Football and war collide as Syrians watch the World Cup

Russia or England? Saudi Arabia or Iran? For many in Syria, this summer’s matches are anything but friendlies

Two Syrian activists wearing the cat and wolf Russia 2018 World Cup mascot outfits perform during an event to protest against the bombings in Syria, in Binnish on June 29, 2018. (AFP)

Maher Al-Mounes-Saturday 7 July 2018

DAMASCUS - In a simple house in Damascus' Old City, Ahmed Hafi sits in front of his television, watching a replay of the Russian football team's penalty-shootout win against Spain.

Behind Hafi is a giant Russian flag, an expression of support for his favourite team.

Hafi, a 26-year-old student, loves football passionately. His loyalties used to lie with France, a team he watched playing all the time.

Since 2011, however, when the Syrian war broke out, everything in his country has changed, including which football team he supports.

"I cannot now separate sports from politics," Hafi tells Middle East Eye.

"France has supported the Syrian opposition all the time, I cannot support it anymore."

I cheer for Saudi Arabia, France, England, and every country that supported the Syrian people, and I will not support any team that has supported the Syrian regime

- Ziad, refugee

Hafi is a staunch supporter of the Syrian government. He believes that it is "shame to support any country that has contributed to supporting the Syrian opposition".

Before 2011 the sight of Syrians cheering on the Russian football team would have been unusual.

As the war progressed, however, Russia became an increasingly prominent actor in the country.

First, with its repeated use of its United Nations Security Council veto to block resolutions against President Bashar al-Assad's government.

Then, in 2015, intervening militarily and decisively swinging the war in Assad's favour.

Now Damascus is awash with Russian flags, as its previously unfancied football team puts in a number of unexpectedly strong performances.

Flags are seen outside a cafe in Damascus during the World Cup. (MEE/Maher al-Mounes)

Russia, and Assad's other key ally Iran, aren't the only teams heavily supported in the Syrian capital.

In a shop on an old street in the city centre, Abu Fares sells various flags and banners representing the teams playing in the World Cup.

Normally Fares' shop sells stationary. "I do not care about sports and politics," he tells MEE.

But when international football tournaments come around, Fares, 50, sees an opportunity to capitalise on the excitement surrounding the competitions.

"Most of the people who come to my shop buy Brazil banners. But this is the first time I have stocked Russian and Iranian flags, and some are asking about these flags and buying them," he says.

Not only one of the more popular flags, the Russian ones are also the cheapest, selling at 300 Syrian pounds ($1.40).

Unlike other countries' flags, which are imported, Russian banners are manufactured within Syria.

German solidarity

Sarah Hassoun is still wearing the German team's shirt, despite her favourites' failure in the group stage and early exit from the competition.

The 30-year-old pharmacist has never visited Germany. "There was no link or anything to do with Germany," she says. "I only knew of Germany as an industrialised country."

But like hundreds of thousands of other Syrians, Hassoun's sister fled the war in Syria and found asylum in the European country.

The World Cup shows in a Damascus home. (MEE/Maher al-Mounes)

In 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that her country would give asylum to all Syrian refugees that came there.

Since then, as many as half a million Syrians have found refuge in Germany.

"After my sister travelled to Germany, she started sending me pictures from there every day and I gradually became fond of this country," she says, showing a picture of her sister in a German village on the background of her phone.

"I do not care about sports, but I cannot not support a country that said to my sister: "Welcome'."

Tackling politics

Syria's seven-year war has been devastating for the country.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed, around five million have fled the country, while six million more are displaced within Syria.

The uprising and the Syrian government's crackdown on it have torn Syrian society apart and created huge divisions between its people.

Ziad, a refugee in Turkey who wants to be identified only by his first name for security purposes, says he would support any team other than Russia or Iran.

Instead, he supports any country whose government backs the Syrian opposition.

"I cheer for Saudi Arabia, France, England, and every country that supported the Syrian people, and I will not support any team that has supported the Syrian regime," he tells MEE.

"I wish I could cheer for the Syrian national team," Ziad adds. "But now it is a reflection of the regime and not the entire Syrian people."

For Ziad, it is impossible to divorce politics and the war from football.

"The issue is not football, it is purely human; it is whether you are human or not. So everyone who supports Russia is not human."

World Cup flags are sold in Old Damascus (MEE/Maher al-Mounes)

Not everyone feels the same.

Fouad Ali, a 34-year-old journalist covering the conflict, loves watching the games and doesn't favour any team over another due to politics.

Instead, he sees the sport as an escape.

"I want to breathe, I want to run away from the political news. I separate politics from sport. I love to follow the French team, it plays well," he tells MEE.

Ali says the way politics is reflected in so much of life disgusts him and has driven him to distraction.

"Politics is a bad thing. It should not be confused with anything else," he says.

"When that happens, politics ruins everything."

In Bosnia, Forgetting Could Mean a Brighter Future

The debate over whether to build an official memorial to Sarajevo's Romeo and Juliet, murdered in 1993, exposes the pain and peril of dwelling on the past.

BY MICHAEL COLBORNE-JULY 6, 2018

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Meriam has told the story of Bosnia’s wartime Romeo and Juliet more times than she can count.

“This isn’t something I forget,” Meriam, 33, told a group of about a dozen tourists at the foot of the bridge where Bosko Brkic and Admira Ismic were shot dead in May 1993.

Brkic and Ismic, both 25, were high school sweethearts trying to eke out an existence in Bosnia’s war-torn capital. Ismic, a Bosniak Muslim, and Brkic, a Christian Orthodox Serb, had decided the time had come to try to escape the hell that was the siege of Sarajevo.

Holding a photo of the young lovers, Meriam’s voice cracked as she described how snipers gunned them down as they tried to flee across a bridge to territory held by Bosnian Serb forces. Brkic died instantly. Ismic, fatally wounded, crawled over to Brkic’s body, cuddled him, and, holding him, died a few minutes later. Their bodies, still locked in an embrace, were left lying on the pavement in unseasonable heat for more than a week.

“As long as we remember them,” Meriam said, “none of this was in vain.” It’s clear that many people in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and the whole of the former Yugoslavia, regardless of national background, are attached to the story of Brkic and Ismic; they certainly haven’t forgotten it either. For them, it represents something that has been lost, a prewar innocence — a time of tolerance when merchants of nationalism didn’t rule the roost.

But remembering in today’s Bosnia is not so easy. For a story that so many recall and tell foreign visitors, the same visitors won’t see a single monument or memorial in Brkic and Ismic’s honor anywhere near the bridge where they were killed. And for some Sarajevans, that’s the way it should be. Building monuments and memorials, ironically enough, may not always be the best way to remember the past.

Above: The bodies of Admira Ismic, right, and Bosko Brkic lie near the Vrbanja bridge in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on May 19, 1993. Admira, a Muslim, and Bosko, a Serb, were gunned down as they tried to escape the war-torn city.(Northfoto via Getty Images) Top: Admira and Bosko are shown in a photo taken along Sarajevo’s Miljacka River just after their high school graduation in 1985. (Chris Helgren/Reuters)

Brkic and Ismic’s story first made it around the world thanks to Kurt Schork, the Reuters correspondent in the besieged Bosnian capital, who told the story of Brkic and Ismic a few days after their deaths.

“Bosko is face-down on the pavement, right arm bent awkwardly behind him. Admira lies next to her lover, left arm across his back,” Schork wrote for Reuters on May 23, 1993. A year later, the story of Brkic and Ismic was made into a documentary film, Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo, by PBS’s Frontline, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the National Film Board of Canada, and WDR Germany.

As a Serb in a largely Bosniak city, Brkic began getting more and more abuse from angry neighbors as Bosnian Serb forces continued to pound the city; the shells even destroyed the apartment Brkic shared with his mother. After receiving a request to report to a Bosniak-run police station, Brkic feared the worst. His grandfather had vanished during World War II when he had obeyed a similar order. Brkic didn’t want to meet the same fate. With Ismic by his side, they decided they would flee Sarajevo to the Bosnian Serb side.

Ismic left a note for her mother that morning. “My dear Mum: It seems we are finally leaving tonight and whatever happens is God’s will,” the note read. “Everything will be fine, like the war never happened.” Later that same day, Ismic and Brkic were shot dead. It’s still not known conclusively who fired the fatal shots.

After the war, Brkic and Ismic were buried in Sarajevo’s Lion’s Cemetery, surrounded by other victims of the siege and within sight of the cafe where they first met. Schork himself died in 2000, shot along with a colleague in Sierra Leone covering the country’s brutal civil war. Half of his ashes, as he had stipulated in his will, were buried next to Brkic and Ismic.

Media across the whole of the former Yugoslavia faithfully retell the couple’s story every year. Reader comments tend toward the nostalgic. They are an “example of true love,” said one reader of Dnevni Avaz, Bosnia’s biggest-selling newspaper. Some readers of one popular Serbian tabloid, Blic, said the story always brings tears to their eyes. They were “pure and innocent” people destroyed by war, said one reader on a Croatian website, while back in Sarajevo some said they’re even a “symbol of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of co-existence.”

But at the bridge where Brkic and Ismic spent their last moments together, there’s nothing to help anyone remember them. There haven’t been many serious efforts to erect a memorial or monument or in some way publicly honor their memory. The University of Sarajevo political scientist Nezruk Curak told journalists last year that he was trying to persuade politicians to introduce “a day of remembrance for the courageous people like Admira and Bosko.”

While some Sarajevans seem amenable to the idea of a public memorial, others have responded to the suggestion with scorn. Many of those who were in the besieged city during the war worry that yet another memorial to the city’s recent bloody past is more than the still-wounded city and country would be able to bear.

Two years ago, a local politician, Neira Avdibegovic-Dizdarevic, at the time a member of the left-leaning Democratic Front, proposed a memorial be built, and the online reaction to the young politician’s statement on the Bosnian news portal Klix was almost uniformly negative: an “overblown Hollywood story,” one reader said.

Others of a more Bosniak nationalist bent derided Brkic as a traitor. “He tries to run away from his own,” one commenter said in a profanity-laced post on Klix, “but then they kill him and then they want to build him a statue.” Other readers wondered why the story of Brkic and Ismic should be remembered more than those of the thousands of others in Sarajevo who lost their lives during the siege in their own dire, sad circumstances.

Aida Cerkez, a journalist from Sarajevo who worked for The Associated Press during the war, saw Brkic’s and Ismic’s bodies on the bridge. She knows firsthand how painful a well-intentioned memorial to the past can be. For the 20th anniversary of the start of the siege of Sarajevo in 2012, a group of artists set up the Sarajevo Red Line along the city’s long central street — a column of 11,541 red chairs representing all of the lives lost in the city during the siege, including 643 smaller red chairs representing children.

It was the first time Cerkez and others were truly able to grasp the barbarity of what had happened in their city 20 years before. “Nothing during the war was as powerful as that for us,” Cerkez said. “It was so painful that I’m not really sure I want to relive that,” she said, stressing just how heart-rending the episode was for her and others.

Predrag Kojovic, the leader of Our Party, a small party fighting an uphill battle against Bosnia’s ethnic-based political system, doesn’t think there should be a monument or memorial to Brkic and Ismic. The bridge they died on, Kojovic notes, is already named after Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sucic, the first two victims of the siege. There are so many stories like Brkic and Ismic’s, he says, that commemorating them all isn’t even possible or desirable.

A war correspondent for 20 years before entering politics, Kojovic worries that what made Sarajevo so special before the war risks being lost to the memories of the war and to a tourism industry that markets the sufferings of the fratricidal conflict to curious visitors. Even if stories like Brkic and Ismic’s are positive symbols — Kojovic notes that he himself is the product of a mixed couple — he worries that the way the negative memories from the war are remembered isn’t conducive to building a new, forward-looking Sarajevo. “It would be branding Sarajevo as a huge graveyard where people live,” Kojovic said.

Nera Ismic, mother of Admira Ismic, mourns at the twin grave of her daughter and Admira’s boyfriend, Bosko Brkic, during a funeral ceremony in Sarajevo in 1996. The bodies of the couple were exhumed from an untended grave in a Serb military cemetery and transported back to the reunified city whose wartime horrors they tried to flee. (Peter Andrews/Reuters)

On the anniversary of Brkic and Ismic’s deaths, their shared tombstone at Lion’s Cemetery is covered with flowers. Cerkez, for her part, thinks this is the only physical memorial Brkic and Ismic need. “If they’re still alive in our hearts, why erect a monument?” Cerkez asked. “You erect monuments to things you need to be reminded of.”
The debate about how to remember Brkic and Ismic comes at a time when some worry that Bosnia itself may soon be history. Elections are scheduled take place in October, but the country’s electoral law remains unreformed; in 2016, a Bosnian Croat politician complained that the appointment of Croats from majority Bosniak cantons violated Croats’ rights to representation under the Dayton Accords, the international agreement that stopped the war in 1995. An annex of the accords still serves as Bosnia’s constitution, dividing all levels of government among the country’s three constituent peoples and helping perpetuate the legacy of wartime separation through divided schools, a decline in mixed relationships like Brkic and Ismic’s, and so-called ethnic entrepreneur politicians who benefit from division.
In December 2016, Bosnia’s Constitutional Court agreed with Croat politicians’ complaints and called for a new (and still uncreated) electoral law. Dragan Covic, the Croat representative of the country’s tripartite presidency, has pushed for a version of the law that some worry could create a third territorial entity for the country’s ethnic Croats. It’s feared that this could upset the precarious balance that already exists between the country’s two existing entities: the Bosniak and Bosnian Croat-dominated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, the largely Bosnian Serb entity currently led by the bombastic, pro-Russian Milorad Dodik, who has mused about separation and the breakup of Bosnia.

That’s why Brkic and Ismic’s story, and what it means for people in Bosnia and beyond, isn’t just a question about whether to remember or forget the past. It’s a question of whether responding to collective traumas by building monuments and memorials is really the best way to build a new future out of the wreckage of a war that, for Sarajevans like Cerkez, is still far too close to the heart.
Ultimately, trying to officially remember Bosko and Admira may well be the biggest insult to their memory. As the French historian Pierre Nora argues, history is something that’s reconstructed in the present to represent a past that no longer exists. If the slain sweethearts are made into history,
memorialized and monumentalized with official government sanction, the very ideas they represent — namely, a multicultural, multiconfessional Bosnia and the power of love to transcend division — would in some ways be relegated to the past forever, rather than made into a symbol of the society that modern Bosnia could once again become.

 

Michael Colborne is a journalist covering central and eastern Europe. (@ColborneMichael)

 

Earthquakes stuns US Democrats and Mexico

Populism (Alt-Right, Alt-Left) and the global struggle for hegemony

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (28): Socialist and potentially youngest Congresswoman (https://ocasio2018.com/)

Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador after victory (https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/01/americas/mexico-election-president-intl/index.html)

Kumar David-July 7, 2018, 8:08 pm 

A tussle for the future of the US Democratic Party (DP) has begun. The surge to populism whose highest point so far was the election of Donald Trump and a more recent event was the return of autocrat Erdogan to the Turkish Presidency on a ticket to breach democracy, reverted to the US last week. It is an event that most of the world will take little note of but will shake up the US Democratic Party and change the complexion of the challenge to Trump’s presidency. It came as a victorious challenge by unknown till the results were known Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (28) who ousted a 10-term incumbent DP Congressman for the right to contest the November House of Representatives (‘lower’ house of Congress) as candidate for New York’s 14-th District. This is a sure bet Democrat seat so she will soon be in Congress.

This piece is about my pet topic of the last two years that is getting under the skin of IQ80 readers and the LSSP leader who want soda-bottle analyses; it’s about sweep of neo-populism, mostly Alt-Right but sometimes Alt-Left. I won’t offer you learned definitions of the distinction but cough up examples which will serve us better. Alt-Right is Victor Oban of Hungary in the extreme corner, Trump’s base which feels betrayed and disillusioned with the "swamp", and at home the corrupt populist Rajapaksas. The Five-Star part of the Italian ruling populist menagerie, New Zealand’s Labour Party of Prime Minister Jacinda Arden and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Amlo) elected Prime Minister of Mexico on 1 July are Alt-Left. Britain’s Labour Party and the Bernie Sanders movement in the US have substantial programmes and I do not write them off as populists. Modi is something of a taxonomist’s enigma.

US Democratic Party

primary

Before getting my teeth into the global sweep of neo-populism and Lanka’s Buddhist-fascist-chauvinist and retired military officer inspired Gota version, I need to say a few words about the AO-C (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) phenomenon. The Democratic Party (DP), as now established, has nothing to offer the 30+% of less privileged American’s who steadfastly support Trump. This DP is a bastion of elitism led by educationally and intellectually privileged East and West Coast snobs who in programme, attitude and lifestyle have nothing to offer the less well-off. In these times of erosion of social structures (immigration, opiate crisis) and rout by foreign economic competition (I desist from my favourite cliché "collapse of capitalism") this dead-as-a-door-nail DP is getting nowhere. Democrats revel in repeating Kim Jong Un’s description of Trump as a "mentally deranged dotard", and true as this may be they have made no headway in breaking Trump’s base vote. If at all his rating has risen marginally from 39% to 41% in recent months. Nor do the Democrats have a rural agenda to nullify the Trump swing.

After she won, people and the media were asking "Who is this woman; where in the woodwork did she come from?" She delivered what the media is calling an earthquake. Ocasio-Cortez’s own story begins in the Bronx; as briefly as possible, she is the daughter of working class Puerto Rican parents, studied economics at Boston University, worked as a community organizer and then took a low-paid, long-hours job at a restaurant. During the 2016 primary she was an organizer for Bernie Sanders. Her campaign for nomination was door-to-door in working class areas and among coloureds and blacks. Her programme is much the same as Sanders’ programme; visit https://ocasio2018.com/ for more. (Democrats and Republicans hold selection-elections called a Primary among their loyalists in the relevant electorate to choose the party’s candidate. Candidates are not chosen by a party committee or party leaders).

Let me make my point and move on. What can beat Trump is not calling him a moron, boor, rake and liar; all true but water on a duck’s back for his faithful and for underprivileged and unemployed white workers, depressed rural communities and now blacks who see no reason to support the establishment DP. The three wealthiest Americans own more than the lowest 50% of America, so unsurprisingly Alexandria proved that it was an issues based campaign that mattered to ordinary Democratic primary voters and may eventually penetrate the lower ranks of the GOP. What issues: Medicare for all, universal job guarantees, housing, funding for education, justice in immigration and reform of a vicious law and order and court system. This is what a US Social Democratic Programme reads like. In the UK, mutatis mutandis, this is the Labour Party’s outlook. The hot-topic now is how far the process in the DP will escalate and ‘beyond-liberal’ candidates gain ground. We will have to wait and see.

Mexico

The 1 July Mexican election was a referendum on the country’s political elite, economic direction and a questioning of the underlying policies of post-cold war Mexico. Left-populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Amlo) who won the presidency by a large majority at his third attempt, vowed to topple a political establishment he likens to "mafia power". He promised to divert the money that greases the wheels of political graft to social programs. His opponents say he will plunge the country into debt and economic turmoil, like cynical Lankans who may add that they have seen it all before. Right now however football crazed Mexicans are weeping over their World Cup defeat by Brazil on 2 July.

Mexico is the second largest country after Brazil in population and economy in the Americas south of the US. Corruption and crime are major issues; the country had 25,000 homicides last year, the highest number since data tracking commenced two decades ago.

Previous presidents got tough on drugs and locked up kingpins but when a second wave of dealers surfaced a few years later the authorities could not respond adequately. Corruption is a huge issue and goes to the very top.

The outgoing government hampered prosecution of corrupt politicos; the larger, more numerous and more highly placed the corrupt, the more easily cases get buried – carbon copy of yahapalana.

Amlo has promised to tone down market-friendly economic policies, cut extravagant mega projects, reduce the pay of the President and high officials, introduce scholarships for poor students and start a pension scheme for the elderly and the disabled. He has not spelled out how he will find the money but he is unlikely to backtrack on these pledges making him an Alt-Left populist. He wants to hold a mid-term referendum on his own performance after two years – he must avoid inauspicious 10 Feb! He was Mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005 and quit with high approval ratings. He is a shrewd pragmatist unlike Ranil. The Presidency is an immensely bigger challenge and the world is watching. Morena, Amlo’s electoral front of the Labour Party and the Social Encounter Party of religious conservatives, is different from Ranil’s UNP(F) on both social and economic policy. Moreno won 210 of the 300 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Both Presidency and Chamber were landslides.

The global fate of Alt-Left Populism may be riding on the back of this Mexican maverick and New Zealand’s immensely popular new Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. Arden’s popularity flows from her charm and style and the perception that she is transparent and honest; it has little to do with any economic achievements to date, however that is what will count. Arden is a social democrat and an environmentalist but in the long run it is the ability to discipline and manage the economy while delivering welfare goodies that matters. Left populism is free of racism and hatred and Arden has proved her worth in this respect.

The British Labour Party is more solidly social democratic, as opposed to Alt-Left populist, but dour faced Jeremy Corbyn can pick up a lot in the style and smile from the charming Miss Arden. A Labour victory in the next election is important for Britain but its significance stretches far beyond the British Isles. It will resonate all over Europe and in the Americas and the ensuing effects on political psychology can stem the tide of rising Alt-Right and neo-fascist tendencies in the European continent. The most important is Germany; a Labour Party defeat in the UK will grist to the mill of AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) a far-right party which made substantial gains in the 2017 Federal Elections to become the country’s ‘third party’. The fight for Labour in the UK has global ramifications that will affect us all.

It’s not good to sign off on an essay like this one without a brief homily about the deplorable domestic scene. It would not be erroneous to draw a parallel between the global Alt-Right and Mahinda-Gota racial religio-fascist populism and the electoral swing evidenced in February. While a Gota presidency, arguably, is unlikely it is my estimation that pro-Mahinda jackals will do well in Sinhalese electorates in parliamentary elections. To stem this trend we cannot depend one iota on Ranil and his UNP morons; Sirisena is an insidious Gota collaborator; the Dead Left explicit traitors. The Better-Left (JVP, ULF, Bahu’s NSSP etc.) and the remnant rump of liberalism must pull together. Without illusions but out of necessity they must collaborate with the UNP, dissident-SLFPers and with Tamil and Muslim organisations. The challenge calls for flexibility and intelligence, both in short supply.

Exclusive: Vijay Mallya shrugs off threat of British asset seizures

Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya leaves Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Britain January 11, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Files

Alan Baldwin-JULY 8, 2018

SILVERSTONE, England (Reuters) - Embattled Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya said on Sunday he will comply fully with court enforcement officers seeking to seize his British assets, but there was not much for them to take as his family’s lavish residences were not in his name.

India wants to extradite the 62-year-old former liquor baron from Britain to face charges of fraud as a group of Indian banks seek to recover more than $1 billion of loans granted to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

A verdict is expected by early September, with July 31 the final date for closing oral submissions and appeals likely whatever the outcome.

Speaking to Reuters at the British Formula One Grand Prix, where he is principal and co-owner of the Force India team, Mallya said he would hand over British assets held in his name. But a luxury country residence belonged to his children and a house in London belonged to his mother, making them untouchable.

“I have given the UK court on affidavit a statement of my UK assets. Which, pursuant to the freezing order, they are entitled to take and hand over to the banks,” he said. “There’s a few cars, a few items of jewellery and I said ‘OK, fine. You don’t have to bother to come to my house to seize them. I’ll physically hand them over. Tell me the time, date and place.’”

“There’s no question of being homeless because at the end of the day, they are entitled to take my assets in my name declared on oath to the court. They can’t go one step beyond,” he said.

‘FUGITIVE ECONOMIC OFFENDER’

Mallya said a super-yacht he used for entertaining at races in Monaco and Abu Dhabi, which was recently sold at auction in Malta after a dispute over unpaid crew wages, was not his problem either.

“I have not owned the Indian Empress boat for more than seven years now,” he said. It had belonged to “a Middle Eastern gentleman”, whose name he would not disclose, in a deal that gave Mallya use of it for one month a year, he said.

Mallya has been in Britain since he left India in March 2016, unable to travel after his passport was revoked, so the annual British Grand Prix is the only race he has been able to attend since then.

The Indian government’s Enforcement Directorate, which fights financial crimes, is seeking to declare him a “fugitive economic offender” and to confiscate 125 billion rupees worth of his assets.

Mallya has denied the charges, decried a “political witchhunt” and has said he is seeking to sell assets worth about 139 billion rupees ($2.04 billion) to repay creditors.

“I think the overriding consideration that everybody seems to be missing is that I have put $2 billion worth of assets in front of the Karnataka high court which is more than sufficient to repay the banks and indeed everybody else,” he said.

“So the question of attaching assets either in the UK or whatever should not arise.”

Mallya repeated recent complaints on Twitter that Indian criminal enforcement agencies had frozen assets in India so he could not sell them, while banks continued to tot up interest.

He said the enforcement directorate had also attached assets inherited from his father, including properties acquired in the 1920s, under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
“How can those be proceeds of crime? This is the injustice that is happening,” he said.

The former billionaire, at one time dubbed the ‘King of Good Times’ and a former member of the upper house of the Indian parliament, bridled at being branded a ‘fugitive’.

“I was always a resident of England and a non-resident of India. So where else do I come back to? So where’s the running away concept? It’s just become too political,” he said.

“And now in an (Indian) election year, I guess what they want to do is bring me back and hang me on the holy cross and hope to get more votes.”

Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Peter Graff

Maldivian Joint Opposition faces teething troubles ahead of presidential poll

Ibrahim Mohamed Solih alias Ibu

Saturday, 7 July 2018

The Maldivian Opposition parties had recently made a significant breakthrough by agreeing to back Ibrahim Mohamed Solih alias Ibu of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) as the common candidate for the 23 September presidential election in which the powerful incumbent President, Abdulla Yameen, is a candidate.

The Joint Opposition had also agreed that Solih’s running mate (the Vice Presidential candidate) will be from the Jumhoory Party (JP) led by Gasim Ibrahim. The JP is yet to decide who it should nominate as the running mate.

Solih is generally seen as a good candidate who can take on Yameen. He has fewer angularities than Mohamed Nasheed who he replaced because Nasheed had been legally barred from contesting. Nasheed, who is in self-exile, told the party convention that elected Solih, that he would fully back the chosen candidate.

It is said that Solih is ideally suited to carry the other Opposition parties with him as he has been a good negotiator believing in give and take. On the day he was elected as the MDP candidate Solih told party members that the MDP should be ready to make amendments to its election manifesto to accommodate the views of the other Opposition partners.

Seeing an opening for a compromise on contentious issues, the ruling Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM) declared its intention to re-open the stalled All-Party Talks on divisive issues. Fisheries Minister Dr. Mohamed Shainee invited Solih to help re-start the All-Party Talks.

But even as it seemed that the Maldives is going to have a hard fought but a free and fair election, murmurs of discontent were being heard both in the MDP and the JP.

Stirring in MDP

 There is an element of uncertainty in the MDP camp over the candidacy of Solih because an undertaking had been given to Nasheed that Solih would step down and allow Nasheed to contest, if, at any stage, the Yameen Government lifts the ban on Nasheed.

Nasheed is said to have included this clause because he was unsure about Solih’s stepping down after 18 months which the MDP election manifesto would expect him to do.

It is recalled that in 2008, ahead of the first democratic Presidential election, Nasheed had promised to the other parties in his group, that a fresh Presidential election would be held after dictator Mamoon Abdul Gayoom is defeated by the united Opposition. But after he defeated Gayoom, Nasheed forgot about the promise he had made to hold a fresh election in one and a half years.

Nasheed has been barred from contesting the 2018 election because he is yet complete his 13-year prison sentence for terrorist activity. He had misused his medical leave from imprisonment to seek asylum in the UK and is yet to return to complete the prison term.

But Nasheed hopes that even at the eleventh hour, Yameen might yield to international pressure, release him and lift the ban on his contesting elections. He believes that a lifting of the ban is entirely possible if the US, EU and India step up pressure on Yameen.

India mounts pressure

Sure enough, India came out with a statement on Thursday asking Yameen to restore democracy. The Spokesman of India’s External Affairs Ministry Raveesh Kumar said that India has been “closely monitoring” the situation in Maldives, and added that “the announcement of elections in the Maldives comes at a time when democratic institutions including the Majlis (Parliament) and the Judiciary are not allowed to function in a free and transparent manner. This is indeed a matter of concern.”

India has called on the Government of Maldives “to return to the path of democracy and ensure credible restoration of the political process and the rule of law, before the elections are conducted”, Kumar said as he emphasised the importance of a conducive atmosphere to hold a free and fair elections.

Therefore there is an off chance that Yameen might agree to pardon Nasheed and enable him to contest the election in the nick of time, that is just before 9 August, when the final list of Presidential candidates will have to be released.

But this possibility could stymie Solih’s campaign. It might adversely affect his ardour and also hurt the prospects of the MDP and the Joint Opposition.

Uncertainties in the Opposition

The Opposition coalition hit its first snag on Wednesday after the Jumhoory Party (JP) appeared to disagree on the manifesto announced by the MDP.

Some of the 11 pledges which the JP leader Ibrahim Gasim had made, differs in some key respects from the MDP’s manifesto. There are differences over allowing foreign judges to probe internal matters, and on changing the Presidential system to a parliamentary one. Gasim had also proposed that the Maldives re-join the Commonwealth which it quit in 2016 and lift the age cap on Presidential candidates to enable him to contest. Clearly, there has been a lack of consultation among the Opposition parties.

There are rumblings within the JP too. There is opposition to the possible nomination of Gasim Ibrahim’s youngest wife Aishath Nahula. She is a fresher to politics and would be chosen only because of her marriage to Gasim. She will also be difficult to control on account of her closeness to Gasim.

This could be the reason why the JP is still to make up its mind on who it should put up as Solih’s running mate.

Meanwhile, President Yameen has started his election campaign, hopping from atoll to atoll inaugurating water supply and other infrastructural and welfare schemes. He has asked the Chinese to complete the bridge between Male and Hulhumale where there is a massive housing scheme. He has inaugurated new flights between the islands to link them with each other and with Male.

Wherever he goes, Yameen stresses his contribution to improving infrastructure and making the Government in Male implement promises made to the people. He describes the Opposition’s dependence on foreign power to overthrow his Government as an “anti-national mindset” which goes against the grain of Maldivian nationalism.

He criticises the Opposition’s dependence on Western liberal democracies, which want the 100% Muslim Maldives to allow non-Islamic places of worship, and non-Islamic cultural practices like same sex marriage. Yameen propagates adherence to the moderate Islam as practiced in the Maldives traditionally which, while not being Wahabi, is conservative in certain matters.

Maldivian opposition leaders

New election law

To defend the national interest, Yameen’s Government has brought in a law to bar people who have, or had had, dual citizenship or who had got political asylum in a foreign country.

Even if these people had surrendered their foreign nationality or had given up foreign asylum, ten years should have passed before they can become eligible to fight elections in the Maldives.

Explaining the reason for this restriction, a source in the ruling PPM said that many rich Maldivians take foreign citizenship and live abroad for many years and then parachute into Maldives to become an MP or the President, throwing money to find their way through the system.

“The measure has been taken with the interest of Maldivians in mind. We want people who have stayed put in this country, interacted with and served the people to be our MPs or our President,” the source said.

However, the law was passed in the typical Yameen way. The ruling party did not have the 43 MPs needed to pass the bill. It had only 35. Therefore it used an earlier Supreme Court ruling which allowed bills of national importance to be passed without the required majority using the “Doctrine of Necessity”.

The Opposition was, as usual, not present in the House, as it has been boycotting Parliament in protest against Yameen’s road-rolling tactics. The bill was passed uncontested.

The hidden story of the women who rose up

John Pilger gave this address on the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the Parramatta Female Factory, Sydney, a prison where ‘intractable’ women convicts from mostly Ireland and England were sent to Britain’s Australian colony in the early 19th century

by John Pilger-Jul 8, 2018

( July 8, 2019, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Like all colonial societies, Australia has secrets. The way we treat Indigenous people is still mostly a secret. For a long time, the fact that many Australians came from what was called “bad stock” was a secret.

“Bad stock” meant convict forebears: those like my great-great grandmother, Mary Palmer, who was incarcerated at the Female Factory in Parramatta, near Sydney, in 1823.

According to nonsense spun by my numerous aunts – who had irresistible bourgeois ambitions — Mary Palmer and the man she married, Francis McCarthy, were a lady and a gentleman of Victorian property and propriety.

In fact, Mary was the youngest member of a gang of wild women, mostly Irish, who operated in the East End of London. Known as “The Ruffians”, they kept poverty at bay with the proceeds of prostitution and petty theft.

The Ruffians were eventually arrested and tried, and hanged — except Mary, who was spared because she was pregnant. She was just 16 years old when she was manacled in the hold of a ship under sail, the Lord Sidmouth, bound for New South Wales “for the term of your natural life”, said the judge.

The voyage took five months, a purgatory of sickness and despair. I know what she looked like on arrival because, some years ago, I discovered an extraordinary ritual in St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.

Every Thursday, in a vestry, a nun would turn the pages of a register of Irish Catholic convicts — and there was Mary, described as “not more than 4ft in height, emaciated and pitted with the ravages of small pox”.

When Mary’s ship docked at Sydney Cove, no one came forward to claim her as a servant or a skivvy. She was a “third class” convict and one of “the inflammable matter of Ireland”. Did her newly born survive the voyage? I don’t know.

They sent her up the Parramatta River to the Female Factory, which had distinguished itself as one of the places where Victorian penal experts were testing their exciting new theories. The treadwheel was introduced in the year Mary arrived, 1823, as an implement of punishment and torture.

The Cumberland Pilgrim described the Female Factory as “appallingly hideous … the recreation ground reminds one of the Valley of the Shadow of Death”.

Arriving at night, Mary had nothing to sleep on, only boards and stone and straw, and filthy wool full of ticks and spiders. All the women underwent solitary confinement. Their heads were shaved and they were locked in total darkness with the haunting whine of mosquitoes.

There was no division by age or crime. Mary and the other women were called “the intractables”. With a mixture of horror and admiration, the Attorney General at the time, Roger Terry, described how the women had “driven back with a volley of stones and staves” soldiers sent to put down their rebellion. More than once, they breached the sandstone walls and stormed the town of Parramatta. Missionaries sent from England to repair the souls of the women were given similar short shrift.

I am so proud of her.

Then there was “courting day”. Once a week, “bereft gentlemen” (whomever they might be) were given first pick, followed by soldiers, then male convicts. Some of the women found “finery” and primped urgently, as if an inspecting male might provide a way out of their predicament. Others turned their backs should an aspiring mate be an “old stringybark fella” down from the bush.

During all this, the matron would shout out what she called “the good points” of each woman, which was a revelation to all.

In this way, my great-great grandparents met each other. I believe they were well matched.
Francis McCarthy had been transported from Ireland for the crime of “uttering unlawful oaths” against his English landlord. That was the charge leveled at the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1833.

I am so proud of him.

Mary and Francis were married at St Mary’s Church, later St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, on November 9th, 1823, with four other convict couples. Eight years later, they were granted their “ticket of leave” and Mary her “conditional pardon” by one Colonel Snodgrass, the Captain General of New South Wales — the condition being she could never leave the colony.

Mary bore 10 children and they lived out hard lives, loved and respected by all accounts, to their ninetieth year.

My mother knew the secret about Mary and Francis. On her wedding day in 1922, and in defiance of her own family, she and my father came to these walls to pay tribute to Mary and the intractables. She was proud of her “bad stock”.

I sometimes wonder: where is this spirit today? Where is the spirit of the intractables among those who claim to represent us and those of us who accept, in supine silence, the corporate conformity that is characteristic of much of the modern era in so-called developed countries?

Where are those of us prepared to “utter unlawful oaths” and stand up to the authoritarians and charlatans in government, who glorify war and invent foreign enemies and criminalise dissent and who abuse and mistreat vulnerable refugees to these shores and disgracefully call them “illegals”.

Mary Palmer was “illegal”. Francis McCarthy was “illegal”. All the women who survived the Female Factory and fought off authority, were “illegal”.

The memory of their courage and resilience and resistance should be honoured, not traduced, in the way we are today. For only when we recognise the uniqueness of our past — our Indigenous past and our proud convict past — will this nation achieve true independence.

'These changes are unprecedented': how Abiy is upending Ethiopian politics

New PM has electrified country with his informal style, charisma and energy

Abiy Ahmed: ‘To those who tried to divide us, I want to tell you that you have not succeeded.’ Photograph: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters

Jason Burke-Sun 8 Jul 2018

Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, has accelerated a radical reform programme that is overturning politics in the vast, strategically significant African country.

Since coming to power as prime minister in April, Abiy has electrified Ethiopia with his informal style, charisma and energy, earning comparisons to Nelson Mandela, Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama and Mikhail Gorbachev.

The 42-year-old – who took power following the surprise resignation of his predecessor, Haile Mmariam Dessalegn – has so far reshuffled his cabinet, fired a series of controversial and hitherto untouchable civil servants, reached out to hostile neighbours and rivals, lifted bans on websites and other media, freed thousands of political prisoners, ordered the partial privatisation of massive state-owned companies and ended a state of emergency imposed to quell widespread unrest.

In recent days, Abiy fired the head of Ethiopia’s prison service after repeated allegations of widespread torture, and removed three opposition groups from its lists of “terrorist” organisations.

On Sunday, the former soldier met president Isaiah Afwerki of Eritrea in a bid to end one of Africa’s longest running conflicts. The two men hugged and laughed in scenes unthinkable just months ago.

“You don’t want to exaggerate but for Ethiopia, a country where everything has been done in a very prescriptive, slow and managed way, these changes are unprecedented,” said Ahmed Soliman, an expert in East African politics at London’s Chatham House. “His main task is to satisfy all expectations of all groups in a huge and diverse country. That’s impossible but he’s trying to do so with some gusto.”

Despite an International Monetary Fund forecast predicting that Ethiopia would be the fastest-growing economy in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018, even the officially sanctioned press has admitted the country’s serious difficulties.

The Addis Ababa-based Reporter described “the spectre of catastrophe hanging over Ethiopia” and called on the new prime minister to pull the nation “back from the brink”.

Ethiopia is facing a critical shortage of foreign currency, only temporarily solved by an infusion of cash from the United Arab Emirates. There is growing inequality, a shortage of jobs for a huge number of graduates, significant environmental damage, ethnic tensions and a hunger for change.

Different interest groups have come together in recent years to constitute a powerful groundswell of discontent, with widespread anti-government protests led by young people. At least 70% of the population is below the age of 30.

“The youth [are] the active force behind the country’s growth. Now there must be a new model to make Ethiopia progress economically by creating more job opportunities for the youth while respecting political and civil rights,” said Befeqadu Hailu, a 37-year-old blogger jailed repeatedly for his pro-democracy writings.

Abiy has apologised for previous abuses and promised an end to the harassment.

“I have always lived in fear but I feel less threatened when I write than I did before,” Hailu said. “It’s not only his word … the moment he spoke those words the security personnel down to the local levels have changed.”

But not all back Abiy’s efforts. Last month, a grenade was thrown at a rally organised to showcase popular support for the reforms in Addis Ababa’s vast Meskel Square, where many among the tens of thousands supporters wore clothes displaying the new prime minister’s image and carried signs saying “one love, one Ethiopia”. Two people died and more than 150 were injured in the blast and the stampede that followed.

“Love always wins. Killing others is a defeat. To those who tried to divide us, I want to tell you that you have not succeeded,” Abiy said in an address shortly after the attack.

Officials said there had been other efforts to disrupt the rally, including a power outage and a partial shutdown of the phone network. At least 30 civilians and nine police officers were arrested.

Since Abiy took power, there have been “organised attempts to cause economic harm, create inflation[ary] flare-up and disrupt the service delivery of public enterprises”, state media said.

One possible culprit could be a hardline element within Ethiopia’s powerful security services – Abiy has replaced military heads with civilians and admitted past human rights abuses. Another could be a faction opposed to the effort to find peace with Eritrea.

Strafor, a US-based consultancy, said the perpetrators of the “amateurish” attack were more likely to be from one of Ethiopia’s restive regions.

The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the rebel coalition that ousted the Derg military regime in 1991, is split by factional battles between four ethnically based parties as well as fierce competition between institutions and individuals.

Tigrayans, an ethnic community centred in the north of Ethiopia, make up about 6% of the population but are generally considered to dominate the political and business elite.

Abiy was seen as a relative political outsider before being picked for the top job by the EPRDF council. He is the first leader from Ethiopia’s largest ethnic community, the Oromo, who have complained for decades of economic, cultural and political marginalisation.

Born in western Ethiopia, Abiy joined the resistance against the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam as a teenager before enlisting in the armed forces, reaching the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He has a doctorate in peace and security studies. After a stint running Ethiopia’s cyberintelligence service, he entered politics eight years ago and rose rapidly up the ranks of the Oromo faction of the EPRDF, which has historically been at odds with the Tigrayans.

Analysts say Abiy’s mixed Christian and Muslim background, and fluency in three of the country’s main languages allow the new leader to bridge communal and sectarian divides. He has also reached out to women, making an unprecedented mention of his wife and mother in his acceptance speech.
One personal acquaintance described the new prime minister as “always looking ahead for the future”.

“He is also a good listener but with a bit of headstrong attitude towards people who don’t deliver,” said Yosef Tiruneh, a communications specialist who worked under Abiy at the science and technology ministry.

Tiruneh, said shelves of books on religion, philosophy and science filled Abiy’s office. “He is physically active and very well organised ... He did not have a secretary because he wanted his office to be accessible. His office door was literally never closed.”

Andargachew Tsege, a British citizen unexpectedly pardoned in May after four years on death row on alleged terrorism charges, said Abiy was “very intelligent and a quick learner” who was committed to democratisation.

“Abiy invited me to meet him two days after my release. We spoke for 90 minutes and a lot of issues were discussed. It was a meeting of minds. This guy means business,” Tsege, who was abducted by Ethiopian security services while in transit in Yemen four years ago, said.

But some point out that the autocratic nature of decision-making in Ethiopia has yet to change, even if Abiy is using his new powers to reform.

“The country is still being led by one person and his cabinet,” said Tigist Mengistu, an executive in Addis Ababa. “Sadly we have been there for 27 years and we want that to change. It is bad for a country as diverse as Ethiopia,” she said.

Additional reporting by Hadra Ahmed in Addis Ababa

From Uganda to Pride

Cathy Newman-7 Jul 2018Presenter

As a million people take to London’s streets to celebrate Pride – we talk to Aloysius Sali – who fled to the UK and claimed refugee status after being persecuted for his sexuality in his native Uganda, and now works full time with LGBT refugees here.