Wednesday, March 28, 2018

The Question of Eligibility of the Foreign Service Officers for Promotions

(Lanka-e-News - 28.March.2018, 11.30PM) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has initiated an action to promote the officers in the Grade I of the Foreign Service to a special grade as per the Foreign Service Minute of 2016. According to this service minute, the promotions should be granted through an interview process and the Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already requested the permission of the Public Service Commission for the interview and related processes. However, the criteria to be used at the interview and the questions related to the actual seniority of the most of the senior Foreign Service Officers have been met with harsh criticisms by the officers of the Foreign Ministry. They alleged that the most of the senior officers have not fulfilled the requirements for their promotions since beginning of their career and yet they have influenced the Foreign Secretary to adopt interview criteria that would ensure their promotions.

It is a fact that like other services such as the Administrative Service and the Accountancy Service, the Foreign Service is also governed by its own service minute, Financial Regulations, Establishment Code and other rules and regulations of the government of Sri Lanka. Accordingly, the Foreign Service Minute, which is the main document that explains the rules, regulations and procedures applicable for recruitment, confirmation and promotion of the Foreign Service officers. Therefore, after the appointment, the officers need to pass first and second efficiency by examinations, second language and foreign language examinations.

However, according to the sources close to the Foreign Ministry, among the top 24 officers in the Grade I of the Foreign Service, some have received their promotions without fulfilling the above requirements as per the previous service minute. As stipulated in the 1994 Foreign Service minute, the officers of that time needed to pass their first efficiency bar examination within three years of their appointment. Thereafter, the second efficiency bar examination should be completed within six years of the appointment. It was also required for them to complete the foreign language requirement within three years of the appointment and for the confirmation in the service. The issue is that a number of top most senior officers in the Foreign Service have used many side-avenues and frauds to get their promotions and confirmation in the service rather than sitting for examinations.

Paying attention to their dirty tricks of the senior officers, some of the junior officers have decided to challenge the seniority of some senior officers exposing their misdeeds. There is a seniority list published by the Minister of foreign affairs. However, it is alleged that this list does not reflect the actual seniority of the officers. Some officers of the Foreign Service, therefore, have registered their protest on the utilization of this seniority list to consider promotions to the special grade of the Foreign Service.

It is alleged that 07 officers have taken more than 06 years to complete their second efficiency bar examination. They are A. Wijewardnea, E.M.R. Perera, S.Nakandala, S. Ganegamaarachchi, T.Ravinthiran, A.L.M.Lafeer and P.M.Amza. As per the service minute, if an officer failed to fulfil any requirements within the stipulate period, in this case within 06 years of the first appointment, their seniority should be considered from the date of completion of the service requirements and they should be kept below the officers who have already done the examinations within six years. Unfortunately, this has not happened. In addition, Mr. A.L.A.Azeez has failed to complete the first efficiency bar examination within 03 years.

According to the information received from the Minister of foreign affairs, A.L.A. Azeez has failed six times in his accountancy paper. This officer belongs to the batch recruited to the Foreign Service in 1992. However, instead of a result sheet from the Department of Examination, he has submitted a document issued by M.Maharo the then director of the Overseas Administration Division of the Foreign Ministry to secure his promotion. However, according to the records of the Department of examination this officer has not passed his examination. Surprisingly, in 1995 with the support of H.M.Shafick , Deputy Commissioner of the Department of examination, a number of Tamil and Muslims officers have been able to manipulate their examination results. A.L.A. Azeez has also failed to fulfil the second language requirements. Instead of a certificate issued by the Department of examination or obtained through the departmental examination, he has submitted a written request stating that a study programme he underwent in Geneva in 1993 has a Foreign Language component. Yet this is not correct.

Similarly, P.M.Amza, instead of a proper certificate, has submitted a letter of attendance from a Sri Lankan institute that he participated in a class to learn the Arabic language. In this case, a letter of attendance cannot be considered as a certificate. It is also learnt that M.Keegall has submitted a forged certificate for his foreign language requirement with the forged signature of Dr. Palitha Kohone, the permanent representative of the UN. Yet, at the advise of the then Minister G.L.Peiris, then Secretary K.Amunugama dropped the charges against him and he was allowed to continue in the service. Present Ambassador in Bahrain S.U.J.Mendis has also not passed his efficiency bar examinations but then Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama has submitted a cabinet paper requesting to exempt him from this requirement. This is totally a bias decision and an incorrect procedure. This special favour has been granted to S.U.J.Mendis to repay the support he has extended to the son of the Minister to write his dissertations to the Singapore Management University.

It is also learnt that Majintha Jayasinghe, present Deputy High Commission in Malaysia, has been promoted without any qualification purely through a political purposes. He has failed his efficiency bar first examination eight times within a period of eight years. Later, he became a favourite of Sajin Vas Gunawardena, the monitoring MP for Foreign Ministry. He was paid over Rs. 3 million as in areas for keeping him in the seniority list backdating. This whole process was completed with the strong support of then Secretary, K. Amunugama. There is a case pending in this regard.

While some officers received royal treatments, five officers who were unable to fulfil the requirements of promotion were demoted and kept in the lower positions in the seniority list. They are Kapila Jayaweera, P.Karunaratna, Ransiri Perera, Tiloma Abhayajeewa and Dhammika Semasinghe. They are still receving stepmother treatments at the Ministry, while all the crooks are enjoying undue benefits.

According to the information received from the Foreign Ministry, the secretary of the ministry seems to be infavour of using this incorrect seniority list for the promotion of officers to the special grade of the Foreign Service. The junior officers of the Foreign Ministry have started that they are very closely monitoring the situation in order to take legal action if the seniority list of the Foreign Service is prepared correctly and demote the officers who have not eligible to serve as senior officers in the Foreign Ministry. Above are a few examples where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs failed to follow the correct procedures and government rules and regulations. The officers of the Foreign Service have already made their submissions to the relevant authorities seeking their assistance to correct the mistakes and put the house in order.

By A Special Correspondent

---------------------------
by (2018-03-28 21:15:44)

Police Narcotics Bureau inspector arrested over Welikada deaths

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

An Inspector of the Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) has been arrested over the deaths of several inmates during the 2012 Welikada prison riots.

Inspector Neomal Rangajeewa was arrested by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) over the incident.

The riot in 2012 left 27 inmates dead and several injured. The riot broke out during a search for illegal arms.

The Government had appointed a committee to investigate the riot and a report was compiled on the incident.

In January this year the Human Rights Commission in Sri Lanka (HRCSL) recorded a statement from a journalist over the riot.

The statement was recorded from journalist Kasun Pussewela after he had filed a petition at the HRCSL.

Pussewela had sought an investigation into the incident saying there was ample evidence to prosecute some people who were responsible for killing prisoners who took part in the riot.

The HRCSL obtained written evidence from Pussewela as well as video and photographic evidence. (Colombo Gazette)

Avoiding a Day Zero: Turn on the taps of conservation and innovation for water

Thursday, 29 March 2018

On 22 March I was reading the supplements in the press over World Water Day. In Sri Lanka it is a matter of pride that in this particular day we can reminisce and claim on our proud hydraulic heritage and even coming to the recent times declare of our own total control of Gal Oya scheme in design and construction – seven times the capacity of Parakrama Samudraya!

However on 23 March I was witnessing a deluge of water from a hosepipe on a vehicle and someone scrubbing vigorously the body in trying to get some shine. The previous day’s reading and discussions reminded me that we actually enjoy our pipe-borne water at a subsidised rate.

The Water Board spends about Rs. 48 on average for a cubic meter of purified water while at the basic level we only pay Rs. 12 per unit. All the chemicals we have to import and sometimes even food grade chemicals are used for water purification. Then we liberally used this purified supply to wash vehicles without an iota of understanding.

This lack of sensitivity is seen across many a function. As you see in the picture in some places a child for his shower only has a choice that all of us would find quite revolting!

Water is life

Most certainly water is life. However, today we find the resource really stressed and most of the reasons we should be able to trace back to our actions.

As this year’s Water Day is celebrated, the world’s first situation of a major urban city running out of water is taking place in Cape Town, South Africa. This developed city of six million people a Day Zero – the day when the pipes will run dry – is a haunting reality and the dates are just getting extended only because the city’s tough action on continuous reduction of what is being made available.

A long-standing drought has reduced the available water in the reservoir and earlier Day Zero was estimated to happen in April which now had been postponed to July. This is basically by further rationing the water to its citizen’s from 100 litres to 50 litres per person per day.

Considering that this city is a thriving metropolis with a significant tourist inflow, one can understand when you can now only have a two-minute shower, one toilet flush, two hand-washings, etc. This is indeed an extreme situation but the reality is that it is not the only city that is facing this situation – yes, that is the most significant. Recently research published in Nature reported that 19% of 482 cities studied are to be susceptible to severe water stress.

Reckless handling of resource

We must admit that we are quite reckless with the handling of this resource. Though with the past glory as a hydraulic civilisation, which designed and developed world-class hydraulic infrastructure, today we are at times reduced to sending water in bottles to the very same places. This is indeed sad!

However, whether we see the irony of the situation, I am not sure as we feel as if it is mission accomplished when the lorry loads appear and get distributed with all the associated banners and event management teams on site.

Just consider how much of a backward journey we have travelled since then. Again the very same region is plagued with a disease of unknown origin and one clear alleviating solution has been the provision of clean drinking water. This really should not be considered as a solution but more as a basic human right.

Again, all the systems that have been identified as the best interim measure of water delivery is coming from a technology sourced from elsewhere and which has inherent complexities and costly maintenance duty attached.

A different mechanism?

Can’t we provide water with a different mechanism? There are rainwater harvesting systems too being deployed but the support and the scale of deployment is much less and of course they directly depend on rain being available and today we have witnessed a long period of drought in most parts of that region.

We are the world’s No. 1 supplier of activated carbon based on a renewable resource. It beats me why we cannot engage and design community water supply schemes, as activated carbon is an excellent purification media.

With RO it is indeed sad to witness the retained water portion which can be up to two-thirds of the water intake and which should potentially contain all the toxins that should be causing the kidney disease being just poured into the ground again. This is a common sight and an incredibly questionable procedure.

One must understand if there are no significant levels of toxins in the discharge water, then actually the use of RO is an overkill. Thus with respect to managing a resource technical understanding with lifecycle analysis is most important.

Also a question to be asked is, can a farmer carry a bottle with built in purification potential thus allowing him to use from any source of water, relieving him of anxiety and dehydrating due to fear and in addition creating additional oxidative stress? The region, which we used in picture postcards and earn tourist dollars, is in real need of a technical solution today to realise a basic human right.

In-depth understanding needed

Giving leadership to the provision of a resource supply also needs an in-depth understanding. It just cannot be achieved with ad-hoc decision-making or with different agendas. Before Cape Town, Melbourne – a city with so many Sri Lankans – who have decided to leave a wet country to seek abode in a drier country – faced a serious water crisis due to the drought between 1997 and 2007.

The authorities did communicate on a daily basis the available water and did indicate explicitly the need to conserve and the citizen’s did. While the citizenry changed their water devices to be more frugal with the dispensation – taking the responsibility to shower for a minimum time period with a low quantity of water, gardening to be controlled, etc. – design and development work too were integrated to ensure that acceptance of the new way of life was not going to be difficult.

In houses you may find two water supply lines fresh and reclaimed water from recycling operations being made available to certain tasks – toilet flushing to cleaning tasks, rain water harvesting systems built in, etc.

Climate change

One significant threat under which we live today is climate change. One can attribute this threat to our own making but as Sri Lankans we only will be in the receiving end of impacts. Water is considered to be the one which is most susceptible under climate change and risks to that resource the greatest.

Even when sending water to Anuradhapura and then when floods inundate the very same lands, when seawater intrusion at Kelani and Kalu Ganga appears not many are moving us to concrete action in a planned manner.

Water is too great a resource to be considered only as a political measure and interest should not be restricted only to be correlated to the potential impact on the elections. While Melbourne demonstrated how decision makers should act bringing along with them the citizen’s to work as one we revel in finding solutions first getting ourselves completely divided! While one conserve there may actually be another who will ready to burn the infrastructure in protest over perceived rights!

Conservation and innovation

So many downside risks that our water economic sector has, we should understand the value of efforts of conservation to innovations. Efforts should be made with Public Private Partnerships.

Just consider the array of devices that are coming into the market for water efficiency in other countries. Some just do not conserve they communicate conservation as typical of this IoT (Internet of Things) age. I am not recommending simply buying all these from outside but recommending understanding the business potential too that one can realise by engaging in such activities.

Today we experience that one single flood, a deluge of about 125mm rainfall, can cause a dip in economic performance of the nation for that particular quarter. Where is the resilience? There is the need to address and build resilience as unfortunately extreme events are much more likely to be the norm than a rarity in time to come.

There is also the need to connect research with applications to realise benefits and this is important to water sector as well. As the example provided indicates, we have been ignorant of much of successes realised on the international stage for common benefit. As a nation that has innovated in the past to the level of global excellence, the time calls for a similar resurgence of the ability!

Israel to evacuate, destroy entire Palestinian village of Umm al-Hiran

Israel has announced plans to demolish the entire Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the southern Naqabregion in April.

If enacted, Israel will force 350 Palestinians into homelessness.

Israeli police arrived in the village on 21 March and posted eviction notices on homes and the village’s mosque, stating that demolition will take place between 15 and 29 April.

#فيديو قوات الاحتلال تخطر بهدم مسجد قرية أم الحيران في النقب المحتل pic.twitter.com/bbN7uJ5Nax
— وكالة شهاب (@ShehabAgency) 21 March 2018

وكالة شهاب

✔@ShehabAgency

#فيديو قوات الاحتلال تخطر بهدم مسجد قرية أم الحيران في النقب المحتل

7:18 AM - Mar 21, 2018

Israel plans to transfer the villagers to the nearby Bedouin town of Hura for two years, until permanent residence is built, the publication Arab48 reported.

Two Israeli government organizations, the National Planning and Building Council and the Bedouin resettlement authority in the Negev, are pushing to strike a deal with community members by allocating them a share of the land. But community leaders said that no agreement has been made with either Israeli body.

Jewish-only settlement

Israel plans to build a Jewish-only settlement in place of Umm al-Hiran, according to documents uncovered by legal advocacy group Adalah in August 2017.

The documents, which include the association bylaws of the planned “Hiran” settlement, state that only “a Jewish Israeli citizen or permanent resident of Israel who observes the Torah and commandments according to Orthodox Jewish values” will be permitted to live there.

The documents add that residents must be approved by an admissions committee.

This discrimination is in direct contradiction to Israel’s 2015 high court rule that the planned settlement will not prevent anyone from living there, including Palestinian Bedouins, according to Adalah.

Constant harassment and demolitions

Umm al-Hiran is one of many communities in the Naqab that lie unrecognized by Israel and are consequently deprived of basic services and infrastructure.

This is not the first time Umm al-Hiran’s villagers have been forcibly transferred. Prior to the Nakba – the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Zionist militias – the community originally lived nearby. They were forcibly displaced to their current location in 1956.

Umm al-Hiran has undergone persistent harassment and lived under constant threat of demolitions in recent years, forcing many families “to sign transfer agreements and to leave their village,” Adalah reports.

The families were uprooted from Umm al-Hiran and promised decent alternatives. However, they now live in “dangerous temporary structures without even the most minimal living conditions” and without basic access to water, electricity and sewage infrastructure, Adalah attorneys wrote in an urgent letter to Israeli authorities demanding them to postpone the demolition.

During a January 2017 raid to demolish homes in Umm al-Hiran, Israeli police shot and killed 50-year-old Palestinian math teacher Yaqoub Abu al-Qiyan.

The head of the Popular Committee of Umm al-Hiran, Raed Abu al-Qiyan, called on Palestinian leaders in Israel and media outlets to stand with the community in its struggle for recognition.

“Umm al-Hiran needs you,” Raed told the publication Arab48. “The Israeli police and all the government bodies associated with it have been targeting us for a while, with continuous daily attempts to change our position in Umm al-Hiran.”

Israel’s demolitions of Bedouin structures has doubled in 2017, with 2,220 structures demolished compared to 1,158 in 2016, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Approximately 70 percent of the 2017 demolitions were undertaken by the owners themselves, who are otherwise threatened with heavy fines. Israel sees this as a “positive trend” that avoids confrontation with these communities, according to Haaretz.

'Bread police' scour Israeli hospitals for forbidden Passover food

'The danger is not guns, but leavened bread,' Palestinian doctor tells MEE as hospital visitors face bag searches for sandwiches

An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man prepares matza, a traditional unleavened bread eaten during Passover (Reuters)

Mustafa Abu Sneineh-Wednesday 28 March 2018

Visitors to Israeli hospitals ahead of the holiday of Passover this week face having their bags searched for sandwiches and leavened food in a move which Palestinians and secular Israelis say subjects them to Jewish religious laws without legal authority.

"The danger is not guns during Pesach, but leavened bread," one Palestinian doctor from occupied East Jerusalem working in an Israeli hospital, who declined to give his real name for this story, told Middle East Eye.

"A week before the holiday, notes were pinned in hospital corridors, near the lifts, and in the kitchens, asking visitors not to bring leavened bread and asking employees to take out all sorts of leavened food from the fridges."

There is no law in Israel that prevents citizens and residents from bringing leavened foods into hospitals

- Sawsan Zaher, Adalah attorney

Passover, which begins on Friday, is a week-long Jewish holiday commemorating the Israelites’ exodus from ancient Egypt. Observant Jews do not consume any food made of grain and water granted time to ferment and rise, as Israelites only ate unleavened bread during that time, according to the Torah.

An essential part of the traditional preparation for Passover is the ritual of "Bi'ur Chametz", literally meaning “cleaning out the leaven”, through selling bread to non-Jews, burning leavened food, and cleaning food cupboards and fridges to remove any traces of leavened products.

Since 1986, an Israeli law known as the Chametz Law has forbidden business owners from putting leavened food on display during the Passover Feast. During the holiday, Israeli supermarkets, therefore, cover up leavened food shelves, hiding products such as cakes, biscuits, noodles, and even beer.

Some Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel gather around a fire to burn leavened bread and pasta, and dip cooking utensils in boiling water as part of Bi'ur Chametz a few days before Passover.

Leavened food products covered up in a Jerusalem supermarket (Wiki)

While observing Bi'ur Chametz should be an individual religious choice, Israel's Health Ministry in 2015 intoduced a policy banning visitors from bringing leavened products into hospitals for the duration of Passover.

Sawsan Zaher, an attorney at the Adalah centre in Haifa, which campaigns for Arab minority rights in Israel, told MEE that this policy was enforced in hospitals nationwide.

"All individuals – including non-Jewish Palestinian citizens – must undergo strict searches at hospital entrances. Any leavened bread products found are confiscated or destroyed,” she said.

“In a number of past cases, individuals who refused to hand over their bread products to security guards were prevented from entering hospitals and visiting admitted family members.”

Adalah filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court on 27 February against the Health Ministry’s ban, demanding that the Supreme Court either issue an interim order preventing the Health Ministry from enforcing the ban this Passover, or that it schedule an urgent hearing in order to secure a solution prior to the holiday.

No decision on the matter had yet been issued at the time of publication.

An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish boy shows a matzo (unleavened bread) to a customer at a bakery in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Mea Shearim, April 2001 (AFP)

“There is no law in Israel that prevents citizens and residents from bringing leavened foods into hospitals and there is no law that prevents them from bringing non-kosher food for their hospitalised relatives to eat,” Zaher said.

Eyal Bassoon, a spokesperson at Israel's Health Ministry, declined to answer MEE’s questions regarding the ministry's justifications of the policy and whether any hospitals were exempt from the ban.

"The ministry's response to [Adalah's] petition would be given in court, as is customary," Bassoon said.

'Sneaking leavened food into hospital'

Staff and patients spoke to by MEE confirmed that the ban was implemented in hospitals.

A spokesperson for Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in West Jerusalem, one of the biggest medical centres in Israel, confirmed to MEE that the ban was implemented in the medical centre.

"It is a governmental decision and we have to abide by it, we have no choice," she said. "If you open Haaretz newspaper, you will find a notification calling for cleaning out the leaven in the hospitals among the public (patients and visitors)."

She added that there was no official list specifying which foods were banned and which were allowed.

"The policy says Chametz, but there is no clarification regarding which items are concerned," the spokesperson said, adding that Hadassah offered unleavened food to patients during Passover that was "healthy and nutritional".

A few days ahead of Passover, notes were pinned in Shaare Zedek Hospital in West Jerusalem telling visitors and employees that, beginning on Wednesday 28 March, "all food coming from outside" would not be allowed into the hospital for the duration of Passover, and asking for all leavened food to be taken from hospital rooms, kitchens, fridges, and closets.

A note for visitors and employees banning them from bringing food into Shaare Zedek hospital starting from 28 March (Supplied)

Shirli Nada Michalevicz, an Israeli Jew, told MEE that she gave birth during Passover in Hadassah Ein Karem two years ago.

"Each time my relatives went to visit me, they were not allowed to bring any Chametz. My husband is originally from Sweden, and he went through intensive search by the hospital's security guards to make sure what type of food he brought."

Although security was tight on leavened food, Michalevicz said that her family managed "to sneak in" Chametz food a few times, as the only kind of bread she could eat at the hospital after giving birth was Matzo flatbread, a dry crunchy bread made without yeast or baking soda consumed especially during Passover.

"It’s shame that a country that considers itself secular forces everyone to accept religious rules," she said. "I imagine that it may be even more difficult for those who are not Jewish."

The doctor spoken to by MEE said that as an Arab Muslim he felt discriminated against by the hospital's imposition of Chametz restrictions.

"You have here what they call the bread police – people working in security, but for a week their mission is to hunt leavened bread. It is surreal," Salameh said.

Salameh mentioned how he once brought lunch to work – kofta and grape leaves, as well as leavened bread – during Passover, in spite of the ban on outside food, and had to eat outside of the hospital premises to avoid trouble with hospital security.

"We ate outside the hospital, not far from view of the security guards. Because we were doctors, they did not say anything and we were frank about having leavened bread. But if it had been a visitor, the situation would have been different," he said.

Zaher from Adalah said she saw the Ministry ban as an "aggressive intervention" of Israeli authorities in private decisions regarding what to eat and where, and a "violation" of human liberty and personal dignity.

"You are talking about vulnerable situations as is the case with hospitalised patients or visiting family members,” she said.

Mueller just drew his most direct line to date between the Trump campaign and Russia

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III departs after a meeting on Capitol Hill on June 21. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

By Aaron Blake March 28 at 8:57 AM

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation just drew what appears to be its most direct line to date between President Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.

That line is drawn in a new court filing related to the upcoming sentencing of London attorney Alex van der Zwaan. Van der Zwaan has pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates and a person identified in the document only as "Person A." Person A appears to be a former Ukraine-based aide to Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort named Konstantin Kilimnik.

Here's the paragraph:

Fourth, the lies and withholding of documents were material to the Special Counsel’s Office’s investigation. That Gates and Person A were directly communicating in September and October 2016 was pertinent to the investigation. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agents assisting the Special Counsel’s Office assess that Person A has ties to Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016. During his first interview with the Special Counsel’s Office, van der Zwaan admitted that he knew of that connection, stating that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with GRU.

That Person A has had ties to Russian intelligence is not terribly surprising. Kilimnik's personal history has been examined extensively by the media, including The Washington Post. He has denied being involved in Russian intelligence, but he served in the Russian military and attended a Russian military foreign language university that is seen as a breeding ground for intelligence agents.

What you need to know about Paul Manafort's ties to Russia. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

What's particularly significant in the Mueller filing, though, are six words: “and had such ties in 2016.” Prosecutors have said previously that a longtime Manafort and Gates associate had ties to Russian intelligence, but they have never said those ties remained during the 2016 campaign. In December, they said this associate was “a longtime Russian colleague . . . who is currently based in Russia and assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service.” Why those six words were added in this filing when they didn't appear in the previous filing is the $64,000 question.

As Philip Bump details here, this is hardly the first public indication of a link between the Trump campaign and Russia, but it is the closest connection Mueller has made in a filing to this point.

Mueller hasn't weighed in on the alleged Kremlin ties of the Russian lawyer Donald Trump Jr. met with, for instance, nor has he filed anything involving Roger Stone's contacts with hackers who have been linked to Russia.

The other new piece here is that Mueller's team says Gates described Person A (again, apparently Kilimnik) as “a former Russian Intelligence Officer with GRU.” (GRU is Russia's military intelligence organization.) So according to van der Zwaan, Gates talked openly about Person A's ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik told The Post in June that he has “no relation to the Russian or any other intelligence service.” Mueller is now apparently directly disputing that using Gates's own words, via van der Zwaan.

Ever since his guilty plea last month, van der Zwaan's relation to the case has been unclear. We know he is the son-in-law of a prominent Russian Ukrainian banker, but as with other figures in this case, we have no idea why he lied to investigators. Was it an honest mistake, or was he covering something up?

The new van der Zwaan filing doesn't shed a whole bunch of new light on that, but it does suggest that Mueller views Kilimnik as a possible link between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that he believes Kilimnik hasn't been forthcoming about his ties to Russian intelligence. We also know that Manafort had been in contact with Kilimnik during the 2016 campaign, meeting him at least twice and asking him to provide private briefings about the 2016 election to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is closely tied to Vladimir Putin.

Whether that's pertinent to the broader collusion investigation is something we'll have to wait to find out. There is so much Mueller knows that we simply don't; this could be the tip of an iceberg or an extraneous fact. But those six words do seem at least a little conspicuous.

The Post’s Sari Horwitz and Marc Fisher compare the events of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s life to how he's portrayed in pop culture. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Australian academics pen open letter re influence of China on universities

2018-03-15T080655Z_177521151_RC1C34A8FBF0_RTRMADP_3_CHINA-PARLIAMENT-DISSENT-1200x340

By Max Walden -March 28, 2018

Academics and members of the Chinese diaspora in Australia have signed an open letter submitted to parliament regarding proposed amendments to national security law partly aimed at undermining perceived influence of the Chinese Communist Party on the country’s politics and universities.

The letter was submitted to a parliamentary inquiry into a new national security Bill, focused on “espionage and foreign interference”. The Bill aims to clamp down on the ability of foreign entities to provide financial donations to Australian political parties or civil society organisations.

It would also impose penalties including jail time for the receipt of what the Australian government deems “sensitive” information that could threaten national security.

Signatories of the open letter – comprising of academic staff from many of the country’s leading universities including the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney and University of Adelaide – expressed concern over the legislation, aspects of which they said would “imperil scholarly contributions to public debate on matters of importance to our nation”.

“We are alarmed that the new legislation would criminalise the simple act of receiving information deemed harmful to the national interest, let alone discussing it in public,” it said. “While exemptions have been proposed for journalists, this does nothing to assuage our concern that the freedom of scholars to fulfil their public function will be threatened by these laws.”

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also criticised the Bill, arguing that it would restrict rights to freedom of opinion and expression in Australia.

HRW has said in its current form, the Bill would see Australia “following in the steps of repressive countries” such as Cambodia and Turkey. “Legal provisions that chill free expression do not protect Australia’s democratic values but undermine them,” it said in a recent statement.

James Gomez of Amnesty said that the Bill is a “clear overreach” in the name of national security and would only serve to “hide government dealings from public scrutiny”, calling for it to be “scrapped immediately”.

The academics’ open letter also said that debate around supposed Chinese influence in Australia had “created an atmosphere ill-suited to the judicious balancing of national security interests with the protection of civil liberties.”

As a major trading partner of Australia, China’s role in business and politics has dominated headlines in recent years, particularly after Senator Sam Dastyari resigned in December 2017 over questionable links with Chinese businessmen. The Labor politician was found to have defended China’s position on the South China Sea during a visit to the country – contradicting his own party’s policy on the matter.

A recent book entitled Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia by Clive Hamilton, a professor in public ethics at Charles Sturt University, has caused further controversy since it was released in February. It argues that China is actively trying to draw Australia into its sphere of influence and turn it into a “puppet state” by infiltrating government, business and academia.

The Chinese government has rejected the book’s claims as “completely meaningless and good for nothing.” The academics’ open letter also rejected Hamilton’s accusations, stating that: “We strongly reject any claim that the community of Australian experts on China, to which we belong, has been intimidated or bought off by pro-PRC interests.”

There was “no evidence” that China was seeking to export its political system to Australia, they said.