A 74 year old social activist from the western Indian state of Maharashtra has shot to global fame this week as the leader and icon of India’s anti corruption crusade.

Anna Hazare’s demand for a powerful anti-corruption ombudsman – or Lokpal – has drawn stunning popular support across India. It has also brought him into confrontation with the India’s government.

But what could the objection be?

The tussle is over the extent of the Lokpal’s reach. While the Congress government wants to keep the Prime Minister’s office and the Judiciary outside the purview of the Lokpal legislation, Hazare and an array of anti corruption activists insist that these powerful bodies must also be included.

Cairn Lanka, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cairn India, has begun drilling in one of eight blocks in the Mannar Basin off the island’s north-western coast.
 
Sri Lanka’s government claims that seismic data shows potential for more than 1 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mannar.
 
By way of comparison, Sudan’s proven oil reserves of 6 billion barrels (0.5% of world reserves).
 
Of the eight blocks, two have been granted to China and India. Russia’s largest oil company, Gazprom, has also indicated an interest, as has Malaysia’s Petronas.
 
Economic development minister Basil Rajapakse says that if oil is found, Sri Lanka would no longer be dependent on imports from other countries.
 
Bizarrely, he also warned that some western countries may pose a threat to Sri Lanka, like they have done in the Middle East, if Sri Lanka is successful.
 
Perhaps he’s forgotten that Cairn Energy, which owns half of spin off Cairn India, is a British company, which has been trying for over year to off load Cairn India to the Indian company metals and mining giant Vendanta.
 
Both Cairn Energy and Vendata are in the FTSE-100 index of the London Stock Exchange.
 
Meanwhile, Cairn Lanka has been exempted from taxes and import duties until 2016. The decision was introduced by Basil Rajapakse and passed in parliament with 58 votes against four.
 
Exemptions on taxes include all capital goods imported by Cairn Lanka and its sub-contractors, including equipment, machinery and required supplies and consumables.
 
Democratic National Alliance (DNA) leader Anura Dissanayake claims that the exceptions mean that if oil is found, Sri Lanka would only receive 10% of the profit, compared to the 38% without the concessions.

An article by Professsor Minxin Pei in The Diplomat provides some answers.

Much of the world has been watching the debt crisis in the United States with trepidation in recent weeks, but one actor has been particularly nervous: China.

Why? China is the world’s biggest lender to the US. Prof Pei writes:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa . Photo PTI

The United States is “looking at some innovative and creative ideas to break the impasse over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue,” PTI quoted visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in Chennai Wednesday.

The report did not elaborate.

Meanwhile, in a public address Ms. Clinton said that India's example of multicultural democracy should serve as a model for Sri Lanka.

Describing Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s capital, as an example of how much society can achieve when all citizens fully join their country's political and economic life, she added: "Every citizen of Sri Lanka deserves the same hope and opportunity for a better future." (corrected from earlier post)

Her comments predictably drew loud applause from the crowd.

Addressing a crowd of students, industrialists, businessmen, artistes and members of civil society at the Anna library, Ms. Clinton said she chose to come to the coastal city as "an admirer of what has been accomplished in the country in the last 18 years".

She described Tamil Nadu as one of the "most industrialised and educated states" that indicates why India should take a leadership role in the region.

Ms. Clinton’s visit to Tamil Nadu was the only regional engagement of her much anticipated three-day official visit to India.

She is the first high-ranking US official to visit the southern state, one of the powerhouses of India’s booming economy, and a key destination for US investment. The US consulate in Chennai issues more skilled temporary worker visas than any other US outpost in the world, the Wall Street Journal says.

Aligned interest and values

"The United States and India can work together to advance democratic values in the region,” the Times of India quoted her as saying. "Our interests align and our values converge."

“We can support states transitioning into democracy in Africa and the Middle East. India's Election Commission widely viewed as the gold standard for running elections can play a role in this," she said.

"There is no better place to speak about Asia Pacific than Chennai, which looks out onto the Bay of Bengal. Indian traders have sailed these waters for thousands of years and their influence can still be seen across the region – in the Tamil influences in the Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia and in the Ganesha gods that guard homes in Indonesia."

"India will have the duty to speak out against human rights violations in Asia. … "We encourage India not just to look east but also act east."

"India's diverse and democratic system can serve as a model for Sri Lanka. In Chennai and in Tamil Nadu, you can see how much society can achieve when all citizens participate in political and economic life. Every citizen of Sri Lanka deserves the same."

Meeting Jayalalitha

Earlier, Ms. Clinton met with Ms. Jayalalithaa for an hour in the Secretariat. They discussed various social, political and economic issues of common interest, an official press release said.

Contrary to assertions attributed to Indian External Affairs Ministry officials last week, the Tamil question in Sri Lanka also featured in their discussions, India press reports said Wednesday.

Ms. Jayalalithaa was quoted by PTI as pointing out that though Sri Lanka’s war en ended two years ago, Tamils in Jaffna area are still in camps and unable to go back to the original areas where they used to live.

Ms. Clinton also congratulated Ms. Jayalalithaa on her electoral victory in the April 13 Assembly polls, and invited the Tamil Nadu leader to visit the United States, PTI said.

Former Guatemalan army chief Gen. Héctor Mario López Fuentes was charged this week with genocide for his command role in the killings of over 300 Mayan people in 1982 and 1983.

A UN-backed commission found that during Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict some 200,000 people were killed or disappeared and security forces committed 440 massacres in indigenous communities.

The commission specifically found that the military’s counter-insurgency operations in the Ixil Triangle amounted to acts of genocide, with 32 separate massacres targeting the indigenous Maya-Ixil population.

Gen. Fuentes is accused of being the “intellectual author” of 12 massacres from 1982-1983. At the time, he was Guatemala’s military Chief of Staff, the third-highest-ranking official in the country.

See Louisa Reynolds’s article for LaPress.org, and Amnesty International’s statement.

During the short-lived 1982-83 dictatorship of Efraín Ríos Montt, the army launched a brutal campaign targeting indigenous communities that it accused of supporting left-wing guerillas.

The strategy was known as “draining the water that the fish swim in.”

Any villages where signs of guerrilla activity were found — hidden weapons or propaganda — were deemed to be “subversive”, and the villagers were systematically killed.

Any villages found abandoned when terrified residents fled to the mountains were also razed to the ground, a policy known as “scorched earth.”

As a result of the regime’s genocidal policies, over 10,000 Mayans were murdered and 9,000 were displaced from their land.

Other former Guatemalan military and police officials have been arrested in recent months for their role in human rights abuses during the armed conflict.

These include  Colonel Héctor Bol de la Cruz and Jorge Humberto Gómez López, both former heads of the national police force.

An army officer and a soldier who participated in a December 1982 massacre in Dos Erres village were arrested earlier this year. Guatemalan security forces tortured and killed 250 men, women and children in Dos Erres before razing the village.

The anti-genocide group, Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), has published visual evidence of mass graves in South Kordofan where Sudanese government forces are targeting the Nuba population.

The Sudanese military and allied forces have carried out systematic attacks on Nuba civilians in South Kordofan that could amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes, according to a UN report obtained on Friday by AFP.

See also articles by Christian Science Monitor, DPA and CNN.