EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

          

 

Ratko Mladic: An old man faces justice

Belgrade has sent a clear message that it intends to turn the page and start rebuilding the country and the region

The 16 years in which Ratko Mladic has roamed free in Serbia is not a long time in Balkan memory. It's no more than the blink of an eye. Besides, the arrest of Europe's most wanted war crimes suspect has as much to do with the present as the past. The chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal (ICTY), Serge Brammertz, was just about to deliver a damning verdict on Belgrade's reluctant pursuit of Mladic to the UN, a report which would almost certainly have doomed Serbia's bid to be declared a formal candidate for EU membership later this year. Serbia has already fallen years behind Croatia, which can reckon on becoming the 28th member in 2013. President Boris Tadic, who faces unrest on the streets and a challenge from a strengthening nationalist opposition, had to deliver – and deliver quickly. The EU, for its part, will now come under strong pressure to reciprocate. It is no exaggeration to say that the arrest of one man could open a new chapter in relations between his country and Europe.

Nothing about the stocky former general has ever been diminutive. He has, according to just two counts on the ICTY charge sheet, the blood of 17,000 victims on his hands – the massacre of 7,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 and the siege of Sarajevo, which claimed 10,000 lives. This was more than died during the German occupation. And yet the fact that he has evaded capture for so long speaks volumes about the raw memory of those terrible events. Consider the reaction yesterday of the Serbian Radical party, whose spokesman accused Serb police of treachery for arresting a Serb hero. According to one poll, 40% concur with that view, and 51% would not hand Mladic over to the tribunal. Mladic's insider knowledge of how the security services worked was surely not the only factor that kept him one step ahead of the game for 16 years. It was also the fact that he remained, to the people who began protesting in Belgrade last night, a hero worth protecting.

The cauldron of ethnic cleansing is still warm to the touch in this part of Europe, and it was only last month that Serbia agreed to hold face-to-face talks with Kosovo, whose independence it refuses to recognise. Belgrade also plays a major role in the calculations of the Bosnian Serbs, and their demands for a breakaway statelet from Bosnia-Herzegovina. If the Kosovans were allowed to break away from Serbia, why, they argue, are Bosnian Serbs to be denied the same right? The embers of this fire are still smouldering and could easily reignite. The trial of Mladic, and the painstaking unveiling of the evidence against him, will do nothing immediately to douse passions. Indeed they could fan them. The demonstrations organised by the Serbian Radical party will inevitably turn up the heat in the nine or 10 days that it will take for Mladic to be transferred to the international tribunal in the Hague. In that time, the courts and Tadic himself will both have to hold firm.

But in the long run, the state's unswerving determination to deliver Mladic to international justice is the strongest message any government in Belgrade could give to its neighbours that it intends to turn the page of history and start rebuilding the country and the region. Put to one side the carrots of EU membership. Mladic's deliverance to the Hague is the only conceivable route to establishing normal relations between all the beleaguered, and still impoverished, communities of the region. It is the only way of re-establishing Serbia's place in the Balkans, not as a pariah state but as a modern trading partner. It could also be a reminder to those manning fortress Europe of the cost of keeping the gates shut. France, Germany and the Netherlands, all suffering from enlargement fatigue, have been setting new conditions on Croatia's membership. Yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy changed tack, acknowledging that it was impossible to tell Serbia now that the door was closed. The dinar has dropped.

George Osborne: A lonely figure

Far from things getting better for the economy, under Osborne they are getting steadily worseRare is the George Osborne speech that does not begin with a roll call of groups that support his spending cuts. Sadly for the chancellor, though, supporters for his historic austerity package are themselves increasingly rare. David Cameron's star guest this week, Barack Obama, was polite but conspicuous in his disagreement with the coalition's one-track stance. "We've got to make sure that we take a balanced approach and that there's a mix of cuts, but also thinking about how do we generate revenue," said the president. Then there was the chief economist of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pier Carlo Padoan, who said there was "scope for slowing the pace" of cuts. Given how much the coalition has made of OECD approval for its policies, this is extraordinary.

The chancellor's newfound loneliness matters both economically and politically. Economically, those OECD comments followed on from its admission that prospects for the UK are getting worse. Last May the thinktank predicted that UK GDP would grow 2.5% in 2011; yesterday that forecast was cut (yet again) to 1.4%. That is higher than the prediction from the chancellor's Office for Budget Responsibility, but the OBR has also reduced its expectations for economic growth time and again. The Bank of England has had to do the same, and so have a whole host of private-sector forecasters. True, other countries have fallen subject to the same fate – but not so dramatically. The consensus is clear: far from things getting better for the economy, under Mr Osborne they are getting steadily worse.

Flick through the economic reports published this week and the same plangent theme sounds again and again. The CBI reports a "sharp" decline in trade for restaurants and other consumer-service firms over the first three months of this year. That is backed up by the detailed GDP figures this week showing a slump in household spending, to its lowest level since the height of the banking crisis. The chancellor's answer to how Britain emerges from its slump is a boom in business investment – but that collapsed 7.1% in the first part of the year. There is no good way of playing these figures – just like those big-picture forecasts, they are not going the government's way.

A canny tactician, Mr Osborne sold his austerity plans to the public as being the tough medicine prescribed by every economist going. Yet one by one, his allies – whether in the CBI, the G20 or the OECD – are distancing themselves from his policies. The chancellor may have claimed to be the consensus once; now he is out of sympathy with both the centre ground and economic reality.

In praise of … Blackburn with Darwen

With a high youth population, the towns' comprehensive children's centres helped inspire Sure Start

The wheel turns. An industrial powerhouse declines from the busiest cotton-spinning town in the world, with 2.5m spindles in 1870, to a handful of specialist, residual textile firms today. A great international name shrinks to provincial status; was it Blackburn we were talking about. Or Burnley? Or Bolton? What is the difference between them anyway? The future lies elsewhere. Such conversations no doubt still take place in bastions of ignorance away from the north, but reality is now winning out. Not only in the shape of successful engineering of aircraft, but in news about the exceptional number of young people who live in Blackburn with Darwen. One in four of the population is under 15, officially the largest proportion in the UK. Elsewhere, this might be considered a drain on resources. In Blackburn with Darwen, it is being turned to good account. The towns' comprehensive children's centres helped inspire Sure Start and, through careful budgeting and protection from cuts, continue to flourish. No local child is more than a pram push away. It has an elected "youth MP" and youngsters are involved in the governance of such regenerative centres as Blackburn College and the £8m YouthZone which opens later this year. Its online children and young people's directory is hosted at a textese web address: URBwD.com. Young people, in return, overwhelmingly want to stay and make their lives in Blackburn and Darwen. There could be no better shoulder to the wheel than that.

 

The Mideast Peace Process: No Plan for Talks

This is the time for bold ideas to salvage Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel did not seize it. In his address to Congress, he showed — once again — that he has no serious appetite for the kind of compromises that are the only way to forge a two-state solution and guarantee both Palestinians their long-denied state and Israel’s long-term security.

President Obama showed more rhetorical initiative when he spoke, but he doesn’t appear to have a strategy for reviving negotiations. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, is refusing to come back to the table and is apparently betting his people’s future on a misguided deal with Hamas and symbolic gestures.

This is more than just a wasted opportunity. Continued stalemate feeds extremism. And there is a deadline looming: Absent negotiations, Palestinians plan to ask the United Nations in September to recognize their state. The measure won’t get them what they want, and the United States will veto it when it gets to the Security Council. But the exercise will further isolate Israel and Washington.

President Obama vowed to revive the peace process but checked out when Mr. Netanyahu rejected his demand for a settlement freeze and Mr. Abbas refused to negotiate without it. Mr. Obama got back in the game last week. In a speech on the Arab Spring, he goaded allies, including Israel, to take political risks for peaceful change.

What drew the most attention was his call for negotiations on a Palestinian state based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders — with mutually agreed land swaps. The idea has been the basis of all negotiations for more than a decade, including those backed by President George W. Bush.

Mr. Netanyahu immediately insisted that Israel would never return to the “indefensible” pre-1967 boundaries. Playing to his conservative base at home, and on Capitol Hill, he ignored the second half of Mr. Obama’s statement about “mutually agreed swaps so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Pretty much everyone but the hardest liners — on both sides — assumes that in a peace deal Israel will retain many of its West Bank settlements and compensate Palestinians with other land. On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged as much, saying that “in any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders.”

His aides had raised hopes that Mr. Netanyahu would offer new ideas to revive talks, but there was really nothing new there. He insisted that Jerusalem “will never again be divided” and Israel’s Army would remain along the Jordan River. And while he basked in Congress’s standing ovations, Ethan Bronner reported in The Times that in Israel the trip was judged a diplomatic failure. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Mr. Netanyahu’s “same old messages” proved the country “deserves a different leader.” Palestinians dismissed the visit and said they would focus on nonviolent protests leading to September.

So what happens now? More drift and recriminations, unless Mr. Obama comes up with a plan to get the parties into serious talks. We see no hint that he is working toward one. We are told that he has no immediate plans to appoint a new envoy to replace George Mitchell, who resigned, or to send Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the region. Negotiations will become even harder once the unity government with Hamas is formed and it gets closer to September. Time is running out.

The Mideast Peace Process: Washington Makes Things Worse

Only a few minutes after President Obama finished his carefully balanced speech on the Middle East last week, Republican presidential candidates and lawmakers began twisting his words to suggest that he was calling for an epochal abandonment of Israel.

“President Obama has thrown Israel under the bus,” said Mitt Romney. Tim Pawlenty wrongly said Mr. Obama had called for Israel to return to its 1967 borders, which he called “a disaster waiting to happen.” Rick Santorum said Mr. Obama “just put Israel’s very existence in more peril.”

Others went even further. Representative Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee, a former presidential candidate, said Mr. Obama had “betrayed Israel.” The worst line came from Representative Allen West of Florida, who somehow believes Mr. Obama wants to keep Jews away from the Western Wall and wants to see “the beginning of the end as we know it for the Jewish state.”

Some Democrats were also piling on, evidently afraid Republicans will paint them as anti-Israel. It was not helpful when Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said that no one outside of the talks should urge the terms of negotiation, clearly repudiating the president’s attempts to do just that. Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip, and other Democrats have made similar statements.

Pandering on Israel in the hopes of winning Jewish support is hardly a new phenomenon in American politics, but there is something unusually dishonest about this fusillade. Most Republicans know full well that Mr. Obama is not calling on Israel to retreat to its 1967 borders. He said those borders, which define the West Bank and Gaza, would be the starting point for talks about land swaps.

Do the president’s critics even agree on the need for a Palestinian state next to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel says he does? It is not clear that several of the Republicans would go as far as the prime minister, who at least noted that Mr. Obama does not want to return to the 1967 lines. But even those who do should admit that two-state proposals have always been along the lines sketched out by the president.

In 2007, for example, Mr. Romney told The Jerusalem Post that his administration would “actively work toward a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.” What could the outline of that solution be if not the one Mr. Obama mentioned? Mr. Romney doesn’t address that question in his speeches. It is one thing to make noise on the campaign trail. It is quite another to lead a quest for peace.

How the Other Half Lives, Still

At the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in Manhattan, visitors can view meticulously recreated moments in the lives of the immigrant families who lived there, like the Moores of Ireland. Their dark, stifling apartment sits ready for the wake of a baby girl, dead of malnutrition. This was in the 1870s, when America’s newcomers struggled mightily against poverty and isolation.

They still do. New immigrants crowd into derelict apartments. Parents toil, children suffer. But while most of the last centuries’ newcomers were Americans in the making, many today have no way to naturalize. They live in the shadows, so their American-born children do, too.

“Immigrants Raising Citizens,” a study by a Harvard education professor, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, followed nearly 400 of these young children in New York City. It found that while mothers and fathers showed great effort and ingenuity in trying to provide for their children, the children have paid a steep price for their parents’ precarious lives.

Depression, anxiety and crushing work schedules, plus the stress and discomfort of crowded apartments, make it hard for parents to provide adequate nurturing. Fear of deportation and lack of information keep parents from enrolling children in government programs that offer help with nutrition, child care and early education. From the start, the children’s development suffers. Their reading and language skills lag. These early results bode poorly for their future academic and job success.

If conditions are this bad in New York City, with its array of social services and nonprofit organizations, what would he have found in Arizona or Texas or other places where immigrants are pushed ever farther into the shadows? Professor Yoshikawa estimates that four million preschool-age children of immigrants are American citizens. Their hindered development will haunt this country.

End of the Line

In 1995, some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred in the town of Srebrenica. It was the worst ethnically motivated mass murder in Europe since World War II. Now, finally, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general who masterminded that butchery, is where he should be — in custody, facing prosecution before the International Criminal Court and, we hope, a lifetime in prison.

The arrest should be a warning to other butchers that they, too, will be caught and held to account, no matter how long it takes. It is also a reminder that sustained international pressure works. Europe’s leaders made Mr. Mladic’s capture and delivery to The Hague a condition for Serbia’s admission to the European Union.

For more than 15 years, Mr. Mladic managed to evade capture, almost certainly with the help of some Serbian officials. Serbia’s president, Boris Tadic, is a new sort of leader, and, last year, Serbia finally accepted responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre and apologized.

With Thursday’s capture of Mr. Mladic, he has proved his sincerity. Europe now has to prove its sincerity and move Serbia’s application to the European Union forward.

We hope the arrest will also facilitate reconciliation among Bosnia’s ethnic factions. There is plenty of blame. But the Bosnian Serb leadership in particular needs to abandon its fantasies about dismantling the multiethnic Bosnian state. It has few friends left in Belgrade and none anywhere else.

There is one more fugitive wanted for war crimes: Goran Hadzic. President Tadic vowed that he, too, will be arrested. But Mr. Mladic is the last of the big three butchers. Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader is on trial in The Hague on charges of genocide. Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president and the war’s architect, died in 2006 while his trial was under way. It is small solace for the dead, but these ruthless men ultimately are being made to answer for their crimes.

EDITORIAL : THE GLOBAL TIMES, CHINA

                   

 

BRICS are wise to challenge IMF together

The IMF executive directors for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known as the BRICS, issued a joint statement Wednesday, saying that the choice for the new IMF chief should be based on competence, not nationality. Slamming the "obsolete unwritten convention" of the European grip on the IMF, the unusual statement poses a challenge to the traditional financial hegemony.

As emerging economies have long decried, the backroom deal between Europe and the US to respectively head the IMF and the World Bank has eroded the legitimacy of global financial institutions. Dominating the global financial layout, the US and Europe are grabbing colossal benefits in international labor division. Though developed countries appear high on the supporter list for financial reforms, their dominance seems immune.

Pragmatically, China is not capable of seeking more interests for emerging countries alone. It is wise to join hands with other BRICS members to express complaints, though BRICS members are still weak in IMF voting shares - the US takes up 17 percent of voting share, and the EU 36 percent leaving the BRICS with only 11 percent.

It may take a few decades before the BRICS are able to bring substantial changes to the ingrained financial order. Besides, due to historical and practical reasons, BRICS countries still have misunderstandings and divergences among themselves, which may be taken advantage of by the US and Europe to disintegrate the group. However, by issuing the joint statement, the BRICS have initiated a protracted battle to oppose Western financial dominance.

The world is witnessing a profound shake-up of its traditional patterns. It is true that emerging countries still find it hard to put up a very experienced and competent candidate. However, they will be making contributions as long as they reinforce solidarity in standing up to traditional economic powers at this time.

At the moment, China is able to protect its territory and sovereignty, but still appears vulnerable to global financial risks. A healthy and orderly domestic financial market has not yet been established. Inflows of hot money from overseas may easily cause fluctuations here.

China has a lot to do. It needs to build a financial market with risk resistance capacity, to further enhance the international position of the yuan, and to safely realize the full convertibility of the yuan. Most importantly, it needs to foster a batch of financial talent with sharpened international insight.

It is still early to stress the status of the BRICS members in the IMF. However, as the trend of rising economic strength in emerging countries continues, the BRICS will gain momentum in serving as an important counterweight. Their latest joint statement is but the beginning.

EDITORIAL : THE DAILY YOMIURI, JAPAN

          

 

Arbitrary evidence disclosure to blame for false accusations

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Two men were acquitted Tuesday in a retrial of a murder-robbery case that occurred 44 years ago.

Shoji Sakurai and Takao Sugiyama, both 64, won acquittal at the Tsuchiura branch of the Mito District Court over the murder-robbery of a 62-year-old carpenter in the Fukawa district of Tonemachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, in 1967. Slightly more than 100,000 yen was stolen.

In handing down a ruling on what is known as the Fukawa case, the presiding judge said, "There is no objective evidence to link the defendants to the crime."

Sakurai and Sugiyama, whose life imprisonment sentences were finalized by the Supreme Court in 1978, were released on parole in 1996. In the retrial that began in July last year, prosecutors again demanded life imprisonment.

The prosecutors will study whether to appeal the case, but given that the evidence they presented has been totally discredited, it would be best if they abandon the idea of taking the case to a higher court. This would finalize the acquittal for the two defendants.

The Fukawa case is the seventh since the end of World War II in which defendants sentenced to death or to life imprisonment have been acquitted in a retrial. In March last year, a defendant in the so-called Ashikaga case was acquitted of the murder of a 4-year-old girl in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, in 1990.

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Credibility of confessions

All those involved in the legal system should take a serious view of the latest failure to prevent the filing of false charges. They must closely examine the situation to stop false accusations being made.

In the retrial of the Fukawa case, the prosecutors attempted to prove their case by focusing on the confessions of the two defendants and a local resident's account that placed them at the victim's house.

The ruling stressed that the defendants' accounts taken during the investigation in which they confessed to the charges lacked consistency. It said "the possibility cannot be ruled out that the depositions based on the defendants' accounts were compiled under the guidance of the prosecutors."

This indicates investigations that rely heavily on confessions often result in false accusations. This was apparent in the Fukawa case.

The court also said the testimony of the witness lacked credibility, as another witness, a female acquaintance of Sugiyama, testified that "the man I saw near the crime scene was not Mr. Sugiyama but someone else."

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Disclose all evidence

The deposition that included this testimony was disclosed by the prosecutors for the first time in 2001 when Sugiyama and Sakurai applied for a retrial for the second time. The deposition proved a decisive factor behind the court agreeing to the retrial.

The court did not totally accept the credibility of her testimony. However, if the testimony had been made known much earlier, the original trial might have followed a different course.

The prosecutors obviously made arbitrary judgments about what evidence to disclose. Evidence that would work to their disadvantage was withheld.

With the introduction of the lay judge system, prosecutors are, in principle, obliged to submit all evidence related to points of contention before the first hearing is held. However, prosecutors tend to keep almost all the evidence under their control.

Trials can be conducted fairly only if prosecutors disclose all the evidence, even that which might work to their disadvantage. Judges, for their part, should encourage disclosure of evidence.

3rd-party panel must get to bottom of nuclear crisis

The Yomiuri Shimbun

How could such a serious accident happen at one of Japan's nuclear power plants, which were touted as being absolutely infallibly safe? This question must be answered clearly.

The government on Tuesday decided to set up a third-party expert panel to investigate the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. The panel is expected to compile a midterm report by the end of this year.

Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, was appointed chairman of the panel. Hatamura is known for his scientific research into human error. The panel is to have about 10 members.

Hatamura is also an expert in mechanical engineering, and has argued that learning from errors instead of from successful experiences will lead to better understanding. He maintains the "Failure Knowledge Database," in which accidents in various fields, including their backgrounds, have been recorded, investigated and analyzed.

In probing the nuclear crisis, we hope Hatamura will make use of techniques he has developed in his error research to figure out how to prevent similar accidents from recurring and improve safety at nuclear power plants. We hope the panel will quickly compile useful information and put it to work at other nuclear plants.

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Man-made disaster

TEPCO said in its analysis of the status of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant that the power station's Nos. 2 and 3 reactors likely suffered core meltdowns, in addition to the previously acknowledged meltdown in the No. 1 reactor. This is an unprecedented and serious disaster.

The direct cause of the nuclear crisis was apparently the loss of the reactors' cooling functions due to damage from the colossal tsunami following the March 11 earthquake. However, the utility cannot attribute its inability to prevent the successive meltdowns solely to the natural disaster.

TEPCO's safety measures to be taken when the cooling functions were lost are flawed. The utility's procedures called for preventing core meltdowns by opening the reactors' valves to release internal pressure as a last resort. But the company put off taking this step.

This and other factors that contributed to the man-made disaster must be thoroughly investigated. The panel should look into a wide variety of matters, including the responses of the government and TEPCO after the crisis began, and nuclear safety regulations of past governments.

The government has granted the panel the ability to question Cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Naoto Kan, and bureaucrats over the nuclear crisis. The panel's investigation process will be disclosed to the public. This is only natural, as distrust in the safety of Japan's nuclear plants is growing at home and abroad.

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Detailed record needed

Meanwhile, the government has apparently not kept detailed records of discussions that were held to decide how to deal with this historic crisis. This is cause for grave concern.

For instance, some experts have said the situation in the No. 1 reactor might have been aggravated because seawater injections to cool it were temporarily suspended. Although the Prime Minister's Office is alleged to have ordered the suspension, the facts are shrouded in mystery because of the lack of detailed documentation.

The panel will have a difficult time investigating if it has to rely heavily on testimony based on memory. The panel must get to work by preserving any existing documents, memos and other evidence as soon as possible.

EDITORIAL : THE DAILY MIRROR, SRILANKA

DON'T START AGAIN

Among many Tamils, the Tamil National Alliance has become a stigma on the Tamil community. So are the Diaspora. Some may disagree. TNA,   with it s superiority complex has created more troubles within communities than bringing them together.

Last week the venerable TNA said it would request Russia and China to urge the Sri Lankan government to work out a long lasting political solution to the national question, Parliamentarian and party media spokesman Suresh Premachandran said.

TNA should do degrees in world history in the first place.

Russia and China supported Sri Lanka in its war against terrorism and as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, had at the time thwarted an attempt to bring a resolution against Sri Lanka.

Bringing solutions is good. But then, what are the problems?

The bloody war is over. Some may be still saying "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red." This is hacked. So is the so-called national problem.

The fact is when the problem started the global situation was entirely different. Opportunities were limited. It was polarized. Private sector commercial activity was in its infancy.

In such a scenario a thing like “standardization” did affect adversely the youth who have high aspirations.

Now we are talking about it after 40 years.

Governments have opened up. Nobody cares about vernacular languages. Today, even a trishaw driver wants to send his child to English medium school!

The IT field has taken English even further high. “Sinhala Only” will have to use binoculars to take a peep at the benefits of English. Still many political leaders and sadly many voters believe in the political rhetoric of language politics.

So, since the world has changed the context of the problem too has changed. In fact the stumbling block has been eliminated.

Now a talented youth can zoom into top slot positions had he has the talent. Global corporations do not have a column that asks your nationality.

So when the main cause of the problem is removed naturally there is no problem.

But still TNA et al harp on the some problems.

True enough, the three or more decade of war has left many maimed and devastated, mainly the Tamil speaking population. (The use of “Tamil” is only for the purpose of reference). And as a responsible government should and sincerely set aside the pettiness that is always associated with it, should speedily help these people rebuild their lives.

Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias KP, who succeeded Prabhakaran as the LTTE leader has also echoed that the UN Secretary General’s panel report on Sri Lanka  wouldn’t help any reconciliation and rather it disturbed reconciliation.

“If you go to Wanni and (discover) 1,000 families or 100,000 families benefiting from this UN report, then it’s a different story. But the truth is that no one gets any benefit from such reports,” he had added.

“The past is past. War means first (many people) die. War means who dies first. Truth (also dies). War means the same everywhere. You cannot say good war and bad war. War is war,” he had been quoted as saying.

We see one Asoka in him.

To finish today’s thought, how many of you know that now many countries are encouraging foreigners to buy land and property in their country and inviting foreigners to make their country their second home!

EDITORIAL : THE HINDU, INDIA

    

 

India in Africa

The second India-Africa summit at Addis Ababa has set the stage for a comprehensive re-engagement between the world's largest democracy and an emerging continent. The Africa-India Framework for Enhanced Cooperation and the Addis Ababa Declaration adopted at the summit envisage economic and political cooperation, and also cooperation in a host of other areas including science and technology, social and infrastructure development, tourism, culture, and sports. Africa and India recognise the opportunities they bring to the table for each other; both are now better positioned to use these opportunities in ways that can give substance to the old political slogan of ‘South-South cooperation.' As a leading player in the global economy, it is natural for India to seek participation in a resource-rich continent that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as the “new economic growth story.” His announcement of a $5 billion credit line over the next three years was the eye-catcher of the summit, but clearly, African nations are interested in enhancing their own skills and capabilities. India, with its substantial technology knowledge pool, is well placed to contribute to such capacity-building. This will also help in better utilisation of Indian financial assistance — of the committed credit line, unused funds from a previous financial package comprise $3.4 billion.

Following the first summit in 2008, India initiated several such efforts, including the Pan-African e-Network Project across 43 countries, which drew appreciation from the beneficiary countries. That new proposals for capacity-building discussed at this summit cover fields as diverse as information technology, textiles, food processing, and weather forecasting underscores the needs of a continent seeking to stabilise itself economically and politically. As important, it highlights Africa's recognition of rising India's capabilities to assist other developing countries. The India-Africa relationship is not new; it draws on a long, shared history of struggle against European colonialism, and a determination to ensure equality in the post-colonial world order. Africa has played host to a large Indian diaspora, and independent India was among the first to take a firm stand against apartheid in South Africa. Reducing India's ties with Africa to a ‘rivalry' with China is to take a narrow view of history. Given the realities, it is also meaningless — China's $126 billion trade with Africa is way ahead of India's $ 46 billion. It is best for New Delhi to use the present momentum to build its relationship with Africa in ways that will be of optimal benefit to both sides.

Figuring out the textile crisis

By downing shutters for a day this week, cotton spinning mill units may not have reduced the huge glut that has built up in yarn stocks. But they have succeeded in turning the spotlight on the complex web of public policy the central government has woven in the years since Independence. Few will quarrel with the objective of securing for cotton growers a remunerative price. Where the government has gone wrong is in simultaneously taking upon itself the burden of ensuring that high cotton prices do not result in high yarn prices for handloom weavers or for power looms. In this effort at squaring the circle, it has ended up creating a tangle of quantitative and tariff controls on cotton as well as yarn interspersed with duty drawback incentives, concessional lending to units engaged in the value chain of the textiles industry, and so on — in short, a bureaucratic process of Kafkaesque proportions. Much of this was supposed to be calibrated in real time in line with changes in global and domestic demand and supply. What is clear is that this policy framework is badly in need of a reality check in many crucial respects.

For instance, the continuous capacity addition in yarn manufacture ought to have tempered official fears of yarn shortage for weavers and knitted garment manufacturers while formulating policy. That has not been the case. Similarly, it is well recognised that as an approach to cloth-making hand weaving is now more expensive than mass manufacturing. It is no surprise that the poor of the land have found cheaper alternatives in fabrics woven by machine. Another anomaly is that while the law reserves several varieties for the handloom sector, these mass consumption fabrics whose parity depends on yarn prices are actually made by power looms. Yet official policy maintains the pretence that this mandated reservation is for the benefit of millions of handloom weavers — who are the poorest members of the value chain after farmers. Indeed, so out of tune with reality is official policy that the proportion of the total output a yarn manufacturer must compulsorily wind in a coil form (hank) so as to be amenable for use by handloom weavers has remained the same despite the substantial changes in mass clothing habits. Nothing in the track record of governance witnessed over the last six decades gives room for any optimism that the government can handle this complexity and deliver on desirable policy outcomes. It is time a comprehensive nation-wide enquiry was conducted into the economics of the cotton textile sector, covering all its constituents and seeing how they have fared. Appropriate policy changes can follow.

EDITORIAL : THE DAILY STAR, BANGLADESH

           

 

Transport anarchy

Put a stop to it

Anarchy now rules the city's passenger service, especially of buses and minibuses in the capital. Operators of the public transports are still found to be charging fares in excess of those fixed by the authorities. Small wonder sporadic quarrels and scuffles between ticket collectors and commuters, drivers fleeing buses when challenged by mobile courts, stranded transports on the streets and so on have become a day-to-day scene on the city roads. All this is happening in spite of HC directives to the communications secretary and the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) and others concerned to prevent collection of additional fares by bus operators. Five more mobile courts have joined the drive in addition to two others to discipline the recalcitrant bus operators, but with little result.

The bus operators seem to be indifferent to public protests, media coverage on instances of their being caught in the act, government's directive to follow the prescribed fare chart, let alone HC directives. The mobile courts in operation are undoubtedly facing a huge challenge to tame bus operators.

But what is most baffling is where are those unruly bus operators deriving their arrogance from?

The authorities should also give a deeper look at this aspect of the issue and try to delve deeper into the problem. The bus owners, who are the real bosses of the bus drivers and conductors, need also to be brought under the fold of the law.

In its six-point directives, the HC has asked the communications and home secretaries to constitute a seven-member committee to monitor how far its orders are being implemented on the ground. Similarly, it also directed the police authorities concerned to form vigilance teams to enforce government orders.

We think whatever measures the government takes, those should not be one-shot ones. The drives launched by mobile courts and other actions taken should be sustained to produce result. The government may also think of forming a high-powered task force entrusted with the job of looking into all aspects of the fare issue and suggest ways and means to ensure civic order and security.

Land grabbing menace

Deterrent punishment called for

The government decision to launch a drive to recover about 1000 acres of khas lands of Bhawal forest illegally occupied by industrialists and other individuals in the past is a move in the right direction.

The land ministry identified 93 usurpers of forest lands worth around Taka 1000 crore during the preceding government. The decision to recover the land remained suspended for sometime due to unknown reasons. The grabbers submitted fake documents and false statements to validate their action.

The parliamentary standing committee on the Ministry of Land will meet this week to discuss the progress on implementation of its recommendations.

Not only are government lands in Bhawal forest under illegal occupation, similar cases of usurpation of all kinds of government lands have also been going on across the country.

Apart from forest lands, plain and hilly lands are also poached upon by the opportunists. The foreshores of rivers and canals are the latest targets, causing immense damage to the rivers of the country. Grabbing of hill lands in Chittagong led to mudslides and loss of lives.

There seems to be a strong nexus at work between vested interest and officials to flout government orders. For its part, the government has not been successful in dealing with them effectively. Half hearted measures have run out of steam; the concerned authorities will have to be tough to prevent the grabbers from continuing their illegal activities and recover not only the particular forest land, but all kinds of land that they have already usurped.

While giving kudos to the land ministry for its decision to recover lost lands, we urge the government to take legal action against the grabbers so as to deter those who are waiting in the wings to follow in their footsteps should they slip though the loopholes of law.