Europe

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Why the Duma's new restrictions against LGBTQ "propaganda" are both dangerous and unsurprising.





Nearly everyone who pursues an advanced degree in area studies without having ethnic or family ties to their chosen region has an unusual story about how they got into the field. In my case, the interest stemmed from two short-term evangelical youth mission trips to Russia in 1999 and 2000. 





I had just graduated from high school at the time, and I was looking for something to help me contextualize a crisis of faith that had been troubling me for several years. I wanted to imagine a world beyond the stifling Midwestern conservative Christian enclave in which I’d grown up, and when I first stepped off the plane in Moscow, I was nervous but also thrilled to start getting a sense of what Russia was like. I was thus susceptible to certain romantic notions about the “Russian soul” and its depth of authenticity that supposedly contrasted with Western superficiality and calculation, and, after seeing the sights in Moscow and spending a couple of weeks getting to know young Russians in a rural summer camp environment, I was hooked. In that lingering post-Cold War moment of relative optimism, I developed a naive fascination with Russian language and culture that came to define my professional and intellectual life in the following years.





It’s embarrassing to me now that I ever engaged in missionary activities, but, while I quickly gave up on the desirability of converting (Orthodox) Christians to (Protestant) Christianity, the new friends and pen pals and an interest in the country itself remained. I began to study Russian in college, and from that point on, I traveled to Russia regularly until the end of 2015, by which time I had earned a PhD in modern Russian history from Stanford University and spent three years teaching at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), a school with which Stanford partnered at the time. But these days, I’m forced to wonder if I’ll ever go back.





Amid the coverage of Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine, which has dragged on now for nearly eight months, the Russian State Duma has been preparing to pass further restrictions against LGBTQ “propaganda” in an initiative that Deputy Alexander Khinshtein, chair of the committee on information policy, believes may pass as early as next week, according to reporting by the Russian news service Interfax. The new legislation, for which hefty fines will be demanded from violators, is quite comprehensive, banning any public representation of queer sexualities or gender identities, and making particular mention of banning “information that might cause children to wish to change their sex.” Thus far, this new legislation has received relatively little comment in the Western press. But there is no doubt that the legislation and the Russian discourse around it will generate yet more violence against a scapegoated minority as the government drives LGBTQ existence entirely underground. 





“Sodomy” was illegal in the Soviet Union, and was only legalized in Russia in 1993. At that point, many observers believed that a democratizing post-Soviet state was on a trajectory toward greater acceptance of difference and greater integration into the international community. Sadly, and in retrospect unsurprisingly, the openness did not last.





From 2003 to 2004, in between finishing college at Ball State University and starting my postgraduate studies at Stanford, I worked as an English teacher at the American Home—a private English school and center of cultural exchange—in the provincial Russian city of Vladimir, in the region I’d traveled to as a youth missionary. In my advanced English classes at the American Home, I had students read and discuss newspaper articles about current events, and that year, the state of Massachusetts had legalized same-sex marriage. When we discussed the topic in class, by and large, the students voiced negative opinions. But whether it was acceptable that we were discussing homosexuality and LGBTQ rights in the classroom was never remotely in question. 





Fast-forward to the 2012-2013 academic year, when, post-PhD, I taught humanities classes to both undergraduates and master’s students at RANEPA. One of the Russian students in my postgraduate course—the only liberal among the Russians in the class—gave a sympathetic presentation about Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” protest and its aftermath. She chose the topic entirely on her own, but I was admittedly enthusiastic. Her presentation gave way to a chaotic shouting match among the students, which I should have taken as a foreshadowing of things to come. Some weeks later, I got a frantic phone call from a RANEPA administrator demanding to know why I had “taught Pussy Riot lyrics” in my class. The conversation left me wondering if I was going to get fired. While I didn’t, I did learn to self-censor a bit in the classroom. Later that summer, the Russian State Duma passed its notorious anti-gay “propaganda” law banning the dissemination of any information about “non-traditional sexual relations” to minors. I was dismayed.





All of this has been on my mind in light of the Duma’s new anti-LGBTQ legislation—legislation that feels all the more potent given what is fueling it. Because while anti-queer sentiment has been brewing for years, with much encouragement from above, it is also quite clear that Moscow’s anti-queer obsession is connected with the war in Ukraine, both of which derive from an authoritarian ethos that elevates toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and “traditional values” as an ideal to be emulated, promising punishment for those who deviate. The legislation is of a piece with the war effort, which Russian Orthodox Church and state officials have cast in terms of “spiritual warfare” against the “satanic” West, specifically for its rejection of these same “traditional values.”





Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken an increasingly right-wing populist line since 2011, a period when protests against corruption and election irregularities were a regular feature of life in Moscow. Meanwhile, since the Ukrainian protests of 2013, which centered on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) and developed into what is now referred to as the Revolution of Dignity, right-wing Russian politicians and Russian Orthodox Christian leaders have fixated on Ukrainian aspirations for democracy and self-determination, denouncing these hopes as a Western conspiracy, Nazism, Satanism—and, of course, as the corrupting influence of “Gayropa.” The authoritarian desire of the Putin regime and Russian nationalists to control the future of Kyiv has thus been framed in terms of “Western decadence” vs. “traditional Slavic values,” a framing that, until Putin actually invaded Ukraine, generated a great deal of sympathy for the Russian autocrat on the American and European Right.





Here at home, of course, LGBTQ rights are also under intense attack by the Right, and certain states’ governors—those of Florida and Texas in particular—have so severely abused their respective state bureaucracies in their efforts to persecute transgender Americans and their supporters that many families with trans children have been forced to move out of state. This isn’t the post-Cold War world many of us once young, naïve idealists imagined. When I returned from Russia to take a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of South Florida in Tampa in 2015, I still thought I was going to a place where things were getting better and better for queer folks like myself. I was wrong.





In both Putin’s authoritarian Russia and Trump’s authoritarian America, it was (and has been) painful to watch people I thought were reasonable go all-in for the nationalist narratives that leave no room for those who are different from the straight Christian norm. Ironically, it was while living in Moscow, at age 33, that I finally came to recognize my own queerness, the source of feeling “different” and uncomfortable in my own skin that had marked my evangelical childhood and youth, and which that same evangelical socialization had left me ill-equipped to see or acknowledge. Once upon a time, I had held up Russia as a mirror to America, my vague young adult discontent and inability to feel comfortable in my Christian Right milieu fueling a need to broaden my horizons about human possibilities. Now, I see in both countries a sort of imperial provincialism, a post-Cold War hangover borne of “great power” nostalgia and a yawning abyss of insecurity papered over with jingoistic bravado, conspiracy theories, and approved categories of people to hate, while (in classic abuser mode) claiming to “love” them so much that you have to beat them into conformity with what is ultimately “best for them.” In both countries, there are many good people who resist these toxic impulses, but the impulses persist, leaving destruction in their wake. 





The last time I was in Russia was December 2015, when RANEPA flew me to Moscow to sign a contract that supposedly had to be signed in person before I could get paid for the last semester of editorial work I had done remotely on one of the school’s academic journals. With not much to do other than wait for the paperwork, I visited friends, strolled down memory lane, and went ice skating with a colleague and an ex-girlfriend at the massive outdoor rink in Gorky Park. Amid New Year’s preparations, almost no work gets done in Russia in late December, and on the day I had to leave Moscow, there was still no contract for me to sign. “Don’t worry,” a young administrator told me. “We’ll just forge your signature on the contract.” I finally got paid in cash at an academic conference in the United States that took place nearly a year later.





That surreal goodbye to Russia is an apt coda to the years I spent at RANEPA, when Putin’s creeping authoritarianism started to become, well, much less creeping. In the first few years after 2015, I continued to assume I would return to Russia someday. But now, many Russians themselves, including some of my friends and colleagues, have had to flee the country for their own protection as conscientious objectors to the full-scale war that, back then, none of us anticipated. Some LGBTQ Russians have also fled in recent years, a trend that will no doubt continue as state persecution of the LGBTQ community intensifies. Just as Americans sometimes debate whether it’s ethical for people whose rights and safety are threatened to leave red states instead of staying and trying to change things for the better, the topic of leaving or remaining in Russia—which inevitably raises questions of privilege and survivors’ guilt—has been a contentious matter among the Russian intelligentsia in recent years. My own thinking is that no one who can find a way to leave—especially no marginalized person—is ever ethically obligated to remain in a place that denies them their rights and is unsafe for them. Sometimes, as you struggle to keep hope alive that someday things will be better, all you can do is bear witness.


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Russia’s New Anti-LGBTQ Legislation is Just More of the Same Authoritarianism

by Chrissy Stroop

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Want to be a better tourist? Start by embracing local lore. 





When I visited Iceland, there were a few things on my list: an active volcano, a museum of witchcraft in the Westfjords, a puffin tour, and running into Björk and becoming best friends. I kind of knew I wanted to visit Hafnarfjörður, a port town close to Reykjavík, home to an idyllic volcanic park known for elf sightings. But it was an afterthought, a kitschy stop that I expected to experience as a skeptical tourist rather than a believer. 





Icelandic people’s belief in and deference to the Huldufólk (Hidden People) is well-documented. Tourists know it, and mock it, all while indulging in activities like the Elf School, which is exactly what it sounds like. On an episode of Travel Man, host Richard Ayoade and his companion attended the school and spent the segment mocking the very elves they were supposed to be learning about, leaving no more enlightened than when they went in. Global headlines read things like, “More Than Half of [This Country] Believes in Elves,” but obscure what that belief really means. It’s a punchline, something to make the people of Iceland seem naive, primitive. As if to say: There was a time when it was appropriate, but now there are cars on the road. Grow out of it, already.





The belief varies person to person, but the general consensus is that elves exist in nature, in rocks and volcanoes and forests and water. There are over 50 kinds, all with different physiques and temperaments, depending on where they live. And regardless of proof or lack thereof, one thing is for sure: When an elf’s home is moved, to make way for construction or similar human disturbances, bad things tend to happen. This alone is enough to deter most people from fucking with them. When starting construction, many people will consult with elf experts like Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, who can liaise with the elves and find out who lives where and whether they’d consider moving on. If they won’t, construction stops. The result is a country that lives in harmony with its expansive, alien landscape. A country and a people that moves and develops slowly enough to let nature—and the Huldufólk who protect it—flourish around them.





It’s that volcanic landscape that drew me, and draws most tourists, to Iceland. Fagradalsfjall was still active, as it is again now, and the country-wide presence of volcanic rock is enough to distinguish it from anywhere else I’ve ever been. Whole fields of lava feel like a walk on the moon, sparse and removed from humanity, and yet teeming with life. Where another country might have cleared them away, Iceland builds tourism around its volcanoes, turning large expanses of hardened lava into family friendly parks and attractions. I ultimately decided to go to Hafnarfjörður, not for the elves, but for this scenery and the quiet that comes with it. 





The park in Hafnarfjörður, like much of Iceland’s scenery, grows around lava and the ever-present threat of volcanic eruption. Despite the human feet stomping around, however, locals say that all that untouched nature creates the perfect environment for elves. Hafnarfjörður plays up the legend somewhat, with little human-built elf houses and a gift shop that sells elf dust. It’s kind of a tourist trap—but a very quiet one, with local families just hanging out. While I thought I just wanted to relax in the park, I was also primed to retreat into the rocks with the Huldufólk: That morning, my phone was filling up with people congratulating me on something that should have been exciting but instead felt overwhelming. I set it to airplane mode and set off into the park, trying to let myself be in tune with another world, which felt easy with an unusually warm Icelandic sun on my back.





It was there that I found the Huldufólk, or they found me. I came across a crack in the lava and crouched down, laying my hands on rock that still felt warm, alive. I peered inside and saw nothing in it, no elves teasing me, so I lay a flower at the entrance, where thick, hard, clear slime interlaced with rainbows decorated the grass. I sat, still, the peace that had been evading me finally gathering. I thanked the elves for the quiet and moved on after a while, enjoying the rest of the park.





In all of the photos surreptitiously taken of me hanging out by that crack in the rock, there is a rainbow enveloping me. It hadn’t been raining and I hadn’t seen the rainbow, except in the slime, but there it was. When my fiancée and I later told a friend of his, an Icelandic professor, about our experience, she said, “Oh yes, elf slime,” like it was the most normal thing in the world. She also gave a stern warning: Do not follow the elves, no matter what they offer.





When we later shared our experiences with other Icelandic people, it caught me off guard how difficult it was to be embarrassed. They listened, told us that we were lucky, that the elves didn’t appear to just anyone, and so rarely to tourists. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t “seen” an elf—the extent of my small interaction was enough. I felt grateful to be believed, but I also felt some gratitude in return that I hadn’t questioned their beliefs or culture. I went in, two-footed, willing to see the elves if they would show themselves to me. What I got was something special, an experience to talk about, but also a moment of peace that I desperately needed, elves or not. 





For much of my early life I believed in magic, something that faded as I got older. As a child, I believed wholeheartedly in the tooth fairy, insofar as I believed she would be my friend and bring me gifts. So maybe it shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise that I found myself among elves, wanting to fall into gaps in the volcanic rock. But why shouldn’t we look for magic as adults, especially in places like Iceland that offer it up so freely? Who does it harm to respect someone else’s version of the tooth fairy I’d loved, and maybe even try to meet them, too? 





When—if—we share our supernatural experiences with people who don’t come from cultures that share them readily, there’s always a moment of shared trepidation. You can sense them tip-toeing around their own experiences, hedging with “I don’t usually believe in this stuff” or “it could have been anything.” After a while, when each person realizes they are safe, they share. We might not always have proof, but what we experience and how we perceive it is real. When we experience it with others, our beliefs—and our confidence in our own experiences—gain power.





More than that, when we as tourists are lucky enough to spend time in other people’s countries and cultures, we need to honor them. That means trying their food, understanding their customs, learning to fit in. That means not immediately complaining if you don’t get enough ice or the service isn’t fast enough. It means exploring temples and monuments and other important sites with respect. It means trying your best to speak the language and not just shouting “chips, PLEASE” in a waiter’s face.





It also means taking on those customs and beliefs that are maybe even more foreign to you, like believing in elves. It means not laughing at something that means a lot to a lot of people in a country that for the most part gets by just fine without you. In Iceland, the Huldufólk maintain the rule of the land, a respect for the sparse, otherworldly landscape that blooms freely. Believing in elves or magic or ghosts or God or tree spirits isn’t inherently childish or naive, it’s a part of being a human being with a belief system and a desire for rituals and order. 





More than that, by having patience and respect for the places you visit, even when it requires a suspension of disbelief, you might open yourself up to a little magic. You might make friends and take home experiences that you could never have had if you scoffed at something meaningful to someone else. You might even meet an elf. Plus, you’ll just seem like less of an asshole, one less reason for people to hate tourists. And wouldn’t that be nice?


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I Didn’t Believe in Elves Until I Did

by Marianne Eloise

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One month into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, amid rampant disinformation, the fog of war, and rapidly shifting geopolitics, The Conversationalist's Executive Director has put together an overview of the latest reporting and analysis.





Despite being at war with Ukraine in Donbas since 2014, Russia's invasion of its neighbor on February 24 took many by surprise, including experts on and from both countries. It's not that people disregarded Putin's threats, but many couldn't stomach the thought of another land war in Europe, nor what that rupture would mean for two such interconnected peoples, not to mention the world order. As both the daughter of a Ukrainian Jew from Odessa, and a historian of the Soviet Union, I've been unable to look away. For The Conversationalist, I've gathered some of the best reporting and analysis from inside Ukraine and Russia on war crimes, sanctions, repressions, Nazis, refugees and racism.





Reporting from Ukrainian cities under bombardment 





The most harrowing accounts of the war have come from cities in eastern Ukraine, especially the port city Mariupol, which has been flattened in the space of a few weeks. For 20 days, AP journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka documented the siege of Mariupol, including mass graves and the now famous photo of a pregnant woman being carried through rubble on a stretcher after Russia targeted Mariupol's maternity hospital. They later escaped Mariupol to avoid capture by Russian forces. 





Meduza has published accounts and photos from Kharkiv and Volnovakha, including the story of Boris Romanchenko, 96, who survived four Nazi concentration camps only to die after a Russian shell hit his building in Kharkiv. Meanwhile in Kyiv, journalist Kristina Berdynskykh shelters in the metro and questions whether she was right to stay. 





What's the deal with "de-Nazification"? 





Russian propaganda would like you to think this war is about "de-Nazifying Ukraine," which includes attempts to assassinate its Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, bombs next to Holocaust memorials, and the retraumatization of WWII survivors. In the New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch questions whether Putin's war is genocidal. The sad irony is that the invasion has led to the rearming of Ukraine's far-right militias.





Who is being sent to fight this war? 





Russia says it is liberating Russian-speaking Ukrainians from imagined oppression. But who is doing the actual fighting? Historian Robert Crews writes in the Washington Post about Muslims fighting on both sides of the war, and how these divisions threaten stability in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Recent reports of Syrian mercenaries being recruited by Russia triggered righteous anger in many already distressed at the disparate treatment of Syrian refugees by the international community. 





The Moscow Times reports that Central Asian migrant laborers are being targeted for conscription: ​​“I think the Russian government is using labor migrants as cannon fodder in Ukraine.” Near the Ukrainian border in Belarus, morgues full of Russian soldiers suggest much higher casualty rates than are being reported. As for Ukraine's conscription efforts, some question why men have not been allowed to seek refuge with their families, especially considering the number of women in the military and the overwhelming volunteer response. 





What's happening inside Russia? 





Putin has initiated an intense domestic crackdown. Alexey Navalny was sentenced yesterday to nine more years in prison. It's now a 15-year prison sentence for calling the war a war. Historian Sergey Radchenko argues that Putin has revived the cruelty of the Soviet Union. Across the country, people are being arrested for speaking or posting or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, in St. Petersburg survivors of the Nazi blockade are speaking out against the war. Marina Ovsyannikova, who waved antiwar signs during a live broadcast on Russian state television, says "the cognitive dissonance became unbearable." 





Are sanctions having an impact? 





In cities across Russia, people have begun lining up to buy sugar. Meanwhile, the West still has yet to reckon with its own complicity in enabling Russia and the fact that kleptocracy isn't just a Russian problem. In the EU, Hungary is standing in the way of further sanctions on Russian gas shipments. OCCRP has set up a Russian oligarch asset tracker. 





What do The Conversationalist contributors have to say? 





The Conversationalist is proud to have published standout scholars and journalists covering Ukraine and surrounding countries. 





Natalia Antonova has been covering Russia, Ukraine, and Putin for The Conversationalist since our founding. Her December 2021 analysis in Foreign Policy on the Russian delusions motivating the invasion anticipated current events better than most. For The Conversationalist she wrote a compelling piece on sanctioning Putin's inner circle, and warning of the destabilizing effects of a Russian invasion.





Hanna Liubakova is a Belarusian journalist and fellow at the Atlantic Council, who previously wrote for The Conversationalist about how Belarus's protests against Lukashenko were fueled by an unprecedented civil society movement. She has since left Belarus for safety reasons, and was recently interviewed by Al Jazeera about antiwar sentiment among Belarusians.





Kimberly St. Julian Varnon has risen to deserved prominence on Twitter and cable news since the invasion began for her analysis, her historical expertise on Ukraine, Russian imperialism, and race in the Soviet Union, and for her advocacy on behalf of Ukrainian refugees, especially BIPOC students suffering additional discrimination. She recently wrote on what the progressive caucus gets wrong about Ukraine. Previously for The Conversationalist, she wrote about Russia as a mirror for American racism.





Terrell Jermaine Starr has been reporting from inside Ukraine since before the war began. Starr was recently profiled in Politico about what racism taught him about covering the war and Russian aggression. He first wrote for The Conversationalist about how US foreign policy is undermined by the dominance of white men.





Final thoughts: 





Read Fiona Hill's interview on nuclear weapons and Putin's war with the West. Hill is always a must-read on Russia, and has advised successive US administrations on Putin. 





Don't miss Talia Lavin's interview with poet Ilya Kaminsky on memory, viral poetry, and Odessa.





David Remnick interviewed historian Stephen Kotkin for The New Yorker. The result is a mixed bag. Kotkin's sharp insights and depth of knowledge are undermined by essentialist characterizations of East and West. 





Here's a Twitter thread that shows Russia winning the information war in the southern hemisphere.





Watch Arnold Schwarzenegger's appeal to the Russian people. It was floated on Twitter that Fiona Hill had proposed Schwarzenegger as US Ambassador to Russia, and from this video, it's evident why.


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What you should know about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

by Anna Lind-Guzik

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The Phosphoros Theatre makes plays with, for, and by asylum seekers in the UK. Its amateur actors travel all over the country to perform, telling their own stories in the form of a fictionalized narrative. 





__





“On a chair on a ship in the middle of the ocean.” 





“The bed I shared with my grandfather at home.”





“A sofa-bed in Belgium that I could hardly fit on.”





The characters on the stage have all been forced by their circumstances to sleep in uncomfortable places. As the lights come up, the audience learns that the actors are all asylum seekers and refugees who have come to the UK. In All The Beds I Have Slept In, produced by Phosphoros Theatre, they describe their perilous journeys from their dangerous home countries to a place they hoped would offer them freedom and safety.





Phosphoros’s plays emerge from the minds of its actors. To create this production, the company got together over a weekend, played drama games, and brainstormed. They had stories to share but needed a theme to anchor them. They realized that what their stories had in common was beds, in that all of them had once slept on proper beds at home but then, during their long journeys, they had moved from one strange bed to another. Often, they had had nowhere to sleep but the cold ground. On stage, that theme became a prop that was central to the action—sometimes a bed on wheels that served as a place to sleep or a place to talk. Sometimes, the bed was even a boat.





By the end of the creative weekend playwright Dawn Harrison had a wealth of material. During the writing process she checked in with the actors by WhatsApp to verify what kinds of expressions they might use, to make sure the dialogue reflected their voices accurately.





“A charpai on top of my roof in Afghanistan when it was too hot to sleep inside,” is how one of the performers, a young man named Syed Haleem Najibi, described his bed.





Syed is studying to be an engineer, while simultaneously touring with the theater company—which makes productions with, for, and starring refugees and asylum seekers. In theory one’s bed is a “place of comfort,” but this has not been the case for many of these refugees. “I've slept on the street, and I've slept in forests and fields,” Syed said. Going into this project “I understood the value of a bed,” he said, adding that the stories were “very personal. All the actors, he said, wanted to tell their stories in their own voice and “not the way the media or the politicians are showing it.”





Syed has been with the company since its first production in 2016, but All the Beds I Have Slept In has been his most emotional acting experience . Refugee audience members often approach him after his performance and tell him that they heard their own story in his words. “I'm representing all these people who don't have the opportunity to be standing on a stage like this and tell the stories the way they want to,” Syed says.





All the actors in the production came to the UK as teenage asylum seekers. They are used to telling their stories, but usually to lawyers, social workers, and interpreters who then retell their stories for them. Syed wants people in the UK to get to know refugees and hear their stories directly.





The message he wants to convey is that  “nobody would be willing to leave their family, leave their homeland, leave their friends, just like that for no reason. You don't leave home unless home is not safe for you.”





Missing home





“A blanket in the rescue ship that pulled me from the sea.”





When he arrived in the UK as a teenager in 2012, Syed was full of hope. He believed he had arrived in a country that would respect and recognize his human rights. But like his character in All The Beds I Have Slept In, who glosses over the difficulties of his life in the UK as he describes it to his brother back home over the phone, Syed’s experience was not what he had hoped.





Once in the UK, he discovered that he was at the start of another journey, this time through the bureaucracy—the asylum system, the care system, the education system. It was a “hostile” experience, he said. He had to fight for his rights, and his battle continues.





Being part of a touring theater company has changed Syed’s experience of living in the UK. He’s met people in every part of the country and has come to know a huge range of organizations that support refugees. And he has made new friends. He says he now has a new family called “Phosphoros.”





Nevertheless, said Syed, Britain does not feel like home. “I am constantly reminded that I don't belong here, by the system and by society,” he says. Compounding that feeling, the House of Commons recently passed the controversial “Nationality and Borders bill,” which, if approved by the House of Lords and passed into law, would make it harder for people to claim asylum in the UK. This bill could even allow the government to strip people of their citizenship without notice.





“It's shocking to hear that even somebody with British citizenship can be removed and sent back to their country of birth,” Syed says.





On a 2019 visit to Afghanistan Syed realized that his country no longer felt like home. People there saw him as a foreigner rather an Afghan. “I realized that I'm just a tourist in Afghanistan and I don't belong there,” he said. “I don’t belong anywhere.”





Afghanistan from afar





“In a stranger’s flat in Nice.”





During his previous life in Afghanistan, Syed went to school. But there was no future for him there, with seemingly never-ending war all around him. The extreme instability was impossible to bear, and so he decided to leave





In August, tensions in Afghanistan increased again when the U.S. pulled its remaining troops out of the country, leaving a power vacuum that the Taliban filled within days. Syed found it “heartbreaking” to watch this unfold from abroad, knowing his family was still there. He says that people he knows are now going weeks without their salaries and, unable to buy food, have become desperate.





Towards the future





 “A carpet in church the night before a spiritual celebration.”





Syed no longer sees a future in Afghanistan and is now focused on building his life in the UK. He’s studying sustainable energy engineering, and hopes to contribute toward ending the climate crisis.





But he’s also hoping that those who follow his path will have a better future. “I'm hoping to see a system, not just in the UK, but all around the world, treating migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers with dignity and respect,” he says.





Syed wants to continue acting with Phosphoros even as he starts his engineering career. He’s proud to use his personal experience as a piece of art, and education, to help people see refugees as human beings. To treat them with the dignity and respect they are so often denied.





In the play, a stranger offers kindness to a boy called Mohamed, who is continuing his journey towards the UK. He offers him a place to stay for the night. He buys his train ticket. It is this kindness that allows Mohamed to travel without fear. But the stranger doesn’t wait to be thanked. Instead, he said that he was going to get a coffee and strolled away.





“When he said he was getting a coffee, he meant goodbye.”


    [post_title] => 'In our own words': refugee actors share their stories on stage
    [post_excerpt] => The Phosphoros Theatre makes plays with, for, and by asylum seekers in the UK. Its amateur actors travel all over the country to perform, telling their own stories in the form of a fictionalized narrative. 
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‘In our own words’: refugee actors share their stories on stage

by Katie Dancey-Downs

WP_Post Object
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    [post_date] => 2022-02-03 15:34:20
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For decades Johnson glided through life on his charisma and connections, enjoying a reputation as a genial buffoon. But now his lies and hypocrisy are finally catching up with him.





Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, has had a storied career. He was once a journalist who, though fired for making up quotes and even whole stories, continued to rise in the profession. He was a Member of Parliament, then Mayor of London for two terms, then went back to Parliament, where he eventually became foreign secretary, before finally getting to the prime minister’s office.





Now it seems that Johnson’s time in 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence, might well be cut short, following a still unfolding scandal about boozy illegal parties during the country’s national lockdowns.





In a video recording that was leaked in December, a spokeswoman is seen giggling at a mock press briefing as she practices lying about the parties. Since then, the media has reported a tsunami of leaks about at least 16 parties having taken place in other government departments while pandemic rules were so strict that the law even forbade more than two people walking together in the park. In a matter of days, fury spread across the country.










The details were vivid. Aides at 10 Downing Street smuggled in suitcases filled with bottles of wine. There was a drunken party on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, at which the Queen herself was photographed sitting masked and alone at her own husband’s funeral, as per pandemic protocol. Some of the partygoers got so inebriated one night that they broke the backyard swing set, which had been set up for Johnson’s son to play on.





Each time the media reported yet another party, people shared on social media what they had been doing on that pandemic lockdown day. At best, people sat alone in their apartments with nothing to do; at worst, they were unable to attend the funerals of loved ones because of the stringent restrictions.





The scandal has, so far, caused one member of Parliament to leave the Conservatives for the Labour party and several others to publicly call on Johnson to resign. Sue Gray, a senior and well-respected civil servant, was asked to write an official report on the illegal events.





Days before she was due to publish her report, the Metropolitan Police announced they would be conducting their own investigation into alleged breaches of lockdown rules. This means that Gray’s full report will have to wait, but a redacted version published last week hit out against "failures of leadership and judgement" in Downing Street.





Dominic Cummings, a political consultant whom Johnson hired as his senior advisor when he became prime minister in 2019, and later fired in 2020 for briefing the press against him, is widely believed to be the source of the leaks about the parties. Cummings, who was Johnson’s closest advisor during and before the election, is known for being vengeful.  This sequence of events also felt, in hindsight, a bit inevitable.





Boris Johnson has been caught lying in person and in print countless times and he has always got away with it. He has had three wives, heaven knows how many mistresses, and, allegedly, does not even know how many children he has fathered. He is untrustworthy, unserious, gaffe-prone and easily distracted; and yet, somehow, because of his charm and shamelessness, he kept falling upward.





His rise once seemed inevitable, given his class background (and the British are ever obsessed with class) and connections. The son of a politician, he spent his formative years at Eton College, Britain’s most elite private school, famously attended by both Prince William and Harry and 19 other British Prime Ministers. There, he became secretary of the debating society and editor of the school newspaper. This trajectory wasn’t surprising; as a profile from the Sunday Times once explained, “[their father] Stanley deliberately created a family atmosphere in which beating the others at running, jumping, eating the hottest mince pies, coming first at school or simply having the blondest hair entirely captured the lives of all four children.”





The Johnsons were bred to want it all. After Eton, Johnson “went up” to the University of Oxford, where he was elected president of the Oxford Union (the university’s prestigious debating club). A brief dip followed, when he was fired from an internship at the Times for making up some quotes.





Never down for long, Johnson bagged himself a job at the right-leaning Daily Telegraph instead, having met its editor while at Oxford, and took it from there. He soon became the paper’s Brussels correspondent and took to writing outlandish stories about the European Union to please its eurosceptic readers, in a bout of ham-fisted foreshadowing.





At the time, the EU was growing and important questions were being asked about what its future should be, what its members wanted and what its place should be in the world. Instead, Johnson wrote pieces on Italians wanting smaller condoms (false); about an EU spokesperson living in a castle (false); and other made up stories of that caliber.





By the end of the 1990s, Johnson started to show political ambitions. According to Jim Pickard, Chief Political Correspondent for The Financial Times, Johnson said he wanted to become a politician  because “no one puts up statues to journalists."





It was a bold move but not a surprising one; after all, many well-connected, posh British men before him managed the move from journalism to politics, no matter how ill-suited to either job they were.





Johnson, who seems to revel in his image as a genial buffoon, once called Black people "piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles" and gay men “tank-topped bumboys.” He has said that women who wear the hijab look like “letterboxes.” And yet, his foppish charm, bumbling charisma and semi-celebrity status meant he was elected mayor of London in 2008.





During the 2012 Olympics he got stuck on a zipwire while wearing a hardhat and clutching a plastic UK flag in each hand, in an incident that many believe was a stunt because, while he looked quite silly, he did not seem the least bit flustered.





While mayor, Johnson had an affair with a woman who worked in tech and was accused of giving her access to contacts and public funds. The story only came out relatively recently, as Jennifer Arcuri, the woman in question, decided to tell her story to the media. So far, there have been no serious consequences for Johnson.





In 2016 Johnson was back in Parliament when then-Prime Minister David Cameron called a referendum on whether the country should remain in the EU. Johnson huffed and puffed and then he came out in favor of Brexit. He later admitted that he’d written two columns for that day’s Telegraph, one supporting each side, as he could not make up his mind.





He then became the most visible face for the Vote Leave campaign. Johnson rode around on a big red bus claiming that post-Brexit Britain would spend an extra 350 million pounds a year on the national health service—which never happened—and compared the EU to Adolf Hitler. Three years later, he campaigned for prime minister on a platform of “get Brexit done.”





His decision to bring in Dominic Cummings, who is such a divisive figure that David Cameron called him a “career psychopath,” as his most senior adviser could yet prove to be his undoing.





The incompatibility of their personalities led to many fights, while Cummings’s abrasive style alienated everyone around him. The real problem, however, stemmed from his repeated clashes with Carrie, Johnson’s third wife.





A former Conservative adviser herself, she wielded—and still wields—considerable power in Number 10, a fact that Cummings resented. Forced to pick between the maverick and the spouse, Johnson eventually sided with the latter, and fired Cummings in late 2020.





It was always clear that Cummings would eventually take his revenge; the only question was when and how.





Since the “partygate” revelations became the top story in the British media, Cummings has repeatedly attacked Johnson for lying about the events to Parliament. In the prime minister’s defence, lying and charming people is something he has always been good at—and, until now, has nearly always been able to get away with.





The British people seem finally to be fed up with his charismatic clown persona. Millions of law-abiding citizens were unable to see their friends and families for months on end; people died alone and people gave birth alone; and meanwhile, in the corridors of power, people danced and drank until dawn. Johnson's profuse apologies are seen as transparently mendacious and insincere.










Whether Johnson will survive this scandal is still an open question, with not even the most seasoned political analysts taking bets. If the police do find evidence of criminal behavior, and if more revelations come out in the next few weeks, he might be ousted by his own party.





As of February 3, two top aides have quit, citing Johnson having been caught lying as their reason. Meanwhile, 11 Conservative Members of Parliament have called for a vote of no confidence against Johnson. If a total of 15 percent follow suit, MPs will then have to vote on whether they have confidence in their leader. If the prime minister wins the no-confidence vote, the MPs cannot challenge him again for a year; if he loses it, a leadership contest starts immediately. As of this writing, it is impossible to predict what will happen next.





Still, there are some years to go until the next election, and illegal parties during the pandemic aren’t the only problem Britain is facing. Rising inflation and skyrocketing energy bills means the country is heading for a dire cost of living crisis, and no-one seems to know how to deal with it. The Labour Party is climbing back up in the polls, slowly but surely, but these are not their problems quite yet; instead, what the U.K. needs right now is a sharp and well-functioning government.


    [post_title] => Why 'Partygate' could be the end of Boris Johnson's political career
    [post_excerpt] => A tsunami of revelations about drunken late-night parties at the prime minister's official residence during Covid lockdown have enraged the public, alienated members of his own party, led two top aides to quit, and might ultimately spell the end of Boris Johnson's term in office.
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Why ‘Partygate’ could be the end of Boris Johnson’s political career

by Marie Le Conte

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    [post_content] => Zemmour's racism and anti-immigrant positions are not new, but his misogyny reveals where the ideological fault line lies between the new and the old far right.

Éric Zemmour, a prominent French journalist and television personality who espouses extreme-right views, announced in November that he would be a candidate for president of the Republic. He doesn’t yet have enough signatures to run in the April election, but his potential candidacy has captured enormous media attention, revealing significant support from the far right and even from some subcultures of the moderately conservative right.

Zemmour has almost no chance of being elected president, though he might poach some votes from Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National (RN, or National Rally; formerly the FN, or National Front). Nevertheless, a trickle of ministers and smaller political parties continue to join his newly established Reconquête (Reconquer) party, even as he is involved in a series of high profile scandals involving several accusations of sexual assault, an extramarital relationship with a much younger woman, and three court cases on accusations of inciting racist hatred.

While he has won supporters for his extreme positions on Muslims and immigration, Zemmour polls low with women. Marine Le Pen has reorganized her campaign accordingly, and Zemmour —with seven accusations of sexual assault currently pending and more than a few misogynist tracts under his belt—was obliged, for reasons of realpolitik, to declare himself a “feminist, like the next man.”

A darling of the culture wars

Zemmour, 63, rose to prominence in the 1990s as a columnist and commentator. Back then he espoused a “union of the right”—i.e., a coalition of the moderate right Républicains and the far-right Front National (FN). He became a darling of the culture wars with his essay Le Premier Sexe (2006), a gender panic polemic on the purported “feminization” of men in France. The book—yes, its title is a riposte of Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist book The Second Sex—sold over 100,000 copies.  He followed this with a novel, Petit Frère (2008), in which he attacked “anti-racist angelism," and then a trilogy that sold even better than Le Premier Sexe—Mélancolie française (2010), in which he recounts the history of France; Le Suicide français (2014), where he argues that the French nation has become degenerate since the student-led uprisings of 1968; and Destin français (2018), a sort of autobiography in which he describes various historical events that have influenced his worldview. He ends the final essay with a polemic against the growing influence of Islam on French society.

Zemmour’s most recent book, La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot (France Hasn’t Had Its Last Word), published in 2021, sold 165,000 copies within three weeks. Cherished by his followers as “an intellectual” and tolerated by others as a kind of maverick TV personality—a buffoon, perhaps, like the former journalist Boris Johnson, or like Donald Trump—Zemmour is, thanks to his many books, a frequent guest on television news and culture programs. He uses these prime-time opportunities to air his views on the decline of French society, the clash of civilizations, immigration and assimilation, national preference, and national identity. He is one of the figures responsible for bringing the “great replacement theory,” the fear that France’s “native” (white) population will be replaced by (brown) non-European people, into the mainstream discourse.

Whilst lamenting the passage of France’s heroic age—Napoleon, etc.—Zemmour manages to align himself with both President Charles de Gaulle, who led the French resistance during the Nazi occupation of France, and the Nazi collaborator Marshall Philippe Pétain, Vichy France’s chief of state. This pairing is an ingenious move, presenting two historical figures who represented opposing political views as representatives of France’s lost past, when strong men took charge. Jean Marie Le Pen, the former leader of the far-right FN, made the mistake of expressing his support for Pétain while denouncing de Gaulle—at a time when de Gaulle was still an extremely popular figure in France. Zemmour expresses support for both men, which is novel.

A racist's racist

Zemmour is the son of Jewish immigrants from Algeria and is himself a practicing Jew who attends an Orthodox synagogue. That has not stopped him from aligning himself with the antisemitic far right, or from saying that Pétain was right to deport non-French Jews to concentration camps—because in doing so he saved some French-French Jews (of the 75,000 Jews deported from France, 72,500 were murdered) .

Zemmour has transitioned smoothly from being an “outspoken” voice in the discourse around political correctness as it morphed into what we now call a “debate” on “cancel culture.” Today he is a comfortable anti-feminist, traditionalist, misogynist, homophobe, anti-abortionist, and a “critic” of the legacy of the social movements of the 1960s. He also deplores gender studies and writes in Le Premier Sexe that rape trials qualify as the “judiciary surveillance of desire.”

In the months before he announced his candidacy, Zemmour reveled in several personal and legal scandals that further raised his public profile. In September Paris Match’s cover showed him frolicking in the sea with Sarah Knafo, his 28 year-old assistant and campaign manager, whom he has known since she was 13 years old (she is the daughter of family friends). Zemmour recently confirmed that Knafo is his “companion” and is pregnant with his baby, to the delight of the press, which speculates endlessly about Mylène Chichportich, his wife of 40 years: Is she suffering or indifferent as she stands silently at his side?

While Knafo is something of a protégée to Zemmour, she is in her own right a perfectly terrifying and precocious extreme right militant. As a university student she was active in the FN and in a student association called Critique of European Reason, through which she got down with the sovereigntists and Euroskeptics, and met prominent right wing thinkers like Alain Finkielkraut. At 25 she did an internship at the French embassy in Tunis. She then authored a “handbook,” based on what she’d learned in North Africa about migration routes, on how to facilitate the deportation of undocumented migrants from France.

His frequent trips in and out of court keep the press talking about Zemmour, too. His January 17 conviction for inciting racial hatred was his third. A judge fined him 10,000 euros ($11,400) for having said, on live television, that unaccompanied migrant minors “have nothing to do [in France], they’re rapists, assassins, that’s all they are, you have to send them back to where they came from.” Meanwhile, at one of his November rallies, Zemmour’s militia-style bodyguards beat up an anti-racist activist in a brawl reminiscent of Trump rally scenes.

A radical ideologue

French commentators have pointed out that the country’s media is falling into the trap of giving free publicity to Zemmour, just as the U.S. media made the mistake of broadcasting Trump’s rallies live without commentary and of reporting incessantly on his tweets, giving him massive free publicity on mainstream evening and cable news programs. Like Trump, Zemmour overwhelms the media with provocative soundbites, which are often in the form of attacks on journalists. As a result, media outlets are drowning in a sea of far-right madness—reporting and broadcasting Zemmour’s racist, sexist, and fascist comments repeatedly, without analysis or critique.

The fact that Zemmour’s ideas are splayed bittily across television and internet platforms, and that only certain people read his books from beginning to end, works to obscure their character as a complete ideology. His misogyny, abhorrence for the student-led uprisings of 1968, dislike of modernity, and hatred of Muslims are connected and inform each other. A quick online search brings up a list of citations to go with each of Zemmour’s ideas, presented like an inventory of the contents of a bag belonging to the fasciste du jour.

Zemmour deliberately muddies the extremism of his complete ideology by presenting his ideas in a willfully confusing, often “third positionist” manner— i.e., expressing right wing ideas in the language of left-wing ones. For example, in his books he offers a critique of the monogamous couple and, ostensibly, praise for polyamory. But this is not advocacy for free love. Rather, it is an expression of approval for a premodern society in which married men had multiple mistresses and in which women had no means of leaving an unhappy marriage. In French third positionism is roughly translated as confusionniste — which is a better term, perhaps, because the deliberate effort to create confusion is a salient and defining characteristic of contemporary fascism. Writing about Zemmour is challenging because it’s almost impossible to avoid the trap of either reproducing his ideas without comment, or presenting them with expressions of shock and outrage. In either case, the writer is amplifying Zemmour’s ideology, thus giving him yet more free publicity.

Zemmour and his fellow far right television personalities have succeeded in shifting the Overton window of the French discourse. Fueled by the country’s growing and fertile climate of Islamophobia, which is partly a reaction to a series of high profile, violent terrorist attacks over the last six years, the center and center-right are now taking positions that were once considered far right. In a recent illustration of this shift, Macron’s government drafted and passed the Loi de Séparatisme, a law to “strengthen republican values.” The law targets and seeks to repress the Muslim community and its cultural expression, which conflicts with France’s aggressive secularism. As such, it is a populist attempt to exploit, or give lip service to, the idea that a cultural “great replacement” has happened, or is happening, in France.

It is perhaps surprising that the extreme right—identitarian and antisemitic as it is—might choose Éric Zemmour over Marine Le Pen. Zemmour, though born in France, is the offspring of an Algerian-Berber Jewish immigrant family, while Le Pen is white and descended from France’s best-known fascist dynasty. Zemmour’s background has been a subject of conversation on fan forums for Papacito (a far-right influencer with a popular YouTube channel who supports Zemmour) and on gaming websites, where eager 20-year-old neo-Nazis agree that while his Jewishness is a bit of a problem, he’s kind of an Ubermensch.

The fault line in the far right

Physically, Zemmour cuts a slight figure, with, as Harrison Stetler put it, “massive ears folding out around [a] receding jaw.” He bears no physical resemblance to the towering Aryan figures of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, or to the topless horse rider Vladimir Putin. His possible success amongst extreme right voters — a smattering of ultra-conservative Christians, neo-Nazi groups, far right influencers, lapsed FN or Républicains voters—seems to be derived from his capacity to embody discursively a kind of straight talking, Trumpian masculinity (and whiteness), not seen in French politics since Jean-Marie Le Pen led the FN. He espoused a more overt brand of racism than that of his daughter Marine, the heir to the party’s leadership.

Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, has in recent years made a dive for the center, trying to clean up her party and kicking out embarrassing family members such as her niece (who now wants to run with Zemmour) and her father, who infamously described the Holocaust as “a detail of history” and, as a French military officer, tortured people during the Algerian war. The effect of Marine’s efforts to take the party mainstream was to alienate her most right-wing voters, who have become disillusioned with her perceived political correctness. While Le Pen herself has said she is “against gay marriage,” she has also pink-washed her party in an effort to appeal to LGBT groups and even has several gay deputies. Recently Le Pen revealed that for the last five years she has been living in secret with a woman, her “childhood friend” Ingrid. “There are no men in my house, even the cats are female,” Marine said in a widely watched TV interview broadcast in early November.

The critical fault line between Zemmour and Le Pen is, clearly, misogyny. Zemmour positions himself against a “cosmopolitan” political correctness that purportedly welcomes homosexuality and feminizes extreme right politics. Those who oppose Marine Le Pen’s leadership of the FN perceive her as having emasculated her daddy’s once-great party.

One might wonder what is more prominent in Zemmour’s ideology—a hatred of women, or a hatred of Muslims and immigrants?

But this would be the wrong question. Zemmour’s essay Le Premier Sexe shows his misogyny and his racism to be, if not interchangeable, on a continuum with one another. It shows the strong link between “theories” of feminization and the great replacement, which usually advances the racist theory that Muslims, Jews, and other non-white people will soon replace white people. It starts out as a great replacement theory about gender, advancing the idea that French men have become feminized through a culture that elevates “feminine values.” Men, he writes, are allowing themselves to be replaced by women and become total pussies, whereas a real man is a “sexual predator, a conqueror.”

It is of course a polemic: his histrionic dismay at the purported fragility of contemporary French men is motivated by his belief in a naturalized masculine power (and violence), ready and waiting to be resuscitated. His essay is a spurious patchwork of loosely connected observations on advertising, football, cinema, sport, dubious “facts” and statistics, and hardcore conspiracy theories. He advances the theory that the purported feminization of men is due to the influence of “single mothers, sixty-eighters and feminists,” plus a homosexual conspiracy that wants to denaturalize sex and create a society segregated along the lines of gender. According to Zemmour, the plot is to eradicate male body hair because it would remind men of their natural “bestiality, virility,” and to set up conspiratorial alliances in cities between immigrants, single women, and gays. The speed with which he moves from roots to rootless cosmopolitans is, frankly, startling.

By the end of Le Premier Sexe all this scattered madness joins up with his other great preoccupation—Muslims and immigrants. The great replacement of gender becomes just the great replacement, tout court. Hurtling through an account of the liberalization of divorce and abortion, he claims that French men have “laid their phalluses down,” thus declaring France “an open land, waiting to be impregnated by a virility from outside.” This has happened, he writes, because Christianity is a pussy religion. Outside of the Western world, he writes, men defend their dominant position “like a treasure” and refuse to align the “status” of their women with that of the Europeans.

The argument is not simply that white French men are becoming more like women, but that they will be replaced by a masculine revolution of foreign (Muslim) men who are concentrated in France’s suburbs. Despite the book’s highly misogynistic character, which shows Zemmour’s hatred for women and especially feminists, part of his argument is that Black and Arab men, with their machismo and their desire to dominate, present a danger to…Western white women and feminists.

Zemmour can claim as much as he likes that he is now a feminist. His entourage of female influencers, FemmesAvecZemmour (WomenWithZemmour), are flocking to make the same racist argument about women’s safety in an effort to make a feminist of old Zemmour. But Zemmour is quite different from other leaders. He manages to present himself as a real man, a man’s man, a man who speaks his mind, while remaining, a wily, self-satisfied intellectual who espouses a hardcore and explicit ideology. Whether he becomes a candidate in the presidential election or not, it’s quite clear that his prominence is symptomatic of a rightward shift in France, and in any case such extreme right mobilizing has already made its impact on the policies of the center.
    [post_title] => Softbois in France: a feminist perspective on the rise of Éric Zemmour
    [post_excerpt] => Zemmour's racism and anti-immigrant positions are not new, but his misogyny reveals where the ideological fault line lies between the new and the old far right.
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Softbois in France: a feminist perspective on the rise of Éric Zemmour

by Rona Lorimer

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    [post_content] => Officially, Dodik's secessionism is in reaction to a new law that bans genocide denial. But his true motives are more cynical and venal.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) appears to be coming apart at the seams. The Balkan state is currently embroiled in its worst political crisis since the 1992-1995 war, the bloodiest on European soil since the Second World War. The current tumult was triggered by Milorad Dodik, a Bosnian Serb nationalist politician and notorious demagogue, who has been leading calls for Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb-majority region established after the war, to “pull out” of the country’s central institutions—its armed forces, intelligence agency, and tax authority. Most recently, he and his party, the SNSD, have expanded their secessionist rhetoric to include the state police, the border police, and even the country’s constitutional court.

Dodik and his party are paving the way for the RS entity to secede from BiH in all but name. His calls to quit the state’s central institutions are a violation of BiH’s constitution and of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which played a key role in ending the Bosnian War. According to that agreement, BiH is governed by a complex ethnic-based power system, which includes a tripartite presidency, wherein one Bosniak, one Serb, and one Croat simultaneously serve on the body and arrive at decisions via consensus. Or, at least, that is the theory. In practice, the system is marred by dysfunction and near constant obstruction, especially by Dodik and the SNSD.

What does he have to gain by pushing his war-scarred country dangerously close to the brink of another armed conflict? The answers are both cynical and predicated on a mix of political survival and ideology.

Officially, Dodik’s secessionist talk is based on his party’s rejection of a new law that criminalizes genocide denial. On July 23, 2020 the then High Representative, the Sarajevo-based international envoy who oversees the implementation of the 1995 peace agreement, Valentin Inzko, imposed a law banning the denial of all internationally recognized war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocides (like the Holocaust). This means that anyone who denies that Serb nationalist forces committed genocide against Bosniaks during the 1992-95 war is now committing a crime.

For Serb nationalist leaders in BiH, this is an outrage. Genocide denial is a staple of their politics; Dodik’s regime has even funded bogus “commissions” to cast doubt on the well-established and forensically proven fact that Serb nationalist forces carried out widespread atrocities against Bosniak civilians while under the command of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both of whom were  convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Their convictions are largely concerned with the 1995 genocide in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where Serb nationalist forces forcibly separated over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from refugees nominally under the protection of the UN, transferred them to nearby fields and industrial buildings, and gunned them down. The New York Times report on the killings, quotes human rights officers and diplomatic officials who described it as “the worst crime since World War II.” Most experts and scholars, however, consider the totality of the Serb nationalist war effort in BiH to have been genocidal in nature, and not isolated merely to the events in Srebrenica.

Read Jasmin Mujanovic's review of "Quo Vadis, Aida," a "shattering, essential" film about the Srebrenica killings. 

The Bosnian parliament failed to pass its own legislation banning genocide denial because of obstruction by Dodik’s SNSD bloc and their coalition partners in the Croat nationalist HDZ. While the HDZ is not a secessionist party, they do want to further the ethnic fragmentation of BiH through the creation of a so-called “third entity,” a kind of Croat-dominated RS. Such an entity existed briefly during the war; its entire senior leadership was also convicted of crimes against humanity. Because Dodik sees the HDZ’s goals as a means of further undermining the central BiH state, he is happy to champion the HDZ’s interests.

In any case, Christian Schmidt, the new High Representative, has said the law imposed by his predecessor would remain in effect until parliament passed its own. Rather than engage in democratic niceties like parliamentary debate, Dodik has now shifted tactics to creating illegal parallel institutions. He has even threatened to recreate the “Army of the Republika Srpska” (VRS), the militia that committed the Srebrenica genocide.

Dodik has governed BiH’s RS as a virtual autocrat since 2006. Prior to the genocide, the areas of northern and eastern BiH that now constitute the entity were wholly multiethnic; today they are almost wholly Serb-dominated. Dodik is currently a member of BiH’s tripartite state presidency and has no official function within the RS, but the Serb enclave is his personal fiefdom in all but name. Once an American-backed reformist who helped eject Karadzic’s SDS party from power, Dodik has spent much of the last 16 years reinventing himself as a hardline nationalist. That has also meant violently cracking down on civil society, creating a regime-controlled media apparatus, and centering all real power in the entity of his own person.

Because of the Dodik regime’s near-authoritarian domination of the Serb entity, the SNSD is unlikely to lose power in the next BiH general elections, scheduled for October 2022. Moreover, because of the expansive power-sharing provisions of the Dayton constitution, Dodik and his Croat nationalist allies in the HDZ also (in)directly control large aspects of the state apparatus, a fact that has shielded leading figures in both parties from prosecution for a legion of criminal affairs and a smorgasbord of anti-constitutional activities. In October 2021, for instance, BiH’s BN TV reported that the SNSD government had allowed industrial grade oxygen tanks, unfit for human consumption, to be used in hospitals in the region. In December 2020, Dodik’s appointee on BiH’s central judicial oversight body was forced to resign in disgrace after he was caught on tape directing payoffs to underlings, and openly discussing how to sway justices.

It is this trinity—sectarian ultranationalism, autocracy, and kleptocracy—that is the nucleus of Dodik the person, and the regime he has constructed in RS. He wants to dismantle the Bosnian state because he needs all three to survive politically and because of venal, financial self-interest.

Dodik and his party have made the glorification of genocide denial one of their central ideological and electoral pillars. Without it, their political survival is in grave danger. The law banning genocide denial also creates politically and emotionally legitimate grounds for the High Representative to remove Dodik, which in turn would decimate his expansive criminal patronage networks. As noted in a January 5 U.S. Treasury Department brief, outlining the reasons for a new round of U.S. sanctions against him:

“Dodik…has established a patronage network in BiH from which he and his associates benefit. As one example of his corrupt actions, Dodik has provided government contracts and monopolies in the RS directly to close business associates. With his corrupt proceeds, Dodik has engaged in bribery and additional corrupt activities to further his personal interests at the expense of citizens in the RS.”

To be clear, the High Representative had grounds to remove Dodik already, but the SSND is hardly the only political party in BiH guilty of corruption, self-dealing, and abuse of office. Systematic genocide denial, however, packs a more robust, normative punch.

This also explains why Dodik has resisted implementing the “5+2 Agenda,” the formula set out in 2008 for the phasing out of the Office of the High Representative (OHR). The two most important pieces of that checklist are: the dispute over state properties on RS territory, the most sensitive of which are military installations that belong to the Bosnian Armed Forces; and “the entrenchment of the rule of law.” Both items strike at the heart of Dodik’s authoritarian autonomy in BiH. If Dodik agreed to respect the presence of Bosnian military bases on RS territory and to abide by the rule of law, including an appropriate genocide-denial law, he could secure the OHR’s departure. But he would also be undermining his own authority by accepting the state’s primacy over his fiefdom. That is why he is trying to get rid of the OHR without implementing the 5+2 Agenda.

Dodik ’s extremist gambit, however, reveals the true nature of his broader political project. He is not concerned about the anti-genocide law per se. He is worried because the OHR has shown that it is willing and still able to activate the Bonn Powers—i.e., its authority to use extra-constitutional powers to protect the integrity of the Dayton Accords—and this threatens Dodik’s own political survival.


What gives Dodik’s current efforts additional weight is not only that his party has begun using the RS assembly to formalize his purported “withdrawal” from state institutions, or his dismissing the legitimacy of Schmidt’s tenure at the OHR. That, in and of itself, does not make such acts legal. A sub-national assembly cannot unilaterally override the acts of a state parliament or the contents of international agreements—which is what the SNSD is doing—in any country on Earth, not even in BiH. But these actions indicate a degree of actual political courage Dodik’s regime has not hitherto displayed.

Dodik feels he can afford to be bold because he enjoys the support not only of Moscow and Belgrade, but also of Hungary, which is a member of the EU and NATO;  he recently claimed to have the support of several additional EU member states. While the Russians had Schmidt barred from the UN Security Council—the first time a BiH High Representative was prevented from addressing the body—Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has said explicitly that he would prevent the EU from imposing sanctions against Dodik’s regime, even as his country pledged financial aid to the RS. Orbán, whose Fidesz party is notoriously racist, antisemitic, and anti-democratic, has also peddled thinly veiled Islamophobic conspiracy theories to buttress Dodik’s brinksmanship.

Where BiH goes in the months ahead remains to be seen. Dodik and his partners in the HDZ might try to scuttle the country’s next elections, in order to further the narrative that BiH is a “failed state” that should be partitioned among neighboring powers, in line with the contents of a recent non-paper written by the cabinet of Slovenia’s Prime Minister, Janez Jansa, another Dodik ally. The U.S. has imposed new rounds of sanctions on Dodik; on Alternativa Television, a regime-controlled TV station that broadcasts pro-Dodik propaganda; and on Dodik’s former appointee to BiH’s judicial oversight body. The U.S. is expected to add more names to the list in coming weeks. The UK and Germany have also threatened their own measures, though they have not yet initiated them. In the interim, Zeljko Komsic, the Chairman of BiH’s presidency, has warned that unless the international community works with local authorities to stop Dodik, “force will have to be the response.”

Komsic is not wrong. Whether because of his extremist politics or his criminal interests, Dodik is clearly replicating the 1992 march to war under presided over by Radovan Karadzic, the convicted genocidaire. For all his bravado, though, Dodik knows he does not have the necessary hard power to go up against the BiH security apparatus, as fragmented as it is. The fear, however, is that he is still gambling on the idea that if he concocts a serious enough crisis, Serbia and Russia will come to his aid—little green men and all. Such a scenario would create a vortex of instability and conflict in the strategic center of the Western Balkans that, as in the 1990s, would suck in neighboring states. With Russia threatening further aggression against Ukraine, the West can ill afford another security crisis in the volatile southeast of Europe.
    [post_title] => A genocide-denying autocrat is threatening to throw a lit match into Bosnia's tinderbox
    [post_excerpt] => Once a US-backed anti-nationalist reformist, Milorad Dodik has spent much of the last 16 years reinventing himself as a hardline nationalist politician.
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A genocide-denying autocrat is threatening to throw a lit match into Bosnia’s tinderbox

by Jasmin Mujanović 

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    [post_content] => The current situation for journalists in Belarus is horrific enough, but will probably worsen. 

On May 23, Belarusian authorities caused a global outcry when they diverted a Lithuania-bound commercial flight to the Belarus capital of Minsk so they could arrest two passengers on the plane: self-exiled journalist Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega. This shocking tactic was seen as emblematic of just how far President Aleksandr Lukashenko is willing to go to capture and punish his critics.

The dramatic arrest should not have surprised anyone familiar with the vindictive nature of the Lukashenko regime. The Belarusian leader, who has run the country since 1994, launched an especially brutal crackdown against the media around the August 9, 2020, presidential election, which was widely seen as rigged.

Dozens of reporters were detained for reporting on mass anti-government protests after Lukashenko claimed victory in the contested vote; Belarus now has at least 19 reporters behind bars —up from 10 in 2020 —according to CPJ’s 2021 prison census. 

CPJ has documented the beatings of journalists in detention as well as the authorities’ attempts to close media outlets, block the internet, raid newsrooms, harass journalists, and keep bringing new charges against those in jail. Many journalists have been detained multiple times.

By late 2020, CPJ noted another change in the Belarusian authorities’ tactics: they started bringing criminal charges against journalists rather than just holding them in 15-day administrative detentions. In February, two journalists of the Poland-based online broadcaster Belsat TV were sentenced to two years in jail. The two were detained in November 2020 while livestreaming from a protest in Minsk. Katsiaryna Barysevich, a correspondent for Tut.by, one of Belarus’ largest media outlets, was also detained in November 2020 and sentenced in March this year to six months in jail on absurd charges of reporting on the death of protester Raman Bandarenka.

When Barysevich, whom CPJ honored with its International Press Freedom Award this year, was released from prison on May 19, she found out that her media outlet was shuttered, more than a dozen of her colleagues, including chief editor Maryna Zolatava, journalists Elena Tolkacheva and Volha Loika were in custody on tax evasion charges. Barysevich was unable to enter the Tut.by office. “I can’t get a document that proves my past employment with Tut.by because the office is sealed off, and there’s nobody in there. I cannot prove that I am unemployed now,” she told CPJ in June. (Several other Tut.by staff remain in detention and face serious charges. They are not listed in CPJ’s prison census because they did not work as journalists.)

Days after the authorities raided the Tut.by and Belsat offices in May, the arrest of Pratasevich reinforced the full extent of the brutal nature of the Lukashenko regime.

Pratasevich, who was made to appear on state TV and at press conferences after a publicized “confession,” is now under house arrest in Minsk, banned from seeing anybody and going outside. Agents from the KGB, Belarus’ national security agency, reportedly live with him in his room. Pratasevich’s parents, Dmitry and Nataliya, say they do not know what charges their son is facing and told CPJ they are concerned about him.


By late 2021, Belarusian authorities had closed down most prominent independent media outlets and popular social media channels, branding them “extremist.” The authorities also targeted organization that help journalists. The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an advocacy and trade group that is a partner of CPJ, was ordered to close after 26 years of operations. Its leaders continue monitoring press freedom violations from inside Belarus.

The Press Club Belarus, which assisted journalists with training, education and capacity building, was shuttered; its head Yulia Slutkskaya and other employees ended up behind bars. They were released only after asking for presidential pardon and paying large fines to cover the taxes they were accused of evading.

In addition, Belarusian authorities took extra measures to ensure that the information about detainees does not get to local and international media. They forced many lawyers to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from speaking on cases, and stripped some lawyers of their licenses.

Belarus prison conditions are harsh. Journalists usually share cells with a dozen of other inmates, some with diseases, including COVID-19, or lice. Many have health issues but are not getting the medical treatment they need. Ksenia Lutskina, detained in December 2020 and facing seven years in jail in retaliation for her work as a journalist, has a brain tumor that is growing and causing bad headaches, her father, Aleh Lutksin, told CPJ. She’s been given painkillers but is not allowed to receive tests or medication she needs. (Belarus authorities have not responded to CPJ’s requests for information about any detainees.)

The current number of journalists behind bars is the highest for Belarus in the three decades since CPJ launched its prison census. Many are facing lengthy prison sentences on retaliatory and anti-state charges, such as treason.

The situation for journalists in Belarusian jails is likely to worsen. Every day, there are fewer media outlets and press freedom advocates to report on the journalists’ conditions, upcoming trials, and sentences. Those who continue to do so, like reporters at BAJ, are at risk of imprisonment. Lukashenko’s track record shows he can be expected to use every available tool to continue gagging dissident voices.

*This article was originally published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). 
    [post_title] => In Belarus, Lukashenko’s vindictiveness reaches new heights
    [post_excerpt] => The current number of journalists behind bars is the highest for Belarus in three decades. 
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In Belarus, Lukashenko’s vindictiveness reaches new heights

by Gulnoza Said

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    [post_content] => The dominant religion of Russian officials is money. There are many ways to exploit that, starting with a long list of individually targeted sanctions.

Russia appears to be preparing for a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Satellite images show the  Kremlin has been moving military materiel to the border since October, while intelligence analysis posits that as many as 175,000 troops are headed for border-region Russian army bases. These developments have alarmed both Europe and the United States, with President Biden warning President Putin on Tuesday of “strong economic and other measures” during a two-hour video summit between the two leaders. 

The ongoing conflict began more than seven years ago, after the November 2013 Euromaidan Uprising that led to the popular ousting of Viktor Yanukovich, a fantastically corrupt president who had largely been Putin’s ally. The Russian president responded in March 2014 by invading and annexing Crimea, and destabilizing parts of the Ukrainian east. Now, a simmering conflict is poised to get much worse. How should  Western powers respond, particularly given that Ukraine is not a member of the EU or NATO?

First, we must dispense with the idea that we can and should do nothing. As someone originally from Ukraine I am a biased observer; but even when I set aside my desire to prevent Putin from killing my relatives, I can see dire consequences for ostensibly disinterested parties. Western states would prefer to pretend that the headache called Vladimir Putin didn’t exist, given all the other headaches they have to deal with — like the global pandemic and rising inflation — but deal with him they must.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would cause instability throughout Europe and beyond, including a gas pipeline disruption and the loss of a buffer zone between NATO and an ever-belligerent Russia. Adventurism by leaders of other countries—such as Iran, for example—who would see the distraction and the dismay as an opportunity, would likely increase in scope. The current refugee crisis would grow exponentially, with disastrous repercussions. Markets would suffer, as would businesses and aviation.  

Russia’s other neighbors — including Central Asian regimes — could become increasingly unstable. Putin is using extreme measures in an attempt to bully Western powers into keeping Ukraine out of NATO; his fear is the prospect of seeing the Western alliance’s military forces right on his border, but this fear holds risks for the entire region. As long as there are no consequences to his actions, Putin will not stop. 

The Russian view of Ukraine, which was part of the czarist empire and the Soviet Union, is distorted by imperialist propaganda that describes it as both a nation of buffoons and a threat that Russia must pacify. Russia also sees Ukraine as the stage for another grievance—that of Western triumphalism following the end of the Cold War, which the United States described as a “victory.” To put the matter in crude but simple terms, America insulted Russia and Putin, the former KGB officer, wants revenge.

Putin seems to believe that demoralizing the United States, which has provided aid to Ukraine  since it became independent in 1992, would be a major win for Russia. Ukraine is poised to fight, even if their military is destined to lose an all-out war against Russia's, but images of carnage and violence don’t deter Putin easily. We must understand that the Russian president would be initially unmoved by the sight of Russian soldiers coming home in body bags. 

“Who the hell do Ukrainians think they are?” was something I often heard in elite Moscow circles— among businessmen, television personalities, politicians—after the ousting of Yanukovych and the launch of the 2014 war. Russia’s ruling elite disliked the idea of Ukrainians possibly enjoying a functioning democracy and a better standard of living than they had. Moscow sees a stable, prosperous Ukraine as hostile simply because its existence might cause ordinary Russians to ask questions about why they were comparatively worse off. 

Because Russia is an extremely unequal society, its elite sees ordinary citizens as less than human and thus not entitled to ask uncomfortable questions, which might lead to popular discontent. In order to maintain their position, the leadership is most likely to choose divide-and-conquer: Incite a bunch of ordinary Russians against Ukrainians, dial up anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western propaganda, and keep everyone distracted with a war. 

What’s to be done to prevent this looming nightmare that will involve both bloodshed and wider instability? 

First, the Western nations must stop behaving as though they are powerless. Putin sees Western consternation as a sign of weakness.

It’s important, furthermore, to understand that Putin is not an ideologue. He uses ideology as an effective shield, but in practice he’s just another kleptocrat—albeit one with nuclear weapons. Russia’s new elite is composed of his close friends and important functionaries, all of whom benefit financially from their relationship with the president; normal people loathe Putin’s friends because they are so overtly corrupt. That very justifiable hatred is one of Russia’s greatest vulnerabilities, and one of the saddest elements of modern Russian life, which is dominated by stress and suspicion. Putin is the single leadership figure that Russians look to today, but he cannot fix all their problems. Meanwhile, brewing discontent is ripe for exploitation.

Western powers must also draw clear red lines by naming consequences and then acting upon them if Putin refuses to back down. Cutting Russia off from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication)—the international system that allows banks to carry out trans-border transactions—should absolutely be on the table. This would rattle the Russian economy and have an immediate impact on Russian citizens. Notice how you can’t send money to an Iranian bank from the United States? That’s because Iran has been cut off from SWIFT; this affects everyone in Iran, from the leadership to ordinary people on the street. 

A move to cut Russia off from SWIFT would also, of course, impact U.S. banks and German banks, which use it to communicate with Russia. But these banks are more insulated from financial pain because their economies are far more robust and integrated than Russia’s.

The Russian elite loves opulence. It stashes its assets (and, frequently, its children) abroad — popular spots include London and Paris, Manhattan and Miami, the Cayman Islands, and Cyprus. The dominant religion of Russian officials is money. There are many ways to exploit that, starting with a potentially very long list of individually targeted sanctions, such as those already levelled at dangerous Kremlin lackeys like businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been indicted in the U.S. for the role he played in meddling in the 2016 election; and propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, the notorious state TV presenter who is Russia’s own Tucker Carlson, only virtually unopposed.

Another factor to consider is Moscow’s fragile relationship with Beijing, with the Kremlin particularly worried about China expanding its influence in Russia’s Far East, where there are real tensions between the local leadership and Putin’s central government. When you want to know what bothers the Russian government, look at what it is restricting or monitoring. The FSB, for example, controls the Russian census in order to cover up resentment of Moscow in different parts of Russia. I was in Moscow when the 2010 census was conducted, and saw how researchers noted that the number of people identifying as “Siberian” as opposed to “Russian” had spiked. Today, writing about these issues in Russia can easily land you on a watchlist. All of this demonstrates that Moscow is worried about Russian territorial integrity. 

Russian propagandists tend to yell at me when I make these observations; they are defensive because they know I am telling the truth. Moscow is wary of China’s ambitions in the Far East and elsewhere, how they might affect Russia’s position in areas ranging from the Arctic to outer space, and how an already resentful Russian society might react to their country’s declining position. Washington can leverage that fear in many ways, most saliently by playing up the fact that Moscow today is nothing but Beijing’s uneasy sidekick. Russia is poorer and more vulnerable than China. Its population is declining. In its desire for great power status, it is decidedly outmatched by Beijing. These facts already don’t sit well with Putin, but are particularly infuriating to Russia’s citizens. 

Engaging Russia directly would merely serve to create another vortex of violent instability. But Russian private military companies (PMCs) have their fingers in many pies — in countries like the Central African Republic and Venezuela, where they are interested in both resource extraction and political influence. Signaling that all of these ventures are fair game for hostile action might not have an immediate effect—Putin likes PMCs precisely because they are expendable—but many of the Russian leader’s friends have significant amounts of money tied up in these ventures; inflicting pain on them makes him vulnerable. 

Most importantly, we must not mythologize Putin. Nor should we adopt the approach of the notorious Fox TV commentator, Tucker Carlson, who claims that Putin is massing troops and materiel because he needs to “secure” his border with Ukraine. This is a cynical political move: Carlson’s ratings go up every time he trashes President Joe Biden. If Biden is opposed to Putin, Carlson will side with Putin, even at the cost of global stability and the international standing of the United States. If Putin came out and claimed he needed his “Lebensraum” now, Tucker would probably cheer him on, and that’s all you need to know about that. 

Instead of being like Tucker, we should simply see the depressing system Putin created in all of its stark, granular detail — and understand that it won’t stop after it devours Ukraine. The time to oppose it is now.
    [post_title] => To stop Putin, grab him by his wallet
    [post_excerpt] => Western leaders are conducting their foreign policy as though nothing can be done to stop Putin. This is a mistake: he's weaker and more vulnerable than he appears.  
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To stop Putin, grab him by his wallet

by Natalia Antonova

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    [post_content] => Throughout her journey, the 9-year-old Syrian refugee girl-puppet was greeted by both loving crowds and anti-migrant protesters. 

A huge crowd gathers outside the National Theatre in London’s Southbank. Children run around during the last moments of daylight. A choir stands ready. They are waiting for Amal. Heads turn and people point, as a giant puppet rounds the corner. As she walks into the courtyard, a solo voice sings out her name. The audience is silent.

Amal tentatively explores the crowd, peering into the faces in front of her. She bends down to touch a child’s hand, and an elderly woman appears to give her words of heartfelt comfort. The mood is electric. When Amal finally leaves the National Theater, the crowd follows her across Waterloo Bridge, accompanying her as she continues to her next destination. 

She might just be a puppet, but Amal represents something very real. She embodies a nine-year-old Syrian refugee, who has taken the same journey as many unaccompanied minors across Europe. Her name is Arabic for “hope.” Amal started her journey on the Turkey-Syria border, kicking off Good Chance and Handspring Puppet Company’s travelling festival, The Walk, and journeying 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) to find a home in Manchester, UK.

We were all invited to join Amal as she traveled across Turkey, Greece, and Italy, where she was met with both love and hostility. Amal has finally arrived in the UK, just as its government is proposing potentially hugely consequential changes to its immigration system, changes which could actually land those making dangerous journeys like Amal’s in jail. 

Thankfully for Amal, as she made her final steps across Europe, she was welcomed and given a home. Will the same be true for real migrant children?

Amal’s next steps in Europe

As Amal left Italy, to begin the final leg of her journey, she took her first steps through south-eastern France and into Switzerland. In Geneva, she played in the fountains outside the United Nations Office, and placed her hand on The Broken Chair, a 12-metre sculpture of a seat with a snapped leg, designed to raise awareness of the victims of landmines. There were many such poignant moments during The Walk.

“The fact that this journey is based on a real route that many thousands of children have walked, and some have lost their life on, means that we are entrusted with a great responsibility to represent their stories in an honest and complicated way, showing the hardship but also the beauty of their journeys,” Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk and Good Chance, told me. 

“We take this responsibility very seriously, because we know that as big as Amal is, so is the impact of her journey.”

Amal moved on from Switzerland, stepping next into Germany, home to the EU’s largest population of displaced people. When she arrived in Stuttgart, she made friends with a giant robotic puppet, part of the Dundu Family of German puppets that have brought together audiences internationally since 2006 with spectacular light and music shows. As nighttime arrived, Amal met more of the family, as they lit up the darkness.

When unaccompanied minors like Amal first arrive in Germany, they’re taken into the care of the local youth welfare office, explains Jonathan Sieger, head of the Bürgerzentrum community center and executive board member of NGO Kölner Spendenkonvoi, which assists newly arrived refugees.

These young people are then placed with relatives, a foster family, or a suitable facility, and they must be given a legal guardian, as is the case—although not necessarily the reality—across much of Europe.

One of the main risks young refugees face, Sieger says, is developing long term trauma. “What we are lacking in Germany is general psychological treatment for refugees. Especially for unaccompanied minors, this help is crucial,” Sieger says. This same sentiment has been echoed by organizations across the continent. 

Organizations like Bürgerzentrum are supporting young refugees to settle into their new homes. From its base in Cologne, Bürgerzentrum offers cooking workshops, theater classes, cultural events, and trips. Amal’s journey did not end here, but if it did, perhaps she would have found a warm welcome.

As Amal bid farewell to Germany, she continued across Belgium, and then into France.

Walking through France

In the mountain region of Briançon, Amal embarked upon the treacherous path that many refugees have used to cross from Italy into France. She gazed at an exhibition of artwork made from the objects and clothes left behind by those who had traveled before her. In Paris, she saw the Eiffel Tower, and in Lyon she walked through the park with new friends. There was music wherever she went: brass bands, accordions, drumbeats.

Amal was treated with dignity and celebration, but this is not always the reality for refugees in northern France. Police use violence and tear gas, which has been documented by Refugee Rights Europe and others.

Safe Passage International is an organization helping child refugees reach safety and reunite with family, and it works across the UK, France, and Greece. In France, most of the people they support are sleeping on the street when they first come into contact with them.

“Having fled war and persecution, there are thousands of children stuck on the streets or in refugee camps across Europe—nobody can call that safe for a child. Children are at serious risk of violence, exploitation and trafficking. These are children left in limbo and exposed to incredibly dangerous situations,” says the organization’s CEO, Beth Gardiner-Smith. 

Amal then made her way to Calais flanked with cheers and flags. This is often the spot where people cross over to the UK. It was the people of the Calais Jungle, a refugee camp that the French government had destroyed in 2016, which served as the original inspiration for Amal. It was also the birthplace of an earlier Good Chance production, The Jungle, about the people who gathered at an Afghan café in the refugee camp. Despite all this, the Mayor of Calais objected to Amal passing through the area and refused to approve a permit.

Like many young refugees before her, Amal crossed the English Channel to the UK. But unlike fellow young refugees, the company of Good Chance actors accompanying Amal crossed the water safely, with passports in hand and comfortable places to sleep on either side of the journey.

Arriving on UK shores

On a grey day toward the end of October, Amal finally stepped onto the shore in Folkestone, Kent, in the south-east of England. The actor Jude Law, who is an ambassador for The Walk, held her hand as she walked down the pier, where schoolchildren welcomed her and gave her a passport, blanket, and cookies.

The day after Amal’s arrival, supporters flocked to Parliament Square in London to join the Refugees Welcome Rally, organized by a collective of refugee organizations. The protest took place in opposition to the government’s new “Nationality and Borders Bill,” which parliament is currently considering.

The Conservative government has stated three objectives for this bill: 

    
 	
  • “To make the system fairer and more effective”;
    • 
 	
  • “To deter illegal entry into the UK”;
    • 
 	
  • “To remove from the UK those with no right to be here.”
    • 


In her opening speech for the bill, Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “The British people have had enough of open borders and uncontrolled migration[...] Enough of dinghies arriving illegally on our shores, directed by organized crime gangs.”

She went on to outline some of the proposed changes, which include a maximum prison sentence of four years for those “entering the country illegally” and additional powers for the Home Office’s Border Force. 

The policies outlined in the bill contravene the UN Refugee Convention, which states that refugees should not be penalized for the manner in which they enter a country if they are coming from somewhere where their life or freedom has been threatened. 

According to Safe Passage International, the UK government’s bill is aimed, foremost, at deterring migrants and refugees who wish to enter the UK, but fails to address the reasons people leave their countries.

“The UK Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill will cruelly punish refugees who turn to us for compassion and safety, whilst doing nothing to break the business model of smugglers who exploit the lack of safe passage to the UK,” says the organization’s CEO, Beth Gardiner-Smith. “We urge this government to tear up these cruel plans and instead open safe routes for refugees seeking sanctuary in the UK.”

There are currently no visas that would allow a person to travel legally to the UK and claim asylum. 

“It’s deeply concerning that virtually the only way now for child refugees to reach the UK from France—regardless of their age, vulnerability, family links or community ties—is to risk a dangerous journey in the back of lorries or on dinghies across the Channel,” Gardiner-Smith added.

If passed, the bill could see many asylum seekers deported to a third country, particularly those who have already traveled through what are considered “safe nations.” The government will introduce “reception centers,” which could resemble the controversial Napier Barracks, criticized for their “squalid” conditions. The bill also paves the way for keeping refugees offshore, where they are detained in so-called processing centers in a third country.

Safe Passage International is calling on the UK government to allow entry to people seeking asylum in cases where they already have family in the UK. They also say the situation for refugees has worsened since Brexit because the EU’s Dublin Regulation, which provided the criteria for defining which country is responsible for examining a refugee’s asylum application, has not yet been replaced with a UK equivalent. 

Thankfully, there is a strong network of local organizations across the UK supporting young refugees, like the Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN). Daniel and Osama are two of KRAN’s youth ambassadors. They are also refugees; now they support people who are making the same journeys that they did. 

Three years ago, KRAN started a Youth Forum, where young refugees meet to discuss different issues that affect them—like accommodation, education, and mental health. Youth ambassadors like Daniel and Osama act as a bridge between these young people and the organization.

In the forum, young people often describe the contrast between their expectations and their experiences in seeking asylum in the UK. In most instances, they’ve faced challenges at every stage. These stories also highlight the essential role of organizations like KRAN and the Refugee Council, and Refugee Action.

Despite the challenges he’s faced, Daniel has felt welcomed in the UK and does not believe the country’s new immigration plan represents the sentiment of the wider public.

The bill is now in the report stage and awaiting its third reading, after passing its second reading by 366 votes to 265. With a Conservative majority, it seems likely the bill will pass. But there could be legal challenges to Priti Patel’s plan for a Border Force to push back boats carrying refugees.

Meeting Amal

Both Daniel and Osama met Amal in Kent. They described it as an extraordinary experience.

“It really represents our stories, it represents the suffering that we have been through,” Osama says. “You have this emotional feeling when you see that people are coming just [to see] a puppet and [to give] their warm greetings.”

At the beginning of this month, Amal finally found a home in Manchester. Local schools, refugee communities, and the Manchester International Festival created a spectacle for her arrival: a flock of puppet birds. As Amal moved among the crowd, a flight of swallows acted as her guide, their wings illuminated and flapping gently around Amal. These birds know migration too, making dangerous journeys every year between the UK and South Africa.

“I know that the arrival into the UK specifically, though not only the UK, is not a simple one. Amal and the children she represents only start a much longer journey once they reach their final destinations,” The Walk director Zuabi says.

Zuabi, nonetheless, has hopes for Amal, a puppet who represents all young refugees: “We are not born refugees, it is a circumstance, and this circumstance should be as short as possible.” 

If the Nationality and Borders bill is passed, the future could look bleak for asylum seekers hoping for refuge and welcome in the UK. Already, the Border Force has been spotted practising sea push back techniques. Napier Barracks is still operating. But the open arms with which Little Amal has been welcomed and the persistent work of grassroots refugee organizations show that the British people care, and will stand up for their new neighbors. It’s there in Amal’s name—there is hope.
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    [post_excerpt] => Enthusiastic crowds greeted the 10 year-old unaccompanied Syrian refugee girl, even as parliament considered a bill that would make thousands of refugees ineligible to stay in the UK. 
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Little Amal arrives in the UK as parliament considers a bill that would see her deported

by Katie Dancey-Downs

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    [post_content] => The government has recognized its error and resigned, but the women's lives are still in tatters. 

Franciska Manuputty’s ordeal with the Dutch tax authorities began in 2010, when she received notification to repay €30,000 (about US $35,000) in childcare tax benefits, to which the government alleged she had not been entitled. Manuputty, 49, is a low-income single mother of two. She was soon behind on the rent, couldn’t pay her electricity bills, and turned to a food bank to feed her family. Her daughter, now 20 years old, told her recently that as a child she had lived in constant fear of returning home from school to discover they had been evicted from their apartment. 

Manuputty is one of the victims of what the Dutch media calls the child benefits scandal. Over the course of around a decade the government falsely accused thousands of eligible families of having committed fraud and ordered them to repay childcare tax benefits to which they had, in fact, been entitled. 

A parliamentary investigation published in December 2020 found that the tax authorities had set up a child benefits system with bureaucratic rules so rigid that even the smallest administrative error in filling out forms caused the system to flag beneficiaries, who were then pursued by the courts and forced to repay all the money they had received—plus fines. The total number of victims is not yet clear; but based on a parliamentary investigation and the number of people who applied for the initial compensation of €30,000 (about $35,000), at least 35,000 people have been affected. 

The fallout from the scandal led to the government’s resignation in January 2021. 

Families that were forced to repay tens of thousands of euros faced bankruptcies, job losses, forced sale of houses, homelessness, divorce—even suicide. Several families saw their children removed by child protection authorities, on the basis that they were no longer able to care for them after losing their homes and financial stability. 

The €30,000 compensation doesn’t even begin to solve Manuputty’s problems. Because the tax authorities labelled her a cheat in 2009, her name is now in the system and her credit is ruined. Over the past decade all her applications for financial aid were rejected, which forced her to keep borrowing money and leave bills unpaid. She now owes €100,000 ($115,000) to various creditors. “I hold on to life for my children,” said Manuputty.

Investigative journalists discovered, via the parliamentary freedom of information act, that the algorithms had been designed to flag “cheats” based on the amount a parent received—i.e., the more benefits they received, the more likely they were to fall under suspicion. The result: the people targeted were those whose low-paid jobs made them most eligible for childcare benefits. 

A disproportionate number of people in that group were single mothers with foreign citizenship, so the algorithm de facto flagged poor women who were either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants, adding racism to the scandal.  The Ministry of Finance brought a discrimination suit against the tax authorities, but the  public prosecutor dismissed the case, saying the issue must be solved politically. Victims of the false accusations are appealing that decision. A parliamentary commission will be  appointed to investigate the matter later this year or next year. 

Via a WhatsApp group for victims of the scandal, Franciska Manuputty met Batya Brown, 35,  a part-time employee at a daycare center who is now pregnant with her fifth child. When the two were asked to address an anti-racism demonstration about their experiences they decided to collaborate on their speeches and provide one another with moral support. They were joined by Kristie Rongen, 45, a small truck driver, who had recently  confronted Prime Minister Rutte during a widely viewed live broadcast of a political TV show. 

While Rongen holds only Dutch citizenship, Batya Brown was born in Ethiopia. Manuputty’s parents are from the Maluku Islands, formerly a Dutch colony—now occupied by Indonesia. For the latter two women, their relationship with the Dutch state is informed by their ethnic identities, which is further compounded by the role that racism played in the tax scandal.

Brown was adopted as a child from Ethiopia, arriving in the Netherlands when she was six years old. Because of a bureaucratic error that she is fighting to correct, she is still ineligible for a Dutch passport. Meanwhile, in 2007 the tax authorities began demanding that she repay her benefits . The resulting financial problems forced her to move often and, while the tax authorities recently annulled her remaining debts, her struggle with the immigration authorities continues. In other words, she has been battling with both the tax authorities and the immigration office for her entire adult life.

Manuputty suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and transgenerational trauma. Her grandfather is a South Mollucan, a member of an Indonesian indigenous group that fought in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) alongside colonial forces in the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-9), then were brought to the Netherlands after the Dutch reneged on a promise to grant them territorial sovereignty. The Mollucan community feels humiliated to this day by their treatment at the hands of the Dutch. “As a victim of the child benefit scandal, I have been neglected and robbed of my dignity again,” said Manuputty, adding that she felt as though history were repeating itself.

Rongen acknowledged that she presents in her media appearances as a strong woman, which she is; but behind the scenes she is emotionally devastated. “I cry a lot, every day,” she said. Her ordeal with the tax authorities began in 2010, with her debt topping out at €92,000 ($123,000). After four years of debt counselling, the government annulled what was left of that amount and granted her compensation in December 2020. Her battle with psychological trauma is ongoing. She has dedicated herself to helping reunite parents with children they lost to foster care, a calling that provides her with a feeling of purpose. “When a mother messages me for help, I dry my eyes and get going again,” she said. In a matter-of-fact tone she added, “I would prefer not to live anymore. But what would happen to my children if I were no longer here?”

In addition to their media appearances and participation in anti-racism demonstrations earlier this year, the three women have initiated demonstrations of their own, to garner public support and amplify their demands. These include: cancellation of all the victims’ debts by the end of 2021; financial compensation of at least €1 million ($1.16 million) to each victim; and the immediate reunification of parents with children who were taken from them and put into foster care. They also want psychological support. And they want those responsible for the scandal to be brought to justice.

When the government resigned in January the women hoped the new administration would deal with the matter quickly, but they now understand the process will take years. One egregious reason for the slow pace: the commission tasked with defining the amount of compensation that each victim should receive is severely understaffed; at the current rate they will need 975 years to complete their work.

 “Applying for everything costs so much time and energy, which I would prefer to dedicate to my children,” said Batya Brown. Kristie Rongen added: “Instead of asking for more effort from the victims, they should just give every one of them half a million euros to settle the matter. Our lives have been destroyed.” 

Franciska Manuputty agrees. “I have been trying for years to regain my independence by setting up my own business,” she said, explaining that her applications for business loans have all been rejected because the “fraudster” label destroyed her credit rating. “I struggle for freedom, it’s in my genes, but I feel trapped in a prison without walls.”

The women have also reached out to other victims, organizing small events like picnics and activities for children, which they pay for via crowdfunding, just to relax and start healing together. Coming together has energized the women. “Our suffering has become visible,” said one. Then, with tears in her eyes and a voice choked with anger: “Years ago, when he was ten, eleven years old, I promised my oldest son that everything would be okay. He is 16 years old now! I am determined to keep my promise to him.” 
    [post_title] => 'I cry a lot, every day': Victims of the Dutch child benefits scandal fight for compensation
    [post_excerpt] => Thousands of Dutch families were destroyed by financial hardship after the tax authorities falsely accused them of submitting fraudulent applications for childcare tax benefits, requiring them to pay back the allowances they had received in their entirety—plus fines.
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‘I cry a lot, every day’: Victims of the Dutch child benefits scandal fight for compensation

by Fréderike Geerdink

WP_Post Object
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    [post_content] => Her message to the world: please don't forget the refugee children.

A little girl is walking alone from Syria to England. She is 11 feet and 6 inches tall.

Little Amal (Arabic for “hope”) is actually a giant puppet. She represents the thousands of refugee children who have been displaced from their home countries. This nine-year-old Syrian girl is now journeying from Turkey, across Europe, and to the U.K., as part of an 8,000 kilometer (5,000 mile)  travelling festival titled The Walk.

At the end of July, Amal began her journey as a “refugee” in Gaziantep, Turkey, home to half a million Syrians. People holding lanterns aloft surrounded her, lighting up the night. As she moved through the streets, Amal reached out to balconies where children stood watching, and gently touched their hands as they smiled down at her. Orbs of light sparkled overhead, and a choir welcomed her with song. Many of the people participating in the street theater were themselves refugees.

Amal is now halfway through this theatrical journey created by Good Chance, a theater company founded in the Calais refugee camps in 2015, in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company. Communities in Turkey, Greece, and Italy, where she’s continued her journey, have found different ways to welcome her — sometimes with love, and sometimes with hostility. But how close is Amal’s experience to that of real refugee children?

Setting off in Turkey

The rest of Amal’s journey through Turkey was likewise filled with celebration and theatrical wonder.

In Adana, a flock of model birds accompanied her across the Taşköprü stone bridge, held up proudly on long sticks by both children and adults in the local community. She played with the children of Tarsus, who crowded in together for a chance to touch her hands. In the Kaleiçi Bazaar in Denizli, portraits of refugees who had journeyed through Turkey were projected onto walls as she appeared.

“I think the most common reaction is wonderment, followed by curiosity. People have been receiving her very warmly in many places,” says Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk and Good Chance.

“One of the most astonishing things for me as artistic director on this project, was the true generosity and creativity that this evoked from people,” he says. “This project is only possible because of a network of thousands of people that have devoted time, energy, and their creativity to create these welcoming events along the way.”


Turkey is a poignant place for this journey to begin. It hosts the biggest population of refugees in the world. The “best interests of the child” principle, part of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, is enshrined into law here, which means that all unaccompanied young refugees must, in theory, be given suitable accommodation and a guardian. But according to the Asylum Information Database (AIDA), many children are in fact abandoned by the state which doesn’t offer the protections they are promised. AIDA has also pointed out the state sometimes appoints inappropriate guardians, such as people without the right qualifications, or who aren’t a relative, leaving refugee children with no other choice but to beg in the street.

Were Amal settling in Turkey, accessing education could also be a real problem. Approximately 400,000 Syrian children residing in the country are not receiving an education, according to Human Rights Watch and Turkey’s Ministry of Education,

Amal, however, is not settling in Turkey. On her last day in the country, she stood on the shores of Çesme as the sun set, ready to take a boat to Greece. In these waters, many refugees like her have lost their lives. Zuabi commented on the potency of that moment, as Amal looked into the horizon, almost motionless.

Hostility in Greece

Little Amal’s journey in Greece was, at times, quite tumultuous. It began with music, with a whole community arriving to meet her off the boat in Chios and welcome her with song. But in other towns, she faced fury.

“In a city called Larissa in Greece, she became a symbol of the refugee problem, she was shouted at and even violently attacked,” says Zuabi. Protesters threw stones at Amal. And in Meteora, people voted to ban Amal from walking through their village, because they did not want a Muslim child walking through a Greek Orthodox space. More violence was threatened against Amal in other towns and villages along her route.

“From that moment, her appearances in Greece created a strong sense of solidarity. I think the reaction she induces is specific to the context of the country we are in, and even more specific to the city and the population we meet,” Zuabi says. “One thing I know for sure is that nobody stays indifferent.” 


In spite of the threats against Amal, people still came together to welcome her in Athens. While some events had to be cancelled, Amal took to a rooftop in Athens to meet locals. From this vantage point, Zuabi says, he could see people wiping tears from their eyes. On the Walk With Amal Instagram account people responded to the video of the violence with an outpouring of love and solidarity—more than double the number of comments than their other popular videos. There were messages like, “I'm so proud that I walked with you Amal, hand in hand with my children!” and “We want to welcome you, celebrate you and keep you safe.” 

In Ioannina, Amal walked between the Katsikas refugee camp and the city centre. In the camp, Zuabi says there was a sense of pride; people felt celebrated. As she walked on, the local community presented lightboxes filled with messages of hope: “You are our rainbow” and “Step by step,” they said. 

When unaccompanied minors arrive in Greece, they are detained in reception centres until they’ve been processed and a place in a shelter found for them, but backlogs mean they can be left waiting for months. Their accommodation is often unsuitable, and spaces are limited. Human Rights Watch has witnessed young people living amongst the general population of Greece’s Moria Camp, because the areas designated for children are beyond capacity. Some children have to fend for themselves, sometimes sleeping in the open despite the fact that, under Greek law, unaccompanied children should be placed in safe accommodations and placed under guardianship.

Irida Pandiri is responsible for shelters for unaccompanied minors through her work with the Association for the Social Support of Youth (ARSIS), a Greek NGO that assists young people in difficulty or danger. She says the larger reception centres in which people are detained are simply not appropriate for children, in part because they cannot leave the facilities to go to school. Meanwhile, the guardianship promised to these young people is not provided. 

“Guardianship, it is almost a joke in Greece,” she says. “When they are in the detention facilities, there are no guardians.” This, for ARSIS, is a crucial issue. Education is also a major problem, with Greek schools often reluctant to register refugee children; even in cases where registration is possible, Covid restrictions often prevent them from leaving the camp to attend.

In order to make it to these reception centres, young refugees must come face-to-face with authorities hoping to send them back to Turkey. Their “welcome” to Greece is full of violence: their belongings are confiscated and they are frequently turned away, in clear violation of their human rights. Many such experiences have been documented by organizations like the Border Violence Monitoring Network and Refugee Rights Europe.

Just as the response to Amal’s reception in Greece was mixed, so has ARSIS found its ability to do its work challenged by uneven support in various communities.

“In the years since 2017-2018, in the areas where we are trying to establish shelters, unfortunately, the communities weren’t so welcoming,” Pandiri says.

But ARSIS continues to support young refugees as best it can. The organization has eight centres for unaccompanied children across Greece, and they operate safe zones in some of the larger camps. Other NGOs also offer child protection services, legal advice, and recreational activities.

As Amal took her final steps in Greece toward Piraeus Port, she was guided by more singing and live music. The protests in Greece were loud, but the welcome was louder.

Walking through Italy

Little Amal is now walking through Italy. She arrived in Bari, where an Italian nonna, or grandmother, arrived to give her guidance. This nonna, a puppet just a few inches shy of Amal’s height, pulled her for a hug and imparted upon her some words of wisdom.

[caption id="attachment_3195" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Little Amal greeted by an Italian nonna, or grandmother, in Bari, Italy.[/caption]

Italy has welcomed Amal warmly, but this experience might be far from the reality for actual young refugees. Andrea Costa is president of Baobab Experience, an organization supporting displaced people who have arrived in Italy. The organization is also a humanitarian partner of The Walk.

“Italy—and I’m very sad to say this, because I love my country—is changing,” Costa said. Although it has traditionally welcomed foreigners, negative media coverage of migration and the rise of far-right politicians have led to a changed country, he said, adding: “It's pretty difficult for unaccompanied minors to make their way in Italy.”

In Italy, solidarity with refugees has now been criminalized in a number of ways. In June 2019, Italy banned NGOs from carrying out search and rescue operations. In the area of Ventimiglia, several people have been charged for giving food to refugees, after a municipal decree outlawed the practice.

“Before, people felt ashamed to be racist,” said Costa. But now, people who want to help refugees must do so surreptitiously. 

Like Turkey and Greece, Italy has policies and procedures in place that are designed to protect unaccompanied children. They are given a permit to remain until they are 18 years old. They can’t be pushed back to other countries, they must be accommodated, and they cannot be detained. 

But in practice, these rights aren’t always respected. As the coronavirus pandemic swept through Italy, the government used private ships to quarantine incoming refugees. According to a report from the Italian Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI), some children were held on these ships for 10-15 days (although some people report this is far longer) before their ages were assessed. Human Rights Watch reported that children were being illegally pushed back from Italy to Greece, another abuse of rights. These are young people who have most likely already faced tremendous trauma.

Costa describes Italy as a transit country for refugees. While many young people choose to move through the country rather than claim asylum, they are at risk.

“We have an extremely high number of unaccompanied minors who don't want to stay in Italy, but want to go directly to France, to Germany, to Holland, to Belgium, because they know that even for minors, just like for all the other migrants, it's much better organized in other European countries,” Costa said.

According to Human Rights Watch, many young refugees cite a lack of access to education and poor reception upon arrival in Italy as influencing them to move onto other countries instead.

Baobab Experience is an organization composed of volunteers who care for young people at risk of falling into the hands of smugglers or human traffickers while they’re in Italy. They make sure these refugees have somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and are clothed. Recently, they joined a network of organizations helping to create safe passages so that, if those young people do choose to cross borders, trusted organizations can help on the other side, including in finding travel tickets at the best prices, rather than turning to smugglers.

But there is another problem for unaccompanied minors in Italy—a cruel gift on their 18th birthday. As they make the difficult transition into adulthood, far from their home country and family, they are no longer guaranteed accommodation. Many of them lack the skills to make their way safely in the world, with no access to language or professional skills.

“There are a lot of young people that really lose important years of their lives,” Costa says. This is why Baobab Experience provides English and Italian courses for young people.

Despite all this, Costa remains optimistic about the future of refugees in Italy. He’s seen a change in younger Italians, who seem to be more understanding about their plight. Perhaps a new, more welcoming Italy is on the horizon.

Meanwhile, Amal is continuing her journey through Italy, before she crosses into France. She’s just finished exploring the ancient landmarks of Rome; in Vatican City Pope Francis met with Amal, along with the children accompanying her on this leg of the journey. 


Amal’s welcome across Turkey, Greece, and Italy varied from country to country and village to village. Like the refugees whose experiences she’s enacting, Amal’s journey has only begun. Her last stop is the U.K., where the government is currently pushing through legislation called the borders and nationalities bill, which would deny asylum or aid to any refugee who enters the country through an unofficial port of entry—for example, by crossing the channel in a small boat. Under the provisions of the bill, Afghan refugees forced to escape from the Taliban could be jailed in the U.K. because they reached the country by routes that the U.K. government has decided are “illegal”—although, according to international law, there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker. What kind of welcome can Amal expect when she arrives in October?

In spite of the government proposals, many British communities promise a warm welcome to Amal and to refugee children. Camden Town has planned a birthday party for Amal, while several choirs will sing for her in the port town of Folkestone on the day she arrives in the U.K.. Anti-refugee sentiment has become more pronounced since Brexit, but many people have also become more vocal about their support for refugees. In the face of racism, changing government policy, and dehumanizing tabloid headlines, compassionate communities are needed more than ever.
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This is Little Amal, the puppet refugee girl on a European odyssey

by Katie Dancey-Downs

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