Australian government returns refugees to Sri Lanka

Oscar Grenfell 

According to Colombo Page, an online news site, the Australian government repatriated 29 asylum-seekers to Sri Lanka last Thursday. The group had reportedly arrived on a boat the previous day near Learmonth Beach on the northern coast of Western Australia.

The incident is the latest example of the criminal policy, introduced by the previous Labor government, of forcibly expelling Sri Lankan refugees from Australia, without even the pretense of considering their claim to asylum.

Successive governments, Labor and Liberal-National, have continued the policy in defiance of warnings by the UN and humanitarian organisations that Sri Lankan refugees, who are often from the Tamil minority, face imprisonment, persecution and torture at the hands of the Colombo government.

The 29 refugees were reportedly from the southern Sri Lankan towns of Matara, Hambantota, Hakmana and Tangalle. They included two children, aged 12 and 15 years old, who were travelling with their father and uncle. The group was apparently arrested by Australian Border Force officers on arrival, then placed on a chartered flight to Colombo the following day.

A spokesperson for Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, told the Australiannewspaper that they could not comment on the plight of the group, or even confirm that they had arrived in Australia.

The spokesperson cited the government’s policy of not commenting on “operational matters” relating to the actions of border force and naval personnel, on the grounds that the “interception” of asylum-seekers is a matter of “national security.” This means that the number of refugees attempting to arrive in Australia, their treatment by the authorities and subsequent plight, is treated as a state secret, and hidden from the population.

Significantly, the deportation of the refugees occurred the same day that the UN committee against torture requested that the Australian government halt the scheduled deportation of a Tamil refugee facing imminent removal to Sri Lanka.

The refugee’s lawyer, Alison Battisson, had warned that the asylum-seeker faced the prospect of “a range of torture practices, including rape,” if deported. The Sri Lankan government alleges that he had assisted the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war formally ended in 2009, with the government and the military defeating the LTTE. At the conclusion of the conflict, and in subsequent years, the military carried out mass roundups of Tamils and political opponents, along with extrajudicial killings and widespread torture.

In the 2015 elections, the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse, which prosecuted the war, was ousted in a US-backed regime-change operation aimed at curtailing growing Chinese influence in the country.

Despite its attempts to don a “democratic” mask, the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena has maintained a virtual police-military occupation of war-ravaged sections of eastern and northern Sri Lanka, and has continued the persecution of Tamils.

Faced with a deepening political crisis this year, the government has deployed the military against striking workers and has promoted communal hostilities towards the islands’ Tamil and Muslim minorities.

Last month, Associated Press (AP) published an investigative report, based on the medical and psychological evaluation of 50 Tamil refugees in Europe, and interviews with them. The men said that prior to fleeing the country, they had been subjected to horrific abuse by the Sri Lankan authorities, who accused them of being Tamil militants.

One man told AP he had been kidnapped by five security personnel, and taken to a “‘torture room’ equipped with ropes, iron rods, a bench and buckets of water” and with blood on the wall. Another said he was “held for 21 days in a small dank room where he was raped 12 times, burned with cigarettes, beaten with iron rods and hung upside-down.”

The abuses documented by AP occurred between early 2016, and mid-2017. The reports tallied with the interim findings of a UN Working Group on arbitrary detention, released Friday, which noted numerous allegations of “harassment, intimidation and threats” against Tamils and their advocates, along with “ill-treatment and torture to extract confessions.”

In September, the Australian High Court heard the appeals of two Sri Lankan asylum-seekers against their imminent deportation to Sri Lanka. The former Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard in 2012 began the process of removing over 650 Sri Lankan refugees to Colombo, and denying them the right to seek asylum.

The High Court upheld the policy, which is a violation of international law, despite the sitting judges conceding that the two refugees could face imprisonment on return, and appalling conditions, including “torture, maltreatment and violence.” The court noted that all Sri Lankan refugees deported from Australia since November 2012 had been arrested, held on remand and charged under the country’s immigration legislation.

The persecution of Sri Lankan refugees is one aspect of a brutal “border protection” program defended by the entire official political establishment. This has included consigning hundreds of refugees who arrived in Australia by boat to concentration camps in the Pacific Islands, another policy reintroduced by Labor.

Last month, the Australian government “closed” its refugee detention centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG), because that country’s supreme court ruled that their confinement was unconstitutional. Despite their protests, the refugees were deprived of food and water and forced to leave the camp to unsafe “alternative accommodation.”

The Australian government’s close collaboration with Colombo, against Sri Lankan refugees, is also bound up with geopolitics. The US and Australia view Sri Lanka as strategically critical to their aggressive policies in the Indo-Pacific region, including preparations for war against North Korea and China.

Successive Australian governments have directly enabled the crimes of the Sri Lankan authorities. In a program initiated by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, the Australian Federal Police trained and equipped Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department, a unit notorious for torture and political kidnappings.

During a Sri Lankan visit in November to “celebrate 70 years of bilateral relations” between the two countries, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull signalled even closer collaboration in the persecution of Tamil refugees, and opponents of the Colombo regime. Turnbull declared his commitment to “our work together to combat trans-national crime, particularly people-smuggling”—the derogatory term used to refer to refugees attempting to flee by boat.

Washington and Honduras seek to crush opposition to fraudulent re-election

Andrea Lobo

On Sunday, both the Honduran electoral tribunal (TSE) and the Organization of American States (OAS) effectively put an end to the twisted electoral process that has followed the November 26 polls. The first made the official declaration of victory for the incumbent president, Juan Orlando Hernández, over the Opposition Alliance against Dictatorship’s candidate Salvador Nasralla by a margin of 1.5 percent. He is now to be sworn in for another four-year term in January.

For its part, the OAS chief, Luis Almagro, issued the following statement: “Facing the impossibility of determining a winner, the only way for the people of Honduras to be the victors is to call for new general elections.”

After three weeks of scrambling for a path of least resistance, these announcements mark the beginning of a new stage in the imposition by Washington and its Honduran client state of their preferred rulers with virtually the same methods that they used in the aftermath of the 2009 military coup.

As then, they have relied on the compliance and bankruptcy of the right-wing and pseudo-left “opposition” forces to suppress the widespread social indignation among Honduran workers, peasants and youth.

Throughout the three weeks, including under a curfew during the first week, the armed forces have been strictly ordered to clear and violently intimidate the demonstrators, who have set up “paros” or road-blocks across the entire country, with at least 83 actions on Sunday in response to the TSE announcement. At least 20 civilians have been killed, 70 injured, 800 arrested and others reported missing.

The large toll suffered by protesters against the fraud is the result of two main factors: the law-and-order measures of the government and the orders by the opposition to its sympathizers to hold isolated demonstrations like road-blocks vulnerable to the attacks by the police, and to dissuade the formation of any defense committees in the targeted working class neighborhoods.

On Friday, the ex-president deposed in 2009 and leader of the alliance, Manuel Zelaya—a big landowner and at one point manager of the Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP)—carried out a sinister media stunt by appearing at some of the roadblocks, while constantly looking over his shoulder, and proclaiming, “The people have the right to sacrifice themselves for their sons, just like Jesus Christ died for the people and the sins of others, we are willing to sacrifice ourselves so that this generation gets respected at the polls.”

Honduran workers and youth need only look at recent history to know that blood should not be wasted in bringing to power any faction of a bourgeoisie willing to betray them and turn the repressive apparatus against them to defend the interests of imperialism.

Just as in the 1980s, when Honduras was a base for US counterinsurgency operations throughout Central America, and after the 2009 coup, the state forces, armed and financed by Washington, are kidnapping and murdering those leading the ongoing protests, with reports and videos of uniformed but masked officials carrying out extrajudicial murders of demonstrators and entering homes even during the daytime. Violent clashes with the police continued into late hours of Monday.

The Alliance has directed all of its appeals for a solution to the deepest political crisis in the country since the 1980s to the US State Department and the OAS, Washington’s diplomatic arm for the Americas since its foundation after World War II. When the TSE made its announcement on Sunday, the opposition candidate, the former Pepsi Honduras CEO and economic-liberal hardliner, Salvador Nasralla, was on his way to negotiate and present his evidence of fraud to the State Department and the OAS.

After the 2009 coup backed by the Obama administration resulted in mass protests in Honduras and international condemnation, the OAS came to the conclusion that it was necessary to suspend Honduras. However, the Honduran coup regime, Washington, the OAS and the National Resistance Popular Front (FNRP) signed the Pact of Cartagena in May 2011. The FNRP and its leader, Manuel Zelaya served as a reliable left flank for bourgeois politics in the country. Almost immediately, on June 1, 2011, the Honduran representatives to the OAS were welcomed back with a standing ovation.

Last Sunday, the OAS-commissioned analyst, Irfan Nooruddin, published a report on the electoral results. Among several “unusual” findings, he points out that, after two-thirds of the votes were computed, there was a “strikingly large deviation from the earlier trend” in the subsequent results in favor of the PN, a trend present “in all departments” that “is hard to explain as pure chance.” His diplomatic conclusion: “I would reject the proposition that the National Party won the election legitimately.”

Later that day, hoping to keep the social opposition against the Honduran coup regime and the appeals by the Alliance linked to the OAS, Almagro made his proposal for new elections. Just as in 2009, the body will seek to mediate and eventually reach a new deal between the government and the Zelaya-Nasralla faction of the bourgeoisie, while Washington and Tegucigalpa carry out a bloody suppression of the social upheavals.

The Honduran bourgeoisie, notwithstanding, backed the declaration of Hernandez’s re-election on Monday, with declarations by the COHEP and the CONAFEPH, the main employers’ organizations offering their endorsements.

The Trump administration has made clear that, in spite of the Alliance’s promises to defend US business interests, it considers it vital to maintain the current and fast-tracked imposition of austerity, militarization, and dictatorial forms of rule in response to the deepening social crisis in the country. This crisis has been deepened by the deportation of tens of thousands of Hondurans from the US and Mexico, the continued stagnation in productive investments internationally and the preparations for global military conflicts.

While Washington is employing the Obama-era Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) to strengthen is stranglehold over the region and protect its interests from foreign powers, namely Russia and China, and, particularly, against the working class, the weak-link in the chain appears to be Honduras.

The country’s poverty rate has increased 10 percent since the 2009 coup, making it a generalized condition for three-fourths of the population, while the number of millionaires has increased significantly. Retired and current Honduran officials refer constantly to the threat of an “insurrection” and “civil war”. In response to temporary strikes by the police forces, the government resorted to expanding its protracted purge of more than 4,000 officials since 2016 to those showing any reluctance to carry out repressive orders. On Monday morning, at least 17 police officers “resigned” to the Special Commission for Depuration.

At the same time, there have been reports of attacks against the main news outlets that favor the Alliance and denounce the electoral fraud, UNE TV and Radio Progreso, including threats and the destruction of their transmission antennas and optical fiber cable networks. Several reporters of Radio Progreso had already been given special protection by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights given threats after the 2009 coup and the murder of one of the station’s managers in 2014.

The pseudo-left organizations that work within or in the orbit of the FNRP, including the Morenoite Socialist Workers’ Party (PST), Socialism or Barbarism, and the Central American Socialist Party (PSOCA), have all closed ranks behind Nasralla, calling for a “national civic strike” to defend the coming to power of the Alliance. Their politics reflect the interests of layers of the upper middle class of academics, trade union officials and state bureaucrats, whose main fear is that their privileges will be threatened by a working class movement independent of the bourgeois political establishment.

Resistance to the current offensive by the ruling class requires the development of an independent movement of the working class, forming workers’ and defense committees in their neighborhoods and workplaces to formulate their demands and tasks based on an international socialist program.

MSF survey provides clear evidence of the Burmese military’s mass murder

John Roberts

A report based on surveys by the medical relief organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has provided the first detailed study of the horrific scale of killings by military, police and Buddhist nationalist thugs of the Rohingya population in Burma’s Rakhine state.

In what the MSF says is a conservative estimate, at least 6,700 died violent deaths at the hands of the security forces and associated gangs in the 31-day period from August 25. Of these, 730 were children under the age of five.

There have been numerous reports of individual atrocities, missing family members, grave site discoveries and satellite images of burnt-out Rohingya villages. Previous estimates of the number of deaths were based on this scattered information.

The Burmese military led by General Min Aung Hlaing and backed by the National League for Democracy (NLD) government has dismissed all of these accounts out of hand.

In September, in the period covered by the MSF report, NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi blamed the violence in the Rakhine on Rohingya “terrorists” and condemned reports of Burmese army atrocities as “fake news photographs” and “a huge ice berg of misinformation.” The government claimed no more than 400 were killed during this period of which most were “extremist terrorists.”

Since August 25, 647,000 people have fled into refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, already overcrowded with previous Rohingya refugees, creating a massive humanitarian crisis. The Muslim Rohingya are regarded by Burmese Buddhist chauvinists as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh and have been persecuted and denied citizenship for decades.

The sheer scale of the exodus has made clear that army operations begun on August 25, supposedly in response to small-scale attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, were aimed at driving the Rohingya out of Rakhine state where many have lived for generations. The United Nations has described it as “ethnic cleansing.”

The MSF report, released simultaneously in New York, Amsterdam and Paris on December 14, exposes the scale of the state terrorism.

The MSF estimates the overall death toll range is from 9,425 to 13,759 Rohingya in the period August 25 to September 24. These include the 6,700 people who died as the result of violent attacks. The peak was reached in the last week of August.

The MSF has 2,000 staff, three inpatient facilities, three primary care centres, 15 health posts and two mobile clinics in the refugee camps in Bangladesh. It has treated 142,980 patients since August 25, ten times the figure for the same period last year.

The report is based on six retrospective health surveys in different sections of the refugee camps. Four surveys were conducted in northern settlements and two in southern settlements—ranging from the northern Kutupalong camp to the southern Moynarghona camp in the Cox’s Bazar area just over the border from Burma.

The population in camps covered by the survey was 608,108 of whom 503,698 had fled Burma since August 25. In the northern sector, the survey team used random sampling of 905 households and in the south, systematic sampling of 1,529 households. In all 2,434 households representing 11,426 people were involved.

Household heads described the family structure and dates, locations and causes of the deaths of family members during the period.

The overall mortality rate of the households surveyed from August 25 to September 24 was equivalent to 2.26 percent of the sampled population. This pooled crude mortality rate (CMR), which was 13.3 times higher than the figure for the same population from May 27 to 24 August, was used to estimate the total number of killings.

Karline Kleijer, MSF Emergency Desk manager, stressed in the video released with the report that the estimate of 6,700 violent deaths was based on a conservative approach to interpreting the data and almost certainly underestimated the death toll.

The survey did not take place in all the camps and the report made no estimate of those who did not make it out of Burma, nor of the ongoing repression inside Rakhine state. MSF medical director Dr Sidney Wong said the MSF has reports of entire families being locked in their homes that were then set on fire.

Kleijer said that the surveys were originally part of a general health study but when the scale of the killings emerged “we simply could not sit on this information.”

Of the violent deaths, 69.4 percent were from gunshot wounds. Some 8.8 percent were burnt to death in homes, 5 percent were beaten to death, 2.6 percent suffered sexual violence leading to death and 1 percent were killed by landmines.

Of children under five, 59 percent were killed by gunshot, 14.8 percent were burnt to death in homes, 6.9 percent were beaten to death and 2.3 percent were killed by land mines.

This slaughter has been compounded by the efforts of the Bangladeshi government to block refugees from Burma. Moreover, Bangladesh struck a deal with Burma last month, the details of which remain unpublished, to repatriate hundreds of thousands Rohingya back to where they fled from.

If such atrocities had been carried out in Syria, for instance, which the US has targeted for regime change, there would be howls of condemnation in the international media. However, the criticism from the US and the European Union of the killings in Burma has been belated and muted.

In 2011, Burma’s military dictatorship shifted its orientation away from Beijing and towards Washington, and entered into a power-sharing arrangement with the pro-Western NLD. Virtually overnight, Burma was referred to as “a developing democracy” rather than a “rogue state.”

In a carefully-staged election in 2016 under an anti-democratic constitution, the NLD and Suu Kyi was installed as head of government and foreign minister. In reality, the junta is still in charge and controls the key ministries of defence, home affairs and border affairs. Suu Kyi and her government, which share the military’s Buddhist supremacist ideology, function as the apologists for its crimes.

As long as the Burmese regime continues to align with Washington and to open up its economy to Western investment, the US and its allies will continue to turn a blind eye to the military’s slaughter. The Trump administration has rejected any immediate calls for sanctions and limited its response to face-saving appeals for an end to the violence in order to maintain US ties with the Suu Kyi government and the military.

Onassis Fellowships Program for International Scholars 2018/2019 - Greece

Application Deadline: 28th February, 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International (Non-Greek citizens)

To be taken at (country): Greece

Field of Study: The Program covers courses in the following academic fields:

• Humanities:
• Social Sciences
• Economics/Finance:
• Arts

The consideration of an eventual interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approach/dimension for the proposed research would be highly appreciated.

Type: Post-doctoral Scholarship/Fellowship

Eligibility: The Program covers scholarly research in Greece only and in the fields stated above.

1. Eligible to participate are the following candidates:

• Persons of non-Greek descent
• all applicants should have already completed their Ph.D.
• Cypriot citizens are also eligible to apply for Category D and E fellowship only, provided they permanently reside and work outside Greece
• Persons of Greek descent (second generation and on) are also eligible to apply for a fellowship or scholarship, provided they permanently reside and work abroad or currently study in foreign Universities
• Category D and E also applies to Scholars of Greek descent or citizenship provided they have a professional academic career of at least ten (10) years in a University or Research Institute abroad
• The above mentioned clarification (d) also applies to Ph.D. candidates of Greek descent or citizenship, who pursue post-graduate studies outside of Greece (Category C – please see below), have conducted their high school studies and have obtained a degree outside Greece and permanently reside outside Greece for more than fifteen (15) years

2. Former Fellowship Recipients of the Foundation can re-apply for a fellowship only if five (5) years have elapsed since their previous fellowship scholarship.

3. Former Fellowship Recipients of the Foundation who have twice received a fellowship cannot apply again to the Onassis Fellowships Program for International Scholars.

4. No extension of the duration of the fellowship beyond the period mentioned in this announcement for each category will be permitted.

5. It is not possible to postpone or defer the fellowship to a later academic year

Number of Awardees: up to ten [10]

Value of Scholarship:

 1. Coverage of the travel expenses for a round trip air-ticket from and to the country and place where the fellowship recipient permanently resides, for the grantee only, for the beginning of the scholarship and upon definite departure from Greece that amount a) up to Three Hundred Euros (€300.-) for a European country or b) up to One Thousand Euros (€1,000.-) for a transatlantic trip or travel to and from countries of Asia and Africa. Fellowship recipients will be solely responsible for the purchase of their tickets

2. A monthly allowance of One Thousand Five Hundred Euros (€ 1,500.-) for subsistence, accommodation and all other expenses.

Duration of Scholarship: up to Three [3] months during the academic year October 2018 – September 2019

How to Apply: Online at the Foundation’s website: www.onassis.org > Scholarships > Scholarships for Foreigners > Category C, D or E > Online Application

Candidates are invited to carefully read the Announcement before completing their application. The online submission of the application does not imply that the said application is accepted for further evaluation. Candidatures that do not meet even one of the conditions of the current Announcement are automatically withdrawn from the evaluation process. By submitting an application for an Onassis scholarship, candidates state clearly and unequivocally that they unconditionally accept all the terms of the Announcement and the relevant application.

Candidates are required to submit all of the requested documents within the specified deadlines listed in this Announcement

Application Form (PhD Candidate-Category C)
Application Form (Professor of all levels-Category D)
Application Form (Post-doctoral Researcher-Category E)

At the same time, the candidate collects all of the required supporting documents and sends them by registered mail until 28/02/2018 (date on postmark) to the following address:

ARIONA HELLAS
S.A. Representing the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation in Greece
Onassis International Fellowships Program
Aeschinou Street 105 58 Plaka, Athens
[Verification code for the submission of the online application]

The required supporting documents can also be submitted by the candidate in person or via a representative at the above mentioned address.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation

Romanian Government Scholarships for International Students 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 15th March 2018

This is the date whereby Foreign diplomatic missions accredited to Bucharest must send the application files with a Verbal Note to Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Public, Cultural and Scientific Diplomacy Directorate.

However, the candidate should enquire at the diplomatic mission where he intends to submit the application file about the enrolment calendar. The deadline for submitting the application files is established by each diplomatic mission.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Any non-EU country

To be taken at (country): Romanian Universities

Eligible Field of Study: priority will be given to the candidates applying for: political and administrative sciences, education studies, Romanian culture and civilization, journalism, technical studies, oil and gas, agricultural studies, veterinary medicine, architecture, music, arts.

About Scholarship: The scholarships are granted for three levels of study:

1.  for the first cycle (licenta): This scheme is dedicated to graduates of high schools or of equivalent pre-university systems, as well as to candidates who require the equivalent of partial studies and the continuation of their studies in Romania. The complete cycle of university studies lasts for 3 to 6 years, according to the specific requirements of the chosen faculty, and ends with a final examination (licenta);
2.  for the 2nd cycle (master): This scheme is dedicated to graduates of university/post graduate studies; it lasts for 1,5 to 2 years and ends with a dissertation;
3.  for the 3rd cycle (doctorate) this scheme is dedicated to the graduates of university/postgraduate studies (i.e. master); it lasts for 3-4 years, in keeping with the specific requirements of the chosen faculty, and ends with a doctor’s thesis.

Type: Undergraduate, Masters and Doctoral degrees

Eligibility: Citizens of non EU countries (irrespective of their country of residence) are eligible to apply. Priority is given to citizens from non EU states with which Romania does not have cultural and education cooperation agreements.

Number of Scholarships: 85 scholarships for undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Romania

Value of Scholarship:

• Free-of-charge tuition
• Free-of-charge accommodation (depending on availability, accommodation will be offered free-of-charge in students hostels, in keeping with the higher education regulations and within the limits of the sums available for this purpose),
• Financial support – a monthly amount representing :
  •  the equivalent in Romanian currency of 65 EURO per month, for the under-graduate students (1st cycle),
  • the equivalent in Romanian currency of 75 EURO per month, for post-graduate students (master degrees and specialization) 2nd cycle.
  • the equivalent in Romanian currency of 85 EURO per month, for post graduate students (doctor’s degree) 3rd cycle.

These scholarships do not cover food, international and local transport. The candidates must be prepared to support personally any other additional expenses.

Duration of Scholarship: For the period of study, subject to academic performance.

How to Apply: To get all the necessary information about the scholarships (conditions, necessary documents, enrolment calendar) and to submit their application files, the candidates should apply directly to:

• the Romanian diplomatic missions accredited to the candidate’s country of origin or of residence or to
• the diplomatic mission of candidate’s state of origin accredited to Bucharest

Visit scholarship webpage for Details

Sponsors: Romanian Government

Important Notes: Language of Study: In order to promote Romanian language and culture, the Ministry of National Education has decided that the beneficiaries of the scholarships should study only in the Romanian language. The candidates who do not know Romanian are offered one supplementary preparatory year to study the language. Students who declare that they know Romanian language will have to pass a language test organized by the competent higher education institutions.

Commonwealth Split-site PhD Scholarship in UK for Developing Countries 2018

Application Deadline: 15th February 2018

Eligible Countries: Developing Commonwealth Countries

To be taken at (country): UK Universities

Eligible Field of Study:All subject areas are eligible, although the CSC’s selection criteria give priority to applications that demonstrate the strongest relevance to development.

About Scholarship: The Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan is one of the largest and most prestigious scholarships schemes for international study in the world. Since it was established in 1959, around 30,000 individuals have benefited – 24,000 of them have held awards funded by the United Kingdom, managed by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom (CSC).

Commonwealth Split-site Scholarships support one year’s study at a UK university as part of a PhD being undertaken in a candidate’s home country, under the joint supervision of a home country and UK supervisor.

The 12-month period of study in the UK supported by the scholarship can be taken at any stage during your PhD study, providing this is justified in your study plan. It can be divided into two or more periods, with no more than 12 months elapsing between each award term. If you have not already started your PhD at the time of your application, you will be eligible to spend a maximum of six months in the UK in your first year of study.

You can apply for a Commonwealth Split-site (PhD) Scholarship to support up to 12 months’ study at an eligible UK university as part of a PhD being undertaken in your home country, under the joint supervision of home country and UK academics.

Your application must be made in the context of a departmental/institutional link with a UK university already in operation or currently under negotiation. Applications without supporting statements from both your home country supervisor and your proposed UK supervisor will be considered ineligible.

Offered Since: 1959

Type: PhD study

Selection Criteria

• The 12-month period of study in the UK can be taken at any stage during the PhD study (providing this is justified in the study plan), and can be divided into two or more periods with a period not greater than 12 months elapsing between each award term.
• A Commonwealth Split-site Scholarship covers full tuition fees for one year at the UK host university, stipend for up to one year in the UK, return airfare, and other allowances. The scholarship does not support the period of study at the home country university.
• Those candidates who have not yet commenced their home PhD at the time of application will be eligible to spend a maximum of six months in the UK in the first year of their studies.

Eligibility: To apply for a Commonwealth Split-site Scholarship, candidates should:

• Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person
• Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country
• Be registered for a PhD at a university in your home country by the time your scholarship is confirmed. Your final qualification will be awarded by your home country university (not your proposed UK university). This scholarship will not support your period of study at your home country university.
• Ensure that an institutional or departmental link exists between your home university and your proposed UK university. This link must be greater than simply a collaboration between individuals.
• Be available to start your academic studies in the UK by the start of the UK academic year in September/October 2018
• By October 2018, hold a first degree of at least upper second class (2:1) honours standard, or a second class degree and a relevant postgraduate qualification (usually a Master’s degree)
• Be unable to afford to study in the UK without this scholarship.

Number of Scholarships: Several

Value of Scholarship: Each scholarship provides:

• Approved airfare from your home country to the UK and return at the end of your award (the CSC will not reimburse the cost of fares for dependants, nor usually the cost of journeys made before your award is finally confirmed)
• Approved tuition fees
• Stipend (living allowance) at the rate of £1,065 per month, or £1,306 per month for those at universities in the London metropolitan area (rates quoted at 2017-2018 levels)
• Warm clothing allowance, where applicable
• Study travel grant towards the cost of study-related travel within the UK or overseas
• If you are widowed, divorced, or a single parent, child allowance of £458 per month for the first child, and £112 per month for the second and third child under the age of 16, if you are accompanied by your children and they are living with you at the same address in the UK.

Duration of Scholarship: One year

How to Apply: You must make your application directly to the CSC using the CSC’s Electronic Application System (EAS). The CSC will not accept any applications that are not submitted via the EAS.

All applications, with full transcripts detailing all your higher education qualifications (with certified translations if not in English), must be submitted by 23.59 (GMT) on 15 February 2018 at the latest.

You are advised to complete and submit your application as soon as possible, as the EAS will be very busy in the days leading up to the application deadline.

You must provide the following supporting documentation, which must be received by the CSC by 23.59 (GMT) on 19 February 2018 in order for your application to be eligible for consideration:

• Supporting statement from your supervisor at your home country university, highlighting current institutional links
• Supporting statement from your proposed supervisor at a UK university, highlighting current institutional links
• Reference from at least one other individual
• Copy of your valid passport showing your photograph, date of birth, and country of citizenship

How to use the EAS

You are not required to apply via a nominating body for these scholarships.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Sponsors: Commonwealth Scholarship Commission – CSC

Yenching Academy of Peking University Masters Fellowship Program for International Students 2018

Application Deadline: 15th January 2018

Eligible Countries: International

To be Taken at (country): China

About the Award: The Yenching Academy is a fully-funded residential program offering a wide array of interdisciplinary courses on China within the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Working closely with their academic mentors, Yenching Scholars have the flexibility to create their own study paths by choosing from six research areas and a variety of extracurricular activities. Studying at the Academy represents a unique opportunity not only for intercultural and academic exchange, but also for personal and professional development. 

Field of Study: Scholars participate infield studies to culturally, economically, or socio-politically significant regions within Mainland China. Each Scholar chooses one of six research areas corresponding to thesis topic. (The research area does not affect course selection options or requirements.)
Research Areas:
•  Economics & Management
•  History & Archaeology
•   Law & Society
•  Literature & Culture
•   Philosophy & Religion
•   Politics & International Relations

Eligibility: Applicants should have:
· Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in any field, awarded no later than August 31 of the year in which they wish to enroll;
· An outstanding academic record;
· Strong interest in interdisciplinary study of China;
· A record of extracurricular achievement, community engagement and social responsibility;
· Leadership potential;
· English proficiency.
Successful applicants will show how the Yenching Academy program is relevant and valuable for their career plans.
Preference is given to candidates age 25 or younger as of August 31 of the year they wish to enroll. For students from countries with mandatory military service, the age preference is 27 years old or younger.

Number of Awards: About 125

Value of Award: Yenching Academy provides a generous postgraduate fellowshipcovering tuition fees, a travel stipend for one round-trip journey between each Scholar’s base city and Beijing, accommodations, and a monthly living stipend.

Duration of Program: 

• Fellowships for international scholars are for 12 months, with the option to extend for a second year in Beijing.
• During the second year in Beijing, students may apply for a limited number or Teaching, Research, or Administrative Assistantships.
• In addition, scholars may apply for grants to help fund research projects related to China Studies.
• All students complete coursework during their first year. The second year is for completing thesis writing and defense (international students who choose to leave Beijing after the first year may complete thesis defense remotely). Degrees are granted upon the completion of all coursework and satisfactory defense of the thesis, and are awarded in January and July of each year.
• The Academy also offers a limited number of doctoral scholarships to selected Yenching Scholars who would like to pursue doctoral degrees in other Peking University departments.

How to Apply: Apply here

Visit Program Webpage for Details 

Award Provider: Yenching Academy of The Peking University

Pushing Russia’s Buttons

Tommy Raskin

Assume for a moment that the popular allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election are all true. How should the US government retaliate?

Short answer: it shouldn’t (any more than it already has). If the Kremlin sneakily helped Donald Trump to victory, then it is likely that our government’s longstanding and unnecessary “punishment” of Russia largely motivated the interference. To reduce the chances of something so appalling from happening in future elections, we should therefore move to relieve the dangerously high tensions that have been mounting between the US and Russia for decades.

For détente to succeed, leaders in the US must try to understand and allay Russia’s legitimate security concerns. That begins with acknowledging the profound Russian trauma caused by World War II, a tragedy to which the Soviet Union lost hundreds of towns and more than 20 million people in less than a decade. Given the depth of that horror, the US should appreciate why Russians today get squeamish when foreign powers start flexing their muscles on Russia’s western border.

Russian statesmen have explained their fears before, but to seemingly little effect. Strong evidence suggests that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, scared of Western encroachment, agreed to NATO’s incorporation of a reunified Germany in 1990 only because the US in turn agreed not to expand the alliance any further east than that. But in flagrant disregard for the objections that the Russians had previously articulated, NATO exploited its newfound strength in post-Soviet Europe by subsuming Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland under President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Tasked with ushering Russia into the new century, President Vladimir Putin established some rapport with the incoming US President George W. Bush in 2001. However, relations chilled in 2002 when the US officially abandoned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and thereby opened the door to a US defense system capable of stopping Russia from effectively using its own nuclear arsenal in response to a US nuclear attack. Against that backdrop, Russia grew even more worried about US recklessness when Bush defied Putin by beginning a protracted and bloody occupation of Iraq in 2003.

Meanwhile, US activity in Europe continued to drive the two governments further apart. In 2004, NATO reignited the Kremlin’s unease about Western military expansion by admitting another set of European countries, this time bringing the alliance all the way up to Russia’s border. Then, shortly before Bush left office, the friction became even more palpable when the United States’ Georgian clients fought Russian troops in the brief but devastating Russo-Georgian War of 2008.

Although President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried initiating a so-called “reset” in US-Russia relations upon taking office, the new Cold War raged on. In the wake of Russia’s 2011 parliamentary election, Clinton proclaimed that Russian leaders should be “accountable” and requested a “full investigation” into allegations of election “fraud and intimidation.” These thinly veiled jabs at Putin, combined with Clinton’s role in the then-recent ouster and killing of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, increased Moscow’s disquiet about Clinton’s aggressively meddlesome tendencies.

Clinton resigned before Obama levied sanctions in response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, but she continued to promote militarism from the sidelines. Notably, she advocated a no-fly zone to check the power of Kremlin-backed President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, endorsed sanctions against Russia itself, and criticized European leaders for their generally weak response to the authoritarian, pugnacious Putin. Of course, Assad’s Islamist enemies and Putin’s various fascist enemies in Ukraine were not exactly peaceniks either, but Clinton didn’t seem to mind much. Even if it meant strengthening a few terrorist rebels and neo-Nazis along the way, the aspiring Democratic president was apparently intent on putting Russia in its place.

What happened next is still unclear, but let us again consider what it would mean if Russia—likely in hopes of keeping a proven warmonger out of the White House—then executed the alleged plans to undermine Clinton’s campaign. For one, it would mean that the Kremlin behaved despicably, especially because vulnerable Americans who played no role in our government’s provocation of Russia may now be paying the price for it under the rule of an erratic President Trump. However, it would not mean that the US should heighten its attacks on Russia. In fact, any conceivable Russian interference in the 2016 election would give Washington an additional reason to reduce tensions with Moscow today, to try to keep the Kremlin from destabilizing our country again.

Although conventional wisdom may suggest otherwise, the US can pursue this type of détente without sacrificing its national assertiveness. It is no contradiction for the US to promote de-escalation—by lifting sanctions, refusing lethal assistance to Ukraine, and generally scaling down military involvement in Europe—while retaining the option of strongly penalizing Russia if the Kremlin later proves to be the incorrigible, chaos-craving, empire-enhancing government that so many in Washington seem to imagine. At this point, though, it seems likely that Russia is more interested in softening the United States’ aggressive geopolitical posture than in triggering American chaos for the sheer heck of it. That is why peace with Russia is probably still achievable through diplomacy, but we will have to seize the moment before the new Cold War spirals even further out of control.

Cracks in the House of Sand: the Pratfalls of the Crown Prince

Patrick Cockburn

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia is the undoubted Middle East man of the year, but his great impact stems more from his failures than his successes. He is accused of being Machiavellian in clearing his way to the throne by the elimination of opponents inside and outside the royal family. But, when it comes to Saudi Arabia’s position in the world, his miscalculations remind one less of the cunning manoeuvres of Machiavelli and more of the pratfalls of Inspector Clouseau.

Again and again, the impulsive and mercurial young prince has embarked on ventures abroad that achieve the exact opposite of what he intended. When his father became king in early 2015, he gave support to a rebel offensive in Syria that achieved some success but provoked full-scale Russian military intervention, which in turn led to the victory of President Bashar al-Assad. At about the same time, MbS launched Saudi armed intervention, mostly through airstrikes, in the civil war in Yemen. The action was code-named Operation Decisive Storm, but two and a half years later the war is still going on, has killed 10,000 people and brought at least seven million Yemenis close to starvation.

The Crown Prince is focusing Saudi foreign policy on aggressive opposition to Iran and its regional allies, but the effect of his policies has been to increase Iranian influence. The feud with Qatar, in which Saudi Arabia and the UAE play the leading role, led to a blockade being imposed five months ago which is still going on. The offence of the Qataris was to have given support to al-Qaeda type movements – an accusation that was true enough but could be levelled equally at Saudi Arabia – and to having links with Iran. The net result of the anti-Qatari campaign has been to drive the small but fabulously wealthy state further into the Iranian embrace.

Saudi relations with other countries used to be cautious, conservative and aimed at preserving the status quo. But today its behaviour is zany, unpredictable and often counterproductive: witness the bizarre episode in November when the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was summoned to Riyadh, not allowed to depart and forced to resign his position. The objective of this ill-considered action on the part of Saudi Arabia was apparently to weaken Hezbollah and Iran in Lebanon, but has in practice empowered both of them.

What all these Saudi actions have in common is that they are based on a naïve presumption that “a best-case scenario” will inevitably be achieved. There is no “Plan B” and not much of a “Plan A”: Saudi Arabia is simply plugging into conflicts and confrontations it has no idea how to bring to an end.

MbS and his advisers may imagine that it does not matter what Yemenis, Qataris or Lebanese think because President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and chief Middle East adviser, are firmly in their corner. “I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing,” tweeted Trump in early November after the round up and confinement of some 200 members of the Saudi elite. “Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years!” Earlier he had tweeted support for the attempt to isolate Qatar as a supporter of “terrorism”.

But Saudi Arabia is learning that support from the White House these days brings fewer advantages than in the past. The attention span of Donald Trump is notoriously short, and his preoccupation is with domestic US politics: his approval does not necessarily mean the approval of other parts of the US government. The State Department and the Pentagon may disapprove of the latest Trump tweet and seek to ignore or circumvent it. Despite his positive tweet, the US did not back the Saudi confrontation with Qatar or the attempt to get Mr Hariri to resign as prime minister of Lebanon.

For its part, the White House is finding out the limitations of Saudi power. MbS was not able to get the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to agree to a US-sponsored peace plan that would have given Israel very much and the Palestinians very little. The idea of a Saudi-Israeli covert alliance against Iran may sound attractive to some Washington think tanks, but does not make much sense on the ground. The assumption that Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the promise to move the US embassy there, would have no long-term effects on attitudes in the Middle East is beginning to look shaky.

It is Saudi Arabia – and not its rivals – that is becoming isolated. The political balance of power in the region changed to its disadvantage over the last two years. Some of this predates the elevation of MbS: by 2015 it was becoming clear that a combination of Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey was failing to carry out regime change in Damascus. This powerful grouping has fragmented, with Turkey and Qatar moving closer to the Russian-backed Iranian-led axis, which is the dominant power in the northern tier of the Middle East between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean.

If the US and Saudi Arabia wanted to do anything about this new alignment, they have left it too late. Other states in the Middle East are coming to recognise that there are winners and losers, and have no wish to be on the losing side. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a meeting this week in Istanbul of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, to which 57 Muslim states belong, to reject and condemn the US decision on Jerusalem, Saudi Arabia only sent a junior representative to this normally moribund organisation. But other state leaders like Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, King Abdullah of Jordan and the emirs of Kuwait and Qatar, among many others, were present. They recognised East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and demanded the US reverse its decision.

MbS is in the tradition of leaders all over the world who show Machiavellian skills in securing power within their own countries. But their success domestically gives them an exaggerated sense of their own capacity in dealing with foreign affairs, and this can have calamitous consequences. Saddam Hussein was very acute in seizing power in Iraq but ruined his country by starting two wars he could not win.

Mistakes made by powerful leaders are often explained by their own egomania and ignorance, supplemented by flattering but misleading advice from their senior lieutenants. The first steps in foreign intervention are often alluring because a leader can present himself as a national standard bearer, justifying his monopoly of power at home. Such a patriotic posture is a shortcut to popularity, but there is always a political bill to pay if confrontations and wars end in frustration and defeat. MbS has unwisely decided that Saudi Arabia should play a more active and aggressive role at the very moment that its real political and economic strength is ebbing. He is overplaying his hand and making too many enemies.