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Monday, 17 January 2005  
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Of human smuggling and prostitutes

While fresh concern over child smuggling and other forms of abuse of the young is being spurred by the tsunami disaster and its aftermath, it is equally disconcerting to learn that a two-way process of human smuggling is continuing between parts of Eastern Europe, Asia and Sri Lanka. The Lankan authorities have had reason to refocus on this unresolved problem following reports of the illegal presence here of a number of foreign sex workers and 'comfort women' of numerous nationalities - Thai, Cambodian, Malaysian, Singaporean, Russian, Ukrainian etc.

The magnitude of this problem was driven home to us recently by a court case where a Lankan was handed down a rigorous prison sentence for forcibly confining at his home a woman of Eastern European origin who apparently didn't possess a valid visa to remain in this country. The woman had been forced into prostitution by the local man who was exploiting her illegal status to earn a fast buck.

Recent disclosures of the widespread presence in this country of foreign women of illegal status indicates that the court case in question is not an isolated instance of women smuggling and the sexual exploitation of these foreign women.

However, there is also the question of large scale smuggling where Sri Lanka being inclusive as a transit point for shiploads and planeloads of human smuggling of men to the West. These people do not have visas but are smuggled by air to foreign destinations. The problem became so acute that the international aviation authorities clamped down heavy fines on airlines carrying passengers without visas.

As for the sex workers it is well-known that one spectrum is gambling establishments such as casinos using them as an inducement to bring foreign clients particularly Western expatriates working in the countries in the region.

The prime issue is, what facilities the influx of these sex workers and other persons of illegal status from foreign countries to Sri Lanka? How do they get past the law, in other words. Once in the country, how do they manage to live and work here, undetected and uninterrogated? We hope the authorities would address their minds to these issues.

It would be in the national interest for the police and the immigration authorities, for instance, to tell us how the smuggling of these persons takes place. Needless to say, if they know the 'nuts and bolts' of these operations they should get down to cracking down on them. Obviously, the immigration authorities would need to fine-comb the travel documents of persons of foreign origin without subjecting them to any humiliation and harassment, if they are initially using legal channels to get into the country, because the legal visitor has to be separated rigorously from the bogus one.

Some among us need to get past the attitude that sex workers - female or male - are a price of 'development'. They are certainly not. As we see it, besides the reputation of Sri Lanka, what is seriously being imperilled is human dignity and the standing of the human personality. Whereas the decision to sell one's body is an individual decision, made freely, there is no denying that our's is a culture which doesn't regard such decisions correct. If a person is compelled to sell her body, she is denigrating her identity as a human being. We need to always perpetuate and respect this norm.

Mammals vs dinosaurs

You have probably heard it all before, but the story of mammalian evolution goes like this: Mammals were living under the shadow of dinosaurs; then dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago; in the absence of the big creatures, mammals thrived, became bigger and more diverse; they took over the planet.

But two remarkable finds in a fossil treasure trove in northeastern China may smash perceptions about early mammals, according to a study published last week in the British weekly journal Nature.

The conventional view is that in the long reign of the dinosaurs, mammals were small creatures no bigger than rats and weighed a kilo or two at most. Two newly-discovered mammal fossils may change this version forever.

The findings reveal that some early mammals were much larger and more diverse than previously thought and were tough enough to compete with the dinosaurs. The remains, dating from at least 128 million years ago, were found in layers of sediment in Liaoning province, where dozens of preserved dinosaur bones and early birds have been found in recent years.

The first fossil, the size of a large cat and dubbed Repenomamus robustus, was found to have the remains of a young parrot-faced dinosaur, a psittacosaur, in its stomach. This is the first direct evidence that early mammals ate small vertebrates. The other find is even more impressive - a relative of R. robustus called Repenomamus gigantus: a dog-sized mammal more than a metre long and probably weighing 14 to 15 kilos. A Repenomamus could waddle, although not run, and could stand on its hindlimbs and walk effectively enough to stalk small prey. Neither creature could have looked like any mammal alive today.

These revelations suggest that we may have been harbouring wrong views on mammalian evolution all this time. If the new evidence is correct, it means that mammals competed ably for food and territory with the bigger dinosaurs. Some mammals had not stopped at that - they had devoured the smaller dinos.

Mammals could also have had the advantage of a bigger, more developed brain in outpacing the dinosaurs. Rather than living in mortal fear of the massive dinosaurs, mammals would have made their presence felt in the primeval jungle.

The fossil finds also remind us that the past is yet to yield all its secrets. We may have to change conventional theories as new evidence is unearthed. There could be many more secrets of evolution out there (or rather down there), waiting to be discovered.

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