JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, its ratings slipping over suspicions of favouritism, has suffered a fresh embarrassment when his defense minister made politically sensitive remarks just days ahead of a key local election.
Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, speaking on Tuesday at a rally for ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) candidates in Sunday’s Tokyo Metropolitan assembly election, asked for voter support saying the request was from “the defense ministry, the Self-Defense Forces, the defense minister and the LDP”.
By law, the SDF, as Japan’s military is known, must be politically neutral. Inada withdrew the remark at an impromptu news conference, saying it could be “misunderstood”.
The July 2 vote for the Tokyo Metropolitan assembly is on the surface a referendum on Governor Yuriko Koike’s first year in office, but it is also shaping up as a chance for voters in the capital to express their views on Abe’s administration.
Koike is aiming for her new “Tokyo Residents First” party and its allies to win a majority in the 127-seat assembly, while the LDP hopes to keep its status as the biggest party.
Abe’s support slumped in surveys released last week on voter concerns about suspicions that he helped a friend get permission to open a veterinary school in a special economic zone and criticism his ruling bloc rammed a contentious bill through parliament and ended the session to close off debate.
Abe and his aides have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the approval process for the new school to be run by Kake Gakuen (Kake Educational Institution).
Inada’s remarks prompted a call from the main opposition Democratic Party leader, Renho, for her resignation, but Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that she had withdrawn her remark and should remain in her post.
The flap follows a widely publicised incident in which a female LDP lawmaker was taped verbally and physically abusing her aide.
The lawmaker has left the LDP. Finance Minister Taro Aso, known for making gaffes of his own, later appeared to blame the incident on the lawmaker’s gender. “If you look at her academic background, it’s impeccable, but she is a woman,” Aso was quoted by media as telling LDP members on Saturday.
Media reports said on Wednesday that the LDP, worried about the Tokyo race, was considering asking Shinjiro Koizumi, the popular 36-year-old lawmaker son of ex-premier Junichiro Koizumi, to campaign for its candidates. – Reuters
Abu Dhabi's crown prince asked the US to bomb Al Jazeera as America was planning its invasion of Iraq, according to a diplomatic cable detailing his conversation with a top US state department mandarin.
According to the cable, Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) "laughingly recalled" to Richard Hass a conversation between his father, Sheikh Zayed, and the emir of Qatar, Hamad Al-Thani, in which Hamad had complained MBZ had asked for the US "to bomb Al Jazeera".
"According to MBZ, Zayed [his father] derisively responded: 'Do you blame him?'"
In his comments, made in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, MBZ warned that public opinion in the Arab world over the invasion - which he described as "containable" if the war was short and efficient - could be heavily inflamed by the Qatar TV network's coverage and advised that its influence be reined in.
MBZ said "it was a mystery to him why the Qataris continued to inflame public opinion" through Al Jazeera... "and suggested that the US use its weight to pressure Doha".
The cable added that MBZ had "emphasised the need for US engagement with the Qataris to rein in Al Jazeera".
In April 2003, the Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad was struck by a US missile killing one staff member and wounding another, though a US Central Command spokesman told BBC News the station "was not and never had been a target." In 2001 the station's Kabul office was hit by two bombs in another US attack, although there were no casualties.
The statement appears to show decades-long emnity between Qatar and the UAE over Al Jazeera, which has boiled to the surface once again with a Saudi, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt-led blockade of Qatar and demands to close the network down.
Last week Riyadh laid down a list of 13 demands for Qatar, which also included ending Doha's support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a downgrade of diplomatic ties with Iran and the shutting of a Turkish military base outside Doha.
According to the cable, however, MBZ downplayed tensions between the Saudis and Qataris, noting the two populations "share Wahhabi roots".
More concerning, he said, were UAE-Saudi relations, which MBZ reportedly described as "far more complex".
He drew his attention to Abu Dhabi's "nagging bilateral border dispute with Riyadh (the al-Shayba oil field)".
"Nevertheless, the ever pragmatic Emiratis recognised the need to deal with the Saudis and have thus maintained good relations with Riyadh."
However, the cable noted that MBZ took a "dim view" - in one case literally - of some senior members of the Saudi government - "sardonically noting that interior minister Nayef's bumbling manner suggested that 'Darwin was right'," and went on to say that King Fahd was not "in complete control of his faculties".
Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud is the father of Mohammed bin Nayef - who was last week stripped of his position of crown prince by the king, Salman, who instated his son Mohammed bin Salman as heir.
Bin Nayef is thought to have held personal antipathy to MBZ.
“I think we should all agree these changes in Saudi are much needed," said Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE's ambassador to the US.
"Our job now is to do everything possible to ensure MBS succeeds."
The 2003 cable also highlights MBZ's then apparent tacit support for the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, whose removal from power the Gulf nations are now officially committed to.
MBZ "encouraged continued USG (US government) engagement with Bashar, noting that otherwise, 'the wrong guys' will fill the vacuum."
"In MBZ's estimation, Bashar is active and 'wants to do good,' although his relative youth and inexperience are real drawbacks."
The Opposition is powerless, the police are bystanders, courts have not shown interest and the BJP feels it will no longer lose elections.
Family members of Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer who was allegedly lynched by vigilantes for transporting cows in Rajasthan in April, sit on a dharna to demand justice for him. In recent months, a string of deadly mob attacks on Muslims has triggered outrage across India, with critics accusing the Narendra Modi government of not doing enough to stop these assaults. (HT file)
Jun 27, 2017
There is no doubt that a form of medieval madness has taken over India in the shape of Islamophobia and regular lynching of Muslims in different states. The situation has moved quickly from not renting out homes to Muslims to refusing to tolerate their presence in public spaces. Muslims are being taunted on trains and streets, fights initiated and lynched. The lynchings have become so common that we do not know which one to respond to. Should we weep for Mohammad Naeem in Jharkhand or Hafiz Junaid in Haryana? How many remember the details of Pehlu Khan’s murder in Rajasthan? Mohammad Akhlaq is now just another milestone in this steady journey of wanton death. Many on social media who were horrified by Srinivas Kuchibotla’s murder in the US in February are strangely muted about the lynching of Muslims in India.
There is scarcely a word of condemnation from the BJP’s leadership. Forest fires in Portugal get more notice from this government than the ravaging of India’s social fabric that has taken centuries to nurture. Rather than express concern – let alone enforce the law – the Union Cabinet and BJP leaders found a way to signal to gau-rakshaks that they are on the same side. They skipped President Pranab Mukherjee’s iftar reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan in an unprecedented flouting of convention and political grace. The politicians are essentially conveying to the vigilantes that they too have such contempt for Muslims that they’d rather not be seen in public breaking bread with them.
The striking thing about vigilantism now is that there is no incentive for the BJP to make it stop. The Opposition is powerless, the police are bystanders, courts have not shown interest, the ruling party feels that it will no longer lose elections and so it has no dread of the hustings.
There is also notably no fear of violent retaliation. Muslims in India are effectively hostages in their own land, unable to take on a section of the majority that is fortified by a State that looks the other way in the face of gratuitous violence. Vigilante violence also tests the bonds of transnational Muslim solidarity. Ordinarily, Pakistan and Pakistan-based terror groups would use violence or the threat of violence as leverage over the Indian government to bargain on Kashmir or relax anti-Muslim policies elsewhere. (The 1993 Mumbai blasts were a reaction to the riots that targeted Muslims in December 1992 and January 1993.) But Congress and BJP governments react very differently to terror attacks.
The Congress is weakened by them while Hindu nationalists are bolstered by them. In the current climate attacks can provide the excuse for more bloodletting and subsequent consolidation of Hindu identity. That’s the bind Hindu vigilantes put Islamabad and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in.
There is thus a deterrence at play here for the vigilantes to exploit. But deterrence breaks down sometimes, which also works for the BJP. The Pakistani army and the LeT may have a measure of geopolitical reason, groups like Islamic State may not (which is why we are hearing more about IS as a threat to India lately). When terror attacks happen in India or where there is a spike in militancy in J&K as is expected they can quickly change the direction of the debate and harden middle class attitudes towards Muslims in general.
To get a sense of this, consider what happened in Kashmir over the last year. Security forces reacted excessively to the outpouring of grief following Burhan Wani’s killing last July, firing live ammunition and pellets at civilian protestors that left about 100 people dead, blinded many and partially blinded hundreds. The debate has now moved away from the high civilian toll to a representation of stone-pelting youth as terrorists. This was achieved through sheer repetition in the public sphere, with no quarter given to Kashmir’s complex past or its suffering. Over the last month, the government has come under criticism over Major Leetul Gogoi tying Farooq Ahmad Dar to a jeep, but suddenly a crowd in Srinagar lynches deputy superintendent of police Ayub Pandith – an act widely condemned by Kashmiris – and now it becomes difficult to get the focus back on State action. In other words, one act is enough to draw an equivalence and gloss over a lengthy, bloody past and turn the debate in the direction the government wants.
We are likely to see more Ayub Pandith moments in Kashmir and other states of India. No one outrageous act will be allowed to build up for too long; there will either be another distraction, another outrage - either by design or the logic of circumstances. Paresh Rawal’s tweet on Arundhati Roy ensured that attention was diverted from pictures of Naeem drenched in his own blood.
Lynching not only acts out hatred for Muslims, it also serves to generate support, acquiescence and fear among the different constituents of the Hindu middle class. The key sources where this cohort picks up independent, contrarian views – universities, media, writers, filmmakers and artists – are being tamed. Throw in the spectre of open violence on the street and its compliance is assured. It is very easy to silence people when there is no rule of law. A troubled conscience unsure of peer support is often no match for a frenzied and organised political force. Many will flit between fear and helplessness (about lynching) and rage (about violence in Kashmir). It’s a condition geared to produce moral flight and political apathy, which suits the BJP as it seeks to quickly consolidate Hindu identity. Sunil Khilnani famously wrote in The Idea of India that “in a fundamental sense, India does not merely ‘have’ politics but is actually constituted by politics.” Right now the possibility of politics is being threatened by organised fear.
Exclusive: Annual consumption of plastic bottles is set to top half a trillion by 2021, far outstripping recycling efforts and jeopardising oceans, coastlines and other environments
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A file picture dated 13 April 2010 shows a boy from Senegal walking along a polluted beach strewn with predominantly plastic bottles in the village of Ngor, Dakar, Senegal. Photograph: Nic Bothma/EPA-A worker sorts plastic bottles at a recycling centre on the outskirts of Wuhan, Hubei province, China. Photograph: Jie Zhao/Corbis/Getty Images You’ll find them on the beaches, too. Photograph: Barbara Walton/EPA
A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change.
New figures obtained by the Guardian reveal the surge in usage of plastic bottles, more than half a trillion of which will be sold annually by the end of the decade.
The demand, eq
uivalent to about 20,000 bottles being bought every second, is driven by an apparently insatiable desire for bottled water and the spread of a western, urbanised “on the go” culture to China and the Asia Pacific region.
More than 480bn plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300bn a decade ago. If placed end to end, they would extend more than halfway to the sun. By 2021 this will increase to 583.3bn, according to the most up-to-date estimates from Euromonitor International’s global packaging trends report.
Most plastic bottles used for soft drinks and water are made from polyethylene terephthalate (Pet), which is highly recyclable. But as their use soars across the globe, efforts to collect and recycle the bottles to keep them from polluting the oceans, are failing to keep up.
Fewer than half of the bottles bought in 2016 were collected for recycling and just 7% of those collected were turned into new bottles. Instead most plastic bottles produced end up in landfill or in the ocean.
Between 5m and 13m tonnes of plastic leaks into the world’s oceans each year to be ingested by sea birds, fish and other organisms, and by 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish, according to researchby the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Experts warn that some of it is already finding its way into the human food chain.
Scientists at Ghent University in Belgium recently calculated people who eat seafood ingest up to 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic every year. Last August, the results of a study by Plymouth University reported plastic was found in a third of UK-caught fish, including cod, haddock, mackerel and shellfish. Last year, the European Food Safety Authority called for urgent research, citing increasing concern for human health and food safety “given the potential for microplastic pollution in edible tissues of commercial fish”.
Dame Ellen MacArthur, the round the world yachtswoman, now campaigns to promote a circular economy in which plastic bottles are reused, refilled and recycled rather than used once and thrown away.
“Shifting to a real circular economy for plastics is a massive opportunity to close the loop, save billions of dollars, and decouple plastics production from fossil fuel consumption,” she said.
Hugo Tagholm, of the marine conservation and campaigning group Surfers Against Sewage, said the figures were devastating. “The plastic pollution crisis rivals the threat of climate change as it pollutes every natural system and an increasing number of organisms on planet Earth.
“Current science shows that plastics cannot be usefully assimilated into the food chain. Where they are ingested they carry toxins that work their way on to our dinner plates.” Surfers Against Sewage are campaigning for a refundable deposit scheme to be introduced in the UK as a way of encouraging reuse.
Tagholm added: “Whilst the production of throwaway plastics has grown dramatically over the last 20 years, the systems to contain, control, reuse and recycle them just haven’t kept pace.”
In the UK 38.5m plastic bottles are used every day – only just over half make it to recycling, while more than 16m are put into landfill, burnt or leak into the environment and oceans each day.
“Plastic production is set to double in the next 20 years and quadruple by 2050 so the time to act is now,” said Tagholm.
The majority of plastic bottles used across the globe are for drinking water, , according to Rosemary Downey, head of packaging at Euromonitor and one of the world’s experts in plastic bottle production.
China is responsible for most of the increase in demand. The Chinese public’s consumption of bottled water accounted for nearly a quarter of global demand, she said.
“It is a critical country to understand when examining global sales of plastic Pet bottles, and China’s requirement for plastic bottles continues to expand,” said Downey.
In 2015, consumers in China purchased 68.4bn bottles of water and in 2016 this increased to 73.8bn bottles, up 5.4bn.
“This increase is being driven by increased urbanisation,” said Downey. “There is a desire for healthy living and there are ongoing concerns about groundwater contamination and the quality of tap water, which all contribute to the increase in bottle water use,” she said. India and Indonesia are also witnessing strong growth.
Plastic bottles are a big part of the huge surge in usage of a material first popularised in the 1940s. Most of the plastic produced since then still exists; the petrochemical-based compound takes hundreds of years to decompose.
Plastic population
Major drinks brands produce the greatest numbers of plastic bottles. Coca-Cola produces more than 100bn throwaway plastic bottles every year – or 3,400 a second, according to analysis carried out by Greenpeace after the company refused to publicly disclose its global plastic usage. The top six drinks companies in the world use a combined average of just 6.6% of recycled Pet in their products, according to Greenpeace. A third have no targets to increase their use of recycled plastic and none are aiming to use 100% across their global production.
Plastic drinking bottles could be made out of 100% recycled plastic, known as RPet – and campaigners are pressing big drinks companies to radically increase the amount of recycled plastic in their bottles. But brands are hostile to using RPet for cosmetic reasons because they want their products in shiny, clear plastic, according to Steve Morgan, of Recoup in the UK.
In evidence to a House of Commons committee, the British Plastics Federation (BPF), a plastics trade body, admitted that making bottles out of 100% recycled plastic used 75% less energy than creating virgin plastic bottles. But the BPF said that brands should not be forced to increase the recycled content of bottles. “The recycled content ... can be up to 100%, however this is a decision made by brands based on a variety of factors,” said Philip Law, director general of the BPF.
The industry is also resisting any taxes or charges to reduce demand for single-use plastic bottles – like the 5p charge on plastic bags that is credited with reducing plastic bag use by 80%.
Coca Cola said it was still considering requests from Greenpeace to publish its global plastics usage. A spokeswoman said: “Globally, we continue to increase the use of recycled plastic in countries where it is feasible and permitted. We continue to increase the use of RPet in markets where it is feasible and approved for regulatory food-grade use – 44 countries of the more than 200 we operate in.”
She agreed plastic bottles could be made out of 100 percent recycled plastic but there was nowhere near enough high quality food grade plastic available on the scale that was needed to increase the quantity of rPET to that level.
“So if we are to increase the amount of recycled plastic in our bottles even further then a new approach is needed to create a circular economy for plastic bottles,” she said.
Greenpeace said the big six drinks companies had to do more to increase the recycled content of their plastic bottles. “During Greenpeace’s recent expedition exploring plastic pollution on remote Scottish coastlines, we found plastic bottles nearly everywhere we went,” said Louisa Casson, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace.
“It’s clear that the soft drinks industry needs to reduce its plastic footprint.”
(Reuters Health) - People with heart disease are at risk of dying sooner when they suffer from chronic depression and anxiety, a recent study suggests.
Researchers examined data on 950 people in Australia and New Zealand with stable coronary artery disease, which happens when plaque accumulates in the arteries supplying the heart and causes them to harden and narrow. Also called atherosclerosis, this process can weaken the heart muscle, cause an irregular heartbeat and lead to heart attacks.
About 4 percent of participants reported regularly suffering from moderate or severe psychological distress over the first four years of the study, and they were roughly four times more likely to die of heart disease and almost three times more likely to die from any cause during the next 12 years compared to people with no distress.
The heart patients who reported only occasional or mild distress, however, didn’t appear to have an increased risk of premature death, researchers report in the journal Heart.
“This really indicates that over the longer term it is the amount of distress that matters,” said lead author Dr. Ralph Stewart, a cardiologist at Auckland City Hospital and the University of Auckland.
“We do not yet know whether treatments for anxiety and distress reduce mortality, but there is enough evidence to recommend that people should look for ways to reduce high levels of persistent distress,” Stewart said by email.
At the start of the study, all of the participants had experienced a heart attack or hospitalization for unstable angina, when the heart doesn’t get enough blood flow or receive enough oxygen, in the previous 3 to 36 months.
They completed a psychological questionnaire when they joined the study, and again after six months and at one year, two years and four years.
Questions to assess depression and anxiety asked, among other things, if participants felt constantly under strain, found life a struggle all the time, got scared or panicky for no good reason, or thought they played a useful part in things.
Overall, 587 people, or 62 percent, were not distressed at any of the psychological assessments.
Another 255 individuals, or 27 percent, reported at least mild distress during two or more assessments and 35 people, or about 4 percent, regularly suffered from moderate or severe psychological distress.
Researchers followed half of the participants for at least 12 years. During this monitoring period, 398 people died from all causes and 199 died from cardiovascular disease.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove that depression or anxiety causes premature death for people with heart disease.
Another limitation of the study is that the psychological assessments stopped after four years, so it’s possible the findings might underestimate the impact of persistent distress, the authors note.
The psychological assessment used in the study also doesn’t do a good job of pinpointing the exact nature of stress and is no longer used for assessing it, Dr. Gjin Ndrepepa, a researcher with the German Heart Center Munich at the Technical University of Munich, writes in an accompanying editorial.
But mental distress can activate the body’s so-called flight or fight response, the sympathetic nervous system, and boost levels of stress hormones, Ndrepepa told Reuters Health by email. This might contribute to elevated blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes and prompt unhealthy behaviors like smoking or drinking or being inactive.
“These stress-related internal and external adverse reactions aggravate the progression of the disease and predispose people to poor outcomes including increased odds of death,” Ndrepepa said. “My belief is that depressed patients with coronary heart disease, particularly severely depressed ones, should be treated for depression.”
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein delivered the following speech at the Law Society in London, 26 June 2017
by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein-
( June 27, 2017, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) “Earlier this month, Britain’s Prime Minister called for human rights laws to be overturned if they were to “get in the way” in the fight against terrorism. Specifically, Theresa May said there was a need “to restrict the freedom and movement of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a threat, but not evidence to prosecute them in full in court.” For an increasingly anxious public, shaken by the recent and dreadful terrorist attacks, her remarks no doubt reflected real anger and frustration, but they also seemed intended to strike a chord with a certain sector of the electorate, and it is this expectation that truly worries me.
Land Mediation Boards For Reconciliation in N-E Implementing the LLRC Recommendations “Two disputants agreed to visit the village sage seeking mediation on their bitter dispute. He listened patiently to both. At the end, addressing one, the mediator said the disputant was right. Turning to the other, the mediator said that he too was right. The watching wife asked how could both be right at the same time. The mediator replied, ‘you too are right’.”
2017-06-28
Implementing the LLRC Recommendations
The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee (LLRC), a committee of high intellect, was charged by the then Government, with the cognitive challenge of defining reconciliation and offering suggestions for post-conflict settlement. It recommended, among others, that urgent attention be given to resolving land displacement issues in the North-East (N-E) conflict zones, as a load-bearing part of general reconciliation approaches. Government decided that this recommendation be implemented through Sri Lanka’s mediation system, which had gained international recognition. The first of the Land Mediation Boards (LMBs) for the N-E conflict zones was established in Jaffna. This was to be followed with three more, in Kilinochchi, Trincomalee and Batticaloa.
With the end of the military conflict, a number of civil issues - which so far had lain unattended or dormant- surfaced for attention. Of them, one of the most intractable pertained to land. Land is an asset, but of a special class. Land is rarely owned solely to gain a return on capital but mostly, to incorporate emotions; many consider land as their soul-blood of existence, offering the owner a levitational lever to rise in social positions. Share-ownership in a company serves as a transactional asset. Land ownership is more fundamental, it provides an alchemy, to socially transform individuals. Land ownership or its deprivation has profound social implications, deprivation even leading to revolutions.
An unravelling of problems and finding solutions to the complexities of land transactions in conflict zones, not only require hard, technical approaches of analysis (law, history, etc) but also soft, behavioural initiatives of change (sociology, psychology, etc)
Because of the length of the military conflict, the normal adjudication on land issues to permit society to function -- like giving legal form to land transactions for award of dowries -- was not always feasible. To fill the vacuum, a variety of ad hoc, work-a day solutions, had been pragmatically devised, some of them not in strict conformity with principles of judicial equity or even the law. These solutions were nevertheless accepted as legal by a beleaguered society. With peace now prevailing, there emerged countervailing pressure to disregard these ‘Wild West’ decisions; it sought a restoration of the status quo ante, on the argument of force majeure. The principle invoked here is retributive justice, where a victim seeks a rectifying remedy from a perceived “perpetrator”.
Land is a significant part of a complex social interweaving in rural society. But precipitate action to ensure an immediate alteration of functioning land relationships -- whatever their zombie provenance -- by an unemotional, remedial application of retributive laws, is not possible. Law is objective but it has soul. Hasty remedy would be disruptive of society at all levels, whether in the village, intra-community or inter-community levels. Since Government’s primary obligations are to maintain law and order and social stability, it would not acquiesce with such a disturbance. A soothing adjustment mechanism was required. The LLRC recommended reconciliation, meliorated through an adjustment process.
An unravelling of problems and finding solutions to the complexities of land transactions in conflict zones, not only require hard, technical approaches of analysis (law, history, etc) but also soft, behavioural initiatives of change (sociology, psychology, etc), coupled with an entrepreneurial push, the joint objectives of the three, being to ensure that a settlement should not become a generating point for a further round of contention. To enable this to be done, Government has proposed a mediation mechanism, on which it has over a quarter century direct experience. Community Mediation Boards, manned by volunteers, were formed under the law in each Divisional Secretariat. They work under a Mediation Boards Commission appointed by the President. Mediators, drawn from the community itself, (lawyers and politicians are debarred), function as a catalyst serving the parties at loggerheads, encouraging them to voluntarily work towards an “yes”, without an alien settlement being imposed on them. The victim and the “perpetrator” are voluntarily brought together in a face to face relationship and, in the presence of the mediator, discuss their problems to reach a settlement. At every point in the mediation cycle, it is an individual’s decision-making and voluntarism that is emphasised. If a settlement cannot be made, the contending parties could take recourse to the judicial system. Mediation is based on the principle of restorative justice: retributive justice is the mainstay of the formal judicial system. Restorative justice has a “perpetrator”, victim and a mediator from the community. Democracy is deepened by settling issues through give and take, not by imposition. Mediation provides a Gandhian opportunity for people themselves to decide on matters affecting them. When the Tsunami made land fall, causing widespread physical and social disruption, special remedial Tsunami Mediation Boards were appointed, which functioned under the same principles.
Mediation is an alternate conflict resolution mechanism to the judicial system. The formal judicial system attempts to establish the “Truth” and, from its divination, judicial decisions are made. From the time of Socrates, there have been attempts by “Truth” seekers and its vendors, to find an objective “Truth” but with little success. Recent concepts of Post-truth, fake news and alternate facts do not give credence to the existence of such an objective “Truth”. Truth Imperialism should not be the paramount consideration of Land Mediation Boards in settling land issues. They should concentrate on establishing stable, friction-free social systems as their primary objective, all else are supportive considerations. Land Mediation Board initiatives should be based, not through forensic analyses which yield the “Truth”, but, by encouraging behavioural trade-offs, accommodation, diplomatic agreements, condign adjustments, etc. Given the same circumstances, settlements reached under mediation could be different. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, said Emerson. Adjudication, based on “Truth” and precedent, play no part in mediation.
With the end of the military conflict, a number of civil issues - which so far had lain unattended or dormant- surfaced for attention
New problems require fresh approaches to solution, as existing intellectual concepts and categories are dated and unable to process new developments. Contentious, acerbic land issues -- a running sore in the conflict zones of the North-East provinces -- require new thinking, if reconciliation were to be achieved. Land Mediation Boards, while retaining fundamentals of mediation but garnished with fresh cognitive concepts, promise a fresh route to this end.
The writer was a former member of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service.
27/06/2017 Shrinking space for human rights voices and dissent, and concerns over the terms of engagement between government and civil society A statement by concerned human rights and democratic rights, activists and organisations 27th June 2017,
Colombo
As individuals and organisations committed to human rights and democratic freedoms, and the rights of freedom of expression and dissent, we are deeply concerned about recent attempts to stifle voices of human rights activists and silence dissent.
In the year 2015 the good governance Government started a new term of office, promising a more democratic country with restored justice. The main promises of the Government revolved around peace building, reconciliation, constitutional reforms, and eradication of corruption. It is incorrect to say that, these promises are entirely ignored; rather it clearly shows that promises were and are in the process of being fulfilled. The granting GSP+ to Sri Lanka has taken the country to another level in the eyes of the international community and as well as the locals. No doubt it has an immense impact on the economy of the country. It also implies that Sri Lanka is on the right track of good governance by protecting human rights, labour rights and environment.[1]
The good governance government has completed almost two years in office. The Establishment of Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms, Public Representation Committee on Constitutional Reforms, Commissions to investigate corruption,[2] adoption of National Drug Policy and most significantly the passage of the RTI Act in Parliament on June, 2016 can be identified as milestones of the good governance Government. In the aspect of laws and regulations progress seems immense. Further, documentation or publishing massive reports mostly informing the international community is way beyond satisfactory level. The real question is how realistic all these laws, documents and regulations are to people. Maybe it is zero or maybe it has some impact. However, formulating of laws and documention would not solve the problem; these attempts need a practical approach so that people can get justice. It is a positive thing to document history and make laws to attain justice as much as possible. But the laws and documents should not be to veil the real issues. In this piece, my main focus would be the fading process of transitional justice with special attention to (none) establishment of the Office of Missing Person in the island.
People who were seeking post war justice are in pain and dying of wounds which have yet not healed. . The post war justice is not only for Tamils but also for Sinhalese and Muslims who suffered from the war at many levels. The military war widows who faced and face many difficulties after the death or injury of the husband, widows of civil security force officials, who are in a vulnerable situation without an income, as they are not getting long term remuneration, Muslims who suffered from the war without being a part of any side that was involved in the war, Sinhalese who lived in border villages who were used as a tool to sustain the Sinhala majority in all geographical areas and many more. These communities and individuals have suffered enough from war and waiting for a solution after the war. The proposed mechanisms of reconciliation after months of effort are hidden in a report which no one knows about.
The sole reconciliation mechanism initiated by the Government is the Office of Missing Persons (OMP). Disappearances were reported from throughout the island. The State as well as non-State actors has carried out disappearances across ethnic categories, class groups, religious categories, time and regions.[3] CTF has received submissions related to disappearances of;
(1) Village roundups of Tamil and Muslim civilians (war time and post-war) and Sinhalese civilians during the Southern insurrections by the police, army, and intelligence services.
(2) White van abductions of Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala civilians, including human rights defenders, journalists and workers, university students and others.
(3) Surrenders and subsequent disappearances of Tamil combatants to the armed forces and police, particularly during the last stage of the war.
(4) Families of surrendered LTTE cadres, including very young children who disappeared.
The Northern Provincial Council (NPC), its activities and politics, attracts far more national and even international level political attention than its counterparts in the other eight provinces, due to several reasons. Firstly, devolution of power is a core aspect of Tamil politics. Secondly the Northern Provincial Council is and will continue to be Sri Lanka’s consistently opposition-controlled provincial council and thirdly the post war, international pressure that led to the holding of the Northern Provincial Council.
Therefore, the recent saga in Tamil politics, where Northern Chief Minister, retired Justice Wigneswaren was almost removed by a motion of no confidence moved by a majority of the Northern Provincial Council, riveted political attention up North and to the chief protagonists in the crisis, namely the Chief Minister and Illankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) leader and former general secretary Mavai Senathirajah.
It took the wisdom and sagacity of TNA leader Rajavarothian Sambanthan, ably assisted by his trusted assistant, President’s Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran, to defuse the crisis and restore a semblance of unity between the dominant ITAK and some of its smaller partners, affiliates and fellow travelers.
Chief Minister refuses to support TNA at general election
Now, it is not for the first time that there has been sharp divergence in policies and politics between the Chief Minister and the ITAK. The first instance was during the general elections of 2015, when Chief Minister Wigneswaren made an amazing public statement and took the political stand, that he would not be supporting the TNA at the general elections since he must be above, or as a provincial leader, was beneath the parliamentary political fray. Such a stance was unheard of either in Sri Lanka or abroad. You would not for instance have a Governor in the US refusing to campaign for his party at congressional elections. The result of this act of political ingratitude to the TNA, which had brought him out from the cold and installed as Chief Minster through the Party’s block vote, was that the TNA, which secured five (5) of the seven (7) seats in the Jaffna district lost out on getting the sixth seat by just six votes and the beneficiary of that close call was, of course, Vijeykala Maheswaren of the UNP, which secured the sixth seat and the EPDP’s Douglas Devananda, who came in seventh.
However, Chief Minister Wigneswaren did not strictly stay neutral in the general election fray. Three days before the polls he issued a statement calling upon the Tamil people to vote for Tamil parties that would support the Tamil struggle rather than a compromise. This was both a break from his position of being supposedly recused from the process and left the Tamil polity in doubt as to whether he criticising the TNA and recommending the political alliance of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) led by the intransigent and anti-engagement Gajan Ponnambalam. But, the Chief Minister learnt a lesson he seems to have since forgotten that when he goes and acts against the ITAK/TNA, (the parliamentary elections were contested as ITAK since TNA is not a registered political party or alliance), he has no electoral currency, credibility or clout. The general elections of August 2015, were a rout for the Chief Minister’s preferred ACTC-led non-engagers. For all Gajan Ponnambalam’ s rather extreme Tamil nationalist rhetoric, his group secured just a little over five thousand votes in the entire Jaffna District getting less than one third of the over seventeen thousand votes secured by young Angajan Ramanathan, leading the UPFA unsuccessful effort under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sinhala nationalism. The reality of the Jaffna District general election of August 2015 is that the Sinhala nationalism of Rajapaksa as represented by young Ramanathan on the UPFA ticket had three times more attraction than the Tamil nationalism of the variety sprouted by Galen Ponnambalam. This, despite the Chief Minister’s misguided endorsement! Following the general election as well, many ITAK Northern Provincial Councilors wished to remove Chief Minister and once again TNA and the then newly minted Leader of the Opposition Sambanthan, demonstrated that he wanted to repay evil with good by letting the Chief Minister remain.
The next action by the Chief Minister, against the ITAK was the formation of the Tamil People’s Forum (TPF) essentially the political refuge of those who were unsuccessful at the general elections of 2015. The Chief Minister instead of focusing on dealing with and ameliorating the effects of the conflict in the North, was busy trying to create and be an alternative voice to the TNA / ITAK in Tamil politics. Again, ITAK provincial councilors wanted to remove the Chief Minister, but TNA leader Sambanthan demonstrated how much Tamil politics had changed by letting him remain in that position.
The new democratic Tamil political leadership of the TNA/ITAK leadership of Sambanthan, Senathiraja and Sumanthiran are not even willing to take action against their internal critics. One hopes their political accommodation and graciousness, which turns Machiavelli’s theories on its head, would be electorally rewarded in time to come, not least because reconciliation in Sri Lanka requires the moderation and democratic credentials of the ITAK’s leadership.
My association with
Dr. Saman Kelegama, Executive Director of the Institute of Policy Studies or IPS, dates back to the early 1990s when I had the opportunity to listen to him at an international conference on trade liberalisation. At that time, it was a cardinal sin to pinpoint shortcomings of the trade liberalisation experiment which Sri Lanka had initiated a decade earlier, but the bearded young economist who took the podium as a researcher from IPS surprised us all. He said that the trade liberalisation move initiated by Sri Lanka in 1978 was a necessity, but the timing and the steps taken were all catastrophic. What he meant was that Sri Lanka, instead of going for a wholesale trade liberalisation, could have done it in steps so that its adverse effects could have been minimised. Since then, I became a fan of Dr. Saman Kelegama, who is known as Saman to his friends. I had a very close rapport with him, personally as well as professionally.
28th June 2017
In the year 2015 the good governance Government started a new term of office, promising a more democratic country with restored justice. The main promises of the Government revolved around peace building, reconciliation, constitutional reforms, and eradication of corruption. It is incorrect to say that, these promises are entirely ignored; rather it clearly shows that promises were and are in the process of being fulfilled. The granting GSP+ to Sri Lanka has taken the country to another level in the eyes of the international community and as well as the locals. No doubt it has an immense impact on the economy of the country. It also implies that Sri Lanka is on the right track of good governance by protecting human rights, labour rights and environment.
