Happy Anniversary to America’s Most Corrupted Election

It’s never too late to make sure future votes are secure from foreign interference. Here’s how.

Voters cast their ballots at voting booths at PS198M The Straus School on Nov. 8, 2016 in New York City, New York. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images) 

BY SUSAN HENNESSEY, BENJAMIN WITTES-NOVEMBER 8, 2017, 1:56 PM

It’s the one-year anniversary of the day the American public elected Donald Trump president of the United States of America. It’s also the anniversary of the culmination of an unprecedented foreign adversary operation to interfere with and delegitimize the U.S. elections. The public has spent much of the last year debating whether such an operation really occurred, the extent of possible involvement of people in the United States, and what impact it might have had on the outcome.Far less attention has focused on how we’re going to stop it from happening again.

We previously noted the startling lack of concern demonstrated by the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on the matter. Sessions testified before the Senate recently that notwithstanding the threat of future foreign interference, he’s not sure what the Justice Department is doing about it. It seems he hasn’t bothered to ask.

Unfortunately, Sessions isn’t alone. Despite enduring interest in the issue of election security among the public and on Capitol Hill, the Trump administration has taken remarkably few concrete steps to counter the threat of foreign interference in 2018, 2020, and beyond.

Below are some ideas on where the executive branch — with help from Congress — should start.
First, it needs to disentangle pure election security issues from broader information operations or covert influence campaigns. Information operations certainly impact the broader context in which elections occur and can interact with election security issues to further undermine confidence. But they should be understood as a separate issue, with a distinct set of available solutions.

Election security involves the more specific threat to election infrastructure and voting systems used in the management and administration of elections. Voting systems include things like voting kiosks, voter registration systems, election night reporting, and poll books (where voters check in).

Depending on how broadly one construes election security, it also may involve protecting systems used by campaigns, parties, and candidates.

The information security community has busied itself over the past year proving the alarming vulnerabilities in these systems. At the annual DefCon cybersecurity conference, it took hackers about 90 minutes to thoroughly compromise U.S. voting machines in ways that would allow them to remotely change vote tallies.

To be clear, even if actually changing vote tallies isn’t a technical impossibility, it’s still extremely difficult to do so on the scale necessary to predictably change the outcome of a statewide or national election. The most probable actors with both the incentives and technical capacity to carry out sophisticated attacks are foreign governments. In order to successfully fix an election, they wouldn’t only have to beat forensic detection but also evade the U.S. and allied intelligence communities. The aftermath of the 2016 election demonstrated that is no easy task.

Unfortunately, the name of the game here isn’t just changing election outcomes. U.S. adversaries have set their sights on a more achievable goal: to undermine confidence in the electoral process. The intention here is to shake the faith of the American people in their government, in their processes and institutions, and in the selection of their leaders. In other words, an adversary doesn’t need to change the results to launch a successful assault on liberal democracy. And shaking confidence is a whole lot easier to achieve than predictably changing election outcomes. To do it, a malicious actor needs only to penetrate systems such that experts and election officials can no longer say with confidence that they are positive about the integrity of the system and the result it produced.

This means voting systems have to be secured in a way that protects against both the threat to the actual integrity of the results and to confidence in the systems generally.

The biggest roadblock at the moment is states.

In the United States, state and local governments, rather than the federal government, primarily administer elections.

 Unsurprisingly, states tend to push back hard at any perceived federal intervention in their electoral processes. That’s what happened when the Department of Homeland Security tried to offer voluntary assistance to states during the 2016 election, and Georgia’s secretary of state not only declined the help but also falsely accused DHS of improperly breaching state election systems. And when Trump’s voter fraud commissioners asked for election data from states, Mississippi’s secretary of state toldthem to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”

At the same time, states are woefully under-resourced in funding, training, expertise, equipment, and auditing capabilities. For example, according to a Brennan Center for Justice report, 41 states have voting machines that are more than 10 years old. Many states lack funding to buy new machines or increase security. And there are huge variations not only between states but also in some instances from county to county.

It simply isn’t reasonable, under these conditions, to expect state election systems to withstand sophisticated nation-state attacks — to not only counter known threats but also to anticipate unknown threats and to do it in a way that keeps results clean and is understood by the public. The task is even more Herculean when one considers that a successful strategy must not only work to prevent attacks but also rapidly restore confidence in the event of a successful attack. It’s time for the federal government to step up.

Designating election systems as part of critical infrastructure — which the Barack Obama administration did in its final days — is a good first step.

If the Trump administration now wants to make its own headway on these issues, without running afoul of states’ rights sensibilities, it needs to adopt an approach that is more carrot than stick. It can do so by developing a national strategy on election security that includes baseline standards and best practices and then by providing substantial federal funding to states to help meet those standards.

Tying large amounts of federal funding and support to meeting specific security standards developed at DHS and the National Institute of Standards and Technology is an obvious way to both address federalism concerns and get results. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Amy Klobuchar are leading the charge in Congress, offering amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act aimed at using federal funding to incentivize better election security practices that would take this approach. The executive branch can deepen these efforts by rolling out a comprehensive and actionable national approach.

Our adversaries have given plenty of thought to the security of the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections over the past year. It’s time for the Trump administration to catch up.

Bangkok migrant raids lead to arrest of 19 children

Dozens of refugees and asylum seekers have been detained in Thailand, rights groups say. Source: Shutterstock

By Caleb Quinley | 8th November 2017 

OVER the past two weeks, Thai authorities sprung multiple raids on unsuspecting asylum seekers throughout the city: leading many to question the authenticity of Thailand’s goals to develop ethical and practical immigration policies.

According to the human rights group Fortify Rights, dozens of refugees and asylum seekers have been detained for either overstaying their visas or unlawful entry. By international law, refugees who have UNHCR documents are supposed to be exempt from arbitrary arrest – especially if children are involved.

“Thai authorities are trampling on the rights of asylum seekers,” Fortify Rights executive director Amy Smith said.

SEE ALSO: Activists, women and ethnic minorities lack protection in Thailand – UN

“Asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their home countries shouldn’t experience further violations in Thailand. Thailand should respect the rights of those in need of protection, including asylum seekers and children.”

However, Thai authorities continue executing raids that undoubtedly target marginalised groups.

A Thai policeman at Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, Thailand, in March 2015. Source: Shutterstock/Settawat Udom

The most recent raid occurred on Nov 7, when police infiltrated 10 locations in Bangkok targeting both refugees and asylum seekers. According to Fortify Rights, police apprehended vulnerable groups including UNHCR recognised “People of Concern”, although exactly how many people were arrested is still unconfirmed.

One week prior, on Oct 31, authorities executed another raid named “Black Halloween”, as distasteful a name as questionable the arrests. The incursions were directed towards refugee dense areas eventually leading to the arrest of 21 Somali asylum seekers, including eight children. It appears police purposefully searched for those with darker complexions, stereotyping and categorising them as criminals.

Most of those arrested held UNHCR documents. One distraught and concerned Somali mother spoke to Fortify Rights, saying: “I witnessed the killing of my husband and the rest of my children [back in Somalia], but I managed to survive. My son is the last of my family. He is everything to me.”

Her son is only 11 years old and he is currently waiting for news of what will happen to him – while his mother continues to wait in distressed anticipation.

SEE ALSO: Thailand leaves legal loophole for torture, disappearances – UN

On Oct 30, Thai police aimed their scope at Pakistani refugees.

They stormed small apartment homes in the Phet Kasem area of Bangkok, arresting 22 Pakistani asylum seekers, two of which were children. To the astonishment of rights groups, all detainees held documents issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Raids like these are unfortunately no surprise, however, as it is well known how easy it is to migrate to Bangkok illegally. It’s also established that people of colour are often harassed in Thailand. Nightmare stories are abundant, and tales of indefinite detention are incredibly prevalent.

In fact, on Oct 21, more arbitrary arrests occurred. It seems the pattern continues.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha rides on a tractor at a farmer school in Suphan Buri province, Thailand, on Sept 18, 2017. Source: Reuters/Athit Perawongmetha

Police detained seven Somali asylum seekers with legal UNHCR documents. Again, five children were arrested—and now currently detained at Bangkok’s Immigration Detention Centre (IDC).

Bangkok’s IDC has been heavily criticised for the conditions inside: along with the inability to offer adequate or some say even humane care, additionally unable to offer timeframes of release for many detainees inside.

The centre is nothing less than a prison: cramming an absurd amount of prisoners together in unhealthily small spaces. NGOs and rights groups particularly criticise the centres’ inability to offer health and hygiene-related basics.

As of late, IDC is also under scrutiny for detaining children, which is a clear and obvious violation of international law. IDC has a policy not to detain children under 15 – a policy it seems isn’t at all being implemented.

SEE ALSO: Thailand: Report details human rights violations against defenders

Thai police don’t distinguish illegal immigrants who come here for financial reasons, from asylum seekers. Instead, they arbitrarily bundle the two groups together. Arresting whoever falls within the scope of their raids.

“I don’t understand why IDC is so hesitant [to release children from IDC] even though they know detaining children is against the law. There is no reason for them to detain any refugees. Refugees are not criminals,”  says Phutanee Kangkun, a human rights specialist for Fortify Rights.

“It’s clearly seen in how they define their raids. ‘Black Halloween’ and ‘Black Eagle’ operations are discriminating against people of darker complexion. They [Thai police] assume people of colour have more tendencies to commit crimes than other nationalities. This way, all people of colour are suspects, including asylum seekers and refugees.”

New Delhi declares emergency as toxic smog thickens by the hour

Sanjeev Miglani, Aditya Kalra-NOVEMBER 9, 2017

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Indian capital declared a pollution emergency on Thursday as toxic smog hung over the city for a third day and air quality worsened by the hour.

Illegal crop burning in the farm states surrounding New Delhi, vehicle exhaust emissions in a city with limited public transport and swirling construction dust have caused the crisis, which arises every year.

The problem has been compounded this year by still conditions, the weather office said.

A U.S. embassy measure of tiny particulate matter PM 2.5 showed a reading of 608 at 10 a.m. when the safe limit is 50.

An hour before it was 591.

PM 2.5 is particulate matter about 30 times finer than a human hair. The particles can be inhaled deep into the lungs, causing heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and respiratory diseases.

Residents complained of headaches, coughs and smarting eyes.

“Waking up with a headache, breathlessness & throat irritation every day,” Bhavani Giddu wrote on Twitter.

Many people stayed home and restaurants in some of the city’s most crowded parts were deserted.

“I’d like to assure people that the central government shall do everything possible to bring about improvement in air quality in Delhi and the Nation Capital Region,” central environment minister Harsh Vardhan said as authorities faced criticism for failing to take steps to fight a problem that erupts every year.

Women wearing masks walk past a road barrier on a smoggy day in New Delhi, India, November 9, 2017. REUTERS/Saumya Khandelwal

The haze covered India Gate, a war memorial in the centre of the city where Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife Camilla paid their respects on Thursday.

The city will curb car use next week, the state government said, the latest attempt to clean the air.

New Delhi will follow an “odd-even” scheme for five days starting Monday in which cars will be allowed on the roads based on whether their number plates are odd or even.

“It is an emergency situation,” said Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot.

In other measures, commercial trucks have been banned from the city unless they are carrying essential commodities, all construction has been stopped and car parking charges raised four times to force residents to use public transport. Schools have been shut for the week.

But experts said these measures were unlikely to bring immediate relief.

“There is such a cloud over us that you probably need artificial rain or some such to clear this,” said Dr Vivek Nangia, a pulmonologist at Delhi’s Fortis hospital.

Video images shot by ANI, a Reuters affiliate, showed farmers illegally burning crop stubble in Rohtak, about 65 km from Delhi.

Farmers in Haryana, where Rohtak is located, and Punjab, the two big agrarian states surrounding Delhi, burn millions of tonnes of crop waste around October every year before sowing the winter crop of wheat.

State authorities say it is hard to enforce the ban unless farmers, a powerful political constituency, are given funds to buy machinery to clear their land.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said in a Twitter post: “Situation is serious but Punjab helpless as problem is widespread & state has no money to compensate farmers for stubble management.”

Climate Change Effects On People’s Health

Rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns will likely decrease the production of staple foods, particularly in the poorest African countries.

by Dr. César Chelala-Nov 9, 2017

(November 9, 2017, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) The recent natural catastrophic events in the United States and Puerto Rico -which may be related to or worsened by climate change- call attention to the effects this phenomenon has on human health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO,) the warming and precipitation trends associated with climate change claim over 150,000 lives annually. It is possible that the costs of this phenomenon will increase with time –both in lives as well as in economics- underscoring the need for more effective approaches to this problem.

The rate of global warming has accelerated over the last few decades and, as a result, sea levels are rising, glaciers are melting and precipitation patterns are changing. As we have recently seen in the Caribbean and North America, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense, and so have been the consequences on the lives of every population in nature.

People’s health is the result of factors such as genetic make-up, nutrition, level of activity, social milieu, economic status, and education among other factors. In addition to those, there are other determinants of health such as clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food, secure shelter and access to health care, all of which are affected by climate change.

Although climate change may bring some localized benefits, such as fewer deaths in winter and increased food production in some regions as a result of temperature increase, its effects on health are mostly negative. They include infectious and allergic diseases as well as mental health problems caused by moving people out of their homes and, in most cases, placing them into much more precarious living conditions.

At a global level, the number of weather-related natural disasters has more than tripled since the 1960s, resulting in an enormous amount of deaths (some estimated indicate over 100,000 deaths per year), which occur mostly in developing countries. Rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions not only destroy homes but also affect medical facilities and other health and social services. Floods contaminate freshwater supplies, increase the risk of water-borne diseases, and create breeding ground for mosquitoes, with their considerable disease-carrying capacity.

Malaria, which is transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes, and kills almost one million people every year –mainly African children under five years old-, is strongly influenced by climate. And so is the Aedes mosquito vector of dengue, a most debilitating disease. An estimated 390 million dengue infections occur worldwide each year, with about 96 million resulting in illness. It is estimated that the number of people affected by dengue will increase substantially in the next few decades.

Rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns will likely decrease the production of staple foods, particularly in the poorest African countries. This will result in increases in malnutrition and under nutrition –particularly among children-, which currently cause 3.5 million deaths every year. A United Nations (UN) panel on climate change reported that, over all, global warming could reduce agricultural production by as much as two percent each decade for the rest of the century, while population will grow to 9.6 billion in 2050, from 7.2 billion today.

Higher temperatures increase ground-level ozone concentrations and direct lung injuries and more serious respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Climate change will also lengthen the transmission seasons of important vector-borne diseases and modify their geographic range, according to WHO. Disease migration responds to complex dynamics, of which temperature is one more factor.

Although all kinds of populations are affected by climate change some groups such as children, older people and the poor are more vulnerable. Countries with weak health infrastructure and beset by economic problems will be the least able to respond with adequate assistance, a situation starkly seen now in Puerto Rico.

Even if many actions can be carried out at the individual level, it is necessary to strengthen the awareness of governments about the seriousness of the situation and the urgency to create adequate mechanisms to respond to this challenge. Otherwise, we will ignore the damage at our own peril.

Dr. César Chelala is an international public health consultant and a winner of several journalism awards. This article was originally published by Information Clearing House

Breast cancer 'can return 15 years after treatment ends'

9 November 2017

Breast cancer can resurface after remaining dormant for 15 years following successful treatment, a study has found.

Women with large tumours and cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes had the highest 40% risk of it coming back.

Researchers writing in the New England Journal of Medicine said extending treatment with hormone therapy could reduce the risk of it recurring.

Scientists analysed the progress of 63,000 women for 20 years.

All had the most common form of breast cancer.

This is a type fuelled by the hormone oestrogen which can stimulate cancer cells to grow and divide.

Every patient received treatments such as tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors which block the effects of oestrogen or shut off the hormone's supply.

Although after five years of treatment their cancers had gone, over the next 15 years a steady number of women found that their cancer spread throughout their body - some up to 20 years after diagnosis.

Women who originally had large tumours and cancer that had spread to four or more lymph nodes were at highest risk of the cancer returning the next 15 years, the study said.

Women with small, low-grade cancers and no spread to the lymph nodes had a much lower 10% risk of cancer spread over that time.

'Remarkable'

Lead researcher Dr Hongchao Pan, from University of Oxford, said: "It is remarkable that breast cancer can remain dormant for so long and then spread many years later, with this risk remaining the same year after year and still strongly related to the size of the original cancer and whether it had spread to the (lymph) nodes."

Doctors have long known that five years of tamoxifen reduces the risk of recurrence by about a third in the five years after stopping treatment.

Recent research has suggested that extending hormone therapy to 10 years may be more effective at preventing breast cancer recurrence and death.

SCIENCE LIBRARY-Breast cancer cells are stimulated to grow and divide by the hormone oestrogen

Aromatase inhibitors, which only work for post-menopausal women, are believed to be even more effective.

But there are side effects with hormone treatments which can affect patients' quality of life and cause them to stop taking the pills.

These include menopausal symptoms, osteporosis, joint pain and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Prof Arnie Purushotham, senior clinical adviser at Cancer Research UK, which funded the study, said that since the research began, new drugs had been used to treat breast cancer and those worked in different ways to tamoxifen.

He said: "It's vital that work continues to better predict which cancers might return.

"We also need to know what the difference for women might be in taking hormone therapies for 10 years instead of five, the side effects and how this affects patients' quality of life."

Sally Greenbook, from charity Breast Cancer Now, said it was essential that women discussed any changes in treatment with their doctor.

"We would urge all women who have had treatment for breast cancer not to be alarmed, but to ensure they are aware of the signs of recurrence and of metastatic breast cancer, and to speak to their GP or breast care team if they have any concerns."

DOZENS OF MEN DESCRIBE RAPE, TORTURE BY SRI LANKA GOVERNMENT

08/11/2017

LONDON (AP) — One of the men tortured in Sri Lanka said he was held for 21 days in a small dank room where he was raped 12 times, burned with cigarettes, beaten with iron rods and hung upside-down.

Another man described being abducted from home by five men, driven to a prison, and taken to a “torture room” equipped with ropes, iron rods, a bench and buckets of water. There were blood splatters on the wall.



A third man described the prisoners as growing accustomed to the sound of screaming. “It made us really scared the first day but then we got used to it because we heard screaming all the time.”

Raped, branded or beaten repeatedly, more than 50 men from the Tamil ethnic minority seeking political asylum in Europe say they were abducted and tortured under Sri Lanka’s current government. The previously unpublished accounts conjure images of the country’s bloody civil war that ended in 2009 — not the palm-fringed paradise portrayed by the government.

One by one, the men agreed to tell their stories to The Associated Press and to have the extensive scars on their legs, chests and groins photographed in July and August. The AP reviewed 32 medical and psychological evaluations and conducted interviews with 20 men. The strangers say they were accused of trying to revive a rebel group on the losing side of the civil war. Although combat ended 8 years ago, the torture and abuse occurred from early 2016 to as recently as July this year.
Sri Lankan authorities deny the allegations.

Piers Pigou, a South African human rights investigator who has interviewed torture survivors for the past 40 years in the world’s most dire countries, says the sheer scale of brutality is nothing like he has heard before.

“The levels of sexual abuse being perpetuated in Sri Lanka by authorities are the most egregious and perverted that I’ve ever seen.”

Most of the men say they were blindfolded as they were driven to detention sites. They said the majority of their captors identified themselves as members of the Criminal Investigations Department, a police unit that investigates serious crimes. Some, however, said it appeared their captors and interrogators were soldiers based on the types of uniforms and insignia they were wearing. One man reported seeing army uniforms hanging on a clothes line and many of the men wearing army boots.

In an interview last week in Colombo, Sri Lanka Army Commander Lt. Gen. Mahesh Senanayake denied the torture allegations.

“The army was not involved — and as for that matter — I’m sure that police also were not involved,” he said. “There’s no reason for us to do that now.”

The Sri Lankan government minister in charge of the police agreed to an interview with the AP last month but did not follow through.


Despite its denials that widespread torture still persists among its security forces, Sri Lanka has repeatedly failed to investigate war crimes allegations stemming from its 26-year civil war.
That conflict was between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who were fighting for an independent homeland for the Tamil minority, and the Sinhalese-dominated government. The Tigers, as they were known, were designated as a terrorist organization after a wave of suicide bombings. The government’s forces, however, were also accused of targeting civilians, which is considered a war crime under international law.

At the end of August, human rights groups in South America filed lawsuits against Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Brazil and other South American nations. He is accused of overseeing military units that attacked hospitals and killed, disappeared and tortured thousands of people at the end of the war. Other high ranking officials — often shielded by diplomatic immunity — have also been accused.

Upon the ambassador’s return to Sri Lanka, President Maithripala Sirisena vowed that neither Jayasuriya the ambassador nor any other “war hero” would face prosecution for such allegations — a pledge that rights groups said illustrates the government’s refusal to investigate its own soldiers accused of war crimes.

Nevertheless, Sri Lanka’s international profile is on the rise.

In May, the European Union restored the special trade status that Sri Lanka lost in 2010 after the European Commission found that the country had failed to implement key international conventions. Sri Lanka is also paid to participate in U.N. peacekeeping missions and was recently asked to sit on a U.N. leadership committee trying to combat sexual abuse. An AP investigation earlier this year found that 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers participated in a child sex ring in Haiti that persisted for three years — and no one was ever prosecuted.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, one of the U.N.’s top diplomats who has pushed for accountability in Sri Lanka, was aghast at the AP’s accounts of the 52 tortured men.

“While the U.N. is unable to confirm this until we mount an investigation, clearly the reports are horrifying and merit a much closer inspection from our part, especially if they occurred in 2016 and 2017,” said Zeid, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The International Truth and Justice Project has gathered testimony from more than 60 Sri Lankans across Europe — 52 of whom were part of the AP’s investigation. The group has been lobbying governments and international organizations to get justice for victims.

The non-governmental organization assigned the men witness numbers to protect their identities. The men agreed to share their stories on condition of anonymity out of fear that they or their families in Sri Lanka could face reprisals.

The men said they were accused of working with the Tamil Tigers, but the government insisted in its interview with the AP that the rebel group is no longer a threat. Nearly all of the men were branded with tiger stripes meant to symbolize the rebel group that fought against the Sinhalese-dominated government for an independent Tamil homeland. One man had nearly 10 thick scars across his back.

Most of the men say they were sexually abused or raped, sometimes with sticks wrapped in barbed wire. Homosexuality is illegal in Sri Lanka and rape carries a significant social stigma. Still, the victims said they felt obligated to tell their stories.

“I want the world to know what is happening in Sri Lanka,” a 22-year-old known as Witness #205 told the AP during an interview in July. “The war against Tamils hasn’t stopped.”
___

A ‘WHITE VAN’ ABDUCTION

Unlike most of the victims, Witness #249 admits to having been a member of the Tigers nearly a decade ago, joining up when their ranks had been depleted in the final stages of the war. He walks with a limp, caused when a piece of shrapnel left in his leg from a battle in which nine of his friends were blown up.

After the war, he returned to the family farm, helping his father. Last year, he married his high school sweetheart, and began collecting donations for victims of the war.

Soon after his wedding in 2016, he said, he was snatched off the streets, arriving at a torture room hours later.

“They heated up iron rods and burned my back with stripes,” he told the AP, closing his eyes and rocking back and forth. “On another occasion, they put chili powder in a bag and put the bag over my head until I passed out. They … raped me.”

His father eventually bribed the security officers to free him. He was hospitalized for 10 days after his release. Most of the men said their families paid an average bribe of 500,000 Sri Lankan Rupees (around $3,250) and up to $20,000 to be smuggled into Europe — hefty sums that sometimes forced their families to sell parcels of land.

Many of the other victims said they had never worked for the Tamil Tigers. But all told similar tales: they were abducted at home or off the streets by men in white or green vans, they were tortured for days or weeks or months, a family member often secured their release through a bribe, and they made their way to Europe using smugglers.

“I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye to my wife before I fled for England.”
Now, after all he has endured, Witness #249 relates to the tragic characters in the works of his beloved Shakespeare: broken and cursed.

Last year, Sri Lankan authorities were called to Geneva to testify before the U.N. Committee against Torture. When questioned about allegations of continued use of torture against suspects in police custody and impunity for alleged perpetrators, Sri Lanka’s Attorney General Jayantha Jayasuriya said the country’s constitution prohibited torture and that strengthening human rights was a cornerstone of its current agenda. He also said “strict action” would be taken against perpetrators of human rights violations.

But advocates say that hasn’t happened.

“Unless those responsible for these crimes are tackled head on and held accountable, this will not end,” said Frances Harrison, project manager for the International Truth and Justice Project.

Many Tamils contend that the government continues to target them as part of a larger plan to destroy their culture. Tamils, who speak a different language and are largely Hindu, unlike the largely Buddhist Sinhalese majority, say they have been treated like second-class citizens.

More than 100,000 people were estimated to have died in the war, including at least up to 40,000 civilians in its final months, according to U.N. estimates. Sri Lankan authorities have denied targeting civilians and dispute the toll. Rights groups say both sides committed war crimes.

Witness #205, who reported that he was held for 21 days and tortured, said he was accused of belonging to the Tamil Tiger rebel group.

He, like the majority of the other victims, said one of his captors identified himself as a member of Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigations Department.

“These survivors are the walking wounded of an invisible war in which rape has become the ultimate covert weapon,” said Harrison.

SIXTY CIGARETTE BURNS

Many of the victims meet each week at a London church for English classes and counselling sessions.
In July, a new member of the group stepped forward revealing at least 60 cigarette burns on his legs and chest. At 19, he was the youngest victim of the group and trembled when speaking of his sexual abuse.

“What’s striking is that I’m seeing men who are younger and younger, meaning that they would have had very little to do with the war,” said Dr. Charmian Goldwyn, who has seen nearly 200 Tamils who say they were tortured. Some of the cases occurred before 2015 but she has also seen men who have described more recent abuse.

She assesses their mental and physical health and often testifies in their asylum hearings. She said the branding and scars often make it easier to prove torture for an asylum claim but it becomes more difficult to prove sexual abuse.

Gary Anandasangaree, a Tamil lawmaker in the Canadian government, said there is a large degree of distrust from asylum seekers who fear for the families they left behind. He said one group who sought asylum in Canada had telephone calls to their families intercepted. The families in Sri Lanka were then questioned by the Criminal Investigations Department, he said.

“The reports of recent torture are not surprising,” he said. “I heard similar stories on a visit last year.”

Though the men are relieved to be in Europe, asylum can take years, and even if granted it isn’t necessarily permanent. Britain, like many countries, is buckling under pressure from anti-immigration groups.

For a 34-year-old taxi driver known as Witness #199, the fear of being rejected for asylum is crippling.

In 2014 while still in Sri Lanka, he visited his wife in the hospital after she gave birth to a son. With the war behind him and a new life ahead, he was overjoyed to be starting a family in his homeland — where he finally felt safe.

“After leaving the hospital, a man standing next to a white van started calling my name,” he said. “I wasn’t scared at that point so I just got in.”

The men asked him to pay a bribe and when he told them he couldn’t, they released him on the condition he pay in two weeks, he said.

“My uncle said the men would keep coming back to ask for money so he advised that it would be best if I left the country.”

He fled to Switzerland, but was rejected for asylum eight months later.

Back home, he said, he was visiting friends when he was abducted again.

This time, he was held 23 days, branded with iron rods and raped after a group of men entered his cell and forced him to drink a bottle of alcohol, he said. Some forced him to perform oral sex on them and beat him when he refused. He lost consciousness. When he woke up, he was naked, covered in semen and bleeding from his rectum.

Seeing the bottle left in his cell, he broke it and tried to slash his wrists.

Two days later, he was released and made his way to the UK.
Within days of arriving and applying for asylum, he tried to kill himself again, this time by drinking bleach.

He hasn’t seen his baby boy since he was born.
___

THE TORTURE ROOM

Some have cast doubt on the men’s stories, saying that the marks could have been caused during the war or even that the men could have inflicted the injuries themselves to gain sympathy on asylum applications — an assertion that that medical and academic experts say is not credible.

Witness #203 said he was forced to join the Tigers as a child soldier at 16. He was studying to be a teacher when he found himself on the battlefield. For four months, he was tasked with collecting the body parts of fallen fighters killed in the extensive shelling soldiers so they could be buried.
Then, last year — seven years after the war ended — he said he was abducted in a white van and driven for two hours.

From his location, he believes he could have been taken to the notorious Joseph Camp, a military installation in the north of Sri Lanka that has been the source of numerous torture claims over the years.

For 11 days, he says men stripped him, touched his genitals and forced him to touch theirs. The 12th day was worse.

“I was put on a bench face down with my hands tied under it and my feet tied to it,” he told the AP.
After refusing to sign a confession written in Sinhalese, the majority’s language, he said his torturers threw a rag soaked in petrol into a bag and shoved the bag onto his head. He passed out. When he awoke he was in a torture room.

It was there that the soles of his feet were thrashed and his back was beaten with a metal pipe. His captors then heated up long metal rods so they could brand him with the marks of a tiger.

He was released on the 13th day after his father paid a bribe and found a Muslim trafficker to arrange for a fake passport for passage to the U.K. In the same month after he arrived, he tried to hang himself with a wire rope. More than a dozen of the victims have tried to kill themselves.

“From all of the beatings, especially on the soles of my feet, the pain had taken over. But what haunted me the most is all of the sexual torture that went on.”

Many of the men said they signed false confessions after the torture.

The road to recovery will be no easy journey for the men, admits Caroline Roemmele, who supervises some of their counselling.

A cocktail of anti-depressants, sleeping pills and pain medication brings comfort to some. Others find solace in telling their stories even though each word awakens memories of their traumas.

“It’s a long process,” said Roemmele. “But the human race wouldn’t have survived if we couldn’t survive trauma.”
___
Associated Press writer Katy Daigle contributed to this report from Colombo, Sri Lanka

Prof. Yash Ghai reading Sri Lankan minds on federalism states ‘There seems to be a phobia in your country’

Prof. Yash Ghai

2017-11-09 

Prof. Yash Ghai has advised in the negotiations and making of constitutions in about 15 countries. He chaired the Kenyan Constitution Commission and its constituent assembly which led to a new constitution in 2010. In 2013 Prof. Ghai was selected by the Fijian Military Government to be the Chairperson of Fiji’s Constitutional Committee. He was the Sir Y K Pao Professor of Public Law at the University of Hong Kong and has taught law at the University of Warwick. He has held visiting professorships at the Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Uppsala University and the University of Wisconsin. In a recent visit to Sri Lanka, at the invitation of Democracy Reporting International, he shared with the Dailymirror  the Kenyan experience of constitution making. 

Prof. Yash Ghai reading Sri Lankan minds on federalism states ‘There seems to be a phobia in your country’.... by Thavam on Scribd

WITHOUT TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE SRI LANKA CANNOT GO FORWARD SAYS JAPANESE PROSECUTOR MOTOO NOGUCHI

08/11/2017

Motoo Noguchi is a Prosecutor at the Supreme Prosecutors Office of Japan; Chair of the Board of Directors, the Trust Fund for Victims, International Criminal Court.

I am visiting this country on an official mission of the Government of Japan, but my message below is my personal one as an expert reflecting my tentative observations as of today and does not necessarily reflect the views and positions of the Government of Japan.

It is critical to recognize that the ongoing efforts for the reconciliation mechanisms are for the entire people of Sri Lanka and are intended to benefit all of them in an equal manner. There may be some misunderstanding that the mechanisms will benefit only a part of the people of Sri Lanka, such as Tamil people, but this should not be the case. In addition to the unprecedented nature of the efforts, maybe some foreign words unfamiliar to the Asian people, such as transitional justice and accountability, are a cause of the misunderstanding. In fact, these words do not exist in the Japanese language, neither, and we have yet to find directly equivalent and natural translation of these words in Japanese. Therefore, I will try to explain my understanding of the reconciliation without using these words.

Later in the 20th century, Sri Lanka entered a tragic phase of violence and war which finally ended in 2009. Since then, the Government and people of Sri Lanka have been focusing on rebuilding a united, peaceful, and prosperous country. During the decades of prolonged violence and war, many people suffered immensely, irrespective of ethnicity or religion. Indeed, the serious sufferings extended to the entire country. But the tragic phase ended and now you are rebuilding your country.

As an initial step, there are several things to be prioritized, together with constant efforts to achieve further economic development. First, the fate and whereabouts of those who are still missing must be found and known to their families without further delay. Second, those who seriously suffered must be adequately redressed so that they can regain their dignity and hope and start a new life. Third, those who were responsible for these serious sufferings must be punished according to law and subject to the availability of credible evidence. Fourth, all the communities across the country must reunite to rebuild a peaceful and prosperous country and to prevent the recurrence of past tragedies.
To achieve the objectives above, the reconciliation mechanisms are composed of four pillars, truth, justice, reparations, and non-recurrence. All of them are equally important to rebuild the country and to lay the foundation for sustainable economic development for a united and peaceful country. It is important not only for the present Sri Lankan people, but more so for the generation of your children. You must not make your children face again all the tragedies that you had to undergo.

This is my understanding of what the reconciliation means. This is such a simple thing, which I trust is the common belief of all the Sri Lankan people. You don’t need to see it as overly complicated or something foreign to the culture of Sri Lanka.

Among the four pillars, the accountability mechanism or criminal prosecution is seen as the most politically sensitive issue. I see this largely coming from the misunderstanding that the judicial mechanism that is under discussion will benefit only a part of the entire population, more concretely only Tamil people. This is because many people, in particular those from the majority community, tend to see this mechanism as a forum for prosecuting the alleged war crimes committed by the military forces during the war, while leaving the crimes committed by the LTTE side unaddressed. As a result, they tend to see the accountability mechanism as a structurally one-sided and inherently unfair forum aimed at punishing their war heroes.


I don’t think that is the case, because what this mechanism intends to do is to prosecute those who were responsible for serious sufferings of people, irrespective of their ethnicity or religion, and thereby to provide justice to victims, their families, and their communities. The main criteria in the case selection should be the gravity of crime and not who committed the crime. This is exactly what is meant by the rule of law and there is no space for politics here. In other words, the judicial mechanism should be designed, structured and operated in a way that it will benefit all the communities of Sri Lanka in a fair and equal manner. The scope of crimes to be addressed by the judicial mechanism needs to be carefully considered taking this point into account, both in terms of material and temporal jurisdiction. Because this is a critical point to ensure the unreserved support and active participation for the judicial mechanism, which are crucial for its success in delivering justice that is acceptable to all.

It is also important to know that the judicial mechanism is not a forum to pursue collective responsibility to some entities including the military forces. On the contrary, it is procedures to identify individual criminal responsibility, thereby contributing to convictions against some individuals while releasing others from unfounded allegations against them. And those who are prosecuted of course have a right to rebut to charges against them under due process of law and shall be acquitted in case of a successful defense or the absence of evidence to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.


The question of international judges seems to have been focused in the discussion surrounding the accountability mechanism. In my view, what is most important is not the nationality of judges, but whether an individual serving as judge can be supported from all the communities equally and whether the people is willing to leave the fate of cases of his/her wisdom and professionalism. What is more important is to secure the fair, skillful and efficient investigations which are a prerequisite to make any subsequent trials meaningful. Without high quality investigations there are not much that even the most able judges can do.

Some may argue that it would be better to forget about past events and just look to the future, without undergoing painful and complicated procedures of criminal prosecution and trials. However, I think such an approach will effectively endorse the culture of impunity, will fail to provide justice to victims, and will increase the risk of recurrence of similar crimes and tragedies. As an established democratic country, Sri Lanka must stick to the rule of law, not only on legal texts but also through concrete action of the judiciary.

In the end, the ability of State to protect its people by adherence to the rule of law is one of the most essential infrastructure of a Nation State. Same as other critical elements of social infrastructure such as water, sanitation, education, transportation and financial systems, the principled and efficient judiciary is a key element for a democratic nation. For Sri Lanka to make great steps forward towards sustainable economic development and prosperity, the stable and determined application of the rule of law is a must. Japan is a long friend of Sri Lanka. Nearly seventy years ago, when Japan was struggling to rebuild the country from the scourge of war, Sri Lanka was one of the first countries which strongly supported Japan in its endeavors to return to the international community.

Now that Sri Lanka is determined to overcome the past tragedies and move forward, I, as a Japanese citizen, am most honoured and pleased to be of any help to you in these unprecedented endeavors. I thank you, my friends.

( Special message to the Sri Lankan people regarding the ongoing efforts for reconciliation from Motoo Noguchi, Prosecutor at the Supreme Prosecutors Office of Japan.)

Motoo Noguchi is a Prosecutor at the Supreme Prosecutors Office of Japan; Chair of the Board of Directors, the Trust Fund for Victims, International Criminal Court; Former United Nations international Judge at the Cambodia Khmer Rouge Trials, the Supreme Court Chamber; Former Professor of UNAFEI (United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders), Former Visiting Professor of the University of Tokyo; Former Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, Asian Development Bank.

Maithripala Declares War On Ravi K Using Lankaenews As Proxy

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

President Maithripala Sirisena has taken steps to block the news website www.lankaenews.com. Another news website, www.srilankamirror.com, has claimed that the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) has issued a directive to all internet service providers operating in Sri Lanka to block lankaenews following a court order.

President Sirisena, speaking at events to mark the 2nd death anniversary of Ven Madoluwawe Sobitha Thero, referred to “crooks responsible for the Central Bank bond scam” using certain websites operated out of the country to sling mud at him.  

In the meantime, Minister Rajitha Senaratne, speaking at the Cabinet Press Briefing also referred to an unnamed website ‘operated out of the country’ attacking the President in a distasteful manner.  

“I have told the President that if we caught a few such people and locked them up then media ethics would improve,” Senaratne said.

 

The reporting website, www.srilankamirror.com, claims that the Presidential Secretariat had directives to entities advertising in lankaenews to stop their ads forthwith.  

Lankaenews, in a post on their Facebook page, has acknowledged that the website has indeed been blocked by the TRC last afternoon.  

Lankaenews said: “Subsequent to lankaenews breaking a story about the President and the Maharajah Organization working in cahoots to strike a deal with respect to a Russian ship, the Presidential Secretariat has directed our advertisers to stop advertising with us. Not only did they stop advertising, they refused to pay for advertisements already published.

“It was by moving to stop advertisements that the previous regime began its suppression of lankaenews. Next, the CID stormed into our office, apprehended personnel and interrogated them. This happened 9-10 times a year. Finally, the office and library were set on fire.”

Interestingly, Rajitha Senaratne was a minister of the very same Rajapaksa Government that attacked lankaenews in this manner. Immediately after Maithripala Sirisena became President, restrictions on access to lankaenews and other such websites were lifted. Incidentally, the offices of lankaenews was set on fire the day the website carried a cartoon depicting then president Mahinda Rajapaksa as suffering from a sexually transmitted disease. It is this very website with whom relations have soured of late that was propped by the Yahapalana Government via advertisements.

Lankaenews was receiving ads worth approximately Rs 600,000 per month from Lotteries Board and Sri Lanka Telecom.

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