Sri Lanka's Tamil minority...

The power of the ballot

Nov 26th 2009 | COLOMBO
From The Economist print edition

Suddenly, it matters what Tamils think

SHAKING the rain out of his hair, Ravi Chandran boarded a state-run bus for Jaffna in the north and looked around. It would leave Colombo soon, at 11.30pm, and he wanted to grab a good seat for what could be a 16-hour journey. Mr Chandran, a 27-year-old businessman in a rugby jersey and jeans, is among an estimated 3,500 commuters from Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority to have used the new bus service since the government eased travel restrictions earlier this month. Civilians taking public transport to Jaffna no longer need defence-ministry authorisation; just three copies of their national identity card will do.

Since the government’s victory in the long war with Tamil Tiger rebels in May, Tamils have chafed under travel and other restrictions. But an election looms, and President Mahinda Rajapaksa is lifting at least some of these. This week, he signed a proclamation authorising a presidential election in January. His main challenger is expected to be his former army commander, General Sarath Fonseka. So the loyalties of the Sinhalese majority will be split, and Tamil votes decisive.

The government has already started courting them. On November 21st, after months of intense international pressure, the government announced that those displaced by the war will be free to move from December 1st, and that all of them will be resettled by the end of January. Of nearly 300,000 people interned in camps, almost half have already been ferried back to their war-shattered villages.

Like others clambering on the Jaffna bus this week, Mr Chandran was happy that mobility between the mainly Sinhalese south and the mostly Tamil north is increasing. But what should be a simple ten-hour trip home remains dogged by delays, checkpoints and intense security.

During a meeting with newspaper editors this week, Mr Rajapaksa presented his decision to go to the polls early as a sacrifice of two years of his term rather than as a shrewd move to capitalise on victory in the war. He said he wanted to allow voters in the north and east the chance to select a president. At the latest election in 2005, in which Mr Rajapaksa squeaked home by fewer than 200,000 votes, the Tigers ordered a boycott of the poll in Tamil areas.

Still, Tamils are not likely to fall for Mr Rajapaksa’s claim, or for the small, calculated steps the government is taking to win their votes. Niranjan Ganeshathasan, a law student, agrees that Tamils will swing the vote in January but he would much rather see the repeal of draconian anti-terrorism legislation, an acceptable power-sharing arrangement, and a truth-and-reconciliation commission to investigate what happened in the last weeks of the war. Mr Rajapaksa, he insists, will have to try harder, merely to entice apathetic Tamils to vote at all.

Suffragette city...

Little watched, Hong Kong's democratic fever is reaching its crisis...
Illustration by M. Morgenstern

THE struggle for democracy in Hong Kong is not like the struggle elsewhere. One venerable warrior takes holy communion alongside the territory’s chief executive before spending the rest of the day lambasting him. Another, a bluestocking barrister, struggles to pump her fist in time to the campaign music, after listening to Mozart at home. A former high official turned freedom fighter, dubbed “Hong Kong’s conscience”, famously peeled off from a march to pop into the hairdressers. Democrats and their “pro-Beijing” adversaries alike send their sons to Ampleforth, Winchester or other snooty British schools.

Part of the flavour of Hong Kong’s democracy struggle comes from the close intertwining of the elite in a small territory of 7m. And, as a columnist, Michael Chugani, puts it, the democratic fight is waged with democracy-style freedoms. People take to the streets, mock their rulers in the press, or take them to court. When Britain handed Hong Kong to China in 1997, these freedoms were not certain to endure. Yet the Communists in Beijing have endured too. Their opposition to radical change has given politics the air of a theatrical set-piece. Everybody knows his part.

That impression was reinforced on November 19th, when the chief executive, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, proposed reforms aimed at widening democracy in 2012, the year of elections for his successor and for a new Legislative Council (“Legco”). The democracy camp, with 23 out of 60 seats in a Legco that is still rigged against it, condemned them as little different from earlier proposals, which Legco voted down in 2005. In the chamber, the official explaining the plan waited for the inevitable missile hurled by “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, one of Hong Kong’s very few anarcho-Trotskyites. It proved to be a cardboard microwave oven, symbolising warmed-up fare. All good fun.

Though democrats rarely admit it, political theatre, within bounds, has brought incremental improvements. In 2003 protests led the government “temporarily” to suspend a deeply unpopular anti-sedition law imposed at China’s behest. In the 2005 debate about political reform, democrats’ main beef was the absence of a timetable for universal suffrage, promised in Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law. But in 2007, aware of growing local anger, China ruled that it would apply starting in 2017 for electing the chief executive, and from 2020 for Legco.

Five years seems neither here nor there. So why make a fuss about 2012? One reason is that it is still far from clear what China means by “universal suffrage”. Take the “functional constituencies”, a British legacy. These are made up of companies, professional bodies and trade unions, in which 16,000 organisations and just 211,000 individuals “elect” half of Legco’s members. The latest proposals leave the functional constituencies intact. Stephen Lam Sui-lung, secretary for constitutional affairs, argues that the chief executive in 2017, elected through universal suffrage, will have the mandate to reform them. Democrats naturally want these rotten boroughs abolished in favour of purely geographical seats, but Mr Lam says that “the government has not reached such a strong conclusion.” A bastard system may prevail. As for the chief executive’s post, high barriers to nomination might yet debar candidates with a democratic bent.

Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, head of the Civic Party, says Hong Kong needs a “road map” for getting to the final democratic arrangements. Now frustration is driving some to bolder theatre. Long Hair Leung’s League of Social Democrats and the Civic Party, made up mainly of barristers, propose that a legislative councillor in each of Hong Kong’s five geographical districts now resign, sparking by-elections in which each will campaign on the single issue of universal suffrage. They intend the by-elections to send a resounding popular message to Beijing. If that fails, some want democratic legislators to resign en masse.

The plan is a huge gamble for the pan-democratic camp, putting at risk the 20 seats democrats need to wield a veto, without which any old political package might pass. Worse, says Ronny Tong Ka-wah, a founder of the Civic Party, the proposal is splitting political parties, the pan-democratic camp, and Hong Kong at large. In particular, the Democratic Party, veterans of the democracy movement but against the by-election plan, are lambasted by younger radicals as traitors. Rather than hastening political reform, all this may encourage China to resist it. “For 20 years Beijing has wanted to divide us,” says Mr Tong. “Now we’re destroying the democratic movement without Beijing lifting a finger.”

Rotten boroughs, rotten fruits

Since legal freedoms have survived, some question whether democracy really matters at all. The answer is certainly yes, it does. As it is, Mr Tsang and his unelected team struggle with declining popularity and problems of governance. A point never acknowledged by China (unsurprisingly) is that democratic legitimacy would help the executive branch. Nor is it true, as China has argued, that Hong Kong is an “economic city” whose go-getting residents care not a fig for politics. That ignores Hong Kong’s under-represented poor. A highly skewed distribution of political rights is mirrored by equally skewed wealth. The average living space per person in public housing is 12.5 square metres (135 square feet), half that in China, which is eight times poorer. Thousands of men live in “cage homes” like livestock coops.

The pearl-wearing freedom fighters understand this. So do their conservative opponents. In the early 1970s industrialists insisted that an end to the seven-day week would spell doom for Hong Kong. Their sons today argue against a minimum wage, a social-safety net and an end to the functional constituencies. The difference is that their fathers would never have expected the Chinese Communist Party to be their staunchest ally.

Economist.com/blogs/banyan

What is happening in Switzerland....?

My compatrriots' vote to ban minarets is fuelled by fear...

It wasn’t meant to go this way. For months we had been told that the efforts to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland were doomed. The last surveys suggested around 34% of the Swiss population would vote for this shocking initiative. Last Friday, in a meeting organised in Lausanne, more than 800 students, professors and citizens were in no doubt that the referendum would see the motion rejected, and instead were focused on how to turn this silly initiative into a more positive future.

Today that confidence was shattered, as 57 % of the Swiss population did as the Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) had urged them to – a worrying sign that this populist party may be closest to the people’s fears and expectations. For the first time since 1893 an initiative that singles out one community, with a clear discriminatory essence, has been approved in Switzerland. One can hope that the ban will be rejected at the European level, but that makes the result no less alarming. What is happening in Switzerland, the land of my birth?

There are only four minarets in Switzerland, so why is it that it is there that this initiative has been launched? My country, like many in Europe, is facing a national reaction to the new visibility of European Muslims. The minarets are but a pretext – the UDC wanted first to launch a campaign against the traditional Islamic methods of slaughtering animals but were afraid of testing the sensitivity of Swiss Jews, and instead turned their sights on the minaret as a suitable symbol.

Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted. In France it is the headscarf or burka; in Germany, mosques; in Britain, violence; cartoons in Denmark; homosexuality in the Netherlands – and so on. It is important to look beyond these symbols and understand what is really happening in Europe in general and in Switzerland in particular: while European countries and citizens are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the new visibility of Muslims is problematic – and it is scary.

At the very moment Europeans find themselves asking, in a globalising, migratory world, "What are our roots?", "Who are we?", "What will our future look like?", they see around them new citizens, new skin colours, new symbols to which they are unaccustomed.

Over the last two decades Islam has become connected to so many controversial debates – violence, extremism, freedom of speech, gender discrimination, forced marriage, to name a few – it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this new Muslim presence as a positive factor. There is a great deal of fear and a palpable mistrust. Who are they? What do they want? And the questions are charged with further suspicion as the idea of Islam being an expansionist religion is intoned. Do these people want to Islamise our country?

The campaign against the minarets was fuelled by just these anxieties and allegations. Voters were drawn to the cause by a manipulative appeal to popular fears and emotions. Posters featured a woman wearing a burka with the minarets drawn as weapons on a colonised Swiss flag. The claim was made that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Swiss values. (The UDC has in the past demanded my citizenship be revoked because I was defending Islamic values too openly.) Its media strategy was simple but effective. Provoke controversy wherever it can be inflamed. Spread a sense of victimhood among the Swiss people: we are under siege, the Muslims are silently colonising us and we are losing our very roots and culture. This strategy worked. The Swiss majority are sending a clear message to their Muslim fellow citizens: we do not trust you and the best Muslim for us is the Muslim we cannot see.

Who is to be blamed? I have been repeating for years to Muslim people that they have to be positively visible, active and proactive within their respective western societies. In Switzerland, over the past few months, Muslims have striven to remain hidden in order to avoid a clash. It would have been more useful to create new alliances with all these Swiss organisations and political parties that were clearly against the initiative. Swiss Muslims have their share of responsibility but one must add that the political parties, in Europe as in Switzerland have become cowed, and shy from any courageous policies towards religious and cultural pluralism. It is as if the populists set the tone and the rest follow. They fail to assert that Islam is by now a Swiss and a European religion and that Muslim citizens are largely "integrated". That we face common challenges, such as unemployment, poverty and violence – challenges we must face together. We cannot blame the populists alone – it is a wider failure, a lack of courage, a terrible and narrow-minded lack of trust in their new Muslim citizens.

Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University. His most recent book is What I Believe

Religions for Peace Global Youth Campaign for Shared Security..

Disarmament Can Provide Means for Peace, Development, Secretary-General Tells

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s message to the Religions for Peace Global Youth Campaign on Disarmament for Shared Security in San Jose, Costa Rica, on 7 November:
It is a pleasure to send greetings to the World Conference of Religions for Peace and the Arias Foundation and all the participants in this Global Youth Campaign on Disarmament for Shared Security. I thank the Government of Costa Rica for hosting this event and for its staunch support, expressed at the September Summit of the United Nations Security Council, for the disarmament agenda and for my own five-point action plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
The world is over-armed and peace is under-funded. We are now a generation beyond the end of the cold war, but military spending is rising and is now well above $1 trillion. More weapons are being produced, flooding markets, destabilizing societies and feeding the flames of civil war and terror.

Yet the world is also witnessing a new wave of interest in advancing disarmament goals ‑‑ an interest shared by Governments and civil society alike. People everywhere are recognizing as never before the tremendous burdens and risks of continuing to invest vast sums and energies in nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, small arms, landmines, cluster munitions and other deadly weapons. Disarmament is back on the global agenda, and we must make the most of this new moment of opportunity.

The United Nations has always recognized the critical role religious communities play in building peace. Religious leaders and people of faith around the world, including Religions for Peace, have long been active in advocating for a number of disarmament measures, including the recent adoption of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. This year’s global, multi-religious youth campaign is another welcome effort. I urge you to use this event to build and strengthen the networks of mutual support that are so essential for the success of disarmament initiatives. I hope young people will also support the UN’s “We Must Disarm!” campaign by joining us on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and elsewhere to tell the world why these weapons should have no place in the twenty-first century.

There can be no development without peace and no peace without development. Disarmament can provide the means for both. With your voice and strong support, we can get this message across and advance the international disarmament agenda. Please accept my best wishes for a successful conference.

Singapore terrorist linked to Abu Sayyaf..

SINGAPORE, Nov 8 — Muaiya. Manobo. Muawiyah.
Real or aliases, they are the names used by a Singaporean terrorist.
He is an Indian Muslim linked to regional terror network Jemaah Islamiah (JI), with skills in logistics and financial planning. He is now working as a ‘consultant’ to Filipino bandit group Abu Sayyaf.

This is what security expert Rommel Banlaoi told The Sunday Times.
The academic was in Singapore last week to release his book, Philippine Security In The Age Of Terror.

Some reports had suggested that Muaiya could have been killed in a Philippine counter-terror operation earlier this year, but Professor Banlaoi said his information suggests that the terrorist is still alive.
Muaiya is, in fact, helping senior Abu Sayyaf leaders prepare their terror operations, the head of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research said.
A Singapore Home Affairs Ministry spokesman said officials in Singapore have been in touch with the Philippine authorities on this issue but added that they are unable to disclose any other details.

Muaiya’s skills are said to be so good that slain JI leader Noordin Top once sought his help to secure M-16 rifles and rocket grenades.
Noordin, the hardline JI leader behind most of the major bombings in Indonesia, was killed in a security operation a few months ago.
Banlaoi, who has taught at the Philippine National Defence College, still works with the government on strategic issues.

He said Muaiya, who is in touch with senior JI leaders in the Philippines like Umar Patek and Dulmatin, works with a faction of the Abu Sayyaf that has ‘ground control’ over operations.
Muaiya reportedly left Singapore some years before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the subsequent uncovering of JI cells in Singapore and elsewhere in the region.
According to Jakarta-based think-tank International Crisis Group, he was not a member of the JI cell broken up by the Singapore authorities in 2001.

Security experts became aware of Muaiya’s presence in the Philippines earlier this year when the Abu Sayyaf took as hostage three Red Cross workers in Mindanao.
The Indian Muslim was reportedly seen moving hostages about in Mindanao, while acting as a media spokesman.

Banlaoi said from his information, Muaiya is part of a group of between 25 and 40 JI members and a few foreign jihadists who are training the Abu Sayyaf.
He reports to at least one senior Abu Sayyaf leader, Isnilon Hapilon.
An upsurge in kidnappings suggests that the bandit group is financially stronger than it was before and continues to mobilise resources.

Banlaoi said the security situation in Mindanao is worrying, with newer bandit groups emerging even as older ones maintain links with one another.
In the most recent incident, the newly identified Bangsamoro National Liberation Army was involved in the killing of two American soldiers this month, he said.
Besides the Abu Sayyaf, Mindanao is also home to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, among other militant groups.

“They are getting financial resources, but the government’s efforts to counter them are hampered,” Prof Banlaoi said, adding that Filipino militant groups may seek to extend their tentacles by getting involved in regional operations as well. — Straits Times

KEADILAN TO EXTEND HELP TO EARTHQUAKE-HIT PADANG...

Seeing the pictures and video clips of the devastation wrought by the two earthquakes in Padang and surrounding areas, surely no-one could fail to be moved. The disaster caused destruction of not just homes and public amenities, but also of the lives of thousands of individuals.

There is now an urgent need to rebuild physical structures, and also to help the people to rebuild their lives and communities.

KEADILAN’s International Bureau will spearhead the Party’s initiative to offer assistance in whatever forms we are able, according to the needs on the ground. We will work through the Party’s Yayasan Aman (Peace Foundation), and will also cooperate with a number of NGOs which already have a presence there.
We will be sending a small team on a fact-finding mission and in the meantime we are launching an appeal for donations and volunteers.

We hope that caring Malaysians will be generous in offering whatever help they can. The task is huge, and it is our shared responsibility, especially as close neighbours, to reach out and assist our suffering brothers and sisters in Padang.

MUSTAFFA KAMIL AYUB
Chairman,

International Bureau

What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson Climate correspondent, BBC News

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

Average temperatures have not increased for over a decade

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Recent research has ruled out solar influences on temperature increases

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.
He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.
The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.
These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.
So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."
So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.
But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.
In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.
What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

The UK Met Office says that warming is set to resume

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.
But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Global Humanitarian Contributions in 2009:

Totals by Donor as of 08-Nov. 2009

click here to know committed and uncomiitted donors...!!

http://ocha.unog.ch/fts/reports/daily/ocha_R18_Y2009___0911080205.pdf

GLOBAL ISSUES FORUM..

AFTA - ARE WE READY?

Saturday 5 Sept. 2009

Seminar Hall, PJ Civic Centre,

9.00am - 1.00pm

Programme:

9.30- Welcoming address and introduction to the GIF by

Mustaffa Kamil Ayub - Head of International Bureau

9.50- Keynote address by YB Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim

10.30- Panel presentations and Q and A

Moderator: Datin Paduka Dr Tan Yee Kew

Panelists:

1. Dr. Mary Cardoza, (Pres. Elect MMA)

2. Prof Dr Ananthan Krishnan (AMRI-ASIA)

3. Dato' Rameli Musa (Ingress)

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE.. 29 SEPT

Disarmament and non-proliferation

The International Day of Peace, observed each year on 21 September, is a global call for ceasefire and non-violence. This year the Secretary-General is calling on governments and citizens to focus on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

On 13 June 2009, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a multiplatform campaign under the slogan WMD – We Must Disarm to mark the 100-day countdown which lead to the International Day of Peace on 21 September.

The United Nations will continue to raise awareness of the dangers and costs of nuclear weapons, and on why nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are so crucial. The Secretary-General was joined in the campaign by United Nations Messenger of Peace Michael Douglas, who has championed the cause of disarmament for the United Nations since 1998, and American actor Rainn Wilson, featured in the TV series The Office.

The International Day of Peace was established by the UN General Assembly in 1981 for “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace within and among all nations and people.” Twenty years later, the General Assembly decided that 21 September would be observed annually as a “day of global ceasefire and non-violence" and invited all Member States, organizations and individuals to commemorate the day, including through education and public awareness, and to cooperate with the United Nations in the establishment of a global ceasefire.