Former president and current president has influenced investigations into the Easter attack, Here is the evidence for the Cardinal

(Lanka-e-News -29.May.2020, 11.30PM) On the 22nd of this month Archbishop Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said that a powerful person in the country is trying to weaken the investigation even though it seems that investigations are underway. However he did not say who the influencer was.

Seven suspects including Rishad Badiudeen's brother, Riyaj Badiudeen, were arrested last April in connection with the Easter day bombing. They were arrested on charges of having links with second suicide bomber at Hotel Shangri-La Mohammed Ibrahim Inshaf.

The only evidence available to the Criminal Investigation Department to justify the arrest of the suspects was the phone calls taken to Inshaf. There are no recorded audio tapes to know what was talked about, except the date and time of the phone conversation.

Below are the records of calls to Inshaf the arrested suspects made
Suspects name / number of times call to Inshaf / number of times Inshaf outgoing to calls
Mohamed Anis / 5 / 0
Mohamed Amanullah / 0 / 0
Mohamed Mubeen / 0 / 0
Mohamed Azmi / 0 / 0
Ismail Hajiar / 260 / 311
Mohamed Riyaj / 5 / 0
Hijaz Hisbullah / 142 / 48

The CID has so far failed to find any evidence beyond the number of times the suspects spoke to Inshaf's phone. According to history, even a child can deduce that he had a close relationship with Inshaf. According to the call history, even a child can deduce that who had a close relationship with Inshaf. That is Ismail Hajiar, who spoke to the suicide bomber 571 times.

Strange but true, Ismail Hajiyar, who spoke to the suicide bomber 571 times, was arrested and released within four hours. He was released on an order from President Gotabhaya because Ismail Hajiar, a friend of Gotabaya gave Gotabhaya's presidential election campaign a sum of Rs. 2000 million.

Shantha Bandara, the then Public Relations officer of president Sirisena had spoken several times to the number of Inshaf who was killed. Sirisena's Telecom brother too has also spoken to Inshaf's number several times. It was Shantha Bandara who issued a letter to issue copper to Ishaf’s copper factory in wellampitiya.

Therefore one can complete Archbishops half statement he made that it was the former president and the current president whom have influenced the investigations of the Easter attack.

Keerthi Rathnayake

Former army intelligence officer
Translated by Robinhood

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by     (2020-05-29 23:59:34)

Expat Sri Lankans Right Of Return Violated Due To Covid-19 Mismanagement

By Mohamed Ajiwath –MAY 30, 2020

Mohamed Ajiwath

-19 was spreading in Wuhan china from late Dec 2019 and on February 2020 the first batch of 33 (mainly students) were evacuated to Sri Lanka and kept in 14-day Quarantine in an army facility. Since early March returnees from selected countries were required to undergo mandatory quarantine in various camps. After, Covid-19 was made pandemic by WHO on March 11 2020, our international airport was closed on march 19 for all incoming passengers, though kept open for outgoing passenger’s for a brief time.

Many returnee’s expats who arrived before the strict enforcement of quarantined, were subsequently found to be Covid-19 positive hence caused community pocket clusters. The government of Sri Lanka took swift action using contact tracing and minimized further community transmission of the Covid-19. 

The action of the Covid-19 task force, including the front line health professionals, intelligence personnel and the security forces under the direction of the President is commendable and even appreciated by many world leaders. The enforced curfews and movement restrictions have largely effective except for the sudden hikes among Navy Personnel. As of May 30th, even the Navy cluster has been largely brought under the control.

However, the continued closure of the airport took heavy toll on the expat community, many of lost jobs and are stranded. Many of the expats who were planning to return to their country of origin were denied the opportunity to come back and government is facing heavy criticism from many corners for not standing be the expats during their time of despair,

This article critically explores the current Covid-19 management practices and how it can be improved and provide some solution with a view of urgently opening the airport for all incoming passengers of Sri Lankan origin.

Key Issues Involved

Although large population of Sri Lankan origin lives with their families in Europe, USA and Australia and most of them chosen to stay put even during the pandemic. Majority of these migrants are living in those country by their own choice hence, and despite the heavy tolls in Europe, there is no expected heavy inflow of Sri Lankans (except those came from Italy). 

However, the demographic pattern of expat employees in West Asia (specially middle east) is different ball game where mostly the expats are employed due to sheer economic compulsion, rather than by their own preferred choice. Majority of them, except for few who are employed as professional, are essentially poor unskilled, domestic workers or self- employed who are going through heavy physical, mental and emotional hardships just to protect their families from hunger and to give them basic decent living.

Immediately after the pandemic declaration, the number of Covid-19 positive cases dramatically increased in Europe, USA and the Gulf Countries. Sudden increase and rapid spread of the virus is mainly attributed to the very nature of the camp type accommodation where heavy concentration of employees are sharing minimal facilities. In many cases the recommended social distancing norms are not practical if not impossible. Similar scenarios are found in detention camps (e.g., Kuwait from where the first batch of detainees were returned).

Considering the increased number of covid 19 positive cases, all Gulf Countries implemented Covid 19 containment protocols including closure of all non-essential services. Accordingly, almost all, employers lost their regular income. As a result, many of Sri Lankan employees lost their jobs, salaries deferred and suddenly found themselves in a nightmare. Some companies while retaining their staff, reduced the salaries through indirect and non-voluntary means. Apart from regularly employed personnel substantial numbers are engaged in self-employment (such as taxi drivers, food mess operators, cleaners, day workers, small vendors etc.) They also lost their regular income. 

The overall situation which arose unexpectedly, left with no choice other than returning back to Sri Lanka. Naturally it is their expectation to return back to Sri Lanka to avoid further expenditures (and in some cases starvation). 

Many welfare support group and the embassies are currently helping some of the affected employees. However, there is no rosy pictures, when all those who were reasonably earning were forced to depend on the generosity of others. Knowing that the pandemic is going to stay for a while, the no 1 priority of those impacted is to return to Sri Lanka without further delays. 

Hence it the responsibility of the current government to facilitate early repatriation of the stranded employees as well as to assist those who willing to visit their families at this time of despair.

Kuwait Returnees

As part of a program to bring back Sri Lankans, the government gave priorities to students all over the world. A limited number of special flights were operated from middle east including UAE, Kuwait and Qatar. Whilst all the passenger list was either selected or endorsed by Covid-19 task force, the repatriation of detainees was done through Kuwait government flights (2 Nos) during late May. Upon arrival and having gone through the PCR tests, approximately 200 returnees were found to have Covid 19 positive, hence the government decided to slow down the repatriation process. Although Sri Lankan and other Flight operators indicated their willingness to start regular commercial flights from June 1st, the plans are currently shelved due to government decision. 

Citing the limited Quarantine Facilities and Treatment capacities (which are exclusively government operated through Covid 19 Task force), the right of return of expat employees are unduly delayed. 

Whilst there are proposals to open the airport from August for Tourist, there is no specific information available for Sri Lanka oversees employees and their families.

Current approach to Covid-19 Prevention for oversees returnees

Currently all returnees are taken to Government run Quarantine centers (or Hotels in some cases where the returnee bear the cost) and detained for 21 days. All are subjected to PCR tests and if found positive taken to Covid isolation wards and treated. Those found to be negative, are released from detaining centers. 

Since the current PCR test take 2-3 days, there is no option other to send all returnees to quarantine centers. 

From the writer’s research, it was noted that alternative approaches are employed by various government and in some case the Covid 19 management is more effective than what is practiced in Sri Lanka (Kerala is a living example). The author encourages all relevant authorities to explore such practices and adopt a more flexible yet effective Covid 19 management for all returnees. 

Testing Methodology for Covid-19 

Many variants of Molecular or Serological Tests are currently employed internationally. 

Molecular tests look for signs of an active infection. 

They usually involve taking a sample from the back of the throat with a cotton swab. The doctor then sends the sample off for testing.

The sample will undergo a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. This type of test detects signs of the virus’s genetic material.

A PCR test can confirm a diagnosis of COVID-19 if it identifies two specific SARS-CoV-2 genes. If it identifies only one of these genes, it will produce an inconclusive result. 

Molecular tests can only help diagnose current cases of COVID-19. They cannot tell whether someone has had the infection and since recovered.

Serological tests

These tests detect antibodies that the body produces to fight the virus. These antibodies are present in anyone who has recovered from COVID-19. 

The antibodies exist in blood and tissues throughout the body. A serological test usually requires a blood sample.

Serological tests are particularly useful for detecting cases of infection with mild or no symptoms.

New Testing for Covid 19 within 5 Minutes 

Abbott Laboratories received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the fastest available molecular point-of-care test for the detection of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), delivering positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes.

What makes this test so different is where it can be used: outside the four walls of a traditional hospital such as in the physicians’ office or urgent care clinics.

The new Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 test runs on Abbott’s ID NOWTM platform – a lightweight box (6.6 pounds and the size of a small toaster) that can sit in a variety of locations.

Read More

When memory outlives

by Mirusha Yogarajah   Apr 27, 2020


Tamil people created, own, and manage the businesses woven tightly into the fabric of Toronto – Babu Take-Out & Catering, the famous Spiceland franchise – but we are also the workers stocking shelves, sweeping the aisles, weighing and cutting fish, and packing up hundreds of iddiyappams. The restaurant industry was one of the few industries in which Tamil migrants were initially able to find work – albeit often underpaid and exploitative work. Today, we are the working class as well as, increasingly, Toronto’s elite – but behind the wealth of the Tamil elite lies the fact that most of us arrived in Toronto fleeing genocide. Where once we sought shelter in the Nallur Kandaswamy temple in Jaffna, we fled to seek safety at the crosswalks of McCowan and Finch.

How we came to be

The Tamil genocide haunts the political activities of Toronto’s Tamil community; to understand Tamil diaspora politics today, we must first understand the events that began in 1948.
Tamil people are concentrated in the state of Tamil Nadu in the south of India and in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s population is three-quarters ethnically Sinhalese (who are predominantly Buddhist) and 15 per cent Tamil (who are largely Hindu). After Sri Lanka gained independence from British colonization in 1948, the Sinhalese Buddhist majority – who formed government in 1956 – began discriminating against Tamils. In 1956, the government passed the Sinhala Only Act, making Sinhala the official language of Sri Lanka; in 1971, the Policy of Standardization made it so that Tamil students had to score higher than Sinhalese students to qualify to attend university; and in 1979, the government passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which allowed for the government to detain people – predominantly Tamils – without a warrant.

In 1956, the government passed the Sinhala Only Act, making Sinhala the official language of Sri Lanka.

In response, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers) formed as an armed resistance group seeking to create a sovereign state for Tamils in northern Sri Lanka. The armed conflict that erupted between the Tigers and the government in 1983 cost 40,000 lives, according to the United Nations (though other sources put the death toll as high as 100,000). The Sri Lankan government defeated the LTTE in 2009, ending the 26-year-long conflict.

In 1979, the government passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which allowed for the government to detain people – predominantly Tamils – without a warrant.

The first Tamils arrived in Canada long before the war, in the 1940s and 1950s. They were educated, wealthy, Westernized, and few in number. Harini Sivalingam, a lawyer and organizer in Toronto, tells me that prior to 1983, the Tamil community was predominantly composed of people on student visas who immigrated for better jobs and education. But as of 1983, Tamil refugees began fleeing the island in droves. Still, most of those who could leave – especially those who were able to flee with their whole family – were of higher caste and class. Canadian immigration policy was sympathetic, allowing most Tamil refugees to bypass stages of the refugee hearing process. Between 1989 and 1998, Tamil asylum claims to Canada had an acceptance rate of 85 per cent.

Still, most of those who could leave – especially those who were able to flee with their whole family – were of higher caste and class.

In the early days of Tamil migration to Canada, refugees faced violent white supremacy. In 1993, a 41-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil refugee and restaurant worker named Sivarajah Vinasithamby was left partially paralyzed after being attacked by a member of the white supremacist organization Heritage Front.

Sivalingam explains that, following the early 1990s, a third wave of Tamil migrants arrived in Canada, thanks to family reunification programs for refugees. Most of these migrants settled in Toronto and Montreal; today, Canada’s Tamil population officially numbers 157,000 – though experts agree that this number lowballs the Tamil population, since it doesn’t include the many Tamils who may be reluctant to identify themselves to census officials.

Policing and surveillance

The September 11, 2001, attacks and the subsequent “war on terror” changed the relationship between Canada and Tamil refugees: refugees began to be seen as a national security threat. In the years following 9/11, countries – including the U.K., Canada, and the entire European Union – would outlaw the LTTE and prohibit LTTE fundraising activities on their soil.

In 2001, a Globe and Mail headline screamed: “Bullets fly as Tamil gang war flares.” The piece highlighted AK Kannan and VVT, two gangs born and bred in Scarborough and Mississauga. In the 1990s an 2000s, the gangs were responsible for the deaths of a number of young tamil men – including 19-year-old Kapilan Palasanthiran, 19-year-old Annushath Indrakanthan, and 22-year-old Kristian Thanapalan. For some young Tamil men, the gangs served as a family at a time when Tamil families were fragmented across oceans and within the same homes because of intergenerational trauma. Gangs were also a source of protection: Tamil people experienced violent racism and held a mistrust of authority that was rooted in the violence they experienced at the hands of the Sri Lankan military during the war. Shortly after the death of Palasanthiran in 1997, a group of Tamil people established the Canadian Tamil Youth Development (CanTYD) Centre in Toronto. They aimed to prevent gang violence by providing Tamil youth with social supports and role models.

For some young Tamil men, the gangs served as a family at a time when Tamil families were fragmented across oceans and within the same homes because of intergenerational trauma.

In response to the mounting gang violence, Toronto police created the Tamil Task Force, committed to investigating Tamil youth and conducting surveillance of Tamils in Toronto. Sivalingam explains, “law enforcement did not understand that the increase in violence was a social problem and not necessarily a crime problem. These kids had a lot of social issues affecting them. Many youth didn’t have family supports and they were staying in Toronto with uncles because they themselves were refugees. If they did have family in Canada, there was a lack of communication and trust between family members. The youth also carried PTSD from a war-torn country.”

The decision to name the new police unit the “Tamil Task Force” heightened the stigma surrounding the Tamil community. A report by CanTYD, Toronto Tamil Youth: The Realities, recommended that “the name ‘Tamil Task Force’ needs to be eliminated for the term is offensive and counterproductive for improving relations with the police.” Sivalingam tells me that it was through the Tamil community’s advocacy that the Tamil Task Force was eventually renamed the Street Violence Task Force.

In 2001, a joint task force by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Toronto Police Service conducted a mass police raid called Project 1050, resulting in the arrest of 51 Tamil men believed to be members of VVT and AK Kannan. “The majority of the accused were charged under a section of the immigration act that prohibits involvement in a criminal organization, marking the first time street gangs were classified as ‘organized crime’ under immigration laws,” Michelle Shephard observed in the Toronto Star. Sivalingam explains that “many of the men who were deported as a result of Project 1050 had similar profiles: they came to Canada as youth in the early- to mid-1990s and got involved in minor street crimes such as assault, drug possession, fraud, etc. They got caught up in the 1050 sweeps which brought them under the radar of immigration enforcement. In some cases the deportations were still being fought years after. Some of the cases at the federal court are from 2012 which are more than 10 years after the raids.”

Those who were deported were sent back to a country in the midst of an ongoing war. Panchalingam Nagalingam, who was deported to Sri Lanka in 2005 following the 1050 raids, says he was kidnapped from his home in Colombo and tortured for two days.

Sivalingam tells me that it was through the Tamil community’s advocacy that the Tamil Task Force was eventually renamed the Street Violence Task Force. 

This history helps explain the continued surveillance and racial profiling that Toronto police still deploy against Black and brown communities. In March 2020, the Toronto Police Service held a public town hall to discuss their proposed installation of CCTV cameras in Scarborough, Jane and Finch, and Chinatown – three neighbourhoods of mostly racialized residents. As Friends of Chinatown Toronto observed, “Heightened police surveillance will target poor + BIPOC folks – police surveillance does NOT equal safety.”

The 2009 Gardiner protests

One of the most pivotal moments in the formation of Tamil political identity in Canada was the Gardiner protests in Toronto, which occurred on Mother’s Day 2009. After months of smaller protests and hunger strikes beseeching the Canadian state to intervene in the Sri Lankan genocide, over 2,000 Tamil people walked out on to the Gardiner Expressway, bringing traffic to a standstill. Canada took notice. The mainstream media responded with naked racism. An inflammatory National Post article by George Jonas explained how “rabid Tamils surged into roadways blocking traffic, demanding Canada to save them, turning from figures of sympathy into bloody nuisances, from citizens into adversaries, from freedom fighters into extortionists.” Christie Blatchford complained in the Globe and Mail, “We live in a country where we don’t even know how many of our fellows are Tamils from Sri Lanka, but are simultaneously asked to accept on faith that they are properly and legally here and to extend to them every privilege conferred by Canadian citizenship.” Newspapers referred to protesters’ actions as “controversial,” their demeanour as “aggressive,” and their ideology and demands as indistinguishable from those of the LTTE.

 

Kiruthiha Kulendiren is a staff representative for the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union and a Tamil-Canadian woman who joined the 2009 Gardiner protests. “Walking from Queen’s Park to the Gardiner happened organically,” she recalls. “It was a visual outpouring of intrinsic grief and the grief overflowed on the Gardiner and [coagulated] on Spadina.”

“The Tamils walked down Spadina to the Gardiner and we had nothing left – we were empty. All we had inside of us was grief. It wasn’t just a protest asking for justice. We were being erased,” she continues.

“It was a visual outpouring of intrinsic grief and the grief overflowed on the Gardiner and [coagulated] on Spadina.”

Then, in October 2009 and August 2010, two ships arrived on the coast of B.C. – the Ocean Lady and MV Sun Sea. Filled with 568 Tamil refugees fleeing genocide, the Canadian government chose to detain all the passengers. The adults were variously accepted as refugees, deported, or charged with human smuggling. Stephen Harper’s administration tabled Bill C-49, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act, which was later incorporated into Bill C-4 and then C-31. Bill C-31 passed in 2012. The bill made it a criminal act for asylum seekers to come to Canada through “irregular” means. This specifically criminalized lower-caste and lower-class refugees. The Harper administration and the then-minister of public safety, Vic Toews, restricted refugees who arrived in Canada under the guise that the Canadian state was concerned about human smuggling and passengers’ links to terrorism. 

I bring up some of the turmoil of Tamil people in the late ’90s and 2000s to showcase the shift in the Canadian government’s response to Tamil migrants and our struggle for liberation. When Tamil people needed Canadian state intervention the most, to stop the genocide, Canada failed the Tamil people. Instead, the government chose to criminalize, surveil, and dehumanize the Tamil people of Toronto.

The fallout from genocide

In 2020, we have mayoral acknowledgements of genocide, a Tamil Heritage Month, two Tamil MPPs, and a Tamil MP. Both MPPs are members of the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party of Ontario, and the MP is a member of the Liberal party. I asked members of my community why Tamil people are voting PC; they told me that the PC party chose Tamil men to represent predominantly Tamil ridings. Overwhelmingly, Tamil people are attracted to voting for Tamil men who look like them and are able to communicate with them in both Tamil and English. It remains somewhat radical for a Tamil person to hold political office – both because of racism in the Canadian electorate and because the Sinhala Only Act – which mandated that public servants speak Sinhalese – prevented Tamil people from working in the Sri Lankan government and forcibly retired existing Tamil public servants.

And even though Tamil people in Toronto remain sympathetic to the plight of refugees, Darshika Selvasivam, a Tamil activist in Toronto, tells me that Islamophobia, anti-Indigenous racism, and anti-Blackness persist throughout the community, making right-wing politics attractive to some.

Gender-based violence is a pervasive issue in the community – just last year, Tharshika Jeganathan was killed by her ex-husband on her way home from her job at Dollarama in Scarborough. In a 2008 study published in the journal Health Care for Women International, Tamil women said that intimate partner violence occurred as a result of “mental illness, anger and loss of control, infidelity, and binge drinking.” The study also found that Tamil women were held responsible for “provoking” their husbands’ violence. Alcoholism is also a noted issue in the community, though few statistics exist to corroborate what we all know, because many cases of family violence, mental illness, and trauma go undocumented and unspoken in the community. The trauma is intimately related to poverty in the community – trauma prevents people from keeping jobs, and poor physical health results in early deaths.

But for every model minority story, there are many more Tamil folks working the night shift for a poverty wage.

Today, some Tamil people have been able to invest in the capitalist myth of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and use work to isolate their trauma – working multiple jobs, sleeping five hours a night, and saving vigorously. But for every model minority story, there are many more Tamil folks working the night shift for a poverty wage.

In 2018, four Tamil migrant workers from India spoke to CBC about the atrocious working conditions they say they faced as sculptors for the Sridurka Hindu temple in Richmond Hill. Sleeping in the bedbug-infested basement boiler room of the temple by night, by day they were allegedly drastically underpaid, underfed, and forced to work long hours in unsafe conditions without breaks. Two of the workers, Sekar Kurusamy and Suthakar Masilamani, claim the temple owes them over $66,000 in stolen wages. The temple has denied the allegations. The Tamil Workers Network raised awareness and sought legal recourse for the workers.

John No, a lawyer with Parkdale Community Legal Services, which took on the case for free, explained to CBC that temporary foreign workers’ “ability to stay in Canada and make a living is completely dependent on that one employer. So if that one employer is treating them badly, whether in terms of working conditions or employment standards, they have very little real recourse because they can’t leave that job.”

Tamil art and resistance today

At the same time, Toronto is blooming with Tamil art and organizing, and each sphere faces these issues head-on.

Nedra Rodrigo, a Tamil woman, created Tam Fam Lit Jam as a space to hear and present poetry written and performed by Tamil people. She is also spearheading the Tamil Community Centre (TCC) in Toronto, a space that includes recreational facilities, meeting rooms for community groups, and more. Though specific programming hasn’t yet been developed, surveys conducted by the TCC show a high demand for a gymnasium, an auditorium, mental health services, and space for a museum commemorating the Tamil genocide.

Thurka Gunaratnam is a Tamil comedian who created the New Normal Comedy Show for BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+, and women comedians. She hosts monthly shows in Toronto and Scarborough that aim to destigmatize sex and queerness in BIPOC communities.

The Workers Action Centre hosts $15 & Fairness, a campaign to increase Ontario’s minimum wage to $15 and fight for stronger workplace rights, like vacation time and overtime pay. Alongside Mandarin and English, Tamil is one of the languages into which the Workers Action Centre translates their materials. I spoke to Milan Nadarajah, an organizer with the centre, who explains that much of Toronto’s Tamil population still works unstable and precarious jobs. He spoke of how the first generation of Tamil migrants worked minimum-wage jobs in Toronto, while the second generation of Tamil people are working jobs with higher wages in fields like accounting or law.

The Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU’s) Justice for Janitors campaign is a movement of over 225,000 janitors across Canada and the United States – and since the launch of the Toronto campaign in 2007, 4,000 of those janitors are in Toronto. Many janitors in Toronto are racialized, and a high proportion are Tamil. Laxy Saunthararajan, a union organizer for SEIU Local 2, tells me that in the 1980s, janitorial contracts were given directly from property managers. But throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, property managers began subcontracting; companies would enter bidding wars, with the lowest bidder receiving the contract. This drove down wages for janitors. Prior to unionization, contracts would be flipped frequently because property managers or building owners merely sought out companies who had lower bids – resulting in poor job security and inhumane wages. Justice for Janitors aims to get all subcontracting companies under one collective bargaining agreement.

Saunthararajan emphasizes that the purpose of Justice for Janitors is to empower janitors to build political power outside and within their workplaces. She tells me about a conversation she had with a Tamil janitor who was key in organizing his workplace around 2007 or 2008. When discussing what motivated him to organize his co-workers, he talked about the armed conflict back in Sri Lanka and how he struggled to make ends meet here. He said that he knew what it’s like to lose everything as a community, and that he wanted to ensure that his legacy will be one of improvement and change for the Tamil community.

Update, April 27, 2020: This article originally stated that Tam Fam Lit Jam is a venue for LGBTQ+ Tamil poets. It has been updated to reflect that, while many of the performers are LGBTQ+, all Tamil poets are welcome to perform. 

Mirusha Yogarajah is a Tamil kid who writes to heal. She likes Bananagrams, cheese plates, and her friends.

The coronavirus and Sri Lanka’s pre-existing non-medical conditions

by Rajan Philips-May 30, 2020, 10:47 am

The two most vulnerable groups to the coronavirus are the elderly and people of all age groups with pre-existing medical conditions, i.e. the so-called life-cycle illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems, liver complications, lung disease etc. In both instances, the virus exploits the compromised immune systems of its hosts. That has been the general story in countries with large numbers of Covid-19 cases and fatalities. Italy has high life expectancy among its people and a high proportion of the elderly, traditionally attributed to additive free cooking using garlic and olive oil, and of course the local wine. Italy paid a high price to the pandemic in the richer northern parts of the country. In America, the Trump acolytes are racially blaming American diversity and obesity as vulnerable pre-existing conditions for the country’s virus curve (racing to two million cases) and mounting death toll (now past 100k), to divert attention from the Administration’s ‘chaotically disastrous’ (as Obama called it) handling of the crisis.

Sri Lanka, despite its economic woes, and with or without the now healthily cold-pressed coconut oil – like the always cold-pressed and healthy gingelly oil (thala thel), has a remarkably high life expectancy and a high proportion of the elderly. And, touch wood, it is also having a low number of Covid-19 cases and an even lower death statistic, practically compared to every other country. If this overall pattern (even after taking into account the IPA’s alternative statistics which are not at all significantly higher) were to prevail over the global life of the current pandemic, the island’s pandemic experience may become the subject for future studies as a healthy deviant, quite in contrast to the way the malaria epidemic of the 1930s earned academic notoriety for the island in epidemiological studies as the ‘Ceylon epidemic.’ Let us not get ahead of ourselves, however, the way the government did self-congratulating itself almost three months ago.

What is common though, between then and now, are the country’s pre-existing non-medical conditions, which have become part of the Sri Lankan genome and are now blistering to the surface with the coronavirus acting as the default trigger. The economic condition is worse than Type 2 Diabetes; months long lockdown has further weakened the overall immune system and whole limbs of the economy are risking old school amputations. Add to that the chronic heart condition of the constitution, now under direct hydroxychloroquine attack by forensic quacks. Much of the respiratory media are hopelessly clogged up in pro-government apologetics, while the social media inhalers provide less oxygen and more laughing gas. Ethnic preoccupations have morphed from the violent epileptic seizures of old, to scabby skin eruptions in the body politic now. Lastly, and to safely land my unapologetic metaphorical flight, the government’s standard prescriptive options range between familial Task Force oil treatment for all symptoms and increasingly frequent application of military ventilators. You get the picture. The reality is worse. Even though the coronavirus is seemingly under control, thanks mostly to the island’s medical and public health genius.

The Economy

Everyday there is a new blueprint for the economy produced by well-meaning and thoughtful professional economists, academics and/or concerned business leaders. But Sri Lanka’s core problem is that the government has no cash and made it worse by slashing its tax revenues. Its redress allocations are less than a percentage point of the GDP, and nowhere near the redress measures in the neighbouring South Asian countries. The Rs. 5,000.00 Samurdhi disbursement, the only government handout so far, has reportedly not reached 44% of the have-not sections of the population. Traditional social cohesion and reciprocity might be at work in preventing widespread destitution. There is informal subsistence even though the informal economy is formally shut down. At the macrolevel, the government is looking for handouts from China and currency swaps with India. But how much will even the maximum help from the two Asian economies measure up to the country’s domestic needs and external shortfalls? There is no assessment. There is no plan. There is no more sign of the miracle that many thought they saw on November 16. It is not the virus that is to blame. The virus has only exposed the cluelessness to which hopes were unsuspectingly attached in November last year.

The government must first identify what it can realistically do in tough circumstances that the country is in. Not in the next two to five years, but the next two to five months, even two to five weeks. Nivard Cabraal is calling for 10% of the GDP (Rs. 1.5 trillion out of Rs. 15 trillion GDP) as stimulus to be garnered through "collective interventions," over the next three to five years. Not the timeframe for the current urgency, nor the correct concept for the current situation. There is no collective intervention in any country. In wealthy countries, where interest rates are rock bottom and debt to GDP ratios are a Keynesian dream, the governments are bankrolling the stimulus. Huge private corporations are not ‘collectively intervening’, only collectively baying for government bailouts. The developing countries are hoping for collective global intervention, not collective domestic interventions. China is on its own, only the state will intervene, but it will need global trade even to assert its (relatively!) absolute advantage.

India seems to be eclectic in its approach, and there is a spirited national debate in the country about the Modi government’s economic policy involving, among others, two pan Indian national leaders from Tamil Nadu, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and former (Congress) Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. And out of nowhere last Wednesday, the Tamil Nadu State government signed 17 MOUs with companies from eleven countries (Australia, China, England Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States) for investments with local partners in the manufacturing of heavy vehicles, electronics, footwear, energy, medical equipment etc. The MOUs involve IR 150 billion ($2 billion) capital and will generate 47,000 new jobs. What efforts are being made by any of Sri Lanka’s Task Forces to pull off anything like this?

Mr. Cabraal’s ‘collective intervention’ terminology is his newest euphemism for pilfering 2.6 million EPF members of as much as Rs. 500 million, or a third of his stimulus target. Ostensibly, the scheme will create for the members a "life-line" of their own making by prematurely withdrawing from their life savings to pay current debts. This at a time when their government is asking for debt moratorium from all its, creditors. Where is the moral equivalence here? Leave alone the long-term loss to the employees and their becoming a future burden to the government with depleted savings. He has other fanciful ideas such as facilitating 100-day stays in Sri Lanka for elderly American, Chinese, and European tourists, for the 2020/21 winter season. There is one hitch. Who is going to fly them so early, even if they are willing to venture out after escaping the virus at home? Mr. Cabraal is also highlighting the importance of global help, which should mean more than China and India, as well as reinforcements by the IMF and the World Bank. The question is what impacts will Sri Lanka’s political conditions and ethnic differences have on the prospects of Sri Lanka getting the global economic support it needs?

A missed opportunity

Long before the Supreme Court was petitioned over election timing and the status of parliament, former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya suggested a conference among Party leaders, the Prime Minister, and the President to pre-emptively address the emerging constitutional impasse. While correctly refusing to go along with the roguish idea for the Speaker to summon the dissolved parliament, Mr. Jayasuriya even more correctly warned that failure to consultatively address the constitutional issue will have huge implications for Sri Lanka obtaining global support to the extent it is needed.

In all the economic proposals that are being spawned now, it is taken for granted that maximum global support is a given - no matter happens to parliament, whether or not elections are held, regardless of minority complaints, and regardless as well of the increasing normalization of military secondments to civilian positions in the state apparatus. That external support should not be taken as a given is the lesson the new Rajapaksa Administration should learn from the last Rajapaksa Administration. That is the difference between the external experience of the last year of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Administration and that of the first year of Sirisena-Wickremesinghe Administration. Sri Lanka lost its external goodwill in 2014 and regained some of it in 2015. It is likely to happen again, and the loss of goodwill will also last a lot longer with adverse implications for the economy and public health.

Whichever way the Supreme Court rules, everyone is already a loser. If the Court were to conclude that parliament should be recalled, government supporters will whip up a backlash against the opposition parties and will do everything possible to make life miserable for the opposition. The opposition is in such a disarray that it can neither create nor benefit from another pro-democracy wave as in October 2018. Given Sajith Premadasa’s role during that tumult, one cannot expect him to show either initiative or backbone in the current situation. Ranil Wickremesinghe was an unworthy and inconsequential beneficiary of the 2018 wave, and he will again be unworthy of his status and inconsequential in his actions.

On the other hand, if the Court were to agree with the government’s position that parliament can remain dissolved while the Election Commission expedites the holding of the postponed election, the government supporters will be jubilant but there will be sulking across a wide swathe of the rest of the population including the Sinhalese. Constitutional governance would have been delivered an insufferable blow, but there will be no public mourning for it. The creeping militarization of civil administration will be given an additional push. Much of the media outlets will welcome the verdict as the last word on the matter and urge the country to move on. It will be the last word, no doubt, but one that will raise more questions than it would answer. And it will not be the last word externally.

All of this could have been easily avoided if the government had responsibly taken the simple constitutional steps that were subtly implied by Karu Jayasuriya and explicitly articulated by legal luminaries like Nihal Jayawickrama and Savitri Goonesekere. Parliament could have been recalled, attended to the limited business that it was recalled for, and gone into dissolution again. The Election Commission would have gone ahead with setting an appropriate date and organizing the election with advice from public health officials. The country would have won, and no one would have lost. At least one of the pre-existing conditions would have been treated and the government would have been one degree freer to turn its energies towards the other conditions. That would have been too easy and too good to be true.