Members of the Sub Laban family protest in front of the EU headquarters in Jerusalem to demand protection from Jewish settlers who are trying to take over their home in Jerusalem’s Old City, 3 December 2015.Mahfouz Abu TurkAPA images
Resolution to the long-running eviction case against a Palestinian family from their home in the Old City of Jerusalem is no nearer after settlers rejected a compromise proposed by Israel’s high court on 19 December.
Last February, the high court agreed to hear an appeal by the Sub Laban family, after the lower courts ruled to evict the family from their home of more than six decades in occupied East Jerusalem.
At a hearing attended by diplomats from the United States, United Kingdom, French, Belgian and Dutch consulates, the court recommended a settlement whereby protected tenancy status would be granted to Nora Ghaith and her husband Mustafa Sub Laban, but exclude their children, the third generation.
According to a statement released by supporters of the family, this means that as long as Nora and her husband live, the family can remain in the home.
But settlers have rejected the compromise, sending the high court back into deliberations on the family’s appeal.
According to the family, the settlers’ lawyer has demanded that they be evicted and suggested they move into a small storage room under the home.
Colonization of Old City
The Sub Laban family have been resisting eviction since 2010, when the Israeli government gave the building to the Kollel Galicia Trust, a private settler group that aims to colonize the Muslim quarter of the Old City. With the support of the government, the Galicia Trust and its settlers have been determined to remove the family from their home.
Over the last year, settlers have made several attempts to evict the Sub Labans, at times with the assistance of the Israeli police.
At the beginning of the year, settlers who had recently taken over a neighboring house drilled six large holes into the walls of the Sub Laban children’s bedroom.
The Sub Labans are the last Palestinian family remaining in the building. The others have been evicted and replaced by Jewish settlers.
The Galicia Trust has deep ties to Ateret Cohanim, another private settler group that has settled at least 500 Jews in the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City. All of these settlers reside in homes from which Palestinian families were evicted.
Threat of eviction
Nora Ghaith’s mother first moved into the house in 1953, when many Palestinian refugees from West Jerusalem were forced to find new homes after being expelled by Zionist militias to establish the State of Israel.
The building she moved into was one of many that had been abandoned by Jews at the beginning of the 20th century and had fallen into the custody of Jordan. Until 1967, Jordan’s Custodian of Enemy Property leased these properties to Palestinians as “protected tenants.” The protected tenant status was supposed to apply to at least three generations.
When Israel took control of East Jerusalem, the properties came under control of Israel’s General Custodian.
Palestinians remained as residents, but since the 1980s, private settler groups have tried to claim the properties for Jewish residents in close cooperation with government bodies.
The lawyer of the Galicia Trust that is fighting the Sub Laban family in court, claims the family abandoned the property more than 30 years ago, therefore forfeiting their protected tenant status. The family denies this claim.
The high court’s suggested compromise would maintain the protected tenant status for the second generation of the Ghathi-Sub Laban family, but terminate it for their children.
The United Nations’ Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported last month that 180 Palestinian families in East Jerusalem are currently under threat of eviction after settler organizations like Ateret Cohanim challenged residents’ “protected tenant” status. These families total some 818 individuals, including 372 children.
Twenty people have been killed in confrontations between protesters and security forces in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, UN officials believe, hours after the end of the second five-year term of the president, Joseph Kabila.
A government spokesman said the death toll was nine.
Opposition leaders called for demonstrations overnight after Kabila refused to step down at midnight, and accused the 45-year-old former guerrilla commander of carrying out a coup d’état.
On Tuesday police and soldiers fired live ammunition in Kinshasa, as opposition activists burned tyres, threw stones and attacked an office of the ruling party. Violence was also reported in the southern city of Lubumbashi, where at least two deaths were reported: one protestor and a policeman who was lynched by an angry crowd.
In a video message released overnight, the senior opposition leader Etienne Tshikedi called on Congolese people to peacefully resist an “illegal, illegitimate leader” who he said had committed treason by holding on to office.
Protests expected on Monday were quelled by a massive security presence, the restriction of internet access and a wave of arrests. Human rights campaigners said about 110 people had been detained across the DRC in the four days before Kabila’s mandate expired. Up to another 100 are thought to have been arrested in the last 24 hours.
Outside one police station in the Njili neighbourhood of Kinshasa, about 20 young men were under guard on a concrete platform, hands tied behind their back.
At a nearby hospital, staff reported a death and two injuries in the morning’s violence. The full death toll from the violence is very difficult to ascertain: medical staff are under instructions not to disclose information, and security forces routinely dispose of bodies secretly, local human rights officials and activists say.
José Maria Aranaz, a representative of the UN human rights office in Kinshasa, told Reuters: “On the issue of deaths, it looks bad. We are reviewing allegations of up to 20 civilians killed, but [the information] is pretty solid.”
Most of the arrests occurred overnight as security forces moved through neighbourhoods known to be opposition strongholds. “The soldiers came and were going from house to house picking people up,” one resident in the Matete district of Kinshasa told the Guardian.
In nearby streets, young men burned tyres before being chased away by police, and scattered shots rang out. Police and heavily armed soldiers confronted protesters across burning barricades, and the district headquarters of Kabila’s political party was set on fire by a crowd, prompting a barrage of teargas.
Roads were empty across Kinshasa, which appeared to be shut down for a second consecutive day.
Thousands of troops and dozens of armoured vehicles were deployed at strategic points. There were similar scenes elsewhere across the country.
Ministers and supporters of Kabila say logistical and financial problems mean fresh elections cannot be held until 2018. Until then, Kabila – who has completed two terms in power and is prevented by the constitution from running for a third – has a constitutional duty to remain in office, they claim.
Sami Badibanga, the new prime minister, called for calm and asked security forces to show “discipline and restraint”. In September more than 60 people died when security forces opened fire on an opposition march.
“We will work in a spirit of frank cooperation with the international community to face the social and economic challenges and arrive at transparent and credible elections,” Badibanga said.
A ban on gatherings of more than 10 people did not appear to apply to small convoys of pro-government supporters who took to the streets in the afternoon.
“Our president is a patriot. It is calm today. Most of the population is with Kabila,” said Ali Warial, 33, who organised one rally in the Njili neighbourhood.
Protesters said they would intensify their efforts. “We are going to protest until the last possible moment. We are proud of our country. We want power for the people, of the people,” said François, a 27-year-old teacher in Matete.
Talks between the government and opposition factions brokered by the Catholic church are suspended and due to restart later this week.
Tshisekedi, the opposition leader, stopped short of calling for mass demonstrations – which would almost certainly result in significant bloodshed – and said he would respect the “timetable decided by the bishops”. Though he has a loyal following on the streets, the opposition is fragmented and faces a determined administration that is supported, for the moment, by a powerful security establishment.
The crisis has been building for many months. Negotiations and protests have intensified as the end of Kabila’s mandate approached. Washington and European capitals have sought to put pressure on Kabila to hold elections and have imposed sanctions on members of his close circle.
There is little doubt there is widespread discontent at Kabila’s rule. High inflation, the devaluation of local currency and flagging investment is causing deep economic hardship throughout the country, where two-thirds of the estimated 70 million population live on less than £1.50 every day.
“It’s impossible to live. There are no jobs, there is no trade, and food is more and more expensive. We are surviving only by struggling every day,” said Mary, a 38-year-old housewife in Matete.
Observers fear the crisis could plunge DRC, which has never known a peaceful transfer of power since gaining independence from Belgium in 1960, into a prolonged period of instability.
Many fear a return to the civil wars that killed an estimated 5 million people between 1997 – when the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was ousted after a 32-year rule – and 2003.
Supporters of Kabila insist he has no intention of clinging to office. Barnabé Kikaya, the president’s chief diplomatic adviser, denied there was any plan to change the constitution to allow a third term, as several other African leaders have done in recent years.
“If we had wanted to change the constitution to allow a third term, we would have already done it,” he said.
“Their video footage actually contains children that have been recycled in different reports. So you can find a girl named Aya who turns up in a report in say August, and she turns up in the next month in two different locations.”EVA BARTLETT, 9 DECEMBER 2016
The background
20 DEC 2016
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian citizen who describes herself as an “independent writer and rights activist”.
She writes a blog for the state-funded Russian media outlet Russia Today and is candid about her support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who is fighting Syrian rebels with Russian and Iranian help.
In a speech organised by the Syrian mission to the UN, Ms Bartlett recently criticised the western “corporate media”, saying journalists were “compromised” and used sources that were “not credible”.
She went on to attack the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue group funded by a number of western governments including Britain.
Western media outlets – including Channel 4 News – frequently broadcast footage supplied by the White Helmets, which purports to show the aftermath of regime attacks on various rebel-held areas in Syria.
Supporters of the Assad regime have variously accused the White Helmets of being puppets of western powers, peddlers of faked footage or even terrorist fighters posing as humanitarian workers, all of which the organisation vigorously denies.
Ms Bartlett said: “Their video footage actually contains children that have been recycled in different reports; so you can find a girl named Aya who turns up in a report in say August, and she turns up in the next month in two different locations.”
A clip from the press conference has been viewed more than 3 million times on In The NOW, a Facebook page run by Russia Today but not branded as such.
We’ve tried to contact Ms Bartlett without success, so it’s not 100 per cent clear what she means by this, but our best guess is that she is referring to a claim involving a girl called Aya which has been circulated widely on the internet:
The suggestion here is that the White Helmets filmed the same child – presumably some kind of actor – at three different locations, presumably to exaggerate the effects of regime bombing, or to fake attacks altogether.
This is almost certainly nonsense. Here’s why.
The analysis
Girl One
The dates mentioned in this photo montage are roughly accurate.
The images across the top half of the picture were taken on 27 August by Abdalrhman Ismail, a Reuters photographer who has been working on the front line of the Syrian conflict for three years.
The shots show an unnamed girl and two other children supposedly being rescued from rubble by White Helmets.
Mr Ismail shot the girl alone and with other children, along with many other survivors of two airstrikes that hit the Bab al-Nairab district of Aleppo.
Two barrel bomb strikes on that neighbourhood on that day were very widely reported. The attack that day was notable because it hit a funeral where civilians were mourning deaths from an earlier attack.
Some people commenting online seem to think it sinister that the child was photographed in the arms of three different men, but we have seen plenty of other footage from Syria where rescuers work in a chain and pass children to each other.
Girl Two
The girl in the bottom left photo is hard to see from the still used in the “Al Qaeda/White Helmets” montage. She was the subject of an astonishing piece of video footage that was broadcast around the world in September this year.
Identified in reports as Rawan Alowsh, aged five, the girl was shown buried deep in debris after an airstrike in Aleppo on 23 September this year. The rest of her family – three sisters, parents and baby brother – were reported to have perished.
The long sequence in which rescuers painstakingly clearing rubble away from around the girl suggests that it would have been difficult to fake this footage.
Someone would have had to have buried a screaming child up to their chest in rubble and carefully assembled a large amount of heavy wreckage around and on top of her – an extraordinary logistical challenge and an extraordinary collective act of child abuse.
Judging by some of the online conversation about this, some people don’t believe it’s possible for children to be pulled out of the rubble of collapsed buildings without serious injury, but we know that it can happen.
It happened recently after an earthquake in central Italy. And in other conflict zones, adults and children have been known to emerge unscathed from houses wrecked by bombs.
Indeed, Eva Bartlett herself reported on such a case in Gaza in 2009, telling the story of a Palestinian man called Abu Qusay who was “buried alive” by an Israeli bomb but emerged with “only a mere scar at his left eyebrow”.
It’s also worth noting that none of the men at the scene of Rawan’s rescue are wearing the uniform of the White Helmets. They appear to have nothing to do with the organisation, and the footage was not released to the world’s media by the White Helmets through their usual online channels.
Rawan is later filmed lying on a hospital bed soon afterwards, apparently asleep or unconscious. Her jumper has been removed and her face is more clearly visible:
Some online comments we have seen suggest – without any evidence – that this is not the same girl we see being rescued and carried away. But some of the details of the outfits match, like the two gold bangles the girl is wearing on her left wrist, which is visible in earlier footage too.
A report in the Australian newspaper from a few days later – heavily based on conversations with doctors in rebel-held Aleppo – said of Rawan: “She is being cared for by her grandparents but remains in deep shock, barely able to speak and apparently unable to understand that her parents and siblings are dead.”
Girl three
This video footage was also very widely circulated. It was first uploaded to YouTube by anti-Assad activists in Talbiseh, a large rebel-held town just north of Homs, and around 100 miles away from Aleppo.
We see a girl with blood apparently pouring from a wound on the bridge of her nose, in some distress, after an airstrike on Talbiseh on 10 October. She is calling for her father in Arabic:
The girl then gives her name as Aya. She was reported to be eight years old. Reports from the time suggested that Aya’s parents and three siblings all survived the attack and she was reunited with them later.
Again, judging from comments, some people believe that this footage is staged, that the girl is acting and the blood on her face is fake.
Whatever this video does and doesn’t show, it lets us have a good look at Aya’s face, so we can compare the three girls side by side.
It seems pretty obvious that these are three different children, with quite different facial features:
We can also clearly see throughout the footage that, despite some superficial similarities in the girls’ outfits, they are not wearing the same clothes.
Aya is wearing a sleeveless turquoise top, while Rawan is wearing a jumper in a similar colour and the unnamed girl photographed by Abdulrhman Ismail is wearing a turquoise top with a distinctively different design.
Like Rawan, this girl wears gold bracelets, but they are on her right wrist. And unlike Rawan, her jeans are studded with sequins.
Timing of the attacks
Another thing we can check is whether there are independent accounts of attacks taking place at times and places that fit these incidents.
In the case of the unnamed first child, the attack in August was described by the Reuters photographer who took the picture, and there are numerous other press reports of a double airstrike in the same neighbourhood of Aleppo on that day.
Rawan was purportedly rescued from rubble on 23 September, a day when anti-government activists in Aleppo, local medical staff, journalists on the ground, the UN agency Unicef, Human Rights Watch, the Violations Documentation Center and others all reported heavy airstrikes on the city.
Indeed, the Syrian Army announced it was about to launch an operation to retake rebel-held districts of east Aleppo, including airstrikes, shortly before the incident.
In the case of “Aya”, footage uploaded by the same activist group in Talbiseh on the same day shows the aftermath of bombing on the town. Videos of victims, including crying infants and the dead body of an elderly man, were posted on the same day, apparently without attracting disbelief.
The attack took place a week after a wave of airstrikes in the area, after Russian officers were quoted as saying they were intensifying the air campaign in rebel-held areas.
The verdict
It’s hard to prove something like this absolutely, but we think it is beyond reasonable doubt that the three little girls in these pictures are different people.
We would suggest that if you choose different still images and compare them with each other, the girls don’t really bear a very strong facial resemblance to each other at all.
The most striking similarity is their outfits – turquoise tops and jeans. But that raises an obvious question: if you really were using a child actor to fake three different incidents, why would you dress them in similar clothes? Logically, if anything, wouldn’t you make an effort to make them look as different as possible?
Add to that the other circumstantial evidence: the White Helmets – supposedly the instigators of all this “fakery” – were not involved in one of the three rescues.
It’s not clear whether critics of the White Helmets believe that all the videos the group posts of people being rescued from bombed-out houses are fake. There are dozens listed on the group’s YouTube page in the last six months alone.
In the case of all of these three girls, we have footage of other injured children from around the same time as the attacks took place, which no one has suggested was staged. Why use fake victims when there were other real people to film and photograph?
And we have a Reuters photographer on the ground at one of the incidents, who was satisfied that the events he was recording were genuine.
Finally, we can verify from other sources that the airstrikes that led to these pictures really happened, and judging from the time they were first uploaded, we know that the pictures were taken very soon after bombs fell in the vicinity.
So to believe that these images are really of the same child actor, you would have to believe that a little girl was on standby somewhere in Syria, waiting to be rushed to different locations – crossing several front lines in the process – as soon as there was news of a regime airstrike.
Perhaps the simpler explanation is the more likely one: children really are being orphaned in Syria, or left wounded and distressed, and those children are now being wrongly accused of involvement in an elaborate conspiracy.
We ought to say that there is the possibility that Eva Bartlett had something else in mind entirely from this montage of pictures. We’ve tried to contact her for clarification but haven’t received a reply yet. We will update the blog if she gets back to us.
The list of towns and cities in the Middle East currently lying in ruins gets longer every year.
One of the latest additions is Sirnak in southeast Turkey. Fighting between government security forces and Kurdish militants since March has transformed the mountainous town into a setting reminiscent of Aleppo or Gaza.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is today releasing its annual worldwide round-up on journalists who have been killed in the past year.
This is fewer than in 2015, when 101 journalists were killed. But the fall is not encouraging because it is due largely to the fact many journalists have fled countries that became too dangerous, especially Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and Burundi. These exoduses have created news and information black holes where impunity reigns.
The fall is also the result of the terror imposed by press freedom predators who close media outlets arbitrarily and gag journalists. Regardless of their courage, journalists in countries such as Mexico censor themselves in an attempt to avoid being murdered. Of countries not at war, Mexico was the deadliest for journalists in 2016, with a total of nine killed*.
Worldwide, nearly three quarters of the journalists killed in 2016 were deliberately murdered. In Afghanistan, all of the ten journalists who were killed this year were deliberately targeted because of their profession. Seven of them died in a suicide attack in January on a minibus used by privately-owned Tolo TV, an attack claimed by the Taliban. Journalists were also hunted down and slain in Yemen.
RSF condemns the impunity enjoyed by those who murder journalists and the complicit lack of action by many governments that are often only too ready themselves to trample on media freedom.
“The violence against journalists is more and more deliberate,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “They are clearly being targeted and murdered because they are journalists. This alarming situation reflects the glaring failure of the international initiatives aimed at protecting them, and is a death warrant for independent reporting in those areas where all possible means are used to impose censorship and propaganda, especially by fundamentalist groups in the Middle East. So that international law can be enforced, the UN must establish a concrete mechanism for implementing resolutions. With the arrival of a new UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, a special representative for the protection of journalists must be appointed as a matter of urgency.”
Syria continues to be the world’s deadliest place for journalists, followed by Afghanistan. Worldwide, two thirds of the journalists killed this year were in war zones. Almost all of them were local journalists, now that news organizations are increasingly reluctant to send their reporters to dangerous hotspots abroad.
Pakistan's Senate has recommended scrapping of the 5,000 rupee ($48) banknote, despite government opposition and warnings that removal of the country's highest denomination bill could destabilize the economy.
A resolution, which is not binding, called for the government to remove the banknote to "reduce illicit money flow, encourage the use of bank accounts and reduce the size of undocumented economy".
The resolution, passed on Monday, comes less than two months after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprisingly scrapped his country's two biggest currency bills - the 1,000 rupee ($15) and 500 rupee notes - in a move that led to acute currency shortages and threatens to slow India's short-term economic growth.
Senator Osman Saifullah Khan, who proposed the motion, wants the banknote to be scrapped over a three- to five-year period, domestic media said.
Pakistan has a huge informal economy and transactions are often handled in cash, partly because much of the population is not part of formal sectors. The government also offers frequent tax amnesties to encourage people with hidden wealth to declare their assets, hoping to expand Pakistan's extremely narrow tax base.
Successive governments have struggled to boost Pakistan's persistently low tax-to-GDP ratio, which now stands at about 10 percent.
Zahid Hamid, law and justice minister, told the Senate that the government opposes the motion as the 5,000 rupee note accounts for almost one-third of the 3.3 trillion rupees of notes in circulation.
He said withdrawing the note would hamper business activities, hurt the government policy of financial inclusion and cause "chaos in the market", domestic media reported.
Modi's experiment to scrap about 86 percent of India's currency by value has drawn sharp criticism from many inside the country, where it led to huge queues outside banks and cash shortages that have disrupted business.
He has touted his war against "black money" as vital reform to boost state coffers and help the government battle tax evasion and corruption.
($1 = 104.70 Pakistani rupees) ($1 = 67.8469 Indian rupees)
(Additional reporting by Asad Hashim; Editing by Richard Borsuk)
There is no doubt Tibet is hanging like Democle’s Sword on China. Chinese leadership wrongly thinks that world conscience can be silenced and the presence of the Tibetan refugees and the Dalai Lama can be hidden by forcing every country in the world to ignore the Dalai Lama.
by N.S.Venkataraman-Dec 19, 2016
( December 19, 2016, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) In recent times, China appears to be closely monitoring the movement of the Dalai Lama and has been protesting to every country which has received the Dalai Lama or given prominence to him.
It is strange that China which is a large country with huge population, a strong economy and mighty military power is giving an impression that it is scared of the Dalai Lama, who is a frail elderly person with no military at his command and only possessing attributes of goodwill for everyone.
China opposes the Dalai Lama everywhere
Even after six decades of occupying Tibet, China seems to be concerned that the independent spirit of Tibetans living in exile around the world continues to remain very high. China seems to be so scared of the Tibetan spirit that it opposes the visit of the Dalai Lama to any country in the world.
Due to objection from China and fearing China, Sri Lanka refused to give visa to the Dalai Lama, in spite of millions of Buddhists living in Sri Lanka. A few weeks back, the U S President Obama received the Dalai Lama through the back door, to keep China in good humour.
Measures against defiant Mongolia
The recent visit of the Dalai Lama to Mongolia was opposed by China and China caused a crisis in Mongolia to punish the defiant Mongolia. Mongolia’s crisis followed its reception of the Dalai Lama last month, triggering a slew of economic measures by China against Mongolia. China took exception to the statement by Mongolian ambassador to India seeking India’s financial support to override Mongolia’s economic difficulties.
China objects to an invitation to the Dalai Lama:
Now, China has slammed India for inviting the Dalai Lama for a function in New Delhi, organised when the Dalai Lama was present in the opening session of the Laureates and Leaders for Children organised by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s Children’s Foundation on December,10
In a strongly worded response , China said “Recently in disregard of China’s solemn representation and strong opposition, the Indian side insisted on arranging for the 14th Dalai Lama’s visit to the India presidential palace and participation in the event with the Indian President and meeting with President”.China asserted that it was strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposed to that.
Moral power versus military power
When China invaded helpless and defenceless Tibet,it resulted in thousands of Tibetans fleeing from their motherland. Tibetan exiles are now living all over the world mostly as refugees .
The Dalai Lama and Tibetans living around the world as refugees follow the philosophy of Gautama Buddha , which essentially reflects peace and tranquility in their mindset and with malice for none. They are hoping that one day or other, Tibet will once again become an independent country living uptoit’s traditions and value systems
The Dalai Lama and many thousands of Tibetan refugees living across the world now enjoy enormous moral power, as the world is conscious of the fact that great injustice has been done to Tibet by China.
The world is highly impressed by the quality of leadership provided by the Dalai Lama to Tibetans, which is symbolized by malice towards none and love for peace everywhere. It is remarkable that the Dalai Lama has not spoken disparagingly about China in any forum,inspite of the enormous sufferings inflicted on the Dalai Lama and Tibetans by China.
There is no doubt Tibet is hanging like Democle’s Sword on China. Chinese leadership wrongly thinks that world conscience can be silenced and the presence of the Tibetan refugees and the Dalai Lama can be hidden by forcing every country in the world to ignore the Dalai Lama.
It is obvious that moral power of Tibet is gaining strength over the military and economic power of China. It remains to be seen as to how long China can hold on to it’s ill gotten Tibet.
Like Gandhi, Ambedkar was truly a Mahatma and a great visionary. As the Chair of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution, Ambedkar was primarily responsible for gifting to India a great constitution singularly suited to a large, uniquely diverse country. No one else could have done it. He was the right man at the right place at the right time. It is to the credit of the leaders of the Indian National Congress, particularly Gandhi and Nehru, that despite decades of bitter conflicts with Ambedkar, he was entrusted with that daunting task. It is to Ambedkar’s credit that he not only accepted that responsibility but produced a gem that has not only survived the many ravages of political changes that rocked India since the mid 20th century, but has held India together and gained lustre in the process despite wide spread predictions to the contrary.
Apart from drafting the constitutions, Ambedkar was the first Minister of Law and Justice of Independent India. The distinguished sociologist Louis Dumont has categorised societies into Homo Hierarchicus (based on belief in hierarchy) and Homo Equalis (based on belief in equality), and identified India as an exemplar of Homo Hierarchicus. This categorisation has been widely disputed on the grounds that all societies tend to be hierarchical irrespective of the professed ideology. However, India’s caste system is unique and, perhaps justifies Dumont’s categorisation. In the words of Ambedkar, “Untouchability is more than a religious system. It is also an economic system, which is worse than slavery… As an economic system it permits exploitation without obligation”
Ambedkar was born to a Mahar family of Dalits (oppressed people) then widely referred as to Durjans (meaning evil people). Gandhi introduced the term Harijan (God’s people) to describe Dalits; that was also the title of his journal which he published for many years. Ambedkar found the term to be patronising and preferred the term Dalit.
I will avoid repeating of what Dr.Upul Wijayawardhana has written in his excellent article in The Island on Saturday 10th December, but would urge readers to study that very informative piece. When Ambedkar returned to India with many prestigious Doctorates and Masters degrees from the Universities of Columbia and London, predictably, he remained an untouchable and was widely treated as one. On one occasion he was requested to garland a statue of Shivaji, an Indian hero who had a long history of leading revolt against Moghuls and other invaders. The next day there were Brahmins at the side of the statue to purify it of pollution acquired by the touch of an untouchable.
Among his many books there is one titled, “What Congress and Gandhi has done to the Untouchables (Lahore; Classics, 1977). He prefaces a quotation from the Thucydides, “It may be in your interest to be our masters, but how can it be in ours to be your slaves?” Superficially it may appear that knowledge of the national leaders of the past, and shared mythology, history and tradition may help to unite the different categories of people of India; In fact these very factors serve to divide. Many Indian heroes have exhibited deep caste prejudices. Many Hindu traditions and rituals are caste based. While these may serve to bind and inspire Caste Hindus, they may alienate Dalits and, in some cases, other minorities such as Muslims. Such a contradiction is not peculiar to India. In the USA, celebrating Thanksgiving and Independence may inspire and unite Whites but not Native Americans or Blacks. As expressed by the great Black leader Frederick Douglass, “This 4th of July is yours not mine… The sunlight that brought light and healing to you had brought stripes and death to me” [Quoted in Higginbotham Jr et al in Race in American Law, in Bernard Schwarts (ed) American Law- the 4rd century, New York University School of Law]
While Gandhi and the Caste Hindu leaders were jailed for undermining Britain’s war efforts through Civil Disobedience Campaigns, Ambedkar mobilised Dalits for the war effort. He was determined that before the British left, there should be tangible progress in the struggle of the Dalits. He had little hopes of achieving any such progress after the British left. A potentially fateful dispute was related to caste quotas into state sector administrative and educational institutions and into elected political bodies. While such quotas have long been accepted in India, the fresh issue raised by Ambedkar was that the electorates should also be segregated. Traditionally the electorates were purely territorial and reserved for caste, untouchable and tribal candidates in rotation, But the electorates were integrated and hardly any of them had untouchable majorities. In consequence, untouchables seating election needed to appear to be moderates. They also needed to be survile in their campaigning; any show of defiance would lose votes Ambedkar wanted segregated electorates in which only untouchables could vote for untouchable candidates, thus enabling untouchable candidates to campaign aggressively on very radical manifestos which they cannot afford to do if the majority in electorates were High Caste. Gandhi thought this could be divisive. Since the British wanted this dispute to be settled before any progress towards Independence resumed, Gandhi began an indefinite fast to death. Nervous that the death of Gandhi could provoke a spate of caste atrocities, Ambedkar was persuaded to abandon his demand for segregated electorates in exchange for larger reservations for untouchables and tribals. Gandhi’s fast was called off, and progress towards independence was resumed.
There were other issues of dispute between Gandhi and Ambedkar such as Gandhi’s concept of devolving down to the Village Panchayats. On this issue Nehru and many other caste Hindu leaders sided with Ambedkar who voiced his position bluntly: “ What is a village, but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism”. Gandhi’s move to vitalise Panchayats was voted out, and the outcome was a constitution that was in-line with Ambedkar’s and Nehru’s shared ideologies of a social modern democratic state with elaborate provisions for human rights including reverse discrimination for disadvantaged groups, particularly Dalits and tribals. As Jennings has observed (some characteristics of the Indian constitution, Madras, Oxford University Press, 1953), “ The ghosts of Sydney and Beatrice Webb stalk through the pages of the text of the directive principles of the Indian constitution.”
Despite extensive and detailed constitutional safe guards, despairing of meaningful reform, Ambedkar resorted to tactics similar to those pioneered by black Muslims in the USA. He led half a million Dalits into Buddhism and another half a million followed soon after his death. The political nature of this initiative is clear from the fact that Ambedkar first considered conversion to Islam or Christianity as alternatives before settling on Buddhism. The reason why Christianity was rejected may be that several Christian churches and even foreign Christian Missionaries had taken opportunist positions on caste, in India as in Sri Lanka. That the church lost gaining a million of converts from Hindu Dalits is a major loss to the church, but a greater loss is their ideological compromise with caste discrimination and oppression. In this matter, Buddhists in Sri Lanka have gone further and established their own caste system, deeply compromising the teachings of the Buddha. The position of Islam in gender may be unacceptable, but it is surely better on caste than those of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians.
Finally, Ambedkar has borrowed freely from the French constitution, particularly in the preamble emphasizing Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and even more from the US constitution especially the 14th Amendment relating to due process to equal protection, but his constitution is in several ways superior to both the French and the US constitutions. Truly, he was a visionary Mahatma.
Hundreds of kayaktivists protest drilling in the Arctic and the Port of Seattle being used as a port for the Shell Oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer (Daniella Beccaria/seattlepi.com via Associated Press)
President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from future offshore oil and gas drilling.
Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia from oil exploration and the potential for spills.
The announcement by the White House late in the afternoon was coordinated with similar steps being taken by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shield large areas of that nation’s Arctic waters from drilling. Neither measure affects leases already held by oil and gas companies and drilling activity in state waters.
“These actions, and Canada’s parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth,” the White House said in a statement. “They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited.
White House officials described their actions to make the areas off limits to future oil and gas exploration and drilling as indefinite. Officials said the withdrawals under Section 12-A of the 1953 act used by presidents dating to Dwight Eisenhower cannot be undone by an incoming president. It is not clear if a Republican-controlled Congress can rescind Obama’s action.
“There is a precedent of more than half a century of this authority being utilized by presidents of both parties,” a White House aide said. “There is no authority for subsequent presidents to un-withdraw. . . . I can’t speak to what a future Congress will do.”
“The U.S. is not acting alone today. Canada is acting to put an indefinite stop to activity in its waters as well,” the aide said. “With Canada, we send a powerful signal and reinforce our commitment to work together.”
David Rivkin, an attorney for the Baker and Hostetler law firm who served on the White House Counsel staffs of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, disagreed with the assertion that the decision cannot be overturned. “Basically I say the power to withdraw entails the power to un-withdraw,” Rivkin said, “especially if you determine the justification for the original withdrawal is no longer valid.”
A legal fight would likely follow, Rivkin said. But “it’s not clear why Congress would want to give a president tremendous authority operating only one way.”
U.S. and Canadian officials have negotiated for months to reach a joint understanding on how to manage adjacent areas in the ocean in an effort to make the new protections as sweeping and politically durable as possible. Meanwhile, advocacy groups lobbied Obama to ban oil and gas leasing in the Arctic entirely.
Obama already invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to safeguard Alaska’s Bristol Bay in 2014, and again last year to protect part of Alaska’s Arctic coast. The president has protected 125 million acres in the region in the last two years, according to a fact sheet issued by the White House.
The Beaufort and Chukchi seas are habitat for several species listed as endangered and species that are candidates for the endangered species, including the bowhead whale, fin whale, Pacific walrus and polar bear. Concern for the animals has heightened as the Arctic warms faster than anywhere else in the world and sea ice the bears use to hunt continues to melt.
The underwater canyons protected by the president cover nearly 4 million acres across the Atlantic continental shelf break, “running from Heezen Canyon offshore New England to Norfolk Canyon offshore the Chesapeake Bay,” according to a separate fact sheet.
They are widely recognized as major biodiversity hotspots that are critical to fisheries. The canyons provide deep water corals used by a wide array of fish. The area also provides habitat “for . . . deepwater corals, deep diving beaked whales, commercially valuable fishes, and significant numbers of habitat-forming soft and hard corals, sponges, and crabs,” the White House said.
The American Petroleum Institute denounced the decision. “The administration’s decision to remove key Arctic and Atlantic offshore areas from future leasing consideration ignores congressional intent, our national security, and vital, good-paying job opportunities for our shipyards, unions, and businesses of all types across the country,” said Erik Milito, the group’s Upstream director.
“Our national security depends on our ability to produce oil and natural gas here in the United States,” Milito said. “This proposal would take us in the wrong direction just as we have become world leader in production and refining of oil and natural gas and in reduction of carbon emissions.”
Contradicting the White House’s statement, Milito said George W. Bush removed previous 12-A withdrawal areas with a memorandum and made all but marine sanctuaries available for leasing. “We are hopeful the incoming administration will reverse this decision as the nation continues to need a robust strategy for developing offshore and onshore energy,” he said.
But a wide range of conservation groups hailed the decision. League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski called it “an incredible holiday gift,” saying that “an oil spill in these pristine waters would be devastating to the wildlife and people who live in the region.”
Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called it “a historic victory in our fight to save our Arctic and Atlantic waters, marine life, coastal communities and all they support.” Carter Roberts, president and chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund, applauded what he called “a bold decision” that “signals some places are just too important not to protect.”
Oil production in the Arctic represents a tenth of one percent of the nation’s oil production overall, the White House said. The area is so sensitive and so remote that the economics of exploration is costly.
Shell, which said in September 2015 that it would shelve drilling plans after spending $7 billion and not finding significant amounts of oil, still has one remaining lease in the Chukchi Sea where it drilled a well earlier last year. Shell is also part of a joint venture with Italian oil giant ENI and Spanish firm Repsol in the Beaufort Sea that holds 13 leases.
Shell held other leases in the Beaufort Sea, which the company transferred to the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., a company belonging to the Native Americans in the region.
An earlier plan to allow limited drilling off the Atlantic coast was shelved after state governments along the southern Atlantic coasts — including Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia — expressed worries over the effect on their beaches, tourist industry and environmentally sensitive marsh.
The Navy also objected. The Pentagon provided Interior with a map “that identifies locations … areas where the [Defense’s] offshore readiness activities are not compatible, partially compatible or minimally impacted by oil and gas activities,” department spokesman Matthew Allen said. The map included nearly the entire proposed drilling area.
Live training exercises are conducted off the Atlantic coast, “from unit level training to major joint service and fleet exercises,” Allen said in a statement. “These live training events are fundamental to the ability of our airmen, sailors, and marines to attain and sustain the highest levels of military readiness.”
The Obama administration eventually closed the Atlantic to drilling for five years.
President-elect Donald Trump could counter Obama’s plan with his own five-year plan, but even so it would be years before drilling could start.
The president-elect’s authority to undo a permanent prohibition is unclear. But Congress, controlled by Republicans, could move to rescind the withdrawal of federal lands from oil and gas exploration.
