Australia deports Tamil asylum seeker, separating him from baby daughter

Thileepan faces permanent separation from his wife and child, who have been granted safe haven visas
Tamil asylum seeker Thileepan and his daughter. Thileepan was deported in the middle of the night Monday more than six years after arriving in Australia. Photograph: Tamil Refugee Council

Ben Doherty @bendohertycorro-Tue 17 Jul 2018

A 30-year-old Tamil asylum seeker faces permanent separation from his wife and 10-month-old Australian-born daughter, after being deported more than six years after arriving in Australia.

Thileepan (like many Tamils he only uses one name) had been in Australia since arriving by boat in June 2012. He lived in the community for most of his time in Australia, marrying in 2016. He was taken into immigration detention earlier this year, after his claim for protection was rejected.

He was issued a removal notice on Friday, and was removed from Australia in the middle of the night Monday.

His wife, who arrived separately in September 2012, and 10-month-old Australian-born daughter, were among the demonstrators gathered at the gates of Villawood, in Sydney’s west on Monday.
Thileepan’s wife and daughter were both granted safe haven enterprise visas on Wednesday last week, two days before he was issued with the removal notice.

Their separation will almost certainly be permanent. A safe haven enterprise visa – known as a Shev – does not allow for family reunion, so Thileepan’s wife cannot sponsor him to return to Australia. And because of her “well-founded fear of persecution” – recognised by the Australian government – she cannot return to Sri Lanka.

Thileepan’s father and brother were killed during Sri Lanka’s brutal 26-year civil war, which ended in 2009 when the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were crushed by a final offensive by government of Sri Lanka troops.

But, according to the UN, up to 40,000 civilians were also killed in the final bloody months of fighting, with no-fire zones and hospitals deliberately shelled. Another of Thileepan’s brothers is still missing, one of thousands in Sri Lanka never found after the war.

Thileepan told Australian authorities that during the Sri Lankan conflict he was kidnapped from his home by Sri Lankan security forces, blindfolded, beaten and tortured about his knowledge of LTTE activities.

He was later dumped, still blindfolded, on the side of the road where he was found.

In July 2017, the UN’s special rapporteur Ben Emmerson visited Sri Lanka and reported that “the use of torture has been, and remains today, endemic and routine, for those arrested and detained on national security grounds”.

 Thileepan’s wife and daughter outside Villawood detention centre. Photograph: Tamil Refugee Council

“Entire communities have been stigmatised and targeted for harassment and arbitrary arrest and detention, and any person suspected of association, however indirect, with the LTTE remains at immediate risk of detention and torture,” Emmerson wrote.

However, Thileepan’s claim for protection was rejected by the Australian government, which said his circumstance did not raise Australia’s protection obligations. There were no “character” or criminal matters associated with Thileepan’s case.

The issue of family separations has become a focal point of immigration debates worldwide. In the US, the Trump administration faced massive public backlash after separating children from their parents at the Mexican border. Donald Trump relented but hundreds of children remain separated from their families.

Australia routinely separates families within its immigration regime. At least half a dozen fathers on Nauru have never met their children, after their pregnant partners were taken to Australia to give birth. Husbands and wives, as well as siblings and parents, are separated by Australia’s offshore processing system.

Family unity is a fundamental principle of international and Australian domestic law. Australia is a party to the convention on the rights of the child, which states that children have a right to know and be cared for by their parents, and should grow up in a family environment wherever possible. It is also a party to the international covenant on civil and political rights, which says the family “is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state”.
Guardian Australia put a series of questions regarding Thileepan’s case and slated removal to the Department of Home Affairs. These have not been responded to.

Aran Mylvaganam, a spokesman for the Tamil Refugee Council, said the Australian government “trumps Trump when it comes to breaking up families”.

“How much evidence of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka will be enough for the minister to grant people their right to protection?” he said. “How much trauma is he willing to inflict on Tamil families to make a political point?”

Sarah Dale, principal solicitor of the Refugee Advice and Casework Service said ministers within the home affairs department should intervene to stop Thileepan’s removal.

“It is an unnecessary traumatic separation of the family unit who have been recognised as refugees,” she said. “It is absolutely the right thing to do to keep them together in safety.

“Australia owes protection, particularly to children, and this separation is absolutely contrary to the best interests of this child.”

Scientist debunks health hoaxes with viral parody video

COURTESY OFFICE FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETYImage captionThe video has racked up millions of views

17 July 2018

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A Canadian scientist's Youtube video about an all natural cancer-curing moss is a social media hit.

But it comes with a twist: the health claims in the video are revealed as completely false.

Jonathan Jarry, its creator, is a science communicator whose career focuses on debunking misinformation like the claims found in his viral video.

The video on the value of scepticism has racked up over nine million views.

Mr Jarry, with McGill University's Office for Science and Society (OSS) in Montreal, said he was inspired to make the video when a former co-worker sent him a Facebook post that claimed cancer could be cured by radio waves.

It was "rife with inaccuracies and omissions" and had been viewed online a whopping six million times, he said.

Evidence-based efforts by OSS, a venture dedicated to promoting critical thinking and the presentation of scientific information to the public, to debunk claims like the radio waves cancer cure theory get barely a fraction of those numbers.

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"My idea was let's see if we can build a sort of a Trojan horse," Mr Jarry told the BBC.

"And make a video that looks on the outside superficially like one of these easily shareable videos."

He set about cobbling together a video with claims of an "amazing cancer cure" discovered by a Dr Johan R Tarjany in the 1800s that has long been suppressed by the pharmaceutical industry - a unique moss that can alter cancer's DNA.

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With upbeat music, savvy editing and claims that sound like they have some scientific basis, he mimicked many viral health videos currently spreading misinformation online.

But halfway through Mr Jarry's video comes the big reveal: there is no Dr Johan R Tarjany and no cancer-curing moss.

It goes on to warn the viewer about how easy it is to get roped into false claims.

COURTESY MICHAEL MYERSImage captionJonathan Jarry is a biological scientist who helps debunk false health claims

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"The point is, be sceptical. Ask questions," it warns.

Health misinformation is a serious concern for public health agencies worldwide.

In April, Cancer Research UK warned that belief in fake causes of cancer is rife among the public.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration offers online guides to protect consumers from products claiming to cure cancer online and on social media.

Mr Jarry sees many of the health hoax videos like the one he parodied online and "they spread like wildfire."

"We do have to learn to recognise these bad arguments for what they are," he said.

"They're an appeal to our emotions, to our superficial level of thinking, but they are empty on the inside."

He sees a danger in people potentially delaying medical treatment in favour of the alternative cures on the belief they will work better than modern medicine, or simply spending money on unhelpful treatments.

And he says he is "flabbergasted" at how popular his video turned out to be. He had hoped for a meagre 10,000 shares.

Demonstrations at Kilinochchi OMP hearing as families of disappeared demand international investigation

15Jul 2018

There were scenes of further demonstrations today outside the Office on Missing Persons hearing as families of the disappeared demanded an international investigation into the whereabouts of their missing loved ones. 

The OMP hearing which took place in the Kilinochchi this morning, follows a sitting in Jaffna yesterday where families of the disappeared protested outside, rejecting the process. 

Mothers cried in front of OMP officials as they held out photographs of their missing children.  

"We have no trust in this mechanim," one mother cried. 

Related Articles: 

14 July 2018 : Families of the disappeared protest at OMP hearing in Jaffna

02 June 2018 : Mullaitivu families of the disappeared boycott and protest OMP meeting

Ayyo',does it still have to be 'our Tamils' and 'their Tamils' ?

N Sathiya Moorthy-July 16, 2018, 8:20 am 

Chennai, 12 July 2018

In a way, it could not have happened at a worse time for Vijayakala Mahendran, who has since bowed out as State Minister for Child Welfare, following her controversial ‘we want LTTE back’ kind of public statement, at an official function in native Jaffna. Detractors cannot blame the Rajapaksas for triggering the controversy after Vijayakala said what she should not have said, meant whatever she did not mean to mean, but then the ‘LTTE row’ did help to an extent the New York Times story on China’s Hambantota Port firms spending on incumbent Mahinda R’s failed presidential poll campaign of 2015.

It was possibly something that the authors of the New York Times story might not have bargained for. But then, the Vijayakala controversy has shown that corruption and even sovereignty-centric issues of the China payment and Hambantota port deal(s) kind are not as much an issue as any remote talk of LTTE’s revival, again involving issues of sovereignty, territorial integrity and national security, on land and in the seas (as the ‘Sea Tigers’ showed).

It is not if Rajapaksa’s SLPP-JO parliamentarians alone behaved unruly inside the Chamber, forcing Speaker Karu Jayasuriya to tick them off. Outside of the House, a section of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP colleagues did voice similar demands. UNP back-benchers were in the front, demanding action against a fellow-party colleague, the only woman Minister from the ‘minority’ Tamil community (which in linguistic terms comprise the SLT, Upcountry and Muslim denominations).

It is easy to dismiss the anti-Vijayakala protests as a reflection of ‘southern chauvinism’, but the latter is as much a reality as the intent and content of Vijayakala’s call for LTTE’s ‘return’ was. Rather, the latter alone triggered the former, at least in this case, and the LTTE remains a grave political and electoral issue, at least down South. If nothing else, families in deep South would not want jammed telephone lines connecting to their dear ones working or living in capital Colombo, whenever a ‘terror attack’ used to be reported on TV until the end of the decisive ‘Eelam War IV’ in May 2009.

Not at all naive

Heard on the YouTube or such other medium, Vijayakala’s reference to the need for LTTE’s ‘return’ was as naive as may have sounded to her Tamil sympathisers, whose numbers may have increased, after all, since. Widow of UNP Tamil parliamentarian, T Mahendran, shot in cold blood outside of capital Colombo’s Ponnambala-vaneswarar Kovil on English New Year Day, 2008, Vijakala has since been an elected MP, and Minister since the incumbent Government came to power in 2015.

It means that from being a housewife/home-maker, Vijayakala has travelled a lot in political terms – and should have known what to say and what not so say, whether in public or even within ‘closed doors’. At the public function in Jaffna’s Veerasingham Hall, the Minister was only talking about the safety of women, and the rest of the population in Tamil areas, these past, post-LTTE years, and could well have left it at that. It was not to be.

‘Cultural policing’

Obviously, with future elections in mind, and also to garner a share of hard-line Tamil votes sympathetic to the LTTE’s cause and ways, Vijayakala said that they could walk freely on the streets when the LTTE was around. It was a fact, as the LTTE’s disciplinary procedures were so severe that no Tamil would want to violate them and pay for it with his or her life. In certain communities, and certain nations, such behaviour would have been dubbed ‘cultural policing’, but not in Jaffna, not in LTTE-controlled Tamil areas across the North and the East of Sri Lanka.

It is anybody’s guess why Vijayakala could not have taken up the increasing concern of the Jaffna population with her own Government, of which she was also a Minister, and in private. Or, taken it up with Northern Province’s Tamil Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran, who then could well have (rightly) pointed out to her, how ‘Police’ powers under 13-A had not been devolved on the Provinces, 30 long years after being incorporated in the Constitution.

By taking it up with her Government-appointed Northern Province Governor Reginald Cooray, DIG or IG of Police and all the rest of the political leadership from President Maithiripala Sirisena and PM Wickremesinghe, she could have still kept the issue alive. Why, she could have also flagged a new awakening in ‘distant South’ over the imminent need for ‘Police’ powers for the Provinces, of which the North was only one of the nine, where alone her party too was not as strong as elsewhere.

Went beyond the brief

Even for a public function, sponsored by the Government or not, Vijayakala went beyond her political brief as a people’s representative and also as a Minister, when she said that they ‘wanted the LTTE back’. It was a political message to hard-line Tamils who may have been unhappy with the TNA and not satisfied with rivals from within the Tamil polity.

If Vijayakala had hoped to cash in on such emotive appeals, particularly to the northern women populace, she has lost her job, long before the elections are here. Now, it remains to be seen if the UNP would re-nominate her in Elections-2020 to Parliament, which thankfully would come only after the presidential polls by January that year.

In between, the UNP has set up a four-member panel to study and report on the issue, for the leadership to initiate disciplinary action, if found needed. The police has also been at it, to ‘investigate’ if her statement tantamount to support for an outfit that is a ‘banned organisation’ in the country, and which is still perceived only as a highly-motivated, well-armed ‘terror group’, confining it within the public imagination, as much in the North as in the South.

  

Better or worse still, over a week after Vijayakala’s resignation, there are still news reports about the UNP’s internal inquiry intend on taking a serious look into the affair, to initiate further inner-party disciplinary action against the ‘sacked’ Minister. Other reports have also spoken about the Attorney-General directing the Inspector-General of Police, the top-most cop in the country, to follow up on the pre-resignation instructions to the effect.

Yet, in the Tamil areas, and wherever Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora live, they still perceive the LTTE only as a ‘protector’ of Tamil interests, people, culture and language -- independent of their ‘love’ or hate for the LTTE. Very few see the LTTE as a ‘terror group’ as the ‘Sinhala South’ or a section of the ‘Eastern Muslims’ or the rest of the world might see them, still.

Celebrating ‘Black Tigers’

Incidentally, only days after the Vijayakala row heated up, sections in northern Jaffna and Kilinochchi districts reportedly celebrated the foundation day of the dreaded ‘Black Tigers’ suicide-squad on 5 July. According to news reports, LTTE’s ‘Tiger’ logo and maps of ‘Tamil Eelam’ were on display, with the result, the police has pressed investigations into the issue.

In context, any digging up of the Vijayakala episode further could only be counter-productive in terms of mainstreaming Tamil sentiments, post-war, post-LTTE, which has already been a tardy affair at best. An impression could well be created that Vijayakala was being isolated and pushed to the corner, not only because she was a hapless woman parliamentarian in a male-dominated polity, but more because she was a Tamil.

This kind of sentiments have been ruling the streets of Sri Lanka for long, almost since the imposition the ‘Sinhala Only’ law and the consequent Tamil protests, leading to the LTTE war and violence. Nothing has been done to erase this impression about the Tamils, or such impressions of the Tamils, which is an hourly affair in daily interactions with the police or other Government officials, many of whom definitely have developed a ‘Sinhala superciliousness’.

Shock phrase, not ‘stock phrase’

In political terms, it could well have electoral consequences for the ruling combine in general and Vijayakala’s UNP in particular. The party is otherwise considered relatively ‘Tamil friendly’ compared to other southern Sinhala parties and leaders. For winning elections or even forming a new government in the place of the incumbent coalition in the current Parliament, they need the TNA, even if not their own MP, Vijayakala.

Leave aside the ‘political solution’ under a new Constitution that UNP’s Wickremesinghe had reportedly promised the TNA leadership ahead of the presidential polls of 2015, and which promise has not been kept, at least thus far, irritants of the Vijayakala kind could jeopardise the UNP-TNA relations, whatever that be. Worse still in the reverse, as any accommodation of Vijayakala could well spoil the UNP’s limited chances with the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist voters’, whose numbers are substantial and whose sympathies are still with the war-winning Rajapaksa clan.

According to media reports, TNA’s hard-line ‘rebel’ Northern Province Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran has defended UNP’s Vijayakala, though there is no love lost between him and the Centre, especially with party Prime Minister Wickremesinghe. Another TNA leader, the no-nonsense parliamentarian, M A Sumanthiran, is reported to have said that ‘southern Sinhala leaders’ alone ‘pressured’ Vijayakala into talking about ‘LTTE’s revival’ – though he is not known to have explained it.

In the early stages of the delayed digging up of the Vijayakala row, she was reported to have told Deputy Minister Ranjan Ratnayake, "Ayyo, they have misquoted me", or something to that effect. For the uninitiated, of whom there are many even among the urbane sections of the Sinhala elite, ‘Ayyo’ is a Tamil exclamation of sorrow, sadness and shock.

Obviously, Vijayakala used it as a ‘shock’ phrase, and not a ‘stock’ phrase. But then, the way her statement has been marketed for the Sinhala audience, and the way further action has been promised against the ex-Minister, it could well be in future, as in the LTTE past, "Ayyo, the nation is at it again."

That said, there is no denying that all the issues that Vijayakala flagged at her Jaffna speech on personal security are prevalent across the country and across the world. She however needs to ask herself, if they required the LTTE to restore what essentially is a Law & Order issue, which is what any democratic or not-so-democratic Government are expected to dispense to their people. Here dictatorships may have often succeeded more than democracies.

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorty.com)

Lasantha Wickremethunga murder: Suspects granted bail

KAVINDYA PERERA- JUL 16 2018

Mount Lavinia (MTL) Chief Magistrate Mohammad Mihal has granted bail to Former Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police (SDIG) Prasanna Nanayakkara and Former Officer-In-Charge (OIC) of the MTL Police Crimes Division Tissa Sugathadasa who were arrested and imprisoned over the murder of Former Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickremathunga.

The MTL Chief Magistrate ordered Nanayakkara and Sugathadasa to be released on cash bail of Rs 50,000 and sureties of Rs one million each.

Addressing the Court, the MTL Chief Magistrate said that only the MTL Chief Magistrate’s Court was empowered to grant bail to the two defendants in the case. The MTL Chief Magistrate told the Court that he was granting bail to the two suspects under the proviso that they will neither intimidate witnesses in the case nor scuttle the ongoing investigations and warned that if found to be guilty of either offence he will promptly revoke their bail and incarcerate them. MTL Chief Magistrate Mihal afterwards ordered the passports of the two suspects to be impounded before ordering them to appear before the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on the last Sunday of each month.

However, as the two suspects despite being granted bail failed to fulfill the bail conditions, they were taken back to the prison by prison officers and the Chief Magistrate advised them to fulfill the bail conditions through a motion tomorrow (17).

Nanayakkara was arrested by the CID on 14 February for allegedly having concealed evidence regarding the murder of the Editor. He was the SDIG in charge of the Western Province (South) at the time of Wickremathunga’s murder while the area of MTL came under his supervision. Nanayakkara is facing charges of aiding and abetting in destroying vital evidence in the investigations into the killing of the former Journalist.

Sugathadasa, the Former OIC of the MTL Police Crimes Division was apprehended by the CID on 2 February.

Wickremathunga, the Founding Editor of the Sunday Leader, was murdered by two assailants who had followed him on a motorcycle on 8 January, 2009, in Attidiya, Ratmalana.

The case was put off to 27 September.

REPORT: 2017 WAS A PERIOD OF DISILLUSIONMENT AMIDST SOME PROGRESS IN SRI LANKA

2017 was a decisive year for Sri Lanka, showing what progress had – and hadn’t – been made in the past few years.

15/07/2018


In January 2015, a new government was elected with a massive intervention on the part of the people. For 10 years, their premiere, Mahinda Rajapaksa, ran an authoritarian regime. During this regime, one of the most visible signs of its authoritarian behaviour was the use of overt forms of violence on the people. The Ministry of Defense, which was the most powerful ministry during this time, was run by Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was the president’s younger brother. The basic internal control mechanism in the country came under the control this ministry. The Defense Secretary developed ways to control all activities of the armed forces and the police. In this way, he became the most powerful man within the state apparatus.

REPORT 2017 WAS A PERIOD OF DISILLUSIONMENT AMIDST SOME PROGRESS IN SRI LANKA.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Professionals flay SL-Singapore FTA and suicide mission trade policy

by C.A.Chandraprema-July 14, 2018, 12:00 pm 

Last Thursday, the Professionals’ National Front (PNF) which brings together professionals from the medical, engineering, banking, IT, architectural, and many other spheres held a seminar to a packed audience at the Sri Sambuddhathwa Jayanthi Mandiraya in Thunmulla on the SL-Singapore Free Trade Agreement ahead of the debate in parliament on the same matter scheduled for the afternoon of July 17. The PNF is a body that took shape through agitation against the attempt by the present government to expand the free trade agreement with India to include the trade in services. One of the main demands by the PNF from its very inception is that Sri Lanka should have a national trade policy on the lines of which any free trade agreement should be entered into.

 Since the government was dragging its feet in the matter of formulating a national trade policy, the PNF took the initiative to appoint a people’s commission to make recommendations for the formation of such a policy. In the meantime, a document styled ‘New Trade Policy’ appeared last year on the website of the Ministry of Strategic Development and International Trade purporting to be Sri Lanka’s national trade policy. It was supposed to be in accordance with this policy that the SL-Singapore FTA had been entered into. Speaker after speaker at last Thursday’s event bitterly criticized both the so called National Trade Policy formulated by Minister Malik Samarawickrema and the SL-Singapore FTA that the government entered into. One of the main criticisms made by the PNF against the purported national trade policy of the present government is that nobody had been consulted in its preparation and that it was only ‘an essay’ written by an expatriate Sri Lankan.

 When the Indian government updated its Foreign Trade Policy last year, they got all stakeholders including exporters, trade associations, state governments, and even foreign missions involved in the process. But Sri Lanka’s New Trade Policy seems to have been formulated without any such process and had appeared suddenly on Malik Samarawickrema’s ministry website. This was tantamount to a deliberate insult to the professional organizations that had been agitating for a properly formulated national trade policy. In the midst of all this, the government entered into the SL-Singapore FTA without any consultation or discussion with stakeholders. In fact very few people were even aware that such a thing was on the cards until it was suddenly sprung on all of us. Even though a parliamentary debate is to be held next Tuesday on the SL-Singapore FTA, it’s being held after the FTA has been signed and the Customs Dept. instructed to adhere to its provisions. It was this FTA that for the first time opened up virtually the entire Sri Lankan services sector to competition from Singapore. To say that the professional associations have reached boiling point is an understatement.

New Trade Policy from nowhere

Among the main criticisms made at that seminar about the SL-Singapore FTA was the fact that Sri Lanka has undertaken to provide zero duty access to Singapore for 50% of all product lines immediately, and increase this proportion to 80% within various time frames going up to 12 years, without however obtaining any comparable concession for Sri Lanka. All product lines could be exported completely duty free to Singapore even before the FTA. The other matter taken up was the mandatory opening up of the movement of natural persons in categories such as managers, executives and specialists in a context where these phrases are not defined anywhere, not even in the legal text of the SL-Singapore FTA which defines the word ‘day’ but not the words manager, executive or specialist.

 It’s no great wonder that such criticism would be made of the SL-Singapore when it was based on the so called ‘New Trade Policy’ of the present government which itself is a document lacking focus or depth. The Foreign Trade Policy of India is 150 pages long and is very focused whereas Sri Lanka’s new trade policy is just 29 pages and inconsistent in its assertions. This is why the PNF calls it an ‘essay’. The expatriate Sri Lankan who is supposed to have penned this trade policy starts off with the claim that in recent years (meaning the years before the present government came into power) Sri Lanka’s openness to international trade and investment has declined sharply and that the increased ‘protectionism and inward orientation’ have slowed economic growth.

 The NTP states that the main reason for the inward orientation was Sri Lanka’s tariffs and para-tariffs which have increased the level of protection for Sri Lankan domestic industries at the cost of production for exports. It then goes on to state that this results in consumers having to pay more and local producers not being under any pressure to match international quality standards. It states that high levels of protection divert resources from production for export and that tariffs and other measures that protect domestic industries create disincentives to exports by directly raising the price of imported inputs and raw materials and intermediate and capital goods. However, it is a well known fact that any export oriented industry can import inputs and raw materials from overseas for their industries duty free and that this was the whole purpose in establishing free trade zones.

 How then can Sri Lanka’s tariff regime be a dampener on exports? This talk of tariffs protecting local industry applies only to a few product lines such as footware where there are established local industries and the removal of those tarrifs will result in a flood of imported goods that will result in those industries being wiped out. Obviously the writer of this NTP is opposed to giving these few local industries any form of protection. While talking about reducing Sri Lankan tariffs to open the Sri Lankan economy to the outside world, the NTP at the same time talks of the protectionism that is ‘spreading globally’, particularly in the industrialized countries. But it has not said what we should learn from this wave of protectionism that is sweeping through the very countries that once advocated free trade.

 While talking about opening foreign markets for Sri Lanka’s exporters through multilateral, regional and bilateral trade agreements, the NTP acknowledges the sub-optimal performance of the four existing FTAs (now five with the SL-Singapore FTA) with India, Pakistan, SAFTA and APTA. The NTP acknowledges that the preferences accorded under these FTAs are ‘partial and limited’ and are vastly underutilized by Sri Lankan exporters. Non-tariff barriers and stringent rules of origin are said to be among the reasons for the failure of these FTAs. While acknowledging that the FTAs that Sri Lanka have not succeeded because of protectionism at the other end, the NTP still says that most countries have become ‘more open to trade’ whereas Sri Lanka’s economy has become inward-oriented and markedly more protected.

Tripping over one’s

own buzz words

How is it that the top professions that Sri Lanka has deployed to negotiate FTAs could not find countries that have become ‘more open to trade’ to sign FTAs with? If other countries have become more open, why is Sri Lanka having so much trouble trying to export to those countries? This NTP that Minister Malik Samarawickrema has got written, is a classic case of people tripping up over their own buzz words and platitudes. The NTP itself acknowledges that Sri Lanka will take a more strategic approach in future trade and partnership agreements, drawing on the lessons of experience, while simultaneously addressing shortcomings in existing ones. This means that negotiators will identify non-tariff barriers at the onset and address them along with tariff reductions, specify the mutually recognized or agreed standards, clarify and negotiate rules of origin that best serve its industry requirements, and aim to make market access more predictable for Sri Lankan exporters.

 What the NTP has failed to state is that if it so difficult to negotiate more openness, then there must be less openness in the world than we think there is! It is observed in ths NTP that Sri Lanka’s high tariffs and para-tariffs are also motivated by the need to raise revenue for the government through trade taxes at the border which is relatively easy to levy. This is true. The biggest single item of revenue for the Customs Dept are the taxes on vehicles which the present government too has been plumbing for all they are worth. There is nothing in the NTP which shows how the government is going to meet the shortfall in revenue caused by the reduction or elimination of tariffs. The NTP is replete with the usual jargon such as improving firms’ ability to compete with imports, but without any indication as to how this will be achieved by removing tarrifs.

One concession to commonsense made in the NTP is with regard to the agricultural sector where it is observed that because any change in import policy may have a negative impact on incomes of farmers and prices of essential consumer goods, the government needs to be cautious in reforming tariffs and other levies at the border and that given the importance of agriculture in Sri Lanka, it is imperative for the government to formulate the long-term trade policy as an integral part of a comprehensive agricultural development strategy for the country. Such a policy should accord high priority to food security, livelihood and rural development, employment, and poverty reduction on one hand, and the improvement of productivity on the other.

 The NTP observes that many of the poor can benefit greatly from trade liberalization insofar as it reduces the cost of staples, or creates new export opportunities but some can also be hurt by the lower prices of that which they produce. Trade reforms in the most sensitive sectors will be carried out cautiously with these considerations in mind and, where possible, mechanisms will be put in place to facilitate the migration of workers out of those sectors. This last point seems to indicate that whoever wrote this ‘essay’ on trade policy has the Singapore model in mind and forgets that this is a real country and not a city state. We have a semi-urban and rural hinterland unlike Singapore. The PNF is right in rejecting the NTP that the yahapalana government has put forward. What this country needs is a proper foreign trade policy modeled on that of neighbouring India which is formulated after taking the needs of the economy of the country and after extensive consultations with all stakeholders.

Power Struggle In The Indian Ocean & Sri Lanka’s Foreign Policy

By Ranil Wickremesinghe –JULY 15, 2018

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe

Four Centuries of Western domination in the Indian Ocean has come to an end. Asian nations are re-emerging as Economic and military powers. This has brought a new focus on Asia and the long neglected Indian Ocean region. It also gives Sri Lanka’s foreign policy a new impetus to play a significant role in the region.

The foreign policy of newly independent Sri Lanka under Prime Minister DS Senanayake focussed on Asia

* Supported the independence struggle in Indonesia

* Recognized the Peoples Republic of China and

* Called for a formal peace treaty with Japan.

* Sri Lanka and Australia proposed the Colombo Plan at the Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Conference held in Colombo in 1950

* Entered into the Rubber-Rice Pact with China in 1952

Thereafter Sir John Kotalawela took the initiative to summon India, Myanmar, Pakistan and Indonesia the other Asian powers to meet in Colombo, in April 1954. The phrase non-alignment was used for the first time at this meeting. The Asian powers in turn summoned the 1955 Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung which was also attended by China and Japan.

The next step was a large gathering which included non-Afro Asian nations.

In 1956 Nehru, Nasser and Tito signed a declaration in Yugoslavia calling for a Non-Aligned Movement. Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka one of the initial conveners of the first meeting of the Non Aligned Movement played an important role during her tenure in office including holding the 1976 Summit in Colombo. Sri Lanka’s foreign policy adjusted its focus accordingly. It was necessary during the height of cold war period.

The Colombo Summit was also during the peak of the NAM. However subsequent Soviet-American detente NAM declined in importance. Thereafter, the Movement was left to re-define its relevance after the collapse of the Soviet Union brought the cold war to an end. This collapse followed by the global financial crisis of 2012, has seen the major transformation of the global order. Following the end of the conflict in Sri Lanka, and related Human Rights issues that arose, Sri Lanka since January 2015, has introduced a new multi-pronged approach to re-position itself in the regional order.

New developments in the region and beyond have re-established the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean. The rapid growth of the East Asian, ASEAN and the Indian economies all dependent on international trade has resulted in the Indian Ocean becoming the lifeline of Asian Economies.   The oil and gas from the Persian Gulf have to pass through this largely enclosed water body controlled by choke points. As a result the Indian Ocean sea-lanes of communication, one of the busiest in the world, is vital for the smooth functioning of the emerging geo-energy era. The most important Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC) runs past Sri Lanka making it a strategic location for the control and safety of the sea lanes and communication lines. It gives Sri Lanka the opportunity of becoming the Hub of the Indian Ocean as well.

The control of the strategic foothold of the SLOC and the choke points in the Indian Ocean enables the control of the energy. This has resulted in a number of geopolitical issues coming to the fore.

* China recognizing its strategic vulnerability in the Indian Ocean and has sought to reduce its vulnerability.

* As a result of China’s challenge to the US in the Pacific, the US is obviously concerned about a possible Chinese expansion in the Indian Ocean.

* India the strongest power among the Indian Ocean littoral states as well as several other states are concerned about a possible change in the status quo.

* Japan, Australia and several other countries in the region and beyond are committed to a free maritime order in the Indian Ocean.

This political interplay in the Indian Ocean is in danger of becoming a major centre of tension. A power struggle in the Indian Ocean will no doubt also adversely affect Sri Lanka’s objective of becoming the hub of the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka’s future prosperity depends on the stability of the Indian Ocean. A power struggle in the Indian Ocean also risks making the littoral states into spectators in the Indian Ocean.

The Indo-Pacific Strategy is a concept recently articulated by the USA. China appears concerned that this strategy could contain China in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and thereby increase its strategic vulnerability. Speaking at the Shangri-la Summit in Singapore, Prime Minister Modi reassured “India does not see the Indo-Pacific Region as a strategy or as a club of limited members. Nor as a grouping that seeks to dominate. And by no means do we consider it as directed against any country.” Let this be the starting point.

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Disruptive economy and poverty of knowledge: Sri Lankans have a lot to learn

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A new definition of the poor

Monday, 16 July 2018 

The poor are usually defined as those who are below a given level of income that would be insufficient to meet their basic needs. In my view, the poor – no matter whether it is an individual, family or a nation – are those who are unable to read the oncoming information logically, assess the risks posed or opportunities offered to them and take measures to minimise risks or augment prospects. In this sense, we all are poor.

Disruptive economy and poverty of knowledge Sri Lankans have a lot to learn.docx by Thavam on Scribd