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NEW DELHI: When the sea destroyed her home, Mary Joseph had to move to a warehouse, a shelter that she and her children now share with more than 20 other families displaced by coastal erosion in Valiyathura, a former port area of Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala state.
The rising sea levels in the state that spans almost 600 kilometers on the southwestern coast of the Indian subcontinent is one of the reasons that people are losing their houses and livelihoods, but climate change is not the only culprit.
In Trivandrum, more than 20 percent of the city’s Arabian Sea coastline is affected by erosion, much of it caused by artificial seawalls and riprap revetments protecting infrastructure projects, according to local government data.
Hundreds of fishing families from Valiyathura and about a dozen other neighboring villages have been forced to abandon their houses in the past few years.
“It’s terrible living here where you don’t have any privacy,” Joseph, who has two teenage children, told Arab News.
“Life in the warehouse has not only dehumanized us, but has also brought health problems, with many of us suffering from respiratory problems because this building used to store cement earlier.”
Since May, the displaced villagers and civil society groups have been protesting a multibillion-dollar seaport project built in nearby Vizhinjam, which they say has deprived local communities of homes by increasing sea levels at a pace much faster than climate change.
The Adani Vizhinjam port and container transshipment facility, developed in a public-private partnership since 2016, has already affected about 200,000 people and the number is increasing, according to Trivandrum-based environmentalist A. J. Vijayan.
“We have seen that every year at least 100 houses are getting lost after the port project started,” Vijayan told Arab News.
He estimates that more than 650 families have since moved to temporary shelters in nearby schools and warehouses.
Vijayan is one of the organizers of the protest to stop the development and compensate the fishermen who have lost their lands.
“For land and housing, they should be adequately compensated,” he said, adding that protesters also want the local government to restore the eroded coastline that provided livelihoods to those dependent on it.
“Stolen Shorelines,” a documentary film by K. A. Shaji, a journalist from Kerala, shows how development projects in Trivandrum are pushing coastal communities into homelessness and poverty.
“The coastal region of Kerala is facing massive sea erosion. Massive sea erosion is visible in Trivandrum and the surrounding areas for the last four and five years, and now it has escalated to alarming levels,” Shaji told Arab News.
“At one level climate change is a villain. On the other level there are many contributing factors that are aggravating the crisis created by climate change.”
The local government has policies to rehabilitate displaced communities.
“We are giving 10 lakhs rupees ($12,600) of which six lakhs is for buying land and four lakhs for building houses,” Sheeja Mary, deputy director of the Kerala Department of Fisheries, told Arab News. “These projects are for those who live within 50 meters of the high tide line and those affected by sea erosion.”
She said that under the program, the government has so far helped 3,000 people and plans to rehabilitate a further 15,000.
But the assistance covers all those displaced along the hundreds of kilometers-long Kerala coast, which means that only a fraction of the people affected will receive funding. And if they do, it may be too little to rebuild their households and livelihoods.
Reni Dixon, another resident of the Valiyathura warehouse, said that with the government assistance she would fail to buy land in any port city of Kerala, where her family could rely for sustenance on what they know best — fishing.
“If we shift to the rural areas then our livelihood is lost,” she added. “We have lost not only our houses, but also our livelihoods, and the government is not willing to accept that this is a problem.”
BOGOR, Indonesia: East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta said on Tuesday during a visit to Indonesia that he hoped to boost trade ties between the countries and seal a decades-long bid by his nation to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) next year. Ramos-Horta met his counterpart Joko Widodo on his first state visit to neighboring Indonesia since he was elected in April for a second stint as president. He previously served as president of East Timor, which is also known as Timor Leste, between 2007 and 2012. “Timor Leste as part of Southeast Asia has fulfilled many of the requirements necessary for a functioning economy and democracy so... will be a productive member of ASEAN,” he said, noting he hoped his young country could join the group when Indonesia takes over the presidency next year. East Timor, which applied for ASEAN membership in 2011, currently holds observer status. Speaking at the presidential palace in Bogor, south of Jakarta, the Indonesian president said his country had invested $818 million in East Timor, mainly in energy, banking and communication businesses. “We’ve agreed to increase trade between both countries,” said Widodo, who is widely known as Jokowi. Official Indonesia data shows trade between the countries was worth around $250 million last year. Heavily dependent on revenue from oil and gas, the half-island nation of 1.3 million people has grappled with diversifying its economy and reducing high rates of poverty. Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and East Timor only gained full independence in 2002 after a long and bloody struggle to end an often brutal occupation. Ramos-Horta, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his peaceful efforts to end the conflict, said he welcomed deepening trade ties with Jakarta and Indonesia’s commitment to East Timor joining the 10-member ASEAN regional grouping.
NAIROBI: The US military said it had killed two fighters from the Al-Shabab militant group in an airstrike in a remote part of Somalia’s southern Jubaland state on Sunday. The United States has been carrying out air strikes in Somalia to try to defeat Al-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda franchise seeking to implement its interpretation of Islamic law and overthrow the country’s Western-backed central government. The strike took place near Libikus in the Lower Juba region, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement late on Monday. “The command’s initial assessment is that two Al-Shabab terrorists were killed in action,” AFRICOM said. “No civilians were injured or killed given the remote nature of where this engagement occurred.” Rights activists have accused the United States of shrouding its Somalia operations in secrecy, potentially undermining accountability for incidents involving civilian deaths.
BEIJING: Authorities in southern China apologized for breaking into the homes of people quarantined for being suspected of contracting COVID-19 in the latest example of heavy-handed measures that have sparked a rare public backlash. The Communist Party newspaper Global Times reported Tuesday that 84 homes of people sent for isolation in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district were opened in an effort to find close contacts remaining inside and to disinfect the premises. The doors were later sealed and new locks installed, the paper reported. The district government apologized for such “oversimplified and violent” behavior, the paper said. An investigation team has been set up to investigate and “relevant people” will be severely punished, it said. China’s leadership has maintained its hard-line “zero-COVID” policy despite the mounting economic costs and disruption to the lives of ordinary citizens, who continue to be subjected to routine testing and quarantines, even while the rest of the world has opened up to living with the disease. Numerous cases of police and health workers breaking into homes around China in the name of anti-COVID-19 measures have been documented on social media. In some, doors have been broken down and residents threatened with punishment, even when they tested negative for the virus. Authorities have demanded keys to lock in residents of apartment buildings where cases have been detected, steel barriers erected to prevent them leaving their compounds and iron bars welded over doors. China’s Communist leaders exert stringent control over the government, police and levers of social control. Most citizens are inured to a lack of privacy and restrictions on free speech and the right to assembly.
However, the strict anti-COVID-19 measures have tested that tolerance, particularly in Shanghai, where a ruthless and often chaotic lockdown spurred protests online and in person among those unable to access food, health care and basic necessities. Authorities in Beijing have taken a gentler approach, concerned with prompting unrest in the capital ahead of a key party congress later this year at which president and party leader Xi Jinping is expected to receive a third five-year term amid radically slower economic growth and high unemployment among college graduates and migrant workers. A requirement that only vaccinated people could enter public spaces was swiftly canceled last week after city residents denounced it as having been announced without warning and unfair to those who have not had their shots. “Zero-COVID” has been justified as necessary to avoid a wider outbreak among a population that has had relatively little exposure to the virus and less natural immunity. Although China’s vaccination rate hovers at around 90 percent, it is considerably lower among the elderly, while questions have been raised about the efficacy of China’s domestically produced vaccines. Although China’s Fosun Pharma reached an agreement to distribute, and eventually manufacture, the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech, it still has not been cleared for use in mainland China, despite being authorized for use by separate authorities in Hong Kong and Macao. Studies have consistently shown that inoculation with mRNA vaccines offers the best protection against hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Chinese vaccines made with older technology proved fairly effective against the original strain of the virus, but much less so against more recent variants. Now health experts say the delay in approving mRNA vaccines — a consequence of placing politics and national pride above public health — could lead to avoidable coronavirus deaths and deeper economic losses. China’s national borders remain largely closed and although domestic tourism has picked up, travel around the country remains subject to an array of regulations, with quarantine restrictions constantly in flux. In one recent incident, some 2,000 visitors to the southern tourist hub of Beihai have been forced to prolong their stays after more than 500 cases were found and they were barred from leaving. The local government was struggling to find hotel rooms for those who had already prepared to return home, while hotels and airlines were providing refunds for those who had booked holidays to the city that had to be canceled. China regulates travel and access to public places through a health code app on citizens’ smartphones that must be updated with regular testing. The app tracks a person’s movements as a form of contact tracing, allowing a further imposition of public monitoring. The measures remain in place despite relatively low rates of infection. The National Health Commission on Tuesday announced just 699 new cases of domestic transmission detected over the previous 24 hours, the bulk of which were asymptomatic.
NEW DELHI: Sri Lanka opposition leader Sajith Premadasa withdrew on Tuesday from the race to become president of the island nation, in order to support a rival candidate. “For the greater good of my country that I love and the people I cherish, I hereby withdraw my candidacy for the position of president,” Premadasa said on Twitter. His party and “our alliance and our opposition partners will work hard toward making” Dullas Alahapperuma the winner, he added.
KYIV, Ukraine: As Russia kept up its relentless shelling across the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expanded the shakeup of his security services on Monday by suspending 28 more officials, a day after he dismissed two senior officials over allegations that their agencies harbored “collaborators and traitors.” In his nightly video address, Zelensky said a “personnel audit” of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was underway, and the dismissal of the 28 officials was being decided. “Different levels, different areas of focus. But the reasons are similar — unsatisfactory results of work,” Zelensky said. On Sunday, he had fired SBU chief Ivan Bakanov and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova. Zelensky, citing hundreds of criminal proceedings into treason and collaboration by people within their departments and other law enforcement agencies. “Six months into the war, we continue to uncover loads of these people in each of these agencies,” said Andriy Smirnov, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office. Analysts said the moves are designed to strengthen Zelensky’s control over the army and security agencies, which have been led by people appointed before the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. “In the conditions of a war, Zelensky needs leaders that are capable of tackling several tasks at the same time — to resist Russia’s intrigues within the country to create a fifth column, to be in contact and coordination with international experts, to do their actual job effectively,” Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst with the Penta Center think tank, told The Associated Press. Bakanov is a childhood friend and former business partner of Zelensky, who appointed him to head the SBU. Bakanov had come under growing criticism over security breaches since the war began. Venediktova won international praise for her drive to gather war-crimes evidence against Russian military commanders and officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, over the destruction of Ukrainian cities and the killing of civilians. US State Department spokesman Ned Price, speaking to reporters in Washington, said when asked about the personnel changes that the two governments were in close contact. “The fact is that in all of our relationships, and including in this relationship, we invest not in personalities. We invest in institutions and, of course, President Zelensky has spoken to his rationale for making these personnel shifts,” Price said.
He said Washington would continue to work with Kyiv on war-crimes investigations and information sharing. Intelligence, he said, is “an important element of the assistance that we are providing to our Ukrainian partners in an effort to help them defend themselves.” Zelensky appointed the first deputy head of the SBU, Vasyl Maliuk, to be acting head. Maliuk, 39, is known for efforts to fight corruption in the security agencies; his appointment was seen as part of Zelensky’s efforts to get rid of pro-Russian staffers in the SBU. Fesenko said discontent with Bakanov and Venediktova had been brewing for a while, and it was possible that Ukraine’s Western partners pointed out the underperformance of the SBU and the prosecutor general’s office to Zelensky. Meanwhile, Russia pressed forward with its missile and shelling attacks, which Ukrainian officials said were designed to intimidate the civilian population and create panic. The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, however, said his troops had “stabilized the situation” on the front, largely thanks to Western deliveries of technically advanced rocket systems. “It is complex, tense, but completely controllable,” Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny wrote on Telegram after a phone call with the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley. “An important factor contributing to our holding our defensive lines and positions is the timely arrival of the M142 HIMARS, delivering targeted strikes against enemy command posts, ammunition and fuel depots,” Zaluzhnyy said, referring to the light multiple-rocket launchers recently delivered from the US. Ukraine’s Emergency Service said at least six people were killed by Russian shelling Monday targeting the city of Toretsk in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Toretsk was taken briefly in the Russian invasion of 2014, but Ukrainian forces ended up taking the city back.
Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Russian shelling there is incessant. Four Russian strikes had been carried out on the city of Kramatorsk, he said, and he urged civilians to evacuate. “We’re seeing that the Russians want to sow fear and panic,” Kyrylenko said in televised remarks. “The front line is moving, so civilians must leave the region and evacuate.” Nearly 1,000 civilians were evacuated to Ukraine on Monday from Russian-held territories in the northern Kharkiv region, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. About a third of the region remains in Russian hands after Moscow’s troops overran it in April. In Kyiv on Monday, a funeral was held at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery for a Ukrainian solider killed when his car hit a land mine near Izium last week. His family couldn’t bury him in their hometown in eastern Ukraine because it remains under Russian occupation.
The cathedral was packed with mourners paying their last respects to Fanat, as the soldier was known. Whenever the priest paused, the voice of the soldier’s mother echoed in the church. “We will love you forever and ever. We will miss you so much!” she cried, caressing the closed coffin. “Why do we need to live in this cursed war?” In other developments Monday: • Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected troops involved in the fighting in Ukraine and ordered the military to prioritize destruction of Ukraine’s long-range missiles and artillery, according to a ministry statement. It was not immediately clear when or where the inspection took place. • UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman said that “incrementally, there’s been a little bit more progress” on a proposed UN package deal that would enable millions of tons of Ukraine’s grain to be shipped from the Black Sea, and Russian grain and fertilizer to be sent to world markets without restrictions. Spokesman Farhan Haq said the UN chief spoke to Zelensky about the negotiations. A new round of talks could take place in Turkey later this week, said Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. Some 22 million tons of grain are stuck in Ukraine because of the war. • Ukraine says some Russian forces have been using topographical maps from 1969 as they fight in the country’s east. The Ukrainian military’s general staff, citing the country’s internal security service, said the maps were used by Russian troops fighting around the Kharkiv but did not have buildings built since the early 1970s. • Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken as she began a series of high-profile appearances in Washington. She is to meet with her US counterpart, Jill Biden, on Tuesday. Price said Blinken assured Zelenska of the United States’ commitment to Ukraine, and commended her for her work with civilians dealing with trauma and other damage from the war.