The American Brexit Is Coming

BY JAMES STAVRIDIS-OCTOBER 6, 2016

At a recent White House meeting, President Barack Obama assembled an eclectic cast of characters: the CEO of IBM, one of the largest corporations in the world; a trio of serving politicians from both parties comprising the mayor of Atlanta and governors of Louisiana and Ohio; a former secretary of the Treasury; a recent mayor of New York City, and the dean of a graduate school of international relations and former supreme allied commander (that’s me). Despite wildly divergent backgrounds and political affiliations, everyone in the room agreed on one thing: the value of free trade globally, with particular urgency on the need for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The president was measured, analytical, and pragmatic. In describing his recent trip to Asia, he kept reflecting on the constant refrain from our allies, friends, and partners: The United States was absolutely needed in the region. Washington has spent seven years negotiating this massive agreement (some 6,000 pages and 30 chapters) signed in February that would level the playing field in terms of trade, working conditions, and the flow of goods among a dozen nations — all good allies and partners to the United States. China, he said, was seen increasingly as a bully, using a combination of economic statecraft, hard-power moves in the volatile South China Sea, and territorial claims around the region to coerce behavior.

The deal on the table has one last chance of passing — the lame-duck congressional session after the November election. With both presidential candidates vowing to either reject or completely renegotiate the agreement over domestic competitiveness concerns, the moment is shaping up to be the American version of a Brexit from the Pacific region. Indeed, it’s impossible to not hear echoes of this summer’s surprise popular referendum, in which the United Kingdom decided to walk away from the vast European free-market trading zone over a combination of immigration concerns, fairness arguments about protected domestic industries, and irritation over imposed regulatory regimes. It was a serious geopolitical mistake for Britain to walk away from the European Union, and it would be equally serious for the United States to leave the TPP on the table and effectively walk away from a leadership position in Asia.

The case for the TPP is economically strong, but the geopolitical logic is even more compelling. The deal is one that China will have great difficulty accepting, as it would put Beijing outside a virtuous circle of allies, partners, and friends on both sides of the Pacific. Frankly, that is a good place to keep China from the perspective of the United States, and the treaty thus brings together not only Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and other Asian partners, but also Chile, Mexico, Canada, and Peru. The obvious missing member from Asia is South Korea, but indications are clear that over time South Koreans will want to be part of the agreement. This will be relatively easy to facilitate as South Korea already has a robust bilateral trade agreement with the United States.

The free-trade debate will continue to be part of the presidential election cycle as both candidates disavow the pact and seek to maximize votes in states that have been hit by job losses. While most 

economists point to the broader economic good engendered by free trade generally, the individual pockets of pain caused by heightened overseas competition become strong drivers in an election season. But in time, free trade grows the entire economy and creates a net increase in employment. The answer for individual segments of society that are disadvantaged is additional education and training that allows a pivot into new jobs. Broadly speaking, that has been the trajectory of previous trade agreements both here in the United States and abroad.

What is particularly compelling about the TPP, however, is the geopolitical argument in its favor. Three key points are especially salient:

China is on the march in Asia. Beijing intends to claim essentially the entire South China Sea as its territorial waters, based on preposterous historical arguments soundly rejected by international courts. It continues to build artificial islands, destroy reefs, and practice hybrid maritime warfare with unmarked sailors in “fishing boats” intruding aggressively into Japanese, Philippine, and Vietnamese waters. China clearly intends to be the dominant actor in East Asia, and absent a strong U.S. presence, it will succeed. An Asia dominated by China does not serve U.S. interests for a host of reasons, especially given the economic vitality of the region.

This is a moment of real vulnerability for many Asian nations. The unpredictable Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is watching this potential U.S. Brexit from Asia and already talking about increasing military ties with China. Vietnam, historically wary of its massive neighbor to the north, frequently discusses its vulnerability with U.S. leaders. Japan is rattled by Chinese activity around the Senkaku Islands, and even South Korea — which maintains strong ties with China — is worried about Beijing’s seeming reluctance to rein in the behavior of its client state, North Korea. A U.S. failure to maintain a strong economic presence in the region — highlighted by the TPP — will have significant negative effects on our political and diplomatic position over time.

Sending U.S. aircraft carriers is not enough. Some would argue that the United States can exert all the influence it needs to by simply sending enough Carrier Strike Groups sailing through the western Pacific. That kind of simplistic “show the flag” argument doesn’t work in the 21st century; we are more than 100 years on from Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet. A nation’s influence is the composition of its military, cultural, political, and — above all — economic influence. As the leader of what would be the largest free-trade zone in the world, the United States would continue to exert real leadership in this crucial region.

While China is outside the TPP, membership in this exclusive club will only increase in value over the coming decade. Although China may bridle initially were the deal to come to fruition, the incentive to be included should have an ameliorating effect on its behavior over time, and provide a path to build a bridge to what will soon be the largest single-nation economy in the world.

Over 2,500 years ago, during the Zhou dynasty, the philosopher-warrior Sun Tzu wrote the compelling study of conflict The Art of War. There is much wisdom in that slim volume, including this quote: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The United States can avoid conflict best in East Asia by using a robust combination of national tools — with the TPP at the top of the list. Looking across the Atlantic to the Brexit debacle, we must avoid repeating the mistake in the Pacific.

The clear winner if the United States rejects the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be China, and an increasingly authoritarian and regionally dominant President Xi Jinping will be cheering the loudest.

Photo credit: OLIVIER DOULIERY/Getty Images

Court ruling means act of parliament would be needed for Brexit, says May

PM says logical conclusion of decision is that legislation would be required to trigger article 50, but government plans to appeal

Theresa May will reassure EU figures that the government aims to stick to the timetable set out at the European council. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

Heather Stewart, Rowena Mason and Owen Bowcott-Thursday 3 November 2016 

Theresa May has said she accepts that the “logical conclusion” of the high court judgment on Brexit is that the government would have to pass an act of parliament before it could trigger article 50, the formal process for leaving the European Union.

The government has said it will appeal against Thursday’s unexpected high court ruling, which stated that MPs needed to vote on triggering article 50. Downing Street has insisted it will stick to the timetable of invoking article 50 before the end of March 2017.

Asked whether the prime minister agreed with the Brexit secretary, David Davis, that if the judgment is upheld by the supreme court next month the government will have to put a bill before parliament, she said: “What David Davis was setting out is what would be a logical conclusion to draw from the judgment from today.”

Davis had said: “The judges have laid out what we can’t do and not exactly what we can do, but we are presuming it requires an act of parliament, therefore both Commons and Lords.”

A formal bill would grant MPs and peers the opportunity to stage a full debate before article 50 is triggered; to table amendments and, some hope, debate the broad principles on which the government will conduct negotiations with the other 27 EU member states.

May has requested a phone call with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Friday morning, in which she will reassure him that the government is continuing with its plans and sticking to the timetable set out at the European council. She is also expected to seek to reassure other key EU figures, including the council president, Donald Tusk.

Some in Westminster believe the high court decision has made the prospect of an early general election more likely by increasing the risk that the prime minister will be unable to manage the tensions within her own party.

Dominic Raab, the Tory MP and former minister, said: “If we get to the stage where effectively [some MPs] are not willing to allow this negotiation to even begin, I think there must be an increased chance that we must go to the country again. I think that would be a mistake and I don’t think those trying to break the verdict of the referendum would be rewarded.”

May’s spokeswoman insisted: “Our position has been clear that there should not be an election before 2020; that remains the prime minister’s view.”

Pro-remain MPs hope they can use the opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny created by the ruling to argue against a hard Brexit, where the UK would give up membership of the single market, as well as the customs union that allows free circulation of goods. It also gave further hope to the Scottish government of getting a greater say in the Brexit negotiations.

No 10 attempted to play down the significance of the ruling, insisting that the plan for Brexit remained on track. “The prime minister is clear and determined that this government will deliver on the decision of the British people and take us out of the EU. We are determined to continue with our plan, preparing for negotiations and sticking to the timetable we set out,” it said.


Victorious Gina Miller reacts to article 50 ruling: ‘this case was about process, not politics’ – video

“We have no intention of letting this decision derail our timetable for triggering article 50.”

Government lawyers argued that prerogative powers were a legitimate way to give effect “to the will of the people”, who voted by a clear majority to leave the European Union in the June referendum. But the lord chief justice declared: “The government does not have power under the crown’s prerogative to give notice pursuant to article 50 for the UK to withdraw from the European Union.”

May’s spokeswoman said the prime minister was working from Downing Street as usual and would not be making any public statement on Thursday about the government’s defeat in court.

May will send a cabinet minister to the House of Commons on Monday to make a statement about the ruling, but she will not attend because she will be on a trade trip to India.

Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, said she believed colleagues on all sides of the Commons would vote in favour of triggering article 50, but said “democracy has been asserted”.

“I am also very confident in colleagues in parliament; we are very aware of how people voted – 17 million – to leave the EU. I expect parliament will approve the triggering of the article 50 process. It’s a question of law.”

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said: “This ruling underlines the need for the government to bring its negotiating terms to parliament without delay. Labour respects the decision of the British people to leave the European Union. But there must be transparency and accountability to parliament on the terms of Brexit.”

At least 239 migrants believed drowned in Mediterranean, U.N. says

A woman is wrapped in a foil blanket aboard a ship during a rescue operation for migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. (Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images)

By Michael Birnbaum November 3 at 5:31 PM

BRUSSELS — At least 239 migrants are believed to have drowned this week in two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya, the United Nations refugee agency said Thursday, adding to the toll in what was already the deadliest year on record in the Mediterranean Sea.

Survivor accounts suggest that two crowded boats broke up just off the Libyan coast Wednesday, said Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The 31 survivors were taken Thursday to the Italian island of Lampedusa, which has become a rescue hub amid an ever-deadlier crisis as migrants depart Africa’s northern shores trying to reach Europe.

The reports from the survivors could not be independently confirmed, but it is common for migrant ships to be filled far beyond capacity, and hundreds have perished in past sinkings. If true, the latest shipwrecks bring the toll of dead and missing in the Mediterranean to 4,220 this year, the highest on record, Sami said.

“This is an absolutely appalling figure,” she said. 

According to Sami, the 29 survivors of the first wreck said they capsized after wooden planks at the bottom of the rubber dinghy broke apart several hours after departing Libya around 3 a.m. Wednesday. Pregnant women and at least six children were on board, survivors told the UNHCR, but no children were saved in the rescue, which took place about 25 miles off Libya’s coast. One woman lost her 2-month-old baby, Sami said, and 12 bodies were recovered. 

The survivors said they were in the cold waters for hours before being rescued about 3 p.m. Wednesday. They said more than 140 people were aboard the boat.

Two survivors of a second shipwreck were rescued in a separate operation, Sami said. They said at least 120 had been on board their boat, which had problems immediately upon setting out and broke apart off the Libyan coast around 5 a.m. Wednesday.

The remaining passengers are believed to have drowned, Sami said. No further rescue operations are being performed at the location of those shipwrecks.

“I am deeply saddened by another tragedy on the high seas. . . . So many lives could be saved through more resettlement and legal pathways to protection,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement Thursday. “The Mediterranean is a deadly stretch of sea for refugees and migrants, yet they still see no other option but to risk their lives to cross it.”

Most of the migrants appear to have come from sub-Saharan Africa, Sami said, but she said details were still being checked. She did not immediately know which agency carried out the rescue.

The European Union is conducting a search-and-rescue operation in the western Mediterranean that is temporarily being offered logistical help from the NATO military alliance.

“In this, the deadliest year for boat migration to Europe, the E.U. remains focused on deterrence over protection,” Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Thursday. “The E.U. should be pressing Libyan authorities for permission to operate in Libyan waters, so they can help those in distress and bring them safely to Europe.”

 

Rescued migrants have told the UNHCR that smugglers along the route were telling migrants that responsibility for rescues would soon shift to Libya, and that any rescued refugees would be returned to Libya rather than carried onward to Italy, the agency said. That could be a cause of the current spike.

Migrant traffic across the Mediterranean has changed significantly in the past year, after more than 1 million people made the passage in 2015. Most of them came via Turkey to Greece and then pressed onward into Europe. The sea portion of that journey was shorter and safer than the perilous passage from Libya to Italy. But the Turkish government largely shut down the migrant flow in the spring, closing off the main pathway for people fleeing the conflicts in Syria and Iraq into Europe.

This week, the Gambian soccer federation announced that one of its stars had died at sea while trying to reach Europe. Fatim Jawara, 19, the goalkeeper on the country’s women’s national team, drowned when her boat went down off the coast of Libya several weeks ago.

Traffic from Libya and northern Africa has increased and grown deadlier, according to U.N. figures. Last year, 153,846 people arrived in Italy via the central Mediterranean route — a figure that has just been surpassed in 2016. The arrivals in Italy last month were more than triple those of a year earlier.

The shifting migration patterns have been a boon to smugglers, as demand has increased across the trickier North African route. Smugglers are sending out large groups in several ships at once, complicating rescue efforts if multiple boats capsize, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said in October.

It was not immediately clear whether Wednesday’s sinkings were connected to a single smuggling operation.

Kevin Sieff in Kigali, Rwanda, contributed to this report.

American Irrationalism

We are captive to images and forms of propaganda that make us the most self-deluded population on the planet. We are driven by manipulated emotions, not fact or reason. And this is why, even now, Donald Trump could become president.

by Chris Hedges-Nov 1, 2016

( November 1, 2016, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian)  There is no shortage of signs of impending environmental catastrophe, including the melting of the polar ice caps and the rise of atmospheric carbon to above 400 parts per million. The earth’s sixth mass extinctionis underway. It is not taking place because of planetary forces. Homo sapiens is orchestrating it. Americans are at the same time bankrupting themselves by waging endless and unwinnable wars. We have allowed our elites to push more than half the U.S. population into poverty through deindustrialization. We do nothing to halt the waves of nihilistic violence by enraged citizens who carry out periodic mass shootings in schools, malls, movie theaters and other public places. The political and financial elites flaunt their greed and corruption. Donald Trump appears to pay no federal income taxes. Hillary and Bill Clinton use their foundation as a tool for legalized bribery. Our largest corporations have orchestrated a legal tax boycott. The judicial system is a subsidiary of the corporate state. Militarized police conduct public executions of unarmed people of color. Our infrastructure, including our schools, roads and bridges, along with our deindustrialized cities, are in ruins. Decay and rot—physical and moral—are pervasive.

We are blinded to our depressing reality by the avalanche of images disseminated by mass media. Political, intellectual and cultural discourse has been replaced with spectacle. Emotionalism and sensationalism are prized over truth. Highly paid pundits who parrot back the official narrative, corporate advertisers, inane talk shows, violent or sexually explicit entertainment and gossip-fueled news have contaminated cultural life. “Reality” television, as contrived as every other form of mass entertainment, has produced a “reality” presidential candidate.

Mass culture, because it speaks to us in easily digestible clichés and stereotypes, reinforces ignorance, bigotry and racism. It promotes our individual and collective self-glorification. It sanctifies nonexistent national virtues. It takes from us the intellectual and linguistic tools needed to separate illusion from truth. It is all show business all the time.

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There are hundreds of millions of Americans who know that something is terribly wrong. A light has gone out. They see this in their own suffering and hopelessness and the suffering and hopelessness of their neighbors. But they lack, because of the contamination of our political, cultural and intellectual discourse, the words and ideas to make sense of what is happening around them. They are bereft of a vision. 

Austerity, globalization, unfettered capitalism, an expansion of the extraction of fossil fuels, and war are not the prices to be paid for progress and the advance of civilization. They are part of the savage and deadly exploitation by corporate capitalism and imperialism. They serve a neoliberal ideology. The elites dare not speak this truth. It is toxic. They peddle the seductive illusions that saturate the airwaves. We are left to strike out at shadows. We are led to succumb to the racism, allure of white supremacy and bigotry that always accompany a culture in dissolution.

We cannot, for this reason, discount the possibility that Trump will be elected president. The election outcome will be decided by whatever emotion Americans feel when they cast their ballots.

Celebrity narratives, manufactured pseudo-drama, sex scandals, natural disasters, insults and invective, mass shootings and war flash before us in a constant jumble of images on ubiquitous screens. The sensory assault obliterates reality. A former congressman who sends a picture of himself in underwear to a woman is a national news story. Sober examinations of our economic, foreign, judicial and environmental policies are dismissed as too complicated and boring. They do not produce engaging images. The electronic media’s sole goal is to attract viewers and advertising dollars. It has conditioned us to demand a nonstop vaudeville act.

Because of this mass indoctrination, we have become infected by what Daniel Boorstin in “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America” calls “social narcissism.” The bottomless narcissism of Trump and the Clintons caters to this social narcissism. They reflect back to us our desperate longing for, as well as celebration of, entertainment, celebrity, wealth, power and self-aggrandizement. It is not only advertising and public relations, as Boorstin pointed out, that carry out the incessant manufacturing of illusions that feed social narcissism. Journalists, book publishers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, positive psychologists, self-help gurus, the Christian right and talk show hosts all feed the mania for illusion. They all chant the insane mantra that reality is never an impediment to what we desire. We can have anything we want if we work hard, get an education, believe in ourselves, grasp that we are exceptional and see the impossible as always possible. It is magical thinking. And magical thinking is the only real commodity the elites have left offer to us. Make American Great Again. Or American already is great. Take your pick of idiotic clichés.

“We tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by expecting more than the world can give us or than we can make of the world,” Boorstin wrote. “We demand that everyone who talks to us, or writes for us, or takes pictures for us, or makes merchandise for us, should live in our world of extravagant expectations. We expect this even of the peoples of foreign countries. We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality. We demand them. And we demand that there be always more of them, bigger and better and more vivid.”

The incessant search for instant gratification and the most appealing image, including the image of ourselves we manufacture for others on social media, has robbed us of the ability to examine ourselves and our society. It has extinguished the truth. The terminal decline of the American empire, the utter inability our elites to manage anything important, the climate crisis, widespread poverty and despair do not fit with the illusion. So these realities are blotted from public consciousness. The poor are rendered invisible. The foreign policy debacles will be fixed with more bombs. Only the Soviet and fascist dictatorships, along with the medieval Catholic Church, controlled thought as effectively.

Candidates Trump and Clinton have no plans to halt our slide to oblivion. They are part of the circus. They, like all of the other elites, profit from the system that is destroying us. They lack the incentive and probably the capacity to challenge the structures and assumptions that define corporate capitalism. They function as high priests. They peddle the illusions. They laud our ingenuity and strength. They preach the inevitability of human progress and American exceptionalism. They tell us what we want to hear. They appeal to our emotions, as does all of mass culture. They do not acknowledge reality. That would spoil the show.

We vote for slogans, manufactured personalities, perceived sincerity, personal attractiveness and the crafted personal narratives peddled by candidates. Office seekers create the illusion of intimacy established between celebrities and their audiences. We see ourselves in them; admirers of the “winner” Trump see themselves as becoming him. No politician succeeds without such artifice. Today’s politics is just one more product of a diseased culture. Our political leaders are much like the celebrities who, in Boorstin’s words, “are receptacles into which we pour our own purposelessness. They are nothing but ourselves seen in a magnifying mirror.”

The incoherent absurdities mouthed for our amusement induce a state of permanent amnesia. Life is lived in an eternal present. How we got here, where we came from, what shaped us as a society, in short the continuum of history that gives us an identity, are eradicated.

The quest for identity through mass culture is self-defeating. We can never achieve what these illusions tell us we can achieve. We can never be who we want to be. It is a ceaseless chase from one chimera to the next. And this is why at the end we fall into despair and rage. It is why huge parts of the country no longer hold genuine political ideas. It is why people vote according to how they feel. It is why hatred and fear are a potent political platform. It is why we are sleepwalking into oblivion.

Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Miscarriage can trigger post-traumatic stress disorder

Nicole was not part of the trial, but hopes that by sharing her experience she can help support other people who have lost a baby to miscarriage

NICOLE MARTINImage caption-Nicole and her family - husband Ben, daughter, Eva, and son, Joseph

2 November 2016

Women who have recently had a miscarriage are at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, doctors at Imperial College London have said.

At their early pregnancy loss clinic, a third of the women have PTSD symptoms.

Nicole Martin had three miscarriages in a year, her "dark days".

"Everyone thinks because you've already got a child it's easier. In a lot of respects it definitely is easier than not having a child, but I wanted another child for [my child's] sake."

Nicole and her husband, Ben, started trying for their second child just after their first, Eva, had turned one.

"I was 38 years old and fully aware of the risks associated with having children a bit later in life," she says.

"It took me longer than expected to fall pregnant, and when I did I felt very anxious because many of my friends had suffered at least one miscarriage."

Nicole's story

She was carrying twins, but both died - one at five weeks and the other seven weeks into the pregnancy.

Nicole had to have an operation under general anaesthetic to treat the miscarriage.

Although shell-shocked by the experience, Ben and Nicole continued to try for a baby.

Two months later, Nicole was pregnant, but had another miscarriage at seven weeks.

"The scan showed there was no heartbeat," she says.

"We had to have medical management this time.

"You get given a tablet which breaks down the lining of your womb and you just get sent home to miscarry.

"It's really not pleasant.

"It's your baby, and you have to flush it down the loo.

"It's horrendous."

Pregnancy loss and PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder can develop after a very stressful, frightening or distressing event, or a prolonged traumatic experience.

As many as one in four pregnancies is thought to end in a miscarriage - loss of a pregnancy during the first 23 weeks.

An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilised egg implants itself outside of the womb, usually in one of the fallopian tubes.

It is not possible to save the pregnancy. It usually has to be removed using medicine or an operation.

Her subsequent third miscarriage a few months later left her a nervous wreck.

"I was a mess," she says.

"Everywhere I went mothers were asking me, 'When are you going to have another child?'

"I never ask a woman now about whether she's having babies, or having a second baby, because you never know their story."

Nicole says she nearly gave up all hope.

"I found it just unbelievably cruel," she says.

"I remember phoning my consultant who was great.

"I said, 'Just tell me what I should do.'

"I really wanted someone from the medical profession to say, 'Just give up.'"

Instead, the consultant told Nicole to keep trying if she had the emotional strength because there was still a good chance she would be able to have a healthy baby.

Two months later - just after Nicole's 40th birthday - she was pregnant with her son, Joseph, who is now nearly two years old.

"I still worry a lot, and I'm having cognitive behavioural therapy to help me cope with that," she says.

"Even though we have two beautiful children, I still feel anxious to this day because I can't quite believe it's all over.

"I feel that something's going to spoil our lovely family unit because it was such a struggle getting there."

Dr Jessica Farren, who carried out the BMJ Open study on nearly 90 women attending the pregnancy clinic at Imperial College London for a suspected miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, says although only a minority might have full-blown PTSD, many will suffer from moderate-to-severe anxiety.

"It's the tip of the iceberg really," he says.

"There will be a huge number of women who would still benefit from some support. But the NHS isn't geared up for it.

"Once we've looked after these women clinically and discharged them, there's no real opportunity to check how they are coping emotionally."

After a healthy pregnancy, all women get screened for depression at their six-week check. But following a miscarriage, there are no routine emotional checks.

Dr Farren and her colleagues are studying more women at their clinic to see if they can better spot those that will need the most support.

In the meantime, they say help is out there if you know where to look.

"There are some really good charities and organisations that can offer counselling, and your GP is a good place to start if you want some help accessing support," says Dr Farren.

Continued impunity: Journalist killings unresolved in 2016

Featured image courtesy VikalpaSL Flickr.

GROUNDVIEWS on 11/02/2016

In 2016, Sri Lanka was removed from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Impunity Index.

Each year, CPJ reviews countries for a 10-year period. If there are five or more unsolved cases, the country remains on the index.

Sri Lanka has only four unsolved cases dating from September 2006 to 2016, and so was removed from CPJ’s list.

2016 has also seen some progress made in the cases of several prominent journalists. Sri Lanka has, as a result, seen improvement in its press freedom rankings for 2016.

Yet, looking beyond optics, the question is, how many of these cases have been resolved?

According to the CPJ, there are 14 journalists who have been killed by unknown assailants from 2000-2016. This is not counting those who killed in artillery attacks, suicide bomb attacks, or in the last stages of the war. Including them raises the count to 19 journalists whose killings were due to the work they carried out, and under very trying circumstances.

The Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka have different figures, counting over 40 journalists and media workers killed, abducted or tortured while carrying out their work.

“Justice has not been achieved in any murder-despite a pledge from President Maithripala Sirisena to re-investigate old killings,” the CPJ said when announcing the launch of the Impunity Index.

This method glosses over the fact that many journalists, especially those operating in the conflict-affected North and East, have not seen their cases resolved.

Take the case of Mylvaganam Nimalarajan. He was shot dead on October 19, 2000, when two men broke into his home. Though all the family members survived the attack , the men also knifed his father and threw a grenade at his mother and young nephew.

A bicycle found near the scene of the crime was said to belong to the pro-government Tamil party, the Eelam People’s Democratic Party, which Mylvaganam had criticised in his reports on alleged election fraud. The EPDP said the allegations were “baseless”. Following the October 10 election, Nimalarajan had reportedly told colleagues that he feared for his safety after receiving several threats. He had also noted that the EPDP held him responsible for failing to win votes in Jaffna.

Reporters Without Borders pointed out that the killing took place metres away from a military checkpoint, but the police were vague on whether they had interrogated the Army, though reports suggested the unknown assailants had fired in the air while fleeing.

16 years later, Mylvaganam’s case remains unresolved.

In 2004, Aiyathurai Nadesan was ambushed and shot in Batticaloa. Operating under the pen name Nellai G Nadesan, he had been interrogated by the Army in 2001, with an Army officer threatening to arrest him unless he stopped reporting about the military.

His case too, remains unresolved.

This year, CPJ noted, significant steps have been taken in both Lasantha Wickrematunge and Prageeth Eknaligoda’s cases.

Yet, just last week, the key suspect in Wickrematunge’s case, Army Intelligence Officer Premanande Udalagama, was granted bail, only being remanded in the absence of sureties.

In a sudden turn of events, a retired military intelligence officer committed suicide, with a note in his pocket containing a confession to the killing. The police however said that there were questions raised as to the nature of the Officer’s death, and the veracity of the statement in his pocket.

In Eknaligoda’s case, two Army intelligence officers who were suspects in his disappearance were also granted bail, following a controversial speech by the President in which he accused independent commissions of “following a political agenda.”

“These officers had been in detention for 17 months now and such a long period in remand custody is not trivial in nature,” Sirisena said.

“Justice should be meted out equally to everybody,” he charged.

Yet, as Groundviews and the Social Indicator arm of the Centre for Policy Alternatives pointed out in an infographic, hundreds languish in remand custody for as long as five years. A report compiled by the Human Rights Commission for the UN Committee Against Torture revealed that as of May 2016, of the 111 people who have been remanded under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 29 have not been indicted. The longest period a person has been held in remand without an indictment is 15 years, while trials have been known to have gone on for as long as 14 years.

Sirisena’s most recent comments therefore, seem to be at odds with his commitment to thoroughly investigate the killings of journalists.

The cases of Lasantha Wickrematunge and Prageeth Eknaligoda are only two of the more prominent cases which have received significant coverage and media attention. Those of Bala Nadarajah Iyer, Dharmeratnam (alias Taraki) Sivaram, Subramaniam Sugitharajah and many others on CPJ’s own lists remain unsolved, and almost forgotten.

Below is a video, compiled using Adobe Spark, highlighting these cases.

This November 2, it is important to remember that eradicating impunity goes beyond optics and piecemeal commitments towards transparency and good governance. Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera earlier this month said that Sri Lanka should judge the current government by its actions, rather than by its words alone.

Going by this Government’s actions in the recent past, it seems increasingly unlikely that any of these cases will be resolved.

If you enjoyed this article, you may find “Pain across ethnicity: remembering crimes against journalists” and “Where is journalist Subramaniam Ramachandran 9 years after he disappeared?” illuminating. 

'Aava', a Gota creation: Rajitha


2016-11-02 18

Cabinet spokesman, Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne today said the underworld gang "Aava" active in the North was a creation of former Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa and certain top military officers. 

He said though there may be some rationale to use them against the LTTE during the war, in the peace time they are only a bunch of criminals and thugs who should be apprehended at once and brought before the law. 

Addressing the weekly Cabinet news briefing, Minister Senaratne said it was obvious that the same officials who fed and bred them were once again active and instructed the terror group to create troubles and disrupt peace in the North for their political advantage. 

“For a moment you can justify the action taken by former Defense Secretary and military officers to form this underworld group because the LTTE was also an illegal terror group. But why it is active in the peace time? What they expect by creating a fear psychosis among the civilians in the North?, he questioned and added all members of the Aava group were Tamils.

 Minister Senaratne dismissed the suggestion that this underworld group was a creation of the Tamil Diaspora and said Aava was active in the North during the war and the armed forces were aware of that and added he could even reveal the name of the Brigadier who acted as the god father of the ‘Ava group’ during the war. 

The Defense Ministry has given clear instructions to the police and intelligence services to apprehend them as early as possible and take legal action against them, he said. (Sandun A Jayasekera)

Sri Lanka: Is It Good Bye To ‘Good Governance’?

By R Hariharan –November 2, 2016

Col. (retd) R.Hariharan

People who overwhelmingly voted the President Maithripala Sirisena-Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe alliance to power expecting it to fulfill their promise of yahapalana (good governance) have been shocked by President Sirisena’s strident comments questioning the integrity of the agencies carrying out investigations into cases of corruption, bribery, criminal and financial misconduct.

The President speaking at a function at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute warned that he would take action against Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) and the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) for working to political agendas at the cost of justice. The President seems to have been irked at the agencies giving cause to the opposition to accuse him of political witch hunt; obviously, this referred to the large number of corruption and criminal investigations now going against politicians and armed forces officers. According to the Island newspaper, the President also said that hauling up the former naval chiefs and former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa before the court in connection with the arms storage company Avant Garde Maritime Services (AGMS) case.

He accused those in charge of investigations of misleading him. Referring to the indefinite custody of members of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) held in connection with the disappearance of cartoonist Ekneligoda and the killing of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, the President said the courts should be moved to get them released or given bail pending court proceedings. It is significant that soon after the President’s tirade, the court released on bail Udalagam
a, an army intelligence officer accused of assassinating Lasantha Wickrematunge.

President Sirisena’s reference to cases connected with armed forces was perhaps made to reaffirm his support to the armed forces which have been perturbed ever since Sri Lanka agreed to conduct a judicial probe into alleged war crimes committed during the Eelam war. The issue war crimes issue would again come up at the UN Human Rights Council meeting in March 2017.

In a stinging attack on “certain media organizations, journalists and NGOs” and “traitorous forces,” President Sirisena reaffirmed his confidence in armed forces “no matter how much they criticize, oppose or attack me, I will never lose confidence in the armed forces and will always be committed to do the utmost for the welfare, honour and dignity of the three armed forces and our heroic soldiers.” He added that “he was not ready to compromise national security in order to please NGOs.”

The President said though the government had successfully promoted reconciliation between the communities to create an environment that strengthens inter-communal harmony during the last one and half years, certain groups and organizations ideologically in favour of separatism have not been destroyed. And they were waiting for an opportunity to create trouble for Sri Lanka and people must be on guard.

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