Alternatives International

Lampedusa: European Border Delocalization in the Mediterranean

Sophia Reuss — 2015-06-01T15:41:34Z

Lampedusa, a rocky, 20-square kilometre Italian island in the Mediterranean, lies 113 kilometres east of Tunisia and 300 kilometers north of Libya. In the past two decades, Lampedusa, an access-point for migrants to Italy and Europe, has become a strategic site for lethal European migration policies.

In the wake of the ongoing Mediterranean migration crisis, which Amnesty International deems a “man-made tragedy,” the European Union has militarized its migration policies and stressed the importance of border security. The European Commission's March 2015 report on the issue claims that bolstering European standards of border management and surveillance will be the crux of an effective European response. The sections of the report that aim to address the underlying causes of ‘illegal' migratory flows, such as civil war, persecution, poverty, and climate change, also use the national security rhetoric to prove the necessity of tightened borders, in both European- and origin-countries. The sections on bilateral cooperation with North African and Middle Eastern countries focus on combating smugglers and providing scant humanitarian aid, with insufficient plans for expanding European accommodation of “illegal” or “irregular” migrants.

The EU's insistent and insidious emphasis on ensuring so-called national security by patrolling tightened borders, targeting criminal smuggling networks, and forcibly relocating “illegal” or “irregular” migrants is not a new phenomenon. Lampedusa, closer to North Africa than Italy, has served as the laboratory for European militarized migration policies and border security for decades.

With the Schengen Agreement of 1999, migration from North Africa and the Middle East across the Mediterranean increased considerably; Italy was now the doorstep to the borderless, opportunity-rich Schengen zone of the EU. However, with the Schengen Agreement came new visa restrictions on non-EU citizens entering from the outside. Migration to Italy thus became simultaneously more desirable and more difficult.

Several years later, at the Thessaloniki Summit in 2003, the United Kingdom submitted a proposal for “regional protection zones” and “transit processing centres” located outside the EU's borders. These centres would be ‘protection' zones where migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers waited while they submitted immigration or asylum claims to EU countries. The proposal sought to reduce the number of asylum seekers by delocalizing the EU's southern external border and repatriating Europe-bound migrants. The island of Lampedusa would thus become the first and last stop for many Syrian, Libyan, and Tunisian migrants. Despite the proposal's rejection by France, Spain, and Sweden, the EU Informal Justice and Home Affairs Council implemented five pilot projects. These projects aimed to upgrade existing migrant processing centres and further develop asylum laws in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia in order to shift the onus from the EU abroad.

The results of the proposal, and of reducing the number of legal migrants into the EU in general, was that exponentially higher numbers of ‘illegal' or ‘irregular' migrants attempted, and died along, the journey across the Mediterranean. In this sense, the EU's policies created the structural illegality and irregularity of the current Mediterranean migration crisis. The processing camps on Lampedusa and elsewhere, which were institutions intended to deport migrants, actually “produce the conditions of ‘deportability'” of migrants. The EU's migration policies create and exacerbate the very migration crisis they purport to mitigate.

In August 2004, Italy and Libya signed a joint agreement on combating illegal migration into the EU. The agreement facilitated the October 2004 deportations of more than a thousand ‘irregular' migrants from Lampedusa to Libya on military airplanes. The collective deportations continued through the spring of 2005 with almost weekly regularity.

As the migrant death toll continued to rise, due to shipwrecks during the crossover to Italy and deaths in the desert as the result of the deportations to Libya, several European institutions, social movements, and NGOs mobilized to put an end to the collective deportation process. Ten European organizations filed a joint complaint with the European Commission against Italy's role in deporting migrants to Libya. In the “Resolution on Lampedusa”, the European Parliament called on Italy to grant UNHCR access to the Lampedusa centre, guarantee the individual examination of asylum, and halt the collective deportations. The International Organization for Migration signed an agreement with Libya that aimed to prevent ‘irregular' migration both to and from the country.

The movement to end the collective deportations from Lampedusa culminated on 2 April 2005, the European Day for Freedom of Movement, when activists staged a protest at the Blue Panorama offices, the charter carrier in Rome that was used for the deportation flights. After the protest, Blue Panorama retracted their services.

This was followed in September 2005 with the visit of the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs to Lampedusa to assess the procedures, treatment of detainees, and the management of the processing centre. Their report denounced the Lampedusa centre for inadequate accommodation resulting in overcrowding of the facilities, poor hygiene conditions, and the use of violent and forceful police tactics towards migrants during the deportations.

The report found that migrants in Lampedusa did not have access to asylum procedures: migrants were expelled to Libya, which was most often not their country of origin, and does not have an asylum system capable of managing the high flow of deported migrants. Libya has also not signed the Geneva Convention on Refugees.

These processes have not stopped; in 2008, Italy and Libya signed a ‘friendship pact' whereby Italy provided Libya with military equipment, training, and infrastructure investments in return for harder patrolling of Libyan land and sea borders and the transfer of indicted migrants to detention centres in Libya. In 2009 and 2010, the countries began ‘push-back' operations whereby migrant boats were redirected back to Libya. The current EU response to the migration crisis in the Mediterranean represents the failure of these European measures to adequately address and accommodate the influx of migrants.

Rutvica Andrijasevic concludes that the establishment of extraterritorial processing centres “and the construction of Italy-funded detention centers on Libyan territory, deportations to and from Libya, and joint Italian-Libyan police patrolling of Libyan coastline are all instances that delocalize the EU's external border from South Italy beyond the Libyan coastline into its territory.” This process of border delocalization, which will undoubtedly intensify into 2015 as the EU clamors to address the intensifying migration crisis, will continue to put thousands of migrants to their deaths by creating the conditions of illegality and deportability. Until the EU revisits and radically revises its migration, asylum, and refugee policies, the doors to the European continent will remain locked, with national security hounds patrolling the entrance.

Sources:

Andrijasevic, Rutvica. "Lampedusa in Focus: Migrants Caught between the Libyan Desert and the Deep Sea." Feminist Review 82.Everyday Struggling (2006): 120-25. Web.

http://f-origin.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/235/files/2014/06/CuttittaACME2014.pdf
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/background-information/docs/communication_on_the_european_agenda_on_migration_en.pdf

https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/files/Publications/working_papers/WP_2005/Liza%20Schuster%20wp0520.pdf'

Forced Migration and Ethnic Cleansing: Rohingya Adrift in Southeast Asia

Sophie Smith and Jennifer Geleff — 2015-06-01T15:39:31Z

The Rohingya people are an oppressed Muslim minority group in Buddhist-majority Myanmar that have faced an enduring history of ethnic discrimination and systemic poverty. In Myanmar, the Rohingya are rendered effectively stateless and are denied basic rights, including citizenship and access to education. Most Rohingya live in western Myanmar, also known as the Rakhine region, which borders Bangladesh. A significant portion of the Rohingya people also inhabit Bangladesh where they experience high levels of poverty and grave deprivation. The UN identifies the Rohingya as one of the world's most persecuted ethnic groups. Under such dire circumstances, the Rohingya are susceptible to human trafficking and other degradations, in a futile attempt to escape their current conditions.

The Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG), which facilitates and supports the peace movement in West Bengal, stated that forced migration has become an increasingly critical global issue. The number of people forcibly displaced by violence within their own country rose from 33.3 million in 2013 to 38 million by the end of 2014. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) applies ‘forced migration' as a general term referring to the movement of refugees and those internally displaced by conflict.

In the first quarter of 2015, 25,000 migrants were smuggled by boat from Myanmar and Bangladesh, which amounts to double the same period in 2014. Many migrants smuggled and trafficked to Thailand were held in camps until they paid traffickers a ransom, before being granted the freedom to access the Malaysian border. The IOM estimated that 8,000 migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh are currently stranded at sea. In response to this crisis, representatives of 17 countries including Myanmar, came together at a regional conference in Bangkok, Thailand on May 29. International organizations such as the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the IOM were also present at the conference.

Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to provide Rohingya with shelter for one year. Thailand offered humanitarian help but refused to shelter refugees. According to the IOM Director General, William Lacy Swing, we must radically alter the way migrants are viewed. Many nations were “built on the backs of migrants and with the minds of migrants” and so, we must “look upon migrants as opportunities rather than a problem”. The conference ended Friday with no major breakthroughs. However, one thing is clear: the crisis is escalating quickly and urgent action is required.

Myanmar's attendance at the conference unfolded under specific circumstances. Zaw Htay, director of the office of Myanmar's president, stated that the country would not attend if the word ‘Rohingya' appeared on the invitations. Htay also stated, without any apparent irony, that the “gravest violation of human rights are committed by those corrupt officials who are involved in human trafficking activities”.

Myanmar's government does not recognize the Rohingya people as citizens, arguing that they are in fact migrants, native to the Bengal region. This tension was heightened in March, when Myanmar's government revoked temporary registration certificates issued to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people. These certificates had previously granted the Rohingya people voting rights in Myanmar. The Rohingya people are rejected as Bangladeshi citizens as well, further complicating the situation. Completely stateless, the wholesale rejection of the Rohingya highlights the game of finger-pointing that is embedded in the migrant crisis. Thousands are left dehumanized and adrift, seeking refuge without a destination.

By denying them any patch of earth, the Myanmar government is directly implicated in the decimation of the Rohingya people; acts that must be deemed ethnic cleansing. The blatantly oppressive and racist policies instituted by the Myanmar government have left the Rohingya in a state of immeasurable human suffering, which calls for explicit discussion and direct action.

Volker Türk, the UNHCR's Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, urges that attempts to resolve the plight of these migrants must address the root causes of their flight. Initially, “[s]aving lives must be the number one priority”, said Türk. But further, “a legal status for all habitual residents recognizing that Myanmar is [the Rohingya's] country is urgently required. Access to identity documentation and the removal of restrictions on basic freedoms is needed to normalize and stabilize lives.”

Only a concerted effort by the source, transit and destination countries can protect the Rohingya and successfully prosecute perpetrators of this crisis of misery and death. The MCRG states “[w]hat is essential is to develop an understanding of the causes and consequences of forced migration and gaining the intellectual and practical skills to deal effectively with its challenges both for addressing the causes of forced migration and for the management of effective programmes to assist refugees and other forced migrants.”

Stranded at sea and left at the mercy of their tormentors, the Rohingya people continue to be unaccounted for in a long-standing crisis, which seems to be headed towards a calamitous climax of group-targeted violence. Until they are grounded in a nation-based (Myanmar) identity, this account of ethnic cleansing will only gain momentum, foreseeably resulting in a total systemic demise of the Rohingya people.

SOURCES
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-28/timeline-south-east-asia-migrant-crisis/6498794
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/migrants-rohingya-bangladeshis-150527055925513.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32740637
http://www.mcrg.ac.in/wc.asp
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/691872/myanmar-says-its-not-to-blame-for-migrant-crisis
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/uk-asia-migrants-un-idUKKBN0O00TP20150515
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/28/uk-asia-migrants-meeting-idUKKBN0OD1AW20150528
http://www.unhcr.org/55682d3b6.html
http://www.unhcr.org/55687dc39.html
http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c23.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32740637

Mediterranean Militarization: A New Obstacle for Europe's Migrants

Kyle Jacques — 2015-06-01T15:37:49Z

Last April over 800 people drowned to death in the Mediterranean Sea after a ship packed full of migrants capsized on its way from Libya to Italy. The victims of this tragedy were much like the other thousands of migrants who make this voyage across the world's deadliest maritime migration route. Some are fleeing systematic political persecution in countries like Syria and Eritrea, while others are escaping a complete lack of any meaningful economic prospects in countries like Somalia.

Whatever the country of origin or reason for leaving it, these people will, for the most part, make the long journey to Libya where they pay a hefty fee to be loaded onto overcrowded fishing vessels or inflatable dinghies destined for the shores of Southern Italy or Malta. In many cases they will be intercepted by Italian or Maltese maritime authorities, who will detain the arrivals for perhaps a year or more to establish their identities and evaluate their asylum status. In the best case scenario, they will be assigned a host country, typically Germany or Sweden, for temporary or permanent settlement.

In many cases, however, migrants do not survive the perilous journey. In addition to drowning, migrants risk asphyxiation from being shoved in overcrowded boat hulls, dehydration from the unforgiving sun, and physical abuse from the smugglers. These risk factors have made the Mediterranean Sea the most dangerous border between countries that are not at war with each other.

Since the termination of Mare Nostrum, the Italian-led search and rescue mission once tasked with retrieving these migrants from international waters, the death toll has reached an alarming high. From January to April of this year there have been about 17 times more deaths— more than 1 800 people— than there were during the same period of last year. The response to these staggering figures, the “European Agenda on Migration” released on May 13, is far from adequate.

The document comprises two main pillars. First: a rough blueprint for a quota system in which all European countries each agree to take responsibility for a certain share of migrants and asylum seekers. Britain quickly rejected the plan, in response to growing anti-immigrant sentiment on its shores. France, Hungary, and Poland all promptly followed suit, finding nooks and crannies in the document where they could list their own opt-out provisions.

Thankfully, much wider agreement was found on the part of the agenda that involves just shooting something. The agenda's second major pillar is a naval operation that would involve targeting boats suspected of harbouring migrants and seizing or destroying them before or slightly after leaving the shore. The problems with the operation are almost too numerous to count.

First, destroying migrants' methods of crossing the Mediterranean is not going to quell their desire to do so. In all likelihood, smugglers will simply try and pack more and more people into the dwindling number of remaining vessels, increasing the risk of the voyage. Also, since they will now be fearing interception by European navies, smugglers will likely go to greater lengths to conceal the migrants inside the vessels. This will increase the chances that boats with undetected migrants still on board will be destroyed. A memo leaked by the Guardian even contains an explicit mention of the “collateral damage” the proposed plan will likely entail. Finally, since the vessels used for the trans-Mediterranean voyage are typically fishing boats leased out from fisherman on a trip-by-trip basis, such an operation will have a substantial impact on the livelihoods of already desperate Libyan fisherman.

One would be forgiven for thinking that simply ignoring a humanitarian crisis is the worst course of action. Instead, Europe has upped the ante by militarizing an already deadly migration route and targeting a population that has already endured unspeakable hardships.

If the European Union is even remotely committed to the humanitarian principles it ostensibly holds, than it must end this senseless use of state violence, and begin crafting policies that will actually make a difference. The decision to increase funding for Joint Operation Triton, the massively scaled back replacement for the Mare Nostrum operation, is a small start.

Most importantly, however, Europe must promptly approve the quota agreement contained in the agenda and, beyond that, create a much more extensive plan for settling migrants in Europe.

Even if the quota provisions proposed in the Agenda on Migration were passed tomorrow, Europe would still be far from shouldering an appropriate share of those seeking refuge. According to the UNHCR, 436 000 people applied for asylum across Europe last year, of which 219 000 were migrants who made the trek across the Mediterranean. The EU Agenda on Migration, however, offers a mere 20 000 asylum placements in the entire continent. Compare these numbers to Lebanon and Jordan, who together have taken in over 1.5 million refugees from the Syrian civil war and other Middle Eastern conflicts.

The biggest hurdle in the way of settling more migrants in Europe is the growing prevalence of racist and xenophobic sentiment among both EU politicians and the voters that support them. The mere existence of the United Kingdom Independence Party or the National Front in France illustrate the success of anti-immigrant fear mongering on the continent.

One hopes that the social and economic benefits of an ethnically and culturally diverse Europe will one day be realized and embraced. One also hopes that EU politicians will come to view the difficulties surrounding immigration as signs that it needs to be done better, not abruptly halted. Unfortunately, it often takes people a very long time to realize that they are sitting on the wrong side of history. And, sadly, every second we wait for them, more people will suffocate and drown mere miles from European shores for completely preventable reasons.

References

The Roots of Inequality for Ethiopian Israelis

Interview — 2015-06-01T15:36:03Z

Jessica Desvarieux, Producer, TRNN interviews Lia Tarachansky

Jessica Desvarieux: So Lia, when the protests and the destruction of property took place in Baltimore last week, we covered it and needed to provide some more context about the deeply-rooted economic problems, and just the historically poor relationships that the black community has with police. What are the underlying social conditions faced by Jewish Ethiopians in Israel?

Lia Tarachansky: Well, before you start to understand the discrimination that the Ethiopian community in Israel goes through, you have to understand that Israel is not comparable to the United States, in the sense that Israel is not a democracy the way that Western democracies are democracies.

Israel is an ethnocracy. And what that means is that Israel is a Jewish state, defining itself as a state for the Jewish people, not just in Israel, also Jewish people all around the world. And it has elements of democratic rule for that Jewish population. But the Jewish people in Israel make up only two thirds of the population. So a quarter of the citizens of Israel are not Jewish. And so they fall into second-class and third-class citizen kind of standards.

Now, the Ethiopians are Jewish, but they are black. And before this struggle really rose up to the fore in recent weeks, we've seen another African population in Israel that has been challenging this ethnocratic regime in Israel. And that population, of course, are the African refugees, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, who are not Jewish.

So basically what we're seeing here is that because Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, it has a different kind of category of rights and citizenship levels depending on how you define yourself and how the state defines you in relation to that ethnicity. So if you are Jewish from Europe, you are most likely in the highest position of power. You have a naturalized citizenship, and you have the highest access to power in Israeli society. The next levels are Jews that come from the Arab world and North Africa. Then Jews that came from Russia and the former Soviet Union in the '90s. And the bottom of the Jewish hierarchy in Israel are the Ethiopian Jews. After that, of course, you have the Palestinian citizens of Israel, the African refugees in Israel, which are most likely going to be deported very soon en masse, and then after them the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who are not citizens of any state, and are therefore, don't have any rights.

Jessica Desvarieux: Lia, hold on one second. Let's talk about some specifics, though, of policies that—we want to kind of focus this on the African refugee population, for example. Just to speak to what the Israeli state has instituted in terms of housing and jobs, and how does that affect the African refugee population?

Lia Tarachansky: Well, you can't understand that without understanding ethnocracy. So what I'm trying to get at is, there are two African populations in Israel that are black. There's the African refugees who are not Jewish, and the African refugees who are Jewish. Both of them sort of fall in the cracks of the Israeli ethnocratic regime. The worst, of course, are the African refugees who are not Jewish. They don't have any rights, they don't have any status in Israel, and are basically living at the whim of whoever's the Minister of Interior, and can be deported en masse to third countries at any moment.

The Ethiopian citizens of Israel should have been, or should at least according to the ideology of the ethnocratic regime of Israel, have the same rights as any other Jewish citizens, which of course in the ethnocratic hierarchy are the highest group. But because they are black what you're seeing in practice is a lot of discrimination. And it goes back all the way to the 1980s when they first came to Israel. Basically the Ethiopian Jews lived in Ethiopia, the region of Ethiopia, for centuries. And finally in the '80s as a result of turmoil in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, started moving in the direction of Israel and finally were brought to Israel.

Now, their immigration to Israel was very different than the immigration of most white or Arab Jews. Because first of all, they were kept in internment camps where they were treated for many diseases. Their very Jewishness was questioned. They were forced to undergo mass circumcision, the men had to go through circumcision, because the Chief Rabbinate of Israel did not believe that in fact they were Jewish. And finally the women, in some recent investigations it was revealed, were subjected to levels of criminal forced sterilization, already in internment camps in Africa and in Israel.

And so we're talking about a population who, while are Jewish and should according to the Zionist ideology be welcome in Israel as Jewish citizens, had to undergo humiliating and incredibly racist, borderline criminal policies where their Jewishness was questioned and their women were sterilized in camps where Jewish immigration agents were basically trying to tell them, where you come from you have too many babies, and you have to change your entire family planning if you want to come to Israel so there aren't too many black babies. Of course, the same kind of policy does not apply to religious Jewish people who are white. Who have between seven and twelve children per family.

So that's—the discrimination goes back to the very beginning of their immigration to Israel. Then of course the question of where this population was settled has everything to do with why they are today one of the most impoverished, isolated, marginalized communities in Israel. Basically Israeli power and economy rests between two centers, a few neighborhoods in Jerusalem and a few neighborhoods in Tel Aviv. And if you don't live within that center of power, your access to basically a middle class or upper-middle class livelihood are very limited.

And of course the most impoverished populations, the Jews that came from the Arab world, North Africa, and these Ethiopian Jews, have been settled traditionally in the periphery. In the far north or the far south, in basically ghettos. These are some of the most impoverished communities in Israel, with some of the least investments by the governments of all the municipalities in Israel, except for of course the Palestinian municipalities.

So first of all, you see very minimal investment in them, the least investment of any Jewish community in Israel. You're seeing that in fact they end up in the most frontier units in the army. The Ethiopians end up often in the Magav, which is the border police, units in the army. So they are taking on the brunt of the violence that is perpetrated by the Israeli army. Not somewhere in a comfortable office with a joystick, you kill Palestinians with a drone. They are on the front line, they are the ones who are basically perpetrating the Israeli regime's policies against the Palestinians. And when they come home, they basically find themselves the most impoverished, neglected community in Israel.

At the same time, there's a lot of racism in Israel based on the fact that they are black. They are often confused for African refugees. They're often arbitrarily arrested. The police, which has a very racist practice towards the African refugees, treats the Ethiopians often as African refugees, bringing to the fore a lot of this racism.

Now, the reason that these protests are happening now, and not let's say two years ago, is because in the last let's say 14, 15 months we've seen the, the Israeli government's attack on the African refugees, which brought to the surface a lot of these complaints about racism in Israel, and a lot of the complaints about the way that African people are treated in Israel. Now, after the government finished basically its attack on the African refugees, the Ethiopians saw that the same racism which is perpetrated against the refugees is perpetrated against them. They are often treated as African refugees. They have the same—they feel that they have the same policies and practices practiced against them. We're seeing constant attacks, we're seeing constant violence by the police. We're seeing the police constantly questioning people on the street, treating them like criminals, questioning their identity, questioning their visas. Asking them to prove that they're Jewish. All kinds of harassment.

And these protests, particularly, have come at the heels of that movement of the African refugees and against the African refugees by the government.

So basically, the protest that happened last weekend was very radical in a way. Because the protesters—until now, the Ethiopian community has refrained from protesting in what—in the kind of protest we see in Baltimore and other places in Israel. Their protests have been very pacifist, very peaceful.

For the first time in their history, they go out in a radical protest and they block the main highway in Tel Aviv, in the economic center of Israel. And what you see in that protest is that many of them are holding their hands like this. Now, this is an echo of a symbol that came out in the African refugee protest. In the African refugee protest this symbolized arbitrary imprisonment, because of course the Israeli policies meant that African refugees are imprisoned indefinitely in the large camp in the middle of the desert until they agree to self-deport to African countries such as Uganda and Rwanda. And you saw everywhere in the country the symbol of the two hands with the word freedom underneath.

The fact that the Ethiopian Jewish protesters are emulating this symbol shows that they are connecting their struggle to the struggle of the African refugees, which I have to say is a very brave position. Because the African refugees in Israel are one of those issues where everyone sort of agrees on this atrocious thing. Everybody agrees that the African refugees are refugees, and they probably suffered horrible things in Africa, but they agree that there's no place for them in Israel and they should by and large be deported. There's very few Israelis that believe that the African refugees should receive asylum in Israel and stay.

Most Israelis, and this is why this was such a successful political attack, by all levels of the Israeli government from the Prime Minister and down to the offices of the Ministry of Interior, is that most of the Israelis agreed to deport the African refugees. And the fact that the Ethiopian Jews are making this link with the most marginalized and weakest community in Israel is a very brave thing. And I think that the reason they're doing it is to say that racism is racism, whether it's Jewish or not.

Unfortunately though, they are also wrapping their message in a lot of Israeli nationalist symbols. So while they are crossing their arms and yelling freedom, they're also wrapping themselves in Israeli flags and appealing to the Israeli public in a way that really kind of pulls on the Zionist, the nationalist extremes. So they're singing the anthem. They're constantly talking about how they served the country in the military and they're not against what the country is doing, they just want to be treated as equal, Jewish citizens.

So in a way, they are both making links that are very radical and very promising and very interesting in terms of the anti-racist struggle in Israel, but on the other hand they are doing it by appealing to Zionist values so as to not to alienate themselves from the Israeli mainstream.

Now, the response to their protest—and this is, I think perhaps is the most telling and what we should be watching for in the coming protest—is that the state responded with violence. Mass violence, in the heart of Tel Aviv, in Rabin Square. A place where you've seen hundreds of demonstrations on every issue in the world, from healthcare subsidies to the Israeli-Arab conflict, to housing. Every protest that happens in Tel Aviv happens in this square. And this is the first protest in years that the Israeli police opened, basically attacked with massive—both policemen on horses and tear gas. We're seeing a lot of violence from the police. We're seeing a lot of attacks, the kinds that most protests—which are of course white protests, or protests by white Israelis—never see.

And so the exceptionalization of this kind of protest is going to be very polarizing in Israeli media and in Israeli conversation. And this is what we should be watching for. Because if the government continues to respond with this kind of violence they're looking at alienating a large chunk of the Israeli population, and basically creating a crack in the Zionist mythology of the Jewish unity in Israel.

Lia Tarachansky is an Israeli-Russian journalist and documentary filmmaker who previously reported for The Real News Network on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Born in the Soviet Union, Tarachansky grew up in a settlement in the occupied West Bank. She is the director of On the Side of the Road, a documentary on Israel's biggest taboo - the events of 1948 when the state was created. Tarachansky previously worked as a Newsroom Producer in The Real News' Washington D.C. and Toronto Headquarters, and her work appeared on BBC, Al Jazeera, USA Today, Canadian Dimension Magazine and others.

Source:http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13809

A Kurdish Perspective on the Turkish Elections

Frans Jansson — 2015-06-01T15:32:03Z

ISTANBUL – Hopes and fears are plentiful in Kurdish and left-wing politics in Turkey ahead of the elections on Sunday. The Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), the left-wing party focused on the Kurdish issue, has a unique chance of obtaining the required ten per cent of votes to secure some seventy seats in parliament in the Turkish general elections on the 7th of June. This is perhaps the most politically intense multi-party election in the history of the state.

The buildup to the elections has generated intensified discussion about the Kurdish struggle and the state of the peace process between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party's (PKK), jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, and President Erdogan's ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The PKK engaged in armed conflict with the Turkish state from 1984 up until 2013 and is still considered a terrorist organization by both the European Union and the United States. The terrorist label, however, is increasingly questioned, following PKK's entry into the war against ISIS in northern Syria. The motivation to the Kurdish struggle is to achieve self-determination and cultural and political rights for the oppressed Kurdish minority in Turkey. Kurds make up as much as a quarter of Turkey's population. The PKK began as a Marxist-Leninist organization, but has since moved on to “Democratic Confederalism”, an anarchist inspired political platform that no longer calls for a Kurdish nation-state.

The peace process with the PKK began in 2013 after calls from Öcalan for the PKK to cease hostilities. Although negotiations with the AKP appear to be a fruitless endeavor, some progress has been made. Many skeptics claim that this progress is illusory, given Erdogan and the AKP's grip on Turkey, and therefore any apparent gains are simply institutionalized means to appease tension ahead of the elections. After all, the basis of the Kurdish struggle has not changed.

Tugce Öztürk, a resident of Istanbul's Okmeydani district, explains: “The Turks have no right to govern us. They lost all legitimate claims long ago. We weren't allowed to speak our language. It is enough to be Kurdish to have the police follow you around. I am from Diyarbakir and many of my friends were beaten by the police and imprisoned.”

Öztürk stresses that she never supported the violent methods such as attacks on civilians and suicide bombings of the PKK, but that she has also never been as hopeful for change as with the current rise of HDP. Given the pre-election momentum and the HDP's incredibly high stakes, the prospect of the HDP failing to reach the ten per cent threshold is terrifying.

Öztürk also fears that an HDP failure failure would put the peace process at risk. If the HDP does not enter parliament in June, she believes there will be riots and clashes in Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of the part of Kurdistan that lies within the borders of the Turkish state.

Others are more cynical. A university student from Istanbul who wishes to remain anonymous contests that the HDP does not actually matter. He claims that the HDP party is merely one instrument, and perhaps not the most important or effective one, in the strategic repertoire of the PKK. It all comes down to Qandil, the university student contends. Qandil is a mountainous region in northern Iraq where the military headquarters of the PKK lies. Qandil hosts the PKK command, several thousand militants, and their supplies in relative safety in the inaccessible mountains.

Regardless of the peace process, the next few weeks are likely to define the future of the Kurdish struggle. Many argue that the success or otherwise of the HDP will also set the course of the Turkish left for years to come. An anonymous supporter of the banned Marxist-Leninist organization the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), one of few left-wing organizations that has not been united under the HDP umbrella, states her concern that the HDP will simply use its seats in parliament as a bargaining chip in the peace process and leave the Turkish left stranded without representation in the unlikely event of an autonomous Kurdistan.

Another concern that she articulates is that of electoral fraud; she argues that anything could happen and does not trust president Erdoğan and the AKP to play by the rules of democracy. “With this corrupted fascist state you never know what they might do in order to stay in power,” she says.

If HDP obtains the ten per cent it needs, it is at least theoretically possible that the HDP might hold the balance of power in parliament. In this scenario, the HDP's support would be required should (read: when) the AKP desires to rule for another term. The more likely scenario is that AKP will not receive the qualified majority the party needs to change the constitution. One of Erdogan's projects is to do just this in order to move Turkey's political system towards presidentialism.

However, there is another possibility – that the AKP government ask the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and its neo-fascist youth organization, the Greywolves, to prop up Erdogan's government. The MHP are the sworn enemies of the PKK, and it entirely likely that a government propped up by the MHP and the Greywolves would be inclined to end the peace process.

The last few months have been comparatively calm in Turkey considering the Gezi Park events are fresh in the country's collective memory. Although many HDP offices have been bombed, neither May 1st nor the one-year anniversary of the Soma mining disaster led to any major unrest or disturbances. Some argue that the coming elections present a glimmer of hope to those part of the Gezi generation. If these hopes are shattered, tensions are likely to escalate — and not isolated around the Kurdish question.

Saving What's Left of the Arab Spring

Messaoud Romdhani — 2015-06-01T15:30:04Z

When Tunisia succeeded in holding its second legislative and presidential elections by the end of 2014, the “Washington Post” wrote: “Remember the Arab Spring? Here's what's left,” (November 23, 2014) stating that “while several other countries overthrew their dictators, Tunisia is the only nation to have built a democracy.”

This bitter assessment is explained through the terrible escalation that turned the beacon of hope for democracy and freedom sparked by the Arab Revolutions into a winter of discontent: a chaotic situation in Libya, a military regime in Egypt after the mismanagement of an Islamist government, a civil war in Syria and an everlasting turmoil in Yemen.

However, Tunisia's success story is precarious. Hard-won democratic gains are more fragile than they appear. They are vulnerable to being challenged by two difficulties: a social and economic situation that is getting worse and a geopolitical environment that is getting more and more volatile.

For four years, politics has dominated debates and overshadowed other imperatives. Its true that there's been an endless sequence of important political events at a frenetic pace: election of the Constituent Assembly, the drafting of the Constitution, the presidential and legislative elections…. But it is also true that the ongoing conflicts between political parties, partisan and self-serving politics have dominated the scene, overriding the will to deal in depth with an ailing economic and social environment.

The Tunisian political class seems to have lost sight of the main categorical imperatives:

• That democracy and human rights were key catchwords of the Revolutions; the death of the fruit-seller –Bouazizi- was not only a political act of protest, it was a reaction to a lifetime economic repression and social deprivation;
• The success of the democratic transition is threatened by a economic and social policy that remains in line with that of Ben Ali in every aspect;
• It is the responsibility of the government to uncover the truth about the critical economic and financial situation so as to get everyone to take his responsibility. The situation could become more explosive if the government does not identify its priorities facing increasing social discontent in different regions and sectors.

Since this government has been in place, signs of disrepair have multiplied:

– The flooding that had been going in the fragile North-West of the country had laid bare the suffering of a peasant population that has been left behind for a long time: 4200 hectares of irrigated lands have been damaged; villages and towns suffer from a total absence of infrastructure and protection;
– The social protests in Dhehiba and Ben Guerdane , near the Libyan border, pose ,far beyond their political dimension, the question of regional development in districts living on the fringes of the economic arena;
– The series of school teachers strikes go beyond the mere wage claims to expose the crisis of a flawed educational system;

We could spend more time debating on the threats that are close to our doorsteps from our western and southern borders. Just to give a little heads-up on that: these threats are crucially related to the unprecedented difficulties and the widespread poverty that the populations face over there.

This means that success in the democratic transition, progress that's been made in the fight against terrorism, the relative political freedom…should not divert us from this basic truth: the precarious social situation imposes on all actors a challenging dialogue to get the country out of the rut.

Messaoud Romdhani, Committee for the Respect of Liberties and Human Rights in Tunisia

Uncovering Something Less Ignorant

Dylan Boyko — 2015-06-01T15:27:38Z

I first heard of the vague concept of the Armenian Genocide when I was 13 reading a Kurt Vonnegut novel called Bluebeard. The book was first published in 1987, and only the narrator's distant parents had actively experienced and survived the event. No great care was given to the story, almost a residual anecdote about human indignity contrasted against more visceral – yet still dissociated – memories of the narrator's experiences in WWII. I remember performing a few perfunctory Google searches, but stopped soon after from attempting to learn anything else.

This example of a personal ignorance – a disregard for the history and tragedy of yet another marginalized population – underlines the arrogant and generalizing tendency of western, white cultural and political memory. I read it in a book, but not a textbook or required reading. My curiosity was piqued, not by sheer human violence, but by the abnormality of such an event not being part of my worldview. Either through selective memory or what Sedef Arat-Koc calls the “fundamentally disingenuous” approach to genocide remembrance in Canada, such generic discussions of horrific events veil any true historical impact or potential healing. Arat-Koc goes further, highlighting and disputing the specifically political components of choosing which genocides to commemorate and which to ignore.

Essential power dynamics determine what is remembered. Privilege bubbles to the top, where white male hegemony and the all-too-real polemics associated with such patriarchal and capitalistic structures hold high court. Arat-Koc smartly emphasizes a chilling theme in Canadian genocide remembrance, where priorities for national memorialization mainly circle around white-suffered atrocities (the Holocaust, Stalinistic purges, and the massacres of Bosnia) or genocides tinged with the red scourge of Communism (the Khmer Rouge). Commemoration further entrenches an already privileged economic, social and cultural mindset. Absent from Arat-Koc's list are the U.S. instigated tragedies in Central and South America or more tragedies like the Armenian Genocide with less direct political influence.

Postured and propped memories only serve to demean the entire institution of remembrance. Complaints of lily-white memorials do not at all attack the brutal reality of the Holocaust or any other historical tragedy. Instead, communal memory flows toward a numbing hagiography instead of a critical investigation into the mitigating political and economic factors that may have led to such disasters.

Another strong entry in the forgotten failures of humanity, Joshua Oppenheimer's Indonesian genocide documentary The Act of Killing aims to fully elucidate Arat-Koc's complaints of normative memorialization of trauma. Detailing an American-supported cleansing of Indonesia's dissidents and communists between 1965 and 1966, Oppenheimer allows the genocidaires to recreate their own acts with a disturbing sense of initial glee. By giving the camera to gangsters-cum-paramilitary soldiers, The Act of Killing inverts the process of political regularization of violence and memory. The films protagonist-executioner, Anwar Congo, initially sets out to film a companion piece to Indonesian history, one that he would be proud to show his grandchildren. By the end of the reenactment process, Congo is sputtering and dry-heaving on an apartment building roof where many of his killings took place. The startling about-face grows directly from facing previously commonplace violence in an authentic and austere manner. Government-sanctioned killings obviously constitute genocide, even to the perpetrators. Politics cannot simply account for the lack of discussion. There are no words, as Anwar Congo discovers, but only a choking sensation when finally encountering the enormity of lost human potential. Dissenting artists and academics must continue to clamor for such inquiries into the failures of modern memory.

The questions of remembrance that Arat-Koc raises and the visual confrontations that Oppenheimer captures belabor the same point: in a murky subjective political landscape, the loss of human life is one of the only objective markers of historical and cultural failure. The disregard for Indonesian lives or Indigenous women in Canada – again from Arat-Koc – prioritizes a particular gaze that avoids singular facts for more stilted perspectives. Denying facts due to the associated cultural upheaval of alternative political narratives is a trap into which many first-world citizens fall. It is not enough to merely recognize the inequality.

Because it seems that is all I do. I reread that Vonnegut novel frequently, but even Bluebeard flits over the Armenian Genocide for in-depth examinations of the protagonist Rabo Karabekian's role in a more prominent tragedy. Oppenheimer's sequel to The Act of Killing, The Look Of Silence, further extends his empowerment of the disenfranchised by allowing Indonesian genocide survivors to confront their killers. His examination follows a most noble goal: give those with the least power the greatest opportunity to examine their lived experience and speak it into the cultural memory of a largely unknowing public. I know I fall complicit, but filmmakers like Oppenheimer and academics like Arat-Koc aim to destabilize the white malaise that often blankets conventional memorialization.

The ugliness of history needs to be encountered head-on. The voices that clamor for alternative remembrance, and, hopefully, radical change, must not come from the whiter side of experience, but the actual margin. People of color, women, and all other silenced groups deserve their moment to call attention to both past and present atrocities. Despite what the Harper government or other entrenched political institutions may extoll, the past is not simply a bauble to hold up and examine to fulfill the curiosity of the culturally privileged. The past apparently carries allowances for future indignities, hidden in the weight of previous unmentionable tragedies.

http://rabble.ca/news/2015/04/recognizing-armenian-genocide-beyond-selective-memory

Fighting Austerity

Alternatives — 2015-06-01T15:25:45Z

You are kindly invited to join us at this third edition of The Festival of Solidarity to be held in Montreal, on June 13th, at Salle Agora- Coeur des sciences de l'UQAM, from 9:30am to 5:30pm.

This event, co-organized by Alternatives and the New York office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, will feature not only speakers from the Quebec and North American social movements but also spokespeople for the anti-austerity radical left from Europe. Joining us will be representatives of SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left recently elected to government in Greece; Podemos, the newly formed anti-austerity party that is challenging the old-line parties in Spain; Die Linke, the party of the radical left in Germany.

During the Festival, we will discuss the following issues:

- What are the perspectives for mass mobilization this coming fall ?
– How can we better link climate issues and anti-austerity mobilizations?
– What lessons can be drawn from the European experience in fighting austerity?

Date: Saturday, June 13th 2015, from 9:30am to 5:30pm
Location: Salle Agora, Coeur des sciences de l'UQAM, 175 Avenue Président Kennedy, Montreal. Metro Places des Arts

PROGRAM

9:30-10:00AM
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
Speakers: Ronald Cameron, president of Alternatives and Albert Scharenberg, co-director of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office

10:00-12:00am
FIGHT AUSTERITY, SAVE THE CLIMATE: STRATEGIES AND CHALLENGES
With: Idle No More; CSN; Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (Cornell University); COVO (Coalition against the pipelines); ECO-Students Against Pipelines, and RQGE ( Quebec Network of Ecological Groups)

12:00-1:30pm LUNCH

1:30-3:30pm
FROM SPRING TO FALL 2015:PERSPECTIVES FOR CHALLENGING AUSTERITY
With: FTQ; Teachers' Union activist; ASSÉ member of the executive board; Red Hand Coalition (Community and Women's groups), and ATTAC-Quebec.

3:30- 5:30pm
BUILDING A POLITICAL ALTERNATIVE TO AUSTERITY: THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE
Speakers:
• Yiannis Bournous, Political Secretariat, SYRIZA, Greece;
• Caren Lay, Member of Parliament, DIE LINKE, Germany ;
• Pablo Bustinduy Amador, International Representative, PODEMOS, Spain;
• Amir Khadir, National Assembly person, QUEBEC SOLIDAIRE
For all Questions and Info: Roger Rashi (e-mail:roger@alternatives.ca)