Tag: Karlos Zurutuza

Iran, a Murdered Teenager and a Fading Protest — Global Issues

Several women dance and burn their veils during a nighttime demonstration in Bandar Abbas, southwestern Iran. The protest is in response to the tragic deaths of Jina Amini, who was beaten for not wearing the veil properly, and Armita Geravand on October 28 for similar reasons. Credit: Social networks
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Nov 03 (IPS) – On October 28, Armita Geravand, a 16-year-old Iranian teenager, passed away a month after she had been beaten by the police in the Tehran subway for not wearing the Islamic veil correctly.

Geravand’s death took place 13 months after Jina Amini´s, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman also beaten to death after being arrested in Tehran. She was also wearing her veil in the wrong way.

Amini’s murder, however, was the trigger for one of the largest protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic of Iran since its foundation in 1979. Hundreds of thousands of young women and men took to the streets chanting “Women, life, freedom” all across the country.

The Government responded with a wave of repression that resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests between 2022 and 2023.

Removing the Islamic veil in public, or even burning it, has been a recurring gesture nationally to denounce the constant violation of women’s rights in Iran.

Such a powerful image became the key symbol in protests which also included demands from the country’s minorities.

Both the previous monarchical regime (1925-1979) and the current one have focused on building a national identity as a homogeneous Persian society, ignoring the rest of the nations of Iran.

Thus, Farsi is the only official language in a country where any expression of identities other than Persian is banned and even punished. But it turns out that minorities are the majority: more than 60% of the almost 90 million Iranians are not Persians.

This is the case of the Baloch, a people numbering about four million in the extreme southeast of Iran, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.

An aerial view of Zahedan, the capital of Balochistan under Persian control. To this day it is the only city in Iran where protests continue to take place every Friday. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
An aerial view of Zahedan, the capital of Balochistan under Persian control. To this day it is the only city in Iran where protests continue to take place every Friday. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

A former political prisoner, Shahzavar Karimzadi is today the vice president of the Free Balochistan Movement, a political party banned in Iran that brings together Baloch people from three territories: Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“We have been fighting for our most basic national rights for many years. We advocate for a secular, decentralized and democratic State, but that does not mean that we rule out our right to self-determination,” Karimzadi told IPS over the phone from London.

Apparently, Balochistan under Iranian control is the only corner of the country where the protest has not yet faded away. Karimzadi stressed that his people continue to demonstrate every Friday in Zahedan – the provincial capital, 1,100 kilometres southeast of Tehran – “despite the violence with which the regime responds.”

It’s true. An Amnesty International report published on October 26 denounced cases of torture of detainees in mass arrests in Balochistan that included children. The NGO urged the Iranian authorities to allow access to a UN mission to investigate human rights violations related to the protest.

The statistics speak volumes. Although the Baloch in Iran make up 4% of the country’s total population, a study by the Iranian NGO Iran Human Rights found that 30% of those executed by the State in 2022 belonged to this ethnic group.

Downtown Iranshar, in Balochistan under Iranian control. It is the poorest and most underdeveloped region of the country and one of the most severely punished by the repression of the clerical regime. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

From the mountains to the sea

Like the Baloch, the Kurds are also predominantly Sunni Muslims, an added stigma to their distinct ethnicity from the Persians under the ruling Shiite theocracy..

With a population estimated between ten and fifteen million, they live mainly in the northwest of the country, on the borders of Turkey and Iraq.

In an interview with IPS in the mountains between Iraq and Iran, Zilan Vejin, co-president of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), recalled that the slogan, “Woman, life and freedom” was coined by the Kurdish movement during a 2013 meeting.

“The protest started in Kurdistan led by women. From there, it spread throughout the country because it brings together people of all nationalities within Iran,” explained Vejin.

According to the guerrilla leader, calls against the mandatory use of the Islamic veil are “nothing more than the excuse for a revolt that calls for freedom and democracy.”

Vejin outlined his political project not only for Iran but for the region as a whole. It is a decentralized model, “a democracy built from the bottom up that advocates secularism, gender equality and the right of all peoples to develop their culture and language.”

It could be a solution that the Ahwazis of Iran could also accept.

They number about twelve million and concentrate on the shores of the Persian Gulf, right on the border with Iraq. They have paid for their Arab language and culture with decades of repression — from both the previous and current Iranian regimes.

Faisal al Ahwazi is the spokesperson for the Ahwazi Democratic Popular Front, one of the minority’s main political organizations. In a conversation with IPS by telephone from London, Al Ahwazi explained why his people had distanced themselves from the latest wave of protests.

“The repression we suffered in November 2019 is still too present. Back then, more than 200 Ahwazi protesters were murdered by the regime. That protest had no replicas in the rest of the country and we did not feel solidarity towards us,” lamented Al Ahwazi.

He highlighted the “lack of coordination” in the most recent protests and warned of dangers that may arise from a falsely executed regime change. “If the Persians want to remain in power, there will be a civil war,” said Al Ahwazi.

The moment in which Zilan Vejin was re-elected as co-president of the PJAK. The Kurdish liberation movement advocates a decentralization of the entire Middle East region. Courtesy PJAK

“Separatists”

One of the features of the last wave of protests in Iran has been the high level of participation by young people and their commitment to a “horizontal” movement. Although the absence of leadership has often been taken as a virtue, many analysts identify it as one of the reasons behind its failure.

Mehrab Sarjov, a political analyst and observer of the Iranian issue, also points out the lack of common goals and plans. “We don’t even know what kind of a country they vow for when the clerics are no longer there,” Sarjov explained to IPS from London over the phone.

The expert also recalled that Azeris make the country’s main minority and he highlighted their ties with both Turkey and Azerbaijan.

“Even if it´s Azeri, Kurdish, Arab or Baloch autonomists asking for decentralization and democratization of the country, they´re always labelled as ‘separatists’ by the Persians and automatically discarded,” explained Sarjov.

“It is the rhetoric of the ‘developed centre’ versus a ‘periphery’ whose economic and social backwardness is a consequence, they say, of its distance from that very centre,” he added.

In the absence of an inclusive project from the Persian core of the country, Sarjov points to the country’s minorities as “the main opposition force to the Government.”

But further steps need to be taken.

“Even the most secular and progressive Persians still do not recognize the rest of the peoples of Iran. It will still take time until they understand that they have to sit down and talk to them in order to articulate a movement with a chance of success,” concluded the expert.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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After Nagorno-Karabakh, is Armenia Next? — Global Issues

Civilians are evacuated in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, after the Azeri attack on September 19. Local administration data estimates the population of Karabakh at 120,000. Credit: Siranush Sargsyan/IPS.
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Sep 26 (IPS) – On September 19, the sound of bombs reminded the world of a long-forgotten conflict. In the Caucasus, the Azerbaijan’s army was launching a massive attack against a small enclave, Nagorno-Karabakh.

Also called Artsakh by its Armenian population, Nagorno-Karabakh is a self-proclaimed republic within Azerbaijan which had sought international recognition and independence since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

But that´s unlikely ever to happen.

Aware of the enemy’s military superiority, and exhausted by a ten-month blockade by the Azeri army that has left its residents without even the most basic supplies, the Armenians of the enclave capitulated in less than 24 hours.

These fast-moving events, however, are just the latest chapter in a violent, painful saga dating all the way back to the end of the Cold War.

During the Soviet collapse, conflict between Armenians and Azeris led to a chain of forced expulsions and violence escalated sharply in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Thirty years ago, the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-1994) ended with an Armenian victory this time, leading to the exodus of more than half a million Azerbaijanis back to Azerbaijan.

For the next 25 years, Armenians in the enclave enjoyed their own de facto republic, which they resumed calling by its old name: Artsakh.

However, the international community did not recognize Artsakh. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan spent those decades investing new profits from gas and oil to strengthen its army, investing heavily in new, high-tech military technology.

Azerbaijan would unleash its new force in 2020, during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. After 44 days of horror, Baku would retake many of the areas lost years before.

Armenians fled, some even digging up their dead from cemeteries and driving away with their ancestors in the trunk of their cars for reburial elsewhere, so certain they would never return to that land again.

For Azerbaijan, however, it was an incomplete victory. The Armenians had lost two-thirds of the territory under their control in the second war. But the areas Armenian troops had held on included key regions such as the capital and its surrounding districts.

Carnegie Europe’s Thomas de Waal, author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, describes the conflict between Armenians and Azeris as “ethnic cleansing by each side in turn, rather than diplomacy.”

That the Azeris had squandered their turn three years ago became clear on September 19. The job had to be finished.

Families from Karabakh wait their turn to flee the besieged enclave. Prior to the attack, they had spent ten months under a brutal supply blockade imposed by Azerbaijan. Credit: Siranush Sargsyan/IPS

Now what?

Local sources point to hundreds of dead and thousands of displaced, although it is still too early to know the real figures. What can be confirmed is the mass exodus of thousands of Karabakhis to Armenia.

In addition to the disarmament and dismantling of the Armenian administration of the enclave, Baku has called for its “full integration into Azerbaijani society.”

Could the enclave become an autonomous region within Azerbaijan? It’s unlikely.

If nearly a million members of the Talish people -a Persian-speaking minority, many of whom people also live in neighbouring Iran- do not enjoy any rights as a minority in Azerbaijan, what could the 120,000 Armenians from Karabakh possibly expect?

The only thing standing between them and the Azeris were the Russian peacekeepers deployed after the 2020 peace agreement launched by Moscow.

But it didn´t quite work.

During the three years since the second war, armed incidents were common along an uneasy contact line between the two sides. Russian peacekeepers were hesitant to get between the two longstanding enemies, with Russian forces limiting themselves to observing and taking cover during frequent flareups.

Armenia’s Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, had frequently accused the international community of looking the other way. Calls for Russia to be more assertive in its peacekeeping mission on the border received a cold shoulder from the Kremlin.

Russian peacekeepers in front of the Dadivank monastery, in Nagorno Karabakh. The failure to fulfil its commitment to protecting the population after the 2020 war has been key to the Azerbaijani victory. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

In early September, Armenia and the United States conducted joint military manoeuvres, widely interpreted as a signal that Armenia had run out of patience with Moscow.

Five Russian soldiers are reported dead in the current Azeri attack. But even that appears to have drawn little response from Moscow.

Complicating the situation further, the European Union maintains gas supply agreements with Azerbaijan, which have become key to making up Russian supplies disrupted by the war in Ukraine.

A complicit silence from the EU on the invasion has allowed Baku and Moscow to close ranks against the West. Only Turkey -a close ally of Azerbaijan- is likely to find an open line to Baku and Moscow now, and may play a crucial role as a third voice.

Amid the high-wire diplomacy, regular Karabakhis have been abandoned to their fate, and for most fleeing to Armenia is the only option. Images from the brutal 2020 second war, of Azeri soldiers cutting off the noses and ears of civilians and vandalizing monasteries, remain fresh in local memory.

A group of women pray in the Dadivank monastery during the 2020 war. The enormous Armenian archaeological heritage is among the victims of the war between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Just a slice of land

The new conflict has also shed light on a longstanding strategic objective of Baku: to join the region to Turkey and the Mediterranean. Azerbaijan has been deploying troops in Armenia´s recognized territory since 2020, in a southern region called Syunik.

The strategic strip of land is the only thing standing in the way of connecting the Caspian region to commercial and military access to the open sea. Importantly, it’s a longstanding goal Baku shares with a key regional power, Turkey.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev clings to point 9 of the peace agreement that ended the 2020 war.

Where it says: “Ensure the free movement of people, vehicles and goods,” Aliyev believes he reads something about a certain “corridor” that, of course, he would control but that could isolate Armenia from its Persian neighbour.

Its consequences for Armenia would be disastrous: Iran is the only country with which Armenia maintains a fluid commercial link given that its borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey have been closed since the 90s.

On the other hand, relations with Georgia tend to be problematic due to ties of this with Ankara.

On Monday 25, while Karabakhis were fleeing in their dozens of thousands, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhchivan for the first time.

Bordering Turkey, Nakhichevan would be a strategic part of the controversial corridor.

The fate of Nagorno-Karabakh will surely ripple through the region and beyond. “If Artsakh falls, Armenia will also fall,” Davit Baboyan, former Foreign minister of the enclave, told IPS several months ago.

Baboyan calls the current situation the “worst moment in Armenian history since the genocide.” More than one and a half million Armenians were exterminated in the Armenian genocide, the notorious Anatolian purges that occurred in the first decades of the 20th century.

On August 9, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luís Moreno Ocampo, warned of “the threat of a new genocide against the Armenian people.”

As the world watches the exodus of the Karabkhis from the land they have inhabited for thousands of years, the images may be repeated in Armenia in the short term.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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In Northern Syria, Palestinians Finance Settlements in Kurdish-Occupied Areas — Global Issues

An elderly woman joins a caravan of displaced people during the joint offensive by Ankara and Islamist militias against the Kurdish-Syrian enclave of Afrin, in January 2018. Only 20% of the original population remains in the occupied zone today. Credit: HH/IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza, Gilad Sade (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Jul 18 (IPS) – The video shows an empty house with even the door frames and windows torn out. Graffiti on the wall recalls that the building was once requisitioned by the Sham Legion, an Islamist faction from northern Syria.

“I was very curious so I asked a relative to send me the video to see what state our house was in,” Hassan Hassan told IPS by phone. This 50-year-old English teacher lived there with his family before they were expelled in 2018.

Today he lives with his family in Shehba, a Kurdish region 30 kilometers to the east that has welcomed thousands of displaced people.

The Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin – 300 kilometers north of Damascus – was a Kurdish-majority territory bordering Turkey that enjoyed self-government.

In January 2018, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch, a cross-border attack through which Ankara gave air support to Islamist militias on the ground.

The offensive caused the displacement of more than 150,000 people – almost 80% of the population of Afrin – according to UN data, as well as a chain of abuses and human rights violations.

During the siege, the Hassans barely had time to flee. “We were 19 Kurdish families living in that block, but we lost everything: our books, our photos, memories… Of course, we also lost the right to claim our property,” recalls the Kurd.

A man and his son during the evacuation of Afrin. The Kurdish enclave has become one of the main targets of Ankara-sponsored settlement and demographic change policies financed by Islamic organizations across the Middle East. Credit: HH/IPS

The reasons can be found in a report published in June 2022 by Syrians for Truth and Justice. The France-based NGO which documents human rights violations in Syria points to an ambitious settlement project that kicked off in 2020.

According to the investigation, the project is commanded by Rahmi Do?an —governor of the Turkish border province of Hatay— and financed by organizations from several countries in the Middle East. The beneficiaries are Islamist combatants and ex-combatants and their respective families.

The NGO has found “indicators of demographic change” and draws a parallel with displacement and resettlement in East Timor after Indonesia invaded the territory in 1975.

David M. Mañá, a Spanish journalist specializing in the Kurdish issue, recalls that barely 20% of the original Kurdish population remains in Afrin. He points to “a forced repopulation campaign” moving displaced Arabs from the rest of Syria into the enclave.

“It´s not just about expelling the local Kurdish population; they also want to erase all traces of their language or self-government. Today the Turkish flag is flown even in schools where Kurdish is no longer taught, but Turkish is,” the expert told IPS, by phone from Barcelona.

Access to the Kurdish enclave remains under the exclusive control of the Turkish Interior Ministry. In February, 2022 and 2023, the Turkish authorities organized two tours for reporters who worked under the constant surveillance of government agents.

A woman and her wounded son wait in a makeshift hospital built after the invasion of Afrin. The Arab settlers now resettled on their land have access to hospitals financed, among others, by Palestinian funds. Credit: Jewan Abdi/IPS

According to data obtained by the North Press Agency —a media outlet in northeastern Syria —the more than 20 settlements built in Afrin add to approximately 100 that Turkey has built throughout the occupied areas of northern Syria.

“We Kurds cannot and do not want to live under the control of these people. We only ask to return to our homes, but that will never be possible without an international protection that guarantees our safety,” Ibrahim Shekho, the president of the Afrin Human Rights Organization, told IPS over the phone from the Shehba refugee camp.

Shekho said he is not surprised by the presence of countries like Kuwait, Qatar or Oman behind the project. The Palestinian involvement is something else.

“I cannot understand that there are Palestinians who are able to forget the injustice they suffer at the hands of the Israeli authorities and wish the same to us,” he lamented.

A girl in the Washokani refugee camp in northeast Syria. According to United Nations data, the Turkish occupation of several Kurdish territories along its border has caused the displacement of more than 300,000 people. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

Palestinian involvement

Living with Dignity is one among several Palestinian NGOs legally registered at Israel’s Ministry of Justice. They also introduce themselves as Alaysh 48 (“People of 48”), recalling that they are Palestinian citizens of Israel who reject the country’s borders established in 1948.

On its Facebook page, they claim to be raising funds for Syrian settlements through Hapoalim Bank. It is a financial entity known for channelling money for the construction of settlements in Palestinian territory. They have a branch in the settlement of Ariel.

According to documentation from the Israeli Ministry of Justice examined by IPS, it was in November 2019 when Living with Dignity contacted Turkish organizations “to help Syrian refugees in Turkey.” Their first project included the construction of 112 apartments and 10 mosques in Afrin in 2021.

Since then, they have not stopped raising funds for similar settlements in the region.

The last one that they have co-financed is that of Shadere, which opened last May. What remains of its original Yezidi population has been forced into an Islamic education by the Islamist factions controlling the area.

An aerial view of Al Amal 2, one of approximately 20 settlements built in Afrin. Credit: Afrinmedia

Initially, Shaikh Sallam, an executive member of Living with Dignity, agreed to answer questions from IPS, but he ended up declining the invitation.

However, Living with Dignity is not the only Palestinian-run NGO involved in settlement construction in northern Syria.

Ajnadin, an NGO which has its headquarters in Bayt Hanina — an occupied district in east Jerusalem —is behind several projects, such as the Adjanin Palestinesettlement, opened last January.

On their website, Albairaq -another Palestinian NGO- also claims to be raising money for the programme. IPS contacted Rashad Wattad, an executive member of Albairaq .

“The only aid we have provided to Syrian refugees was after the earthquake and includes food for tents and other basic humanitarian aid,” the Palestinian explained over the phone from the Triangle, a cluster of Arab towns adjacent to the Green Line separating pre-1967 Israel from the Occupied Palestinian Territories,

Asked about the settlements in Syria mentioned in their own reports, Wattad admitted that they had been built in collaboration with Living with Dignity. “They have access to the area,” Wattad clarified.

At the opening of the Al Zaim settlement. “Shelter units project for displaced persons from northern Syria funded by Al Zaim donations, in Quds Town,” reads the panel. Image: Ajnadin’s social media

The Palestinian refused to disclose the number of houses built and still in the pipeline. He said he did not see any contradiction in supporting a settlement program similar to the one his people suffer on their own land.

“We just want to help the people,” said Wattad.

Wafa Al-Muhsinin is an Istanbul-based Palestinian organization involved in the Al Zaim settlement. It owes its name to a Palestinian town occupied in 1967.

It opened last year in Jindires, very close to that empty house that appears in the video sent to Hassan Hassan.

“They told us that a family from Idlib (northwestern Syria) had settled in our house, but that they later moved to a settlement after the earthquake. It is still standing, but it is damaged and it is no longer safe”, said the Kurdish man.

Jindires settlement was one of the points mentioned in a letter that Kurds from Afrin sent to Nazmi Hazouri, the Palestinian consul in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq.

“The word ‘settlement’ horrifies us, and we categorically reject the construction of any in our name,” Hazouri told Kurdish journalists.

Meanwhile, the human flow is directed through northern Syria through a concrete riverbed.

Hassan Hassan is reluctant to rule out going back to Afrin in the future, but he prefers to be realistic. In Shehba the danger is constant and he fears going through the same thing again.

“We´ll have to leave again, that´s our only certainty.”

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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A Shipwreck in Greece Reminds Us of the Mess in Libya — Global Issues

The remains of a shipwreck on a beach in western Libya. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Jun 19 (IPS) – A new catastrophe in the Mediterranean, this time off the coast of Greece. The number of drowned still to be determined — barely 100 survivors speak of more than 700 passengers on board— will be added to almost 30,000 lost at sea since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migrations.

Those are just the people that someone, family or friends, ever claimed. The actual figures are almost certainly much higher.

We read that the traffickers’ boat had left the coast of Libya bound for Italy. We rarely look deeper. Does anyone remember Libya other than as the port of departure after a new misfortune at sea?

Libya has always been a transit country from Africa to Europe. Today, however, we are talking about a scale of unfathomable magnitude, for a very simple reason. Libya has been in chaos for more than a decade, and by now the line dividing trafficking mafias, armed militias, and politicians has become almost invisible.

It might not have turned out this way. We all remember 2011, when a wave of protests against regimes entrenched for decades rocked the Middle East and North Africa. Once that unrest descended into conflict, Libya’s revolt became doubtless the most visible. The eight-month civil war monopolized TV channels and newspapers throughout the world.

The war seemed to end with the lynching of the country’s leader, Moammar Gaddafi, in October of that same year. Literally overnight, Libya disappeared from global attention, as focus shifted elsewhere. There was neither time nor international will to reflect on what had happened, and would come next.

It would prove a missed opportunity. Libya’s immediate future did not look bleak at the time. In 2012, after presidential elections in Tunisia and Egypt, Libya too elected a post-Ghaddafi democratic body, the first General Congress of the Nation, designed to replace the “umbrella” body opposition forces had created during the war, the National Transitional Council.

Elections brought hope to a society that had never been asked its opinion on anything. And at first, unlike what happened in neighboring countries, a self-dubbed “democratic” coalition of new political parties took hold, with political moderates prevailing over an emerging religious extremist wing.

But the euphoria only lasted until that summer. Sectarian attacks against Sufi Muslims took place, followed closely by the assassination of the US ambassador in Benghazi. Images of the burning American consulate anticipated the unraveling to come.

Migrants spotted aboard a sinking dinghy boat somewhere off the Libyan coast. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

A new war broke out in 2014, but remained almost unreported and poorly understood outside Libya. The country split between two governments: one in Tripoli that had the backing of the UN, and another in Tobruk, in the east of the country, that had the backing of allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of Libya.

In the fall of 2015, emails leaked to the UK Guardian revealed that Bernardino León, the United Nations envoy for Libya charged with mediating the conflict, had maintained close links with the UAE, which backed Tobruk’s side in the war. Neutrality was assumed from the UN negotiatorbut this was seemingly not the case.

After “Leongate” forced the UN envoy’s resignation in November 2015, León would move to Dubai, where he was appointed director of the UAE’s Diplomatic Academy. International press remained largely silent on the scandal, and a promised UN investigation never saw the light of the day. Far from contributing to a rapprochement between Libya’s two warring sides, the UN process had led to the war dragging on, and the two sides to entrench.

In 2019, after five years of neither side gaining the upper hand, the Tobruk side, led by strongman Khalifa Haftar — a general who had helped bring Gaddafi to power, and was then later recruited by the CIA— launched a brutal offensive at Tripoli, receiving air and logistics cover from the United Arab Emirates.

The attack on Tripoli was fast and indiscriminate. Civilian targets were bombarded, provoking officials in London and Berlin to initially protest Hafter’s move as “an attack by someone who had not been attacked”. European governments debated calling for Haftar to reign in the onslaught.

Once again, European politics would come into play in Libya. EU parliamentary elections—held in May 2019— filled the Brussels parliament with politicians who were less concerned with the lost to average Libyans, and shared French President Emmanuel Macron’s more hawkish vision.

The French leader’s US counterpart, Donald Trump, also called France and Russia directly and told them he wanted neither Egypt nor the UAE, Haftar’s backers, as enemies. Washington would go on to support Haftar in Tobruk, though the rival Tripoli government had the backing of the UN.

All this would occur in a nation with enormous potential for prosperity. Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa, as well as reserves of underground water and promising mineral resources. It is very close to Europe geographically, boasting an enormous tourist potential and a network of ports that many governments would dream of.

With a population of barely six million, it would be easy for Libya to turn into a model of progress and well-being for the entire region. But the world’s decision-makers have other plans, it appears. In addition to the calls between Washington, Brussels and Moscow, governments in Ankara, Doha, Dubai, Cairo and Riyadh, among others, also know Libya’s strategic and financial value, and want their share. If they don’t get what they want there, each of them will make sure their rivals don’t either.

While global forces take the country’s fate out of Libyans’ own hands, thousands of Sudanese, Malians, Somalis, Nigeriens and others fleeing war and misery continue to pass through a mirage of a country. Those who survive the brutal desert journey fall in the hands of the deeply-rooted human trafficking networks, which operate unmolested amid Libya’s chaos.

The long-awaited stability in Libya is key for the region and its people, including those in the northern Mediterranean. But the world continues to look the other way. After this new catastrophe at sea, we will only remember that an entire country, and its people, from a single line, so familiar now: “The boat had departed from Libya.”

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Keep Quiet or Die — Global Issues

A protest in front of the Quetta Press Club against repression by the Pakistani state. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (hamburg, germany)
  • Inter Press Service

HAMBURG, Germany, Apr 07 (IPS) – Geologists have described the region as the most similar to Mars on Earth. Whether it’s violent sandstorms or ice found on its surface, we get more news from the red planet than from Balochistan.

“I still don’t understand how a territory divided by the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan remains so unknown to the rest of the world. I can’t think of a people who receive as little attention as the Baloch,” Martin Axmann told IPS.

This doctor in Political Science and author of one of the most referential recent books on the Baloch question – Back to the Future (Oxford, 2008) – points to a strategic territory the size of France which boasts huge reserves of gold, gas and uranium.

Axmann is one of the speakers at a conference organized by the Movement for a Free Balochistan – a political organization with a “secular and democratic” project -, on the 75th anniversary of Balochistan´s forced annexation by Pakistan.

Today it is the most depopulated province, the one with the highest rates of illiteracy and infant mortality, and the one most affected by violence. It´s also the most hermetic one.

The German expert would not have been able to access the area if he had travelled as a journalist. The few that have tried have been expelled from the country and banned, or even worse.

Carlotta Gal was a correspondent for The New York Times when she was brutally beaten in Quetta – the provincial capital, 900 kilometers southeast of Islamabad – in 2006 by a group of men who identified themselves as “members of a special section of the Pakistani police.”

They told her that she lacked permission to be in Quetta.

A family remembers two of their relatives kidnapped and found dead somewhere in Balochistan. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

After nine years as an Islamabad correspondent for The Guardian and The New York Times, Declan Walsh was expelled from the country in 2013 for “undesirable activities”. He had written an article about the missing Baloch in Pakistan.

Due to this firewall against the foreign press, the responsibility for reporting falls exclusively on local journalists. Pakistani journalist and best-selling author elaborates on this:

“Reporters on the ground face constant threats from Pakistani secret services, Baloch movements and sectarian groups. We often never get to find out who is behind many of the attacks,” Rashid told IPS by phone from his residence in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

He claims that many of his colleagues resort to “self-censorship”:

“It’s simply not reported. And if Balochistan is not in Pakistan’s media eye, it will not reach the outside world either as most of the Western media is fed by press agencies.”

Karima Baloch was one of Balochistan’s best-known human rights defenders and activists. She was found dead in 2020 in a lake in Ontario, in Canada. Photo: Courtesy BSO Azad

In its latest report on press freedom worldwide, Reporters Without Borders ranks Pakistan 157th, describing it as “one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.”

The Balochistan Union of Journalists points to more than 40 journalists killed in Balochistan between bomb blasts and targeted killings, some of them committed outside the country.

Sajid Hussain’s body was found Baloch in a river on the outskirts of Uppsala (Sweden). RSF then pointed to the possibility that it was the work of Pakistani agencies.

“Eight months later, the body of Karima Baloch, a Baloch activist and human rights defender, was rescued from the waters of Lake Ontario (Canada). The BBC had included her on its list of “the 100 most inspiring and influential women” of 2016.

Very gradually, women are also claiming their space on the streets of Balochistan. Photo: Courtesy BSO Azad

On “ground zero”

“When you are a journalist in Balochista, it is the security agencies that contact you directly: they call you by phone, they reach out when you cover a press conference, a protest in the street…”.

Thus begins the story of Ahmad, an exiled Baloch journalist who prefers not to disclose his full name or country of residence to IPS to avoid reprisals on his family back home.

“One of the most sensitive stories is that of the enforced disappearances. In the eyes of the agencies, the simple fact of speaking with their relatives means that you are working against the State,” underlines the Baluch man on a videoconference.

In 2022 alone, Amnesty International reported more than 2,000 cases in Pakistan, a phenomenon that the NGO describes as “frequent” in the province of Balochistan .

Ahmad recalls how difficult it was to cover the news about Balochistan, and also that phone call while he was covering the story of a murdered colleague:

“We know who you and your brothers are. We also know that you have two children, what school do they go to… Do you want them to stay alive?” he was told over the phone.

Ahmad soon realized that he was being followed. A few days later, he was run over while riding his motorcycle to work.

“I was lucky to get out unharmed and that there were a lot of people around. The car turned around and left,” recalls this journalist who left the country soon after.

Two Baloch insurgents somewhere in the mountains of Balochistan. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/ IPS

It was the same threats that pushed Kiyya Baloch into exile. He´s a seasoned reporter with several publications The Guardian , The Telegraph or the BBC .

“That pressure ended up affecting my family. They couldn’t stop thinking that I could be assassinated at any moment,” told IPS over the phone this reporter who prefers not to reveal his current coordinates.

“I even receive threats in this country where I am now,” he apologizes, before pointing to other coercive measures.

“The Government also puts the pressure on the media so that they do not hire you, or you get fired; they drown you financially in order to cut your wings as a journalist until. Eventually, you end up leaving the country,” adds Baloch.

Listening to the BBC and Voice of America radio broadcast at home from a very young age was what sparked Zeynap’s vocation . She chooses a random name in order to protect herself.

The media blackout on Balochistan has prompted activists in Europe to launch campaigns like this one on London public transport. Photo: Courtesy FBM

She speaks from “ground zero” and from a “much more fragile” position than that of her male colleagues.

“We share with them the fear of state surveillance, but then there are those cultural barriers that only us, women, face,” the reporter told IPS by phone.

An example of that, she explains, is how women are perceived in those “all-men protests.”

“You want to do your job but at the same time, want to respect the culture so at the end, you heavily rely on sources. Even if you are not very far from the place you are researching, you make phone calls to ask others instead of going to the spot yourself”, she explains.

Zeynap points to “human” issues beyond the purely political. “Did you know that more than half of the girls here do not go to school? Few issues seem more important to me than this one,” she stresses.

How to tell that and other stories from Balochistan to the outside world?

The reporter recalls the veto on international NGOs, and she also does not foresee any changes in the government’s policies towards journalists.

“The international community and human rights organizations will have to step in,” says Zeynap. “I do not see any other way around.”

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Turkish Writer Pinar Selek Faces Her Fifth Life Sentence — Global Issues

Pinar Selek, a Turkish writer, is the victim of one of the most Kafkaesque trials in Turkey’s history. Credit: Juantxo Egaña/IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (biarritz, france)
  • Inter Press Service

BIARRITZ, France, Mar 23 (IPS) – The woman we’re meeting in a house on the outskirts of Biarritz -800 kilometres southwest of Paris- is a university professor, the author of several books and hundreds of articles, and a well-known human rights activist.

According to Turkish courts, she also planted a bomb that killed seven people and injured more than 120 in Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar 25 years ago.

“Up to four scientific reports, including the one from the Turkish police themselves, pointed to a gas explosion, but later they said that it had been a bomb, and that I had planted it,” Pinar Selek tells IPS. This 51-year-old Turkish woman is embroiled in one of the strangest trials in the history of the Turkish judiciary.

“It’s Kafkaesque,” she blurts. “The case is based on the testimony of a Kurdish man who said that we had planted the bomb together. Later, he claimed to have confessed under torture, and that he didn’t even know me. He is free in Turkey, and I am in exile.”

On June 21, 2022, the Turkish public news agency Anadolu announced the annulment by the Supreme Court of Turkey of Pinar Selek’s fourth acquittal. Previously, she had been found innocent in three criminal proceedings.

But the sentence to life imprisonment is already firm and unappealable. On January 6, 2023, the Istanbul Court of First Instance issued an international arrest warrant for her.

Martin Pradel, Selek’s lawyer, talks about a “purely political case”.

“I have never heard of any other case that has gone on for 25 years without legal evidence of any kind. And this is without mentioning that Pinar has been acquitted up to four times,” Pradel told IPS over the phone from Paris.

The lawyer urged the French state to give Selek protection as a French citizen. If not, he added, the next step would be to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Several French town halls such as the one in Marseille have also turned to her case. On March 29 she will receive the Medaille de la Ville de Paris, a recognition awarded by France´s capital city (Courtesy Pinar Selek)

“Where are they?”

Born into an Istanbul family of left militants, Pinar Selek has devoted her life to making visible those “invisible” in her country of origin: women and Kurds, prostitutes, Roma, homosexuals, Armenians…

“Where are they?” has always been her question as a researcher, and also as an activist. It was this vital commitment that brought her to prison in 1998, after refusing to hand the police a list of Kurdish contacts for one of her sociological studies.

“When they started building new prisons, we resisted being transferred. More than 300 died under attacks in which prisons were even bombed,” remembers Selek.

She was released after more than two years of captivity, torture, and a hunger strike in which, she says, dozens died. Back on the street, she was one of the founders of Amargi, a groundbreaking feminist organization in Turkey, and also the first feminist bookstore in the history of her country.

She has added a set of tales and a few books of her own to its shelves, but she has not been back in a long time. She had to leave the country in 2009 and, after getting her French citizenship in 2017, she settled down in Nice, where she teaches at the University Côte d’Azur, a public institution.

Ilya Topper, a Spanish journalist and analyst based in Istanbul for more than ten years, sees the trial opened against Selek in 1998 as “part of that brutal campaign against everything that seemed to treat Kurdish demands as a topic that could be discussed.“

“Until around 2005, anyone within a hundred meters of a protest which held a banner with a slogan that had any remote resemblance to a phrase once said by someone from the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) would be put in jail for many years,” the expert told IPS over the phone from Istanbul.

Until just over a decade ago, he adds, mayors were still sentenced for saying something in Kurdish on charges of “speaking a non-existent language.” He illustrates it with a concrete case:

“In 2011, a Kurdish mayor was sentenced to half a year in prison and a fine of 1,500 euros for naming a public park after Ehmedi Xani, an 18th-century Kurdish poet. The controversial issue was not the writer, but the initial letter of his last name: it is written with X, which exists in Kurdish, but not in Turkish.”

The trial against Selek, underlines the analyst, “highlights the deterioration of the Turkish Judiciary in a country where you can go to prison for any reason.”

Pinar Selek fears that her international arrest warrant will affect her family in Turkey and restrict her movement even within France. Credit: Juantxo Egaña/IPS

Solidarity

Several human rights watchdogs have consistently denounced Selek’s case. Human Rights Watch describes it as “the perversion of a criminal justice system”; the International PEN Club – a world association of writers with consultative status at the UN- includes Selek in its list of 115 authors who suffer harassment, arrest or violence around the world.

In a telephone conversation with IPS, its president, Burhan Sönmez, mentioned other notorious cases in Turkey, such as that of the publisher and human rights defender Osman Kavala, or the opposition politician Selahattin Demirta?

“Both remain behind bars despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling for their immediate release,” Sönmez stressed from London.

Solidarity goes hand in hand with denunciation. More than a hundred personalities including intellectuals, political leaders and social agents will attend the hearing to be held in Istanbul on March 31. It’s a legal formality to notify Selek of her firm life sentence.

Michele Rubirola, former mayoress of Marseille and today the first deputy of the consistory, is the one chosen to represent the city. In a telephone conversation with IPS, Rubirola spoke of “someone who is a victim of injustice and oppression.”

“Selek ‘s academic struggles have turned into political struggles, and the relentlessness of the political and judicial power she is facing consolidates her as a true human rights activist,” added the delegate.

A judicial process that has lasted a quarter of a century is reaching a key moment just a few weeks before decisive elections in Turkey, a referendum on the more than two decades in the power for Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.

“My trial is one of the indicators of the evil rooted in Turkey: it reflects both the continuity of the authoritarian regime and the configurations of the repressive devices,” laments Selek.

She also confesses concern about how it may affect her family in Turkey, and herself in her host country.

“I am convicted of a massacre and my movement may be restricted internationally, and even within France. Moreover, Turkey is asking me for millions in compensation for the deaths and the destruction and there´s an international financial convention that could be executed in France,” she recalls.

Today, her only certainty is that she will try to move on with her life. Other than her work at the university, she also gives talks and organizes events and protests. Exile, she says, “may have uprooted me from my country, but not from the street.”

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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The Sami People’s Fight Against Norwegian Windmills — Global Issues

The Sami people protested in the centre of Oslo against the Fosen wind farm, in the north of Norway (Jannicke Totland/ Natur og Ungdom)
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Mar 09 (IPS) – There are 151 wind turbines and more than 130 kilometres of connection routes and power lines on the Fosen peninsula, 530 kilometres north of Oslo. Norwegian judges say that they should not be there, and the owners of those lands since time immemorial do too.

But it is not a mirage.

“The wind farm crisscrosses areas of winter pasture that can no longer be used because the reindeer will never come near the windmills. Thus, an ancestral migration route that is crucial for us has been destroyed,” says Maria Puenchir, a 31-year-old human rights activist who is well-known in the region, and presents herself as “queer, Sami and disabled”, told IPS over the phone.

The Sami, also known as Lapps or Saami, are a people spread across the northern borders of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, in a territory they call Sápmi.

Puenchir spoke from her native Trondheim, very close to the peninsula where the wind complex stands today under scrutiny. Its construction began in 2016 despite numerous calls for its suspension, including one from the United Nations, citing its potential impact on the way of life of local communities.

Five years later and one after its completion, the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled unanimously among its eleven judges that the installation was illegal and violated the rights of reindeer herders to develop their culture.

“The ruling is clear, but it does not explain what to do with the wind turbines. Not only have they not been dismantled, but they continue to function,” laments Puenchir.

On January 30, Amnesty International launched a campaign asking that the judicial resolution be respected and “a continuous violation of human rights be stopped and repaired.”

It was on February 23 when a group of young people dressed in traditional Sami costumes decided to wrestle with the Norwegian state. After occupying the offices of the Ministry of Oil for four days, they were evicted by the police, but managed to block several other ministries before a crowdy sit-in in front of the Royal Palace, on March 3.

One of the six wind farms installed in Fosen. They remain active even if the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled, in 2021, that they were illegal and violated the rights of Sami reindeer herder communities. Photo: StatKraft

“The initiative arose from an Instagram campaign among the Sami youth. They began to count the days that passed without any finger being lifted since the Norwegian Supreme Court ruling. When the account reached 500, they took to the streets,” Puenchir recalls.

She did not hesitate to fly to Oslo to join the group, nor did Greta Thunberg. The well-known activist for the defense of the climate this time joined a protest against a “green” energy project.

“I had the chance to come and show my support to this struggle. All those who have a possibility to support local struggles like these should do so,” Thunberg explained to IPS, by phone from the streets of Oslo.

“All over the world we are seeing the continuation of land grabbing and exploitation of indigenous land, but we can also see that the resistance is continuing and growing,” claimed the activist before calling for “the end of the colonization of Sápmi.”

On March 2, the Sami heard an apology from the Norwegian Government delivered by Terje Aasland, the country’s minister of Oil and Energy

“They have spent a long time in a difficult and uncertain situation and I feel sorry for them,” Aasland said, after meeting with the president of the Sámi Parliament, Silje Karine Mutoka

For the moment, Oslo has repeated a mantra that the wind power project can coexist with reindeer herding. A firm decision is lacking on the future of the controversial infrastructure, however.

“I had the chance to come and show my support to this struggle. All those who have a possibility to support local struggles like these should do so” Greta Thunberg told IPS during the protest against the Norwegian wind farms in Sami territory (Jannicke Totland/ Natur og Ungdom)

From north to south

According to data from the International Energy Agency, 98% of Norway’s electricity supply comes from renewable energy. The six wind farms in the Fosen complex produce more energy than all the wind farms built in the rest of the country combined.

Although Fosen’s turbines are the work of a multi-company conglomerate with Swiss and German participation, 52% of the investment remains in the hands of Norway’s Statkraft.

Responding to questions posed by IPS, Statkraft stressed that the Supreme Court ruling “does not mean that the licenses for the wind farms have lapsed and it did not conclude what should happen to the turbines.”

The operation of the Fosen wind farm, the company adds, “can be maintained without irreparable damage to reindeer husbandry as long as there is an ongoing process to clarify the necessary mitigation measures necessary for a new licensing decision that does not violate the rights of the Sami.”

The company claims it is “working actively to contribute to reaching a solution that enables the Sami people to continue their cultural practice in line with international law.”

On its website, Statkraft claims to be “Europe’s largest renewable energy producer and a global company in energy market operations.” Their figures point to 5,300 workers in 21 countries.

The protest started on February 23 by blockading the Ministry of Oil and Energy for four days before spreading to other ministries. (Jannicke Totland/ Natur og Ungdom)

Complaints and legal rulings against the Norwegian energy giant have also come from other continents.

On February 23, Chilean police violently repressed a demonstration against the Los Lagos power plant project Statkraft is building on the banks of the Pilmaiken River, 370 kilometers south of Santiago de Chile.

“It is a place of great importance for the Mapuche people with a ceremonial complex and a cemetery. According to ancient beliefs, the Pilmaiken river is where souls travel after they die so that they can continue their cycle,” Fennix Delgado, a 35-year-old construction worker active in the Pilmaiken support network told IPS by phone.

All across Sápmi

“Both in Chile and in Norway we are witnessing the plundering of indigenous ancestral territory without the consent of the affected communities or any respect for their cultural realities.”

That´s the take of Eva María Fjellheim, a member of the work team of the Sami Council — its largest civil society organization. She spoke to IPS by phone from Tromso, 1,100 kilometres north of Oslo.

“Although the Sami Council supports efforts to combat the climate and ecological crisis, these cannot be implemented at the cost of fundamental rights,” explains 38-year-old Fjellheim.

She combines her work for the council with her research for his PhD at Norway’s Arctic University on “green colonialism” and Sami resistance to the development of wind power on pasture lands.

Ancestral knowledge and practices of indigenous peoples, she believes, “could be considered as part of the solution and not as an obstacle.”

The researcher also points out that, in addition to Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia are promoting similar wind projects across Sami territory.

“The Nordic countries tend to defend their image as leaders in terms of respect for rights and sustainability, but their reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on the Fosen case is the latest proof of very much the opposite,” says Fjellheim.

“It’s as if human rights violations only occurred in other regions, and not in a democratic welfare state like Norway.”

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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"An Israeli Senior Minister Asked Me To Commit Hate Crimes" — Global Issues

Gilad Sade, in white, with Itamar Ben Gvir, to his left, during Gvir’s visit with alleged recruits during a trial in 2004. All the minors were convicted. Credit: Ilan Mizrahi.
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Feb 21 (IPS) – Harassing Palestinians, vandalizing their cars and houses, occupying their lands: Gilad Sade, a 36-year-old Israeli, recalls his day-to-day life when he belonged to a Jewish supremacist organization.

“I was first jailed at thirteen and would go back to prison many times. During those years, Itamar Ben Gvir and I were thick and thin,” Sade tells IPS from Rome, Italy.

Itamar Ben Gvir is Israel´s newly appointed Minister of National Security.

His party, Jewish Power, won six seats in the November 2022 legislative elections. Today, it forms a far-right government considered the most extremist in the country’s history, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Raised in a family of secular Jewish immigrants from Iraq, Ben Gvir, 47, joined the Kach movement —an ultra-Orthodox organization designated as a terrorist group in the nineties by Israel, the US, the European Union, Canada and Japan— as a teenager. In 1995 he became famous for threatening then-Prime Minister Isaac Rabin three weeks before he was assassinated.

“When he first moved out of his family house, he hung a photo of Barouch Goldstein in his new residence in Kiryat Arba,110 kilometres southeast of Tel Aviv,” recalls Sade. Also known as the “Butcher of Hebron,” Goldstein was a medical doctor from New York who murdered 29 Palestinians with an assault rifle in 1994.

Sade recalls that, as a child, he was often in the care of Ben Gvir. He was in primary school when he received his first assignment.

“We used to distribute leaflets calling for the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel or the demolition of the al Aqsa Mosque. Ben Gvir asked me to hide them under my shirt. As a child, the police would not search me.”

A school day in Hebron, one of the cities hardest hit by violence in Israel Credit: Mikel Ayestaran.

At the age of 14, Ben Gvir asked him to bring a ski mask and handed him a wire cutter to break into the United Nations compound in Jerusalem to vandalize UN cars and spray anti-UN graffiti on walls.

“He would never take risks. I could easily get in trouble or even get killed while he waited in his car listening to Hasidic music,” says Sade

Ben Gvir, he explains, recruited young people from broken families. “He boasted that he kept them away from the streets and drugs but actually paid them cash to commit these kinds of crimes. The boys sought the approval of the group by spitting on the Palestinians, pushing them to the ground, pepper-spraying them,” he recalls.

Contrary to what one might think, Sade says that there was no room for improvisation. “They trained us to deal with all sorts of situations: from occupying the home of a Palestinian family to handle a police interrogation,” explains Sade.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 7, Ben Gvir said he had been arrested “hundreds of times” — the first time at 14 —and bragged about having been accused “in only just eight occasions.” At 18, his criminal record exempted him from military service.

Before launching his political career, he was convicted for “incitement to racism and support of terror,” by calling for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.

“Today he has moderated his speech, at least in public, in order to reach parliament. But everyone knows that he is still the same racist influencer he´s always been,” says Sade.

Sade quit the extremist movement at 21.

“It was a very long and painful process to be able to overcome, among other things, the hatred towards myself for the damage inflicted,” he admits. He also regrets that many of his former colleagues “did not manage to break the walls of that mental prison.”

36-year old Gilad Sade has been forced to live in exile by threats he constantly receives from Israeli far-right movements. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza

Sade would become an adventure travel guide, and his fondness for photography would open the doors to journalism. As a freelance reporter working for both Israeli and international media, he works in places like Nagorno Karabakh and Kosovo. However, part of his job has focused on exposing those who, he insists, ruined his life and the lives of hundreds of young people.

But the price to pay was exile. The frequent target of threats, he cannot return to Israel. Especially today, when those who were his mentors are in power.

Itamar ben Gvir ‘s spokesman declined to answer to questions forwarded by IPS. He told this news agency that any accusation of hate crimes against the minister is “not serious” and “just jihadist propaganda.”

Domination

Last November, weeks before the new government was formed, Palestinian Authority officials warned that Itamar Ben Gvir´s appointment could have a “potentially catastrophic impact.”

Their concern appears to have been well-founded. In a report released by Amnesty International on February 1, the London-based NGO denounced the death of 35 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces during January alone.

“The killings help sustain the Israeli apartheid regime and constitute crimes against humanity as well as other measures such as administrative detention or forced displacement,” the Amnesty report said.

On January 27, seven people were killed in a synagogue and a dozen seriously injured in two attacks on Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. Two weeks later, two Israelis were killed, including one child, in an intentional car-ram attack in Jerusalem.

The recent violence under the new administration continues a worrying trend. In its World Report 2023, Human Right Watch points to “a policy to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians” under a new government which, the New York based NGO underlines, “includes Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted by an Israeli court for incitement to racism and support of a terrorist organization.”

Show of force in Jerusalem during Israel’s Independence Day. Credit: Mikel Ayestaran.

For Alberto Spectorowsky, an Uruguayan-Israeli citizen and professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, the current climate of violence in the country is related to corruption charges against the prime minister.

“There is a conflict unleashed between those who defend a democracy with liberal institutions and those who want to take away the power and independence of the Court of Justice,” Spectorowsky told IPS from Tel Aviv over the phone.

The current prime minister was sworn into office immersed in an open process for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. “Without this pending trial, Netanyahu would be another defender of liberal democracy,” claims the political scientist.

As for Ben Gvir, Spectorowsky points to “an open scenario”:

“Netanyahu has no interest in setting the Middle East on fire, and that is why he tries to contain Ben Gvir. However, the latter announced that he will leave the coalition if they take away his authority,” the expert underlines.

In an interview given to Israeli Channel 12, on February 4, the senior minister gave the government a period of three months to implement measures such as the death penalty for terrorists or the creation of a security body made up of armed civilians.

“As long as I continue to have influence, I will not overthrow the government,” said Ben Gvir. His most recent measure has been to increase by 400% the number of weapons permits that can be granted monthly.

Sade believes Ben Gvir is seeking to create his own armed militia.

“Now he wants to arm everyone to contain these attacks, which, however, have increased since he took office,” he adds. “What could you possibly expect from a country whose National Security minister asked me and others to commit hate crimes?”

Israel has become a trap, he says, “not only for the Palestinians, but also for anyone who thinks differently.”

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Turkey’s Shaky Foundations — Global Issues

Diyarbakir´s city centre after the military operation launched by Ankara in 2015-2016 across the country´s main Kurdish cities. Credit: KNK.
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Feb 14 (IPS) – Geology explains the terrible earthquake that shook Turkey and Syria on February 6 with academic coldness: the Arabian, Eurasian and African plates pressure the Anatolian plate. On the surface, geopolitics resorts to concepts like “fault”, “tension” or “fracture” to explain things too. When one looks at Turkey, both disciplines’ maps can easily overlap each other, with a death toll calculated in the tens of thousands.

The earthquake’s epicentre lies in a chasm that has been widening since World War I (1914-1918), when the Kurdish people were left stateless. Over 40 million Kurds remain spread across the borders of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

Half of them live in the southeastern region of Turkey. It is not by chance that the broken North-South socioeconomic divide in Anatolia actually shows itself from west to east.

Tour operators offer two main tourist packages: touring the west of the country in clockwise or anti-clockwise directions.

The east is never an option, even if you miss the astonishing Neolithic archaeological site of Gobekli, or the source of the Tigris and Euphrates, among other treasures.

Actually, “Kurdistan” has always been a taboo word for the Turkish national narrative, which favours euphemisms such as “the southeast” to refer to that part of the country. After all, what name can be given to what doesn’t even exist?

For decades there was no talk of Kurds, but of “mountain Turks.” Their language, Kurmanji, still has not reached newspapers or schools. There is indeed a television channel in Kurdish – there are around fifty in neighbouring Iraq – but it is government funded. Accordingly, there´s no deviation from the official discourse.

Without leaving the epicentre of the earthquake, the city of Kahramanmaras owes its name to the Turkification of its original Maras (of disputed origin) to which is added the Turkish Kahraman, “hero”. Also, better not look for “Amed” on maps when trying to get to Diyarbakir, Turkey’s main Kurdish city.

These are just two of the thousands of examples that speak of this drive to erase all “foreign” traces from the maps. The next step is to do it physically. The city of Hasankeyf, a 12,000-year-old archaeological treasure once protected by UNESCO, was completely flooded in 2020.

Diyarbakir´s city centre after the military operation launched by Ankara in 2015-2016 across the country´s main Kurdish cities. Credit: KNK.

Today, Hasankey lies out of reach under a network of dams through which the water supply from the Tigris and the Eufrates to Syria and Iraq is often cut off.

The most modern cities are not spared either. In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Kurdish towns were burned down by the Turkish Army in the war against the Kurdish guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

In the wake of the umpteenth military operation launched by Ankara in 2015 and 2016, the rubble in several of them was reminiscent of that of the last earthquake. Once again, the civilians then took the worst part.

“You are not Kurdish, you are Armenian and we are going to do the same we did to you a hundred years ago,” this reporter heard a Turkish police officer shout over a loudspeaker during the curfew enforced on the Kurdish city of Cizre, in September 2015.

Two earthquakes (in 1912 and 1914) announced what was to become the first genocide of the 20th century, when more than a million and a half Armenians were swallowed by that same fault.

Today, in Turkey there are barely 60,000 castaways from that Eurasian plate, and the waves are still hitting neighbouring Armenia, which remains sandwiched between two Turkic states (the second one is Azerbaijan).

“How happy is the one who says I am a Turk,” read murals across Turkey, paraphrasing Kemal Ataturk, the controversial father of the republic. “The homeland is indivisible” is also a recurrent one.

The cruelest paradox decrees that the country celebrates its first hundred years of existence slit open. Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdo?an has already declared a state of emergency for three months in ten devastated regions.

The complaints that relief does not arrive pile up, creating an even more precarious situation for over three million Syrian refugees who´ve crossed the border to Turkey since the war started in Syria in 2011.

The earth has burst under their feet after more than a decade since the war broke out in his country. They are the most direct victims of the Arabian plate, the one governed by autocrats such as Bashar al Assad in Syria, General Abdulfatah al Sissi in Egypt or the satraps of the Persian Gulf.

They all share with Erdo?an an obsession with perpetuating themselves in power and an exclusive discourse on which to articulate their respective country models.

More paradoxes in history make Erdo?an come to power in the aftermath of the Izmir earthquake in 1999 -it left more than 17,000 deaths-, and the last one occurred on the eve of decisive elections next May.

But perhaps the deepest fault is that of democracy.

After more than two decades in power, Erdo?an had shielded his re-election by disqualifying Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and his most direct rival in the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

He had also outlawed the third political force, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Their leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yüksekda?, have been in prison since 2016.

“If my mother tongue is shaking the foundations of your state, it probably means that you built your state on my land,” said Musa Anter, a Kurdish journalist and writer assassinated by Turkish intelligence agents in 1992.

Add to that the brutal jolts of geology, and disaster is served.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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The Journalist Stranded in Europe’s "Guantᮡmo" — Global Issues

Pablo González during a previous trip to Ukraine. Credit: Juan Teixeira/IPS
  • by Karlos Zurutuza (nabarniz, spain)
  • Inter Press Service

NABARNIZ, Spain, Jan 19 (IPS) – It’s 23 hours a day in a cell without natural light and just one to walk around in a 7×4-metre courtyard. For Pablo González, an independent Spanish-Russian journalist, it’s been almost a year spent in solitary confinement in Poland.

González was arrested on the night of February 27th in Przemysl, a Polish city bordering Ukraine. A journalist specializing in the post-Soviet space, the reporter had worked in Ukraine several times and he was planning to cross the border to cover the Russian invasion of the country launched a few days before.

Three days after his arrest, the Polish government released a statement that the Internal Security Agency (ABW) had arrested González “on suspicion of having carried out operations for the benefit of Russia, taking advantage of his status as a journalist.”

“They said they had ‘irrefutable proof’ that he is a spy, but no one has yet seen it. The secrecy around it is overwhelming,” Oihana Goiriena, González’s partner, told IPS from her residence in Nabarniz, in Spain’s Basque Country.

Following the latest three-month extension granted by the court handling the case, Polish authorities still have not made public the evidence they claim to have against the journalist. His lawyers in Poland are not allowed to speak publicly about the case, there is no date for the trial and not even a formal accusation against González.

“He has lost a lot of weight, but the worst thing for him is being in solitary confinement, not being able to talk to anyone all day,” explains 47-year-old Goiriena. She was able to visit him on November 21 of last year. A Polish security agent supervised the reunion, for which Goiriena travelled to Poland.

González is prevented from making telephone calls and has to rely on letters to communicate with the outside world. The letters need to be translated and filtered by Polish security first, however, and replies can take four months. “Two for the letters to reach him and another two to receive his,” says Goiriena. As for her three children, “they have not seen their father in all this time.”

Goiriena describes the Spanish Government’s response to the case as “tepid.”

“So far we have only had contact with the Spanish consul in Warsaw, no one else has reassured us or shared any hints,” she says.

The reason González has been dragged to the Polish cell remains vague, she says. Goiriena believes her partner’s two passports, Russian and Spanish, set off alarm bells in Warsaw.

The son of a Russian and the grandson of an exile from the Spanish Civil War, Pablo González was born in Moscow in 1982 as Pavel Rubtsov. When his parents split eight years later, the child was left in the custody of his mother -the granddaughter of another Spanish exile- who returned to Spain and registered her school-age son as Pablo, the Spanish translation of Pavel, and under her last name, González.

Alternatively, Goiriena says her partner’s reporting might have also caught Polish officials’ attention. “Pablo had previously worked a lot in Poland, covering stories such as the anti-government protests, the threats faced by the LGTBI community or the migratory crisis on the Belarusian border, where people were left to die in the cold in the “no man’s” land between both countries,” she says..

“He is an ‘uncomfortable’ journalist,” for Polish officials, she says. “I think they went too far and now they don’t know how to get out of this.”

The reporter during the siege of Nagorno Karabakh, in 2020 (Courtesy González family)

Administrative silence

A Polish lawyer was hired in April 2022, and Goiriena sought advice from a criminal justice panel in the country last October. González’s primary lawyer since he was arrested, though, has been Gonzalo Boye.

A Chilean based in Spain for over three decades, Boye is an expert in European International Law who has been involved in several high-profile cases including the March 11, 2004 jihadist bombing of Madrid’s Atocha train station, and Edward Snowden´s whistleblower case, among others.

Speaking to IPS by phone from Madrid, he said González’s arrest is “unprecedented” within the European Union. “It is an unsustainable case, one of those in which someone is arrested and later investigated.” Boye has not yet been allowed to visit his client.

“Neither Brussels nor Madrid have lifted a finger, their only answer so far has been silence,” says Boye. Claiming institutional indifference to what he describes as “a kind of Guantánamo within the European Union,” he has already forwarded a protection request to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions.

“Europe has sided squarely with Ukraine, and Poland is key in the conflict. Pablo González is just another victim of that war,” argues Boye, in an attempt to find a logic to González´s arrest in Poland.

Alongside a platform that struggles to make the case visible, several personalities and professionals in communication and law have requested Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain for greater involvement in its resolution.

In a reply to repeated efforts at contact from IPS, Spain’s Ministry of External Affairs stated by email that Spain’s embassy in Warsaw “is up to date on the case and following it closely.”

The statement says González has been offered an opportunity for consular assistance, and received seven visits, with “the next expected soon.”

“At all times, the need to respect their rights has been stressed to Polish authorities. In addition, efforts have been made at different levels in relation to his case, conveying the same message,” the ministry said, in its statement.

The Damages

The war in Ukraine has turned Poland into a main hub for supplies of all sorts in Ukraine – from basic food items to hit-tech weaponry -, as well as the main exit point for millions of refugees fleeing the war. It is the focal country in a conflict whose consequences are felt globally.

Poland’s role in the conflict, however, has not prevented the progressive deterioration of its democracy.

In its 2022 report, the US NGO Freedom House claimed that Poland had the fastest decline in democracy among the 29 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia monitored by the organization.

“I don’t recall a case similar to that of Pablo González in the European Union,” Alfonso Bauluz, the president of Reporters Without Borders in Spain told IPS over the phone from Madrid.

While he pointed to the “complicated scenario” posed by the war in Ukraine, he also highlighted that Poland is “one of those EU countries that have toughened measures against plurality of information.”

“For Poland, it´s already been eight years of consecutive decline in the World’s Press Freedom Index we release at RSF,” stresses Bauluz. The eastern European country ranks 66th (just behind Cyprus, Mauritius and Montenegro) on a list of 180 countries.

On January 10, RSF Spain called again for the “end of the prison cruelty inflicted on Pablo González,” that his presumption of innocence be respected and that “all the guarantees for a fair trial” are met.

“All I want is a trial as soon as possible, either public or private, but as soon as possible,” says Oihana Goiriena. Although the journalist’s partner is confident that his innocence will finally be proven and he will be released, she also stresses that the damage has already been done:

“In a few weeks, he will have served a year in prison. In addition, paying lawyers and costs has put us in debt for a long time, not to mention the professional damage it entails for a journalist specializing in the post-Soviet space”.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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