Sri Lankan Muslim ministers resign amid growing threats of anti-Muslim violence

K. Ratnayake

Nine Muslim ministers of the Sri Lankan government resigned on Monday in response to renewed threats by fascistic Buddhist monks, Sinhala racists and other reactionary elements to violently attack the country’s minority Muslim population.

The resignations followed a provocative “fast unto death” protest on Saturday by Athuraliye Rathana, a Buddhist monk and Sri Lankan parliamentarian. Rathana demanded the removal of cabinet minister Rishad Bathiudeen and the governors of the Western and Eastern provinces, Azath Salley and M.L.A.M. Hizbullah, who are all Muslims.

Rathana has made unsubstantiated claims that these individuals assisted the Islamic extremist National Thowheeth Jamma’ath (NTJ) group which carried out the terrorist attack on Christian churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on April 21. His protest is in line with the ongoing efforts of Sri Lanka’s ruling elite to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment. Rathana is an advisor to President Maithripala Sirisena.

Representatives of the Sirisena-led faction of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) met with the fasting monk on Saturday and expressed their solidarity with his demands, as did officials from the SLFP faction led by former President Mahinda Rajapakse. The Rajapakse-led opposition group also tabled a no-confidence motion against Bathiudeen in the parliament encouraging chauvinist groups to step up the anti-Muslim campaign.

On Sunday, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, who leads the fascistic Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) group, met with Rathana and declared that if his demands were not carried out by noon the next day there would be nationwide protests. On Monday, monks organised racist thugs in Kandy, Colombo and several other towns in preparation for violence.

Following the April 21 terror attacks, tens of thousands of troops and police have been mobilised in search operations and indiscriminate arrests in Muslim areas, but nothing has been done to stop racist mobs threatening violence.

On May 12 and 13, Sinhala racist groups attacked Muslims in the north-west and at Minuwangoda in the western province destroying property, killing one individual and injuring many others. Police and military officers turned a blind eye to the anti-Muslim attacks.

On Monday, Azath Salley and M.L.A.M. Hizbullah sent their resignations to Sirisena who then appealed Rathana to end his provocative protest. He promptly obeyed. Later that day cabinet minister Bathiudeen submitted his resignation.

Addressing a press conference, key cabinet minister Rauf Hakeem appeared with other Muslim ministers and declared that all nine ministers had decided to resign in order to protect the Muslim community, which had been “terrified” by the escalating threats. He said the ministers wanted the government to expedite an inquiry into any allegations against the Muslim leaders. “If any of us are found guilty, we should be punished,” he declared.

Hakeem said that the Muslim ministers would continue to support the government as elected MPs until the investigation ended. The decision of the Muslim political leadership, who are part of Colombo establishment and have backed the government’s repressive measures, will only encourage the Sinhala racist and Buddhist extremist groups.

The ever-increasing threats against Muslims are a warning to the entire Sri Lankan working class. Every faction of the ruling elite is systematically using Islamophobia to divide the working class along ethnic and religious lines as part of its preparations for autocratic forms of rule.

The Sri Lankan ruling class is infamous for its use of Sinhala chauvinism against the Tamil minority to divide the working class and defend capitalist rule. Its anti-Tamil discrimination and pogroms culminated in the 30-year war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). It was provoked in 1983 by the then United National Party (UNP) government, to divide the working class and break its resistance to Colombo’s “open market” restructuring.

While the Sri Lankan ruling elite and the media continues whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria, it is a fact that the defence establishment was warned in advance by Indian intelligence that a terrorist attack was planned for April 21. Evidence is now trickling out that a section of the government leadership also knew about the impending disaster but allowed it to occur.

Sri Lankan government and defence authorities have not provided any explanation for their inaction but have used the attack to impose a draconian state of emergency and deployed armed forces with sweeping powers throughout the country. Muslims have been ordered to provide information about the “terrorists” and Muslim women’s traditional attire, including the burqa and niqab, has been banned.

The Colombo media, which fully backs these repressive measures, is maintaining a vile anti-Muslim campaign, publishing inflammatory and sensationalist articles about the police and military raids and violent arrest operations.

The real target of all these repressive measures is the working class. The rising wave of workers’ strikes and protests over the past six months has been subdued by the government’s so-called anti-terror campaign, with the backing of trade unions and the pseudo-left. This is only temporary.

In December, over 100,000 plantation workers held a nine-day national strike to demand the doubling of their daily basic wage. In March, 200,000 teachers held a one-day national strike and were preparing for a two-day strike in May. Rural unrest has been developing and students have been involved in ongoing protests against the privatisation of education.

Terrified by this opposition to the government’s austerity measures, President Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader Rajapakse have all been preparing for authoritarian methods of rule. All factions of the ruling elite are now using the bogus campaign to “defeat the international terrorism” to support police-state measures.

Sirisena is systematically promoting anti-Islamic groups and on May 23 granted a presidential pardon for BBS general secretary Gnanasara and released him from prison. Gnanasara was serving six-year jail term for contempt of court. The BBS is notorious for its provocations against Muslims and Christians. In March 2014, Gnanasara instigated violent attacks on Muslims at Aluthgama and adjoining small towns. Scores of properties were destroyed, four Muslims killed and many others injured in the mob attacks.

Last week Prime Minister Wickremesinghe told a Jaffna meeting that his government would “show no mercy to those who sow the seeds of communal disharmony to achieve their political ends.” He claimed to have intelligence information about attempts to create violence and the individuals involved.

Wickremesinghe’s posturing is bogus. The UNP-led government and its political allies support the anti-Muslim hysteria and have passed a number of laws strengthening the military and the state apparatus.

The Rajapakse-led faction is likewise fanning the anti-Muslim campaign, while denouncing the government for “weakening” the military and its intelligence wing, and claiming that this paved the way for terrorist attacks.

Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) hopes to win government with the backing of section of the military. The SLPP has announced that its next presidential candidate will be the former president’s brother, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the former defence minister. He was responsible for the bloody final phase of the war against the separatist LTTE and also ruthlessly mobilised the military and the police to suppress struggles by workers and the poor.

On Monday, Ceylon Chamber of Commerce secretary Dhara Wijethilake wrote to the defence secretary and army commander, voicing his concerns about the danger of mob attacks. The letter declared, “As the highest-ranking official vested with responsibility for the maintenance of law and order, we expect you will ensure that all necessary measures are taken to maintain peace, law and order...”

Wijethilake’s “law and order” letter is another indication that Sri Lankan business chiefs will not hesitate to demand the military be used against the working class as it comes into conflict with the government and corporations.

Sri Lankan workers must seriously take stock of the situation. The working class must resolutely oppose the anti-Muslim campaign of the ruling elite and all its emergency rule measures and fight for unity of the workers across ethnic and national lines. Workers must take the initiative to build action committees in workplaces, large estates and neighbourhoods and call for support from youth, students and the poor.

The drive to dictatorial rule can only be defeated through the independent mobilisation of the working class in the struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government to implement socialist policies as part of struggle for international socialism. This is the program the Socialist Equality Party fights for.

Military junta launches counter-revolution in Sudan

Jean Shaoul

The counter-revolutionary bloodbath launched by the junta in Sudan’s capital Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman ongoing since Monday has killed some 100 people, including an eight-year old child, and injured hundreds more.

The number of victims includes 40 bodies pulled from the Nile River that the army dumped there. But with many protestors still unaccounted for the final total is likely to rise. A Sudanese journalist on Britain’s Channel 4 cited a former security officer who said that some of those thrown into the Nile had been beaten or shot to death and others hacked to death with machetes, declaring, "It was a massacre."

Victims of Monday’s massacre

The bloodbath is part of a broader move by the Transitional Military Council (TMC) to forcefully close down the protests and sit-ins in Khartoum and throughout the country. The TMC had seized power on April 11 after months of mass protests, in a preemptive coup against the 30-year rule of President Omar al-Bashir in a bid to preserve the military-dominated regime.

It is a prelude to a bloody military dictatorship along the lines of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt, with the full backing of Washington’s reactionary and ruthless regional allies, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. It was el-Sisi, then the Defence Minister in the elected government of Mohammed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government, who led the murderous assaults on pro-democracy demonstrators in Cairo in 2013.

On Tuesday, TMC chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, announced the cancellation of a three-year power-transfer deal tentatively agreed with opposition leaders organized under the umbrella of the Alliance for Freedom and Change (AFC). Instead, it would hold elections in nine months’ time under “regional and international supervision.”

The Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), one of the groups within the AFC, rejected the move, accusing the junta of a “systematic and planned” crackdown. Calling for the “overthrow of the military junta,” they urged demonstrators to return to the streets for Eid al-Fitr prayers, marking the end of Ramadan, to honour those killed on Monday and to “demonstrate peacefully” in a nation-wide “civil disobedience” protest.

The SPA also called for an international inquiry into the killings, rejecting the junta’s investigation. It is opposed to early elections which, if indeed they are held, would likely be rigged and/or dominated by ousted dictator President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP), the only organised political party with the resources to mount an election campaign.

On Monday, the TMC had cut off electricity to the central area of Khartoum and country-wide access to the internet, before deploying convoys of heavily armed members of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to guard the entrances to the bridges across the Nile and patrol the streets around both cities.

The RSF, previously known as the Janjaweed and notorious for their brutal suppression of the uprisings in Darfur and the east of the country, is controlled by the TMC’s deputy leader, Lieutenant General Hamdan Dagalo (known by his nickname “Hemeti”), who has ambitions of stepping into al-Bashir’s shoes. He was given carte blanche to unleash a general carnage.

Dagalo’s forces used live ammunition, stun grenades and tear gas to break up the more than five-month-old sit-in outside the country’s defense ministry in Khartoum, where tens of thousands of Sudanese had encamped demanding an end to military rule and the transfer of power to a democratically elected government. They then set about demolishing the barricades, beating up anyone who resisted, with protestors shouting in disbelief, “During the month of Ramadan?”

Videos on social media show the military shooting and beating unarmed, defenceless civilians and setting fire to the tents. One soldier was filmed shouting to other soldiers, "Kill them, kill the child of the dog.” There were also reports of the paramilitary forces raping women.

Much of Khartoum is now under lockdown. One resident told the BBC, “We have reached the point where we can't even step out of our homes because we are scared to be beaten or to be shot by the security forces.” Another said members of the Janjaweed had pulled him from his car and beaten him on his head and back.

The TMC justified its crackdown with ludicrous claims that the security forces were pursuing “unruly elements” who had fled to the protest site and were causing chaos. The RSF’s Major General Othman Hamed accused the sit-in of attracting prostitutes and hashish sellers and demonstrators of throwing stones at soldiers.

The Sudanese Doctors’ Committee, a supporter of the SPA that has played a key role in organizing the protests, appealed for "urgent support" from international humanitarian organisations to help the wounded. It said that it was struggling to cope, with people being treated on hospital floors, while soldiers patrolled outside, preventing doctors and even volunteers from entering.

According to witnesses, the RSF and the military had looted and destroyed property in hospitals and threatened doctors and medical workers with reprisals if they treated the wounded.

Video clips showed troops beating medical staff at Khartoum’s Royal Care Hospital, in some cases so severely that they too needed hospital treatment. They demanded the evacuation of all the patients. Soldiers arrested one of the doctors, Waleed Abdullah, after shooting him in the leg. One Sudanese doctor told the Middle East Eye web site, “If they know I'm a doctor, they will arrest me,” while another said it was “chaos everywhere.”

The assault on the protest had been openly prepared for days after negotiations between the junta and the civilian opposition popular alliance broke down over whether a military or a civilian figure would head a joint military-civilian regime during a proposed three-year transitional period in preparation for presidential elections.

Demonstrators had remained in the streets, rejecting the protracted transition and demanding an immediate end to the ruling junta. Last week, the country was paralysed by a two-day general strike called by the SPA.

The murderous crackdown began just after the TMC chief al-Burhan and deputy Dagalo’s tour of the three countries--Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE--that have backed the junta and are Washington’s chief allies in the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE had already pledged $3 billion to prop up Sudan’s junta. The quid pro quo is the dispatch of Sudanese troops to support Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s near-genocidal war against Yemen. After the meeting in Riyadh, Dagalo declared that “Sudan stands with the kingdom against all threats and attacks from Iran and the Houthis [Yemen’s anti-Saudi rebels].”

The military junta’s brutal crackdown gives the lie to the treacherous line of Britain’s Socialist Workers Party, which backed its sister party, the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists’ (RS) support for the Egyptian military’s ouster of Mursi, that paved the way for el-Sisi’s bloodbath and repression that have been even more ferocious than that of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak.

RS’ Hossam al-Hamalawy, writing in SWP’s monthly journal Socialist Review,called for Sudan’s revolutionaries to negotiate and ally with the lower ranks of the officers and among soldiers, and seek their participation.

The SPA and AFC, under the influence of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), are seeking to build a broad popular alliance of workers with political parties and armed groups, the same groups that have dominated Sudan since independence, to form a civilian-led transitional government. The notion that such a government--in a country dominated by a small, wealthy clique—would be capable of resolving the enormous social and economic problems confronting Sudanese workers is a dangerous illusion.

Egypt’s revolutionary struggles contain enormous political lessons, obtained at a terrible price, for the working class throughout the Middle East and North Africa where there is a growing movement of strikes and demonstrations by workers in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

The only way to establish a democratic regime in Sudan is through a struggle led by the working class, independently of and in opposition to the liberal and pseudo-left forces in the middle class who will stop at nothing to block a social revolution, to take power, expropriating the regime’s ill-gotten wealth in the context of a broad international struggle of the working class against capitalism and for the building of socialism.

Whither Indo-Pacific?

Sandip Kumar Mishra

At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this June, the US Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan released the US Indo-Pacific Strategy Report. The subtitle of the report talks about the US goals of "preparedness, partnerships and promoting a networked region," and the 55-page report appears to be a new and clearer vision of the US Indo-Pacific strategy.

A few important points reveal themselves at the first reading. One, the Indo-Pacific strategy appears to have been accorded more priority in US foreign and defence policies, with the report stating that the Indo-Pacific is a "priority theatre" for US interests. In fact, it goes on to say that the "Indo-Pacific is the single most consequential region for America’s future."

Two, the US strategy is now going to be more overt in contending with China. For example, the report openly alleges that China "seeks to reorder the region to its advantage by leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce other nations." This posture comes in the wake of unending US-China trade disputes, China’s visible move to alter the economic order of the region through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea (SCS), and non-cooperation with the US in the denuclearisation of North Korea.

Three, the US Indo-Pacific strategy is aimed at involving more like-minded countries rather than being just a quadrilateral network among the US, Japan, Australia, and India. For example, the strategy envisages a more active role for Southeast Asian countries. This ties back to the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randall Schriver asking ASEAN countries during his visit to Kuala Lumpur in April 2019 to aim for a code of conduct (CoC) in the SCS that would be "consistent with existing international laws and norms." The report indicates that the US will reach out to Taiwan, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam more proactively to convince them to fight for a free and open SCS, as around US$ 5 trillion worth of global trade passes through it. China, in recent years, has built military installations on around seven islands in the SCS. Thus, a horizontal expansion of the Indo-Pacific network is another important motive of the newly released strategy. However, this does not imply that the quadrilateral network would be diluted in the process.

Four, the US Indo-Pacific strategy is going to become more stringent in the implementation of Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs), and for that the US will provide technical assistance to willing Southeast Asian states. Under its Maritime Security Initiative, the US plans to provide ScanEagle 2 Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) to several countries free of cost, such as the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It is interesting to note that the US is ready to give concessions to these countries despite its Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which restricts arms supply to those countries that do business with Russia in the defence domain.

The US Indo-Pacific Strategy Report is an important US statement on regional politics, and it says in clear terms that this strategy will be more focused, prioritised, horizontally expanded, but non-compromising. It will, in all probability, further intensify US-China contestation for regional influence. However, its efficacy and success are not certain. First, a horizontal expansion of the strategy may lead to a less cohesive approach, and there could be more varied shades of the same strategy pursued by different countries. Second, many of the regional countries are not going to be comfortable with the aggressiveness inherent in the US Indo-Pacific Strategy Report. Third, Southeast Asian countries are more diverse than the report assumes them to be. They are not so likely to be willing members of any overt counterbalancing strategy vis-à-vis China. Several of these countries recently sent their warships to China when on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Navy, Beijing displayed its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.

Overall, the US Indo-Pacific Strategy Report is significant development on matters that relate to regional security equations, but it is yet unclear as to how it could play out. Through the report, the US has shown its firmness against China’s 'revisionism', and China, in return, has also shown a similarly uncompromising stance. It is now time to witness how other countries of the region respond to it, which will play a big role in how the strategy unfolds. 

TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship for African Students to Study at Leading Business Schools 2019/2020

Application Deadline: 30th June 2019

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (University):  The Financial Times MBA Global Ranking for 2018 lists the top ten schools as; Stanford Graduate School of Business, INSEAD, University of Pennsylvania: Wharton, London Business School, Harvard Business School, University of Chicago: Booth, Columbia Business School, Ceibs, MIT: Sloan, and University of California at Berkeley: Haas. Click the link below for details.

About the Award: Launched in 2011, The TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship aims to help up to seven students a year. Since launching, scholarships have been awarded to 30 students in total attending Harvard Business School, INSEAD, London Business School, MIT: Sloan, Stanford Graduate School of Business, University of California at Berkeley: Haas, University of Chicago Booth, University of Pennsylvania: Wharton, IE Business School and University of Cambridge: Judge. Our scholars have come from Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Ghana.

Type: MBA

Eligibility: 

• All successful African MBA applicants to the top ten Business Schools (as ranked by the Financial Times) are eligible to receive The TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship regardless of domicile.
• The grant is awarded to successful candidates prior to the annual intake for that Business School.

Number of Awards: 7

Value of Award: The TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship is intended to provide additional financial support to help African students bridge some of the financial burden attached to taking on MBA programmes, it will not be enough to act as the primary source of funding for these programmes.

Duration of Award: Duration of MBA programme

How to Apply: Eligible students should email mba@tyd-fo.co.uk sending the following information between 1 May and 30 June 2019:
• Full Name
• Nationality
• Full contact details
• Name of Business School where you have been accepted onto their MBA Programme
• Year of enrolment at the Business School
• Copy of offer letter from the Business School
• Copy of your CV
• Copy of your budget and funding shortfall (include all scholarship and loans information). Note, the TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship is to help support by providing additional financial aid, it will not be enough to act as the primary source of funding for the MBA.

Visit the Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers:  TY Danjuma Foundation


Important Notes: Note, the TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship is to help support by providing additional financial aid, it will not be enough to act as the primary source of funding for the MBA.

Earth Journalism Network 2019 Reporting Fellowships to the UNCCD COP14 (Fully-funded to New Delhi, India)

Application Deadline: 23rd June 2019 at 5pm IST.

Eligible Countries: African Countries and India

To Be Taken At (Country): New Delhi, India

About the Award: Internews’ Earth Journalism Network is pleased to announce a Fellowship program that will allow selected journalists to attend and cover the 14th Conference of the Parties (COP 14)  to the UN CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION (UNCCD) taking place in New Delhi, India in early September, 2019.
The UNCCD COP14 will be a key gathering to review progress made to control and reverse further loss of productive land from desertification, land degradation and drought. A mix of representatives from national, regional and local governments, science and research communities, the private sector, international and non-governmental organizations and all forms of media are expected to address these issues during the two-week event.
As part of this Fellowship program, the 2019 group will comprise five selected journalists from Africa and India. We’re putting particular emphasis on selecting reporters from arid regions, or regions impacted by drought and desertification. Fellows will attend the conference between 6-14 September, where they will engage with other participants and Fellowship program organizers in a series of specially designed activities that will include mentorship, an orientation workshop, breakfast briefings and interviews and sessions with high-level officials.

Type: Conference, Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible for the Fellowship, applicants must:

• Be a professional journalist from or representing an established media house and reporting from a developing country;
• Fill out the application form using the link below, including answering essay questions that illustrate his/her experience reporting on desertification and degradation issues. We also ask you to describe the kinds of stories you might pursue at the conference;
• Be available to arrive in India on Friday, 6^th September and stay until departure on Saturday, 14^th
• Commit to participate in all Fellowship activities;
• Provide a letter of support from an editor, producer or supervisor who can confirm your ability to publish or broadcast your material in an established media outlet. Freelancers are welcome to apply but must provide a letter of support.

Selection Criteria: Criteria for evaluating applicants will include the prospective Fellow’s demonstrated experience covering desertification, climate change and other environmental topics, their interest in continued coverage of these issues and their audience and outlet’s reach.

Number of Awards: 15-20

Value of Award: Amongst costs covered will be

• nonrefundable economy-class airfare, hotel, meals, and transportation both in-location and in transit.
• We will also assist with the press accreditation process and provide other support services relating to travel.
• Please note that the process of obtaining any necessary visas is a Fellow’s responsibility; however, visa costs can be reimbursed.

The Earth Journalism Network fully respects the editorial independence of all journalists. Throughout the conference, Fellows are free to report as they see fit. As well as the requirements above, we ask that journalists agree to cross-post all stories they file during the UNCCD COP14 on the Earth Journalism Network website and local and regional partner sites (we expect the stories will first be published or broadcast by a Fellow’s home media outlet).

Duration of Program: September 6^th – Sept 14th 2019.

How to Apply: As part of the application process, journalists will be asked to submit examples of their work. These can be uploaded as text pasted into a Word document or as links. Stories can be sent in a native language as long as they are accompanied by a short English synopsis. A good command of English, however, will be needed to answer the essay questions and will also be important to participate in Fellowship activities.

Apply Now

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Short Story Day Africa Prize for African Writers 2019

Application Deadline: 31st October 2019.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): Online

Offered Since: 2013

About the Award: The Short Story Day Africa Prize is an African writing prize open to African citizens, permanent residents of African countries, or second generation Africans living in the diaspora only. Unpublished works between 3000-5000 words in response to the theme are eligible for the prize.

Type: Essay writing contest

Eligibility: 

1. Any African citizen or African person living in the diaspora(Citizens of African countries or former citizens who have given up citizenship for whatever reason, and second generation Africans whose parents are/were African citizens), as well as persons residing permanently (granted permanent residence or similar) in any African country, may enter.
2. Writers may only submit one story for the competition. Repeat entries by the same writer will be disqualified.
3. Writers are welcome to submit stories in any fiction genre.
4. Stories must be between 3000 and 5000 words in length.
5. Stories must be submitted in English. While you are free to incorporate other languages into your story, the story must be able to be understood fully by its English content.
6. To facilitate easy reading and judging, please format your stories according to the format stipulated below. Stories not formatted in this way are at the risk of being disqualified.
7. Stories must not have been previously published in any form or any format.
8. Simultaneous submissions are not welcome. Any story entered or published elsewhere during the course of judging or publication will be disqualified.
9. You are welcome to enter under a pseudonym or nom de plume, as long as you also include your real name along with your entry.
10. All entries will be judged anonymously. Please DO NOT put your name or any other identifying details anywhere on your manuscript.
11. The judges’ decision is final.
12. By submitting a story the author attests that it is their own original work and grants exclusive global print and digital rights to Short Story Day Africa for one year, and thereafter agrees to seek permission to republish and when published elsewhere attributes first publication to Short Story Day Africa; non-exclusive digital rights to Worldreader to publish individual stories on Worldreader Mobile; and non-exclusive digital rights to BooksLive for publicity purposes.
13. By entering, the author agrees to allowing Short Short Story Day Africa to include their entry in an anthology should it be selected by the judges; and to working with editors to get their story publication ready.
14. We will not share your personal information with anyone. We will, however, add you to Short Story Day Africa mailing list for the sole purpose of informing you of next year’s even, or of other Short Story Day Africa events that may be of interest to you.

Submission Criteria: Candidates should:

• Type their document, using a single, clear font, 12-point size, double-spaced. The easiest font to use is Times New Roman, or a similar serif font.
• Put the title of their story halfway down the cover page. Please DO NOT title your story Migrations. Start your story immediately below the title.
• Put an accurate word count at the top right.
• Please number the pages.
• Left-justify their paragraphs.
• Ensure there is at least a 1 inch or 2 centimetre margin all the way around your text. This is to allow annotation to be written onto a printed copy.
• Indent each new paragraph by about 1/2 inch or 1 centimetre, except for the first line of the story or the first line of a new scene.
• Don’t insert extra lines between your paragraphs. A blank line indicates a new scene.
• Put the word “End” after the end of their text, centred, on its own line.

Number of Awardees: Three

Value of Award: 

• 1st prize  US$800
• 2nd prize US$200
• 3rd prize  US$100

addition three emerging writers will receive a 20 week online creative writing course. These will be selected from the long list or slush pile.

How to Apply: Candidates should go here to apply

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider: Short Story Day Africa

Important Notes: Due to a lack of funding submissions will incur a small fee which pays for the Submittalbe platform. The fee is in dollars HOWEVER you do not need a dollar account to pay. All currencies are accepted and your bank will convert the amount taken off your account into local currency. Thank you for your understanding.

DAAD Postgraduate Scholarships for Development-Related Courses 2020 – Germany

Application Deadline: Each chosen course has its deadline (Sept-Dec).  Please consult scholarship brochure for more information (See link below).
Only exception is Cameroon. Students are to apply before 31st July 2019 through the German embassy.

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): Germany

Fields of Study: Individual scholarships exclusively for Postgraduate courses in Germany that are listed on the “List of all Postgraduate courses with application deadlines”.

About the Award: With its development-oriented postgraduate study programmes, the DAAD promotes the training of specialists from development and newly industrialised countries. Well-trained local experts, who are networked with international partners, play an important part in the sustainable development of their countries. They are the best guarantee for a better future with less poverty, more education and health for all.

Type: Master’s, PhD

Eligibility: 

• Candidates fulfil the necessary academic requirements and can be expected to successfully complete a study programme in Germany (above-average result for first academic exam – top performance third, language skills)
• Candidates have a Bachelor degree (usually a four-year course) in an appropriate subject
• Candidates have at least two years’ professional experience
• Candidates can prove their motivation is development-related and be expected to take on social responsibility and initiate and support processes of change in their personal and professional environment after their training/scholarship

Selection Criteria: 

• The last academic degree (usually a Bachelor’s degree) should have been completed no longer than six years previously
• At least two years’ relevant professional experience
• Language skills: Depending on chosen study programme; please check scholarship brochure or the website of your chosen study programme.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: 

• Depending on academic level, monthly payments of 750 euros for graduates or 1,000 euros for doctoral candidates
• Payments towards health, accident and personal liability insurance cover
• Travel allowance, unless these expenses are covered by the home country or another source of funding

Duration of Program: 12 to 36 months (dependent on study programme)

How to Apply: It is important to check for your desired course HERE and go through the Program Webpage before applying.

Visit Program Webpage for details


Award Provider: German Exchange Education Services (DAAD)

Society Is In Decay – When the Worst is First and the Best is Last

Ralph Nader

Plutocrats like to control the range of permissible public dialogue. Plutocrats also like to shape what society values. If you want to see where a country’s priorities lie, look at how it allocates its money. While teachers and nurses earn comparatively little for performing critical jobs, corporate bosses including those who pollute our planet and bankrupt defenseless families, make millions more. Wells Fargo executives are cases in point. The vastly overpaid CEO of General Electric left his teetering company in shambles. In 2019, Boeing’s CEO got a bonus (despite the Lion Air Flight 610 737 Max 8 crash in 2018). Just days before a second deadly 737 Max 8 crash in Ethiopia.

This disparity is on full display in my profession. Public interest lawyers and public defenders, who fight daily for a more just and lawful society, are paid modest salaries. On the other hand, the most well compensated lawyers are corporate lawyers who regularly aid and abet corporate crime, fraud, and abuse. Many corporate lawyers line their pockets by shielding the powerful violators from accountability under the rule of law.

Physicians who minister to the needy poor and go to the risky regions, where Ebola or other deadly infectious diseases are prevalent, are paid far less than cosmetic surgeons catering to human vanities. Does any rational observer believe that the best movies and books are also the most rewarded? Too often the opposite is true. Stunningly gripping documentaries earn less than 1 percent of what is garnered by the violent, pornographic, and crude movies at the top of the ratings each week.

On my weekly radio show, I interview some of the most dedicated authors who accurately document perils to health and safety. The authors on my program expose pernicious actions and inactions that jeopardize people’s daily lives. These guests offer brilliant, practical solutions for our widespread woes (see ralphnaderradiohour.com). Their important books, usually go unnoticed by the mass media, barely sell a few thousand copies, while the best-seller lists are dominated by celebrity biographies. Ask yourself, when preventable and foreseeable disasters occur, which books are more useful to society?

The monetary imbalance is especially jarring when it comes to hawks who beat the drums of war. For example, people who push for our government to start illegal wars (eg. John Bolton pushing for the war in Iraq) are rewarded with top appointments. Former government officials also get very rich when they take jobs in the defense industry. Do you remember anyone who opposed the catastrophic Iraq War getting such lucrative rewards?

The unknown and unrecognized people who harvest our food are on the lowest rung of the income ladder despite the critical role they play in our lives. Near the top of the income ladder are people who gamble on the prices of food via the commodities market and those who drain the nutrients out of natural foods and sell the junk food that remains, with a dose of harmful additives. Agribusiness tycoons profit from this plunder.

Those getting away with major billing fraud grow rich. While those people trying to get our government to do something about $350 billion dollars in health care billing fraud this year – like Harvard Professor Malcolm K. Sparrow – live on a college professor’s salary.

Hospital executives, who each make millions of dollars a year, preside over an industry where about 5,000 patients die every week from preventable problems in U.S. hospitals, according to physicians at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The watchdogs who call out this deadly hazard live on a fraction of that amount as they try to save lives.

Even in sports, where people think the best athletes make the most money, the reverse is more often true. Just ask a red-faced Brian Cashman, the Yankees GM, who, over twenty years, has spent massive sums on athletes who failed miserably to produce compared to far lesser-paid baseball players. Look at today’s top ranked Yankees – whose fifteen “stars” are injured, while their replacements are playing spectacularly for much smaller compensation than their high priced teammates.

A major reason why our society’s best are so often last while our worst are first is the media’s infatuation with publicizing the worst and ignoring the best. Warmongers get press. The worst politicians are most frequently on the Sunday morning TV shows – not the good politicians or civic leaders with proven records bettering our society.

Ever see Congressman Pascrell (Dem. N.J.) on the Sunday morning news shows? Probably not. He’s a leader who is trying to reform Congress so that it is open, honest, capable and represents you the people. Surely you have heard of Senator Lindsey Graham (Rep. S.C.) who is making ugly excuses for Donald Trump, always pushing for war and bloated military budgets, often hating Muslims and Arabs and championing the lawless American Empire. He is always in the news, having his say.

Take the 162 people who participated in our Superbowl of Civic Action at Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. in May and September 2016. These people have and are changing America. They are working to make food, cars, drugs, air, water, medical devices, and drinking water safer. Abuses by corporations against consumers, workers and small taxpayers would be worse without them. Our knowledge of solutions and ways to treat people fairly and abolish poverty and advance public services is greater because of their courageous hard work. (see breakingthroughpower.org).

The eight days of this Civic Superbowl got far less coverage than did Tiger Woods losing another tournament that year or the dismissive nicknames given by the foul-mouth Trump to his mostly wealthy Republican opponents on just one debate stage.

All societies need play, entertainment, and frivolity. But a media obsessed with giving 100 times the TV and radio time, using our public airwaves for free, to those activities than to serious matters crucial to the most basic functioning of our society is assuring that the worst is first and the best is last. Just look at your weekly TV Guide.

If the whole rotted-out edifice comes crashing down, there won’t be enough coerced taxpayer dollars anymore to save the Plutocrats, with their limitless greed and power. Maybe then the best can have a chance to be first.

Chinese Intellectual Property Theft: The Indictment of Huawei Is an Embarrassment

Moshe Adler

With its criminal indictment at the beginning of the year  the US government has successfully made Huawei the poster child for technology theft by China.  But the indictment is an embarrassment.  Huawei is not a thief.

Huawei is charged with stealing technology for a robot that T-Mobile-USA uses to test phones. The robot, “Tappy,” taps phones repeatedly to determine their durability.  Huawei wanted T-Mobile to offer its phones to its subscribers, and eager for its phone to pass the test, sent engineers to T-Mobile’s lab to learn how Tappy works. One of the conditions T-Mobile set for permitting Huawei to examine Tappy was that the robot would not be photographed.   But a Huawei engineer did photograph it, and the indictment alleges that this was a breach of a trade secret.  It first tells to what length T-Mobile went to keep Tappy a secret, and then it recounts how the Huawei engineer went about photographing it secretly. Reporting about the indictment NPR told its readers “[w]e would like to include a photo here of Tappy, but photographing the robot is expressly prohibited by T-Mobile, and Tappy is kept under very tight security in a lab at T-Mobile headquarters in Bellevue, Wash.”  What the indictment does not say is that Tappy is not a secret but a sales-prop.  T-Mobile invites customers to “Say Hello to T-Mobile Tap Happy” in a video that displays it in operation. Huawei did sign a confidentiality agreement that prohibited it from photographing Tappy, but when it did, it was not photographing a secret.

The indictment also misleads when it claims that a Huawei employee removed an arm of the robot from the lab in order to take its measurements.  T-Mobile’s video shows that Tappy is an Epson robot (M.S.R.P. $7,495) with an arm that operates a short rod.  T-mobile covers the tip of the rod with a rubber cup, and the cup taps the screen of the phone that is being tested.  Huawei did not remove the arm of the robot (it did not need to, all it had to do is buy an Epson robot); it removed the rubber cup.  Huawei was concerned because it was unable to replicate T-Mobile’s test results, and suspected that the discrepancy was due either to the dimensions or degree of softness of the tip.  Huawei did this without permission, but describing Huawei’s action as removing an arm of a robot so secret that no photographs of it exist is dishonest because it makes it appear to be a lot more sinister than the actual removal not of an arm but of a rubber tip.

All of this, and more, is known, because T-Mobile has already sued Huawei for the theft in civil court, and a verdict was reached in 2017.  In the civil trial, the jury heard evidence from experts of both sides.  One of Huawei’s  expert’s testified that Tappy simply did not work.  It did not trigger the touch threshold unless it used so much force, it overly bent the screen.  T-Mobile’s inventor of Tappy acknowledged this problem when he testified in court that Huawei’s expert testimony “reinforces the need for a rubber tip redesign.”  Another expert for Huawei, using T-Mobile’s own data, showed that Tappy had no effect on the rate that phones were returned to T-Mobile.  It is perhaps understandable why Huawei’s engineers became desperate:   The problem was not that they did not understand how Tappy works, the problem was that Tappy did not work and that T-Mobile was reluctant to acknowledge it because it did not want to lose this prop.   It appears that the jury suspected as much.  It found Huawei guilty of breaching a confidentiality agreement it signed with T-Mobile and fined it $4.8 million for it, but it also found that T-Mobile suffered no damage at all ($0) from the breach, and that the breach was neither willful nor malicious.  It must also be noted that the civil suit notwithstanding, T-Mobile wanted to offer its customers Huawei phones when the US government intervened to ban its sale not only by T-Mobile, but also to AT&T and Sprint.

Huawei did not steal technology and there has so far been no evidence presented that demonstrates that it is a thief.  Is the US losing its technological dominance, then?  Huawei’s success suggests that it is.  But for American workers, this is something to celebrate. As I explained in a previous article, when other countries are technologically backwards, American workers lose jobs.  An even spread of scientific knowledge is not our enemy; it is our hope.

Human Rights, The Expelled Chagos Islanders, and Britain’s Hypocrisy

Brian Cloughley

On May 20 the United Kingdom appointed its first human rights ambassador to the United Nations and two days later the General Assembly of the United Nations overwhelmingly condemned the UK for its continuing colonial treatment of the Chagos Islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, whose inhabitants it expelled fifty years ago.

The irony escaped the UK’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who announced that the new ambassador “will be central to our work in defending human rights across the globe.” 

Hunt was spouting some of the most hypocritical garbage ever uttered by a representative of the present British government, which says a mouthful (as it were), because Britain’s conduct when it evicted the Chagos Islanders from their homes was brutal, and its continuing denial of their human rights is despicable.

The Chagos Archipelago of some sixty islets was “depopulated” in the 1960s because Britain had agreed with America that there should be a US military airfield on the main island, Diego Garcia. As revealed in 2004, the head of Britain’s Colonial Office in 1966 wrote that “The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee. Unfortunately along with the Birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are being hopefully wished on to Mauritius etc.”

The sneering condescension so evident in that display of racist bigotry encapsulated the attitude of the British government which had refused to contribute troops to America’s war in Vietnam and was seeking to make up for this in some fashion. Prime Minister Harold Wilson, knew that sending British troops to Vietnam would be politically suicidal — but nobody cared about the fate of a couple of thousand “Tarzans or Men Fridays”, so he curried favor with Washington by handing over Diego Garcia.

By various subterfuges, the people of the entire Chagos Archipelago were expelled, in the course of which the colonial governor Sir Bruce Greatbatch, “ordered all pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles.” As one evicted Islander, Lizette Tallatte, said in a 2004 documentary “when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried,” and then the remaining islanders “were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives.”

Boris Johnson, the likely next prime minister of Britain, could relate to all this, as he too has a condescending attitude to the colored peoples of Britain’s former empire, having written that “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.”  In his column in Britain’s ultra-right wing Daily Telegraph he also mentioned that the then prime minister Tony Blair was “shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.”

This is the probable next prime minister of Britain, folks!  Don’t be a piccaninny with a watermelon smile!   

When he was foreign secretary Johnson was notorious for his blunders, insensitivity and arrogant rudeness. In 2017, when visiting the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar, the country’s most sacred Buddhist site, he attempted to recite a colonial era poem by Rudyard Kipling that includes the lines “the temple-bells they say: Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!” The British ambassador stopped him in mid-verse, which was just as well, because watermelons are a major product in Mandalay, and who knows what Johnson might have said or sung if he had seen some.

His boorishness and vulgarity extend to Russia, which he frequently berates, and he especially objects to the status of Crimea. As reported by the Daily Telegraph (which gives him £275,000 ($350,000) a year for a weekly column) he likened the situation “to the occupation of the Sudetenland by Hitler’s forces in 1938.”  (The statement is ludicrous, but it is notable that thousands of people were expelled from Sudetenland, albeit it more brutally than the citizens of the Chagos Islands were thrown out of their lifelong homes.)

Even the New York Times reported that “an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted on Sunday [March 16, 2014] to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, resolutely carrying out a public referendum that Western leaders had declared illegal and vowed to punish with economic sanctions . . . The outcome, in a region that shares a language and centuries of history with Russia, was a foregone conclusion.”

But the Chagos islanders were not given an opportunity to vote in a referendum before being expelled from their homes, and continue to be denied any voice in their future.

At the UN General Assembly on May 22 there was an overwhelming vote for a resolution requiring that Britain should withdraw its “colonial administration” from the Chagos Islands. 121 countries voted in favor, against the US, Australia, Hungary, Israel, Australia and the Maldives which joined Britain in defending its manifestly illegal conduct, which it was judged to be by the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

One of Boris Johnson’s lucrative Daily Telegraph pieces is carried on a British Government website (one wonders if he received any further cash for what the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society defines as “secondary uses of work”), and in it he refers to the Crimea referendum as “bogus”.  He then declares that Britain must “redouble our determination to stand up for our values and uphold international law”.

In May 2018, when Johnson was foreign secretary, he was asked in Parliament “Will the Foreign Office review its current position on the plight of the Chagos islanders, who should be granted immediately the right to repatriation in their home in the Indian ocean territories?”  He replied :  “we are currently in dispute with Mauritius about the Chagossian islanders and Diego Garcia. I have personally met the representative of the Chagossian community here in this country, and we are doing our absolute best to deal with its justified complaints and to ensure that we are as humane as we can possibly be.”

The people who deny the Islanders their rights are poisonous scum, as is made clear in a British 2009 diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks (no wonder the Brit establishment detests Julian Assange) which noted that the government “would like to establish a ‘marine park’ or ‘reserve’ providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory . . . [which]  would in no way impinge on US use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes . . . [and ensure] that former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.”  What a great idea!

The particular piece of perambulating filth who thought up this dinky little piece of devious malevolence was the Director, Overseas Territories in the Foreign Office, Mr Colin Roberts, who was duly rewarded by the granting of honours and governorship of the Falkland Islands.

Politicians and mandarins in London consider the Chagos Islanders to be inconsequential pawns and will never allow them to have a vote about their future, as took place in Crimea.  The Tarzans and Man Fridays of Chagos will never be able to display one of Mr Johnson’s watermelon smiles.

The Chagos saga is a despicable charade of double-talk, spite and downright evil and makes mockery of Britain’s new-found desire to “defend human rights across the globe.” The only sure thing about hypocrites is that they’ll continue to be hypocritical.