Sri Lankan Foreign Minister calls for ban on bottom trawling 17/9/16

Mangala Samaraweera points to the destructive fishing practice that harms marine ecosystems.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera has called for a ban on bottom trawling, a destructive fishing practice that harms marine ecosystems.

The Minister made the appeal at the recent ‘Our Ocean 2016 conference’ in Washington DC, ahead of high-level talks between India and Sri Lanka on the Palk Bay conflict.

It is a longstanding issue

Sri Lankan Tamil fisherfolk have for long expressed concern over bottom-trawling by Tamil Nadu fishermen in Sri Lankan waters. The Indian fishermen are reluctant to give up trawling which, they argue, employs hundreds of daily-waged fishermen.

Sri Lankan fishermen, whose access to the sea was restricted due to the ethnic conflict, resumed full-time fishing only in 2009 when the war ended. However, their livelihoods are yet to pick up because of the serious damage that Indian trawlers are reportedly causing.

‘Committed to combat illegal fishing’

Mr. Samaraweera said Sri Lanka was committed to combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. Sri Lanka paid a heavy price for it, when the European Union imposed a 15-month ban on seafood imports from the island. While the ban was lifted in April this year, after Sri Lanka adopted new fisheries policies, activists in Sri Lanka point to “IUU fishing by Indian fishermen” in the Palk Bay.

Last year, Tamil lawmaker M.A. Sumanthiran moved a bill in Sri Lankan parliament to ban mechanised bottom trawling. Indian fishermen, however, cross the maritime boundary and fish using trawlers. In 2016 so far, the Sri Lankan Navy has arrested at least 150 Indian fishermen on charges of illegal fishing.

Challenge to bilateral ties

The Palk Bay issue has proved a challenge to Indo-Lanka relations, with talks between fishermen of both countries ending in a deadlock. The two countries are now working on dates for the Ministerial level talks, according to diplomatic sources in New Delhi. The neighbours are also trying to resume talks between fishermen from both sides, officials said.

Pakistan hits back at India’s human rights record - 17 / 9 / 16

Pak says Indian focus on Balochistan "is to distract attention from the repression unleashed in Kashmir."

Pakistan on Saturday criticised India over alleged human rights violation in Kashmir and threatened to expose the country in the world over the “abysmal rights situation” in other parts if it continued to talk about Balochistan.

Pakistan said the sudden Indian focus on Balochistan was consistent with their “playbook of seeking to distract attention from the repression unleashed in Kashmir.”

“It is interference”

Pakistan’s delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) strongly rebutted India’s “untenable stance” on Jammu and Kashmir and slammed its “persistent interference” in Balochistan.

“In strongly-worded right of replies, the Pakistan delegate termed India’s attempts to deny its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir a ‘travesty of history’,” Pakistan Foreign Office said.

The delegate said Pakistan was not surprised by the “intemperate” remarks of the Indian leadership and the Indian delegation, which constitute “open interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs, especially in Balochistan.”

“The increasing international attention being given to the plight of the Kashmiri people is being desperately countered by New Delhi by attempting to shift attention elsewhere,” it said.

“Flouting of international norms”

Given the “persistent, irresponsible flouting of international norms governing inter-state behaviour by India, we are constrained to point out the abysmal human rights record of the Indian government,” the Foreign Office said.

The delegate referred to a bill in Indian Parliament seeking to penalise those who depict Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory and said “this was yet another pathetic effort to alter facts to conform to their own deluded sense of reality.”

The delegate drew the attention of the Council to the recent statement by a People’s Democratic Party MP, who has described the current Indian repression as “worse than the Nazi forces.”

‘Egregious violations’

The delegate pointed out the “egregious violations” of human rights of people in large swathes of India and that Pakistan had scrupulously avoided commenting on India’s internal human rights situation.

“Pakistan has restrained itself from commenting on the unrelenting repression unleashed by the Indian State in many of its areas,” the Foreign Office said.

“We, instead, only address the situation in Kashmir, as that is an international dispute acknowledged in repeated U.N. resolutions,” it said.

“The fact that we do not comment on the abysmal rights situations in other parts of India, is not due to lack of awareness of the shameful record of the Indian State. Rather, it stems from a scrupulous observance of international norms — something which India is incapable of doing,” it said.

This is the irony: India

Stepping up its offensive against Pakistan on the Balochistan issue at the UNHRC, India had on Friday said Pakistan was a nation that practiced terrorism on its own people and the sufferings of the people of Balochistan were a telling testimony in this regard.

Exercising its right of reply and raising the Balochistan issue for the second time in three days at the UNHRC, India said the irony of a nation that has established a well-earned reputation of being the global epicentre of terrorism holding forth on human rights.

First mercy killing of terminally ill minor reported in Belgium - 17/9/16

It is the only country that allows children of any age to undergo euthanasia, as long as they are able to make rational decisions and are in the last stages of an incurable disease

A terminally ill child has become the first minor to be euthanised in Belgium since age restrictions on such mercy killings in the country were lifted in 2014, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

The head of the federal euthanasia commission gave no details of the minor beyond saying it was an exceptional case of a child with a terminal illness, the Het Nieuwsblad reported.

“Fortunately there are very few children who are considered [for euthanasia] but that does not mean we should refuse them the right to a dignified death,” Wim Distelmans told the newspaper.

Only such country

Since its euthanasia legislation was amended in 2014, Belgium has been the only country in the world that allows children of any age, as long as they are able to make rational decisions and are in the last stages of an incurable disease, to choose to end their suffering.

The Netherlands also allows mercy killings for children, but only for those aged over 12.

The Belgian amendment, which was passed after heated debate — notably over the meaning of a required “capacity of discernment” — offers the possibility of euthanasia to children “in a hopeless medical situation of constant and unbearable suffering that cannot be eased and which will cause death in the short term“.

Any request for euthanasia must be made by the minor, be studied by a team of doctors and an independent psychiatrist or psychologist and have parental consent.