EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, UK

         

 

Sri Lanka: No-inquiry zone

Truth and accountability are not divisible, and a single failure of international justice is also a collective one

When Richard Goldstone, the judge who headed a UN fact-finding mission to Gaza, partially recanted last month – an act that was disowned by fellow members of the mission – the saga was used as Exhibit A in the case against the UN. The organisation, it was claimed, was so inherently biased against Israel that it lacked the moral authority to investigate it. Where was the Goldstone report about Sri Lanka, some asked?

A UN panel has just produced such a report about the carnage of civilians which took place two years ago when government forces crushed the Tamil Tigers. It is as hard-hitting as anything Goldstone produced, and therefore is just as likely to be shelved. The point is that truth and accountability, let alone international justice, are not divisible. One country's ability to bury the evidence of war crimes endangers how civilians are treated in all other conflicts. A single failure of international justice is also a collective one.

That there is credible evidence that government soldiers targeted civilians, shelled hospitals and attacked aid workers in the final months of the war against the Tamil Tigers is indisputable. That the Tigers used civilians as human shields and shot those attempting to flee the carnage at point-blank range is equally true. Tens of thousands died as a result of these twin brutalities. The zone that the government established in the north-east of the country in the final months of its civil war was an area where savagery was organised on a daily basis. Civilians queueing at a food distribution centre would be shelled while President Mahinda Rajapaksa's office instructed the army to stop what it claimed it had not been doing. It was a no-journalist, no-aid-worker zone, but it was anything but a no-fire zone.

Two years on, the goal has to be to establish an independent inquiry into these events. The Sri Lankan government has consistently opposed the UN, and at one point organised demonstrations against UN staff in Colombo. It has established two ad hoc bodies, but no one has been held accountable. Its supporters claim that anything more trenchant would endanger the peace that has reigned on the island since. All of these arguments are self-serving.

That leaves the UN itself. The secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, claims he lacks the authority to order an inquiry into the mass killings without the consent of the Sri Lankan government, which is not a member of the international criminal court, or a decision by an appropriate international forum of member states. Human Rights Watch is right to disagree. Having fought to establish the panel, the UN secretary general has a responsibility to finish what he started.

Higher education: Mess in the marketplace

Some students are finding that this is one market where the customer is always wrong

Slowly but surely, the demand for university continues to grow. Amid tales of woe from unemployed graduates, and even while a demographic dip is making 18-year-olds something of a rare species, new figures from the clearing house Ucas reveal that applications have, once again, crept up. The effect of the great recession, which has greatly swelled the number of hopefuls in the last few years, has been not only sustained but somewhat intensified, with another 2% increase. But hopes may rise and be dashed – if the means to fulfil them do not keep pace. Record numbers who have bought the university dream – youngsters prepared to work hard and be saddled with debts – could be disappointed.

The clustering of English university fees at £9,000 is of obvious significance to would-be students, and is also deeply embarrassing for ministers who had promised that such stratospheric levies would be the exception, not the rule. It is not in itself, however, quite as ruinous for the sector's finances as some over-excited reports suggest. Not every student gets a costly loan to cover their fees, and not every student's fees will be levied at the full whack, thanks to scholarship schemes. Factoring these in, and remembering also that the exchequer will eventually recoup much of the money that it lends out, the budgetary hole that results is measured in millions as opposed to the panicked predictions of billions. Even so, there is a gap, and it admits no room for expansion to meet rising demand. Indeed, with the large budget for scientific research properly protected, it will probably require fresh retrenchment from the freeze on numbers which the coalition has already imposed.

The deepest pangs will afflict those who receive rejection letters over the next few months, but there could also be frustration in store for many getting the green light. After a full quarter-century during which numbers have increased continually and funding only falteringly, universities are already creaking. Few students paying the full price in a market that is rigged against them will be satisfied by the service they receive. Every last crumb of direct support is being removed from the teaching of arts and social sciences, on the strength of the Browne report, a technocratic document which did not contain the word "humanities". Many who stump up the full £9,000 in exchange for a few weekly hours of crowded lectures and photocopied reading lists will soon cotton on to the reality that they are cross-subsidising laboratories and field trips on other courses. The government's big idea is for profit-hungry providers to set up shop, and drive rip-off colleges to the wall. It might work in theory, but it will never do so in practice for as long as the Treasury continues to impose manifold restrictions on the creation of the surplus places this would involve. The new educational market gets tangled up in other ways with the quotas imposed by a cash-strapped Whitehall. The universities that more people would like to attend do not have the freedom to answer that demand, and the old notion that good A-level grades should be a passport to a good college, which is already fading fast, will become a distant memory. Even as students are metamorphosed into paying punters, some are finding that this is one market where the customer is always wrong.

With much of the architecture of the loan system specified in law, there is limited freedom to address its emergent shortcomings. So desperate is the scramble to rescue nice ideas about choice from being entirely drowned in dark financial waters that some people are even asking whether top colleges might start auctioning some share of their places to those English students with the deepest pockets, a previously unthinkable thought that was unthinkable for good reason. The university dream risks souring into a politically poisonous mix of debt and disappointment.

In praise of … the Asian Music Circuit

If the AMC loses its entire £500,000 grant, its good work, unrivalled passion and expertise will stop next spring

A few months ago David Cameron called for different ethnic communities to find out more about each other. However flawed the prime minister's views on multiculturalism might be, this was an excellent suggestion. So why has the Arts Council cut all of its funding to one organisation that has done most to bring different cultures in contact with each other? For the past 20 years the Asian Music Circuit has been bringing over some of the best musicians and dancers from India, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Afghanistan and other Asian countries. The hallmarks of an AMC show are breadth of knowledge, imagination and a touch of wit: they put on jazz concerts featuring Bengali flautists alongside Texan guitarists; they unleash Rajasthani dancers in Kensington Gardens; and when Prince Charles turns up to a performance they greet him with a camel. Such cheek runs alongside a commitment to spreading under-exposed Asian music far and wide. AMC artists play not only in the big cities but from Cornwall to the Hebrides. Asian classical and folk concerts will never make an organiser rich, but the tiny group matches its Arts Council cash with private money. It has opened a museum of Asian music aptly described by the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, as "brilliant". If the AMC loses its entire £500,000 grant, all this good work stops next spring – and what will disappear with it is unrivalled passion and expertise. This is madness. The Arts Council should reconsider – and reverse its decision.