and are under the orders of masterminds to take over the state".

He frequently refers to "masterminds" who he says are bent on breaking up Turkey, in what appears to be a veiled reference to the West in general, and more specifically, the United States.

On Saturday, Labour Minister Suleyman Soylu told broadcaster Haberturk he believed Washington was behind the coup attempt. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described public suggestions of a U.S. role as "utterly false", and said on Sunday that Washington had had no intelligence of the coup before it began.

The Pentagon also announced on Sunday that operations from Turkey by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State had resumed after Ankara reopened its air space, which had been closed during the coup attempt.

However, U.S. facilities were still operating on internal power sources after Turkey cut off the mains supply to the base. Kerry said the difficulty for U.S. planes using Incirlik may have been a result of Turkish aircraft flown in support of the coup using the base to refuel.

'PARALLEL STRUCTURE'

The crackdown intensifies a longstanding push by Erdogan to root out the influence of followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Erdogan accuses followers of Gulen, who was once an ally but is now his arch-enemy, of trying to create a "parallel structure" within the courts, police, armed forces and media with an aim to topple the state.

The cleric has denied this and said he played no role in the attempted coup, denouncing it as an affront to democracy.

Erdogan said Turkey's justice and foreign ministries would write to Western governments to demand the return of Gulen's supporters from those countries.

Kerry said he had no evidence that Gulen was behind the plot to seize power, and he urged Turkish authorities to compile evidence as rapidly as possible so the United States could evaluate whether he should be extradited to Turkey.

Even before the coup attempt was over, Erdogan promised a purge of the armed forces. "They will pay a heavy price for this," he said. "This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army."

At a rally late on Saturday, his supporters demanded that the coup leaders be executed. "Let's hang them!" chanted the crowd in Ankara's central Kizilay square. Erdogan told them that parliament may consider a proposal to bring back the death penalty, which has been abolished.

Erdogan's critics say he will use the purge to create a pliant judiciary, eliminating any dissenting voices in the courts.

Some European politicians have expressed their unease about developments since the coup attempt.

"(The coup attempt) is not a blank cheque for Mr Erdogan. There cannot be purges, the rule of law must work," said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Ayrault told France 3 television that European Union ministers would reiterate on Monday when they meet in Brussels that Turkey - which has applied to join the bloc - must conform to Europe's democratic principles.

All the world’s in turmoil, and all the world leaders merely players

by Rajan Philips

( July 16, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Suddenly July has become the cruellest month, competing with April. Change of season and springs of action are anathema to the depressed and that’s what made TS Elliot call April, the month of spring, the cruellest month. July this year began in the wake of Brexit win in the United Kingdom, upending British politics and causing a grave midlife crisis for the European Union. Then it was time for the periodical police shooting and counter shooting in the US, leaving a distraught President Obama to once again play the role of America’s – not Commander in Chief but Comforter in Chief. For sports lovers, the Euro-Cup and Wimbledon may have brought some respite, but even they have become distant memories swept away by a tractor trailer mowing down a promenade full of revelers celebrating Bastilles Day in Nice, France. Rounding off the week is the news about a failed military coup attempt and more killings in Turkey.Turkey’s democratically elected strongman, President Erdogan, has prevailed and has vowed punitive action against the coup clique in the army.

In between, Theresa May became Tory leader by acclamation and Prime Minister David Cameron did not wait a moment longer before vacating his post and residence for the new PM. To show the world that western unity is still intact, Brexit notwithstanding, the leaders of NATO countries, including David Cameron, assembled in – of all places – Warsaw to make a statement for Russia’s benefit. It is both the perception and the reality of western encirclement of Russia that drives Vladimir Putin crazy. But he is being unusually quiet this week, and seems to have left name calling to China after an international tribunal (the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague) rejected Chinese claims to “historical rights” over the resource-rich and hotly disputed waters of the South China Sea. The Hague hearing was caused not by any western power but by the Philippines in 2013, after Filipino fishermen were prevented by Chinese ships from reaching an oceanic outcrop (the Scarborough Shoal) that is 600 kilometres closer to the Philippines than to China. Beijing boycotted the hearing, disputing its jurisdiction over what is in China’s view a purely bilateral matter. After the ruling, the Chinese government has called the tribunal “a puppet” of external forces and made up of non-Asian judges.

The world was a different place when Warsaw was the epicentre of a different alliance. The Cold War world order of that era fell apart after one of the two Superpowers that sustained it proved to be internally unsustainable. The fall of the Berlin Wall that was the start of the end of the Cold War has also been called as the starting point of globalization, now the universal lightning rod for every political malcontent. But just as the Soviet Union fell apart, China burst on the world scene not for any socialist conquest but for conquering the world market without diminishing the absolute political power of the Communist Party. India cut itself loose from the shackles of state socialism and entered the market without abandoning any of the complications of being the world’s most populous democracy. Britain’s Brexit is now acclaimed as the assertion of people power against the elitism of globalization. Pope John Paul II was also famously weary about globalization. He wanted communism gone but abhorred the market consumerization of his beloved Poland, like the Brexit folks now hoping for a new European osmosis that would have only Britain enjoying all the fruits of free trading in goods and none of the hassles of the free movement of people.

Decency and optimism

The Polish Pope was also weary of democracy and would have interpreted the British referendum accordingly. In contrast, Pope Francis, the Jesuit from Argentina, is more in tune with the challenges of our times than either of his two immediate predecessors. On the secular front, Barak Obama is the lone ranger in the global battle over ideas and ideologies. Germany’s Angela Merkel, perhaps given her Chemical Engineering background, is rational and decisive but is not cut out for eloquent expositions. Both are exceptional but they also derive their eminence, as John Stuart Mill said of his contemporaries in the 19th century, from the plains that surround them. It is a sign of what the American people are missing in their politics and public life that they are giving Barak Obama approval ratings that are exceptionally high for an outgoing President. His international ratings are even higher. The Obama presidency will be reviewed both for its disappointments and its achievements, its controversies as well as its concurrences. But what many will miss most when he leaves the White House, as New York Times right-wing columnist David Brooks put it, is the basic decency of the man and his family. His detractors have questioned his birth, disparaged him for his race, and mocked his intellectual aloofness, but they could not land a speck of scandal on him. Quite exceptional, for the White House, in a long time.

Exceptional as well is Obama’s optimism in the face of encircling challenges. The great orator he is, he would rather be waxing eloquent in festive ceremonies and not delivering eulogies at public memorials after mass shootings – eleven of them in eight years. In the last of them, in Dallas, last week, he sought and found words in the Old Testament and sources in the treasure of American positive experiences to inspire his people not to despair and give in to erecting walls, but to keep breaking down barriers and building bridges. At a more rational level, he is one of the few leaders who argue that the baby of globalization should not be thrown out with its bathwater. Based on American statistics, he has argued that automation in industry has been a bigger cause of job losses than globalization. What he has also acknowledged is the general failure of governments to identify the negative impacts of globalization and develop specific programs to attend to those who become victims of those impacts. That task cannot be left to market forces, which by definition are not at all helpful to those who fall behind through no fault of their own.

Obama is also the fortuitous historical beneficiary of becoming president after the Iraq war launched by his predecessor had gone terribly awry. The Chilcot report in Britain is another crushing confirmation of the misgivings many had about the Iraq war jointly launched by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. Obama came into office criticizing the Iraq war as a stupid war, but has not been able to achieve much in cleaning up the mess created by it. His efforts to change directions in American foreign policy have had few cheers at home and have been by and large ineffectual abroad. He is assailed at home for not doing enough to destroy ICIS in the Middle East, but there is no magical way to stop ICIS from taking its battles to western cities even if its territorial control in the Middle East is totally eliminated. The problem is now much more complicated and even finding a viable solution to the Palestinian question is likely to put an immediate end to ISIS misadventures. Unlike other world leaders and in the face of condemnation by his American critics, President Obama has steadfastly refused to call ISIS as a manifestation of radical Islam, insisting that doing so would be to give an unwarranted religious cover to a motley bunch of thugs and murderers. His logic is formally impeccable, but the practicality of defeating ICIS requires a great deal more than formal logic. It requires not only military crackdowns in the Middle East but also political and social inclusions of different communities in the West, especially in Europe and including Britain.

Is South Korea Regressing Into a Dictatorship?

BY DAVE HAZZAN-JULY 14, 2016

The latest blow to free speech and assembly in South Korea came on July 4, when the leader of the country’s influential Korean Confederation of Trade Unions was found guilty of orchestrating an illegal demonstration. A Seoul court sentenced Han Sang-gyun to five years in prison and a $436 fine for organizing a massive Nov. 14 anti-government protest in downtown Seoul, as well as other demonstrations dating back to 2012. Amnesty International characterized the case as part of the “shrinking right to freedom of peaceful assembly in South Korea.”

Indeed, lively, and often violent, street protest has been a national sport in South Korea since the country’s founding in 1948. And until the early 1990s, when the election of opposition leader Kim Young-sam ended more than 40 years of authoritarian rule, the repression of protests was common as well. But over the last few years, the country has regressed. Since taking office on Feb. 25, 2013, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her Saenuri Party have sued journalists, jailed labor leaders and opposition politicians, censored the press, and dissolved political parties. Aiding her has been a network of right-wing organizations, as well as the country’s intelligence agency — the National Intelligence Service (NIS) — which sent out millions of illegal tweets in favor of Park during the 2012 election.

The conventional view is that this propensity for dictatorial powers comes from Park’s upbringing: She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the South Korean general who launched a coup in 1961, set himself up as head of a military junta, and was then elected president in 1963.

Thus began an 18-year reign, characterized by massive economic growth coupled with severe repression — including arbitrary arrest, widespread torture, executions, and martial law. Park’s rule ended only when his own intelligence chief assassinated him in 1979. Today, Park the elder’s legacy isdeeply divisive. Many older Koreans see him as a savior who created prosperity and strengthened the country against what was then a more advanced North Korea. Others, especially younger Koreans, simply view him as a tyrant.

The current president, born in 1952, grew up in this environment. At 22, she rose to national prominence after a North Korean agent assassinated her mother, Yuk Young-soo, with a bullet meant for the president. Park’s dreams of being a university professor were dashed, as she assumed the duties of first lady. After her father’s murder, Park withdrew from public life for almost two decades. She returned to government in 1998 and was elected to the country’s legislature, the National Assembly. In 2007, she unsuccessfully ranfor her party’s presidential candidacy. But in 2012, Park won both the nomination and the presidency, beating Moon Jae-in of the liberal Minjoo Party. Voters then described the intensely private Park as “good-hearted, calm, and trustworthy” — someone who can “save our country.”

Park is the first female president of South Korea, no small feat in a country with many of the lowest indices in the developed world for women’s equality. Indeed, many conservative male voters elected her — despite her gender — because of her association with her father.

Since taking power, Park has not disappointed the conservatives who miss her father’s muscular rule. Park argues she has to be tough to deal with the thugs in Pyongyang’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, who haverepeatedly made disgusting and sexist attacks against her, threatened to destroy South Korea (and the United States), tested nuclear weapons and medium- and long-range missiles in violation of U.N. sanctions, and generally lived up to their reputation as very, very bad neighbors.

But the North Korean menace is widely felt to be contained and isn’t high on the minds of most South Koreans. However, that hasn’t stopped Park from developing an uncanny ability to find communists under every pillow and mattress in the country. It’s a common slur in South Korea to accuse anyone mildly progressive of being jongbuk — a pro-Pyongyang apparatchik — but it has reached a fever pitch under Park.

In December 2014, the Ministry of Justice caused the disbanding of the Unified Progressive Party (UPP), a minor left-wing party with five seats in the National Assembly, for being pro-Pyongyang. It was the first time since 1958 that the government had forced a political party to disband. The UPP insisted it was simply in favor of closer ties between the two Koreas. But the Justice Ministry accused two key members of planning a rebellion to support North Korea in the event of a war — and a court sentenced one of them to 12 years in jail. The prominent Saenuri politician Choi Kyung-hwan said the party was only one of many “poisonous mushrooms” that “must be rooted out.”

Park also sees communists lurking in academia, especially among historians who write middle and high school history textbooks. Conservatives claim the texts unduly criticize South Korea’s past dictators, including Park’s father, as torturers and pro-Japanese collaborators. That they were both these things is irrelevant; children need to be indoctrinated with “correct historical views and values,” Park says — presumably, her own.

The government plans to replace the eight state-approved texts currently available with a single state-written text, which the Ministry of Education will force all schools to use. The final draft of the textbook is not available yet, but one assumes it will be much like the textbook drafted by conservative scholars in 2013, which was approved by the government but which virtually no schools use because of its clear bias.

Meanwhile, Park has sought to discourage or eliminate critical coverage of her and her government by battering press freedom. In 2014, the governmentindicted Tatsuya Kato, the Seoul bureau chief for the popular Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun. They claimed his story questioning the president’s activities on the day of the April 2014 Sewol ferry disaster — in which more than 300 passengers, mostly high school students, died, allegedly because of mismanagement from both the ferry company and the central government — amounted to criminal defamation. (He was lateracquitted.) Kim Ou-joon and Choo Chin-woo, two independent reporters, were tried for criminal defamation for insinuating that the president’s brother, Park Ji-man, was involved in a cover-up of his cousin’s murder in 2011. They were acquitted in January 2015, after their second trial.

The list goes on: The government sued the left-wing newspaper Hankyorehover a report that the president staged a photograph at the ferry disaster. They have also sued the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest paper, over a story regarding high-level appointments. And they are suing the Unification Church-owned Segye Ilbo tabloid for a story critical of Park’s former chief of staff.

As a result, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Paris-based free press watchdog, ranked the country 70 out of 180 in its most recent World Press Freedom Index, down 10 places from 2015, and the lowest for South Korea since RSF began tabulating the index in 2002. “The government has displayed a growing inability to tolerate criticism and its meddling in the already polarized media threatens their independence,” the group wrote. All this has led to a climate of fear and self-censorship in newsrooms across the country, as journalists worry they will have to call their lawyers next.

Rowdy public protest is as Korean as kimchi, but over the past three years, Park’s government has severely abrogated that right, too. Nov. 14, 2015, saw the biggest anti-government protests in a decade, where, despite the rain, an estimated 80,000 people took to the streets of Seoul. The government declared the demonstration illegal, however, and police dispersed it with tear gas and water cannons, spraying dye so protesters could be identified and rounded up later. (It was for his help planning and participating in this demonstration that Han was arrested.)

Saenuri Party spokesman Kim Yong-woo identified the protesters as pro-North Korean agents (surprise, surprise) and said the demonstrations were “impure.” Park, meanwhile, told a cabinet meeting that protesters who wear masks should be banned. Why? Because Islamic State terrorists also wear masks. Park seems unconcerned, however, about conservative protesters, who have disrupted left-wing rallies and have even gone so far as to eat pizzain front of the hunger-striking families of children who died on the Sewol ferry. (In fairness, conservative protests have been much smaller.)

It’s become a cliché on the left to compare Park’s ruling style to her father’s. Yes, the comparison is overstated — Park the younger has not tortured or hanged anyone or overthrown a democratically elected government in a coup. But while the torture and killing has not returned, the clampdown on freedom has.

It’s done in the name of anti-communism, but North Korea isn’t the biggest concern of South Koreans today; it’s inequality, job opportunities, and realizing a decent standard of living. Park has failed to address these concerns and, as a result, needs someone to blame. Liberals and communists will do just fine.

Malaysians hold mass rally calling for end to Burmese persecution of Rohingyas

Thousands of protesters marched to the Burmese embassy in Kuala Lumpur calling for an end to the persecution of the Rohingyan Muslim minorities on July 15, 2016. Image via @PAS Pusat

15th July 2016

SEVERAL thousand protesters marched to the Burmese (Myanmar) embassy in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to denounce the treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the predominantly Buddhist country.

Local reports say about 5,000 people took part in the rally to submit a memorandum to the Burmese mission in the Malaysian capital, but other estimates place the number at around 2,000 protesters who carried banners calling for the end of Burma’s alleged silence on systematic genocide and persecution of Muslims in Rakhine state.

The procession, which was organised by Malaysia’s Pan Islamic Party (PAS) and other non-governmental organisations, began after Friday prayers at the Tabung Haji mosque on Jalan Tun Razak at about 2pm, before the crowd made its way to the embassy some 2 kilometers away from where they gathered.

According to local newspaper Sinar Harian, the memorandum addressed to the Burmese government called for the country to recognize the rights of the stateless Rohingyas.

Sectarian violence, which erupted in 2012, has seen dozens of Muslim Rohingyas killed by vigilante mobs comprising hardline Buddhist nationalist groups and followers, with thousands more displaced.

SEE ALSO: Human rights group unimpressed by Burma’s new government

However, PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, who was present at the rally, said the Burmese embassy did not send a representative to accept the protest note, adding he was disappointed that the envoy “turned a cold shoulder” to the crowd.

“We urge the ambassador to Kuala Lumpur to apologize for failing to send a representative,” he said.

“They should at least send some one to receive the memorandum.”

He said PAS also condemned the Burmese government and its leaders for their alleged silence on the killing of Rohingyas and the violation of their human rights.

Tuan Man also called on the Malaysian and ASEAN governments, as well as Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) member states, to take action on the matter.

“The governments must discuss the issue in ASEAN (meetings) to resolve the issue of refugees who have created a burden in other countries,” he said.

South Africa’s latest weapon against HIV: street dispensers for antiretrovirals

Patients will no longer need to join five-hour-long queues for their medication

People queue to be tested for HIV at a mobile clinic in Johannesburg. South Africa has the world’s highest number of people with the virus. Photograph: Denis Farrell/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tracy McVeigh-Sunday 17 July 2016

A hole-in-the-wall machine that dispenses antiretroviral drugs to people with HIV will be unveiled in Durban on Monday ahead of a pilot scheme that will see units installed in rural areas miles from the nearest doctor or clinic.

The machine has been developed at the Right to Care project in the Helen Joseph hospital, Johannesburg, and is a prototype of what its South African developers believe could be a game-changer in the fight to contain the Aids pandemic in their country and beyond.

The £63,000 machine – with robotics from Germany teamed with local expertise on software – will be unveiled at the 2016 International Aids Conference, which begins in Durban on Monday.

Fanie Hendriksz, managing director of Right To Care’s ePharmacy project, said the pilot would begin immediately afterwards, with four units going into Alexandra, a densely populated Johannesburg suburb where high rates of poverty and lack of education keep infection rates and ignorance about HIV high.

“We hope to have reached six sites this year,” said Hendriksz. “They will come with their own power source and have a link via a webcam to a centre where there will be a pharmacist on call if needed – but generally it will be patients scanning in smartcard IDs and accessing their three months’ prescription, forgoing the need to come all the way into a hospital or a clinic and wait for hours to access their medication.”

To prevent any problems with stigma, the machines won’t be identified as HIV-related because other medication will also be available for patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes or TB.

South Africa has the highest number of people in the world living with HIV – 7 million – with half now accessing treatment. Ensuring people stick to their treatment is essential, not only for keeping them healthy and alive, but also making them less infectious, according to experts who say that poor “adherence” to medication is a key challenge.

The Right to Care project, funded by the South African department of health and the Global Fund, has been working hard on those challenges, not only saving lives, ensuring babies of HIV positive mothers are free of the virus, but reducing waiting times so people who can little afford to travel or to take time off work no longer have to spend hours accessing HIV tests and treatment.

Testing is already improving across the continent thanks to the invention of quick, easy tests including one, the Samba, developed by a team at Cambridge

Dr Sello Mashamaite, the medical manager at Helen Joseph, said: “It’s all about managing more patients with less.

“A lot of patients miss their visits because they cannot afford to miss work; long queues, transport costs, people waiting hours for their medicines. It means as clinicians that we have to think about improving efficiency to ensure adherence to treatment.

“Before, in our pharmacy, people were waiting five hours here, now it’s 20 minutes,” says Mashamaite. “Working with technology is the innovation that will save lives.”

Jenny Ottenhoff, global health policy director of the One Campaign, said: “The life-saving impact of treatment relies on adherence. We know that when a patient is on medication and taking it correctly, the chance of passing the virus on to a partner is virtually zero. This preventative effect is a game-changer and can help make the end of the Aids epidemic a reality by 2030, but only if we ensure that every person accessing treatment has the support needed to take it correctly every day without fail.”

A groundbreaking study in 2011 showed that starting HIV treatment when the patient is positive but still healthy, and strictly adhering to the treatment regimen, reduced HIV transmission to HIV-negative partners by 96%. This has been dubbed “Treatment as Prevention”.

Failure to adhere to treatment limits viral suppression, and so thwarts the preventative effect of treatment.

Treatment as prevention dramatically influenced the WHO’s current policy to treat everyone who tests HIV positive as soon as they are diagnosed and South Africa plans to start offering treatment immediately following diagnosis before the end of 2016.

But it still needs to get the pills to the people, making innovation like a drug vending machine close to peoples’ homes the difference between life and death.

B.C. Drug Overdose Deaths Expected To Reach New Record In 2016: Health Minister

Fentanyl pills appear to be playing a central role in the increase of drug-related fatalities. (Photo: The Associated Press)

-By Geordon Omand- 05/12/2016

VICTORIA — British Columbia's health minister says he's hopeful the rate of drug overdose deaths will start dropping this month as a result of action taken by the province to curb a disturbing spike in opioid-related fatalities.

So far, last month's declaration of a public-health emergency doesn't appear to have slowed the number of overdose deaths, said Terry Lake, who noted fentanyl appears to be playing an increasingly central role.

"The numbers are continuing to be extremely high," Lake said. "We're on track for a record year."

Updated numbers released Thursday by the BC Coroners Service showed the deadly opioid was linked to nearly half of more than 250 overdose deaths tallied for the first four months of this year.

That's compared to about a third of the 480 overdose fatalities for all of last year.

"Definitely, fentanyl is a big, big part of what's going on," Lake said.

The emergency declaration made in April allows health officers to collect information in real time to identify patterns and respond with preventative measures by targeting certain areas and groups of people. The step reduces the lag of waiting for data from the coroner's office.

Number of deaths increasing despite emergency declaration

But the number of deaths has continued to grow, despite increased outreach initiatives, aggressive awareness campaigns and the rapid distribution of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.

"With the declaration of the public-health emergency, with increased availability of naloxone (and) with the increased number of first responders available to administer it, I'm hopeful that this month we'll start to see those numbers come down," said Lake.

"But it really is something that we have to continue to talk about, to make sure people are very aware."

B.C.'s medical health officer Perry Kendall said he wasn't surprised by the update.

"(Overdose deaths) haven't gone down yet, but I didn't really think that they would have," he said on Thursday.

"This obviously means we need to work on them."

Kendall predicted last month that if the number of fatalities continued to rise at this rate, the total could exceed 800 by year's end.

The Fraser Valley region leads the province with a total of 76 overdose deaths in the first four months of 2016. That's followed by 66 deaths in Metro Vancouver and 54 on Vancouver Island. There have been 45 overdose fatalities in the Interior and 15 in Northern B.C.

Kilinochchi IDPs demand land back from Sri Lankan military  16 July 2016

Tamil internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Paravipanchan, Kilinochchi this week requested government to take action to allow them to be settled into their own homes. 

The Sri Lankan military continues to occupy 17.2 acres of land owned by the 52 families, who remained displaced since the end of the armed conflict. 

Paravipanchan, an area within Kilinochchi town, was previously the site of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) political headquarters, including the organisation's peace secretariat as well as media and educational offices.

The families held a protest last Saturday demanding their land and homes to be released to them. The symbolic hunger strike was the latest in a series of demonstrations by the families who have been protesting against the army occupation since 2012. 

On July 10, the families met with the Kilinochchi district's government agent and made a further request for the last to be released, with a petition handed over to the official on Tuesday. 

Post-War Reconciliation in Sri Lanka – A Reality Check

Photo courtesy James Morgan

PROF. JAYADEVA UYANGODA on 07/15/2016

Text of the presentation at the seminar on “Peace and Reconciliation & Nation-Building”, organized by the Association for Social Development and held at Organization of professional Associations Auditorium, Colombo, on July 10, 2016.

I share the basic premise on which the theme of this seminar seems to have been constructed, that is, “peace and reconciliation are a prerequisite for nation-building in Sri Lanka.” I am also aware that there is a strong argument in political theory that war, conflict and violence are more important in nation building than peace and reconciliation.  There is indeed no shortage of theorists in Sri Lanka who advocate this particular argument with passion and conviction. I don’t intend to debate with that approach in my presentation today.

Let me first elaborate a little bit some conceptual significations of the three thematic components of this seminar.

Peace building after an internal civil war requires consolidation of ‘negative peace’ and taking concrete steps towards positive peace. Negative peace the absence of war and violence. Consolidation of negative peace entails its institutionalization as foundation for positive peace, which calls for two programmes, namely, (a) addressing the root causes of the conflict, (b) preventing recurrence of the conflict. Both these objectives are interrelated, one supporting and nourishing the other.

Consolidation of negative peace and inauguration of a positive peace-building project define the larger conceptual framework for policy within which reconciliation and nation-building can also be understood and elaborated in concrete terms.

Reconciliation is about bringing the parties, communities and peoples involved in the conflict together. Its objective should be setting in motion the beginning of a new political life under conditions of the absence of war and violence. In societies of conflict, reconciliation is necessitated by the breakdown of community relations during the protracted civil war in which violence, mutual hatred, and suspicion had defined inter-community relations.

Reconciliation presupposes a number of rather difficult things to do. Key among them are (a) reconciling with the violent recent past through a shared imagination between parties to the conflict to ‘understand and forgive,’ in order to negate the need to recur such violence; (b) building the political will among direct parties to the conflict in order to work together for rebuilding the polity and society in a new framework of shared political life,  (c) building positively new relations among the people and among communities to be able for them to imagine collectively a new ‘nation’ and a new political order, and (d) bringing the victim of war, violence and destruction out of an inner world of loss, defeat and despair to a outer world in which they are agents of their own destinies.

Nation building is a shorthand concept that encapsulates the larger political objective of both peace building and reconciliation. It actually refers to a dual political task of (a) rebuilding the nation as a pluralistic political community of equal citizens and ethnic groups that call themselves ‘nations’ or ‘nationalities’, and (b) rebuilding the state as a union of free, equal nations and nationalities on a new foundation of pluralism and democracy. Here, our emphasis should be on ‘rebuilding’ because, Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war has been about some fundamental inadequacies of how both the nation and state have been conceptualized and given concrete expression in our constitutions, laws, state policies, and state ideologies. The conflict, war and violence have also torn asunder the fragile foundations of the Sri Lankan nation and the state.

Now, when we put together these three thematic objectives, the policy package it presupposes is quite comprehensive and extensive. Its points to a concrete policy agenda marked by being a radical departure from the post-war approach that was advanced from 2009 to 2014. The leadership of the new government was brave enough to embrace and advance such a vision for Sri Lanka’s transition from absence of war to long-term re-building for peace and democracy. One and half years into this new agenda of peace building, reconciliation and political reforms, there are now signs of the process having entered a phase of unanticipated complexities. Its pace has been slowed down. Doubts are being expressed about the government’s commitment. And the broad political consensus required for the success of that radical reform project seems to be quite elusive.

In other words, this is the time for a reality check.

Reality is different from promises and rhetoric. Reality, if we recall a cliché, tastes bitter too. Let me very briefly make the following few points that constitute my reality check list.

• No general or shared understanding of what reconciliation and peace building should mean has emerged in Sri Lanka. This is despite the fact that the idea of reconciliation has been a subject of intense political debate since the war ended in May 2009. There are contending and adversarial understandings of peace and reconciliation. Government leaders are now openly expressing, hope fully unintentionally, how these bitter contentions about concept, processes, goals and policy as well as institutional mechanisms of reconciliation and peace buildings are interfering with the government’s own approach.  A lack of clarity and shared understanding among government leaders themselves can hardly promote the goals of Sri Lanka’s post-war reform agenda. It has the potential to bring the entire project to a standstill, or to a slow end.

• As a concept, reconciliation has not been intellectually indigenized in Sri Lanka. Nor does it seem to be adequately understood by the majority of the populace that includes ordinary citizens, who are voters, professional politicians, government officials and those who shape the public opinion. The idea of reconciliation still remains strange and alien to the masses and professional politicians alike.

• Sri Lanka’s civil war ended unilaterally and by military means alone. The state emerging as the victor. This fact alone has made the project of liberal peace building, advanced by the global actors, being viewed irrelevant by most of the Sinhalese citizens. Sri Lanka’s case in fact is a unique one, which poses a fundamental question: is reconciliation possible in a conflict that has not ended through a peace agreement between the main parties to the civil war? Sri Lanka does not have a mutually binding peace agreement between parties. It has created a particular psychology of victor and vanquished along ethno-nationalist terms. This government has made sincere efforts to break this mindset of adversarial duality. But more hard work still remains.

• The political leadership of the government seems to be still struggling, perhaps with some results, to move away from the paradigm of victor’s peace. This is no easy task, given the fact that the war ended in a unilateral military victory to the state.  Taking the state machinery’s dominant mindset built on the glorification of victor’s peace is actually hard. President Sirisena seems to be quite sensitive to the enormity of the challenge, and he can’t be blamed for the slow progress in this front. However, it needs to be acknowledged that the government’s effort in this area of work remains inadequate.

• The political leadership of the government has been rather reluctant, for inexplicable reasons, to provide political leadership and ideological guidance to a sustained campaign to win over the Sinhalese masses, in coalition with Tamil and Muslim masses, to its agenda of peace, reconciliation and pluralistic nation-state building. Such a sustained ideological campaign is necessary to shift the victor’s peace paradigm and re-establish the necessity, authenticity and legitimacy of the government’s earlier vision of ‘peace and reconciliation of all, by all and for all.’

• Sri Lanka’s current project of reconciliation and peace building seems to be excessively internationalized. This stands in sharp contrast to the approach of the previous government, which emphasized de-internationalization of post-war transition. The re-internationalization of the post-war peace process has its pitfalls as well. While managing the politics of international involvement with some success, the government has also allowed it to appear to be a source of deep divisions among key decision-makers of the government. This is particularly evident by the expression these days of these conflicting views on the question of ‘transitional justice.’

• The new phase of reconciliation and peace building, after the government change of early last year, too is mired in the conflict between three rival factions of Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese ruling elite, as represented in the UNP and the two SLFP/UPFA camps. Reconciliation among adversarial factions of the ruling elites does not seem to be in the realm of possibilities. Reconciliation among reconciliators is increasingly becoming a new political need. Who can reconcile the reconciliators? If the conflict that appears to be simmering at present between the two power centers of the government is not properly managed, this might even become the big question in the weeks and months to come.

• Reconciliation in post-war or post-conflict societies has had a strong moral content.  Reconciliation in such societies need to be facilitated by a strong sense of building new relationships of co-existence with the former adversaries, a commitment to make peace with them, and a willingness to move forward, while not forgetting the past. The following textbook definition of reconciliation is useful for us to acknowledge this moral dimension of it: “Reconciliation is an overarching process which includes the search for truth, justice, forgiveness, healing and so on. At its simplest, it means finding a way to live alongside former enemies – not necessarily to love them, or forgive them, or forget the past in any way, but to coexist with them, to develop the degree of cooperation necessary to share our society with them, so that we all have better lives together than we have had separately.” This quote is from the IDEA Handbook on reconciliation published in 2003. Though somewhat old, it still is relevant to Sri Lanka too.  In both South Africa and Guatemala, religious communities provided the leadership to give social meaning to this moral essence of peace and reconciliation. In contrast, our religious leadership continues to show disinterest in the goals of peace and reconciliation. Lacking in a moral content, and shunned by the moral communities, the agenda of peace building and reconciliation has been made vulnerable to narrow politicization.

• Finally, the government’s state rebuilding project through constitutional reform, which is centrally vital for post-war political rebuilding, seems be a project waiting for a champion to take it forward for success. Although the basic groundwork has been laid for reforming the constitutional framework of the state, it does not seem to be given a place of pride and priority in the government’s scheme of things. Constitutional reform is serious business, as we have learned from our own recent experiences. It can be utterly divisive. It has the potential to re-open the fault lines of the polity and reignite the conflict. The reason is quite simple. Constitutional reform is after all about sharing of state power in a society with an unresolved ethnic conflict. Without a determined champion, the nation and state rebuilding efforts through constitutional reform might run the risk of being stalled once again. Neither the President nor the Prime Minister at the moment appears to be ready to come forward to champion, head held high, the course of constitutional reform. No civil society group, or individuals outside the government, can play that role. Taking that responsibility head on is the task for which the people of this country have elected these two leaders. Voters or civil society activists don’t need to remind them repeatedly of that mandated duty.

What Next

Thus, my reality check does not offer any reason for those committed to the theme of this seminar to be jubilant. Nor is it a reason to be complacent. Their efforts need to be redoubled. Their short term efforts should be aimed at re-energizing the political leadership of this government to revisit their reform promises made early last year, to re-commit themselves to that reform agenda, to critically review the progress achieved and setbacks suffered so far, and begin a course correction initiative and then work hard to fulfill a promise that has a truly historical significance.