Photos: Crisis pushes more Sri Lankans into poverty

Sri Lanka is in the throes of its starkest economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.

Dilhani Wathsala, 14, eating her lunch cooked by her mother, Nilanthi Gunasekera, 49, in her home at Wanathamulla, Colombo. 

Millions of Sri Lankans are battling a calamitous decline in living standards, as they find themselves forced to skip meals, ration medicines and turn to firewood in place of cooking gas.

Hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, rising oil prices and economic mismanagement under previous governments, the island nation is in the throes of its starkest crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.

Rampant inflation, snaking fuel queues and shortages of essentials such as food and medicine have driven many Sri Lankans into poverty, while months of street protests deposed the previous president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in July.

More than a quarter of the population of 22 million is now struggling to secure adequate, nutritious food, the United Nations says.

As desperation grows, the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe is seeking a multibillion-dollar bailout in talks with the International Monetary Fund and is tapping key allies, from India and Japan to the United States.

But major financial assistance is still months away, making tough austerity measures likely, so few Sri Lankans will see conditions improve soon.

As depleted reserves have dried up supplies of petrol, diesel and gas, lengthy fuel queues, sometimes persisting for days, have become a daily feature this year.

The shortages have brought a boom in demand for firewood.

Krishan Darshana told the Reuters news agency that he had joined his father in breaking up logs to sell as kindling after getting laid off from a job in construction during the crisis.

“It’s very hard work,” said the 25-year-old, who now makes do with a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits as the day’s only meal. “But what else can I do when there are no jobs for us?”

Nilanthi Gunasekera holds a handful of dried fish, the only protein her family will have until next week. 

Manel Peiris, 68, in her kitchen, in Colombo. 

'I am a heart patient and have to take medicine every day,' Peiris said. 'Hospitals used to issue medicine for three months. But with the onset of the economic crisis, hospitals don't have medicine and so we are asked to buy from pharmacies. But one month's cost is around Rs 3,400 [$9.3] which I can't afford, so I buy only for one week at a time. Sometimes my husband has to borrow or get an advance from his workplace.' 

Gamage Rupawathi, 60, right, her husband WA Susantha, 45, centre, and their son, Krishan Darshana, 25, left, at their home in Colombo. 'When I had a fruit business I was earning a significant income,' Rupawathi said. 'But with the drawn-out lockdowns during the pandemic and now this economic crisis I don't have money to restart my fruit stall.' 

WA Susantha holds a cup of plain tea and two pieces of biscuit, the only food he has for the day. 

'We used to have all three meals, but now we skip breakfast. We are now waiting until my brother brings home some rice,' said S Gayathri, 29, standing with her mother M Saraswathi, 59, in front of their house in Colombo. 'After this we won't have any vegetables left.' 

Ramani Priyani Nisshanka, 62, in a dark room in her home after she switched off the lights to save on the electricity bill. 

Ramani Priyani Nisshanka holds an electricity bill. 'My husband fell ill around a year ago,' she said. 'Now it's very difficult not only to spend on food but even to pay bills.' 

Vidyathipathige Nihal, 62, at his home in Colombo. 'Just a couple of months back some robbers broke into our house and stole the small gas cylinder and the cooker we had ... So now we are forced to cook with firewood,' he said. 

Chandra Thushari Peiris, 42, at her food kiosk in Colombo. 'We had a good business at our kiosk,' she said. 'Since we used to eat the leftovers from our kiosk we didn't have any problem with food ... But during the pandemic, and more so the present economic crisis, we didn't get any customers.' 

Oshada Fernando, 11, holds a kite that his uncle made for him. 'With the economic crisis we haven't bought any toys for our son,' said his mother, 42-year-old Anusha Priyadarshini. 

 

Sri Lanka must ‘reverse the drift towards militarisation’: UN

The latest United Nations report calls on Sri Lanka to end its human rights violations as the country faces its worst economic crisis yet.

Army soldiers remove tents from the site of a protest camp outside the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Friday, July 22, 2022

Sri Lanka must immediately reverse its “drift towards militarisation”, the United Nations has said in a human rights report, calling on the new government to engage in dialogue “to advance human rights and reconciliation”.

The South Asian island nation has suffered acute food and fuel shortages, lengthy blackouts and spiralling inflation this year after running out of foreign currency to import essentials amid its worst economic crisis to date.

The crisis sparked months of protests against the government over economic mismanagement, culminating in a huge crowd storming the residence of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who then fled for the Maldives, Singapore and Thailand before returning to Sri Lanka last weekend.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has been criticised for launching a crackdown on peaceful protesters since he succeeded Rajapaksa in July.

“The new government should immediately reverse the drift towards militarisation, end the reliance on draconian security laws and crackdowns on peaceful protest,” the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in its latest report on Tuesday, referring to the new government which took over after Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to step down as president in July in the wake of mass protests.

“Fundamental changes will be required to address the current challenges and to avoid repetition of the human rights violations of the past,” said the OHCHR report.

It added that the government should also “show renewed commitment to security sector reform and ending impunity”.

Sri Lanka’s government defaulted on its $51bn foreign debt in April and is in ongoing negotiations for an International Monetary Fund bailout.

The country’s central bank is forecasting a record eight-percent gross domestic product (GDP) contraction for the year.

Rajapaksa’s government was accused of introducing unsustainable tax cuts that drove up government debt and exacerbated economic problems just as the country was struggling with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 73-year-old issued his resignation from abroad after fleeing the country in July, but he flew back to Colombo on Saturday and was garlanded with flowers by political allies on his return.

He is now living in a new official residence with a security detail, both provided by Wickremesinghe’s government, to the dismay of protest leaders who campaigned for him to face legal action.

Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, whose term ended last month, said in the report that those responsible for bankrupting the island should be prosecuted.

“The High Commissioner hopes that the new administration will respond to the popular demand for accountability for economic crimes, including corruption, and abuse of power with a renewed commitment to end impunity,” she said.

It was the first time the UN rights office raised the economic crisis, in a report repeating its calls for those who perpetrated atrocities during the island’s long civil war to be brought to justice.

“The High Commissioner encourages the international community to support Sri Lanka in its recovery, but also in addressing the underlying causes of the crisis, including impunity for human rights violations and economic crimes,” the 16-page report said.

The report also repeated long-standing calls by the rights office for the prosecution of those responsible for atrocities during the island’s decades-long civil war, which ended in May 2009.

Sri Lanka has been resisting international calls to investigate allegations that its troops killed at least 40,000 Tamil civilians in 2009.

 

Jamaica sending team to Canada to probe work conditions on farms

Fact-finding team will travel to Canada to speak with Jamaican farmworkers after recent allegations of exploitation.

Between 50,000 and 60,000 foreign agricultural labourers come to Canada annually on temporary work permits

Jamaica has appointed a “special fact-finding team” to investigate the working conditions of Jamaicans employed on Canadian farms, after workers in the province of Ontario said last month that they faced “exploitation at a seismic level“.

In a statement shared on social media on Thursday, Jamaica’s Minister of Labour and Social Security Karl Samuda said a six-person team would “travel to Canada to observe operations and speak with workers on the farms, and provide a report to the Minister”.

The brief statement did not provide any additional information, such as which farms the team members will visit or when the trip to Canada would take place. “Further details will follow,” it said.

A group of Jamaican farmworkers sent a letter to Samuda in August denouncing their treatment on two Ontario farms, which they likened to “systematic slavery”.

The workers, who were not named for fear of retribution, said they were in Canada under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), a decades-old scheme that allows Canadian employers to hire temporary migrant workers from Mexico and 11 countries in the Caribbean to fill gaps in the country’s agricultural labour market.

Foreign workers brought to Canada through SAWP can have jobs for up to eight months in the year, and many people have been coming to the country for decades under the programme.

“As it currently stands, [SAWP] is systematic slavery,” the farmworkers said in their letter, which came just days before Samuda came to Canada to tour farms employing workers from Jamaica.

“We work for eight months on minimum wage and can’t survive for the four months back home. The SAWP is exploitation at a seismic level. Employers treat us like we don’t have any feelings, like we’re not human beings. We are robots to them. They don’t care about us,” the workers said.

But after his trip, Samuda said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera last week that he observed “no evidence of mistreatment” on the Ontario farms he visited.

“We observed no evidence of mistreatment,” said the minister, stressing that SAWP is “absolutely essential to thousands of Jamaican families, many rural communities, and the entire [country of] Jamaica”.

In a more detailed statement shared on Friday morning, the Jamaican labour ministry said it received support from the Canadian government for its fact-finding mission.

Canada’s High Commissioner to Jamaica, Emina Tudakovic, “gave her government’s commitment to support tactical solutions identified by the task force to improve conditions wherever necessary”, the ministry said.

Between 50,000 and 60,000 foreign agricultural labourers come to Canada annually on temporary work permits. They work in various roles, from the planting and harvesting of fruits and vegetables, to meat processing.

But for years, human rights groups have reported a range of issues with SAWP and other migrant labour programmes. Advocates have said a major problem is that temporary foreign workers are tied to their Canadian employers, which means they are effectively not allowed to work for anyone else.

Foreign workers have reported living in crowded, substandard housing, and many said they fear retribution – such as being deported or barred from coming back to Canada for the next season – if they raise concerns with their bosses.

In a statement on Thursday, the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, an advocacy group that the Jamaican farmworkers are members of, said the workers “are ready to discuss the letter” sent to Samuda last month.

The group said the workers are also ready to hold talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Immigration Sean Fraser to reiterate their call for permanent residency for all temporary foreign workers, refugees, students, undocumented people and others in Canada.

The workers and their supporters have said permanent immigration status is the best way to help guarantee that their rights will be protected.

 Asked if Ottawa planned to give temporary migrant farmworkers a path to permanent residency, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told Al Jazeera last month that the government is exploring ways to help foreign nationals transition from temporary to permanent status.

 

Probe under way after baby dies at asylum centre in Netherlands

The Dutch authorities are probing a three-month-old baby’s death as asylum seekers face an accommodation crisis.

The situation in Ter Apel has turned into a national crisis

Dutch authorities are investigating a death of a three-month-old baby at a reception centre for asylum seekers in the Netherlands, highlighting the lack of adequate accommodation for refugees in the country, which has become a national crisis.

The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate said in a statement that the baby died on Wednesday morning in the sports hall of the reception centre for asylum seekers in Ter Apel village.

The baby’s name, gender and nationality have not been publicly released.

“A three-month-old baby died last night in the sports hall in Ter Apel. Like everyone, I am deeply shocked by this terrible event,” State Secretary Eric van der Burg said on Twitter.

Refugees wait outdoors at the centre for asylum seekers in Ter Apel

The situation in Ter Apel has turned into a national crisis, due to the lack of space at asylum centres and the inability of municipalities to provide shelter to refugees.

The Dutch Red Cross set up tents in the centre’s garden due to the lack of beds but removed them following a backlash.

Now many refugees, including women, children and the elderly, continue to sleep in the garden.

While the government was attempting to facilitate the transfer of a hotel purchased in the village of Albergen to the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) to accommodate 300 refugees, it faced protests from local residents.

Many Dutch lawmakers and the public are now demanding an urgent explanation from the officials after the shocking death of the baby.

‘Inhuman’ living conditions

The Dutch branch of MSF deployed in Ter Apel on Thursday – a first for the organisation usually giving medical assistance to those in need in war zones.

“As from today we are giving medical care in Ter Apel,” Doctors Without Borders diretor Judith Sargentini said.

“Living conditions there are inhuman and must be improved immediately,” she told the AFP news agency. “There are no showers and the toilets are dirty,” she said.

“We have reached a low point in our country,” added Groningen mayor Koen Schuiling, calling on other municipalities to open their doors and help alleviate overcrowding at Ter Apel.

More than 100 people have spent nights outdoors, sleeping on

 the roadside with little or no access to shelter or food 

 

Guinea to keep timetable for AFCON 2025 football tournament

Guinea was originally scheduled to host the continental tournament in 2023 but the list of host nations was reshuffled in 2018.

Supporters of Guinea national football team cheer in Sekondi, Ghana, January 28, 2008 during the African Cup of Nations football match against Namibia

Guinea’s military government has told a Confederation of African Football (CAF) mission that it will meet the timetable for staging the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (CAN).

CAF has sent a team to the West African state to assess its readiness to host the tournament.

Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who appointed himself president after taking power in a coup in September 2021, met the delegation on Wednesday.

“They came with a message, and this message was, ‘Is 2025 feasible for us [Guineans] or not?’,” Sports Minister Lansana Bea Diallo said.

The CAF team held out the possibility of postponing CAN 2025 until 2026 or 2027, he said.

“The president was straightforward – ‘We made this a national priority, and the national priority is for 2025, we won’t go for 2026 or 2027, we will organise it in 2025’,” the minister was quoted on state TV late Wednesday as saying.

“And that’s the word of the head of state which has been given today,” he said.

Hosting Africa’s biggest sporting event is a major challenge for Guinea, which suffers a chronic lack of sporting and transport infrastructure.

The country also has a long history of political turbulence.

Last year’s coup saw the removal of octogenarian President Alpha Conde after bloody protests over his bid for a third term in office.

The takeover has stirred frictions with the influential West African bloc ECOWAS, which has been pushing for an early return to civilian rule.

On the eve of the CAF visit, Doumbouya issued a decree declaring the 2025 competition an issue of “national and priority interest”.

All spending for organisational needs “will be processed as a matter of urgency” and procedures will be fast-tracked to allocate land needed for the tournament.

In March, Doumbouya named a new organising committee after one of its members publicly doubted whether it was feasible to host the tournament in 2025.

The CAF mission appeared to have been encouraged by the visit.

“Today we are really reassured by Guinea’s preparedness,” said one of its members, Benin’s Mathurin de Chacus.

Doumbouya “spoke like a soldier – he’s determined to organise CAN for the Guinean public”, he said in remarks broadcast on television.

The delegation will brief CAF on the outcome of its mission, he said.

Guinea was originally scheduled to host the tournament in 2023, but this was pushed back by two years when the list of organising nations was reshuffled in 2018.

The 2023 event will be hosted by Ivory Coas

 

Nearly entire train network shuts down in Netherlands over strike

Staff at the railway firm NS stop work in the central Netherlands region that acts as a hub for nearly all train lines.

A stranded traveller passes a sculpture of a blue train at Utrecht Centraal station 

Nearly the entire Dutch rail network has been shut down as workers affected by soaring inflation and staff shortages are on strike to demand better pay and working conditions.

Staff at the railway company Nederlandes Spoorwegen (NS) stopped work for the day on Tuesday in the central Netherlands region that acts as a hub for nearly all train lines, halting trains across the country.

An exception was the line linking Amsterdam with the busy Schiphol airport that returned to service after a strike shut it down on Monday.

Utrecht Centraal station, the country’s biggest rail hub and normally packed with travellers, was eerily deserted on Tuesday morning.

Screens showing train timetables were lit up with the word “cancelled” in red letters and a station announcer explained in Dutch and English that services were being hit by the strike.

NS said in a statement that international trains operated by Thalys and Eurostar were running again after being halted on Monday.

Schiphol said in a warning to travellers that NS had indicated that four trains an hour would run each way between the airport and the Dutch capital’s central station.

Labour unions have called a series of strikes on the Dutch rail network after negotiations on a new collective labour agreement broke down.

All trains listed were marked “cancelled” in red at Utrecht Centraal station