he eight Muslim students released on February 5 after being found guilty of violating laws that help protect archaeological sites makes Sri Lanka seriously consider the efforts they take to instill discipline in society. What disturbs us most is that these students are undergrads of the South Eastern University’s Engineering Faculty and can be termed as being among the best brains in the country. This poses the question whether the education they received and the intelligence they posses failed to serve them as tools to fathom what’s good and bad in terms of their conduct? Sri Lanka is a Buddhist predominant country and such acts are enough to instigate violence in the society, often targeting the minorities. Muslims have had enough bad experiences regarding such acts in the past and these undergraduates should have known better.
For the record these youth had posted pictures on Facebook of them standing on the ruins of Kiralagala Archaeological Site (Which houses the remain of an ancient Buddhist temple) and paid the penalty of being in remand custody and also paying fines which amounted to over Rs 50,000 each. This incident takes place weeks after the incident in Mawanella where many Buddha statues were vandalized, yet again by Muslim youth. In both these incidents the culprits have been youth who were following higher education and could be termed educated.
Now such incidents can have the effect of adding fuel to fire when they are reported on social media websites. It’s common knowledge that religious tension exists between the Sinhalese and the Muslims at present. When such incidents are reported on social media websites, often subject to exaggeration, the worst of human qualities surface and disturb the peace in the society.
Questions are also posed whether Facebook is competent to figure out hate speech and written content (published in Sinhalese) which can destabilize society? There have been issues with Facebook in the past with the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) once going to the extent of warning Facebook authorities to remove certain harmful content which targeted the minorities; in this case too the party at the receiving end being Muslims. But strangely Facebook chose to ignore GoSL’s pleas. Facebook later accepted there had been an error on its part in not removing the damaging content. Facebook terms these types of posts-which suggested the elimination of this community from Sri Lanka-as high priority content which must be removed. What’s alarming is that Facebook maintains that it has the competency to spot and remove hate speech, despite such posts damaging and dividing society.
Following the trail left by the mischief-makers in Mawanella some interesting facts do surface. According to a father of the youth, who was beaten up by the villagers for vandalising Buddha statues, two organisations, ‘Jamaat-e-Islam’ and ‘Thowheed Jamaat’ are involved in social service in Mawanella and many other parts of the country. There had been one or two Muslim extremists in these organisations who had served them in high positions. One was a preacher and had left the organisation because his views had clashed with those of the organisation. These organisations have over the years promoted peaceful existence between the Sinhalese and the Muslims in Mawanella. Such history gives good indication that a handful of Muslim preachers, known as Maulawees, do promote hatred and distort the peaceful teachings of the sacred Koran.
Critics also point out that newspapers using Sinhala as the medium must also exercise caution when reporting incidents relating to racial tension between these two communities. It is reported that a leading Sinhala daily newspaper had published the names and addresses of suspects arrested for vandalising Buddha statues in Mawanella. Critics opine that this newspaper possibly was aware of there being a threat to these suspects when exposing their identities and whereabouts. Certain newspapers and social media websites are accused of promoting tension between these two communities.
It’s high time that we monitor our youth and check whether they carry ‘germs of hatred’ regarding other religions and communities. If they do their minds need to be cleansed, because if not social media often does act as the wind that spreads such germs!
Sri Lanka is in a state of backwardness and confusion in terms of its knowledge on things as well as the way it thinks. This backwardness and confusion can be seen rooted even in accepted policies of far-reaching consequences – so much so that it has become a common characteristic and a general trend in almost all sectors.
It can also be considered a topic that has not received due attention or been subjected to debate despite it being a significant factor which has adversely affected the progress of the country in many respects. This article intends to explore the way these two factors have resulted in the low progress and downfall of two important sectors, namely education and agriculture.
However, I wish the reader to treat this article only as a general review intended to draw the attention of the authorities concerned and the general public to these two areas rather than provide a comprehensive review of the subject.
Progress made in mathematics
Over a considerable period of time, the rate of students failing in mathematics at the GCE O/L examination remained as high as 65%. Surprisingly, the progress shown in the results of this subject now stands at a very high and exceptional level. Presently, the situation is reversed with the rate of failures coming down to 35% and that of the passes received going up to 65%.
This sudden progress is not an outcome of a gradual progress in the competency of the subject knowledge; nor is it due to an improvement in the teaching techniques either. It is only an outcome of lowering the level of pass marks to as low as 29. This cannot be considered a sound policy that leads to the benefit of students in the long run except for their backwardness and downfall.
The strange thing is that the lowering of the level of pass marks has not generated any opposition or shock among educationists and parents. Instead, it has received the approbation of everyone, so much so that this can be presumed to be the way Sri Lanka rectifies its mistakes.
Over a very long period, the GCE O/L examination was commenced on a Monday. The former Commissioner General of Examinations changed this date to a Tuesday, creating a new tradition. A Member of Parliament had the reason clarified with the Commissioner General of Examinations for changing the date from Monday to Tuesday, which he reported to the Parliament at the same time, creating a pleasant impression on the raison d’ĂȘtre of the Commissioner General of his decision.
According to his explanation, the Commissioner General of Examinations had changed the date from Monday to Tuesday on astrological reasons considering the adverse impact of Rahu kaalaya that prevails at the time of the commencement of the examination on Mondays. Rahu is considered an inauspicious planet and the time under its influence should be avoided in doing any auspicious work. So, he has changed the date in good faith to rescue students sitting for the examination from adverse impact of Rahu.
If this learned Commissioner of Examinations, by some chance, had happened to be the head of the Civil Aviation Authority, the Colombo airport would have been made the only astrological airport in the world that operates air travel taking into account the time of Rahu and the direction in which Mara stands.
This illustrates the degree of freedom enjoyed by people who hold important positions in the administration of the country in managing the institutions under their jurisdiction according to baseless and idiosyncratic beliefs held by them.
There is a practice in schools today in directing students who sit for public examinations to take a vow invoking the blessings of supernatural forces for successful performance in examinations. The teachers themselves take the lead in taking students in groups to the churches, temples and kovils of their choice for this purpose. It can be described as a ritual followed by schools with official approval of the authorities. In some areas, pens that are supposedly magically charmed and blessed with supernatural powers are distributed among students sitting for public examinations.
Such programs are often conducted with the approval and connivance of the school authorities. The extent of degeneration of the education system in Sri Lanka can be discerned from these mythical and superstitious practices associated with examinations.
The object of school education ought to be to disseminate useful worldly knowledge, conducive to building a successful life in this world, rather than sacrificing the present life for a better life in an otherworld. But, the school system in Sri Lanka can be said to have become an institution that promotes credence in paranormal issues and superstitious beliefs among students. The most important point here is that this gullible system which promotes beliefs in primitive superstitions among students has not become a matter of concern and objection of media, the academics or the learned parents.
It appears that rote learning, memorisation based on repetition, has become the main focus of disseminating knowledge to the students in Sri Lanka. The entire school system is based on this system. In the long past, when there were no written languages, the knowledge of one generation was transmitted to the next by memorising the information. This method was known as oral tradition. The system adopted in Sri Lankan schools today in disseminating knowledge to students is more or less similar to the oral tradition adopted in the past.
Accordingly, in Sri Lanka, the students have got accustomed to memorising the knowledge transmitted by their teachers instead of exploring knowledge through critical review and analysis on their own and by themselves. This is a wicked system that kills the creative abilities of the students, but it does not seem to have caused any objection or anxiety in the people.
The school system
The school system can be cited as the best example to illustrate the confusion in the way Sri Lanka thinks. It has become a complex issue when it remains a matter that could be solved easily.
In all developed countries where a sound system of education exists, all schools are classified as primary, secondary and tertiary schools. The new entrants to the school education system should select a school from among two or three schools situated closer to their homes. The quality of almost all schools is more or less the same. There is hardly any competition to enter into a primary school.
But the situation in Sri Lanka is totally different. In most cases, the mother and the father are compelled to be concerned with the problem of finding a school for the child from the moment she is conceived. In order to find a good school for the child, they have to build false evidence, in most cases incurring a very high cost, to obtain an address closer to the school. Yet, it is only a very few who would be successful in achieving the objective even after paying a substantial bribe. I need not reiterate that this is an extremely uncivilised practice.
The informal system of classification of schools in Sri Lanka, while limiting the chances available for poor people to come up in life through education, has attached a class division to the school system; besides that it has rendered the student enrolment process to a school, an extremely a corrupt system. This complex problem can be easily solved by abolishing the unjust classification of the present system of schools as high and low by introducing a simple system that recognises all schools as equal in status. It would not be difficult to introduce a primary school system from Grade 1-5, secondary school system from Grade 6-11 and higher school system from Grade 12-13.
A study made by me in 2010 revealed that if all schools are classified into three broad categories as primary, secondary and higher schools, the category of primary schools will have 7,000 schools or 72% of the total number of schools with each school having 233 students and 9.65 teachers on average. The number of secondary schools from Grade 6-11 will be 2,000 or 23% of the total number of schools. The average student population per school will be 945 and the number of teachers 68.64 per school. The number of higher schools will stand at 662 or 7% of the total number of schools. The average student population per school will be 662 and the number of teachers 32.01 per school.
Such a reform in the school system will certainly lead to remove the present discriminative classification of schools as high and low and make all schools equal, to a great extent, in terms of the standard of the quality of education and social acceptance. The persistent struggle made to enter a child into a selected few schools and the corruption associated with it can be eliminated.
Such a system will make the management, administration and supervision of schools easy. It will not only facilitate the formalisation of the distribution of resources but also make it easy to optimise the distribution of academic staff as well. It will make it easy for the principals to manage the school and the teachers to manage the classroom.
As all students in primary classes are educated in a school closer to their homes it enables the students to reach the school even without being accompanied by their parents. It will also help the parents to reduce the cost of transportation incurred in educating their children. The time spent in travelling by bus or other mode of transportation will be reduced. The traffic congestion on roads can be reduced. The present trend of well to do people migrating to cities for the education of their children, selling their properties in rural areas, can be discouraged.
The National Education Commission of Sri Lanka too has recommended such reforms for the school system. But the political authority or the old boys and girls associations of schools do not wish to see such a change. It is not difficult to understand the reason for their resistance to change in the present system.
Agriculture and wild animals
Several examples can be cited from the field of agriculture also to illustrate the confusion inherent in the way the Sri Lanka thinks, but I would like to comment only on the policy in regard to the material issues associated with the damages caused to agricultural sector by insects and wild animals.
The Sena caterpillar has become the main topic of discussion in agriculture today. This caterpillar has already done serious damage to the corn cultivation of Sri Lanka. Obviously, it can be a threat to paddy and vegetable cultivation as well. The issue of the Sena caterpillar is a big problem to be solved immediately. But we must not forget that the Sena caterpillar is not the only creature that causes damage to agriculture.
The Government has officially reported that the damaged caused by wild animals to agriculture in Sri Lanka remains as high as 40%. Monkeys, small brown monkeys or rilavun, wild boars, peacocks, porcupines and elephants are among the major animals who have become a serious threat to our agriculture.
A country needs wild animals. There should be a consistent policy to protect them. But, the Government has a responsibility to control the high growth of certain species of animals that pose a threat to the agricultural product of the country. Many countries have adopted a policy of authorising people to hunt animals which have a high rate of growth or the Government assumes the responsibility of destroying the surplus growth by itself. The kangaroo is the national symbol of Australia. Yet, at present, there is a policy in use in Australia in which kangaroos are shot to control the excess growth of the species and the meat sold public consumption with any excess being used as animal food.
Whether we eat it or not, meat has a big economic value. Countries which do not exploit this resource can be considered as ignorant countries. India is a Hindu country. The Hindus do not consume beef. But India does not allow the beef that it does not consume to go waste. India is ranked the largest beef exporter in the world. In 2014, India exported 2,089,000 metric tons of beef. The income earned in beef export was $ 4,781.18 million.
The damage caused by wild animals to agriculture in Sri Lanka has increased due to lack of a consistent Government policy for controlling the dense growth of animal population. The Government is prepared to kill the people who rebel against the Government. But, the Government is hesitant to kill the wild animals that cause great damage to agriculture and have a high density of growth.
Also, the Government is not prepared to allow the people to hunt them. The policy of the Government in regard to this issue I must say is not only ignorant but also ludicrous. Killing of wild boar is not prohibited by law. But possession, selling and transportation of wild boar meat had been prohibited.
In response to a consistent clamour made by the Punarudaya movement, the Government declared a policy authorising the possession, selling and transportation of wild boar meat. Consequent to this new policy, the price of wild boar meat fell down to Rs. 300 per kilo while the sale of it became an open thing. However, as the relevant gazette notification was not published amidst the crisis that arose in the face of the recent change of the Government, the relevant wildlife officials made it an opportunity to adopt a rigid policy against the hunters and the traders of wild boar. This illustrates the true nature of the way the bureaucracy of Sri Lanka operates.
How is it possible that the possession, selling and transportation of the meat is illegal if the killing of wild boar is not prohibited? Does it imply that the hunter should consume part of it and the remainder of the killed animal is buried without selling its meat?
We must not forget that Sri Lanka has a high level of malnutrition. Professor K. Samarasinha of University of Peradeniya, in an interview with a newspaper, had indicated that protein malnutrition in Sri Lanka is as high as 30%. In fact, meat consumption in Sri Lanka remains at a very low level.
Animal protein is an essential requirement for the development of the brain of small children. Perhaps Sri Lanka may be the only Buddhist country where consumption of meat is considered a sin. While per capita meat consumption per annum in Sri Lanka is 6.3 kilograms, it remains at 16.6 kg in Cambodia, 25.8 in Thailand, 28.3 in Myanmar, 45.9 in Japan and 49.9 in Vietnam, all of which are Buddhist countries. The low intelligence level apparent in Sri Lanka by international standards may have some connection with the low rate of consumption of meat and the practice of abstaining from consumption of meat.
Sri Lanka, if it chooses, can make use of the surplus of animals to overcome the protein deficiency in the food intake and malnutrition of the people. Permission should be granted to hunt animals that damage agriculture except elephants and lift the ban on possession, transportation and selling of their meat. The meat that we do not consume in Sri Lanka can be sold to other countries which have demand for them.
In doing so, Sri Lanka, which has become economically bankrupt, can make the surplus supply of wild animals a lucrative source of income generation whilst at the same time solving the problem of high density growth of certain animal species.
If mosques are the heart of the Muslim community, madrasas are its arteries
– Pic by Shehan Gunasekara
Friday, 8 February 2019
“It is a fact that when disputation and disagreement … on any topic have once risen among a people, it is not possible, after they have taken root, for that disputation and disagreement to be entirely eradicated … the intelligent man will not be so stupid as to hope to decide a dispute of such long standing.
The intelligent person contemplates and observes the wise purpose of disagreement … He finds that many benefits … lie within it – and does not interfere in or attack anybody’s tenets or disposition …” (KatibCelebi, Mizan-ul-haqq, as translated by Geoffrey Lewis, Balance of Truth, pp. 28 and 41 and quoted in Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam?, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016, p. 277)
In one of my earlier pieces titled ‘Behind the Mawanella Bigotry II’ (9 January), I said, “Madrasas have an important role to play in character building of young Muslims. However, the curriculum of these religious schools needs modernisation.”
Beyond character building madrasas’ knowledge horizon has to be expanded to incorporate new developments in teaching and learning. I also referred in that piece to a book by Ebrahim Moosa, ‘What is a Madrasa?’ published by Edinburgh University Press, 2015. The author concludes his book with the following comments:
“… Knowledge does not only have to serve the purpose of salvation and bypass the realities of the world in which believers live and flourish. Both the revelatory tradition and the humanistic tradition of knowledge can be fruitfully harnessed, rather than one at the expense of the other. The metaphysical legacy of the past could have a fruitful dialogue with the scientific heritage of the present in order to create a new metaphysical theology. But to achieve that goal a robust exposure to multiple knowledge traditions is a precondition. A refurbished Muslim orthodoxy in South Asia can offer guidance to millions in an effective and realistic manner. Madrasas are the ideal social laboratories where these experiments with knowledge can successfully be undertaken.” (pp.252-253)
Madrasas (I am excluding the village maktabs from this category) in Sri Lanka have a history of more than one century and they are closely linked with those in the Indian subcontinent. This is why Moosa’s observations are particularly pertinent to Sri Lankan context. Also, his comments need serious consideration because he started his education in the traditional institutions of Darul Uloom Deoband and Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknowb efore furthering his studies in modern universities and becoming an academic.
He is now a Professor of Islamic Studies at the Notre Dame University in USA. His knowledge about madrasa education is therefore not simply theoretical but mixed with practical experience. There are several others like him such as the Professor of Law, Khalid Abou El Fadl at UCLA School of Law, who is also calling for reforms in madrasa education.
Without the madrasas Sri Lankan Muslim community would have lost not only Islam’s theological legacy but also the practical side of din, which is a way of life and not religion in Western sense. It was the madrasas that produced and are producing mosque functionaries like imams who lead prayers and deliver sermons, muazzins who call for prayer and take care of mosque maintenance, and even school teachers who teach basic Islamic catechism to primary school children.
These imams, muazzins and teachers are the chief interlocutors who spread the revelatory message of Islam in the community. If mosques are the heart of the Muslim community, madrasas are its arteries. However, like in the subcontinent, and for that matter in most other parts of the world, the method of instruction and subjects taught in madrasas have remained traditional and without any change to keep pace with the intellectual progress of a techno-scientific age.
The madrasas are operating simply as transmitters of knowledge produced decades and even centuries ago rather than equipping their students with an intellectual armoury to confront challenges from a scientific modernity. Their preferred modality of teaching and learning has remained predominantly prescriptive and proscriptive rather than exploratory. It is repetitive and memory oriented rather than discursive and analytical.
It is this method of teaching and training that creates what Muhammad Arkoun calls amytho-historical mind as opposed to a tele-techno-scientific mind. A deeply inherent suspicion towards rational inquiry and scientific methodology with pure utilitarian approach towards modern technology has produced and calcified a metaphysical orthodoxy in which madrasa education has played a critical role. This orthodoxy is not only backward looking in outlook but also explosively reactive to heterodoxy. To deny this reality is to live in fools’ paradise. Thus, reforming and modernising madrasa education with a view to at least mellowing the orthodoxy is sine qua non. It is an imperative task facing Muslim educationists and Muslim activists in Sri Lanka.
I use the term paideia from ancient Greek culture to describe the model that I have in mind. Paideia refers to a well-rounded education to the children of Greek aristocracy. The scholars that madrasas produce, the ulema (plural of alim and is not restricted to religious scholars alone), are, in the context of Sri Lanka, a spiritual elite equivalent to an aristocracy in the mundane world.
Ulema have a special place and prestige among ordinary Muslims and they are the chief communicators through whom Islamic knowledge is transmitted to Muslim masses almost daily and through multiple channels. That ulema should therefore be intellectually versatile and equipped with a broader knowledge than pure theology moulded in the past, so that they can confidently involve creatively in what Shahab Ahmed calls(in a different context), “hermeneutical engagement”, with the rational, scientific and technological challenges of present times. Islam has a rich discursive epistemological tradition, which stagnated after the 12th century. It is by modernising and reforming the madrasas that we can revive that tradition and push forward.
Unlike Greek paideia, which had no place for theology or spiritual disciplines but included subjects in liberal arts, science and mathematics as well as martial arts and aesthetics, paideia of madrasas should include elements of those branches of knowledge with theological studies. It is a pity that madrasas are not even training their students to handle information technology.
Moosa, from whom I quoted above, cites a revealing episode from the life of the much maligned Mughal Emperor Aurangazeb who went through traditional education and studied subjects similar to the ones taught in today’s madrasas. One day, he chided one of his tutors Mullah Salih for not teaching him what was necessary for a ruler.
“If you had seasoned me with that philosophy which forms the mind to ratiocination, and intensely accustoms it to be satisfied with nothing but solid reasons, if you had given me those excellent precepts and doctrines which raise the soul above the assaults of fortune, and reduce her to unshakeable and always equal temper, and permit her not to be lifted by prosperity nor debased by adversity; if you had taken care to give me the knowledge of what we are and what are the first principles of things, and had assisted me in forming in my mind a fit idea of the greatness of the universe, and of the admirable order and motion of the parts thereof; if, I say, you had instilled into me this kind of philosophy, I should think myself incomparably more obliged to you than Alexander was to his Aristotle and believe it my duty to recompense you otherwise than he did him. Should not you, instead of your flattery, have taught me somewhat of that point so important to a king, which is, what the reciprocal duties are of a sovereign to his subjects and those of subjects to their sovereign; and ought not you have considered, that one day I should be obliged with the sword to dispute my life and tit (seize) crown with my brothers? … Have you ever taken any care to make me learn, what it is to besiege a town or to set an army in array? For these things I am obliged to others, not at all to you. Go and retire to the village whence you are come, and let nobody know who you are or what is become of you.” (This is only one part of a long quote Moosa had edited from the original by Francois Bernier in Travels in Mogul Empire A.D. 1656-1668.)
What is needed is a madrasa education grounded in the revelatory message of Islam but incorporates into its curriculum other branches of epistemology so that future generations of ulema who come out of it will be a class of enlightened teachers, preachers and community leaders behind whom all Muslims irrespective of inter-generational and inter-gender gaps would rally for guidance.
Yet, reforming madrasa education is not easy. There will be resistance from the conservatives and vested interests who may fear that their traditional fortresses would crumble in the face of changes. Radical changes will have no prospect of acceptance. Therefore, to make reforms more malleable, they can be introduced incrementally to allow the guardians of orthodoxy sufficient time to digest the impact of each dose before injecting the other. Irrespective of how one may implement this, without serious modernisation and reforms to bring about a new paideia the madrasas in operation now would remain largely disconnected to a fast changing techno-scientific world. Will Muslim leadership in the country including ACJU wake up and act?
(The writer is attached to the School of Business and Governance, Murdoch University, Western Australia.)
By Dr Debapriya Mukherjee - February 7, 2019, 9:04 pm
Former Senior Scientist
Central Pollution ControlBoard
Today it is beyond our imagination that mild to moderate bacterial infection is untreatable and causes death. But mismanagement in antibiotic use is accelerating the natural process of evolution and mutation in bacteria – a phenomenon known as antibiotic resistance (ABR). This ABR poses a colossal threat to global health and incurs high economic costs to the society. The convergence of factors such as poor public health infrastructure, rising incomes, a high burden of disease, and cheap, unregulated sales of antibiotics has created ideal conditions for a rapid rise in resistant infections in many countries including India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan. Currently, every year, 700 000 patients die globally on account of ABR. This death toll will increase to 10 million by 2050, which would lead to a reduction of gross domestic product (GDP) by at least 2.5%.
Over-the-counter, nonprescription sales cause the resistance to antibiotics as "one of the most significant threats to patients' safety worldwide. This may be attributed to the limited availability of well trained pharmacists in many pharmacies in these countries despite the government regulations. Poor enforcement of the law and regulations is the most likely factor to the limited availability of pharmacists. Antibiotics are often the go-to prescription for many primary care cases, but as much as 23% of these prescriptions could be inappropriate. Higher antibiotic consumption can lead to drugs becoming ineffective at combating infections. Self-medication with antibiotics purchased without a prescription is common practice, particularly in these countries. Self-medication involves obtaining medicines without a prescription, resubmitting old prescriptions to purchase medicines, sharing medicines with relatives or members of one’s social circle, or using leftover medicines stored at home. The inappropriate use of antibiotics through self-medication may cause signiïŹcant adverse impacts such as antibiotic resistance, treatment failure, and drug toxicity. Inappropriate drug use in self-medication includes taking inadequate doses, sharing medicines, a short duration of treatment, and stopping treatment upon the improvement of disease symptoms. The appearance of multidrug-resistant bacterial strains, which are highly resistant to many antibiotic classes, has raised a major concern regarding antibiotic resistance worldwide. This resistance may result in longer-lasting illnesses, more doctor visits, extended hospital stays, the need for more expensive medications, and even death. More than 50% of antibiotics are purchased without a prescription and used over-the-counter in most parts of the world. In addition to drug resistance, the commonly used antibiotics have adverse impacts on the ecology of both the gut and the oral micro biome as observed in many adults. The fecal micro biome is also severely affected by antibiotics.
The antibiotic in the environment originating from waste water treatment plants serving antibiotic manufacturing facilities causes the transfer of resistance genes into human micro biota and pose a serious threat to antibiotic effectiveness. Antimicrobial residues in food animal products (such as chicken and milk) indicating that antibiotic use in food animal production is widespread. Practically there are no regulations governing the discharge of antimicrobial waste into the environment or presence of antibiotic in these foods.
Antibiotic use in India went up from 3.2 billion defined daily doses (DDD) to 6.5 billion in 2015. Factors which contribute to antibiotic malpractice may have a geographical variation due to diïŹerences in human behavior, health literacy, economy, and legal provisions, not allowing the generalization of ïŹndings from elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, about 12.7% of the total estimated annual health budget (about US $22 million) is spent on antimicrobials. The scale-up in antibiotic use has been enabled by rapid economic growth and rising incomes but that could not enable the improvements in water, sanitation, and public health, although evidence exploring this key issue is anecdotal. Antibiotics continue to be prescribed or sold for diarrheal diseases and upper respiratory infections for which they have limited value. Of course, patient expectations relating to antibiotic treatment puts pressure on clinicians to prescribe antibiotics when they are not necessary. The large population is often blamed for the easy spread of resistant pathogens, but population densities in the developing countries cannot be granted as the major cause. The main obstacle is that these countries lag on basic public health measures as well as fault in health system. Doctors routinely receive compensation from pharmaceutical companies and pharmacists in exchange for antibiotic prescriptions. The current antibiotic dispensing practice poses not only a serious challenge to the appropriate antibiotic use in the country, but may also be associated with signiïŹcant adverse drug reactions (ADRs)from the antibiotics, high treatment cost and complications of infections due to inappropriate treatment with antibiotics, and can impact global ABR and related consequences.
The fight against ABR is constant and the discovery of new antibiotics is critical. Together, the facts and statistics raise an important question: is the time of antibiotics up? Although antibiotics have served humanity well for the last 70 years or so, the ability of bacteria to quickly evolve has made it imperative to look for other options. To combat rising antimicrobial resistance, improve access and clinical outcomes, and preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics WHO (World Health Organization) adopted a new classification for antibiotics. This new model comprises three categories: Key Access antibiotics that "should be widely available, affordable and quality assured"; Watch Group antibiotics recommended only for specific, limited indications; and Reserve Group antibiotics for situations when all alternative antibiotics have failed.
Reduction in the use of antibiotics represents a huge challenge in all these countries particularly India that is a major drug producer and has some of the highest sales of antibiotics globally and highest levels of antimicrobial resistance. Contributing factors to these high sales include failures of India’s drug regulatory system (which have been identified in government reports) the sale of antibiotics without prescription, and the proliferation of fixed-dose combination (FDC) antibiotics, many of which are not approved in other countries or by India’s national regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO). FDCs are formulations comprising two or more drugs combined in a fixed ratio of doses and available in a single dosage form. FDCs that are composed of two antimicrobial drugs, especially drugs with mismatched dosing regimens, are concerning in the context of antimicrobial resistance. Over-the-counter access to antibiotics is a problem, but regulations to restrict access have to be balanced against the need to maintain access for the significant proportion of the population that lacks access to doctors. Indeed, lack of access to effective and affordable antibiotics still kills more children in developing countries than drug resistance. The background burden of bacterial infections, and misuse for all fevers regardless of whether they are caused by parasites, viruses or bacteria, is another major causal factor. Under the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Program), the government has committed to providing toilets and improving sewage systems to reduce burden of bacterial infection, but these measures will take time to implement.
Now there is emergent need to ensure that the rules and regulations stipulated by respective government are implemented to stop over-the-counter sale, irrational prescriptions and self-medication. However, drug control authorities in all these countries are trying to build awareness about the problem among professional bodies, the media, policymakers, and the lay public. Despite the initiatives already taken, the most challenging task to impose restriction on inappropriate use of antibiotics is to improve the capacity of drug regulatory bodies to safeguard against powerful antibiotics being sold over the counter and to phase out the use of antimicrobial growth promoters in livestock. These capabilities are also needed to ensure the safety and reliability of India’s pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, which now supplies a significant proportion of the world’s pharmaceutical needs. Also behavior change is needed among physicians and patients. In this context it is pertinent to mention that many countries have achieved remarkable reductions in smoking in buildings, workplaces and public places through regulation and behavior change communication. Similar campaigns may work to educate the public and physicians about the dangers of uncontrolled antibiotic use through mass media in efficiently targeting public education programmes as has been the case in high-income countries, but more research is needed to see how well this could work in India and neighboring countries. There is urgent necessity to change the rules under which physicians can accept compensation on prescribing antibiotics. Another important task is to collect adequate data for evaluating the extent of resistance. The Indian Council of Medical Research has established a National Programme on Antimicrobial Surveillance in ten laboratories based at academic centres and covering priority pathogens identified by the World Health Organization. This surveillance data on antibiotic consumption must be interpreted with sound scientific evidence to help in prudent use of antibiotics through medical supervision and prescription in order to combat the unwanted antibiotic side effects including emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria from antibiotic misusage. This move would send a strong signal of the country’s commitment to tackle this issue.
A federal judge in Washington, DC, on Monday dismissed a lawsuit against the American Studies Associationover its decision to support the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
The ruling is a significant blow to efforts by Israel lobby groups to use courts to harass, intimidate and silence supporters of Palestinian rights in US universities – a tactic known as lawfare.
In his 20-page ruling, US District Judge Rudolph Contreras wrote that the plaintiffs had no standing to file a lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of the ASA, and that their individual damage claims came nowhere near the $75,000 minimum required for them to seek relief in federal court.
At most, the individual plaintiffs could seek damages of a few hundred dollars to cover membership dues they allege were misappropriated, but they would have to find some other venue to pursue their claims, the judge found.
“The court basically said, in no uncertain words, that the plaintiffs suing ASA lied when they claimed to have ‘suffered significant economic and reputational damage.’” Radhika Sainath, senior attorney with the civil rights group Palestine Legal, told The Electronic Intifada. “But, as the court explained, ‘nowhere’ in the lawsuit could the plaintiffs explain what that damage was. It didn’t pass the smell test.”
“Desperate lawsuits”
“I’m thrilled that this baseless case has been dismissed. It served no purpose other than persecuting those who dare to criticize Israeli policy and seek to end the occupation through peaceful means,” Steven Salaita, one of the defendants, told The Electronic Intifada.
“Our victory further illustrates that it’s important to stand firm against attempts to silence those devoted to the cause of justice.”
In 2014, Salaita was fired by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for social media comments criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza that year. He sued the university for breach of contract, alleging administrators acted under pressure from pro-Israel donors, later settling the case.
Salaita then found himself targeted by the lawsuit against the American Studies Association.
Along with Salaita, the lawsuit named as individual defendants the academics and Palestinian rights advocates Lisa Duggan, Curtis Marez, Avery Gordon, Neferti Tadiar, Sunaina Maira, Chandan Reddy, Jasbir Puar, J. Kehaulani Kauanui and John Stephens.
“These desperate lawsuits brought to silence advocates of Palestinian rights are not only losers – they’re helping to grow the movement by making even clearer who’s on the wrong side of history – who is the aggressor, who is unreasonable and who wants to silence debate,” Maria LaHood, deputy legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, told The Electronic Intifada.
LaHood, who represented Salaita in the ASA lawsuit, added, “Freedom, justice and equality have always been on the right side of history.”
The complaint alleged that a “cabal of USACBI leaders” surreptitiously took over the ASA and used their positions on its executive committee and national council to foist the boycott resolution on the association’s unsuspecting membership, misspending ASA money in the process.
As part of the solidarity movement, USACBI, the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, argues that Israeli academic institutions should be boycotted because they are complicit in Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian rights.
Driven by Israel lobby
The force behind the lawsuit was the Louis D. Brandeis Center, an Israel advocacy organization that has for years worked to smear Palestine solidarity activism as anti-Semitism, and attempts to suppress it with frivolous lawsuits and bogus civil rights complaints.
Until February last year, the Brandeis Center’s president Kenneth Marcus was an attorney for the plaintiffs.
Last June, the Senate confirmed Marcus as the Trump administration’s top civil rights enforcer at the Department of Education, a position that potentially allows him to pursue his campaign to repress supporters of Palestinian human rights from within the federal government.
The lawsuit against ASA had previously suffered a major setback.
“The boycott resolution was aimed both at encouraging academic freedom for Palestinians and strengthening relations between American institutions and Palestinians,” Judge Contreras wrote at the time. “Thus, it was not contrary to the ASA’s express purposes.”
But Contreras allowed other claims to go forward – until he eventually threw the lawsuit out altogether.
“The Zionists can’t accept the extent of revulsion over Israel’s crimes so they imagine that any group that stands up for justice has been tricked and manipulated into doing so,” Mark Kleiman, the attorney for J. Kehualani Kaunui and Jasbir Puar, told The Electronic Intifada.
“This blindness partially stems from their own reliance on tricks, bribes and subterfuge to slow down what is rapidly becoming a mass movement,” Kleiman added.
“In this lawsuit they simply made up accusations and then pretended they had been harmed by the things they imagined people had done.”
Exclusive: jihadist group placed bounty on head of foreign fighter after plot, say intelligence officials Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s bodyguards are thought to have exchanged fire with foreign fighters over the coup attempt. Photograph: Uncredited/AP
Martin Chulov in Hasakah-
The Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, survived a coup attempt last month launched by foreign fighters in his eastern Syrian hideout, intelligence officials believe, and the terrorist group has since placed a bounty on the main plotter’s head.
The incident is believed to have taken place on 10 January in a village near Hajin in the Euphrates River valley, where the jihadist group is clinging to its last sliver of land. Regional intelligence officials say a planned move against Baghdadi led to a firefight between foreign fighters and the fugitive terrorist chief’s bodyguards, who spirited him away to the nearby deserts.
Isis has offered a reward to whomever kills Abu Muath al-Jazairi, believed to be a veteran foreign fighter, one of an estimated 500 Isis fighters thought to remain in the area. While Isis did not directly accuse Jazairi, placing a bounty on the head of one of its senior members is an unusual move and intelligence officials believe he was the central plotter.
“They got wind of it just in time,” an intelligence official said. “There was a clash and two people were killed. This was the foreign fighter element, some of his most trusted people.”
Iraqi officials and their counterparts in Britain and the US are confident that Baghdadi has recently spent time in the final redoubt of the so-called caliphate, where the group’s diehard members have regrouped after two years of battlefield losses for what has widely been billed as a last stand. The holdouts include senior leaders and the remnants of the ranks of foreign fighters who flooded into Syria and Iraq from 2013-15, swelling the ranks of the extremist organisation to at least 70,000. Now, an estimated 500 or so militants remain, along with their families, hemmed in by US-backed Kurdish forces on the Syrian side of the Iraqi border, and by Iranian-backed Shia militias on the other.
As Isis’s area of control has disintegrated and its leaders have been annihilated, Baghdadi’s whereabouts have become an increasing focus. A diabetic with high blood pressure, who suffered permanent injury in an airstrike four years ago, he has been on the run from the militaries of four nation states as well as tens of thousands of militia since his only public appearance to anoint himself as caliph in the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul in mid-2014.
While rumours of unrest within the dwindling organisation have swirled in recent months, there has been little – until now – to suggest a serious threat from within to Baghdadi’s leadership or life.
Those who have stayed near the extremist leader are themselves also ideologically driven veterans,
whose loyalty has been tested over years of losses. However, Isis fighters – among them former diehards – have been fleeing the besieged areas each day for the past three weeks, with several thousand members and their families surrendering to Kurdish-led forces near Deir ez-Zor.
US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighters near the last Isis-held territory. Photograph: Ivor Prickett/New York Times/Redux/eyevine
Among the new captives are large numbers of foreigners, some of whom insist they were forced further into the group’s shrinking lands by months of hectic attacks. Kurdish forces believe that foreigners remain clustered around the remnants of the Isis leadership. Several captives are believed to be among them – including the British journalist John Cantlie, who was one of more than 25 foreigners held by Isis in Raqqa.
Cantlie was captured by Isis in Syria in 2012 and subsequently fronted a series of propaganda videos for the group. He has not been seen since the last video was last released in 2016, but earlier this week the UK security minister, Ben Wallace, in a briefing with reporters, said he believed Cantlie was still alive. Reports on Thursday suggested Isis could be using Cantlie and other western hostages still unaccounted for as bargaining chips in return for safe passage out.
Kurdish forces, and intelligence officials in Iraq, estimate that the remnants of the group have enough weapons and personnel to survive for at least another month, if they choose to hold firm. Fighters have an escape route, of sorts, to the deserts, but Syrian regime and Russian forces are active to the south of that area, making a dash into the sands a tricky proposition.
Roads to the frontlines remain littered with the ruins of recent clashes: buildings pancaked by bombsand oilfields ransacked for parts. Roads leading to the Syrian border have been gouged by the retreating extremists who – even in the depths of winter – are sustaining a furious rearguard action. The destroyed municipal hospital in Hajin. Photograph: Ivor Prickett/New York Times/Redux/eyevine
Despite Isis’s losses of land, there are growing signs of a low-level insurgency re-emerging in Iraq, near where the group overran Mosul in June 2014. The numbers of roadside bombs and summary executions have steadily increased over the past year, officials in northern Iraq say. And Isis is believed to have raised its flag – albeit briefly – in parts of Mosul and the nearby Nineveh plains.
FILE PHOTO: The late leader and founder of the Islamic revolution Ayatollah Khomeini speaks from a balcony of the Alavi school in Tehran, Iran, during the country's revolution in February 1979. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
DUBAI (Reuters) - Like many Iranians, retired judge Mohammad Reza made big sacrifices to help Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini launch his Islamic Revolution, enduring torture in prison for handing out leaflets calling for an end to the Shah’s long dictatorship.
When Khomeini returned from exile in Paris on a special Air France charter to millions of ecstatic supporters on February 1, 1979, Mohammad Reza, now 72, was among the crowds at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport.
“I still remember crying and chanting ‘as the demon left, the angel arrived’,” he said by telephone from his home in Tehran, declining to give his family name for security reasons.
The revolution which swept Iran 40 years ago this month united influential bazaar traders, intellectuals and people of all classes against the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s lavish lifestyle, secret police and Western-style social and economic reforms.
Iran’s leaders still chant the trademark “Down with America” slogan of the revolt, sometimes in front of vast crowds, but they no longer inspire Mohammad Reza, and some other aged revolutionaries, who are now among the most vocal critics of the clerical leadership.
First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri said the revolution had brought Iranians independence, freedom and justice in a speech this week to mark its anniversary on Monday. “Thanks to it, people were able to govern their destiny,” he said.
Mohammad Reza noted that freedom, independence and social justice were the gains the Ayatollah promised, but said using those words was now out of the question for ordinary people.
“You can get arrested today if you repeat the Imam’s (Khomeini’s) values and goals publicly,” he said.
I WAS THERE
In 2009, Mohammad Reza said his grandson Arash was jailed and tortured in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison — where Mohammad Reza had been detained under the Shah — as security forces crushed an uprising following disputed presidential elections.
“At the beginning we did not know where he was or whether he was even alive,” the former judge said. “I used my friends from the time of the revolution who had important positions in the government to locate him.”
Iranian officials say protests and criticism of the Islamic Republic are driven by external forces intent on destroying it.
Mohammad Reza said he did not want another revolution but a return to Khomeini’s revolutionary principles.
As a junior judge under Khomeini, he said he served underdeveloped areas, hoping they would prosper in the new Iran. “I helped the revolution in my own way. By helping the poor.”
Images of the turbaned Khomeini that now plaster walls across Iran and are held aloft by pro-government demonstrators remind him of the man he fought for in Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq, which claimed a total one million lives. His son-in-law lost a leg in the conflict.
“Whenever the revolution needed me, I was there. My wife and my daughters cooked for soldiers during the war,” he said.
After retiring 10 years ago, he opened a small grocery shop.
“I know many people who cannot even buy basic goods for their families. They come to my shop and I give them those goods,” he said. “We did not do the revolution to make a group of elite rich.”
The authorities have acknowledged there is corruption in Iran but say they are tackling it.
FILE PHOTO: Traffic in evening rush hour moves slowly past a huge mural of founder of Islamic revolution Ayatollah Khomeini in central Tehran, Iran, January 3, 2005. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl/File Photo
Under decades of rule by the Shah, the self-proclaimed “king of kings”, a huge gap emerged between rich and poor: a 1971 party for world leaders in a specially created oasis only served to highlight the gulf.
During months of increasingly violent protests, Iranians chanted “Death to Shah” before the Shah and his wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi, left Tehran and flew to Aswan to Egypt on January 16, 1979.
Now, much smaller numbers of protesters call for “Death to Dictator” during demonstrations against economic hardships they blame on President Hassan Rouhani, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards, who have extensive business interests.
The country is engaged in costly proxy conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen but has struggled economically since President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the 2015 nuclear deal last year and reimposed sanctions.
Prices of bread, cooking oil and other staples have soared and the value of the rial currency has plunged.
In January, Rouhani said Iran is facing its worst economic crisis since the Shah was toppled. The World Bank anticipates inflation in Iran jumping to 23.8 percent in 2018-19 from 9.6 percent in 2017-18, and to 31.2 percent in 2019-20.
Last year, Iran cracked down on protests over poor living standards in over 80 cities and towns that posed the most serious challenge to its clerical leadership since the 2009 revolt. Khamenei blamed “enemies of the Islamic Republic”.
Small, sporadic protests continue over issues such as unpaid wages but nothing on the scale of last year.
Mohammad Reza said he sympathised with the demonstrators. “Their wages weren’t paid. They cannot pay their rents,” he said.
Living with his wife and two daughters and their families in a small house in southern Tehran, he is nostalgic for the hopeful early days of the revolution which ended Persia’s 2,500-year-old Peacock Throne.
But more than three-quarters of the population of 85 million is under the age of thirty, a generation Mohammad Reza said was less influenced by the revolutionary era that forms the bedrock of the clerical establishment.
“When I see how this system is pushing our young generation away from Islam and the pillars of the revolution, I feel sad and desperate,” he said.
he eight Muslim students released on February 5 after being found guilty of violating laws that help protect archaeological sites makes Sri Lanka seriously consider the efforts they take to instill discipline in society. What disturbs us most is that these students are undergrads of the South Eastern University’s Engineering Faculty and can be termed as being among the best brains in the country. This poses the question whether the education they received and the intelligence they posses failed to serve them as tools to fathom what’s good and bad in terms of their conduct?
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s bodyguards are thought to have exchanged fire with foreign fighters over the coup attempt. Photograph: Uncredited/AP
The destroyed municipal hospital in Hajin. Photograph: Ivor Prickett/New York Times/Redux/eyevine
