Mamata Banerjee (L), Chief Minister of the eastern state of West Bengal, flanked by N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, calls off sit-in protest in Kolkata, February 5, 2019. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri
KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ended a nearly 48-hour street protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, saying she would mount a national campaign to oust his ruling Hindu nationalists.
Banerjee is rallying regional parties and the main opposition Congress to forge an alliance to beat Modi in elections expected in the next couple of months.
On Sunday night, she started a sit-in in central Kolkata, after the police stepped up an investigation into Ponzi schemes in the state that defrauded thousands of small investors, a probe Banerjee says was ordered by Modi to undermine her administration.
Modi’s government has denied any wrongdoing and said West Bengal authorities had obstructed investigators and even briefly detained them.
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On Tuesday hundreds of supporters cheered as Banerjee announced the end of the protest.
“This dharna (protest) is a victory for the people, victory for the country, victory for the democracy, victory for the constitution. So let us finish it today,” said Banerjee, who leads the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) regional party.
Some opposition leaders including the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, N. Chandrababu Naidu, visited her to express support while others said they backed her campaign against Modi.
Elections are due by May and polls suggest Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is in a tight race against the Congress and regional parties.
West Bengal, which sends the third largest number of legislators to the Lok Sabha, has become a battleground state as the BJP looks to make in-roads in the east to make up for any losses in its northern heartland.
The Supreme Court earlier on Tuesday asked the state police to co-operate in the federal investigation into the fraud schemes.
“TMC is afraid of the growing influence of the BJP in West Bengal and thus is trying to create a hype through this protest,” said Dilip Ghosh, state chief of the BJP.
Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Robin Pomeroy
TAKING selfies and posting them on social media is often derided as a narcissistic, self-absorbed and attention-seeking practice. Filters come in for particular disdain due to the role they play in reinforcing unattainable beauty standards, by making faces lighter, slimmer and wider-eyed than is natural.
Yet feminist, minority and queer activists have argued that selfies can be a way for people to represent and take pride in their identity, sexuality and gender orientation. And recently, my own experiences researching gender, smart cities and urban citizenship in India have led me to see the value of selfies in a new and surprising way.
To that end, we created a WhatsApp group, and asked 11 women to send in diary entries of their daily experiences in the form of images, text, audio or video as they travelled from their homes to the city over the course of six months.
Our participants turned out to be avid selfie takers. But there’s much more to this than a simple rendition of a millennial trend. Their selfies are digital, visual stories from the margins which capture their struggles and accomplishments as they step out from women’s traditional role in the home and navigate the largely male-dominated realm of the city.
Phones for fun and freedom
Getting a personal mobile phone is a significant event in the lives of these women. Families only permit the women to have their own phone after a series of difficult negotiations, as families are anxious that the phones could lead to what families perceive as “transgressive” behaviour, such as disobeying parents, breaking curfew, talking to men, or wearing Western clothes.
Our participants convinced their families that having a phone is essential for keeping safe and staying in touch, when they have to go into the city for “legitimate” reasons such as work or education.
Smartphones usually come at a price which their families cannot afford, so when women start working they often spend their first salary to get one of the cheaper Android devices and pay off the full cost in monthly instalments.
Data is affordable and connectivity can be instantaneous. Having a personal phone gives women the ability to leave the home and communicate with others away from the gaze of the family, so they see it as giving the gift of freedom.
Collage of fun selfies. Source: WhatsApp diary entries
Women celebrate this freedom using the phone’s front-facing camera. Of course, they take selfies for fun, using filters to transform their faces with amusing and outlandish templates.
WhatsApp me aana, facebook me jaana, yeh hai smart zamaana – translated as ‘coming on WhatsApp, going to Facebook, these are the smart times’. – WhatsApp diary entry, 2018.
But they also take selfies to record their visits to different places, celebrate their friendships and mark their coming of age as smart, connected young women, enjoying urban life – even when poor network connectivity means phones frequently crash and apps fail.
The city at arm’s length
Our participants didn’t really regard taking selfies as a political act. But when you consider how, when and where they take selfies the images are a barometer of their social, economic and political exclusion from the city. They speak to the paradoxes experienced by women living in Delhi’s urban peripheries, as both technology – and the city itself – can be at once liberating and dangerous.
In some ways, the selfies show that being in the city is liberating for women, as they represent a new-found freedom outside the home and the constraints of traditional gender roles. Through these selfies, women curate the city at arm’s length, placing themselves in the centre of the frame as they stage their own arrival in many different public places.
Collage of selfies in the city. Source: WhatsApp diaries
But by recording women’s presence at a particular time and place, these selfies also give away what, when and where the women cannot be. For example, selfies are mostly taken during the day, or when they are with a group of friends, in places where there are fewer men, or in familiar neighbourhoods where they feel comfortable and confident.
Very rarely do these women take selfies when they travel alone – because sexually predatory male attention remains a constant feature of their journeys.
Uploading selfies to Facebook also exposes these women to the dangers of online and offline stalking, harassment and bullying. A disturbing picture entry in the WhatsApp diary, captioned “my selfie in a bus full of men”, evoked the Nirbhaya case of 2012 – when a young woman was fatally gang-raped on a bus – and suggested that the selfie is also a way for these women to witness and record danger in their everyday life.
Phones between the home and the city
Selfies inside the home are largely absent in the WhatsApp diary entries. Although home is valued by their families as private – and therefore safe for women, our participants often viewed it as a place of confinement.
Home is where the women’s daily struggles with poor infrastructure for drinking water, sanitation, waste collection and transport take place. More significantly, family control over women’s bodies – through strict curfew hours and restrictions on where they can go – highlight older and younger generations’ very different understandings of freedom and danger.
While older generations who grew up without mobile phones are mainly concerned about women’s physical safety, the young women in our research have to deal with daily invasions of privacy, sexual harassment and abuse both at home and in the city, online and in real life.
Their selfies tell a story about what it’s like to navigate the journeys between home and the city, as the boundaries between public and private, freedom and danger become increasingly blurred in these “smart times.”
Incumbent asks how long Juan Guaidó will persist with his ‘virtual presidential term’ Juan Guaidó (left) , who declared himself interim president last month, and Nicolás Maduro. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Nicolás Maduro has issued a thinly veiled threat to the young opposition leader trying to force him from power, hinting that Juan Guaidó could soon be imprisoned as a result of his challenge.
“Until 2025, too?” Maduro said, referring to the six-year term he recently assumed to a storm of international condemnation. “Or until he ends up in jail by order of the supreme court of justice.”
Western diplomats have expressed surprise that, nearly two weeks after he threw the gauntlet down to the incumbent leader, Guaidó remained a free man. Many attributed that fact to warnings from his key backer, the United States, that any move against him would have consequences.
Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, has said that violence against or intimidation of Guaidó or other opposition leaders “would represent a grave assault on the rule of law and will be met with a significant response”.
Venezuelan state media have intensified their campaign against Guaidó and his growing list of international backers in recent days, claiming that they risked plunging the country into war.
On Monday, a succession of European governments, including Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and Spain, recognised Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader after Maduro rebuffed their call for presidential elections.
During an interview on Tuesday morning on the state-run channel Venezolana de Televisión, the Socialist party politician Gerardo Sánchez said “squalid” and traitorous members of the opposition would be treated “like enemies of the homeland” if their actions sparked foreign military intervention.
Speaking on Monday night, Maduro again railed against “Donald Trump’s extremist policies” towards Venezuela and gave no hint he was preparing to stand aside.
Maduro also condemned US-backed plans to send convoys of humanitarian aid to Venezuela’s western and southern borders later this week as a provocation designed to humiliate his country and his government.
“With this show of humanitarian aid they are trying to send a message: ‘Venezuela has to go begging to the world!’ And Venezuela will not beg for anything from anyone in this world,” he said.
Some observers fear that the aid convoys risk sparking – or may even be designed to spark – a confrontation with Venezuelan troops loyal to Maduro. On Monday, Guaidó urged members of the military to allow the aid into his economically-collapsed country.
In Cúcuta, the busiest crossing on Colombia’s 1,378-mile (2,219 km) border with Venezuela, warehouses were filled with boxes of aid which began to arrive on Sunday evening. Photos shared on social media on Saturday by Mark Green, the head of USAid, showed boxes of food being prepared for delivery, emblazoned with a US flag.
Though it is not yet known how the aid will be delivered to Venezuela, Colombian officials with knowledge of the process said it was an operation lead by Guaidó from Caracas in coordination with US aid workers and regional governments. On Monday, Canada pledged $40m (£31m) of aid destined for Venezuela, while the US last week promised $20m.
The man Britain now recognises as President of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, has called on European countries to provide more aid. Speaking to Channel 4 News, he said 300,000 Venezuelans were in desperate need and might even die without more assistance.
His comments come after the sitting President, Nicolas Maduro, said an American plan to bring humanitarian aid into the country was a pretext for military intervention.
The US-style bar-shaped version of the drug is the form that is most commonly traded among teenagers - like this group, there are many counterfeit versions
By Chi Chi Izundu-4 February 2019
The coroner for Northern Ireland has called the rising number of deaths linked to fake versions of the anti-anxiety drug, Xanax, "an escalating crisis".
Joe McCrisken says he is signing off an alprazolam-related death nearly once a week.
He says "most of the deaths" are caused by counterfeit versions of Xanax, the brand name for the drug alprazolam.
"The deaths are a very tiny tip of what is a very huge iceberg," he says.
Xanax is used to treat anxiety and panic attacks. It is not available on the NHS. It is a powerful tranquiliser.
But it can be obtained on private prescription in the UK, is widely prescribed in the US, and counterfeit versions circulate on the black market.
Last year, the BBC found that children as young as 11 were being treated by ambulance services after taking fake versions of it.
Mr McCrisken said the number of deaths linked to alprazolam in Northern Ireland had risen from one in 2015, to 26 in 2017.
"In 2018, it's looking like that might double to somewhere around 50 provisionally.
"That's an indication of not an emerging crisis, but an escalating crisis. It's a very real public health concern."
Case study: My head was away
Paul, 20, started taking counterfeit Xanax from the age of 17 after being introduced to it by a friend. He said he initially took it to help with his anxiety.
"It made me feel happy. It made me feel like a different person, as if all your problems have gone, it made you feel like you needed it. But at the same time like you didn't really need it. But that's when all the bad stuff started happening.
"My head was away. I started fighting with my family, I tried to stab my mum, I was going to stab my dad, getting into fights, getting into debt."
Paul admitted to taking other drugs - but said fake Xanax had the worst effect on him as he had no idea whether it had been cut with other substances.
Counterfeit Xanax
"It's made me psychotic and stuff and made me not be able to control my anger.
"People nowadays are just playing Russian roulette with tablets, they're just trying to see what the next hit is.
"But it's not worth it. Too many young people are dying from the fake stuff going about."
Paul says he is exceptionally lucky to still be alive, considering his abuse of the tranquiliser and other drugs.
"One night I took 56 of them. That was on a Friday. And I didn't wake up until the Sunday. That's when I went round to my Mum's and smashed her TV, then had her pinned up against the car. I didn't know what I was doing.
"I didn't think I would make it to the age of 20 because of the stuff I was doing. They make you suicidal.
Paul says he would buy fake versions of Xanax "bars" to feed his addiction
"Even after I am off it, I still have to deal with the voices in my head. I have to still deal with all the mental health problems."
Paul said dealers would offer the drug to passers-by on the street.
"It's silly because you'll have 13-year-old kids running about trying to sell you the drug on the street corners."
Paul underwent a residential rehab treatment and has been clean for just under a year.
Huge concern
Mr McCrisken said when he started the job three years ago, he had never heard of counterfeit Xanax.
"The alprazolam powder is being obtained from the Far East, I was told in one inquest, and then pressed in the UK and sold on the dark web."
Because Xanax is not available on the NHS in the UK, Mr McCrisken believes almost all the deaths linked to the drug in Northern Ireland are from counterfeit versions.
"We can't underplay this; it's hugely concerning. The sheer escalation of deaths, involving alprazolam as well as other drugs, but particularly that one, as a coroner, concerns me.
"This is one that seems to have emerged out of nowhere, really, and it's escalated to a degree where it should be concerning everybody."
He added that the problem was UK-wide. Figures from Scotland showed a four-fold increase in deaths related to alprazolam from 24 in 2016 to 99 in 2017.
Peter Burkinshaw is the drug and alcohol lead for Public Health England.
"We've got no evidence that there is a very widespread epidemic of its use, but we're certainly clear that its use is increasing," he said.
"And we can see it in various data sets, we can see it in police seizures data, we can see it in hospital admissions data and we can see it amongst young people coming into treatment centres for help."
Dr Michael McKenna is concerned about fake Xanax misuse among his patients
In December, Public Health England released figures showing the number of young people being treated for addiction to benzodiazepine drugs like alprazolam.
Dr Michael McKenna, a GP at Falls surgery in Belfast, said counterfeit Xanax has become a particular problem among his patients over the last six months.
He is mainly treating teenagers and people in their early 20s.
"We had a number of drug deaths over the Christmas period and I've heard Xanax being mentioned as one of the drugs that has been taken.
"We'll know when the post-mortem findings come out."
Students at Jaffna Unviersity removed the Sri Lankan ‘Lion’ flag and instead raised black flags at the campus to mark Sri Lanka’s Independence Day today.
04 February 2019
Banners were seen around the campus stating the day was a ‘Black Day’ for Tamils on the island, as like previous years, demonstrations took place across the island to mark the occasion.
Whilst the Sri Lankan military held several parades, including in the Tamil homeland, banners at the university denounced the military occupation.
“Army! Leave our native land,” read one banner.
Another banner said,
“Who transferred out independence from the colonial to chauvinism.”
Demonstrations also took place across the North-East with Tamils holding black flags in protest at the celebrations by the Sri Lankan state for independence day, arguing that the Tamil nation was not free and lacked even basic rights such as land rights.
Sri Lanka enters its 71st year of Independence with political uncertainty in the air. The only certainty is that 2019 will be a year of elections. Presidential elections have to be held in November. There is a likelihood that provincial and general elections will be held either before or soon after the presidential elections depending on the calculations of the government that is in power.
Once again, as in the past, the main Tamil political parties did not attend the Independence Day celebrations. It appears that the Tamil polity is increasingly alienated from the mainstream polity which is not a positive sign. In 2015 after the election of President Maithripala Sirisena the TNA attend the Independence Day celebrations. This was the first time for over four decades by leaders of the mainstream Tamil political parties.
The last time they attended the ceremony was in 1972 prior to the passage of the first Republican Constitution. The 1972 Constitution was passed without accepting any of the proposals made by the mainstream Tamil parties, which saw the worsening of the political alienation of the Tamils from the Sri Lankan polity. A political solution has still to happen, even though Sri Lankans have had 71 years to work out the answer.
In his Independence Day message this year, President Maithripala Sirisena implicitly spoke of the need for a new path when he said, "Having gained independence from imperialist rulers, as a nation, we expected a political, socio-economic and cultural forward march, with a unique national identity free of colonial shackles. To entrust the future of the nation to minds enslaved by imperialism for more than a century, is more dangerous than being under colonial rule itself."
POSITIVE FEATURES
Today it is taken for granted that British colonial rule laid the seeds for the ethnic conflict in the country through divide and rule policies and that the British used the Tamil minority to rule the Sinhalese majority. The disproportionate numbers of Tamils and religious minorities who were at the higher levels of the colonial administration is provided as evidence for this assertion.
The negative aspect of this type of analysis is that is that it seeks to absolve Sri Lankan’s from the responsibilities for our own failures. Sri Lanka’s transition to Independence was peaceful. It was unlike in India where partition into Hindu and Muslim dominated territories led to mass upheaval and violence that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions as refugees. Sri Lanka did not take this route because the leaders of the main ethnic minorities did not ask for separation in 1948 but only asked for inclusion and a share of political power in a united country.
The democratic political system in which elections with universal adult franchise is one of the positive features of the British colonial experience. Sri Lanka was one of the first colonial territories to receive the adult franchise beginning in 1911. The first Sri Lankan to be elected through elections for the Educated Ceylonese Seat was Ponnambalam Arunachalam from Jaffna. This choice of the voters indicated that ethnicity was not the main dividing line in society at that time.
The problem is that we took the British model of the unitary state, as practiced in 1948, and have continued to utilize it as an article of faith. The British system of government has changed significantly since those days. But we remain trapped in the past.
ALTERNATIVE PATH
At the time that the country got its independence in 1948 Sri Lanka was seen as a possible Switzerland of the East. The British colonial administrator Leonard Woolf who wrote about the injustices that the colonial system brought the rural people in his book "Village in the Jungle" written in 1913 saw Sri Lanka adopting the Swiss cantonal system to accommodate its ethnic and religious diversity.
In a November 1938 Memorandum to the British Labour Party, on the Demands for Reform of the Ceylon Constitution, Woolf advocated "Ensuring a large measure of devolution or even introducing a federal system on the Swiss model." He wrote "The Swiss federal cantonal system has proved extraordinarily successful under circumstances very similar to those in Ceylon, i.e., the co-existence in a single democratic state of communities of very different size, sharply distinguished from one another by race, language and religion." (‘Letters of Leonard Woolf’, ed. Frederic Spotts, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1990, pp. 416-7).
Today the unitary state model in Britain has changed greatly. It has changed to accommodate a parliament in Scotland, a power sharing executive in Northern Ireland and an assembly in Wales. Unfortunately in our 71st year of Independence we politicians whose mindsets are rooted in the past. The main issue they are taking before the people is that the country is in danger of being divided.
Today we have one set of politicians saying that the government’s proposals for constitutional reforms and meant to undermine the unitary state. We have another set of politicians who are proposing to take out the term "unitary state" from the constitution and replace it with Sinhala and Tamil words that they say are its exact equivalents while others say it is not. As a result the level of mistrust of politicians is high when it comes to the issue of constitutional reform.
FUTURE HOPE
On the day before Sri Lanka celebrated its 71st Independence Day, over 250 youth representing 8 districts of the country spanning the North and South and all ethnic and religious communities came together for three days of activities. Most of them had never met each other before, but they had spent two years engaging in training on peacebuilding which included getting to know about the political and social challenges facing the country.
These 250 young people demonstrated that they have the energy and enthusiasm to work across ethnic and religious differences. During the three days they spent together, the young people experienced trust building and problem solving exercises which are the main lacuna in the country today in terms of inter ethnic and inter religious relations.
The hardest problem is to find a solution to the ethnic conflict that is endorsed by all communities. The differences between the parties, even within the government alliance, are very great. The past four years have not been sufficient for them to develop enough trust and understanding between themselves to reach out to each other and compromise on their differences. This is why the draft constitution that has been developed by the expert committee of parliament is not being presented as a formal government document.
The challenge for Sri Lanka is to create a set of common political values that members of all communities can accept that are based on respect for human rights and the rule of law. This is the process that needs to be speeded up through a new constitution that will create citizens who are politically equal, not subjected to discrimination and with the right to determine their own future within a united country whether the constitutional label is unitary or not.
The Postcolonial Sri Lanka has become worse than what it was during Colonial Period: The Sorrow History of How February 4th– the Day of Independence to the Sinhalese has Turned Out to be a Black Day to the Tamils
Sri Lanka has completed a postcolonial era of 70 years, after being freed from the fetters of the colonial rule and she is currently entering the 71styear. We Sri Lankans, who incessantly boast about Sri Lanka’s achievement of independence are not in the least interested to recall the history of the past 71 years, during which the foundation had been laid for the never-ending ethnic conflict. It is, in fact, very unfortunate to note that the same day, which is the day of independence to one particular ethic group has turned out to be a black day to another. Although the British colonial rule (1796 – 1948) had helped to strengthen the ethnic identity of the two main ethnic groups, the changes in the economic structure introduced by the British during this period had an impact on the ethnic relationships between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. This was the cause for affecting the postcolonial relationships between the two main ethnic groups that had been historically interacting socially, economically and politically well with each other. In spite of the fact that such a foundation for ethnic disharmony was laid during the British colonial period, no one would deny the truth that it was only during the postcolonial period, the ethnic conflict has escalated into frequent acts of violence. This article is attempting to analyse from the point of view of the Tamils, the basics that led to their desperate plight during this postcolonial period of 71 years.
Is it Liberation or Political Independence?
February 4th is nationally considered as the day Sri Lanka gained independence. From the point of view of colonialism, this could also be recognized the first day of the postcolonial era. When we review the past political history, the latter description seems more appropriate than the previous one. This is because independence differs from political liberation. As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, the country liberated itself from the British colonialism and thereafter entered into the postcolonial structure.
The fact that a country liberates itself from colonial rule means that it has reached the important stage of autonomy. This is quite evident from the initiatives for development that are being under taken by those countries which achieved political independence. Generally speaking, this could be also inferred from the history of the Asian, African and Latin American countries which after their political liberation paved the way for their people to enjoy the fruits of independence. However, on the contrary, it is unfortunate to observe that ethnic conflicts have erupted in those countries recently liberated from colonialism. In these countries, the majority communities after gaining political authority have started discriminating against the ethnic minorities. Sri Lanka is no exception to such a behaviour. The history of the island’s ethnic conflict proves that such a situation has prevented its people from enjoying the fruits of independence or the self-governing structure.
In fact, Sri Lanka has failed in transforming its liberation gained from colonialism in 1948, “independently” as its own independence. This is quite evident from the series of actions that India – our neighbouring country – had taken in developing itself. Within a short period of its liberation from colonialism, a part of India separated itself from the sub-continent and came to be known as Pakistan. As a follow up, the important task that India undertook was the establishment of a Constitutional Council, designing a suitable constitution and the declaration of India a Republic. The dawn of independence was spoilt by its inevitable partition that led to the formation of Pakistan. Remembering such an undesirable experience and having unshakable faith in the concept of unity “we Indians,” in 1956, the country establishes linguistic states i.e. states based on the language spoken by a group of its people, with the intention of avoiding further division of the country. The demand for separation lost its vigour ever since, and the concept of national integration has steadily gained ground.
India’s struggle against colonialism differed from Sri Lanka’s approach, in the same way as that of the success of India’s postcolonial history in considering its independence as its treasured possession. Even though there existed difference of opinion among those freedom fighters of India, in respect of independent India all of them had a clear view. In other words, what they wanted was that by gaining political freedom India should be liberated from the experiences of its colonial history and postcolonial aspirations of India should be entirely free from their colonial characteristics. This was the reason why India declared itself a Republic soon after it was liberated from colonialism and started building up nationalism by establishing state based on respective languages, with the view to prevent separatism.
Whereas in respect of Sri Lankan leaders – whether they are the leaders of the Sinhala majority community or the leaders of the minority Tamil community – they have failed in fulfilling this historical obligation. This historical failure commences from the struggle for Sri Lanka’s independence. Unlike Indian leaders, the Sri Lankan leaders led their movement with the objective of achieving self-government under the British imperialism. Their objective was to bring about changes in the functioning government as well as in the administration in a peaceful way and through Constitutional changes. Hence the Sri Lankan leaders did not adopt the strategy of the Indian leaders who opposed the British colonialists and strove to gain independence. They preferred to gain self-rule without antagonising the British colonial rulers. In other words, the Sri Lankan leaders did not even think of demanding the British to quit Sri Lanka.
Abhirup Roy-FEBRUARY 5, 2019
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