Politics

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    [post_content] => 'Incredibly vague' wording of a parliamentary bill would 'effectively put the U.K. on par with some of the more repressive countries in the world.'

In April 2019, activists chained themselves to a pink boat in the middle of Oxford Circus, one of London’s most famous intersections. A lime green Extinction Rebellion flag flew from the top of the boat, and on one side was the slogan “Tell the truth.” Traffic at one of the city’s busiest intersections came to a grinding halt, as protesters occupied the road.

All across the city, Extinction Rebellion caused disruption. They occupied Waterloo Bridge, obstructed trains, and glued themselves across the entrance of the London Stock Exchange. More actions followed throughout the year. The purpose was to push the government into taking serious action on the climate crisis. Approve of their methods or not, these bold actions forced the world to pay attention.

Now, the U.K. government is debating a new bill that would give police more powers at protests in England and Wales. In the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, people breaching police rules at demonstrations will face increased penalties, and the police would have new powers to control static and single person protests. They could impose start and finish times, and enforce maximum noise levels if a protest could cause “significant impact” for people nearby or “serious disruption” to a business.

The bill stipulates that the rules would also apply to a protest of just one person. Theoretically, someone standing with a sign and being disruptive could be fined up to £2,500. The bill would also stop vehicular access to Parliament being blocked by demonstrations, and anyone refusing to move when asked by the police would be causing an offence.

In summer 2020, London came to a standstill for another reason. Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Black Lives Matter movement marched through the city, forcing the country to pay attention to racial injustice.

The Home Office fact sheet refers to the Extinction Rebellion protests before outlining any measures. Following their actions, Home Secretary Priti Patel said that Extinction Rebellion was an emerging threat, and called the Black Lives Matter protests “dreadful”.

The bill, which covers a whole range of issues beyond just protests, passed its second reading in the House of Commons on March 15, just two days after police were criticized for their handling of the peaceful vigil for Sarah Everard,  the 33 year-old London woman who was murdered while walking home through a park on the evening of March 3. Police used physical force to break up the Clapham Common vigil, which became a call for changes that would keep women safer (a later report stated that the police “acted appropriately”, but the report has also been criticized). Since then, ‘Kill the Bill’ protests have erupted across the country. The date for the next step, committee stage, is yet to be announced.

The right to cause disruption

Organizations and prominent individuals from across England and Wales have signed a letter to the Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Justice, sharing their concerns.

One of those organizations is Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring. In a phone interview, Netpol’s Campaigns Coordinator Kevin Blowe told The Conversationalist that the bill cracks down on protests which are non-violent, but disruptive.

“What we've always said is that all protests are disruptive to some degree. If that wasn't the case, it wouldn't be a protest,” he said.

The sections of the bill aimed at stopping people causing serious disruption would place “subjective, wholly disproportionate power in the hands of the police,” he said. 

Beyond this, Home Secretary Priti Patel would have the power to define what exactly constitutes serious disruption. There would be no parliamentary debate.

“The police already have extensive powers. The idea that somehow things are swung too far in favour of the protesters is simply not true,” Blowe said.

With a strong Conservative majority, he believes this bill is likely to pass a parliamentary vote in some form.

The U.K., like many other countries, has a history of change-making through disruptive protest. In the early 1900s, when peaceful protest had done nothing to gain women the right to vote, Emmeline Pankhurst led the Suffragettes in a campaign of civil disobedience. They smashed windows, started riots, and snuck into parliament. Perhaps most famously, Emily Davison threw herself under the King’s horse. The campaign led to a parliamentary commission to study the issue of women’s suffrage; and in 1918, British women finally won the right to vote. 

With such a strong history of protest, will this bill, if it becomes law, stop people from being disruptive?

“It's not going to stop people from going out in the streets and campaigning around climate change. It's not going to stop people coming out, because they're outraged about racial injustice, or indeed protesting around the expansion of police powers,” Blowe said. Protest, he added, “is the only way that people see as having any chance of getting the Government to listen.”

More likely, said Blowe, more people will end up being arrested, while certain social and political movements will be criminalized.

In an email statement, a Home Office spokesperson said: “It is wrong to claim these measures will stop people from carrying out their civic right to protest. People will still be able to protest, but they cannot be permitted to trample on the rights of local businesses and communities.”

Members of Parliament who represent other parties have been vocal about the damage the bill could do.

The Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Home Affairs, MP Alistair Carmichael tweeted: “This crackdown on protests is dangerous and draconian and must be opposed.”

Meanwhile Labour MP Zarah Sultana called the bill a “recipe for repression” on Twitter, and Jenny Jones, Green Party member of the House of Lords (who’s also an activist) tweeted: “We need to understand that our rights and freedoms are under threat from our Govt.”

Netpol, along with other organizations, said that the whole 307 page bill needs to be opposed. In fact, ahead of this bill, Netpol put forward their own Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights, asking for transparency of policing at protests.

A global issue

Article 19, an organization defending freedom of expression and information, also signed the joint letter speaking out against the bill. 

“The incredibly vague and broad language that's in the U.K. policing bill will effectively put the United Kingdom on par with some of the more repressive countries in the world,” says Executive Director Quinn McCew in a Zoom interview.

She said that what’s happening in the U.K. is part of a broader global issue, with governments trying to control civil society and people's ability to hold them to account. She pointed at Hong Kong, which saw sustained street demonstrations to protest the Chinese government’s repressive restrictions on freedom of expression, as one of the worst examples of government suppression: “Incredibly draconian laws put in place there have effectively cut off the legs of the protest movement.”

She also speaks about Kenya, where Covid-19 emergency powers have been used to silence protests against police brutality.

“The justification for clamping down on and using violence against those protesters was exactly the same as the justification that the U.K. Government and the police ultimately gave for the violence they used against the protesters at the vigil in Clapham Common,” McCew said.

Aside from the impact on freedom to protest in England and Wales, she believes the bill could send ripples around the world, with other nations following the U.K.’s lead.

The right to freedom of peaceful assembly, or the right to protest, is enshrined in laws across the world. It’s included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it’s not just the U.K. battling with new protest laws.

In November 2020, the French government put forward a law that would criminalize the act of sharing images or videos of police. This ban on filming police, activists warn, could allow police brutality to go unchecked. The tragic final moments of George Floyd’s life were caught on camera and have provided vital evidence in the ongoing trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who has been charged with his murder, but this is not true for other police killings—like that of Adama Traoré, who died in the custody of French police in 2016.

While the law goes through various stages and rewrites, protesters are opposing it across the country. 

Even without this new law, demonstrators face rubber bullets, tear gas, and weapons used by police. There’s not just a risk of criminalization and fines, but of serious injury.

Defending protest with protest

In June 2020, Black Lives Matter demonstrators pulled down a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston from its plinth in Bristol, as crowds cheered. Its next destination—Bristol Harbour. If the new bill goes through, anyone defacing a monument could face a 10 year prison sentence, and the events of summer 2020 are cited in the bill’s explanatory notes as the reason for this change in law.

Following the Clapham Common vigil and the bill’s second reading, protests continue across the country, with the issue of women’s safety high on the agenda. Both protesters and MPs have drawn comparisons between the protections proposed for monuments and statues, and the protections that women are so desperately demanding.

Interviewed by Sky News,  Labour MP David Lammy said: “It is the case here in the U.K., that the starting tariff in prison is five years for rape [...] Why are we saying that pulling down a statue is more important than a woman’s body?”

It’s a point that McCew has made, too.

“Looking at what happened during the policing of the vigil for Sarah Everard, and looking at the language that's in the policing bill, it's quite clear that there's a higher level of support for protecting a slaveholding monument than there is for women's rights and women's ability to speak,” she said.

If this bill goes through, McCew says the bill could lead to even greater civil unrest. The two biggest global issues—the climate crisis and the call for racial justice—are the very two issues that the police and government are trying to restrict. Rather than fewer disruptive protests, there could be more.
    [post_title] => The right to protest is under threat in Britain
    [post_excerpt] => 'If it didn't disrupt, it wouldn't be a protest': free speech activists push back against a legislative bill that would give British police sweeping powers to limit the right to public protest.
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The right to protest is under threat in Britain

by Katie Dancey-Downs

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    [post_content] => Thousands of U.S. residents who were undocumented or on non-permanent visas fled to Canada during the Trump years.

Rodney* (not his real name) works as a machine operator at Canada Bread’s assembly line. To get to work each day he travels an hour by public transportation from his home in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood to a production plant on the other side of town. He alternates day and night shifts, bagging bread products for the city’s major supermarkets; barring a three-week mandatory furlough, he’s worked through the pandemic without a break. Rodney is both an essential frontline worker and an asylum seeker.

The 36-year-old former police officer left his hometown of Kingston, Jamaica in February of 2015 when he learned that someone had put out a hit on him and his family due to his work in a special anti-corruption unit. Someone shot his younger sister, who lives with their elderly parents.

She survived, but Rodney knew he had to leave the country in order to protect his family. He fled to Florida, and then moved to New York City, where an aunt lived. But refugee claimants faced an uncertain future in the United States; he wanted something better and more permanent. So, in March of 2018, he crossed the border to Canada.

“My aunt lives in Queens, so I took a Greyhound bus to upstate New York and then a taxi to Roxham Road,” he told me.

Roxham Road: the trickle that became a tsunami

Before 2017, Roxham Road was just a quiet street in the small town of Plattsburgh, N.Y., which is right on the Canadian border. In February of that year the Trump administration began implementing its cruel immigration policies and people who had been in the U.S. for years, either as undocumented immigrants or on non-permanent visas, began to flee—many of them to Canada. It was then that the Roxham Road border crossing gained international attention.

This is the spot where many asylum seekers have crossed from the U.S. to Canada on foot, because a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement, signed by both countries, exempts asylum claimants who cross at unofficial entry points from being turned back. People who enter Canada from the U.S. at an official port of entry are ineligible to make a refugee claim and will be returned to the U.S.; the bilateral agreement presupposes the U.S. is a safe country for asylum seekers. In 2017, the Canadian Council for Refugees joined in a legal challenge against the Canadian government, asserting that the U.S. was no longer a safe haven for asylum seekers. Canada’s Federal Court agreed, ruling that the agreement breaches constitutional guarantees of life, liberty and security.

Prior to February 2017, says the Refugee Board of Canada, the number of asylum seekers coming from the States was in the hundreds. By September 2020, it skyrocketed to 58,625. As of this writing, roughly 16,000 claims have been accepted, 13,000 rejected, and slightly more than 27,000 cases are still pending. Research conducted by the Migration Policy Institute suggests around 40 percent of people who crossed that border left the U.S. “for reasons directly tied to U.S. immigration policies.”

The Trump administration implemented policies that made thousands of desperate people feel they faced the kind of harm Amnesty International qualified as “catastrophic.” Illegal family separations; massive pushbacks of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border; cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees; and indefinite detention in deliberately cruel conditions, often bordering on torture, of people who were treated like criminals only because they sought a better life.

But while Canada’s immigration system looks better than its southern neighbor’s, it is still deeply flawed. For asylum seekers, the policies can seem capricious and even cruel. Rodney feels that the treatment he received at the hands of Canadian officials has been unjust.

“When I crossed, they arrested me, searched me, looked at my documentation, and put me in a room where I waited,” he said. Hours passed until a bus transported him to a holding area, where he waited until 1 a.m. to be interviewed.

The Canadian Border Services agent who interviewed him, he said, adopted a confrontational tone and made him feel that she was not assessing his request fairly.

Rodney told the agent about documentation that included sworn affidavits from his family and newspaper articles about his undercover work with the police, but the agent didn’t seem to believe him. “She kept inferring that my sister being shot was an accident and not a deliberate attempt on her life,” he said.

Non-recorded interviews pose a problem

That interview is now being used to undermine Rodney’s claim for asylum.

In the crucial Basis of Claim (BOC) document, upon which the Refugee Board decides whether or not to grant the applicant asylum, the agent wrote that Rodney had been instructed to destroy evidence during the course of his work as a police officer. Rodney denies having told the agent anything of the kind. But because the interview was not recorded, he is locked in a "he said/she said" situation.

He did not even learn what the agent had written on the form until his hearing in September of 2020. “When the judge started asking me why I hadn’t disclosed this so-called information, I explained that I couldn’t omit something that I had never said.” He added that the judge also asked why the newspaper articles didn’t report his name, “when it should have been obvious that it had been omitted to protect me and my family.”

Rodney does not understand why he was not allowed to see the original document at the time the agent took his statement. “It’s a statement that is essentially attributed to me, so why didn’t I get the opportunity to see what’s disclosed? I never saw it, I never signed it, and yet the contradiction between the Canada Border Services agent’s statement and my testimonial at the hearing is why my asylum request was basically denied, according to the judge.”

Jacqueline Callin, a spokesperson for the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), confirmed that it was not the agency’s practice to record refugee claimants’ statements at ports of entry. But she did maintain that, while she could not comment on Rodney’s case specifically, CBSA rules stipulated that refugee claimants and their representatives should, in general, receive copies of the statement in advance of the hearing.

But Rodney insists the CBSA never gave him a copy of his file. “I was only given certified copies of my birth certificate and my passport from the same CBSA officer who interviewed me at the port of entry,” he said. His original birth certificate and passport are still with the border agency.

Long-standing issues persist

Rodney’s lawyer, Perla Abou-Jaoude, said that the CBSA often ignores routine requests for access to applicants’ files. This “puts the applicant at a disadvantage,” she said “and could be rectified so easily”— if the government agency would simply make a routine practice of providing a copy of the applicant’s file simultaneously to their lawyer and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). Recording the interviews, she said, would also be an effective way of ensuring transparency and accountability.

Janet Dench, the executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), a national non-profit umbrella organization, said that the absence of recorded interviews was a “long-standing issue” and one that the council has been trying to rectify for a long time.

“You call a simple help line these days and you’re immediately informed that you’re being recorded,” she said. “Yet we’re not recording these important interviews when people’s lives are on the line, when [doing so] would allow the government to monitor the conduct of their agents? I don’t understand why they’re so resistant to it.”

Responding to complex questions under duress

Dench said the CCR’s position is that the task of asking these important questions and filling out the BOC should not be carried out by CBSA agents. “Asking such complex questions when people are tired, confused, and scared is questionable. We have repeatedly asked the IRB not to put too much weight on these initial testimonials, and for the most part, they don’t, but every case is different. Bottom line, the CBSA should not be conducting these assessments, and if they are, they should be recorded.”

Abou-Jaoude also questioned a practice that has refugee claimants filling out complicated forms when they’re exhausted, frightened, confused, and sometimes unaware of what they’re signing because of language barriers. Mistakes during the initial declaration can potentially affect their credibility and chances. Rodney and his lawyer have filed an appeal and he’s now waiting to hear back. The process could take up to a year.

Working as a frontline worker in a foreign country

In the meantime, Rodney works. He has no family in Canada, and he tells me that he leads a rather solitary life. When I tell him that it sounds lonely, there’s a long pause on the other end of the line. His older sister, who was severely handicapped, passed away this past October. Rodney was not able to attend her funeral or be with his family in mourning. He worries about his parents who have health problems, and he sends what money he can afford back home. “I don’t make much, but I make sacrifices so I can help them.”

When I ask him if he likes what he does, I can “hear” the shrug through the telephone. “I’m indifferent,” he said. “I work hard, and I always try to be professional. But I’m working to survive, so I can help my family.”

When the pandemic hit Rodney was working the night shift at Canada Bread. Workers have been equipped with surgical masks and face shields, so he feels safe at the plant. And his company has provided him with a letter explaining his presence outside during Quebec’s 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

“The very first night the curfew was implemented I was stopped,” he said. “I was waiting for the bus early in the morning and a police car going in the opposite direction immediately made a U-turn and came straight at me. I showed them the letter.”

I ask him what his first impression of Montreal was. “It’s a lot more French than I expected before coming here,” he said, laughing. “I’m slowly learning the language and I wish I could take classes and improve it, but work exhausts me. I often finish my shift at 1 a.m. and at that hour the bus doesn’t pass by too often, so I routinely wait an additional 45 minutes just to board it. Then, another hour to get home,” he trails off.

With the hearing coming up, Rodney wants to share what happened to him. He wants people to understand that the system needs improving.

Canadian border agents under investigation

He’s not the only one who thinks so. In 2019, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians launched a review into the actions of the CBSA, following multiple reports of flaws within the agency, as well as multiple harassment allegations. CBC News reported that the agency had investigated 1,200 allegations against its own staff over a two-and-a-half-year period.

“CBSA agents have a lot of discretionary power, but there’s no outside oversight of staff conduct, which can occasionally be problematic,” said Abou-Jaoude.  Dench confirmed that the CCR was very aware of the lack of accountability and transparency.

Considering the power and scope border policing agents have, combined with allegations of serious misconduct that include unnecessary force, conflict of interest, and sexual harassment, one would think the government would welcome recorded interview sessions, since they would protect both the applicants and the agency’s reputation.

“So much is at stake here— for me and my family,” Rodney says. “I have no recourse now. There’s a contradiction between [the CBSA agent’s] statement and my story and naturally the judge will take her word as being neutral and accurate. But what she wrote was inaccurate and there’s no way for me to prove it.”
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For asylum seekers, Canada’s immigration policies can seem capricious and even cruel

by Toula Drimonis

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    [post_content] => The Minister of Higher Education branded academics "Islamo-leftists," claiming they bear responsibility for terror attacks.

When France’s Minister of Higher Education and Research, Frederique Vidal, announced last month that free, environmentally friendly period products would be made available on French campuses, the news generated ample national and international media coverage. This measure must be recognized as a victory for French student unions, which have long campaigned against  period poverty. Yet, a good news story about the country’s campuses is also what the center-right ruling party, La République en Marche, needs right now to distract us from the reality of what the government is doing to French universities—which is far more sinister.

In recent years, Paris has engaged in frontal attacks on academic freedom. Austerity measures have eroded universities, with students and staff struggling with deteriorating working and learning conditions. A controversial new higher education law is set to damage academic autonomy and quality by consolidating short-term employment and funding, and the role of private companies.

Most recently, the French government has decided to turn public universities into a battleground on which to wage a culture war ahead of the April 2022 presidential elections—where they will likely try and appeal to the far right. Feeding into public antagonism toward Muslims, Vidal has attacked so-called “Islamo-leftists” in universities, claiming that academics engaged in race, postcolonial, and gender studies, bear responsibility for terrorist attacks against France. Last month, Vidal called for an investigation into academic research that feeds “Islamo-leftist’’ tendencies that “corrupt society.’’ This caused a general outcry in academia and it remains unclear whether this ludicrous exercise will happen.

But in a context of socio-economic distress and social anxiety due to the pandemic, the government’s inflationary use of the term  helps build an imagined “enemy of the interior,” a treacherous intellectual elite responsible of the country’s ills. The scholars under attack are actually doing critical work in helping us understand the complex mechanisms that perpetuate sexism, racism and class and how they intersect. The official call for a purge of French academia can only raise deep concerns among those who consider academic freedom and intellectual inquiry to be core pillars of a democratic society.

At the same time, the impoverishment of French public universities has continued, carrying with it a deleterious impact on academic autonomy and students’ life. The free period products campaign will cost €15 million ($18 million) a year—a cheap price to buy a progressive reputation and social peace on campus. By comparison, the Union des Etudiants de France (UNEF), one of France’s student unions, has been calling for a €1.5 billion emergency plan to address student poverty.

Compared to the astronomical cost of higher education in the United States, French universities are inexpensive; annual tuition ranges between between €170 to €600 ( $204-$720), depending on the degree. But the principle of free education has been enshrined in the French constitution since 1946, recognized by the state as a duty to its citizens and an integral aspect of the post-WWII social contract. Anyone who completes a Baccalaureate (high school matriculation) is entitled to attend university. While the most prestigious universities remain selective and elite, low tuition fees have had the effect of narrowing socio-economic gaps. This is why French society remains strongly attached to the “free university” principle and has resisted the government’s decades-long ambition to shift to a high tuition system like the one in the United States. And yet, even with low or free tuition, student poverty is today a stark reality in France: about 20 percent of students live below the poverty line, while 46 percent are seeing their academic work suffer because they have been forced to take jobs to compensate for the severe cuts to once-adequate state financial aid.

In face of the deterioration of their learning and living conditions, student anger is brewing. Last year, a student in Lyon set himself on fire in Lyon to protest academic poverty. Over the past two decades of budget austerity, academics’ working conditions have also steadily worsened. The recruitment of permanent academic staff has been minimal while student numbers have increased very fast. Rather than ramp up university support, though, some €6 billion of public funding are annually paid to private companies to support their R&D efforts through the Research Tax Credit, with very limited impact on France’s research achievements.

Vidal’s new Higher Education and Research Law, adopted in December despite the academic community’s quasi-unanimous rejection, will deepen the inequalities between a few well-resourced institutions and the majority of cash-strapped universities.

The law increases the number of early-career academic staff who are forced to work as adjuncts rather than staff with benefits; it also reinforces the funding of public research through short-term projects and commercial companies. This will have a damaging impact on academic autonomy and quality.

All of this, meanwhile, is playing out while France grapples with a series of sexual harassment and rape cases that have damaged the reputation of prestigious higher education institutions.,

Academics and students have been calling on the government and university leadership to challenge the power structures that allow for the systemic entrenchment of sexism within French universities. So far, their demands have been met with little response.

Anti-intellectualism, scapegoating of the academic community, and chipping away at university freedom are hardly new or unique to France. These are, indeed, a cornerstone of authoritarian governments, who deploy discursive and legal tactics in order to stifle dissent and free inquiry on campus. Now, as these wars increasingly reach democratic fronts, we must oppose them.

Of course, I am in favor of free period products in universities and schools, but why did France’s universities have to wait for 2021 to receive this benefit? French public universities are an essential public service dedicated to fostering human understanding through open-ended enquiry. They are an instrument of social mobility for many working class youth. They also add to France’s influence on the world stage. As the government dismantles these crucial institutions, we should not allow opportunist politicians to use free tampons as a fig leaf for their actions.
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    [post_excerpt] => Over the past two decades of budget austerity, academics’ working conditions have also steadily worsened. Last year, a student set himself on fire to protest academic poverty.
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French gov’t diverts attention from its war on academic freedom with free period products

by Sonia Languille

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    [post_content] => The U.K. government's policy of housing asylum seekers in army barracks has caused a storm of controversy.

Every day and every night during his stay, Kareem* had to listen to the sound of far right extremists. They swore in English and Welsh, threatened the men living inside, and by night hurled rocks at the metal gates of the camp. 

“You’re not welcome here,” they told the asylum seekers.

This is the Penally Camp in Wales; formerly an army camp, it is now used to house newly-arrived asylum seekers. Kareem was taken there at the end of September. The experience, he said during a phone interview, gave him flashbacks—memories of torture and imprisonment that he had escaped and from which he sought refuge. “We are vulnerable people,” he said, adding: “We need someone to support us here in the U.K.”

With another national lockdown due to the pandemic, attacks from the far right eased. But anti-immigrant demonstrations outside the camp are not the only problem the men inside faced. Kareem said that when he arrived at Penally there were no interpreters; detainees resorted to communicating with camp management through gestures. He said security and management were racist and treated the men poorly. Access to medical care was patchy.

When asked if there were any social distancing measures, he laughed and said: “In the middle of a pandemic you’re in a room with five other people.” The only place people wore masks was in the queue for food. 

Kareem spent nearly two months in the camp before an NGO managed to secure his release, but plenty of others remain inside. The number of residents was recently reduced to around 100.

In England, behind the wire fences and red brick exterior of the ex-army camp, Napier Barracks has been the cause of controversy and protest since September 2020, when the U.K. Home Office started using it to accommodate around 400 men. A High Court judge ruled that  conditions in the camp were prison-like, unsuitable, and unsafe. Many of the asylum seekers housed there are survivors of torture, trafficking, and other traumas; and yet, there is little access to mental health support. There have been several reports of suicide attempts.

Public Health England warned the Home Office that Napier was unsuitable back in September 2020. In April 2021, a judicial review will examine claims from five asylum seekers that the accommodation is inadequate.

From inside Napier, photos shared with the NGO Choose Love show the true story. Garbage cans overflow into the corridor, with old food containers and plastic cups spilling out of black bags. In a hall, metal frame beds topped with plastic mats are lined against the walls, set up as a dorm room. The beds are around two metres from each other, but the men breathe the same air, in the middle of a global health pandemic. 

It didn’t take long for COVID-19 to race through the facility. On Wednesday the Home Office revealed that at least 197 people had tested positive, a shocking number that amounted to 50 percent of the total people held there and nearly double what the government had previously reported. 

Earlier this year a fire broke out in one of the blocks, thought to have been started deliberately. Nobody was hurt, but people say they were left without electricity, heating, and drinking water.

[caption id="attachment_2338" align="alignnone" width="1600"] A fire broke out in January at one of the barracks at the Napier facility.[/caption]

From within the camp, an anonymous man posted a message following the fire, in which he offered some compassionate insight as to the would-be arsonist’s motives. He wrote, “Each of us react in our own unique way when we are desperate and disappointed. Some may protest peacefully[…] some may lose control. I want you all [to] know that this was not something that we all can approve.”

Home Secretary Priti Patel was less compassionate toward the desperate person who set the fire. She tweeted: “The damage and destruction at Napier Barracks is not only appalling but deeply offensive to the taxpayers of this country […] This site has previously accommodated our brave soldiers and army personnel—it is an insult to say that it is not good enough for these individuals.”

In response to the assertion that accommodation built for soldiers was “good enough” for asylum seekers, Kareem said: “We had wars, we had bombs... all of the bad things that happened in our home countries. We came here to seek refuge and to settle in peace.”

Fighting to empty the barracks

Freedom From Torture  is one of two NGOs that have launched petitions calling for the barracks to be closed. As of this writing, more than 39,000 people have signed. 

During the summer of 2020 there was saturation coverage of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France. Priti Patel said she wanted to make the route ‘unviable.’ At the Port of Dover, anti-immigration protesters, many of them football hooligans and Nazis, clashed with police—even as anti-racism grassroots groups showed up to express solidarity with the asylum seekers. And yet, compared to other European countries the U.K. saw relatively few people entering the country as refugees.

Aalia Khan, Freedom From Torture’s media manager, told The Conversationalist: “A lot of asylum seekers have fled persecution and torture, and have made very dangerous journeys across the world, only to end up in the U.K. in the equivalent of a refugee camp created by the Home Office.”

She said that the use of army barracks is part of a worrying trend of asylum seekers being used as political tools.

Khan said, “We're absolutely appalled by the use of barracks to house very vulnerable people.: She added that the barracks were “not fit for human habitation,” whether the inhabitants were soldiers or asylum seekers. 

When asked for a response to the situation at Napier, a Home Office spokesperson told The Conversationalist: “They [asylum seekers] are provided with safe, warm, secure accommodation with three nutritious meals served a day—all paid for by the British taxpayer. These sites have previously accommodated army personnel and it is wrong to say they are not adequate for asylum seekers.”

MP Holly Lynch, the Shadow Immigration Minister, raised concerns about the barracks in a letter in December 2020, saying she was deeply concerned about unsafe living conditions. After the Government conducted an independent review, she asked for the outcome. But they did not publish the report, nor share their findings with her.

"What on earth do the Government have to hide?” she asked. “It's clear that their lack of compassion and competence has resulted in an unacceptable situation in Napier Barracks, creating the perfect situation for COVID to be transmitted, putting at risk the people living in the former barracks, the staff and the neighbouring community. The U.K. Government must come clean and publish the report without delay."

Is this the future of the UK asylum system?

Until recently, the government planned to set up another camp for asylum seekers in the Hampshire Village of Barton Stacey, but those plans are now under review. Aalia Khan said she believed that the work of organizations like Freedom From Torture in exposing the terrible conditions in the camps has been effective in persuading the government not to expand further its policy of detaining asylum seekers in army barracks. 

According to Home Office documents, the barracks were designed as a temporary measure. While only men are housed there, women and children are put in hotels, or in mother and baby units.

“I don’t think that there's any need to house asylum seekers in barracks or in any building that's unfit for human habitation,” said Kahn, adding that with the pandemic lockdowns there were plenty of empty hotels that could have been used instead.

In September The Financial Times leaked Home Office plans to implement an Australian-style offshore detention system, whereby asylum seekers would be taken thousands of miles from the U.K. and held on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The Labour Party called the plan inhumane. The Home Office said they were looking at every option.

Kolbassia Haoussou is the lead survivor advocate for Freedom from Torture. He has personal experience of the U.K. asylum system, and is a torture survivor.

“One of the key elements of rehabilitation for me was feeling safe,” Haoussou says. Being held in military barracks would surely trigger trauma and do nothing to help the healing process.

He echoed Khan’s observation about the asylum system having become politicized. For Haoussou, the basis of the asylum system should be about protection.

“What we should do is find out how we can protect people, not how we can reject people,” he said.

Following the U.K’.s exit from the European Union (Brexit), the future of the asylum system is unclear, and so too is the role that former military barracks will play. Accommodation is just one piece of the asylum system puzzle, but when it has the capacity to affect a person’s sense of safety so powerfully, the U.K. must make an effort to get it right.

*Kareem is not his real name, as he wanted to remain anonymous
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‘Unfit for human habitation’: asylum seekers in the UK are housed in filthy army barracks

by Katie Dancey-Downs

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    [post_content] => Civil society organizations in Myanmar are pushing for international recognition of internet access as a human right.

Since the internet first emerged during the 2011 Arab Spring as an effective means of organizing grassroots protests and speaking directly to the rest of the world in an unprecedented way, human rights defenders have found that it can also be used as a weapon against them. Since 2011, nationalist politicians in both authoritarian and democratic states have learned how to manipulate their citizens through social media—and when to use internet shutdowns to cut their critics off from the rest of the world. The Myanmar military clearly understands this dichotomy well. Since seizing power on January 31, it has restricted internet access—starting with Facebook, which for most people in Myanmar is their primary gateway to the online world.

In the midst of massive peaceful protests and a violent response from the military, people inside Myanmar have attempted to get information out during first a partial and then nearly total internet shutdown. It has never been easy for human rights defenders in Myanmar, but without the internet it is exponentially harder.

This is not the first time the Myanmar government has limited or blocked internet access. Eight townships in Rakhine and Chin states have been living with shutdowns off and on since June 2019. The military reportedly lifted those shutdowns on February 3, even as they began to restrict access elsewhere. Without access to the internet during the pandemic, residents— many of them survivors of the military’s genocide against ethnic Rohingya—have been denied essential information and vital aid. Now there are signs that internet shutdowns will be the new normal in Myanmar.

#WhatIsHappeningInMyanmar?

Using this hashtag and others, people inside Myanmar have been doing their best to report events on the ground, although Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger have been blocked since February 3. Many people, including activists and journalists,  moved to Twitter, where they called for the world to pay attention and support them. The military responded by blocking access to Twitter and Instagram on February 5, and followed this with a broader internet shutdown.  For a few days, friends and family outside of Myanmar had no information; they were left to wonder whether their loved ones were safe. Only a few independent media outlets and individual activists, such as journalist Mratt Kyaw Thu, managed to circumvent the shutdown and post live updates to social media.

Internet access now appears to be at least partially restored. Footage of protests, including a video of the military shooting 19-year old Myat Thet Thet Khaing, is making the rounds on social media; but military leaders refuse to back away from their anti-democratic coup, despite international condemnation and the imposition of sanctions by the United States.

In fact, the military has proposed a draconian “cyber security bill.”  According to an open letter signed and posted online by 161 Myanmar civil society organizations—a brave move, given the ongoing arrests of members of the National League for Democracy party as well as Union Election Commission officials and high-profile activists— the bill:

…includes clauses which violate human rights including the rights to freedom of expression, data protection and privacy, and other democratic principles and human rights in the online space. As the “bill” is drafted by the current military regime to oppress those who are against its rule, and to restrict the mobilization and momentum of online resistance, we strongly condemn this action by the current military regime in accordance with our democratic principles.

Currently there are only unofficial English translations of the bill available on social media, but reviews by Reuters and BBC reporter Freya Cole confirm that the legislation would prohibit “speech, texts, image, video, audio file, sign, or other expressions disrupting unity, stabilization, and peace.” The text also appears to include provisions that would enshrine the government’s right to shut down the internet at will and require Internet Service Providers to retain massive amounts of user data. ISPs that do not comply could be subject to fines and see their employees imprisoned.

The internet as a weapon

The military knows from its own experience the power of the internet—and especially of social media. The consensus among international experts and the U.N. is that the genocide of the Rohingya was enabled by the military’s use of Facebook; this is something that even Facebook acknowledges.

In a 2018 article on the role Facebook played in inciting against the Rohingya, The New York Times reported that the military created fake Facebook personas who “posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes” and “flooded” the social media platform with hatred, spreading misinformation and fear about Muslims generally and the Rohingya specifically, even as the military systematically massacred and raped Rohingya, burning their villages to the ground and forcing the survivors to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

Facebook provided some shocking statistics about posts in Myanmar during the genocide of the Rohingya. In a 2018 blog post the company says it removed “425 Facebook Pages, 17 Facebook Groups, 135 Facebook accounts and 15 Instagram accounts in Myanmar” for engaging in “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior” (CIB)—i.e., networks of fake accounts dedicated to inciting violence and hatred and spreading misinformation. According to the company “[a]pproximately 2.5 million people followed at least one of these Facebook Pages.”

But that wasn’t the end of the matter. Facebook has continually reported on efforts remove CIB— yet some of this content is still active. In fact, the social media platform banned a military television network page that was operating after the coup had already taken place only because the Wall Street Journal asked why it was still active, given that it had been banned earlier.

#SaveMyanmar

We do not have any clarity on what will happen next to internet freedom in Myanmar. For social media users outside the country, this a good time to follow the Twitter accounts of people who have been reporting events from the ground as much as and whenever possible. Twitter should consider authenticating these accounts and fast-tracking a blue check of verification to those who request it.

In a February 6 letter, civil society organizations in Myanmar called for Internet Service Providers to “prevent the military from accessing user data…take every action available to appeal the recent junta directives, [and] develop plans in the event the human rights situation in Myanmar deteriorates.” The situation in Myanmar is inarguably deteriorating, and ISPs must develop those plans now. Telenor, the Norwegian multinational communications services provider, has said repeatedly that it is doing everything it can to push back on these orders, but their best is clearly not enough.

The UN Human Rights Council is holding an emergency session on Friday to discuss the “implications” of the situation in Myanmar. The UN has already taken steps towards declaring access to the internet a human right. As it considers how to support human rights in the country it should emphasize the need to maintain internet access.

After all, the internet isn’t just a weapon; it is still, even now, and despite those who continue to abuse it for nefarious purposes, a tool for upholding human rights and maintaining democracy.
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In Myanmar, the internet is a tool and a weapon

by Dia Kayyali

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    [post_date] => 2021-01-29 16:03:30
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    [post_content] => This is not a time for unity in American politics. It's a time for accountability.

With Joe Biden finally inaugurated after a rocky transition period and a dubious first for America—a non-peaceful transfer of power—elite American influencers and legacy media outlets will no doubt be tempted to take their eyes off the festering fascism that brought Donald Trump to power. One key constituent element of the toxic brew that became Trumpism is Christian nationalism. It was prominently on display in the January 6 storming of the Capitol in the form of prayers, Christian flags, “Jesus 2020” signs, crosses, and more, and it will remain a powerfully destructive force in local, state, and national politics. Will the media do the responsible thing and continue to shine a spotlight on it?

Given that Biden is now calling for national “unity”—without emphasizing accountability for those who implemented hateful policies, committed crimes, incited violence, and engaged in corruption during the Trump presidency—the belated and modest progress we’ve seen in how major media outlets report on the Christian Right could be rapidly reversed. Americans invested in the health of their civil society must maintain pressure on media platforms to keep their reporting on the right track, which may help to prevent the resurgence of Christofascism four or eight years from now.

And count on this: the Christofascists will not go gently into that good night. They will be organizing, and we must keep the public informed of their activities and plans.

Conservatives, including those affiliated with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project that unfortunately became a darling of many liberals during the 2020 election cycle, have long since revealed their obvious investment in painting Trump as the problem, rather than a symptom of a problem with much deeper roots—one for which they bear much responsibility. If these conservatives have their way, no one will face real accountability for the horrors of the Trump years and their violent culmination—no one except, maybe, Trump himself. Although even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of Trump’s greatest enablers since the 2016 election, agreed not to obstruct  an unprecedented second impeachment trial that will take place in the Senate even with Trump already out of office, it looks like the Republican senators will once again refuse to convict Trump. After all, that’s what “unity” means to Republicans, the ostensible “party of personal responsibility”—no consequences for the destruction they have wrought.

If “unity” wins the day, there will be no justice for the victims of those who, under the auspices of the Trump presidency, violated the human rights of asylum seekers, presided over a grossly incompetent response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the concomitant spreading of disinformation, and incited the mob that invaded the Capitol on January 6. The reputations of high-level Trump administration officials and associated enablers will be rehabilitated; their lucrative, high-profile careers will be back on track.

Meanwhile, cable news and the major media outlets will likely tread lightly at best around the structural problems in America that give the Right disproportionate power. If this happens,  conditions will be ripe for the rise of a smoother, more competent fascist leader than Trump. The Republican Party remains a bastion of far-right authoritarianism, and, while many Republican leaders seemed embarrassed in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, they are now mostly trying to simply “move on” as if it never happened.

In addition to holding GOP leadership to account, we must continue to shine a bright light on the Christian Right’s anti-democratic ideology. It would be a serious mistake to end the long overdue media scrutiny of evangelicalism precipitated by authoritarian Christians’ overwhelming support for Trump. The contrast of a brash, pussy-grabbing, impious bully with the hitherto “respectable” image of “family values” politics drew constant (if still often poorly informed) media attention throughout Trump’s term in office. But that could change with Democrats in charge of both the presidency and—tenuously—Congress. The Christian supremacism that pervades America’s elite public sphere is too little acknowledged, and it would be easy for many journalists to fall back into whitewashing and breezy bothsidesism in their coverage of authoritarian Christians.

Already, prominent evangelical Trump supporters are attempting to gaslight the public. Initially, Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son and the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said publicly that he believed Trump’s lie about the election having been “stolen” from him. He also said that he supported the efforts of right-wing Christian senators to overturn the election. Now, with Biden installed as president and possible legal repercussions for prominent people who promoted the lies, Graham denies any responsibility for inciting the January 6 insurrection. Even worse, he now insists, against a massive trove of video evidence, that he has seen no evidence of Christian involvement in the invasion of the Capitol (though he admits Christians were present at the rally on the National Mall).

Going forward, how will journalists report on such things—if they report on them at all? And what will those few influential white evangelicals who have been surprisingly willing to reckon with evangelical involvement in January 6—especially Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, writer David French, and head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm Russell Moore—do? Will it be back to culture-warring as usual?

French, at least, continues to blame “both sides” for America’s polarization when the Right is demonstrably far more to blame than the Left, and is stressing national unity in a way that glosses over the rot inherent in right-wing Christian ideology. And while he writes movingly of the harassment he and his family members suffered for their opposition to Trump, this does not seem to have taught him to empathize with LGBTQ folks like me, who are disproportionately subjected to bullying but not supposed to exist according to French’s theology. I suspect that so long as we are invisible to French, so will be his theology’s role in the rise of Trumpism.

Since February 2020 and over the course of the presidential election cycle through President Biden’s Inauguration, it has been my privilege to write a monthly column for The Conversationalist about the Christian Right’s politics, focusing mostly on evangelicals and Trump. While this monthly assignment now comes to an end, I plan to remain a frequent contributor to this outlet. For now, I would like to leave my readers with the following thoughts.

White evangelicals have consistently been America’s most loyal and enthusiastic Trump-supporting demographic since 2016; to say they have not taken the results of our recent presidential election well would be classic Midwestern understatement. (I am a Hoosier; don’t hate.) Many are still in denial. Most white evangelicals live in an authoritarian world rife with conspiracy theories and “alternative facts”; and that, combined with their powerful and well-heeled institutions and lobbies, means that their anti-pluralist aims will remain a serious threat to American democracy.

My 2020 reporting and commentary will remain here, bearing witness, as the country moves on from Trump. I would ask that we all do what we can to keep America’s far Right, including the Christian Right, under media scrutiny, so that we might be better prepared for the political battles to come.
    [post_title] => Christian nationalism after Trump remains a powerful and destructive force
    [post_excerpt] => President Biden must hold accountable those who implemented hateful policies, committed crimes, incited violence, and engaged in corruption during the Trump presidency.
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Christian nationalism after Trump remains a powerful and destructive force

by Chrissy Stroop

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    [post_content] => Can a single activist bring down Vladimir Putin?

In December of 2011, the name Alexey Navalny was everywhere in Moscow. Then a 35 year-old lawyer turned popular anti-corruption blogger, he inspired unprecedented street protests after Vladimir Putin’s party won 50 percent of the parliamentary vote in an election that was widely viewed as fraudulent. 

Even the most cynical members of the Moscow Hack Pack, as foreign correspondents called themselves, were stunned and impressed by the protests. By December 24 the crowds swelled to 120,000, according to organizers. For the first time in about a decade, Vladimir Putin’s so-called “managed democracy” faced an opposition that captured the attention of mainstream Russians. 

Russian police cracked down harshly on the protest organizers. Many were arrested and imprisoned—including Navalny, who was sentenced to 15 days in jail for “blocking traffic.” 

Over the next decade Navalny became the best known and most popular leader of the opposition to Vladimir Putin’s anti-democratic rule. He established the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK); under its auspices, he published documentary evidence of the dirty, corrupt dealings between oligarchs, state corporations and Putin. Within two years of the 2011 protests, he was widely regarded as the most potent opposition to Putin and his United Russia Party, which Navalny called “the party of thieves and crooks.”

In 2013 he ran for mayor of Moscow, winning a remarkable 27 percent of the vote in a four-way contest, but ultimately losing a run-off to incumbent Sergei Sobyanin—a Putin appointee—in a result that Navalny and his supporters said was tainted by vote falsifications and violations. 

The police and FSB continued to persecute Navalny with detention, house arrests, and a criminal investigation on trumped up corruption charges. But he remained undeterred, and his popularity continued to grow. Navalny was the international face of Russia’s opposition, widely regarded as the only viable threat to Putin’s power. Tellingly, Putin has never spoken Navalny’s name, which Kremlin observers say is a sign of weakness. 

Imprisonment, house arrest and threats failed to deter the activist, so perhaps it was inevitable that Putin would try something more lethal to bring down his rival.

In August 2020, while on a domestic flight, Navalny collapsed in excruciating pain. He was taken to a local hospital, then evacuated to Germany for treatment. French and Swedish lab tests confirmed that he had been poisoned by Novichok, the Soviet-era nerve agent. Russian authorities, of course, denied having poisoned the activist. But in a widely publicized audio recording, Navalny himself managed to elicit a confession from an agent of the FSB; the man not only confirmed that Russia’s Intelligence agency had poisoned Navalny, but explained that they had done so by putting the toxic substance on his underpants. There is something very personal and humiliating about trying to kill a person that way. 

This past Sunday Navalny returned to Russia for the first time since the Novichok incident, in a move that many supporters thought was foolhardy but all agreed was very brave. 

Police detained him as soon as he landed, taking him from the airport to Moscow’s notorious Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where he awaits trial for failing to check in with his parole authorities over a suspended prison sentence in a politically motivated fraud case.  Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption crusader for whom the Magnitsky Act is named, was infamously tortured to death in the same prison.

In order to defeat a political foe in Russia, you must also emasculate him (I’m using this pronoun deliberately, as power in Russia is fundamentally male-centric). I think this is why videos of a poisoned Navalny moaning in pain were such a hit with Kremlin trolls and various lackeys. It seemed like the ultimate defeat at the time. 

It’s also why Navalny’s brave and defiant return to Russia, in spite of the state making it obvious that he should not go back, is all the more powerful. 

Navalny, who was a lawyer and a businessman before he became a prominent member of the opposition, was a well-known Russian nationalist. Some of his nationalist activity, such as using ethnic slurs against Georgians, he has disavowed. At the same time, Navalny’s specific and frequent criticism of the Chechen dictator, Ramzan Kadyrov, and the violent misogyny espoused by Kadyrov and his officials, is clearly not something Navalny regrets. 

Those of us who observed the rampages of wealthy Chechens in Moscow thought Navalny had a point there. The Kremlin’s completely hands-off approach toward Chechen officials had resulted in lawlessness that’s monstrous even for a country like Russia, and that kind of sickness was never going to stay contained in Chechnya. 

In channeling Russian resentment against Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov & Co., Navalny certainly increased his relevance early on — but it was his investigative work into the corruption of mainstream Russian officials that really hit the mark in recent years. 

That’s because Navalny understands the helpless frustration that Russian corruption engenders. Even among Russian citizens who still support Putin, there is anger at the wealthy clans that surround his throne. Putin himself knows this, which is why he clearly considers Navalny dangerous. 

In July 2013 I reported on a downtown Moscow protest that erupted after Navalny first registered for the mayoral election and was swiftly given a prison term, before the votes could be cast. The weather was hot and stifling that day. An older woman in the crowd next to me made an odd remark—something about still believing that Putin was OK, because “surely he doesn’t realize that they’re putting Navalny in prison,” but that what was happening to Navalny was just beyond belief at this point.

I couldn’t get the woman to give me her name and go on the record, but I’ll never forget the duality of her thinking. It’s the kind of duality that has enabled Putin to stay in power for as long as he has, but yet has also contributed to Navalny’s stardom — all because it allows Russian citizens to pick and choose what facts to believe. They can, for example, admit that corruption in Russia is terrible, but, at the same time, will argue that Putin is a good guy who’s actively trying to fight it. They can disapprove of random repressions but wholeheartedly insist that Putin’s government is not to blame for them.

Navalny did not go to prison on that occasion. Instead, he went on to do more high profile anti-corruption work. The politically motivated court cases against him stacked up. He was attacked from all sides, including by Russian oppositioners jealous of his charisma and success. Together with his wife Yulia, his resolute companion and the mother of his two children, he has persevered. Now his fate is again uncertain.

It is especially uncertain, because less than 48 hours after Navalny was put behind bars, his team released a major investigation into Russian corruption that the Washington Post describes as a “bombshell” that “crossed all Putin’s red lines.” In video posted to YouTube and to his Instagram account, which has 3.5 million followers, Navalny narrates footage of a stupendously lavish residence that he calls “Putin’s palace” and “the world’s biggest bribe.” Built on the Black Sea, the “palace” includes an ice skating rink, casino, theater, and helicopter landing pad; it cost, according to Navalny, about $1 billion in taxpayer funds. Putin has not disclosed the residence on any official forms. As of this writing, the video has been viewed more than 50 million times. 



According to Bloomberg News, the Kremlin now plans to seek a 13.5 year jail sentence for Navalny, in an attempt to derail his anti-corruption movement. Navalny's supporters are calling for nationwide protests on Saturday; Russian police already harassing well-known activists and trying to force social media platforms to delete posts calling upon people to join the protests, as this young woman does in a TikTok video.

It would be impossible to document every tragedy, indignity, and controversy of Alexey Navalny’s political life here. To do so would take a book, if not several books. Meanwhile, perhaps the most important lesson about his trajectory has to do with his dedication.

For years, my fellow journalists and I argued about every twist and turn in his story. People have said, “Now he will surely give up.” “He will consider the safety of his family.” “He will go into exile.” None of those predictions came to pass. 

Since returning to the States from Moscow, I have used Navalny as a cautionary tale for people seduced by the administration of Donald Trump. I have told them that what Putin did to Navalny is something that Trump would love to do to all of his critics, if he had the opportunity and means. I have pointed out that Putin’s authoritarianism is something that Trump always admired. “Is this what you want for your own country?” I’ve said. “To be hounded by the police, and the courts, and every other government attack dog just because you care about official accountability?” 

Many of my fellow Americans have argued to me that such lawlessness could never take root here. But the January 6th attempted insurrection did give a lot of them pause. 

The thing about democracy is that it can be fragile. After all, institutions are only as good as the people who occupy powerful positions within them. 

Russia has plenty of institutions. Russia even used to have a decent constitution — until recent, sweeping changes. None of that matters on the ground, where repression and corruption remain the norm. As we move on from Trump, it’s something for Americans to consider, to humble ourselves just a little, and to think long and hard about what transparency and rule of law mean for us. 

What Navalny is fighting to create is something that we must be willing to preserve.
    [post_title] => Alexei Navalny: the Russian anti-corruption activist who refuses to back down
    [post_excerpt] => Five months after he was airlifted to a German hospital to recover from Novichok poisoning, allegedly by the FSB, Alexei Navalny returned to Russia. Police arrested him at the airport, but even from jail he continues to challenge Putin with revelations about the Russian leader's alleged corruption.
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Alexei Navalny: the Russian anti-corruption activist who refuses to back down

by Natalia Antonova

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    [ID] => 2255
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    [post_date] => 2021-01-15 03:26:06
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    [post_content] => Refugees trying to enter Europe are encountering border patrols that turn them back with brutal violence, which rights workers say is systemic.  

It’s around midnight in the Croatian forest, and trees block out most of the moonlight. Five days ago, four men—one Palestinian and three Algerian—crossed the Bosnian border into Croatia, and they have been walking ever since. A few moments ago, they met an Iranian woman with two young children.

Suddenly four police officers appear, shouting: “On your knees, sit down, sit down!” 

The police search the men for their phones, and tell them to hand over their money. They force the men to strip, while the woman and children are separated from the near-naked men. One man, who tells this story to an NGO in November 2020, describes the police making a fire and burning the group’s jackets and backpacks, while one officer drinks whisky and throws out insults.

“He said weird words. I don’t want to repeat them. But I can tell you it was without any respect. He insulted my mother, my sister, everyone. Weird words,” he said.

This is what he claims happens next.

The officers found long branches in the woods, and used them to beat the men.

The group was eventually taken to a small lake near the Croatian-Bosnian border. Waiting for them are 13 or 14 men in balaclavas, and the man telling this story believes they are police.

“And then the fight started. The first one had to go there. ‘Get naked!’ and then they hit him. After. The second one: ‘get naked’ and then bam, bam, bam. Next one: bam, bam, bam. It was like war,” he said.

The masked men used branches, metal batons, and their fists. The mother and two children watched from a distance.

“Then they say to us: ‘now swim’. Just imagine. It was night. So dark and so cold. Then they started throwing big rocks in our direction into the water. Imagine. It was dark, the men had been drinking. What if a rock would hit my head?”

As the men get out of the water, they are forced to walk across the border, back into Bosnia. Behind them, the masked men fire their guns.

This story was recorded by the Border Violence Monitoring Network, a group monitoring human rights violations at the EU’s external borders. While this is the account of one person, it is not an isolated incident. Right across Europe, the evidence shows that refugees and migrants are being forced back across country borders. These pushbacks are not only illegal, they are often violent. 

The evidence is mounting

A new report from the End Pushbacks Partnership and non-profit project Refugee Rights Europe shows the extent of these pushbacks at both land and sea borders.

There is evidence of violence on almost every border covered in the report. In Greece, video evidence shows the coast guard shooting into the water next to boats, in Slovenia far-right militias patrol the razor-wire fence borders, and in Turkey people have been shot as they try to cross into Greece.

Violence aside, pushbacks go against everything the EU stands for. Under the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights, mass expulsions are prohibited. It’s also unlawful for anyone to be pushed back to a country where there’s a serious risk that they’ll face the death penalty, torture, or any other inhuman or degrading treatment. Beyond this, EU Member States must guarantee the right to claim asylum—a right that is rooted in international refugee law.

Selma Mesic is the Greece and Balkans coordinator at Refugee Rights Europe, and she’s also part of the team behind the End Pushbacks Partnership, which has put together this report. She said it’s clear that these violent pushbacks aren’t the result of rogue officers.

“This is systematic,” she said. “It’s really hard to imagine all of this being done on a random basis.”

“Both by the number of people, but also the geographical reach of this trend, it seems entirely implausible that there are such common methodologies and tendencies happening across this many borders,” she said.

Pushbacks are happening in the thousands. The vast number, Mesic said, means it’s impossible for this to be the work of a few rogue individuals.

Violence at sea

The land and sea borders between Turkey and Greece are common routes for people making their way into the Schengen Area, where there is officially no passport control between the 26 European countries, although some countries are exercising temporary border controls.

On the Greece-Turkey sea border, like so many others in the report, evidence has been found of violence and illegal pushbacks. Much of this violence, according to the report, comes at the hands of the Hellenic (or Greek) Coast Guard.

A video published by the BBC shows this playing out in real time. As people try to enter Greek waters on a small dinghy, people on the large coast guard boat shoot into the water, push at the dinghy with a pole, and create waves, rocking the overcrowded vessel.

When asked for comment, a representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Hellenic Coast Guard sent an official response. 

“The officers of the Hellenic Coast Guard who are responsible for guarding the Greek and European sea and land borders have for months maximized their efforts, operating around the clock with efficiency, a high sense of responsibility, perfect professionalism, patriotism, and also with respect for everyone’s life and human rights. Their actions are carried out in full compliance with the country's international obligations.


As for the tendentious allegations of supposed illegal actions, we must emphasize that the  operation practices of the Greek authorities have never included such actions.”

When directed to the specific BBC video evidence, the Press Officer of the Ministry for Maritime Affairs, Mr Kokkalas, responded:

"This video was reproduced in March 2020, a period during which our country received a sudden, massive, organized and coordinated pressure from population movements to its eastern land and sea borders. This situation was an active, serious, exceptional and asymmetric threat to the country's national security."

In March 2020, pushbacks from Greece escalated. The global Coronavirus pandemic was sending the continent into lockdown, and Turkey had just opened its border with Greece in order to put pressure on Europe. Turkey is currently host to around 3.6 million refugees; in 2016 the EU and Turkey made a deal to put an end to dangerous sea crossings —a one in, one out policy with a financial incentive for Turkey to the tune of €3 billion. They agreed that for every Syrian refugee that Turkey took back from the Greek islands, the EU would resettle one Syrian refugee from within Turkey. But since then, there have been a number of disputes, including Turkey’s view that the EU has not kept their side of the bargain, and has not helped to manage the crisis in Syria. Opening the border meant more pressure on a struggling Greece, and more fuel for the fire of right-wing political groups in Europe.

The Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, announced: “Our national security council has taken the decision to increase the level of deterrence at our borders to the maximum. As of now we will not be accepting any new asylum applications for one month.”

“Do not attempt to enter Greece illegally,” he said. “You will be turned back.”

A new trend also emerged, according to Mesic, where people are apprehended after they've landed on the Aegean islands, and are then pushed back.

She explains that people are put into detention, and then taken back out to sea, abandoned near Turkish waters on small life rafts designed for emergency sea rescues. The rafts have no motors, and the people are left drifting in the ocean. All this has been detailed in multiple testimonies collected by Human Rights Watch.

The people interviewed also said that Greek officers stole their belongings, including ID and money. The coast guard said they have rescued thousands of migrants.

Among the Human Rights Watch testimonies, Hassan (not his real name), a Palestinian refugee from Gaza, said this:

“The Greek Coast Guard put us in a big boat. We drove for three hours but then they put us in a small boat. It was like a raft. It was inflatable and had no motor. Like a rescue boat they keep on big boats in case there is an emergency. They left us in the sea alone. There was no food or water. They left us for two nights. We had children with us.”

Alongside reports of pushbacks, there are also heroic stories of rescue, both from the coast guard and civil society groups. Refugee Rescue, the last search and rescue boat working from the island of Lesvos, worked for five years to save the lives of people crossing the Aegean sea. But the organization said it has had to suspend its operations because a deteriorating situation means their work is no longer safe.

The perpetrators of pushbacks

At the land border, a similar story is unfolding. Mounting evidence shows that people are not only being pushed back by authorities, but that unidentified masked men are playing a role in the process.

“There's no clear understanding of exactly who they are,” Mesic said.

“A lot of the testimonies given by victims of pushbacks, say they're apprehended close to the river, then they're driven on little motorboats across the river on towards the Turkish side. They tend not to speak, because, I would presume, they don't want to betray an accent or a specific language that they're speaking which could identify them.”

Mesic said the men wear masks and black clothing. She believes it’s a deliberate attempt to make sure they can’t be identified.

Countless claims of violence by Greek authorities have been collected by The Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN).

In one report, they speak to a Moroccan man, who said he has been pushed back to Turkey seven times. 

“If you come back to Greece, we will kill you.” These are the words he claims were levelled at him by a Greek officer, after he and his fellow travellers were picked up in Orestiada, a village near the Turkish border in July 2020.

BVMN said the group was taken to a nearby police station, where their phones were confiscated, and they were given no food or water. The next day, they were taken to another police station, where officers threw water on them, stripped them, and, according to the man’s statement, beat them with metal batons. He added that they were not given any opportunity to claim asylum.

When BVMN interviewed him a month later, the man still had bruises on his back.

Police eventually took the men to the border and forced them to look at the ground while threatening them with guns. Masked men beat anyone who dared look up.

“If you look at them, they can hit you until you die. They don’t care about this. We were so scared,” he told BVMN.

They were forced across the river, back into Turkey.

Greek police did not respond to requests for a comment.

A Europe-wide problem

The situation on the border between Greece and Turkey is just one example, and similar stories are playing out on borders between Schengen countries too. 

In France, people have been pushed back to Italy for a number of years. The 515km (320 mile) border has essentially been closed since 2015, following terror attacks in the country when a State of Emergency was declared.

However, some groups such as Anafé (National Association of Border Assistance for Foreigners) say these border controls are being used as a way to fight immigration.

“It’s not something you’d expect. They’re both EU countries. You think they’d be more aligned with their human rights and fundamental rights provisions. But clearly not, because these pushbacks are happening at a high rate,” said Selma Mesic.

The pushbacks typically happen after people are searched and arrested on trains or at train stations, and there are also claims of racial profiling. According to the End Pushbacks report, people are locked up in inhumane conditions; their personal documents are stolen and they are denied the right to claim asylum.

Unaccompanied minors are also being pushed back. Several civil society groups report that authorities often change dates of birth on forms so that children (who are entitled to specific provisions and protections) are classed as adults. In fact, in 2018, Anafé brought a major class action involving 20 cases of minors being pushed back to Italy. They won the case.

Beyond the violent pushbacks happening on European borders, is the problem of chain refoulement, where people are forced back across multiple borders. Through this practice, their lives are put in even greater danger.

On the Italian border, people are being pushed back into Slovenia, and then further along the Balkan route. They are forced into Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, and Serbia, where they often face inhumane conditions. People face police violence, homelessness, and destitution. Their right to seek asylum is often violated.

Mesic explains that along the Balkan route, people are apprehended, driven to the border, and handed over to the equivalent officials on the other side. Many countries, she said, are leaning on their readmissions agreements to claim that everything is being done within the law.

“It’s really easy to poke holes in that, because there are a lot of fundamental rights that are not being respected—the right to seek asylum, the right to have an interpreter or to receive information about your rights. Some of these rights are actually covered by readmissions agreements, but they're not really practised,” she said.

Raising the alarm

The groups behind this report are calling for urgent action. Together, they’ve set out a list of EU advocacy demands.

“We need effective access to asylum registration on both the EU external and internal borders, and to make sure that the safeguards and the right to asylum are upheld, because with the pushbacks happening, the right to asylum is gravely undermined,” Mesic said.

The group also wants to see an end to illegal detention practices, to end racial profiling, and to see a respect for the Schengen border code. They also want assurances that agencies, particularly European border and coast guard agency FRONTEX, are being held to account. They want to know that this work is carried out in line with the EU’s human rights obligations.

“The European Commission must hold member states to account,” Mesic said.

She said that all the rules and guidelines are already in place, but that there don’t seem to be any consequences when they are broken. The Schengen border code and the EU charter should provide the right protections, but the rules, based on the evidence, are not being respected.
    [post_title] => A call to end border violence in Europe
    [post_excerpt] => There is evidence of violence on almost every border covered in the report. In Greece, video evidence shows the coast guard shooting into the water next to boats, in Slovenia far-right militias patrol the razor-wire fence borders, and in Turkey people have been shot as they try to cross into Greece.
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A call to end border violence in Europe

by Katie Dancey-Downs

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    [post_date] => 2021-01-08 04:05:58
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    [post_content] => Under Trump, the presidency revealed itself, perhaps like no time before, to be a veritable monarchy. 

The January 6 sack of the U.S. Capitol by far-right extremists, egged on by President Trump and his refusal to acknowledge defeat at the November presidential elections, is among the darkest days in modern American history. For scholars of authoritarianism, however, and especially those of us with lived experiences with such regimes, there is little surprise at what transpired. Instead, it is a kind of informed terror.

In my case, it is the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the rise of the genocidaire Slobodan Milosevic that has informed my perspective on Trump’s rise and the chaos of his fall. I was a young child when my family was forced to flee Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital, in April 1992. But the onset of nationalist aggression against Bosnia, orchestrated by Milosevic’s then regime in Belgrade, was not sudden. It had been carefully prepared, organized, and regimented. So, too, the ensuing genocide in Bosnia: it involved bureaucrats, paperwork, pay stubs, and complex logistics.

My parents and their peers watched much of the Yugoslav dissolution crisis play out on their TV screens—mostly in disbelief. Yugoslavia was a one-party, authoritarian regime, but it was widely considered the most “liberal” communist polity in Europe. It had a large, relatively prosperous middle class; Western commodities were widely available, as were Western media and entertainment. Yugoslavs traveled freely to both the First and Second World. And in cosmopolitan Sarajevo, the center of multiethnic Bosnia, a litany of punk and rock bands, literary circles, and youth groups agitated for social and democratic change.

Understandably, then, when Milosevic first appeared on the radar of Yugoslavia’s educated middle class, he was seen as a deeply ridiculous figure. A dour communist apparatchik, his affect was transparently false. He spoke in an overwrought, airy way, his head perennially tilted upwards, capped by a crown-line pompadour.

But my parents and their peers were wrong. Milosevic’s appeal to the supposedly beleaguered ethnic Serbs of Kosovo, Yugoslavia’s poorest region, struck a note with many, especially in Serbia. He and his tight-knit circle of political operatives promptly outmaneuvered the sclerotic communist party apparatus in Belgrade. They quickly seized control of the country’s state media, while simultaneously ingratiating themselves with the hardline authoritarian leadership of the Yugoslav military.

And on the streets, Milosevic whipped up mobs of Serb nationalists with sinister speeches that alluded—with no evidence—to a brewing conspiracy to exterminate the Serb nation. Directing the crowds against other members of the communist regime, Milosevic toppled the governments of Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro, to seize the Yugoslav collective presidency and install himself as the country’s supreme leader. He called this ploy the “anti-bureaucratic revolution”; it lacked mass support as such, but it was ferociously supported by a hardcore base of Serb nationalist radicals and extremists.

Within the span of three years, between 1987 and 1990, Milosevic emerged as the most influential and powerful figure in Yugoslavia, a complex, multiethnic federation. His adept use of Serb nationalist grievance politics was successful but only for a moment. By 1990, the leadership in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia realized that Milosevic was on the cusp of a total takeover, and that he would impose his sectarian-authoritarian rule with an iron fist.

When a last-ditch effort at curtailing his rise failed at the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990, the country began to fragment. There were no more institutional avenues left to check him and so, one by one, the remaining republics held multiparty elections, and then promptly sought to exit the federal state.

Milosevic’s pursuit of one-man rule failed but it also killed the Yugoslav federation. With the union dissolving, Milosevic used the massive Yugoslav military, and an assortment of ultra-nationalist and criminal paramilitaries, to attempt to carve out of Croatia and Bosnia chunks of territory to append to a new “Greater Serbia”. This necessarily involved the systematic killing, torture, rape, and expulsion of tens of thousands. Bosnia became the site of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II. The Bosnian War and genocide resulted in the deaths of nearly 100,000 people in less than four years.

As a result of these experiences, former Yugoslav and Bosnian scholars and writers were among the first  to warn, from the earliest days of Trump’s candidacy, that his political program was a threat to American constitutional government; that American institutions and politicians would struggle to contain his sustained assault on the rule of law; that his administration was a mortal threat to black, brown, and immigrant communities; and that he would help unleash a din of sectarian violence that would tear at the fabric of the republic.

Every subsequent week confirmed the accuracy of our predications. Privately, many of us spoke about what our “red lines” were: when was it time to try to leave the country? What was the point of no return? Flashes of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, the early days of the war in Bosnia, filled our sleepless nights.

The imposition of Executive Order 13769—the Muslim ban—in January 2017 immediately set off alarm bells for all of us. The sustained civil society push-back gave us hope, but the failure of the courts to roll back a transparently discriminatory policy gutted those prospects. Then came a flurry of scandals and horrors: family separation, the white nationalist march in Charlottesville, impeachment.

Trump kept pushing, and America’s famed system of “checks and balances” kept buckling. The presidency revealed itself, perhaps like no time before, to be a veritable monarchy. Seemingly no outrage, no violation was severe enough to warrant a meaningful sanction from the Republican Party, or Trump’s electoral base.

During last summer’s Black Lives Matters protests, when federal forces were called in by the President and used to violently clear Washington, D.C.’s streets of peaceful protesters, and military helicopters ominously hung over the few remaining crowds, I drove to a nearby ATM. I took out several thousand dollars in cash, went home, and took out all my family’s passports. I told my wife that we should seriously talk about leaving. She did not disagree, but we wondered where to go. Perhaps to Vancouver, Canada to stay with my folks, I said—or perhaps back to Sarajevo.

We did not leave. But we began recording videos for our young daughters about this moment in American history. About how we rationalized our decision to stay, and to use whatever resources we had, whatever platforms we could tap into to protect and shore up the American republic, and those most vulnerable in it.

The United States is not Yugoslavia. But it also not an unassailable bastion of good governance. It has its own long, dark histories of sectarian violence and authoritarianism. The collapse of the Jim Crow South is a recent historical event, and the struggle between white supremacy and racial equality still, indelibly, shapes contemporary American politics. America is not uniquely resistant to the threat of illiberalism or civil strife, and despite Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ electoral triumph, Donald Trump remains a significant danger to the republic.

It is imperative that once he is removed from office, all levels of American government and civil society initiate a sustained campaign to restore the American republic. Major social and financial investments must be made in renewing civic trust, rolling back disinformation and spreading media literacy, promoting the study of civics and governance, and aggressively dismantling and prosecuting domestic far right and white supremacist cells.

Above all, this moment cannot be forgotten. The page cannot be turned on this period before there is a genuine national reckoning, a true commitment to truth and reconciliation, and an accounting for how Donald Trump, a vulgar, semi-literate demagogue, was able to bring the American constitutional regime to its breaking point in four years—and why so many were, and continue to be, willing to aid him in this pursuit. America’s future depends on confronting, rather than forgetting his tenure.
    [post_title] => The predictable terror of Trump's rise and fall
    [post_excerpt] => The United States is not Yugoslavia. But it also not an unassailable bastion of good governance. It has its own long, dark histories of sectarian violence and authoritarianism.
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The predictable terror of Trump’s rise and fall

by Jasmin Mujanović 

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    [post_content] => Part of the Trump campaign's strategy was to feed into the Christian right's martyr complex. 

When it comes to the religious vote in America’s 2020 presidential election, some clearly biased commentators are trying to spin cherry-picked exit poll data into a tale about white evangelical defectors helping former Vice President Joe Biden win. But it was Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank who got it right when he summarized the Trump 2020 phenomenon as largely about white evangelical Christians who “were fired up like no other group by Trump’s encouragement of white supremacy”—versus “everybody else.”

As evidence of his claim, Milbank cites exit poll data that shows white evangelicals, who represent about 15 percent of the U.S. population, comprise about a quarter of the electorate overall—and a full 40 percent of Trump voters. To be sure, majorities of all white Christian demographics voted Trump in 2020 as in 2016; in addition, a very small percentage of Black Christians, and a larger minority of Latinx Christians voted for Trump this year. White evangelicals, however, remain far and away America’s most solidly pro-Trump demographic, and they turned out in droves to support him. And to say that Trump’s white evangelical base is not taking the news of his election loss well would be quite the understatement.

Despite some high-profile Republican leaders and “respectable evangelicals” like Michael Gerson chiding them for a “failure of character,” many of these evangelical Trump supporters have refused, for weeks, to recognize that the election is over. In doing so, they are literally demonizing Democrats and playing up the same old wild persecution fantasies that have long since animated this authoritarian demographic.

On the notoriously reactionary 700 Club, the flagship Christian Broadcasting Network program, 90-year-old host Pat Robertson asserted, “It isn’t over yet,” and called on his audience to pray to overturn the election. “In the name of Jesus, I bind the spirit of delusion that has come over this land,” Robertson prayed, adding, “We will not surrender our nation, we will not give up this great country, and Satan, you cannot have it, in the name of Jesus.” Satan, he suggested, “wants to turn this nation over to socialism.” Robertson declared: “I still think Trump’s ultimately going to win.”

Those who grew up being taught that reality is shaped by “spiritual warfare” will instantly recognize Robertson’s language of “binding demons.” When applied to politics, such thinking is clearly incompatible with democracy. It has also been on prominent display throughout Trump’s presidency in the figure of his spiritual advisor, Paula White, who has also publicly prayed against the “demonic” forces supposedly trying to “hijack the will of God” for the election.

The prominence of neo-Pentecostal and charismatic Christians like White has been building within evangelicalism for decades, as conservative, mostly white evangelical subculture has become, along with the G.O.P., increasingly authoritarian. And it’s not just older evangelicals. While many young people leave evangelicalism, those who opt to stay in the faith even as it has careened into virulent extremism are, if anything, even more hardline than their parents.

Christians like White, Robertson, and their followers are invested in the “prophecies” that many of them have made over the last few years holding that Trump has been “chosen” to pursue God’s will for the United States. Elite celebrity preachers like White and Robertson might be cynically cashing in on the anxieties of rank-and-file believers, but there is no doubt that many evangelicals truly fear a Biden administration will “persecute” them.

According to political scientist Ryan Burge, evangelicals have a “martyr complex.” During the election cycle the Trump campaign explicitly played into this, with Trump casting Biden, a devout Catholic who has vowed to protect both religious freedom and LGBTQ rights, as anti-religious. “Essentially they’re against God if you look at what they’re doing with religion,” Trump said, while his son Eric claimed of his father:

He’s literally saved Christianity. I mean, there’s a full-out war on faith in this country by the other side. The Democratic Party, the far left, has become the party of the atheists, and they want to attack Christianity, they want to close churches. They’re totally fine keeping liquor stores open, but they want to close churches all over the country.

The fantastical message that Christianity is “under attack” matches what evangelicals themselves believe and want to hear. For the majority of them, the definition of “religious freedom” is the power to discriminate against members of other religions and to impose their narrow interpretation of Christianity on those who do not share it, using the coercive force of law. They regard having to coexist with LGBTQ people and provide us with equal accommodation in the public square as “persecution.”

Meanwhile, conspiracy-minded evangelicals frequently indulge in even darker fantasies, imagining their religious practice could actually be banned and that they could be arrested or even executed for practicing their faith by, for example, refusing to solemnize a same-sex marriage. Of course, these scenarios are about as likely to play out in America as a blanket ban on the consumption of apple pie.

Meanwhile, Eric Trump’s false claim that Democrats “want to close churches” is being widely circulated on Twitter. This is a bad faith and deliberately dishonest interpretation of America’s patchwork of county, municipal, and state-level public health requirements limiting the size of social gatherings, often including church services, which have been linked to numerous incidents of mass infection. Along with their reckless insistence that church services should continue as usual—sometimes in the form of lawsuits—prominent evangelicals have turned sensible mask requirements into fodder for the culture wars, using rhetoric that paints them as victims of a supposedly anti-Christian government. Some conservative Christians, including Kanye West, even claim to believe that the coronavirus vaccine, when it becomes available, will confer “the Mark of the Beast” on those who receive it as the Antichrist rises to power.

This reality-averse majoritarian self-victimization is a hallmark of fascism; it will not, unfortunately, simply disappear when President-elect Biden takes office. A dangerous right-wing politics of grievance will continue to shape American political life so long as conservative Christians continue to hold outsize influence and disproportionate power, a situation that is facilitated by the undemocratic Electoral College and equal representation of all states in the Senate, regardless of their population.

As I write this, Trump-supporting evangelicals continue to deny that Biden won the election and to insist that they will never accept the Democratic leader as president. They are also railing against C.D.C. advice that people refrain from attending large Thanksgiving gathering this year because they are likely to further exacerbate the already spiking spread of COVID-19 infections.

On prosperity gospel televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel, for example, evangelist Mario Murillo declared, “I will never believe that Joe Biden is the president of the United States.” Invoking the language of spiritual warfare, Murillo called on Christians to “rebuke” the election results and described the role of the church in current events as “supernatural.”

“Our role is to command the strongholds to come down,” Murillo exclaimed, referring to the charismatic Christian notion that demonic “principalities and powers” can be defeated through prayer.

As Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” When far-right Christians like Murillo tell us they will never accept Biden (or, frankly, any Democrat) as the legitimate president of the United States, proponents of democracy need to believe them. People who think their political opponents are literally demonic, and who continue to incite irrational fears of persecution—even as the federal courts, which Trump stacked with right-wing authoritarians, continues to deliver for their culture wars agenda—are not people who can be reasoned or compromised with. Nothing short of total control will ever be enough for them.

How do we deal with that stark reality? It is important to maintain the pressure, no matter the odds of success, for democratic reforms that would limit the power of white evangelicals and other authoritarians. This means pushing for the abolition of the Electoral College; for adding seats to the Supreme Court as a means of restoring fairness after the G.O.P.’s recent power grab; and admitting DC and Puerto Rico as states.

We must also maintain high public awareness of Christian nationalist extremism. Over time, a more realistic national conversation about white churches and Christian nationalism should contribute to the political delegitimization of Christian extremists in the eyes of the public, thus opening up new political possibilities for the future.

Biden, unfortunately, has called for a clearly impossible unity, which means that his administration is unlikely to lead the way here. Still, it seems he is willing to exercise power in the pursuit of justice; that, at least, will help fend off the theocratic threat for the time being.

 
    [post_title] => Why do so many evangelicals continue to deny that Biden won the election?
    [post_excerpt] => People who think their political opponents are literally demonic, and who continue to incite irrational fears of persecution, are not people who can be reasoned with.
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Why do so many evangelicals continue to deny that Biden won the election?

by Chrissy Stroop

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    [post_date] => 2020-10-29 15:49:54
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    [post_content] => Legacy media outlets do their readers a vast disservice in presenting the minority of anti-Trump evangelicals as evidence of a broader change in attitudes.

The Trump era in American politics, which I sincerely hope comes to an end in 2021, will be forever marked by widespread public consternation over the often enthusiastic support of the Christian Right, and white evangelicals above all, for a corrupt, “pussy-grabbing,” tenth-rate would-be dictator. Over the past four years I have been trying to explain why evangelical Trump support is not only unsurprising, but also the logical culmination of the evangelical culture wars I was born into and mobilized for.

Unfortunately, legacy media outlets in the United States continue to resist this hard truth. With less than one week left before the November 3 election, they are amplifying the small minority of white evangelicals that support former Vice President Joe Biden, instead of explaining why the vast majority of white evangelicals will never dump Trump. They are also irresponsibly pushing the tired old trope that young evangelicals are changing evangelicalism for the better, in ways that will materialize any day now. Apparently we just have to keep waiting, much like Christians have been waiting for the Second Coming for the last 2,000 years.

Why do legacy media outlets continue to amplify the small liberal minority among white evangelical Christians?  Daniel Schultz, a United Church of Christ pastor and veteran civic activist, observed that they “make a good story: you’ve got white evangelicals going against the grain, so it’s unusual, and you have people standing up for their morals (or at least pretending to do so), so it’s inspirational.” However, he said, journalists need to ask whether the atypical evangelical individuals and initiatives they’re highlighting represent “meaningful change.”

Of course, the outliers do deserve some media coverage. One example is Not Our Faith Political Action Committee, a bipartisan PAC devoted to helping defeat Trump. But reporters glosses over the salient point that this organization’s  advisory council, though composed of Protestants and Catholics, is ethnically far more diverse than the white evangelicals and white Catholics who voted for Trump in 2016. Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, which is is prominently supported by Billy Graham’s granddaughter Jerushah Duford, likewise deserves coverage—but responsible reporting should include some healthy skepticism of Duford’s optimism about evangelicals’ ability to change for the better, given the documented resiliency of authoritarianism in conservative, mostly white evangelical subculture.

The handful of white evangelicals who oppose Trump are notably more visible, and seemingly more organized, on behalf of a Democratic presidential candidate, than any similar group has been in recent memory. And there is a non-zero chance that their efforts might actually shift a few votes in swing states, which could in turn make the difference in what will most likely be a tight contest in the Electoral College even if there is a popular vote landslide for Biden, which is likely. All of this, of course, assumes a free and fair election that plays out relatively smoothly, which is certainly not a given.

Eighty percent of the white evangelical vote went to Trump in 2016, a historic high. Trump’s share of that vote could fall back into the 70s, though this seems unlikely given the GOP’s hypocritical rush to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat with charismatic Catholic extremist Amy Coney Barrett; her confirmation places the overturning of the Supreme Court’s Roe and Obergefell decisions within the Christian Right’s grasp if the composition of the court remains untouched. A Biden administration could expand the SCOTUS to restore fairness, and, while I believe it should do so, you can be sure Trump’s evangelical base will keep this possibility in mind as something to avoid by voting for Trump.

Jerushah Duford’s first name is derived from the Hebrew word for “inheritance,” but it is the notoriously bigoted and rabidly pro-Trump Franklin Graham, son of Billy, who far more embodies not only the legacy of “American’s pastor,” but also white evangelical subculture. America’s elite public sphere places far too little emphasis on that sobering fact.

If we are ever to have a proper reckoning with this moment, which is far from guaranteed even if Biden wins the 2020 presidential election handily, we will need to face not only the fact that white evangelical subculture is essentially authoritarian, but also the role of the media in obscuring that truth, and by extension enabling authoritarianism via the normalization of extremism. Major media outlets need much better religion reporting; unfortunately, however, the organizations willing to fund religion journalism, like the Lilly Endowment in my native Indianapolis, tend to be heavily biased in favor of conservative Christians.

The relatively small number of journalists who cover religion do their readers a great disservice by taking the word of the people they report on at face value, when they should be questioning them with some skepticism. Conservative Christians maintain they are misunderstood; in response, reporters seem to be striving to tell only positive stories about them, no matter how harmful the politics of those Christians might be to those who do not share their views.

It is wildly irresponsible to equate “good” religion journalism with highlighting moderate to liberal evangelical youth as if they are typical, as in this example from The New York Times, and/or parroting the aggrieved talking points of their authoritarian counterparts as if they represent “the gospel truth,” or at least something worthy of the public’s sympathy, as in this example from The Washington Post.

Or take this combative, aggressively defensive opinion piece in defense of white evangelicals published by Religion News Service in the final run-up to this year’s election. Titled “Demonizing White Evangelicals Won’t Solve Our Political Divisions,” it is another iteration of the “very fine people on both sides” argument. The writer, Arthur E. Farnsley II, posits that both liberal and conservative Americans are responsible for the divisions in our society, when it is well established that the country’s polarization is asymmetric and driven primarily from the right.

Farnsley writes that critics of right-wing evangelicals must build bridges, but provides no evidence that anyone has engaged in “demonizing” white evangelicals, let alone elite journalists and commentators. That is, unless his definition of “demonizing” is presenting the public with highly substantiated facts about the intimate connections between American white supremacism and predominantly white churches, and daring to suggest that the people who lead and attend the churches most complicit in white supremacism should be held accountable.

In a powerful response to Farnsley’s commentary in his Substack newsletter, ex-evangelical podcaster Blake Chastain, who is a friend of mine, pointed out that “it is white evangelicals who hold the flame and set fire to bridges, both in their churches and in the public square.”

We must not be taken in by Farnsley’s gaslighting, nor by right-wing extremism wrapped in “civil” trappings by “respectable” evangelicals who understand the damage that Trump support has done to their brand, and thus seek to distance evangelicalism from Trump.

The latest example of the latter comes from heavyweight Calvinist theologian John Piper’s blog, Desiring God. In a post that made waves on Twitter when it dropped on October 22, Piper strongly hinted that he will be abstaining from voting for president this year, characterizing the two choices as “death by abortion” (Biden) and “death by arrogance” (Trump). But there is simply no way to build a bridge between advocates of democracy and human rights,  on the one hand, and people like Piper who casually make false and conspiratorial statements like, “I think Planned Parenthood is a code name for baby-killing,” on the other.

How does America move forward from the Christian nationalist surge of the Trump years? Those committed to liberal democracy can and should look to build bridges with conservative Christians like Duford, who has shown a willingness to break ranks with evangelical authoritarianism and to operate in good faith in a pluralistic democracy. However, if we look away from what conservative, mostly white evangelical subculture definitively is— i.e., anti-pluralist, anti-democratic, and incapable of significant cultural change from the inside—we cannot move the country forward. Those characteristics represent unreconstructed America, and those who exhibit them must be pushed to the political sidelines or the United States will always be at risk of the unreconstructed minority imposing authoritarian, white supremacist patriarchal rule.

As sociologist of religion Andrew Whitehead, who studies evangelicals, recently observed, “there is so much inertia institutionally that it will take an extremely long time for white evangelicalism to change, and I have a hard time seeing that happen. It will be so interesting to see if younger evangelicals just leave or conform. My suspicion is those who truly embrace environmentalism or LGBTQ-affirmation, for example, will end up leaving.” And indeed, many are leaving.

True, 16 percent of the white evangelical vote went to Hillary Clinton in 2016. As Schultz explains, “About 15-25 percent of white evangelicals are liberals or at least moderates. So there's always someone to go against the majority, creating the necessary drama for a media piece.” Nevertheless, he stressed that “the numbers don’t lie: somewhere around 80 percent of white evangelicals support Trump, and that’s in line with white evangelical support for GOP presidential candidates going back to at least 2004. In other words, white evangelicals are the Republican base, and there's simply no reason to think that’s changing in this election.”

 
    [post_title] => Pro-Biden white evangelicals are a minority. The vast majority will support Trump
    [post_excerpt] => It is wildly irresponsible to equate “good” religion journalism with highlighting moderate to liberal evangelical youth as if they are typical.
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Pro-Biden white evangelicals are a minority. The vast majority will support Trump

by Chrissy Stroop

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    [post_date] => 2020-10-16 04:44:02
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    [post_content] => “Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value.”
--Joe Biden

In 2019, America spent $732 billion on its military. China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and Brazil spent $726 billion combined. Since American defense philosophy is predicated on the belief that national defense is better carried out abroad rather than at home, it spends billions of dollars on overseas military bases—of which the U.S. has more than any other nation—and aircraft carriers.

Meanwhile, more than 210,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and more than 7 million have contracted the virus, according to the Center for Disease Control. But the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to approve bills initiated by the Democrats, which would provide relief of $2,000 per month to people deprived of an income, even as frontline healthcare workers struggled during the height of the pandemic to secure personal protective equipment (PPE) while the federal government declined to help. 

The country with the biggest economy in the world failed to protect its citizens from unemployment, economic recession, and a pandemic. 

It’s clear we value guns and other weapons of war over the medical needs of citizens those arms are supposed to protect. 

Last summer, as financial relief to individuals under the CARES Act was about to end, Senators Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey proposed an amendment to the $740.5 billion annual defense budget that would cut 10 percent, or $74 billion, and invest the funds in education, healthcare, and housing in poor communities. 

The Senate rejected the amendment, with 37 Democrats joining their Republican colleagues to vote “no.” Senators Sanders, Warren, and Markey were among those who voted in favor of the amendment. 

In the House, Democrats split 92-139 against the amendment to cut the defense budget. This prompted Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat representing California’s 17th District, to tweet: "I don’t want to hear anyone tell me that we can’t enhance expanded unemployment benefits when we spend more on endless wars than the next ten countries combined."



Bernie Sanders argued that the cut would help create jobs by building schools, affordable housing, hospitals, sustainable energy, clean water facilities and other community centered needs that have been proven to improve health and decrease crime. It would help the federal government improve education by reducing class sizes, increasing teacher pay and supporting free public tuition for universities, colleges and trade schools.  

More poignantly, Sanders said:

 If this horrific coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it is that national security involves a lot more than bombs, missiles, tanks, submarines, nuclear warheads and other weapons of mass destruction. National security also means doing all we can to improve the lives of the American people, many of whom have been abandoned by our government for decades.

The United States government claims to be protecting its citizens from foreign threats, yet cannot shield them from domestic ills like homelessness, underpaid teachers, the lack of universal healthcare, and failure to implement a minimum wage that keeps full-time workers out of poverty. 

The conservative position is that a superpower needs a strong military to protect itself from “emerging threats” in China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. 

But what good is a strong military if it protects a nation that cannot provide food to low-income school children? 

And what good is it to be a nuclear power if America cannot solve the problem of Black women—ironically America’s most committed voters—dying at childbirth at higher rates than any other ethnic group in America?

President Dwight Eisenhower warned in 1961 of an oversized military when he spoke of an overinvestment in military spending and the excessive influence of the “military industrial complex.”

We have failed to heed that warning. We need to reimagine what safety means.

America’s defense policy needs to change, beginning with its position on nuclear weapons. As late as the 1980s, the United States and the former Soviet Union held close to 90 percent of the world’s nearly 75,000 nuclear weapons; through various nuclear non-proliferation treaties, that figure has dropped to around 14,000, with the U.S. and the Russian Federation continuing to hold 90 percent. 

Serious, knowledgeable people have called for reducing America’s weapons stockpile.

William Perry, who was Deputy Secretary of Defense during the Clinton Administration, wrote in a 2017 Washington Post op-ed that America’s proposed $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons spending was unnecessary. No surprise attack could destroy all of the navy’s submarines, he explained; but the risk of a conventionally armed cruise missile being mistaken for one with a nuclear warhead was real—as shown by the three narrowly averted Cold War catastrophes. Moreover, cutting nuclear-armed cruise missiles and cancelling plans to replace Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) stockpiles would save $30 billion and $149 billion, respectively—i.e., more than double the $75 billion that would be saved with a 10 percent cut to the current military budget. 

Similarly, Berry Blechman of the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., argued in a 2016 opinion for the New York Times that the $1 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program approved by President Obama was unnecessary because it would “impose an increasing burden on the defense budget, making it difficult to maintain our conventional military superiority—the real guarantee of U.S. security.” Like Perry, Blechman recommends cutting more than 100 ICBMs. 

Defunding the Pentagon is an essential strategy for appropriating funds to social services, exactly as is defunding police departments that do not actually reduce crime. This is a message the public needs to hear.

America has 6,800 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. But it only takes 100 nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth. And yet, the Trump Administration has asked for $29 billion in nuclear weapons spending for the 2021 fiscal budget—even though the president’s own Air Force Chief of Staff has argued that the Pentagon cannot afford it. 

COVID-19 has killed more Americans than the five most recent wars the U.S. has been involved in combined. Our current military outlook is too focused on defending the homeland instead of actual Americans who actually reside in it. Republicans are angling to push through a SCOTUS nominee to end the Affordable Care Act, threatening to strip millions of Americans of the only healthcare safety net they have—during a pandemic.  

Small businesses are struggling to secure COVID-19 relief while Donald Trump, a billionaire, notoriously paid only $750 per year in federal income tax.

During the 2012 presidential debates, Mitt Romney worried that the U.S. had fewer naval ships than at any other point in the country’s history—to which Obama responded that it also had fewer horses and bayonets. In other words, having more doesn’t make us stronger; on the contrary, being smaller and nimbler makes us more efficient. Obama was wrong to dismiss the threat to U.S. security posed by the Kremlin, but Putin’s most potent weapon wasn’t the military: it was disinformation and election meddling, against which Republicans in Washington refuse to protect the nation. 

The United States Postal Service is an essential service, particularly during a pandemic election year, when millions are choosing to mail their ballots rather than risk being infected by COVID-19 while standing in line to vote. And yet, the USPS is facing a budget crisis. We are a democracy that can single-handedly destroy the Earth, but can’t make it possible for every citizen to vote.

The knowledge that we have an arsenal of unnecessary nuclear weapons and a military capable of occupying several nations simultaneously might make conservatives feel secure. I’m willing to bet, however, that most Americans would rather have universal healthcare, affordable housing, and improved public education. That silent majority must surely feel some bitterness at seeing their tax dollars allocated to fund endless wars when the local hospital doesn’t even have enough ventilators to save all the Covid-19 patients. 

 
    [post_title] => The case for taking from the Pentagon and giving to the people
    [post_excerpt] => What good is a strong military if it protects a nation that cannot provide food to low-income school children? 
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The case for taking from the Pentagon and giving to the people

by Terrell J. Starr

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