02/06/2018
The Police have admitted that isolated incidents had been reported where Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) persons had been a target.
DIG Ajith Rohana acknowledged that there are isolated incidents of discrimination of LGBT persons, but added that the Police are working towards eliminating them by introducing sensitising programs in the police training curriculum.
The Executive Director of EQUAL GROUND Rosanna Flamer-Caldera sat with DIG Ajith Rohana, Professor Camena Guneratne from the Open University, Ms Ambika Satkunanathan of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, and Dr. Paikiasothy Sarvanamuththu of the Center for Policy Alternatives to discuss how to combat discrimination of LGBTIQ persons.
The discussion took place to mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), EQUAL GROUND said in a statement.
The discussion revolved around the commitments made by the Government of Sri Lanka during its Universal Periodic Review in November of 2017.
During the panellist’s presentations, DIG Ajith Rohana strongly emphasised that no one should be discriminated because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
A highlighted point that was repeatedly discussed was the importance of social change following policy change and how the narrative should be shaped when challenging the laws that criminalise same-sex conduct.
Dr Sarvanamutthu strongly believed that there is power in numbers and representation. He suggested that it is time that families rally behind the movement.
He urged parents and grandparents to strongly question the law and file for a class action lawsuit demanding for the decriminalisation of their children and grandchildren.
From a policy change stand point Professor Camena stated that even though the constitutional reform process is in the back burner there could be a possibility of explicit protection offered to the LGBTIQ community through expansion of the fundamental rights chapter. This reform, coupled with an introduction of post-enactment of judicial review of all legislation that is inconsistent with the constitution can nullify the criminalisation of same-sex conduct as stated in Penal Codes 365 and 365A of Sri Lanka.
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has taken a strong public position in including explicit protection for the LGBTIQ community.
In Ms Satkunanathan’s presentation, she discussed the importance of not only sensitising the general public and civil society organisations but also the staff at the HRCSL to be empathetic and non-judgemental.
The LGBTIQ community can also use other forms of legislature such as arbitrary violence and torture to safeguard themselves from unauthorised searches and questioning. Ms Ambika also urged that community members make use of the HRCSL’s complaint mechanism to report violations. (Colombo Gazette)
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - Sorrow, heartache and tears filled the Khuzaa neighborhood of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, as Palestinians mourned the death of Razan al-Najjar, a 21-year-old paramedic killed by Israeli fire.
Najjar, who for 10 weeks had been treating those wounded by Israel during the Great March of Return mass demonstrations, was shot in the chest on Friday during the latest protest.
Beginning on 30 March, the Great March of Return protests have been held along the fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, demanding the return of Palestinians to the homes they were expelled from in 1948 that now lie in Israel.
Thousands attended her funeral on Saturday, including many medical workers. Friends and colleagues wept as they grieved her loss.
Najjar's father Ashraf carried the bloodied uniform she wore when she was shot.
"My angel left this place, she is now in a better place. I will miss her so much. May your soul rest in peace my beautiful daughter," he said.
Razan al-Najjar's mother holds up the uniform the paramedic was killed in, 2 June, 2018. (MEE/Mohammed Asad)
Officials at the Gazan health ministry said 100 people were wounded by the Israeli military on Friday, including 40 by live ammunition. Four paramedics were wounded while helping people who were injured near the fence.
"They [the Israelis] know Razan, they know she is a paramedic, she has been helping treat wounds since 30 March," Sabreen, the paramedic's mother, told Middle East Eye, speaking with tears in her eyes.
"My daughter was a target for the Israeli snipers. The explosive bullet was directly shot in her chest; it was not a random bullet."
Razan al-Najjar, a paramedic shot by Israel. (Screengrab)
Najjar, the eldest of six siblings, became a paramedic after taking a diploma in general nursing and many first aid courses.
She volunteered in hospitals and with NGOs and medical organizations, building skills and experience that she then used on the wounded during the Great March of Return protests.
As a paramedic, Najjar mainly concentrated on helping women and children injured during the demonstrations.
My daughter was a brave paramedic that was never scared of the Israeli snipers
- Sabreen, Razan al-Najjar's mother
"My daughter would be out every Friday between 7am and 8pm. She was in the field doing her work, healing the wounds of the injured, and my daughter was a brave paramedic that was never scared of the Israeli snipers," Najjar's mother said.
"She used to come home with blood covering her uniform. She used to stay at the protests until everyone had left."
Blood across her uniform
Reda al-Najjar, Razan al-Najjar's colleague and friend, was with the paramedic when she was shot by the Israeli sniper.
"I was there when Razan was wounded. We were trying to get to protesters that were choking on tear gas. When we got closer to the fence the Israeli forces intensively fired tear gas and live ammunition on us," she said.
"Tear gas and black smoke were filling the place. It was very hard for us to take a breath.
"Suddenly Razan was pointing to her back, and then she fell on the ground, blood was spreading across her uniform."
He added: "We paramedics go to the protests to rescue injured protesters. We don't have weapons. All we have are medical tools and a first aid kit to help the protesters."
Razan al-Najjar's relatives mourn the paramedic's death at her funeral in Khan Younis, 2 June, 2018. (MEE/Mohammed Asad)
At least 121 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the Great March of Return, mainly by live ammunition that has been shot into the upper parts of the body.
Najjar is the second Palestinian paramedic to be shot dead since the protests began. The first, Moussa Abu Hassanein, was shot two weeks ago.
According to the Gazan health ministry, 223 paramedics have been injured during the demonstrations, and Israeli forces have also targeted 37 ambulances.
The ministry's spokesman, Ashraf al-Qedra, condemned Najjar's killing and called on the international community to intervene and stop the killing of Palestinian protesters, civilians, paramedics and journalists.
In an interview previously published on social media, Najjar herself also tried to draw attention to Israel's crackdown on the protests and said she had a message as a paramedic.
I call on the world to look and see why the Israeli forces are targeting us
- Razan al-Najjar, killed paramedic
"We witness a lot of attacks by the Israeli forces - paramedics and journalists are targeted," she said.
"I call on the world to look and see why the Israeli forces are targeting us. We are not doing anything. We are just rescuing injured people and healing their wounds."
A diplomatic effort is underway tonight to avert further bloodshed across southern Syria. President Assad’s army is poised to expel a variety of rebels and Islamist insurgent groups from a swathe of land bordering Jordan and Israel.
Tensions are between Israel and Syria are higher than for generations. In particular, where Syria’s Golan Heights – much of it occupied by Israel – and the rest of Syria itself meet.
Access to the Syrian side is usually denied but our Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson is the first foreign TV journalist to visit Syria’s front line with Israel in recent years and sends this exclusive report.
Labour’s “witchfinder general” Maggie Cosin (right) poses with Blairite lawmaker Liz Kendall, who would later come last place in the leadership contest that Jeremy Corbyn won by a landslide. (Facebook)
Veteran anti-racist, former mayor of London and Labour giant Ken Livingstoneresigned in May from the party to which he had devoted his adult life.
But the very same day, another high-profile leftist purged from Labour put the party on notice he would be taking his case to the high court.
Marc Wadsworth’s case highlights how the party’s disciplinary apparatus is being used to purge members falsely accused of anti-Semitism, many of them supporters of Palestinian rights.
Wadsworth announced at a meeting in Bristol that his lawyer had written to General Secretary Jennie Formbygiving Labour two weeks to re-admit him or expect a legal challenge to his expulsion.
The letter came as Wadsworth was on a national speaking tour calling for his reinstatement.
After the expulsion of Wadsworth in April, it became clear to many activists that Livingstone had little chance of receiving a fair hearing.
So in May, after two years of suspension over supposed anti-Semitism, Livingstone said the controversy over his continuing membership had become a “distraction” to getting the party led by Jeremy Corbyn back into government.
Livingstone said that had he fought expulsion, his case would have dragged on “for months or even years, distracting attention from Jeremy’s policies.”
Corbyn himself said it was a sad moment but it was the “right thing to do”.
Media circus
Livingstone’s statement reiterated that he did “not accept the allegation that I have brought the Labour Party into disrepute – nor that I am in any way guilty of anti-Semitism.”
But he went further in apologizing than he had ever done before, saying he recognized “that the way I made a historical argument has caused offense and upset in the Jewish community. I am truly sorry for that.”
In April 2016, Livingstone had been asked in a BBC radio interview if a Labour lawmaker’s online posting about Hitler’s actions being “legal” had been anti-Semitic.
In reply, he raised the 1933 Haavara agreement between the Nazi government and the Zionist Federation of Germany, saying it amounted to Hitler “supporting Zionism” by transferring Jews to Palestine.
In contrast to Livingstone’s contentious, but broadly accurate historical comments, the event that got Marc Wadsworth expelled was far more clear cut – it was based on a totally fabricated version of his comments, eagerly adopted by a frenzied media circus.
In June 2016, right-wing Labour lawmaker and former Israel lobby spin doctor Ruth Smeeth falsely claimed Wadsworth had accused her at a public event of a “media conspiracy” – a fabricated quotation.
Almost two years later, she deleted the press release containing these claims from her website – but refused to correct it, and continued to repeat her false claims in media interviews. She later reposted the press release, misleadingly backdating it as if it had never been deleted.
Due to the strength of Wadsworth’s case on the facts, many activists expected the Labour Party disciplinary hearing to exonerate him.
But it didn’t. Why? And who was behind the ruling?
FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud arrives on the tarmac to welcome U.S. President Donald Trump as he arrives aboard Air Force One at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 20, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
JUNE 2, 2018
PARIS (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has threatened to take military action if Qatar installs a Russian air defence system, France’s Le Monde newspaper reported.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar last year, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism, which it denies.
Qatar and Russia signed an agreement on military and technical cooperation last year. Qatar’s ambassador to Russia was quoted as saying in January that it was in talks to buy the Russian S-400 missile air defence systems.
Le Monde said that Saudi King Salman had written a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron, expressing his profound concern over negotiations between Doha and Moscow and the possibility that Qatar could deploy the missiles.
“The kingdom would be ready to take all necessary measures to eliminate this defence system, including military action,” Le Monde quoted the letter to Macron as saying. It said the letter had been sent “recently”, but was not more specific.
Salman asked Macron for his assistance to prevent the sale of the missiles and preserve peace in the region, Le Monde said.
The French president’s office and the Saudi government’s communications office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reporting by Yann Le Guernigou and Marine Pennetier in Paris and Stephen Kalin in Riyadh; Writing by Maya Nikolaeva; Editing by Peter Graff
Both countries have hit back at the U.S. with their own tariffs
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto during the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016. Mexico and Canada renewed their commitment to the bare knuckled NAFTA renegotiation after absorbing the blow of the Trump administration's decision to impose potentially debilitating new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
Mike Blanchfield · The Canadian Press ·
Now they put their noses to the grindstone and get back to the North American Free Trade Agreement. But it is shaping up to be a complicated, uphill slog.
Mexico and Canada have renewed their commitment to the bare-knuckled NAFTA renegotiation after absorbing the blow of the Trump administration's decision to impose potentially debilitating new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
The dragging on of the NAFTA talks was a key reason behind the U.S. move to target Canada and Mexico, but given the importance of that trade agreement to the continent's economy, neither U.S. neighbour was deterred.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto made their commitment in a Thursday phone call, following Trump's decision not to exempt their countries from import duties of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminum.
Canada retaliated with $16.6 billion worth of "countermeasures" that hit a range of products from flat-rolled steel to playing cards, while Mexico also plans tariffs on a variety of U.S. products, including flat steel.
"The leaders expressed their strong concerns and deep disappointment with the imposition of U.S. tariffs on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum exports," Trudeau's office said in a summary of the phone call with the Mexican leader.
"They also discussed the North American Free Trade negotiations and agreed to continue working toward a mutually beneficial outcome."
Late Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump sent a very sharp warning — directed at Trudeau — over the pending the NAFTA negotiation.
Trump said in a statement the days of the U.S. being taken advantage of in trade deals "are over."
Canada should not walk away: Beatty
On NAFTA, Trump said: "Earlier today, this message was conveyed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada: The United State (sic) will agree to a fair deal, or there will be no deal at all."
A fair deal is the furthest thing from Trump's mind, something that Thursday's sweeping tariffs decision demonstrates, according to business leaders and trade analysts.
Some question whether there might actually be a negotiating table to return to given the reality of the political calendar. Mexico's presidential election is one month away and the U.S. Congressional midterms follow in the fall.
Trump's latest move amounts to "blackmail" in the NAFTA renegotiation, but it doesn't kill chances of carving out a deal, says a veteran of Canada's free trade battles.
Perrin Beatty, the president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said Canada should not walk away from the NAFTA table.
"We should not ever agree to blackmail of the nature that was proposed here," said Beatty, who was a federal cabinet minister at the time of the original Canada-U.S. free trade negotiation that was NAFTA's precursor.
"We should remain at the table as long as there is a table to remain at, and look for a deal in which everyone wins."
Beatty said future negotiations have been altered by Trump's "classic bully techniques" which are designed "to extort the conditions that Donald Trump wants to see in NAFTA."
Eric Miller, of the Washington-based Rideau Potomac Strategy Group, said it is possible to move forward with NAFTA on a separate track from the tariff dispute. That's not unprecedented because when the original Canada-U.S. free trade talks were happening, the two countries were mired in the softwood lumber dispute.
But this time it's different, he said.
'The big ball game'
The key is for Canada to move forward with NAFTA while keeping the "damage done" in steel and aluminum contained in its own separate lane. After parsing the statements of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Miller said it is clear the two countries want to do that.
"If the U.S. thinks this, in some way, will soften up Canada's position or make it want to give concessions to resolve the NAFTA, they are misunderstanding the situation," he said.
"Canada knows this is the big ball game and they have said from the very beginning they're not going to yield to pressure tactics."
A leading American trade lawyer says the window for serious NAFTA negotiations has simply closed for the year because it has been overtaken by the political calendar.
"I believe the real challenge on NAFTA will be Mexico. I do not believe we can proceed in any significant way on NAFTA before the July 1 election," said Dan Ujczo, of the firm Dickinson Wright PLLC.
Others say there's no way NAFTA's negotiators can look each other in the eye after Thursday's developments.
"It's hard to imagine how you negotiate with a knife to your throat," said Jean Simard, president of the Aluminum Association of Canada.
In the country’s prosperous north, there’s firm backing for League leader Matteo Salvini
Matteo Salvini (right) after being sworn into power last week, in coalition with Luigi Di Maio (left) of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters
To his many critics, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League, is a racist opportunist who is about to take Italy down a dangerously confrontational and xenophobic path. To his supporters, in the League’s northern heartlands, he is a “warrior” whose high-profile instalment as interior minister in western Europe’s first populist government is a symbol of the country’s much-needed pivot to the right.
That is certainly the view in Pontida, a relatively prosperous village in the northern Lombardy region’s Alpine foothills, where thousands of League supporters converge once a year for a rowdy celebration in the party’s honour.
“Salvini is a great revolutionary,” Giuseppe Paruta, a pensioner who has supported the party since its early days as a northern Italy secessionist movement, told the Observer.
“He’s one of us. When he comes to the festival each year, he makes a speech, eats with us, drinks with us. Sometimes he comes across as aggressive, but he’s not a bad person.”
Paruta is jokingly known around town as Pontida’s Donald Trump – he sports a hairstyle uncannily similar to that of the US president. “I like him too, but Salvini is better,” he said.
Much like Trump, Salvini is esteemed by Paruta and his friends at the town’s Bar8 as the strongman needed to restore law and order in a country they claim is buckling under the weight of the migrant crisis.
Salvini supporters admit they have relatively little to complain about: their pensions are good and they own their homes. But they say they resent having had to work so hard for their achievements when they see “illegal immigrants wandering around, doing nothing and not paying taxes like we had to”. They are counting on Salvini to put a stop to all of that.
Salvini, born in Milan to a middle-class family, was swift to remind voters that his top priority would be to deal with thousands of illegal immigrants. “Open doors for good people and a one-way ticket for those who come to create commotion,” he said.
The government was formed despite the apparent collapse of talks when president Sergio Mattarella rejected the coalition’s nomination of controversial Paolo Savona as finance minister. The 81-year-old economist, a noted critic of the European Union, had previously called the euro a “German cage” and his appointment was judged to be beyond the pale by Mattarella.
As markets went into turmoil, insults were traded with the EU and calls were made by Luigi Di Maio, leader of M5S, for Mattarella to be impeached. But faced with the prospect of fresh elections in July, Salvini and Di Maio scrambled to put together an alternative cabinet that will now see Savona challenge the EU in the guise of European affairs minister. Meanwhile Giovanni Tria, an economics professor with a more moderate tone towards Europe, was named finance minister.
Salvini and Di Maio agreed that neither should become prime minister of the new coalition, instead appointing Giuseppe Conte, a relatively unknown law professor with no political experience, to steer a government programme that includes generous tax cuts, a universal basic income and a raft of hardline policies against illegal immigrants, Roma people and Muslims. They will, however, share the role of deputy premier, with Di Maio, a 31-year-old former waiter, also serving as minister of labour. The new coalition is expected to receive a vote of confidence this week.
But while League supporters are happy their hero has made it into government, they have reservations about the union with M5S.
Salvini, usually seen wearing jeans and open-necked shirts, is considered by his admirers as a down-to-earth man of conviction. Di Maio, on the other hand, is perceived as a sharp-suited ditherer, who is as inexperienced as he is inconsistent.
“The League is totally different from M5S,” said Giulio Sapelli, an economics professor who taught Salvini at the University of Milan. “You never know what they [M5S] are thinking or going to do. For example, this calling for Mattarella to be impeached was crazy.”
Sapelli, a eurosceptic who was among those mooted as a potential premier for the coalition, also pointed to the League’s history in government and experience in administering two of Italy’s richest regions – Lombardy and Veneto. Meanwhile, haphazard management has seen M5S lose support in the two biggest cities it runs, Rome and Turin.
“It’s very hard to know how long [this government] will last,” added Sapelli. “The League is the only classic ‘rank and file’ party left; M5S is a movement with a weird leadership.”
Marco Ghezzi, the League’s candidate for mayor in upcoming local elections in Calolziocorte, a town close to Pontida, would have preferred the party to have stuck with its centre-right coalition partners: Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the smaller far-right Brothers of Italy. The group won the biggest share of the vote in the 4 March elections but fell 3% shy of the majority required to govern. Berlusconi stepped aside to allow the League to forge a deal with M5S, which sees the 81-year-old media magnate as a symbol of the corruption it has long railed against, although the alliance still campaigns at regional and local level.
Matteo Salvini greets supporters of his party during a visit to a local market in Pisa last week. Photograph: Gianni Nucci/EPA
“The problem with M5S is that they don’t have a ‘structured party’. Most of it is based online,” said Ghezzi.
Ghezzi is expected to win the 10 June vote in Calolziocorte by a landslide, ousting a centre-left Democratic Party leadership, which in itself is an anomaly in a region dominated by the League.
At a mayoral hustings on Thursday night, the prime concern of the town’s residents was security. Its population of 15,000 includes about 1,500 foreigners. Ghezzi said most are integrated, but in recent years the area has seen an uptick in the arrival of illegal immigrants.
“They hang around the station at night, sleep in abandoned houses and by the river,” he added. “It’s a scandal for the people here, who mostly live in mountain villages and cherish their values and tradition.”
Echoing Salvini, Ghezzi said that migrants ought to be vetted before they arrive.
Salvini is notoriously quick to speak out when crimes are committed by foreigners, while remaining silent over incidents involving white-skinned Italians. In a recent Facebook post he expressed horror at the alleged gang-rape of an Italian woman by Bengali men in Rome, but failed to mention the arrests of five Italian hotel workers a few days earlier over the alleged rape of a British woman in the holiday town of Sorrento.
Ghezzi claims the reactions are different because the proportion of crimes committed by immigrants outweighs that by Italians. Italy’s crime rate has fallen 8.3% over the past decade, according to interior ministry figures, despite the number of foreigners increasing from three to five million.
“In Italy, public debate is often not based on reality, but on the perception of reality,” said Matteo Pucciarelli, a journalist at La Repubblica and author of Anatomy of a Populist: the true story of Matteo Salvini. “Crime has gone down, but the feeling of insecurity has risen. Truth doesn’t count, but what you say does, and in this respect Salvini is incredible. We don’t live in the Wild West, but he gives the impression that we do.”
Pucciarelli believes that Salvini, whom he describes as a “media animal”, will continue to project false realities while giving the impression that all is in order.
“For example, deporting thousands of immigrants is impossible. But all the same he’ll succeed in making it look as if he is a minister ruling with an iron fist.”
What a sting operation reveals about press freedom in the world’s largest democracy.
Supporters read a special edition of a local newspaper in Chennai, India, on Dec. 6, 2016. (Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images)
BYPAMPOSH RAINA-
NEW DELHI — Media companies here sometimes use hidden cameras to expose dirty deals at the highest levels of power. Last week, it emerged, the lens had also been focused within, revealing ugly warts across the entire body of the Indian news industry. In a series of video recordings released by Cobrapost, an Indian nonprofit news website, top executives of leading Indian media companies are allegedly seen negotiating contracts worth millions of dollars in exchange for spreading Hindu nationalist propaganda — ostensibly to benefit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the lead-up to national elections next year.
Cobrapost had deployed a reporter posing as a representative of a bogus Hindu nationalist group. Among the media giants that supposedly fell for the sting operation was Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL), the media conglomerate that owns the Times of India and several other publications and TV stations. The Times of India is the country’s biggest English daily by circulation. Other influential media targets included the India Today Group, which publishes a top weekly magazine and also owns a popular set of TV news channels; and HT Media, which publishes the Hindustan Times, a major English daily. In all, 26 media groups were exposed through scores of videos. (Cobrapost released a first batch of video recordings, involving 17 media organizations, in March.)
The video recordings each show senior corporate leaders from media groups interacting with a reporter who is not visible in the frame. The reporter — in disguise, we assume — is heard proposing a three-pronged media strategy that aims to exploit religious fault lines by propagating Hindutva, the right-wing Hindu belief system that guides the politics of the BJP and its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. About 80 percent of India’s population is Hindu, and nearly 172 million Muslims living here constitute its largest minority. The national election, which is slated for next year, will decide if Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead India for another five years.
For the proposed first phase of the propaganda, the news companies would use their media and sponsored events to spread teachings from the Hindu religious text the Bhagavad-Gita. The second phase, according to the videos, would involve endorsing staunch Hindu leaders while lampooning Modi’s political rivals such as Rahul Gandhi, president of the Indian National Congress, India’s oldest political party; Mayawati, the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, who is hailed as a champion of the Dalits, the lowest rung in the Hindu caste hierarchy and often the subject of fierce discrimination; and Akhilesh Yadav, leader of the Samajwadi Party, an important group in the opposition with a predominant voter base in Uttar Pradesh, an Indian state with about 200 million residents. The reporter from Cobrapost is heard repeating in various videos that the third and final leg of the media strategy would hinge on aggressive Hindutva campaigns to incite and polarize the electorate. Incredibly, the representatives from the media companies are seen continuing these conversations and discussing how much money they could get in return.
But, unsurprisingly, the exposé has failed to garner mass public attention in India, with the media reluctant to publicize its own failings. While some companies have dismissed the videos as doctored or fabricated, a few have sought legal recourse to have the videos and related stories taken down. The India Today Group said in a legal notice to Cobrapost: “The videos appear to be manipulated and edited in a manner so as to create a false impression in the eyes of the viewer.” BCCL went a step further in claiming that Cobrapost was actually the victim of what it called a “reverse sting” — and that it knew the reporter was a “fraudster” all along. HT Media’s CEO told an Indian newspaper his comments in the Cobrapost video were “conveniently edited.” Questions are also being raised about the past of the reporter who went undercover.
Swapan Dasgupta, a conservative member of parliament, dismissed the Cobrapost sting as a “honey trap” but remarked that it was not a surprise that some media outlets take sides or agree to run coverage favorable to a particular political party.
“There are people who are pro-Modi and people who are anti-Modi,” he said. “There would have been a problem if only one point of view was allowed in the press.”
Dasgupta is also a journalist and a member of the Press Council of India, a media regulatory body.
Despite sting journalism’s controversial reputation, the exposé, if accurate, reveals the ease with which the Indian press seems willing to peddle a political agenda. And, if true, the videos are all the more troubling given that India’s history has repeatedly shown mixing religion and politics can lead to violent sectarian clashes.
Aniruddha Bahal, the editor of Cobrapost, said he wanted to “expose the endemic nature of paid news in India.” Bahal founded the website in 2003 and it is known mostly for sporadic sting operations; previous targets have included corrupt politicians and banks accused of money laundering. He added, “When publications agree to polarize society and defame your political opponents, then it gets to criminal territory.”
Bahal’s Cobrapost codenamed the sting “Operation 136” — a reference to India’s dismal ranking in the World Press Freedom Index in 2017. Out of 180 countries surveyed by Reporters Without Borders, India was ranked 136th. Its position has since fallen two spots to 138th in the 2018 rankings, well below countries such as Afghanistan, which is ranked 118th. The rankings are based on parameters including pluralism, media independence, self-censorship, transparency, and abuses.
Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of The Caravan, an Indian magazine featuring long-form narratives on politics and culture, said, “The current condition of the Indian media is such that, even without the lure of money, journalists across the board are willing to kowtow to the government.” Bal said he had formed this opinion based on his regular interactions with journalists from various media organizations.
“It is not as if the Congress Party was not using the media to its advantage. But resistance to this government is more difficult,” said Bal. “We have an autocrat in power. [Modi] is opposed to any media criticism. There is a clear message to the press to leave Modi, Jaitley, and Amit Shah alone.”.
Arun Jaitley is India’s finance minister; Shah is the BJP’s president.
Raju Narisetti, who founded Mint, India’s second-largest business newspaper by circulation, said there is anecdotal evidence that the current Indian government is one of the “most covertly vindictive and coercive administrations in India’s 71-year history when it comes to press freedom.” Journalists risk their careers if they report news critical of the government or expose wrongdoing of big business groups that enjoy government support.
“While there is still the veneer of an open debate in the [Indian] media, there is massive self-censorship, or a very narrow range of topics and stories that can actually run in terms of true enterprise journalism or pointing out issues,” said Narisetti, who has also previously been a managing editor of the Washington Post and deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.
Although no money changed hands in the Cobrapost sting, according to Bahal, the videos seem to show how easy it would be to try to buy influence at India’s top media companies. With less than a year to go before national elections in 2019, the stakes could not be higher. This sting is yet another example of how media could be misused to influence democratic elections, a much-debated issue especially after the alleged data breach in the U.S. elections in 2016 — after which Russian meddling is being investigated — where leaked emails were disseminated in the media.
“The question for India is whether winning the next election would make the ruling party even more brazen in its continued suppression of independent journalism and whether Modi sees good role models in Turkey’s Erdogan and Hungary’s Orban for his second term,” Narisetti said.
“There is clearly a growing movement — often sparked by governments themselves — to sow seeds of doubt about what one reads and sees and hears in mainstream media about politics, political parties, and elections.”
Toys R Us is in the process of closing all 800 of its U.S. stores. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News) By Abha BhattaraiJune 1 at 4:07 PM
Toys R Us isn’t paying severance to its 30,000 workers who will lose their jobs as the retailer shuts down, even though it doled out millions in executive bonuses a week before it filed for bankruptcy. Now, some workers are calling on lawmakers to create new rules that would require bankrupt companies backed by private-equity firms to provide compensation to their workers.
On Friday, more than a dozen workers met with lawmakers in New Jersey, where Toys R Us is based, to push for severance pay. Workers also called for new regulations on leveraged buyouts, as well as windfall taxes that would prevent private-equity firms from running a business into the ground and then walking away with huge sums of money.
In addition to meeting with lawmakers, employees are preparing to file a claim in bankruptcy court next week asking that they be fairly compensated, according to workers’ advocates at the Center for Popular Democracy.
“This is the story of a company — one of the most iconic in America — that was saddled with so much debt that it could not succeed,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said at a Friday event in the parking lot of a Toys R Us in Totowa, N.J. “And now the big guys are walking away and the workers are left with nothing.”
Much of Toys R Us’s troubles, employees say, date to a 2005 leveraged buyout in which its new owners — private-equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Bain Capital, and real estate firm Vornado Realty Trust — loaded the company with more than $5 billion in debt. The company filed for bankruptcy last year, citing $7.9 billion in debt against $6.6 billion in assets, and announced in March that it would close all 800 of its U.S. stores.
The toy retailer said it will close about a fifth of it’s U.S. stores between February and April, as it tries to emerge from bankruptcy.(Reuters)
On Friday, Booker and other New Jersey lawmakers submitted a letter to the heads of those firms, urging them to “do right by the company’s workers.”
“I have always been proud to work at Toys R Us, but this is not Toys R Us — this is KKR and Bain Capital,” Tracy Auerbach, a store manager in Chandler, Ariz., who has been working at the company for 31 years, said during a news conference on Capitol Hill last month. “This is Wall Street greed. How can they walk away with millions and leave 33,000 workers with zero?”
Last year, Toys R Us awarded executives $8 million in bonuses a week before filing for bankruptcy. A few months later, the company got approval from a bankruptcy judge to pay up to $21 million in additional bonuses to executives if they met certain performance goals. (That money was never awarded because the company’s performance fell short.) Chief executive Dave Brandon received $11.25 million in compensation last year.
Toys R Us is one of dozensof retailers backed by private equity to file for bankruptcy since last year, as heavy debt loads and increased competition take their toll on the industry. Others that have filed for bankruptcy following leveraged buyouts include Nine West, Claire’s, Gymboree, True Religion and Payless Shoe Source.
In the case of Toys R Us, financial filings show that the company was handing over $400 million a year to pay back its debt, often at the expense of turning a profit. Recently, it was burning through $50 million to $100 million in cash each month as it tried to dig its way out, according to court documents filed in March.The retailer also paid $470 million in advisory fees, interest and other payments to Bain Capital, KKR and Vornado since 2005. The firms did not respond to requests for comment.
“Something is seriously wrong with this type of economy,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said at the Friday event. “How many employees at Bain are now worrying about how they’ll pay for day care? How many employees over at KKR don’t have the cash to fill up their gas tank to go out looking for jobs?”
A boy sits in a burnt area after fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine State near Sittwe, Myanmar May 3, 2016. Source: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun
1st June 2018
A boy sits in a burnt area after fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine State near Sittwe, Myanmar May 3, 2016. Source: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun
THE United Nations and Burma’s (Myanmar) government announced an agreement on Thursday for the safe return of Rohingya refugees who have fled violence in Rakhine state.
Almost 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled across the border to neighbouring Bangladesh since a military crackdown began in August 2017. There are now estimated to be almost a million residing in squalid refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar region.
More details from @UN on today's agreement on repatriation of Rohingya - stresses they want return to "places of origin or their choosing". Suggests UN will have access to sealed off parts of Rakhine to assess conditions & help refugees to make "informed decisions" about return.
8:42 am - 31 May 2018
“Since the conditions are not conducive for voluntary return yet, the MoU (memorandum of understanding) is the first and necessary step to support the government’s efforts to change that situation,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
Burma’s government said in a brief statement late on Thursday the MoU would be signed “soon” and UN agencies would “support access to livelihoods through the design and implementation of community-based interventions.”
Burma and Bangladesh agreed in January to complete the voluntary repatriation of the refugees within two years but differences between the two sides persist, impeding implementation of the plan.
An aerial view shows burned down villages once inhabited by the Rohingya seen from the Myanmar military helicopters that carried the U.N. envoys to northern Rakhine state, Myanmar, May 1, 2018. Source: Reuters/ Michelle Nichols
As monsoon season approaches, there is a pressing need to find a solution to the temporary housing situation but many Rohingya have expressed fear at returning to Buddhist majority to Burma where they have faced persecution and abuses at the hands of the military.
A recent study from Xchange.org found that while 99.5 percent of Rohingya refugees wanted to return to Burma, only 0.3 percent would go back in the current conditions. Witnesses reported killings, rape and arson on a large scale, executed by planned military operations.
In a separate statement on Thursday, Burma’s government said it would set up an independent commission to investigate “the violation of human rights and related issues” in Rakhine State following the army operation there in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents on security posts.
The commission will be assisted by international experts, the statement said without elaborating.
The Security Council asked Burma in November to ensure no “further excessive use of military force” and to allow “freedom of movement, equal access to basic services, and equal access to full citizenship for all”.
Burma has for years denied Rohingya citizenship, freedom of movement and access to basic services such as healthcare. Many in Burma regard the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from mostly Muslim Bangladesh.
02/06/2018
Razan al-Najjar's mother holds up the uniform the paramedic was killed in, 2 June, 2018. (MEE/Mohammed Asad)
Razan al-Najjar, a paramedic shot by Israel. (Screengrab)
Razan al-Najjar's relatives mourn the paramedic's death at her funeral in Khan Younis, 2 June, 2018. (MEE/Mohammed Asad)
Matteo Salvini greets supporters of his party during a visit to a local market in Pisa last week. Photograph: Gianni Nucci/EPA
Supporters read a special edition of a local newspaper in Chennai, India, on Dec. 6, 2016. (Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images)
