VOL: 4- ISSUE 255VOL: 4- ISSUE 255

3030.PAGE 07COMMENTARY

POST-IT SOLUTIONS TO SURGICAL PROBLEMS

Registered in the Department of Posts of Sri Lanka under No: QD/130/News/2021

PAGE 04PAGE 03 PAGE 08HOT TOPICSGLOCAL RED CENTENARY

GLOBAL COVID DEATHS CROSS 4 MN AS OUTBREAKS

SURGE IN ASIA

BASIL SWORN IS AS NEW FINANCE MINISTER

HAITI’S PRESIDENT ASSASSINATED IN NIGHT-TIME RAID, SHAKING A

FRAGILE NATION

JULYJULY09 - 11, 202109 - 11, 2021

- Dineth Chamalka/ENCL

An elderly woman is unceremoniously carried away by police officers, during a protest near the Parliament complex in Sri Jayewardenepura, Kotte, on Thursday (8). Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Teachers’ Union, two Buddhist monks and the woman were among the 45 Sri Lankans arrested in different parts of the country on Thursday, for staging protests in violation of quarantine laws. The protest

near the Parliament complex was organized by the Inter-University Students' Federation, the Ceylon Teachers’ Union and the Frontline Socialist Party against the General Sir John Kotelawala National Defence University Bill, which the protesters allege paves the way for militarization of higher education in Sri Lanka. In Akuressa in the Southern Province, 13 members of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP),

including two former provincial councillors, were arrested at a protest staged against the fuel price increase and the government’s controversial chemical fertilizer ban. Protests over numerous government actions are becoming daily occurrences in Sri Lanka as are arrests of the protesters who are accused of violating quarantine laws that have banned public gatherings, a fundamental right

Biden says US to pull its forces out of Afghanistan by August 31 WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden vigorously defended his decision to end America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan on Thursday (8), asserting that the United States can no longer afford the human cost or strategic distraction of a conflict that he said had strayed far from its initial mission.

Speaking after the withdrawal of nearly all US combat forces and as the Taliban surge across the country, Biden, often in blunt and defensive tones, spoke directly to critics of his order to bring an end to American participation in a conflict born from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said the United States would formally end its military mission at the end of Au-gust. “Let me ask those who want us to

stay: How many more?” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “How many thousands more American daughters and sons are you willing to risk? And how long would you have them stay?”

Biden said he was not declaring “mis-sion accomplished,” but he made clear the future of the country — including the fate of the current government and concerns about the rights of women and girls — was no longer in the hands of the US military.

Responding to questions from report-ers about his decision to bring the war to a close, Biden grew testy as he rejected the likelihood that Americans would have to flee from Kabul as they did from Saigon in 1975. He insisted that the United States had done more than enough to empower

the Afghan police and military to secure the future of their people.

But he conceded that their success would depend on whether they had the political will and the military might.

Pressed on whether the broader objec-tives of the two-decade effort had failed, Biden said, “The mission hasn’t failed — yet.”

The war began two decades ago, the president argued, not to rebuild a distant nation but to prevent terror attacks like the one on Sept. 11, 2001, and to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. In essence, Biden said the longest war in US history should have ended a decade ago, when bin Laden was killed.

-NYT

PORT-AU-PRINCE - At least 17 people, including 15 Colombians and two US citizens, were detained in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haitian officials said Thursday (8) night, as they pa-raded the suspects before the news media and asserted that “foreign-ers” had been involved in the brazen attack.

At a news conference at National Police Headquarters with the in-terim prime minister, the American men were described as being of Haitian descent and were identified as Joseph Vincent and James Solages. Haitian security officials had earlier described Solages as a resident of South Florida who had been apprehended Wednesday (7) during the manhunt for the assailants. A Canadian government of-ficial said that Solages was briefly employed as a reserve bodyguard by a security company hired by the foreign affairs ministry in 2010. At least eight more suspects were on the run, authorities said.

“We are pursuing them. We are asking the public to help us,” said Haiti’s police chief, Léon Charles, before a phalanx of politicians and police. Colombia’s defence minister, Diego Molano, said the govern-ment was cooperating with an official request from Interpol, the global police agency, for information about the detained suspects. He added that initial information suggests that they were retired members of the Colombian military. Haiti’s interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, said a group of foreigners had entered the country to kill the president “in a cowardly fashion.” Angry civilians have also joined in the hunt, capturing some suspects themselves and setting afire vehicles thought to have been used in the attack. Haiti is now basically under martial law after Joseph declared an “état de siège” — a state of siege — that allows the police and members of security forces to enter homes, control traffic and take special security meas-ures. It also forbids meetings meant to excite or prepare for disorder.

-NYT-Read more on page 8

PARIS - World hunger rose steeply in 2020, with six times more peo-ple living in "famine-like conditions" than in 2019, rights group Oxfam said Friday (9). The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated existing crises sparked by conflict and climate change - the "three lethal Cs" - according to the group. "Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, vulner-able communities around the world have been sending a clear, urgent and repeated message: 'Hunger may kill us before coronavirus'. Today, deaths from hunger are outpacing the virus," it said in a statement.

Oxfam calculates that 11 people a minute are likely dying from acute hunger, compared to seven people a minute from COVID-19.

The group identified places including Yemen, the Central African Republic, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Venezuela and Syria as countries where existing food crises had been worsened by the onset of the pan-demic and its economic consequences.

"Mass unemployment and severely disrupted food production have led to a 40% rise in global food prices, the largest increase in more than a decade," Oxfam said. In total, it said over half a million people are liv-ing in "famine-like conditions" around the world, while 155 million live with "extreme hunger" - the equivalent of the combined populations of France and Germany. Of the 155 million, two out of three live in a coun-try with ongoing war or conflict. "Conflict remained the biggest driver of hunger around the globe for three consecutive years, including dur-ing the pandemic," the group said. "We are currently seeing the super-imposition of crises: unceasing conflicts, the economic consequences of Covid-19 and a spiralling climate crisis," said Helene Botreau, Agricul-ture and Food Security Advocacy Officer at Oxfam France.

Oxfam's analysis comes ahead of the United Nations' Food and Ag-riculture Organization's own report on global food security, due to be published on Monday.

-AFP

2 US citizens among at least 17 suspects arrested

People living in famine-like conditions rose six-fold in 2020

LONDON - Antimicrobial or antibiotic resistance could prove "the death knell for modern medicine" and lead to an "antibiotic apoca-lypse," according to England's former chief medical officer.

Ahead of the European Congress on Clinical Microbiology & Infec-tious Diseases, speaker Sally Davies warned of scant progress in curb-ing bacterial resistance to antibiotics, a growing danger that has been widely flagged in recent years.

Davies, now Britain's Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), said on Friday (9), the market for antibiotics is "broken."

"Compared to 8 billion dollars of profit for cancer drugs, the 100 mil-lion loss for antimicrobials means that our medicine cabinets are be-coming emptier - because of bankruptcies, not lack of scientific brain-power," she said. Governments must "act now," said Davies. "For many it is already too late - they have died."The Group of 7 (G7) countries last month said they would spend more on researching antibiotics, with members Britain and the US earlier announcing subsidies for pharma companies to develop new drugs.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says "infections caused by antibiotic-resistant germs are difficult, and sometimes im-possible, to treat." While bacteria can naturally develop resistance to antibiotics over time, the problem has been "accelerated," according to the World Health Organization, by the "misuse of antibiotics in humans and animals." Research published last week by Washington Universi-ty claimed antibiotics were "misused" in India during a deadly recent coronavirus surge. "Antibiotics are only effective against bacterial in-fections, not viral infections such as COVID-19," the researchers said, warning that "overuse increases the risk for drug-resistant infections."

-dpa

World faces ‘antibiotic apocalypse’ unless germ resistance is tackled

Trending News Quote for TodayQuote for TodayPeople only see what they are prepared to see.

-Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson

Word for TodayWord for TodayOmnium-gatherum [om-nee-uhm-gath-er-uhm] -noun -a miscellaneous collection

Today in HistoryToday in History1995 - The Navaly church bombing is carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force killing 125 displaced Tamil civilians taking refuge in the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Today is...Today is...Sugar Cookie DayA day to shamelessly indulging in the delicious perennial favourite

G20: Finance ministers of the G20 coun-tries kick off two days of talks with the minimum global tax rate for businesses on top of the agenda.Bangladesh: Police say a massive blaze in a factory has killed three people and in-jured at least 30 with some people jump-ing from the upper floors to escape the fire.USA: Pfizer and BioNTech announce they would seek authorization for a third dose of their COVID-19 vaccine to boost its ef-ficacy, as the Delta variant drives devas-tating outbreaks in Asia and Africa and cases rose again in Europe and the United States.Japan: The Olympic flame arrives in To-kyo with just two weeks until the Games open, as athletes and fans mourn a “heart-breaking” decision to bar spectators from almost all venues over the virus.

Moïse killing

Oxfam reveals

In forceful defence of withdrawal says country achieved its objectives

Afghanistan: Taliban say they have cap-tured port of Islam Qala, the country’s big-gest border crossing with Iran, as the insur-gents continue a blistering offensive across the country.Fiji: The country announced plans to make the coronavirus vaccine compulsory for all workers as it battles a runaway outbreak of the Delta variant, with the prime minister issuing a blunt message: “no jabs, no job”.Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s economic hub begins a two-week lockdown in the hope to contain the worst COVID-19 virus outbreak.IMF: Managing Director Kristalina Geor-gieva says the Fund’s executive board has backed increasing its special drawing rights (SDR) by $650 billion as it looks to support countries recover from the COVID-19 cri-sis.

2 JULY 09 - 11, 2021 WEEKEND EXPRESS

BUSINESSBUSINESS

COLOMBO – State-run SriLankan Airlines had lost Rs 58 billion in the 10 months to Feb-ruary 2021 as a coronavirus crisis hit a carrier which lost Rs 47.1 billion in the previous year, official data shows.

SriLankan earned revenues of Rs 44.1 billion up to February 2021, down from Rs 180.1 bil-lion in the year to March 2021.

However expenses were Rs 102.8 billion, down from Rs 230.3 billion a year earlier.

SriLankan, along with Qatar kept the coun-try connected in the worst months of the coro-navirus crisis, when airports shut down and airlines were grounded in many countries.

However SriLankan also made losses of Rs 17 billion in the year to March 2018, Rs 44 bil-lion in the year to March 2019 and Rs 47 billion in the year to March 2020.

The firm had lost money and was tuning to State support ever since its management was

taken back from Emirates Airlines. The cur-rent management had taken some steps to cut costs. In the year to March 2020, lease rentals were cut to Rs 19.4 billion from Rs 29 billion a year earlier. In the 10 months to February lease rentals were Rs 21.7 billion, amid currency de-preciation.

Its fleet was reduced to 24 from 27 in 2018.“SLA was granted government support in

the form of equity infusions and treasury guar-antees in order for it to receive funding from the outside financial market,” the Ministry of Finance said.

“As a result, SLA will receive US$ 500 mil-lion as equity infusion from the national budg-et over the next five years.”

Sri Lankan’s accumulated losses were Rs 374 billion up to February 2021, up from Rs 326 billion a year earlier.

-economynext.com

DUBAI - A startling public row between Saudi Arabia and brash neighbour the UAE has exposed the steadily diverging paths of once inseparable allies who are competing to profit from what may be the world’s last oil boom.

Wrinkles in relationships between the Gulf monarchies are usually resolved be-hind palace walls, but a fiery debate over the future of global oil production burst into the open this week.

The United Arab Emirates has bitterly opposed a proposed deal by the OPEC+ alliance of oil-producing countries, slam-ming it as “unjust” and triggering a stale-mate that could derail efforts to curb

rising crude prices amid a fragile post-pandemic recovery.

That is a rare challenge to Saudi Ara-bia, the world’s number-one oil export-er - as well as the Arab world’s largest economy and custodian of Islam’s holi-est sites.

But the fault lines were drawn before this week’s virtual talks. And while ob-servers say a full rupture is unlikely, the new competitive spirit will only intensify.

Saudi Arabia’s ambitious de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sal-man and the UAE’s strongman Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed have long been seen as the region’s power couple,

known by their matching initials - MBS and MBZ. While MBZ was once seen as a mentor to the younger leader, their lack of joint appearances of late has triggered speculation that the relationship has cooled considerably.

Economic rivalry is at the heart of the feud. The Gulf states are trying to cash in on their vast oil reserves as they face the beginning of the end of the oil era.

Riyadh is desperate to fund an overdue program to diversify its economy before the switch to renewables is complete.

The kingdom has “suffered from 50 years of lethargy in terms of economic policy and dynamism and now has to

play catch-up,” said Saudi government advisor Ali Shihabi.

The Emiratis “will understand that you have to make some space for that”, he said.

Kirsten Fontenrose, a former White House official responsible for Saudi pol-icy and now with the Atlantic Council, said strongarm tactics set the stage for the OPEC+ row.

The neighbours have now decided “we have to prioritize our financial future against our friendship”, she said.

“It’s tit-for-tat and no hard feelings, just economic realities.”

-AFP

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka rupee- dollar markets are largely inactive in outright trades while implied forward rates have eased further, with a state bank staying off longer tenors, market participants said.

Spot/one year swaps were quoted around 1200/100, spot/6 months 800/1000, spot/3 month swaps 570/640, spot/2 month 380/425 and spot 1/month 124/202, dealers said. Sri Lanka’s interbank dollar yields rose sharply with amid money printing and credit downgrades as sovereign bond yields rose and a state bank which fi-nances a petroleum utility was also looking for dollars. In parallel markets the rupee was quoted around 230 to the US dollar, up from around 225 a week earlier, market participants said.

At the policy meeting held on Thurs-day (8), the Central Bank kept its rates at the current levels. Standing Deposit Facility (SDFR) 4.50%, Standing Lend-ing Facility Rate (SLFR) at 5.50%, Bank Rate 8.50% and Statutory Reserve Rate at 2.20%. The Central Bank also said that it expects the country’s first-quar-

ter growth to be around 5% as opposed to initial predictions of 3%. In the mon-ey markets, the rupee touched 230 to the US dollar this week up from around 225 last week, while forward discounts in dollar/rupee swaps eased slightly.

In the swap market spot/one year deals were quoted at a discount of 1500/1400 cents, a slightly lower than an earlier 1800 levels with a state bank no longer in the market, market partici-pants said. Spot/6 month swaps were quoted at 1000/800, spot/3 months 615/570, spot/2 months 380/400 and spot/1 month 380/400.

A discount indicates that the dol-lars bought at the spot rate on Thursay (200) will be sold back to the seller at the end of the period at a stronger for-ward rate (185). Forward dollars are at a discount because rupee rates are kept down with money printing, which has created a dollar shortage and driven the yields up. Rupee quoted in Telegraph Transfers (TT) rates on Thursday was 197.9023/202.8977. The indicative spot rate quoted by Central Bank was 199.9.

-economynext.com

NEW YORK - Stocks fell Thursday (8) and bond yields dropped as inves-tor anxiety over the bumpy economic recovery rippled through financial mar-kets.

The rise of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus has served as a reminder that the pandemic remains a threat to both public health and the economy. Although infections and deaths in the United States are far below rates from earlier this year, on Wednesday (7), the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that the Delta variant now accounts for more than half of new US infections. Trading in government bonds has signalled con-cerns about the economy

Tourism and travel companies, which have become a proxy for investor sen-timent about the risk of the pandemic, tumbled Thursday. Carnival Corp., Nor-wegian Cruise Line and American Air-lines were each down more than 3% in early trading. “There’s growing concern

on how robust the economic recovery will be,” said Edward Moya, senior mar-ket analyst Oanda, a foreign currency exchange. “The virus spread in other countries is starting to suggest we won’t have a strong second half of the year.”

Investors also parsed the latest eco-nomic figures from the Labour Depart-ment, which reported that the number of new claims for state unemployment rose slightly, to 370,000, compared with 350,000 expected by economists. The S&P 500 dropped more than 1%, on track for its biggest daily decline since mid-June, and the yield on 10-year Treasury notes fell to 1.3%.Stocks in Europe were also sharply lower, with the Stoxx 600 Europe dropping 1.8%, and the The FTSE 100 in Britain and the DAX in Germany were both down nearly 2%. Oil prices also fell Thursday. West Texas Intermediate, the US crude bench mark, fell 0.4% to $71.88 a bar-rel.

-NYT

BRUSSELS - Germany’s three largest carmakers colluded illegally to limit the effectiveness of their emissions technology, leading to higher levels of harmful diesel pol-lution, European antitrust authori-ties said Thursday 980.

Volkswagen and its Porsche and Audi divisions must pay 500 million euros, or $590 million, and BMW will pay 373 million euros, or $442 million, as part of a settlement with the European Commission related to the cartel. Daimler avoided a fine that would have totalled 727 million euros because it blew the whistle on the plot, the European Commission said.

The settlement is another blow to the image of the German automak-ers, who dominate the high end of the car market but have lost some of their lustre after Volkswagen ad-mitted in 2015 that millions of cars it produced were fitted with soft-ware designed to dupe official emis-sions testers.

Daimler and BMW became taint-ed by the diesel scandal after the European Commission accused them in 2017 of illegally agreeing with Volkswagen on specifications for emissions treatment technol-ogy. Those accusations led to the settlement Thursday.

The European Commission, the European Union’s administrative arm, did not accuse the carmakers of agreeing to deploy illegal tech-nology. Rather, it said that they il-legally agreed to deploy emissions technology that met minimum legal standards but was not as good as it could have been.

Among other things, the car-makers agreed to limit the size of the tanks used to hold a chemical, known as AdBlue, that neutralizes harmful nitrogen oxides in diesel emissions, the commission said. Larger tanks would have done a better job reducing pollution but taken space that companies pre-ferred to use for audio speakers or other amenities.

“For over five years, the car man-ufacturers deliberately avoided to compete on cleaning better than what was required by EU emission standards,” Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition commissioner, said in a statement. “And they did it despite the relevant technology being available.”

Volkswagen has since paid well over $20 billion in fines and legal settlements related to its diesel emissions cheating. Daimler ad-mitted last year that its Mercedes-Benz cars were also programmed to cheat on admissions tests and paid $2.2 billion as part of a settlement with US authorities. Sales of diesel vehicles, which once accounted for more than half of the new cars sold in Europe, have plummeted.

BMW portrayed the settlement as a vindication because it did not accuse the company of emissions cheating, which it has consistently denied. The fine was lower than expected, freeing up 1 billion euros that BMW had set aside to cover penalties related to the cartel case.

“Unlike some of its competitors, the BMW Group never considered reduced, illegal emission control,” the company said in a statement. Discussion with the other carmak-ers “had no influence whatsoever on the company’s product deci-sions,” BMW said.

Daimler noted that it cooperated with the investigation.

“The European Commission ex-plicitly found no evidence that there was any agreement regarding the use of prohibited defeat devices,” the company said in a statement.

Volkswagen agreed to the settle-ment but said it was considering appealing some aspects of it, which is permitted under European Union law.

“The commission is breaking new legal ground with this deci-sion, because it is the first time it has prosecuted technical coop-eration as an antitrust violation,” Volkswagen said in a statement. “It is also imposing fines even though the contents of the talks were never implemented and customers were therefore never harmed.”

-New York Times

SriLankan loses Rs 58bn upto Feb 2021 amid coronavirus

Oil on troubled waters

SL Rupee outright trades inactive, forward discounts ease

Stocks tumble and bond yields drop as growth concerns grip Wall Street

Volkswagen and BMW fined nearly $1 billion for emissions colluding

CB Governer says

Row shows Gulf powers on diverging paths

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka is discussing import controls on carefully selected items, Central Bank Governor W. D. Lakshman said, as liquidity injections triggered forex shortages, widened par-allel market spreads and undermined the credibility of a 200 to the US dollar peg of the rupee.

“The central bank makes various pro-posals,” Governor Lakshman told report-ers responding to a question on whether the finance ministry would ban the im-ports of electrical appliances among others. “Some proposals are accepted.

Some are not. These import restrictions are some carefully selected items which are believed to be not essential at all and ones which we think there are stocks for several months.

“We have said it is good to control them for several months. They are still at discussion level.”

Sri Lanka has imposed the worst im-port controls since the 1970s after print-ing over Rs 600 billion in 2020 and over Rs 200 billion in 2021.

Though reserve money has expanded unusually fast as food prices rose in dou-

ble digits, other commodities rose faster and suspected precautionary cash hold-ings also rose, US$ 2.3 billion flowed out as a balance of payments deficit in 2021.

In the first four months of the year there was a US$ 929 million deficit.

This month parallel markets started to pick up as banks started to ration letters of credit when the printed money came up for redemption at the 200 to the US dollar peg.

Surrender requirements were placed on remittances and exports proceeds

imposing a strong side convertibility undertaking on a 200 to the US dollar non-credible peg which was already on the weak side and fears of devaluation increased.

In Sri Lanka there is a strong Mer-cantilist belief that monetary instabil-ity in the form of currency pressure and BOP deficits have something to do with trade and not the exchange rate anchor or central bank credit. Import controls, price controls, rationing are outcomes of monetary instability.

-economynext.com

Sri Lanka discussing import controls of selected itemsBy Jack Ewing

- A

nd

rea

s S

OL

AR

O /

AFP

Italian police officers stand guard at the gate of the red zone, in front of the Arsenal on Thursday (8) a day before G20 finance ministers and central bankers meet, in Venice

GLOCALWEEKEND EXPRESS JULY 09 - 11, 2021 3

Express Newspapers (Cey) Pvt. Ltd.,185, Grandpass Road, Colombo 14, Sri LankaTelephone: 0117 322 705 (Editorial) 0117 322 731 (Advertising)0117 322 789 (Circulation)Email – editor.dailyexpress@encl.lk/weekendexpress@encl.lk Epaper - http://epaper.newsexpress.lkFacebook –News Express Sri Lanka

COLOMBO - A brother of Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Ra-japaksa on Thursday (8) became finance minister, tightening the family's grip on power in the South Asian nation as it confronts growing economic troubles.

Basil Rajapaksa, 70, took over the finance portfolio from anoth-er brother, Prime Minister Mahi-nda Rajapaksa.

The 72-year-old President has put Mahinda in charge of a newly created but lower level economic

policies and planning ministry. Mahinda Rajapaksa, 75, was the country's president for a dec-ade up to 2015, and Basil, who is known as the family's political strategist, managed the economy then.

Basil takes charge now after the economy recorded a coronavirus-inflicted 3.6% contraction for 2020, the worst since independ-ence from Britain in 1948.

With his entry, the Cabinet headed by Gotabaya now has five

members of the Rajapaksa fam-ily. Eldest brother Chamal, 78, is minister of irrigation, while the Prime Minister's eldest son Na-mal, 35, is the youth and sports minister.

Several Rajapaksa family mem-bers hold junior minister posi-tions and other key positions in the administration.

Basil Rajapaksa was described as ‘Mr Ten Percent’ in a 2007 US embassy cable published by the WikiLeaks organization because

of commissions he allegedly took from government contracts.

He has denied any wrongdo-ing and inquiries failed to find any evidence to back charges he syphoned off millions of dollars from state coffers.

As a dual US-Sri Lankan citi-zen, Basil was prohibited from standing in the 2020 election, but Gotabaya removed constitutional provisions which prevented his entry to the legislature.

-AFP

Basil sworn is as new finance ministerCOLOMBO – The priorities of the people are the priori-ties of the government, Sri Lanka’s newly sworn-in Min-ister of Finance, Basil Rajapaksa, told reporters upon ac-cepting his portfolio from his brother President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday (8).

“Though I may serve as a minister, the farmers, fisher folk, labourers, professions, civil servants and others in this country should think a colleague of theirs is the min-ister of finance,” he said.

Noting that Sri Lanka is in a grave situation, Rajapaksa made an open appeal to the media and all trade unions to help the government overcome the challenges the country is facing on multiple fronts amidst the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. “We have faced more serious situations, however. We have overcome worse political challenges, mainly because of everyone who supported us,” he said, urging, “This is a difficult task. Let us all work together.”

Rajapaksa also alluded to “unpleasant” actions that might have to be taken, as a father would, though he did not elaborate, albeit to say, “But those things will be done sincerely for the people.”

News bulletins on broadcast media showed celebra-tions organized by supporters of the government, with footage of congratulatory banners and firecrackers being lit in towns in various parts of the country and banners.

Despite a COVID-19-related ban on protests and pub-lic meetings, small groups were seen shouting slogans in support of his appointment.

Rajapaksa took oaths as a national list MP of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), a party he helped found and whose meteoric rise over the last few years can at least in part be attributed to his organizing and cam-paigning skills.

He held the Economic Development portfolio in the 2010-15 Mahinda Rajapaksa administration and back-bencher MPs of the present government have repeatedly called for his entry to Parliament so the crisis-riddled economy could be salvaged almost single-handedly, the way — the MPs claimed — he had done in the heyday of the Mahinda Rajapaksa era.

Despite speculation that the Finance Ministry will not be given to Basil— that portfolio until Thursday being held by his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa — the president’s media division announced his appoint-ment early in the day, preceded by a gazette notification announcing a newly created Economic Policies and Plan Implementation portfolio. This portfolio is now held by Prime Minister Rajapaksa, who was also sworn in before President Rajapaksa on Thursday.

Two more appointments were also made as the state ministry portfolios of Shasheendra Rajapaksa and Mo-han de Silva were reshuffled. Sheeshandra, the son of the president’s brother, Minister Chamal Rajapaksa, now holds possibly the longest ministry title in Sri Lanka’s history as State Minister of Promoting the Production & Regulating the Supply of Organic Fertilizer, Paddy & Grains, Organic Foods, Vegetables, Fruits, Chillies, Onion and Potato Cultivation Promoting, Seed Production and Advanced Technology in Agriculture. De Silva was sworn in as State Minister of Coast Conservation and Low-Lying Lands Development. Both state ministries were newly created, as published in another extraordinary gazette is-sued by the president Thursday, amending the functions of a number of ministries.

According to the gazette, Selendiva Investments Ltd, a State-run firm controversially created to take over various state assets and act as the ‘investment arm’ of the govern-ment, will come under the purview of the State Ministry of Urban Development, Waste Disposal and Public Sani-tation. The Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA), meanwhile, will be brought under Mohan de Sil-va’s State Ministry of Coast Conservation and Low-Lying Lands Development, while 10 institutions including the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) and the Department of Census & Statistics will come under the newly created Economic Policies and Plan Implemen-tation Ministry.

Even as celebrations were taking place across the is-land, over 40 people were arrested on Thursday for en-gaging in protests that had little to do with the new min-isterial appointments. A majority of these arrests were made at a protest held near the Parliament, against the proposed Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) bill.

News footage showed protestors, including older wom-en, being frog-marched into police buses amid shrieks of protest from fellow activists. Thirty-one people including General-Secretary of the Sri Lanka Teachers’ Union, Jo-seph Stalin, were arrested near the Parliament rounda-bout. The protest was jointly organized by the Inter-University Students Federation (IUSF), the Sri Lanka Teachers’ Union and the Frontline Socialist Party.

The KDU bill, first presented in 2018 under the previ-ous government, has been controversial, with left-leaning opposition parties including the Jantha Vimukthi Pera-muna (JVP) alleging it will pave the way for militarization of higher education in Sri Lanka.

A Buddhist monk who marched into one of the buses claimed he and the protestors had been attacked. “If there are attempts to stop us, that won’t happen. No matter if Basil or whoever comes, this will not be stopped,” the monk said.

News footage also showed tense situations outside the Colombo Magistrate’s Court Thursday evening as police and bailed-out protestors who were to be sent to quar-antine were seen shoving each other. At least one protes-tor was heard claiming he had been attacked. Another claimed they were being packed off to quarantine by force.

The main opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) also held a protest near Parliament Thursday against what it called the government’s suppression of the peo-ple’s right to protest.

Sri Lanka banned protests and public meetings until further notice on Tuesday (6) to prevent large gatherings and the further spread of COVID-19.

Responding to allegations that police were suppressing protests against the government using quarantine regula-tions, Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekara told Parliament Thursday, the arrests were in accordance with guidelines issued by Health Services Director General Dr. Asela Gunawardena in an effort to contain the spread of the virus.

It was not at all politically motivated, he said. -economynext.com

Enter Basil

As human rights continue to deteriorate, Britain reaffirms funding for Sri Lanka’s military

As Rajapaksa family tightens grip on crisis-hit Sri Lanka

Newly appointed Minister of Finance Basil Rajapaksa in conversation with a Buddhist monk, after signing documents during his swearing-in ceremony at the Ministry of Finance office in Colombo on Thursday (8)

– J. Sujeewakumar/ENCL

Reshuffles, fireworks, frog marches

mark arrival of new finance minister

COLOMBO - Sri Lanka has slated a stock of Pfizer coronavirus vaccines to be given to students going abroad and to a group of fishermen in Man-nar who may interact with fishermen from India, the head of the island’s COVID-19 task force said.

Students who have to go to some countries which have specified the types of vaccines allowed will be given the Pfizer vaccine, Sri Lanka’s military chief General Shavendra Sil-va said. “There is an identified group of fishermen in Mannar who are thought to interact with Indian fish-

ermen,” General Silva told a privately run pro-government television chan-nel, adding, “We will be vaccinating them with Pfizer vaccine.”

An Israel study found that the Pfiz-er vaccine was 70% effective against the Delta or Indian variant of the novel coronavirus. He said students who are seeking to go abroad will also be vaccinated with Pfizer.

Though Sinopharm has been ap-proved by the World Health Or-ganization (WHO), it has not been approved for use in many Western nations. By Wednesday, 2,171 per-

sons had been given the Pfizer vac-cine.

Sri Lanka was at first planning to give the Pfizer vaccine to over 600,000 awaiting the second dose of AstraZeneca. However, a stock of over a million AstraZeneca vaccines is due to arrive in Sri Lanka late in July. Sri Lanka has given 2.356 mil-lion first doses of Sinopharm and 921 second doses up to July 07.

So far 114,000 Sputnik first doses and 14,452 second doses have also been given.

-economynext.com

COLOMBO – Several areas in Co-lombo, will experience a 21-hour water cut on Saturday (10) due to improvements to be carried out at the Ambatale water plant aimed at increasing water capacity, a Na-tional Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) said.

Media reports said Colombo 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 will see wa-ter supply interrupted for 21-hours from 9:00 a.m. Saturday to 6:00 a.m. Sunday (11), while water will be supplied under low-pressure condi-tions to Colombo 04 and 12.

Two of the water treatment plants that provide water to greater Colom-bo are the Ambathale and Biyagama plants. “We are going to connect an-

other 50,000 cubic metre pipe sup-ply to Ambathale Water Treatment Plant from Biyagama,” NWSDB Ad-ditional General Manager (Western Province) Chrishan Fernando said on Thursday (8).

“These days we have spare capac-ity at Biyagama, so we are going to connect it to our Ambathaleya plant. This will increase the current capac-ity.”

At present Ambathale produces around 550,000 cubic metres per day, so by adding new pipelines it will be increased to 600,000. “This is will on average produce 60,000 cubic metres of water per day,” Fer-nando said.

-economynext.com

COLOMBO - The latest Brit-ish Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) ‘Hu-man Rights and Democracy’ report slams the continued deterioration of rights in Sri Lanka but reaffirms Britain’s commitment to supporting Sri Lanka through its Conflict, Sta-bility and Security Fund (CSSF).

The report comes as Sri Lanka faces increased scrutiny over its worsening human rights record with the EU passing a recent reso-lution calling for the repeal GSP+ trading agreement. The US Con-gress also introduced a resolution condemning the dire situation in Sri Lanka, calling for an “international accountability mechanism”, while the UN human right head has fur-ther expressed concerns over the continued targeting of Tamils and Muslims.

Whilst Sri Lanka faces increased criticism, Britain’s leading parlia-mentarian opposition have ques-tioned the continued support grant-ed through the CSSF and Britain’s failure to impose sanctions on sen-ior Sri Lanka government and mili-tary officials accused of egregious human rights abuses. Despite grow-ing alarm over the human rights sit-uation, British foreign direct invest-ment into Sri Lanka in 2020 greatly outstripped China’s.

In October 2019, when ques-tioned on how the “£10.75 million that has been allocated to Sri Lan-ka from the Conflict, Stability and

Security Fund over the next three years [would] be disbursed” Con-servative MP, Heather Wheeler, re-sponded noting that support would be granted in six areas. These were “peace building, de-mining, polic-ing, defence, corruption and cross-party reconciliation”.

Nigel Adam’s, X, has gone on to state that “any future CSSF alloca-tions will be subject to the outcome of the spending review”.

The recent FCDO report claims that the CSSF has been used to “sup-port victims of sexual and gender-based violence” as well as helping to “build media capacity to highlight the impact of COVID-19 on margin-alized communities”.

The report further claimed that Britain would “continue to invest in ambitious programs which sup-port conflict-affected communities, promote the role of civil society, facilitate social cohesion, and un-derline the critical importance of post-conflict reconciliation and ac-countability”.

Despite this statement, funding for the project has garnered signifi-cant skepticism as journalist Mark Curtis notes that funding has been allocated to Sri Lanka’s military and police under the auspices of train-ing that “respects human rights”. Despite receiving this funding and training, torture by Sri Lanka’s se-curity forces remains an endemic issue.

-TG

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s main opposition Samagi Jana Balawe-gaya (SJB) has filed three funda-mental rights petitions in the Su-preme Court challenging arrests made under quarantine regula-tions.

A privately owned television net-work reported that the petitions, filed by SJB MPs Ranjith Mad-duma Bandara, Harshana Rajapa-kurna and Mayantha Dissanayake, have named the Inspector General of Police, the Director General of Health Services, the Minster of Health and the Attorney General as respondents.

The submissions were made a day after Sri Lanka police arrested over 40 protestors in Colombo and elsewhere for allegedly violating quarantine regulations, even as government supporters were seen celebrating the swearing in of Fi-nance Minister Basil Rajapaksa by lighting firecrackers and gathering in small groups.

A majority of the arrests were made at a protest held near Par-liament in Sri Jayewardenepura, Kotte, against the proposed Kotela-wala Defence University (KDU) bill. News footage showed protes-tors, including older women, be-ing frog-marched into police buses

amid shrieks of protest from fellow activsits. Thirty-one people includ-ing Sri Lanka Teachers’ Union General Secretary Joseph Stalin were arrested near the parliament roundabout. The protest was joint-ly organized by the Inter-Universi-ty Students Federation (IUSF), the Sri Lanka Teachers’ Union and the Frontline Socialist Party.

The KDU bill, first presented in 2018 under the previous govern-ment, has been controversial, with left-leaning opposition parties in-cluding the Jantha Vimukthi Pera-muna (JVP) alleging that it will pave the way for militarisation of higher education in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka banned protests and public meetings until further no-tice on Tuesday (6) to prevent large gatherings and the further spread of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, United National Party (UNP) leader and national list MP Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament Friday (9) that forcibly sending individuals to quarantine camps is against the law.

Without a PCR test no one can be sent to quarantine, he said, adding that existing laws do not allow for such individuals to be quarantined without reason.

-economynext.com

Mannar fishermen and students to receive Pfizer coronavirus vaccine

21-hour water cut in parts of Colombo on Saturday, plant capacities to be increased

Main opposition SJB files FR petitions against protestor arrests

4 JULY 09 - 11, 2021 WEEKEND EXPRESS

HOT TOPICSHOT TOPICS

By Sara Hussein, with AFP Bureaus

By Arif Karimi

Amid COVID crisis

As commandos launch

counterattack

By John Eligon

Global COVID deaths cross 4 mn as outbreaks surge in AsiaTOKYO - The global COVID-19 death toll has crossed four mil-lion, with the worst of the pan-demic only just starting to hit some parts of the Asia-Pacific and cases rising again in the United States.

The more infectious Delta vi-rus variant is accelerating out-breaks, and while some nations have started easing restrictions, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the world was at a "perilous point".

With fears growing about the spread of the virus, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced Thursday (8) that the capital Tokyo will be under a state of emergency throughout the Olympics.

"The more infectious Delta variant now accounts for around 30 percent of cases," Japan's vi-rus response minister Yasutoshi Nishimura had said before the emergency announcement.

The emergency will run until August 22, but it will be far looser than the lockdowns seen in other parts of the world such as Aus-tralia.

The government there said Thursday it will rush 300,000 vaccine doses to Sydney as Aus-tralia's largest city - in its third week of lockdown - struggled to bring a Delta outbreak under control.

South Korea, once considered a coronavirus response model, reported nearly 1,300 new infec-tions on Thursday, the highest since the pandemic began.

The surge has forced South Ko-rean authorities to consider im-posing the tightest restrictions, under which all public events would be banned.

Elsewhere in Asia, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City has gone into lockdown. The virus threat also

forced organizers Thursday to postpone the Southeast Asian Games were due to be held in Vi-etnam.

But the worst of the Asian out-breaks is in Indonesia, which has become a global hotspot with death rates rising tenfold in a month to more than 1,000 on Wednesday.

Hospitals in the vast archi-pelago of 270 million have been pushed to the brink by the flood of coronavirus cases.

The WHO announced Wednes-day (7) that more than four mil-lion people have died from COV-ID-19, but cautioned that the figure was an underestimate of the true toll.

And while many wealthy na-tions, spurred by rapid vaccina-tion programs, have started eas-ing and even entirely eliminating restrictions, the WHO urged "ex-treme caution".

"The world is at a perilous point in this pandemic," said the UN body's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accusing rich coun-tries of hoarding vaccines and of acting "as though the pandemic is already over".

The COVID-19 challenge has been further complicated in re-cent weeks by the rise of the Delta variant, which was first detected in India.

In Brazil, which has the world's second-highest known COV-ID-19 death toll, authorities said Wednesday that the variant has started spreading rapidly in the country's most populous state Sao Paulo.

"It is already circulating in our midst in people who has no travel history or who have no contact with someone who has been, for example, in India," said Sao Paulo health secretary Jean Gorinchteyn.

"We have to pay special atten-tion."

The Delta variant has also caused a spike in COVID-19 cases in the United States, which has the world's highest availability of vaccines.

But its once-rapid immuniza-tion campaign has dropped off steeply since April.

The seven-day average of new cases rose 21% compared with two weeks ago, Centers for Disease Control data showed Wednesday.

Regions in the Midwest and South with lower vaccination rates are experiencing higher case rates than regions with high vaccination rates such as the Northeast.

Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Secu-rity told AFP that the likely trend now is that Covid-19 will be more of a problem in areas where vac-cinations are low.

"In other parts of the country, the pandemic is largely going to be something that's managed as more of an ordinary respiratory virus."

One such area is New York City, where on Wednesday a tick-er-tape parade honoured the eve-ryday "heroes" who kept the city running through the pandemic.

Between marching bands and under confetti, groups of doctors, caregivers, delivery men, public transport workers and food bank employees and others marched as onlookers cheered.

"It's a trauma we've all kind of gone through," said New York resident Sara Cavolo.

"It really hits home the fact that now we're coming back out of this and reemerging, we've made it. It feels just very good to celebrate."

- Agence France-Presse

DUBAI - Dubai authorities were Thursday (8) investigating an ex-plosion on a container ship car-rying flammable materials which unleashed a fireball at one of the world’s busiest ports and sent shock waves through the city.

Firefighters rushed to the scene at Jebel Ali Port to tackle the blaze that broke out shortly before mid-night on the large vessel which au-thorities said had been preparing to dock.

Flames and smoke poured from the ship but authorities said the blaze was doused within 40 min-utes and there were no casualties, with all 14 crew evacuated in time.

Police said that the summer heat, already hovering above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Gulf city, may have been a factor.

“Jebel Ali Port authorities are continuing an extensive investiga-tion on the cause of the fire and its circumstances,” the Dubai Media Office said in a statement.

Police vehicles and fire trucks were Thursday still parked close to the heavily damaged vessel, which the authorities identified as the Comoros-flagged MV Ocean Trader. Drone footage released by the Emirates media office showed

smoke still emanating from the ship, docked at the port near stacks of thousands of containers.

Residents of apartment towers and villas that line the city’s coast reported hearing a loud bang in the night and then felt windows and doors shaking after the fire-ball shot into the sky.

An AFP correspondent saw a helicopter circling overhead as columns of smoke rose from the tightly secured facility after the blast.

Dubai police said three of the 130 containers on the ship held flammable materials.

“Initial reports indicate that... friction, or heat, may have led to the blast”, Dubai police chief Ab-dullah al-Marri told Al-Arabiya, adding that there were no radio-active substances or explosives in the containers.

Such events are a rarity in the ultra-secure Gulf emirate, one of seven which make up the wealthy United Arab Emirates.

Jebel Ali port is capable of han-dling aircraft carriers and was the US Navy’s busiest port of call out-side of the United States in 2017, according to the US Congressional Research Service.

-AFP

NEW DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appointed new fed-eral ministers for health, IT and oil as part of a reshuffle aimed at refurbishing his government’s image amid fierce crit-icism of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Modi appointed Mansukh Laxman Mandaviya as the country’s new health minister just hours after Harsh Var-dhan, who was the face of the govern-ment’s efforts to fight COVID-19, was asked to step down along with his dep-uty.

Official sources said Vardhan had to pay the political price for the govern-ment’s struggles to cope with a devas-tating second wave of coronavirus in-fections. Modi’s government has faced sharp criticism for the chaotic rollout of a nationwide immunisation campaign that experts said had worsened the im-pact of the second wave, killing hun-dreds of thousands.

The official death toll after a surge in COVID-19 infections in April and May passed 400,000 last week.

More than half of those reported deaths – the third most of any country – occurred during the past two months as the Delta variant of the virus tore through the nation and overwhelmed

its already strained healthcare system. Mandaviya, who belongs to Modi’s home state Gujarat, was previously a junior minister holding the portfolios for ports and chemicals and fertilisers.

Opposition leader P. Chidambaram said the removal of the health minister and his deputy was an acknowledge-ment that the Modi government had failed in managing the pandemic but the buck should stop with Modi.

“There is a lesson for ministers in these resignations. If things go right the credit will go to the PM, if things go wrong the minister will be the fall guy,” he said.

The reshuffle also came after the defeat of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in April elections in the key West Bengal state.

In all, 15 cabinet ministers and 28 junior ministers were sworn in by Presi-dent Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony in the presidential palace on Wednesday.

They replace 12 ministers that were fired in the first cabinet reshuffle since Modi was re-elected in 2019 on a prom-ise to transform India into a political and economic power.

Eight junior ministers were elevated to the cabinet rank.

-Agencies

NKANDLA — Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa, was taken into custody Wednesday (7) to begin serving a 15-month prison sentence, capping a stunning downfall for a once-lauded freedom fighter who battled the apartheid regime alongside Nelson Mandela.

The Constitutional Court, the nation’s highest judi-cial body, ordered Zuma’s imprisonment last month after finding him guilty of contempt for failing to ap-pear before a commission investigating corruption ac-cusations that tainted his tenure as the nation’s leader from 2009-18.

Under Zuma, who was forced to step down, the ex-tent of crony corruption within the governing African National Congress Party became clear, turning a once heralded liberation movement into a vehicle of self-enrichment for many officials. The corruption led to the gutting of the nation’s tax agency, sweetheart busi-ness contracts and rivals gunned down in a scramble for wealth and power.

Zuma, 79, voluntarily surrendered Wednesday, 40 minutes before a midnight deadline for the police to hand him over to prison officials. He was driven out of his compound in a long convoy of cars and taken into custody a short time after, police said. The arrest followed a week of tense brinkmanship in which the former president and his allies railed against the high court’s decision, suggesting, without evidence, that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

Those comments whipped up Zuma’s supporters, who stationed themselves by the hundreds outside his rural homestead in Nkandla on Sunday (4) and said the police would have to kill them if they wanted to get to the former president. But there was little such resistance seen Wednesday night, and only the lights of reporters’ cameras illuminated the darkened street outside the compound.

While much of the country praised the court’s rul-ing as an affirmation of South Africa’s democratic system and the principle that no one is above the law, the standoff of the past week exposed deep divisions in this young democracy and in the African National Congress, or ANC, the liberation party that has ruled the nation since apartheid fell in 1994.

Zuma, whose tenure as president was marked by scandal and mismanagement, is nevertheless a popu-list figure deeply beloved in some corners, particularly among Zulus in his home province, KwaZulu-Natal. His loyalists gathered Sunday outside his compound, a series of thatched-roof buildings sitting on a slope — a site that became associated with greed when as president he was accused of using taxpayer money for upgrades. Many argued that Zuma’s opponents within the ANC had sought to use the courts to prevent him from retaking control of the party from his former deputy and the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

South Africa’s image as a leader on the African con-tinent — honed by Mandela and his successor, Thabo Mbeki — took a plunge during Zuma’s rule. Zuma, who had no formal schooling, was seen as a champion of struggling South Africans in rural areas and town-ships. But he was dogged by accusations of corruption even before he was elected, and he left the country with a stagnant economy, with high unemployment and even more deeply mired in the extreme inequal-ity that predated his rule. The government now alleges that tens of billions of dollars were siphoned from state coffers during Zuma’s tenure, which he denies.

During a rally Sunday afternoon, Zuma stood on a packed stage to address his followers, who squeezed shoulder to shoulder, hanging on his every word

“I fought for freedom,” Zuma told the crowd. “I was fighting for these very rights. No one will take my rights away. Even the dead that I fought against dur-ing the liberation struggle will turn in their graves.”

During a news conference Sunday evening, Zuma argued that he was sentenced without a trial and com-pared his situation to the apartheid struggle.

Hours after appearing on a crowded stage before legions of supporters, often without wearing a mask, Zuma also told the news media that sending someone his age to jail in a pandemic “is the same as sentencing me to death.” Zuma’s prison sentence stemmed from his refusal to testify before the corruption commission led by Justice Raymond Zondo, deputy chief of the Constitutional Court. Zuma defied an order in Janu-ary and began a sharp public critique of the judiciary.

He then ignored multiple requests from the Consti-tutional Court to defend his unwillingness to testify. Zuma has said that he would have testified before the corruption panel if Zondo had recused himself be-cause he felt that the justice was biased against him.

In announcing the court’s decision last month to send Zuma to prison, Justice Sisi Khampepe, the act-ing chief at the time, said that the former president had carried out “a series of direct assaults” on the ju-diciary “as well as calculated and insidious efforts” to “corrode its legitimacy and authority.”

“If with impunity litigants are allowed to decide which orders they wish to obey and which they choose to ignore, our constitution is not worth the paper upon which it is written,” she said, reading from a decision the court backed 7-2. Days later, Zuma filed a motion asking the court to consider rescinding its order of im-prisonment. He also filed a motion in a lower court asking it to prevent the police from arresting him until after a Constitutional Court hearing Monday (12) to decide on his motion to rescind.

In a hearing this week in the lower court, Zuma’s lawyer doubled down on his client’s argument that it was unjust for him to be sentenced to prison with-out having had a trial. The lawyer, Dali Mpofu, also suggested that there could be civil unrest if Zuma were sent to prison, referring to a massacre in 2012 in which the police fatally shot 34 miners on strike in the town of Marikana. During the hearing, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, a lawyer for the commission, said that Zuma needed to be arrested on charges of repeatedly defying the judiciary.

-New York Times

HERAT - Taliban fighters on motorbikes roamed a provincial Afghan capital Thursday (8) after a day of heavy fighting that saw them storm the city in their most brazen assault since the United States stepped up its troop withdrawal.

The government flew in hundreds of comman-dos to Qala-i-Naw in Badghis, the first provincial capital to face an all-out assault by the Taliban since May 1 when the insurgents launched a blis-tering campaign to capture new territory.

With the US troop pullout "90% complete", ac-cording to the Pentagon, fears are mounting that Afghan forces will be stretched without the vital air support of the US military.

Residents in Qala-i-Naw had either fled the city or stayed indoors Thursday after more than 24 hours of intense fighting that saw the Afghan air force launch strikes on Taliban positions.

"The Taliban are still in the city," resident Aziz Tawakoli told AFP.

"You can see them going up and down the streets on their motorcycles."

He said many of the city's 75,000 people had fled their homes -- either to neighbouring dis-tricts or to Herat. "The shops are closed and there is hardly anyone on the streets," Tawakoli said, adding that helicopters and planes had bombed Taliban targets through the night.

Badghis provincial council member Zia Gul Habibi said the Taliban suffered casualties, but also surrounded the city.

"All districts are under their control... People are really in fear," she said.

"All shops and government institutions are closed. There are still reports of sporadic fight-ing." Parisila Herawai, a rights activist in the city, expressed concern for the safety of women in particular. "It is an emergency situation for all women, especially activists," she told AFP.

"If the Taliban plan to remain in the city, we will not be able to work."

On Wednesday (7), the Taliban briefly seized the police headquarters and the local office of the country's spy agency but were later pushed back.

As news of the assault spread, social media was flooded with videos of clashes - with some showing armed Taliban fighters on motorbikes entering the city, as onlookers cheered.

Local officials said some security officers had surrendered to the Taliban, and the insurgents opened the gates of the city jail, freeing hundreds of prisoners.

Most had since been recaptured, officials said.Overnight, the defence ministry said it rushed

hundreds of commandos to the city to launch a "large scale operation", spokesman Fawad Aman said on Twitter. The attack on Qala-i-Naw comes as the Taliban carry out a blistering campaign across the country but mostly in the north, cap-turing dozens of districts since early May.

The fighting appeared to be spreading in neighbouring Herat province where officials acknowledged losing two districts to the insur-gents.

Rights group Human Rights Watch said the insurgents were forcing people from their houses in northern areas that they have captured.

"The Taliban's retaliatory attacks against civil-ians deemed to have supported the government are an ominous warning about the risk of future atrocities," said HRW associate director Patricia Gossman.

"The Taliban leadership has the power to stop these abuses by their forces but haven't shown that they are willing to do so," she said.

-Agence France-Presse

Jacob Zuma, former south African president, is arrested

Taliban surround Afghan city

Dubai authorities probe port blast that shook the city India gets new ministers for

health, IT, oil

-STR

/ A

FP

Volunteers wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) carry a coffin containing the body of a person who died from the COVID-19 coronavirus before it is cremated in Taungoo, Bago region on Thursday (8)

REALITY CHECKWEEKEND EXPRESS JULY 09 - 11, 2021 5

India reopens but fear pervades

They were the nice, older couple next door

Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against TalibanKABUL - Women have taken up guns in northern and central Af-ghanistan, marching in the streets in their hundreds and sharing pic-tures of themselves with assault rifles on social media, in a show of defiance as the Taliban make sweeping gains nationwide.

One of the biggest demonstra-tions was in central Ghor prov-ince, where hundreds of women turned out at the weekend, wav-ing guns and chanting anti-Tali-ban slogans.

They are not likely to head to the frontlines in large numbers any time soon, because of both social conservatism and lack of experience. But the public dem-onstrations, at a time of urgent threat from the militants, are a reminder of how frightened many women are about what Taliban rule could mean for them and their families.

“There were some women who just wanted to inspire security forces, just symbolic, but many more were ready to go to the battlefields,” said Halima Paras-tish, the head of the women’s di-rectorate in Ghor and one of the marchers. “That includes myself. I and some other women told the governor around a month ago that we’re ready to go and fight.”

The Taliban have been sweep-ing across rural Afghanistan, tak-ing dozens of districts including in places such as northern Badakh-shan province, which 20 years ago was an anti-Taliban stronghold. They now have multiple provin-cial capitals in effect under siege.

In areas they control, the Tali-ban have already brought in re-strictions on women’s education, their freedom of movement and their clothing, activists and resi-dents of those areas say. In one area, flyers were circulating de-manding that women put on bur-qas.

Even women from extremely conservative rural areas aspire to more education, greater freedom of movement and a greater role in their families, according to a new survey of a group whose voices are rarely heard. Taliban rule will take them in the opposite direction.

“No woman wants to fight, I just want to continue my educa-tion and stay far away from the violence but conditions made me

and other women stand up,” said a journalist in her early 20s from northern Jowzjan, where there is a history of women fighting.

She attended a day’s training on weapons handling in the provin-cial capital, which is currently be-sieged. She asked not to be named in case it falls to the Taliban. “I don’t want the country under the control of people who treat women the way they do. We took up the guns to show if we have to fight, we will.”

She said there were a few dozen women learning to use guns with her, and despite their inexperi-ence they would have one advan-tage over men if they faced the Taliban. “They are frightened of being killed by us, they consider it shameful.”

For conservative militants, fac-ing women in battle can be humil-iating. Isis fighters in Syria were reportedly more frightened of dy-ing at the hands of female Kurdish forces than being killed by men.

It is rare, but not unprecedent-ed, for Afghan women to take up arms, particularly in slightly less conservative parts of the country. Last year a teenager, Qamar Gul, became famous nationwide after fighting off a group of Taliban who had killed her parents. The militants included her own hus-band.

In Baghlan province, a woman called Bibi Aisha Habibi became the country’s only female warlord in the wake of the Soviet invasion and the civil war that followed. She was known as Commander Kaftar, or Pigeon.

And in northern Balkh, 39-year-old Salima Mazari has recently been fighting on the frontlines in Charkint, where she is the district governor.

Women have also joined Af-ghanistan’s security forces over the past two decades, including training as helicopter pilots, al-though they have faced discrimi-nation and harassment from col-leagues and are rarely found on the frontlines.

The Taliban shrugged off Af-ghanistan’s historical precedents, claiming the demonstrations were propaganda and men would not allow female relatives to fight.

“Women will never pick up guns against us. They are help-

less and forced by the defeated enemy,” said a spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid. “They can’t fight.”

The Ghor provincial gover-nor, Abdulzahir Faizzada, said in a phone interview that some of the women who came out in the streets of Firozkoh, the provincial capital, had already battled the Taliban, and most had endured violence from the group.

“The majority of these women were those who had recently es-caped from Taliban areas. They have already been through war in their villages, they lost their sons and brothers, they are angry,” he said. Faizzada added that he would train women who did not have experience with weapons, if the government in Kabul ap-proved it.

The Taliban’s conservative rules are particularly unwelcome in Ghor, where women tradition-ally wear headscarves rather than covering themselves fully with the burqa, and work in fields and vil-lages beside their men, Parastish said.

The Taliban have banned wom-en even from taking care of ani-mals or working the land in areas of Ghor they control, she added. They have closed girls schools, ordered women not to leave home without a male guardian and even banned them from gathering for weddings, saying only men should attend.

Women from these areas were among those who marched. “More than a dozen women have escaped from Allahyar in Shahrak district last week and came to us and asked for guns to go and fight for their lands and freedom. The same situation is in Charsadda re-gion,” Parastish said.

“Women said: ‘We are getting killed and injured without defend-ing ourselves, why not fight back?’ They were telling us that at least two women were in labour in their region, with no medical things around and they couldn’t come with them.”

For now, she said, the main thing holding the women back was the men in power. “The gov-ernor said there is no need for us now and they will let us know.”

-This article was originally featured on theguardian.com

MAALULA - In the ancient Syrian village of Maalula, whose residents still speak the language of Jesus, vol-unteers rake stones and scrub graffiti in preparation for the return of Chris-tian pilgrims after years of war.

Nestled among towering cliffs in the mountains north of Damascus, Maalula is one of the world’s oldest Christian settlements.

Before Syria’s war, it drew in thou-sands of visitors a year -including for-mer US president Jimmy Carter and late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez - to visit its churches and monaster-ies and to hear its inhabitants speak Aramaic.

But from 2011 onwards, the devas-tating conflict largely kept pilgrims away from the village, whose name in Aramaic means “entrance”, after the narrow passage between its lime-stone cliffs.

Legend has it that in the first cen-tury Saint Taqla, a young woman, escaped an arranged marriage to a pagan and ran away from her home to lead a Christian life.

With Roman soldiers in hot pur-suit, she reached a dead end in the mountains, but when she prayed, a passage opened in the rock face, lead-ing into a cave.

She lived there for the rest of her life, curing the sick with water from a sacred spring, near the site of today’s Saint Taqla Greek Orthodox convent.

In the narrow pass at the foot of the canyon, men have been working in the summer heat to prepare the site for visitors in time for Assumption on August 15.

Volunteers heaved a fallen boul-der from the pathway then shovelled limestone debris into a wheelbarrow to clear the way for a new stone path.

Yahya, 29, dabbed a wet cloth on the rock to rid it of graffiti left during the conflict.

“We’ll make it even more beauti-ful than it used to be,” he said, sweat pouring from his forehead.

Nearby, on the side of the wind-ing 500-metre canyon leading to the Saint Taqla convent, the Arabic word “message” and a heart were still vis-ible, both in red paint.

Rebels and jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda seized Maalula in the autumn of 2013, forcing most of its Christian inhabitants to flee.

Syria’s then-Al-Qaeda affiliate kid-napped 13 nuns from the Saint Taqla convent. They were released in a pris-oner swap with the Damascus author-ities in March 2014.

Regime forces recaptured Maalula the following month. But years on, many of the town’s 6,000 mainly

Greek Catholic inhabitants have yet to return, and so have out-of-town visitors.

Village mayor Ibrahim al-Shaer said the canyon was once a key at-traction.

But during the conflict, “it was left to the mercy of the elements, littered with remnants of war, and its walls defaced by graffiti,” he said.

Yussef Ibrahim, the deputy gover-nor of Damascus governorate, grew up in Maalula.

He remembered the days when diplomats and foreign dignitaries where driven in to admire the ancient village.

“People used to come to the Maal-ula grotto to pray and seek a cure” to their ailments, he said.

“I’ll be much happier when I see them all return.”

- Agence France-Presse

By Emma Graham-Harrison

The older couple first came to the public eye on a winter night in Tehran, Iran, when their film director son invited them to the stage after a screening. They were frail, and seemingly shy, and the younger man helped his mother up the stairs, then draped his arm around his father’s shoulder.

That was five years ago.Now their son is dead, and Akbar Khorramdin, 81,

and his wife, Iran Mousavi, 74, are back on the public stage, accused of his killing and, in a twist that has shocked and riveted Iranians, the killings of a daugh-ter and a son-in-law over the course of a decade. The victims were drugged, suffocated, stabbed and then dismembered, authorities said.

The couple has confessed to the crimes, but if Khorramdin, a retired army colonel, and Mousavi, a homemaker, are remorseful, they have done a good job hiding it.

“I have no guilty conscience for any of the mur-ders,” Khorramdin said in a television interview from detention. “I killed people who were very morally cor-rupt.”

Mousavi appeared no more contrite.“We decided together, the two of us,” she said in

a television interview shortly after she was arrested. “My husband suggested it and I agreed. I have a great relationship with my husband. He doesn’t beat me or curse at me.”

Judge Mohammad Shahriari, who presides over criminal prosecutions in Tehran, said investigators believe the motive for the killings was family dis-putes. The couple are undergoing psychiatric evalu-ations, officials told Iranian media.

To say the case has rattled the psyche of Iranians since the remains of the couple’s son, Babak, 47, were found in a garbage bin in May, would be an under-statement.

Already, Iranians had been battered by a raging pandemic, a shortage of vaccines, an economy buf-feted by sanctions and the prospect of more social repression as hard-line conservatives take over the government. But the accusations against the elderly couple touched a nerve.

For Iranians, home is synonymous with sanctuary, and elderly parents, especially mothers, are revered as saint-like figures. And so they have reacted with bafflement and then outrage to every twist and turn of the case, and to the parents’ behaviour after their arrests.

Photographs in Iranian media have shown Khor-ramdin clad in prison pyjamas flashing a victory sign. He told authorities that he would do it all over again — and might even kill his other two adult children, too, if he were released, according to news reports.

The couple were arrested after sanitation workers collecting trash discovered a bag containing body parts on May 15. The discovery was made at a vast, well-known apartment complex called Shahrak Ek-batan, where Babak Khorramdin, a relatively un-known film director, lived with his parents. Forensic experts got fingerprints from a piece of a hand, and identified him as the victim, authorities said.

When investigators reviewed surveillance camera footage from the building’s elevator the night before the body parts were discovered, they saw the couple transporting large plastic trash bags and a carry-on suitcase, authorities said. The mother held the eleva-tor door open as the father made a few trips with the bags and adjusted them for space. At one point, video published in Iranian media shows, he glances at a mirror and fixes his cap.

When the police showed up at their apartment to interrogate the parents, they confessed to the kill-ing — but it soon became apparent there was more to the case, authorities said. Over the next few days, investigators discovered missing-person reports filed for the couple’s daughter Arezou, who disappeared in 2018, and her husband, Faramarz, who went missing in 2011.

The couple then admitted having killed them, too, authorities said.

Much like serial killers, they adopted a pattern over years, they told interrogators, who gave this account: First the couple mixed sleeping pills into food to se-date their victims. Then they bound, suffocated and stabbed them. Finally, they dismembered the corpses in the bathtub and disposed of the remains in trash bins scattered around town.

In televised interviews, the parents said they had killed their children because they disapproved of their lifestyles. They accused their son of being physi-cally aggressive, and said he was freeloading off them and having sex with girlfriends. Their daughter, they claimed, was addicted to drugs and drank alcohol, while her husband was abusive and dealt drugs.

Friends of Babak and Arezou say those descriptions are impossible to reconcile with the people they knew.

“For those of us who knew Babak, this is all unbe-lievable and very strange,” said Nima

Still, last week, Mousavi contradicted her earlier account of her relationship with her husband in an audiotape from prison released by Human Rights Ac-tivists News Agency, a Washington-based advocacy group. She said her husband was abusive toward her and she accused him of raping Arezou.

At the tight-knit Shahrak Ekbatan housing com-plex, where the couple have lived for 40 years, resi-dents recall them babysitting for neighbors, chatting with shopkeepers and taking evening strolls in the gardens.

“We cannot comprehend that there were murder-ers living among us,” said one resident, Minoo, a 51-year-old mother of two, who also did not want to give her last name because she said she was afraid of the family. “We may have passed them by every day and said hello. This apartment next to us was a house of horror and none of us knew.”

-New York Times

AGRA — From a rickety fishing boat on the Yamuna River, Sumit Chaurasia points out how the setting tangerine sun catches the sparkle of the mother-of-pearl embedded in the Taj Mahal, India’s majestic monument to love.

For a decade, Chaurasia, 35, has made such poetic observations to tourists. But since March 2020, when India imposed a nation-wide lockdown to curb the coronavirus, its monuments have been largely closed. Visas for foreign tourists have been suspended, and he and legions like him have been out of work.

While the Taj Mahal partially reopened in mid-June — with strict limits on the number of visitors — Chaurasia’s life, like much of In-dia, remains in limbo: no longer totally shut down, but far from fully normal or safe.

“The corona is still with us,” said Chaurasia, pointing out the flames licking the riverbank from a crematory next to the monument. This spring, Agra, like India’s capital, New Delhi, ran out of space to cremate its dead, with thousands a day dying from COVID as India experienced one of the world’s most cata-strophic encounters with the disease.

The crowds that usually throng the Taj at sunset have been reduced to a handful of mostly local residents, roaming around the 25-acre complex for just over $3 a ticket.

This near-emptiness makes Chaurasia cry, but he prefers it to the alternative despite the hardships it imposes on him and the family he supports: elderly parents, a wife and two young daughters.

“Don’t sacrifice your life to visit the Taj Mahal,” he said as the boat gently bobbed on the holy Yamuna while monarch butterflies fluttered and pelicans soared over the trash-clogged shores.

India is only now emerging from its trau-matic spring, when a devastating second wave of the coronavirus hit, imprinting grim memories of frantic searches for hospital beds, medicine and oxygen — and of funeral pyres that burned day and night, turning the skies an ash gray.

As case numbers have fallen, authorities have cautiously reopened the country, in-cluding monuments like the Taj Mahal. But just 4% of the country’s 1.4 billion people are fully vaccinated, and health officials warn another wave may be looming, casting a pall over the life that is starting to return.

“We don’t go out unless it’s necessary,” Chaurasia said.

Agra, with a wealth of Indo-Islamic ar-chitectural treasures including the Taj, is usually cacophonous and traffic choked. It is now quiet and uncrowded, and so too are the stores selling the inlay marble handicrafts and treacly sweets for which the city, the one-time capital of the Mughal empire, is famous.

Agra is an essential stop for anyone visit-ing India, from backpackers to presidents — Donald Trump visited in February 2020 dur-ing a state visit — and about 800,000 people in the city, half its population, are dependent on tourism.

Virtually all of them have been affected, said Pradeep Tamta, a city tourism official. Many of the artisan workshops that populate Agra’s ancient streets have not survived 15 months of intermittent lockdown, and most of the rest are struggling.

In an open-air building along a narrow alley, Irfan Ali, 51, hunches over a machine used to file down shards of mother-of-pearl into moons, stars and other shapes that will later be adhered to marble in intricate pat-terns on tiles, tabletops, vases and trays.

Foreign tourists, Ali said, have over the years driven up demand for the art form, which represents the materials and motifs of Agra’s most famous monument.

“They wanted a piece of the Taj Mahal,” he said. “Now there’s only silence.”

-New York Times

By Farnaz FassihiBy Emily Schmall and Karan Deep Singh

Then the first body turned up

‘Don’t sacrifice your life to visit the Taj Mahal’

Syria village with language of Jesus prepares for returning pilgrims

- Fa

ce

bo

ok

One of the biggest dem-onstrations was in central Ghor province, where hun-dreds of wom-en turned out at the weekend, waving guns and chanting anti-Taliban slogans

6 JULY 09 - 11, 2021 WEEKEND EXPRESS

RETHINKING AMERICA

If extradited

Biden weighs a response to ransomware attacksWASHINGTON — President Joe Biden emerged from a Situation Room meeting with his top cyber-security advisers on Wednesday (7) to declare that he “will deliver” a re-sponse to President Vladimir Putin of Russia for the wave of ransom-ware attacks on US companies, af-ter hearing a series of options about how he could disrupt the extortion efforts.

Biden’s vague statement, deliv-ered as he was departing for a trip, left it unclear whether he was plan-ning another verbal warning to Pu-tin — similar to the one he issued three weeks ago during a one-on-one summit in Geneva — or would move ahead with more aggressive options to dismantle the infrastruc-ture used by Russian-language crim-inal groups.

Each option runs significant risk, because Russia is capable of escalat-ing its own behavior. And as the ran-somware deluge has shown, many companies in the private sector and federal and state government agen-cies remain rife with vulnerabilities that Russian actors can find and ex-ploit.

After more than three decades in government, Biden seems compara-tively less concerned about hacking operations focused on espionage, activity that all countries conduct and that the United States carries out every day against its geopoliti-cal rivals. But he has been alarmed by the economic disruption of ran-somware, especially since gasoline, jet fuel and diesel shortages gripped the East Coast after a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline two months ago.

Attacks using ransomware, a form of malware that encrypts data until the victim pays, have grown increas-ingly disruptive and costly.

The White House’s argument is that the attacks are emanating from Russian territory, so it is Putin’s responsibility to take them down — and that the United States will act if he does not.

Biden’s aides provided few details of the Wednesday morning meet-ing, which included key leaders from the State Department, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, and other mem-bers of the intelligence community. But they said it focused on immedi-ate options — not the longer-term

policy for dealing with ransomware that is expected in the coming weeks.

Biden is under growing pressure to take some kind of visible action — perhaps a strike on the Russian servers or banks that keep them run-ning — after delivering several stark warnings to Moscow that he would respond to cyberattacks on the Unit-ed States with what he has called “in-kind” action against Russia. The president’s most recent warning came right after the meeting with Putin at a lakeside estate on the edg-es of Geneva, where Biden gave him the Department of Homeland Secu-rity’s list of 16 areas of “critical in-frastructure” that the United States considers off limits and would merit a response if attacked.

The most recent attack, over the July 4 holiday, was mounted by a Russian-language group that calls itself REvil, an abbreviation of ‘ran-somware evil’.

The immediate victim was a Flor-ida company, Kaseya, that provides software to companies that manage technology for thousands of smaller firms, which largely do not have the technology or people to manage their own systems. By getting into Kaseya’s supply chain of software, REvil was able to hold up to 1,500 companies hostage, including gro-cery chains, pharmacies and even railways in Sweden.

In the United States, the munici-pal government of North Beach, Maryland, and several small compa-nies were affected, but Biden’s aides said the larger effects were relatively muted.

“We got lucky,” one senior official involved in cyberdefence said, not-ing that the ransomware group ap-peared to have borrowed some tech-niques from the Russian intelligence agency that last year manipulated the software code sold by a company called SolarWinds that maintained broad access to government and cor-porate networks.

A preliminary review by adminis-tration officials determined that the ransomware attack over the week-end did not affect the kind of critical infrastructure — power grids, water distribution systems, the working of the internet itself — that Biden had warned Putin would mark a red line.

Biden said late Wednesday that he was awaiting a report from the FBI about whether the Republican Na-

tional Committee was deliberately targeted last week when one of its contractors was hit by a cyberattack that appeared to be the work of the SVR, the most skilled intelligence-gathering operation in Russia.

“The FBI is working with the RNC to determine the facts,” Biden said. “When we find out the facts, I’ll know what I am going to do tomor-row.”

(RNC officials said the access was quickly cut off and nothing was sto-len.)

But it was the sophisticated nature of the Kaseya attack that concerned experts. It used a “zero day” — an unknown flaw in Kaseya’s technol-ogy — then spread the ransomware to the company’s clients and hun-dreds of their customers. Those techniques are considered unusually sophisticated for cybercriminals and help thwart traditional defences, like the antivirus software that runs on most commercial networks and in-dividual computers.

For months, the National Security Council has been weighing options to stop the ransomware that has de-bilitated gas pipelines, meat process-ing plants, hospitals and schools. A task force at the Justice Department, in concert with the FBI, has been working to prevent ransomware op-erators from getting access to some of the cryptocurrency wallets where ransoms are deposited, or moved. Last year, US Cyber Command, which runs cyberoperations for the military, disabled the servers for an-other Russian-language group that the United States feared Moscow might use to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.

Any combination of those tech-niques could be used again. Dmitry Alperovitch, a founder of the cyber-security firm Crowd Strike, and now the founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank, has argued that until Biden moves to cut signifi-cantly into Russia’s oil revenue, he will not get Putin’s attention.

But so far, those steps have proved insufficient to deter further attacks. The question for the White House now is whether REvil’s recent at-tacks come close enough to the red line set by Biden in Geneva that he cannot let the moment pass, even if the damage to US interests was lim-ited.

-New York Times

MIAMI - The elite crews searching the pulverized steel and smashed concrete that was the Champlain Towers South shifted their focus to recovery efforts Wednesday (7), acknowledging after nearly two weeks that survivors would not be found.

“Just based on the facts, there’s zero chance of survival,” Assistant Chief Ray Jadallah of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue told families of the missing in a private briefing.

Despite no sign of survivors beyond the hours immediately after the build-ing in Surfside, Florida, collapsed June 24, officials had continuously pledged they would continuing searching as long as any chance of rescue remained. When the tally of the missing was first announced, it stood at 159, and the death toll at four. By Wednesday (7) evening, the death toll had risen to 46, with 94 people unaccounted for. “When somebody is missing in action in the

military, you’re missing until you’re found, and we don’t stop the search,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said at a news conference June 29.

That mission ended Wednesday af-ternoon, when Jadallah told families that the operation would transition from search and rescue to search and recovery. He said search teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Israel were in agreement with the decision.

“We need to bring closure,” Jadallah said.

At one point in the meeting, which The New York Times viewed a record-ing of, a woman thanked the officials for their work. The room erupted in ap-plause.

Rescue teams had come from all over Florida, as well as Texas, Israel and Mexico, driven on by the anguish of on-looking family members who yelled out the names of their missing loved ones

and stories of unlikely survivals from disasters past.

As impatience and frustration grew among family members of the missing, the teams on the pile continued looking for weeks, moving millions of pounds of concrete. The work was gruelling and dangerous, with fires that burned in the rubble and the constant possibility of mounds of debris giving way. One res-cuer fell 25 feet off the wreckage right in front of people who had been invited to watch the search.

On Sunday (4), the section of the building that had remained standing was demolished to guard against it top-pling on its own and to help speed the search.

Sounds came from the rubble, not human voices but bangs and taps that were as unclear as they seemed auspi-cious. As rescuers dug through the pile, they found no one alive after the day of the collapse, only signs — wallets, old

photos — of lives once lived. In some places, heavy machinery had to lift con-crete slabs. In other places, rescuers sifted through concrete by hand.

Douglas Berdeaux and his wife, Linda Howard, of Daytona Beach, Florida, learned Wednesday morning that How-ard’s sister, Elaine Sabino, 70, was of-ficially named among the dead.

Later they were told that the rescue mission had been called off.

“I think it’s realistic, based on the fact that when they brought down the second portion of the building they were unable to find any voids that they thought peo-ple could be staying in,” Berdeaux said, adding that rescue officials told families they had hoped to find signs of life in a stairwell, or perhaps in a basement area in the gaps between cars.

Instead, he said, “There was nothing. It was all rubble, and crushed. Noth-ing.”

-New York Times

By David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth

By Patricia Mazzei, Campbell Robertson and Richard Fausset

Last Wednesday (June 30), President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers pub-lished a blog post warning everyone not to make too much of any one month’s employ-ment report. It presumably released this in advance of Friday’s (2) report to fend off possible accusations that it was just trying to make excuses for a weak number. As it hap-pened, however, the report came in strong: The economy added an impressive 850,000 jobs. The job gain was especially impressive given widespread claims that businesses couldn’t expand because generous unem-ployment benefits were discouraging work-ers from taking jobs. (Recent benefit cuts in many states came too late to have affected this report.) Well, somehow employers are managing to hire a lot of people anyway.

Oh, and so much for Donald Trump’s warnings that there would be a “Biden de-pression” if he weren’t re-elected.

That said, the council’s points were well taken. COVID-19 created huge dislocations in the economy, and as we recover from these dislocations economic data are unu-sually noisy — largely because the standard adjustments statisticians make to smooth out things like seasonal variation don’t work well in an economy still distorted by the pandemic. At this point, however, we have enough data in hand to declare that the economy is booming. In fact, it’s booming so strongly that Republicans have pivoted from claiming (falsely) that we’re experienc-ing the worst job performance in decades to lauding the employment numbers and giv-ing credit to … Trump’s 2017 tax cut.

Back to that in a minute. First, let’s try to put this boom in context, by noting that the economy is running hotter than it did dur-ing the ‘Morning in America’ boom that gave Ronald Reagan a landslide victory in the 1984 presidential election.

We’ve gained 3 million jobs since Biden took office, or 600,000 jobs a month. This compares with gains of 340,000 a month in the year leading up to the 1984 election.

To be fair, Reagan-era job gains took place from a lower base, so it may be more appro-priate to compare growth rates. But this still gives Biden the advantage: 5% at an annual rate, versus 4.4% in 1983-84. And the dis-parity grows if you compare jobs with the working-age population, which was growing around 1% a year in the 1980s but has stag-nated in recent years.

So it’s a boom. What’s behind it?The Republican determination to attrib-

ute everything good that happens to tax cuts is almost beyond parody. Some of us still remember how practically everyone in the GOP predicted disaster after Bill Clinton raised taxes, then, when he presided over prosperity instead, declared that the boom of the late 1990s was a result of Reagan’s tax cuts in the early 1980s. Of course, they’re now insisting that good news in mid-2021 is somehow a vindication of stuff Trump did almost four years earlier.

The truth is that Reagan doesn’t even deserve much credit for the boom of 1983-84; most of the credit should go instead to the Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates in 1982. But how much credit should Biden get for job growth in 2021? Not all of it, certainly, but quite a lot.

The American Rescue Plan, which greatly increased the purchasing power of Ameri-can consumers, has surely been an impor-tant driver of growth. Even more important, however, has been the rapid rise in vaccina-tion rates, which has led to a plunge in the infection and death rates. Some of us pre-dicted long ago that the US would experi-ence a rapid, ‘V-shaped’ recovery once the pandemic subsided and the economy could reopen; well, the success of the vaccination drive has brought us to that moment.

And political leadership has had a lot to do with rapid vaccination. Yes, the vaccines themselves were developed before Biden took office, and the Trump administration had ordered millions of doses. But the Biden administration took much stronger steps than its predecessor had to coordinate vac-cine distribution and get shots into arms.

More generally, anyone who doubts the importance of political leadership in pro-gress against COVID-19 should look at the differences in vaccination rates across states, which have a stunning correlation with par-tisanship: States that voted for Biden have been much more successful than Trump states in getting their residents vaccinated. So yes, we are having another morning in America, and Biden deserves more credit for his good morning than Reagan ever did for his. Obviously things could still go wrong. Vaccination rates have slowed down, in part because of resistance in red states, and the large number of still-unvaccinated Ameri-cans makes a wave of new outbreaks possi-ble. Also, while I’m in the camp that sees the current inflation as a transitory problem, we could be wrong.

Above all, short-run economic success is no guarantee of good long-term results. Many people have forgotten the widespread economic despair that prevailed just a few years after Reagan’s triumphalism. But right now the economic news is good. And Joe Biden has every right to crow about it.

-New York Times

WASHINGTON — If a British court permits the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face criminal charges in the United States, the Biden administration has pledged that it will not hold him under the most austere conditions re-served for high-security prisoners and that, if he is convicted, it will let him serve his sentence in his native Australia.

Those assurances were disclosed Wednesday (7) as part of a British High Court ruling in Lon-don. The court accepted the US government’s appeal of a ruling that had denied its extradition request for Assange — who was indicted during the Trump administration — on the grounds that American prison conditions for the highest-secu-rity inmates were inhumane. The new ruling was not made public in its entirety. But in an email, the Crown Prosecution Service press office pro-vided a summary showing that the High Court had accepted three of five grounds for appeal submitted by the United States and disclosing the promises the Biden administration had made.

A lower-court judge, Vanessa Baraitser of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, had held in Jan-uary that “the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States” given US prison condi-tions. The summary of the decision to accept the appeal said that the United States had “provided the United Kingdom with a package of assurances which are responsive to the district judge’s spe-cific findings in this case.”

Specifically, it said, Assange would not be sub-jected to measures that curtail a prisoner’s con-tact with the outside world and can amount to solitary confinement, and would not be impris-oned at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo-rado, unless he later did something “that meets the test” for imposing such harsh steps.

“The United States has also provided an assur-ance that the United States will consent to Mr. Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any custodial sentence imposed on him,” the summary said. No hearing date has been set. The Crown Prosecution Service and the Justice De-partment declined to comment.

In a statement, Stella Moris, Assange’s fiancée, urged the Biden administration to instead drop the extradition request and abandon the charges, which she portrayed as a threat to First Amend-ment press freedoms.

“I am appealing directly to the Biden govern-ment to do the right thing, even at this late stage,” she said. “This case should not be dragged out for a moment longer. End this prosecution, protect free speech and let Julian come home to his fam-ily.” The case against Assange is complex and developed over the course of three indictments secured by prosecutors during the Trump ad-ministration. It centres on his 2010 publication of diplomatic and military files leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst — not on his publication during the 2016 election of Democratic emails stolen by Russia.

Prosecutors have made two sets of accusa-tions. One is that Assange participated in a crimi-nal hacking conspiracy, both by offering to help Manning mask her tracks on a secure computer network and by engaging in a broader effort to encourage hackers to obtain secret material and send it to WikiLeaks. The other is that his solicit-ing and publishing information the government had deemed secret violated the Espionage Act.

While hacking is not a journalistic act, the sec-ond set of charges has alarmed press-freedom advocates because it could establish a precedent that such journalistic-style activities may be treat-ed as a crime in the United States — a separate question from whether Assange himself counts as a journalist. In January, Baraitser rejected the Trump administration’s extradition request on the grounds that Assange might be driven to sui-cide by American prison conditions. On Jan. 19, in one of its last acts, the Trump administration filed an appeal of that ruling. Soon after taking office, the Biden administration pressed forward.

-New York Times

By Paul KrugmanBy Charlie Savage

It’s morning in Joe Biden’s AmericaUS says Assange won’t

be held in harsh conditions

Officials end search for survivors in Florida condo collapse

- M

ich

ae

l A. M

cC

oy

/Th

e N

ew

Yo

rk T

ime

s

President Joe Biden returns to the White House in Washington on Wednesday (7), after a visit to Crystal Lake, Ill., where he promoted the administration’s economic recovery plan. The president summoned his top cybersecurity advisers to consider immediate action to disrupt Russian incur-sions

COMMENTARYWEEKEND EXPRESS JULY 09 - 11, 2021 7

Déjà vu 1974

Why a mere tweaking of the PTA won’t help the government

secure GSP+ concessions

By Jehan Perera

By Basil Fernando

The lasting consequences

of the release of a

convicted murderer

By Bernard Weinraub

Post-it solutions to surgical problems

The government has announced it is taking steps to replace the Pre-vention of Terrorism Act (PTA) with a law that is more in conformity with international standards. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported it had informed the EU of action underway to revisit provisions of the PTA with the study of existing legislation, past practice, and inter-national best practices.

The EU was informed of the decision made by the Cabinet of Ministers to appoint a Cabinet Sub-committee and an Officials Com-mittee to assist it and to review the PTA, and to submit a report to the Cabinet within three months. The Officials Committee comprises rep-resentatives from the Ministries of Justice, Defence, Foreign Affairs, Public Security, Attorney General’s Department, Legal Draftsman’s De-partment, Police, and the Office of Chief of National Intelligence. The Ministry also announced that the government will continue its close and cordial dialogue with the EU with regard to commitments, while demonstrating the country’s sub-stantial progress in areas of recon-ciliation and development.

The government’s willingness to address the issue of the PTA follows the EU Parliament’s unexpected resolution that calls for the with-drawal of the GSP Plus tariff con-cession, though as a last resort, in the event of Sri Lanka not abiding by its commitments to the protec-tion of human rights. The wording of the EU resolution leaves open the possibility of salvaging the GSP Plus, the importance of which has been articulated by the country’s exporters, particularly the apparel and fishing industries.

Foreign Minister Dinesh Guna-wardena and Foreign Secretary Admiral Prof. Jayanath Colombage, who met senior representatives of the Joint Apparel Association Fo-rum (JAAF) Sri Lanka, the Seafood Exporters’ Association of Sri Lanka (SEASL) and trade unions, had re-assured them of the government’s commitment to ensuring that the EU GSP+ would continue to remain beneficial to the country.

The exporters have pointed out that the EU market is just too im-portant to lose as the prices paid by the EU are more than double that of purchasers in other countries. It is not only the fate of Sri Lankan ex-porters that hangs in the balance. The media reported a government decision to restrict imports of so-called luxury goods that included mobile phones and electronics. While the government has formally denied this, such news indicates a catastrophic collapse in public con-fidence in the economy. On the oth-er hand, if Sri Lanka become truly a country that treats all its communi-ties equally, and abides by the rule of law, foreign investors, including the large and prosperous Diaspora can be invited to invest bring in the much needed foreign exchange for development that benefits all com-munities.

The government will be aware that a mere tweaking of the PTA will be insufficient to secure the GSP Plus concession from the EU. This is why the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs goes on to mention that the government had released 16 LTTE prisoners and has

informed the EU of the release of Rs 79 million to the Office of Repara-tions in June to settle 1,230 pro-cessed claims for reparation. The Ministry also claims an additional Rs 80 million was released on June 29 to settle a further 1,451 processed claims, out of a total of 3,389.

The GSP Plus is given as an incen-tive to countries that have commit-ted themselves to implementing 27 international human rights agree-ments. This goes far beyond the re-design of only the PTA and release of prisoners detained under it, who in any event, should not be there in the first place having been subjected to coerced confessions, not charged or brought before the courts of law or who have had their cases delayed for too many years.

The 27 human rights agreements the EU expects beneficiary coun-tries to be following include those focusing on human rights, which are the Convention on the Preven-tion and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1969), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976), In-ternational Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1981), Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punish-ment (1987), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990). Those relating to labour rights in-clude the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Or-ganize Convention, 1948 (No. 87), Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98), Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) (and its 2014 Pro-tocol), Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105), Mini-mum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100), Discrimination (Employ-ment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111).

There are also conventions relat-ing to the environment, including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (1973), Mon-treal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987), Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Haz-ardous Wastes and their Disposal (1989),Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992), Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2000), Stockholm Convention on persistent Organic Pollutants (2001), Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1998). Finally, there is the category of protection of good governance, which include the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961), United Nations Con-vention on Psychotropic Substances (1971)’ United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988) and the United Nations Con-vention against Corruption.

Despite this plethora of inter-national agreements relating to human rights, labour rights, en-

vironment and good governance, at the root of the EU’s concerns is the lack of progress in addressing the consequences of the country’s protracted ethnic conflict. This led to three decades of war, and now to 12 years of post-war peace in which the root cause of unequal and dis-criminatory treatment remains un-addressed. The government has an uphill task to convince the interna-tional community about the sincer-ity of its intentions. This is a govern-ment that was elected to power in a highly polarizing and nationalistic election campaign, which depicted the ethnic and religious minorities as potential threats to national se-curity and national sovereignty and needed to be neutralized. It is also the government that was in place following the end of the war in 2009 until 2015, which may have been the best time to settle issues once and for all, but did not take up the challenge.

The irony is that as a result of its antecedents, which brought it to power, the government is finding it difficult to convince the ethnic and religious minorities within the country, let alone the EU, that it is sincere in its commitment to peace, reconciliation and human rights. The unfortunate reality is that the government has a dearth of credible champions within its fold who can articulate a message of peace and reconciliation in a convincing man-ner. Those champions of the past decades, including Prof G. L. Pei-ris, Prof Tissa Vitarana, DEW Gu-nasekara and Vasudeva Nanayakka-ra, have receded to the background in terms of their contributions to peace and inter-ethnic justice. But the appreciation of their past com-mitment suggests that they can play a role if called to man the breaches by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. They have the intellectual capacity to realize that simply changing the PTA and releasing prisoners is not sufficient to show change of heart, but there needs to be a demonstra-ble commitment to ensuring that all sections of the people are treated equally.

An important task therefore de-volves upon President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to articulate the change that is necessary as no one can doubt his bona fides in relation to preserving national unity, national sovereignty and national security. The foundational principle for his government’s approach could be the speech he made at his swearing in, when he said he would be the president of all Sri Lankans, includ-ing those who did not vote for him. The essence of human rights, and of the 27 international covenants that the EU wishes Sri Lanka to comply with, is the concept of equality and equal treatment before the law, ir-respective of race, religion, culture, gender, sexual orientation, caste or political party. A genuine reconcili-ation process with devolution, as-sociated with changes to legislation in this regard that ensure equal-ity treatment to all, may be able to change the stands taken by most countries than any other singular alteration.

-Dr. Jehan Perera is the Executive Director of the

National Peace Council and this article was originally featured on

peace-srilanka.org

COLOMBO, May 6, 1974 — At dawn hundreds of people wait in bread lines. Elderly men and women pick through garbage. Thieves harvest vegetables and rice in the countryside.

Although the earth is bountiful in Sri Lanka, which was formerly Ceylon, the nation of 13 million has a critical food shortage. Moreover, it is going broke, jolted by inflation, torn by internal dissension and plainly alarmed about the future.

Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, a tough politician and a Socialist, said recently that the eco-nomic crisis had “almost squeezed the breath out of us—we are literally fighting to survive.”

Bandaranaike, who is the target of bitter attack, repeatedly pronounces a single, stark slogan for her nation: ‘Produce or perish’.

What makes the crisis at once melancholy and bizarre is that the Ceylonese, because of govern-ment largesse, have been among the best fed, best educated and healthiest people in South Asia. Their fertile tropical Indian Ocean island, the size of West Virginia, is covered with dense vegetation.

Perhaps the fundamental reason for Sri Lanka’s plight is that the cost of food imports has spiralled while export earnings have remained stationary. A blend of government mismanagement of farmland, meagre incentives to growers, the take‐over of pri-vate estates under land reform and the residue of co-lonial tradition—the British ignored food production to spur tea and rubber exports—has left a lush nation virtually begging for rice and wheat.

At one stage last month, some sources say, Sri Lan-ka had only two weeks’ rice supply in stock. An emer-gency shipment of 40,000 tons from China averted an immediate crisis. Other nations selling food here are Australia, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, Canada, the United States and even India, which has serious food problems of her own.

A diplomat remarked that Sri Lanka was living a ship-to‐mouth existence.” An economist said: “The country is now operating on a week‐to -week basis. We check how much comes in and how much goes out. We don’t think beyond the week. We can’t.”$2‐billion in Debt

The nation is about US$ 2‐billion in debt to oth-er, nations and is increasingly unable to get loans because of its poor credit position. This year it will spend about two‐thirds of its foreign‐exchange earn-ings, or about $300‐million, just on imports of rice and wheat, whose cost has tripled in the last two years. In the meantime the key exports — tea, rubber and coconut, which account for 80% of the foreign exchange earnings — have failed to generate enough to meet the food bills. The reasons for this include fertilizer shortages, bureaucratic restrictions and low investment in new equipment, plus export pric-es, especially of tea, which have not followed those of grain. “It’s a spectacular non-achievement,” an economist said. “They’re Importing 50% more than they’re exporting. They’re broke, and because they’re forced to spend so much money on food, they have very little left for petroleum, fertilizer and manufac-tured products to keep the economy going.”

Compounding the crisis, according to critics of the government, is an ideological addiction to take‐overs, coupled with a tradition of far‐reaching so-cial‐welfare measures, which are extravagant and perhaps crippling.Big rise in population

Even Ceylonese concede that the decades‐old sys-tem of free medical care, free education and free food dole each week to every non-taxpayer — the vast majority —has proved economically unfeasible, especially with a population that has doubled in 25 years. In addition the Government subsidizes and underwrites wheat, sugar and flour at unrealistic low prices.

It would be political suicide to end the handouts, and Bandaranaike’s coalition United Front was swept to power in 1973 on the promise of supplying more free rice than ever.

Now the government has cut the ration of rice, flour and sugar to about three pounds a week, com-pared with as much as 10 pounds a week in the nine-teen‐fifties. The rice ration is about a pound and a half a week. compared with four pounds last spring.

An indication of the topsy turvy quality of politics is that the Opposition leader, J. R. Jayewardene of the United National party, said that he would make the food ration eight pounds a week if he came to power. Because of the free education in a nation where half the population is under 30—and because the floundering economy is still based on agriculture — about 700,000 educated people are without jobs. This is a main source of unrest.

In 1971 this group staged an insurrection against the government that was quietly but harshly crushed by security forces. The number of insurgents round-ed up and killed runs in the thousands.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike, whose husband, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, was assassinated in 1959 when he was Prime Minister, heads an anti-capitalist coali-tion of three parties — her own Sri Lanka Freedom party, ‘which’ emphasizes ‘democratic socialism’, the pro‐Moscow Communist party and the Trotskyite Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP).

Private investment is under severe constraints and the Government has spurred a measure that allows the nationalization of any company—a move that has virtually dried up foreign investment.

A ceiling on disposable income of $330 a month after taxes as well as limitation of landholdings to 50 acres has further curtailed investment and produc-tion. “The only salvation lies in making the country self‐Sufficient,” the Prime Minister told a May Day crowd. “We are facing a crisis such as the’ country has never yet faced In its history.”

-The New York Times Archives

The release of the convicted mur-derer Duminda Silva is a reckless act which will have lasting consequences on the social organization of Sri Lan-ka and the social consciousness of the Sri Lankan people. The damage this will do to the functioning of a system of administration of the country is in-calculable. In fact, in the minds of the people, how they assess themselves and the nature and quality of their citizenship will also be drastic.

A cynic may argue that the only way for Sri Lanka to appear to be respect-ing the principle of equality before law after this reckless release, is to amend the penal code by reducing the maximum sentence for murder to 6 years. Perhaps, many other laws will have to be amended in keeping with such a change, thereby diminish-ing the importance held by the high courts in holding of criminal trials. If the sentence for murder is going to be a maximum of 6 years, then accord-ingly, these cases could be tried in the Magistrates’ Courts themselves as the distinction between serious crimes and simple offences will no longer hold valid. Besides, the roles of Ap-peal Courts and the Supreme Courts itself will be greatly diminished when the conviction held after a long pro-cess of fair trial could be drastically changed by outsiders who do not hold any judicial power.

Political power or administrative power could override judicial power. When that happens, the entire fabric on which the Sri Lankan legal system is held together will also be dimin-ished.

The entire legal education in Sri Lanka, particularly in terms of crimi-nal law, would also have to be dras-tically changed. The philosophical basis of the existing jurisprudence in Sri Lanka is based on universally held principles that a serious crime requires harsh enough punishments in order to have a deterrent effect. Pursuit of a deterrent effect against serious wrongdoings is fundamental to the existing of an organized way of life based on civilized principles.

All the basics that have been taught in the law faculties and the law college and also in other educational insti-tutes that has law as a subject is based on these fundamental premises.

While the cynic may satisfy their anger by coming into such conclu-sions, the average citizen of the coun-try cannot continue to live if that kind of cynical response is all they can do on the face of such a reckless handling of most fundamental criminal justice issue.

What is really at stake is whether criminal justice is any longer an aim that is pursued by the Sri Lankan State. Thus, the issue is not just about a particular government but about the nature of the State of Sri Lanka. Does this State recognize one of its primary duties is to guarantee the protection of life, liberty, and the properties of the people who live within that soci-ety? Can any State that does not have a firmly founded criminal justice sys-tem based on tested principles and values, administered by the civilized norms and standards qualify to be called a State? The mere fact of a leg-islative declaration of being a State does not create a State.

The State is a physical fact. It de-pends entirely on the manner in which institutions function on the ba-sis of norms and standards that will guarantee stability and the security of the people. Security of the people is the foundation of any democracy.

Therefore, the present problem that is created by the release of a convicted murderer just 6 years after the con-viction raises fundamental questions that the society cannot ignore.

In terms of many crises that Sri Lanka is now faced with, the ques-tion that is constantly discussed in all public controversies is how a proper system of management could be de-veloped in order to avoid this kind of crises that are faced by the society. On that issue, the present situation calls for a discussion on all the issues re-lated to our law as well as our consti-tutional principles, which are based theoretically on the premise of liberal democracy.

-AHRC

Sri Lanka, short of food, faces an economic crisis

A reckless act

– P

MD

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (R) receiving a commemorative gold coin from Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, W D Lakshman (L) in Colombo, to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of China’s Communist Party on Tuesday (6). The Rajapaksa government has an uphill task to convince the international community about the sincerity of its intentions, announce-ment about steps to replace the PTA notwithstanding

8 JULY 09 - 11, 2021 WEEKEND EXPRESS

HAITI IN FOCUSHAITI IN FOCUS

How Moïse went from banana

exporter to president

Haiti’s president assassinated in night-time raid, shaking a fragile nationThe first explosions rang out after 1:00 a.m., shattering the calm in the neigh-bourhood that was home to President Jovenel Moïse and many of Haiti’s most affluent citizens.

Residents immediately feared two of the terrors that have plagued the nation — gang violence or an earthquake — but by dawn, a much different reality had emerged: The president was dead.

A group of unknown assailants had stormed Moïse’s residence early Wednesday (7), shooting him and wounding his wife, Martine Moïse, in what officials called a well-planned op-eration that included “foreigners” who spoke Spanish. In a televised broadcast to the nation, the nation’s interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, appealed for calm and presented himself as the new head of the government, announcing that he and his fellow ministers had declared a “state of siege.” Haiti is now under a form of martial law. The assas-sination left a political void that deep-ened the turmoil and violence that has gripped Haiti for months, threatening to tip one of the world’s most troubled na-tions further into lawlessness.

While the details of who shot the pres-ident and why remained unknown, four people suspected of being involved in the assassination were killed by the po-lice in a gunbattle and two others were arrested, Haiti’s police chief said late Wednesday. The chief, Léon Charles, also said that three police officers who had been held hostage were freed.

“The police are engaged in a battle with the assailants,” he said at a news conference, noting that the authorities were still chasing some suspects. “We are pursuing them so that, in a gunfight, they meet their fate or in gunfight they die, or we apprehend them.”

In recent months, protesters had tak-en to the streets to demand Moïse step down in February, five years after his election, at what they deemed was the end his term. Armed gangs have taken

greater control of the streets, terrorizing poor neighbourhoods and sending thou-sands fleeing, kidnapping even school-children and church pastors in the mid-dle of their services. Poverty and hunger are rising, with many accusing members of the government of enriching them-selves while not providing the popula-tion with even the most basic services.

In an interview, Joseph told The New York Times that he was now in control of the country, but it was unclear how much legitimacy he had, or how long it might last. A new prime minister had been scheduled to replace Joseph this week — he would have been the sixth to hold the job in Moïse’s term. The head of the nation’s highest court, who might have helped establish order, died of COVID-19 in June.

“We are in total confusion,” said Jacky Lumarque, rector of Quisqueya University, a large private university in Port-au-Prince. “We have two prime ministers. We can’t say which is more legitimate than the other.”

“This is the first time where we’ve seen that the state is so weak,” he added.

Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, Bocchit Edmond, said at a news conference that the killing of the coun-try’s president had been carried out “by well-trained professionals, killers, com-mandos.”

He said the attackers had presented themselves as agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency, but that they were “fake DEA” and “professional killers.” He said he was basing his assessment on security camera footage of the attack.

Moïse’s wife survived the attack and was “stable, but in critical condition,” Edmond said. She was transported to Miami for treatment, arriving there Wednesday evening.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he was “shocked and saddened” by the assassination and the shooting of the president’s wife. “We condemn this heinous act,” Biden said in a statement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Joseph, offering condolences, the State Department said.

Moïse had held on to the office, argu-ing he had only occupied the position for four years of the five-year term. In the first year after he was elected, an in-terim president took over as the country investigated allegations of fraud.

Many Haitians — including constitu-tional scholars and legal experts — con-tended that his five-year term started when he was elected, and has since expired. But the United States and the Organization of American States backed Moïse. Within Haiti, experts warned, the political vacuum left by Moïse’s killing could fuel a renewed cycle of violence. As the population struggled to assess the situation, the normally clogged streets of the capital remained ominously empty.

Banks and stores were shuttered; university classrooms vacant; the ti machann — or market women — who normally line the shoulders of roads selling their wares were conspicuously absent.

Lines formed as some people tried to stock up on water — which is normally bought by the container in poorer areas — in case they end up hunkered down for a long time. Many others huddled at home, calling friends and family to check their safety and to ask for updates. In some middle-class neighbourhoods, people gathered on the sidewalks, shar-ing their fears for the country’s future.

“Things are hard and ugly now,” said Jenny Joseph, a university student from the suburb of Carrefour. “For the next few days, things will be crazy in Haiti.”

Joseph, the interim prime minister, has put Haiti under a form of martial law. For 15 days, the police and security members can enter homes, control traf-fic and take special security measures and “all general measures that permit the arrest of the assassins.” The decree also forbids meetings meant to incite

disorder. At the moment, Haiti has no functioning Parliament. Moïse’s gov-ernment did not call elections, even af-ter the terms of the entire lower house expired more than a year ago. Only 10 of Haiti’s 30 senate seats are currently filled. Moïse had been struggling to quell growing public anger over remain-ing in power.

After Moïse did not leave office in February, when many in the opposi-tion deemed his term over, thousands of Haitians took to the streets in large marches, demanding his resignation. The government responded by arresting 23 people, including a top judge and a senior police officer, who the president said had tried to kill him and overthrow the government.

Moïse counted on a high level of pro-tection, travelling regularly with more than a dozen armoured cars and police guards. There are often 100 officers from the presidential guard around the president’s home, said former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe.

There had been no specific warning of the overnight attack, said the Haitian ambassador, Edmond.

It was not clear whether any of the suspected assassins who had not been killed or arrested in the gunbattle with the police were still in Haiti. Because the country’s airport was closed down on Wednesday, the ambassador said, they might have slipped across the border to the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, or escaped by sea. Edmond said he has been in touch with the White House, the State Department and the US am-bassador to Haiti, and has called on the United States for help.

The support, he said, would help “to make sure Haiti doesn’t go even deeper into a spiral of violence,” and specifi-cally, “to make sure that the Haitian po-lice have the necessary means to put the situation under control.”

-New York Times

The assassination of President Jovenel Moïse compounded the Caribbean na-tion’s turmoil and deepened fears of more widespread political violence.

The interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, said the president had been “cowardly assassinated,” called on the country to “stay calm” and sought to re-assure Haitians and the world that the police and army were controlling the situation. But Joseph’s words did little to blunt concerns of possible chaos.

“There is no more Parliament. The Senate is missing for a long time. There’s no president of the Court of Cassation,” said Didier Le Bret, a former French ambassador to Haiti, adding of Joseph, “Everything will rest on him”.A history of political violence

The assassination of Moïse is the cul-mination of years of instability in the country, which has long been seized by lawlessness and violence. Haiti, once a slave colony notorious for the brutality of its masters, won independence from France after slaves revolted and defeat-ed Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces in 1803. But in the two centuries since, Haiti has struggled to emerge from cycles of dic-tatorships and coups that have kept the country impoverished and struggling to deliver basic services to many of its peo-ple.

For nearly three decades, the coun-try suffered under the dictatorship of François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, and then his son, Jean-Claude, known as Baby Doc. A priest from a poor area, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, became the first democratically elected president in 1990. But in less than a year, he was de-posed in a coup, then returned to power in 1994 with the help of thousands of US troops.

Aristide was re-elected in 2000 but forced out again after another armed uprising and went into exile. He has called it a “kidnapping” orchestrated by international actors, including the US and French governments.Earthquake, cholera, corruption

When a devastating earthquake flat-tened much of the country in 2010, the disaster was seen as an opportunity to resuscitate battered infrastructure and start fresh by shoring up the govern-ment’s own capacity to rebuild. More than $9 billion in humanitarian as-sistance and donations poured in, but-tressed by an additional estimated $2 billion’s worth of cheap oil supplies and loans from the then-powerful ally Ven-ezuela. International aid organizations rushed to help manage the recovery.

But the money did not set Haiti on a new path — and many experts believe the country is worse off since the re-construction began. A cholera outbreak soon after the quake that killed at least 10,000 Haitians was linked to the ar-rival of infected peacekeepers from the United Nations, which only admitted involvement years later but denied legal responsibility, shielded by international treaties granting the organization diplo-matic immunity.

Michel Martelly, a one-time popular singer who became president in 2011, was accused of widespread corruption and mismanaging funds intended for re-construction. Reports by Haitian court-appointed auditors revealed in lengthy detail that much of the $2 billion lent to the country by Venezuela was embez-zled or wasted over eight years. Before he entered politics, Moïse, then a little-known fruit exporter, was implicated in

one of the reports for his involvement in a scheme to siphon off funds intended for road repairs.Fed-up Haitians take to the streets

In the years that followed, persistent economic malaise, rising crime and cor-ruption led to protests by Haitians fed up with their government and demand-ing Martelly’s resignation. But he held onto power and after one term tapped Moïse to succeed him in 2015 elections.

Moïse’s bid for power was marred from the beginning. His campaign was accused of fraud and corruption, and he took power 14 months after voters went to the polls, after an electoral tri-bunal found no evidence of widespread electoral irregularities. He took office in 2017 facing an indictment for graft re-lated to Venezuelan aid.

Over the next several years, Moïse used his control of the judicial system to dismiss the charges and undermine the opposition, which never accepted his electoral victory.

The result was an increasingly para-lyzed government that became grid-locked completely in early 2020, just as the country faced the coronavirus pan-demic.A leadership Crisis, Power Vacuum and COVID-19

A disagreement between Moïse and the opposition about the start of his presidential term spiralled into a full political crisis, leaving the country without a parliament or a new election date. As the crisis dragged on, Moïse began governing by unpopular decrees, further undermining his government’s legitimacy. Protests against his rule ac-celerated.

The political gridlock severely un-dermined the country’s already weak health care system as coronavirus cases spread. Haiti remains the only country in Western Hemisphere to not receive any COVID-19 vaccines as it now strug-gles to deal with the latest spike in in-fections. Although official coronavirus deaths remain relatively low because of limited testing, aid workers have said the hospitals are overwhelmed.Criminal gangs and a reign of terror

Haiti’s power vacuum has been in-creasingly filled with the leaders of or-ganized crime, who have taken over parts of the capital over the past year, instilling a reign of terror. Kidnappings, looting and gang-associated violence have made parts of the country ungov-ernable, leaving many Haitians fearful to even leave their homes and forcing some aid organizations, on which many in the country depend for survival, to curtail activities.

Rights organizations have linked a surge in gang violence to the country’s political deadlock, accusing prominent politicians of working with organized crime to intimidate opponents and set-tle scores in the absence of a functioning government. Last month, one of Haiti’s most prominent gang leaders publicly declared a war against the country’s tra-ditional elites, calling on citizens to raid established businesses.

“It is your money which is in banks, stores, supermarkets and dealerships,” the gang leader, Jimmy Cherizier, better known by his alias Barbecue, said in a video message on social media. “Go and get what is rightfully yours.”

-New York Times

By Catherine Porter, Michael Crowley and Constant Méheut

By Natalie Kitroeff and Anatoly Kurmanaev

It was a battle from the start for Haiti's presi-dent, Jovenel Moïse.

Even before he took office, Moïse had to fight off accusations that, as a virtually unknown ba-nana exporter, he was nothing but a hand-picked puppet of the previous president, Michel Mar-telly.

“Jovenel is his own man,” Moïse told The New York Times in 2016, shortly after having won the election, trying to rebut the accusations. He promised to show results within six months in office. After more than four years in office, he was killed in his home early Wednesday at the age of 53. He left a wife and three children.

In his last year in office, as protests against him grew and he declined to step down, he had to defend himself in other ways: “I am not a dic-tator,” he told The Times earlier this year.

Moïse was the former president of the cham-ber of commerce in Port-de-Paix, the country's northwest region, when he ran for president. When he emerged as a leading candidate in 2015, few people had ever heard of him. They called him “the Banana Man”.

He won a majority of votes in a crowded field where few people had bothered to cast ballots.

In interviews, Moïse often recounted how he had grown up on a large sugar plantation in a ru-ral area of the country and could relate to the vast majority of Haitians who live off the land.

He attended school in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and said he learned how to succeed by watching his father’s profitable farming busi-ness. But his time on that plantation made him think.

“Since I was a child, I was always wondering why people were living in such conditions while enormous lands were empty,” he said. “I believe agriculture is the key to change for this country.”

He ran a large produce co-operative that em-ployed 3,000 farmers. But during his time in of-fice, Moïse was widely accused of behaving like a strongman who tried to consolidate power.

In 2019, an inspector general’s report examin-ing PetroCaribe funds generated from Venezue-la’s oil donations accused him of embezzlement. Two of Moïse’s companies had billed to build the same road, the report said, which critics believed was a scheme to generate money to pay for his campaign. People wondered: What was a banana company doing building roads?

He was also accused of having used powerful violent gangs to suppress political opposition.

“The involvement of various Moïse adminis-tration officials and police officers in planning and executing attacks point to a state policy to attack civilians,” a study this year by the Inter-national Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School said. In a dispute over when his term should end, he declined to step down and ruled by decree as the terms of nearly every elected official in the country expired and no elections were held. He tried to push through a new con-stitution that would have given his office more power and the ability to secure more terms in of-fice. Those plans were derailed by the pandemic and rising insecurity in the country.

History will remember Moïse as a stubborn and brave person who knew what he wanted, and was willing to fight for it, said Pierre Regi-nald Boulos, an opposition figure and wealthy business leader who helped Moïse get elected, but ultimately broke with him and became his nemesis. “When he has something in his mind, he becomes blind about it,” Boulos said. “From what I knew of him before we broke up, this was a guy who really wanted to see change in Haiti. I think his desire to see a new Haiti was real. And he had energy like nobody else. This was a presi-dent who worked 14, 16, 18, 20 hours a day.”

It was normal for Moïse to hit the road before dawn for a seven-hour drive to the capital, attend a two-hour meeting and turn back the same day, Boulos said. As for who may have killed him, “Everybody’s name has been floated,” Boulos said, “including my own.”

James Morrell, director of the Haiti Democ-racy Project, a group formed by former U.S. am-bassadors that monitors elections in Haiti, disa-greed with those who believed Moïse had illegally stayed in power. He accused the United States and the international community of “pulling the rug out” from under him by withdrawing United Nations troops that had offered protection.

“The opposition was gunning for him almost from the start,” Morrell said.

“I think that he was fairly ineffective,” he add-ed. “He became more and more abusive.”

Even his critics agree that Moïse used his pow-er in office to try to end monopolies that offered lucrative contracts to the powerful elite. And that made him enemies.

“To some he was a corrupt leader, but to oth-ers he was a reformer,” said Leonie Hermantin, a Haitian community activist in Miami. “He was a man who was trying to change the power dy-namics, particularly when it came to money and who had control over electricity contracts. The oligarchy was paid billions of dollars to provide electricity to a country that was still in the dark.”

Simon Desras, a former opposition senator in Haiti, said Moïse seemed to know that his battle against the wealthy and powerful interests in the country would get him killed.

“I remember in his speech, he said he just tar-geted the rich people by putting an end to their contracts,” Desras said in a telephone interview as he drove through Haiti's deserted streets. “He said that could be the reason for his death, be-cause they are used to assassinating people and pushing people into exile.”

“It’s like he made a prophecy.”-New York Times

By Frances Robles

‘I am not a dictator’

How the assassination of Haiti’s president follows years of strife and gridlock

-Ch

an

g W

. Le

e/T

he

Ne

w Y

ork

Tim

es

President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti addresses the 73rd United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 27, 2018. Moïse was assassinated in an attack in the early hours of Wednesday (7), at his home on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, the prime minister said

LIFE, LOVE AND LOSS9WEEKEND EXPRESS JULY 09 - 11, 2021

Dilip Kumar, Indian film star who brought realism to Bollywood, dies at 98

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter reflect

on 75 years of marriage

Dilip Kumar, the last of a triumvirate of ac-tors who ruled Hindi cinema in the 1950s and ’60s, died Wednesday at Hinduja hos-pital in Mumbai, India. He was 98.

His death was confirmed by Faisal Fa-rooqui, a family friend, who posted a brief statement on Kumar’s official Twitter ac-count.

In post-independence India, Kumar and two other stars set about defining the Hindi film hero. Raj Kapoor reflected the newly minted Indian’s confusion: his signature role was that of the Chaplinesque naïf ne-gotiating a world that was losing its inno-cence. Dev Anand, known as the Gregory Peck of India, embodied a Western insouci-ance that still lingered; he became a stylish matinee idol.

Kumar, though, delved deeply into his characters, breaking free from the sema-phoric silent-movie style of acting popu-larized by megastars like Sohrab Modi and Prithviraj Kapoor.

As one of the country’s earliest Method actors, he was often compared to Marlon Brando, another early adopter of the tech-nique, even though Kumar credited himself with using it first.

“I learned the importance of studying the script and characters deeply and building upon my own gut observations and sensa-tions about my own and other characters,” Kumar said in his autobiography, ‘The Substance and the Shadow’ (2014). “The truth is that I am an actor who evolved a method.”

His preparation for roles became the stuff of legends. For his death scene in the 1961 megahit, ‘Ganga Jumna’, he ran around the studio so that he could enter the set at a point of exhaustion.

For a song sequence in the 1960 film ‘Ko-hinoor’ (‘Mountain of Light’), he learned to play the sitar. For emotional sequences in the 1982 movie ‘Shakti’ (‘Power’) and the 1984 movie ‘Mashaal’ (‘Torch’), he drew from memories of when his brother died, recalling the pain that registered on his fa-ther’s face.

Kumar was born Yousuf Khan in Pe-shawar (then part of British India, now in Pakistan) on Dec. 11, 1922, the fourth of 12 children to Ayesha and Mohammad Sar-war Khan. His father was a fruit merchant and nd moved the family to Bombay, now known as Mumbai, then to Deolali, in west India, where Dilip attended the Barnes School. He then enrolled in Khalsa College in Bombay.

He wanted to play soccer or cricket pro-fessionally, but the family’s economic situa-tion forced him to look for work elsewhere. For a time he was an assistant in an army canteen in Poona (now Pune).

A chance encounter with a former teacher changed his life. When he said he was look-

ing for a job, the teacher introduced him to the pioneering Indian actress Devika Rani, who, along with Himanshu Rai, had estab-lished the Bombay Talkies studio.

The idea was to get a job, any job, but Rani asked if he would consider becom-ing an actor. Kumar, who had seen only one film in his life — a war documentary — was flummoxed, but the money persuaded him. Rani also said that taking on a Hindu screen name to obscure his Muslim back-ground would help his career. He became Dilip Kumar.

His first film, ‘Jwar Bhata’ (“Ebb and Flow”), in 1944, was a flop, with Baburao Patel, the acerbic critic of Film India, call-ing him “an anaemic addition to our film artistes.” But in 1947, his performance in ‘Jugnu’ (‘Firefly’), alongside Noor Jehan, received more favorable attention. By the time ‘Shaheed’ (‘Martyr’) was released a year later, Patel was singing his praises: “Dilip Kumar steals the picture with his deeply felt and yet natural delineation of the main role.”

The hits kept coming, including ‘Nadiya Ke Paar’ (‘Across the River’), ‘Shabnam’ (‘Dewdrops’) and Mehboob Khan’s ‘An-daz’ (‘Style’), where Kumar was cast with Kapoor and the actress Nargis. In 1954, Kumar won the newly instituted Filmfare Award for best actor for his performance as an alcoholic in the tragic love story “Daag” (‘The Stain’). He won seven more Filmfare statuettes for best actor in addition to a Lifetime Achievement Award. Guinness World Records honoured him on his 97th birthday for his “matchless contribution” to Indian cinema.

Many of his early films had him chasing unattainable women. The 1950 melodrama ‘Jogan’ (‘Nun’), ends with him weeping at his lover’s grave. That same year, he played a Heathcliff-like character in ‘Arzoo’ (‘De-sire’), one of three variations of ‘Wuthering Heights’ that he acted in.

He earned the nickname ‘Tragedy King’ after acting in a series of dramas that a psychiatrist later said took a toll on his health. In one of them, the 1951 movie ‘De-edar’ (‘Sight’), he plays a blind man whose eyesight is restored through surgery. But he blinds himself again when he realizes that he and the surgeon are in love with the same woman. (To prepare for the role, Kumar observed a blind beggar at Bombay Central Railway Station.)

One of Kumar’s best-known tragedies is Bimal Roy’s ‘Devdas’ (1955), about a man who becomes an alcoholic when his child-hood sweetheart deserts him.

Kumar’s love life also made news; he had relationships with actresses Kamini Kaush-al, Madhubala (they made the 1960 block-buster ‘Mughal-e-Azam’, about thwarted lovers, long after they broke up) and Saira

Banu, whom he married in 1966 when he was 44 and she was 22. In the 1980s, while still married to Banu, Kumar married so-cialite Asma Rehman in secret. The news was quickly outed and it became a scandal, but Banu stuck with Kumar, who ended the second marriage. He is survived by Banu.

Professionally, Kumar’s record was spot-less, with films that have not only been successful but have left a lasting impact. Films like ‘Naya Daur’ (‘New Era’) in 1957, ‘Yahudi’ (‘The Jews’) in 1958, ‘Madhumati’, also in 1958 and ‘Ram Aur Shyam’ (‘Ram and Shyam’) in 1967 are still remembered today.

In the 1970s, Kumar found fewer roles as younger, more agile actors were cast as he-roes, and he took a break.

He returned in 1981 with a blockbuster, ‘Kranti’ (‘Revolution’), that reshaped his screen persona as the older moral centre. He had similar roles in star-heavy mega-productions like ‘Vidhaata’ (‘The Creator’) in 1982, ‘Karma’ (1986), Saudagar (‘The Merchant’) in 1991 and especially ‘Shakti’, when he was cast for the first time opposite the reigning Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

Kumar’s last film was ‘Qila’ (‘Fort’) in 1998. By then, his style felt “more than just outdated,” a reviewer wrote in India To-day. “It’s prehistoric. Dilip Kumar’s long, drawn-out dialogue delivery is out of sync with the times.”

Kumar received the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian awards, in 1991, the Dadasaheb Phalke, India’s high-est award for cinematic excellence, in 1994, and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015. From 2000 to 2006, he served as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parlia-ment.

But these honours from the Indian gov-ernment consumed far less newsprint than the decision by the Pakistani government, in 1998, to confer on him their highest ci-vilian honour, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz. Amid heightened religious tensions, Kumar was branded an anti-national by Hindu politi-cians who asked him to return the award to Pakistan. He did not. He said in his autobi-ography that returning it “could have only soured relations further and produced bad vibes between India and Pakistan.”

Those words proved Kumar was a tactful diplomat off-screen.

Onscreen, his characters would launch into more rebellious rhetoric. In the 1970s period drama ‘Sagina’, when labelled a trai-tor, he responded: “If you’ve drunk your mother’s milk” — meaning, if you’re man enough — “then come get me.”

Even in this larger-than-life context, there was a dash of the realism that defined him.

-New York Times

The actor who evolved a method

He asked, she said no... but then

Veteran Indian actor Dilip Kumar speaks at the podium for his award for outstanding achievement in Indian cinema at the 5th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards in Singapore on May 22, 2004. Dilip Kumar, one of the biggest stars in the golden age of Indian cinema from the 1940s to the 1960s, died July 7, 2021 aged 98

-R

os

lan

RA

HM

AN

/ A

FP

By Rick Rojas

By Baradwaj Rangan

PLAINS, Ga. — Jimmy Carter, a midshipman in the US Naval Academy, wanted to marry Rosalynn Smith, a girl he met on the day she was born and knew mostly as his sister Ruth’s best friend until they went on a double date, riding to the movies together squeezed in the rumble seat of an old Ford.

He asked.She said no.Of course, he persisted. And on a recent morning, the pair

of them — the former president and first lady, now known as Mrs. Carter — were still side by side, his hand resting on top of hers, explaining that the rejection had merely been a hiccup before a marriage that is about to reach its 75th anniversary.

“After a while, I changed my mind,” said Rosalynn Cart-er, 93, noting that she hesitated because of a request by her father on his deathbed that she finish college.

“After a long while,” Carter, 96, piped up.Their partnership has withstood the glare of political

campaigns and the strains of raising a family, triumphs that catapulted them to international prominence and a defeat that sent them home to Georgia as political outcasts with a faltering family business. As their world inevitably narrows in the dusk of life, the couple has come to rely on their bond even more.

“We’ve just grown closer and closer together,” Carter said.

But after riding out the coronavirus pandemic in the modest ranch-style home in Plains they built in 1961, the Carters are eager to step out. The Bidens dropped by in April for a visit. Rosalynn Carter said she looked forward to seeing a great-granddaughter, now 3, she had not met yet. And next weekend, they’ll go down the street to Plains High School, where a few hundred relatives and friends will gather to celebrate their anniversary, which is on Wednes-day (16).

The occasion has nudged the couple to reminisce on a marriage that has come to be defined by its longevity, sure, but also by the closeness of the two people in it. “We share everything,” he said.

They had some advice on how to sustain a relationship: They never go to bed angry. They found shared interests and hobbies, like skiing, bird-watching and fly-fishing. But they also had the good fortune of enjoying each other’s company.

Seventy-five years is a long time. It’s about three years shy of the life expectancy of the average American. And, in terms of presidential marriages, reaching three-quarters of a century is a singular distinction. President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, were the only other first couple to reach seven decades. He was 17 and she was 16 when they met at a Christmas dance in Greenwich, Connecticut. Barbara Bush often said he was the only boy she had ever kissed. They had been married for 73 years when she died in 2018. Bush died less than eight months later.

The Carters have been a constant in each other’s lives vir-tually from the beginning. When he was 3, his mother took him to see the neighbour’s new baby, Rosalynn.

When she was older, Rosalynn Carter said, she would visit Ruth Carter, who kept a photograph of her brother on her bedroom wall. “I fell in love with that picture,” she said.

“Mother always said I married him because of his uni-form,” she said. “You know that?”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Carter said. “It was my uni-form.”

He kept writing and calling after she declined his first proposal. She was dating men she went to school with at a junior college in Americus, Georgia. “I was distressed,” he later wrote. But she ultimately came around. They mar-ried soon after she graduated, keeping her promise to her father.

The relationship — a sailor wed to his sweetheart in rural Georgia in 1946 — reflected, in many ways, the time and place of its origin. One of his biggest regrets, he said, was making consequential family decisions early in their mar-riage without consulting her.

She was furious when he announced that he was leaving the Navy and returning the family to Plains. She had sa-voured the life of a Navy wife. “I had been self-sufficient and independent from my mother and Jimmy’s mother,” she recalled. “And I knew that if I went home, I was going to have to come back to them.”

She seethed on the drive back to Georgia. “She avoided talking to me as much as possible and would ask our oldest son, ‘Jack, tell your father we need to stop at a restroom,’” Carter wrote in ‘A Full Life’, the memoir he published when he was 90.

But over the years — with trial and error, as well as their shared ambition — it evolved into a partnership that chal-lenged boundaries imposed by gender norms. He relied on her political instincts on the campaign trail. When he was in the White House, they would have weekly policy lunches and she attended Cabinet meetings. She also had a major hand in running the Carter family’s peanut warehouse business when they first returned to Plains, and then again later on, after leaving the White House and discovering the business was $1 million in debt.

As they have grown older, the Carters have been known for their endurance. But ageing is inescapable. He has now handed over Sunday school duties to his niece. Their mo-bility is limited; Rosalynn Carter gets around a bit more easily than he does. But sitting together in their living room as the sunlight flooded through a large front window, the Carters said that their connection to each other had evolved and strengthened.

“I know for my sake,” Jimmy Carter said, “it’s been the best thing I’ve ever had happen to me — marrying Rosalynn and living together for so long, growing to know each other more and more intimately every day in married life.”

His hand drifted over to hers.-New York Times

10 JULY 09 - 11, 2021 WEEKEND EXPRESS

SPORTSSPORTS

Favoured athletes, disciplines, join Sri Lanka’s bandwagon to Tokyo OlympicsCOLOMBO - "Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand,” declared Nelson Mandela at the inaugural Laureus World Sports Awards in 2000. President of the Na-tional Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOCSL), Suresh Subramaniam, quoted the iconic South African leader at Olympic House in Colombo on Wednesday (7) at the official launch of Team Sri Lanka, which is gearing to participate in the Tokyo Olympics, with less two weeks to go for the start of the Games postponed from last year.

In what was more of a public relations exercise to appease the corporates who have shown tremen-dous goodwill to support Sri Lanka’s nine-member Olympic team, the NOCSL chief tried to portray that they were sending the best contingent to To-kyo. Until a week ago they were not sure how many athletes would make the cut, although they had al-ready decided on the number of officials who would be accompanying the team.

Since time immemorial Sri Lanka has depended on ‘wildcard’ invitations to take part in the Olym-pics. It emerged that only three participants have really ‘qualified’ to compete in Tokyo, namely Mathilda Karlsson (equestrian), Yupun Abeykoon (athletics) and Milka Gehani (gymnastics). The other six are by invitation handed by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Tripartite Commission Invitation Place or Universality Places given by the interna-tional federations.

Although Olympics are about participation, the manner in which the NOCSL has haphazardly sought Tripartite Invitation slots for certain disci-plines reeks of favouritism. Even the selection of two team leaders (male and female) smells of pref-erential treatment to associations who are in their good books, not the athletes per se. The criteria on which, judoka Chamara Nuwan Gunawardena, tak-ing part in the Olympics for the second time, and 18-year-old artistic gymnast Milka Gehani de Silva were chosen as flag-bearers for the Tokyo Games defies logic. If they are going by seniority as NOCSL Secretary-General Maxwell de Silva claimed, Milka does not fit the bill, while Matthew Abeysinghe, who became the first Sri Lankan swimmer in Olym-pic history to qualify for 2016 Rio Games, has more credentials than Gunawardana. Abeysinghe also set a national record of 49.11 seconds in the 100m freestyle at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, which was well within the Olympic qualifying standard for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. US-based Abeysing-he is considered the greatest athlete in South Asian Games history and also the most decorated; win-ning a total of 14 gold medals, two silver medals, and one bronze medal.

Considering that Olympians are ambassadors of the country at the Games, it would have been more appropriate to hand over the leadership reins to Sri Lankan-born Swedish showjumper Mathilda Karlsson, who was the first to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics and would be creating history in eques-trian for Sri Lanka. She would have captured the

imagination of the world with her epoch-making story of being adopted by Swedish parents as an infant and switching allegiance to her country of birth. She would have done more to put Sri Lanka on the world map by her mere participation in To-kyo, in a sport graced by royalty.

Even the Sri Lankan public know little of gym-nast Milka, albeit a Youth Olympian. She has be-come virtually invisible since she went to Japan on an Olympic Solidarity scholarship two years ago, and came under the patronage of the Japanese Olympic Committee.

The NOCSL seems to have formed a protective shield around the teenager who has done little to project the image of herself, Sri Lanka or the sport of gymnastics, unlike Canadian-born Sri Lankan Anna-Marie Ondaatje, who became the first gym-nast to win a gold medal for the country in artistic gymnastics but unfortunately got the cold shoul-der from the NOCSL who did not pursue her ap-plication for a Tripartite Invitation place seriously. Milka to her credit was confirmed as having quali-fied on merit, after securing a continental individ-ual quota for the Olympics, as she was the highest ranked eligible athlete based on the results of the 2019 World Championships after the Asian Cham-pionship was cancelled. Milka was ranked No.1 ahead of India’s Pranati Nayak.

The NOCSL also wants the public to believe that the IOC (International Olympic Committee) hands over wildcard invitations because of their international relations. “We have received a lot

because of our connections more than what other countries have got. Wildcard is given to athletes who have performed at international level. We got two Universality Places through FINA because the two swimmers (Abeysinghe and Aniqah Gaffoor) were of high standard. We tried to get wildcards for weightlifting, wrestling, archery and even boxing. We asked for everything including boxing but we don’t have top ranked players in boxing. If we had somebody like Niluka (Karunaratne) in the list they would have got,” said Maxwell de Silva.

The preferential treatment given to badmin-ton star Niluka Karunaratne is another case in point. The two-time Olympian, who is chairman of the NOCSL Athletes’ Commission, was virtually pushed to get qualified to take part in the Olympics for a third time. After failing to get the required To-kyo ranking points, a week later it was announced by the NOCSL that he had got ‘selected’ via Tripar-tite Invitation. There is no denying the commit-ment and sacrifices made by the 17-time national singles champion to reduce his weight and improve his world ranking to 99. However, the NOCSL also displayed their partiality by allowing Niluka to take his brother Dinuka, a three-time national cham-pion, as a sparring partner to Tokyo.

When asked what the NOCSL expects in Tokyo from the Sri Lanka team, Subramaniam was dip-lomatic: “I am sure they know the task. They know what they are expecting. They know what I am ex-pecting. I am sure they will do their best.”

-ENCL

By The Line Judge

COUNTER PUNCH

Choice of judoka Gunawardana and teenager Gehani as team leaders defies logic

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS (CEY) PVT, LTD. NO - 267, RAJA MAWATHA, EKALA - JA - ELA