PLO threatens to revoke recognition of Israel if US embassy moves to Jerusalem

Palestinian officials call for protests in mosques to object to the proposed move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and say it would violate Oslo peace agreements

The US embassy building in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on 28 December 2016. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

Peter Beaumont in Ramallah-Tuesday 10 January 2017

Senior Palestinian officials have warned that the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s recognition of Israel – one of the key pillars of the moribund Oslo peace agreements – is in danger of being revoked if Donald Trump moves the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Palestinian leadership is also calling for protests in mosques and churches on Friday and Sunday to object to the move, calling for opposition to the plan “from Pakistan to Tehran, from Lebanon to Oman”.

Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem is highly contentious as it would recognise Israel’s exclusive claim to the city, most of which was annexed illegally after the 1967 war. The Palestinians also see it as their future capital.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayyeh told reporters on Tuesday that any move to relocate the US embassy would provoke a reaction. “One of the measures we are considering seriously is the issue of mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel. [It] is not valid any more doing this,” he said referring to the proposed embassy move.

The warning came amid increasingly stark warnings over the risk of an “explosion of violence” in the region if the US embassy is moved, and after Abbas himself wrote to Trump to reconsider, citing the dangers in the move.

In his letter – disclosed on Monday and also copied to other world leaders – Abbas told Trump moving the embassy “will likely have [a] disastrous impact on the peace process, on the two-state solution and on the stability and security of the entire region, since Israel’s decision to annex East Jerusalem contradicts with international law”.

The comments came after the officials said they had been told by diplomatic contacts that Trump may be preparing to announce the relocation of the US embassy during his inauguration speech on 20 January. CNN reported on Monday that Trump’s transition team had told “allies” that it plans to go ahead with the relocation.

That fear follows the introduction of new legislation in Congress a week ago by three Republican Senators, including Ted Cruz, demanding the embassy be located in Jerusalem. 

Palestinians have also been alarmed by Trump’s appointment of figures who have supported Jewish settlement building in the occupied territories.

That includes Trump’s proposed new ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who has questioned the two-state solution, and most recently Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose family charity has given money to one of the West Bank’s most hardline settlements.

Friedman himself – an extreme rightwinger who has compared liberal US Jews to kapos or concentration camp guards chosen from among the prisoners – made clear on his appointment that he looked forward to taking up his post in Jerusalem.

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, had floated the idea of revoking recognition of Israel at a conference in Washington last month, a proposal that has gained momentum ahead of a peace conference in Paris on Sunday on the Middle East peace process.

Briefing journalists on diplomatic moves ahead of that gathering of some 70 countries in the French capital, Shtayyeh reinforced recent statements by other senior Palestinian politicians and warned that the two-state solution would not be able to survive a move by the Trump administration that would be seen in the Arab world as a unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Shtayyeh also suggested that such a move would also be a breach of US commitments under the 1995 Oslo peace agreement. “The US is a witness to the Oslo agreement, signed in the White House in front of President Clinton. This is an international commitment.”

While Palestinian officials had been careful to be diplomatic following Trump’s election, in recent weeks they have become more and more explicit about their concerns.

Asked about officials in Trump’s team who would deal with the Israeli-Palestinian question, Shtayyeh was pessimistic.

“The indications are negative,” Shtayyeh said of Trump’s recent appointments, adding: “If Trump moves the [US] embassy to Jerusalem that would be the end of the two-state solution. Trump would be giving away something that is not his to give.”

Shtayyeh said that the Palestinian leadership had received warnings that Trump might announce the relocation on inauguration days from “American circles and diplomatic friends”.

Shtayyeh’s remarks came following the leak of the draft resolution text to be considered in Paris on Sunday, which suggests participants will be asked to bind themselves to opposing any unilateral moves on changing Israel’s pre-1967 borders, including on the final status of Jerusalem that was left to be negotiated after the Oslo peace accords were signed.

The draft text – leaked to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz – suggests that moves that began with the adoption by the UN security council of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement building, seem set to continue right up to Trump’s inauguration.

The US embassy has been located on Tel Aviv’s HaYarkon Street for half a century. US state department policy has long held that the status of Jerusalem will only be determined in final talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Although the US Congress passed a law ordering the move to Jerusalem in 1995, every president since then has exercised a six-month waiver to prevent it taking place, usually citing “national security concerns”.

The Palestinian comments also join warnings from other international officials in recent days alerting to the dangers in moving the American embassy.

A Jordanian government spokesman warned last week that the move would have “catastrophic implications on several levels, including the regional situation” warning it could also affect bilateral relations with the US.

On Friday, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, echoed that view in an interview with CBS, warning that the plan, outlined by Trump on the campaign trail and reiterated by members of his team since, could cause an “an explosion, an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank, and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region”.

Kerry also warned that It would “have profound impact on the readiness of Jordan and Egypt to be able to be supportive and engaged with Israel as they are today”, he warned.

Abbas warns Trump not to move US embassy to Jerusalem

Palestinian leader tells US president-elect that a relocation would have a "disastrous impact on the peace process".

Trump has promised to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem [Reuters]

09 Jan 2017

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has written to US President-elect Donald Trump telling him not to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, according to official Palestinian media reports.

Trump has said at various times that he plans to relocate the embassy, and last month chose David Friedman, a right-wing lawyer who has pledged to move the mission to Jerusalem, as his ambassador to Israel.

The settlers and the guards harass us and our children’

In an official letter, Abbas gave warning that such a move would have a "disastrous impact on the peace process, on the two-state solution and on the stability and security of the entire region", Palestinian news agency Wafa said on Monday.

Wafa, which did not specify when the letter had been sent, said Abbas aimed to explain the "risks" of moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

Abbas also sent letters to other world powers, including Russia, China and the European Union, calling on them to "spare no effort" to prevent the US from making the move, Wafa said.

A potential relocation is severely opposed by Palestinians as a unilateral action while the status of the city remains contested.

Israel supports the move and has encouraged previous presidents to take similar steps to no avail.

The Palestinians regard Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while Israel proclaims the entire city as its undivided capital.

INTERACTIVE: Jerusalem's Broken Homes

The US and most UN member states do not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the city's status is one of the thorniest issues of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last month Kellyanne Conway, Trump's spokesperson, told a US radio station that moving the embassy was a "very big priority" for the president-elect.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and subsequently annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

Donald Trump’s ‘first attempt to ignore the law’

Jared Kushner is President-elect Donald Trump's son-in-law but he's also one of his key confidants. Here's a closer look at the man who is expected to be a senior adviser to the president in Trump's White House. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

By Aaron Blake January 10 at 7:00 AM

President-elect Donald Trump intends to name his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior adviser to his White House — a move that would put to the test a 1967 anti-nepotism law and provide a Trump White House already rife with ethical questions a bona fide legal showdown.

In fact, this amounts to Trump's "first attempt to ignore the law," according to Washington University government ethics expert Kathleen Clark. And she says it has huge implications not just for Kushner, but for the rest of his presidency.

I spoke with Clark about anti-nepotism laws, why they exist, and how Kushner and Trump might get around this particular one. Our conversation is below, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

WAPO: I think a casual observer may wonder why Trump’s son-in-law serving in his administration is a big deal. Why do such anti-nepotism laws exist, and why is nepotism a problem?

CLARK: We have anti-nepotism laws in the federal government and in lots of state governments, because the practice of hiring relatives undermines public confidence that the government official is actually finding best person for the job. What are the chances that the best person for the job just happens to be a relative, right? In addition to the problem of public confidence, hiring a relative also causes problems within the government organization. It can undermine the morale of government officials. It can cause confusion about what the lines of authority are; in other words, the relative may have a particular title, but many may perceive the relative’s role as even more important than the title would suggest. It may be very difficult to say no to the president’s son-in-law. It may be very difficult to say, ‘That’s a bad idea’ to the president’s son-in-law, in a way it would be easier to say those things to someone whom the president hired but isn’t related to — someone who’s not the father of his grandchild or grandchildren.

WAPO: The anti-nepotism law on the books is supposedly a reaction to the Kennedys. But was there an era in politics in which nepotism was a particularly bad problem?

CLARK: What I can tell you is that the federal statute is by no means unique. Almost all states have anti-nepotism laws. A review of state anti-nepotism laws in 2000 found only seven states lacked such laws. So it’s widely perceived as a problem that needs to be addressed by prohibiting the hiring of relatives.

WAPO: The Trump team and Kushner believe a 1993 D.C. Circuit Court decision gives them a way to make this happen, but you’ve noted that the section in question is “dicta.” Can you explain that?

CLARK: The crux of that decision was that the presidential spouse is a de facto officer or employee for purposes of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. And then, after [Judge Laurence] Silberman said that, he added dicta where he said, "We doubt Congress intended to include the White House under the anti-nepotism statute." Judge [James L.] Buckley on the D.C. Circuit concurred in the judgment, but refused to concur in the opinion, and specifically called out that passage and objected to it. So that part of the opinion, on which I suspect the Trump advisers will be relying, is absolutely dicta, and it’s, as I said, rejected by Judge Buckley.

[Trump would join motley crew of nepotists with appointment of son-in-law]

WAPO: So basically, it’s not the law?

CLARK: Judge Silberman, who has rarely found a limitation on executive power appropriate, who has rarely met an executive power of the president that he hasn’t embraced, used this case to assert that Congress’s anti-nepotism statute shouldn’t apply to the White House — even though the statute names the president. And Judge Buckley said the argument that the anti-nepotism act applies only to departments and not to the White House is a weak one. That’s probably one of the things they will rely upon, and it’s a very weak argument.

WAPO: From what you have seen of his efforts, do you think Kushner is going to be able to get around this law?

CLARK: In your question, you asked is Kushner going to be able to get around this. And I want reframe the question: Is Trump going to be able to get around this, because I see this as Trump’s first attempt to ignore the law, act in violation of the law, and he’s going to see if he can get away with it. We have a statute that names the president, that names the son-in-law relationship, that Congress identified a problem and enacted a statute prohibiting a president from hiring a son-in-law. President-elect Trump, in my view, is testing the waters to see if he can get away with violating what I would call this government ethics provision. And whether President-elect Trump gets away with this depends, it seems to me, in part on the public response as well as the congressional response.…

We’ll see whether President Trump is required to follow the law or not. And so, I think this is enormously significant, because it’s an initial test of whether — we’ve seen as a candidate, Donald Trump has violated norms, and now we’re going to see whether he also plans to violate the law.

Jeff Sessions Defends Record On Civil Rights At U.S. Senate Hearing

But he’ll still enforce the legislation that outlawed torture.

 01/10/2017 

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s candidate for attorney general said on Tuesday he was against banning Muslims from entering the country and would enforce a 2015 law that outlawed waterboarding terrorism suspects, even though he had opposed the law.

During the 2016 election campaign Trump said waterboarding, which simulates drowning and is widely regarded as torture, was an effective technique and vowed to bring it back and make it “a hell of a lot worse.”

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, a close ally of Trump’s and his nominee to be attorney general, told a Senate confirmation hearing that the law was “not the right step” and should not have applied to the “higher ups” in the military and intelligence community.

However with his remarks on enforcing the law, he indicated a willingness to resist the president-elect.

The hearing for Sessions, in line to be the country’s top prosecutor and legal adviser to the president, was the first in a series this week for nominees to Trump’s Cabinet ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration.
Protesters charging Sessions has a poor record on human rights interrupted the proceedings several times.

Sessions, 70, became the first sitting senator to endorse Trump for the presidency in early 2016 and has remained an adviser on issues such as immigration. He is being reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, a panel on which he serves, and is widely expected to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate.

President George W. Bush’s administration was strongly criticized at home and abroad when intelligence agencies used waterboarding. More recently Trump has said retired Marine Corps General James Mattis, his nominee for secretary of defense, had persuasively argued against it.

On another counterterrorism issue, Sessions said he would not support banning anyone from the United States on the basis of religion, and said Trump’s intentions were to block people coming from countries harboring terrorists, not all Muslims. During his campaign, Trump at one point proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

CLINTON EMAILS

Sessions also said he would recuse himself from investigating Hillary Clinton’s email practices and charitable foundation if confirmed as attorney general, and he would favor the appointment of a special prosecutor for any such investigation.

“I have said a few things,” Sessions said about his comments during the presidential race accusing former Democratic presidential candidate Clinton of illegal activity. “I think that is one of the reasons why I should not make a decision in that case.”

Trump, who defeated Clinton in the Nov. 8 election, said during the campaign that if elected he would ask his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to see that Clinton go to prison for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and her relationship with her family’s charitable foundation.

“We can never have a political dispute turn into a criminal dispute,” Sessions said. “This country does not punish its political enemies but this country ensures that no one is above the law.”

Many questions on Tuesday aimed to establish how closely Sessions hewed to Trump positions.

Sessions said he agreed with Trump in opposing Democratic President Barack Obama’s executive action that granted temporary protection to immigrant children brought to the country illegally by their parents and would not oppose overturning it.

Sessions, who has represented the deeply conservative Southern state of Alabama for 20 years, has a long record of opposing legislation that provides a path to citizenship for immigrants. He has also been a close ally of groups seeking to restrict legal immigration by placing limits on visas used by companies to hire foreign workers.

As head of the Justice Department, the attorney general oversees the immigration court system that decides whether immigrants are deported or granted asylum or some other kind of protection. A key plank of Trump’s election campaign was his pledge to deport illegal immigrants and to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Sessions also said he agreed with his many of his fellow Republicans that the military prison for foreign terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba remain open. The Obama administration has sought to close the prison, opened by Bush in 2002, and bring its prisoners to U.S. civilian courts to be tried.

KEVIN LAMARQUE / REUTERS

Protesters take positions at the start of a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for U.S. Attorney General-nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 10, 2017.

DEFENSE AGAINST RACISM

Sessions several times defended himself against charges of racism. He said allegations that he harbored sympathies toward the Ku Klux Klan, a violent white supremacist organization, are false.

“I abhor the Klan and what it represents and its hateful ideology,” Sessions said in his opening remarks.

“End racism Stop Sessions,” and “End hate Stop Sessions,” read some of the signs carried by protesters.

Sessions was denied confirmation to a federal judgeship in 1986 after allegations emerged that he made racist remarks, including testimony that he called an African-American prosecutor “boy,” an allegation Sessions denied.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said the Senate Judiciary Committee had received letters from 400 civil rights organizations opposing his confirmation to the country’s top law enforcement post.

“This job requires service to the people and the law, not the president,” Feinstein said.

“There is a deep fear about what a Trump administration will bring in many places. And this is the context in which we must consider Senator Sessions’ record and nomination,” Feinstein added.

Sessions has opposed abortion and same-sex marriage as a senator, but said on Tuesday that if confirmed as attorney general he would follow the Supreme Court rulings that legalized both abortion and same-sex marriage.

He also said he opposed lowering mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders and did not see voter identification laws as a barrier to voting, a reversal of two key stances of the Obama administration.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander, Sarah Lynch, Dustin Volz and Ian Simpson)

Change in Islamic Bank of Bangladesh and terrorist money

Most of all, now the million dollars’ question is that, what the government of Bangladesh has done regarding the IBB, will it be successful eventually?

by Swadesh Roy

( January 10, 2017, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) Bangladesh government has made a big change in a special type of bank, Islamic Bank of Bangladesh (IBB); the bank was accused of Islamic terrorist funding. Last eight years Bangladesh has been suffering from terrorism. Islamic terrorism is two types in Bangladesh. One is organised by some ultra-Islamic terrorist groups another is going with political violence. Even being a democratic country like Bangladesh, why is Islamic terrorism going on with political violence?  In Bangladesh, one of the opposition political parties’ ally is typical, their main party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and their mentor Jammat –E- Islami (jammat) have people support, but they are very much involved in Islamic terrorism. Jammat is basically terrorist party, their most of the prominent leaders in Bangladesh are awarded death sentences, and they were executed. They are punished for their war crime of 1971. IBB was set up by that Jammat 34 years ago. It is now one of the biggest banks of Bangladesh; the lion portion of shares of this bank hold many Islamic capital of the world.

However, last thirty-four years Jammat was getting terrorist capital from this bank; not only that, they recruited the manpower for this bank from their party members. So, this bank is one kind of financial sectors of their party. Last eight years, IBB not only financed the terrorist, but also some of the Bank officers were directly involved in terrorism. Now the new chairman of the bank said, “it will be inquired, if we get any one of the bank officers was involved with petrol bomb, he will be sacked.” It is to be mentioned here, from 2012 to 2015 BNP and Jammat burnt many innocent people including pregnant women and the children by throwing petrol bomb.   On the other hand, the chairman also said, “now the recruitment policy has changed, the bank will give the appointment, Hindus and the women.” Before this change, Hindus and the women were ban in the job in this bank. Despite, it is not the big issue, the main issue is, to stop the Islamic terrorism finance. The finance minister of Bangladesh, find out it correctly, he said, “we have to find out, where and how the profit of this bank drain out.” Finance minister of Bangladesh, found out the basic point of the way of funding terrorism, because the total capital of IBB is now 80 billion BDT, but last year bank showed their profits only two billion BDT. It is not justified profits. So, it indicates that in any form money is going some hidden places. The new chairman said, “from now on, the bank will invest more in the government projects.” It is a brilliant decision, because it has two very good sides; one, the money of this bank will invest for the infrastructures development of Bangladesh, another is the money will be accountable to government and the bank. Besides, government is a good party to bank who never does the misuse of money.

After this change the finance minister said that “they have to do this change for the pressure of the Islamic Development Bank(IDB).” Finance minister did not disclose why IDB give them pressure? But everyone could understand the cause of the pressure of IDB; because, it is not possible for a world reputed finance institute like IDB to maintain any participation with Islamic terrorist finance. Though, IBB has been financing the Islamic terrorist for a long time, the public and the government of Bangladesh were saying from the beginning; even many books and article published on this issue, but IDB respond late. Why this late? The main cause of it, there was a propaganda in Bangladesh and the abroad, the terrorism which was occurring in Bangladesh, was not the Islamic terrorism, it is a political movement; government coloured it as a terrorism. Even the people who were writing regarding Islamic terrorism in Bangladesh, they were branded as the supporter of the government. This propaganda got more strength because of the western diplomats to Bangladesh. Somehow, western diplomats say BNP and Jammat are the moderate Muslim Party; they are not terrorist? Why they think so, has no justification, it may be purposefully or lack of the knowledge regarding Islamic terrorism. However, after the Islamic terrorist attack in the café Holy Artisan in Dhaka, then the world understood what was going in Bangladesh. So, probably the cause of the pressure of IDB is an effect of Holy Artisan attack in Dhaka.

Most of all, now the million dollars’ question is that, what the government of Bangladesh has done regarding the IBB, will it be successful eventually? The thinking of the society of Bangladesh has been changed, fanatic groups are increasing, and now the progressive groups in Bangladesh are not the majority. On the other hand, all the officers and the mid-level management of IBB are the Jammat people. They are very committed towards so called Jihad. So, is it possible to change only top boss of the IBB to stop the terrorist funding? However, government had no other way, rather what they have done () is a good first step. So, to see the final round, we have to wait.

Swadesh Roy, Executive Editor, The Daily Janakantha, Dhaka, Bangladesh he can be reached swadeshroy@gmail.com     

Only Religion Can Defuse Nigeria’s Demographic Time Bomb

Rapid population growth isn’t an economic opportunity — it’s a looming disaster that politicians are powerless to stop.

BY REMI ADEKOYA-JANUARY 10, 2017

A few years ago, when the “Africa rising” buzz was in full swing, the continent’s rapidly expanding population was often presented as an asset, a comparative advantage over the rest of the world. While Western populaces, particularly in Europe, were aging and likely to shrink in the coming decades, Africa’s fast-growing and youthful population was supposed to provide the dynamism and consumer base needed to power its economy and transform the continent into a global growth engine.

If one country seemed to personify that narrative, it was Nigeria, already sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous country, which boasted between 7 and 8 percent GDP growth for much of the 2000s. But now that the global commodity slump has plunged Nigeria into its worst economic crisis in two decades, and pushed youth unemployment through the roof, it’s clear that far from a dividend, the country’s demographics were a disaster waiting to happen.

And the time bomb is ticking faster than we feared. At the end of last year, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics revealed that the country’s population is now estimated to have surpassed 193 million, significantly exceeding the earlier U.N. projection of 187 million in 2016. In other words, the U.N.’s much-publicized forecast that Nigeria will overtake the United States as the world’s third-most populous nation by 2050 will likely happen much sooner than that. (Nigeria’s fertility rate is 5.13 children per woman, compared with 1.87 per woman in the United States.)

Part of the optimism surrounding Nigeria’s population growth no doubt stemmed from the country’s natural resource wealth, which was supposed to enable investments in infrastructure, industry, and education, among other things. But with markets as volatile as they are, it’s clear that oil and gas revenue — which accounts for 95 percent of export earnings and 70 percent of government revenue — isn’t enough to keep a country the size of Nigeria afloat. Indeed, since oil prices started to drop in mid-2014, Nigeria’s currency has depreciated more than 170 percent against the dollar while the country’s GDP has contracted accordingly in dollar terms.

The 2017 national budget will be the largest ever when measured in local currency, but at the current market exchange rate — though not the official one, which is largely fictitious — it amounts to a meager $15 billion.The government of Kansas, population 2.9 million, has a bigger budget than Nigeria.
In per capita terms, the situation is even bleaker. The government has just $77 to spend on each citizen in 2017. A nation with a population fast approaching 200 million has earmarked just $290 million for education this year (including capital spending), less than a third of what Harvard University will spend on research and development alone. Barring an unexpected jump in commodity prices, this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon, meaning many of the country’s newest citizens are likely to join the 62 million Nigerians who are currently illiterate.

In other words, a large percentage of Nigeria’s rapidly expanding population will have few or none of the skills needed to secure decent-paying jobs, build sustainable businesses, or otherwise contribute to a globalized 21st-century economy. Many are likely to join the already 30-million-strong army of unemployed youths aged 15 to 34. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, more than 45 percent of the country’s 69 million youths are either unemployed or underemployed — and this is a conservative estimate.

With such grim employment statistics, it’s little wonder that violent crime, including kidnappings and armed robberies, is on the rise while ethnic tensions, never far from the surface in Nigeria, are growing. At the same time, young people are leaving for Europe in record numbers: Of the 153,000 migrants who entered the European Union via the Italian coast in 2015, the largest number — 22,000 — were Nigerians.

So what can be done to defuse this ticking time bomb? Various Nigerian governments have attempted to promote family planning, but these programs have had limited impact due to their modest scope and inability to change deeply embedded cultural and religious sensibilities that encourage large families.

Pushing birth control is not easy in a society where children are widely regarded as “blessings from God.” Human interference in such heavenly matters is considered arrogant and presumptuous.

Economic calculations also drive the desire for many children. In a society lacking a social safety net, parents rely on their kids to provide for them in old age. The more future caregivers you have, the brighter your retirement prospects.

There is also a pervasive cultural belief, perhaps reinforced by the “Africa rising” narrative, that Nigeria draws strength from its numbers. A large and growing population is one of the two main pillars supporting Nigeria’s vaunted status as the ordained “Giant of Africa” (the other pillar is the country’s significant natural resource wealth, the value of which most of the population overestimates). It is partly for this reason that family planning campaigns, perceived as driven by foreigners and especially white people, are often viewed as a conspiracy to weaken Nigeria and Africa in general.

Given these entrenched realities, it makes sense to turn to the only people capable of changing minds on issues as sensitive as family planning: religious leaders. Most Nigerians are fiercely attached to their religious leaders, be it the imams and mallams in the predominantly Muslim north or the charismatic pastors of the mostly Christian south. In a society where the corrupt political class has been thoroughly discredited, religious leaders are the authority figures. If enough of them could be persuaded that the country is headed for disaster if population growth isn’t curbed, they might be willing to support a broad-based family planning campaign. (Traditional rulers should also be engaged in such an exercise, since they also retain significant authority at the grassroots level.)

This type of cooperation between religious and political leaders has succeeded in promoting family planning in other deeply conservative societies — post-revolutionary Iran, for instance — and the basis for it is already in place. Nigeria’s politicians and religious leaders have long enjoyed a symbiotic relationship: Politicians rely on religious leaders to bolster their legitimacy and in return provide generous funding to build mosques and churches. This quid pro quo is especially pronounced in the northern Muslim parts of the country where sharia, or Islamic law, is practiced, religious authority is especially strong, and birth rates tend to be higher than among southern Christians.

The latest population figures must serve as a clarion call for the Nigerian government and its international partners to come up with policies, programs, and campaigns aimed at slowing down the birth rate while also providing better opportunities for those already born. The country’s demographic explosion should stop being presented as an opportunity or an asset; it is a disaster waiting to happen for a nation with Nigeria’s limited resources.

Image credit: SODIQ ADELAKUN/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

'I fear being entombed in my body' - suicide legal challenge

Noel Conway: "I fear I will reach a stage where I am entombed in my own body"

A terminally ill man has begun a legal fight for the right to die.

Fergus Walsh-6 January 2017

Noel Conway, who's 67 and has motor neurone disease (MND), says he fears becoming "entombed" in his body as his muscles gradually weaken.

Mr Conway, from Shropshire, wants a doctor to be able to prescribe a lethal dose when his health deteriorates.

The case will be the first High Court challenge to the existing law since MPs rejected an attempt to introduce assisted dying in 2015.

It will also be the first such case since right-to-die campaigners lost their appeal before the Supreme Court in 2014.

The campaign group Dignity in Dying is supporting the legal bid.

Its chief executive, Sarah Wootton, told me: "Noel's experience sadly echoes that of hundreds of other terminally ill people in this country - choice and control at the end of life is something that everyone should be able to have."

But Baroness Campbell, a disability rights campaigner, said the current law - the 1961 Suicide Act - was already compassionate and changing it would be "highly dangerous".

"Disabled people want to be valued by society and would see any legal change as a real threat."

Incurable condition

Noel Conway, a retired college lecturer, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a form of MND, in November 2014.

It is an incurable neurological condition that causes weakness and wasting in the limbs.

I have a right to determine how and when I die and I want to do so when I have a degree of dignity remaining to me

Noel Conway

He is dependent on a ventilator overnight, requires a wheelchair and needs help to dress, eat and with personal care.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Mr Conway said he had been given a life expectancy of less than 12 months although his death might come sooner or later.

He told me: "I fear I will reach a stage where I am entombed in my own body as my ability to move gradually reduces - that would be unimaginable."

Mr Conway, who lives with his wife Carol and son Alex, used to be very physically active and enjoyed climbing, skiing, walking and cycling.

Image copyrightNOEL CONWAY Image captionBefore his illness Noel Conway was a keen skier, climber and cyclist

He told me he was not in any pain at present, but feared what would happen in his final weeks and that he might die by suffocation or choking.

"I have a right to determine how and when I die and I want to do so when I have a degree of dignity remaining to me," he said.

'Slippery slope to hell'

Carol Conway told me: "Noel's diagnosis was devastating. I do support him and think he should have the right to say enough is enough rather than fighting for breath and not being able to move.

"I can't help him end his life - we need the help of medical professionals to ease his passing."

Image copyrightFERGUS WALSH/ BBC Image captionCarol and Noel Conway at home in Shropshire

Mr Conway has signed up with Swiss suicide group Dignitas but is concerned that when he is ready to die he might be too ill to travel.

He said: "I want to live and die in my own country. The current law here condemns people like me to unimaginable suffering - I'm heading on a slow, slippery slope to hell."

What is the law?

Noel Conway is seeking a judicial review of the 1961 Suicide Act, which makes it a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison for anyone to assist in a suicide.

His legal firm Irwin Mitchell, will seek a declaration that this is not compatible with the Human Rights Act 1998, which confirms that individuals should have respect for a private and family life.

This is the latest in a series of challenges to the law on assisted dying.

In 2014 the Supreme Court rejected an appeal concerning three disabled men who wanted doctors to be allowed to assist patients to die.

They had used similar legal arguments. Five out of nine justices concluded that they did have the power to declare current law breached the right to a private life.

They did not make a "declaration of incompatibility" but two said they would have done so.

The Supreme Court made it clear that it was up to Parliament to deal with any decision on amending the law.

In September 2015 MPs rejected plans for a right to die in England and Wales, in their first vote on the issue in almost 20 years.

Noel Conway is the first terminally ill patient who is going to the High Court to argue for a right to an assisted death based on the failed vote in Parliament.

This case, which is expected to be heard at the High Court within a few months, will reopen a debate which has impassioned voices on both sides.

Those opposed to a change in the law argue that this issue has now been resolved for good by Parliament.

Baroness Campbell, who has spinal muscular atrophy, founded the organisation Not Dead Yet.

'Frightening burden'

She uses a powered wheelchair, is fed through a tube and can now move only two of her fingers.

She told me: "If the law was changed it would feed into society's fear that being very disabled like me is a state worse than death.

"We already have to fight to live; a right to die would be a huge and frightening burden."

But Sarah Wootton from Dignity in Dying said the government had "ignored the pleas of terminally ill people" and said "Britain was being left behind".

Canada, California and Colorado all introduced assisted dying in 2016 and later this year the government in Victoria, Australia, plans to introduce legislation to allow doctors to help the terminally ill to die.

Meanwhile, in Shropshire, Noel Conway says he may not be well enough to travel to London for his High Court case and he realises it may not be resolved until after his death.

But he said: "Other countries have shown that assisted dying can work - it's been happening in Oregon for 20 years. I want to ensure that terminally ill people like me don't have to suffer, and have a choice about their death."

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Still searching for justice – 11th anniversary of Trinco 5 killings

02 Jan  2017

On this day 11 years ago, five Tamil students were summarily executed by Sri Lanka's Special Task Force, whilst they spent an afternoon on the beach in Trincomalee.

To date no one has been brought to justice for the murder.

This report was compiled with testimonies collected by Together Against Genocide (see here), UTHR-J (see here) and Amnesty International (see here and here).

Still searching for justice.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Contemptuously rejecting the path cut by venal politicians

• Sunday, January 08, 2017

From the reports of the Disappearances Commission in the 1990’s to the findings of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (2011) to the most recent report of the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation (2017), it has been a long and undeniably hopeless ride for Sri Lanka’s victims.

Throughout that process, which has also been littered by many other commission reports of greater or lesser importance, the overriding message was simple; heed the call of Sri Lanka’s people from all four corners of the country asking for justice and for recognition of the atrocities that they have suffered as human beings.

Instruments for political purposes

But the single greatest national tragedy is that without exception, all these efforts (regardless of the genuineness or otherwise of the individuals contributing therein) have been cynically premised from the very start itself to serve as instruments for political purposes, to be discarded when these purposes have been served.

More than twenty years ago, Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Disappearances Commissions were perhaps the most hopeful initiatives, ushered in with goodwill in the dawn of a new era of equity, equality and constitutional governance that was promised. Alas, the crippling lack of an enlightened political leadership soon put paid to that dream. Adding insult to injury, the Commissions themselves were sought to be used as political instruments to settle scores with enemies of the previous regime.

In the final result, their reports prepared under Presidential Warrant were not even published in full. Parts of the findings even today remain blocked to public scrutiny, unsurprisingly so since they name perpetrators in uniform and in positions of political power, some of whom are very much still in public life.

The downward spiral of the judiciary

The Kumaratunga Presidency was marked not only by the grievous failure of the Disappearances Commissions but also by the crippling politicization of Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court which commended its downward spiral during that time, even as the country’s senior public intellectuals in law remained complicit and silent.

Let no one mistake the matter; it is precisely as a result of that degeneration that Sri Lanka’s legal systems attracted scrutiny, leading the country to ultimately confront the current call for international justice. It was a shameful indictment on a justice institution which counts among the oldest in South Asia and once ranked distinguished jurists among its members.

The next singular marker on this list, the LLRC, was conceived by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa to get the pesky international community calling for accountability in respect of atrocities committed in the Wanni during the closing days of the ethnic conflict, off his back. Many of the LLRC’s excellent recommendations were disregarded in the same cavalier manner as its predecessors.

Time for pleasantries over

And brought into being on a similar rationale as the LLRC, (in other words, to divert international pressure plainly and simply), the Unity Government’s Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation which came out with its report this week, is now being contemptuously attacked by prominent Ministers. It seems, and unequivocally so, that hypocritical pleasantries and the time for sheathing the sword is now over.

Certainly the coyness on the part of both President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to publicly endorse the effort, even if not agree with all the recommendations therein should not be seen as accidental. Clearly this was an initiative that was useful while it lasted to divert the attention of international actors. Now with the near advent of an isolationist and exceptionally maverick US President to the White House, that pressure is not expected to impact in quite the same way.

And confronted by ultra-nationalist forces under the Rajapaksa banner in the South, it does not need a remarkable cerebral effort to predict what will happen next. Barring the proverbial miracle, Sri Lanka’s political leadership, commonly referred to disingenuously as a Unity Government, though increasingly lacking the core elements of actual unity, will take the easy way out to indulge in the outrageous minimum of a few selected trials (if at all), while leaving graver system failures of justice unresolved.

No reason to expect outrage

There is little to prevent such an eventuality. By itself, there is faltering public ownership of the outcomes. Only the naïve would expect a storm of public outrage by an indifferent South which has, apart from selective consultations with selected actors, been largely ignored in both the transitional justice discussions and the constitutional reforms.

On its own part, the North has been rendered sullen if not resentful at the preferential and selective handling of transitional justice priorities. In any event, a stuttering Office of Missing Persons and a Victims and Witnesses Protection Authority which includes members accused with good reason of terrorizing witnesses during the Rajapaksa years are scarce factors for compelling confidence.

And to cap it all, the Government still has not reneged on its astonishing proposal of a draconian counter-terror law that will catch up citizens in its iron grip. So it may be fairly said that the year has begun un-propitiously for those yearning for change.

Need for a commonsensical counter-balance

But labeling every discussion with an ethnic tag, as some hardliners in the North (and their diaspora supporters) prefer to, only aggravates the matter. The ethnic dimension in ‘hard cases’ has been borne out in several studies co-authored by this columnist, including the more frequently cited ‘The Judicial Mind in Sri Lanka’ (2014) as well as ‘Habeas Corpus in Sri Lanka; Theory and Practice of the Great Writ in Extraordinary Times’ (2010). That does not need to be particularly reiterated.

Yet confining the country’s post-war crisis of justice to an ethnic dimension alone is unforgivably blinkered. The New Year must surely see deep reflections on the need for justice by Sri Lanka’s grass roots communities. These must provide a commonsensical counter-balance to tired rhetoric in conference halls and funded donor projects as well as confound utopian dreams of nationalistic hardliners.

For most of the past two years, the ‘transitional justice’ industry which flourishes in Colombo, in conjunction with a constitutional reform process which is looking as much a pipe dream as everything else, has successfully diverted attention away from pressing systemic reforms. That has to change. Without that collective intervention, we will only tread the same hopeless path, viciously cut by venal politicians over and over again.