JVP Defending Sexual Predator: Union Action Demanding Reinstatement Of Employee Dismissed For Abusing Co-Worker

Wasantha

FEBRUARY 16, 2019

A fresh controversy is brewing over the involvement of a Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna affiliated trade union to defend a private sector employee who has been dismissed for sexually abusing a 23-year-old male co-worker.

The trade union, on Friday, launched a strike at South Asia Gateway Terminal (SAGT) Private Limited demanding the reinstatement of the employee who was dismissed for sexually harassing the young employee.

It has been reported that the Harbour police has discouraged the victim from lodging a Police complaint about the incident and advised him to resolve the problem with the predator on “friendly terms.”

The victim, as his next resort, has complained to the management of the company about the sexual harassment. The company had entrusted a third party inquiry officer to probe the matter and upon his findings, had dismissed the predator.

It is against this backdrop that the JVP affiliated trade union at SAGT launched a strike demanding the reinstatement of the dismissed employee. Colombo Telegraph learns that the union operates under former Parliamentarian Wasantha Samarasinghe who was also a member of the North Central Provincial Council.

“After the internal inquiry, action was taken and there was industrial action arising from it. There was a third party inquiry and the perpetrator was disciplined. The victim has been reallocated,” SAGT Private Limited CEO Romesh David has told Groundviews.

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Will Basil take a different path?

BY GAGANI WEERAKOON-FEB 17 2019

The leaders of the opposition alliance, formerly referred to as the Joint Opposition met at the residence of former Minister and the Chairman of Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Prof. G.L. Peiris earlier this week to discuss about future elections and forming an alliance with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. While many leaders were present, many of the prominent parliamentarians like Kumara Welgama and a few others who used to attend such meetings earlier were not being informed about or invited to attend the meeting. The group was waiting for SLPP National Organiser Basil Rajapaksa to arrive, as no election discussion would be successful without the inputs from the latter.
It is widely believed and acknowledged even by the opponents like the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, that it is only Basil who knows every lamp post in the country and where the posters should go and engages in ‘scientific election campaigning’.  
However, Rajapaksa (Basil) did not make an appearance even after three hours and, finally, his elder brother Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa was convinced that he is not going to make an appearance.

“It’s already 10 (in the night) and I don’t think Basil would come today. Let’s go home and meet on another day,” he said as the clock clicked 10p.m.

Basil Rajapaksa at the time also was at another meeting with Local Government representatives talking about how the SLPP should face future elections - be it Provincial Councils or Presidential. However, according to sources the main focus was on the Presidential Election as it is the only one which as at the moment would be held for sure.

However, the remarks made by Rajapaksa throughout the week on several occasions, showed that he, in fact, not entertaining the popular idea of having a UPFA candidate or re-electing President Maithripala Sirisena.

He openly said that the Party members will not support anyone outside the party as a Presidential candidate under any circumstance, and the candidate would have to contest under the Party’s Lotus Bud symbol.

Rajapaksa expressed these views during a meeting held at Party headquarters among Gampaha District Local Government members of the SLPP.
SLPP commenced a series of meetings among Local Government members of the Party from 5 February. The meetings were held based on the Districts.

During this meeting, Local Government members have apparently raised their concerns over the Presidential candidate and the statements of certain SLFP MPs over the possibility of naming President Maithripala Sirisena as the Presidential candidate.

SLPP Local Government members said they would not support a non-member as Presidential candidate under any circumstances. The Local Government members also pointed out that statements to the contrary of the Opposition MPs had created doubt in the minds of the voters, which could be used by other political parties for their advantage.

During the meeting, Rajapaksa said priority would be given to the Party and the Party would not take any decision without the consent of the members.
“The SLPP was built-up from the village. This is a political party in which the voter base was built even before leaders of the party emerged.  Therefore, all the decisions of the party would be taken according to the will of the members,” he added.

He noted that the SLPP would remain as a Party that gives its priority for members rather than the leaders of the Party. Rajapaksa assured that the Party would remain transparent and would not betray its members.

“Party leadership will never ask the members of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna to support anyone who was not approved by the members. Therefore, I can assure the next Presidential candidate will be a member of our Party and we will contest under the symbol of Pohottuwa (Lotus Bud),” he added.

SLPP President will be sworn in on 9 December

Meanwhile, speaking to the media he said that a new SLPP President will be sworn in on 9 December. After which the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna will launch an ambitious development programme that will embrace all 36,000 villages in the country.

In addition, he said that the SLPP is preparing a programme that will ensure that 5,000,000 families in the country will be successful. Basil Rajapaksa added that they hope to carry out a series of programmes under a new SLPP President.
When questioned if the Provincial Council Election will be held earlier, he said: “No, an SLPP President will be sworn in on 9 December.”

On a later occasion, Basil Rajapaksa said the Party would focus on formulating and giving popularity to their policies as they believe policies would attract voters more than a candidate.

Rajapaksa expressed these views during a meeting held at Party Headquarters between members of the SLPP. “There is no other country like Sri Lanka which had to learn a hard lesson from working toward the victory of a particular individual. Therefore, we think that policies should be given focus as they have the power to attract voters as much or more than the candidate,” he added.

Rajapaksa said even though they had spent two years building a political Party with democratic qualities they would not have wait as long to find a suitable Presidential candidate. “During the last Presidential Election, the group that contested under the symbol of Swan wanted to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa. They did not have any plan to develop the county,” he added. Therefore, at this election, people will be focused more on what policies the candidates bring to the table, which could be a deciding factor, in his view.  

He noted that the people of the country had understood the impact of electing an individual instead of policies from the 2015 Presidential Election. Rajapaksa said the SLPP was formed to establish democratic values that according to him had diminished after 2015.

Thanks to the contribution made by the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna’s Local Government representatives and other Party members, the Party has Rs 21 million in its savings, Basil Rajapaksa noted.

He said grand old Parties went through troublesome periods but the SLPP was steering ahead smoothly with the contribution made by its members. “There were times when the United National Party (UNP) couldn’t settle Sirikotha’s electricity bill when it was in the Opposition.

Having been unable to maintain, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) office was once shut down during the time of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike,” he said. He also said that they have decided to hold the National Conference of the Party.

“The Party leadership will decide the date on which the National Conference should be held,” he said.

However, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) still has not ruled out the possibility of a common candidate for the Presidential Election, despite SLPP National Organiser Rajapaksa’s earlier statement that the Party will not support anyone outside the Party as a Presidential candidate under any circumstances.

Decision on common candidate

“The final decision on the common candidate will be taken after a lengthy discussion between President Maithripala Sirisena and Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa. I can assure that there will not be any disagreement over the common Presidential candidate and no decision will be taken without the participation of both of them,” UPFA MP S.B. Dissanayake told reporters at MP Thilanga Sumathipala’s residence.

He noted that the UPFA would not change its stance, even though SLPP members had on several occasions said they would prefer to field their own candidate, and not someone from a different Party. Defending Basil Rajapaksa’s statement, Dissanayake said Rajapaksa’s statement was only targeted at SLPP members in order to strengthen the Party.

“It is obvious that Basil Rajapaksa targeted his Party members, and it is fair from his point of view as he is the National Organiser of the Party,” he added.
He pointed out every Party has their own preferences for Presidential candidate, but at the end of the day, the final call would be made as a group that would involve both the SLFP and the SLPP. He noted all progressive forces would join with them to defeat the United National Party in the upcoming elections, and that the SLFP and SLPP both have several promising candidates, while the UNP, in his view, had none.

“We have strong candidates like Maithripala Sirisena, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Chamal Rajapaksa, and Dinesh Gunawardena, but when it comes to the UNP, there is no winning candidate,” he added.

Speaking of the new political alliance that the SLFP, SLPP and other UPFA members are in the process of building, MP Thilanga Sumathipala, who is a member of the Committee which was appointed to look into possibilities of forming a new political alliance, said the formation of such an alliance will take more time.
  “We are not in a hurry to announce our new alliance and  its name, as it is a wide and complex process, which means it will take some time to set up the mechanism. We will also have to use different approaches for different scenarios. When it comes to Provincial Elections, we have to follow an approach which suits that, and at a Presidential Election we have to adapt for that as well. Therefore, this is a complex process,” he said.

It was widely known that Basil Rajapaksa did not encourage a pact between Mahinda and Maithri even last year and was against toppling the Government. He strongly maintained that the focus of the Joint Opposition and the SLPP should be in holding Provincial Council Elections and to forming a Government should not be rushed into. Political circles still believe that he did not like the idea of Mahinda Rajapaksa becoming Prime Minister on 26 October 2018 after which Sri Lanka ran into a constitutional crisis.

“I don’t like this, but would stand by him (Mahinda) because I can’t completely give up” was what was widely circulated as him been saying, soon after the event to a group of close associates.

While, the two parties (SLPP and SLFP) engaged in contradictory statements over elections, Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa says that no development activities will take place in the country when there is no agreement between the President and the Prime Minister.

The problem at the moment is that the Prime Minister and the President are fighting each other, he said in a recent interview with The Hindu on the sidelines of the third edition of The Hindu’s Huddle conclave in Bengaluru.
“When the Executive and the Prime Minister fight each other or when they do not agree to anything then nothing will happen in the country. No development work. Nothing!”

He stated that this has already started happening and that “everything has stopped” in Sri Lanka. “And for the last four years nothing has happened. That was the sad part of it,” he said.

He stated that the Sri Lankan people are suffering because of this and that no investments have come into the country as a result. “No one is going to invest when there is no political stability.”

He stated that the only way to resolve this issue is to have a strong Government and the President and Prime Minister of the country need to be of the same wave length.

As if to prove that there is no end to these confrontations, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe speaking at an event at Maligawatte last week said bankrupt politicians cannot be allowed to use the Judiciary as a “football”, and if they come to Parliament and make baseless statements, the people will ultimately suffer the consequences.

Criticising independent Commissions

He also said criticising independent Commissions as well as attacking the independent Judiciary will weaken the control and eradication of narcotics.
Addressing the gathering, the Premier pointed out that the Government has only controlled the drug menace, not eradicated.

“When baseless statements are made in Parliament, people will suffer. We have only controlled illicit drugs, not eradicated. Should we continue, or should we abandon the programme?,” he questioned.

The Premier said when the drug problem became critical in the past he called the top Police officers in 2015 or 2016, and asked whether to allocate more funds from the Budget. The Police officers replied that money is not a problem, but that they needed an independent and a trustworthy Judiciary.

“They (Police officers) asked me not to allow parliamentarians to interfere in the affairs of the Police if the drug problem needs to be resolved. The officers asked not to allow the controlling and interferences that had arisen during the last administration again. They said not to start a drug control campaign while their eyes were blindfolded and hands were tied,” the Prime Minister recalled.
High-ranking Police officers thought it would be possible to control drugs if independent Commissions functioned properly.

“The establishment of the independent Commissions has created confidence among the Police. The Judiciary also took decisions with a straight backbone. The control of narcotics was accelerated because of the independent Commissions that we have set up,” the Premier said.

While PM Wickremesinghe was critical about those who are criticising the Constitutional Council, several other opposition Parliamentarians, including Opposition Leader Rajapaksa joined echoing President Sirisena’s sentiments on the establishment.

Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa said, that the entire State sector has collapsed today due to arbitrary actions taken by the Constitutional Council.
“Criticising the Constitutional Council is not the same as criticising the Judiciary or belittling it. Because of CC’s arbitrary action, the entire State sector has collapsed today,” he said.

Constitutional Council corrupt

Meanwhile, former Justice Minister and MP Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe alleged that the Constitutional Council was one of the most corrupt institutions in the country and stressed the need to abolish it.

He told a news conference that it was clear that the Constitutional Council did not take correct, impartial and reasonable decisions when making recommendations.
“The President is not allowed to appoint the Appeal Court President. In most instances when the CC made approvals, it has not taken correct, impartial and reasonable decisions. For instance, former Solicitor General Suhada Gamlath was rejected by the CC as Attorney General just because he had been appointed as the Justice Ministry Secretary during the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime. When the name of Justice Deepali Wijesundera was nominated as Appeal Court President and as a Supreme Court Judge, it was rejected by the CC as she delivered the verdict of the “White flag case” convicting the accused,” he said.

Rajapakshe challenged the former and current members of the CC for a public debate on a television channel, if his allegations were false. “Functioning of the CC any longer is detrimental to the country. The Legislature should pay its immediate attention to abolish it,” he said.

Meanwhile, the private and unofficial Bar has channelled a petition, forwarded to it by a group of lawyers, to the Constitutional Council, urging that the Acting President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Deepali Wijesundera be considered when making the appointment to the vacancy of the Permanent President of the said Court.

The Secretariat of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) had received a petition to this effect with the signatures of 100 to 150 lawyers.

Speaking to Ceylon Today, BASL Secretary Kaushalya Nawaratne said that they had yet to receive any official communication in this regard from the CC, explaining that no decision has been taken in this connection yet.

“We cannot influence the CC in connection with this matter. All that we can do is to bring to the notice of the CC, the concerns of the legal community in relation to this particular matter. The petition states that Judge Wijesundera’s seniority and credentials also be considered when making the appointment to the position of the office of the President of the Court of Appeal, a post which is presently vacant.”

MMDA, ACJU, politicians and women

Muslim women of the era when the ‘madhahib’ (plural for ‘madhhab’) derived their ‘fiqh’ laws in relation to marriage and divorce are not the women of today. Today, they are more educated, more independent, more professional, and therefore they are a significant component of the nation’s labour force. They are not a piece of property to be protected and sold – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

Saturday, 16 February 2019 


It is 10 years since Justice Saleem Marsoof (JSM) and his committee was appointed to review and make recommendations to reform the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA), passed originally in 1951 and amended in 1954, 1955, 1965 and 1969 before becoming Law No. 45 in 1975. Neither in drafting the original Act nor in its subsequent amendments Muslim women were ever consulted. It was all a male affair.

The need for further reforms to the Act in order to reflect the changing status of Muslim women in Sri Lanka arose, because an articulate, educated and professional class among them, demanded such reforms but within the parameters of a progressive Islam. This is a novelty. The tragedy however, is the lack of adequate representation of Muslim women in the final stages of consultation.

The 7 February meeting attended by ACJU, Muslim politicians and an intruder YMMA (the community still doesn’t have YWMA) are all men claiming to speak on behalf of women. Justice Minister Thalatha Athukorale has conveniently passed the buck to Muslim politicians to decide, and none of those politicians would dare challenging ACJU. This is the dilemma Muslim women are facing at the moment. ACJU, the unchallenged guardian of prevailing orthodoxy, is not going to allow equal status for women in the affairs of marriage, divorce and disputes arising out of it.

ACJU’s intellectual fortress is built with bricks of ‘shari’a’, ‘fiqh’ and ‘madhhab’. Is this fortress that impregnable for modern ideas on women, marriage, divorce and family to enter and reshape its structure? Historically speaking there had been a creative tradition in Islam of discursiveness, disagreements, controversies and compromises in shaping those bricks and that tradition is not closed except in the minds of ACJU hierarchy.

Muslim women of the era when the ‘madhahib’ (plural for ‘madhhab’) derived their ‘fiqh’ laws in relation to marriage and divorce are not the women of today. Today, they are more educated, more independent, more professional, and therefore they are a significant component of the nation’s labour force. They are not a piece of property to be protected and sold.

An intentional reading of the Quran and researches by erudite Muslim women about the actual status accorded to them in Islam is totally contradictory to what the guardians of orthodoxy are advocating. Had ACJU been a forward looking institution changes to the fiqh would have originated much earlier from within that apex body. Unfortunately its retrogressive outlook and intellectual stagnation have forced the demand for reforms to come from outside.

An intentional reading of the Quran and researches by erudite Muslim women about the actual status accorded to them in Islam is totally contradictory to what the guardians of orthodoxy are advocating. Had ACJU been a forward looking institution changes to the fiqh would have originated much earlier from within that apex body. Unfortunately its retrogressive outlook and intellectual stagnation have forced the demand for reforms to come from outside

The JSM report after long gestation has come out with a few progressive recommendations especially in regard to raising the marriageable age, consent of bride before marriage is contracted, stricter conditions on polygamy, women registrars of marriage, and abolition of dowry. Although these recommendations fall short of what is required to respect the human rights of women and equality of their status, yet JSM and the committee deserve to be congratulated for what they have come out with. The role of the six women members in that committee deserves special mention.

Instead of acting on the recommendations and legislating in Parliament a suggestion was made on 7 February to translate the report in Tamil and circulate it widely. Why now and before legislating? The answer is clear. It is to cause further delay by creating more controversy. It will be interesting to see what the responses not only from the community of ‘ulema’ but also from others after reading the Tamil translation.

No two members of the ulema community, as found out by Justice Muneer in Pakistan in 1954, agree on anything. (I strongly recommend Muslim activists to read that report where Justice Muneer states that no two ulema agreed even on the definition of a Muslim.) When such conflicting views and reactions arise after circulating the report that may call for further discussion involving further delay. The hidden agenda to sabotage the report is shocking, to put it mildly.

In an election year neither the Minister of Justice nor the Muslim parliamentarians are going to antagonise a powerful Muslim group like ACJU by ignoring its wishes. The only option to Muslim women is to form a broader coalition of sympathetic voices and continue agitating. It is surprising that even a progressive intellectual group like the Kandy Forum is keeping silent on this matter. As one writer put it “Women are the Future of Islam”. 

(The writer is attached to the School of Business and Governance, Murdoch University, Western Australia.) 

The citizen archivist

Sanjana Hattotuwa-February 16, 2019, 8:52 pm 

A public lecture of archiving from a few years ago dealt with how I’ve developed an interest in preserving digital content - especially on social media - for posterity. The assumption many hold is that digital content never decays and that once online, on the web or indexed on Google, content never disappears or goes away. This is wrong on many levels.

For starters, digital content is only good if its accessible. A book or scroll can last hundreds of centuries in the right conditions. Printed text doesn’t require energy to store and regenerate. A book’s format is timeless, requiring only the physical turning of a page to access its contents. A digital file - like this column sent to the Sunday Island’s Editor, a PDF or a spreadsheet - requires energy to be stored, and propriety technology to open. Think of WordPerfect, dBase III Plus or VisiCalc. All of these programmes were - just two or three decades ago - very common and widely used. Today, it’s a technical challenge to access any file created by them for two reasons. One, the magnetic media they were stored on. Old floppy disks, especially in the tropics, would have long given up a fight against fungi, humidity and insects. Two, the file formats are defunct and require significant effort and technical expertise to open in modern day computers and programmes. No digital file format or medium used today is immune from this same decay, decades hence.

So-called ‘right to be forgotten’ legislation aside, where citizens in certain jurisdictions can order search engines, through judicial review, to delink specific content, social media content is in fact extremely difficult to find as time goes by and for a variety of reasons. Vital content essential for a fuller historical record is sometimes erased. A few years ago, a demeaning comment on the posterior of a well-known actress, published on Namal Rajapaksa’s official Twitter account, is now gone. At the time it was originally posted, the tweet generated a lot of pushback from others, including from your author, disgusted at the comment and appalled that a culture of violence against women was condoned on the account of a prominent personality. As Namal Rajapaksa’s profile expanded and a public, political persona was more carefully crafted, this tweet, obviously inconvenient to and incompatible with future aspirations, was surreptitiously deleted without any apology. Namal’s father provides another example of deleterious digital deletion. In the first 24 hours of the constitutional coup late last year, the entire contents of the Prime Minister’s official website was wiped out and replaced by a single image of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Rarely seeing or treating content on official websites as held in public trust, politicians often completely erase or overwrite content for parochial optics and partisan gain. In yet another example from few years ago, the entire contents of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) website disappeared completely, almost overnight, prompting an unprecedented note of dismay and alarm from the US Foreign Affairs Committee, which correctly flagged that citizen testimony was a vital part of historical record. Sadly, the website was never restored and its content - ranging from invaluable audio recordings to multi-lingual transcripts - is gone forever.

The problem is in fact much larger and more complex. Historically, every time the website of a leading newspaper in Sri Lanka is revamped, access to its archives - if they exist at all - is completely lost. Civil society projects often launch websites, each important and unique for what is captured, showcased and indexed. However, many aren’t engineered to last the unceasing onslaught of attacks against vulnerable web properties. In time, the sites crash or their domains - the web address if you will - expire. The greater the volume of production at a certain time, around a specific topic or on a particular platform, the harder it is to find a specific post. Combined with this, the longer the time after content was initially shared or produced, the less discoverable it becomes. Further, a lot of social media content exist in what are called ‘walled-gardens’. This means that what’s posted on Facebook and Twitter isn’t by default indexed on or discoverable through search engines. Biographies in the near future, anchored to key individuals whose correspondence, output and personalities mostly or only exist on certain social media platforms, will be near impossible to write or capture.

Over a decade ago, disturbed and saddened at the prospect of so much vital content being maliciously wiped out or disastrously degenerating over time, I started to archive key civil society websites and websites launched at the time of, or set up to record vital aspects of the ceasefire agreement. I also archived all the Twitter Q&A sessions conducted under the Rajapaksa regime, including with Mahinda Rajapaksa, Lalith Weeratunga and Nivard Cabraal. Sites set up by the erstwhile LTTE, linked to their ironic Peace Secretariat and Department of International Relations, were also archived. Additionally and over time, I started to archive key government websites linked to key political and developmental events, processes and projects. Dr. Saroja Wettasinghe, the former Director of Sri Lanka’s National Archives, in conversation with me after an interview we recorded for TV in 2014, said that she wished the Archives had the human resources and technical knowhow to scale up what I was doing.

Unsurprisingly, many of these sites, particularly linked to or from the time of the Ceasefire Agreement as well as the CoI and IIGEP processes, don’t exist anymore. The only existing public copy of vital records - from speeches and statements to declarations, agreements and proposals - are in the archived sites. Sadly though, much more than I could save, is lost. It begs the question as to how we record politics as it is conducted and contested today for posterity. The constitutional coup late last year resulted in the unprecedented growth of social media content, both in favour and staunchly opposed to it. From flood relief to constitutional reform, from the announcement of key policies to vibrant debates around political developments on Facebook, from the live broadcasts of press conferences and rallies on social media, generating millions of views and tens of thousands of comments, to campaign websites and related content, from personal tweets of politicians to the plethora of output from official accounts, from structured social media interactions with the public to more informal and unstructured engagements with those in positions of authority and power, politics is digital. How and to what degree we can capture these conversations, at risk of being subsumed, erased, deleted, lost and forgotten, matters a great deal. It requires, on the lines of UK’s Web Archive initiative, a high-level commitment by government to archive digital records. The UK doesn’t, to my knowledge, have to deal with politicians erasing entire websites just to put up their own image after an unconstitutional transfer of power. Clearly, Sri Lanka’s challenge, in addition to technical issues, is also institutional and cultural. There is no discernible evidence that successive governments value enough the work done by predecessors to save their digital records and output carefully.

Ultimately, the issue is how we deal with history, including inconvenient truths. To remember is political, and remembrance often is an act of defiance. Successive governments and political leaders wants citizens to forget. This essential tension is what places at risk all digital content that are official records. With scant regard for any version of history other than what’s officially sanctioned by whoever is in power, a fuller appreciation of the value of preserving digital content is almost entirely lost. The tragedy is that future generations will never even know how much of the country’s rich conversational, political, social and cultural textures they’ve lost.

Palestinian teen dies from tear gas canister injury

Relatives of Hasan Nofal mourn during the boy’s funeral in Bureij, central Gaza, on 13 February.

Ashraf AmraAPA images

Maureen Clare Murphy Rights and Accountability 14 February 2019

A 16-year-old Palestinian died on Tuesday from wounds sustained during protests along Gaza’s eastern boundary last week, the health ministry in the territory stated.

Hasan Nabil Ahmad Nofal, struck in the head by an Israeli-fired tear gas canister east of Bureij in central Gaza, is the third child to have died after being injured during Great March of Return protests on 8 February.

View image on Twitter

Defense for Children@DCIPalestine

On February 8, Hassan Nabil Ahmad Nofal, 16, was struck in the head by an Israeli-fired tear gas canister. He was 150m from the Gaza perimeter fence near Al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza. He sustained skull fractures & injuries to his brain. He died on February 12. #GazaReturnMarch

44

4:17 PM - Feb 13, 2019

The other two children killed were Hamza Muhammad Rushdi Ishtaiwi, 17, and Hasan Iyad Abd al-Fattah Shalabi, 13.

Hamza Ishtwaiwi was sitting some 200 meters from the Gaza-Israel boundary fence when he was hit in the neck by a live bullet, according to Defense for Children International Palestine.

View image on Twitter

Defense for Children@DCIPalestine

Israeli forces shot and killed 13-year-old Hassan Iyad Abdel Fattah Shalbi on February 8 around 4 pm during demonstrations near the Gaza perimeter fence in Khan Younis. He sustained a gunshot wound to his chest, exiting out his back, and he died soon after. #GazaReturnMarch

99

9:45 AM - Feb 10, 2019

United Nations officials condemned the killing of the children during last week’s protests:

Nickolay E. MLADENOV@nmladenov

I am appalled by the killing of two Palestinian children by Israeli fire on Friday in #Gaza. Such incidnets must stop. #Children must not be targeted or put in harm’s way. They must be protected. Lethal force is only a last resort. Deepest condolences to the families. #UNICEF #UN

217

6:49 AM - Feb 11, 2019

Geert Cappelaere

✔@gcappelaere

UNICEF is deeply saddened by the killing of two children, aged 13 and 17 years old, shot yesterday in the #Gaza Strip.

The exact circumstances of their death are under verification. This brings the number of Palestinian children killed this year to four.

54

3:48 AM - Feb 9, 2019

Israeli forces have killed six Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza so far this year, nearly one per week on average.

Tear gas canister deaths

Of the 15 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in 2019, three died after they were hit in the head with gas canisters during Gaza protests, including 16-year-old Hasan Nofal, who was standing with a group of youths some 150 meters from the boundary fence when he was struck in the right side of his head, fracturing his skull.

Abd al-Raouf Ismail Salha, 13, died on 14 January after being injured by a tear gas canister three days earlier, and Samir Ghazi al-Nabbahin, 47, died on 29 January after being struck by a gas canister four days earlier.

Five Palestinian children have died after being struck by tear gas canisters since the start of 2018, according toDefense for Children International Palestine.

“Tear gas canisters can become deadly weapons when they are fired and strike a child’s torso or head,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish of Defense for Children International Palestine stated.

Nearly 190 Palestinians have been killed during Great March of Return protests since their launch on 30 March last year.

Great March of Return fatalities made up the majority of the more than 300 Palestinians killed in the West Bank and Gaza in 2018.

Of the total number of Palestinians killed last year, 60 were children and 10 were persons with disabilities, according to the human rights group Al-Haq.

“Throughout the Great March of Return protests, Israel has deliberately injured and maimed Palestinian civilians, targeting specific body parts with the intention of causing permanent injury and amputations,” Al-Haq states in a report submitted earlier this month to the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

Some 6,400 people have been wounded by live ammunition during the protests, most of them in the limbs, according to the World Health Organization.

More than 120 amputations – 21 involving children – have taken place resulting from injuries sustained during the demonstrations. Twenty-two people have been paralyzed due to spinal cord injuries, and nine people have permanent vision loss.

Palestinians with disabilities killed

Three Palestinians killed during Great March of Return protests last year had psychosocial and intellectual disabilities, according to Al-Haq.

One of them was Karam Muhammad Fayyad, 26, shot in the head with a live bullet during protests east of Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on 28 December.

Ghanim Ibrahim Shurrab, a 44-year-old “diagnosed with a psychosocial and intellectual disability,” died on 5 November from his injuries sustained during protests the previous month.

He had been shot in the foot with a live explosive bullet, “causing severe bleeding and the rupture of arteries. As a result of his injury, [Shurrab] suffered health complications, primarily vascular toxicity, leading to his death,” according to Al-Haq.

Another Gaza man, Hussein Fathi al-Ruqub, died on 5 October last year after being shot in the stomach with a live bullet while collecting empty bottles near the Israel boundary fence.

“According to medical reports, [al-Ruqub] had suffered congenital abnormality and cerebral atrophy since birth. [Al-Ruqub] also had cognitive and linguistic disabilities,” Al-Haq states.

Palestinians with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank last year include Muhammad Subhi Anbar, shot in the stomach by a private security guard at a checkpoint in April.

“Following his death, Muhammad’s body was withheld by the Israeli authorities until 13 July 2018, when his body was released to the family in a white plastic cover, completely frozen and unfit for a dignified burial,” according to Al-Haq.

Muhammad Hussam Habali, a 22-year-old resident of Tulkarm refugee camp “born with a mental disability, causing him difficulties to recognize his surroundings and identify threats and risk consequences,” was shot in the head with a live bullet on 4 December.

Video footage of the incident shows that Habali posed no threat to soldiers and was walking away from them when he was shot from behind.

This story was updated to include quotations and data concerning tear gas canister injuries from Defense for Children International Palestine.

Palestinians furious and fed up with corruption of Abbas's 'mafia' PA

A botched social security law, cabinet dissolution and rampant nepotism add to mistrust of Palestinian Authority

A protest in Ramallah against the PA's proposed social security law in November 2018 (AFP)

By Megan Giovannetti in Ramallah, occupied West Bank- 15 February 2019

Ali was incredulous. "You call them a government?" he asked. "I call them mafia."

For the 22-year-old Palestinian resident of the southern occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, is a corrupt institution that benefits only an elite few.

“Abu Mazen’s [Abbas’s nickname] children attend the best schools, the best hospitals, they travel all over the world. They don’t care about people in Palestine.”

Palestinian security forces form a human shield as demonstrators protest PA's proposed social security law (AFP)

Ali is far from alone. According to a recent public opinion poll published by the Palestinian corruption monitor Aman Coalition, 91 percent of Palestinians surveyed say they do not trust the PA.

Ghassan - a member of the now-dissolved Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and the ruling party Fatah, who requested to be referred to by a pseudonym - has worked within the PA for over 20 years.

For him, the political and financial malpractice of the government, such as funnelling money into building new embassies abroad rather than building projects within Palestine, have severely eroded the public's trust in the governing body.

Ninety-one percent of Palestinians surveyed say they do not trust the PA, according to recent poll 

“We are  neglecting the Palestinian people,” he continued. “This is why trust has plummeted from the Palestinian people, because over the past 10 years we haven’t seen any development on the ground.”

The resignation of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah two weeks ago following the dissolution of the PLC in December has only confirmed this view for many Palestinians. These latest moves are widely viewed as a means to further consolidate power in the hands of Fatah and the president.

Airlines without planes and VAT-free cars

Created in 1994 in the wake of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority was intended to serve as a transitional governing body for five years until the establishment of a fully fledged Palestinian state, as part of a two-state solution.

A quarter of a century later, Palestinians are no closer to obtaining that state - and the PA has morphed into a bureaucratic giant many feel is more concerned with maintaining its power than advocating for a long-term political solution to the Israeli occupation.

“Most corruption is focused at the top,” Isam Haj Hussein, operations director at Aman, told MEE. The priority of the government, he said, is “to invest and control all the resources of the country for the benefit of the party” - Fatah.

Vintage postcard advertising the PA-owned airline (Twitter/@zaidiesulaiman)

Fatah, which has dominated the PA since its inception, uses one tool in particular to gain loyalty, Haj Hussein said: public sector employment.

Political corruption often manifests itself in the creation of positions out of thin air and the appointment of top officials based on loyalty or nepotism, rather than merit.

One of the more absurd examples of misused funds for government employment, as Aman’s 2017 report indicates, is that of PA-owned Palestinian Airlines.

There hasn’t been an operational airport in the occupied Palestinian territory since 2001, when Israel destroyed the Gaza International Airport during the Second Intifada.

'This spending is unnecessary under occupation. We only have $14 billion [in GDP], we need to spend it carefully - on Palestine itself'

- Former PLC member and 20-year PA employee

The airline apparently resumed operations again in 2012 in Egypt, despite not being recognised by the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority.

However, the company is still included in Palestine’s Ministry of Transportation budget, with no details or transparency.

Haj Hussein said that almost 200 employees of the airline inside the occupied Palestinian territory not only still receive salaries paid for by the PA's finance ministry, but have also received raises during the same time period.

Exaggerated or otherwise fictitious positions seem to also come with heavy perks, including salaries upwards of $10,000 a month, according to Aman, and customs exemptions on imported luxury cars.

According to the Aman report, the amount of money lost to customs evasions on luxury cars in 2017 alone - an estimated $357,600 - was “enough to cover the cash programme budget provided by the Ministry of Social Development, which distributes $214 dollars per three-month period to 1,670 needy families".

“This spending is unnecessary under occupation,” Ghassan emphasised. “We only have $14 billion [in GDP], we need to spend it carefully - on Palestine itself.”

Taxation without representation

In light of endemic corruption, the recent push for a new government seems to be nothing more than “a perception of political change,” said Marwa Fatafta, the Middle East and North Africa director of Transparency International - giving the impression that "something is happening because the discontent of the Palestinian people is super high.

“However, at its very core,” she continued, “the system is pretty much the same. It’s been captured by Fatah and Fatah is going to continue to dominate the political scene.”

Palestinians supporting the Fatah movement demonstrate in Ramallah in support of Abbas (AFP)

“The government is taking advantage of the dissolved parliament,” Ghassan agreed, adding that by “government” he means the ruling party Fatah. “The executive power is getting rid of laws and freedoms and making their own.”

Recent protests throughout the West Bank against a proposed social security lawthat would have included an income tax between seven and nine percent on private sector employees and employers exemplify the Palestinian people’s distrust in their government.

Abbas has since suspended the plan.

“The government hasn’t done anything in terms of building new industrial areas, creating new jobs,” Ramallah resident Ammar, 28, told MEE. “At the same time, they increase taxes on us, and I’m not seeing a shekel go back to benefit us as a community.

'You expect me to give my money to the government when they can’t even keep the soldiers out of Ramallah?'

- Ammar, Ramallah resident

“You expect me to give my money to the government when they can’t even keep the [Israeli] soldiers out of Ramallah?” he laughed.

Haj Hussein agreed with Ammar, noting that “even if you changed the law or changed all the articles we had problems with, the problem is still with the trust”.

The proposed law came right after the dissolution of the PLC, Fatafta said, “just drop[ping] out of nowhere through presidential decree with complete lack of transparency, no consultation”.

To Fatafta, ordinary Palestinian citizens are legitimately concerned about giving their money to the government when no one knows what the future is going to look like.

“We’re not living in a functioning democracy, let alone a state,” she said. “How can you ensure the money you’re taking now is going to be returned at some point when you retire?”

Governing under occupation

The uproar around the proposed social security law happened at the same time as heightened tensions in the West Bank resulting in many military raids in Ramallah, the de facto administrative centre of the PA.

“You have to keep in mind that the PA... is captive to the Israeli government and the Israeli military," George Giacaman, a professor at Birzeit University and a member of Aman’s board of directors, said. “It works within the confines that are placed on it.”

Palestinian children play under a bridge near the Khan al-Ahmar Bedouin village slated for demolition (AFP)

“They [the Israeli military] enter, arrest, issue curfews, and so on,” Giacaman continued, “so in a way, the PA doesn’t even have total control of the area that is called Area A.”

Under the Oslo Accords, the occupied West Bank was divided into three zones. Area A, making up some 18 percent of the West Bank, is officially under complete Palestinian Authority control. In Area B, the PA and Israel respectively hold administrative and military control, whereas Area C, constituting some 60 percent of the territory, is exclusively under Israeli military authority.

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In practice, however, Israeli forces carry out regular incursions into Area A, and the PA’s well-documented security coordination with Israel in all parts of the West Bank has been heavily criticised by the Palestinian public.

“This has been demoralising, not only for the PA - it has undercut its standing and legitimacy in the public,” Giacaman said, emphasising the context of the Israeli occupation in understanding Palestinian people’s distrust in their government.

The continued confiscation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and the imprisonment of PLC members by Israeli authorities has also undermined the credibility and effectiveness of the PA.

“This is the context in which the PA governs,” Giacaman said. “It is an impossible situation.”

“The occupation is not a justification for corruption, but it explains why or how corruption happens,” Ghassan, the former PLC member, explained.

“When you are ‘busy’ with the occupation, you turn a blind eye to corruption.”