Nuclear power benefited the Japanese economy by some ¥33 trillion over the years, said Masakazu Toyoda of the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ), and the country risks wasting this in its slow progress to restart its reactors.

Speaking at the Annual Conference of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) today, Toyoda said that Japan’s dependence on imported fossil fuels was now higher than it was in 1973. The country’s response then was to increase nuclear power generation, and now it should maintain nuclear power as an “essential option”, he said.

All 48 of Japanese nuclear power reactors remain offline pending confirmation that they meet heightened post-Fukushima safety requirements set by the still-new Nuclear Regulation Authority. However, plans to decommission five of the older units have already been announced. The first units to restart, perhaps in the middle of this year, are expected to be Kyushu Electric Power Company’s Sendai 1 and 2 in Kagoshima prefecture.

The Sendai reactor restarts would be the first step in reducing Japan’s extreme reliance on imported fuel, which currently runs to 98% of energy production, said Toyoda. An important economic role of nuclear power in the past was to avoid these imports, which he said saved Japan from sending ¥33 trillion ($276 billion) overseas. “We are effectively living on these savings and we may lose about two thirds by 2020 if we stay on this course,” said Toyoda, noting the “drain of national wealth” caused by ¥3.6 trillion ($30 billion) being spent on imported fuel each year to compensate for idled reactors.

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By Alberto Buitre

The detention and disappearance of social and human rights activists, the assassination of social leaders and the arrest of others for political reasons are part of “a government policy” aimed at discouraging organizations’ resistance to the abuse of power and repression in Mexico.

So stated the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS), a mostly-peasant political organization with presence in nine states in Mexico, in the forum on forced disappearances that convened in January at the Autonomous University of Puebla, where two people “are disappeared” per day, according to the organization.

In Mexico there are more than 110,000 cases of detainees-disappeared, not just 23,000 as the Ministry of the Interior claim.

“More than just a social phenomenon of great importance and concern, the forced disappearance of persons is also a recurrent, systematic practice that has now become a state policy. Its goal is to silence the voice of protest, dissent and even the call for our most fundamental human rights,” said the FNLS in a statement.

For the FNLS, among the 110,000 detained-disappeared are the 43 students of the “Isidro Burgos” Rural School in Ayotzinapa, who were massacred on Sep. 26, 2014 by the Iguala Municipal Police, in the southwestern state of Guerrero, and were allegedly incinerated in an adjacent landfill by members of the “Guerreros Unidos” drug cartel, with orders from the then-mayor, now imprisoned, José Luis Abarca and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda, who have been associated with organized crime since 2005, according to information from the Attorney General’s Office.

The forced disappearances are systematically planned with “the state’s acquiescence and responsibility, either by commission or omission,” says the FNLS.

Social terror

The forced disappearance of persons as part of the repression of social movements is a systematic state practice with participation from drug trafficking groups.

Ramón Islas, an academic in human rights at the Autonomous University of Mexico City, argues that, in the context of the war on drugs, the techniques of creating social terror in the country have evolved.

Islas told Latinamerica Press that today Mexico is living through a “stage of irregular warfare” in the war on drugs, during which unidentified drug or criminal gangs are also involved in the disappearance of people.

“Throughout the entire Mexican territory, the blood of the working people is being scattered. It is reflected, coupled with the thousands of disappeared detainees, in extrajudicial executions and unjust imprisonment. What was initially thought to be a climate of fear exclusive to northern cities [main operation centers for various drug cartels], today this crime lab is spreading to all corners of the country,” said Islas.

“In addition to the detention and forced disappearance of persons, there are new forms of repression, such as drying up a community’s water supply, burning crops and huts, sexual assault and the criminalization of social protest,” explained Islas.

In 2013, 13 social activists were killed in the state of Guerrero. The majority were killed for opposing local chiefdoms who exploited the peasants of the area with the state government’s knowledge. So states the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra, whose leader, Rocío Mesino Mesino, was shot in October of that year. Her father, Hilario Mesino directly blamed governor Ángel Aguirre for the death of his daughter, and he said in statements quoted by the newspaper El Sur Acapulco that during Aguirre’s administration, “repression and criminalization against social organizations and community leaders has intensified.” To date, there are no persons charged for the crime.

Political prisoners

There are also social activists imprisoned for political reasons. So far into the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office in December 2012, there have been 350 political prisoners.

The data are provided by the Free Nestora Committee, a civil organization that supports Nestora Salgado García, commander of the Community Police of the municipality of Olinalá, Guerrero, who was arrested in August 2013 on charges of kidnapping, but whose detention, according to her defense, is based on political causes.

The Free Nestora Committee notes that Salgado García is being politically criminalized, falsely accused of kidnapping, based on an operation that led to the dismantling of a network of sex trafficking of women and girls in Europe and Colombia, who were forced into prostitution in bars in Guerrero and other states in Mexico.

The organization adds that the case of Salgado García shows the “Mexican government’s stigmatization against Community Police”, a security and justice initiative of Guerrero rural communities that began in 1996 encouraged by the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities and the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero, to address the rising force of paramilitary and drug trafficking groups.

According to the data provided by the Free Nestora Committee, of the 350 political prisoners, 13 are community police members imprisoned in Guerrero and four opponents to the La Parota dam, also in Guerrero. There are also some detainees recorded in the state of Puebla for opposing the construction of a thermoelectric plant.

But the largest number of political prisoners is recorded in the state of Michoacán, where more than 300 members of self-defense groups — created in 2013 with the support of the federal government to fight the drug cartel called Los Caballeros Templarios — have been imprisoned, including one of the self-defense groups’ founders, José Manuel Mireles Valverde, arrested in June 2014 for illegal possession of arms for the exclusive use of the Army.

However, Talia Vázquez Alatorre, a lawyer committed to the defense of all prisoners belonging to self-defense groups, argued at that time that Mireles Valverde was a “political prisoner” for the improper legal procedures followed during his arrest.

In November 2014, the former leader of the self-defense groups accepted a “conditional political agreement” with the Ministry of the Interior for gain his release.

The arrests for political reasons even reach the capital. Must be highlighted the case of Mario González, imprisoned for a year by the government of the Federal District for his participation in the demonstrations of Oct. 2, 2013 in the capital, on the 46th commemoration of the student massacre perpetrated by the Army in Tlatelolco in 1968.

While authorities continue banning social protest and treating social activists as delinquents, human rights organizations launch campaigns declaring that protest is a right. The National Network “All Rights for All” (Red TDT) launched in 2008 the campaign “Protest is a right, repression is a crime” and had to relaunch it in 2013 due to increased policies of criminalization of the right to dissent and protest and the impunity with which these policies are applied.

The post Mexico: Imprisoned, Disappeared And Murdered Activists appeared first on Eurasia Review.

In a surprise decision, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has awarded Eugene, Oregon (US), the 2021 IAAF World Championships.

The proposal to award the IAAF’s premier competition to Eugene, bypassing the usual bidding process, was taken in response to what was seen as a unique strategic opportunity to host the IAAF World Championships for the first time in the US, according to the IAAF.

“The decision followed a presentation to the IAAF in recent months by Eugene, USA. The candidature of the city from the State of Oregon and USATF, who mounted a failed bid last November for the 2019 edition of the championships, uniquely combined the commitment of the funding by the governor of Oregon with the support of the United States Olympic Committee and the commitment of NBC to produce and broadcast in cooperation with Universal Sports the championships live across America,” the IAAF said in a statement.

According to the IAAF, the Council’s decision was taken “to grant the sport’s access to one of the most historically successful countries in athletics as well as the most powerful economy in the world.”

It should be mentioned, that Eugene, where the University of Oregon is based, has a strong tradition in track and field events. According to the 2010 Census, Eugene had a population of 156,185 – in sharp contrast to previous hosts that have larger populations.

Justifying its decision, the IAAF said there have been precedents in the past, most recently in the awarding of the 2007 IAAF World Championships to Osaka, Japan, which was also done without a bidding process.

“In granting the championships to Eugene the IAAF Council have made a clear choice on a strategic decision that enables us to take advantage of a unique opportunity that may never arise again, whereby public authorities, the private sector, the national Olympic Committee, NBC and a particularly enthusiastic public are joining forces,” President Diack said.

“Although this decision departs from the usual procedure, I am delighted that my Council colleagues understood the enormous opportunity presented to us to access a key market and have taken a decision in the interest of the global development of our sport,” added President Diack.

According to Vin Lananna, who led Eugene’s bid for the championships “I thank President Diack, the Council and USATF President Stephanie Hightower and CEO Max Siegel in supporting the bid. We promise to deliver an outstanding championships for the sport of track and field in America and around the world.”

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By Brenda Mwale

The issue of drones or Unarmed Aerial Vehicles provides an intriguing legal debate as drones are increasingly being used in warfare and counter-terrorism. There are divergent views and opinions as to their legality in international law. Some argue that the use of armed drones by the U.S military for example in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries is illegal under international law, while some argue that drones are an acceptable tool of war. The use of drones raises many questions. But for purposes of this article, the main question is whether their use amounts to a war crime.

Article 8(2) of the Rome Statute defines war crimes as:

‘Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, namely, any of the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention:

• Wilful killing;
• Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;
• Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;
• Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;
• Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power;
• Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;
• Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;
• Taking of hostages.

War crimes are also ‘[o]ther serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law…’[1]

Drones on the other hand are ‘aircraft either controlled by ‘pilots’ from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a pre-programmed mission.’[2]  There are basically two categories of drones; those that are used for surveillance and those that are armed with bombs and missiles.[3] The armed drones are increasingly being used in armed conflicts and their use poses serious concerns.

Some argue that the use of drones is illegal under international humanitarian law because of the indiscriminate killing of civilians who happen to be in the vicinity of the military targets. On the other hand, some wonder that if a helicopter that fires missiles is an acceptable tool of warfare, what makes the use of drones unacceptable. To them, the use of drones is no different from any other contemporary tools of warfare like a soldier firing a gun or a helicopter firing missiles.

Needless to say, the use of drones does not fall into the categories under Article 8 of the ICC Statute. According to Alberstadt, R, ‘drones, by themselves, are not illegal. They do not qualify as banned military instruments under regulations of armed conflict nor under Article 8 of the Rome Statute as they do not exhibit banned qualities such as causing indiscriminate harm or unnecessary suffering.’[4] Further, they are used to target military objectives and are believed to deliver precision strikes, but this is a subject of controversy.[5]

Despite the alleged precision strikes, many civilians who were neither taking part in hostilities nor posing any imminent threat have been killed by drones.[6] What happens when civilians are killed in the process of targeting military objectives? Is this considered collateral damage? Or is it a grave breach of international humanitarian law to kill civilians? Where do we draw the line? As per Harold Koh,[7] using drones “veers near the edge” of illegality but does not quite tumble over it.[8] Their use in international warfare should therefore be clearly defined and well regulated by law.

Notes:
[1] Article 8(2) (b) of the Rome Statute

[2] http://dronewars.net/aboutdrone/ (accessed on 12/04/2015)

[3] http://dronewars.net/aboutdrone/ (accessed on 12/04/2015)

[4] Alberstadt, R. Drones under International Law (2014) Open Journal of Political Science, 4, 223.

[5] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-10713898 (accessed on 12/04/2015)

[6] See http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-10-22/us-drone-strikes-are-controversial-are-they-war-crimes (accessed on 12/04/2015)

[7] The former dean of Yale Law School.

[8] Cited in http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2012/10/obama_s_drone_war_is_probably_illegal_will_it_stop_.html (accessed on12/04/2015)

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By James A. Baer and Ryan O’Regan*

Contrary to what some might say, the Summit of the Americas was a success for President Barack Obama. His steps towards the restoration of official relations with Cuba garnered applause from across Latin America, and praise from President Raúl Castro. Having walked back his deeply unpopular declaration that Venezuela posed a threat to U.S. interests and security, President Obama was able to largely deflect criticism of his sanctions on several Venezuelan officials. As a result, the major headline to come out of the Summit revolved not around leaders’ attacks on his Venezuela policies (which were admittedly abundant), but instead focused on his warm handshake and private discussion with President Castro. Now that the handshakes and happy talk have receded, however, what remains is the delicate task of bargaining with the Cubans–one that will require months, if not years, to complete.

On April 14, Obama sent Congress a notice that in 45 days he would remove Cuba from the United States’ list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, allowing for Cuban use of international exchanges for their monetary transactions (something prohibited under Cuba’s current status). This will satisfy one of Raul Castro’s initial demands, permitting further talks between the two nations to pursue the goal of establishing full diplomatic relations. The U.S. position is that the Cuban government must permit U.S. diplomats unrestricted access to the island and its people, and that there be no restrictions on Cubans who wish to deal with the U.S. embassy. This would allow U.S. officials to meet with Cuban dissidents and provide them with unlimited opportunities to challenge the current government, which Raul Castro will not allow. For their part, Cubans will take aim at Guantanamo Bay and an end to the embargo. House Republicans are certain to object to this as long as Castro’s leftist government controls Cuba. Castro, for his part, will never allow the U.S. to interfere with internal Cuban affairs, and is not likely to permit unrestricted speech and assembly on the island, especially for dissidents who seek to overthrow his government.

These demands leave both sides far from an agreement and demonstrate the difficulty in reaching a deal that satisfies the two countries’ opposing agendas. Obama, for his part, will not be able to make significant changes to relations with Cuba as long as the Republican-controlled House and Senate oppose lifting the economic embargo. However, recent speeches by three Republican candidates for president have indicated an intra-party divide on the issue. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida oppose lifting the embargo, while Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky, has gone on record stating that lifting the embargo was “probably a good idea.” While Senator Paul is hardly representative of mainstream Republican ideology, business leaders in the U.S. have also stated their agreement with lifting the embargo. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue, for example, has stated that his organization favors lifting the embargo because it represents government interference with business. U.S. public opinion, too, appears to be strongly in favor of reversing Washington’s long-standing feud with the Castro government.

Unfortunately, the realities of primary politics will likely render progress on U.S.-Cuba relations a non-starter for most Republican candidates. With the GOP in control of both houses of Congress,, legislation to end the embargo is unlikely to make headway until the 2016 elections come to a close (if it is introduced at all).

That leaves President Obama with a narrow range of options in responding to Cuban demands, and he may have already given as much as he can provide through his executive authority. This is why his meeting with Raul Castro at the Summit of the Americas was so important: it provided both leaders the opportunity to take the measure of the other and to establish the rapport necessary to see their countries through the trying years to come. Both face significant opposition to rapprochement at home and each man wants to be sure that every concession will benefit his country.

Raul Castro is well aware that Cuba is in need of foreign capital, and must address serious degradation in the island’s technological and physical infrastructure. The limited resources of his cash-strapped government make it imperative that it open to global markets, as Cubans, frustrated by their own limited opportunities, leave the island for jobs in Spain, Latin America, and the United States. This flight of human capital must be alleviated, and disgruntled citizens must placated, but no concessions can, in the eyes of the government, threaten the primacy of the Communist Party in Cuba. His negotiations with the U.S. have given him increased stature in Latin America and the possibility of technological assistance by the U.S. He must now gage how far he can go in permitting economic change without inducing political upheaval.

The handshakes, smiles and happy talk of Panama have pleased both leaders. Now, their diplomats must sit down and discuss the myriad issues that have separated the two nations for more than fifty years, while defending any rapprochement to internal opposition. One can expect these talks to be long, and often tense–but ultimately successful.

*James A. Baer, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and Professor of History at the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College, and Ryan O’Regan, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused neighboring Turkey of torpedoing a UN plan for a ceasefire with rebels in the second city of Aleppo, in comments published on Friday.

Assad told the Swedish newspaper Expressen that Ankara had used its influence with rebel factions to persuade them to reject the proposals put forward by UN envoy Staffan de Mistura for a ceasefire in the former commercial hub.

“The Turks told the factions – the terrorists that they support and they supervise – to refuse to cooperate with De Mistura,” the Syrianpresident said.

The main Western-backed rebel alliance is based in Turkey.

Assad’s regime also accuses Ankara of supporting jihadists with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, who have come to dominate the revolt against his rule since a peaceful uprising in 2011 escalated into armed conflict.

Rebel factions in Aleppo rejected De Mistura’s proposals on March 1, saying they could not accept a separate truce that did not cover other war-torn Syrian cities.

It was a major blow for the UN envoy appointed in July last year, who had made a halt to the fighting in Aleppo the main focus of his peace efforts.

The city has been devastated by fighting since rebels seized its eastern half in 2012, setting up a front line that carves through its historic heart.

Original article

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This week I won a dubious distinction: a groundbreaking Supreme Court judgment has been named after me.

It is an honor I would have gladly dispensed with.

My name appeared at the head of a list of applicants, associations and individuals, which asked the court to cancel a law enacted by the Knesset.

Israel has no written constitution. This unusual situation arose right from the beginning of the state because David Ben-Gurion, a fierce secularist, could not achieve a compromise with the orthodox parties, which insisted that the Torah already is a constitution.

So, instead of a constitution, we have a number of Basic Laws which cover only a part of the ground, and a mass of Supreme Court precedents. This court slowly arrogated to itself the right to abolish Laws enacted by the Knesset which contradict the nonexistent constitution.

Starting from the last Knesset, extreme right-wing Likud Members have been competing with each other in their efforts to castrate the Supreme Court one way or another. Some would stuff the court with right-wing judges, others would radically limit its jurisdiction.

Things came to a head when a group of far-right Likud members launched a veritable avalanche of bills which were clearly unconstitutional. One of them, and the most dangerous one, was a law that forbade people to call for a boycott of the State of Israel and, in a sinister way, added the words “and of territories held by it”.

This revealed the real aim of the operation. Some years before, our Gush Shalom peace organization had called on the public to boycott the products of the settlements in the occupied territories. We also published on our website a list of these products. Several other peace organizations joined the campaign.

Simultaneously, we tried to convince the European Union to do something similar. Israel’s agreement with the EU, which exempts Israeli wares from customs, does not include the settlements. But the EU was used to closing its eyes. It took us a lot of time and effort to open them again. In recent years, the EU has excluded these goods. They have demanded that on all merchandise “made in Israel”, the actual place of origin be stated. This week, 16 European foreign ministers called upon the EU foreign affairs chief to demand that all products from the settlements be clearly marked.

The law passed by the Knesset not only has criminal aspects, but also civil ones. Persons calling for a boycott could not only be sent to prison. They could also be ordered to pay huge damages without the plaintiff having to prove that any actual damage had been caused to him or her by the call.

Also, associations which receive government subsidies or other governmental assistance under existing laws would be deprived of them from then on, making their work for peace and social justice even more difficult.

Within minutes after the enactment of this law, Gush Shalom and I personally submitted our applications to the Supreme Court. They had been prepared well in advance by advocate Gaby Lasky, a talented young lawyer and dedicated peace activist. My name was the first in the list of petitioners, and so the case is called: “Avnery v. the State of Israel”.

The case laid out by Lasky was logical and sound. The right of free speech is not guaranteed in Israel by any specific law, but is derived from several Basic Laws. A boycott is a legitimate democratic action. Any individual can decide to buy or not to buy something. Indeed, Israel is full of boycotts. Shops selling non-kosher food, for example, are routinely boycotted by the religious, and posters calling for such boycotts of a specific shop are widely distributed in religious neighborhoods.

The new law does not prohibit boycotts in general. It singles out political boycotts of a certain kind. Yet political boycotts are commonplace in any democracy. They are part of the exercise of freedom of speech.

Indeed, the most famous modern boycott was launched by the Jewish community in the United States in 1933, after the Nazis came to power in Germany. In response, the Nazis called for a boycott of all Jewish enterprises in Germany. I remember the date, April 1, because my father did not allow me to go to school on that day (I was 9 years old and the only Jew in my school.)

Later, all progressive countries joined in a boycott of the racist regime in South Africa. That boycott played a large (though not decisive) role in bringing it down.

A law cannot generally compel a person to buy a normal commodity, nor can it generally forbid them to buy it. Even the framers of this new Israeli law understood this. Therefore, their law does not punish anybody for buying or not buying. It punishes those who call on others to abstain from buying.

Thus the law is clearly an attack on the freedom of speech and on non-violent democratic action. In short, it is a basically flawed anti-democratic law.

The court which judged our case consisted of nine judges, almost the entire Supreme Court. Such a composition is very rare, and only summoned when a fateful decision has to be made.

The court was headed by its president, Judge Asher Gronis. That in itself was significant, since Gronis already left the court and went into compulsory retirement in January, when he reached the age of 70. When the seat became vacant, Gronis was already too old to become the court president. Under the then existing Israeli law, a Supreme Court judge cannot become the court’s president when the time for his final retirement is too close. But the Likud was so eager to have him that a special enabling law was passed to allow him to become the president.

Moreover, a judge who has been on a case but did not finish his judgment in time before retiring, is given an extra three months to finish the job. It seems that even Gronis, the Likud’s protégé, had qualms about this specific decision. He signed it literally at the very last moment – at 17.30 hours of the last day, just before Israel went into mourning at the start of Holocaust Day.

His signature was decisive. The court was split – 4 to 4 – between those who wanted to annul the law and those who wanted to uphold it. Gronis joined the pro-law section and the law was approved. It is now the Law of the Land.

One section of the original law was, unanimously, stricken from the text. The original text said that any person – i.e. settler – who claims that they have been harmed by the boycott, can claim unlimited indemnities from anyone who has called for this boycott, without having to prove that they were actually hurt. From now on, a claimant has to prove the damage.

At the public hearing of our case, we were asked by the judges if we would be satisfied if they strike out the words “territories held by Israel”, thus leaving the boycott of the settlements intact. We answered that in principle we insist on annulling the entire law, but would welcome the striking out of these words. But in the final judgment, even this was not done.

This, by the way, creates an absurd situation. If a professor in Ariel University, deep in the occupied territories, claims that I have called to boycott him, he can sue me. Then my lawyer will try to prove that my call went quite unheeded and therefore caused no damage, while the professor will have to prove that my voice was so influential that multitudes were induced to boycott him.

Years ago, when I was still Editor-in-Chief of Haolam Hazeh, the news-magazine, I decided to choose Aharon Barak as our Man of the Year.

When I interviewed him, he told me how his life was saved during the Holocaust. He was a child in the Kovno ghetto, when a Lithuanian farmer decided to smuggle him out. This simple man risked his own life and the lives of his family when he hid him under a load of potatoes to save his life.

In Israel, Barak rose to eminence as a jurist, and eventually became the president of the Supreme Court. He led a revolution called “Juristic Activism”, asserting, among other things, that the Supreme Court is entitled to strike out any law that negates the (unwritten) Israeli constitution.

It is impossible to overrate the importance of this doctrine. Barak did for Israeli democracy perhaps more than any other person. His immediate successors – two women – abided by this rule. That’s why the Likud was so eager to put Gronis in his place. Gronis’ doctrine can be called “Juristic Passivism”.

During my interview with him, Barak told me: “Look, the Supreme Court has no legions to enforce its decisions. It is entirely dependent on the attitude of the people. It can go no further than the people are ready to accept!”

I constantly remember this injunction. Therefore I was not too surprised by the judgment of the Supreme Court in the boycott case.

The Court was afraid. It’s as simple as that. And as understandable.

The fight between the Supreme Court and the Likud’s far-right is nearing a climax. The Likud has just won a decisive election victory. Its leaders are not hiding their intention to finally implement their sinister designs on the independence of the Court.

They want to allow politicians to dominate the appointment committee for Supreme Court judges and to abolish altogether the right of the court to annul unconstitutional laws enacted by the Knesset.

Menachem Begin used to quote the miller of Potsdam who, when involved with the King in a private dispute, exclaimed: “There are still judges in Berlin!”

Begin said: “There are still judges in Jerusalem!”

For how long?

The post Avnery Vs The State Of Israel – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Bhaskar Roy*

The assassination of two liberal bloggers in quick succession in February and March raises some very disturbing questions.

First was that of Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-American, who came to attend the “21st February” book fair where a couple of his books were on sale. Machete wielding assailants killed him while his wife Rafida Bonna was injured. Policemen watching the incident simply walked away, ignoring Rafida’s pleas for help.

Avijit, a Hindu and his wife Rafida, believed in liberal humanity. Avijit’s blogs attacked religious extremism which is prohibited in Bangladesh’s constitution. That infuriated the Islamists who promised to get him. And get him they did, with some assistance from law enforcers.

Two of the three assailants of 27 year old blogger Washiqur Rahman who were apprehended by the police were both Madrassa students. When questioned by the police both confessed that they had no idea what a blog was, nor had they read Rahman’s writings. They were simply acting on the orders of another person who told them that killing Rahman was a religious duty.

Another case of hacking to death of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in 2013 remains unsolved.

What was the crime of these young men? They did not break any laws of the country. They were opposing a trend, which appears to have become a force, to convert Bangladesh’s Sufi oriented Islam to the obscurantist Wahabi Islam which is regressive, anti-inclusive and antediluvian.

It is extremely worrisome that the two apprehended youths who hacked to death Washiqur Rahman had no idea why they were ordered to kill him. They were brainwashed to carry out orders of a senior to do their “religious duty”.

What are these religious schools teaching the impressionable young? What contributions can they bring to the society when they are grown up? From where would their own livelihood come? From the power behind these Madrassas, of course.

But their sources of funding is not eternal. These young men are being conditioned not to think, not question, but just obey orders. These orders, they are reared to believe are not of man but that of God, Allah. And they will all go to heaven and will be gifted with 72 houris.

If there was a real blasphemy of Islam then this is it! Islam is a religion of peace and it has room for all. The biggest problem is that this is not only against non-Muslims, but against Muslims who know the religion well but choose to stand up against those Muslims who are trying to misinterpret Islam to pursue their political ends. The leaders of this movement want to create a caliphate in Bangladesh which they will rule with murderous sinful acts. They would rule the nation in comfort while their foot soldiers, like those who hacked these bloggers will remain where they are, or worse.

The non-action by the policemen in the Avijit Roy case is not only worrisome, but downright dangerous. Were they influenced by the terrorists? The terrorist religious group Ansurullah Bangladesh is supposed to be behind the killing of Roy and Rahman. But this is not the only religious terrorist organization now active in Bangladesh. There are many, and all of them appear to be franchises of one idea, and there is one powerful organization legally active which appears to be the mastermind.

Before coming to other related issues, the insidious activities of the Hizb-ut-Tehrir (HUT) need special attention. Founded in Jerusalem in 1953, it has become a trans- national extremist organization with its registered office in the UK. Its aim is to establish Khilafat run by Islamic Sharia law. It took roots in Bangladesh in 2000, came to prominence in 2001 after the US twin-towers bombing, but was banned in 2009 for anti-state activities. The Bangladesh army revealed in January 2012, a coup was planned by a group of HUT influenced officers, but it failed. Now HUT has units at all divisional headquarters and reportedly has a membership of 10,000! It is reported the organization attempted a coup through some sympathetic army officers in 2009.

In a public release on 28 February 2005, the organization appealed to military officers to immediately remove Prime Minister Sk. Hasina and the current ruling system. It referred to the Bangladesh army as a Muslim army sent an appeal to the media not to obey the government’s directive not to give prominence to HUT, and work for the cause of Khilafat.

The HUT has targeted the urban youth, the urban middle class, members of the armed forces and other security forces including the police.

Following the banning of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), Jamatul Mujahidin Bangladesh (JMB), Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJ), Shahadat-e-Al Hikma (SAK), HUT was also declared a proscribed organization. Other banned organizations include Hizb-ut Tawhid, Islami Samaj, Ulema Anjuman al Baiyinaat, Islamic Democratic Party, Tawhid Trust, Tamir ud-Deen, and Allahar Dal.

According to Bangladeshi sources the HUT is the richest banned terrorist organization in the country, but their sources of funding are not known. Money is absolutely important to run such organizations because their cadres and foot soldiers have to be paid. The private Madrassas a.k.a Quami Madrassas provide readymade foot soldiers for these organizations.

Blocking terrorist funding is possible to some extent only and that is generally limited to bank transfers. Some banks like the Islami Bank are suspected of being complicit in these transfers. Substantial money comes in from workers returning from countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. There are approximately 10 million Bangladeshis working in the Gulf and West Asia. They return indoctrinated in Deobandi Islam and with the belief that they must contribute part of their earning to the cause of jihad against infidels, the surest path to heaven. This kind of funding is very difficult to track and stop.

According to reports emanating from Bangladesh, based on intelligence files, the HUT has tied up with the JMB and others. The JMB in turn is in touch with the Al Qaeda through its strategist. Both the strategist and the JMB explosive expert, who were on death row, were rescued by their cadres when being transported from one jail to another. They were very high value prisoners and leads to the question whether the security personnel escorting may have been in collusion with the terrorists. If this is true, the terrorists have made deep incursion inside the security establishment of the nation.

Another development that must be mentioned in the above connection is how much the conservative aspect of religion has penetrated the families of armed forces’ officers. A majority of lady wives have reportedly taken to wearing the burkha for official events. In the lower ranks the burkha appears to have become mandatory.

This is an eerie development. On the one hand the government is trying to bring women out of purdah, give them education and make them economically independent. The Bangladesh ready made garment industry, the second biggest garment exporter in the world after China, is women dependent. If the Mullahs should force them to go back into purdah, not only will the industry collapse, but it will severely hurt the economy and the societal fabric of the nation.

At the same time, the jihadis are trying to use women in bomb making activities and training them as human bombers. The explosions in a JMB cell in Burdwan district, West Bengal, is an example, where two women were helping in bomb making.

Circumstantial evidence suggest that the HUT and the JMB may be working in coordination. Both are engaged in toppling the government. Both see India as an enemy supporting the Awami League and the west as propping up Khaleda Zia and the BNP. The JMB was at one time promoted and protected by powerful BNP leaders like Minister of State for Home, Luftozzaman Babar, deputy Minister Pintu and others. HUJI, which was involved in the assassination attempt of Sk. Hasina in 2004, at the direction of some BNP leaders, and other banned extra-religious terrorist organizations are working as ancillaries to the terror leadership.

It has now come to light that the JMB has been expanding in the border areas of India. An accident in a bomb making facility in Burdwan district of West Bengal brought in central Indian intelligence agencies for investigation and subsequent arrests.

What is confounding is the fact that 60 JMB sleeper cells were discovered in West Bengal and another 20 in Tripura and Assam. The outfit is also expanding in Jharkand. Yet, with 60 modules discovered and there may be more, the West Bengal state intelligence and police seemed to have had no inkling of these developments.

Unfortunately, West Bengal Chief Minister Ms. Mamata Banerjee was initially in a denial mode, nor has she condemned these developments since. She is obviously banking on Muslim votes for her electoral politics, and is under the mistaken belief that obscurantist Maulvis and Mullahs will garner Muslim votes for her.

With such policies of the state government some Maulvis have been encouraged to experiment with imposition of Sharia law in small ways. Recently, a women’s exhibition football game in Murshidabad district had to be cancelled due to objection from local religious leaders that the clothes the players wore was against Sharia. The state administration took no action, despite the fact that local Muslims were involved in organizing the event. Even in Kolkata, progressive Madrassa teachers are being physically assaulted and intimidated by religious extremists.

The big picture of the growing threat to India’s security is being missed. Available information suggests that ISIS is reportedly in partnership with the Al Qaeda. Some Bangladeshi youth have joined the ISIS, and their organization is spreading its influence among some Indian Muslim youth.

The ISIS has declared Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan as Khorasan. Sections of the Pakistani Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) have pledged alliance with the ISIS. With the JMB in contact with Al Qaeda, the prospect of the ISIS entering Bangladesh is a real possibility. Another group, the Rohingyas who are Muslims, are vulnerable to the approaches of the Al Qaeda and Taliban. The Rohingyas are a stateless people with presence both in Bangladesh and Myanmar. They are a persecuted lot.

Around 2003-04, the Pakistani Embassy in Bangladesh was alleged to have been in touch with the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) a Rohingya extremist group.

More recently this year, a Pakistani ISI agent working in the Pakistani High Commission in Dhaka under the cover of consular attaché, was caught red handed giving money to JMB and Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) activists for subversive activities including in India. The head of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in Dhaka was also expelled by the Bangladesh government for “illegal” activities, an euphemism for working against the state of Bangladesh. The Bangladesh government has, however, underplayed both these incidents.

Pakistan’s army and the ISI have never forgiven Bangladesh for breaking away from Pakistan. Late Sk. Mujibur Rahman was seen by Islamabad as the main leader of the liberation movement. Sk. Hasina, as the daughter of Sk. Mujibur Rahman, is seen as the next enemy. Deep hatred has been reserved for India for helping Bangladeshis in their liberation war. The BNP has colluded in that plan, giving Indian separatists open sanctuaries in Bangladesh and using Bangladesh territory to launch terrorist attacks in India.

As Pakistan has learnt, the BNP should also learn, that such terrorists are nobody’s friends. Snakes reared to bite others will ultimately bite the owners.

The terrorist forces are also now turning against the BNP, and will certainly not accept a woman leader who is also known to be personally liberal.

The BNP has willfully allowed the JEI to ride on its shoulders. Khaleda Zia relies on the street power of the JEI. Nobody should take comfort from the fact that the JEI has only 4% of the votes. In Pakistan, the fighting parties have even fewer votes. But that has not prevented them from wielding power much beyond their vote share and helped militancy to grow. This is because the deep state has used them as foreign policy assets against India and in Afghanistan.

The BNP made similar mistakes and continues to do so. This is a grave mistake, and can boomerang against itself.

The Awami League is also making a mistake by prohibiting the media from reporting on HUT. The media needs to expose these organizations. What the Daily Star did was expose the threat posed by HUT. In the caption to the photograph of HUT poster, the daily attacked HUT. The intent of the daily was very clear.

In contrast to the media clampdown HUT has taken to the internet for propaganda of their views, persuading people to join them. And it appears they have scored some success.

One has only to sit back and imagine the looming threat to Bangladesh and its neighbourhood. Playing ostrich is the wrong approach.

It is time the BNP shed the JEI for its own survival. The major parties must put aside their political differences for a separate tussle, and join forces to fight this imminent threat that may consume all.

*The writer is a New Delhi based strategic analyst. He can be reached at e-mail grouchohart@yahoo.com.

The post Are Islamic Extremists Poised To Swallow Bangladesh? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong made a surprise two-day visit to India on 12-14 April 2015, the first by a foreign minister of that country in 25 years and thus a rare high-level engagement between India and North Korea.

India and North Korea established diplomatic relations in December 1973. The timing and significance of the visit cannot be missed as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to make a maiden three-nation visit to China, Mongolia and South Korea in May 2015. For India, this gave a good opportunity to reassess its stand on the on-going conflict between the South and North Koreas.

As scheduled, Yong met with Sushma Swaraj and Vice-President Hamid Ansari. One cannot also miss the timing of the visit as India’s defence minister Manohar Parikkar left on a four-day visit to South Korea on 14 April even when Yong was still in India. It was in March-April 2015, Parikkar had made a trip to Japan, after Modi’s visit to that country in August-September 2014. While in Seoul, Parikkar discussed with his counterpart how to enhance bilateral military ties, including the possibility of increasing exchanges of personnel and joint exercises. India is also keen to partner South Korean companies setting up shops and producing defence-related equipment as a part of its Make in India initiative. These visits demonstrate that each is trying to reach the other and trying to dissect issues that are in larger regional interests. Is North Korea worried that India is beefing up ties with countries with which it has adversarial relations?

What was the purpose of this sudden visit? Yong was local guardian to North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un during his schooling in Switzerland in the 1990s and is among the few leaders to wield influence in the secretive kingdom. Earlier, Yong was ambassador to Switzerland and believed to have been in charge of managing the funds of Kim’s father, the late Kim Jong-Il. As the country’s foreign minister, Yong has remained active and made trips to the UN, Russia, Cuba and Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, from Pyongyang’s perspective, his visit to India assumes significance.

Though India has diplomatic relations with both South and North Korea, the government has maintained a low-key official level engagement with Pyongyang. The Indian mission in Pyongyang functions with skeletal staff and a diplomatic assignment in that country is seen as a punishment posting. In contrast, a posting at the mission in Seoul is seen as a privileged posting. Though Sushma Swaraj responded to Yong’s request for assistance to be considered positively, it is unlikely to ruffle India’s relations with South Korea. South Korea, however, would expect that humanitarian assistance should be conditional to the improvement of human rights in North Korea, for which a UN panel headed by Michael Kirby recently indicted the regime.

It may be recalled that North Korea has been under economic sanctions for the past decade or so since its clandestine nuclear weapons and missile development programs became public. Its subsequent nuclear tests severely impacted its economy and worsened its relations with other countries. The famine of the 1990s caused a debilitating blow to its economy and the country is yet to recover from this shock. North Korea is heavily dependent upon external aid and trade and with sanctions drying up these means, its reliance on China, the only country it can rely, and few others with whom it has diplomatic and friendly relations has only increased. This could be the reason why Yong decided to visit India not only to brief the compulsions for its pursuance of nuclear weapons program but also seek aid and other humanitarian assistance. Yong’s visit to India also provided the latter an opportunity to reassess its relationship with North Korea, which is under heavy economic sanctions from the UN and western countries.

During his meeting with the Indian counterpart, Yong briefed on North Korea’s nuclear program and also sought food and educational aid. Like other countries, India too is concerned with the deteriorating security situation in the Korean peninsula, resulting from North Korea’s nuclear program, as this adversely impacts the robust economic relationship it has built with South Korea, Japan and China. Understandably, therefore, Swaraj conveyed to Yong that maintaining peace in the Korean peninsula is sine qua non for cooperative prosperity among the countries with stakes in the region. Surprisingly, even while Pyongyang tries to reach out to India as demonstrated by Yong’s visit, the KCNA, the official media of North Korea, makes relatively little mention of India, though coverage on the US and China, the two countries with which it has contrasting relationships is more. Yet, owing to historical reasons and India’s role in the Korean War, Pyongyang, like South Korea, places India high in the list of its imports and export partners and therefore looking to broaden its trade horizon.

North Korea, it seems, finds compelling reasons to find new trade partners because of isolation following sanctions it is facing for some time. The recent bonhomie between North Korea and Russia in which the economic content is a major focus could be one such example. This is essential for the regime to survive. Pyongyang does realise that expanding market in Russia and other friendly countries could help in honing the economic potentials of North Korean economy. Pyongyang does realise that in terms of trade export value, India was second only to China as a destination for North Korean goods, especially silver. Imports from India to North Korea shrunk significantly over the last four years. However, trade interactions in other direction increased by a large margin.

According to the ITC Trade Database, exports from North Korea to India recovered from just $137,000 in 2012 to nearly $110 million in 2014. However, there are caveats that point that India may have breached UN luxury goods sanctions in what appear to be numerous exports of precious stones and metals to the North over the last two years.

Even while Sushma Swaraj questioned the clandestine transfer of nuclear and missile technology and expressed concern with Yong, she did not mention Pakistan by name. A statement issued by the external affairs ministry said that “The foreign minister-level talks were held in a frank and friendly atmosphere, where issues of mutual interest including India’s security concerns came up for discussion,” adding that Swaraj “conveyed to her Korean counterpart the significance of peace and stability in the Korean peninsula for India’s Act East policy”. The reference was to tensions in the Korean peninsula between North and South Korea that flare up from time to time and India’s engagements with the countries in the region, including South Korea and Japan. India has strong trade and economic links with both countries. Both North and South Koreas are technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a ceasefire and no peace treaty was signed.

North Korea’s clandestine links with Pakistan on missile and nuclear technologies during the reign of Benazir Bhutto and the role of A.Q. Khan is well known and India’s concerns with North Korea’s non-proliferation record are therefore legitimate. North Korea’s nuclear tests in the past and the surface-to-air missiles firings into the seas ignoring the concerns of such acts by its neighbours also are disapproved by India. Though these incidents do not directly affect India’s security interests, Pyongyang’s clandestine relations with Pakistan are worrying. This is because both India and Pakistan have fought four wars since 1947, though there is little prospect for this to escalate at a nuclear scale. Both carried out a series of nuclear tests in May 1998.

Unlike North Korea’s immediate neighbours such as South Korea and Japan, India is in an enviable position to play the role of sobering influence to deter Pyongyang from launching in any adventurist activity. When North Korea suffered from natural disasters in the past few years, India extended humanitarian assistance to North Korea. In 2011, India was quick to respond to a food shortage in North Korea by providing $1 million through the World Food Programme. The assistance provided by India comprised consignments of blankets, rice, wheat, babyfood, polythene sheets, etc. In the past, India donated 2,000 MT of white rice in September 2002 and 1,000 MT of rice in July 2004. India also provided 200,000 Dexamethasone 4 mg (i ml injection), besides donating medicines for the victims of the Ryongchon train blast. In January 2006, India again provided 2,000 MT of rice. Even this time, Swaraj assured her counterpart that India would consider Korean request for additional humanitarian aid, and augment foreign aid, especially in the education and culture sectors.

Pyongyang had appreciated India’s timely assistance. Following this, the North Korean foreign minister visited the Indian embassy for the Republic Day function in Pyongyang on 26 January. Though India holds foreign office consultations with North Korea, it has limited leverage with the reclusive country, which counts China as its main ally. Though China is North Korea’s closest ally, relations between the two countries have soured after the assumption of power by Kim Jong-un, while South Korea-China relations have warmed. Yet, North Korea’s relationship with China remains like “lips and teeth” relationships and this cannot be discounted easily.

There are serious strategic considerations for this to undergo dramatic change. This did not deter Swaraj to respond Yong’s request for more humanitarian assistance to consider “positively”. Yong also extended an invitation to Swaraj to visit North Korea at a suitable time. India is on board with the international community that Pyongyang must curb its deep ambitions of becoming a nuclear power and desist conducting more nuclear tests as such acts adversely impacts on the peace and stability in the Korean peninsula. Though the international community has made sincere attempts through the six-party-talks (defunct since 2008) to deter Pyongyang from its nuclear weapons program and imposed tougher sanctions imposed on banking, travel and trade, reflecting the country’s increased international isolation, these measures have little impact on the North Korean regime.

On the other hand, Pyongyang seems to have hardened its position more. At the diplomatic level, India has always supported the six-party talks and peaceful resolution of the dispute in the Korean peninsula.

Sushma Swaraj’s interaction follows a contact between India and North Korea on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit, when her predecessor Salman Khurshid had a rare bilateral meeting with then North Korean foreign minister Pak Ui-Chuan at Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei Darussalam, on June 30, 2013.

According to Indian officials, that meeting had been requested by Pyongyang. That time, Khurshid had conveyed India’s concerns over North Korea’s secret military ties with Pakistan and rejected the communist country’s explanation that its nuclear posturing was intended to merely protect itself from US and South Korea.

Suspicious of the US claim to have won China’s support to seek “verifiable denuclearisation” of North Korea, and rejecting Pyongyang’s explanation for muscle-flexing, Khurshid bluntly told his counterpart from Pyongyang that New Delhi would neither budge from its “principled stand” against proliferation, nor buy the excuse the reclusive country cited to justify its nuclear test in February 2013. That time, Khurshid had told journalists after the meeting: “I told him (the North Korean Foreign Minister) that it was important not to get isolated. If you do not get isolated, you will have friends to help you. But if you get isolated, it becomes difficult for even your friends to help you”. India is indeed concerned over purported military and nuclear ties between North Korea and Pakistan and has taken up the issue at higher level whenever possible.

There have been some high level visits from India to North Korea in the past. When Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi visited Pyongyang in September 1998 as then minister of state and information and broadcasting that was the last high-level engagement with North Korea, labelled by the international community as a pariah for its controversial nuclear weapons program. Also, in April 1992 then Vice President Shankar Dayal Sharma had visited North Korea.

In a rare political engagement with North Korea, India sent a three-member parliamentary delegation to Pyongyang in July 2013, led by Sitaram Yechury of the CPI (M) to participate in the end of the ‘Fatherland Liberation War’ on 27 July that marked the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953. Others in the delegation were BJP MP Tarun Vijay and Congress MP Hamdullah Sayeed.

Though India has kept the channel of communication open, it has always reminded Pyongyang on the futility in its pursuit of nuclear weapons program, which had been “in violation of its international obligations and commitments”. Equally, India has maintained good relations with South Korea. In fact, New Delhi played host to South Korea’s President Park Geun-Hye in January 2014 and at that time then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged North Korea to “comply fully with its international obligations, including under relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions”. That time, Yechury had observed that “the significance of the visit is that at a time when there is tension between North and South Korea, India is trying to assert its independent role away from the US by sending a delegation to Pyongyang”. Like in the past, even at this time India voiced concerns about North Korea’s alleged proliferation linkages with Pakistan.

As North Korea is trying to reach out to India, India should seize the opportunity to launch a diplomatic offensive and take measures that could help reduce influence of China and bring reconciliation between the two Koreas. That would also help enhance India’s standing as an international power. It may be mentioned that India’s efforts and influence helped the Myanmar government to get out of China’s influence to some extend and subsequent lifting of sanctions, leading to its integration to the international community.

One could expect a similar role for India in the Korean peninsula.
As expected, the South Korean government did not make any comment or issue any statement on Yong’s visit to India as it was purely a bilateral issue. It is possible that Pyongyang is trying to reach out to India to avoid international isolation and also because of its estranged relations with Beijing under Kim Jong-un’s regime.

While India is gracious enough to consider extending humanitarian assistance as requested, it needs to be careful to make it conditional so that the aid and assistance would be meant for the people and MUST not be diverted into the military. If the assistance given by India is misused, India would be indirectly contributing to North Korea’s military build-up and proliferation and have an adverse impact on Asian security environment, including India. India could also possibly persuade Pyongyang to eschew the path of developing weapons of mass destruction and abandon the nuclear path. India also should secure that its assistance helps the regime to be open and motivates for introducing market reforms.

Persuading the regime in Pyongyang to talk to South Korea unconditionally could be a good start. The international community would be too willing to extend all possible help by way of aid, investment and technical cooperation if the regime gives up the nuclear path and embraces market economy. That would be in the interest of the country and its people. The people of North Korea, suffering from oppression for long, deserve to live with dignity.

Prime Minister Modi has already earned accolade for his diplomatic success from his several overseas visits already taken. If he can take some of his ‘charm offensive’ to the Korean peninsula during his forthcoming visits to South Korea and China in May 2015 and facilitate in breaking the ice between the two Koreas, he would have enhanced his standing as a world leader and elevated India’s position as a great power with say in global affairs. The visit is both a challenge and an opportunity. Will Modi seize it?

The post Significance Of North Korean Foreign Minister’s Visit To India – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Irena Mensikova

“To live and let live”, this is the motto of the newly declared Free Republic of Liberland, a self-proclaimed sovereign state located between Croatia and Serbia on the western banks of the Danube River. Its president, Czech Vít Jedlička, seized an opportunity and formed this new state on the basis of terra nullius – nobody’s land.

According to its official website, Liberland came into existence due to a border dispute between Croatia and Serbia. On 13 April, Vít Jedlička declared the formation of a new state within this undisputed territory. “Neither Croatia, nor Serbia has any interest in this place and that is perfect for us,” said Jedlička for Ruptly TV. He claims that such actions are allowed under international law, as reported by Balkan Insight.

With its territory of 7 square kilometres, Liberland could become the third smallest sovereign state in the world after the Vatican and Monaco. On its website, the could-be state characterizes itself as a constitutional republic with elements of direct democracy.

The country will, as its founders claim, focus on ensuring the prosperity of people by freeing them of unnecessary restrictions and taxes imposed by government.

“The state takes more than half of what you earn today and it didn’t used to. At the beginning of the last century, it only took ten to fifteen percent,” stated Jedlička for the Ruptly TV. The founders of Liberland believe that state intervenes too much into the economy and into the lives of its people.

“So we found a place, took the place, we went there and put our flag and we are going to let other nations know that we are here, that we exist,” concluded Jedlička.

The priority of the newly formed state will be the prompt formation of a constitution and the establishment of diplomatic relations with Croatia and Serbia, as reported by a Czech media outlet, E15. The country will not accept everyone as their citizens however, as they have set rules by which they will choose who is eligible.

According to the latest update on its Facebook page, Liberland has received “18,729 registrations from 184 countries”.

The post The Free Republic Of Liberland, A New Country In Europe? appeared first on Eurasia Review.

How should we deal with the dangers posed by nuclear arsenals and the proliferation of nuclear materials? Today, Joseph Siracusa looks back at the ‘atomic age’ and assesses the merits of three approaches that were popular then – deterrence, the Global Zero movement, and sanctions regimes.

By Joseph Siracusa*

Famed diplomat George F. Kennan had never heard of the Albert Einstein Peace Prize when he received a phone call on March 9, 1981, informing him that he had become the second recipient of the award. The ceremony took place in May before members of the new Reagan administration, as well as veteran Soviet ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Dobrynin. Long concerned with the nuclear question – how much is enough? – Kennan likened American and Soviet leaders to “men in a dream, like lemmings headed for the sea, like the children of Hamlin marching blindly behind their Pied Piper.” Beginning with the assumption that American and Soviet arsenals were “fantastically redundant to the purpose in question”—deterrence—he urged “an immediate across-the-board reduction by 50 percent of the nuclear arsenals then being maintained by the two superpowers; a reduction affecting in equal measure all forms of the weapon, strategic, medium-range, and tactical, as well as their means of delivery.” While Kennan’s advice was promptly ignored, the problem was, of course, not new. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, perpetually confronted with his own doubts and worries about underwriting America’s technical superiority in the Atomic Age, was among the first to articulate the problem, informing his advisers that “We are piling up these armaments because we don’t know what else to do to provide for our security.” By the time Eisenhower left office, there were already more weapons than conceivable targets.

A sample of statistics from the global nuclear age provides a sobering reminder of the scale of the problem. Upwards of 128,000 nuclear weapons have been produced in the past 68 years, of which about 98 percent were produced by the United States and the former Soviet Union. The nine current members of the nuclear club still possess 17,265 operational nuclear weapons between them, thousands of which presumably are ready to fire at a moment’s notice, enough to destroy the Earth’s inhabitant many, many times over. What should be done about this? On the whole, there are three basic options: 1) the deterrence approach, 2) the ‘global zero’ option and 3) various kind of sanctions. The question is: will any of them work?

Eisenhower’s warning

In his farewell address, delivered on January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower noted that the conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry, each in itself necessary, was new in the American experience. Recognizing the imperative to American security of possession of the latest scientific and military technology, he warned his fellow citizens that they must not fail to comprehend its implications. In the circumstances, the president concluded, “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” As a citizen-soldier, and because of his long experience in both the Army and the presidency, Eisenhower knew firsthand the invidious connection between industrialists and bureaucrats in their domination of the American defense establishment. He himself had presided over the growth of America’s nuclear arsenal from 1,000 warheads in 1953 to more than 18,000 when he left. His message was clear; his remedy less so.

Eisenhower’s warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex has surely come to pass. The waste produced by the U. S. defense establishment—not to mention the Soviet/Russian defense establishment, and the others – has amounted to a policy of national profligacy. Taking just one example, from 1940 to 1996, according to the Brookings Institution’s Atomic Audit, the United States spent almost $5.5 trillion (in constant 1996 dollars) on nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs. This was 29 percent of all military spending from 1940 (beginning with the Manhattan Project) through 1996 ($18.7 trillion). Put another way, this figure exceeded all other categories of government spending except non-nuclear national defense ($13.2 trillion) and social security ($7.9 trillion) amounting to almost 11 percent of all government expenditures through 1996. During this period, U. S. administrations spent on average nearly $98 billion a year developing and maintaining the nation’s nuclear capabilities. Yet, there was another dimension to these costs. Most of this spending was done in secret, but much more significant was each administration’s reliance on untraceable and unreported budgets. Equally important, “[T]he nuclear secrecy system,” according to the authors of Atomic Audit, “has had adverse implications for informed congressional and public debate over nuclear policy, constitutional guarantees, government accountability, and civilian control over the military.” The result of this unprecedented secrecy, Janet Farrell Brodie argues, contributed mightily to the emerging security state as “U.S. civilian society became increasingly militarized during the Cold War.” Eisenhower did well to worry.

For its part, the Soviet Union’s nuclear (and foreign) policies were largely driven by its own military-industrial complex. Dmitry Ustinov, the brilliant technocrat who oversaw the moving and rebuilding of Soviet industries during World War II, was “a tireless leader of the Soviet military-industrial complex.” He and minister of defense, Andrei Grechko, were persuaded beyond peradventure that Moscow faced another world war and were determined that the U.S.S.R. would emerge victorious. Leonid Brezhnev also believed in negotiating from a position of strength. Professor Vladislav Zubok writes that these two men pursued an “unrelenting arms race,” and under Brezhnev’s leadership, by the mid-1970s, total defense-related expenses, especially for missiles, grew at an alarming rate with a detrimental impact on the Soviet standard of living. Indeed, Mikhail Gorbachev complained that he was unaware of “the true scale of the militarization of the country” until after he became general secretary. Told at first that military expenditures comprised 16 percent of the nation’s budget, he soon learned that the real figure was closer to 40 percent and that of the 25 billion rubles marked for science, the military took 20 billion for technical research and development. The state’s emphasis on centralization, secrecy, and the military-industrial complex had all but destabilized the Soviet economy.

Nuclear alarmism

With worries about nuclear proliferation mounting during the early years of the twenty-first century, is there a danger of nuclear alarmism in the United States and elsewhere? In their 2008 article in International Security, security specialists William Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova declared, “Today it is hard to find an analyst or commentator on nuclear proliferation who is not pessimistic about the future.” What apparently upsets these experts is that they find little by way of existing proposals that offer a means of containing nuclear proliferation. One observer argued that the past offered few or no guidelines for the future: “During the Cold War, the world’s security was built on a handful of interlocking truths that were dreadful to contemplate, but blessedly stable … every brick of that deterrent edifice is now crumbling.”

Historian Francis Gavin has challenged this overly pessimistic outlook, arguing that this nuclear alarmism has resulted in overstated claims that are “in some cases, wrong, emerging from a poor understanding of the history of nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation.” He examines a number of myths that drive the opinion that new nuclear threats presumably are “more dangerous than those of the past.” For example, he reviews those beliefs that during the Cold War nuclear weapons readily stabilized international politics or the converse that superpower rivalry alone drove proliferation during the same years. The alarmists have oversimplified the strategic dilemmas of the Cold War era and have ignored the regional security issues that contributed to proliferation during these years. Those analysts who believe that Washington and Moscow alone created the nonproliferation regime, one might add, ignore the very considerable role played by the international community. No one, however, dismisses the fact that nuclear proliferation is an important policy matter. Certainly, Gavin sees it as such, but warns that “overreacting to current dangers while mischaracterizing those of the past” could “drive misguided policies.”

Surely, then, there are significant lessons to be harvested from the history of the nuclear weapons era. Because twenty-first century proliferation issues, as Gavin points out, “have deep roots in the past” for global “policies to be successful, an understanding of this history is vital.”

What, then, should be done, and what should leaders and officials consider when determining their policies and politics? There are two basic ideas that will dominate discussions in the years ahead: a) expanded nuclear deterrence and b) applying economic/military sanctions. From these two ideas, three general approaches may be discerned. First, an inheritance from the First Nuclear Age is the deterrent (and “taboo”) approach that militates against any state’s first use of nuclear weapons. Then, there are proponents of the “global zero” approach, of which President Barack Obama (a nuclear optimist) is the chief exponent, who are persuaded that enforcement is best handled by the nuclear weapons states setting an example. Yet, as Americans reduce their nuclear stockpiles, European nations, Japan, and South Korea, for whom the U. S. provides a nuclear umbrella, worry about whether the U. S. is also reducing its commitment to their protection. The third approach, applying economic, military, and other (cyber/assassination) sanctions, has its supporters, with economic sanctions currently being employed in the cases of North Korea and (for the moment) Iran. The idea of military sanctions has also been advanced, such as Israel employed in the 1981 Osirak bombing of an Iraqi nuclear facility. Sanctions, in turn, raise several important questions: regarding state sovereignty, whether nuclear weapons states have the legal right to interfere with states electing a nuclear weapons program, and whether sanctions are really effective. Indeed, the real question is: Will any of these options actually work?

What do we know? That we have succeeded in developing weapons with the capability of global self-destruction. Needless to say, the human race is in this together – and together must find a resolution until such time as ‘the bomb’ has become an anachronism.

*Joseph M. Siracusa is Professor in Human Security and International Diplomacy and Discipline Head of Global Studies in the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning, at RMIT University, where he is a specialist in American politics and global security.

The post Reflections On The Atomic Age – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A planned anti-Qatari protest ahead of a match between Chelsea and Manchester United, the first major fan demonstration against the 2022 World Cup host, and the imminent publication of a Sunday Times book documenting Qatari political interference in world soccer body FIFA’s 2011 presidential election that returned Sepp Blatter to office at the behest of the FIFA president casts a shadow over next month’s FIFA election and is likely to renew debate about the integrity of the Qatari bid.

The protest and the publication come as 79-year old Mr. Blatter is campaigning for a fifth term in an election at next month’s FIFA congress against three candidates, foremost among whom outgoing FIFA vice president Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, who are demanding reform of the scandal-ridden, secretive group.

It also comes against the backdrop of persistent criticism of Qatar’s controversial labour regime and allegations that migrant workers who constitute a majority of the Gulf state’s population toil under unacceptable working and living conditions on major infrastructure projects, including ones related to the World Cup.

The brunt of that criticism was until now expressed by human rights groups, trade unions and the International Labour Organization (ILO). Qatar has made lofty promises of reform but has yet to act on many of those promises, prompting suggestions that FIFA members could table a resolution at next month’s congress censoring the Gulf state, if not calling for it to be deprived of its hosting rights.

While many fans have been critical of the awarding of the tournament to Qatar and question the integrity of the Qatari bid that has been mired in controversy from day one, few have to date organized to pressure the Gulf state. That may change this weekend with a call by the Chelsea Supporters Trust and Playfair Qatar for a photo protest at Stamford Bridge in London in advance of Chelsea’s Premier League match against Manchester United in demand of improved welfare and rights of workers involved in World Cup-related infrastructure.

The Sunday Times book is likely to put to rest the fictional notion propagated by Mr. Blatter, his associates in the FIFA executive committee, and leaders of other sports associations that sports and politics are unrelated. It will further likely raise questions not only about Qatar’s World Cup bid but also its concerted effort to position itself as a global sports hub. Qatar, which still has ambitions to host an Olympic Games, is hosting 89 major sporting events in the coming year.

The book, The Ugly Game: The Qatari plot to buy the World Cup by Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert, counters Qatar’s defence of the integrity of its World Cup bid and raises questions about the banning of Mr. Bin Hammam despite few doubts about the uprightness of his actions and the transparency of FIFA presidential elections. It asserts, based on a cache of FIFA documents, including a large number of emails, as well as interviews that contrary to repeated Qatari claims disgraced and banned former FIFA vice president and Asian Football Confederation president Mohammed Bin Hammam was intimately involved in the Qatari bid.

In one of its most startling findings, the book asserts that Mr. Blatter concerned that Mr. Bin Hammam’s challenge of his presidency in the 2011 FIFA election posed a serious threat cut a deal days before the election with Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family under which Mr. Blatter would not question the Qatari bid in return for Mr. Bin Hammam’s withdrawal from the presidential race. The deal forced Mr. Bin Hammam to withdraw his candidacy amid allegations that he had bribed members of the Caribbean Football Union in a bid to ensure their support for his presidential bid. The Sunday Times said that Mr. Bin Hammam’s withdrawal statement had been draft by the Qatar 2022 organizing committee.

Mr. Blatter’s concern was prompted by Mr. Bin Hammam’s alleged ability to muster a majority of 14 votes in the FIFA executive committee’s December 2010 vote in favour of Qatar. Mr. Blatter was elected unopposed for a fourth term. Mr. Bin Hammam announced his surprise withdrawal despite the fact that an investigation of the Caribbean incident by the FIFA ethics committee had yet to reach a conclusion. Qatar’s interest was primarily in hosting the World Cup rather than have a controversial Qatari national become head of FIFA. The Sunday Times asserts that the deal was cut despite the paper having provided FIFA with evidence that called the integrity of the Qatari bid into question.

The book further documents Mr. Bin Hammam’s close involvement in the Qatari bid which raises further questions given the repeated Qatari denials and the multiple controversies surrounding the way the former executive conducted FIFA and AFC business. The Sunday Times asserted last year in reporting based on leaked documents that Mr. Bin Hammam had operated a number of slush funds that were employed to buy the support of FIFA member associations.

In a preview of the book, The Sunday Times reported earlier this month that a confidante of Mr. Bin Hammam had phoned the paper on behalf of the Qatari shortly after the disclosure of the slush funds to say: . “Bin Hammam brought the World Cup to Qatar. Bin Hammam and the bid were separate, but Bin Hammam was the coach of the Qatar bid. He brought the votes to Qatar. He was the one with the relationships . . . The rainmaker was Bin Hammam… Blatter didn’t vote for Qatar because he did not want to give Bin Hammam any more power. Then when they won he got a shock and from then on his one thought was to destroy Mohamed bin Hammam. He provoked a death penalty by collecting those 14 votes.”

The post Questions About Qatar’s World Cup Hosting Get Renewed Boost – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

While the European Union is more adamant than ever to diversify away from its Russian-gas dependence, keen to free itself from its ever-growing energy needs by turning its attention further east, the energy rich Caspian states work hard to position themselves within this new blue energy race.

Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan offer game-changing potentials for energy consumers in Europe and Asia, the International Energy Agency said in its latest report, confirming those nations’ capability of supplying gas to Europe.

As it happens, each state of the Caspian Sea region with some 48 billion barrels of oil and over 292 trillion cubic feet of natural gas has a burning desire to diversify its exports. Currently, the energy strategies of the Caspian states aim to reach one goal – to act an alternative supply source for Europe.

In this context, Azerbaijan has appeared the strongest contender. One of the most stable and promising state in the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan offers stability and reliability, two qualities the EU is most desperate for.

The country jumped ahead with the realization of the Southern Corridor Pipeline, at a time when other initiatives carrying natural gas and oil from the Caspian region to Europe ended in fiasco.

Edward Chaw, a senior fellow at CSIS Energy and National Security Program, believes the Shah Deniz gas of Azerbaijan is the only realistic new supply available to be exported to Europe.

“The prospect of other gas from the region is many years in the future,” Chaw wrote in an e-mail to AzerNews. “The timely execution of TANAP and TAP, which are core links of the Southern Gas Corridor, is doubly important, not only for Azerbaijan but also for the region.”

He added that once the corridor is in place, more gas resources can be developed and attracted to use common infrastructure on a commercial basis. “There will be scope for the countries and companies working in those countries to cooperate in expanding gas flows,” Chaw assures.

Chi Kong Chyong, a research associate at the Judge Business School and director of the Energy Policy Forum at the University of Cambridge, shared the same views, noting that Azerbaijan is perhaps the only supplier in the region able to respond to the EU’s gas diversification strategy away from Russia.

“Azerbaijan has long been cooperating with western energy companies on such projects as Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater oil project, Shah Deniz gas-condensate project (both led by BP) as well as BTC and BTE pipelines. Thus the scope to increase gas supply from Azerbaijan seems to be only a matter of economics of the potential supply projects,” he wrote in an e-mail to AzerNews.

The experts agree that Turkmenistan, with the world’s sixth largest natural gas reserve, seemed a perfect candidate from the Caspian region to realize Europe’s diversification dream. However, Europe’s long-awaited Turkmen gas will face a number of geopolitical and financial challenges on its way to Europe.

Noting that Turkmenistan’s rich gas reserves are a logical source for European supplies, Chi Kong Chyong said Europe partially lost the Turkmen reserves to China.

“Following a long and unsuccessful discussion to build the Trans-Caspian pipeline under the Caspian Sea to bring Turkmen gas to Europe, the country has shifted its exports towards China. Most of the prospective and relatively cheap upstream projects have been secured by China – the Yolotan gas field phase I, II are both developed (and financed) by CNPC in cooperation with Hyunday and Petrofac have been targeted to supply the Chinese gas market (up to 60 bcm/a). A second project involving CNPC is Bagtyyarlyk group of gas fields with a total production of 15-30 bcm/a,” he said.

The expert noted that other than these two upstream projects, there are no clear development plans in Turkmenistan and the reserves are more complex and expensive to develop.

With many supporters, including the European Commission, to help natural gas from Turkmenistan to find a route to Europe, the biggest obstacle to any deal from the Caspian region is Russia, which insists that countries can only export from the region if all other littoral states agree.

Europe will try to overcome Russian resistance via gas agreements with Turkmenistan through Azerbaijan, but it will require lengthy discussions and investments, and in view of the current oil-price crisis it is not a feasible option for now.

Chi Kong Chyong further noted that Uzbekistan’s gas supplies to Europe also face constraints; its commitment to supply to China, and a more serious problem – supply route to Europe would have to go through Caspian Sea or Russia, which is impossible in light of Europe’s diversification strategy.

Meanwhile, news that the western-imposed embargo on Tehran might end revived the Iranian option in Europe’s energy agenda. Iran, holding 33.6 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves, sharing 18 percent of total global gas reserves, tries hard to position itself as “Russia’s only competitor for Europe”.

The experts note that despite the hope Iranians got following the Lausanne talks, the country is not ready to satisfy EU’s gas demand and replace Russia as a key supplier, as it lags behind in gas extraction.

“The major challenge in getting Iranian gas to Europe seems to be under-investment in the gas sector – there are infrastructural constraints, namely Iran’s geographical distribution of resources relative to its consumption as well as a lack of production and export infrastructure in the country,” Chi Kong Chyong said.

“Iran’s gas resources (e.g., South Pars field) are in the south of the country and hence would require substantial investment to build new and modernize existing pipelines to bring gas to the north-west to tap into Europe’s southern gas corridor. Thus, Iran as a source for Europe’s flagship southern corridor is not a viable proposition, at least in the medium term,” he stressed.

Dimitar Bechev, a senior visiting fellow at LSEE Research on South Eastern Europe, shared such views noting that there is very little in terms of cross-border infrastructures to carry gas from Iran to Europe.

“Iran charges more than Russian Gazprom or Azerbaijan’s SOCAR on its long-term contract,” Bechev wrote in an e-mail to AzerNews. “Becoming a net gas exporter will involve massive investments but I’m not sure there’s a strong case to be made to international firms when it comes to the prospect of low gas prices in the medium term.”

Consumption of natural gas by EU countries hit 369.90 – million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2014, compared to 388.60 mtoe in 2013 and 393,50 mtoe in 2012, according to Euromonitor International.
The European Union boosted its efforts to diversify energy supplies, but the EU members vary in their approach and lack of firm energy security policy threatens the Central and Eastern Europe, where countries are mostly dependent on Russia, the supplier of 30 percent of EU gas.

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This is the time of year when birds come out and really spread their wings, but since a disastrous day just before spring’s arrival four years ago, Japan’s Fukushima province has not been friendly to the feathered. And as several recent papers from University of South Carolina biologist Tim Mousseau and colleagues show, the avian situation there is just getting worse.

Since a few months after the March 11, 2011, earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear catastrophe at Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant, Mousseau and several co-workers have undertaken a series of bird censuses in contaminated areas. They recently published a paper in the Journal of Ornithology showing results from the first three years of the effort for 57 bird species.

Many populations were found to have diminished in number as a result of the accident, with several species suffering dramatic declines. One hard-hit species was the barn swallow, Hirundo rustica, which suffered large population losses in a dose-dependent manner according to individually measured levels of radiation exposure.

The researchers looked more closely with the barn swallow, trying to isolate the mechanism causing the population decrease with their first two years of data. But as Mousseau, his postdoctoral associate Andrea Bonisoli-Alquati and colleagues reported in a separate recently published study in the journal Scientific Reports, their tests of peripheral erythrocytes in individual barn swallow nestlings failed to show genetic damage as a result of direct-dose radiation effects. Nevertheless, the more detailed study showed a dose-response decrease in both numbers and fraction of juveniles.

“We were working with a relatively small range of background exposures in this study because we weren’t able to get into the ‘hottest’ areas that first summer after the disaster, and we were only able to get to some ‘medium-hot’ areas the following summer,” Mousseau said. “So we had relatively little statistical power to detect those kinds of relationships, especially when you combine that with the fact that there are so few barn swallows left. We know that there were hundreds in a given area before the disaster, and just a couple of years later we’re only able to find a few dozen left. The declines have been really dramatic.”

Another place in the world that might provide insight into what’s now happening in Fukushima is Chernobyl, the scene in 1986 of a devastating release of radioactive materials in Ukraine. Mousseau, as director of the Chernobyl + Fukushima Research Initiative since it was founded in 2000 at Carolina, is uniquely qualified to draw comparisons, having been a leader over the past two decades in establishing a large body of research on the effects of radioactivity on animals living in the wild.

In a separate paper in the Journal of Ornithology, Mousseau and his longtime collaborator Anders Moller of the CNRS (France) discuss how the response of bird species differed between Fukushima and Chernobyl. One contrast between the effects of radiation in the two locales was striking: Migratory birds appear to fare worse in the mutagenic landscape of Chernobyl than year-round residents, whereas the opposite is true in Fukushima.

“It suggests to us that what we’re seeing in Fukushima right now is primarily through the direct result of exposure to radiation that’s generating a toxic effect — because the residents are getting a bigger dose by being there longer, they’re more affected,” Mousseau said. “Whereas in Chernobyl, many generations later, the migrants are more affected, and one possibility is that this reflects differences in mutation accumulation.

“The DNA repair capabilities of migratory species are impaired at least for a short period of time following migration. After they’ve been flapping their wings, generating oxidative stress as a consequence of exercise, their antioxidant levels — vitamin E, carotenoids, for example — are much lower than normal, so the radiation hits them harder than the resident species that don’t have that acute depletion effect.”

What might be most disheartening to the researchers involved, and bird-lovers in general, is how the situation is progressing in Fukushima. Despite the decline in background radiation in the area over these past four years, the deleterious effects of the accident on birds are actually increasing.

“The relationship between radiation and numbers started off negative the first summer, but the strength of the relationship has actually increased each year,” Mousseau said. “So now we see this really striking drop-off in numbers of birds as well as numbers of species of birds. So both the biodiversity and the abundance are showing dramatic impacts in these areas with higher radiation levels, even as the levels are declining.”

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“It is not unusual to find a couple of civilians decapitated or shot on the roads of Al-Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid,” a North Sinai resident told a reporter of Daily News Egypt, which describes itself as Egypt’s only independent newspaper in English. Beheading is the execution method of choice employed by the terror group “State of Sinai” – a comparatively new jihadist conglomerate affiliated to Islamic State (IS), and responsible for a remorselessly bloody campaign against the Egyptian military over the past two years.

The brutal killings include also civilians whom the terrorists accuse of being “armed forces informers”. For example, in February “State of Sinai” released a video showing the decapitation of eight civilians. Their bodies were later found on North Sinai roads. On April 11 it posted a video featuring both the beheading of an individual, apparently a civilian, and the shooting of a young soldier, Ahmed Fotouh, who had been kidnapped on April 2 in an attack on seven military checkpoints which left 16 armed forces’ personnel dead.

The village of Qarm Al-Qawadis, the scene of a notorious jihadist attack last October which left at least 33 Egyptian servicemen dead, witnessed a new onslaught on April 12. “State of Sinai” claimed to have shot two mortar shells into a military base resulting in the death of six army personnel. In a separate incident on the same day, a car bomb targeted a police station in Al-Arish killing six police officers and wounding twenty. Three days later two more policemen were killed after a bomb explosion targeted a security vehicle in the Masaeed area in Al-Arish.

And so it goes on, ceaselessly, relentlessly.

Egyptian journalist Sliman Gawda is convinced that the terrorists “are funded, supported, and even trained by outside sources.” He is referring to Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood supporters, some of whom have based themselves in Gaza city. “As the terrorists become more daring,” he writes, “so should the Egyptian army be more ferocious in its war on terror. Yes, we are paying a heavy price for our war against terror. But we must show the Muslim Brotherhood, once and for all, that we will hunt down each of its individuals until we feel safe.”

After the October attack, which produced the biggest loss of life in decades for Egypt’s army, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi imposed a three-month state of emergency in the north and centre of the Sinai peninsula, and closed Egypt’s Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip. Declaring that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip had become one of the region’s main exporters of terror, Egypt mounted a major offensive aimed at overcoming the threat and re-establishing effective control. A major step was to establish a security buffer zone along Egypt’s shared border with Gaza in order to prevent terrorists from using the vast network of tunnels to launch attacks inside Egypt, or smuggle goods and weapons out. The Egyptian army’s security crackdown included imposing a curfew on the region, demolishing hundreds of houses along the border and transferring thousands of people to new locations.

In a sense Egypt’s war on terrorism began with the overthrow in 2013 of former president Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood government that he headed. Their year in office had demonstrated all too clearly to the majority of the Egyptian population what living under an extreme Islamist administration meant, and by and large they rejected it. Even so, the Muslim Brotherhood retained the support of a fair minority of Egyptians, and al-Sisi inherited an inherently unstable situation. In his view, the restoration of stability required the total rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood and all its works, and given the revolutionary situation, their suppression. Hence the trial of Morsi, the clampdown on leading Brotherhood figures and their supporters, and the jailing of journalists employed by the TV station Al-Jazeera based in Qatar, a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Sisi’s fight against terrorism has gone further. It has ventured into an area shunned by most political figures in the West, fearful of being tarred with that most unacceptable of brushes for the politically correct – Islamophobia.

On January 1, 2015, al-Sisi visited Cairo’s Al-Azhar University where he addressed a gathering of Egypt’s religious leadership. He said some rather surprising things.

Ideas held most sacred by religious clerics, he asserted, were causing the entire Islamic nation to be a source of anxiety to the rest of the world. “That thinking (I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”), that corpus of texts and ideas that we have held sacred over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. Is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible! We are in need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting for your next move…because the Islamic nation is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.”

His initiative has not fallen on deaf ears. On April 2 Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Shawki Allam, spoke not only to the Egyptian people, but to Muslims worldwide.

“There is no true religion that does not regard the sanctity of human life as one of its highest values, and Islam is no exception. Indeed, Allah made this unequivocal in the Qur’an. He emphasized the gravity of the universal prohibition against murder, stating that when a person takes even one life, ‘it is as if he has killed all mankind’.”

Referring to the videos showing decapitations in Sinai and Libya, the burning alive of the Jordanian pilot, and other horrific acts by jihadists, he said: “These thugs are invoking religious texts to justify their inhumane crimes.” This, he asserted,”is a flagrant misreading of both the letter and spirit of the Islamic tradition… These terrorists are not Muslim activists, but criminals who have been fed a mistaken interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah, the teachings and practices of the Prophet Mohammed.

“Beyond a military war on terror, we are in an ideological battle – one we must win – against radical extremists who use terror as a weapon to achieve their goals of disrupting global stability and the conscience of the peaceful world. Egypt is in dire need of the world’s support as it fights against the terrorist cancer. In this battle, Egypt is defending not only itself, but also humanity against the encroaching danger of extremism.”

Food for thought.

The post Egypt’s Fight Against Terror – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called for immediate peace talks between Yemen’s warring parties in a telephone call with United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, Teheran’s official IRNA news agency said.

The Iranian government proposed a peace plan for Yemen that calls for a ceasefire followed by foreign-mediated talks by all sides.

Zarif on Wednesday had said that Teheran is ready to use its influence to impede al Qaeda from taking advantage of an eventual truce between the loyalist forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition and Shiite Houthi rebels.

Zarif reiterated to the UN chief that Iran is ready to do everything possible for a solution to the crisis.

Riyadh and Washington accuse Teheran of militarily backing the Houthi rebels, denied by Iran, as also its military presence on the battlefield. “The Houthis have no need to be trained and armed by Iran”, said Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, to the LebaneseAl Mayadeen TV.

“These charges are intended to present Iran as a source of insecurity in the region… The issue of securing the strategic Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, is a political excuse because the Houthis and their allies will never be a threat to the trade and shipping in the strait”, added Salami.

The post Yemen: Iran Calls For ‘Immediate Talks’ Between Warring Sides appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Alessandro Bruno

On April 15, amid a normalization of ties between the United States and Cuba, President Barack Obama revoked Cuba’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism. Iran, Syria, and Sudan will continue to hold the dubious designation that until 2008 also included North Korea. Such lists have a problem: there is no clarity as to what constitutes a ‘terrorist,’ which allows for states and organizations to criminalize any action, dissent, or criticism as suits their purpose. It was not always so.

In the 1970s, terrorism was confined to specific groups like the Red Brigades in Italy, Sendero Luminoso in Peru or even the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. The term applied to groups and organizations worldwide espousing ideologies ranging from racial supremacy to left-wing extremism. Nobody had the exclusive ‘rights’ to the term. Today, the term terrorism has unfortunately become intrinsically associated with Islam. A stereotype has consolidated within Western culture that all Muslims are terrorists, suicide bombers with the gene for evil in their blood. Terrorist attacks are always tragedies that affect all of us. It is true that there seems to have been a concentration of ignoble acts over the past 30 years in the Middle East and North Africa, seemingly involving violence in the name of Islam; however, the media and world opinion have been rather myopic.

Islamic extremism is certainly dangerous, as is any extremism, but sometimes it is enhanced because it belongs to a different culture than ours in the West. For example, everyone will remember the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001, attributed to Muslims, but what many do not know is that the second most violent attack in American history took place on April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City, at the hands of Timothy McVeigh, a Christian, a former soldier, who planned and executed an attack in which 168 people lost their lives and another 800 were injured. The reasons, as stated by the same McVeigh, are to be found in the conduct of the US government, he claimed “increasingly hostile and therefore deserving of action strategically equivalent to those perpetrated by the United States against buildings in Serbia, Iraq or other nations.

Islam is a religion, which for most of the centuries it has been practiced, has professed tolerance. Its non-ecclesiastical structure has made it easy for some to interpret its tenets in varying and sometimes very intolerant ways, as Islamic State or al-Qaida have infamously demonstrated. Nevertheless, the West has been guilty itself of confusing what is written in the texts with the practices implemented by terrorist groups and by some exalted imam who use religion as a pretext to commit crimes against humanity. This is evidently unfair and wrong. Would we ever confuse the massacre of 2,900 Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila Camp in Beirut by Christian Phalangist militias in September 1982 with the words of Jesus Christ and his teachings of peace? It is very doubtful. The episode, classified by the Assembly of the United Nations as genocide, was documented by photographers who clearly described the perpetrators as Christians because they were brandishing crucifixes during the massacre.

Islam, which represents more than a billion people of every race, nationality and culture, as well as being a religion is also a lifestyle. The overwhelming majority of Muslims profess a religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness that has nothing to do with the violence of Islamic State, or al-Shabaab in Somalia and Kenya, or Boko Haram. Moreover, only 18% of Muslims reside in the Arab world – the majority is scattered in every corner of the earth. Muslims believe in the chain of prophets starting with Adam and including Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Elias, Jonah, John the Baptist and Jesus. When discussing Islam, therefore, it is important to avoid making the now all too common link to terrorism. Perhaps it is even wrong to speak of “Islamic terrorism,” especially as the modern manifestations of Islamic extremism have more to do with the West than with Mecca, having their roots in the Afghanistan of the late eighties and early nineties, with the full financial and military support of the United States and some Arab Gulf countries.

The West needs no lessons in using religion for political repression and massacring civilians. From the austerity and iconoclasm of the middle ages to the Inquisition that sentenced peaceful philosophers like Giordano Bruno to be burned alive, to Oliver Cromwell in 17th century Britain and to the colonization of Africa, just for starters, the West has been more than an inspiration for what we call Islamic terrorists. And Christian terrorism, not just Sabra and Shatila, has not been lost in history. It is very much alive today. Christian ‘terrorists’ read the Bible. They hunt demons and abortionists. And dream of a society based on the Ten Commandments. From the US to China: Christian groups are ready to kill.

Extremism is not a prerogative of Islam as suggested by a study carried out by the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), an American organization that, among other things, specializes in the identification of so-called hate groups, or those aggregations touting ideas of racial or religious hatred. According to the SPLC, between April 2009 and February 2015 on US soil more people have died because of Christian, rather than Muslim, fanaticism. But there have been victims of Christian fanatics worldwide. Terrorism can be fomented by warped interpretations of the Quran just as by equally warped interpretations of the Bible and the Book of Revelation. Cases in which Christians, far from being the victims, become the executioners.

It’s just that it has not occurred to anyone that Christians should be blaming themselves for some of the most violent events in history – not including the world wars, just to mention two, of the past century. More recently and in areas not far from where groups claim allegiance to al-Qaida or Islamic State, Christian Hutus exterminated 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda over a two-month period, in a war described as a genocide by the United Nations, without making any distinction between men, women and children. The Catholic Church obviously knew and there was a clear, if limited, involvement of its prelates, some of whom have been arrested and tried and others transferred to Europe such as Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, who fled to France to void serving his sentence.

Father Wenceslas, who was photographed several times brandishing a gun and colluding with Hutu militias was convicted in Rwanda “in absentia” for genocide and rape. The International Criminal Court of Rwanda has sought and failed to obtain his extradition, but the French Catholic church has always refused. This is not an isolated case. Father Athanase Seromba personally ordered the demolition by bulldozers of his church where he had just bolted the doors, trapping the 2,000 people he had invited to “protect.”

In discussions of Boko Haram in Nigeria or al-Shabaab in Kenya and Somalia, murder, kidnappings, village raids and the use of child soldiers and sex slaves has been widely documented. Little is said about the very Christian group that ‘pioneered’ such tactics in northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), first known as the United Holy Salvation Army and Uganda Christian Army, led by Joseph Kony, is a military and religious movement formed by Christians in 1987 and accused of crimes against humanity – murder, kidnappings, rapes, slavery and torture. The LRA’s stated purpose is to fight Islam and establish a theocracy in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments.

The LRA has been directly responsible for an unknown number of murders (at least 100,000) and the displacement of millions over the years. Its leaders have been accused of crimes against humanity, including killings, abductions, mutilations, torture, rapes, and enslavement for sexual purposes. Joseph Kony has proclaimed himself a spokesman of God and the medium of the Holy Spirit. The LRA emerged from the armed resistance movement active in northern Uganda, following the overthrow of the government led by Acholi Tiko Okello at the hands of Yoweri Museveni, founder of the National Resistance Army. The ideology of the group is a mixture of syncretism, traditional mysticism of the African peoples, Acholi nationalism and Christian fundamentalism. Similar groups, in February 2014, were guilty of massacring Muslim Balaka communities in the Central African Republic. Last January alone the victims are estimated at over 1,000, but at the end of the counts of this conflict that has lasted for years the victims are likely to be tens of thousands.

From America to Africa, up to the Far East Asia, the fundamentalists ‘of the cross’ are organized in terrorist groups. They fight against abortion, interracial marriages, homosexuals and other cults. Sometimes even against fellow Christians who do not recognize their fundamentalist vision. But, apart from acting blind and deaf to the suffering caused by Christian terrorism, the West also fails to recognize Muslims’ own responses and rejection of their fundamentalist manifestations.

The Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah movement’s militia, which many Western countries, including the United States and Canada, insist on branding a terrorist organization ignoring the complexities of 20th-century Lebanese politics, has been at the forefront of the struggle against Islamic State and al-Qaida offshoots such as the al-Nusra Front. Hezbollah has weakened terrorist groups in the strategic area of ​​Quseir and in the mountain range of Qalamoun in Syria. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has recently pointed out: “The equation of army-people-resistance was able to liberate our land, where the world had failed. The resistance, next to the army and the people, has helped protect the borders of Lebanon. That’s why Hezbollah not only should not be considered a terrorist movement, it should be recognized as a subject, in the Arab world, fighting all forms of terrorism and fundamentalism, which it does with the support of the people.

From the beginning, the civil war in Syria, aided and abetted by the West, which at one point in 2013 seemed ready to launch missile strikes against Damascus, has stirred sectarian divisions and threatened the region and the world. To include Hezbollah in the same ranks as al-Qaeda, al Nusra and Islamic State without considering the former’s considerable political relevance is hypocrisy. Similarly, in Yemen, the Houthi ‘rebels, against whom Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Gulf allies are fighting, defeated the Salafi movement that morphed into the now notorious terrorist groups proliferating in southwestern Yemen, such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Finally, it should be stressed that the fundamentalist groups and radicals have no support from political groups, parties and movements in the Middle East, perhaps even less so today than it was the case through the 1960s-1980s, when social and nationalistic aspirations were often championed by secular terrorism. Islam contains within it, as a faith and as a society, the most effective tools to challenge its own fundamentalisms.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

The post Terrorism And Fundamentalism Not Exclusive To Islam – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Michaela Dodge, Steven Groves and James Phillips*

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) unanimously passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, a bill that attempts to bolster the congressional role in the Obama Administration’s negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program. While the effort is well intentioned, the bill sets up Congress to allow the Administration to act as if it had congressional approval while a substantive oversight of the agreement is lacking. The bill paves a path to lifting sanctions and congressional approval of what has emerged as a flawed and dubious deal with a notoriously untrustworthy regime.

The bill allows the Obama Administration’s future agreement with the Iranian leaders to go forward unless it is disapproved by enactment of a new law. To halt a bad agreement then, Congress would need to pass a joint resolution disapproving the agreement, which the President could then veto, as a result of which it would not become law unless two-thirds of both Houses of Congress vote to override the veto. Thus, in essence, under the SFRC bill, the Obama agreement with Iran will automatically go forward unless two-thirds of Congress disapproves of it. In contrast, in the normal treaty process, a President cannot make a treaty unless two-thirds of the Senate votes to approve the treaty.

The President knows that he would not be able to achieve Senate ratification of a nuclear deal with Iran, which is why he is choosing to pursue a deal as a sole executive agreement and not as a treaty. The SFRC bill gives the Administration a vehicle to gain congressional sanction that it neither sought nor was able to obtain in the first place through the standard treaty process.

The Administration’s Bad Deal

The Obama Administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action makes clear that the United States will be left with a risky deal that will not halt Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts, but only slow the pace of its advance temporarily, while allowing Iran to stage a nuclear breakout from a much-improved position after restrictions on uranium enrichment expire in 10 years to 15 years.

Iran is allowed to maintain more than 6,000 operational centrifuges for 10 years, after which it will be free to build a much bigger program that will greatly shorten the time it needs for a nuclear breakout. Despite six U.N. Security Council Resolutions that called for a halt in its enrichment efforts, the Administration has essentially accepted Iran’s self-proclaimed “right” to enrich uranium. Since the global market provides more than enough enriched-uranium fuel for civilian nuclear reactors at much lower prices than Iran can produce it, Iran’s claim that its enrichment efforts are due to necessity is suspicious at best.

Iran is not required to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure or clarify previous questions regarding military dimensions of its nuclear program. Particularly worrisome is the continued operations of its illicit nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz, as well as the heavy water reactor at Arak that has been described as a plutonium bomb factory. All of these facilities, which were built covertly by Iran in violation of its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitments, would now be legitimized by the agreement.

The Administration undermined its own bargaining leverage by prematurely relaxing sanctions on Iran to reach the 2013 interim agreement. Once sanctions are lifted under this latest deal, they will be very hard to re-impose, given the U.N.’s history of coming in a day late and a dollar short in crisis situations. Other members of the U.N. Security Council, Russia in particular, cannot be counted on to fully cooperate on re-imposing sanctions in a timely and effective manner. Just this week, Moscow announced that it intends to sell its advanced S-300 air-defense system to Tehran, despite successive U.S. Administrations’ efforts to prevent the sale.

U.S. allies, including Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have expressed alarm at the prospect for a deal that only temporarily slows down, and does not stop, Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon. They fear that a nuclear deal will lead to a rapprochement between Iran and the United States that will come at their expense.

Conclusion

The well-intentioned legislation has negative consequences because it diverts attention from what should be the goals of an acceptable nuclear agreement:

• A permanent halt in Iran’s uranium enrichment and plutonium production;
• A robust and long-term verification program with extensive real-time monitoring of all nuclear facilities; snap inspections on an “anytime, anywhere” basis; and full Iranian cooperation in interviewing scientists and other personnel involved in all aspects of the nuclear program;
• Iranian admission and detailed accounting for all past research and development of the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program and full cooperation with the investigations of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which Tehran has stonewalled repeatedly;
• A gradual and phased lifting of sanctions linked to Iranian fulfillment of its obligations to retain leverage over Iran to ensure compliance;
• A clear and rapid process for re-imposing all sanctions if Iran is caught cheating; and
• The final outcome must strengthen long-term nuclear nonproliferation efforts, rather than encourage other nations to demand the same nonproliferation concessions as Iran.

The emerging nuclear deal with Iran is likely to lead nervous countries in the region to seek their own nuclear weapons, fueling a cascade of nuclear proliferation that will undermine U.S. security interests in the volatile Middle East and provide Iran with even more resources to fund its many terrorist activities around the world.

The SFRC bill gives the President an easier path to obtaining the very congressional imprimatur that he would probably be unable to obtain through the traditional treaty process. The bill has become a distraction. Congress and the Administration should be focusing on the serious flaws of the Iranian deal rather than on procedural and congressional prerogative issues.

*About the authors:
Michaela Dodge is Senior Policy Analyst for Defense and Strategic Policy in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation. Steven Groves is Bernard and Barbara Lomas Senior Research Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, of the Davis Institute. James Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Allison Center.

The post US Senate’s Iran Nuclear Bill Misses The Point – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Female labor migrants are criticized for abandoning their children in their home country. According to research, this stigma does not affect male migrants.

The past few years have seen a major increase in female migrants from countries such as the Philippines, Russia, and Ukraine. They leave their home country in order to become house maids, nurses and child care workers in Western Europe. The women often leave due to financial necessity and unemployment, but this is not always the case.

The possibility for a better life abroad may be an equally important reason, but this fact is not talked about.

“There is a strong stigma connected to women who leave their country to work abroad. Male labour migrants do not experience this type of stigma,” said researcher at Fafo Guri Tyldum.

She has studied the female migration discourse in Ukraine. A lot of women travel from Ukraine to Italy to work as private nurses for elderly people.

When grandmother leaves

There have been plenty of front page news in Ukrainian newspapers about how society is unraveling due to absent mothers. The children go to the dogs, nobody looks after the elderly, marriages are ruined and the remaining men are driven to the drink.

“It is a general understanding that women who migrate sacrifice their own children. The discourse on female migration gives the impression that the women who migrate leave behind small children, but the average age of these women is forty plus. Quite a few are actually grandmothers,” said Tyldum.

Since Ukrainian women generally have children at an early age, the children are more or less grown up when their mothers leave for Italy. They are often gone for several years at a time, and they send money home.

This could mean that the women are being stigmatized for something that is unfounded, according to Tyldum. “And this is also reflected in the research literature on the field. Nearly all research on female migrants who travel to Italy focus explicitly on the motherhood aspect.”

There are some women who leave their small children behind, but according to Tyldum, they are a small minority among the large stream of Ukrainian migrants. Moreover, there is a strong tradition in Ukraine for leaving the child care to the grandparents.

“Migration researchers’ view on female migrants is quite simply behind,” said Tyldum.

Fatherhood more important than motherhood

According to the researcher, motherhood is not an important factor for understanding the female migration stream to Italy, simply because the majority of the women who migrate have grown up children.

“Fatherhood, on the other hand, is central for understanding why Ukrainian men go abroad to work,” claimed Tyldum.

She emphasizes that the male Ukrainian migrants talk a lot about their responsibility as fathers and of the importance of being an attentive husband in the periods between the work orders.

“These men clearly identify with their role as a family man and provider. But within migration research, few scholars have paid any attention to the fatherhood aspect of male work migration.”

Ukrainian men usually go to Russia and Poland to work in the construction industry. Their work is often characterized by short-term contracts, and they commute between home and their jobs abroad.

Women are always perceived as mothers

“When it comes to female migrants, on the other hand, they are viewed in light of their identity as mothers regardless of whether this is of any relevance or not,” said Tyldum, adding that this “might reflect the prevailing moral panic in countries characterised by large-scale female migration. But at the same time it is striking, since many female researchers fight the same battle themselves. They, too, fight for the freedom to be defined as something other than just mothers.”

Researchers studying male labor migration seem to be more interested in the migrants’ opportunities and their access to the labor market than in what consequences migration might have for the family that is left behind in the home country.

Sacrifice themselves for the family

Tyldum is interested in the motifs the migrants make use of when they relate their own migration narratives.

On the one hand, female migration to Italy is regarded as a sacrifice. From this perspective, the women sacrifice themselves in order to create a better life for their families.

Tanya, a 53-year old woman who has returned to Ukraine relates:

“He [her husband] had not been working for fourteen years. Why did I go to Italy? Because I had to. There was no money. I was afraid … the future was uncertain. That’s the reason why I left for Italy.”

The women often talk about being away from their families for years at a time and the grief it involves. On top of that, their jobs are perceived as degrading and the working conditions are poor.

Motherhood is a central motif in the narrative of sacrifice. Motherhood forces the women to leave Ukraine. It is a mother’s duty to secure her children’s future and set her own needs aside even if it involves humiliation and poor working conditions in a foreign country.

Also a story of freedom

Some of the women, on the other hand, tell stories of freedom. They migrate because Italy offers a better life for them than Ukraine.

According to Natalie, aged 55, young women go to Italy to find a husband, while the older women go in order to get away from one:

“Young women go because it is interesting. Some older women go because they don’t have a husband here in Ukraine, while others go because he [their husband] drinks. That’s why they stay in Italy. An Italian husband won’t harm his wife. Women have more rights than men there.”

Better in Italy than in Ukraine?

According to Tyldum, it is important to understand what these women are running away from.

“After all, the working conditions are better in Italy than in Ukraine for many of these women,” she said.

“In Ukraine they typically have a good-for-nothing husband and they have to run the family farm all by themselves. And in addition to their own family, they are often also responsible for their parents in law. On top of all this they often have one or two jobs outside the home.”

As one of Tyldum’s interviewees said: “You’re lucky if you have two hours of spare time on a Sunday in Ukraine.”

In Italy they’re off work every Thursday afternoon and all day on Sundays. And although they have to be available day and night during the rest of the week, after all they are only minding one elderly person, not an entire extended family.

Freedom and denunciation

One of Tyldum’s female interviewees had been living with and working for an elderly woman in Italy for six years, and they had become good friends. She lived in a nice house by the sea, she was responsible for the old woman’s finances, and her children and grandchildren were allowed to come visit. She felt that she was mastering her own life, and she was able to save up a lot of money.

However, this narrative of freedom was mixed with a narrative of sacrifice, of how she had made sacrifices for her family and how she was met with prejudices, denunciation and disrespect when she returned to Ukraine.

According to Tyldum, the women may avail of the narrative of freedom in order to describe their lives in Italy, but it is nevertheless not regarded as a legitimate reason for leaving in the first place.

“It won’t be legitimate to say “I left to pursue my own happiness” as long as there’s a general assumption that the women who migrate sacrifice their children.”

Not enough reasons to stay

Tyldum emphasized that the narrative of sacrifice is just as true as the narrative of freedom.

“Believing that Ukrainian women experience such hardship in their home country that they’re happy with the mere opportunity to work on the black market in the EU is a pitfall.”

“The female migrants are facing a black labor market where they are in danger of being exploited. Their employer may make an effort to have their work legalised, but it is often not in the employer’s interest, since it would increase the price of the services that these women can offer,” said Tyldum.

You need to keep at least two thoughts in your head simultaneously to really understand female labor migration from Ukraine.

“The story about migration as a way of gaining freedom illustrates that despite the economical profit, there’s a chance that some of these women would have remained at home if the reasons for staying with their family in Ukraine were better.”

The post Exploring Stigma Of Female Labor Migrants appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(Civil.Ge) — Georgia’s Parliament discussed this week with its first reading legislative amendments broadening scope of the offenses linked to participation in and range of other activities related to illegal armed groups, as well as criminalizing traveling abroad and an attempt to go abroad for the purpose of terrorism.

Package of amendments to the criminal code also includes a bill criminalizing “calls for violent actions” aimed at causing “discord between racial, religious, national, ethnic, social, linguistic or other groups” if such calls create “obvious, direct and substantive threat.”

The Parliament was expected to vote on the package on April 17, but the legislative body failed to hold a session due to lack of quorum after opposition UNM lawmakers refused to undergo registration in protest over an issue, unrelated to this or other legislative proposal, which were scheduled to be discussed or voted at Friday’s session.

Deputy interior minister, Levan Izoria, told lawmakers on April 15, when the package was debated in the Parliament with its first hearing, that the government started drafting of these bills last year in cooperation with country’s western partners to address cases of joining Georgian citizens to Islamic State group fighters in Syria.

He said that radicalization of youth in Pankisi gorge – north-eastern Georgia predominantly populated by Muslim community of Kists – is a serious challenge for the country. Izoria also acknowledged that tightening of the legislation won’t be enough for addressing this challenge and the state should also provide for other measures aimed at fostering “integration of locals to the society.”

Although radicalization trend in Pankisi is not a new development, the issue became a topic of broad public discussion recently, especially after it was reported earlier this month that two schoolboys from Pankisi gorge, one aged 16, left for Syria to join IS group.

There are no precise figures on number of Georgian citizens fighting for the IS group; some estimates put the figure in dozens, mostly from Pankisi gorge but also some from Adjara and Kvemo Kartli regions, and some estimates suggest there are more than 100 Georgian citizens.

PM Garibashvili said on April 16 that about “100 residents of Pankisi left for Syria before we [GD coalition] came into power” in late 2012. “After we came into power only few young people from Pankisi went to Turkey and then probably moved to Syria,” Garibashvili told journalists on April 16 and called on them not to make “scandal” because of “two or three people.”

“Relevant agencies know very well those groups, several people, who stir up situation in Pankisi, and they will neutralize these groups in line with the law,” he said.

Before these remarks by the PM, a senior lawmaker from GD ruling coalition, Irakli Sesiashvili, who chairs parliamentary committee for defense and security, said on April 14 that estimates about more than 100 Georgian citizens being among IS fighters are exaggerated. He said that actual number is no more than “two-three dozens.” MP Sesiashvili also said without providing details that there were cases when some Georgian citizens returned back as a result of efforts from the “relevant” Georgian authorities.

According to the bill, which was first tabled in January and revised since then, “joining and/or participation in an illegal formation or receiving training from such formation; recruiting or training a person with the purpose of joining, participating or otherwise promoting the activities of such illegal formation” will be punishable with imprisonment from 3 to 7 years, instead of initially proposed 5 to 10 years. Public calls for committing these offenses, if this call creates “obvious, direct and substantive threat”, will be punishable with imprisonment for up to 2 years.

According to the bill “dissemination or use of information materials and/or symbols related to membership and/or participation in illegal formation” if this action creates “obvious, direct and substantive threat” will be punishable with up to 3 years in jail.

The bill envisages release from criminal liability for persons, who will “voluntarily” give up participation in or other activities related to illegal formations. During the discussions, UNM lawmaker Tariel Londaridze offered to set a deadline and apply release from criminal liability if a person gives up illegal activities, listed by the bill, within a set timeframe. The Deputy Interior Minister said that the proposal will discussed during the second hearing of the bill.

The revised version of the bill specifies that the measures should be applied in connection to those “illegal formations”, which are out of state structures’ control. During the discussions Deputy Interior Minister Izoria reiterated that the provisions envisaged by the bill will not apply to those Georgian citizens who fight on the Ukrainian side in eastern Ukraine.

The bill will introduce a new clause, which will make it punishable by 6 years to 9 years imprisonment traveling abroad or an attempt to go abroad “for the purpose of carrying out, preparing of and participating in terrorist activities or for the purpose of terrorist training.”

The bill also envisages criminalization of calls for terrorism or voicing public support for terrorism if such calls create “obvious, direct and substantive threat of carry out terrorism activities.”

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