A Light Unto Some Nations

How Israel's policy toward African asylum-seekers transformed it from a land of refuge into a land of deportation.

African asylum-seekers protest at the Holot detention center in Israel's Negev Desert, on Feb. 17, 2014. (Jack Guez/ AFP/ Getty Images) 

BY ANDREW GREEN

 | MARCH 6, 2018, 7:22 AM

Last month, Israel’s government initiated a sweeping new effort to expel tens of thousands of unwanted African asylum-seekers. Officials offered them a choice: indefinite detention in Israel or a one-way ticket to an unnamed third country — most likely Rwanda or Uganda.

The first seven men swept up as a result of the new policy chose prison. Now many of the roughly 34,000 asylum-seekers in Israel will face the same difficult choice as the government aims to force most of them out by the end of March.

“It’s a very worrying situation,” said Taj Haroun, who fled Sudan during the genocide in Darfur and has been living in Israel for a decade. “Almost every individual here is afraid. We live in this uncertainty. We’re not sure what will happen to us.”

For years, the Israeli government has conducted a shadowy program to rid itself of asylum-seekers from Eritrea and Sudan — a process guided by secret deals with African governments that agree to take in the asylum-seekers, only to discard them illegally in third countries, including war zones like South Sudan.

Now Israel appears to be ramping up that clandestine program. In the past, asylum-seekers were deported in small groups; now, the Israeli government is looking to kick out thousands in just a few months. And whereas the earlier program was at least ostensibly voluntary, Israel is now offering the asylum-seekers only one alternative to deportation: detention with no known end date or guarantee of asylum.

Human rights groups have long insisted that Israel’s policy violates international law. They say the latest iteration adds another breach, this time by ignoring a recommendation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on the use of detention as a last resort.

African asylum-seekers first began entering Israel in large numbers in the mid-2000s. The bulk of the arrivals were from Eritrea, a country with a policy of forced military conscription that U.N. observers have compared to slavery. Others came from Sudan, many of them, like Haroun, survivors of the genocide in Darfur. Most made their way into Israel by crossing the Sinai desert, where they ran the risk of being caught and tortured by human traffickers or shot by Egyptian border guards.

Israel officially sealed its border with Egypt in 2013, after almost 65,000 foreign nationals had entered the country, according to the Israeli Ministry of Interior. By then, the campaign to expel them was already well underway.

As the numbers increased, Israelis living near asylum-seekers and politicians courting votes in those areas began to make largely unfounded complaints that the asylum-seekers were committing crimes, robbing locals of jobs, and destabilizing the neighborhoods where they settled. The subtext of these allegations was a fear that their presence would transform Israel into a less Jewish state.

In a February speech, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said that without the fence on the Egyptian border, “We would be seeing here a kind of creeping conquest from Africa.” Shaked, a member of the Jewish Home party, has long pushed an unapologetically nationalist agenda which includes settlement expansion, annexation of the West Bank, and aggressive moves to ensure that Israel retains a Jewish majority.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government has adopted some of Shaked’s positions and has made it virtually impossible for African asylum-seekers to actually receive asylum. Since 2009, Israel has granted refugee status to just one Sudanese and 10 Eritreans, recording an acceptance rate within those communities of less than 1 percent, according to UNHCR.

Instead, African asylum-seekers have been allowed to remain in Israel on temporary visas, which they must renew every few months. That status makes it difficult for them to find jobs or housing, forcing them to crowd into apartments together or to camp out in parks or other public areas.

As anti-immigrant sentiment has mounted, the government has made life even more difficult for the asylum-seekers. Since 2013, thousands have been randomly summoned to a detention facility in the middle of the Negev Desert. Having stripped the asylum-seekers of their freedom, Israeli officials began to whisper about a scheme to send them to Uganda or Rwanda — though neither country has officially confirmed the deal. The asylum seekers received $3,500, a one-way ticket, and the promise, on arrival, of a right to work and an opportunity to rebuild their lives.

But as Foreign Policy previously documented in a year-long investigation, many who agreed to the transfers were stripped of their travel documents and encouraged to make illegal border crossings into third countries, including Uganda, South Sudan, and Kenya. Some of the people who agreed to the deportation have landed in the hands of the Islamic State or died attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

The Israeli government has publicly dismissed those stories and insisted that the asylum-seekers who arrive in the unnamed third countries are safe and protected, though in private Israeli officials admit they don’t have the capacity to monitor the condition of asylum-seekers once they leave Israel. That means Jerusalem cannot guarantee that it has not violated the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention’s prohibition on forcibly returning refugees to countries where they might face persecution.

The situation has only grown more fraught since then. “Now I think it’s the worst,” said Liat Bolzman, an independent researcher who has been collecting the stories of people who accepted the earlier deportation offers. “This is the lowest point of everything until now, of making their lives miserable.”

Dror Sadot, the spokesperson for the Hotline for Refugees and Migrant Workers, a refugee protection organization, said the broad sweep of the new order has galvanized opposition within Israel, where many people have relatives who once sought protection from persecution. Protesters have organized marches and demonstrations. Rabbis have publicly offered to hide any asylum-seekers at risk of deportation. And in Holot, hundreds of detainees have staged a hunger strike in solidarity with the seven men now facing indefinite detention.

Activists have also ramped up pressure on the alleged partner countries, Rwanda and Uganda, urging them to refuse to prolong any agreement with Israel.

Last month, Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo, speaking to a small crowd of academics and students in Berlin, claimed her government had no knowledge of Israel’s plans to deport more asylum-seekers and no agreement to accept them. Her government has long sought to avoid questions about what it might be getting in return for accepting the asylum-seekers.

“What Israel does is not our business,” she said. “But whomever comes to us of their own free will and they’re coming to Rwanda, we will receive them.”

She demurred, though, when pressured to say whether asylum-seekers who decided on deportation over indefinite detention could be considered as exercising free will. “The forcing doesn’t happen in Rwanda,” she said. “That’s an Israeli issue.”

A recent court order has offered asylum-seekers one potential foothold. On Feb. 15, an Israeli appeals tribunal ruled that desertion from the Eritrean military is a legitimate asylum claim — a position the government had earlier rejected. That may force officials to reconsider hundreds of asylum applications and delay any deportations of Eritreans.

Still activists like Haroun fret that the government will push ahead with the deportations eventually, even if it means getting tied up in court.

As he told me recently, “All the policies during all of these years have been leading to this.”

While India-China relations will remain problematic, a thawing is evident

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 Saturday, 10 March 2018 

After going through a tumultuous phase in 2017, relations between India and China now appear to be thawing with some tentative and yet significant steps being taken by the two countries to arrive at a détente if not a “solution” per se.
However, basic issues such as the 70-year border dispute, India’s concern over China’s economic and strategic intrusions into its sphere of influence in South Asia, China’s support to terror-sponsor Pakistan and fears about allowing Chinese investments in India remain. And these are not likely to be solved to mutual satisfaction in the foreseeable future.

But war, or a total breakdown of relations, or even a marked exacerbation of the conflict, are ruled out. Problems are likely to be sorted out diplomatically and through economic cooperation.

In 2017, a series of disputes marred relations between the two countries. The 72-day military standoff at the border in Doklam beginning between June and August had threatened to take the two countries to war as in 1962. If Doklam was taken by China, the gateway to the Indian State of West Bengal would have been opened to Chinese troops. And India would have been de-linked from its ally, Bhutan, which would have been added to China’ sphere of influence.

In January 2018, Chinese troops with road building equipment had crossed 200 meters into Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh — an Indian state that China claims in its entirety as “South Tibet.”

China had been aggressive at the political level also. It opposed, tooth and nail, India’s bid to be a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). It blocked, on technical grounds, India’s efforts to get the UN to designate as a “global terrorist” the dreaded Pakistan-based Masood Azhar, chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

On its part, India openly opposed China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of President Xi Jinping. It boycotted an international conference in China on BRI even though more anti-China countries like US and Japan attended it. India joined the “Quad”, an Indo-Pacific strategic alliance comprising US, Australia and Japan, irritating China, which saw in it a global anti-China “gang up”.

Incurring China’s displeasure, Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, visited Arunachal Pradesh an Indian border state which China claims is part of “South Tibet.” India is holding the mega naval exercise “Milan 2018” from March 6 to 13 with the participation of at least 16 countries including Australia and Malaysia. China thinks that the exercise aims to show China that India has a “strong influence” in the Indian Ocean.

Denouement not surprising

However, the peaceful denouement of the Doklam, Arunachal standoffs and previous standoffs in Ladakh, indicated that behind all the military sabre rattling and political posturing, neither side wanted to go to war. In every case, measured military movements on the part of China had been matched by India’s determination to stand its ground using the minimum military force.

According to Jeff M.Smith, South Asia Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Chinese border incursions are essentially meant to convey a political message not to grab territory as such.

“They are designed to embarrass India’s leadership and to show the Indian public and the world, that China can operate at the border with impunity while underscoring Prime Narendra Modi’s inability to secure India’s sovereign borders,” Smith said.

India-China watchers would not have been surprised by the denouement of the above mentioned crises, given the fact that such situations had arisen before only to end in a sort of détente. For this, thanks must go to the “Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement”, painstakingly worked out by top Indian diplomat Shivshankar Menon and his Chinese interlocutors way back in 1993.

Encouraging signs

Following the rather traumatic Doklam episode, there have been some encouraging signs of improvement in bilateral ties. The new Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, has ushered a new era. A Mandarin Speaking China expert and a former Ambassador to China, Gokhale went to Beijing for a dialogue with the key Chinese interlocutor on security matters, State Councilor Yang Jiechi.

The cordiality witnessed at the meeting made even the hawkish Chinese Communist party publication Global Times gush optimistically. It said that the two sides had “agreed to deepen strategic communication, beef up mutually beneficial cooperation and properly settle sensitive issues, based on the consensus reached by leaders of the two countries.”

The Indian Embassy’s statement was equally sanguine about the meeting. It said that the two sides “noted the need to build on the convergences between India and China and address differences on the basis of mutual respect and sensitivity to each other’s concerns, interests and aspirations. Both sides underlined that as two major countries, sound development of relations between India and China is a factor of stability in the world today.”

Pakistan slightly sidelined

In a significant step away from the normal policy of supporting Pakistan blindly, China agreed to put Pakistan on the “Financial Action Task Force (FATF) terror financing grey list.”

When China took over the Vice Presidency of FATF with New Delhi’s support, India promptly congratulated it. The Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson tweeted congratulations along with the hope that “China would uphold and support the objectives and standards of FATF in a balanced, objective, impartial and holistic way.”

Many suspect that India and China had struck a deal on the FATF as China is also worried about unbridled Jehadi and Baloch terrorism in Pakistan. These terrorists could target China’s ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project there. Perhaps by listing Pakistan China was also telling Pakistan to control terrorists on its soil a measure that would immensely benefit India which has been a victim of Pakistan-based terrorists.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited New Delhi in December 2015 and met his counterpart Sushma Swaraj during the 15th Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of China, Russia and India. “Being anti-India is not in China’s interests and Beijing does not want Nepal, Sri Lanka and Maldives to adopt an attitude of exclusion toward India. In fact, all sides should work together to promote development in the region,” observed the Chinese Communist party’s publication Global Times.

The journal went on to say: “Vijay Gokhale’s visit shows that the two governments have prepared to manage differences seriously, enhance communication and reduce mistrust, preventing to turn India’s own imaginary threats from turning into conflicts. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit to be held in Qingdao, East China’s Shandong Province this June, will give Chinese and Indian leaders an opportunity to communicate face to face.”

While Western analysts like Alyssa Ayres, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who had served in the South and Central Asia Bureau of the State Department, predict that India and China will have a ‘Cold War-like’ relationship, Global Times thinks otherwise.

“Though Sino-Indian ties are becoming increasingly complicated, it is impossible for them to become cold war-like as it goes against the interests of both countries. Top leaders of the countries have a consistent assessment of ties. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed during the BRICS Summit in Xiamen, that China and India should see each other as development opportunities rather than threats.”

“In December, China’s State Councilor Yang Jiechi traveled to India to attend the 20th Special Representatives’ Meeting on China-India Boundary Questions and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended the 15th meeting of Foreign Ministers of China, Russia and India in New Delhi, All these show that bilateral relations are stabilising and on the upswing,” Global Times said. “Beijing has attached great importance to diplomacy with New Delhi. Xi and Modi have met on varied occasions. Modi repeatedly said that India has always paid attention to its relations with China and is willing to strengthen cooperation with Beijing to promote sound and stable development. Frequent Sino-Indian high-level summits and the consensus reached at them can be regarded as cornerstones of the future stability of relations,” the Communist party publication said.

“There are unavoidable bumps between neighbors, but no fundamental contradictions exist between China and India. Almost all problems and disputes between the two sides in recent years are technical problems rather than fundamental strategic differences,” Global Times said.

India and China came close to armed conflict in the Maldives when former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed called for an Indian military intervention and China allegedly sent a fleet to the Eastern Indian Ocean to back beleaguered Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen. But New Delhi had no plans to intervene militarily and Indian officials denied any threatening Chinese naval movement.

India is concerned about China’s growing economic clout in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives becoming a strategic threat to it, but it is not willing to force the concerned governments to change their China policy so long as India’s security concerns and economic interests are given due weightage.

According Alyssa Ayers, India will not follow US’s China policy in toto. “I think India is going to be highly unlikely to be enlisted in something framed as a US-led effort to contain China. That is not what India seeks to do. It seeks to defend its own interests,” she said.

“India has been a big supporter of global norms, of freedom of navigation. But it also partners with China in many arenas. In the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), India is the number two capital contributor,” she noted.

The BRICS organisation with India and China in it is a real institution, Ayers said and added that India is very active in BRICS which has created its own development bank. India became a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

And there is peace on the border. On 5 March, India’s Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharman, told parliament that “post disengagement from the face-off in 2017, troops of both sides have redeployed themselves away from their respective positions at the face-off site. The strength of both sides have been reduced.”

Sitharaman also said that border issues are being “regularly taken up with the Chinese side through diplomatic and border personnel meetings.’

Most recently, in order not to irk China, New Delhi asked the Tibetan government-in-exile in India to cancel its two main events in New Delhi, planned to mark the Dalai Lama’s 60 years in exile in India. This came in the wake of a note sent by the government last fortnight asking senior leaders and government functionaries to stay away from the events.

In its note, the government had underlined that it is a “very sensitive time for India’s relations with China.”

Afghan Taliban urge religious scholars to boycott peace conference

MARCH 10, 2018

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban urged Islamic scholars on Saturday not to take part in a conference due to take place in Indonesia aimed at building agreement and support for possible future peace talks in Afghanistan.

The call follows President Ashraf Ghani’s offer last month to hold peace talks with the Taliban and comes as international powers have sought to build pressure on the movement to accept negotiations to end more than 16 years of war in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have so far proved unresponsive to the offer. And on Saturday they said the proposed conference of religious scholars from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia was merely intended to “legitimize the presence of infidel invaders in the Islamic country of Afghanistan”.

The conference, proposed by Indonesian President Joko Widodo in January and due to be held later this month, was an effort to present “the sacred Jihad in Afghanistan ... as unlawful bloodshed”, the Taliban said in a statement.

“Do not afford an opportunity to the invading infidels in Afghanistan to misuse your name and participation in this conference as means of attaining their malicious objective.”

Fighting to drive out international forces and re-establish their version of strict Islamic law, the Taliban control or contest large areas of Afghanistan and inflict heavy casualties on government security forces.

They have offered to talk to the United States about a possible peace agreement but have so far ruled out direct talks with the Western-backed government in Kabul, which they say is an illegitimate foreign-imposed regime.

Despite their unpromising rhetoric, however, Western diplomats say that efforts have been intensifying behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for possible future talks with regular contacts through intermediaries.

At the same time, the United States has stepped up battlefield pressure, notably through air strikes on the Taliban as Afghanistan’s international partners have sought to build up diplomatic support from neighbouring countries to push the movement to the negotiating table.

They have also invested considerable effort in trying to build consensus among religious scholars against tactics such as suicide bombings, which have been regularly carried out by Taliban and other insurgent groups.

The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?

We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating.

By Christopher Mellon March 9 at 2:23 PM

Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science.

In December, the Defense Department declassified two videos documenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.  

The videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest .

A third declassified video, released by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science , a privately owned media and scientific research company to which I’m an adviser, reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015.

(To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science)

Is it possible that America has been technologically leap-frogged by Russia or China? Or, as many people wondered after the videos were first published by the New York Times in December, might they be evidence of some alien civilization?

Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers.

I served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and as staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I know from numerous discussions with Pentagon officials over the past two years that military departments and agencies treat such incidents as isolated events rather than as part of a pattern requiring serious attention and investigation. A colleague of mine at To the Stars Academy, Luis Elizondo, used to run a Pentagon intelligence program that examined evidence of “anomalous” aircraft, but he resigned last fall to protest government inattention to the growing body of empirical data.

Meanwhile, reports from different services and agencies remain largely ignored and unevaluated inside their respective bureaucratic stovepipes. There is no Pentagon process for synthesizing all the observations the military is making. The current approach is equivalent to having the Army conduct a submarine search without the Navy. It is also reminiscent of the counterterrorism efforts of the CIA and the FBI before Sept. 11, 2001, when each had information on the hijackers that they kept to themselves. In this instance, the truth may ultimately prove benign, but why leave it to chance?

(A Pentagon spokesman did not respond to requests from The Washington Post for comment, but in December, the military confirmed the existence of a program to investigate UFOs and said it had stopped funding the research in 2012.)

The military personnel who are encountering these phenomena tell remarkable stories. In one example, over the course of two weeks in November 2004, the USS Princeton, a guided-missile cruiser operating advanced naval radar, repeatedly detected unidentified aircraft operating in and around the Nimitz carrier battle group, which it was guarding off the coast of San Diego. In some cases, according to incident reports and interviews with military personnel, these vehicles descended from altitudes higher than 60,000 feet at supersonic speeds, only to suddenly stop and hover as low as 50 feet above the ocean. The United States possesses nothing capable of such feats.

On at least two occasions, F-18 fighters were guided to intercept these vehicles and were able to verify their location, appearance and performance. Notably, these encounters occurred in broad daylight and were independently monitored by radars aboard multiple ships and aircraft. According to naval aviators I have spoken with at length, the vehicles were roughly 45 feet long and white. Yet these mysterious aircraft easily sped away from and outmaneuvered America’s front-line fighters without a discernible means of propulsion.

From my work with To the Stars Academy, which seeks to raise private funds to investigate incidents like the 2004 Nimitz encounter, I know they continue to occur, because we are being approached by military personnel who are concerned about national security and frustrated by how the Defense Department is handling such reports. I am also familiar with the evidence as a former Pentagon intelligence official and a consultant who began researching the issue after the Nimitz incident was brought to my attention. On several occasions, I have met with senior Pentagon officials, and at least one followed up and obtained briefings confirming incidents such as the Nimitz case. But nobody wants to be “the alien guy” in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue. This is true up and down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to progress. 

If the origin of these aircraft is a mystery, so is the paralysis of the U.S. government in the face of such evidence. Sixty years ago, when the Soviet Union put the first manmade satellite in orbit, Americans recoiled at the idea of being technologically surpassed by a dangerous rival, and the furor over Sputnik ultimately produced the space race. Americans responded vigorously, and a little more than a decade later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. If these craft mean that Russia, China or some other nation is concealing an astonishing technological breakthrough to quietly extend its lead, surely we should respond as we did then. Perhaps Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s recent chest-thumping claims about propulsion breakthroughs are not pure braggadocio. Or, if these craft really aren’t from Earth, then the need to figure out what they are is even more urgent.

Lately, media coverage of the issue of unidentified aerial vehicles has focused on an expired $22 million congressional earmark for Bigelow Aerospace, a contractor with ties to former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.). The money mostly funded research and analysis by that contractor, without participation from the Air Force, NORAD or other key military organizations. The real issue, though, is not a long-gone earmark, helpful though it may have been, but numerous recent incidents involving the military and violations of U.S. airspace. It is time to set aside taboos regarding “UFOs” and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators. 

Within a roughly $50 billion annual intelligence budget, money is not the issue. Existing funds would easily cover what’s needed to look into the incidents. What we lack above all is recognition that this issue warrants a serious collection and analysis effort. To make headway, the task needs to be assigned to an official with the clout to compel collaboration among disparate and often quarrelsome national security bureaucracies. A truly serious effort would involve, among other things, analysts able to review infrared satellite data, NORAD radar databases, and signals and human intelligence reporting. Congress should require an all-source study by the secretary of defense while promoting research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability.

As with Sputnik, the national security implications o
f these incidents are concerning — but the scientific opportunities are thrilling. Who knows what perils we may avoid or opportunities we might identify if we follow the data? We cannot afford to avert our eyes, given the risk of strategic surprise. The future belongs to not only the physically brave but also the intellectually agile.

Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. 

FatCheck: will the government’s calorie cuts work?

By Martin Williams-8 Mar 2018

The government has announced its ambition to reduce the number of calories in some popular foods by 20 per cent by 2024.

Will this really help the nation lose weight? There’s often confusion and debate about how best to tackle the UK’s obesity epidemic.

Some commentators have blamed obesity on over-consumption of certain food types like carbohydrates, sugar and fat, while others say it’s the total number of calories you consume that matters most.

Should we be counting calories or prioritise cutting down on fat… or sugar? And what about exercise?

Here at FactCheck, we don’t claim to be scientists. So, instead, we spoke to some of the country’s top experts on obesity.

Here’s what they told us:

‘Be calorie conscious’

Professor Susan Jebb of Oxford University and a member of the Public Health England’s Obesity Programme board:

“If your focus is obesity then you’ve got to focus on calories. What is it that makes people overweight? It’s calories.

“All of the other things matter – saturated fat, sugar and salt. But if people eat fewer calories, they will probably also get less saturated fat, less sugar and less salt, because they’re eating less food.

“Once you’ve got calories right, of course we should then be saying the quality of food matters.

However many calories you’re eating, what you want to do is to make those the healthiest calories they can be. And those two messages of course have to go alongside each other.

“The huge challenge is how do you get the nation to eat fewer calories? The answer is not saying that everyone has to count every calorie they eat. That doesn’t get us anywhere, partly because it’s too boring and we’re too busy. Also because it’s actually really hard to know how many calories there are in things.

“But you can still be calorie conscious – you need a general awareness. But even better would be if the food industry took some of the unnecessary calories out of food.

“Saying we need to reduce calorie intake does not in any way detract from saying we need to be more active. We need to take action on both.”

‘Calorie counting does not work’

Professor Jimmy Bell of the Research Centre for Optimal Health at the University of Westminster:

“I was slightly surprised by this emphasis on calories. The government is skirting around the edges of the problem by saying we’re going to reduce calorie content in food by 20 per cent. It’s like saying we’re going to have a really nice Brexit: we all wish the same thing, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

“At the end of the day, we humans like eating food. But most of us find it impossible to tell how many calories are in anything.

“We should try to get the manufacturers to come out with alternatives where the calorie should not be the main drive, but satiety should be the main drive. So you might have a small volume but you feel satisfied.

“Calorie counting has been shown that, long-term, it does not work. The answer to weight loss was given years ago: eat less, walk more. That’s it. I’m really surprised that the government did not say anything about physical activity.”

‘Too little, too late’

Professor Anthony Barnett of the University of Birmingham and a clinical director at the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust:

“It’s great to see they’re taking some interest, but it really is – in many ways – too little too late. This is a programme that will take us beyond the next election, and who knows what the next government will do.

“It’s much too long term, and I think they need to have a much more holistic approach to the problem, rather than just the focus on calories. To an extent it’s laudable, but there’s so many other things that need to be done, so we need a bit of joined up thinking.

“What we really need in this country is a major public health campaign, amongst other things. Something along the lines that we had with smoking, HIV, cervical cancer and so on, which were actually very successful.

“Reducing calories in certain foods is all very well, but there’s so many other aspects to our overweight and obesity problem. If you actually look at calorie intake in this country over the last thirty years, calorie intake actually hasn’t increased very much. But what has reduced dramatically is the amount of physical activity people are taking.

“We also have a problem at the other end of the spectrum with anorexia, particularly with teenage girls. Calorie restrictions is going to be the last thing they need. It’s something which needs to be thought about – it comes down to balance and individualisation and the care that you’re offering.”

‘It is to do with calories’

Dr Kieran Clarke, professor of physiological biochemistry at the University of Oxford.

“Anything to help is a good thing. Trying to get people to exercise is really difficult, mainly because you have to exercise so long to get rid of those calories. So it’s just much easier to reduce the number of calories.

“Personally, I’d rather see a tax on foods with empty calories, such as biscuits, and a subsidy on fruit and veg.

“But I think it is to do with calories. The easiest thing to do is to know how many calories you are drinking in a latté, for example. Counting calories, weighing yourself every morning, is a good thing to do.

“They don’t have to know to the minutest details about what calories are in what. But they have to have an idea that if they eat a banana, it probably has between 70-100 calories and that’s a good thing.

“The government has to do things that have simple messages – and I think this is a good simple message.”

‘Not all calories are equal’

Professor Nita Forouhi, programme leader of the Nutritional Epidemiology programme at Cambridge University’s MRC Epidemiology Unit:

“It’s a step in the right direction, mainly because it gives a very clear message that it’s not just about individuals and personality responsibility alone. Calorie control and portion size control are definitely an important part of the overall strategy.

“But obesity – and the consequences of obesity – are critical public health burdens, and the managing of this has got to be multi-pronged. Beyond diet, there are other things that feed into it too, not least our increasingly sedentary behaviour.

“Not all calories are equal. Calories can be healthy or unhealthy calories. For example, you get nine calories per gram of fat. But whether you eat saturated fat or unsaturated fat calories, that makes a huge difference.

“As a public health official, I think one has to give bold strategies for action to get the message across. The next step which needs unpicking is what action is required.”

‘Fits with the scientific evidence’

Professor Ian Macdonald, of Sheffield University’s Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences:

“Counting calories is not wrong, but it’s very crude and you need to know how much you’re burning up in order to know what calorie target you’re aiming for.

“We do research in which we get people to lose weight. If we say to the participants ‘we want to eat a diet that gives you no more than 1,500 calories a day,’ then counting calories is really important to achieving that. We teach them how to do it and give them guidance on how to achieve it.

“But if you say ‘we want you to eat 10 per cent fewer calories than you’re burning up’, then that’s quite difficult because, first of all, we don’t know what we’re burning up.

“This policy fits in with the scientific evidence which has been provided, but it will be hard. It will need health professionals to help people understand what it is they need; it will need the media to help them understand as well.”

Nano-wires revive the retina

By S Ananthanarayanan-March 10, 2018, 12:08 pm 

The retina is the light-sensitive part of the eye, which helps us to see. Damage to the light-sensitive cells in the retina is the reason for a great many cases of vision loss.

A common disease of the retina is macular degeneration, where the central part of the retina loses its function. Another is retinitis pigmentosa, where vision loss starts at the periphery and progresses inwards.

In both cases, the remaining structure of the eye, which collects lights and forms images, and then the nerves that carry electrical signals to the brain, are intact. It is the mechanism to convert light into electrical impulses that has failed.

Jing Tang, Nan Qin, Yan Chong, Yupu Diao, Yiliguma, Zhexuan Wang, Min Jiang, Jiayi Zhang and Gengfeng Zheng from Fudan University, Shanghai and a Tian Xue from the Heifi National Laboratory, China, report in the journal, Nature Communications, an advance in the drive to find man-made devices to take the place of the failed light-sensitive cells.

The team of researchers has created a mat made of tiny bits of titanium dioxide wire, dotted with nano-particles of gold, which is able to resolve light falling on the retina with fineness not achieved so far. The device has been tested on laboratory mice and there is promise of helping human patients as well.

When light strikes the photoreceptor cells in the retina of the natural eye, there is a structural change in molecules in a pigment within the cell, and this affects the movement of charged sodium ions, creating electrical tension.

This is the signal that gets transmitted down, to other nerve cells within the retina and then to the brain, as brightness in the part of the visual field that the photoreceptor cell represents.

There are about 120 million photoreceptor cells in the average human eye, and these are connected to some two million nerve terminals leading to the brain.

When the photoreceptor cells are damaged, what we need is a method to generate electrical signals and send them to the nerve cells. One method that has been developed has head-mounted cameras with photocells to generate signals.

Users learn to associate the neural stimuli received to approximate shapes. The implanted electronics, however, is bulky and the surgery to pass cables through the lining of the eye, to transfer signals, is complex. Another system places the camera and related electronics in a chip that is implanted behind the retina.

This device contains tiny photocells to capture light, amplifiers to boost their signal and electrodes to stimulate retinal nerve cells. The surgery is even more complex, the cost in both cases is astronomical and the resolution of images is limited.

An improvement that was reported in 2015 consists of photocells, with basic electronics, mounted on a chip that is implanted with less invasive surgery and communicating directly with the mat of nerve cells.

A chip that was one mm square and implanted behind the retina of experimental rats had 250 photocells, which permitted reasonable resolution of detail.

The current development by the group writing in Nature Communications goes one further and replaces the very photocell with photosensitive material, at the dimensions of nano-metres, which allows far greater resolution of images.

Apart from not needing diodes and other electronics to transfer charge, nano-materials have a different mechanism of sensitivity to light.

The principle of the photocell is that atoms of semiconductor materials, like silicon, have loosely bound electrons in their outer orbits, which can get knocked free when struck by a photon or particle of light.

These electrons represent charge, which can be tapped through one-way gates, called diodes, and initiate electrical effects.

In contrast, light, which is an electromagnetic wave, set up mechanical and electrical oscillations in the material. The dimensions of nano-particles are suitable for resonance, or frequency matching of the light wave and the oscillations in the material, and there can be transfer of energy from the light wave.

An array or matrix of such nano-wires of titanium dioxide was created by depositing the titanium material on a substrate from a solution, followed by heat treatment.

Nano-particles of gold were then deposited on the nano-wires by soaking the array in a solution of a gold compound after washing and annealing. Spikes of nano-wires and a nano-wire spotted with gold can be seen in the picture.

The interesting thing about this array of nano-wires is that while it will give off electric charge when exposed to light, the array can be directly in contact with nerve tissue, to transfer charge in the same way that the natural rods and cones of the eye excite the nerve cells.

While this is similar to the arrangement in the 2015 development, the big difference is that the light sensitive elements are now nano-wires, not full-fledged photocells.

The diameter of the nano-wires was 100 nm (a nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre) and their length was two microns (a micron is a thousandth of a millimetre).

There were about 10 nano-wires to every square micron. This works out to be 10 million nano-wires in every square millimetre. We can see that this is a huge improvement over the 250 photocells we could have in a square millimetre in the work reported in 2015.

The arrays of nano-wires were then tried out, first in experimental mouse retinas in the lab and then after implantation in the retinas of living mice.

The nano-wire implanted retinas showed robust sensitivity to light of all relevant frequencies (colours) both in the retina test as well as in living mice.

"…the pupillary light reflex experiment showed that the sensitivity of blind mice implanted with NW arrays was similar to that in wild-type mice", the paper says.

What has been designed and manufactured hence mimics the way real rod and cone cells of the eye function, and has several good features flowing from the nano-metre scale dimensions, the paper says.

Although the design of nano-wires still does not make colour vision possible, that is also within reach. The paper says the capability that has been demonstrated point towards adaptation for use as prosthetic devices in human patients.

The Sinhala Buddhist will hit us next in 2020

Saturday, 10 March 2018

This is so easy, so predictable. Even a five-year-old Muslim kid would make this prediction effortlessly. Anything that’s psychologically overwhelming becomes easily predictable through a process known as conditioning. Classical conditioning whose teachers are many today, is the first type of learning to be discovered within the behaviourist tradition. The major theorist in the development of classical conditioning is Ivan Pavlov and his contemporary Sigmund Freud.

There is certainly a distinct pattern emerging, not too difficult to comprehend. Inter alia the interplay of demographics is huge. When two national leaders with Buddhist credentials come forward as main candidates for example at a presidential election in Sri Lanka, the insecure one plays the “entitlement” and “Sinhala exceptionalism” card. This strategic stance extends a lot of leverage. Coupled with an attempt to induce fear psychosis in the minorities the mantra forms a healthy equation.

Those that want to remain in power can subvert any political system. More detrimentally people can be turned idiots if one of the popular candidates is a polished and veteran demagogue. This is the only reason I find democracy infinitely imperfect. Basic intelligence is not a widely distributed commodity, that’s why we have Donald Trump at the helm today.

Come 2020 the election year, those incessantly feeding the ravenous “entitlement” and “exceptional” appetite will release their stashed dough to create havoc once again so that they could motivate an obtuse and nescient mob to accomplish certain essential milestones.  The usual slogans “they are taking our land” “they are mixing vandha beheth”.

This is essential “political investment” for some to make their own people idiots for political gain. This way the strategy could garner most of the Sinhala Buddhist votes and minorities vote could also go communal and a clear winner emerges.

The residual sediments of the afore-stated lethal politics still lingers though not active as it should be. We have not seen its full force. The psychologically tormenting and ubiquitous “orange revolution” is at work though deprived of full throttle.

To continue on the mental torture phenomenon one of my friends told that his seven-year-old daughter associates the colour orange with violence. She hugs her parents the moment she sees anyone walking, talking or running in orange. This is an unfortunate development.

Like the ominous footprint of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), «the Army of Defence for Israel,» the criminal military force of the State of Israel who terrorise Muslim households in Gaza and West Bank and other occupied territories. This deadly outfit enters homes of Palestinians in the cover of night and creates psychologically torturous mayhem. I am sure the world has seen and heard the shrieks and screams of young children and women. A strange parallel.

The priceless gifts some sections of the Sinhala Buddhist continue to give so lovingly to the Muslims does bear ample testimony of their profound gratitude. Valiantly and steadfastly committing to uphold the territorial integrity of the country, Muslims stood firm. Sri Lanka our motherland. A great reward indeed for the Muslim leadership who constantly reassured the youth not to take any violent recourse despite persistent and pressing provocation. Previously by the LTTE and now by some white-clad scoundrels and their easily malleable protégés.

Are these people so amnesic? Some of the most trustworthy intelligence in the Army and military were Muslims. Some of the best fighters were Muslims. My alma mater Zahira College Colombo gave a lot to the Army in terms of bravery only to be bitten by a bunch of treacherous scoundrels. The Kattankudy massacre was too much for the Muslims. To be eliminated at a place of worship was simply unthinkable. Many incidents I can cite, but what’s the point? It’s history repeating itself.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and the Minister in charge of Law and Order (at the time of writing), I have some words for you. I had a lot of respect for you. I was once your ardent supporter not anymore.

My Prime Minister, sir, is a 45-year-old bright spark and one heck of a human being. When you couldn’t stop your own people from trespassing an UN-funded refugee camp and started to relentlessly dehumanise a bunch startled Rohingya refugees my Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent planes to Syria to bring them to Canada and give them a new life. And he was there in person to receive them at the airport.

When the unruly mob in Sri Lanka with scant respect for the law caused havoc and judged innocent Muslims as being terrorists and meted them with everything extra-judicial, my Prime Minister settled a case involving a Canadian inmate of Gitmo for $ 10.5 million because in his own words: “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is for all Canadians and must be respected at all cost.”

The Charter is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada. It forms the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982. These are not mere words in a piece of paper but palpable rights enjoyed by all Canadians.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe you have been at the helm of your party and the country for the last 25 years but my Prime Minister Trudeau is just into the third year of his first term and some of his policies are suicidal politically as the opposition takes him to task. But the people know he is doing the right thing and that’s what matters. He is not greedy for power. After all, what’s power for if you’re unable to protect your people? Finally I wish to state to my Sinhala Buddhist brethren: Don’t try to destroy the economy of the Muslims. It’s the same God who gives them who gives you. Another issue that’s worrying the Sinhala Buddhists is the supposedly disproportionate breeding of Muslims. I addressed this issue many times and wish to address it again. We are still less than 10% of the population according to the last census. If this is still a problem, who am I to tell a people how to increase their population?

Please, please, please do what has to be done to increase the Buddhist population. Two countries in the world have already legalised polygamy, polygyny to be precise. Eretria and Tanzania. Let Sri Lanka be the third and let this action prevent the Buddhists from casting a “vapara” eye at the Muslims. Incidentally by legalising polygamy the Sri Lankan Government will be implementing a proposal made by the Most Reverend, Most Disciplined, Most Venerable Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara.

I surely would want my favourite Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka to take advantage when it becomes law. A true opportunity for him to save his race if he indeed feels threatened.

MISSION CONCLUDING STATEMENT 

March 9, 2018

A Concluding Statement describes the preliminary findings of IMF staff at the end of an official staff visit (or ‘mission’), in most cases to a member country. Missions are undertaken as part of regular (usually annual) consultations under Article IV of the IMF's Articles of Agreement, in the context of a request to use IMF resources (borrow from the IMF), as part of discussions of staff monitored programs, or as part of other staff monitoring of economic developments.

The authorities have consented to the publication of this statement. The views expressed in this statement are those of the IMF staff and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF’s Executive Board. Based on the preliminary findings of this mission, staff will prepare a report that, subject to management approval, will be presented to the IMF Executive Board for discussion and decision.

An IMF staff team led by Manuela Goretti visited Colombo from February 27 – March 9 to hold discussions for the 2018 Article IV consultation and advance the technical work on the fourth review of Sri Lankan authorities’ economic reform program under the three-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

The IMF mission had constructive discussions with the Sri Lankan authorities on the 2018 Article IV Consultation and made progress towards a staff-level agreement on the fourth review of the EFF-supported program. Program discussions will continue in April in Washington D.C. during the Spring Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.

Economic Recovery Set to Continue

Following a series of weather-related shocks in 2017, the economy is gradually normalizing. Real GDP growth is projected to rise to 4.4 percent in 2018, supported by a recovery in agriculture and industry and robust growth in services, reaching 5 percent over the medium term. Inflation is projected to revert to around 5 percent by end-2018, as food prices stabilize.

Reforms have progressed under the program but vulnerabilities remain

Despite weather-related shocks and some delays in implementation, program performance remains broadly on track. The new Inland Revenue Act (IRA) and the CBSL’s Roadmap towards inflation targeting represent landmark reforms and their successful implementation is critical going forward. Fiscal consolidation is advancing, with preliminary data showing a primary surplus in 2017. The CBSL has been effective in curbing credit growth and stabilizing inflation despite recent pressures, while stepping up its pace of reserve accumulation.

Nevertheless, the economy remains vulnerable to adverse shocks given the still sizable public debt and low external buffers. Looking ahead, to secure these hard-won gains and support inclusive, sustained growth, the reform momentum needs to continue and policy frameworks and institutions further strengthened.

Strengthening institutions to promote stability and inclusive growth

Against this backdrop, the authorities should push ahead with their Vision 2025strategy to support Sri Lanka’s rapid and inclusive growth through ambitious structural, macro-economic, and social reforms. Key priorities include: (i) advancing fiscal consolidation through revenue mobilization, a more robust fiscal rule, and stronger SOE governance, (ii) modernizing monetary, financial and exchange rate policy frameworks, and (iii) accelerating growth-enhancing structural reforms.
Advancing fiscal consolidation through stronger fiscal rules and SOE governance

Progress in revenue-based fiscal consolidation has helped preserve space for public investment and social spending while bringing down public debt. Further revenue mobilization is needed to meet the 2018 primary surplus target and reduce the overall deficit to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2020. The new IRA represents a major achievement towards a simpler and more equitable tax system, and its smooth implementation will be critical. There is also scope to further strengthen efficiency of public investment and social safety nets.

Beyond 2020, a well-designed fiscal rule can help build on this progress and place debt firmly on a downward path. In line with international best practices, the Fiscal Management Responsibility Act should be amended to contain mechanisms to ensure compliance, supported by improvements in debt management and greater fiscal transparency.

Energy pricing reforms are a priority to contain fiscal risks from State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Targeted social transfer programs can help to mitigate the distributional impact of these reforms. Timely publication of the audited financial statements of major SOEs and regular review of performance under the recently introduced Statements of Corporate Intent would also strengthen SOEs governance and transparency.

Modernizing monetary, financial, and exchange rate policy frameworks

The CBSL has prudently managed monetary policy in the face of price shocks and market volatility. The CBSL should remain focused on price stability as its primary objective and stand ready to tighten if signs of demand-side inflation pressures or accelerating credit growth appear. The favorable external environment offers a window of opportunity to bolster reserve buffers and, in the event of volatile global capital flows, exchange rate flexibility should be the first line of defense. Planned changes to the Monetary Law Act, as part of the Roadmap towards flexible inflation targeting, are a key milestone to further strengthen the CBSL’s mandate, governance, and autonomy.

The authorities should remain vigilant against a buildup of systemic risks in the financial sector. If needed, further macroprudential tools can be considered to curb excessive credit growth in certain sectors. The banking sector is on track to meet the Basel III requirements and should prepare contingency plans to insure against an adverse shock. Non-bank financial institutions should be subject to the same level of oversight as banks, with problem institutions promptly resolved.
Accelerating structural reforms to promote inclusive growth

The reforms under the authorities’ Vision 2025 are important in promoting rapid and inclusive growth. Sri Lanka’s protectionist trade regime should be gradually liberalized through reform of tariffs, para-tariffs, and non-tariff barriers, as well as closer regional integration. Robust implementation of the new IRA and the one-stop shop for FDI will improve the investment climate. Efforts to combat corruption should be stepped up, including through greater transparency in fiscal and SOE management and a stronger AML/CFT regime.

Addressing Sri Lanka’s sizable gender gap and boosting female labor force participation will require labor market reforms and effective gender budgeting, including through vocational training, flexible work arrangements, safe transportation, and child care support. A well-designed natural disaster risk financing framework will help Sri Lanka address costs associated with climate change.

The mission met with Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, State Minister of Finance Wickramaratne, State Minister of National Policies and Economic Affairs De Silva, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Coomaraswamy, other public officials, and representatives of the business community, civil society and international partners.

IMF Communications Department

“Despise communalism’ – Sathyagraha in Colombo

March 9, 2018 by

 

A ‘Sathyagraha’ campaign to protest against the communal clashes that occurred in Digana area in Kandy District and the attempt to spread communalism in other areas was held at Viharamahadevi Park today (9th).

The ‘Sathyagraha’ organized by the JVP was participated by a large crowd including representatives of civic organizations, artists, university lecturers and professors, Bhikkus of National Bhikkhu Front and members of several Muslim organizations.
Speaking to the media the Leader of the JVP Anura Dissanayaka said, “What exploded in Kandy was not an isolated incident or happened spontaneously. Communalism was systematically aroused throughout out the country by various interested parties. Certain political movements instead of finding solutions for issues confronted by the people were bent on spreading communalism among their communities. Politics has divided communalism into camps. As such, communalism that has surfaced in our country should be defeated.

There are Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher and Malay communities living in our country. Without accepting equal rights for them, national unity cannot be built.
Communal clashes do not surface through Sinhalese Buddhists, Tamil Hindus or Muslim Islamists. It is very clear that it is a movement with a political agenda. As such, this communalist tendency should be defeated. These communal clashes are an advantage to rulers. They could conceal the real issues and divert people’s opposition away from them. Hence, all Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and other people should come forward to defeat all sorts of communalism.”

The President of National Bhikkhu Front Ven. Handugala Rathanapala Thero, Attorney at Law Upul Kumarapperuma, Dr HinidumaSunil Senevi, Dr Athulasiri Samarakone, Dr Dileepa Vitharana of the Open University, Former Ministry Secretary Ashoka Peiris and members of Muslim Organizations addressed the gathering.

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From The Safest To An Insecure Sri Lanka For Muslims – II

By Ameer Ali –MARCH 9, 2018

Dr. Ameer Ali

Yet, a question should be asked whether the Muslims themselves did contribute in some ways to become a target for attack. There are two elements that provided sustenance to the nationalists’ poisonous propaganda against Muslims. One is political and the other religious. Politically, the formation of an ethnic political party for Muslims, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, was a historic blunder committed out of parochial interest. At no time did the SLMC represent the entire Sri Lankan Muslim community contrary to its claim otherwise.  Yet, by hiding behind the support it had in the Eastern Province and by arrogantly claiming to representation at a national level SLMC jeopardised the security of Muslims in all other provinces, especially at a time when Sinhalese and Tamil sub-nationalisms were clashing violently. Also, while the Sinhalese and Tamil firebrands had their respective languages to rouse the masses to act, SLMC, without a language to claim its own, had to resort to religion to move its supporters to act. This unfortunately drew Islam into the ethnic cauldron. This is a new and dangerous phenomenon in Muslim politics of Sri Lanka. Before the birth of SLMC, Muslim leaders were shrewd enough to rally behind one or the other of national parties to gain access to political power, and indeed they achieved a lot to the community. SLMC on the other hand singlehandedly managed to make the Muslims a target for attack not only by the Sinhalese politicians but also by their Tamil counterparts. It is time to dissolve this party and stop forming any other of its type if Muslims were to win back the confidence and trust of the other communities.

Islam as a religion was never a problem in Sri Lanka until the last quarter of the previous century. How did it become one after that? The answer to this question will lengthen this piece beyond limit. However, a few points need elaboration in the interest of clearing certain myths about Islam in this country. Firstly, the religious awakening amongst Muslims in the wake of the sudden influx of petrodollars into the coffers of OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) resulted in a frenzy of activities in the Muslim world with the ultimate goal of Islamising the ruling World Order, both in its economic and political dimensions. What gave the impetus to this frenzy was the fact that for the first time since the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate Muslim nations, at least its petrodollar quarters, had the financial capacity to design their Islamization programs without depending on Western powers for any economic aid or policy advice. The newly acquired wealth also gave the Muslims in general a false sense of pride in that they felt that the Muslim countries have become a power to be reckoned with in the international arena. Sri Lanka had a glimpse of the size of this rising Muslim power when the Non Aligned Movement’s conference convened in Colombo in 1976, which brought a galaxy of Muslim leaders with their entourage travelling through the city in glittering cavalcades.  Naturally, the local Muslim community was elated. However, a few Sinhala nationalists looked at this event through their warped lens and feared the early signs of a distant Muslim invasion.

Secondly, even before the 1970s, the religious activities of the Tabligh Jamaat (TJ), a peaceful missionary movement whose foot soldiers, contrary to many false propaganda, devoted their time and energy solely to make many nominal Muslims become real Muslims. This they did by preaching to them to regularise their prayers and other obligatory religious rituals, and adopt the simplicity of the Prophet, as the governing moto of their life. Without the TJ many mosques would have remained to this day empty of worshipers. However, as the number of worshippers increased mosques had to be enlarged to accommodate them. Mosque renovation works therefore became a common sight in the 1970s. After the 1980s however, in consequence of the new religious awakening, foreign funds flowed generously through state and private sources to supplement local collections and new mosques started springing up, some of them appearing very ostentatious with an architecture not entirely alien to Sri Lanka. How many of the mosque-haters and mosque-lovers in Sri Lanka would know that the dome that crowns many mosques here and all over the world has a Buddhist origin from Central Asia? (Incidentally, the city of Bukhara in Uzbekistan, where the famous collector of Hadiths or traditions of the Prophet, Imam Bukhari was born derives its name from vihara, another Buddhist connection to Islam.)     

Sri Lankan Muslims are mostly an urban community and therefore the proliferation of mosques in crowded cities and towns became an eyesore to the Sinhala nationalists. The situation made worse by the irresponsible use of loudspeakers to call for prayers, five times daily, starting from before dawn until late in the evening. When several mosques in a small area started calling through loudspeakers simultaneously the cacophony naturally became a nuisance to non-Muslims. Hence the frequent complaints against mosques from the Sinhalese and others. In this era of technology, when there are countless other means available to inform the worshippers know of their prayer times, why choose loudspeakers? This shows the failure of effective leadership among Muslims.

Thirdly, and this is the most contentious of the issues regarding Islam in Sri Lanka, is the rising influence of an ultra-conservative wave of the religion called Wahhabism.  This is a religious sect, which claims purity in belief but remained largely confined to the Arabian Peninsula until the 1970s. It became global in its spread in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. This needs some explanation. When Ayatollah Khomeini kicked out the Americans from Iran and threatened to export his hijacked Islamic revolution especially to the Sunni Arab world, US administration panicked.  The Iranian fever at that time was infecting the minds of Muslim youth everywhere. If for example, the regimes in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt were to be toppled by a religiously inspired revolution mixed with anti-Americanism, US dominance in the Middle East would have been in serious jeopardy. The challenge that confronted the super power therefore, was to find some way of stopping the Iranian virus from infecting. It was in that context it discovered that the safest way was to allow a counter force to influence the Muslim mindset. The ultra-conservative Wahhabi puritanism backed by Saudi riyals came quite handy and was licenced to capture the Muslim mind.  Through funds to build mosques and educational institutions, by offering scholarships to young Muslims to study in Saudi Arabia and Saudi nominated colleges and universities, by sponsoring conferences and colloquiums to which imams and Islamic religious functionaries from all over the world were invited and entertained and by offering free air tickets to Muslim leaders and members of their organizations to go on pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, Wahhabi influence spread far and wide. In addition, the expatriate Muslim labour force in the kingdom after been indoctrinated by the singular teachings of Wahhabi imams became a cheap conduit to spread the sect’s doctrine in their own countries when they returned home.

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