President directly interfered with the independent courts ? His interview stirs up a hornet’s nest !

(Lanka-e-News -23.Oct.2016, 5.00PM)  foreign Diplomatic mission which evinces tremendous interest in the affairs of the good governance in Sri Lanka , and in the best interests of the county has commenced the translation into English yesterday itself of the interview in Sinhala of the president with  Sunday Lanka Deepa newspaper , according to reports on diplomatic affairs reaching   Lanka e news .

This is because those foreign countries are of the opinion  the live interview of the president with Lankadeepa is  an extension of his recent speech going by the newspaper report of his Sinhala  interview. Because the   president has directly interfered with several cases that are before the courts , the foreign countries are reckoning that as intense pressures mounted on the independent judiciary. 

The speech of the president and his newspaper interview are a direct interference with the following cases:

His state minister Fowzie ‘s issues before court

The case before court against retired  Navy Commander and 

the murder  of journalist Prageeth Ekneliyagoda, which had drawn international focus, and the pressures mounted on courts on behalf of  the murderers .  

These interferences have earned the bitter displeasure of the foreign community.

The president pointed out  , those were the faults of the investigators , despite  the glaring truth staring fiercely in his face that   those were not due to actions taken by the investigators , and  those were mainly based on  court directives. 

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• by     (2016-10-23 11:49:38)

Daham’s Clique Night Club Attack Swept Under The Carpet

October 23, 2016 

Two weeks since the Clique Night club came under attack from a group led by the son of President Maithripala Sirisena, Daham; it now appears that the incident has been swept under the carpet with police taking no action against any of the culprits.

Despite clear CCTV footage showing officers from the Presidential Security Division (PSD) threatening the security guards at the night club, after they refused Daham Sirisena and his friends’ entry to the club on October 8, the police have so far not even recorded a statement from Daham Sirisena since the incident.

Soon after his arrival from Thailand, Sirisena sent out a customary order instructing the law enforcement authorities to carry out a full scale investigation into the attack, however two weeks since the incident, the Maradana police which was investigating the incident has not taken any action to bring the culprits to book.

Despite several telephone calls from the Colombo Telegraph to Superintendent of Police (SP) Ruwan Gunasekera, he did not answer his mobile.

The attack was allegedly orchestrated by Sirisena’s son, after he and his group were infuriated that they were denied entry into the club. After threatening the security and leaving, the angry mob returned with poles and launched an attack on the guards and also damaged property of the club. They also attacked a security guard with a flower pot who was later admitted to the Accident Service. However several hours later, the security guard said that he was unable to identify anyone, despite the area where the attack took place being well lit.

Deputy Minister of Parliamentary Reforms and Mass Media Karunarathne Paranawithana told a news conference on October 12 that Sirisena had instructed the authorities to launch a full scale investigation into the night club attack, in which his son was accused of being involved. However, despite the reported order, Sirisena had broken the law himself after he ordered the police to show him all of the CCTV footage of the attack.

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Boycotting “the occupation” is not enough

Liberal Zionists are attempting to co-opt BDS to preserve Israeli apartheid.Ryan Rodrick BeilerActiveStills

Ali Abunimah-21 October 2016

Earlier this month, The New York Review of Books published a call for “a targeted boycott of all goods and services from all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and any investments that promote the occupation, until such time as a peace settlement is negotiated between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.”

That call, signed by Peter Beinart, Todd Gitlin, Michael Walzer and more than 70 other liberal Zionist writers and luminaries, states that the so-called Green Line – the 1949 Armistice Line separating the occupied West Bank from present-day Israel – “should be the starting point for negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian parties on future boundaries between two states.”

Co-opting BDS

This is precisely the kind of attempt to co-opt the success of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that Columbia University professor Joseph Massad cautions about in a 2014 article for The Electronic Intifada: liberal Zionists aim to redefine and redirect the movement’s strength and efforts towards preserving, instead of challenging, Israel as a racist, apartheid and colonial state.

Massad warns that BDS could turn from something “untouchable by European and American officials and liberal academics and activists – who understood its ultimate goal as one that not only refuses to guarantee the survival of Israel as a racist state, but also aims specifically to dismantle all its racist structures – to something increasingly safe to adopt by most of them, as it now can be used to secure Israel’s survival.”

Palestinians must insist, Massad writes, that those in solidarity with them adopt BDS with an explicit commitment to its goals, “to bring about an end to Israel’s racism and colonialism in all its forms inside and outside the 1948 boundaries” – the whole of present-day Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Opening

In the current issue of The New York Review of Books, more than 100 activists, scholars and artists from Palestine and around the world – including BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti, activist and scholarAngela Davis, historian Joan Scott, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, writer Alice Walker and South African freedom fighter Ronnie Kasrils – have responded.

The new letter – of which I am one the signers – says that it defies “common sense” to call only for “boycotting settlements while letting Israel, the state that has illegally built and maintained those settlements for decades, off the hook.”

“By omitting Israel’s other serious violations of international law, the statement fails the moral consistency test,” the letter adds. “Aren’t Palestinian refugees, the majority of Palestinians, entitled to their UN-stipulated rights? Shouldn’t Palestinian citizens of Israel enjoy equal rights by repealing Israel’s dozens of laws that racially discriminate against them?”

It emphasizes that the Palestinian call for BDS is aimed at “all entities, Israeli or international, that are complicit in denying Palestinians everywhere their rights.”

Like The Nation and The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books has rarely opened its pagesto Palestinian writers, and has been a bastion of liberal Zionist orthodoxy.

So in that sense, its publication of the letter represents a small opening in the wall of exclusion.

Little-known group claims it killed senior Egyptian army officer

Banner of the Revolution says it was responsible for murder of brigadier general outside his suburban Cairo home

 Egypt’s president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has urged authorities to beef up security at vital installations. Photograph: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

Agencies in Cairo-Sunday 23 October 2016 

A little-known Egyptian group has claimed responsibility for the killing of a senior Egyptian army officer outside his suburban Cairo home.

The claim came in a statement by the Banner of the Revolution on social media accounts known to be sympathetic to militant groups. The claim’s authenticity could not be immediately verified.

Brig Gen Adel Ragai was the commander of the army 9th armoured division headquartered in the sprawling military base of Dahshour, near Cairo. He had recently served in the northern part of the Sinai peninsula, where security forces have been fighting Islamic militants for years. The unit was also responsible for destroying smuggling tunnels running between the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, according to reports.

The statement said Ragai’s driver and security guard were injured in Saturday’s attack, which Egyptian media reported was carried out by three masked gunmen.

The statement claimed the attack was partly in revenge for the killing earlier this month by security forces of Mohammed Kamal, a senior official of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood.

The only other attack for which Banner of the Revolution claimed responsibility was an August shooting at a checkpoint in Menoufia province, north of Cairo, which left two policemen dead and wounded three other policemen and two civilians.

Hours after the attack on Ragai, the Egyptian president, Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, conferred with his prime minister, the defence and interior ministers and intelligence chief to review the security situation, according to a presidential statement. It said Sisi urged authorities to beef up security at vital installations, but gave no details.

Before the statement, suspicion fell on the local affiliate of the Islamic State group leading the fight against security forces in Sinai, and Hasm, or “Decisiveness”, a shadowy group suspected of links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hasm has claimed responsibility in recent weeks for attacks in Cairo, including a shooting against the country’s former mufti, or chief Muslim theologian, and a car bomb against the chief prosecutor’s deputy. Both escaped unhurt.

The insurgency in Sinai has grown deadlier following the military’s 2013 ousting of an elected but divisive Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sisi, himself a career army officer, said in a recent interview that he expected the war in Sinai to continue for a long time and that both sides in the conflict were getting better at fighting each other.

Russia Orders US: Tell The World About Aliens, Or We Will

John Peterson-October 22, 2016

A stunning Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) report on Prime Minister Medvedev’s agenda at the World Economic Forum (WEF) this week states that Russia will warn US that the “time has come” for the world to know the truth about aliens, and if the United States won’t participate in the announcement, the Kremlin will do so on its own.

The WEF (The Forum) is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva and describes itself as an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

The Forum is best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland. The meeting brings together some 2,500 top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world, including health and the environment.

NASA Openly Admits Alien Life Exists: Get Ready for Disclosure

Critical to note about this years Forum is that the WEF, in their 2013 Executive Summary, scheduled for debate and discussion a number of items under their X Factors from Nature category, and which includes the “discovery of alien life” of which they state: “Proof of life elsewhere in the universe could have profound psychological implications for human belief systems.”

Equally critical to note is that Medvedev, after completing a 7 December 2012 on-camera interview with reporters in Moscow, continued to respond to reporters and made some off-air comments without realizing that his microphone was still on. He was then asked by one reporter if “the president is handed secret files on aliens when he receives the briefcase needed to activate Russia’s nuclear arsenal,” Medvedev responded:

“Along with the briefcase with nuclear codes, the president of the country is given a special ‘top secret’ folder. This folder in its entirety contains information about aliens who visited our planet… Along with this, you are given a report of the absolutely secret special service that exercises control over aliens on the territory of our country… More detailed information on this topic you can get from a well-known movie called Men In Black… I will not tell you how many of them are among us because it may cause panic.”

Western news sources reporting on Medvedev’s shocking reply about aliens stated that he was “joking” as he mentioned the movie Men In Black, which they wrongly assumed was a reference to the 1997 American sci-fi adventure comedy about two top secret agents battling aliens in the US.

The Baltic Sea Anomaly – The Incredible Mystery Of The ‘Alien Spacecraft’ That Lies at The Bottom Of The Baltic Sea

Medvedev, however, wasn’t referring to the American movie but was, instead, talking about the famous Russian movie documentary Men In Black which details many UFO and alien anomalies.

Where Western news sources quoted Medvedev as saying “More detailed information on this topic you can get from a well-known movie called ‘Men In Black,’” his actual answer was, “You can receive more detailed information having watched the documentary film of the same name.”

The reason(s) for Western propaganda news outlets deliberately distorting Medvedev’s words become apparent after his shocking statement, and as evidenced in just one example of their so called reporting on this disclosure of alien life already being on our planet where the title of one such article was “Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev makes a crack about aliens, and conspiracists promptly lose their minds.”

If anyone is “losing their minds” about aliens, it must be pointed out, it is certainly not Russia, but the Vatican, which in November 2009 announced it was “preparing for extraterrestrial disclosure”.

NASA Telescope Confirms “New” Life On Other Planets

Equally, and apparently, “losing their minds” are US government officials themselves, such as former Pentagon consultant Timothy Good, and author of Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-Up, who in February 2012 stated that former President Dwight Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens who were ‘Nordic’ in appearance and wherein a ‘Pact’ was signed to keep their agenda on Earth secret.

With the recent discovery in the Russian city of Vladivostok of a 300-million-year-old UFO tooth-wheel, and scientists, astronauts and YouTube users reporting increasingly strange happenings on the moon, the European Space agency reporting their discovery of a 1,000 ancient river on Mars, and UK and Sri Lanka scientists saying they now have “rock solid proof of alien life” after finding fossilized algae inside meteorite, the only ones who seem to be truly “losing their minds” are the Western, especially American, propagandists who for decades have covered up one of the most important stories in all of human history that “we are not alone.”

Source: theusualroutine.com

Donald Trump’s campaign manager admits: ‘We are behind’

By Jenna Johnson October 23 at 11:29 AM

MIAMI — Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, a longtime Republican pollster, admitted Sunday that her candidate is currently losing to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"We are behind," Conway said on NBC's "Meet the Press." Clinton, she said, "has some advantages, like $66 million in ad buys just in the month of September, thereby doubling her ad buys from August. Now, most of those ads are negative against Donald Trump — classic politics of personal destruction, cesspool kind of ads. And she has tremendous advantages: She has a former president, who happens to be her husband, campaigning for her. The current president and first lady, vice president, all much more popular than she can hope to be."

But Conway is still hopeful that Trump can be victorious by winning over undecided voters who don't like Clinton. Instead of pointing to polls, which Trump has said are rigged against him, Conway pointed to the enthusiasm that she seen on the campaign trail.

"Let me tell you something: You go out on the road with Donald Trump, this election doesn't feel over," Conway said on CNN's "State of the Union."

[Donald Trump is in a funk: Bitter, hoarse and pondering 'If I lose...']

On "Fox News Sunday," Conway said Trump is focused on winning Florida, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina and, possibly, Nevada, while protecting Arizona and Georgia, which are traditionally Republican states but have seen bursts of support for Clinton in polls.

On CNN, Conway would not say whether she had known ahead of time that Trump planned to use a major policy speech in Gettysburg, Pa., on Saturday to lash out at women who have accused him of sexual assault, calling them "liars" and threatening to sue them after the election.

"Well, I was there at the speech yesterday in Gettysburg . . ." Conway said, then pivoted to a description of the policy stances that were outlined in Trump's speech but were overshadowed by his defensive comments.

CNN's Jake Tapper again asked Conway whether she knew Trump would "spend 15 minutes railing against people accusing him of misdeeds, railing against the media."

"Well, he delivers his own speeches. This is his candidacy. He's the guy who is running for the White House, and he has the privilege to say what he wants," Conway said. She then accused CNN of giving Clinton questions for a town hall during the Democratic primaries ahead of time, a charge that Tapper denied.

[Trump's truest believers start to worry: 'You could easily lose this election.']

On "Meet the Press," Conway said that Trump is "at his best when he sticks to the issues" but that he also defends himself against false accusations. She said Trump is waiting until after the election to sue the women involved because he's "busy winning the presidency." She also noted that his attack on his accusers was "a small piece of a 42-minute speech."

During the final presidential debate on Wednesday night in Las Vegas, Conway retweeted a tweet from The Washington Post's Robert Costa that said: "'Bad hombres' = Trump being Trump. Trump's other answers = Conway-esque." When asked about the retweet on Sunday, Conway said she did not mean to be critical of Trump and was instead "literally gleeful" about his strong answer on abortion. She said some had misunderstood the tweet.

"I actually have a sense of humor that maybe some are lacking," Conway said.



The GOP presidential nominee is out on the trail ahead of the general election in November.

Our generals failed in Afghanistan

BY THOMAS E. RICKS-OCTOBER 18, 2016

By Jason Dempsey

Best Defense guest contributor

The United States military failed America in Afghanistan. It wasn’t a tactical failure. It was a failure of leadership.

The ascent of David Petraeus and the Army’s rediscovery of counterinsurgency doctrine led many to believe that the military had dramatically adapted itself for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately the transformation was only skin deep. Petraeus was a myth, and the intellectual father of the Army only in the eyes of the national media. The institutional inertia of the military bureaucracy never caught up with the press releases. The result was a never-ending series of public pronouncements by senior leaders about the importance of counterinsurgency, accompanied by a continuation of Cold War-era personnel and rotation policies that explicitly short-changed the effort.

Upon taking command in Afghanistan in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal made the rounds of his subordinate units and asked each of us, “What would you do differently if you had to stay until we won?” At the time I was in charge of operations for a brigade in the middle of tough fight in eastern Afghanistan. It was absolutely the right question, but in retrospect it was also a trick question. The answer was to get the right people into the fight, keep them there long enough to develop an understanding of the environment, and hold them accountable for progress, but that was not something the military was interested in doing. Instead, we stuck with a policy that rotated leaders through the country like tourists.

Taking the lessons of unit cohesion from Vietnam, the military has followed a policy in Afghanistan where entire units rotate in and out of country every seven, nine, or 12 months. This model, more than the policy of individual rotation in Vietnam, ensures both tactical proficiency and unit cohesion at the soldier level. 

But it also is completely ill-suited for a counterinsurgency campaign. It makes sense to limit the time soldiers spend conducting tactical operations, but leaders attempting to establish the kind of relationships and understanding necessary to be effective in counterinsurgency must be kept in place much longer. By changing out entire units so frequently, our policy has guaranteed that military leaders rotating through Afghanistan have never had more than a superficial understanding of the political environment they are trying to shape.

The shortcomings of this rotation policy in counterinsurgency have been further reinforced by an institutional culture and personnel management system that places a low priority on the advisory mission. From the beginning of our efforts in Afghanistan the advisory mission was promoted publicly but given a low priority in execution.

The premier example of this mismatch between what military leadership said we were doing, and what the bureaucracy was actually prioritizing, can be found in the story of the AfPak hands program. The program was launched by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, and lauded as the key to shaping Afghanistan by creating a cohort of expert officers from across the services that would have the language skills and experience to build the kind of long-term relationships needed to build an effective Afghan security apparatus. While a priority for the Chairman, the effort was never embraced by the services.

Despite the fanfare and stated importance of the program, mismanagement and mis-utilization were rampant as this specialized cadre encountered personnel systems unable to support non-traditional career paths. Caught between career managers that saw the program as a deviation from what officers “should” be doing – leading tactical units – and a deployment system that often led to random staff assignments instead of partnered roles with Afghan leaders, the program quickly became known as an assignment to be “survived” if not avoided altogether.

A leaked briefing from the Army G-1, the service’s head personnel officer, to the Chief of Staff of the Army in 2014 confirmed that the AfPak Hands program had become a dead end for military careers. Officers who had participated in the program were being promoted at a fraction of the rate of those who had not. 

There are only two explanations for this outcome: Either the Army was sending sub-par officers to serve in the program, or officers were being punished for deviating from the traditional career track. Whichever it was, both explanations reveal that the effort to train and advise the Afghans was simply not a priority for the Army.

Similar challenges faced those who served on Security Force Advise and Assist Teams. These teams, like the AfPak Hands program, were always ad hoc and widely considered assignments to avoid, as they did not align with traditional career paths. And in the end, the rigidity of the military’s 1950’s-era personnel system simply overwhelmed any desires to prioritize the counterinsurgency mission. Centrally managed and organized around rigid career development templates, this personnel system does a magnificent job of sustaining a peacetime military that is prepared to fight and win tactical battles at the onset of a conventional war, but is not built to go beyond placing square pegs in square holes.

Preserving the conventional warfighting capabilities produced under that system for a future war is a valid concern. But after 15 years of conflict with little success to show for our efforts it is past time to ask our military leaders, “What war are we waiting for?”

Warren Buffett famously observed that if you’ve been playing poker for half an hour and don’t know who the patsy at the table is, then you are the patsy. We’ve been in Afghanistan for 15 years. Afghans know how to manage the American officers passing through their country. American officers rotating through Afghanistan on short-term deployments can never fully understand the network of relationships behind the formal chain of command. I saw this firsthand in 2012 after working to relieve a clearly incompetent border police commander. After several months of cajoling his chain of command the officer was relieved. 

I had been told of his family connections, but felt his incompetence was surely enough to keep him out of uniform. Of course, I was wrong. By the time I returned in 2014, two generations of advisors had passed through the border police headquarters and he had reassumed command.

When we have not been oblivious to this dynamic we have reacted with indignation. After all, don’t the Afghans care about winning the war?

A common joke in large hierarchical bureaucracies like the American military is that things aren’t going well because “higher headquarters can’t plan, and subordinate units can’t execute.” This describes the current view of military leaders in that larger strategic failings are out of the military’s lane, while any faults in execution must surely fall on the shoulders of the Afghans. Left unexamined is how our approach to the war was both ill-suited for the task at hand and ultimately constrained our strategic options.

In discussing what the Afghans need to be ready to fight the Taliban, a senior Pentagon official recently said, “The local forces need air support, intelligence and help with logistics.” Yet, unaddressed by this official, and largely unasked by anyone, is why the Afghan military needs these capabilities when the Taliban have been able to achieve such success without them?

This would be a good first question for the next president to ask as he or she faces a steady stream of senior military officers asking for “more men, more money, and more time,” because the answer reveals the superficiality of the military’s approach to Afghanistan.

Our current exit strategy entails the creation of a massive security force designed for a nation with neither the effective bureaucracies nor functioning civil society that are required to sustain and control such a force. Of course, it will take decades to secure Afghanistan with this model. And even then there is no guarantee of success. So long as the military pays only lip-service to counterinsurgency the president will be hearing the same refrain of “more men, more money, and more time” for years to come.

Jason Dempsey retired from the Army in 2015, last serving as special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 as the operations officer to an infantry brigade and again in 2012-2013 as a combat advisor to the Afghan Border Police. He returned again briefly in 2014 to assess the advisory mission. He is the author of Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations. He currently serves as an adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security and Director of the Military and Veterans Initiative at Columbia University.

Photo credit: Mamie Burke/U.S. Department of Defense

Rotherham trial: far right activists in the spotlight

Rotherham trial: far right activists in the spotlight

Thursday 20 Oct 2016

A jury’s been hearing how a far right organization called Yorkshire’s Finest was bent on targeting Asian families in Rotherham with violence.

Prosecutor Paul O’Shea told Sheffield Crown Court that the group was made up of veteran football hooligans with links to the English Defence League, British National Party and the former National Front.

He described Yorkshire’s Finest as racist activists with a history of involvement in extreme violence.

The jury was handed photographs from the group’s Facebook site, one of which shows a Union Jack with the words “We arrive, We …. …. up, We leave”.

The court was told the group looked for opportunities to carry out attacks on Asians and Muslims to give themselves a more militant image than other far right movements.

The jury was told the South Yorkshire town had hosted 14 far right demonstrations between August 2014 to September 2015 which had created an atmosphere of fear and anxiety.

The details emerged in the trial of 10 Asian men accused of violent disorder in allegedly attacking some members of the group at the end of a right wing extremist march through Rotherham in September last year.

The prosecution also revealed that police had intelligence that the leaders of Yorkshire’s Finest would be at the gathering but would avoid joining the march in order to carry out attacks.

The ten accused deny violent disorder and the trial continues.

India's children of bonded labourers use memories to rescue others

A farm labourer weeds a ginger field in Nagarally village in Karnataka, India, July 7, 2015. REUTERS/Abhishek N. Chinnappa/File Photo

By Anuradha Nagaraj-Sun Oct 23, 2016

BENGALURU (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - They are not easy to spot. Working in vegetable patches and on millet fields in Karnataka, farm labourers caught in debt bondage suffer mainly in silence.

But Gopal V has lived with this silence for long enough. Now 44, the son of bonded labourers is on a mission to identify workers trapped in debt bondage - and to make sure they get justice.

"My parents worked endless hours not for money, just food," Gopal said. "They worked for a landlord in my village, whose house I still can't enter. He paid them back with a little food, and my father died in bondage."

Now, he travels across villages around Anekal, near the city of Bengaluru, looking for people like his parents.

There is an urgency to his search, he says, because he wants to "get them out before they die".

India banned the practice of bonded labour in 1976, but the country is still home to 11.7 million bonded labourers, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The labourers may be working to pay off a loan from their employer, or a debt inherited from a relative.

Jeevika, a non-profit organisation that works to eradicate bonded labour in the southern state, said it identified 12,811 bonded labourers in Karnataka between 2012 and 2015. Most of them are still waiting for state authorities to give them release certificates and compensation money, it said.

Its founder, Kiran Kamal Prasad, estimates that there are up to 200,000 bonded labourers across Karnataka.

"It is a perennial problem that persists in the agriculture sector," said Druthi Lakshmi of the state's rural development department.

"We know they are really poor, illiterate people who often go back to the same landlord for work after they are rescued because the rehabilitation money is not enough."

The government is in the process of undertaking a more comprehensive survey to identify people in bondage, she added.

Gopal and others like him who work in partnership with Jeevika use their childhood memories of suffering and debt bondage to encourage others to find a way out of it.

"The fear of the landlord still exists in our (lower-caste) Dalit communities and people refuse to acknowledge they are in bondage," said Ramakrishna V, also the son of a bonded labourer.

"It takes a lot of talking before they break down and admit they are paying off a loan they took many, many years ago," said Ramakrisha, now a lawyer fighting for workers' rights in court.

THREATS

Activists say most people trapped in bonded labour are unaware of the fact they might have paid off their initial loan 10 times over. In addition, the 1976 Abolition of Bonded Labour Act cancels any dues that may be pending when a worker is rescued from bondage, they said.

Jayaboraiah, 47, recalled how he was studying in his room when the landlord of his hostel came knocking.

"He said my father had disappeared without repaying the 800 rupees ($12) loan he had taken to start a sericulture (silk production) business. I dropped out of school and spent eight years working in his home and field to pay off that loan," Jayaboraiah said.

But a glance at a report on bonded labour in a newspaper one morning led him to a government office to ask for help.

"Now I know the law and am able to explain to families in debt bondage that they have repaid their dues and should now be demanding minimum wages," he said.

All three men said their personal experience of growing up in the shadow of debt bondage helps them to start a conversation about the issue in villages where traditionally lower-caste people still find it "almost impossible to leave the clutches of a landlord".

Gopal said: "We are constantly threatened and so are workers, but we keep going to villages and areas where Dalits live and we lived until recently.

"It takes a lot of probing before anyone admits to having taken a loan and working to repay it. It takes us months to build trust," he said.

Gopal's three daughters have documented the lives of their grandfather and uncles who worked as bonded labourers.

"I tell them about it because it is the reality from which they have emerged, and it makes them sensitive to the fact that many more still need help," Gopal said.

($ 1=66.7827 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Anuradha Nagaraj, Editing by Jo Griffin and Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)

Burmese government blocking aid in Rakhine state, says HRW

A Rohingya girl who was displaced following 2012 sectarian violence carries a baby at Nga Chaung Refugee Camp in Pauktaw, Rakhine state, Burma. Pic: AP.

 23rd October 2016

HUMAN Rights Watch has urged the Burmese (Myanmar) government to lift its blockade on humanitarian aid for ethnic Rohingyans in the northern Rakhine State.

The rights group on Friday said government security operations have cut off assistance to tens of thousands of people and forced many to flee their homes. 

Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director had also urged the United Nations and donor governments to publicly call on the Burmese government to ensure aid organisations can reach those in need.

“Recent violence in northern Rakhine State has led the army to deny access to aid agencies that provide essential health care and food to people at grave risk,” he said in a statement.

“The Rohingya and others have been especially vulnerable since the ethnic cleansing campaign in 2012, and many rely on humanitarian aid to survive.”

The UN had previously expressed concern at violent attacks by unidentified individuals and groups against border guards and security forces on Oct 9 in three areas of Northern Rakhine that became deadly.

SEE ALSO: Burma: UN adviser urges fullest restraint after fresh round of violence in restive state

Armed men attacked three police outposts in Maungdaw township near the border with Bangladesh, killing nine police officers and seizing weapons.

The President’s Office blamed a previously unknown Rohingya group called Aqa Mul Mujahidin for the attacks, though other officials have said it is unclear who was responsible, the HRW said.

Five members of the security forces have also been killed in a fresh round of violence, forcing government security forces to declare the area an “operation zone” to sweep for attackers. According to senior members of the government, security forces have killed 30 people.

However,  HRW said reporting is heavily reliant on government sources as journalists have been denied access.

Rohingya activists have alleged that government forces have committed serious abuses during the current operations, including summary executions and the burning of villages.

A World Food Programme (WFP) partnerships officer said  authorities have blocked all aid deliveries to Maungdaw township since Oct 9 and aid agencies have not been able to conduct a needs assessment.

“We have asked [for access] from township level to Union level,” he said.

“The official explanation [for being denied access] is that security operations are ongoing.”

Broad and open-ended restrictions are not permissible under international law, HRW, although authorities may restrict freedom of movement for specific security reasons for a limited period of time.

Newly arrived migrants gather at Kuala Langsa Port in Langsa, Aceh province, Indonesia, in 2015. Pic: AP.

Under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, HRW said all authorities “shall grant and facilitate the free passage of humanitarian assistance and grant persons engaged in the provision of such assistance rapid and unimpeded access to the internally displaced.”

HRW said over 50,000 people remain without food aid in Maungdaw. The government, however, has recently permitted the resumption of food assistance to 37,000 people in Buthiduang township.

“The blocking of aid will also severely impact nutritional programs and mobile health clinics that serviced the area,” the group said, quoting aid workers.

“With freedom of movement restricted, ill or wounded people cannot access the main hospital in Maungdaw.”

Some 3,000 ethnic Rakhine people have been displaced from the violence and as many as 15,000 Rohingya, but the lack of access prevents an accurate count.

Longstanding discrimination by the Buddhist majority against Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine exploded into bloody violence in 2012. More than 100,000 people, mostly Rohingyas, are still in displacement camps.

“The Burmese government has a responsibility to search for and arrest those who attacked the border posts,” Adams said.

“But it is required to do so in a manner that respects human rights, ensures that the area’s people get the aid they need, and allows journalists and rights monitors into the area.”

Cholera kills 9 in Yemen's Aden, as deadly disease spreads

The United Nations announced an outbreak of cholera in Yemen earlier in October, as disease spreads in the war-torn country

Yemeni children receive treatment at a hospital in the capital Sanaa on 11 October, 2016 (AFP)

 

Sunday 23 October 2016

Yemen's government announced on Sunday that nine people had died of cholera in second city Aden as the infectious disease spread across the war-torn country.

 

Ten other people in the southern port city have been diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease which is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes acute diarrhoea, the health ministry said.

 

A ministry statement said 190 cases of severe diarrhoea had been admitted to hospitals in Aden, which hosts the government's temporary headquarters.

 

The ministry said that around 200 cases of cholera had been reported nationwide.

 

The United Nations this month announced an outbreak of cholera in Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country even before the war broke out.

 

A Saudi-led coalition began a bombing campaign in March 2015 against rebels who seized the capital Sanaa and large parts of Yemen in a war the United Nations says has killed nearly 6,900 people.

 

This month, the World Health Organization said it had confirmed 11 cases of cholera in Sanaa.

 

The WHO warned that the scarcity of drinkable water has worsened hygienic conditions and fuelled a marked increase in cases of severe diarrhoea, in particular among people displaced from their homes in central Yemen.

 

The UN's child agency UNICEF said cholera could prove fatal in up to 15 percent of untreated cases.

 

The agency says nearly three million people in Yemen need immediate food aid, while 1.5 million children suffer from malnutrition, including 370,000 with severe malnutrition that weakens their immune systems.

 

Doctors in Aden said that the WHO and the Emirati Red Crescent have supplied hospitals in the city with medical aid to help treat cholera cases.

 

The United Arab Emirates is a key member of the Riyadh-led Arab coalition battling the Houthi rebels and their allies.