Oleg Sentsov. CC BY-SA 4.0 Antonymon / Wikipedia. Some rights reserved.Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian film director from Simferopol and a political prisoner of the Kremlin, is on Day 16 of a hunger strike. Sentsov selected the start date (14 May) to make sure that he will have been striking for a full month by the start of the Football World Cup, which begins in Russia on 14 June. The aim of Sentsov’s protest is the release of 64 Ukrainian citizens who are currently held in the Russian Federation on political grounds.

In summer 2014, Sentsov, an AutoMaidan activist from Crimea, was accused of terrorism offences— he reportedly planned to set a local United Russia office on fire and blow up a local Lenin monument. The investigation and trial was based on testimony received under torture and later retracted. No evidence of any terrorist group existing in Crimea was ever found, and the only thing that “proved” Sentsov’s membership of Ukrainian far-right group Right Sector, a name used by Kremlin propaganda to whip up fear of a “Nazi junta” in Kyiv, was a CD containing the Soviet documentary “Ordinary Fascism”.

During his trial in 2015, Sentsov refused to recognise that Russian citizenship had been imposed on him, claiming that he wasn’t a serf to be sold with the land. Without a shred of evidence, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and is currently being held in a prison colony in the Far North Of Russia. The fact that Sentsov is both a film director and a incredibly brave individual has guaranteed him media support and international public opinion — which hasn’t, it should be said, so far led to his release. But he isn’t on hunger strike for himself: he is striking for all Ukrainian political prisoners currently held in the Russian Federation.

The majority of these prisoners are residents of Crimea, and many are Crimean Tatars. For many of these cases, there’s only one or two mentions of them to be found in the media. All the cases detailed below are politically motivated: there is either insufficient evidence behind these prosecutions, or the charges being prosecuted are too serious for the evidence available. All these individuals should be released and sent to Ukraine as soon as possible.

Oleksandr Kolchenko, an anarchist from Crimea. He was sentenced alongside Sentsov in the “Crimean Terrorists” case relating to the torching of a door at the United Russia building in Simferopol. He received 10 years in prison.

Volodymyr Balukh, a farmer from Crimea. He raised a Ukrainian flag above his house and installed a street sign that read “Street of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred”. Balukh is also currently on the 72nd day of a hunger strike. He received three years and seven months in prison.

Mykola Karpyuk, one of the leaders of UNA-UNSO, and Stanyslav Klykh, a history teacher. Karpyuk and Klykh were sentenced in the fabricated case against former Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk for his alleged role in the First Chechen War. Klykh is still dealing with the mental consequences of being tortured. They received 22 years and six months and 20 years respectively.

Pavlo Gryb, a student who travelled to Belarus to meet a woman who, as it became apparent, was working for the Russian security services. He is charged with espionage. He is facing between five and ten years in prison.

Oleksandr Kostenko, a participant in EuroMaidan and policeman from Crimea. Kostenko was investigating human trafficking in the Russian Federation, and was arrested by the very people he was investigating and charged with assault and possession of a firearm. He has been sentenced to three years and 11 months.

Ali Asanov and Mustafa Degermendzhi were participants in a public rally against Russian annexation of Crimea on 26 February 2014 in Simferopol. They are facing eight years in prison.

Bekir Degermendzhi, Asan Chapukh, Kyazim Ametov, Ruslan Trubach are activists from the Crimean Tatar resistance. These men were arrested in a cafe. During the arrest, 82-year-old veteran Crimean Tatar activist Vedzhie Kashka suffered a heart attack and died en route to the hospital. They are charged with extortion.

Ernest Ametov, Server Zekiryaev, Seiran Saliyev, Memet Belyalov, Marlen (Suleiman) Asanov, Timur Ibragimov, Uzair Abdullayev, Teimur Abdullayev, Emil Dzhemadenov, Rustem Ismailov, Aider Saledinov, Rustem Abiltarov, Zevri Abseitov, Remzi Memetov, Enver Mamutov, Refat Alimov, Arsen Dzhepparov, Vadim Siruk, Emir-Usein Kuku, Muslim Aliyev, Enver Bekirov, Ferat Saifullayev, Nuri (Yuri) Primov, Rustem Vaitov, Ruslan Zeitullayev, Nariman Memedeminov — these men are Crimean Tatars who have been charged or sentenced for their real or alleged membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation (banned in Russia) that calls for the peaceful establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. These men are facing from 10 to 20 years in prison.

Talyat Abdurakhmanov, Seiran Mustafayev, Arsen Kubedinov, Renat Suleimanov are activists in the Crimean Tatar resistance. They are accused of extremist activity.

Emil Minasov, a Facebook user who posted a petition in support of men charged in the “26 March Case” — Ali Asanov and Mustafa Degermendzhi, and the now released Akhtem Chiigoz. He is facing one year and three months.

Oleksiy Stogniy, a Ukrainian sailor. He has been sentenced for alleged espionage for Ukrainian. He received three years and six months.

Gleb Shabliy, a businessman. In 2016, the TV channel Russia-1 broadcast a video where Shablyi allegedly confesses to spying for Ukraine. This case is currently being examined in camera.

Volodymyr Prysych, a truck driver. After having been tortured, Prisych read out a text to camera in which he confessed to espionage. He was sentenced for drug possession, and suffer a minor heart attack during trial. He was sentenced to three years.

Volodymyr Dudka, a civil specialist with Ukraine’s Emergency Ministry, and Oleksiy Bessarabov, an analyst. Both were accused of espionage. They are likely to face 20 years in prison.

Dmitry Shtyblikov, a loader at the Russian Federation Emergency Ministry in Sevastpol. He has been accused of espionage. He is facing five years in prison.

Yevhen Panov, a driver and volunteer, and Andriy Zakhtey, a plasterer. Both have been charged with participating in an espionage group. They are facing between 12 and 20 years in prison.

Mykola Shyptur, a EuroMaidan activist who travelled to Crimea to support a public rally to mark the 200th anniversary of Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko. He was detained by a so-called “Self-Defence” group, and charged with attempted murder. His sentence is 10 years.

Andriy Kolomiets, a EuroMaidan activist who was living in Kabardino-Balkariya, Russia, and was arrested for being involved in Maidan. He was sentenced for drug possession and murder attempt. He was sentenced to 10 years.

Mykola Dadeu, a volunteer from Mykolaiv. He was arrested in Novorossiisk, Crimea, and is accused of assisting Right Sector.

Oleksiy Sizonovych, a pensioner from Krasnodon. He is accused of preparing terrorist acts. He experienced clinical death on two occasions after being tortured during investigation. He is sentenced to 12 years.

Oleksiy Chirniy, a history teacher. During the “Crimean Terrorists” case, he incriminated himself and other participants. He is sentenced to seven years in prison.

Serhiy Lytvynov, a worker from Luhansk region. He was abducted from a Russian hospital, and accused of robbery. He was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison.

Valentyn Vygovskyi, a businessman. He was abducted by the FSB during a personal visit to Crimea and accused of espionage. He was sentenced in 2015 to 11 years.

Viktor Shur, a businessman who allegedly photographed a sensitive military site and was accused of espionage. He was sentenced to 12 years.

Oleksandr Shumkov, a former bodyguard to Right Sector leader Dmyro Yarosh. Shumkov doesn’t remember how he found himself in a Pre-Trial Detention Centre in Bryansk, Russia. He has started a hunger strike in support of Oleg Sentsov. He is facing between two and six years in prison.

Dmytro Dolgopolov, a Ukrainian soldier who transferred to the Russian army, and Ganna Sukhonosova, a fitness instructor. Both are accused of espionage.

The entire length of sentences handed out to these people so far, according to human rights defenders, is 189 years. The Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, have not rushed to work on the release of Ukrainian citizens systematically. In the four years since the first people were detained in 2014, the Ukrainian authorities have not created an official position that would be responsible for prisoner release or exchange. Recently, the Ukrainian press reported that activists involved the campaign to support Oleg Sentsov have faced problems — first, a printing service refused to produce leaflets for the Sentsov campaign on the pretext of pressure from the Ukrainian security services, and then the Kyiv city authorities demanded that a banner in support of Sentsov should be removed from the city’s House of Cinema (apparently it was “political advertising”, which was banned during the Champions League Final in Kyiv).

The only man appointed — without any legal recognition of this position or legal responsibility for any inappropriate activity — to work on prisoner exchange on the Ukrainian side is, for some reason, Viktor Medvedchuk. This man, who back in the 1980s imprisoned Ukrainian dissidents such as Vasyl Stus, was a strong opponent of EuroMaidan, and enjoys personal relationship with Vladimir Putin (since the latter is reported to be his daughter’s godfather). Medvedchuk is also found on US and Canadian sanctions list.

The only way to help release the Kremlin’s hostages is simultaneously pressuring the Russian and Ukrainian authorities to start negotiations on prisoner exchange or release immediately. The international community can act as a mediator at these negotiations in order to guarantee their effectiveness.

If negotiations on prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine don’t start in the next few days, there is a risk that Oleg Sentsov will die on hunger strike.

A version of this text originally appeared on Nihilist. 

Catholic Worker logo. Credit: Flickr/Jim Forest. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Revelations of sexual harassment and abuse in the charity and NGO sectors have triggered deep questions about the nature of voluntary action today. What are the costs of increased size and bureaucracy and the distancing of not-for-profit agencies from grassroots constituencies and concerns? Are there alternative forms of charity that avoid these problems while achieving a different kind of impact on power relations, human relationships and values—the things that really underpin long-term moral and social transformation?

For the last six months, I’ve been volunteering with the Catholic Worker movement in London which tries to do just this. While there’s certainly a place for formal charities that are run by paid managers and employees, the Catholic Workers and other groups like them build their activities around an individual and collective commitment to serve the most vulnerable and destitute in society that eschews personal, material gain. With its roots in pacifism and Christian anarchism—which attracts people from all Christian denominations and none—the movement represents a concrete re-imagining of the nature of charity and serves as a counter example to many other contemporary institutions.

It was founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the US in 1933, who initially joined forces to found a radical newspaper. When homeless people started enquiring about the ‘houses of hospitality’ that the newspaper described, Day felt compelled to act, and opened the first such house in New York to those who had been made homeless by the Great Depression. Since then, more than 150 other houses have been founded across the United States and Europe, providing food and lodging to homeless people and refugees within a supportive community environment that also acts as a hub for broader strategising and organising.

The movement’s way of life is simple but challenging. As the writer and researcher Carol Rakoczy put it in an article for Transformation: “For Day there was no dichotomy between the spiritual and the material; both were part of the same reality in which the Gospel text about feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless was a daily joy and challenge. Love was the measure of her life, but Day was very realistic about the cost of this path, which was everything—comfort, reputation, misunderstandings, and the lack of a stable family life with a partner. She often quoted a phrase from the writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: ‘Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing.’”

Hence, both concrete action and self-sacrifice lie at the heart of the Catholic Worker movement, and it’s this relationship that distinguishes its work from that of other more formal charities. What makes the movement effective is the simplicity of this call-to-action in which everyone in the house or community is part of the same, shared endeavour.

Live-in volunteers commit to what Day called ‘voluntary poverty.’ “We cannot see our brother in need without stripping ourselves,” she wrote in her bookLoaves and Fishes, “It is the only way we have of showing love. Voluntary poverty is the answer.” By stripping oneself of the desire to make material gains from charitable activity it is possible to foster a personal transformation that allows people to work with others in radically different and more egalitarian ways—not as clients or ‘others’ who are ‘poor.’

But the movement is not just about personal transformation; it also carries a broader political message, and from the 1930’s it has sought to challenge the injustices of the time. Day highlighted the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while several other Catholic Workers were imprisoned for their acts of civil disobedience against the Vietnam War. It’s the linking of these two levels of action together that’s still the essence of the movement today—a different form of individual motivation that supports, and is supported by, a much broader call for social and political change.

It’s in this spirit that London Catholic Worker provides meals and accommodation for up to 18 destitute asylum seekers at Giuseppe Conlon House, an ‘intentional community’ in North London. The aim is to provide concrete support for those who have no recourse to public funds, and to resist hostile immigration policies. Every month, live-in volunteers hold a silent vigil outside the Home Office to remember those who have died in fleeing war and persecution.

“Because we are able to work for free here—as a community—we can support the people who for political reasons aren’t getting support,” says peace activist Nora Ziegler who’s a long-term community member and volunteer at the house. “So, I see our work as resistance to capitalism, to the hostile environment of policy, and I feel very privileged that I have the freedom to do this. I feel like I am free to do the work that is important to me, because I don’t have to worry about finding someone who will pay me for it.”

Ziegler tells me that she once attended an event with senior staff at homeless charities. She noted that they weren’t interested in discussing homeless people who had no recourse to public funds. If refugees don’t have approved ‘leave to remain,’ they told her, it means that they’re illegal in the UK, while other staff said they ‘don’t have the funding’ to support such refugees. But if charities aren’t supporting some of the most vulnerable people in society who will? Perhaps that requires thriving models of charity outside the formal charity sector. Many charities rely on government funding, while others have a close relationship with government that affects their political neutrality.

Leading homelessness charity St Mungo’s, for example, was recently accused of working with the Home Office to find and arrest homeless people deemed to be staying illegally in the UK. In this context, the Catholic Worker movement is relevant because everybody is deserving of support and no questions are ever asked of them. “We never ask why they are here,” writes Day in Loaves and Fishes.For me, this approach is the heart of charitable work; recognising the inherent worth and dignity of every human being.

What makes Giuseppe Conlon House and other houses of hospitality different to a night shelter is that those who are welcomed—whether refugees or homeless people or anybody else—are not treated as ‘service users’ as in the vernacular of many charities; they are ‘guests.’ They live together with volunteers in an intentional community in which friendships can develop between guests and volunteers. Guests also move out of the house whenever they are ready.

“I think for a lot of people who are victims of the immigration system here it just crushes their self-worth, their self-esteem,” Ziegler says, citing the story of an asylum seeker who previously lived at the House. “He was a handful for us—there were many times where we had to ask him to leave at night because he came home very drunk, which was really hard. But I think at the same time, being here was really, really good for him. Not just because of what the volunteers did but also because of the other guests who were looking out for him. And I think he really needed that environment where it felt like people care.”

It is this type of community which has helped to create ‘wholeness’ for guests at the Catholic Worker Farm in North West London, which caters for destitute female asylum seekers and their children by providing temporary lodging, meals, counselling and English lessons. As Scott Albrecht told me (who calls himself the ‘kindly abbot’ of the farm), “The most significant thing is the lives of the women. They go from severe confusion and chaos to wholeness and wellbeing. That is the most rewarding and satisfying, like a woman from Afghanistan having her bones literally crushed. She has recovered.” The guests are called ‘sisters’ and over 500 women have been supported at the farm since August 2006.

Day implored others to return to the roots of Jesus’ teaching in order to support the most marginalised in society. The same teachings inspire Albrecht today. “I describe ourselves as ‘homo emptor’” he says, “Man the consumer. We’re constantly consuming. I think the Catholic Worker movement is an antidote to that with its teaching of voluntary poverty…The government has austerity measures and the Catholic Worker movement has teachings of dignity and every person is Christ. The movement is an antidote to systemic failures.”

Speaking as a charity professional myself, I don’t believe that everyone has to give up their salary in order to be effective. That would be unsustainable, and it could act as a barrier to people with less means who want to get involved in social action.

What we really need is a vibrant and dynamic civil society in which charitable institutions are just one part of the equation in forging a just and equitable society, and in which the most vulnerable people who ‘fall through the cracks’ are supported. Indeed, the initial findings of an inquiry into the future of civil society found that people are losing trust in big institutions, including charities.

That’s why voluntary action must exist outside of formal institutions, through self-organised networks like the Catholic Worker movement. Because there are no central headquarters for the movement, houses of hospitality work in agile and dynamic ways that are not hampered by bureaucracy, like the Saint Maria Skobtsova House which was founded in 2016 in response to the Calais 'jungle' and which supports refugee minors.

The Catholic Worker model is not utopia. There are still power inequalities between volunteers and guests because volunteers have a right to work and guests do not, just as volunteers choose to live in a house of hospitality and guests may not have a choice at all. However, the choice for volunteers to live in ‘voluntary poverty’ helps to mitigate these inequalities in power. It’s a lesson from which other charities might learn.

School in Egypt. Picture by Karen Green / Flickr.com (CC BY-SA 2.0)In April 2018, the World Bank agreed to grant Egypt a loan worth 500 million USD, earmarked for education reform. This was followed by a publicity blitz by the Egyptian minister of education, Tarek Shawky, where he highlighted the primary features of this reform, which would involve a complete overhaul of the educational system.

On paper, these reforms are close to a middle class, liberal fantasy. For example, the focus on memorization, which has plagued the school system, is to be replaced with a focus on research, as well as, creative and critical thinking. It will also involve the use of computer tablets, replacing the printed book, as well as, a complete overhaul of the grading system. The minister also highlighted the fact that the President himself is supervising this project, and is prioritizing it.

The announcement was greeted warmly by many of my middle class friends and acquaintances, who viewed this development as a positive step towards creating a politically aware citizenry that is able to participate effectively in the political process. This was, usually, followed by a response that emphasized the importance of education as a solution to Egypt’s problems, explicitly condemning the poor, which is the vast majority of the Egyptians, as both, ignorant and in need of civilizing.

When placed within this context, one can see how the topic of education fits, neatly, into the orientalist middle class rhetoric about the poor, as well as, wilfully ignoring the role that the education system plays as an instrument of class power and domination in an autocratic country like Egypt. 

Education is usually the first answer that comes to mind in conversations with my middle class friends about how Egypt can tackle its complex and growing issues. No mention is made of the impact of years of autocracy, violence, and repression on the degradation and dehumanization of the poor, nor is there any mention made that the prominent roles that the elites and their middle class supporters have played in this process.

This can be attributed to two main reasons, which can be traced to the historical genesis of the urban middle class in the Arab world in general, and Egypt in particular. This class can trace its modern roots to the devastating encounter between western imperialism and Egypt, which was followed by the latter’s failed attempts at modernization.

These attempts, driven mostly from the top, triggered a process of class formation that lead to the creation of the urban middle class, which perceived itself as the bearer of the cause of national salvation. This was to be achieved, either through wholesale adaptation of western methods, or through a rejectionist approach that promoted a return to what it described as an authentic Islam, namely, Islamism.

I, like Nasser and Qutub, am the product of this class formation

The lines between the two factions were never clear-cut, while they borrowed from each other as they struggled for supremacy. I, like Nasser and Qutub, am the product of this class formation, as well as, the movements that they represented, namely the rise of the military strong men and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Thus, this class, which is a minority in the country, holds a paternalistic view that is heavily influenced by orientalist depictions of the rest of the populace. This is coupled by an autocratic and anti-democratic bent, which is constantly justified by the argument that the Egyptian poor are not ready for democracy, an issue that could be easily resolved through mass education programs, which will “enlighten” the people to their “real” interest.

For example, many argue that the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood stems from poverty and ignorance, rather than authentic appeal to the core ideological values and a deeply appealing moral message to many. This, of course, ignores the fact that the mass core of the Brotherhood comes from the middle class, albeit with more of a rural hue, and that the leadership is highly educated, and in some cases extremely wealthy. The most prominent examples of this is Mohamed Badie, the general guide of the Brotherhood, who is a University Professor, as well as, Hassan Malik and Khairat el Shater, both wealthy business men.

The issues with this view on education are many folds. First, and most obvious, is the deeply orientalist overtones that this rhetoric has, which helps sustain the deeply undemocratic character of the Egyptian polity. Second, and most importantly, it completely ignores the overarching social context, which has led to the degradation and de-humanization of the mass of Egyptians, most importantly, the role that the autocracy has played in this degradation.

This misdiagnosis, which stems from the urge to justify the failure of the middle class to deliver on its self-anointed mission of modernization, explicitly shifts the blame for the failures of the democratic movement to the masses, rather than the elites, military and civilian alike, who worked to undermine it. One only needs to remember that the coup of 2013 was openly welcomed by a number of prominent opposition figures, with both leftist and liberal credentials, liked Mohamed El Baradie and Hamdeen Sabahi.

This process of “passing the bucket” has allowed the middle class to avoid a process of self-reflection and criticisms

This process of “passing the bucket” has allowed the middle class to avoid a process of self-reflection and criticisms, which might have caused it to mature and develop. On the contrary, it has simply moved the blame to the victims, and has thrown its support behind the army generals, who, ironically, continue to follow economic policies that disenfranchises them.

The third issue with this logic is that it assumes that education operates in a societal vacuum, in essence ignoring the deeply autocratic values, which have a stranglehold over the Egyptian polity, inhibiting the development of democratic values, and most importantly, the ability to resist and to question.

Thus, any education reforms that aims at developing political participation needs to be accompanied by wide range societal changes that challenges the existing status quo, not simply an educational revamp, which even, if successful, will be met by stiff resistance by the forces of the status quo.

Finally, and most dangerously, is the total ignorance of the role that the school system plays as a tool for ideological indoctrination and spreading of the hegemony of the ruling classes, in the case of Egypt, military capitalism, which is inherently anti-democratic. As a product of the Egyptian schooling system myself, I remember how the school system was used, not only to falsify history and create a pro-military narrative, but to instil a sense of submission and respect of authority based on tradition and religious dogma.

As such, one cannot imagine a true reform of the educational system that is free from theses constraints, which would allow students to question the ideological cornerstone of the Egyptian autocracy. One needs to remember the “our strength comes from our Egyptiness” propaganda campaign, launched by the ministry of Education, with clear fascist undertones.

The reform of the education system is at best, a small part of the puzzle and the middle class obsession with it is, simply, a reflection of the failure of this class to drive the modernization process in the country. The current narrative, besides being steeped in orientalist symbols and rhetoric, shields the middle class from self-questioning. A necessary process in order to develop the needed social and political consciousness is shifting the blame on the shoulders of the masses, who are seen as uncivilized and corrupt.

This is very similar to the view held by the European colonialist about the Egyptians, not too long ago, and some argue, is still being held until this day. In essence, the scars of the colonial encounter, and the origins of the middle class, which is deeply intertwined with it, have led to a form of self-loathing and orientalism that is essential to the view that this class holds of itself, namely as a modernizing force that is under siege by the hordes of poor and uncivilized. An island of civility in the sea of savagery.

Without a change in this view and an embrace of the masses of the people, the development of the democratic movement is bound to be stunted and isolated. This can be best summarized by Franz Fanon, one of the great intellectuals of the anticolonial movement who said “the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.” Let us hope that the lessons of the past are not forgotten! 

Image: Ponderosa Templeton, Wikimedia/Creative Commons.

Human rights campaigning in the UK, where I am writing this from, is shifting from finger pointing to emotional appeals. In this post-factual world of fake news, trolls and bots, simply uncovering human rights violations no longer works as effectively as it used to. A new approach is needed because connecting with people’s hearts is more urgent than ever.

One persuasively articulated new approach is that not everyone is the same – and thus, framing is crucial. This approach notes how some people support human rights messages whatever the package they come in, whilst others will always oppose human rights. And some, possibly the majority, do not have anything against the idea of human rights or against their champions, but remain sceptical or distant, or simply have not cared enough to make up their minds yet. This third group should be human rights’ target audience because they will tip the scales in one direction or the other. This tribe has a cracking name that matches their super heroic responsibility: The ‘persuadables’.

To reach out to the persuadables human rights groups are urged by the re-framers to change the conversation. Based on neuroscience and cognitive linguistics, campaigners must communicate hope over fear, they must tell stories that speak to emotions and humanity. Facts and figures are useful with your loyal friends. Feelings work better with the persuadables, or so says the theory.

I admire the zeal to reassess what works and what doesn’t. It is good news that the sector is paying more attention to public opinion here and abroad.

But I think we risk hitting a target by missing the point.

I agree that we should burst the bubble we live in. Strategic framing smells of psychological warfare - but I could live with that. My issue however is that this relatively new approach assumes that the trick lies in communications, when in fact it’s about something far more profound. The British human rights community faces an existential dilemma. The problem is not the way human rights activists speak. The problem is who we are.

Human rights people –working in the UK on UK issues- are cosmopolitan, highly educated, mostly white and polyglot, they live and work in London and they earn more than most. With all due respect to my brethren, human rights people are awfully privileged.

I know this because I tick all the boxes.

I refuse to apologise for it because there is nothing wrong with the colour of my skin, with my worldview, my place of residence or my academic qualifications, and I am insolently snobbish about being multilingual. I am in no position to demand any individual change from my colleagues in arms.

What I really want is to be part of a bigger and more diverse movement, a truer reflection of society.

I don’t want to sound more palatable to the persuadables. I want to speak differently as a consequence of having merged with some of them. I don’t underestimate the challenge. This renovation would entail significant organisational changes, starting from our own governance and the way we allocate legitimacy to our decisions. We would also have to rethink our geography and social space. We have been too distant for too long. It will take time and resources to build the necessary confidence but we should make extra efforts to leave our comfort zone and spend more time in areas that we have neglected at our peril. We could start where people voted to leave the EU for example. And we would also need to reconsider our own operations and the themes we campaign on. We would be expected to take a back seat, listen more than we speak, support other causes before we summon others to join ours. An adequate standard of living and healthcare are the two most valued human rights in our society. And yet Britons are not legally entitled to them. Isn’t it about time we campaigned seriously on this?

Strategic communications work in Ted videos and online dating agencies. They may be enough if you are Rupert Murdoch and your aim is to sell more papers, or if you are Cambridge Analytica and you want to help big money win elections. But it cannot be sufficiently good for us. We should not choose words to persuade the other. To the widest extent possible we should change to become the other. Speaking of dating, allow me the cliché: The problem is not them; it’s us. But we can change, and there is hope in that.

Image: Maurice, CC BY 2.0

Radical forces, hitherto marginal, have hijacked Westminster. Such is the prevailing anxiety in post-Brexit politics.

Inside the Conservative Party, a small group of Brexiteers hold Theresa May hostage to a hard Brexit, against the preferences of most Tory voters. Inside the Labour Party, a small group of Momentum activists use Stalinist practices to demand loyalty from Labour MPs and councillors. The conventional wisdom is that both ends of the political spectrum present a threat to British democracy, while the centre remains the refuge of the sensible.

But the data suggest otherwise. In a new working paper I examine the most recent waves of the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey, which ask respondents from over 100 countries a range of questions about social and political issues. And I find that hostility to democracy is highest not at the extremes – but in the centre.  

My analysis measures respondents’ left-right position against three different metrics. The first is support for democracy, indicated by the proportion of respondents who believe that democracy is a ‘very good’ political system. The second is support for democratic institutions, indicated by respondents’ view of civil rights and free elections as ‘essential’ to democracy. And the third is support for authoritarianism, indicated by respondents view of a ‘strong man that does not have to bother with parliament’ as a ‘very good’ or ‘fairly good’ system. Across all three, I find that centrists are significantly less supportive of democracy and significantly more supportive of an authoritarian alternative.

The British case is one of the most striking. Less than half of British centrists believe that democracy is a ‘very good’ political system, compared with over 60 per cent along the extremes. While the far right remains the most hostile in many European countries, the British centre consistently ranks highest in its disregard for democratic procedure.

At this point, some survey skeptics might balk: it is possible that respondents place themselves at the centre when they are confused, or when they do not care enough to take sides. I address this possibility in three ways. First, the survey includes a “Don’t Know” response to left-right placement, which I exclude from the analysis. Second, the survey includes several policy questions – including views of immigration and preferences over equality versus freedom – which I test against respondents’ left-right placement. I find that self-placement closely predicts policy views, with centrists preferring the moderate position.

Finally, I re-run all my analysis on the sub-sample of non-apathetic respondents who identify as “Very” or “Somewhat” interested in politics. I find that the same trends hold – especially in the British case.

But the question of methodology largely misses the point. A prominent assumption in British politics is that there is a silent majority of moderates – people who understand themselves as moderates – who are, by dint of their moderation, committed to democratic ideals.

But that assumption is based on a one-dimensional model of politics. According to this model, voters exist on a single spectrum from left to right, and all of their policy positions align there, too. In other words, voters’ views of wealth redistribution are lumped together with their views of free and fair elections. This one-dimensional model suggests the centre as the natural home for pro-democratic support.

In reality, though, there are good reasons to believe that citizens with moderate policy positions might also be hostile to democracy. One reason is apathy. As Alan Abramowitz argues in The Disappearing Center, centrist voters tend to be less politically engaged than polarized ones.

But even non-apathetic moderates might choose to reject the messy business of democracy in favour of a more enlightened authoritarian regime – particularly in polarized times like these, when the democratic process has ratified extreme policy positions and ushered extreme candidates into office. My analysis finds that support for a "strong leader" that ignores parliament is highest among centrists in Britain.

What are implications of these findings for the state of democracy and its prospects for survival?

One is that the centre is not a safe zone. If Britain continues to move toward a hard Brexit, Remain moderates may be tempted to constrict the democratic will in order to get their way. In Italy, we have just witnessed a textbook case of authoritarian centrism, as the pro-establishment president blocked the formation of an anti-establishment government. The same could happen here.

For centrists who are also committed democrats, then, these findings should be particular cause for concern. If the centre must hold against a rising tide of false populism, then centrists must fortify it – engaging with moderate voters to renew their faith in democratic politics, rather than assuming their like-mindedness.

In the effort to safeguard liberal democracy, though, they have unlikely allies. The assumption, debunked here, that radical politics are anti-democratic has led some moderates to reject candidates that call for radical change. But there is nothing incompatible between strong political views and commitment to democratic process.

We might, then, finally abandon our assumptions about which groups pose a threat to democracy — and start looking at the actual policies and practices that define them.

Former Deputy Mayor of Mogadishu speaks at a conference between Somali diaspora returnees and locals to promote good relations, June,2017. Wikicommons/AMISOM - Mohammed Imam Nur Ikar. Some rights reserved.

Diaspora groups have been recognized as development actors in policy circles since the early 2000s. Most attention has been paid to remittances sent to developing countries, whose volume is triple that of official development assistance. However, disaster relief, development projects and knowledge transfer are significant development contributions as well. Somali-Swedish diaspora engagement in the Somali region is a case in point, with activities ranging from water provision in drought-affected areas to promotion of women’s rights. Programmes supporting such involvement may strengthen its development potential but institutional and administrative constraints risk undermining the impact. 

Since the outbreak of civil war in Somalia in 1991, Somali refugees have settled all over the world, including Sweden. Somalis are well known for their transnational engagement in their erstwhile homeland, providing a lifeline in times of crisis and contributing to long-term processes of change. Sweden has become a significant hub for Somali diaspora engagement, with a rich and diverse civil society engagement.

There are numerous registered diaspora associations supporting development in the Somali region, including women’s associations, NGOs and umbrella organizations. Informal diasporic networks spanning several continents, mosques and businesses are also diaspora actors. Two diaspora support programmes exist, offering matched funding for Somali-Swedish diaspora associations working with development and for social entrepreneurship.

Diaspora projects receiving matched funding typically concern sustainable development, gender equality, human rights and job creation, in line with Swedish development priorities. However, many diaspora activities are self-funded through donations from Somalis in Sweden and sometimes globally. These projects tend to focus on health, education, water provision and drought relief. 

No matter whether their activities receive external funding or not, many diaspora actors explain their involvement as motivated by a sense of moral obligation in the face of suffering. “It’s like you have an obligation to give back” as one female activist put it, while a man explained how his development engagement was kicked off by a visit to his native town. Being devastated by the poverty he encountered there, he decided to do something himself. “There are opportunities in Sweden and there is funding for organizations”, he said and continued, “there is nobody else; who can it be rather than us?” “There is nobody else; who can it be rather than us?” 

Opportunities and challenges  

Somalia is a significant partner country for SIDA, being the fourth biggest recipient in 2016. Both SIDA and Somali-Swedish diaspora groups thus have extensive engagement in the Somali region. On the one hand, SIDA has a strategic interest in cultivating a strong relationship with Somali-Swedish development actors to further contributions in alignment with overall Swedish priorities and interests. On the other hand, progress in development and reconstruction in the Somali region is of huge importance for Somali-Swedes. Likewise matched funding for diaspora engagement makes it possible to upscale certain types of diaspora involvement. There are thus mutual opportunities and interests. 

However, it would be naïve to think that the relationship between the development industry and diaspora groups is all roses. One challenge concerns development modalities and priorities. Diaspora engagement tends to be flexible and cross-sectoral, spanning the often strict division between development and humanitarian relief in development cooperation agencies. Furthermore, some diaspora actors are simultaneously involved in family affairs, collective development projects, and perhaps a political career. They do not necessarily have a detached or neutral position vis-à-vis the target areas and populations, in other words, but may be personally involved at several levels. This causes skepticism among some development professionals concerning the effectiveness and compatibility of diaspora activities with development cooperation. Some diaspora actors are simultaneously involved in family affairs, collective development projects, and perhaps a political career.

Conversely, some diaspora actors question the appropriateness of Swedish development priorities and a rights-based approach that they characterize as out of touch with realities on the ground, while others emphasize the importance of gender equality, for example, and human rights. No matter what, diaspora actors call for more reconstruction and service delivery in contexts of abject poverty and post-conflict – like in much of the Somali region. Another challenge is extensive administrative procedures in combination with relatively short project duration periods of projects receiving matched funding. Most diaspora associations are run by volunteers and the excessive time spent on application, accounting and reporting constitutes a considerable constraint for many activists. 

What should be done?

Diaspora engagement in development is significant, long-term, and may benefit hard-to-reach populations. While it may be upscaled by matched funding, it is not determined by such support. That said, diaspora engagement is no silver bullet to development and there are no quick fixes. So what should be done? 

First, introducing enhanced flexibility vis-à-vis reconstruction activities and service delivery as well as faster and simpler administrative procedures would facilitate involvement in diaspora support programmes. It would also have wide resonance among diaspora actors and in the Somali region. This is important given the continued fragile situation and occurrence of complex crises.

Second, intensifying dialogue between policymakers and diaspora groups may enhance partnerships and mutual understanding. Many diaspora actors have a desire for stronger inclusion in policy processes that concern the Somali region and diaspora engagement. Here it is a final consideration that such collaboration offers opportunities for development agencies and diaspora actors alike. 

Image: Saul Albert/Flickr, CC 2.0.

On 18 May, in its property section, the Guardian ran an article entitled ‘NHS privately planning to develop Royal Free nurses’ home into luxury flats.’

A week earlier the HSJ (paywalled) reported that University College London Hospital Foundation Trust boasted a £76m surplus after asset sales and a Sustainability and Transformation ‘bonus’. 

Most of the focus on privatisation of the NHS has been on the outsourcing of clinical services to private health providers. More recently the creation of wholly-owned private Subsidiary Companies has attracted attention and they have been debated in parliament. But there is consistently less attention paid to the extent of the policies in place dedicated to selling NHS land. These policies are shrinking the amount of publicly owned land in the name of providing cash to ‘pump prime’ transformation.

In a Guardian article 8 February Brett Christophers, Professor of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University wrote, “All told, around 2 million hectares of public land have been privatised during the past four decades. This amounts to an eye-watering 10% of the entire British land mass, and about half of all the land that was owned by public bodies when (Mrs) Thatcher assumed power.” 

Despite all protestations to the contrary the NHS has been increasingly expected to transform to commercial business practice over the last 40 years and the articles above illustrate the effects of those policies. This is a mass transfer of property from public to private ownership. It has affected our utilities, education, the courts, probation and prison service, housing – and the NHS. There are no exceptions. 

Reducing the NHS Estate: The 5 Year Forward View and The Naylor review

The 5 Year Forward View (5YFV) and the Naylor Review are based specifically on the reduction of the number of sites from which the NHS operates: fewer GP family practices, closure and downgrading of hospitals, centralisation of services. The ownership of sections of the NHS is played out in the language of the private sector – mergers and acquisitions, sweating assets – and belongs firmly in the realm of privatisation. Sales, leases with commercial rents for properties that were previously part of a real ‘one public estate’ and the transfer of properties out of the control of local governing bodies and into publicly-owned private companies like NHS Property Services are all part of the process. 

The Naylor Review was published in March 2017. It examines how the NHS in England can raise cash from its premises. Its findings are in line with the requirements set out in the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) which were introduced in December 2015 to fast forward NHS England’s 5YFV.

The Review emphasises the need to develop out of hospital care and to provide the necessary infrastructure to increase care in the community. It explicitly states that it is the acute division of the service that is to be scaled back and the GP family practice model to be dismantled.

Naylor argues that 57% of the cash that can be found from the sales which will pump prime these changes will be found in London. Charing Cross Hospital, for example, may be reduced to just 14% of its existing area and the rest sold off for development. He has a second report on London estates unpublished for reasons of commercial confidentiality.

The reality for investors looking at development properties is that central London hospitals occupy valuable sites; long-derelict, small town general practice surgeries do not. Naylor’s Review emphasises the combination of sales of existing estates and the introduction of private finance to create newbuilds as key to changing the Estate to meet the New Models of Care set out in the 5YFV.

The danger of taking ‘surplus’ land at face value 

Although the NHS land sales are being used as part of a programme for enforced change, they are not unique in the public sector. Across all departments land sales are being promoted as a solution to the housing crisis. Theresa May chose to prioritise this area in her 2017 conference speech. This appears to be evidence of a worrying trend to prioritise land values and property, which give high returns to private investors, over the provision of essential public services. The real risk for the NHS is that the more it moves from its core purpose, the less likely it is to be there to provide a service for future generations.

There are a growing number of campaigners, think tanks and housing organisations who support the ‘release’ of land on the basis that it should be re-used for beneficial public purpose of a different kind.

For example, New Economics Foundation has an interactive map which shows a huge amount of public property for sale and proposes that users start to have a say in creating new community developments on those sites. The National Housing Federation produced a briefing, ‘Releasing NHS Estates for Community Benefit’. Its executive summary says:

“The National Housing Federation has been working to explore new ways that housing providers and the NHS can work together to use NHS surplus land. NHS trusts often have surplus land, but do not have the skills or resources to develop and manage it. Given that early release housing or key worker housing could provide improved patient outcomes and reduce cost of care there is a strong case for housing providers and NHS trusts to work together in developing surplus land.

On this principle three uses have been identified: step down facility, supported housing and key worker housing. 

The challenge with these proposals are the Treasury targets for income and housing receipts. This paper, including analysis from Frontier Economics seeks to explore the economic benefit and examine some specific case studies for how organisations can work together.”

The Royal Free and the lie of ‘surplus’ land 

The clash between rhetoric and reality is illustrated in the case of the Royal Free. In the Guardian article the property for sale is already keyworker accommodation. But because it is a valuable site it is proposed that it should be sold off for development for luxury flats. However, the building itself was gifted to the Royal Free nearly 100 years ago by Lord Leverhulme. That means that its current running cost will be modest and accommodation can be provided at low rents. To buy land at current prices in order to develop new key worker accommodation is likely to be impossible without increasing rental charges.  

The agents, Frank, Knight and Rutley are advertising the development on a restricted access webpage. The plans have not yet received local authority planning permission, but with everyone from the Prime Minister to local housing campaign groups squarely supporting a policy of surplus land disposal, it is easy to see why the estate agent is behaving as if it is a foregone conclusion. In the article, one current resident said, “the trust has sold several other key worker accommodation blocks in recent years”. “We wouldn’t be the first residential place they’ve sold,” he said. “They seem to be doing quite a lot of selling their affordable properties for development.” 

Perhaps the resident was referring to The Royal Free Foundation Trust acquisition of Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust in July 2014. Chase Farm Hospital was the focus of local campaigning over the loss of its A&E but it is now subject to planning permission. Although a downgraded hospital is included in the plans, the key workers’ accommodation there has been lost too and 500 residential homes and a primary school will be built on the site.  

Resistance will be met with regulatory power 

As well as a push to develop any identified surpluses, Naylor’s recommendations are that GPs must move out of their old properties which they own into new ones which they will not own. Naylor suggests, “GP practices can be given incentives to move into new facilities, supported by substantial private sector investment. NHS commissioners and regulators have considerable latent authority to insist that premises be fit for purpose. These powers could be used far more explicitly to ensure that new investment is in line with the 5YFV and to force the pace of investment in or exit from inadequate premises.” 

Naylor’s analysis of the GP estate demonstrates a clear preference and expectation of mass transfer from public to private ownership and financing. Naylor himself was reported as being delighted at the £3.3billion of private financing for new primary care facilities. According to the investors, the money could fund up to 750 new primary care centres but this is predicted to cost the NHS up to £200million a year in new rental charges. 

The Review claims that within each STP those providers that have greater potential to raise money will share the money with those poorer and less well-endowed providers they are partnered with. However, with the bulk of the cash being found from sales in London it is not clear how these benefits will extend to the whole country. And that highlights a problem with the Guardian’s headline: ‘NHS privately planning to develop Royal Free nurses’ home into luxury flats’ because it isn’t ‘the NHS’ that is doing this, it is the Foundation Trust, as a business, which will reap the profit itself. 

What’s mine is mine: the inexorable rise of the disproportionately wealthy hospital trusts 

The Shelford Group, representing some of the richest foundation trusts in the country, raised the issue of cross-subsidy in their written submission to the Health Select Committee on Integrated Care Systems. The HSJ 13 April 2018 reported that the Integrated Care Systems are under threat from this approach as organisations are unwilling to risk losing their sustainability funding if a neighbouring clinical commissioning group fails to meet its plan.  

The HSJ article on University College London Hospitals Foundation Trust (UCLH) shows just how much that matters. The Trust has sold The Eastman Dental Hospital site to University College London. It has also sold a subsidiary company it created in 2011 for its radiology services in which it had a 50% share in partnership with Australian firm Everlight Radiology. 

The HSJ says, ‘the trust said it was approached to dispose of its stake as part of a process in which Everlight sold its teleradiology business to an asset management group.’ It was sold for £6.1m, generating a profit of £4.8m. Its original stake in the partnership had been £0.75m.  

These profits will net UCLH additional Sustainability and Transformation Fund payments of £35m on top of its own core allocation of £15m. This is the second year running it has accrued substantial additional payments because of land sales. The extra money comes from awards allocated but not paid to other Trusts either because they failed to meet their financial targets or didn’t agree one. 

The PropCo and Commercial Rents 

The 5YFV’s New Models of Care, on which all these property deals and ‘re-shaping’ of the estate are based, are experimental. Such a large-scale change without extensive consultation and testing jeopardises the NHS’s ability to provide safe care. Historically the replacement of NHS delivery of mental health care led to disastrous consequences for patients. The 5YFV relies on a similar care-in-the-community model replacing many NHS services with an emphasis on self-care and non-clinical services. Land sales and privatisation must be examined in this context. 

The Health & Social Care Act (2012) made provision for the creation of the NHS’ own private limited company which was registered with Companies House in 2011 (before the Act was passed), NHS Property Services Ltd (PropCo). It owns the property which was previously under the stewardship of the Strategic Health Authorities and the Primary Care Trusts. Although it is currently wholly-owned by the Secretary of State for Health, it is a private limited company. These properties have passed from public to private ownership. 

The precipitous creation of the company and its nature caused concern to the House of Commons Health Committee. The National Audit Office (NAO) investigated and uncovered failures of good practice. It noted that the government had failed to properly consider forms of public ownership and failed to provide detailed operating objectives. The NAO noted that one of the outlined advantages of setting up a company was the possibility of a future complete sale to the private sector.  

There is precedent for this with the sale of both the Department of Work & Pensions estate and the HMRC estate, so this is not idle speculation. 

The PropCo announced in April 2016 it was to start charging market rents to its NHS tenants with immediate effect. The company has already commercialised the leases on the properties it acquired. The biggest transfer of properties so far took place in December 2016, when the company completed the acquisition of the freeholds of 12 Community Hospitals in Devon into its ownership, with the last line of their press release stating: ‘leases to regularise occupation are currently being finalised’. It is clear that in this context ‘regularise’ can only mean ‘commercialise’ and that rent increases will follow.  

It is estimated that GP surgeries and Community Hospitals owned by the PropCo (which are not already listed or projected for sale) will have to find in the region of £60million a year from their diminishing incomes to pay these rents.  This is another step in aligning the NHS with commercial and market practices.  

Despite the commercial rents the PropCo is taking from the funding given to NHS bodies by the government to provide frontline services, its Annual Report and Accounts show it is making a loss. Its auditors report that: ‘the substantial shortfall between the costs required to provide the company’s services and the income derived through rental is funded through a recharge to NHS England and the Clinical Commissioning Groups. This recharge is in the nature of a grant and does not have any conditions attached to it.’  

It is a private company whose debts are covered by the Treasury to keep it solvent whilst its charges undermine the solvency of its tenants. 

Project Phoenix: private organisations rising from the ashes of public service 

The latest private sector creation to be involved with this complex web of sales and public-private partnerships is Project Phoenix. Project Phoenix is the creation of six major regional public/private property deals which could be in place by June 2019. The procurement process is due to start shortly. The Project is described as a venture to attract companies to ‘unlock’ capital funding for the NHS. The companies formed by these six property deals will be known as Regional Health Infrastructure Companies (RHICs). Just like PFI, these infrastructure projects will be ‘off the balance sheet’ and will sell publicly owned property and replace it with private rented. They are described as the “delivery route” for trusts and Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships to transform their estate. 

Project Phoenix is the realisation of Sir Robert Naylor’s plan in his review of NHS property. He calculated that up to £5.7billion of funds could be ‘accessed’. The RHICs will increase the number of private subsidiary companies already proliferating in the NHS as they will be set up to run the development projects necessary to create the new privatised NHS estate. 

Bring it back into public hands  

The response from the Department of Health and Social Care to the petitioner who achieved the debate on privatisation which was held in Westminster Hall on 23 April said, “the private sector has always played a vital supporting role in the NHS, for example in building hospitals, in providing facilities management services”. But the pretence that this commercial property and private company development is a normal part of public service delivery must not be allowed to carry on if we are to retain an NHS which is fit for purpose. 

Private companies can be sold, as the NAO warned about NHS Property Services Ltd and UCLH have demonstrated with their sale of their radio-imaging company. Unless something is done, unless this process is halted, there will be a proliferation of sales and developments of land, and transfers of subsidiary companies into private hands. The need to restore the NHS to public service becomes ever more urgent.

This article is cross-posted with kind permission from Public Matters.

Vigilante. Flickr/Jose Moutinho. Some rights reserved.

The dreams of militant multiculturalists are haunted by the ghost of a big conspiracy plotted by dark forces with plans for deportation and the repression of their political and ethnic enemies. These projections are taken for real and undeniable facts. Therefore, there is no alternative but to confront nationalist manifestations violently wherever you see them. Any other option would be irresponsible, liberally naïve, and pave the way for the ultimate catastrophe. The Nazi Machtergreifung is the ghost in these nightmares. Antifa and other anti-racist groups motivate their political action with these imaginaries.

Another ghost is haunting the dreams of the nationalists in Europe. In France, a number of books have focused on a future civil war scenario with multiculturalists starring as the Great Satan. They are the collaborators who have let in the enemies. Identification with the struggle against pan-Germanic fascism is an obvious historical reservoir for nationalist mythology in this political landscape. It is an eschatological civil war fantasy where multiculturalists will meet their fate in a Day of Reckoning. These kinds of dreams are frequently presented right after an Islamist terror attack. But as they are also taboo, they are therefore drawn up in the form of predictions of what is going to happen. In this way they assume the form of objectivity. But between the lines, and judging by their manic repetition, these sombre prophecies emanate nevertheless as a sort of political pipedream.

These two camps are increasingly hostile. The language may be more and more militant, but it is still a cultural and political conflict rather than open warfare. Some observers have referred to a ‘low-intensity civil war’ with sudden surges, especially of more vitriolic language, which take longer to metamorphose into political agendas in national parliaments in the form of bills to restrict freedom of expression and halt the proliferation of Muslim cultural traits in the institutions of society. 

The Islamist side does not appear to be directed by a political agenda put into words, but rather by direct action such as attacks on blasphemers and on Jews and Jewish institutions. The outbreak of attacks in the summer of 2016 was the high point (to date) of waves of Islamist violence, especially the massacre on the seafront in Nice on 14 July, in which the perpetrator completely randomly attacked men, women and children and mowed them down with a truck. 

The blueprint for attacks of this kind, and also the one on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, during which the perpetrators again massacred completely random victims in a non-selective terror attack, was laid out months in advance by Islamic State in a strategy paper found when one of its strongholds in Libya was overrun. It called on Islamists to provoke mass immigration from Libya to Lampedusa and Sicily, and smuggle combatants into Europe in waves of migrants and refugees.

The idea behind non-selective terror was, according to analysts, to provoke a fierce and militant reaction from European nationalists and hostility from political parties. This, it was hoped, would result in new and restrictive legislation against European Muslims, and they, in turn, would resort to armed struggle and promote sympathy and support for Islamic State. This ‘theory of misery’, which in some ways is highly reminiscent of the violent, extremist strategy of the 1970s red brigades (Bader-Meinhof in Germany) was meant to provoke European states to show their “true face” behind their repressive tolerance, and suppress Muslim culture and religion. 

No spokesperson for any of the nationalist parties in Europe openly supports violent attacks on their political opponents or enemies. This may be a matter of a purely strategic consideration, which dictates that political violence against Islamists and their political followers will be counter-productive and damage the nationalist cause. What is for sure, however, is that a certain level of rage simmers in these nationalist groups on the Internet, on blogs and elsewhere – rage against the wave of mass crimes committed by Islamists and lumpen-proletarian elements who slipped into Europe with the wave of refugees in 2015. These nationalist circles seem mentally prepared to support vigilantism openly, acknowledging that mainstream politicians lack direction. These tendencies open up a potential scenario in which violence spirals out of control, people are polarised and the authorities will further lose their monopoly on violence and coercion.

Outlines of a plot development foretold

Patrick Calvar, director of the French agency for internal security, DGSI, warned in July of 2016 – three weeks before the massacre in Nice – against a civil war scenario with armed attacks by radical nationalists on Muslims in France, if the wave of Islamist terror were to continue. Ola Kaldager, former director  of E14, the secret intelligence service in Norway, predicted a civil war scenario in a longer perspective in Europe a week after the Bataclan massacre in Paris, November 2015. According to him, a refugee situation that is out of control, the growing political and social polarization between Muslims and their European societies and the eventual collapse of the welfare states with far too many Muslims marginalized and out of work, will lead to disaster in the form of violent clashes.

The vocabulary of political mythology has changed: Moroccan-French writer Zineb el Rhazoui uses the word“collaborators” for multiculturalist opponents in her latest book, which harks back to the Nazi occupation, and the more topical term “crypto-Islamists” , in a context where political opponents confront critics of Islam with accusations of “Islamophobia”. These terms verbally pave the way for a mobilisation of a violent political backlash by defining opponents as enemies by comparing them to collaborators during World War II. It is no exaggeration to say that this discussion – and discussions about associated topics like mass immigration, freedom of speech, criticism of religion, integration or assimilation or ethnic apartheid – have taken hold of the political debate in many European countries today, defining faultlines that grow deeper by the day. 

Let us imagine a dystopian scenario of the future where these violent and ideological struggles escalate in a Europe which is also haunted by other types of unrest: the Dayton Agreement on the Balkans has taken a definitive knock, and Serbia is instigating a rebellion in Bosnia to rip the Republika Srpska out of The Republic of Bosnia with support from Russia. Western countries – partly due to American isolationism, partly due to European lack of direction and decision – do not summon the strong motivation needed to interfere. The Visegrad countries plus Austria have left/been excluded from the European Union because of the disagreement over refugees and their unwillingness to take their share. They have now for ten years been neutral or more closely knit within the Eurasian Union (Russia and post-Soviet states). Greece is a failed state, and some of the Islands close to the Turkish coast have been annexed by Turkey. (This is a territorial demand already now claimed by Erdogan’s foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.) This will be done out of what is due to historical reparations and due to the protection of the many refugees in the ill-maintained camps. Other refugee camps are spreading like a gulag into Romania and Bulgaria as Germany has outsourced these tasks to the poorer EU countries in order to avoid a deteriorating political crisis at home. 

On the left and centre-left there is still no overarching critique of the illiberal version of multiculturalism as an authoritarian mindset, created to protect reactionary Islamic dogmas and cultures that are antagonistic to democracy and human rights. Politicians in general are still blind to the danger that this ideology of apartheid entails. This vision of the future is only partly a parallel world; militias with a violent potential like Islamic State and Al-Qaeda rise and fall from time to time, and they serve as guides to more or less spontaneous international Islamists. They emerge when states implode under the weight of internal religious tensions, perhaps exacerbated by outside intervention and in a revolutionary chaos as in Iraq and Syria. Acts of terror are commonplace and occur regularly in different parts of Europe. Critics of Islamism and Islam all belong to the nationalist right. A critical liberal position with respect to multiculturalism does not exist, apart from a few intellectual freethinkers. It is Christianity against Islam, and both confronting blasphemy, freedom of expression and secularism. 

Everything is even more polarised than now, ten years before the Storm. Filtering and blackouts of controversial news stories are accepted and a formal international practice adopted to avoid confrontation and riots. Social media like Facebook, hand in glove with EU agencies and other international organisations, have formalised a code of hate speech laws and regulations for how ethnic and religious conflict and crimes can be discussed. Internationally, Denmark is a frontline target for Islamist campaigns and boycotts and attacks just as it was during the Cartoon Crisis. Pleas are heard for changes to the law, and domestic politicians and people in the mainstream media advocate more correct and sensitive terminology in relation to news coverage of conflicts and political and social positions. The term ‘Islam’ is not to be used unless you have a ‘political ordination’ from a religious council under the Ministry for religious affairs. 

In this vision of the future, the nationalist militants develop their own terminology, so that there is no common language in a shared public sphere that calmly and descriptively defines political positions and actions. Arab governments – whether they are 'democratic' or still authoritarian and dictatorial, use campaigns against Denmark to legitimise their power. 

In this scenario, business, the left and social liberals seek to escape from the crisis by complying with the increasing demand for international consensus from forums like the UN, the OIC, and various philanthropic, ecumenical and humanitarian NGOs, anti-racist organisations and so on. Religious organisations are also involved in various contexts. There is consensus on a ban on criticism of religion and culture, tougher hate speech laws with dramatic fines, imprisonment and ‘berufsverbot’ served on ‘The Enemies of Democracy’.

Forward to Sharia: novels, plots and counter-plots

Militants and proto-terrorist nationalists in Europe believing in this projection of the near future, urge that the Islamist attack on Denmark should be instrumentalised, used as a battering ram to break down liberal democracy in the UK and the EU, forcing Islamists and multiculturalists to show their hand and introduce Sharia-influenced legislation in these countries. In their view, this is a necessary step in order to provoke an adequate and revolutionary nationalist backlash.    

The agents for these instrumentalised acts of violence are home-grown networks allied, to a greater or lesser extent, with international terrorist organisations. It is not hard to imagine support from elements of the secret services or parts of the state apparatus of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. A secret politics or intelligence operation was already deployed to manufacture the Cartoon Crisis. At this stage, militant nationalists in Denmark try to halt the trend with a “strategy of misery” – by supporting ultra-violent Islamist terror to send voters into the arms of a more determined Right that will crack down on Islamisation with martial law, military law, capital punishment and deportations of political undesirables. As a result, they support the self-image of the Islamists and their propensity for violence on tactical and logistical levels, believing that this will instrumentalise them in a more long-term strategic plan to escalate violence and seek an inevitable confrontation. 

This strategy has been applied with success in recent European history in the Balkans. The Yugoslavian counter-espionage agency KOS facilitated the political organising and victory for the Islamists in Bosnia in 1992 in order to radicalise the Serbs and make them ready to mobilise for a civil war. After that the ethnic cleansing of the Muslims could begin as well as the military struggle for territory. The result from that plan, called RAM, is today named Republika Srpska.

The theoretical ballast for these aspirations and actions is in current revolutionary literature by authors likeGuillaume Faye, Renard Camus, Alexander Dugin, etc. Faye writes about the potential conditions for avoiding the convergence of the disasters of globalism and mass immigration by reconquering the “European ethnosphere”. For R. Camus, the crisis is down to a conspiracy to replace the peoples of Europe with obedient clients from the third world,  from lumpen Arab- and African masses, in order to guarantee support for the political apparatus in a gruelling political struggle. For Dugin, it is about Europe's place along with Russia in a Euro-Siberian union against Muslim colonisation and against a political opponent, the United States, which so far has promoted the destruction of the continent by supporting globalisation and “the weapon of mass migration”.

These fictitional scenarios are based on projections of the experience from the civil war in Bosnia as well as the social fantasies and hopes of extremists today. But another player might show up more clearly as this scenario culminates. He is already present in the European political arena. 

An additional player – Surkov?

It is well-established fact that Russia supports and promotes many of the nationalist parties in Europa. This political strategy is applied in the forms of financial support and by spreading false information to disgrace western and European institutions supporting the agenda of the nationalist parties. Alexander Dugin’s works – as a semi-official ideologue of the Kremlin – is to propagate so-called ‘traditional values’ against western liberalism and decadence, and promote the idea of a geopolitical interest between Europe and Russia against their American opponent. It is a barely disguised imperial ambition which openly reveals the true nature of Russian intervention in western public opinion and politics. He is positive towards the ambitions of both Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece – and also the leftwing SYRIZA in Greece, although he deplores the lack of a  “spiritual dimension” of the left, making it in his eyes, too focused on an “alternative sort of modernism”. But what counts for him is nevertheless the logic: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And the Great Satan in the geopolitical game is of course “North America” and liberal and universal values. 

Even the political conflict in Europe concerning illiberal multiculturalism and immigration is very real – and a substantial conflict in its own right – the Russian intervention on behalf of nationalists groups and parties might very well be to intrumentalize this conflict in its own geopolitical interest. This is already obvious now. 

In Peter Pomerantsev’s reports from modern Russia; “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible” (2015), he writes about the kingmaker Vladislav Surkov, whose portfolio in the Kremlin in 1996 included ideology, media, political parties, religion, modernisation, foreign relations and – curiously enough - modern art. I once met Pomarentsev in Bratislava for a conference, and he outlined for me a day in Surkov’s life: in the morning he founds civic forums and human rights NGOs, at lunch, he founds a nationalist movement to attack the NGOs. In the afternoon, he supports an exhibition of provocative avant-garde art and in the evening he supports a group of orthodox militants who attack the exhibition. The idea is to ​​own all the forms of political discourse, and not let anything grow outside the Kremlin. Moscow is an oligarchy in the morning, a democracy in the afternoon, a monarchy in the evening and ends up being a totalitarian society around about bedtime. 

In this projection of the near future, the interpretation is that this form of political scenography also applies to asymmetric warfare, to Putin's Russia and its involvement in the European theatre of war. What we see as an existential challenge and a real political conflict in Europe might end up as a pawn in a bigger geopolitical game.

This has already begun. The nationalist rightwing act as Putin’s useful idiots, and the unreformed left and Islamists act as the useful idiots of the nationalist rightwing. For the rest of us – liberal Christians, agnostics, liberal Muslims – we are designated to serve the role of cannon fodder in the political process. 

This essay was originally presented at the Telos-Paul Piccone conference in Deutches Haus, New York University on Assymetrical Warfare.

May 22,2018. A protester and cardboard cutouts depicting Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg ahead of his appearance before the European Parliament. Riccardo Pareggiani/ Press Association. All rights reserved.Five decades before Mark Zuckerberg vowed to “bring the world closer together,” a group of supranational entrepreneurs set out the goal of forming an “ever closer union of the peoples of Europe.” Both Facebook and the European Union have created new opportunities for trading ideas and goods within an imagined community that transcends national borders. But repeated crises have laid bare their disconnection from the ordinary people they are supposed to serve.

Facebook and the EU have each placed enormous confidence in top-down technocratic governance. Their legitimacy, in practice, is based not on the permanent allegiance or the direct and meaningful consent of the governed, but rather on their ability to attract members by delivering a rewarding “user experience.” Thus when people grow dissatisfied, their instinct is to leave rather than push for new leadership or mobilize for reform, as indicated by Brexit and the #DeleteFacebook movement.

Brussels and Silicon Valley share a common lineage in globalization. Facebook would not exist today were it not for a courageous decision to build a transnational telecommunications network run by a cluster of commissions and taskforces rather than any one government. Similarly, the EU began as a technocratic entity overseeing the coal and steel production of six nation-states, later expanding to encompass all types of cross-border commerce. Historians will laud the internet and European integration for contributing to an unprecedented expansion of trade and liberal democratic norms. In a very short time, billions of people gained access to new forms of free expression, education, travel, and employment.

But like other institutions associated with globalization, the EU and the tech industry are facing a backlash, accused of blindly pursuing their visions of progress while neglecting major flaws and collateral damage. In a leaked memo, Facebook vice president Andrew Bosworth wrote that even if “someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools… we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good.”

Both systems were built on idealism and contained few corrective mechanisms to address abuses by either internal or external forces. Thus the likes of Facebook, Google, and Twitter failed to protect their users from political manipulation and shady data brokers, and Eurocrats have bungled their response to debt and migration crises.

Restoring faith through democratization

Much of the debate about how to change Facebook has revolved around increasing the transparency and accountability of its decision-making processes. Unlike traditional companies, which sold customers a product for their private use, search and social media companies retain control over how we use their platforms – and even whether we are allowed to use them. To restore public confidence, all large online services must be more open with users about crucial decisions, particularly surrounding data privacy and free speech.

In its latest Corporate Accountability Index released this week, the nonprofit Ranking Digital Rights stated that Facebook’s “disclosure of options users have to control what information the company collects, retains, and uses was worse than any other company in the index.” Users also deserve more information about decisions to remove content that violates either Facebook’s internal rules or the laws of countries in which it operates. Too often these policies have been enforced unevenly, allowing violent incitement to remain while censoring human rights activists.

In his recent testimony before Congress, Zuckerberg said, “It’s not enough to just connect people, we have to make sure those connections are positive. It’s not enough to just give people a voice, we have to make sure people aren’t using it to hurt people or spread misinformation.” To its credit, the company has made recent moves to reformat its privacy tools and publish its internal guidelines for content regulation, while adding a process for appealing the removal of content for “nudity, sexual activity, hate speech, or violence” in which you may obtain a second judgment within 24 hours. But to make the jump from enlightened dictatorship to democracy, Zuckerberg must open Facebook up to far greater participation.

That should start with treating its users less like consumers or subjects and more like citizens. Facebook currently updates its terms of service with the same aloofness attributed to EU diplomats adopting treaty changes. As others have pointed out, Facebook experimented with “mass referendums” from 2009 to 2012. In its last vote – which altered how Facebook shares users’ personal data with partner companies – 88 percent of participants (some 660,000 people) rejected the new terms of service. But turnout did not reach a 30 per cent threshold to make the referendum binding, as only 0.2 per cent of users participated. So the company went ahead with the changes, just as the EU has sometimes forged ahead with planned restructuring despite defeats in national plebiscites.

Greater democratization also means attending to the needs of vulnerable groups and local constituencies. For years civil society activists have complained about how hate groups were prospering on Facebook. UN officials investigating possible genocide in Myanmar implicated Facebook as having “substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict.” In Sri Lanka, where extremists posted videos inciting ethnic violence, Facebook responded with a high-level delegation that worked out an agreement to address the problem, but only after the government blocked access to the platform. Zuckerberg has promised to hire more content reviewers who speak languages like Burmese and Sinhala, and work together with civil society groups “to identify specific hate figures so we can take down their accounts, rather than specific pieces of content.”

Institutions worth saving

One of the greatest impediments to change is the notion that the actions and algorithims of big social media and search platforms are neutral by nature, technical rather than political, and undeserving of the level of scrutiny we apply to governments.

Similarly, for decades many argued that the EU had no “democratic deficit” because it was a sui generis institution, essentially a cross-border trade regulator, not beholden to our common conceptions of popular participation and open deliberation.

Certain scholars were quick to criticize these claims: Simon Hix long argued that the EU needed an injection of normal left-right politics in order to achieve accountability and legitimacy, and in 2012, digital rights activist Rebecca MacKinnon described how Facebook had become “a world unto itself: an alternative virtual reality that for many users is now inextricably intertwined with their physical reality.”

Thankfully, EU leaders and tech executives now seem to be awakening to their obligations, with the president of the European Commission declaring, “Now is the time to build a more united, stronger and more democratic Europe,” and Zuckerberg agreeing that Facebook is responsible for the content appearing on its platform.

Facebook and the EU can both be credited with giving hundreds of millions of people greater access to certain public goods. Facebook, for all its faults and despite what are ultimately pecuniary motivations, provides an open public square for the exercise of free expression and association. The EU is, at heart, a project to deliver peace and prosperity to a continent that had been subjected for centuries to the horrors of war. Users are free to leave Facebook, and whole nations have the option of leaving the EU; freedom and democracy would not necessarily die without them.

But it would be far better to defend past gains, push for reform, and harness the potential of these institutions to spread the benefits of democracy further.

Aeropuerto de Quibdó. Fuente: Diálogo Chino. Todos los derechos reservados.

Cuando Iván Duque, ganador de la primera vuelta de las elecciones en Colombia el 27 de mayo, no participó en el tercer debate presidencial en la ciudad portuaria de Buenaventura el mes pasado, los críticos lo interpretaron como un signo del histórico abandono por parte de las élites de una zona del país desesperadamente empobrecida.

Sin embargo hoy los inversores chinos buscan invertir de manera sustancial en la región de El Chocó. Al hacerlo, inciden en el mecanismo que hace que el desarrollo económico basado en la extracción de recursos naturales genere desigualdades y aporte poco a la población local.

Capital Airports Holdings Company (CAH), compañía que pertenece a la Administración de Aviación Civil de China (CAAC), planea invertir casi 2 millones de dólares en la modernización y ampliación del aeropuerto de la capital regional, Quibdó, ciudad hasta hoy aislada debido a sus difíciles condiciones geográficas y conexiones viales inseguras.

La posibilidad de establecer ahora vuelos internacionales a y desde Quibdó podría conectar el capital regional con los mercados globales.

El acuerdo con CAH contempla una concesión de 15 a 25 años para operar el aeropuerto y el aumento de su capacidad de carga, lo que le permitirá a China asegurarse el monopolio de las exportaciones agrícolas y mineras de la región.

Quibdó tiene un nivel tan escaso de desarrollo que ni siquiera dispone de canalizaciones de agua o de alcantarillado.

Se puede anticipar que una consecuencia importante de disponer de una mejor infraestructura de transporte es que atraerá más inversión extranjera y fomentará aún más las actividades extractivas.

Posee una de las tasas más altas de pobreza de Colombia, acceso inadecuado a los servicios de salud, bajos niveles de infraestructuras educativas y recreativas y altos niveles de corrupción.

Teniendo esto presente, es difícil argumentar que la inversión en modernizar y ampliar el aeropuerto sea una prioridad para la comunidad local. Entonces, ¿a quién beneficia?

Aspecto físico de muchos de los vecindarios de Quibdó y campo de fútbol improvisado junto al río Atrato. Fuente: Diálogo Chino. Todos los derechos reservados.

Quibdó: ¿ciudad internacional o socialmente exclusiva?

Los habitantes de Quibdó (entre ellos, los académicos locales) hablan con orgullo de la próxima internacionalización de la ciudad y del progreso que este proyecto generará en la región.

Sin embargo, se puede anticipar que una consecuencia importante de disponer de una mejor infraestructura de transporte es que atraerá más inversión extranjera y fomentará aún más las actividades extractivas en El Chocó.

Un acceso más fácil y seguro a la ciudad es un incentivo para las inversiones extranjeras en El Chocó y esto ya es tangible en Quibdó. En 2017, una empresa inmobiliaria empezó a construir un nuevo complejo comercial con cines, un casino y parques infantiles.

Y un consorcio internacional está promoviendo un complejo comercial y residencial con altos y lujosos edificios que albergarán un hotel, oficinas y apartamentos construidos siguiendo “altos estándares internacionales”.

Pero la actividad desarrollada hasta la fecha en el sector minero e inmobiliario ha traído pocos beneficios a los habitantes de la ciudad y es difícil argumentar que proyectos como éste vayan a garantizarles un futuro más próspero, cuando los apartamentos y las instalaciones de lujo están totalmente fuera de su alcance.

Promoción del centro comercial El Cabí y promoción del complejo residencial y comercial Borde Balay. Fuente: Diálogo Chino. Todos los derechos reservados.  

Chinos en El Chocó: ¿realimentando el conflicto?

En la última década, industrias extractivas como la minería de oro se han desarrollado y expandido en El Chocó generando graves consecuencias ambientales y sociales.

Según El Tiempo,en 2001 las actividades relacionadas con la extracción de oro habían destruido 302 hectáreas de selva; en 2014 el número de hectáreas destruidas había aumentado a 36.185.

Cabe señalar, por otra parte, que la extracción de materias primas en la región la gestionan grupos armados ilegales, que también controlan la producción de coca y el narcotráfico.

En 2001 las actividades relacionadas con la extracción de oro habían destruido 302 hectáreas de selva.

Por consiguiente, las economías extractivas en El Chocó no sólo son destructivas para el medioambiente sino que son también excluyentes ya que solo benefician a un grupo reducido de élites locales.

Según el último informe de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE), el lavado de dinero procedente de la minería ilegal en El Chocó se realiza a nivel local, en sectores como el inmobiliario.

Según el Informe Económico Regional anual del Banco Central de Colombia (ICER 2015), entre 2010 y 2014 la construcción en Quibdó registró una tasa de crecimiento (13%) mayor que cualquier otro sector económico, seguida por los servicios inmobiliarios y financieros (8,2%).

Esto tiene un impacto directo sobre el entorno urbano en ciudades como Quibdó y ofrece una impresión ilusoria de desarrollo económico.

Es decir, se levantan construcciones nuevas que no responden a una demanda real creciente de vivienda u ocio.

Y Quibdó carece de suficiente presencia estatal para garantizar que los beneficios se redistribuyan a nivel local, y de una economía local suficientemente robusta como para poder soportar semejante auge de la inversión impulsado por la demanda china de materias primas.

Según datos del Banco Central de Colombia, desde 2012 las exportaciones se han concentrado, en gran medida, en el mercado chino. El enorme crecimiento de las importaciones de metal para materiales de construcción por parte de China empezó en la década de 1990 y llegó a su punto máximo entre 2003 y 2011.

Como argumenta David Harvey, la rápida urbanización y el desarrollo del sector de la construcción en China durante este período permitió estimular la actividad económica y superar la recesión global de 2008.

Sin embargo, el comportamiento de las importaciones a partir de 2012 no ha sido el mismo para todos los metales: ha disminuido en el caso del metal para la construcción, pero no en el caso de los metales preciosos como el oro, elemento importante en la fabricación de productos manufacturados de alta tecnología como los teléfonos inteligentes, en los que la economía china ha centrado su atención en los últimos años.

¿Qué es lo próximo para Quibdó?

La concesión del aeropuerto a CAH promueve el desarrollo de la ciudad desde un prisma “neoliberal”, como “compensación” por el histórico abandono de la región del El Chocó.

Se ha otorgado responsabilidad sin poder a las instituciones y actores locales, mientras que las instituciones y actores internacionales están ganando poder sin responsabilidad.

Además, el Estado se aprovecha de que esta inversión extranjera directa (IED) se considera funcional para el desarrollo de El Chocó, una gran parte del cual estuvo durante años bajo control de las FARC.

Pero el problema, como señalan los geógrafos Peck y Tickell, es que ahora “se ha otorgado responsabilidad sin poder a las instituciones y actores locales, mientras que las instituciones y actores internacionales están ganando poder sin responsabilidad”.

A través de grandes proyectos de infraestructura, la IED está transformando la ciudad de Quibdó. Surgen y se comercializan nuevos proyectos inmobiliarios, centros comerciales y casinos como parte de un moderno y lujoso patio de recreo, pero ese nivel de riqueza es impensable para la gran mayoría de sus habitantes.

Dichos proyectos son el resultado y el reflejo de la presión que ejercen los inversores extranjeros sobre los estados-nación con una administración débil, ubicados en regiones con un valor estratégico por sus recursos naturales y con pocas alternativas que no sean la de abrir sus puertas de par en par a la actividad económica.

Coordinando una respuesta

El interés en desarrollar el “marginado” Pacífico colombiano no sólo proviene de China y Colombia. Los países vecinos de América Latina también buscan beneficiarse de su mayor conectividad.

El bloque económico de la Alianza del Pacífico, formado en 2011 y que comprende a Colombia, Chile, México y Perú, busca explícitamente “formar un bloque comercial regional y forjar lazos económicos más fuertes con la región de Asia y el Pacífico”.

La agenda de inversiones chinas en El Chocó representa un nuevo desafío para Colombia a medida que el país avanza en la era del post acuerdo de paz, ya que los impactos de su crecimiento deben tener ahora en cuenta no sólo la desigualdad de los beneficios económicos que se derivan de dichas inversiones, sino también la degradación ambiental que provocan.

La respuesta a China en El Chocó debe llevarse a cabo a través de procesos de participación y consulta abierta.

Muchas zonas afectadas por la minería están ubicadas en territorios pertenecientes a colectivos afrodescendientes y en zonas indígenas organizadas - es decir, el Consejo Comunitario Mayor de la Asociación Campesina Integral de Atrato (CCOCOMACIA), que es el principal Consejo Comunitario de la Asociación Campesina Integral del Atrato.

Ignorar a estas comunidades en el proceso de otorgar sin consulta previa licencias mineras dentro de su territorio sería violar sus derechos territoriales.

La IED debería garantizar el beneficio mutuo del inversor y la comunidad receptora, permitir la transferencia de tecnología y desarrollar la capacitación local.

A partir de un monitoreo más cercano por parte del gobierno en asociación con las comunidades locales, las inversiones chinas podrían actuar como catalizador para la inclusión económica de dichas comunidades y el desarrollo sostenible de El Chocó, contribuyendo así a la construcción del proceso de paz. 

Este artículo ha sido publicado previamente por Diálogo chino y se puede leer aquí

Quibdó airport. Source: Diálogo Chino. All rights reserved.

When Ivan Duque, the winner of the first round of the elections in Colombia on May 27, refused to participate in the third presidential debate in the Pacific port city of Buenaventura last month, critics interpreted it as a sign of the Colombian elites’ historic neglect of a desperately impoverished part of the country.

Chinese investors, however, have been looking to make significant investments in the Chocó region. In doing so, they will exacerbate an unequal form of economic development based on the extraction of natural resources that brings little benefit to the local population.

Capital Airports Holdings Company (CAH), a company owned by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), plans to invest almost 2 million dollars in modernising and expanding the airport facilities of the regional capital, Quibdó, a city almost isolated due to its challenging geographical conditions and unsafe road connections.

Now, the possibility of establishing international flights to and from Quibdó could connect the city to global markets.

The deal with CAH includes a 15-25 year concession to operate the airport and an increase of its cargo capacity, which will enable China to secure its monopoly on exports from the region’s agriculture, forestry and mining sectors, the share of which has already grown from just 2% a decade ago to 93% last year, according to data from Colombia’s Central Bank.

Quibdó is so underdeveloped that it lacks water pipelines or a proper sewage system. It has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country, with poor access to healthcare services, low levels of education and recreation infrastructures, and high levels of corruption.

With this in mind, it is difficult to argue that the investment in modernising and extending the airport is a priority for the local community. So who stands to benefit?

Pelenque neighbourhood in Quibdó and an improvised soccer field next to the Atrato River. Source: Diálogo Chino. All rights reserved.

Quibdó: an international or a socially exclusive city?

Quibdo’s local inhabitants (including local academics) speak proudly of the forthcoming internationalisation of the city and the progress that this project will bring to the region.

However, an important consequence of the foreign direct investment (FDI) is that improved transport infrastructures will pull in more foreign investment and facilitate the expansion of extractive activities in El Chocó.

In the last decade, extractive industries such as gold mining have developed and expanded in El Chocó with enormous environmental and social consequences.

This new investment is already tangible in Quibdó. In 2017, a private real estate company began constructing a new shopping complex with cinemas and a casino and playgrounds.

And a private international consortium is promoting a business and residential complex with high-rise luxury towers which include a hotel, offices and apartments meeting ‘high international standards’.

So far, however, the activity in the mining and real estate sectors has brought few benefits for the city dwellers and it is difficult to argue that new projects like the above mentioned will guarantee a more prosperous future, considering that the properties and luxury facilities are absolutely out of reach for them.

A billboard promoting El Cabí shopping mall and a flyer promoting the Borde Balay residential and business complex. Source: Diálogo Chino. All Rights Reserved.

The Chinese in Chocó: refuelling the conflict?

In the last decade, extractive industries such as gold mining have developed and expanded in El Chocó with enormous environmental and social consequences.

According to national newspaper El Tiempo, by 2001 gold mining activities had destroyed 302 hectares of rainforest; by 2014 the hectares destroyed were 36.185.

The situation becomes even more complex when one takes into consideration that, in many cases, the production of commodities in the region is managed by illegal armed groups, which also control coca production and drug trafficking.

Therefore, extractive economies in El Chocó are not only environmentally destructive but also non-inclusive for they benefit only a small group of local elites.

According to the latest report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the profits from illegal mining in Chocó are laundered locally in sectors such as real estate.

Between 2010 and 2014, Quibdó’s construction sector recorded the highest rate of economic growth (13%) of any sector, followed by real estate and financial services (8,2%), according to the Colombian Central Bank’s annual Regional Economic Report (ICER 2015).

These economic activities have a direct impact on the urban environment and land use in cities such as Quibdó, and give an illusory impression of economic development.

That is, new construction developments are emerging which do not respond to a real growing demand for housing or leisure. Quibdó lacks the necessary State presence to ensure that at least some of the benefits are redistributed locally, or a resilient enough local economy to withstand a boom of this kind, driven by global trade and China’s demand for raw materials.

According to the latest report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the profits from illegal mining in Chocó are laundered locally in sectors such as real estate.

Data from Colombia’s Central Bank shows that since 2012 exports have become highly concentrated in the Chinese market. China’s huge growth in metal imports for construction materials began in the 1990s and reached a peak between 2003-2011.

According to David Harvey, rapid urbanisation and construction in China in this period enabled it to stimulate economic activity and overcome the global recession of 2008.

Metal imports for construction decreased after 2012, but this does not hold true for precious metals such as gold, which is an important element in high-technology manufactured goods such as smart phones, to which China’s economy has shifted attention in recent years. 

What next for Quibdó?

The airport concession to CAH promotes development in a “neoliberal” perspective, as a “compensation” for Colombia’s historic neglect of the Chocó region.

Moreover, the State is taking advantage of the fact that this incoming foreign direct investment (FDI) is perceived as positive for the development of Chocó, large parts of which were for many years controlled by the FARC.

The problem, as geographers Peck and Tickell point out, is that “local institutions and actors are now being given responsibility without power, while international institutions and actors are gaining power without responsibility”.

FDI in large infrastructure projects in Quibdó is transforming the city. Despite new real estate projects, shopping malls and casinos springing up and being marketed as a part of a modern, luxury playground, such a level of wealth is wholly unthinkable for the vast majority of its inhabitants.

They are the result of foreign investors putting pressure on nation-states with weak administrations and regions with high strategic resource value, that have few alternatives to opening themselves wide to global economic activity. 

Coordinating a response

Interest in developing “marginalised” Colombia’s Pacific comes not only from China and Colombia. Neighbouring Latin American countries also aim to benefit from its greater connectivity.

The Pacific Alliance economic bloc, which was created in 2011 and includes Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Peru, explicitly seeks to “form a regional trading bloc and forge stronger economic ties with the Asia-Pacific region’.

Local institutions and actors are now being given responsibility without power, while international institutions and actors are gaining power without responsibility.

China’s investment agenda in El Chocó presents yet another challenge for Colombia in the post-peace agreement era, for the impacts of this growth in trade must now take into account not only the effects on social inequality but also the environmental degradation.

The response to China in El Chocó must come as a result of processes of participation and open consultation.

Many areas affected by mining are located in well-organised, collective afro-descendant and indigenous territories – grouped in the High Community Council of the Comprehensive Rural Association (COCOMACIA).

Ignoring these communities by granting mining licenses in their territory without prior consultation would be a violation of their territorial rights.

FDI should guarantee the benefit of both the investor and the local community, allow the transfer of technology and build local capacity.

With closer monitoring by the government in partnership with local communities, Chinese investment could act as a catalyst for the economic inclusion of local communities and the sustainable development of El Chocó, thus contributing to the peace building process. 

This article was previously published by Diálogo chino and can be read here

Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Bruno Rodriguez, Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs. Photo: EU, All rights reserved.

The European Union (EU) and Cuba are showing signs of moving towards establishing a strong relationship.

This is happening despite a string of previous meetings, misunderstandings, US policy under Donald Trump, and the persistence of sectors within and outside the EU and the island opposed to advancing bilateral ties.

On May 15, the first ever joint Council between Cuba and the EU was held in Brussels. The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security, Federica Mogherini, and the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, met (again) to mark the start of implementation of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA) which came into effect provisionally in December 2017 and put an end to two decades of a restrictive position with respect to Cuba by the European Council.

For the first time in thirty years of official relations, it puts both actors within the framework of an institutionalized bond - this increases contacts, which become stable and permanent.

The importance of this agreement is multiple. For the first time in thirty years of official relations, it puts both actors within the framework of an institutionalized bond - this increases contacts, which become stable and permanent.

It also prompts them to find suitable formulas to put into practice what has been agreed upon in general terms, thus avoiding impasses and stagnation. Although this is most apparent and practical for the immediate future, what is perhaps equally important is the fact that the agreement has changed the attitudes of both signatories - without sacrificing their principles or values -, and has allowed them to work on common ground and create "gateways" to new areas in which previously unidentified common interests may emerge.

Only the provisional clauses of the agreement are in force for the time being, pending the ratification of the whole by the parliaments of the twenty-eight EU member states.

These provisional clauses, however, cover an important part of the agreement, and this has allowed a series of initiatives to be taken at the joint Council meeting in Brussels.

First of all, the concretion of an 18 million euros cooperation project on renewable energy, the very first to give actual content to the new bilateral relations framework, on an issue of special relevance for Cuba, which aims to include a significant component of non-polluting energies to its energy matrix, coinciding in general terms with the policy proposals of the EU in this area.

The institutionalizing of political dialogue in five specific areas - human rights, sustainable development, disarmament, the fight against the illegal small arms trade and unilateral coercive measures - is another of the joint Council's significant results, which opens up new lines of work.

The regular meetings agreed upon will address issues which, while being of common interest, are approached in different ways by the parties.

In contrast to previous moments in the relationship, it does seem not only that a decision has been made on both parts to build spaces for dialogue and cooperation and to focus on consensus rather than dissent, but also to discuss the latter.

Donald Trump’s government has intensified the application of the policy of blocking Cuba in the financial sector, a decision which has a strong extraterritorial impact on European banks and companies.

The ratification by Cuba of the agreement establishing the European Union-Latin America and the Caribbean Foundation (EU-LAC), negotiated at the end of the first decade of this century, was also announced.

This ratification incorporates Cuba to the intergovernmental organization whose objective is the strengthening of the bi-regional association between the EU and its member States on the one hand, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) on the other.

The preparation of another 21 million euro agreement on food security and sustainable agriculture was announced by the EU High Representative at the press conference at the end of the Joint Council.

The expressed will to promote exchanges for the European Year of Cultural Heritage and to support the celebrations of the 500-year anniversary of the founding of the city of Havana in 2019 - a request that historian Eusebio Leal made publicly to Federica Mogherini during her visit to Cuba last January, and which she gladly accepted – were among the finer topics on which decisions were also made.

All these advances are taking place in a context which is not exempt from risks and obstacles. On the one hand, in contrast to the openness of the Barack Obama administration, Donald Trump’s government has intensified the application of the policy of blocking Cuba in the financial sector, a decision which has a strong extraterritorial impact on European banks and companies.

On the other hand, the EU's approach to the island is still being questioned by those in Europe who emphasize the issues where the perceptions of both actors are more divergent, such as human rights and the situation in Venezuela.

With or without a common position, the EU advocates for an economic and political opening in Cuba. But this has not prevented the EU from finding that this tactic was wrong and that a bilateral instrument was needed in order to overcome the anomalous situation which was making Cuba one of the very few countries in the world whose relations with the EU lacked a contractual framework.

According to the High Representative, today Cuba is not alone facing those who "raise walls and close doors".

Some new approaches to the Cuban reality have now become apparent in discourse, such as explicitly calling - in Spanish - "bloqueo" what had always been called "embargo" in the EU – Mogherini used this term in Havana on January 3, 2018, and again in her speech at the press conference after the Joint Council, on May 15. More importantly, according to the High Representative, today Cuba is not alone facing those who "raise walls and close doors".

The EU has found a way to show its own path in contrast with the Trump Administration, spotlight it and move forward.

Its new policy stance could also serve to "support the process of economic and social reform in Cuba." It should be noted, in addition, that half of the EU member states have already ratified the ADPC.

The Cuban government, for its part, has expressed its wish for "a more active participation of the European Union in the economic development" of the island. The chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez, considers that the conditions are favourable for expanding ties further.

Obviously, the presence and participation of the EU, and particularly its objectives, are viewed quite differently depending on the perspective - from Brussels or Havana.

But it is nevertheless a fact that there are spaces where these perspectives converge and that the EU has quite evidently managed to position itself on the island: today, it is already Cuba’s first trading partner, the first investor and the first supplier of development aid.

The current framework agreement is about political dialogue and cooperation. True, compared to the rest of the areas it covers, the scope of the agreement on trade is admittedly quite limited. But it could be one of the main areas for evolution in the future.

The EU market is a very demanding one, with very strict quality standards and specific access requirements depending on the products, and although this may theoretically be an incentive to improve standards in countries which, like Cuba, have an interest in having greater access to the EU market, it is also clear that it is an obstacle.

In this sense, Cuba would probably wish to be offered a relaxation of the rules of the General Preference System for some given products, as this would allow it to access the market in a similar way to what it did in the past, and perhaps also some specific rules for products that both parties may agree on.

Cooperation in trade-related issues such as the promotion of exports, marketing techniques and better knowledge of the EU market is also important

For the time being, the implementation of the ADPC offers a framework which is broad enough for expanding and strengthening EU-Cuba relations. Success in implementing it will lay the foundations for positive evolution in the future.

The roadmap from now on can be very diverse, for the agreement signed includes practically all possible areas of bilateral cooperation.

However, it should focus on the understanding that the agreement is not an end in itself, but a means to strengthen the bilateral relationship, and that the bond between Cuba and The EU will keep on progressing and evolving depending on the way in which it is implemented.

This article is being published as part of the partnership between Nueva Sociedad and democraciaAbierta. You can read the original here  

Shutterstock/Montebasso. All rights reserved.While the World Health Organisation warns of major measles outbreaks spreading across Europe, vaccination has stepped into national and EU political debate as a major health issue. Looking at the 2018 Italian general election, some candidates scrambled to deliver a clear position on this matter. Adopted last summer, a new Italian law on vaccines introduced 10 mandatory (and free of charge) vaccinations for preschool and school-age children. Parents now have to present vaccination certificates to schools which must notify the local health authorities when they fail to present those documents. The Democratic Party and Forza Italia political parties champion the so-called ‘Lorenzin Law’ while the right-wing Northern League and the 5 Star Movement call for immunizations to be left to parents’ discretion, regardless of WHO warnings on measles outbreaks.

France followed in Italian footsteps and made 11 vaccinations mandatory from January 1, 2018. As it was stated by French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, it is unacceptable that children are still dying of measles in a country where some of the earliest vaccines were pioneered. Indeed, south west France has been recently hit by a measles epidemic: in the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine since November the outbreaks have resulted in 269 confirmed cases of measles, of whom 66 were admitted to hospital for treatment. Even more worrying, the region has a too low vaccination rate to cope with the epidemic (between 70% and 81% of people are vaccinated, lower than the level recommended by the World Health Organisation – 95%).

The fall in public confidence in vaccines has become more and more of a challenge which has contributed to low rates of immunisation against the rise of highly contagious disease across Europe. Media controversies, some political propaganda and the spread of fake news (from big pharma conspiracy to autism) have fuelled a dangerous mistrust of vaccines.

Does the EU want to play a role on this issue? The European Commission is currently exploring ways for Member States to work together on immunizations. Vaccination policy is a competence of national authorities; however, a lot can be done with the support of Brussels. President Jean-Claude Juncker has singled out the issue in his State of the EU address, where no other reference to health policy was made. Reading through Juncker’s White Paper, vaccines hold a significant position in EU political debate and policies. To prove that, a proposal for a Council recommendation on national vaccination policies is expected in the months to follow.

President Juncker commented on the measles epidemic in Italy and Romania: “It is unacceptable that in 2017 there are still children dying of diseases that should long have been eradicated in Europe (…) This is why we are working with all Member States to support national vaccination efforts. Avoidable deaths must not occur in Europe”. So, what can the EU do to tackle vaccine hesitancy across Europe? EU incentives and best practice sharing could tackle vaccine hesitancy, especially in the frame of the increasing impact of digitalization (e.g. countering fake news messages on social media, promoting aware-raising campaigns). Also, it is likely that better aligned vaccine schedules can help to increase trust and confidence in immunisation programmes.

Article 168 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), provides that Union action must complement Member States policies and cover monitoring, early warning, and combating serious cross-border threats to health, by coordinating national policies accordingly. Epidemics are by definition cross-border and shared threats. No single country can cope with them alone. Vaccination is one of the most important medical measures developed in the twentieth century and the best defence we have against contagious and serious (sometimes deadly) diseases. Thanks to vaccines, smallpox, polio and many other fatal diseases have been eradicated. Vaccines hesitation and the related decreasing immunization coverage represent a shared European threat. They put at risk human health by causing resurgence of infectious diseases long since considered under control (in 2017, Europe observes a 4-fold increase in measles cases compared to 2016).

There are several areas where EU can and must act:

• -  First, the EU could strengthen its surveillance capabilities to better assess vaccines benefit (as well as potential risks) and infectious disease patterns. An effective EU surveillance and data collection system (possibly coordinated by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) would also provide a needed support to national immunisation strategies and to deter further outbreaks;

• -  Second, the European Commission should investigate the causes of vaccine hesitancy and put in place policy programs to increase awareness by enhancing fact-based information about vaccination.

Many stakeholders look forward to the Council Recommendation. I believe that many companies and organisations will then have the chance to prepare in advance policy solutions to the EU’s imminent drive to coordinate national policies.

Image: George Osborne arriving at the Evening Standard offices. Credit: Victoria Jones/PA Images, all rights reserved

London’s Evening Standard newspaper, edited by the former chancellor George Osborne, has agreed a £3 million deal with six leading commercial companies, including Google and Uber, promising them “money-can’t-buy” positive news and “favourable” comment coverage, openDemocracy can reveal.

The project, called London 2020, is being directed by Osborne. It effectively sweeps away the conventional ethical divide between news and advertising inside the Standard – and is set to include “favourable” news coverage of the firms involved, with readers unable to differentiate between "news" that is paid-for and other commercially-branded content.

Leading companies, most operating global businesses, were given detailed sales presentations by Evening Standard executives at the newspaper’s west London offices in an effort to sign them up to the lucrative deal.

Among those that have paid half a million pounds each to be involved are international taxi-app firm Uber, which is facing an imminent court appeal against the decision to cancel its licence to operate in London. The Evening Standard has previously come under fire for not declaring Osborne’s £650,000-a-year part time job with the fund managers BlackRock, who hold a £500m stake in Uber.

The global tech giant, Google, still recovering from reputational damage over its low UK tax bills and criticism over its close relationship to the Cameron-Osborne government, has also signed up.

Some companies, including Starbucks, walked away from the Evening Standard’s pitch, rejecting the offer of paying to boost their reputations through tailored news and comment.

London 2020 is scheduled to start on June 5. Unbranded news stories, expected to be written by staff reporters – but paid for by the new commercial “partners” as part of the 2020 deal – have already been planned for inclusion in the paper’s news pages within a week of the project’s launch.

A big commercial pay-off

The London Evening Standard has a circulation of close to 900,000 and distributes more copies within a two-mile radius of Westminster than the Times does across the UK nationally. Many London commuters, who pick up their free copy of the Standard at underground and rail stations, will be unaware that they will be reading paid-for news coverage that is part of a wider commercial deal.

An increasing number of British newspapers often carry “native advertising”, essentially paid-for commercials designed to look like independent editorial articles.

Although the 2020 campaigns will involve branded, native and advertorial pages, along with public debates hosted by the Standard, the six partners have also been promised the Standard will carry “money-can’t-buy” positive news and “favourable” comment pieces that will appear to readers as routine, independently written editorial.

By the established industry definition of “news” – which makes or breaks a newspaper’s integrity and its editor’s reputation – a commercial pay-off is supposed to play no part.

"...something you might do in Saudi Arabia, but not here

One Starbucks senior executive, who asked not to be named, told openDemocracy: “Buying positive news coverage is PR death…something you might do in Saudi Arabia, but not here. This wasn’t right for us. We do engage in advertorial [a hybrid mix of advertising and editorial] but that’s just marketing. We don’t need to buy our reputation.”

A formal statement from Starbucks confirmed that the company "had met with ESI and opted not to move forward with the project".

A spokesman for ESI Media said that the “allegations about the Evening Standard are baseless and wrong.”

“We would never offer ‘positive news’ coverage and ‘favourable’ comment as part of a commercial deal. The Evening Standard’s editorial integrity and independence is always at the heart of everything we do and is beyond question. That’s why we have such a big and loyal readership.

“No commercial agreement would ever include ‘favourable’ news coverage. Like all British newspapers, the Evening Standard has valued commercial partners and works with them on specific campaigns for the benefit of our readers. Indeed, editorial independence is and remains guaranteed in the contracts we sign.”

openDemocracy contacted Uber and Google for their comments on the London 2020 project. At the time of publishing, no response had been received from either.

‘Improving London for the benefit of all’?

Uber’s involvement offers further conflicts-of-interest for George Osborne. The world’s largest fund manager, BlackRock, pays Osborne £650,000 a year for a one-day-a-week role as an adviser. BlackRock also has an investment stake in Uber worth £500m.

Image: Twitter/Fair use

Google’s decision to involve itself in this paid-for news deal will also raise eyebrows, given the objectives of its Digital News Initiative in Europe. The DNI has a budget of €150 million over the next three years. Google have stated their aim is to “combat misinformation and disinformation” and “help consumers distinguish fact from fiction online”.

London 2020 involves six “themed projects” running for two years. These include politicised initiatives on clean air, plastic pollution, schools and workplace tech and a project designed to address London’s housing crisis. The six 2020 “partners” have each paid half a million pounds to head projects that will be sold to Standard readers as “improving London for the benefit of all.”

In language lifted directly from Osborne’s years as head of the UK Treasury in David Cameron’s government, the project was presented to potential partners as aiming to highlight London as an “innovative and economic powerhouse” which is “fit for the future”.

The paid-for campaigns will conclude close to the date of the next London mayoral elections in 2020. Partners have been promised the Standard will be “dedicated to delivering” the aims of the six projects over the next two years.

‘Theatrically-constructed news’

As part of the sales pitch at the Evening Standard’s West London offices, would-be partners were told to expect campaigns that will “generate numerous news stories, comment pieces and high-profile backers”.

One executive with knowledge of the project said that the paying partners were told that their company’s own planned communications and marketing strategies could be coordinated with the Standard’s news coverage. The Standard would trail positive “news” from the six 2020 partners, with other news organisations and media outlets expected to follow.

Image: Presentation given by Evening Standard executives promising companies “money-can’t-buy” news and comment stories 

Another executive was told the “money-can’t-buy” campaigns in the Standard aimed to create “news that will make news, but news that comes with a positive message.” According to one insider: “What was being offered was clear – theatrically constructed news, showing everything good being done.”

“What was being offered was clear – theatrically constructed news, showing everything good being done.”

Uber, for its half-million fee, will be given the branded lead role in the “clean air project” which is supposed to highlight the benefits of “cleaner transport” and of turning London “electric” by 2020.

Starbucks was offered the “plastic pollution project” which claims it will be “lobbying to sharply reduce London’s single-use plastic consumption.” The coffee company refused to sign up, telling Standard executives they already had their own plans.

Google’s fee will cover parts of the schools and work tech projects. Both involve the promised promotion of digital skills and the development of a “network of digital training hubs.”

For their £3 million the partners have also been promised a special monthly print section themed to individual projects; a “bespoke” social media strategy including readers polls; and public debates, exhibitions and large-scale events organised by the Standard.

The deal is also set to include “specially created wraps”, where the front and back pages of the newspaper become a large showcase advert, along with special “native advertising” that matches the form and design of the Standard’s editorial pages.

Last week all the department heads in the Standard, including the news and comment editors, were given their first sight of the London 2020 project. Until then Osborne had confined the project to a small core team.

End of ‘church and state’ divide

Earlier this year openDemocracy exposed a similar paid-for deal at the Evening Standard involving the Swiss bio-chem and agriculture company, Syngenta. Positive news coverage and skewed public debates were part of the arrangement with the commercial division of the Standard, ESI Media.

Staff news reporters were involved in the Syngenta coverage which included telling Standard readers how GM crops would help solve the world’s food problems – without mentioning ESI’s lucrative deal with the GM-producing giant Syngenta.

ESI Media, owned by the Moscow-based oligarch, Alexander Lebedev and run in London by his son Evgeny, also governs the UK’s online Independent newspaper, which is located in the same Kensington office as the Standard.

The group commercial director of ESI, Jon O’Donnell, has previously said ESI no longer sees itself as just involved in advertising, but was now a “media business”. O’Donnell has also said the once “strict divide between the so-called ‘church and state’ [editorial and advertising] was doing more harm than good.”

‘Converting PR into news – for a price’

Details of London 2020 and Osborne’s lead role in driving the project has brought criticism from leading media commentators and industry figures.

The journalist and broadcaster, Peter Oborne, currently associate editor of The Spectator and a political columnist with the Daily Mail, resigned as the chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. He alleged there was an unscrupulous relationship between the editorial and advertising departments at the Telegraph, which led to the suppression of negative stories about the global banking giant HSBC because it was a major source of revenue. His resignation letter was published by openDemocracy. The Telegraph dismissed Oborne’s claims.

Speaking in reaction to the London 2020 deal, he told openDemocracy: “George Orwell – who worked for the Evening Standard – once said that journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed, and everything else is public relations. George Osborne, as the Standard’s editor, appears to be ignoring the dangers Orwell pointed out and is converting PR into news – for a price.

“It’s essential that the commercial arm of any newspaper is kept at arm’s length from editorial. openDemocracy’s report suggests that news and PR have become hopelessly intertwined and confused at the Standard. George Osborne as editor has a great many questions to answer as to why he’s doing this – the main one being that the news and comment pages of his newspaper seem to be up for sale. If this is allowed, how can the integrity of this newspaper be maintained?”

General Secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association, Steve McNamara, accused the Standard of putting “its profits ahead of Londoners” by selling favourable coverage to Uber.

“Uber was stripped of its licence in London for failing to protect passengers in this city. Uber deliberately did not report serious crimes or conduct appropriate background checks on its drivers. Buying positive news coverage to try and influence the upcoming licence appeal hearing is the lowest of the low. If Uber is really sorry for its ‘mistakes’ it should use this money to clean up its operation and pay its drivers more.”

Amendments, 31 May 2018

A comment from an ESI media spokesperson was added to this story. It was received a day after the company made comments about London 2020 to other media. A formal statement from Starbucks has also been added.

European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, May, 2018. Ye Pingfan/ Press Association. All rights reserved.

14.05.2018



Open Letter to Ms. Federica Mogherini, 


High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 


European Commission
,

Berlaymont
1049,

Brussels



We, the undersigned, thank you for your speech on May 8, 2018, pledging the European Union’s intention to remain steadfast in its commitment to the historic accord concluded between Iran and the E3/EU+3, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Too often, politicians have inclined to patronise and admonish, but, instead, you opted for a “universal language” of respect and dialogue. You proclaimed that “[t]his deal belongs to each and every one of us”, and that it enjoins us not to “let anyone dismantle this agreement”. But despite such salutary remarks, in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s public announcement to withdraw from the JCPOA and re-impose sanctions on Iran, the survival of the agreement is far from assured. 



The majority of Iranians have demonstrated their heartfelt support for this hard-won diplomatic accord. They have shown their support through their two-time election of a president promising to initiate constructive dialogue with the world, patiently awaiting the outcome of a long and arduous series of negotiations despite the debilitating impact of sanctions on their everyday lives, celebrating in the streets of major Iranian cities when the JCPOA was successfully agreed upon, and finally, announcing their approbation of the agreement in over 100 cities across the globe in the weeks and months that followed.



In your speech you stated that “the European Union will remain committed to the continued full and effective implementation of the Nuclear Deal”. We wholeheartedly welcome this commitment, but as you are fully apprised, it is crucial that Europe is able to discharge its international obligations and ensure, despite U.S. sanctions, that Iran and its people enjoy the full economic and political dividends promised according to not only the letter, but also the spirit of the JCPOA. The IAEA has repeatedly verified Iran’s compliance and honouring of its commitments under the agreement, and this ought to be reciprocated in turn. 



In an increasingly unstable global climate and ever-more precarious “age of extremes”, it is essential that one of the great diplomatic successes of the 21st century not find itself carelessly squandered. By your own estimation it took some 12 years for this agreement to be reached. If Europe in coordination with its Russian and Chinese partners prove unable to salvage the JCPOA, the likelihood of further instability in the region and even war increases exponentially.



While the JCPOA showed that diplomacy is possible, in view of recent events and President Trump’s reneging on the accord, the message to the world shouldn’t be that peace is inevitably transient and short-lived. For every one of us who is committed to fostering peace through reasonable dialogue and mutual understanding, preserving the integrity and viability of the JCPOA is of inestimable importance. Trust in the European Union, UN Security Council and wider international community is at stake, as well as their credibility to tackle many of the enormous challenges which lie ahead in the years to come.



The Iranian people backed peace and diplomacy. Now it is the responsibility of the international community to demonstrate that they made the right decision and that the promises that were made will be carried out and effectively realised. Failure is not an option. The alternative path is simply too costly, not only for the present generation, but for posterity as well. 

… 



Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley


Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics Emeritus, MIT


Slavoj Žižek, International Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London 


Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University

Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus in Philosophy, McGill University

Joan Wallach Scott, Professor Emerita, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ


Fredric Jameson, Knut Schmidt Nielsen Professor of Comparative Literature, Duke University

Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government MESAAS, International Affairs, and Anthropology, Columbia University 


Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University


Abdolkarim Soroush, prominent Iranian intellectual and theologian

Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard University

David Harvey, Distinguished Professor, The Graduate Centre, CUNY

Nancy Fraser, Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor, New School for Social Research

Wendy Brown, Class of 1936 First Professor in Political Science, University of California Berkeley

Taraneh Alidoosti, Iranian actress

Shlomo Sand, Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University

Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, St Antony’s College, Oxford

Cumrun Vafa, Donner Professor of Science, Harvard University

Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University

Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan

Vijay Prashad, Public intellectual and author, Tricontinental

Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History, University of Houston

Mohsen Kadivar, Research Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, Duke University

Richard Bulliet, Professor Emeritus in Middle Eastern History, Columbia University

Stathis Kalyvas, Gladstone Professor of Government, All Souls College, Oxford


Ervand Abrahamian, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Iranian and Middle Eastern History and Politics, Baruch College, CUNY

Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor in Anthropology, The Graduate Centre, CUNY


Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University 


Jacqueline Rose, Professor of Humanities and Co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London

John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

Owen M. Fiss, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law, Yale Law School  

Homa Katouzian, Iran Heritage Foundation Research Fellow, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford 


Karma Nabulsi, Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford

Ali Mirsepassi, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies / Director of Iranian Studies Initiative, NYU


Norman Finkelstein, Independent Scholar of Israel/Palestine 


Omid Safi, Professor of Asia and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University

Asef Bayat, Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Shirin Neshat, Visual Artist, New York, USA

Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Coucil 


Aziz Rana, Professor of Law, Cornell University Law School


Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Associate Professor of History, Sociology, and Director of Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois

Farid Esack, Professor in the Department of Religion, University of Johannesburg

Babak Rahimi, Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Religion, UC San Diego  

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies, SOAS, University of London

Mohammad Azadpur, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, San Francisco State University


Nader Hashemi, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and an Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics, University of Denver 


Adam Sabra, Professor and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies, University of California

Ilan Pappé, Professor of History, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter 


Walter Armbrust, Albert Hourani Fellow & Associate Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies, St Antony's College, University of Oxford


Jairus Banaji, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS, University of London


Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Associate Professor & Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History, University of Houston


Annabelle Sreberny, Emeritus Professor, SOAS, University of London


Khodadad Rezakhani, Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University


Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, St Cross College, University of Oxford 


Morteza Hashemi, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh


Mazen Masri, Senior Lecturer in Law, City, University of London
Kevan Harris, Assistant Professor in Sociology, UCLA 


Hossein Kamaly, Middle East Institute, Columbia University

Roham Alvandi, Associate Professor of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science


Mahmoud Sadri, Professor in Sociology, Texas Woman’s University 


Arash Eshghi, Lecturer in Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University 


Lior Sternfeld, Associate Professor in Iranian Studies, Ben Gurion University of the Negev


Robert J. Riggs, Assistant Professor of World Religions, University of Bridgeport 


Alan Godlas, Associate Professor in the Department of Religion, University of Georgia


Alessandro Cancian, Research Associate, The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London 


Robert Buzzanco, Professor of History, University of Houston


Sajjad Rizvi, Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual History and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter


Fatemeh Shams, Assistant Professor of Modern Persian Literature, University of Pennsylvania


Paul R. Pillar, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Center for Security Studies, Georgetown University 


Ashk Peter Dahlén, Associate Professor in Iranian Languages, Uppsala University, Sweden


Zuzanna Olszewska, Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of the Middle East, University of Oxford.


Rouzbeh Parsi, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Human Rights, Lund University


Niki Akhavan, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communication Studies, Catholic University of America


Dörthe Engelcke, Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law


Nahid Siamdoust, Postdoctoral Associate & Lecturer in Iranian Studies, Yale University


Ali Akbar Mahdi, Lecturer in Sociology, California State University, Northridge


Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, Utrecht University


Prashant Keshavmurthy, Associate Professor, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University


Arzoo Osanloo, Associate Professor, Department of Law, Societies, and Justice, University of Washington


Alireza Doostdar, Assistant Professor, Divinity School, University of Chicago


Lucie Ryzova Senior Lecturer in Middle East History, University of Birmingham


Afshin Shahi, Senior Lecturer in International Relations & Middle East Politics, University of Bradford 


Bashir Saade, Lecturer in Religion and Politics, University of Stirling


Paola Rivetti, Assistant Professor, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University 


Nadeem Rezavi, Professor of History, AMU, India
Rasmus

Christian Elling, Associate Professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural & Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

Danny Postel, Assistant Director, Middle East and North African Studies Program, Northwestern University 


Farhang Rouhani, Associate Professor in Geography, University of Mary Washington


Sussan Siavoshi, Cox Professorship in Political Science, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas


Sahar Maranlou, Lecturer in Law, School of Law and Human Rights Centre, University of Essex


Shervin Malekzadeh, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Williams College


Leyli Behbahani, Research Associate at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London


Otávio Luiz Vieira Pinto, Assistant Lecturer, Universidade Estadual de Santa Catarina (UDESC)


Hani Khafipour, Associate Professor of Iranian Studies, USC


Marta Bolognani Research Affiliate, Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, University of Bristol


Maziar Behrooz, Associate Professor in History, San Francisco State University 


Navid Yousefian, Founder of See You In Iran and Doctoral Candidate in Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara


Farhad Dokhani, PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies & Co-President, Harvard Iranian Student Association, Harvard University


Hadi Jorati, Expert Consultant, Library of Congress 


Jasbeer Musthafa Mamalipurath, Doctoral Candidate in Sociology of Religion, Western Sydney University, Australia


Milad Jokar, Visiting Lecturer, Middle East Geopolitics and Diplomacy, Normandy Business School, France


Fereshteh Ahmadi, Professor in Sociology, University of Gävle, Sweden

Hassan Hakimian, MBI Al Jaber Reader in Economics and Director of London Middle East Institute, SOAS, University of London


Navid Ghaffarzadegan, Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech, USA

Christopher de Bellaigue, journalist and author

Aaron Hughes, Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Rochester

Abdolreza Kahani, Iranian film director

Adnan Tabatabai, Co-founder and CEO of CARPO - Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient, Bonn, Germany

Ahmad Sadri, Professor of Sociology, Lake Forest College, USA

Alexander Jabbari, Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature, University of Oklahoma

Ali Banuazizi, Professor of Political Science, Boston College

Ali Fathollah-Nejad, Affiliated Researcher, Center for Middle East Politics, Freie Universität Berlin

Alireza Taghaboni, Architect, Professor, Nextoffice,Azad university of Iran

Amir Kermani, Assistant Professor of Finance and Real Estate, UC Berkeley

Andrew F. March, Berggruen Fellow, Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University

Arang Keshavarzian, Associate Professor Middle Eastern Studies, NYU

Azam Ali, Singer/Composer, California, USA

Barbara Slavin, Director of the Future of Iran Initiative, The Atlantic Council

Behrooz Bayaz, Physicist, former lecturer at the university of Marburg, Germany and former external expert of IAEA, Freelance analyst

Bijan Khajehpour, Atieh International, Vienna

Carool Kersten, Reader in the Study of Islam & the Muslim World, King's College London

Cemil Aydin, Professor in the Department of History ,University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Charles E Butterworth, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government & Politics,University of Maryland

Daniel Brumberg, Director Democracy and Governance Program, Georgetown University, Department of Government

Daryoush Ashouri, Public intellectual and author

Daryoush Mohammad Poor, Senior Research Associate, Institute of Ismaili Studies

David Priestland, Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford

David Yaghoubian, Professor of History ,CSU San Bernardino

Deniz Ülke Aribogan, Professor of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University

Donna J Haraway, Distinguished Professor Emerita, UC, Santa Cruz

Doug Henwood, Producer/Host, Behind the News, KPFA radio

Ebrahim Ahmadian, Researcher in Islamic Studies, independent journalist & environmental activist

Ebrahim Moosa ,Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Nortre Dame

Edward R. Shapiro, M.D. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale Child Study Center

Edward Wastnidge, Lecturer in Politics & Internatipnal Studies, Open University

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Professor in Political Science ,Northwestern University

Ellie Geranmayeh, Senior Policy Fellow

Evaleila Pesaran, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge

Fanar Haddad, Senior Research Fellow, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore

Farhad Khosrokhavar, Professor of Sociology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France

Farhang Jahanpour, Distinguished Professor, University of Isfahan

Farideh Farhi, Affiliate Graduate, Faculty of Political Science, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Farrokh Negahdar, Political Analyst and Activist

Farzaneh Milani, Chair of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Virginia

Fatima Tofighi, Assistant Professor & EUME fellow, University of Religions, Qom and Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin

Gennaro Gervasio, Senior Lecturer in History and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa,Roma Tre University, Italy

Ghoncheh Tazmini, Scholar and Author

Giuseppe Acconcia, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Padova

Hamid Ahmadi, Iranian Filmmaker

Hamid Zangeneh, Professor of Economics, Widener University

Hamze Ghalebi, Iran Analyst and Former Political Advisor, Paris, France

Hatsuki Aishima, Associate Professor, National Museum of Ethnology, Japan

Hossein Abadian, Professor of Iran Modern History

Hossein Khosrojerdi, Artist and Designer, London

Hussein A H Omar, Junior Research Fellow in History, Pembroke College, Oxford

Iradj Sobhani, Head of Gastroentology Department, Unviresity Paris-Est CRETEIL

Jamal Abdi, VP for Policy, National Iranian American Council

James M. Gustafson, Associate Professor of History ,Indiana State University

James McDougall, Associate Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford

Kamiar Mohaddes, Janeway Fellow in Economics, University of Cambridge

Kathryn Babayan, Associate Professor of Iranian History& Culture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Kaveh Ehsani, Assistant Professor of International Studies, DePaul University, Chicago  

Kevan Harris, Assistant Professor in Sociology, UCLA

Kiumars Pourahmad, Iranian film director

Lord John Alderdice, Director of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, Harris Manchester College, Oxford

Mahmud Farjami, Independent scholar, author and stand-up comedian

Mamak Khadem, Musician/ Mathematics Instructor, California, USA

Mana Kia, Assistant Professor, Middle East, South Asian and African Studies, Columbia University

Mani Haghighi, Filmmaker and Actor

Mania Akbari, Filmmaker and Artist , London

Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar, Professor, Department of Political Science, Director, Middle East Studies Program, Santa Barbara City College, CA

Mansour Farhang, Professor of Political Science, Bennington College

Masoud Behnoud, Journalist and Author

Massoumeh Torfeh, Iran Analyst, London School of Economics

Maureen Sioh, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, DePaul University

Mehdi Ghadyanloo, Artist/ Public artist

Mehran Kamrava, Professor, Georgetown University-Qatar

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University

Mohammad Ali Ardebili, Professor of Criminal Law, Shahid Beheshti Law School, Tehran

Mohammad Ghanoonparvar, Professor Emeritus of Persian and Comparative Literature, The University of Texas at Austin

Mohammad Jamal Samavati, Iranian Musician and Ethnomusicologist, Sheyda Ensemble

Mohammad Salemy, Artist & Curator, The New Centre for Research & Practice

Mohammad Taghi Karoubi, Professor of International Law, SOAS University

Mohammad Tavakoli-Targhi, Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto

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Moisés Garduño García, Professor in International Relations, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Mojtaba Mahdavi, Associate Professor of Political Science and ECMC Chair in Islamic Studies, University of Alberta

Nader Entessar, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Criminal Justice, University of South Alabama

Nadia Marzouki, chargée de recherche, CNRS, Paris, France

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Nayereh Tohidi, Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Director of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, California State University, Northridge

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Noushin Darya Framke, Writer, Editor, TheIPMN.org

Parviz Tanavoli, Artist and Scholar

Peyman Jafari, Lecturer in Modern History, University of Amsterdam

Philip G. Kreyenbroek, Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies, University of Goettingen

Philip Grant, Honorary Fellow, College of Arts, Humanities, and  Social Sciences,University of Edinburgh

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, Senior Lecturer in History, King’s College London

Richard Tapper, Professor of Anthropology, SOAS, University of London

Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of History, University of Delaware

Saeed Barzin, Iran analyst, BBC World Service (retired)

Saeed Paivandi, Professor of Sociology, University of Lorraine, Nancy, France

Sasan Fayazmanesh, Professor Emeritus of Economics, California State University, Fresno

Shahir Shahidsaless, Political analyst and freelance journalist

Sheila Carapico, Professor, Political Science and International Studies, University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia

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Timothy Mitchell, William B Ransford Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, Columbia University

Toby C. Jones, Professor and Director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Rutgers University

Tomoko Yamagishi, Professor in Cultural Theories and Iranian Studies, Meiji University, Tokyo

Touraj Atabaki, Senior Researcher, International Institute of Social History and Professor Emeritus and Chair of the Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia, Leiden University

Touraj Daryaee, Maseeh Chair in Persian Studies, Culture& History, UC Irvine

Yaser Mirdamadi, PhD candidate in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Professorial Research Associate, Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, SOAS University of London

Activists of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, 2018. Image: PPI/Zuma Press/PA Images.Pakistan is set to go to the polls on July 25th. Trusting the general elections will go ahead, they will mark an important step towards strengthening the country’s democratic process. But there is still much more to be done: democracy is not confined to the ballot box. Despite the progress made in the past decade, Pakistan continues to be bewitched by an array of partially real, partially imagined threats. The figures at very top of Pakistani society have spun a powerful narrative of a nation under constant attack, which dismisses any criticism or dissent as either ‘foreign influence’ or ‘anti-patriotic’ politics; a tactic that has been deployed in response to protests by the country’s ethnic minority communities. How Pakistan responds to these nascent movements is as much a test case for democracy as the forthcoming elections.  

Pakistan is slowly moving away from a decade that was marked by a wave of terrorism. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a website that monitors terrorism across the region, civilian deaths from terrorist attacks have fallen from 3000 in 2013 to 540 in 2017. Indiscriminate attacks have posed a constant challenge for the state, and civilians have paid the price of the country’s unconditional support for the United States-led “war on terror”. Only after a ruthless attack on a school in Peshawar in 2014 which killed 132 pupils has the government made a decisive turn towards a fully-fledged counterterrorism strategy, with the aim of eliminating once and for all the menace that has left severe open wounds across the country.

Pashtuns have been demonised as violent extremists, traffickers, and Taliban sympathisers

One of those open wounds can be located within the Pashtun community. Pashtuns live predominantly in the north-west regions that border Afghanistan, which includes the Federally Administrative Tribal Areas and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Since 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the populations of these regions have been engulfed by state-led conflicts. A guerrilla war that served Pakistan and US designs against the Soviets, fuelled radicalisation, and perpetuated colonial-style rule, created the conditions for two of Pakistan’s most underdeveloped regions to be further marginalised.

Pashtuns have been demonised as violent extremists, traffickers, and Taliban sympathisers. Pashtun students have been profiled by security forces and have been subject to harassment and abuse, which, in the case of Mashal Khan back in 2017, ended with his brutal assassination at the hands of religious extremists. Several hundreds of Pashtuns have been reported missing; earlier this year, a UN human rights body said it had received over 700 reports of enforced disappearances in Pakistan. The promised dignity that democratic rule brings to all citizens has not been experienced by Pashtuns or by most of Pakistanis in general.

After decades of being misunderstood, dehumanized, deprived by the state, Pashtuns are finally awakening, peacefully. A new social movement known as PTM, or Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (Pashtun Protection Movement), formed in 2014, has organised several protests to demand dignity and rights not just for themselves but all Pakistanis. PTM is demanding what, by definition, a functional democratic state must guarantee to all her citizens.

Reactions to PTM are conferring the movement a crescent legitimacy. The top military leadership classified PTM as a movement supported by ‘foreign forces’ and an obstacle to their fight against terrorism. More recently, attempts to link PTM to the Taliban have been circulated on social media, which the organisation denies. The right to protest and to demand human rights and dignity should not be equated with army efforts to bring peace and stability to Pakistan. PTM, like any other citizen, or civilian group, has the right to be critical of the military.

PTM, like any other citizen, or civilian group, has the right to be critical of the military.

The English-language media within Pakistan have covered PTM’s protests, however, they reach only a fraction of the population. TV channels, however, have not covered the protests seemingly due to ‘self-imposed’ censorship from above. Karachi’s PTM gathering in May was disrupted hundreds of miles away, with the movement’s leader being barred from boarding two flights, first in Islamabad, and, some hours later, in Lahore. Political leaders from main parties like PPP or PML-N, perhaps motivated by the upcoming elections, have voiced their concerns on attempted censorship of the PTM.

Social movements are constitutive of every democratic society, and play an important role in making them more just and progressive. Parliament’s recent decision to merge the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a step in the right direction to bring constitutional rights to all citizens in Pakistan. The existence of a social movement borne in a region where democracy and constitutional rights were a mirage is a sign that young people in Pakistan’s most remote regions are eager to be part of democratic processes.

Although the army’s anti-terrorism campaign has been successful in reducing the number of attacks, it must acknowledge that it’s past errors have contributed to the marginalisation of ethnic communities like the Pashtuns. Secondly, the military must come to terms with the fact that democracy grows out of the right to protest. If it continues to see democracy only in the narrow terms of the ballot box, the dream of a fully democratic Pakistan will not be realised.

London women’s protest against austerity cuts. Photo: Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi.In the long history of women’s battle for civil and human rights – and I include trans woman in this struggle – personal testimony, women talking and being listened to, has been crucial to forcing the public awakening that precipitates activism, protest, legal and policy change.

There are elements of this tradition of listening, documenting injustices, and keeping a record of the casual damage of structural violence, that chime with investigative journalism. This is what the pioneering reporter Ida B. Wells did in nineteenth century America, when she carefully documented the lynching of black men, her truth challenging established narratives.

But the world of investigative journalism today is essentially masculine. Certain stories are seen as worthier of investigation, certain storytellers deemed more credible and authoritative. The voices of women are rarely prioritised. Any feminist anti-racist reporting project must work to dismantle received ideas of how and whose stories should be told, and who gets to tell them.

In my own reporting I deliberately listen to people in a particular way, putting in the extra work to find and hear the voices of those who are often invisible to wider society – in policy, in politics, and in feminism. There are too many under-investigated stories; the violence done is pervasive, hidden in plain sight.

How austerity – state-sanctioned structural violence against women, under the guise of ‘saving money’ – has played out in Britain is just one example.

London women’s protest against austerity cuts. Photo: Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi.Reducing the role of the state, cutting budgets for local authorities, legal aid, and public services including social security (we call them welfare benefits in the UK), freezing public sector salaries – these policies hurt women the most. That’s well-documented.

Women are more likely to use public services, more likely to be employed in low-paid jobs in the public sector, and more likely to do the unpaid care work when the government no longer provides a particular social service. It follows, if you cut the public sector, you hurt women.

“In the UK, these policies choices were deliberate. Austerity was enacted despite knowledge that it would impoverish women.”

In the UK, these policies choices were deliberate. Austerity was enacted despite knowledge that it would impoverish women.Impact assessments were produced showing this. One feminist NGO even took the government to court to challenge the first austerity budget. They lost.  

Some of these policies seemed to be a deliberate attempt to revert to an old-fashioned idea of a nuclear family – forcing women into financially-dependent relationships in order to survive. Even though working class and some middle class women have always had to take paid work (on top of unpaid care work carried out in the home).

Public services that were built up over decades enabled women to live more financially independent lives – they weren’t perfect, but we could build on them. These were rolled back under austerity policies.

I’ve focused on the impact of austerity on the lives of migrant women, working class women, and black and brown women. Referred to in the stats as BAME, we have data showing that they lose more than even the poorest white women under austerity, which only adds to existing structural disadvantages.

When I’ve documented these stories, it’s been from the bottom up. As an independent journalist, mostly working for small organisations, I have had the flexibility to choose how I frame and investigate stories.

Yarl's Wood Protest 2015, Bedford, United Kingdom, Photo: Flickr/iDJ Photography.CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Some Rights Reserved.This means that my sources tend to be based in communities and living through injustices, rather than people with access to money and power who might blow the whistle on something. Following the money is important, but so too is following the policy. Who is hurt and why?

I’m not the only one who works in this way. Back in 2016, I worked in collaboration with journalists at the Scottish investigative journalism platform the Ferret, to tell the story of refugee women and women with uncertain migration status trying to leave violent relationships.

While working on that story, I was reminded of a comment made by the woman who set up the UK's first formal domestic violence refuge, in an abandoned terrace house in west London. She said:“Nobody seemed to be doing anything constructive to help. They just seemed to be sending these women back to the men who beat them, and some back to be killed.”

She described “a terrible relentless uncaring…” and that was – is – exactly what’s happening to refugee and migrant women across the UK today. People who are supposed to help are turning them away.

“Nobody seemed to be doing anything constructive to help. They just seemed to be sending these women back to the men who beat them, and some back to be killed.”

I wrote about a bright young woman named Nabeelah who had come to the UK from Pakistan and married a British man. He was physically abusive; his family bullied her. One day she said: enough.

She went to the British police and they interrogated her. When she went to a domestic violence refugee, they asked: what’s your immigration status? They couldn’t help because her migration status meant they wouldn’t receive government money to fund her place in their shelter.

This is another effect of austerity and a government that is very hostile to migrants. There’s a gap in British law, which means that some migrant and refugee women in the UK on spousal visas can’t access some public services.

I’ve written about this issue before, and black feminists have fought this for decades. It predates austerity, which has made it worse. Legal aid for most immigration cases and for challenges to benefit decisions is now much more limited, and fewer services are available.

Nabeela managed to leave her abusive husband, but she had nowhere to go. Eventually she was put in touch with a brilliant lawyer, a woman of colour working all hours to keep her practice going because the government cut legal aid for most immigration cases as part of its austerity programme.

Much of the work this lawyer does for these women is unpaid. With her help, Nabeelah secured a place at a special refuge for women of South Asian origin.

Funding for these refuges has been cut dramatically by government under austerity policies. They are reducing contracts for specialist domestic violence grassroots organisations that support LGBTQ services, services for black women, services for muslim women, services for LatinX women and instead they offer generic contracts to large organisations who do many different things.

As part of my research – as well interviewing several women – I tried to get data from government on the number of domestic violence victims refused help because they were in the country on spousal visas.

I sent freedom of information requests to the Home Office. Their response? They don’t keep this data. I sent requests to 34 local authorities across England and Wales, all of whom were part of a network of councils monitoring precarious migrants in their districts. Not a single one kept data on these women.

That’s another challenge in investigating issues affecting mostly black and poor women: there are huge data gaps.

Most of the councils I contacted said that they follow existing protocols for dealing with survivors of domestic violence. But, as with the Home Office’s latest Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy, these provide no specific guidance in cases of women without children who are unable to access public funds because of their migration status.

That’s another challenge in investigating issues affecting mostly black and poor women: there are huge data gaps.

I also worked with a university researcher who was investigating the effect of cuts to south Asian women and other women of colour where she lived. She found statistics on gender, statistics on race, but rarely, when it came to public services, on both together. This frustrated her, and made her feel invisible.

This gap is part of a wider problem where official, accepted narratives ignore and render invisible the lived experiences of non-white people, especially those who identify as women.

It is such gaps and invisibility that Ida B Wells challenged when she investigated and reported on lynchings in America, more than a hundred years ago. This is what feminist, anti-racist media must do today.

* This article is adapted from a talk given by Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi at the 2018 International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, where 50.50 organised a panel on why we need feminist investigative journalism.

Photo: Ruslana Alibekova. Source: chernovik.net. All rights reserved.According to the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, a bill on the voluntary study of national languages that was passed by parliament this April will have a detrimental effect on inter-ethnic relations in Russia. The Kremlin’s position on the question still remains unknown.

Meanwhile, civic activists across the national republics of the Russian Federation are demonstrating a willingness to fight for the preservation of identity. Unexpectedly for many, national linguistic policies have provoked a wave of mobilisation.

Integral, but voluntary

The draft law is the result of a statement made by President Putin last year, in which he claimed that “forcing someone to learn a non-native language is just as unacceptable as lowering the level of Russian education.” During the meeting of the Council for Cross-National Relations that took place in Yoshkar-Ola in July 2017, Putin urged the heads of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation to pay “special attention” to this issue.

Putin also added that, in the Russian Federation, national languages are “an integral part of indigenous culture of the country’s peoples.” He also emphasised that “the right to learn national languages is guaranteed by the Constitution, and it is a voluntary right.”

This statement led to a series of inspections by prosecutors in republics across the Russian Federation. North Ossetia, where Ossetian has been taught as a state language, was one of them. However, at that time, Putin’s statements drew little attention in the North Caucasus. It seemed as if the region was indifferent to the fate of its languages. Tatarstan was the only region that stood up against the Kremlin in the fight for the fundamental rights of Russia’s federal organisation.

Perhaps it was this Volga republic’s “principles” that led to the North Caucasus becoming agitated by this recent bill. Social activists in North Ossetia were the first to speak out, with the Association of Teachers and Researchers of Ossetian Language and Literature organising a signed appeal to the Head of State in December 2017.

The lesson of the Ossetian language. Source: sevosetia.ruThese civic activists refer both to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal laws which allow individual republics to freely choose their state languages in their territories and regulate how they are studied. In their statement, the activists emphasise that “the laws that regulate the study of Ossetian as a state language of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania are based entirely on the Constitution and federal legislations.”

Following the example of North Ossetian activists, intellectuals and civic activists in Kabardino-Balkaria addressed the heads of the executive and legislative powers in an open letter at the end of April. The letter was published on the Kabardino-Balkarian Human Rights Centre website: “The bill proposed by the State Duma flagrantly violates the constitutional rights of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria (KBR), as well as those of other national republics: all of them are legal state entities that have a right of self-determination within the legal framework of Russian Federation, including the right to choose a model for preservation and development of their native languages. On that basis we categorically object to the adoption of the bill, and we demand that it be removed from the (legislative) agenda immediately because, apart from its destructive power that aims to completely obliterate national languages, it can also seriously destabilise the socio-political climate of the multinational state.”

The Congress of Karachai People also issued a demand to stop the bill in support of the initiative of Kabardino-Balkarian civic activists. It states the following: “In accordance with the Republic Constitutions, the languages of the national republics are considered state languages. Consequently, the current legislative initiative undermines the basis of statehood in the national regions and thus should be considered as destructive. Furthermore, it can even become a factor that destabilized the cross-national relations in our country.”

In May, Kumyk civic activists addressed the members of the State Duma demanding that the bill be removed from the legislative agenda because it is “anti-people”. This was followed by the similar demands from the National-Cultural Autonomy of Dagestani Avars.

“A deadly threat”

North Caucasus regional languages are exposed to various degrees of threat, due to different tempos of linguistic assimilation. In the eight years between Russia’s 2002 and 2008 censi, the number of Karachayevo-Balkar language speakers in Kabardino-Balkaria decreased by 10,000. In 2002, the ratio of Karachayevo-Balkar speakers in Karachayevo-Cherkessiya to the size of its population was above 101% – i.e., the language was also spoken by members of other national groups. However, by the year 2010, that ratio had dropped to 93%.

The number of speakers of the Kabardino-Cherkessiyan language (the linguistically proper name) in Kabardino-Balkaria decreased by 68,000, and in Karachayevo-Cherkessiya the number remains unchanged, even though the Cherkess population, a sub-group of the Circassian people, in the region has increased slightly.

During the same period, the number of Ossetian speakers in North Ossetia decreased by nearly 43,000. The number of Kumyk speakers in Dagestan had decreased by almost 63,000. And the number of Avar language speakers in the same republic had dropped by nearly 80,000.

These numbers speak for themselves. Observations in the North Caucasus show a general tendency toward a demographic increase among all ethnic groups on the one hand, and a decrease in the number of national language speakers on the other.

Speaking to me, the head of Kabardino-Balkarian Human Rights Centre Valery Khatazhukov confirmed this trend: “I can claim without any exaggeration that ethnic cultures in Russia are facing a deadly threat. And this is connected first and foremost to federal-level initiatives aimed at diminishing the public and political roles native languages play in these regions.”

According to Khatazhukov, over the last decade the time dedicated to learning the native languages of Kabardino-Balkaria has been reduced by 50%, elementary classes that were taught in Kabardin and Balkarian languages have been closed, and native language learning in pre-school education has been gradually phased out. Khatazhukov believes that these are the causes of public outrage and criticism towards this new draft legislation on the voluntary learning of native languages.

It should be noted that the numbers of regional language speakers were in decline even under the conditions of compulsory education

“While analysing the current situation, we have to face a question that is no longer rhetorical: what is to be done, and what is the role of the state in solving these problems?” Khatazhukov adds. “It might be worth remembering why the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic was established in the first place, and where it gets its name from. It received its name as a result of the self-determination of both Kabardin and Balkar peoples within Russia.”

Khatazhukov explains that it is not about privileging Kabarinians and Balkarians – all citizens of the republic have their rights to self-determination along with equal civil and political rights. However, within the territory of KBR, Kabardinian and Balkarian are designated as state languages, and, according to Khatazhukov, this is why learning these languages must be obligatory.

It should be noted that the numbers of regional language speakers were in decline even under the conditions of compulsory education. The situation is predicted to worsen after learning the state languages in the republics of the North Caucasus is made optional.

A non-standard situation

Early in 2018, civic activists in the North Caucasus announced a petition against a law that initiates “the exclusion of the national-regional component” from federal education policies, and which had already been enacted in 2007. This law began to be implemented in November 2008, after the Ministry of Education and Science banned the use of native (non-Russian) languages in state examinations. In other words, native-speaking students were no longer allowed to take their final school exams.

The North Caucasus is now almost devoid of schools where students are taught in their region’s native language. The only school which does was recently opened in North Ossetia, though children are taught in their native languages in some rural primary schools in Dagestan. However, there are no educational institutions where a full education is carried out in regional languages in Dagestan. No such schools exist in Chechnya and Ingushetia, which are practically mono-ethnic, either.

In the republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia, people still use regional languages for everyday communication, which creates the impression that Vainakh ethnic groups (Chechens, Ingush and Kists) are resilient against the threats of assimilation. However, according to many sociolinguists, the absence of education, visualisation, and paperwork in native languages will eventually lead to the qualitative degradation of the latter.

These are the reasons why national activists are protesting against the efforts to make regional languages optional in education. Among other things, the petition above states that “the realisation of the principle of choosing a native language, or promulgation of the right to choose whether to study one’s native language, will have catastrophic consequences for all the languages and cultures of non-Russian peoples.”

The number of speakers of native languages in Dagestan is steadily declining. Photo: Kavkaz.Realii. All rights reserved.“If in the final school exam (EGE), the Russian language exam is obligatory, while other subjects are examined only in Russian, most of the non-Russian parents will prefer to raise their children as Russian native speakers because that would allow them to maximise the time spent on learning Russian as well as other subjects. Consequently, students who will keep studying their native languages will suffer in terms of their knowledge of Russian and their level of education in general.”

It would be untrue to say that regional activists are fighting for their native languages only by criticising the state powers. For example, Adygean enthusiasts (Kabardinians, Circassians, and Adygians) created their own information platform, CircassiaTV, which distributes various video materials in their native language.

Elbrussoid, the Karachayevo-Balkar foundation for the development of youth, is translating and dubbing popular animation and feature films. Alongside this, young programmers are creating educational gaming apps that help users learn the Karachayevo-Balkarian language.

Activists of Moscow-based Kumyk organisation Qumuqlar translated the whole interface of the social networking platform VKontakte. Now users of this popular social network are able to switch to the Kumyk language, which is rendered in Latin alphabet. The interface of this social network has been translated into other languages as well. Now users can choose between Kabardino-Circassian, Ossetian and Lezgin. Ingush, Avarian and Lak versions are now in the process of being translated as well. Some Caucasian languages lost their positions in the social network due to a lack of updates – after all, every month the VKontakte interface is updated with new words.

Governmental approach

As far as Russian state’s role in popularising national cultures is concerned, it appears that the government considers regional languages to be risk factors, and is trying to get rid of them as soon as possible. However, it is precisely restrictive measures that are stimulating yet another wave of ethnic mobilisation. In this sense, language appears as an entirely new factor in the North Caucasus. Until this day, the main triggers of mobilisation were, among others, resources (for example, land) or distribution of seats in the government.

The Russian government needs to rethink its linguistic policies at least for the sake of preserving stability. It is quite clear that villages, where regional languages still dominate, should use different educational approaches and even different textbooks in contrast to urban centres where knowledge of regional languages is often weak. As far as the educational system is concerned, these features must be taken into account. National activists also believe it is important to emphasise the presence of languages in the regional media.

Moscow criticises its neighbouring countries for initiating the same kind of policies towards Russian minorities

Furthermore, the government is not even training certified Caucasian language translators, even though the demand can be quite high–for example, when translators are needed in courts or during legal investigations involving people who prefer to be addressed in their native language. However, as things stand, only philologists and journalists get to learn these languages in universities.

The Russian government is applying double standards in their linguistic policies. On the one hand, we have an adoption of laws that demotivate people and create disadvantageous conditions for learning regional languages. On the other hand, Moscow criticises its neighbouring countries for initiating the same kind of policies towards Russian minorities.

For example, in April 2018 a Russian parliamentarian described the decision by the Latvian government to gradually transform Russian schools into Latvian ones as “linguistic genocide”. This statement came in the context of the very same legislative initiative about the voluntary study of regional languages. Such hypocrisy is obviously a source of public discontent.

Quite unexpectedly, activists in the North Caucasus, Volga, Ural and other regions are starting to demonstrate solidarity in public discourse. All of the aforementioned petitions addressed to the federal government appear to represent the last stage before the conflict escalates into street protests. In Tatarstan, the government refused nearly a dozen requests to hold marches in support of the Tatar language. Moscow will find it much more difficult to ban street protests in the North Caucasus.

This article was translated by Tomas Čiučelis.

A Palestinian shows his ID to security officer at an Israeli checkpoint, May 2018. Luay Sababa//Press Association. All rights reserved.Turmoil has erupted in the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP), following the board’s decision to hold its 2019 annual meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, as some members charged the organization of discriminatory practices, in violation of its own principles. 

IARPP is one of the fastest growing psychotherapy organizations in the world, famed for its commitment to social justice and a style of clinical work that recognizes the patient as a co-creator of the psychoanalytic work along with the analyst. Most IARPP members reside and practice in the US. The Israeli chapter is the organization’s second largest.  

“It is unreasonable to hold an international professional conference in a country where it will not be accessible to some of the professionals interested in attending it, on grounds such as the clinician’s’ ethnicity or political opinions,” an Israeli IARPP member said, under condition of remaining anonymous. “Palestinian clinicians residing in the West Bank and Gaza are highly unlikely to receive permits to enter Israel at this time, and even the process of applying for these permits is so degrading, that it is illegitimate for IARPP to subject the Palestinian attendees to this ordeal.” 

Although the 2019 conference location became a matter of fierce controversy among both the leadership and the rank members of this 2000-member organization, the Board has refused to reconsider the venue of its 2019 conference, a response which is the only formal reply that IARPP has made to the issue. The Board then closed down debate on the question on the IARPP internet discussion forum after 24 hours. Some of the dissenting members reported strong pressures to keep quiet, including verbal assaults, threats, and character assassinations on multiple professional mailing lists.

In response to the organization’s disregard for member concerns, a number of IARPP members have cancelled their lectures at the upcoming 2018 conference in NYC (one whole panel, on the subject of Israel-Palestine, has been cancelled), left the Tel Aviv conference organizing group or left IARPP altogether, while others have called for a boycott of both conferences.  

“I simply could not in good conscience remain with IARPP when there is such disregard for Israel’s occupation, daily atrocities against my people, like the recent massacres in Gaza, and violations of international law and human rights,” said a Palestinian psychotherapist practicing in NYC who recently left IARPP.

The upheaval did not end with the organization membership however. Over 1300 mental health professionals, academics and activists from across the world, including Israel and the West Bank, have signed three different petitions and statements urging IARPP’s board to reconsider the conference location. The petition that received the largest number of signatures was initiated by the US-based activist group called USA-Palestine Mental Health Network, in conjunction with Dr. Samah Jabr, the Palestinian activist psychiatrist who oversees all mental health services in the West Bank. Renowned feminist philosopher Judith Butler is among the signatories. Another petition was drawn up by the members of the Israeli group Psychoactive – Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights. The 34 signatories of this petition (11 of them IARPP members) argued that “holding an event of this nature in Tel Aviv implies a political position that accepts the Israeli Occupation as a reality with which we/people can live”, pointing out that “the Israeli establishment traditionally sees such events as expressions of acceptance of Israel’s policy and the fierce debate in the IARPP network also attests to the political and ideological significance that is ascribed to the conference location”.

The dissenting Israeli professionals added that according to Israel’s own laws, international professionals who actively resist the Israeli Occupation are also unlikely to be allowed into Israel, hinting at the recent law blacklisting members of some 20 human rights defender organizations – including the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Quakers organization American Friends Service Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace – and banning them from entering the country.  

Most astonishingly perhaps, given the personal and professional risks they could face in the current social climate as a result of such action, 24 Palestinian mental health professionals who are citizens of Israel organized their own petition, protesting the choice of the conference location and asking IARPP to move the event to Cyprus or Jordan so that their Palestinian colleagues from the West Bank and Gaza could attend. “We have been exposed to the key relational concepts, such as intersubjectivity and mutual recognition, and appreciate the way that the relational theory and practice make room for thinking about the mental health impacts of social and political conditions. In this light, we were surprised to discover that IARPP chose to hold its international conference in Israel, despite its longstanding history of human rights abuses, notably the violent occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza. In our minds, not taking these ongoing assaults on Palestinian lives and human rights into account when choosing the conference location could be translated as their quiet acceptance by IARPP”, the letter reads.

The Palestinian signatories asserted that their colleagues in the occupied and besieged territories “have a right to resist”, and expressed hope that “the IARPP Board will take our appeal seriously and make an ethical choice to side with the oppressed”. The board members of the Arab Psychologists’ Association, representing most Arab mental health professionals in Israel, are among the signatories.  

IARPP’s board maintains that the organization does not choose its conference locations based on political considerations, but rather holds conferences in countries that boast thriving IARPP chapters – and Israel has one. The board has also pledged to organize a tour in the West Bank (at present, the tour being organized looks more like a tour of Jerusalem… whether East or West Jerusalem, remains to be seen), and to try applying for permits for Palestinian mental health workers to attend. It has been brought to IARPP’s attention that such permits are unlikely to be issued and that even if they are, most Palestinian mental health professionals are unlikely to choose to attend, given the popularity of the academic boycott in general and prominent Palestinian professionals’ positions regarding the IARPP conference more specifically. 

To date, multiple media items covering the conflict have been published, including the piece by Dr. Alice Rothchild in Mondoweiss and its Hebrew translation, which appeared on the Israeli professional psychology website Psikhologiya Ivrit, and articles by Dr. Samah Jabr in Middle East Monitor. In an article provocatively titled A Monologue with the “Other”, Jabr questioned IARPP’s ability to hold a safe space for Palestinians in their own home, while accommodating for Israel’s policies of military occupation and siege. “The IARPP is losing a unique opportunity to respond to the voices that ask for a genuinely safe space for Palestinians and their supporters,” she responds “Treating Israel like any other controversial government, ignores the impact of the occupation on the possible participation in the conference itself by Palestinians and others. Placing the convenience of the conference for Israeli participants over the rights of clinicians elsewhere to have fair access to it.”

At this moment, both the supporters and the opponents of the Tel Aviv conference are getting ready for the IARPP 2018 conference in NYC. The steering committee of the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network organized an event, Voices on Palestine, which will be held at the same venue – the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan – where the conference is taking place. The event, which is scheduled to take place concurrently with the IARPP conference but without overlapping with any of its proceedings, will start with a panel of speakers, to be followed by an open discussion on Israel-Palestine. All the attendees of the conference have been invited to participate, including the IARPP board members, each of whom has received a friendly personal invitation. IARPP did not reply to the invitations, but weeks after signing a contract with the Roosevelt Hotel, one of the organizers of Voices on Palestine received a phone call from the hotel administration, notifying her that the event could not be held at Roosevelt, because IARPP feared conference disruptions and… had hired a private security company to protect the conference from the event organizers!

The hotel representatives further noted that they became so alarmed upon learning about the IARPP board’s fears that they additionally arranged that the NYC Police would also be present to help safeguard the conference. Eventually, the activist was able to convince the hotel administration that she was an IARPP member herself and that the event she and her colleagues were planning was meant to be a peaceful discussion and not a security threat of any kind. 

It will be interesting to see what will actually happen at the NYC conference. While some of the protesters are still hopeful that IARPP will listen and that the New York and Tel Aviv conferences will allow for honest political discussion, others are deeply disenchanted and alarmed by the way in which this heretofore progressive professional organization is enacting what seems like a strong identification with the right-wing government of Israel – representing political dissent as a security threat, and not ruling out any means of “self-defense” in the face of this “threat”.

A 1972 hunger strike by Ukrainian Canadian students in support of Ukrainian political prisoners.

This article was given as a paper at the “1968-2018: Militant practices East and West” conference held in Paris on 23-24 May 2018.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a radical movement of Ukrainian socialists and anarchists emerged in Canada and northeastern USA. We were sons and daughters of the Ukrainian nationalist post-war emigration and the first generation to grow up in liberal democracies and to go to universities. We regarded ourselves as Ukrainian Canadian citizens rather than as immigrants, but in the process of our radicalisation we developed a strong concern for the situation in Ukraine as well.

Our generation was swept up in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the student movement, the protests against the war in Vietnam, the movements of African Americans and First Nations, the feminist movement, struggles for multicultural rights and the Quebecois national movement, by the counterculture that defied traditional authority, conformity and conservative social mores.

We followed what was happening in European countries east and west, including France and Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union. The generation of the 1960s in Ukraine, the shistdesiatnyky (lit. “people of the 60s”, the 1960s cultural and political movement for self-determination) had a particularly strong influence upon us. We read their work, Lina Kostenko, Ivan Dziuba, Vyacheslav Chornovil, Lev Lukianenko and Ivan Kandyba. We knew they protested the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by Warsaw Pact troops, and that the crushing of the Prague Spring was also the beginning of further repression against them as well. They were central to our understanding of Ukraine, because they told us something quite different from what our parents had told us. They were a key to our radicalisation. From out of this broad international experience there appeared a more politicised and self-organised group with an agenda to fight for our rights in the diaspora and for our aspirations for Ukraine. With respect to the latter our unifying slogan was “For Democracy and Socialism in an Independent Ukraine”.

Activists today in both Russia and Ukraine who are marginalised and repressed can be better protected and heard if they are better supported internationally, from abroad

Our strategic objective was to challenge the monopoly on dialogue between East and West held by the ruling classes of the USA and USSR, to break down the isolation of the democratic, national, workers’ and civil rights movements in the countries of the Warsaw Pact and defend them from repression.

We aimed to make these movements in the Socialist Bloc better known in the west, to promote an independent dialogue between the new emancipation movements in the west and east, and to organise international solidarity and practical aid with our counterparts in the east.

Our methods were protest actions organised by a network of Committees in Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners, the publication and distribution of an English language journal about Ukrainian affairs (META) and a Ukrainian language journal (Diyaloh) of information, analysis and debate about major developments in international politics and opposition movements in the east. We organised the clandestine transport and distribution of literature, typewriters and basic printing equipment to opposition groups in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. We co-operated with opposition groups in exile from these countries and with western socialist organisations. We transported their literature as well as ours into Eastern Europe.

A number of our members moved from Canada to study or live permanently in Western Europe in order to conduct this work. We remained a small group of some 25 members. Our public and clandestine work lasted for some 13 years, until 1985. By that time the wave of radicalisation that started in the 1960s had subsided. We did not quite reach the time of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union as a unified and still active collective.

1968-2018

What is relevant from our past experience for today? What are the continuities and absences and how do we formulate new perspectives and new objectives for our work?

We did achieve some of our goals, such as helping secure the release of political prisoners like Leonid Plyushch and Piotr Grigorenko. We were told by them and by other prisoners afterwards that their conditions of incarceration were less intolerable because the authorities knew and they themselves knew that people in other countries were campaigning for their release. This meant that international solidarity was effective and worthwhile, even though the governments that imprisoned the people we were defending never admitted it.

Activists today in both Russia and Ukraine who are marginalised and repressed can be better protected and heard if they are better supported internationally, from abroad. A permanent campaign of international solidarity is needed, in the first instance with those are in prison and enforced exile.   

What is still valid of the broad objectives adopted by our group in the 1970s: democracy, socialism and independence? All three of them, but in a radically altered socio-economic and state political context. The Soviet Union has collapsed. A new wave of emigration has arrived in western Europe and North America. Ukraine became a formally independent state. There is a new and corrupt ruling class in Ukraine that exploits the labour of society, violates its democratic rights and fails to protect its national sovereignty against a resurgent Russian state. The Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity ten years later failed to dislodge it. Where once Ukraine was embedded in the Soviet Union, on its side of the Cold War, today Ukraine is the object of inter-imperialist rivalry between Russian and western imperialisms, in neither camp but on the front line between them. The Ukrainian ruling class is pulled in both directions into the projects of regional expansion and hegemony of both competing camps (NATO, EU, Eurasian Economic Union, Russian security sphere).

These rivalries between the West and Russia dominate international discourse. As in the time of the Cold War, there is still a need for an independent international observatory on the current situation inside Ukraine and the country’s place in the interstate system and global economy that takes as its standpoint the interests of Ukrainian society as opposed to those of its ruling class. This kind of observatory could be organised by a coalition of activists abroad to produce and disseminate its own criticism, analyses and policy proposals as well as those of the independent labour movement, human rights groups, the LGBT community and others in Ukraine.

We still need to recover the radical Ukrainian tradition that is rooted in the philosophy of universal emancipation, to contest the integral nationalist and racist tradition of the far right

We still need to recover the radical Ukrainian tradition that is rooted in the philosophy of universal emancipation, to contest the integral nationalist and racist tradition of the far right. This is a difficult undertaking in the wake of the historical catastrophe of Stalinism and the failure of transition to the western model of democracy and the market.

Our small group in the 1970s adopted socialism as one of our objectives as a result both of the influences upon us from our immediate Western milieu and of our own rediscovery of the Ukrainian vernacular socialist tradition, the one that contested Stalinism and was almost completely annihilated by it. The latter came to us from our study of the 1917 Revolution, the 1920s in the Soviet Union and the nationalist movement in the Second World War. We confronted the blank spots and falsifications of history that were created by the Stalinist and integral nationalist schools. These blank spots and falsifications still leave a deep mark on the consciousness of the present young generation in the east and west. The rewriting of history goes on today in Ukraine, but now it is done under a new ideological imperative articulated in the Decommunisation laws and the Institute of National Memory. Historical scholarship, if we can call it that, is harnessed to provide legitimacy to the new Ukrainian ruling class and to outlaw its critics.  

And finally, we need to ask ourselves why so much of the Western left fails to protest against the crimes of Putin’s regime as it does religiously against US imperialism. Who is defending today’s victims of repression and political prisoners in Ukraine and Russia, not to mention Belarus, Kazakhstan and elsewhere in the east?

There is the deeper problem than simply the lack of awareness: every historic wave of revolt against the established order disintegrates and is reincorporated into the status quo again. This process leaves behind a residue of political actors who speak in the language of their former radicalism but in the interests of one or another part of the status quo. In international politics, this is the phenomenon of campism. One of the main obstacles that we Ukrainian socialists faced when we were trying to defend Soviet political prisoners in the 1970s and 1980s came from some of our fellow comrades in the left. Their response to our condemnation of Stalinist repressions was to argue that the repressions carried out by Western state agencies like the CIA in Latin America were even worse. This kind of moral relativism was in fact an apology for Stalinism, an exoneration of its crimes, and indeed a judgement that the USSR was a superior, more progressive and humane civilisation than advanced Western capitalism. It was a veiled campism, a political orientation  in favour of protecting the Soviet Union’s ruling class from the alleged danger of a restoration of capitalism posed by its domestic critics, the dissidents like Andrey Sakharov, Pyotr Grigorenko, Leonid Plyushch and Mustafa Dzhemilev. As it turned out, it was the Soviet Union’s ruling Communist Party that restored capitalism, not the Party’s critics.

The Western left today is a pale shadow of former self in the 1970s. Some even question whether it deserves to be called “left-wing” any more. However, we do still confront the campist orientation among its remnants, this time in the form of defending Putin’s regime in Russia and its actions in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere. So, if we are to be effective in our defense and solidarity work today we must confront left-wing Putinism, this contemporary campism. It ranges across a whole spectrum, from obscurantist nostalgia for the Soviet Union to the actions of a Western lobby cultivated and funded by the Russian state itself.