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03 May 22
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In an unprecedented revelation, a document written by Justice Samuel Alito says ‘Roe was egregiously wrong from the start’
In what appeared to be a stunning and unprecedented leak, Politico said on Monday evening it had obtained an initial majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated in the court on 10 February.
The opinion strikes down Roe v Wade, the court’s 1973 ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion, and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v Casey – that largely upheld that right.
Politico quoted Alito as saying: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
The justice adds: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. It is time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
Four of the other Republican-appointed justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices, the article added.
After an initial vote among the justices following the oral argument, one is assigned the majority opinion and writes a draft. It is then circulated among the justices. At times, in between the initial vote and the ruling being released, the vote alignment can change. A ruling is only final when it is published by the court.
But if, as expected, it is adopted, the decision would rule in favour of Mississippi in a highly consequential case about that state’s attempt to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. That would sound the death knell for the half-century guarantee of nationwide protection of reproductive rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion.
Several Republican-led states have already passed highly restrictive abortion laws in anticipation of such a ruling by the supreme court which, thanks to three appointments by Donald Trump, now has a 6-3 conservative majority.
Politico said it received a copy of the draft opinion from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case. The draft opinion runs to 98 pages, including a 31-page appendix of historical state abortion laws, and includes 118 footnotes.
The supreme court declined to confirm what would be the worst security breach in its history – regarding one of its most consequential rulings in decades that is sure to enflame America’s deep political divisions. After the Politico story broke, footage posted to social media showed a crowd of protesters gathering outside the supreme court late on Monday night, waving signs and chanting “my body, my choice.”
Neal Katyal, a former US acting solicitor general who has argued many cases before the supreme court, tweeted: “I’ve quickly scanned the draft opinion and it appears legitimate. This means there was a preliminary vote to fully overrule Roe v Wade and that a majority of the court agreed.”
He added: “There are lots of signals the opinion is legit. The length and depth of analysis, would be very hard to fake. It says it is written by Alito and definitely sounds like him. It’s 60+ pages long. If this is a deep fake, it would require a state actor or someone like that. I can’t imagine that.
“It’s possible the Court could pull back from this position, but this looks like they voted that way after the oral argument.”
Democrats condemned the leaked ruling. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, issued a statement saying overturning Roe v Wade would be “an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history”.
“If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years – not just on women but on all Americans,” they said.
“Every Republican senator who supported Senator McConnell and voted for Trump justices pretending that this day would never come will now have to explain themselves to the American people.”
Christie Roberts, Democratic senatorial campaign executive director, said: “If this report is true, this Republican attack on abortion access, birth control and women’s health care has dramatically escalated the stakes of the 2022 election.
“At this critical moment, we must protect and expand Democrats’ Senate majority with the power to confirm or reject supreme court justices.”
“I am horrified by the apparent draft supreme court opinion leaked this evening … this should not be the supreme court’s final opinion when it comes to abortion rights,” said New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul in a statement. The governor later added on Twitter: “I refuse to let my new granddaughter have to fight for the rights that generations have fought for … won, rights that she should be guaranteed.”
“This decision is a direct assault on the dignity, rights, … lives of women, not to mention decades of settled law,” said the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. “It will kill and subjugate women even as a vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal. What an utter disgrace.”
Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted the the news showed “Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW”.
Reproductive rights and civil rights advocates also weighed in. Naral Pro-Choice America’s president, Mini Timmaraju, called it “the most ominous and alarming sign yet that our nation’s highest court is poised to overturn Roe v Wade”.
“If the supreme court does indeed issue a majority opinion along the lines of the leaked draft authored by Justice Alito, the shift in the tectonic plates of abortion rights will be as significant as any opinion the court has ever issued,” the ACLU said in a statement.
Republicans, however, were exultant. Madison Cawthorn, a congressman from North Carolina, wrote on Twitter: “Because of Donald J Trump, Roe v Wade will be overturned.”
The Republican senator Tom Cotton condemned the apparent leak but applauded the vote, saying: “The Supreme Court … the DOJ must get to the bottom of this leak immediately using every investigative tool necessary. In the meantime, Roe was egregiously wrong from the beginning … I pray the Court follows the Constitution … allows the states to once again protect unborn life.”
Polling has shown that relatively few Americans want to see Roe overturned. In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 69% of voters in the presidential election said the supreme court should leave the Roe v Wade decision as is; just 29% said the court should overturn the decision.
Alito said the court can’t predict how the public might react and shouldn’t try. “We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work,” Alito wrote in the draft opinion, according to Politico.
Russian soldiers in Ukraine. (photo: Shutterstock)
ALSO SEE: The Occupiers Are Advancing Near Izium, Rubizhne and Popasna,
and in the Kherson Region
They also said Russian gains in Donbas had been "minimal at best" and "quite frankly anaemic", and Vladimir Putin's troops appeared to be displaying a risk aversion to casualties.
A senior US defence official said: "They were hoping to get Kharkiv and hold it."
The official added that in areas of Donbas they were "moving in and then declaring victory, and then withdrawing their troops only to let the Ukrainians take it back.
"There's a casualty aversion that we continue to see by the Russians now."
The official said Russian advances in the Donbas were "very cautious, very tepid".
He said about 70 of the 90 155mm howitzers promised to Ukraine had now been delivered, along with tens of thousands of rounds, and training for Ukrainian soldiers.
Amid reports that General Valery Gerasimov, the head of Russia's armed forces, has been killed in Ukraine, US officials said that while he did visit the Donbas last week, they could not confirm reports he was wounded.
A senior US defence official said: "We can confirm he was in the Donbas. It's certainly possible that his trip was of a manner of oversight in trying to gauge for himself what was going on.
"What he learned, what he transmitted to his commanders, if anything, we just don't know. For several days last week he was in the Donbas. We don't believe that he's still there."
It came as British intelligence officials said Russia has lost a quarter of its invading army in its botched occupation of Ukraine.
Some of Moscow's most elite units, including its Airborne Forces, have suffered the highest levels of attrition in the first 68 days of the conflict while one quarter of Russia's forces used in the invasion was now "combat ineffective".
The Kremlin has committed over 120 battalion tactical groups, each numbering between 600 to 1,000 soldiers, to Ukraine, which amounts to about 65 per cent of Russia's entire ground combat strength, according to the report.
The Ministry of Defence said it would "probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces".
On Sunday night, unconfirmed local reports from the southern port city of Odesa said that a 15-year-old boy was killed and a 17-year-old girl was injured in a Russian rocket attack.
The rocket, apparently aimed at a military facility, also damaged a nearby monastery.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone destroyed two Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea off Snake Island, a rocky outcrop that became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the early days of the Russian invasion.
Footage released by the Ukrainian military shows the Turkish-made Bayraktar drone hitting the two Russian Raptor-class patrol vessels that can be used for landing troops.
The 40-acre island became famous when a tiny military unit posted on it refused to surrender to a Russian warship and famously told the vessel to “go f— yourself” on the first day of Moscow’s invasion, sparking a wave of Ukrainian patriotism.
Across the border in Belgorod, used as the Kremlin's staging post for its invasion, more explosions were reported on Monday after a series of unexplained attacks on infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities on Monday tried to evacuate a second group of civilians from Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel works after 100 people were able to leave the plant after taking shelter in its sprawling network of bunkers for several weeks.
Vadym Boichenko, the mayor of Mariupol, said on Ukrainian television that 100 people were able to leave the city’s basements on Monday and were awaiting an evacuation to a safe place.
“This is supposed to happen, and we’re waiting for the enemy troops to let it happen today.”
Authorities in the self-proclaimed separatist statelet of Donetsk said on Monday 214 people including 33 children left Mariupol that day for a separatist-controlled area.
Ukrainian officials did not confirm the reports.
The evacuation may have been complicated by reports of renewed shelling in the city.
Denys Shlega, a Ukrainian National Guard brigade commander in Mariupol, told Ukrainian TV that Russian forces on Sunday night started shelling the plant after a two-day break.
“There are still hundreds of civilians including about 20 children in Azovstal’s bunkers, according to our calculations,” he said.
Mr Putin, in response to numerous pleas to cease fire around the Azov Sea city that has been obliterated by weeks of Russian airstrikes, insisted in recent days that Russia was no longer shelling Mariupol.
Almost 24 hours after the first group of evacuees left Mariupol on Sunday, local officials in central Ukraine said that the people arrived safely.
“We have managed to evacuate over 100 women, children and elderly people,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Zaporizhzhia said on Monday.
“Everyone who has been evacuated will be offered a safe shelter in Zaporizhzhia. Finally people will be able to feel safe and have some rest.”
Mariupol authorities on Monday accused Russia of trying to cover up the traces of apparent war crimes in the city.
Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor, claimed that Russian troops may have used lorries that brought in humanitarian aid to carry the bodies of killed civilians and take them out of town.
Bird-eye view drone footage shot by Russia-backed separatists showed white lorries parked at several bombed-out blocks of flats last week.
“We can say with certainty that the occupying forces are taking out thousands of dead bodies from Mariupol,” Mr Andryushchenko said.
“This is not an isolated case but a large-scale operation.”
"One child is a 2-year-old girl from the country's capital, Kyiv, and the other is a 17-month-old boy from western Ukraine." (photo: Shriners)
One child is a 2-year-old girl from the country’s capital, Kyiv, and the other is a 17-month-old boy from western Ukraine, WHDH reported.
The toddlers, along with one parent accompanying them, arrived at Shriners Children’s Boston on Wednesday, April 20, according to a hospital news release.
“Due to the current state of affairs in Ukraine, the country’s medical infrastructure is understandably challenged,” John McCabe, the executive vice president of the Shriners Children’s health care system, said in a statement.
Their arrival comes as Russia continues to wage war in Ukraine after invading the country on Feb. 24. As of April 21, 2,345 Ukrainians have died in the conflict, including dozens of children, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In Ukraine, the toddlers were similarly burned from boiling water unleashed by explosions in separate incidents, doctors said, according to WHDH.
McCabe detailed how the hospital is “uniquely positioned to help these children from Ukraine, because our physicians, nurses and therapists have extensive experience in providing care for children who suffer life-threatening burn injuries, including in natural disaster or other urgent situations.”
Shriners Children’s, which has several hospitals nationwide, has provided emergency care for Ukrainian children since the 1990’s, including “children affected by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986,” the release said.
The hospital “stands ready to care for more children from the region who can benefit from our specialized care,” Jerry Grantt, chairman of Shriner Children’s Board of Trustees, said in a statement.
The facility in Boston is “one of four of Shriners Children’s burn care facilities for children” and “the only verified pediatric burn center in New England,” according to the release.
California governor Gavin Newsom. (photo: Elijah Nouvelage/EPA)
Newsom told the L.A. Times editorial board Thursday that the state would seek out a share of $6 billion in federal funds meant to rescue nuclear reactors facing closure, money the Biden administration announced this month. Diablo Canyon owner Pacific Gas … Electric is preparing to shutter the plant — which generated 6% of the state’s power last year — by 2025.
“The requirement is by May 19 to submit an application, or you miss the opportunity to draw down any federal funds if you want to extend the life of that plant,” Newsom said. “We would be remiss not to put that on the table as an option.”
He said state officials could decide later whether to pursue that option. And a spokesperson for the governor clarified that Newsom still wants to see the facility shut down long term. It’s been six years since PG…E agreed to close the plant near San Luis Obispo, rather than invest in expensive environmental and earthquake-safety upgrades.
But Newsom’s willingness to consider a short-term reprieve reflects a shift in the politics of nuclear power after decades of public opposition fueled by high-profile disasters such as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, as well as the Cold War.
Nuclear plants are America’s largest source of climate-friendly power, generating 19% of the country’s electricity last year. That’s almost as much as solar panels, wind turbines, hydropower dams and all other zero-carbon energy sources combined.
A recent UC Berkeley poll co-sponsored by The Times found that 44% of California voters support building more nuclear reactors in in the Golden State, with 37% opposed and 19% undecided — a significant change from the 1980s and 1990s.
The poll also found that 39% of voters oppose shutting down Diablo Canyon, with 33% supporting closure and 28% unsure.
Nuclear supporters say closing plants such as Diablo would make it far more difficult to achieve President Biden’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2035, and to mostly eliminate planet-warming emissions by midcentury — which is necessary to avert the worst impacts of climate change, including more dangerous heat waves, wildfires and floods, according to scientists.
Nuclear plants can produce power around the clock. The stunning growth of lithium-ion battery storage has made it easier and cheaper for solar panels and wind turbines to do the same, but those renewables still play much less of a role when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing, at least for now.
The U.S. Commerce Department, meanwhile, is considering tariffs on imported solar panels, which could hinder construction of clean energy projects that California is counting on to avoid blackouts the next few summers, as Diablo and several gas-fired power plants shut down. Newsom said in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo this week that her department’s tariff inquiry has delayed at least 4,350 megawatts of solar-plus-storage projects — about twice the capacity of Diablo Canyon.
He urged Raimondo to “take immediate action to resolve this issue as soon as possible.”
“This Department of Commerce tariff issue is one of the biggest stories in the country,” Newsom told The Times’ editorial board. “Looking at retroactive 250% tariffs for everything coming out of Malaysia or Vietnam, and Taiwan, elsewhere — this is serious.”
The governor said he’s been thinking about keeping Diablo open longer since August 2020, when California’s main electric grid operator was forced to implement rolling blackouts during an intense heat wave. Temperatures stayed high after sundown, leaving the state without enough electricity to keep air conditioners humming after solar farms stopped producing.
A few hundred thousand homes and businesses lost power over two evenings, none of them for longer than 2½ hours at a time, officials said. The state only narrowly avoided more power shortfalls during another heat storm a few weeks later, highlighting the fragility of an electric grid undergoing a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Newsom spokesperson Anthony York said the governor’s decision to reconsider Diablo Canyon’s closure timeline was driven by projections of possible power shortages in the next few years. Those projections, he said, came from the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the electric grid for most of the state.
Anne Gonzales, a spokesperson for the grid operator, couldn’t immediately provide the projections. She said in an email that the agency supports “considering and exploring all options” for keeping the lights on, as doing so gets harder due to climate impacts including more extreme heat waves, more aggressive wildfires and hydropower supplies diminished by drought.
Newsom told the editorial board that reliable electricity is “profoundly important.” He also acknowledged the growing number of scientists, activists and former U.S. energy secretaries who have pressed him to rescue Diablo for climate reasons.
“Some would say it’s the righteous and right climate decision,” Newsom said.
Extending the plant’s closure deadline — PG…E is on track to shutter the first reactor in 2024, and the second in 2025 — wouldn’t be easy even with funding from the Biden administration. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission would need to hurry to renew Diablo’s operating license. Newsom suggested several state agencies would need to be involved, too — as well as the Legislature, which last year declined to even give a committee vote to a bill designed to keep Diablo Canyon open.
For Newsom to extend Diablo’s life, he would also need PG…E’s cooperation in applying for federal funds. The company committed to closing the plant in 2016, when it struck a deal with environmental groups and its own union workforce to get out of the nuclear business — a decision that was eventually endorsed by regulators and lawmakers.
Asked whether PG…E is open to changing course on Diablo, spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said in an email that the company is “always open to considering all options to ensure continued safe, reliable, and clean energy delivery to our customers.”
“PG…E is committed to California’s clean energy future, and as a regulated utility, we are required to follow the energy policies of the state,” Paulo said.
Newsom said he’s asked PG…E to consider what it would take to keep Diablo Canyon open longer, including the possible role of federal funds.
“Based on the conversations we’ve been having with PG…E, it’s not their happy place,” he said.
The company declined to comment on how federal funds might be used to Diablo’s benefit. State officials have previously told The Times that operating Diablo past 2025 would require billions of dollars of upgrades to comply with earthquake safety rules, and with environmental regulations governing the use of ocean water for power-plant cooling.
To Ralph Cavanagh — co-director of the clean energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and a key architect of the 2016 deal to shut down Diablo Canyon — applying for federal funds would be a fool’s errand.
Cavanagh said it’s his understanding that only certain types of power companies with specific economic challenges are eligible for the nuclear funding, and PG…E isn’t one of them. The infrastructure bill approved by Congress last year — which set aside the money Newsom is interested in seeking — says funds are only available to nuclear plants that compete in a “competitive electricity market,” which Diablo Canyon does not.
York, Newsom’s spokesperson, acknowledged in a text message that there’s “some question about whether Diablo is eligible” for the federal money, and that “PG…E would need to talk to” the federal Energy Department to get more clarity.
Cavanagh also said solar, storage and other clean energy resources could replace Diablo cheaply and reliably, as envisioned in the 2016 deal. As for the supply chain and tariff issues that have slowed solar and battery storage projects, he pointed out that both of Diablo’s reactors will still be online through summer 2024, with the second sticking around until August 2025.
“We have time to get our arms around that,” he said.
While NRDC supports keeping some nuclear plants operating where safety risks are lower, the technology’s fiercest critics argue nuclear is fundamentally unsafe. They consider Diablo Canyon especially risky because it’s near several seismic fault lines along California’s Central Coast. As far back as the 1970s — when then-Gov. Jerry Brown protested the plant’s construction — Diablo has stirred fears of an earthquake-driven meltdown spreading deadly radiation across the state.
Nuclear waste is another concern. In the absence of a permanent underground storage repository for spent fuel, radioactive waste is piling up at power plants across the country, including the shuttered San Onofre facility along the coast in San Diego County.
Rescuing Diablo Canyon is far from California’s only option for averting blackouts.
There are many other steps the state might take — and in many cases is actively taking — to keep the lights on after sundown the next few summers, such as adding batteries to the grid, paying homes to use less energy and coordinating electricity supplies more closely with other Western states. Longer-term options include investing in geothermal energy and offshore wind.
Newsom told The Times’ editorial board he plans to announce a “resilience fund” in next month’s update to his annual budget proposal, to pay for projects that would help avoid rolling blackouts the next few years.
But the governor also thinks keeping Diablo Canyon around at least a little while longer is worth considering, despite the political backlash it might provoke. He pointed to modeling by the state’s Public Utilities Commission and Independent System Operator showing that worsening heat waves — fueled by climate change — are making it harder to keeps the light on.
“We threw out the old playbook. We’re going to worst-case scenario,” he said. “We are being very sober.”
Supporting nuclear is a key climate priority for the Biden administration. But federal officials hadn’t seemed optimistic PG…E would apply for a share of the Energy Department’s $6-billion nuclear bailout fund. During a visit to Southern California last week, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters she’s “not sure that the community [around] Diablo Canyon is on board yet.”
Senator Susan Collins. (photo: Greg Nash/Getty Images)
A constitutional right that has been in place for 50 years is about to be shattered on the wing of a promise to her that predictably turned out to be a lie.
He did not.
Maybe his fingers were crossed because whatever he said to Collins, it was a lie. Kavanaugh’s confirmation on a bare 50 to 48 vote was the beginning of the end for Roe v Wade, and everybody knew it except maybe Collins, who insisted Kavanaugh was telling her the truth, that he had such reverence for precedence, what they call stare decisis, which means “to stand by things decided,” that Roe would be safe in his hands.
Collins is pro-choice, moderation is her brand, and the pro-choice community waited with apprehension as she did due diligence on Kavanaugh. She assembled a team of 19 lawyers to help her go through his positions before spending two hours and fifteen minutes with the judge, where she claimed to secure his commitment to stand by the 1973 Roe decision and its successor, Planned Parenthood v Casey, the ruling that in 1992 reaffirmed Roe.
By the time Collins went to the Senate floor to deliver her nearly hour-long speech, which she dragged out to full effect until it felt more like a laying on of hands, cynicism had sprouted to the point where it seemed as though the fix was in. Collins was on board with this nomination no matter what, and when a last-minute bombshell revelation threatened to derail Kavanaugh, Collins was there in high dudgeon to denounce the supposed unseemliness of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault.
She deplored the “steady decline in the dignity of the confirmation process” and “gutter politics” that she blamed on interest groups and activists on the left.
After the contentious hearings where Kavanaugh mounted an emotional defense, Collins said she met with him again and in that second meeting she again extracted what she believed was his commitment to uphold Roe. “Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article 3 of our Constitution itself. He believes that precedent is not just a judicial policy, it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent. In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration. It is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed except in the most extraordinary circumstances. The judge further explained that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance and fairness.”
There was an out, of course, that we’ll no doubt hear a lot about in the coming days and months, that on the rare occasion when the court corrects a “grievously wrong decision,” like Brown vs. The Board of Education overruling Plessy vs. Ferguson, or one that is deeply inconsistent with the law, then SCOTUS has an obligation to right the wrong.
Collins said at the time she is not naïve, that she knows how the court works, and she prided herself on asking all the right questions. “When I asked him would it be sufficient to overturn a long-established precedent if five current justices believed that it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said “no,” Collins told the Senate and the country in what has now become an infamous speech.
Collins won a fifth term in the Senate in 2020, and her re-election wasn’t even a close call. She was too eager to believe all that fluff about stare decisis, and now a constitutional right that has been in place for 50 years is about to be shattered on the wing of a promise to her that predictably turned out to be a lie.
Susan Collins told the women of America that they could trust her to protect their reproductive freedom. She let us down.
Protesters take part in an anti-government demonstration near the president's office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 30, demanding President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's resignation over the country's crippling economic crisis. (photo: Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images)
A mountain of foreign debt has led the country to default on loans for the first time since its 1948 independence.
Signs of Sri Lanka’s impending economic crisis became increasingly apparent over the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic as food prices soared and power blackouts increased in frequency. Sri Lanka currently has about $7 billion in total debt due this year.
Many attribute Sri Lanka’s economic crisis to the mishandling of its finances by successive governments through mounting foreign debt and continued infrastructure investments. The Rajapaksa administration also implemented sweeping tax cuts in 2019, slashing the value-added tax (VAT) rate — the tax applied to imports and domestic supplies — from 15 percent to 8 percent, which contributed to a decrease in the country’s revenue.
The president’s older brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is expected to be removed as prime minister as part of an agreement brokered by former President Maithripala Sirisena, who defected with dozens of other members of the incumbent president’s governing party in April in protest of the Rajapaksas’ poor governing.
But the country’s power struggle may have sown discord between the two brothers which could exacerbate its political impasse. On Friday, the Associated Press reported a spokesperson for the prime minister did not immediately confirm the elder Rajapaksa’s removal, saying that any such decisions would be announced by the prime minister in due time.
The country continued to mount foreign debt without sufficient revenue
A big part of Sri Lanka’s economic woes is its ballooning foreign debt, namely to fund its aggressive turn to infrastructure development under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the elder Rajapaksa sibling and two-time prime minister. With its finances already bleeding, Sri Lanka took out major investment loans from state-owned Chinese banks to fund its infrastructure projects including a controversial port development in the Hambantota district.
The Sri Lankan government justified the Hambantota project as a way to grow its economy as a bustling trade hub comparable to Singapore. However, the project was riddled with corruption and stalled, and Sri Lanka eventually handed over the port’s control to China as collateral after it was unable to pay back its loans.
Over the last decade, Sri Lanka amassed a debt of $5 billion to China alone, making up a large portion of its overall foreign debt, according to the New York Times. Sri Lanka’s bloated debt to China and the Hambantota project failure are often held up as an example of the “debtbook diplomacy” that China has pursued in the last couple of decades.
Some believe China has expanded that monetary diplomacy approach through its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure project involving Chinese investment in infrastructure developments in parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe, as part of China’s bid to increase global influence as a growing economic power. The number of countries that have signed onto China’s BRI project is unclear, but is somewhere between 139 and 146, including Sri Lanka.
While an infrastructure project on such a global scale may provide some economic benefits to the participating countries, the BRI has become a strategic way for China to gain political leverage with economically vulnerable countries across the Asia-Pacific region. At least 16 countries involved in the BRI project have been saddled with billions of dollars of debt which China then has leveraged, according to an independent analysis by Harvard Kennedy School for the US State Department.
About 22 percent of Sri Lanka’s debt is owed to bilateral creditors — institutional investors from foreign governments — according to CNBC. Neighboring India has sought to grow its bilateral cooperation with Sri Lanka partly as an attempt to secure its influence in South Asia over China. India recently gave Sri Lanka a $1.5 billion credit line to tide over the country’s fuel crisis in addition to another $2.4 billion through a currency swap and loan deferment since January.
As the country amassed foreign debt, its tourism sector — previously a $4.4 billion industry and a primary revenue source for the island — took successive hits. In 2019, tourism suffered after a series of church bombings that killed nearly 300 people, including some foreign nationals.
The next year, the Covid-19 pandemic halted tourism and other major sectors, spurring a global economic downturn. Although Sri Lanka saw some increase in its number of foreign visitors last year, the ongoing pandemic combined with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — both nations leading sources of tourism for Sri Lanka before the conflict — continued to slow the industry’s recovery.
A worsening crisis triggered mass protests
The country’s issues escalated in March when the Sri Lankan government announced a 13-hour daily power cut as a way to save energy amid the ongoing crisis. Without sufficient power, many were unable to do their jobs as the economic crisis continued, prompting mass unrest. Thousands of Sri Lankans took to the streets in the weeks following the power cuts to protest the country’s growing crisis.
On April 1, President Rajapaksa declared an emergency as growing unrest saw protesters clash with police. The entire Sri Lankan government Cabinet resigned in protest not long after the emergency law was implemented, causing Rajapaksa to revoke the law. Among those who resigned was Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa, another member of the Rajapaksa family and the president’s nephew.
With growing political unrest and no resolution in sight, Rajapaksa’s rivals began calls for a no-confidence vote against his administration.
“We are confident we have the numbers and we will bring the motion at the appropriate time,” opposition lawmaker Harsha de Silva told CNBC. Hoping to placate critics, President Rajapaksa sought to form a new unity coalition under his leadership but failed to gain support. In April, the government also announced it would temporarily suspend foreign debt payments, marking the first time Sri Lanka had defaulted on foreign loans since its independence.
Experts had been warning of a potentially dire situation for the country’s finances for some time. When the country defaulted, the government had been negotiating a bailout plan with the International Monetary Fund, which had assessed its accumulated debt as unsustainable.
“The government intends to pursue its discussions with the IMF as expeditiously as possible with a view to formulating and presenting to the country’s creditors a comprehensive plan for restoring Sri Lanka’s external public debt to a fully sustainable position,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
In a meeting with Cabinet officials a week later, President Rajapaksa acknowledged his government’s role in the country’s declining economy. Specifically, the president said the government should have approached the IMF earlier for support in tackling its unruly foreign debt and that they should have avoided a ban on imported chemical fertilizers, which was meant to preserve Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange holdings but instead hurt its agricultural production.
“During the last two and a half years we have had vast challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the debt burden, and some mistakes on our part,” Rajapaksa said.
Now, Sri Lanka’s future rests on whether the president’s proposed government changes will placate his growing opposition long enough for a solution to come through from the IMF. The Sri Lankan central bank chief, Nandalal Weerasinghe, has stated that such a hoped-for deal could still be months away, however.
Maria Violet Medina Quiscue from Pueblo Nasa in Colombia. (photo: Tristan Ahtone/Grist)
Engagement isn't an option; we must divest from these industries, they say.
Michelle Cook, Navajo, was among those who offered testimonies focused on the women at the frontlines of extractive projects, the boardrooms of financial institutions, and the halls of governments. Speaking at a side event hosted by Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network at the 21st session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, Cook described the work as being part of a sacred obligation.
“That’s what we’re doing, fulfilling a prayer for the world – for nature – with love, compassion, and with courage. No other weapon than that, the truth,” Cook, the founder of Divest Invest Protect, said. “For some, that is so terrifying. Indigenous women will not give up … We will not be intimidated, shamed or be afraid just for being who we are.”
The international forum side events offer participants the opportunity to continue thematic dialogues outside of the forum’s schedule, which is more limited than previous years due to the pandemic and is operating on a hybrid format this year. Summer Blaze Aubrey, Cherokee and Blackfeet, is a staff attorney for the International Indian Treaty Council and also spoke on the panel. She noted that racism and genocide are at the center of human rights violations around the world. Atrocities are ongoing and fueled by the extractive industry, she added, even with “green energy” initiatives moving forward. She pointed to the White House’s Russian rhetoric and the Defense Production Act, which was enacted to jump start new mines or expand existing ones.
“Engaging in the extractive industry isn’t moving forward, it’s not going to help in the long run. It’s part of capitalism,” Aubrey said. “It is not helpful…We see throughout the extractive industry on Turtle Island it’s linked to violence against women. It’s so nuanced and interconnected that you cannot speak on one without speaking on the other.”
Women on the panel maintained that due diligence must occur continuously through development projects, not just during the initial phases. But ultimately, they say, society needs to divest from the extractive industry altogether.
“Indigenous people are providing the answers,” Aubrey said, referencing traditional knowledge and science. “We understand how to live symbiotically with the environment, How to feed people. We already have systems in place that will protect us and the world.”
She added that corporations and financiers need to recognize that and be engaged in those principles and strategies.The panel called out BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, saying the investment company has an insatiable appetite for feeding its bottom line. BlackRock presently does not have an Indigenous rights policy, a shortcoming that Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network founder Osprey Orielle Lake said should change immediately.
Like countless others during the first week of the Permanent Forum, the panel consistently returned to the matter of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). FPIC specifies that developers must engage with impacted Indigenous communities to ensure their participation and consultation. However, despite the international human rights principle being widely adopted by U.N. member states via the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, many experts and leaders have identified that the articles are not being recognized or applied effectively, leaving the land and people vulnerable to exploitation. Among the other solutions highlighted, included investing in climate justice frameworks that center traditional ecological knowledge.
For women like Maria Violet Medina Quiscue, from Pueblo Nasa in Colombia, it takes courage to speak out on these issues – especially on a global scale – because land and human rights defenders are being murdered, meaning that publicly criticizing the institutions, corporations and nations behind them places her life on the line. Quiscue described the deeply entrenched racism against Indigenous people in Colombia, which has been on full display as of late.
For the last seven months, roughly 2,000 Indigenous people have been living at an encampment at Bogota National Park after being displaced by extractive industries and paramilitary groups. Anti-Indigenous rhetoric from Colombian politicians has created a hostile environment for Indigenous people, with grocers and store owners refusing to serve Indigenous people. Quiscue says racism in Bogota ramped up after Mayor Claudia Lopez Hernandez unleashed a slew of attacks against Indigenous people at the encampment.
Quiscue says the discrimination they are currently facing is rooted in colonization. Maria and the other panelists made it clear that Indigenous people maintain both the legal right to say “no” to extraction as well as a sacred obligation to stand up against current and future developments. At an event featuring numerous policy solutions and calls to action, this was the line that the women seeking to hold financial institutions accountable consistently returned to: you cannot be a climate leader when you expand extraction.
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