Threat to world court: Trump provokes emergence of dangerous world order

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 2018-09-14 

Months after United States troops invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, Mazar-i-Sharif earned the notoriety as the city of torture and extrajudicial killings, quite at variance with its worldwide fame as the city of Islamic and Hellenic architectural glory.  

It was also as paradoxical as it is shocking, for at the centre of the torture allegations was the United States, a country which till the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington DC had been seen to be championing human rights and democracy worldwide.

At the Mazar-i-Sharif prison, it is alleged that hundreds of detainees were subjected to severe forms of torture. Many died there or were taken to the nearby desert and killed.  ‘Massacre at Mazar’ was a name of a documentary Scots film producer Jamie Doran made. It was shown in the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin and the European parliament in Strasbourg in July 2002. What the documentary had exposed was corroborated by a report the US Human Rights Group, Physicians for Human Rights, had released the same year. (https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/us-had-role-in-taleban-prisoner-deaths-1-609624).

The then US government advocated a culture of impunity, supporting even forms of torture such as waterboarding to elicit information from terror suspects, while a majority of US citizens, not in a proper state of mind after the shock of the 9/11, remained silent.  Their silence was licence for the George W. Bush administration to commit human rights violations in total disregard for international humanitarian laws and laws on warfare.

The ugly truth behind the US-led war on terror is that the US has committed war crimes and the US will not allow an international tribunal or another nation to bring US war crime suspects to justice.  Now whatever the faults of the US, since World War II ended, the rest of the world looked to it for global leadership.  

If leadership implies followership, the example the US sets with regard to the issue of war crimes only gives rise to a dangerous trend.  Already, with a maverick president in the White House, the international order is fast hurtling towards chaos because of US misbehavior.  

In yet another outlandish move, on Monday, the White House National Security Advisor, John Bolton, sounded like a bully to warn International Criminal Court judges, prosecutors and investigators that they would face sanctions and even arrest, if the world court took action to prosecute US soldiers for alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan.  

Bolton, a neoconservative hawk, said to be one of the architects of the United States’ illegal invasion of Iraq, has many a time in the past spoken contemptuously about international diplomacy which he has slammed as an affront to the US sovereignty.  He once infamously said if the United Nations building in New York “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” Such was his scorn for the UN, though President Bush appointed him as the US ambassador to the UN.

Bolton’s full-scale attack on the ICC is not surprising. That his remarks had the backing of President Trump, who is equally contemptuous about international systems, is also not surprising. After all, Trump, claiming that climate change was a hoax invented by China, had withdrawn the US from the Paris climate deal, the United Nations Human Rights Council and has threatened to end the US membership in the World Trade Organisation. 

The ICC was set up in 2002 after years of negotiations in Rome and elsewhere.  The talks were held at a time when a new world order was emerging after the end of the Cold War. It was a period, when the sole superpower, the US, had been urged to play its global leadership role responsibly -- and more significantly, it was a period when consensus was being built up for an international world order based on respect for and strict adherence to human rights.  This was because the international community was feeling guilty of not taking effective action to stop genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Giving leadership to this campaign was the European Union -- with the US wavering, its eyes wide opened and mind fully occupied with the possible consequences if the Rome Statue was to become a reality, especially with regard to its military plans.  

Though the Bill Clinton administration was somewhat agreeable to the Rome process in principle, the Bush administration, hell bent on launching the neoconservative-scripted wars on nations, was totally opposed to the idea of setting up an international court to try war crimes. The Congress hurriedly passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act to undermine the universal jurisdiction of the ICC.  Washington also began signing bilateral agreements with other nations, preventing them from taking American soldiers to the ICC or trying them for war crimes in domestic courts.  

Even before the 9/11, the US had not been a great respecter of international humanitarian laws or world court judgments. Should we remind ourselves of the US atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the use of Agent Orange chemical weapons in Viet Nam and the use of cancer-causing depleted uranium in Fallujah, Iraq?  In 1984, the US refused to obey an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling which found Washington guilty of placing sea mines in Nicaragua’s waters.  Then in 2003, it invaded Iraq in what was later described by the then United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan as an illegal war.  

On the one hand, alarmed by what it sees as China’s aggressive behaviour or assertive diplomacy with regard to disputed islands in the South China Sea, the US calls for a ruled-based word order.  But on the other hand, feeling no compunction, it flouts international norms and shakes the foundation of international law, painstakingly wrought through decades or centuries by nations which wished to solve disputes through diplomacy rather than bloodshed.  Such double standards indicate that rules are only for less powerful nations, while big powers can do whatever they think is right or wrong to further their national interests.  

Some may justify such duplicity as part of power politics.  But they need to realise that it will only lead to an anarchical global order, where human rights violations and war crimes will be non-issues, with Hitlerite dictators having a field day.  

While, under Trump, the US has squandered its moral right to the mantle of global leadership, China which is gradually replacing the US as the number one world power, is not interested in promoting human rights or democracy.  Perhaps, the only silver lining is the EU, but its outreach is limited.  Need we say more about the evolving world order? The sooner the Americans unseat Trump the better it is not only for them, but also for the rest of the world. 

Manafort will cooperate with Mueller as part of guilty plea, prosecutor says

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to two charges on Sept. 14, and will cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. (Jenny Starrs /The Washington Post)

By Spencer S. Hsu ,Devlin Barrett andJustin Jouvenal-September 14 at 12:53 PM

President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort agreed Friday to provide testimony to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as part of a plea deal that could answer some of the most critical questions about whether any Americans conspired with Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.

The decision to cooperate with Mueller in hopes of a lesser prison sentence is a stunning development, signaling Manafort’s surrender to criminal charges that he cheated the Internal Revenue Service, violated foreign lobbying laws and tried to obstruct justice while opening a new potential legal vulnerability for Trump.

“I plead guilty,” Manafort told U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson at a hearing Friday morning in federal court in the District. As part of his plea, Manafort ­admitted to years of financial crimes to hide his money from the IRS and promised to tell the government about “his participation in and knowledge of all criminal activities.”

Flipping Manafort gives Mueller a cooperating witness who was at key events relevant to the Russia investigation — a Trump Tower meeting attended by a Russian lawyer, the Republican National Convention and a host of other behind-the-scenes discussions in the spring and summer of 2016.

“This is a big win for Mueller’s team. Gaining Manafort’s cooperation has always been viewed as the Holy Grail of this investigation,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “It now remains to be seen what Manafort can provide, but it is unlikely that prosecutors would have been willing to strike this deal unless they were already convinced that he has valuable information.”

Court papers indicate Manafort was talking in detail to prosecutors at least as early as Monday — making multiple statements and a written proffer to investigators as the two sides worked toward a deal.

Kathleen Manafort, left, wife of Paul Manafort, enters federal court in Washington on Friday. (Keith Lane for The Washington Post)

In return for his cooperation, Manafort hopes to have years shaved off a potential 10-year prison sentence and see his family hold on to some property.

Kevin Downing, an attorney for Manafort, gave a brief statement outside the courthouse after the hearing. “He wanted to make sure his family remained safe and live a good life,” Downing said of Manafort. “He has accepted responsibility.”

When asked whether the deal with Mueller’s team is a full cooperation agreement, Downing replied, “It is.” He did not respond to questions about whether Manafort has been interviewed by Mueller’s team or whether Manafort’s defense team remains in a joint defense agreement with Trump’s attorneys.

[Manafort is the fifth Trump campaign team member to plead guilty to criminal charges. Here’s what he’s charged with.]

Manafort’s defenders have long insisted that he would not cooperate with Mueller and that he does not have information that would incriminate the president.

Before he joined the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort made a name for himself in the D.C. lobbying world, but his past caught up with him. (Dalton Bennett , Jon Gerberg, Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)

Manafort’s cooperation was first revealed by prosecutor Andrew Weissmann at the outset of the hearing.

Jackson noted that Manafort had agreed to cooperate “fully and truthfully” with the investigation conducted by the office of special counsel, including participating in interviews and debriefings, producing any documents in his control, testifying, and agreeing to delay sentencing until a time set by the government.

Under the terms of the deal, Manafort faces a possible maximum prison sentence of about 10 years, though that does not include any likely sentence for his conviction last month in Virginia. His attorneys may seek a lower sentence, and prosecutors did not agree to recommend any sentence.

Before Manafort pleaded guilty, Weissmann spent about 40 minutes describing in detail Manafort’s criminal conduct — from a 10-year scheme to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, to hiding millions of dollars he earned from that work, and then, when investigators were on his trail, trying to tamper with witnesses in the case.

After a year of denying the charges and fighting them at every stage of the investigation, Manafort admitted Friday that he did what prosecutors had long said — cheat the IRS out of $15 million and lie repeatedly to try to cover his tracks. While he pleaded guilty to just two of the seven charges he faced at trial, prosecutors forced him to admit to the broad scope of his financial and secret lobbying schemes.

“I believe it’s fair to say that’s probably the longest and most detailed summary that ever preceded this question, but is what the prosecutor said a true and accurate description of what you did in this case?” Jackson asked Manafort.

“I did. It is,” Manafort said, resting both hands on the lectern before him.

The deal will preempt Manafort’s trial scheduled for this month. Manafort pleaded guilty to two charges — conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring to obstruct justice.

[From ‘the Count’ to inmate: The fall of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort]

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a brief statement after the announcement. “This had absolutely nothing to do with the President or his victorious 2016 Presidential campaign,” she said. “It is totally unrelated.”

Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani said: “Once again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign. The reason: The president did nothing wrong.”

A criminal information — a legal document filed by prosecutors to detail the criminal conduct to be admitted by the defendant — was filed in advance of the plea.

The document is a laundry list of Manafort’s admitted criminal conduct, including funneling millions of dollars in payments into offshore accounts to conceal his income from the IRS. “Manafort cheated the United States out of over $15 million in taxes,” the document states.

The filing also offers new details about the various ways in which Manafort sought to surreptitiously lobby the U.S. government and influence American public opinion toward Ukraine.

In 2012, Manafort set out to help his client — Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych — by tarnishing the reputation of Yanukovych’s political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, according to the document. “Manafort stated that ‘[m]y goal is to plant some stink on Tymo,’ ” according to the document. At the time he made that statement, he was trying to get U.S. news outlets to print articles saying Tymoshenko had paid for the murder of a Ukrainian official, according to the criminal information.

The document also says Manafort “orchestrated a scheme to have, as he wrote in a con­temporaneous communication, ‘[O]bama jews’ put pressure on the administration to disavow Tymoshenko and support Yanukovych.” Manafort set out to spread stories in the United States that a senior U.S. Cabinet official “was supporting anti-Semitism because the official supported Tymoshenko,” according to the document.

At one point, Manafort wrote to an associate: “I have someone pushing it on the NY Post. Bada bing bada boom.” The document does not identify the then-Cabinet official, and it was not immediately clear whether such an article was published.

As part of the plea deal, the government plans to seize five properties worth millions of dollars, including Manafort’s apartment in Trump Tower. The deal also calls for forfeiture of a handful of financial accounts and a life insurance policy.

The guilty plea is another reversal for Manafort, who has fought vociferously — but unsuccessfully — against Mueller’s investigation. The 69-year-old political consultant was convicted last month in Alexandria, Va., federal court on charges of bank and tax fraud.

Manafort’s cooperation with Mueller could provide investigators new evidence or leads to chase; the guilty plea, however, will prevent weeks’ worth of headlines about the trial in the month before congressional elections.

The longtime lobbyist resigned from his position as Trump campaign chairman in August 2016 amid increasing scrutiny of his work in Ukraine.

[Who did Paul Manafort and Rick Gates work for in Ukraine and Russia?]

Over a 40-year career, Manafort redefined and expanded Washington’s influence industry domestically and internationally, parlaying successful campaigns into lobbying opportunities. But by the mid-2000s, there were signs that his consulting career had slumped, and at times his finances appeared to be shaky. It was in Ukraine that he revived both — in ways prosecutors say violated the law.

Both cases brought against Manafort by the special counsel stemmed from his work in Ukraine. The jury in Virginia found that Manafort hid millions of dollars he made there to avoid paying taxes and then lied to get loans when the political party that was paying him was ousted from power and the funding dried up.

In the trial scheduled in Washington, Manafort faced charges of conspiring against the United States, money laundering, failing to register as a lobbyist, making false statements and conspiring to obstruct justice by trying to influence witnesses.

Manafort had the choice to consolidate both cases into one but declined. He had been jailed since June as a result of the witness-tampering charges.

[Paul Manafort moved to Alexandria jail, a past home to spies and terrorists]

He has yet to be sentenced in Virginia, where legal experts say he faces eight to 10 years in prison under federal guidelines on the eight of 18 counts on which he was convicted. A mistrial was declared on the remaining 10 charges after jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict.

In the months leading up to the plea deal, law enforcement officials had come to suspect that Manafort’s legal strategy rested in part on hoping to win a pardon from the president, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

Trump has sought advice from attorneys on the possibility of pardoning Manafort and other aides accused of crimes, Giuliani previously told The Washington Post, and was counseled against pardoning anyone involved in the Mueller probe. Trump agreed to wait at least until the investigation ends, Giuliani has said.

Manafort’s decision to cooperate and provide evidence to Mueller may make a pardon less likely.

Several defendants have cooperated or pleaded guilty in connection with the special counsel’s probe, including Manafort’s former right-hand man Rick Gates; former national security adviser Michael Flynn; and former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who was sentenced to 14 days in jail last week after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI.

The decision by Trump’s ­onetime personal attorney Michael Cohen to plead guilty last month in a federal investigation in Manhattan particularly angered the president, who denounced him as a “flipper” and praised Manafort for being a “brave man” who would not break under pressure from prosecutors.

Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Jackman, Philip Rucker and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.

Liberation Movement of Tibet Need Greater Vigour

Freedom for Tibet will come sooner or later but the sustained and determined efforts to inject greater vigour into the liberation movement is the greatest need of the day.

by N.S.Venkataraman-Sep 14, 2018

Sep 14, 2018

( September 14, 2018, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) With the characteristic arrogance that aggressors are known to exhibit, Chinese premier Li Keqiang has said that Tibet is inseparable part of China’s “sacred” territory. It is not clear as to what the Chinese premier meant when he used the term sacred territory while referring to the present occupation of Tibet by China , though the fact and the ground reality is that China invaded Tibet, massacred large number of protesting Tibetans and which forced the revered leader the Dalai Lama to flee from Tibet along with his followers in 1959.

While China has been occupying Tibet for over six decades now, it has not succeeded so far in integrating the Tibetans living in Tibet with mainstream China . Under China’s occupation, Tibet continues to remain as isolated part of China. It is very well known that China is now controlling and administering Tibet with strong arm tactics and vice like grip, resulting in violation of human rights and suppression of freedom.

To conceal it’s acts of human rights violation in Tibet to put down any liberation movement , China has been consistently denying permission to foreigners to visit Tibet and see the conditions for themselves. Chinese government has been routinely denying the request from journalists and human rights activists from across the world to visit Tibet.

Recently, key Congressional committee in USA has unanimously passed a crucial bill on Tibet, under which Chinese officials responsible for discriminating against Americans who try to enter Tibet will be banned from entering US.

The bill titled “The Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act”, seeking unhindered access to Tibetan areas to US officials , journalists and common citizens , something which is routinely denied by the Chinese government, now moves to the House of Representatives. The legislation is to ensure that Americans are given the same access to Tibet that Chinese citizens have to the US. It was passed by the House Judiciary Committee.

This is a very significant move in USA that would bring to light China’s aggressive control of Tibet .

While China’s aggression and occupation of Tibet is the fact and almost the entire world thinks that Tibet has been the victim of China’s expansionism and greed for territory, the world has largely remained silent on this issue without openly condemning China and extending support for the cause of Tibet’s freedom and liberty.

United Nations Organisation, which is supposed to be the forum to ensure world peace and justice and echo the voice of countries which are the victims of aggression , has practically done nothing to support Tibet’s cause . UNO has virtually ignored the Tibetan issue as if it is a non issue.

Even countries like USA and India have approved Chinese occupation of Tibet , leaving the Tibetans high and dry for all practical purposes.

Tibetans in exile who are now spread in various countries around the world are thoroughly disappointed that the world remains unconcerned about the plight of Tibetans . They seem to be now wondering whether Tibet would become a liberated country at any time soon.

The recent announcement of the Dalai Lama that he would welcome autonomy status for Tibet under overall Chinese government has sent confusing signal around the world, both among the Tibetans and friends and sympathisers of Tibet. While the Dalai Lama made this announcement, Chinese government has virtually ignored the Dalai Lama’s stand on acceptance of autonomy status for Tibet and has not reacted at all .

In such circumstances, Tibetans should realize that any plea for autonomy status for Tibet would be a non starter and such reconciliation to accept autonomy status would only help in diluting and diverting the cause of liberating Tibet from China’s occupation.

While Tibetans in exile have formed a government in exile and has some symbolic structures like parliament etc., Tibet liberation movement is yet to make visible impact in world forums.

The pre requisite is that the Tibetans need to recognize the fact that the movement is yet to gain the type of vigour , strength and force that will propel it to achieve the objective of retrieving the sacred land of Tibet.

There is certainly an urgent need to put greater energy into the movement for liberation of Tibet from China and stronger campaign has to be carried out.

While it is upto the Tibetans and their friends and supporters to carve out the methodology for putting greater vigour into their movement , there is no doubt that the world will support the Tibetan cause, if the world would be well informed about the injustice done to the Tibetans.

Freedom for Tibet will come sooner or later but the sustained and determined efforts to inject greater vigour into the liberation movement is the greatest need of the day.

Italy's Salvini likens African immigrants to 'slaves'

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini speaks during a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Milan, Italy, August 28, 2018. REUTERS/Massimo Pinca

SEPTEMBER 14, 2018

VIENNA/ROME (Reuters) - Italian far-right leader and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini likened African immigrants to slaves at a European conference on Thursday, drawing an angry response from Luxembourg’s foreign minister, who cursed at him in frustration.

Salvini, who heads the League party, has led a popular crackdown against immigration since Italy’s coalition government took office in June. He was speaking at a closed-door session of a conference on migration and security hosted by Austria, which holds the rotating European Union presidency.

“I heard someone say we need immigration because the population is ageing. I see things completely differently,” Salvini told the session in remarks filmed and posted on his Facebook profile.

“I’m paid by citizens to help our young people start having children again the way they did a few years ago, and not to uproot the best of the African youth to replace Europeans who are not having children anymore... Maybe in Luxembourg there’s this need, in Italy there’s the need to help our kids have kids, not to have new slaves to replace the children we’re not having.”

Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign and immigration minister, was sitting a few places down from Salvini and grew visibly angry as Salvini spoke, finally interrupting the Italian in French with “Allez, allez, allez”, suggesting he had gone too far.

“In Luxembourg we had tens of Italian immigrants. They came as migrants, who worked in Luxembourg so that you could in Italy had money to pay for your children,” he said in French, concluding with the exclamation “Merde alors!”.

Asselborn was apparently referring to the decades following World War Two, when several European countries took in migrant workers to meet the demand for labour during a prolonged economic boom.
The conference, which includes some European and African interior ministers as well as EU officials, was due to wind up on Friday afternoon. Salvini was also due to hold a joint news conference with Austrian far-right leader and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache at 4:15 p.m. (1445 GMT) on Friday.

Reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna and Steve Scherer in Rome; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

Burma’s Suu Kyi breaks silence to defend sentencing of two journalists

Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi speaks at the World Economic Forum on ASEAN at the National Convention Center in Hanoi, Vietnam Sept 13, 2018. Source: Reuters

By A. Azim Idris | 14th September 2018 | @AzimIdrisHybrid

AS international outrage grows over the widely-publicised jailing of two Reuters journalists, Burmese (Myanmar) leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday said that the sentencing has “nothing to do with their freedom of expression”.

Even though the United Nation’s human rights body accused her government of waging a war against independent journalism following the jailing of two Wa Lone and Kyaw Seo Oo for violating the country’s laws, Suu Kyi believed there has been no “miscarriage of justice”.

“They were not jailed because they were journalists… well sentence has been passed on to them because the courts have decided that they have broken the Official Secrets Act,” she said during an international economic forum in Vietnam.

“So if we believe in the rule of law, they have every right to appeal the judgement and to point out why the judgement is wrong if they consider it wrong.”

SEE ALSO: Burma has waged war on independent journalism, says UN body 

The UN body released a report on Tuesday which examined five cases, including that of Wa Lone and Kyaw Seo Oo, who were sentenced to seven years prison for violating a local law on state secrets during their probe into the massacre of 10 men from the Rohingya minority.

The report entitled “The Invisible Boundary – Criminal prosecutions of journalism in Myanmar”, which examined freedom of the press since Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) came to power in 2015, said it had become “impossible for journalists do to their job without fear or favour”.

Both men were nabbed in December last year, later claiming trial to accusations of being in possession of secret documents belonging to the government. During trial, they told the court the papers were handed to them by two police officials at a restaurant in Yangon, moments before they were arrested.

The group Reporters Without Borders estimates that around 20 journalists were prosecuted last year in Burma.

Despite the outcry, the Burmese government has insisted that the jailing of the two journalists under the colonial-era Official Secrets Acts did not involve hidden hands and was done in accordance to due process.

Detained Reuters journalist Wa Lone speaks to the media while leaving Insein court in Yangon, Myanmar July 9, 2018. Source: Reuters/Ann Wang

Suu Kyi also advised those against the sentencing to read the court’s summary on the verdict.

“And if anybody feels there has been a miscarriage of justice then I would like them to point it out,”

According to Reuters, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley described Suu Kyi’s remarks as “unbelievable”.

Heyley’s response appeared to be the sharpest direct public rebuke of the Burmese leader by a US official.

“First, in denial about the abuse the Burmese military placed on the Rohingya, now justifying the imprisonment of the two Reuters reporters who reported on the ethnic cleansing. Unbelievable,” Haley wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

SEE ALSO: Thailand: Police shutdown press discussion on Burma Rohingya Crisis 

At another news briefing, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Washington disagreed with many of the comments Suu Kyi had made and added that the journalists should be released immediately.

“That verdict calls into question press freedom in Burma,” she said.

“The fact that those journalists were convicted despite testimony by police that they were ordered to frame those journalists, that in our view raises serious concerns about the judicial independence and the fair trial guarantees they are supposed to have in that country,” Nauert said.

“We continue to urge the government of Burma to take action immediately to correct this injustice.”

Interview-‘The first cut I saw, I puked’: the story of MIA’s turbulent new documentary

MIA, real name Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer
From footage of a fragmented immigrant upbringing to arguing with Elastica and upstaging Madonna, director Steve Loveridge and MIA discuss 2018’s most illuminating pop doc

Fri 14 Sep 2018 

“The first cut he showed me, I puked,” says Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, AKA MIA, “and then I was ill for like four or five days.” She was watching a rough cut of Matangi/Maya/MIA, a documentary about her made by friend Steve Loveridge. The film makes extensive use of MIA’s own home movies. “It was awful when I watched it, the shock of it was insane,” she continues. “The shots with my mum, and us in the bedroom. And there was much more footage of my brother, which was really tough during those times. It still makes me emotional to think about it … ” Her voice trails off. She wipes tears from her eyes: “Yeah, it was very emotional.”

We are in a hotel suite in London. Loveridge is sitting beside her. “Very emotional,” he agrees sympathetically. “Because Maya hadn’t watched the tapes back for years and years.”
“No. I had never watched them back,” MIA cuts in.

“So it was a long time before I showed Maya another cut.” Loveridge says. “I was like: ‘That didn’t go well.’” They both start laughing.

Watch the trailer for Matangi/Maya/MIA – video

MIA and Loveridge have been friends since they were art students in London 20 years ago; two outsiders drawn together, albeit from very different backgrounds. MIA is famously the daughter of a Sri Lankan Tamil resistance leader, and emigrated to London when she was 10; Loveridge grew up in Surrey. “Whenever you went round Maya’s house in those years, there were always incredible amounts of drama happening,” says Loveridge. “So it wasn’t like she was like a normal teenager who’s just obsessed with themselves. Her brother was going to a young offenders’ institute and she wasn’t going to see him for two years, and then her dad came back after no one knew whether he was alive or dead for 10 years. No one had heard a peep out of him. So they’re big family events. For ages, Maya called my film Keeping Up With the Arulpragasams.”

When Loveridge screened the finished film at Sundance earlier this year, MIA didn’t puke, but nor was she unequivocally happy with the result. “He took all of my cool out,” she said at the time, bemoaning the lack of focus on her music. “It’s not the film I would have made.”

That’s the trouble with MIA: there is no single way to tell her story. She doesn’t fit the formats. On the one hand, hers is the story of a self-made artist whose abrasive, lo-fi rap tunes and neon guerrilla stylings encapsulated a global cultural moment, especially via her ubiquitous hit Paper Planes. Taking another angle, it’s the story of an immigrant teen dealing with the drama of her fragmented family and learning to survive in xenophobic 80s Britain. There is also the activist MIA, who uses her position as the world’s most famous Sri Lankan to highlight the ongoing turmoil back home, and the plight of refugees and immigrants worldwide. Yet none of these angles quite captures the brash, fearless, defiant personality who has routinely energised and scandalised pop culture: performing at the Grammys with Jay-Z and Kanye West, heavily pregnant, in a see-through dress; being vilified for a video showing ginger-haired children getting shot in the head; upstaging Madonna by raising her middle finger at their 2012 Super Bowl half-time show (in the film, we see her getting told off backstage, then running away like a naughty schoolgirl).

 MIA with Steve Loveridge. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Guardian

Faced with all this, the challenge is to either make sense of MIA or simply decide that she doesn’t make sense. Many have settled for the latter, but that was never an option for Loveridge. As its three-part title suggests, rather than picking one strand, Matangi/Maya/MIA tells fragments of the whole story. The aim was not to explain MIA’s life but to provide context: “When you see it joined up into a narrative, it has different meaning. It’s suddenly understandable in different ways,” says the director.

Putting the film together took Loveridge nearly 10 years, including several false starts and a few crises of his own. MIA’s US record label (Interscope) and management (Roc Nation) were initially supportive of the project, he explains. “Interscope lined me up with loads of celebrities and channelled it into being a run-of-the-mill Behind the Music-style film,” says Loveridge. He conducted “hours and hours” of interviews with the likes of Kanye West, Spike Jonze, Danny Boyle, Romain Gavras, producer and ex-boyfriend Diplo, and Interscope boss Jimmy Iovine. But by 2013, frustrated by the lack of progress or funds, Loveridge had had enough. “I really couldn’t give a flying fuck,” he posted on his Tumblr. “Count me out. Would rather die than work on this.”

However, after a few personnel changes (MIA seems to go through managers like Spinal Tap went through drummers), Loveridge started afresh, ditching the celebrities and drawing instead on the extensive archive footage MIA had handed over to him. There was more than 700 hours of it, including those domestic scenes, suggesting that MIA had started work on her own bio-doc before her career had even begun. That wasn’t the case, although when Loveridge and MIA first met, she was as much a film-maker as he was. They were both on the film and video course at London’s Central St Martins college. “Jarvis Cocker and Pulp went to St Martins to do that film course before us, so that was the only saving grace,” says MIA.

This was the pre-digital era, when students learned on 16mm cameras and edited by hand. The college had one newfangled digital camera, MIA explains. “You had to sign and wait for a year to get it for 10 days. So when I got access to that camera, which was massive, I just filmed everything, cos you just never knew when you were going to get it again. I never thought that my family stuff was the thing; it was on the back end of tapes I’d shot where I was trying to make art films.

“I reckon about 70% of that film is shot by me, don’t you think?” says MIA to Loveridge. “Maybe about 10% shot by you. No, not even 10.”

“Yeah,” protests Loveridge. “Because some of that really early stuff is shot by me and you don’t even realise.”

MIA: “Which bit?”

Loveridge: “Bits of you putting your jacket on in your house, in 1997.”

MIA: “That is not shot by you!”

Loveridge: “It is shot by me. How are you shooting yourself putting a jacket on?”
MIA: “Because … ”

Loveridge: “You never had a tripod. You were too poor.”

MIA: “Yeah, but I had a shelf.”

There was other footage as well as the Keeping Up With the Arulpragasams material: MIA hanging out – and arguing – with her friend Justine Frischmann of Elastica, who became her entry point into music (MIA shot a video and designed artwork for them); and singing a demo version of Paper Planes with Diplo in her bedroom. There was also footage of MIA’s trip to Sri Lanka, post-college, in 2001. She got a small amount of funding from a TV company to make a documentary about her cousin, who was genuinely missing in action. It was only on arriving in Sri Lanka that she discovered that filming and conducting interviews could get her arrested. So she filmed her family instead. “I really wasn’t prepared in a professional kind of way,” she laughs. That much is confirmed by a clip of MIA setting off from London and forgetting to take one of her cameras, which is still filming her.

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 From left: Nicki Minaj, Madonna and MIA perform during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2012. Photograph: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

At this point, MIA pivots to the serious abuses still going on in Sri Lanka nine years after the civil war officially ended: the 100,000 missing persons still unaccounted for; the mothers still lobbying the government for answers; the irony of her US and UK taxes supporting foreign policies that she opposes. She talks about US influence, Facebook’s connections to Sri Lankan politics, Cambridge Analytica, Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and her former friend Julian Assange (“He has sacrificed so much for belief in truth”).

There is rarely space to accommodate her as both a pop-culture figure and a political activist, yet it is MIA’s mission to combine the two. I turn the question to the director: was there a reason not to focus more on global politics in the film?

“Good question,” says MIA triumphantly, turning to Loveridge to await his response.

“It’s a very complicated story to tell,” says Loveridge, “because the things that Maya is saying need backing up, to not leave her vulnerable to being accused of being paranoid or a conspiracy theorist. And it started to become a completely different film where I’m investigating the Sri Lankan government’s collusion with major social media outlets and 45 minutes ago we were dealing with Justine Frischmann and Elastica.”

Perhaps MIA needs to make her own film. She is taking steps in that direction, having directed her recent music videos herself, such as the epic, migrant-themed Borders, filmed in south India.
“Yeah, I definitely want to try to make a film,” she says. “I keep writing and then stopping cos I get taken into supporting Steve’s film.”

“I just had to rip her away from the typewriter,” says Loveridge sarcastically. “Maya is really into epic sagas. When she reads me her films I’m like: ‘That’s going to cost a fortune.’

There is still time. Most musicians get a doc when their lives or careers are over, but MIA is still only 43. She certainly sounds keener on making films than making new records: “I think I’ll always make music, with people I like making music with, but I can’t do it the way that it demands a female to do it right now. I can’t be bothered to get lip injections and a fake butt and a pair of fake tits.”

“But musicals … ” Loveridge suggests.

She looks at him quizzically.

Loveridge: “ … I think are in a right slump, and I think that would be amazing. We did this art biennale in Kochi in south India, and Maya was invited to exhibit as a visual artist but also perform there, and it was the first time I’d ever seen you work with Tamil drumming and it was so incredible. That I’d just love to see.”
MIA: “As a musical?”

Loveridge: “Yeah. I just think that would be the most incredible thing ever.”
MIA: “Wow. No, I’m writing, like, a Chinese epic.”

Matangi/Maya/MIA is in UK cinemas from Friday 21 September

India’s Suicide Problem

Nearly two in every five women in the world who kill themselves are Indian – Lancet 

( September 14, 2018, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Nearly two in every five women in the world who kill themselves are Indian, according to a Lancet study that says the country’s suicides rates constitute a public health crisis.

The rate of Indian women who die by suicide hnow represents 36.6% of global female suicide deaths. Indian women who died by suicide were more likely to be married, to be from more developed states and, by a large margin, aged below 35. The suicide rate among Indian women was three times higher than what might be predicted for a country with similar geography and socio-economic indicators, the researchers said.

Poonam Muttreja, the executive director of the Population Foundation of India, a public health group, blamed the trend on early marriage – one-fifth of Indian women still marry before the age of 15 – along with male violence against women and other symptoms of a deeply entrenched patriarchal culture.

“Our social norms are very regressive,” Muttreja said. “In the village, a girl is called her father’s daughter, then she is her husband’s wife, and when she has a son, she is her son’s mother.” 62% of women believe it was legitimate for their husbands to beat them.

Around one in four men in the world who die by suicide are Indian, roughly the same proportion as in 1990, the study said. Suicide was also the leading cause of death for young people of both genders but was worse for women.

Read the report here;

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Constitutional reforms: NABF alleges country will be a Federal State

CHATHUSHKA PERERA- SEP 13 2018

Allegations were raised by representatives of the Buddhist clergy that the JVP, the Government, and the TNA is intending to make the country a Federal State through the proposed 20^th Amendment to the Constitution, under the guise of abolishing the Executive Presidency.

These views were expressed at an event organized by the National Academic Bikkhu Forum (NABF), held today (13) with the participation of ordained academics and several members of the Buddhist clergy.

The speakers claimed that the working groups which were engaged in conducting public consultations prior to the drafting of the Constitution were biased. Hence it was urged that the reform process be halted and steps be taken to reinforce the Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance. It was further claimed that if the reforms are implemented, the division of the State would diminish the respect and moral authority guaranteed to the Buddhist clergy under the current Constitution and would ensure the end of Buddhism in the country.

Meanwhile, addressing concerns regarding local food production,  Professor Ven. Induragare Dhammarathana Thera, an academic attached to the Kelaniya University  that the British were responsible for introducing weeds, weedicides, pests and pesticides to the country, which by the time they granted Sri Lankan Independence had destroyed local farming and fertility of the soil. He further claimed that local agricultural researchers of the country are dependent on the internet to conduct research and have never even seen mud.

SRI LANKA: HUNDREDS OF UNIDENTIFIED BODIES DUMPED IN GRAVES: CHIEF JMO LAMENTS VIOLATION OF HUMAN DIGNITY

Nearly 300 unidentified bodies were buried in Colombo’s public graveyards between 2013 and 2018 alone while dozens more are interred in a similar manner around the country.

13/09/2018

From January to August this year, a total of 67 unidentified bodies were brought to the Colombo Judicial Medical Officer (JMO). Only 32 of them were claimed. The remaining 35 were buried by an undertaker contracted annually by the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) for burying unidentified human remains.

Last year, in Colombo, there were, 117 bodies, of which 65 were unidentified and buried. Statistics for the past five years were provided by the JMO office. The total number of bodies that were interred without ever being named between January 2013 and August 2018 is 293. Sri Lanka has no central database, national policy or standard procedures to help identify human remains that have no claimants. “This practice is not ethical,” said Dr Ajith Tennakoon, Chief Consultant JMO (Colombo) and head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology. “They are somebody’s somebody but are buried as unidentified people because nobody comes to claim them.”

“We did not recognise the problem in the past but we now know how these bodies are managed in other countries in a proper, dignified, scientific way,” he continued. “We realise that we are not taking proper steps to identify them. These people are not aliens. This is a question of human dignity.” A lot of bodies are found and brought to hospitals around the country, Dr Tennakoon said. By law they are subjected to an inquest and postmortem examinations. Some have died of natural causes or injuries suffered in accidents while others are homicide victims.

“When it comes to homicides and accidents, the criminal cases cannot proceed without establishing the deceased’s identity,” he pointed out. “I have so many murder cases where the bodies have not been identified.” When a person goes missing, their relatives typically lodge complaints with the police. But neither the JMOs nor the police have access to a collated, central database that could help them tie deaths to missing persons. While photographs and fingerprints are taken, the only database available for comparison is one that houses the details of criminals; there is often no match.

The Colombo JMO office only realised the magnitude of the problem when, in 2013, Dr Tennekoon started gathering data. “We found that there were around100 unidentified bodies every year just in Colombo,” he said. “Just imagine how many there are in other hospitals that don’t record data?”
Most hospitals have insufficient cooler facilities to keep bodies for a long period. Even the Colombo JMO office, which can hold around 30 corpses (identified and unidentified) at any given time, now does not keep an unidentified body for more than 14 days. During this window, an inquest and post-mortem examination must be conducted. Photos are taken and displayed on a notice board while the police are requested to take out media advertisements.

The Colombo JMO office also recently introduced a separate post-mortem data collection form to record details of unidentified and unclaimed bodies. Information such as description of clothing, accessories and physical attributes, including scars, are noted down in details. Toenails are preserved for DNA (again, most hospitals do not have the facilities to store the material).

“We try to complete all this in one month and if nobody claims them, the bodies are disposed of at state expense,” Dr Tennekoon said. The process was introduced to the Institute he heads but he said it should be further developed and extended to jurisdictions under other JMOs.

“When a body is brought, steps must be taken to record information in detail,” he urged. “The data from police and hospitals should go to one central place, ideally the Office of Missing Persons (OMP), so they can match these when there is a complaint. Facilities must be provided to hospitals to store DNA samples. The bodies must also be buried in an identified place in case they need to be taken out later. This is the simplest mechanism to manage these unidentified bodies.”

There must be a national policy and standard operating procedures but none of this can be done if policymakers did not understand the gravity of the problem. “This country has a lot of issues regarding missing persons and I am not talking only of the war,” the Chief JMO said. “Some of these persons may even have been dumped in other parts and buried as unidentified bodies.”
At least three ministries will need to be involved: the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Law and Order. Inquests are carried out under the Criminal Procedure Code and coroners are under the purview of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

The OMP’s interim report released this week also drew attention to this problem. “In order to guarantee proper identification of human remains, expedite ongoing reforms to the legal framework pertaining to inquests into deaths and related protocols, and ensure a multidisciplinary coordination system between institutions responsible for search, recovery and identification,” one of its recommendations read.

But the issue of unidentified dead is not something the MoJ has been looking at in the recent past, said Piyumanthi Peiris, Additional Secretary (Legal). Instead, a task force set up under the Ministry has for several months been deliberating on amendments to the manner in which inquests are conducted in the country. The final report is due.
By Namini Wijedasa/ST