Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Earlier this month, the 5,000-member American Studies Association (ASA) voted more than two to one to endorse a scholarly boycott against Israeli universities. It asked its members to refuse to "enter formal collaboration with Israeli academic institutions or with scholars who are expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions, or on behalf of the Israeli government."
Boycotting Israel "represents a principle of solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and an aspiration to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians."
Why are academics, supposedly devoted to the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, voluntarily cutting off contacts with fellow scholars? Actually, there's a history behind this and it doesn't bode well for Israel.
The movement to demonize, delegitimize and eventually eliminate the state of Israel has been gathering steam ever since the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, where Israel was singled out for special condemnation as a "racist" state practising "apartheid."
In April 2004, sixty Palestinian academic and non-government organizations called for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has grown in the years since; its objective is to force Israel through various boycotts to comply with its goals: The end of Israeli occupation and colonisation of Arab land, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and respect for the right of return of Palestinian refugees into Israel itself (which would likely turn it into a non-Jewish country).
The BDS movement, already a force in the British academic community, is now spreading to the United States. In the wake of the Gaza war fought between Israel and Hamas between December 2008 and January 2009, a group of American university professors launched a campaign calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
"As educators of conscience, we have been unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel's indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions," the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel stated in its inaugural press release.
In April the 800-member Association for Asian American Studies voted to support a boycott, the first American academic group to do so. Their resolution contended that the boycott was "in protest of the illegal occupation of Palestine, the infringements of the right to education of Palestinian students, and the academic freedom of Palestinian scholars and students in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel."
Next month, the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association (MLA) in Chicago will debate a resolution calling on the State Department to criticize Israel for barring American professors from going to Gaza and the West Bank when invited by Palestinian universities. With 30,000 members, the MLA is a much larger body than the ASA.
"The debate at ASA breached a taboo that existed about how people discuss Israel and Palestine," explained David Lloyd, an English professor at the University of California at Riverside, who will speak in favor of an academic boycott at the MLA meeting. "ASA has paved the way for MLA and other associations."
These are organizations with professors from many institutions and covering many disciplines, he added, maintaining that the discussions indicate a "larger, nationwide shift" regarding Israel. "It's beginning to become something people recognize as an issue of justice and ceases to be something held by a vocal minority."
The 749-member Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) will also be debating a resolution in support of an academic boycott of Israel at the group's national conference next May in Austin, Texas.
The NAISA Council has encouraged its members to boycott Israeli academic institutions to protest "the infringement of the academic freedom of Indigenous Palestinian academics and intellectuals in the Occupied Territories and Israel who are denied fundamental freedoms of movement, expression, and assembly."
Ohio State University English Professor Chadwick Allen, the president, said the move followed a member-generated petition asking that the group formally support the boycott.
Another group potentially considering anti-Israel measures is the 62,000-member American Library Association, where several members have called for action against Israel.
Many academics are incensed at the way Israel is being singled out, noting that these scholarly groups have not taken it upon themselves to boycott, among others, China, Iran, Russia, Syria, or Zimbabwe - countries with far worse records. This is true but it doesn't change the fact that Israel is losing the battle within the academic community, once a reliable friend of the Jewish state.
For years, pro-Israel activists have tended to minimize the impact of the BDS movement and claimed that it has not been successful in shaping public opinion regarding Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. They are wrong.
Professor Henry Srebrnik
Monday, December 30, 2013
Thursday, December 26, 2013
A Tilt to the Left in South America
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
Many people remember the blustery late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, long a thorn in the side of the United States. A populist par excellence, Chavez, who died in March, referred to his ideology as Bolivarianismo (“Bolivarianism”), based on the ideals of the 19th century soldier who led the fight for South American independence from Spain, Simon Bolivar.
He was an exponent of anti-imperialism, national sovereignty, and grassroots political participation. His hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, who was his vice-president and minister of foreign affairs, is carrying on his legacy.
The National Assembly has granted Maduro decree powers that will allow him to create laws on his own without legislative approval. The president insists that he needs the powers to address the country’s grave economic difficulties, for which he blames an “economic war” being waged by the political opposition.
But Venezuela is not the only country in South America which has tilted to the left in recent years. In Bolivia, the left-wing Movement for Socialism-Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP) is now in power. Its leader, President Juan Evo Morales, was first elected in 2005 and re-elected four year later. This followed years of discontent with International Monetary Fund-imposed austerity measures instituted by his predecessors.
A member of the Aymara people, Morales has focused on issues affecting indigenous and poor communities. He has instituted land reform, redistribution of wealth from natural gas and petroleum extraction, and nationalisation of key industries.
Peru has now elected two presidents of aboriginal Quechua descent, Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala. This has been a breakthrough, in a country ruled for most of its history by a privileged ethnic Spanish oligarchy that owned most of the land and resources, and was protected by the country’s military. Native peoples were politically marginalized within a highly stratified society with a racial hierarchy.
After winning in 2001, Toledo brought together experts and indigenous leaders to discuss the needs of indigenous people throughout the country. His symbolic inauguration ceremony at the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu was attended by all the presidents of the neighboring Andean states, who joined him in signing the “Declaration of Machu Picchu,” promising to protect indigenous rights.
Humala, the current leader, in office since 2011, also came in as a left-wing reformer. He has created or bolstered some social programs, and poverty in Peru has been cut by more than half in recent years, falling from 59 per cent of the population in 2004 to 26 per cent last year, according to government figures. Political polarization has decreased.
Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president since 2007, is a popular leader who in 2008 declared the national debt “illegitimate,” having been contracted by corrupt and despotic prior regimes. His administration has reduced the high levels of poverty, indigence, and unemployment in Ecuador.
In Paraguay, Fernando Lugo won the presidency in 2008 but was removed four years later. A Roman Catholic priest, Lugo was ordained a bishop in 1994. He gained prominence by backing peasant claims for better land distribution. Resigning his Church position, he became the candidate of the Patriotic Alliance for Change, a coalition of parties on the left, and pledged to give land to the landless and fight corruption.
However, Lugo faced impeachment proceedings following a June 2012 incident in which police clashed with landless peasants, resulting in 17 deaths, and he was removed from office by a Paraguayan Congress controlled by his political enemies.
Lugo maintained that his presidency was targeted because he tried to help the country’s poor majority. Paraguay's powerful elite, long accustomed to getting their way during 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party, had fought Lugo’s attempts to raise taxes on the country's major export, soybeans, and redistribute farmland to the poor majority.
The current president, Horacio Cartes, elected earlier this year, joined the Colorado Party in 2009 and said he wanted to counter the swing to the left in Latin American politics.
He’ll certainly face an uphill battle. In Chile, Michelle Bachelet, a Socialist who had ruled the country between 2006 and 2010, decisively beat rival candidate Evelyn Matthei to retake the office on Dec. 15.
After General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup, Bachelet was arrested and tortured, before being allowed to leave the country in 1975. She finally returned to Chile in 1979 after four years in exile.
Now again president, she plans to push forward major social reforms and has vowed to raise corporate taxes to fund an education overhaul, expanding access to higher education, and to reduce the wealth gap.
Many people remember the blustery late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, long a thorn in the side of the United States. A populist par excellence, Chavez, who died in March, referred to his ideology as Bolivarianismo (“Bolivarianism”), based on the ideals of the 19th century soldier who led the fight for South American independence from Spain, Simon Bolivar.
He was an exponent of anti-imperialism, national sovereignty, and grassroots political participation. His hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, who was his vice-president and minister of foreign affairs, is carrying on his legacy.
The National Assembly has granted Maduro decree powers that will allow him to create laws on his own without legislative approval. The president insists that he needs the powers to address the country’s grave economic difficulties, for which he blames an “economic war” being waged by the political opposition.
But Venezuela is not the only country in South America which has tilted to the left in recent years. In Bolivia, the left-wing Movement for Socialism-Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP) is now in power. Its leader, President Juan Evo Morales, was first elected in 2005 and re-elected four year later. This followed years of discontent with International Monetary Fund-imposed austerity measures instituted by his predecessors.
A member of the Aymara people, Morales has focused on issues affecting indigenous and poor communities. He has instituted land reform, redistribution of wealth from natural gas and petroleum extraction, and nationalisation of key industries.
Peru has now elected two presidents of aboriginal Quechua descent, Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala. This has been a breakthrough, in a country ruled for most of its history by a privileged ethnic Spanish oligarchy that owned most of the land and resources, and was protected by the country’s military. Native peoples were politically marginalized within a highly stratified society with a racial hierarchy.
After winning in 2001, Toledo brought together experts and indigenous leaders to discuss the needs of indigenous people throughout the country. His symbolic inauguration ceremony at the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu was attended by all the presidents of the neighboring Andean states, who joined him in signing the “Declaration of Machu Picchu,” promising to protect indigenous rights.
Humala, the current leader, in office since 2011, also came in as a left-wing reformer. He has created or bolstered some social programs, and poverty in Peru has been cut by more than half in recent years, falling from 59 per cent of the population in 2004 to 26 per cent last year, according to government figures. Political polarization has decreased.
Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president since 2007, is a popular leader who in 2008 declared the national debt “illegitimate,” having been contracted by corrupt and despotic prior regimes. His administration has reduced the high levels of poverty, indigence, and unemployment in Ecuador.
In Paraguay, Fernando Lugo won the presidency in 2008 but was removed four years later. A Roman Catholic priest, Lugo was ordained a bishop in 1994. He gained prominence by backing peasant claims for better land distribution. Resigning his Church position, he became the candidate of the Patriotic Alliance for Change, a coalition of parties on the left, and pledged to give land to the landless and fight corruption.
However, Lugo faced impeachment proceedings following a June 2012 incident in which police clashed with landless peasants, resulting in 17 deaths, and he was removed from office by a Paraguayan Congress controlled by his political enemies.
Lugo maintained that his presidency was targeted because he tried to help the country’s poor majority. Paraguay's powerful elite, long accustomed to getting their way during 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party, had fought Lugo’s attempts to raise taxes on the country's major export, soybeans, and redistribute farmland to the poor majority.
The current president, Horacio Cartes, elected earlier this year, joined the Colorado Party in 2009 and said he wanted to counter the swing to the left in Latin American politics.
He’ll certainly face an uphill battle. In Chile, Michelle Bachelet, a Socialist who had ruled the country between 2006 and 2010, decisively beat rival candidate Evelyn Matthei to retake the office on Dec. 15.
After General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup, Bachelet was arrested and tortured, before being allowed to leave the country in 1975. She finally returned to Chile in 1979 after four years in exile.
Now again president, she plans to push forward major social reforms and has vowed to raise corporate taxes to fund an education overhaul, expanding access to higher education, and to reduce the wealth gap.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Ethnicity and Politics in Guyana
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
What’s the answer to this trivia question: “Which Jewish woman other than Israel’s Golda Meir has ever governed a country?” It’s Guyana’s Janet Jagan.
Janet Rosenberg Jagan was a Chicago-born socialist politician who from 1997 to 1999 was president of Guyana, a republic on the northern coast of South America whose 795,000 people are mostly the descendants of African slaves and South Asian indentured labourers. How then did this come about?
Guyana, the former British Guiana, gained its independence from Great Britain in 1966. Its national motto is “One People, One Nation, One Destiny.” Rarely has a slogan reflected reality less.
Guyana is one of only three entities on the continent which are not Spanish or Portuguese. To its east is Suriname, the former Dutch Guiana, and further east is French Guiana, still under French sovereignty. The three Guianas are, in ethnicity, language and orientation, more part of the Caribbean than mainland South America.
Indo-Guyanese (or East Indians) constitute about 43 per cent of Guyana’s total population, followed by Afro-Guyanese at 30 per cent. People of mixed heritage are at 16 per cent and Amerindians (native American tribes) make up nine per cent. Most Indo-Guyanese practice Hinduism or Islam, while Blacks are mainly Christian.
In such societies, ethnic divisions easily become the basis for political cleavages. Tensions periodically have boiled over between the two main groups, which back ethnically based political parties and vote along ethnic lines.
The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has been largely pro-Indian since the mid-1950s, while the People’s National Congress (PNC) has been mainly Afro-Guyanese.
The PNC managed to gain power for much of the period since independence even though its Afro-Guyanese supporters were numerically inferior to the other large bloc, the East Indians. This was due to the fact that it managed to obtain support from the mixed population, which is culturally similar to the Afro-Guyanese, and from the Amerindians.
The PPP was formed in 1950 by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, an Indo-Guyanese, and his American-born wife Janet. It was socialist and at first genuinely multi-ethnic. One of the founders of the new party was a London-trained Afro-Guyanese, Forbes Burnham.
The PPP would prove too radical for the British, who still governed the colony; they suspected it of links with Communists. In 1955, the PPP split, and Burnham and his faction created the mainly Black PNC. Both parties became vehicles for the rival ethnic groups. The pro-PPP Hindi slogan “apan jaht” (vote for your own kind) became true for the whole society.
Washington, too, worried that Jagan was too left-wing and in 1961 President John Kennedy ordered the CIA to covertly finance a campaign of labour unrest and sabotage that led to race riots.
As independence drew near, London drafted a new constitution with a proportional representation electoral system favourable to the PNC. In the last pre-independence election in1964, a PNC coalition took office, and Burnham became prime minster. It was this government that led the country to independence two years later.
Back then as an aspiring journalist, I remember meeting and interviewing Cheddi Jagan in the autumn of 1965 when I was a student at McGill University. He was visiting Montreal and spoke at the university trying to make the case that he had been railroaded out of office as London was preparing to grant British Guiana independence.
Rigged elections would follow one after another after independence, as Burnham and his cronies – now calling themselves “socialists -- remained in power, driving the economy into the ground. A new constitution became law in 1980 and Burnham declared himself executive president. When he died in 1985, Guyana was the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.
His successor Desmond Hoyte began to revive the economy by courting foreign capitalists and privatizing many nationalized industries. He also opened up the political system to genuine competition.
In the October 1992 elections, Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party/Civic led a four-party coalition to victory against the ruling PNC. Despite his Marxist philosophy, Jagan promised to continue the free market economic reforms.
Jagan would serve as president until his death five years later. His wife Janet held the post until 1999, when she retired due to ill health; she died in 2009. The Jagans had married in Chicago in 1943, while Janet was a nursing student at Cook County Hospital, Cheddi a dental student at Northwestern University, and both already involved in radical politics.
Since 1992 the PPP/Civic has won five straight victories. Guyana’s current president, Donald Ramotar, an economist by training, has been in office since 2011, succeeding Bharrat Jagdeo. He has pledged to continue his predecessors’ policies, with their emphasis on improving social conditions and government services, especially in the fields of housing, education, health and energy security.
Guyana has experienced positive growth almost every year over the past decade. But it continues to suffer from widespread government corruption and the fragile protection of property rights under the weak rule of law.
What’s the answer to this trivia question: “Which Jewish woman other than Israel’s Golda Meir has ever governed a country?” It’s Guyana’s Janet Jagan.
Janet Rosenberg Jagan was a Chicago-born socialist politician who from 1997 to 1999 was president of Guyana, a republic on the northern coast of South America whose 795,000 people are mostly the descendants of African slaves and South Asian indentured labourers. How then did this come about?
Guyana, the former British Guiana, gained its independence from Great Britain in 1966. Its national motto is “One People, One Nation, One Destiny.” Rarely has a slogan reflected reality less.
Guyana is one of only three entities on the continent which are not Spanish or Portuguese. To its east is Suriname, the former Dutch Guiana, and further east is French Guiana, still under French sovereignty. The three Guianas are, in ethnicity, language and orientation, more part of the Caribbean than mainland South America.
Indo-Guyanese (or East Indians) constitute about 43 per cent of Guyana’s total population, followed by Afro-Guyanese at 30 per cent. People of mixed heritage are at 16 per cent and Amerindians (native American tribes) make up nine per cent. Most Indo-Guyanese practice Hinduism or Islam, while Blacks are mainly Christian.
In such societies, ethnic divisions easily become the basis for political cleavages. Tensions periodically have boiled over between the two main groups, which back ethnically based political parties and vote along ethnic lines.
The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has been largely pro-Indian since the mid-1950s, while the People’s National Congress (PNC) has been mainly Afro-Guyanese.
The PNC managed to gain power for much of the period since independence even though its Afro-Guyanese supporters were numerically inferior to the other large bloc, the East Indians. This was due to the fact that it managed to obtain support from the mixed population, which is culturally similar to the Afro-Guyanese, and from the Amerindians.
The PPP was formed in 1950 by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, an Indo-Guyanese, and his American-born wife Janet. It was socialist and at first genuinely multi-ethnic. One of the founders of the new party was a London-trained Afro-Guyanese, Forbes Burnham.
The PPP would prove too radical for the British, who still governed the colony; they suspected it of links with Communists. In 1955, the PPP split, and Burnham and his faction created the mainly Black PNC. Both parties became vehicles for the rival ethnic groups. The pro-PPP Hindi slogan “apan jaht” (vote for your own kind) became true for the whole society.
Washington, too, worried that Jagan was too left-wing and in 1961 President John Kennedy ordered the CIA to covertly finance a campaign of labour unrest and sabotage that led to race riots.
As independence drew near, London drafted a new constitution with a proportional representation electoral system favourable to the PNC. In the last pre-independence election in1964, a PNC coalition took office, and Burnham became prime minster. It was this government that led the country to independence two years later.
Back then as an aspiring journalist, I remember meeting and interviewing Cheddi Jagan in the autumn of 1965 when I was a student at McGill University. He was visiting Montreal and spoke at the university trying to make the case that he had been railroaded out of office as London was preparing to grant British Guiana independence.
Rigged elections would follow one after another after independence, as Burnham and his cronies – now calling themselves “socialists -- remained in power, driving the economy into the ground. A new constitution became law in 1980 and Burnham declared himself executive president. When he died in 1985, Guyana was the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.
His successor Desmond Hoyte began to revive the economy by courting foreign capitalists and privatizing many nationalized industries. He also opened up the political system to genuine competition.
In the October 1992 elections, Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party/Civic led a four-party coalition to victory against the ruling PNC. Despite his Marxist philosophy, Jagan promised to continue the free market economic reforms.
Jagan would serve as president until his death five years later. His wife Janet held the post until 1999, when she retired due to ill health; she died in 2009. The Jagans had married in Chicago in 1943, while Janet was a nursing student at Cook County Hospital, Cheddi a dental student at Northwestern University, and both already involved in radical politics.
Since 1992 the PPP/Civic has won five straight victories. Guyana’s current president, Donald Ramotar, an economist by training, has been in office since 2011, succeeding Bharrat Jagdeo. He has pledged to continue his predecessors’ policies, with their emphasis on improving social conditions and government services, especially in the fields of housing, education, health and energy security.
Guyana has experienced positive growth almost every year over the past decade. But it continues to suffer from widespread government corruption and the fragile protection of property rights under the weak rule of law.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
The Frozen Conflict Between Moldova and Transnistria
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
When it comes to eastern Europe, most of the world’s attention these days has been focused on the quarrel within Ukraine between those who want the nation to join the European Union and those who desire closer ties with Russia. But it’s not the only problem in that part of the former Soviet Union.
Just to the west of Ukraine lies Transnistria, also known as the Trans-Dniester Republic and (officially) the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, an unrecognized state that broke away from the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union in 1990.
Today it retains its independence thanks largely to the military support provided by the Russian 14th Army, which has been stationed there since the 1950s, when the whole area was part of the USSR. Russia also provides Transnistria with financial assistance.
The tiny breakaway republic of 4,163 square kilometres consists of a narrow strip of land located east of the Dnieper River (hence the name), plus the city of Bender and its surrounding localities located on the western side. The country borders Ukraine to its east.
In total, Transnistria comprises more than 500,000 people, with Russian and Ukrainian Slavs making up 59 per cent of the population and Moldovan Romanians 32 per cent. The capital, Tiraspol, a city of 203,000, is almost three-quarters Russian and Ukrainian.
Moldova itself has a checkered history. It is a largely Romanian-speaking entity, historically known as Bessarabia, which was part of Romania after the First World War until occupied by the Soviets in 1940 and reconstituted as the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR).
However, when Moscow created the Moldavian SSR, it added the mainly Russian-speaking Dniester region, formerly an autonomous part of Ukraine, to Romanian Bessarabia – sowing the seeds of future ethnic trouble.
In the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, it was clear that Moldova had an identity problem and that the inhabitants, coming from an array of ethnic backgrounds, were a long way from being a cohesive and friendly family.
The mainly Russian and Ukrainian population in the Dniester region grew alarmed over growing Moldovan nationalism and even the potential reunification of Moldova with Romania. A 1989 law which made Moldovan an official language added to the tension. The law made it compulsory for everyone who worked in a position where they had to communicate with customers to speak both languages; Russian and Ukrainian speakers saw this as discriminatory.
Given all this, the Trans-Dniester Republic proclaimed its secession from the Moldavian SSR in September 1990. A year later, when the USSR ceased to exist altogether, the Moldovian SSR declared its own independence, as did Transistria.
After World War II, Transnistria had been heavily industrialised and though it accounted for only 17 per cent of the old Soviet republic’s population, it was responsible for 40 per cent of its GDP. So the newly independent state of Moldova, whose 3.6 million people are themselves quite poor, attempted to regain the Trans-Dniester Republic, resulting a in a short war between March and July 1992.
With aid and equipment from the 14th Army, which still retains a 1,200-strong Russian military contingent in Transnistria, the region held off the Moldovans. A cease-fire led to the creation of a three-party Joint Control Commission, consisting of Russia, Moldova, and Transnistria, which supervises a demilitarized security zone on both sides of the Dniester River. It has been a “frozen conflict” ever since.
In September 2006 Transistria’s citizenry voted overwhelmingly to confirm their independence and the country has created its own constitution, flag, national anthem, and coat of arms, as well as a military, police, postal system, and currency. But Transnistria remains a de facto state, unrecognized by sovereign members of the international community -- including even Russia itself.
Transnistria is plagued by corruption, organised crime and smuggling. It has been accused of conducting illegal arms sales and of money laundering.
However, it remains an electoral democracy. Indeed, the current president, Yevgeny Shevchuk, an ethnic Ukrainian, won the December 2011 election by beating the incumbent, Igor Smirnov, and the Kremlin-backed speaker of the parliament, Anatoliy Kaminski.
Moldova is also home to 160,000 Gagauz, a Turkic Christian people. In 1994 the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, in Moldova’s south, was established for them. If Moldova decided to unite with Romania, Gagauzia would have the right of self-determination.
Moldova and Transnistria have engaged in talks in recent months, including a meeting between Moldovan Prime Minister Iurie Leanca and Shevchuk. Moldova announced that its parliament would consider removing travel restrictions on Transnistrians with Russian or Ukrainian passports.
Moldova last month signed a free trade pact and political association treaty with the European Union which offered the impoverished country’s 3.5 million citizens visa-free travel entry within the 28-nation bloc.
Russia has already shown its dissatisfaction by banning the import of Moldovan wine, Moldova’s major export, and it has delivered thinly veiled threats that Russia might stop supplying Moldova with natural gas.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Moldova recently, and said that the Obama administration would sponsor a Moldovan trade mission so it could develop a market for its wine in the United States.
It is unlikely that war will be renewed because Russian President Vladimir Putin would actively support Transnistria, while the Moldovans could expect little military aid from the United States and NATO.
When it comes to eastern Europe, most of the world’s attention these days has been focused on the quarrel within Ukraine between those who want the nation to join the European Union and those who desire closer ties with Russia. But it’s not the only problem in that part of the former Soviet Union.
Just to the west of Ukraine lies Transnistria, also known as the Trans-Dniester Republic and (officially) the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, an unrecognized state that broke away from the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union in 1990.
Today it retains its independence thanks largely to the military support provided by the Russian 14th Army, which has been stationed there since the 1950s, when the whole area was part of the USSR. Russia also provides Transnistria with financial assistance.
The tiny breakaway republic of 4,163 square kilometres consists of a narrow strip of land located east of the Dnieper River (hence the name), plus the city of Bender and its surrounding localities located on the western side. The country borders Ukraine to its east.
In total, Transnistria comprises more than 500,000 people, with Russian and Ukrainian Slavs making up 59 per cent of the population and Moldovan Romanians 32 per cent. The capital, Tiraspol, a city of 203,000, is almost three-quarters Russian and Ukrainian.
Moldova itself has a checkered history. It is a largely Romanian-speaking entity, historically known as Bessarabia, which was part of Romania after the First World War until occupied by the Soviets in 1940 and reconstituted as the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR).
However, when Moscow created the Moldavian SSR, it added the mainly Russian-speaking Dniester region, formerly an autonomous part of Ukraine, to Romanian Bessarabia – sowing the seeds of future ethnic trouble.
In the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, it was clear that Moldova had an identity problem and that the inhabitants, coming from an array of ethnic backgrounds, were a long way from being a cohesive and friendly family.
The mainly Russian and Ukrainian population in the Dniester region grew alarmed over growing Moldovan nationalism and even the potential reunification of Moldova with Romania. A 1989 law which made Moldovan an official language added to the tension. The law made it compulsory for everyone who worked in a position where they had to communicate with customers to speak both languages; Russian and Ukrainian speakers saw this as discriminatory.
Given all this, the Trans-Dniester Republic proclaimed its secession from the Moldavian SSR in September 1990. A year later, when the USSR ceased to exist altogether, the Moldovian SSR declared its own independence, as did Transistria.
After World War II, Transnistria had been heavily industrialised and though it accounted for only 17 per cent of the old Soviet republic’s population, it was responsible for 40 per cent of its GDP. So the newly independent state of Moldova, whose 3.6 million people are themselves quite poor, attempted to regain the Trans-Dniester Republic, resulting a in a short war between March and July 1992.
With aid and equipment from the 14th Army, which still retains a 1,200-strong Russian military contingent in Transnistria, the region held off the Moldovans. A cease-fire led to the creation of a three-party Joint Control Commission, consisting of Russia, Moldova, and Transnistria, which supervises a demilitarized security zone on both sides of the Dniester River. It has been a “frozen conflict” ever since.
In September 2006 Transistria’s citizenry voted overwhelmingly to confirm their independence and the country has created its own constitution, flag, national anthem, and coat of arms, as well as a military, police, postal system, and currency. But Transnistria remains a de facto state, unrecognized by sovereign members of the international community -- including even Russia itself.
Transnistria is plagued by corruption, organised crime and smuggling. It has been accused of conducting illegal arms sales and of money laundering.
However, it remains an electoral democracy. Indeed, the current president, Yevgeny Shevchuk, an ethnic Ukrainian, won the December 2011 election by beating the incumbent, Igor Smirnov, and the Kremlin-backed speaker of the parliament, Anatoliy Kaminski.
Moldova is also home to 160,000 Gagauz, a Turkic Christian people. In 1994 the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, in Moldova’s south, was established for them. If Moldova decided to unite with Romania, Gagauzia would have the right of self-determination.
Moldova and Transnistria have engaged in talks in recent months, including a meeting between Moldovan Prime Minister Iurie Leanca and Shevchuk. Moldova announced that its parliament would consider removing travel restrictions on Transnistrians with Russian or Ukrainian passports.
Moldova last month signed a free trade pact and political association treaty with the European Union which offered the impoverished country’s 3.5 million citizens visa-free travel entry within the 28-nation bloc.
Russia has already shown its dissatisfaction by banning the import of Moldovan wine, Moldova’s major export, and it has delivered thinly veiled threats that Russia might stop supplying Moldova with natural gas.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Moldova recently, and said that the Obama administration would sponsor a Moldovan trade mission so it could develop a market for its wine in the United States.
It is unlikely that war will be renewed because Russian President Vladimir Putin would actively support Transnistria, while the Moldovans could expect little military aid from the United States and NATO.
Monday, December 16, 2013
The Andean Nations of South America Have Large Native Populations
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Along the mountainous western spine of South America, in regions once mainly part of the Inca Empire, there are a number of countries with significant Amerindian populations who speak native languages. And it has given these nations a decidedly left-wing cast.
Quechua speakers make up a large part of the population of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. The language spoken by some 10 million people in South America, it was the one used by the Incas. With some five million speakers in Paraguay, Bolivia, and elsewhere, Guarani is another major South American language.
A quarter of Ecuador’s population of 15.7 million is native, while another 65 per cent is mestizo, having mixed European and indigenous ancestry. Almost all of the indigenous population are Quechuas living in the valleys of the Sierra region.
Indigenous peoples in Peru make up about 45 per cent of the total population of 30 million, with most living in the Andes mountains. There are a large number of distinct ethnic groups, with about 3.5 million speaking Quechua. Mestizos account for another 37 per cent.
Amerindians are the majority ethnic group in Bolivia, accounting for 62 per cent of the population of 10.5 million. An additional 30 per cent is mestizo. Here too the predominant native language is Quecha. Along with Aymara, Guarani, and Spanish, it is an official language of Bolivia.
Paraguay was established in colonial times as a refuge for native peoples. In 1609 the Catholic Jesuit Order created the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay, which lasted from 1609 until 1767, to prevent the exploitation of the Indian peoples. By 1732 there were 30 Guarani missions in the colony; however the Jesuits were expelled by the Spanish crown in 1767 and the missions rapidly declined.
Today, while only a small per cent of Paraguay’s population is fully indigenous, with most of them living in the remote Gran Chaco region, almost all of the country’s other 6.8 million citizens are partially of native heritage. Along with Spanish, Guarani is one of the official languages of Paraguay, spoken by the majority of the population.
These countries all now have organizations dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights of indigenous peoples.
The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), formed in 1986, has pursued social change using a wide range of tactics. In 2005, CONAIE participated in an uprising which ousted President Lucio Gutierrez, whom they accused of betraying native peoples on behalf of foreign corporations. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon represents people in the Amazon region of the country.
The Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP), comprising 57 organizations, is the primary indigenous rights movement in Peru. The Movement in the Amazon for Tribal Subsistence and Economic Sustainability (MATSES), is another rights organization that is working for the cultural survival of indigenous people.
In 2009, opposition to oil development in the Amazon region, led by AIDESEP, led to months of civil disobedience, including the closing down of roads and rivers to traffic. The protestors feared the toll it would take on the environment. Intervention by the military resulted in dozens killed.
Then president Alan Garcia charged AIDESEP’s leader, Alberto Pizango, with sedition and called the organization part of an “international conspiracy” backed by Bolivia and Venezuela to destabilize his regime.
Bolivian social movements developed primarily due to the failure of the political party system. These movements emanated in conflicts against privatisation of vital resources such as gas and water, and they coalesced into a larger struggle for justice by adopting a radical reform agenda.
The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia, founded in 1982, is now the representative umbrella organization of 34 native groups in the country. Since 1990 it has organized major marches demanding indigenous autonomy, territorial protection, more seats in the national legislature, and indigenous control over natural resources in their territories.
Paraguay has two main native groups, the Coordination of Indigenous Peoples of the Cuenca of Pilcomayo River, and the Native League for Autonomy, Justice, and Ethics. The indigenous communities, who live in poverty and face discrimination, have been chased from their lands as a result of deforestation for livestock and agriculture.
Some groups have turned to violence in reaction to the poverty and oppression suffered at the hands of dictators and economic oligarchies.
Peru, in particular, endured a decades-long insurrection by a Maoist guerrilla movement based mainly in the native-populated rural highlands, known as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), which became notorious for its use of terror.
Formed in the 1970s in the impoverished region of Ayacucho by Abimael Guzman, its militants fought a vicious war against the ethnically Spanish-dominated regimes in Lima. By the time of Guzman’s capture in 1992, at least 70,000 people had died, and hundreds of thousands displaced.
A smaller group, the Cuban-inspired Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, was also active at the time. Named for the last indigenous leader of the Incas, it was led by Victor Campos and its stated goals were to establish a socialist and anti-imperialist state. In December 1996, fourteen of its members occupied the Japanese Ambassador's residence in Lima, holding 72 hostages for over four months until killed by the military.
In Paraguay, the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) is a Marxist rebel group that has recently stepped up attacks in areas where the guerrillas are thought to draw support from impoverished farmers chafing at the expansion of large-scale soybean farms and cattle ranches. The group, which adopted its current name in 2008, proposes the destruction of “imperial-bourgeois democracy.”
It’s an uphill road, but Amerindian peoples are making progress. Bolivia and Peru have even in recent years elected presidents of indigenous heritage.
Along the mountainous western spine of South America, in regions once mainly part of the Inca Empire, there are a number of countries with significant Amerindian populations who speak native languages. And it has given these nations a decidedly left-wing cast.
Quechua speakers make up a large part of the population of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. The language spoken by some 10 million people in South America, it was the one used by the Incas. With some five million speakers in Paraguay, Bolivia, and elsewhere, Guarani is another major South American language.
A quarter of Ecuador’s population of 15.7 million is native, while another 65 per cent is mestizo, having mixed European and indigenous ancestry. Almost all of the indigenous population are Quechuas living in the valleys of the Sierra region.
Indigenous peoples in Peru make up about 45 per cent of the total population of 30 million, with most living in the Andes mountains. There are a large number of distinct ethnic groups, with about 3.5 million speaking Quechua. Mestizos account for another 37 per cent.
Amerindians are the majority ethnic group in Bolivia, accounting for 62 per cent of the population of 10.5 million. An additional 30 per cent is mestizo. Here too the predominant native language is Quecha. Along with Aymara, Guarani, and Spanish, it is an official language of Bolivia.
Paraguay was established in colonial times as a refuge for native peoples. In 1609 the Catholic Jesuit Order created the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay, which lasted from 1609 until 1767, to prevent the exploitation of the Indian peoples. By 1732 there were 30 Guarani missions in the colony; however the Jesuits were expelled by the Spanish crown in 1767 and the missions rapidly declined.
Today, while only a small per cent of Paraguay’s population is fully indigenous, with most of them living in the remote Gran Chaco region, almost all of the country’s other 6.8 million citizens are partially of native heritage. Along with Spanish, Guarani is one of the official languages of Paraguay, spoken by the majority of the population.
These countries all now have organizations dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights of indigenous peoples.
The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), formed in 1986, has pursued social change using a wide range of tactics. In 2005, CONAIE participated in an uprising which ousted President Lucio Gutierrez, whom they accused of betraying native peoples on behalf of foreign corporations. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon represents people in the Amazon region of the country.
The Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP), comprising 57 organizations, is the primary indigenous rights movement in Peru. The Movement in the Amazon for Tribal Subsistence and Economic Sustainability (MATSES), is another rights organization that is working for the cultural survival of indigenous people.
In 2009, opposition to oil development in the Amazon region, led by AIDESEP, led to months of civil disobedience, including the closing down of roads and rivers to traffic. The protestors feared the toll it would take on the environment. Intervention by the military resulted in dozens killed.
Then president Alan Garcia charged AIDESEP’s leader, Alberto Pizango, with sedition and called the organization part of an “international conspiracy” backed by Bolivia and Venezuela to destabilize his regime.
Bolivian social movements developed primarily due to the failure of the political party system. These movements emanated in conflicts against privatisation of vital resources such as gas and water, and they coalesced into a larger struggle for justice by adopting a radical reform agenda.
The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia, founded in 1982, is now the representative umbrella organization of 34 native groups in the country. Since 1990 it has organized major marches demanding indigenous autonomy, territorial protection, more seats in the national legislature, and indigenous control over natural resources in their territories.
Paraguay has two main native groups, the Coordination of Indigenous Peoples of the Cuenca of Pilcomayo River, and the Native League for Autonomy, Justice, and Ethics. The indigenous communities, who live in poverty and face discrimination, have been chased from their lands as a result of deforestation for livestock and agriculture.
Some groups have turned to violence in reaction to the poverty and oppression suffered at the hands of dictators and economic oligarchies.
Peru, in particular, endured a decades-long insurrection by a Maoist guerrilla movement based mainly in the native-populated rural highlands, known as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), which became notorious for its use of terror.
Formed in the 1970s in the impoverished region of Ayacucho by Abimael Guzman, its militants fought a vicious war against the ethnically Spanish-dominated regimes in Lima. By the time of Guzman’s capture in 1992, at least 70,000 people had died, and hundreds of thousands displaced.
A smaller group, the Cuban-inspired Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, was also active at the time. Named for the last indigenous leader of the Incas, it was led by Victor Campos and its stated goals were to establish a socialist and anti-imperialist state. In December 1996, fourteen of its members occupied the Japanese Ambassador's residence in Lima, holding 72 hostages for over four months until killed by the military.
In Paraguay, the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) is a Marxist rebel group that has recently stepped up attacks in areas where the guerrillas are thought to draw support from impoverished farmers chafing at the expansion of large-scale soybean farms and cattle ranches. The group, which adopted its current name in 2008, proposes the destruction of “imperial-bourgeois democracy.”
It’s an uphill road, but Amerindian peoples are making progress. Bolivia and Peru have even in recent years elected presidents of indigenous heritage.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Mandela's South Africa and the Middle East
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
As the world mourns the death of a truly great man, Nelson Mandela, it is interesting to look back on his, and South Africa’s, relationship with Israel and the Arab world.
A disproportionate number of white South Africans who opposed apartheid and aided the African National Congress during the years of white-minority rule were Jewish, and Nelson Mandela always made sure the world knew it.
In his 1994 autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” Mandela said “I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice.”
But he also sometimes viewed Israel as a colonial power, and Jewish groups criticized Mandela for praising the Palestine Liberation Organization just a month after he was freed in 1990. The PLO had built a close relationship with the ANC and for some years had helped train members of its military wing. One of Mandela’s first acts as a free man was to visit Yasser Arafat.
After all, following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, an increasingly isolated Israel developed close ties with the apartheid regime in Pretoria. By the mid-1970s, an economic and military alliance between Israel and South Africa was on the ascendancy.
In April 1976 South African Prime Minister John Vorster paid a state visit, meeting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The two countries even cooperated in the development of nuclear technology. By the late 1980s Israel was virtually alone among countries that still maintained strong, even strategic relations with apartheid South Africa. Obviously, it would have been asking too much of even a Nelson Mandela to ignore all this.
Libya had also provided funding and support, as well as military training, to the ANC. Mandela, in turn, said he considered Moammar Gadhafi a friend and made two official visits to the country as president of South Africa, in 1994 and 1997.
Mandela chided those who expressed opposition to these ties by declaring that they made the mistake of assuming that “their enemies should be our enemies.”
However in October 1999, after he had stepped down as president, Mandela came to Israel, visited theYad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, and met with newly elected prime minister Ehud Barak. But he reiterated his unwavering opposition to Israeli control of Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon.
In recent years, under presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s relationship with Israel has been decidedly cool, as Pretoria sees itself as sharing an affinity with the Palestinians and other Third World peoples. Just last month, South Africa’s Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said that South African ministers are not visiting Israel out of solidarity with the Palestinians.
“The struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle," she told an audience of trade unionists.
“The last time I saw a map of Palestine, I couldn’t sleep,” Nkoana-Mashabane added, explaining that the map “is just dots, smaller than those of the homelands, and that broke my heart.” The “homelands,” also called Bantustans, were territories set aside for Black South Africans in apartheid-era South Africa.
Iran’s nuclear quest, however, did not bother her when she met with Iran’s visiting Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and praised Iran for its “for human rights."
None of this bodes well as the country faces a future without the stabilizing inspiration of Nelson Mandela.
As the world mourns the death of a truly great man, Nelson Mandela, it is interesting to look back on his, and South Africa’s, relationship with Israel and the Arab world.
A disproportionate number of white South Africans who opposed apartheid and aided the African National Congress during the years of white-minority rule were Jewish, and Nelson Mandela always made sure the world knew it.
In his 1994 autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” Mandela said “I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice.”
But he also sometimes viewed Israel as a colonial power, and Jewish groups criticized Mandela for praising the Palestine Liberation Organization just a month after he was freed in 1990. The PLO had built a close relationship with the ANC and for some years had helped train members of its military wing. One of Mandela’s first acts as a free man was to visit Yasser Arafat.
After all, following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, an increasingly isolated Israel developed close ties with the apartheid regime in Pretoria. By the mid-1970s, an economic and military alliance between Israel and South Africa was on the ascendancy.
In April 1976 South African Prime Minister John Vorster paid a state visit, meeting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The two countries even cooperated in the development of nuclear technology. By the late 1980s Israel was virtually alone among countries that still maintained strong, even strategic relations with apartheid South Africa. Obviously, it would have been asking too much of even a Nelson Mandela to ignore all this.
Libya had also provided funding and support, as well as military training, to the ANC. Mandela, in turn, said he considered Moammar Gadhafi a friend and made two official visits to the country as president of South Africa, in 1994 and 1997.
Mandela chided those who expressed opposition to these ties by declaring that they made the mistake of assuming that “their enemies should be our enemies.”
However in October 1999, after he had stepped down as president, Mandela came to Israel, visited theYad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, and met with newly elected prime minister Ehud Barak. But he reiterated his unwavering opposition to Israeli control of Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon.
In recent years, under presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s relationship with Israel has been decidedly cool, as Pretoria sees itself as sharing an affinity with the Palestinians and other Third World peoples. Just last month, South Africa’s Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said that South African ministers are not visiting Israel out of solidarity with the Palestinians.
“The struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle," she told an audience of trade unionists.
“The last time I saw a map of Palestine, I couldn’t sleep,” Nkoana-Mashabane added, explaining that the map “is just dots, smaller than those of the homelands, and that broke my heart.” The “homelands,” also called Bantustans, were territories set aside for Black South Africans in apartheid-era South Africa.
Iran’s nuclear quest, however, did not bother her when she met with Iran’s visiting Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and praised Iran for its “for human rights."
None of this bodes well as the country faces a future without the stabilizing inspiration of Nelson Mandela.
Monday, December 09, 2013
For the Past 35 Years, Iran Has Been the World's Major Problem
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
As the year draws to a close, the greater Middle East, that immense region from Morocco in the west to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east, remains to most volatile part of the world. And American presidents have for the past 35 years seemingly been clueless about the region.
In 1979, Jimmy Carter, inept and indecisive, abandoned the Shah of Iran and allowed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to outfox and run circles around him. His botched attempt to rescue the American embassy hostages only magnified his failures. Those who want to get a fuller account of how this transpired should watch the first installment of an excellent three part BBC documentary on Iran and the West, “The Man Who Changed the World,” available on You Tube.
This regime change ushered in a new zeitgeist in the world, and especially in the Middle East. By 1982 the Islamic Republic was sowing terror around the region and elsewhere, including the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut by its protégé Hezbollah in 1983. It has gone from strength to strength.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the decaying Soviet empire, because in his tunnel vision “religion” was “good,” Communism “bad.” Of course the Islamist fighters later morphed into the Taliban and America is still paying the price.
Bill Clinton was, let us say, “busy” as al-Qaeda bombed two American embassies in east Africa in 1998, killed 19 U.S. servicemen in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in 1996, and destroyed the USS Cole in Aden in 2000. By the time he left office, al-Qaeda was no doubt planning the attacks of 9/11.
George Bush fought the Taliban in Afghanistan and Baathist Iraq “on the cheap,” and knowing nothing about the culture of either country, declared them both safe for democracy after American forces “beat” Saddam and Mullah Omar.
Actually, both wars had barely begun. The real victor in the Iraq war when the Americans finally left was actually Iran, as the Baghdad Shi’a regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki now is little more than an Iranian vassal.
As for Afghanistan, the Pashtun Khan Hamid Harzai, chief of the Popalzai tribe – known to us as the “president of Afghanistan” -- is negotiating with fellow Pashtuns in the Taliban, who are mostly from the rival Ghilzai tribe, in order to save his own neck once western forces depart the country. Already there are sources claiming that he will reintroduce stoning as a punishment for adultery in the country’s penal code. How long before the Taliban regains control over large parts of the country?
Barack Obama has been giving away the store entirely. He looked away when Iranians protested in 2009 against a fixed election; only reluctantly got involved in the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya in 2011, and did nothing when Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in Syria earlier this year.
Obama has now declared a great diplomatic victory in the attempt to prevent the Iranians from developing a nuclear bomb. The “Plan of Action” signed by Iran, the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union declares that Tehran can no longer enrich uranium to 20 per cent and must neutralize its existing stockpiles of 20 per cent enriched uranium. It also cannot increase its stockpiles of 3.5 per cent enriched uranium.
The sanctions relief, some $7 billion, is relatively limited and theoretically reversible if the Iranians break their promises. All the main sanctions will stay in place until a final agreement has been signed -- if it will be -- six months from now.
But can Iran be trusted? Its record is far from reassuring. Its leadership has not given up on wanting to wipe out what its leaders have called the “cancerous Zionist entity,” Israel. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini recently remarked that “Zionist officials cannot be called humans, they are like animals, some of them.” The Israeli regime “is doomed to failure and annihilation,” he added.
In any case, hard-liners in Iran think Tehran has already made too many concessions and think all sanctions should be lifted. And Khameini is himself leaving his options open and can always ask them to step in if he doesn’t like the way the talks develop.
We seem to have come full circle from 1979– once again Iran is the major problem, as it has been for the last six U.S. presidents.
As the year draws to a close, the greater Middle East, that immense region from Morocco in the west to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east, remains to most volatile part of the world. And American presidents have for the past 35 years seemingly been clueless about the region.
In 1979, Jimmy Carter, inept and indecisive, abandoned the Shah of Iran and allowed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to outfox and run circles around him. His botched attempt to rescue the American embassy hostages only magnified his failures. Those who want to get a fuller account of how this transpired should watch the first installment of an excellent three part BBC documentary on Iran and the West, “The Man Who Changed the World,” available on You Tube.
This regime change ushered in a new zeitgeist in the world, and especially in the Middle East. By 1982 the Islamic Republic was sowing terror around the region and elsewhere, including the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut by its protégé Hezbollah in 1983. It has gone from strength to strength.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the decaying Soviet empire, because in his tunnel vision “religion” was “good,” Communism “bad.” Of course the Islamist fighters later morphed into the Taliban and America is still paying the price.
Bill Clinton was, let us say, “busy” as al-Qaeda bombed two American embassies in east Africa in 1998, killed 19 U.S. servicemen in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in 1996, and destroyed the USS Cole in Aden in 2000. By the time he left office, al-Qaeda was no doubt planning the attacks of 9/11.
George Bush fought the Taliban in Afghanistan and Baathist Iraq “on the cheap,” and knowing nothing about the culture of either country, declared them both safe for democracy after American forces “beat” Saddam and Mullah Omar.
Actually, both wars had barely begun. The real victor in the Iraq war when the Americans finally left was actually Iran, as the Baghdad Shi’a regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki now is little more than an Iranian vassal.
As for Afghanistan, the Pashtun Khan Hamid Harzai, chief of the Popalzai tribe – known to us as the “president of Afghanistan” -- is negotiating with fellow Pashtuns in the Taliban, who are mostly from the rival Ghilzai tribe, in order to save his own neck once western forces depart the country. Already there are sources claiming that he will reintroduce stoning as a punishment for adultery in the country’s penal code. How long before the Taliban regains control over large parts of the country?
Barack Obama has been giving away the store entirely. He looked away when Iranians protested in 2009 against a fixed election; only reluctantly got involved in the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya in 2011, and did nothing when Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in Syria earlier this year.
Obama has now declared a great diplomatic victory in the attempt to prevent the Iranians from developing a nuclear bomb. The “Plan of Action” signed by Iran, the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union declares that Tehran can no longer enrich uranium to 20 per cent and must neutralize its existing stockpiles of 20 per cent enriched uranium. It also cannot increase its stockpiles of 3.5 per cent enriched uranium.
The sanctions relief, some $7 billion, is relatively limited and theoretically reversible if the Iranians break their promises. All the main sanctions will stay in place until a final agreement has been signed -- if it will be -- six months from now.
But can Iran be trusted? Its record is far from reassuring. Its leadership has not given up on wanting to wipe out what its leaders have called the “cancerous Zionist entity,” Israel. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini recently remarked that “Zionist officials cannot be called humans, they are like animals, some of them.” The Israeli regime “is doomed to failure and annihilation,” he added.
In any case, hard-liners in Iran think Tehran has already made too many concessions and think all sanctions should be lifted. And Khameini is himself leaving his options open and can always ask them to step in if he doesn’t like the way the talks develop.
We seem to have come full circle from 1979– once again Iran is the major problem, as it has been for the last six U.S. presidents.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Burma's Ethnic, Religious Divisions Make Democracy Difficult
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
Burma, or Myanmar – the country is known by both names – has for decades been one of the most oppressive states in Asia, under military rule between 1962 and 2010. Part of the reason stems from its many ethnic divisions, which has made it difficult to establish democracy in this southeast Asian nation.
Burma consists of seven regions populated chiefly by the Burmans, or Bamar, who make up two-thirds of the population of 60 million; and seven states inhabited mainly by indigenous ethnic minorities, including the Shan, Kayah, Mon, Kayin, Rakhine, Chin and Kachin.
When the Shan, Chin and Kachin minorities accepted a semi-federal constitutional framework in 1947, as Burma was about to emerge from British colonial rule, the Bamar majority guaranteed them autonomy. But the other minorities were not invited, and Kayin observers rejected the outcome.
Following the failure of these accords, the ethnic policy of the Bamar-dominated central government has alternated between dialogue and violent counter-insurgency. Hostility to the government’s Burmanization policies contributed to this alienation on the part of the minorities.
Since coming to power, following the country’s first elections after decades of military rule in 2010, President Thein Sein has said that peace with minority groups is a priority, and the government has signed individual cease-fires with many ethnic armed groups. It has also freed more than 1,100 political prisoners since the reforms began.
But leaders of ethnic minorities remain wary, pointing to the military’s continuing campaigns against ethnic armies in Kachin, Shan and other states. Fighting between the Kachin Independence Army and government forces since June 2011 has displaced more than 100,000 Kachins, with many seeking refuge in Yunnan Province, in neighbouring China.
Even Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and a revered advocate of democratic government, who was released from years of house arrest in 2010, has been less than forthcoming when it comes to the rights of ethnic minorities.
“The ethnic nationalities want to set up a federal system,” David Tarkapaw of the United Nationalities Federal Council, an umbrella organization representing 11 ethnic armed groups, asserted recently, and this will require “agreement on some basic changes to the constitution” that came into force in 2008.
Meanwhile, another serious issue has come to the fore, involving the country’s small Muslim minority, who consist of somewhere between four and eight per cent of the population.
This is a legacy of the colonial past, when Burma was part of the British Indian Empire. Indians, many of them Muslims, came as civil servants and soldiers, stirring resentment among Burmese Buddhists. In recent months radical monks have built on those historic grievances, stating that Muslims are having more children than Buddhists and could dilute the country’s Buddhist character.
In recent months, Buddhist mobs have killed more than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people from their homes. In March, a three-day rampage through Muslim neighborhoods in the central city of Meikhtila left 43 people dead. In August, a mob in the city attacked Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations’ special human rights rapporteur in Burma.
In Lashio, a city in the northern Shan state, mobs set fire to a Muslim school and orphanage in May.
A growing Buddhist movement known as “969” is campaigning for a boycott of Muslim products and businesses and a ban on interfaith marriages. “If we are weak,” Ashin Wirathu, the spiritual leader of the radical movement has declared, “our land will become Muslim.”
The suggestion that Muslims leave the country has been a common refrain during the violence, which bewilders many Muslims who have always considered themselves Burmese.
There is particular disdain for a group of about one million stateless Muslims, who call themselves Rohingya, some of whom migrated from neighbouring Bangladesh. The local authorities in the western state of Rakhine, where most live, have imposed a two-child limit for Muslim Rohingya families, a policy that does not apply to Buddhists. Human Rights Watch has accused the authorities of fomenting an organized campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya.
This has also tarnished the image of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National League for Democracy (NLD), who has been criticized for failing to speak out strongly in defense of these stigmatized Muslims.
Asked at a news conference in 2012 whether the Rohingya should be given citizenship, she equivocated. “We have to be very clear about what the laws of citizenship are and who are entitled to them,” she responded.
Clearly, if Burma is to successfully continue its transition to democracy – at the moment, the military still has a major say in government -- critical problems of ethnic discord remain to be properly managed and resolved. And the NLD needs to realize that ethnic relations must be accorded a full place alongside democratization.
Burma, or Myanmar – the country is known by both names – has for decades been one of the most oppressive states in Asia, under military rule between 1962 and 2010. Part of the reason stems from its many ethnic divisions, which has made it difficult to establish democracy in this southeast Asian nation.
Burma consists of seven regions populated chiefly by the Burmans, or Bamar, who make up two-thirds of the population of 60 million; and seven states inhabited mainly by indigenous ethnic minorities, including the Shan, Kayah, Mon, Kayin, Rakhine, Chin and Kachin.
When the Shan, Chin and Kachin minorities accepted a semi-federal constitutional framework in 1947, as Burma was about to emerge from British colonial rule, the Bamar majority guaranteed them autonomy. But the other minorities were not invited, and Kayin observers rejected the outcome.
Following the failure of these accords, the ethnic policy of the Bamar-dominated central government has alternated between dialogue and violent counter-insurgency. Hostility to the government’s Burmanization policies contributed to this alienation on the part of the minorities.
Since coming to power, following the country’s first elections after decades of military rule in 2010, President Thein Sein has said that peace with minority groups is a priority, and the government has signed individual cease-fires with many ethnic armed groups. It has also freed more than 1,100 political prisoners since the reforms began.
But leaders of ethnic minorities remain wary, pointing to the military’s continuing campaigns against ethnic armies in Kachin, Shan and other states. Fighting between the Kachin Independence Army and government forces since June 2011 has displaced more than 100,000 Kachins, with many seeking refuge in Yunnan Province, in neighbouring China.
Even Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and a revered advocate of democratic government, who was released from years of house arrest in 2010, has been less than forthcoming when it comes to the rights of ethnic minorities.
“The ethnic nationalities want to set up a federal system,” David Tarkapaw of the United Nationalities Federal Council, an umbrella organization representing 11 ethnic armed groups, asserted recently, and this will require “agreement on some basic changes to the constitution” that came into force in 2008.
Meanwhile, another serious issue has come to the fore, involving the country’s small Muslim minority, who consist of somewhere between four and eight per cent of the population.
This is a legacy of the colonial past, when Burma was part of the British Indian Empire. Indians, many of them Muslims, came as civil servants and soldiers, stirring resentment among Burmese Buddhists. In recent months radical monks have built on those historic grievances, stating that Muslims are having more children than Buddhists and could dilute the country’s Buddhist character.
In recent months, Buddhist mobs have killed more than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people from their homes. In March, a three-day rampage through Muslim neighborhoods in the central city of Meikhtila left 43 people dead. In August, a mob in the city attacked Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations’ special human rights rapporteur in Burma.
In Lashio, a city in the northern Shan state, mobs set fire to a Muslim school and orphanage in May.
A growing Buddhist movement known as “969” is campaigning for a boycott of Muslim products and businesses and a ban on interfaith marriages. “If we are weak,” Ashin Wirathu, the spiritual leader of the radical movement has declared, “our land will become Muslim.”
The suggestion that Muslims leave the country has been a common refrain during the violence, which bewilders many Muslims who have always considered themselves Burmese.
There is particular disdain for a group of about one million stateless Muslims, who call themselves Rohingya, some of whom migrated from neighbouring Bangladesh. The local authorities in the western state of Rakhine, where most live, have imposed a two-child limit for Muslim Rohingya families, a policy that does not apply to Buddhists. Human Rights Watch has accused the authorities of fomenting an organized campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya.
This has also tarnished the image of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National League for Democracy (NLD), who has been criticized for failing to speak out strongly in defense of these stigmatized Muslims.
Asked at a news conference in 2012 whether the Rohingya should be given citizenship, she equivocated. “We have to be very clear about what the laws of citizenship are and who are entitled to them,” she responded.
Clearly, if Burma is to successfully continue its transition to democracy – at the moment, the military still has a major say in government -- critical problems of ethnic discord remain to be properly managed and resolved. And the NLD needs to realize that ethnic relations must be accorded a full place alongside democratization.
Monday, December 02, 2013
Rwanda Has Been Rewriting its History Since the 1994 Genocide
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Pioneer Journal
In 2010 Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda since 2000 and candidate of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), won a second term with 93 per cent of the vote, in an election marred by repression, murder, and lack of credible competition.
Some potential opponents were disqualified or failed to enter the race, because they would have been charged with “divisionism.” What is that all about? It’s part of an attempt to rewrite the country’s bloody history.
On April 6, 1994 President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda was returning from a summit in Tanzania when a surface-to-air missile shot his plane out of the sky over Rwanda's capital city of Kigali.
Habyarimana, a Hutu, had excluded all minority Tutsis from participating in government. That changed on August 3, 1993 when Habyarimana signed the Arusha Accords, which would have weakened the Hutu hold on Rwanda. Eight months later he was dead.
Hutu extremists in the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development blamed the Tutsis for the assassination. From April to July of 1994, upwards of perhaps one million Tutsi were massacred by Hutu-led gangs and the country’s army. It ended when Tutsi exiles in Uganda, organized in the RPF, invaded the country, marched into the capital of Kigali, and defeated the perpetrators of the genocide.
Some two million of the genocidaires, known as the Interahamwe, fled into the vast rain forests of the eastern Congo, from where they have periodically launched attacks into Rwanda.
In Rwanda, Hutu nationalists had come to power in the “Hutu rebellion” of 1959–1962, during the last years of Belgian colonial rule. They overthrew the traditional Tutsi kingdom and its ruling class, resulting in the death of around 20,000 Tutsi and the exile of another 200,000 to neighboring countries. Independence from Belgium in 1962 marked the establishment of a Hutu-led Rwandan government.
The RPF was formed in 1985 by Tutsi nationalist exiles who demanded the right to return to their homeland. They attacked Rwanda from neighboring Uganda in 1990; though the invasion failed, Hutu fear of losing power paved the way for mass murder four years later. Pro-genocide propaganda ran in newspapers, dominated public gatherings, and was broadcast across the country.
Since 1994, the RPF-led government has been dominated by a small clique of anglophone Tutsi who had been in exile in Uganda, and who blamed Belgium and France for having supported Hutu rule. (Although never ruled by Britain, Rwanda joined the Commonwealth in 2009.) They have made “divisionism” and references to “Hutu” and Tutsi” in public discourse a crime, as part of its “unification” policies designed to create a national identity. Offenders can be prosecuted, newspapers shut down, and political parties banned.
The government insists that all of the country’s citizens are simply “Rwandans” and has had the history books rewritten to stress the “harmony” of its pre-colonial past. This form of what the sociologist Stanley Cohen, in his book “States of Denial,” refers to as “social amnesia,” is an attempt to allow the country to separate itself from its horrific past.
This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that politically constructed identities have been imposed on diverse societies.
According to this new historical discourse, prior to the arrival of, first the German, then Belgian, colonialists, the labels “Hutu” and “Tutsi” referred to wealth and social status, not “essentialist” ethnic groups, and hence they were fluid. Insofar as there was inequality between the royal court and ordinary Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi were equally victims of subjugation.
It was the Europeans, it is now claimed, who introduced the “Hamitic hypothesis” -- the idea that the Tutsi were actually immigrants to Rwanda from Ethiopia, whereas the “Bantu” Hutu were indigenous to the region. The Europeans thus elevated the Tutsi as the supposedly “superior race,” breeding resentment among the Hutu. They were the creators of ethnic dissension.
After 1934, the Belgian government introduced an identity card system, which identified each person as either a Hutu, Tutsi or Twa (a very minor ethnic group).
And by having defined the Tutsi as more recent arrivals, the colonialists also allowed Hutu nationalists to argue that the country should be restored to its “original” owners. With independence, Tutsi could thus be portrayed as a foreign minority who were enemies of the country.
Hence it was necessary to eliminate the colonial discourse about ethnic identity -- which, by happy coincidence, also obscures the predominance of the minority Tutsi, now some 15 per cent of Rwanda’s 12 million people, and allows them to run the state without official reference to that fact, even though everyone knows it!
In 2010 Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda since 2000 and candidate of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), won a second term with 93 per cent of the vote, in an election marred by repression, murder, and lack of credible competition.
Some potential opponents were disqualified or failed to enter the race, because they would have been charged with “divisionism.” What is that all about? It’s part of an attempt to rewrite the country’s bloody history.
On April 6, 1994 President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda was returning from a summit in Tanzania when a surface-to-air missile shot his plane out of the sky over Rwanda's capital city of Kigali.
Habyarimana, a Hutu, had excluded all minority Tutsis from participating in government. That changed on August 3, 1993 when Habyarimana signed the Arusha Accords, which would have weakened the Hutu hold on Rwanda. Eight months later he was dead.
Hutu extremists in the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development blamed the Tutsis for the assassination. From April to July of 1994, upwards of perhaps one million Tutsi were massacred by Hutu-led gangs and the country’s army. It ended when Tutsi exiles in Uganda, organized in the RPF, invaded the country, marched into the capital of Kigali, and defeated the perpetrators of the genocide.
Some two million of the genocidaires, known as the Interahamwe, fled into the vast rain forests of the eastern Congo, from where they have periodically launched attacks into Rwanda.
In Rwanda, Hutu nationalists had come to power in the “Hutu rebellion” of 1959–1962, during the last years of Belgian colonial rule. They overthrew the traditional Tutsi kingdom and its ruling class, resulting in the death of around 20,000 Tutsi and the exile of another 200,000 to neighboring countries. Independence from Belgium in 1962 marked the establishment of a Hutu-led Rwandan government.
The RPF was formed in 1985 by Tutsi nationalist exiles who demanded the right to return to their homeland. They attacked Rwanda from neighboring Uganda in 1990; though the invasion failed, Hutu fear of losing power paved the way for mass murder four years later. Pro-genocide propaganda ran in newspapers, dominated public gatherings, and was broadcast across the country.
Since 1994, the RPF-led government has been dominated by a small clique of anglophone Tutsi who had been in exile in Uganda, and who blamed Belgium and France for having supported Hutu rule. (Although never ruled by Britain, Rwanda joined the Commonwealth in 2009.) They have made “divisionism” and references to “Hutu” and Tutsi” in public discourse a crime, as part of its “unification” policies designed to create a national identity. Offenders can be prosecuted, newspapers shut down, and political parties banned.
The government insists that all of the country’s citizens are simply “Rwandans” and has had the history books rewritten to stress the “harmony” of its pre-colonial past. This form of what the sociologist Stanley Cohen, in his book “States of Denial,” refers to as “social amnesia,” is an attempt to allow the country to separate itself from its horrific past.
This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that politically constructed identities have been imposed on diverse societies.
According to this new historical discourse, prior to the arrival of, first the German, then Belgian, colonialists, the labels “Hutu” and “Tutsi” referred to wealth and social status, not “essentialist” ethnic groups, and hence they were fluid. Insofar as there was inequality between the royal court and ordinary Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi were equally victims of subjugation.
It was the Europeans, it is now claimed, who introduced the “Hamitic hypothesis” -- the idea that the Tutsi were actually immigrants to Rwanda from Ethiopia, whereas the “Bantu” Hutu were indigenous to the region. The Europeans thus elevated the Tutsi as the supposedly “superior race,” breeding resentment among the Hutu. They were the creators of ethnic dissension.
After 1934, the Belgian government introduced an identity card system, which identified each person as either a Hutu, Tutsi or Twa (a very minor ethnic group).
And by having defined the Tutsi as more recent arrivals, the colonialists also allowed Hutu nationalists to argue that the country should be restored to its “original” owners. With independence, Tutsi could thus be portrayed as a foreign minority who were enemies of the country.
Hence it was necessary to eliminate the colonial discourse about ethnic identity -- which, by happy coincidence, also obscures the predominance of the minority Tutsi, now some 15 per cent of Rwanda’s 12 million people, and allows them to run the state without official reference to that fact, even though everyone knows it!
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The Tug of War Over the Crimea
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Some 25 million ethnic Russians were left adrift when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and was replaced by 15 different nations. They now found themselves living as minorities in newly-independent countries.
Included in this huge Russian diaspora are some 8.5 million people in Ukraine, about 17 per cent of the total population of 44 million. And in one region of the country, the Crimea, Russians make up 60 per cent of the population of two million. (The rest are Ukrainians, at 25 per cent, and Tatars, at 12 per cent.)
The Crimean peninsula, which juts out into the Black Sea from Ukraine, covers an area of more than 26,000 square kilometres. Virtually an island, it has been a bone of contention and an arena for war for centuries.
The Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great in 1783, wrested from its Crimean Tatar inhabitants. It has been used as a beachhead from which to attack Russia, as was the case during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, when Britain and France went to war to protect the Ottoman Empire against Russian attempts at expansion.
It was captured by the Nazis in 1941 during the Second World War and retaken by the Soviets three years later. During his last years in power, the paranoid Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin even believed that the United States planned to invade the Soviet Union through the Crimea.
After Stalin’s death, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1954 transferred the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, today’s Russian Federation, to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the independent Ukraine.
It didn’t much matter back then, as the Soviet Union was, despite its formal ethno-federalism, really run from the Kremlin by the Communist Party. But it does matter now, since the Russian-majority population of the peninsula is cut off from Russia itself.
Today the Crimea is an autonomous republic within Ukraine, with its own constitution and 100-member parliament, which appoints the prime minister, currently Anatoliy Mohyliov. Politics continues to be dominated by the Russian majority. In the 2010 Crimean election, the pro-Russian Party of Regions won 80 seats.
The Crimea is also represented by 12 out of 225 single-member constituency seats in the Ukrainian parliament (the other 225 are elected by proportional representation). In the 2012 Ukrainian national election, the Party of Regions won all but one Crimean seat. Although Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, in the Crimean republic more than 77 per cent speak Russian, and government business in the capital of Simferopol is carried on mainly in Russian.
In 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations were held by ethnic Russian residents, and the then deputy speaker of the Russian-dominated Crimean parliament said that he hoped that Russia would come to the aid of the Crimea in the same way as it had when it had helped the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia fend off the Georgian army a year earlier.
A year earlier, Ukraine’s foreign minister had accused Russia of giving out Russian passports to the population in the Crimea and described it as a “real problem.”
The Russian Black Sea fleet still uses the Crimean port of Sevastopol as its home base; the lease runs through 2042. Sevastopol, which is now home to a Ukrainian naval base as well, has an even higher proportion of ethnic Russians than the rest of the republic.
While Moscow does not publicly back Crimean separatists, it has declared that the rights of ethnic Russians in the Crimea must not be violated. The Crimea is now the setting for a political tug of war between Russians, Ukrainians, and even the small Tatar minority.
Some 25 million ethnic Russians were left adrift when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and was replaced by 15 different nations. They now found themselves living as minorities in newly-independent countries.
Included in this huge Russian diaspora are some 8.5 million people in Ukraine, about 17 per cent of the total population of 44 million. And in one region of the country, the Crimea, Russians make up 60 per cent of the population of two million. (The rest are Ukrainians, at 25 per cent, and Tatars, at 12 per cent.)
The Crimean peninsula, which juts out into the Black Sea from Ukraine, covers an area of more than 26,000 square kilometres. Virtually an island, it has been a bone of contention and an arena for war for centuries.
The Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great in 1783, wrested from its Crimean Tatar inhabitants. It has been used as a beachhead from which to attack Russia, as was the case during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, when Britain and France went to war to protect the Ottoman Empire against Russian attempts at expansion.
It was captured by the Nazis in 1941 during the Second World War and retaken by the Soviets three years later. During his last years in power, the paranoid Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin even believed that the United States planned to invade the Soviet Union through the Crimea.
After Stalin’s death, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1954 transferred the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, today’s Russian Federation, to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the independent Ukraine.
It didn’t much matter back then, as the Soviet Union was, despite its formal ethno-federalism, really run from the Kremlin by the Communist Party. But it does matter now, since the Russian-majority population of the peninsula is cut off from Russia itself.
Today the Crimea is an autonomous republic within Ukraine, with its own constitution and 100-member parliament, which appoints the prime minister, currently Anatoliy Mohyliov. Politics continues to be dominated by the Russian majority. In the 2010 Crimean election, the pro-Russian Party of Regions won 80 seats.
The Crimea is also represented by 12 out of 225 single-member constituency seats in the Ukrainian parliament (the other 225 are elected by proportional representation). In the 2012 Ukrainian national election, the Party of Regions won all but one Crimean seat. Although Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, in the Crimean republic more than 77 per cent speak Russian, and government business in the capital of Simferopol is carried on mainly in Russian.
In 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations were held by ethnic Russian residents, and the then deputy speaker of the Russian-dominated Crimean parliament said that he hoped that Russia would come to the aid of the Crimea in the same way as it had when it had helped the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia fend off the Georgian army a year earlier.
A year earlier, Ukraine’s foreign minister had accused Russia of giving out Russian passports to the population in the Crimea and described it as a “real problem.”
The Russian Black Sea fleet still uses the Crimean port of Sevastopol as its home base; the lease runs through 2042. Sevastopol, which is now home to a Ukrainian naval base as well, has an even higher proportion of ethnic Russians than the rest of the republic.
While Moscow does not publicly back Crimean separatists, it has declared that the rights of ethnic Russians in the Crimea must not be violated. The Crimea is now the setting for a political tug of war between Russians, Ukrainians, and even the small Tatar minority.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Half-Century Elapsed Since JFK's Assassination
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
For those of us old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, it’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed since then.
But we can appreciate how far back that was if we go back to 1963 and see what the world looked like a half-century earlier.
In 1913, monarchs sat on the thrones of most European countries. Wilhelm II was the Emperor of Germany, Victor Emmanuel III was king of Italy, and Nicholas II was tsar of “all the Russias.” A Habsburg, Franz Joseph I, governed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Sultan Mehmed V ruled the Ottoman Empire.
Countries like Czechoslovakia, Finland, Ireland, Poland, and the three Baltic states did not yet exist as sovereign entities. And of course almost all of Africa, and much of Asia, including India, were colonies of European powers.
Trouble was brewing in the Balkans, and two wars, in 1912 and 1913, among Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and the Ottoman Empire, would help ignite the Great War that would begin a year later.
By the end of the First World War, the German Hohenzollerns, Austrian Habsburgs, Russian Romanovs, and the Ottoman Turkish dynasty would be no more. Austria-Hungary itself ceased to exist, divided into a number of successor states, and a Turkish republic replaced the Ottoman rulers, while Turkey’s Middle Eastern provinces were divided between Britain and France.
Women in most countries were still unable to vote in 1913. In Britain, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst of the Women’s Social and Political Union was sentenced to three years in jail in response to the organization’s campaign to destroy public and private property. In the United States, a Woman Suffrage Parade marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington that March.
It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract and famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman died.
It was only a half-century after the decisive 1863 Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War, and a gathering of 53,407 veterans of both the Confederate and Union armies commemorated the event.
The start of the Second World War was still 26 years away. Very few people had yet heard of Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini, or Joseph Stalin. And John Kennedy himself had not yet been born.
For those of us old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, it’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed since then.
But we can appreciate how far back that was if we go back to 1963 and see what the world looked like a half-century earlier.
In 1913, monarchs sat on the thrones of most European countries. Wilhelm II was the Emperor of Germany, Victor Emmanuel III was king of Italy, and Nicholas II was tsar of “all the Russias.” A Habsburg, Franz Joseph I, governed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Sultan Mehmed V ruled the Ottoman Empire.
Countries like Czechoslovakia, Finland, Ireland, Poland, and the three Baltic states did not yet exist as sovereign entities. And of course almost all of Africa, and much of Asia, including India, were colonies of European powers.
Trouble was brewing in the Balkans, and two wars, in 1912 and 1913, among Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and the Ottoman Empire, would help ignite the Great War that would begin a year later.
By the end of the First World War, the German Hohenzollerns, Austrian Habsburgs, Russian Romanovs, and the Ottoman Turkish dynasty would be no more. Austria-Hungary itself ceased to exist, divided into a number of successor states, and a Turkish republic replaced the Ottoman rulers, while Turkey’s Middle Eastern provinces were divided between Britain and France.
Women in most countries were still unable to vote in 1913. In Britain, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst of the Women’s Social and Political Union was sentenced to three years in jail in response to the organization’s campaign to destroy public and private property. In the United States, a Woman Suffrage Parade marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington that March.
It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract and famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman died.
It was only a half-century after the decisive 1863 Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War, and a gathering of 53,407 veterans of both the Confederate and Union armies commemorated the event.
The start of the Second World War was still 26 years away. Very few people had yet heard of Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini, or Joseph Stalin. And John Kennedy himself had not yet been born.
Monday, November 18, 2013
The Southeast Asian Sultanate of Brunei Strengthens its Muslim Identity
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Brunei’s ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, announced the promulgation of a new Islamic criminal law that could include penalties like amputation for theft and stoning for adultery, to come into effect next year.
The Shariah penal code, which would be applied to Muslims only, should be regarded as a form of “special guidance” from God, he stated, and would be “part of the great history” of the country. Brunei’s Shariah Islamic court had previously handled mainly family-related disputes.
Brunei was once much bigger. It became an Islamic sultanate in the 14th century, under a newly converted ruler, Muhammad Shah. At its peak in the 16th century, it controlled the northern regions of Borneo, including modern-day Sarawak and Sabah, today part of Malaysia, as well as the Sulu islands, now governed by the Philippines.
During the 19th century, the Sultanate ceded Sarawak to a British adventurer, James Brooke, as a reward for his aid in putting down a rebellion and named him as rajah; and it ceded Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company. In 1888 what was left of Brunei itself became a British protectorate.
It’s not often that the small country of Brunei makes the
news, but it did in October.
Brunei’s ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, announced the promulgation of a new Islamic criminal law that could include penalties like amputation for theft and stoning for adultery, to come into effect next year.
The Shariah penal code, which would be applied to Muslims only, should be regarded as a form of “special guidance” from God, he stated, and would be “part of the great history” of the country. Brunei’s Shariah Islamic court had previously handled mainly family-related disputes.
Brunei Darussalam (its full name)
consists of two small enclaves of land on the northeastern coast of the
southeast Asian island of Borneo, surrounded by the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
Most of the huge island is part of Indonesia.
With a population of some 420,000 people, mostly Muslims, in
an area of 5,765 square kilometres, Brunei is a tiny country. An oil-rich state,
the sultanate is sometimes referred to as the Kuwait of southeast Asia.
Brunei was once much bigger. It became an Islamic sultanate in the 14th century, under a newly converted ruler, Muhammad Shah. At its peak in the 16th century, it controlled the northern regions of Borneo, including modern-day Sarawak and Sabah, today part of Malaysia, as well as the Sulu islands, now governed by the Philippines.
During the 19th century, the Sultanate ceded Sarawak to a British adventurer, James Brooke, as a reward for his aid in putting down a rebellion and named him as rajah; and it ceded Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company. In 1888 what was left of Brunei itself became a British protectorate.
Brunei regained its independence in 1984 and, thanks to
extensive petroleum and natural gas fields, is now one of the world’s richest
countries. It is the world’s fourth-biggest producer of natural gas, giving the
country enough wealth to buy the loyalty of its subjects. There is no income tax,
and education and health are virtually free.
Brunei’s ties with Britain remain strong. The current ruler,
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, went to
the Royal British Military Academy at Sandhurst and his late father was rescued
by the British Army when it crushed a brief revolt in 1962.
Under Brunei’s 1959 constitution, the country is an absolute
monarchy. The Sultan, who
succeeded to the throne in 1967, is both head of state and, in his capacity as
prime minister, head of government, with full executive authority, including
emergency powers since 1962.
The Sultan’s role is enshrined in the national philosophy
known as Melayu Islam Beraja,
which encompasses Malay culture, Islamic religion, and the political framework
under the monarchy. As an Islamic country, Brunei became a full member of the
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in 1984.
Southeast Asia’s Islam, unlike that of the Middle East, has
historically been more relaxed when it came to practice but has become more
stringent. Since the late 1970s an Islamic resurgence is taking place in the
region.
Rising oil revenues provide an extensive social welfare
system and promote Islam, including subsidizing the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca),
building mosques, and expanding the Department of Religious Affairs.
Brunei’s Muslim-majority neighbours have also been
tightening their religious rules. In Indonesia, a bill submitted to parliament
earlier this year that called for a ban on alcohol has stirred unease among the
country’s predominantly moderate Muslims. Also, the government has ordered that
the finals of the Miss World pageant, which some Islamic groups denounced as
immoral, be moved from the outskirts of Jakarta to predominantly Hindu Bali.
In Malaysia, former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi furthered the agenda of Islamic supremacy at
the expense of other religions. The country has restricted the ability of
Christian groups to proselytize among Malays, and recently a Malaysian court
has ruled that non-Muslims cannot use the word Allah to refer to God, even in
their own faiths.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Crimean Tatars a Beleaguered Minority
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
A peninsula that juts out into the Black Sea from Ukraine, the Crimea, which covers an area of more than 26,000 square kilometres, is virtually an island, and has been a bone of contention and an arena for war for centuries.
The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people, had founded an independent state there in the Middle Ages, allied with the Ottoman Empire. The Crimean Khanate was among the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 18th century.
However, their state weakened as the Ottomans lost ground to an expansionist Russian Empire. When Catherine the Great annexed the Crimea in 1783, the Tatars comprised 98 per cent of the population, but many Crimean Tatars were massacred or exiled. Their numbers continued to dwindle, due to Russian settlement.
They fared little better in the new Soviet Union in the 20th century. The Crimea was captured by the Nazis in 1941 during the Second World War and retaken by the Soviets three years later. The Tatars were all expelled in 1944, having been accused by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin of collaborating with the Nazis. Given the geopolitical position of the Crimea, the Tatars were perceived as a threat. Some 200,000 were deported to central Asia, and many more thousands died en route.
After Stalin’s death, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1954 transferred the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, today’s Russian Federation, to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the independent Ukraine.
Although a 1967 Soviet decree removed the charges against Crimean Tatars, the Soviet government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement in the Crimea or to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, nearly 300,000 Tatars were able to return to the Crimea, despite strong opposition from its mostly Russian and Ukrainian inhabitants. The Crimea had now become an autonomous republic within an independent Ukraine. The Tatars now comprise 12 per cent of the peninsula’s population of two million, with the remainder made up of Russians, at 60 per cent, and Ukrainians, 25 per cent.
When the USSR dissolved, the Tatars collaborated with the newly independent Ukrainian government in Kyiv to secure their rights. They founded a representative body, the Qurultay, with the 33-member Mejlis as its executive; the current chair, Refat Chubarov, was selected this year. It is able to address grievances to the Ukrainian central government, the Crimean republic’s government, and international organizations.
But the Crimea continues to be dominated by its Russian majority, and there were violent clashes between them and the Tatar minority in 2006-2007. Many Russians (and Ukrainians) fear the spread of radical Islam among the Tatars. Amid the ethnic tensions, small-scale Wahhabist groups sponsored by Arab Gulf states emerged, including the banned Hizb-i-Tehrir, which castigated the Mejlis for its “soft” policies, but the radicals have little support.
In 2010, several pro-Russian Crimean political leaders demanded the disbanding and banning of the Mejlis and all other forms of political representation for the Crimean Tatars. The current Crimean republic’s prime minister, Anatoliy Mohyliov, has in the past praised Stalin’s expulsion of the Tatars.
Two mosques were attacked recently, and ethnic tensions threaten to throw the Crimea into a downward spiral of civil violence.
A peninsula that juts out into the Black Sea from Ukraine, the Crimea, which covers an area of more than 26,000 square kilometres, is virtually an island, and has been a bone of contention and an arena for war for centuries.
The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people, had founded an independent state there in the Middle Ages, allied with the Ottoman Empire. The Crimean Khanate was among the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 18th century.
However, their state weakened as the Ottomans lost ground to an expansionist Russian Empire. When Catherine the Great annexed the Crimea in 1783, the Tatars comprised 98 per cent of the population, but many Crimean Tatars were massacred or exiled. Their numbers continued to dwindle, due to Russian settlement.
They fared little better in the new Soviet Union in the 20th century. The Crimea was captured by the Nazis in 1941 during the Second World War and retaken by the Soviets three years later. The Tatars were all expelled in 1944, having been accused by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin of collaborating with the Nazis. Given the geopolitical position of the Crimea, the Tatars were perceived as a threat. Some 200,000 were deported to central Asia, and many more thousands died en route.
After Stalin’s death, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1954 transferred the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, today’s Russian Federation, to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the independent Ukraine.
Although a 1967 Soviet decree removed the charges against Crimean Tatars, the Soviet government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement in the Crimea or to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, nearly 300,000 Tatars were able to return to the Crimea, despite strong opposition from its mostly Russian and Ukrainian inhabitants. The Crimea had now become an autonomous republic within an independent Ukraine. The Tatars now comprise 12 per cent of the peninsula’s population of two million, with the remainder made up of Russians, at 60 per cent, and Ukrainians, 25 per cent.
When the USSR dissolved, the Tatars collaborated with the newly independent Ukrainian government in Kyiv to secure their rights. They founded a representative body, the Qurultay, with the 33-member Mejlis as its executive; the current chair, Refat Chubarov, was selected this year. It is able to address grievances to the Ukrainian central government, the Crimean republic’s government, and international organizations.
But the Crimea continues to be dominated by its Russian majority, and there were violent clashes between them and the Tatar minority in 2006-2007. Many Russians (and Ukrainians) fear the spread of radical Islam among the Tatars. Amid the ethnic tensions, small-scale Wahhabist groups sponsored by Arab Gulf states emerged, including the banned Hizb-i-Tehrir, which castigated the Mejlis for its “soft” policies, but the radicals have little support.
In 2010, several pro-Russian Crimean political leaders demanded the disbanding and banning of the Mejlis and all other forms of political representation for the Crimean Tatars. The current Crimean republic’s prime minister, Anatoliy Mohyliov, has in the past praised Stalin’s expulsion of the Tatars.
Two mosques were attacked recently, and ethnic tensions threaten to throw the Crimea into a downward spiral of civil violence.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
The Ongoing Problem of Kashmir
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
The most intractable problem between India and Pakistan has been the status of Kashmir, which has bedeviled their relationship from the moment both countries gained their independence.
When India was partitioned into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India in 1947, princely states were given the option of joining either country.
Though Kashmir had a Muslim majority, and its territory was contiguous to what had become Pakistan, the Hindu Maharaja, Hari Singh, who ruled Kashmir opted to throw in his lot with India. It was incorporated into the Indian Union as the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has never reconciled itself to this.
Pakistan has argued that including a Muslim-majority state in India repudiates the two-nation theory responsible for its identity; it insists that the “completeness” of the nation depends on the integration of the state into Pakistan. Former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once said that “Kashmir must be liberated if Pakistan is to have its full meaning.”
On the other hand, India insists that Kashmir’s annexation validates the theory of secular nationalism on which it was founded.
Pakistani irregulars occupied a partition of the territory, now called Azad (Free) Kashmir, in 1947, and Pakistan fought wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999 to try to conquer it. In 2003 Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a cease-fire, but Kashmir remains divided, with troops from both countries facing each other at the Line of Control.
Pakistan contends that India is still bound by a 1948 UN Security Council resolution to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir, to allow its people to decide whether they would like to accede to India or Pakistan. A third option, an independent Kashmir, has also been suggested by some of Kashmir’s political elite. So Kashmir’s own inhabitants are not united in their political desires.
Multiple peace talks have been held over the years in attempts to resolve the conflict, although there have been disputes about who can legitimately represent the various parties involved.
Meanwhile, a major insurgency within the Indian state itself began in 1988, after Muslim political parties complained that the 1987 elections to the state’s legislative assembly were rigged. Fuelled by covert support from Pakistan, and involving many mujahidin who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, by the end of the decade at least 50,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 people had died in the conflict.
India used draconian laws, which allow security forces to detain individuals for as many as two years without presenting charges, and a massive military presence, to quell the violence. There was eventually one Indian soldier or paramilitary police officer for every five Kashmiris. Yet there was further large-scale unrest in 2010.
In September, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met in New York and agreed to maintain peace on the border, but their pledge seems to have made little difference on the ground.
Monday, November 04, 2013
Morocco, Spain, and the Western Sahara Issue
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
By the end of the 15th century, Spain controlled the largest empire the world had ever seen up to that time. In the Americas, except for Brazil, everything from the southwestern United States and Florida down to present-day Chile and Argentina belonged to the Spanish Crown, along with the islands of the Caribbean. As well, the Philippines archipelago in Southeast Asia and some south Pacific island chains were Spanish possessions.
However, Britain and France began to acquire Caribbean islands as Spanish power weakened, and in the first quarter of the 19th century, the vast colonies in Latin America all acquired their independence as seventeen sovereign republics.
In 1898, defeated in a war with the United States, Spain also departed Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the South Pacific Caroline and Mariana islands, including Guam.
All that was left in the 20th century were a few small bits and pieces, all in Africa: Ifni and the protectorate of Spanish Morocco in northern Morocco (the rest of Morocco was a French protectorate); Spanish Sahara to Morocco’s south; and Spanish Guinea, consisting of the offshore island of Fernando Po (now Bioko) and the small continental enclave of Rio Muni.
In 1968, under pressure from nationalists and the United Nations, Spain granted independence to its tropical colony, renamed Equatorial Guinea. It has since been one of Africa’s worst-run states, under the dictatorial rule of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been president since 1979.
After Morocco achieved independence from France in 1956, Ifni and Spanish Morocco became part of that country. However, Spain has retained two small enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, on the Mediterranean coast, though Morocco considers them to be under foreign occupation. Spain has ruled both cities for centuries and the local populations of the disputed territories reject the Moroccan claims by a large majority. The Canary Islands, off the Moroccan coast, also remain part of Spain.
Morocco also laid claim to Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara), which Spain had acquired in 1884 during the so-called “scramble for Africa,” asserting that the territory was historically an integral part of the Moroccan monarchy. The population there is of mixed Arab and Berber descent.
Since 1973, a guerrilla war led by the Polisario Front, representing the native Sahrawi tribes, had also challenged Spanish control in the colony, and Spain had actually begun negotiations for a handover of power with leaders of the indigenous rebel movement.
Meanwhile, Morocco lost its case for legal control of the territory at the International Court of Justice in October 1975 and a United Nations mission to the territory found that Sahrawi support for independence was “overwhelming.”
So one month later some 350,000 Moroccans advanced several miles into the territory, escorted by 20,000 Moroccan troops, in the so-called “Green March.” It caught Spain in a moment of political crisis. In 1975, with the death of Francisco Franco, Spain was transitioning from a fascist dictatorship to a constitutional monarchy.
Madrid decided to withdraw from Spanish Sahara following renewed Moroccan demands and international pressure, mainly from United Nations resolutions regarding decolonisation. The Spanish government feared that the conflict with Morocco could lead to an open colonial war in Africa,
Under immense pressure, therefore, Spain agreed to cede the colony to Morocco and Mauritania, to Spanish Sahara’s south; the area was then split between the two. But after a disastrous four-year war with the Polisario, Mauritania withdrew from Western Sahara, and left Morocco in control of all of what it calls its Southern Provinces.
The Polisario, aided by Algeria, has continued to oppose the Moroccan occupation, which has not been recognized by the African Union or the UN. In 1976 the guerrilla movement proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and set up a government in exile in Algeria. Since 1979, the Polisario Front has been recognized by the United Nations as the representative of the people of Western Sahara. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was admitted to the African Union in 1984, prompting Morocco to withdraw from the organization.
In 1991 Morocco and the Polisario agreed to a UN -backed cease-fire, which included an agreement by Morocco to allow a referendum in Western Sahara to determine the wishes of its population.
However, to date the referendum has not been held because of questions over who is eligible to vote. In 2001, Algeria proposed a division of the area, with the southern part going to the Polisario and the northern part to Morocco, but both parties turned it down.
As of 2013, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has been recognized by 85 states. On the other hand, Morocco’s claim is supported by the Arab League.
In the 1980s Morocco built a 2,700 kilometre-long barrier to keep Polisario fighters out of the bulk of the area that lies to the north and west of it. Today the Polisario Front controls the eastern third of the territory, but this area is almost uninhabited, while many thousands of Sahrawis languish in refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania.
The stalemate continues, and bloody clashes erupted between police and pro-independence protesters in October when a UN envoy visited the territory.
By the end of the 15th century, Spain controlled the largest empire the world had ever seen up to that time. In the Americas, except for Brazil, everything from the southwestern United States and Florida down to present-day Chile and Argentina belonged to the Spanish Crown, along with the islands of the Caribbean. As well, the Philippines archipelago in Southeast Asia and some south Pacific island chains were Spanish possessions.
However, Britain and France began to acquire Caribbean islands as Spanish power weakened, and in the first quarter of the 19th century, the vast colonies in Latin America all acquired their independence as seventeen sovereign republics.
In 1898, defeated in a war with the United States, Spain also departed Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the South Pacific Caroline and Mariana islands, including Guam.
All that was left in the 20th century were a few small bits and pieces, all in Africa: Ifni and the protectorate of Spanish Morocco in northern Morocco (the rest of Morocco was a French protectorate); Spanish Sahara to Morocco’s south; and Spanish Guinea, consisting of the offshore island of Fernando Po (now Bioko) and the small continental enclave of Rio Muni.
In 1968, under pressure from nationalists and the United Nations, Spain granted independence to its tropical colony, renamed Equatorial Guinea. It has since been one of Africa’s worst-run states, under the dictatorial rule of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been president since 1979.
After Morocco achieved independence from France in 1956, Ifni and Spanish Morocco became part of that country. However, Spain has retained two small enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, on the Mediterranean coast, though Morocco considers them to be under foreign occupation. Spain has ruled both cities for centuries and the local populations of the disputed territories reject the Moroccan claims by a large majority. The Canary Islands, off the Moroccan coast, also remain part of Spain.
Morocco also laid claim to Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara), which Spain had acquired in 1884 during the so-called “scramble for Africa,” asserting that the territory was historically an integral part of the Moroccan monarchy. The population there is of mixed Arab and Berber descent.
Since 1973, a guerrilla war led by the Polisario Front, representing the native Sahrawi tribes, had also challenged Spanish control in the colony, and Spain had actually begun negotiations for a handover of power with leaders of the indigenous rebel movement.
Meanwhile, Morocco lost its case for legal control of the territory at the International Court of Justice in October 1975 and a United Nations mission to the territory found that Sahrawi support for independence was “overwhelming.”
So one month later some 350,000 Moroccans advanced several miles into the territory, escorted by 20,000 Moroccan troops, in the so-called “Green March.” It caught Spain in a moment of political crisis. In 1975, with the death of Francisco Franco, Spain was transitioning from a fascist dictatorship to a constitutional monarchy.
Madrid decided to withdraw from Spanish Sahara following renewed Moroccan demands and international pressure, mainly from United Nations resolutions regarding decolonisation. The Spanish government feared that the conflict with Morocco could lead to an open colonial war in Africa,
Under immense pressure, therefore, Spain agreed to cede the colony to Morocco and Mauritania, to Spanish Sahara’s south; the area was then split between the two. But after a disastrous four-year war with the Polisario, Mauritania withdrew from Western Sahara, and left Morocco in control of all of what it calls its Southern Provinces.
The Polisario, aided by Algeria, has continued to oppose the Moroccan occupation, which has not been recognized by the African Union or the UN. In 1976 the guerrilla movement proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and set up a government in exile in Algeria. Since 1979, the Polisario Front has been recognized by the United Nations as the representative of the people of Western Sahara. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was admitted to the African Union in 1984, prompting Morocco to withdraw from the organization.
In 1991 Morocco and the Polisario agreed to a UN -backed cease-fire, which included an agreement by Morocco to allow a referendum in Western Sahara to determine the wishes of its population.
However, to date the referendum has not been held because of questions over who is eligible to vote. In 2001, Algeria proposed a division of the area, with the southern part going to the Polisario and the northern part to Morocco, but both parties turned it down.
As of 2013, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has been recognized by 85 states. On the other hand, Morocco’s claim is supported by the Arab League.
In the 1980s Morocco built a 2,700 kilometre-long barrier to keep Polisario fighters out of the bulk of the area that lies to the north and west of it. Today the Polisario Front controls the eastern third of the territory, but this area is almost uninhabited, while many thousands of Sahrawis languish in refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania.
The stalemate continues, and bloody clashes erupted between police and pro-independence protesters in October when a UN envoy visited the territory.
Friday, November 01, 2013
India's Restive Regions Not Easy to Govern
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
India has faced insurgencies in some of its states over the past decades, though the issues that gave rise to these have to some extent been resolved.
Sikh nationalists began to agitate for a sovereign state of their own, Khalistan, in the northwestern state of Punjab. The region has been the traditional homeland of the Sikhs, an ethno-religious people, and they ruled the Punjab for some eight decades before being subdued by the British in the mid-19th century.
In 1947 the Muslim parts of the Punjab became part of the new country of Pakistan, while the eastern half, comprising Hindus and Sikhs, remained in India. In 1966, owing to the demands made by Sikh organisations to create a Punjabi-speaking state, the Indian government divided Punjab into a Punjabi-speaking state of the same name, and the Hindi-speaking states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Today Sikhs form about 60 per cent of the population in the Punjab.
But for many this was not enough. In 1984, extremists led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale occupied the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple), in the Sikh city of Amritsar. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi eventually had the army storm the temple, killing perhaps as many as 2,000 people. In turn, she was murdered by her Sikh bodyguards a few months later. Massacres of Sikhs throughout the country followed.
There were still thousands being killed in the Punjab in the 1990s, but the crackdown on extremists, coupled with some accommodation to Sikh aspirations, have greatly minimized the problem. In recent years, Sikh extremism and the demand for Khalistan has all but abated.
In the far eastern state of Assam, almost cut off from the rest of the country by Bangladesh, a similar movement for self-determination was fuelled by neglect and resentment at the fact that immigrant Bengalis from West Bengal were moving in and occupying key positions in business, industry and government.
An armed struggle, led by the United Liberation Front of Assam, ensued in the 1980s and in the past two decades some 18,000 people died in clashes between the rebels and the security forces. Assamese natives have now been given a greater say in the running of the state and the ULFA suspended operations in 2011.
Various tribal peoples have also had states carved out of Assam over the decades, including Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. This too has led to a diminution of conflict. There are still demands for statehood for a state of Bodoland in Assam and Gorkhaland in neighbouring West Bengal.
India’s southern states have also experienced dissatisfaction with rule from the predominantly Hindi-speaking north, and many have at times been governed by regional parties. A Dravidian party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) is currently in power in Tamil Nadu.
This past July, the Congress Party unanimously passed a resolution to recommend the formation of a separate Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh, and it will become India’s 29th state. Proponents of a separate Telangana state have in the past cited perceived injustices in the distribution of water, budget allocations, and jobs.
No one ever thought it would be easy to govern such a vast and multi-ethnic land.
India has faced insurgencies in some of its states over the past decades, though the issues that gave rise to these have to some extent been resolved.
Sikh nationalists began to agitate for a sovereign state of their own, Khalistan, in the northwestern state of Punjab. The region has been the traditional homeland of the Sikhs, an ethno-religious people, and they ruled the Punjab for some eight decades before being subdued by the British in the mid-19th century.
In 1947 the Muslim parts of the Punjab became part of the new country of Pakistan, while the eastern half, comprising Hindus and Sikhs, remained in India. In 1966, owing to the demands made by Sikh organisations to create a Punjabi-speaking state, the Indian government divided Punjab into a Punjabi-speaking state of the same name, and the Hindi-speaking states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Today Sikhs form about 60 per cent of the population in the Punjab.
But for many this was not enough. In 1984, extremists led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale occupied the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple), in the Sikh city of Amritsar. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi eventually had the army storm the temple, killing perhaps as many as 2,000 people. In turn, she was murdered by her Sikh bodyguards a few months later. Massacres of Sikhs throughout the country followed.
There were still thousands being killed in the Punjab in the 1990s, but the crackdown on extremists, coupled with some accommodation to Sikh aspirations, have greatly minimized the problem. In recent years, Sikh extremism and the demand for Khalistan has all but abated.
In the far eastern state of Assam, almost cut off from the rest of the country by Bangladesh, a similar movement for self-determination was fuelled by neglect and resentment at the fact that immigrant Bengalis from West Bengal were moving in and occupying key positions in business, industry and government.
An armed struggle, led by the United Liberation Front of Assam, ensued in the 1980s and in the past two decades some 18,000 people died in clashes between the rebels and the security forces. Assamese natives have now been given a greater say in the running of the state and the ULFA suspended operations in 2011.
Various tribal peoples have also had states carved out of Assam over the decades, including Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. This too has led to a diminution of conflict. There are still demands for statehood for a state of Bodoland in Assam and Gorkhaland in neighbouring West Bengal.
India’s southern states have also experienced dissatisfaction with rule from the predominantly Hindi-speaking north, and many have at times been governed by regional parties. A Dravidian party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) is currently in power in Tamil Nadu.
This past July, the Congress Party unanimously passed a resolution to recommend the formation of a separate Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh, and it will become India’s 29th state. Proponents of a separate Telangana state have in the past cited perceived injustices in the distribution of water, budget allocations, and jobs.
No one ever thought it would be easy to govern such a vast and multi-ethnic land.
Monday, October 28, 2013
The Process of Decolonization in Goa and East Timor
By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneeer
Relations between India and Portugal only thawed in 1974, when,
following a revolution that led to the end of authoritarianism in Lisbon, Goa
was finally recognised as part of India. In 1987 Goa
became a separate state in the Indian federation, which it remains to this
day.
During the age of European imperial expansion which
began at the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese and Spanish kingdoms were
first off the mark.
While the Spanish headed west, with Columbus
landing in the Americas, the Portuguese, attracted by the wealth of the fabled
east, sailed around the continent of Africa and into the Indian Ocean, to south
and south-east Asia.
In 1498, Vasco de Gama reached India, and 12 years later Portugal acquired Goa, on India’s west coast. They
also managed to conquer areas of what is now Indonesia, including Timor, where
Portuguese merchants arrived in 1515. Macao, at the mouth of the Pearl (Zhu Jiang) River, in
southern China, became a Portuguese trading post in 1557.
However, while they would lose most of their empire
to stronger European powers such as Great Britain and the Netherlands, the
Portuguese managed to retain little remnants, including Goa, Macao, and the
eastern end of the island of Timor. (The Dutch had made the western part of
Timor part of their Dutch East Indies empire.)
While British India gained its freedom in 1947 and
Dutch-ruled Indonesia its independence in 1949, the Portuguese hung on to their
small possessions.
By the mid-1950s, though, decolonization was in
full swing in Africa and Asia, and these little colonies stuck out like sore
thumbs. The Bandung Conference, a
meeting of 25 recently independent Asian and African states that took place in
Bandung, Indonesia in 1955, had called for an end to colonialism, and
Indonesia’s President Sukarno became one of the leaders of the nonaligned
movement of newly sovereign countries.
However, in both Goa and East Timor, centuries of
Portuguese rule had made the native populations almost entirely Portuguese-speaking Roman
Catholics, and Lisbon stubbornly refused to give them up. Portugal itself remained
a backward semi-fascist state.
Losing patience, India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, sent the Indian army into Goa (and Portugal’s two other Indian dependencies
of Diu and Daman) in 1961 and expelled the Portuguese. No one took much
notice or protested. In India, the action was seen as the liberation of
historically Indian territory. (When
Macao was returned to China in 1999, the same argument was made.)
Although Goa was predominantly Catholic during the long centuries of
Portuguese rule, many left after 1961, and today Goan Catholics form only 30
per cent of the state’s total population (the majority are now Hindu).
The 1974 Portuguese revolution also saw the final
end to its empire, as the new democratic government in Lisbon granted its
African colonies independence. In East Timor, however, things turned out
differently. It had also declared its independence, in 1975, but was
invaded by Indonesia and declared Indonesia’s 27th province the following year.
The regime in Jakarta claimed
the same rights to East Timor as India had done with Goa – it was a matter of
decolonization. Based on the premise that the Portuguese half of Timor, an
island geographically situated in the center of the
vast archipelago, was really part of its territory, Indonesia
contended that the division of the island into two had been simply the legacy
of European imperialism and therefore should be rectified.
The Indonesians considered it another stage in the
emancipation of their country, which had begun with the war
of national liberation against the Dutch. No doubt Indonesia thought the
same political reconciliation that had taken place with India would also
occur following the annexation of East Timor. But things did not work out that
way.
The United Nations never recognised the annexation, nor did Portugal. And the East Timorese, who were 97 per cent
Catholic, never reconciled themselves
to being part of the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Their long
and bloody subjugation under Indonesian rule resulted in some 200,000 deaths from
famine and violence during the occupation.
International pressure mounted on Indonesia to allow self-determination
for the province. Wishing to avoid the impression that Indonesia ruled East
Timor as a colony, Indonesian president B.J. Habibie agreed to a vote, offering
a choice between special autonomy and independence.
The 1999 UN-sponsored referendum found 78.5 per
cent of East Timorese opting for independence. Further Indonesian-sponsored
violence ensued, resulting in the arrival of an Australian-organized
peacekeeping force. Finally, in 2002, East Timor (Timor-Leste) became an
independent country and a member of the United Nations.
The world had changed since the era that produced
the Bandung Conference. In 1961, the ideologies that legitimized the
acquisition of territory by force, if necessary, on the basis of decolonization
and anti-imperialism had allowed India to incorporate Goa. But four decades
later, these had been trumped by the concept of the right of a people to self-determination.
Monday, October 21, 2013
The Anomalous Political Status of Puerto Rico
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Captured in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Caribbean
island of Puerto Rico has been an American possession ever since.
Spain possessed Puerto Rico for over 400 years, despite
attempts at capture of the island by the French, Dutch, and British. Given the
long history of Spanish rule, while Spanish and English are both official
languages, Spanish is the island’s primary language.
In 1917, Puerto Ricans were granted American citizenship and
since 1948 have elected their own governor. In 1952 a constitution was adopted
and ratified by the electorate, turning the unincorporated territory into the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, with its own democratically elected legislative
and executive branches and its own Supreme Court.
Puerto Ricans are American citizens and can come and go to
the mainland as they please; they also need no permits to work. It is estimated
that some two million Puerto Ricans have migrated to the United States, and there
are more Puerto Ricans living in New York than in the capital, San Juan.
However, the 3.6 million residents of Puerto Rico pay no
federal income tax, nor can they vote in American presidential elections. And
the United States Congress still legislates over many aspects of Puerto Rican
life, including the currency, the postal service, foreign affairs, military
defence, communications, and commerce.
This anomalous situation has made the political future of
the island a constant preoccupation. In 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists led a
three-day revolt against U.S. domination, known as the Jayuya Uprising, in
various cities and towns on the island, decrying the island’s colonial status.
Two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate President Harry Truman
in Washington. But since the island achieved Commonwealth status as an
autonomous polity, there has been little violence.
Still, politics continue to revolve around the question of
Puerto Rico’s future and its three major political parties have been formed
around the preferences of statehood, independence and the current commonwealth
status. The Partido
Popular Democratico (PPD) seeks to maintain or improve the current
status, the Partido
Nuevo Progresista (PNP) wants to fully incorporate Puerto Rico as a U.S.
state, and the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueno (PIP)
calls for national independence.
Since 1998, Puerto Ricans have cast their ballots in three
plebiscites regarding their relationship with the U.S., the most recent held in
November of last year. Voters were asked first whether they agreed that Puerto
Rico should continue to have its present form of territorial status. Regardless
of how voters answered that question, they were asked secondly, to express
their preference among three non-territorial alternatives: statehood, complete
independence, or a form of sovereign nationhood in a “compact of free
association” with the U.S. The Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau in the
Pacific have such arrangements with Washington.
On the second ballot question, of the 1.3 million voters who
made a choice, nearly 800,000 supported statehood, some 437,000 backed
sovereign free association and 72,560 chose complete independence. But nearly
500,000 left that question blank, as the pro-Commonwealth PPD instructed its
supporters not to answer it at all, since the Commonwealth option wasn’t
listed. Puerto Rico’s Governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, a member of the PPD, also
supports the current Commonwealth status.
However, the PNP organized pro-statehood marches in both Puerto
Rico and on the U.S. mainland on March 2, demanding that the American
government honor the results of the referendum. On May 15, the island’s
non-voting Congressman, Pedro Pierluisi of the PNP, introduced the Puerto Rico
Status Resolution Act in the House of Representatives, which if passed would
ask Puerto Rican voters if they want Puerto Rico to be admitted as the 51st
state of the Union.
Regardless of whether Pierluisi’s bill becomes law, yet
another plebiscite may be in the island’s future. The budget President Barack
Obama sent to Congress in April includes $2.5 million for a status plebiscite
in Puerto Rico in 2014.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico is in financial trouble. It has about
$87 billion of debt, counting pensions, or $23,000 for every person on the
island. Governor Padilla, has frozen the biggest of the island’s public pension
funds, raised utility rates sharply, imposed new taxes and stepped up
enforcement of existing taxes. The territory will postpone most long-term
borrowing for the rest of 2013.
Should Puerto Ricans opt for statehood, would they even be
admitted? Congress has ultimate authority over the admission of new states and
is under no obligation to admit states even in those areas whose population
expresses a desire for statehood. The Republican Party might not like the idea
of millions more Hispanics, who would probably vote Democratic, added to the
electorate. It therefore remains an unlikely prospect.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Sri Lanka, the Commonwealth and Harper
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
South Africa was prevented from continuing as a member after it became a republic in 1961, due to its policy of apartheid; it was readmitted in 1994. Nigeria, Pakistan, Fiji and Zimbabwe have in the past at times been suspended, following military coups or fraudulent elections. Zimbabwe quit the organization altogether.
Harper said it was unacceptable that Sri Lanka had yet to investigate allegations of atrocities during and after the civil war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in May 2009. In April 2011, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon published a report by a UN-appointed panel of experts, which concluded that as many as 40,000 people were killed in the final weeks of the military campaign.
This past March the UN Human Rights Council voted urged the Sri Lankan government to investigate “alleged violations of human rights.” More recently, Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner on human rights, criticised the Sri Lankan government's failure to investigate allegations of war crimes against military officers and government officials. Sri Lanka has denied allegations its troops committed major crimes.
Sri Lanka’s Tamils, who make up about 15 per cent of the population of 21 million and are mainly Hindu, have long been subjected to by the majority Buddhist Sinhalese. They seek, if not a fully sovereign state in the country’s north, where they form a majority, some form of federalism enabling them to have some semblance of self-government in the region and power-sharing at the national level.
Pillay was “particularly alarmed at the recent surge in incitement of hatred and violence against religious minorities, including attacks on churches and mosques, and the lack of swift action against the perpetrators.”
Four years after the end of the Tamil insurgency, great sections of the north remain a scene of devastation. The Sri Lankan army continues to occupy thousands of homes, farms, factories and resorts for which the government has paid little or no compensation.
However, the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who led the war against the Tigers, declared that interference in the internal affairs of the country in the guise of protecting human rights was “disturbing.” He has complained that Sri Lanka was being persecuted by the international community, and has used that as a pretext to obstruct even more thoroughly the work of journalists, lawyers and activists.
Sri Lanka also maintains that Canada’s critiques are motivated by domestic concerns, given that some 300,000 Tamils live in the country, mainly in the Toronto region – the largest Tamil population outside South Asia. Tamil Canadian candidates have participated in the political process representing various parties at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.
Rajapaksa’s government has also become increasingly authoritarian. Following the 2010 presidential election, Rajapaksa even ordered his main opponent, Sarath Fonseka, a former commander of the army, arrested. Fonseka was found guilty of corrupt military supply deals and sentenced to three years in prison.
Given the undeniable evidence of human rights violations by the Colombo government, Prime Minister has made the right call in deciding to stay home.
The 54-nation Commonwealth is an organization that professes
to be committed to common values, such as democracy, human rights, and the rule
of law, as expressed in the Singapore Declaration of 1971. The Harare
Declaration of 1991 reaffirmed the principles laid out in Singapore and they
were most recently reinforced in the Commonwealth Charter adopted earlier this
year.
South Africa was prevented from continuing as a member after it became a republic in 1961, due to its policy of apartheid; it was readmitted in 1994. Nigeria, Pakistan, Fiji and Zimbabwe have in the past at times been suspended, following military coups or fraudulent elections. Zimbabwe quit the organization altogether.
Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma says the
oreganization imparts its values of good governance and democracy around the
world. Yet the Commonwealth is holding its annual Heads of Government meeting
in Sri Lanka next month – a country in which some 80,000 people, mainly
civilians, have been killed during a 25-year civil war and one whose government
continues to engage in human rights violations, including murder and rape. Human
Rights Watch has noted that the Commonwealth Secretariat has refused to discuss
the human rights situation.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has, correctly, announced he
will not attend, due to ongoing human rights abuses by the host Sri Lankan
government. The prime minister cited everything from the impeachment of a chief
justice to allegations of extra-judicial killings and disappearances, and the
jailing of political opponents and journalists.
Harper said it was unacceptable that Sri Lanka had yet to investigate allegations of atrocities during and after the civil war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in May 2009. In April 2011, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon published a report by a UN-appointed panel of experts, which concluded that as many as 40,000 people were killed in the final weeks of the military campaign.
This past March the UN Human Rights Council voted urged the Sri Lankan government to investigate “alleged violations of human rights.” More recently, Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner on human rights, criticised the Sri Lankan government's failure to investigate allegations of war crimes against military officers and government officials. Sri Lanka has denied allegations its troops committed major crimes.
Sri Lanka’s Tamils, who make up about 15 per cent of the population of 21 million and are mainly Hindu, have long been subjected to by the majority Buddhist Sinhalese. They seek, if not a fully sovereign state in the country’s north, where they form a majority, some form of federalism enabling them to have some semblance of self-government in the region and power-sharing at the national level.
Pillay was “particularly alarmed at the recent surge in incitement of hatred and violence against religious minorities, including attacks on churches and mosques, and the lack of swift action against the perpetrators.”
Four years after the end of the Tamil insurgency, great sections of the north remain a scene of devastation. The Sri Lankan army continues to occupy thousands of homes, farms, factories and resorts for which the government has paid little or no compensation.
However, the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who led the war against the Tigers, declared that interference in the internal affairs of the country in the guise of protecting human rights was “disturbing.” He has complained that Sri Lanka was being persecuted by the international community, and has used that as a pretext to obstruct even more thoroughly the work of journalists, lawyers and activists.
Sri Lanka also maintains that Canada’s critiques are motivated by domestic concerns, given that some 300,000 Tamils live in the country, mainly in the Toronto region – the largest Tamil population outside South Asia. Tamil Canadian candidates have participated in the political process representing various parties at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.
Rajapaksa’s government has also become increasingly authoritarian. Following the 2010 presidential election, Rajapaksa even ordered his main opponent, Sarath Fonseka, a former commander of the army, arrested. Fonseka was found guilty of corrupt military supply deals and sentenced to three years in prison.
Given the undeniable evidence of human rights violations by the Colombo government, Prime Minister has made the right call in deciding to stay home.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Dual Cultural Societies of Trinidad and Tobago
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal
Pioneer
The southernmost of the Caribbean islands, situated just off the coast of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago were first colonized by the Spanish, then came under British control in the early 19th century.
The islands' sugar industry was hurt by the emancipation of the Afro-Trinidadian slaves in 1834, but they were replaced by indentured labourers from India between 1845 and 1917.
This legacy remains evident today. The country's population of 1,225,000 consists of Indo-Trinidadians, who constitute 40 per cent; Afro-Trinidadians, another 40 per cent; mixed 18.4 per cent; white 0.6 per cent; and Chinese and other minority groups 1.2 per cent.
Though all these people share a small island, a common language, schools, and even food and clothes, their identity as Trinidadians exists alongside their separate political and cultural spheres.
Many Indians, in particular, feel they have been forced to submerge their culture and conform to the country's Black culture.
The plural nature of the society gave rise to political parties sharply divided along ethnic lines, as politicians began playing the "race card." Even before independence in 1962, two major parties had emerged six years earlier, as the two dominant ethnic groups began to battle for political primacy.
The People's National Movement (PNM), led by Dr. Eric Williams, represented the Afro-Trinidadians, and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) under the leadership of Bhadase Sagan Maraj, was the vehicle for the Indo-Trinidadians.
The Democratic Labour Party (DLP) replaced the PDP in 1957 and it evolved into the United Labour Front (ULF) in 1976, and later into the United National Congress (UNC) in 1989, both led by Basdeo Panday. For the most part, its fate would be that of the official opposition. Under the rule of the PNM, the political identity and international face of the country was an Afro-Caribbean one, with South Asian culture minimized.
This is now changing. In May 2010, the People's Partnership party, led by Kamla Persad-Bissessar, an Indo-Trinidadian, achieved a landslide victory against the incumbent PNM government of Prime Minister Patrick Manning. The new grouping won 29 of the 41 seats in the House of Representatives, reducing the PNM to 12. It even captured the two seats on the island of Tobago, whose 60,000 people are mostly of African origin. However, in the 2013 election to the Tobago House of Assembly, the local government body responsible for the small island, the PNM won all 12 of its seats.
The People's Partnership was formed after a Unity Accord was struck prior to the election between several groups, including the Opposition UNC; the Congress of the People (COP); the Tobago Organization of the People (TOP); the Movement for Social Justice (MSJ); and the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC).
Many of these groups, including the COP and the MSJ, representing labour, had felt alienated from the governing process under the PNM.
The rise to power of the island's first female prime minister has had a transformative effect. For decades, politics were dominated by men, and Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who became leader of the opposition in 2006, had at times been fighting for her political life.
Despite its goal of people-centered growth and development, the People's Partnership faces numerous challenges. The country's ethnic and class cleavages result in competing interest groups and divergent demands.
During the election campaign, Manning had sought to stir up intercommunal divisions by suggesting that Persad-Bissessar would seek to harm the interests of Afro-Trinidadians should she be elected.
On the other hand, Persad-Bissessar claimed that while the previous government "did not pay much attention to the Hindu population," her government would. Her new attorney general, Anand Ramlogan, concurred. "People think of Trinidad as a predominantly African country. We want to rectify this misperception." Previously there was "discrimination manifest in subtle ways," he stated, "one of which was the allocation of state funding."
The government has instituted a new multicultural policy, which came about, according to Winston Peters, the Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism, because the new government recognized that "a large portion of the citizenry feels itself alienated from sharing in the development of the nation."
The policy seeks to foster "a climate of inclusion, equitable distribution of resources and recognition and celebration of cultural diversity."
This emphasis on Indo-Trinidadian culture will rectify the previous lack of attention given to Indo-Trinidadians by governments dominated by Afro-Trinidadians. But in the end, for the country to thrive, it will need to find a middle ground between the needs of its citizens of African and Indian origin.
The southernmost of the Caribbean islands, situated just off the coast of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago were first colonized by the Spanish, then came under British control in the early 19th century.
The islands' sugar industry was hurt by the emancipation of the Afro-Trinidadian slaves in 1834, but they were replaced by indentured labourers from India between 1845 and 1917.
This legacy remains evident today. The country's population of 1,225,000 consists of Indo-Trinidadians, who constitute 40 per cent; Afro-Trinidadians, another 40 per cent; mixed 18.4 per cent; white 0.6 per cent; and Chinese and other minority groups 1.2 per cent.
Though all these people share a small island, a common language, schools, and even food and clothes, their identity as Trinidadians exists alongside their separate political and cultural spheres.
Many Indians, in particular, feel they have been forced to submerge their culture and conform to the country's Black culture.
The plural nature of the society gave rise to political parties sharply divided along ethnic lines, as politicians began playing the "race card." Even before independence in 1962, two major parties had emerged six years earlier, as the two dominant ethnic groups began to battle for political primacy.
The People's National Movement (PNM), led by Dr. Eric Williams, represented the Afro-Trinidadians, and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) under the leadership of Bhadase Sagan Maraj, was the vehicle for the Indo-Trinidadians.
The Democratic Labour Party (DLP) replaced the PDP in 1957 and it evolved into the United Labour Front (ULF) in 1976, and later into the United National Congress (UNC) in 1989, both led by Basdeo Panday. For the most part, its fate would be that of the official opposition. Under the rule of the PNM, the political identity and international face of the country was an Afro-Caribbean one, with South Asian culture minimized.
This is now changing. In May 2010, the People's Partnership party, led by Kamla Persad-Bissessar, an Indo-Trinidadian, achieved a landslide victory against the incumbent PNM government of Prime Minister Patrick Manning. The new grouping won 29 of the 41 seats in the House of Representatives, reducing the PNM to 12. It even captured the two seats on the island of Tobago, whose 60,000 people are mostly of African origin. However, in the 2013 election to the Tobago House of Assembly, the local government body responsible for the small island, the PNM won all 12 of its seats.
The People's Partnership was formed after a Unity Accord was struck prior to the election between several groups, including the Opposition UNC; the Congress of the People (COP); the Tobago Organization of the People (TOP); the Movement for Social Justice (MSJ); and the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC).
Many of these groups, including the COP and the MSJ, representing labour, had felt alienated from the governing process under the PNM.
The rise to power of the island's first female prime minister has had a transformative effect. For decades, politics were dominated by men, and Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who became leader of the opposition in 2006, had at times been fighting for her political life.
Despite its goal of people-centered growth and development, the People's Partnership faces numerous challenges. The country's ethnic and class cleavages result in competing interest groups and divergent demands.
During the election campaign, Manning had sought to stir up intercommunal divisions by suggesting that Persad-Bissessar would seek to harm the interests of Afro-Trinidadians should she be elected.
On the other hand, Persad-Bissessar claimed that while the previous government "did not pay much attention to the Hindu population," her government would. Her new attorney general, Anand Ramlogan, concurred. "People think of Trinidad as a predominantly African country. We want to rectify this misperception." Previously there was "discrimination manifest in subtle ways," he stated, "one of which was the allocation of state funding."
The government has instituted a new multicultural policy, which came about, according to Winston Peters, the Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism, because the new government recognized that "a large portion of the citizenry feels itself alienated from sharing in the development of the nation."
The policy seeks to foster "a climate of inclusion, equitable distribution of resources and recognition and celebration of cultural diversity."
This emphasis on Indo-Trinidadian culture will rectify the previous lack of attention given to Indo-Trinidadians by governments dominated by Afro-Trinidadians. But in the end, for the country to thrive, it will need to find a middle ground between the needs of its citizens of African and Indian origin.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)