Huge rise in deaths of homeless people in the UK

Dennis Moore

Aaron French-Willcox, aged just 19, was found dead in a tent in Cardiff in the early hours of February this year. Aaron had type one diabetes and he died from diabetic ketoacidosis.

Just three weeks before his death, he had to leave a homeless shelter because he had been caught taking Spice, the synthetic cannabinoid.

Aaron’s tragic death typifies the terrible plight that many of those who sleep rough across the UK face each night as they try to find a place to sleep. He was one of the many people who have been forced to live in temporary and semi-permanent tented encampments across the UK, an increasing number of whom are dying on the streets.

Across Britain, it is common to see tents and encampments set up in cleared wooded areas, underneath bridges, underpasses, or the less noisy areas of city centres.

The reaction of the local authorities to these encampments has been mainly to break them up, and move them on, utilising Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) and enforcement orders.

In July, 10 police officers broke up an encampment on the banks of the Severn river near Worcester Cathedral, where six rough sleepers had been living. Only days later, some of those who had been forced to leave were seen sleeping out in Worcester town centre.

Data on those living in tents and encampments is not formally collated. However the homeless charity Crisis said that last Christmas it was estimated that more than 9,000 people would have been sleeping out in tents, cars, trains and buses.

This figure is on top of the many thousands who are already sleeping out across Britain and represents an increase of 57 percent since 2011.

The official figures as to how many people are sleeping out in England are calculated based on a “head count” of rough sleepers carried out on a given night. The count itself is guided by strict rules, including what constitutes a rough sleeper. Those sleeping in what are defined as encampments, including tents, and cars are not necessarily included in the total figure of the 4,751 who were accepted as bedding down outside overnight in 2017.

The official rough sleeper counts are considered a vast underestimation of the true scale of rough sleeping in England.

In response to last year’s count of rough sleepers in Manchester, where 278 people were recorded, Mike Wright, the strategic lead on Homelessness in Greater Manchester, said the official figures failed to take into account the true number of rough sleepers, whose status fluctuates. Some 500 long-term rough sleepers were referred by Manchester council staff, GPs, and charities to a scheme working to find long-term accommodation for the most entrenched rough sleepers.

The numbers of those dying on the streets or in temporary accommodation has more than doubled in the UK in the last five years, with many being found dead in church graveyards, supermarket car parks and crowded hostels.

Many of these have been attributed to rising rents, welfare cuts and a lack of social housing, which have led to some of the most vulnerable ending up dying on the streets.

Matthew Downie from Crisis said, “These figures are a devastating reminder that rough sleeping is beyond dangerous, it’s deadly, and it’s claiming more and more lives each year.”

There is an increase in the numbers who have died on the streets who have mental health problems, rising from 29 to 80 percent in the same five-year period.

Figures compiled by the Guardian earlier this year showed that in 2017 one person a week was dying. It is likely that these figures are an underestimation, because homeless deaths are not recorded at a national level and local authorities are not required to record rough sleeper deaths.

A recent investigation carried out by Manchester Evening News (MEN) journalist Jennifer Williams found that many deaths of homeless people are not only not investigated in the UK, but are not properly counted.

Donn Morgan, a 30-year-old man from the working-class Wythenshawe district of south Manchester, was found dead last month on Whitworth Street West in the city centre. His death only came to light because a member of the public rang the MEN to say the road was shut early Sunday morning.

By the time a reporter called the police about it, the road had been reopened and Morgan’s death had been declared non-suspicious. One of Williams’ colleagues went out the following day to ask other rough sleepers about what had happened to Morgan. They told him of another rough sleeper, a man named Luke Urmston, who had died only a few yards away from where Morgan had died just days earlier. Both died within just yards of some of the dozens of cranes that are constructing luxury apartments for the wealthy throughout the city centre.

An inquiry made to the city coroner into deaths of homeless people found that in the last five years it has investigated 50 deaths of people with no fixed abode, with this number increasing over that period. Of the 50 deaths, 48 were men, with the youngest being 28 and the oldest 90.

The report “Dying On The Streets,” carried out by the St. Mungo’s charity that works with rough sleepers, points to increasing problems with a lack of services and a marked increase in the numbers of rough sleepers dying.

The report was based on a survey carried out earlier this year that included St. Mungo’s and 71 other providers of services across all regions of England. The number of people dying in London between 2010 and 2017 was counted at 158. In the first four months of this year the number of people who have died that have been recorded is 40—a figure that exceeds deaths for the whole of 2013.

Some of the survey’s findings point to only a minority of deaths of people sleeping rough being reviewed, with 63 percent of respondents saying they had seen a death locally, but only 23 percent saying they had any experience of a review being carried out following the death of a rough sleeper.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said that access to emergency accommodation for rough sleepers had gotten harder compared to five years ago. Some 70 percent of respondents said access to mental health services for rough sleepers had gotten harder in the last five years.

Respondents reported that only 30 percent of services had staff with specialist training in mental health, substance use, or social care and immigration. The lack of specialist training in these areas significantly impacts services in London, where the migrant population is higher, yet only 23 percent of services have workers with specialist training, and 77 percent none at all.

In the last five years in England there has been a 97 percent increase in rough sleeping, whilst 31 percent of street outreach services reported they had seen a decrease in funding.

It is not surprising that with access to specialist services and accommodation becoming harder to obtain, increasing numbers of homeless people are dying on the streets. The average age for a homeless person dying is 47 for a man, 43 for a woman.

Much fanfare surrounded the government’s recent announcement that a £100 million fund would be granted to eradicate rough sleeping within a decade.

This is a vastly inadequate response to the social catastrophe that is forcing more and more people out on the streets. Official statistics show that rough sleeping in England has gone up for the seventh consecutive year—an increase of 169 percent since 2010, when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government came to power. Tory Housing Secretary James Brokenshire admitted that there is no new money in the fund and that this money will be spent over the coming decade.

Swedish election results in gridlock and growth of the far-right

Gabriel Black 

Sweden’s national parliamentary elections were held Sunday amid widespread fear of the growth of the neo-fascist Swedish Democrats combined with contempt for the mainstream political parties, particularly the Social Democrats.

The election resulted in a state of political gridlock between the two major coalitions. The “center-left” bloc, an alliance between the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens, won 40.6 percent of the vote, while the “center-right” bloc, called the “Alliance,” composed of the Moderates, the Centre Party, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, won 40.2 percent of the vote.

Neither coalition has a sufficient number of deputies in the Swedish Riksdag (parliament) to form a government on its own. In the coming two weeks, before the parliament opens, the two coalitions will attempt to cut deals with sections of the opposing coalition or seek a deal with the Swedish Democrats.

Swedish Democrat leader Jimmy Akesson has made clear that his party will seek to force the entirety of Swedish politics to the right by playing the “kingmaker” in this political crisis. He stated at an election rally, “We will increase our seats in parliament and we will gain huge influence over what happens in Sweden during the coming weeks, months and years.”

The Swedish Democrats, which emerged out of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movement, won 17.6 percent of the vote and 63 seats in the 349-seat Riksdag, making it the third largest single party after the Social Democrats and the Moderates. The Swedish Democrats’ share of the vote increased from 2014, when it won 12.9 percent, however, the party’s electoral result was lower than polls had anticipated. During the summer, some polls predicted it would win almost 25 percent of the vote.

To the extent that the Swedish Democrats have been able to win a hearing, it is because of the bankruptcy of the traditional ruling parties in Sweden. The Social Democrats, working in alliance with, at different times, the Moderates, the Green Party, the Left Party, the liberals and the Christian Democrats, have overseen decades of growing inequality and deteriorating social services, particularly education and healthcare. Years of scandals, incompetence and deception have eroded the support sections of workers and youth once gave to the Social Democrats.

The Social Democrats, who have ruled Sweden for most of the past 100 years, received their lowest vote in over a century. The Moderates, traditionally the second largest party, also experienced a sharp decline in support, losing 14 parliamentary seats.

What is taking place in Sweden follows the general political pattern seen throughout Europe and much of the world under conditions of the global crisis of the capitalist system.

In France, the Socialist Party has essentially collapsed, with the far-right feeding on the void. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has emerged as the official opposition as a result of a similar climate of disgust with the mainstream parties—and support from the military-intelligence apparatus and sections of the ruling class for the neo-fascists.

While Sweden is often placed on a pedestal by reformist groups in the United States and Europe due to its comparatively extensive welfare state, the reality is that it, like every other capitalist country, is heading deeper into economic and political crisis.

A January 2015 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report found that between 1985 and the early 2010s, inequality grew in Sweden faster than in any other country in the organization, including the United States.

In 2014, the top 10 percent of the population held over 68 percent of the total wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report. This level of wealth concentration is higher than that of every other country in Europe except Switzerland, and it is significantly higher than many countries with similar levels of development such as the UK (53 percent), Australia (50 percent) and Canada (57 percent).

The ballooning wealth of the top 10 percent of Swedish society, bound up with financialization and the rise of stock values, contrasts sharply with the experience of millions of Swedes, who have seen years of cuts to social services, including healthcare, pensions and education, along with rising living costs, particularly housing, and a loss of decent-paying manufacturing jobs.

It is in this social climate that the far-right is able to gain a hearing and use immigrants as a scapegoat. In 2015, Sweden, relative to its size, admitted the largest number of refugees in Europe. The overwhelming majority of the population expressed warmth and sympathy for the hundreds of thousands who fled regions destroyed by the US-led war drive in the Middle East (wars, such as Libya and Afghanistan, in which Sweden has been involved).

Since 2015, all of the political parties, from the Left Party on down, have moved sharply to the right on immigration, adapting to the racist policies of the Swedish Democrats and bolstering their political status. Now there is only a trickle of new immigrants coming in.

Meanwhile, the Swedish ruling class is stepping up its role in the anticipated war between the United States and Russia. The Swedish press, increasingly filled with sensationalist stories about Russian Baltic expansion, produced several articles on alleged Russian involvement in the Swedish election. While social services are on the chopping block, the Social Democratic-Green coalition concluded an agreement last year with the Moderates and Centre Party to hike military spending by over 8 billion kronor ($1 billion) between 2018 and 2020.

It is notable that the Swedish Democrats’ vote fell well short of the media predictions. This reflects the widespread left-wing and pro-immigrant sentiments of broad masses of Swedish workers and youth. Many people voted out of a deeply felt conviction that this fascistic party needed to be stopped in its tracks.

The growth of support for the Stalinist Left Party, from 5.7 percent to 7.9 percent, likewise reflects this politically unclarified leftward sentiment. The Left Party actually increased at a slightly faster rate (38 percent) than the Swedish Democrats (36 percent).

However, the Left Party plays a politically reactionary role, working to channel working class anger behind the Social Democrats and block the development of an independent working class political movement. Stopping the growth of the far-right in Scandinavia and Europe as a whole requires the creation of a genuine socialist movement of the European and international working class.

Trump administration threatens sanctions against International Criminal Court

Patrick Martin

The Trump administration announced Monday that it would retaliate against the International Criminal Court (ICC), a judicial panel established under the auspices of the United Nations, if the ICC took any action against US military or civilian officials over charges of war crimes in Afghanistan.

The announcement was made by National Security Advisor John Bolton in a speech to the Federalist Society, the corporate-financed association of ultra-right lawyers and judges that has vetted President Trump’s two nominations to the US Supreme Court.

Bolton took the occasion of an appearance before a group of lawyers to declare the US government’s defiance of any constraint on its actions under international law, which he characterized as an attack on American sovereignty. His main concern was not so much for front-line soldiers, as for the decision-makers, from military commanders on the battlefield to war planners and strategists in Washington, right up to the White House itself, who he said were in danger of being “intimidated” by the threat of war crimes charges.

In rejecting the ICC the Trump administration has not adopted a new policy. When the body was first created in 2002 under an accord signed in Rome, the Bush administration repudiated it, and Congress quickly passed legislation by huge bipartisan margins. The new law, the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, had as its goal “to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not a party.”

Subsequent events demonstrated why the Bush Administration repudiated the ICC. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq in a criminal war of aggression launched on the basis of lies. As a direct consequence of the invasion, over a million Iraqis were killed, and the United Sates military engaged in sadistic torture and murder on a massive scale.

The Obama administration upheld this law as well, and Bolton hailed it, joking that it had been widely dubbed The Hague Invasion Authorization Act, since it approved in advance the use of military force to free any US citizens facing charges before the ICC, which sits in The Hague, Netherlands.

The national security advisor outlined further actions that the Trump administration was prepared to carry out in the event the ICC decided to act on a request filed in November 2017 for an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan committed by Afghan government and outside forces, including American. The ICC has been collecting evidence on torture in US, NATO and Afghan government detention centers since 2007, without taking any action thus far, an indication of the impotence of such bodies when faced with opposition by the major imperialist powers.

These actions would include denying entry to the United States for members and employees of the ICC, financial sanctions against ICC judges and staff if they have assets in the US financial system, and the bringing of criminal charges under US law. In other words, anyone who would dare to investigate US war crimes overseas could find themselves sitting in a US jail, or even in a detention center like Guantanamo Bay, treated like a “terrorist.”

In perhaps the most revealing passage of his 30-minute speech, Bolton outlined what he said were five fundamental defects of the International Criminal Court. The second “defect” was that crimes of aggression were defined too vaguely. If the ICC had been in existence during World War II, he declared, it would have found the Allies guilty of war crimes for the bombing of Germany and Japan—the deliberate creation of firestorms in Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo and other cities, in which hundreds of thousands died, and the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Bolton objects to such methods being called by their right names—war crimes—because he represents a government that has already tested out such methods, in Mosul, Raqqa and other cities, and is preparing to do so on a much vaster scale, including giant metropolises like Tehran, Moscow and Beijing.

Bolton paired the declaration of war on the ICC with a directive to close the Washington office of the Palestine Liberation Organization because the Palestinian Authority has brought charges before the ICC over Israel’s building of illegal settlements on the West Bank on land seized from Palestinian farmers.

While Bolton ridiculed the ICC as an illegitimate body that was grossly exceeding its authority, he was silent on the real target of the Trump administration’s wrath: the 123 member states that participate in the ICC and accept its jurisdiction. This includes every nation in Latin America except Nicaragua, every Caribbean state except Cuba and Haiti, every European country except Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, and Pacific states like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.

Bolton asserted that states comprising two-thirds of the world’s population and 70 percent of the world’s military force were outside the ICC, without mentioning that this consists mainly of the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, the countries of southeast Asia (most under military or Stalinist dictatorship) and nearly all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (including Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel).

This list includes an array of savage US-backed dictatorships, which engage in everyday violations of human rights on a mass scale, through torture, imprisonment and executions.

In threatening the ICC, the Trump administration is not merely defying an international tribunal initially sanctioned by Washington. It is effectively laying down the law to what once were the closest allies or client states of American imperialism: the NATO countries, the Latin American countries, and the countries of the Pacific Rim. If they cross the United States, they will be dealt with savagely.

In the person of Trump, Bolton & Co., American imperialism is dropping the pretense of the United States as the leader of the free world and the advocate of international law, a political posture that, however false, was of enormous significance in the historical period following World War II.

Instead, Trump’s America is a nakedly predatory imperialist power, openly seeking domination over all others, flouting international law and democratic scruples whenever the interests of “America First” require it to do so.

And despite their occasional protests, there is no significant dissent from the Democratic Party against this stance of defiance of international law and any accountability for US troops and operatives for their actions around the world.

On the contrary, the Democratic Party’s main criticism of Trump is that he has been insufficiently aggressive and unconstrained in the use of American military power, particularly in Syria, as well as on the periphery of Russia, in areas like Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltic states.

ICAO Young Aviation Professionals Program (Fully-paid Internship at Montréal, Canada) 2019

Application Deadline: 30th September 2018

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Montréal, Canada.

About the Programme: The selected Young Aviation Professional Officers will be expected to contribute to ICAO, IATA and ACI work programmes related to aviation safety, air navigation capacity and efficiency, or to economic development of air transport, aviation facilitation, or environmental protection, focusing on inter-relationships between regulatory activities of ICAO and those in the airline and airport industries in IATA and ACI.

Type: Internship

Eligibility: 

• Commitment to continuous learning: The willingness and ability to engage in self-development, keep up-todate with new developments, help others to learn and learn from others.
• Planning and Organizing: Ability to set clear goals, prioritize, anticipate problems or risks, and have effective time management skills.
• Communication: Ability to write in a clear, concise and accurate manner. Ability to communicate verbally and with diplomacy.
• Client Orientation: Ability to see from the clients’ perspective, anticipate client needs and concerns; find appropriate solutions for clients, and keep clients informed.
• Teamwork: Ability to work collaboratively with others and maintain harmonious working relationships in a multicultural environment.
• Technological awareness: Ability to use contemporary software such as MS Office Suite (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), SharePoint, or equivalent and demonstrate a willingness to learn and use new technology.

Selection Criteria: 

• Level of educations: a) Master’s degree (or equivalent, to be demonstrated by the applicant); or b) Bachelor degree, supplemented with a Commercial Pilot License or an Air Traffic Control License.
• Experience: Minimum of two years’ professional working experience in aviation-related regulatory activities and/or in the aviation industry.
• Language skills: Fluent reading, writing and speaking abilities in English. Working knowledge of a second language commonly used in international organizations (French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian or Arabic) would be an asset; and
• Age criteria: Aged 32 years or less on the closing date of this announcement.
• Note: Preference will be given to candidates who are not currently serving, or who have not previously served, as an intern with either ICAO, IATA and ACI.

Number of Awardees: 3

Value of Programme: 

• Living Costs: All living costs and expenses will be borne by the Young Aviation Professional Officer.
• Financial Support: A fixed amount of CAD $4 000 per month will be provided to each selected Young Aviation Professional Officer to assist with living costs.
• Annual leave will be provided at the rate of one and a half days per month.
• Sick leave will be provided at the rate of one day per month.
• Medical insurance will be provided at the single rate for prescription/medical/dental coverage within Canada. The selected candidates will be required to pay the employee portion of the premium, which is estimated to be approximately CAD $ 122.66 per month.
• Occupational accident insurance will be provided (at no cost to the selected candidates).
• Non-occupational accident insurance will be available to the selected candidates, at their own cost.
• Travel: Where required, travel costs to and from Montreal at the beginning and at the end of the Programme will be provided at the lowest available applicable fare. The cost for one excess baggage (i.e. baggage in excess of the weight or volume carried without charge by transportation companies) will be covered up to a maximum of 25 kilograms.
• Visa: ICAO will provide a letter of support to assist in obtaining the required visa.

Duration of Programme: Each Young Aviation Professional Officer position will be filled for twelve months.

How to Apply: Interested candidates who meet the selection criteria are requested to submit their candidature by the closing date of 30 September 2018 by completing the online application form available at https://careers.icao.int. They must also attach a motivation letter summarizing: their professional achievements to date; their suitability for the Programme; their career aspirations in regulatory activities and/or the aviation industry; and the field of work for which they wish to be considered. Candidates should also indicate their preferred task(s) from the lists provided in Appendix A and Appendix B and explain why they have this interest.
It is important to visit the Programme Webpage before applying for this Internship

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)

Important Notes: Candidates who do not complete the online application and the motivation letter will not be given consideration.

British Council Alumni Awards 2019

Application Deadlines: 28th October 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All countries except the UK

Eligible Field of Study: All

About the Award: The Alumni Awards celebrate the outstanding achievements of alumni and showcase the impact and value of a UK higher education. Award winners and finalists are leaders in their fields who have used their experience of studying at a UK university to make a positive contribution to their communities, professions and countries.
If you, or someone you know, studied in the UK and have gone on to achieve exceptional success, apply yourself or nominate someone today.

Type: Award

Eligibility: 

• Alumni must be currently residing in one of the 14 countries participating in the Alumni Awards 2018
• Alumni must have studied in the UK at degree level or above:
  • within the last 15 years (i.e. 2003 or later)
  • for a minimum of one term or semester
  • enrolled at an officially recognised (160 institutions) or listed (650 institutions) UK higher education institution

Selection Criteria: All eligible applications will be assessed on the extent to which they meet the following four criteria:

1. IMPACT: evidence of tangible impact, and scale of impact, of your work (inspired by your UK education) in your profession/community/society.
2. UK INFLUENCE: evidence of how your UK education has played a key influence in your success and impact.
3. MEDIA TRACTION: Extent to which your success story is likely to resonate with local/regional/national media in your country of entry, or beyond (global media).
4. POTENTIAL TO INFLUENCE AND INSPIRE: Extent to which (including capacity and willingness) you and your story are likely to influence and inspire the next generation of prospective internationally mobile students in your country of entry to choose the UK as their study destination.

If you are applying yourself, you will need to answer three short questions on the application form to explain how your UK higher education has contributed to your success and why you think you should be considered for an Alumni Award 2017.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Finalists and winners at all levels (national, regional and global) will benefit from their global profile being made more visible through press and publicity opportunities, and building their professional networks. The three Global Alumni Award winners will be invited to the UK for a professional networking opportunity in Summer 2019.

How to Apply:  How to prepare to apply yourself, or nominate someone, for an Alumni Award 2019:

• Check the eligibility criteria and read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Choose the award category
• Prepare a statement
• Gather supporting documents
• Apply or nominate here

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: British Council

Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship (Fully-funded to London, UK) 2018

Application Deadline: 17th September 2018.

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): London, UK

About the Award: Index helps fellows build key partnerships, troubleshoot and receive expert support in multiple areas including personal safety, finance, PR and mental health. Fellows work with Index and partners to identify and realise key strategic goals. Index promotes news and regional developments through our magazine, website and social media.

Categories:

• Arts: for artists and arts producers whose work challenges repression and injustice and celebrates artistic free expression
• Campaigning: for activists and campaigners who have had a marked impact in fighting censorship and promoting freedom of expression
• Digital Activism: for innovative uses of technology to circumvent censorship and enable free and independent exchange of information
• Journalism: for courageous, high-impact and determined journalism that exposes censorship and threats to free expression

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• The 2019 Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship is open to any individual or organisation involved in tackling free expression threats.
• Four fellowships will be offered, one in each of the following categories: journalism, campaigning, arts and digital activism.
• Anyone can nominate or self-nominate.
• Nominees must have had a recognisable impact in the past 12 months.

Selection Criteria: 

• Timeliness: A significant contribution within the past 12 months.
• Resilience: Courage to speak out, persisting in the face of adversity.
• Innovation: Creative ways of promoting free expression or circumventing censorship.
• Impact: Evidence of shifting perceptions, influencing public or government opinion, contributing to legislative change.

Need: Those cases where the 2019 Awards Fellowship can potentially add the most value.

Number of Awards: 4 Fellowships in each of the categories above.

Value of Award: Fellows receive 12 months of direct assistance, starting with an all-expenses-paid training week in London in April 2019.

How to Apply: Submit your nomination

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Index on Censorship

Government of Ireland Masters and PhD Scholarships for International Students 2019

Application Deadline: 16:00 (Irish time) 1st November 2018

Eligible Countries: National and International

To Be Taken At (Country): Ireland

About the Award: The aim of the Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, hereinafter referred to as the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, is to support suitably qualified research master’s and doctoral candidates pursuing, or intending to pursue, full-time research in any discipline.
A number of targeted scholarships are offered in collaboration with strategic funding partners.

Type: Masters, PhD

Eligibility:

• Applicants must fulfil the following criteria:
  
  
  • have a first class or upper second-class honours bachelor’s, or the equivalent, degree. If undergraduate examination results are not known at the time of application, the Council may make a provisional offer of a scholarship on condition that the scholar’s bachelor’s, or the equivalent degree result is a first class or upper second-class honours. If a scholar does not have a first class or upper second-class honours bachelor’s, or the equivalent, degree, they must possess a master’s degree. The Council’s determination of an applicant’s eligibility on these criteria is final;
  • must not have had two previous unsuccessful applications to the programme, including strategic partner themes. This includes applications since 2009 to the EMBARK Scheme previously run by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology, and the Government of Ireland Scholarship Scheme previously run by the Irish Council for Humanities and Social Sciences;
  • in the case of applications for a research master’s scholarship, applicants must not currently hold, or have previously held, a Council Postgraduate Scholarship;
  • in the case of applications for a doctoral degree scholarship, applicants must not currently hold, or have previously held, any Council Postgraduate Scholarship other than those which would enable them to obtain a research master’s degree
• Applicants will fall under one of two categories based on nationality and residency. For category one, applicants must meet BOTH of the following criteria:
  • be a national of a European Union member state, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein or Switzerland
    AND
  • have been ordinarily resident in a European Union member state, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein or Switzerland for a continuous period of three of the five years preceding 1 October 2019.

All other applicants will fall under category two.
While the majority of scholarships will be awarded to applicants who fall under category one, a proportion of awards will also be made to exceptional applicants who fall under category two. Please note that the Council may request documented evidence of an applicant’s nationality and residence.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• a stipend of €16,000 per annum
• a contribution to fees, including non-EU fees, up to a maximum of €5,750 per annum
• eligible direct research expenses of €2,250 per annum

Duration of Program:

• Research master’s degree: 12 months
• Structured research master’s degree: 24 months
• Traditional doctoral degree: 36 months
• Structured doctoral degree: 48 months

How to Apply: Potential applicants should read the 2019 Terms and Conditions carefully to ascertain whether or not they are eligible to apply. Indicative versions of the applicant, supervisor and referee forms are provided for information purposes only. All participants must create and submit their forms via the online system.

Apply here

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Government of Ireland

Important Notes: 

• Please note that the timings provided here are indicative and may be subject to change.
• All scholarships must commence on 1 October 2019.

The scourge of internet gagging in Kashmir

Abid Ahmad Shah

The world of today is altogether in contradiction to the times of the previous ages. Technology has taken the global order by a major revolutionary storm and made the world a knowledge driven global network. Internet forms the mainstay of the current times and is in fact a boon companion of man in the modern times. Internet is the constitutive element of the current times, sans which life seems to be a dead wood and bereft of technological assimilation.

Over the world, there are today a multitude of problems and a plethora of issues which really pose a serious and a grave challenge to the peace and order of the societal organisations. Kashmir is not a different case. It is in fact a looming imbroglio amuck with political crisis prior to the partition of the sub-continent, thence after and as of now with a renewed impetus and inroads of chaos and uncertainty. Every other day, the situations take a u-turn of additions and alterations with the passage of time and pose a serious challenge for the system to contain the problems at hand.

Since, the eruption of Amarnath land transfer controversy, through the tumultuous phases of 2010 and 2016 till date, the situations have achieved great uncertain proportions and reflect the growing tendencies of political waywardness in Kashmir. Whether we call it destiny, manoeuvring or inroads of tragic phases of political uncertainty, the situations are of enormous gravity as of now.

Net is the major requirement of the masses all over the world, particularly for the students and business fraternity in the contemporary times. Next day, a cordon and search operation (CASO) is undertaken in the valley by the security agencies during anti-militancy operations, the major thrust of the government is driven towards the choking and muzzling of internet space in Kashmir. In a place dogged with an overridden unhealthy political atmosphere with a restive nature, one cannot expect a peaceful scenario on the day-to-day basis.

The constitution of India as a guiding principle of rights and duties guarantees right to freedom of expression to the citizens of the country .People in Kashmir voice their dissent over the social media once an unfortunate and gory episode recurs in Vale. The gagging and censuring of media and net in Kashmir has become a new normal in Kashmir. By denying the people, particularly students, the access to information regarding the day-today happenings and latest information about the world situations and information influx, the government is in fact committing a major wrong in Kashmir.

The policy of net gagging in Kashmir might serve as a deterrent in the short term to keep the situation at control in tense Kashmir, but the aftershocks of the situations cannot be negated. This is an illogical and irrational step in the far-sighted strategy. Since, 2008, Kashmir has been witness to internet blockades, e-curfews and blocking of Pakistani channels at the behest of the government. Situations have arisen and gone, but the scars of the tragic episodes are there and every day the social media is abuzz with the narratives of the gory tales of the masses which the people have undergone in the long run.

It is a bizarre fact that a coin has two sides. Likewise, Net usage has rights and wrongs associated with it. Internet is the major requirement of people as of now. By choking the net space in Kashmir day-in and out, the government is doing wrong and it may resurface as backlash in the long run.

Instead of taking recourse to banning channels and choking net space in Kashmir, the major thrust of the government should be to take route towards betterment of good governance in J&K and dialogue with all the stakeholders which will serve as a better trigger to better the fragile  situation in Kashmir which has unfortunately manifested into a dynamic malignancy and snatched the peace and order of the people’s lives, with an ensuing disorder and chaos looming large over the Asian sub-continent.

Since ceasefire to current political crisis, all is not well in Kashmir and the situations are turning from bad to worse with the passage of time. Today, the alienation among the masses is much more as was in the previous years.

What is therefore the required broad strategy of the government in the current times is to create a consensus and environment for dialogue on the Kashmir issue and restore the faith of people in the political order for the sake of peace which Kashmir is yearning for. There cannot be something divine intervention so far as issue at stake is in consideration; rather a strong political will to better the situation in Kashmir is the vital need of the hour.

Being in New Delhi for over four years as a student from 2011 to 2014, never have i obseved the media gag and net muzzling in mainland India..Why only in Kashmir? This question haunts my mind and is a great disgusting factor.

By resorting to media gagging and net muzzling, the government is committing a wrong step in contravention to the good governance principles which only dents the compassionate mainstreaming of the masses and creates a gory tale of otherness within the psyche of the people as a countermeasure in the long run. The government in J&K ought to understand the gravity of current political instability. Today’s media gag and tomorrow’s liberation will never serve the purpose. After all it is the question of collective pain and unified political approach within the purview of logical approach of political dealing.

Today Kashmir is in search of a dialogue and that is the sine-qua-non condition to rectify the errors and solidify the peace in the hinterland of idyllic setting in the world. Kashmir through the decades-old political alienation has ultimately pushed the masses to the wall.

The emphatic dealing after understanding the macroscopic dimensions of the Kashmir problem, people’s suffering, oppressive tactics and substitution with an ethic of care and concern within the purview of humane approach and entangled through the ropes of good governance can act as a best remedy to the political ailment and its remedy thereof.

India’s Fading Democracy

Ashraf Lone

Indian democracy is in grave danger. First it was all about lynchings of muslims and dalits and killing of some selective activists but now the tide of intolerance and bigotry has entered the houses of all, including the urban intellectual class, labellled by present regime as “Urban Naxals”, which has derived widespread condemnation. No one is being spared now. Those ,who are critical of the government policies are considered “threat” by the ruling class to their power . This ruling class is afraid of losing the power and is thus using every tactic to remain in power or to try everything , not to lose power in future(elections). Dissenting voices are being silenced and curbed.

RSS affiliated BJP is leaving no stone unturned to remain in power.  “Love Jehad” slogan seems to be an old or outdated tactic now, though can be used at any opportune time which suits the ruling party. Lynchings have brought shame to India, and democratic system on international level. Some of the cases of lynchings  have proved involvement of the government in these crimes and criminals are roaming free.

From last four years Muslims have felt the brunt of this regime. There have been killing of Muslims in the name of beef eating and cow smuggling going on without interruption. Mobs are ruling the streets with full state patronage. Another aspect of the Indian society is discrimination and suppression of dalits on every front from villages to university recruitments. Lynching of dalits on one pretext or the other have  been also reported.

India is under BJP rule and BJP  in Independent India’s history has for the first time came to the power with full majority. It has tried and tries everything to saffronise the country. From school syllabus to Higher education, it has tried to change the narrative of history in its favour. It has turned its “heroes’” lost battles in wins, where Akbar is defeated by Rana Pratap at Haldighati.

The BJP has failed to fulfill its promises. Before election it had promised to reduced oil prices, creation of 1 crore jobs, of bringing back black money, but now it finds itself  nowhere near the target. its IT Cell is totally frustrated now. Fake charges againt intellectuals, activists and writers has become a new norm in today’s India. They are jailed and humiliated on roads and on different forums. Killing of activists and journalist is continuing on regular intervals.

Television Media has also felt the brunt of this regime in one way or the other. Some prominent TV personalities have been attacked for for speaking truth to power. Advertisements have been stopped to various media outlets. Only those are allowed to speak who toe the line of government and ignore the plight of common masses and harsh realities of the society.

Another worrying factor is the falling value of the rupee against the dollar and rising petrol prices. These two have worried Indians. Demonetisation proved to be total disaster making people wonder , what demonetization was all about. Editor-in Chief of Forbes magazine Steve Forbes has called demonetization a theft of people’s property and has also called Indian bureaucracy “to be notorious for corruption, red tape and lethargy.”

Fear has engulfed the whole of India. Journalists are now scared to ask questions and some have taken the back seat and are keeping mum and some have turned propagandist for the government. No pressing questions are asked to government for the larger benefit of the Indian masses. Polarization is being done with purpose, to devide the society on communal lines for the vote bank politics. With 2019 elections nearing, the present regime is leaving no stone unturned to wash it from its failures and shortcomings. It is using different but dangerous tactics to woo the masses to its fold.

Indian democracy is in peril now, with only one man calling the shots on all important matters. The ruling dispensation is no mood to answer the questions of the media and the opposition. Intolerance is rising with each passing day with hate speeches against Muslims and subsequently with the lynchings of Muslims. Activists are arrested with no stoppage to these arrests. Media is being muzzled and media persons silenced and threatened. Questioning the government has become a crime now freedom of expression seems to be thing of the past . It is like “ Elected Dictatorship” and undeclared emergency now in India and future of Indian democracy looks very bleak in present atmosphere of hate and bigotry.

Hundreds of Australian Aborigines killed in state custody

Richard Phillips

Thirty years after the Hawke Labor government’s 1987–91 “Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody,” the state brutality and killing of indigenous people in Australia continues unabated.

According to figures published last week by the Guardian, 147 Aborigines, including children, have died in custody over the last ten years, bringing the total number of indigenous people who have lost their lives in custody to 407 since the royal commission.

The deaths were the result of pursuits or violent assaults by police or prison officers, untreated physical and mental health illnesses and suicides. Not a single police or prison officer has been prosecuted over these fatalities.

The Guardian report is based on a detailed study of hundreds of coroners’ inquests between 2008 and 2018. The newspaper decided to undertake the investigation because federal, state and territory authorities have failed to maintain up to date records on the number of indigenous deaths in custody.

Gail Hickey, whose son T. J. died during a police pursuit in 2004

Australian Aborigines are the most incarcerated people in the world. Only 2.8 percent of the Australian population identifies itself as indigenous but they constitute 27 percent of the total number of prison inmates, 22 percent of deaths in prison and 19 percent of those killed in police custody.

The Guardian investigation features an online searchable database Deaths Inside and notes that more than half of the Aborigines who died in custody since 2008 had not been convicted of a crime. Most were suspected of non-indictable offences, ranging from public intoxication, to evading police and other repressive laws used by police to harass and detain Aboriginal people.

The database includes the example of 46-year-old Mr Ward who died of heat stroke in late January 2008, after being transported 360 kilometres through the Western Australian outback in the back of a police van with faulty air conditioning. Ward was admitted unconscious to hospital where he died. He had a severe burn on his side from lying on the extremely hot metal floor of the vehicle. GLS, the transport company used by Corrective Services, and two GLS employees, were later fined by Worksafe.

The report points to “stark differences in the medical care Indigenous people receive” compared to their non-indigenous counterparts. Half of the Aborigines who died had treatable medical conditions, including diagnosed mental health conditions or cognitive impairments, such as a brain injury or foetal alcohol syndrome disorder, but did not receive the necessary care.

The most common officially reported descriptions of the causes of death in the database are “Medical episode following restraint” or “Medical care required but not all given, procedures not all followed, force used.”

On December 30, 2008, a 24-year-old Aboriginal man, referred to as HN, died in the Royal Perth hospital three days after being bashed under the security cameras of a service station in Broome, Western Australia. HN was still unconscious when police arrived and arrested both his brother and the man who had attacked them. When HN regained consciousness, he was also arrested and taken to Broome hospital but did not receive a brain scan. An autopsy later revealed that HN had extensive skull fractures and intracranial haemorrhaging. He left the hospital against medical advice and was arrested again by a police officer who thought he was “good as gold” to be held in custody.

Police watch-houses, prisons and alcohol detention centres, the Guardianreported, failed to follow their own basic prevention of suicide procedures. Prisoners known to be at risk of self-harm were held in cells with hanging points, or placed in cells alone, despite numerous recommendations made by coroners that hanging points be removed from prisons and police watch houses.

In 2010, TLI, an Aboriginal woman with a chronic injury and a tooth abscess, was denied pain medication for six weeks after being transferred to Townsville women’s prison in Queensland. Her medical records were not sent to the jail with her and authorities, apart from providing mild painkillers, insisted she did not need pain relief. Six weeks after transfer, she took her own life. The coroner found the pain was “a contributing factor in her despair” during her final weeks.

The Guardian database references the case of 22-year-old Julieka Dhu in Western Australia. She was arrested on August 2, 2014, for unpaid parking fines and violently assaulted by several police officers at South Hedland police station.

Dhu was dropped on the cell floor when she could not stand up, dragged along the floor, and then carried, handcuffed and shackled, to a police van because she could not walk. Police told her she was “faking it” and berated her as a “f…ing junkie.” Dhu died on August 4, from septicemia and pneumonia caused by an infection in a rib broken by her violent partner some weeks before.

Protest over the death of Julieka Dhu

In another case, Kumanjayi Langdon, 59, died of heart disease in May 2015 while lying on a concrete bench in a Darwin police cell. He had been drinking in a park and was picked up by police under the Northern Territory’s “paperless arrest” laws. Introduced in 2014, the laws allow police to arrest and detain people for up to four hours. The coroner ruled that Langdon “was treated like a criminal and incarcerated like a criminal; he died in a police cell which was built to house criminals.”

Later that year, in October, police were sent to Kingston in Queensland to “restrain” Shaun Coolwell, who they claimed was having a “violent drug-induced episode” and behaving in an "uncontrollable" manner.

Coolwell was pinned down by police who handcuffed him while paramedics injected a chemical sedative. He began to have breathing problems, lost consciousness and died in hospital a few hours later. An internal investigation by Queensland police cleared the officers of any wrongdoing and found they had used “the minimum force required.”

These incidents are just a small sample of the horrifying and tragic reports in the Deaths Inside database. The investigation also revealed that most of the families of those who had died in custody were treated with contempt by state authorities, who delayed telling the next of kin. One father only found out that his son had died when another prisoner called him. Grief stricken families of victims have had to wait for years before coroners’ inquests were even commenced.

Last week Pat Dodson, an Indigenous Labor Party senator and one of the “Deaths in Custody” royal commissioners, declared that Australia was “going backwards as a nation” and denounced the Liberal-National federal coalition government. Dodson’s statement is disingenuous and a crude political diversion.

The increasing number of Aboriginal deaths in custody have occurred under Liberal-National and Labor governments—state, federal and territory alike.

In the aftermath of the royal commission, the entire political establishment, including figures like Dodson and other Aboriginal leaders, the Greens and pseudo-left organisations, claimed that the various cosmetic recommendations made by the commission would “end” the state-sanctioned carnage.

Every official investigation into the deaths in custody of Aborigines, including the 1987–91 royal commission, however, has been a whitewash. The recommendations and cosmetic changes advanced at various times have done nothing to change the plight of Aborigines, the most oppressed section of the Australian working class, but provided a licence for state authorities to continue the repression.

The growing number of Aboriginal deaths in custody runs parallel with the enrichment of a small elite of indigenous bureaucrats, academics and entrepreneurs who claim that racial oppression is the product of “white society” not the capitalist system and secondly, the widening economic gulf between this milieu and the vast majority of Aborigines.

The ongoing state-repression and economic degradation inflicted on Aboriginal workers and their families are just the most graphic expression of the social onslaught being carried out on all sections of the working class by big business governments in every country. The only way to fight this is through the development of a socialist movement that unites all working people, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike, in a fight to put an end to the profit system.

Sri Lankan prime minister threatens increased internet and social media censorship

Saman Gunadasa

Addressing last month’s “Colombo Defence Seminar–2018,” Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared that “global disruptive forces” were using the internet and social media to destabilise countries and were a threat to “national interests.”

The annual Colombo Defence Seminar has been held since 2011 and is organised by the Sri Lankan army. Its declared objective is to share the experiences of global defence establishments in fighting the “threats from terrorism and other activities.” The event was attended by military leaders, security and defence chiefs and diplomatic officials from 38 countries, including the US and other imperialist powers.

Wickremesinghe, who delivered the seminar’s keynote address, warned that an “array of traditional and non-traditional security threats” confronted governments in the 21st century.

While the prime minister referenced the social and political impact of what he glibly characterised as “natural calamities, climate change, human exodus and displacement,” his principal concern was what he said was the use of the Internet and social media by extremists and “violent non-state actors.”

“The new media, including social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other websites,” he said, “are becoming global disruptive forces.”

The nature of warfare, he said, “is shifting from physical to online” and referred to the mass revolutionary uprisings that erupted in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. “We have seen the potential of this new media to destabilise nations and affect serious change in the case of countries like Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt etc.”

Social media and the internet played a major role in the eruption of mass strikes and protests known as the “Arab Spring,” first in Tunisia, which led to the downfall of the Zine El Abidine Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and then a revolutionary upsurge of the working class in Egypt and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship. The absence of a genuine revolutionary and socialist party of the working class, meant that the Egypt ruling elite, with US backing, was able to crush this mass movement and reestablished a military dictatorship.

Wickremesinghe’s references to these revolutionary eruptions are no accident, but are driven by his concerns about the mounting opposition of Sri Lankan workers, the rural poor and students to his own government.

The “unity government” of Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena this year has confronted strikes and protests by power, railway, health, petroleum, ports, postal, water supply and plantation workers, as well as ongoing student protests against the privatisation of education, and demonstrations by peasants and fishermen.

The Sri Lankan government faces a mounting economic and political crisis with falling export earnings, a ballooning foreign debt and International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands that it deepens its austerity measures against the working class and rural masses.

Encouraged by the internet censorship measures by the US and other imperialist powers, Wickremesinghe’s speech is a clear indication that Colombo is planning to step up its own censorship of social media and the internet.

Colombo systematically blocked websites during its 26-year communal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The war ended in 2009 but the blockades continued.

Like its predecessor, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government has targetted social media and websites and maintains its special internet military intelligence unit, established during the war.

Last November, the Telecom Regulatory Commission (TRC), which directly comes under the president Sirisena, blocked lankaenews.com, after it began criticising him.

In March this year, Colombo banned Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp and other social media on the pretext that they were being used to organise and promote anti-Muslim violence by Sinhala-Buddhist extremist groups in the central Kandy district. Sirisena has also been calling for censorship of social media using sex-related abuses to justify his threats.

Wickremesinghe has previously announced that the government is formulating new laws to censor the internet and Facebook. Sri Lanka has around six million social media users i.e., around 30 percent of the population. Like its counterparts around the world, Colombo is deeply concerned that workers and youth are increasingly turning to social media and the internet for honest and accurate information.

Wickremesinghe’s speech to the Colombo Defence Seminar indicates that Sri Lanka’s political elite are preparing a major crackdown on the internet and social media.

Israel’s Netanyahu extends hand of friendship to fascistic Philippines President Duterte

Jean Shaoul

The fascistic president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has completed a four-day visit to Israel, the first-ever visit to the country by a Philippine head of state.

Duterte met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as President Reuven Rivlin and officials from Israel’s military and intelligence agencies. Among his entourage were 46 senior politicians, officials and military and security personnel, as well as a 150-strong delegation of business leaders.

The butcher Netanyahu is a fitting host to Duterte, who took office in 2016. “We remember our friends and that friendship has blossomed over the years and especially over the last few years,” Netanyahu said.

With Duterte’s visit, Netanyahu has added yet another far-right figure to Israel’s stable of allies.

The Philippine president’s visit follows visits by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, not to mention the coterie of far-right figures who attended the opening ceremony of the US embassy in Jerusalem earlier this year.

Duterte began his visit with an address to an audience of Filipinos in Jerusalem, where he defended his earlier remark, “If there are many beautiful women, there will be many rape cases as well,” as an exercise in “democracy and freedom of expression.”

Speaking last Monday after his meeting with Netanyahu, Duterte said, “May we continue to be blessed with a strong relationship,” adding cynically, “We share the same passion for peace. We share the same passion for human beings.” Then came a pledge of support for Israel’s repression of the Palestinians and its recent military threats against Syria, Iran and Lebanon.

“But,” added Duterte, “we also share the same passion of not allowing a family to be destroyed by those who [have] corrupt ideologies... In this sense, Israel can expect any help that the Philippines can extend.”

Duterte’s passion for human beings involves building a police state under the guise of a war on drugs. According to official statistics, the police killed 4,279 people between July 1, 2016 and May 15, 2018. Even more died at the hands of unofficial death squads, with the Duterte administration listing as one of its “key accomplishments” in the war on drugs an estimated 16,355 additional homicides in 2017 alone.

Duterte’s host likewise has the blood of thousands on his hands. Netanyahu heads the government of a state based on the oppression of an entire people. The Israel Defense Forces have killed more than 170 unarmed Palestinians—including children, journalists and paramedics—and injured some 13,000 in the weeks of protests near the border between Gaza and Israel that started on March 30 to demand the right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and villages. The Israeli military has used live bullets, tear gas and rubber bullets against unarmed protesters who posed no threat to Israel or its border fence.

Israel’s assault on the Palestinians follows its crippling 11-year-long blockade of the tiny enclave and its murderous wars on Gaza in 2008-09, 2012 and 2014, which killed 1,417, 147 and 2,250 Palestinians respectively and destroyed much of Gaza’s basic infrastructure and tens of thousands of homes.

Duterte said that Israel had aided the Philippines on intelligence matters on multiple occasions and thanked Netanyahu for helping his country “win its war on terror.” This was a reference to Israel’s arms supply during what became known as the Marawi Siege on the southern island of Mindanao in 2017, which left much of the city in ruins. More than 1,000 people were killed and 400,000 were forced to flee their homes in what began as a war between rival armed gangs, including Islamic State militants.

Following his meeting with Netanyahu, Duterte went to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, where he laid a wreath. In 2016, he compared his crackdown on drug dealers and users to the Holocaust, saying, “Critics compare me to Hitler’s cousin… Hitler massacred three million Jews... there’s three million drug addicts… I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

At Yad Vashem, he piously pledged to fight “insane rulers” like Hitler and called for learning the lessons of that “horrific and benighted period of human history.”

Duterte also chaired a business seminar at his hotel for CEOs from Israel and the Philippines. Ministers signed three bilateral agreements, adding to the existing 14 bilateral agreements relating to scientific cooperation, investment and the employment of the 24,000 Filipino caregivers—out of some 29,000 Filipinos working in Israel—that would cut the cost of employing every caregiver by $12,000.

The Filipinos were also expected to sign an oil exploration license for the Israeli-owned company Ratio Petroleum, which is seeking to exploit the Philippines’ offshore oil. The company has a stake in Israel’s Leviathan offshore natural gas production site in the eastern Mediterranean and licensing rights and options overseas, including in Guyana, Surinam, Malta and Ireland.

On Tuesday, Duterte met President Rivlin in Jerusalem. He was met by dozens of demonstrators. Prior to the visit, Israeli human rights groups had urged Rivlin not to welcome the “mass-murderer.” Appealing on behalf of at least 24 human rights groups, Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack argued that Duterte “poses a threat not just to Philippine citizens, but also to the peace of the whole world.” Welcoming Duterte was a tacit endorsement of massacres “against specific population groups,” “legitimizing other murderous leaders” across the globe.

Israel is not only legitimizing murder, it is facilitating it. The main purpose of Duterte’s trip to Israel was to explore future arms deals, including advanced weaponry and equipment and, potentially, aircraft. Duterte told Rivlin his country would in future buy weapons and military equipment only from Israel due to its lack of restrictions on their use. The US is “a good friend,” he said, “but if we buy there, there are limitations, also with Germany and China.”

The US and other countries have been forced, publicly at least, to refuse to sell Duterte arms due to gross human rights violations committed during his brutal crackdown. His tilt towards China has also angered Washington.

Israel is one of the largest arms dealers in the world, with nearly 60 percent of its defense exports going to the Asia-Pacific region. Since Duterte became president, Israel’s export of arms to the Philippines, including radar, armoured vehicles and anti-tank equipment, has risen from $6 million to $21 million.

According to the Global Militarisation Index, Israel has been the most militarised nation on the planet every year since 2007, and last year became a “cyber superpower,” selling about 10 percent of the world’s computer and network security technology. Its particular expertise is the “pacification industry,” the suppression of civilian unrest, based on its decades-long experience of suppressing the Palestinians.

Israel has a record of supplying arms to murderous regimes, including the Philippines, training and arming the death squads of the brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s, Augusto Pinochet’s military regime in Chile from 1973 to 1991, and the military juntas in Argentina and Bolivia in the 1970s. It sold arms used in the Rwandan genocide, the Bosnian war and Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers.

Last year, human rights groups accused Israel of training Myanmar’s special forces and supplying them with “advanced weapons,” including tanks and gunboats used during the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Muslim minority group, the Rohingya.

In September 2017, the Israeli High Court banned the reporting of Israeli arms sales to Myanmar after an appeal by the defense ministry. Myanmar’s navy showcased its Israeli-made gun-boats bought in defiance of EU and US arms embargos on the country. Israel has also violated the embargo on providing weapons and training to South Sudan, fueling the civil war there.