Dr Zouhair Lahna has worked in conflict zones across the globe – Syria, Libya, Yemen, Uganda and Ethiopia – but he has never seen anything like the Israeli war on Gaza.
In those life-threatening situations, the Moroccan French pelvic surgeon and obstetrician said, there was a route to safety for civilians.
But on Tuesday, Israeli forces seized and closed Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt – the only escape for Palestinians from the war and the most important entry point for humanitarian aid.
“This is another injustice. … It’s not human,” Lahna said, shaking his head as he spoke to Al Jazeera from Cairo, Egypt, where he has been evacuated from the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis.
He laments having to leave his Palestinian colleagues behind.
“I am angry, troubled, upset … because I left some people. They are my friends. I was with them, these doctors, these people. …We eat together, we work together and now I left them in trouble. They have to move their families, look for a tent, look for water, for food,” he said.
Lahna has spent months volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals as part of missions organised by the Palestinian Doctors Association in Europe (PalMed Europe) and US-based Rahma International.
Dr Lahna, centre, with his colleagues at PalMed Europe and Rahma International in Gaza’s north, near Kamal Adwan Hospital [Courtesy of Zouhair Lahna]
On the morning that displaced Palestinians in eastern Rafah were ordered to evacuate and before Israeli tanks rolled in, Lahna and his foreign colleagues received text messages from the Israeli army.
“The Israeli army, they know everything. They know everyone who is in Gaza and how to reach them. They told us to leave.”
The texts urged the foreign doctors to leave Gaza because the Israeli military would soon begin an operation in eastern Rafah.
A few hours later, Lahna and his counterparts from PalMed Europe and Rahma International were picked up by their organisations and taken to safety in Cairo.
“There were four doctors in the European Hospital, four in the Kuwaiti Hospital and two others,” he said. “We waited while they gave our names to the Egyptian and Israeli authorities, and finally, we got word to leave.”
As they were departing, leaflets from the Israeli military printed with the evacuation order fell from the sky along with missiles from Israeli warplanes.
People were in a panic as they headed north from Rafah towards Khan Younis or west towards the sea, Lahna recalled.
Collapse of a system
When asked about the conditions of the hospitals he worked in, Lahna has trouble describing what he saw.
He begins to speak, then pauses, apologising, pained by the number of sick, wounded and dying individuals who were brought in daily.
“It’s difficult for me to remember this,” he said slowly.
While the European Hospital has been spared from an Israeli raid, it has been receiving referrals from other overwhelmed hospitals.
It has also been a place of shelter for displaced people who try to find space wherever they can, including at the doors of patient rooms, in the building’s corridors, on the stairs and in the hospital’s garden.
Lahna’s visit to al-Shifa Hospital, which he says was ‘barbarically destroyed’ [Courtesy of Zouhair Lahna]
Before the European Hospital, Lahna and his team volunteered at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza’s northern city of Beit Lahiya. He is among the few foreign doctors to have travelled to the area.
They worked there for a week, the longest Israeli authorities permitted them to be there, he said.
There, the situation was even more dire, the doctor said, exacerbated by what the World Food Programme says is a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza.
In December, the hospital was the site of an Israeli raid when the military besieged and shelled it for several days. Displaced families had also been sheltering there and were rounded up alongside medical staff and personnel.
Gaza’s hospitals, the majority of which are no longer functioning, have also been the site of mass graves discovered after Israeli raids. Graves have been found in recent weeks in Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals along with 392 bodies.
Working for peace, not war
With the collapse of the healthcare system in Gaza, Lahna is determined to return and volunteer there once again but isn’t sure when that will be possible.
For now, he said, he will return to France to check in at his “other job” and spend time with his family, who may have had a harder time than he did because all they did was worry about him while he was in Gaza.
He is sure all of Rafah will soon be occupied by Israeli forces, which will be deadly for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians there, he said.
“This world is blind,” Lahna said, dismayed that the Rafah incursion is likely to continue to occur despite warnings from the international community, which has not been able to stop Israel from committing mass atrocities, he said.
“Human rights is a joke. The United Nations is a big joke,” Lahna added.
He believes the war is as much a United States conflict as it is Israeli with the US approving an additional $17bn in aid to its top Middle East ally last month.
For Lahna, the protesting university students around the world, particularly in the US, who oppose Israel’s ongoing assault know the value of human rights.
Yet when it comes to Palestinians, he said, they are coming to realise that these values do not apply – and are increasingly becoming disillusioned with their elected officials and the state of the world.
That disillusionment is wearing on the doctor himself, but he said it has also strengthened his resolve to offer his expertise to people in warzones around the world, including Gaza.
Asked if he is worried about being arrested. tortured or killed for his work in the enclave, the surgeon barely bats an eye.
He said his time to die will come one day or another and if it happens while helping the vulnerable in Gaza, then that will be the time meant for him to depart.
“I am not more precious than Palestinian people,” Lahna said. “I am a humanitarian doctor. I work. I help people. [We] doctors come in for peace. We don’t come in for war.”
Simon Thomsett tentatively removes a pink bandage from the wing of an injured bateleur, a short-tailed eagle from the African savannah, where birds of prey are increasingly at risk of extinction.
“There is still a long way to go before healing,” Thomsett explains as he lifts up the bird’s dark feathers and examines the injury.
“It was injured in the Maasai Mara national park, but we don’t know how,” says the 62-year-old vet who runs the Soysambu Raptor Centre in central Kenya.
The 18-month-old eagle, with a distinctive red beak and black body, was brought to the shelter five months ago, where about 30 other injured raptors keep it company.
The sanctuary in the Soysambu reserve is one of the few places where the birds of prey are safe.
A study published in January by The Peregrine Fund, a United States-based non-profit organisation, found that the raptor population has fallen by 90 percent on the continent over the last 40 years.
“You can go down a road today for maybe 200km [125 miles] and not see a single raptor,” Thomsett says.
“If you did that 20 years ago, you would have seen a hundred.”
Critically endangered Ruppells vultures warm themselves in the morning sun at the Naivasha Raptor Centre [Tony Karumba/AFP]
The reasons for the decline are multifold.
Vultures and other scavengers have died from eating livestock remains, falling victim to a practice adopted by cattle farmers who poison carcasses to deter lions from approaching their herds.
Deforestation also plays a part as does the proliferation of power lines across Africa that prove fatal for birds who perch on them to hunt prey.
Some species are shrinking so fast that conservation initiatives will not yield results, says Thomsett. “We are too late.”
Birds of prey also suffer from an image problem.
“Vultures are seen as ugly, unsightly, dirty and disgusting,” says Shiv Kapila, who manages a bird sanctuary at the Naivasha national park which lies around 50km (31 miles) from the Soysambu reserve.
Some communities even go so far as to kill species such as owls and lappet-faced vultures, believing they bring bad luck.
“We have to convince people that not only are they absolutely gorgeous but also incredibly useful as well,” he says, as long-legged Ruppell’s vultures and pink-headed lappet-faced vultures rub shoulders inside a cage.
A lappet-faced vulture, that is critically endangered, in its habitat at the Soysambu Raptor Centre [Tony Karumba/AFP]
Educating people about birds of prey is essential, says Kapila, who organises school trips to the sanctuary and visits to local communities to shift public opinion.
“We can see a lot of difference in attitudes,” says 25-year-old vet Juliet Waiyaki, who began working at the Naivasha sanctuary last year, helping to care for the 35 birds of prey housed there.
But she sometimes questions whether her work as a vet makes an impact.
“I can’t tell you if by us saving eight vultures out of 300,000 … if that makes a difference,” Waiyaki says. “But we do our part.”
At the Naivasha sanctuary raptors can stay from just a few days to several years. Staff often travel across the country to rescue injured birds.
“We take an injured bird from the field or members of the public bring them to us and we treat them,” says Kapila, adding that 70 percent of his patients eventually recover enough to return to the wild.
Despite the massive decline in numbers, Thomsett sees “room for optimism”, especially when he thinks of injured birds that seemed to have “had no chance whatsoever … [but] are alive and well today”.
He even gets return visitors, he says, with some birds coming back to greet him years after they are released into the wild. “It is extremely rewarding,” he says.
Shanghai, China– “The Chinese take great pride in their food,” read a memo prepared for United States President Richard Nixon ahead of his groundbreaking visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972. Nixon’s lavish state banquet with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing, broadcast live across the world, was crucial in improving US public opinion of a country that had been hidden from view for decades.
More than half a century later, food is once again playing a central role in nurturing warmer US-China relations. With Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen both recently wrapping up their second visits to China in less than a year, meals have emerged as a key ingredient in stabilising ties between the two countries, as officials on both sides look to tap into the potential of what has been called “food diplomacy”.
Yellen’s visit in early April was notable for the level of Chinese public attention on her food choices. Anticipation was high after her first visit last July, when her choice of a Beijing restaurant serving authentic food from the country’s southern Yunnan province, including mushrooms that can have psychedelic effects if cooked improperly, made her a social media darling in China.
This time around, it was not only her choice of authentic Cantonese and Sichuan food that grabbed headlines but also her use of chopsticks at a popular Guangzhou restaurant established in 1880, reminiscent of Nixon’s own chopstick skills that also impressed his hosts in 1972.
Although Yellen is known to sample local food during her trips around the US, the symbolic significance of doing so in China was especially pronounced, according to Thomas DuBois, a historian of China who teaches at Beijing Normal University.
“In China, food is the language of diplomacy, and the Chinese are rightfully proud of their culinary culture. She [Yellen] knew that how she ate would reflect extremely heavily on her visit,” DuBois told Al Jazeera.
“If you’re eating badly in China, because it’s a very food-obsessed culture, it’s more than a sign of bad taste, it’s a sign that there’s something off about you.”
US President Richard Nixon’s 1972 banquet in Beijing was broadcast live on television [Bill Achatz/AP Photo]
DuBois noted that one of the common phrases used to describe Yellen’s eating in China was “qianxu”, or humility – a character trait “extremely important” to the Chinese.
“Eating well and knowing how to eat is a profound moral philosophy in China that really comes down to being humble enough to change yourself according to what needs to happen, such as coming here and using chopsticks,” he said.
Food’s importance to diplomacy is well-known among foreign diplomats in China. According to a diplomat for a major European country in Beijing, eating together is one of the top priorities when interacting with Chinese officials.
“In high-level bilateral meetings, it’s incredibly important to have an eating element in the programme because that’s where you can have an open and frank conversation,” he said, preferring not to be named. “The dinners are used strategically on both sides to create a trusted relationship,” he said.
Before the diplomat was posted to Beijing, part of his training related to Chinese banquet customs, including who sits where at the table and the rules surrounding toasting. Ministers from his country are also briefed on these customs before they have meetings with their Chinese counterparts, he added.
Even so, banquets can be tricky affairs. In addition to complicated customs, the complex nature of Chinese cuisine, which uses a wide range of ingredients, can lead to challenges in establishing rapport over food, especially with food allergies, which are relatively uncommon in China.
At a recent banquet in Beijing arranged by the Chinese, each visiting European minister had a different allergy, from lactose intolerance to shellfish.
“A Chinese staffer came over and told me that they had such difficulty planning this dinner for us because our ministers have so many different allergies,” the diplomat said. “These differences in eating habits can complexify things and create lots of stress and anxiety.”
Warm coverage
The viral seven-second video of Yellen’s chopstick skills was first posted by a social media account believed to be run directly by Beijing. Multiple state-run outlets published the full details of Yellen’s food itinerary, including all the dishes she ate.
In an essay on the popular Chinese app WeChat, veteran commentator and former journalist Zhang Feng noted that Chinese state media coverage of Yellen’s more endearing side was a departure from the “cold” reporting on US officials in recent years.
“Yellen’s trip to China may somewhat improve the anti-American sentiment of ordinary Chinese people,” Zhang wrote. Chinese public opinion of the US sharply deteriorated during the Donald Trump presidency, who famously ate “Americanised” Chinese food during his state visit in 2017, rebounding slightly since President Joe Biden took office.
The warmer coverage is consistent with the Chinese state media’s shift in tone on US-China relations in recent months as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) looks to stabilise bilateral relations amid domestic economic challenges.
The practice has historical roots. Chinese officials also used food to improve perceptions of the US in the run-up to Nixon’s visit in 1972. Photos of Americans friendly to the regime, such as journalist Edgar Snow, attending various state banquets were widely circulated in both national and internal party newspapers.
The Nanxiang Steamed Bun restaurant said it had seen no spike in business as a result of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken eating there [Vincent Chow/Al Jazeera]
However, there has also been nationalist pushback against the recent softening of rhetoric.
The outspoken tabloid Global Times said in an editorial that “[t]he Chinese people welcome anyone from anywhere to come and enjoy our food, but that does not mean we won’t push back against groundless accusations and outright crackdowns”.
Another vocal critic, former Xinhua News Agency journalist Ming Jinwei, accused compatriots of being “hopelessly enamoured” with the US in a WeChat essay and referred to them as “spiritual Americans”. He claimed that the reputation of the US is now “bankrupt” in China, which he described as “a good thing”.
The debate over how the CCP should shape domestic opinion towards the US was on display in the much frostier reception Blinken received during his visit in late April, which included meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
While Blinken also ate in authentic restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing, with the US embassy even sharing a clip of him with a popular Chinese food vlogger showing off his chopstick skills, his eating habits received far less attention than Yellen’s.
The social media account that had enthused about Yellen’s ability to use chopsticks did not share any videos of Blinken’s culinary adventures. Instead, it emphasised Chinese talking points about the US’s “wrong words and deeds” on various red-line issues at the centre of US-China tensions, including Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Ukraine.
On Weibo, China’s equivalent of X, one of the most discussed topics during Blinken’s three-day visit was an interview with the BBC in Beijing in which he was subject to tough questioning over US support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
The related hashtag for the interview broke into the site’s top 10 most discussed topics on April 28, amassing more than 67 million views as of Tuesday. In contrast, multiple hashtags about Yellen’s eating habits had amassed a total of 39 million views.
It is unclear whether the BBC interview went viral organically. Weibo has been accused of rigging its hashtag ranking system before, with hashtags relating to international politics prone to manipulation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping enjoys a glass of wine on his visit to France this week [Aurelien Morissard/AP Photo]
On Saturday evening, the Shanghai restaurant that Blinken visited was about 80 percent full. A staff member said the restaurant’s location in a tourist hotspot meant that they were always busy and that Blinken’s visit had not led to a spike in customers.
Nonetheless, other countries have also recognised the power of food diplomacy.
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron thanked the visiting Xi after an hours-long meeting in Paris for his “openness“ to not imposing preemptive tariffs on French cognac. Beijing had launched an anti-dumping investigation into European brandy in January, viewed by some as a response to a European Union probe on Chinese electric vehicles.
Macron later took Xi and his wife to the Pyrenees, where they nibbled on cheese and enjoyed some wine.
And what did Macron’s going-away gift for Xi include? Two bottles of cognac, of course.
New Orleans, Louisiana, US – Student protests against the Israeli war on Gaza have rocked the United States over the past few weeks, prompting a police crackdown on many campuses and more than 2,000 arrests. Students who have set up protest encampments at universities across the country are calling for their institutions to withdraw all investments from firms complicit in Israeli abuses against Palestinians.
While the focus has been on Columbia University in New York and other elite Ivy League institutions, students are also organising for Palestine in the US South. Smaller Southern cities were at the heart of the 1960s civil rights movement, but today, like then, protesters operate in a particularly hostile, even violent environment.
In New Orleans, the largest city in Louisiana, protests have taken place on university campuses and on the city’s streets.
On April 28 for a few hours, the campus encampment movement spilled into the city centre. A few dozen protesters set up green tents in Jackson Square, demanding the city, too, divest from Israel.
This was the first time the encampment movement had spread beyond universities in New Orleans. It signalled a desire on the part of protesters to amplify their message – even before Israel seized control of the Rafah border crossing and intensified its bombing on Monday in preparation for a potentially imminent ground assault on an already devastated area where more than 1.4 million Palestinians, including 600,000 children, are sheltering.
“It’s overdue,” said Kinsey, a supporter of the off-campus encampment who gave only their first name. “It’s been bubbling [up]. The tides were already shifting. That pressure has been building. We’ve used our words. We’ve chanted and marched and been ignored. So now, solidarity encampments are the bare minimum.”
Tackled, handcuffed, Tased
The Jackson Square encampment, which was not claimed by any one organisation, was occupied by a mix of about 40 local artists, builders and service industry workers. Sprawled on the grass, the protesters made demands that echoed that of the student movement: They called for the city to divest from Israeli companies and institutions deemed to be profiting from the war on Gaza. The Port of New Orleans was one institution singled out after it entered into a partnership with Israel’s Port of Ashdod last year.
The protesters sat on the ground at the heart of the city’s French Quarter during one of the city’s busiest tourist weekends when it was hosting its annual Jazz and Heritage Festival. The goal, one protester said, was not necessarily to stay indefinitely – he just hoped police would allow them to stay overnight.
Passing tourists snapped photos. Protesters played music and shared food. About a dozen police officers stood nearby, seemingly unsure about how to force them to dismantle.
But as night fell a few hours later, things changed. Police announced the park was closed and ordered protesters to leave. When they refused, officers began to grab and then tackle protesters, chasing and arresting 12 people. Three protesters were taken to hospital, two with broken bones. Police used Tasers on several people, at least one of whom was handcuffed on the ground at the time.
One of those arrested appeared in court the next day in a wheelchair due to injuries allegedly inflicted by police and told Al Jazeera that officers broke his leg with a baton. Another suffered a skull fracture, according to a press release issued by some of the protesters.
The charges levelled against those arrested are more severe than what students have typically faced. Two protesters are being charged with a “hate crime against law enforcement”, a charge created in Louisiana in 2016, the equivalent of which exists in just a handful of US states.
Undeterred, a campus encampment sprang up the next day.
An officer tackles a pro-Palestine protester at a short-lived off-campus encampment in the centre of New Orleans [Delaney Nolan/Al Jazeera]
A watermelon puppet and 100 state troopers
Students were already planning the encampment at Tulane University, a private university miles across town, before they heard about the off-campus protest in the city centre, they said.
Taking responsibility for protests in Louisiana exposes organisers to great legal risks. A recent court decision means protest organisers can be held liable for the actions of participants. It is also, according to a decades-old state law, illegal to wear masks in public. A pair of bills working their way through the Louisiana State Legislature, 70 percent of whose seats are held by conservative Republicans, would give motorists the right to run over protesters blocking roads if drivers feel they are in danger. Another would make it a crime to be within 25ft (7.6 metres) of a working officer.
Antiwar organisers at Tulane have faced an uphill battle from the start, students said.
“Tulane is one of the most deeply connected institutions to …Israel,” said Kristin Hamilton, a Tulane graduate student. The school leads one of four US-Israel Energy Centers, collaborating with Israeli universities and an Israeli fossil fuel company to research and develop gas extraction.
When students gathered to set up tents on their campus on April 29, police officers, some on horseback, immediately began tearing them down, the students said. Brenna Byrne, a former student at Tulane, said she saw a police horse’s hooves nearly come down on the head of one student who had been detained on the ground. Afraid the student would be killed, she moved forward to help and saw her own sister, Hannah, also on the ground and being arrested, a police officer kneeling on her head. She and five others were arrested.
But suddenly, the police backed off.
Dozens, then hundreds of young people came to the encampment, located between a main thoroughfare and the university president’s office. Students played music, made signs, sang and chanted, “Hold the line for Palestine.” The camp had snacks, a literature table and a 10ft (3-metre) watermelon puppet in a dress – the watermelon having become a widely used symbol for the Palestinian flag. Members of the public came out to drop off supplies.
By the next day, a billboard-sized LED sign had been erected, blasting loud music and displaying a message that warned protesters they were trespassing. Demonstrators as well as a Tulane facilities worker and police present at the site said they believed it was set up by university authorities. The music drowned out attempts by groups of Jewish and Muslim protesters to perform prayers throughout the afternoon.
Despite the threat of dispersal, the mood was upbeat. Silas Gillett, a Jewish sophomore, said: “Multiple people came up to us and said they felt more safe that day than they ever had on campus. Tulane is, usually, a very hostile place for Palestinians, Muslims and students of colour.”
Hamilton recalled people dancing dabke, a traditional Palestinian folk dance, that night, even as police gathered nearby. “To see that Palestinian joy happening at the exact same time the state was trying to oppress and terrorise us – that was really powerful.”
The camp lasted 33 hours.
On May 1 at 3am, more than 100 state troopers in riot gear and backed by armoured vehicles stormed the encampment and arrested 14 students.
“It was overwhelming,” Hamilton recalled. Video footage reviewed by Al Jazeera shows state police pushing Hamilton to the ground, and the student shared medical records showing they were later diagnosed with a concussion as a result of assault. The student believes they were targeted because they were filming the police at the time.
In another video reviewed, an officer pulls a weapon believed to be a bean-bag rifle and aims it point-blank at nearby students.
Students described the police response as “traumatic”.
Two protesters talk near the barricades of Tulane University’s pro-Palestine encampment on April 30, 2024 [Delaney Nolan/Al Jazeera]
‘Everything about this one was different’
The police reaction to the Tulane encampment appeared far more organised than the response to the Jackson Square protest: More than 100 state troopers in riot gear moved in one coordinated skirmish line to dismantle the Tulane camp as opposed to the Jackson Square arrests, which were initiated by about a dozen local officers
A lawyer who was acting as a liaison between the Tulane protesters and police said law enforcement “could have de-escalated, but they chose riot gear”. The liaison, who asked not to be identified to prevent retaliation, has acted as a legal observer at dozens of protests over various issues in Louisiana but said, “Everything about this one was different.” The aggression displayed by “the police was like nothing I’ve seen at any protests before”, the liaison added. “It was a militarisation.”
But the reaction towards the demonstrations does not necessarily mean that protesters will not take to the streets in New Orleans again.
Protesters said that while Tulane is hostile towards Palestinians, pro-Palestinian sentiment is still strong in the city. Gillett attributed it in part to New Orleans’s predominantly Black and lower-income population. There is also a significant Palestinian population in the area involved in protesting, and this year, a Palestinian New Orleanian, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, was killed when he was shot in the head by the Israeli army near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, said that in the US, “brown and Black communities and poorer folks are more supportive of Palestine. And I think the reason is that Palestine is an anti-colonial movement.” Polling has consistently found Black Americans to be more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than white Americans. “I think we’re seeing that the Palestine movement [is] strongest in places where there’s also a broader, multiracial working class.”
“This is absolutely a class issue,” Hannah Byrne said.
That also means that when authorities turn their power on the protesters, students from racial minorities and lower-income backgrounds often suffer the most.
On April 31, for example, Gillet was notified that he had been suspended from Tulane along with seven other students and evicted from his student housing due to his involvement in the encampment, pending a hearing. He said most of the students he had organised the protests with were on needs-based scholarships. He also has a scholarship, and his suspension may force him to leave school.
The actions of the police and university administration can be viewed as part of a wider climate at Tulane and in Louisiana that has viewed pro-Palestinian sentiment with suspicion and even as a threat. The State Legislature on Wednesday advanced a bill that doubles down on backing for Israel, calling for support for “the nation of Israel in the wake of the October 7, 2023, terror attacks and Israel’s ongoing efforts to root out Hamas”.
Even before the nationwide wave of pro-Palestinian protests, demonstrators were arrested at a Tulane rally in October, and in March, Tulane Professor and former CNN CEO Walter Isaacson was filmed pushing a protesting student.
The majority of Americans under 30 want a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, according to polling data. As Israel presses on with “ironclad” support from the US, what will the Gaza protest movement come to look like?
“I don’t think the protest is starting in university campuses and spilling over,” Abdelhadi said. “I would say the direction has flowed the opposite way,” from the public onto campuses.
Abdelhadi pointed to past civil rights movements where she said there “wasn’t one specific action that changed everything”. Instead, in her view, it was “a combination of all the actions, all the tactics”.
Until Israel’s war in Gaza ends, the anger among pro-Palestinian protesters and their desire for change are unlikely to go away.
“Although we have been suspended, that does not mean we will be giving up,” said Maya Sanchez, another Tulane student involved in the encampment. “As Israel and its violence escalates, so does our commitment to fight for a liberated Palestine.”
Medan, Indonesia – Indonesian film director Joko Anwar is a busy man.
He is on location in the city of Bandung, shooting “a new project”, the details of which he refuses to divulge, while also wrapping up post-production on another film to be released “soon”.
At the same time, he is doing press for his latest smash-hit horror flick Siksa Kubur (Grave Torture), which was released in Indonesia on April 11 and has already sold almost 4 million tickets – putting it on track to join the top 10 highest grossing Indonesian films of all time.
“Can you give me 10 minutes,” he apologises about 20 minutes into the phone interview, having said that he was on set but not that he was actually between takes. “I just need to shoot this scene.”
It is perhaps no surprise that Anwar, one of Indonesia’s most celebrated film directors, is good at multitasking – particularly if the rave reviews of Siksa Kubur, which he wrote, directed and marketed, are anything to go by.
The film tells the story of a young girl Sita (played by Widuri Puteri) and her brother Adil (Muzakki Ramdhan). It begins in 1997 when the siblings witness their parents, who own a bakery, die in a suicide bombing.
Joko Anwar with the cast of A Copy of my Mind at the Venice International Film Festival in 2015 [Andrea Merola/EPA]
The bomber, who steps into the bakery moments before detonating the bomb, plans to die as a martyr – believing he will go straight to heaven and avoid being tortured in his grave.
“The concept of grave torture does not exist in other religions – it is uniquely Muslim,” Anwar explained.
“Muslims believe that, when you die, you will be questioned by two angels about your life. If you don’t do well, you will be tortured in your grave.”
After watching her parents die at the hands of a man who believes he can evade sin even as he murders innocent bystanders, Sita becomes obsessed with proving that grave torture does not exist and that religion is primarily a form of fear-mongering.
It is a sensitive topic in Indonesia, where almost 90 percent of the country’s 270 million people are Muslim, but Anwar, himself a practising Muslim, says that he did not want the film to be “judgemental”.
“We tried to treat the topic with the greatest respect and not disparage anyone. We were just throwing out questions and hoping that there would be a discussion. We wanted the film to be an experience that led to reflection,” he said.
The idea for Siksa Kubur was percolating in Anwar’s mind for “a long time” before it came to fruition.
“I wanted to examine the relationship between religion and people. Since I was a child, I have had questions about belief and religion, which I tried to explain to the audience through these characters.”
One of these characters is the head of the Islamic boarding school that the orphaned Sita and Adil attend, and who abuses the young boys in his care.
Anwar wrote the screenplay following a series of high-profile cases of abuse at religious institutions across Indonesia, including Muslim and Christian schools.
“Teachers at religious schools use religion as their identity, so I wanted to ask the question: Why are they doing that then?” he said.
“The theme of abuse at religious institutions was based on a very relevant issue in Indonesia.”
‘Gotham City’
Like Sita and Adil, Anwar’s childhood was difficult.
He was born in 1976 in the city of Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra.
His father worked as a pedicab driver, a backbreaking job riding a bicycle with a passenger cab around the densely populated city, while his mother sold fabric in a local market.
Anwar grew up in what he describes as “a slum named Amplas”.
Located in the heart of Medan, Amplas is the city’s main transit terminal, clogged with long-distance buses ferrying passengers across Sumatra and beyond.
Christine Hakim got her part in Siksa Kubur after a chance meeting with Anwar in a hotel lobby [Courtesy of Joko Anwar]
Like many transit hubs, Amplas has long had a reputation for a certain amount of vice, filled with pickpockets and ticket touts, grifters and traffickers – serviced by open-air shacks that offer a cheap local moonshine made from the fermented sap of toddy palms.
Across the rest of Indonesia, Medan also has a nickname: Gotham City, after the crime-ridden metropolis in the Batman comics.
Anwar, a comic book fan, laughs when reminded of the moniker and agrees that Medan is a tough place to live. Amplas, in particular, he says, was “not conducive to a child”.
By the age of 14, the majority of Anwar’s peers were either “in prison, married because they got someone pregnant, or consumed by drugs and crime. I escaped by watching films”.
From the age of six, Anwar would make an arduous 45-minute journey on foot to a rundown “bioskop rakyat” (community cinema), which sold cheap tickets for local Indonesian films and kung-fu movies from Hong Kong.
Sometimes, he had the few rupiahs he needed for a ticket and could go inside, but at other times, he did not have enough or the sellers refused entry to a child on their own. On those occasions, Anwar would stand on his tiptoes and peek through the ventilation shaft of the cinema, which did not have air conditioning and was cooled by fans.
“That way, I could see about three-quarters of the screen, and I discovered that there were different worlds other than my own,” he recalled.
His dream of attending film school, however, proved elusive when his parents could not afford the fees, and instead, Anwar went to the Institute of Technology in Bandung where he studied aeronautical engineering before becoming a journalist and film critic for the Jakarta Post.
Once there, he interviewed filmmaker Nia Dinata, who helped him get hired as an assistant director for the 2003 film Biola Tak Berdawai (The Stringless Violin).
In 2003, Dinata and Anwar co-wrote the satire Arisan! (The Gathering!) – “the first film in Indonesia to depict homosexual relationships in a positive light” – and won awards at the Bandung Film Festival, the Citra Awards and the MTV Indonesian Movie Awards.
The accolades kept coming.
In 2005, Anwar made his directorial debut with Janji Joni (Joni’s Promise), about a film reel delivery driver named Joni (Nicholas Saputra) who meets a girl who will only reveal her name if he successfully delivers a film reel while racing through Jakarta’s notorious traffic.
In 2009, Anwar released Pintu Terlarang (The Forbidden Door), which TIME Magazine film critic Richard Corliss said could be “Anwar’s calling card for international employment, if only Hollywood moguls wanted something out of their own narrow range”.
His fifth feature film, A Copy of My Mind, was the only film from Southeast Asia to be screened at the 2015 Venice Film Festival and, in 2019, his superhero movie Gundala premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In 2020, Anwar’s folk-horror film Impetigore was announced as Indonesia’s official submission to the 2021 Academy Awards.
Joko Anwar is a regular on the film festival circuit [File: Morgan Lieberman/Getty Images via AFP]
Christine Hakim, an actor, producer and activist often referred to as the “grande dame of Indonesian cinema”, has been acting since 1973, and worked with Anwar for the first time on Impetigore.
“He’s amazing, very special,” the 67-year-old told Al Jazeera. “I was not a horror film actor when I met him. I don’t like jump scares and I don’t like horror films,” she said, laughing.
But a chance meeting in a hotel lobby, during which Anwar pitched her the part, changed her mind.
“I knew he was one of the best directors in Indonesia, which is why I agreed,” she said.
When Hakin saw the script for Impetigore, she says she was astonished.
“In my 40 years working in the film industry, there had never been a director who had written the entire backstory of my character for me. Usually, as an actor, I had to interpret and find that myself, doing all my own research,” she said.
“I thought he was so serious.”
Hakim also has a role in Siksa Kubur, in which her character dies after becoming entangled in a washing machine that spins out of control.
Originally, Hakim’s manager tried to break the news about the washing machine gently.
“Of course, I started screaming. I said, ‘Are you joking? I’m too old for this’.”
Yet when she read the rich and complex script – which tells the story of Hakim’s character suffering a dreadful psychological blow that requires her to “dig deep to concentrate and find the level of stress required” – she changed her mind
“I knew Joko wouldn’t do anything to put me in danger and I felt comfortable after he explained the role to me in detail,” she said.
“I don’t think I would have ever considered acting in horror films had it not been for Joko.”
A film fan
Is there an overarching theme in Anwar’s films, from the upbeat highs of Janji Joni to the shadowy depths of Siksa Kubur?
He says there is: family dynamics.
“I always want to examine what happens if you have a ‘good’ family or a ‘bad’ family and how that plays out in society,” he explained.
As the youngest of three siblings, with an older sister and brother, Anwar says he “grew up without a father figure”.
“My father basically never talked to me. It was a dysfunctional family, but I survived and used it as my inspiration. I hope, in turn, to inspire others. In the end, it was a blessing in disguise,” he said.
The cast and crew of Siksa Kubur on location [Courtesy of Joko Anwar]
Anwar’s mother died in 2009 and his father the following year, having both lived to see some of his success, although they struggled to understand his films.
“We didn’t talk about them,” he said. “They were always busy and left me to my own devices. They never stopped me from doing anything, but they didn’t praise me either.”
Thomas Barker, an honorary associate professor at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University, who specialises in the cultural sociology of Southeast Asian screen industries, describes Anwar as “a unique personality in Indonesian cinema”.
“The development of his career and his work traces the development of the Indonesian film industry itself over the past 20 years. He’s also a film fan, meaning he has a lot of film knowledge to draw on and this is evident in his work.
“I think this gives his work a cinematic depth and intertextuality. He understands the form of cinema and can pull in ideas from a whole range of sources.”
He adds that Anwar is “helping to elevate Indonesian cinema in a way that makes it more palatable to an international audience”, which can be demonstrated through his success at international film festivals and his work for international companies and global streaming services.
“This is not an easy skill, especially in horror which can be quite specific to a culture in terms of its characters, fears and monsters,” Barker said.
Of all his work, Anwar is most proud of Siksa Kubur, which he describes as his most personal film as well as the one that has elicited the most discussion.
“Audiences have had so many theories about the film and what it means, because we didn’t give it a neat conclusion and left it up to them.”
While Anwar is still riding high on the success of Siksa Kubur, he also has an upcoming Netflix series named Nightmares and Daydreams that tackles a rare genre in Indonesian cinema: science fiction.
Anwar and the cast on the set of the bakery between takes [Courtesy of Joko Anwar]
Anwar says the Indonesian film industry has one of the biggest potential markets in the world, although some skills are still lacking.
“We need more film schools, because lots of people want to enter the industry and don’t know where to study,” he said. “We need more film schools across all of Southeast Asia.”
Despite the hurdles, the industry continues to grow, which Anwar sees as “a good sign commercially”.
Asked if the Indonesian film industry is in good health, he pauses before answering.
“I wouldn’t say that the Indonesian film industry is in good health,” he said.
On April 21, Hala Sharaf’s heart was heavy as she left her family in Gaza to resume her studies in Cairo, Egypt.
After surviving Israel’s devastating war on the besieged enclave, she feared the world had forgotten about the plight of her people.
Gaza has been under a relentless Israeli assault in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities and military outposts on October 7, in which 1,139 were killed and about 250 taken captive.
In Cairo, Hala saw videos of university students protesting across the United States in the face of threats of suspension and police raids.
The second-year medical student was surprised. She had expected that Western audiences would tire of the news cycle quickly when it covered death and destruction in Palestine, and she had never imagined that her American peers would risk their futures to call for a ceasefire and for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
“It seems only students support us, but they have made us feel so hopeful for rejecting what America and Israel are doing to us,” Sharaf, 20, told Al Jazeera.
Hala Sharaf wears a black hijab and hugs her friend in the Gaza Strip [Courtesy of Hala Sharaf]
‘Our voice’
Sharaf’s is one of millions of Palestinian lives upended by Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed some 35,000 Palestinians, uprooted most of its 2.3 million people, and put their families outside Gaza through agonies of uncertainty as they seek information on their loved ones.
“Nobody can imagine what we went through in Gaza. We lost our homes and [everything that underpins] our society.”
Many Palestinians have left for Egypt to escape Israel’s relentless assault and its looming invasion of Rafah on the Egyptian border, where at least 1.5 million Palestinians displaced from all over Gaza are sheltering.
Four Palestinian students who recently came to Cairo spoke to Al Jazeera about the US student protests.
“I feel those students in America are our voice,” said Zahra al-Kurd, 19, a Palestinian medical student in Cairo.
“Even if the protests don’t change the situation for us now, we know that it will help us in the long run.”
Zahra al-Kurd, front, takes a selfie with her classmates at Al-Azhar University [Courtesy of Zahra al-Kurd]
Al-Kurd says she lost 250 members of her family since Israel launched its war on Gaza.
In the first week of the war, al-Kurd and her family fled to southern Gaza seeking safety from Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment.
But after their arrival, a bomb fell on the house next to where they were staying and flattened the neighbourhood.
Al-Kurd lost 17 members of her family in that Israeli attack, but she survived.
“My mother’s face was too disfigured to identify her … and my father passed away in the hospital from his injuries about a week later,” she told Al Jazeera.
Mohamad Abu Ghali, 22, recalls watching from his window as the Israeli army destroyed his college, the Islamic University.
He was supposed to graduate last semester with a physics degree, but the ceremony never happened due to the war.
“I was at home and it was very clear from my window what happened to the Islamic University. When [Israel] does mass bombing – or carpet bombing – it can be seen from everywhere,” he told Al Jazeera.
On April 25, Abu Ghali left Rafah to try and complete his education in Cairo. Since then, he has closely observed the demonstrations unfolding in the US.
Mohamad Abu Ghali in his apartment in Cairo, Egypt [Courtesy of Mohamad Abu Ghali]
He said he was moved by a viral video of Noelle McAfee, chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who was arrested by police and zip-tied for trying to protect the students in the protest encampment.
At Columbia University in New York, professors even formed a human chain to protect the students, despite the threat of losing their jobs and careers for their actions.
Abu Ghali said the brave professors in the US remind him of his own instructors, many of whom lost their lives in what rights groups describe as an Israeli genocide. He particularly misses Sufyan Tayeh, president of the Islamic University, who was killed along with his family in the Jabalia refugee camp.
Tayeh is one of 95 university professors killed since October 7, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
“[Tayeh] was a really amazing professor,” said Abu Ghali fondly. “He had such an advanced understanding of quantitative mechanics and advanced mathematics … I loved attending his classes.”
Semblance of hope
Israel’s war in Gaza has destroyed an entire society and shattered the dreams of a young generation, according to Tia al-Qudwa, a young medical student who has also sought refuge in Egypt.
She had just started university when the war began, and had hopes of graduating and helping to improve Gaza’s overburdened healthcare system – now lying in ruins after Israel damaged or destroyed dozens of medical facilities, including 24 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals.
“I’ve now changed my preference from wanting to study medicine, to … international law,” al-Qudwa, 18, told Al Jazeera.
“Of course, international law hasn’t changed anything, but what am I going to do? I either have to accept the world as unfair and unjust or be part of the change.”
Tia al-Qudwa gives a speech at her high school graduation [Courtesy of Tia al-Qudwa]
After watching the student protests, al-Qudwa believes there is a generational shift in how Americans view the Palestinian cause and that the protests prove that many young people are committed to ending Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, despite the risks to them.
“I can’t believe the police are attacking peaceful protesters in the US. How is this democratic? It is fascism what’s happening there,” al-Qudwa said.
“I admire the students protesting. They’re risking their lives and futures for us.”
Sharaf, the second-year medical student, said many Palestinians from Gaza appreciate the solidarity from their peers in the US. She prays that the demonstrations will pressure Israel to halt its stated plan to invade Rafah, where her parents and loved ones are.
“The student protests in America make me feel like I’m not alone,” Sharaf told Al Jazeera.
Stockholm, Sweden – Malmo is rarely the centre of attention, but this week, the spotlight is on as the Eurovision Song Contest dominates Sweden’s third-largest city.
More than 150 million people tune into the annual competition that organisers say is apolitical.
This year’s event is likely to be far from it, however.
Israel is set to participate amid protests and calls for a boycott given its war on Gaza that has to date killed more than 34,500 Palestinians.
“Falastinvision”, for instance, is billed as an alternative “genocide-free” song contest. Stop the war, Women’s song for Gaza and Long live Palestine are among the more than 30 entries that can be voted for online, with a winner to be announced on May 11 – the same day as the Eurovision finale.
In the run-up to Eurovision, more than 1,000 Swedish artists demanded a ban on Israel but their calls were rejected. Israel is participating with Hurricane – the song had previously been titled October Rain, an apparent reference to Hamas’s October 7 attacks, which organisers deemed too political.
The group that governs Gaza launched an unprecedented incursion into southern Gaza seven months ago, during which 1,139 people were killed. Hundreds were also taken captive during the assault, which sharply escalated the historic Israel-Palestine conflict.
But as well as the expected pro-Palestine events in Sweden, which activists hope tens of thousands will attend, there are a series of planned Quran burnings, giving the Malmo municipality a complex mix of issues to contend with.
Since demonstrations and counter-demonstrations heighten the security threat, Swedish police will be joined by Danish and Norwegian officers for the week.
Deir el-Balah, Gaza – The word is a weary wish in Gaza, as much a source of searing disappointment as the last emblem of hope.
It has also been on the lips of protesters worldwide, who for months have demonstrated against the carnage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The word is “ceasefire”, an end to the Israeli assault that has pummeled the Gaza Strip for seven months – killing at least 34,683 and injuring at least 78,018 more in a drawn-out Israeli retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on its territory on October 7.
Several rounds of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas in recent months have failed to end the bloodshed or even achieve a temporary pause, as happened last November.
The source of the talks’ deadlock is that Hamas wants a permanent end to the war and the assurance that Israel will not invade Rafah, the refuge for nearly 1.5 million Palestinians.
In ongoing negotiations in Cairo, Egypt, Israel has agreed to only a 40-day pause in fighting and said it will forge ahead with its Rafah offensive regardless of whether a deal is reached.
A potential ceasefire keeps internally displaced person (IDP) Abeer al-Namrouti glued to her phone day and night, the displaced Gaza resident often falling asleep to news bulletins still playing near her head.
“I’m going to keep listening until I hear the word ‘ceasefire’,” al-Namrouti told Al Jazeera.
The 39-year-old, who has eight children, left the town of al-Qarara in Khan Younis after munitions struck her home, destroying it. The attack also injured her and her husband and they had to undergo weeks of treatment that is still ongoing for her husband.
From the tent they live in now in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, she heads to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital to get the medication her husband still requires and administers them to him via IV. It is a difficult life, but she remains determined.
Al-Namrouti is hopeful about a ceasefire this time.
“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is holding things up – every time things move a little, he puts obstacles in [place], but this time I’m more optimistic than the past,” she said.
While months of shuttle diplomacy have failed thus far, if a deal is reached, the family will go back to the town they lived in.
Al-Namrouti with her husband and one of her sons in April 2024 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
“I know we won’t have [even] a tent back there or anything, but all that matters is that we’re on the land that belongs to us.
“I’m going to go back there and set up a tent and just stay,” she concluded adamantly.
‘It’s never happened so far’
Wael el-Nabahin, 48, came to Deir el-Balah from Bureij with his family and set up a slightly unusual tent, the family has a television to watch the news, and even a washing machine.
“I wanted my family to be a bit comfortable and not live in abject disaster. We watch the news all the time to see what’s going on,” el-Nabahin told Al Jazeera.
But the father of four is sceptical of a ceasefire deal any time soon.
“There’s been talk of ceasefires before, but it’s never happened so far,” he said.
If there was such a deal, however, he is determined to return to Bureij, despite his house having been burned down.
Wael al-Nabahin set up as comfortable a tent as possible for his family [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
“If there’s a ceasefire, the first thing we’d do would be to take our tents and go back to where our houses were. We’ll set up there,” said el-Nabahin.
It is this weariness that Louise Wateridge has seen among Palestinians she has worked with in Rafah. The spokesperson with the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, UNWRA, says a ceasefire is the minimum demand for the war-weary Palestinians.
“People here are so tired. There is continuous fear, continuous displacement. The only hope they have is a ceasefire … No matter who you are, the feeling here is we need an immediate ceasefire.”
‘It’s going to end, world war or not, it’s going to end’
For Mahmoud el-Khatib, simply staying alive to see the war end would be significant.
“My house has been destroyed, but it’s not about the house or a car or whatever, it’s more about how we now see that simply surviving is a victory,” el-Khatib told Al Jazeera.
The 55-year-old father of eight has been displaced from Juhor ad-Dik, forced to move between Deir el-Balah and Rafah in the south in the past few months.
“We’re all optimistic that there will be a ceasefire and that we’ll be able to go back to our homes, to the north, back where we belong,” he said.
Mahmoud el-Khatib feels that simply surviving is a victory [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
“If I were to feel safe, everything would be fine, even if I’m in a simple tent.”
And while many diligently follow the news in hopes of a deal, Raed Abu Khousa has had to take a break. Keeping tabs on the war daily took a toll on his mental health.
The 45-year-old father of eight has been displaced for the last four months from Bureij after his home was badly damaged.
Despite now living in a tent, which he says is increasingly difficult with summer approaching, Khousa has cautious optimism about a truce deal.
“I’m not super optimistic, but it does feel like we’re closer to something. And if it’s not this time around, we’re closer to a solution,” he told Al Jazeera.
“It’s going to end, world war or not, it’s going to end. As Muslims, we believe that God will bring us success, and what is asked of us is that we are patient and wait for Him.”
Raed Abu Khousa stopped following the news daily when it became too stressful [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Tbilisi, Georgia – Crowds of protesters have been braving tear gas and water canons after more than two weeks of protest against the Georgian government’s draft law targeting civil society.
The new law would require non-profit entities (NGOs and media outlets) receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as “organisations pursuing the interest of a foreign influence”, with tough penalties for noncompliance of up to $9,000.
Mass demonstrations last year forced the government to withdraw a similar bill. This second attempt has given renewed energy to thousands of young people, from school pupils to university students, swelling a tide of discontent.
They believe their government has fallen under the influence of the Kremlin and is sabotaging their dreams of being part of Europe. Each night, the rallies have begun with the Georgian national anthem, as well as the EU’s, Ode to Joy.
“This is where I live, where my son will live – I don’t want Georgia in the enemy’s hands. I want it free for everyone,” fumes 25-year-old Giga.
“No to the Russian law!” says Nutsa, 17. She’s holding up a placard which reads: “Northern neighbour, we don’t have anything in common with you”.
That northern neighbour is Russia, where Vladimir Putin’s 2012 law on foreign agents has eliminated dissent. In 2022, he expanded it to require anyone receiving support from outside Russia to register and declare themselves as foreign agents.
But the Georgian government has insisted its own law is similar to legislation in Western countries.
The EU disagrees that the law resembles Western transparency regulations, such as EU and French planned directives and the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, warned on May 1 that Georgia was “at a crossroads”.
Washington is alarmed. It has provided almost six billion dollars in aid to Georgia since the 1990s. US Ambassador to Georgia Robin Dunnigan said in a statement on May 2 that the US government had invited Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, to high-level talks “with the most senior leaders”.
According to Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs later that day, that invitation was declined. Instead, Kobakhidze accused the US of supporting “revolutionary attempts” by non-governmental organisations working in the country, such as EU-funded organisations Transparency International Georgia and ISFED, which often call attention to government corruption and abuses of power.
The government may fear that these organisations could influence the outcome of a general election in October in which the governing Georgian Dream (GD) party hopes to secure a majority.
Kornely Kakachia, director of the Georgian Institute of Politics, said he believes the government’s rhetoric reflects the opinion of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder of the governing party.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he adds, has changed Ivanishvili’s calculus.
“Ivanishvili and GD leaders believe that Russia is winning in Ukraine and he just thinks [of] how to be friendly with [Russia], to find his place in this geopolitical new order,” says Kakachia.
In tandem with its foreign funding law, GD has promised to curb LGBT rights and has passed amendments to the tax code that will make it easier to bank money from overseas in Georgia.
“That’s an attempt to try to lure Putin and the Kremlin basically to give them a new model of Georgia, which will be a kind of offshore zone for Russian oligarchs,” says Kakachia.
Protesters who oppose a new ‘foreign influence’ law clash with police in Tbilisi, Georgia [Stephan Goss/Al Jazeera]
Hired thugs and ‘Robocops’
The nightly protests over the past two weeks have seen some of the largest turnouts in the 11 years of GD’s government.
On Thursday, protesters blocked a key intersection known as Heroes Square. But a group of unknown men in civilian clothing appeared and began to beat people.
Known as Titushky, hired thugs were deployed by the Ukrainian security services during Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests in 2013 and 2014 in which people called for closer relations with the EU and protested against corruption.
Professor Ghia Nodia of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development said the moment feels similar to Ukrainian President Yanukovych’s decision a decade ago to use violence to put down protests.
“The feeling is that this time, Ivanishvili went too far and people have to fight. There are relatively small-scale violent crackdowns almost every day, but so far, the tide of protest didn’t go down.”
The protests have been mostly peaceful, though some protesters have tried to enter parliament where legislators have been debating inside.
Defiant men and women wave EU and Georgian flags in front of units of black body-armoured riot police dubbed “Robocops” who are armed with truncheons, mace and shields.
Other masked police officers without identification badges have been filmed punching, kicking and dragging protesters by the hair into custody.
Hardware stores have been emptied of face masks. Pepper spray and tear gas quickly incapacitate those without protection, their eyes and noses streaming from the chemicals, many of them retching or struggling to breathe.
The country is heavily polarised. Mikheil Saakashvili, whose reforms did much to modernise Georgia after 2003’s “Rose Revolution’” is serving a six-year prison sentence. He was found guilty of “abuse of power” and organising an assault on an opposition lawmaker. His party, the United National Movement (UNM), is the most powerful party in opposition, but it is deeply unpopular because of its own track record from its time in office from 2004- 2012.
Protests have rocked Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital city, for the past two weeks [Stephan Goss/Al Jazeera]
‘Backsliding on democracy’?
Many of today’s protesters do not identify with either the UNM or any other political party in opposition.
MEPs have repeatedly voted on resolutions in Strasbourg and Brussels condemning GD’s “backsliding” on democracy in recent years and its treatment of the former president.
But one group of protesters told Al Jazeera that the European Parliament was wrong to call for sanctions against Ivanishvili while simultaneously demanding Saakashvili’s release.
In power, GD has taken credit for winning the right for Georgian citizens to travel to Schengen countries within the EU without a visa. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it submitted its application for EU candidacy.
EU leaders are beginning to doubt that it is a serious partner, however. They have called on the Georgian government to enact reforms aimed at preventing any takeover of the state by oligarchs.
But that is unacceptable to Bidzina Ivanishvili. On April 29, he addressed tens of thousands of people who, by a GD leader’s admission, had been bussed in from other parts of the country to attend a counterprotest.
It proved that the government can command large numbers of supporters when it chooses, though the tired-looking attendees showed little energy or enthusiasm for being there.
In his address, reading from an autocue, Ivanishvili outlined his government’s new narrative: That a global force led by the West has tried to strip Georgia of its autonomy and goad it into another war with Russia.
“The funding of NGOs, which they often begrudge us and count as aid, is used almost exclusively to strengthen the agents and bring them to power,” he said. “Their only goal is to deprive Georgia of its state sovereignty.”
‘Slave law’
On one evening during the protests this week, printouts of Ivanishvili’s image with the word “Russian” across his forehead are lying scattered across a park close to the parliament building in Tbilisi.
As protesters make their way to a rally outside, they scuff and tear at the paper beneath their feet. Bikers roar through the streets and the crowd cheers and chants “Sakartvelo!” (“Georgia!”).
Twenty-year-old Shota is carrying crates of mineral water to hand out to the protesters. He says he paid for them himself.
“For us, for our generation, the European future is first of all,” he says. “That’s why we stand here with our finances, with some strength, and we will stand until the politicians withdraw the slave law they want to pass.”
GD looks set to pass its law on foreign agents in a third reading on May 17, and it remains unclear whether the government or its opponents are willing to risk a dramatic showdown on the streets.
But if hitherto fractious opposition parties find a way to unite now, that could make a victory in October’s election harder to attain for the government. The summer heat came early to Tbilisi. And it will only build as the election countdown continues.
Laszlo Kemencei lives as sustainably as possible on his small farm in eastern Hungary. He believes the land is effectively borrowed from his daughter, so he must do all he can to preserve it for the future.
Kemencei, 28, his wife Cintia, 31, and their daughter Boroka, who is almost two, moved to the farm outside Ladanybene three years ago. They keep horses, pigs and chickens on an area of 4.5 hectares (11 acres), which they partly lease for grazing.
They do not use pesticides, keep their animals free range, and dig the land as little as possible to preserve the structure and moisture of the rich soil. They grow their own vegetables and slaughter or barter the meat they need while trading the rest with families who choose a similar lifestyle.
Kemencei says while becoming fully self-sufficient seems an unrealistic goal, they rely minimally on external resources.
“This land, we have not inherited from our fathers, but we have it on a lease from our children … so we try to live and farm the land in a sustainable way,” he says.
While there are no statistics on how many families are following a similar lifestyle in Hungary, anecdotal evidence suggests it is a growing trend.
Some want to rein in their cost of living, while others want to escape a consumer-driven society or live a more environmentally friendly life.
Kemencei estimates there are about 1,000 families trying to embrace some form of sustainability, either alone or as part of informal barter arrangements, or as part of more structured eco-villages.
Currently, they do not live off the grid. They have internet and buy electricity and gas for heating. But their water comes from a well and they hope to install solar panels and a wind turbine when they can afford it, Kemencei says.
They can get by on about 250,000 forints ($690) per month, outside of emergencies. They buy milk, sugar and other essential items that they cannot grow or produce themselves.
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![Zahra al-Kurd [front] takes selfie with her classmates at Al-Azhar University.](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/IMG-20240502-WA0067-1715000554.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C1027)
