UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 (IPS) – Whether to have children or not is one of the most life-altering decisions a person can make.
But as UNFPA’s 2022 State of World Population report shows, people around the world – especially women and members of marginalized groups – are frequently denied any choice in the matter, with partners, relatives, health care providers and even governments making or strongly influencing these decisions.
“Men have greater decision-making power . Women may have to act secretly/discreetly to get contraception services,” a man in India told report authors.
“Men hold the ultimate decision-making power. It is common practice for providers to ask for the husband’s consent,” a woman in Sudan said.
Though women’s reproductive decisions have been subject to interference for centuries, it’s only in the last decade that researchers have begun to recognize and explore this concept. They call it reproductive violence.
What does reproductive violence look like?
Reproductive violence includes any form of abuse, coercion, discrimination, exploitation or violence that compromises a person’s reproductive autonomy.
This form of gender-based violence can be committed by individuals such as partners, relatives and health care providers, or by entire communities, as social norms influence societies’ ideas of who should or should not be a parent. Meanwhile governments often exert this form of violence through laws and institutions, by preventing access to contraceptives or even conducting forced sterilization campaigns, for instance.
At the interpersonal level, reproductive violence might look like a partner hiding, destroying or even forcefully removing their partner’s birth control, or involve “stealthing” – the practice of removing a condom during sex without consent.
For others, reproductive violence follows the news of a pregnancy, with some women compelled against their will into motherhood and others, to terminate.
It was the latter action that 58-year-old Jasbeer Kaur from Rajasthan, India, told UNFPA in 2020 that her husband’s family tried to force on her after learning Jasbeer was pregnant with triplets – all girls.
“No daughter had been born in my husband’s family in the last three generations. They told me, we won’t allow three daughters to be born in the house at the same time. They gave me an ultimatum: Get an abortion or leave,” Ms. Kaur said.
In demanding this of her, Ms. Kaur’s in-laws were perpetuating harmful social and gender norms that assign higher value to boys’ lives than those of girls. Members of Ms. Kaur’s community reinforced this discriminatory perspective, calling Ms. Kaur “poor thing” for not having any sons.
“Here, people still think … as a mother, you haven’t done your bit until you’ve given birth to a son,” one of Ms. Kaur’s neighbours told UNFPA.
But Ms. Kaur stood up to these norms and practices. She chose to leave her husband and his family and to keep her pregnancy. Today, her triplets Mandeep, Sandeep and Pardeep are all in their mid-twenties, building careers across the arts, business and health care.
“Today, people know us as Jasbeer Kaur’s daughters. We want to make something of our lives,” Sandeep said.
Seeing the problem to solve it
Although reproductive violence often involves partners and family members, as in Ms. Kaur’s case, they are not the only perpetrators. Governments and institutions also commit acts of reproductive violence through coercive laws and policies, some of which aim to control national-level fertility.
With the global population now eclipsing 8 billion people, countries’ population policies have entered the spotlight. And evidence has begun to emerge, especially, of countries seeking to boost fertility through problematic means, including by limiting access to abortion and cutting sex education from school.
UNFPA has warned that these efforts to engineer population size typically have little impact on fertility in the short term, and in the long term, risk causing major problems.
“Focusing on numbers alone treats people as commodities, stripping them of their rights and humanity,” UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem said on 14 November in an op-ed for TIME. “We have too often seen leaders setting targets for population size or fertility rates, and the grievous human rights abuses that result.”
“Let’s be clear: When we talk about the ‘problem’ with fertility rates or an ‘ideal’ population size, we are really talking about controlling people’s bodies. We are talking about asserting power over their capacity for reproduction, whether by influence or by force, from policies where families are paid to have more children, to egregious violations like forced sterilization, often suffered by ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and people with disabilities.”
Today, many women are unable to exert control over their reproductive lives. UNFPA reports that across 64 countries, more than 8 per cent of women lack the power to decide on contraception, and nearly a quarter of women lack the power to say no to sex.
Specifically regarding reproductive violence, UNFPA is currently working on a technical paper and developing a measurement tool to help health care practitioners, researchers, institutions and governments identify where, when and how these violations occur. It’s a critical step towards helping societies address this issue and safeguard people’s rights and choices.
“A resilient world of 8 billion, a world that upholds individual rights and choices, offers infinite possibilities – possibilities for people, societies and our shared planet to thrive and prosper,” said Dr. Kanem.
STOCKHOLM, Oct 26 (IPS) – In his treatise On War, the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) stated that war is “merely a continuation of policy with other means”. With his experience from the Napoleonic Wars von Clausewitz knew that totalitarian regimes could end up conducting huge and ruthless military campaigns. Furthermore, he assumed that to win a war it is necessary to mobilize and indoctrinate the inhabitants of an entire nation. Such an endeavour is called total war, a term that actually can be applied to Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Putin came to power during the turbulent times following the collapse of the Soviet Empire. His image as a forceful personality convinced many that Putin could make Russia “safe for democracy and business”. In June 2000, Bill Clinton proclaimed that Putin was “fully capable of building a prosperous, strong Russia, while preserving freedom and pluralism and the rule of law.”
Soon business flourished, satisfying foreign investors eager to enjoy Russia’s vast deposits of natural riches. At the same time, fear of terrorism was boosted by explosions in heavily populated residential areas. Putin’s answer to these assumed terrorist threats was in accordance with von Clausewitz´s advice to use “force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed.” The pursuing escalation of the war in Chechnya, pinpointed as the origin of terrorism in Russia, made Putin a nationalist hero, while his characteristics as teetotaler, capable administrator, quick learner and talented actor made him assume the role of a Hollywood-inspired saviour/hero. He single-highhandedly flew planes and rode bare-chested through the wilderness surrounding Siberian rivers. Media lionised him as a rough and strong judo/black-belt champion capable of leading an entire, long suffering nation onto a straight path to prosperity.
Some worrisome signs were nevertheless written on the wall. In 2004, Putin declared the collapse of the Soviet Union as” the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” Meanwhile, his acolytes were amassing the spoils from the collapsed Soviet Empire. Putin supported and protected those oligarchs who backed him, while bankrolling his inner circle.
In Munich 2007, Putin bared his teeth and claws in a speech given at an international Security Conference. He declared that the US was a predatory nation prone to apply an ”almost unconstrained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations plunging the world into an abyss of conflicts.” This revelation was in 2008 followed by Russia´s military assault on neighbouring Georgia.
General elections were rigged, while some political opponents ended up dead, like Boris Nemtsov, who in 2015 was killed on a bridge close to the Kremlin. Alex Navalny, Putin’s most prominent and fearless opponent, was arrested and imprisoned for thirteen years. Out of jail, he was in 2020 poisoned on a flight to Siberia. Close to dying, he was brought to Germany for expert treatment. After recovering, Navalny went back to Russia, where he was immediately put on trial and imprisoned.
Non-compliant oligarchs were and are routinely harassed. First to be rounded up were those who controlled independent media, like Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. Both fled the country. In 2013, Berezovsky died ”in suspicious circumstances”. Another oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had funded independent media, was already in October 2003 arrested on board his private jet and imprisoned for ten years.
Putin can now unopposed claim that the belligerent attack on Ukraine was necessary for protecting the Motherland. Subdued Russian media affirm that ruthless Ukrainian leaders have transformed their nation into a pawn in the cynical game of a Superpower intending to subjugate, or even annihilate, the Russian Federation.
It appears as if Putin is not only dedicated to make “Russia great again”. Another goal of his seems to be to enrich himself and his cronies. As a means to cover up his greed, Putin poses as upholder of “strict” morals, based on “pro-life” and traditional “family” values, as well as heroic patriotism and religious fundamentalism. Twenty years after coming to power Putin could declare: “The liberal idea has become obsolete. Liberals cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over recent decades.”
In spite of the Ukrainian war and his disrespect for human rights, Putin remains an icon for right-wing nationalists. A symbol of defiance to Western Liberal Establishment’s alleged encouragement of mass immigration and affinity to ”multiculturalism”, conceived as attempts to undermine morals and national identities.
As a counterweight to such assumed measures, backward looking politicians around the world pay homage to nostalgic notions, like a lost Great Chinese Tradition, a Russian Empire, Hindu pride before the arrival of Islam, a Global Britain, the Ottoman Empire, etc. This trend is occasionally joined with a global system where ruling elites consider themselves to be unrestrained by international norms, traditional modes of state governance, and democratic decision processes. Some world leaders try to pull the wool over the eyes of their followers by packaging their intents within populist opinions, like despise for political correctness, globalism, investigative journalism, LBTQ rights, feminism and environmental NGOs. A dangerous trend that, if unchecked, might as in the case of Putin´s Russia lead to socioeconomic conflicts degenerating into total war.
In the US, a strengthened adherence to illiberalism was fostered by Donald Trump. Under his watch US politics began to shift from rule-based order to one where might and wealth make right, a message boosted by media like Fox – and Breitbart News. Trump behaved like a wannabe despot, trying to apply authoritarian tactics at home, while paying homage to thugs and dictators abroad. Before him, US presidents had pledged their adherence to human rights, democracy, and freedom of speech. Nevertheless, their governments occasionally supported despots and dictators, not linking concerns for human rights to security, economy and financial affairs. A Realpolitik, which to “friendly” despots indicated that the US did not care so much about repression and corruption within the fiefdoms of their friends. Such behaviour was based on strategic reasons, while Donald Trump appeared to embrace authoritarians because he actually admired them – Dutete, Xi Jinping, Orbán, Erdo?an, Kim Jung-un, and not the least, Putin.
The former US president´s homage to ideas similar to those of Putin and his pose as a nationalistic superman might be connected with his obvious narcissism and appeal to nationalistic extremists. However, his senseless bragging is also combined with greed. A wealth of investigating reporting has demonstrated links between organized crime and corrupt rulers/oligarchs with the Trump Organization’s overseas business connections.
Money is also part of Russian foreign relations. Populist, chauvinistic parties like Italian Lega Nord (currently known as the Lega) and the French Front National (currently Rassemblement National) have received intellectual and economic support from Russia. This support to European political parties may be considered as a Russian effort to secure support for Putin’s policies abroad, as well as locally.
Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, a fluent Russian speaker far from being a friend of Putin, dismissed him as a leader using nineteenth-century means to solve twenty-first century problems. For sure, Putin’s attack on Ukraine mirrors age-old use of devastating warfare as a radical solution to complicated sociopolitical problems. It seems to be a stalwart application of the two-hundred-years-old advice provided by von Clausewitz:
Philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are just the worst. As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act likewise. By such means the former dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed to extremities, to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of counteracting force on each side.
Putin´s Ukrainian war neglects human suffering and has now disintegrated into a bloody power struggle, where Russia “to the utmost extent” makes use of its military strength, while being supported by “the co-operation” of a propaganda striving to engage the entire Russian population in the war effort.
The Ukrainian war not only concerns the protection of Mother Russia from a “predatory West”, its ultimate goal is to control a hitherto sovereign nation’s politics and natural resources. Putin’s declared support to an allegedly discriminated Russian minority in Luhansk and Donetsk seems to be a subterfuge for grabbing an essential part of Ukraine’s economic resources.
During early 2000s, privatization of state industries yielded a so called Donbas Clan control of the economic and political power in the Donbas region. These oligarchs were supported by Kremlin and a rampant corruption soon took hold of an area dominated by heavy industry, such as coal mining (60 billion tonnes of coal are waiting to be extracted) and metallurgy.
Before Russia in 2014 backed separatist forces in a ferocious civil war, this particular area produced about 30 percent of Ukraine’s exports and a huge amount of gas reserves in the Dnieper-Donets basin was beginning to be extracted. In those days, the most prominent oligarchs in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions were Putin proteges – Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Yanukovych, the latter had become Ukraine’s President, though his attachment to Russia and conspicuous corruption led to his fall through the Maidan Uprising in 2013, starting point for Ukraine’s transformation into a prosperous nation.
The Maidan Revolution caused a wave of insecurity sweeping through the former Soviet Empire, shaking up corrupt “counterfeit” democracies/dictatorships like Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Small wonder that the authoritarian leaders of these nations are stout supporters of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
While reading von Clausewitz’s On War it is quite easy to relate it to Putin’s politics that undeniably have resulted in war as a “continuation of policy with other means.” It is not the first time in history that authoritarian regimes have plunged entire nations into a blood-drained pit of war. All of us have to be be aware that support of authoritarian regimes might lead us all down into Hell.
Main Sources: Klaas, Brian (2018) The Despot´s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy. London. Hurst & Company. von Clausewitz, Carl (1982) On War. London: Penguin Classics.
The Congo-Rwanda border bustles with traders going between the two countries but is also a conduit for criminal syndicates to smuggle elephant tusks and other contraband. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
by Aimable Twahirwa (rubavu, northwestern rwanda)
Inter Press Service
RUBAVU, Northwestern Rwanda, Oct 21 (IPS) – Every morning, Valerie Mukamazimpaka, a businesswoman selling various food products from Rubavu, a district in Northwestern Rwanda, wakes up early morning to cross “Petite Barrière,” one of the busiest border crossings with the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The mother of three takes advantage of the ‘Jeton,’ a daily authorization paper allowing individuals to move within the municipal limits of the border towns of Rubavu, Rwanda, and the frenetic city of Goma from North Kivu Province in the eastern part of DRC.
All day long, a constant stream of trade crisscrosses between the two countries, with people like Mukamazimpaka carrying bags of fruits, vegetables, and other products for business purposes on their backs or heads.
With over 55,000 legal crossings daily, “Petite Barrière” is described as the busiest land border between Rwanda and DR Congo under the strict supervision of law enforcement officers and customer agents whose duties primarily investigate and apprehend suspected smugglers.
“There are villagers around here who are sometimes forced to use porous entry points to avoid the risk of detection and apprehension because of moving smuggled goods such as ivory tusks mixed with other business commodities,” she told IPS.
In these remote villages across the transborder region, the modus operandi of ivory tusks smugglers is diverse. While some traffickers that smuggle ivory often deal in other illegal goods. Other highly sophisticated networks use social media platforms for advertising wildlife products online and finding buyers in their target market abroad.
While large-scale illegal wildlife crime is not prominent in Rwanda, conservation experts observe that Rwanda is a strategically relevant country in the illicit trade of wildlife products because it is nestled between several important sources, transit, and destination countries.
The use of social media has allowed smugglers of wildlife products to expand their network’s reach using Rwanda as a transit route, experts say.
According to Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association, because the illegal wildlife trade, such as in ivory tusks, constantly evolves, the country needs law enforcement capacity building for police, customs, and judiciary personnel. It is also crucial that a national database for wildlife crime cases is set up and local communities are made aware of the penalties for wildlife crime.
Last year Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) arrested four people for allegedly trafficking products from endangered animals, such as elephant ivory.
According to Dr Thierry Murangira, RIB Spokesperson, the suspects were caught while using Rwanda as a transit country to smuggle 45 kilograms of ivory from the DRC to Asian countries.
The ring of smugglers had been using Facebook to connect with their accomplices who were still at large on the other side of the border. The case exposed that smuggling syndicates are now utilizing media platforms as an intermediate tool to connect buyers from Asia and buyers from DRC as the primary source market.
During a field investigation conducted on a freezing cold evening in Busasamana, a remote village from Rubavu, a district located at the border with the DRC, this reporter spotted residents who disguised themselves as farmers while waiting impatiently for potential customers looking to move goods using porous routes in their illegal cross-border trade to Rwanda.
A trader, who identified himself as Habanabakize, says his business is transporting goods on his wheelbarrow and moving smuggled goods to survive.
Investigations conducted by this reporter have demonstrated the role of social media platforms as a means for smugglers to connect and use locals to move ivory tusks across the border.
“People here are sometimes forced to take increasingly hazardous paths to cross the border because they are looking to make a living,” Habanabakize told IPS in an interview.
Online tools
Across these transborder areas, organized wildlife smuggling is severely threatening the survival of some of the most threatened species, including elephant ivory from Eastern DRC, where smugglers use technology to control their business remotely, according to the latest report by TRAFFIC, an international organization engaged in the fight against wildlife trade.
One of the investigations conducted by this reporter found that despite efforts by local administrative officials, customers, and border patrol agents in chasing smugglers, individuals engaged in this highly profitable illegal business use any online tools available to them.
But to move smugglers’ items to their destination, traffickers advertise wildlife products by messaging thousands of people through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp using anonymous accounts to control their illegal business using remote surveillance.
Aimable Twahirwa struck up a conversation with a smuggler during his investigation. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
This helps them connect with wildlife hunters and their informants on the other side of the border before engaging with potential customers through social media and chat rooms to sell elephant tusks, the typical commodity being illegally trafficked to consumers, particulars from parts of Asia.
Online payment methods
Most criminal syndicates rely on established methods such as placement and laundering of funds through formal financial institutions, which are undertaken through various online payment methods.
According to Rwanda’s National Public Prosecutor Authority (NPPA), money launderers, who play a significant role in the illegal wildlife trade, use smart techniques and utilize complex sequences of banking transfers or commercial transactions, which cannot be easily detected or traced.
Jean Bosco Murenzi, head of the Compliance and Prevention Department of Rwanda’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), says that the cooperation and information exchange with Financial Intelligence Centres from other countries remains key to cracking down on such financial cheating where it is common to launder money through online and social media platforms.
With the establishment of the FIC in August 2020, financial institutions in the country can now submit suspicious transaction reports to the center, which also has the authority to exchange information with its peers from other countries.
Through this regional partnership, Rwanda and Kenya signed an agreement of cooperation in July this year, focusing on areas of information sharing about money laundering.
In many countries across the East African region, including Rwanda, conservation experts believe that the rise of e-commerce has made illegal wildlife trade online more hidden and more difficult to track and monitor.
East Africa’s judicial and procuratorial organs stepped up efforts in March to deepen their cross-border collaboration on ‘asset recovery’ – taking back the proceeds of wildlife crime and ending the money laundering that allows ill-gotten gains to be used for profitable investments. According to Paul Kadushi, Director, Asset Forfeiture, Transnational and Specialized Crimes Division, National Prosecutions Service of Tanzania, wildlife crime is leading to the proliferation of guns in the region.
During the investigation, the writer asked to join one of the Facebook buy/sell groups that focus on selling a wide array of items, with among products available for purchase sellers claimed were ivory.
After placing an order for ivory tusks on Facebook, the writer was prompted to a separate online form requesting him to fill in contact details, including phone number, and he was asked to pay with Mobile Money. The writer did not proceed.
Social media is the new medium that connects illegal elephant tusk traders with their markets. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
However, a few minutes later, the writer received a call from an anonymous number introducing himself as an agent from a registered company without elaborating on the name of the business and address location.
Criminal syndicates
Conservation experts believe that today’s trade of wildlife products across the East African region has shifted from physical markets to online marketplaces where traffickers apply e-commerce business models and use encrypted messages to evade detection by law enforcement.
“By their organization, they are very highly sophisticated criminal networks, and they are very difficult to detect, and a lot of it is being sold over the internet now,” said Dr Katherine Chase Snow, founder of Gaia Morgan group, a US-based non-profit conservation intelligence consultancy.
Reports show that the Internet has become a prime outlet to advertise and arrange sales, including of wildlife specimens, both legally and illegally.
A TRAFFIC report released in July 2020 indicated that 8,508 ivory items, from elephant tusks to jewelry and decorative items, were posted for sale on 1,559 Facebook and Instagram accounts in major countries across Asia in 2016.
According to Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB), most smugglers now use social media to find new ways to connect with potential customers and hide their real identities from the police.
Meantime, Interpol also says that traffickers take advantage of different social media platforms to advertise and sell wildlife and wildlife products online.
Gaining access to a vast international marketplace and following the same routes as other crimes such as drugs and weapons smuggling, wildlife trafficking is rising 5% to 7% annually, it said.
Online advertising
Andrew McVey, climate advisor at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), stresses the need to have a greater public perception that wildlife crime is actually a serious and organized crime.
“Online advertising has been the main tactic used by wildlife traffickers, but still, Governments need to do more routine surveillance of the internet,” McVey said.
Fidele Ruzigandekwe, the Deputy Executive Secretary for Programs at the Rwandan-based Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC), observes in an interview that current efforts to combat wildlife crime should not solely be linked to anti-poaching and law enforcement activities in each specific country across the region.
GVTC is an interstate collaboration toward sustainable conservation in the Virunga landscape, which stretches along the borders of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“There is a need for transborder consultation between relevant organs within the partner states to crackdown illegal wildlife crimes that are now relying on sophisticated technologies,” Ruzigandekwe said.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Opinion by Soraya M. Deen, Christine M. Sequenzia (los angeles / washington dc)
Inter Press Service
LOS ANGELES / WASHINGTON DC, Oct 21 (IPS) – Eleven out of 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) still sanction the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy, silencing their citizens and emboldening violence by non-state actors.
For the past 70 years, Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights has condemned capital punishment for religious offenses, a global standard shared during our recent visit to the UN headquarters in New York.
As a prelude to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) high-level meetings in mid-September, we led the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable Campaign to Eliminate Blasphemy and Apostasy Laws, urging UN members to stand in strong support during two paramount resolutions calling for an end to the death penalty and extrajudicial killings.
We urge the insertion of language codifying the death penalty never being imposed as a sanction for non-violent conduct such as blasphemy and apostasy. The effort produced an encouraging response by Nigerian third committee officials who renewed their commitment to freedom of religion or belief by supporting embedded language in both the moratorium on the death penalty and a resolution on renouncing the death penalty for extrajudicial killings.
In the days that followed our visit, the world has witnessed the outrage of human rights activists and concerned global citizens with the death of Masha Amini, an Iranian Muslim woman who was arrested and subsequently died in the custody of Iranian morality police for a violation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s compulsory hijab mandate.
Brutal cases like these will only cease when government officials in Iran, and other egregious human rights violators, listen to the cries of their people and uphold globally recognized human rights declarations. These include statutes supporting international religious freedom or belief, and the repeal of apostasy and blasphemy laws.
When most countries around the world and the majority of Muslim nations are taking concrete steps to abolish capital punishment for perceived religious offenses such as blasphemy and apostasy, some refuse to modernize their legislation, thus branding themselves as the worst violators of internationally recognized basic human rights.
This staunch obsession with upholding persecutory laws and implementing the harshest of punishments, violates religious freedoms – the right to life and the right to freedom of religion or belief. This misinterpretation of scripture is an abuse of Islam, tarnishing the image of Muslims around the world and a disregard to Gods mercy, a belief that transcends faith orientation.
The multidisciplinary and multifaith delegation from the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Campaign urged UN members, including: Luxemburg, Canada, and Sri Lanka, to raise their voices loudly in favor of embedded international religious freedom language in two resolutions which will come up for a vote during the UNGA in November.
Penholders Australia and Costa Rica are calling for a moratorium on the death penalty which is only supported by the IRF Campaign with the addition of specific language ensuring the death penalty never be imposed for non-violent conduct such as apostasy or blasphemy.
Likewise, Finland, as penholder for the UNGA resolution on extrajudicial executions, is being asked by global advocates to add language on freedom of religion or belief, emphasizing the necessity for States to take effective measures to repeal laws currently allowing the death penalty for religious offences, such as criminalization of conversion and expression of religion or belief as a preventative measure.
Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is clear – everyone has the right to freedom of religion or belief. Yet, 11 States today maintain the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy. We raise the voices of the voiceless, such as Pakistani woman Aneeqa Ateeq who was sentenced to death for blasphemy in January 2022 after being manipulated into a religious debate online by a man who she romantically refused.
Also, an 83-year-old Somali man, Hassan Tohow Fidow, who was sentenced to death for blasphemy by an al-Shabaab militant court and subsequently horrifically executed by firing squad; and a 22-year-old Nigerian Islamic gospel singer Yahaya Sharif-Aminu who was sentenced to death for blasphemy because one of his songs allegedly praised an Imam higher than the Prophet.
As an outcome of our UN advocacy, we pray that the 11 Muslim member states—Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen– join in the common-sense repeal of the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy as a great step toward becoming civilized nations.
The majority of OIC member nations who do not sanction the death penalty for religious offenses should be regarded as examples of modernity and humanity and their path to restore and uphold basic human rights should be replicated.
The Qur’an says, “There shall be no compulsion in religion; the right way has become distinct from the wrong way.” (Qur’an 2:256). Likewise, we read passages like 18:26:, “And say, ‘The truth is from your Lord. Whoever wills – let him believe. And whoever wills – let him disbelieve,” and “whoever among you renounces their own faith and dies a disbeliever, their deeds will become void in this life and in the Hereafter (Qur’an 2:217).”
The holy book, which serves as a moral compass for the laws in OIC member nations, upholds the right to freedom of religion or belief which has been recognized by the OIC majority.
As has been recently witnessed in Iran, when civil society activates around globally recognized human rights, the world takes note. The OIC asserts its purpose “to preserve and promote the foundational Islamic values of peace, compassion, tolerance, equality, justice and human dignity” and “to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, good governance, rule of law, democracy, and accountability”.
To that end, with the passage of both critical UN resolutions, OIC members will face the controversial and politically sensitive task of calling out other OIC colleagues who continue to violate human rights by imposing the death sentence upon individuals for exercising their right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.
We assert that it is a societal problem as much as it is a reflection of the deficiency of democratic values and principles.
Embedding international religious freedom language in both resolutions calling for the repeal of the death penalty will be strengthened with the strong support of the 46 OIC nations and other human rights champion nations in the days ahead.
We are encouraged by Saudi Arabian scholar, Dr. Mohammad Al-Issa of the Muslim World Alliance, who travels the world sharing the unanimously approved Charter of Makkah – a document affirming differences among people and beliefs as part of God’s will and wisdom.
Our collective voice must be unwavering in its call and commitment to repeal the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy as a primary step towards upholding theologies of love and compassion, building toward human flourishing.
Dr. Christine M. Sequenzia, MDiv is co-chair IRF Campaign to Eliminate Blasphemy and Apostasy Laws; Soraya M. Deen, Esq. is lawyer, community organizer, founder, Muslim Women Speakers, and co-chair International Religious Freedom (IRF) Women’s Working Group
ROME, Oct 20 (IPS) – That’s why a new ship with a big white “E” will navigate the Mediterranean Sea. The vessel has a red hull, is more than fifty meters long and has low decks. Soon, it will leave the port of Genoa and go out into the open sea. If those living on the north shore of that ‘water cemetery’ bearing the name of Mediterranean had chosen life, the “Life Support” would not have been greeted by the applause of a people packed square, on a late summer night, in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia. It would not be ready to sail now; . if they had chosen life, that ship would have another job.
“Mom, I’m thirsty.” That’s how Loujin died, asking for water. She was four years old and had been at sea for ten days on a boat that launched an SOS to which no one responded until was too late on a still-very-hot September. She and her family were fleeing the war in Syria with the impossible hope of a refugee camp in Lebanon. She died along with six other refugees: “They died of thirst, hunger and severe burns,” said Chiara Cardoletti, Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, on Twitter. “According to the reports of the survivors who are being verified by the police the corpses were thrown into the sea when they began to be stockpiled,” according to the newspaper Avvenire. The sea took at least eighty, dead off the coasts of Lebanon and Syria, just a few days later. Eleven other decaying bodies were recovered in the first half of October off the coast of Tunisia. Before that, water had snatched away so many lives that we are not even able to count them and cry for them.
If there had been a ship, such as the one with a large white “E” on its red sides, perhaps Loujin would be alive. The “E” is that of Emergency, an Italian NGO founded in 1994 to bring aid to civilian victims of war and poverty.
Emergency has made its choice: It will sail the Mediterranean, fishing for human beings regardless of the “barriers” erected in that water. Barriers created by laws, rules, and sometimes arbitrarily, do not prevent women and men in search of a future; instead, all too often, they turn into dead bodies – those that wars and starvation weren’t able to make.
Ten thousand people were in Reggio Emilia at the annual meeting of Emergency, an organization that has turned the defense of human rights and its radical “No war” policy into concrete actions in the most difficult places on the planet. Those numbers, doubled compared to the previous year, portray a country, Italy, which longs for peace and hospitality.
“Seeing and knowing that there are thousands of people dying off our shores is absolutely not acceptable. With we believe to represent many people in Italy who do not want to see this happen,” Pietro Parrino, Emergency’s director of the Field Operations Department, explained to us.
From 2014 to the day of this writing, i.e., mid-October this year, 25,034 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea. “They were more than 1,100 just in the absence of a coordinated search and rescue operation at European level,” a statement from the NGO said. “We must be at sea to save people’s lives,” Parrino stressed. Whatever the reason why those women and men have decided to take the most dangerous of journeys: “They simply need help and we are, and we try to be, in the places where help is needed,” he added.
Being there, however, is a hard choice. There are very few NGO search and rescue ships, constrained by laws and bureaucracy that prevent them from getting to where they are needed, leaving migrants in the hands of the Libyan coast guards or forcing the vessels to wait days before docking at safe ports. Their work is not easy and they have even been accused of being “sea taxis” or “accomplices” of traffickers in a country where the call for a “naval blockade” has been a slogan for those who won the last political election.
It takes courage to choose life, anyway.
The last stretch
Barriers, “walls” within the sea, ancient Romans called Mare Nostrum, built by other choices, political choices, such as the bilateral Memorandum of Understanding that Italy signed with Libya in 2017 or the Malta Declaration issued shortly after. Agreements “that form the basis of a close cooperation that entrusts the patrolling of the central Mediterranean to Libyan coastguards,” followed by the establishment of the Libyan SAR, a large maritime area where the responsibility for coordinating search and rescue activities was assigned to Libya, Amnesty International explained. The human rights organization is among those calling for the suspension of the Memorandum: “In the last five years, over 85 thousand people have been intercepted at sea and sent back to Libya: men, women and children who have faced arbitrary detention, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, rape and sexual violence, forced labor and illegal killings.”
Any attempt to pull out those barriers, even if made up of boats, is doomed to fail; instead, it will produce pain. Migrations do not stop, new routes open up, and the old ones close and then reopen as the laws or European policies change. Crossing the sea is just the last stretch of a long journey in which human trafficking is a business built on desperation and managed by the same organizations that smuggle drugs and oil. Trips are a commodity sold on a market where the currency can be money or one’s body.
The Mediterranean route will continue to be worth a lot of money. Dirty money, cash, mobilized in a very sophisticated way, ends up in the pockets of those we do not know, or rather, of those about whom we know what they do, financing other illicit businesses. It is not just a question of the “passage” , but it is a much more complicated mechanism.
NGOs’ search and rescue operations were said to have increased the number of people who decided to travel to Europe. However, data from the Italian Ministry of the Interior show that this is false, as reported by the Huffington Post last year. In 2021, there were many more arrivals than the previous year even though there was not a greater number of vessels in the Mediterranean, as some of them were blocked by “bureaucracy.” There were few ships but a greater number of arrivals because those who flee wars and hunger always find new ways to organize the journey.
“People who to leave countries like Afghanistan or the Horn of Africa and have thousands and thousands of kilometers in front of them to be covered on foot with little or no money, are people who have courage and determination unimaginable for us,” Parrino said. Desperation moves them, a desperation that puts them in the hands of those who promise a place in a rust bucket. “The story these people tell is that few get a simple ride. Many are enslaved for years, in the fields or as prostitutes, because the traffickers earn tens of thousands of euros by selling them and reselling them before setting them free again. The trafficking is not to let people cross the Mediterranean; the trafficking is the management of these thousands of desperate people who are exploited as labor slaves and sex slaves for months, for years, before receiving the green light to take the boat,” he added. “People do it because they have even less than the hope that lies ahead. They are people who accept a risk they already know”, Parrino stressed.
Gabriele Baratto, a criminologist at the University of Trento, studied that market for a research project. He investigated the “digitization” of human trafficking.
Smugglers use social media, especially Facebook, to find migrants who want to leave. Then Baratto and his team contacted them. They thought it would be difficult, that they would have to turn to the dark web, that they would have to use secret jargon. But no, everything happens in the light of day. It was enough to type simple keywords, questions such as: “how to get to Europe.”
“ hundreds of posts, pages, and groups dedicated to promoting travel for migrants and these posts contained and contain basic information on the , point of departure, point of arrival and some indication on the price, date, month of departure. And the thing that left us most bewildered was that there was the phone number of the traffickers,” Baratto explained at Emergency’s meeting in Reggio Emilia.
They are “tour operators” of pain, who ask to be reached by phone, WhatsApp, or Skype, which are more difficult to intercept. “We came up with scripts, stories saying: ‘I am in Italy but I have my sister, I have my brother, I have my parents .’ They answer, and if they don’t answer, they write to you. Within a maximum of half an hour you can talk to them on the phone and they give you all the information.” The more you pay, the safer, more “comfortable,” and more direct the journey is, and traffickers know how laws and policies of states in Europe change.
“‘If you did this, why don’t the police do the same?’ ,” Baratto added. It is just too difficult to arrest traffickers one by one. The solution is only “a new approach to immigration,” he believes.
Behind that market in the sunlight, there is hell – the hell that Emergency knows.
“Is it possible to open a humanitarian corridor and decide with what means (to intervene)? … We know very well from where they come…” The only answer to those questions has been Europe’s agreement with Libya, ” ‘paying’ traffickers, providing patrol boats, money, convincing them not to let people leave. The flows from the countries of departure have not changed, the flows in the countries of arrival have greatly decreased. Where do all these people go? How do traffickers use them?” Parrino told us.
To halt the chain of deaths, it would be necessary to eradicate the factors that force people to leave or to decide that it can’t be fate to open the doors of Europe: “Access cannot be by chance for who are saved at sea or manage to land on our shores by boat. We think that it should be much better structured, without launching ‘invasion’ alarms,” he said.
Legal and safe access for those who must leave their countries: That’s the call of the NGO Emergency. Until then, it will be at sea because the sea swallows everything. “After a few minutes the sea is flat and you don’t realize that there has been a tragedy, there are no pieces left, nothing remains …” Parrino said from the Reggio Emilia stage.
No one answered the SOS of the boat that took away the souls of those eighty people who died in mid-September, as happened to Loujin. No one listened to their cries, betraying the ancient law of the sea that imposes that obligation. Instead, Emergency wants to be there with its “Life Support” to respond to those ships that cry out. It will be one of the few of that small fleet of NGOs that resists the obstacles dictated by a guilty and inhuman bureaucracy that pulls invisible barbed wires straight into the water.
A “bureaucracy,” the Italian one, to which the European Court of Justice replied in August, giving reason to the NGO’s Sea Watch vessels blocked for months in the ports of Palermo and Porto Empedocle in 2020. Ships subjected to inspections, prevented from operating for reasons such as “missing certifications” or “too many people on board.” Laws, political choices, and administrative stops that over time have forced NGOs to rethink even “how” help is brought.
Emergency has already been operating since 2016 with other partners offering health and social assistance, a type of aid that was not so common in the past because search and rescue operations were quick and disembarkation never too long. But now, docking in Italy can be timeless.
“The longest mission I can remember was fifty days. Fifty days at sea, of which at least thirty with the refugees on board because stuck in the harbor, with people jumping off the ship psychologists who had to get on,” Parrino remembered.
There are no well-defined rules, he explained, but a lot of arbitrariness, differences according to the ports or the “political climate. There were moments that three or four days passed from identification at sea to disembarkation and moments when thirty or forty days passed,” he added.
That’s why Life Support’s mission will be about fifteen days, as it could be necessary to stay on board longer. “If I had to leave and return from Sicily, it takes about a day to go patrolling in front of the Libyan coast, and you go there when there are good weather windows because in bad weather there are clearly no departures. Within two or three days you should be able to identify the target, so within four or five days the mission should be over.”
That’s just theory. More often, boat persons must share the little space of the ship for days, and over time that forced coexistence can become hard. “Those vessels are clearly not cruise ships. We are renovating the one we bought to the fullest with the experience we have gained over the years, but there are certainly no one hundred and seventy cabins … so things get heavy.”
Two or three days after the rescue, adrenaline turns into other fears, and “everything returns to memory: hunger, despair, what you have left … what you have suffered, the for what has been and for what will happen.” This is why keeping people on board for a long time has profound repercussions for everyone. We need to work “on empathy” and we need to increase the staff, doctors, nurses, “we need to have psychologists ready to board in case the ship has to stop, you have a crew under pressure,” Parrino explained.
Search and rescue at sea by NGOs is often a divisive topic but saving lives cannot be divisive, ever. This is Energency’s starting point, also this time. That’s why the “Life Support” will go out into the open sea. On its red hull, it will take, off the shores of Genoa, the words of Gino Strada, its founder, who in 2017 won the SunHak Peace Prize and who passed away last year: “If the rights are not for every single person, you’d better call them privileges.”
STOCKHOLM, Oct 05 (IPS) – After President Putin had given a speech, garnered with accusations and myths, a mega-show at the Red Square celebrated the re-entry of four Ukrainian regions to the bosom of Mother Russia. This while a mass mobilization was preparing to throw hundreds of thousands of young men into the hell of war. Why are people trusting, supporting and even admiring a political leader like Putin? One of many reasons might be his stance as Supreme Leader, a Strongman.
I get along very well with Erdogan. The tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. — Donald Trump
The Halo Effect is a tendency to unconditionally accommodate positive impressions of a single individual, a cognitive bias that influence personal opinions and feelings in a wide array of areas – religion, morals, patriotism, etc. The Halo Effect makes it possible for a political leader to exercise complete authority over millions of people. Historic and terrifying examples of this are the Führer Adolf Hitler, the Vozhd Joseph Stalin, the Duce Benito Mussolini, and the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong.
This is far from being a recent phenomenon, some examples of Strongmen are power-hungry personalities like Qin Shi Huangdi, Augustus, Djingis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Shaka, Suharto, and Kim Il-Sung. Individuals guilty of leading their supporters into an Inferno of violence and misery. Political Strongmen generally maintain their grip on other people’s minds through lies and myths, while manipulating mass media to spread propaganda and fake news, as well as organizing spectacles and mass rallies,
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari mentions that chimpanzees, the human specie’s closest relatives, have social instincts allowing them to form friendships and hierarchies that facilitate communal hunting, gathering and defense against predators. However, thousands of chimps cannot create a stock market, a United Nations, a Vatican. They cannot unite behind an Alpha Male, or topple him through a revolution, nor create a Government ruled by common law, or build a temple.
What makes humans unique is their sophisticated use of language, making it possible to ”gossip”, i.e. to talk about who is courting whom, who is a cheat, and who is an honest person. Such information may keep together a group of twenty, or fifty members, but seldom more than a hundred individuals. To achieve mass mobilization for work or war, much more than plain gossip is needed. According to Harari this is made possible through humans’ ability to fantasize and share their stories with others.
It is abstract notions that bind us together. Tales about deities, life after death, human rights, laws and justice. Human constructs like money and nations are based on mental innovations that have become materialized. The majority of the world’s population no longer belongs to tribes where sorcerers and priests told tales about guardian spirits and divine punishments. Instead we trust business-people, artists, priests and lawyers. Most of us are now living in a world governed by huge business corporations, mass media, sophisticated weaponry and manipulating politicians, maintained through shared myths and ideas.
Through preserved texts, computers and other means of communication we are now able to continuously increase and store large quantities of knowledge. And not only that, we are able to store and maintain information that actually is alien to ”reality” – invented conspiracies, ghosts, nations, limited liability companies, and even human rights. Fantasies are transformed into an actual existence.
We are gradually distancing ourselves from nature, creating our own world. However, this does not mean that we have got rid of our animal instincts. We are still likely to become subordinated to alpha males who use mental innovations to subdue us through repressive violence. chauvinism, and various kinds of media manipulation.
Even if Strongmen have been with us throughout human history, this does not mean that the phenomenon has constantly dominated our entire existence. Like all human behaviour, domination of our species is submitted to trends and change. It now seems to exist a current global trend that favours a return of the Strongman, combined with a spreading disrespect of compassion, human rights and a shared responsibility for the well-being of our world and planet.
The world’s two most populous nations, India and China, are currently under the spell of increasingly autocratic leaders. In India Naendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian People’s Party, was once accused of condoning the Gujarat riots in 2002, when at least 790 Muslims and 250 Hindus were killed, followed by further outbreaks of violence against the minority Muslim population in the federal state of Gujarat, where Modi was Chief Minister. He is now the undisputed leader of the Indian Republic. According to the respected Indian historian Ramachandra Guha since May 2014, the vast resources of the State have been devoted to making the prime minister the face of every programme, every advertisement, every poster. Modi is India, India is Modi.
The 2019 Balakot Airstrike, during which Indian warplanes bombed alleged terrorist training camps inside Pakistan, Modi’s support increased and during the general election campaign that followed Modi declared: ”When you vote for the Lotus , you are not pushing a button but pressing a trigger to shoot terrorists in the head.”
In China, the hitherto all dominating Communist Party has become ”rejuvenated” and strengthened under the leadership of Xi Jinping and the party propaganda machine is creating a cult of personality around Xi Dada, Uncle Xi, whose presidential time limit was abolished in 2018, meaning that he could stay in power for life. Xi Jinping Thought has been incorporated in the Chinese Constitution, a distinction previously only accorded to Mao Zedong.
Unchallenged autocratic regimes are maintained in several nations, like those of Saudi Arabia’s royal family and the emirs in the United Emirates. The political and ruthless repression in North Korea continues unabated under the Sogun, Military First, policy of the Il-sung dynasty. However, Strongmen are present within several democracies, ostentatiously in countries like Russia, the Philippines, Turkey, the Republic of India, Hungary, Israel, as well as in the US and several nations in Latin America and Africa. Even if such politicians use to state they respect ”democratic norms”, they are nevertheless intent to erode them.
A common trait among Strongmen seems to be efforts to limit judicial independence. Both Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman and China’s Xi Jinping have used much needed ”anti-corruption campaigns” to get rid of opponents, while terrifying several members of their nations’ political elite. In China over a million people have been arrested and imprisoned in connection with such campaigns, while some have been executed. Poland’s Kaczynski and Hungary’s Orbán have changed constitutional arrangements to bring courts under their control. Donald Trump has rather than lauding the US’ independent courts and free elections, castigated judges as biased if they ruled against him and famously tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Like Trump, Natanyahu in Israel and Bolsonaro in Brazil have complained about ”fake news” and a ”deep state” working against them. When Nethanyahu lost power in 2021 he made Trump-like claims that he had the been victim of the ”greatest election fraud in the history of any democracy.”
In Turkey more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors were purged, as well as academicians and army officers, after a State of Emergency had been declared by Erdo?an in 2016. The concept of The Deep State has for decades been used by Erdo?an to label opponents among traditional politicians and it was adopted by Trump when he declared that he was going to ”drain the swamp of Washington”.
Political Strongmen have a tendency to scoff at ”political correctness”, generally connected with human rights’ advocates, supporters of minorities and environmentalists. In spite of their dictatorial cravings, Strongmen like to state they are supported by the ”common people”, declaring that even if they disdain institutions they love ”the people”. Their politics are funded on the concept of ”we and them”, ”black or white”, and the ones who are not with me are against me. Opponents are ridiculed and demonized as ”outsiders” or ”perverts”, epithets attached to immigrants, as well as ethnic-, religious- and/or sexual minorities. It is also common to accuse shady foreign forces of plotting against the Nation. Russian and Chinese politicians regularly refer to ”Western plots to split the Nation”. Or, like Orbán, indicate that sinister, global cabals are trying to annihilate Hungarian culture by promoting mass migration and ”liberal dissolution of morals”. His favorite scapegoat is the philanthropist Georg Soros, who also have had the honour of being denounced by Putin, Trump, Erdo?an, Orbán and Bolsonaro.
Popular scapegoats can also be the EU, NATO, neighbouring nations, or Superpowers. Muslims are often sorted out as particularly dangerous, not only fanatics and terrorists, but all of them. Blaming ”others” is a simple solution to complex problems. A simplicity expressed in three words slogans – ”Get Brexit Done!”, ”Build the Wall!”, ”Law and Order!”, ”Lock them Up!”, or even in two words like ”Americans (or Italians, Hungarians, Swedes, etc.) First!”
Much more could be written about political Strongmen, let us, however, return to the enigmatic Vladimir Putin. In 2018, his powerful press secretary Dmitry Peskov, multi-millionaire as so many of Putin’s closest associates, declared;
There’s a demand in the world for special sovereign leaders, for decisive ones who do not fit into general frameworks and so on. Putin’s Russia was the starting point.
Main Sources: Rachman, Gideon (2022) The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World and Harari, Yuval Noah (2014) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Protesters in Washington, DC, march against the alleged killing of Uyghur Muslims. June 2022. Credit: Unsplash/Kuzzat Altay
Opinion by Mandeep S.Tiwana (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Oct 03 (IPS) – This week is a momentous one for the world’s premier human rights body. At stake is a resolution to decide whether the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva can hold a debate on a recently released UN report.
The report concludes that rights violations by China’s government in its Xinjiang region ‘may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity’.
Unsurprisingly, China’s government is doing everything in its power to scotch plans for a debate on the report’s contents. Its tactics include intimidating smaller states, spreading disinformation and politicising genuine human rights concerns – the very thing the Human Rights Council was set up to overcome.
The historic report, which affirms that the rights of Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslim population are being violated through an industrial-level programme of mass incarceration, systemic torture and sexual violence, attracted huge controversy before it was released on 31 August 2022, minutes before the end of the term of the outgoing High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet.
The report was supposedly ready in September 2021 but so great was the pressure exerted by the Chinese state that it took almost another year for it to be aired. Absurdly, the 46-page report includes a 122 page annex in the form of a rebuttal issued by China, rejecting the findings and calling into question the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Office of the High Commissioner has asserted that the report is based on a rigorous review of documentary evidence with its credibility assessed in accordance with standard human rights methodology. The report’s recommendations are pretty straightforward: prompt steps should be taken to release all people arbitrarily imprisoned in Xinjiang, a full legal review of national security and counter-terrorism policies should be undertaken, and an official investigation should be carried into allegations of human rights violations in camps and detention facilities.
Nevertheless, a proposed resolution to hold a debate on the report’s contents in early 2023 is facing severe headwinds. A number of states inside and outside the Human Rights Council, united by their shared history of impunity for rampant human rights abuses – such as Cuba, Egypt, Laos, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Venezuela – have already rallied to China’s defence in informal negotiations on the brief resolution.
What is most worrying is that China appears to be leaning on smaller states that make up the 47-member Human Rights Council by inverting arguments about politicisation of global human rights issues and projecting itself as the victim of a Western conspiracy to undermine its sovereignty.
If China were to have its way, it would be a huge setback for the Human Rights Council, which was conceived in 2006 as a representative body of states designed to overcome the flaws of ‘declining credibility and lack of professionalism’ that marred the work of the body it replaced, the UN Commission on Human Rights.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his ground-breaking In Larger Freedom report, lamented that states sought membership ‘not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others’.
Human Rights Council members are expected to uphold the highest standards in the protection and promotion of human rights. But our research at CIVICUS shows that eight of the Council’s 47 members have the worst possible civic space conditions for human rights defenders and their organisations to exist. In these countries – Cameroon, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Libya, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan – human rights are routinely abused and anyone with the temerity to speak truth to power is relentlessly persecuted.
Regimes that serially abuse human rights may be motivated to block findings of investigations being aired on the international stage, but the international community has a collective responsibility to the victims. Civil society groups are urging Human Rights Council members to stand firm on the call for a debate on the China report.
Human Rights Council member states that assert the importance of human rights and democracy in their foreign policy are expected to vote in favour. Nevertheless, the influence of regional and geo-political blocs within the Council mean that the issue will essentially be settled by the decisions of states such as Argentina, Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Paraguay, Senegal, Ukraine and Qatar.
China will undoubtedly pressure these states to try to get them to oppose or abstain in any vote that seeks to advance justice for the Uyghur people.
The stakes are particularly high for China’s mercurial leader, Xi Jinping, who is seeking to anoint himself as president for a third term – after abolishing term limits in 2018 – at the Chinese Communist Party’s Congress, which begins on 16 October.
Recognition of the systematic abuses to which Xi’s administration has subjected the Uyghur people would be considered an international affront to his growing power.
If China were to prevail at the Human Rights Council, it would be another blow to the legitimacy of the UN, which is already reeling from the UN Security Council’s inability to overcome Russia’s permanent member veto to block action on the invasion of Ukraine. So much – for the UN’s reputation, and for the hope that human rights violators, however powerful, will be held to account – is resting on the vote.
Mandeep S. Tiwana, is chief programmes officer and representative to the United Nations at global civil society alliance, CIVICUS.
STOCKHOLM, Sep 22 (IPS) – After general elections on the 12th September, Sweden is on the threshold of a new era. The Sweden Democrats (SD) won almost 21 percent of the votes and thus became the largest in a bloc of right-wing parties that now have a collective majority in the parliament. A nation that for a long time prided itself of being a beacon of tolerance and openness will now experience a historical transformation. The Sweden Democrats was once founded by Nazi sympathisers and for decades shunned by mainstream politicians. However, SD has now tipped the political scale in a country previously known for its stable and predictable politics, and some of the party’s former foes are now willing to co-rule with them.
SD thrives on fears of organized crime, narrow-mindedly associated with migrant environment. The party has benefited from many Swedes’ worries about immigration and a failed integration policy, which has secluded immigrants, often concentrating them to sparsely populated areas, or desolate suburbs, leaving many of them jobless and aid dependent. Most immigrants have not been obliged to learn Swedish and adapt themselves to Swedish society. SD is pointing out that Sweden’s foreign-born population has doubled in twenty years and has now reached twenty percent.
Recent high-profile cases of shootings and explosions in public places are connected with showdowns between criminal gangs fighting for a drug and weapons market often controlled by ethnic clans. A development feared by many Swedes and on social networks SD has resolutely inflated such fears. The party’s winning strategy has been its intention to introduce “strict law and order”, combining it with a ban on the entry of new asylum seekers, tougher criminal penalties, mandatory deportation of migrant criminals, penalise begging, and increase police presence in disadvantaged suburbs. Absent from these policies is an intensified effort to reach out to, integrate and educate immigrants, while assisting them in entering the labour market.
Leading SD for 17 years, Jimmy Åkesson is a vociferous demagogue, not afraid of using generalisations and cliches to engage a sympathetic public. He has been extremely active campaigning, travelling around the cities of the country. In his speeches, Åkesson has a knack for painting a grim picture of a country ravaged by crime, presenting his party as the only means to “make Sweden great again.”
Åkesson’s political foes and opponents eventually felt forced to climb up on his bandwagon of fear mongering, becoming engulfed by issues connected with law enforcement, while other important themes like rising energy prices, Sweden’s upcoming membership in NATO, disappointing results of educational reforms, long waiting times for adequate health care – all this was drowned out by a relentless focus on immigration and crime.
It seems like Swedish political parties have been blinded by their efforts to cling to power and influence, forgetting ideologies and their traditional agendas, becoming infected by the worryingly short-sighted ideology of an extremist party, which wants to return to a fictitious utopia consisting of a bygone ideal state of time-honoured norms and values. During debates preceding the elections almost nothing was said about a future threatened by climate change, a disappearing biodiversity, insufficiently controlled nuclear power, the automation of working life, growing mental maladies, and a vast array of other social problems.
Founded in 1988, SD struggled to win enough votes to elect any MPs at all. However, ever since entering the Parliament in 2010, the party has increased its share of successive elections. It’s growth has been staggering – in the 2006 election SD received three percent of the votes, in 2010 – 5,7 percent, in 2014 – 13 percent, in 2018 – 17.5 percent, and finally in 2022 – 21 percent.
SD’s success story has caused a fierce debate over how much the party has changed ideologically, while transforming itself from a political pariah to an influential power-broker. Jimmie Åkesson, who took over the leadership of SD in 2005, did ten years ago unveil a “zero-tolerance policy against racism and extremism”, excluding his party’s worst extremists. In 2015, he even suspended the party’s entire youth wing over its links to the far-right.
Why did SD exclude these “fanatics”, at the same time as it replaced its burning flame logo with a more innocent-looking flower and got rid of its slogan Keep Sweden Swedish? A viable explanation is that SD wanted to go “mainstream” by cleaning up a conspicuous past originating in the almost universally scorned White Power Movement with roots securely fastened down deep in the fertile ground of musty Nazism.
If SD members are reminded about this awkward truth, they might say that their party now is far from being Nazi-affected, as stated by a member of SD’s reformed youth moment:
All that was before I was born. People accuse us of bad stuff, but I don’t think the fact that there were shady people in the party 30 years ago has affected the appreciation of voters attracted by our current politics.
Probably not, even if SD’s legal spokesperson still seems to cling to the old slogan of Keep Sweden Swedish. He recently tweeted a picture of a Stockholm underground train branded with the party’s colours and stating “Welcome to the repatriation express. Here’s a one-way ticket. Next Stop Kabul.”
However, some people are well aware of the fact that when SD was established in the town of Malmö, one of its founding members was an old Nazi who once had volunteered in the Waffen-SS while another was “the last Swede who dared to show himself in a Nazi uniform.” Up until 1995, SD’s vice chairman was a lady who summarized the Party’s policy as
We can with a good conscience continue the fight against the poison of humanity: Marxists, Liberals and above all the Sionist occupying power. As the vermin they actually are, they will all be crushed like lice
It was this shady party that attracted four students in the university town of Lund. Jimmie Åkesson eventually became the leader of SD, while two members of the group now serve as Party Secretary and International Secretary, respectively. The fourth member, the only one who obtained a degree, is currently member of the Regional Board of Skåne, Sweden’s wealthiest region, after serving as Party Secretary and Vice Speaker of the Swedish Parliament.
As students these men enjoyed being “politically incorrect” and founded a group they called The National Democratic Students’ Union. They eventually joined the SD, stating they intended to “take over” this minuscule extremist party. They are now asserting they didn’t support SD’s extreme ideology. Nevertheless, why did they then chose to “take over” a Nazi party?
In his bland and impersonal political autobiography, Satis Polito, Latin for Sufficiently Polished, Jimmie Åkesson poses as heir to the “old” Social Democratic idea of a just and secure People’s Home. The cover is as falsely arranged folksy as the rest of SD’s messages. Vintage Social Democratic election posters and the cat are photo-shopped. The title of the book indicates SD’s intention of becoming housebroken by washing away its Nazi past. Or as an Italian newspaper expressed it: “Modern Fascism does not stomp around in leather boots, until it dares to show its true face it paws around in felt slippers.”
SD fits fairly well into a standard description of populist parties currently haunting the entire world:
Exalting “common people”, depicted as a homogenous group opposed to a multifaceted society. A view connected with xenophobia and mistrust of “power elites”.
Scepticism towards representative democracy. Right-wing populists are happy to participate in elections. If they win, they tend to change the rules of the game to benefit themselves. Like Hungary’s Victor Orbán who stated “we only have to win once.” If they lose, populists often question the election results, suggesting that elections were rigged, like Donald Trump.
An aggressive political style is expressed through a vulgar use of language, sharp condemnations and ridicule of opponents, while depicting themselves as victims of a biased media and the “establishment”.
A frequent use of poorly substantiated claims and/or conspiracy theories aiming at undermining stories promoted by “established media” and members of the “elite”.
Instead of open racism and xenophobia populist parties claim to adhere to and support a “national culture”. Whatever that might be? Jimmie Åkesson wrote in his book that he wants a speedy dismantling of the multicultural policy, in the cultural area, as well as other areas of society /…/ A strengthening of the cultural heritage and a restoration of the common national identity. We simply do not want the divided, segregated – soulless – society that the social-liberal establishment has created for us. We fight it. That’s why they hate us. That’s why they fight us. As a Sweden Democrat, I believe that something cannot be considered part of Swedish culture if it lacks a deep anchorage among current or previous generations of Swedes, or if it is something that is unique to Sweden, or a part of Sweden.
Such sentimental and basically incomprehensible gibberish makes many worried what will happen now when SD is going to be part of the Swedish Government. To what purpose? SD believes neither in climate change, nor in the equal value of human beings. What kind of future are they and their fellow parties around the world intending to create?
The final words of Satis Polito fail to mollify any worries. Jimmie Åkesson claims that the Social-Liberal Establishment so far has thwarted SD, but
Just let them be. It is only natural that a falling autumn leaf is startled by an increasing wind.
I wonder from what direction this gathering storm is coming. Probably, from the dark world once created by Nazis and Fascists.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Anis Chowdhury (sydney and kuala lumpur)
Inter Press Service
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 13 (IPS) – After a quarter century of economic stagnation, African economic recovery early in the 21st century was under great pressure even before the pandemic, due to new trade arrangements, falling commodity prices and severe environmental stress.
European scramble for AfricaAfrica’s borders were drawn up by European powers, especially following their ‘Scramble for Africa’ from 1881 ending by World War One. Various culturally, linguistically and religiously different ‘ethnic’ groups were forced together into colonies, to later become post-colonial ‘nations’.
Europeans came to Africa seeking slaves and minerals, later building colonial empires. The US attended the 1884 Berlin Congress, dividing Africa among European powers. Colony-less ‘latecomer’ Germany got Southwest Africa and Tanganyika, now Namibia and mainland Tanzania respectively.
Namibia’s Herero and Nama peoples revolted unsuccessfully against German occupation in 1904. General Lothar von Trotha then ordered “every Herero … shot”. Four-fifths of the Herero and half the Nama died!
Communities were surrounded, with many killed. Others were held, with many dying in concentration camps, or driven into the desert to die of starvation. In 1984, the UN Whitaker Report concluded the atrocities were among the worst 20th century genocides.
Asymmetric interdependence?
Europe’s post-Second World War recovery benefited immensely from their primary commodity exporting colonies. After the wartime devastation, European imperial powers relied on colonial currency arrangements for precious foreign exchange.
Imperial power also ensured captive colonial markets for uncompetitive post-war European manufactures. Recovery and competition brought down commodity prices, especially after the Korean War boom. For well over a century, such prices have declined against those for manufactures.
As decolonization became inevitable, French politicians promoted the notion of ‘Eurafrica’, mimicking the US Monroe Doctrine’s claim to Latin America. French elite discourse insisted African independence should be defined by (asymmetric) ‘interdependence’, not ‘sovereignty’.
Although Germany lost its few colonies in Africa after losing the First World War, the influential West German Die Welt wondered wistfully in 1960, “Is Africa getting away from Europe?”
From decolonization to Cold War
The US was the first nation to recognize Belgian King Leopold II’s personal claim to the Congo River basin in 1884. When Leopold’s brutal atrocities and exploitation of his private Congo Free State domain, killing millions, could no longer be denied, other European powers forced Belgium to directly colonize the country!
Patrice Lumumba became the first elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). An advocate of pan-African economic independence, his wish for genuine independence and sovereign control of DRC resources threatened powerful interests.
Lumumba was brutally humiliated, tortured and murdered in January 1961. The shameful assassination involved both US and Belgian governments which collaborated with Lumumba’s Congolese rivals.
Struggling to stand up
Pan-Africanist leader Kwame Nkrumah wanted independent Ghana to chart an ‘anti-imperialist’ path, staying non-aligned in the Cold War. He wanted hydroelectric dams to power Ghana’s industrial progress, beginning by smelting its bauxite to develop an aluminium value chain.
The US, UK and World Bank agreed to finance the Akosombo Dam, on condition it provided cheap energy to a Kaiser Aluminium subsidiary to process alumina for export to Kaiser. This arrangement was only rescinded decades later, early this century.
A scaled-down Bui dam was finally built by Chinese contractors decades later. Nkrumah’s 1965 book, Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, was probably the final straw in embarrassing the West.
Meanwhile, Nyerere’s pro-Western contemporaries were supported by the West. Such countries, e.g., neighbouring Kenya and Uganda, received much more Western aid although their development records have not been much better.
A luta continua
At independence, Zambia had no universities, with only 0.5% completing primary education. The country’s copper mines were mostly in British hands. Most people survived on limited land for the villagers, without electricity and other amenities.
Hemmed in by Western-supported racist states, President Kenneth Kaunda – a devout Christian – sought foreign help to bypass hostile South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to change the landlocked nation’s fate.
Côte d’Ivoire has long been a major producer of cocoa and coffee. But three decades of misrule by its pro-Western founding father, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, ensured endemic poverty and stark inequalities, culminating in civil war.
Both Kaunda and Houphouet-Boigny later abandoned their early, more neo-colonial policies. Zambia nationalized copper mines, hoping to improve living conditions, instead of enriching foreign investors.
Meanwhile, Ivorian cocoa was withheld to secure better prices. But both efforts failed, as copper and cocoa prices collapsed. Thus, both nations were severely punished for trying to better their fates.
Non-alignment best
During the first Cold War, Western hostility to African aspirations forced many to turn to the ‘socialist camp’ to build infrastructure and develop human resources. Washington then was as concerned with economic gain as countering ‘Reds’.
The Kennedy administration had increased foreign aid, urging allies to do likewise. But instead of supporting African aspirations, the West pursued its own economic interests while claiming to support post-colonial aspirations.
Increasing African government indebtedness over the 1970s forced many to accept structural adjustment programme policy conditions imposed by international financial institutions from the 1980s. Of course, developing countries following International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank prescriptions became Western darlings.
Nyerere observed: “The IMF … makes conditions and says, ‘if you follow these examples, your economy will improve’. But where are the examples of economies booming in the Third World because they accepted the conditions of the IMF?”
Cold War considerations have also meant US interest in Africa has waxed and waned. Now, the West warns of imminent Chinese ‘take-overs’ and nefarious Russian designs. China seems more interested in financing and building infrastructure, while Putin promotes Russian exports.
Neglected by the US after the first Cold War until its 21st century African initiatives, including Africom, African nations have increasingly welcomed alternatives to the West, albeit somewhat warily.
Together, the world can help Africa progress. But if support for the long cruelly exploited continent remains hostage to new Cold War considerations, Africans will choose accordingly. Non-alignment is now the pan-African choice.
Independent UN human rights experts condemned the death sentence of a university lecturer charged with blasphemy in Pakistan, calling the ruling “a travesty of justice”. December 2019. Credit: UNICEF/Josh Estey
Opinion by Soraya M. Deen, Christine M. Sequenzia (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Sep 12 (IPS) – In nations lacking certain religious freedoms, the bold multi-faith membership of the International Religious Freedom Roundtable’s Campaign to Eliminate Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws, would be forbidden.
This archaic, and at times, violent fact is driving a biblical justice authority, an international activist and a team of culturally and religiously diverse advocates to raise their voices with member states, just before world leaders arrive for the high-level segment of the 77th UN General Assembly session which commences in New York City September 20.
The trip will highlight the twelve nations currently imposing the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy charges, calling for its immediate repeal.
Freedom of religion or belief is universally regarded as fundamental human right and is protected by international covenants and national constitutions alike.
However, courts continue to mete out unjustifiably long prison sentences and even death sentences to individuals for non-violent, victimless conduct such as committing blasphemy or apostasy.
Recently, Nigerian humanist Mubarak Bala was sentenced to an unimaginable 24 years’ imprisonment for an allegedly blasphemous Facebook post he made expressing his disbelief in an afterlife.
Though the death penalty is not actually imposed upon a convicted individual in a vast majority of cases, the sentence itself relegates convicts to years and decades of prolonged imprisonment on death row, denial of medical care while in prison, withholding of legal counsel, and endless interrogation.
Pakistanis rally in support of Mumtaz Qadri who was convicted and executed for a blasphemy-motivated killing of a former governor, in Lahore, Pakistan, Feb. 2016. Credit: Voice of America
Previously, Asia Bibi, a Pakistani woman, languished on death row for eight years on charges of blasphemy simply for drinking water from a canteen while picking berries with a group of Muslim women.
After her release and acquittal in 2019, Asia was forced to flee her home country in fear of reprisal attacks by radical Islamists.
In 2014, a pregnant Sudanese woman Mariam Ibrahim – who was imprisoned on apostasy charges for her marriage to a Christian man, and as a woman born to a Muslim father – was forced to give birth to her second child while her legs remained shackled to the cell floor.
As a Christ follower, I am reminded of times when God revealed his heart for justice through stories like that of Esther, whom was strengthened to boldly intercede for an oppressed group of religious minorities.
The time is now for United Nations Member States to do the same, through their set own of convictions, in an effort to create communities of human flourishing and safety for those who are persecuted for freedom of religion or belief.
Speaking on Islam’s position on blasphemy, there is much evidence that Prophet Muhammad pardoned his worst critics. Blasphemy laws and inhumane punishments for blasphemy have no legitimacy in the Quran.
The Quran does not command Muslims to kill blasphemers.
Surah (verse) 4:140 of the Quran states – “If you hear people denying and ridiculing God’s revelation, do not sit with them unless they start to talk of other things…”
There is no reference to killing and or issuing fatwas.
Even where moratoriums on the death penalty exist, faith minorities and individuals who express views and perspectives deviating from those prescribed by the majority religion can be in tremendous danger.
Mauritania, which has upheld a moratorium on the death sentence since 1987, convicted blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir of apostasy and sentenced him to death as recently as 2014 for an article he wrote criticizing the use of Islam to justify the caste system in his country. Fortunately, Mkhaitir was released from prison in 2019.
In Pakistan, where the death sentence is often issued to perceived blasphemers – most often Christian and Ahmadi Muslim minorities – but not carried out– laws criminalizing apostasy and blasphemy embolden state and non-state actors alike to commit acts of violence against innocent civilians.
In July 2021, a police constable slashed and killed a man named Muhammad Waqas who had been previously acquitted of blasphemy charges; the perpetrator explicitly stated perceived blasphemy as the crimes’ impetus.
A few months later, in December 2021, a Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara was lynched by a mob and had his body burned by an angry mob in the Pakistani city of Sialkot.
Kumara was a garment factory manager who had been accused of committing blasphemy after removing an Islamic poster from the factory’s walls to prepare for a renovation project.
These non-state actors, fortified by lackluster laws, pose a serious obstacle to human rights, free speech and dignity, creating a system where sometimes even state supported religious leaders call for the death penalty and other inhumane punishments.
A more recent and equally horrific incident occurred in Sokoto Nigeria, when young Christian college student Deborah Samuel Yakubu was stoned to death and set on fire by her very own Muslim classmates.
Days prior, Yakubu had angered the perpetrators by questioning why her school course’s WhatsApp chat was being used to discuss contentious religious affairs rather than focusing on academic issues.
Currently, twelve nations that maintain the death penalty for apostasy, blasphemy, or both; these include Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. *
Additionally, approximately 40% of UN Member States – some of them holding seats in the Human Rights Council – criminalize apostasy and blasphemy, despite their lack of the death sentence for such ‘crimes’.
However, it is not without criticism and attention by human rights and religious freedom activists and even representatives of the United Nations who have emphasized the inhumanity of apostasy and blasphemy laws and called for their repeal.
This includes the UN General Assembly, the UN Secretary-General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Council, and the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of religion or belief, and on extrajudicial killings, respectively.
Now, civil society is taking matters into its own hands.
Efforts to work toward the abolition of the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy have been a bottom-up grassroots approach. Next week, a delegation of human rights and religious freedom advocates will travel to the United Nations to meet with representatives from the missions of numerous UN Member States, including Luxembourg, Canada, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Niger, and Australia.
Their goal is to increase support among UN Member States for the insertion of language in the UNGA Resolution on Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions stating that “the death penalty should never be imposed as a sanction for apostasy, blasphemy, or other perceived religious offense.
As a capstone to the multifaith, multicultural and multidisciplinary United Nations advocacy fly-in, the group will host an issue briefing pointing to the critical proposed resolution language, calling for the immediate repeal of the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy charges.
The briefing, which is open to the press, will spotlight survivors in their own voice. The development of pluralistic resilient communities which uphold basic human rights and allow for human flourishing amongst inevitable interdependent globalized societies depend on the undaunted actions those in power.
We call upon all Member States to join us in this fight toward international religious freedom by supporting the IRF Campaign’s resolution language today.” More info here.
Dr. Christine M. Sequenzia, MDiv. is Co-Chair, International Religious Freedom Roundtable Campaign to Eliminate Blasphemy and Apostasy Laws
Soraya Marikar Deen, is a Lawyer, Community Organizer, International Activist; Human Rights & Gender Equity Advocate. She is also Co-chair Women’s Working Group @ Int. Religious Freedom Roundtable and Founder MuslimWomenSpeakers
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