Artisanal miners are cutting down trees to process gold and climate change experts are concerned about the forests. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
by Jeffrey Moyo (mazowe, zimbabwe)
Inter Press Service
MAZOWE, Zimbabwe, Oct 29 (IPS) – With homemade tents scattered about, hordes of artisanal gold miners throng parts of Mazowe village in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland Central Province, where they have cut down thousands of trees to process gold ore.
Patrick Makwati (29), working alongside his 23-year-old cousin, Sybeth Mwendauya, are some of the miners who mine without a permit that have descended on Mazowe village, cutting down trees for processing gold.
The two cousins said they are using the trees to process the gold that they mine as they claim that they could not afford coal which could have been an alternative for them.
Illegal gold miners, like Makwati and Mwendauya, claim to only use wood when processing gold.
Yet, while the cousins camp in the bushes of rural Mazowe and cook their meals, they have also switched to woodfire.
“We depend on the trees we cut because we can’t afford coal while we also don’t have access to electricity,” Makwati told IPS.
In Zimbabwe, a tonne of coal costs 30 US dollars before transport costs are factored in, which illegal gold miners like Makwati and Mwendauya cannot afford.
The two cousins, like many other illegal gold miners, solely depend on woodfire to heat up the gold ore.
In areas like Mazowe, forests have already fallen, thanks to the gold miners, and now the areas look like a mini deserts.
Forestry officials from the Zimbabwean government lament the constant loss of forests every year.
According to the Forestry Commission here, this country loses 262,000 hectares of trees every year for different reasons.
Illegal gold miners have been factored in as one of these.
Thirty percent of the forest is lost to illegal mining, says environmental activist, Monalisa Mafambirei, based in the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
“You speak of Mazowe as a case study, but, of course, this is not the only area losing trees to illegal gold miners. In fact, this problem facing our forests is widespread as gold miners are all over the country where gold is mined, and trees have continued to be the casualties as gold miners cut them down rather carelessly either for use when processing the gold ore or as they clear the land upon which they mine,” a government climate change officer here who said she was not authorized to give media interviews, told IPS.
Even environmental campaigners in this southern African country, like Gibson Mawere, heaped the blame on the artisanal gold miners for fanning deforestation in the country.
“Illegal gold miners are unregulated, and they cut down trees, clearing areas on which they mine for gold, and also they use firewood to then process the gold ore because you should remember that these miners have no access to electricity nor coal to use in place of firewood,” Mawere told IPS.
As the blame game plays out, it may be years before a solution is found to stem the deforestation fanned by illegal gold miners in Zimbabwe.
For the artisanal gold miners, the answer lies in formal employment.
Without that, they say, forests may have to continue to suffer.
Gold miners like Makwati and his cousin place the blame on the country’s struggling economy.
“If we don’t cut the trees, we will have no money at the end of the day. We use fire from the trees we cut to process the gold ore before we sell pure gold. With formal jobs, we wouldn’t be harming the environment nor destroying trees,” Makwati told IPS.
Venezuelan migrants stranded in Guatemala after their journey to Mexico was cut short by new restrictions issued by the United States. Most of them, unable to afford to return to their home country, await possible humanitarian return flights. CREDIT: IMG
by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
Inter Press Service
CARACAS, Oct 28 (IPS) – Thousands of Venezuelans who have crossed the treacherous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, or who have made the perilous journey through Central America and Mexico to reach the United States, have found themselves stranded in countries that do not want them, unable to continue their journey or to afford to return to their country.
Unexpectedly, on Oct. 12, the U.S. government announced that it would no longer accept undocumented Venezuelans who crossed its southern border, would deport them to Mexico and, in exchange, would offer up to 24,000 annual quotas, for two years, for Venezuelan immigrants to enter the country by air and under a new set of requirements.
“We were already in the United States when President Joe Biden gave the order, but they put us in a van and sent us back to Mexico. It’s not fair, on the 12th we had already crossed into the country,” a young man who identified himself as Antonio, among the first to be sent back to the border city of Tijuana, told reporters in tears.
He was one of approximately 150,000 Venezuelans who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border this year to join the 545,000 already in the U.S. by the end of 2021, according to U.S. authorities.
Raul was in a group that took a week to cross the jungle and rivers in the Darien Gap, bushwhacking in the rain and through the mud, suffering from hunger, thirst, and the threat of vermin and assailants. When he arrived at the indigenous village of Lajas Blancas in eastern Panama, he heard about the new U.S. regulation that rendered his dangerous journey useless.
There he told Venezuelan opposition politician Tomás Guanipa, who visited the village in October, that “the journey is too hard, I saw people die, someone I could not save because a river swept him away, and it was not worth it. Now what I have to do is return, alive, to my country.”
In Panama, as in Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and of course Mexico, there are now thousands of Venezuelans stranded, some still trying to reach and cross the U.S. border, others trying to get the funds they need to return home.
They fill the shelters that are already overburdened and with few resources to care for them. Sometimes they sleep on the streets, or are seen walking and begging for food or a little money, abruptly cut off from the dream of going to live and work legally in the United States.
That aim was fueled by the fact that the United States made the possibility of granting asylum to Venezuelans more flexible, as part of its opposition to the government of President Nicolás Maduro, which U.S. authorities consider illegitimate.
In addition, it established a protection status that temporarily allowed Venezuelans who reached the U.S. to stay and work.
Venezuela has been in the grip of an economic and political crisis over the last decade which, together with the impoverishment of the population, has produced the largest exodus in the history of the hemisphere: according to United Nations agencies, 7.1 million people have left the country – a quarter of the population.
Venezuelan migrants walk in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez between the Rio Grande and the wall that separates them from the United States, a border that they will no longer be able to cross on foot but only by air and with express permission from Washington. CREDIT: Rey R. Jáuregui/Pie de Página
Caught up in the elections
The flood of Venezuelan immigrants pouring across the southern border coincided with the tough campaign for the mid-term elections for the U.S. Congress in November, which could result in the control of both chambers by the Republican Party, strongly opposed to Democratic President Biden.
Republican governors and candidates from the south, strongly opposed to the government’s immigration policy and flexibility towards Venezuelans, decided to send busloads and even a plane full of Venezuelan asylum seekers to northern localities governed by Democratic authorities.
Thus, through misleading promises, hundreds of Venezuelans were bussed or flown and abandoned out in the open in New York, Washington, D.C. or Martha’s Vineyard, an island where millionaires spend their summers in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International denounced the use of migrants as political spoils or as a weapon in the election campaign.
Against this backdrop, the Biden administration changed its policy towards Venezuelans, closing the country’s doors to them at the southern border, reactivating Title 42, a pandemic public health order that allows for the immediate expulsion of people for health reasons, and reached an agreement with Mexico to return migrants to that country.
The 24,000 annual quotas provided as a consolation, for migrants who have sponsors responsible for their support in the United States, plus requirements such as not attempting illegal border crossings or not having refugee status in another country, is almost equivalent to the monthly volume of Venezuelans who tried to enter the U.S. this year.
A family of migrants reaches the end of their journey through the dangerous Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama, on their long journey to reach the border between Mexico and the United States. But a new U.S. immigration measure prohibits access to the U.S. for Venezuelans. CREDIT: Nicola Rosso/UNHCR
What happens now?
In the immediate future, those who were on their way will be left in limbo and will now have to return to their country, where many sold everything – from their clothes to their homes – to pay for their perilous journey.
Hundreds of Venezuelans have begun to arrive in Caracas on flights that they themselves have paid for from Panama, while in Mexico and other countries they await the possibility of free air travel, of a humanitarian nature, because thousands of migrants have been left destitute.
There are entire families who were already living as immigrants in other countries, such as Chile, Ecuador or Peru – where there are one million Venezuelans in Lima for example – but decided to leave due to a hostile environment or the difficulties in keeping jobs or finding decent housing, in a generalized climate of inflation in the region.
This is the case told to journalists by Héctor, who with his wife, mother-in-law and three children invested almost 10,000 dollars in tickets from Chile to the Colombian island of San Andrés, in the Caribbean, from there by boat to Nicaragua, and by land until they were taken by surprise by the U.S. government’s announcement, when they reached Guatemala.
Now, in contact with relatives in the United States, he is considering the possibility of returning to the country he left three years ago for Chile, or trying to continue on, while waiting for another option to enter the U.S.
The United States has reported that crossings or attempts to cross its border by undocumented migrants have decreased significantly since Oct. 12.
Among the justifications for its action at the time, Washington said it sought to combat human trafficking and other crimes associated with irregular migration, and to discourage dangerous border crossings in the Darien Gap.
According to Panamanian government data, between January and Oct. 15 of this year, 184,433 undocumented migrants reached Panama from the Darien jungle, 133,597 of whom were Venezuelans.
After his return to the country on Oct. 25, Guanipa the politician told IPS that at least 70 percent of the migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in the last 12 months were Venezuelans, along with other Latin Americans and people from the Caribbean or African nations.
And, after collecting personal accounts of the death-defying crossing, he urged his fellow Venezuelans to “for no reason risk their lives” on this inhospitable stretch that is the gateway from South America to Central America.
At every Latin American border, migration rules are becoming more restrictive and Venezuelans wait patiently to be allowed access, often to try to reach the farthest destinations in the hemisphere, such as Chile or the United States. CREDIT: Gema Cortés/IOM
The Venezuelan government blames the massive exodus and the dangers faced in the Darien Gap on its political and media confrontation with the United States, while claiming that the numbers of reported migrants are wildly inflated and that, on the contrary, more than 360,000 Venezuelans have returned to the country since 2018.
Heads of United Nations agencies and international humanitarian organizations believe that given the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, the flow of migrants will continue, and they therefore call on host countries to establish rules and mechanisms to facilitate the integration of the migrants into their communities.
While the United States has slammed the door shut on Venezuelan migrants, in countries such as Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and some Central American nations, new rules are also being prepared to modify the policy of extending a helping hand to Venezuelans.
For example, Ecuador overhauled the Human Mobility Law to increase the grounds for deportation, such as “representing a threat to security”, and Colombia – which has received the largest number of Venezuelans – eliminated the office for the attention and socioeconomic integration of the migrant population.
Panama will require visas for those deported from Central America or Mexico, Peru is working to change regulations for the migrant population, and the government of Chile, which in the past has expelled hundreds of migrants on flights, announced that it will take measures to prevent unwanted immigration.
Of the 7.1 million Venezuelans registered as of September as migrants by U.N. agencies, the vast majority of them having left the country since 2013, almost six million were in neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries.
Entire families have not only sought to reach the United States or Europe, but have traveled thousands of kilometers, in journeys they could never have dreamed of, with stretches by bus but often on foot, through clandestine jungle passes or cold mountains, to reach Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina or Chile.
Others tried their luck in hostile neighboring Caribbean islands and dozens lost their lives when the overcrowded boats in which they were trying to reach safe shores were shipwrecked.
Faced with the explosive phenomenon, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) established a platform for programs to help migrants in the region and host communities, which is coordinated by a former Guatemalan vice-president, Eduardo Stein.
Of their budget for 2022, based on pledges from donor countries and institutions, for 1.7 billion dollars, they have only received 300 million dollars, in another sign that Venezuelan migrants have ceased to play a leading role on the international stage.
ECW director Yasmine Sherif announced US$2 million in new funding for children in the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, with conflicts, displacements, the climate crisis, COVID-19, and other epidemics such as Ebola disrupting development gains, as many as 3.2 million children (aged 6-11) are out of school, so even more funding is required. Credit: Armen Mahungu/IPS
by Alfred Ntumba (kinshasa)
Inter Press Service
Kinshasa, Oct 28 (IPS) – Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW) director Yasmine Sherif said that she was “deeply moved” by the resilience of children she met during her week-long visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 3 million children between the ages of 6 and 11 are out of school. However, there was a desperate need for funding.
“The educational needs of these children remain very high. I ask all partners, the government, the private sector, people of good faith, and all those who have funding to show their humanity and lend us a hand. We call on donors to urgently scale up their support for all girls and boys affected by the crisis in the DRC. We have a joint program valued at 66 million US dollars. ECW has already invested 22 million; we need another 44 million for the next three years,” Sherif said in an interview with IPS. ECW is the United Nations’ global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.
Children at Primary School Mama Yemo celebrate gifts for learning. Credit: UNHCR Ghislaine Nentobo
Sherif visited an ECW-funded programme in Tanganyika in the country’s southeast. UNICEF implements the programme with the Congolese government, provincial authorities, and other key implementing partners.
While the programme launched at the end of June, it was already showing promise.
“We have seen the progress and the needs for children, communities, and villages,” Sherif said.
The delegation visited the Lubile 1 primary school in the village of Pungwe; a school built with funding from ECW. The school has high-quality infrastructure and provides students with a meal. There are also psychological services to assist children with trauma. According to the delegation, this school is a first – indicating that anything is possible if the means are available.
Sherif yesterday also announced 2 million US dollars in new funding to provide life-saving educational support for refugees and host-community children and adolescents in the Nord Ubangi province in the DRC.
However, Sherif and the UNICEF Representative, Grant Leaity, have also called on donors worldwide to provide 45 million dollars in urgent, additional funding to support ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the country facing a humanitarian crisis.
“I witnessed first-hand the refugees crossing after a harrowing journey from the Central African Republic and the generosity of the government and local communities hosting them. For vulnerable children, particularly girls, education offers protection and hope. Many girls and boys who had never been to school in their home country now benefit from an opportunity to learn and thrive. With this new grant allocation, we can ensure to sustain and expand the response and build on this successful programme,” said Sherif.
Alongside Lubile 1 Primary School, ECW and its partners have also developed a learning center dedicated to the non-formal education of young girls displaced by war in the region. They are often victims of sexual violence and sometimes neglected. “We must therefore work to reverse this trend. To achieve this, adequate funding is needed,” she said.
ECW Director Yasmine Sherif and UNICEF Representative in DRC Grant Leaity spend time with students at Mpungwe Village’s first school, Lubile Primary School – which was constructed thanks to ECW support and includes a World Food Programme school canteen, implemented by local partner The Salvation Army. Credit: ECW
“I am deeply moved by the strength and resilience of the girls, boys, and teachers I have met and whose lives have been transformed by education and the support of local partners, the UN, civil society, and communities,” said Sherif.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are around 5 million internally displaced people, including 700,000, this year. This is the largest number of displaced people in Africa.
The province of Tanganyika alone registers nearly 350,000 internally displaced persons. This represents a major challenge. The province has nearly 4,300 primary and secondary schools to educate more than 1.8 million school-aged children. At least 1,700 more schools must be built to ensure good education for children.
Education is the basis of all human rights, says Sherif adding that investing in children’s education guarantees the achievement of sustainable development objectives. Because she believes education is at the center of human rights. Without it, little can be achieved.
“With education, we can improve mental health, school feeding, water and sanitation, protection, and many other useful services for our children,” she said.
ECW works with donors, the government, parents of students, and local organizations to provide quality education to children who are victims of violence of various kinds in this part of the DRC.
According to Laura Mazal, the British Embassy’s development director, access to quality education in times of humanitarian crisis is vital for children. It offers protection, a sense of normalcy, and hope.
“Most of the children come from displaced families and have never been to school before. Education is their only hope,” said Mazal. Great Britain is the second largest contributor to this multi-stakeholder fund at the global level. “Their courage and the efforts by the community and local partners to ensure all children go to school inspire us all to do more. We call on public and private donors to urgently step up their support for all crisis-affected girls and boys in DRC and worldwide to have the opportunity to enjoy their right to a safe, protective, inclusive quality education.”
ECW and its partners operate in three provinces where the horrors of war are still perceptible including Tanganyika, Central Kasai, and Ituri. The initiative intends to mobilize more resources to deploy in other provinces affected by violence and other crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Schools are essential in reducing tensions between community groups, which often spill over into armed conflicts.
“We must step up to help the next generation to heal from the wounds of violence,” Sherif said. “It is crucial to jointly expand holistic education programmes that integrate psychosocial support, gender transformative approaches, and a focus on safety and the well-being of children and adolescents. At the same time, more must be done to stop this cycle of unspeakable violence and systematic violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law. The pervasive impunity must end; perpetrators must be brought to justice.”
GENEVA, Oct 28 (IPS) – The organisational is personal. Every day since the two of us were asked back in 2020 to co-lead the process of culture transformation at UNAIDS, the United Nations organisation which drives global efforts to end AIDS, we have both felt at our very core how crucial it has been to get it right.
The mission of UNAIDS is vital to ensuring the health and human rights of every person. Staff and partners need to be confident of a supportive and empowering culture that will enable their work.
A 2018 Report by an Independent Expert Panel had shone a light on what were important organisational shortcomings, leading to a comprehensive set of changes in leadership, systems and crucially, culture.
As the Culture Transformation process has got underway, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented shifts in work, and a resurgence of global protests, including from the Black Lives Matter movement and for women’s rights, have a generated an inspirational momentum for action to tackle intersectional injustice.
Reflecting almost three years of UNAIDS culture transformation work, what stands out in particular for the two of us is how the “outer work” has required so much “inner work”. We have needed to be, and to help others be, our full selves, and to acknowledge what we don’t yet know of each other’s experiences.
The process has deepened our appreciation of how our differences, both personally and professionally, are a key strength, enabling each situation, each process, to be seen from a combination of unique angles, and how equality is crucial in enabling all these to be brought forth.
Creating safe spaces for our colleagues to speak about their lived experiences was transformative. We asked ourselves and those around us tough and tender questions. We had colleagues tell us they felt heard for the first time. Brave conversations helped colleagues to connect and to advance the tangible changes that matter most to them.
We understood the need for a common reference framework for all of us at UNAIDS. This has led to a first set of feminist principles that guide our way forward.
Through the process, it became ever more clear to both of us that culture transformation begins at the personal level. As a Malawian woman of African-Asian heritage, living and working in Latin America at this time, intersecting identities and multiple cultural heritage became for Mumtaz the centre of personal reflections.
In leading conversations on decolonizing the HIV Response, Mumtaz’s own colonization was calling for attention. For Juliane, too, this has been powerful journey: as someone who has experienced sexual assault in the workplace, this work is deeply personal, driven by a determination to build safe workplaces for everyone, including by addressing inequalities and unhealthy power balances. Our intersectional feminist approach has brought our experiences to our work.
But this work has also highlighted that whilst the organisational is personal, so too the personal is often dependent on the organisational. Engaging with intersectional feminist principles at the personal level was not enough.
That is why we were proud to help UNAIDS become the UN entity to put intersectional feminist principles at the core of its being. It is why vital work continues to integrate those principles into policies and practices to advance a workplace culture in which every individual can flourish.
As we have helped build a movement for change across six regions, engaged in conversation with more than 500 colleagues, and supported some 25 diverse teams in their own journey, we have recognised the centrality of the institutional level.
Cultural transformation is a long and challenging process that requires the tenacity and creativity of many. To weave the stories and aspirations of so many of the champions for change together while preserving their uniqueness, we have borrowed the quilt symbol that is iconic in the AIDS response.
As the change process evolves, new tiles will be added, others might fade or need repairing. But the work is not done. It is a ‘quilt in the making’ – individual and collective work, one tile at a time.
Mumtaz Mia and Juliane Drews have led UNAIDS Culture Transformation since May 2020.
Mumtaz is a Public Health expert with two decades of experience working to end AIDS. Juliane is a change management expert with 15 years of experience in developing inclusive and just organizations in which staff in all their diversity thrive.
Dusk approaches in Yangon, Myanmar. Credit: Unsplash/Alexander Schimmeck
Opinion by Noeleen Heyzer (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 (IPS) – The political, human rights and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar continues to take a catastrophic toll on the people, with serious regional implications.
More than 13.2 million people are food insecure, about 40 percent of the population is living below the poverty line and 1.3 million are internally displaced. Military operations continue with disproportionate use of force including aerial bombings, burning of civilian structures, and the killing of civilians including children.
I condemn the indiscriminate airstrikes on a celebration in Kachin State that killed large numbers of civilians days ago. The People’s Defence Forces are also accused of targeting civilians.
The plight of the Rohingya people, along with other forcefully displaced communities, remains desperate, with many seeking refuge through dangerous land and sea journeys. The price of impunity is a grave reminder that accountability remains essential.
Since the release of the Report of the Secretary-General on the situation in Myanmar, violence between the Arakan Army and the military in Rakhine has escalated to levels not seen since late 2020, with significant cross-border incursions, endangering all communities, harming conditions for durable return, and prolonging the burden on Bangladesh as host of about 1 million Rohingya refugees.
As the Myanmar crisis deepens, I continue to promote a coordinated international strategy, in line with my mandate, engaging all stakeholders for an inclusive Myanmar-led process to return to the democratic transition.
A child looks after his younger sibling in Myanmar. Credit: World Bank/Tom Cheatham
My first visit to Myanmar as Special Envoy in August to meet the military’s Commander-in-Chief was part of broader efforts by the UN to urgently support a return to civilian rule based on the will and needs of the people.
I made six requests during the visit: ending aerial bombing and burning of civilian infrastructure; delivery of humanitarian assistance without discrimination; the release of all children and political prisoners; a moratorium on executions; the well-being of and engagement with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
I also highlighted Myanmar’s responsibility for creating conducive conditions for the voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable return of Rohingya refugees. Soon after, I visited Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar on the five-year anniversary of the Rohingya’s mass displacement, where I expressed the United Nations’ appreciation for Bangladesh’s generosity and heeded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s statements that the current situation is unsustainable.
A highlight of the visit was my discussions with women and youth in the refugee camps. They made it clear that they need to be engaged directly in discussions and decisions about their future.
Their rights and protection, in particular their citizenship, freedom of movement and security, must be guaranteed, guided by the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. Going forward, I will continue to strengthen co-operation with ASEAN and engagement with all stakeholders.
While there is little room for the de-escalation of violence or for “talks about talks” in the present zero-sum situation, there are some concrete ways to reducing the suffering of the people. Recognizing that many more people will be forced to flee the violence,
I will continue to urge ASEAN to develop a regional protection framework for refugees and forcefully displaced persons. The recent forced return of Myanmar nationals, some of whom were detained on arrival, underlines the urgency of a coordinated ASEAN response to address shared regional challenges caused by the conflict.
Education and skills development are powerful tools to prepare Rohingya refugees for their return to Myanmar, which I continue to advocate, working closely with leaders of ASEAN and neighbouring countries as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
Key Ethnic Armed Organizations and the National Unity Government have together appealed for me to convene an Inclusive Forum for engagement to facilitate protection and humanitarian assistance to ALL people in need, in observance of International Humanitarian Law.
I have also initiated a women, peace and security (WPS) platform on Myanmar with the Foreign Minister of Indonesia to amplify the needs of women affected by the conflict, and their leadership as agents of change.
To conclude, there is a new political reality in Myanmar: a people demanding change, no longer willing to accept military rule. I will continue to appeal to all governments and other key stakeholders to listen to the people and be guided by their will to prevent deeper catastrophe in the heart of Asia.
Noeleen Heyzer, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar, in her address to the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee 25 October 2022
STOCKHOLM, Oct 26 (IPS) – In his treatise On War, the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) stated that war is “merely a continuation of policy with other means”. With his experience from the Napoleonic Wars von Clausewitz knew that totalitarian regimes could end up conducting huge and ruthless military campaigns. Furthermore, he assumed that to win a war it is necessary to mobilize and indoctrinate the inhabitants of an entire nation. Such an endeavour is called total war, a term that actually can be applied to Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Putin came to power during the turbulent times following the collapse of the Soviet Empire. His image as a forceful personality convinced many that Putin could make Russia “safe for democracy and business”. In June 2000, Bill Clinton proclaimed that Putin was “fully capable of building a prosperous, strong Russia, while preserving freedom and pluralism and the rule of law.”
Soon business flourished, satisfying foreign investors eager to enjoy Russia’s vast deposits of natural riches. At the same time, fear of terrorism was boosted by explosions in heavily populated residential areas. Putin’s answer to these assumed terrorist threats was in accordance with von Clausewitz´s advice to use “force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed.” The pursuing escalation of the war in Chechnya, pinpointed as the origin of terrorism in Russia, made Putin a nationalist hero, while his characteristics as teetotaler, capable administrator, quick learner and talented actor made him assume the role of a Hollywood-inspired saviour/hero. He single-highhandedly flew planes and rode bare-chested through the wilderness surrounding Siberian rivers. Media lionised him as a rough and strong judo/black-belt champion capable of leading an entire, long suffering nation onto a straight path to prosperity.
Some worrisome signs were nevertheless written on the wall. In 2004, Putin declared the collapse of the Soviet Union as” the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” Meanwhile, his acolytes were amassing the spoils from the collapsed Soviet Empire. Putin supported and protected those oligarchs who backed him, while bankrolling his inner circle.
In Munich 2007, Putin bared his teeth and claws in a speech given at an international Security Conference. He declared that the US was a predatory nation prone to apply an ”almost unconstrained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations plunging the world into an abyss of conflicts.” This revelation was in 2008 followed by Russia´s military assault on neighbouring Georgia.
General elections were rigged, while some political opponents ended up dead, like Boris Nemtsov, who in 2015 was killed on a bridge close to the Kremlin. Alex Navalny, Putin’s most prominent and fearless opponent, was arrested and imprisoned for thirteen years. Out of jail, he was in 2020 poisoned on a flight to Siberia. Close to dying, he was brought to Germany for expert treatment. After recovering, Navalny went back to Russia, where he was immediately put on trial and imprisoned.
Non-compliant oligarchs were and are routinely harassed. First to be rounded up were those who controlled independent media, like Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. Both fled the country. In 2013, Berezovsky died ”in suspicious circumstances”. Another oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had funded independent media, was already in October 2003 arrested on board his private jet and imprisoned for ten years.
Putin can now unopposed claim that the belligerent attack on Ukraine was necessary for protecting the Motherland. Subdued Russian media affirm that ruthless Ukrainian leaders have transformed their nation into a pawn in the cynical game of a Superpower intending to subjugate, or even annihilate, the Russian Federation.
It appears as if Putin is not only dedicated to make “Russia great again”. Another goal of his seems to be to enrich himself and his cronies. As a means to cover up his greed, Putin poses as upholder of “strict” morals, based on “pro-life” and traditional “family” values, as well as heroic patriotism and religious fundamentalism. Twenty years after coming to power Putin could declare: “The liberal idea has become obsolete. Liberals cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over recent decades.”
In spite of the Ukrainian war and his disrespect for human rights, Putin remains an icon for right-wing nationalists. A symbol of defiance to Western Liberal Establishment’s alleged encouragement of mass immigration and affinity to ”multiculturalism”, conceived as attempts to undermine morals and national identities.
As a counterweight to such assumed measures, backward looking politicians around the world pay homage to nostalgic notions, like a lost Great Chinese Tradition, a Russian Empire, Hindu pride before the arrival of Islam, a Global Britain, the Ottoman Empire, etc. This trend is occasionally joined with a global system where ruling elites consider themselves to be unrestrained by international norms, traditional modes of state governance, and democratic decision processes. Some world leaders try to pull the wool over the eyes of their followers by packaging their intents within populist opinions, like despise for political correctness, globalism, investigative journalism, LBTQ rights, feminism and environmental NGOs. A dangerous trend that, if unchecked, might as in the case of Putin´s Russia lead to socioeconomic conflicts degenerating into total war.
In the US, a strengthened adherence to illiberalism was fostered by Donald Trump. Under his watch US politics began to shift from rule-based order to one where might and wealth make right, a message boosted by media like Fox – and Breitbart News. Trump behaved like a wannabe despot, trying to apply authoritarian tactics at home, while paying homage to thugs and dictators abroad. Before him, US presidents had pledged their adherence to human rights, democracy, and freedom of speech. Nevertheless, their governments occasionally supported despots and dictators, not linking concerns for human rights to security, economy and financial affairs. A Realpolitik, which to “friendly” despots indicated that the US did not care so much about repression and corruption within the fiefdoms of their friends. Such behaviour was based on strategic reasons, while Donald Trump appeared to embrace authoritarians because he actually admired them – Dutete, Xi Jinping, Orbán, Erdo?an, Kim Jung-un, and not the least, Putin.
The former US president´s homage to ideas similar to those of Putin and his pose as a nationalistic superman might be connected with his obvious narcissism and appeal to nationalistic extremists. However, his senseless bragging is also combined with greed. A wealth of investigating reporting has demonstrated links between organized crime and corrupt rulers/oligarchs with the Trump Organization’s overseas business connections.
Money is also part of Russian foreign relations. Populist, chauvinistic parties like Italian Lega Nord (currently known as the Lega) and the French Front National (currently Rassemblement National) have received intellectual and economic support from Russia. This support to European political parties may be considered as a Russian effort to secure support for Putin’s policies abroad, as well as locally.
Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, a fluent Russian speaker far from being a friend of Putin, dismissed him as a leader using nineteenth-century means to solve twenty-first century problems. For sure, Putin’s attack on Ukraine mirrors age-old use of devastating warfare as a radical solution to complicated sociopolitical problems. It seems to be a stalwart application of the two-hundred-years-old advice provided by von Clausewitz:
Philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are just the worst. As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act likewise. By such means the former dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed to extremities, to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of counteracting force on each side.
Putin´s Ukrainian war neglects human suffering and has now disintegrated into a bloody power struggle, where Russia “to the utmost extent” makes use of its military strength, while being supported by “the co-operation” of a propaganda striving to engage the entire Russian population in the war effort.
The Ukrainian war not only concerns the protection of Mother Russia from a “predatory West”, its ultimate goal is to control a hitherto sovereign nation’s politics and natural resources. Putin’s declared support to an allegedly discriminated Russian minority in Luhansk and Donetsk seems to be a subterfuge for grabbing an essential part of Ukraine’s economic resources.
During early 2000s, privatization of state industries yielded a so called Donbas Clan control of the economic and political power in the Donbas region. These oligarchs were supported by Kremlin and a rampant corruption soon took hold of an area dominated by heavy industry, such as coal mining (60 billion tonnes of coal are waiting to be extracted) and metallurgy.
Before Russia in 2014 backed separatist forces in a ferocious civil war, this particular area produced about 30 percent of Ukraine’s exports and a huge amount of gas reserves in the Dnieper-Donets basin was beginning to be extracted. In those days, the most prominent oligarchs in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions were Putin proteges – Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Yanukovych, the latter had become Ukraine’s President, though his attachment to Russia and conspicuous corruption led to his fall through the Maidan Uprising in 2013, starting point for Ukraine’s transformation into a prosperous nation.
The Maidan Revolution caused a wave of insecurity sweeping through the former Soviet Empire, shaking up corrupt “counterfeit” democracies/dictatorships like Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Small wonder that the authoritarian leaders of these nations are stout supporters of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
While reading von Clausewitz’s On War it is quite easy to relate it to Putin’s politics that undeniably have resulted in war as a “continuation of policy with other means.” It is not the first time in history that authoritarian regimes have plunged entire nations into a blood-drained pit of war. All of us have to be be aware that support of authoritarian regimes might lead us all down into Hell.
Main Sources: Klaas, Brian (2018) The Despot´s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy. London. Hurst & Company. von Clausewitz, Carl (1982) On War. London: Penguin Classics.
Women living in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s idyllic Swat valley are determined that Taliban militants will not take root in their community again. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS
by Zofeen Ebrahim (karachi)
Inter Press Service
Karachi, Oct 26 (IPS) – The rise in militancy in Swat still haunts many locals with flashbacks of what they went through 15 years ago.
Dr Yasmin Gul can recall every last detail of the day she and her family were forced to leave their hometown of Matta, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) idyllic Swat valley, along with thousands, days before the Pakistan army launched an offensive, Operation Rah-e-Rast, against the militants of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) after the failed peace agreement with the latter, in 2009.
It was not just the “excruciating” pain running with her braces (Gul is a polio survivor) but the mayhem that afternoon that she recalls.
“We ran with nothing but the clothes on our back,” and went to Madyan, a town an hour’s drive from Matta, and stayed for three months with their uncle. She was among the nearly three million people, many of whom fled Swat for several years.
She can still recall the indignity faced by “the women, the children and the elderly – some of whom were being carried on the shoulders of their sons” after they ran for their lives amidst the sound of deafening “bombing”.
“The militants forced the burqa (an enveloping outer garment worn by women which fully covers the body and the face) upon us, but that afternoon I saw women running for their lives without covering themselves with the chadar (traditional Pashtun cloth that envelops the body from head to foot),” she said.
“I never want to go through that again,” she said resolutely. “We will not let anyone bring us to the brink, and this time, we will not be deceived.”
The images of dead bodies on streets are as fresh as the hushed tones that echo in her ears of elders talking of young girls from her family being kidnapped, raped, and even forced into marriage to militant commanders and of defiant men who were punished in the most barbaric manner including being beheaded and slaughtered. The victims were then put on public display. “I was old enough to remember many things,” she said.
“I don’t think I have healed and come out of the horror of all that I witnessed,” said Gul. “Neither has anyone else; we just don’t talk about it and have bottled it all up.”
In 2002 a firebrand cleric from Swat, Mullah Fazlullah, set up his headquarters at his village in Imam Dehri.
Between 2004 and 2007, he started wooing the locals, especially the women, through several dozen illegal FM radio stations promising the Nizam-e-Adal (Islamic justice system), not just in Swat but the entire Malakand division, of the KP province, comprising the districts of Bajaur, Buner, Chitral, Dir and Shangla. By 2007, the TTP had established its writ in the valley, just 160 km from the country’s capital, Islamabad, while the 20,000 army troops deployed looked on helplessly. The Taliban spokesperson Muslim Khan had told IPS in a 2009 interview: “We want to give women their rightful place in Islam”.
“People say it was the women of Swat who supported Fazlullah by giving large donations, even their jewellery, but no one asks why,” said Musarrat Ahmad Zeb, a Pakistani politician from Swat, who had been a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, from June 2013 to May 2018.
Talking to IPS from Swat, she said the TTP promised quick justice to the locals, which they had enjoyed when the wali ruled Swat and had eroded after the princely state acceded to Pakistan in 1969. Zeb is the widowed wife of Miangul Ahmed Zeb, son of the wali of Swat, Miangul Jahan Zeb.
But instead of giving the women what the TTP promised, they took away their right to life altogether. They were forced to give up jobs where there was interaction with men, they were forbidden from walking to the market unescorted and adolescent girls were not allowed to go to school.
Twenty-one-year-old Neelum Noori is worried she may have to close down her beauty parlour in Mingora, the capital city of Swat.
“We had a fairly good clientele, but since the last two months, it’s a trickle. If this continues, how will we be able to pay the rent and utility bills of the place?” she told IPS over the phone. She not only supports her parents but also pays for her tuition. Noori is enrolled in the two-year diploma course for a lady health visitor programme.
Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Defence and National Security, told IPS the “resurgence of terrorism” in KP was of “serious concern”, recalling the sacrifices made by Pakistan’s armed forces and the people to combat and contain the “scourge”.
But the arrival of the Taliban is not new and not in Swat alone. “They have been there for many years and are everywhere in KP. I have been bringing it to the notice of colleagues in the assembly since 2018,” Mohsin Dawar, a legislator, from North Waziristan, and chairperson of the National Democratic Movement, a nationalist party.
He told IPS the militants got energized after the Taliban took over Kabul last year.
According to a recent research paper produced by the Islamabad-based think tank, Pak Institute of Peace Studies, as many as 433 people were killed and 719 injured in 250 attacks in Pakistan between August 15, 2021.
Terming them “isolated incidents of terrorism”, the officials claimed all did not take place in KP. However, the TTP has claimed responsibility for a majority of these attacks.
Last month eight six persons, including a former peace committee head Idrees Khan, were killed by a remote-controlled bomb attack. Khan was at the forefront of mobilizing resistance against the Taliban in 2007. Earlier this month, a minister of Gilgit Baltistan was taken hostage; in return, they demanded the release of their comrades involved in the deadly 2013 terrorist attack on the Nanga Parbat base camp, in which foreign climbers were targeted. They also wanted an end to women’s sports activities in GB. “These high-profile cases create fear among the general public and are very demoralizing for them,” Dawar had said in the assembly recently.
While it was the “people’s resistance” that had “contained” the situation, he warned it can get out of hand and become “even more dangerous than last time” if not taken notice of now.
Fazal Maula Zahid, a member of the Swat Qaumi Jirga (a platform of elders and notables working for peace in the region), had high hopes for the youth and women of the valley. “If they come out as a collective force and are organized,” he said, no harm can come to the valley.
“Today’s youth are energetic and have seen or heard the troubles of their elders; they will not allow history to repeat itself,” Zahid said, adding the people had no faith in government functionaries who have done little to protect the hapless people.
For a few weeks now, residents from different towns and cities of KP, like Khawazakhela, Kabal, Matta, Mingora, Charbagh and Madyan, have been coming out to protest against the surge in terrorist attacks.
“At Mingora, there were more than 80,000 at Nishtar Chowk; it was huge,” said Zahid, who attended the event. “I am told the one at Charbagh was even bigger!”
“It is heartening that people have risen against this resurgence and showed their resolve to never again allow this phenomenon to pollute their society,” said Sayed and the “gains of the recent past are not frittered away”.
He informed that at a committee meeting held earlier this month, it was resolved to “revitalise the counterterrorism apparatus”, especially the National Counter Terrorism Authority, (responsible for making counter-terrorism and counter-extremism policies and strategies). He hoped, there “won’t be a yawning chasm between words and deeds” and the interests of the people and the state will remain paramount, not “political expediency”.
But these were only men, as the custom of segregation in public spaces is still prevalent.
However, said Zahid, in an unprecedented move, on October 21, a handful of women also protested in Madyan.
Both Noori and Gul said they, too, want to come out. “I think if there are enough women, my family will give permission,” said Gul.
Russia’s General Sergei Surovikin is no stranger to mass murder and spreading terror.
In Chechnya, the shaven-headed veteran officer, who has the physique of a wrestler and an expression to match, vowed to “destroy three Chechen fighters for every Russian soldier killed.” And he’s remembered bitterly in northern Syria for reducing much of the city of Aleppo to ruins.
The 56-year-old air force general also oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and send refugees fleeing to Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign “showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area,” noted Human Rights Watch in a scathing report.
Now he is repeating his Syrian playbook in Ukraine.
Two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin appointed Surovikin as the overall commander of Russia’s so-called special military operation, to the delight of Moscow’s hawks. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov praised Surovikin as “a real general and a warrior.” He will “improve the situation,” Kadyrov added in a social media post.
But reversing a series of stunning battlefield Ukrainian victories and shifting the tide of the war may be beyond even the ruthless Surovikin. Ukrainians have shown throughout the year they’re made of stern stuff and aren’t going to be intimidated by war crimes — and they’ve endured bombing and bombardments before by equally unscrupulous Russian generals.
But Western military officials and analysts note there are already signs of more tactical coherence than was seen under his predecessor General Alexander Dvornikov. “His war tactics totally breach the rules of war but unfortunately they proved effective in Syria,” a senior British military intelligence officer told POLITICO. “As a war strategist he has a record of effectiveness — however vicious,” the officer added.
Surovikin and other officials point to the targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with a massive wave of attacks the past week. Strikes at the weekend resulted in power outages across the country leaving more than a million households without electricity, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said Saturday.
“These are vile strikes on critical objects,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “The world can and must stop this terror,” he said. “The geography of this latest mass strike is very wide,” Zelenskyy added. “Of course we don’t have the technical ability to knock down 100 percent of the Russian missiles and strike drones. I am sure that, gradually, we will achieve that, with help from our partners. Already now, we are downing a majority of cruise missiles, a majority of drones.”
Intercepting a majority of what’s being fired by the Russians at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, though, isn’t enough to halt the disruption Surovikin is endeavoring to provoke with the strikes. The scale of the damage caused to Ukraine’s power system at the weekend exceeded what was inflicted in the first wave of strikes on energy infrastructure on October 10, according to a Telegram post by Ukrenergo, the state grid operator.
Cheap shots
Around a third of the country’s power stations have been destroyed since the attacks started, Ukrainian authorities say.
And for Russia the cost of the aerial assault is cheap, relying as it does on Iran’s Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles, basically flying bombs nicknamed “kamikaze drones” because they are destroyed on impact.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with then-PM Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Surovikin in 2017 | Pool photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
The drones, which have a flying range of 2,500 kilometers, loiter over a target until ordered to attack. With a wingspan of 2.5 meters they can be difficult to identify on radar and cost only an estimated €20,000 to make, compared, say, to cruise missiles costing up to €2 million to produce.
Last week the White House said Iranian drone experts — trainers and tech support workers — have been deployed on the ground in Russia-annexed Crimea to help launch attacks on Ukraine. “Tehran is now directly engaged on the ground, and through the provision of weapons that are impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine,” said national security spokesman John Kirby.
But turning to Iran for assistance also demonstrates a Russian weakness, says a Pentagon adviser. That they are using Iranian drones suggests they really are running out of missiles. “I don’t think their capabilities are anyway as good as they claim. I’ve always thought that the Russians were a bit of a hollow force. They don’t have depth in range with capabilities and they can’t really apply them very effectively. The fact that they’re going to Iranians for drone technology, that’s a pretty sad statement about the once vaunted Russian military-industrial or Soviet military-industrial complex,” the adviser told POLITICO.
And while the drones are helping to cause considerable damage, their light explosive payloads at 36 kilograms present the Russians with a problem – they are not powerful enough to cause “decommissioning” damage to big power stations and so are being aimed at smaller sub-stations instead. Eventually, too, Western and Ukrainian experts will find ways to jam the GPS system the drones depend on to shift them off target. So, they may have a short shelf life of effectiveness, say Western officials.
Not having sufficient depth in terms of capabilities isn’t the only problem facing Russian generals. One of the most debilitating problems for the Russians has been the lack of small-unit leadership and competent supervision on the battlefield.
Ukrainian servicemen and police officers stand guard in a street after a drone attack in Kyiv on October 17, 2022 | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
The Ukrainians since 2014 have been steeped in U.S. military doctrine and training, which focuses on building a professional corps of corporals and sergeants who understand the big picture and are given the delegated authority to make decisions on the battlefield as they lead their units, according to John Barranco, an analyst at the Atlantic Council who oversaw the U.S. Marines’ initial operations in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks and served in Iraq.
The failure of the Russians to build up such a cadre has plagued them in Ukraine and it isn’t a deficiency Surovikin has time to rectify. In fact, the situation is likely to worsen with the Kremlin now throwing into inadequately battle-trained conscripts from Putin’s partial mobilization order.
Russian retreat
After just a handful of days’ training, conscripts are already dying. And draftees are being sent to what is now the crucial front in this stage of the war — the southern port city of Kherson — where Russian authorities have ordered all residents to leave ahead of a closing advance by Ukrainian troops.
Kherson city is the only regional capital Russia has managed to seize since the invasion began. It was a key prize in establishing a land bridge between Crimea and Ukraine’s south, as well as opening the way for a potential assault on the major Black Sea port of Odesa.
But a Ukrainian counteroffensive that started in the summer is now bearing down on Kherson city. Russia’s tactical position in the area is highly compromised, with units of paratroopers dug in on the west bank of the Dnieper River, where they are highly vulnerable. “From a battlefield geometry point of view, it is a terrible position for the Russians,” Jack Watling, a land warfare expert at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, told POLITICO.
Watling, who’s been conducting operational analysis with Ukraine’s general staff, says the Russians on the west bank are among their most capable troops but can’t be resupplied reliably “at the scale needed to make them competitive” and they won’t be able to counterattack.
“The Ukrainians have the initiative and can dictate the tempo,” Watling said. “From a purely military point of view, the Russians would be much better off withdrawing from Kherson city and focusing on holding the river [from the east bank] and then putting the bulk of their forces on the Zaporizhzhia axis, but for political reasons they have been slow to do that and seem to ready to fight a delaying action.”
A view taken on October 19, 2022 shows a road sign reading “Kherson” in the town of Armyansk in the north of Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula bordering the Russian-controlled Kherson region in southern Ukraine | AFP via Getty Images
That seems in line with what Ukraine’s general staff reported at the weekend. Russian troop movements have been occurring in the Kherson region with some units preparing for urban combat, while others have been withdrawing.
In short, Surovikin is being forced to try to pull off one of the most difficult of military maneuvers — an orderly retreat to reposition forces, including draftees with scant training and units that have no cohesion. When more experienced Russian troops tried the same move near Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine last month, they suffered a rout.
Thuggery alone won’t save Russian conscripts from motivated and agile Ukrainian forces. Whether Surovikin has the tactical skills to navigate a dangerous retreat will be what counts.
Ammunition used by the Iranian secfurioty forces in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province during anti-regime protests. Credit: courtesy
by Arina Moradi (copenhagen)
Inter Press Service
COPENHAGEN, Oct 25 (IPS) – It’s been over a month since Bayan, a 30-year-old Persian language teacher, last left her home in the Kurdish city of Piranshahr, 730 northwest of Tehran. Her parents believe they must protect her from what might happen to a protester in Iran.
“I told them that I am ready to die now in this fight rather than languish to death in this country,” this woman tells IPS over the phone. Like the rest of those interviewed from the Danish capital and who live inside Iran, she doesn’t want to disclose her identity for fear of reprisals. Her family, she adds, are afraid of detention, torture and especially the possibility of being subject to sexual violence by security forces inside detention centres.
After the tragic death of Mahsa Amini -the 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died in police custody after she was detained in Tehran for “inappropriate attire”-, thousands of young women and men have been chanting “Women, Life, Freedom” in the Iranian streets since mid-September. However, there are many more Iranian women nobody has seen so far among the protesters. Like Bayan, many yearn for freedom without being able to leave their family homes.
It’s doubtless easier for the men. Despite the brutal anti-riot forces’ crackdown, Soran, Bayan’s younger brother, says he has joined almost every protest in the city. His parents have been warning him of the possible consequences too, but they can’t stop him from leaving the house.
“I tried to convince my parents to let my sister join me, but they wouldn’t allow it. So we found a safer way to participate,” the 24-year-old Kurd tells IPS. They have worked together on a list of contacts of many journalists outside of the country.
“My brother goes out to join the protests and also gather news. I contact the journalists from the list to let them know what´s going on here: I send them videos, pictures and the name of those we think have been arrested by security forces,” explains Bayan. “I hope what I do helps somehow.”
Ammunition used by the Iranian secfurioty forces in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province during anti-regime protests. Credit: courtesy
According to the state news agency IRNA, more than 1000 people including journalists have been arrested across Iran, but the actual number is estimated to be much higher.
There has been no official data on the number of detainees in Iran’s recent protests, In its October 18 report, The United Nations warned about “mass arrests of protesters,” including the detention of at least 90 civil rights activists, human rights defenders, lawyers, artists, and journalists.
Iranian journalist Niloofar Hamedi is among those captured. On September 16, Hamedi gained access to Kasra Hospital in Tehran, where Mahsa Amini was being treated following her detention by the morality police. Hamedi would later publish a photo of Amini’s parents hugging and crying in the hospital. The picture quickly spread along with Hamedi’s reporting on Amini’s death, something which eventually spiralled into nationwide protests
In the country’s capital Tehran, Neda, a 38-year-old mother of two also does her bit. Since the very beginning, she has sheltered dozens of protesters who were chased by security forces and needed a place to hide.
“It first happened on the second night of the protests in Tehran. A group of six young women and men were slamming the door asking for help as police were chasing them in the streets. It was before midnight. I opened the door as fast as possible and closed it even faster. The kids woke up and we were all in a panic. I got so emotional that I cried and hugged one of the girls. Some of them cried too. I can’t forget their young innocent faces,” the Iranian woman tells IPS over a phone conversation.
Since that night, Neda is always ready whenever there is a protest in their neighbourhood. She delivers food, water, medicines or whatever is needed by the protesters who hide from the anti-riot forces.
“One night, there was a young boy who was shot in his right leg. I called a friend of mine who is a doctor to treat him at my place. We couldn’t risk taking him to the hospital for security reasons.”
Neda says all she wants is to see the end of the Islamic Republic’s power. “I wish to see my kids growing up in a country where there is respect for women, freedom, and equality. I just want to see the fall of this regime with my own eyes.”
However, she finds it difficult to convince her husband to let her leave the house and join the protesters in the streets.
“Everybody expects a mother of two to stay home with the kids. I feel like I am on fire. I stay at home while these young people risk their lives being in the streets. Sometimes I feel so powerless and guilty,” she admits.
Women in Saqqez, Kurdistan province, holding hands amid anti-regime protests in October 12, 2022. Credit: Courtesy
Behind the slogan
As of October 15, at least 215 people including 27 children have been killed in the protests in Iran, Norway-based group Iran Human Rights reported.
“The reckless state violence which has even targeted children and prisoners, along with the false narratives presented by Islamic Republic officials, make it more crucial than ever for the international community to establish an independent mechanism under the supervision of the UN to investigate and hold the perpetrators of such gross human rights violations accountable,” the organization’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said in the report.
On October 17, Amnesty International also called on the UN Human Rights Council to hold a special session on Iran “as a matter of urgency” and urged the Council to establish “an independent mechanism with investigative, reporting and accountability functions to address the most serious crimes under international law and other gross human rights violations committed in Iran.”
Iranian authorities have blamed the west for instigating the unrest. “Who would believe that the death of a girl is so important to Westerners?” the country’s foreign minister, Hussein Amir Abdollahian, said on October 15.
Despite the growing crackdown by Iranian security forces, protests keep spreading all across the country thanks to people like 41-year-old Hana. She lives with her husband and their two kids in Bukan, 478 kilometres west of Tehran, in Azerbaijan province. This city of around 200,000 has seen waves of protests and public strikes in the past month. However, she could not join the protesters in the streets.
“I stayed home to take care of the children and my husband went out to protest. He believes that kids need me more than they need him in case of detention, injuries or even death due to the security forces’ brutal crackdown on the protesters,” Hana tells IPS over the phone.
She owns a women’s clothing shop and she has joined all the strikes to show objection to the state. The security forces have broken her shop’s windows and many others in the city as a tactic to force them to end the strike.
“I didn’t give up. It’s the least I could do to contribute to the uprising,” says the Iranian woman. “Women, life, and freedom,” she insists, is much more than a slogan.
“It’s a lifetime goal for most Iranian women who have been suffering all kinds of pressure from their families, from society and, above all, from the state and its anti-women laws.”
Republicans in general favor less immigration than Democrats. For example, a national Gallup poll in July 2022 found that the proportion saying immigration to America should be decreased was 69 percent among Republicans versus 17 percent among Democrats. Credit: Guillermo Arias / IPS
Opinion by Joseph Chamie (portland, usa)
Inter Press Service
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 24 (IPS) – Given the upcoming midterm elections in the United States and the consequences of the outcome for domestic legislation and programs as well as the country’s foreign policy, it’s useful and fitting to review fundamental differences between America’s two major political parties on vital demographic issues.
On virtually every major demographic issue, including reproduction, mortality, immigration, ethnic composition, gender, marriage and population ageing, significant divides exist between the Democrats and Republicans (Figure 1). Those divides have significant consequences and implications for current and future government policies and programs.
Source: Various U.S. public opinion surveys.
Those divides on vital demographic matters, which have become increasingly politicized by the two major parties, are reinforcing political polarization and partisan antipathy across the country and hindering the economic, social and cultural development of the United States.
With respect to reproduction, while most Democrats are in favor of a woman’s legal access to abortion, most Republicans are not. For example, a March 2022 PEW national survey found that proportion of Democrats saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases was more than twice that of Republicans, i.e., 80 versus 38 percent.
Also, Gallup polls indicate a widening gap since the late 1980s between Democrats and Republicans on the circumstances permitting abortion. By 2022, for example, the proportions of Democrats and Republicans saying abortions should be legal under any circumstances were 57 and 10 percent, respectively (Figure 2).
Source: Gallup.
A similar difference on abortion is evident among members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court. While Congressional Democrats are largely in favor codifying access to abortion and safeguards to the right to travel across state lines to undergo the procedure, Congressional Republicans are opposed to such access and safeguards. And the recent Supreme Court abortion decision ending the right to abortion reflects the divides in the views of justices appointed by Republican and Democrat administrations.
Concerning access to birth control methods, the vote on the recently passed bill by the House of Representatives was mostly along party lines. All but eight Republicans opposed the bill that aims to ensure access to contraception. In the Senate, the birth control measure is expected to fail as most Republicans are likely to be against it.
On mortality and morbidity issues, Congressional Democratic and Republican leaders are also divided. A notable example of that divide has been the sustained Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act enacted by Democrats more than a decade ago.
Recent research has also found that more premature deaths occur in Republican-leaning counties than in Democratic-leaning counties. The policies adopted by Democratic-leaning states compared to those in Republican states are believed to have contributed to the greater divide in mortality outcomes. Those policies include Medicaid expansion, health care access, minimum wage legislation, tobacco control, gun legislation, and drug addiction treatment.
The early responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was transformed from a public health concern into a major political issue, also reflect the divide in mortality outcomes between Democrats and Republicans. While mask wearing, social distancing, and related preventive measures were often stressed by most Democratic officials, many Republican leaders resisted such measures and downplayed the risks of the coronavirus.
Those partisan differences concerning the COVID-19 pandemic were reflected in the behavior and attitudes of Republicans and Democrats across the country. As a result of those attitudinal and behavioral differences, Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat-leaning counties.
With respect to immigration, Republicans in general favor less immigration than Democrats. For example, a national Gallup poll in July 2022 found that the proportion saying immigration to America should be decreased was 69 percent among Republicans versus 17 percent among Democrats. The rise for decreased immigration during the past several years is primarily due to Republicans, whose desire for reducing immigration increased by 21 points since June 2020 compared to an increase of 4 points among Democrats (Figure 3).
Source: Gallup.
To address immigration levels, the former Republican administration advocated building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and limiting the granting of asylum claims. In contrast, most Democratic leaders have not been in favor of erecting a border wall. Also, the current Democratic administration has been removing obstacles to granting asylum claims, including ending the former administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Concerning the more than 11 million illegal immigrants residing in the country, the former Republican administration wanted to ban counting them in the 2020 census. The desired exclusion of undocumented migrants in the census enumeration was aimed at not including them when determining Congressional representation. The current Democratic administration, in contrast, includes undocumented migrants in the census count and determining Congressional representation.
On whether to offer an amnesty to immigrants living unlawfully in the country, a wide divide exists between the two major political parties. While Democrats are largely in favor of offering illegal immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship, many Republicans oppose granting an amnesty to those who are unlawfully resident in the country. A PEW survey in August 2022, for example, found the proportion in favor of a path to U.S. citizenship among Democrats was more than double the level among the Republicans, 80 versus 37 percent, respectively.
Regarding the changing ethnic composition of the U.S. population, Democrats tend to view the changes more favorably than Republicans. For example, one national PEW survey found Democrats three times more likely than Republicans to say a majority nonwhite population will strengthen America’s customs and values, i.e., 42 and 13 percent, respectively.
Similar divides between Democrats and Republicans were found with respect to interracial marriage and same-sex marriage. The growth of interracial marriage is considered to be a good thing for the country by a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans, 61 and 33 percent, respectively. Also, Democrats have been consistently more likely than Republicans to say that same-sex marriages should recognized by the law as valid, with the proportions in 2022 at 83 and 55 percent, respectively (Figure 4).
Source: Gallup.
Democrats and Republicans also differ in their views about gender identity. While a national PEW survey found 80 percent of Republicans saying that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex assigned at birth, 64 percent of Democrats took the opposite view, believing that a person’s gender can be different from the sex assigned at birth.
Moreover, the majority of Republicans, 57 percent, say that society has gone too far in accepting people who are transgender, compared to 12 percent of Democrats.
On the issue of population ageing, noteworthy policy differences with program implications exist between Democrats and Republicans. In general, Republican leaders have resisted government entitlement programs established by Democrats, such as Social Security and Medicare, preferring reliance on the private sector, freedom of choice and individual responsibility.
Republican leaders have proposed replacing those major programs for older Americans with private investment accounts and a voucher system for health insurance. In addition, some Republicans recommend eliminating Social Security and Medicare as federal entitlement programs and have them become programs approved by Congress annually as discretionary spending.
A similar political divide exists among Americans concerning the provision of long-term care that the elderly may need. One national PEW survey in 2019 reported that while two-thirds of Democrats say the government should be mostly responsible for paying for that care for the elderly, 40 percent of Republicans have that view.
In sum, significant divides currently exist between Democrats and Republicans on nearly every major demographic issue facing the United States. Those divides are being politicized by the two parties, reinforcing political polarization and partisan antipathy across the country, which in turn are affecting domestic legislation and foreign policy as well as hampering America’s progress in the 21st century.
Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”
The United Nations Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (SPT) suspended its tour of Australian prisons on Sunday, citing a lack of cooperation from officials who denied them access to some detention facilities.
In a statement, the SPT said its staff were prevented from entering some places where people were being held, and in some cases were not given “all the relevant information and documentation” they requested.
“Given that OPCAT applies to all federal states without limitations or exceptions, it is concerning that four years after it ratified the Optional Protocol, Australia appears to have done little to ensure consistent implementation of OPCAT obligations across the country,” said the head of the four-person delegation, Aisha Shujune Muhammad.
Australia is one of 91 signatories to the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT), which aims to protect the human rights of detained people.
OPCAT had planned to visit the country’s facilities in 2020 to ensure compliance but the trip was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Australia has also delayed key requirements of the agreement, including establishing an independent torture prevention monitoring body, officially known as the National Mechanism for Prevention of Torture (NPM), according to the UN subcommittee.
Officials finally arrived in the country for the start of the planned 12-day tour on October 16, but encountered problems accessing some sites in Queensland and New South Wales (NSW).
Police officers barred officials from entering a detention facility in Queanbeyan, NSW, said the state’s Corrective Services Minister Geoff Lee, who praised their work in an interview on local radio.
“We don’t torture people,” he told radio station 2GB. “Why should I help taxpayers … foot the bill for the UN coming to Australia? Aren’t they better off to go to places like Iran?”
The issue relates to a long-running dispute over who should pay for any improvements made to Australian facilities as a result of any recommendations made by the UN – states want the federal government to pick up the tab.
On Monday, Australia’s Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said the UN decision was “disappointing” and the country remained committed to the agreement.
“The suspension of the visit does not change the Australian government’s commitment to promoting and protecting human rights domestically and internationally,” he said.
The Australian Human Rights Law Centre issued a statement Monday signed by 79 rights advocates and advocacy groups, calling on the New South Wales and Queensland state governments to fully adhere to the country’s international obligations on torture prevention.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said state prisons keep “the highest standards anywhere in the world” and independent processes are in place to monitor conditions.
In a statement, Queensland Health said officials were denied access to some inpatient units due to provisions in the state’s Mental Health Act to “preserve the safety and privacy of people with severe mental illness.”
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaczszuk said the state looked forward to working with the UN on whatever access they need “under the conditions.”
Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sunday secured an unprecedented third term as general secretary of China’s Communist Party, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
The appointment comes after a week-long party congress during which the 69-year-old leader tightened his grip over the country, making him possibly the world’s most powerful individual, according to some analysts. And it paves the way for him to get another five-year term as the country’s president at the annual legislative session in March and to continue his confrontational line with the West.
Beijing has grown increasingly aggressive on both the military and economic fronts while cozying up to a warmongering Russia.
At 69, Xi has has surpassed the informal retirement age of 68 and could be in a position for life-long rule. In 2018, Xi scrapped the presidential two-term limit, allowing him to rule indefinitely.
In a dramatic scene on Saturday during the highly choreographed meeting, former Chinese President Hu Jintao was unexpectedly escorted out of the closing ceremony of the Communist party congress, in what was seen by some as a sign of Hu deterring health and by others as a symbolic scene of Xi’s strengthened powers.
He appointed to the party’s Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top governing body, officials who analysts say are his proteges and allies. Among them they mention for example Wang Huning, described as the ideologue who has shaped Xi’s nationalist views; Cai Qi, whose ties with Xi go back over two decades; and Ding Xuexiang, a close Xi aide who often travels with the president.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a congratulatory message to Xi on his third term, the Kremlin said. Putin told the Chinese president that he looked forward to further developing the “comprehensive relationship and strategic alliance between our two states.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is planning a trip to China next month and is set to be the first Western leader to greet Xi as the newly re-appointed leader. EU leaders at a meeting on Friday discussed the bloc’s line over China.
While Scholz insisted that the EU must remain a beacon of global trade, even with China, others such as outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said that many leaders during the discussion stressed that “we must not repeat the fact that we have been indifferent, indulgent, superficial in our relations with Russia.”
And they also stressed that “those that look like business ties … are part of an overall direction of the Chinese system, so they must be treated as such,” Draghi added.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Opinion by Soraya M. Deen, Christine M. Sequenzia (los angeles / washington dc)
Inter Press Service
LOS ANGELES / WASHINGTON DC, Oct 21 (IPS) – Eleven out of 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) still sanction the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy, silencing their citizens and emboldening violence by non-state actors.
For the past 70 years, Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights has condemned capital punishment for religious offenses, a global standard shared during our recent visit to the UN headquarters in New York.
As a prelude to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) high-level meetings in mid-September, we led the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable Campaign to Eliminate Blasphemy and Apostasy Laws, urging UN members to stand in strong support during two paramount resolutions calling for an end to the death penalty and extrajudicial killings.
We urge the insertion of language codifying the death penalty never being imposed as a sanction for non-violent conduct such as blasphemy and apostasy. The effort produced an encouraging response by Nigerian third committee officials who renewed their commitment to freedom of religion or belief by supporting embedded language in both the moratorium on the death penalty and a resolution on renouncing the death penalty for extrajudicial killings.
In the days that followed our visit, the world has witnessed the outrage of human rights activists and concerned global citizens with the death of Masha Amini, an Iranian Muslim woman who was arrested and subsequently died in the custody of Iranian morality police for a violation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s compulsory hijab mandate.
Brutal cases like these will only cease when government officials in Iran, and other egregious human rights violators, listen to the cries of their people and uphold globally recognized human rights declarations. These include statutes supporting international religious freedom or belief, and the repeal of apostasy and blasphemy laws.
When most countries around the world and the majority of Muslim nations are taking concrete steps to abolish capital punishment for perceived religious offenses such as blasphemy and apostasy, some refuse to modernize their legislation, thus branding themselves as the worst violators of internationally recognized basic human rights.
This staunch obsession with upholding persecutory laws and implementing the harshest of punishments, violates religious freedoms – the right to life and the right to freedom of religion or belief. This misinterpretation of scripture is an abuse of Islam, tarnishing the image of Muslims around the world and a disregard to Gods mercy, a belief that transcends faith orientation.
The multidisciplinary and multifaith delegation from the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Campaign urged UN members, including: Luxemburg, Canada, and Sri Lanka, to raise their voices loudly in favor of embedded international religious freedom language in two resolutions which will come up for a vote during the UNGA in November.
Penholders Australia and Costa Rica are calling for a moratorium on the death penalty which is only supported by the IRF Campaign with the addition of specific language ensuring the death penalty never be imposed for non-violent conduct such as apostasy or blasphemy.
Likewise, Finland, as penholder for the UNGA resolution on extrajudicial executions, is being asked by global advocates to add language on freedom of religion or belief, emphasizing the necessity for States to take effective measures to repeal laws currently allowing the death penalty for religious offences, such as criminalization of conversion and expression of religion or belief as a preventative measure.
Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is clear – everyone has the right to freedom of religion or belief. Yet, 11 States today maintain the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy. We raise the voices of the voiceless, such as Pakistani woman Aneeqa Ateeq who was sentenced to death for blasphemy in January 2022 after being manipulated into a religious debate online by a man who she romantically refused.
Also, an 83-year-old Somali man, Hassan Tohow Fidow, who was sentenced to death for blasphemy by an al-Shabaab militant court and subsequently horrifically executed by firing squad; and a 22-year-old Nigerian Islamic gospel singer Yahaya Sharif-Aminu who was sentenced to death for blasphemy because one of his songs allegedly praised an Imam higher than the Prophet.
As an outcome of our UN advocacy, we pray that the 11 Muslim member states—Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen– join in the common-sense repeal of the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy as a great step toward becoming civilized nations.
The majority of OIC member nations who do not sanction the death penalty for religious offenses should be regarded as examples of modernity and humanity and their path to restore and uphold basic human rights should be replicated.
The Qur’an says, “There shall be no compulsion in religion; the right way has become distinct from the wrong way.” (Qur’an 2:256). Likewise, we read passages like 18:26:, “And say, ‘The truth is from your Lord. Whoever wills – let him believe. And whoever wills – let him disbelieve,” and “whoever among you renounces their own faith and dies a disbeliever, their deeds will become void in this life and in the Hereafter (Qur’an 2:217).”
The holy book, which serves as a moral compass for the laws in OIC member nations, upholds the right to freedom of religion or belief which has been recognized by the OIC majority.
As has been recently witnessed in Iran, when civil society activates around globally recognized human rights, the world takes note. The OIC asserts its purpose “to preserve and promote the foundational Islamic values of peace, compassion, tolerance, equality, justice and human dignity” and “to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, good governance, rule of law, democracy, and accountability”.
To that end, with the passage of both critical UN resolutions, OIC members will face the controversial and politically sensitive task of calling out other OIC colleagues who continue to violate human rights by imposing the death sentence upon individuals for exercising their right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.
We assert that it is a societal problem as much as it is a reflection of the deficiency of democratic values and principles.
Embedding international religious freedom language in both resolutions calling for the repeal of the death penalty will be strengthened with the strong support of the 46 OIC nations and other human rights champion nations in the days ahead.
We are encouraged by Saudi Arabian scholar, Dr. Mohammad Al-Issa of the Muslim World Alliance, who travels the world sharing the unanimously approved Charter of Makkah – a document affirming differences among people and beliefs as part of God’s will and wisdom.
Our collective voice must be unwavering in its call and commitment to repeal the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy as a primary step towards upholding theologies of love and compassion, building toward human flourishing.
Dr. Christine M. Sequenzia, MDiv is co-chair IRF Campaign to Eliminate Blasphemy and Apostasy Laws; Soraya M. Deen, Esq. is lawyer, community organizer, founder, Muslim Women Speakers, and co-chair International Religious Freedom (IRF) Women’s Working Group
Ian Fry, Australian National University Professor and Tuvalu’s former ambassador for Climate Change for over 21 years, was appointed in May by the UN Human Rights Council, as the first Special Rapporteur on climate, following the overwhelming vote to recognize the Right to a Healthy Environment, in 2021.
“Human-induced climate change is the largest, most pervasive threat to the natural environment and societies the world has ever experienced, and the poorest countries are paying the heaviest price”, the expert told delegates.
Mr. Fry highlighted the “enormous injustice” perpetrated by rich countries and major corporations, which are not acting to reduce their greenhouse emissions, and consequently failing the poorest and least able to cope.
“The G20 members, for instance, account for 78 per cent of emissions over the last decade”, he underscored.
The Special Rapporteur sat down with UN News before delivering his report, which focuses on three areas: mitigation action, loss and damage, access and inclusion, and the protection of climate rights defenders.
He spoke about what he hopes the upcoming UN Climate Conference in Egypt (COP27) will achieve, addressed some of the climate-action challenges given the war in Ukraine, and shared some of the recommendations he made to member states, including the call for a High-Level Forum to be held next year.
UN Video screenshot
Ian Fry, Special Rapporteur for the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, sits down for an interview with UN News.
UN NEWS: Can you please explain what is the focus of your first report to the General Assembly?
IAN FRY: The main issues are those coming up at the COP in Egypt.
First, issues around improving action on mitigation to get countries to commit to more action. We know that there’s not enough being done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so I want to bring attention to that and look at the human rights implications of not doing enough on climate change.
The next issue is precisely the consequences of that, and I’m looking at the issue of loss and damage. These are the huge impacts that countries are suffering as a consequence of climate change and the huge costs that are involved. To date, there have been discussions around establishing a Loss and Damage fund, but that’s been moving very slowly, so I’m hoping to build further momentum to work on getting that fund agreed, and up and running.
The final issue is around access and inclusion. This is getting people who are most affected by climate change to be able to present their voices to climate change meetings. This is women, children, youth, people with disabilities, indigenous peoples, all the groups that are right at the forefront of climate change and human rights impacts. We need to find ways of getting their voice into the climate change process.
UN NEWS: What is the connection between human rights and these issues we see related to climate action
If we think about the floods in Nigeria and Pakistan, and the severe drought that’s occurring in Somalia now, people’s human rights are being affected as a consequence of climate change.
These are millions of people around the world whose basic enjoyment of human rights is being affected. So, we have to make that connection, we have to put a human face to climate change.
On 3 September 2022, four-year-old Rahim stands on the rubble of his house, destroyed by the floods in Pakistan.
UN NEWS: In the last UN Climate Conference, which was held in Glasgow in 2021, member states signed a declaration which finalized the negotiations of outstanding terms of the Paris Agreement. What do you expect countries will be speaking about during the upcoming COP in Egypt?
Well, there are a number of issues on the table. We’re leading up to what’s called the Global Stocktake [in 2023], this is a review of the implementation of the Paris Agreement. So, there are processes involved in establishing this review process.
I think that the crunch issue will be around this whole loss and damage debate. We’ve seen pushback by some key countries around advancing the issue, but the developing countries have unanimously said “we want loss and damage on the agenda” and civil society is saying the same thing.
UN NEWS: And what are the challenges regarding the loss and damage issue?
Well, there are major developed countries that are quite concerned about it and looking at this issue from the perspective of what the polluter pays. At the moment, the countries most affected by climate change and suffering the costs are having to deal with those costs themselves.
I was recently in Bangladesh and saw firsthand the impacts of climate change. And it’s unfair for countries like Bangladesh to have to deal with the cost of climate change on their own, which is not of their own making. So, the most vulnerable countries produce the least amount of emissions, yet they’re paying the cost of the damage from climate change.
So, it’s time the big countries, the major emitters, stood up and said, “we’ve got to do something, we’ve got to make a contribution to these vulnerable countries”.
Villagers in Pakistan’s Khairpur Mirs District in Sindh province cross flooded land to get to their homes.
UN NEWS: For you what would be the best outcome of this COP?
I’ve put forward a number of recommendations in my report. One of them is to commence a process to establish this Loss and Damage Fund.
We also must have a process to ensure greater participation, particularly for civil society, youth, and women groups, and to open up the COP to these groups to have a better say.
I would also like to see a revision of the Gender Action Plan since it’s quite old, it’s not well-developed. We know that there are critical issues of climate change impacts on women and young people, and those issues need to be brought and put forward onto the Agenda and Action Plan developed to address those issues.
There is a whole host of other issues that I’m looking at advancing. For example, the issue of increasing mitigation. I’m trying to suggest that parties should call for the UN Secretary-General to hold a special summit next year on ramping up pledging to reduce their emissions.
So hopefully that will come forward as well.
IOM/Anne Schaefer
An aerial view of N’djamena following heavy rains in August 2022.
UN NEWS: Since the Right to a Healthy Environment was declared a Universal Human Right, have you seen any changes implemented by countries?
I think countries are starting to see how they can implement that resolution. There’s certainly dialogue within countries.
I know the European Union is having discussions about how to incorporate that resolution within their national legislation, within constitutions. And I think regional bodies are also looking at that to develop regional agreements that bring on board that resolution.
UN NEWS: Do you think is possible at this point to keep the goal of curbing global warming to 1,5 degrees?
Well, it’s a challenge. We’re not seeing that with the current Nationally Determined Contributions and the sort of commitments that have been made by countries.
We’re heading on a pathway towards two to three degrees Celsius, so there has to be a lot more action to get countries to reduce their emissions.
The complication, of course, is the Ukraine war, where we’re seeing countries sort of having to find old sources of fossil fuel energy to replace what they’ve been deprived of, as a consequence of the war. So that’s the problem, and that’s been a distraction as well.
However, there’s a good side to it, I think countries are also saying that they need to be self-sufficient in energy and the cheapest way to do so is with renewable energy.
And we’re seeing Portugal moving towards 100 per cent renewable, we know Denmark is also doing that, and I think that will drive other countries to see the need to be renewable and self-sufficient in their energy.
Human Rights High Commissioner Volker Türk has deplored the deadly use of force against demonstrators, including killings by live ammunition, the Office said in a statement.
Thousands took to the streets in the capital, N’Djamena, and other cities on Thursday, to protest the 24-month extension of the transition to civilian rule.
‘Lethal repression’
Some 50 people were killed, including a journalist, and nearly 300 were injured.
“Our Office has also received reports of violence by protesters following the lethal repression, including attacks on property. We call for calm and for all sides to show restraint,” said OHCHR Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani.
Reports indicate that at least 500 people were arrested. OHCHR has called for all persons detained for exercising their rights to peaceful assembly to be promptly released.
The protests erupted on the day the military were due to hand over power.
Political transition delayed
Chad has faced a political crisis since longtime President, Idriss Déby, died battling rebels in the north in April 2021.
The military installed his son, Mahamat Idriss Deby, who was supposed to step down on Thursday, but says he will rule for another two years.
Ms. Shamdasani said OHCHR’s Chad Office received information from sources that several hundred protesters, mostly young people, started demonstrating in N´Djamena early on Thursday.
Internal security forces used tear gas and fired live ammunition to disperse the protestors.
Respect human rights
OHCHR reminded the Chadian authorities of their obligation to protect and respect human rights, including the right to life, and to ensure that citizens can exercise their rights to peaceful assembly as well as freedom of opinion and expression.
“Defence and security forces must refrain from the use of force against peaceful protesters and ensure that force is not used unless strictly necessary and, if so, in full compliance with the principles of legality, precaution, and proportionality,” said Ms. Shamdasani.
OHCHR also urged the authorities to conduct impartial, prompt and effective investigations into any human rights violations that may have occurred, “including the apparent use of unnecessary or disproportionate force to disperse protests.”
IOM/Anne Schaefer
An aerial view of N’djamena following heavy rains in August 2022.
Devastating flooding
The crisis is occurring as Chad faces flooding affecting one million people. The heavy rains began in July, and 18 out of 23 provinces have been impacted.
Several neighborhoods in the capital are entirely submerged, and people have been forced to flee their homes, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Thursday.
He added that some 465,000 hectares of agricultural land have been destroyed, which could further aggravate the already critical food insecurity situation in the country.
The UN and partners have so far delivered food, medicine, tents, mosquito nets, solar lamps and other items to some 200,000 people.
“The humanitarian community and Government’s joint flood response plan seeks nearly $70 million to reach 800,000 people, but so far it received only 25 per cent of the funding it needs,” said Mr. Dujarric.
The partners are ramping up efforts to mobilize resources to reach more people.
Civil society organisations at the Finance in Common Summit. Credit: Noel Emmanuel Zako
Opinion by Bibbi Abruzzini (abidjan, ivory coast)
Inter Press Service
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Oct 21 (IPS) – A coalition of civil society organisations is demanding public development banks (PDBs) to take radical and innovative steps to tackle human rights violations and environmental destruction. No project funded by PDBs should come at the expenses of vulnerable groups, the environment and collective liberties, but should instead embody the voices of communities, democratic values and environmental justice.
The demands, part of a collective statement signed by more than 50 civil society organisations, come as over 450 PDBs gather in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, from October 19th, for a third international summit, dubbed Finance in Common.
The COVID-19 pandemic and climate emergency, coupled with human rights violations and increasing risks for activists worldwide, is bringing the need to change current practices into even sharper focus. While public development banks may drag their feet on addressing intersecting and structural inequalities, civil society organisations are taking actions aimed at creating dignified livelihoods by embedding development with concrete affirmative measures towards climate, social, gender, and racial justice.
PDBs cannot be reluctant to act. They need to hit the target when it comes to supporting the transformation of economies and financial systems towards sustainability and addressing the most pressing needs of citizens worldwide – from food systems to increasing support for a just transition towards truly sustainable energy sources. PDBs must recognise that public services are the foundation of fair and just societies, rather than encouraging their privatisation and keep austerity narratives alive.
9 out of 10 people live in countries where civic freedoms are severely restricted, and with an environmental activist killed every two days on average over the past decade, development banks have an obligation to recognize and incorporate human rights in their plans and actions, following a “do not harm” duty.
Civil society organisations at the Finance in Common Summit. Credit: Noel Emmanuel Zako
Communities cannot be left out of the door. They need to be given the space to play the rightful role of driving forces in the answers to today’s global challenges, without them PDBs will move backwards rather than forward – and this means more environmental degradation, less democratic participation, and to put it bluntly an even greater crisis than the one we are facing today. And nobody needs that.
The recommendations in the collective civil society statement emerge from a three-year process of engagement and exchange, involving civil society networks in an effort to shape PDBs policies and projects. You can find some of their words and messages below.
As the call for accountability grows, the Finance in Common summits are an opportunity for PDBs to show moral leadership and help remedy the lack of long-term collaborations with civil society, communities and indigenous groups, threatening to curtail development narratives and practices.
Here are the messages from civil society organisations from around the globe directed at public development banks.
Oluseyi Oyebisi, Executive Director of Nigeria Network of NGOs (NNNGO) the Nigerian national network of 3,700 NGOs said: “The Sahara and Sahel countries especially have been facing the most serious security crisis in their history linked with climate change, social justice and inequalities in the region. Marked by strong economic (lack of opportunities especially for young people), social (limitation of equitable access to basic social services) and climatic vulnerabilities, the region has some of the lowest human development indicators in the world – even before the covid pandemic. Access to affected populations is limited in some localities due to three main factors: the security situation, the poor state of infrastructures and difficult geographic conditions. PDBs must prioritise civil society organisations and Communities initiatives supporting state programs of decentralization, security sector reforms and reconciliation. This will help reduce the vulnerability of populations and prevent violent extremism.”
Mavalow Christelle Kalhoule, Forus Chair and President of Spong, the NGO network of Burkina Faso said: “Development projects shape our world; from the ways we navigate our cities to how rural landscapes are being transformed. Ultimately, they impact the ways we interact with one another, with plants and animals, with other countries and with the food on our plates. The decisions taken by public development banks are therefore existential. Such responsibility comes with an even greater one to include communities directly concerned by development projects, those whose air, water and everyday lives are affected for generations to come. For this to happen, public development banks must reinforce their long-term efforts to create dialogue with civil society organisations, social movements and indigenous communities in order to fortify the democratic principles of their work. We encourage them to listen, to ask and to cooperate in innovative ways so that development stays true to its original definition of progress and positive change; a collective, participative and fair process and a word which has a meaning not for a few, but for all.”
Tity Agbahey, Africa Regional Coordinator, Coalition for human rights in development said: “Many in civil society have expressed concerns about Finance in Common as a space run by elites, that fails to be truly inclusive. It is a space where the mainstream top-down approach to development, instead of being challenged, is further reinforced. Once again, the leaders of the public development banks gathered at this Summit will be taking decisions on key issues without listening to those most affected by their projects and the real development experts: local communities, human rights defenders, Indigenous Peoples, feminist groups, civil society. They will speak about “sustainability”, while ignoring the protests against austerity policies and rising debt. They will speak about “human rights”, while ignoring those denouncing human rights violations in the context of their projects. They will speak about “green and just transition”, while continuing to support projects that contribute to climate change.”
Comlan Julien AGBESSI, Regional Coordinator of the Network of National NGO Platforms of West Africa (REPAOC), a regional coalition of 15 national civil society platforms said: “Regardless of how they are perceived by the public authorities in the various countries, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) contribute to covering the aspects and spaces not reached or insufficiently reached by national development programmes. Despite the undeniable impact of their actions on the living conditions of populations, NGOs remain the poor cousins of donor funding, apart from the support of certain philanthropic or charitable organisations. In such a context of scarce funding opportunities, aggravated by the health crisis due to COVID-19 and the subsequent economic crisis, Pooled Finance, which is in fact a paradigm shift, appears to be a lifeline for CSOs. This is why REPAOC welcomes the commitments made by both the Public Development Banks and the Multilateral Development Banks to directly support CSO projects and programmes in the same way as they usually do with governments and the private sector. Through the partnership agreements that we hope and pray for between CSOs and banks, the latter can be assured that the actions that will be envisaged for the benefit of rural and urban communities will certainly reach them with the guarantees of accountability that their new CSO partners offer”.
Frank Vanaerschot, Director of Counter Balance, said: “As one of this year’s organisers of the Finance in Common Summit, the EIB will brag about the billions it invests in development. The truth is the bank will be pushing the EU’s own commercial interests and promoting the use of public money for development in the Global South to guarantee profits for private investors. Reducing inequalities will be second-place at best. The EIB is also co-hosting the summit despite systemic human rights violations in projects it finances from Nepal to Kenya. Instead, the EIB and other public banks should work to empower local communities by investing in the public services needed for human rights to be respected, such as publicly owned and governed healthcare and education – not on putting corporate profits above all else.”
Stephanie Amoako, Senior Policy Associate at Accountability Counsel said: “PDBs must be accountable to the communities impacted by their projects. All PDBs need to have an effective accountability mechanism to address concerns with projects and should commit to preventing and fully remediating any harm to communities”.
Jyotsna Mohan Singh, Regional Coordinator, Asia Development Alliance said: “PDBs should have a normative core; they should start with the rights framework. This means grounding all safeguards into all the various rights frameworks that already exist. There are rights instruments for indigenous people, the elderly, women, youth, and people living with disability. They are part and parcel of a whole host of both global conventions and regional conventions. Their approach should be grounded in those rights, then it will be on a very firm footing.
Asian governments need to support, implement, and apply strict environmental laws and regulations for all PDBs projects. The first step is to disseminate public information and conduct open and effective environmental impact assessments for all these projects, as well as strategic environmental assessments for infrastructure and cross-border projects.”
Hyundai Motor Co, Korea’s top automaker, is investigating child labor violations in its U.S. supply chain and plans to “sever ties” with Hyundai suppliers in Alabama found to have relied on underage workers, the company’s global chief operating officer Jose Munoz told Reuters on Wednesday.
A Reuters investigative report in July documented children, including a 12-year-old, working at a Hyundai-controlled metal stamping plant in rural Luverne, Alabama, called SMART Alabama, LLC.
Following the Reuters report, Alabama’s state Department of Labor, in coordination with federal agencies, began investigating SMART Alabama. Authorities subsequently launched a child labor probe at another of Hyundai’s regional supplier plants, Korean-operated SL Alabama, finding children as young as age 13.
In an interview before a Reuters event in Detroit on Wednesday, Munoz said Hyundai intends to “sever relations” with the two Alabama supplier plants under scrutiny for deploying underage labor “as soon as possible.”
In addition, Munoz told Reuters he had ordered a broader investigation into Hyundai’s entire network of U.S. auto parts suppliers for potential labor law violations and “to ensure compliance.”
Munoz’s comments represent the Korean automotive giant’s most substantive public acknowledgment to date that child labor violations may have occurred in its U.S. supply chain, a network of dozens of mostly Korean-owned auto-parts plants that supply Hyundai’s massive vehicle assembly plant in Montgomery, Alabama.
Hyundai’s $1.8 billion flagship U.S. assembly plant in Montgomery produced nearly half of the 738,000 vehicles the automaker sold in the United States last year, according to company figures.
The executive also pledged that Hyundai would push to stop relying on third party labor suppliers at its southern U.S. operations.
As Reuters reported, migrant children from Guatemala found working at SMART Alabama, LLC and SL Alabama had been hired by recruiting or staffing firms in the region. In a statement to Reuters this week, Hyundai said it had already stopped relying on at least one labor recruiting firm that had been hiring for SMART.
Munoz told Reuters: “Hyundai is pushing to stop using third party labor suppliers, and oversee hiring directly.”
Munoz did not offer further detail into how long Hyundai’s probe of its U.S. supply chain would take, when Hyundai or any partner plants could end their dependence on third party staffing firms for labor, or when Hyundai could end commercial relationships with two existing Alabama suppliers investigated for child labor violations by U.S. authorities.
In a statement on Wednesday, SL Alabama said it had taken “aggressive steps to remedy the situation” as soon it learned a subcontractor had provided underage workers. It terminated its relationship with the staffing firm, took more direct control of the hiring process and hired a law firm to conduct an audit of its employment practices, it said.
SMART Alabama did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Munoz’s comments come on the same day that an investor group working with union pension funds sent a letter to Hyundai, pushing it to respond to reports of child labor at U.S. parts suppliers, and warning of potential reputational damage to the Korean automaker.
The letter said that the use of child labor violated international standards Hyundai committed to in its Human Rights Charter and its own code of conduct for suppliers.
Washington, DC — A top civil rights group in the United States has asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling that upheld an Arkansas state law penalising companies that boycott Israel.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a petition on Thursday asking the top court to take up the case, arguing the Appeals Court decision violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects the right to free speech.
“When a state singles out particular boycotts for special penalties, as Arkansas has done here, it not only infringes the right to boycott — it also transgresses the First Amendment’s core prohibition on content and viewpoint discrimination,” ACLU lawyers wrote in their filing.
In June, the appeals court ruled in favour of the law, saying boycotts fall under commercial activity, not “expressive conduct” guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The law follows similar measures passed by dozens of US states to curtail the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which pushes to pressure Israel through non-violent means to end abuses against Palestinians.
Several rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have said Israel’s treatment of Palestinians amounts to apartheid.
The Arkansas case started in 2018 when The Arkansas Times, a publication in the city of Little Rock, sued the state after refusing to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel to win an advertising contract from a public university.
The law requires contractors that do not sign the pledge to reduce their fees by 20 percent.
A federal district court initially dismissed the lawsuit but a three-judge appeals panel blocked the law in 2021, ruling it violates the First Amendment. In June, a full appeals court reversed the panel’s decision, essentially reviving the law.
The Supreme Court is the final level of appeal and review in the US judicial system. If the top court refuses to take up the case, the appeals court’s decision will stand.
The nine-seat Supreme Court has a conservative majority with three justices appointed by former President Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel.
Rights advocates have warned that anti-boycott measures do not only push to unconstitutionally silence Palestinian rights activism but also threaten free speech rights in general — and are being used to restrict boycotts of other entities, including the fossil fuel industry.
Brain Hauss, a senior staff lawyer with the ACLU, said the June decision to uphold the anti-BDS law in Arkansas “badly misreads” legal precedents and withdraws protection for freedoms exercised by Americans for centuries.
“Worse yet, the decision upholds the government’s power to selectively suppress boycotts that express messages with which the government disagrees,” Hauss said in a statement on Thursday.
“The Supreme Court should take up this case in order to reaffirm that the First Amendment protects the right to participate in politically-motivated consumer boycotts.”
Americans for Peace Now (APN), an advocacy group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace, also called on the Supreme Court to review the ruling.
“A Supreme Court decision on this case, if it decides to take it up, could have broad repercussions in the United States and beyond,” APN President Hadar Susskind said in a statement.
“We hope the Court discusses the matter and rules that states have no business imposing conditions on the free speech rights of individuals, organizations and companies. You may support or oppose boycotting Israel or the occupation, but as a government you must not impose your opinion on others or sanction them for their views.”
Anti-BDS laws often restrict boycotts of Israel as well as any Israeli-occupied territories. Last year, several US states threatened sanctions against Ben & Jerry’s after the ice cream company decided to stop doing business in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
ROME, Oct 20 (IPS) – That’s why a new ship with a big white “E” will navigate the Mediterranean Sea. The vessel has a red hull, is more than fifty meters long and has low decks. Soon, it will leave the port of Genoa and go out into the open sea. If those living on the north shore of that ‘water cemetery’ bearing the name of Mediterranean had chosen life, the “Life Support” would not have been greeted by the applause of a people packed square, on a late summer night, in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia. It would not be ready to sail now; . if they had chosen life, that ship would have another job.
“Mom, I’m thirsty.” That’s how Loujin died, asking for water. She was four years old and had been at sea for ten days on a boat that launched an SOS to which no one responded until was too late on a still-very-hot September. She and her family were fleeing the war in Syria with the impossible hope of a refugee camp in Lebanon. She died along with six other refugees: “They died of thirst, hunger and severe burns,” said Chiara Cardoletti, Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, on Twitter. “According to the reports of the survivors who are being verified by the police the corpses were thrown into the sea when they began to be stockpiled,” according to the newspaper Avvenire. The sea took at least eighty, dead off the coasts of Lebanon and Syria, just a few days later. Eleven other decaying bodies were recovered in the first half of October off the coast of Tunisia. Before that, water had snatched away so many lives that we are not even able to count them and cry for them.
If there had been a ship, such as the one with a large white “E” on its red sides, perhaps Loujin would be alive. The “E” is that of Emergency, an Italian NGO founded in 1994 to bring aid to civilian victims of war and poverty.
Emergency has made its choice: It will sail the Mediterranean, fishing for human beings regardless of the “barriers” erected in that water. Barriers created by laws, rules, and sometimes arbitrarily, do not prevent women and men in search of a future; instead, all too often, they turn into dead bodies – those that wars and starvation weren’t able to make.
Ten thousand people were in Reggio Emilia at the annual meeting of Emergency, an organization that has turned the defense of human rights and its radical “No war” policy into concrete actions in the most difficult places on the planet. Those numbers, doubled compared to the previous year, portray a country, Italy, which longs for peace and hospitality.
“Seeing and knowing that there are thousands of people dying off our shores is absolutely not acceptable. With we believe to represent many people in Italy who do not want to see this happen,” Pietro Parrino, Emergency’s director of the Field Operations Department, explained to us.
From 2014 to the day of this writing, i.e., mid-October this year, 25,034 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea. “They were more than 1,100 just in the absence of a coordinated search and rescue operation at European level,” a statement from the NGO said. “We must be at sea to save people’s lives,” Parrino stressed. Whatever the reason why those women and men have decided to take the most dangerous of journeys: “They simply need help and we are, and we try to be, in the places where help is needed,” he added.
Being there, however, is a hard choice. There are very few NGO search and rescue ships, constrained by laws and bureaucracy that prevent them from getting to where they are needed, leaving migrants in the hands of the Libyan coast guards or forcing the vessels to wait days before docking at safe ports. Their work is not easy and they have even been accused of being “sea taxis” or “accomplices” of traffickers in a country where the call for a “naval blockade” has been a slogan for those who won the last political election.
It takes courage to choose life, anyway.
The last stretch
Barriers, “walls” within the sea, ancient Romans called Mare Nostrum, built by other choices, political choices, such as the bilateral Memorandum of Understanding that Italy signed with Libya in 2017 or the Malta Declaration issued shortly after. Agreements “that form the basis of a close cooperation that entrusts the patrolling of the central Mediterranean to Libyan coastguards,” followed by the establishment of the Libyan SAR, a large maritime area where the responsibility for coordinating search and rescue activities was assigned to Libya, Amnesty International explained. The human rights organization is among those calling for the suspension of the Memorandum: “In the last five years, over 85 thousand people have been intercepted at sea and sent back to Libya: men, women and children who have faced arbitrary detention, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, rape and sexual violence, forced labor and illegal killings.”
Any attempt to pull out those barriers, even if made up of boats, is doomed to fail; instead, it will produce pain. Migrations do not stop, new routes open up, and the old ones close and then reopen as the laws or European policies change. Crossing the sea is just the last stretch of a long journey in which human trafficking is a business built on desperation and managed by the same organizations that smuggle drugs and oil. Trips are a commodity sold on a market where the currency can be money or one’s body.
The Mediterranean route will continue to be worth a lot of money. Dirty money, cash, mobilized in a very sophisticated way, ends up in the pockets of those we do not know, or rather, of those about whom we know what they do, financing other illicit businesses. It is not just a question of the “passage” , but it is a much more complicated mechanism.
NGOs’ search and rescue operations were said to have increased the number of people who decided to travel to Europe. However, data from the Italian Ministry of the Interior show that this is false, as reported by the Huffington Post last year. In 2021, there were many more arrivals than the previous year even though there was not a greater number of vessels in the Mediterranean, as some of them were blocked by “bureaucracy.” There were few ships but a greater number of arrivals because those who flee wars and hunger always find new ways to organize the journey.
“People who to leave countries like Afghanistan or the Horn of Africa and have thousands and thousands of kilometers in front of them to be covered on foot with little or no money, are people who have courage and determination unimaginable for us,” Parrino said. Desperation moves them, a desperation that puts them in the hands of those who promise a place in a rust bucket. “The story these people tell is that few get a simple ride. Many are enslaved for years, in the fields or as prostitutes, because the traffickers earn tens of thousands of euros by selling them and reselling them before setting them free again. The trafficking is not to let people cross the Mediterranean; the trafficking is the management of these thousands of desperate people who are exploited as labor slaves and sex slaves for months, for years, before receiving the green light to take the boat,” he added. “People do it because they have even less than the hope that lies ahead. They are people who accept a risk they already know”, Parrino stressed.
Gabriele Baratto, a criminologist at the University of Trento, studied that market for a research project. He investigated the “digitization” of human trafficking.
Smugglers use social media, especially Facebook, to find migrants who want to leave. Then Baratto and his team contacted them. They thought it would be difficult, that they would have to turn to the dark web, that they would have to use secret jargon. But no, everything happens in the light of day. It was enough to type simple keywords, questions such as: “how to get to Europe.”
“ hundreds of posts, pages, and groups dedicated to promoting travel for migrants and these posts contained and contain basic information on the , point of departure, point of arrival and some indication on the price, date, month of departure. And the thing that left us most bewildered was that there was the phone number of the traffickers,” Baratto explained at Emergency’s meeting in Reggio Emilia.
They are “tour operators” of pain, who ask to be reached by phone, WhatsApp, or Skype, which are more difficult to intercept. “We came up with scripts, stories saying: ‘I am in Italy but I have my sister, I have my brother, I have my parents .’ They answer, and if they don’t answer, they write to you. Within a maximum of half an hour you can talk to them on the phone and they give you all the information.” The more you pay, the safer, more “comfortable,” and more direct the journey is, and traffickers know how laws and policies of states in Europe change.
“‘If you did this, why don’t the police do the same?’ ,” Baratto added. It is just too difficult to arrest traffickers one by one. The solution is only “a new approach to immigration,” he believes.
Behind that market in the sunlight, there is hell – the hell that Emergency knows.
“Is it possible to open a humanitarian corridor and decide with what means (to intervene)? … We know very well from where they come…” The only answer to those questions has been Europe’s agreement with Libya, ” ‘paying’ traffickers, providing patrol boats, money, convincing them not to let people leave. The flows from the countries of departure have not changed, the flows in the countries of arrival have greatly decreased. Where do all these people go? How do traffickers use them?” Parrino told us.
To halt the chain of deaths, it would be necessary to eradicate the factors that force people to leave or to decide that it can’t be fate to open the doors of Europe: “Access cannot be by chance for who are saved at sea or manage to land on our shores by boat. We think that it should be much better structured, without launching ‘invasion’ alarms,” he said.
Legal and safe access for those who must leave their countries: That’s the call of the NGO Emergency. Until then, it will be at sea because the sea swallows everything. “After a few minutes the sea is flat and you don’t realize that there has been a tragedy, there are no pieces left, nothing remains …” Parrino said from the Reggio Emilia stage.
No one answered the SOS of the boat that took away the souls of those eighty people who died in mid-September, as happened to Loujin. No one listened to their cries, betraying the ancient law of the sea that imposes that obligation. Instead, Emergency wants to be there with its “Life Support” to respond to those ships that cry out. It will be one of the few of that small fleet of NGOs that resists the obstacles dictated by a guilty and inhuman bureaucracy that pulls invisible barbed wires straight into the water.
A “bureaucracy,” the Italian one, to which the European Court of Justice replied in August, giving reason to the NGO’s Sea Watch vessels blocked for months in the ports of Palermo and Porto Empedocle in 2020. Ships subjected to inspections, prevented from operating for reasons such as “missing certifications” or “too many people on board.” Laws, political choices, and administrative stops that over time have forced NGOs to rethink even “how” help is brought.
Emergency has already been operating since 2016 with other partners offering health and social assistance, a type of aid that was not so common in the past because search and rescue operations were quick and disembarkation never too long. But now, docking in Italy can be timeless.
“The longest mission I can remember was fifty days. Fifty days at sea, of which at least thirty with the refugees on board because stuck in the harbor, with people jumping off the ship psychologists who had to get on,” Parrino remembered.
There are no well-defined rules, he explained, but a lot of arbitrariness, differences according to the ports or the “political climate. There were moments that three or four days passed from identification at sea to disembarkation and moments when thirty or forty days passed,” he added.
That’s why Life Support’s mission will be about fifteen days, as it could be necessary to stay on board longer. “If I had to leave and return from Sicily, it takes about a day to go patrolling in front of the Libyan coast, and you go there when there are good weather windows because in bad weather there are clearly no departures. Within two or three days you should be able to identify the target, so within four or five days the mission should be over.”
That’s just theory. More often, boat persons must share the little space of the ship for days, and over time that forced coexistence can become hard. “Those vessels are clearly not cruise ships. We are renovating the one we bought to the fullest with the experience we have gained over the years, but there are certainly no one hundred and seventy cabins … so things get heavy.”
Two or three days after the rescue, adrenaline turns into other fears, and “everything returns to memory: hunger, despair, what you have left … what you have suffered, the for what has been and for what will happen.” This is why keeping people on board for a long time has profound repercussions for everyone. We need to work “on empathy” and we need to increase the staff, doctors, nurses, “we need to have psychologists ready to board in case the ship has to stop, you have a crew under pressure,” Parrino explained.
Search and rescue at sea by NGOs is often a divisive topic but saving lives cannot be divisive, ever. This is Energency’s starting point, also this time. That’s why the “Life Support” will go out into the open sea. On its red hull, it will take, off the shores of Genoa, the words of Gino Strada, its founder, who in 2017 won the SunHak Peace Prize and who passed away last year: “If the rights are not for every single person, you’d better call them privileges.”
“In my nightmare, I see someone is following me in the dark, ” he said. “I’m alone and no one is helping me.”
He says his life was forever altered in early October, when he was arrested on the streets of Tehran for joining anti-government demonstrations, and then tortured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – known as the Sepah – for four days.
The abuse was psychological and physical, he told CNN, including electric shocks, controlled drowning and mock executions.
The 29-year-old says he was held in solitary confinement and intermittently beaten, before eventually being placed in a room with roughly two dozen other protesters, including a woman with cuts across her face and neck who said she had been sexually assaulted by security forces.
Arman, whose name has been changed for his safety, says he saw the IRGC’s emblem on a desk, and again on the uniform of one of the men guarding him – but that he doesn’t know exactly where in Tehran the center was located because he was tasered and had lost consciousness before being driven there.
In order to leave the detention center, Arman claims he was forced to sign a false confession saying he received money from the US, UK and Israeli governments to go out and create “chaos” in Iranian society. He was then told that if he engaged in any more “activism” he and his family would be hunted down and arrested, he said.
What Arman claims happened to him and those allegedly detained alongside him isn’t an isolated incident. Instead, it’s part of a tried and tested playbook used by the Iranian government to stalk, torture and imprison protesters, in an ongoing campaign to squash political dissent.
In the months following Iran’s nationwide demonstrations in 2019, which were sparked by the government’s abrupt decision to increase the price of gas by 50% but snowballed into calls for the fall of the Islamic Republic and its leaders, widespread accounts of torture and thousands of arrests were documented.
As Iranians from all walks of life unite to fight for their civil rights – in protests first sparked by the death of a young woman in religious police custody last month – it appears to be happening again.
“We are now in the worst time of our life. Full of stress. Full of fear,” a 24-year-old female protester told CNN. She says several of her friends were tortured – and that one of them was also sexually violated – after being detained by the IRGC in Rasht last month.
“Nothing has happened to me yet and I was able to escape. But it is possible at any moment,” she explained during a video call about the incident, her face covered to protect her identity.
CNN has spoken to almost a dozen Iranians who have shared first-hand accounts of torture in either the 2019 and 2022 protests, or who have had loved ones die or disappear while in the custody of authorities.
Some of those impacted shared photographs documenting their injuries as well as court records detailing the criminal charges they’re facing; others shared only their stories, which CNN cannot independently verify.
CNN contacted the Iranian government as well as its permanent mission to the United Nations regarding the accounts of torture and arbitrary detention detailed by protesters but has yet to receive a response.
Farhad, a 37-year-old father-of-two, intimately understands the personal cost of speaking out against the Iranian government, but it hasn’t stopped him from joining the demonstrations which have continued for more than a month now and seem to transcend Iran’s social and ethnic divisions.
In the November 2019 protests, he says he watched several of his friends die on the streets of Tehran after being gunned down by security forces, in what would be a four-day nationwide rampage to silence dissent that ultimately left more than 300 civilians dead, according to Amnesty International.
It wasn’t until December 2, in the aftermath of the bloodshed, that Farhad says plain-clothes officers kicked down his door in the middle of the night to arrest him for his involvement in the demonstrations.
Farhad, whose name has also been changed for his security, says the IRGC used footage of the protests from the BBC – which he has since shared with CNN – to identify him, effectively weaponizing the media coverage of the rallies to hunt down participants.
He claims he was tortured for 16 days in total and like Arman, that he knew the Tehran detention center in which he was being held was run by the IRGC because of a sign on one of its walls displaying its distinctive insignia.
In Farhad’s telling, several hundred people were detained and tortured alongside him. He still hears their screams.
“Hundreds of people were imprisoned with me. There was a bed, people were being tied to it and abused. There were rapes, torture with electric shocks and boiling water … they were hanging people from the ceiling to beat them,” he told CNN.
Farhad’s last memory from his time in that dark room is when he was hung up and beaten senseless by plain-clothes officers before being thrown in the back of a car, driven to an undisclosed location and dumped on the side of the road.
Days later he woke up in a medical clinic near his house in Tehran, he said. He doesn’t know how he got there but cites an extended family member with links to Iran’s government as a possible reason his life was spared.
“My teeth were broken; my lip was completely torn off. Because my bleeding was so severe, I [think] they did not expect me to survive.”
CNN has reviewed photographs of Farhad’s injuries and the scarring he lives with today.
Farjad has since left Tehran with his immediate family for their safety, but says he still receives late-night phone calls from Iranian authorities threatening to rape his wife and kill his children, and that his bank account is periodically frozen.
He also claims that in the months following his torture, his national identity card – the primary document used to access essential services in Iran – was wiped from the system.
Despite the ongoing risks to his life and livelihood, Farhad’s commitment to the current demonstrations is unwavering.
“My country and my people are suffering. The government of the Islamic Republic oppresses in the name of religion, I can’t see people [being] killed for their beliefs anymore,” he said.
CNN spoke with four more protesters who were tortured while in detention and later imprisoned for taking part in anti-government demonstrations in 2019 – including a young single mother who says she has had to place her son in the care of her parents in order to serve prison time, and a 43-year-old father of two from Shiraz who says he suffers from acute post-traumatic stress disorder, after spending 48 days in solitary confinement.
Their accounts all share striking similarities, most notably the ongoing harassment they say their families face from Iranian authorities via fake social media accounts, late-night phone calls, and local informants whom they believe monitor them for the IRGC intelligence service.
Amin Sabeti is an Iranian cyber security expert who has spent years studying hacking groups with ties to the Islamic Republic, including the IRGC-affiliated ‘Charming Kitten’ group, which was recently sanctioned by the US government for “malicious cyber-enabled activities, including ransomware and cyber-espionage.”
According to Sabeti, who is based in the UK, state-sponsored hackers have a tried and tested method in place to “dox protesters” once they’ve infiltrated their online groups using fake accounts, which involves “sharing photos of them on Twitter, Instagram or Telegram and asking others to share information about them,” while pretending to be concerned for their safety.
“They used the same tactics in the November 2019 uprising,” Sabeti explained, which has led to more tech-savvy demonstrators identifying suspicious accounts and distributing warnings among their networks.
At Tehran’s Ebrat Museum – a repurposed former prison – dramatic displays on the atrocities carried out against Muslim clerics by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s police during the revolution have long been used as a propaganda tool to celebrate the “freedoms” won in the Islamic Republic.
And yet, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who was himself imprisoned in the 1970s during Pahlavi’s reign – and his security apparatus, have a decades-long legacy of also using mass arrests and torture to control and silence political dissidents – the hypocrisy of which is not lost on protesters today.
The current movement – led and inspired by women – has united Iranians across generations, in what is shaping up to be the biggest threat the regime has faced to date. Notably, it has also survived weeks of rolling internet outages and violent crackdowns.
But as chants of “woman, life, freedom” continue – a rallying cry that’s come to encompass the daily violence and control Iranian women are rising up against – more than 1,000 people have been arrested, according to state news IRNA.
Looking ahead, analysts and exiled activists CNN spoke to are fearful that the authorities will ultimately employ whatever violent tactics they deem necessary to once again, regain some semblance of control.
Already, almost two dozen children – some as young as 11 – were killed by Iran’s security forces during demonstrations in September, according to Amnesty International, in a chilling reminder that no life will be spared. Meanwhile, Iran’s Education Minister Yousef Nouri confirmed last week that student protesters are now being detained in what he termed “psychological institutions,” run by the state.
None of the Iranians CNN spoke with were naive to the fact that their lives – and the lives of their families – are on the line as the uprising rages on, with most going to extreme lengths to protect their personal information online and avoid unnecessary risks while taking to the streets.
Arman still receives threatening phone calls and messages for his activism, but he says he won’t be deterred.
“They torture us, and they are lying to the world, to the international community … Iranians want freedom,” he said. “We don’t want dictatorship. We want to connect with the world.”
