Category: GLOBAL ISSUES

By  Kalinga Seneviratne*

This article is the second in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Feature and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate.

SINGAPORE (IDN | Lotus News Features) – A bill tabled in the Sri Lankan parliament in January to create a legal framework to control the behavior and conduct of Buddhist monks has created deep divisions within the majority Buddhist community in the country.

Known as the ‘Theravadi Bhikku Kathikawath (Registration) Bill’, the draft legislation to control the behavior of some wayward monks who have tarnished the image of Buddhism in the country in recent years has been discussed in political and legal circles for sometime. And it has elicited wide support in the Buddhist community.

By J Nastranis | IDN-InDepthNews Analysis

NEW YORK (IDN) – The 193-member United Nations General Assembly recalled the legacy of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in helping the world body find its footing in a new global landscape during the tumultuous early 1990s. Boutros-Ghali passed away on February 16 at the age of 93,

Addressing the Assembly’s special tribute at UN Headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Boutros-Ghali, whose second term was blocked by the U.S., had both the fortune and the misfortune to serve as the first post-Cold-War UN chief.

By Jonathan Power* | IDN-InDepthNews Viewpoint

LONDON – There are three schools of thought in American foreign policy: two you have heard about and a third that is relegated to the background.

The first and arguably the most prominent is the neo-conservative. These people, in the days of the Soviet Union, were the rabid anti-communists who wanted to beat the Soviet Union into the ground with vastly increased spending on defence.

Today they are the ones who supported the extreme right wing agitators who overthrew the middle-of-the-road president of Ukraine, Wiktor Yanukovich. They supported President George Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and want President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria.

The second is the liberal. Liberals have always wanted to seek nuclear arms limitations with Moscow. They wanted an end to apartheid in South Africa. But many of them also believe in directly interfering in a country that is carrying out inhumane policies. They persuaded President Barack Obama to intervene in Libya’s civil war which left a political mess that has become a haven for ISIS. Some of them have argued for intervention in Syria’s civil war. They also, in tandem with the neo-conservatives, successfully persuaded Obama to pursue an anti-Russian policy in Ukraine.

By Monzurul Huq | IDN-InDepthNews Analysis

TOKYO (IDN) – Religious identity, which in a broader context is perceived as belonging to a certain faith, is a topic of heated debate these days, mainly because a religious sense of belonging is directed toward achieving a certain goal by inflicting harm on others. The ongoing debate has been intensified in recent years with the concept of a clash of civilizations winning support among a group of Western academics and intellectuals.

It has received further impetus with the involvement of Western governments in the process of toppling regimes that the leaders of the Western world termed as “evil empires” – and thus paving the way for a blowback in the form of emergence of various religious-based terrorist groups claiming the righteousness in the name of divinity.

By Reinhardt Jacobsen | IDN-InDepthNews Report

AMSTERDAM (IDN) – A Court in Amsterdam struck down Meseret Bahlbi lawsuit against Mirjam van Reisen, Dutch professor and human rights advocate. The judge found that she was not guilty of libel and slander and that the youth party of the Eritrean regime can be seen as a means of collecting intelligence abroad. The decision comes as a huge relief not only for the Dutch professor, but also for the Eritrean diaspora across Europe.

When the case was heard on January 27, 2016 in Amsterdam the focus was more about the nature of the regime in Eritrea, and the role played by its supporters in Europe. The court room was packed to overflowing, mostly by Eritreans from the diaspora in Europe. The majority came to support Mirjam van Reisen. She was being sued for libel and slander by Bahlbi, an Eritrean residing in the Netherlands, who according to the judgment “is linked to the regime of Eritrea and actively supports the ideas of this regime”. Bahlbi himself, however, “stated in the summons that this [Eritrea] is a dictatorship and that torture takes place”.

By Reinhardt Jacobsen | IDN-InDepthNews Analysis

AMSTERDAM (IDN) – The reach of an allegedly long arm of the Eritrean regime abroad has been the subject of a series of high profile articles in the media. Latest reports say that it is not only targeting Eritrean refugees but also Dutch citizens.

At the core of the debate is a series of articles by OneWorld journalist Sanne Terlingen who revealed that members suspected to have links to the Eritrean regime were serving as interpreters in asylum cases. Two siblings of the chair of the YPFDJ, the youth wing of the only party of Eritrea, were still employed by the interpretation service, even though the rules of the Dutch government agency would not allow this.

By Jennifer Sun* | IDN-InDepthNews Essay

“America’s once shining beacon has somehow dimmed a bit, and the Red China I left 30 years ago is not as bloody red as it used to be. The two countries, capitalist and communist, actually have a lot in common: the rich and powerful could be greedy, hypocritical and morally corrupt,” writes Jennifer Sun, author of the recently published novel ‘Two Tales of the Moon’.