Facebook Germany says it will start tackling fake news in weeks

A picture shows the Facebook logo on a beach chair at the Facebook office in Berlin, Germany, August 29, 2016. REUTERS/Stefanie Loos/Files

Sun Jan 15, 2017

Facebook said on Sunday it would update its social media platforms in Germany within weeks to reduce the dissemination of fake news.

"Last month we announced measures to tackle the challenge of fake news on Facebook," the U.S. technology company's German-language newsroom said.

"We will put these updates in place in Germany in the coming weeks."

German Justice Minister Heiko Mass has repeatedly called on Facebook to respect laws against defamation in Germany that are stricter than those in the United States.

Other government officials have expressed concern that fake news and "hate speech" on the internet could influence a parliamentary election in September in which chancellor Angela Merkel will seek a fourth term in office.

The Facebook note said the company would make it easier to report items suspected to be fake news and work with external fact-checking organisations.

One of those, German-based Correctiv, has signed the U.S. Poynter International Fact-Checking Code of Principles, it said. Facebook would require others it enlisted to do the same.

Warning signs would be attached to reports identified as noncredible, and the reasons for the decision given.

Facebook would also make it impossible for spammers to forge the websites of reputable news agencies, it said.

Germany has seen an increase in online hate speech following an influx of more than a million migrants.

(Reporting by Vera Eckert; editing by Andrew Roche)

With days left in office, President Obama ushers in dozens of policies. But will they stay seated?

In the final days before President Obama leaves office, administration officials are rushing to complete dozens of tasks, with little assurance that any of them will be retained in the Trump administration. (Michael Reynolds/EPA)

By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis January 14 at 6:52 PM

In the past week, the Obama administration overturned a decades­-old policy toward Cuban immigrants, forged two major agreements to address racial bias in big-city police departments and approved an unexpected cut in mortgage insurance premiums for hundreds of thousands of low-income and first-time home buyers.

Officials even made time, after years of lobbying, to add the rusty patched bumble bee to the list of endangered species.

In the final days before President Obama leaves office, administration officials are rushing to complete dozens of tasks that will affect millions of lives and solidify the president’s imprint on history. But in many cases, their permanence is uncertain, and President-elect Donald Trump is already pledging to undo some of them after taking office.

“He is clearly using executive power aggressively and trying to do as much as possible in his final days,” Princeton University history and public affairs professor Julian Zelizer said in an email. “It is clear that a president who was once reluctant to use the power of his own office has changed his heart, especially now that he sees a radically conservative Congress and Republican president-elect are getting ready to dismantle much of what he has done.”

On Thursday alone, the administration designated three new national monuments and expanded another two in sites including a forest in the Pacific Northwest and a school for freed slaves in South Carolina; took away one of the special immigration privileges Cubans arriving in the United States without visas have enjoyed for 50 years; announced sanctions designations against 18 senior Syrian officials for their role in the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon in 2014 and 2015; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Vice President Biden; and accused Fiat Chrysler of cheating on national emission standards for some of its diesel trucks.

President Obama is ending a policy that allows Cubans who entered the U.S. without a visa to pursue residency after one year. (The Washington Post)

[Obama beats FDR, creating and expanding most national monuments ever]

For weeks, congressional Republicans and members of the Trump transition team have questioned why the White House is pressing ahead given that the GOP will control both the executive and legislative branch for at least the next two years.

On Dec. 5, 23 Republican senators wrote Obama a letter asking that his administration “cease issuing new, nonemergency rules and regulations given the recent election results of November 8.”

“It is our job now to determine the right balance between regulation and free market principles and make sure that our federal government no longer stands between Americans and financial success,” they wrote.

Many departments have also accelerated hiring in recent weeks, hoping to bring on as many employees as possible in case Trump proceeds with a planned freeze for federal employees. On Tuesday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) wrote the heads of 18 agencies, asking them to provide details on their current hiring practices.

Both Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence have vowed to reverse some of Obama’s key policies as soon as they take office. But it will be nearly impossible to erase all of them in the months and years ahead, and to achieve the maximum impact, Trump will have to accept new limits on his own power.

The Obama administration’s race toward the finish line isn’t completely out of the ordinary. Last-minute regulatory actions also spiked in 2008 and in 2000, said Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the conservative American Action Forum, which has long been tracking White House regulations.

But since Oct. 1, Obama has finalized more economically significant rules — ones with an estimated economic impact of at least $100 million — than Bill Clinton did in his final four months as president, according to Daniel Pérez, a policy analyst at the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University.

“We find routinely that politics influences things, and this is just a manifestation of it,” Batkins said. “We see how politics can bend these levers of policy.”

More broadly, Obama has finalized at least 571 major rules while in office, nearly 63 percent more than George W. Bush did during his two terms. And half of the major rules the White House Office of Management and Budget reviewed during the first five-and-a-half years of the administration had an economic impact of at least $1 billion, Pérez said.

[Obama to top aides: ‘What are we doing on bees?’’]

The tempo of federal regulation can work both ways, Batkins noted. While the Obama administration has been feverishly publishing new regulations in the wake of November’s election, the same White House wasn’t so eager to produce new regulations in the run-up to Obama’s reelection in 2012. That October, by Batkins’s count, just four rules came out of the White House.

The president and his aides have been unapologetic about the burst of new policies in recent weeks.

“The administration has made a concerted effort to complete important work that was started months or even years ago,” said White House spokesman Patrick Rodenbush in an email, adding that when it comes to its most recent rules, “we have followed the same rigorous practices and principles used to develop and review regulations that have been upheld throughout the entirety of this administration and previous administrations.”

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who did not brief members of Trump’s transition team before announcing Monday that the Federal Housing Authority would cut interest rates, told reporters that he had “no reason to believe this will be scaled back,” adding that the change “offers a good benefit to hard-working American families out there at a time when interest rates might well continue to go up.”

But Ben Carson, whom Trump nominated to succeed Castro, told lawmakers Thursday he was “surprised to see something of this nature being done on the way out the door, which of course has a profound effect.”

“Certainly, if confirmed, I’m going to work with the FHA administrator and other experts to examine that policy,” Carson said.

The White House’s sense of urgency is probably well founded, given Trump’s commitment to try to roll back the policies of the Obama era. And Obama took much the same approach after assuming office in 2009, essentially halting former president George W. Bush’s pending regulations.

In a letter on Jan. 20, 2009, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel wrote to the heads of every federal agency, ordering them to halt any regulations that had yet to be published in the Federal Register and to consider a 60-day extension of the effective date of regulations that had not yet taken effect.

“It is important that President Obama’s appointees and designees have the opportunity to approve and review any new or pending regulations,” Emanuel wrote at the time.

Such an approach today would effectively freeze an array of Obama policies, including five new Energy Department efficiency standards issued Dec. 28 affecting portable air conditioners, swimming pool pumps, walk-in coolers and freezers, commercial boilers and uninterruptible power supplies. The agency estimates the standards will save U.S. consumers between $15 billion and $35 billion over time, but only one of them is published in the Federal Register so far.

Congressional Republicans are hoping to go further, having passed legislation Jan. 4 that would allow lawmakers to overturn any rule finalized in the last 60 legislative days of Obama’s tenure in a single vote, rather than taking them up individually. The White House has pledged to veto the bill, called the Midnight Rule Relief Act, but given that the Senate is not slated to take it up until after Inauguration Day, it could ultimately come to Trump’s desk for his signature.

Still, it is unclear whether the new president will sign it. Pérez noted that the 1996 Congressional Review Act, which is what allows Congress to reverse a rule within 60 legislative days of its enactment, prohibits agencies from issuing a “substantially similar” rule once it is overturned.

“The Trump administration may very well have different policy preferences for any given area of regulation,” he said in an email, “but disapproval via the [Congressional Review Act] would limit the Executive’s power to implement its own regulatory agenda for any given issue-area.”

On Friday, the Obama administration showed no signs of slowing down.

It filed a defense brief in a lawsuit brought by states over regulation of the nation’s rivers and streams, defied industry opposition by publishing a rule intended to keep first responders safer after a deadly 2013 fertilizer facility explosion in Texas, took steps to lift decades-old financial sanctions against Sudan and finalized regulations aimed at cracking down on the inhumane treatment of show horses.

But even as Obama was churning out his final actions, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill were taking a first step toward repealing the president’s signature health care law, starting to erase his legacy even before his time in office ends.

Donald Trump and the Anti-Vaxxer Conspiracy Theorists

BY LAURIE GARRETT-JANUARY 11, 2017

Things are getting down and dirty now. And millions of lives are at stake. I cannot possibly state strongly enough how dangerous it is that President-elect Donald Trump has embraced the notion that vaccination is the cause of autism.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a celebrated vaccine skeptic, met with Trump on Jan. 10. Speaking to reporters outside Trump Tower in Manhattan after the meeting, Kennedy said he will chair a commission “on vaccine safety and scientific integrity” at Trump’s request, because, “we ought to be debating the science.”

(One news organization, the Guardian, later reported that the Trump team denies Kennedy will lead such a commission, but offered no other explanation for why the environmentalist was summoned to meet with the president-elect.)

Kennedy has long held the position that vaccines are dangerous, and that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine administered to all American children is a likely cause of autism.Like any good conspiracy theorist, Trump has long questioned the wisdom of vaccines. On Oct. 22, 2012, Trump tweeted that vaccines constitute “doctor-inflicted autism.”

In August 2016, Trump met with the disgraced ex-physician, Andrew Wakefield, who originated the claim. Formerly a gastroenterologist, Wakefield conducted experiments on children that, he claimed, proved they acquired autism from MMR immunization. The research was published in the British medical journal Lancet in 1998 but was retracted in 2010 by the journal, which stated: “[I]t has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were ‘consecutively referred’ and that investigations were ‘approved’ by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.”

Wakefield’s license to practice medicine in the United Kingdom was stripped by the country’s General Medical Council after three years of investigations, having found him guilty of “serious misconduct.” The British Medical Journal went even further, denouncing Wakefield’s work as “fraudulent.” Before the investigation was completed, Wakefield relocated to Austin, Texas, where he continues to lead vaccine opposition today.

Wakefield produced a documentary, Vaxxed, in which he defends his work and claims to be the victim of a vast conspiracy. His defenders adhere to the conspiracy idea, insisting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the entire global vaccine industry, the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health, the pharmaceutical industry, and all the major science and medical journals in the world are joined in the mission of inflicting autism through vaccines.

For years, pediatrician Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania, has served as a punching bag for Wakefield’s supporters, as he has tirelessly addressed Wakefield’s claims using every medium to reach parents and dissuade them from vaccine hesitancy. At the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Heidi Larson runs a project to track the Wakefield effect and understand why parents in rich countries are declining immunizations. Since 2007, of vaccine-preventable diseases worldwide, noting a striking shift over time in measles, pertussis, rubella, and mumps — all surfacing more often in wealthy North America and Europe and less frequently in poorer parts of the world in the absence of extraordinary disruptions, such as wars, refugee crises, and natural disasters.

So let’s get a few things straight, Mr. Trump.

Yes, there has been an increase in autism diagnoses in parts of Europe, the United States, and Canada — but this is largely because psychiatric associations have widened the definition of the disorder, now describing autism as a spectrum that ranges from the extreme of complete nonfunctionality all the way to socially challenged genius, or Asperger’s syndrome. Some additional rise in rates may not be fully explained by the expanded diagnostic definition: It is likely that parent and physician awareness, coupled with lowered stigma, has brought more cases to light. Boys are at least five times more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder than girls, yet the genders are equally likely to be vaccinated.

No, I do not think Trump’s primary motivation for raising autism concerns is his son Barron. There has been considerable controversy regarding 10-year-old Barron’s public behavior and allegations that he is autistic: Such discourse has no place in public health. It is stigmatizing, both by pointing a finger at a child and by de facto insinuating that people who are on the autism spectrum deserve to be singled out.

And, yes, Mr. Trump, back in the day when you and I were children and were vaccinated — thankfully — to prevent us from getting measles, rubella, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, and other awful diseases, a mercury-based preservative was used to keep vaccines from going bad on doctors’ shelves. Kennedy claims the mercury is still used as a preservative and causes brain damage. But the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Food and Drug Administration removed Thimerosal, the preservative in question, from vaccines and it has not been used in MMR since 1999. The terrific science writer Seth Mnookin documented all of this in his book The Panic Virus. 

Given Trump’s interest in Russia, he might be interested to know that the first claims of an association among vaccines, mercury, and child neurological health problems were raised in the early 1980s by Soviet virologist Galena Petrovna Chervonskaya and trumpeted in the Communist Party’s Komsomolskaya Pravda. Vaccination rates fell so low following the report that Soviet soldiers returning from war in Afghanistan, where diphtheria was still common, unwittingly spawned an epidemic that swept the Soviet Union, causing the worst outbreak since World War II. Some 200,000 unvaccinated children contracted diphtheria, which killed roughly 2 to 3 percent of those infected, varying by region.

Vaccines save lives. Back in 1970, when measles was the No. 1 cause of death for African children under 5, most of the continent’s nations had child mortality rates around 400 per 1,000 live births, meaning nearly half the toddlers wouldn’t survive to celebrate their fifth birthday. I bitterly recall walking through pediatric wards in northern Tanzania in 1983, filled to capacity with tiny children, covered in measles rash, fighting for their lives.

Today that horror has plummeted, thanks to UNICEF, GAVI, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO, and hundreds of nongovernmental organizations around the world that have brought the power of immunization to the poorest and most remote parts of the planet. It’s been an enormous fight, getting more manufacturers on board, bringing vaccine prices down, figuring out how to keep them cold and safe during weeks of transport across challenging terrain, getting ample supplies of sterile syringes, and training tens of thousands of volunteer health care workers in injection techniques. Many times over the years, it has seemed as if some force would overwhelm the effort, as money-raising stumbled or vaccine-makers, tired of all the lawsuits and hassles, threatened to cease manufacture. But since 2000, measles vaccination has spared 17.1 million children’s lives. If worldwide contributions to vaccine efforts stay on course, the combined impact of all immunizations from 2011 to 2020 will be 23.3 million lives saved, most of them babies.

Trump should know that the most virulent anti-vaccine force on Earth is the Taliban, which has executed, bombed, kidnapped, and maimed about 10 times more polio vaccinators in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2005 than there are children who have contracted polio. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has blocked immunizers and spawned outbreaks of polio and measles. Thanks to the Syrian war and massive disruptions of family lives across the Middle East, polio has returned, measles has erupted, and millions of dollars’ worth of special vaccination campaigns are underway in refugee camps and war-torn parts of Syria and Yemen.

Perhaps these lives in far-off places aren’t Trump’s concern: As he’s said, American lives come first. But consider that, as of Jan. 10, the Arkansas Department of Health is tracking 2,421 cases of children with mumps, arising from parental refusal to vaccinate, and is telling parents that the “MMR vaccine is safe and effective.” And Arkansas is not alone: Mumps outbreaks are cropping up all over the USA, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Measles caseloads are also increasing, and more than half are linked to parents’ refusal to vaccinate. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is soaring across America — another disease prevented with proper vaccination.

Trump soon will have to deal with another disease called Zika: We don’t yet have a vaccine for that one. Zika causes a horrible range of birth defects, from hearing loss to skull and brain malformation, all the way to stillbirth and post-birth death. It is often likened to another virus, rubella or German measles, which reached epidemic proportions in the United States in 1964. Like Zika, rubella was most dangerous for fetuses, and most babies born deaf or blind in 1963-1965 were victims of the German measles epidemic: 20,000 babies were born in this country with rubella congenital syndrome. In April 2015, WHO declared rubella eradicated from the Americas, thanks to MMR vaccination. I’m sure Trump doesn’t want to be responsible for its return.

Some wealthy Americans have reasoned that measles, mumps, diphtheria, rubella, rotavirus — these and other vaccine-preventable diseases are really only threats to poor kids, living in slums or developing countries. Vaccine-refusal rates are highest in American communities of wealth, such as Marin County, California. Those school districts are most likely to have elected boards of education that offer families opportunities to opt out of immunization, while still enrolling their youngsters to sit with other children in the classroom. For their children, the logic holds, raised in clean environs on healthy diets and fresh air, those bacteria and viruses pose no risk. They have the luxury of focusing on unproven challenges posed by vaccination, either due to the products’ alleged contamination or to their babies’ inability to tolerate so many immunizing doses in such a narrow time window. Trump appears to share these views.

They are, of course, wrong. Unimmunized children are already growing up, going to college, and falling victim to whooping cough, measles, mumps, and other microbes lurking in their dormitories, gyms, and elsewhere. When they take their well-financed school-year abroad, lack of full immunization will put them at risk for infections. And as for the pacing of the immunization schedule, I can only ask whether they have spent any time watching their infants’ behaviors. In a single day’s play crawling on the floor, chewing on Fido’s tail, stuffing toys shared with other toddlers into their mouths, fighting over food with siblings, or licking the cat’s milk dish, they are bringing their environs into their bodies, exposing their immune systems to doses of antigens millions of times larger than are contained in all of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommended vaccine doses, combined.

Babies have two jobs: 1) Absorb noise, sights, and smells to program their brains and learn language. 2) Slobber over everything in sight to train their immune systems to recognize the difference between what’s OK and what constitutes danger. Failure to properly build up immune defenses can lead either to an inability to fight off even mild infections or the reverse — allergies and asthmatic responses to routine elements of life. All vaccines do is help nudge that immune system programming along.

Trump was vaccinated. I was vaccinated. No doubt you were vaccinated. And we are all better for it. I can’t imagine traveling without proper yellow fever immunizations, and as soon as it was available I lined up for the hepatitis B vaccine. I wish the chickenpox vaccine had existed when I was a baby, so I wouldn’t have nearly died of the disease as an infant and suffered a horribly painful bout of shingles when I was 30, thanks to the latent virus awakening and noshing on my spinal cord.

Taking any steps that lend credence to the anti-vaxers’ conspiratorial fears will only prompt more parents to resist giving their children the same lifesaving treatments as were given to them, decades ago. Shame on anybody who would dream of putting children’s lives at risk, all over the world, for the sake of political expediency or the fears of rich white people.

Photo credit: THIERRY ZOCCOLAN/AFP/Getty Images

Urine test reveals what you really eat

By James Gallagher-13 January 2017

A urine test that can reveal how healthy your meals are has been developed by UK scientists.

They think it could be used to improve nutritional advice or in weight loss because people are notoriously bad at recording their own eating habits.

The test, detailed in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, detects chemicals made as food is processed by the body.

The research team believe it could be widely available within two years.

The urine samples are analysed to determine the structure of the chemicals floating around in it using a technique called a proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

This gives clues to both recent meals and long term dietary habits.

Gut health

The results of your body processing fruit, vegetables, fish and different types of meat leave a distinct signature in the urine.

Clues to the state of the body's metabolism and gut health can also be detected by investigating the chemicals in it.

The test was developed by a collaboration between Imperial College London, Newcastle University and Aberystwyth University.

Dr Isabel Garcia-Perez, one of the researchers at Imperial, said: "This will eventually provide a tool for personalised dietary monitoring to help maintain a healthy lifestyle.

"We're not at the stage yet where the test can tell us a person ate 15 chips yesterday and two sausages, but it's on the way."

Could urine be more accurate than food diaries?

In trials, around 60% of people either under or over report what they are eating.

Prof Gary Frost, another scientist at Imperial, said this could be the first independent test of what people munch on at home.

He told the BBC News website: "You can really tell whether someone's been following a healthy diet or not.

"The bigger you are the more likely you are to under-report what you eat.

"People find it difficult to open up to what types of foods they eat at home, which is a major problem."

The researchers believe the test results could help combat people's obesity or risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes.

Prof Frost said: "If someone is very big and their profile says they're eating lots of energy dense foods like meat, then you can try to change that profile and then test them again later.

"It remains to be seen, but people might respond better to that and there is a desperate need for tools to help people change their diet."

He says doing the test on large numbers of people would build up a picture of what the nation was really eating, which could be used to design better public health campaigns.

The scientists were able to spot the difference between healthy and unhealthy diets after tests on 19 people who spent days eating a carefully controlled set of meals.

Four diets of varying degrees of healthiness were given to the patients and their urine was sampled morning, noon and night.

Dr Des Walsh, from the UK Medical Research Council, commented: "Though this research is still in its early stages, it's grappling with essential methods in food and diet studies where advances are really needed.

"Measuring what we eat and drink more accurately will widen the benefits of nutrition research, developing better evidence-based interventions to improve an individual's health and reduce obesity."

Follow James on Twitter.

CIVIL SOCIETY TO UNHRC: SRI LANKA HASN’T MAKE DEMONSTRABLE PROGRESS IN TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

Image credit: SCRM.

14/01/2017

Sending a singed letter to the members States of the United Nations Human Rights Council leading civil society members and some organisation says that , the Government is yet to make demonstrable progress in establishing transitional justice mechanisms.

The full letter follows:

CIVIL SOCIETY TO UNHRC.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Whither the Constitution?

Good subcommittee reports; political omens not so good

President at Asgiriya Temple with Ven. Warakagoda Dhamasiddi Gnanarathana Thero

by Kumar David-January 14, 2017, 7:22 pm 

The good news is that the six subcommittees (Fundamental Rights, Judiciary, Finance, Law & Order, Public Service and on Centre-Periphery Relations) have submitted their reports; all good work and if the exercise keeps on track this constitution could be much better than its predecessors of 1972 and 1978. It is not often that one has an opportunity to congratulate our MP’s; so well done! This piece deals with the main points; Dr Jayampathy Wickremeratne has a 70 page softcopy tabular comparison of the existing and proposed versions.

Whither the Constitution.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Raviraj verdict erroneous! Re trial -two appeals; State has acted against itself ! International community shocked..!

By Wimal Dheerasekera

(Lanka-e-News -13.Jan.2017, 11.45PM)   The bizarre  verdict delivered after hearing the trial  until late in the night for the first time in Sri Lanka’s judicial history on the Raviraj murder case had been challenged on the grounds the court decision is absolutely faulty and flawed . Therefore two appeals were filed in the appeal court day before yesterday (11) challenging the earlier decision  and requesting a review on the decision  from the very beginning.

One appeal was filed by the Attorney General (AG) , and the other was by lawyer Sumenthiran on behalf of the aggrieved party .

Answering queries  in this regard , Sumenthiran said , this case being heard before a jury panel itself was wrong because one of the charges was filed under the prevention of terrorism Act (PTA) , and a jury panel is not empowered to hear such cases filed under the PTA. When this case was being heard earlier , this objection was raised at the outset , but that was ignored , Sumenthiran pinpointed. 

Sumenthiran via the appeal is requesting a re trial  - with the parties to the case in  the earlier trial .

State against State –International community  dismayed and disturbed ….

Meanwhile ,according to reports reaching Lanka e news , even internationally the verdict in this case has  sent a  wave of  great shock and perturbation. This is because , while two  members of the security division who were implicated in this murder have become crown witnesses and have come forward to give evidence , and when of one them was even an eye witness in the twin  murder of Raviraj M.P. and his security police officer , it is a most perplexing question why were all the accused acquitted and exonerated of all charges?  Obviously, the next question therefore is , who is truly behind the murder of  Raviraj and his security officer ?

International observers  while saying   , what mainly influenced the verdict of the court  was the evidence given by the Director ,State intelligence service (SIS),  also   question ,how did the court accept the false evidence of SIS Director DIG Nilantha Jayawardena who is a State officer himself ,which was against the evidence of the other  State witnesses ?  This has baffled and shocked the foreign observers too. 

Nilantha Jayawardena an officer of the State going  against the State witnesses itself is to make a joke of the modes and methods of the  government, because the state officer should be appearing against the criminals ( otherwise it implies the state  itself is acting on behalf of the criminals) and not on their behalf . While the  government  is expected to take action against the criminals , in this    instance Nilantha the State officer appeared on behalf of the accused (criminals)  instead of the state witnesses.

Nilantha’s  mendacity  came to light when he said he does not know Abeyratne , an intelligence division officer under him  who was implicated in the crime , but  later became a state witness,  despite   the fact Nilantha was in the same intelligence division for a long time.

When Nilantha said he could not identify Abeyratne , Rohan Abeysuriya representing the A.G.’s department in his cross examination  asked from Nilantha in court , whether he does not know Abeyratne’s wife who is still working under him  in the Intelligence division ?.

When  Nilantha could not give an excuse , the crown counsel inquired in open court  , whether it is possible to accept Nilantha’s answer that he does not know Abeyratne who is the husband of  the lady  officer , and also working under him in his own division?  The foreign observers  have therefore rightly  questioned whether it   didn’t  become clear from all these  that Nilantha was lying before court ? and  cited this as an example to substantiate their view that  this case was not impartially conducted. 

Meanwhile Nilantha  related a different story among his friends…

He was summoned to give evidence in court without providing  him enough time. The court summons  was delivered by hand by the  CID one evening asking him to be present in court  the following morning , he had revealed.

Even the delivery of notice is questionable , for a court must deliver a summons through a courts officer , and not through the CID that is appearing on behalf of the complainant. Unbelievably , the judge for inscrutable reasons ordered that the  summons be handed over to the CID.

Nilantha had also disclosed because he was not given adequate time by the court , he could not seek AG’s  advice. But this statement of his is untenable since ,when a State witness appears in court to give evidence on behalf of the state , he must undoubtedly have secured AG’s advice under the law.  

Hence , Nilantha  had the opportunity to ask for another date to give evidence after citing the reason that the summons was served on him only the previous day. Nilantha did not do that.  Hence he has committed perjury  and his statement  before court based on the  ground  that he did not receive A.G.’s advice is unacceptable under any circumstances. In addition, Nilantha has told his friends that Abeyratne the state witness is an ‘Ass’. He was once interdicted over charges of a  laptop robbery . He also had an illicit affair  with the wife of Ilampari , an LTTE leader. Hence Nilantha has told his friends , such an officer should not have been made a State witness.

In fact these reasons adduced by him  are in fact going against Nilantha because his statement in court that he does not know Abeyratne  has been proved false thereby.  Besides , his  claim that Abeyratne is an Ass and should not have been made a crown witness is most ridiculous because one who becomes a crown witness in every case is such an individual who is associated with the  crime , that is  ,in anticipation of a pardon. Therefore , a crown witness cannot ever be somebody otherwise than an “Ass’ to borrow Nilantha’s word.  It is  because of this ,  to commit such crimes , ‘gentlemen’ in the Intelligence division are not deployed. Such gentlemen irrespective of who instructs what do not  indulge in unlawful and murderous  activities. 

If anybody is committing murders on illegal orders or for money or for perks , he /she must be an ass of the intelligence division naturally .  The reasons cited by Nilantha in his defense only go to prove all the more that he has a soft spot for criminals who are in the intelligence division. 

The international community is  most perturbed and agitated pertaining to the Raviraj murder  owing to the fear they now harbor  that even  in connection with all the high profile murders of Lasantha Wickremetunge; Thajudeen ; Prageeth Ekneliyagoda ;  Pararajasingham M.P.;  and killing of five children in the East after committing  extortion  , during the Rajapkse regime , this same illegal procedures may be followed during the trials in these cases which are pending  ,and the same villainies may be resorted to . 

It is the apprehension  of the international community that even in the future cases to be heard , Nilantha Jayawardena can be a pernicious influence. He could be giving evidence against the state witnesses , and can be used as a tool towards that end to make a mockery of justice.  One more reason for this belief is , the intelligence service under Nilantha Jayawardena had not lifted a finger to assist the CID in its investigations so far .

In the circumstances , it is the duty of  the present  government to take a decision in regard to government officers appearing on behalf of the State because , in case the international community forms the opinion that this government is unable to sustain and maintain the sovereignty of the law , this government could lose its international image and  stature much  faster than even the corrupt , crooked and finally despised and   discarded Rajapakse regime , with the result the present rulers can possibly  be shunted and marginalized by the international community beyond  measure.

Connected report …

By Wimal Dheerasekera 

Translated by Jeff

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by     (2017-01-14 00:06:54)

FOREIGN JUDGES: SRI LANKA’S DILEMMA

14/01/2017

The question remains as to how Sri Lanka is going to justify its rejection of foreign participation in the accountability process after co-sponsoring the UNHRC resolution

The question about the involvement of foreign judges in the mechanism to investigate the allegations of Human Rights violations during the last phase of the war between the security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) has come to the fore again.

After a few stories about the comments by politicians in the media, the issue made headlines when the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms handed over its report to former President and the Chairperson of the Office of the National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR), Chandrika Kumaratunga on January 5.

In spite the Task Force having discussed many issues, only its recommendation on the involvement of foreign judges in the accountability mechanism had been highlighted by the media.

However, reminding us of the fate of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) – both appointed by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the recommendation was rejected by the very government that appointed the Task Force.

The LLRC recommended the creation of a domestic mechanism to investigate the alleged Human Rights violations was rejected by the Rajapaksa government leading to the intervention by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

The same fate had befallen on the APRC when it reportedly recommended a set of proposals on the devolution of power. Besides, the APRC report never saw the light of day.

Soon after the report prepared by the Task Force headed by Manouri Muttettuwegama was handed over to Kumaratunga, so many Ministers rushed to reject the recommendation for the involvement of foreign judges.

Cabinet Spokesmen, Ministers Rajitha Senaratne and Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena told journalists that President Maithripala Sirisena had already rejected the international involvement.

Senaratne further stated that the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner Prince ZeidRa’ad Al Hussein had accepted the Sri Lankan position during his visit to the island in February last year.

Buddha Sasana and Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe went on to reject not only the recommendations but also the Task Force as well. He said he did not have confidence in the Task Force.

However, as if to counter the remarks made by Senaratne on the UN Human Rights chief, the UNHRC in its twitter account on the same day said “Zeid has always urged the creation of a hybrid court in Sri Lanka,” while giving a link to a news item in the UNHRC website, which in turn had given another link to the report Al Hussein had presented to the Human Rights council in 2015, to prove what it said “his unchanged position”

The Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms formed by the Cabinet on December 18, 2015 and headed by Mano Tittawella and the Task Force under it, comes under the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Secretariat is tasked with the design and implementation of Sri Lanka’s reconciliation mechanisms. Another purpose of the Secretariat and the Task Force seem to be showcasing to the world the efforts by the new government towards reconciliation among various communities.

Although many members of the Task Force are associated with NGOs it is not an entity totally outside the State machinery.

Had the government leaders such as the President and the Prime Minister been against the foreign involvement in the accountability process throughout the period since they came to power, there wouldn’t be anything to discuss at this juncture, when the Ministers reject the foreign judges on behalf of the government.

However, it was puzzling as to what the future relationship between the international community and Sri Lanka would be, when the latter rejected one of its own commitments to the former.

The relationship between the international community and the Sri Lankan government had been soured during President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s tenure as the government went back on its words on the accountability issue.

Rajapaksa had personally given an assurance to UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon a week after the end of the war that the accountability issue would be addressed.

Despite the LLRC report being the only Sri Lankan commission report that the international community had accepted, though with reservations, the Rajapaksa government did not take follow up actions with its recommendations. This backtracking game resulted in three resolutions against the Sri Lankan government adopted in the UNHRC and an international investigation into the war crimes allegedly committed by the security forces and the LTTE.

President Sirisena’s government attempted to show the world that it was different from the previous regime in respect of Human Rights and democracy.

And Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera called on the world to not judge the new government by the ‘broken promises, experiences and u-turns of the past” during the UNHRC session in September 2015.

In fact the government took several measures towards reconciliation including the appointment of civilian Governors to the Northern and Eastern Provinces as demanded by the Tamil political parties, removal of ban on Tamil diaspora organisations and the lifting of the blocking of certain websites including the Tamilnet run by the LTTE.

In spite of the growing cordial relationship between the Sri Lankan government and the UNHRC the UN Human Rights Chief on September 16, 2015, released a report on Human Rights abuses by Sri Lankan government forces and the LTTE during Sri Lanka’s civil war, while calling for the establishment of a special hybrid court “integrating international judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators.”

However, after discussions between the Sri Lankan and the US officials, the US initiated resolution adopted at the UNHRC called on the “participation of Commonwealth and other foreign judges, defence lawyers and authorized prosecutors and investigators in a ‘Sri Lankan’ judicial mechanism.”

It did not call for a hybrid court.

With this agreement Sri Lankan authorities who co-sponsored the resolution argued that investigation against selected security forces personnel would clear the name of those forces of human rights violations.

However, President Sirisena dropped a bombshell in January 2016 during an interview with BBC by saying he did not agree with the foreign participation in the accountability process. Until then no Ministers protested against the foreign judges.

Two weeks after this interview was published Zeid Al-Hussein visited Sri Lanka during which he also said that “Though the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) makes a recommendation on the judicial process into alleged war crimes or on the involvement of foreign judges, it was the sovereign right of Sri Lanka to decide.”

This was what Minister Senaratne had referred to recently.

Again in June last year the Human Rights Chief had apparently gone back to his original position and said in a report on Sri Lanka that “The High Commissioner remains convinced that international participation in the accountability mechanisms would be a necessary guarantee for the independence and impartiality of the process in the eyes of victims, as Sri Lanka’s judicial institutions currently lack the credibility needed to gain their trust.”

Hence, it now seems that many Sri Lankans, including Minister Senaratne, had misunderstood what Al Hussein had said during his Sri Lanka visit.

Although both Sri Lankan leaders and the UN Human Rights chief had apparently been wavering between participation and non-participation of foreign judges, it is the UN version that would finally be counted.

Therefore, the question remains as to how Sri Lanka is going to justify its rejection of foreign participation in the accountability process after co-sponsoring the UNHRC resolution.

After all, Sri Lanka had appealed to the international community to “not judge the new government by the ‘broken promises, experiences and u-turns of the past.”

Daily Mirror