Insight: Indore child killer sentenced to death 23 days after arrest, raises fears over trial fairness

INDORE, India (Reuters) - Naveen Gadke was arrested on April 20 and charged with the rape and murder of a baby girl in Indore.

Krishna N. Das-MAY 23, 2018

Three weeks later a court sentenced the 26-year-old odd-job man to death in the fastest such trial known to have happened in modern India, a nation where public outrage is running high because of a series of rapes and related killings.

Police, prosecutors and the district court in the city of Indore worked at a furious pace to get the conviction quickly, amid a backlash on the streets, including marches in this city of about 2 million, 550 miles south of Delhi.

This is in a country where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government last month introduced the death penalty for rapes of girls under 12 years in response to public pressure but which has a notoriously slow court system, with cases taking at least six years on average to final ruling,
 according to governance tracking group Daksh.

But the pace of the trial, the intensifying push for speedy hearings in rape cases, and questions about the legal defence provided to Gadke – who pleaded not guilty - have raised concerns among some legal rights advocates.

They are fearful there will be wrongful convictions and hangings when a defendant cannot afford to hire a good lawyer.

“While expeditious trials are ideal, these should not be at the cost of fair trial safeguards like the right to adequate time to prepare a defence and the presumption of innocence,” said Leah Verghese, senior campaigner at human rights group Amnesty International India, in an email response to questions.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer Rebecca John said she was concerned. “As a principle, I am opposed to rushing through investigative processes and trial processes” she said.

But reflecting the mood of the nation, well-known Supreme Court lawyer Dushyant Dave, a vocal supporter of capital punishment, said India “needs to send at least 500 people to death in the next one year to end this endemic” of rape.

“Our system is archaic and extremely inefficient,” he added.

 

Such views have resonated with the mother of the dead three-month-old girl as she sat on the front yard of a 200-year-old palace where her homeless family sleeps in the open.

She told Reuters she was happy with the swift verdict but her daughter would get justice only when Gadke is hung to death, just as quickly.

“Once such men are hanged, no one will dare to do anything like this to any girl,” she said.
Rape victims and their families cannot be identified under Indian law.

Gadke could not be contacted as journalists are not allowed to speak with convicts in jail as per a home ministry directive.

Sachin Verma, Gadke’s lawyer, said his client told him that his estranged wife “framed” him, but said little else.

Reuters could not trace Gadke’s wife to seek comment.

SLAPPING AND SHOVING

At trial, the mother, police officers and the prosecution lawyer said security cameras showed Gadke taking away the infant as she lay asleep by her parents. Fifteen minutes later, he was seen coming out of the basement of a nearby building, where her blood-smeared body was found, police said.

Medical tests, completed quickly under instructions from government officials, confirmed she was raped, and the semen from a vaginal swab was found to be a DNA match with Gadke, according to court documents reviewed by Reuters.

Gadke’s lawyer Verma, who specialises in matters related to crimes against children, said he reluctantly took the case on state government orders.

That was after four other lawyers refused to defend Gadke, Verma said. In a sign of how high temperatures were rising in the community, around a dozen lawyers attacked the defendant outside the court when he first arrived, slapping and shoving him, according to police.

Prosecutors presented 29 witnesses, including police and shopkeepers who found the victim’s body, and “everybody supported the prosecution”, said Verma. He presented no witnesses for Gadke’s defence.

Verma said he could have done better if he had more time to prepare for the case.

“They had to create a story and they had to decide quickly,” said Verma, who is expecting to receive 4,000 rupees ($58) from the state government for representing Gadke. “My client told me: ‘Everyone has already decided I am guilty. What’s the point of all this?’”

Special prosecutor Mohammad Akram Shaikh said that they had “conclusive evidence” against Gadke.

Judge Varsha Sharma, who deals with matters related to crimes against children and ruled on the case, declined to comment.

The location where, according to police, Naveen Gadke raped and murdered a baby girl, is pictured in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India, May 16, 2018. REUTERS/Krishna N. Das

SENDING A MESSAGE

Police pressed charges against Gadke within seven days of the crime, said Police Inspector Shivpal Singh Kushwah.

“All of us wanted to send a message that the law can work fast, and we succeeded,” he said.

The court sat for seven straight working days to hear the case, unusual in India where one court is often dipping in and out of several cases on the same day. A government-run laboratory conducted tests on forensic evidence within four days of a police request. This usually takes more than a month, Kushwah said.

After hearing details of his crime from Shaikh and the witnesses, Judge Sharma found Gadke guilty and ordered his death by hanging.

“This falls under the rarest of rare case and it would be appropriate to hand such a criminal the toughest punishment,” the judge declared.

The sentence has to be confirmed by a higher court, for which Gadke will be provided a different lawyer by the state government. The court’s decision can be challenged in the Supreme Court. An appeal to India’s president is the last resort. The entire process can take years.

ACCELERATION DEMANDED

Even before Gadke’s trial, there were growing calls to speed up child rape trials.

 Slideshow (2 Images)

Lower courts take an average of five years to complete cases of prisoners sentenced to death, high courts one year and four months, and the Supreme Court two years and one month, according to a 2016 report by the Centre on the Death Penalty in the National Law University of Delhi.

The university study found that 74 percent of 373 death row prisoners they interviewed were economically vulnerable. The majority were from low castes and religious minorities. In the Indore case, Gadke did various jobs like cleaning utensils in eateries.

By contrast, trials involving India’s rich and powerful sometimes take more than 10 years. Gurmeet Ram Rahim, a wealthy self-styled godman who had many followers, was convicted last year on charges of raping two followers - 15 years after the case was registered.

Government statistics show that since 2012, when a young woman was gang raped in a moving bus in Delhi igniting national uproar, reported rape cases have climbed 60 percent to around 40,000 in 2016 – about one every 15 minutes - with child rape accounting for about 40 percent.

Beijing’s Threats Against Taiwan Are Deadly Serious

China's leaders are giving up on political hopes of reunification — and considering military options.

Taiwanese sailors salute the island's flag on the deck of the Panshih supply ship after taking part in annual drills, at the Tsoying naval base in Kaohsiung on Jan. 31. (Mandy Cheng/AFP/Getty Images)

BY DEREK GROSSMAN-MAY 22, 2018

Just hours after staging the largest display of naval forces in its history in the South China Sea on April 12, China announced that it would abruptly pivot to conducting live-fire military drills in the Taiwan Strait six days later. The bombastic exercises went ahead — and Beijing followed up with several recent bomber flights around the self-governing island as well.

According to the Chinese nationalist tabloid Global Times, Beijing felt compelled to proceed with the exercises to “check ‘Taiwan independence’” and because “the US has been containing China on the Taiwan question.” And it’s been exactly Beijing’s perception or misperception of these two factors — the political status of Taiwan and how close Taipei and Washington have become — that have come to dominate cross-strait relations in recent months, substantially raising the risk of military conflict.
But what Beijing won’t admit is how much its own actions have driven Taipei’s and Washington’s responses.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Chinese leaders have always viewed Taiwan as a renegade province that needed to be brought back under the mainland’s thumb. Times were good from 2008 to 2016 under Taiwan’s then-president, Ma Ying-jeou, who regularly implied that Taiwan was part of China — albeit in some ambiguous and to-be-determined way. After all, Ma’s party, the Kuomintang, had traditionally maintained its own version of “One China” — although one in which they were the rightful inheritors of the imperial legacy, not the Chinese Communist Party.

But with the inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen of the historically pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in May 2016, Beijing has expressed increasing frustration with what it sees as Taiwan quietly inching toward independence. Chinese President Xi Jinping has on numerous occasions forcefully dismissed Tsai’s olive branches because of her continued refusal to recognize the “1992 Consensus” — a concept that acknowledges the existence of only “one China,” but that allows each side its own interpretation.

Most recently, at the National People’s Congress held in March, Xi railed against Taiwan’s “acts and ploys,” saying such activities “will be condemned by the Chinese people and punished by history.” In Chinese eyes, Tsai’s affiliation with the DPP automatically makes her motives suspicious. Beijing has not forgotten nor forgiven Tsai’s work in the late 1990s on then-Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui’s “special state-to-state” formulation of cross-strait relations, implying two separate and sovereign states on either side of the strait. Tsai has also been attacked personally, with a senior Chinese military official criticizing her for being “extreme” and “emotional” because she is unmarried.

Although his posting was quickly taken down and roundly condemned in China, the fact that the article ever appeared in the first place in the International Herald Leader — a newspaper affiliated with the state-run Xinhua news agency— speaks to the depths of vitriol mustered against Tsai.
But distrust of Tsai isn’t the primary force shaping the mainland’s thinking. Beijing sees two other, even more sinister, trends developing in Taiwanese politics.

 The first is Tsai’s decision in September to appoint Lai Ching-te, or William Lai, to the premiership. Lai is the former mayor of Tainan, which is located in the deep south and considered a DPP stronghold. In late September, during an open session of the legislature, he unambiguously advocated Taiwanese independence.

When confronted with these remarks the following week, Tsai responded that Lai knew “what the limits are” of government policy. More recently, Lai on several occasions has professed to be a “political worker for Taiwanese independence.” Tsai has failed to unequivocally condemn these comments, recently calling Lai an “honest man” with no “other special ideas.” These statements, along with her earlier rejection of Lai’s speech in the legislature, were probably not categorical or forceful enough to appease Beijing.

Additionally, two former presidents have joined forces in a grassroots effort to push for a referendum on Taiwanese independence. Lee, of the Kuomintang, and Chen Shui-bian, of the DPP, are seeking a vote by April 6, 2019. They specifically picked this date to signify Deng Nan-jung’s self-immolation in the name of “100 percent freedom of expression” 30 years prior. Tsai has not condemned this campaign either.

Beijing also worries about the underlying motivations of the Trump administration for improving relations between the United States and Taiwan. In December, President Donald Trump signed into law the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the Pentagon to send warships to Taiwan. Although the law does not require Washington to do so, it opens the door to such a possibility. China responded by arguing that the act violates the U.S. “One China” policy, whereby Washington only recognizes Beijing as China’s government.

A Chinese diplomat at an embassy event in Washington went much further, saying that “the day that a U.S. Navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung is the day that our People’s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force.” On March 16, Trump also signed the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages “visits between officials from the United States and Taiwan at all levels.” Then, perhaps on cue, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex N. Wong four days later visited Taiwan and met with Tsai, noting that the U.S. relationship with Taiwan “has never been stronger.”

 Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to appoint former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton as his national security advisor has ruffled feathers in Beijing. Bolton in the past has argued for the need to reconsider the U.S. “One China” policy, and he is rumored to be attending the opening of the new American Institute in Taiwan facility in June. Separately, Trump has authorized the State Department to allow U.S. defense firms to sell components to Taiwan for its indigenous defense submarine program — another highly sensitive issue.

And finally, the Trump administration’s release of its National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy this winter refer to China as a “revisionist” and “rival” power. Thus, Beijing is suspicious that Washington is trying to improve relations with Taiwan to bolster its Indo-Pacific strategy, which is designed, in large part, to work with allies and partners to counter Chinese coercion of regional neighbors. From Beijing’s perspective, doing so would be tantamount to playing the Taiwan card to contain China.

As much as Beijing likes to argue that Taiwanese domestic politics and the upgrade in U.S. interactions with Taiwan are to blame for exacerbating cross-strait relations, the fault lies in Beijing.

 Taiwan and the United States are actually responding to increasingly aggressive Chinese behavior in the Taiwan Strait since the moment Tsai appeared to have a good chance of winning the presidency in late 2015. China has ratcheted up diplomatic, economic, and military pressure tactics to express its displeasure. It is difficult to know whether Xi’s recent success in abolishing term limits and his yearslong intimidation of political rivals through his anti-corruption campaign now means he can more easily turn up the heat on Taiwan. But China’s growing economic and military strength only bolsters Xi’s confidence in his Taiwan policy.

Tsai has actually been both pragmatic and cautious in dealing with the delicate issue of Taiwanese sovereignty and independence, and at every turn has sought to maintain the status quo of peace and stability in the strait. Most notably, Tsai recognized the “historical fact” of the 1992 Consensus — something no other DPP president has ever done. This alone makes her the best DPP president Xi could hope to have in Taiwan. But Tsai’s popularity is falling, and Lai’s is on the rise, suggesting that Chinese threats and pressure are having the counterproductive effect of rallying voters who want independence.

And recent U.S. moves, though seemingly bold, have not substantively changed the “One China” policy in any way. Trump himself recognized the “One China” policy. Indeed, the Trump administration is simply carrying out its obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack or any other form of coercion. Clearly this is necessary, as the China of today is far more militarily advanced and prepared for military conflict than the China of 1982, when the act became law.

Beijing, however, does not seem to care. As a result, Taiwan and the United States must prepare for greater hostility in the coming years, almost certainly lasting out to the next Taiwan presidential election in 2020. By that time, Beijing hopes its pressure tactics will have borne fruit and it will have a new Taiwanese president who is more amenable to keeping the 1992 Consensus in place. If Tsai wins reelection — or another, even more anti-mainland candidate, such as Lai, gets elected — then another four years of tension and possibly military conflict are likely.

Brexiters' customs model 'could cost £20bn for UK business'

‘Max-fac’ option could result in huge annual hit for firms, according to head of HMRC

Trucks queue up waiting to enter the Port of Dover. The “max-fac” model is favoured by Boris Johnson and David Davis. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Pippa Crerar and Richard Partington-Wed 23 May 2018

The post-Brexit customs model favoured by Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Michael Gove could cost business as much as £20bn a year, the head of HMRC has said, a verdict that delivers a huge blow to the Brexiters’ hopes of a complete departure from the customs union. Jon Thompson told the Treasury select committee that their preferred “max-fac” model, which relies on technology and trusted trader schemes to minimise border checks, would be substantially more expensive than the alternative.

Cabinet sources claimed that they had never been briefed by HMRC that the cost could be so high. The huge figure, which represents around double the UK’s annual net contribution to the EU, sent shockwaves around Westminster. Theresa May’s preferred option, the customs partnership model, under which the UK would collect tariffs on behalf of the EU, would be virtually cost-free because businesses could claim back the levies, Thompson said.

The prime minister has faced veiled threats from leading Brexiters including Johnson, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg in recent days to drop the partnership model and press ahead with their max-fac option instead.

The issue has split both her cabinet and the wider Conservative party, with May forced to divide her cabinet into two groups to fight out their differences over Britain’s post-Brexit customs arrangements. Both options have already been dismissed by Brussels as “fantasy-island, unicorn” models.

Brexiters have warned that a third “backstop” option, agreed by the cabinet last week in case the Irish border issue is not resolved speedily, must remain in place only for a short time, fearing that it could be a back-door means of keeping Britain tied to the EU indefinitely.

Some in Westminster believe if Brussels accepts the UK’s alternative plan, which would keep Britain aligned with elements of the single market and customs union if no other agreement is reached, it could become the post-Brexit norm. However, there have been reports that Brussels might reject it.
Downing Street played down the the HMRC’s £20bn estimate. May’s official spokesman said: “The prime minister has asked for work to be done on both customs models. That work is ongoing and therefore any speculation about implementation is just that.”

However, Thompson told MPs that max fac would force firms to draw up UK customs declarations at £32.50 a time, while there would be similar charges on the EU side of the border. Rule-of-origin protections for particular products, such as Melton Mowbray pork pies, would mean higher charges still.

“So you need to think about the highly streamlined customs arrangement costing businesses somewhere in the late teens of billions of pounds, somewhere between £17bn and £20bn,” he said. “The primary driver here is the fact that there are customs declarations.”

The HMRC chief said there were approximately 200m intra-EU consignments made by firms each year, according to figures checked by the National Audit Office. The customs partnership model, by comparison, would in theory allow goods to cross the border without the need for comprehensive checks, which would be significantly more economical for businesses. They could expect to pay a maximum of £3.4bn a year in total, he told MPs, although in reality it could be “a net cost of zero or less, depending on the tariffs drawn up by the UK and Brussels, because businesses could claim them back”.

The Treasury committee chair, Nicky Morgan, summarising the potential costs of the max-fac arrangements, asked Thompson whether it would be a relief if parliament voted for a customs union. He said it was for MPs to decide.

Tory Brexiter Bim Afolami MP said the figures should give ministers pause for thought. “Leaving the customs union is the right policy, but whatever the solution we come up with must not be hugely costly and burdensome to British business. That would not be a good outcome,” he said.
Thompson also said it would take between three to five years to begin implementing the UK’s new customs arrangements, depending on which of the two options were decided upon by the government.

While they would be unable to begin putting them in place until a decision was made, he insisted that the UK border would still continue to operate from the moment Britain left the EU. However, he admitted that such a border might not be “fully optimal”.

Even so, there could be issues posed by the land border in Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic. “There is a design challenge for us,” he said. “If you look around the world, even the most technologically advanced customs borders generally involve some kind of infrastructure,” he said.

A No 10 spokesman said: “We have been clear on a number of occasions that our intention is to be ready by the end of the implementation period.”

The Coming Collapse of the State

As a foreign correspondent, I covered collapsed societies, including the former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion.

by Chris Hedges- May 22, 2018

( May 22, 2018, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.

The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics. It will not demilitarize our police and reform a prison system that has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. It plays to the margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to address substantive political and social problems and instead focusing on narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in our peculiar species of anti-politics.

This is a doomed tactic, but one that is understandable. The leadership of the party, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, are creations of corporate America. In an open and democratic political process, one not dominated by party elites and corporate money, these people would not hold political power. They know this. They would rather implode the entire system than give up their positions of privilege. And that, I fear, is what will happen. The idea that the Democratic Party is in any way a bulwark against despotism defies the last three decades of its political activity. It is the guarantor of despotism.

Trump has tapped into the hatred that huge segments of the American public have for a political and economic system that has betrayed them. He may be inept, degenerate, dishonest and a narcissist, but he adeptly ridicules the system they despise. His cruel and demeaning taunts directed at government agencies, laws and the established elites resonate with people for whom these agencies, laws and elites have become hostile forces. And for many who see no shift in the political landscape to alleviate their suffering, Trump’s cruelty and invective are at least cathartic.

Trump, like all despots, has no ethical core. He chooses his allies and appointees based on their personal loyalty and fawning obsequiousness to him. He will sell anyone out. He is corrupt, amassing money for himself—he made $40 million from his Washington, D.C., hotel alone last year—and his corporate allies. He is dismantling government institutions that once provided some regulation and oversight. He is an enemy of the open society. This makes him dangerous. His turbocharged assault on the last vestiges of democratic institutions and norms means there will soon be nothing, even in name, to protect us from corporate totalitarianism.

But the warnings from the architects of our failed democracy against creeping fascism, Madeleine Albright among them, are risible. They show how disconnected the elites have become from the zeitgeist. None of these elites have credibility. They built the edifice of lies, deceit and corporate pillage that made Trump possible. And the more Trump demeans these elites, and the more they cry out like Cassandras, the more he salvages his disastrous presidency and enables the kleptocrats pillaging the country as it swiftly disintegrates.

The press is one of the principal pillars of Trump’s despotism. It chatters endlessly like 18th-century courtiers at the court of Versailles about the foibles of the monarch while the peasants lack bread. It drones on and on and on about empty topics such as Russian meddling and a payoff to a porn actress that have nothing to do with the daily hell that, for many, defines life in America. It refuses to critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power, which has destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the largest transfer of wealth upward in American history. The corporate press is a decayed relic that, in exchange for money and access, committed cultural suicide. And when Trump attacks it over “fake news,” he expresses, once again, the deep hatred of all those the press ignores. The press worships the idol of Mammon as slavishly as Trump does. It loves the reality-show presidency. The press, especially the cable news shows, keeps the lights on and the cameras rolling so viewers will be glued to a 21st-century version of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It is good for ratings. It is good for profits. But it accelerates the decline.

All this will soon be compounded by financial collapse. Wall Street banks have been handed $16 trillion in bailouts and other subsidies by the Federal Reserve and Congress at nearly zero percent interest since the 2008 financial collapse. They have used this money, as well as the money saved through the huge tax cuts imposed last year, to buy back their own stock, raising the compensation and bonuses of their managers and thrusting the society deeper into untenable debt peonage. Sheldon Adelson’s casino operations alone got a $670 million tax break under the 2017 legislation. The ratio of CEO to worker pay now averages 339 to 1, with the highest gap approaching 5,000 to 1. This circular use of money to make and hoard money is what Karl Marx called “fictitious capital.” The steady increase in public debt, corporate debt, credit card debt and student loan debt will ultimately lead, as Nomi Prins writes, to “a tipping point—when money coming in to furnish that debt, or available to borrow, simply won’t cover the interest payments. Then debt bubbles will pop, beginning with higher yielding bonds.”

An economy reliant on debt for its growth causes our interest rate to jump to 28 percent when we are late on a credit card payment. It is why our wages are stagnant or have declined in real terms—if we earned a sustainable income we would not have to borrow money to survive. It is why a university education, houses, medical bills and utilities cost so much. The system is designed so we can never free ourselves from debt.

However, the next financial crash, as Prins points out in her book “Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World,” won’t be like the last one. This is because, as she says, “there is no Plan B.” Interest rates can’t go any lower. There has been no growth in the real economy. The next time, there will be no way out. Once the economy crashes and the rage across the country explodes into a firestorm, the political freaks will appear, ones that will make Trump look sagacious and benign.

And so, to quote Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?

We must invest our energy in building parallel, popular institutions to protect ourselves and to pit power against power. These parallel institutions, including unions, community development organizations, local currencies, alternative political parties and food cooperatives, will have to be constructed town by town. The elites in a time of distress will retreat to their gated compounds and leave us to fend for ourselves. Basic services, from garbage collection to public transportation, food distribution and health care, will collapse. Massive unemployment and underemployment, triggering social unrest, will be dealt with not through government job creation but the brutality of militarized police and a complete suspension of civil liberties. Critics of the system, already pushed to the margins, will be silenced and attacked as enemies of the state. The last vestiges of labor unions will be targeted for abolition, a process that will soon be accelerated given the expected ruling in a case before the Supreme Court that will cripple the ability of public-sector unions to represent workers. The dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency, causing a steep devaluation. Banks will close. Global warming will extract heavier and heavier costs, especially on the coastal populations, farming and the infrastructure, costs that the depleted state will be unable to address. The corporate press, like the ruling elites, will go from burlesque to absurdism, its rhetoric so patently fictitious it will, as in all totalitarian states, be unmoored from reality. The media outlets will all sound as fatuous as Trump. And, to quote W.H. Auden, “the little children will die in the streets.”

As a foreign correspondent I covered collapsed societies, including the former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are visible: crumbling infrastructure; chronic underemployment and unemployment; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and stagnation; an economy built on the scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters; opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a year; an epidemic of suicides; unsustainable military expansion; gambling as a desperate tool of economic development and government revenue; the capture of power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the physical diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant bombardment by electronic hallucinations to divert us from the depressing sight that has become America and keep us trapped in illusions. We suffer the usual pathologies of impending death. I would be happy to be wrong. But I have seen this before. I know the warning signs. All I can say is get ready.

Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. https://www.truthdig.com/author/chris_hedges/ 

Six black girls were brutally murdered in the early ’70s. Why was this case never solved?

Retired D.C. police detective Romaine Jenkins with case files in her home. (Pete Marovich/For The Washington Post)

By Cheryl W. ThompsonMay 22

Retired D.C. police detective Romaine Jenkins doesn’t remember many of the cases she handled during her four years in homicide. It was the late 1960s and early ’70s, and the unit was overwhelmed with murders. She was in her 20s then, and the first woman to make it to homicide. She’d been sent there by the department’s top brass to investigate baby deaths, including abortions, which were illegal at the time. Some of the male detectives, particularly those who were fathers, didn’t particularly like investigating the deaths of children. Such cases hit too close to home. But Jenkins, then single and childless, didn’t mind.

Six black girls were brutally murdered in the early ’70s. Why was this case never solved.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Amnesty International: Rohingya militants massacred dozens of Hindus

Hindu women cry near the dead bodies of their family members in Ye Baw Kyaw village, Maungdaw in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state. September 27, 2017. Source: STR/AFP

By Emma Richards | 23rd May 2018

THE Rohingya militant group Arsa killed dozens of Hindu civilians and abducted others during an attack in Rakhine state last August, according to a new investigation from Amnesty International.

Through interviews with survivors the report, released Wednesday, discovered how Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) fighters sowed fear among Hindus and other ethnic communities with these brutal attacks.

Wielding guns and swords, the militant group were responsible for at least one, and potentially a second, massacre of up to 99 Hindu villagers in August 2017, the report found.

SEE ALSO: Burma Muslims jailed for praying in the street

“Our latest investigation on the ground sheds much-needed light on the largely under-reported human rights abuses by Arsa during northern Rakhine State’s unspeakably dark recent history,” said Tirana Hassan, Crisis Response Director at Amnesty International.

“It’s hard to ignore the sheer brutality of Arsa’s actions, which have left an indelible impression on the survivors we’ve spoken to. Accountability for these atrocities is every bit as crucial as it is for the crimes against humanity carried out by Myanmar’s security forces in northern Rakhine State.”

At the time, Arsa denied any involvement in the massacre. The group has not released any statements in over four months and has not responded to Amnesty’s accusations.

According to the report, on August 25 last year, Arsa militants, aided by some local Rohingya, descended on the village of Ah Nauk Kha Maung Seik, in the northern Maungdaw township in Rakhine.

AmnestyInternational‏Verified account @amnesty

Our new investigation shows that Rohingya armed group ARSA killed & abducted scores of Hindus in Rakhine State, August 2017. Accountability for these human rights abuses is as crucial as that for the crimes against humanity committed by Myanmar's military.

10:30 am - 22 May 2018

They rounded up all Hindu men, women, and children, before executing 53 of them. Only those who agreed to convert to Islam were spared.

Hindu survivors told Amnesty they either saw relatives being killed or heard their screams.

SEE ALSO:  Burma’s ‘forgotten’ war

Bina Bala, a 22-year-old woman who survived the massacre, told Amnesty International:

“[The men] held knives and long iron rods. They tied our hands behind our backs and blindfolded us. I asked what they were doing. One of them replied, ‘You and Rakhine are the same, you have a different religion, you can’t live here. He spoke the [Rohingya] language. They asked what belongings we had, then they beat us. Eventually, I gave them my gold and money.”

The bodies of 45 people from Ah Nauk Kha Maung Seik were unearthed in four mass graves in late September 2017.

The remains of the rest of the victims from that village, as well as 46 people missing from neighbouring Ye Bauk Kyar village, have not been found to date.

The details of Arsa attacks have gone largely unreported in light of the “unlawful and grossly disproportionate campaign of violence” undertaken by Burma’s security forces against the Rohingya minority.

Hindu women cry near the dead bodies of their family members in Ye Baw Kyaw village, Maungdaw in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state. September 27, 2017. Source: STR/AFP

The army has been found to manipulate the local Hindu population to stoke division and support their narrative that the Rohingya were violent. In September, it came to light that local Hindu villagers who were displaced by fighting were used to stage photos dressed as Muslims pretending to destroy their own villages.

Almost 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since the crackdown began in August. The military has been accused of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. But that does not mean Arsa should not face justice for the suffering they have caused, say Amnesty.

“Both must be condemned – human rights violations or abuses by one side never justify abuses or violations by the other,” Hassan said.

“It’s hard to ignore the sheer brutality of Arsa’s actions, which have left an indelible impression on the survivors we’ve spoken to. Accountability for these atrocities is every bit as crucial as it is for the crimes against humanity carried out by Myanmar’s security forces in northern Rakhine state.”

Abortion debate: the Irish referendum discussed and explained

23 May 2018

Jackie LongSocial Affairs Editor and Presenter

On Friday Ireland will decide whether to scrap its almost-total ban on abortion. Vocal proponents for and against reforming the constitution have powered a referendum campaign that has become increasingly bitter, but with a significant proportion of the electorate thought to have made up their minds.

Our Social Affairs Editor Jackie Long is joined in Dublin by a panel representing all corners of the debate.

WEATHER AFFECTS OVER 38,000

The Navy and the Puttalam District Disaster Management Unit helping evacuate inmates of the Madampe Pothuwila elders home who were stranded due to the floods yesterday. (Picture by Prasad Poornamal, Puttalam District group correspondent)

Ishara Mudugamuwa-Wednesday, May 23, 2018

The Disaster Management Centre said a total of 68,000 persons belonging to 18,079 families have been affected across 19 districts due to the adverse weather prevailing in the country.

Disaster Management Centre (DMC) Deputy Director and Media Spokesman Pradeep Kodippili said more than 6,710 people have been displaced and currently staying in 168 safer locations in nine districts.

Eight deaths have been reported so far and six out of those deaths were due to lightning incidents. The highest number of affected people has been reported from the Ratnapura District where a total of 13,033 people belonging to 3,287 families have been affected.

He said that the red notices issued for some areas regarding the possible disaster situation including landslides and floods are still valid and people should be vigilant about possible risks.

The Deputy Director requested residents in low-lying areas close to the Kelaniya, Nilwala, Gin and Kalu rivers to be vigilant and evacuate the area if necessary as the water levels in the rivers are still rising.

According to the Irrigation Department, water levels of Millakanda in Kalu Ganga, Baddegama in Gin Ganga, Dunamale in Attanagalu Oya and Panadugama in Nilwala river were rising.

Meteorology Department sources said the prevailing showery condition is expected to enhance in the north-western, western and southern sea areas during the next few days.

Showers or thundershowers will occur at times in the sea areas extending from Trincomalee to Pottuvil via Batticaloa and in the sea areas off the coast extending from Mannar to Hambantota via Colombo and Galle. Heavy showers can be expected at some places in the above shore areas.

Showers or thundershowers will occur at several places in the other sea areas.

The coastal belt extending from Kankesanturai to Potuvil via Puttalam, Colombo and Hambantota can be rough at times as the wind speed can increase up to 60 kmph at times.

Strong gusty winds and rough seas can be expected along with thundershowers. Naval and fishing communities are also requested to be vigilant.

JO request for debate on floods turned down

By Saman Indrajith-May 22, 2018, 11:04 pm 

Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, yesterday, turned down a request made by the Opposition for a debate on prevailing disaster situation in the country and fuel price hikes instead of the scheduled one an Order to provide for a condominium in Kollupitiya

Speaker Jayasuriya said that it had been decided at the last party leaders’ meeting to debate the Order under the Strategic Development Project Act No 2 made by Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade. "Once such a decision is reached we have to stick to it. That is the tradition. I cannot grant the request by the Opposition to debate the prevailing situation in the country now."

MEP Leader Dinesh Gunawardena: "There is a crisis situation in the country owing to inclement weather. Floods and landslides have affected people all around the country. Tens of thousands of people are in distress. Damages to houses and properties are massive. This is a situation of national emergency. We should take up this issue instead of what has been listed for debate. On the other hand, fuel price hikes have made life miserable for people. Prices of all essential items are soaring due to the fuel price increases.

Leader of the House Minister Lakshman Kiriella: The fuel prices are still lower than those in 2015.

We should take up the business listed for the date.

Speaker Jayasuriya: At the party leaders’ meeting it was decided to grant time for JVP sponsored adjournment debate on fuel price hikes this evening. Two hours have been promised. We could take up that issue then. If you need, we can allocate more time. It was also agreed to take up the emergency weather situation issue during the environment debate on Wednesday. You come here and talk something else. Please, let me proceed with the day’s business. MP Gunawardena asked for time to make a brief statement. I gave that opportunity. Now, you make demands against the previous agreement.

Leader of the House: MP Gunawardena sought permission only for a statement.

MP Dr Bandula Gunawardena: As per Standing Orders, a decision made at the party leaders meeting is less important than a request made by more than 21 MPs if they make that request standing up together. There are more than that number here. So the Speaker could revise his decision. If he has doubts he could check it. The MPs are ready to support the change of topic of the debate.

Speaker: We cannot do that. We will abide by the decision made at the party leaders’ meeting.

MP Udaya Gammanpila: Parliament is conducted in accordance with the Standing Orders. Standing Orders have provisions for a request made by more than 20 MPs.

Leader of the House: Have more than 20 MPs made such a request? As per Standing Orders such a request should be made in writing.

Speaker: They made such a request. Hours were spent at the party leaders meeting on the matter. I turned down that request. There is no point in discussing the matter further.

MP Dayasiri Jayasekera: We pass the matter scheduled for today without debate and then take up the disaster situation for debate.

Speaker: Majority at the party leaders meeting agreed to take up the matter on Wednesday.

MP Vasueva Nanayakkara: According to traditions of Parliament, matters of national importance should be given priority. We need a debate on floods and fuel price hike. When you sit in the chair of the Speaker, look the issue from the people’s point of view and not from the party’s.

Jayasuriya: I do not take the government side. What I said was the agreement that had been reached at the party leaders meeting.

Leader of the House: The Speaker has given his ruling. There is no further debating this matter. We should move forward with the day’s business.

MP Dinesh Gunawardena: Why are you afraid of discussing the people’s problem?

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe: When a ruling is given by the Speaker we have to abide by it. If we debate and doubt it that would be against the Speaker’s ruling. If a ruling of the Speaker cannot be accepted then we would have to appoint a committee to look into that.

Mahindananada Aluthgamage: What is more important foreign investment or the problems of people?

MP Bimal Ratnayake: We have made a request for an adjournment debate on fuel price hikes. It has been granted. We could take up the disaster situation, too, at the same time. We may debate both issues together. The government can get their ministers to respond to both issues.

Leader of the House: We are agreed. You can take up any time after 4.00 pm.