NEW REGULATIONS TO CONTROL CIVIL SOCIETY: IF ENACTED IT WILL HAVE A CHILLING EFFECT ON PRIVATE ENTITIES ACROSS SRI LANKA – CPA

22/03/2018

The Cabinet of Ministers approved on 20 February 2018 a proposal to introduce amendments to the Voluntary Social Service Act (VSSO) No. 31 of 1980. The proposed amendments contain far-reaching consequences on the activities and finances of civil society and if enacted in its present form will have a chilling effect on a range of private entities across Sri Lanka. The present move is also in a context when there are several existing laws in place to monitor and regulate non-governmental organisations and other entities that are likely to fall within the proposed amendments.

Read the full report as a PDF: CPA-Note-on-VSSO-Amendment-2018-FINAL-2-1

CPA-Note-on-VSSO-Amendment-2018-FINAL-2-1.pdf by Thavam on Scribd

Crippling civic organising, mobilising and resistance through Draft Amendment to the Act on NGOs

Featured image courtesy Sri Lanka Brief

RUKI FERNANDO-03/22/2018

The author gratefully acknowledges insights and input from Attorney-at-law Ermiza Tegal.
On February 20, 2018, the Cabinet decided to publish the repressive Draft Act to Amend the Voluntary Social Service Organizations (Registration and Supervision) Act no. 31 of 1980 (LDO 32/2011) to a gazette and present it to Parliament for approval. As usual, the drafting has been done in secret with no consultations. To the best of my knowledge, the draft Act has not been made publicly available by the Government.[1]

In the face of mounting pressure and questions, today, more than a month after he had presented this draft Act to the Cabinet, Minister Mano Ganesan had belatedly committed to have a consultation with civil society on April 10, 2018 and assured that it won’t be gazettedpending observations at this consultation.[2] This is the same Minister who stated last year that he doesn’t “see any serious reason to regulate NGOs in this country” and that he doesn’t want to use the word, ‘Regulation’.[3]

The draft’s foremost stated purpose is “regulate, supervise & inspect” NGOs through a legalised “National Secretariat for NGOs (Hereafter referred to as the Secretariat)” under an unspecified Ministry. The Secretariat has investigative powers and assumes and duplicates functions of the Police. The extraordinary and excessive powers given to the Secretariat directly infringe on Freedom of Association, Freedom of expression, Freedom of Thought, Conscience & Belief and Right to Privacy. The draft gives the Director General of the Secretariat, the Minister in charge and the Ministry’s Secretary unprecedented control over any grouping defined as a NGO. It comes in the context of reporting and approval requirement currently in place for NGOs, having created a culture and expectations in the districts that NGOs have to be subservient to the local government officials.

Making collectives illegal and crippling independent civic organising and mobilising

The draft tries to capture a broad range of collectives or groups in it’s definition of an NGO[4]and compels them to register and obtain approval from the Secretariat for it’s existence, or become illegal. There are only very few exceptions.[5] This definition and compulsory registration and approval may bring under the Secretariat’s control or render illegal, groups promoting and protecting rights and interests of their members, formal and informal grouping of individuals, groups receiving funding or working voluntarily, movements that may be temporary or permanent and groups involved in initiatives of social entrepreneurship, public-private partnerships etc. It strikes at independent organising and mobilising initiatives and makes very vulnerable those campaigning on repealing or changing unjust laws, such as ones related to gender and sexuality and the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Practically, if this draft is enacted, it may bring under its control or render illegal existing civic groups such as Purawesi Balaya (Citizens Power), National Movement for Just Society (NMJS), Lawyers for Democracy (LfD), Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF), Student Unions, Peoples Alliance for Right to Land (PARL), Peoples Movement against Port City, Women’s Action Network (WAN), movements of Relatives of Disappeared etc. One wonders whether groups such as the “Civil Monitoring Commission” initiated and led by Minister Mano Ganesan and others during the Rajapakse regime and “Mothers Front” led by Minister Mangala Samaraweera and others during Premadasa regime, as well as movements of the past such as Movement to Protect Eppawala Phospate Deposits, Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE) and University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) would have been willing to subject themselves to such controls.

Arbitrary registration, suspensions, cancellations and limited possibilities of Appeal

Under this draft Act, registration (and thereby legality) is dependent on whims and fancies of the Director General of the Secretariat and Ministries or Authorities which are “responsible for activities planned to be undertaken by the organization”. If registration is rejected, the appeals have to be made to the Secretary to the Ministry, under which the Secretariat functions, within 30 days.

The registration can be suspended or canceled (and thereby make the organisation illegal) for range of reasons. These includes if the Director General feels the organization is a threat or prejudicial to national security or public interest. An organisation can also be de-registered if the Secretary to the Ministry feels the organisation is operating contrary to the national interests. None of these terms are clearly defined and only possible appeals are to Provincial High Courts, within the very short span of 30 days.

Attack on ideological and physical autonomy of civic groupings

The proposed Act implies civic groups must agree to “common development needs” of the country as defined by or agreeable to the government. This is likely to marginalise groups that are challenging the government’s model of development, which is often pro rich, pro-market and non-participatory. It also infringes on autonomy and internal policies and practices of civic groups, by interfering and retaining the final say in matters such as a change of objectives, a change in the geographical area of work, the establishment of branches, a change of the group constitution, cooperation with other groupings and the government, networking and forming federations, standards of service, financial and policy management, making donations to other groups, fund raising from the public, change of name, change of address, flag, symbol, logo etc. Information on staff and volunteers can be obtained by the Secretariat up to 6 years after they have left the organisation.

Policing powers beyond ordinary Police powers

In ordinary law, the police requires a warrant to enter a premises and search, examine books, registers or records, make copies and extracts. But the draft Act allows the Secretariat a free hand to do this, without even a clearly defined criteria for reasonable suspicion of any illegal activities. The power to “request and obtain information” implies a group from which the Secretariat “requests” information cannot refuse, as the Secretariat has powers to “obtain”, not just to “request”. The Secretariat also has powers to investigate money laundering and terrorist financing, which ought to be by the Police.

Breaching Banking Confidentiality

Under ordinary law, when the Police requires information from banks in the course of investigations of alleged crimes, they have to provide explicit justifications and orders for banks to release information are only made by a judicial authority. But the draft law confers powers to the Secretariat to breach confidentiality of banking information, without reference to any criminal conduct, rendering individuals and entities engaged in non-governmental activity second class citizens. The draft Act compels banks to inform the Secretariat of deposits over Rs. 1 million and electronic funds transfers and all transactions over an amount prescribed by the Minister. Such control over groups defined as NGOs is in contrast to the government’s policy to liberalise capital flow, under which the new foreign exchange law[6] permits undeclared money held abroad up to the value of a million dollars to be brought into the country with no penalty, while amounts in excess could be brought with the payment of a one percent fee. This puts in an additional layer of surveillance over and above what the Central Bank would be doing with regard to fund flows into the country, again singling out those defined as NGOs.

Broad and Vaguely defined “NGO crimes”

The draft Act creates range of “offences under the Act”, some of which are broadly and vaguely defined and leave room for abuse. Offences includes non-registration, which violates Freedom of Association and the principle of “Voluntary Notification”. Even a simple request for information if deemed inadequately responded to may attract a Rs. 250,000 fine or one year imprisonment and thus, is likely to create a fear psychosis. The lack of certainty runs contrary to the basic tenet of rule of law. Yet, again the hypocracy of criminalising acts that may be administratively corrected, is patently obvious when compared to the Foreign Exchange Act (FEA), which replaces the Exchange Control Act (note the change in nomenclature away from the notion of ‘control’), which was described as a new law that “decriminalised exchange control violations and freed citizens from its draconian provisions. The responsibility to implement the new management system has been vested on the authorised dealers who are subject to neither criminal nor civil proceedings under FEA. Instead, they are disciplined through an administrative process”[7].

Blurring the lines between “government” and “non-governmental”

This draft in letter and spirit, appears to convert NGOs into GONGOs – Government controlled Non-Government Organisations. It attempts to make a non-governmental group primarily accountable to the government – instead of primary accountability being to it’s members and to values they espouse, intended beneficiaries and donors – ignoring that the government is often the very body such groups seek a distinction from and often aim to monitor, critique and challenge.

Civic collectives and individuals involved in such groups must not be above the law – given that problems such as financial mismanagement, sexual harassment, gender based discrimination and abuse of worker’s rights, also occur in these entities, just las they do in government agencies and the private sector. But this must be done through ordinary law, which is applicable to all, without resorting to ultra-intrusive laws, discriminatory laws, which has the high potential to facilitate witch-hunts, to blur the line between what is “government” and what is “non-governmental / civic” and cripple independent organising and mobilising that a government may feel challenged by. Legal frameworks to address money laundering and other criminal activity must be uniformly applied instead of targeting NGOs in this disproportionate and unjustified way.

There is no point in trying to reform or engage with this draft law. It must be opposed in its entirety. If at all we need an additional law, it must be a “Freedom of Association Act” that promotes Freedom of Association, with registration based on principle of “Voluntary Notification” and not a restrictive law to make “non-governmental / civic” groupings pawns of the government.

---

[1] But drafts in three languages has been uploaded by concerned activists, and are available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HQJTYaXMBzrMFVkABruRnW53WdrwU8ES/view?usp=sharing(English), https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jlZw5mhi5hnHtDZfv-C6nGeeouU7834s/view?usp=sharing (Sinhala) and https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ngRI7i-R-RlglZxsFlykZZRM09lGQp1r/view?usp=sharing (Tamil)

[2] https://twitter.com/ManoGanesan/status/976728773386158080

[3] Statement by Minister Mano Ganesan on 1^st July 2017

[4] Includes any association, council, society, trust, foundation, federation, movement, center, consortium, company, guarantee limited companies, private companies receiving foreign funds for non-profit oriented activities, any organization under any written law or incorporated under Standing Orders of the Parliament or any other association of persons, branches of overseas registered organizations,

[5] Examples of exceptions mentioned are places of religious worship, banks, public quoted companies, school development societies, alumni associations, trade unions, political parties and any such organizations

[6] Foreign Exchange Act No 12 of 2017

[7] Statement by Former Central Bank Deputy Governor W A Wijewardene as quoted in article titled ‘Exchange control will become obsolete – Economist’, Sunday Observer found at http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2017/12/03/exchange-control-will-become-obsolete-economist

Editor’s Note: Also read “Is it the NGOs in Sri Lanka who need straitjacketing?” and “Who is afraid of NGOs?” 

The young have given up, we have given up on them

Around two or three years ago, the young of this country, disgusted at and disenchanted by what was and is happening around them, resolved on seeking greener pastures. Elsewhere. Abroad. It’s a startling trend at one level, but one that was expected for a long, long time.

2018-03-23

 They have given up on the country that bred them, given up on the morals and polemics they were taught from an early age to respect, and while many of them are trying to strike at what they want in here, a great many others have yielded to their impulses and decided to complete their A Levels, get into a local university if possible, and once that’s done, pack their bags and pursue their higher education, careers, and marriages elsewhere.

   
Consider the statistics. 4.5 million or 25% of this country is comprised of the young, i.e. those between the ages of 15 and 29 years. I’ve had the good fortune of meeting so many of them during the last five or six years, particularly through stints at journalism and freelance writing, and I’ve had the good fortune of discovering the hidden talents, the untapped potentials, of this demographic. No matter what fields they want to take to – from engineering to writing to photography to rapping to advertising – they are sincerely eager to get rid of the conventional wisdoms that exist in their societies and take the culture of their country to the next level. The elders have decided to rebel against these inclinations, but that has anyway been the case in other societies too. In Sri Lanka, however, a deeper problem exists: the absence of a proper leadership to represent them, and more to the point, to represent who they want to become. 

 
And if this is the main reason for their decision to leave the country, they couldn’t have picked a better time and yet a worse time: better because the country is in such a rut that the only way to escape it is to escape it literally, and worse because the world we’re in, and the countries these youngsters want to depart to, are being ridden by restriction after restriction, imposed as a result of what is considered to be the failures of multiculturalism and assimilation in those societies. We have moved, in other words, from Obama’s America to America First and Brexit. The youth, in other words, have nowhere to turn to; unless they act and move fast, they won’t be in a position to realise what they want. They have given up, but don’t know where else to turn to.

 
A conundrum.   

In Sri Lanka, however, a deeper problem exists: the absence of a proper leadership to represent them, and more to the point, to represent who they want to become

Brain drains have always been a problem for Sri Lanka (just look at the minds from here at work, in big companies and organisations, elsewhere), and yet, even with that, this new impending spate of youth defections worries me more than anything else. In a context where those in charge of youth affairs are (for the lack of a better way of putting it) too old, too mellowed, to understand the affairs of the young, and in a context where the general polity of the country has splintered between two political camps, neither of which has any clue as to where they want to take us to, it’s understandable that the young have given up. (The ardently political among this demographic, naturally enough, still bat for the side they’re on, but the apolitical segment of that demographic, who despise politics in general but love the culture they’ve been born to, hate both sides.)   

If 25% of this country leave in the future, when they’ve picked up the skills and the habits they need to wade through the world, the brain drain they will compel will be quite unlike any other we have faced until now. Most of those who will leave, barring those who have no real future in terms of higher education (i.e. those who didn’t study in local schools and hence have to go abroad to pursue what they want), would have picked those skills up courtesy of an education system that was free, or free in terms of the costs they didn’t have to pay for and the bills that others footed for their schooling. It was the taxpayer who paid for their textbooks and teachers, the taxpayer who made them go through those 12 years from primary school to A Levels. Ultimately, all that money, all those costs, would have been for nothing: what they resulted in was a culture whereby those who learn to become professionals decide that enough is enough and pack their bags. If that’s not a waste of money and resources, I don’t know what is. 

Brain drains have always been a problem for Sri Lanka (just look at the minds from here at work, in big companies and organisations, elsewhere), and yet, even with that, this new impending spate of youth defections worries me more than anything else

And I think it’s convenient for us to blame the politician, when the problem lies elsewhere. Personally speaking, I can’t think of leaving my country, not because of some false consciousness of a non-existent superiority of this culture, but because there’s no other society we can call our own. Worldly achievement and material success, however, are two big reasons why we are ready to become lotus-eaters. There’s something ironically contradictory about a country that can give so much – we are a nation of smilers despite the most obvious odds stacked against us – and yet force us to leave it because of those who lead it. If we don’t fix this now, we’ll never fix it. The young will leave us. For good and forever.    

JVP to present 20A on April 19 or 20

Disna Mudalige and Camelia Nathaniel-Friday, March 23, 2018

JVP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said the 20th Amendment to the Constitution to abolish the Executive Presidency will be presented in Parliament on April 19 or 20. Speaking to the media at the Parliament Lobby yesterday, he said the Amendment would be presented as a Private Member’s Bill.

“We decided to give priority for the No-Confidence Motion against the Prime Minister and wait till it is finished.

The Government has failed to keep to its promise of abolishing the Executive Presidency even after three years in office. We will give the initiative to this move through the 20th Amendment,” he said.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister against the Russian Defence Deal

Exclusive

by Our Political Editor- Mar 22, 2018

( March 22, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Prime Minister Ranil Wicramasinghe has expressed his displeasure over again and again towards the suggested Russian Defence Deal in which the Government of Sri Lanka was planning to buy a Offshore Patrol Vassal, Geopard 5.1, and few more defence related equipment, a reliable source wishes to keep the identity anonymity in the Prime Minister’s office, has told the Sri Lanka Guardian.

Prime Minister Wickramasinghe, who is now on the knife edge over the no-confidence motion against him submitted before the speaker of the Parliament, said to be raised his voice against this deal while comparing the defense deals so far completed with the countries such as India at the lower rate.

Meanwhile, “He has been targeted by certain private media entity over the last two years. The bottom line is that, the particular media company is the one which is behind this defence deal,” the source added.

According to the sources in Moscow, “What we heard is something new to compared with the history. The Federal Service of Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC), for the first time, is working towards accomplishment of the deal, along with the Rosoboronexport. This is very first time that FSMTC has been involved in such a deal.”

In our earlier report, we have exposed [ Read here] that the team of Rosoboronexport has conducted a special meeting in Singapore recently where officials from the company urged the local third party on the urgency of completion of the deal.

A 500 Day Plan For Yahapālanaya

By Niranjan Rambukwella –MARCH 22, 2018

Corruption. Cost-of-Living. Competence. Communication. Performance on these four Cs will determine Sri Lanka’s future in 2020. The government has about 500 days to act. Here’s what needs to be done.

Corruption: Minnows and Sharks

The government’s anti-corruption credibility is dented. Regaining trust requires prosecuting one’s own. Prosecuting a couple of government MPs – one UNP and one SLFP may be enough – will go far to restore the government’s credibility. It will also then open the road for the unimpeachably legitimate conviction of the Rajapaksas and their cronies.

The process needs to be sped up. Cases need to be heard by trials-at-bar sitting every single day – if necessary including weekends. If there aren’t enough judges, introduce overtime so that judges work more. As for prosecuting resources, the AGs department needs to expand. But that’ll take too long. The fastest way of improving the state’s prosecuting capacity is hiring private lawyers to assist in cases and shifting SOE legal work to the private bar.

Emblematic cases are well and good. But no ordinary citizen paid a bribe to the Rajapaksas personally. Their experience of corruption is paying cops and principals. Extrapolating from Transparency’s Global Corruption Barometer, every year nearly a million Sri Lankans pay bribes the police and 740,000 pay bribes for schooling. For the effects of anti-corruption to be felt by the public, the government needs to go after the minnows too.

Since the police and schooling are by far the most significant areas of retail corruption, they are where the government should start. Georgia, which had one of the most corrupt police forces in the world, has some good ideas. Their progressive government cleaned up the problem in months. One strategy outlined in their PM’s book, Practical Economics, was to set up a special unit to police the policemen. This unit, outside the standard police structure, hired young and highly motivated plain-clothes constables to offer bribes to policemen. The officers had cameras in their cars to ensure that the evidence was irrefutable. Police accepting bribes were caught on video. The courts would then swiftly jail them and remove them from service. Officers who did not take a bribe were offered rewards, and even promotions. A flying-squad of 50 officers – armed with the latest technology e.g. bodycams –could transform the police force in a matter of months. Similar methods could be used by the Bribery Commission to prosecute errant policemen and principals. Once the police and schools are cleaned up, then other consumer-facing government institutions like kachcheris, CEB, water-board and courts can follow.

Cost-of-Living: Cut Taxes

Instead of deflation – a reduction in the cost of living – the government should ideally help the public understand that rising incomes is more important. But that can’t be done in two years. So prices need to go down. The fastest way to reduce prices is to reduce taxes. But the government needs taxes, especially thanks to the Rajapaksas corruption and white-elephant debt.

Therefore, the fastest way of reducing taxes is selling assets. And the quickest way to sell assets is via the stock-exchange. Start by selling the remainder of SLT and Hotel Developers (Hilton). Then sell small stakes, say 10 percent, of Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. That may be enough to eliminate NBT and the other irregular taxes in the short-run till tax reforms kick-in.

The second way of reducing taxes is accelerating tariff reduction and introducing tax simplification. As tariffs reduce, goods automatically become cheaper. The fall in government revenue is often compensated by higher volumes of consumption. With sufficient asset sales, the government may be able to tide over this transition period. In the medium to long term, improvements in tax collection and reduction in SOE losses should kick-in to place government finances on a sustainable level.

A reduction in the price level will also enable the Central Bank to either cut interest rates, or at least hold them steady. This will ensure that investment continues and the demand side of the economy holds up.

Competence

Cutting corruption and the cost-of-living won’t be enough. The government needs to govern. People need to have confidence that the government is building a better future. And nothing smells of the future like high-modernism. A few quick wins are enough. Pick five priority projects and get them done or at least ensure they are visibly under construction. The Colombo East Terminal, Colombo Inland Waterway, Central Expressway and Malabe Light Rail are good candidates.

Sri Lankan Airlines rightly takes a great deal of press bandwidth. Take on Sri Lankan’s liabilities and sell it. If that’s not possible, close it and auction the landing slots to Sri Lankan flagged carriers on a medium-term lease to ensure competition on routes. Its painful, but better than the pain of a weekly headline. Tourism is one of two major drivers of growth at the moment. Introducing competition into catering, terminal management and bunkering at Katunayake and Ratmalana will help reduce Sri Lanka’s expensive lift-costs. This will keep the labor-intensive tourism boom booming.

None of these projects affect the median Sri Lankan voter. That was the genius of Mahinda’s cross-country road, electrification and water projects. Now that the low hanging fruit is by and large complete, the next step is soft-infrastructure. Every parent wants their child to be a doctor or an engineer. But only 869 of Sri Lanka’s 2803 schools that offer A Levels offer the science stream for A Levels. But that’s not so bad. In 2014, over half the students who sat for O Levels failed English and 43 percent failed maths. The diagnosis is clear: increase the quality of maths education. Raise maths and English teacher salaries to get capable people into the system, train existing teachers so that they teach better and harness technology. This can’t all be done in two years. But people will notice if serious steps are taken in the right direction.

Read More

Women’s bodies, masculinities and economic insecurities

Understanding recurrent violence against Muslims

 Thursday, 22 March 2018 

Cat’s Eye was deeply saddened to witness another wave of anti-Muslim violence, yet again, under a Government which promised to protect them from such violence.

It was reported that the first round of violence in Ampara was sparked by a claim that a Muslim restaurant was spiking their food with “sterilisation pills”. The claim lent itself to a common paranoid rhetoric that Muslims are attempting to make the Sinhala population infertile.

The invocation of fertility is not new. In 2012, No Limit was accused of serving ‘infertility’ toffees; then other Muslim-owned clothing stores were accused of selling undergarments smeared with chemicals aimed at causing infertility.

These stories were absurd, yet nobody refuted them. They have been freely circulating in the public sphere, and particularly on social media, for far too long. This time, it is laudable that the medical community responded to this incident and denounced the outrageous allegation, debunking the myth that triggered violence against Muslims.

The steps taken by the Police to take the suspected infertility pill from the eatery in Ampara to the Government Analyst, and the ruling of the Government Analyst that this was a “carbohydrate compound” or lump of flour is equally welcome.

The intervention of the medical community and the Government Analyst notwithstanding, we feel a ‘scientific’ explanation alone may not be very helpful to understanding why so many people were so easily persuaded to engage in violence or in preventing such violence in the future due to fears about the potential unproductivity of Sinhala men. This is part of a much broader Sinhala Buddhist ethno-nationalist discourse about Muslim extremism and expansionism that is currently gaining ground in certain sections of the population.

A crude mapping of this rhetoric suggests that it consists of several different myths: a) ‘Muslims do not practice family planning and therefore the Muslim population is growing at a much faster rate and will overtake both the Sinhala and Tamil population’; b) ‘Muslim men are not only entering into inter-racial marriages with Sinhala Buddhist women and forcing them to adopt “foreign” values, leading to the desecration of Sri Lankan culture, they are also forcefully converting and raping Sinhala women’; c) ‘The Government’s family planning programme has primarily targeted Sinhala women, denying them the right to have as many children as they want’.

Concerns about demography reveal a deep-seated fear within the Sinhala majority that the social, political and economic power they hold will be diminished by a ‘rising’ minority population. It is our contention that this nationalist discourse, and its role in defining the Sri Lankan nation state, has to be understood as being fundamentally tied to women’s bodies, dominant notions of masculinity and its relationship to real economic conditions.

The marking, policing and enforcing of boundaries between communities also works to enable the heteronormative policing of women within communities. Implicitly coded within the discourse of women’s reproduction and their role in sustaining a particular ‘race’, is community ownership of women’s bodies, in particular through an emphasis on concerns such as the purity and honour of a community or the family.

The “our women” language stems from communities, families and the State via laws and policies, which all too often violate the rights of these same women by sanctioning cultural and social norms and practices which are harmful to women and girls: domestic and family violence, incest, rape, sexual abuse, limiting access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, and so on. In many of these instances, what communities do to “their women” is permissible by virtue of it being done by “their men”; while in contrast, a perceived threat to the wellbeing of one community’s women by another, such as the threat of the sterilisation pills aimed at Sinhalese by Muslims, is cause for outrage and retaliation.

This feigned concern for the women and girl children of the community is a useful tool with which to mobilise men, by calling upon their masculinity and protector status; a status embedded in the power dynamic of unequal gender relations.

Beyond the glaring ethno-religious “in-group/out-group” ideas at the epicentre of the violence, the real economic motivations and insecurities of the attackers cannot be ignored. The focus on masculine insecurities also brings to the fore the economic insecurities that are shaping relationships between communities at the local level.

The Muslim community has seen attacks on their businesses, whether big commercial enterprises such as Fashion Bug and No Limit  or small eateries and restaurants, both as a target of the organised violence, as well as via the circulation of the fertility-related misinformation.

Cat’s Eye sees the increasing cost of living and difficult economic conditions for a majority of the population (of all ethnicities) as being intrinsically linked to the production of a nationalist, racist sentiment against a perceived economically productive minority – something we have seen time and time again in Sri Lankan history.

This sentiment has been allowed to sediment. It is weaved into political discourse, stark in the poor and red-herring responses of the State throughout our recent history, and is most efficiently mobilised by parties with vested interests when expedient.

Thus, anxieties about Muslim procreation and fertility and the extinction of the Sinhala race exists in a mutually reinforcing relationship with biological and cultural notions of men’s roles as progenitors and protectors of the nation and women’s roles as reproducers of the nation.

The examination of the gendered nature of this rhetoric helps us to look beyond the purely ethnic dimensions of the violence towards addressing the economic inequalities that underpin ethnicised violence.

Recognising the complex gendered dimensions of our current predicament can perhaps help us to prevent these recurrent waves of violence in the future. It would mean going beyond a call to the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural notion of Sri Lanka, towards understanding and addressing the factors which drive real tensions and anxieties between communities and people.

(The Cat’s Eye column is written by an independent collective of feminists, offering an alternative feminist gaze on current affairs in Sri Lanka and beyond.)

The devils in doctors and dons People funding free education have right to say stop private practice

For a start, this stupid vehicle permit scheme should be scrapped forthwith 

It is the people who funded 13 years of their schooling and their graduate education. That includes five years of medical education

Selfish, unethical work resulted in disrupting medical education for over 10 months. None but GMOA and dons are responsible for chaos

Can they ever publicly say, they are honestly delivering on their social responsibilities to ask for more?

2018-03-23

Having indulged in writing on issues like reconciliation, corruption, development and all things directly political, a news item on Sunday last prompted this write up on professionals and academics beyond the short mention, I had about them last week.  

On Sunday, March 18, the Sunday Times carried a news item based on a letter written by the Kelaniya University Faculty of Medicine Teachers’ Association (KUFMTA) to the Minister of Higher Education.

  
It says:  

“This trade union action (referring to the strike by non-academic staff) has completely disrupted the academic activities of the University system and more so in the faculties of medicine, since medical education was earlier disrupted for over 10 months over matters relating to the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) issue.”  

This is very funny, coming from Medical Faculty academics, which encouraged and allowed students to go out on street rampages on a weekly basis almost the whole of last year.  

Funny, disgusting and more than irritating too when they now say over 10 months of medical education was disrupted “over matters relating to SAITM issue.”  
What are those SAITM related issues?  

They are nothing more than what Deans of all Medical Faculties and their destructive allies the GMOA leaders created.  

It was these same Deans who left medical faculties to be run by student mobs as they pleased. All eight State University Medical Faculty Deans, who sit as Ex-officio members in the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) and that includes the Dean of the Kelaniya University Medical Faculty as well, together with GMOA, played a sinister role in dragging the SAITM issue into a crisis for no advantage of their own medical students and most unjustly against those medical students at SAITM. 
During Prof Carl Fonseka’s pitiful tenure as the SLMC President, these Deans, in fact, changed recommendations of their own SLMC Committee, that investigated the quality of SAITM medical education, headed by Prof Rizvy Sheriff, for no other reason but to deny SAITM students any possibility of graduating as medical practitioners.  

All those selfish, unethical work of theirs resulted in disrupting medical education for over 10 months. None but they are responsible for all that chaos.

Having aided and abetted the disruption of University education for almost one year, how or why have they suddenly turned into Saints in medical education?  
It is the same dirty, selfish mindset that deprives SAITM students any reasonable solution that is still working.  

They don’t want the university non-academic staff unions to gain an advantage and benefit from their strike action. Yet, these dons cannot oppose the strike openly for FUTA, is collecting and arranging demands to go for strike action in a few months from now.  

Hence, this letter to the Minister of Higher Education is just to cover their otherwise crude selfishness.  

I beg to ask these dons who want the present university non-academics’ strike settled soon to save medical education,  

“Would you oppose the planned FUTA trade union campaign that demands ‘retirement permit for duty-free vehicles’, to save medical education?”

FUTA leadership is now canvassing for consent from affiliated teacher unions for demands “FUTA should agitate for, and take trade union action on, as necessary”.  
The demands, over a dozen are extremely selfish and greedy, beginning with “salary concerns post-2020, obtaining retirement permit for duty free vehicles, leave conditions especially addressing overseas leave constraints, adequate university housing for dons and remedying anomalies and injustices in payment of allowances and provision of benefits such as communication allowance among few others that had been squeezed in to show the academics are also interested in University activities. 

None of them have anything directly related to serious educational reforms though. Most have been listed expecting such personalized demands would carry the whole academic population on board for trade union action. The final demand list may even end up including one for preferential quota system for FUTA in Grade I School Admissions.  

In fact, this was argued as necessary by the Secretary of FUTA himself, some months back.  

These academics are not alone in professional greed. The GMOA leadership too has come up with similar and equally selfish demands once again. A short message on mobile phone that went out to the membership end of first week this March read, “Hon. Minister Rajitha has given an appointment to GMOA on 23 March to finalise the decisions on our proposals for DAT revision & 05 yearly vehicle permit.”  

Obviously there are other demands as selfish as these, they would be taking up with the Minister, if the appointment is kept as scheduled. Unlimited, never satisfied greed for money, leaves no shame with these mafia-type GMOA leaders to talk of revising an allowance that in the first instance is not valid and should be scrapped.  
“Disturbance, Availability and Travelling” allowance they call DAT is Rs.35,000 per month. What is “disturbance” for a medical practitioner who anyway is “on call”? What is “availability” when they are “on call”? Do they mean DAT is for those who are disturbed and called to be available for duty when not “on call”? Does it then mean those who are not disturbed and asked to be available during a month, are not paid DAT for that month? That’s how vulgar this DAT is and the GMOA leadership wants it revised upwards for no apparent reason.

These medical practitioners never sign attendance for two reasons. One, they suffer from an incurable disease called “AMES” (Acquired Mega Ego Syndrome) and thus don’t want to sign attendance like other public employees.  

They think they are not “flunkies” to sign attendance registers like others. The second and the more important reason is, with no attendance register to calculate the actual hours worked, overtime pay is now calculated on the personal diary entries as endorsed by another GMOA member, who is the DMO.  

They are paid overtime on an hourly basis as well as for three weekends they work. And there is much duplicity when DAT is also paid.  

When “disturbed and called to be available” and when that time goes as over time too. Fact is, there is no acceptable monitoring and supervising mechanism in place in any Government hospital or in the health sector that can check abuse that’s plenty.  

With both the FUTA and the GMOA wanting duty free vehicles every five years, where do people who fund their living stand? There are 18,300 plus registered medical practitioners in Public Service. IF on a very conservative estimation, 75 percent of them purchase duty free vehicles, with a nominal duty waiver of Rs.03 million per vehicle, the national income to the Treasury, the people, will have to forego will be a colossal sum of 41,400 million rupees (Rs. 41 bn). 

What if that amount or close to that amount of national income has to be forgone for FUTA membership, who would want the same facility? Loss to public would definitely be more than 125,000 million rupees, on a realistic estimate.  

The GMOA and the FUTA leadership that claim they stand for free education should know, it is the people of this country -from every pauper on the street to the wealthiest high flying proprietor- have funded 13 years of their schooling and their graduate education. That includes five years of medical education. 

That notwithstanding, every cent of these professionals’ and dons’ take home salary and all other perks are also funded by public money. 

What moral obligations do these medical professionals and the academics have to society, to demand more and more? 

Can they ever publicly say, they are honestly delivering on their social responsibilities to ask for more? 

It was one of these university dons who once told me, if the railway employees want to strike for better pay, they must also ensure a better-improved service.

There are plenty of issues in the public sector regarding salaries and cadres. They have to be fixed once and for all to demand an efficient Public Service.  

There are long-running anomalies on unnecessary salary gaps maintained between different trades, skills and professions on “fake ratios”. 

 
The GMOA sabotages all other union demands on salaries and allowances to maintain these gaps as wide as possible while holding public life to ransom to increase their package. 

This is a symptom of “free education producing bigger crooks” in a competitive free market economy.  

This method of salary and cadre calculations will have to be done with and sooner the better.  

Sri Lanka needs to have a common “national living wage” across all sectors, services, skills, trades and professions.  

Everyone has a right to a decent and a secured life and that has to be guaranteed to make “free education” worth its cost.  

Primary condition to ensure that is to pay a living wage for the job one is employed for. It is this ‘living wage’ that should be topped with a “skill or professional” allowance to maintain a decent appreciation of responsibilities and workload entrusted in employment.

For a start, this stupid vehicle permit scheme should be scrapped forthwith.  

That not only leads to corruption but also drains off hard-earned foreign exchange on increasing fuel imports too.   Next, the GMOA should be very plainly told, if any of its demands require more public money than what is now allocated, their channelling and private practices (PP) would be completely banned.   People cannot be candles those are lit at the both ends-funding their education and salaries and paying for medical treatment.  

They are free to resign and practise privately.  

Sri Lankan Ex-Leader's MP Son Says Not Allowed to Enter U.S.

FILE PHOTO: Namal Rajapaksa (C), son of former Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa, leaves with prison officers at court after being arrested in Colombo, Sri Lanka July 11, 2016. REUTERS/Dinuka 

March 22, 2018, at 12:57 p.m

COLOMBO (REUTERS) - SRI Lanka's opposition legislator Namal Rajapaksa, the eldest son of Sri Lanka's former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa, on Thursday said he was not allowed to enter the United States despite having a valid visa.

Namal, who was in Russia to monitor the presidential election, was to fly to Houston from Moscow late on Wednesday.

"When I went to check into the flight in Moscow, I was told that U.S. Home Office (State Department) had informed not to allow me to enter the U.S.. No reason was given," Namal told Reuters via phone. He said he had a valid multiple-entry visa for the United States.

"There was no travel ban on me and I was to attend my aunt's funeral. The U.S. has the right to refuse my entry, but they could have informed me earlier," he said.

A spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka said the U.S. law prohibits the country's officials from discussing individual visa cases.

Junior Rajapaksa's passport was impounded as part of a probe into an alleged money laundering, state media has reported.

But he was granted permission to travel abroad for a period of two months by the Colombo Chief Magistrate on Feb. 22 to travel Russia and Nepal for two months from Feb. 26 to attend seminars organized by Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

Namal is facing legal battles including misappropriation of funds in an apartment project and is on bail after being arrested in July 2016. He was questioned by financial police investigating a $650-million high-end project in the capital Colombo.

He had denied any wrongdoing and said the government was on a witchhunt against its political rivals instead of delivering on its promise of good governance.

Since he swept to power in January 2015, President Maithripala Sirisena has launched a series of investigations into deals that were cleared by his predecessor Rajapaksa and his family members, some of whom were in the cabinet.

However, a political party backed by former president Rajapaksa overwhelmingly won a local government poll last month, creating a path for his political comeback.

(Reporting by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Alison Williams)

Copyright 2018 Thomson Reuters.

Hindu priest killing: Soldier, 3 others sentenced to death 

2018-03-22

A soldier and three others accused of killing a Hindu priest in Murugumoorthi Sankanai, Jaffna on April 11, 2010, and severely injuring another were convicted and sentenced to death yesterday (22) by Jaffna High Court Judge Manikkavasagar Illanchelian.

The three who were convicted were identified as Pedurusingha Gunasena, K. Muhundan alias Shakthi and Balasubramaniam Shivaruban of Jaffna

The Judge stated that after a lengthy trial the prosecution had been able to prove their case beyond a shadow of a doubt. Accordingly, he ordered that the three who were convicted be hung on a date to be determined by the President.

The murder of the chief priest of the Hindu Kovil S. Sivanathan at Murugamoorthy Road Sankanai in Jaffna was proved to have been carried out by these three convicts using automatic firearms. His two sons had also been injured in the shooting. The killers had also got away with Rs.50,000 and a motorcycle.

Manipay Police had launched investigations into the killing while the army had also launched an investigation into the incident given the fact that a soldier was one of those accused.

The judge also sentence all three to 20 years imprisonment for robbery and assault. (Sithum Chathuranga)

Replanting the forests one wild mushroom at a time

MARCH 21 2018

When she was a girl, Nilanthi Kumarasinghe would fill a bowl with salt and chilli powder and head into the forest. Her parents were worried it was unsafe, but to her those were halcyon days. She and the other children ran wild, spending lazy afternoons climbing trees to pluck fruit, both sweet and tart; laughing and talking as they ate them with chilli powder.

“We grew up relying on the resources of the forest. We found things there that we could not find anywhere else,” Nilanthi remembers, describing how her father used to return from his forays into the woods with large baskets of wild mushrooms. Their neighbours would bring home fruits, honeycomb and medicinal herbs.

Now 42-years old, Nilanthi is married and lives with her family in Mahakirindegama, a village near Mihintale in Anuradhapura. Her mushrooms come not from the forest but from a little shed behind her house. The seeds are grown in sawed-off PVC bottles, each container filled with a combination of mango wood dust, magnesium sulphate, calcium carbonate, soya and gram flour and gypsum to hold it all together. She uses only organic fertilizers to keep pests at bay and swears by fermented garlic juice.

Each container in her shed yields some 750 grams of mushrooms before it must be replaced. For every 200 grams of oyster mushrooms Nilanthi makes Rs.60; abalones get her a little more, at Rs.80 per pack. Her product is in demand, all her neighbours buy from her, and she also supplies the local shops. In total, in a good month she earns Rs. 40,000.

Training and supplies from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) helped her kick start what is today a thriving business. The Community Forestry Project is funded by AusAid and implemented by the Department of Forestry in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme. It was initiated to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in the dry and intermediate zones of Sri Lanka.

At the heart of the programme is an awareness that the communities that live on the boundaries of the forest are in fact the best people to protect it. When empowered and equipped with knowledge of the ecosystem and best practices, technologies, market linkages, access to credit and ability to partner with the Government, private sector, NGOs and other entities, such communities can prosper.

Field operations began in 2012, with the project being rolled out across 17 districts. 23,000 ha of forests were replanted in 167 sites and productivity was enhanced in over 3,000 home gardens.

As part of the support to the Department of Forestry, motorbikes and computers were provided to field offices, thereby helping to improve their capacity and access. A Programme Management Unit was established at the premises of the Forest Department to facilitate the implementation of the programme. In total, an estimated 10,000 households enjoyed direct benefits from the project, with indirect beneficiaries estimated to be some 90,000 people.

Before this work began, many of these communities were isolated, and lacking in access to basic infrastructure, water and other essentials. Most of the men in this area are daily wage workers, says Namali Ratnatunga, a forest extension officer with 15 years of experience in the department. To make money, they would often go into the forest, slashing and burning to create room for chena cultivation. Close to a small tank, this village would also see large numbers of elephants and monkeys ransacking their fields. Now Ratnatunga sees alternative livelihoods making a huge impact.

Nilanthi is one of a dozen women who work from home. Ratnatunga has helped others set up business where they raise chickens, grow lime, mangoes and beetle leaves, and run a variety of small home businesses. In the next village, Ratnatunga helped the community plant teak trees, which have provided them with the wood they need to run their furnaces. Such initiatives have curtailed forest encroachments, while leaving the communities more prosperous, with sustainable sources of income.

Ratnatunga feels the project’s focus on women has really paid off. “The work is being done by the women,” she says, explaining that the family benefits when women earn because women are more likely than men to invest in the household and in well-being of individual family members. Nilanthi puts her own earnings toward the education of her three children, the youngest of whom, a girl, is in Grade 5. “We, the women in this area, are the ones sustaining this project,” says Nilanthi with pride.