The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is shaking up the ultraconservative Al-Saud Kingdom to its very roots. Is he doing the right thing, at this point in time, or is he duly opening a can of worms, the consequences of which could bring the “Middle East chaos,” resulting from the failed Arab Spring, home to this rich, conservative, tribal and patriarchal kingdom?

As a matter of fact, things are not looking up for this country, the oil prices are plummeting dangerously, the country is bogged down in an unwinable war in Yemen against the Shiite Houthis armed by Iran and the Iranian nuclear threat is looming in the east. The country needs undoubtedly to reform but is doing it, at this very moment, safe and feasible?

Soon MBS will become the king and he, surely, wants to start his rule with a tabula rasa, by opening up his country to the world culture and modernist ideas, this “revolution” is certainly welcomed by women, youth and all the thousands of Saudis who were educated in the West, but certainly not by the conservative religious caste and the tribe of princes, who made so much hay in the traditional and opaque kingdom. They will certainly not accept the “clean slate” and, by all means, will put up a fierce fight to safeguard their privileges and power.

Eradicating Extremist Ideas

MBS wants to “eradicate extremist ideas” thriving in his country to rid it from Wahhabism that is equated, worldwide, with terrorism and violence. In a historical speech, he promised to return his country to a moderate Islam, without explaining what he meant by moderate Islam and he has indirectly, however, accused Wahhabism, the state religious doctrine, of giving the country a bad image and vicious reputation.

On the occasion of the Riyadh Forum which took place last October 24th in the Saudi capital, the Crown Prince Mohammed has come to present the creation of a new economic zone on the shore of the Red sea. While listing the objectives of this mega-project that could attract investments totaling more than 425 billion euros, the son of the King Salman was questioned about the radical Islam taught in the country of the two Holy Mosques.

Against all odds, the country’s new powerful man has, then, clearly, denounced the “extremist ideas” disseminated in the Kingdom. Mohammed bin Salman also promised to “abolish” them immediately. A thinly veiled attack on the Saudi conservative Ulemas, who, till now, governed Saudi society following the Wahhabi doctrine, an ultra-rigorous version of Sunni Islam.

“We are returning to what we were before – a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,” the 32-year-old crown prince said.

“We will eradicate the remnants of extremism very soon … We represent the moderate teachings and principles of Islam,” he added, forcefully.

In an article published by the Iranian paper “Financial Tribune,” the anonymous writer wonders quite rightly if MBS is making history or just a mess :i

“So since his assumption of power in the kingdom, the crown prince has announced and then revised plans for a major overhaul of the national economy, significantly softened restrictions on women drivers, laid the groundwork for privatizing some of the national oil company Aramco and reducing state subsidies on basic services, and announced plans for a gigantic international tourism development along the Red Sea coast that will be covered by liberal international norms instead of the austere Saudi-Wahhabi traditions.

At the same time, MBS has launched a terrible and endless war against Yemen, laid siege to Qatar, continued to explore how to either interfere or constructively engage in the domestic politics of assorted Arab states, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria, arrested both liberal and conservative Saudis who do not fully support his plans, and engaged in a relentless and largely fruitless regional and international attempt to isolate Iran.

MBS is certainly making headlines; but is he also making history, or making a mess? For now we can only acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of his current approach.

The problem is that, by criticizing radical Islam this way, the young 32 year-old prince is attacking the very foundations of Saudi Arabia. In fact, since the alliance sealed in 1744 between Mohammed bin Saud, the patriarch of the family and the ultraconservative Imam Muhammed Abdul Wahhab,ii politics remain the exclusive domain of the Saud household in exchange for the dissemination of “original and pure Islam” by the Wahhabi Ulemas in the Saudi society.iii

For the time being, the future King seems to have successfully scored points not only by being responsible for the decision to allow Saudi women to drive, but, also, by letting them,for the first time, attend sporting events in some stadiums of the country. Will MBS win the arm-wrestling contest with the Ulemas or will he be toppled, in the name of the pure religion?

Not to forget of course that MBS is, also, the primary force driving “Vision 2030,”iv an initiative designed to wean Saudi Arabia off of its traditional dependency on oil revenues by creating a more dynamic and diverse Saudi economy open to international investments and propitious for a modern and modernist way of life.

The Purge Year: Arrest Of Princes, Ministers, Senior Officials And Prominent Businessmen

Some sources informed the Lebanese news media outlet “L’Orient Le Jour”v of the setup of an ad hoc commission in Saudi Arabia, in charge of investigating into corruption in public sector, Al Arabiya Englishvi reported immediately after, the arrest of dozen of Princes and dozens of former ministers in the framework of an anti-corruption offensive.

According to several newspapers, the very rich and powerful Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was among the prominent personalities arrested.vii

According to Al Arabiya,viii the anti-corruption Commission is led by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmane. These evictions seem to fall within the framework of a strategy carried by the Saudi Crown Prince and aiming at getting rid of the conservative group in power.

By controlling the main levers of the Government, from defense to economy, it seems that Mohammed bin Salman is seeking to silence all the internal protests before any formal transfer of power is done by his father, King Salman, 81 years old.

In this regard, Patrick Wintour, the diplomatic editor of The Guardian argues that:

No one doubted that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a man in a hurry. But the Saudi royal’s decision to arrest 11 princes, four ministers and dozens of former ministers shows he is a risk-taker on a scale the Middle East has rarely seen.

The fact that the billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns the investment firm Kingdom Holding, was among the wave of late-night arrests (and is thought to be held in the luxurious confines of Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton hotel) suggests MBS, as Salman is known colloquially, is willing to take on the kingdom’s most powerful figures to implement his reforms and consolidate ixpower.

In theory, MBS could be in power for a half a century. The question is whether he is showing the maturity and steadiness to use such a lengthy reign to create a viable, modern Saudi Arabia.

The crown prince will say the arrests show his determination to root out corruption, a precondition of a more open economy. But few think the arrests, and related ministerial sackings, are the independent decision of a new corruption body, established just hours before to replace an existing one, rather than part of a wider reshuffle to centralise all security authority under MBS. “

No doubt, the decision to rid the country of corrupt officials and corrupt members of the business community goes along with what MBS has promised at the end of October: to deliver a “moderate” Arabia, in complete break from the image of a country that has long been regarded as the exporter of Wahhabism, a rigorist version of Islam, which has influenced many jihadists around the world.x

The Crown Prince has launched many reform projects to date – right to drive for women, the opening of movie theaters among others- which mark the biggest cultural and economic upheaval of the Kingdom’s modern history, with a real marginalization of the conservative religious castes. Simultaneously, he has worked on strengthening his political control on the power by conducting a wave of arrests of dissidents, among which influential religious and intellectuals.

Are These Moves Sincere Or Else?

Is the purge okayed by King Salman and effected by his son the Crown Prince truly a permanent set of reforms to change the country in depth or only power games to allow MBS to sit on the throne, in the near future, unhindered by the traditional religious powerhouse and the influential and powerful business community?

Saudi Arabia is breaking slowly but nervously from its traditional moorings to move into modernity while its allies, friends and supporters are sitting on the sidelines hoping and praying that MBS succeeds in his risky undertaking, bearing in mind that Wahhabism has been often rightly blamed, now and then, for spawning terrorism and intolerance around the world, for quite some time.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatou on Twitter : @Ayurinu

End notes:
i. https://financialtribune.com/articles/international/75227/mbs-the-reformer
ii. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism
iii. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/29/what-is-wahhabism-the-reactionary-branch-of-islam-said-to-be-the/

« Somewhat paradoxically, however, members of the Saudi ruling class have applauded Wahhabism it for its Salafi piety – i.e. its adherence to the original practices of Islam – and the movement’s vehement opposition to the Shia branch of Islam.

In the 1970s, with the help of funding from petroleum exports and other factors, Saudi charities started funding Wahhabi schools (madrassas) and mosques across the globe and the movement underwent “explosive growth”.

The US State Department has estimated that over the past four decades Riyadh has invested more than $10bn (£6bn) into charitable foundations in an attempt to replace mainstream Sunni Islam with the harsh intolerance of its Wahhabism. EU intelligence experts estimate that 15 to 20 per cent of this has been diverted to al-Qaida and other violent jihadists. »

The movement now has worldwide influence inspiring the ideology of extremists worldwide. »

iv. http://vision2030.gov.sa/en

«  It is my pleasure to present Saudi Arabia’s Vision for the future. It is an ambitious yet achievable blueprint, which expresses our long-term goals and expectations and reflects our country’s strengths and capabilities. All success stories start with a vision, and successful visions are based on strong pillars. The first pillar of our vision is our status as the heart of the Arab and Islamic worlds. We recognize that Allah the Almighty has bestowed on our lands a gift more precious than oil. Our Kingdom is the Land of the Two Holy Mosques, the most sacred sites on earth, and the direction of the Kaaba (Qibla) to which more than a billion Muslims turn at prayer.  More… »

Crown Prince and Chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs
Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud

v. https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1082226/arrestation-de-princes-et-danciens-ministre-en-arabie-saoudite-al-arabiya.html

vi. http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/gulf/2017/10/04/24-arrested-in-Saudi-Arabia-trying-to-incite-sedition.html

Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry has said that 24 individuals utilizing social media to incite sedition and tribal fractions have been arrested on Wednesday.

A ministry spokesman said in a statement that the suspects were exploiting social networking sites to spread unfounded rumors and lies about their living conditions in the Hail region to provoke “sedition and tribal infidelity”.
The group included one person who created a hashtag on social networking sites to promote sedition.

The ministry warned of any attempts to spread rumors or lies that breach the kingdom’s security. (SPA)

The authorities, the spokesman added, are now investigating the online roles of each suspect.

The ministry said in its statement that it will “stand firmly in front of such practices and the spread of lies that breach the security of the Kingdom”.

vii. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-waleed-bin-talal.html

viii. http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/gulf/2017/11/04/Saudi-Crown-Prince-to-head-a-new-committee-to-combat-corruption.html

In a statement carried by the official Saudi news agency, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud decreed the following:

“In view of what we have noticed of exploitation by some of the weak souls who have put their own interests above the public interest, in order to, illicitly, accrue money and as we have taken care, in this regard, since we assumed the responsibility to follow these matters out of our pledges towards the homeland and the citizen, we decided:

First: To form a supreme committee chaired by the Crown Prince and the membership of: Chairman of the Monitoring and Investigation Commission, Chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Authority, Chief of the General Audit Bureau, Attorney General and Head of State Security.

Second: Exemption from laws, regulations, instructions, orders and decisions, while the Committee shall perform the following tasks:

Firstly, to identify offenses, crimes, persons and entities involved in cases of public corruption.

Secondly, the investigation, issuance of arrest warrants, travel ban, disclosure and freezing of accounts and portfolios, tracking of funds, assets and preventing their remittance or transfer by persons and entities, whatever they might be. The committee has the right to take any precautionary measures it sees, until they are referred to the investigating authorities or judicial bodies. It may takes whatever measures deemed necessary to deal with those involved in public corruption cases and take what it considers to be the right of persons, entities, funds, fixed and movable assets, at home and abroad, return funds to the state treasury and register property and assets in the name of state property.

Thirdly: The Committee may seek the assistance of those it deems necessary and may set up teams for investigation, prosecution, etc., and may delegate some or all of its powers to these teams.

Fourthly: Upon completion of its duties, the committee shall submit to us a detailed report on its findings and what it has taken, in this regard.

Fifthly: Competent authorities shall be informed of this order and all parties concerned shall similarly cooperate fully to enforce the provisions. »

ix. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/05/saudi-arabia-arrests-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman

x. http://www.arabnews.com/node/1182831/saudi-arabia

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” — J. Krishnamurti, Indian philosopher and writer.

“A scholar is always a scholar, and the king only rules his kingdom.” — Indian proverb.

The words of this Indian proverb could easily be understood, if the situation were some-what different then it is in the education system of BiH.

Namely, when questioned to which ethnic group they belong (read: nation), in the scope of research done as decided by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport about the equal use of the Bosnian and Croat teaching plan in elementary and secondary schools, between 18% and 20% of students of the Second Gymnasium Sarajevo (High School) stated that they are Bosnian, according to the school director. A significant number of those registered in the category of “others” should be added to this, as well as those expressing their nationality as Chinese, Eskimo (Inuit) or Bulgarian …

All five sides of this part of text are based on a methodological analysis of what is happening behind the scene: Is the wish of politicians to design (or maybe create), a new person who should be like George Orwell’s Winston from “1984,” and all that based on an already formed model? Is this a wish to create conditions “for the possible upcoming war’ in the nearest future? Or this is a wish to protect the vital interests of “my” own people?

This author objectively presents his view, but, the solution is not on the table yet.

The only thing that could be said after you read this text goes towards the fact that regardless of the opposition’s efforts, and managing to face their stance to prove that this is a new kind of apartheid as well as a non-civilized act, the light at the end of the tunnel cannot be seen yet for the simple reason:

NO ONE HAS ANSWERED WITH A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ‘HOW’ WILL WE OVERCOME THIS.

This is the reason why the education system could be the next obstacle (after establishing joint institutions based on election results 1997) in the further strengthening of FBIH.

Therefore, the Federation Ombudsmen reacted strongly and unanimously when they saw the Federal partner’s plan: Vera Jovanovic, Esad Muhibic and Branka Raguž, FBIH Ombudsmen sent the following recommendation to Dr. Fahrudin Rizvanbegovic, Min. of Education and his Deputy, Dr. Jakov Pehar, that according to legal legislation, obligations and responsibilities based on the FBIH Constitution, as well as the Charter of child rights, they have to prepare laws for Elementary and Secondary Schools and enable administrative bodies to adopt above mentioned laws.

Until this recommendation is implemented, all written instructions forwarded by the Minister or his Deputy — in other words those relating to the “use of two teaching plans inside the whole territory of FBIH — should be suspended.”

Of course they were obeyed. And for now, everything is silent, however, it looks as if the Ombudsman would like to achieve something as soon as possible. Recommendation given is “Conditio Sine Qua Non” of recommendations for establishing a civic society. Why? Simply, the Journalist has not stated his viewpoint in the text. There was no need. It was so obvious that the parties in Government wish to continue with already established politics: If you do not interfere with my business I shall not in yours!

Division is the most painful for children, but when it enters their innocent souls, it will be very difficult to remove this malignant matter. The conclusion that came from the journalist of the Slobodna Bosna magazine could be the closest to explaining, “that something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (in the whole of “Denmark”), speaking of education…

…”unfortunately just by looking at history books it is clear when the students in BIH will be educated, not to speak of consequences of which it is not possible to speak at all. If questioned whether those consequences will be bad for all of us, the only answer one can give is –YES. Since children in BIH are educated inside RS and Croat controlled areas that their homeland is Croatia or Serbia: Subsequently, Croats in part and Serbs absolutely openly refuse to accept BIH inside books for children as well as teaching plans and that is a continuation of aggression on this country. Not even Bosniaks (Muslims) are without guilt.”…

Interesting issue arise in the form of main subjects such as history, language and geography, which have become something of the utmost interest for the ruling parties.

Therefore, logical question put before us is, “Why?” Just like the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte said: “Language is the basis of nation’s existence.” However, what we have here is bigger than language itself.

Just as an example, the program principles of HZHB (the so-called Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia) state the following: ”Croatian language and Croatian national program are crucial for preserving self-identity of Croat people in BIH .” This sentence (which is more or less similar to the opinions given by representatives of two other nations – Serbs and Bosniaks – Muslims) would be acceptable if we did not have a bloody war behind us that tried to destroy the will for living together.

Consequently we are faced with something much more serious — and I am not stating that International Community should be involved in something that belongs to local people, but these mistakes must be corrected with a real sentence: There are still Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks who wish to live together. To give them a possibility of creating a joint teaching program for schools and to “awake the memories” of living together are challenges for future generations ahead of us. Can we allow ourselves to be faced with the possibility of new horrors of war in the following 5 to 10 years?

Kings (or Beys if you like it that way ) already exist in this country and many of them, whether we like it or not, consider it their own feud, but less and less scholars will remain if they continue with their intentions.

Maybe a statement of Christian Amanpour, one of the most appreciated journalists of these days, broadcasted on CNN on October 16, 1997 can serve us as a conclusion: “HR Organizations warn that segregation is flaying directly in the face of Dayton Peace Accords which was designed to promote a tolerant society and reunification .”

Well, it’s up to us…

This essay above was written by this author and publish on 08/12/1998 in BH Journalist (well-known magazine of BH Journalist Union, 19 years ago in Bosnia and Hercegovina)

Nineteen years later, today in 2017 we still have the same situation. Ups, sorry, no, we do not have. Why? Because one complete generation became mature and ready to cast their Bosniak (Muslim), Serb and/or Croat vote. What do you think? Would they vote for peace or war? I think the answer is so obvious.

P.S. What about us, the so-called others from the Constitution: Bosnians and Herzegovinians? Nothing, because we are just the Eskimos from the South of Europe, a simple minority, with no basic human right. Yes, my dear World. Just “google us” and you will see that chauvinism and nationalism from all three sides made us a minority of “others” within our own country. So, Poland and the nationalistic protesters who disrupted Poland Independence Day events this Sunday is just beginning for Europe.

You did not learn anything from the dissolution of former Yugoslavia, anything at all.
So, please, World, do not be the sinner. Learn from us.

Shutting down the Department of Education and returning control of the education dollar to the American people is the key to improving education. The best way to put the people in charge of education is by shutting down all unconstitutional bureaucracies, repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, and ending the Federal Reserve’s money monopoly.

Since Congress is unlikely to restore constitutional, limited government in the near future, supporters of quality education must advance policies aimed at giving Americans control over the education dollar so they can seek alternatives to the federally-controlled system. This is why I have always supported education tax credits and deductions.

When I was in Congress, I introduced legislation providing tax credits for contributions to education scholarship funds. These funds provide K-12 scholarships to low-income-family students whose parents cannot afford private schools. These scholarship funds allow these children to escape government schools that have been ruined by federal “reforms” like No Child Left Behind and Common Core, as well as mandates such as the ones dictating what can be served in school cafeterias.

Including education scholarship tax credits in the tax reform bill currently before Congress would be a major step toward creating a free market in education. In a free market, parents could select the type of education that best suits the unique needs of their children, instead of the demands of politicians and bureaucrats. Schools could compete on the basis of academics, extracurricular activities, and even lunch menus. Those with unique and innovative education ideas would be free to establish schools and prove their models’ superiority.

Moving to a free-market education system would increase the amount of money spent on educating children. This is because in a free market resources would not be siphoned away from the classroom to support a bloated federal bureaucracy and schools would not be force to waste valuable resources proving they are complying with federal regulations.

By increasing competition, education scholarship tax credits encourage government-run schools to improve. The threat of losing more students may even cause local school boards and state boards of education to resist federal mandates. Thus, education scholarship tax credits can improve the education of all children.

Some libertarians oppose education scholarship tax credits on the grounds that they are a form of government “subsidy.” Since education tax credits allow people to use their own money to support education, this claim only makes sense if one believes that all income is owned by the government, so any income not taxed away is a gift from government. This is a strange position for a libertarian to take!

Other critics say that tax breaks for education (or any other item) distort the market. They also claim that these tax breaks cause income taxes to be higher than they would be without these credits. These critics may have a point, but the answer is to force Congress to cut spending and reduce or eliminate all taxes, not to take away existing tax breaks.

Almost all Americans agree that education should be generously funded. The only question is who should control the education dollar — the federal government or the people. Anyone looking for the answer need only consider how American education has declined as the federal government’s role has increased. Education scholarship tax credits are an important step toward restoring control of education to the American people and providing a quality education to children from low-income families. Congress should help American children and include education scholarship tax credits in the tax reform bill.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

When confronted with the spectacle of the malnourished, the impoverished, the famine stricken, and the desperate, the Australian political instinct is simple: Why did these poor fools get themselves into this mix? With each wave of refugees arriving in the country’s young history, the cold shoulder has mixed with the lukewarm welcome.

At no points have refugees been welcomed so much as grudgingly accepted. Australia, after all, has a humanitarian intake, and boasts about it like a vulnerable child who feels her grades the best in class.

Like a necessary pantomime, Australia’s distant, estranging middle-class tediousness treats human rights as the necessary costume at the international human rights party. To be such an international citizen, conventions are signed, and modestly implemented. Some are even abused with a degree of legalised gusto.

In a country with no bill of rights, it can hardly be any other way. The rights culture, it can be said, is one of smugness and suspicion. Supremacy resides with Parliament, and a misplaced belief that the executive will somehow be compliant.

The sentiment towards refugees and asylum seekers taking the sea route hardened after the 1990s, when the means of arrival became an issue in Australian politics. (You cannot be punished or discriminated against on the manner of travel under the Refugee Convention, but the lawyers were obviously napping at stages.) Decent people, after all, took planes, and if they did arrive by boat, would surely do the appropriate thing and fly a decent class.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the issue of pressing concern was the arrival of Vietnamese boat people fleeing the Communist Republic. Then, as now, the issue of how these people were arriving bothered certain Australian figures, most notably John Howard. Aqueous borne arrivals, notably of the Asiatic sort, terrified him.

The currently broken, and easily refutable theme in the practiced inhumanity against those now defiantly assembled on the closed Manus processing facility at the Lombrum Naval Base, is that of the “market model”. Refugees and asylum seekers should never partake in a system of exchange. Money for passage is a smutty exchange best stamped out.

To that end, refugee and asylum seeker policy in Australia resembles that of a tax meeting or Reserve Bank board gathering. The agenda never changes: what markets are appropriate, and which ones are not?

The market that encourages the pursuit of the Refugee Convention, its articles, its spirit, is discouraged by the denizens of propriety. To flee persecution, harm and mortal risk, forms the quintessence of international refugee law, but best take a number and wait your turn.

The problem with this approach is simple: awaiting that vital turn in this artificially contrived queue can lead to interminable periods of processing, detention and waiting in camps of varying degrees of comfort. Often, these are located in impoverished states. Rarely are they found in wealthier ones.

Inevitably, this situation of crippling stagnation has produced, over the decades, individuals who facilitate the movement of peoples. Money, often life savings, exchange hands. Risky routes are traversed. Death can never be ruled out as a possible outcome.

Rather than providing solace and comfort to those who brave such routes, the propriety-driven market modellers in Australian Immigration and Border Protection prefer to discourage, and criminalise, the smuggler. But more to the point, the product – individuals availing themselves of the means to reach Australia – are also to be criminalised. Like drug producer like drugs; like pornographer, like porn. All, to be frowned upon, jailed, detained.

The reduction of the entire issue to a business model has similarities to another absurd and futile argument: the puritanical efforts to criminalise prostitution. Where there is demand, there will be supply.

As sex has been a commodity for sale since humans discovered the primeval delights, and desperate pitfalls, of copulation, supply has been forthcoming. The only way you abolish prostitution would be to abolish sex, and, perhaps, lobotimise the entire human race. (This is a proposition that would, no doubt, rest well with the Catherine McKinnon-Andrea Dworkin school of totalitarian, and essentially sexless human relations.)

In refugee politics, a similar type of totalitarian thinking on human relations has taken hold. The refugee must be proper, decent, and very well disposed to begin with. Fleeing poverty and bombs, one must do so with a stoic determination without mental strain, concern of debility. But importantly, in fleeing, one should wait one’s turn. Shut up and put up – Australians are generous.

Those who have bucked this have ended up in such places of tragedy and travesty as Nauru and the Manus Island Centre. The Australian state, through its subsidised satraps, has effectively relocated and dehumanised individuals that could have been processed and resettled far more cheaply in Australia. But that would not be proper.

The language of propriety is neatly tied to the language of property, ownership, and liberal market values. It would be inappropriate to pay a smuggler to assist you in discharging obligations due under the Refugee Convention, but it would also be inappropriate to refuse to relocate to other processing centres where safety at the hands of the local population is questionable.

The 570 men who remain at the facility are therefore deemed, in the words of government minister Christopher Pyne, “squatters”.1 They supposedly have a choice, a distinctly bankrupt way of assessing the problem given that they never asked to be placed on Manus to begin with.

These obstinate souls are now told they have three centres to be relocated to in Lorengau, faux refugee Hiltons with running water, food and in some cases spending money, yet refuse to heed the direction of authorities. They are, essentially, asserting rights that Australian and PNG authorities regard as non-existent. Forcible removal is deemed imminent.

The term “squatter” has a curious historical salience: Australia was essentially settled (read conquered, plundered, appropriated) by squatters. Indeed, the entire Australian psyche was shaped by squattocratic values. Fascinating, then, when confronted with such a spectacle, it should offend.

As the Manus Island brutality show persists, human rights advocates issue pleas, politicians in Canberra issue cant-filled rebukes, and officials in the Immigration ministry insist on the nonsensical notion that detaining individuals on land is a humanitarian response to preventing deaths at sea. The mendacity of refugee politics knows no end, but obscene propriety, at whatever cost, shall prevail.

India’s Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on Monday addressed the Indian community in Manila, Philippines.

The Prime Minister said that the ASEAN region is very important for India. He spoke of the long shared heritage and emotional bonding that India has with the ASEAN region. In particular, he mentioned the Buddha and the Ramayana. He said the Indian diaspora in the region has a key role to play in nurturing this heritage.

The Prime Minister said India has never harmed another country. He spoke of the sacrifice of one and a half lakh Indian soldiers, who laid down their lives in distant lands during World Wars 1 and 2.

He said that India’s present too, must be equally bright, and radiant. He said we should do everything possible to ensure that the 21st century, which is termed “Asia’s century” becomes “India’s century.”

The Prime Minister spoke of initiatives such as Jandhan Yojana and Ujjwala Yojana, taken by the Government for empowering the poor. He also mentioned the gains made through Aadhaar linking of subsidy.

Rohingya refugee Senoara Khatun knew nothing about HIV/AIDS until doctors found the immunodeficiency virus in her bloodstream, days after the expectant mother and her husband escaped to Bangladesh last month.

Khatun, 24, was 31 weeks into her term when she received the diagnosis, but it was too late to abort the pregnancy, the physicians told the couple. Khatun gave birth two weeks ago to their first child, a girl named Renu, who, as they feared, was born HIV-positive.

“After arriving here, we went for a regular check-up to see if everything was ok with her pregnancy. Two days later, doctors told us that she had this incurable disease, which could be transmitted to our child,” Khatun’s husband, Mohammad Shajahan, 33, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Khatun and her newborn are among 62 cases of HIV – made up by a majority of women but also including at least 11 children – that have been confirmed in overcrowded Rohingya refugee camps along Bangladesh’s southeastern border, according to Dr. Shaheen Chowdhury, the resident medical officer (RMO) of a government-run hospital in Cox’s Bazar, where the mother and baby are being treated.

One of the 62, a woman, has since died of AIDS. Physicians and other health experts estimate that thousands of refugees in the camps are infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, but have yet to be diagnosed.

“If we come to grips with the actual scale of the problem, it would be very frightening,” Chowdhury, who is overseeing the treatment of HIV positive Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar, the southeastern district that houses the refugee camps and settlements, told BenarNews.

Myanmar – from where 615,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, according to the latest U.N. estimates – has Southeast Asia’s second highest prevalence of HIV after Thailand, with about 230,000 people of the total population of about 51 million, living with the virus as of 2016, according to UNAIDS. Myanmar is one of 35 countries that together account for 90 percent of new infections globally.

“We estimate that at least 5,000 Rohingya, who have arrived in Bangladesh since Aug. 25, are HIV-positive,” Chowdhury said.

A military crackdown Myanmar’s Rakhine state spurred the ongoing influx of refugees. It followed attacks on police and army posts there that were blamed on Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgents. About 1 million Rohingya refugees, including those who fled earlier cycles of violence in Rakhine, are sheltering in southeastern Bangladesh.

Stigma

Adus Salam, a government-appointed civil surgeonin Cox’s Bazar, said more than 2,000 doctors, interns and others were working to detect HIV at the refugee camps in the district.

“A lot of the Rohingya are either unaware they are HIV-positive or they try to hide it due to the stigma attached with the disease,” Salam told BenarNews.

However, of the 62 confirmed cases, only five – like Khatun – were unaware they were carrying the virus, Chowdhury said.

“The remaining 56 cases were detected in Myanmar and the carriers knew they were HIV-positive when they entered Bangladesh,” he said, adding that in many cases, the “reuse of disposable syringes” seemed to be the cause of transmission.

“It is a possibility that hospitals in Myanmar intentionally did this to harm the Rohingya population, but I don’t know. There is no way to confirm that,” he said.

The government of Buddhist-majority Myanmar does not recognize Rohingya Muslims as citizens and refers to them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Its security forces have been blamed for carrying out killings, rapes and arson against the community for decades, in what the U.N. has described as “textbook ethnic cleansing” of the persecuted Muslim minority.

60 hospitalized

While Senoara Khatun declined to be interviewed out of fear her neighbors would shun her if they came to know that she was HIV-positive, her husband, Shajahan, said she frequently fell ill over the last three years.

“Every time we went to a hospital [in Rakhine] they gave her some injections and sent her back. But she never got better,” he said. “We didn’t even know what HIV was until we came to Bangladesh.”

Chowdhury said five of the 60-HIV positive Rohingya who were being treated at his hospital were at “stage three,” meaning they wouldn’t last much longer.

“All HIV patients, including those at stage three, visit the hospital for their antiretroviral treatment and go back to the camps,” he said, adding that hospital staff also provided counseling to the patients and their guardians to help them maintain a positive state of mind.

Shajahan visits the Cox’s Bazar district hospital, which is about 50 km (31 miles) from his camp, almost every week.

“The counselor here tells me about HIV and guides me on ways we can help my wife and my baby lead a near normal life despite the infection. My only aim is to keep my wife and child alive and happy for as long as I can,” he said.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

By Felipe Villamor

Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte and U.S. President Donald Trump touched on the threat posed by the Islamic State (IS) and the ongoing Rohingya crisis in Myanmar during a bilateral meeting in Manila, a joint statement released by the White House said Monday.

Trump arrived in Manila on Sunday at the tail end of a 12-day Asian tour. He met with Duterte on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit attended as well by leaders of China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

“President Trump expressed his condolences for the tragic loss of life in Marawi City at the hands of ISIS-affiliated terrorists, and congratulated the Armed Forces of the Philippines for its success in liberating Marawi,” the statement said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

Trump vowed that the United States would continue its support and assistance for the Philippines’ fight against terrorism, it said. The United States, as well as Australia, provided aerial intelligence support during the Marawi firefights.

Late last month, Manila declared an end to a five-month battle against Islamic State-backed militants in the southern city of Marawi. Officials said the fighting, which included heavy bombing runs by Philippine Air Force jets, killed 930 militants, 165 soldiers and 47 civilians.

‘No boundaries’

In a speech at the summit’s opening ceremony, Duterte underscored that Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore had provided valuable assistance during the fighting that reduced Marawi to a landscape of ruined houses and buildings and displaced its more than 200,000 residents.

He said terrorism and violent extremism endangered peace and stability in the region, which is home to more than 500 million people and at least three Muslim-majority countries – Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The threats posed by radical groups “know no boundaries,” Duterte warned.

“Piracy and armed robbery in the seas put a dent on our growth and disrupt the stability of both regional and global commerce,” he said, while adding that the spread of illegal drugs across borders also endangered the “very fabric of society.”

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the spread of IS, which is also known by its other acronym ISIS, rose “sharply” in recent years in the region “partly inspired by the earlier successes of ISIS in the Middle East.”

But while congratulating the Philippines for ending the Marawi clashes, he said the militants could be biding time before launching more deadly attacks.

“Therefore, it is important to strengthen counter-terrorism cooperation,” he said. “Law-enforcement agencies must continue to coordinate closely, and facilitate the timely exchange of intelligence.”

Rohingya crisis

In their bilateral meeting, Trump and Duterte spoke about the Rohingya crisis gripping Myanmar and Bangladesh, a topic of great concern among ASEAN’s Muslim-majority nations.

The two leaders called for the “expeditious delivery of humanitarian assistance to affected communities to affected communities,” according to the statement, which did not use the word “Rohingya.”

The two leaders “welcomed the Myanmar government’s commitment to end the violence, restore media access, ensure the safe return of displaced persons, and implement all of the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, and urged all parties to support these government commitments,” the statement said.

More than 600,000 people have crossed the border into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, after a violent crackdown by security forces in Buddhist-majority Myanmar against the Rohingya Muslim community. The crackdown followed coordinated attacks on Myanmar police and army posts that were blamed on Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgents.

‘Human rights briefly came up’

Activists were hoping the 40-minute meeting between the two leaders would center on extrajudicial killings, an offshoot of Duterte’s anti-drug crackdown that has left more than 3,000 Filipinos dead, according to official figures.

“The two sides underscored that human rights and the dignity of human life are essential, and agreed to continue mainstreaming the human rights agenda in their national programs to promote the welfare of all sectors, including the most vulnerable groups,” the statement said, listing human rights as the third of 14 topics discussed by the two leaders.

“The conversation focused on ISIS, illegal drugs, and trade. Human rights briefly came up in the context of the Philippines’ fight against illegal drugs,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters.

But Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque told reporters earlier Monday that “the issue of human rights did not arise. It was not brought up.” He later said the leaders had discussed the Philippines’ war on drugs, with Trump appearing sympathetic “unlike previous administrations in the United States.”

South China Sea ‘better left untouched’

Absent from Duterte’s opening remarks was China, which is engaged in territorial dispute with ASEAN members over the South China Sea. Geopolitical analysts have warned that overlapping claims could lead to violence and threaten regional stability.

Last year, The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in favor of the Philippines, and dismissed China’s sweeping territorial claims. Beijing angrily reacted and said it would not heed the ruling.

Four ASEAN members – the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam – as well as Taiwan and China have overlapping claims to islands in the South China Sea. But while all claimants have agreed to maintain the existing state of affairs in the volatile region, China has continued to fortify islands it claims and built land features, according to Philippine defense officials.

ASEAN leaders were expected to introduce the South China Sea item during the Manila meeting, but it was apparently sidestepped after Duterte was called to a meeting with Xi in Vietnam over the weekend, site of the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC) summit.

China earlier this year agreed to begin negotiations with ASEAN for a code of conduct in the region, but a copy of the “chairman’s statement” issued by the host country left the item on South China Sea blank.

In a meeting with businessmen Sunday night before a gala dinner, Duterte said, “And today, China is the No. 1 economic powerhouse. And we have to be friends.

“The South China Sea is better left untouched.”

He said Xi had assured him that his government was not prepared to battle over a strip of tiny, potentially rich islands, situated in a vital sea lane through which an estimated $5 trillion of the world’s trade passes through annually.

“I do not want to waste the lives of my countrymen for a useless war that cannot be won by anybody,” Duterte quoted Xi as telling him.

“He made it clear to us that the only way to go is cooperation. And so I would say that we should open our doors to everybody. Ideological conflicts are no longer in the vogue, it is passé,” Duterte said.

Since assuming the Philippine presidency last year, Duterte has taken steps to repair damaged ties with China. Among his first foreign trips was to Beijing, where he received millions in economic pledges while advocating friendlier relations, a marked departure from an antagonistic stance espoused by his predecessor.

But in moving for closer ties to China, and to Russia – another American rival – Duterte antagonized the United States, the country’s longtime defense ally. After Trump took office in January, relations were put back on track.

By Michael Lelyveld

China’s government has warned of natural gas shortages this winter after ordering northern cities to end reliance on heating from coal.

On Oct. 16, the nation’s top planning agency issued a notice to local authorities and state petroleum producers, warning that gas supplies “will be insufficient” during the peak demand periods of the heating season, which runs from mid-November to mid-March.

With this year’s strong economic growth, gas consumption has “significantly accelerated,” the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said. The strains of a cold winter will make the “supply and demand situation … more severe.”

In a lengthy statement, the NDRC told local governments and enterprises to “strengthen the political consciousness, the overall consciousness, the core consciousness and the conscientious consciousness” to “protect the people’s livelihood.”

State petroleum companies were directed to increase gas production and speed work on pipelines, as well as gas storage projects and infrastructure for imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The NDRC urged improvement of emergency planning, particularly in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region for “extreme conditions with (the) gas peak forecast.”

Press reports drew links between the warning and the government’s accelerated drive to replace coal for heating in smog-bound cities.

“This winter, more homes in China will be heated by natural gas amid Beijing’s push for local governments in the north to use the cleaner-burning fuel,” the South China Morning Post said.

“The irony, however, is there may not be enough to go around,” it said.

The paper said that shortage concerns had already led to price spikes on the Shanghai Petroleum and Gas Exchange and LNG spot markets.

The increases are likely to be reflected in annual contracts being negotiated for next year, the paper said.

The PetroChina subsidiary of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) raised distribution prices for gas supplies to commercial users by 10 to 15 percent, the South China Morning Post reported separately last week.

“The alert shows Beijing is trying to head off supply disruptions during the peak demand period,” Reuters reported.

“Residential users with their radiators will have supply priority over industrial users, increasing the possibility of power losses during gas shortages,” it said.

China’s LNG imports in September were the second-highest on record, the news agency reported.

“We are all quite concerned with supply shortages this winter … as we may not have the infrastructure capacity to catch up with the demand growth,” Li Wei, a vice president of LNG terminal operator Kunlun Energy, was quoted as saying.

End of coal-fired heating

Analysts said the threatened shortage is not only the result of the government’s fuel-switching initiative but also the way it is being implemented.

To avoid a repeat of last winter’s smog crisis, the central government has ordered an end to all coal-fired heating in 28 northern cities for this year’s winter season.

The plan has led to a crash program to scrap coal-fired boilers and build new distribution networks for gas.

“In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and nearby areas, 28 cities will now use only natural gas, electricity and renewable energy,” the official Xinhua news agency said on Sept. 16.

The report did not say what would happen if the mid-November deadline was not met.

Philip Andrews-Speed, a China energy expert at National University of Singapore, said the shortage warning and price spike were results of an arbitrary and abrupt application of the fuel-switching policy.

“Yet another example of the interaction between sudden government command and market forces, combined with the time needed to construct the infrastructure to deliver gas to the users,” Andrews-Speed said by email.

“The companies are struggling to raise gas production as well as building the pipelines and connecting the consumers to offset the enforced decline of coal burning,” he said.

The sudden gas crunch is a sign of how seriously the government has taken the air quality problem this year.

Despite all previous efforts, air pollution worsened in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in the first nine months as concentrations of fine smog-forming particles known as PM2.5 rose about 10 percent from a year before, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said.

In Beijing, levels of larger PM10 particles soared 53.8 percent in September, the official English-language China Daily said.

Last week, as a fresh shroud of smog rolled over Beijing and other northern cities, official media reported a series of annual comparisons covering narrower geographical areas and time frames to argue that pollutant readings had improved.

The weather has not cooperated with the smog reduction campaign.

On Oct. 30, municipal officials in Tianjin announced that central heating would be turned on 15 days earlier than usual due to cold temperatures, Xinhua reported.

So far this year, China’s gas production has fallen behind demand growth.

In the first nine months of the year, gas consumption climbed 15.7 percent from a year earlier, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said. Production in the first three quarters rose 9.1 percent, Bloomberg News said, citing figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Total gas imports by pipeline and LNG tanker rose 5.2 percent in the first nine months from a year earlier, Dow Jones Newswires said.

Unprepared for the consequences

Government authorities appear unprepared for the consequences of their crackdown on coal-fired heating.

Last year, China consumed 205 billion cubic meters (7.2 trillion cubic feet) of gas. International energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie expects demand will rise to 230 billion cubic meters (bcm) this year, with 10 bcm of the increase due to heating needs, Reuters reported.

But China has only 8 bcm of storage capacity, about 4 percent of demand, which is a fraction of the proportion in the United States and Europe, Wood Mackenzie said. The slim reserves may leave little margin for emergencies this winter.

As recently as last November, an expert from the CNPC Research Institute of Economics and Technology estimated that China could have a 50-bcm surplus of gas supplies by 2020 as the result of long-term LNG contracts and pipeline projects.

But that forecast may have no bearing on the short-term problem that China is facing this winter as a result of the government’s drive to end heating with coal.

The unintended effects are reminiscent of last year’s push to cut production overcapacity in the coal and steel industries.

While the government claimed success in meeting and exceeding reduction targets, the threat of short supplies led to steep price increases, spurring mines and mills to boost output — just the opposite of what the policy was supposed to achieve.

In a previous episode of rigid regulation in late 2010, the NDRC ordered a series of arbitrary power cuts in an effort to meet its five-year energy efficiency targets. After an outcry over service disruptions, NDRC officials apologized and promised they would never happen again.

It is unclear how far the NDRC will take the enforcement of its regulatory authority this time.

Bloomberg News quoted one analyst as urging regulators to raise gas prices in order to spur more production. Higher prices would also reduce “unnecessary consumption from low-margin industrial users,” the analyst said.

But Andrews-Speed doubts that price hikes would provide a solution.

“Raising prices in the short-term probably would not make much difference, and if it did, … some end-users might switch back to coal,” he said.

New observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have uncovered the never-before-seen close encounter between two astoundingly bright and spectacularly massive galaxies in the early universe. These so-called hyper-luminous starburst galaxies are exceedingly rare at this epoch of cosmic history — near the time when galaxies first formed — and may represent one of the most-extreme examples of violent star formation ever observed.

Astronomers captured these two interacting galaxies, collectively known as ADFS-27, as they began the gradual process of merging into a single, massive elliptical galaxy. An earlier sideswiping encounter between the two helped to trigger their astounding bursts of star formation. Astronomers speculate that this merger may eventually form the core of an entire galaxy cluster. Galaxy clusters are among the most massive structures in the universe.

“Finding just one hyper-luminous starburst galaxy is remarkable in itself. Finding two of these rare galaxies in such close proximity is truly astounding,” said Dominik Riechers, an astronomer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and lead author on a paper appearing in the Astrophysical Journal. “Considering their extreme distance from Earth and the frenetic star-forming activity inside each, it’s possible we may be witnessing the most intense galaxy merger known to date.”

The ADFS-27 galaxy pair is located approximately 12.7 billion light-years from Earth in the direction of the Dorado constellation. At this distance, astronomers are viewing this system as it appeared when the universe was only about one billion years old.

Astronomers first detected this system with the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory. It appeared as a single red dot in the telescope’s survey of the southern sky. These initial observations suggested that the apparently faint object was in fact both extremely bright and extremely distant. Follow-up observations with the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope confirmed these initial interpretations and paved the way for the more detailed ALMA observations.

With its higher resolution and greater sensitivity, ALMA precisely measured the distance to this object and revealed that it was in fact two distinct galaxies. The pairing of otherwise phenomenally rare galaxies suggests that they reside within a particularly dense region of the universe at that period in its history, the astronomers said.

The new ALMA observations also indicate that the ADFS-27 system has approximately 50 times the amount of star-forming gas as the Milky Way. “Much of this gas will be converted into new stars very quickly,” said Riechers. “Our current observations indicate that these two galaxies are indeed producing stars at a breakneck pace, about one thousand times faster than our home galaxy.”

The galaxies — which would appear as flat, rotating disks — are brimming with extremely bright and massive blue stars. Most of this intense starlight, however, never makes it out of the galaxies themselves; there is simply too much obscuring interstellar dust in each.

This dust absorbs the brilliant starlight, heating up until it glows brightly in infrared light. As this light travels the vast cosmic distances to Earth, the ongoing expansion of the universe shifts the once infrared light into longer millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, all thanks to the Doppler effect.

ALMA was specially designed to detect and study light of this nature, which enabled the astronomers to resolve the source of the light into two distinct objects. The observations also show the basic structures of the galaxies, revealing tail-like features that were spun-off during their initial encounter.

The new observations also indicate that the two galaxies are about 30,000 light-years apart, moving at roughly several hundred kilometers per second relative to each other. As they continue to interact gravitationally, each galaxy will eventually slow and fall toward the other, likely leading to several more close encounters before merging into one massive, elliptical galaxy. The astronomers expect this process to take a few hundred million years.

“Due to their great distance and dustiness, these galaxies remain completely undetected at visible wavelengths,” noted Riechers. “Eventually, we hope to combine the exquisite ALMA data with future infrared observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. These two telescopes will form an astronomer’s ‘dream team’ to better understand the nature of this and other such exceptionally rare, extreme systems.”

More than one-third of Latinos interviewed in a recent study believe science education may have a negative impact on the religious faith of their children, according to new research from sociologists at Rice University.

The study examined the relationship between STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and religious faith from the perspective of blacks and Latinos, two groups that are among the most religious in the U.S. Study authors Daniel Bolger, a Rice Ph.D. student, and Elaine Howard Ecklund, founding director of the Religion and Public Life Program and the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences, conducted the study to investigate what impact parents think science education will have on their children’s faith.

“Despite notable gains over the past 50 years, blacks and Latinos remain less likely than whites and most groups of Asians to pursue STEM careers,” Bolger said. “However, previous research also suggests that churches help promote positive educational outcomes. We were very interested in examining the connection between science education and faith for individuals who attend black and Latino churches to see if we could understand more about why these disparities in pursuit of STEM careers persist.”

Key findings from the study include:

• Forty-three percent of Latinos interviewed believe science education could have a negative effect on a child’s religious faith, compared with just 8 percent of African-Americans.
• Nineteen percent of African-Americans interviewed believe science education could have a positive effect on a child’s religious faith, compared with 14 percent of Latino respondents.
• More than half (54 percent) of African-Americans interviewed said that the effect of science education on a child’s religious faith depends on the influence of the family and the religious community, compared with just 21 percent of Latinos.
• Nineteen percent of African-Americans interviewed said they were unconcerned about education affecting the faith of their children in any way, compared with 21 percent of Latinos.

Ecklund, the study’s principal investigator, said that while these interview findings are not representative of the entire population, they do uncover important relationships that ought to be studied further in larger studies that are more representative.

“They also start an important move to take seriously the opinions of black and Latino congregants in the religion and science debates,” Ecklund said.

Both Bolger and Ecklund hope that the research will help move discussions of religion and science education beyond debates about curriculum to exploring how perceptions of bias might shape the educational aspirations of religious students in black and Latino communities.

The researchers conducted qualitative interviews with 40 study participants (14 Latinos and 26 African-Americans) from four religious congregations in two urban areas. These people were selected from the larger Religious Understandings of Science study, which included a survey of over 10,000 people and in-depth interviews with 319 participants. The study focused on how both religious and nonreligious people perceive science.

Whether or not the corruption scandals hounding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lead to his sacking matters little. Though nearly half of Israelis polled in July — well before the scandals took a much dirtier turn — believe that he is corrupt, a majority said they would still vote for him.

A recent survey conducted by Israel’s Channel 10 TV concluded that if general elections were held today, Netanyahu would garner 28 percent while his closest contenders, Avi Gabbay of the Zionist Camp and Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, would each gather 11 percent of the vote.

“The next stage, which is drawing near, is for the citizens of Israel to re-elect a criminal as their leader and entrust their fate to him,” leading Israeli columnist Akiva Eldar wrote in response to Netanyahu’s continued popularity despite accusations of corruption and repeated police investigations. But Eldar should not be surprised. Political corruption, bribery and misuse of public funds have been the norm, not the exception, in Israeli politics.

Alex Roy puts it more succinctly in a recent piece in the Times of Israel: “The fact that (Netanyahu) still has a good chance of being the prime minister after these coming elections says more about how used to corruption we have become than how clean he is.” Roy wrote that his country “has gotten used to political criminals” simply because “each prime minister over the last quarter century has at some point faced criminal charges.”

He is right, but there are two major points that are missing in the discussion that had been, until recently, mostly confined to Israeli media. First, the nature of the suspected misconduct of Netanyahu is different from that of his predecessors. This matters greatly.

Second, Israeli society’s apparent acceptance of corrupt politicians might have less to do with the assumption that they have “gotten used” to the idea, and more with the fact that the culture as a whole has grown corrupt. And there is a reason for it.

Netanyahu’s alleged corruption is rather different from that of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was corrupt in the old-fashioned way. In 2006, Olmert was found guilty of accepting bribes while serving as mayor of Jerusalem. In 2012, he was convicted for breach of trust and bribery, this time as prime minister. In 2015, he was

sentenced to six years in prison.
Other top Israeli officials were also indicted, including President Moshe Katsav, who was convicted of rape and obstruction of justice. These charges remained largely confined to a person or two, making the nature of the conspiracy quite limited.  Israeli and Western media pundits used such prosecutions to make a point regarding the ‘health’ of Israel’s democracy, especially when compared with its Arab neighbors.

Things are different under Netanyahu. Corruption in Israel is becoming more like mafia operations, roping in elected civil servants, military brass, top lawyers and large conglomerates. The nature of the investigations that are closing in on Netanyahu points to this fact.

He is embroiled in File 1,000, where he and his wife accepted gifts of large financial value from renowned Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan in exchange for favors that, if confirmed, required Netanyahu to use his political influence as prime minister.

File 2,000 is the Yisrael Hayom affair. In this case, Netanyahu reached a secret deal with the publisher of the leading Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Arnon Mozes. According to the deal, the newspaper agreed to cut down on its criticism of Netanyahu’s policies in exchange for the latter’s promise to decrease the sale of rival newspaper Yisrael Hayom.

Yisrael Hayom is owned by pro-Israeli American business tycoon Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu’s close and powerful ally until news of the Yedioth deal surfaced. Since then, Yisrael Hayom has turned against Netanyahu.

File 3,000 is the German submarines affair. Top national security advisors, all very closely aligned to Netanyahu, were involved in the purchase of German submarines that were deemed unnecessary, yet cost the government billions of dollars. Large sums of this money were syphoned by Netanyahu’s inner circle and transferred to secret, private bank accounts. This case, in particular, is significant regarding widespread corruption in Israel’s uppermost circles.

Central to this investigation are the cousins and two closest confidantes of Netanyahu: His personal lawyer David Shimron, and Israel’s de-facto Foreign Minister Isaac Molcho. The latter has managed to build an impressive but largely hidden network for Netanyahu, where the lines of foreign policy, massive government contracts and personal business dealings are largely blurred.

There is also the Bezeq affair involving Israeli telecommunication giant Bezeq and Netanyahu’s political ally and friend Shlomo Filber. Netanyahu was communication minister until he was ordered by a court to step down in 2016. According to media reports, his handpicked replacement Filber served the role of spy for the telecommunication powerhouse, to ensure critical government decisions were communicated in advance to the company.

Most intriguing about Netanyahu’s corruption is that it is not a reflection of him alone: This is layered corruption, involving a large network of Israel’s upper echelons. There is more to the Israeli public’s willingness to accept corruption than its inability to stop it.
Corruption in Israeli society has become particularly endemic since the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The idea that ordinary Israelis can move into a Palestinian house, evict the family and claim the house as their own with the full support of the military, government and courts exemplifies moral corruption to the highest degree.

It was only a matter of time before this massive corruption racket — military occupation, the settlement enterprise and the media whitewashing of Israeli crimes — seeped back into mainstream Israeli society, which has become rotten to the core. While Israelis might have “gotten used” to their own corruption, Palestinians have not, because the price of Israel’s moral corruption is too high for them to bear.

Manifestations of Zika virus (ZIKV) infection differ drastically. Sometimes they are catastrophic, most notably when they cause microcephaly in some babies born to infected mothers. At other times, they are mild and fleeting, suggesting that unknown factors temper Zika infections’ severity. Recently, dengue virus emerged as a prime suspect because it shares many genetic and structural characteristics with ZIKV and is endemic in most of the regions affected by Zika’s global spread.

A study published the November 13, 2017, issue of Nature Communications by La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LJI) investigator Sujan Shresta, Ph.D., now addresses interplay between dengue and ZIKV infections. It reports that mice rendered immune to dengue show “cross-protection” from subsequent Zika infection and then identifies specific types of immune T-cells capable of defending against both viruses. These revelations have profound implications for efforts to build a potent anti-Zika vaccine.

“In some parts of the world Zika is almost like a secondary infection. It has spread into Brazil/Latin America and is moving into places in Asia where people previously had dengue,” says Shresta, an associate professor in LJI’s Center for Infectious Disease. “Our new work suggests that vaccines targeting either virus could be engineered to induce both T cell and antibody responses effective to protect people in these areas.”

When one encounters a pathogen in real life, two arms of the immune system spring into action to neutralize it. In the so-called humoral response, B-cells begin to secrete specific antibody proteins, which latch onto and neutralize pathogens in tissue or blood. Simultaneously, a cell-mediated immunity system also becomes active, deploying cytotoxic T-cells to directly recognize and kill pathogen-infected cells.

In theory, the ideal vaccine might mimic both antibody and T cell responses to block an infectious disease. But in truth, most (26 of 28 vaccines currently licensed for human use) stimulate primarily a B-cell or antibody response, which in many cases is sufficient. But Shresta’s new work confirms what many vaccinologists are beginning to suspect, namely that protection against thus far intractable pathogens will likely require rallying both B-cells and T-cells.

Specifically, Shresta’s team created the first “sequential” mouse model mimicking dengue-then-Zika infection. To do that, they first infected mice genetically vulnerable to to this family of viruses with dengue virus. Those mice became sick, recovered from infection, and hence acquired immunity to dengue, presumably because viral infection had mobilized their immune B-cells, T-cells or both. The group then inoculated the same mice with ZIKV and waited to see if mice showed ZIKV symptoms. But overall, mice that had previously acquired dengue immunity showed protection against Zika, as evidenced by a reduced burden of ZIKV in blood and tissues, such as brain, liver or testis, compared to control mice not “pre-inoculated” against dengue.

“These experiments suggest that the reason that some people infected with Zika do not come down with disease is due to prior exposure to dengue,” says Shresta. “This may explain why Zika is not passed to the unborn child of every pregnant woman in dengue-endemic countries exposed to virus.”

In a different experiment, the scientists isolated cytotoxic T cells from the blood of dengue-immune mice and infused them into normal mice, a procedure known as adoptive T-cell transfer. When infused mice were then infected with ZIKV, they also showed disease resistance, supporting the idea that the T-cell arm of the immune system can do the heavy lifting against ZIKV infection.

Jinsheng Wen, Ph.D., a professor at Wenzhou Medical University in Wenzhou City, China, was the study’s first author. Wen says the results from this work are a powerful lesson to vaccinologists currently wrestling with how to design an effective Zika vaccine: “Our work strongly suggests that a successful vaccine would need to include components to induce not only a B-cell response but also a T-cell response.” Today, anti-dengue vaccines that primarily evoke antibody responses are in clinical trials or starting to be licensed in certain countries but show only moderate success. And, there are no approved Zika vaccines, although the US government is partnering with pharmaceutical companies to develop candidates.

Shresta hopes work like hers will guide those efforts. “Approved vaccines for many diseases work by inducing antibody responses. But now we are dealing with problematic diseases, like dengue and Zika for which we cannot rely solely on raising antibodies. Certain pathogens are likely to also require a T-cell response.”

Leaders and members of unregistered religious groups in Vietnam were detained in their homes as APEC leaders met in Da Nang Nov. 6-11.

Hua Phi, a leader of the Cao Dai indigenous faith, said five security officers on Nov.4 ordered him not to leave his home until the APEC summit ended on Nov.11.

Hua Phi said the security officers threatened that if he did not obey their order, he would be detained.

“Although I strongly protested, many plainclothes police have stationed around my home around the clock,” said Hua Phi, who is based in Lam Dong Province of the central highlands.

The leader said members of the Vietnam-based Interfaith Council of Vietnam have been closely followed by security officers.

Hua Phi is one of 27 council members from unregistered faiths working together to protect themselves from government persecution.

In the southern province of An Giang which is home to followers of the Hoa Hao Buddhist sect, police prevented many people from leaving their homes.

Ha Van Duy Ho, a local Hoa Hao leader, said on Nov. 8 while he traveled by boat to Long Xuyen city, police stopped the vessel and forced him to return home.

“Police tried to prevent us from going to Da Nang to present abuses of religious freedom to world leaders,” he said.

A Hoa Hao source said the government increases its crackdown on unregistered religious groups for fear that they will inform international delegates about abuses of religious freedom and human rights.

“Such actions make the communist government undervalued by the international community,” the source said.

By Alicia Buller

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s position hung in the balance on Monday amid reports that dozens of MPs were backing a move to oust the PM, whose leadership has been battered by a string of scandals and crises.

The British pound sank Monday on uncertainty surrounding May’s future, but UK multinational shares were buoyed by the sliding currency, dealers said.

The Sunday Times reported that 40 ministers in the ruling Conservative Party have agreed to sign a letter of no confidence in the prime minister, just eight short of the number needed to trigger a leadership contest.

May’s leadership was further weakened after two British Cabinet ministers were forced to resign in recent weeks, one over sexual harassment and the other for a series of unauthorized meetings with Israeli officials.

May has been struggling to maintain her authority in the face of a lack of a parliamentary majority, ongoing party infighting and complex Brexit negotiations.

The government is also under pressure to meet a two-week deadline set by the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier on Friday for a deal on exit terms ahead of the December EU summit.

“All arrows point toward change in the near future,” Matthew Goodwin, Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent and an associate fellow at Chatham House, said of the increasingly precarious nature of May’s tenure. Goodwin told Arab News that Theresa May’s position has never looked so uncertain.

The professor said: “She faces multiple pressures: Growing calls to resign from within the Conservative parliamentary party, leadership rivals jockeying for position inside her own Cabinet, a public that has become far more dissatisfied with her handling of Brexit, businesses that are unhappy with the lack of clarity on the Brexit deal, and on top of all of that, a fragile economy.”

Tony Travers, director of the Institute of Public Affairs at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told Arab New that May faces a “startling” number of difficulties.

Travers said: “She lacks a parliamentary majority, she faces complex Brexit negotiations and scandals at Westminster. Each of these challenges interacts with the others. There is little clarity as to where the UK government is heading, either in relation to its future relationship with the European Union or in terms of economic policy. Only time can sort all this out.”

By Marija Ristic and Filip Rudic

Serbia’s prosecution told BIRN that the indictment of 11 people who allegedly helped Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic hide in Belgrade while he was a fugitive has been declared a state secret.

The Serbian public prosecutor’s office has rejected a request to provide BIRN with the indictment against 11 people who were tried for helping former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic to hide while he was on the run from an international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

The prosecutor’s office said that the indictment had been classified as confidential because releasing it could damage Serbia’s reputation internationally.

“The First Basic Public Prosecution has the requested information which is labelled a state secret, as in the abovementioned case there is great danger to society due to criminal actions that may have as a consequence endangered the international reputation and status of the Republic of Serbia,” it said in a written response to BIRN’s request.

After Mladic’s arrest in 2011, many former officials, including former President Boris Tadic, claimed that the former Bosnian Serb general had the active support of senior Serbian military and state security staff who often leaked information to him and his aides to help him dodge arrest. No charges have been raised in connection with these allegations.

BIRN has previously reported that the Serbian army and police systematically obstruct public access to information that could expose their officers’ involvement in wrongdoing during the 1990s wars.

According to Serbian law, an indictment is a public document, but in some cases prosecutors redact some information in order to protect privacy.

However, to BIRN’s knowledge, no indictments have ever been declared a state secret until now.

The director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, Milan Antonijevic, also said he could not recall any such incident.

“They can increase the secrecy level of certain parts of the document but… the document in its entirety cannot be declared a secret,” Antonijevic told BIRN.

Lawyer Marina Kljaic, who follows war crime trials for the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, also said she had never heard of such a case.

Kljaic said that once an indictment is confirmed, there is no legal basis in the criminal procedure code for it to be declared a state secret.

The defendants in the trial, Marko Lugonja, Stanko Ristic, Ljiljana Vaskovic, Borislav Ivanovic, Predrag Ristic, Sasa Badnjar, Ratko Vucetic, Tatjana Janjusevic Vaskovic, Bojan Vaskovic and Blagoja Govedarica, were charged with hiding Mladic in an attempt to prevent his extradition to the UN court in The Hague.

In August this year, the Serbian Appeals Court acquitted all of them except Lugonja, who admitted his guilt and was sentenced to six months in prison.

Mladic – whose trial verdict is due to be pronounced in The Hague on November 22 – was on the run for 16 years, evading charges of genocide and war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He was finally arrested in 2011 while hiding at a relative’s house in the village of Lazarevo in Serbia.

He fled Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996 and it is believed he spent most of his time as a fugitive at various locations in Serbia.

From 1996 to 2003, when Serbian authorities adopted a law on cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, Mladic had the support of Yugoslav Army personnel and a special unit of mainly Bosnian Serb army officers to assist him.

At that time, Mladic mostly lived in his apartment in Belgrade and was often seen in public.

At the end of 2002, when the UN court intensified its cooperation with the Serbian authorities, Mladic turned for help to his closest associates, including former Bosnian Serb intelligence chief Zdravko Tolimir, who was also wanted by the Hague Tribunal for genocide in Srebrenics.

Once Tolimir was arrested, Mladic relied on his family to help him evade capture. For most of that time, Mladic lived in various apartments in and around Belgrade.

By Peter Kellner*

(EurActiv) — It remains improbable but it is no longer impossible: Theresa May’s government could collapse before Brexit takes effect. The United Kingdom could end up with a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn. We are no longer undertaking an exercise in fantasy to ask what he would do.

The answer is not simple. Throughout his career, Corbyn has been a consistent opponent of “Europe.” He is a left-wing socialist who has always regarded Brussels as the headquarters of a capitalist conspiracy against the workers. In 1975, he campaigned for the UK to leave the Common Market, as the EU was then called.

He voted against the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, saying that it “takes away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation, and high unemployment throughout the European Community”.

He also opposed the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 on the grounds that the EU had “always suffered a serious democratic deficit”.

In last year’s Brexit referendum, however, Corbyn grudgingly accepted that, as the leader of an overwhelmingly pro-EU party, he had to recommend a vote for Remain. But he did so half-heartedly. When one interviewer asked him to rate the merits of the EU on a scale of one to ten, he awarded them a lukewarm “seven.”

It was scarcely a ringing endorsement of EU membership, and he refused to play an active part in the cross-party Remain campaign. He did not sound distraught, as many Labour politicians did, when the referendum result was announced.

Since then, Labour’s overall policy has been much the same as the government’s—for the UK to have its cake and eat it: that is, to accept the referendum verdict but seek a deal with the other 27 EU member states that maintains as many of the benefits of membership as possible while shedding the costs and responsibilities.

One does not need a master’s degree in negotiation theory to see that such a deal is unlikely. Indeed, if May’s government collapses, it may well be because the talks break down, or lead to a deal that Britain’s parliament does not accept. An incoming Corbyn government may be faced with a binary choice: hard Brexit, without a deal—or no Brexit at all.

(We should note, in passing, that May has refused to confirm or deny that ministers have received legal advice that the UK could rescind its decision to leave the EU at any time up to March 2019. And Lord Kerr, who drafted Article 50, says that the UK has every legal right to change its mind.)

So, which way would Corbyn jump? The clues from this year suggest that he would end up keeping the UK in the EU.

The Labour Party manifesto for the June general election went far further than the Conservatives’ in spelling out the benefits of membership that it would like to keep: the single market; the customs union; cooperation on climate change, refugees, and terrorism; Horizon 2020; Euratom; Erasmus; the European Medicines Agency; the European Arrest Warrant; and all EU rules on workers’ rights, consumer rights, and environmental protection.

There has been some confusion among leading Labour MPs since the election about whether the party wants these institutional arrangements to remain—or would accept new arrangements that simply happen to look like the old ones. If the latter were the case the UK would, for example, no longer be in the single market, but would trade with the EU for all practical purposes as if it were.

Increasingly that confusion is being dispelled. Keir Starmer, Labour’s highly respected shadow minister for Brexit, has been edging the party’s formal position toward wanting the UK to remain in the single market and customs union, not just seeking a relationship that looks like them. The logic of Starmer’s position is clear. If the UK does end up facing a binary choice, “No Brexit” would be vastly preferable to “Hard Brexit.”

However, do not expect him, even less Corbyn, to say that anytime soon. While Labour MPs and rank-and-file party members overwhelmingly want the UK to remain in the EU, many Labour voters, especially in the party’s traditional heartlands in the Midlands and the North of England, voted Leave last year.

And Corbyn himself is torn between two small groups of people close to him: those in his office who remain anti-Brussels hardline socialists, and trade union leaders who helped him become party leader and who fear that Brexit would be bad for their members’ jobs.

For the time being, then, Labour’s formal position is intellectually incoherent. At the same time, it is turning out to be politically useful. The leadership is biding its time while internal arguments are thrashed out behind closed doors. It is also waiting to see how the current Brexit negotiations in Brussels play out.

Which brings us back to the point that Labour’s policy will become relevant if, and only if, Theresa May’s government loses control of parliament. If that happens, it will mean that the talks have gone badly—in which case, Labour can complete its journey toward keeping the UK in the EU. Labour could blame the Conservatives for causing a crisis and proclaim a partisan slogan that might be highly effective: “No to Tory Brexit.”

*Peter Kellner is a journalist, political commentator, and former president of YouGov. This opinion piece was first published on Carnegie Europe’s website.

An unprecedented scandal broke out between Russia and India with Moscow suspecting that New Delhi granted US Navy representatives access to the Russian nuclear submarine of Project 971i, operated by the Indian Navy since 2011. According to Kommersant, the incident threatens to seriously complicate negotiations both on the lease of the second nuclear submarine, and on other projects in the field of military-technical cooperation between the two countries.

Several sources in Russian state structures have confirmed that with the newspaper saying that the Indian partners have recently committed several “unfriendly acts towards Russia.” First, according to them, the US Navy delegation visited the aircraft carrier Vikramaditya (property of the Indian Navy) and Russian officials were forced to issue a note of protest. After some time, a high-ranking military source told Kommersant, the American delegation was already on board the Chakra.

Kommersant’s source working in the military technical cooperation system, called the fact that the US Navy appeared on a Russian submarine (located on the base near Vishakhapatnam, pending repairs) outrageous. “There were well-trained technical specialists, though unlikely to get any real information,” the source said.

According to the newspaper, this whole string of incidents can have a very adverse impact on defense cooperation between the two countries, which has been successfully developing over the past five years. According to several sources, specialized Russian structures are preparing retaliatory measures against their Indian partners. “Very difficult conversations are on the horizon, we have a lot of questions,” a source said. Some who spoke to Kommersant believe that, in particular, the negotiations on leasing the second nuclear submarine, which the Indian Navy planned to obtain from Russia, will be seriously complicated.

According to Kommersant, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who intends to come to India in December with one of the largest deals on Russian arms, will have to iron out the problems that have accumulated. In addition to the Chakra issue, he must negotiate the creation of a fifth-generation fighter under an agreement which was signed back in 2007, but neither the airplane’s conception nor its financial parameters have been determined yet.

By Deepak Kumar Nayak*

On November 8, 2017, two Railway Protection Force (RPF) troopers were attacked by cadres of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) at the Bacheli Railway Station in Bastar District of Chhattisgarh. Both the troopers were found with their throats slit. While one of them succumbed at the incident site, another was rushed to a nearby hospital where his condition is said to be very critical.

On October 5, 2017, CPI-Maoist cadres killed a villager, identified as Imra Kabasi, in the Bapanapalli area under Padia Police limits in the Malkangiri District of Odisha. The Maoists dragged Imra to the nearby forest and slit his throat, suspecting him of being a Police informer.

Earlier, on August 7, 2017, a group of 50 armed CPI-Maoist cadres killed Nandapur Sarpanch (head of the Panchayat, village level local self Government institution), Jaga Khara, by slitting his throat at Hatibari village under Padua Police limits in Koraput District of Odisha, alleging he was a Police informer.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, the Maoists have killed at least 13 persons using barbaric methods such as slitting the throat, hacking or beheading, including 10 civilians (including one surrendered Maoist) and three Security Force (SF) personnel, in 13 separate incidents so far in 2017 (all data till November 12, 2017). These brutal killings were spread across four Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected States. Odisha recorded five such fatalities (four civilians and one SF trooper); followed by Chhattisgarh with four fatalities (two civilians including the surrendered Maoist and two SF personnel); Bihar with three fatalities, all civilians; and Jharkhand with one civilian fatality. The total combined civilian and SF fatalities in Maoist violence across the country stands at 158 in 2017 (87 civilians and 71 SF personnel).

During the corresponding period of 2016, there were at least 19 comparably brutal killings, including 17 civilians and two SF personnel, in 16 such separate incidents, across four LWE-affected States in India. Odisha recorded a total of nine such fatalities, all civilians; followed by Chhattisgarh with seven fatalities (five civilians and two SFs); Jharkhand with three fatalities, all civilians; and Andhra Pradesh with two civilian fatalities. In the remaining period of 2016, another two such fatalities were reported: one civilian each from Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

There were 22 such fatalities in 2015, six in 2014; 10 in 2013; 17 in 2012; 29 in 2011; 30 in 2010; 51 in 2009; 20 in 2008; 12 in 2007; nine in 2006; and three in 2005.

Maoists have used these barbaric methods of eliminating adversaries since the formation of the CPI-Maoist on September 21, 2004. According to partial data collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 243 persons, including 218 civilians (out of which six were surrendered Maoists), and 25 SF personnel, have been killed using these barbaric methods across eight LWE-affected States. The total combined civilian and SFs fatalities, during this period was 4,958.

According to the SATP database, the first such killing after the formation of the CPI-Maoist was registered on July 5, 2005, when Maoist cadres slit the throat and beheaded three members of the Shanti Sena (peace army), an anti-Naxalite (anti-LWE) ‘resistance force’, after seizing all their belongings and destroying their houses, at Khairpani village in the Gumla District of Jharkhand.

Jharkhand recorded the highest number, 62, of brutal executions by the Maoists during this period; followed by Chhattisgarh, 58; Odisha, 53; Bihar, 31; West Bengal, 18; Maharashtra, 13; Andhra Pradesh, seven; and Uttar Pradesh, one. As a percentage of total killings, however, Odisha tops the list with 10.11 per cent [number of such killings out of all civilian and SF killings in the State], followed by Bihar (6.39 per cent), Jharkhand (6.35 per cent), Maharashtra (4.27 per cent), Chhattisgarh (3.35 per cent), West Bengal (2.95 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (2.72 per cent), if Uttar Pradesh is excluded. Two fatalities were reported in UP, of which one fell in this category.

An overview of these executions indicates that the Maoists have killed most of their victims using these methods because the suspected them of being Police informers. A total of 629 alleged Police informers have been killed by the Maoists since the formation of the groups (data till November 12, 2017).

These barbaric methods remain unabated despite the fact that the Maoists have ‘expressed regret’ in some such cases in the past. Indeed, after the killing of Francis Induwar, on October 6, 2009, the then ‘spokesperson’ and a ‘Central Committee (CC)’ member of the CPI-Maoist, Cherukuri Rajkumar aka Azad, while he justified the use of violence on the grounds that it was in defence of the poor and unarmed, conceded that the beheading of Francis Induvar was an aberration that would not be repeated. Induwar who was an inspector with the State Special Branch (Jharkhand Police), was abducted on September 30, 2009, by the Maoists from Hembrom Bazaar in Khunti District and was subsequently killed on October 6, 2009, after the Maoist demand for the release of three of their leaders – Kobad Ghandy, Chattradhar Mahato, and Chandra Bhushan Yadav – in return for Induwar’s safe release, was denied.

With Maoists rapidly losing ground, and a rising incidence of specific intelligence operational successes by the SFs, the orchestration of such killings reflects a desire to create terror among people. These executions are intended to act as a deterrent against any attempt to ‘spy’ on Maoists activities or to help the Police in any other manner.

Indeed, in a review meeting held at an undisclosed location in early 2017, the CPI-Maoist concluded that their armed struggle was undergoing a “difficult phase”. Of 16 Maoist strongholds across India, the resolution spoke of “setbacks” in some, and a weakening of the movement in others. However, as K. Srinivas Reddy, the editor of Telangana Today, who accessed the party resolution noted,

This is not to say that there were no deadly raids against security forces by the party’s armed wing, the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA). They still have military might. But the movement is losing its political force.

Given the reverses the Maoists continue to suffer, they are likely to intensify acts to terrorize local populations. SFs are going to be hard pressed to prevent these actions in areas of receding Maoist influence. Only a continued intensification of SF operations can keep the Maoists off balance and on the run. Where local population progressively turn away from the Maoists and specially where they actively assist the Police, their protection must be an overwhelming priority for the SFs.

*Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant; Institute for Conflict Management

US Vice President Mike Pence welcomed Monday to the White House Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin to reaffirm the strong and enduring cooperation between the United States and the Holy See.

According to the White House, the leaders underscored the fundamental values shared by the United States and the Holy See and their mutual commitment to engage globally to promote human rights, combat human suffering, and protect religious freedom.

The Vice President expressed gratitude for the Holy See’s efforts to restore democracy in Venezuela and looked forward to Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Burma and Bangladesh.

The leaders agreed on the need to address humanitarian and stabilization needs across Iraq and Syria, including for Christians and other vulnerable minority communities, the White House said.

The Vice President also commended the Holy See’s efforts to counter trafficking in persons and expressed the desire to expand cooperation between the United States and the Holy See on this issue, which is a priority for the Administration.

By Giriraj Bhattacharjee*

The third round of talks between the Government of India (GoI) and the Working Committee of the Naga National Political Groups (NNPG), a grouping of six armed Naga militant formations, reportedly took place in New Delhi between November 1 and November 3, 2017. GoI was represented by the Union Government’s interlocutor for Naga Talks, R. N. Ravi. NNPG was led by the convener of its Working Committee N. Kitovi Zhimomi, who is also the General Secretary of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland – Neokpao-Kitovi (NSCN-NK). Other members of the NNPG include NSCN-Reformation faction (NSCN-R) and four factions of Naga National Council (NNC) – Federal Government of Nagaland (FGN), NNC-Parent Body, Non-Accordist faction of NNC/National People’s Government of Nagaland (NPGN/NNC-NA), and Government Democratic Republic of Nagaland /NNC-NA (GDRN). On December 14, 2016, these groups, at the behest of the Nagaland Tribes Council (NTC), a civil society organisation, had come together in Dimapur to constitute a Working Committee to steer a ‘permanent solution’ to the ‘Naga issue’. The NNPG is led by Zhimomi and includes the ‘co- conveners’ of the Working Group, Zhopra Vero Kedallo (FGN), Hozheto Chophy (NPGN/NNC, NA), V. Nagi (NNC-Parent Body), Kiumukam Yimchunger (GDRN/NNC, NA), Wangtin Naga (NSCN-R), and Alezo Venuh (NSCN-NK).

Though no further details are available about the talks, media reports stated that Nagaland Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang, who was present in New Delhi ‘with his team’, met the NNPG leaders on November 4, 2017. After the meeting with the Chief Minister, NNPG leaders stated that they impressed upon the ‘visiting team’ to continue working towards ensuring a ‘final settlement’ of the Naga Political issue that is “inclusive, honourable and acceptable to all for long standing peace in the State.”

Earlier, the second round of talks between GoI and NNPG had taken place at Dimapur (Nagaland) on October 23, 2017. The meeting was held behind closed doors with the GoI team led by R.N. Ravi and NNPG by Kitovi Zhimomi. According to reports, the discussions focused mainly on issues of principle, without delving into the specifics. In an interview with Nagaland Post, Ravi disclosed that the October 23 meeting was on ‘substantive issue’ and ‘business-like’. Separately, Zhimomi had stated that NNPG had set in motion the process of political negotiations with GoI on the basis of “historical and political rights of the Naga people for self determination and identity.”

Significantly, the first round of talks between the two sides had taken place on September 27, 2017. GoI representative Ravi met an 18-member delegation led by NNPG Working Group convener Zhimomi. According to a Press Release issued on the same day by the media cell of the NNPG, the Working Group and GoI “officially began a political dialogue today [September 27], to resolve the protracted Indo-Naga political issue.” The release added that during the talks Ravi pointed out that the “moment was a historic one for both the Center and the Nagas as the effort was aimed towards resolving a seventy year old political problem through dialogue.” The interlocutor had also stressed on the principle of equality, mutual respect and trust for resolving the issue and urged the Naga delegation “to be realistic and not dwell on rhetoric.”

With this initiative almost all the known armed Naga outfits based in Nagaland have come under ambit of negotiation for a ‘final settlement’. This is, indeed, a major success, as the Union Government had earlier called for wider participation, and had signed the Framework Agreement with the Isak-Muivah faction of NSCN (NSCN-IM) on August 3, 2015. In an exclusive interview to Nagaland Post on May 15, 2015, Ravi had categorically stated that his approach was to take the entire Naga society on board. Elaborating further he had clarified that “there is nothing called settlement with NSCN-IM as it is a settlement of the Naga issue.”

Nevertheless, worries persist. Talks with NSCN-IM continue to drag on. Reports indicate that the talks have hit hurdles due to NSCN-IM’s insistence on a separate constitution for the proposed ‘Nagalim’. An unnamed ‘senior functionary’ of NSCN-IM reportedly asserted, “Having a separate constitution for the Nagas has become the bone of contention in the talks.” Earlier, on August 13, 2016, a joint communiqué was issued by both NSCN-IM ‘general secretary’ Thuingaleng Muivah and R. N. Ravi in which it was stated, “We assure the people that the talks have been progressing in the right direction with determination. We are closer than ever before to the final settlement and hope to conclude it sooner (rather) than later.”

At this juncture widening the arc of talks may, in fact, have the potential to irk NSCN-IM, which has always claimed to be the ‘sole representative of the Naga people’. In a statement issued on April 3, 2015, NSCN-IM ‘general secretary’ T. Muivah had claimed that “the GoI [Government of India] and the Nagas represented by the NSCN are in the process of working out an honourable political solution acceptable to both.”

It may, however, be a case that the Government has reached out to the new grouping with the tacit support of the NSCN-IM. The implications of the new initiative, however, remain to be seen. Indeed, according to an August 24, 2017, report on the issue of the Government’s desire to take all Naga factions on board for the ‘final agreement’, an unnamed NSCN-IM source had said that it is understood that the Centre wanted other groups to accept the agreed points with the NSCN-IM and accept the final accord. Significantly, on September 13, 2015, NNC had stated that any agreement arrived between the NSCN-IM and New Delhi would be “invalid” because the Naga people have, at no point of time, given the mandate to NSCN-IM or any other group other than NNC to negotiate on the Naga issue.

Moreover, the Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K), presently the most violently active group in the region, continues to remain out of the ambit of talks. On March 31, 2015, NSCN-K had unilaterally abridged the CFA signed between the outfit and the Union Government on April 28, 2001. Subsequently, the Union Government also called off the agreement with NSCN-K in a statement released on April 28, 2015.

Worryingly, according to an October 21, 2017, news report, an Intelligence Bureau (IB) report suggests that there are frequent meetings between the Chinese and NSCN-K leaders at Ruli and Kunming in China’s Yunnan province. The Chinese are reported to have held at least two meetings in a month with NSCN-K to ensure that the peace talks are stalled.

Further, there have been substantial changes in the leadership structure of both the NSCN-IM and NSCN-K. Two of the prominent figures of the Naga insurgency recently passed away. Shangwang Shangyung Khaplang, ‘chairman’ of NSCN-K, died on June 9, 2017, after a prolonged illness in a hospital at Taga in the Sagaing Division of Myanmar. Earlier, Isak Chisi Swu, ‘chairman’ of NSCN-IM, had died of multiple organ failure at a hospital in Delhi, on June 28, 2016. Khango Konyak replaced S.S. Khaplang in NSCN-K, while the post of ‘chairman’ remains vacant in NSCN-IM. Also, on May 19, 2016, the Kholi Kitovi faction of NSCN (NSCN-KK) leader ‘general (retired)’ Kholi Konyak, moved to NSCN-IM and joined as its ‘vice-chairman’. M B Neokpao Konyak replaced Kholi Konyak and the erstwhile NSCN-KK is now known as the Kitovi-Neokpao faction of NSCN (NSCN-KN)]

The Naga Peace talks have taken an interesting turn with the inclusion of several other formations. An ‘inclusive’ settlement would certainly be an optimal outcome to resolve the longest surviving insurgency in the Northeast; but this is still a long way off.

* Giriraj Bhattacharjee
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management