BAME people are over-represented as essential workers on the frontline of the pandemic. Tim Dennell | Flickr

Under the cover of the pandemic, the actions of the UK government have reinforced systems of racial oppression. The virus discriminates based on race: Public Health England data has established that BAME people are dying in disproportionately higher numbers compared to their white counterparts. BAME communities are on the frontline. They are overrepresented as essential workers, being placed in the most dangerous lines of work and, as a result, are more likely to die of the virus. The pandemic has both highlighted structural inequalities and seen government inaction help to reinforce these systems of oppression. The governments failure to protect BAME workers on the frontline has left them vulnerable to a virus which discriminates.

The actions of the government were indicted in a recent report by Baroness Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black British teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in London in 1993. Commissioned by Sir Keir Starmer, the Lawrence Review condemned the government for perpetuating racial inequalities through its response to the pandemic. She states:

Black, Asian and minority ethnic people have been overexposed, under-protected, stigmatised and overlooked during this pandemic... The impact of Covid is not random, but foreseeable and inevitable the consequence of decades of structural injustice, inequality and discrimination that blights our society.

Lawrence sends a clear message: the governments response to the pandemic has highlighted, enforced and entrenched existing structural inequalities.

The racial discrimination of the virus is evident. Those of Bangladeshi origin are 50% more likely to die of the virus according to Public Health England data. Almost three times as many black males and twice as many black females were infected with the virus compared to their white counterparts. The disproportionate impact of the virus can be explained by the overrepresentation of BAME people in frontline professions, particularly in the health sector, education and the food industry. The government designating certain workers as essential saw many BAME people put on the frontline against a virus that the government has failed to control.

The BAME lives lost in the pandemic cannot be reduced to statistics; daily death tolls are dehumanising and have left the public desensitised to this still unfolding tragedy. The death of TfL worker Belly Mujinga, a black woman who was spat on by a passenger and denied PPE by her employer, exposes the shocking neglect perpetrated by those with a responsibility to protect essential workers. Her death further ignited Black Lives Matter protests earlier this summer. Areema Nasreen, a brown woman, was one of the first nurses to die of the virus. She worked tirelessly in the intensive care units in a hospital near Birmingham. These stories remind us of the lives behind every statistic and demonstrate the overexposure of BAME people on the frontline and the failure of the government to protect them.

The most vulnerable communities experience the greatest impact of the virus, while the government continues to deny them protection.

The racial disparity in the effects of the virus has been investigated and some have suggested that biological factors can partially explain why BAME people are more likely to die of the virus. The August PHE report states that once comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension and type II diabetes are taken into account, the disproportionate impact of coronavirus on BAME people is less pronounced. The link between these conditions and poverty highlights the connections between material conditions, race and risk of suffering from the virus. The report fails to investigate the intersection between occupation, deprivation, race and coronavirus deaths, a gross oversight that prevents us from gaining a holistic understanding of the risk posed by the virus. This type of simplification reduces the issue to genetics and fails to take into account the way in which deliberate actions taken by the government have reinforced structural inequalities.

Socio-economic inequalities have exacerbated the racial inequalities entrenched by the pandemic. The option to work from home simply isnt available for many, meaning that not just those workers deemed essential have had to travel, often on public transport, to unsafe workplaces, putting themselves at risk in order to survive. Poor and crowded housing has aggravated this crisis. Half of all Bangladeshis and Pakistanis live in poverty, limiting their ability to self-isolate or shield and putting their lives at greater risk. Like the Grenfell Tower tragedy, poor housing has exposed the intersection between poverty, government neglect and institutionalised racism, which has ultimately led to the avoidable loss of BAME lives. The most vulnerable communities experience the greatest impact of the virus, while the government continues to deny them protection.

Not only has the government put BAME workers on the frontline, it has actively targeted their communities during the pandemic. The Conservative MP Craig Whittaker stoked backlash by suggesting that Muslims were to blame for the spread of the virus, with the Prime Minister failing to denounce the comments. Furthermore, an investigation by Liberty revealed that the police are more likely to fine black and brown people for breaking coronavirus rules. This targeting of BAME communities by the Conservative government predates the pandemic and can be seen by the hostile environment policies that led to the Windrush scandal. The Equality and Human Rights Commission recently stated that these discriminatory actions were against the law. Racism is deeply ingrained in the states consciousness, meaning the simultaneous targeting and neglect of BAME communities is far from incidental.

As with the Grenfell tragedy, the Windrush scandal and the hostile environment policies, the governments response to the pandemic indicates that it does not value BAME lives. These systems of oppression however, are part of a wider malaise. Entrenched structural inequalities, both in institutions and wider society, have been highlighted by the pandemic. This is a time of crisis, and BAME lives are on the frontline.

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On the frontline: How the government has made BAME lives dispensable - Varsity Online

Hardly anyone in Turkey thought they would bid farewell to 2020 amid a fresh controversy surrounding the Islamic headscarf.

The response to Ali Babacan, who chairs the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), tearing up while talking about his sister's removal from the university during the infamous Feb. 28 process, fueled the debate anew. At the same time, Fikri Salar, a main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) heavyweight and former Cabinet minister, sparked controversy by publicly targeting women who cover their hair.

That Babacan, who cozied up to secularists and liberals for a while, reached out to conservatives with a reference to the headscarf ban unsettled skeptics, who have been urging him to engage in "self-criticism." Some have accused the former Justice and Development Party (AK Party) politician of "exploiting the past suffering of religious people." Others have said Babacan is "a follower of political Islam in the guise of a liberal."

Babacan could not even appease his critics by charging the ruling party for "using political power to oppress other groups." Instead, he was promptly asked to come clean and criticize his own political career.

Ironically, the former finance minister had emerged as a vocal critic of the AK Party government, brushing aside Generation Z's demand for reconciliation and mild language much like his former colleague, Ahmet Davutolu, who currently chairs the Future Party (GP).

The secularist backlash against Babacan's latest attempt to maintain his ties to conservatives speaks volumes about the dilemma facing Turkey's recently established political parties. Their fellow opposition figures do not tolerate the slightest outreach to conservatives Muslims, even if former AK Party politicians jump on the CHP's "dictatorship" bandwagon and agree to the restoration of a parliamentary system. In other words, they are strictly forbidden from paving a third way between the ruling party and the anti-government coalition, dominated by the CHP, the Good Party (IP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

To make matters worse for them, the AK Party remains the true representative of conservative voters. President Recep Tayyip Erdoan abolished the headscarf ban that made Babacan weep. They cannot embrace the charge of authoritarianism or other liberal demands because everything is already taken.

Spokespeople for the DEVA and the GP target the government with the CHP's rhetorical ammunition, but they haven't uttered a single word yet to criticize opposition parties. One thing is clear: They cannot speak a genuine political language under that ultra-secularist oppression. They will end up further alienating conservatives, from among whom they emerged, and failing to make liberals and secularists happy.

I was deeply troubled by Salar expressing doubt about a judge, wearing a headscarf, protecting his rights and delivering justice. Those comments may have been dismissed as an act of ultra-secularist militance, not uncommon on the pro-CHP network Halk TV's shows, had the commentator been a leftist with extreme views. Instead, those words came from Salar, a prominent Social Democrat, revealing the deeply entrenched anti-headscarf sentiment among CHP's ranks.

It seems that the dream of reinventing the oppression that Turkey's religious citizens endured during the Feb. 28 process is still alive. That sentiment not only revives the outdated headscarf debate specifically, the arbitrary distinction between the providers and recipients of public services but also shows that the idea of "the reactionary threat" is very much alive in secularist minds.

To be clear, I do not expect the secularism debate in Turkey to come to an end. It is quite surprising, however, that such primitive interpretations of that principle are still so popular. One would have at least hoped that the crude, French-Jacobinist version was replaced by the Anglosaxon approach.

The fierce opposition to the religious headscarf, which Salar reaffirmed, clearly demonstrates that Turkey's Kemalists, leftists and secularists have not undergone the transformation necessary to appeal to voters. That's enough to understand why they cannot win elections.

The obvious question is whether conservatives should be concerned. It is no secret that conservative voters could experience another Feb. 28 process once the AK Party is no longer in power. The CHP leadership manages to conceal its thirst for revenge yet, perhaps, fortunately, pro-CHP networks like Halk TV kindly share the movement's real thoughts with the general public. There is a broad spectrum of CHP figures from those advocating a coup to those who want the call to prayer to be recited in Turkish and those who want to convert the Blue Mosque into a museum.

In contrast, the state's relationship with religion underwent a serious period of normalization under the AK Party. Muslim demands came to occupy a certain space in the public domain legally, as the secular lifestyle remained widespread. Outside the aggressive realm of politics, a fresh interaction between secularists and religious people became possible in socioeconomic life.

A brand of politics, which respects the religious demands of conservatives, will remain at the heart of Turkish politics. There is no reason to worry, as Erdoan's brand of struggle (rather than the liberal impostors bullied into self-critique) will be Turkey's strongest political current in the future.

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Turkish politics and discussions on Islamic headscarf | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

We are beginning a new year, yet the 2020 election is still raising questions about the future of democracy in the United States. Professor Camila Vergara is a postdoctoral research scholar and lecturer at the Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia Law School. She has written an important book, Systemic Corruption: Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic, and says the U.S. is an oligarchic democracy, a system designed to serve some but not all. In this interview, Dr. Vergara discusses how we can implement real democracy, beginning at the local level.

Tom Bauer: Why does Joe Biden say U.S. democracy is the best system in the world?

Camila Vergara: The representative system that we call democracy was established for social hierarchies to be preserved and for elites who govern to be insulated from popular pressures. The founders had money and resources, and they wanted the people kept far away from power so they were not forced to redistribute. This was explicit in the design. The object of the liberal state was the preservation of private property. The working classes are always going to try and elect someone that will redistribute property. They needed a political system which would filter popular demands. They were afraid of the tyranny of majority when the real threat was the power of the wealthy. It was rotten from the beginning.

So, this is how the system is rigged.

Yes. Systemic corruption is a constitutional issue. I measure it by what the system is producing. The constitution organizes power, and power is paired with wealth. We can think of the level of inequality in a society as the degree of corruption that society has. If a big chunk of the GDP is being appropriated by the 1 percent, and the majority of the people are being relatively dispossessed, then the system is not working for the majority, but for the 1 percent.

Does democracy work at all?

We are not a democracy, we are an oligarchic democracy, a system with free and fair elections, and free speech [within certain limits], but run by the powerful few for the benefit of the powerful few. This is not done in a direct manner. They might say they are preserving a system or fail to change the system to benefit the majority. They receive money from corporations to not do anything because the best way to preserve the system is to leave everything as it is. Corruption is not just an action; it is also negligence.

By negligence, do you mean the signs of systemic corruption are revealed by what isnt done? By societal neglect like letting people die and environmental racism? And not protecting people from police violence? Not changing the laws?

Laws are never neutral. A law never benefits everyone the same. Here in the United States, police kill Black people in the streets on a daily basis. But I dont feel fear, even if Im not American, because Im white. The right to life or to live free from fear is not equally distributed. Moreover, the idea that our legislators are these neutral people who will make the best law is just absurd. It doesnt happen. There is always an agenda. We need to think about corruption more broadly, not merely as when a public official receives money in exchange for benefits, as it is currently understood. Corruption is built into the structure. It is how the system works. It is false that we are in a democracy and that the system works for the majority. The framers of the Constitution sold us an ideal that has never materialized. The ideal of formal equality is an illusion. Were not equal in society, only on paper. We need to re-politicize inequality because inequality is not natural but a by-product of our constitutional frameworks.

The law serves the elites, in a system which was designed to serve elites, and this is why the system maintains inequality. So, are we going to be able to do anything about things like systemic racism and climate change before we solve this problem of systemic corruption?

I dont think so. Think about the problem of the environment. It needs to be solved, people are all on board, but the governments are not doing enough, and theyre never going to do enough. In an oligarchic democracy, the oligarchs have the grip on power. The congress and the laws that are made, the judges and how they apply the law everything works for the benefit of the few. Not because individual judges are bought, not only because special interests buy individual lawmakers; its because the laws are made and applied in an unequal manner. They come predetermined. Its not about the specific judge being a racist, its because the law allows for inequality and discrimination. So, without solving the problem of how to make laws able to foster equality and control the power of oligarchs, who benefit from the current state of things, it will be difficult to achieve radical change.

If you want to tackle climate change, and you want to tackle it in a manner that is going to avert destruction, you need the people themselves making the judgement. The government cannot be trusted because the government is oligarchic. It is in the grip of oligarchy. It doesnt matter who you elect because they are not independent. You would have to change the elite in all the institutions, and that is more difficult than organizing popular power.

By popular power, you mean local assemblies, right? Can you explain a bit more about those?

Local assemblies in which people meet and make decisions. Theyre autonomous and can connect to other local assemblies. You had town hall meetings in the United States. These were instances in which the people met and made decisions, engaging in self-government. Thomas Jefferson lamented that the Constitution didnt institutionalize the town halls as it did with the other state powers. Jefferson is influenced by the tradition of popular government in the Roman Republic in which the common people had their own assembly. Today, we are talking about huge states. You cannot have one assembly of the people. You need to have assemblies in every district, connected in a network that works like a plant.

You mean like an organic plant, something that grows?

Yes. Government is hierarchical. It works like our own animal structure. It has a brain that commands, and it has the extremities that do. Plants have brains in each root and in each leaf, and they can communicate with other trees and plants. For example, if you have a plague or disease, trees produce a chemical reaction through the roots and the leaves that communicate to others to protect themselves by creating a kind of immunity response to that pest that is coming. So, there is solidarity in plants, and they go off in all directions. Basically, theres no central command in the tree. The roots go wherever they want, and if they find water they communicate to the others, so they can turn around in that direction. I think a network of local assemblies should mimic this decentralized structure.

Have you read Moral Tribes, by Joshua Greene? His solution to answering moral questions when youre not part of the same team may be similar to what you just described. One root has the skill that says the waters that way, but wait a minute, theyre Republican. So, in this decision were going to follow the Republicans; in the next decision we might follow the Democrats. It sounded like he was saying the ideal would be a bit more on a case-by-case basis, and the moral decision would be based on meeting the practical demands of the decision at the time to maximize benefit for all.

It is similar to what I propose. There should be no central command, and if there are assemblies that believe in something, theres no authority to make the others conform. If youre going to respect creativity and spontaneity, you need to allow for issues to arise organically, from the ground up. Take the case of Canada or Chile, where there is a minority of Indigenous people. If you ask citizens in Canada or Chile what are the 10 most important issues that need to be discussed, the majority would not put Indigenous issues because there are other things more important to them. Maybe health care or environmental things would be first. Maybe Indigenous issues, if they make the cut, would be way in the bottom. But if you have a decentralized network, it is likely that a resolution that has to do with Indigenous peoples will come from an Indigenous assembly. And even if your white, middle-class assembly would not actively sponsor Indigenous issues, it could vote in favor of that because it makes sense. But if you centralize decision making then the majority, who are not Indigenous, will have their issues bumped up, basically, and the others will never be discussed, or will be discussed in the margins without much consequence. However, if you are presented with an issue that makes sense to you, even if it doesnt benefit you directly, you are likely to support it. Then social change could come from one assembly that is marginal in proportion to the population.

So, what I propose is not a government of the majority, in which only the majoritys interests are primal, but a government in which the majoritys judgement and common sense rule. There is a kind of plant-like solidarity, in which we could support issues for the benefit of others. The same as the tree that is dying with a pest produces chemicals to alert others and save them, people organized in local assemblies could approve motions in solidarity with others. I think solidarity is part of human nature. Of course, greed is also part of human nature, but while greed is fostered by our current system, solidarity is not enabled because it doesnt have a space or an institution through which people could engage in it.

It sounds amazing. But how are we supposed to do this?

The only way to fight against systemic corruption which I define as the progressive oligarchization of power in society is to set up a counterpower, like the one in the Roman Republic in which the plebeian people those who were not aristocrats, like the majority of us today, who do not have privilege and live paycheck to paycheck had their own institution and their own representatives, the tribunes, who had the power to veto anything coming from the government as well as to initiate legislation. Today, we dont have that. Niccol Machiavelli said that for a republic to be really free, it needs to empower the plebeian people, those who are today de facto second-class citizens. A republic that does not give institutions to the common people to resist oppression ends up decaying into an oligarchy, a government of the few for the benefit of the few. Therefore, the constitution of liberty is a constitution based on institutional conflict, on dissent and struggle. Imagine if we had the power, as citizens, to veto laws that we believe are oppressive, or push for reform when elites are acting as gatekeepers of the status quo?

How do we get that power?

The power of assemblies comes from people acting together politically; we dont need permission to assemble, deliberate and decide. Historically, popular power has been the power of numbers, the power of being in the street, or in assemblies. If we could have local assemblies, even if they dont have any legal power, they could pressure government to comply. If, for example, a motion for repealing a law is voted and aggregated, and the majority of assemblies in a country agree to this repeal, I would say the government and the system need to respond to that. If youre the government and do not comply, youre going to lose in the next election. So even if local assemblies dont have legal power, the people by their number, their presence, exert pressure on elites. But ideally local assemblies need to have their power incorporated into the Constitution.

So, it sounds like theres going to be all these votes from all these different assemblies. How does it all shake out? Again, who decides?

When you vote as an individual, youre voting within the system, and within the logic of the system. Youre part of the system. When you are together and you can deliberate, and have arguments and testimony and experiences that are shared with people that you trust and people that you respect in your neighborhood that you already know, or that you start knowing, then something new can happen. Thinking with others, common sense arises, a common sense that is not constrained by the individualist system. Hannah Arendt says coming together, political action, can trigger a new beginning.

But how would this change the system? Can you walk us through the process a bit of how this might happen?

From any local assembly, a great idea could come out, and if that assembly approved a resolution, it could also be discussed in neighboring assemblies and then aggregated into a popular demand that could force government to comply. But the only way to do this is to do it through politics of presence: to be with others in the same space and reason together and not be mere passive receptors of the media. The media are selling you crap all the time, and the majority of the people buy it and end up voting to legitimize bad decisions. Its very easy to manipulate individuals to vote and legitimize a terrible policy if you are not in concert with others and sharing information. The only way to actually have a power that is going to be a counterpower that is going to rectify the bad things government does, is to have a network of primary assemblies from where common people can push back collectively.

But, ideally, power for assemblies will come from the Constitution?

Ideally. And, ideally, people would be paid. The only time ancient Athens was really a democracy was when Pericles established payment for going to the assembly. Everybody had the right to go to the assembly and vote and do government, but only the nobles had the time to go to the assembly to spend a day deliberating. If you were a farmer, which was the majority of the people, you needed to be farming. You couldnt spend a day going to the city to be deliberating. Pericles understood that the only way for the working classes to be able to attend the assembly for this to really be a democracy of the demos, the people was to pay them a salary. I pair this with the universal basic income (UBI) initiative.

Ive heard this before, the idea of making the people do something in exchange for UBI, like some kind of public service. Since UBI is about giving everyone a base income, is this like some kind of jury duty thing? Anyone and everyone could be called to attend public assembly as a trade-off for getting UBI?

Yes. If youre going to pay people, pay people for being political, and not just for being consumers. UBI is just receiving money and spending it, so you are reinforcing the system in being a private consumer. If you made the payment conditional to going to the assembly, theres an extra incentive to go and do politics. Its also a fiscal stimulus. This is also the only way for the poor to vote. The poor tend to abstain from voting. If youre going to have the poor engage in politics, you need to pay them. You need to give them food. You need to give them child care. They will go if you do this because they are deprived of this.

They are deprived because they are living in a corrupt system, which means they will have a lot to say about it. And free food is always a draw.

Its a great incentive. For the upper-middle classes, maybe not, because they have nannies and receive a good paycheck. So why would they waste their Saturday going to the assembly? But if you dont have any of those things, and you are going to have free food, even if just coffee and cookies, you probably will go. Its like the ark of Noah. If you build it, they will come. I hope that if we built the appropriate infrastructure to engage in politics at the local level, it will happen, and people will be engaged. And you dont need constitutional change for that. You can have a mayor from a city doing this, because it doesnt need to be by law.

The mayor of my city, Montreal, is Valrie Plante. What could she do to make this happen?

Have neighborhood assemblies. For that you need spaces where people can gather. Of course, COVID is difficult and winter is coming. But in summer, you can do it outside.

Can you Zoom assemblies?

Yes, you can have a Zoom assembly. And actually, Zoom can accommodate more than a hundred people. So you can have an assembly. The mayor would need to yield power.

Yield power?

This is the point. Its difficult. Mayors dont like to be told what to do. But youre not going to waste your time going to a Zoom assembly if you know your vote doesnt mean anything. Why are you going to waste your time if you have no power? In order to have assemblies work, they need to have power. A mayor would have to say, Okay, lets organize these neighborhood assemblies, and whatever is decided in these assemblies, I will do within my scope of power.

Insofar as she is able.

Yes.

After all, she needs wiggle room to deal with oligarchs, right?

Yes. When you have progressive leaders, they are generally trapped and powerless. If they want to push for something radical, they need to deal with the opposition of oligarchs. But if you have assemblies behind you, then you can say to the oligarchs: Look, the assemblies decided X and therefore I need to implement X, and if you go against them, it is probable you will mobilize them further.

Sounds a lot like what Bernie Sanders is trying to do.

If Bernie Sanders would have come to power and he wanted to put a wealth tax or whatever he wanted to do, how would he manage? Congress is completely deadlocked and you need super-majorities to do anything. So even if he would have been elected, he would not have been able to do much without the support of mobilization and assemblies. Having an organized popular power is a complement to our democracy, and having this new actor would really materialize democracy.

By new actor, you mean a new peoples institution of constitutionally mandated assemblies?

Yes. Democracy is the rule of the people, but the people today do not rule. We pay six figures to mayors, the president and legislators to do their jobs, but if theyre not doing their jobs, we dont have any mechanism to control them. Thats why we need a new popular institution to be a counterpower to resist the oligarchic tendencies of the system.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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Democracy Will Never Be Delivered From Above. It Must Be Built From Below. - Truthout

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan on Friday said for Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), the year 2020 was marked with "Indian brutalities and oppression" of Kashmiris.

"The military siege, communications blockade, media blackout, incarceration of the Kashmiri leadership, and every possible violation of human rights of the Kashmiri people continue for 515 days since Indian's illegal and inhuman actions of August 5, 2019," Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said in his weekly media briefing.

The spokesperson said in their brazen acts of state terrorism, the Indian occupation forces martyred more than 300 innocent Kashmiris, including women and children, in fake encounters and staged cordon-and-search operations.

He said during the same period, 750 Kashmiris were critically injured, while 2,770 innocent Kashmiris were arbitrarily detained and 922 houses destroyed as part of collective punishment inflicted on the Kashmiri communities.

In pursuit of its agenda to convert the Muslim majority of IIOJK into a minority, he said, the Indian government issued more than two million fake domicile certificates to non-Kashmiris under the so called "Jammu and Kashmir Grant of Domicile Certificate (Procedure) Rules, 2020".

The spokesperson said Pakistan reiterated its call for a UN Commission of Inquiry, as recommended by the OHCHR in its two reports in 2018 and 2019.

"The commission should thoroughly investigate the Indian crimes against the Kashmiri people during the past three decades," he stressed.

The spokesperson expressed Pakistan's deep concern over the health condition and continued incarceration of Kashmiri leadership, including founding leader of Kashmiri organisation Dukhtaran-i-Millat and the "Iron Lady of Kashmir" Asiya Andrabi, leader and founder of the Jammu & Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party; Shabbir Ahmed Shah; and prominent leaders such as Yasin Malik, Masarat Alam Bhat, Mohammad Ashraf Sehraie, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

He recalled that Pakistan had written to the UN Secretary General and the UN Human Rights Commissioner, particularly highlighting the inhuman and illegal treatment of Andrabi.

Chaudhri said to divert attention from its internal failings and the situation in IIOJK, India continued to escalate tensions along the Line of Control (LOC).

"During 2020 alone, Indian occupation troops made 3,097 ceasefire violations, deliberately targeting the civilian populated areas. In these unprovoked Indian violations, 28 innocent civilians embraced shahadat, while 257 sustained serious injuries," he said.

The spokesperson said the Indian government with its illegal and inhuman actions had failed and "will continue to fail in breaking the will of the Kashmiri people".

"The brutalisation of innocent Kashmiris at the hands of Indian occupation troops, will only further strengthen their resolve for freedom from illegal Indian occupation.

I wish to reassure our Kashmiri brothers and sisters that they are not alone in their rightful struggle," he said.

He said Pakistan would continue to stand with them till the realization of their inalienable right to self-determination.

APP

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2020 marked with Indian oppression of Kashmiris - The Express Tribune

On December 9, 30 leading German cultural institutions issued a statement opposing a resolution directed against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement passed by the German parliament (Bundestag) a year and a half ago. More than 1,000 artists from Germany, Israel and around the world have lent their support to the statement.

The Bundestag resolution Resolutely confronting the BDS movementcombating anti-Semitism was put forward by the parliamentary groups of Germanys governing grand coalition of the conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), together with the opposition parties Free Democratic Party and the Greens. The resolution accused the BDS of anti-Semitism.

Modelled on the movement against apartheid in South Africa, BDS calls for a boycott of Israel and demands, among other things, an end to the occupation of Arab lands, the demolition of the wall around the occupied territories, legal equality for Jews and Arabs and the right of return for Palestinian refugees, as agreed in UN Resolution 194.

The Bundestags condemnation of BDS served to denounce and suppress as anti-Semitic any criticism of the policies of the Israeli government, which is at the centre of imperialist preparations for war in the Middle East. The Bundestag resolution demanded the withholding of any public spaces and financial support to organisations and individuals with any sort of connection to BDS, or who sympathise with its aims. This meant, de facto, the suppression of any criticism of the foreign policy of the German government, which, despite occasional tactical differences, pursues its own imperialist goals in the Middle East in close cooperation with Israelone of the most important markets for Germanys arms industries.

It is highly significant that the Bundestag resolution also received support from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which plays down the crimes of the Nazis and tolerates numerous anti-Semites and neo-Nazis in its ranks. When it came to the vote, the AfD faction abstained only because it had put forward its own, even harsher motion, calling for a ban on BDS. The Left Party also introduced its own motion, which condemned BDS in the same manner as the government motion but included a few phrases about reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians.

The December statement by the cultural institutions now makes clear that the real aim of the all-party Bundestag resolution was not to combat anti-Semitism, but rather to suppress freedom of expression. Since the passing of the Bundestag resolution, numerous artists and intellectuals, including Jews, have been disinvited from scheduled events or boycotted because they criticise the policies of the Israeli government or defend the rights of Palestinians.

A key part of the statement by cultural institutions reads: In the name of this resolution, significant voices and critical positions are being suppressed on the basis of false accusations of anti-Semitism. The cultural institutions formed a working group titled Initiative GG 5.3 Weltoffenheit, in whose name they published their declaration. The name refers to the clause dealing with the freedom of art and science enshrined in Article 5 (3) of Germanys Basic Law.

The cultural initiative was supported by internationally renowned institutions such as the Berliner Festspiele, the Deutsches Theater Berlin and the Alliance of International Production Houses, academic institutions such as the Einstein Forum Potsdam, the Berlin College of Science, the Centre for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin, as well as state-related organisations such as the Goethe-Institute, the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Humboldt Forum Foundation and Berlins House of World Culture.

The latter organisations fear that the suppression of all criticism of Israel will endanger their work in other countries, but the main driving force of the declaration is the concern that suppressing critical views plays into the hands of right-wing, authoritarian tendencies and stifles the freedom of culture.

The common fight against anti-Semitism, racism, right-wing extremism and any form of violent religious fundamentalism is at the heart of our initiative, the statement reads. Germanys historical responsibility should not lead to a blanket moral or political delegitimisation of other historical experiences of violence and oppression. Confrontation and debate must be possible, especially in publicly funded cultural and discursive spaces.

The declaration ends with the statement that a society open to the world and that permits public discourse and dissent is the basis which allows the arts and sciences to continue to exercise their own function: i.e. critical reflection on the social order and an opening up to alternative world concepts.

As an example of the negative consequences of the Bundestag resolution, the declaration cites the case of the Cameroonian historian and political researcher Achille Mbembe. Mbembe was invited to give the opening speech to this years Ruhrtriennale but was then confronted with a wave of accusations of anti-Semitism after he described the Israeli occupation of Palestine as a form of colonialism and compared it to the apartheid policy of South Africa. The artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale refused to turn down his invitation and the administration of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia cancelled the meeting in the meantime, citing the coronavirus pandemic.

Mbembe is only one of many who have been accused and censored as a result of the Bundestag resolution. Artists who have been accused of anti-Semitism include the London-based author Kamila Shamsie, who was stripped of the Nelly Sachs Prize by the city of Dortmund, and the rapper Tali Kweli, whose invitation to participate at the Open Source Festival in Dsseldorf was withdrawn. The most recent and notable case involved Israeli students at Berlins Weiensee Art Academy, who were prevented from carrying out a series of meetings critical of Zionism by the university administration.

There have been previous cases of attempts to suppress the BDS. On December 13, 2017, Munichs city council banned by a large majority any meetings in municipal premises that deal with, support, follow or promote the BDS. A motion opposing this ban was initially rejected by Germanys Administrative Court. Following an appeal, Germanys Higher Administrative Court justified the plaintiffs motion in November 2020.

In 2018, the director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Peter Schfer, was forced to resign after holding a podium discussion with the Jewish philosopher and feminist Judith Butler and the anti-Zionist professor Micha Brumlik. More than 400 Jewish scholars, mainly from the United States, Israel and Germany, protested against Schfers resignation, which came in the wake of huge political pressure from the Israeli embassy. Brumlik criticized the accusations against Schfer as a sign of the decline in left-liberal cultural circles, likening it to a new form of McCarthyism directed against all those suspected of some sort of support for the BDS.

The artistic director of the Berliner Festspiele, Thomas Oberender, who signed the declaration against the governments BDS resolution, said in practice it led to revoking invitations to artists and scholars who have worked in Germany for many years and whose work has never violated the values of our Basic Law.

Hartmut Dorgerloh, the general director of the Humboldt Forum Foundation in Berlin, pointed to the growing influence of far-right radicalism in German public life and declared, We are living at a time when rational behaviour is being disregarded at the highest political level. [...] a time when critical positions toward the Israeli government are equated with anti-Semitism, while nationalist and openly racist forces gain momentum.

The American philosopher Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum Potsdam for the past 20 years, told Deutschlandfunk radio that as a Jew she reacted angrily when no reference was made of the broad range of Jewish discussion worldwide, but instead only very conservative voices could be heard. Criticism of the Israeli government must be possible, she said: According to the logic of the BDS resolution, neither Albert Einstein nor Hannah Arendt would be allowed to give a lecture in Germany because, although they supported the state of Israel, they were both very critical of the unjust treatment of the Palestinians.

The accusation of anti-Semitism against leftists and intellectuals plays into the hands of right-wing radicals and fascistssuch as Donald Trump, Viktor Orbn, Matteo Salvini, Rodrigo Duterte and the AfDwho identify with the racist policies of the Israeli government and have been greeted jubilantly as state guests in Jerusalem. In Germany, the number of anti-Semitic crimes by far-right radicals increased sharply last year and more and more cases of anti-Semitism and pro-Nazi tendencies have been uncovered in the German police and the armed forces. At the same time, accusations of anti-Semitism are levelled against any leftist who criticises the policies of the far-right Israeli government.

The German government and its anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, have sharply rejected the statement by cultural activists. The German government repeated its mantra that the State of Israels right to exist was non-negotiable. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said that its officials had ruled out any cooperation with the BDS movement before the resolution was passed and had refrained from supporting any means which could promote the BDS. The CDU faction of Leipzig City Council is seeking to take action against the director of the citys annual Documentary Film Festival (DOK), who signed the statement by cultural bodies.

The basis for this slanderous campaign is the definition of anti-Semitism laid down by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which is enshrined in the Bundestags BDS resolution and bluntly criminalises political criticism of the state of Israel.

Internationally, the accusation of anti-Semitism is being used to persecute even the mildest critics of Israel. In the UK, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was suspended temporarily and tens of thousands of his supporters purged from the party on drummed-up charges of anti-Semitism.

BDS co-founder and well-known Palestinian politician Omar Barghouti was denied entry to the US where he was scheduled to give a lecture at Harvard University, while the Netanyahu government denied entry to US members of Congress Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. The Israeli state has drafted an extensive blacklist of individuals who are denied entry to the country due to links to BDS.

Anti-Semitism, i.e., the racial hatred of Jews, is an ideology associated with the extreme right. In Germany, it assumed the most pernicious, murderous form with the Holocaust. But in other countries, it also serves the ruling class as a means of deflecting the anger of mostly petty-bourgeois layers of the population threatened with social decline by directing them against the Jewish part of the population. Socialists, on the other hand, have always fiercely fought against the poison of anti-Semitism and repeatedly opposed all forms of discrimination against Jews.

The denunciation of left-wing criticism of the reactionary, anti-democratic policies of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, alongside the political campaign to denigrate Islam, reflects the rightward shift of the ruling class. Domestically, it is aimed at criminalising those critical of the government and, in terms of foreign policy, justifying militarism and oppression in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

See more here:

German cultural institutions oppose government's antiBDS resolution aimed at quashing criticism of Israel - WSWS

The case for passing Bill C-15, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, was crystallized last week with Conservative Party Leader Erin OTooles ignominious remarks sanitizing the residential schools.

OToole suggested the intent of the schools was educational and snidely advised using the record of Liberal governments as a means to silence debate. While the comments betray OTooles whitewashing of Canadian history, he was right about one thing: discrimination, dispossession and denial of Indigenous rights is a proud bipartisan tradition in Canada.

Like every significant advance for Indigenous rights within Canada, Bill C-15 results from decades of activism, organizing and struggle led by Indigenous peoples. It is a short, relatively simple piece of legislation that affirms the UN declarations application in Canadian law. The bill also provides a framework for aligning laws and policies to be consistent with the declaration through a mandated action plan with annual progress reporting. Bill C-15 is based on a similar private members bill tabled by former NDP MP and residential school survivor, Romeo Saganash.

The UN declaration defines the minimum standards for dignity for Indigenous people as human rights related to culture, identity, language, health and education. It also includes articles on self-determination and self-government, redress and restitution, and the requirement to secure Indigenous peoples free, prior, and informed consent for developments within their lands. It is these clauses that have the potential to transform Crown-Indigenous relations and begin to undo hundreds of years of Crown veto and the attempted destruction of Indigenous cultures, governance system and legal orders.

The Trudeau government has long espoused commitment to the declaration. Every day, however, thousands of decisions are made by the Crown that directly contradict it. Case law has set some minimum legal requirements to consult and accommodate should Indigenous rights be infringed. In our experience, even this minimum standard is often unmet, the Crown preferring to force Indigenous people to prove that their rights have been infringed after the fact.

The courts can only do so much to remedy the conflict between the Crown and Indigenous peoples. Bill C-15 moves the country in the direction of resolving the conflicts proactively. As required under the bill, the first action plan is to identify and prioritize which laws and acts to harmonize.

Bill C-15 also makes explicit the need to address state-led racism and violence. The governments actions and inactions have created inequities that cry out for action every day. Weve all seen the reports: the unequal funding of housing and infrastructure; the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system; the race-based oppression inflicted on Indigenous people in the Canadian health-care system; and the continued removal of Indigenous children from their communities by child service agencies, to name a few.

Even by its modest objective of aligning laws with the declaration over time, the bill is weak. It gives the government three years (!) for the action plan to be developed. The tabling of that plan and the annual progress reports to Parliament are vague and do not provide any remedy beyond public pressure should there be no progress to speak of. Perhaps Trudeau thought better of an ambitious timeline after unconscionably missing the target to end boil-water advisories in First Nations?

The limitations of the legislation run deeper. In 2019, British Columbia passed its law implementing UNDRIP that includes mechanisms to enable shared decision-making with First Nations, including statutory powers. Statutory decisions are generally defined by legislation, and power often rests with a minister or civil servant. B.C.s law enabled the Crown to negotiate agreements that share decision-making with Indigenous governing bodies and require their consent before the Crown executes decisions that could affect them.

Bill C-15 does not have any tools to help operationalize consent or create new ways for Indigenous title to be implemented. Its slow, incrementalist approach is frustrating. Nevertheless, it has merit. Despite shortcomings, the bill will provide new avenues and contestation sites for Indigenous rights movements to advance.

Most importantly, it binds any future government, no matter its political stripe, to the high standard of consent and the inevitability of Indigenous self-determination. Until the fundamental structures for how decisions are made, Indigenous political movements will continue to challenge Canadas authority and the myth of Crown land.

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Khelsilem is an elected leader for the Squamish First Nation. Jonathan Sas is an honorary witness to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was an adviser to B.C.s minister of Indigenous relations.

See more here:

Indigenous rights bill weak, but necessary - ThePeterboroughExaminer.com

George Orwells Animal Farm debuts today as a PC and mobile game based on a classic work of literature.

The game was made by small collective of indie developers and they worked with estate of George Orwell, who wrote the classic allegorical book about totalitarian government in 1945. This game is the work of indie developers headed by Imre Jele and Andy Payne, who lead the mini-studio The Dairymen. They enlisted another indie, Nerial (creators of Reigns), to help make the game and writing veteran Emily Short wrote the narrative.

They describe it as an overtly political act of game development. It is a labor of love for Jele, who grew up in communist Hungary before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He felt the oppression of the government every day, and he was distressed to see the U.S. fall into the same parallels to living in totalitarian countries. He saw the same tactics of alternative truths, fact manipulation, and populism used, and he felt that Orwells allegory full of gaslighting, hypocrisy, corruption, and greed has never been more relevant.

August marked 75 years since the novels first printing. I read it along with Orwells 1984 and a host of other dystopian novels when I was young. And Animal Farm remains relevant today, but perhaps the medium of video games will bring it home better for young people, as games are great for showing what if scenarios. Jele convinced the Orwell estate to support the effort. The resulting narrative game is a choice-based adventure title that puts the player at the center of an allegorical revolution on a farm, where the animals overthrow the humans.

By choosing which of the animals wishes they follow and who is ignored or sidelined players will influence the critical events that define the fate of the farm. The game has six different destinies and eight different endings. The narrator is Abubakar Salim, who played Bayek in Assassins Creed: Origins.

I interviewed Jele and Short about the making of the game.Heres an edited transcript of our interview.

Above: Animal Farm co-creator Imre Jele.

Image Credit: The Dairymen

GamesBeat: Animal Farm is one of my favorites, as is 1984. I was curious how this all got started for you, how you went down this road.

Imre Jele: I was born in Hungary, behind the Iron Curtain. I was on the other side of the fence. I grew up in a family that was politically active, what was considered by the government to be the wrong side of politics. I grew up in what they called the soft regime, but there was still some nasty stuff going on. I was the last generation that was still clapping for the big leader. A white shirt and a little red tie, and we marched up and down in front of the school.

Animal Farm was read to me when I was a child, next to The Little Prince and Winnie the Pooh. I dont know how they define me, those three books, but thats how I started. I remember very early on that I wanted to make a board game out of it, because it was such an important book to me. I could relate to it. I understood the story in a way, because my family was affected by it. I found some notes of mine, actually, that I made when I was an early teenager, about that board game. Its awful, I can tell you. It took a few decades.

A few years ago I had this moment where you know how it is when you keep saying to yourself, I should totally do that! And then you have this list of hundreds of things and its never going to happen. I went through that list and I wrote it all down on little pieces of paper. I made three piles. One was, it must happen. One was, it should happen. One was, it could happen. And then I set the shoulds and coulds on fire. It was very cathartic. In the must-happen pile was Animal Farm.

We started chasing this. I felt that gaming was ready for it. We were always an art, but not always a great art. We grew up. Its time. The audience is ready. The developers are ready. I said the same thing to the Orwell estate. I reached out to them. Thats a long story in itself, but the short version is that when I first reached out I got back an email that said, Rights not available. That was it. I wrote back to them, because I knew the rights were available, and I wanted to continue pursuing them. It took months and months, and ultimately I managed to convince the estate. They did what they were supposed to do. Its their job to protect the estate. They cant allow it to be misused, so to speak. But it took a long time, and an even longer time after we convinced them to figure out what the game was going to be.

We had multiple false starts. We built a bunch of prototypes with different strengths and weaknesses, but nothing quite felt right. I remember I kept referencing Nerial and the Reigns game series. At one point Andy, who worked with us on the team, said, You always keep talking about them, but why arent we working with them? So I reached out, and they were immediately super-excited. They wanted to be on board. In fact, that was the story of this whole thing. Anyone we spoke with, when we asked them to suggest someone, the answer was usually, How about me?

Emily, who Id known for a few years, was the same. I came to her and asked, Who would you suggest to write this? And she said, I know some people, but what about me? It was amazing. Thats how this whole indie collective came together. A lot of people with different companies and different allegiances were excited about this. They felt that its more than just a game project. Its something where we feel we have a responsibility to do it.

Above: Emily Short led the narrative for Animal Farm.

Image Credit: The Dairymen

GamesBeat: How long has it taken to get to this point?

Jele: For the longest time, I never said this out loud, but I was told that I should. We originally wanted to release this alongside the 2016 election. Ill leave it at that. I felt that certain figures around the world, not just in America, emerged over the last decade in particular, who started to use these tools that were eerily similar to what I lived through. I recognized the language. You might replace some words. Instead of capitalist spies its immigrants or whatever. But its the same language.

The actual development, though, we only started very late last year. It was December, maybe. We properly got started in January.

Emily Short: We were doing some narrative design pitch docs in November, but I wasnt really writing until December.

GamesBeat: Was there a challenge in getting it funded? What led to that long gestation?

Jele: Thats one of the reasons. Its a modest indie project. Were not raising millions. But still, one dollar is one dollar. It was a tricky effort. We got some offers, but we had to be cautious. We have certain allegiances that we have to stay clear of because of the implications and what they mean to the community. Ultimately we had an individual benefactor who chose to privately fund the entire enterprise, which was an amazing opportunity. We dont have to respond to a big corporate entity. We still have the relationship with the estate and with this investor, but theyve largely left us alone through the entire process. Weve only gotten support from them.

GamesBeat: How big an effort did it become as far as team size?

Jele: Overall, its just five or six people.

Short: Some people have come on and off. We swapped out engineers at Nerial at one point. But yeah, its usually been me, an artist, an engineer, and a couple of other people whove been involved in art direction or additional support of various kinds.

Jele: We also had the audio, the composer, Morgan, who Ive worked with a few times. We recorded the voice-over with Abubakar Salim, who was Bayak in Assassins Creed: Origins. Kate Saxon was our director. Her CV is quite impressive. All these people were excited to come on board. But the core team was fairly small.

GamesBeat: The book is fairly short. I dont know how long the game is, but how did you deal with adapting that narrative?

Short: The way we approached that, we wanted to definitely be a game. At the same time, we wanted to be very much faithful to what the book was, and not insert a lot of other material or other angles on things. The first stage of that for me I have to say, this was easier because of the kind of book it is. Animal Farm is a particularly good book to make into a game because its so much about systems and processes and how people affect each other. How the farm is doing, how the politics work. And each of the animals on the farm, obviously they have a character and a personality, but theyre also tied to a particular style of political engagement. Its a very systemic book to start with, which made it a lot easier.

Looking at that as a first step, thinking about OK, well, what are the systems in this book? How do we bring those into game systems? Lets make it about youre looking after this farm. It has certain qualities, things you might recognize. Think of a farm sim type of situation. Have we planted crops? How are the farm animals feeling? Those kinds of things come into it. You also have the storyline trajectory of whos in power and how theyre using that power. And then we associated each of the animals or animal groups with a particular type of verb or interaction. Boxer gets lots of work done, but hes not very critical of the political leadership. Different animals on the farm have different strategies for dealing with things.

That first step was just building out and mapping the books systems onto gameplay systems. And then the next thing was to take the text of the book and put it in a spreadsheet and break it into pieces. What are the beats here? Where do those map in terms of game states that could arise? This character is dead, so this beat becomes available, and so on. I added a few other things, which were just about things I think Orwell would have taken for granted that his audience already knew about. Harvesting and planting stuff. But basically it was those beats.

I looked through that to see where there were alternate game states that are clearly implied by choices in the book. This animal dies instead of that animal. Something goes differently in a key battle sequence. Those kinds of things. Thats where I needed to augment and create material that wasnt in the book. But I tried to be quite disciplined about not adding things that werent at least implied by that structure.

The most notable area where we needed to fill out a fair amount of content was around Snowball. If you play the game naively, or if we run through an auto-test and let it make choices automatically, most of the time youll end up with something close to the canonical structure of the book, where Napoleon winds up in charge. If you actually choose to push back on that and try to set up a situation where Napoleon is killed and Snowball takes charge, something like that we wanted to answer that question as well.

For things like that, I looked at other historical examples, especially from communist regimes, but also authoritarian regimes in general. What are alternate historical examples that, if they had happened before the writing of Animal Farm, might have inspired it as well? There are some elements of Snowballs regime that draw more from Maoist China attempts to industrialize in a way that arent particularly good for the inhabitants, to say the least so wed have something that felt like it was constructed with the same themes and the same thinking, even if it wasnt part of the original text.

Above: Animal Farm has a longer narrative than the book.

Image Credit: The Dairymen

Jele: The book is short. Depending on how fast you read it might take an afternoon. But its one of those books where Ive handed it to several people to read again, after they read it when they were much younger. They pick it up and say, This is it? I remember it being a lot longer. Everyone remembers more to the story because theres so much implied, and because of the historical context. With our knowledge of oppressive regimes we imagine that what weve heard about should have been covered in Animal Farm.

Theres a reason why Orwellian is a word now. People tie a lot of things together under that. Because of that, there are elements that people, when they play theyll think Orwell obviously wrote it. And I think Emily did a splendid job of matching the language and the phrasing and the wording used to the original book.

What I always say, though, we didnt want to make Animal Farm In Space. We just wanted to make Animal Farm. This book has, unfortunately, remained relevant for 75 years. Its 75 years old this summer.

We worked with the Orwell estate, but not just because of the licensing. They gave us insight early on, and a lot of feedback, which was very helpful. No one understands Orwell better. We also worked with the Orwell Society, which manages the Orwell Prize, and other organizations to make sure that we got it right. The estate wanted to make sure that we understood the work and had the right motivations.

Short: I didnt feel like they were constraining us at all. They were interested to know how we were approaching it thematically. We had quite a long conversation about other elements in Orwells work outside of Animal Farm. Essays, 1984, other things that might shed additional light. Some of that material I also read. But it was nice to have further background and further conversations around it. It was a useful process, also, to explain to them how the narrative design process did not change the story. They were interested in what we were doing to the story by making it playable, but that was a productive conversation in both directions.

GamesBeat: The book exists in everyones head. We all have our own imagination of what it would look like. How did you try to make something that would look right to people?

Jele: We had some art styles that we hope to release after the game comes out, because we had some crazy ideas. We had one that was based on Soviet brutalist propaganda posters. Its gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. But the reality was that again, we wanted to bear in mind that legacy of 75 years. We wanted to make sure we created an art style that isnt just a quick punch and then walk away, but something we believed could have that same legacy, that longevity.

We went back to book illustrations. You can see a couple here. My absolute favorite is Ralph Steadmans version. Its beautifully illustrated. Theres also a graphic novel version. There are some great versions. That was another source of inspiration. We kept going back to the old book illustrations, the woodcut look. What would that look like? Not trying to create something with the latest and shiniest effects we could put in, but something we felt would feel at home in a book.

Short: We were conscious throughout of the way that the bookit doesnt present itself exactly as a childrens book, but theres that quality of a fable. Its timeless. Its something that you could have read to you. The narrative voice in the book is very much the voice of an omniscient person who understands everything, even if hes not saying everything he knows. We tried to carry both of those things over in the art style, and also in our choice of who was voicing it and how the narration was done. We wanted to create that sense of being told the story.

GamesBeat: What is the age range youre targeting, if there is one?

Jele: Theres no target age as such. I think its going to be enjoyable for anyone whod enjoy the book. The book is usually taught in eighth or ninth grade in the states, but I read it when I was younger. I didnt understand everything in it, of course. But I dont think it calls for a specific age.

Short: A really young kid isnt necessarily going to follow the language. But we tried to keep the language itself simple enough that kids in that middle school age range would be able to follow it. Its the same with the gameplay. There are things you can try to pursue that would be more challenging. But if youre not playing with a great deal of tactical awareness, you should still be able to get an interesting story out of it.

Its meant to be something where you could sit down with it as a kid and get something interesting out of it, while as an adultyou can essentially ask it questions. Its a version of the story in which you can explore, well, what would happen in this story if Boxer died earlier or later, or we had a different person in power at this point? Which remains interesting even into later years.

Jele: I was talking to someone whos in education, and we were discussing what type of reading level we should go for in the game. He checked it and told me that, funny enough, it very closely matches an eighth or ninth grade curriculum in terms of the vocabulary. Later on he said he suspects that the curriculum was actually using Animal Farm as one of the books to establish what was readable at that age.

Short: In terms of what I did with the language, often Id have a piece of text that Id pulled into the spreadsheet, and usually Id need to edit it down to be a bit shorter and simpler. Usually, you end up with a sentence structure thats using a similar cadence to Orwell, but maybe fewer clauses, something like that.

Above: Animal Farm was co-created by Imre Jele, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary.

Image Credit: The Dairymen

GamesBeat: How do you preserve or extend the satirical elements of the story as you try to expand it and make it interactive?

Short: Theres a couple of directions with that. None of the endings are what you would call a joyous, happy ending where all is well. Orwell didnt believe that was a viable outcome for this kind of government, and that made sense to us as well. But there are different ways that things can go badly.

You can get the canonical ending, or a variation on the canonical ending with Snowball. But then there are some other endings you can get if your farm management goes awry. Things like they wind up losing the farm in battle to the humans, or everyone goes hungry. The farm is depopulated for some reason like that. There, again, I was going back to historical examples to pull. When one of these regimes goes down, what are the people in power doing to save themselves? Things like that.

Theres one ending where, if youve leaned into having a surveillance state, you get the birds, who are your surveillance characters, announcing that they now run things. Its a bit KGB, that kind of stuff. Every time we had one of those things emerge whats a good mapping here? Whats something that feels like it would have felt right to Orwell?

Another place was the characterization of the individual animals. The core gameplay is often about choosing youre constantly selecting the animals themselves that you want to have react to a particular dilemma or situation. A lot of the choice mechanics are aboutthe hen will respond to this, the dog will respond to this, the cow will respond to this. Naturally that meant writing a lot of dialogue for all those characters, and not all of that dialogue exists in the book. But that was another opportunity to lean into different characters. Whats a funny thing they would say right now?

Jele: A great example pretty much everyone thinks they know all the commandments of Animalism. That every single one of them, you can read both versions, both the original and the tainted version. And actually you cant. The book doesnt cover all the tainted versions. Emily had this wonderful opportunity to complete Orwells work where he didnt finish it.

Short: [Laughs] It just wasnt necessary for him. But yeah, we had to come up with answers to all those questions.

Jele: The birds are a great example of how to meaningfully extend something. Its always tricky. You cant even read something without putting yourself into it. Adapting is a big challenge, how you adapt. The surveillance state thing is a good example. In the book they specifically talk about the birds being used to spy on neighboring farms. Of course, logically, they would also use the birds to spy on their own animals. We dont have to worry too much about whether Orwell would agree with that, because in 1984, he explores exactly that. We know that he understood the idea of the surveillance state, and wrote about it. Incorporating that into Animal Farm isnt that big of a stretch. It helped to look at his other work as well.

Short: That specifically is something its not pulling in the exact incidents of 1984. But its absolutely drawing on it.

GamesBeat: If there were a bigger budget or team available to you, is there anything you felt like you left on the table, that you would have done with more resources?

Jele: Its hard to answer that. Theres an old line about how you never complete a creative project. You just abandon it. We were very mindful of that from the beginning. There was a version we considered where it was going to be Animal Farm-meets-Uncharted. That just didnt feel right. A lot of ideas were abandoned not for financial, but for creative reasons.

This is a faithful adaptation of a book. Its not trying to be something else, to be a big action-adventure or anything else. Its a faithful adaptation of one of the most relevant and historically important literary works. I feel like we have to bear that in mind. Now that the deadline is closing in, do I wish we had an extra few months to polish? Of course. There are a lot of things I wish we did. But I also feel that I dont want to add huge amounts of extra stuff, even if I had all the time and money in the world. This game has achieved what we set out to do. Were very proud of the work.

Short: I always can find more things that I would tweak, because thats how it always is. But in terms of the creative concept of it, what we were trying to make I feel like if it had a lot more its not a story that needs lots of CGI. In fact I think it would be kind of distracting. Im happy with the shape that it wound up taking. It doesnt go too wildly far outside I dont feel like there are bits where, if we put it in front of Orwell, hed say, My god, what is this? If wed gone deeply video gamey about it, it would probably have that quality.

GamesBeat: The storys relevance to politics and history, do you feel like its there in the game? Have you said what you wanted to say about that?

Jele: I was raised to hate communists. When I say the word hate I mean hate. Not I hate chocolate ice cream. But a visceral anger. I said nasty things. They were the enemy, the Soviet communists.

I remember playing Papers, Please, and I realized, playing that game a number would come up. Do you have enough money to pay for medication? Or whatever it was. After a few rounds, I started to act like a machine, ignoring other humans. You could say that Im a gamer and Im playing it that way, and thats true. But how quickly did I become that person in a video game, who just runs the system and uses the excuse of just being part of the system? I remember that made me very emotional. What would I have done if it were my child, my parents? What decisions would I make in that scenario? It was very uncomfortable to match that up with the hate I was raised with.

That has to be reflected in the story, because Animal Farm does reflect that. The historical evils done to these animals were also done to real people in the real world. Talking about the facts of how people fail these systems or stand up to these systems its not just a great creative subject to talk about, but its also a responsibility these days, when we see powerful autocratic regimes seemingly rise up around the planet. Its important to talk about it, and I feel that Animal Farm, adapted very faithfully, needs to be done. It talks about where I grew up, and it talks about the millions of people who suffered specifically under the Soviet communist regime, but there are many other forms of oppression.

Above: Napoleon is Animal Farms bad pig.

Image Credit: The Dairymen

Its obnoxious to say this, of course. Do we match Orwells work? I dont know. We tried our best, as far as I can tell. A lot of effort went into getting it right, into making sure that we were channeling Orwells voice. We know that his voice still works. We always wanted to achieve that, and how successfully we achieved that you know how it is. After a while youre blind to your project. I cant tell anymore. But well see how players react.

Ultimately my hope is that people dont even talk about how well it was adapted. My dream would be that people just say, Yes, its Animal Farm. If we could manage to make people feel like the book did, if we can make even a single person say, You know what, Ive heard similar things in the news, whats happening in this game. If we could achieve that, Id be extremely proud. This was an inspiring, humbling, and terrifying project to work on, because of its importance.

Short: All of what you said, in terms of capturing those moments narratively there were also some things in terms of the mechanical design that I was quite happy with, how they embed message. One thing thats a subtler strand in Animal Farm its not only critiquing the pigs and the way they behave, but also things like Boxer is altruistic. Hes kind. Hes good. He works very hard. But his response also enables what happens. His constant desire to resolve systemic injustices and systemic problems by throwing his own labor into it and trying to work harder actually opens the door for Napoleon to be what he is.

Thats something the mechanical design reflects. There are certain things the pigs do that their ability to do that is numerically enhanced by Boxers behavior. There are things like that where we take elements that are thematic in the book and express them through the gameplay. Whether everyone is going to read that is another question. But I felt particularly strongly about getting that kind of thing across. It not only speaks to authoritarianism, but it also speaks to some of the problems with modern capitalism and the things it can do to people. The way it makes individuals responsible for their household and their well-being, but doesnt provide any social safety net. Again, Im throwing my own labor into filling a gap rather than addressing the problem at the level of system and politics.

Jele: As I say, this was inspiring, humbling, and terrifying, to do all this. Not just because of the 75-year legacy, but because of the importance of the work and how relevant it is. Its why I was so excited to have Emily on board, and to have Nerial with their mechanical thinking, bringing this collective together. Thats the kind of thinking it needed. If it was just down to me, it wouldnt have been possible to make this game. It needed these different perspectives not just on the book, not just on gameplay and narrative design, but every aspect.

Its exciting when theres a problem I cant solve, even a trivial one. Early on I asked, What should the voice be? Is it first-person, third-person? It was Emily who said, Well, the book has an omniscient narrator, so why dont we use that point of view? In the game, you dont make a choice about what I do, or point at someone to make them do something. Theres a narrator, and you choose who you listen to. The animals present themselves and you pick one.

All of these ideas came together in the process with the team. It was a very joyful process. But like any game launch, well see what people think.

Read this article:

George Orwells Animal Farm interview Making a game inspired by totalitarian oppression - VentureBeat

Regulatory Review, a publication affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Program on Regulation, has just posted my new article on how immigration restrictions harm US citizens, as well as would-be immigrants. Here is an excerpt:

Immigration policy is often framed as pitting the interests of would-be immigrants against those of native-born Americans. It is indeed true that immigration restrictions seriously harm potential migrants, many of whom end up being relegated to a lifetime of poverty and oppression based merely on having been born to the wrong parents or in the wrong place. But restrictions also often inflict severe economic harm and injustice on current American citizens. These harms are often given short shrift in public discourse, and they are often excluded from standard estimates of the burden of government regulation on the U.S. economy. But they are real nonetheless

The successful development of two COVID-19 vaccines (one just approved by regulators in the United States and elsewhere, and one that will likely be approved soon) could put an end to the epidemic that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States and around the world. Importantly, both vaccines were developed by firms led by immigrants or children of immigrants

Few immigrants are likely to make contributions on the scale of the COVID-19 vaccines. But the exclusion of large numbers of migrants inevitably means barring some who could make extraordinary advances. And the loss of even those few is a huge cost.

Moreover, even "ordinary" immigrants collectively make enormous economic contributions.

Perhaps we should let in migrants who seem likely to become valuable workers but keep out most others. This reasoning, however, assumes that government can do a good job allocating labor and predicting which people will make useful contributions. That assumption is unlikely to be true. If it were sound, the Soviet Union would have been a great economic success.

Many of the greatest immigrant scientists and entrepreneurs came from humble origins and would have been excluded under current proposals for so-called "merit-based" immigration. The world is full of people with modest initial credentials who could achieve great things in a society that offers them a meaningful opportunity to do so. By excluding them, we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Economic harm is far from the only cost of migration restrictions to American citizens. The law enforcement apparatus established to keep out and deport undocumented migrants unavoidably threatens the civil liberties of all Americans.

Because of weak due process protections in the immigration enforcement system, the federal government detains and sometimes deports thousands of U.S. citizens every year after mistaking them for undocumented immigrants.

The last part of the article briefly summarizes ways in which potential negative effects of migration can be addressed without excluding people. I discuss that issue in much greater detail in Chapter 6 of my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.

Read more:

My New "Regulatory Review" Article on How Immigration Restrictions Harm US Citizens - Reason

Lashing out at the Mamata Banerjee government over Thursdays attack on the convoy of BJP national president JP Nadda, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said on Friday that any political activity by the opposition is ruthlessly oppressed by the state government with police assistance.

The Governor also said that he has a list of 21 senior public servants who are acting as political workers. This list includes names of some senior IPS officials who have been appointed as advisors by the Mamata Banerjee-government, he said.

Any political activity by the opposition in West Bengal is ruthlessly oppressed with police assistance. Alarmingly, police are always on political mode in support of the ruling party. Such oppression climaxed yesterday, he said while addressing the media at Raj Bhavan on Friday.

Taking on the chief minister over the issue of branding a section of political leaders as outsiders, Dhankhar cautioned the chief minister and said that his responsibility come into play when the chief minister deviates from the Constitutional path.

Also read: Situation at border over last 6 months result of Chinas actions - India

I wish to caution the chief minister. What is meant by outsiders? Where are we heading when we tag Indians as insiders and outsiders? Please dont play with fire. Stop this game of outsiders and insiders. My responsibility starts when you deviate from the Constitutional path, he added.

A day after Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, also a TMC MP, attacked Nadda, Dhankhar urged the chief minister and the MP to take back their words and advised that it would increase her stature.

How could a responsible chief minister talk the way she did? In my tweet, I have urged her to think about the grace and depth of Bengali culture and withdraw the video (of her speech) as that would enhance her dignity. Withdrawal of the video with an apology will raise her stature, he added.

For the chief ministers nephew, the Governors advice was, He was talking about a person much older to him and occupying a senior political position. It was unavoidable. I am sure he would heed my advice. He has a long political career ahead of him. He must be part of a system of setting high standards.

The chief minister had mocked Nadda in her speech on Thursday saying, They (BJP) have no other work. At times the home minister is here, other times its Chaddha, Nadda, Fadda, Bhaddha. When they have no audience, they call their workers for doing nautanki.

The Governor also accused the chief minister and the state administration of favouritism and corruption.

Non-responsive approach of the CM to critical issues raised by the Governor is a pointer that governance is not in accordance with the rule of law and more importantly this is a cover-up for corruption, nepotism and favouritism, he added.

Read more:

Opposition is ruthlessly oppressed with polices assistance in Bengal: Governor - Hindustan Times

Unprecedented. No word has been used more often to describe this remarkable year. At some point in the distant future, medical students of this era will recall being summarily removed from clinical rotations, uncertain if we would be asked to stay home or serve on the front lines of the fight against a global pandemic.

We will recall when, during the summer of 2020, the moral and political duty to engage with the most momentous anti-racist movement since the 1960s reanimated a nation paralyzed by fear. By the fall, cataclysmic wildfires on the West Coast poisoned the air from San Francisco to New York City. Coronavirus, cultural upheaval and manifestations of climate change all bore down on us as we entered the most consequential and divisive national election in living memory.

As medical students were taught to keep our personal politics out of the clinic. And yet, the nations politics seep into nearly every aspect of medicine. The structural determinants of health that make our patients sicker and harder to treat are consequences of political decision-making; radical expression of political concepts like freedom and self-determination have dramatically worsened Americas experience of COVID-19. Insofar as politics fundamentally shape how medicine is practiced, our responsibility to patients requires that we develop and maintain an expansive political consciousness.

With political consciousness-building in mind, the remainder of this essay will review the history of another period in American history defined by a simultaneous struggle against government oppression and communicable disease: The American Revolution. Our review will expose the origins of American interpretations of freedom and self-determination. Well end with a discussion on why political systems defined by a single, narrow conception of freedom are ill-suited to combat many modern public health threats, and what we as medical students can do about it.

Before we begin our analysis, its important to acknowledge that the lofty appeals to freedom that defined the American Revolution are invariably complicated by the periods malignant racism, sexism, systematic oppression. The War of Independence was never meant to secure the Enlightenment principles of freedom and equality for anyone but white men. Keeping the periods intellectual contradictions and limitations in mind will help distinguish the periods problems and solutions from our own. With that caveat in place, lets turn to the events that laid the foundations for the political troubles we face today.

By 1775, many American colonists were fed up. The American colonists understood themselves to be British citizens, entitled to the full rights and freedoms afforded them by law and custom. King George III and his government seemed to disagree when they failed to explicitly extend protections enjoyed by British citizens in Britain. To them, it appeared the colonies were unique entities, which entitled the Crown to keep a standing army stationed in cities up and down the Atlantic Coast during peacetime, even if the English Bill of Rights of 1689 expressly forbade such an action. Besides, the young colonies had proven unruly; a standing police force might help keep things in order.

Police states are touchy. A slight bump here or an accidental nudge there can send matters spiraling out of hand. Such volatility helps explain why in 1770 a simple disagreement near the Boston Custom House quickly escalated into a violent confrontation between British soldiers and the townspeople, leaving five Bostonians dead. The sentiments soured by the Boston Massacre would be further spoiled by the Coercive Acts, a series of laws that both robbed Massachusetts of its right to self-governance and kept British officials from having to stand trial in colonial courts.

Every British transgression, no matter how small, served to remind the colonists that they were not, in fact, protected by the rule of law as they were led to believe. To make matters exceedingly worse, colonists were being taxed for the privilege of living under imperial rule.

While many colonists held out hope for a peaceful resolution of grievances with King George III, Patrick Henry, a leader in the powerful state of Virginia, had enough. He made his sentiments known to delegates of the Second Virginia Convention late in 1775, offering a simple solution to the colonies woes: raise a force of Virginians to ensure Virginias defense. Such a force would eliminate the justification for His Majestys soldiers and the high taxes their presence demanded. Henrys provocation sent the convention into a heated debate about whether such an action would invite war with the British. In defense of his resolutions, Henry delivered his now-famous speech with an ultimatum that grabbed the delegates by their spiritual collars and refused to let go: Give me liberty or give me death! A month later, a milestone in the fight to reform government, according to Enlightenment ideals, began in two villages north of Boston.

Just as the colonists took up arms to tear down the police state in which they lived, North Americans of all backgrounds began facing down a second, even deadlier enemy to freedom: smallpox. The variola virus, present in the Americas since Columbuss arrival in 1492, had chosen this particularly fraught moment to resurface in the British colonies of North America.

With no known treatments and an understanding that close contact with the infected increased the chance of falling ill, colonists implemented quarantine and self-isolation programs. Some opted for inoculation (also known as variolation), a forerunner to vaccination that required inserting pus from a smallpox patient into an incision made in the healthy recipients arm. Variolation caused disease in the recipient, in some cases even leading to death. Despite these dangers, the prospect of immunity was enough to convince Abigail Adams to inoculate herself and her family. George Washington reached the same conclusion for his troops after watching, helplessly, as the disease ravaged soldiers on both sides.

Today, Americans once again find themselves beset by the challenges of 1775. We are pushing back against the dual threats of police brutality and a deadly communicable disease in the midst of deep political division. Like a people besieged on all sides, attention to one threat raises the possibility of a sneak attack by the other. Our shouts of protest against police violence and systemic racism are muffled by the masks protecting our faces, lest we inadvertently invite the coronavirus into our lungs, then families, then communities. Despite a raging epidemic, Americans of 2020, like the colonists of 1775, have been left with little choice but to risk illness and violent ends in order to secure the full rights and freedoms afforded to us by law.

We are still years away from being able to fully reckon with the lessons of this year. Certainly, the events of 2020 have reinvigorated civic involvement. Theyve also reminded us that democratic politics and medicine take as their goal the same basic ideal: the enhancement of human freedom.

The overbearing nature of our current challenges might lead us to believe that our freedom depends on ridding ourselves of forces that restrict our freedom (i.e. structural and implicit racism, police violence, gross income inequality, climate change, coronavirus). This is what philosophers call negative freedom. Those who advocate for small government do so for the same reason as those who advocate for police reform: fear that an over-empowered state is a threat to human freedom (and sometimes, to life itself).

While history is rife with justifications for building political systems to protect negative freedom, the costs of decentralized power become evident when a nation is met by challenges as harrowing as war or pandemic. Like an invading army, a communicable disease cannot be defeated by the uncoordinated, undisciplined effort of even a powerful nation, at least not without incurring incredible losses (Soviet losses during the Nazi invasion of Russia serve as a poignant reminder of the costs of being unprepared for a powerful enemy).

In order to push back against an adversary as powerful as coronavirus, the best of American ingenuity and will-power must be organized and overseen by a government able and empowered to lead. Yes, by empowering government in times of crisis we invite the possibility of future tyranny, but what sense does it make to invite significant, perhaps fatal, injury now to avoid the risk of possible injury later? True existential challenges in the present not only warrant but demand such risks be taken.

National emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic help us see the shortcomings of building a political system too focused on limiting government power to protect negative freedoms. A significant portion of the nation is currently so suspicious of federal overreach that they would rather risk exposure to a deadly pathogen than invite the vague possibility of tyranny and oppression down the road. However, if we dont give the government the power it needs to effectively organize the fight against COVID-19, we threaten not only the lives of fellow citizens, but also the political economy on which we all rely.

Can we escape this dilemma with our health and freedom intact? Yes, but only if we acknowledge the reality that certain problems cannot be solved by individuals and decentralized governments. As medical professionals who regularly deal with death and disease, we are well-positioned to advocate for balancing negative freedom with positive freedom, which means providing individuals the power and resources needed to manifest their will. How do medical students start down the road to becoming effective advocates for positive freedom? First, and most importantly, by recognizing our position. As the incoming workforce for a profession desperately short on staff, our will, if expressed collectively, can reshape medicine into a force for the advancement of positive freedom.

Second, students must organize and work locally. Get involved in your local chapter of White Coats for Blacks Lives, or find a community organization working with individuals experiencing homelessness or food insecurity. However you choose to develop your political consciousness as a medical student, be sure the experience requires you to intertwine some amount of your own well-being with the well-being of those suffering from the shortcomings of our political system. Consciousness grows when we have an emotional stake in the matter at hand.

Lets hope for our own sake, and for our patients sake, that the sacrifices of this year inch us closer to an America courageous enough to admit that a political system obsessed with negative freedom can itself be an enemy of freedom.

Image Credit: Small Pox Cemetery(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)byKayla Nicole

Contributing Writer

University of California, San Francisco-University of California, Berkeley Joint Medical Program

Adrian Anzaldua is a fourth year medical student at the UCSF/UC-Berkeley Joint Medical Program, class of 2021. In 2009, he graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy. He also holds a Masters of Science from UC-Berkeley School of Public Health. After medical school, Adrian will pursue a career in Psychiatry.

Link:

Precedented: Historical Guidance on Freedom and Health in the Age of COVID-19 - Pager Publications, Inc.

China will not face a case at the International Criminal Court over its treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang -- for now.

Beijing is accused of numerous crimes against Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in the far western region, including a mass detention system, forced labor, and claims of genocide and human rights abuses.

As China is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, prosecution at the court has always been a long shot. But activists had hoped to bring a case based on actions taken against Uyghurs living in Tajikistan and Cambodia, both of which are ICC members.

In a report released Monday, however, the office of ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said the "precondition for the exercise of the court's territorial jurisdiction did not appear to be met with respect to the majority of the crimes alleged" since they appear "to have been committed solely by nationals of China within the territory of China, a State which is not a party to the Statute."

Bensouda's office has left the file open, meaning the ICC could still pursue a case provided more evidence was presented.

Speaking to the Guardian, Rodney Dixon, the lead barrister in the attempted ICC case against China, said his team "will be providing highly relevant evidence ... in the coming months."

"We are engaging with the office of the prosecutor as these proceedings go on with the aim of opening a full investigation," Dixon added.

The message is clear: while Bensouda's decision may seem like a win of sorts for China, it highlights the growing pressure over Xinjiang and the determination of Uyghur groups and other activists to hold Beijing to account.

Leading that charge at an international level is Washington, where being tough on China is by now bipartisan consensus and numerous hearings have been held on the situation in Xinjiang. US President Donald Trump has taken a hard line towards Beijing, and his government has sanctioned multiple Chinese officials allegedly responsible for human rights abuses against Uyghurs.

Ahead of the US election last month, some activists had expressed concerns Joe Biden would take a softer approach. But in a statement on Xinjiang, the now President-elect denounced the "unspeakable oppression" against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, which he said amounted to "genocide."

Responding to those comments, Elijan Anayit, a spokesman for the Xinjiang government, said last month that claims of genocide were "a completely false proposition and a vicious attack on Xinjiang by overseas anti-China forces."

Anayit pointed to the historic genocide of Indigenous Americans to argue the United States had no standing in this matter, and accused Washington of committing "a serious violation, sacrilege and manipulation" of the United Nations convention against genocide by targeting Beijing in this manner.

Yet while the US may have geopolitical motivations for holding China to account -- and little room to argue the ICC decision, given Washington too is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and has even sanctioned Bensouda -- it is not alone in speaking out over Xinjiang.

In a speech at the UN General Assembly in September, French President Emmanuel Macron called for an official investigation into Xinjiang. European lawmakers have also pushed for concerted action over the issue, including potential sanctions against Chinese officials.

"We will not hesitate to use our democratic clout and put these values of human rights high on the agenda in dialogues with our partners, just as we did at the two summits with Chinese leaders this year," European Council President Charles Michel said last month. "We devoted a substantial part of our discussions to the issues of the rule of law in Hong Kong and the protection of minorities in Xinjiang."

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China -- a grouping of hundreds of lawmakers across Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia-Pacific -- has also lobbied for international action over Xinjiang, supporting the case at the ICC and calling for a UN investigation into the matter.

The pressure comes with China's global reputation plummeting in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. A Pew survey in October found that unfavorable views of China had reached historic highs in many countries, with a majority in all 14 countries polled expressing negative opinions of Beijing.

The most immediate effect of all this lobbying could be on international businesses that source materials and labor from Xinjiang. According to a new report from Adrian Zenz, a leading scholar on the oppression of Uyghurs, Chinese government documents and media reports show that "hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority laborers in Xinjiang are being forced to pick cotton by hand through a coercive state-mandated labor transfer and 'poverty alleviation' scheme."

Earlier this month, the US blocked cotton imports from Xinjiang over forced labor concerns -- allegations China has consistently denied. In his report, Zenz argued there was "evidence for coercive labor related to all cotton produced in Xinjiang," and said "companies should be required to thoroughly investigate the role of Chinese cotton in their supply chains, even if any related production takes place outside China."

Numerous major clothing retailers use cotton sourced from Xinjiang, and have already come under pressure for this practice. The latest findings could spark some to reevaluate their supply chains, or prompt other governments to take action and force companies' hands.

The likelihood of growing international criticism having an effect on Beijing is far smaller, however.

In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping defended his policies in Xinjiang as "completely correct." And as the ICC decision this week shows, holding countries to account is often easier said than done.

Read more from the original source:

China avoids ICC prosecution over Xinjiang for now, but pressure is growing - KCTV Kansas City

COMMENT

This year will be forever associated with one story that affected every single country in the world: the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time of writing, more than 68-millionpeople had been infected with the virus and more than 1.5-million people have died of it, according to the World Health Organisation. As the virus continues to spread, these numbers will only increase with the second wave already underway in Europe, the United States and South Africa.

While the worlds attention has focused on the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been another pandemic that has spread in its shadow human rights violations. From Angola to Botswana, Uganda to Zimbabwe, people have suffered untold horrors, abuses and injustices in the past 12 months in East and Southern Africa.

The African Unions theme for the continent in 2020 was silencing the guns. But as 2020 draws to a close, the sound of gunfire tragically became a feature of life in Ethiopia where hundreds of civilians have been killed and thousands more forced to flee into neighbouring Sudan to escape fighting, after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military operation against the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front, which controls Ethiopias northern Tigray region.

Amnesty International has established that the conflict has already resulted in a massacre of civilians, and calls for an immediate thorough, independent and impartial investigation that will identify perpetrators and hold them accountable for human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law. All sides to the conflict must urgently prioritise the protection of civilians, allow access to human rights monitors, and give humanitarian organisations unfettered access.

More than three years after the fighting began in Mozambiques Cabo Delgado province, by an armed group calling itself Al-Shabab, victims of the conflict which has killed more than 2 000 people and displaced more than 300 000 others are no closer to justice, truth and reparation. Authorities have failed to bring to justice all those suspected of crimes and human rights violations under international law. Government forces have been accused of crimes under international law, as well as human rights violations in pursuit of those suspected of being involved with the armed group, including extrajudicial executions, torture and other ill treatment.

Also underreported and unrelenting has been the neglected war being waged against women and girls, as reports of gender-based violence shot up during the first few months of the pandemic. In South Africa, the nationwide lockdown announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 23 March to control the spread of the virus, meant that many women and girls were unable to escape from abusive partners and family members. By mid-June, 21 women and children had been reported killed in the country.

Elsewhere, increased incidents of violence against women were reported during lockdowns in Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe, in a chilling reminder that many countries are still a dangerous place for women. Their shocking deaths reflect governments failures to prioritise the protection of womens rights both in law and practice, and there have been many calls for urgent measures to be taken to correct this.

Freedom of expression was another casualty across the continent this year. In Uganda, authorities continued to clamp down on free speech, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, including by indiscriminately using deadly force on protesters.National Unity Platform presidential candidate and musician Robert Kyagulanyi, commonly known as Bobi Wine, was regularly harassed and intimidated in a clear attempt to limit his political reach, a violation of his rights, ahead of elections next year. The Ugandan authorities targeting of Bobi Wine and his political activism through repeated arrests and detention is persecution, plain and simple. Recently, he started campaigning with bullet-proof gear as he has felt that his life is under considerable threat.

In Tanzania, the country went to the polls on 28 October under a climate of heavy repression and suppression of opposition voices. An Amnesty International report found that President John Magufulis government had weaponised the law to silence opposition and critical voices in the run-up to the vote. Opposition candidates were arrested on spurious charges that stripped them of their right to freedom of assembly, association and movement. At the same time, the government tightened censorship rules to exert significant control over what local and foreign media publish, violating the right to freedom of expression.

In Zimbabwe, it was a difficult year for journalists, opposition leaders and human rights activists. Those who demanded accountability, decried their declining socioeconomic status or exposed government corruption faced intimidation and harassment, including abductions or arrests. Investigative journalist Hopewell Chinono was arrested twice and held in lengthy pretrial detention for exposing corruption.

In many instances, the state of emergency introduced by African governments to take measures to contain Covid-19 was used as a cover for outrageous human rights violations. In Angola, an investigation by Amnesty International in August revealed that security forces tasked with enforcing Covid-19 measures to mitigate against the spread of virus, repeatedly used excessive and unlawful force and killed at least seven boys and young men between May and July. The youngest victim was just 14 years old. One teenage boy was shot in the face by security forces while he lay injured; another was killed when police fired on a group of friends at a sports field. Angolan authorities are also cracking down on dissent. Last month, peaceful demonstrations against the high cost of living in Luanda were disrupted by the security forces, with a number of activists arrested and later released.

As Covid-19 spread, millions of people across the region faced hunger as lockdowns meant that they were unable to work and access food. The vast majority of people in the region make their living in the informal economy, for example as street vendors or manual labourers. Under lockdown measures, these were considered non-essential roles and people in this sector were prohibited from working. Women and children were the most affected by hunger. It is not too late for governments to urgently put in place social protection measures to uphold the right to food.

But there is reason for optimism. Activists and human rights defenders are pushing back continuing to speak out and organise peaceful protests to claim their human rights.

In Namibia, youth-led protests have challenged longstanding gender-based violence and deep-seated patriarchy under the hashtag #ShutItAllDown, inspiring the region to take a stand against the scourge. The youth courageously demanded immediate political action to end the scourge.

In Zambia, civic action and advocacy made sure that the Constitution Amendment Bill 2019, also known as Bill no 10, was defeated as it failed to garner the support of two-thirds of MPs.

After street protests challenging last years vote, a fresh vote was held in Malawi after judges on Malawis Constitutional Court found that there had been widespread irregularities in last years election. The re-run election, ushered a smooth political transition from former president Peter Mutharika to President Lazarus Chakwera.

In 2021, people must continue to stand up and defend their hard-won freedoms in the same way they fought against colonial oppression and apartheid. History has taught us that freedom will not be given easily to the people; it must be fought for and we must fight very hard.

Read the original post:

Pandemic of human rights abuses haunts governments in East and Southern Africa - Mail and Guardian

Indyref2: Sturgeon warned Scotland would 'suffer' by Miklinski

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has resumed calls for a second referendum for Scottish Independence in recent months. With a No-Deal Brexit looming, the leader raised her concerns about the nations stance within the European Union. In a previous demand to breakaway from Britain, the dictator Idi Amin sent a threatening letter to Her Majesty to demand for freedom.

Amin served as the President of Uganda for eight years from 1971, when he quickly became known as the Butcher for his deplorably brutal tactics.

Before his rise to power, he was a trainee cook in the Kings African Rifles battalion and later enlisted as a private in 1946.

He grew fond of Scotland during his time in the army after being taught to play the bagpipes by the militarys pop major.

Chris Mikul, author of My Favourite Dictators, claimed that Amin was often seen wearing a kilt and tartan forage cap after that point.

His notorious rise to power happened after Uganda gained independence from Britain in 1962.

Amin took over as President nine years later and was described as the biggest buffoon on the world stage.

He gained a reputation for barbaric torture methods and brutality, which led to the deaths of between 300,000 and 500,000 people during his reign.

Before he rose to power, a British officer was reported to have described the 6ft 4in recruit as virtually bone from the neck up.

JUST IN:James Bond fury: Sean Connery's outburst at being called 007 off-set

He claimed that Amin needed things explained in words of one letter due to his poor education and lack of English.

Despite this, Mr Mikul claimed that the Kings African Rifles loved him because he was strong as an ox, fiercely loyal to his superiors and funny.

Years later, Amin lunched with Prime Minister Edward Heath and also dined with the Queen at Buckingham Palace according to Mr Mikul.

During his trip to the UK, Mr Mikul claimed that Amin also visited his beloved Scotland and felt connected to the nation.

READ MORE:Sturgeon 'to exploit no deal' as SNP plots to defy No10 with vote

After Amin became President in 1971, he sent a number of surprising messages to world leaders including the Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.

He wrote: I love you very much and if you were a woman I would even consider marrying you, although you have grey hairs on your head.

Not only that, he sent a fiery message to The Queen about Scottish Independence, where he boasted: Many of the Scottish people already consider me King of the Scots.

I am the first man to ask the British government to end their oppression of Scotland. If the Scots want me to be their King, I will.

READ MORE:Shame on Sturgeon for royal snub of Kate and Wills, says NICK FERRARI

In another surprising move, he announced the formation of a Save Britain Fund.

Mr Mikul recounted: At one point, he sent a cable to Prime Minister Health urging him to send a pane to pick up some wheat and vegetables collected by farms before it goes bad.

In 1978, Amins troops mutinied and fighting broke out along the Ugandan-Tanzanian border.

Later he was forced to flee into exile, where he lived between Libya and Saudi Arabia until his death related to kidney failure in 2003.

Chris Mikuls book My Favourite Dictators was published by HeadPress in 2019 and is available here.

Excerpt from:

Scottish independence: Dictator threatened Queen to 'end British oppression' in letter - Daily Express

For Formula One fans around the world, the news that world champion Lewis Hamilton has recovered from coronavirus and will be fit to race in Abu Dhabi this weekend will be met with jubilation. F1s management, on the other hand, might be feeling ambivalent.

Over the course of a season marred by Covid-19, Hamiltons increasingly firm stance on social justice, sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement, has frequently overshadowed the racing. And last month, before the Bahrain Grand Prix, he made the incendiary claim that F1 has a consistent and massive problem with human rights abuses in the places it visits. Chase Carey, the head of F1, hit back, saying we are very proud of our partnership here in Bahrain, but this has done little to quell the uproar.

Hamilton, who has won more races than any other driver and is now a record-equalling seven-times champion, is far from alone in questioning F1s relationship with these regimes. Last month a cross-party coalition of British MPs wrote to F1s management, expressing concern that they were being exploited by Bahrain to sportswash its dismal rights record. When asked on CNN whether 30 British MPs had got it wrong, Carey was adamant, stressing that F1 was in fact working with partners to improve and advance the human rights issues. The Bahrain government denied that hosting the race was sportswashing and rejected claims of human rights abuses. Yet, with the final race of the season taking place in the United Arab Emirates tomorrow, and a first-ever race scheduled for Saudi Arabia next year, F1s position appears more and more indefensible.

While many associate the UAE with high-rise hotels and luxurious shopping malls, behind the shimmering towers lies an authoritarian state with a dire human rights record. Just 20km from the Yas Marina grand prix circuit, human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor sits in prison, serving a 10-year sentence for criticising his government on social media.

Yet F1 appears happy to take abusive regimes at their word. When challenged by CNN on the state of human rights in its Gulf partner states, Carey pointed to clear publicity about increased rights for females in Saudi Arabia. To choose the last state on Earth to allow women to drive for a motorsport event always seemed distasteful and in appearing to side with the regime, has F1 betrayed those who genuinely fought for womens rights in the kingdom? Indeed, just days before that, Saudi Arabia transferred the trial of Loujain al-Hathloul, who led the campaign for womens right to drive, to a court reserved for terrorism suspects.

F1s apparent acceptance of the Saudi line is familiar to many Bahrainis. We have long experienced brutal government suppression of protests against the Bahrain Grand Prix. On the eve of the 2012 race, police killed father of five Salah Abbas Habib. To this date, there has been no accountability for his death.

Few have a more intimate knowledge of the lengths Bahrain will appear to go to protect their lucrative relationship with F1 than Najah Yusuf, a Bahraini activist who was tortured, sexually assaulted and jailed for three years for criticising the grand prix on social media. When the UN declared Yusufs imprisonment arbitrary last year and called for her to receive compensation, F1 pledged to raise her case with Bahrain. However, Yusuf says that F1 has made no attempt to has not contacted her and she continues to face harassment from the regime to this day. Her teenage son, Kameel, now faces over 20 years in prison for attending protests, in what Amnesty International deems a reprisal against his mother.

My organisation, the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, has campaigned for many years for F1 to take responsibility for where it chooses to race, with little success. However, Hamiltons comments have offered the regions beleaguered activists a glimmer of hope. In November, Yusuf joined two other torture victims in writing directly to Hamilton in the hope that he might draw attention to their plight.

As the worlds greatest F1 driver, when Lewis Hamilton speaks, Formula 1 has no choice but to pay attention. While Hamilton admitted last month that he needed to learn more about countries like Saudi Arabia, he has a unique opportunity to ensure his sport is no longer used as a vehicle to sportswash human rights abuses. For Loujain al-Hathloul, Ahmed Mansoor, Najah Yusuf and thousands of other victims of oppression in the Arab Gulf, his voice will be more important than ever.

Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei is the advocacy director of the UK-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy

See the rest here:

Lewis Hamilton has spoken out on human rights. Formula One will have to take a stand - The Guardian

Dear esteemed members of the Academia!

Given that you are not intimately familiar with Slovenian state of affairs, internal political struggles and media manipulations we are not blaming you, that you were so thoroughly mislead by the Slovene radical left academia in believing that academic freedoms in Slovenia are being eroded.

What is described in your petition has no common denominator with real life.

You write that since rightist politician Janez Jana came to power, the government has refused to reappoint several museum directors and one director of a research institute and further state that scholars must be allowed to work without this kind of political and governmental interference.

The Government is thoroughly committed to following due process and pays utmost attention to rules and regulations that govern appointments of the directors of public institutions. A public competition has been carried out for each appointment, with strict standards and rules governing who can apply for the position. After the Selection board of the Ministry of Culture has suggested the most appropriate candidates (based on competency) to the Minister, he has always diligently followed its proposal. The Minister steadfastly preferred the candidate which was objectively found to be the best on merit. However, when it comes to appointments of directors of public institutions, the law states that the selection of candidates selected by the Selection board must always be sent to Councils of the public institutions, which are eligible to give their opinion on which candidate is more suited for the function. Due to sheer number of years left-wing coalitions have been in power, those councils have always been selected by left governments, so they tend to negate the Ministers preferences (which is, as a rule always the top candidate in the selection process) and give their opinion that another candidate is more suitable - usually the current directors or a candidate aligned by left-wing centers of power. The government is not trying to undermine the professionalism of such Councils; however, it is important to note that they have been indeed nominated politically and their role as an independent consulting institution is at best doubtful. Another thing to stress is that the Minister of Culture in not bound by their opinions. Their role is purely advisory. This is due process in Slovenia, and it has been the same for three decades. In fact when the Minister uses his power of discretion it is exactly a tool which eliminates the potentially politically biased opinions of the Councils of the public institutions.

The system is inherently political, since the Councils themselves are appointed politically, yet the left-wing governments never took issues with it in the past. Accusations of political interference only surface once a right-wing government is in power and never during a quarter of a century when left-wing governments have governed. The Ministers reliance on due process of picking the best candidates is the only line of defense against a politically appointed apparatus.

The new appointments of various directors have been slandered in public by the media (which by inertia is predominately left-wing) and leftist academia alike. Accusations have been made that candidates are professionally incompetent; some even go so far to call them apparatchiks and SDS shills. This is an enormous insult to these prominent candidates, who came through the selection process with all the required competencies required for the position. These are highly regarded experts in the field, known both domestically and internationally, yet they do not fit into the inner circle of political candidates appointed to these positions in the past.

Next, the petition talks about plans to establish a new Museum of Slovene Independence, claiming that the new museum would bea propaganda institution, promoting nationalist narrative about the past aimed mainly at buttressing the ideological agenda of the ruling Slovene democratic party.A statement like this is insulting, outrageous, preposterous and an outright attack on Slovenian sovereignty.

National independence and freedom it espouses is not an ideology. It is a universal value shared not only by Slovenians, but all humanity. The museum will be part of the celebration of the 30thanniversary of Slovenian independence. It will be subject to international standards and curated by professional historians with no political affiliations, to ensure proper representation of Slovenias struggle to break loose from the communist dictatorship.

Many post-communist countries that broke the shackles of oppression, have a museum dedicated to those fateful times in a nations history. Croatia has its Homeland war museum, Latvia has the Museum of the occupation of Latvia, Lithuania has the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights etc. It has nothing to do with nationalism. It is a celebration of freedom and humanity. Independence was a project of all Slovenian citizens (not just ethnic Slovenians!), who have decided by an overwhelming majority to live in a free, democratic society during the 1990 Slovenian independence referendum. This event is the only one in history that properly united all Slovenian citizens. To say such a museum would be a propaganda institution is an outrage.

In closing, we fail to see, how appointments of directors of public institutions and an establishment of a Museum of independence would have any effect on academic freedom in Slovenia. It seems like a complete non sequitur. For decades appointing new directors has been a routine during left-wing governments. It is a political process, but a process that requires regular transitions of power, which Slovenia sadly lacked for most of its independent history. It is highly curious that matters put forwards in the letter are precisely the same matters which professional left-wing Slovenian activists had issues with, in the past. In fact, they have written a very similar petition to Slovenian media outlets. Therefore, we strongly suspect that the undersigned have no proper understanding of internal goings-on of our country and have merely signed a letter which was written in Slovenia, by Slovenians and for Slovenians.

Yet, it is important to highlight that the Government of Slovenia firmly believes in autonomy and freedom of the academia, which has never been undermined or threatened during the course of this Governments mandate.

Finally, we would also like to highlight that the Government lead by Prime minister Janez Jana is not a rightist government, as the petition is suggesting. It has two liberal left-wing coalition partners, both members of the ALDE European alliance. Slovenia only had homogenous governments when left-wing parties formed coalitions. In fact, during the last decade the left-wing coalitions have been in power for 9 out of 10 years.

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The response to the petition of 150 foreign academics | GOV.SI - Gov.si

Chinas National Day, October 1, was not a cause for celebration among the Uyghurs, Mongolians and Tibetans who gathered in Tokyo to protest the Communist governments suppression of human rights in their respective homelands.

Representatives for members of ethnic minorities from China who now live in Japan met Japanese lawmakers at the National Diet Building in Tokyo, where they described Beijings assimilation policies and other measures, which they allege are tantamount to cultural genocide. They also pleaded with Diet members to speak out against Chinas blatant disregard for basic human rights.

The meeting was part of joint protest activities organized by a Tibet support organization based in the United States. The joint protests were carried out in 88 locations in 36 countries to coincide with Chinas National Day. In Tokyo, it was followed by an October 3 protest march in the capital citys landmark commercial district near the Imperial Palace.

The meeting at the National Diet on October 1 brought the human rights and cultural oppression home to Japanese lawmakers through the testimony of the visiting participants.

Tsering Dorjee, a Tibetan participating in the event, pointed out how the Chinese authorities have recently ramped up surveillance of residents in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Everyone now has to carry ID when moving about, he reported. And they have been keeping a tighter eye on the border, so that last year only a dozen or so Tibetans were able to make it abroad to seek political asylum.

Olhunuud Daichin, Secretary general of Southern Mongolia Congress, told lawmakers how since September Mongol children attending primary and middle school are increasingly being made to carry out their studies in the Chinese language, adding:

They are switching to the use of Chinese-language textbooks, and references to traditional Mongol ceremonies are being eliminated.

It looks like they are trying to exterminate the language and culture of the Mongolian people.

It should be noted that the Mongolians are divided between those living in the independent nation of Outer Mongolia and those in Southern Mongolia, which corresponds to the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia.

Kerimu Uda, President of Japan Uyghur Association, represented the Uyghurs in Chinas far western Xinjiang Province. (Uyghurs prefer to call their homeland East Turkestan.) They are currently suffering severe suppression by the central government, with huge numbers being forced into internment camps for reeducation.

He said, If Uyghurs do not have their names chosen from a list drawn up by the government, then they cannot even name their children officially.

The event accomplished its purpose of educating the lawmakers, according to organizers. Hidetoshi Ishii, executive director of the Japan executive committee for Resist China, and vice president of the Japan-based Free Indo-Pacific Alliance explained:

Almost all of the 10 National Diet members from both ruling and opposition parties that participated in this event stayed until the end. It shows that Japanese politicians are paying attention, which was very epochal. The members of the executive committee are willing to continue activities like this.

The meeting was followed by a press conference at which Olhunuud Daichin brought up the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 passed by the U.S. Congress to sanction Chinese authorities involved in the ongoing oppression of the Uyghur people.

I would like to see a Japan that values freedom and democracy follow suit and pass such a human rights law, he declared.

The meeting also passed a resolution stating, We must unite to force the Chinese government to halt its policies of ethnic genocide.

Two days later on October 3, about 350 people from the Uighur, Hong Kong, Southern Mongolia, and Tibetan homelands gathered in Tokyos central commercial and business districts to parade through the streets with flags of their respective ethnic groups, in protest of the Chinese governments persecution of ethnic minorities.

Planners for the demonstration, hosted by about 20 Japanese organizations working on human rights issues in China, focused on Chinas recent directives to abolish education in the Mongolian language for students in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China and the crackdown on the democracy movement in Hong Kong.

Olhunuud Daichin representing the Southern Mongolia Congress told the group before the marches began:

The 71st anniversary of the Chinese Communist Partys administration is the 71st year of cracking down on us. We want to tell the people of the world about the current situation in China.

A 37-year-old Tibetan woman who participated in the march wearing the Chupa national costume said, I participated in the hope of Tibetan independence. I expect Japan to be a leader in Asia and want to see you exert your power and influence on these matters.

Another Tibetan woman in her fifties told the group, In Tibet, there is no end to people who commit suicide because they have no freedom. But (the international community) looks away while it runs to China for money.

Some day, I want to go back to a Tibet that is free, she added.

(Read the original stories here and here, in Japanese.)

Author: The Sankei Shimbun

See the article here:

Uyghurs, Tibetans in Japan Decry Beijings Oppression of Human Rights in their Homelands at Diet Meeting - JAPAN Forward

The stark decision facing Americans this November was on full display in the first presidential debate. On one side, there was loud, obnoxious and unorthodox Donald Trump, whose strongman shtick turns on his base. On the other was Joe Biden, stately and mostly calm. Biden represents an older political order that has disenfranchised so many, and Trump did his best to dig into this disenfranchisement and convince Americans that his brand of chaotic evil is good, actually.

Even though the divided United States is so neatly summed up by the choice between Trump and Biden, the division isnt simply partisan. Its also regional, based on class or occupation, city versus rural, and ideological.

As Black Lives Matter protests have exploded across the U.S., its clear that the foundation of the country white supremacy is its greatest problem. To confront a problem woven into the fabric of the nation will require a reckoning that could transform, and even unwind, the country.

The U.S. has profound problems all settler-colonial states do. And as fascism rises, police brutality continues unabated and Americans take to their streets to demand rights, its increasingly clear that demanding system reform is a dead end. If the system was built to oppress, the only way to stop oppression is to destroy the system.

Dismantling the U.S. is an idea that is both radical and centuries-old. In 2009, Paul Starobin argued in the Wall Street Journal that Americans should consider transforming the U.S. into modern city-states, like innovative Singapore. He wrote: Americas broke, ill-governed and way-too-big nation-like state might be saved, truly saved, not by an emergency federal bailout, but by a merciful carve-up into a trio of republics that would rely on their own ingenuity in making their connections to the wider world.

Eleven years later, and the cry for decentralized government feels more and more like a possible solution to the mess that the not-so-United States finds itself in.

There is a deep crisis of democracy in the U.S.: the American government is too tied to the corporate world and too unresponsive to the people it governs. Partly, thats because governing every American through three levels of government means that the thorniest issues can be passed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction without ever settling on a satisfying resolution.

The U.S. is a nation that was built on genocide and through slavery, and it has never accounted for either. The deep inequalities that exist today trace a direct line to the countrys foundation. More than one-quarter of the 38.1 million Americans living in poverty are Indigenous, and more than 20 per cent are Black. Indeed, the very people on whose backs and whose land the United States is built are the ones who continue to live in the most difficult conditions.

Reparations must be paid, and one estimate places the amount at US$10 trillion to $12 trillion just to close the wealth gap that exists between Black and white Americans. But money isnt enough. Reparations also require a fundamental shift in where Black Americans find themselves in the U.S., while also giving land back to Indigenous nations that never ceded their territory. These two projects must be realized for the U.S. to face its past and chart a more equitable future, and its impossible to see this happening governed by the status quo.

The U.S. became the worlds most powerful superpower after the Second World War in an era where the prevailing political consensus, liberalism, was that if the markets were not mitigated, people would react with violence. The liberal consensus meant that both the Republicans and Democrats became big-tent parties that sought to help citizens in different ways by building a welfare state.

Liberalisms strength, glossing over the political divisions that exist within society, would eventually become its weakness, as the horror of two world wars and the Great Depression fell away from peoples minds. The Republicans, and then the Democrats, caused liberalism to fail in those fundamental promises: the welfare state was destroyed, the manufacturing base that provided good wages and good jobs is gone and inequality threatens social cohesion.

If liberalism falls, it will take its most important example down with it. And if it doesnt, it is still the right time to engage in a democratic process for Americans to redefine what their state looks like. This could be an example of democracy and self-determination, two words Americans throw around a lot when they are in other countries but which are rarely practised very well domestically.

A new federal arrangement could certainly replicate a colonial structure, but a process that is rooted in reparations and respect for Indigenous sovereignty would have to be created mutually, in a way that avoids doing political business as usual. It might sound lofty, even impossible, to imagine democracy operating in a way that is local, decentralized and responds to average peoples needs. But its exactly how communities in the U.S. right now are co-operating to survive through the pandemic, floods, hurricanes and fires. Why would it be impossible to apply these principles more broadly to create a new kind of federal arrangement?

In 2000, Johan Galtung predicted the U.S. empire would fall in 2025. In 2010, he argued that this might happen when an isolationist president is elected who seeks to remove the U.S. from foreign engagement. The fall of this empire would have a profound impact on the U.S. domestically, as so much of politics and the economy have operated in service of the empire. As Trump has promised to bring U.S. troops home, how will having a domestic military shape the new era of a nation that does not have bases around the world and is no longer the great global military superpower?

In 2016, Vice featured Galtungs theory and wrote: He argued that American fascism would come from a capacity for tremendous global violence; a vision of American exceptionalism as the 'fittest nation'; a belief in a coming final war between good and evil; a cult of the strong state leading the fight of good against evil; and a cult of the 'strong leader.'" Galtung argued that 15 contradictions would bring the collapse of the empire but also would have profound impacts on the stability of the U.S. as a whole, especially where so many people have such deep and important grievances with the state.

Theres little question something major is going to have to happen to course-correct, and its not simply a Biden presidency. A Biden victory will diffuse a lot of the anger many Americans feel while also igniting another kind of anger the fascist organizing that has been so intensely fuelled by Trump.

By eliminating this tier of government entirely, it would radically shift power and devolve decision-making to be closer to average people. It would fundamentally alter how states operate and would give average people a new struggle in which to participate: not just in rewriting a constitution that finally interprets "We the People" to mean all people, but also in righting historical wrongs through redistribution of wealth, land and power. It could be a way forward, where people can peacefully engage and bridge the division that threatens the existence of the United States.

Original post:

Time to reimagine the US government - National Observer

On Mahatma Gandhis birth anniversary, activist and lawyer Prashant Bhushan delivered a lecture organised by the Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi.

In his remarks, he asserted the relevance of Mahatma Gandhis teachings and principles to present-day India, saying Gandhi would have exhorted people at large to throng the streets in protest againstunjust and discriminatory laws and practices of the [Narendra Modi] government.

Below is the full text of his speech.

Mahatma Gandhis actions and writings during his lifetime tell us a lot about his view of justice in society as well as justice through courts. At one level, his view of justice was governed by what he felt was the consequence of an action on the weakest, the poorest and the most helpless man in society. At another level, his view of justice was governed by his belief in what was fair and equitable. At yet another level it was governed by what he felt was an act in public interest.

Gandhis view of justice for the last man

Gandhi always worked for and strove to provide justice to the weak and immiserated. He expressed this in his Talisman, in one of the last notes left behind by him. He said,

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melt away.

Here his view of justice is really governed by what is fair to the last or weakest person, rather than the greatest common good. It is because of this view of justice that he stood for the rights of and against the oppression of minorities, at the hands of the ruling majority. It is this view of justice that made him stand against majoritarian sentiments and stand with the deprived minorities if he felt they were being oppressed.

Though Gandhis often conflicting views on the caste system and its practice has been the subject of much controversy, and which was also ground for Ambedkars strong disagreement with the Mahatma, there is no doubt that Gandhi spent a substantial part of his life in working for the abolition of all forms untouchability and for allowing Dalits access to equal rights in every sphere of activity. Here too, it was his view of the oppression of and fairness towards the Dalits, that guided his actions.

Statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the premises of the Parliament House during the monsoon session, New Delhi. September 20, 2020. Photo: PTI/Kamal Kishore

Gandhi: Legal justice and justice of conscience

Gandhi had many encounters with the law and the judicial system and he faced them with an unflinching firmness of principle. He mooted the idea of civil disobedience where he propagated that it was just and principled to disobey laws which were fundamentally unjust and unfair. Gandhi wrote explaining his idea of satyagraha: The object behind the idea of Satyagrah is to make the people fearless and free, and not to maintain our own reputation anyhow.

Also Read: Prashant Bhushan and the Gandhian Response to an Illegitimate Law

Thus be defied many unjust and excessive laws, two of which mark important satyagrahas by Gandhi which Id like to mention. Under a harsh colonial law, peasants in Champaran, Bihar were made to cultivate indigo on a portion of their land or pay an enhanced rent to the factory. Further, those who refused to comply would have their land confiscated. When Gandhi visited Champaran in 1917, it was his first encounter with the hardships of the peasants in India. He was ordered to leave the district and even produced before a magistrate, where he only stated that, as a self-respecting man he was bound to disobey the DMs order and continue his stay.

He wrote to the viceroy that the peasants were living under a reign of terror and their persons and their minds are all under the planters heels. He travelled extensively defying all orders against his public activity and collected almost 7,000 testimonies which led the Champaran Agrarian Enquiry Committee, whose reports largely favoured the tenants and ended his first satyagraha successfully.

The other important satyagraha that Gandhi led later in 1930 was against the unjust salt tax the states monopoly over the production and sale of salt. Gandhi wrote on this stating:

The illegality is in a government that steals the peoples salt and makes them pay heavily for the stolen article. The people, when they become conscious of their power, will have every right to take possession of what belongs to them.

This then led to the famous Dandi march to the sea to defy the salt law, an event that hailed Gandhi as the law breaker.

Gandhi also disobeyed the British law of sedition. In 1922, he was imprisoned in Yerwada for violating Section 124(A) of the Indian Penal Code, for uttering or writing words exciting disaffection towards the government established by law. Section 124 (A) defines Sedition as:

Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law, shall be punished

He believed that while disobeying fundamentally unjust laws was just and fair, it was equally incumbent upon the conscientious objector practising civil disobedience to submit to any penalty that could be imposed by the judiciary for such civil disobedience, without indulging in any violence. Gandhi thus spent many years in jail for various acts of civil disobedience. He stated during this trail,

I wish to endorse all the blame that the leaned advocate general has thrown on my shoulders in connection with the Bombay, the Madras, and the Chauri Chaura occurrenceshe is quite right when he says that a man of responsibility, a man having received a fair share of education, having had a fair share of experience of this world, I should have known the consequences of every one of my acts. I know that I was playing with fire.

Gandhis sedition trial of 1922 was one that brought into sharp focus the conflict between obedience to the law of the land and obedience of ones moral conscience in opposing an unjust law. Gandhi had been charged with sedition for writing politically sensitive articles in his weekly journal Young India.

He went on to say at his trial:

Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite to violence. But the section under which Mr. Banker and I are charged is one under which mere promotion of disaffection is a crimeI have studied some of the cases tried under it (section 124A) and I know that some of the most loved of Indias patriots have been convicted under it. I consider it a privilege, therefore, to be charged under that section.

And elsewhere in the trail he said,

I had to make my choice. I had either to submit to a system which I considered had done irreparable harm to my country or to incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth when they understood the truth from my lips. I know that my people have sometimes gone mad, I am deeply sorry for it. I am therefore here to submit not to a light penalty. But to the highest penalty. I do not ask for mercy. I do not ask for any extenuating act of clemency. I am here to invite and cheerfully submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.

Gandhi thus laid more emphasis on truth and justice of conscience rather than in courts of justice. He said, There is a higher court than the court of Justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts. This issue came up most starkly when he was charged for contempt of court for having published a letter in Young India written by the district judge of Ahmedabad to the registrar of the Bombay high court. The charge was that the letter was a private official letter forming part of a pending case. When asked by the chief justice of the Bombay high court to publish an apology, Gandhi submitted that he could not conscientiously offer any apology. He stated:

I regret that I have not found it possible to accept the advice given by His Lordship the Chief Justice. Moreover, I have been unable to accept the advice because I do not consider that I have committed either a legal or a moral breachI am sure that this Honble Court would not want me to tender an apology unless it be sincere and express regret for an action which I have held to be a privilege and duty of a journalist. I shall therefore cheerfully and respectfully accept the punishment that his Honble Court may be pleased to impose upon me for the vindication of the majesty of law.

Justice Hayward held that Gandhis actions scandalised the judge concerned (Judge Kennedy). He also suggested that Gandhi posed not as a law-breaker but as a passive resistor of the law, and held it sufficient to severely reprimand Gandhi and the editor for their proceedings and to warm them of the penalties imposable by the high court.

Later in November 1922, he was discontinued as a member of the Inn and his name was removed from the rolls. By then it was several years since he had practised as a lawyer. His appearances in court had been as someone who was charged as a law breaker. Gandhi was willing to submit to any penalty that could be lawfully imposed on him for disobeying the courts orders which he felt were unjust and violated his principles/conscience. I may point out here that for Gandhi adherence to ones principles/conscience meant being truthful, fair and just.

Mahatma Gandhi receives a donation in a train compartment. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Unknown author, Public domain

Gandhi in todays context:

Martin Luther King, Jr, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964 said, Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force that makes for social transformation. This reference to a peaceful and resistant India many decades ago, inspiring a civil strife-torn US towards freedom, is a startling acknowledgment of the power of Gandhis campaigns led by non-violent satyagraha and civil disobedience.

I believe, at no other time is Gandhi and his teachings/principles more relevant to India, than today. We are witnessing today an onslaught on many ideals and principles which were fundamental and very dear to him. There is an onslaught on minorities, on the streets, in the media and by fundamentally discriminatory laws being sanctioned by a bigoted government.

There is an assault on truth, civility, scientific temper and reason itself. There is an assault on dissent by the use of fundamentally unjust laws such as the NSA, UAPA and of course sedition, against dissenters and students such as Devangana Kalitha, Natasha Narwal, Safoora Zargar or Umar Khalid, activists and academics such as Anand Teltumble, Sudha Bharadwaj, Shoma Sen, Gautam Navlakha and several other framed in the Bhima Koregaon case; eminent activists and academics such as Harsh Mander, Apoorvanand and Yogendra Yadav, who are being falsely implicated in a trumped up conspiracy to have caused the North East Delhi riots, which were unleashed by the right wing to crush a successful and peaceful peoples resistance against the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act. There is a further assault on the media and on political opposition, through complicit agencies which pursue their political masters rather than the law.

There is also an assault and an attempt to suborn independent institutions like the judiciary, the Election Commission, the CAG, the NHRC, the CBI, the Lokpal, etc. Police investigative agencies, like the NIA, ED, NCB and the State police organisations, have been made handmaidens of the ruling establishment to harass and victimise innocent people while allowing law breakers to roam free, making a mockery of the rule of law.

There is no doubt, that Gandhi would have been aghast and dismayed at seeing the India of today. Could he have imagined that having freed India from British rule, more than 70 years later, our country and society would be reduced to a different form and more venomous servitude to falsehood, hatred and violence.

It is not clear if he would have fasted against all these malpractices in our society or what exact form his agitation would have taken, but there is no doubt that he would not have been at peace or rest with what is being witnessed in our country. His sense of justice would have led him to implore those propagating Hindutva/rabid media houses/the BJP and its IT Cell, to understand that vilifying Muslims by spreading this communal hatred is not only unjust and unfair but is causing harm to all humanity by shaking the foundation of brotherhood and love that our diverse society is built on.

He would have told them that the religious, linguistic and cultural diversity of our society is our asset and that any attempt to create a Hindu rashtra will be catastrophic of all. He would have told those who attack scientific temper by promoting superstition and blind beliefs that this is creating a society without knowledge and understanding; that the effort by this government to blunt and prevent critical thinking, discussion and debate in universities will prevent the quest for truth and progress in society; that the creation of a post truth society where people cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood would sound the death knell.

Also Read: Hindus, in Trying to Drive out the Muslims, Are Not Following Hinduism

Gandhi who called Section 124-A, the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen, would have been dismayed and appalled to see an independent India still persisting with the colonial sedition law that he outrightly opposed, where people are still being jailed for speaking out against the oppressive actions of the government or any authority.

He would have been appalled by the colonial law of contempt by scandalising the court still being used in India to punish people who speak the truth about the faults and failings of the judiciary, which is today barely able to give justice to a vast majority of those suffering and oppressed in this country today.

He would have been revolted by laws such as the National Security Act, which allows the government to keep in detention political leaders and others for months together, on the ground that the government feels their liberty would be a threat to national security. He would be appalled by the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the manner in which it has been used to persecute and incarcerate some of the finest human rights activists in the country a law which does not even allow bail till you are proved innocent and thus enables the government to keep innocent citizens rotting in jails for decades together while delaying trials.

He would have found all of these laws and practices a complete travesty in the name of justice. He would also have been appalled by the economic policies of the government which are mindless and cruel such as demonetisation or the manner of imposing the lockdown so fundamentally opposed to the interests of the poor and designed to benefit the few crony capitalists.

I have no doubt he would have been against the recent farm Bills which are designed to eliminate the minimum support price for crops and abolish any regulation of the unequal trade between the farmers/middlemen/corporates. All these would, from a Gandhian perspective, militate against every sense of fairness and justice.

Members of various farmer organisations block a railway track during a protest against the Central government farm Bills at Nabha in Patiala, September 24, 2020. Photo: PTI

Does Gandhi have anything for such an abusive, violent, intolerant and diminished society as we have become today terrorised, communally torn and governed by a despotic regime? Would his non-violent satyagraha and disciplined call for mass protest be relevant at all against bigoted authorities, powered by cronyism, violence and loot? I have no doubt Gandhi would have given a call for massive civil disobedience against such an unjust system with laws and practices that are oppressing the masses today. He wrote, Everyone should realise the secret that oppression thrives only when the oppressed submit to it.

Also Read: Hindutva Leaders Revile Gandhi and His Message, But Cant Resist Basking in His Glory

Just as he told our people that in resisting the British rule they must lose the fear of jail, COVID-19 or not, he would have exhorted the people today to throng the streets in protest against these unjust and discriminatory laws and practices of the government. He would have lauded and led the anti-CAA protests and would surely have launched a Jail Bharo Andolan, daring the government to incarcerate millions of peaceful protesters from across the country.

It is this courage in adversity that Gandhi would have displayed in leading India today, and as Gopalkrishna Gandhi has written in his introduction to a collected works of Gandhi, such courage becomes popular when the two have served consciences, not constituencies. Today, we take our cue from Gandhis courage. Gandhis courage invited wrath and incarceration. But he never sacrificed the cause of justice for fear of persecution. He said, Strength does not come from physical capacity but from an indomitable will. It is the indomitable will of the suffering masses that must galvanise us to stand up against this constitutional fascism that has suffocated our country today. Gandhis legacy of non-violent resistance, defiant satyagraha, obstinate adherence to a belief in justice and fairness, unflinching courage in the face of repression, are our call to action, even today.

Thank you. Jai Hind.

Prashant Bhushan is an advocate practising in the Supreme Court.

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Gandhi Would Have Been 'Aghast and Dismayed' at Seeing the India of Today: Prashant Bhushan - The Wire

Since Aliaksandr Lukashenka, the authoritarian ruler of Belarus, claimed victory in the August 9 presidential election, the country has been swept by a popular uprising against his regime, which has lasted for a quarter of a century.

The national as opposed to state white-red-white flag, along with the white knight emblem, has been adopted by the protest movement. Its slogan Long live Belarus dates back to the national liberation movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Yet Belaruss popular revolution is not about national identity or the countrys geopolitical orientation. There has been no reference to its heroic past, nor have the European Union or Russian flags been flown. The Belarusian revolution is about freedom and democracy: the right to choose your own government and to express your opinion publicly without fear of violence and repression.

The soft power exemplified in womens marches and non-violent actions has been predominant in this revolution. There are no hierarchical power structures among the protesters. The focus is instead on grassroots cooperation, inclusion and mutual aid. In this sense, it is a post-national revolution focused on civic identity, that is attaining a better and more dignified life inside ones own country.

The white-red-white flag has been chosen to contrast with the state red and green Soviet replica, promulgated by Lukashenka. It dates back to the 15th century, when white and red elements were present on the flags of the troops of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a medieval forerunner of the present-day Belarus and Lithuania. The flag later became an official symbol of the Belarus Peoples Republic, a short-lived state of 1918, and was revived again by the Belarusian intelligentsia during the Nazi occupation of 1941-1944. Finally, the flag became an official state symbol of an independent Belarus in 1991, following the demise of the Soviet Union.

Having come to power in 1994, Lukashenka launched a propaganda campaign to discredit the white-red-white flag and the knight emblem as those of Nazi collaborators. He then used the question of revoking the ostensibly Nazi symbols as a pretext to push through a controversial referendum that allowed him to subjugate the legislature and embark on integration with Russia.

Lukashenka continued his assault on the short-lived national revival of 1990-1994 by curtailing use of the Belarusian language in public life and rewriting history textbooks. Russian was made an official state language, and the new state ideology portrayed national identity as stemming from the Belarusian partisan guerrilla movement during the Second World War.

There was little opposition to the creation of this fake narrative for several reasons. Belarusians have always lacked a strong sense of national consciousness. As part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth since the second half of the 17th century and the Russian Empire since the late 18th century until the revolution of 1917, Belarus was subject to strong Polish and Russian influences. Belarusians used to call themselves tuteyshyia literally from here as they did not identify themselves as Belarusian, Russian or Polish but as coming from this land.

Later, as the western frontier of the Soviet Union, Belarus was subject to further Russification. This process included the deployment of large numbers of Russian troops and their integration into Belarusian society, the appointment of Russian bureaucrats as heads of the Belarusian Communist Party and the wiping out of the local intelligentsia. More than 100,000 Belarusians, including teachers, doctors, writers and poets, were executed by the NKVD in 1937-1941 in the Kurapaty village on the outskirts of Minsk.

As a result, nationalism did not become a strong social force driving political change in Belarus as it did in the Baltic states. Unlike Ukraine, there was no nationalist sentiment among Belarusian communists either. The nationalist opposition, which managed to push through the white-red-white flag and the knight emblem as state symbols, lost its popularity in the late 90s having failed to act on economic reforms and was quickly crushed by Lukashenka.

The presidents geopolitical orientation towards Russia has not helped in building a sense of national identity either. In 1999, Lukashenka signed a treaty with the Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, to form a Union State between Belarus and Russia, much of which has yet to be implemented.

Belarus then joined the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and finally the Eurasian Economic Union. In contrast, the West has kept limited ties to Belarus, following the crackdown on the Belarusian opposition after thereferendums of 1995-96. It was only after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 that the West decided to expand contacts with the Belarusian government, helped by the release of political prisoners.

Western prosperity and its freedoms have always been attractive to Belarusians, whose country borders three EU members.

Sociologists say that Belarus is undergoing an identity crisis. People find themselves squeezed between two civilizational choices, unable to make up their minds. Polls show that public opinion has swung between supporting a western or a Russian orientation, with the latter often leading, although the gap has diminished in recent years. For example, those preferring full integration with Russia over joining the EU dropped from 60.3 per cent in January 2018 to 40.4 per cent in December 2019. At the same time the number preferring to join the EU has risen from 20.2 per cent in January 2018 to 32 per cent in December 2019.

Most of todays protesters are in their 40s or younger the two generations that have grown up in an independent Belarus. For them, their countrys sovereignty is inalienable. As Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the opposition, has said: It is not a subject of debate or haggle.

The polls since 2016 have shown more than 75 per cent of Belarusians wanting Belarus to remain independent from Russia, with 15 per cent preferring full integration.

As foreign travel has become easier, Belarusians are confronted with the question of who they are and what it means to be Belarusian. In recent years, several projects aimed at defining and (re)constructing Be- larus national identity have been launched. These include Belarusian language courses and singing classes, costume designs with national elements, translations of books into Belarusian and national history tours.

The election campaign and the post-election protests are speeding up this process. Public interest in national symbols and songs, as well as a history of Belarus, untainted by state propaganda, is growing.

The popular revolution in Belarus is helping to nurture a sense of civic identity. Having endured the hardships of the 1990s and the authoritarian oppression that followed, the country has matured over the past 30 years. Its people are ready to define how they want to live and will no longer tolerate more decades of repression.

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Shaking off oppression - Chatham House

This is an article from World Review: The State of Democracy, a special section that examines global policy and affairs through the perspectives of thought leaders and commentators, and is published in conjunction with the annual Athens Democracy Forum.

In recent years a handful of African countries, including Sudan and Algeria, have said goodbye to longstanding authoritarian rulers, creating openings, however small, for democratic change.

The West African nation of Togo, however, remains firmly under the thumb of a military-backed regime that of the Gnassingbe family, the longest-ruling dynasty on the continent. In recent years, the regime has fully embraced the tactics of digital repression to extend its longevity, outflanking (for now) an increasingly emboldened community of online activists.

The citizens of Togo, a country of roughly eight million people between Ghana to the west and Benin to the east, have lived for more than 50 years under a brutal dictatorship. The nations military regime came to power in 1967, with the installation of the armys chief of staff, Gnassingbe Eyadema, as president. Mr. Eyadema died in 2005, bringing to an end a ruthless 38-year reign marked by widespread human rights abuses. In the months after Mr. Eyademas death, the military-backed candidacy of his son, Faure Gnassingbe, proved victorious in an election marred by serious fraud allegations.

The generations of Togolese activists who had fought the dictatorship of Gnassingbe the First hoped his passing would bring an end to the nations tyranny, paving the way for a brighter democratic future. Instead, Mr. Eyademas death, in February 2005, and the election of his son in April led only to horrific violence: Between 400 and 500 people were killed during those months, with thousands more wounded, according to a United Nations report.

In response to the arrival of Gnassingbe the Second, a new generation of activists came to the fore. The internet was their most powerful tool, and as internet penetration in Togo grew, so did the democratic resistance movement.

I was one of those activists, and like many of my fellow dissidents I have felt empowered in the years since Mr. Gnassingbes rise by the ability to denounce the government its corruption and gangsterism on social media. You may rule over Togo with no accountability, I wrote in a 2014 Facebook post, addressing the administration, but we citizens rule over the internet, and we will hold you accountable.

Unfortunately, the Gnassingbe government isnt keen on any form of resistance, whether in the streets or online. (Mr. Gnassingbe was re-elected in 2010 and 2015 amid accusations of fraud by Togos opposition.) In fact, in recent years it has become increasingly obvious that we underestimated the governments ability to adapt its repressive methods to the digital world.

In the late summer of 2017, major protests quickly spread across the country in support of the oppositions demands that President Gnassingbe resign and that term limits, abolished by his father in 2002, be reinstated. During the monthslong demonstrations, tens of thousands of protesters chanted Faure Must Go, a slogan coined by an activist movement that I co-founded in 2011 with other young Togolese dissidents living in and outside the country. The Faure Must Go movement relied on decentralized digital organizing, which helped many of us maintain our anonymity, protecting us from direct physical repression by leaders.

However, the governments response to the 2017 protests made it clear that we werent as secure as we had thought. In September, the regime shut down the internet for nine days. In the ensuing months, hundreds of protesters were arrested and several were killed, including a 9-year-old boy, according to Amnesty International.

During this time, we received information suggesting that some activists had been arrested and tortured by the government based on evidence gleaned from private conversations that had taken place on WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging app. This gave us a strong hint that the government was spying on us, thus destroying our anonymity as online activists and putting our own security and that of our family members in jeopardy. I was in contact with some of the imprisoned activists for months; many were subsequently forced to flee the country or to go into hiding.

Thanks to a 2018 investigation by Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research group based at the University of Toronto, we later discovered that a spyware program known as Pegasus was likely being used by the Togolese government to target smartphone users in the country. We believe the regime has used this program to attack the electronic devices of Togolese dissidents.

Pegasus is a product of the NSO Group, an Israeli company that has sold the surveillance technology to numerous governments around the world, solely, the company said, to aid in the fight against terrorism and crime. However, multiple allegations have emerged that the governments in question, some of them with poor human rights records, have also used NSO spyware to target activists, journalists and other civil society leaders. NSO is essentially selling arms to authoritarian governments, fueling abuse and oppression as it puts profits before human dignity.

By late 2018, the Togolese regime had managed to consolidate power by repressing protests and by organizing parliamentary elections under dubious conditions (which the opposition boycotted). It also passed a new cybersecurity law curtailing freedom of expression. As a result of the elections, President Gnassingbe gained the control he needed in Parliament to modify the constitution in his favor: A law passed in 2019 reinstituted the term limits eliminated by his father a major demand of the opposition but it did so while ignoring the three terms Mr. Gnassingbe had already served, potentially allowing him to rule Togo until 2030.

Other West African leaders, including Alpha Cond of Guinea and Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast, have recently followed in Mr. Gnassingbes footsteps by claiming that constitutional changes within their countries have essentially reset the term-limit clock to zero. (It is perhaps no surprise that the 2018 Citizen Lab report found potential Pegasus infections in Ivory Coast.)

When Mr. Gnassingbe ran for a fourth term in February 2020, the opposition had only a microscopic chance of winning. The regime, which retained control of the legislature, barred election monitoring groups from operating in Togo and deployed security forces across the country. Mr. Gnassingbe declared victory with 72 percent of the vote, surpassing his percentages in the 2005, 2010 and 2015 elections, amid further allegations of fraud made by the opposition.

Recent investigations by Citizen Lab and others have revealed that yet more government critics in Togo, including prominent Catholic leaders, have been targeted by NSO surveillance software, as part of an attempt to monitor their conversations and movements. The government seems to have succeeded at maintaining its grip on power in the face of mass protests. The Gnassingbe dynasty, in power for over a half-century, continues.

Yet the thirst for democracy in Togo is stronger than ever. The resistance must now go beyond holding authoritarian regimes accountable and demand that tech companies like NSO also be held responsible for the resources they provide to these governments.

The Togolese regime is ignoring a crucial truth: The internet has given the younger generation a taste of freedom and once people know what it feels like to be free, they can no longer be held in bondage indefinitely.

Farida Nabourema is the executive director of the Togolese Civil League, a nongovernmental organization promoting democracy and the rule of law in Togo, and the spokesperson for the Faure Must Go movement.

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In Togo, There Is Nowhere to Hide - The New York Times