With NATO-Russia relations at their lowest point in decades, the two former Cold War adversaries are in a tense stand-off over missile defense. In recent years, Russia established a dense thicket of overlapping missile and missile defense systems with ranges that jut into NATO territory.
Those systems could hinder NATO’s access to the territory in which it operates — akin to a 21st century moat around a castle. In defense jargon, it’s a strategy known as anti-access/area denial, or A2/AD. And it’s a top worry for NATO commanders.
“The proliferation and the density of that kind of A2/AD environment is something that we’re going to have to take into account,” Gen. Frank Gorenc, the top U.S. Air Force commander in Europe, said of Russia’s missile build-up near Eastern Europe in an interview with the New York Times last year. “It is very serious,” he said.
To visualize the NATO-Russia missile defense stand-off, experts at the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) put together an interactive map showing what each side has in its arsenal — from missile defense to land-based and naval-based strike capabilities. Take a look here:
As the map shows, Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic coast sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, boasts one of Russia’s thickest A2/AD “bubbles.” Kaliningrad is a major thorn in the side of NATO as it bulks up the alliance’s military footprint on its eastern flank, said Thomas Karako, a missile defense expert with CSIS who created the interactive map. “When Air Force One flew [President Barack Obama] into Warsaw, it had to fly through Russia’s air defense bubble,” Karako told Foreign Policy, referring to Obama’s participation in the NATO summit in Poland in July 2016. “That illustrates just how deep Russia’s missiles can reach into NATO territory,” he said.
The map also conveys how vulnerable NATO sea and airports in the Baltic states are to Russia’s blanket of missile threats. Russia could cut the Baltic states off from the rest of NATO in a crisis scenario, U.S.
Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told FP in 2015. Those ports, a military lifeline for NATO reinforcements in the unlikely event of a Russian attack, aren’t very well defended, said Karako. “It’s a real concern.”
This week, the United States began the largest deployment of troops and tanks to Europe since the end of the Cold War, as part of its efforts to shore up deterrence against Russia. But with President-elect Donald Trump, a critic of NATO, set to take office on Jan. 20, some allies are question the reliability of American security commitments to Europe.
The veteran British journalist, who scooped the story of Hitler’s invasion of Poland on her third day on the job and later unmasked Soviet spy Kim Philby, has died at 105.
Any big journalistic scoop requires a combination of luck and hustle. It’s only natural that Clare Hollingworth had a lot of both when she scored one of the greatest scoops of the 20th century.
Hollingworth was born to a industrialist who took her to visit major historical battlefields as a girl. As a young woman, she showed a rebellious spark, breaking off an engagement and going to work for the League of Nations as a secretary. From there, she jumped to work for a British refugee organization that sent her to Poland after the Allies sanctioned Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland. Thanks to an old but still valid German visa she’d gotten for a ski vacation, she was able to enter Germany and shepherd refugees to Poland and then on to safety.
That work brought her a measure of fame—she arranged the evacuation of more than 3,500 Jews and dissidents, earning the moniker “the Scarlet Pimpernel,” after Baroness Orczy’s novel, according to Time—but she was abruptly sacked in July 1939, apparently because British intelligence felt she was granting visas to too many people who were either politically or ethnically “undesirable.” She returned to the U.K., got herself accredited by The Daily Telegraph, and went back to Poland.
Back in the field in August of that year, she borrowed a car from an ex-boyfriend in the British Foreign Service, surmising that the Union Jack on the vehicle would get her into Germany without trouble. She was right.
“The border guard was a bit surprised when they saw the Union flag flying on the car, but they let me in,” she told the Telegraph in 2011. “I stopped to buy aspirin and white wine and things you couldn’t get inside Poland. And then I was driving back along a valley and there was a hessian screen up so you couldn’t look down into the valley. Suddenly, there was a great gust of wind which blew the sacking from its moorings, and I looked into the valley and saw scores, if not hundreds, of tanks.”
She drove back to Poland and told her ex-boyfriend. He wired the government in London. Hollingworth, meanwhile, filed her dispatch to the Telegraph reporting Hitler’s invasion of Poland—breaking the news of the start of World War II. She was 27 years old and had been a working reporter for three days.
It would prove to be more than beginner’s luck. Hollingworth, who died Tuesday in Hong Kong at the age of 105, went on to rack up plenty of other journalistic exploits over the course of a long career. In 1942, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery barred female reporters from the front lines in Egypt, so Hollingworth got a credential from an American magazine, Time, so she could continue reporting. (Hollingworth didn’t have much regard for Clare Booth Luce, a journalist who married Time founder Henry Luce, nor for Martha Gellhorn, the swashbuckling war correspondent who was for a time married to Ernest Hemingway, regarding them both as prissy elitists, according to The Washington Post.)
In 1946, Hollingworth and her husband, a Times of London Middle East reporter, were 300 yards away when members if the Irgun, an Israeli right-wing paramilitary group, bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which was the offices of the British Mandatory government in Palestine, killing 91. In the 1950s, Hollingworth reported on the Algerian war of independence. She was present there in 1962, when Algerian fighters burst into an Algiers hotel to kidnap an Italian journalist. Finding him absent, they attempted to abscond with British reporter John Wallis instead, likely to execute him. Hollingworth—who stood a mighty 5-foot-3—promptly led a charge to take him back.
“Clare turned like Joan of Arc to the rest of us standing with our hands up—‘Come on!’ she said, ‘We're going, too! They won't shoot all the world's press!’” recalled journalist Tom Pocock. “So we all marched out and started climbing into the jeeps.” Wallis was let go. She also reported from Vietnam, India, and Pakistan, and was the first to interview Mohammad Reza Pahlavi when he became shah of Iran—and was among the last to interview him after he was deposed. She learned to fly and to jump out of planes.
But Hollingworth’s other monumental scoop came in 1963, when her acquaintance Kim Philby, a British intelligence agent who worked as a reporter as cover, didn’t show up for a dinner party in Beirut. Using port records, Hollingworth determined that Philby had boarded a Soviet ship bound for Odessa; Philby, a double agent for the Soviets, was defecting. She wrote the story, but her employer at the time, The Guardian, held it, concerned the account was too explosive. In typical style, Hollingworth waited until the editor holding the story was out and convinced his deputy to publish it.
Hollingworth went to Asia in the 1970s, covering Mao’s death and other stories in the region. She mostly lived in Hong Kong from the 1980s onward. She celebrated her birthday at the Foreign Correspondent Club there in October. As late as 2004, The Guardian reported that while Hollingworth did not have a formal job with the Telegraph, her final employer, she did not think of herself as retired and called the desk in London daily to check in—and had, until recently, made a habit of occasionally sleeping on the floor, just to make sure she wasn’t going soft.
When Hollingworth turned 100, her eyesight failing but her vigor unabated, she was asked what she would do if she were young.
“I should look through the papers and say, ‘Where’s the most dangerous place to go?’ because it always makes a good story,” she told the Telegraph. Nevertheless, she said: “I must admit that I enjoy being in a war... I’m not brave, I just enjoy it.”
If that statement was plainly ridiculous, Hollingworth could be forgiven one small liberty with the truth after a lifetime of unparalleled reporting.
A staff member adjusts a giant screen at the congress center where the annual meeting, World Economic Forum, will take place in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday Jan. 15, 2017. Business and world leaders are gathering for the annual meeting in Davos. Source: AP/Michel Euler
New estimates show that just eight men own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world.
The estimated US$426 billion worth of assets attributed to just a handful of men, including Bill Gates of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is equal in value to that owned by the poorest 3.6 billion people on the planet.
These figures have come to light in an Oxfam report released today to coincide with the opening of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
While world leaders come together to discuss global growth and development, Oxfam has used its most recent report to highlight the growing problem of rising economic inequality and the threat that is poses to global development.
“It is beyond grotesque,” Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB said. “This year’s snapshot of inequality is clearer, more accurate and more shocking than ever before.”
The report points out that, despite world leaders signing up to a global goal to reduce inequality, the gap between the rich and the rest continues to widen.
A general view shows the congress center of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland Jan 15, 2017. Pic: Reuters
And the figures are truly staggering.
Since 2015, the richest 1 percent has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet.
Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over US$2.1 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.
The incomes of the poorest 10 percent of people increased by less than $3 a year between 1988 and 2011, while the incomes of the richest 1 percent increased 182 times as much.
A FTSE-100 CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 people in working in garment factories in Bangladesh.
In the US, new research by economist Thomas Piketty shows that over the last 30 years the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50 percent has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1% have grown 300 percent.
In Vietnam, the country’s richest man earns more in a day than the poorest person earns in 10 years
Oxfam warns of the dangers of leaving these troubling trends unchecked.
The growing inequality is responsible for a number of deepening problems across the globe. It increases crime and insecurity in communities and undermines the efforts to reduce poverty, a movement that has seen success in recent decades with hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty.
As more people are forced to live in fear and with diminishing hope for the future, disillusionment takes hold and from this we see the rise of concerning phenomenon such as racism and nationalism.
The report points to Brexit and Donald Trump’s election victory as products of this disillusionment, listing wage stagnation, insecure jobs and the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots as reasons for the population’s lack of willingness to tolerate the status quo.
The situation in developing nations is also showing some troubling trends. Despite the progress on reducing poverty, one in nine people still go to bed hungry.
Oxfam’s early estimations of poverty have also been proven to be highly underestimated. Last year, Oxfam said the world’s 62 richest billionaires were as wealthy as half the world’s population. However, this number dropped to just eight men when information showed that poor people in China and India owned fewer assets than previously thought, making the bottom 50 percent even worse off and widening the gap between rich and poor further.
Farmers cut paddy in a field in Baruipur village, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Kolkata, India, Tuesday, April 26. Pic: AP.
Oxfam points out perceived causes of the deepening crisis. And places the blame squarely at the feet of big business and the super-rich.
Big corporations did well in 2016 with profits for some of the big hitters soaring, so much so in fact that the world’s ten biggest corporations together have revenue greater than that of the government revenue of 180 countries combined.
But we are seeing increasingly big business’s desire to work for the rich and a refusal to spread the benefits of economic growth to those that need it. By striving to turn profit and reward shareholders at any cost, many top companies are squeezing workers resulting in over working, wage stagnation and, in some cases, even a cut in wages.
The widespread occurrence of tax avoidance by some the world’s biggest business also came to light last year. It appears tax avoidance is purely business as usual for many of these corporations in their pursuit to maximise profit. But all of this comes at the cost of vital public services and economic growth for the most vulnerable in society.
The report also points to the control that big business wields in the corridors of power. With profits soaring and influential stake holders, many corporations are able to pull the strings that dictate policy, furthering their own cause often at the expense of poorer people.
While pointing out the seriousness of the situation, the Oxfam report also proposes a method of correcting the path of the global economy.
Based on research carried out by Hoy and Sumner in their 2016 report, “Gasoline, Guns, and Giveaways: Is There New Capacity for Redistribution to End Three Quarters of Global Poverty?” Oxfam believes that three-quarters of extreme poverty could in fact be eliminated now using existing resources.
By increasing taxation and cutting down on military and other regressive spending, as well as implementing a more ‘human’ approach to our economy, we can stymie the slide into further inequality.
The human economy, as imagined by Oxfam, would look after the 99 percent, rather than the top 1 percent of society. It would be based on core principles of cooperation rather than competition, business plans that operate sustainably and that benefit everyone, forcing the super-rich to pay their fair share of tax, harnessing of new technology to benefit the masses, the development of sustainable renewable energy, and, at the very heart of the principle, gender equality.
The juxtaposition of having staggering poverty and yet so much obscene wealth in the world is nonsensical. To have so much money in the hands of so few, while so many go hungry is illogical. This, along with concern for the future, is a point that is driven home in today’s report. To rectify the absurdity of the situation, Oxfam has shown that we must act.
Their positive outlook for a ‘human’ future is possible if we adapt our current thinking and arrive at a new common consciousness in which money does not trump humanity.
Given the escalating inequality across the globe, the increasing disenfranchisement of large swathes of the population, and the growing sense of insecurity, this needs to happen sooner rather than later.
As Oxfam puts it, “we can and must build a more human economy before it is too late”.
By remaining silent over the systematic destruction of Syria's healthcare by the government and its allies, WHO is complicit in war crimes Annie Sparrow claims
Monday 16 January 2017
For years now, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been fiddling while Syria burns, bleeds and starves. Despite WHO Syria having spent hundreds of millions of dollars since the conflict began in March 2011, public health in Syria has gone from troubling in 2011 to catastrophic now.
The researchers, at the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, were investigating patients with pulmonary hypertension.
High blood pressure in the lungs damages part of the heart, and about a third of patients die with five years of being diagnosed.
There are treatments: drugs, injections straight into the blood vessels, a lung transplant.
But doctors need to have an idea of how long patients might have left, in order to pick the right treatment.
Machine learning
The software was given MRI scans of 256 patients' hearts, and blood test results.
It measured the movement of 30,000 different points in the organ's structure during each a heartbeat.
When this data was combined with eight years of patient health records, the artificial intelligence learned which abnormalities predicted when patients would die.
The software could look about five years into the future.
It correctly predicted those who would still be alive after one year about 80% of the time. The figure for doctors is 60%.
Dr Declan O'Regan, one of the researchers, told the BBC News website: "The AI really allows you to tailor the individual treatment.
"So it takes the results of dozens of different tests including imaging, to predict what's going to happen to individual patients very accurately.
"So we can tailor getting absolutely the right intensive treatment to those who will benefit the most."
The team now want to test the software works in other patients in different hospitals before assessing whether it should be made widely available to doctors.
The researchers also want to use the technology in other forms of heart failure, such as cardiomyopathy, to see who might need a pacemaker or other forms of treatment.
Dr Mike Knapton, from the British Heart Foundation, said: "This exciting use of computer software in clinical practice will help doctors in the future to make sure that patients are receiving the correct treatment before the condition deteriorates and leaves them needing a lung-transplant.
"The next step is to test this technology in more hospitals."
SLFP ministers insist it must continue and Sirisena must contest, but President still silent; Cabinet spokesman says abolition essential
Ministers also want amendments to 300-page National Human Rights Action Plan; Premier agrees to make changes
TNA says it will withdraw from Constitution-making process if merger and more devolution are not considered
By Our Political Editor
A string of decisions by Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) ministers with President Maithripala Sirisena in the chair, revealed exclusively in the Sunday Times last week, have sparked a heated political debate.
Whatever his political ideologies are, 83-year-old Rajavarothiyam Sampanthan, the leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), and Leader of the parliamentary Opposition, is one of Sri Lanka’s politicians who has the distinction of living a simple and austere life.
Not for him are the luxury Government bungalows, hand crafted teak furniture or wooden flooring, wall mounted HDTVs in different rooms, expensive curtaining and airconditioning most ruling party politicians are now accustomed to.
He lives in a third floor dilapidated apartment at the Summit Flats. The rain soaked plywood front door has peeled into strips at the bottom. The drawing room is some ten feet by twenty feet area. A quarter of the space is taken by a large table. Stacked atop are the foldable foam rubber mattresses of a group of Ministerial Security Division (MSD) personnel who provide protection. The four chairs in the drawing room have seen much better days. The covers of the foam rubber cushions are worn out. They have changed colour after constant use. One loose arm of a chair is tied to the seating pane with a roll of thick thread. A second chair shook as the legs were unsteady. A few steps along a red cement stairway in the sitting area, obliterated in the middle by constant use, is his bedroom.
After the August 2016 parliamentary elections, the TNA became the largest political party other than those in the Government and Sampanthan became the Leader of the Opposition. The one-time successful lawyer from Trincomalee before he took to politics is yet to receive an official bungalow. “I have been shown a few buildings but I found they were all unsuitable,” he told the Sunday Times. Now, he said, a letter has been sent to him allocating a house. “We have to look into it,” he added.
One morning when I arrived for a meeting with the veteran politician, I was told he was at breakfast. I later learnt that his valet Gopal Murugesu had walked across to a kiosk along nearby Havelock Road to get the food — a bun.
Here are excerpts of answers Sampanthan gave to questions posed to him:
MOVES BY SLFP MINISTERS NOT TO ABOLISH THE EXECUTIVE PRESIDENCY DURING CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES: I do not want to get involved in SLFP politics. A lot of the people who are making noises are those who were against President Maithripala Sirisena. They did not contribute to his victory in any way. They did not have the courage to go against {former} President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
ON THE SLFP WANTING TO DISALLOW A MERGER OF THE NORTHERN AND EASTERN PROVINCES: This has been discussed at the Steering Committee meetings. They will send their report to the Constituent Assembly. We will have to await their decision.
THE TNA STANCE ON THE MERGER BEFORE THE PARLIAMENTARY POLLS IN AUGUST LAST YEAR: That is well known. We have not abandoned any position of ours. We will endeavour to frame a Constitution that will be acceptable to all people including the Tamil people and the Tamil-speaking people.
The TNA said in its election manifesto last year “principles and specific constitutional provisions” paramount to the resolution relate mainly to the sharing of the powers of governance…..” It said “fundamental to achieving genuine reconciliation, lasting peace and development for all Peoples of Sri Lanka,” included “the contiguous preponderantly Tamil speaking Northern and Eastern Provinces is the historical habitation of the Tamil people and the Tamil speaking peoples.”
ON THE SLFP MOVE NOT TO SUPPORT ANY CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE THAT REQUIRES A REFERENDUM: Our view is that nothing should be done behind the back of the people. People should approve the new Constitution at a referendum. That is the substance of the resolution adopted by the Constitution Assembly.
ON PRESIDENT SIRISENA AND PREMIER WICKREMESINGHE’S DECISION NOT TO HAVE FOREIGN JUDGES IN COURTS PROBING ALLEGED WAR CRIMES: There is a resolution adopted at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in October 2015. That is one of the recommendations made by the Task Force on Reconciliation. There is a need to ensure that the victims have confidence in any process. It is up to the Government to make decisions that will ensure justice is meted out. Sunday Times
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
My interest in writing this opinion is solely in relation to the Rule of Law (ROL) and its application in post-conflict Sri Lanka. There were promises echoed from the stages of both the Presidential and General elections with much hype, to transform Sri Lanka into an exemplary nation. Nearly two years after, even a semblance of this looks a distant mirage?
Events of the recent past indicates that there are at least three areas which impact on the ROL locally. They are Buddhism, politics and corruption. These three are intertwined and difficult to manage. For instance, politics is tainted with Buddhism and corruption. The solution is to first untwine and separate each of these from the other and, secondly, to distance each of these three factors from this idea of the ROL. To do this there are certain conditions precedent :
Determination (firm and sincere), to establish a decent civil society;
Positioning (truly), the interest of the nation above personal interests, ambitions and political party pursuits;
Inclination (strong), towards upholding truth and justice;
Resolution (unswerving), to apply the law equally to all including the monks and politicians; and,
Courage, bravery, impartiality and the real character of patriotism.
It is apt to refer to a statement by the Late Justice Weeramantry, “there can be no democracy in a country unless the rule of law prevails at every level from the humblest to the most exalted citizen.”
Are these monks alone?
For the sake of brevity, I will confine myself only to the first of these three i.e. Buddhism. As far as Buddhism is concerned the excellence of it’s teachings is well known worldwide. What is not equally known is the irreparable damage that is being done to Buddhism. There have been several scholarly opinions expressed in the Colombo Telegraph time and again, mostly written by Sinhala Buddhists. Almost all of which expressing concern on the same lines namely, the damage being perpetrated on Buddhism. Strangely, not by any non-Buddhist but by the Buddhists themselves. More so, by some of those who have chosen to adopt the strictures of Buddha and donned the saffron robe. Are these monks alone? Nay, they are ably supported by the cohorts within the bureaucracy and those outside. Evidently for their selfish political gains and, the cunning foxes among them, eyeing greater political ambitions in the future.
Racialist nationalism and buddhism are opportunistic slogans used by these so called ‘patriots’ and ‘saviours’. The Rule of Law for such elements is an obstacle.
Is Buddha A Prophet Of Islam?
This is a subject of much intellectual debate and scholarship. I must make mention of this in passing. Some may feel uneasy or even jealous arising from a sense of possessiveness that a Muslim is writing about Buddhism. Be aware that Buddhism is a universal message and not the private property of the Sinhalese. I love Buddhism and I love the Buddhism in it’s original form. I, obviously, do not love the corrupted version of Buddhism as it is commonly being practised today.
My love for Buddhism stems from my adherence to Islam. It teaches that to every nation messengers and reformers have been sent at different times. Such Reformers preached what was suitable for that time and for those people.
“And for every community or a nation, there is a Messenger;” (Quran, Chapter 10 Verse 47)
“Truly We inspire you, as We inspired Noah, and the prophets after him, as We inspired Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and Jesus and Job and Jonah and Aaron and Solomon, and as We bestowed unto David the Psalms;”
“And Messengers We have mentioned to you before, and Messengers We have not mentioned to you,…” (Quran, Chapter 4 Verse 163–164)
Note the last sentence, ‘Messengers We have mentioned to you before, and Messengers We have not mentioned to you’. A subject under study is if Buddha can be among one such Reformer who has not been mentioned but was Awakened to guide and reform mankind. Most of what he preached within the context of his time is in harmony with the progressive teachings of Islam. The final Reformer being Prophet Muhammed (Peace be upon him). This is, however, a totally different subject which can be dealt with on a later occasion.
Environment Of Impunity
It would be really humorous to think of a group of Congressmen writing a letter to their President, Barrack Obama, requesting him to take into custody and charge a suspect for inciting hate. Sadly, what would be considered a joke in the United States of America is a reality in Sri Lanka. Last month, (2nd December 2016) a letter was addressed to President Maithripala Sirisena signed by twenty one Muslim Parliamentarians requesting him “to take all extremists who are causing hate amongst communities into custody and charge them for inciting hate.” Does this action of the Members of Parliament demonstrate the absence of the normal standards of the Rule of Law? Something is amiss to require the intervention of the Chief Executive of the country over a simple investigation and prosecutorial matter. What is clear from this is the environment of impunity that has been created by the politicization of the Executive by successive governments. Wither the Rule of Law. In the absence of ROL chaos reigns and democracy diminishes.
On December 28, Aingkaran Kugathasan accompanied a friend to the Jaffna police station to lodge a complaint. It was around10.40 a.m. and there was a long queue. But even after one hour, the line did not move.
“When we inquired, we were told there was only one policeman conversant in Tamil and that he had been summoned by a senior police officer for an urgent matter,” Mr. Kugathasan, an attorney-at-law, said. He returned over one-and-a-half hours later. And their turn came around 1.15 p.m.
“Just as the policeman started recording my friend’s statement, we were told there was an issue at the Governor’s office and that he had to go there,” Mr. Kugathasan said. “And we were asked to come the following day.”
This is just one in many problems faced by the people on a daily basis owing to a failure to implement the Official Language Policy.
The fundamental law on languages is enshrined in Chapter IV of the 1978 Constitution. These provisions were amended by the 13th and 16th Amendments in 1987 and 1988, respectively. Accordingly, Sinhala and Tamil are both official and national languages of Sri Lanka while English is the link language. Article 12(2) in Chapter III of the Constitution recognizes the right to language as a fundamental right.
But language policy implementation has moved at a snail’s pace over the last few decades. The lack of bilingual proficiency in the State sector is an obstacle to reconciliation, states the recently released final report of the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTF). “Shortcomings in bi-lingual language proficiency throughout the machinery of the State were identified in most submissions across the country as a major impediment to reconciliation,” it said, recommending that the issue be addressed as a priority.
There are over 100 laws and gazettes still to be translated from English to Sinhala, Mr Lionel Guruge, a senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) said. And more than 200 of them haven’t yet been translated into Tamil. The Supreme Court is currently hearing a fundamental rights petition in this regard.
The CPA has filed over 1000 complaints on language rights with institutions such as the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) or courts. Some notable cases include action regarding language equality in legislation, information on National Identity Cards (NICs), pharmaceuticals, currency notes, signboards on buses and railway announcements.
“We had to lodge complaints even to ensure destination boards on buses are displayed in all three languages,” Mr. Guruge said, voicing frustration about failure to carry out such basic obligations.
People were also largely ignorant of their language rights. This can sometimes have tragic consequences. A man from Moratuwa obtained an insurance policy after signing a document in English. When he lost a thumb in an accident, the company refused to pay up saying the agreement he signed had stated compensation could be obtained only if he lost a whole hand.
“He came to us, but he had already signed a legal document,” said Mr. Guruge. Everyone has the right to demand a document that needs signing in a language they can understand, he stressed.
A recent study by the Ministry of Official Languages on bilingual officers in 13 public institutions across 25 districts found there were at least 2,223 vacancies. At least 1,349 of them were in the Police Department.
The Police Department in a report to the National Police Commission (NPC) last year, said 7,267 officers had completed a Tamil language training course since 2010. The Police Department plans to train a further 1,200 officers in 2017, it said.
But the numbers are clearly inadequate considering that the force consists of some 75,000 officers of lower rank, a majority of whom speak only Sinhala, NPC Secretary Ariyadasa Cooray conceded.
Moreover, Tamil speaking officers cannot be continually deployed in majority Tamil-speaking areas. Depending on service requirements, police are transferred every two years. “You can’t keep Tamil-speaking officers indefinitely in the North and East,” Mr. Cooray said. “That’s akin to a punishment transfer.”
The police are just one agency that has badly failed in implementing the 0fficial language policy. All State employees are required to attain proficiency in a second language within the first five years of employment. A 2007 circular issued in this regard is still in force. The Official Languages Department facilitates effective implementation of the language policy. But even officials in this Department admit that trying to compel all State workers to learn a second language has failed.
The proficiency exam tests both written and oral skills. The Department’s Research Unit analyses results after each round of exams. The latest assessment makes for grim reading. Just two per cent of candidates scored over 75 marks in the second language in 2015 and 2016. Some 60 per cent who passed had obtained around 40 marks–the minimum score. Their knowledge is wholly inadequate for productive work. The Research Unit has observed that efficient service can be expected only from the two percent that scored 75 marks or over.
“Most who follow language classes do so with the sole purpose of passing the exams,” said Official Languages Commissioner W. A. Jayawickrama via e-mail. Their interest in the language wanes rapidly after the exam. The Research Unit has concluded that it was “pointless” to try and train all Government officials in a second official language.
To make better use of the second language initiative, the Unit has recommended that the State sponsors language education among employees who show genuine interest in learning and in the culture of the ethnic group to which that language belongs. These candidates could then be subjected to continuous assessment by the Official Languages Department or another language education institution. It is proposed that employees who pass these tests should then receive incentives placing them on a higher salary scale than others in the same designation.
51 p.c. of national issue solved if allowed to carry out my plans: Minister Mano Ganesan
The sole authority for language policy implementation is the Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue and Official Languages. The Department of Official Languages (DOL), the Official Languages Commission (OLC) and National Institute of Language Education and Training (NILET) fall within its purview.
Mano Ganesan is proud of being the first subject minister proficient in all three languages. He insisted that language law implementation was essential to a political solution to the country’s national issues, in an interview with the Sunday Times. If allowed to freely carry out his language plans, the Government can solve “51 per cent of the national issue,” he said.
Bilingual language proficiency within the State sector was nowhere near satisfactory, Mr. Ganesan admitted. “Learning the second language is considered an additional burden by employees although second language proficiency is tied to their promotions and incentives,” he said. He alleged that some State employees were using ‘dubious means’ to obtain second language proficiency certificates for promotions and incentives. Consequently, most public sector workers with second language proficiency certificates do not speak, write or understand the second language.
This creates situations where poorly-qualified people make basic mistakes that insult whole communities. Mr. Ganesan referred to a photograph sent to him of a sign fixed above a bench in a Government office. In Sinhala, it read, “Reserved for pregnant mothers”. The Tamil script said, “Reserved for pregnant dogs”. He cannot dream of a bilingual State service even within the next few decades, the Minister said.
He once asked the officer-in-charge (OIC) of a police station in Colombo how he would deal with a complainant who knew only Tamil. The OIC had introduced him to a Tamil-speaking Sinhala officer who did that job. The Minister then struck up a conversation with him in Tamil. “Within a minute, I found he could speak very little Tamil,” he recounted.
The officer had no academic qualifications in Tamil. He had picked up bits from tuition classes. His skills were clearly inadequate for someone tasked with so serious a responsibility’ as a complaint is taken down in Sinhala and the complainant is required to sign it, the chance for error is high.
“I realise this is neither the fault of the OIC nor of the officer,” Mr. Ganesan stressed. What this underlines is the need for professional interpreters and translators in the State sector.
A Cabinet Paper is due to be presented soon seeking approval to recruit, train and appoint an initial batch of 3,000 “bilingual assistants” to all State institutions requiring such service. They would be picked from among those who had sat for the GCE A/Level or O/Level exams and had passed second language subjects.
Another Cabinet paper has already been submitted seeking amendments to the scheme of recruitment for State services enabling those with bilingual abilities to score extra marks at recruitment interviews. Among other things, the Minister wants Cabinet approval to amend the Official Languages Commission Act enabling legal action against all violators of language policy.
Other immediate measures are also being taken on four fronts, he said. Steps will be taken to ensure all external and internal movable and immovable signboards are trilingual. All documents and forms for public use will be available at State institutions in the three languages. Efforts will be made to ensure citizens receive oral and written responses in the official language of their choice or the link language at all State institutions. The Ministry will push institutions to commit towards an official language policy in all Government offices.
The Government will encourage the private sector to implement these. Mr. Ganesan does not see anyone obstructing the plans. Even the Joint Opposition led by Mahinda Rajapaksa has assured its support for implementation of the language policy
“I trust the President, Prime Minister and Cabinet would support me in achieving my targets,” he said. “If I can’t get it done, I don’t think I’ll waste my time continuing as a Minister.”
BY JANUARY 12, 2017
