Turkey's shining liver transplant industry has humble origins
MURAT SOFUOGLU

Yaman Tokat, a leading Turkish surgeon, speaks to TRT World and explains what made Turkey a global leader in the liver transplant industry.

Like a Sufi dervish following his master, Turkish surgeon Yaman Tokat followed Mehmet Muhlis Tekdogan, a well-known heart surgeon in Turkey.

The year was 1987 and Tekdogan had returned to Turkey after spending several years in the US, where he had earned fame as a professor at the University of Chicago. He returned to his homeland with a mission to develop a heart surgery department in the Ege University and slowly build an organ transplant discipline in the country's healthcare sector.

As Tekdogan met then-28-year-old Tokat, a native of Izmir’s Karsiyaka district, he saw in him a man who would fight all the odds and carry out ambitious surgical tasks assigned to him.

“One day the teacher (hoca in Turkish) called me. I was one of his first assistants. ‘My child, do a kidney transplant this week,’ he told me,” Tokat recalls.

It was a time when such transplant operations were neither performed at the Ege University nor in Izmir. Although such surgeries were performed in some other parts of Turkey, the results were mixed: some became successful, some resulted in failures.

“In Turkey, at the time, there was no such concrete medical concept like kidney transplant from a cadaver,” Tokat says.

In light of all the complexities and lack of resources, what Tekdogan demanded from Tokat was not an ordinary operation at all. Instead, it was a very fearful task for surgeons, which turned their dreams into nightmares.

“But in Turkish surgery, if you loudly question an instruction and say 'how the hell can I do this?', then, they [master surgeons] would not assign that task to you ever. If they offer you an assignment, you should just say under any conditions ‘Yes, I can do it’,” Tokat tells TRT World.

“You should not say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I cannot do it’. That’s what I have learned [from my teachers],” Tokat said, his expressions underlining as if he was sharing the secrets of his surgical success in Turkey.

Turkish model

As Turkey lacked organisational structure in sectors like liver or kidney transplant, individual actions came first before a stable system supporting those crucial surgical procedures came into being, Tokat says. But in the developed world, where a stable system has already been in place, an intervention like Tekdogan's is not needed as their systems naturally decide the order of individual actions, he adds.

“In our case, someone, who knows the job, shows how it should be done, then, things begin to move towards establishing a system,” he explains. In Tokat’s case, it was Tekdogan who "led the charge."

“He came from the US to start this at the Ege University and led the charge. His ‘You-guys-will-do-this' determination made things move there. We could not achieve anything without his leadership and connections,” Tokat says.

While gaining speciality in general surgery for five years, he worked intensely on kidney transplantation. Tokat and his friends also opened Turkey’s first coordination centre in Izmir to organise people to donate their organs.

When Tokat completed his specialisation course, Tekdogan called him again.

“This time he told me ‘Ok, let’s do a liver transplant,’” he said, adding that he immediately followed the advice and researched on which institution was the best for liver transplant.

As he found Britain’s Cambridge University, he moved there in 1993 to deepen his knowledge and practice of liver transplant.

“I learned how to do a liver transplant there with its full procedure. In 1994, when I came back to Turkey, I started doing liver transplant operations. The first time in the country’s history, my team was able to conduct successful operations with patients living for longer periods afterwards,” Tokat says, referring to the surgeries he performed in the Ege University.

Before Tokat conducted liver transplants, Turkey had recorded a few surgeries in the field. In 1988, the first liver transplantation was performed by Mehmet Haberal, whose team also did the first deceased donor liver transplantation (DDLT) in 1990.

But no patients could live for longer periods afterwards, Tokat says, referring to previous operations. “I did the first successful liver transplant in Turkey with the patient living ten years after the operation on August 24, 1994,” says Tokat.

Fatma Akin was Yaman Tokat’s first liver transplant patient, who was also Turkey’s first long term transplant survivor. She became pregnant three months after the operation in 1994. She had a healthy boy named after Tokat’s first name, Yaman. The picture was taken in 2004. (Credit: Yaman Tokat / TRTWorld)

Under Tokat’s leadership, Turkey’s first successful DDLT program was established in 1994 in Izmir. Five years later, he also established the first live donor liver transplantation (LDLT) program in the Ege University.

Leading the charge

From 1994 to 1997, Tokat’s team had conducted ten back-to-back liver transplants — each one showed amazingly successful results. The subsequent surgical feats shot him to fame in Turkey. In October 1997, one of Turkey’s private television channels even broadcasted one of his liver transplant operations live on TV.

“When people saw that a liver transplant is indeed possible and a patient could live after an operation, there was a real increase in the number of people donating their organs, making 1997 a turning point for the development of the country’s liver transplant sector,” Tokat says.

In 1998, a new development emerged across the world, which was the possibility of live donor liver transplantation (LDLT). Then, Tokat went to Japan’s Kyoto, which was known as the hub of LDLT, to learn this new technique. He stayed there for 15 days, joining a couple of operations. He came back with VHS footage of the operations.

“At the time, there was no Youtube or anything like that,” he says.

“When I was back in Izmir, I and one of my partners sat down on a weekend on one of the hottest days of the year, watching those 5-minute videos maybe forty times to memorise every move”.

(Musab Abdullah Gungor / TRTWorld)

The following year, in 1999, his team conducted Turkey’s first successful LDLT operation, taking the country to the new age of both organ donation and the LDLT. Both the techniques became popular in Turkey for reasons ranging from religious considerations to close family relations.

“We began doing like 100 operations per year,” Tokat says, referring to a period between 1999 and 2005, when he decided to move the whole liver transplant program to Istanbul’s Florence Nightingale Hospital. For 15 years, his team had worked there until he decided to establish a new center, International Liver Center, this year. He now performs all the liver transplantation operations in his new center.

More than three decades after he conducted the first kidney transplant operation in Izmir, Tokat is now considered to be one of Turkey’s leading liver transplant surgeons, who is also well-known across the world and has earned the reputation of being a fearless surgeon. Since 1994, he has done more than 1,500 liver transplants. He once performed 143 surgeries a year, he recalls.

Turkey: a rising star

Thanks to Tokat and his other courageous and capable colleagues, Turkey has made an incredible improvement in the liver transplant industry, where the country is counted among the top three countries in the world in terms of recording the most liver transplant operations along with India and South Korea. (Musab Abdullah Gungor / TRTWorld)

Turkey’s success rate is also quite high in terms of live donor liver transplantation (LDLT), reaching 80 to 90 percent, according to Tokat. With the help of the Turkish health ministry, which accelerated its support to the industry in 2010, 49 liver transplant departments continue to operate across the country with varying degrees of success.

“The state’s decision to fully support organ transplantation ten years ago was a very big step. But we also need to implement that decision in a proper sense,” Tokat says.

“Turkey’s decision at the time was probably one of the best steps ever taken in the world, as it aimed to make all organ transplants free for all patients no matter where operations are done,” he sees.

“We grew up reading books in English and going to Western countries to learn more about the transplantation industry. But now, American and British surgeons are coming to Turkey to get training from us to learn more about LDLT operations,” he says.

In the Ege University in Izmir in 2002, Professor Yaman Tokat discusses with Ronald W. Busuttil, a well-known American professor, who is also the Dumont Professor of Transplantation Surgery and Chief of the Division of Liver and Pancreas Transplant in the Department of Surgery at the UCLA School of Medicine. (Credit: Yaman Tokat / TRTWorld)

Due to the pandemic, Turkey has particularly become an attractive destination for liver transplant operations, as Europe and the US have imposed various travel restrictions preventing people from considering them as an option.

“In LDLT operations, we are much better than Germany, Britain and the US. Our operational costs are also much lower than those countries. Due to the pandemic, India and China have also lost their appeal, making Turkey one of the best destinations for health tourism,” he says.

Tokat and his colleagues also established the International Liver Surgeons Union, where he is the deputy chairman now, bringing out many top liver transplant surgeons across the world. With his International Liver Center, which he ultimately wants to evolve into a university, Tokat aims to collect various data from different cases and a wide range of experiences from Turkey and the world.

“We want to leave Turkey a perpetual legacy and a large collection of data,” he says. If his centre turns into an international medical body, where the world’s top surgeons could find their voice, many patients across the globe would choose Turkey as their ultimate destination to cure liver diseases then, he believes. (Musab Abdullah Gungor / TRTWorld)

“Now I want to run for this dream. If you have dreams, you can find meaning in life,” he says.

Imagination is crucial for continuity, he says, recalling how modern medics in the early 1900s first thought about the possibility of organ transplant by seeing ancient pictures of mythological animals, who were kind of eclectic or hybrid entities created by using different body parts of different animals.

Tokat and his colleagues want to develop an international liver transplant centre, which could be an attractive point for Turkey’s surrounding region from the Balkans to the Middle East and Central Asia.

A man of discipline and principle

While Tokat is now undoubtedly one of the biggest names in the liver transplant industry, he appears to have lost no love for what he does.

Tokat, a Turkish word which also means a slap in English language, comes across as a passionate man, who's deeply devoted to his job, liver transplant, one of the hardest surgical procedures, which saves thousands of lives every year.

But he doesn't like to attribute his success to the word 'passion'. Instead, he credits Tekdogan for shaping his career, as well as his middle-class background, which taught him to be honest and ethical no matter what.

“I began my career not as a passionate man but as a man on a mission,” he says, referring to the roots of his Turkish model. “I began this job because my teacher told me ‘Come and start this job’”.

“After my decades-long labour, I have also developed a love for my occupation. You love something if you labour so hard for it. If you don’t labour anymore, love breaks up,” he says.

“As much as I succeed, I learn more and help others and my occupation has turned into a passion for me, making myself a role-model for our society”. 

Turkey's Inonu University aiming for Guinness record in liver transplants

Source: TRT World

Hospital volunteer Leonid Krasner decorates his single-use PPE suits with art before entering the Covid-19 wards

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Volunteer Leonid Krasner poses for a photo outside the City Clinical Hospital No. 52 treating Covid-19 patients in Moscow, Russia on December 9, 2020. (Reuters)

With medics and helpers covered in masks, medical glasses and protective suits, it is sometimes hard to convey festive cheer to the patients on Moscow's Covid-19 wards.

But Leonid Krasner, who has been volunteering at a hospital since the first wave, has found a way with the colourful pictures he draws on the back of his overalls to help patients recognise him and bring a smile to those being treated.

Krasner, 59, decorates his single-use suits before entering the wards every time he is in the hospital.

He once drew a cartoonish plane for a sick pilot and a congratulations card for a mother on Mother's Day.

"This is to boost your mood and your immune system," he told an old lady with an oxygen mask, charmed by the Christmas tree daubed on his back.

During the outbreak's second wave, Moscow has registered around 6,000-7,000 new infections every day, about a quarter of Russia's nationwide caseload, and it has had to open several temporary hospitals, including one on an ice rink.

Cheer up!

Krasner and some of his fellow volunteers are tasked with looking after the weak patients discharged from intensive care units to regular wards.

They help them with every day things like combing their hair, brushing their teeth and shaving.

A former businessman, Krasner was one of dozens of Muscovites with no prior medical experience who volunteered to help at coronavirus hospital number 52 in spring when the outbreak hit the Russian capital.

He ended up catching the virus himself shortly after his first shifts and it took him two weeks to recover at home before he could get back to his patients.

"Even if a person is in a bad way and is sick, they still need emotions ...This cheers people up," said Krasner outside a ward where he had been massaging the legs of a recovering patient.

Framed: What is justice to a man wrongly imprisoned in India for 23 years?

HAZIQ QADRI

&
QADRI INZAMAM

Forced into confessing to a crime he didn't commit, Nisar Mirza Hussain has no idea how to rekindle his relationship with freedom.

Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir — It is May 1996 and Mirza Nisar Hussain is 16. He has finally come to terms with losing his father to cancer in 1990.

A year later, Nisar quits school to help his brother, Mirza Iftikhar Hussain. Their business selling Kashmiri Pashmina shawls and carpets is booming: they are doing well not only where they live in Delhi, but also in Mussoorie (an Indian hill station) and even in Nepal.

Nisar has gone to Kathmandu to receive payment from a trader. He stays with few other Kashmiris in a rented room near a marketplace in Maharajganj. He makes his way to a telephone booth to place a call to his family in Srinagar, with friends in tow.

He enters the booth and realises that several police vehicles have suddenly surrounded the booth - he has no idea what is happening. Even before he can make the phone call, he and his friends are bundled into a police vehicle and taken to an unknown location. What he does notice is that it's not the Nepal Police, but the Delhi Police leading the operation.

Nisar and his friends are interrogated and asked about the purpose of their visit to Nepal. Then he is shown the photograph of the trader who owes him money. He recognises him. His friends also recognise the photo and tell the police how they know him. It still doesn't make sense to Nisar.

They reach the police station where Nisar is taken aback when he sees dozens of Kashmiris having been rounded up (whose fates are unknown to this day). It’s in this police station that Nisar overhears the Delhi Police explaining to the Nepal Police that these Kashmiris are being detained in connection with the Lajpat Nagar bomb blasts that had taken place on the evening of May 2, 1996, in the busy Central Market area of Lajpat Nagar in Delhi. An attack that killed 13 and injured 39 others.

Though just a teenager, Nisar is able to grasp the gravity of the situation. He and his friends are frisked, stripped naked and interrogated for several hours. They are then driven to the India-Nepal border in Sunauli.

An old photograph of Mirza Nisar Hussain in his teenage years, before he was arrested by Indian police in Nepal. (TRTWorld)

The journey is not easy – on their way to India, the police abuse them, some of them even beat them. As they cross the border, Nisar is frightened by the sight of dozens of police jeeps waiting for them. They are hooded, bundled into a police jeep and driven to an underground detention camp in Lodhi Road — and that is where Nisar's story begins.

Torture and coercion

Nisar has no idea where he is, and as soon as he reaches the Lodhi Road detention camp, he is thrown into a cell and stripped naked. His friends, in other cells, face the same treatment.

Nobody says anything. A group of policemen barge in with wooden clubs and beat him occasionally. They hit him all over his body — his shrieks are confined to the concrete walls. He has, for now, disappeared from the face of the earth.

The more he pleads with his captors to stop, the more infuriated they grow and the more brutal they become, as if pleading for mercy triggers their mercilessness. He is not allowed clothes nor food, except on the rare occasion when he is given a cup of tea and bread, which is again followed by a harsh beating.

Nisar is unable to fall into a restful sleep. His friends in other cells meet the same fate. It dawns upon him how young men who disappear in Kashmir leave behind families in a miserable spiral of anticipation, and he could become one of those young men.

Tihar, Central Jail, New Delhi, India. (Arijit Sen / Getty Images)

Nine days pass and he is beaten to a point where he is ready to tell the police that he's willing to do anything they want. By this point, Nisar’s family and friends hear about his arrest. The media starts raising questions about arrests made in Nepal. Under pressure, the Delhi Police’s special cell produces Nisar and two others before the media, but claims to have arrested them on that day.

But before being paraded in front of the media, they are made to sign on a ream of over 200 blank pages. In exchange for no further beatings, they are told to memorise a story: confess in court to their involvement in the Lajpat Nagar bomb blast.

Nisar, who knows nothing about driving, is told to confess to having driven an explosives-laden car to Lajpat Nagar; another friend is asked to tell the court that he had procured explosives from a handler. They agree to confess but seek assurances they will not be beaten.

But Nisar is already broken. How does a boy who has not yet begun to dream, understand that this could be the end of his future? He resigns to his fate. He gives up on hope. He longs for death. Prays for death.

When Nisar and his friends are produced in court, the judge takes a look at them, sees their condition, and asks nothing. He orders them into 14-day police custody. During those two weeks, several agencies interrogate them, take their statements and confessions. They are asked to repeat the story the Delhi Police asked them to memorise. But the thing about lies is that you tend to forget them no matter how much you repeat them.

In every retelling they forget a detail or deviate from the plot, then they are beaten until they remember what they are told to say. As they keep repeating the coerced confession, their chances for freedom turn bleaker. It’s here that Nisar learns that his brother, Iftikhar, has also been arrested in the same case. The hope that Iftikhar could support his family comes crashing down.

Two weeks later, Nisar and others are produced in court again and are sent to Tihar Jail. His age is falsely mentioned as 19, snatching any chance of him being sent to a juvenile court where his prospects for release would have been higher.

Jail diary

What would a 16-year-old, who had never even been in a fight before, do in a prison where hardened criminals, murderers and thieves were kept?

Two weeks later, Nisar finds himself in court again — and another shock awaits.

Nisar finds a team of Rajasthan Police in the court, demanding his custody. They claim Nisar’s involvement in a bomb blast on a bus in Samleti, Rajasthan that had taken place on May 22, 1996, and killed 14 people.

Nisar is shocked. He has never even been to Rajasthan, he tells the court. Even the Delhi Police, who had framed him, tell the court he should not be handed over to the Rajasthan Police. But the court sends Nisar into their custody and he's taken to Rajasthan in connection with the Samleti bomb blast case.

Nisar is taken to a jail in Rajasthan and put in a prison called Bandgaathi, a Hindi word for a ‘closed valley’, a name given by the prisoners to an isolation ward. It is a dark and dingy ward where each cell is devoid of any light and bereft of windows. They are so small that one feels the walls might just shrink. It has a heavy door with a small hole to peep through - that is his only window to the outside world. The cell is dusty, dark and humid. That is all there is: no separate space for a toilet, to bathe, to eat or sit.

Nisar eats, prays, sleeps and defecates within these four walls. All he gets is a small pot of water every day with which he washes and uses the rest of it to drink in the heat of the summer, in a region where the summer temperatures can touch 48 degrees celsius.

But the cell is so filthy that he gets lice in his hair, body and even in his eyebrows. A pot of water is not enough to get rid of the pests. The filth, lice and the sickness they cause is not where the torment stops.

Nisar is regularly beaten for three months, so much so that his left hip is broken. Every time the policemen leave the cell, he imagines himself dying. He imagines comfort in death. The police continuously force him to toe their line, confessing to having been part of the Samleti bomb blast.

How does one live with isolation? In that sweltering prison cell, Nisar survives by remembering the names and faces of all those he had loved. If there is a miracle that the weak and tormented can perform, it lies in summoning their imagination.

Three months later, Nisar is produced in a Rajasthan court where he sees his mother, sisters and uncle at a distance. As soon as they see each Nisar’s condition, they begin to wail - his sisters pull at their hair and fling their scarves; his mother falls unconscious and the uncle tries to console them as Nisar helplessly watches from a distance. That is all the consolation allowed.

Nisar is taken back to his cell

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Mirza Nissar Hussain, wrongly convicted in the '1996 Lajpat Nagar bomb blast case', seen after a hearing at Patiala Court in New Delhi on Thursday, April 8, 2010. The court convicted him along with 5 others in the case. (Perveen Negi / TRTWorld)

One day, when Nisar sees his elder brother, Zaffar Hussain, he breaks down and realises his helplessness. He pleads for him not to visit in the future and to let him be. He bids him farewell and resigns to his fate, again. He now realises the futility of hope.

The same evening, Nisar hears loud thuds, like gallops, approaching towards him. The heavy door of his cell is thrown open and he is dragged out. Dozens of policemen and several prisoners, holding wooden clubs, start beating him until he loses consciousness and is thrown back into the same cell.

Nine months later, Nisar is shifted back to Tihar where he stays until late 2012.

In Tihar, Nisar meets other Kashmiris who had been framed in the same cases. While there are no frequent beatings and torture in Tihar, life there is fraught with its challenges.

In a barrack with a capacity of not more than 50 people, the cell where Nisar is kept is packed with over 150-170 people. In Delhi’s simmering heat and humidity and the absence of any cooling arrangements, getting a moment’s sleep in these cells is unimaginable.

Nisar and his friend protest against going back to the overcrowded barrack. The jail in-charge, Subhash Sharma, who has earned the sobriquet ‘Saddam Hussain’ for his strictness, puts them in Kasuri ward, a cell reserved for those who violate prison rules. And it comes as a relief. The Kasuri ward is not overcrowded and has enough space for Nisar and his friend so that they can sleep and pray at ease.

Hope and despair

Life becomes fragile when you give up on hope. In his 23 years of prison life, more than 30 judges were changed as they kept dragging the case to a point where it became completely hollowed out. There was one instance in 2006 when a bench was hearing Nisar’s case on a day-to-day basis and his hope for freedom seemed to resurrect.

The 16 prime witnesses the Delhi Police had presented turned hostile. Nisar and others had learnt to hope again. One day, when Nisar was taken to the Patiala Court for the hearing, he found there was no judge. His rekindled hope had been doused again.

In 2010, his brother, Mirza Iftikhar, was acquitted of all charges and released. That revived hope. Soon after his release, Iftikhar moved the Delhi High Court in his brother’s case and challenged the lower court’s order.

Since the case had gone off the rails, the witnesses turned hostile and the case was cannibalised by its own loopholes. The High Court finally acquitted Nisar and his friend Ali Mohammad in 2012 of all charges in the Lajpat Nagar Bomb Blast case. Nisar’s good behaviour in court was duly mentioned and appreciated by the judge who pronounced the judgment.

Nisar waited in anticipation. He imagined himself walking out of the prison. He was eager and impatient. He had forgotten what it meant to be free. But it was still out of reach. Nisar and Ali were shifted to Rajasthan jail to await a verdict in the Samleti blast case. 

An old photograph of Mirza Nisar Hussain (left) with his brother Mirza Iftikhar (Right). (TRTWorld)

As soon as he reached the jail, Nisar was struck by the realisation that maybe he is destined to die alone in a prison cell.

His time in Rajasthan jail was not easy. Whenever there were attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir or massive anti-India protests, Nisar and his fellow Kashmiris faced the brunt of it - the inmates called them terrorists, beat them up and abused them.

When a suicide bomber in Kashmir’s Pulwama killed over 40 Indian paramilitary troops on February 14, 2019, everything inside the jail changed. Emotions ran high. They were constantly abused and threatened.

In the aftermath of the February 2019 attack, Nisar recalls, some prisoners bludgeoned a Pakistani prisoner to death with a stone in a TV room because they wanted to avenge the deaths of Indian troops.

In such a hostile environment, Nisar was uncertain of his fate. But fate works in unusual ways. A former Delhi University Professor, the late SAR Geelani, helped to arrange for Nisar a reputed lawyer, Kamini Jaiswal, who represented Nisar and Ali in the Samleti blast case.

Again, judges were changed, the case dragged on and hearings were adjourned. It was finally in 2019 when a judge from Punjab heard the case on a day-to-day basis for 10 days and heard all the arguments. She acquitted Nisar and Ali and they walked free from Rajasthan jail on July 23, 2019. Hope had finally outlived injustice.

Freedom?

“Sometimes I think I was better off in jail,” Nisar says as he reflects on his life. “I knew my fate when I was in jail. Here I am uncertain. There is too much to worry about.”

It has been more than a year since he was released, but Nisar hasn't found a way to earn. “Soon after I was released, the entire Kashmir was put under a lockdown and the government had other priorities. Any chances of being compensated for my 23 years of wrongful confinement were lost. It was followed by the coronavirus (pandemic),” he says.

Mirza Nisar Hussain at his home in Srinagar's Shamswari, in India-administered Kashmir. (Haziq Qadri / TRTWorld)

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for Nisar to face his relatives, neighbours and acquaintances, for they keep asking about his plans to get married, a job and his future.

“There is no future. What should I tell them?” Nisar says.

Now whenever a guest or a relative visits his home in Srinagar’s old city, Nisar rushes off to another room and waits for the guest to leave so that he doesn’t need to speak about his future. “Who will marry a 40-year-old jobless man?” he asks.

When his brother, Iftikhar, was released, he bore some of the expenses of the case, even though Kamini Jaiswal did not charge anything from the Mirza family. He works at a private firm and they had loaned him money to meet the expenses of the case.

Now that Nisar has been released, half of Iftikhar’s salary is cut to pay back the loan. Whatever little is left, helps to run household expenses. Another brother, Zaffar Hussain, is a private teacher and earns a modest salary.

When Nisar and his brother were arrested in 1996, their shops and goods in Delhi were confiscated. Their family business could never be revived. “If we had not been falsely implicated, we would have been doing well right now. I would not have been begging for a job,” he says.

Every time he looks at his mother, Nisar says, a feeling of despondency dawns upon him. “She wants to see me have a future. She doesn't want me to suffer. She is tormented by questions people ask about me. That torments her. And her grief torments me,” Nisar says. “Life outside the jail is not so free after all.”

Mirza Nisar Hussain with his brother Mirza Iftikhar (left) at his residence in Srinagar's Shamswari in india-administered Kashmir. (Haziq Qadri / TRTWorld)

Justice?

People in their forties might reflect back on their lives and sift through all the memories, good and bad. But what if there is only one memory that permeates throughout your entire life?

What if there is no memory except those of cold concrete grey walls; of years and years of hopelessness; of ageing without dreams; of stolen adolescence; of deceit and betrayal; of being reduced to a number? Then it’s not a memory. It’s not life. It’s a dark spell that makes you believe in the futility of existence, of everything good, like hope. And what if this dark spell lasts a lifetime?

It’s not that Nisar is not happy to be ‘free’, but what does justice mean to him? Does freedom after 23 years offer a semblance of justice? What should one call it?

Nisar sums it up with just a handful of words: “Justice died in prison.”

India frees Kashmiri men after 23 years of wrongful imprisonment

AUTHOR

Haziq Qadri

 

haziq_qadri

Mohammad Haziq is a freelance journalist based in India-administered Kashmir.

AUTHOR

Qadri Inzamam

 

Qadri_Inzamam

Qadri Inzamam is a freelance journalist based in Indian-administered Kashmir. His stories have been published in the BBC, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, The New Arab, Caravan, Scroll and several national and local media publications.

 Half of Russians skeptical Kremlin critic Navalny was poisoned - poll

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Half of Russians believe that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was either not poisoned, as he and Western governments contend, or that his poisoning was stage-managed by Western intelligence services, a poll showed on Thursday.

© Reuters/SHAMIL ZHUMATOV FILE PHOTO:

 Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny takes part in a rally in Moscow

The poll, released by the Levada-Center, shows how hard it remains for Navalny to shape public opinion in Russia even as his case attracts wide media attention in the West and his own slickly-produced videos of what happened to him this summer rack up millions of views online.

Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin's most outspoken critics, was airlifted to Germany for medical treatment in August after collapsing on a plane in Russia. Germany has said he was poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent in an attempt to murder him, an assertion many Western nations accept.

A joint media investigation last week named agents from Russia's FSB security service it said were behind the plot to kill him. Navalny on Monday released a recording of him speaking by phone to a man he described as a state security agent who told him, among other things, that the poison had been placed in his underpants.

The FSB has called that recording a fake designed to discredit it, however, and has said that foreign intelligence services helped Navalny make it while the Kremlin has mocked Navalny and tried to call his sanity into question.

The poll by Levada, which is regarded as more independent than state counterparts, showed only 15% of Russians believed what happened to Navalny was an attempt by the authorities to rid themselves of a political opponent.

Video: Russian President Vladimir Putin refutes reports that Russia's security services were behind the poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, saying that if they had been, the opposition leader would not be alive. (AFP)
Half of Russians sceptical Kremlin critic Navalny was poisoned - poll (msn.com)

HIS NOVICHOK HIT TEAM SEEMS TO BE ZERO FOR SUCCESS LEAVING 

THEIR VICTIMS ALIVE THE NOVICHOK MAY BE EXPIRED!!!1

By contrast, 30% thought that the incident was stage-managed and that there was no poisoning, and 19% said they believed it was a provocation orchestrated by Western intelligence services.

The same poll, which canvassed 1,617 Russians aged 18 or older, showed that 7% thought it was revenge by someone he had targeted in one of his anti-corruption investigations.

Denis Volkov, Levada's deputy director, said the results showed a split in opinion between older and younger Russians, whom Navalny has targeted with high-profile online investigations and by speaking to them directly in live internet broadcasts.

"Older generations receiving news on TV and trusting TV news, and supporters of the authorities mostly consider what happened as a stage-managed event and provocation of the West," Volkov wrote on Facebook.

"Young people, active internet users and critics of the authorities are much more likely to blame Russian authorities for the poisoning," he said.

Navalny is still convalescing in Germany, but has said he wants to return to Russia.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

VIVA CUBA VENCEREM0S

Cuban doctors arrive in Panama to fight pandemic amid US opposition

A group of 220 Cuban health care professionals arrived in Panama on Thursday to help fight the coronavirus pandemic despite objections from the United States, Panama's health ministry said.

© STR Hospitals in Panama are saturated as a spike in coronavirus cases has forced the government to order a lockdown over Christmas and the New Year

The Cuban medics will "reinforce the health system in this fight against covid-19," the ministry said on Twitter.

Panama announced o0n December 15 it would hire doctors from Cuba, the US, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia to tackle the pandemic despite a law restricting medical practice to locals.

Panama is the worst affected country in Central America with more than 220,000 Covid-19 cases and over 3,600 deaths among its 4.2 million population.

But the announcement had met resistance from Michael Kozak, Washington's acting assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

"Governments that hire Cuban medical workers must ensure their fair and humane treatment -- in stark contrast to the Castro regime, which traffics in, and exploits, the workers' bravery for its own gains," Kozak tweeted on December 21.

"Make contracts transparent and pay workers directly."

The US is Panama's main political and economic ally.

Cuba's practice of hiring out its world-renowned health care workers has been branded "white coat diplomacy" by Havana's detractors, including Washington, which has accused Cuba of "forced labor" and using the medics as a propaganda tool.

"Our White Coat Heroes have arrived in Panama," Cuba's embassy in Panama said on Twitter alongside a video of people wearing white coats and carrying a Cuban flag.

Since reopening its economy in September and October, Panama has witnessed a spike in coronavirus cases that has left its hospitals saturated and their staff exhausted.

The government has imposed a total lockdown over Christmas and the New Year to try to slow the virus's spread.

Panama is due to receive 450,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine during the first quarter of 2021.

Panama President Laurentino Cortizo had announced plans to hire Cuban doctors in August but backed down following criticism from Washington and from within the country.

However, the government was forced into a change of heart as it was unable to hire enough health care professionals to tackle the virus crisis.

jjr/dga/bc/ft

A probe snaps 'great conjunction' photo of Jupiter and Saturn from the moon


By Chelsea Gohd 

Behold, the view from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter!



(Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

A moon-orbiting probe got a stunning up-close view of the "great conjunction" of Jupiter and Saturn from Earth's rocky satellite.

Monday (Dec. 21), Jupiter and Saturn appeared closer in the night sky than they had in about 800 years during what's known as a "great conjunction." People all around the globe watched and photographed the planets, which looked almost like a single, bright "star" in the sky. However, us Earthlings weren't the only ones who got a celestial show.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched in 2009 and has enough fuel to keep orbiting the moon for another six years, spotted the cosmic event all the way from the moon.

Great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn seen by Griffith Observatory (space.com)

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera's (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) captured an unbelievable image of the two planets just a few hours after the pair's point of closest separation (0.1 degrees), which occurred at TK. Now, while Jupiter and Saturn may have looked like one glowing orb to the naked eye, with the detailed view of the NAC, you can clearly resolve the individual planets. In fact, the image provides so much detail that you can even faintly see Saturn's rings. 

Here on Earth, skywatchers were able to see Jupiter's moons with DSLR cameras and even basic telescopes, though Saturn's rings were usually only visible with higher-powered telescopes.



On Dec. 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn appeared just one-tenth of a degree apart, or about the thickness of a dime held at arm's length, according to NASA. During the event, known as a "great conjunction," the two planets (and their moons) were visible in the same field of view through binoculars or a telescope. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

When the NAC captured this image of the two planets, Jupiter was about four times brighter than Saturn, so the brightness of the original image was adjusted to make both equally visible.

While Jupiter and Saturn have a close conjunction once every 20 years, the planets haven't appeared this close since 1623. Additionally, the planetary alignment came just a few days before Christmas, with many dubbing the bright event a "Christmas Star," adding even more to the astronomical excitement.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

SPACE WEATHER

A dark storm on Neptune has reversed direction and scientists can't explain why

© Provided by Space 

Astronomers were surprised to see two storms on Neptune. It’s possible the planet’s giant storm spawned another when it abruptly changed directions.

A dark storm on Neptune abruptly switched directions and started moving away from almost certain death, puzzling astronomers.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope first spotted the vortex in 2018. A year later, the storm began drifting southward toward Neptune’s equator, following the path of several storms before it. Usually, these dark spots on Neptune live for a few years before either vanishing or fading away. However, the storm mysteriously stopped moving south and made a sharp u-turn, drifting back northwards. At the same time, astronomers spotted a second, smaller dark spot on the planet.

They theorize that this smaller “cousin” storm may be a piece of the original vortex that broke off and drifted away.

Related: Birth of 'Great Dark Spot' Storm on Neptune Seen for 1st Time (Photo)

"We are excited about these observations because this smaller dark fragment is potentially part of the dark spot’s disruption process," Michael H. Wong of the University of California at Berkeley said in a NASA statement. "This is a process that's never been observed. We have seen some other dark spots fading away and they're gone, but we've never seen anything disrupt, even though it’s predicted in computer simulations."

Although Hubble has tracked similar storms on Neptune over the past 30 years, astronomers have never seen such unpredictable atmospheric behavior.

The current storm, which is 4,600 miles (7,403 kilometers) across (bigger than the Atlantic Ocean) is the fourth-darkest spot Hubble has tracked since 1993. These storms are high-pressure systems that rotate clockwise due to the planet’s rotation (unlike hurricanes on Earth, which are low-pressure systems that rotate counterclockwise).

Typically, as storms drift toward Neptune’s equator, the Coriolis effect that typically keeps them stable starts to weaken and the storm disintegrates. Yet, unlike past observed storms and computer simulations that show storms following a more-or-less straight path to the equator, this latest vortex didn’t migrate into this “kill zone.”

"It was really exciting to see this one act like it's supposed to act and then all of a sudden it just stops and swings back," Wong said in the same NASA statement. "That was surprising."

Spotting a smaller storm that potentially broke off from the larger vortex was also surprising. Astronomers informally call the smaller storm "dark spot jr." This "jr." is still quite large, stretching 3,900 miles (6,276 km) across. Although researchers can’t prove that the smaller storm broke off from the larger one, Wong said it’s possible that shedding that fragment was enough to stop the larger storm from continuing on towards the equator.

This latest giant storm on Neptune is the best-studied so far on the planet. For instance, when Hubble first spotted the storm in 2018, the telescope saw bright companion clouds around the vortex. Those clouds are now gone, having disappeared when the storm stopped drifting southward. It’s possible that the lack of these clouds could reveal some secrets about how the dark spots evolve.

There is still a lot of mystery surrounding storms on Neptune, but NASA’s Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program is standing by to crack those mysteries. But, for now, astronomers will keep their eyes on this mysterious dark spot on Neptune.

Follow Kasandra Brabaw on Twitter @KassieBrabaw. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

MEET NEO

A huge asteroid potentially measuring more than double the size of the Statue of Liberty is set to sail past Earth on Christmas Day.

© iStock Stock image: Artist's illustration of an asteroid. A large space rock will sail past the Earth on Christmas Day, 2020.

During its close approach, the space rock—dubbed 501647 (2014 SD224)—will come within 0.02019 astronomical units, or nearly 1.9 million miles, of our planet at 8:20 p.m. UTC (3:20 p.m. ET) on December 25, data from NASA's Center for Near Earth Studies (CNEOS) shows.

According to CNEOS, the asteroid is estimated to measure anywhere between 302 feet and 689 feet in diameter.

At the lower end of this range, the space rock would be almost exactly the same height as the Statue of Liberty. But at the upper end, it would be more than double the size of the famous monument in New York City.

While a close approach of 1.9 million miles sounds very far away, it is actually relatively near in astronomical terms. In fact, 1.9 million miles is just under eight times the average distance between the Earth and the moon.

As 2014 SD224 flies past our planet, it will be travelling at a speed of more than 22,000 miles per hour—which is roughly thirty times the speed of sound.

The space rock is one of many so-called near-Earth objects (NEOs) that orbit the sun in the vicinity of our planet.

Technically, the term NEO refers to any asteroid or comet that have orbits with the potential to come within 121 million miles of the sun, or 30 million miles of the Earth's own orbital path.

So far, researchers have spotted around 25,000 NEOs—the vast majority of which are asteroids. Scientists think most of the of the largest NEOs have been discovered, although there are likely to be many more smaller ones that are still undetected.

"By continually searching for asteroids, we expect to eventually find the majority of the hundred-meter-scale asteroids over time, as each happens to pass by our planet many years or decades before a possible potential impact," CNEOS director Paul Chodas previously told Newsweek.

"We have already inventoried over 95 percent of the really large asteroids (1 kilometer or 0.62 miles in size and larger) and we know that none of them has any chance of impacting over the next century."

NEOs that are thought to measure more than 460 feet in diameter and are in orbits that could potentially cross the Earth's own path within centuries or millennia—like 2014 SD224—are categorized as "potentially hazardous."

2014 SD224 will fly past Earth just a few days after the winter solstice on December, which marked the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

The astronomical event was notable this year because it coincided with a "great conjunction" of Jupiter and Saturn during which the two planets appeared closer in the sky than they have done for around 400 years.

'Lasting honour': Battle for Hong Kong ended on Christmas Day 1941 and Capt. John Reid was among the Canadians there

THERE WAS A VETERAN OF HONG KONG WHO WAS A MEMBER OF MY PARENTS NORWOOD BRANCH 149 OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN LEGION YEG

© Provided by National Post

 “C” Force arrives in Hong Kong on November 16, 1941.

VIDEO AT THE BOTTOM

On Christmas Day, 1941, Hong Kong surrendered to invading Japanese forces. The Canadian death toll was 290, and some 1,700 were taken prisoner. Among the PoWs was John Reid, a young Canadian doctor who volunteered for the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps after his medical training. He survived the war, but finding a peace of his own took 10 tumultuous years, with casualties of a different sort. This excerpt from the new book The Captain Was a Doctor describes Reid’s experience through the last three days of the battle for Hong Kong.

By December 22, Mount Cameron, several miles north of Reid’s Regimental Aid Post, had become the linchpin of West Brigade’s defensive line as the Japanese forced their way from the east. The position was held by only 100 Winnipeg Grenadiers, reinforced by a platoon of British Royal Engineers — all that could be spared. After raining Mount Cameron’s defenders with artillery and mortar fire, the Japanese attacked during the evening with 1,000 troops. The Grenadiers and Royal Engineers fought back ferociously, but a Japanese breakthrough on their right flank threatened to encircle their position and forced their withdrawal northward to Wan Chai Gap. In his postwar debriefing in October 1945, Reid recalls the confusion of this night:

(We were) still at Aberdeen Reservoir. This hill (where we had our aid post) continued to Wan Chai Gap. That part was held by the British and Canadians on our left flank. During the night we heard a lot of firing on this hill. We phoned (Grenadier Headquarters, northwest of Mount Cameron) to find out what was going on. They said, absolutely nothing — everything’s under control and quiet. In about ten minutes we got a call (from Grenadier Headquarters) in a great hurry and as soon as the phone was off (the hook) someone said the Japs are coming, we’re falling back on Mt. Gough, northwesterly, and for us to get up (to Mount Gough) any way we could … we would try to make a last stand there, then they banged down the phone. We picked it up again to ask, what’s this all about? Nobody was there.

Mount Cameron fell to the Japanese in the early hours of December 23. Except for Stanley Peninsula, where Canada’s Royal Rifles and the rest of East Brigade were cut off but still holding out, the Japanese now controlled the whole eastern half of Hong Kong Island, including the north-south corridor down the centre to Repulse Bay. West Brigade’s entire defence line from Leighton Hill in the north of the island to Bennet’s Hill in the south was under intense attack. On this day, another telegram was sent to Governor Mark Young by Prime Minister Winston Churchill:

There must be no thought of surrender. Every part of the island must be fought and the enemy resisted with the utmost stubbornness. The enemy should be compelled to expend the utmost life and equipment. There must be vigorous fighting in the inner defences and, if need be, from house to house. Every day that you are able to maintain your resistance you help the Allied cause all over the world, and by a prolonged resistance you and your men can win the lasting honour which we are sure will be your due.

© Courtesy of The Captain was a Doctor Captain John Reid.

With Mount Cameron overrun by the enemy, the Winnipeg Grenadiers north of the Aberdeen Reservoir, now dangerously exposed, were ordered to pull back to Aberdeen Village on the coast, Reid’s medical unit with them. On the morning of Tuesday, December 23, Reid deposited his wounded at the Aberdeen Naval Hospital and took stock of what he should do next.

At the beginning of hostilities, all of the garrison’s field ambulances, including the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, were reorganized as the Combined Field Ambulance led by Lieutenant-Colonel Lindsay Ride of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, with the Winnipeg Grenadiers’ Major John Crawford as second-in-command. During the last three days of fighting, the Combined Field Ambulance Headquarters had been on the move and was out of touch with many of its medical units. When Reid finally made contact late on Tuesday afternoon, he was ordered to Pok Fu Lam on the west coast of the island. As he describes in his postwar debriefing, believing his short-lived military career was about to end, he persuaded the Field Ambulance Headquarters otherwise:

I hadn’t been in the army a very long time and I asked the British Colonel if I could be assigned somewhere else. I had just got into the army and here I was in Hong Kong only a few days and the war was almost done and I asked him if there wasn’t something I could be doing. There wasn’t anything to do at Pok Fu Lam and there wasn’t going to be. He phoned back (and) said, okay, you go to the War Memorial Hospital. That was on the Peak. So I went over there and gave anaesthetics for a day.

The Casualty Clearing Station at War Memorial Hospital was dealing with civilian wounded as well as a stream of British, Canadian, and Indian military casualties. Shortly after the invasion of the island, the hospital’s water supply and electrical system had been knocked out, although engineers from a scuttled British ship managed to rig a small dynamo to produce power for the operating room. Reid was a welcome addition to the medical team. Dr. Annie Sydenham, the hospital’s chief anaesthetist, later reported: “We benefited from the assistance of (Captain Reid) as he knew his own men and was able to give them confidence and cheer.”

Reid remembers the night of December 24 as the oddest of Christmas Eves:

In the basement of the hospital, whose floors above lay ravaged by shell fire, by the flickering lamps in the darkness gathered a varied group: nurses and volunteer nurses, the few daughters of the well-placed who had clung to Hong Kong despite the signs that the “balloon” was really going aloft this time, patched wounded, medical orderlies, officers, and the odds and sods drifting in from the hills — to all came the sudden realization of Christmas Eve. Pots of jam were brought out, loaves of bread, tins of plums, strong hot tea, and — almost surreptitiously — a song: “Silent night, holy night,” rising stronger, louder, fuller till every voice took it up. For an hour all the old sweet airs (were sung), faces gleaming, smiling, tear-dropped but buoyed by the general British “thumbs-up,” till finally fading, most slumped left or right in exhausted sleep.

By dawn of Christmas Day, the remaining elements of West Brigade were hemmed into the western third of the island, while those of East Brigade were trapped on Stanley Peninsula in the southeast. In Victoria that morning, the South China Morning Post, somehow still operating amid the battle, published its penultimate wartime edition with the headline: “Hong Kong Is Observing the Strangest and Most Sober Christmas in Its Century-Old History.” Governor Mark Young broadcast a Christmas message to the colony: “In pride and admiration I send my greeting this Christmas Day to all who are fighting and all who are working so nobly and so well to sustain Hong Kong against the assaults of the enemy. Fight on. Hold fast for King and Empire. God bless you all in this your finest hour. Let this day be historical in the grand annals of our empire. The Order of the Day is to hold fast.”

Practically the last action of the Battle of Hong Kong was a suicidal attack ordered on Christmas morning by Brigadier Wallis, British commander of East Brigade, to retake Stanley Village, a position at the top of Stanley Peninsula recently overrun by the Japanese. The unit chosen for the mission was “D” Company of the Royal Rifles, a force by now reduced through casualties to 120 men. Although Wallis promised artillery support for the attack, none materialized, and at 1:00 p.m. on Christmas Day, Company Sergeant Major George MacDonell and two other platoon leaders led the Canadians across open ground in a wild charge that by its sheer fierceness succeeded in evicting the larger enemy force from parts of Stanley Village while inflicting heavy casualties. But greatly outnumbered by Japanese reinforcements, who began to encircle them, and targeted by a sustained artillery barrage, the Rifles were soon ordered to retreat by Major Maurice Parker, “D” Company’s commanding officer, a tricky withdrawal by two’s and three’s, while MacDonell and Sergeant Lance Ross provided covering fire with their Bren guns before barely escaping themselves. Twenty-six Royal Rifles died during the action. With the 75 who were wounded, “D” Company suffered 84 percent casualties in the attack on Stanley Village. For all the men’s heroics, nothing was gained.

On the west side of the island, General Maltby, the garrison commander, had reached the same conclusion: holding Hong Kong was hopeless; fighting on only meant pointless loss of life, followed by inevitable defeat. Maltby’s final dispatch to London ended: “At 3:15 p.m. (Christmas Day) I advised his Excellency the Governor and Commander-in-Chief that no further useful military resistance was possible and I then ordered all Commanding Officers to break off the fighting and to capitulate to the nearest Japanese Commander, as and when the enemy advanced and the opportunity offered.”

The official surrender of Hong Kong to the Japanese took place at 4:30 on Christmas afternoon. Reid heard the news and its after-effect half an hour later:

The white flag went up about four in the afternoon. Now isolated pockets (of resistance) only, snarling hedge-hogs, but separate. About 5 p.m. the NOISE faded away, little and lesser noises, fewer and farther and, finally, still, still silence, even movement suspended from that hour.

With the silence (came) a bee-hive of thoughts buzzing in the brain: Hong Kong — how strange; home — so far and unreal; only small boats left, and where to go?; friends lost, found, and unknown. Fundamentally, a sense of de-personalization, as though floating in a limbo and seeing, but not fully comprehending, reality.

The Captain Was a Doctor by Jonathon Reid, John Reid’s son, was published in October 2020 by Dundurn Press.

Quebec watchdog completes its probe into police-involved death of Chantel Moore

WHAT NO PEPPER SPRAY? NO TASER? NO BILLY CLUB?

Moore was shot by a member of the Edmundston Police Force during a wellness check on June 4, after the young woman had allegedly walked toward an officer with a knife in her hand.

FREDERICTON — Quebec's police watchdog has completed its investigation into the New Brunswick police-involved killing of Chantel Moore, a 26-year-old Indigenous woman.
© Provided by The Canadian Press

The watchdog, known as the Bureau des enquetes independantes, said Wednesday it had forwarded its report to New Brunswick's Public Prosecutions Services and to the coroner in the case, on Dec. 16.

Quebec's independent police watchdog investigated the case because New Brunswick does not have its own police oversight agency.

New Brunswick's prosecutions office said Wednesday it will examine the Quebec watchdog's finding to determine whether it will lay charges.

The office says its examination could take several weeks.

Quebec's police watchdog says its investigation revealed a person made a call to the Edmundston police to ensure the safety of Moore at around 2 a.m. on June 4.

The watchdog says when police arrived, Moore allegedly opened the door to her apartment holding a knife and walked toward the policeman.

The police officer allegedly stepped back, asked Moore to drop the knife and when that didn't happen, he fired.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 24, 2020.

The Canadian Press