As Good As You?

Nikolaj — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:53:48 +0000

Published in The Bulletin magazine

Adel Kassem - Copyright Nikolaj Nielsen 2011

Tourists wander about the cobblestoned streets in Brussels’ city centre. They’ve come to gaze at the Grand’Place and take photos of one of the capital’s most famous residents, the Manneken Pis. Some are unaware that the network of narrow streets nearby is the heartland of the capital’s thriving gay scene. Many same-sex couples have taken up residence in this area in an attempt to live in peace and relative security. But a spate of extremely violent attacks against homosexuals in recent months has unnerved the community. The rainbow-coloured flags that drape the storefronts and the bars that cater to a homosexual clientele cannot conceal the fact that a large part of Brussels society has yet to truly accept its queer community.

Much blood has been spilt on these cobblestones: a young gay couple were beaten senseless in June, and a lesbian couple suffered a violent attack in late August. The vast majority of victims don’t report physical violence to the police. Indeed, only four cases of violent homophobia were officially reported in 2010. In 2009, there were 56.

“To be homosexual in Brussels is to be confronted with violence constantly,” wrote Brussels Secretary of State for Equality Bruno De Lille on his website earlier this year. De Lille is openly gay and in a relationship, yet he cannot hold his partner’s hand in public without attracting insults, looks of disgust and, at times, even physical violence. In the face of such abuse, nearly one-third of all victims suffer psychological traumas, according to the Brussels-based Centre pour l’égalité des chances et la lutte contre le racisme, a public and independent organisation that promotes equality and fights discrimination.

But homophobia has taken yet another ugly twist. When three young men of non-European descent attacked a gay couple in June, politicians like the openly gay Flemish Minister of Education Pascal Smet peddled a rhetoric that stigmatised a diaspora community who already endure deep-rooted discrimination. Following the assault on the gay couple, Smet told De Standaard that Belgians of North African descent are the cause behind much of the insecurity and homophobia in Brussels. Violence in Brussels, he claims, stems directly from 500 or so young men of ethnic backgrounds.

“Homophobia existed in Belgium before immigrants arrived,” says Said, a young gay Belgian-Moroccan who directs Belgium’s intercultural queer organisation, Merhaba. Merhaba was launched in 2002 and reaches out to homosexuals with roots predominantly in Muslim countries. The organisation has no political or religious affiliation. Instead, Merhaba attempts to educate and create inter-communal dialogue. But the barriers are numerous. Not only do queers from ethnic cultural backgrounds face discrimination over their sexuality, they may also suffer from racism, Islamophobia and paternalism – from within their own communities as well as from within more traditional queer communities.

“You can’t fight homophobia with Islamophobia. You fight it through education and raising awareness. You also need to fight against gender stereotypes and sexism, heterosexism and heteronormativity that form the basis of homophobia,” says Said. Following the recent cases of physical violence against homosexuals, Said concedes that there are problems with attitudes towards homosexuality within migrant communities. At the same time, he finds it unjust to systematically single out immigrants and those of ethnic backgrounds as the only authors of homophobic behaviour, especially if no effort is made to situate this behaviour in a broader socio-economic context.

Homophobia, in Said’s view, penetrates all of Belgian society and is most commonly expressed within ‘macho’ environments. The younger generation does not fully accept homosexuality either. A study carried out in 2009 by the universities of Antwerp and Hasselt among 4,000 students, for instance, found that nearly 10 percent of Flemish youth think that sex between people of the same sex is wrong and 20 percent wouldn’t want to be seen with a gay person.

Nobody knows how large the homosexual community is in Brussels. Belgium does not gather statistics on sexual preferences, says Radouane Bouhlal, director of the Movement Against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia (MRAX). Moreover, it is impossible to know how many homosexuals hide their sexuality. Bouhlal estimates that anywhere between 10 and 18 percent of the city’s population is gay. Prior to joining MRAX, Bouhlal was an activist fighting for gay rights. He was also instrumental in getting Belgium to legalise gay marriage in 2003.

“Belgium’s laws are advanced but its society is not,” he says, adding that the country is structurally racist. He then draws a pyramid. At the pinnacle are the white Belgians; followed by Europeans, and so on until at the very bottom are the scattered remnants of a disillusioned North African community. “Fighting homophobia requires supporting community and anti-racist associations that create inter-communal dialogue. It also requires education and speaking to children about homosexuality,” he says. His basic idea is to collapse the pyramid and give everyone an equal chance in life, while breaking down prejudices about homosexuality. Within that mix, the gay community has to stamp out long-running misconceptions. The American Psychiatric Association, for instance, declared that homosexuality was not a mental illness in 1973. The United Nations World Health Organisation came to the same conclusion 20 years later – in 1993.

A few metres away from La Bourse, where the gay couple were attacked in June, 36-year-old Adel Kassem speaks about the growing Arab gay community in Brussels. Adel is originally from Egypt. He is a practising Sunni Muslim and has been living in Belgium since he was 20. “I’m not afraid anymore,” he says in fluent English. Adel works at FEDASIL, Belgium’s asylum-seeker reception agency. This outspoken and articulate individual has found an inner peace and the courage to live his life openly. Adel is Arab. He is gay. He is Muslim. And yet he’s a found a home in a country where discrimination and stigma are never too distant. Still, he cannot imagine hiding his true identity from the people he loves, regardless of the injurious epithets.

“Coming out enriched me. It gave me self-confidence. I am a Muslim. I am proud to be a Muslim,” he says. A University of Leuven economics graduate, Adel often discusses his homosexuality with other Muslim men who are sometimes hostile to the idea. In Egypt, he attempted to deny his sexuality but found himself sitting alone in the dark, afraid that people would hate him. Afraid that his parents would reject him.

He contemplated a double life, with a wife and children. But he couldn’t do it and left for Belgium where he found comfort in its nascent Arab gay community. “My parents have been incredibly supportive,” he says. He regularly attends a mosque in Brussels. Some of them know he is gay. His close friends, he says, were shocked but they accepted him. The boundaries are nonetheless visible. Outside the confined space of Brussels’ gay quarter, the streets can be menacing. “Leaving the neighbourhood and walking across the canal is viewed as an act of provocation by some,” he says. “We cannot deny that there is a huge lack of education in the ethnic and immigrant community in Brussels. But who is trying to improve their lives?”

The Lucrative Business of Chaos and Aid

Nikolaj — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:12:38 +0000

Published in Meta Magazine

In a destitute village somewhere deep in the Congolese forest, Dutch artist Renzo Martens unlatches two metal boxes and removes several large neon lights. His motions are deliberate, slow and choreographed. As he assembles the lights onto a wooden frame the villagers, dressed in tattered clothes, gather around curious. The sound of a generator breaks nature’s choir. Night has settled and the villagers begin to dance and sing. Renzo stares impassive. Above them in the cool glow of blue and red neon is written in English ‘Enjoy Poverty Please.’

Enjoy Poverty Please
It is a message that runs through Renzo’s 90-minute film, Episode III, filmed over two years in the Congo and completed in 2008. ‘Enjoy poverty please’ is phrase that takes the antipodal spectator of this work into a wide moral chasm—a chasm where Renzo demands the audience to question the morality behind white smiling aid workers snapping photos of the suffering, of western photojournalists snapping photos of the dead, of a UNICEF representative attempting to explain away all the logos slapped onto the blue and white tarpaulin meant to protect the displaced from sun and rain.

Pouring from this moral chasm is the extraordinary wealth of poverty. It is also a place where predominately white aid workers are either unwilling or unable to confront a harrowing question: could humanitarian aid possibly perpetuate the cycle of war and misery? Could poverty possibly be just another commodity, traded, bought and sold like gold, coltan or diamonds on the international market?

Consider this. The Congo’s combined annual profit from gold, coltan and diamonds in 2008 was less than the foreign donated aid revenue generated the same year from those huddled, shivering and trembling with fear, beneath a UNICEF tarpaulin. At the bottom of this moral chasm are the destitute, where they have always been, and where they slave away at pittance pay for impossible jobs, denied access to education and basic rights. At the top looking down are the wealthy government officials, humanitarian relief organizations, and a Western public whose conscious is loosely dressed with morality, human rights, and justice but whose demands for inexpensive products condemns the working poor to utter poverty.

Poverty as a Product
Episode III opens with a scene of a wiry man chopping away with a machete at thick jungle bush throughout a field that literally stretches beyond the horizon. He is meant to clear it. It is an atrocious task that pays him a pitiful 50 cents for three days of work. “We are suffering,” he says as he points to all the brush. “What can I do?” he adds and continues to hack away in frustration. He works for Groupe Blattner Elwyn, a European-run consortium of palm oil and coffee plantations, that Renzo later revisits in his film.

“It is the poor who should benefit from poverty,” Renzo said in an interview with TV2Africa in May, 2010. “The film is a portrait of power relationship,” he explained, adding that poverty is a commercial enterprise in what Richard Dawden, Director of the Royal African Society in London, likens to an “aid agency supermarket.” The problem, according to Renzo, is the spoils of poverty are flowing in the wrong direction. Certain corporations and multi-nationals exploit the poor. Few would argue against that. The poor in the Congo represent cheap labour in an environment that lacks decent working standards and labor rights. The end-result is cheaper produce on the world market. Again, few would argue against that.

But Renzo goes further. His film argues that humanitarian relief agencies and government officials also exploit the poverty of refugees and internally displaced persons. The business model for these organizations and individuals is based on poverty and conflict. Without conflict, without poverty, some of these people and organizations would be without jobs and so it is in their interest, acknowledged or not, to guarantee the cycle. It is a heterodox argument that discloses bold truths.

Renzo wants to usurp the status quo and reverse the power relation. His cynical perspective is meant to encourage the poor to brand, package and market their own misery like products on a supermarket shelf. They should be the ones taking photos of emaciated babies. The logos on the tarpaulin should belong to them. They should be the ones selling compassion to distant populations whose perceptions of Africa have been distorted and reduced down to the crude terms of corruption, disease, war and backwardness.

It is an intriguing promulgation that he could have pursued even further. But he doesn’t, for instance, fully challenge humanitarian relief workers on the premise of his film. He doesn’t directly challenge the white photojournalists either, who document and bear witness to events unfolding in the darkest hours of humanity. Instead, Renzo takes the viewer through a handful of scenarios that depict power relations between the haves and the have-nots. He shows the suffering of the working poor at a palm oil and coffee plantation. He follows white Italian photojournalists from AFP as they take photos of rotting corpses and then explain the marketing rationale behind their work. He convinces local Congolese photographers to emulate their white colleagues and snap photos of starving children instead of weddings and celebrations. He runs into a MSF caravan that is inexplicably leaving a region populated by malnourished children. He traverses, by canoe and by foot, through the Congo with his neon sign ‘Enjoy poverty please.’

Yet his attempts to empower the poor to ‘own’ their misery fail to make a significant impact–except maybe on several incredulous audience members of his film. And perhaps rightfully so. Renzo, in a benign fashion, is guilty of the very act he condemns. He too is basing his work as an artist on the poverty of others. He too enters the lives of the desperate until he is satisfied with his scene, his shot, and his moment. The wisp of encounters he leaves behind will not fade the misery of the poor. They will remain where he had found them and when he returns to Europe, he can place his work in an art gallery and have intellectuals attempt to decipher Freudian references to id, ego, and superego. If anything, lingering memories of distraught black faces may instead haunt his consciousness. Still, he has the courage to admit his entitlements vis-à-vis poverty. Near the end of the film he confesses that he, too, is capable of vanity. But unlike the journalists and the humanitarian relief workers, Renzo’s work does not portend righteousness or make claims to do good. It simply reveals.

Compassion Fatigue
Renzo’s stoic behavior in face of extreme poverty and his detached but poignant questioning of the injustice stand in stark contrast to the normal media blitz and marketing campaigns that play on the conscience and emotions of its carefully targeted audience: us.

Renzo, however, does disclose certain uncomfortable truths. He insightfully depicts the casual relation between poverty, media, and humanitarian aid. It is an apotropaic relation that Dutch journalist Linda Polman argues in her book, Crisis Caravan, essentially undermines viable long-term solutions to war. A relation that feeds into what Susan D. Moeller, Director of the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, describes as the unacknowledged consequence of peripheral journalism and humanitarian aid marketing machines on the general public. Another starving baby. Another famine. Another war. No context. No depth. No understanding. But plenty of compassion fatigue.

In 1984, BBC journalist Michael Buerk opened the world’s eyes to skeletal Ethiopian children dying en masse. Live Aid was launched, over USD 100 million was raised and donated, and six years later the same famine in the same place was repeated. But the picture of the starving baby could no longer provoke the same outrage it did in 1984. The connection between stimulation and an emotive response, or what Walter Benjamin described as the ‘aura’ of an image, had been severed. Aid agencies were aghast. An apathetic public does not pressure donors and governments to fill the aid agency coffer. Something unspeakable, much more insidious and horrible would need to happen to shock the public into emptying their wallets.

Then came Rwanda. By the time genocide had been pronounced, 20% of its population had been hacked to death. The ‘refugees’ poured into the city of Goma where a camp erected by aid agencies fed and nursed back to health between 10 000 to 20 000 Hutu extremists and murderers who then returned to Rwanda to finish off the job (Polman). The around 250 NGOs and international aid agencies in Goma kept silent with one exception–the French branch of Médecins sans Frontiers left Goma in disgust in 1994. “Far from contributing to a solution, aid only perpetuates the situation in Goma,” wrote France MSF in a newsletter addressed to their donors (Polman).

Supporting Despots and Killers
When Renzo made this film in 2008, the Congo had received nearly USD 2 billion in aid. In 2010, according to the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, institutional donor aid peaked at USD 16.7 billion–the highest level ever recorded. NGOs received 17.3 percent of institutional humanitarian aid. Private funding added another USD 4 billion. MSF received USD 1.1 billion last year in private donations alone, more than the UK’s entire 2010 aid budget. Yet the misery continues.

“The humanitarian aid system is broken,” said John Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children earlier this year, adding that “humanitarian aid does not produce any long term benefit. It is easier for an organization to prove it had dealt with an emergency rather averted one,” he said adding that only two of the top 20 recipients of international humanitarian aid have moved out of the emergency phase in the past five years. In some cases, humanitarian aid is used for political ends and by host governments to coerce its citizens.

“To whom belongs poverty?” Renzo asks a handful of Congolese men in the film. They are gathered beneath a straw gazebo in an impoverished village. They listen intently. He then writes on a white board, “If we can sell it, it is important to know who the boss is.” Below the phrase he then writes, “Poverty brings money, riches. Poverty is a resource.” The resulting humanitarian not only brings riches, it is also a tool used to coerce and manipulate opposition.

A joint undercover investigation by BBC’s Newsnight and the bureau of investigative journalism at London’s City University published this August found Ethiopia’s government using foreign aid-funded “capacity-building” programs ‘to indoctrinate schoolchildren, intimidate teachers and purge the civil service of people with independent political views.’ Their investigation confirmed an extensive 2010 Human Rights Watch report, “Ethiopia: Donor Aid Supports Repression” that shows how donor-supported resources and aid is used as a tool to consolidate the power of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. Ethiopia is one of the world’s top recipients of humanitarian aid. The EU has so far given the region over EUR 200 million in aid with further funding promised.

The Horror
Celebrated English nurse Florence Nightingale, writes Linda Polman in Crisis Caravan, opposed humanitarian aid and relief right from the start. When in 1863, Swiss philanthropist Henry Dunant launched the world’s first-ever international volunteer humanitarian relief organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Nightingale made her views known to the public.

Dunant had convinced governments that reducing the number of cripples on the battlefield would ease their burden on the state. It was economically justifiable and it teased the imaginations of many people with noble and good intentions. Nobody should have to suffer, argued Dunant. Good or bad, everyone should have the right to proper medical attention. Indeed, around the same time Dunant was making his case, the great American educator Horace Mann said “Until you have done something for humanity you should be ashamed to die.” These were powerful words. But at that time, war was mostly fought among and between professional soldiers. Nightingale reasoned that the very nature of war and conflict would change via relief organizations and pro-active volunteers doing their personal part for humanity. And it frightened her. “By easing the burden on war, war ministries would make waging war more attractive,” argued Nightingale (Polman).

Today, wars suck in the civilian population who too often shoulder the onslaught. In its annual report, ‘People Under Threat,’ the Minority Rights Group International says the number of civilian killed in conflicts has reached unprecedented levels. Less than 5 percent of World War I victims were civilians. The United Nations estimates 90 percent of those killed today are civilians of whom the vast majority is women, children and the elderly.

If the bullets don’t kill them, then ensuing disease, lack of water and famine will. And if that doesn’t work then the refugee camps, like Goma that nursed an army of Interahamwe back to health to continue their slaughter of Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda, will. No questions asked because neutrality and impartiality is sacrosanct to humanitarian relief organizations.

Dunant’s ICRC used impartiality and neutrality as arguments to not notify the world of the atrocities being committed by Nazis throughout its death camps. It was later revealed that the ICRC had been aware of these camps by as early as 1942. They knew about the ovens, the forced labor and death by starvation and torture. But they chose to remain impartial and neutral. François Bugnion, the

ICRC’s Director for International Law and Cooperation within the Movement, describes that moment in ICRC as a badge of shame.

“These actions are not negligible, since every life saved is priceless, but they cannot obscure the fact that, overall, the ICRC’s efforts were a failure,” he says. “Yet the failure was, above all, that of the ICRC’s inability—or unwillingness—to fully recognize the extent of the tragedy that was unfolding, and to confront it by reversing its priorities and taking the risks that the situation demanded”.

The same neutrality and impartiality that prevented the ICRC to inform early on what was happening in the concentration camps was also used by humanitarian agencies and NGOs in Goma to justify healing, feeding and funding the Hutu militia. As the Interahamwe marched into the open arms of the awaiting humanitarian relief organizations, they carried with them the spoils of war, bloodied machetes, axes and Kalashnikovs. The Hutu government in Goma even levied a ‘war tax’ on all aid agencies and used the money to fund its ragtag army.

By the time the Tutsi army finally torched the camp to the ground, aid agencies had erected 2,324 bars, 450 restaurants, 590 shops, 60 hair salons, 50 pharmacies, 30 tailors, 25 butcher shops, 5 blacksmiths, 3 cinemas, 2 hotels and a slaughterhouse in Goma alone (Polman). The aid agencies provided the Interahamwe with entertainment, jobs, health and the infrastructure that turned the camp into a thriving town. And we, the West, provided the aid agencies with millions upon millions of USD to run the camp. In the meantime, Tutsi and moderate Hutus received nothing—except the futile efforts of General Romée Dallane, commander of the tiny UN force in Kigali to protect what he could. “Even as millions in humanitarian aid was flown into Goma we could not get a few thousand dollars to help Kigali,” said Dallane (Polman).

Renzo’s Trail of Errors
There is a scene in Episode III that shows Renzo walking down a long narrow trail. In front and behind him are workers of Groupe Blattner Elwyn. The scene continues at the worker’s quarters where the man who had been hacking away at the forest brush for pittance pay presents Renzo his family. Their living conditions are deplorable. In a pot of boiling water, his wife stirs in a bundle of leaves. His son gnaws away at the raw meat of a small rodent, peeling back the fur to reveal the red flesh.

His daughter, her knees pulled close to her chest, sits silent in complete darkness. “She doesn’t sleep,” says her father who has been toiling away the plantation for the past ten years. She is seriously ill with visible ichorescent infections on her face, feet and buttocks. “They are actually worse off than those who have no jobs,” a village doctor who makes regular visits tells Renzo. “Most of the plantation worker children are malnourished,” he adds.

Later on in the film, Renzo visits the family a second time and offers them a feast. He serves them large chucks of beef and a bowl of vegetables. The little girl finds the strength to eat the meat and for a brief moment she smiles. Her father stands next to her and thanks Renzo as if he had been some kind of savior. Renzo looks at him and says they should all appreciate their poverty and find happiness in it. Poverty is their lot and so long as we the West desire to feed our vanities, erect institutions and relief agencies to brand our moral shibboleths to the world, and demand inexpensive products, the poor shall remain shackled to the bottom of the chasm.

Just before the family ends their meal, we see Renzo sewing a logo of the European Commission onto the tattered shirt of the ailing little girl. The father, perplexed, eats the last piece of meat.

The European Parliament’s Revolving Door

Nikolaj — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:34:52 +0000

Published at the Corporate Europe Observatory

A number of former MEPs are still active inside the Parliament, lobbying on issues they previously worked on while in post. Their networks inside the EU institution are invaluable to consultancy firms, PR agencies, and the companies which actively headhunt and recruit them. They know how the system works, who to talk too, and how to best influence their former colleagues.

The Lisbon Treaty, introduced in 2009, substantially increased the Parliament’s legislative power, making MEPs even more attractive to consultancy firms. The Parliament can now accept, amend or reject the content of European legislation that affects every European – making its decision makers worth knowing.

Its new powers mean that greater scrutiny, transparency and accountability are required to minimize any potential conflict of interest and corruption.

“Lobbyists write amendments. This is known. For instance, I received the same amendment from dozens of different MEPs from different groups on my report on CO2 emission regulation. Their wording was identical,” Rebecca Harms, co-president of the Green party, told Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), adding: “There are too many lobbyists and it’s difficult to understand who exactly they are working for.”

CEO has documented numerous cases of former MEPs who have turned lobbyists. John Purvis (Conservative, UK) left the European Parliament in 2009 and joined the lobby consultancy Cabinet DN where he now chairs the Financial Future Forum, which provides information-sharing and networking for financial services organisations on issues where EU law affects the industry. Christian Rovsing (Conservatives, Denmark) also joined Cabinet DN.

Gary Titley (Labour, UK) joined consultancy Hume Brophy. Titley, an authority with insider knowledge on EU foreign and security policy, served four terms as an MEP and was vice-president of the Socialist group. John Cushnahan (Fine Gael, Ireland) is known to lobby MEPs at the Parliament on the behalf of British American Tobacco. Cushnahan is apparently a regular visitor according to an assistant working in the Parliament who says she sees him “all the time”. Cushnahan was an MEP for 10 years.

Glyn Ford (Labour, UK) now works for the agency, Gplus. Finnish MEP Piia-Noora Kauppi (Conservatives, Finland) took up a post with the Federation of Finnish Financial Services and the European Banking Industry Committee (EBIC). While an MEP she was a known advocate of light-touch regulation for the banking sector. Former MEP Karin Riis-Jørgensen (Liberal Party, Denmark) now works for Kreab Gavin Anderson and Jules Maaten (Liberal Party, the Netherlands) joined Public Matters.

Meanwhile Erika Mann (Social Democrats, Germany) joined the Computer and Communications Industry Association in December 2009 as Executive Vice President, running their Brussels office. She had previously served on the parliamentary committee for industry, research and energy.

Then there are the MEPs who walk through the revolving doors more than once. Ernest Strasser, the MEP caught in the cash-for-amendments scandal, has been replaced by Hubert Pirker who is returning for his third time as MEP. Prior to replacing Strasser, Pirker was chief executive of his own consultancy firm, EU-Triconsult. The company has been recently dissolved.

EU-Triconsult openly promoted its close ties with the European Parliament, organising meetings for clients with decision makers in Brussels. To drive home the message, Pirker used the email signature: “Former Member of the European Parliament”. The company also advertised that it specialised in organising contacts with South Korean representatives - Pirker spent almost four years in the Parliament’s ‘Delegation for relations with the Korean Peninsula’ while MEP. Today, he is on the Committee on Transport and Tourism.

It is unclear whether or not any of these MEPs were hired while still in Parliament. But it is not uncommon for MEPs to have second jobs. New research by Corporate Europe Observatory, LobbyControl and Spinwatch revealed that 35 per cent of MEPs from across 13 member states have second jobs or paid outside financial interests. As many as one in seven of these jobs could provoke a conflict of interest with their work as an MEP.

“Second jobs need to be looked”, says Diana Wallis MEP, a member of the working group of 10 MEPs who are now looking to develop a code of conduct for Members after the recent Sunday Times exposé. “The issue is not the second job per se but whether such a job creates a conflict of interest, how you declare that, and how the situation is managed to create public trust in the system,” she added.

However, this revolving door is not limited exclusively to MEPs.

Oiling the hinges

CEO was recently given access to documents that show how former Parliamentary staffers worked on behalf of big pharma in an attempt to influence the legislative process on the adverse effects of authorised medicines.

Every year, around 200,000 people die in Europe because of the dangerous side effects of medicines. Some of these deaths occur because drugs can be rushed onto the market without proper studies or thorough screening. Rofecoxib, an anti-inflammatory, has been linked to thousands of fatal heart attacks . It was authorised in 1999 but wasn’t withdrawn until 2004.

Legislators wanted to improve the labelling of drugs so that the public were better informed of any inherent dangers with medicines. As a result, some medical products, especially those with a new active substance, will now be identified by a black symbol and a statement that it is being monitored.

But during the passage of this legislation, while no one at the European Parliament explicitly argued against improving the safety of drugs, or against better labelling and patient access to information, there were attempts to weaken the wording of the warnings on the labels on the grounds that they could potentially frighten people.

These attempts were made by, among others, two former assistants of Françoise Grossetête. Grossetête is a French MEP from the European People’s Party (EPP). In 2009, Grossetête was awarded the ‘Health MEP of the year award’ at the Parliament Magazine’s awards by Brian Ager, Director General of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations. Françoise Grossetête was recognised for her commitment to pharmaceutical and health issues .

Grossetête is MEP and also Regional Advisor (Conseillère régionale) for the Rhône-Alps region which is also home to Sanofi Aventis and global headquarters of its vaccine division, Sanofi Pasteur. Sanofi Aventis has invested over 300 million euros in the region since 2005.

Jérémy Michel was a Parliamentary assistant to Françoise Grossetête from October 2000 to October 2006. A month later, he became the Senior Manager for European Affairs at Sanofi Aventis – a position he still holds today. His partner, Géraldine Philibert was also a former Parliamentary assistant to Grossetête. Philibert still works in the European Parliament, but now as an EPP policy advisor and spearheaded the EPP’s position on adverse effects of medicines on behalf of the EPP’s shadow rapporteur Pilar Ayuso.

In the early hours of April 21 2010, Michel sent an email outlining Sanofi Aventis’ position and amendment proposal changes on the rapporteur’s draft legislation. This email has been seen by CEO. Later that same day (April 21), Philibert sent an email outlining the EPP’s position and proposed changes on the directive on the adverse effects of medicines and the regulation. CEO has obtained a copy of this email. According to a parliamentary source, who wishes to remain anonymous, the two positions were almost identical.

“In general EPP does not want to send a wrong and alarmist message to patients which might put at risk the treatment as decided by health professionals,” wrote Philibert adding that “the EPP cannot support the ‘intensive’ monitoring these words are considered as being not in adequacy with the objective. In a spirit of compromise, EPP suggest to replace them by ‘under observation’.”

While such parallels are not inherently unusual, the close relationship between two individuals, one lobbying on behalf of Sanofi Aventis, and the other heading a highly-relevant EPP policy initiative, raises obvious questions.

Grossetête does not appear to have been directly involved in these exchanges. Nonetheless, during a debate at the plenary session in Strasbourg in September she told lawmakers: “We must also take care not to frighten patients with excessive warnings; providing too much information could ultimately prove harmful.”

Blocking the revolving door

The recent cash-for-amendment scandal exposed a culture that blurs the lines between public and private interests. The parliamentary working group has been tasked to establish a code of conduct for MEPs and lobbyists is scheduled to present its results and recommendations on 21 June, including rules on the revolving door, with a vote most likely set near the end of the year. But how serious are these efforts and will they change anything?

In the United States, former Congressmen are barred from entering Congress if they become paid lobbyists. The US has also imposed a two-year cooling off period banning Congressmen from taking positions with private firms in areas they legislated on. The Buzek working group is discussing a similar restriction but one that “is adapted to a European model” according to a policy advisor working on the issue.

In other words, the group is taking its inspiration from what currently exists in other Member States. No Member State has the same level of restrictions against lobbying as in the US. Instead, the group wants to establish guidance and protocols but what this means for the revolving door is still not clear.

“The Parliament should offer members a lot more guidance when it comes to dealings with lobbyists and any potential conflict of interest situations. We need to look closely at MEPs who are also principal rapporteurs on co-decision legislation. We need to strengthen the code of conduct of MEPs,” MEP Wallis, a member of the group, said.

MEPs do not appear keen on imposing a two-year cooling-off period.

“I’m not in favour of a two-year cooling period. It is not necessary that MEPs are treated like Commissioners”, one MEP told CEO, explaining that not everything can be solved through regulation alone and that trust needs to be established between MEPs and the public.

But as former MEPs are entitled to a transitional allowance for up to two years after they leave office until they get another job, surely the Parliament should impose some restrictions on what ex-MEPs can do during this time?

In the meantime, former MEPs continue to enter the Parliament at will. Some of these individuals can be spotted sipping drinks at the Mickey Mouse bar on the Parliament’s third floor. They come to socialize and participate in events organised by the Former Members Association (FMA). The association “brings together former MEPs and avail [sic] of their experience and expertise” according to its site.

The FMA’s president is Pat Cox who was also the former President of the European Parliament. He certainly didn’t hesitate to become a lobbyist upon leaving the Parliament, working for Microsoft, Michelin, Pfizer and lobby consultancy APCO. He even had his own lobbying firm. At the same time, he also advised European Commissioner Meglena Kuneva in 2009 on “Communication and Strategy for Consumers on citizens”.

Indeed, this former president set an example that condones the excessive influence of corporate lobbying inside the EU’s only elected institution. A practice that not only threatens to sideline the public interest but also distances the Parliament from the people it was elected to represent.

Safe as houses

Nikolaj — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 09:19:37 +0000

Published in The Bulletin magazine – June 2011

Nuclear power plant in Tihange, Belgium

The meltdown in Fukushima, Japan has reinvigorated the debate over Belgium’s ageing nuclear facilities. Belgium’s seven nuclear reactors, all run by Electrabel, produce just over 51% of the country’s electricity. Only France relies more on nuclear energy.

Yet despite issues over aging, safety, and security of these massive generators – politics are fighting to keep the Belgian facilities operational and French company GDF Suez happy. Electrabel is a wholly owned-subsidiary of GDF Suez.

More worrisome are the security and safety issues. Another government watchdog cites dozens of issues at three of Electrabel’s oldest nuclear reactors. When queried over these alarming reports – some of which have yet to go public – the relevant ministers either refuse to answer or obfuscate the details.

In a report yet to be released to the public, the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC) for instance cited 25 security and safety flaws in the two plants at Doel and another 18 in Tihange. The exact nature of these flaws remains a mystery even to Belgian federal deputies who have repeatedly asked Annimie Turlebloom, Belgium’s Minister of Interior, for full disclosure and explanation. The FANC is under the Minister’s mandate.

“There is a huge lack of transparency and democracy here,” says Kirstof Calvo from the Ecolo-Green! party. Calvo had asked Turtlebloom for the report a number of times. Each time he was refused adding that Electrabel is entitled to the first look of the government commissioned report. The company will also have the liberty “to make any necessary corrections before it goes to us and the public,” says Calvo.

Karina de Beule, an official at FANC, told The Bulletin that these flaws were not of great importance but then could not provide further details when pressed. Carine Sower, another FANC official, made similar comments and described the flaws as “points which need attention and/or reevaluation, but [are] not major flaws. To our knowledge there are none at this moment in time, otherwise we would have stopped operating these plants already. The agency will publish the report as soon it is available,” she wrote in an email.

Ageing nuclear plants

There are 442 commercially active nuclear reactors in the world. Twenty-six are 40 years or older. In 2015, another three will hit the forty mark – all of them in Belgium. Two are located in Doel, only 11 km away from Antwerp. The third is located in Tihange, 4 km away from Huy – the very same reactors with the undisclosed security and safety issues pointed out by the FANC report. The three reactors account for around 11% of Belgium’s energy output.

And because of it Belgium can lay claim to yet another record. It’s the only country in the Union to have erected nuclear facilities in high-density population areas. Almost a million people live within a 20 km radius of Doel. Another half million live near Huy. Yet Belgium’s national emergency plans are insufficient even according to its own government commissioned report following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The report recommended a minimum 20 km evacuation zone. Today and a quarter of a century later – it’s still 10 km.

“It’s up to the regions and the towns like Antwerp to come up with evacuation plans and not the federal government” the Centre gouvernmental de coordination et de crise (CGCCR) told The Bulletin. Should the unthinkable ever transpire, then it would be up to the CGCCR to coordinate the evacuation on a national level. However when asked if Antwerp even had a plan, the CGCCR said it believed so.

Greenpeace Belgium’s Eloi Glorieux who heads the organisation’s nuclear dossier says Antwerp simply has no evacuation plan in case of nuclear disaster. “The current evacuation plan is only 10 km around Doel 1. A kilometre more and it would include Antwerp, which is too difficult to coordinate and plan. There is no evacuation plan in place for Antwerp,” said Mr Glorieux. “It would be chaos.”

The Bulletin asked Annie Turtlebloom, Belgium’s Minister of Interior who is also in charge of the population’s safety and security, to explain. Why the radius discrepancies? Why is there no national emergency plan for those Belgians living closest, for instance, to Gravelines? Gravelines is one of the world’s largest nuclear parks and is even less secure than those ageing behemoths in Doel according to Greenpeace Belgium.

Turtlebloom’s spokesperson told The Bulletin that the questions were too technical and too detailed for the Minister to answer. He then promised to forward the questions onto the relevant authorities but could not guarantee a response. The Bulletin then asked a general question to which the spokesperson responded, “You can find those answers in other articles and in press releases.”

No time for answers

Paul Magnette, Belgium’s Minister for Climate and Energy, is allegedly cosying up to GDF Suez and its wholly owned subsidiary Electrabel. Guido Camps, the director of the government’s own energy market regulator, even threatened to resign in March because Magnette ignored his recommendations on nuclear profit margins while instead taking into consideration the recommendations of a parallel study made by…Electrabel.

Camps claims Electrabel makes around EUR 2 billion per year. Electrabel says it makes only EUR 650 million. Which one should be taxed? The dispute is being mediated by the direct intervention of caretaker Prime Minister Leterme who then handed the case over to yet another government regulator. They came up the figure EUR 900 million – thus undermining Camps’ authority as a government watchdog.

Indeed, Magnette had already a cut a deal with GDF Suez in 2009 to extend the operational life of the three oldest reactors by 2025, and not by 2015 as originally planned in 2003. The remaining four reactors received 20-year extensions. In exchange, the company would fork over around EUR 250 million per year to the state coffers.

But because the government collapsed in June of last year, the legislation meant to seal the deal never took place. In theory, the three ageing facilities will still have to stop production and shut all operations by 2015. The industry is not happy and is pressuring the government to hold up its end of the bargain. “A deal is a deal,” Sophie Dutordoir of Eletrabel told L’Echo.

In March, Magnette met with Gerard Mestrallet of GDF- Suez and Dutordoir behind closed doors. The Bulletin asked what had been discussed at the meeting and why, among other questions, insurance companies refuse unlimited liability coverage should a disaster ever occur. German insurance companies, for instance, provide unlimited liability coverage to German nuclear reactors. But in Belgium it is capped at EUR 300 million. Magnette took two days to respond. His spokesperson had told The Bulletin by telephone that our questions had been answered and only needed a final signing off by the Minister.

A few hours later, The Bulletin received the following email: “Unfortunately it was impossible for the Minister to answer all your concrete questions, but instead I would like to refer to our press releases.” The Minister didn’t respond to any of the questions and neither did any of his press releases.

In the meantime, a Belgian law allows a company to label its nuclear, coal, and gas generated energy as green because of ‘special drawing rights’ from wind farms in Norway, Sweden, or other countries. Electrabel’s partner SPF-Luminous, for instance claims it produces 100 % green electricity. In reality, it’s less than 10%. Magnette is hoping to change the law and afford some greater transparency to the consumer. Whether he succeeds is another story.

In Europe – slideshow of migrants and asylum seekers

Nikolaj — Tue, 17 May 2011 16:27:45 +0000

Throughout the past two years I’ve written a number of articles on migrants and asylum seekers. Click on the image below to launch the slideshow and view some of the images I took of them.

Click image to launch

The Sahrawi: Seeking solace in a dream

Nikolaj — Sun, 15 May 2011 20:50:03 +0000

(pambazuka news, July 2008)

A row of Moroccan flags, firmly embedded in a concrete wall too tall to scale, align a compound that has no political will and surround a United Nations mission that has no human rights mandate. Minurso, the UN Mission for the Referendum in the Western Sahara, is a sad spectacle where the single blue flag appears to reach tall into the brisk December sky. But it hangs limp as the dozens of red draped green stars flutter in the slight breeze; defiant and dominant.

In front of the mission’s gate are two armed Moroccan soldiers. They stare out onto an empty lot where some brave individuals once staged a peaceful protest. Their demands for the fundamental rights of assembly, of freedom of expression and thought, were quickly kicked into the dirt by the black boots of the Moroccan security forces and their notorious DST. The blue helmets of the mission were passive, behind their barricade sipping sweet minted teas. Their silence underlines the terrible cost of human suffering and injustice that has gone unchecked for over 34 years. As I walk by the compound, one of the soldiers approaches and asks if I work for the mission. He then tells me to leave.

This is Laayoune. A former Spanish outpost turned administrative centre where Moroccan soldiers, police, and security details are as common as the lowly soul attempting to carve out a life in the middle of this vast desert, whose relative size is comparable to that of the entire UK. Laayoune houses some 200,000 (this figure is in dispute) individuals. In its margins, in the Eraki neighbourhood and elsewhere, the Saharawi live in bland block apartments, some in slums, some in relatively decent housing. All under the tyranny of indifference and a media blackout.

Minurso was established in 1991 with a mandate to oversee a referendum for the self-determination of the Sahrawi and to keep the peace between Morocco and the Polisario. But years of deadlock, of missed opportunities, and a lack of political will in the Security Council has forced the blue helmets into a corner where comfort and complacency have replaced international law and rigour.

Boredom erodes the soldiers’ minds. Their SUVs are shiny and brilliantly white, the tires a perfect black. Everything they have appears new and when they are parked in the asphalt of lots of expensive hotels like the Nagir, the ordinary Sahrawi woman can do nothing but walk by, her head turned low as the bustle of Africa’s longest territorial conflict and the UN’s last decolonisation procedure continues unabated, unchecked and discredited. She is alone with her thoughts, but a recurrent phrase – shared by so many just like her – runs through her head like ticker tape: Independence, independence now.

On 28 April, Amnesty International sent a letter to the UN Security Council calling on members to include a human rights monitoring component in Minurso’s mandate. Two days later, that request was denied. One can only speculate as to why. Permanent Security Council member France has long been an advocate of Morocco’s autonomy plan and their commercial and political interests in the kingdom far outweigh any human rights mandate. French banks Credit Agricole and Société Général dot the city’s main boulevards Hassan II and Mohammed V. Then two years ago France blocked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from publishing the following in a report on the conflict: The right to self-determination for the people of Western Sahara must be ensured and implemented without any further delay. According to Reuters, France did not offer any immediate comment when questioned.

Several hundred kilometres away in the refugee camps in Algeria, Khadad Mhamed, the Polisario member in charge of the referendum with Minurso, fumes. ‘The United Nations is morally responsible for this delay. It is a scandal that we are still suffering after all these years. Minurso is unable to organise a referendum because there is no political will.’

Worse, according to some Sahrawi, Minsuro witnessed the physical abuse by the Moroccan police on fellow Sahrawi and did nothing. In January 2008, the UN peacekeepers defaced and vandalised prehistoric art in the occupied territories Agence France Presse reported. Several of the soldiers had sprayed paint onto rock art that depicts human and animal figures dating back 6000 years. And then there are rumours of sexual abuse. But these belong to other articles, and other proper and thorough investigations.

What the Minsuro are doing is providing the logistical support along with the coordinated efforts of the UNHCR: To fly Sahrawi from Laayoune to visit distant relatives in the refugee camps in Algeria. According to the UNCHR, between March 2004 and April of this year, some 8,000 Sahrawi have benefitted from the program which was established under the wing of what is disingenuously called the Confidence Building Measures Programme (CBM).

Christopher Ross, the new UN Secretary General’s Personal Envoy for the Western Sahara, is seeking to promote more such measures in order to see a definitive end to the conflict. His predecessor, Peter van Walsum, failed miserably. In August 2008, Mr Walsum wrote an op-ed in El Pais where he advanced a solution ‘short of full independence’. It was an astonishing admission that flew in the face of dozens of UN resolutions, including Resolution 1514 that guarantees a people’s right to self-determination. The resolution is a pillar in the UN Charter and no person has the right to determine a people’s destiny except the people. So much for neutrality, though some are now voicing hope in Mr Ross and a US administration headed by President Barack Obama.

‘Mr Ross is an exceptional figure, he speaks fluent Arabic and understands the conflict,’ says Pedro Pinto Leite, secretary of the International Platform of Jurists for East Timor (IPJET). The IPJET, instrumental in shaping the referendum for self-determination in East Timor, has for years also supported the Saharawi. Mr Leite then said Obama had sent a letter to King Mohammed VI expressing his views on the conflict, though no record or publication has yet brought this into the public domain.

Not only the UN, but also the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in favour of the Sahrawi – over thirty years ago. But where international justice continues to fail the oppressed, the fight continues in Laayoune’s alleys and streets, where the idea of independence from Rabat is rooted in the lives of the 160,000 refugees, as well as families torn apart. The walls on these neighbourhoods are tagged ‘Morocco, Morocco out!’ along with other slogans, written in Spanish and in Arabic. Driving through the neighbourhood one late evening to meet the activists, I spotted four terrified young boys lined up against the wall as Moroccan police yelled in their faces. A wall near them was also tagged but the cab driver casually said it was drugs.

For Brahim Sabbar, a Saharawi human rights defender who lives in Laayoune, the struggle for independence is one that can only be won through peaceful protest and through the recourse of international law. ‘Our relationship with the Moroccan civilian is good, it’s the state we have a problem with,’ he says.

Mr Sabbar is probably now in his late fifties or early sixties, but he spent at least ten years of his life locked up in the secret detention Kaalat Megouna. His family thought he was dead, his mother had refused to talk and remained silent until finally one day he arrived at her doorstep, frail but alive. His story is one that continues under remarkably similar parallels by those much, much younger than him. He had been apprehended by plainclothes policemen near Dakhla, a port town off the coast of the Western Sahara, where he had been celebrating Mauritania’s defeat and withdrawal from the territory. For the first four years, he and eight other Sahrawi were isolated from the rest of the prison population.

‘We kept ourselves entertained by creating theatre as a vehicle. We became both audience and actor.’ As the years went by, the Saharawi at Kaalat formed committees until finally there emerged the start of a human rights organisation. Today, the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations Committed by the Moroccan State (ASVDH) remains banned but the material it produces and the testimonies it supplies to other organisations like Frontline Defenders and Human Rights Watch is a demonstration of its commitment.

Since Minurso has no human rights mandate, it is up to the Sahrawi to organise and document abuse. Mr Sabbar is a central figure among those organisations. When he was once again jailed, Amnesty International launched a campaign for his release. But there are many others whose names are not known, at least not to the international community.

At only 18, Hassanna Aalia is no stranger to the Moroccan police. He is a photographer and his images document that which is so difficult to express in words. ‘Testimonies,’ he says. Mr Aalia has himself seen the ether of police brutality. Behind the city slums lies Seguiat at Hamra, a stagnating river where Sahrawi are regularly taken to and beaten. ‘They took me to the river, they beat me there, they tortured me, and then they left me there,’ he says in a quiet voice.

Stuck in the green swill of its water are rusting cans of Pepsi and other refuse. Behind, the walls of Suuk Djema and ahead, a single road meanders into the desert some call the lahmada, literally translated into ‘oh the heat, the cold’. Somewhere along this edge stood Hassanna Aalia, forced to strip naked as the Moroccan police took photos of him and then threatened to send them to pornographic sites if he continued to document the abuse. Despite the events that have unfolded there and the litter that dots the river banks, Seguiat at Hamra is beautiful, an oasis in the desert where one could imagine of how things may once had been, before the Moroccans, before the Spanish. It is peaceful.

Hassanna Aalia is fortunate. He never experienced the Black Jail unlike another Sahrawi human rights defender, Ahmed Sbai. I met Mr Sbai in the outskirts of Laayoune and waited for his contact to arrive at a corner butcher, where whole sheep are strung upside down from hooks, blood dripping from their noses into small pools of crimson on the dirty concrete. In the distance, high-pitched voices of children playing in the darkness break an otherwise complete silence. The silhouettes of the block apartments stand cut against the brilliant stars of the night sky. Finally, a figure of a man approaches and then moments later, his story begins.

‘You enter that prison lost but you leave as a new born,’ he says. ‘I cannot really express in words what it’s like.’

In 1999, Mr Sbai says he was kidnapped from a demonstration in Smara and sent to Lebbayer, a secret jail 25 kilometres outside Laayoune. He was taken to a room inside the compound and tortured. ‘It’s an empty room with no furniture except for a table and a large light. There are at least eight people in the room who then band your eyes before the torture begins. They place you facing the wall on your knees with your hands bound behind your back. I sat like this the whole night, until they set me on the table and beat me.’ He says he was then taken by his hands and feet, and stretched out with his face pushed to the floor while someone pounded his kidneys.

Accused of belonging to a criminal organisation, Mr Sbai was then sentenced to prison for two years in what he describes as rigged court proceedings. ‘There is no independence in the court system. The judge will always decide in favour of the Moroccan government.’ Mr Sbai describes the Black Jail as a building coming apart at its foundations. Inside, there are five rooms three to four meters in length with a maximum total capacity for 250 prisoners.

‘I lived among thieves and criminals but I did meet two other political activists. Each room has at least 60 prisoners,’ he says. Even in these closed quarters, Mr Sbai says drugs and alcohol are rampant, smuggled into the jail by prison staff. ‘The authorities allow the drugs to control the prison population. The food made us sick and we were given water that been stored in a cistern where rats swam.’

What then are the Polisario doing to advance their cause? At the 34th European Conference of Coordination Support to the Sahrawian People (EUCOCO) in Spain, it became obvious that the Polisario’s actions in Morocco proper and the occupied territories was less than minimal. In the place of real action were words and dozens of speeches from delegates and representatives from around the world, expressing their solidarity and their photo-ops, which were few and far in between. Algeria’s delegate shouted his country’s solidarity with the Polisario, but refused when asked to comment, saying he was there as a private citizen and was not speaking on behalf of Algiers. He then asked to remain anonymous.

At the ‘Human rights in the occupied territories’ workshop of the conference, Brahim Dahane, president of the ASVDH expressed his frustration. ‘The Polisario have yet to coordinate a plan of action,’ he said. Sadafa Ahmed Bahia, himself a member of the Polisario did not disagree. ‘The Polisario’s implication in the occupied territories is minimal. They don’t organise protests, they only represent them.’ And then again, in Agadir, Sahrawi student leader Aino Mohammed offered the same response. As it stands, the movement has no paid full time human rights lawyer. Arguments broke out at the workshop and at one point, a handful of jurists simply left. Even among the civil societies represented at the EUCOCO, there exists a rivalry exasperated by language barriers and codes of conduct. Eva, a French activist kept me entertained on all the political intrigues within the movement. But the costs are obvious. A glaring frustration of inaction seems to have derailed any substantial movement – at least at EUCOCO. There are indeed other solidarity movements for the Western Sahara, but EUCOCO seemed to décor a set.

The European Union itself has its own act. The European Commission remains the largest donor to the refugees in Algeria. Since 1993, the Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) has handed out €133 million to the camps. Then two years ago, it gave another €10 million and then the same amount last June. At the same time, the European Union is signing lucrative fishing contracts with Morocco off the disputed coastline, in direct violation of international customary law and their duty of non-recognition over an area still under litigation. The 1975 ICJ ruling states that the right to self-determination also includes the right to sovereignty over natural resources. But an Association Agreement signed with Morocco means exports are stamped with a EUR1 certificate designating the products as originating in Morocco – including those exploited in the Western Sahara.

Morocco is Africa’s top exporter of fish. And certain ministers in the European Parliament were outraged when contracts were finalised. In 2006, Brussels signed off the Fisheries Partnership Agreementwith Rabat. EU vessels are now exploiting the rich fish grounds off the Western Saharan coast. These fleets fly German, Latvian, Lithuanian, Dutch, British, Polish, and of course, Spanish flags. Spain has the most licences. Only Sweden has officially denounced the plunder of these natural resources while Ireland, Greece, and Austria have expressed serious reservations over the partnership agreement. Money is to be made and mouths to be fed. And as the financial crisis squeezes its grip, more and more pressure will be placed on Rabat to open up markets and trade to its vast neighbour to the north. But this is only part of the story.

Prior to an annual congress in Tifariti in 2007, Polisario leader Baba Sayed said the Polisario needed a fundamental change. ‘This congress must be a renaissance for us or it’s over for Polisario.’ At EUCOCO, he appeared content but it was difficult to ascertain whether or not his renaissance had ever materialised. At the refugee camps in Algeria, the youth are mobilising and taking decisions without first conferring the Polisario. It is a situation that admittedly has the Polisario on edge.

‘The Sahrawi leaders couldn’t stop us. They were afraid something would happen. They wanted us to stop but we refused,’ said 28-year old Brahim Sid Ahmed Boudjemaa, a Sahrawi refugee from the Smara camp in Algeria. Boudjemaa had, along with several hundred young student Saharawi, approached the Berm, a sand wall that runs 2000km through the contested border with Algeria and well along the edge of Mauritania. The students walked through a minefield and tossed rocks at the Moroccan soldiers. Boudjemaa said the Polisario were afraid something would happen, that a Moroccan soldier would lose his cool and shoot one of the students. But no shots were fired, their fingers only just touching the triggers.

Resorting to international laws and human rights protocols has left some of the refugees feeling bitter. The principles of justice are present as are the associated values. But it’s the waiting that is pushing many to the brink. At the very least, those living in Laayoune in the occupied territories can stage a fight, are active and are driven with purpose for a cause that belongs to them and fundamentally to us all.

‘Our situation might lead to extremism, it is so unfortunate and sad, but we have no exit. We have lost all faith in the UN. History tells us that anything taken by force should be resolved by force,’ said Mulay Hamadi Nanak, a refugee in the camps in Algeria.

With no future and no real prospects for an independent state, Mr Nanak is seeking solace in a dream, in a solution that borders on madness. War is an absurd tragedy. Some of the old men who fought against the Moroccan soldiers are today lying at the centre for landmine victims in Rabbouni. Some are missing limbs, others paralysed. They are spending the remainder of their lives supine, thinking about the what-ifs and the terrible suffering they and their Moroccan brethren have experienced for a cause that seems dispersed and blown away like so many fine grains of sand.

A small bomb in Gali

Nikolaj — Sun, 15 May 2011 20:37:09 +0000

(openDemocracy.net, July 2008)

The Svetliachok cafe has seen better times. The blue-and-red canvas cover has been torn from its awning, scattering in its wake sweet-wrappers and napkins. They lie in puddles around the cafe entrance amid the continuing drizzle. It is a miserable scene. But people in the town of Gali, near the Georgian border in eastern Abkhazia, have more than rain and repair to worry about. For the debris represents the work not of the weather but of a bomb.

The journey south here from Abkhazia’s capital Sukhum (Sukhumi), an hour by pot-holed road, is a minor lesson in the intractability of the conflict that has kept Abkhazia in limbo since the small Black Sea region wrested itself from Georgia’s control in the war of 1992-93. The traffic we passed en route to the Georgian border was sparse: the occasional United Nations vehicle, a dilapidated red bus, three Russian MC trucks, and several dozen cows – all heading the other way towards. Everywhere, shelled-out homes from the war were a constant reminder that – the faded evidence of Sukhum’s former resort status (and even a few Russian tourists) notwithstanding – Abkhazia is a conflict-zone.

For the fifteen years since they established a fragile autonomy after decades as part of Georgia and the Soviet Union, the Abkhazians have been struggling for recognition as an independent state. “It’s about our identity, security, dignity, healing wounds, and being able to interact on a equal basis”, says Liana Kvarchelia, deputy director for the Centre for Humanitarian Programmes in Sukhum says. Abkhazians’ deep desire to be seen as a distinct people with the right to determine their own future is, however, viewed with outright opposition by Georgia, suspicion by the international community, and scepticism even by Abkhazia’s main protector and ally, Russia.

Amid political isolation and constant insecurity, the Abkhazians have managed to establish an elected government and a nascent civil society. But they have been forced increasingly to rely on Russia, in a relationship they concede is often ambivalent. Their primary concern, as long as a return to war with Georgia remains the main threat, is security. When that is guaranteed, the rest will follow, or so they hope.

Before leaving Sukhum, I call Abkhazia’s deputy foreign minister to get an assessment of the situation in Gali to find that the area has been declared an emergency-zone after the bomb explosion late on the previous evening killed four people and injured six. Natella Akaba, chair of the Association of Women of Abkhazia, advises me not to travel. But no one it seems has told the guards at a succession of Russian military checkpoints, and we arrive in the centre of Gali where – against the background of a Soviet-era mural depicting white doves and a cosmonaut – two investigators are picking through debris in the blast-site.

A single checkered white-and-red ribbon, tied to the pine trees that surround the tiny Svetliachok cafe, cordons off the area where on 6 July 2008 four people died: Jansukh Muratia, the acting head of Abkhaz security in the Gali district; Sukhran Gumba, an Abkhaz border officer; Anzor Lagvilala, a United Nations translator; and Iveta Toria, a local resident. It was another episode in a deteriorating situation that had already seen four bombs explode in Gagra and Sukhum on 29-30 June, injuring twelve people. For the Abkhazians, the situation is clear. “This is a specific action made by Georgian special agents. Their goal is to show that Abkhazian and Russian peacekeepers cannot control the situation”, said Rusland Kishmaria, special representative of the Abkhaz president in Gali region.

Most local residents refuse to talk to a curious stranger. But further away from the scene, one – a Georgian who fled Gali in the war, only to return in 1997 – tells me: “You can see what life is like here. So long as the Russians are here, our lives will not change. The Russians are satisfied with an unstable situation. There is a lot of tension. If something happens we can’t rely on either the Russians or the Abkhazians. We can only rely on ourselves.”

A few hours later, back in Sukhum, Abkhazia’s defence minister Mirab Kishmaira looks nervous as he refuses point-blank to comment on the bombings. The words are defiant: “We are prepared to face the Georgian soldiers anywhere, anytime. As soon as we get the word, we’ll start military operations.” Kishmaira has seen war in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as his own country, and has no desire to see blood. But when asked if military operations could ever resolve the current conflict, he says: “I wish that Abkhazia will be recognised in a beautiful way and that we can become a model for other countries.”

For the Abkhazians, it was and remains a zero-sum conflict: independence or nothing. Whoever planted the bombs in Gali is accentuating the choice.

Albania’s bitter political stand-off intensifies

Nikolaj — Sun, 15 May 2011 18:02:28 +0000

(EUobserver February 2011)

EUOBSERVER / TIRANA – The bitter stand-off between Albania’s Socialist opposition leader, Edi Rama, and Prime Minister Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party continues to intensify, with another massive demonstration in Tirana – cast as an “anti-Mubarak-style” action – held on Friday (18 February).

Opposition leaders claimed a turnout of 200,000, while police did not give an estimate. Unlike the violence seen in demonstrations almost a month ago, the rally passed largely peacefully amid a heavy police presence.

With no solution in sight, Albania’s aspirations for EU membership have for the moment been thrown into question. The victims of the saga are a people struggling to get by on meagre wages, amid government corruption and a crumbling infrastructure.

Last year, the European Commission opinion on Albania’s application for EU membership called upon the country to strengthen rule of law, ensure political dialogue and establish a properly functioning parliament.

But ugly scenes of members of parliament trading blows last Thursday (10 February) have done little to inspire confidence. To compound the misery, Ilir Meta, the now former deputy prime minister and close ally of Prime Minister Berisha, was caught on camera attempting to influence a huge government tender for a hydroelectric power plant. He resigned on 16 January. The corruption case has fuelled resentment.

A few days later on 21 January, Mr Rama, who is also Tirana’s mayor, led a massive protest that ended in violence and bloodshed. Four people were shot dead by the Republican Guard in front of the prime minister’s office. All were allegedly unarmed and outside the security perimeter.

EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule at the time issued a stark warning. “The tone in Tirana needs to change. The dangerous downward spiral must end. The political crisis must be resolved,” he said in a statement delivered at the European Parliament last Tuesday (15 February)

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton sent her special envoy to the western Balkans, Miroslav Lajcak, to mediate, but to little avail. Mr Lajcak asked the leaders to stop the violence and get the political dialogue back on track. He also asked them to implement the 12 priorities outlined in a 2010 commission opinion.

That meeting occurred the evening before thousands of protesters descended upon the city for a second time. Aside from two minor scuffles with the police, no one was hurt. Razor wire, however, and heavily armed guards surrounded the PM’s office.

Berisha speaks out

In an interview with EUobserver inside his office that very day (5 February), the prime minister threatened to hunt down anyone attempting to overthrow his government by force. Several protesters on 21 January had tried to breech the barrier separating his office and the street.

“Mr Rama wanted to attack by Kalashnikovs, bazookas and other means,” he said, adding that if ever such force is indeed used “they will have a fierce counter-attack … they will be hunted to their last nest and no more.”

Disputed elections

The origin of the escalating controversy is a disputed June 2009 national election. Mr Rama, who lost against Mr Berisha, says it was rigged – a position he has maintained throughout.

A 2009 report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) says the country does not meet international standards for a democratic election. The OSCE recommendations to improve the election process have yet to be implemented. The opposition refuses to recognize any election results so long as proper standards are not in place. Because of this, the upcoming local elections in May are in jeopardy.

Mr Rama is now calling for more protests. He is also insisting for a snap national election – a proposition vehemently opposed by the prime minister.

In downtown Tirana, a pita-shop owner told EUobserver that he saw no future in Albania. Instead, people appear helpless as they witness the rhetoric and the threats of their elected officials aired daily on prime-time television.

Albania, which became a Nato member in 2008, had its visa restrictions to the EU lifted in November 2010.

Ethnic Albanians flee poverty after EU visa move

Nikolaj — Sun, 15 May 2011 17:58:16 +0000

(EUobserver March 4, 2010)

EUOBSERVER / KUMANOVO – The EU’s decision to drop visa requirements for Macedonia on 19 December 2009 has led to a mass exodus of ethnic Albanians from the war-impoverished region of Likove to Belgium. Nobody is entirely sure how many have fled. But the schools are emptying. Entire families have sold their possessions, uprooted, and purchased the €100 one-way bus ticket to Belgium.

The promise of better life, of opportunity, has lured hundreds to an enterprise doomed to failure.

“Better to sleep in a bus station in Brussels than here in Likove,” said one villager.

Villagers have reportedly been told by relatives currently in Belgium that Belgian authorities will grant them asylum. The Macedonian government claims unscrupulous tour operators are spreading lies about Belgium’s immigration policy. Tour operators deny the charge. The most likely cause is a combination of discrimination, extreme poverty, state neglect and disinformation.

In 2001 the region was entangled in war, leaving many traumatised and destitute. The lack of development and investment since then has caused despair.

“We have two lakes in the region but the villagers have no water. Instead the lake water is pumped to the nearby town of Kumanovo,” said Sadula Duraku, the mayor of Likove, who claims economic discrimination.

Likove is Macedonia’s poorest region and with near total unemployment. Even the fields to grow crops lie barren. Everyone in the region is ethnic Albanian – Macedonia’s largest ethnic minority. Kumanovo is Macedonia’s third largest city.

Forty-two children are no longer in school, according to Mr Duraku. The children, along with their parents, have simply packed up and left for Belgium.

“We will build the infrastructure to supply water to the villagers in the region and reconstruct the roads,” Macedonia’s deputy prime minister, Abdulaqim Ademi, said. He could not give a date and said that he is waiting for funding, however. The region has been without running water for years.

Mr Ademi said that Belgian authorities have officially registered 350 asylum claims from the region. However, not everyone fleeing to Belgium has sought asylum. It is probable that many more people have made the trip. While most have left for Belgium, others have gone to Sweden, Denmark and Germany, according to one tour operator.

In the meantime, villagers struggle to survive on less than €20 a month. The lucky ones receive extra from remittances by family members living abroad. The road leading into Likove from Arcancinovo is littered with tonnes of garbage piled metres high. The waste burns in small isolated fires, the black smoke and stench are a blight for the region, which is surrounded by snow-peaked mountains and green valleys.

Aside from media reports, there is no state-sponsored information campaign to inform villagers that Belgium will not grant them asylum, said Macedonia’s minister for labour and social policy.

According to Mr Ademi, himself an ethnic Albanian, people have lost hope. The state has not invested in the region. Many buildings, like the former post-office, are empty shells – bullet-ridden and gutted from the six month war which ended nine years ago.

Flori, the co-manager of the Euro Tours bus company in Kumanovo, said that from the end of January to the beginning of February around 300 ethnic Albanians left for Brussels. Euro Tours operates just two buses.

One of Euro Tours buses had just arrived from Brussels in the late evening on 1 March. Around 25 ethnic Albanians who had left for Belgium just a week earlier were on the bus. The 36-hour journey back home had visibly crushed their spirits.

“All lies. It’s all lies,” said one distraught mother of two, who did not reveal the source of her information regarding the prospects for asylum in Belgium. “I’d rather sleep in my house than walk the streets in Brussels,” she added, before rushing her children into a waiting vehicle.

Macedonia and the mysterious death of Harun Aliu

Nikolaj — Sun, 15 May 2011 17:34:17 +0000

(published in The Bulletin, November 2010)

At the forthcoming NATO Summit in Lisbon, Macedonia’s accession to the EU and NATO will be high on the agenda. But the death of an ethnic Albanian insurgent at the hands of Macedonian police suggests that while the government looks to Europe, there are more pressing issues closer to home

On a small country road leading out of Skopje and into the village of Radusa, Valon Bela pulls over, steps out of the vehicle and puts on his black Ray Bans. Ahead, a vast mountain façade swoops across the horizon then dips sharply behind another before peeling back into nearby Kosovo. A 32-year-old veteran of both the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and National Liberation Army (NLA) in Macedonia, Bela grew up in General, a village tucked behind the Crna Gora mountain range, less than 10 kilometers from Blace. This April Blace made the headlines as authorities discovered a massive cache of weapons, including twenty missiles.

According to Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, who until this October was Commander of NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, the size of the weapons seized in Blace could “destabilise the country.” And a destablised Macedonia would have massive implications on a region once known as the “powder keg of Europe”. Issues of corruption, rampant unemployment and unfilled promises of integration for minority ethnic Albanians have left many former NLA soldiers bitter and impatient for change. With no work and few prospects, these ex-combatants, many of whom had also fought against the Serbs, are currently reconsidering their options.

Back in 2001, tensions over political representation and political autonomy for ethnic Albanians, who make up almost a third of Macedonia’s two million strong population, as well as the issue of Albanian-language education erupted into an insurgency. As many as 7,000 fighters took the country to the brink of war. The Ohrid Agreement was brokered by the EU and NATO to end the hostilities between the NLA and Macedonian security forces. It was obtuse and open to interpretation, but nevertheless it explicitly rejected the use of violence for political aims and reaffirmed a multi-ethnic Macedonia. Soon after the ceasefire the majority of NLA soldiers laid down their arms, and despite of threats of renewed fighting in 2003 Macedonia has remained relatively peaceful since.

But cracks are beginning to appear. Olli Rehn, who was then the EU Commissioner responsible for Enlargement, said of the Ohrid Agreement while addressing the Macedonian Parliament in 2007: “It seems that the constructive and determined approach from all parties now has given way to obstruction and lack of faith.” Rehn’s observation is today mirrored by Veton Latifi, a Macedonian political scientist who says: “Frustration is increasing among the people. The political elite has no vision whatsoever. They are in a crisis and in the process of collapse.”

Then there’s the small issue of the country’s name. Macedonia’s southern neighbour Greece disputes the former Yugoslav republic’s post-1991 title, saying it implies claims on Greek territory of the same name. The issue is a major stumbling block in Macedonia’s accession to the EU and NATO – in 2008, Greece blocked Macedonia’s bid to join NATO and this September, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told Macedonia’s President Gjorge Ivanov that the name issue with Greece must be resolved. The announcement was met with a stern face – and no results. But this month, it’s future will be on the agenda of the NATO Summit in Lisbon. But with some veteran NLA rearming – hundreds, possibly more, according to Reuters – Macedonia will quickly have to find solutions to the problems it has so far failed to address: behind the name issue looms the possible threat of conflict.

Who killed Harun Aliu?

By the road’s shoulder Bela kicks an empty water bottle from the very spot where Harun Aliu and three other NLA veterans were killed in May. Aliu, also known as Commander Kushtrim, was one of the founders of the NLA and a high-ranking officer in the KLA, which at its peak had as many as 30,000 soldiers in its ranks. On 13 May 2010, the Macedonian police reported that they were ambushed near Radusa. They claim a white Mercedes van stuffed with explosives and weapons refused to stop at a police checkpoint. According to the Interior Ministry, those inside the van then started shooting at the police. The police returned fire and shot the four men dead. “The police reaction was totally legitimate,” Ivo Koteski, spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, tells The Bulletin. “All these men had international warrants and were well-known.”

A van full of weapons in a region notorious for arms trafficking; four men dressed in black uniforms with the NLA emblem; one of them, Aliu, a fugitive sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for being part of a group accused of murdering a Macedonian policeman in January 2008 – at first glance this seems like an open and shut case. But some things just don’t add up. Firstly, when the original murder case against Aliu was brought to trial, the lower court threw out the state’s evidence. But the state appealed – and here it’s worth bearing in mind that a report from the Open Society Institute in July 2010 said that Macedonia’s executive powers exert total control over the judiciary – and Aliu was subsequently tried and sentenced to life. One of the alleged accomplices said Aliu was guilty but Bela claims he had been tortured into giving a false confession. Although Aliu evaded arrest (he fled Macedonia, most likely taking refuge along the Crna Gora) he was still able to coordinate and lead the National Alternative Party (NAP), a fringe political group representing the interests of ethnic Albanians which was considered a threat by various sections Macedonian politics.

Then there’s the evidence. In Aliu’s hometown of Hasanbeg near Skopje, the Imam who washed his body for burial says his corpse was swollen and had three bullet holes. Police had allegedly dumped Aliu at the local mosque where the family later found him. His legs and face were badly bruised, as if he had been bludgeoned, and his toenails had been removed. Professor Nazmi Maliqi, a former MP and government minister who is now Vice-Dean of Political Sciences and International Relations at Skopje’s FON University said there were signs of torture. Aliu’s left eye was swollen shut and there were bullet entry holes in the soles of his feet. Another bullet had entered through the upper lip line of his mouth. “That was the fatal shot,” he added.

In Radusa, where the incident supposedly occurred, one local who wished not to be named for fears of his safety, said the police had blocked a section of the road between midnight and 4.00 am. He then explained that no one living in the vicinity heard any gunfire and yet, the van the police presented to the media the following day was riddled with bullets on the front, the side and the back. Also at the scene where the incident apparently took place, the surrounding trees are undamaged. The tree bark is unscathed, just like all the explosives found in the vehicle. “Nobody sane would smuggle weapons on this road in a white Mercedes van,” says Bela, who himself was an arms trafficker during his time in the NLA, although he prefers to call it “coordinating the transfer and shipment of arms throughout the region.” Either way he insists that Aliu would never have made such an obvious mistake. “Harun was a professional. If he had wanted to smuggle weapons, he would have taken the trails,” he says pointing to the black pine forest leading up from the road.

For these reasons there many people who believe that the shoot-out was staged and that Harun Aliu and his colleagues were murdered with their bodies deliberately placed into the van afterwards. It’s not an implausible scenario. In 2002, the Macedonian police faked a terrorist raid and gunned down seven innocent illegal immigrants – six Pakistani and one Indian – claiming that they were “foreign militants”. Macedonian officials later admitted the shootings were staged to impress an international community embroiled in a fight against terrorism. The police officers involved in the crime were eventually acquitted.

There are other theories too. Bela, who now presides over Realitet, a Skopje-based NGO that works to reconcile the differences between Macedonia’s different ethnic groups, believes that Ali Ahmeti may have been involved in Aliu’s death. Along with Aliu, Ahmeti was one of the founders of the NLA. Today he is the leader of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) – Macedonia’s largest Albanian political party currently in coalition with the conservative majority party, the VMRO-DPME.

When asked to explain his theory, Bela claims that Aliu’s influence over veteran NLA members was considered a direct threat to Ahmeti’s hold on power. As Chairman of the National Alternative Party (NAP), Aliu lead a marginalised but increasingly influential organisation; one that may not have had official representation within the Macedonian government but whose reach teased the imaginations of disenfranchised KLA and NLA veterans spread along the porous Kosovo border.

Bela also claims that Ahmeti had already ‘dispatched’ other KLA commanders. The Bulletin’s repeated attempts to interview Ahmeti went unanswered as have Bela’s calls for an “impartial international investigation” into Aliu’s death; The public prosecutor rejected the request because it was incorrectly filed. But Bela says it’s “a ruse”. No matter what they do, he says, the case will never be heard nor properly investigated because its in the best interests of many powerful people not to do so.

Which way lies Macedonia’s future?

However, the Albanian political elite brush off Aliu as little more than a side-show. At his office in Skopje, Macedonia’s Deputy Prime Minister Abdilaqim Ademi, himself an ethnic Albanian, scoffs at the idea of Aliu having any power over disillusioned ex-combatants. “Harun was a leader of a small party with no political influence,” he says. He is also doubtful that the NLA are rearming themselves. As for the weapons found in Blace early May, Ademi says that Macedonia “is in the process of cooperating with Kosovo.”

Political parties in Macedonia are divided along ethnic lines – as are their allegiances. Politicians on all sides parlay the language, historical, and religious differences in a gamble that feeds into the jingoism while diverting attention away from some of the pressing social issues that the country faces. These divisions manifest themselves in Skopje, for example, where the meandering Vardar River splits the city in two. On the one side live the ethnic Albanians; on the other, the Macedonians. So while over €200 million is being invested in beautification and cultural heritage there are villages on both sides that still have no running water.

At the Vicine de Uscite Café 15 km outside Tetevo 38-year-old Besim Hoda sips his macchiato with meaningful intent. He pauses as in mid-thought, carefully pours in some sugar, and stirs it without disturbing the fine creamy head. Hoda’s boyish features belie the fact that he is a KLA and NLA veteran who openly admits to hoarding weapons. Smiling, he tells me: “There are weapons everywhere because every nation in the Balkans has solutions except for the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. We don’t know where to turn. We have no institutions to believe in because the Albanian political party cannot protect us from this Prime Minister [Nikola Gruevski]. We circulate these weapons because of the Prime Minister and because of his rhetoric.”

Gruevski’s rhetoric manifests itself in things like a €200 million reconstruction project which will feature massive sculptures and statutes erected on the Macedonia side of Skopje only while villages on both the Albanian and Macedonian sides of the River Vardar languish without running water. Or in the controversial publication of a Macedonian Encyclopedia which managed to offend all the minorities and the surrounding countries. The encyclopedia referred to Albanians as settlers and claimed, among other things, that the NLA were trained by US and British special forces. The encyclopedia was pulled, but only after the US exerted considerable pressure.

When asked if there are weapons in this village Hoda doesn’t answer. But he doesn’t say no. Hoda knew Aliu and one of the other men shot dead in Radusa. They had fought together against the Serbs in 1999 and the Macedonians in 2001. “We fought against the Macedonians because we realised that the Albanians had no political solution to our problems,” he says, adding carefully: “There may be another conflict in the near future. [But] the next conflict will be even worse than 2001.” Hoda is originally from Albania but he fled the country when it almost collapsed into civil war in 1997. A trained pharmacist, he found refuge in Kosovo where he joined the KLA. It was there that he first met Aliu, a man he describes one of the initiators of the Ohrid Agreement and “a man of peace.” Besim insists that Aliu was assassinated because of his hold over the very same veterans who once almost overthrew the country. “It’s a message to all Albanians that no one is safe.”

Aliu’s family agree. “This was a political killing,” says Llkhom Aliu, Harun Aliu’s younger brother. At his father’s modest home in Hasanbeg, he begins to recount the life and death of his lost brother. Taciturn, he chooses his words deliberately and speaks slowly. When asked who he thought killed his brother he pauses, sets down his tea and then says “no comment”. Their father Ali lights a cigarette and blows the smoke over the porch railing away from his guests. As he listens to his son recount the events he remains, for the most part, motionless and silent. Llkhom runs his hand through his hair. “Harun never compromised his views. He fought for our rights.” Asked if there are any plans to mobilise ex-NLA members to avenge his brother’s death, Llkhom pauses and then smiles slightly. “You’ll have to ask the new leadership.”