Screenshot:Citizens Assembly on Brexit, Manchester, September 2017.YouTube. Fair Use.

Dear friends of Another Europe Is Possible,

When some time ago Michael Chessum, registering my skepticism about a second referendum, asked me a very fair next question “So what is DiEM25’s position on Brexit”? – we may not have been as clear as we are today. So I’m writing in the hope that my answer may be of interest to you and to those who follow us.

Prior to the Brexit referendum, we campaigned together to Remain in Europe to change it: a principled, articulate position which brought together the British Left and progressives throughout Europe, from John McDonnell and Caroline Lucas to Yanis Varoufakis, yourselves and ourselves.

The outcome of the Brexit referendum and the dramatic political developments which followed it, have instead created huge divisions among progressives, despite having to face in Britain the transformation of the UK Conservatives into the “Brexit means Brexit” party (a self-serving delusion presiding over a democracy-free zone process) and in the wider world, Trump and the rise of the “national international” (a coalition of dangerously anti-democratic forces).

Strategic disagreements are natural in the face of a historical strategic defeat like the referendum outcome, and the tasks of moving forwards under these conditions necessarily much more uphill. But an empowering democratic debate taking into full consideration not only the causes of the defeat, but also the opportunities that arise for a new, and maybe more profound form of political transformation, should bring us together again.

Screenshot. Citizens Assembly on Brexit, Manchester, September 2017.I must applaud your decision to transform Another Europe is possible into a member-led democratic organisation and the timing of your decision. Never before has the task to democratize every level of British politics been more urgent or the challenge to create inclusive dialogue around the country more pressing. So I would like to wish you an excellent launch for this exciting new journey that you are on.

I need also to congratulate you on your brilliant work to expose the contradictions of Brexit within the British Left. DiEM25 dedicated every sinew we possessed at the time of the referendum to campaigning with you against Brexit but you have been able to transform what was once the fairly complex argument of a vocal fringe (“stay in Europe to change it” or as Yanis Varoufakis used to put it “in the EU against this EU”) into a hegemonising message at the 2018 Labour conference, with the ubiquitous “Love Corbyn, hate Brexit” placards shifting the internal narrative by a visible margin.

I also have to concede how important it was for you, Caroline Lucas and many others in the Left to shape from a progressive standpoint the developing debate on the ‘People’s Vote’, focusing on the backstage dealing of the government negotiating strategy and on a progressive critique of what it has so far achieved. You deserve a lot of creditfor movingremainers so far on from the disastrous official remain campaign of 2016.

We all believe that the deal negotiated by Theresa May is terrible, in method and motive, in the dangers it poses to workers’ rights, environmental protections, human rights and freedom to move and for the damage it can produce to our social model. We all agree that we must work together to exert the maximum pressure towards its defeat, whenever it finally comes to Parliament.

Screenshot: Citizens Assembly, Manchester, September 2017.But we need to be equally clear about our disagreement at this critical juncture of the roller-coaster that is the Brexit process. For us the mode of delivery of a ‘People’s Vote’ cannot work from a progressive perspective.

Jeremy Corbyn insists that “a People’s vote is not an option for the present”. We think he is right. To have a meaningful effect a People’s Vote, that is, any referendum on the deal with an option to remain, needs to happen well ahead of 29 March 2019, when the article 50 current deadline is bound to conclude the Brexit saga.

Considering the necessary obligations for implementing a referendum, allowing for an electoral campaign of at least one month and before that presumably organising the electoral machine, this should be announced not later than mid-January for the referendum to be held in mid March. But before such an announcement can be made, legislation must be passed both at the House of Commons and at the House of Lords and a referendum bill not yet drafted must be approved in both houses. Unfortunate as it might be, with Parliament shut down for Christmas and in the face of a looming constitutional crisis, is there any possibility that this process could be completed in less than one month?

Time of course is of the essence, and not just time to follow the rules which govern our voting system. Democracy is also about taking the time to take complex decisions without a gun to our heads.

Screenshot: Citizens Assembly, Manchester, September 2017. YouTube. Above all it is about a meaningful debate, which gives every citizen a chance to gather all the information they need about all the viable major options currently available — at least four at the last count. It requires time for citizens to listen to each other and to persuade each other if they can. And we should give people that time. We have heard a lot about the preparations needed for businesses to adapt and for trade deals to occur, but almost nothing about the time for citizens, leavers and remainers alike to explore ‘the deal’ and all its possible alternatives. We must allow democracy the time it deserves, but time is running out very fast for a proper democratic debate, with more facts and much clearer options. Nor can we trust the government to take the break from Brexit that we need to stand back together, and choose our common future carefully.

More than this, a democratic decision concerning the fundamental constitutional questions raised by Brexit, requires citizens not only to choose the best answer to the question, but also to shape the debate by framing the questions themselves or, as political theorist and democracy activist Stuart White put it, in 2015: “Democratic theory says that this is a time when ‘We the people’ have a right to settle what happens precisely because what is at stake is a set of very basic questions about how we are ruled.”

A People’s Debate, properly informed and accessible, inclusive and empowering, must precede a People’s Vote if it is to be a meaningful choice. Neal Lawson and more recently Gordon Brown, recognising the limits of parliamentary decision-making, have called for a “unique consultation”, a multi-faceted process of exchange that “by opening a dialogue across the country and engaging in a constructive, outward-looking conversation about our future” might help us discover “a road back to a more cohesive country, reuniting around shared values and rediscovered common interests” (“To calm the Brexit storm, we must listen to the UK’s views again”, Financial Times,16 November, also Gordon Brown on Brexit.)

Screenshot: Citizens Assembly, Manchester, September 2017.Without a People’s debate, a People’s vote is bound to be a rerun of the referendum binary narrative, hopefully framed in better terms (but how, while the government is run by Theresa May?), whose best possible outcome is to impose on a significant minority the 2016 status quo which was already then untenable to a significant majority.

Do we really want to offer the British people the choice to restore our old EU membership perhaps even including the detrimental changes that David Cameron negotiated in 2016, in his desperate attempt to win enough votes in June: a draconian form of “free” movement with strong limitations on access to welfare and stronger deportation powers for the UK government? Shouldn’t we be arguing for precisely the opposite line of march so that we can influence in a positive direction the Europe we want to see? Without a proper People’s Debate on immigration and all the other key issues, a People’s Vote will never bring about another Europe.

This is why DiEM25 has not signed up to a People’s Vote. We at DiEM25 believe instead that the way forward is to delay and democratise Brexit.

An orgiinal version of this article was published on Medium on December 6, 2018.

Project design for Tashkent City's Lot 3, a shopping centre with two 30-storey buildings. Source: Tashkent City.Two years after the death of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s first president, the once impenetrable country has shown interest in opening up to international investors. Enthusiasts regard this as the “Uzbek spring”, a new beginning for the country under its new leader, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Others have pointed to the sluggish and inconsistent pace of liberal reforms in the Central Asian state, which could just be used as façade to attract foreign capital.

Take Tashkent City, a government-sponsored project that aims to develop a high-tech business hub in Uzbekistan’s capital at a total cost of around $1.3 billion. British, Korean and German companies were awarded the main lots for construction. This flagship project seeks, in the words of analyst Dilmira Matyakubova, to “rebrand Uzbekistan as a country interested in political reform, economic investment, and friendly relations with the rest of the world”. As Mirziyoyev, who is overseeing the project, stated in October 2017: “Tashkent City is a project which we will use to announce ourselves to the international community.”

But closer scrutiny into one of the foreign investors into Tashkent City reveals a complex network of companies and individuals closely linked to Central Asia, casting doubt on the positive news that Uzbekistan’s official media initially trumpeted. Hyper Partners GmbH, though heralded as a German investor for Tashkent City’s Lot 3, seems to belong to a network of Uighur businessmen, partnering with a Kazakh entrepreneur currently facing fraud charges. Neither this company, nor others associated with its public directors, has any record of experience of large-scale construction projects.

The Uzbek government’s desire to showcase its friendliness to foreign investors led journalists to investigate the ownership of the companies that won the tenders to develop Tashkent City, unveiling a complex network of companies and individuals which operate without a clear financial rationale. With the help of legal experts in Germany, we were able to disentangle the threads and highlight the network behind Hyper Partners GmbH, one of Tashkent City’s main investors and foreign contractors.

The German front

Hyper Partners, a company registered in Germany and contracted to develop Tashkent City’s Lot 3 – a shopping centre with two 30-storey towers – is everything but German.

Financial data shows that since 3 August 2018 the company’s sole owner has been Mustafa Palvan, who was 18 when he assumed the company’s directorship and 100% of the shares. The company’s capital amounts to €25,000, the minimum amount required to register a company in Germany. Research suggests that relatives and their business partners, not young Mustafa, could be the ones really in charge of Hyper Partners. There seems to be little justification or rationale for the Tashkent City project management in awarding a tender on a large project to a 19-year-old.

Shareholder list for Hyper Partners GmbH shows Mustafa Palvan, now 19, as the main shareholder. The founders of Hyper Partners are Waleri Wolf, 54, and Evgueni Rosenberg, 61. It’s not clear what nationality Wolf and Rosenberg hold, but the spelling of their names suggests a Russophone origin. Wolf and Rosenberg registered the company on 26 February 2018.

The two had previously founded two other companies, W&R Handelsgesellschaft GmbH in November 2008 and Statuswest GmbH in August 2016. Since October 2018, all three companies have been registered at the same address: Assar-Gabrielsson-Straße 10-14, in Dietzenbach, Germany.

Judging by the financial statements of W&R, the decade-long partnership between Wolf and Rosenberg has been a rocky road. The company mainly sold bathroom supplies. Data from the German State Trade Registry of Companies shows that W&R piled up debts.

A German legal expert, who agreed to analyse the data on condition of anonymity, said that W&R appeared to be on the brink of bankruptcy until a Kazakhstani shareholder appeared three years ago.

Data from German Trade Registry shows that Baurzhan Baimukhanov took a third of the shares in W&R Handelsgesellschaft GmbH in 2015. In 2015, Baurzhan N. Baimukhanov, a Kazakhstani national, became a shareholder in W&R, acquiring one-third of the shares. Following Baimukhanov’s investment, the company’s troubled finances were saved by a loan.

According to the records of the German State Registry, the company declared a €78,419 debt, marked “740 VB gg. Gesellschaftern”. The company’s previous debts towards Wolf and Rosenberg were always marked “730 VB gg. Gesellschaftern”. A shareholder (Gesellschaftern in German) provided the new loan.

While W&R kept logging growing debt in its balance sheets in 2015, the following year the debt was slashed by around €70,000, without clarification in the income tables of the company’s balance sheet. According to the legal expert, this warrants further analysis:

“There are two possible scenarios here: either a shareholder gave the company a ‘credit’ of at least €78,419, or a contract was signed, without a cash transaction, but a promise of repayment. If a credit was given, it's strange that the money never showed up on the balance sheet. If this scenario is correct, the credited amount must have been spent immediately.”

In 2016, W&R’s debt was reduced to €156,336 from €245,462 the previous year.

“The company did not have the capital to reduce the debt in 2016, so the question remains: who paid in €89,126 to settle the debt? In other words, almost €90,000 circulated through the company without a public trace,” the expert concluded.

Wolf and Rosenberg’s associate Baimukhanov is a Kazakhstani businessman with close relations to Chinese business interests. In 2015-2016, Baimukhanov’s small construction company Bazis Alatau, registered in Kazakhstan, worked with a Chinese company, Zhongfu, to bid for a regional government project in Kazakhstan. We can confirm Baimukhanov’s identity from the Kazakh state registry of taxpayers, where his date of birth is consistent with the documentation from the German Trade Registry.

Earlier this year, Baimukhanov was arrested. On 20 February he was detained together with his business partner G. Nabiyeva and charged with fraud of one billion tenge (€2.4 million) in relation to building contracts and leasing land, and with attempting to issue illegal gambling permits in the Khorgos International Centre for Border Cooperation, a joint business project that stretches over both sides of the Chinese-Kazakh border. On 26 February 2018, Baimukhanov’s business partners Wolf and Rosenberg founded Hyper Partners GmbH.

The Uighur connection

Here, this story turns towards the border between Xinjiang and Kazakhstan, the geographic crux where ethnic identities merge and business connections intertwine.

In July 2016, a Dubai resident, Kazakhstani national and ethnic Uighur with the name Abdukadyr Khabibula became a major shareholder in W&R. Khabibula and Baimukhanov each took control of 40% of the company, leaving Wolf and Rosenberg with a 10% stake each. Two weeks after this transaction, Wolf and Rosenberg registered a new company, Statuswest GmbH, together with a resident of the German town of Dietzenbach by the name of Palvan Habibullah. The company was registered at the same address as W&R. Palvan Habibullah owned €20,000 of the shares, or 80%, and Rosenberg and Wolf controlled €2,500 worth of shares each.

The new Tashkent City project from above. Source: Tashkent City. Palvan Habibullah not only has a strikingly similar surname to Abdukadyr Khabibula, who took over W&R – he was also born on the exact same day, 16 February 1964. Cross-referencing through different jurisdictions and the matching date of birth suggest that Palvan Habibullah and Adukadyr Khabibula could be the same person, though differences and mistakes in spelling in the German business registry make it difficult to establish this with any certainty. Several iterations of this person’s name appear in business registries around the world. Here we chose to use the official spelling of the Kazakhstani citizen Abdukadyr Khabibulla, as registered in the UK Companies House database.

In 2014, Khabibulla founded a new company, Palwan Limited, in London. Palwan is the German spelling of the name Palvan, the name Khabibulla may be using as a German resident. But in the UK registry, Khabibulla figures as a UK resident. Palwan Limited has remained dormant, and counts possible relatives of Khabibulla among its shareholders: Aibibula Paliwanmuhaimaiti (born August 1991), a UK resident and Chinese national; Rezi Maliya (born April 1967), UK resident, Chinese national; Aibibula Yamimaiti; and Aibibula Nuerbiya.

Two of the shareholders in Palwan Limited, Abibulla Paliwanmuhaimaiti and Rezi Maliya, are also shareholders and directors of another company, AKA London Trading Limited (later renamed AKA London Limited). This company was registered on 29 October 2015 in the British town of Kingston upon Thames. Abibula Nuermaimaiti (born June 1989), a UK resident and Chinese citizen, is also listed among the company’s shareholders.

With companies registered in Dubai, Kyrgyzstan, London, Germany and Turkey, holding Chinese and Kazakh passports, and with a variety of residencies, these directors and major shareholders are part of an international Uighur community that makes use of different jurisdictions and investment options across Europe and Asia. According to public accounts, some time between in 2015 and 2016, AKA London Trading borrowed around £2 million from a man named Abdurkadyr Khabibula, in all probability a spelling mistake of Khabibulla’s full name, since it was disclosed in the accounts that he was a “related party to the directors” of AKA London Trading Limited.

This UK company also borrowed around £7.1 million from Palvan Insaat Turizm Lojistik San. TIC. Ltd, a Turkey-registered company related to the Uighur group, between 2015 and 2016. Aibibula Paliwanmuhaimaiti, a director of the UK company Palwan Limited, is registered as the head of this Turkish company, according to information from Turkey’s Yellow Pages business directory. The Palvan Insaat company is located in a residential area of Istanbul. A cursory look through Google Street View and a thorough search failed to return any details of business activity at the address.

The business address of Palvan Insaat Turizm Lojistik San. TIC. Ltd. Source: Google Streetview. A Dubai subsidiary, AKA International DMCC, owned by Khabibulla and two other Palwan Limited shareholders, appears to be the only company among this network with an actual real estate portfolio. Indeed, this company invested in a high-tech project in Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek Smart City. This government-led project aimed to install cameras for road safety and surveillance, utilising facial recognition technology to identify people of interest to the authorities. According to the Kyrgyz government, a Chinese state investment fund, Beijing China Veterans Lingxin Capital Management, is acting as the main investor, with Huawei Technologies providing implementation. According to the January 2018 deal, the Beijing China fund will provide $51 million of the investment. The Kyrgyz government was due to provide the remaining funds ($9 million), but backed out at the last minute. According to the director of the Investment Promotion and Protection Agency of Kyrgyz Republic, Huawei identified a new partner ready to invest these funds: a Kyrgyz-registered company, AKA Invest.

At this time, AKA’s investment and ownership came under scrutiny by Kyrgyz investigative websites Kloop.kg and Respublika KG. When contacted by Kloop, AKA Invest admitted to being a subsidiary of the Dubai company AKA International DMCC, and stated that it is owned by three ethnic Uighurs: Abdukadyr Khabibulla from Kazakhstan and Aibula Nuermaimaiti and Aibula Palivanmukamiati, both from China. At the time, AKA Invest’s office was located at the address of a cafe in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital. The company’s clerk told Kloop journalists: “You can ask your questions there [in the cafe] and they will pass them on to us.” It seems an unlikely base from which to make a $9 million investment in a high-tech urban development project, still more so given that these Uighur businessmen are also investing in another – Tashkent City.

While Wolf and Rosenberg served as the public directors for the German companies, Palvan Habibullah obtained 60% of the shares in Statuswest in 2016. According to data from the German State Registry of Companies, Statuswest took a loan of €500,000 in 2016 from an unknown source. Given the paucity of their assets, it is unlikely that the loan came from Wolf and Rosenberg. After the loan, Khabibulla/Habibullah appeared in the company’s documents as a 60% shareholder.

Shareholders in W&R Handelsgesellschaft GmbH, according to German Trade Registry.

Between 2017 and 2018, control of these companies was ceded to family members of Khabibulla, Wolf and Rosenberg. W&R is now owned by two men in their thirties named Wolf and Rosenberg. After the August 2018 buyout, Hyper Partners’ main shareholder is now 19-year-old Mustafa Palvan.

Thomas Mayne, an anti-corruption campaigner and author of a recent report on asset recovery and return, said:

“This shows how easily it is to obscure the true owners of a project – the beneficial owners – using companies registered abroad. The project certainly raises many red flags: the source of the funds is unclear, and a 19-year-old is unlikely to be the true beneficial owner of the company responsible for the Tashkent City shopping centre project.”

With complex rounds of loans and cash, this network of German companies could be used as a shell for opaque investments. The difficulty of identifying the investors and shareholders of Hyper Partners GmbH, Abdukadyr Khabibulla and the other businessmen may be no accident.

Concealing their identity and affiliations in relation to this project would have been a plausible response to the scrutiny that arose following the investigations from Kloop.kg and other watchdogs. Similarly, Baimukhanov’s initial role in W&R and the fact that Hyper Partners was founded less than one week after he was arrested on fraud charges in February this year could suggest that his role as the middleman between the project and the unknown beneficial owners of these companies was spoiled.

An expert with over a decade of experience in major financial crime cases in Europe and Central Asia, who agreed to comment on the case on the condition of anonymity, said the German front companies raised suspicion:

“The commercial rationale for funding a Germany-based company through unsecured personal loans originating from a high-risk jurisdiction raises eyebrows. Looking at the data, the money from such unsecured loans would then go from Germany to Uzbekistan. What would be the benefit of [this circle of transactions] other than guaranteeing a degree of anonymity for the ultimate beneficiaries of the investment?”

Funds are transiting from Central Asia through German companies back into Central Asia. These funds are now poised to be funnelled back into Uzbekistan through Hyper Partners’ investment in Tashkent City. Two key questions remain: why did the Uighur businessmen set their companies up in this way? And are these men the end of the chain or are they another front for other figures behind the money flows?

Destruction of an apartment block for Tashkent City project. Tim Stanley, senior partner for Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States at Control Risks, a global risk consultancy, said: “This investigation into a potentially fraudulent investment scheme involving a flagship investment project is a timely reminder to investors and the donor community of the risks they run if they fail to conduct adequate due diligence or take the required steps to identify and mitigate their third-party risks.”

Thomas Mayne further stated: “[This information] also poses many questions for the German authorities, who should investigate the funds flowing through the German companies in question. If the Uzbek authorities are serious about attracting foreign investment, they should not only collect and verify full beneficial ownership information of companies bidding for such projects, but also make that information available to the public.”

In sum, it appears that not only did Tashkent City accept a teenage investor, the project also chose to work with a company closely associated with a Kazakh businessman currently facing significant fraud charges for 1 billion Kazakh tenge (€2.4 million) – and with Uighur investors representing a group of active and dormant companies, which issue personal loans of several million pounds. It might be high time to request a public audit of Rosenberg and Wolf’s companies.

Open Democracy contacted Hyper Partners GmbH, Statuswest GmbH, W&R Handelsgesellschaft GmbH and International Business Center Tashkent City for comment, but did not receive a response.  

FILE PHOTO dated 25/2/2017 of a drone and an aircraft. John Stillwell/Press Association. All rights reserved.

As I am writing, we are entering day 3 of the drone’s occupation of Gatwick Airport in London (or thereabouts). Events surrounding the drone are reported in the live-feeds of several, if not all, major press outlets in Britain; hundreds of flights have been rescheduled or cancelled; the army is called in to ‘take down’ the unmanned object; and patrols are taking place across many other UK airport to prevent a further escalation on a national scale.

Brexit is forgotten, even Corbyn’s allegedly misogynistic mumbling no longer matters. A single drone has led an entire country on lockdown to look up at the air, while its government decides to securitise the national airspace. One unmanned aerial vehicle with an unclear purpose. It is the stuff of sardonic albeit suggestive Kafkaesque novels.

The event, surely orchestrated by a resentful philosopher of sorts, demystifies the assumed stability and fixity of the workings of our everyday. It exposes the organisational fragility of the aerial infrastructures that we take for granted when getting from point A to B. It teaches us humility against an arrogant faith in the infallibility of imaginary superior technologies that can master nature. (If one drone can challenge the gargantuan force of mass tourism, what chance does geoengineering have against global climate change?).

It shows how something so seemingly peripheral and local can challenge the political, economic and legal architectures of the wealthiest of countries. An executive of Gatwick Airport explains that “This is an unprecedented issue. This isn’t a Gatwick Airport issue. It’s not even a UK issue. It’s an international issue.” The sad truth is that he might be right.

This reality, one that centres on the governance of air, or, rather, the belief therein, has already long been known and felt in places where atmospheric violence is not the exception but the norm. That is to say that what is happening in London is global and deeply disconcerting, legally, geographically, philosophically, but it also must be understood as a local and political event. Context, I mean to say, almost always matters:

One drone striking Gatwick; 0 deaths (fortunately)

430 minimum confirmed strikes in Pakistan: 2,515-4,026 deaths

328 minimum confirmed strikes in Yemen: 1,019-1,383 deaths

4,978 minimum confirmed strikes in Afghanistan: 3,916-5,346 deaths

125 minimum confirmed strikes in Somalia: 839-1,037 deaths

(all data from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/)

Yes, of course, I wish travellers all the best in getting to their destinations safely and smoothly to be with family, friends and loved ones. In short, to experience life and happiness in a trouble-free fashion. The drone and its pilot, however, also give us, ie. those for whom infrastructure works are enabling, a chance to reflect on the privilege of enjoying safe air in a world where other atmospheres are turning increasingly hostile and lethal.

Rebecca Harms. Image: Rebecca Harms / Jurgen Olczyk.In December, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was awarded the 2018 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Sentsov, an outspoken opponent of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for terrorism offences.

The Sakharov Prize is awarded to individuals “who have made an exceptional contribution to the fight for human rights across the globe, drawing attention to human rights violations as well as supporting the laureates and their cause”. Oleg Sentsov is certainly among these people. In May 2018, Sentsov started a 145-day long hunger strike, asking for the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia. He was forced to end his hunger strike in October 2018. But even in prison, Sentsov continues to fight for his convictions – and his work as a filmmaker.

The award ceremony took place in Strasbourg on 12 December 2018. Held in a prison in Russia’s Far North, Sentsov was not only unable to attend the ceremony (Natalia Kaplan, his cousin and legal representative, accepted the prize instead), he is even illegally prohibited from collecting parcels of warm clothing. “It is a strange feeling to be pressured to survive on boiled water and thin soup, while the whole world is supporting you,” Sentsov wrote in an address to the Sakharov Prize Committee.

What will Sakharov Prize mean to Sentsov and other political prisoners in Russia? oDR speaks to Rebecca Harms, a Green MEP (Germany) closely involved in Sentsov’s case.

Oleg Sentsov is, in the first place, an artist – a filmmaker and playrighter. What do you make of his film and theatre productions?

I saw his 2011 film Gamer. I come from a family of filmmakers. My husband and all the people I live with in my house in the countryside are involved in producing films –writers, directors, editors. It is probably because of this personal background, that I feel a specific responsibility. 

I think that for Oleg it was very important that solidarity with a colleague in prison spread among filmmakers at a time when his case had already been forgotten in Europe. What happened here in Berlin during the Berlinale, in Cannes and at other film festivals – all this was very important. I was also pleased that the film academy helped to produce The Trial: State of Russia against Oleg Sentsov, by Russian filmmaker Askold Kurov, and that this film was presented first in Germany at the Berlinale.

“For Oleg it was very important that solidarity with a colleague in prison spread among filmmakers”

Natalia Kaplan’s speech during the award ceremony and in many briefings in Strasbourg – with different groups and people from different political background as well as with representatives of the European Commission – has shown us the artist Oleg Sentsov, who needs his work and tries to continue under the most awful circumstances. I hope that European governments and diplomats will become more involved in Oleg‘s case. The Sakharov Prize makes it a duty for us to work for Oleg’s freedom. But since we don‘t know whether we will see him soon becoming a free man again, we have to support Oleg’s capacity to work as a filmmaker even in prison.

Is this support already being provided in any way?

Oleg continues to work, but not yet with our support. We have learnt during Natalia Kaplan’s visit to Strasbourg that he is already working on a new movie. It could, potentially, become a very good co-production: Ukrainian, Polish, German, French. That would strengthen the artist and hopefully his way to survive in prison.

Why do you think Oleg Sentsov’s case is so important for other people in the European Union?

Right now there is a group of Ukrainians, 70 people, who are imprisoned in Russia. They are recognised as political prisoners according to international standards. When you have this kind of a situation, with such a large group of prisoners, you never know who will be the face of the group, the face representing all of them. There are others who also became very visible, like Nadiya Savchenko, Roman Suschenko or Akhtem Chigoz, the Crimean Tatar leader, who was released already some time ago. But last year – when Oleg went on hunger strike when the world came to visit Russia for the FIFA football championship –his face became the face of all of them. Oleg Sentsov risked his life for the freedom of all the Ukrainian political prisoners. He connected his fate to their fate and therefore became the exemplary case. We have to understand this and this doesn‘t allow us to forget the others.

“We have to support Oleg’s capacity to work as a filmmaker even in prison” 

Perhaps another reason is that he is not a Crimean Tatar, he is a Ukrainian from Crimea, a sort of a bridge between different Ukrainians. Together with some colleagues in Strasbourg we recently have produced a little video in which we read the names of all the Ukrainian political prisoners. When listening to the names you understand that most of them are Crimean Tatars.

Do you think that the situation with Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia will change in any way after the events in the Azov Sea?

These sailors are clearly prisoners of war, an undeclared but ongoing war which is now in its fifth winter. In the European Union, we aim to put pressure on the Russian side to free those Ukrainian servicemen immediately. It is completely illegal that these men were not only detained, but were also accused of illegal border crossing in a Russian court. I don’t know whether we will be successful in their cases. My proposal to introduce personalised sanctions against all Russian navy officials and judges involved in this case has been adopted in the Resolution of the European Parliament, but the European Council has not yet decided to follow this proposal.

“We need more pressure and more engagement from the West”

The documentary by Askold Kurov, The Trial, shows that Sentsov is Putin’s personal hostage. When Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov has begged Putin even twice to free Sentsov and gave good reasons for this, Putin rejected twice in a very clear and a very cold way. We need more pressure and more engagement from the West, supporting also Russian filmmakers, because I know that many Russian filmmakers are also asking to free Sentsov. My own husband and a young filmmaker from our family have been invited to a film festival in Saratov this year and won a prize. In the opening of this festival, the speaker talked about Sentsov and asked to free him. And he got a lot of applause for this. I think there is hope. Sokurov repeated recently and publicly his request.

How do you imagine those sanctions? What are the possibilities that could be used? Will those be personal sanctions as you mentioned or will they have a broader scope?

Personalised sanctions against Russian officials responsible for illegal detention, illegal trials, Stalinesque sentences and ill-treatment or torture should include the following: banning them from entering the European Union, freezing their accounts in European banks and also not permitting them to use the services of European Union like hospitals, schools or universities. I am convinced that the Magnitsky Act, which has been passed in several countries already, is a very important reaction against systematic violations of human rights. We need to establish such a legal instrument at the EU level.

Oleg Sentsov is not the only artist detained in Russia today. Alongside him there are other artists who are being prosecuted and put on trial, such as Kirill Serebrennikov or Alexey Malobrodsky. Is there anything the European Union can do to further protect the rights of Russian artists, or at least to provide them with some sort of refuge in the EU, in the worst case scenario?

There is a lot we need to improve. We should not leave the responsibility of organising exile and a secure life outside of Russia to Ukraine or the Baltic states alone. There is a growing crowd of Russian artists, journalists and political activists, who do not have an official exile status, but they work and live in Russia‘s neighbouring countries. We should contribute to improve the conditions for them to work. They have already an impact on people in Russia even when working from outside their country.

Oleg Sentsov. Photo CC BY-SA 4.0: Antonymon / Wikipedia. Some rights reserved.In Germany, everybody, as a rule, wants a good relationship with Russia. So do I. However, having good relations with Russia cannot mean doing business as usual. We need a dialogue. But not a dialogue to cover the truth about Putin’s war against Ukraine or his support for anti-EU far right movements. We need good relations with Russian civil society. And this needs to be taken very seriously, otherwise we fall into the trap of what is promoted by people such as Alexander Rahr [German historian and political analyst] or Gerhard Schröder [former German Chancellor and now Rosneft chair] – who suggest that Putin’s authoritarian system is tailor-made for the Russian people. It is not, as we know from many people, from Russian civil society and from Russian citizens.

How do you feel this climate of relations with Russia is changing in the EU, among your colleagues, with the influx of conservatism in European politics? Is there more pressure on you?

The climate in the debate is becoming increasingly tense on all Russia-related issues. I see more and more clearly how far the Kremlin is involved in these success stories of the right wing, anti-democratic and anti-European camp. 

Will the EU sanction its own politicians for visiting Crimea?

I have always advocated that colleagues should respect Ukrainian laws. There are reasons for these laws. However, I am also encouraging Ukrainian authorities not to make a visit to Crimea a mission impossible. I believe that Crimea can and should be visited – but only if laws of Ukraine are respected. Those who visit Crimea illegally in violation of Ukrainian law, they face criminal charges in Ukraine. In the EU we should continue to advocate for respect of Ukrainian law and should reject to follow the rules or the invitations of the occupying force [Russia]. I think Ukrainians have to accept that independent journalism is not anti-Ukrainian, and to investigate the situation in Crimea, also in the other occupied territories, is to the advantage of Ukraine.

“Ukrainians have to accept that independent journalism is not anti-Ukrainian”

What do you think of the possibility of an OSCE mission being placed in Crimea and whether Ukraine could become a part of this mission?

Since the very beginning, it has been clear that this peninsula is confronted with the most awful human rights violations in Europe. You also see it when you look at the list of political prisoners that Crimean Tatars have not only lost their minority rights, which were achieved in Ukraine, but are being treated extremely badly. We know that every week the Russian security services search the houses of Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians in Crimea. Despite several requests and due to Russia’s reluctance, neither the UN, nor the OSCE have been allowed to deploy an observation mission in Crimea. Russia always tells us that Crimeans wanted to be reunited with Russia, but if this is true, why are they hiding the peninsula from international observation?

Over the years I have followed the reports of a German NGO called Gesellschaft für Bedrohte Völker (Society for Threatened Ethnic Groups), a well-known human rights organisation with a lot of experience in similar situations like in Crimea. They describe the deterioration on the peninsula very well in their annual reports. In addition, the UN reports reflect the worsening human rights situation.

Is there any possibility for the EU to cooperate with Russian civil society sector to implement at least some form of monitoring in Crimea?

There should be more attempts by the European Parliament to invite Russian civil society activists to Brussels, and also more efforts especially by Western EU countries to invite them to Berlin, Vienna and Paris. This could also change the view on Russia, and could debunk the mantra of the pro-Putin camp and the Gazprom lobby in EU that says all Russians are comfortable with Putin and his system.

I admire those Russian citizens who go to the streets, sometimes alone, to show solidarity with Sentsov or Crimean Tatars. I find it incredibly strong what these people are doing and we in the West should at least pay much more attention to Russian civil society.

From what I have experienced in my work in post-Soviet states over the last 15 years is that change always comes from the inside. It is a preposterous idea from Russian propaganda that CIA organised EuroMaidan in Kyiv. The Maidan was so strong because it was a Ukrainian movement that came from the very heart of Ukrainian citizens.

I advocate to take civil society in Russia very seriously. If we have no dialogue with Russian civil society there is no serious dialogue. And I am convinced that we should, even if this became more difficult thanks to Putin‘s NGO laws, support Russian civil society. Change can and will happen if Russian citizens want it.

Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom responds to questions about allegations sexual harassment at Westminster. Picture: PA. All rights reserved.On 12 December 2018, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May faced a ‘vote of no confidence’ in her leadership. Her Conservative party MPs were invited to vote in a secret ballot, indicating whether they thought the prime minister should continue in her role. Conservative party rules stated that she would have to resign as party leader if she lost the vote.

May knew it was going to be a tight vote, as she needed the support of at least 159 out of 317 of her MPs to survive. The Conservative party then announced that two MPs who had previously been suspended following allegations of sexual harassment and abuse, Charlie Elphicke and Andrew Griffiths, would be reinstated ahead of the crucial vote.

Earlier this year, the Sunday Times newspaper revealed that Elphicke had been accused of rape by a former staff member. He had undergone a police interview under caution in March 2018, but no rape allegation was put to him on that occasion. Elphicke maintains his innocence and has denied any wrongdoing.

Griffiths had sent thousands of text messages to women in his constituency including explicit comments like his desire to “beat” a woman during sex. He subsequently said he’d sent these texts while having a manic episode, and that he was “ashamed and embarrassed”.

The Labour party criticised the Conservatives for “betraying” women by reinstating the suspended MPs ahead of the vote. A year after a series of #MeToo allegations broke in parliament, in late 2017, this welcoming back of alleged harassers for political expediency begs the question: what has changed for women in politics? And can this government be trusted to pay more than lip service to our rights when it’s political crunch time?

On 12 December 2018, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May faced a ‘vote of no confidence’ in her leadership. Her Conservative party MPs were invited to vote in a secret ballot, indicating whether they thought the prime minister should continue in her role. Conservative party rules stated that she would have to resign as party leader if she lost the vote.

May knew it was going to be a tight vote, as she needed the support of at least 159 out of 317 of her MPs to survive. The Conservative party then announced that two MPs who had previously been suspended following allegations of sexual harassment and abuse, Charlie Elphicke and Andrew Griffiths, would be reinstated ahead of the crucial vote.

Earlier this year, the Sunday Times newspaper revealed that Elphicke had been accused of rape by a former staff member. He had undergone a police interview under caution in March 2018, but no rape allegation was put to him on that occasion. Elphicke maintains his innocence and has denied any wrongdoing.

Griffiths had sent thousands of text messages to women in his constituency including explicit comments like his desire to “beat” a woman during sex. He subsequently said he’d sent these texts while having a manic episode, and that he was “ashamed and embarrassed”.

The Labour party criticised the Conservatives for “betraying” women by reinstating the suspended MPs ahead of the vote. A year after a series of #MeToo allegations broke in parliament, in late 2017, this welcoming back of alleged harassers for political expediency begs the question: what has changed for women in politics? And can this government be trusted to pay more than lip service to our rights when it’s political crunch time?

Abuse in the lobby

In October 2017, women around the world came forward under the MeToo banner, accusing powerful men of sexual assault, harassment and rape. From the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein to news anchors, journalists, and Wall Street bosses, it wasn’t long before MeToo came to Westminster– the home of the UK parliament.

This year, a survey commissioned by MPs found one in five people working in parliament had experienced sexual harassment. Women reported twice as many cases as men.

Following disclosures of sexual harassment from the journalist Jane Merrick among other women, the defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon was the first to resign from his ministerial post, in November 2017, admitting his conduct may have “fallen short” of standards.

Sir Michael Fallon resigned from his UK cabinet position in 2017 following disclosures of sexual harassment. Image: PA. All rights reserved.A few weeks later, the deputy prime minister Damian Green resigned amid allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards a young Conservative party activist (which he denied). A parliamentary inquiry had found these allegations “plausible” and that he’d previously made “misleading” statements about pornography on his work computer.

Over the last year, MPs, parliamentary staff, and activists from across parties have faced allegations of inappropriate behaviour,bullying, sexual assault, and rape.

The Financial Times journalist Laura Hughes exposed wide-ranging abuses of power at parliament. One parliamentary staff member anonymously told Hughes that a Conservative MP had boasted that he’d had sex with researchers on her desk. Another former staffer told Hughes that she knew of 10 women who had been harassed at parliament.

With two MPs resigning from ministerial posts (although not their seats), and other MPs and party activists under investigation or facing allegations of misconduct, it had become clear to parliament by the end of 2017 that action needed to be taken to change a culture of widespread bullying and harassment at the heart of British politics.

The extent of the Westminster abuse scandal was chilling. It’s precisely these people in these corridors of power who make laws about violence against women and workplace sexual harassment. How could these lawmakers be trusted to create fair and just policies to protect people from sexual violence, when some were alleged perpetrators themselves?

How could these lawmakers be trusted to create fair and just policies to protect people from sexual violence? 

September 7, 2018. Thessaloniki, Greece. Public health workers expressing their anger against Greek govt. public health cuts scuffle with riot police as they try to enter parliament. Giannis Papanikos/ Press Association. All rights reserved.

The poet Fernando Pessoa taught us that no stupid idea can gain general acceptance unless some intelligence is mixed in with it. So how can it be that austerity appears to have been generally accepted? Objectively it is a bankrupt policy – the data is clear on this – and yet it continues to be part and parcel of our daily lives.

It happens that we now know what was already obvious for a while: that austerity is not only inadequate as a policy method to exit economic crises but that its continuation depends almost entirely on the inability of politicians to abandon the political capital thus far invested in advocating for it. It was true in Greece, in Portugal and it is true today everywhere in Europe. While the International Monetary Fund [IMF] now publicly condemns the austerity policies that the Troika of lenders – which incidentally included the IMF – forced down the throat of peripheral Eurozone economies, almost nothing has been done to turn away from them. Instead, we hear our leaders proclaim the end of the crisis as if we live in a black and white world which offers us simple binary options like: crisis/no crisis as if we were able to turn it on and off as we pleased.

Isn’t today’s tragedy precisely that we are all very well aware of the cost of austerity, but nonetheless cannot bring our liberal establishments to admit that it was plain wrong? The Greek case shows that the political capital spent on pursuing austerity policies is – at least in part – the reason why such political investment cannot be renounced so easily. It would be like admitting that all the work that you’ve done was in fact a lie. And with elections around the corner, we all know that no political figure will admit to such blunders when power is up for grabs.

We seem to be living in Guy Debord’s ‘society of the spectacle’ – except that in this case it is not that we are slaves to technological advancements alone and therefore act like we are doing – but also to our own political system whose functionaries operate within a framework of power struggles.

Panhellenic anti-austerity march by thousands of Greek pensioners in Athens on December 15, 2018. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.We could talk about the real issues of our time, like lack of investment, poverty, climate change and so on, but the ruling liberal establishment prefers instead to extend and pretend the lie of austerity in order to convince voters that it was indeed a correct policy to pursue – no matter what the evidence actually says. The outcome of such extend and pretend politics is what we are seeing emerge everywhere in the world today: a widespread resentment towards the ruling liberal establishment embodied by populist monsters whose racist, authoritarian and xenophobic politics are finding a voice in our communities.

So what is the answer amidst this failed politics? The answer can only be a Progressive International whose narrative deeply penetrates this warped version of reality. We must talk about this, endlessly. We must repeat it ad nauseum to dismantle the layers of propaganda that we are fed day in – day out. If we don’t do this we will fail miserably in our quest to change Europe and the world. There’s no time to lose.

Fake news, hate speech, and the consolidation of ‘outsider’ type candidates that pit themselves against traditional ways of doing politics were the elements that came together to produce the populist tendencies that have recently taken centre stage in Latin America. 

The strong presidential character of Latin American political systems ensures that the personality of the candidate weighs in more than their respective parties, favouring a dynamic where a connection between a candidate and the people can weaken democratic institutions seen to be against the personable leader.  

Throughout 2018 we’ve seen 3 new presidents win elections in Latin America that are building a path towards a change in the political cycle in the region.

The hopefuls of the pink tide are being left behind, and the uncertainty of the times ahead plague the majority of democracies around the world due to authoritarian tendencies that have recently arisen.

In Colombia, the victory of Duque has consolidated the tradition of the right-wing elite that has been governing the country for decades.

In contrast, the recently inaugurated government of López Obrador in Mexico has one of the most progressive political agendas seen in decades and ends a long cycle of conservative politics in the country, however his demagogy is a worry for democratic institutions. Finally, the worrying victory of Bolsonaro in Brazil represents a hard blow for the left, democracy, and the PT in particular.

It’s in this post-electoral context full of contrasts that we present a brief evaluation of each of the 3 new presidents that will come to define the coming years in Latin America:

Duque: from inefficiency to unpopular 

President Duque completed his first 100 days with an extremely low approval rating. His victory is unquestionable, even though it consolidated the left as a legitimate political opposition in the country for the very first time. He has attempted to face up to the issue of the brutal murders of social leaders, new corruption scandals, and the continuation of the peace agreements for the FARC with little success. 

His leadership has been weakened by the 22 murders of social leaders since he has taken office, an issue which continues to call human rights into question in Colombia.

This context of extreme violence arises in the midst of uncertainty over the lack of political will to implement adequate post conflict policies that can deliver.

Profound corruption scandals such as that of Odebrecht continue to sweep across a government in which even the general prosecutor of the nation may be implicated.

This monumental scandal has already derailed presidents in Brazil, Peru and Panama, and in Colombia it appears the elites continue to be swamped in a problem that corrodes democratic institutions and encourages impunity. 

This monumental scandal has already derailed presidents in Brazil, Peru and Panama, and in Colombia it appears the elites continue to be swamped in a problem that corrodes democratic institutions and encourages impunity. 

Iván Duque hasn’t been able to capitalise on the window of opportunity that the peace agreements have offered, nor the implementation of the post-conflict settlements.

Questioning transitional justice, interrupting dialogue with the ELN, the failure of the reinsertion of ex-guerrillas and the abandoning of territory which has lead to the proliferation of illegal crops, and violence at the hands of criminal groups are a few of the issues that have worsened under his leadership.

Finally, the Colombian president faces a growing opposition that has taken to the streets to decry Duque and whose voices extend to senators and deputies within the government. Everything indicates that we will continue to experience tremors in Colombia in the coming years.

López Obrador, hope, resistance and uncertainty 

The recently inaugurated Mexican president AMLO faces many challenges if he wishes to carry out his campaign promises. The disproportionate expectations that his campaign created, which he refers to as the ‘fourth transformation’, are so high that now he must face growing scepticism.

The pacification of the war on drugs is one of the most urgent and difficult issues of his mandate. The objective to change conditions on the ground with programs such as legalisation of the cultivation of marihuana, or begin a process of amnesty for those imprisoned during the war if they collaborate in the defeat of larger criminal networks contrasts with the militarisation of the security forces also currently under way. This will no doubt put democratic standards at risk.

His ambitious plan intends to put an end to corruption and to move forward with his republican austerity goals. Eliminating all governmental luxuries starting with turning the official residence of the president into a museum open to the public, cutting salaries by 60%, travelling in economy class and selling the presidential plane, are all highly symbolic gestures but are opposed by his political adversaries.

His proposal to reduce public salaries has found resistance among the judges and the judiciary power of the country who have recently challenged this measure in the courts. 

These promises alongside AMLO’s tendency to convoke popular referendums which are questionable in democratic terms show that the obstacles that must be faced are significant. The hope of real change beyond populist gestures remains high, but the AMLO earthquake will experience many counteractions.

Bolsonaro earthquake hits Brazil

With the election of Bolsonaro, referred to as “the myth” by his followers, Brazil fell into a state of shock. The country now left completely polarised and fragmented has seen its main left-wing force crash and burn. 

The unexpected eruption of Bolsonaro represents an earthquake of collosal dimensions and it remains to be seen if the democratic institutions of Brazil are strong enough to contain him. 

The promise to end violence was one of Bolsonaro’s main objectives during his campaign and the terrifying record of 63,880 murders in 2017 is intolerable for obvious reasons. However, it’s not entirely clear that Bolsonaro’s strategy will in fact achieve this through worrying militarisation and arms liberation proposals. 

The figure of Bolsonaro has generated fear among many. In the midst of an open international rejection of racist, homophobic and anti-democratic postures, the eyes of the world are on the president who will be inaugurated in January next year. We must remain alert so that the democratic limits are not crossed and that human rights are respected. 

The declarations of ministers up until now don’t provide many reassurances. We must wait and remain attentive to what could occur next. The unexpected eruption of Bolsonaro represents an earthquake of collosal dimensions and it remains to be seen if the democratic institutions of Brazil are strong enough to contain him. 

This year has left many open questions regarding democracy in the region. In the midst of a growing lack of confidence in democratic institutions, parties and governments, 2018 has shown that the political paradigms in the region are changing, and these new tendencies are reminders of a very dark past that is yet to be forgotten.

Despite these processes of democratic decline, we have also witnessed great displays of resistance and solidarity. We remember the tremendous earthquake that hit Mexico in 2017 that brought the local population together to rescue victims from under the rubble.

Another example of solidarity can be round in the reaction to the great Venezuelan migrant crisis and the growing phenomenon of migrant caravans that show that despite the change in tendencies of 2018, there is still hope for Latin America. 

President George W Bush and PM Tony Blair in Blair's Sedgefield constituency, jointly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for waging war on Saddam Hussein, November 2003. Owen Humphreys/Press Association. All rights reserved.

At the end of 2003 the United States-led war in Iraq was going badly wrong. It had started so well from the Pentagon’s perspective, as American troops entered Baghdad within weeks of launching the invasion in late March. The regime crumbled and a statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled. The sitting president George W Bush soon delivered a triumphal speech in front of a banner declaring “mission accomplished”. Even then it looked premature. At that point, the quick victory Washington expected was already running into quicksands. 

By mid-summer, a rapidly evolving urban insurgency was inflicting serious casualties among the coalition of international (mainly US and British) forces. Many of the latter were killed. But improvements in trauma care meant that six or seven times their number were now surviving previously fatal wounds – albeit with appalling, life-changing injuries: loss of limbs and other body parts, severe abdominal injuries, PTSD at an almost unbearable level.

This type of combat had the inevitable result of a far greater use of firepower by the coalition, often against suspected sniper posts. In turn this killed many Iraqi civilians, thus serving to increase people's opposition to the invasion of their country (as it was now seen by Iraqis). By the searing heat of July, the Bush administration was looking for solutions to what was predominantly an American war. 

One option was to get India to commit a reinforced army division of 17,000 personnel to take over Iraq's quieter north-east region, while the US itself concentrated its troops in areas of greatest need, especially Baghdad and its environs.

India's then prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee of the broadly Hindu nationalist BJP, was willing. But public opinion was overwhelmingly against, and this mattered even more as five state elections were due that autumn and a general election the following year (see "Far from home, alone", 16 July 2003). After intense debate and protest in India, the request by Washington was rejected. As hopes of expanding the coalition evaporated, the US was left to work with a few allies (including, as ever, Britain) in a troubled, costly effort with no obvious way forward.

Except, that is, for one other off-centre option: a turn to Israel, which combined intimate military links to the US with experience of urban counterinsurgency against Arab opponents. There followed intensive discussions in Tel Aviv in the first five days of December between the heads of Israel's ground forces and the US army’s training-and-doctrine command (TODC) (see "After Saddam, no respite", 19 December 2003). This was welcome progress for the Pentagon, not least as it enabled the advanced training and use of Israeli equipment, especially in the area of close-quarters surveillance.

But there was a downside, in that news of this collaboration with Israel filtered through to the leaderships of the Iraqi rebellion, including those linked to the wider al-Qaida network. While western reporting of the closer US-Israel military links was confined mainly to a few military journals, across the Middle East and north Africa it was highlighted as proof that the invasion of Iraq was a straightforward "Crusader-Zionist" plot to control the Arab world.

History gave this interpretation even more utility as a propaganda tool. A thousand years earlier, the renowned Abbasid caliphate had Baghdad as its capital. From the telescope's other end, what looked in Washington to be the successful use of a trusted ally in a flailing war was something of a gift to al-Qaida and like-minded extreme movements.

A dark return

Fifteen years later, crucial elements of this more recent history are on repeat. A new US president is proving useful to ISIS and others thanks to his particularly close relationship to Israel, exemplified by the symbolic move of the US's embassy to Jerusalem. More broadly, the US is being further worn down by an endless cycle of war.   

In this context, Trump wants to depict the planned withdrawal of 2,000 US troops from Syria as, in effect, a declaration of victory over ISIS. It's true that the movement has largely (if not wholly) gone underground after losing much (if not all) of its territory. But there is unlikely to be a single western security analyst who thinks ISIS has been defeated. An estimated 10,000-20,000 paramilitaries remain active in Iraq and Syria, while related movements are well placed across north Africa and the Sahel. From this vantage point, the US military evacuation can be seen as a humiliating American flight.

This view finds reinforcement in Afghanistan, where Trump’s order to withdraw 7,000 troops ignores the US defense department's assessment that the Taliban – having made steady gains in rural areas – will welcome such a decision.      

Two elements are worth adding to this emerging picture. The first is that ISIS has but a small, if entrenched, presence in Afghanistan, and it is the more nationalist Taliban who stand to gain from a US military drawdown. That said, to the wider "anti-American world" such fine details may matter less than the broad image of a United States in retreat.

The second is that thousands of US forces will remain in Syria and Afghanistan, many of them more covertly as special forces or privatised military. Even if perhaps 9,000 regular troops do go home, these will be drawn from open contingents. No comprehensive US withdrawal is yet occurring. 

Blackwater military helicopter in Baghdad Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2004. Wikicommons/U.S. Air Force Photo by Master Sgt. Michael E. Best. Some rights reserved.In this respect, a fascinating indicator is the notorious Blackwater company's re-emergence as a major player in the privatisation of US war. The new edition of Recoil magazine ("the ultimate firearms destination for the gun lifestyle") carries a full-page advertisement featuring the words “WE ARE COMING” on a black background – with nothing else but the Blackwater logo. The war's privatisation may prove to have been a subsidiary factor in James Mattis's resignation, now becoming effective from 1 January rather than the initial 28 February date.  

Such symbolic details will matter little to ISIS and other Islamist paramilitaries, whose sights are set higher and longer. The leader of, in their terms, the "far enemy" boasts of success as he pulls American troops from two key war zones. In his looking-glass world appearance is all that counts. In the real one of the Middle East, the hubris of "mission accomplished" in 2003 and 2018 forms a destructive continuum, with no end yet in sight.  

On this episode of Changed My Mind, small business consultant and lobbyist Craig Beaumont talks about his changing views on devolution, and the need to support small business owners as they seek diversity of thought.

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A policeman shoots during an intervention in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2018. Photo.- NA, via FiloMews. All rights reserved.

Off-duty police officer Luis Chocobar shot and killed18-year-old Pablo Kukoc in December 2017, several blocks from the scene of a robbery where a tourist had been stabbed in Buenos Aires. Kukoc had participated in the crime and was fleeing at the time, and he posed no imminent danger to anyone.

Argentina’s president and the security minister received Chocobar as a hero and held his actions up as exemplary – despite a judicial investigation that questioned their proportionality and that will soon go to trial.

On the 3rd of December, Argentina’s government published Resolution 956/2018, which alters regulations on the use of firearms by the federal security forces. The Resolution expands the grounds for using lethal force generally and legitimizes firing at fleeing suspects, as Chocobar did.

Through our work monitoring police use of force around the world, we have already identified a pattern of excessive use of firearms, particularly shotguns, in Argentina. Under the new rules, which go against international human rights and policing standards and good practices, police killings and extrajudicial executions could be set to rise.

The new regulations not only permit the use of firearms when there is an imminent danger of death or serious injuries; they also provide other examples of what would be considered “imminent danger”, lowering what should be a high threshold for the use of firearms.

The examples given include instances when it is “credibly presumed that the suspect could have a lethal weapon”, such as when they are part of a group and another member either has a firearm, has fired shots or has injured third parties. It also covers instances where a suspect appeared to be armed but actually was carrying a replica gun.

Firearms should only be used where there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury – not just because one member of a group had a weapon.

The provision stating that it is likely that a suspect is armed because another person is armed could feasibly provide vigilante police officers with carte blanche to carry out extrajudicial executions against certain groups, such as suspected gang members. Firearms should only be used where there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury – not just because one member of a group had a weapon.

The provision on replica firearms is similarly problematic. It is one thing to discuss in a specific case if a police officer who shoots someone in the mistaken belief that they were armed with a firearm should be absolved after an independent and rigorous investigation is carried out, because it is proven that their mistaken belief was reasonably held.

For example, a police officer may believe there is an imminent threat to life due to the replica firearm appearing indistinguishable to a real firearm and the threatening manner in which it is aimed. It is quite another to establish in advance and in general terms the lawfulness of every instance when a suspect is shot when carrying a replica firearm or when their alleged accomplice is armed, effectively preventing any judicial oversight.

Particularly relevant in light of the Chocobar case, the new regulations stipulate that security forces can use lethal force against a suspect who flees after causing or trying to cause death or serious injury, regardless of whether the suspect is armed or poses an imminent threat to the officer or others. This could allow unscrupulous officers to use the excuse that the suspect was fleeing, to open fire indiscriminately.

“Imminent danger” is also stated to include instances where the “unpredictability of the attack, the number of aggressors or the weapons they carry, materially impede the performance of law enforcement duties...” This overly broad and ambiguous clause could potentially be used to justify the use of lethal force against protesters, in a context of increasing repression and criminalization of demonstrators in Argentina.

In response to such concerns, the Security Ministry issued a press release specifying that the new regulations “do not modify the use of weapons during demonstrations or public protests, since the norm that establishes the use of non-lethal weapons in these cases remains in force”.

Additional human rights safeguards, including precautionary measures such as training in de-escalation techniques, that might reduce the need to use any force at all, are missing.

These are some of the new provisions that fail to meet international use of force standards, particularly the requirement that “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life”.

Additional human rights safeguards, including precautionary measures such as training in de-escalation techniques, that might reduce the need to use any force at all, are missing completely from Argentina’s new regulations.

International standards also require police to use the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve a legitimate law enforcement objective. However, the new regulations allow firearms to be used when other “non-violent” means prove ineffective.

This fails to take into account other means of force that are less harmful than lethal firearms – so-called ‘less lethal weapons’ (e.g. batons, pepper spray, etc.) – and this omission could lead to the rapid escalation of violence.

Analysing the new regulations from a human rights perspective and in light of developing good practice in policing internationally, it is clear that they are a backward step. Underpinning them, there seems to be an attempt to avoid judicial oversight of law enforcement activities and broaden the scope for the use of firearms beyond what is acceptable under international law.

While it is essential to train law enforcement officers on a wide range of realistic scenarios, such as what to do when a dangerous suspect flees or when another member of a group of suspects is armed, the legitimacy of police action should be judged on a case-by-case basis rather than justified across the board in law.

It would be far more effective to provide police with sufficient training and appropriate equipment, base the law on established principles such as necessity, proportionality and accountability, and ensure the resources and mandate for each case to be investigated and judged according to these principles.

A victory sign is made during a protest held on Habib Bourguiba avenue in Tunis, on Monday May 22, 2017. Chedly Ben Ibrahim/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

فجّر الممثّل التلفزيوني السوري عباس النوري جدلاً على مستوى "الرأي العام" السوري، بسبب تصريحاته خلالمقابلةمع "راديو المدينة" في العاصمة السوريّة دمشق، قال فيها إنّ "صلاح الدين الأيوّبي هو كذبة كبيرة"، ما جعل تصريحه هذا قيد تناول واستهجان على مواقعالتواصل الاجتماعي والصحافةأيضاً.

النوري، ضمن مقابلته في برنامج "المختار" كان قد حاول الظهور بمظهر الناقد السياسي والاجتماعي للعديد من مظاهر الحياة الثقافيّة في سوريا، الأمر الذي دفعه لنقد شخصيّة صلاح الدين التاريخيّة، لكن ما حدث هو أنّ هذا الجزء الأخير كان مسبّباً للجدل في أوساط الكثير من السوريّين، بعد أن قامت الإذاعة نفسها باقتطاعه من المقابلة وعرضه على صفحاتها في مواقع التواصل الاجتماعي.

النقد الموجه للنوري، كان إما للدفاع عن صلاح الدين الأيّوبي بصفته يحمل مرجعيّة تاريخيّة دينيّة للكثيرين، أو لانتقاد الممثّل السوري لتعاميه عن الجرائم الحاليّة التي تعاني منها سوريا في السنوات الأخيرة من قبل نظامها الذي يُعتبر النوري قريباً منه سياسيّاً، وإن كان هذا الأخير قد حاول إظهار العكس فيعدد من المناسبات.

وبالتالي فإنّ الجدل الذي ثار حول تعليق النوري على شخصيّة الأيّوبي لم يكن منفصلاً عن طبقات مركّبة للصراعات السياسيّة والثقافيّة في سوريا، والذيليس بجديد، أن يرتدي فيها الرأي الديني لبوس السياسي، أو أن تعبّر الآراء السياسيّة فيها عن نفسها بوصفها قضايا فنيّة وثقافيّة بحتة، حيث أنّ للّغة المواربة خاصيّة أصيلة في النقاش السوري العام، لم تشذّ حالة النوري-الأيّوبي عنها.

الزوبعة الإعلاميّة السوريّة تزامنت أيضاً مع أخرى في مصر، وصلت أصداؤها للصحافة العالميّة

الزوبعة الإعلاميّة السوريّة تزامنت أيضاً مع أخرى في مصر، وصلتأصداؤهاللصحافةالعالميّة، كانت هذه المرّة حول فستان ارتدته الممثلّة المصريّة رانيا يوسف في مهرجان القاهرة السينمائي. الحادثة التي بدأت بحملات تحريض منالإعلامالرسمي المصري، ومن بعض الشخصيّات الدينيّة ليتطوّر الأمر إلى قضايا رفعت بحقّ الممثلّة أمام المدّعي العام، أعلن بعض المحامون عن سحبها عقبمقابلةمهينة لرانيا يوسف مع المذيع المصري عمرو أديب "اعتذرت" فيها عن الإطلالة التي ظهرت بها في المهرجان.

الرأي العام والثورات المضادّة

توضّح حالتا النّوري ويوسف العديد من ملامح الحياة العامّة في مصر وسوريا مع نهاية العام 2018، حيث يبدو أنّنا أمام عمليّة ابتعاد مضطرد للنقاش العام عن قضايا أكثر أهميّة وتأثيراً على حياة المواطنين في كلا البلدين، تتزامن مع مضي السنوات التي أعقبت ثورات العام 2011 في كليهما.

فعلى الرغم من أن تصريحات الممثليّن وسلوكهم كشخصيّات عامّة هو أمر جذّاب دائماً للجمهور، حتّى في أكثر البلدان ديموقراطيّة، إلا أنّ تصريح عبّاس النوري، وفستان رانيا يوسف يرسمان صورة شديدة البؤس للنقاش العام في سوريا ومصر، إذا ما قورن هذا النقاش مع نوعيّة نقاشات أخرى قد تجري في أيّ بلد فيه حياة سياسيّة عامّة قد قد يكرّس الإعلام فيها الكثير من الوقت لحياة السياسيّين الشخصيّة وربّما "فضائحهم"، ولكن ليس فقط المشاهير من الممثلين.

بالعودة إلى مثالينا، نجد أنّ "الحادثتين" تشكّلان مشهدين شبه مسرحيّين ينتميان إلى عبثّيّة عربيّة أصيلة. في المشهد الأوّل يطالب عبّاس النوري أحد أعمدة ما يعرف بسوريا بمسلسلات "البيئة الشاميّة" بإعادة قراءة التاريخ لتحقيق رؤية نقديّة أنضج له، وهو كلام مستحبّ لو لم يكن صادراً عن بطل مسلسلات مثل "باب الحارة" و"ليالي الصالحيّة" وغيرها الكثير من الأعمال التي أنجزت أكثر الرؤى تسطيحاً للتاريخ الاجتماعي للمدن السوريّة، والتي تستمرّ عجلة إنتاجها حتّى اليوم على الرغم منالنقدالمستمرّ لها حتّى منمشاركين فيها. ذلك بالإضافة طبعاً لتوقيت الحديث عن إعادة قراءة تاريخ يعود إلى القرن الثاني عشر، بينما تعيش سوريا عقب ثورتها أكبر أزمة إنسانيّة في تاريخها الحديث،خلّفتقرابة نصف مليون قتيل، وملايين النازحين واللاجئين.

يبدو الإعلامي المصري عمرو أديب منتشياً على الهواء، بعد انتزاعه "اعتذاراً" من الممثّلة رانيا يوسف

أمّا في المشهد الثاني فيبدو الإعلامي المصري عمرو أديب منتشياً على الهواء، بعد انتزاعه "اعتذاراً" من الممثّلة رانيا يوسف، قدمّته للشعب المصري بسبب إطلالتها المسيئة لـ"ثقافته وعاداته" ليقوم على إثرها بعضالمحامينبسحب الدعوى القضائيّة.

متابعة المشهد تخلق الكثير من المرارة  لمشاهدة نوع من "الذكورة الجمعيّة" المصريّة متجسّدة في شخصيّة أديب منتزعة تبريراً لحقّ الممثلّة المصريّة بارتداء الفستان الذي تراه مناسباً في مهرجان القاهرة السينمائي،في تناقض مثير للاهتماممن قنوات النظام المصري الذي من المفترض أنّ حجّته الأساسيّة في الوصول للسلطة كانت القضاء على الإسلام السياسي، المهووس بدوره بالوصاية على أجساد النساء.

على الرغم من التناقضات البادية في حادثتي عباس النوري، ورانيا يوسف، إلّا أنّهما يشكّلان حالة منسجمة مع الروح العامّة للقوى المضادّة لمطالب التغيير في سوريا ومصر، فجملة التناقضات التي تحاول الرموز الإعلاميّة والثقافيّة للأنظمة بيعها مرّة تلو الأخرى لا يبدو أنّها تشكّل نشازاً عن اللحن العام لمنطق السلطة، بل لحناً منسجماً مع السلطة غير الشرعية للديكتاتوريّة، والّتي لا تترفّع عن بيع الفكرة والفكرة المضادّة لها في أيّ وقت، فهي محافظة ومنفتحة، ديمقراطية جداً ومعادية للديمقراطية في ذات الوقت، وغيرها من الصفات وأضدادها التي تشكّل حالات مثل النوري وأديب أمثلة كاشفة عن منطقها المتداعي، والمفروض بقوّة السلطة لا بسبب تماسكه المنطقي.

 الجسد العربي حين تنجح الثورة

ليس بعيداً عن سوريا ومصر، أثار ممثّل سوري آخر هو حسين مرعيجدلاًفي مهرجان قرطاج المسرحي في تونس، عقب خلعه لملابسه أثناء تقديم عرض مسرحي سوري من إنتاج ألماني على خشبة المسرح. الرأي العام في تونس،وأيضاًفي مناطق عربيّةأخرىعاد لينشغل بجدل حول واقعة مصدرها ممثّل عربي هذه المرّة مع أسئلة حول حقّ الممثّل في التعرّي على المسرح، وعن الحدود الفاصلة بين الفن والواقع، والحياء وقلّته، وغيرها من الأسئلة التي وإن كانت مشابهة من السطح الخارجي لحادثة فستان الممثلة رانيا يوسف، إلاّ أنّها في الوقت ذاته تدور وفق قنوات مختلفة للنقاش، وللفعل ولرد الفعل.

فـ"الحادثة التونسيّة" جرت ضمن إطار مهرجان مسرحيّ ضمّ عروضاً عربيّة مسرحيّة متنوّعة بعضها قريب جدّاً من الأنظمة الحاكمة، وأخرى معارضة لها، كحال عرض "يا كبير" الذي أثار الجدل في المهرجان لتضطّر إدارته لإصدارتصريحتوضّح فيه عدم معرفتها بخيار الممثّل في التعرّي الكامل على المسرح، وأنّ نسخ العرض التي قدّمها المسرح الألماني المنتج للعرض مختلفة عن تلك الّتي قدّمها العرض على الخشبة فيما يبدو خياراً مرتجلاً من الممثّل أثناء تقديم العرض.

المنطق العام لمشكلة الجمهور مع عرض "يا كبير" يتشابه مع قضيّة فستان رانيا يوسف، لجهة غضب الجمهور العربي بسبب ما تعتبره فئات واسعة "خدشاً" للحياء العام أو "إخلالاً بالأخلاق" ولكن في الوقت ذاته اختلفت آليّات معالجة الموضوع بما يبدو انسجاماً مع طبيعة النقاش العام في البلد العربي الوحيد الذي بدأ عمليّة التحوّل الديمقراطي بعد نجاح ثورته نهاية العام 2010، فالقضيّة لم تتطوّر –حتّى اللحظة- لدعاوى قضائيّة، أو لاعتذار علني مهين كما مع رانيا يوسف، بل على العكس من ذلك، شهد النقاش العام التونسي ارتفاعاً لأصواتتدافععن خيار الممثّل وعنالحريّة الفنيّة، ليبدو النقاش دائراً في فضاء أكثر "صحيّة" وديموقراطيّة من الفضائين السوري والمصري.

لا تبدو الكتلة الكبيرة من الجمهور العربي بريئة من عدائيّة النقاش العام المحتقن تجاه حريّات الأفراد في التعبير وارتداء ما يرونه مناسباً، ولكن في الوقت ذاته لا تقصّر الديكتاتوريّة في لعب دور الراعي الحريص على تدوير النقاش العام في خدمة حالة عدم الجدوى السياسيّة أو حتّى الاجتماعيّة، حيث نرى في الحالة التونسيّة استثناءً مبشّراً بأمل ما في الخروج من الحالة الصفريّة للنقاش العربي حين يتعلّق الأمر بالتراث أو الجسد، أو حقوق المرأة، وغيرها الكثير من التابوهات العربيّة المحروسة بتُرس الدين، وسيف الديكتاتوريّة.

Image: courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.

On this Christmas Eve, activists gathered to celebrate with Brazil’s former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. More than 500 Lula supporters took part in an interreligious act followed by the traditional Christmas dinner in the southern city of Curitiba. There, in the headquarters of the Federal Police, Lula has been jailed since April this year.

The festivity was prepared by members of the “Free Lula Vigil”, a camping site set up in front of the Federal Police, where around 60 militants have been protesting against Lula’s imprisonment for over 260 days. Although the camp has faced hostilities by some neighbours and even a gun attack earlier this year, its members keep trying to make Lula feel loved. Every day, members of the camp give “good morning, good afternoon and good night” to the ex-president, shouting him words of support.

However, some activists from different parts of the country have arrived only for Christmas. Veronica Berge, 31, took 14 hours to reach Curitiba from Rio de Janeiro. “We are living difficult times and the only way to be slightly happy is to be around people who think the same way you do”, answers Veronica when asked why she decided to join the party. To her, Lula represents resistance against the “Bolsonaro’ upcoming fascist government”.

“Lula is the true Santa, he is a true disciple of Jesus”, affirms Elias Gonçalves Rodrigues, 61.  Elias has followed the former president during his whole political career. And explains that his family, coming from a poor background in the northeast of Brazil, could only reach better living standards thanks to Lula’s public policies. “To arrest Santa is a crime”, says.

For Elias Gonçalves Rodrigues, 61, Lula is "the true Santa Claus". Image: courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.

Lula’s case

Son of illiterate farmworkers, Lula emerged as a union leader during the Military Dictatorship and helped to build a transformational left political party which  ran the country for more over 13 years.

After an impeachment scandal involving his handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff in 2016, Lula was convicted to 12 years of imprisonment for corruption and money laundering. He was found guilty of receiving a $755,000 seaside duplex apartment from a construction company called OAS. According the prosecutors, the flat was part of a multi billion-dolar scheme managed by the former president Lula.

But his supporters consider the trial to be a political persecution  claiming the lack of evidence. Lula affirms he has never won the apartment. Some people say Lula’s judgement is a response of the brazilian elite to the rise of the working class during the ex-president government.

At the day of his arrest, an ardent crow tried to stop his surrender. Behind bars, Lula was barred from running in October’s presidential elections, although polls showed him in a comfortable first place.

The legal battle

This Christmas party occurs five days after one of the episodes of the legal battle over Lula’ condition. Last Tuesday, one of the Supreme Court’s  ministers ordered the release of all prisoners in second instance. The situation applied to Lula's case but the injunction was overturned a few hours later by the current president of the court.

On July, a federal judge had accepted a petition for a habeas corpus planted by members of the Workers' Party, prompting immediate reaction by Sérgio Moro, the judge who triggered the conviction of Lula. The action was followed by a legal confrontation between judges, which ended a few hours later blocking the ex-president’s release.

As Lula’s future remain uncertain, the “Free Lula Vigil” will keep its activism.  Groups  and families are already planning their New Years Eve in Curitiba. Until then, Lula continues to be “the true Santa” for many of them.

"Selfie at Curitiba". Image: courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.

Screenshot: Aaron Sorkin and Jeff Daniels in Mockingbird publicity. YouTube. Fair use.

Harper Lee’s classic novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird”, set in Alabama in the mid 1930s, tells the story of a black man falsely accused of rape, and his defence in court by the saintly Atticus Finch, all narrated by Finch’s 8-year-old daughter, Scout (or Jean Louise, to use her baptismal name).

Written by Lee before she was even 30, and basing her characters on her own family, the book has been in print for nearly sixty years, has accumulated 30 million sales, and was memorably translated to the screen in 1962, winning Gregory Peck an Oscar for his performance as Atticus. Until just before her death, a year ago, Lee was thought to have written no other book, though a manuscript of a sequel about Atticus Finch twenty years later – of disputed provenance – was published under the title of “Go Set A Watchman” in 2017.

Forming a bridge between Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caulfield, Scout’s story has became a staple of the American classroom, so it was no surprise when busloads of schoolchildren in uniform lined up for a matinee preview in December of a new stage dramatisation by Aaron Sorkin, of “The West Wing” fame.

With Jeff Daniels – who starred in Sorkin’s last TV series, “Newsroom” – playing Atticus, and Bartlett Sher – the Nicholas Hytner of American theatre – directing, it was no surprise to learn that the box office had taken an unprecedented $16 million in advance bookings before it opened on December 13. What was a surprise was that the Lee estate had gone to court (unsuccessfully) to prevent the show going ahead, claiming the script was not a fair reflection of the book.

Rudin’s take

The lead producer of the drama is the prolific Scott Rudin, whose name is attached to at least half a dozen of Broadway’s most successful recent offerings. His ability to spot a hit, to support a script he likes, or to manage a transfer from London or off-Broadway, is unmatched amongst the cluster of producers who dominate the Great White Way, in his case with shows ranging from new musicals like “The Book of Mormon” to major revivals of Pinter, Miller and Albee. He has also received 11 Oscar nominations for films he has produced, including “Moneyball”, “The Social Network” and “Steve Jobs” (three movies scripted by Sorkin), “No Country For Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood”. He has been a film studio executive and a TV executive producer (“Newsroom”, inevitably), and is one of the few people to have won an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy.

The reviews of this “Mockingbird” have been respectful, but in truth the production is largely a disappointment, partly for the reasons offered by the Lee estate. Apparently, Rudin swiftly rejected Sorkin’s first draft, which followed the book more closely than the finished version does: “get the trial up front!” (in the book, we are half way through the 300 pages before the trial starts). Sorkin also decided to “let the African-American” characters speak – notably, Tom Robinson, the accused, and Calpurnia, the Finch family maid (Scout’s mother had died when she was just two, and her brother Jem six).

Starting with a scene from the courthouse makes a certain amount of sense dramatically: but it forces on the director a series of set changes which become clunkier as the play proceeds. At the performance I attended, some scenery got stuck, causing a 15-minute hiatus, and bringing grudging applause from the audience when Jeff Daniels turned to them and said: “it’s a preview!” (I am too embarrassed to admit what I paid for two seats in the last row of the orchestra – or stalls, as we would say in the UK – for a Wednesday afternoon performance a week before opening night: such is the marketing oomph of five famous names as author, adaptor, producer, director and star – and, of course, a book title of lasting fame).

Letting Tom and Calpurnia ‘speak’

But the decision to let Tom and Calpurnia ‘speak’ is hard to understand. In the book, Tom’s evidence takes up six pages. Sorkin has added almost nothing to it, other than to interpolate, rather clumsily, an invented scene of Atticus showing dismay when Tom admits to having felt sorry for his supposed victim, the white trash teenager, Mayella Ewell, left by her even trashier father, Bob, to look after half a dozen younger siblings single-handed. “I told him not to say that: juries don’t want to hear a Negro saying he feels sorry for a white woman!”

As for Calpurnia, Sorkin invents some kind of resentment on her part, which Atticus struggles (understandably) to comprehend. She comes across as surly and sassy: which is not just anachronistic, but quite false to the book. One reviewer likened the relationship between the two as that of sister and brother, which only underlined the glaring absence of Atticus’ sister Alexandra from the adaptation. Presumably in keeping with this re-interpretation, the most affecting scene in Lee’s original story is simply omitted by Sorkin: where, after Tom’s conviction, Calpurnia explains to Atticus why so many of Tom’s friends and neighbours have left offerings of food at the Finch kitchen door, showing gratitude for his efforts in defending a hopeless case; thereby reducing Atticus to tears.

Instead, Calpurnia challenges Atticus when he tells his children – Jem is particularly outraged by the jury verdict – that it is wrong to judge people, let alone a whole community, until you have lived inside their skin. It will take a while, he says, before Maycomb County (the small community where the Finch family lives) learns to treat all people alike, regardless of skin colour. “But how long do we have to wait?” Sorkin has Calpurnia sulkily objecting: a piece of updating that he and Rudin have robustly defended, but which feels quite out of place in 1935.

Of course, the New York audience lapped that line up (the lady sitting next to me leaned across, before the curtain rose, to apologise for the tragedy of Trump – “it’s not New York’s fault!”). Even more applause greeted the “coming out” as gay by the young friend of Scout and Jem, Dill, as he bade them farewell before the final curtain: an absurd and gob-smacking invention – Dill is not even 9 years old in the book, and is – apart from one scene – an entirely dispensable character, even if Sorkin thinks Lee based him on her friend Truman Capote, with whom she grew up in Monroeville, Alabama (the model for her fictional Maycomb County).

Far too adult

Sorkin and Sher try to finesse the deep unlikelihood of this plot development by having the three children played by adults. The male actors are thirty-ish, while Scout is played by the 40-year-old Celia Keenan-Bolger. It is no criticism of their performances that this casting profoundly undermines belief in the drama: even dressed in dungarees and clutching Daniels’ waist when her character needs comfort, Keenan-Bolger cannot convince as an 8-year-old. Perhaps the decision was driven by the number of lines the three characters have to deliver, but it would have been much simpler to have allowed an older version of Scout to frame the action, and given real child actors more sculpted parts.

Reportedly, Rudin told Sorkin that Atticus had to “grow” during the action, but it’s not clear how this has been achieved, other than to have Atticus losing the seat he has long held in the Alabama legislature, because of his taking the Tom Robinson defence; which suggests shrinkage rather than growth.

Either way, that does not happen in the book. Surely only the most unobservant reader of Lee’s work would fail to see that it is the “growth” of the two children which is at its core. Lee’s skill as a ventriloquist enables us to “hear” Scout distinctly, first as a 6-year-old and then as an 8-year-old, learning lessons from the court case and events surrounding it. And Jem grows from the play leader daring to approach the door of the neighbouring Radley house – where Arthur Radley, known as “Boo”, has holed up as a recluse for decades and has become in the children’s imagination some kind of bogeyman – into an impassioned 12-year-old, following the trial from the gallery (where all the African-American citizens of Maycomb must sit) and pronouncing his dismay at the verdict.

In the play, perhaps for reasons of economy, there is no gallery, and so no room for Dill’s big scene, running from the gallery in tears, distressed by the prosecutor continuously addressing the accused as “boy”: something Dill, from out of state, is probably not used to.

What Atticus teaches Jem is that he must not judge people collectively: there is good and bad in each one; and that, actually, it was something of a triumph to have had the jury spend three hours considering their verdict (again, something ignored by the play), giving real grounds for hoping that an appeal hearing might succeed, where justice can distance itself from the prejudices of a local jury made up of poor white farmers.

Atticus believes that it was one of the farmers, Walter Cunningham, who prolonged the deliberations: the man that Scout recognized (he is a client of her father’s, too poor to pay his bill in cash, so supplying farm produce instead) as one of the lynching party that turned up at Maycomb jail the night before the trial. She engages him in conversation (as Atticus had told her was the polite way to deal with people), asking after his son, who is her classmate: “tell him hey for me, won’t you?” Cunningham pauses. “Then he did a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took me by both shoulders. ‘I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady.’ He said. Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. ‘Let’s clear out,’ he called. ‘Let’s get going.’” So, inadvertently, Scout defuses a crisis.

Unsubtle Sorkin

Sorkin introduces us to Scout at the start of the play with a little concoction of his own: the mystery (apparently, in the eyes of Scout and Jem) as to how – after the trial – Bob Ewell managed to fall on his own knife and stab himself to death in the stomach. But this little tease, however dramatically useful, is actually false to the book. What Scout actually learns at the end is that the mysterious “Boo” Radley, who, so she later realizes, had left the children little tokens in the hollow of a tree when they were smaller, had actually emerged from his self-imposed reclusiveness, and intervened to prevent Bob Ewell from stabbing both her and Jem. He had then carried Jem, who had suffered a broken elbow in the attack, back to the Finch house. Scout’s Halloween costume for the school pageant – she is dressed as a ham – has a knife slash in it, but was robust enough to prevent her being wounded, and the wire structure left clear marks on her assailant’s arms.

To begin with, Atticus believes the sheriff, Heck Tate, is shielding Jem from a charge of killing Ewell. Then Heck tells Atticus that Ewell has been stabbed with a kitchen knife: and there was no way that Jem would have been carrying such a weapon on his way back from the school pageant. Scout quickly understands how wrong she had been about the imagined bogeyman: “Boo was our neighbour. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.”

There is no “mystery” about Bob Ewell falling on his own knife, or at least not one that exercises Scout. And she fully understands why Tate wants to close down the investigation, and leave Boo out of it, telling Atticus “well, it would be like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” – reminding him of his own words when he bought his children air rifles: “shoot all the bluejays you want if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”. As one of the Finch neighbours, Miss Maudie Buford, explained to Scout, “mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” After the sheriff leaves, Scout takes Boo by the hand, and escorts him home. “He gently released my hand, opened the door, went inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again.”

Unfortunately, much else of Harper Lee’s subtlety eludes Sorkin, or is ignored by him. In the era of “Black Lives Matter”, it was inevitable that there would be a nod to official as well as unofficial violence towards Tom Robinson. When he is shot trying to escape from prison, the theatre audience is left to think that this was a deliberate, even inevitable, act to eliminate the risk of acquittal at appeal. But Lee’s Atticus is more nuanced: yes, he says, “seventeen bullet holes in him – they didn’t have to shoot him that much”.

But he also says that the guards first fired above Tom’s head to warn him, and only when he was almost over the fence did they shoot at him, reporting afterwards that he would have made his escape if his withered left arm had not handicapped him – the same disability which Atticus had deployed in court as proof that Mayella’s father, not Tom, had given her the beating that could only have been inflicted by a left-handed man. Atticus simply rues the fact that Tom lost hope after the conviction, and was not prepared to wait for his appeal hearing.

Courtroom drama

The big scenes of Mayella and Bob Ewell giving evidence in court are the most successful in the play, and Sorkin has sensibly left them almost unchanged from the book (apart from making Bob an anti-semite as well as a racist, which, as the New York Times noted, seemed like another instance of “pandering to the Broadway audience”). Frederick Weller and Erin Wilhelmi act their socks off, and it is to the credit of Jeff Daniels that he restrains his performance rather than trying to match their fireworks. This is Sorkin’s forte – his first big success was the courtroom drama “A Few Good Men – and he does not fall short.

These scenes alone ensure that everyone leaving the Shubert Theatre will have experienced dramatic excitement and moral uplift for at least part of their visit, especially if they have never read – or cannot remember – Harper Lee’s original.

The director, Bartlett Sher, is not noted for lacking in bright ideas. His “South Pacific” made brilliant use of the depth of stage at the Lincoln Center (US spelling), and his “The King And I” pulled off a stunning coup de theatre with the giant prow of a ship carrying the royal governess to Siam thrusting into the same auditorium as the show opened. His revival of “Fiddler On The Roof” may have been outshone by the latest version, this year, all in Yiddish, but his revivals of two Clifford Odets plays, “Awake and Sing!” and “Golden Boy”, won deserved critical plaudits.

“Awake And Sing!” is dominated by the claustrophobic Berger apartment, and all the action seems to pass through its crowded rooms, especially the kitchen. Then, in the final scene, as the key protagonists, grandson and grandfather, make their way to the roof of the building, the scenery magically pulls away, allowing the audience the belief that the young man and his idealistic hopes will be allowed to escape from the mundane realities of his family’s struggle for survival.

Paradoxically, in “Mockingbird”, Sher reverses this brilliant action. The scenery repeatedly flies in, rather than off, with cast and extras pushing furniture back and forth, re-creating the courtroom and the front porch alternately. It is all unduly laborious, reflecting the awkward structure of the play. Even the mournful incidental music, which is specially composed, and performed on guitar and pump organ by two musicians on-stage throughout, feels misjudged. This is not Sher’s finest hour.

Artful simplicity

Despite the mis-steps and mis-judgements by the production team, this “Mockingbird” is still a recognisable version of Lee’s original. The purist might wish that her estate had prevailed in its court case, but the flaws in this dramatization are not so great that I would put anyone off from seeing it – assuming the seat prices do not have that effect. At least the cost of entry will swell the estate’s income, over and above the $100,000 rights fee paid by Rudin. And for $8, anyone can buy the paperback and enjoy Harper Lee’s artful simplicity on its own terms – again, or for the first time.