Tuesday, August 16, 2016

World's hottest month shows challenges global warming will bring

July was hotter than any month globally since records began – but some areas, such as the Middle East, suffer more than others

High temperatures are hitting places already suffering from drought. Photograph: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images

Emma Graham-Harrison-Tuesday 16 August 2016

In Siberia, melting permafrost released anthrax that had been frozen in a reindeer carcass for decades, starting a deadly outbreak. In Baghdad, soaring temperatures forced the government to shut down for days at a time. In Kuwait, thermometers hit a record 54C (129F).

July was the hottest month the world has endured since records began in 1880,scientists have said, and brought a painful taste of the troubles people around the world may have to grapple with as global warming intensifies. Results compiled by Nasa showed the month was 0.84C hotter than the 1951-1980 average for July, and 0.11C hotter than the previous record set in July 2015.

The temperature increase last month was not all due to climate change. Part of the increase came from the tail end of the El Niño phenomenon, which spreads warm water across the Pacific, giving a boost to global temperatures.

But scientists said the July record, which came after a string of new month-high temperatures, was particularly striking because it came as the impact of El Niño faded, and added weight to fears that 2016 will go down in history as the hottest year since records began.

“Even if we have it augmented by El Niño, it’s quite concerning as a citizen to see that we are flirting with very high numbers, and a record is a record,” said Jean-Noël Thepaut, head of Europe’s Copernicus climate change service.

He had not expected such a warm July, and said that although his organisation did not forecast temperatures, the high temperatures continued through the start of August and made a record for the year extremely likely.

“What we can say over the last seven months is that every month has been a record; we are on good track to have another record year,” he said. Beyond immediate trends, longer-term weather patterns made clear the rise could not be dismissed as the impact of a severe El Niño, he said.

“One fact beyond what we are seeing today, among the last warmest years, 15 years have been obtained in the 21st century and we have not been in El Niño for 10 years. So there is a general longer-term trend,” Thepaut said.

The challenge for climate scientists, and politicians seeking to drive climate policy, has often been linking changes in global averages to shifting weather patterns at home that may or may not appear to reflect the worldwide data.

Mercury hits the heights in Baghdad. Photograph: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

“This is a global average, so it can be difficult for people everywhere to perceive it themselves,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the LSE’s Grantham research institute on climate change and the environment.

As extremes become more common, however, that is also starting to change, even in places such as the UK where changes have so far been relatively more manageable.

“We can see that locally there is evidence of changes in many places – for instance, in the UK, our eight warmest years have all occurred since 2000, as have six of our seven wettest years, so the UK is becoming warmer and wetter.”

The provisional average temperature in the UK for July was 15.3C, which is 0.2C above the 1981-2010 long-term average, according to the Met Office.

However, it is well below the record set in 2006, the hottest UK month on record, when the average temperature was 17.8C.

The temperature increases in July were not spread evenly, with brutal heat across the Middle East potentially warning of troubles to come for a region that is particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures.

Climate scientists say individual areas of extreme weather cannot be directly linked to global warming even as overall temperatures rise, but they give an indication of the challenges to come in a hotter world.

“If the global mean [average] increases a certain amount, the temperatures in this region in summer will increase even more,” said Jos Lelieveld, an atmospheric researcher at the Max Planck institute for chemistry, who earlier this year published a report on how climate change would affect the Middle East and North Africa.

He warned then that large areas could become so hot that they would be virtually uninhabitable for human beings, and could trigger an exodus of hundreds of millions of refugees. The July temperatures just underlined the urgency of the crisis, he said.

“This worries me a lot because we have a lot of problems there already; there is a documented drought that has been going on for fifteen years,” he said. “This is already one of the driest regions in the world.”

Some experts think those problems have already contributed to the violence in the region, with some researchers claiming drought fuelled Syria’s civil war.

But perhaps because of the huge security and humanitarian crises crippling many countries there, most governments have spared little thought to dealing with a problem that seems less urgent, even if its fallout could be just as devastating.

“Climate change and challenges associated with it or provoked by it didn’t yet reach the attention of heads of states,” said Adel Abdellatif, a senior regional advisor with the UN development programme focused on climate change in the region.

“Attention is mainly paid to threats emanating from armed groups, and climate change threats are not seen within the framework of national security,” he said.

Adding to the problem is the fact that those likely to be most vulnerable to the flooding, droughts and rising temperatures are those least able to push for change, both within countries and across the region.

“Those affected by threats of climate change are the people living at the edge of vulnerability and in the frontline of the perfect storm,” said Abdellatif.

When Kuwait recorded temperatures of 54C this summer, the highest ever recorded in the eastern hemisphere, its relatively wealthy citizens were mostly able to combat the raging heat by turning on the air conditioning.

In neighbouring Iraq, where electricity supplies are sporadic, not everyone can afford coolers and millions of refugees were stranded under little more than tents in the desert, heat is much more dangerous.

The July temperatures have given added urgency to calls for governments to deliver on commitments made in Paris last year to limit temperature rises to 1.5Cbeyond pre-industrial levels – a limit not far off the record set in July.

“People should be in no doubt that global warming continues apace and that should focus governments on the task of delivering what was agreed in Paris last year,” said the LSE’s Ward.

Nasa’s records indicate July was about 1.3C warmer than the pre-industrial average, said David Karoly, a climate scientist from the University of Melbourne, who pointed out that Nasa’s baseline temperatures already included about 0.5C of warming in global temperatures.

Karoly said about 0.2C of that anomaly was likely to be owing to El Niño, leaving about 1.1C mostly caused by human-induced climate change.

Additional reporting by Michael Slezak

Viruses 'more dangerous in the morning'

Image copyrightSPL

By James Gallagher-16 August 2016

Viruses are more dangerous when they infect their victims in the morning, a University of Cambridge study suggests.

The findings, published in PNAS, showed viruses were 10 times more successful if the infection started in the morning.

And the animal studies found that a disrupted body clock - caused by shift-work or jet lag - was always vulnerable to infection.

The researchers say the findings could lead to new ways of stopping pandemics.

Viruses - unlike bacteria or parasites - are completely dependent on hijacking the machinery inside cells in order to replicate.

But those cells change dramatically as part of a 24-hour pattern known as the body clock.

Find out what is happening in your body right now

In the study, mice were infected with either influenza, which causes flu, or herpes virus, which can cause a range of diseases including cold sores.

The mice infected in the morning had 10 times the viral levels of those infected in the evening.

The late viruses were failing after essentially trying to hijack a factory after all the workers had gone home.

Prof Akhilesh Reddy, one of the researchers, told the BBC News website: "It's a big difference.

"The virus needs all the apparatus available at the right time, otherwise it might not ever get off the ground, but a tiny infection in the morning might perpetuate faster and take over the body."

He believes the findings could help control outbreaks of disease.

Prof Reddy said: "In a pandemic, staying in during the daytime could be quite important and save people's lives, it could have a big impact if trials bear it out."

Watch out for him in the mornings.

Further tests showed that disrupting the animal's body clock meant they were "locked in" to a state that allowed the viruses to thrive.

Dr Rachel Edgar, the first author, said: "This indicates that shift workers, who work some nights and rest some nights and so have a disrupted body clock, will be more susceptible to viral diseases.

"If so, then they could be prime candidates for receiving the annual flu vaccines."

The researchers used only two viruses in the study.

However, the pair were very distinct (one was a DNA virus the other an RNA virus), which leads the research team to suspect the morning risk may be a broad principle that applies across a wide number of viruses.

About 10% of genes, the instructions for running the human body, change activity throughout the day, and this is controlled by the internal clock.

The research focused on one clock gene called Bmal1, which has its peak activity in the afternoon in both mice and people.

Prof Reddy added: "It's the link with Bmal1 that's important, since when that's low (in the early morning), you're more susceptible to infection."

Curiously, Bmal1 becomes less active in people during the winter months - suggesting it may have a role in the greater risk of infections at that time of the year.

The body clock has been implicated in our susceptibility to infections before, flu jabs appear more effective in morning and jet lag affects the malaria parasite.

Follow James on Twitter.

Justice and accountability for war related sexual violence in Sri Lanka

As the testimonies of survivors of sexual violence in Sri Lanka’s long war enter the public domain and the government designs transitional justice mechanisms, is an end to impunity in sight?

CHULANI KODIKARA 15 August 2016

The Sri Lankan government is currently designing transitional justice mechanisms to address human rights abuses connected to the three decade long war which ended in May 2009. But a key question is whether victims of sexual violence and rape committed in the context of the war will come forward and use these mechanisms?

The silence around sexual violence has long posed a challenge to determining its nature, scale and magnitude in the context of Sri Lanka’s long war. On the one hand, this is due to the pervasive culture of shame, which deters women from speaking out. Twenty-five years ago, in Broken Palmyrah Rajini Thiranagama noted that the “loss of virginity in a young girl, even if against her will, meant that she could not aspire to marriage in our society and, if already married, there is a good chance that she will be abandoned”.

The view of rape victims as “spoilt goods” has always been one of the most significant causes of under-reporting. Survivors and their families are however silenced not only by the shame of rape, but also by fear. Fear of reprisal by perpetrators or of further violence from the very institutions meant to protect them. That too remains unchanged.

Writing of the post-war context, Satkunanthan notes that women’s silence on sexual violence “was possibly their way of normalizing life and switching to survival mode in the militarized and repressive post-war phase. They may also maintain silence due to fear of losing control of their stories once they are in the open”.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, a handful of rape complaints were made against the security forces from women who appear to have defied shame and fear in order to do so. There are also a number of other women and girls found murdered and raped, with strong circumstantial evidence implicating members of security forces or para military groups. With the exception of two (see below), none of these cases were properly investigated or perpetrators were indicted or prosecuted.

In the few cases where there was an indictment the case was never concluded. In many of these cases medical evidence was not collected in time; witnesses were harassed and intimidated, and cases were transferred from courts in the North to the South where they simply died. The case of Krishanthy Kumaraswamy (1996) and the more recent case from Visvamadu (2010) remain the only two where members of Sri Lankan security forces personnel have been prosecuted to the end and found guilty of sexual violence and murder. Impunity and lack of accountability for sexual violence has been an entrenched feature of the 30 years of war in Sri Lanka.

However, following the end of the war a UN investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka (OISL) as well as a number of international organisations such as theInternational Truth and Justice Project, Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch andFreedom from Torture, have together placed hundreds of survivor testimonies about sexual violence and rape, especially in detention in the public domain.

The significance of these reports in making sexual violence visible in the context of the war cannot be overstated. Incidents of sexual violence and rape are documented in graphic and horrific detail in the voices of survivors themselves. Perpetrators are identified as security forces and police personnel ranging from low-level guards to senior officers who are said to have made little or no effort to hide their identity. The places where these incidents took place include secret and known detention centres across the country. Most survivors say that they escaped after their families paid a bribe for their release from custody and all of them are now living outside of Sri Lanka.

The OISL investigators were not allowed into the country and had to rely on testimony collected from a distance or from victim survivors living outside of Sri Lanka. International organizations have explicitly acknowledged that it would not have been possible to conduct research of this nature within Sri Lanka given the shame and stigma attached to being raped, the fear of reprisals from perpetrators and lack of witness protection measures.

These reports are also a call for justice and accountability. They construct sexual violence as crimes under international law. They seek to establish the widespread and systematic nature of these crimes and argue that they are not isolated incidents committed by a few errant soldiers. Rather it is argued that these crimes are organized acts that by their frequency, location and nature, imply some degree of planning and centralized control going beyond specific individual perpetrators. In fact, they assert that sexual violence and rape in torture has been part of a deliberate government policy to obtain information, intimidate, humiliate, and inflict fear on persons who were with or seen as supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Having framed sexual violence as an international crime, all of these reports call for the full array of transitional justice mechanisms including prosecutions. In calling for criminal investigations and prosecutions the reports however insist that it cannot be a purely domestic process. The OISL report for instance, calls for the establishment of a hybrid special court, which includes both international and domestic judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators. The case for such a mechanism is made on the grounds of deeply embedded or entrenched impunity and the absence of a credible and competent domestic mechanism to deal with such crimes.

International organisations are also now calling for Sri Lankan exiles living abroad and particularly those who have suffered sexual violence to be allowed to participate in transitional justice processes within Sri Lanka, including by giving evidence. The International Truth and Justice Project for Sri Lanka quotes an interviewee to the effect that “they would be willing to participate from abroad provided that their testimony takes place in a confidential environment in which their identities are protected”.

They are requesting the Government of Sri Lanka to explore how such a process could be put in place. They cite as best practices the Liberian exampleof diaspora testifying from abroad through video or audio technology, as well as the use of Rogatory Letters, which can secure such testimony. i.e., formal written requests made by one judicial body to another in a different, independent jurisdiction that a witness who resides in that jurisdiction be examined through the use of interrogatories accompanying the request.

At present, the Victim and Witness Protection Act that was passed by parliament in February 2015 makes provision for witnesses living in remote locations within Sri Lanka to provide evidence through audio-video linkages, in the presence of a public officer. Responding to criticisms that this is inadequate, cabinet has approved an amendment to the Act, to allow Sri Lankan’s living abroad to testify provided it is given at a Sri Lanka diplomatic mission.

The IJTP report however states that victims of human rights violations living abroad would not agree to having a Sri Lankan government official sitting in the room with them. Furthermore, even if testimony from abroad, gathered in accordance with international standards is made admissible, international involvement in prosecutions is a highly contested and controversial issue within Sri Lanka. The President has stated that no foreign judges will be allowed to be part of Sri Lanka’s transitional justice process. If that is the case, even if victim survivors living outside Sri Lanka are given legal standing, they may not be willing to appear before a purely domestic mechanism.

The attention to and systematic collection of evidence of war-related sexual violence in Sri Lanka and the invocation of international criminal law to address such violence has to be recognised as products of our times. These reports affirm the ascendency and hyper-visibility of rape discourses in international law, the focus of an increasing of body of critical feminist scholarship. AsFionnuala ni Aolain points out fact-finding and documentation are part of this international discourse of naming, shaming and advocacy. Yet pursuing justice for sexual violence in local contexts such as Sri Lanka is still fraught with challenges. International normative frameworks and discourses do not automatically transform or challenge local cultures of shame and fear, nor inspire victim survivors to bear witness to crimes of sexual violence committed against them. But can they contribute to transforming Sri Lanka’s legal culture to allow victim survivors living outside the country to become witnesses to crimes committed against them?

Transitional Justice & Reconciliation In Sri Lanka

By Mahendran Thiruvarangan –August 14, 2016

Mahendran Thiruvarangan

2005,

the year of the tiger;

bearing down on waves of water

washing ashore

bodies unidentified.

unidentified men,

waving guns in a delirious salute,

dance the masque of death around

a ring of bodies,

riddled with

bullets

of identity:

tamil, traitor[ii]

This submission highlights the importance of looking at the impact of the war on the Tamil communities in the North in all its multiplicity. It is important that the war, both in its final phase and the ethnic conflict, are not seen as a binaristic Sinhala -Tamil conflict, or purely as a Tamil versus Sri Lankan state phenomenon, implying in the end a simple division between victims and perpetrators. For actual justice to be meted out, the historical detail of the ethnic conflict, the procedure of war, the high level militarization of several camps of the parties involved, the deep seated structural inflections of gender, class, caste and other factors, the deep injustices of structural aspects such as the oppressive practices of the state and state like structures, the structures of militant organizations like the LTTE should be taken into account.

Transitional justice is predicated on the idea of truth, telling the truth, accountability and finally a coming to terms with the past in some way, leading to reconciliation, co-existence. This submission aims at complicating the ideas of truth as given and truth would always lead to reconciliation and raising questions such as what we should do as communities, apart from legal measures, to achieve reconciliation and what kind of co-existence is possible at this historical juncture, seven years after the end of the civil war. Asking these questions will help us to be reflexive about the processes that we are part of and situate them in the current historical moment.

Multiplicity of Experiences

The prolonged ethnic strife and the civil war have left us with multiple stories about our past and how we now relate to one another as individuals and communities. Thus there is no single truth about the war. Even within a community the war was experienced by the people differently. These experiences were inflected by class, gender, and caste. Within the Tamil community, a group of people branded as traitors were socially and politically marginalized, physically tortured, killed or forced to leave their areas of residence by the LTTE for voicing their criticism of the movement and its narrow nationalist vision for the people in the North-East including the Tamils. Some activists were killed in places like Chennai and Paris. We cannot narrate The Tamil community’s experience of the war without talking about the torture camps the LTTE ran in the North-East and the children it forcibly recruited especially from underprivileged families in the rural regions in the East and Vanni and to fight the war. Reconciliation thus means not just re-structuring the state and creating the conditions necessary for a future of ethnic co-existence but also a process of self-evaluation that we need to undertake as communities.

While it is important to understand the ethnic dimension of the war, we should simultaneously look at how social divisions such as class, caste and gender pluralize the people’s experiences of the war. Thanges Paramsothy’s work on the IDP camps in the Jaffna district shows that the inmates of 25 of these camps predominantly belong to landless, oppressed caste communities. De-militarization alone would not solve the problems of these communities; the state has to allocate land for these families[iii]. Sivamohan Sumathy’s recent research on gender and violence demonstrate that women in the Vanni operate under the oppressive social gaze of patriarchy which is intensifying under militarization: “The women working on the [army-run] farm have to be attired in a uniform of trousers and shirt. At first there was much ridicule of this wear. The women took to changing their clothes at the farm itself, but as there was no shelter in the farm area, this led to much speculation, scandal and eventual outrage about moral depravity. At present, the women are boldly wearing this uniform to work.”[iv]

If our engagement with the past, the war as a whole and its gory end in Mullivaikal should take us to a violence-free, inclusive and democratic future we should acknowledge the multiple ways in which the people as individuals, communities, dissidents and people marked for caste, class and gender had experienced the civil war and ethnic violence. This multiplicity should encourage us to question what the nation (including the Tamil nation) and the state (including the contemplated Tamil Eelam) mean to their differently constituted, differently positioned peoples within their territories.

BY R.M.B Senanayake-2016-08-16

Everything seems to have become a 'right' these days. I read the other day that medicine is a 'right'. This is all a confusion of what constitutes human rights. The latest is medicine. Medicine is said to be a human right. But human rights stem from their recognition in International Human Rights Treaties. There are different treaties and declarations on the subject; it is only those that the international community has recognized are human rights. Nor have all countries signed up to implement them. So human rights recognized by law are not all among what the public may consider as human rights in ordinary usage.

So there is a misunderstanding of human rights in our society. Firstly human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever their nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. So it is necessary to use the term with care. There are Human Rights Treaties and not all countries have signed up to accept them all. To be meaningful human rights have to be recognized by the law. Just because medicine is important for human beings who are patients doesn't mean that they have rights, unless such rights are recognized by law or treaty. Most of the essential requirements for human beings existence have been recognized as human rights. There may be other things humans need as for example medicine for sick people. But where does one draw the line for medicine as today there are very expensive life- saving drugs which prolong life of such patients although they may not be able to have the same quality of life as earlier.

These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible. Universally human rights are expressed and may be guaranteed by law, in the forms of treaties, customary international law, general principles and other sources of international law. International human rights law lays down obligations of governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts; in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups a distinction must be drawn between certain core human rights needed for human existence and other requirements which are desirable, but not necessarily essential for basic existence. So, just because someone considers medicine as important doesn't mean it is a human right unless it is accepted as such by law or by treaty.

Another point is that recognition of a right does not necessarily cast an obligation on the State to provide it free. The State has to levy taxes to carry on its duties and obligations. So when some duty or obligation is cast on the State and if the State is required to provide it free of charge then it means the cost of the service is being cast on the community. But not all benefits are equally enjoyed by all the citizens. Generally, it is nothing but fair that the beneficiary of the service should bear the costs, although in the case of essential services necessary for life and where the poor may not be able to afford it, there is a case for the State to fund it through taxation for that is what it means when we say a service is to be provided free by the State.

Further human rights have to be recognized by the State and it must uphold them. But all States have not recognized all the purported human rights. Of course they have not signed up for all the treaties.

All States have ratified at least one, and 80 per cent of States have ratified four or more, of the core human rights treaties, reflecting consent of such States which creates legal obligations for them and giving concrete expression to universality. Some fundamental human rights norms enjoy universal protection by customary international law across all boundaries and civilizations. But apart from them to talk loosely about a human right merely because it is an essential need for humans will only create misunderstanding among the ordinary people who may then demand them free from the State as our people are great believers of a free lunch.

Economics of A.S. Jayawardena Part II: Our man in the Bank of Ceylon

A.S. Jayawardena-Monday, 15 August 2016

The story so far

In Part I of this series we looked at how AS was transformed from a radical socialist economist to a free market economic thinker. It was noted that both the London School of Economics and Harvard University played a key role in fashioning his views on economics.

He got superb exposure to the changing global environment whilst at these two prestigious institutions of higher learning. In addition, he was associated with some of the leading thinkers in the field at both LSE and Harvard. They were also radical in the sense that they too questioned the existing paradigm in economics. Yet, they were using that radical spirit to seek wisdom and knowledge.

Accordingly, applying his own critical thinking, AS was able to make a fine reading of emerging global developments. That reading, continuously revised and upgraded with new facts and figures, helped him to look at issues from a different perspective.

Working in many places

AS’s work area was not confined only to the Central Bank. He got the opportunity of working in numerous other places outside the bank. One such institution where he got the opportunity to work and enhance the range of his experiences was the Bank of Ceylon, the leading state sector commercial bank in the country.

Two short encounters at BOC

AS’s encounter with BOC happened in two different stages in two different capacities. The first was when he was appointed BOC’s General Manager in 1976. The other was when he was invited to head the Bank as its Chairman in 1989. Both were brief encounters, close to or less than one year in duration.

Joining with the controversial FRD

When AS assumed duties as GM of BOC, the Minister of Finance was Felix R. Dias Bandaranaike, commonly known as FRD. He was powerful as well as controversial. He was the chief strategist of the SLFP-led Government of the day headed by Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Hence, his powers were wielded over almost all the Cabinet Ministers.

They were kept in check occasionally only by the intervention of the Prime Minister herself. The Government was at that time making plans for the forthcoming Parliamentary Elections. FRD, the brain behind the election plans, was expected to use his powers as the Minister of Finance to secure a victory for the Government. He therefore made several controversial moves on the economic front.

One was the revaluation of the rupee-dollar exchange rate in an apparent attempt at easing the rising cost of living. Another concerned the preparation of plans for flooding the market with imported goods to show that there were no shortages, a malignant disease that had spread like a pandemic during that period.

A third was connected to the first and the second. That was to seek liberal financial packages from foreign banks to implement his free import policies. At that time, Sri Lanka’s external credentials were at such a low ebb that any letter of credit for importing goods had to be guaranteed by a third party of worth.

FRD wanted foreign banks to extend this credit guarantee to Sri Lanka. When that guarantee was not forthcoming, in the fourth place, he threatened them with nationalisation. That was an ill-thought measure which had been used by India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi a few years ago. Thus, India provided, of course in the wrong way, the moral support and a precedent for FRD to act.

He therefore went ahead with his plan and presented a hurried bill to Parliament to nationalise all the foreign banks. FRD’s attempt was aborted only by an unscheduled dissolution of Parliament by the Government in early 1977.

AS, the outsider at BOC

Hence, joining an administration headed by FRD at that time was as controversial as FRD himself. It also carried a considerable political risk since the whole election campaign of the opposition United National Party had been directed against FRD and Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

AS was an outsider and his appointment as GM of BOC was in contravention of the Bank’s policy of picking up GMs out of existing senior officers. Hence, there was much objection to his appointment from within BOC.

However, FRD was not the one to observe conventions if they stood in his way to an election victory. He had already proved his disregard of conventions by appointing the President of the main trade union of the banking sector, the Ceylon Bank Employees Union or CBEU, as Chairman of BOC. That was to weaken the militancy of CBEU which had already conducted several successful trade union actions against the Government. Hence, when AS was appointed as GM, the talk in the market was that he was being brought from outside to help FRD to implement his election plans.

FRD’s wrong choice

But the two people who had been selected by FRD were wrong choices to attain his political objective. The Chairman, T Rusiripala, a diehard trade unionist, did not run BOC in the way FRD expected him to do. He later confided in me that he was conscious of the changing political winds in the country and did not want to be a controversial figure. After all, after leaving the Chairman’s post, he had a career at the People’s Bank and a role as a trade union leader. He did not want to tarnish his image for petty political reasons.

The situation faced by AS was similar but graver. AS too had to return to the Central Bank after his brief encounter with BOC and continue as an economist there. In addition, he was viewed by BOC’s senior management as a destroyer of their career advancement plans. Hence, there was a cold hostility extended toward him. He too was mindful of the changing political situation in the country and did not want to be identified as a political game player at BOC. He, therefore, had to act cautiously maintaining an extraordinary balance in his every move like an acrobat walking on a tightrope. He could not displease the Government in power.

At the same time, he could not risk tarnishing his future career as a professional. The discipline he had got from both LSE and Harvard told him that he should act neutral. That was exactly what he did during his short tenure as GM of BOC.

Learning ABCs of commercial banking at BOC

There was another reason for him to act neutral. He was a central banker but was not conversant with commercial banking practices. Those practices he had to learn anew. Hence, he had to make peace with the senior management members at BOC.

He was a quick learner and also a critical learner. Hence, while learning commercial banking practices, he attempted to dig into their rationale or commercial logic. One of those senior members of BOC at that time told me later: “AS had regular meetings with us to examine the performance of BOC. But we knew that the main purpose of those meetings was for him to learn of what we are doing and why we are doing it. It was easy for us to explain to him the ‘what we were doing part’. But even we hadn’t thought of the ‘why we were doing part’.

“It was not easy to bluff him because he questioned us from A to Z of BOC’s practices. He wanted to compare those practices with those adopted by other banks. But that was a futile exercise because almost all those who had been working in those other banks were ex-BOC officers. Hence, when they went to another bank, they just copied what we had been doing at BOC. But it had a good outcome also. It led to coherence in the banking sector practices in the country emanating from a single mother bank, BOC. But, as the man he is, AS could not be pleased easily. He questioned us at length sometimes even beyond our tolerance level. That was AS. He not only learned from us, but also guided us.”

Forcing Central Bank officers to learn from BOC

AS always had a very good impression about the senior hands at BOC at that time. He talked about them fondly in personal conversations with us for years. He returned to the Central Bank in January 1978 as its Economic Research Director.

We had weekly meetings at the department. At those meetings, he used to narrate to us his encounters at BOC. He confessed that he learned the ABCs of practical commercial banking from those officers at BOC. He did not stop there. He forced two of us, Ranee Jayamaha and me, to visit BOC whenever we had a problem of understanding practical banking and learning of what it is from officers at BOC. That was because both of us were attached to Money and Banking Division of the Department at that time and knew only of money and not banking.

I recall visiting the BOC head office located at York Street at that time and bothering BOC officers for petty details of their practices: how a goods receipt worked, what was meant by a usance promissory note, what were the details of a large item in their balance sheet called other assets and other liabilities, etc. The objective was to expand our knowledge base on practical commercial banking. This practice was continued when AS became the Deputy Governor of the Bank in 1988 and later its Governor in 1996. He required all new recruits to the Central Bank to spend some time at BOC and learn of practical banking there.

BOC, the banker of the elite

But what did he do at BOC? He is normally shy and reluctant to sing his own hosanna. He would just say that he visited BOC branches outside Colombo and observed that the Bank had not used its full potential to reach the masses in the country.

For the ordinary people, BOC was still a bank of the elite, working in a language alien to them and had practices that were not customer-friendly. The People’s Bank, which had been set up some 15 years ago, was very active in rural areas and was always looked up to by ordinary people as their own bank. But BOC was still making more profits by being the banker to the Government and to the corporate sector. Yet, what he noted was that the People’s Bank was the real ‘pulse of the people’ whereas BOC was ‘banker to the nation’.

He told me that this dichotomy had to be broken and BOC should be taken to the doorstep of the people. But he did not give me details as to how he approached the issue at hand.

Taking BOC to people

I therefore spoke to the Chairman of BOC, T. Rusiripala, while he was GM there for details. Rusiripala was candid and full of praise for AS.

He said: “AS, like me, had realised that we should not play politics there. It was true that we had been specifically handpicked by the Government of the day. Yet, our responsibility was to the Bank and not to the political authorities that had appointed us. But, we had to proceed cautiously without angering them. Hence, we duly recognised their powers. But at the same time, we did everything possible to uplift the Bank’s conditions”

Promoting pawning business at BOC

What did AS do? I asked him. “There were two main contributions which he made,” Rusiripala revealed. “He wanted to bring BOC to the masses. When he visited branches, he had realised that BOC was not active in lending to farmers. It was just going by conventional lending systems. That was to use the refinance funds from the Central Bank and on-lend to farmers.

“But between the cultivation and the harvesting seasons, farmers needed money to maintain themselves. Since they had no other income source, they had to pawn their jewellery to banks and get the needed money. From the point of view of an entrepreneur, that was to get working capital. So AS wanted to fill that gap along with the People’s Bank, which had been doing it as one of its main businesses.”

“So AS wanted BOC to enter the pawning business?” I asked him. “Yes,” said Rusiripala. “AS took the responsibility upon himself to promote pawning at BOC. That was a decision which the BOC Board had taken. AS took it forward. AS was not there for long to see the final results. But the foundation which he had laid had started to work at BOC. Within years, BOC became a leading lender to farmers under pawning.”

Expanding ASC network of BOC

“What was the other contribution he made?” I asked him.: “That was the continuation of the BOC work at the newly established Agrarian Services Centres. They were sub branches of BOC which were later upgraded to full branch status. But AS did the handy work of expanding the ASC network of the bank. This was in addition to streamlining the administration at BOC. But they stand out as his main contributions to the country and the bank,” said Rusiripala

That was AS’s work at BOC. It was short but long lasting. His experience at BOC helped him to fashion his career throughout his later professional life. He used to tell me: “In many places you work, it is to your own gain.”

(W.A Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, could be reached at waw1949@gmail.com)

Dr. Nirmal Vows To Appear Against Privatization Of Education

By Hema Senanayake –August 14, 2016

Hema Senanayake

Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri took a principled position to severe his all relations with Citizens’ Power (Purawesi-balaya) and National Movement for a Just Society (NMJS). The reason was that some of the leaders of those two civil society movements have expressed their support for the Malambe private medical school which is popularly known as SAITM and Nirmal has vowed to appear against the privatization of education.

Nirmal has a strong case if we look at the education model in Canada – And its university education is almost free and publicly funded by spending nearly 5.4% of the country’s GDP and having done so Canada has produced 51% of graduates among its adult population, perhaps the largest percentage of graduates in any developed country.

In regard to private university education, just south to Canadian border, the United States provides a strong example by having most prestigious universities in the world and they all are privately funded, yet the important point is that parents’ income do not matter for best students who seek admission to those universities and this was especially true prior to the year 2008. In general, none of the student who wants to pursue university education is left out in the American system. American system ensures social justice and right to education for all who could perform well. I am not sure whether Nirmal could agree for such a system. Having said that, I am also not sure whether parents’ income did not matter for best students who seek admission to the SAITM.

Whatever the case is, the question about SAITM is not about the quality of graduates it produces. If the quality is poor as argued by GMOA, the quality could be improved fairly easily. But Nirmal’s position has a different dimension. He opposes the privatization of university education.

Therefore, if we think that the education system must ensure the right to education and must ensure social justice, basically both these goals have been equally achieved by the U.S. system and Canadian system.

(Image by Amantha Perera/IRIN)

16/08/2016

WAN Statement on the Proposed Office of Missing Persons (OMP).

On May 27^th, 2016, the Government gazetted a new bill on the “Office on Missing Persons (Establishment, Administration and Discharge of Functions)”. Throughout June, the Women’s Action Network (WAN) conducted trainings, interviews, and focus group discussions in the north and east to gather the views of war-affected women on the four proposed Transitional Justice (TJ) mechanisms: the OMP, Truth Commission, Justice mechanism, and Office of Reparations. Based on these consultations and drawing from comparative experience and best practices, WAN believes the Bill can be strengthened in several respects to address the needs and goals of affected women in the north and east. The OMP and other TJ processes must challenge the root causes of human rights violations and take a gender-sensitive approach.

WAN sees that the primary goals and principles of the OMP as:

To collect, collate, analyze and document all cases of people who have been disappeared or otherwise missing within a year.
To undertake full and comprehensive investigations into the nature of the disappearance and whereabouts of the victim, living or dead;
Provide detailed information to the families of the disappearance together with psycho-social support and reparations as required;
Provide a comprehensive set of data and background information on numbers of people missing and the nature and impact of disappearances as part of a process aimed at truth telling, acknowledgement and reconciliation; and
Make available evidence to both judicial and non-judicial processes of justice and accountability.

WAN expresses concern that the OMP Bill has reportedly been designed with little prior consultation with the families of disappeared. It has been said by some that the priority is have the Office up and running without delay, but a balance between speed and good design and effective processes is a must. Consultations should not be seen as merely a box to be ticked but as absolutely central to the design of an OMP that responds to the needs and aspirations of the victims and their families and to the wider needs of a nation moving towards reconciliation. Consultation will enhance the effectiveness, the design, the credibility and legitimacy of the OMP. It can also become an example of the new commitment to democracy and good governance in which the state becomes responsive to the needs of the people rather than imposing policy through a top-down and centralized system of control.

Consultation must be established as integral and for the entire duration of the OMP. It is not just as a one off but an on-going process continually reefing the operations of the OMP and keeping the entire population informed as to its progress.

Recommendations for OMP Structures and Processes

The OMP must be victim-centered and designed to ensure empathy, accessibility, gender-sensitivity, transparency, and independence.

Empathy:

The OMP should start from an understanding of what it means to have a family member disappeared. Surviving relatives, often women, are left to navigate the present without knowing if their loved ones are dead or alive. They register complaints with the CID, ICRC, Human Rights Commission, Paranagama Commission, and other authorities and are made to re-live their trauma again and again as they retell their stories without avail. They are surveilled, harassed, placed at significant risk as female heads of households, and they deplete savings in hopes of finding the truth.
OMP staff should consist of caring, trusted locals who understand the geography, language, and history of the area. Staff members must be experienced with working on enforced disappearance. The process should give victims time and space to tell their stories. Victims should not be cut off or told merely to submit their information in writing, as occurred with the Paranagama Commission.
To prevent further re-traumatization, the OMP should collect, collate and analyze the data that has already been collected by previous commissions.
The OMP’s victim/witness testimony and other evidence should be shared directly with other TJ mechanisms to prevent the need to retell the same information. Therefore, at the outset a series of protocols and guidelines must be put in place to ensure that the evidence gathered is to a standard that may be considered admissible in a later judicial proceeding and that it is held in a safe and secure manner to be used with the consent if the witness/victim, as appropriate.
Many women objected to the name of the OMP, stating their loved ones were disappeared and not merely missing. Among other things, women should have certificates of absence labeled as “certificates of disappearance.” Those who have been forced to accept death certificates should be allowed to exchange such certificates to certificates of absence/disappearance.
The OMP should consider the interconnected ways disappearance affects kin, particularly women. The OMP should be able to recommend reparations and assist in job placement and preferential school admissions. The OMP should be linked to a reparations unit/office that can quickly process reparations; victims should not have to go to multiple different places as they rebuild their lives. Certificates of absence/disappearance should be declared as presumptively valid to enable women to access their husbands’ Bank accounts, pensions, properties, subsidies, gratuity/EPF/ETF, welfare payments, and life insurance. The OMP should facilitate private sector recognition of these certificates. The OMP should help reduce debt obligations for affected women who are carrying the debts of their missing husbands, fathers, and sons.
The OMP should investigate perpetrators according to victim’s wishes, whether the disappeared person’s fate is known/unknown and whether the identity of the perpetrator is known/unknown. The outcome of the OMP’s investigations should inform later accountability processes.
Psychosocial support should be available throughout the process, from initial engagement to learning a disappeared person’s whereabouts to identifying remains and performing death rituals if the person was killed. Planning and funding must be in place to provide training and capacity building based on best international practices and experience to ensure this support is provided in a timely and comprehensive manner.

Accessibility and Gender Sensitivity:

The OMP should have district-level offices and be accessible to physically challenged persons.
The OMP should offer financial assistance, transportation, physical protection, and psychosocial support to those who engage.
OMP staff should be 50 percent female, and all staff must have gender-sensitivity experience and on-going training and support to be able to address issues as they arise. The OMP must always make female translators available.
The OMP should allow testimony from all witnesses who have seen an abduction or act of surrender or who may provide other relevant information to an investigation and not limit testimony solely to relatives of the disappeared.
Victims should have a mechanism to make complaints against OMP staff members who behave insensitively toward women. The OMP should take immediate corrective action, including by removing offending staff members.
Victims should be able to suggest improvements to the structure or processes of the OMP, if the initial structure proves to be unresponsive to women’s issues.
Some women report having been forced to pay bribes (including sexual favors) for information about their disappeared relatives. The OMP should report these incidents to the bribery commission. The OMP should recommend reparations for women to recover monies (bribes) paid to the CID, TID, politicians, and paramilitary groups. Perpetrators should be promptly investigated and charged.
Paragraph 18 of the OMP Bill creates a “Victim and Witness Protection Division within the OMP” to “protect the rights and address the needs and concerns of victims, witnesses, and relatives of missing persons.” This unit should be required to function independently from the AG, IGP, and TID and be staffed with members of civil society, Human Rights Commission Sri Lanka, and international human rights observers.
Paragraph 1(c) of the OMP Bill requires the OMP to protect the rights and interests of missing persons and their relatives. To achieve that mandate, families of the disappeared must be at the center of all investigative processes. The OMP Bill should be amended to create a unit or division to engage closely with relatives and victim’s groups in each district or region of investigation. This could be created within the “Victim and Witness Protection Division” under Paragraph 18 or as a separate unit under Paragraph 11(e). Families should be able to give periodic and tangible input and feedback on procedures, priorities, and tangible outcomes of the OMP.

Transparency:

Data collected from previous commissions must be made publicly available, with appropriate safeguards in place to protect identities.
Statistical information such as the number of persons in detention, detention locations, the number released, and the number disappeared should be entered into an electronic system that can be easily analyzed and checked for duplication.
The OMP must publicly report its activities, procedures, and general findings and continuously engage with families of the disappeared and local women’s groups in their preferred language. Relatives of the disappeared must be allowed to confidentially inquire whether the perpetrator is being investigated.
The Paranagama Commission recently sent letters to many families stating it “intends to discontinue investigations” but “if it transpires to you or to the Commission that credible evidence surfaces regarding the missing person, the Commission will not hesitate to take necessary action accordingly.” This complete lack of transparency and sensitivity should be avoided in the OMPs communications with families of the disappeared. Most importantly OMP should communicate with survivors in their own language unlike Paranagama commission that has been sending letters in English and Sinhala to families that can only understand Tamil.
The OMP must inform individuals of any consequences of accepting a death certificate, certificate of absence, or certificate of disappearance for their disappeared kin.

Independence:

The OMP must function independently from other governmental entities.
OMP staff should be carefully vetted to ensure they are trustworthy and do not have any prior record of harassment, intimidation, or violence. They should be persons who can be trusted to protect the privacy and confidentiality of all communications, testimony, and data. They should be known for their neutrality.
The OMP’s work should be monitored by an independent group of local and international experts. In particular, there should be a group of women who monitor the OMP for gender sensitivity.

2.Recommendation to Add a Forensics Unit to the OMP Bill

The OMP bill can be strengthened by including the establishment of a dedicated forensics unit, led by Latin American experts in forensic anthropology and forensic archaeology.

In the years after the war, mass graves have been discovered in different areas, affecting different communities. The Matale grave contained 154 bodies, and the Mannar grave contained 83 bodies. In both cases, skeletons showed signs of serious torture, but current processes for investigating these atrocities have been inadequate. Given the numbers of disappeared in Sri Lanka, additional mass graves may be discovered as the OMP begins its work. The Mannar and Matale cases, as well as past experience in the Chemmani and Sooriyakanda cases, reveal the need for a centralized, coordinated approach that applies international best practices to investigate all mass graves.
The OMP should have a dedicated forensics unit, perhaps modeled on the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics in Kosovo. The mandate of the unit should be to identify victims and return remains to families. The unit should work in coordination with other branches of the OMP to consider issues of compensation, death certificates, and psychosocial support at the outset.
The gazetted OMP bill allows the office to enter agreements for “technical support and training (forensic or otherwise) and collaboration. (Para. 11(a).) It also requires the Tracing Unit to be staffed by “competent, experienced, and qualified investigators, including those with relevant technical and forensic expertise.” (Para. 17(2).) While this is positive, the OMP would be strengthened if it incorporated a forensics unit from the outset. The problem with current bill is that it may be possible for outside experts to be prevented from providing meaningful assistance or oversight, as was the case in Chemmani where outside forensics experts were involved.
Forensics should not be limited to building a state-of-the-art lab or calling in outside forensics help at a late stage of investigation. This top-down method (favored by groups like the International Commission of Missing Persons- ICMP) failed in Bosnia because it did not put families at the center. Families of the disappeared must be at the center of the forensics process in Sri Lanka. Teams working in Peru, Guatemala, and Argentina took precisely this approach, and the OMP should allow those forensic anthropology teams to lead the forensics process alongside families of the disappeared here.
To meet international best practices, forensics work does not start with DNA, but instead with a comprehensive database of antemortem data. This data allows forensics experts to draw correlations and suggest hypotheses about who the remains in mass graves may be. Under an investigative-led approach, families are at the center of the process of gathering antemortem data, and DNA is used only later to corroborate results. Families of the disappeared are asked key details to piece together the story of the disappearance (who, when, how, identifying details, corroborating witnesses, physical evidence, scars/birthmarks, etc.). This antemortem database can also the OMP’s other work, as it would contain information of those missing as well as those known to be deceased.
Another task of the OMP should be to identify the possible mass gravesites and securing those sites for further investigations (may be through the special council/court). Given the testimonies that the OMP will get from witnesses and affected families, there is a high possibility of mapping such mass gravesites at the initial stages of OMP investigation.
In short, the OMP must invite relevant international and local experts to design a forensics unit from the ground-up. Both the Peruvian Team of Forensic Anthropology (EPAF) and Guatemalan Team of Forensic Anthropology (FAFG) have visited Sri Lanka in the last few months and met with affected families and women’s organizations and would be well positioned to lead this process. Ultimately, a victim-centered approach places relatives of the disappeared in each region or locality at the center of decisions whether to exhume mass graves and make individual identifications of skeletal remains.

3. Recommendations for Broad Legal Reforms

For the OMP to have any impact, the Government must repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and introduce a bill criminalizing enforced disappearance.

On 30 June 2016, a man under constant surveillance by state intelligence officers was abducted and disappeared in Mannar. He was found two kilometers away from where he got abducted with burn marks across his back. Without structural reform, including repeal of the PTA and criminalization of enforced disappearance, these abuses will continue irrespective of promises the Government makes to the international community.
While the Government has now ratified the U.N. Convention on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearance, we have yet to see a law criminalizing enforced disappearance. We raised this same point during public consultations on constitutional reform before the Public Representation Commission but have yet to see any movement.
In co-sponsoring the 2015 U.N. Human Rights Council resolution, the Government committed to repealing the PTA. Draconian laws like the PTA are one of the major causes of enforced disappearances, as they have allowed state security forces to abduct and arbitrarily detain persons without producing them before a magistrate. The PTA is responsible for disappearances, torture, and custodial deaths of Tamils in the north and east. Many women have been detained and even jailed for demanding truth and justice for their disappeared kin. Despite promises of reform, the PTA remains in effect, and the CID and TID continue to subject women in the north and east to widespread surveillance and harassment with impunity.

WAN welcomes the creation of the OMP but expresses deep concern at the lack of meaningful consultation in developing the gazetted OMP Bill. The Bill may be strengthened in several respects to ensure empathy for victims, accessibility, gender-sensitivity, transparency, and independence. WAN offers these constructive recommendations to place families of the disappeared at the center of the investigative process. With careful design and consistent outreach with affected families, the OMP can mark a break from past mechanisms and hope to address the structural causes of mass scale disappearances in the north and east and take a gender-sensitive approach.