Bolstering Africa’s justice system with International Criminal Court

2017 has been an interesting year for extreme politics. Both radical left and reactionary right ideas have entered mainstream discussion. On a single day, you can expect a very average news station to cover stories that touch on the failings of capitalism, as well as the increasing power of Neo-Nazis. It's just that kind of year. 

That's why, when an issue such as the removal of statues comes around, it's important to take a discursive view, and not simply leap headlong into dogmatic answers. The overlap between extreme right and left may be minimal in content, but there can sometimes be a similar vociferous tone, which makes their answers at least sound the same. 

Let's take the Taj Mahal as a litmus test. Hardline Hindu nationalists (who are in power) want to marginalise the Taj from Indian history. They claim it is a symbol of the Islamic oppression of the Hindu nation. Therefore, to reclaim the true history of India, Mughal architecture and history should be excluded. It is not 'true' history. 

There is obviously a lot to unpack here, but since so much of 2017 has been about the nature of public symbols and their connection to history, it seems appropriate to ask what the difference is between the Taj case and the removal of statues of Confederate luminaries in the US. 

On the surface of it, there is an obvious parallel: both the white supremacist statues in the US and the Taj Mahal recall times of oppressive power alignments. The Mughal Empire was oppressive, Hindus were treated as second-class citizens (in an already caste-dominated society), and there were atrocities committed against Hindus and other groups on a religious basis. White supremacists of course enslaved and tormented black people for centuries, first as slaves, then as second-class citizens. Therefore, marginalising and tearing down these monuments is justified, even if the Taj Mahal is incomparably more beautiful than any statue anywhere. 

Well, it's true that the cases are similar, but not in the way outlined above. Both illustrate instances of a powerful group trying to distort history, and celebrate oppression. The hardline Hindu nationalists are already in power in India – and their support for marginalising the Taj Mahal is born of a desire to isolate and marginalise Islam and muslims. They cannot tolerate that something so beautiful such as the Taj exists, since it the product of an Islamic background, and not a Hindu one. The categories used to describe history make no sense: India never was a wholly Hindy country, nor was it ever understood that the Taj itself is an 'Islamic' monument. Furthermore, yet nationalists justify this isolation through the specious writings of the risible PN Oak – a 'historian' who argues that once much of the world was ruled by a superior Hindu elite (sound familiar, Nazis?).

Just like the white supremacists in the US, they wish to support monuments that justify and celebrate oppression, and destroy those demonstrating diversity and pluralism. 

The Taj Mahal is a monument more beautiful than any ideology or sordid thought the nationalists could ever muster. I sincerely hope India does not go the route of the Babri Mosque, and destroy another gem of its very real, very Indian history. 

Armed police force entered the campus of one of Pakistan’s leading universities earlier this week to forcefully disperse a peaceful demonstration by the university students.

Subsequent events at the Quad-i-Azam University in the capital Islamabad led to tragic, chaotic and unfortunate – whatever you call it – circumstances, with blood-stained students beaten-up by the police and rounded up into police vehicles. These heart breaking images went viral on social media, amplifying the impacts of state oppression against the very basic right of assimilation and protesting to defy oppressive policies.

A total of 70 students of the QAU were taken into custody by the federal capital’s police for demanding the release of expelled students, protesting against an increase in the fee, and a number of other anti-student measures adopted by the university administration. Justifying the high-handedness of the police, the Vice Chancellor of the QUA, Dr. Javed Ashraf, pronounced these students as “some unruly individuals.” 

In this particular case, the QAU administration might argue the extreme intervention was made for the welfare of the students – who have nothing to do with all this ‘politics’; as if a political engagement for rights is a crime, and wish to go on with their studies. But, what about the students coming from poor provinces such as Baluchistan and remote areas of other provinces? Those who cannot afford an increase in fee, but are equally dreaming of a promising future, like the one available to their university peers from the well-off capital of Islamabad. Finally, since when and with what reasons has peaceful agitation become a crime, with demonstrations on a university campus, at that.

It comes then as no surprise that there isn’t a prominent presence of locally educated bright minds on the political arena in Pakistan, a country dominated by feudalism and nepotism. Universities are repeatedly failing to nurture young minds beyond the production of machine-like thinkers. Students are simply groomed to perform certain tasks in line with guidelines and instructions.

In April this year, a young university student, Mashal Khan, was lynched to death on the Abdul Wali Khan University campus by some fellow students who charged him of alleged blasphemy. Later in May, Saad Aziz – a young educated boy from a leading private educational institute in Karachi, confessed to killing members of Shia community and a leading female civil society activist Sabeen Mehmood in the port city.

In September, police in southern Sindh province accused a Karachi University student for being an active commander of a militant group and involved in attempted murder of a provincial assembly member.

A clear-eyed view of the situation demands that the students should be allowed to exercise their democratic rights, engage in healthy debates that fuel individualistic thinking, instead of being oppressed and left for exploitation.

Photo: Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) 

Last Monday, just over thirty minutes after publishing the latest entry in her widely read blog, Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered in a car bomb not far from her home in the sparsely populated rural village of Bidnija.

Known more globally for her forefront work in the investigation and exposure of the biggest data leak in history, otherwise known as the Panama Papers, Caruana Galizia, recently described by Politico as a “one-woman Wikileaks” was a fiercely independent journalist, with no political agenda bar exposing undercurrent networks of corruption and financial laundering, predominantly in her home country of Malta.

The choice to end the life of Caruana Galizia using the scare weapon of a car bomb, was of course, motivated not by a generalised opposition to her work, but by a wider reaching desire to both silence reporting that interferes with her killer’s interests, and to reverberate a message of fear throughout the journalistic community. But as poignantly written by journalist Jonathan Freedland, “if Caruana Galizia’s death is a reminder of the risks such reporters take, her life is a reminder of the value of their work.”

Caruana Galizia has been accumulating evidence as well as publishing investigative writing that exposes and accuses Malta of becoming a mafia country, where the Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat – of whom she was consistently critical – and his wife have alleged links to the Panama Papers, alongside the usual elite corruption, money laundering and widespread gang violence.

We’re living through a time when brave investigative journalism is both rare and met with the risk of journalists’ careers, at best and lives, as we’ve now witnessed, at worst. With the President of the United States declaring that it’s “frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever they want”, in conjunction with his ongoing war on the press, it’s paramount we continue fighting, and marching, and protesting for free speech and media that is fearless.

Caruana Galizia’s son, a journalist himself said “This was no ordinary murder and it was not tragic. Tragic is someone being run over by a bus. When there is blood and fire all around you, that’s war. We are a people at war against the state and organised crime, which have become indistinguishable.”

Austria has become the latest country in Europe to see voting for far-right parties bolstered. In the elections held on October 15th, the populist Freedom Party (FPO) achieved its best result ever, with 26% of the vote. With an anti-immigrant and anti-establishment stance, the nationalist party’s share of the vote was only bettered by the right-wing People's Party (OVP), which achieved 31.5% of votes.

Just 31 years old, People’s Party front-runner Sebastian Kurz will become the world’s youngest ever national leader, likely to form a coalition supported by the Freedom Party. As the country swings to the right, rhetoric from the People’s Party candidate is not so distant from the xenophobic message spread by the far right party and has proved effective in gaining votes.

Founded in 1956 by former Nazis, the FPO had maintained a modest but steady support in Austrian politics until the 90's, usually achieving less than 10%. The 2015 refugee crisis (when 90,000 Syrian refugees entered the country), however, boosted its popularity.

But it was not just the far right who scapegoated immigrants for the country's problems. The growth of the Freedom Party led Kurz to follow suit in campaigning on racist populist ideas, particularly on immigration issues. During the election campaign, the People’s Party announced restrictions on immigration and a stricter stance on crime and terrorism. As a foreign minister in the previous Government, Kurz had already closed the Austrian border to refugees in 2016 and passed an Integration Act in 2017 banning the full-face veil.

Apart from the expected xenophobic measures, the new coalition is also likely to adopt neoliberal and anti-welfare reforms characterised by its support for free market economics. Both the Freedom Party and the People’s Party have announced plans to cut public spending on social benefits, introduce more flexible labour legislation and cut corporate tax rates. At the same time, they are likely to deepen authoritarian measures such as curtailing the right to protest or controlling public broadcasting.

After the rise of far-right parties in recent European elections in countries such as France (21%), the Netherlands (13%) or Germany (13%), we continue to observe a worrying shift of far-right parties towards the mainstream. After an initial prudence in involving such parties in government coalitions, the case in Austria, nevertheless, paves the way for extreme right parties to be included in governance, a path in contradiction with European values ​​of tolerance and solidarity. Unfortunately, although with some exceptions, the rising wave of extreme nationalist populism does not yet show signs of crashing.

Photo: FPO

In what has become testament to growing frustration by a majority of the young population in Africa, scenes of sprouting betting shops, slot machines, online gaming and casinos are quickly turning into a common phenomenon across the continent, luring the youth with the promise of making a quick and hustle free buck.

But beyond this promise, is a catalogue of broken homes, clinical cases of desperation and at times suicide occasioned by bet losses.

In East Africa for example, one of the regions where sports betting is enjoying fanatical following, there has been numerous reports of youth draining their savings or taking loans to participate in betting. Yet as the multibillion dollar industry continues to thrive, the youth are finding themselves worse off than they were before engaging in gambling games, with psychiatrists positing that the current addiction by a majority of young people has reached epidemic proportions, with those who loose increasingly preferring suicide.

While the proponents of gambling have always positioned it as a healthy pass time that is equally an income generator for any government, tales of addicts who are willing to do anything to gamble, and who are increasingly being ostracised by society, makes this no ordinary pastime. Various countries are already revisiting gambling laws, with others instituting complete shutdown of betting joints in a bid to rescue their youth.

While the jury is still out on whether any institution has a moral right and authority to infringe on the kind of pastime an adult of sound mind chooses to engage in, it is a black and white affair that no nation ever prospered by allowing the cream of its society: the youth believe in the easy way out. There are meaningful, decent and sustainable ways to cure unemployment in Africa among the young population. Betting isn’t one of them.

All warring sides in Afghanistan seem to have adopted the dreadful path of death and destruction following the announcement of the new US war strategy for the conflict-riddled country.

With no encouraging signs of any headway towards resuming the stalled peace process, the sudden surge in gruesome deadly incidents across the country has sparked fears about the overall prospects of ending the war that has now entered its 17th year.

Responding to an array of mounting air and drone strikes by the US and Afghan forces, this week the Taliban carried out multiple suicide car bombings in at least three different provinces, killing more than 100 security personnel, and civilians who were going about their everyday life activities.

On Wednesday morning, multiple suicide car bombings rocked Gardez city, capital of the southeastern Paktia province, at a distance of less than one hundred miles from the heavily guarded Afghan capital Kabul. More than 50 lives were lost there, including the police chief for the province, and a number of young Paktia University students and many common citizens queuing-up for identity cards, passports and other documents near the site of the attack.

The Ghazni province’s Andar district and Kandahar’s Maiwand district saw similar assaults resulting in the loss of over 70 lives in the blink of an eye.

Now, looking at what the other parties to the conflict are doing would picture a very clear image of the situation on the ground. Since the announcement of the new US war strategy for Afghanistan in August, the US Forces in Afghanistan (USFOR – A) conducted at least 751 air strikes in the month of September alone, according to a US Air Forces Central Command report.

On its part, the Afghan ministries of defence and interior are issuing statements on the killing of tens of suspected militants on a daily basis.

Where is all of this death and destruction leading us then? The US, arguably the major player in this scenario has already pledged to send in more troops, and is also pushing its Nato allies to follow suit. On the other side, the Taliban and other militant groups do not seem to be having a manpower supply issue after all, both due to the prevailing fundamental ideology in the region and some pull factors created by state actors.

There does seem to be a broader consensus, at least among some wise quarters, that the raging war in Afghanistan is not the answer to the ongoing problem in the country. One wonders then why there aren't any tangible moves on the ground to at least pave way for a political settlement instead of all this warmongering.

Photo: Linke Zeitung 

In today’s media world, new events have a shelf life of several days, at best, and a couple of Tweets, at worst. But the charcoaled skeleton of the Grenfell council block continues to tower over the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, black, destroyed and traumatised, making it an inescapable reminder to survivors, residents and volunteers that their government has failed to aid them in the most desperate of incidents.

Four months after the fire broke in the social housing block, survivors continue to fight for a recognition of their rights, and with that, their humanity. Since then only 14 families have been rehoused, while 159 had turned down temporary housing offers that were squeezed in haphazardly to meet Theresa May’s deadline for all affected families to be offered temporary housing before July 5th. The Grenfell Response Team (GRT) said that “traumatised families could not be rushed into accepting offers to meet artificial targets and that most families were holding out for permanent homes.”

Over the past few weeks, dozens of funeral notifications circulated in the area and on Facebook. The survivors of the fire have hardly been given the privilege of mourning for their lost families, and the sudden displacement of their community. Last week alone saw the burial of 22 children, women and men; some for entire family members or households. “The number of children who have died makes these losses especially bitter. These were the next generation of the community, people at the beginning of their lives who had everything to live for.” Said Yvette Williams of the Justice 4 Grenfell campaign.

As scaffolding began engulfing the tower last week, floor by floor white sheeting is being put in place to cover the distressing sight of its remains. Yet Grenfell survivors are worried this will be the first in many steps to whitewash not only the accountability of both the borough council of Kensington and Chelsea and the Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), but the legal implications of such criminal negligence.

A recovery security committee has recently been founded to give a platform for the voices of Grenfell survivors. But how can a community affected by such an incident begin to reform itself, heal from the unimaginably futile loss of lives? To lose a generation of young members of a community engraves a hereditary trauma that will leak into decades to come.

Amidst the lack of liability, the unknown number of lives lost due to the severity of the fire in conjunction with the deaths of several undocumented residents; the silent march that took place just last Saturday and the lost voices of those who died; it’s crucial to maintain the link between the committee and public safety at high priority, and to continue empowering citizens to keep corporations and councils accountable.

Entire villages razed to the ground, historic areas of natural beauty completely wiped out, woodland burned to ashes and an intolerably high death toll. Forest fires that raged across northern and central Portugal last Sunday, killing over 40 people, once again caused a scene of bleak and tragic devastation.

Just as the Portuguese began recovering from last June’s shock, tragedy repeated itself only four months after the deadliest wildfires in the country’s history, which killed 65 people, most trapped in their cars in a desperate attempt to flee the blazes.

Behind yet another disaster, was an explosive mixture of contributing factors of incomprehensive scales. Insufficient preventative measures, weak or absent forest management, deficiencies in the largely volunteer fire brigade, an uncoordinated response, lack of information, the effect of climate change, vested interests of the paper industry and criminal activity. The list could go on.

But one significant, yet hardly reported reason behind such a massive tragedy has been the rural exodus from the Portuguese interior, where the wildfires wreaked havoc. The younger generation simply leave to seek opportunities elsewhere. Many go abroad (with a domestic population of 10 million, Portugal has a 5 million-strong diaspora), whilst others move to the coastal cities (over 70% of the country's population is concentrated on the coast), leaving the older population more and more abandoned and isolated.

In rural areas, the ageing population has little capacity to maintain forests and clear flammable brush and detritus, which fuel and spread fires, culminating in the brutal ecological and human destruction witnessed in the recent wildfires.

Furthermore, Portugal is one of the most heavily forested countries in Europe. However, most of its woodland is privately owned (over 85%), often by absent owners who poorly manage and neglect the forest.

Additionally, many criticise the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy as being a total misfit for Portugal. Experts say that funds from Brussels have been poorly channelled, discouraging activities such as cattle farming which is very helpful in cleaning forest brush. Alongside the disappearance of cattle, planting of non-autochthonous trees such as the highly flammable eucalyptus has soared, catering to the needs of the paper industry.

Taking everything into account, blame must fall on the successive governments who have done little more than turn their backs on the countryside, encouraging the centralisation of all kinds of public services from health to education, and offering few incentives to set up any type of business or industry in the interior. Repeated failures from Portugal’s authorities are responsible for not only the loss of over 100 lives, but also for the destruction of the country’s increasingly scarce ecological heritage.

Photo: Hélio Madeiras