Bangladesh: A reader’s admiration for a journalist-cum- columnist par excellence

Creative capacity is the hallmark of a columnist because if it is not there, then he cannot make columns interesting, and hence cannot guide readers.

by Anwar A. Khan-Jul 12, 2017

( July 12, 2017, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) All developing countries face myriad issues on a day-to-day, short and long-term basis, and Bangladesh is no exception. The media is to pursue with an open mind, and a journalistic ethos that is not merely investigative but is thorough, consistent and transparent. The function of journalism is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true journalism. Syed Badrul Ahsan (SBA) is an eminent senior journalist and columnist of Bangladesh. The noted columnist previously was Executive Editor at the Daily Star and Associate Editor at the Daily Observer. He did his Masters in 1979 on English Literature from Dhaka University. He served as a lecturer in English at Notre Dame College from 1982 to 1985. He started his journalistic career at the New Nation in the early 1980s, he moved to other newspapers, among which were the Morning Sun, the Bangladesh Observer, the Independent, News Today and New Age. He is now at The Asian Age as its Associate Editor. He is also a columnist with www.bdnews24.com, a reputed online internet Newspaper of Bangladesh.

He is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is also an author, political commentator, and a literary critic, and has had a three-year stint as a senior diplomat of Bangladesh to UK. SBA is by heart a journalist par excellence in English journalism. To him journalism is what was said by Joseph Pulitzer: “I am deeply interested in the progress and elevation of journalism, having spent my life in that profession, regarding it as a noble profession and one of unequalled importance for its influence upon the minds and morals of the people.”

We are living in a time when obituaries are being written for newspapers every day. Opinion writing is growing rapidly in the Newspapers like never before. There are many great columnists in the country. The essential quality for a great column is storytelling, the ability to entertain as well as educate. This is to turn or place at an angle toward the stylists who combine the urgency of news with the precision of poetry, writing history in the present tense. So take it with a grain of salt, as an appreciation, the start of a conversation. Columnist SBA covers his columns with a seasoned storyteller’s eye that recalls the classic correspondents of our times. The makers versus takers narrative drive much of his columns. His every time spurs heartfelt columns arise intense interest in the readers’ thoughtful minds. His first page commentary is also in rare form all year, but his close-focus story and his kindness resonate in an otherwise news cycle. His every column can be considered as a masterpiece.

With his natural charm, wit, and intelligence, he is made for it, but he only concentrates on human value-driven big bucks when he is finally done with his columns. In an age of extravagant exaggeration, the term “larger than life” gets kicked around a lot. Badrul is the original and the best in that regard. His legend has reached down to the readers and journalists who have come in his wake. He is a living giant, a very, very, very erudite man. He has that gift of winning people over and impressing them and he uses it to a great effect. He is a person of great humanity and intelligence who actually are making a massive contribution to journalism in this country. There is a kindness and intelligence to him and that’s why, he is so different in so many ways.

He is an amazing friend, colleague, and intellectual who has made an indelible impression on everybody he works and has been working with. He is an astute, a tremendous and insightful senior journalist and columnist. He is extraordinarily intelligent. He works from instinct. Anybody around him who knows him knows how formidable he is when he puts his mind to it to get things done. His record speaks for itself. He really does believe in the State, our glorious Liberation War, its true spirit and he loves this country passionately.

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It is absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what he sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others.

Badrul Ahsan is best known for his work in the journalistic sphere; it is his deep personal commitment to the cause of Bangladesh’s true spirit and he has brought his vast experience to bear in support of the newspaper industry. He is for rigorous consistency and ethical orientation which he has stood for over the years. He is a world-class scholar. The demonstration of passion for advancing the cause of value-based society has been a way of life for him for close to four decades. He strongly believes that the importance of public administration lies in its critical role in ensuring effective implementation of government policies and programmes. When there is a weak capacity in public administration, delivery of services is largely unsatisfactory.

He is a strong advocate of : corruption hates transparency. Transparency and accountability help to reduce corruption. Badrul is a prolific writer in English and has written many columns, poems, critical essays in rich English which deserve high commendation by the readers. His columns ask us to look back in order to look forward. His story, in these many telling, becomes exemplary. His peroration perfectly Pericles “for goodness sake, don’t letting the audience dosing-off.” His fountain of knowledge is indelible as the country moves towards critical political time where conflicting issues, fragmented interests and competing sentiments have become the trend. He has managed to stay away from controversies and live above parochial interests.

He has become a celebrity but never behaves like one. He is a very nice person both on the personal level and in the world of journalism. We should be most proud of him. We hope that readers would recognise the immense good carries out every day by respectable, modest, diligent, compassionate like SBA. It would just be nice once in a while to realise how good he has it, when you have it. Like C. S. Lewis, we wish to say:” You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. “In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty-six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society” -― John Grogan’s very words are true to the case of Syed Badrul Ahsan. Journalism is literature. Being a columnist is as much a diagnosis as a job description. Mark Twain is absolutely correct when he said :”In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.”

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It is absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what he sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. He cannot do his work without judging what he sees. Badrul first sees the inner meaning of any subject-matter, only then he uses his keen edged pen. A columnist must possess some qualities at the personal level, as these are essential for him to be known as a better individual as well. He must possess certain qualities, which are a must for any professional journalist or a columnist.

A columnist is to be well-read and educated. It is deemed so because he will understand the changing times, and will be able to make readers comprehend too. It is also important for him to having knowledge of the related fields for which he is writing. Reading is a must for everyone, but for a columnist, reading of almost all subjects is a necessity because knowing everything around him and mastering one can do. One subject, he must know it thoroughly because a columnist acts as a preacher-cum-opinion maker; hence he must know things to put them in a proper perspective. He should be well-versed in language. A columnist has to play with words to create humour, situation, criticism, argument and conclusion. So it is very important for a writer to present ideas in better language. For columnists, it is a must that they write in the best language; in rich language like Badrul. The columnists move around and look at the society besides seeing through the news to get insight. Moreover, they are also looking for a scoop and think and probe like a reporter, while analysing things like a columnist. He must have complete knowledge about laws and ethics of journalism. Huge responsibilities are on a columnist’s shoulders, when he is writing. He knows the laws, and keeps journalistic ethics in mind besides never relegating the editorial policy to redundancy.

Creative capacity is the hallmark of a columnist because if it is not there, then he cannot make columns interesting, and hence cannot guide readers. A columnist must work hard besides earnestly using brain and argument. He must know how to keep his readership intact. He must look for new subjects because he does not want that his readers get bored with the ideas often written about. A columnist never plays in the hands of the corrupt elements, and he always keeps his honesty and integrity unscathed. Syed Badrul Ahsan does have that much of those essential qualities. His word is his bond. He is a humble, kind, generous and courageous, and patriotic journalist. We ask for God’s blessings and comfort for him all the while. May he find the courage and strength to move forward in peace and confidence. Lead the right path that others will follow, live a good life worthy of example. Long live Syed Badrul Ahsan in good health and in good spirits. We wish he receives many prestigious international awards for his great contributions to journalism for long.

World's Largest Tuna Company Finally Commits to Sustainable Fishing and Worker Protection

Major victory took two years of relentless campaigning and pressure from hundreds of thousands of concerned consumers across the globe.

Greenpeace activists submit a petition with over 680,000 signatures to Thai Union in Bangkok on June 2, 2017, calling on the company to commit to positive changes for the oceans and workers at sea.Photo Credit: Panumas Sanguanwong/Shutterstock

By Sarah King / Greenpeace

July 11, 2017, 12:50 PM GMT

It took two years of relentless campaigning and nearly 700,000 concerned people from around the world, but today we are sharing the good news that together we convinced the world’s largest tuna company to clean up its act.

Tuna giant Thai Union, which owns brands such as John West, Chicken of the Sea, Petit Navire, Mareblu and Sealect, has committed to a series of changes to its business that will help to protect seafood workers, reduce destructive fishing practices, and increase support for more sustainable fishing.

This marks a major shift for the corporation, and sends a signal to the entire fishing industry to do better for the oceans and seafood industry workers.

How did this happen?

As the world’s biggest tuna producer, one in five cans of tuna sold globally are canned by Thai Union. Greenpeace’s global campaign to transform the tuna industry has included targeting its brands for several years through tuna rankings, along with assessments of foodservice companies, supermarkets, and other brands supplied by the company.

Almost two years ago, we launched a global campaign, calling on Thai Union to bring the tuna industry out of the shadows where a cycle of overexploitation, devastation and appalling labor practices flourish in the name of profit.

Alongside our allies, unions, concerned members of the public and our supporters, we pushed the company toward a brighter future for our oceans, seafood workers and ocean-dependent communities.

From our ships on the high seas, to supermarkets, industry conferences, and company headquarters, thousands of people including massive labour unions and human rights organizations joined our call for Thai Union to source more sustainably and responsibly.

Together, we pushed companies supplied by Thai Union to sell better products and commit to policies that help workers and our oceans, including tackling practices like transshipment that fuel illegal activity and human rights abuses.

So how has Thai Union changed?

Thanks to the mounting pressure, starting immediately, the company will begin making the following changes across its global business.

1. Reduce fish aggregating device (FAD) use by an average of 50 percent, and double supply of verifiable FAD-free caught fish globally by 2020. FADs are floating objects that create mini ecosystems and result in the catch and killing of many marine species, including sharks, turtles, and juvenile tuna.
2. Shift significant portions of longline caught tuna to best practice pole and line or troll caught tuna by 2020 and implement strong requirements in place to help reduce bycatch. Longline vessels are known for catching and killing non-target species like seabirds, turtles, and sharks.
3. Extend its current moratorium on at-sea transshipmentacross its entire global supply chain unless strict conditions are met by suppliers. Transshipment at sea enables vessels to continue fishing for months or years at a time and facilitates illegal activity.
4. Ensure independent observers are present on all longline vessels transshipping at sea to inspect and report on potential labour abuse, and ensure human or electronic observer coverage across all tuna longline vessels it sources from. Much of the abuse that plagues fishing vessels takes place out of sight without authorities to report to.
5. Develop a comprehensive code of conduct for all vessels in its supply chains to help ensure workers at sea are being treated humanely and fairly, beginning in January 2018.

An audit will be conducted by an independent third party next year to measure progress, and in the meantime, we will all be watching and waiting for positive results.

Calling on other major tuna buyers

Thai Union cannot and should not be taking this on alone. Not only will the vessels catching the fish need to fully cooperate for these commitments to turn into real action and positive change, but all major buyers and sellers of tuna need to recognize that the status quo is no longer acceptable.

Supporting more sustainable and socially responsible fisheries, particularly those that are small-scale, is an essential part of any sound tuna sourcing policy. Customers should not have to choose between bad or better, all tuna should be responsibly-caught to help address the oceans’ overfishing crisis.

Thai Union’s commitment is not the end of the story to transform the fishing industry, but the continuation of a growing movement to stop out of control companies from wreaking havoc on ocean ecosystems and people’s lives. We need to continue to hold companies accountable and all do our part to reduce the threats to our oceans.

Want to help protect our oceans and push for better tuna fisheries? Urge your favourite brand or supermarket to ensure it’s sourcing more responsibly-caught tuna, avoid brands poorly rated in Greenpeace’s tuna rankings, eat less tuna to help struggling populations to recover, and when in doubt, choose vegan “tuna”- yes, that’s a thing!

Burma vows ‘no restrictions’, escorts media to restive Rakhine


A Rohingya refugee woman walks on the muddy path as she carries a child at the Kutupalang Makeshift Refugee Camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, July 8, 2017. Pic: Reuters

13th July 2017

BURMA pledged on Wednesday “no restrictions” on journalists visiting the troubled state of Rakhine this week, in the first official trip to include foreign reporters to mostly Rohingya Muslim villages affected by violence since October.

Eighteen Burmese nationals and foreigners representing international media, including Reuters, arrived in the state capital of Sittwe on Wednesday ahead of a government-escorted visit to the northern areas of Buthidaung and Maungdaw, where most residents are stateless Rohingyas.

“There are no restrictions regarding the areas that you can report from,” said Thet Swe, a director at the Ministry of Information’s News and Periodicals Enterprise.

“We didn’t arrange any ‘for show’ places for news reporting,” he said.

SEE ALSO: Burma must ‘fully cooperate’ in UN inquiry on crimes against Rohingya – US 

Last year, Burma‘s army unleashed a crackdown in the area after Rohingya militants attacked posts near the Bangladesh border, killing nine police officers.

Some 75,000 people fled across the nearby border to Bangladesh, according to the United Nations, which has documented allegations of gang rape, torture, arson and killings by security forces.

Burma’s government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied most of the allegations, and has denied entry to a UN fact-finding mission tasked with looking into the allegations.

The government has blocked independent journalists and human rights monitors from going to the area in the far north of the state for the past nine months.

Suu Kyi has said a UN fact-finding mission would only heighten tension in the region. Many in Buddhist-majority Burma, see the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Burmese officials say a domestic investigation, led by Vice President Myint Swe – a former lieutenant general in the army – and a commission headed for former UN chief Kofi Annan – which is not mandated to investigate human rights abuses – are the appropriate ways to address problems in Rakhine State.

Security concerns

Annan recommended in March that authorities “provide full and regular access for domestic and international media to all areas affected by recent violence”.

Reporters on the visit to the northern areas would be provided security by Burma’s paramilitary Border Guard Police force, Thet Swe said.

Although access would not be restricted, he said, reporters should stay close to officials during visits to villages for their own security.

A detailed itinerary for the five-day trip was provided to reporters on Wednesday.

The itinerary does not include visits to the villages at the centre of a two-week offensive in mid-November, in which Reuters has documented numerous allegations of abuses by troops following a clash with Rohingya militants.

SEE ALSO: Starvation hits Burma’s Rakhine state as food supplies dwindle

However, Thet Swe said, the plan was “not fixed” and would be subject to changes due to the weather and security concerns. He invited reporters to suggest additional places they want to visit.

Reporters would be taken to the village of Tin May, where security forces killed two suspected militants and arrested one after they detonated a bomb on Sunday, according to an announcement from Suu Kyi’s office.

While Burma has denied entry to a UN fact-finding mission, a UN special rapporteur on human rights, Yanghee Lee, is visiting Rakhine State this week.

Although she is not expected to visit the northern areas near the border with Bangladesh, she is due to meet some of the people displaced in violence since 2012.

About 120,000 Rohingya have lived in “internally displaced persons” camps in Rakhine State, dependent of international aid, since communal widespread violence that year. – Reuters

Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize laureate imprisoned in China, dies at 61

Chinese dissident and writer Liu Xiaobo has died at 61. He suffered from late-stage liver cancer. (The Washington Post)

By Harrison Smith July 13 at 9:53 AM

In the days after the Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, on Oct. 8, 2010, his country cut off trade talks with Norway, home of the Nobel committee, and placed his wife under house arrest. In apparent protest of the award, a group of Chinese business and cultural leaders established an alternative to the Nobel, the Confucius Peace Prize, and later honored such human rights renegades as Vladi­mir Putin, Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe.

Mr. Liu, who died July 13 at age 61, received the Nobel for what the award committee called his “long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights.” It was that very struggle, from his hunger strike at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to his insistent calls to end one-party rule, that also made him a marked man in China.

[Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo called ‘a monument to morality’]

He was in the midst of an 11-year prison sentence when he won the prize. It promoted a man much of the world regarded as a distinguished activist and whose own leaders considered a dangerous subversive.

Foreign news reports about the Nobel honor were blacked out in China, where authorities called it a “desecration” of the prize. Text messages that included his name went unreceived, stymied by state-run cellular networks, and the news was squelched online by the censorship apparatus known as the “Great Firewall.”

Liu Xiaobo in 2008. (Associated Press)

At the Nobel ceremony in Oslo, Mr. Liu was represented by an empty chair. Not since the 1935 prize, when German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky was being held at a concentration camp by the Nazis, had a laureate or a family member been unable to accept the honor in person. Ossietzky died at a Nazi hospital in 1938.

Mr. Liu spent much of the past three decades in forced confinement — at home, at labor camps or in prison. And his final months, after being diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May and granted medical parole, drew international calls for his release.

His death, at a hospital in the northeastern city of Shenyang, was confirmed by a statement from the Chinese government, and it made Mr. Liu the latest in a string of Chinese dissidents whose incarceration ended in serious illness or fatality. A photograph posted July 5 on Twitter by the dissident writer Ye Du showed an emaciated Mr. Liu at the hospital with his wife, Liu Xia, a photographer and poet who had pleaded for better medical care for Mr. Liu.

A pair of American and German doctors who were granted permission to treat Mr. Liu said Sunday that he was strong enough to seek medical treatment abroad. Chinese officials resisted that claim and rebuffed requests from Germany and the State Department to allow him to leave the country.

The hospital treating Mr. Liu said that he was suffering from respiratory and renal failure, as well as septic shock, and that his family had decided against inserting a breathing tube necessary to keep him alive.

Through it all, Mr. Liu’s plight remained largely invisible at home, where his writings were censored and he was labeled a mere criminal.

‘Looking for real life’

A bespectacled chain-smoker with a stutter, Mr. Liu established himself as a literary and political bomb thrower in the mid-1980s, when Chinese society experienced a “cultural fever” under reform-minded Communist Party officials.

Liu Xiaobo in 2008. (Associated Press)

Mr. Liu (whose full name is pronounced lee-oh SHEEOW-bwoh) “was the enfant terrible of the late-’80s intellectual scene in Beijing,” said journalist Orville Schell, an acquaintance of Mr. Liu’s who is now a China scholar at the Asia Society in New York. “He was somebody who you invited to a party with some trepidation, because he was bound to offend someone.”

Confucius was “a mediocre talent,” Mr. Liu said; contemporary Chinese writers were even worse. The country’s “Marxism-Leninism,” he wrote in one article, was “not so much a belief system as a tool used by rulers to impose ideological dictatorship.”

Mr. Liu was a visiting scholar at Columbia University when, in April 1989, thousands of students began demonstrating in Tiananmen Square to demand democratic reforms. The assembly marked a turning point for Mr. Liu, who arrived at Tiananmen in May and began protesting alongside the movement’s young leaders.

When the chants began to die down and soldiers started trying to clear the square, Mr. Liu and three friends — including Hou Dejian, a popular rock singer from Taiwan — erected a tent beside the 10-story Monument to the People’s Heroes and began a 72-hour hunger strike.

“We are not in search of death; we are looking for real life,” the strikers declared in a statement. “We want to show that democracy practiced by the people by peaceful means is strong and tenacious. We want to break the undemocratic order maintained by bayonets and by lies.”

Two nights later, military units launched a full-scale assault on the square, firing their rifles and driving armored vehicles into crowds that lined the surrounding streets. Mr. Liu and his fellow hunger-strikers, fearing a bloodbath in the square, acted as negotiators between military forces and the remaining demonstrators. At dawn on June 4, the group successfully persuaded the students to leave.

Mr. Liu’s actions — at one point he grabbed a rifle from a demonstrator and smashed it on the ground, preventing what he saw as an excuse for the military to “gun everybody down” — were widely credited with saving thousands of lives. Still, at least several hundred civilians were killed in the attacks, details of which were suppressed by the Chinese government.

“From the moment I walked out of the square, my heart has been heavy,” Mr. Liu said in “The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” a 1995 documentary that took its name from the English translation of Tiananmen. “I’ve never gotten over this.”

While biking on June 6, amid a government crackdown that led other prominent demonstrators to go into hiding, Mr. Liu was captured by Chinese officers. He later recalled the event in a poem,

“Experiencing Death”:

Deep in the night, empty road

I’m biking home

I stop at a cigarette stand

A car follows me, crashes over my bicycle

some enormous brutes seize me

I’m handcuffed eyes covered mouth gagged

thrown into a prison van heading nowhere

He was imprisoned for 21 months, branded a “black hand” and an “evil mastermind,” and forbidden from publishing in China — a dictate that he subverted through pseudonyms and by penning articles for overseas publications.

Mr. Liu published more than 1,000 essays, by his count, and called for reform, not revolution. Yet he remained under state surveillance and in 1996 was sentenced to three years of forced labor for drafting a declaration that called for reconciliation with Taiwan, freedom for Tibet and the impeachment of President Jiang Zemin.

Instead of leaving the country, Mr. Liu chose to remain in China, a decision that “was the path of destruction for his life” but that enabled him to remain an effective critic of the state, Schell said. His work culminated in Charter 08, a sweeping, pro-democracy manifesto that landed him in prison for the last time.

Published online in 2008, the document was modeled in part on Charter 77, an anti-Communist tract that Czech dissidents such as Vaclav Havel, a friend of Mr. Liu’s, had drafted decades earlier. Mr. Liu was among the leading drafters and first signers of Charter 08, which called for “the democratization of Chinese politics” through the establishment of a new constitution, greater freedom of expression, an independent judiciary and an end to one-party rule.

The document drew unexpectedly wide-ranging support, receiving 10,000 signatures from farmers, lawyers, philosophers and street vendors until it was pulled off the Internet by Chinese censors. “Probably the most worrying thing to the authorities was the broad coalition of people who decided to put their name on it,” Nicholas Bequelin, then an Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper in 2009. “It was the organization [that concerned them]; it was across different social groups and across the country. That’s really one of the red lines for the party.”

Mr. Liu was captured by police shortly before the document’s release and confined to a windowless room north of Beijing. His final public statement was in court, days before he was found guilty of “inciting subversion of state power” on Christmas Day 2009.

“I firmly believe that China’s political progress will never stop, and I’m full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future, because no force can block the human desire for freedom,” he said in the statement. Titled “I Have No Enemies,” it was later read at his Nobel ceremony.

The statement included extended remarks about his wife, whose love he described as his “most fortunate experience” in 20 years. “Even if I were crushed into powder,” he said, “I would still use my ashes to embrace you.”

Childhood under Mao

Mr. Liu was born in the northeastern city of Changchun on Dec. 28, 1955, and came of age during the worst years of the Cultural Revolution. In Mao Zedong’s bid to reassert his authority and revive revolutionary zeal, intellectuals and alleged dissidents were “reeducated” through forced labor, and millions of urban children were sent out of school and “down to the countryside” to work at farms and rural communities. Thousands of professionals were attacked and killed.

With his father, a professor of Chinese literature, Mr. Liu worked for a time in Inner Mongolia. He returned to Changchun and graduated from Jilin University in 1982, part of the first cohort to return to college after Mao’s death in 1976. He received a master’s degree in Chinese literature at Beijing Normal University in 1984 and earned his doctorate there four years later.

Mr. Liu was married at a labor camp in 1996, although the marriage was not officially recognized for another two years. In 2012, Liu Xia told the Associated Press that she was allowed to visit Mr. Liu in prison once a month but was otherwise permitted to leave her apartment only to buy groceries and see her parents.

A previous marriage, to Tao Li, ended in divorce during Mr. Liu’s first prison sentence. In addition to his wife, survivors include a son from his first marriage, Liu Tao.

Mr. Liu focused increasingly on his writing and poetry in later years, and from 2003 to 2007 served as president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center. Some of his work was translated into English and published in the 2012 collections “No Enemies, No Hatred” and “June Fourth Elegies.”

The latter featured poems that Mr. Liu wrote each year in commemoration of the Tiananmen Square attacks. The writing, he said, was a means of bearing witness to a tragedy that had been excised from the country’s official histories.

He wrote in one poem:

The day
seems more and more distant,
and yet for me it
remains a needle inside my body

remains a crowd of Mothers who’ve lost their children.

Is North America's opioid epidemic a crisis of masculinity?

Men accounted for 80% of the 935 fatal overdoses in British Columbia last year – and a researcher says it’s time to pay more attention to the risks they face

 ‘I think we haven’t really thought deeply or well about who men are, about what the pressures on them are, what we need them to be,’ says a researcher. Photograph: Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images

Jane Philpott: ‘The death toll is worse than any other infectious epidemic in Canada.’ Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Ashifa Kassam in Vancouver-Wednesday 12 July 2017

The calls began just after midnight and continued relentlessly throughout the day. By the end of Wednesday 26 April, paramedics in the Canadian province of British Columbia had responded to a record 130 suspected overdose calls.

The day offered a window on the battle playing out in British Columbia as residents grapple with an opioid crisis that has claimed, on average, four lives a day in the province.

The struggle is playing out across North America, as authorities in Canada and the US grapple with an epidemic that has claimed thousands of lives on both sides of the 49th parallel.

Against this stark backdrop, a professor at the University of British Columbia has highlighted a different statistic from the crisis: in 2016, of the 935 fatal overdoses in the province, 80% were men.
Research that shows men are more likely to use illicit drugs, so it is perhaps logical that they are more likely to overdose. But the clinical psychologist Dan Bilsker argues that the figure suggests a relationship between the crisis and masculinity – one that may offer clues as to why the death toll continues to rise, and where the solutions might lie.

“I think we haven’t really thought deeply or well about who men are, about what the pressures on them are, what we need them to be,” he said.

Bilsker has spent years studying men’s psychological health, delving into why men live an average of four to six years less than women and are more likely to kill themselves. In some ways, the opioid crisis stems from the same tangled roots, he said. And as with many other health issues, its singular interaction with gender has been largely overlooked.

Across Canada, at least 2,458 people died last year of an opioid overdose, according to the federal government. “The death toll is worse than any other infectious epidemic in Canada, including the peak of Aids deaths, since the Spanish flu that took the lives of 50,000 people a century ago,” Jane Philpott, Canada’s health minister, told a conference in Montreal earlier this year. (Her government has been criticised for not doing enough to address the crisis – as she spoke, protesters unfurled a banner reading: “They talk, we die.”)

Bilsker believes the government’s response would be different if those dying were 80% women. “I suspect there would be more groups – more people actively involved in raising public awareness – who would speak up and engender a greater sense of this being an important issue,” he said.

The gender divide in deaths reflects levels of drug abuse in the province, where 80% of users are men, said Patricia Daly, the chief medical health officer of Vancouver Coastal Health. “People here often talk about men’s health,” she said. “We don’t have a focus on things that men are at greater risk for and this is certainly one – dying of an overdose is primarily affecting men, and men in the prime of their life.”

But others say that the federal government’s reluctance to engage with the issue owes less to gender, and more to the stigma around drug use. “I think if it was any other group of people dying like this, we would have handled it a long time ago,” Jordan Westfall of the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs recently told the Guardian.

When it comes to explaining why so many men are dying, Bilsker pointed to a variety of factors. Data shows that men are more likely to suffer severe workplace injuries, which could in turn make them more likely to be prescribed opioids for pain. “In our society, we slot men into the dangerous jobs, where they may be killed in small numbers, but they may well be injured,” said Bilsker.

Across Canada, many of those dying are men between the ages of 19 and 50 years old. “I think it’s easy to simply look at them as foolish risk takers,” said Bilsker. But to do so would minimise the extent to which our culture socialises and rewards men who are willing to take risks, he argued.

“Whether its logging or its the military, we need men to do it,” he said. “We need men to do inherently risky jobs.”

That nudge toward risk is compounded by societal norms that discourage men from talking about emotional suffering or reaching out for help, he said. “One of the main things drugs are used for is killing psychological pain. They’re not just about taking something to become euphoric, they’re often escapes from one’s experience of unbearable pain,” he said.

A deeper understanding of these factors could offer tools to fight back against the crisis, said Bilsker, pointing to the informed – and ultimately effective – public campaigns waged against impaired driving in recent years as an example.

After months spent highlighting the gender disparity in the opioid crisis, Bilsker said he’s beginning to see indications that the message is sticking.

“It’s just starting to be seen as something that actually needs to be talked about,” he said.

On framing our Constitution

Featured image courtesy ConstitutionNet

DEVANESAN NESIAH on 07/12/2017

On Independence Day we had a Constitution framed primarily by a British academic, Sir (then Dr) Ivor Jennings in the mid-40s. In formulating this document he consulted Prime Minister D.S Senanayake, Sir Oliver Goonetellike and others as and when he considered it to be necessary. The superficiality of the consultation is revealed in the response of 8, October 1949 (copied below) of Prime Minister Senanayake to Jennings on receiving a complimentary copy of “The Constitution of Ceylon”;

Dear Dr. Jennings,
Thank you very much indeed for the complimentary copy of “The Constitution of Ceylon” which I am looking forward to reading at my leisure. I have no doubt it will be very pleasant reading for me.
Yours sincerely,
sgd. D.S Senanayake

That Constitution is usually referred to as the Soulbury Constitution because Ceylon had not yet attained independence and Lord Soulbury was the Governor General. It was essentially a British product, in the drafting of which neither the population nor even the Members of the State Council had a significant hand. In this respect it is very different to those of many other Constitutions, notably of India and South Africa.

On framing our Constitution.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Sambandan to intervene if govt. fails to provide solutions for missing persons issue

 

By Roosindu Peris-July 12, 2017 

Leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), R. Sambandan stated that solutions will be provided swiftly, to the families of the disappeared due to the government involving themselves in the matter. 

Sambandan made these statements while participating in a protest - fast organized in Kilinochchi by 143 relatives of the missing. 

He added that he had discussed the problem regarding the missing individuals with both the President and the Prime Minister, and the government is currently on the path to provide solutions to the problems mentioned. 

Sambandan went onto state that the government needed some time to execute the solutions discussed, and that if their attempt fails, the TNA will step in to carry out the reconciliation process. 

He further stated that he would directly intervene and help out with the issues the relatives of the disappeared victims are facing. 

The district MP of Kilinochchi, Sivagnanam Shritharan and representatives of the Kilinochchi district from the Northern provincial council, were some of the individuals who had attended the event. 

Unarmed Tamil man shot dead by Sri Lankan police in Vadamaradchi

09 Jul  2017

Sri Lankan police shot dead an unarmed Tamil man in Vadamaradchi East, on Sunday afternoon.

Relatives of the dead man gather round his body. Photograph: Uthayan

Yogarasa Thines, in his twenties and from Thunnalai succumbed to his wounds shortly after being shot by police around the Manatkaadu desert area of Vadamaradchi East.

The killing has created a tense situation in the area, with angry locals attacking a check point set up to monitor illegal sand excavations, causing police to flee.

Reinforcements were later sent to the scene, although tensions continue, with reports of police vehicles being pelted with stones, as locals gathered at Manthigai Hospital where Mr Thines’s body is being kept.

Point Pedro police told reporters that the victim was involved in illegal sand excavations and that officers shot at him for running when told by police to stop.

Sri Lankan papers reported on Monday that two policemen have been arrested. The two police officers were presented in front of Point Pedro magistrate today and remanded until the 24th of July. The police officers have been identified as Sub inspector Sanjeevan and Sub inspector Mohammed Mubarak.

Earlier today Sri Lanka's police spokesperson Ruwan Gunasekara told reporters that the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Pujith Jayasundara had ordered a Special Investigation Unit (SIU) to  visit Jaffna. Mr Gunasekara said the investigators would reach Jaffna on Tuesday to conduct an impartial investigation into what happened. 

Police are still conducting a search operation for the two other unarmed Tamil men fled the scene after the first Tamil man was shot dead by the police.

Related Articles: 

10 July 2017 : Protests in Jaffna after police kill unarmed Tamil man

Sri Lanka: Constitutional impasse

The process of drafting a new Constitution has now been in the pipeline for some months. This has been slow because the government has been keen to obtain the views of as many stakeholders as possible.

by Lakdev Liyanagama-Jul 13, 2017

( July 13, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Among the main priorities of President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and their National Unity government was the task of enacting a new Constitution to replace the nearly forty-year-old Constitution introduced by former President J. R. Jayewardene which ushered in an executive presidential system of government in the country.

Although the three Presidents from the United National Party (UNP) who held office, Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa and D. B. Wijetunge did nothing to diminish the powers of the Presidency, the three Presidents from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), Chandrika Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena all promised to abolish or modify the Presidency.

Kumaratunga called the 1978 Constitution a ‘bahubootha’ (nonsensical) Constitution and pledged to repeal it but did not do so. Rajapaksa promised to modify it but in fact went on to strengthen the powers of the Executive President, amending it through the 18th Amendment to remove the two-term limit on an individual to hold the office of President.

President Maithripala Sirisena, whose presidential election campaign was born out of the campaign of Venerable Maduluwave Sobhitha Thera’s movement to abolish the executive presidential system of government, pledged to reform the Presidency, pruning its powers and making it responsible to Parliament.

Amendment to the Constitution

Indeed, President Sirisena and the National Unity government has already pruned some of the powers of the Presidency, restoring the two-term limit on an individual and reducing the term of office from six years to five years through the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

The process of drafting a new Constitution has now been in the pipeline for some months. This has been slow because the government has been keen to obtain the views of as many stakeholders as possible. Two key areas in the process- apart from reforming the Presidency- are changes to the electoral system and the devolution of powers that will redress the grievances of ethnic minorities.

However, the entire country was taken by surprise when the Buddhist clergy, spearheaded by the Asgiriya Chapter in Kandy, issued a statement a week ago, declaring that there was no need for a new Constitution. They also raised the issue with the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances Bill being presented in Parliament, wanting it deferred.

The special Sangha Council which met to issue the statement was attended by the Mahanayakas of three Nikayas and seventy-five other leading Buddhist prelates. It was the most direct intervention yet by the clergy into the affairs of the government, since the National Unity government assumed office.

However, it will be recalled that two weeks prior to this statement, the Karaka Sangha Sabha of the Asgiriya Chapter had issued a statement under the hand of the Mahanayake of the Asgiriya Chapter, the Most Venerable Warakagoda Gnanaratana Thera noting what it called were ‘concerns about the challenges posed by internal and external conspiracies against Sinhala Buddhists’.

Muslim community

What raised eyebrows in that statement was its tacit endorsement of the sentiments of the radical Buddhist monk, Venerable Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thera and his self-styled ‘Buddhist Army’, the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) organisation, although it said it did not approve of the manner in which the Venerable Thera had conducted himself.

“Although we do not approve the aggressive behaviour and speech of Bhikkhu Galagodaatte Gnanasara, the viewpoint expressed by him cannot be discarded. Insulting Bhikkhus by various groups without inquiring into the veracity of the issues raised by him cannot be condoned,” that statement from the Mahanayake of the Asgiriya Chapter said.

Many were taken by surprise at this stance because Venerable Gnanasara Thera, openly inciting racial hatred against the Muslim community, was wanted by courts and was a fugitive. Days after the statement from the Asgiriya Chapter, the Venerable Thera who had alleged that there were death threats against him, surrendered to two separate courts and was granted bail twice on the same day.

What the two declarations made by the Buddhist clergy in Kandy revealed was that there was a significant difference of opinion between them and those in government. While the issue of Venerable Gnanasara Thera’s conduct is a matter of concern, it pales into insignificance against the greater issue regarding amending the Constitution, which is at the core of the Government’s agenda.

Indeed, it could be argued that, at the last presidential election, the people of the country preferred Maithripala Sirisena over the incumbent, all-powerful President Mahinda Rajapaksa because they desired a departure from the oligarchy that was controlling all aspects of the country’s public life, an oligarchy made possible only because of the 1978 Constitution.

To now interrupt the process of constitutional reform would be to abandon the very reason why the government was voted into office. On the other hand, the sentiments of the Buddhist clergy could not be disregarded because they wield considerable influence over the vast majority of voters who are Sinhalese Buddhists. If ignored, it could result in disastrous political consequences.

To deal with this conundrum is a difficult task for the Government. Towards resolving this issue, President Sirisena visited Kandy soon after. He was accompanied by the Buddha Sasana and Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe who has acquired a reputation for his pro-Sinhala Buddhist sentiments within the UNP parliamentary group.

There, President Sirisena informed the Mahanayaka Theras of the three Nikayas and other Sangha Sabhas that a new commission and a special committee would be appointed to look into proposed Constitutional reforms. It is understood the President explained the rationale of the Government’s course of action and assured that measures would be in place to safeguard the ‘foremost’ status of Buddhism that is now guaranteed under Article 9 of the present Constitution.

Days later, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe echoed the same sentiments. Speaking at the opening of the ‘weli maluwa’ at Ruwaneweliseya in Anuradhapura over the weekend, the Prime Minister stated that provisions would be included in the new Constitution that would prohibit Governments from interfering with the internal matters of three main Buddhist Chapters.

Political parties

While the Government was attempting to defuse what could be a political crisis, other political parties were also querying the stance of the Buddhist clergy. The Mahanayakes have decided to oppose a new Constitution without any knowledge of its contents, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Parliamentarian Bimal Ratnayake declared. The JVP, he said, was not opposed to a new Constitution.

Meanwhile, The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) urged the Government to hold a referendum and place the issue of the new Constitution before the people. TNA parliamentarian M. Sumanthiran stated that the decision on a new Constitution should ultimately rest with the people and hence a referendum should be held if necessary.

Surprisingly, the Joint Opposition (JO) has not come out in force, opposing a new Constitution. It has its own dilemma. The current Constitution, with the 19th Amendment in force, debars Mahinda Rajapaksa from running for President again. Therefore, as long as the present Constitution is operative, Rajapaksa will have to play second fiddle- and that is not a prospect the JO relishes.

In contrast, if the present Constitution is replaced, the powers of the Executive President are further pruned and are replaced by an executive Prime Minister; Rajapaksa could be back in the driving seat. This could explain the JO’s muted response to the declaration in Kandy.

It was also noted by many observers that opposition to a new Constitution at this stage was somewhat premature because the draft of a new Constitution has not been released yet. There were many proposals under consideration and there was no ‘draft Constitution’ as such.

To its credit, the government has not abandoned the project of reforming the Constitution. In fact, all indications are that it is going ahead with the process, with greater input from the Buddhist clergy. In this process, it would do well to note that a continuous dialogue with the clergy will be helpful. This was also noted by the JVP which said the clergy had not been well informed by the government.

Indications are that the government will continue with its efforts to draft and present a new Constitution. Now, in addition to obtaining a two-thirds majority in Parliament, it has to convince the Buddhist clergy that a new Constitution is both necessary and essential. That will be challenging, especially if chauvinistic opposition political forces band together and decide to gain political mileage.