Diplomacy: Insane Circus in Washington

THE INSANE CIRCUS NOW GOING ON IN WASHINGTON – A SAD PARODY OF JOSEPH MCCARTHY WAVING FISTFULS OF BLANK PAPER IN THE EARLY 1950S, INSISTING THEY WERE LISTS OF RUSSIAN SPIES

by John Chuckman- Jan 7, 2017

( January 7, 2017, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) The single most important point to keep in mind about the “Russians did it” three-ring circus underway in Washington – after the essential fact that still no proof has been provided to support accusations coming from the highest level – is that there is no issue around the contrived notion of interfering in an American election or endangering American security. None.

What essentially happened in this leak of private information – yes, I think it was leak, not a case of hacking – was that personal conversations of a highly embarrassing nature were released to the public.

That is not a crime against the state. That is not a matter of national security. And that is not interference in a country’s election. Those are all stupidly false issues even to raise here.

This is the sort of information that gossip columnists or investigative reporters or authors of tell-all books have always been ready to provide the public.

No such reporter or writer is regarded as a spy. None of them is viewed as an agent of a foreign power. But, of course, they are very much resented by the people hurt or embarrassed by the information they provide.

So, we have a double fraud here being perpetrated, right before our eyes, at the highest level in America.

The first fraud is the deliberately dishonest notion that the release of private gossip in any way represented interference in an election.

The second fraud is the unproven assertion that Russia was somehow responsible for obtaining the information.

My mind is not closed to any possible truth here, I do not pre-judge and assert that we are being showered with falsehoods by Obama and his servants, although I do believe that is what is close to certain.

And I believe that it is close to certain because my instincts tell me strongly that when someone makes strong accusations and provides no believable proof, the accusations are almost certainly false, and, as a matter of principle, they should be regarded as false.

This goes double when the accusations are dressed up in strikingly dishonest language – the kind of language beloved by a lowlife politician like John McCain or a demonstrated reckless-tongued and prejudiced anti-Russian bureaucrat such as James Clapper – language, delivered with theatrically somber tones and faces, about interfering in America’s democracy. Incidentally, Clapper’s disgraceful characterization of Assange as a pedophile exactly mimics the empty accusations of sexual perversion old Joseph McCarthy used to level at some of his targets.

Gossip is not interfering in democracy. It is just information people may weigh when they vote, just as valid or not as any other information available. Indeed, its information value to each voter is privately weighed against empty campaign slogans and an avalanche of truly false news provided by an utterly-biased corporate press in the last election. Voters were arguably better informed than in a long time.

What a tiresome circus Washington has become with this matter. All these well-paid officials asserting this or that, carrying on with speeches and committees, and concocting completely unconvincing proof. 

Meanwhile the nation is absolutely jammed with serious problems receiving no attention. That fact alone tells you more than you may want to know about America’s political establishment.

And all of the circus is because the insanely ambitious Hillary Clinton cannot accept that she is not widely liked and was defeated for that simple reason.

And all because the Democratic Party, married tightly and corruptly to the Clintons as its biggest source of money for years, cannot accept that it ran the wrong candidate.

And all because the Chairman of Hillary’s disastrous campaign, John Podesta, cannot face the embarrassingly stupid fact of his own utter carelessness, his computer password having been “password.”

As Julian Assange has said, a 14-year old could have hacked Podesta’s computer easily. And may we not ask, if what the password guarded was indeed so precious, why wouldn’t this man be considered the chief guilty party for his negligence?

And also, finally, because one of the most disappointing presidents in American history, a man who has failed at most of what he has attempted except at mass killing and displaying extreme arrogance, Obama, viscerally dislikes Vladimir Putin for besting him in Ukraine and in Syria.

He is also miffed and embarrassed that his ridiculous crisscrossing of the country in Air Force One, at public expense for a private purpose, failed to elect Hillary.

He is even further resentful at the lost prospect of being appointed to the Supreme Court by Hillary, something there is every reason to believe she promised him.

As for pretentious appointed hacks like James Clapper, well, the entire history of what I like to call Big Intelligence is littered with their fraudulent claims and failed projects.

There hasn’t been a significant American war in which Big Intelligence didn’t play a role of first concocting “evidence,” the kind of stuff that would be thrown out of any court of law but which serves just fine to assist politicians in temporarily bamboozling the public.

Readers may be interested in the fact of Obama’s unusually cozy relationship with the Pentagon – yes, the Obama of the Peace Prize and people’s 2008 hopes and the big smile and the baritone voice, but also the Obama of all the killing and arrogance and abject failure:

He is their man.

Taiwan: President Tsai heads to central America; US stops set to irk China

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen. Pic: AP.

7th January 2017

TAIWANESE President Tsai Ing-wen has set off to visit Central American allies, saying she wants to bolster Taiwan’s presence on the international stage on a trip that includes transits in the U.S. that look set to raise China’s ire.

Speaking to reporters before boarding her flight Saturday, Tsai said the visits would bolster relations with Taipei’s allies and “show the international society that Taiwan is a capable and responsible partner for cooperation.”

She will transit through Houston and San Francisco, stops that will likely irritate Beijing, which has urged Washington to prevent the self-ruled island’s leader from stopping in the U.S.

It was not clear if Tsai would meet President-elect Donald Trump or anyone from his transition team, though analysts say she is likely to meet with U.S. politicians.

SEE ALSO: China considering strong measures to contain Taiwan – sources

Early last month, China called on U.S. officials not to let Tsai pass through the United States en route to Guatemala, days after Trump irked Beijing by speaking to Tsai in a break with decades of precedent.

The U.S. State Department appeared to reject the call, saying that such transits were based on “long-standing U.S. practice, consistent with the unofficial nature of (U.S.) relations with Taiwan.”

China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, whom it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a renegade province.

Her call with Trump was the first between a U.S. president-elect or president and a Taiwanese leader since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition to China from Taiwan in 1979.

An adviser to Trump’s transition team said he considered it “very unlikely” there would be a meeting between Tsai and Trump if she were to go through New York.

SEE ALSO: After Trump episode, China tells US to block Taiwan president’s transit

China’s Foreign Ministry said the one-China principle, which states Taiwan is part of China, was commonly recognised by the international community and that Tsai’s real aim was “self-evident.”

China hopes the United States “does not allow her transit, and does not send any wrong signals to ‘Taiwan independence’ forces,” the ministry said last month.

U.S. State Department spokesman said transits were “based on long-standing U.S. practice, consistent with the unofficial nature of our relations with Taiwan.”

Additional reporting by the Associated Press and Reuters

Keep the faith, Modi tells party leaders ahead of polls

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in conversation, on the second day of BJP's national executive meeting in Delhi on Saturday.  

‘Demonetisation decision taken to improve the life of the poor’

Nistula Hebbar- JANUARY 08, 2017

In the last national executive meeting of the BJP before the Assembly polls in five States, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made common cause with the poor, saying they were the focus of his government and projected demonetisation as a long-term tool to fight black money and corruption in order to improve their lives.

In his concluding address to the two-day meeting, Mr. Modi said serving the poor was serving god. He went on to quote a Sanskrit shloka to say he did not covet power, heaven or a second life but longed to end the people’s sufferings.

‘Welcome criticism’

Asking party leaders to keep the faith with regard to his government’s decisions, like demonetisation, Mr Modi told them he “had been born in poverty, and had lived in it.” He also told them: “Welcome criticism, don’t be afraid of allegations. If our resolve and inner truth is strong, we will go forward in our path.”

This emotional pitch in the Prime Minister’s speech was a pointer to the fact that demonetisation and attempts to link it to the fight against corruption and expanding the tax base for more public spending will be the main poll planks for the party.

Mr. Modi also made a strong case for transparency in poll funding. “A culture of transparency is emerging in the country and it is our duty to usher in transparency in poll funding as well.” He added that the BJP was wholeheartedly in favour of it and urged all political parties to come together for this.
Mr. Modi praised party workers and described them as those who didn’t bend to the power of the prevailing wind, but turned it to their advantage. He asked party men not to seek the ticket for relatives and leave candidate selection to the party bodies.

“Prime Minister Modi said the poor and poverty were not a means to win elections for the BJP. For us it is an opportunity to serve. To serve the poor is to serve God,” Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Mr. Prasad said Mr. Modi had ‘saluted’ the spirit of Indian society in taking his government’s campaign against corruption, black money and fake currency to its own.

“There is a tradition in our society that it realises its own strength in fighting social evils. The untrammelled flow of currency is one of the biggest stimulants to corruption and that is why our government’s move on demonetisation received such huge support. I had appealed to the people that some hardship would be there but that it would help in fighting corruption, and people responded whole heartedly,” Mr. Modi reportedly said.

“The poor have the power within themselves to defeat poverty and our government will enable this power,” Mr. Modi added.

'Bigger, cleaner GDP'

Earlier in the day, the national executive passed an economic policy resolution terming demonetisation as a “brave move aimed at the welfare of the poor”.

The resolution was moved by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who also said demonetisation had resulted in “black money being deposited in banks” and will lead to higher revenues and “bigger and cleaner GDP”.

“In this scared movement across the country, the common people were taking upon themselves the temporary suffering of standing in queues with full enthusiasm and positive energy,” the resolution stated.

Union Minister for Commerce, Nirmala Sitharaman, said “such a decision could only have been taken by a government with a strong political will, which the Modi government has displayed,” she said.

Giving Newborns Medicine Is A Dangerous Guessing Game. Can We Make It Safer?

By Megan Scudellari-01/04/2017

BOSTON — Two rows of plastic cocoons line the walls of the neonatal intensive care unit, sheltering babies so tiny, their little hands can’t wrap around their parents’ index fingers. Many have been treated with multiple medications in their short lives: antibiotics, anesthetics, narcotics, diuretics.

And most of the drugs coursing through their fragile bodies have not been approved for use in newborns.

That’s not just the case here at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center. It’s a global problem. Pharma companies are afraid to test drugs on babies because they’re so vulnerable, and because the risk of liability is so high. Parents and doctors say they’re wary of enlisting newborns as “guinea pigs” in clinical trials.

The result: An estimated 90 percent of medications administered to newborns are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in children so young. That means neonates — premature and full-term infants less than 28 days old — are routinely treated with drugs that are not adequately tested for safety, dosing, or effectiveness.

Despite this gaping hole in medical knowledge, infants admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit may receive up to 60 medications in their first month of life, said Dr. Jonathan Davis, chief of newborn medicine here at Tufts Medical Center.

Davis, a soft-spoken, baby-faced man with a smile for every child and parent, is a fierce advocate when it comes to changing all this. He’s conducting several clinical trials with the newborns in his NICU. And he’s helping other doctors around the world do the same.

In 2015, an FDA-funded nonprofit launched two global efforts to spur clinical trials in infants. Davis directs one of those initiatives, the

International Neonatal Consortium, known as INC. In November, INC published its initial contribution to the field — a guide to clinical trials in neonates, including information on trial design and data collection for investigators and study sponsors, and advice for drug regulators.

“We’ve got to do something,” said Davis, who has spent more than 35 years studying medications in infants and has published over 150 papers.

Without drug data for newborns, he said, “we can’t be certain which drugs, in which doses, to use when.”

Davis argues that the current system — doctors making decisions based on little more than anecdotes and intuition — essentially treats each sick newborn as an uncontrolled, unapproved study of one. The baby may or may not do well on the drug; either way, no data is collected and the result does not inform treatment of other infants around the world.

“Children are protected through research,” said Dr. Raphaël Rousseau, director of pediatric oncology drug development at Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche.

It’s technically more challenging to study drugs in neonates than older children, he acknowledged. But still, he said, “there is no real excuse not to do drug development in neonates.”

When mistakes are fatal

Some of the babies in the Tufts NICU are swathed in blue light to treat jaundice; others are draped with colorful knit blankets made by local volunteers. Behind a curtain in alcove number 18, first-time mother Aubrey Baptista nurses 2-week-old Elijah.

Elijah was born Oct. 28 with a heart defect requiring surgery. When doctors discovered his condition, Elijah was immediately put on an IV drip of a drug to help keep his heart valve open. During surgery, he received anesthesia and morphine. Post-surgery, doctors administered nitrous oxide, oxygen, and antibiotics.

At least, those are the drugs Baptista remembers being told about.

What she was not told, at any point, was that the FDA hadn’t reviewed the safety or efficacy of those drugs, in those doses, for babies like Elijah. Doctors simply told her, “This is what we’re doing.”

“There wasn’t much choice,” she told STAT.

Over the last 25 years, the FDA has approved only two drugs that significantly improved neonatal survival: surfactant and nitric oxide for respiratory conditions.

Most neonatologists do not tell parents about the lack of medical evidence for the drugs they use, said neonatologist Dr. Matthew Laughon of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They just prescribe.

Because there is little alternative.

“When you’re sitting there at the bedside, and you’re looking the parents in the eyes, and the baby is dying or really sick, to just stand there and say, ‘We don’t have anything to do because it hasn’t been proven’ —well, that’s challenging,” said Laughon. “If we never gave drugs because they were off-label, we wouldn’t have any drugs.”

Physicians often make treatment decisions by scaling down from how medications are used in adults. “We take it right out of the vial of an adult drug, dilute it down, and give it to the babies,” said Davis.

In multiple cases, that technique has led to disaster. “There have been some big, big, big mistakes in neonatology through the years when it comes to drugs,” said Laughon.

Those include the sudden deaths of preemies due to too-large doses of the antibiotic chloramphenicol in the 1950s; the fatal poisoning of infants from large amounts of benzyl alcohol, a preservative used to flush catheters, in the 1980s; and deaths from a preservative, propylene glycol, in a multivitamin given orally to premature infants in a dose intended for adults.

Infants are not tiny adults and should not be given drugs as if they were, said Catherine Sherwin, division chief of pediatric clinical pharmacology at the University of Utah School of Medicine, who studies pharmacology in neonates.

Newborns absorb, metabolize, and excrete drugs differently than adults. “Yet we haven’t done the studies to know exactly what those differences are,” Sherwin said. “We just know they’re different.”

Lackluster laws and shoddy trials

There have been two large legislative efforts to encourage pharmaceutical companies to increase the number of pediatric drug studies: the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act of 2002 and the Pediatric Research Equity Act of 2003. Both were made into permanent law in 2012 with the passage of the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act.

Overall, the incentives and requirements within that legislation — carrots and sticks — worked. As of Oct. 31, 

651 drugs in the US have new or revised labeling for pediatric patients.

But the laws did not work for newborns.

Just 24 of the 406 labeling changes made as a result of that legislation affected neonates — and those were primarily on drugs that are used rarely, if at all, in NICUs in the United States, according to a 2015 analysis.

Even worse, the few labels that were changed for neonates didn’t add any beneficial new drugs to the NICU arsenal. “The most frequent drug labeling changes were [to state] that a drug was not effective or there was a safety concern,” said Laughon, who coauthored the study.

The most positive neonatal label changes have come from a National Institutes of Health initiative that put $25 million per year toward studying off-patent, older drugs in children — but that program’s funding runs out this year.

Pharmaceutical companies and institutional review boards continue to shy away from studying infants because they are fragile, cannot spare many blood samples, and are vulnerable to permanent injuries — injuries that, in the past, have been awarded large malpractice verdicts.

It’s also a small market, so pharmaceutical companies aren’t likely to make money by getting drugs approved for neonate use, Rousseau said. And few drug makers have dedicated pediatric teams.

“Any study that I’ve ever done that could potentially be sponsored by Big Pharma, but is in neonates, sends them running,” Sherwin said. “It’s hard to do, and it’s hard to get money to do it.”  

The majority of studies that have been done in neonates in recent years “were not able to establish efficacy,” wrote Dr. Susan McCune, deputy director of the Office of Translational Sciences at the FDA, who communicated with STAT via an emailed statement reviewed by the FDA’s press office.

It remains unclear whether that lack of success is due to the drugs themselves or trial design issues, she added. The latter is a major problem for the field. For example, many studies group all infants born two or more months before their due date into a single category, yet a 4-week-old infant born at 24 weeks gestation is not the same as a 1-day-old born at 28 weeks.

Last year, Davis and colleagues analyzed 25 proposed neonatal trial designs submitted by pediatric clinical trial groups and individual researchers, and found that six had fatal flaws — like requiring six EKGs on babies in the first day of life — that made it unlikely the trials would ever be successfully completed.

Davis hopes the new INC guidance will change that. At Tufts, he conducts about 10 neonatal trials at any one time. Among them: A clinical trial he’s been running for the past three years to test whether morphine or methadone, the two most common medications used in infants suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome, is more effective.

Despite widespread use of both medications, doctors simply don’t know.

As Davis walks through the NICU, talking to nurses about new arrivals, Aubrey Baptista cradles Elijah, still with an IV port buried in his tiny hand for another round of antibiotics. Would she have enrolled her newborn son in a clinical trial if asked?

Baptista hesitates. “Because it’s life or death ... I don’t know. It’s scary enough as it is.”

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SRI LANKA: The job of a judge is to do justice, regardless of nationality

Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe

by Basil Fernando-January 6, 2017

Concerns have been raised about the preliminary report of the Consultation Task Force (CTF), particularly about hybrid courts and foreign judges.

It should be remembered that this report and its recommendations have not been finalized. Additionally, at the very beginning of the report, the CTF write that they are not making extensive recommendations themselves, but that this is merely a collection of ideas from various people to whom they have listened.

This whole discussion that has created some controversies about hybrid courts should, I think, require a little bit of thinking.

First and foremost, this issue must be looked at from the point of view of law and justice. After all, the idea of the court is to mete out justice at the end. If it fails, then all this talk is worth nothing. A court can deliver justice only if its judges meet the requirements in terms of their experience, education and, above all, their integrity and their being commitment to justice and not to anything else. The motto should be: let the heavens fall, but justice will prevail.

If we can find such judges in Sri Lanka, let’s find them. There is no special requirement to bring anybody from outside. But if we can’t find them, or we can’t find enough of them here, then we should either bring them from somewhere else or we should not engage in the exercise at all, because there are only two types of courts: courts of justice, or kangaroo courts.

What we don’t want to have are kangaroo courts. That is what we have to avoid. In order to do that, we need to advertise the required qualities and get people from wherever. This is not about genes. This is not about colour or about what country you come from. A judge, acting in their professional capacity, has no nationality. A judge has nothing else but justice. That is why Lady Justice is blindfolded. Once you sit as a judge, you don’t belong to normal categories. It doesn’t matter whether you are Indian, Sri Lankan or from elsewhere. There are many courts all over the world where there are mixture of people. For example, in Hong Kong, as a matter of practice, you always have judges from developed jurisdictions working with Hong Kong judges in the Court of Final Appeal. The goal is to maintain quality.

What we should have is justice of a quality that no one can challenge it. It will not listen to governments, it will not fear any repercussions; it will just be justice. If justice cannot be done, the judges would say that they cannot do justice here, and that they cannot do something false.

We can again reach global standards. This is happening in many other fields. See how many engineers are in this country who are foreigners. Suppose you say that no engineers should come from abroad: what would happen to all their enterprises? See medical teams. This is happening all the time in every field.

Suppose we one day say that all foreigners are banned from participating in anything at all. What would become of us? In the world today, it is not like that anywhere. There is some absurdity in this whole discussion.

The second thing is that nothing is of greater value by being called ‘hybrid’. The mere fact that you add a foreign judge to a team of others does not make it a good court. The best example is where I used to work, in Cambodia, where there was an experiment with a so-called hybrid court. It was a complete failure.

The issue is the ensure quality. If the quality can be ensured by the talent we have, so much the better. Otherwise, open it up like any other employment opportunity and ensure that those people abide by quality.

If there is a fear that some foreigner may try to bring an agenda into this, it should be remembered that judges do no have agendas: judges do not have nationalities.

Many courts in the world have foreign judges. Many developing countries have in the past deliberately brought them in so as to raise their quality. Some of our judges, people from our system, are in other courts, such as in Fiji. There are so many of our judges there, including sitting judges. We have also sent prosecutors and judges to the International Court of Justice.

Sri Lankans have played their parts in other courts, and other people can also do the same thing here. The idea that any foreigner would be someone who is biased is, I think, a very false notion.

Of course, on the one hand there is the substantial issue, and on the other there is the political issue. Politically, the opposition tries to say that foreign judges will try to put our national heroes into jail, and other such allegations.

The government is then put in an embarrassing position, so they say they won’t have the judges. That’s a political debate, but these are not issues that politicians can decide purely on political terms. The judiciary is not something that should be decided on political terms.

The independence of the judiciary does not require that only local judges can sit at a court. Local and international does not apply. The reason for the blindfolded image is that they simply don’t have nationalities, their genes don’t matter, they go by certain qualities. This is the only profession of that type, where we don’t give any priority to anything but justice. Let the heavens fall, but justice must be done. They cannot say that they think in a particular way, that their ancestry guides them, or astrology or anything else.

In terms of the CTF objectives, it is essential to start with the issue of investigations. We cannot find the truth without investigations. Before we talk about judges, we should emphasize the need for proper and impartial investigations because, whenever a crime is reported, it is an absolute obligation to begin investigations immediately. The crimes reported include one of the most heinous crimes: enforced disappearances. People have already complained. The obligation of the government is to begin investigations. If the investigations bring out the truth, whether in favour or against the complaint, that determines what happens next. We should therefore concentrate all our efforts into that first step, which we simply cannot avoid: the issue of investigations.

This issue must be addressed step-by-step. Our experts, even those involved in transitional justice, look at books, but they don’t look at the contextual issue. What is missing here in this country? What is wrong? Not only regarding crimes related to the civil war, but in normal crimes? Our investigative system is in a serious crisis. In a normal murder or rape case, making a complaint doesn’t mean that there will be an investigation. Sometimes there are. In many cases, it doesn’t happen. There is something wrong in our basic criminal justice system. Making use of this larger issue, we should deal with our basic system. Correcting this is in everybody’s interest. If something happens to me today, it is in my interest that there is a system where a complaint can be made and where complaints will be investigated.

This is not a matter for speculation. We don’t speculate about crimes. We investigate crimes. It is a serious art and science.

Rather than borrowing some terms from elsewhere and putting it into a report, we should look at the local situation and see what is wrong with it. A critique should be made of the local situation. If someone is not happy with the local judiciary being able to do this job, make a proper critique of that and explain why.

Politicians may raise obstacles to foreign judges, but no question is being asked about what the people want. Would the people want justice or a farce? Some kind of bluff, followed by conviction or acquittal? We don’t want courts that are committed to convicting or acquitting people without due process. It should be according to justice. So do you want a court of justice, or some kind of bluff? This is a matter for the people, primarily, and if the people begin to demand this, all these parties will have to listen. Political parties should listen to the people. Here we have it the other way: we borrow our ideas from political parties. The whole nature of democracy is to get the people to say what they want to the political parties. That should not be turned the other way.

In the Sri Lankan mentality there is almost an inability to go beyond surface politics and into the realities of how things happen. Everything is just for the newspaper or the media, for talk, and not about how to get things done. Justice is done by people involved in justice. That is, investigators, prosecutors, judges; these people do justice. Politicians don’t do justice. In fact, fighting against injustices done by politicians was how the justice project came about. In England, you had to fight against the King, to the point that one of first heads of states to be killed was in England, in search of justice. Justice will never come from the hands of politicians alone.

If the whole country can only be run by politicians, then we don’t need any other kind of professions. We wouldn’t need accountants or doctors, only politicians.

People must be able to rely on justice institutions. That brings out the real question: Do we want anarchy to prevail in this country? Lawlessness? Or do we want the rule of law back? That is kind of issue that should be central issue in these reports. The core question should be: what is happening to the rule of law? Will this court, whichever court it is, be respected within the framework of the rule of law? Will they help to stabilize this country? Will they make it a country that is safe for everybody, where it is safe for people speak out and participate? Will that happen or will it just be people living in fear?

The greatest assault on the dignity of a victim or their family is to deny the truth of what happened to the victim. We can’t resolve that by any other means, including giving facilities, though that is indeed necessary. Nobody disagrees on the fact that infrastructure and other necessities should be provided. But that does not restore dignity to a person. If my brother was killed and I don’t know what happened, if he was arrested and then disappeared, I would suffer all my life with that idea, asking what happened. That would go to the very depth of my dignity.

Justice is more important to a nation than anything else, and that is what we are rapidly forgetting. We had that idea up until the 1978 Constitution. We believed that justice was fundamental. Without justice, we will not have a sense of dignity at all. Today, the whole nation suffers from the fact that we are unable to have a system of justice that we can look at and say: even if everything fails, if politicians fail, at least in the sacred vicinity of a court of justice, we get justice.

The Hardships Of Northern Sri Lankans Under The Sirisena Government

By Pitasanna Shanmugathas –January 6, 2017

Pitasanna Shanmugathas

I had the opportunity to speak with Thulasi Muttulingam, a Sri Lankan Tamil aid worker based in the North. She spoke to me about the hardships, even under the new Sirisena government, Sri Lankan Tamils continue to experience.

I asked Muttulingam why it is so difficult to get psychiatric and trauma counseling help in the North. Muttulingam stated that initially the government did promote psycho-social help. However, the Rajapaksa government put a halt to providing psycho-social help because too many war stories were leaking out pertaining to the extent civilians suffered during the war. “Many organizations doing psycho-social help had to do it in hiding.”

Muttulingam criticized the NGO model as one which fosters individuals to become more dependent rather than self-sufficient. Muttulingam said that an entire generation, born after the 1980s, have grown up with the idea that “someone will always be there to handout stuff” making [people in war affected areas] incapable of standing on their own two feet and thus fostering a dependence on NGOs. As part of a solution, livelihood projects have been launched by some NGOs based in Sri Lanka. Citizens are expected to show their ability to become self-sufficient through managing tasks such as running a business. However, Muttulingam disclosed that a very few percentage of citizens are actually successful at keeping the projects running instead of closing it with some excuse. “The citizens, due to having been closed in for a long time, do not really understand how the outside world functions.” Citizens in the North produce local products such as milk, biscuits, and soaps. However, after the war ended, products from the South came flooding in and as a result, the local products do not stand a chance and citizens of the North, instead of economically trying to remain competitive, are folding in because they are not used to that competitive system.

The wider context, Muttulingam emphasized, is due to problems within the government and private employment sector. “The only draw to government employment,” Muttulingam said, “is that they pay a basic living wage that is commensurate with the cost of living—they pay about 25,000 and there is also a hope of a pension with a government job. That is it.” Muttulingam stressed the need to implement a minimum wage law in Sri Lanka that is commensurate with the cost of living. “So being paid 10,000 [rupees] a month to support your family to work 15 to 16 hours a day, it is illegal, but many companies are doing it.” The inability to live in Sri Lanka because of the cost of living, Muttulingam said, is a significant reason as to why many citizens are fleeing on boats to Australia.

The Minister of Women’s Affairs, Chandrani Bandara, asked by Al Jazeera about what programs are being considered to help war widows; Bandara responded, “We have initiated several programs like livelihood programs with credit schemes, like entrepreneurship training, counseling….credit basis for self-employment.” Furthermore, Bandara stated, “I don’t think the Tamil widows are not taken care of. Priority is given to these widows especially in those areas there are so many programs taking place. I don’t think the Tamil widows are isolated.” Muttulingam responded to Bandara’s statements by stating, “No, the widows have it really badly in the North.” Muttulingam debunked Bandara’s point by stating that being top on the beneficiary list is “not necessarily the help that helps sustain them [the widows].” Muttulingam added, “There are too many things stacked against [the widows] in the culture.”

Women are paid less than men and mothers are unable to leave their children to find equal opportunity employment. All these considerations put together keep stacking up against what Muttulingam referred to as the “female headed households.” Muttulingam explained that [the widows] do get a lot of help from the NGO model, but not from the community model, as the “community is heavily stacked against them.” Women who are enterprising and are able to stand on their own two feet, Muttulingam explained, are criticized and looked at negatively by the community. “It is again somehow damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

Families who have resettled after experiencing constant displacement during the final stages of the war are now intent on building their dream house and subsequently end up going a little overboard. The Indian government has been providing houses for Tamils in the North. The housing will cost Tamils at least seven lakhs which alone will get them into debt. Tamils, even though they can’t afford it, will build houses that are 25 lakhs, 30 lakhs, “because for the first time they are getting to live in a house and they have all these dreams. “Companies are exploiting those dreams held by Tamils in the North by going house to house and selling TVs, furniture, DVDs, even though in some of these places, they don’t even have electricity.”

I asked Muttulingam, based on the civilians in the North she has met, if there was any truth to the claim that the LTTE used civilians as human shields. “Everywhere,” Muttulingam responded. “Every single last person in the Vanni who [was] caught in that last time frame they all tell the same story. And these are people who were part of LTTE’s most important martyr families themselves. Here it is common knowledge, and that level of betrayal for them, they expect [that] the army would do this, the government will do this, but when the LTTE did that to them [using Tamils as human shields], the shock of that betrayal…they have been heavily traumatized by that,” Muttulingam stated. Muttulingam also said that the former LTTE cadres are being marginalized and ostracized within their own communities in Sri Lanka because of the actions the former cadres committed against their own people during the war.

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Defence Secy allays Manouri’s concerns

by Shamindra Ferdinando-January 6, 2017, 7:34 pm

Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiarachchi yesterday told The Island that the military or police wouldn’t interfere with those who had been consulted by the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTFRM) in respect of alleged atrocities committed during the conflict.

The outfit comprised 11 civil society activists, including key members of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and editor of Ravaya and attorney-at-law K. W. Janaranjana.

Defence Secretary Hettiarachchi stressed that there was no basis for the perception that the military would interfere with those who had brought their grievances to the notice of the CTFRM.

Asked whether the civil society outfit had sought an assurance from him regarding the safety and security of who had provided information to them, Defence Secretary Hettiarachchi said that Chairperson of CTFRM and attorney-at-law Manouri Muttetuwegama had recently met him in this regard.

Addressing the media at the Information Department on Thursday, Mrs. Muttetuwegama said that she had requested security guarantee for those who had shared their experiences with members of Zonal Task Forces. Mrs. Muttewegama stressed the importance of safety and security of of those who had conducted consultations on behalf of CTFRM.

Explaining the countrywide consultation process involving sectoral consultations, zonal task forces as well as submissions, Muttetuwegama emphasized: "Although we have been appointed by the government, we are certainly not agents of the State."

Muttetuwegama said that they expected continuing security guarantees from the government to prevent untoward actions by the military and ex-militants. The civil society spokesperson said that they expected the government to take into consideration their recommendations based on their findings. The CTFRM expressed confidence that the proposed transitional justice mechanisms would be based on their recommendations.

Professor Sitralega Maunaguru, formerly of the Eastern University said that those who had been affected by the conflict were concerned about the slow progress in addressing their grievances. Declaring that a range of far reaching reforms were required in post-war Sri Lanka, the academic urged the government to address accountability issues, language issue as well as confidence-building-measures.

Maunaguru also called for the establishment of memorials for those who had been killed in the struggle against successive governments.

Muttetuwegama’s outfit said it has received 7,306 submissions during countrywide consultations held between July-Sept. 2016. According to the data made available by the CTFRM, eastern districts of Batticaloa and Ampara and the Southern province had recorded the highest number of participants. Maunaguru said that people living in up country areas, too, had taken up several issues.

Secretary to the CTFRM Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu said that those who had participated in consultations were wanted to have the proposed accountability and reconciliation mechanisms established closer to the area affected by the conflict.