JVP’s 20th Amendment; a test for major parties

2018-05-26

In significant move, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, in parliament yesterday handed over a private members bill or the 20th Amendment calling for the complete abolition of the 40 year executive presidential system. This system has been widely criticised by almost all parties but no one really got down to abolishing it due to many wide ranging reasons.

In July 1977, when the United National Party’s (UNP’s) then leader J.R Jayewardene won an unprecedented 5/6 majority in parliament, it possibly may have given him ideas of exercising absolute power and keeping his party in power for decades unlike the long drawn Constitutional Assemblies which we see even now Mr. Jayewardene - obviously with the help of his eminent lawyer- brother H. W Jayewardene, worked out an executive presidential system within eight months. On February 04, 1978 he was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s first Executive President with virtually unlimited political powers and without the checks and balances we see in other countries. In Sri Lanka the Executive Presidential system had its positives as well negatives. 

Many see the necessity of a strong executive arm to carry out large scale development measures as undertaken during the terms of Presidents J.R. Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa and Mahinda Rajapaksa. They argue that such decisive implementation of development projects would not have been possible if not for the Executive Presidency. The same is seen with regard to the ending of the war. Among the widely seen political abuses from 1978 to 1988 was the 1982 Referendum which, most analysts believed was legal but illegitimate though Mr Jayewardene won a 50.1 majority in the controversial Referendum it was twisted and turned into a 5/6th majority in parliament. 

Many analysts believe, this move drove the JVP out of main stream politics into which Mr Jayewardene himself had brought the party after the former Sirimavo Bandaranaike government appointed a wide - powered Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) which sent most JVP leaders to jail. The move also is believed to have been one of the main causes of July 1993 racial riots which was one of the biggest black marks in Sri Lanka’s history and regard the devastating 26 – year ethnic war. Mr Jayewardene also virtually got rid of the opposition with a Special Presidential Commission (SPC) stripping former Premier Sirimavo Bandaranaike and other leaders of their civic rights and introducing the Fifth Amendment which forced the then Opposition Leader Appahpillay and Amirthalingam other Tamil members to quit parliament.

 The next President Ranasinghe Premadasa also manipulated the executive system especially by the manner in which he dealt with the impeachment motion introduced by UNP seniors Gamini Dissanayaka, Lalith Athulathmudali and others. In 1994, when Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga took over as SLFP leader, she promised the JVP, she would abolish the executive presidential system within 24 hours if she was elected president because she believed it was the biggest curse for the country. But she did not follow through with her promises. After Mrs Kumaratunga, President Rajapaksa also promised to abolish the executive presidency but in 2010 he did just the opposite by enforcing the 18th Amendment which gave him the power to be president for life with absolute authority. In the campaign for the January 2015 presidential election, Maithripala Sirisena also promised to abolish it but had not fulfilled it so far. 

The JVP ceremonially handed over the motion at 11.15 a.m yesterday, to Parliament Secretary General Dhammika Dasanayake in the presence of the Speaker Karu Jayasuriya. JVP frontliner MPs Suinil Handunnetti and Nihal Galappaththi were also present. It says the 14 page Bill may be sited as the 20th Amendment to the Constitution and essentially wants a ceremonial president elected by parliament on the advice of the Cabinet of Ministers. 

However, detractors point out that at the time the Executive Presidency was introduced the 13th Amendment was not there and abolishing it at that time would not have been a concern. They point out that with the enactment of the 13th Amendment certain safeguards against secession are hinged on the Executive Presidency and therefore it is not advisable to abolish it while the 13th Amendment remains in place as it is. We hope all parties would consider what is best for the country and decide on this important issue in a balanced way.     

Lanka’s lost fight against corruption

How are some countries winning the battle to control corruption?

Carpark Mahanama and Timberhead Dissanayake

by Kumar David-May 26, 2018, 6:49 pm 

Sleaze, skulduggery and the purchase of officials, politicians and businessmen great and small is a cancer metastasizing not only in the less developed part of the world but also in powerful and rich nations as well. The latter is epitomised by Donald Trump. No US president has been as embroiled as this individual in scandals, investigations of wrongful collusion, sex-related indignities, hiring disgraced White House aides (five have pleaded guilty, one tried and convicted, and several still arraigned before the courts) and concealment of financial dealings. At the same time worldwide the fight against corruption led by people’s movements, journalists, brave prosecutors and political leaders who seem able to hold their head above water, goes on. There are winners and losers.

Sleaze galore in Mother Lanka

Sri Lanka, in the last five decades and at the present is a resounding loser; the future is bleak. Nothing will happen from now till the next election cycle; Yahapalana has in the three months since 10 February, made it amply clear that it is toothless. If the present lot, together or separately, win the next election cycle the paralysis will drag, nothing will improve; Ranil has no spunk, his leadership is tinsel. Whatever was left of Sirisena after his pulverisation in the LG elections was ground into dust when his Chief-of Staff was nabbed collecting Rs 20 million - for himself or who else we do not yet know - in a carpark. When you rob, do it in style man! Grama sevakas don’t get it! If the Ranil-Maithri twosome is driven out, then what? God-forbid, Alibaba and the One Thousand and One thieves will return. It will be frying pan to fire, shit-hole to hell-hole. For the rest of this election cycle ending in 2019-20 and the end next in 2025-26, only brave souls see bright skies. If you are hopeful that public anger will slip the electoral leash and break out in direct action, well, not impossible but hard to prophesy though hopelessness leads to desperation –vide Palestine.

The leader of the JVP is quoted as saying:

"The president’s chief of staff has been arrested over taking a bribe of Rs. 20 million. The chief of staff of former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga was also arrested over a bribery charge. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s chief of staff who was also arrested on a bribery charge is now released on bail. The international police are searching for two relatives of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa ? who were engaged in diplomatic service ? in order to arrest them. The prime minister is completely responsible for the Central Bank governor fleeing the country after the bond scandal. The prime minister is silent on that issue. All these fraudulent activities have taken place with the blessings of the present and former heads of state. While the leaders who organise these frauds remain free, it is only the middlemen who are caught" (JVP Leader Anura Kumara Disanayaka quoted in Verite Research).

[Verite Research in its May 7-13 Media Analysis Release summarises 11 pieces from the Sinhala press on recent big-time corruption scandals. Readers who do not customarily track the Sinhala press can benefit from the source].

The spread of corruption among politicians, bureaucrats and bureaucrats is epidemic all across the world. Previous windows in human history have gone down by names such as The Warring States Period, The Rise of Islam, The Enlightenment, Age of Reason, Industrial Revolution and Decolonisation; it is likely that the 50-year phase of the socio-political story in the middle of which we seem to be, will go into the books as the Aeon of Global Graft.

El Dorado of sleaze: Central America

The presidencies of Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras have been marked by crime and corruption since he first won in 2013. His campaign was fraught with embezzlement as he and his cronies siphoned off US$90 million from the Honduran Social Security Institute for the campaign against Xiomara Castro, wife of President Manuel Zelaya, a democratically-elected leftist ousted in a U.S.-supported coup in 2009. Hernandez stole US$300 million from the social security system while president of the National Assembly. Rajapaksa-clique larceny, comparatively, is diminutive.

Hernandez of course was re-elected in November 2017, despite (no actually because of) the grand larceny and a fraudulent vote which the United States blithely and routinely endorsed; "he is a bastard but he is our bastard". Hernandez sterilised the judiciary, took de facto control of the attorney-general’s department and had congress defang legislation to investigate high level corruption, and castrated an investigative body that could expose his highway robbery.

In Guatemala president Jimmy Morales with the full backing of US Senator Marco Rubio is taking the stops out in a fight to disembowel CICIG, a UN baked agency that exposed his campaign financing malpractices. It is not for nothing that Central America’s ‘northern triangle’ of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala is famed for graft, drugs and rotten dictators. The proportion of people who paid a bribe in 2017 to access a public service is: Panama 38%, Honduras 33%, El Salvador 31%, Nicaragua 30%, Guatemala 28% and Costa Rica, 24%. (CentralAmericadata.com, Feb 2018).

In her book Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s former finance minister explains how she discovered just how dangerous it could be. Her 83-year-old mother was kidnapped in 2012 by powerful criminals who objected to her Ministry’s attempts at reform - in particular a crackdown on fraudulent claims for oil subsidy payments, a huge drain on the country’s finances. The kidnappers demanded that she resign from her position on live television and leave the country. She refused, her mother escaped, and the program of economic reforms continued. Lanka’s journalists, Lasantha, Eknaligoda and Noyhar were much less lucky.

All is not lost

Nevertheless the fight goes on. Hong Kong’s ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) is a model that Sri Lanka should copy; but of course it never will so long as legislation depends on the 225 coots who warm their backsides in Kotte. It is a paradox that the public despises every one of them, but the same public dutifully votes them into office; an inexplicable instance of mass schizophrenia.

The ICAC has fearlessly pursued billionaires and the powerful. It has succeeded in putting a former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang behind bars for five years. In South Korea three former Presidents have been convicted on corruption charges, one was impeached but not convicted and one was assassinated. Should one be overjoyed at the courage and independence of prosecutors or weep for a country whose heads of state are serial crooks?

A lady who has won great laurels is Thelma Aldana, the attorney-general of Guatemala who is just stepping down having completed her term of office. During her four years she put a serving president (Otto Perez Molina) and a Vice-President (Roxana Baldetti) behind bars in 2015 and 2017 respectively. Thelma, oh Thelma wherefore art though Thelma? Sri Lanka is in need of a man or a woman of thy calibre! Why are we cursed with prosecutorial sheep? Why is our judicial system an exemplar of what Dickensian lore calls the ‘laws delays’? Why is our PM bereft of willpower; why is our grama sevakeya, his siblings and progeny suspected of larceny? Oh unlucky Lanka!

Even Malaysia, a pit of corruption for more than a decade under the prime ministership of Najib Razak, may do better. Najib gerrymandered electoral boundaries, looted $680 million (a feat beyond the bravest Rajapaksa) from 1MDB a sovereign investment fund, boiled the race pot and threw critics into prison. The electorate has given him his desserts; UMNO lost power for the first time in 60 years. His passport has been seized, his house searched and sacks of valuables and files removed and Najib been barred from leaving the country. He may be arrested by the time you read this.

I think it unlikely that Mahathir and Anwar will betray the public outcry for justice. The big difference is that Mahathir is not clay like Ranil, nor stained by ineptitude like Maithri. Mahathir has vowed to bring charges against Najib so perhaps the wheels of justice will grind finer in Malaysia – still fingers crossed, we have learnt much the hard way. Unlike the Mahinda-Maithripala incompetent jellyfish, Mahathir-Anwar alliance has promised not to cut a deal with Najib if wrongdoing is found in the 1MDB probe.

Populism has been on the march elsewhere earlier this month as well. I devoted an entire section of my April 1 column to the victory of neo-populism in Italy; 70% of Italians voted for the rightist Northern League or the Centre-Left five-Star movement in about equal numbers. The split hindered the formation of a government, but they have now managed to get together to form a unity government. This is not a surprise; as I told at the time "modern neo-populism has no ideology". The tension between the factions will impede corruption in Italy though it could not do so in Lanka because our politicians, personally, are of much inferior ethical worth.

Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s alliance won the largest number of seats (54 of 329 seats) on an anti-corruption, anti-elite populist platform in the Council of Representatives, Iraq’s notoriously fractured parliament. Sadr a nationalist is opposed to American and Iranian interference; his alliance includes secularists, the Communist Party and independents. The Hezbollah alliance won more than half the seats in the Lebanese parliament and will have to be included in the next government. These changes may lead to a little less corruption in Iraq and Lebanon, as after the switch from Paksa to yahapalana. In a context where Israel and America are determined on war if regime change in Iran is unachievable, these realignments are a harbinger of a much modified Middle Eastern calculus.

Dayasiri who parades as paragon of virtue has taken 1 million ‘santhosam’ from Aloysius –his bodyguard exposes whereas DSG suppresses the truth ! Shame !!

(Lanka-e-News – 26.May.2018, 2.00PM)  Former sports minister who roared like a Lion and paraded as a paragon of virtue when steering  forward a no confidence motion against the prime minister (P.M.) on the grounds  that during  the issue of  treasury bonds by the Central bank , the P.M.was  involved in the alleged bond scam and that he  plundered  funds jointly with Perpetual Treasuries Co., is himself (Dayasiri) a record breaking culprit and crook , it has now been proved.

The report submitted to court by the CID on the 24 th  had confirmed Dayasiri is a downright crook. This two legged  rat has  collected a ‘santhosam’ (bribe proper) of Rs. one million from ‘Walt and Row Associates’ an affiliated Co. of ‘Perpetual Treasuries’ which is implicated in the alleged treasury bond scam.

The relevant  B report of the CID was forwarded to court by the Deputy Solicitor General (DSG) Yasantha Kodagoda during the  bond scam case trial  which is now being heard in court against Perpetual Treasuries.

 It is a well and widely known fact   , many individuals  who were not directly involved in this bond transaction were summoned to the presidential commission and several innocent  individuals were embarrassed by the DSG making loud announcements in court merely because they had exchanged phone calls  . Yet this same DSG failed to reveal the name of Dayasiri in open court despite latter’s deep involvement and while his name was mentioned in  the CID report . This is indeed most perplexing and intriguing . This is a grave lapse and must be frowned upon.   

In the open court Kodagoda only referred to Dayasiri as ‘an M.P.’ He could have at least referred to this culprit as ‘a former minister’ .

In any case the M.P. mentioned in the B report produced in court is none other than this minister of sports Dayasiri Jayasekera to whom even racketing  is a sport and play. The police security officer Amila Kumara Herath who worked under Dayasiri during the year 2015, has recorded  his statement at  the police in this regard. On 2015-06-15  Dayasiri has handed over a check worth Rs. 1 million to Amila and requested to cash it for him .

That check belonged to Walt and Row Co. affiliated to Perpetual Treasuries. The check No. is 566635 has been  issued out of  the current account No. 0073900773 of Walt and Row  Co. In the statement made by Amila , it is revealed he cashed the check at the relevant Bank branch  in Kurunegala , and handed over the Rs. one million cash  immediately to Dayasiri (  waiting like a greedy raven   to eat  the muck) at the car park of the bank .The B report forwarded to court mentions  the details.

In the same way , another check worth Rs. one million issued by  W.M. Mendis Co. affiliated to Perpetual Treasuries had been cashed and handed over to the CEO of that Co. It is suspected that sum too was a ‘santhosam’ in the same way like how Dayasiri  received.

After considering the pros and cons of the submissions, Lanka Jayaratne the Fort magistrate decided to remand Director General of Perpetual Treasuries conglomerate Arjun Aloysius  and its CEO Kasun Palisena who have been in remand custody for the last about three months, for a  further period until   7th of June.  

Now that Dayasiri’s clean slate he tried to maintain and his pretenses while indulging in all the vilest corruption have been smashed to smithereens , the next pertinent question is , why did Dayasiri  grab so much cash ? If he had collected the santhosam to suppress some fraud , Aloysius being held  in custody while the accomplice Dayasiri is scot free ,is mot unjust and unfair.

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by     (2018-05-26 08:41:10)

Arjuna Mahendran Affair: An Open Letter To The Prime Minister Of Singapore

By Rusiripala Tennakoon –MAY 26, 2018

Rusiripala Tennakoon

Quote – “International covenant on civil and political rights in force from March 1976 (Part II Article 15.2) of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights” states as follows:

“Nothing in this article shall prejudice the trial and punishment of any person for any act or omission which, at the time when it was committed, was criminal according to the general principles of law recognized by the community of nations”

25th May, 2018

His Excellency Lee Hsien Loong
Prime Minister of Singapore
PMO – The Istana
Singapore

Your Excellency

We are writing to you today as citizens of a neighbouring country maintaining extremely cordial and friendly relations with Singapore, ever since Singapore was born as a new country.

Our two countries are bonded together as members of the Commonwealth of Nations through the Commonwealth Secretariat and are committed to operate with inter-governmental consensus of the member states of the Commonwealth. We recall and hold with esteem respect and honour our admirations towards the first Prime Minister of Singapore, Late Lee Kuan Yew, as a leading political figure in the region with outstanding achievements, accepted with open doors to any government anywhere in the world. We recollect with gratitude his extremely friendly attitude displayed towards our country throughout the tenure of his office as the Prime Minister.

Your Excellency, a few years ago one of your citizens, (formerly a citizen of Sri Lanka) was invited by our Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, to head a leading government institution of our country. His name is Luxman Arjuna Mahendran and the institution he was invited to head was the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Arjuna Mahendran was appointed, designated as the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in January, 2015.

Shortly thereafter, in February that year the news of a controversial Treasury Bond transaction broke out spreading shock waves in the economic circles of the country culminating into a public demand for an investigation by the authorities to divulge the true facts relating to the issue. Despite several futile attempts by some politicians to shield the matter, the Parliament of Sri Lanka decided to refer the case to be inquired into by the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), a standing committee, of the Parliament.

In October 2015 COPE revealed that the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Arjuna Mahendran should be held responsible for the Bond Issue Scam and legal action should be initiated against him. However President Maithripala Sirisena announced the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry, under the existing Laws of Sri Lanka to further investigate the case.

This Bond Commission after protracted investigations and leading evidence of several persons including Governor Arjuna Mahendran and the Prime Minister Wickremasinghe, over a period of 10 months long deliberations, issued its report on 16th January, 2018. This is now a public document of the country.

The commission of inquiry has recommended the institution of legal action against those involved in the scam including Arjuna Mahendran. Accordingly the Attorney General of Sri Lanka has filed legal action and the courts have commenced the judicial process prosecuted by the Attorney Generals’ Department.

Two of the accused are in remand jail under Court orders and summons have been issued to Arjuna Mahendran to appear before Courts.

The legal authorities of the government have informed Courts that he could not be traced at the address given by him in Singapore to serve the Summons on him. Courts have now issued an open warrant to arrest him. Sri Lanka Police, it is reported, has sought the assistance of the Interpol to arrest him to be produced to courts for the judicial inquiry. Interpol’s Singapore branch has now informed Criminal Investigation Dept of Sri Lanka that Arjun Mahendran is in Singapore.

The Commission of Inquiry has pointed out interalia possibilities of conflict of interest and insider dealings associated with this scam. The country is waiting to see the wrong doers being dealt with according to law and to the recovery of several Billions of state funds squandered in the process of the scam.

The economy of the country is also in dire states. When the Bond Scam came to light the country was caught up in a huge debt trap. The position has been worsened many fold due to the scam.

Therefore, we appeal to you, as citizens of a friendly neighbouring country, to use your good office as a friendly gesture to help the authorities to arrest your citizen who is required here to face legal action of a fair trial in accordance with known recognized judicial norms assured by the Government of Sri Lanka under the guidance of our Prime Minister.

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Seasonal influenza claims nine lives

2018-05-26

While admitting that the seasonal influenza spreading in the Southern Province had caused the deaths of nine individuals last month, Chief Epidemiologist Dr. Anil Dissanayake yesterday said the number of admissions to hospitals had considerably reduced this week.

Dr. Dissanayake told Daily Mirror that all nine deceased were infants and four of them had already been suffering from chronic diseases including heart disease. He also said the other infants who had died were those who were continuously getting treated for some health issue.

“More than 90 deaths were reported in 2017 due to this seasonal influenza which spread all across the country unlike in 2018. The seasonal influenza only spread in the Southern Province this year. However, there are possibilities of the influenza spread to the other areas also if preventive measures are not taken,” he said.

He said accordingly the spread of this disease had been brought under control and added that the damage it had caused was relatively low in comparison to last year.

He also said the Epidemiology Unit and the all other health authorities were on high alert and had taken all possible steps to mitigate the prevailing situation. (Kalathma Jayawardhane)

The question not asked

comet Shoemaker–Levy 9

Sanjana Hattotuwa-May 26, 2018, 6:47 pm 

The collision of the comet Shoema-ker–Levy 9 into Jupiter in July 1994 was at a time when there was no social media, broadband or smartphones. The significant of the event to the scientific community, and anyone interested in astronomy or cosmology, was that it was the first extra-terrestrial collision in our solar system to be closely observed and monitored. News of the collision and the resulting scientific observations came to Sri Lanka relatively late, only through the mainstream print media. I followed it with great interest and was subsequently asked to speak about it in school at a session called Current Affairs, held every Wednesday for all A/L students. It was my first public speech, and was the ticket to English debating, writing for and then ending up editing the College magazine.

But the reason I spoke about astronomy - a subject that to many in the audience was entirely esoteric and provided an excellent excuse to whisper amongst themselves or at the time, or delve into salacious print produced by and for schoolboys – was the selfish projection of a childhood interest to gaze at the stars, and how they got there. The excitement of explaining trajectory and terrain, of observations through telescope and implications for us, was not shared amongst the audience. And to date, our education system anchored to rote and regurgitation strips away almost all the joy out of scientific knowledge and discovery, requiring students to memorize compound, composition or table over the cultivation of an inquiring mind. I did horribly in all my science classes, scoring poorly, but I read voraciously everything my father bought for me on science, which included a subscription to National Geographic, science and space encyclopedia’s and science fiction novels.

The disconnect at the time between the vividly illustrated books at home, and their engaging style of writing, and the boring, turgid prose plus awful monochromatic illustrations in the government textbooks, coupled with soporific teachers more interested in marks than co-inquiry, could not be starker. It is only now, when I see my son studying what he does, and how, that I am very wistful of my own time in school where more engaging syllabi and pedagogy may have driven me to a life and vocation very different to what I pursue today. But that early love for science hasn’t diminished and is why whenever I go to a new city, one of the first stops are the science and natural history museums.

There is a global and local movement for the strengthening of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in secondary and tertiary education, especially for girls. So-called STEM subjects are the foundation for jobs that are the most sought after and highly paid today, both in Sri Lanka and abroad, ranging from machine learning, predictive analytics, big data harvesting, data visualization, specialized or generalized artificial intelligence and cutting-edge socio-economic analyses. On the other hand, I have always been an ardent proponent of the arts and humanities, noting that all the greatest scientists throughout history have had a deep appreciation for, love of and critical engagement with music, literature and the visual arts. Perhaps a well-rounded individual needs both, for I find too many in Sri Lanka who are clearly very good at scientific inquiry completely uninterested in the arts, and conversely, many actors, writers and activists entirely dismissive of exciting scientific discoveries that while completely removed from the realm of their work and output, locates us as humans amidst our built and natural environment, our visible universe and so much we cannot yet relate to, see or have the language to comprehend.

This year, I started a subscription to New Scientist. For years, whenever I have been thoroughly depressed with partisan politics, parliament and politicians, I have taken refuge in the Scientific American, NASA or National Geographic for two reasons. One, every encounter with this content is a vital reminder of how little I know and understand of anything, of both our insignificance as individuals and profound significance as a species. And linked to this, every visit is a vital reminder of how bigger the world is, when often it seems to be solely framed by the monumental ignorance of those we elect to political office in Sri Lanka. In school, I read Asimov, Clark, Bradbury, Niven and obviously, Frank Herbert (introduced to many later through the superb Dune computer games). Through them I found new worlds, and a taste for mental exploration. This is not something we still teach in school, and the only reason I am this strange way today is because of my father’s indulgence, at a time I know now he could ill afford it, to buy me whatever book I wanted and asked for.

This is why I nearly cried when I first peeked into the library at Parliament, many years ago. It is a wonderful space – vast, well-stocked, carefully curated, brightly lit, climate controlled and, tellingly, completely empty. I have been told only, quite literally, a handful of MPs use it. But we should not blame them. It is our education system, that teaches us to constantly look down and drill into memory, when we should be looking up and learning more about finding answers, that is the root of this proud, publicly paraded nescience. Our schools punish creativity identified only as distraction, and our teachers, tired, underpaid and under-appreciated, have little to give their students by way of kindling their minds, instead of filling their books.

Science, including science fiction, reading far beyond subject matter, day-dreaming, spending time in library in sections entirely unrelated to interests, wandering through a science museum, reading up on the stars or the effects of light on zooplankton, the search for and study of exo-planets, the jaw-dropping beauty of Hubble’s imagery of the farthest regions of space, listening to Hawking (and what was an acerbic humor), or downloading an app to place and pin the constellations above you, looking at a new moon or getting lost in documentaries like ‘The Last Man on the Moon’, recently released by the BBC are pleasures children – and indeed, adults - must be told to be unashamed about, and rewarded for. Some readers may think these are pursuits only upper echelons of society can manage. They are wrong. Science is all around us. Its negotiation constitutes our daily life, the very core of our being and everything we do. To engage with science and indeed, be captivated by science fiction, is just to question our environment, our lives, and our choices.

Fundamentally, I have come through science, reading and inquiry to a question we do not ask, and aren’t taught to ask. A question that is not just at the heart of scientific inquiry, it is the very essence of active citizenship. To ask it – and keep asking it - is deeply frowned upon and violently opposed, because there are no simple, easy answers, no quick sound bites possible in response. The question is powerful because it unravels and unmasks what is held or projected as true, and posits instead a creative uncertainty, viable options or possible alternatives – anathema to politicians interested only in voters who can’t give them a hard time.

The question is a simple one, in fact, a single word.

Why.

Always and forever, ask why.

Israeli soldier hurt earlier in West Bank dies of injuries

Attacker has not been identified, though three Palestinian suspects are taken in for questioning

Night protest at Al-Amari refugee camp in 2012 (AFP/file photo)

Saturday 26 May 2018

An Israeli soldier critically injured in the occupied West Bank on Thursday died of his injuries on Saturday, an army statement said.

The English-language statement said that Sergeant Ronen Lubarsky, 20, of the Duvdevan special forces unit, died during the morning, two days after being struck on the head by a stone block thrown during an arrest raid.

Israeli media said that the block was a granite slab dropped from a third-floor window.

Lubarsky was evacuated to Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem in Jerusalem, where he was sedated and hooked up to a respirator, Haaretz said on its website. Though he was wearing full protective gear at the time of the incident, the impact of the slab shattered his helmet and caused a severe impact to his head.

View image on Twitter

The Times of Israel

✔@TimesofIsrael

Ronen Lubarsky, soldier struck by marble slab in West Bank, dies of wounds https://www.timesofisrael.com/ronen-lubarsky-soldier-struck-by-marble-slab-in-west-bank-dies-of-wounds/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter …

2:50 PM - May 26, 2018

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Palestinian sources said the incident took place during a night operation attempting to arrest suspects in Al-Amari refugee camp in the city of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority.

Amari camp, home to 15,000 Palestinians, is a regular flashpoint where Israeli raids have sparked fierce clashes in the past.

Israeli forces regularly carry out night raids in Palestinian-governed parts of the West Bank to arrest Palestinians suspected of militant activities against Israel.

The Israeli military said that the troops had been seeking Palestinian militant gunmen.

"The operational activity in which (Lubarsky) participated was intended to apprehend a squad of operatives who were involved in shooting attacks," it said.

Posthumously promoted

It added that he was promoted posthumously to the rank of staff sergeant.

His attacker has not been identified, though three Palestinian suspects were taken to the Shin Bet security service for questioning, Haaretz reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his "deep sorrow" at the soldier's death.

"The security forces will reach the terrorist and the state of Israel will bring him to reckoning," a statement from his office quoted him as saying in Hebrew. 

Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Duvdevan was at the forefront of the raids.

"Duvdevan, one of our elite units, conducts many arrests every night in an endless war that has no publicity and no glory," he wrote on his official Twitter account.

"We shall bring Ronen justice," he added.

Israel’s high court blesses killing and maiming of Gaza protesters

Israeli forces aim towards Palestinian protesters east of Gaza City on 25 May.

 Atia DarwishAPA images

Maureen Clare Murphy- 26 May 2018

Israel’s high court rejected two petitions from human rights groups challenging the military’s open-fire regulations this week as several more Palestinians died from wounds sustained during Gaza’s ongoing Great March of Return protests.

It was the second ruling made by the court on Thursday rubber-stamping war crimes.

The high court ruling may be viewed by the International Criminal Court as an indication that Israel’s judicial authorities are unwilling to carry out genuine proceedings concerning crimes against Palestinian civilians.

Between 19 and 25 May, Gaza’s health ministry announced the deaths of seven Palestinians from injuries inflicted during protests along the eastern perimeter of the territory beginning 30 March.

The deceased were identified as Hussein Salem Abu Oweida, 41, Ahmad al-Abed Abu Samra, 21, Muhammad Mazen Alayan, 20, Muin Abd al-Hamid al-Saee, 58, Muhannad Abu Tahoun, 21, Ahmad Qatoush, 23 and Yasir Sami Saad al-Din Habib, 24.

Also this week a 15-year-old in the occupied West Bank, Oday Akram Abu Khalil, died from wounds sustained when he was shot in the stomach by Israeli forces during protests on 15 May, the annual commemoration of the 1948 Nakba or catastrophe.

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Defense for Children@DCIPalestine

Odai Abu Khalil, 15, was pronounced dead Wednesday, eight days after Israeli forces shot him in the abdomen. https://buff.ly/2Lw1u1O 

9:22 AM - May 26, 2018

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More than 115 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since 30 March, the vast majority of them during Great March of Return protests – including 14 children, two journalists and a paramedic.

Some 3,600 people were injured by live fire during the protests.

A lightly wounded soldier was the only reported Israeli casualty resulting from the protests in Gaza.

Court sides with state – again

The Israeli high court ruled in favor of the state’s argument that protesters constituted a danger to Israeli soldiers and civilians, thus justifying the use of lethal force.

The judges sided with the government’s contention that the protests take place in the context of a long-running armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. The state argues that the legal framework that regulates the use of fire during the protests is international humanitarian law, or the laws of war.

Human rights groups say that irrespective of the political affiliation of any of the organizers or participants, the demonstrations along Gaza’s eastern perimeter are a civilian matter of law enforcement governed by the framework of international human rights law, which allows for the use of deadly force only to stop an imminent lethal threat.

“Some of the rioters have tried to trample or break through the border fence, creating a clear and present danger that terrorists will penetrate into the state’s territory, and this is happening in areas near towns on the Israeli side,” wrote Hanan Melcer, one of the three judges who reviewed the petitions.

“Among the rioters were some who threw rocks and fire bombs at Israeli troops. Therefore, it seems that gunfire was employed to achieve a legal purpose – defending citizens of the state and Israeli soldiers,” Melcer added.

The court ruling gives the military “a green light to its continued use of snipers and live fire against Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip,” stated Al Mezan and Adalah, two of the groups that had petitioned the court.

The two groups stated that the court had “refused to watch video clips documenting Israeli shootings of demonstrators and, rather than actually examining the case, fully accepted the claims presented to it by the state.”

Al Mezan and Adalah published a video montage of such clips:

“The extreme nature of the ruling is also highlighted by the striking absence of any mention of the casualty figures that had been presented to the court,” the human rights groups added.

The Israeli high court said it could not move forward with an inquiry into the military’s rules of engagement because petitioning organizations rejected a request by the state to present the judges secret intelligence without the petitioners being allowed to review it.

“We have no concrete information about the identity of the key activists and inciters, the nature of their acts, their organizational affiliation, their involvement in terrorist activity or other forbidden hostile activity, or whether and in what manner they constituted a clear and present danger,” Melcer stated.

The justices accepted the state’s description of the Gaza protests as “violent disturbances” which were “organized, coordinated and directed by Hamas, which is a terrorist organization in a state of armed conflict with Israel.”

No imminent threat

Adalah and Al Mezan stated that the court ruling “contradicts the conclusions and preliminary results of international human rights organizations and United Nations bodies documenting and evaluating the events in Gaza.”

During a special session of the UN Human Rights Council concerning the events in Gaza last week, the body’s High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein stated:

“Although some of the demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, used slingshots to throw stones, flew burning kites into Israel, and attempted to use wire-cutters against the two fences between Gaza and Israel, these actions alone do not appear to constitute the imminent threat to life or deadly injury which could justify the use of lethal force.”

The Human Rights Council voted to establish a commission of inquiry into mass civilian casualties during the demonstrations with a final report due next March.

Tania Hary, executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group which challenged the open-fire regulations, said she was “disappointed but not surprised to see the court again sanction Israel’s grave violations of human rights and international law in Gaza.”

A Palestinian injured during Great March of Return protests rests outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital after being discharged, 19 May.

 Mohammed ZaanounActiveStills

Israel’s high court has long championed policies towards Palestinians that violate international law.

Gisha has previously faulted Israel’s judiciary, and principally the high court, for accepting “the state’s legal positions almost unquestioningly” regarding the 11-year blockade of Gaza.

Palestinian human rights groups have urged the International Criminal Court to investigate the unprecedented closure of Gaza as a crime of persecution.

The Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister made a referral to the International Criminal Court on Tuesday, calling for an immediate investigation into Israeli crimes.

In 2015, the court launched a preliminary examination into potential war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Preliminary examination by ICC

A preliminary examination is the first step in the court’s process to determine whether to open a formal investigation, which can then lead to indictments and trials.

But while a preliminary examination is carried out whenever a referral is made, it is open-ended and can carry on for years, at the discretion of the chief prosecutor.

In 2006, the prosecutor began a preliminary examination of alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan from 2002.

Eleven years after the examination was opened, and up to 15 years after the commission of the first alleged crimes, the prosecutor concluded that there was enough evidence to proceed with a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Taliban, the Afghan government and the United States.

A preliminary examination into alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Colombia, opened in 2004, is still pending, according to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.

In her response to the Palestinian complaint, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda signaled that she does not intend to expedite the process, stating that the “preliminary examination has seen important progress and will continue to follow its normal course.”

Israel’s foreign ministry lashed out against the Palestinian move, calling it an effort “to politicize the court and to derail it from its mandate.”

Over the past several weeks Bensouda’s office has expressed “grave concern” over the situation in Gaza and warned Israeli leaders that they may face prosecution for the killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters.

Earlier this month the press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders formally requested that the International Criminal Court prosecutor investigate the targeting of journalists in Gaza as war crimes.

The Palestinian rights groups Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights stated this weekthat they “have submitted five comprehensive communications to the prosecutor” as part of the court’s preliminary examination.

“These communications have related to the 2014 offensive against the Gaza Strip, the Israeli-imposed Gaza closure, the use of the Hannibal Directive in Rafah, and crimes committed in the West Bank including Jerusalem,” the groups stated, adding that they “have also provided information on the lack of domestic investigations and prosecutions.”

The prosecutor “has sufficient evidence” to open a full investigation, according to the rights groups.

“The ICC acting as a court of last resort must provide redress to Palestinian victims,” they added.