In light of the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overruled Roe v. Wade, the need for federal and state Equal Rights Amendments (ERAs) has become increasingly crucial. The decision emphasized that federal constitutional protections extend only to rights deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.

However, by grounding reproductive rights in the right to equality rather than privacy, the federal ERA’s incorporation into the Constitution would help protect these fundamental human rights from being denied. Using the 14th Amendment and its substantive due process clause, which has traditionally been used to argue for privacy rights, including reproductive rights, has proven to be precarious. This approach relies on the often-debated and fluctuating interpretation of substantive due process by the Supreme Court. By instead anchoring reproductive rights in the federal ERA, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based on sex, these rights would be more robustly protected as fundamental aspects of equality.

There has been a distressing regression in women’s rights in recent years. In v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal constitutional right to an abortion. In , a long-dormant restrictive abortion law was reintroduced and then reversed, leaving women and girls uncertain about their reproductive health rights. These decisions have eroded women’s ability to access sexual reproductive health services and maintain bodily autonomy equally across the nation.

In 2024, women’s rights activists had some victories in and , where limitations for state health insurance-funded abortion care were struck down by district and state supreme courts, respectively, offering hope. 

These developments underscore the Equal Rights Amendments (ERA) at the federal and state levels. Only constitutional entrenchment of gender equality will establish irrefutable protections for us all. 

What is the ERA and what does it have to do with abortion rights? 

The federal ERA is a simple constitutional amendment. It seeks to end sex discrimination and guarantee the rights of all people within the most important legal document in the United States.

The main simply and eloquently states, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

The initial decision by the allowing for the possibility of the reinstatement of a draconian law from 1864 severely restricting abortion access underscores the vulnerability of these rights without explicit constitutional legal protections. The court’s decision stated, “Because the federal constitutional right to abortion that overrode [this statute] no longer exists, the statute is now enforceable….”  

The positive application of state-level equal rights amendments has led to protecting reproductive rights, particularly for economically vulnerable people, and to state-level accountability.

recent judicial ruling striking down limits placed by the state on Medicaid for abortion provides reassurance, demonstrating the power of state constitutional equality provisions to serve as a defense against state agency overreach and limitations on reproductive rights. Similarly, striking down the discriminatory legislation that restricted Medicaid coverage of abortion is a testament to the vital importance of state-level protections that can be derived from an equal rights amendment. 

This election year, with just a handful more co-sponsors needed to to a vote in Congress affirming its validity, it is time to take action to help secure reproductive rights and substantive equality. We also need to ensure that any sex-discriminatory acts will be challenged and reviewed with at the judicial level. 

Working as a lawyer across the globe has reinforced my understanding that legal frameworks, including international treaties, national constitutions, and customary law, play a crucial role in safeguarding fundamental rights. The protection of all women’s human rights, including the right to sexual and reproductive health and rights, requires a multi-faceted approach that encompasses both state and federal levels. 

The US has international legal obligations to guarantee equality and reproductive rights.

Women’s struggle for reproductive autonomy is not confined to any one nation, and must reflect international human rights law and standards, including the right to sex equality, broadly defined.   

At the end of 2023, for example, the UN Human Rights Committee that the United States, which is a State party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “should redouble its efforts to guarantee protection against sex and gender-based discrimination in its Constitution, including through initiatives such as the Equal Rights Amendment.”  

The Human Rights Committee also strongly recommended to the US that it “should take all measures necessary at the federal, state, local and territorial levels to ensure that women and girls do not have to resort to unsafe abortions that may endanger their lives and health.” The Committee elaborated that specific measures the US should take should include providing legal, effective, safe, and confidential access to abortion throughout the US territory, ending the criminalization of abortion – including for medical staff, eliminating inter-state access bans on abortion, and expanding access to medication abortion. 

It’s time to prioritize equality in the US.

Every year, the United States hosts an annual international gathering at the United Nations to discuss the state of gender equality worldwide. Ironically, without constitutional equality or full access to sexual reproductive health, the US is noncompliant with international standards and must implement these measures to finally be on par with where these measures already exist. 

Next March, at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), we should be able to proclaim to the global community that the US is moving towards compliance. This includes states considering measures on Equal Rights Amendments (ERAs) and reproductive rights, such as my home state of , where the ERA will hopefully remain on the ballot this November. These strides will bring the US closer to meeting international standards and shedding its outlier status.

I urge lawmakers and advocates to prioritize the incorporation of the federal ERA and adopting and implementing state ERAs to help ensure that sex equality and reproductive rights, as universal human rights, are upheld throughout the United States. Anything less would be a disservice to and a violation of the principles of equality, non-discrimination, justice, and human dignity that we strive to uphold globally.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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There is a steady stream of Western academic research exploring, describing, and defending human rights. Western governments present themselves as the ultimate protectors of rights of all kinds and frequently introduce new policies and laws aimed at shaping society to reflect these rights. One might argue that the unconditional defense of freedoms and rights cannot go wrong. Or can it?

Rights cannot exist without duties

There is a deafening silence in Western education, social life, and political discourse about the need to first fulfill human duties if any rights are to be obtained. It is surprising and disturbing that there is no “Universal Declaration of Human Duties,” even though it is the fulfillment of duties, not rights, that provides the foundation upon which an individual can grow and a society can flourish.

The establishment of most rights is viable and sustainable only if a set of duties is first addressed. Rights are the spontaneous result of the fulfillment of a series of duties. 

To illustrate the pernicious consequences of unconditionally granting rights without first requiring the fulfillment of a set of duties, let me use the right to freedom of opinion and expression, one of the rights on the UDHR list and one of the most popular rights in the West.

Freedom of opinion and expression is one of the socio-political cornerstones of Western societies and is unconditionally granted to every citizen. Yet it is obvious that, in order for an individual to make a valuable contribution to society, he must first have a thorough understanding of the issues on which he is expressing an opinion. Therefore, to exercise this right in any meaningful way, one must first fulfill several obligations. These obligations include gathering sufficient information about the issue under consideration, having the necessary background information and skills to analyze the information and spending sufficient time analyzing the information to draw sound conclusions. Only after these three obligations have been met can the individual form an opinion and, if he wishes, share it for the benefit of the community. 

However, if these three obligations are not fulfilled first, the individual perspective cannot be considered an opinion, but rather mental noise, and its expression will be detrimental to the public understanding of the issue. This is truer today than ever, given the ease and speed with which (mis)information can be spread. Society, education and governments should therefore emphasize the obligation to be sufficiently informed and to understand the relevant issues before exercising the right to express an opinion.

How to achieve a proper emphasis on duties

By overemphasizing people’s rights and neglecting their duties, individualistic societies become fragile and prone to fractures between various self-serving, short-term values and goals. Western societies seem to have forgotten that most progress occurs when individuals focus on fulfilling their duties and that rights are the spontaneous outcome of this progress.

In the collectivist societies common in Asia, the interests and needs of the community come before those of the individual, and individual duties take precedence. From an early age, children are taught that they have duties to family and society and that they must sometimes sacrifice their personal interests and rights for the greater social good. Individuals are taught that they have a duty to learn, rather than a right to study, and that they have an obligation to work hard, rather than the right to a good job.Ěý

Prioritizing duties also leads individuals to perceive authority as something legitimate and necessary, and, consequently, to be more inclined to follow its directives. Accepting authority and following its directives, even if one does not fully agree with its purpose, is fundamental for the effective management of societies, making them more prosperous. This does not mean that individuals in collectivist societies do not enjoy rights. On the contrary, they may enjoy more rights than in individualistic societies, but these rights are contingent upon, and the natural outcome of, the fulfillment of a set of duties.

Western societies should move away from ignoring the need for their members to focus on their duties. Instead, they must re-emphasize the vital importance that individual duties play in fostering personal growth and ensuring the well-being of societies. In this sense, the West can find inspiration in collectivist societies that prioritize the community over the individual and accept significant levels of authority. After all, personal growth and social prosperity can only be achieved if each of us focuses on fulfilling our duties. Rights will follow spontaneously.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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First, let’s crunch some numbers. In the United States, 57% of sex trafficking victims are under the age of 18, and approximately 300,000 children are at risk of some sort of sexual exploitation. The average age of entry is 12-14 for girls and 11-13 for boys. And the life expectancy of a human trafficking victim is just seven years. One-third of all minor runaways are lured into sex trafficking within the first 48 hours. According to figures from the Family Youth Services Bureau, 1.5 million US juveniles run away from home yearly. And another little-known fact: trafficking a victim is lucrative, generating approximately $300.000 a year, and less risky than the drug trade. DiGirolamo’s book is based on experiences through the eyes of victims, criminals, clients, social workers, and law enforcement personnel in the Denver, Colorado metro area.

Creating awareness through storytelling

Some sex trafficking victims become survivors. And it’s these stories in the book that will provoke the reader.  DiGirolamo provides some breathtaking and horrific examples of the worst of the worst in human behavior.Readers are introduced to various characters, like Ronald, who works for a  law enforcement task force. Compelling case files are brought to life through an insider’s view into the sex trafficking underworld and how criminals are brought to justice. Or take Angela, a girl that was sex trafficked by her pedophile grandfather from the age of five, who miraculously survived and recovered.  Now at the age of 53, she is devoted to sharing her story to empower others. Some victims rarely leave their homes out of fear of getting lured into  sexual slavery and, often, drug addiction. Such is the case with Tessa, who is from an unstable home and is contacted by a trafficker through the video game Minecraft.

One of DiGirolamo’s goals in writing the book is to educate citizens and professionals on how to keep an eye out for signs of human trafficking in daily life.

Valuable tips to recognize and stop human trafficking are shared at the end of It’s Not About the Sex. The book is a must-read for anybody interested in the subject and should be mandatory literature for professionals.

(We have edited this transcript lightly for clarity.)

Philip Fokker: Your daughter is a police officer, inspired you to write your first book, It’s Not About the Badge, correct?

John DiGirolamo: That’s correct.

Philip Fokker: What made you write your second book?

John DiGirolamo: When I was interviewing police officers for my first book, I asked them to tell me about a day at the job they’ll never forget. Also, to make them feel at ease during the interview, I asked them: ‘What would you do when you win the lottery?’ I will never forget one of the law enforcement officers who replied: ‘I would quit my job and hunt down traffickers.’ I knew then that was the direction I wanted to go with my second book. And soon, I realized I knew very little about sex trafficking and figured others were ill-informed on the subject as well. So, I decided to delve into the topic and tell the real story behind the people involved.

Philip Fokker: You quote from Rico’s and Carlo’s [two traffickers in the book – PhF] conversations. How did you gain this information?

John DiGirolamo: I based this on testimony by the police officer involved in the case and other cases he had worked on. What I did, from the book’s perspective, is to take these criminals and create characters from them. The dialogue is not direct but creates a dramatization based on real case files.

Philip Fokker: Did you have access to other law enforcement materials?

John DiGirolamo: Most of it was verbal. I did some research on my own. I needed to operate carefully because the police officer involved is still active and I didn’t want to blow his cover. I would take various case files and combine them in a plot. Most of them were collected through verbal inquiry and I used publicly available court documents as well. The law enforcement perspective was important, but also the flipside, the stories of the criminals involved. So next to court files, I used psychological files on criminals convicted of trafficking. Lastly, I talked to victims of human trafficking, to validate that this is indeed the way these criminals talk and operate.

Philip Fokker: You write that trafficking can generate up to $300,000 a year for a criminal and that the risks are much lower for them than being involved in the drug trade. In your opinion, should law enforcement switch priorities when it comes to these crimes? 

John DiGirolamo: In a sense I do, because we are talking about people. With drugs, you produce it and sell it and it’s done. With people, you traumatize them over and over. But there is a relationship there, these criminals are most of the time also into gun and drug sales. On many occasions, they get their victims hooked on drugs to control them.

Philip Fokker: I find the way you switch perspectives a powerful tool in your book. The bus ticket saleswoman Bethany and the Greyhound clerk in Kiyra’s [a juvenile runaway – PhF] story, make the reader realize that they should be more vigilant. Was this the goal you had in mind while applying this style? And also: did these two eyewitness accounts come from police files?

John DiGirolamo: Those were specifically in the story, to demonstrate that the average person could see something being off. Many people look over the fact that a situation they come across is suspicious. If people don’t understand these signs, trafficking will remain mostly unnoticed, under the radar in society. I got that information by doing research and talking to some of the advocates. An average person that is aware of the signs involved with sex trafficking, could make that one phone call and save a life. Part of the point of this book was to create awareness. The bullet points at the end of the book are included to raise consciousness about the subject

Philip Fokker: What is needed to prevent certain ‘behavior to fall through the cracks of bureaucracy’, as you put it in your book?

John DiGirolamo: I mean, it starts with education. Hopefully, people become aware and be motivated to solve this problem worldwide. One of the NGOs I spoke to said that a lot of times a victim could see a person during the time the abuse was taking place, without them noticing anything being off. People need to be diligent. Next to that, I believe that the elephant in the room is the current culture. Contemporary cultural influences make it look ok to pay for sex. If there would be no demand for this, there would be no crime.

Philip Fokker: Potential clients should be more aware of the pain and misery they inflict on these trafficked people, do you mean? Or do you think that in the US – where prostitution is mostly illegal – citizens that pay for sex are already morally adrift? What would raise awareness among people that are potentially willing to pay for sex?

John DiGirolamo: In some cases, and some states, people will just be given a ticket when getting caught. But if law enforcement arrests somebody, they are being interviewed and put in the system, making repetition less attractive. One of the things that came out of my research is that some people who ‘buy’ another person for sex, are already dehumanizing themselves and the victim. 

Dehumanization of both the victim and the client plays a large role in the transaction of sex trafficking. Victims tell me that they have to shut off mentally during the abuse. And through researching the psyche of the clients, I found that they dehumanize the victim to deal with possible feelings of guilt. Most of the clients are what we would call ‘normal people’ who, according to law enforcement, are trying to make their crime sound ok, coming up with excuses for themselves such as: “I’m not doing it to my daughter, I’m doing it to a stranger.”

And like I said before, modern culture feeds these trends: the rise of pornography usage for example. The individualization of society makes intimate relations less deep and meaningful and sex, in many cases, pure physical. Our culture worsens trafficking, with people reenacting scenes they have seen online. I mean: It’s a lot harder to be mean to somebody face-to-face than while behind a keyboard. It’s this kind of removal from reality that is also being applied by clients paying for sex.

Philip Fokker: Do you have any idea in how many cases a trafficker gets convicted?

John DiGirolamo: I don’t have an exact number. But people in law enforcement tell me it’s hard to get these criminals prosecuted, because of two reasons: many victims don’t want to come forward and a lot of manpower is needed to successfully close a case. One law enforcement officer from the Denver area told me that they work 100 cases a year, adding that they could be working on 1,000 if they had the manpower. 

In Colorado, they recently made the laws on trafficking much tougher. Because of this, one criminal received a 400-year conviction. But, as I mentioned before, convictions take multiple witnesses and a lot of resources. Sadly, the “defunding the police” trend from the last few years, does not help victims, to say the least. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 658 persons were convicted of a ‘federal human trafficking offense’ in 2020.

Philip Fokker: Erlinda’s case, in which a mother and her daughter fall victim to traffickers, is very well researched and should maybe be mandatory reading for every police officer in training, in my opinion. How did you research this case?

John DiGirolamo: This particular case was brought to my attention by a police officer and especially shows the ruthlessness of these criminals. By murdering in front of the petrified women, they showed them that they were not bluffing when it came to their threats. Sadly, both the mother and daughter were killed violently by the criminals later on. Again, setting an example for other girls that witnessed the murder. 

Philip Fokker: On a more hopeful note: the stories of Angela Rae and Jessica are very empowering. What can you tell us about these stories and why did you choose to include them in the book?

John DiGirolamo: So, I definitely wanted the stories of survivors and not only victims in the book. And I wanted somebody that was not too young, someone who went through a long recovery and healing process. Angela’s story is about persevering in the face of adversity. Her story tells how someone can deal with even the most horrific abuse. When I talked to her, she had just come out with her story. She was 53 and had the perspective and experience I was looking for. With her experience, she could voice the needs of survivors. 

Hopefully, other victims and survivors feel that they as well can overcome the heartache and nightmares. Angela found that in the end, being able to forgive her grandfather, who pimped her out to fellow pedophiles as a child, was for her own good. When I spoke to her, she told me that she had a nightmare about the abuse two days before. And that in the past she would be upset about this for a day, and now only for about ten minutes. Her lesson: it never leaves you, but you can learn to manage the trauma.

Jessica’s story comes from a whole other perspective. What I wanted to show with her story is how certain aspects of our culture promote sexual relations with underaged children. One of the girls in her story is forced to pose in a Hello Kitty outfit, for example. That’s how some pornography is now portrayed. This fuels a certain desire in the people watching it. If you look at studies on pornography, most kids are about ten years old when they first encounter pornography. 

It’s not like finding an old Playboy magazine, like in the pre-internet era. Getting exposed to hardcore porn at a young age rewires the brain. It distorts the view of people that are depicted in porn as if they are just there to please the viewer. So, Jessica’s case is really about culture. Also, I liked her coming back to God. Going down the bottom of the barrel before being able to lift yourself. She is now very open about her time as a porn actress, madam and prostitute, and a spokesperson against pornography and trafficking.

Philip Fokker: What are you currently working on?

John DiGirolamo: I’m working on various stories, with the theme ‘people who fight evil’. I just finished the story of a police officer that poses as a 12-year-old girl online and meets guys that want to hook up with her at a hotel. So, you can imagine this officer has some compelling stories to share.

Philip Fokker: Any last thoughts?

John DiGirolamo: Some more statistics, which I hope help raise awareness: 60% of sex trafficking cases happen through someone within the kids’ social network. Only 5% of the cases involve kidnapping. Predators nowadays are operating mostly online, like the girl in my book that meets a guy playing Minecraft. These kids are obsessed with reaching 1,000 followers or ‘friends’. And society doesn’t see this as a problem. But maybe that’s just because the average parent does not realize that out of these 1,000 “friends,” some are predators. 

[Readers can buy this book on .]
[ edited this interview.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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During these protests, some have chanted slogans in favor of the Pahlavi dynasty. Sadly, these protesters do not realize that both father Reza Shah and son Mohammad Reza Shah would have shot them dead or arrested and tortured if they were in power.

Why are Young People Protesting in Iran?

In our previous article, we analyzed Mohammad Mosaddegh and the golden age of Iranian democracy. For a 12-year spell from 1941 to 1953, Iran experienced freedom, reforms and the exercise of popular sovereignty. Mosaddegh cleaned up corruption and improved the economy. He invested in health, unemployment insurance and infrastructure. Mosaddegh also initiated programs to address women’s rights. However, this Iranian statesman is most noted for leading the nationalization of the oil industry.

The British Strike Back

The British had a monopoly over ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s oil since its discovery in 1908. Nationalization of the oil industry made Mosaddegh their worst enemy and British agents began working to oust him. They used every possible means to undermine his policies and question his competence. They resorted to disinformation, bribery, blackmail, murder and riots.

In June 1953, the British succeeded in winning over American support by painting Mosaddegh to be a socialist. By now, the US was about the spread of communism. The British also promised Americans a share of the oil. Nationalization was also a bad for other countries and went against the interests of American oil companies. The US was also disappointed that Mosaddegh did not show any in the formation of the Baghdad Pact, yet another anti-Soviet military alliance of the Cold War.

Hence, the US agreed with the British to launch “.” Its goal: remove Mosaddegh from power. Now, the CIA dispatched one of its stars to Tehran. This swashbuckler was and he worked with close coordination with MI6 for regime change in Iran. 

Together, the Americans and the British bribed politicians, military officers, government officials, warlords, and reporters. They also hired mobsters and hoodlums to pretend to be communists. These fake communists attacked people, broke into stores, torched buildings and used profanity as part of their shock and awe tactics to discredit Mosaddegh.

These tactics did not quite work. Mosaddegh remained wildly popular. When this Iranian statesman called for a referendum to dissolve the Majles (the Iranian parliament), he got of the vote. However, the British and the Americans were infiltrating many powerful interest groups in Iran. The plot against Mosaddegh was thickening. In August 1953, even as Mosaddegh remained popular, he was unaware that many of his , including some in his own party, were conspiring with the British and the Americans to oust him. 

Revolution Erupted in Iran Because of Mohammad Reza Shah

One Coup Fails but the Second Succeeds

On August 16, 1953, the Shah dismissed Mosaddegh. He appointed General Fazlollah Zahedi, a , as prime minister. Some close associates of the Shah have the view that this was unnecessary. Mosaddegh would have resigned had the Shah asked him to do so.

Zahedi and his cronies began arresting Mosaddegh’s top aides. Mosaddegh saw Zahedi’s appointment as a military coup and refused to step down. The prime minister summoned loyal military officers to his defense. They arrested the party Zahedi had sent to capture Mosaddegh.

The Shah fled the country and Zahedi took refuge with the CIA. The CIA-led, MI6 first attempt miserably failed. Mosaddegh felt so confident that he did not take the opportunity to to the nation about the coup. This turned out to be a historic blunder.

The CIA and MI6 did not give up. They carried on their anti-government activities and instigated violence in the streets. Fearing communist attacks, Iranians withdrew to their homes. After three days of rioting, Ayatollah Abul-Qasem Kashani reportedly Mosaddegh about a coup attempt to oust him.  Mosaddegh dismissed the warning with his aloof reply, “I am supported by the Iranian nation.”

The very next day, large crowds suddenly appeared in the streets in support of the Shah. On this historic day of August 19, 1953, Mosaddegh was caught unawares. The second coup attempt succeeded. Zahedi came out of hiding and arrested Mosaddegh. On hearing about Mosaddegh’s fall, the then British prime minister said that after a long time he finally slept well.

After the coup, Mosaddegh was put on as a traitor in a military court. Fearing popular reaction, Mosaddegh’s statements in his defense were all censored. Mosaddegh was sentenced to solitary confinement to begin with and then house arrest for the remainder of his life. At the age of 84, he died in 1967 while still in house arrest. 

In the , he said, “Yes, my sin – my greater sin – and even my greatest sin is that I nationalized ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire…. This at the cost to myself, my ; and the risk of losing my life, my honor, and my property.” Then, he continued, “I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chain of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.”

After the coup, the weak, narcissist and debauched Shah returned to Iran. From now on, he wielded absolute power. Tutored by US advisers, he became a cruel despot just like his father. He crushed all political movements. The opposition went underground, discontent simmered and eventually led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Personal Memories and Consequences of the Coup

One of the co-authors still remembers the day of the coup. He was with his father running errands in central Tehran. At midday, everything seemed peaceful. Suddenly, all hell broke loose. People appeared in trucks chanting, “Death to Mosaddegh, long live the Shah.” The co-author’s father instinctively cursed the British for engineering this ruckus. The very next day, Iranians such as the co-author’s father, friends and family knew that the CIA and MI6 had engineered the coup because Zahedi thanked the US for its support.

In the US and in Britain, the people did not realize the role the CIA and MI6 had played for years. They assumed that organic street protests led to Mosaddegh’s fall. One co-author has been in the US since 1965. He is married to an American. He has had numerous discussions with fellow Americans who resolutely believed that the US could never do as dastardly a deed as overthrow a democratically elected government through a coup.

The US mass media took the same line as uninformed American citizens. In 2003, The New York Times supported the Iraq War. In 1953, this venerable publication supported the coup against Mosaddegh. went further and claimed that “this was no military coup, but a spontaneous popular uprising.” 

In 2013, such claims were proved patently false. The CIA that it carried out the 1953 coup with the approval of the highest levels of the US government. The British have yet to issue a mea culpa but numerous retired MI6 and CIA officers have remarked to the other co-author that this coup turned out to be a historic blunder. These officers maintain that this 1953 coup had unintended consequences and led directly to the 1979 revolution.

It turns out that the coup was planned, coordinated and directed by Cyprus-based MI6 agent . The CIA’s Roosevelt merely executed Darbyshire’s plans. The 1953 coup was the CIA’s first exposure to covert operations that caused regime change. Since then, the has replicated it in numerous other countries.

The dissolute Shah rewarded the US generously for installing him on the throne. In October 1954, Iran signed the , giving the “US, British, and French oil companies” 40% ownership of its nationalized oil industry. The management of the consortium was led by American oil companies for 25 years and many consider it to be “the ever put together.”

Surprisingly, the took over the country in February 1979 about 7 months before the agreement was due to expire. In January 1979, one of the major concerns of the world leaders at the summit was the flow of oil from Iran as revolution erupted in the country. The US and Britain had profited handsomely from the 1953 coup and the 1979 revolution was an unnecessary headache.

Why MI6 and the CIA Succeeded

Given Mosaddegh’s popularity, a question recurs repeatedly: why did the coup succeed?

Mosaddegh was unlucky. The communist Tudeh Party was at least as powerful as Mosaddegh’s National Front. Tudeh could have come out on the streets to prevent the unrest and the coup. However, Joseph Stalin’s death in March 1953 left Tudeh in . Just as the Shah was the lackey of the West, the Tudeh Party was controlled directly by Stalin. With the Soviet strongman dead, Tudeh was rudderless and useless.

In addition to bad fortune, Mosaddegh himself was to blame. He was an idealist who could be exceedingly naïve when it came to realpolitik. Mosaddegh believed deeply in democracy but failed to realize that many of his enemies did not. When he was informed about legislators, officials and military officers plotting a coup, Mosaddegh’s reaction was to ask for proof. Naturally, such proof was hard to come, which lulled this venerable Iranian statesman into a false sense of complacency.

Mosaddegh’s championing of freedom of religion annoyed many conservatives. In particular, it strained relations with his most powerful religious and patriotic supporter . This support was crucial for Mosaddegh because Kashani commanded a powerful base that could have countered those plotting a coup. To make matters worse, Mosaddegh ignored Kashani’s warning a day before the coup.

Mosaddegh lost some of his secular supporters because they feared communism. Furthermore, some parliamentarians were upset with the prime minister for dissolving the Majles. A few switched sides and supported the coup.

Mosaddegh fatally did not seize the moment after the first coup. This attempt was reported on the radio but the prime minister did not give a public address disclosing all the facts. He did not summon the masses to his defense. Mosaddegh was a sick man during much of his premiership and, particularly, at the time of the coup. He had lost touch with the masses, key interest groups and many members of his own party. Mosaddegh also failed to realize that success today gives no guarantee of success tomorrow.

Mosaddegh was a touch too credulous in trusting the US. He expected Uncle Sam to be an honest broker between Iran and Britain. During his visit to the US, the then president Harry Truman arranged for Mosaddegh’s medical care. Relations between the US and Iran continued to be even when Dwight D. Eisenhower became president. 

As fear of communism rose in the US, Eisenhower turned against Iran. The sweet prospects of access to Iranian oil also facilitated this change of heart. Given the US stress on capitalism and securing oil for its energy-hungry economy, it was inevitable that Washington would look extremely unfavorably upon nationalization of the oil industry. Mosaddegh did not realize the stakes on the geopolitical chessboard and was unprepared to counter the foreign powers.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Scary CIA-MI6 Coup Destroyed Iran and Damaged the World appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The campaign grabbed the attention and endorsement of some Iranian celebrities and athletes like Ali Karimi but drew silence from well-known anti-regime Iranian diaspora activists Nazanin Boniadi, journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, actress Golshifteh Farahani and activist Hamed Esmaeilion.

However, many ethnic peoples and political representatives with other democratic forces in the opposition were alarmed by this unilateral and unseemly campaign. Many took to social media to reject Reza Pahlavi, and his supporter’s attempt to hijack the revolution and assume leadership. 

Revolution Erupted in Iran Because of Mohammad Reza Shah

In Balochistan, many protesters held stating, “No to Mullah and Shah, no IRGC terrorists, Yes to freedom.” Another well-known revolutionary slogan chanted on city streets across Iran is “Death to the oppressor, whether he is the shah or the supreme leader.” If Reza Pahlavi and his supporters truly cared about democracy and human rights, they surely could not have missed the voices of the people facing guns and bullets on the streets in Iran. 

show protesters chanting other common slogans that reject the objectives of the Pahlavi campaign like “no monarchy, no leader (supreme leader), democracy and equality.” Even more direct was a held up by protesters in Zahedan, Balochistan that reads, “Reza Pahlavi is not our representative, understand that we have our representatives.” 

It would be incorrect to say that Reza Pahlavi does not have supporters. Nevertheless, most Iranians do not want to sacrifice their lives in a revolution to overthrow the theocratic state of the ayatollahs only to have it replaced by the son of a previous dictator overthrown by a revolution in 1979. The Ayatollahs and Pahlavi have had decades to govern Iran but both have been impediments to democratic movements throughout ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s history. This among many other factors demonstrates the absurdity of the Pahlavi campaign.

Why the campaign does more harm than good

Anyone advocating for Reza Pahlavi’s leadership through this campaign is truly not in touch with reality and knows little about the law or how political processes work. The titled, “Prince Reza Pahlavi is my representative,” states, “Considering the revolution that is going on in Iran and considering that Reza Pahlavi asked the people of Iran to give him power of attorney to lead this movement.” There is no legal basis under domestic or international law to give someone such power. The entire premise of the campaign has no grounds in democratic processes or legal code. The campaign illustrates that Reza Pahlavi and his supporters are zealous to monopolize the revolution and secure power for themselves. 

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Having the Shah’s son serve as interim leader in a transitional government if the revolution successfully overthrows the Islamic Republic sends the wrong signal to people inside and outside of Iran because the people do not want to go back to the days of the monarchy. They are also firmly against the theocratic system of the Ayatollahs. The people in Iran have learned from the last revolution that getting behind a self-declared messiah (Khomeini) may lead to another authoritarian system.

If Reza Pahlavi supports women’s rights then he should step aside and let a woman lead. If monarchists want to establish the monarchy on the backs of the women and men who have died or are being tortured and imprisoned in this globally recognized women’s revolution, then I propose that one of Pahlavi’s sisters campaign for leadership. It would be quite progressive but the Pahlavi monarchy is gender biased.   

Having a campaign for leadership at a time when the revolution has not succeeded in overthrowing the theocracy illustrates the immaturity of the prince and his supporters. They claim to be for democracy yet attempt to arbitrarily impose upon the people an exiled Pahlavi seeking to continue a family legacy of assimilation, forced homogenization, and authoritarianism under the guise of freedom and modernity. 

Reza Pahlavi is not a unifier but a divider

In a recent interview with Manoto TV, Reza Pahlavi makes it clear that he has no democratic solution for Iran’s multitude of problems nor does he propose any governing structure that can guarantee the rights of Kurds, Baloch, Azeri and Ahwazi Arabs. 

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The journalist asks Pahlavi about how he views the demand by ethnic groups in Iran who say that they are ready to be a part of the coalition and an exile government if Pahlavi and others recognize them as distinct nations in a multinational Iran. His response, applauded by his supporters, shocked many others.

Pahlavi responds, “Any democratic force that believes in democratic institutions and political transparency can be a part of the political coalition that we are demanding but they must believe that the territorial integrity of Iran is a red line. Anyone who does not believe in the unity of ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s territory cannot be a part of the political coalition and this is our clear message for all parties.”

His dismissal of the rights of such nations as mere demands of separatism and a threat to Iran’s territorial integrity indicates that he does not believe in democracy. He seeks to hijack the Jina Revolution like Khomeini did with the 1979 Revolution and impose homogenization and assimilation much like the Islamic republic has been doing and his father before them. 

Despite living in the West and having connections with many western governments, he has done little to investigate the power-sharing institutions and principles that maintain social and political cohesion in democratic countries that could serve as plausible solutions to the demands of the different nations in Iran. He resorts to the Khomenian tactics of appealing to fears and accusations instead of diplomacy and cooperation.

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In his recent Manoto TV Pahlavi goes on to say, “Tell me what Iranian would want his country to be divided into pieces? Those who talk about separatism need to know that the chants inside Iran are nationalistic and not local or specific to any ethnic or religious group. The people want one Iran.”

None of what Reza Pahlavi says is true or helps to unite the diverse peoples who inhabit Iran. When Jina Amini died, the revolution for women, life, and freedom began in Kurdistan in her hometown and spread all over Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran blamed the Kurds, bombed Kurdish opposition parties across the border in the KRG and even came out with statements accusing the Kurds of orchestrating the revolution with the help of Israel. This is because the revolution sparked by the death of a Kurdish girl in a Kurdish town and by a Kurdish slogan started in Kurdistan before spreading to the rest of Iran. 

What the people want in Iran is freedom but that means different things to different people. This is a fact that Pahlavi and other Iranian leaders have not thought about or perhaps have chosen to ignore in favor of a more absolutist governing structure that fundamentally changes little for non-Persian nations or the establishment of a working democracy in Iran.

In the 1940s, Qazi Muhammad, president of the Kurdistan Republic, made efforts to peacefully resolve the Kurdish question through the establishment of pluralistic and democratic Iran. With the help of the Brits and Americans, the last Shah of Iran hanged Qazi for establishing an autonomous Kurdistan government and advocating for democracy in Iran. 

In the 1980s, the Kurdish leader Abdul Rehman, who once said that “we will not allow anyone to claim that they are more Iranian than us Kurds,” and who made famous the slogan: Democracy for Iran, Autonomy for Kurdistan, was assassinated in Vienna by regime agents while negotiating with the Iranian state. 

Similarly, his successor Dr. Sadiq Sharafkandi was assassinated in Mykonos while meeting with Iranian opposition leaders to unify opposition against the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic of Iran justifies the murder of the Kurdish leaders with the same argument that Reza Pahlavi makes, that they were separatists or a threat to the territorial integrity of Iran. 

In addition, The of Nationalities for a Federal Iran have articulated similar demands. The of Nationalities for a Federal Iran which is an alliance of political parties and advocacy groups campaigning to replace the current Islamist government system in Iran with a secular, democratic, federal government has also rejected these allegations of separatism. 

None of these nations demand independence or separation from Iran, yet, monarchists like Pahlavi and the Islamic Republic both continue this rhetoric of separatism and territorial integrity because they do not want to share power and build a tolerant and pluralistic democracy in Iran that recognizes the fundamental rights of all nations in Iran. 

It has been 72 years since the establishment of the Iranian nation-state. The Kurds and others continue to struggle for their rights as nations yet Iranian leaders like Reza Pahlavi and the Ayatollahs continue to label them as threats to territorial integrity. 

The separatism accusation illustrates that Iranian leaders in the monarchist and Islamist camps continue to hold outdated views about demands for self-determination and democracy that make them unfit to lead Iran.

If Iran fragments into separate states like the former Yugoslavia did in the 1990s, It will not be because the non-Persian nations did not try to resolve their issues peacefully and democratically. It will be because the Iranian state forced upon the various peoples a policy of assimilation and homogenization to erase the identity of marginalized nations in Iran.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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In two forthcoming papers, Low, a professor of business economics and public policy, takes a revealing look at “reproductive capital,” a term she uses to describe the economic value of fertility, and thus the trade-offs that women make when they make time-consuming educational and career investments.

In her first , “Pricing the Biological Clock: The Marriage Market Costs of Aging to Women,” forthcoming at the Journal of Labor Economics, Low designed a unique online dating experiment to determine how both men and women fare in the marriage market as they get older and fertility declines.

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“You always hear people talking about the biological clock and how influential it is in women’s lives. But what’s been missing from the literature is this idea that if men also want to have kids, then it isn’t just a personal trade-off for women, it’s an economic trade-off,” she said. “Who you marry is one of the most significant financial decisions you can make. It’s a big deal for your financial well-being whether you marry someone who is going to make $50,000 a year or $500,000 a year.”

The experiment recruited real online daters who were asked to rate hypothetical profiles in which the photo was the same, but the age and income varied. The participants were incentivized to be honest in their answers; as compensation, they received customized advice from a dating coach on how to attract the type of partner they rated highest.

The results found that both male and female participants valued a high income in a potential romantic partner, but there was a sharp contrast when it came to age preferences. Men were rated higher as they aged, while women were rated lower as they aged. However, the preference for younger women was only found among male daters who had no children and who were knowledgeable about when female fertility declines. Based on their ratings, for every year past 30, women had to make $7,000 a year more to stay in the romantic running for them.

“These findings indicate that men also hear the ticking of the biological clock. Seeking to marry and have children, they naturally prefer more fertile partners,” Low wrote in the paper.

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More Equitable Policies

Low said she hopes business and political leaders will use her findings to craft more equitable policies that take into consideration this economic trade-off for women. Although women’s education levels have been rising rapidly in the last 50 years, women still make up of Fortune 500 CEOs. Keeping talented women in the workforce isn’t just important in closing the gender pay gap, it’s a key component to a thriving economy, she said.

“You might be paying her more money to stay in this high-pressure job, but she’s losing out on the marriage market, which puts it in different economic terms,” Low said, noting that women’s fertility begins to decline in the 30s, which is the same age that most careers ascend. “Firms need to think about how to alleviate that trade-off and recognize it as the equivalent of costing her money.”

She said change could come in the form of redesigning career timelines so that women can get the full value of both their human and reproductive capital. In law and medicine, for example, women often delay marriage and children as they attain graduate degrees and pursue residency or partnership.

“There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to finish law school, take a fellowship that’s a slower pace for a few years, and then start the partner track when your kids are in kindergarten,” Low said. “People are working into their 70s these days. Why can’t they make intensive investments starting when they are 35?”

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Human vs. Reproductive Capital

While Low’s first study finds a $7,000 price tag on each year marriage is delayed, her second , “The Human Capital – �Reproductive Capital’ Tradeoff in Marriage Market Matching,” forthcoming at the Journal of Political Economy, models the real trade offs this consideration creates in women’s school and career investments.

People who are higher income or higher education typically marry partners who are also higher income or higher education. This is a phenomenon economists refer to as “assortative matching.” Low documents a key deviation from this pattern: Throughout the 20^thcentury, graduate-educated women have married poorer spouses than college-educated women, despite being higher earning themselves. Every other education level yields richer spouses.

Why? Education may increase “human capital,” but because it takes time, it decreases “reproductive capital,” especially for educational investments that take longer and are later in life.

Low shows that when you acknowledge this duality in women’s school investments, you can predict that education will be viewed as a positive thing in the marriage market, up to a point, but will start to detract from women’s marriage market “value” when it interferes with fertile years.

Low said her research illuminates how women pay for investing in their careers and education with a “tax on the marriage market.” This makes entering careers requiring lengthy investments, which also tend to be the highest paying, less appealing for women, and may help explain the persistent gap in representation for women at the top of the corporate ladder.

It’s not all bad news, though. Recently, graduate-educated women have started marrying richer men than college-educated women, and also marrying at higher rates and divorcing less.

Low’s explanation: the shrinking American family. Because everyone is having fewer children, graduate women aren’t facing quite the same disadvantage. The preference for smaller families seems to be a bit of an equalizer for women across the board.

“People have documented this phenomenon of a reversal of fortune for educated women on the marriage market — that they used to marry less, get divorced more, have fewer children. And now, things are improving. But I show this has not been driven by college-educated women at all, but rather graduate-educated women, and that’s because of reproductive capital,” Low said. “A graduate degree and the subsequent career investment really do cut into those reproductive years when you want a large family.”

Low’s work further suggests that this marriage market improvement could be leading to a greater willingness for women to pursue educational investments, with women’s graduate school enrollments now outpacing men’s.

Women as �Economic Agents’

When asked if she found these studies to be a disappointing indictment about gender in society, Low said it was simply honest.

“There are some real difficulties, and we can build a better society that lets us be more equal by taking account of those differences,” she said. “But we don’t get there by ignoring those differences and gaslighting women that they can just try harder.”

Low, whose research focuses more broadly on diversity, equity, and inclusion, said the two papers are part of her larger agenda to change how women are studied in economics and beyond. She wants society to value women as “economic agents” and treat women’s issues with the same weight as other serious topics. Whether or not to have children — and when to have children — is a fundamental decision.

“If you look around the world, you see not everybody consumes cars or designer clothes, but most people get value in their lives by either having or connecting to children in some way,” she said. “Children are of fundamental economic importance, and I want to treat that with the full seriousness of the economic tools that we have. In doing so, it takes women’s decisions out of this dismissive context and puts it back in the domain of economic optimization, where there are two very important sources of value creation that she’s trading off between.”

[ first published this piece.]

[Shaurya Singhi edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Does a Woman’s Biological Clock Have a Price? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Indonesia has set a target of in GHG emissions without international funding, and 43.20% with international support by 2030. This commitment is legally binding. This gives judiciaries a pivotal role in achieving this goal. is “an increasingly common and citizen-accessible area of environmental law.” Citizens increasingly use this form of litigation to hold countries and public corporations accountable both “for their climate mitigation efforts and historical contributions to .”

In Indonesia, all climate-related cases are filed in the general court and led by certified judges in environmental law. The future holds increasing ecological challenges due to climate change, making it essential for Indonesia’s government to enhance its jurisdiction in order to mindfully regulate environmental laws.

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In 2019, citizens and activists of Jakarta sued the government for poor air quality in central Jakarta court. This case was critical in the history of human rights in Indonesia as it voiced the citizens’ demands to improve the overall environment. The case reached a verdict after two long years in 2021. The verdict entailed appropriate penalties for the president, three of the ministers, and the governor, in order to implement appropriate actions against air pollution. This case has contributed to the climate litigation progress and movements in Indonesia.

Principles and Practice

This case consists of some principles related to environmental law as mentioned in Article 2, of 2009. These include the principles of pollution pay, sustainable development and the precautionary principle. According to the pollution pay principle, Jakarta’s governor should be stricter in penalizing drivers who do not comply with permissible pollution levels for vehicles, businesses or activities that do not meet emission-quality standards. Due to this case, the governor issued  , regarding the exhaust emission tests of motorbikes in 2020. This added more than 15 air quality monitoring stations, and arranged emission inventory. 

Air pollution negatively impacts health over many generations. Such pollution is not sustainable and violates the principle of sustainable health. Judges argued that the health ministry had violated the law by refusing to share any information regarding the polluted areas and the effect of the air pollution on public health.The health ministry also did not have the statistics about the decline in public health due to the air pollution. This goes against article 14 in presidential . Therefore, there is a need for Indonesia to improve transparency among stakeholders.

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Keeping in accordance with the precautionary principle, after the forest fires in 2017, the panel of judges requested the president to revise presidential rule 41 of 1999. Though the validity of this act has been questioned for 21 years, it has still not been reviewed by the president, signifying a failure to prioritize the regulations. Despite this, a ray of hope may still lie amongst the citizen lawsuits filed against air pollution in Jakarta. These lawsuits led the government to redesign the Baku Mutu Adara Ambien (BMUA), which translates as the Ambient Air Quality Standard, and could possibly be what encourages the prioritization of the pollution risks. 

Strengthening Climate Commitments

This suit serves as an example for all Indonesians to approach the court of law with citizen lawsuits if their rights to a healthy environment are violated. The right to a healthy environment is a human right, and so, will be considered in court in any environmental case. The court’s decision to consider human rights a supporting element in Perbuatan Melawan Hukum (PMH), and their choice to present human rights experts in court are well-measured moves. 

In addition to this case, the media also plays a crucial role in raising awareness about climate litigation in Indonesia. Presenting more cases and initiating discussions will increase critical thinking and optimism amongst citizens about the environment and their human rights.

The president and the ministries of Indonesia need to be held accountable for any violation of the BMUA rules. Jakarta’s air pollution is getting progressively worse. Along with Hanoi and Mandalay, Jakarta is the city in Southeast Asia. Their citizens’ life expectancy has by three to four years on average.The verdict also probes the ministry of environment and forestry to strengthen the supervising roles of governors. The supervising roles of governors extend to the areas of forming policies on emission limits, management plans (), power station units and other operating industries in each province. In order to further public participation and their faith in the government, there need to be mechanisms to penalize governors if found ineffective. This will showcase the nation and its judiciary’s commitment towards reversing climate change. 

Indonesia continues to face challenges with solving the air pollution in Jakarta. For instance, the country has a limited number of judges specializing in environmental law who can address the potential rise in climate-related cases. Indonesia also needs to stop relying on coal power plants to attain its economic resilience due to its direct impact on air pollution. Furthermore, the public is still largely unaware of the urgency of the climate crisis. 

Since climate-related cases are rising, Indonesia must train its young judges in environmental law. Cases alone will not do the trick and neither will judicial activism. Indonesian citizens have to take an active role in getting their representatives to draft laws to combat climate change. They also have to put pressure on the government to implement these laws through sensible policies. These policies must have goals and targets that can be measured, monitored and evaluated. Only then will Indonesia be able to play its part in combating climate change.

[ and edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What Jakarta Climate Change Lawsuit Means for the Future appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

This phrasing may seem normal for most, but it can be a tool of oppression. When used in political discourse or a legal framework, the label “minority” can worsen marginalized people’s social, economic, and political persecution by implying their rights are less significant or deserving of recognition.

The term also leads to a lack of media coverage and priority in policy when people labeled minorities are attacked, arrested, imprisoned, or killed by states. Even when they get media attention, governments fail to address the gross human rights violations committed against them.

The term defined by the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, refers to groups “which constitute less than half of the population in the entire territory of a state whose members share common characteristics of culture, religion or language, or a combination of any of these.”

The words we use can weaken or reinforce oppressive systems. In essay, “Politics and the English Language,” he stated, “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.” Thus, a legal system or polity’s language can be problematic if it heavily emphasizes the rights of either the majority or the minority.

How The Term Leads to Oppression

The term “minority” downplays human rights abuse and the psychological trauma experienced by entire populations. As a minority, you constantly fear being imprisoned, killed, bombed, or forced to leave your home country. Even when living peacefully, the worry about who you are and where you come from renders you prone to victimhood and permeates your entire life.

This fear and victimhood is the life of most persecuted people labeled minorities. “Minority” is a word that quantifies human rights and suffering and results in treating such people as lesser than those with membership in the dominant group in society. Using the term “minority”, further marginalizes the rights of ethnic, cultural, and religious groups.

In all instances of its use, “minority” emphasizes insignificance even when that is not a person’s intention. Furthermore, to minimize the severity and injustice of their persecution of these people, states that violate human rights against ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities within their borders employ this same language of insignificance that highlights the problematic term or concept of minorityhood.

Minority-hood is the condition of being treated and made to feel insignificant because you are different from the majority.   

The minority-majority dichotomy serves oppression in every facet of society: political, social, or economic. Thus, to eradicate violence and discrimination against nationalities, ethnicities, and cultural groups, the term, minority, must be removed from international law.

Why The Term should Be Eliminated

Many states are dominated by one ethnic group or another. The concept of minorities contributes to the inequality between groups in diverse polities. It often works to marginalize those distinguishable from the majority while favoring the group in power.

It is more feasible to recognize the rights of all people and the rights of ethnonational, linguistic, religious and cultural groups in international law without referring to them as minorities. Classifying oppressed peoples as minorities frequently results in the assumption — conscious or subconscious — that since a group is a minority the lives of its members are less valuable. 

In no way is this advocating for the policing of language. Freedom of speech is integral in dismantling oppressive rhetoric and structures in society. However, dropping the concept of minorities can help us move away from quantifiable notions of rights to more egalitarian concepts of rights that are not discriminatory.

To protect all life, we must respond with the same shock and effort to the taking of one life as we do to that of many lives. Human lives are not measurable statistics or numbers; they are immeasurably valuable. Eliminating the concept of minorities also eliminates the unspoken notion that human life and rights are only significant based on population size.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Many Negative Effects of the “Minority” Label appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Peace in our time?

The peace deal was brokered in November 2022 in and. These agreements allowed for a ceasefire, aid flows and the deployment of African Union-led monitors who would oversee the re-establishment of Ethiopian government authority over Tigray.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that dominates the region, promised to its fighters within 30 days under the agreement. That was signed on November 2. It has still not been completed, at least in part, because the text contained the provision that this would “depend on the security situation on the ground.”

As Patrick Wight wrote, the subsequent Nairobi agreement “states that disarmament of the Tigray Defence Forces’s heavy weapons “done concurrently with the withdrawal of foreign and non-ENDF (Ethiopian National Defence Forces) from the region.” What a “concurrent” disarmament of TDF and withdrawal of Eritrean troops looks like in practice is anyone’s guess. It would be positive if this means the alarmingly rapid disarmament provisions agreed to in Pretoria will be delayed.

It has been the Eritreans that have been holding up progress. At the end of December there were eyewitness reports of Eritrean forces leaving Tigrayan towns. “Eritrean soldiers, who fought in support of Ethiopia’s federal government during its two-year civil war in the northern Tigray region, are pulling out of two major towns and heading toward the border, witnesses and an Ethiopian official,” Reuters.

Others are less certain. Tigrayan refugees that the Eritreans remain in parts of the region. Tigrayans have photographs of Eritreans in Tigrayan cities on Twitter, including Adwa.

Meanwhile, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has been claiming “victory” for his forces over the Tigrayans. “My pride has no bounds”, he said in his New Year. But the Eritrean leader is taking no chances. He is reported to be dissident Ethiopians in case his relationship with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed goes sour.

Afwerki previously used foreign troops to threaten neighboring leaders with the use of force. In 2011, the United Nations reported that Eritrea was behind a “massive” attack on an African Union summit in Addis Ababa, using Ethiopian rebels. It would be wrong to assume that a similar attack is now on the cards, but training dissidents could be a tactic to maintain pressure on Ahmed.

Maintaining tension and instability across the Horn of Africa has been a tactic the Eritrean leader has used consistently since capturing Asmara, the Eritrean capital, in 1991. Since then, Afwerki has led his country into no fewer than eight – from Somalia to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

How will Europe and the US respond?

US President Joe Biden has been assiduous in attempting to end the fighting in Tigray. Biden appointed special envoys to the Horn of Africa as soon as he came to office. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken went out of his way to Ahmed during the US-Africa summit in December. He raised the question of peace with Ahmed as well as the ending of the Eritrean troop presence in Tigray. Some wags have suggested that the peace agreements signed in Pretoria and Nairobi were so closely linked to Washington’s efforts they should be termed “US solutions to African problems” – clearly, a play on the phrase “African solutions to African problems.”

Who Can Resolve Ethiopia’s Catastrophic Conflict?

The key question now is whether sufficient progress has been made to lift the American and European sanctions against Ethiopia. They were introduced to try to end the war. In the of Jeffrey Feltman, the former US special envoy to the Horn: “The United States and the European Union hoped that, combined with emergency humanitarian assistance, punitive measures such as the threat of sanctions and the withholding of development aid would halt the atrocities and move the parties from the battlefield to the negotiating table.”  While the two parties did come to the negotiating table, it is unclear if the peace in Tigray is sustainable.

After two years of war, Ethiopia’s economy is said to be on the verge of collapse. The country nearly $20bn for its reconstruction. The EU Foreign Affairs Council is due to meet Brussels on January 23 and one of the issues on their agenda is the possible unfreezing of hundreds of millions of euros pledged in aid to Addis Ababa. Since 2021, the EU froze nearly $210m in aid to Ethiopia, following the draconian blockade Addis Ababa imposed on the Tigray region. The money is badly needed and it is not yet clear what strings the Europeans may attach to the lifting of sanctions.

For Eritrea, the picture is clearer: Washington has no time for Afwerki and is likely to keep the president under pressure. Afwerkid is already so isolated that it is unlikely that he cares greatly about western attitudes. He prefers to rely on his Arab neighbors, China and possibly Russia for international support. Eritrea will keep playing its game of promoting Ethiopian rebels to retain relevance in the region. This is bad news for Ethiopia and prospects of peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Tigray War Was Tragic, Can Peace Prevail Now? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Mass protests are highly uncommon in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) keeps a tight lid on society, using mass surveillance, incarceration and economic pressure on recalcitrant individuals. Hence, people are too cowed down to protest.

The current protests reveal the scale of disaffection in China. Xi’s zero-COVID policy has clearly failed. It has imposed economic setbacks and social suffering on millions of Chinese families. The CCP’s reputation for competence has taken a beating and so has Xi’s prestige.

Xi’s failed zero-COVID policy has implications for the rest of the world. It shows that supply chains reliant on China face major risks and vulnerabilities. Unsurprisingly, countries are now decreasing investment in China, sourcing imports from other countries and making their supply chains more resilient.

Atul Singh and Glenn Carle make sense of protests in China and what this means for Xi, the CCP and the country.

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: China’s Zero-COVID Policy Comes to Zero appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Ten individuals were killed in an in Urumqi, Xinjiang, as their doors were locked from the outside due to lockdown restrictions, which sparked the initial protests. While lifting those limits was the protest’s main objective, it ultimately resulted in calls for Chinese President Xi Jinping to . Using white paper or plain white fabric as an , protesters condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and called for democracy and the right to free speech.

What led to the events?

There are a few things that can be noted from this mass protest. It’s hard to imagine such a large-scale event occurring in China, as the last major protest in China that attracted a military presence took place more than . But these demonstrations are not unique to Beijing. In 2019, a pro-democracy demonstration took place in Hong Kong.

But last month’s protests came after nationwide tension was built when Xi addressed the 20th CCP Congress in October, : “In responding to the sudden outbreak of Covid-19, we put people and their lives above all else, working to prevent the re-emergence of cases arising from within or brought from abroad, and by persistent pursuit of a dynamic zero-Covid policy”.

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This statement illustrates China’s effort to contain the Covid-19 outbreak, including implementing a strict lockdown. However, such efforts led to the frustrations heard during recent protests. Indicating that despite the President’s party reappointment, certain groups still dare to delegitimize the power of Xi and the CCP.

When Xi was by Congress as the CCP’s general secretary. Following was this statement by party delegates, “We must resolutely uphold Comrade Xi’s core position on the Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

It will be interesting to see how this protest develops and what the Chinese government does next. Just days of protests at Tiananmen Square led to the CCP’s decision to use military force to disperse the crowds, which killed civilians and led to widespread arrests. As a result of these actions, China international sanctions, especially from the US and other western countries.

Unlike the crackdown on Tiananmen Square, the CCP’s handling of the Hong Kong protests did not involve using live ammo or the military. Instead, Hong Kong security forces dispersed the protest using water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. With current events, Beijing is mindful that deploying force, as it did in the past, could damage Hong Kong’s reputation as a free zone under China’s “One Country, Two Systems” principle. As a result, with Hong Kong as an economic hub, sanctions will impact China.

Another step to quell demonstrations in Hong Kong is to withdraw the Extradition Bill, which is the direct demand of protestors. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong carried out this action; however, there is speculation that Beijing was behind the decision.

What’s next and impact on Indonesia

Of course, it is too early to tell how these current protests will end. However, even if they escalate, Beijing will likely handle it how they did with the 2019 protest. On the other hand, if the CCP’s actions lose lives and damage the economy, it will lose more respect from Chinese citizens.

Even though these protests may last for some time, Beijing is likely to avoid using military force or violence and may slowly ease lockdown rules to prevent the spread of public sentiment. By doing this, the Chinese government and CCP could both maintain the people’s legitimacy and accelerate economic recovery.

A wave of protests have also emerged in and and may continue to spread to Indonesia, mainly due to the growing negative sentiment towards China.

Based on the Indonesian National Survey Project in July 2022 by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute which interviewed a group of 1,600 diverse respondents directly regarding economic, domestic, and international politics, that almost 25.4% of the Indonesian public believes the rise of China would negatively affect Indonesia. In contrast, only 30% of people believe establishing relations with China will benefit Indonesia.

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The survey also showed positive feelings towards China among Indonesia only reached 66%, compared to 76.7% five years ago. Not only that, many people are also about Indonesia’s involvement in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project; as many as 41.5% of respondents think BRI can create a debt trap for other countries, including Indonesia. A belief, most likely based on events in other countries, such as the construction of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, which resulted in economic losses.

Negative perceptions of China also extend to Chinese descendants in Indonesia. As demonstrated by 41% of survey respondents who Chinese descendants are still loyal to China. 

A recent study by LAB45 that the re-election of Xi is a breath of fresh air for countries in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. However, the recent protests in China may create obstacles to its continued presence in Indonesia, the closest of China’s ASEAN allies.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What Protests in China Really Mean for Indonesia appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Generation Z or Gen Z, defined as those born between the years of 1997-2012, are increasingly involved in their respective countries’ national politics, especially in the US where hot topic issues such as abortion rights are at the forefront of current political discourse. While domestic politics have caught their attention, this generation is not  as engaged in foreign policy and global politics. Much of this stems from the fact that there is little to no comprehensive education surrounding international affairs in public schools. In the US, where the Common Core curriculum is used, there are no specific for international relations courses at the K12 level.

Furthermore, Common Core standards can vary from state to state. Some students may receive a more comprehensive education about global affairs. Oftentimes, global politics or international relations courses aren’t even offered for students to take to fulfill the social studies requirements necessary to graduate high school. The option to take such courses is typically offered to students involved in specialized programs like the International Baccalaureate or Advanced Placement programs. This also leads to a lack of equal opportunity, as many of these programs are offered at schools in higher-income neighborhoods. Additionally, to even complete these programs and those similar to it, students have to pay hundreds of dollars for materials and final exams, therefore leaving those who cannot afford it, behind.

Why education now needs to include foreign policy and international affairs

As the rate of globalization and social media/internet use rise in conjunction, young people are best positioned to connect with the global community. Gen Z is more tech-savvy by nature, having been the first generation to  grow up with technology. This means they have an advantage, and a more natural desire to leverage social media and the internet for the benefit of progress and change.

Young people are also usually the ones who spearhead social, political, and cultural movements and uprisings; evident throughout history. For example, the Arab Spring, Romanian Revolution, anti-war movement(s), and the Tiananmen Square Protests were all either initiated or largely carried out by young people. Even today, the recent revolutionary protests in   prove that the youth  typically always play a large role in political and social movements.

Looking at patterns from the past to better understand the future is an aged concept; it’s one of the main reasons we study history. However, as our world becomes more interconnected by the day, the need to be aware of what is taking place on the global stage is becoming increasingly crucial. For a generation that has â€�seen’ the world like no other, and is naturally exposed to political discourse, public opinions and tragedies, not giving them a comprehensive background in its functioning is foolish. For example, knowledge of tactics and weapons used by the Russian government in Syria could have benefitted global understanding of the aggression in Ukraine. It could also alert us to potential strategies they may use, if studied closely. 

Obviously, the first step to becoming civically engaged is being educated, reiterating my original point, the youth needs to be clued into global affairs in their formative years. Beyond education, young people also need to start being actively included in discussions surrounding global affairs. We have ideas, solutions, and the passion to get things done. Broadly speaking, young people always have untapped potential, and it’s important for us to have a seat at the table.

[Aashnaa Shah edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post High Time for Gen Z to Become More Worldly appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

As it is often the case in conflicts where parties lack empathy for each other, each side of the abortion issue seemed to interpret the Dobbs ruling through the lens of political talking points without exploring the substance of the ruling first. However, when one resists the appeal of simplistic secondary sources that comment on Dobbs (sensation-seeking news reports; alarmist commentaries; and -sadly in our day- memes, sound bites, and tweets) and actually reads the, the 213-page legal analysis makes three things clear to a dispassionate observer:

• Dobbs v. Jackson was not a political decision. It was an act of depoliticization.
• The Supreme Court did not ban abortion. It delegated to state legislatures the authority to regulate abortion.
• Dobbs will not end abortion in America. It may even expand it. 

A Question of Constitutional Authority

Dobbs v. Jackson contributes to depoliticization of the Supreme Court by simply asking if the court possesses the requisite authority to adjudicate the claims. The six justices who ended up constituting the majority opinion approached the abortion issue from a judicial perspective of restraint. Unlike the majorities in the previous two courts that ruled on abortion (Roe and Casey), the Dobbs majority asked whether the Supreme Court has the authority to declare abortion a constitutional right to begin with. Before asking normative questions that inescapably invite political values into judgments (“Should laws treat feti as humans?”, “What abortion restrictions must be imposed in which phase of pregnancies?”, “Should pregnant people have a right to end a life other than theirs?”), these justices asked a fundamental question that our system of checks and balances requires them to ask: Is abortion a constitutional issue that falls within the purview of the US Supreme Court?

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The Dobbs majority concluded it is not a right, given, amongst other things, there is no reference to abortion in the US Constitution. When Constitutional provisions do not explicitly provide a right, such a “right” can be endorsed by the Supreme Court if the practice it supports has a long societal history as a balancing act of conflicting interests that can be settled for the sake of public order. For example, consider, 2015’s expansion of the already-existing right to marry from heterosexual couples to homosexual couples, or, the 1963 expansion of the already-existing right to counsel from capital offenses to all crimes. The Dobbs majority contends that Roe v. Wade’s asserted constitutional right to abortion did not pass this scrutiny. In 1973 when Roe was issued, abortion had never been a common practice in US history, there was no state or federal statute or an academic work that endorsed a right to obtain abortion, and two centuries of American experience had treated abortion as a criminal activity to a large extent. 

In the absence of a legal and historical support for abortion, the Roe majority extracted the right to abortion from the right to privacy (implicitly) recognized by the 1^st, 4^th, 5^th, 9^th and 14^th Amendments, while the Casey court relied upon the notion of liberty advanced by the 14^th Amendment. However, as the Dobbs majority notes, privacy is too broad of a right and abortion a too morally consequential of a procedure for the two notions to be linked to one another in a way that facilitates a fair subjugation of the opposition’s concerns. 

Weaknesses in Roe and Casey’s reasonings were evident in the arbitrariness of the standards they set. Both rulings struck a balance between the competing interests of feti and pregnant people with trimester and viability thresholds, though there is no legal text, principle, or precedence in American jurisprudence to endorse such thresholds. Moreover, Casey’s vague “undue burden” provision made uniform enforcement unpractical. Accordingly, the court’s endorsement of abortion rights had to be overturned as a judicial overreach that was an “egregious wrong on a collision course with the Constitution from the day [it] was decided”.

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The Proper Role of the Courts

The central thesis in Dobbs v. Jackson is that the US Supreme Court is not the proper authority to regulate abortion. Because the US Constitution has no link to abortion, it is not possible for the court to regulate abortion without creating arbitrary notions (such as viability or trimester thresholds). To do so would be an unacceptable usurpation of the legislative branch’s policymaking rights by the judicial branch of the US government. If the US Supreme Court — a court that consists of nine politically appointed, electorally unaccountable justices — were to regulate a subject like abortion under the guise of interpretation, it would strip the American people of their right of democratic self-determination. 

By not formulating federal law vis-a-vis judicial review, the people’s state representatives are now able to exert authority over regulating abortion. Dobbs v. Jackson expands the democratic credentials of the United States as an audacious experiment in decentralized democracy. Consistent with that experiment, the decision may be read as a reversion to the vision the American Founding Fathers had of states as “laboratories of democracy” under the Tenth Amendment. Read in this light, the Dobbs ruling should not be tainted by counterproductive speculations about the motivations of “conservative” justices on the bench or the decision’s likely negative impact on many pregnant people in the short run.

An Unconventional Prediction

Arguably, the Dobbs ruling will lead to an expansion of abortion rights in America in the long run. Turning abortion from a judicially-regulated matter into a legislatively-regulated one authorizes state governments to attach any level of freedoms on abortion they see a fit. Abortion may now be practiced with fewer restrictions in 17 states where both chambers of the legislatures have Democratic majorities, not to mention others where the Republican Party controls only one chamber with a slim margin (such as Virginia, Minnesota or Alaska). While this also means that 29 other states with Republican-majority legislatures can reduce abortion to unprecedented lows –including, conceivably, a near-complete ban in all phases of pregnancies, I foresee a future for abortion in America that is more, not less, liberal than today.

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What convinces me of this admittedly counterintuitive prediction are the common cultural and political histories Americans share. As a country established by liberty-seeking religious conservatives and furthered by opportunity-seeking economic immigrants, the American ethos has always been defined by self-orientation, pragmatism, and displeasure with top-down approaches to society. Throughout US history, blatantly conservative laws sooner or later began to produce adverse economic consequences – sometimes as actual financial costs, and sometimes as opportunity costs of maintaining status quos. This pressure has driven conservative policymakers to reluctantly relax their approaches in an effort to improve their prospects of reelection. Conservative legislatures’ of marijuana in Louisiana (2021), of supply-side tax cuts in Kansas (2018), of death penalty in North Dakota (1973) or of anti-miscegenation law in Montana (1953) are only a few examples of this well-established phenomenon. The Dobbs ruling will turn abortion into a vibrant economic factor in abortion-liberal states. Improved standards of living, job creation and tax revenues in those states will be juxtaposed with troubling news about unsafe abortion substitutes in other states and will eventually compel policymakers in abortion-conservative states to relax their ideological opposition to various degrees. If progressives are to believe their own arguments, Dobbs will have created an America where abortion is practiced more liberally in the decades to come, with fewer restrictions in abortion-liberal states and restrictions similar to the pre-Dobbs environment in most others. The passion abortion invokes (especially in religious and wealthy segments that are influential in state politics) will undoubtedly slow down some of this progress but not enough to reverse it. Conservative ideals will have to yield to pragmatism and the economic imperatives that have always acted as the other “supreme court” in America.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Is Supreme Court’s Dobbs Ruling an Unintended Win for Abortion? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Such unequal mercy would be no surprise from nations like Ukraine’s neighbors Hungary and Poland, controlled by nationalist parties that have rarely welcomed anyone not white and Christian. However, the same thing is happening in Western Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and here in the United States, the very democracies sworn to protect those fleeing war and persecution and that, in the case of America, sometimes turned those people into refugees in the first place. Our Global War on Terror alone has displaced an estimated people since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

One of the worst examples of this unequal mercy is taking place in Greece, a major gateway to Western Europe for anyone fleeing the Middle East or Africa. Between February and mid-April of this year, some 21,000 Ukrainians made it to Greece — more in three months than the total number of asylum seekers who entered the country in all of 2021. There, the Ukrainians were instantly granted temporary status, giving them access to medical care and jobs, subsidized housing and food allowances, schooling for their children, and Greek language classes for adults.

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This is an admirable example of how all people who flee danger and war should be welcomed. But I’ve been visiting Greece for years now to research my new , Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, and I know a lot of refugees there who have found no such generosity. Most are Syrian, Afghan, or Iraqi, but some are Kurdish or Palestinian, while others come from African countries, including Cameroon, Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and the Republic of Congo.

They, too, escaped war, violence, and other kinds of persecution. In fact, the Syrians, just like the Ukrainians, fled Putin’s bombs when he was helping Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, hold onto power. Yet unlike the Ukrainians, these refugees are forced to languish for years in inhumane, slum-like camps, while their children are denied schooling. They are routinely turned away from hospitals, doctors, or dentists, and are all too often treated with disrespect, even hatred, by landlords, employers, and regular citizens. That hurts. As my friend and co-author, the Syrian writer and refugee Eyad Awwadawnan, whom I first met in Greece, put it, “I think the world should do all it can for Ukrainian refugees, but we are getting a clear message from the Greek government that we are worth less than they are.”

Doomed to Helplessness

During my visits to Greece between 2018 and 2022, I witnessed many examples of its appalling treatment of refugees. At one point, in a camp on the Northern Aegean island of Samos, I found more than 3,000 people living in shipping containers or tents in and around an old military base, surrounded by piles of garbage swarming with rats. They had no potable water, the few toilets were broken, the food mostly inedible, and there was no security for women, children, LGBTQ+ people, or anyone else particularly vulnerable to bullying, assault, or rape. Thousands more asylum seekers were similarly trapped on other islands with nowhere to go and nothing to do, while yet others were in Greek prisons for merely exercising their right to seek asylum. In our book, Eyad and I describe the way people are arrested and imprisoned simply for steering their boats to Greece, or for coming from the wrong country.

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Since its New Democracy government took power in 2019, well into the anti-immigrant, Muslim-bashing administration of Donald Trump here in the United States, the Greek government has been ratcheting up its mistreatment of Middle Eastern and African refugees even further. One of its first acts was to evict everyone granted asylum from subsidized housing or camps, while also withdrawing all financial aid. In this way, they were flung into a homeless, jobless void — that is, into forced helplessness. Winning asylum is supposed to mean winning international protected status as a refugee, but in Greece it now means the opposite — getting no protection at all.

Then, in June 2021, just before the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the Greek Minister of Migration, Notis Mitarachi, announced that all new arrivals from Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Somalia, and Syria would be the chance to apply for asylum and deported to Turkey, which he deemed a “safe third country,” a legal term for a safe haven for asylum seekers. Yet as have made clear, Turkey is anything but safe for those in flight from war or persecution. Not only does Turkey refuse to recognize Syrians as refugees, but it never signed onto the part of the U.N. 1951 Refugee Rights declaration banning refoulement, the term used for returning refugees to a country where they may be subjected to persecution. This means that Turkey can legally send refugees back to the nations they fled, no matter what dangers await them there.

Last April 16th, Greece upped its persecution even further by the housing it offers vulnerable people, such as victims of torture, trafficking, and rape, and sending them to live in camps where there is no security at all. 

None of these policies to Ukrainians.

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At sea, matters are even worse. The Greek authorities and , Europe’s border and coast guard agency, have been pushing refugees out to sea instead of rescuing them. They have left families and children abandoned on flimsy rafts or inflatable boats, or on tiny islands without shelter or food. During the pandemic, Greece and Frontex treated some 40,000 refugees this way, causing at least to drown — abuse that’s been by human rights groups. Yet Greece’s immigration minister has that any of this is happening. 

No less shocking is the way Greece has the rescue of refugees at sea. Volunteers who go out to search for and rescue the capsized boats of desperate immigrants are being arrested and charged with human trafficking. Sara Mardini, a Syrian professional swimmer portrayed in Netflix’s new movie , is one of these. If convicted, she faces 20 years in prison.

Hard as it may be to grasp the idea of making it illegal to rescue drowning people, Greece is far from alone in engaging in such behavior. Just this month, Italy, Malta, and Cyprus banded together with that country to call for the European Union (EU) to take against civilian sea rescuers. Of course, the train drivers and airplane pilots who brought Ukrainians into the rest of Europe are never similarly targeted.

The Greek government has justified all this unequal mercy with chilling language, declaring Ukrainians “” and everyone else an “.” In just that spirit, last month, Greek authorities Afghans in a camp outside Athens to cede their housing to Ukrainians and instead live in filthy and derelict shipping containers. 

That government has long that it is not at fault for treating refugees so badly because it lacks the money and personnel to handle so many of them. But the minute those 21,000 Ukrainians arrived, the same officials suddenly found themselves able to help after all.

Greece is not entirely to blame for such violations of international law, because many of them are underwritten by the EU, which has been pumping money into the country to keep refugees out of Western Europe since 2016. Recently, for example, the EU paid to the Greek government to build five remote prisons for asylum seekers. I saw the prototype for them on the island of Samos: , a collection of white metal shipping containers on a bare patch of land in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a double layer of hurricane fences topped with barbed wire and surveilled by closed-circuit cameras. It is hot, bare, and hideous. Such prisons will not, of course, hold Ukrainians.

Breaking Hearts and Laws

Greece is hardly the only country meting out all this unequal treatment. The persecution of non-white refugees seems to be on the rise not just in countries with far-right governments, but in those previously known for their liberality. Along with this persecution, of course, goes the same sort of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric Donald Trump (not to speak of the Republican Party as a whole) continues to use about those crossing our own border.

Take the United Kingdom, for example. The new Conservative Party Prime Minister Rishi Sunak just offered France to increase its border security by 40% with the goal of arresting more “illegal migrants” and smugglers to stop them from crossing the English Channel.  (An asylum seeker, by the way, is not an “illegal migrant.” The right to cross borders to seek asylum is enshrined in the .) That same $74 million could have been put toward legal and humanitarian services for asylum seekers, helping them find safe ways to apply for protection in either France or the United Kingdom, and so depriving smugglers of business without throwing those refugees into even further danger.

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Within France itself, while President Emmanuel Macron quarrels with the British over who is to blame for the rising number of refugees trying to cross the Channel, Jordan Bardella, the new leader of the country’s increasingly popular far-right party, has rested his entire platform on closing France’s borders to “” immigration. He has made it clear that he’s talking about Muslims and Africans, not immigrants like his own Italian parents.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Giorgia Meloni, the new right-wing prime minister, has just issued a forbidding male refugees from getting off rescue boats or setting even one foot on Italian soil. Similarly, Sweden, once a bastion of progressive ideas, elected a new government this past September that cut its refugee quota from 5,000 people a year to 900, citing the white supremacist trope that non-white, non-Christian refugees will otherwise “” traditional Swedes.

I could go on: France, Greece, Italy, Malta, and Spain are over who will (or won’t) take stranded boats of refugees, pushing those desperate sea goers from shore to shore like so much litter. The Danes are Syrians back to Syria, even after they’ve lived in Denmark for years. Australia is asylum seekers under horrifying conditions in detention centers and on isolated islands. And Britain has locked thousands of refugees in warehouses, passed laws them basic services like health care and housing, and tried to implement a policy of forcibly deporting some of them to .

Here in the U.S., we’re not doing much better. True, President Biden has managed to curtail some of the worst of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, undoing the former president’s Muslim ban and raising the number of refugees allowed into the country every year, but his efforts have been inconsistent. Just this October, shortly before the Democrats barely held onto the Senate in the midterm elections, he expanded the Trumpian Title 42 border policy to include , who, only a week or so earlier, were being welcomed into the country. That policy uses Covid fears to force asylum seekers to stay in dangerous, sometimes deadly camps in Mexico, while rendering it virtually impossible for them to even apply for, let alone win, asylum in the U.S. (Biden originally promised to do away with Title 42 altogether, but the Supreme Court blocked his effort. After declaring that he would continue the fight, he now appears to have course.)

Ukrainians are, however, from this Mexican purgatory as a way of “recognizing the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine” (to quote the Department of Homeland Security). Some are similarly exempt, but only those who worked with the U.S. during our devastating 20-year war in their country. Everyone else is kept for months or even years for their asylum decisions, many of them in detention, regardless of the humanitarian crises they also fled.

All the unequal mercies described here are not only breaking hearts, but laws. A little history: In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt and the newly formed United Nations created the in reaction to the shocks of the Holocaust and the mistreatment of Jews seeking asylum. Three years later, the U.N. held a in Geneva to create a bill of refugee rights, which were ratified into law by 149 nations, including Australia, Britain, Canada, Greece, most of the rest of Europe, and the United States. (Some countries didn’t sign on until 1967.) The idea was to protect the dignity and freedom of human beings everywhere, while never again spurning refugees in the way that had sent so many Jews back to their deaths.

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The Geneva Convention defined refugees as people forced to flee their countries because of “a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group” and who “cannot return home or [are] afraid to do so.” It gave them the right to international protection from discrimination and persecution; the right to housing, schooling, and the chance to work for a living; the right not to be criminalized for simply seeking asylum; and, most importantly, the right not to be subjected to refoulement — and be returned to the countries they had fled.

Thanks, in part, to that convention, when people are driven to flee their countries, they head for the safety and dignity they believe they will find in the West, a belief we are now betraying. To rectify this, the EU’s governing arm, the European Commission, must insist that Europe’s unequal treatment of refugees be replaced with humane, accessible processes that apply consistently to all asylum seekers, regardless of where they come from. The same should be done in Australia, Britain, and the United States. After all, the way we treat refugees today speaks volumes not only about how humanitarian we are, but about how we are likely to act in the future when forces ever more people to flee their homes just to stay alive.

On the other hand, should we continue to favor white Christian refugees over everyone else, we will not only shred the promises and values enshrined in our democracies, but fertilize the poison of white supremacy already festering in the very heart of the West.

[ first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post If You’re a Refugee, Best to be White and Christian appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

South Africa has been placed onto by the US State Department, which means that it is considered to be a source, transit, and destination country for individuals trafficked for the purpose of forced labour or sexual exploitation. 

Although trafficking in South Africa is not a new issue, the extent of the crime has been growing in recent years. 

According to the annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP), the number of people who became victims of human trafficking has more than doubled in the 2021-22 financial year in South Africa. The document revealed that eighty-three people were trafficked, which comes to a shocking comparison with the sixteen  the year before. 

Increasing cases of trafficking in South Africa raise the question of what needs to be done to target the crime more efficiently. 

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The (NFN), which is an organization that establishes connecting players working in the counter-trafficking field in South Africa, underlines that for anti-trafficking efforts to be effective all relevant actors within and across civil society and government need to work together.ĚýĚý

The main vulnerability factors 

Poverty and unemployment are amongst the main causes of high trafficking cases in South Africa. These issues worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic asmore than people have lost their jobs since March 2020. Now, in a country with a population of more than sixty million, the unemployment rate is at almost. 

Those living in impoverished communities across South Africa are vulnerable to trafficking within the country due to limited access to education and few job openings. The same underlying causes affect those who are being trafficked from abroad and who think that South Africa offers more economic opportunities than their home countries. As the financial desperation of the most vulnerable is growing, traffickers lure them in with promises of employment, housing, or education. 

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Human Trafficking Hotline reported an increase in false job advertisements which have been used by traffickers as one of the main recruitment methods. Out of all trafficking cases, more than involved this tactic, which is an increase from 20% in the year preceding the outbreak of the pandemic. 

EMBED: /region/north_america/world-trafficking-day-human-sex-traffickers-latest-world-news-32390/

The South Africa Impact Report 2021, by A21, shows that a global organization is fighting to abolish human trafficking. It lists “job and family instability, violence and abuse, lower education, substance misuse, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and isolation” as factors that lead to a higher susceptibility to victimization in regards to trafficking and exploitation. 

The power of collaboration

Human trafficking is a degrading ruthless form of exploitation that traps in modern slavery. Due to the complexity and the hidden nature of the crime, the anti-trafficking response requires a great degree of collaboration. 

This is where the National Freedom Network steps in as it aims to connect all these actors, which are “acting as a link and ensuring that the interaction between the sectors allows for the flow of communication; the sharing of information, resources and best practices,” Marina Reyneke, the organization’s Operations Manager, tells me. And she adds that “strategic collaborations and networking can be highly effective in preventing and combating human trafficking”.

A to Dark Bali, an Indonesian anti-trafficking network, individual organizations acting independently do not have a supporting infrastructure, which is one of the main reasons for them failing. 

Coalitions bring together organizations that share the same goal. By joining efforts, they can learn from each other, get a more detailed overview of the and trends in the sector, and have more leverage when attempting to influence political positions. Consequently, working together allows them to identify major gaps and develop strategies designed to fill them. 

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Regrettably, in South Africa, the implementation of some anti-trafficking measures that require the cooperation of state departments and relevant stakeholders from civil society has been “weak and somewhat problematic”,according to. 

Not only is it important to create a platform where anti-trafficking organizations can act as a united force, achieving better cooperation with government agenciesĚý proves to also be an important part of the NFN’s agenda.Ěý

Reyneke explains, “Government structures have been established and we need the capacity to continue working closely with these. Our vision is to see all sectors of a society organized and united in their efforts to prevent and combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP).  Our mission is to effectively fight Trafficking in Persons (TIP) through strategic networking, partnership and collaboration”.

The way forward

The NFN has been successful in creating an enabling environment for the many anti-trafficking organizations across South Africa. But to keep the momentum, the network needs funding, which can be challenging to secure.

help equip relevant actors with skills to assist survivors and prevent conditions that foster trafficking. Any kind of financial support can make a real impact and allows the Network to grow and expand its reach and continue its mission. “Our long-term goals are to include much more strategic prevention work as well as ultimately becoming a survivor-led Network,” Reyneke says. 

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The NFN has clearly defined goals and knows what needs to be done to create a more comprehensive anti-trafficking strategy and to better protect survivors. With the help of individual and community donors, the NFN can not only get closer to achieving these aims, but can also ensure the network’s organizational sustainability.Ěý

Looking at the rising trafficking cases in South Africa, it is clear that improvements in the response to the problem are needed. For South Africa to be able to win the fight against human trafficking, the underlying economic, political, and cultural factors need to be addressed and more needs to be offered to organizations such as the NFN that provide a linkage between relevant actors, government, and victims.ĚýĚý

[edited this article]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post How to Curb Rising Human Trafficking in South Africa appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In a widely shared of Jina’s funeral, her father cries out, “This is the daughter of Kurdistan, the child of those who demand freedom. She is the symbol of resistance. Today, the women of Kurdistan are a symbol of resistance for the whole world.”

Her death and the words of her grieving father ignited a women and youth-led protest movement in Kurdistan that swept all of Iran and initiated a global solidarity movement for women, life and freedom. The violent response of Iran to the protests has resulted in the death of over 248 protesters and the arrest of more than 12,575 others, reported human rights group on October 23.

Iran Attacks Kurds Yet Again

A few days after the protests began, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took military action across the border by launching missiles and drone attacks against camps. The strikes wounded 58 people and killed 13 others, including children, an infant, and a pregnant mother.

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According to , Iranian officials and state media have justified the brazen attack on the grounds that Kurdish opposition groups are using Amini’s case as an excuse to separate Kurdistan from Iran.

The continued militarization and economic impoverishment of Kurdish cities by Iran and its imprisonment and execution of Kurds are rationalized based on this accusation of separatism.

Many analysts were surprised that Iran was blaming the Kurds and resorting to unjustified military force against them. However, to Kurds, this attack was expected, as it has been their ill-fate to be the target and scapegoat of the Iranian state: a state that continues its onslaught on Kurdish lives through unjustified imprisonment, execution and assassination.

The story of the Kurds in Iran is similar to that of their brethren in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Being Kurdish in Iran is tantamount to being a criminal. Standing for your identity and advocating for your linguistic, political or economic rights can get you imprisoned and often executed. With few rights and little economic opportunity, the Kurds have few options but to stand defiant against the regime at the risk of death.

A Brave Story of Resistance

The crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran against the Kurds in Iran are extensive because the Kurds have always been the most outspoken critics of the establishment in Tehran. They have paid heavily with their lives for their stance against the tyrannical rulers in Tehran. They even engaged in a full-scale rebellion against the Khomeini regime after his fatwa against the Kurds in 1979.

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The Kurds defied the regime and stood against Khomeini’s government from the inception of the Republic. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini feared the Kurds so much that in his first week as supreme leader of Iran he offered them over $75 million in to buy their loyalty and ward off a Kurdish rebellion. When the Kurds refused to join his so-called Islamic Republic, he declared a fatwa against them and went to war with Kurdistan.

The shocking part of this tragedy is that this phobia of Kurds that informed Khomeini’s fatwa and war against Kurdistan is a significant part of the Persian psyche today.

Outside of Iran, and even many protesters who struggle for human rights and an end to the regime, share this fear of the Kurds. They often attempt to intimidate and strong-arm Kurds into taking down their , and when Kurds insist on talking about their rights, they are told not to speak of this and to stand in unity. This attempt to silence Kurds even in the diaspora, where freedom of expression and other democratic rights are guaranteed and protected by law, illustrates how irrational but deeply rooted this phobia is in the Persian psyche.

This irrational phobia of Kurds and Kurdistan is very much what governs the Persian perspective on the Kurds in Iran. It is a phobia that oppressors across the Middle East share and use as justification for denying Kurdish rights and identity. This phobia informs the forced assimilation, extrajudicial killings, unlawful detention and increased securitization of Kurdistan.

It is thus, fundamentally important to deconstruct and debunk this phenomenon in order to end the intentional, irrational and unjustified persecution of the Kurdish people. It is only through overcoming this phobia and ending the negative connotations of the label of separatism that Iran’s Persian population can build lasting unity and understanding with Kurds, Baloch and other ethnic communities in Iran. This unity is essential in overthrowing the theocratic state of the ayatollahs and establishing an inclusive and truly democratic Iran.

[ published a version of this piece earlier.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Why Does the Islamic Republic of Iran Fear its Kurdish Population? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Attention, in the most basic sense, is a creature’s informational-management strategy. We use our attention to determine what matters, where it is, and whether I can trust it? Vertebrate attentional systems evolved over hundreds of millions of years to let a body use and trust its senses. The brain’s hardware learned to squeeze meaning from scenes like the savannah, scenes containing multiple tiny, faint cues. To a sensory system, faint statistical outliers are eye-candy, attractive,like sugar, precisely because they are rare.  Attention works properly only in a world of sticks, stones, sky, people, fauna and flora, and not much else. Man-made things distract and mis-direct human attention even without meaning to.  And now they mean to and are built to do so, automatically and at scale. 

At the finest level, tiny pixels use microsecond tuning to draw our eyes toward interesting things which aren’t there.  Video games anticipate our anticipation in order to dose us with dopamine. Social media synthesizes the illusion of friendship. Search engines synthesize illusions of meaning. Smartphones rule from our pockets.  Smartphones are the grandest intruders, allowing multinational corporations skilled at using science to design what we will see, believe, and love.

They have successfully commandeered and monetized the growing brains of children and are inflicting widespread damage, according to a powerful new book by the psychologist who saw this coming thirty years ago.  Decades ago Dr. Susan Linn was a child psychologist (and puppeteer!) who appeared on the famous US childrens’ show Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.   Seeing firsthand the damage done to kids by marketing and monetized play, she founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (now Fairplay). It is among the few child-advocacy groups accepting to follow neuroscientific principles, and not accepting corporate money. Now Linn is a professor of psychology at Harvard. 

The best possible book on the topic

With that background Professor Linn is the best possible person to write this book.  And she has produced the best possible book.  While her sentences are often professorial (of course!), there are plenty of cute anecdotes, appearances of charming children, wry observations, and tales of comically misguided products, like the video game advertised to make going to sleep exciting (p. 104).  For a relentless point-by-point compendium of why moneyed interests must be kept away from children’s play, Who’s Raising the Kids still provides a remarkably funny, easy read.  While it employs US examples for a US audience, her reasoning applies outside the US as well, and will probably be easier to act on in those other places.  This book is for the world. 

Most thoughtful people already know that commercial influences are bad for kids, so they don’t need to read this book.  They don’t need its ruthlessly clear thinking and comprehensive, evidence-laden summary of fifty years of scientific study, because their parenting instincts are already fine.  Besides, pondering such depressing content is a grim reward for reading what one already knows.  On the other hand, some responsible officials hoping to make their case may demand even more powerful evidence., Some might even hold out for the formulation of undisputed natural laws to provide them with the clout to successfully rearrange budgets. I’ll give them such laws at the end, since that’s my professional specialty. As a general rule, many parents already have the evidence. They don’t need even the best book imaginable to tell them about the obstacles to raising functional children provided by a market-saturated world. 

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On the other hand, if you are in a position to influence children or guide their experiences—as a superintendent, teacher, nanny, app designer, marketer—you must read this book.  Your ignorance would be a moral hazard when other people’s children are entrusted to your care. And when you finish digesting its contents, to double your investment. Mail your well-thumbed copy to your favorite venture-capitalist or corporate executive, since they need wisdom even more than you do. Ignorance is no excuse when truth is so important, and easily available.

Professor Linn’s barrage of evidence is overwhelming: the wasteful excess of crinkly packaging around toys, kids falling in love with characters from ads, apps designed to spy on kids. Her list of all the easy ways there are to make money from kids’ innocence goes on and on.  Like taking candy from a baby.

After this book, there should be no dispute that markets threaten children’s sanity. Only Self-serving industry will of course gripe about how impractical solutions are to protect the status quo.  Those gripes are true as far as they go, because the only sustainable solution is a tough sell in a pro-capital society. It implies neutralizing market forces present in domains affecting kids. So, in a word, this book is about changing everything.

This book is so good, the best possible review need only use Professor Linn’s own words. Which I will do. No reviewer could add anything more than praise to this magnificent work, except perhaps a commonsense explanation of how this crisis has been mounting for thirty thousand years, and what society must do to save future generations.  

Who’s Raising the Kids, Compressed

Herewith the titles and a few representative lines from each of the thirteen chapters of Who’s Raising the Kids by Prof. Susan Linn (To each quote I append in italics a dense comment using the technical language of trust-formation, to simplify a unification at the end).

Chapter 1: What Children Need and Why Corporations Can’t Provide It

 â€śThe more a toy or app drives the form and content of children’s play and the more the characters or the toys kids play with are linked to popular media properties and franchises, the less children get to exercise curiosity, initiative, creativity, flexible problem-solving, and imagination.” (p. 19)

Comment: Children’s innate learning algorithms need autonomy and real life detail as inputs.  Standardization, broadcast, and synthetic attractiveness undermine those algorithms by restricting freedom and damaging data, and thereby undermine learning and trust.

Chapter 2: Who Wins the Games Tech Plays?

 â€śTechnologies are problematic when they optimize profits at the expense of the health and wellbeing of individuals and the larger society. Yet no independent review of the potential harms and benefits is required before they go to market.” (p. 35)

Humans evolved to capture attention from each other in real life, and to defend ourselves from it. Now cheap and tireless machines capture our attention all the time, everywhere. They are inhumanly designed to dodge our defenses. Accumulated micro-distractions and micro-deceptions erode everyone’s trust and mental function. Yet regulators cannot agree either about how to limit the overall damage, nor even about how to measure it in the first place.

Chapter 3: And the Brand Plays On

 â€śWhen commercial values dominate children’s environment, kids are in danger of losing out on exposure to some of the best human values, such as altruism, generosity, nonconformity, and critical thinking.” (p. 69)

Our brains evolved to associate meaningful phrases with actual human values (e.g. Motherhood, God, Country).  When a child’s mind instead locks onto a slogan optimized for attractiveness by a focus group, the child fixates on something slippery which can never teach it trust.

Chapter 4: Browse! Click! Buy! Repeat!

 â€śWhen corporate executives talk about reducing friction, some of what they mean has to do with reducing external barriers to buying, but it also means reducing or eliminating our intra-psychic friction—the cognitive and emotional brakes that enable us to set limits on consumption. For that reason, kids are not just fair game for advertisers—they are essential targets.  Their immature capacities for judgment and impulse control render them especially susceptible to marketing messages.” (p. 81)

The younger a child is, the more innocent its brain, apt to believe the propositions it is exposed to, the longer damage to learning will last.  For a child to waste crucial brain-cells learning bad habits and things which are not true is a tragedy, while for a marketer those represent long-term investments.

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Chapter 5: How Rewarding are Rewards?

 â€śIn nurturing environments where there are opportunities to explore the world on their own terms, young children are intrinsically motivated to learn, to gain competence, to strive for autonomy, and to satisfy their curiosity.” (p. 107)

Natural environments (unlike synthesized ones) can be instinctually explored in continuous space and time, exactly what a brain evolved to do. Only interaction with unbiased, natural statistics allows a brain’s zooming algorithm to converge on trustworthy solutions. Alternative statistical profiles, such as artificially “intermittent rewards,” undermine that algorithm by over-stimulating dopamine release.

Chapter 6: The Nagging Power of Pester Power

“Except for the fact that children and families are being harmed, there’s something darkly comic about living in a commercialized culture that thrives on business models dependent on encouraging obnoxious behavior in children. No sane parent would welcome people into their home whose every interaction with children is designed to instill in kids such intense desires that they nag incessantly to get them fulfilled.  Yet that’s exactly the goal of all advertising to children.” (p. 123)

Messages and interactions optimized to produce revenue from children must of course somehow free that money from the family coffers. But using children to communicate a sales pitch inserts family conflict and undermines trust.

Chapter 7: Divisive Devices

 â€śWhether with reluctance or open arms, we have invited into our homes powerful, seductive entities designed to generate profits by monopolizing our attention. And they don’t give a damn about our family relations or our children’s wellbeing.” (p. 131)

“Like all other nervous systems, ours evolved to forage, not produce. Humankind uniquely produces things that captivate our senses, and now they do” more than ever. (, p. 2334)

Chapter 8: Bias for Sale

 â€śA society’s material culture simultaneously reflects and influences the values, norms, preferences, and taboos of that society. Stories and toys represent a significant component of the material culture belonging to childhood, and they profoundly influence how children make sense of the world around them, including how they view and experience themselves and others.” (p. 154)

Stories and toys sell better when optimized for pre-existing concepts and stereotypes. Oversimplified ones sell best of all. But when it comes to social values, pre-existing means backwards-looking, and simplified means caricatured. Backwards-looking caricatures describe regressive attitudes like racism, sexism, and mercenary individualism. Those are already built into mass-produced communication, but kids absorb them fastest.

Chapter 9: “Branded Learning”

“Because [corporate-sponsored teaching materials] are often slickly produced, require no up-front cash outlay, and can bypass school boards and be sent directly to teachers, they may appear to be a godsend to cash-strapped schools.” (p. 169)

Corporations have money and underfunded schools have young eyeballs, so an inevitable market-driven (but corrupt) transaction lets corporations disguise their advertising as educational material, offered to schools for free. But there is no such thing as free information. In this case kids and society pay the price.

Chapter 10: “Big Tech Goes to School”

“The value of quality, teacher-driven instruction is well supported by research. There is no credible research supporting industry claims that online, personalized learning programs improve academic outcomes. Test scores do not rise. Dropout rates do not fall. Graduation rates do not improve.” (p. 185)

Human brains evolved to learn from physical objects and physical people in real life.  Pixels and frames on screens are so chopped up, they only carry one millionth of the detail young brains need to trust their eyes, as long-established laws of neuroscience prove. So screen-based inputs of any kind not only don’t help reading and writing, they cause actual harm to seeing itself. 

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Chapter 11: Is That Hope?

 â€śIn the United States, two types of laws would help to stop tech companies from exploiting children.  A national privacy protection law, which we do not have, and adequate laws protecting the rights of children, which we also do not have.” (p. 199)

As long as US law more successfully protects growing capital than growing brains, capital will damage children.

Chapter 12:  Resistance Parenting: Suggestions for Keeping Big Tech and Big Business at Bay

“Six principles of child development to help adults make decisions about introducing tech to young children:

1. Young children live and learn in the context of social relationships.

2.Young children use their whole bodies and all their senses to learn about the world.

3. Young children learn best and benefit most from direct, first hand experience in the world of actual relationships and objects.

4. Young children are active learners who learn by inventing ideas.

5. Young children build inner resilience and coping skills through play.

6. Young children make sense of the world through play.”

(p. 210)

All humans, young children especially, evolved for interaction in the three-dimensional real world, which is our native sensory interface. Synthesized inputs, or even real inputs selected for impact, provide fake data and thus undermine real learning. 

Chapter 13:  Making a Difference for Everybody’s Kids

 â€śI am for a world where children are universally valued for who they are, not for what they or their parents can buy. Where family and community values no longer compete with commercial values for precedence in children’s lives. Where kids have lots of “in the real world” time with their friends and with the adults who love and care for them. Where their friendships can flourish without interference from, and monetization by, tech and media companies.”  (p. 239)

The environments in which brains grow and learn best are the natural, socially supportive ones for which they evolved.  Because all experience is training data for a growing mind, commercial interference damages learning in often irrecoverable ways.  Monetizing children’s brains means the end of our species. 

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The Battle for the next generation’s sanity

This point summarizes Professor Linn’s book. The sensory and social needs of growing children are actively opposed by the needs of capital. Widespread and growing monetization technologies are already eating the brains of our young.  Legally. And sometimes the young even like it.

Attention is easy to harvest because humans offer it so freely. But that doesn’t make the ethics of attention-harvesting different from those of organ-harvesting. Both attack vital biological systems, and thus share a dysfunctional dynamic which, above a very low threshold, ensures that revenue can only derive from inflicting  harm.  As targets, children provide the easiest profit and suffer the longest-term damage.

In recent years bosses and hiring managers worldwide have privately lamented the latest generations’ poor social skills, low attention span and diminished motivation, to say nothing of their defective team spirit, absence of critical thinking and decline in physical endurance. Young people now don’t simply work as well as earlier generations. Studies confirm these mass deficiencies, which happen to be the same problems this book reveals.  Thus, the decision made decades ago, under US President Reagan, to expand the dissemination of kids’ ads has now exploded into what one should expect: sad, damaged, dysfunctional adults everywhere.  The economy is already hurting from how it abused human brains twenty years ago, long before today’s far more invasive technologies took hold.

Although Linn doesn’t stress this point, the class of guilty parties is obviously not limited to large corporations. .Tiny startups and lone influencers can also do damage as they desperately flail about to attract  revenue and attention. The problems Linn points to are deep systemic ones: How can society neutralize a wide class of market mechanisms which have been optimized for hundreds of years to produce revenue by any available means, including means that  have a damaging effect on  children? Is it reasonable to think we can stop capital from doing what it’s best at? Legislation—like the Five Rights bill in the UK and COPPA2 and KOSA in the US—is a start. But it’s not enough.

As of now, the biggest companies in the world have promised their shareholders money produced by  strip-mining the brain-cells of future generations. Can that be stopped? Seen from the coldly mathematical of information flow through space and time, the problem is even worse than what Professor Linn describes. And the possible solutions will inevitably be more profound.

It Started with Cave Art and Loincloths

Allow me a parable. A long long time ago, in Paleo Paradise, people were only exposed to each other and Nature, and paid attention accordingly.  But human interests are fickle, so to manage them somebody, let’s say a proto-administrator, invented figurines and cave art for people to look at, and loincloths to keep them from looking away. Ever since then, humans have seen less and less of each other and the natural world our sensory instincts evolved for, and more of man-made things which exploit those instincts. In fact as a species we’re proud of those creations. We call them art.  When they make money, we call them entertainment or advertising.

The takeaway message is that attention has long been for sale, but it’s never been so cheap. The ancients had salesmen, but not rack-mounted computers serving a million times the harassing sales pitch for the price of a human salesman and with no qualms about the quality of the message.  A few decades ago new active technologies—radio, television, video, cable, internet—let machines represent live talking people. Recently, the ability of The Machines — designed to micro-monitor, micro-monetize, and micro-prod — increased hundreds-fold thanks to the omnipresence of mobile devices. As a result, machines now capture attention far too efficiently for human sanity and safety.  The open security holes of our nervous systems have been utterly hacked. Human communication is corrupt in every medium but the air we breathe.

Roughly, a species whose intimate, subtle social communications evolved through a million years of live campfire singing, dancing, and group hugs has in a couple generations become thoroughly immersed in ever-more-mesmerizing panoplie of blinking things, whose primary purpose is to capture attention and induce belief.  And those things work. The bandwidth and authenticity of human interaction has been dropping steadily since cave-times. Now humans know less and less how to feel, to move, to see, or to connect with one another in more than caricatured ways. The mechanism at the core of the problem is recordable communication. Things like texts, tweets, likes and videos are not even empty calories in terms of biological signals. They provide no calories at all. Our nervous systems are failing from informational starvation, and trust — the essential cement of human society — is dying by the year.

If you worry about Platform Capitalism and the Rise of the Machines, then think about this:  robot-toys, robo-calls and robo-therapists pretend to be our friends, but secretly they obey their spreadsheet overlords.  

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Grand Projects

Humanity has solved problems this hard before, or almost as hard.  Water-pipes made of lead, exploding boilers, crashing trains and cars, toxic food, fake accounting, risky drugs, filthy restaurants, the list goes on and on of tricks we’ve learned to keep the things we make from killing us. As a general rule, when society realizes that saving or making money here creates danger over there, it makes laws and sets up snap inspections. Think financial enforcement, or health inspectors who check that restaurant dishwashers use water that’s hot enough.

Killing bacteria by turning up a thermostat is straightforward.  Killing the influence of money in communication is far harder, since at present capital owns the major channels and doesn’t want to part with them.  In that light, here are some angles for regulators to use in protecting children from toxic commercial interactions:

Disclaimers don’t work; double-blind does.  Any self-respecting judge, I hope, would laugh out of the room the legal fiction that a printed disclaimer will insulate the unconscious against manipulation. The unconscious doesn’t work that way. Learning requires autonomy, so all manipulation harms it.  Fortunately manipulation can be measured objectively, as advertisers do, using randomized testing (“A/B testing”).  As long as regulators can look over the shoulder of marketers measuring ad impacts, honesty has a chance.

Disgorgement discourages damage.  Ill-gotten data, like ill-gotten money, should poison the well. If for example algorithms are trained on kids’ private profiles, or on racist historical data, not only should the data be purged, algorithms and workflow trained on it should be wiped clean.  As an incentive principle, the ease by which technology violates trust must be balanced by draconian consequences when it crosses that line.

Transparency brings balance.   Trust only works when everyone has the same high-quality information.  So private claims about ad “eyeballs” or behavioral impact — the kind of claims companies use to get money from investors and advertisers — must be equally available to the public and to regulators, because those claims are proportional to the public harm being done.

Health Not Test Results.  Until kids again become happy, energetic, social, curious, and motivated, they should get more music, art, live games, and physical activity, and less of everything else, especially technology.  Written tests of academic performance mean nothing compared to live 3-D tests of nervous system function.

This month, the US Senate is considering two laws which would help the situation enormously: the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).  The Senators who vote should read this book.
In fact, Who’s Raising the Kids should be required reading everywhere, especially in countries (like France) with strong protections for public health. But also in countries (like India and Pakistan) whose advertisers seem proud of teaching kids to nag and pester parents (p. 117).  When well-paid grownups brazenly brag about wrecking kids’ relationships, children are doomed.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post How Capital Eats Its Young appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Crimes Against Humanity

The Islamic regime repeatedly continues to perpetrate crimes against humanity. Social diversity and individual and group agency are not taken into account in ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s political structure. This has led to a small group of power holders in a government that does not respect international law or human rights. Sadly, the international community, including the UN and EU, give legitimacy to this oppressive government.

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The international community has not been listening to the plurality of voices that make up the diverse fabric of Iran. The history of widespread and bloody uprisings continues to be ignored. The voice of the people of Iran does not matter. The rights of the diverse groups are neglected.

The recent uprising, with its new multidimensional and transnational characteristics and the widespread support for Iranians abroad, has finally caught global attention. It is now time for EU countries to show that they truly support democracy, and do not just act out of pure self-interest.

In the streets, Iranians are chanting: “We don’t want an Islamic Republic,” “Down with the dictator”, “Death to the tyrant, whether king or leader.” The message is clear: people don’t want an undemocratic government. The Islamic regime now has no legitimacy. The EU and UN need to be talking not to the regime but to the people of Iran. And these people don’t just include Shiite Fars men.

International Community Must Act

After the 1979 revolution, the international community — instead of recognizing the people’s resistance — recognized the mullahs instead. It cannot repeat that mistake. Until there exists  a truly democratic system, ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s government should not be considered  the representatives of all people. The international community must engage with  representatives from various groups that comprise Iran. Together, these groups are shouting slogans that originated from Kurdish society: “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi,” (woman, life, freedom). 

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Unlike the slogans of previous protests, Jin, Jiyan, Azadi has united all oppressed social groups and became their rallying cry. While women and sexual minorities are the most oppressed segments of Iranian society, Iran has become a prison for all its people. All except for the tiny ruling elite, people now see that only by dismantling dictatorial systems, both patriarchal and Islamic, will they form a democratic regime.

The international community must target the Islamic regime itself, especially its representatives abroad. It must isolate the Iranian government, withdraw recognition to the regime and work towards its downfall.

The EU should support the Iranian opposition, especially parties of ethno-national and religious minorities. Non-Fars ethno-nations, when combined in fact constitute the majority of people in Iran. While  some dissident groups such as have a significant  presence in Europe and the United States, they need support to improve their ground game in Iran.

Unlike Fars opposition groups, these minority parties hare no common interests with the Iranian regime. For example, there have been several times that Kurds in Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan in Iran) have gone on strike. They heed the call of Kurdish parties that are illegal in Iran. The strikes show that Kurdish parties are the true representatives of their people, not Fars representatives of the Iranian state. The same is true for other ethno-nations as well.

The EU should forge together an opposition that is a coalition of minorities. Diverse democratic forces represented by organizations such as the of Nationalities for a Federal Iran, a coalition of parties that include the Democratic Party of Iran, the Balochistan People’s Party, the Federal Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan, the Turkmen National Democratic Movement and the Democratic Solidarity Party of (Arabistan) among others.

Democracy is the best way forward for the freedom of the people of Iran. Therefore, the best way forward is the establishment of a government-in-exile that helps the people overthrow the oppressive Islamic regime and institute a truly free, democratic state.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Derecognize Mullahs, Forge New Government in Exile for Iran appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

But my usual optimism is being sorely tested these days. One glance at international headlines is enough to send anyone into extended binge-watching of online films or some other manner of escapism. At some point, though, one cannot ignore the dark clouds on the horizon, or in some cases directly overhead.

Democracy in Danger

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It’s easy to compare the foreboding circumstances of today’s world with those preceding World Wars I and World War II. Indeed, there are some real similarities: headstrong dictators bent on conquest, tense regional rivalries, distracted democracies beset by internal problems or economic challenges, and restless publics stirred by extremists of all manner. But 2022 presents its own unique conditions that make it very different from the years preceding previous global conflicts. The most obvious looms menacingly over the entire planet: nuclear weapons. Another is the already present danger of climate change and the inescapable need for nations to work together in addressing it, especially the major powers. So, no, today’s crises are not like the previous world wars. The stakes are much higher.

Rising of Totalitarians, Distracted Democracies

The closing of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in which Xi Jingping effectively made himself dictator for life of the world’s most populous country and second largest economy, was at once predictable and ominous. Xi made clear that he isn’t backing off. China’s aggressive and belligerent behavior will continue. Having named sycophants to sit with him on the party’s politburo and its standing committee ensures that he will hear no opposition, no alternative ideas and no dissent to his diktat. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has now moved decidedly from authoritarian to government. That is not only dangerous for the people of China but also for the rest of the world as PRC’s military forces gear up for a potential conflict over Taiwan.

As US and China Clash, Taiwan Moves Closer to the Brink of Disaster

Juxtaposed against that looming threat is China’s “” partnership with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Putin, another autocrat seized with blindly conceived grand ambitions, has already laid his cards on the table, or, to be more accurate, on Ukraine. Granted Xi’s commitment to him was made before Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, but China has yet to back away from its Russian relationship. This is despite the fact that the war in Ukraine has largely been a disaster for Putin. In fact, Putin’s setbacks might have turned Russia into a veritable vasal state of China. Arguably, this is good for Xi (maybe) and bad for Putin. Despite this situation not being good for Russia, what are Putin’s options?

Next on the totalitarian hit parade is the Islamic Republic of Iran, which maintains very good relations with the aforementioned autocrats. Its ruling theocracy governs with comparable iron-fisted policies and a heavy dose of neolithic ideology. As hundreds of thousands throughout Iran take to the streets again at considerable risk of arrest, torture and even death, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei with pearls of medieval wisdom: “If we want to prevent our society from being plunged into corruption and turmoil, we should keep women in hijab.”

Protesters show no signs of backing down. So, naturally, the Iranian government needs a distraction. The mullahs blame America. It is the Islamist Republic’s timeless trope, ignored by the vast majority of Iranians for its sheer baselessness. Despite public discontent, Tehran has thrown its lot with fellow autocrat Putin in his unjust war against Ukraine. Iran has joined Russia in attacking the people of Ukraine by sending drones, missiles, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operators and trainers for Russian troops.

Protesters show no signs of backing down. So, naturally, the Iranian government needs a distraction. It has joined Russia in attacking the people of Ukraine by sending drones, missiles and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operators and trainers for Putin’s troops. By throwing in its lot with Russia in a brutal and illegal war against Ukraine, Iran reveals the single-minded obtuseness of Khamenei and the desperation of Putin. Such is the wont of dictators who do what they want. They need not listen to their citizenry and even foreclose the possibility of doing so.

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Further down the list of the planet’s wretched leaders, one cannot ignore the head of the model pariah state, North Korea. One would be hard pressed to identify a single policy or manner of behavior that is not repugnant and anathema to the UN Charter and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At the helm of the Hermit Kingdom is Kim-Jung Un, aka “dear leader,” (the titles “supreme leader,” “paramount leader,” and “great leader” having been already taken by others). The North Korean economy is almost entirely dependent on neighboring China, which sees the tyrant-ruled nation as a useful nuisance and distraction for the US, South Korea and Japan. Otherwise, were North Korea to fall into the ocean tomorrow, it would hardly be missed by the people’s colossus next door. Kim fulfills his role well, periodically launching intermediate-range missiles menacingly near and over South Korea and Japan. The dear leader has most recently threatened to test nuclear weapons, which it continues to produce in flagrant contravention of numerous UN Security Council resolutions.

Three of these nations have nuclear weapons capable of annihilating millions. The fourth, Iran, seems poised to get them unless the P5+1 negotiators can manage to pull a rabbit from their negotiating hats and conclude reimposition of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to curb ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s nuclear weapons development program. But that agreement seems very unlikely after three months of moribund talks, the growing popular protests in Iran and the Islamic Republic’s decision to join forces with Russia against Ukraine. Even so, many predict, ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s eventual acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability within the near-to-medium term is almost certain. Such a prospect would almost assure across-the-Gulf neighbor Saudi Arabia’s rush for its own bomb.

Although Saudi Arabia is nominally led by an absolute monarch, currently King Salman bin Abdulaziz, its effective leader today is his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. MBS, as he is widely known, is an absolutist autocrat but oversees a nation dependent on protection from the US. That dependency relationship could easily change if the kingdom was to obtain or develop nuclear weapons. Unlike North Korea, it has enough oil the world desperately needs to sustain its economy. In fact, Saudi Arabia has so much oil that Iran-like economic sanctions are unlikely. They could lead to a meltdown of the global economy.  

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Given the deteriorating relations between the kingdom and the US and, in particular, between MBS and US President Joe Biden, the world should not discount the prospect of Saudi Arabia acquiring nuclear weapons and of MBS finally severing his nation’s dependency on the US, thus empowering one more autocrat with the ultimate weapon. It will require herculean diplomacy on the part of the US and others to ensure that doesn’t happen. Autocrats have their ambitions and are rarely disposed to changing them.

Arrayed against this dangerous lineup of totalitarian states is the US, still considered the world’s premier superpower. Its network of alliances and defense treaties in Europe and Asia give the US formidable military and economic clout. The US and its allies are united not only by treaties and alliances but also and especially by shared values, particularly democracy, liberty, respect for human rights and the rule of law. The aforementioned autocrats see these values as an American imposition on the international order because the US had overwhelming power since the end of World War II.

This anti-American posturing is self-serving. Let us be honest. The problem with these values is not that they are American, the problem with them is that they counter the autocrats’ justification for one-man rule. Antipathy toward the US and toward the values it espouses is what unites the world’s autocrats. There really is nothing more these nations share, which is revealing in itself.

The Global Rest

Left unmentioned is the “global rest,” the large majority of nations in Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia and elsewhere that have avoided choosing sides. Their reasons are several and not always unjustified. Many are former colonies with lingering resentment toward and suspicions of their former colonizers. In addition, many may see getting drawn into the conflict as counterproductive to their own interests, particularly their economic interests. The larger nations of this group —  India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Nigeria — are stressed democracies like Turkey, Hungary and even the US. Despite their flaws, these democracies would find the ruling styles of China or Russia anathema. For the time being, however, they are not threatened directly nor are their interests jeopardized by the current tensions.

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That could easily change, though, and perhaps faster than anyone would want or could predict. An unrestrained Xi might decide to order an invasion of Taiwan, consequently closing the Taiwan Strait, shutting down half of the world’s tanker traffic and sending the global economy spiraling. If Western nations currently supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia were to let up on their support, it would assure a Russian victory. This would empower Putin to plan further expansion in accordance with his revanchist imperial dream of a greater Russia. All of Western and Eastern Europe would be drawn into a resulting continental conflict, also creating conditions for global economic disaster and fertile ground for totalitarian opportunists elsewhere. Overhanging both scenarios is the prospect of nuclear conflict, already broached by a flailing and ever-desperate Putin.

Inability to resurrect the JCPOA nuclear accord would remove any incentive for Iran to shut down its nuclear weapons program. Whether it actually builds a nuclear bomb or not, the mere prospect could set off war in the Middle East as Israel and possibly Saudi Arabia act militarily to foreclose ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s nuclear advancement. As we have seen in the past, war in the Gulf is highly destabilizing to both the region and to a global economy dependent on the region’s oil. China alone looks to the region for 40% of its oil needs.

None of this is over-the-top alarmism. All of the autocrats mentioned have at one time or other threatened use of force. What recourse do democracies have against this unprecedented alignment of nuclear-empowered autocrats? Is it even possible to talk a dictator out of carrying out actions seen as indispensable to some grand plan? And if not, then what?

Perhaps the first step is shaking the citizens of democracies, most especially in the United States, out of their domestic political navel-gazing and into an awareness of the enormity of the challenge before them. In their increasingly partisan culture wars, Americans appear to be swatting at mosquitoes as dragons, bears and snakes stalk the neighborhood. They would be wise to follow the advice of Franklin D. Roosevelt in hisMay, 1941 . The 32nd president argued then that defense meant not only a well-armed military force but also “… the use of a greater American common sense in discarding rumor and distorted statement… (and) recognizing, for what they are, racketeers and fifth columnists, who are the incendiary bombs in this country of the moment.” Substitute disinformation and alternative facts for “rumor” and election deniers for “racketeers and fifth columnists” and Roosevelt’s words ring true for America today.

Much More than Congress is at Stake this Midterm

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Roosevelt was facing a major threat to the world’s oldest democracy. In the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, America had withdrawn into its isolationist island, flirting with all manner of “America First,” racist and Nazi ideas, and organizations. Meanwhile Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had begun their march through Europe and Asia, and expansion across the Pacific. Only Japan’s strategic blunder in attacking Pearl Harbor succeeded in breaking America out of its isolationist never-never land and launched it into a war to reestablish global security, and ultimately the international global order we know today. It is this very order that Xi, Putin, Khamenei and Kim-Jung Un seek to undo. Neither the US nor other nations should count on either Beijing or Moscow making a mistake like Pearl Harbor again.

The attention and support of voters well informed of the threats before them are indispensable to successfully confronting Totalitarianism Incorporated of today. The alignment of these dictatorial states could be described by the same words Roosevelt used in his December 1940, an “unholy alliance of power and pelf to dominate and to enslave the human race.” The totalitarian order is predicated on obedience to a single authority, aka the great leader. It is an order and peace of the dictator. The democratic alternative is an alliance of nations composed of citizens loyal to a set of ideals and principles. It is an order and peace of free people.

Deterrence, Diplomacy and Unity

What then is to be done? Deterrence is critical. And it is also expensive. Yet it is essential because totalitarians respect power. Therefore, democracies will have to arm themselves to demonstrate resolve and a clear determination to resist totalitarian ambitions. Ukrainians prove today that dictators, regardless of level of brutality, can be stopped. It’s an example to all democracies.

Diplomacy is important too. Yet it can only be effective when backed up by unflinching deterrence and iron resolve. Diplomacy may work with dictators when they see the costs of challenging well-armed and resolute democratic states. In the absence of credible deterrence, diplomacy descends into appeasement, enabling the easiest of victories for a dictator.

At the moment, the US and the West have to embark on a vital diplomatic initiative with the rest of the world. Many nations are still unwilling to commit themselves to confronting the totalitarian challenge. They must be convinced that their continued fence-sitting ultimately will undermine their respective national goals, and the very global order that permits their flourishing. The rallying cry must be that in a peaceful, prosperous and secure world, sovereignty, borders and a rules-based international order are the sine qua non of peace. They are sacrosanct. Without an explicit, unqualified embrace of these simple concepts, no nation is safe. Peace and prosperity for all peoples become elusive. Fear and foreboding envelope societies. Liberty evaporates. Human progress is stymied.

That undertaking — the gathering of all nations together to staunch the advance of aggressive totalitarianism — is necessary and urgent. Done successfully, it may be the best way to avoid war and fix a barrier around all those seeking to impose their will on other nations. No nation, regardless of size, should or can afford to be neutral on this matter.

The lessons of the last century’s two world wars and the Cold War taught us that both military power, and principled and determined diplomacy are necessary when confronting totalitarianism. It is time to apply those lessons with renewed vigor today.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Totalitarianism Now Presents an Unprecedented Global Threat appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

This law intends to give parents greater control over their children’s upbringing and comes at the heels of a raging debate around (CRT) and its purported instruction in schools (K-12). Debates around the bill also culminated in the passage of another bill- HB 7:The Individual Freedom bill, which quite ironically curtails speech by prohibiting classroom instruction, curricula design, and workplace training on particular kinds of discussions about race, color, sex, or national origin. Once again, the law does not define what those restricted forms of speech are. The of this law is to crack down on what DeSantis calls “wokeness”.

Advancements in Gay and Lesbian Rights over the Years: What went wrong?

While these two laws are specific to Florida residents, ongoing hysteria over sexuality, gender, and race in American classrooms has a long political and legal history. On the issues of sexuality and gender in particular, the United States has made tremendous progress over the years. Pew research show that three decades ago, nine-in-ten American adults (89%) would have been upset if their child told them they were gay. But by 2015, that number fell to just four-in-ten adults (39%). On the issue of same-sex marriage too, support has meteorically over the years. In 2005, only 36% of adults favored legalizing same-sex marriage, while a much larger 53% opposed it. By 2015, opinions flipped and 57% of adults favored same-sex marriage, while only 39% opposed it. However, this support/opposition was pretty much confined to party lines, with 65% of Democrats and 65% of Independents showing support for same-sex marriage, compared to only 34% of Republicans (as of 2015). At the time of this Pew survey, same-sex marriage was already legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia but wasn’t yet legal nationwide. Yet almost 75% of voters across party lines believed it would inevitably become the law of the land (this indeed occurred in the landmark 2015 US Supreme Court ruling,). So how did the United States go from legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015 to banning certain types of classroom and workplace discussions on gender and sexuality in 2022?

Most of the activism over the past three decades focused on securing rights for gay and lesbian Americans, which meant same-sex marriage was typically the key issue at stake. As far back as 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled in that the US Constitution did not grant homosexuals the constitutional right to engage in same-sex conduct (“sodomy”) even within the privacy of their homes. Further, the Court repudiated a lower court’s ruling that ‘gay rights’ emanated from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Seventeen years later in 2003, this judgment was overruled in, in which the same Court held that the reasoning in Bowers was flawed because the Fourteenth Amendment did in fact protect homosexual people’s liberty to engage in private and consensual same-sex conduct. 

By this time, debates around the (ill)legality of same-sex marriage had also taken center stage in American politics, with Congress the now-infamous Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996. DOMA defined marriage as a “legal union between one man and one woman” for federal purposes (under Section 3 of DOMA) and allowed states not to recognize same-sex marriages recognized in other states if they so wanted (under Section 2 of DOMA). Section 3 of DOMA was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in (2013), and Section 2 fell in (2015). With Obergefell legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, any state ban on same-sex marriage was invalidated, effectively overturning DOMA. 

It should be noted that Windsor and Obergefell were decided by narrow 5-4 margins, and both victories emanated from decades of sustained efforts by gay and lesbian lawyers and activists. Such was the opposition they faced that a detailed 45 page by the Committee on the Judiciary accompanied the DOMA legislation, which cited the need for an Act like DOMA. The report spelled out the fear that legalizing same-sex marriage, even at the state level, would “divide people unnecessarily” and adversely affect governmental interets. These interested were not confined to “defending and nurturing” heterosexual marriage but encompassed a fear of state sovereignty “subversion” and the “impingement” of scarce government resources. 

At that time, no state in the US had yet recognized same-sex marriage. However, in May 1993, the Hawaiin Supreme Court held in that the denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples may constitute discrimination on the basis of sex. It was this ruling in Hawaii that then-Congressman Charles Canady and others called a “significant threat to traditional marriage laws,” leading to multiple same-sex marriage across the length and breadth of the US over the next three decades, with DOMA being just the beginning.

While gay rights activists may have ultimately won the same-sex marriage debate, new and unfamiliar issues now animate voters, specifically conservatives. These issues include the rights of transgender people and those beyond the lesbian and gay sexuality spectrum (i.e. those beyond the “L” and”G” of LGBTQ+). Since 2017, have considered passing “bathroom bills” that would prohibit transgender and gender non-conforming people from accessing multiuser restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated facilities of their choice. Instead, these laws would compel them to use rooms corresponding with their biological sex. As recent as April 2022, Alabama’s state legislature an expanded “bathroom bill” that would not only limit transgender and gender-nonconforming people’s bathroom access but also prohibit certain discussions of gender and sexuality in classrooms from kindergarten through fifth grade (very similar to Florida’s HB 1557). 

Florida’s law has been named the “don’t say gay” law by because of its vague language proscribing classroom discussions on gender and sexuality in any manner not conducive to state standards. Moreover, parental notification rules in the law have raised speculation by critics that teachers may be compelled to “out” LGBTQ+ students to their parents under this law. Conservatives, however, have pushed back on these claims, arguing instead that the law “protects” children from sexual predators and ““. By re-defining this law as an “anti-grooming” law, conservatives effectively draw from age-old tropes about homosexuality, such as the idea of a “”- one that popular American evangelical commentator and theologian Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. once as “propaganda for immorality” and “poisonous to Christian morality.” He was, however, referencing the increasing representation of gay and lesbian characters in Hollywood. Nonetheless, the is applied by conservatives today to address gender and sexuality in school pedagogy. 

What lies ahead?

Ever since Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to the NCAA swimming title, conservative media has run a series of non-stop against her, which included multiple instances of intentional misgendering that eventually ignited a new debate about â€�women’s rights’ and the ‘protection of women’s sports’. have already passed laws banning transgender girls and women from participating in sports corresponding with their gender identity, while have banned gender-affirming care for minors with gender dysphoria. This fixation with ‘protecting’ women and children has now become a common thread in many Republican-backed laws – from, to, to the slew of. The conservatives of today may have made a begrudging truce with same-sex marriage, but they still consider other LGBTQ+ issues a form of “dangerous woke propaganda” that is detrimental to children.

Clearly the path ahead is rocky. While gays and lesbians may have won the hard-fought right to marry, there is still a long way to go. Americans are still uncomfortable discussing sexuality, gender identity, and gender nonconformity, and only time will tell how all of this will play out in the courts and in the upcoming midterm elections.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post With Midterm Elections just days away, LGBTQ+ issues continue to provoke American conservatives appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Compared to a range of other industrial countries, the SGI 2022 shows that the US remains a weak in terms of sustainable policies in general (rank 33 out of 41 nations) and it receives middling scores overall (rank 22) with regard to economic policies – a topic which looms large for almost every US voter. 

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The SGI 2022 US Report explains that “GDP growth bounced rapidly back, returning to robust levels in 2021,” which coincides with the first year of the Biden administration. Massive emergency spending, which had already started under former president Trump, “included payments to individuals and firms, as well as expanded tax credits and unemployment benefits”. Based on the findings on economic performance, while the incumbent president’s party could be vulnerable, slight increases in some policy indicators since the Trump years, especially economic measures, also suggest that the incumbent majority party is unlikely to face a thumping defeat.  

The party polarization indicator of SGI – where the US is ranked as the most country – makes it plausible that both sides of a politically divided voting public feel energized in this election year, albeit for different reasons. Democrat optimism regarding their party’s chances to contain losses is driven by the recent Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that ended the nationwide constitutional right to abortion that had existed since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. At least initially, the Dobbs decision had a significant energizing effect, especially on women, steering them towards Democratic candidates. In contrast, polls taken until the early fall of 2022 seemed to indicate that Republican-leaning conservative voters in small-town America may have felt complacent after the success of the conservative movement’s decades-long effort to strike down Roe v. Wade. 

The Trump effect

Former president Trump remains a central, and polarizing figure. Trump continues to claim falsely that the 2020 election was stolen and he has remained in the public gaze amid Congressional investigations into the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and his handling of classified documents. As a consequence, Democrats’ campaigns focus on perceived threats to US democracy by Trump and his followers. From the perspective of SGI 2022, this strategy is obvious, but not risk-free. While the report states that there is “increasing tension over the conduct of elections”, and “voting rights have become a contested issue, with the Republican party seeking to suppress low-income and minority votes”, it is also true that Democrats have failed to pass a major voting-rights act through Congress despite their majority. The United States falls into the upper-middle ranks (rank 15) in terms of quality.

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Meanwhile, the Republican electorate is reveling in President Biden’s approval ratings of well below 50 percent, though ratings are not as low as it was a few months ago. In the polls, it is inflation, not abortion or democracy, that tops potential voters’ concerns. Recent economic data—which showed ongoing inflation—will keep it there. Nearly every US household is grappling with higher costs, energy and gasoline prices. But only Republican-leaning voters see inflation as the number one issue, blaming it squarely on Joe Biden and the Democrats. For Democrat-leaning voters, however, inflation is important but does not top the agenda, seen instead in the context of global economic disruptions following the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. For these voters, abortion rights for women after the Dobbs decision is the top issue. The number two and three issues for Republican-leaners are immigration/border control and rising crime. For the Democrat-leaning constituencies these topics matter less. For them, a close second after abortion rights is saving US democracy from the perceived attack by MAGA-Republicans, followed by health care.  

It’s the economy, stupid

But the mobilization of white suburban Republican and independent women who may be worried about the cost of living, school decisions or rising crime could neutralize or offset the impact of those who are mobilized by abortion and the threat to US democracy. As a consequence, Republicans aim to focus voters’ attention on crime and immigration and away from abortion. Meanwhile, rising prices and inflation remain a factor everywhere and will ultimately decide at least the House elections. 

In sum, the midterms are more than just a referendum on President Biden. A few weeks before election day, predictions of sweeping Republican gains have been tempered by the changing political climate, thanks in large part to the Dobbs decision, although the Republicans remain favored to take control of the House. In the final weeks, amid economic jitters, elections could turn on how much sustaining energy the Dobbs decision provides for Democrats or whether it fades in the face of so-called “kitchen table” concerns. 

What happens now in 2022 will also lay foundations for the presidential elections of 2024. If Trump-backed Republican Senate candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia or J.D. Vance in Ohio do badly on November 8, 2022, Trump is less likely to be nominated as their 2024 presidential candidate. If Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is re-elected as governor of the sunshine state for a second term, this will give him momentum for a likely bid for the White House. Conversely, if the Democrats manage to keep their Senate majority and win statewide races for governor and/or the Senate in crucial presidential battlegrounds like Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, it would likely fuel confidence for a President Biden re-election campaign for 2024. On the other hand, if the Democrats fare badly in the midterms and other state elections on November 8, 2022, the current president faces rising pressure not to seek a second term. 

[We thank the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) project of the German Bertelsmann Foundation for this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Much More than Congress is at Stake this Midterm appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The Cold War may be a thing of the past, but the practice of using romance and sex as tools of extortion and blackmail is still flourishing the world over. The #MeToo movement that started as a chorus of feminist indignation mobilizing long-suppressed grievances has also been frequently deployed as a weapon to bludgeon men into silence or, worse, milk them for all they are worth. 

In India, Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, a journalist and documentary filmmaker, has been hot on the trail of duplicitous women. Some of them work in groups, regularly blackmailing gullible males into parting with large sums of money after sleeping with them. Their victims are usually married and hold a respectable place in society, making them easy targets for extortion.

Bhardwaj is known for speaking out against the rampant misuse of India’s gender laws, especially section 376 of the 1860-vintage Indian Penal Code (IPC) that addresses rape and sexual violence. Sections 489A and 354 deal with domestic abuse and sexual harassment respectively. The journalist observes, “Increasingly, men in India are becoming victims of systematic abuse through gender-biased laws. Laws where their innocence doesn’t matter, where they are presumed guilty and where a mere verbal accusation by a woman them a puppet in the hands of police and judiciary for years to come.”

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Indeed, the on gender-based violence gathered by India’s National Crime Records Bureau is very revealing. Of the 120,306 total arrests under section 498A in the year 2020, 96,497 were men and a whopping 23,809 of the arrested were women. There are increasing reports of women who, after a few years of marriage, file false cases of domestic abuse in the hopes of winning large settlements. Subsequently the family is summoned and forced to settle the case by paying large amounts of money. Up to 75% of cases are withdrawn because it emerges that the purported victims are exploiting the law. This can only the credibility of genuine survivors of abuse and domestic violence.

I spoke to Bhardwaj about some of the most disturbing cases she has come across, including that of the woman who filed nine rape cases against nine different men at nine different police stations within one year — all in one city, Gurgaon. The journalist told me about the men who have committed suicide because of shame after they were falsely accused of rape. Bhardwaj also revealed the gaslighting and professional sabotage she experienced at the hands of many feminists. She has also shared her views on the hotbutton topic of marital rape and measures that the government could implement to address the misuse of biased gender laws.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Vikram Zutshi: You deliver a perspective on gender rights seldom seen in the media, highlighting both male and female victims of fraud, abuse and extortion. What are some of the most disturbing and unique stories you have covered?  

Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj: The most disheartening story I have covered to date is that of the late Arvind Bharti, which I have covered in my upcoming documentary, India’s Sons. Arvind was first forced into marriage by a woman who threatened to file a rape case against him. He married her and thought life would be smooth but she filed a false dowry case against him within a year of their marriage. Arvind fought those cases for eight  years, studied law to defend himself properly and when he won the cases finally, he still had to settle because the woman wouldn’t let him be. It was traumatizing for Arvind because he had a daughter too from this marriage. But he had to give up on his daughter because of his wife’s constant cruelty. Eventually Arvind got divorced and wanted to move on, but his estranged wife kept defaming him everywhere he went — at his office and his study centers.

She got him thrown out of his job and eventually got him booked under a false rape charge after getting him beaten up brutally and confining him for three days. Arvind was jailed for 15 days. This broke him deep inside. Eventually Arvind ended his life leaving a 26-page suicide note detailing the torture he went through for decades, and writing about how the laws are extremely favorable to women. I  reported on the case, and stood with his family. Eventually, after several campaigns, the woman was arrested for abetment of his suicide.

The most unique story I have covered is that of Ayushi Bhatia who filed nine rape cases on nine different men at nine different police stations within one year – all in one city, Gurgaon. I exposed this girl, which eventually led to her arrest for filing false cases, criminal intimidation, extortion and blackmail. After that exposĂ©, people from across India contacted me writing about women who are filing false rape cases.

I exposed another such woman, Sonia Keswani from Jabalpur, who has filed six rape cases against five different men in the city of Jabalpur over a span of six years. She filed a rape case on the first man she implicated, got married to him and then filed dowry, domestic violence and rape cases against him again. After this, from 2021 to July 2022, she filed four more rape cases against four other different men. 

In both these cases, while Ayushi and Sonia were both married, they kept filing rape cases on other men, claiming they were raped on a false promise of marriage. In my opinion, these two cases highlight how rape laws are being brazenly misused in our country today.

There are several cases I have brought to light involving suicide by men after they were falsly accused of raping a woman. Some of these names include Awadhesh Yadav, Manoj Kumar, Arvind Bharti, Amit Kumar and Rahul Agarwal.

Zutshi: Your film India’s Sons delves into a bizarre tale of deception and fraud set in Jaipur. Tell us about how the legal system was misused by its practitioners to entrap a number of unwitting men. 

Bhardwaj: India’s Sons is about the lives of men who were falsely accused of rape but then were honorably acquitted by the court after years of trial. By then, their lives were totally destroyed by the case. Justice Nivedita Anil Sharma from Delhi once asked, “If the woman who files a rape case is immediately called a rape survivor, then why shouldn’t we call men who are honorably acquitted in these cases after being falsely accused, as “Rape Case Survivors.” This is what forms the tag line of the documentary as well: The Tale of False Rape Case Survivors.

One of the cases discussed in the documentary is that of a honeytrap racket busted in Jaipur by the special operations group of Rajasthan Police. About 44 people including high court lawyers, policemen, two dozen women and others pretending to be journalists were arrested during this phase. These people did a recce of high net worth men, especially those who were married. They sent women to lure them into sexual relationships, gathered evidence of these relationships and then threatened to register rape cases against these men. They made about three million dollars, a whopping 24-25 crore rupees. This racket operated nonchalantly for about three years until it was busted.

I am in Jaipur right now for the screening of my documentary film and, even today, the anti-corruption bureau has arrested a few policemen and advocates for extorting money from a man accused of rape. In all such cases, the legal system has taken for granted that whatever the woman states is gospel truth. No investigation is conducted and, almost always, even if it is found that the woman has lodged cases falsely, she is not punished. In the honeytrap racket, these women casually changed their statements and turned hostile after receiving money from the accused. The legal system ignored such dubious actions and so did the law enforcement authorities.

Zutshi: Do you consider yourself a feminist in the modern meaning of the term? How have India’s usually hyper-vocal feminists responded to your work? 

Bhardwaj: Personally, I am unable to identify myself as a feminist in the way that the term is used in the modern era. More often than not, hyper-vocal feminists have this innate hate for men which I find very annoying. For them, this entire world is against women, and anyone who doesn’t speak their language is a misogynist.

Equal rights and opportunities for all is an absolutely wonderful thought and, even today, there are women and girls who are disadvantaged and need the support from society to realize their true potential. Having said that, life isn’t a cakewalk for every man out there either. They too have their own struggles, challenges, and now even face discrimination especially because of one-sided laws that need to be addressed. But anyone talking about men suddenly becomes an enemy of feminists.

There are many feminists who have attacked my work. One of them started a petition to Netflix, when my documentary was released, to take it off the air. Another one wrote to the organizers of a TEDx talk I was invited to, demanding not to allow me to speak. In contrast, I have received standing ovations at several events. Time and again, I get abused on social media by feminist warriors who often describe me as a “pick me woman”, “misogynist”, “traitor”, and much worse terms, which I can not mention here. However, it no longer impacts me . I can safely say that I have thousands of women supporting my work, and they actively recognise the need for someone to speak up for these men who are also suffering.

Zutshi: What do you think of the proposed marital rape legislation that is currently a hot topic of debate on social media? 

Bhardwaj: This is an extensive topic of debate. I would ask  you to check out my video on this issue, which details my reservations on the proposed marital rape legislation.

To sum the video up, we already have laws that address sexual abuse within marriage. If the current exception in the existing rape laws were to be removed, almost every matrimonial dispute could result in rape charges against the husband. We are already witnessing thousands of unsubstantiated allegations of unnatural sex that is illegal under section 377 of the IPC. These cases will eventually end in settlements whereby the husband will be asked to shell out significant sums of money to save himself. Certain countries have already instituted special provisions against marital rape. Most of these countries have a gender-neutral law, but in India, it would be rendered as yet another weapon in the hands of wives. 

Zutshi: In your opinion, what are the steps that can be taken to address the misuse of section 376 of the IPS on rape and sexual harassment? 

Bhardwaj: The courts should give credence to fair and impartial investigations. They must value evidence, not mere verbal allegations made by women. This could go a long way in addressing the misuse of section 376. Currently, the courts are not punishing women who misuse section 376 to victimize men. Judges need to penalize women who make false allegations of rape. Only then will the misuse cease.

In addition, I think the lawmakers need to differentiate between cases of sexual assault and those that involve false claims of a promise of marriage because they do not belong to the same category. Currently, all men accused of a promise to marry are thrown into jail. Even if it later transpires that no promise of marriage was made and, consequently, the sex was consensual and not rape, the accused has already enormously suffered. The time in jail and the loss of reputation can often drive such men to suicide. The system is not working and must change.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Shining the Light on the Great Indian Honey Trap appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The BBC tells us that women around the world are now their hair to show their solidarity with their Iranian counterparts. Abir Al-Sahlani, a Swedish Member of the European Parliament, cut her hair in the midst of her speech, giving a rallying cry: “women, life, freedom.”

Why are women protesting?

Since 1979, Shia clerics have ruled Iran. They have imposed strict moral codes and restrictive rules on society. Women are supposed to dress modestly and cover their hair in accordance with clerics’ strict interpretations of Islam. As education levels increase, Iranian women are increasingly unwilling to play by such rules.

Irshad can stop and intimidate any woman for the most arbitrary of reasons. Over the years, Iranian women have become highly educated. The percentage of females in higher education from 3% in 1978 to 59% in 2018. Women have entered almost all professions now. Their expectations have risen similarly. Even when there have been no protests, there is a simmering discontent among women about the restrictions they face on a daily basis. Many women hate the morality police. 

So unpopular is irshad that conservative president Mahmoud proposed to parliament to get rid of this morality police but he was shot down by those far more conservative than him, led by Parliament’s members Mutahari and Pizishkiyan. He explained that the police are also young people and they cannot make a correct diagnosis. Overall, Ahmadinejad forcing people to observe the hijab rule. He held that people had rights to choose and they must be given choices so he was accused by ultra-conservatives of supporting indecency. 

While women may have done well in gaining an education, jobs have been hard to find. Glass ceilings remain thick and strong. Few women make it to top positions. They also find it difficult to get married because educated men with good jobs are in short supply. Furthermore, strict rules make it difficult for women and men to socialize. Like women elsewhere, Iranian women want some choice when it comes to their life partners.

Last year, Ebrahim Raisi was elected president. He is a conservative cleric who has to reinvigorate the old cultural revolution. Irshad have stepped up patrols and taken women away for “re-education” because of their supposedly improper dress. A hijab-and-chastity decree bans women without headscarves from posting pictures of themselves on social media. Naturally, women are dissatisfied with the tightening of restrictions and Amini’s death has set off a powder keg.

Why are men protesting?

Not only women but also men have taken to the streets. If Iranian women are dissatisfied, so are the men. They are really frustrated with the lack of opportunities. Many have lost hope in the future. In particular, educated men are most discontented. They are unable to get decent well-paying jobs. This restricts their marriage opportunities.

Young people are increasingly influenced by western media. They think of the US as a land of milk and honey. Alumni of the elite Sharif University of Technology leave the country in the search of a better life. Those who remain behind are frustrated by the lack of jobs in Iran. They access western media and want similar lifestyles to what they see on screen. This exacerbates their discontent.

American sanctions have taken their toll on the Iranian economy. Since 2012, per capita income has stagnated. After the Russia-Ukraine War, inflation has further soared. To make matters worse, Iran is facing an environmental crisis. Rivers have run dry, groundwater is falling, lakes are drying up and farmland is parched. A growing population has led to wanton felling of forests. In turn, deforestation has exacerbated desertification. As in India and China, pollution is choking cities. Young men find it very difficult to be hopeful about the future.

Over 60% of ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s 84 million population is under 30. Historically, young single men have been a source of instability in any society. Iran has millions of discontented young men. During the recent protests, unknown assailants have banks, police, ambulances, other government officials, mosques, clerics and religious people. The 1979 revolution may not yet be at risk but Iranian society is volatile and could erupt in a volcanic eruption given the slightest provocation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Why Are Young People Protesting in Iran? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Who Are Germany’s National Minorities?

Four state-recognized autochthonous national minorities live on German territory: the Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and the German Sinti and Roma. In accord with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM), five need to be fulfilled to be granted minority protection by the German government: the minorities’ members are German nationals; they have a distinct identity, consisting of an own language, culture, and history; a wish to maintain and preserve that identity; they have settled in Germany for a long time within traditional settlement areas.

As demographic statistics and socioeconomic data based on ethnicity are historically not collected in Germany due to the Nazi past, the numbers of people belonging to the national minorities are estimates. About 50,000 members of the Danish minority live in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, bordering Denmark, and 50,000-60,000 Frisians live along the North Sea coastline between the Netherlands and Denmark. About 60,000 Sorbs, a Slavic minority, live in the Lusatia region, close to the Polish border in East Germany. The minority of the Sinti and Roma provides an exemption from the criteria of residing in a specific settlement area with 70,000 members living all across Germany.

Instrumentalizing National Minorities

The lack of demographic data on national minorities implicates that no figures are available on the number of eligible voters in the respective minority groups. Despite only making up a small proportion of the German electorate, Germany’s far-right AfD has increased efforts to stage themselves as their true advocates. 

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In November 2020, a speech by Beatrix von Storch, deputy chairwoman of the AfD Bundestag faction, laid bare the AfD’s attempt to instrumentalize national minorities to stigmatize other ethnic groups in Germany. Storch deliberately misrepresented the federal government’s pledge to protect national minorities. According to Storch, the fact that national minorities are promised protection based on origin, language, and culture, irrespective of their German citizenship, confirms the AfD’s long-held view that national identity cannot be obtained through the acquisition of German citizenship: “If we that ethnic groups and national minorities have a cultural identity that should be preserved, then the same applies to national majorities. You can’t claim that national minorities like the Sorbs, Frisians, and Danes have a cultural identity and at the same time declare that the national majority in Germany doesn’t.”

With this statement, Storch argumentatively and tacitly deprives some German citizens with an immigration background of their German identity as she had openly claimed before: “ is not part of German tradition and identity, and therefore it does not belong to Germany.” Furthermore, Storch misuses national minorities to spread an ultra-nationalistic ideology harbored by large parts of the AfD, according to which there is a national identity of a people that is deeply rooted.

Misusing the Sorbian Minority for Electoral Success

By spreading its nationalist ideology, the AfD is trying to appeal to the strong sense of home and belonging among many members of Germany’s minorities and capitalize on this electorally. Yet, the election results of the last two federal elections do not indicate that the AfD is succeeding in areas with large populations of national minorities – except in eastern German constituencies and settlement areas of the Sorbs. 

During the 2017 federal election, the AfD managed to muster up 40 percent of the votes in the Sorbian-dominated district of Spree-Neiße in southeastern Brandenburg. Despite significant gains, the party still lagged behind the CDU, traditionally voted for by the mostly Catholic Sorbs. In the subsequent federal election, in 2021, the Sorbian village of Puschwitz hit the headlines when the AfD candidate emerged as the victor. Curiously, in the neighboring Sorbian village of Crostwitz the CDU candidate pipped the AfD’s competitor to first place. Hence, it remains questionable whether these two stand-out successes of the AfD in Sorbian counties and municipalities express a seminal affinity of the Sorbian minority to the AfD, especially since the economically weaker eastern German states have been AfD strongholds anyway.

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On the contrary, the relationship between Sorbs and the AfD was strained before these election results. Sorbs have long experienced right-wing extremist hostilities and attacks, but since 2014, with the beginning of the far-right PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamicisation of the Occident) demonstrations and the rise of the AfD, the extent has significantly increased. According to Heiko Kosel, an MP of the Saxon state parliament for the leftist party Die Linke, “ on Sorbs are linked to increased xenophobia in Saxony in recent years.” Bilingual street signs were smeared and even graffitied with swastikas. Another example of the AfD’s contribution to the hostile climate toward Sorbs was its resistance to a socio-cultural community center in the East German city of Bautzen, where many Sorbs live, warning against ongoing “ łľľ±łćľ±˛Ô˛µâ€ś.

Against this backdrop, an incident during the 2017 general election stirred up the Sorbian community when the AfD once again instrumentalized minority groups to incite xenophobic attitudes toward other ethnic groups. The bone of contention was an election poster that depicted three women in traditional German, one of them in Sorbian attire, with the caption “ diversity? We have it already!” That was unequivocally condemned by the umbrella organization “Domowina,” representing the interests of Sorbs in Germany: “We the use of the Sorbian people to exclude other minorities.”

Overt Racism Against Sinti and Roma

The fact that the AfD’s representation of the interests of national minorities is nothing more than a smokescreen is shown not only by its attempts to play national minorities off against each other but also by its open racism against the national minority of Sinti and Roma. Among Germany’s national minorities the Sinti and Roma occupy a special historic role. During Nazi Germany, they were prosecuted and murdered, resulting in a Genocide of up to 500.000 Sinti and Roma, often referred to as the ” Holocaust.” To this day, Sinti and Roma face discrimination and structural racism. In 2021, authorities recorded antizigan crimes, the year before 128. Antizigan attitudes and sentiments in the center of German society are prevalent. According to a study, 29 percent of the population showed antipathy toward Sinti and Roma. To uncover the dark figure of antizigan sentiment and crime, the German government mandated the Independent Commission on Antiziganism (UKA) in 2019, and an anonymous Reporting and Information Center Antiziganism (MIA) started work in July 2022. In March 2022, the government appointed the first commissioner against Antiziganism and for the life of Sinti and Roma in Germany.

Concerning the Sinti and Roma, the AfD has willingly and repeatedly dropped the covers and counteracted its supposed self-image of being the true representative of the interests of all national minorities. The AfD has been a driving force behind picking up on and promoting antizigan racial prejudice. In a 2019 speech in the German Bundestag about measures to combat antiziganism, the AfD MP Markus Frohnmaier referred to Sinti and Roma as “” („Gypsys“), a racial slur that is condemned by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, the main advocacy group representing the interests of German Sinti and Roma: “â€�Gypsiesâ€� is a foreign used by the majority society that is overlaid with clichĂ©s and rejected by most members of the minority as discriminatory – because the Sinti and Roma have never called themselves that.” Disregarding this terminological clarification of the people concerned, Frohnmaier contested the designation Sinti and Roma as an “ łŮ±đ°ůłľ.”

Evoking Ghosts of the Nazi Past

In June 2018, the Saxon AfD showed no inhibition to evoking the inhumane ghosts of the Nazi past. They did so by submitting a parliamentary request, demanding the collection of demographic data on Sinti and Roma living in . Part of the requested data was the number of German and foreign Sinti and Roma living in Saxony, including their education status. Particularly startling were the queries about irregularities in the compliance with compulsory education and the number of homeless Sinti and Roma. With these suggestive and disparaging questions, the AfD consciously tapped into the persisting circulating prejudices of educational alienation, homelessness, and criminality among Sinti and Roma. With the feeding of false preconceptions and request for a registration of the Sinti and Roma population, the AfD summoned gruesome memories of the systematic genocidal policy of the Nazis against the Sinti and Roma and the Jews, which had also entailed a registration of respective population groups. Hence, collecting population data based on ethnicity is prohibited in Germany.

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Not only the Sinti and Roma were affected by the AfD snubbing this particular lesson from the past. A few weeks after the request for the data collection on the Sinti and Roma, the AfD in the Saxon state parliament also asked for “” on the number of Sorbs in Saxony. Given these efforts, Germany’s National Minority Secretariat, which bundles the interests of the four national minorities, reaffirmed that belonging to a minority is the personal of each individual, which may not be registered, verified, or disputed by the state.

The national minorities in Germany unite in the same vulnerability and need for protection, although their identities and cultures differ. Be it the pitting national minorities against other ethnic groups in Germany, the abuse of national minorities’ symbols for electoral campaigns, open racist attacks against Sorbs and Sinti and Roma, and the disregard for the Nazi past. All these incidents contribute to exposing the AfD’s duplicity and its specious advances toward national minorities for electoral success at the misfortune of others.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The AfD’s Duplicitous Attempt to Target Germany’s National Minorities appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In recent years, radical Islamists have been on the ascendant in a land historically known for tolerant Sufi Islam. Arguably, the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus in 1990 set in motion an inexorable trend. Now, the separatist movement that wants an independent Kashmiri state has been supplanted in many places by those who want union with or even an ISIS-style .

In such an environment, calling out sexual predators in Kashmir is not easy, especially if perpetrators are Islamists. Victims are often targeted by Islamists for being �pro-state’ (read pro-India) and disloyal to the Kashmiri cause.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Mantasha Rashid. She is the founder of Kashmir Women’s Collective (KWC), a gender advocacy group. In October, 2018, KWC named “multiple men in Kashmir – from political analysts, media personalities, editors, journalists and bureaucrats, to political workers – of sexually inappropriate behaviour.”

As noted then, “KWC members [were] individually and collectively vilified by a smear campaign, insidiously circulated by the friends of those named.” KWC KWC received a torrent of threatening emails and messages attempting to silence them. 

Here, Rashid speaks about what inspired her to start KWC, its mission and purpose. She goes on to explain the origins of #MeToo in Kashmir, the major milestones accomplished by KWC, patriarchy and religious conservatism in Kashmir, excesses by Indian security forces, the politicization of gender-based violence in Kashmir, and the complications that arise when women speak out.

Vikram Zutshi: What was the inspiration behind KWC and what are key milestones in its journey? 

Mantasha Rashid: KWC is inspired by , a black women’s organization from the 1970s that worked to address racism and sexism against black women in the US through intersectional feminism. 

While doing a master’s program on gender and sexuality in the US, I realized that we needed to have such an organization in Kashmir. We started in 2016 and registered as a trust in 2017.

From the outset, KWC has been providing legal and psycho-social support to victim-survivors of violence in Kashmir. We also do capacity building, training workshops for students, police, teachers and religious preachers on the issues of gender rights, sexual abuse, harassment at workplace etc. Hence, the focus is educational: we provide support services and advocacy on issues pertaining to gender. 

 Zutshi: How did #MeToo start in Kashmir? The journalists and writers in your #MeToo allegations have stayed studiously silent. Is there another list of offenders that KWC plans to release? Also, do you see any chance for due process to take its course and bring perpetrators to justice?

Rashid: #MeToo is not indigenous to Kashmir. As you know, it is a global movement. KWC began after an informal discussion about the #MeToo movement in our KWC office. Volunteers who were young girls revealed some disturbing details. They told us about prominent men hiding their marital status and luring young girls on the pretext of marriage or guidance in career, internships, academic references etc into inappropriate relationships. When we asked them as to why young girls like them did not shame these men in public, they replied that if they revealed their identity, their families would not accept their revelations and, once their experience became publicly known, their families would be shamed. Kashmir is a small, closed and conservative society where social consequences for women who speak out can be serious. On hearing this, we felt that KWC could act as an interface between these young girls and society. It would collect the stories of these girls and publish them while safeguarding the identity of the girls themselves.

We decided that under no circumstances shall we reveal the names of these girls. The girls reposed their trust in us. They gave us their narratives on the condition that we would protect their identities. The status, credentials or political association of these men were of no consequence to us and we can say with certainty that it didn’t matter to those girls either. 

Our #MeToo movement was centered on women’s experiences and did not pay any heed to the accused men’s families, professions or politics. Unfortunately, some people tried to taint us as pro-state and pro-India voices. Had that been the case, the list of names we compiled would not have officers from state and central services, journalists and even a woman who was the aunt of a girl and had abused her since childhood.

When you ask if we intend to release any more narratives, we would say no. We could not release a few narratives because many women were threatened and withdrew their consent. They apologized for letting us down but their wellbeing is our primary concern.

Zutshi: How many cases of sexual violence do you attribute to Indian security forces? Did any of the victims receive justice? 

Rashid: There are some cases in public knowledge like . A few like that of bride have been documented by and in the book edited by Urvashi Butalia’s edited book, Speaking Peace: Women’s Voices from Kashmir. From what I know, no convictions have been made so far in any cases involving Indian security forces.

Zutshi: How is KWC tackling endemic issues like domestic abuse, sexual violence and mental health conditions? How challenging has it been to get institutional support for your efforts? 

Rashid: It is immensely challenging to hear the stories of abuse and violence at any time of the day, through messages and phone calls as well as in person too. Also, we are a network of volunteering women who do their respective jobs and professions. This makes it quite hard for us. Burnout and time management stress are common. 

My PhD is about violence against women and its findings clearly show that these issues are neither recognized nor understood through the lens of gender-based violence. Instead, they are seen as aberrations, or as individual cases in isolation. A larger policy and action framework is missing despite there being a women’s police station in Srinagar. Its functioning will baffle you as the police focus is on mediation even after clear incidents of physical violence in marriage and even dowry.

As far as institutional support for KWC goes, thus far we have never approached any institution for any support. We have not taken any government or private funding. A few of us donate our time and some money to support and run KWC. We are a non-partisan and objective group with absolutely no political or religious affiliation. We have a few lawyers and counselors who volunteer their services for our network. We refer cases that come to our attention from time to time to these specialized volunteers after our primary intervention. 

Zutshi: How does the ingrained conservatism of Kashmiri society prevent victims from speaking out? What could be done to make the process easier for them? 

Rashid: Kashmir is a closed society and the political conflict has only added to social insecurity. Whenever an issue of gender-based violence or the rights of any minority group are referred to in any social context, it is perceived through the regional political binary lens. The nuances and even facts are often stripped out, reducing the issue to a pro-state or pro-separatist view. 

This is dangerous for any discourse. Such a binary lens shrinks the space for any genuine voice of support or advocacy for gender or minority rights. Also, patriarchy is a global reality, just its manifestations are varied and diverse for different cultures. Even in the US, for example, there are different wages for men and women for the same work. For that matter, black, hispanic, and white women have different experiences because patriarchy is often clubbed with racism.

How will things be easy for women in Kashmir? I think through women’s education to begin with and a lot more social change thereafter. You may find it surprising that an SUV-driving woman who earns no less than nearly $1,900 (Rupees 150,000) per month (a relatively high figure in Kashmir) comes to seek support from us at KWC. Her problem is that her husband is uninterested and neglectful, both financially and emotionally. The lady has no option but to seek a divorce. However, she and her parents are in a fix because she has three sisters who are yet to be married. If this lady divorced her husband, that could potentially cause problems for her sisters in finding suitable grooms.We have a big challenge: how do we deal with such societal attitudes? And it is not an isolated case, such archaic stigmas are widely prevalent in Kashmiri society. 

A lot needs to be done both at an institutional level and at the community level by taking major stakeholders on board. It may come as a surprise to you that, even though a shelter home for women in distress is mandated by legislation on domestic violence, it does not exist on the ground. In its absence, we have housed women in our KWC office for months altogether. There’s a lot that needs to be done. 

Zutshi: Finally, what role does the decades-long Kashmir conflict play in enabling predators and what are some possible solutions?  

Rashid: In a political conflict any issue is dovetailed to anti-state and pro-state, anti-freedom movement or pro-freedom movement narratives. It is nearly impossible to break free of these larger regional political narratives and advocate for any social cause. However, we at KWC largely feel that we have achieved our objective. We simply wanted to create a space in public discourse where these sensitive issues of discrimination, bodily violation, and violence against women are accepted, recognized and  addressed seriously.

Whether women  or girls took their cases to courts, received apology, or their allegations were contested was the second step which didn’t directly concern KWC. Our job was just to be a platform for stories of young Kashmiri girls, to shield them and to protect their identity. 

Sadly, the fact remains that no institutional actions were initiated against the accused by their respective offices. They did not even investigate serious allegations and check on their facticity.

#MeToo is not only a women’s issue but a societal issue of dignity and safety of half the population. Data from the (WHO) reveals that “across their lifetime, 1 in 3 women, around 736 million, are subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence from a non-partner – a number that has remained largely unchanged over the past decade.”

The reason for such alarming WHO numbers is that largely power is disproportionately titled in favor of men. #MeToo was a symbolic gesture of channelizing women’s rage worldwide to tilt this power imbalance, however little its outcome may have been. I strongly feel that #MeToo was necessary and many more such movements are essential for progress.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post It Is Taboo to Talk About #MeToo in Kashmir appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

From struggles and revolutions for independence during colonization to their role as suicide bombers in terrorism and terrorist groups, women have always participated in conflicts. Women in terrorism captured the attention of the global population from onwards when they were being by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in droves. The figure of the female terrorist presents a conundrum. On the one hand, as one who commits acts of violence, she is a perpetrator of human rights violations against her own gender and others. On the other hand, structural human rights violations increase her vulnerability to radicalization. The female terrorist then seems to be caught between these two positions, where both law and politics are struggling to accommodate such a figure within their ambits.

The problem lies in the fact that women typically have been viewed from the of being victims rather than having political agency. Accounts of men’s violence and terrorism typically are seen as rational and male terrorists are seen as active perpetrators of political violence. In contrast, accounts of women’s participation in terrorism is characterised as . This sets up a false dichotomy that translates to an understanding of agency that is gendered, with women’s violence being seen as exceptional.

Women as Victims, Not Perpetrators of Violence

In international law, the women, peace and security () agenda mainly focuses on victims of sexual violence during conflicts. UN Security Council Resolution in WPS has only one with one sentence that mentions female radicalization: “…to conduct and gather gender-sensitive research and data collection on the drivers of radicalization for women, and the impacts of counter-terrorism strategies on women’s human rights and women’s organizations” (para. 12). This is a fraught area within the WPS Agenda with a confusing wording, where women are presented as both problem and solution in the same sentence. Furthermore, the WPS model falls within heteronormativity—it is heterosexual and heteropatriarchal. The WPS space needs to be recast as something else which does not carry the cultural baggage of gender stereotypes and of these normative frameworks.

Too many have taken a simplistic view of women’s violence as a result of personal failures.  Such a recasting is important because the female terrorist is currently presented without any political agency. The model at present is quite simplistic and reductive, reflecting the way in which women’s violence is generally constructed as resulting from personal failures, lost love and irrational emotionality. Consider the reasons given for women’s radicalization by the of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality: “a sense of duty to defend their Muslim brothers and sisters”, “a sense of adventure”, “the prospect of marriage” (p. 26). These reasons are repeated in several policy reports and papers that have come out over the last few years on this topic. 

The â€�push’ and â€�pull’ that are given for women’s violence are that they are frustrated in their personal lives, have unsatisfactory love lives and are looking for an emotional outlet, while the allure of militancy is that it is an adventure, and that they are rebelling against patriarchal injunctions in their own families. Caron E. Gentry and Laura Sjoberg state in Beyond Mothers, Monsters and Whores that how violent women matter in global politics is typically through “the mother, monster and whore narratives which confine them to vengeance, insanity and sexuality and deny the possibility that they could be choosing their actions” (p.20). 

The female terrorist is then always presented as someone’s wife, partner, mother, daughter, sister. And we keep coming back to the tropes of the public/private when the female terrorist is characterized as such, where the public sphere is seen to be the rational male space, and the private sphere the �irrational’ and �emotional’ space. Narratives of women and violence then become sensational and stylized, where their private love and sex lives, lack of ideal femininity as well as lack of political agency become construed as the drivers of terrorism and militancy.

This is not to say that all policy reports do this. The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate’s “Gender Dimensions of the Response to Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters” acknowledges the need to take a different approach. However, this report is one among the few while a majority of the policy reports thus far rehash the stereotypes.

Women’s Agency in Violent Extremism

News reports and coverage of such women popularized the term �jihadi bride’ with regards to women joining ISIS, and several scholars have commented on how problematic this is. The connotation of “jihadi bride” is that these women are infantilized as brides and tabloid sensationalism flattens a complicated but necessary debate about political agency.

The flip side to this, however, is that when talking about such women, especially in the context of foreign terrorist fighters where some left to fight in ISIS as young as 15-year-olds, where does one draw the line between vulnerability and agency?  We need to be to the coercion and violence many female members experience themselves.

At the heart of it all is theinability of the broader cultural to conceive that women are capable of being attracted to violence for reasons that are their own. The gendered narratives of women’s violence ultimately leads to women’s invisibility in legal and political narratives of terrorism, where ultimately women then can only be seenĚý as victims. Any deviation from this is seen as going down a about what it means to be a woman. This appears to cancel the possibility that women may not always behave in ways that we as a society expect them to, thus giving rise to sensationalized narratives and framing their violence as exceptional.

Ěý[The author is aĚýĚýon Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls withĚý who helped publish this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Narratives About Female Terrorists are Sexist and Misguided appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

One way of framing the moral question that so radically divides Americans is to raise a thought experiment in the form of a provocative question: can anyone ever justify detonating a bomb in a building, with massive destruction of property and loss of human lives? The very thought of it seems preposterous.

But, what if the building were, say, the Auschwitz gas chamber in 1944, and the casualties were SS guards? famously wrote a letter to Hitler in 1939. The Mahatma appealed to the Führer for peace. Of course, we now know how naïve Gandhi was on that occasion. Nonviolent resistance worked when facing an oppressor like the British Empire, but the Third Reich was another ballgame. And for that very reason, if anybody ever detonated a bomb in the Auschwitz gas chamber— and in the process some SS guards died—, most reasonable people would have likely agreed that, at the very least, such an action would have been morally acceptable.

The person who detonated the bomb would not have been a terrorist. He/she would have been a freedom fighter. A terrorist targets civilians to advance a particular political point. In contrast, a freedom fighter targets combatants as self-defense. In our hypothetical scenario, the freedom fighter would have detonated a bomb in order to stop an ongoing genocide, and whatever casualties there may have been, they were active perpetrators of the genocide (SS guards), or victims who were about to die in the Holocaust anyway.

A disturbing thought experiment

Now, there are reasonable people on both sides of the abortion debate. But it is important to think about the implications of the anti-abortion view. If the fetus is a person, then in the United States alone, more than half a million persons per year are deliberately killed in abortion clinics. such killings have occurred since Roe v Wade in 1973. While not technically a genocide (in the sense of seeking to wipe out an entire ethnic group), it is very close to it, given the staggering number of victims. This raises the question: whenever someone detonates a bomb in an abortion clinic­ (as it occasionally happens), is that person a terrorist or a freedom fighter?

The overwhelming majority of those who hold anti-abortion views will be quick to say that such bombings are despicable acts of terrorism. But if the fetus is a person, how different is that from the freedom fighter who detonates a bomb in the Auschwitz gas chamber? The purpose in both cases is the same: an attempt to stop an ongoing genocide. Noncombatants are not targeted: in one case, SS agents are targeted; in the other case, active perpetrators of the genocide (abortion doctors and their assistants, women who want to interrupt pregnancies) are targeted. In both cases, innocent victims may be killed (Jews, unborn babies), but they were about to die anyways, and the bombing may actually contribute to save their brethren, by stopping the genocide.

Those who uphold the anti-abortion view may argue that there are legal ways of stopping the genocide, and for that very reason, any violent act targeting abortion clinics is unwarranted. Indeed, Roe v Wade has already been overturned. But at least in the initial phases of these changes, abortion will likely remain legal until six weeks. If the fetus is a person at conception, then even with the overturning of Roe v Wade, hundreds of thousands of persons will still be killed in abortion clinics.

In any case, the legal changes are still part of a long-term strategy. After the overturning of Roe v Wade, there is now a phase of debate amongst legislators at the state level. And while judges and politicians engage in endless debate, each year a large number of persons will continue to be killed in abortion clinics. Perhaps there may have been some diplomatic way to persuade Hitler to stop the killing machine in Auschwitz, but at the rate that Jews were taken to the gas chamber every day, there was no time to wait for nonviolent solutions. Something had to be done immediately. The same reasoning applies to abortion clinic bombings.

Secular humanist philosopher Stephen Kershnar sums up the argument as follows in his book “if the pro-life position is true, then it is permissible to assassinate abortion doctors. My argument rested on two premises. First, lethal violence may sometimes be used to defend innocent parties. Second, if the pro-life position is true, then, sometimes, assassinating abortion doctors is an instance of such defense.”

Can logic solve the problem?

Any reasonable person is presumably repulsed by the idea of approving abortion clinic bombings. But, if the above arguments are valid­ — as I believe they are­ — then only those of us who believe that the fetus is not a person are holding a consistent view. Those who bomb abortion clinics are terrorists ­—not freedom fighters — because they are not attempting to stop a genocide, inasmuch as fetuses are not persons. Nevertheless, those terrorists are more coherent than those pro-lifers whose views imply that there is an ongoing genocide, but somehow shy away from accepting the use of legitimate methods of self-defense to stop that genocide.

Philosophers are very fond of modus tollens. This is a deductive argument, in which we say, “if p, then q; not q, therefore not p”. If it is raining, then it is wet outside; it is not wet outside, therefore it is not raining. As applied to the abortion debate, the following modus tollens argument can be made: if the fetus is a person, then bombing abortion clinics is justified; bombing abortion clinics is not justified; therefore, the fetus is not a person. There are endless discussions about what exactly a person is, when exactly the nervous system has a capacity to feel pain, and so on. Those discussions are important, but in the meantime, this simple — but powerful — argument sheds light on the question of personhood, and it indicates that given the moral abhorrence of bombing abortion clinics, the fetus is not a person. And if the fetus is not a person, then abortion is morally neutral, and it ought not to be outlawed.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post With Roe v Wade Overturned, A Strange Inconsistency Remains appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Controversial Verdict Against Osman Kavala

The court case against the Gezi protests counts as one of the most egregious and partisan prosecutions conducted during Erdoğan’s rule. The defendants were initially acquitted of all charges by a penal court in 2020. However, after Erdoğan’s of the 2020 ruling, the court of appeals overturned the verdict, paving the way to a second trial. The harsh sentences handed down on April 25 mark some of the most severe crackdowns on freedom of assembly in Turkey over the past decade. They demonstrate the total capitulation of the judicial system under Erdoğan’s rule after the country transitioned to a presidential regime in 2018.

On numerous occasions, ErdoÄźan has attacked Kavala personally, him of being “the Soros of Turkey.” Still, the Gezi trial goes beyond a personal vendetta against Kavala and the other seven defendants. Accusing Kavala of masterminding the Gezi protests allows the government to put the blame for the mass uprising on outside actors. The reality, is that the Gezi protests did not have a leader. They arose spontaneously because of the strength of the Turkish civil society at the time. The Gezi trial comes at a time when ErdoÄźan’s popularity is waning thanks to the economic downturn and the migration crisis. By pronouncing Kavala guilty of a spurious charge and packing him to prison, the ErdoÄźan government is seeking  to intimidate government opponents and criminalize any protests.

Peace in the World, Autocracy at Home

The Gezi verdict was announced in the wake of Erdoğan’s efforts for reconciliation with the US and the EU after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In recent weeks, Ankara has been praised by western governments for providing Ukraine with and closing the Bosphorus or Dardanelles to Russian warships. Erdoğan skillfully used the Ukrainian crisis to break his regime’s diplomatic isolation.

The Turkish president has performed a tricky balancing act, supporting Ukraine militarily and diplomatically on the one hand while maintaining cordial relations withRussia. Erdoğan’s attempts at rapprochement in the international arena are in stark contrast to the increasing repression of his critics in Turkey. Last week’s verdict can be seen as an example of Erdoğan’s estimation that the West is too distracted by the Russia-Ukraine War to object to a crackdown on the president’s critics. Faced with increased opposition coordination, Erdoğan faces a tough reelection battle in the upcoming months. As a result, Erdoğan is expected to step up the pressure on his opponents until the next presidential elections due in the summer of 2023.

The Gezi verdict is an ominous warning for others whose political cases are still pending in court. The against the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is arguably the most consequential among them. Accused by the state prosecutor’s office of having close organizational links with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the HDP case will soon be decided by the Turkish Constitutional Court. Hundreds of HDP politicians, including the party’s former chairman Selahattin DemirtaĹź, are already in prison. 

If the constitutional court decides against the HDP, Turkey’s third-largest party will be closed down and hundreds of politicians will face a political ban of five years. Another important case involves İstanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, who is currently facing several investigations that could result in his removal from office, and even criminal conviction. As the judicial system comes under Erdoğan’s control, these cases will be decided on partisan calculations rather than law.

Lastly, the Gezi trial poses a serious political dilemma for the EU. Turkey’s accession talks with the EU have stalled over the past decade. And yet the two sides continue to enjoy an important working relationship on security issues and migration. Turkey’s geostrategic importance has become even more important after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the Gezi sentencing is poised to push Turkey further away from Europe and complicate the EU’s efforts to cooperate with Erdoğan’s government.

On February 2, reported that the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ voted “to begin infringement proceedings against Turkey is an important step to support human rights protection in Turkey and uphold the international human rights framework.” After Kavala’s guilty verdict, Turkey’s voting rights in the Council of Europe could be suspended and even its membership may be in jeopardy

Germany, France, and the US, along with EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell, expressed dismay at the April 25 judgment. found the “heavy politicization” of the trial “deeply troubling” because it exemplified, “once again, the systematic lack of independence of the Turkish judiciary. The Council has repeatedly stated that the targeting of human rights defenders runs counter to Turkey’s obligation to respect democracy and the rule of law.”

 The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock took a stand against  the judicial verdict against Kavala. She it was “in stark contrast to the rule-of-law standards and international obligations to which Turkey is committed as a member of the Council of Europe and an EU accession candidate.”

Erdoğan has become an autocratic strongman who is persecuting his opponents. European policymakers should continue to speak out on human right violations in Turkey and raise the stakes for Erdoğan’s harsh treatment of critics as the country heads into an election year. Turkish democracy is going through a tough time and needs the support of its European friends.

(This text was first published on the SWP website as a “Point of View” .)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post ErdoÄźan’s Regime Persecutes Political Opponents appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

No Story Is Worth Dying For

In most Kenyan media schools, the phrase “No Story Is Worth Dying For” is quite a common saying. However, what happens when you fall in love with your work?

Describing herself as a “product of Jerusalem,” with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shaping much of her life, Shireen Abu Akleh has shown the world what it means to be a journalist and what it means  to tell stories that  affect you as a journalist and your community. In her own words, her only mission was to be close to her people, and within her people she was killed.

“I chose to become a journalist to be close to people. It may not be easy to change reality, but I was at least able to bring their voice to the world,” Abu Akleh said in a taped for the Qatari channel’s 25th anniversary.Ěý

Journalism in Africa Has Become a Travesty

When I was growing up, I listened to Kenya Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Taifa and watched KBC Channel 1 —  that’s what we had at that time and I must say that the type of journalism exhibited was mind-blowing. A type of journalism that can only be compared to Abu Akleh’s.

Today, African journalists have turned their craft into a very ordinary career reserved for cool kids, who spent most of their time in big cities or overseas. After spending time overseas, these cool kids return to their homeland and land jobs in major newsrooms, thanks to their polished English. Sadly, most of them have zero journalism skills or storytelling abilities.

While journalists like Ahmed Hussein-Suale,a renowned investigative journalist from Ghana, was in 2019 for his role in exposing the corruption in his country,and Jamal Farah Adan of Somalia, Betty Mtekhele Barasa of Kenya, and dozens were killed in Ethiopia covering the Tigray conflict, it is very unfortunate that some journalists still find it right to use journalism for fame, power, and build future political careers.

Today, some Kenyan journalists engage in uncalled-for social media wars with critics who point out their lack of skills and unreasonable theatrics for clout chasing.

We have lost the basics of journalism such as good storytelling. Instead, journalists are thirsty for social media numbers, likes, and retweets. We don’t verify anymore. As long as it helps increase the number of followers, it goes for publishing. Right now, distinguishing a professionally trained journalist from a socialite is becoming an uphill task.

African Governments Must Learn from Palestine

Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by Israeli forces just eight days after the world marked the World Press Freedom Day on May 3. With such events, African governments need to step up and steer clear of Israeli-like behaviors of gagging the media, and instead, just like Palestine gave Abu Akleh the freedom to tell her people’s story, they should also give the same freedom to their journalists.

In March, Ugandan authorities the offices of Digitalk, an online tv station known for airing critical views of President Yoweri Museveni and his family. Other than confiscating the TV’s production and broadcasting equipment, they also arrested and charged its reporters with cyberstalking and offensive communication. The charges could see them facing up to seven years in prison.Ěý

The killing of this brave journalist who dared to tell the stories of the oppressive Israeli should not kill the spirits of journalists worldwide. Instead, this should be an inspiration to every reporter to work even harder,  to help give voice to the voiceless, uphold justice and make the world a better place for every person whether in Gaza, Tigray, Libya, Syria or Afghanistan among other countries and regions experiencing instability.

(Senior Editor Francesca Julia Zucchelli edited this article.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Shireen Abu Akleh: The Journalist Martyr appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

For the last 70 years, Tibet has been under China’s thumb even as Hollywood stars swoon at the Dalai Lama’s feet. Many people think of Tibet as a separate nation with a definable history and a specific cultural identity symbolized by the Dalai Lama. Many are unaware of Tibet’s integration into China and its political subjugation by Beijing. In September 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear that Tibet was an integral part of China’s “impregnable fortress” as he decried the heresy of “splittism.” The fate of Tibet shines light on a key issue: can political entities bordering a hegemon exercise sovereignty?

We are living in a world where the 1945 postwar order is ending. The collapse of the Soviet Union has been followed by a bloody war between its two biggest successor states. Oil prices are soaring and inflation is skyrocketing. Fertilizers and food are in short supply because the two big exporters Russia and Ukraine are at war. So, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and many other countries could soon be short of bread, if not oil. 

As the current world order breaks down, what will emerge in its place? Will we see a more fragmented world with regional hegemons competing in their spheres of influence? Or will we see a more multipolar world where dispersed power centers will realize there is no way to survive other than mutual respect and creative collaboration?

I spoke to writer and activist Tenzin Tsundue on a range of issues, spanning from his experience as a Tibetan in India to the state of our modern world. 

The transcript has been edited for clarity. Words in brackets are my insertions to provide context and clarity to Tsundue’s words.

Roberta Campani: How do the Tibetans live in India? 

Tenzin Tsundue: There are about 100,000 Tibetan refugees in India, of which three generations are represented: those who left Tibet (as Tsundue’s parents did), their children who are now adults (like Tsundue) and a third generation (children of Tsundue’s generation) who no longer have direct ties to Tibet. There’s also another group, those who came out of Tibet later on, in the early 2000s and up to 2009 and then it became almost impossible to get out of occupied Tibet. There’s a law in India as per which someone who was born prior to in the country is a citizen regardless of the origin of their parents. (Yet most Tibetans have not applied for citizenship to avoid weakening the Free Tibet Movement.) Like other refugees, Tibetans cannot own property nor vote. In fact, Tibetans don’t even have refugee status because India, like most modern nations, does not recognize Tibet as a state or country. 

We are considered foreigners, we have to get a document that lasts one year. This makes it hard to plan long-term, build a house or start a family. Some can get the document extended for five years. But it is hard not to have any stability. On the other hand, the positive side of this situation is that it maintains the impetus to keep working towards going back to our homeland.

Even if India granted us 43 settlements where we have built farms, hospitals, and schools where we are self-subsistent, this was a lot of work. And now the young go to cities and have jobs in IT.

Tibet is known for being the home country of Tenzin Gyatso, now known as the Dalai Lama. He is recognized both as a spiritual and political leader. In 2011, the Dalai Lama gave up his political role and passed it on to the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). 

The CTA was formed in 1959. Some consider it a government in exile. The Dalai Lama’s handing over power to the CTA is historic. He wants Tibetans and Tibet to function democratically. The Sikyong, a figure analogous to a prime minister, and a parliament is elected every five years. 

Apart from 100,000 Tibetans in India, there are another 50,000 in other countries. All of them can elect members of the parliament and participate in activities of the CTA.

Roberta Campani: What can this impetus achieve given the current situation in China?

Tenzin Tsundue: China looks at Tibetan culture and religion as the biggest obstacle to assimilation. The Chinese want to homogenize Tibet and reduce it into Beijing’s backyard. They see that Tibetans are united over their cause. They are also united with Tibetans in exile.

Tibetan culture is very different from Chinese culture. China believes in bombing mountains, making money out of Tibetan minerals and resources, and damming rivers. In contrast, Tibetans believe that there are gods and goddesses in the mountains, and they are sacred for our living. Our environment is not to serve us. We are part of the environment. Philosophically, we look at land and resources very differently from the Chinese. They also look at people as resources to make them do cheap labor and make money for the capitalists. That is not how we look at life. Tibetan nomads and farmers are “rehabilitated” in reservations, kind of artificial villages so they lose touch and connection with their own land.

Tibet lies north of the Himalayas. It is a large high-altitude plateau inhabited largely by Buddhists who brave bitter winters and lead largely simple lives. Known as the roof of the world, historians speak of a geographical Tibet and a political Tibet. There is also a cultural Tibet associated with meditation, spirituality, esoteric practices, mystique and, in our Hollywoodish times, personified by the beatific Dalai Lama.

In May 1951, the Dalai Lama’s envoys were forced to sign a Seventeen Point Agreement with the Chinese. For the first time, an agreement formally recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. This agreement, though, was signed to avoid a brutal military invasion by the Chinese. Beijing has always claimed Tibet to be an autonomous region belonging to the Chinese nation.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims that it has brought progress to benighted and feudal Tibet. The CCP says that it has bettered the lives of ordinary Tibetans by bringing modern technology and economic growth. The question arises whether this progress was worth it given the decimation of Tibetan culture and the destruction of Tibet’s once pristine environment.

Roberta Campani: Can you give us some background about what brought the situation to this point?

Tenzin Tsundue: Tibet had been a free and independent country right from the beginning until China’s invasion in 1951. What is called the western romanticization of Shangri-La is Tibet — 2.5 million square kilometers of land, geographically the biggest and highest plateau in the world. Tibetans have lived in isolation, untouched by western influences  — they have hardly had any relationship with many other countries. Of course, Tibet had relationships with Mongolia in the north, China in the east, India to the south and by extension with other South Asian countries, like Nepal, Burma, Bhutan and Pakistan. And that’s how Tibet lived as an independent country for all these thousands of years. 

And this isolation has also created this very unique language, culture, and identity. In the last 2,000 years, we have received Buddhism from India. It wasn’t Tibetan, it came from India and today, we are keeping that and Buddhism has become the primary identity for Tibetan people. And that’s how we have lived as a free and independent country and that is still existing today.

The Tibetans inside Tibet that are fighting the Chinese attempt to 1. homogenize, and 2. to use Tibet as a colony, which the Chinese mine and make money off. The reason why Tibetans have not been co-opted by Chinese mining and industrialization is because Tibetans have a very different idea of natural resources and the environment and that is a part of Tibetan identity. We look at nature as a larger universe where human beings are part of. We are servants to nature.

This identity comes from a much larger picture of the Tibetan civilization. That civilization, what we are getting to see, is something many countries have lost. We have not. Our Tibetans in Tibet still believe that the country is more important than the people. We are part of the environment. So the continuity of tradition that we are seeing resists the damming of rivers, mining for resources and clear felling of trees in order to make money through all the cheap made in China products.

China is mining and taking all of these natural resources —  lithium, copper, and gold — to make cheap products for the world. See, how China looks at natural resources is very different to Tibet. The China that is emerging today is not even the China of Deng Xiaoping or of Mao Zedong. China has completed a cultural revolution in so many different phases. So many times, China has completely changed. Tibet may have modernized in different ways, but as a civilization, we are continuous.

China-India Clash Wakes Up Tibet’s Ghost of Independence

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Roberta Campani: It seems that this view makes even more sense now that we have climate issues: how could your experience be made useful for the world in general?

Tenzin Tsundue: I don’t want to be condescending by saying we have the best ideas for the world to copy. We will continue our religion, our culture, we have our very unique civilizational beliefs, and if the world, if the international community see that this is of value, they will anyhow take it. 

Roberta Campani: Do you think there is something positive in the “common prosperity” doctrine that China has brought forward these past few years? In particular, if we consider that inequalities and the wider income gap are creating discontent in most of the traditionally democratic countries. 

Tenzin Tsundue: You and I know it very well, it’s all optics. It’s what political parties create to fulfill their own self-interest, like Trump tried to create something for America while pursuing his own interest and Biden is now trying to do that today. The same goes for the propaganda war between Zelensky and Putin. All these optics are for consumption and you cannot just blindly consume that. When China says that it is creating a more equal society by getting rid of the gap between the rich and the poor, we understand it very well. These are political agendas and not social services. 

And as I said earlier, homogenization means that China already has what it calls the Chinese identity and Beijing is trying to impose that on the rest of the people. Homogenization does not mean there is no culture. There is a culture but it’s the majority culture that they are trying to impose on the minorities or the people that are living under China’s occupation. That is homogenization and this is the biggest threat that is happening in Eastern Turkestan, southern Mongolia, and in Manchuria. And the same thing is happening in Hong Kong.

And there is a threat that China may physically, and militarily invade Taiwan in the future. So this homogenization is the main factor why Hong Kong didn’t want to become completely Chinese because the Hong Kong people have their own identity, a social and a cultural tradition there. And they say “we are not like the Chinese in mainland China.” So you see, the Hong Kong people resist because they don’t want to homogenize. They don’t want to be turned into a Chinese backyard.

Of course, physically, Hong Kong is a part of the People’s Republic of China. Still, they have lived separately for almost one or two hundred years. They have their ideas, identity, ways of living, and culture. It’s much more vibrant and democratic there. Now, they are being homogenized. And the international community did not care much about losing Hong Kong.

Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong are not legally recognized as sovereign states. Therefore, other states and the so-called international community cannot take a clear position on them. However, these three geographical and political entities are increasingly in the news.

According to Professor , “Tibet has been an international issue since the 1950s but no serious attempt has been made to address this problem on the main pretext that the status of Tibet was not clear. The lack of clarity on the status of Tibet is not just because of manipulation by the Chinese. The major contributing factor, in fact, was Tibet’s own failure to move along with the tide of the change that was sweeping the world in the 20^th ł¦±đ˛ÔłŮłÜ°ů˛â.”

As per , lawyer and professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton:  “From a legal standpoint, Tibet has to this day not lost its statehood. It is an independent state under illegal occupation.”  

Roberta Campani: What are your thoughts about how the situation could unfold for Tibet? 

Tenzin Tsundue: Today there are many possibilities. I think that the 63 years of exile experience have given us enough sense of resilience and understanding of the world’s political scenario and our own existence. The early shock we got after coming out of Tibet to the outside world where there were already so many scientific advances. For example, when my parents came to India, they were unable to understand what is a bus, what is a car and what is a train. From there we have come to a situation where the third generation is working in IT companies in India. 

So you see this fast-forward advance and experience has given us the understanding that ultimately our freedom struggle is something we have to do ourselves. And we have created enough cultural resistance and even resilience that even if no one helps us today we are still able to maintain our resistance and we’ll come to a point when China collapses we will go back to our country and we will re-establish a free, independent, democratic Tibet. This much confidence is what we have now.

Today, the Tibetan issue is not isolated. More than ever, the issue of the Dalai Lama, who is the reincarnation (of his predecessor), is now more useful to the United States, to the European countries and to India because China has now evolved from a communist country to an industrial nation and a superpower. China is today a threat to the western countries, India, and many other countries that need to tackle China. Now, we have to work with these other countries that might find the issues of Tibet useful to their causes.

Roberta Campani: How could this happen?

Tenzin Tsundue: Look, when we were protesting in 2008, we were saying that China is killing Tibetans and that there is a genocide happening in Tibet, no one cared. Everyone went to participate in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

This year too, in 2022, when the Winter Olympics are happening, suddenly the United States realizes that there are human rights issues with China. That does not mean that they did not know about human rights violations in Tibet and East Turkestan in 2008. This year, 15 countries boycotted — a diplomatic boycott —  these countries are now finding these issues useful for them against China.

This is the understanding we are now getting as Tibetan refugees. Earlier, Tibetans were nothing —  oh, these are just nice, good, goodie people — and the Dalai Lama is non-violent. Now they find the issue of Tibet politically useful. So, how do we have to position ourselves with countries that want to deal with China differently? Are we able to do it? Perhaps, we can even work with China’s pro-democracy activists who would want to see their country as a democracy.

Tibet: A Nonviolent History of War

READ MORE

Roberta Campani: Are you in touch with people in China who want democracy? 

Tenzin Tsundue: Of course, we are in touch with them but they were themselves persecuted in China and they are now living in foreign countries. 

Roberta Campani: How could this experience that has given you and the Tibetan communities skills and consciousness be helpful? How can you use that experience to raise awareness about other refugees, as it’s a problem all over the world?

Tenzin Tsundue: It is not that the West doesn’t know. It is pretending not to know because its interests up until today have been more into trading with China and not with promoting human rights. We are very well aware of this. As much as we would like to work with western countries on human rights and democracy in China and also freedom for Tibet, we are also aware that the West may be using Tibet today. We would like to work with western countries for democracy in China and freedom in Tibet. 

Roberta Campani: Do you know there is a fascination with Tibetan culture that is actually not so well known?

Tenzin Tsundue: I am not surprised. The consumerism that has taken over the world has, in a way, homogenized entire production units that have centered on easy production. This has come about with big international corporate companies as producers and the rest of the people are just consumers. This model is a danger to the environment and also to human civilization. (That is why there may be a fascination for Tibetan culture.)

Roberta Campani: What is the mission or role that you have chosen? 

Tenzin Tsundue: I am a small activist based here in India. The role I have assigned to myself is that of a writer, I look at certain changing aspects in the Tibetan community, culturally and emotionally, and I write about these aspects. Also, as an activist, an important part of my role is to keep the freedom struggle going, maintaining the restlessness in the movement. And also come up with new ideas on how to deal with the changing political situation in the world and how to guard against certain threats, and, at the same time, look at opportunities that might appear.

So, mine is a very small role. Still, I see it in the larger picture. There is the Tibetan government in exile, there is His Holiness the Dalai Lama, there are members of parliament, there are many other leaders, and as an activist and as a writer, I also play my small role. But in the larger picture, I see that the Tibetan freedom movement up until now has been inspiring both for the international community and us because we have maintained nonviolence as the main thrust of our movement led by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. 

This has inspired many individuals, people in the West, in India and in many other places. They say that this is one peaceful community and a movement that they would like to support, and of course, we have a huge number of sympathizers and supporters, which is how we have maintained the health of the movement. We are hopeful that we will be able to carry on in this way, and when the opportune moment comes about, we can recreate Tibet as a free and independent state and a democracy. 

Han and Hindu Nationalism Come Face to Face

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Roberta Campani: How could this happen? 

Tenzin Tsundue: There are three important factors. 

First and the most important are the Tibetan people themselves. As long as we don’t give up, there is always a chance for us to gain freedom. And if we do give up, no matter even if the entire world comes together to support us, there is no cause to support! 

So finally, the ultimate goal, the ultimate authority over the Tibetan freedom movement, is the Tibetan people. This is the most important fact. 

The second factor is China, because it is China who, without any provocation, entered Tibet, plundered Tibet, captured Tibet and, for the past 70 years, China has been maintaining a military occupation of Tibet. There should be a new kind of understanding within China. The Chinese must completely change the way they run their government and reform their entire structure. They are no longer able to maintain the occupation of Tibet.

China’s superpower status comes from how western countries use the country as an industrial factory floor to make cheap “Made in China” products and ship them to the West. That is how the West created China and made it into a monster. Until 1971, China was not even a member of the United Nations. And American intervention replaced Taiwan with China in the UN. That is how China became a permanent Security Council member at the UN and a superpower. Now, China is trying to throw out the United States from the United Nations. 

(So, China will not continue to be the workshop of the world and occupy Tibet forever.)

The third factor is how China is going to maintain its relationships with western countries, and, with that, what are the changes that are about to come about. We have seen in the past two years during the pandemic how the West has started to behave very differently towards China. Issues of human rights are coming out for the first time and the western relationship with China is changing. And I think this relationship will undergo dramatic changes in the next five years. All these things will throw up lots of opportunities for us.

Roberta Campani: Thank you! Are you still hopeful? 

Tenzin Tsundue: I have to be! There is no option. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Austin’s remarks were problematic on several fronts. For one, they legitimized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification of the invasion of Ukraine as a defense against US-led efforts to box Russia in and potentially undermine his regime.

“US policy toward Russia continues to be plagued by lack of rhetorical discipline. First calling for regime change, now the goal of weakening Russia. This only increases Putin’s case for escalating & shifts focus away from Russian actions in Ukraine & toward Russia-US/NATO showdown”, Richard Haas, the president of the New York-based Council of Foreign Relations and a former senior State Department official. Haas was referring to US President Joe Biden’s last month, which he subsequently walked back, that Putin “cannot remain in power.”

US policy toward Russia continues to be plagued by lack of rhetorical discipline. First calling for regime change, now goal of weakening Russia. This only increases Putin’s case for escalating & shifts focus away from Russian actions in Ukraine & toward Russia-US/NATO showdown.

— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass)

Leaving aside the fact that Austin’s remark was inopportune, it also suggested a lack of vision of what it will take to ensure that Putin does not repeat his Ukraine operation elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. That is an endeavor that would involve looking beyond Ukraine to foster closer ties with former Soviet republics that do not immediately border Ukraine.

A new strategic focus: Kazakhstan

One place to look is Kazakhstan, a potential future target if Russia still has the wherewithal after what has become a draining slug in Ukraine. Mr. Putin has long set Kazakhstan up as a potential future target. He has repeatedly used language when it comes to Kazakhstan that is similar to his rhetoric on the artificial character of the Ukrainian state.

Referring to his notion of a Russian world whose boundaries are defined by the presence of Russian speakers and adherents to Russian culture rather than its internationally recognised borders, Mr. Putin asserted last December that “Kazakhstan is a country in the full sense of the word.”

Mr. Putin first sent a chill down Kazakh spines eight years ago when a student asked him nine months after the annexation of Crimea whether Kazakhstan, with a 6,800 kilometer-long border with Russia, the world’s second-longest frontier, risked a fate similar to that of Ukraine.

In response, Mr. Putin noted that then-president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s Soviet-era Communist party boss, had “performed a unique feat: he has created a state on a territory where there has never been a state. The Kazakhs never had a of their own, and he created it.”

To be sure, Russian troops invited in January by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to help put down anti-government protests were quick to from the Central Asian nation once calm had been restored.

Recognizing the opportunity

Mr. Putin’s remarks, coupled with distrust of China fuelled by the of Turkic Muslims, including ethnic Kazakhs, in the north-western province of Xinjiang, and the of Russia’s Black Sea Novorossiysk oil terminal, Kazakhstan’s main Caspian oil export route, have created an opportunity for the United States.

Last month, Kazakhstan in a United Nations General Assembly vote that condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Since then, its sovereign wealth fund announced that it would no longer do business in rubles in with US and European sanctions against Russia. This week, Kazakhstan stopped of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19.

In an apparent effort to stir the pot, Russian media accused Kazakhstan of Russian nationals from expressing support for Mr. Putin’s invasion and firing Kazakhs who supported the Russian president’s actions from their jobs. At the same time, opponents of the war were allowed to stage demonstrations.

“As Washington policymakers look for ways to counter Russian influence and complicate Mr. Putin’s life, helping Kazakhstan its dependence on Moscow-controlled pipelines, reform its economy, and coordinate with neighboring Central Asian states to limit the influence of both China and Russia might be a good place to start,” said Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead.

Last month, Mr. Tokayev, the Kazakh president, promised sweeping reforms in response to the January protests.

A high-level Kazakh delegation Washington this week to discuss closer cooperation and ways to mitigate the impact on Kazakhstan of potentially crippling sanctions against Russia.

Supporting Kazakhstan would involve a renewed US engagement in Central Asia, a key region that constitutes Russia’s as well as China’s backyard. The United States is perceived to have abandoned the region with its withdrawal from Afghanistan last August.

The regional implications

It would also mean enlarging the figurative battlefield to include not only military and financial support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia but also the strengthening of political and economic ties with former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are, alongside Kazakhstan, members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which Mr. Putin, referring to Kazakhstan, described as a bulwark that “helps them within the so-called ‘greater Russian world,’ which is part of world civilization.”

The invasion of Ukraine has given Uzbekistan second thoughts. Uzbekistan failed to vote on the UN resolution, but Uzbek officials have since condemned the war and expressed support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

As a result, Uzbekistan appears to have reversed its ambition to join the EEU and forge closer ties to the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), the region’s Russian-led military alliance.

“The way Central Asia thinks about Russia has changed. While before, Russia was seen as a source of stability, it now seems that its presence in a very sensitive security dimension has become a weakness for regional stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” said Carnegie Endowment Central Asia scholar Temur Umarov.

“I think that Central Asian governments will seek to the influence of Russia, which will be difficult to do, but they have no choice since it has become an unpredictable power.” Mr. Umarov predicted.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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When a Muslim jihadist is framed as a terrorist while his white blue-eyed Christian counterpart is celebrated as a liberating hero; when Western countries can invade Iraq without being held accountable while their Russian rival is internationally demonized for similar actions; when an exclusive club can own and trade weapons of mass destruction while others are deemed too irresponsible to manage a nuclear program, it should be clearthat the very notion of morality is broken. It is the end not of history, but of the romanticized anthropocentric Renaissance ideals. The argument here is not about whether occupying a sovereign country like Ukraine is right or wrong – that is not even up for debate – but rather about who gets to shape the truth.

The Truth Has Been Canceled

The Russian invasion of Ukraine shocked people’s minds and recalled memories of horror scenes from the 20th century’s two world wars. Instead of running to rescue their European peers, NATO countries preferred to opt for double standards and hypocrisy, imposing a regime in which Russian gas, oil, coal, and wheat are welcomed to heat and fuel Europe, and the Moscow population is deprived of essential banking services, western brands, and international mobility. It is as if the West is only interested in marketing itself as sympathetic to Ukrainian civilians by depriving the “evil” Russians of their dose of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Chanel rather than stepping in with diehard military field action.

Another key response has been to silence like Russia Today and Sputnik News across NATO countries and their allies. Any information coming from Volga country has either been labeled as misleading propaganda or completely banned from broadcasting and suppressed from social media platforms. During warfare, both camps routinely use misinformation as an aggressive weapon. Nevertheless, what is occurring during this crisis is a never-before seen level of intellectual guardianship over the populace. As if the average Joe is judged too obtuse to look at the two sides and form his own opinion. To add insult to injury, even declared last week that it would permit one-way hate speech toward Russian soldiers on Facebook and Instagram.

In our post-truth world, ostracism and became a weapon in the hands of those who control the flow of information through media and social media platforms. They choose who gets a voice and space for expression and who gets silenced and banished from the public sphere. Where some see accountability and the protection of oppressed and minority rights, others see censorship and ideological despotism. The tyranny of a single narrative, even when predominately righteous and morally motivated, remains inherently unethical and historically calamitous.

As an Arab, I can only feel baffled by a West religiously preaching freedom of speech and giving the Middle East long lessons and even assessing scores on access to information and state-inflicted censorship. As a journalist, who has been trained in balance, impartiality, and fact-checking, I am deeply disturbed when reputable media institutions intentionally choose to obscure certain items in the news and promote others. Every media or social media organization has the right to pick its own editorial line and guiding principles. Then again, shouldn’t we all abide by a common Voltairean deontological dictum stipulating that “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it?”

The Honorable White Mercenary 

The end of ethics is a phenomenon that can be sensed in all aspects of how the West deals with global conflicts and interests, like a corrupt cop who only condemns practices that clash with his agenda. For example, why didn’t anyoneimpose sanctions on Saudi Arabia over bombing Yemen? Gucci, Nike, and Mercedes did not withdraw from that Gulf market. No one publicly pressured them to close shop. Similarly, why did the West demonize Iran and Venezuela for years and is now suddenly interested in compromising with them to respond to potential petroleum shortages? The immoral league that rules the world is no longer even trying to hide its dubious duplicity.

The epitome of these immoral actions is visible in   the Western powers shameless incitement of their civilian citizens to with the Ukrainian foreign legion, comprising over twenty thousand combatants. Countries like Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Canada openly encouraged their compatriots to enlist in the holy neo-crusades against the new tsar of Russia. Now, imagine if an Arab country was at war and the League of Arab States invited fighters to resist the enemy. Would they be called saviors or terrorists? Would Western political and media discourses celebrate them as heroes or condemn them as threatening mercenaries? The recent conflict has revealed that the rules of the game and its semantics apply differently depending on skin color, religion, race, and country of origin.

Many Arabs have not been very supportive of NATO’s actions in Ukraine, not because they admire the megalomaniac blood-thirsty ruler of Russia, but because they stood in the first row of the altar of history and saw ethics being slaughtered at the gates of their cities. They do not like Putin. They like the idea of Putin challenging western hegemony. Sorry Fukuyama, history is alive and thriving. It is even organically manufacturing Chinese, Russian, and violent extremism anti-theses to counter the sinister unipolar narrative dominated by the United States and its allies. What has ultimately perished in the lot is our collective ability to abide by the fundamental deontological ethics of humanity: impartiality, neutrality, unity, and universality.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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To: H.E. AntĂłnio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General

CC:H.E. Ambassador Barbara Woodward, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the UN and President of United Nations Security Council

H.E. Ambassador Federico Villegas, Permanent Representative of Argentina and President of United Nations Human Rights Council

Excellencies,

We are writing this letter to express our grave concern about the escalation of violence targeting the Hazara Shia communities in Afghanistan. We are writing to demand your immediate action to address these targeted attacks, which can amount to crime against humanity, and when taken together, constitute an act of genocide. We believe the persistent and deliberate campaign of violence against the Shia Hazara community in Afghanistan requires an urgent and coordinated response by the United Nations and the international community.

On April 19, 2022, a high school and an education center in a Hazara neighborhood in West of Kabul, Afghanistan were bombed, killing and maiming scores of school children. The next day, an attack on a Shia Hazara mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif was bombed, killing thirty one  and injuring eighty seven worshipers attending prayers during the holy month of Ramadan. Local reports, however, indicate a much higher level of casualties. Another mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif was also attacked on the same day and in the same manner, killing and injuring dozens. On April 28, two explosions targeting civilian mini-buses in Mazar-i-Sharif killed at least eleven and wounded at least eighteen Hazaras. On the same day, five Hazara miners traveling in a civilian passenger car were stopped and shot dead in Samangan province.

While terrorist attacks such as the last week’s horrific attacks on Sufi Mosques in Kunduz and Kabul provinces continue to affect civilians throughout Afghanistan, the attacks on Hazaras represent a pattern in recent years that target Hazara-Shia mosques, schools, education centers, public gatherings, sports clubs, public transports, and even maternity hospitals. In the first six months of 2021 UNAMA recorded 20 deliberate attacks against the Hazara ethnic group, resulting in around 500 civilian casualties. The Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), an affiliate group of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), claimed responsibility for most attacks, including recent incidents in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, although perpetrators have not claimed responsibility for some attacks.

Residents, observers of Afghanistan, and international human rights groups have raised constant concern about such a growing trend of targeted violence against Hazaras. In October 2021, after a series of attacks on Shia Hazara mosques in Kunduz and Kandahar, that killed and wounded hundreds, Human Rights Watch characterized the attacks as “designed to spread terror and inflict maximum suffering, particularly on Afghanistan’s Hazara community.” The statement highlighted that “[t]he numerous attacks targeting Hazaras amount to crimes against humanity, and those responsible should be brought to justice.” 

In May 2021, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) called on the Afghan government and the international community to consider the Hazaras as a “population at risk of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or genocide”. In July 2021, Genocide Watch issued an emergency warning for Afghanistan, stating, “The Hazara religious minority is a portent of an approaching genocide.” In August 2021, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum issued a similar statement underlining the risk of genocide against Hazaras in Afghanistan.

Hazaras have a long history of persecution in Afghanistan at the hands of state and non-state actors such as the Taliban and other extremist groups. This history and recent events align with the warning factors of mass atrocity crimes that the United Nations identified in the 2014 Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes.

The return of the Taliban to power has made the Hazaras more vulnerable and subject to increased violence. On August 19, 2021, Amnesty International released a report documenting the Taliban’s targeted attacks against Hazaras and called the group responsible for the “brutal massacre of Hazara men” in Ghazni and Daykundi provinces. Since coming to power in August 2021, the Taliban forcibly removed hundreds of Hazara families from their homes and villages in Helmand, Uruzgan, Daykundi, and Balkh provinces. This is compounded by the Taliban history of brutality against the community, including massacring thousands of Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif (1998), Bamyan (2001), and Zabul (between 1996 and 2001).

In January 2022, following its report on Afghanistan, the UK Parliament’s House of Lords Select Committee on International Relations and Defence established a bi-cameral and cross-party inquiry team on the situation of Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The report stated that “The Hazaras have a long history of suffering state persecution on both ethnic and sectarian grounds.”

Following these most recent attacks targeting Hazaras in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, human rights groups and officials in the international community, including The UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett, expressed concerns about these “targeted attacks on  Hazaras”, and called for “immediate investigation and accountability” to “end such human rights violations.” Similar statements of condemnation and calls for action have been made by special representatives and Ministers of Foreign Affairs in the EU, Sweden, Norway, and Canada. Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions to the UN and in many countries in Europe, North America, and South Asia also expressed concerns and demanded immediate international attention to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructures in Afghanistan, particularly in Hazaras and Shia communities.

However, more must be done to protect the Hazaras in Afghanistan, especially by the United Nations. Thus, we, the undersigned group of intellectuals, academics, human rights, media, and civil society activists from Afghanistan and around the world, urge the United Nations to take immediate actions addressing human rights situation of the Hazaras in Afghanistan, and adopt appropriate measures to protect the community against risks of genocide and crimes against humanity. We urge you to:

• Call a special session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss, as matter of urgency, the situation of the Hazaras and adopt a resolution ensuring that the community will be protected against such heinous targeted attacks;
  
  
• Call for a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to discuss and address the ongoing genocidal attacks on Hazaras, and work to prevent such atrocities and bring the perpetrators to justice;
  
  
• Launch an immediate investigation into the targeted killing of the Hazara and Shias in Afghanistan, and use instruments under the international law to address and put an end to the perpetual killings of Hazaras;
  
  
• Request the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Situation in Afghanistan to collect and publicize substantiated information relating to grave violations of international human rights law, including breaches of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide committed against the Hazaras;
  
  
• Request UNAMA and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Situation in Afghanistan to submit a special report on the situation of Hazaras identifying urgent and practical measures to protect the community against targeted attacks and mass atrocities.

Sincerely,

1. Dr. , Former Chairperson of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
2. , Former Chairperson of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
3. Dr., Ambassador, Afghanistan Mission, Geneva,
4. , Charge d’Affaires, Afghanistan Permanent Mission to the United Nations, New York
5. Dr. Abbas Farasoo, University of Melbourne, Australia
6. Dr. , University of Pennsylvania, USA
7. Dr. , Sheffield University, UK
8. Dr. Dawood Rezai, Legal Scholar, Canada
9. Dr., University of Coimbra, Portugal
10. Dr. , Monash University, Australia
11. Dr. , Texas Christian University, USA
12. Dr. , Carleton University, Canada
13. Dr. Humaira May Rizayee, Hazara rights activist, UK
14. Dr., University College London, UK
15. Dr. , Lecturer & Fellow, Stanford University, USA
16. Dr. , Zayed University, UAE.
17. Dr. , La Trobe University, Australia
18. Dr. , University of Pittsburgh, USA
19. Dr. , American University of Afghanistan/University of Minnesota, USA
20. Dr. , Kanazawa University, Japan
21. Dr. , SOAS University of London, UK
22. Dr. , University of Ottawa, Canada
23. Dr. , Associate Fellow, London School of Economics, UK
24. , Journalist, UK
25. , PhD Candidate, Ryerson University, Canada
26. , Former Diplomat, USA
27. , University Lecturer, Canada
28. , Fellow, New York University, USA
29. , Attorney, USA
30. , Fellow, Yale University, USA
31. , PhD Candidate, Oxford University, UK
32. , PhD Candidate, Fiji National University, Fiji
33. , Chairman of Gilgamesh Foundation, Brussels
34. , Non-resident Fellow, New York University
35. , former diplomat, Canada
36. , Publisher and Founder, Hasht-e-Subh  Daily, Afghanistan
37. , Reagan-Fascell Fellow, National Endowment for Democracy, USA
38. , American University of Afghanistan/The New School, New York
39. Tabish Forugh, Democracy Activist and Contributing Editor at 51łÔąĎ, USA
40. , Human Rights Activist, Canada
41. , Publisher and Founder, Daily Etilaat-e- Roz, Afghanistan
42. , Former Diplomat of Afghanistan to the UN, USA.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Appeal to the UN to Protect Hazaras in Afghanistan appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

International Law

A first lesson is that failure to firmly stand up to violations of international law as they occur convinces trespassers that they can get away with them. It emboldens violators to commit ever more flagrant infringements. Kicking the can down the road by failing to immediately and firmly respond to violations amounts to allowing an open wound to fester. The longer the wound festers, the more difficult, costly and risky it is to cure.

The last 14 years of Putin’s rule are a case in point. Putin began the recreation of his Russian world in 2008 when he recognized the two Georgian breakaway republics of Abkhazia and North Ossetia. The recognition constituted the first step in Putin’s defining of Russia’s borders in civilizational rather than international legal terms.

Ukraine’s Tug of War and the Implications for Europe

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Putin has made no bones about the fact that he sees territories populated by Russian speakers and adherents of Russian culture as the determinants of Russia’s borders, not international law. Ever since 2008, he has demonstrated his willingness to enforce his definition of Russia’s border with military might.

Back then, the international community effectively looked the other way. The failure to stand up to Putin emboldened him six years later to annex Crimea, which is legally part of Ukraine, and foster insurgencies in the Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The United States and Europe responded by slapping Putin’s wrists. The sanctions imposed at the time did little to stop the Russian leader from increasing his war chest or making the cost of continued pursuit of his strongman tactics too costly and risky.

This month’s Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from the international community’s failure to draw a line in the sand back in 2008 or at the latest in 2014. “The Russian aggression is the result of years of appeasement of Russia by many countries,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Human Rights Abuse

Russia is the most dramatic, most recent example of the cost of not responding firmly and unequivocally to infringements of international law as they occur. Other examples are numerous. They include the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and the subsequent military coup in Myanmar, the 2013 toppling of ·ˇ˛µ˛â±čłŮ’s first and only democratically elected president in a takeover by the armed forces, the meek response to the brutal repression of Uyghur Muslims in China, the increasingly blatant discrimination and disenfranchisement of Muslims in India, and missed opportunities to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to name a few.

All of these examples, like Ukraine, contain lessons the international community asserted that it had learned from World War II. They all contain a lesson that should have been learned long before Ukraine but is undeniably evident in the Eastern European crisis: Abetting violations of human rights encourages and emboldens violations of sovereign, national, ethnic, religious, cultural and gender rights.

Back in 1989, Genocide Watch Director Greg Stanton then-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana that “if you don’t do something to prevent genocide in your country, there is going to be a genocide within five years.” Five years later, there was genocide in Rwanda. It is a word of warning that echoes in predictions by Indian journalist Rana Ayyub that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies could lead to large-scale violence against the country’s 200-million Muslims, the world’s largest Muslim minority.

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It is a warning that reverberates in the contrast between the reception and welcome that European states are justifiably according to refugees from Ukraine compared to the rejection of earlier waves of refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. A Moroccan journalist posted a on Twitter of students from the Arab world and Africa watching buses on the Ukrainian-Polish border pick up Ukrainians every 15 minutes but transporting people from countries beyond Europe only every four hours. The journalist, Anas Daif, reported some students have been stranded for four days on the border trying to escape the war.

Freedom of Expression

In a similar vein, prominent BBC journalist Lyse Doucet, reporting from Kyiv, highlighted the fact that humans in distress are humans in distress irrespective of their ethnicity or religion. In a video , she explained that her reporting on the current crisis in Ukraine prevented her from personally accepting in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Irbil the 2022 Shifa Gardi Award named after a journalist killed in 2017 in Iraq by a roadside bomb.

“If anyone knows about the pain and hardship of living with war, it’s the people of Iraq, of Kurdistan. And if anyone knows what it’s like to live in a war that never seems to end, of living with powerful neighbors, and the importance of independent journalism, it is the Kurdish people,” Doucet said.

Doucet’s message brought it all together: the linkages between failing to stand up early and firmly to flagrant violations of international law, abuse of human rights and suppression of freedom of expression. Kurds formed the bulk of thousands of desperate refugees in Belarus who were trying to cross the border into Poland just four months ago. In contrast to Ukrainians being welcomed with blankets, cots, clothing and hot meals, the Kurds were brutally beaten back as they sought to storm the borders.

Iraq, Syria and Turkey may have been different places if Kurdish national and/or cultural rights, which Kurds have asserted for more than a century, had been honored. Instead, the international community abetted repressive policies of both autocratic and democratic governments. Similarly, Ukraine would have been a different place if the international community had stood up to Putin from day one.

War in Europe Is Nothing New

It would also be a different place if Europeans had less of a sense of superiority. Many have expressed shock that “this could happen in 21^st-century Europe.” Europeans would be better served to recognize that their continent is as prone to conflict as are other parts of the world.

Ukraine is not the first such incident in Europe. It was preceded by the brutal conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia and the wars of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s that, three decades later, could erupt again. That realization may be seeping in. â€śWar is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone,”  Telegraph journalist Peter Hannan.

It’s never too late to learn lessons. The world is finally standing up to Vladimir Putin. Yet there is little indication that the broader lessons Ukraine offers are finally being learned.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Learning Lessons in Ukraine and Beyond appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Over the past six months, Afghan women have continued to protest against the Taliban policies, provoking a brutal response. One of the detainees  AFINT: “Unfortunately, there is sexual harassment by the Taliban. The Taliban think that a woman who protests for her rights or has worked before they came to power is a prostitute. So, they consider these women as sex slaves.” While it may be impossible to change the Taliban’s mindset, international and regional pressure is key to helping Afghan women and holding the current regime accountable. 

The Taliban Use Violence Against Women as a Bargaining Chip

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To deal with the international pressures, the Taliban turned the women’s rights issues into a bargaining chip against the international community to gain recognition and force engagement. The US, in particular, consistently calls on the Taliban to respect women’s rights. But does the US have enough leverage over the Taliban to force them to revise their treatment of women?

Power Is Everything 

Since the overthrow of the Afghan government last August, the US remained engaged with the Taliban, although Washington does not recognize the regime as legitimate. Although the Taliban views the US as the loser in this conflict, many within the group’s leadership believe that they have to interact with Washington to gain recognition. 

The Taliban’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai  in December: “If the US embassy reopens in Kabul, all European countries will be here in half an hour. We are working hard in this regard, and since I have been a member of the negotiating team with them (the Americans), I am sure from their morals and behavior that, God willing, they will be back soon.” 

From the Taliban’s perspective, power is everything. As far as they can control the country, the US has to respect them and will have to recognize them. This assumption leads the group to not compromise on women’s rights. Instead of revising their policies, they detained women activists and then released some of them following pressure to do so during the  in January.

The US has profound concerns about the Taliban’s relations with other terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan, but human rights, women’s rights and an inclusive government are all part of the US agenda in its interaction with the country’s new leadership. In his talk at the United States Institute of Peace, Thomas West, the US special representative for Afghanistan,  these values as crucial for the US-Taliban relationship. 

However, it is imperative to keep in mind that any compromise from the international community on women’s rights that suggests to the Taliban that their harsh policies may be accommodated will only exacerbate the situation for women in Afghanistan. 

International Commitment

For more than 20 years, the US and international community repeated their strong commitment to  in Afghanistan, creating the expectation that it should continue doing so after the Taliban takeover. However, many Afghan women saw the US agreement with the Taliban as a .

International pressure is the critical factor for holding the Taliban accountable. When the women activists disappeared without explanation, the Taliban denied its involvement for months. The United Nations and US diplomats repeatedly called on the Taliban to find the missing women.

In the end, the Taliban released several well-known women activists despite denying involvement in detaining them. The group also published videos of  by the activists. Totalitarian regimes use this tactic against human rights activities for propaganda and to mislead the public; exposing the Taliban’s double game will not be easy and will require international commitment and cooperation. 

There are several measures that can be helpful in holding the Taliban accountable, and the US can play a central role. First, the diplomatic contacts with the Taliban should not be interpreted as hope for recognition; rather, diplomacy should be used only for contact and assessing responsibilities.

Second, international consensus on women’s rights and supporting the idea of an inclusive and legitimate government in Afghanistan is key. This is significant for women’s rights and negotiation for building a broad-based government to reflect Afghan society, which is instrumental for avoiding another round of conflict. 

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Third, increasing the activities of international organizations in Afghanistan to support women and monitor their situation under the Taliban is necessary. Currently, there is no access to different corners of the country where crimes against women may be committed. Fourth, financial support to organizations championing women’s education and activities will be vital for women’s voices and Afghan social society to resist the Taliban’s fascist approach.

The US can exert pressure on behalf of Afghan women to demand that their rights to work and education are honored. Any degree of leniency toward the Taliban will make the situation worse for women. If the US shows a faltering resolve or sends a misleading message, the international consensus on human rights will disappear.  

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Does the US Have Leverage to Advocate for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan?Ěý appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The Taliban Use Violence Against Women as a Bargaining Chip

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The theme for the 2022 International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, which took place on February 6, was accelerating investment to end FGM. With the COVID-19 pandemic seriously impacting efforts to eliminate this harmful practice, it is crucial for governments, international actors and donors to scale up investments in global efforts. 

What Is FGM?

FGM involves the partial or complete removal of external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. It is not recommended in any religious texts, has no health benefits and can cause serious lifelong physical and psychological harm. 

With an increase in investment to end this harmful practice, it is important to ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to the Middle East and Asia, which have not been traditionally prioritized, partly due to the absence of official data on the practice. The impact of low investment is felt by women’s rights activists, whose work in both regions is woefully underfunded and lacks sufficient international support.

Globally, an 200 million women and girls have experienced some form of FGM, which is a human rights violation and form of violence against women and girls. However, this data is based only on 31 countries from which national prevalence data is available and does not reflect the true scale of the problem. This has been documented in various reports, including by the US End FGM/C Network, the End FGM European Network and Equality Now. This report found that FGM occurs in more countries around the world than widely acknowledged and that the number of women and girls who are affected is being woefully underestimated.

FGM in Iran

In Iran, the lack of sufficient resources and international assistance has impacted the work of organizations such as . This organization, in particular, does not have big statistical studies to provide reliable data on the scale and nature of FGM in Iran. It also faces challenges due to little support and limited media coverage.

FGM has been documented in Iran for almost a century. In 1928, a travel by pediatrician Dr. Rastegar, writing about Lorestan, a province in Western Iran, was published in the magazine Nahid:

“Another important point that is common among women living in tents is the circumcision of girls, which must be done from the age of five to nine; for until a girl is circumcised, she is not a Muslim and no one will take bread from her. As it was heard from the Lors, the method of circumcising girls is that they put the girl to sleep and cut the outer part of the clitoris, which is out of the small lips, with a sharp razor. Due to the weather and other environmental qualities, the genitals of the nomadic girls are different from urban girls. As is understood, this practice is also common among the Arabs and the tribes of Khuzestan also believe in this practice. To stop the bleeding, the girl has to sit in the river up to her waist, and if she bleeds again, she has to move in the water for a while.”

Despite such early reports, the Iranian press has been reluctant to report on FGM. Homa Sarshar, a pre-revolutionary journalist, said in an that she noticed the spread of FGM 50 years ago during a trip to southern Iran. In a report, she tried to make the news public. However, she says, the media outlet’s editor did not publish her piece as he had been instructed by authorities that the government was aware of the situation and was deciding what to do about it.

Although FGM continues to be practiced in western and southern Iran, the lack of news coverage has been a challenge. For over a decade, activists were unable to convince Iranian news outlets to report on FGM, but some journalists have now begun to cover the issue. Reporting on the issue is key as gender-sensitive media coverage has an important role to play in increasing public understanding about human rights violations, holding duty bearers to account and instigating positive change.

Small-scale in Iran have found FGM prevalence ranging from 16% to as high as 83% in some communities, and there are still many unknown places in the country where FGM may be happening.

Stopping FGM

At one point, the government, at the suggestion of Stop FGM Iran, attempted to conduct a pilot project. The project was launched and provided unprecedented insight, but government cooperation was abruptly paused and, despite a follow-up, never resumed.

Efforts to draft a specific law against FGM in Iran continue. Although some legal provisions refer to the issue of amputation of genitals and allocation of blood money, they are incomplete and should be reconsidered to effectively address the issue. A law explicitly banning FGM in Iran would make it clear to the public that FGM is a human rights violation and provide a deterrent effect to would-be offenders. It would also grant specific legal recourse to survivors within the criminal justice system.

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Many gynecological centers in Iran advertise under the pretext of genital cosmetic surgery, sometimes even under the name of female circumcision, and exploit the lack of public awareness. No government authority is responsible for raising public awareness against this human rights violation, and with very low costs, women are encouraged to have cosmetic surgery on their genitals.

A recent on attitudes toward FGM in southern Iran found the continued prevalence of misconceptions about FGM amongst women in the region, including that FGM prevents infertility, reduces the chances of divorce, protects girls from rape and ensures that women deliver more sons.

How can we stand against female genital mutilation without government intervention, changing the law and raising awareness? Today, in addition to the above, activists need to receive financial and other assistance from government and international actors so they can work toward reducing FGM prevalence and, ultimately, eliminate it.

*[Rayehe Mozafarian is the founder of Stop FGM Iran. Divya Srinivasan is a legal adviser at Equality Now.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Ending FGM in Iran Needs International Support appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

FO° Live: Women Under the Taliban

WATCH

In response, the Taliban have deployed various oppressive measures. In September, they the Women’s Affairs Ministry with morality police, which enforces the armed group’s on the country. At the same time, while trying to confine women to their homes by forbidding them to work or study, the Taliban are using the threat of violence against women as a bargaining chip against the Western powers.

Violent Tactics

In September last year, the Taliban attacked the media to prevent them from covering the women’s protests in Kabul. Two journalists were . Etilaatroz is one of the leading Afghan newspapers and a critical voice mainly focused on investigative journalism. An attack on the newspaper was a clear signal for everyone covering the protests against the Taliban.

Since the armed group took control of the country, at least 318 media outlets in 33 of 34 provinces and, according to the International Federation of Journalists, 72% of those who are women.

But the Taliban quickly changed their tactics to tackle women’s protests through more intimidating methods, including nighttime house searches to locate those who dared raise their voice. Tamana Zaryabi Paryani, a member of the movement demanding rights to work and education, is just one of the women from their homes in Kabul in the middle of the night; her whereabouts . Some families report being contacted by detainees from Taliban prisons in undisclosed locations.

The Taliban deny capturing, detaining or killing women and other opponents. This tactic aims to mislead public opinion, the media and policymakers in Western countries. The situation may be even more critical in the provinces, beyond the eyes of the media. In September last year, the Taliban a former police officer with the ousted Afghan government in front of her family in Gor province; she was pregnant at the time of her murder.

There is no way to assess the true number of disappeared women across the country. Some of them are known by the media, such Mursal Ayar, Parwana Ibrahimkhel, Tamana Paryani, Zahra Mohammadi and Alia Azizi. Most of them belong to the protest movement against the Taliban’s policies. Azizi worked as a senior female prison official in Herat and went missing when the Taliban took control of the city. Amnesty International the Taliban to investigate the case and release her “immediately and unconditionally” if she is in their custody.

Last week, the UN repeated its and asked the Taliban to release the disappeared women activists and their relatives. The German Embassy, currently operating from Qatar, has called for an into the missing women. It is entirely possible that the Taliban will eventually release some of the captives, claiming that they were rescued from the clutches of the kidnappers, in order to portray themselves as a responsible government.

Gang rape is another tactic that the Taliban deploy against women in detention. The Independent that last September, bodies of eight detainees arrested during a protest in Mazar-e Sharif were discovered. According to reports, the girls were repeatedly gang-raped and tortured by the Taliban. Sexual assault is a many-sided weapon against women in a society based on strict honor codes. Some of those who survived the rapes were by their families.

In January, The Times that the staff in the government-run Mazar-e Sharif Regional Hospital claim that they receive around 15 bodies from Taliban fighters each month — mostly women with gunshot wounds to the head or chest.

Bargaining Chip

Violence has been the Taliban’s primary tool both in war and during negotiations with Western powers. Over the course of two decades of conflict, the Taliban used violence as a means to win recognition as a political force. During their talks with the US and the Afghan government, the Taliban escalated violence to enhance their position at the negotiating table. Now, they are pursuing the same strategy by trading repression for recognition.

Since the Taliban took control of the country, women’s rights are a constant subject of ongoing diplomatic discussions that have so far brought no result. The international community has failed to press the Taliban to form an inclusive government and respect women’s rights.

But the armed group wants the international community to recognize their government. In January, a Taliban delegation was invited to Oslo to talk with Western powers and representatives of Afghan women for the first time. At the meeting, Hoda Khamosh, a civil society activist, the Taliban delegation: “why are the Taliban imprisoning us in Kabul and now sitting here at the negotiating table with us in Oslo? What is the international community doing in the face of all this torture and repression?”

Since then, nothing has changed. The reality is that the Taliban used the talks in Oslo as an opportunity to make an international appearance to advertise their government. They are deploying precepts like women’s rights to force more international engagement. While Norway was for inviting the Taliban and offering them exposure, Switzerland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that it invited the Taliban to talk about “the protection of humanitarian actors and respect for human rights.”

The Taliban is an ideological, zealot religious movement, and years of experience suggest that they are unlikely to revise their position on women’s rights and other fundamental issues, including human rights and political pluralism. Talking about women’s rights in Western capitals is just an opportunity for them to normalize their regime and travel abroad. Human rights violations, particularly violence against women, not only serve the Taliban’s ideological purposes but have turned into a convenient bargaining chip against the international community.

It is critical that Western powers support fundamental human rights in the country without providing the Taliban with opportunities for blackmail, implementig realistic measures to press the group to release activists and to respect women’s rights. First, it is important to maintain or escalate the current sanctions regime against the Taliban leadership. Second, making sure that there is no rush to recognize the Taliban regime mong foreign governments is another key leverage point.

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Third, there is a need to appoint a special rapporteur to monitor the human rights situation and document violations to hold the Taliban accountable. Fourth, it is important to extend and support the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan to help monitor the human rights situation in the country.

Finally, the international community can continue its humanitarian support through UN agencies and other organizations without recognizing the Taliban. Recognition of the group will not only increase human rights abuses but will send the wrong signal to other extremists in the region. All these measures will reduce the Taliban’s ability to use violence as a bargaining chip against the international community.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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I’m boycotting these games in Beijing. Doing so does not come easy for me. As a life-long sports enthusiast, I have always looked forward to the Olympics. Watching the world’s preeminent athletes compete on the world stage and rooting for my own national team and others who seem to defy the oddsmakers never failed to excite me. As a kid, I even once dreamed of becoming an Olympic competitor myself. (Alas, my 1.7-meter frame was simply not up to the task of throwing the shot put or discus on the world, or any other, stage!)

Why Democratic Nations Must Boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics

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Here in the United States, NBC television is broadcasting the Winter Olympics, devoting at least six hours per day of coverage. Traditionally, its broadcasts dominate the ratings as Americans gather in front of their TV sets and computer and phone screens to watch and cheer on US athletes. I will be cheering on our athletes, too. But I won’t be watching.

The IOC’s Charter

I will not watch these games because they betray the very values enshrined in the IOC’s&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č; and its definition of “Olympism.” That is, it “seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.” It further states its goal “to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”

Based on its charter, the IOC should have flatly denied China’s petition to host the 2022 Winter Games. How could the IOC have been so blind to its values in awarding the games to Beijing? How was it possible to allow China to host the Olympic Games when the government of the People’s Republic of China has systematically persecuted, incarcerated, shackled and tortured up to 2 million Uyghurs, sterilized their women and sought to snuff out their Muslim faith? Uyghurs, a Muslim-majority, Turkic-speaking people, have inhabited China’s western Xinjiang province for at least 1,000 years.

But the suffering of the Uyghurs at the hands of an overbearing, intolerant Beijing isn’t a one-off. The Chinese have been doing largely the same thing for decades to the people of Tibet, effectively carrying out a campaign of cultural genocide.

Several years ago, the world again witnessed China’s notion of “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and “promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Beijing-directed henchmen attacked the people and institutions of Hong Kong, decimating the last vestiges of democracy in the enclave. The government has been arresting and trying any and all opponents, dissidents, and human rights advocates unwilling to buckle under Beijing’s iron-fisted, authoritarian order.

More recently, the world has observed Beijing turn its aggression to the island of Taiwan, the lone democratic outpost today within China’s one-party, one-man “Asian Reich.” Taiwan presents an unquestionably complex and difficult issue. But the inhabitants of Taiwan have embraced democracy and the freedoms that come with it. Resolving Beijing’s differences with the island and its people with menacing and aggressive behavior — dozens of mass warplane , repeated threats and belligerent bombast — cannot possibly lead to a solution. Rather, a threatened invasion of the island would not only likely crush its democracy, but also inject enormous instability in Asia and torpedo the global economy in a manner unseen since World War II.

To the IOC, however, none of this mattered. Its president, Thomas Bach, and even UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres traveled to Beijing for the opening ceremony of the games with nary a word about China’s abysmal human rights policies in Xinjiang, Hong Kong or Tibet. Instead, the IOC wants to see another “successful” games, which typically means an Olympics that makes money. Lots of it.

The IOC, NBC and Sponsors

Enter the American media giant, NBC. For exclusive broadcast rights to the Olympics through 2023, the network has paid the IOC $7.75 billion. That comes out to roughly $1.8 billion for the Beijing Games alone, or about 20% of the cost of the games. Tragically, revenues trump rights for China and for the IOC.

One would think that with that kind of leverage, NBC and the IOC’s numerous  and advertisers — globally recognized names like Allianz, Toyota, Bridgestone, Panasonic, Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Intel, Proctor & Gamble, Visa, Samsung and others — would have stood up to the IOC, explaining the harm to their brands of awarding the games to Beijing.

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And what about NBC itself? The Chinese government has imposed restrictions on journalists covering the games. The sort of 360-type coverage that is traditionally featured in its coverage of the Olympics — not just the events themselves but also the athletes, their lives and backgrounds, the host country and its people — is being severely . One Dutch journalist has already experienced China’s intolerance, having been  away while reporting live on camera.

Are the dollar earnings so great that NBC will sacrifice its journalistic ethics and responsibilities, all while other members of the profession  under Beijing’s crackdown on truth and free journalism?

China is not Nazi Germany. But Germany in 1936 was not yet the depraved hell of human suffering — the tens of millions of destroyed lives of Jews, Slavs, Roma and so many others — that it would become under Nazi rule. But we might have seen it, given the way the Nazis and Adolf Hitler engaged in over-the-top self-promotion and outward, sensational displays of Aryan superiority and Nazi rule.

The IOC, NBC and their many sponsors and advertisers have given China center stage to arrogantly parade and shamelessly hawk its own brand of unyielding, intolerant authoritarian rule. In China, the power of the state, its ruling Communist Party and great leader, XI Jinping, vitiate Olympism’s concepts of “social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and “basic human dignity.”

If they won’t recognize this contemptible undertaking for what it is, I will. I will miss the world’s best athletes and the great ritual of the world coming together for 17 days to celebrate individual struggle and achievement. I won’t be watching these Winter Olympic Games.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post A Personal Boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Was the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Mother of All War Crimes?

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So, when on November 30, 2021, a court in Frankfurt, Germany, handed down a life  to an Iraqi man who joined the Islamic State (IS) group for genocide against the Yazidi minority — the first time a former member of IS had been convicted of genocide and the first verdict for genocide against Yazidis — it was celebrated as a landmark case in the fight for justice and accountability. Taha al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death.

“T´Ç»ĺ˛ą˛â, ISIS member Taha AJ was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison. This is the first genocide verdict against an ISIS member. This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, & the Yazidi community,”  Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement.

Universal Jurisdiction

The trial was also the first in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction addressing crimes under international law committed abroad by a perpetrator who is not a German citizen and was only extradited on the basis of an international arrest warrant. Universal jurisdiction is the principle that some crimes are so serious that states should be allowed to claim jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where they were committed or any other relation with the prosecuting entity. None of the crimes in the Jumailly case were committed in Germany, and neither the victims nor the suspect were German nationals.

Though universal jurisdiction has been practiced in just a few countries in recent years, it has become an increasingly important tool for achieving accountability and justice for the survivors and victims of international crimes. Hundreds of investigations are ongoing and dozens of convictions have been obtained.

The blossoming of universal jurisdiction is attributable to several factors, one of which is that the alternative route to prosecuting international crimes through the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has effectively been closed by geopolitics. The Syrian conflict, for example, has never been appraised by the ICC because Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad.

The Pursuit of Cases

In recent years, there has been a greater capacity and willingness on the part of some domestic authorities to pursue cases involving international crimes, at least in certain circumstances. More and more countries have also passed laws allowing them to conduct the kind of landmark prosecution that took place in Frankfurt. More countries are following the Dutch  in setting up specialized units within the police, prosecution and even immigration services dedicated to identifying perpetrators of international crimes and bringing them to trial.

Another important factor in the power of universal jurisdiction is that victims and their advocates can contribute to investigations and prosecutions, and sometimes even influence the direction they take. In some countries, such as France and Belgium, victims and NGOs can initiate criminal proceedings. Even where this is not possible, victims and their advocates can still drive cases forward in other ways, such as by tracking perpetrators’ movements, sharing information with the authorities and exerting pressure on them to act.

Dutch authorities have even issued  for Syrians in the Netherlands on how to file a criminal complaint against other Syrians relating to violations in Syria. In February, after Germany’s top court  that war crimes committed abroad can be tried in the country, a court in Koblenz became the first court outside of Syria to rule on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime when it sentenced a former member of the secret police to four and a half years in prison for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Another former Syrian intelligence officer is currently on  in Germany for  58 counts of murder and at least 4,000 cases of torture, rape or sexual abuse.

Many Challenges

Despite this recent progress, enormous legal, evidentiary and logistical challenges remain before international criminal cases can be brought to trial. Investigating and prosecuting international crimes in domestic courts is not straightforward, especially in a complex conflict such as the Yemen war where crimes have been committed over many years by different actors.

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Foreign investigators cannot easily gather evidence on the ground, so they have to rely on the cooperation of different parties to the conflict to build cases. UN bodies like the group of eminent experts, international organizations, local NGOs, and organizations such as Airwars assist with investigations.

Even if evidence linking an individual perpetrator to war crimes can be established, the suspect still has to be apprehended. In some countries practicing universal jurisdiction, those accused of committing war crimes do not need to be within reach of authorities for an investigation to be opened, but they need to be physically brought to court before any trial can take place.

Though international cooperation can be used to apprehend and extradite international pariahs like IS militants, pirates and slave traders, war criminals who are still serving members of Arab regimes are not about to be handed over. Only when they set foot in a country practicing universal jurisdiction — whether for work, vacation, claiming asylum or for any other reason — can they be arrested immediately, providing they do not benefit from immunity.

Jumailly’s conviction “sends a clear message,” Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, which gathers evidence of crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. “It doesn’t matter where the crimes were committed and it doesn’t matter where the perpetrators are, thanks to the universal jurisdiction, they can’t hide and will still be put on trial.”

*[This article was originally published by , a partner of 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post How the Legal Landscape Is Changing for War Crimes appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

First, the COVID-19 pandemic is obviously far from over. While global vaccine distribution continues to be spotty and a matter of economic and political privilege rather than equality and fairness, new variants of the virus such as Omicron continue to emerge and suggest that the largest global health crisis in at least a century is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

It is tragic that the shortsighted, irresponsible attitude to just and equitable global vaccine distribution has now become the root cause for a seemingly infinite loop of viral mutations and spread. Indeed, the policies that are adopted by some countries allow new variants to incubate where vaccines are scarce, only to soon boomerang back to nations that are hoarding doses and patents alike.

Water World: Is Climate Change Driving Our Future Out to Sea?  

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Second, the rapidly deteriorating situation, the stunning collapse of the status quo and public order, and the ongoing humanitarian and human rights crisis in Afghanistan remind us of the inherent vulnerability and fragility of the international order and its institutions. Afghanistan is but one example of a fundamental shift in global and regional geopolitics and balance of power that is now ubiquitous. The consequence is that human security and justice seem to become even more disposable than before.

Third, the 6^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) affirmed that the global climate crisis is not only real and impactful but certain to increase, perhaps exponentially, and become even much more destructive, disruptive and deadly than previously projected.

Keeping the Goal Alive

At the same time, the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow reinforced the widespread fear that it is increasingly unlikely that the 1.5˚C goal sealed in the Paris Agreement — perhaps even the 2˚C fallback position — can still be reached, meaning that unimaginable threats like mega heatwaves, floods, droughts, hurricanes and blizzards, food crises and famines, mass migration and violent conflicts are to be expected to rise throughout this century.

COP26, unfortunately, was more of the same: cynical delegations of certain industrialized countries, as well as ruthless fossil fuel lobbyists, coerced poor countries already hit hard by climate change into a defensive mode and dictated a watered-down compromise that is far from adequate. Despite some mitigation pundits — typically white, male and Western — praising COP26 for “keeping the 1.5-degree goal alive,” the point is not about what’s hypothetically feasible but is very much about what has been done and continues to be done to this world’s poor, marginalized, underdeveloped, disenfranchised and remote people?

Much of the Conference of Parties process carries the handwriting of neoliberalism and neocolonial rule. If those people in the South Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere count, then why has the 2009 promise of COP15 in Copenhagen to make $100 billion in support of adaptation needs available still not been met, even to 50%?

Why do the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters still refuse to pay a single penny for the loss and damage to developing nations that they are responsible for? How dare wealthy carbon-emitting countries refuse to commit to immediate and drastic emission reductions knowing that their selfishness will kill millions of people, wipe out entire species and make much of this planet uninhabitable?

See a pattern? What COVID-19, Afghanistan and climate policy as a global phenomenon have in common is the toxic mix of short-sightedness, selfishness and ruthlessness with which international solidarity, collective action and the noble cause of pursuing equality, dignity and justice in international relations are being sacrificed for short-term gain, dominance and privilege.

Forty years of largely unregulated capitalism, economic globalization and neoliberal rule have not furthered the spirit and goals of the UN Charter. They have ruined our planet, its ecosystems and habitats, and left humanity in a state of shock, turmoil and disintegration — closer to what Hobbes’ “Leviathan” described as the state of nature.

International Threat

By the way, climate change adds to other global risks and threats: It is intersectional, cross-cutting and compounding. , and therefore epidemics and pandemics, are on the rise also because of changing climates, temperatures, precipitation, humidity, biomes and expanding human habitats. Wars such as those in Sudan, Yemen and Syria have been precipitated by climate change, desertification, water shortage, crop failure and hunger — as is forced migration as a mass phenomenon. The list goes on.

We simply can no longer afford a business-as-usual approach or even a moderately progressive approach, let alone a backward approach. This century of complex crises requires a whole new type of global action and response unlike anything before it because peace, security, prosperity and statehood are at risk globally. New, innovative and disruptive legal, economic and political tools are needed, paired with technological advances, ethical and sustainable investments, social movements and large-scale behavioral change.

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Ultimately, the climate agenda — and with it, many other issues of global concern — is a matter of global justice and survival. Measures and instruments must be atoned to yield the safety and well-being of the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised and the underserved. The resilience of the weak will determine the fate of the whole. If that is the case, humanity — and alongside it, other species, ecosystems and the planet — will benefit as a whole. If it isn’t, today’s hubris, ignorance and selfishness will come back as a mighty boomerang, much like Omicron, to haunt many wealthy nations.

*[This article is submitted on behalf of the author by the HBKU Communications Directorate. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the University’s official stance.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Global Climate Crisis Is the New Frontier of Justice appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

How Deep Are the Roots of Democracy in Southeast Asia?

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When the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Min Aung Hlaing at the leaders’ summit back in October, it resulted in the quick of over 5,600 political prisoners. However, it also precipitated resistance to ASEAN’s plan for a non-violent ceasefire. This was characterized by the of the request by ASEAN’s envoy to Myanmar, Dato Erywan Yusof, to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and other detained leaders. With more verdicts , what will ASEAN’s next steps be?

Bitter Pill

It is easy to berate ASEAN for its delayed response to the February coup and to what has now become a , with nearly , 200,000 displaced and 3 million in need of assistance. However, the immediate move by the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom to enforce economic sanctions on Myanmar has not produced the hoped-for results.

Although economic sanctions affect many industries across the country, such as the military conglomerates Myanmar Economic Corporation and Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, they have done little to nudge the military leaders toward a ceasefire. Instead, repression and bloodshed intensify by the day.

The inefficacy of economic sanctions is a difficult pill to swallow, but it forces us to confront two realities. First, the military leaders assign very low importance to economic growth vis-à-vis the pursuit of their political agenda. In this crisis, the main of the military leaders is to right what they believe is wrong, namely nurturing a “true and disciplined democracy” based on the claim that the landslide NLD win in November 2020 was rigged.

The verdict against Aung San Suu Kyi is an indicator that despite a persistent international backlash, the economy has taken a backseat and will continue to be compromised if it means that the junta can legitimize its position.

Economic and travel sanctions like those implemented by the , the , and the , among others, will limit the movement of the military leaders and hold businesses in a tight chokehold. As the fight for survival continues, economic sanctions will only cause the skyrocketing of prices on goods most people will no longer be able to afford. Along with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this will only help to drag half of Myanmar’s population into in 2022.

Secondly, curtailing Myanmar’s dealings with global actors like the US, the EU and the UN is not as fruitful as many would like to think. To offset the newest round of sanctions, Myanmar’s military leaders have linked arms with superpowers on the other side of the political spectrum, like and . Therefore, the remaining challenge for ASEAN is to develop a that can bring a quick end to the bloodshed while making room for negotiations aimed at giving the people of Myanmar a say in their own future.

From 1988 to 2021

Despite the suppression of the , when a military junta again seized power, and the ensuing crackdown on civil rights, then-Burma was to ASEAN in 1997. The move was not without controversy, with continuing international pressure to make the admission contingent on democratic concessions from Yangon, but drove ASEAN’s decision. Unsurprisingly, Myanmar’s accession opened a new set of challenges for the bloc, especially vis-à-vis its non-interference principle.

The discourages states from intervening in the internal affairs of fellow members, including criticism of state actions against its citizens, and condemns those perceived to be in breach of the non-intervention principle. It also denies support to any rebel group seeking to destabilize the government of a neighboring state, providing political support and material assistance to members to counter disruptive activity. To put it broadly, the non-interference policy means that all member states tend to take a hands-off approach when it comes to the national affairs of their regional counterparts.

As a result, one of the main criticisms faced by ASEAN over the decades has to do with its in interfering in regional emergencies, like the 2015 Rohingya crisis that was later identified as by the United Nations. Thus, it was only by 2005 that ASEAN arrived at a to bar Myanmar from the 2006 chairmanship to void a by the West, with the US and the EU condemning the military’s refusal to implement democratic transition and release Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1990 election but was placed under house arrest instead of assuming office.

The association’s silence on its member states has become a significant liability for ASEAN’s reputation. Seeking to enhance the bloc’s international standing and to attract financial support and foreign investment, ASEAN nations finally had a common cause to for the sake of regional stability. Myanmar’s eventual agreement to give up the chairmanship that year also meant the bloc was effective in keeping the military leaders updated on its incremental steps in having a more active approach for the sake of the social and economic stability of all member states.

Fast forward to February 2021, and both Myanmar and ASEAN find themselves in a near-identical predicament. After international criticism fueled lengthy discussions that lasted over two months, ASEAN reached the as its action plan. The surprise election of as the bloc’s special envoy for Myanmar outside the original list of nominees followed, demonstrating not only the internal divides within the bloc but also indicating that Yusof was the only sound choice for ASEAN to of all stakeholders and to make decisions with required caution.

These moves show that have been taken in order for ASEAN to reach a consensus with the Myanmar leaders and, more importantly, for ASEAN to ensure Myanmar was still included in the process. The Five Point Consensus is a gradual strategy that offers a way for ASEAN to begin negotiations with the Myanmar military through diplomatic engagement and respecting the hard-fought national independence of other member states.

Middle Ground

To find a middle ground, Yusof has proposed measured, non-violent strategies that would begin with humanitarian assistance and policy guidance through the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Centre, followed by a more substantive discussion with the junta in exchange for full . ASEAN is currently playing a calculated game of push-and-pull. The military leaders need their relevance in Myanmar politics to be acknowledged, which ASEAN has already indirectly provided; in response, the junta’s lack of cooperation and reciprocity to the consensus protocol provided room for ASEAN to plan its next step. 

In comparison to the economic sanctions, by barring Myanmar’s representatives from this year’s summit, ASEAN has taken a more calculative approach in allowing the junta to consider the consequences of non-cooperation. Simultaneously, ASEAN‘s secretary general, Dato Lim Jock Hoi, that humanitarian assistance “should not be politicised.” At the end of the October leaders’ summit, His Majesty Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah that “Myanmar is an integral part of the ASEAN family and their membership has not been questioned.”

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Despite repeated urgency for stronger action, ASEAN recognizes that coercive strategies are not effective in seeking a final resolution. As much as this is a race against time, it is also unproductive to rush political negotiations that can result in more harm than good. It is clear that ASEAN has moved beyond its non-interference principle and is exercising both caution and effort as the sole moderator in this crisis. Ultimately, continuous criticism can only achieve so much.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post ASEAN’s Myanmar Strategy, Slow But Steady appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s ethnic minorities endure double discrimination — from the ruling regime and from the Iranian human rights community. While the regime and human rights organizations both at home and abroad disagree on many issues, they share a disdain for ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s ethnic minorities, unwilling to see them gain national rights. Thus, the government and its mainstream opposition share a common cause that strengthens the regime’s ability to stay in power and prevent democracy from taking root in Iran.

Repression Is No Longer Enough to Stem the Anger of ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s Minorities

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±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s undergo extreme discrimination beyond the restrictions imposed on all Iranians. They are not allowed to operate schools in their native language, are forced to use Persian in all formal settings, and are regularly subjected to mockery and ridicule in the official media and school textbooks. Ahwazi Arabs face suppression of any expression of their ethnic identity and culture as well as open anti-Arab racism.

Ahwazi Arabs, who number around 8 million, suffer from , environmental degradation, in employment, and high rates of poverty despite being the majority population in the oil and gas-rich . The Persian ruling class reaps the profits from these abundant natural resources while the local Ahwazi people suffer the from their production.

Shared Prejudice

Despite being formally committed to advancing democracy, Iranian human rights organizations share the regime’s prejudices and racism. These organizations rarely report on the distinct discrimination against ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s ethnic minorities, the specific goals of Ahwazi Arab protests or the political prisoners who have campaigned for the rights of ethnic minorities.

For instance, when listing the names of activists who have been abducted from their Western exiles by Iranian operatives, they neglect to mention , an Ahwazi activist and Swedish citizen kidnapped by the regime in Istanbul. Chaab is being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and is in imminent danger of execution.

I personally have experienced this double discrimination. As an Ahwazi Arab human rights activist, I was almost to death for supporting the right of Ahwazi children in Iran to learn their native language, Arabic. I was lucky to escape and settle in the US in 2015. My fellow activists were not so lucky — they were executed in 2014. The physical scars from that torture, which run from my sternum to my groin, will never leave me. Even after multiple operations, I will be on medication for the rest of my life.

Yet despite all the available evidence, I was shocked to discover that the Persian-dominated human rights organizations in the US opposed recognizing the rights of the Ahwazis and other minorities, co-opted our struggles and blocked reporting on our plight.

Social Media Wars

With ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s regime imposing a total media blackout on the Ahwazi issue, social media remains the only option for activists to raise awareness. But even here activists face constant abuse and threats not only from the regime, which deploys trolls and bots to mass-report activists’ accounts in an effort to shut them down, but also from Farsi-speaking Iranian dissidents. At one point, I had three Twitter bans in under 20 days. 

Due to this media war, most people in the West are not aware of Iran’s ethnic diversity, where Turkish, Ahwazi Arabs, Balochi, Kurdish and Caspian account for nearly 40% of ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s population. Most Iranian human rights organizations in exile focus on abuses against Persian dissidents while barely giving any coverage to the systemic racism against the ethnic minorities.

When our young men die for their rights in the streets of Ahwaz, the Persian-dominated groups report on these protests as anti-regime activity, intentionally disregarding the ethnic factor. This was the case in the widespread November 2019 protests and the recent wave of demonstrations this July, which were led by Ahwazi youth. Such co-opting of our activism adds insult to the injury of the brave sacrifices made by our young people.

Refused Recognition

The country’s Persian opposition is reluctant to recognize that Iran is a fundamentally diverse country and that its people have both a national identity and local sovereign claims. These Persian opposition groups have succumbed to the idea that providing support to the Ahwazi cause and recognizing its ethnic demands is a prelude to secessionism. Instead, they continue to turn a blind eye to the demands of ethnic minorities in their own regions in order to promote one nation, one centralized rule, one culture and one language — all Persian.

With this denial by Persian oppositions groups both at home and in exile, and with the regime continuing its brutally repressive, restrictive and racist rule, the outcome of subjugating the country’s ethnic minorities and disregarding their rights is predictable. The civil war that ravaged former Yugoslavia serves as a terrible warning of how states can fracture along ethnic lines. 

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To avert such a catastrophe, Iran must abandon its antiquated supremacist mindset and acknowledge its non-Persian minorities as equal stakeholders and partners who form a power base in their own right. The creation of a federalized democratic system would defuse tensions and mean the possibility of a fair, genuinely progressive, modern state.

Even without its regressive theocratic foundation, the current supremacist system in Iran is an inadequate and outdated relic reflecting a mindset based on 19^th-century colonialism. In reality, the Iranian state is a patchwork of ethnicities, faiths and doctrines. As a result, Iran can choose between creating a fair, stable, democratic and progressive 21^st-century state — which reflects this vibrant and diverse melting pot where each group can elect its representatives to share in an equal, fair and federalized system — and collapsing into factionalism and civil war.

This double oppression to which Ahwazis and other ethnic minorities are subjected and the refusal of the Persian Iranian opposition in exile to even acknowledge both the regime’s or its own deep-seated antagonism toward Ahwazis and other ethnic minorities ultimately only benefits the regime, which can easily thwart a splintered opposition. In the end, we can only dismantle oppression in Iran — and globally — through unity and mutual respect.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post ±ő°ů˛ą˛Ô’s Ethnic Minorities Face Double Discrimination appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The plights of indigenous people in other places are, in many ways, similar with those in the Americas. To this day, they still face challenges every day.

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According to , 370 million indigenous people across the world constitute about 5% of the global population, living in more than 90 countries and speaking over 4,000 languages. Wherever they live, they often face discrimination, oppression, exploitation, eviction and other human rights abuses. As expected, the COVID-19 pandemic has particularly impacted them due to poverty, lack of clean water and access to health services.

In much of the world, indigenous people suffer from high unemployment, poor education and domestic violence. They are often targeted for mistreatment and abuse and have the least access to health services compared with other groups. They are usually imprisoned disproportionately and some die in custody.

Around the World

In Australia, indigenous people constitute around of the population, but they form more than a of the prison population. Their children are more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous children.

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In the Americas, indigenous people are subjected to discrimination, harassment and violence, particularly in countries like , , Paraguay and Nicaragua, among others. They may also face unsubstantiated charges that include sabotage, terrorism and murder and are particularly, vulnerable to human trafficking. In Argentina, indigenous people are further deprived of their rights to ancestral lands. In Paraguay, they continue being evicted and denied their lands. In Peru, the killers of indigenous people are often not brought to justice.

Similarly, and the have discriminated, mistreated and manipulated their indigenous people. Both of these nations have exploited and mismanaged the assets of the native population. Canada has continued oppressing its indigenous people, confiscating their lands and eliminating their cultures.

In June, more than 600 unmarked graves were in Canada at a Catholic-run school for indigenous children that operated from 1899 to 1997. This followed a previous report of at another Catholic school that was open from the late 19^th century to 1969.

The Contributions of Native Americans

The contributions of indigenous peoples to the world are countless. Native Americans alone brought us many plants from beans and peanuts to pineapple and herbal medicines. They also greatly contributed to our democracy, the Founding Fathers in fashioning the US government. The Six Nations, known by the French as the Iroquois, provided a great example of participatory democracy where the government was truly founded on the consent of the governed.

The delegates from the 13 English colonies were inspired by the Native Americans who were endowed with a rich heritage over thousands of years that included counseling among the elders in the affairs of the tribes. As early as 1744, Canasatego, the Iroquois Confederation’s spokesman, the colonists on how to form a union in order to become a powerful confederation. The colonists listened to his advice in forming what became the United States of America.  

In 1751, Benjamin Franklin wrote a inspiring the 13 colonies to follow the Iroquois Confederacy in forming a union. John Hancock, speaking on behalf of the 1775 Continental Congress, expressed it well when he “the Six Nations are wise people. Let us harken to their Council and teach our children to follow it.” In 1988, the US Senate paid tribute to the Native Americans by saying that the “confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself.”

Giving Thanks

Those who live in democracies today, including the United States, owe a lot to Native Americans for their freedom. Indigenous peoples have served us well and deserve to be treated with respect, provided with the same opportunities and appreciated for their contributions to the world. We should work to ensure they have equal rights where they live and raise them out of poverty, enabling them to have access to clean water, hygiene and health services.

In the US, let us make this Thanksgiving Day special by embracing our Native Americans, paving the way to remedy some of their wounds. As Amnesty International recommends, we should follow other countries in the Americas by replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day in recognition of their contributions to the United States of America.

*[Dr. Mehdi Alavi is the founder and president of , a non-religious, non-partisan and charitable organization in the United States that promotes freedom and peace for all. It recently released its Civility Report 2021, which can be downloaded .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin are also fueling this war rhetoric. Both countries are feigning concern about a perceived NATO troop concentration on the border with Belarus. According to reports, nuclear-capable Russian bombers have recently patrolled the Belarusian airspace. German policy should not fall into this trap of conjured-up militarization.

The Migrant Crisis on Poland-Belarus Border Is Lukashenko’s Revenge

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The frequent use of the term “hybrid warfare” fits in with a development that is increasingly shaping the discourse on security and defense policy in Germany and other EU and NATO states. It has become a commonplace belief that the boundaries between war and peace are becoming blurred.

War seems to be everywhere: There is talk not only of hybrid wars but also of information wars, cyberwars and economic wars. Almost every international dispute is interpreted in light of the ubiquitous paradigm of a “great power conflict,” with the potential for military escalation.

Not all of this is necessarily wrong, and much of it is not really new. But war is and remains at its core the organized use of military force for political ends. In the process, states and non-state actors have always used non-military means as a flanking measure to win the propaganda battle or to weaken the will of the opponent to divide their societies.

The technological and societal developments of the past decades have facilitated this enormously. Economic instruments such as sanctions and boycotts can also be threatened or used to augment military means. However, the basic definition of hybrid warfare is that it is the integrated use of military and non-military means or tactics within the framework of an overarching goal or plan.

The current situation on the Polish-Belarusian border does not meet this criterion. Even if this crisis was orchestrated by the Kremlin, it is far-fetched to speak of an integrated “deployment” of migrants in Belarus and of pro-Russian separatists and Russian troops in eastern Ukraine as part of an overall plan.

Calling the situation a hybrid war has concrete consequences because war justifies politically and legally different rules and means than peace. Using the term “war” increases the danger that it will be used to justify the mistreatment of refugees in violation of human rights. War creates a great urgency to act, while at the same time the political room for maneuver dwindles.

The question also arises as to who is waging war against whom. Is it Belarus against Poland, so that there is a NATO Article V case for collective defense? Or is it Russia against NATO? The expansion of the concept of war also dilutes the respective areas of responsibility of internal security forces and armed forces. Shouldn’t the Bundeswehr then also be deployed on the German-Polish border, and shouldn’t NATO send its rapid reaction force to the Polish-Belarusian border?

The fact that the boundaries between war and peace are becoming increasingly blurred is not only due to abstract security policy developments and structural international changes, but it is also very much the result of the language and actions of political actors, including in the West. Politicians, therefore, have a responsibility to continue to define the boundaries between war and peace.

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The migrant crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border is not yet a war. It cannot safely be ruled out that it will not escalate militarily. However, politicians in Germany and the EU should not rhetorically pave the way for such a development and should not respond to corresponding provocations from Minsk and Moscow.

They should meet the challenge posed by migration and refugees with political means — also and especially when a state uses them as a means of pressure. In addition to further economic sanctions by the EU against Belarus, the establishment of a functioning asylum policy in the European Union would be an essential step in this direction.

*[This  was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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This is a from the border between Belarus and Poland, the EU’s eastern frontier, on November 8. People who are trapped between security forces pushing them back and forth had been flying from the Middle East to Belarus in the past weeks, unaware that they were being used by President Alexander Lukashenko for his personal vendetta against the European Union.

One Step Further

The current crisis has its roots in the aftermath of a highly contested election in August 2020 when Lukashenko was proclaimed president of Belarus for the sixth consecutive time since 1994. Neither the EU nor the US recognized the result because the vote, like almost all preceding ones, was assessed as neither free nor fair by the . Electoral fraud triggered widespread demonstrations across the country that were brutally suppressed by the regime. By November, some 25,000 have been , including 477 , with widespread allegations of torture in detention.

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In response, the EU imposed that include a travel ban and an asset freeze against those associated with the regime and which, as of June this year, extend to 166 individuals and 15 entities. Relations became further strained in May when Belarus used a false pretext to a plane flying from Greece to Lithuania and arrested a dissident journalist who was onboard.

Consequently, sanctions were tightened, and an infuriated Lukashenko with reprisal: “We were stopping drugs and migrants on our Western border. Now you will eat drugs and chase people. … Because of your sanctions, we have no money to take care of this.”

Lukashenko had seen how the migration crisis of 2015 polarized EU member states, with Visegrad Group countries — Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland — opposing non-EU migration and refusing relocation of asylum seekers. From Turkey, the Belarusian president may have learned how to use refugees to put pressure on the EU. But Lukashenko, whose authoritarian rule earned him the moniker “the last dictator of Europe,” went one step further, intentionally flying in thousands of people to Belarus to use them in his game against the EU.

Already in June, Lithuanian border guards observed a sudden surge in illegal crossings by people from Africa and the Middle East. Until early July, tried to enter Lithuania’s territory illegally — 12 times as many as in the whole of 2020. Soon it became obvious that it was no coincidence: The number of flights from Middle Eastern countries to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, had intensified. Passengers were taken by buses and taxis to the border and assisted by Belarusian border guards; local travel agencies were also apparently involved.

It is estimated that at the moment, between 800 and 1,000 people from the Middle East every day, with German media reporting up to 40 flights a week from Istanbul, Damascus and Dubai planned by March next year.

Lukashenko’s regime targeted people from fragile countries and lured them with a prospect of easy and legal entry to the EU. This was a endeavor. Depending on the port of departure and destination, the price per person amounted from $6,000 to $15,000. Many migrants seem to have believed that Minsk was just a layover and that they would soon board a plane to Germany. They traveled with their entire families.

Hybrid Threat

As the number of attempts to cross the border illegally was increasing disproportionally fast, Lithuania declared a on July 2. Lithuania and neighboring Latvia, with populations of 2.8 million and 1.9 million respectively, feared that they would not be able to cope with a sudden influx of migrants. In mid-July, Lithuania’s foreign minister asked the EU to take more decisive steps against Lukashenko, a “hybrid threat” and suggesting refugees being used as a “political weapon.”

Latvia declared a state of emergency on August 10; Poland, with a population of 38 million, on September 2. All three states began building fences along their borders.

But all these measures did not halt the pace of illegal crossings. The statistics published by the Polish Border Guard Office show that in August, nearly 2,900 people tried to ; between early August and November 4, the numbered 30,000.

On November 8, as the situation at the Poland-Belarus border escalated, an 3,000-4,000 people were in the vicinity of the border. A column of hundreds of people marched toward an official border crossing in , but most were diverted by Belarusian forces to the nearby forest.

Polish forces used tear gas to stop some of the migrants from cutting the fence. As passing was impossible, hundreds set up makeshift camps along the border. Polish official sources that there may currently be as many as 15,000 migrants in Belarus — the same as the of Polish troops to protect the border.  

No Media, No Frontex

Although all affected countries implemented similar measures, Lithuania and Latvia allowed the media to enter emergency zones, under certain restrictions. Poland barred non-resident civilians, including journalists, from the zone and restricted access to public information, a move by Reporters Without Borders and other press freedom organizations.

All information from the Polish state of emergency zone (SEZ) is provided by the authorities, local residents or, perhaps ironically, the Belarusian regime. Considering that journalists are almost always present in most active war zones and conflict areas, this is quite an unusual situation.

From the outset of the crisis, Poland has been carrying out pushbacks, a practice of forcing migrants to return to Belarus. According to UNHCR, pushbacks are a of international law, but the Polish parliament them in October. Lithuania initially placed migrants in detention centers but soon then followed Poland’s example. In mid-August, more than 4,000 people were in , with 1,500 people were in in early October in Poland.

The affected countries differ in their cooperation with Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency headquartered in the Polish capital Warsaw, which controls borders in the Schengen Area. Frontex deployed its personnel to Lithuania and Latvia, but Poland repeatedly refused help because, as it claims, it had enough troops to protect the border. Polish officials that Frontex Director Fabrice Leggeri was “impressed by the means deployed to secure the border” in Poland.

But Frontex does more than protect borders. It has developed a special code of conduct to protect human rights and created the role of a fundamental rights officer, who monitors border guards to reduce the potential for violations of the rights of migrants.

In their attempt to reach Poland, migrants often have to cross swamps and forests, facing adversarial weather conditions; temperatures in November drop below 0Ëš Celsius (32Ëš Fahrenheit). Most of them wander for days or weeks, pushed back and forth repeatedly. They cannot expect assistance from humanitarian organizations, NGOs or doctors because they are barred from the SEZ. Local residents are also prohibited from helping, but many that they do so regardless.

In order to offer assistance to the migrants, 14 Polish NGOs formed — Border Group — to monitor the situation close to the SEZ. They have documented many pushbacks, with in particular resonating with the public. The incident involved a group of 20 migrants, among them eight children, who in late September managed to reach MichaĹ‚owo, a small town outside of SEZ. They claimed that they wanted to seek asylum in Poland. Nevertheless, they were driven off to Belarus as the entire interaction was recorded by activists and journalists.

This led to protests in Warsaw and Michałowo, supported by three former Polish first ladies. The protesters chanted, “Where are the children?” and “The place for children is not in the forest.”

More Sanctions to Come

The EU unanimously Belarus for “deliberately putting people’s lives and wellbeing in danger” and “.” President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen that in response to the “hybrid conflict” sanctions on Belarus will be widened. However, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov stated that the EU should for stopping migrants.

Nevertheless, the EU is not open to such negotiation and relies on diplomatic international pressure and sanctions. Current attempts are directed at convincing the countries of origin to warn migrants against traveling to Belarus or to sanction the airlines who fly them. Turkish airlines already agreed to to Belarus while Iraqi authorities offered to fly back people who .

Demands for harsher sanctions and complete closure of borders can also be heard. Such a move would paralyze international trade routes and have an impact on Russia and China — Belarus lies on China’s New Silk Road — that use Belarus for . But sanctions are a double-edged sword, having a detrimental impact on those who impose them.

Lukashenko seems to have fewer ways out of the crisis, and many point out that he will have to surrender as the cost of his political gambling is becoming too high. There are also concerns that, in desperation and given his unpredictability, the Belarusian president may start an .

If Lukashenko wanted to divert attention from Belarus’ domestic affairs, he succeeded. In the past weeks, reports on the crackdown against the opposition have disappeared from international debate. If sanctions are tightened and borders closed completely, not only the regime but also civil society will pay the price as Belarus becomes even more isolated.

The situation at the Poland-Belarus border is very dynamic and, in some respects, resembles a proxy war. It is where the EU and NATO encounter Russia’s sphere of influence, with Polish politicians openly accusing Russia of the crisis.

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Whether legal or illegal, migrants should not be used as pawns or human shields in a geopolitical game. As desperate migrants look for other routes to enter the EU, the crisis may soon spill over into Ukraine, Belarus’ southern neighbor. Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have already joined Alexander Lukashenko as he plays with innocent lives.

But while the often-ridiculed Lukashenko managed to unsettle the EU, he has not so far succeeded in further polarizing it. Despite the breach of international law at its border, the EU stands firmly together behind Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Time will tell if this unity remains as the crisis evolves.

*[51łÔąĎ is a  partner of .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The revoking of the emergency law does have some positive consequences, namely the  of the infamous “state security court,” which offered no avenue for appeal and was notorious for its harsh sentences. However, these positive  are mitigated by a myriad of repressive laws, heavy use of pre-trial detention, extrajudicial killings and the heavy politicization of the judiciary, which make the state of emergency mostly redundant.

Two Laws

The most notable example of the repressive laws issued by the regime is the 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law. This has a few notable features.

First, it provides a very vague definition of what constitutes terrorism to include acts that affect “social harmony and national security,” an expansion of which allows the Egyptian regime to crack down on dissent and charge activists with terrorism at will. Second, the law provides immunity to the security forces stating that “members of the security forces cannot be prosecuted in case force was used in the line of duty.” Finally, the law gives the president the power to take “necessary measures” in specific geographic areas in response to a terrorist threat, including isolating specific regions, depopulating them and the imposition of curfews for a period of six months, which can be extended.

In addition, on November 1, after the state of emergency was revoked, parliament approved an amendment to the law that expanded the power of the president, giving him the right to designate the security agency responsible for imposing his directives, a thinly veiled reference to assigning the military as a domestic security force to repress dissent.

The consequences of this law are significant. Besides the use of terror charges against peaceful activists, there has been a sharp rise in extrajudicial executions, reaching  alleged killings in 143 shootouts between 2015 and 2020. In some cases, the families of those killed have attested that their relatives were detained at the time of the alleged shootout. The immunity provided to the security forces by this law has emboldened them to commit killings, with no real investigation or consequence.

Another that is seldom discussed is the Law for Protection of Public and Vital Entities. This law, issued in 2014, stipulates that the military is responsible for providing security to public institutions in cooperation with local police forces. The law says these buildings and institutions belong to the military, hence any acts of protest affecting their functioning fall under the jurisdiction of military courts, notorious for harsh sentencing and lack of due process. The definition of vital entities includes roads, bridges, railways, power lines and public institutions, essentially almost all of the public space.

This law was supposed to be temporary. However, in the same  where the amendments to the terror law were approved, it was made permanent. In effect, this permanently militarizes the public space by extending the jurisdiction of military courts to cover most public spaces and transforming the military into a domestic security agency, responsible for the repression of dissent and protest.

Pre-Trial Detention and the Judiciary

The lawful quashing of dissent is also coupled with the heavy use of  methods of repression, the most prominent of which is the application of pre-trial detention. Egyptian criminal law states that pre-trial detention should be limited to six months for misdemeanors, 18 months for felonies and two years for offenses punishable by death or life imprisonment. In reality, there are a number of cases where detainees  in custody even after they  their pre-trial detention limit. This practice has allowed the regime to arbitrarily detain its opponents for prolonged periods of time on vague charges, with little evidence and in complete disregard of due process.

In addition to this, the regime institutionalized the practice of “,” where once the pre-trial detention period on one charge lapses, the detainee is charged in a new case, with very similar charges. The most notable example is Abdel Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, the head of the Strong Egypt Party, who was  in February 2018. He has remained in pre-trial detention after new  were brought against him in February 2020.

The noose of repression is complete with the heavy politicization of the judiciary, which has been a feature of the regime since the coup of 2013. This is reflected in a number of mass trials, which have shown little regard for due process. The most notable is the  of 735 defendants in the case of Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square sit-in, during which hundreds of protesters were killed by security forces. The final verdict, issued in June 2021, saw the confirmation of the death sentence of 12  Muslim Brotherhood leaders; out of 75 death sentences issued by the lower terrorism court, 31 death sentences were commuted to life in prison.

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The cooption of the judiciary was formalized with the constitutional  of 2019, which gave the president the power to appoint the heads of judicial institutions, as well as stipulating the creation of a higher judicial council — headed by the president — which oversees appointments, promotions and secondments within the judiciary.

The Permanent State of Repression

Hence, the suspension of the state of emergency in Egypt does not signal a real easing of repression, rather, under another guise, its permanence is extended. The amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Law and the Law for Protection of Public and Vital Entities made the state of emergency redundant. This, combined with the actual practices of the security forces and judiciary of using pre-trial detention, extrajudicial killings and torture, means that repression has been deeply institutionalized within the state apparatus, in essence turning it into a modus operandi.

One can speculate that the suspension of the state of emergency was a feeble attempt to claim progress aimed at the Biden administration, which  $130 million in aid over human rights concerns. However, the regime’s strategies point to the opposite, namely that brutal repression in Egypt will be a feature of daily life for years to come.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner organization of 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Of Human Bonds: Between Sex Work and Trafficking

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In Indonesia, there is no official data recorded about sex workers. As a result, these individuals do not have the same chance of receiving the same state benefits as other citizens. As by the United Nations Population Fund (UNPA), one example is Mirna, a 30-year-old sex worker. She struggles to pay her bills due to meeting fewer clients. She also does not have access to food aid from the local government as she does not hold an ID card for Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.

Sex Work and Violence

There is no explicit law in Indonesia that prohibits prostitution, making the trade of sex for money technically legal. Yet, as The Economist , “some local governments have used an ambiguous �Crimes Against Morals’ law to ban sex work in their districts.”

Many sex workers experience barriers when reporting violent crimes against them. These range from social shame to charges for engaging in prostitution. Those who work in the trade, particularly women, are often vulnerable to extreme violence. They face the risk of rape, assault, harassment or death, and the victims are usually blamed.

The National Women’s Commission has collected on violence against sex workers. As of 2018, “violence in the public domain reached 3,528 cases (26%), where sexual violence was ranked first with 2,670 cases (76%).” This was “followed respectively by 466 cases of physical violence (13 %), 198 cases of psychological violence (6%), and special categories, namely trafficking (191 case, 5%), and 3 cases related to migrant workers.” According to the National Commission on Violence Against Women, three Indonesian women are at risk of sexual violence every two hours.

Budi Wahyuni, the deputy chairperson of the National Women’s Commission, has called prostitution a harsh trade. She has argued that sex work is full of threats of sexual, physical and psychological violence. According to her, violence and go hand in hand with the world of prostitution.

In Indonesia, where the dominant religion is Islam, the issue of violence against sex workers has not received enough attention. Many Muslims in the country consider sex workers to be criminals who violate religious norms and, therefore, should not be accepted by society. This situation makes it for sex workers to receive sufficient state protection and resources, including access to health care.

Research by international agencies such as UNFPA that the trade of sex in Indonesia is unsafe. Many pimps cannot guarantee the availability of condoms to protect sex workers, which leaves people at risk of sexually transmitted infections (STI) or HIV/AIDS. Sex workers are also vulnerable to violence by law enforcement officers as well as psychological trauma.

The Indonesian Organisation for Social Change (OPSI), a nonprofit that provides training programs and reproductive education for sex workers, that in the last five years, many brothels were shut down by local authorities. The closure of these sites has made it difficult for facilitators to conduct health programs for sex workers, including protecting them from violence, trafficking or contracting STIs.

What Can Be Done?

It is clear that more needs to be done to help victims of sexual violence, especially those who work in the sex industry. Three areas deserve close attention.

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First, the anti-sexual violence bill must be . “The bill defines sexual violence as physical or non-physical violence that makes someone feel intimidated, insulted, demeaned or humiliated,” Inside Indonesia . “The bill acknowledges that sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, forced contraception, forced abortion, forced marriage, forced prostitution, rape, sexual slavery, and sexual abuse are all forms of sexual violence.” By including these terms in the bill and seeking to tackle abuse, the state can better protect sex workers. Most importantly, the “includes providing health services and legal assistance for victims.”

Second, the government must educate those who consider trading sex for money to be immoral. Many Indonesians ignore the fact that some people become sex workers out of necessity. For some, selling sex is the only way to put food on the table. As the majority in Indonesia, Muslims can play a key role in helping to change the social narrative around sex work.

Third, the government should from New Zealand. In 2003, New Zealand abolished criminal penalties for sex workers and sought to provide access to health services to reduce the risk of HIV/AIDS. Taking this step in Indonesia would help remove the social stigma around sex work and create a safer environment for those who engage in the trade.

In Indonesia, the issue of sex work is still a taboo subject. The “work” dimension of sex workers is considered nonexistent. Apart from the government, few civil society organizations have opened discussions about sex work. Instead of generating debate and addressing concerns, sex workers are shunned by society.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Should Indonesia’s Sex Workers Be Protected? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

This security complex is the reason for the increasingly authoritarian tactics employed by the CCP, including the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang intended to suppress Uighur separatism, and the creation of the in the world to function alongside an Orwellian to control citizens at microlevel.

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The idea is simple: If the CCP controls everything and everyone, then security can always be guaranteed. Within China, this is mostly true. To the best of our knowledge, there have not been any major terrorist attacks within China in recent years, the economy has slowed but not halted, and there are no major social movements or actors who can contest the CCP’s authority. Brutal and authoritarian, the Chinese system of social fascism seems to have achieved its goals.

Security Means Control, Control Means Security

However, problems arise when China attempts to apply this absolute control to foreign policy. When eight Chinese nationals were by Zambia’s police force in 2017 as part-time officers, the strategy of exporting China’s authoritarian domestic policy seemed apparent. Zambia is home to major Chinese investment and a sizeable diaspora, prompting Beijing to attempt to exert control over it to ensure security following the same logic used on the mainland.

Zambians reacted with outrage, drawing parallels to European colonization. Ultimately, the officers were forced to , prompting Beijing to get more creative about how it imposes power so as not to cause backlash again.

Without a physical police presence on the ground, artificial intelligence provided the answer to Beijing’s needs. By 2019, according to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, high-tech surveillance systems have been exported to over — more than half of which had signed up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)— deploying traffic cameras and facial-recognition technology. In Zambia, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Huawei technicians allegedly helped the government to on and track down opposition figures.

It was a win for the Zambian leadership, which hoped to its position further with Chinese support. But even if it did care to protest against China’s schemes to gain greater leverage over the nation, the authorities in Lusaka have little recourse as they are currently $6.6 billion in to China.

Of course, China promised Zambia it would be able to pay back this debt with unrealistically explosive growth through infrastructure expansion. But Zambia has struggled to come up with the money and finds itself stuck in what some have characterized as “debt-trap diplomacy,” a strategy of controlling a nation by first overpromising and straddling it with debt, then failing to deliver, refusing to participate in collective restructuring and finally .

Some that China is simply an exploratory investor testing and prodding the markets, but the strategy has played out across dozens of countries to date, and a study of Chinese landing contracts by AidData, a research lab at William and Mary, reveals that the debt trap is both . Chinese contracts include extensive non-disclosure agreements for the borrowing side and are “shrouded in secrecy.”

The authors state that “China is a muscular and commercially-savvy lender to developing countries” which doesn’t allow borrowers to participate in collective restructuring with Paris Club countries, concluding that “Default triggers of the sort we have identified in Chinese debt contracts potentially amplify China’s economic and political influence over a sovereign borrower.”

The strategy playing out in Zambia has resulted in toward China, increased , and more concessions to China in order to pay back that debt. Not only this, but China’s policy in Zambia has only created a hostile environment for Chinese nationals as well. The fixation with controlling foreign nations through surveillance or debt has not led to an increase in security but instead fostered new forms of insecurity in host nations.

Fueling Insecurity

Pakistan is another example of this security dilemma. Even though China has flagged Pakistan as its key partner in the BRI, it is still being crushed under the weight of its in debt. Again, Islamabad has downplayed this, stating that there will be eventually if Pakistan keeps following the CCP’s lead, even if it means allowing China to lease the nation’s southern port in Gwadar for the next 40 years to be able to make payments on its loans.

In a bus traveling to a construction site in northern Pakistan was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing nine Chinese nationals. In , Chinese engineers were targeted in a bombing that left two children dead in the port of Gwadar. Previously, in , gunmen attacked a stock exchange in Karachi, citing China’s exploitative investments in Baluchistan province as motivation for the attack.

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The violence stems again from the unfairness of the Chinese contracts, demanding concessions that don’t benefit the local population but China’s bottom line. In Baluchistan, this means that China is mining resources like copper and gold while the impoverished themselves see no dividends from the minerals they live atop of. They see themselves as being stripped of the bounty of their land and having to share their already meager .

All the while, regarding China’s investments in Pakistan have continued, with local communities facing food shortages because of China’s exploitation of resources like fishing.

More Chinese investment, more concessions, more discontent, more insecurity: The more Beijing attempts to straddle its international partners with debt and use this debt to exert control over their assets, making decisions regarding economic development and forcing them further into China’s orbit, the more insecurity is created for both the host nations and the Chinese nationals there.

Making the Same Mistakes

However, China has not learned its lesson and is now poised to double down on its mistakes again in Afghanistan. Just a few weeks before the Taliban seized control of the country in August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi with the head of the Taliban’s political commission, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. The meeting solidified China’s stance on the Taliban: They are the of the Afghan people, even if few of the people agree.

The truth is that the CCP is far from considering what the will of the people is, be it in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Zambia. What they care much more about is that the Taliban are the ones in charge and that the group desperately needs aid and international recognition, both of which China can provide. If China delivers on those important factors then, perhaps, Beijing can exert control, secure investments, combat terrorism and possibly extend its domestic crackdown to living in Afghanistan.

The process has already begun. A group of landed in Kabul in early September. While Afghanistan remains on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, China seems to be looking into the future, to a day when Afghanistan is ready for its first surveillance cameras and debt. So far, Beijing has been among the first to start delivering to Afghanistan.

It seems to be a match made in heaven, with Afghanistan’s geostrategic position serving as a great asset for the Belt and Road Initiative. Likewise, the nation has sizeable mineral wealth and could provide Chinese manufacturers with a steady source of much-needed materials for manufacturing. Deals have yet to be made between the Taliban and China, but the future looks bright from Beijing’s vantage point.

However, this scenario is only likely to materialize if the Taliban can be trusted and controlled. If history is any indicator at all, they cannot. Instead, the Taliban’s promises to the CCP will follow a long track record of saying what is most convenient to get what the Talibs want, then reneging on their promises as soon as it is safe to do so.

The Taliban did this in their negotiations with the former Afghan government, agreeing to talks, promising that they are looking for a diplomatic solution while waiting for an opportune moment to take Kabul by force. Again, they promised that when they come to power, they would respect women and minority rights but have already the rights of women and have begun the Hazara from their homes.

Likewise, the Taliban had promised amnesty for all who collaborated with foreign militaries or the former Afghan government but have stated the commitment to return to their pre-2001 use of while running door-to-door .

The problem is a lack of understanding — or a desire to understand — on the part of the CCP just who the Taliban are. Just as in Zambia, without considering the nation’s legacy of colonialization, China attempted to impose a police presence. In Pakistan, China’s indiscriminate exploitation of resources causes upheaval. Now in Afghanistan, Beijing makes deals with those who have committed countless barbaric acts of terrorism based on the belief that the Taliban will kowtow if given what they want: recognition, aid and money.

What the CCP fails to understand about its dealings in Afghanistan is that the Taliban are extremists. They believe that those who do not follow their interpretation of Islam are kufr — unbelievers. To them, unbelievers are fair game: They can be lied to, cheated, poisoned, killed; it doesn’t matter, for the unbelievers are going to hell regardless. This is why the Taliban will take what China has to offer, then turn around and open the door for al-Qaeda to train Uighur separatists in Afghanistan.

There are already signs that the Taliban are double-crossing the Chinese. The group’s new chief of army staff, , holds close ties to the Uighur separatist Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP). The new minister of the interior and current leader of the Haqqani Network, , also maintains close ties to al-Qaeda, which continues to .

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Whether or not these fighters or other Islamists have or will become active in Xinjiang is unknown, especially given China’s extreme censorship around . But it is likely that they will pose a security risk to Chinese projects and nationals in Afghanistan just as insurgent groups do in Pakistan.

The reality of China’s alignment with the Taliban is that the Chinese Communist Party is purchasing a false sense of security. Beijing knows the Taliban are in control and believes it can hold them on a leash. What it doesn’t understand is that the Taliban are not pets, and that both China and the world at large are more insecure with terrorists in charge.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post China’s Policy of Illusory Security Is Destined to Fail in Afghanistan appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The one issue on which both may have agreed is the growing need for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. The UN and various international NGOs have alerted the international community to the imminent faced by the Afghan people, especially inadequate health care and food shortages. Many of the 12 million at-risk Afghans are children.

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To complicate matters, with only 2.2 million Afghans prior to the Taliban takeover, COVID-19 infections are on the rise. Starved of resources, hospitals and clinics lack basic medicines, and staff is forced to work without pay. Then there is the country’s fast-approaching, notoriously harsh winter when food and fuel come at a premium.

Aware of the pending crisis, the earlier this week at an emergency meeting called for and hosted by Italy agreed to respond, though no specific pledges were made. Attendees, while aware of the need to coordinate any assistance effort with the Taliban, also expressed concerns over the Taliban’s commitment to fighting terrorism, specifically mentioning the Islamic State’s (IS) Khorasan faction inside Afghanistan, known as ISK.

Where’s Our Money?

Part of the humanitarian problem stems from the inability of the Taliban to access Afghanistan’s international accounts, frozen by most of the Western governments in whose banks the funds had been deposited. The asset freeze was imposed almost immediately after the Taliban took control. Of the estimated $9 billion in frozen accounts, $7-$8 billion are believed held in US banks, and the Taliban want it. They assert that they can’t care for their citizens properly without it.

As reflected in the G20 discussions, the US and other governments don’t necessarily dispute the claim but also know full well that the Taliban may, and likely will use any unfrozen funds for other purposes, some not at all to the liking of those governments, such as weapons, aid to terrorist groups, support for their drug trade, etc.

The US and other governments are also well aware of the Taliban’s egregious mismanagement of the Afghan economy when they previously ran the country from 1996 to 2001. Their gross ineffectiveness brought the economy to its knees and their strong affiliation with al-Qaida put the country off-limits to outside aid.

Today, it is fair to ask whether the Taliban have learned anything about economic management since they were toppled by the US in 2001. Unless they are willing to accept genuine experts from the previous regime without prejudice, it’s difficult to believe that 20 years of fighting their way back into political power has taught them much about finance, monetary policy, macroeconomic planning, budgeting, banking or any of the other responsibilities that are needed of competent governments to responsibly manage an economy for 40 million people.

Show Us the Goods

With winter on the way, the Americans are acutely aware of the need to start humanitarian assistance now. But they have their own list of wants. These include fighting terrorism, adhering to basic human rights norms and respecting the rights of women and girls, including to equal education, health care and employment opportunities.

Additionally, the US has a number of citizens who could not be repatriated in the rushed evacuation effort that followed the Taliban’s capture of Kabul and the fall of the previous government. Thousands of Afghans who had worked for the US during its 20-year presence in Afghanistan were also left behind. The US wants immediate and unhindered departure of these individuals and their families, if they freely elect to leave.

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Following the meeting, a Taliban spokesman announced that the Americans had agreed to provide humanitarian assistance. But there was no official confirmation from the US side, and there likely won’t be until it receives some affirmative responses to its demands from the Taliban.

That holds particularly true for the frozen Afghan assets. Without airtight commitments from the Taliban followed by genuine action, the Americans will continue to withhold the Afghan funds. It’s leverage, and right now, it’s the only means the US has of assuring some of its basic requirements for the Taliban government are met. Needless to say, trust on either side likely hovers around zero. Therefore, it’s all about, “What are you going to do for me?” The fact that the Afghan people may bear the brunt of the suffering for this position is unquestionably tragic.

Stepping Up to Responsibilities

The US demands, as well as those of the rest of the international community, are reasonable, basic and expected of a responsible and competent governing authority in any country. So, the Taliban face their first test of governance. Having prevailed in their two-decade struggle, they now need to demonstrate they can govern. That the fate of millions of innocent Afghans hangs in the balance is an unfortunate consequence. But consider it a yardstick of Taliban goodwill to their own people.

Nevertheless, neither the US nor the rest of the international community will be able to ignore for long the increasing need — soon to be desperation — of the Afghan people. Soon, some interim solution will be necessary whereby international NGOs and UN humanitarian organizations can enter and operate in the country to provide and distribute goods and services to meet basic human needs, starting with essential food items, medicines and health care. The G20, working with the UN, may be the best approach for that.

But such an emergency effort will do little to get the Afghan economy on its feet. Much more is necessary, starting with the release of the frozen assets. That will mean the Taliban stepping up to its responsibilities and likely not before.

The Biden administration — already under some pressure at home over an ambitious domestic economic agenda stalled in Congress and the humiliating manner in which the Afghanistan withdrawal unfolded — isn’t about to complicate matters by releasing those funds without real Taliban action. Joe Biden is no doubt familiar with the opprobrium heaped on President Barak Obama when he released about $30 billion in frozen Iranian assets in 2015 after the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. To quote from many classic American crime shows, it’s “Show me the goods before I show you the money.”

Perhaps the only good that may be claimed after this first meeting is that the two sides have opened a dialog. But considerable territory will need to be covered before any assertion of “a relationship” may be said to exist.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Can the Taliban Govern Responsibly? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

During the past two years alone, six women have had their lives taken by either their male kin or other men. The women have been reduced to mere statistics thrown around to point out the rise of killings, without investigating the cause of their murder or providing insight into these high-profile cases.

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The Family Protection Law, which was passed by Kuwait’s national assembly in August 2020, for the establishment of a national family protection committee. This committee would put measures in place to tackle the spread of domestic violence. The law stipulates that those taking part in the family protection sector should undergo the necessary training. It also calls for the activation of a domestic violence shelter, which would offer rehabilitation and advisory services to survivors of domestic violence.

At the time, these measures were  as a victory, one that abolished Article 153, which treated honor killings as a misdemeanor with a maximum three-year prison sentence and/or a small fine for the perpetrator. Experts argued that Article 153 all but  honor killings. Yet despite being passed more than a year ago, the Family Protection Law remains nothing but merely ink on paper. The failure to protect women from being victims of domestic violence continues unabated.

Violence Against Women

The absence of such protection is what  Farah Hamza Akbar’s life. In April, Farah was gruesomely killed by a man she had previously filed two cases against for kidnapping and attempted murder. The perpetrator, Fahad Subhi Mohammed, who had been stalking the victim but was not known to her or her family, crashed into Farah’s car, kidnapped her and her two daughters. He stabbed Farah in the chest before dumping her body in front of a hospital, leaving her there to die.

Dana Akbar, Farah’s sister and lawyer, shared a  on social media saying she had warned the prosecutor several times that her sister’s life was in danger. According to Akbar, her sister’s perpetrator attempted to kidnap and harm Farah on multiple occasions. He was detained twice but released on bail each time. Mohammed was out on bail when he killed Farah.

The heinous crime sent shockwaves across Kuwait, resulting in a large  during the height of summer in the holy month of Ramadan. Protesters called for reforming existing laws, putting in place better protection mechanisms for victims of violence and actually enforcing the Family Protection Law.

The debate following Farah’s death served to amplify the anti-sexual harassment movement that was brought into prominence early in the year by Ascia al-Shammari. The influential fashion blogger posted a powerful venting her fury about the horror of being car chased by men, a common form of harassment in Kuwait. She called for a mechanism to report sexual harassment, saying “it is a necessary step in this country … So I don’t understand when you say you are against it.” The video went viral on social media platforms, provoking many women to comment and leading to “culturally sensitive” conversations about sexual harassment and gender-based violence.

Following Shammari’s video, a social media awareness campaign dubbed  (I will not be silent) was launched by medical doctor Shayma Shamo. It served as a virtual safe space that gave women the opportunity to share anonymous testimonies of harassment or abuse, encouraging more women to speak up.

Empty Promises

But the outrage that took place and the different hashtags only resulted in empty promises made by several members of parliament. Former MP Yousef al-Fadhala, who resigned from parliament in April, a government-sponsored mobile app designed to document and register instances of harassment. MP Abdulaziz al-Saqabi for an amendment to the penal code, adding punishments that include up to a year in prison and a fine of 3,000 Kuwaiti dinars ($9,940). Lastly, MP Abdullah al-Mudhaf adding punitive measures to the penal code, with a three-month window for the executive branch to activate these laws.

Almost eight months later, none of the proposals has been acted upon. However, in late September, the minister of commerce and industry and the chairman of the Public Authority for Manpower, Abdullah al-Salman, directives to end discrimination in the private sector and criminalize harassment in the workplace. While this step is long overdue, it is a promising one toward establishing a safer work environment for women. Yet there remains much to do.

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A recent  from the male-only Women, Children and Family Affairs parliamentary committee suggests that femicide is not a legislative issue but a societal one. The committee added that preventing violence against women is the responsibility of the government. This muddled and inadequate response, especially when Kuwait is witnessing a disturbing increase in femicide, is not nearly enough.

Despite having a vocal parliament and a free press, in comparison to its Gulf neighbors, Kuwait lags behind when it comes to enacting legislation to protect the lives of its women. More than one year and six lives later, we still see the offhand attitude in parliament and society toward violence against women, a convenient way of condoning this tragedy without condemning and holding accountable those responsible.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner organization of 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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