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A Note From the Editors As recent political events have thrown nations, states, and individual lives into tumult, we challenged writers to tackle the theme of ‘Dislocation’ on a global level and expose narratives that have perhaps been sidelined or underemphasized in mainstream discourse. The fourteen articles in this term’s edition highlight a diverse array of experiences ranging from individual asylum seekers to global social movements and diasporic sub-groups. We were uplifted by the reflective character of all our submissions, and hope that such topics will spur mindful discussions and optimism to our readership at large. Before presenting this term’s journal, we would like to extend our gratitude to everyone who has made the publication of this issue possible. Our editor-in-chief, Tom Wells, has managed the publication process and helped us throughout the processes of finance, distribution, and graphic design. Our sub-editors, Gareth, Hugh, Nathania, and Viola put in the hard work and constant communication needed to produce the journal in a short few weeks. Dislocation is a difficult theme to present. Robert Harrison put in hard work to come up with a design that effectively captured our theme, and Peter Hudston generously allowed us to utilize his photography to bring the message alive. IRSoc President Justin Graham provided continuous support in finance and promotion. The St. Hilda’s, Exeter, and Queen’s College JCRs provided generous support that helped us realize our goal of raising distribution numbers this term. Each individual’s insight and hard work was critical in making the vision of this journal a reality. Finally, thank you to the writers and artists who produced such excellent and thought-provoking work. We urge our readers to follow our blog, check out the website, and listen to the podcasts and other media supported by IRSoc. The discussions do not end with the publication of this journal. In fact, we hope they are just beginning.
- Ria Mazumdar & Thomas Hunt
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POLITICAL DISLOCATION
PHYSICAL DISLOCATION
An Unlikely Exile? Hugh Thomas // 7
The Rohingya humanitarian crisis: the international response Gareth Hynes // 21
FCO Failings in Foreign Prisons: Detention of British charity worker forces UK-Irani relations into the headlines Francesca Parkes // 9
Climate Change and Dislocation: The Future of Pacific Island Nations Viola Fur // 24 Lessons from e-Estonia Verity Bligh // 26
Czech political culture in dislocation: to be continued? Linda Slapakova // 12
The politics of memory: the legacy of Ukrainian dislocation on Polish-Ukrainian international relations Julia Pieza // 28
Politics and Progress: Interpreting Political Change in Sub-Saharan Africa Beatrice Edmonds // 14 “Israel’s capital, Jerusalem” Kyra Leyland // 17
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SOCIAL DISLOCATION “True� Citizenship in the 21st Century Nathania Silalahi // 32 The Model Minority: Dislocation by Generalization Ria Mazumdar // 34 Inta min wayn? Gabrielle Russo & Emily Roper // 37 On the fringes: from Gogol to the present day Nicholas Ching & Max Randall // 40 Stomping on the ground beneath his feet: gender on the move Magda Rodriguez Dehli // 43
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AN UNLIKELY EXILE? Hugh Thomas
It is October 18, 2014, one month after the illegal independence referendum in Scotland. Alex Salmond is on the run; his last known location is thought to be Unst, in the Shetland Islands. Nicola Sturgeon moulders in jail on charges of high treason. Democratic freedoms in Scotland are severely curtailed. The Union is in flames.
an unlikely candidate for exiled revolutionary. The son of a baker, although popular and memorable at school, he is not remembered by teachers as a natural leader. Yet for those with hagiographic inclinations, there were early signs. His school years taught him to be a “fighter” according to biographer, Carles Porta. As a teenager he helped to found the Nationalist Youth of Catalonia. Fired up by the repression suffered under Franco, he has displayed a staunch commitment to independence ever since, becoming the first president to refuse to take the oath of loyalty to the Spanish Constitution and Crown. This however does not explain why he now resides in Brussels, unable to return home.
It is hard to imagine the above counterfactual occurring in a prosperous democracy. The very idea of a legitimately elected political leader of a major EU nation being driven into exile is risible. The last comparable incident was in 1939, when Catalan president Lluis Companys was forced into exile in France after the Spanish Civil War. To this day Companys remains the only democratically elected, incumbent president in Europe to have been executed, after he was extradited by the Nazis the following year. He at least would have worn the badge of revolutionary with pride. Yet Carles Puigdemont, nationalist Catalan president, now finds himself in the same position.
Puigdemont’s exile stems from his actions in the last months of 2017. In October, he held an independence referendum, which was declared unconstitutional by the Spanish Supreme Court, and vociferously opposed by the Spanish national government. This opposition took the form of large-scale police action, codenamed Operation Anubis, involving the raiding of offices, seizure of ballot boxes, and the threatened arrest of 700 pro-independence mayors.
Born in 1962, Carles Puigdemont is frankly
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In the counter protests, 900 people were injured. In the referendum, largely thanks to an opposition boycott, a majority voted in favour of independence, and Puigdemont issued a unilateral declaration of independence later that month. After being charged with rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds, Puigdemont, along with five cabinet ministers, escaped to the relative safety of Belgium. These charges carry a maximum sentence of over 50 years. His deputy, Oriol Junqueras, did not flee, and having been refused bail now awaits trial in prison.
was banned from public office for two years and fined €36,500 for staging a non-binding, volunteer-run independence poll. Puigdemont may have broken the law, so there is some merit in the Spanish government’s accusation that Puigdemont committed crimes beyond holding unfavourable political opinions. The funds used for the referendum were public taxes, and constitutionally they were misused Amnesty International has not classed Puigdemont, Junqueras, or any of their deputies as prisoners of conscience for this reason. . Beyond this however, it is hard to portray Puigdemont as a criminal. Spanish law defines rebellion as “violently and publicly” declaring “the independence of a part of the national territory.” Sedition is similarly acting “publicly and tumultuously to prevent, by force or other illegal means, the application of the law” or preventing an authority from carrying out their orders. Puigdemont has been neither violent, nor tumultuous, though he has admittedly publicly declared Catalan independence. Hounding him with a potential 50-year jail term seems overwhelmingly disproportionate. Furthermore, article nine of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” Puigdemont might argue that his exile is indeed arbitrary, given the political motivations behind it.
The uniqueness of the situation cannot be overstated. Rebellion and sedition seem archaic offences. In the UK, high treason, the sister offense to rebellion, has not been used since the end of the Second World War, when William Joyce (alias Lord Haw-Haw) was hanged for collaboration with the Nazis. The last case of sedition here was in 1972, when three men attempted to recruit people to the republican cause in Northern Ireland; the offence (at least for Britons) has since been abolished. The Northern Ireland case is perhaps the closest we can imagine for the UK. The Troubles were a genuine instance of rebellion and sedition, in which a substantial part of the country used violence to attempt to reject the sovereign government. As is typical of civil strife, the Troubles themselves generated tens of thousands of refugees: 9,800 crossed the border from north to south in 1972 alone.
What comes next for Puigdemont? Spain has withdrawn the European Arrest Warrants directed at him and his fellow exiles. It is unclear whether Spain will attempt to extradite them. If they do Puigdemont might be tempted to apply for asylum in Belgium, it being one of the few EU countries where EU nationals may still do so. Thanks to the ironically-named Spanish Protocol, an addition to the Treaty of Amsterdam, member states should treat other member states as safe countries of origin. This should mean that all potential criminals can be returned without
This, however, is a far cry from Puigdemont’s situation. Puigdemont is not a terrorist, but the democratically elected leader of a Spanish region. The UK does not threaten the leaders of peaceful movements opposed to national unity with arrest. Nicola Sturgeon, calling for a second referendum, did not run the risk of being barred from public office and fined several thousand pounds. This might seem hyperbolic, except that this occurred to Puigdemont’s predecessor, Arturo Mas, for only going one step further. In March 2017, he
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fear of death, torture or other rights’ violations. Belgium has always maintained a slightly different stance to this, maintaining a separate procedure for assessing asylum applications for EU nationals, and it has used this system on occasion. Relations between Belgium and Spain have soured in the past when Belgium has granted asylum to possible Eta militants wanted by Spain. The Belgian migration minister has publicly said Puigdemont’s chances of asylum are not unrealistic. For now this is premature. Puigdemont has declared he is prepared to govern Catalonia by Skype. How feasible this is remains to be seen. His exile shows no sign of ending imminently.
Carles Puigdemont’s tale is a cautionary one that the UK might do well to bear in mind. Our response to the Middle East refugee crisis was not generous. It would be easy for us to reject out of hand all EU asylum seekers, on the basis of the lip service paid to human rights by member states. Yet if it could happen in Spain, there is no reason it could not also happen in Poland, Hungary, Romania or any other member state that takes a turn towards authoritarian politics. We should not be complacent in our policy towards exiles. Nevertheless, we can be cautiously proud of our recent record regarding independence movements. Alex Salmond may star on Russian television, but at least he has not been exiled there.
FCO FAILINGS IN FOREIGN PRISONS: DETENTION OF BRITISH
CHARITY WORKER FORCES UK-IRANI RELATIONS INTO THE HEADLINES
Francesca Parkes
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a British-Iranian charity worker, wife and mother who was detained in Iran on secret charges pertaining to ‘national security’ on April 3, 2016. Over a year and a half later, the UK mainstream media finally has taken an interest in her case, but she is still yet to be released. Nazanin is only one of multiple dual-nationality political prisoners who have been detained in Iran in recent years. Amidst this shocking infringement of human rights, the UK government continues to steadily build good relations and develop trade links with the Iranian
government to show Brexit Britain is ‘open for business’. In April of 2016, Nazanin and her 22-monthold daughter, Gabriella were arrested at the airport on the return from a family visit. Gabriella’s passport was confiscated and Nazanin was transported to Kerman prison, where she was kept in solitary confinement and interrogated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Shortly after this she was moved to Evin, Iran’s largest prison for political prisoners. In September she was sentenced
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The relationship between the UK and Iran has historic tensions, stemming from the British-backed coup of 1953 following the Iranian government’s steps to nationalise a mainly British-owned oil industry. Today there remains a hostility towards British involvement in the regime. In 2011 when the UK increased sanctions against Iran in relation to nuclear technology, the Iranian parliament voted to expel the British Ambassador. The British embassy in Tehran was only reopened in August of 2015. There is also a deep suspicion of UK media, particularly the BBC. In September 2017, the assets of 150 BBC Persia staff, former staff and contributors were frozen for “conspiracy against national security”. The current regime is particularly suspicious of foreign journalists and suspects there are ‘networks of officers hostile to Iran abroad’. In fact, all television broadcasting is state controlled and BBC Persia has had to change satellite frequencies after interference due to a jamming signal.
to five-years in prison on so-called secret charges. There has been progress: Nazanin’s case was debated in Parliament in June 2017 alongside Kamal Foroughi’s, a 77-year-old British citizen detained in Iran for charges of ‘espionage’. Kamal has been eligible for released since 2014 but Iranian authorities continue to detain him. However, a debate does not change the fact that it took 128 days of Nazanin being detained without charge before the UK prime minister picked up the phone to mention it to the Iranian president Rouhani. These are but two cases of many, in which foreign citizens have been detained on political charges in Iran. In October 2017, three more people were detained for alleged plans to overthrow the regime: Homa Hoodfar, a retired Iranian-Canadian university professor, Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American businessman, and Nizar Zakka, a permanent US resident from Lebanon who worked for the US government embassy in Tehran. One difficulty arises in Iran’s refusal to acknowledge dual citizenship. Nazanin’s treatment and the response from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is, however, also indicative of a wider problem, itself caused by the diplomatic policy which the current government is employing.
Iran is not the only country where the UK is failing in its duty to citizens detained abroad. According to a report by the human rights organisation Redress, currently over 100 UK citizens are subjected to ill-treatment or torture abroad. Furthermore, the FCO fails to recognise findings of international bodies such as the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary
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but not before the Iranian courts brought further charges against Nazanin for ‘propaganda against the regime’. Richard Ratcliffe has called on the FCO to grant Nazanin diplomatic protection, which will signal the UK’s intention to treat the case as a formal legal dispute between the countries. Alternatively, either Theresa May herself, or an extension of the government, could agree a deal whereby Nazanin is released in exchange, say, for the UK’s promotion of Iran’s emerging markets.
Detention, which not only undermines these institutions, but also enfeebles our own human rights interventions. Redress is calling on the UK to commit to making vigorous and effective complaints with regards to all breaches of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and consider bringing cases before the International Court of Justice if they continue. As a member of the G6 and one of the world’s leading powers, if the UK is not seen to support these institutions designed to protect human rights then we will only find it harder to garner support from countries with poorer human rights records. The UK also needs to collaborate with other countries which have nationals detained in Iran to bring greater pressure.
Since the nuclear deal of July 2015, the UK along with the US, France, China, Russia and Germany have been seeking to redevelop a relationship with Iran. In the UK, this has met with varied success: George Osborne had to cancel a trade delegation to Iran due to political concerns from the UK’s allies. Whilst now moving to invest in emerging markets, it is obviously in the UK’s interest for the Iran deal to be upheld to prevent economic sanctions creating further tension in the relationship. Nevertheless, to draw back to the original question: does the pursuit of this goal justify the lacklustre response to individual human rights abuses? We should question our government’s priorities if it is content to abandon British citizens in Iranian prisons just to pursue the long-term goal of improved international relations.
More can be done, not only generally but specifically in Nazanin’s case. UK law does not protect the right to consular assistance and diplomatic protection. The FCO have discretion on whether to offer these services on a case-by-case basis. In Nazanin’s case, both the prime minister and the foreign secretary have raised the issue with the Iranian authorities but are yet to bite the bullet and provoke her release. Boris Johnson has made declarations of support for Nazanin but these spectacularly backfired when he described her family holiday as ‘teaching people journalism’. This was corrected by Theresa May,
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CZECH POLITICAL CULTURE IN DISLOCATION: TO BE CONTINUED? Linda Slapakova
the election had represented a possible first step in the Czech Republic’s transition from politics dominated by Islamophobic and Eurosceptic rhetoric to one that would represent a commitment to solidarity and to political and cultural inclusivity. The overall contextual significance of the election is thus much greater than the international media have generally concluded. Characterizing the election as a question of the country ‘heading East or West’ fundamentally misrepresents the role of the debates about the norms and values that are to represent Czech political culture. While the precise definition of the concept of political culture, broadly understood as a “particular pattern of orientations to political action”, has been widely contested, in the case of the Czech election it provides a useful point of departure for understanding the highly polarized state of affairs. The pre- and post-election discourse thus doesn’t revolve around the question of where the Czech Republic stands culturally and politically within the contemporary European setting, but rather around the essence of domestic political culture against the backdrop of international political developments.
The day before the second round of this year’s presidential elections in the Czech Republic, Czech political commentator Tomas Sedlacek wrote that “if anything counts, it’s tomorrow’s election [...] If the current president wins, everyone will remain in the same cynical, annoyed, grumpy mood which has reigned over the Czech Republic for 15 years”. Reflecting the sentiments of the more than two million voters who had voted for liberal candidates in the first round of the election two weeks prior, Sedlacek’s article describes the significant context of the otherwise relatively non-symbolic election. While the Czech Republic is a parliamentary democracies in which presidential posts are little more than ceremonial, the 2018 presidential election signified a particular transition in the country’s national political setting, bringing about what I shall call a new stage in the dislocation of political culture in Czech politics. With the sitting president Milos Zeman winning a second term, the election was first and foremost a stunning blow to the young, urban, well-educated portion of the electorate. For many of these voters,
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impact of migration from countries culturally distinct from the Czech Republic, but also from European pressures for globalization through intra-European mobility. However, for Zeman’s opponents, even for those who would disagree with the quota system itself, the key issue is the way in which political figures have presented the problem, putting the Czech Republic in direct opposition to constructive attempts of achieving a European compromise.
The key themes of the election were largely similar to those dominating the recent parliamentary elections, in which the ‘ANO Movement’ decisively emerged as the strongest party. Migration has continued to be a key point of debate that populist politicians, including the ANO movement and President Zeman, have used to garner much of their support. All this is taking place at the same time as an ongoing legal dispute between the European Commission and the Czech Republic, who alongside Poland and Hungary is being accused of violating its legal obligations under the EU migration relocation scheme. Despite the fact that under the relocation scheme the Czech Republic is only required to accept approximately 1,600 refugees, migration has emerged as perhaps the most contentious issue in public discourse since 2015. In contrast to other European countries, there have been no specific incidents which might give validity to the claims connecting migration to organized crime or terrorist attacks. Instead, the discourse largely seems to concern the perception of migration as a cultural threat, as well as a threat to the national sovereignty and integrity of the nation-state in contemporary Europe.
Similarly to the 2016 US presidential election, polarization has been discussed both as an aspect of the election as well as a policy issue to be addressed by the candidates. And similarly to Donald Trump, Zeman emerged as the anti-establishment and antielite candidate representing ‘the common people’, despite having spent decades on the Czech political scene, in contrast to his opponent Jiri Drahos, a physical chemist and president of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Zeman built his public image by claiming to represent ‘true Czech values’ which only the ‘simple, common Czech folks’ can understand. In this rhetoric, the well-educated urban electorate has been described as ‘the Prague coffee-society’; a coalition of liberal elites portrayed as agents of foreign cultural influence, incapable of grasping what the country needs or stands for. Supporters of Drahos, on the other hand, characterized Zeman as a corrupt and highly divisive figure, bringing not only the office of the presidency but the entire country much international embarrassment. In such an environment, what emerged as an important policy issue was the ability of both candidates to unite the country and prevent further political polarization.
The perception of the migration crisis as a threat to national sovereignty is also fundamentally connected to the view of the EU as a supranational authority which speaks and acts against the interests and values of its member states. The discourse in this case has primarily centred around the perceived illegitimacy of the European Commission’s quota and relocation scheme, despite having been adopted by a Council vote in 2015. Reflecting the opposition to the decision-making authority of the EU, several political parties have placed the mandatory migration quota in direct connection to ‘migration and citizen security’ in their official party communications. For Zeman’s supporters, core Czech values are perceived as being threatened not only by the potential
True to the highly polarized nature of Czech society and the discourse underpinning the recent election, the concept of ‘dislocation’ in political culture relates differently to each side of the socio-political spectrum. For voters who had supported
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President Zeman’s bid for a second term, the migration crisis and the role of the EU represent the possibility of a departure from ‘what it means to be Czech’. Similarly to the situation in the US, it is difficult to characterize what ‘Make the Czech Republic Great Again’ precisely consists in besides resisting political correctness and the efforts of elites to redefine the Czech Republic’s cultural character to the benefit of foreign actors, be it migrants and refugees, or international institutions such as the EU. For the critics of Zeman, it is precisely the efforts to resist the collective imperatives of the international
community that stand in opposition to the essence of Czech political culture. The Czech Republic’s ability to contribute to the international community has historically given the country national unity and international pride, particularly during the ‘First Republic’ and the symbolic presidency of Vaclav Havel in the post-1989 era. What emerges is a dynamic which will most likely continue to define the character of Czech politics for the years to come. It remains to be seen whether the current political leadership will be able to change the overarching “cynical, annoyed, grumpy mood” which Sedlacek had hoped this election would bring an end to.
POLITICS AND PROGRESS:
INTERPRETING POLITICAL CHANGE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Beatrice Edmonds
relationship between the instatement of democratically elected officials and national development, however, is not as clear in the case of sub-Saharan Africa.
2017 saw a number of developments with respect to entrenched leadership in sub-Saharan Africa. Some of these include the removal of longstanding African heads of state, and thus seem to suggest positive change in the region. In the August of 2017 Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos resigned after 38 years of rule. Robert Mugabe, after serving as president of Zimbabwe for 30 years, stepped down in the wake of a military coup. Such events offer hope for the development of democracy and the decline of corruption, and yet there is reason to fear that this hope is largely false.
Similarly, the removal of an autocratic regime will not necessarily bring about the desired change. In Angola dos Santos was succeeded by Joao Lourenco who has insisted that the dos Santos’s will not remain in control of his administration. Since being sworn into office he has taken actions which support this claim: in November he removed Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman and Jose Eduardo’s daughter, from her position as head of the state oil company.
There is an obvious correlation between the presence of corrupt rulers and a country’s lack of development and stability. The causal
Lourenco, however, is a member of the
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Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which dos Santos remains in charge of. In addition, dos Santos created the title of “President of the Republic Emeritus Honorary” for himself, suggesting that he has no intention of relinquishing his influence over the nation’s politics.
constitutions in order to extend the length of their rule. There have, however, been five attempts to remove term limits in Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal and Gambia which have been prevented by the influence of civil society groups or protesting citizens. International actors, such as the United Nations and European Union, have also contributed to efforts to prevent this practice. However, the issue is further complicated by the fact that some Western democracies, including the United Kingdom, do not have term limits.
In Zimbabwe the break between the new and old regimes appeared at first to have been more decisive: the new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, had fallen out of favor with Mugabe before returning to Zimbabwe to assume the presidency. In recent weeks, however, Mnangagwa has been praising Mugabe, and insisting that he and his family will be left in peace.
Kenya suffers from a different problem altogether, whereby there is not one but two powerful political figures. The elections that took place in August, 2017 were between Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader, Raila Odinga. Although Odinga was widely considered to be the more “populist” candidate, it is unclear whether he is deserving of that distinction. Odinga serves as an example of a leader who capitalizes on a rhetoric of change only as a means of gaining power. Both Kenyatta and Odinga come from prominent Kenyan families, and have immense personal wealth. Furthermore they both maintain strong tribal identities, along which many of their political allegiances lay.
It remains to be seen whether a general election will indeed be held in Zimbabwe in 2018, and what result those elections might yield. There is a possibility, however, that Mnangagwa will fall into a category of rulers who only deplore corrupt leadership as a means of legitimizing their own claims to power. The situation is worsened by the fact that the removal of long standing heads of state in Angola and Zimbabwe is not being mirrored elsewhere on the continent. In Rwanda, for example, President Paul Kagame secured another 7 years in office through a constitutional amendment ending the country’s two-term limit.
The August elections proved highly contentious and were annulled by the supreme court, with another election to be held in October. Odinga withdrew from the second election, claiming that it would not be credible due to a lack of electoral reforms. His name remained on the ballot, however, and the second election yielded the same result as the first: the reelection of the incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta. There are some positive aspects of the Kenyan elections. Many people see the overturn of the first election as a victory for Kenya’s legal system, potentially inspiring other judiciaries in Africa to exercise their authority. However, the violence, drawn along ethnic divisions, that derived from the election overshadows any positive developments that may have taken
The amendment was approved by 98% of voters, and the president won 99% of votes in the subsequent election. This indicates yet another challenge for improving leadership in Africa: ‘democratic’ elections do not necessarily yield democratically elected officials. In the case of Rwanda, Kagame’s landslide victory is most certainly due to voter intimidation and the obstruction of free expression. In other flawed elections voting fraud, civil violence and corruption may serve as the primary culprits. Since 2000, seventeen African heads of state have amended their
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place.
been as great of a departure from the norm as one might hope, that is not to say that there have not been victories. Here I return to the five instances in which the removal of term limits by leaders seeking to extend their own regimes was prevented. In those cases peaceful civil protests, actions taken by civil society groups and international pressures were successful in giving democracy a voice on the continent. While such actions may feel void of the revolutionary spirit, they are in fact composed of it.
While not nearly as violent as the Kenyan elections that took place in 2007, more than 50 people were estimated to have been killed in the post-election violence that occurred last year. The killings were primarily perpetrated by the police, using excessive violence in response to violent resistance. Many of the outbreaks were incited by the opposition, exacerbated by Odinga refusing to accept the results of either election. Thus we come to the most important problem with Africa’s turbulent political landscape: whether incumbent leaders manage to hold onto power, or new regimes take root, the process often proves violent and thus disruptive to large portions of the population.
It is easy to imagine how citizens, weary of the violence brought about from above, might seek to avoid political crossfire whenever possible. That is why it is only the aforementioned combination of both local and foreign actors which might set African leadership on course toward transition and transparency.
What, then, are we to make of this seemingly bleak situation? It would appear that, based on recent events, despotic rulers still dominate the African subcontinent. Military coups have little hope of bringing widespread peace, and various electoral obstacles prevent citizens from bringing about change through peaceful elections. While I am indeed suggesting that recent shifts in sub-Saharan African politics have not
Should the minor victories of last year be duplicated in the next, the situation might still appear grim. Yet it is important to bear in mind that progress, while not necessarily as glamorous or expedient as one would wish, is likely to build upon itself if has enough precedent to rely on.
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“ISRAEL’S CAPITAL, JERUSALEM” Kyra Leyland
tradition, Jerusalem is ‘the Promised Land’ as it was travelled by Abraham, founder of the Jewish faith, as early as 1800 BCE; and from an Islamic perspective, the Prophet Muhammad’s spiritual journey ‘al-Isra’ wal-Mi’raj’ (‘the night journey and ascension’) culminated in the holy city, which was also the original direction of Muslim prayer.
When President Trump officially recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in his move to relocate the US embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv, he publicly asserted his allegiance to the nation of Israel. This has shifted the balance of power in the long running Israel-Palestine conflict and cast doubt on the feasibility of a two-state solution, causing outcry from the diplomatic community. Yet the reception to Trump’s declaration also brings the vast power imbalance of today’s foreign affairs into sharp focus: would Palestine’s leader Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the international community have reacted so strongly if a less economically developed nation had moved its embassy to Jerusalem? And if not, what does this say about modern geopolitics?
It was only in 1948 that Israel was legally declared a state, following the end of World War Two when a number of displaced and persecuted Jews returned to their Promised Land, which at the time was known as the Palestine Mandate and under British control. This region was partitioned into a Jewish and a Muslim jurisdiction, with UN control of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. However, in the Six-Day War of 1967 Israel seized and occupied a number of territories, including East Jerusalem, which was the intended capital of a future Palestinian state. Therefore, Trump’s declaration disregards the possibility of the devolution of this sacred land, and along with it, the prospect of a two-state solution that could satisfy the Palestinians.
First, it is worth considering why the relocation has been so contentious. The sovereignty of Jerusalem has always been at the heart of the bloody conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and as such has never been internationally recognised as the jurisdiction of either people. A combination of religious and political factors have made the city a highly coveted prize for two of the world’s great monotheistic religions: in the Jewish
Despite being steeped in controversy, Trump’s interference in this conflict does not
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eternal capital of the state of Palestine and it is not for sale for gold or billions,” suggesting that the equity and integrity of our global politics are not yet lost.
go against the grain of US policy. President Harry Truman was the first world leader to officially recognise Israel as a nation on 14 May 1948, and Israel played a key role in preventing Soviet penetration of the Middle East during the Cold War. In November 1981, the Memorandum of Understanding on ‘strategic cooperation’ formally recognized Israel as a strategic ally of the United States, and Israel has been the second-largest market for American goods in the Middle East. The intertwined histories of the two nations mean that Israeli affairs will indirectly impact the future of the United States; this makes it somewhat disconcerting that they are now in the hands of Donald Trump, a man who seems unlikely to make a conscious effort to prevent self-interest from getting in the way of morality.
It would be naive to claim that the United States has had no positive impact on the world. There are many instances in which their proactivity has been beneficial: the spread of communism was countered in Eastern Europe through the Truman Doctrine and again in Latin America through military support, and it was US forces that located Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Along with 189 other member states, the USA committed itself to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, contributing to a 66% increase in official development assistance from developed countries between 2000 and 2014, with the ultimate goal of putting an end to poverty on an international scale. The US is only in a position to increase and decrease aid because 200 nations, Israel and Palestine among them, are already in receipt of its financial support. Some may argue that this gives them the right to make funding conditional to the support of US policy. Moreover, aid is only being withheld from Palestine in order to encourage the resumption of peace talks, an ultimately noble justification.
Even more concerning than the dramatic relocation of Trump’s embassy is his power play when interacting with the UN and Palestinian authorities. Of the 15 members of the UN Security Council, 14 voted for the US President to revoke his statement but were overridden by the USA’s veto, a privilege enjoyed by the five founding members of the UN (and incidentally, five of the highest economic contributors). When the vote was subsequently moved to the UN General Assembly, Trump and his UN Ambassador Nikki Haley threatened to “take names” and withdraw billions of dollars in aid from any country that voted against the US. And when the Assembly voted 128-9 in favour of declaring the statement ‘null and void’, the US declared a $285 million cut in UN funding, a shocking announcement given that they contribute 22% of the UN’s annual operating budget. This demonstrates that the US exerts a disproportionate amount of control over the UN, even without its Security Council veto. Finally, in the face of Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to continue negotiations, Haley threatened to cut funds to the UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees. Abbas’s spokesman responded: “Jerusalem is the
Yet, however noble the intentions of a Western power may be, the repercussions of their decisions cannot be overlooked. In their zeal to eliminate communism from Latin America, the USA propped up the brutal dictatorships of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Pinochet in Chile. It is the poorest areas of Palestine that are run by UNRWA and will therefore be hit hardest by the US withdrawal of funding, reducing food, hygiene and water for thousands. Whilst the USA may be the biggest single foreign aid donor, this accounts to only 0.17% of US GDP, which is far below the UN target of 0.7%. What’s more, 35% of their foreign aid goes directly to military and security spending as opposed to long-term development or
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humanitarian efforts. Given the prevalence of capitalism in global affairs, it is perhaps inevitable that the country with the highest GDP has such a disproportionate level of control over current developments. Guatemala has already become the first nation to follow the USA in its decision to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and it is unlikely to be the last. But the truth of the matter is that Western powers often lack either the understanding to make a wholly positive impact on a foreign dispute, or the selflessness to put these needs above those of their own nation. A deeper understanding of complex and nuanced global issues such as the Israel-Palestine conflict would give world leaders a greater sensitivity to the needs of these countries and to the price of peace. However, in view of President Trump’s proven tendency to treat diplomacy as if it were a business transaction, perhaps the prioritisation of peace over profit in United States policy is not yet within reach.
Figure 1 http://www.passia.org/maps/view/6
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THE ROHINGYA HUMANITARIAN CRISIS: THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE Gareth Hynes
from other parts of the subcontinent. After independence in 1948, however, the Myanmar government refused to grant citizenship to any of the Rohingya. Persecution was rife, and worsened after the military took control in 1962. A subsequent citizenship law which recognised 135 ethnic groups in Myanmar, but failed to count the Rohingya, rendered them a stateless people. The crisis continued to escalate with successive waves of violence and displacement, which the democratic election of Aung San Su Kyi in 2011 did little to check. In August 2017 a minority of the Rohingya fought back against this persecution, providing the military authorities the pretext needed to burn homes and destroy villages. The Rohingya were forced to flee, with most crossing into Bangladesh. Around 150,000 ‘internally displaced people’ remain in Myanmar.
Since August 2017, 650,000 Rohingya have fled their homes in Rakhine state, Myanmar. In what is one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, Rohingya have fled to Malaysia and Vietnam by boat, and to Bangladesh by foot. In Bangladesh they sought shelter in a refugee camp called Cox’s Bazar, where they joined a population of 200,000 already in the camp after the last wave of forced migration. The ones who made it have often survived torture, rape, and violence. In the camp, they will come across disease, hardship, and malnutrition. Over half are under the age of 18. This is an overwhelming catastrophe, and the response of the international community has been inadequate. A Persecuted People Though evidence suggests that Muslims have been in Rakhine state since the 12th century, there have been successive attempts to force the Muslim Rohingya from the country over the past fifty years. During British colonial rule, this province was considered part of India and was a popular destination for Muslim migrants
How Bad is the Humanitarian Crisis? As the Myanmar government has refused humanitarian access to the country itself most of our knowledge of this tragedy comes from the 800,000 Rohingya who now make
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up the camp in Cox’s Bazar. Many refugees report they have been physically and mentally traumatised by the violence they have experienced at the hands of the Myanmar army. And in the refugee camp there is no guarantee of safety, with high communicable disease risks due to overcrowded living conditions, poor sanitation, and low vaccination levels. Diphtheria is threatening to become endemic among the population, as cholera and measles threatened to before it. The host population in Bangladesh is now affected, with cases of diphtheria found in the local community. Water testing in the camp has found that 88% of household water is contaminated with E Coli. A Medicins San Frontieres worker writing in The Lancet has described the situation as “the worst slum imaginable.”
messages to encourage further vaccine uptake. A reporting system has been set up to monitor further disease outbreaks with 139 sentinel sites feeding into an early warning, alert and response system. Mental health and psychological support is being scaled up, with 40,000 people having been treated with ‘Psychological First Aid’ to date. The Bangladesh Army has constructed 9000 latrines. In a telling sign of the rapidity with which all this has been implemented, the email address through which you can still contact the health sector in Cox’s Bazar is registered at gmail.com. Once refugees reach Bangladesh they face a gruelling time, and as with previous refugees both here and in other camps around the world there is no easy answer for what happens next. But at least the international community is present and helping. What has been the response with regards Myanmar itself?
The International Response Any international response must encompass both a humanitarian effort to help the displaced Rohingya and a proportional response to the Myanmar government’s actions.
The response to Myanmar Although gathering accurate information has been made difficult by the army’s refusal to grant access to Rakhine state, the systematic persecution of the Rohingya has been widely known for decades. Considering the recent upscaling of violence and displacement, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that this appears to be a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” He made this statement on 11 September 2017, 17 days after the escalation started, yet Myanmar’s actions continued unabated for months. Given it was such a clear cut example, why did the international community not act to stop this?
The relief effort in Bangladesh The relief effort to date has been impressive. Bangladesh’s immigration department has so far registered 730,000 people through its biometric registration system. The UN and WHO are coordinating 124 health sector partners over 169 health facilities. There have been 1.9 million health consultations. Over 350,000 children have been vaccinated against measles and the first round of diphtheria vaccinations took place in December 2017, reaching around 90% of children in the camp. A vaccination campaign has also been started in the Bangladesh community, with over 29,000 children having been vaccinated across 104 local schools. The WHO and BBC Media Action are developing audio
The answer lies in our power to intervene. Whereas genocide confers a legal obligation to intervene, ethnic cleansing is not recognised as a crime under international law. And though ethnic cleansing, defined
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as the forced removal of an ethnic group from a territory, is relatively easy to prove, for genocide one needs to “prove intent to destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group.” And ‘intention’ is hard to prove. Though we might infer it from patterns of behaviour, this is usually found to be insufficient by judges, and ties the international criminal court up for years. Despite calls to label this a genocide, the UN cannot determine genocidal intent without an independent commission of inquiry with access to the country. Such an inquiry cannot occur without cooperation from the Myanmar government. It took 20 years for those that perpetrated the Rwandan genocide to be brought to justice, and this was only possible due to cooperation of the Rwanda government itself.
tional community has been powerless to deal with the cause of the Rohingya crisis, and can instead only deal with the consequences. In terms of the consequences, what of the 150,000 internally displaced persons within Myanmar itself? The WHO states its role is to “support member states respond to and recover from emergencies with public health consequences,” so it cannot intervene due to its own requirement that it ‘supports’ the member state. Clearly in a situation where the state itself is the one causing the catastrophe this is not possible. In international law the balance is in favour of non-interference with a sovereign state’s internal affairs over providing a people with protection from violence and persecution. There is both a logical and historical basis to this position, however it is hard to watch 650,000 Rohingya fleeing torture and rape and not wonder whether this balance might need to be redressed.
The world has already stood by and observed one ethnic group systematically eradicate another through the Rwandan genocide and a similar situation in Srebrenica; leaders boldly stated that this ‘must never happen again.’ As a result the Responsibility to Protect was adopted by all UN nation states in 2005. This is activated when a particular state is “clearly either unwilling or unable to fulfil its responsibility to protect, or is itself the perpetrator of crimes or atrocities.” And with the UN stating that Myanmar is conducting a “well-coordinated, organized and systematic campaign of human rights violations,” it would seem that this criteria has been met. However, the Responsibility to Protect asserted no basis to use force other than Security Council authorisation. A UN Security Council vote proposing such intervention would certainly be voted against by Russia and China, who hold a veto in the Security Council, as they have done with recent votes on similar issues in the UN General Assembly. Although resolutions can be pushed through the General Assembly, which works on a two thirds majority in these cases, votes here are not legally binding on individual nations. As a result the interna-
Conclusion It risks now appearing disingenuous when, after the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, world leaders came together to state that we must never let this happen again. It is happening again, and the international community is powerless to stop it. Though our humanitarian response for those who have fled Myanmar has been encouraging, we have not been able to act to avert this crisis, nor help the displaced Rohingya who remain trapped in Myanmar. We have come a long way since the first Genocide Convention was signed in 1948, but surely now the UN must look again at providing the international community with the ability to prevent such catastrophes in future.
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CLIMATE CHANGE AND DISLOCATION: THE FUTURE OF PACIFIC ISLAND NATIONS Viola Fur
In 2015, New Zealand deported the world’s first climate change refugee. Ioane Teitiota had argued in his asylum application that rising sea levels made his home country of Kiribati unsafe, but the New Zealand Supreme Court rejected his appeal. Although Teitiota was the first environmental refugee, he would not be the last. Since then, dozens of climate change refugee claims have been unsuccessful, a number that is sure to rise in the future.
no means limited to the Pacific: low-lying cities like Venice are in danger of disappearing within a hundred years due to rising sea levels, to name just one example. However, considering that Tuvalu is the least polluting country in the world, it seems particularly unjust that the nation’s very survival is under threat, which makes prompt action to help necessary. While we wait, climate change does not: islands like Nuatambu are already less than half the size they were in 1962, and unless we take action, this trend will not reverse.
Climate change poses a significant threat to the entire world, but it particularly harms Pacific Island nations. From water contamination and floods to rising sea levels and dangerous storms, these generally low-lying countries are increasingly vulnerable to these natural disasters. Vanuatu, for example, has consistently been threatened by climate change-induced cyclones, with Cyclone Pam in 2015 being one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the country. Indeed, the very existence of some Pacific Island nations is under threat: countries like the Solomon Islands might completely disappear underwater in the next few decades.
While the problem of climate change is a global one and cannot be solved by individual nations alone, the governments of the Pacific Island nations have not been idle in attempting to tackle this issue. Kiribati, for example, recently purchased 5500 acres of land in Fiji, hoping to relocate its citizens there if it became necessary. This decision has been criticized, however, as many claim that the purchased land would not be able to accommodate the entire population of the country. Kiribati’s President Tong now claims that the territory would be used for food production as well as serving as a financial investment for the country. Whatever the land will be used for, there is no doubt that the increased media
The threat posed by climate change is by
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coverage that the controversial move bought will benefit Kiribati.
as well as countless cultural and historical monuments. Nan Madol, for example, is an archaeological site containing the remnants of the city that served as the capital of the Saudeleur Dynasty for over five hundred years. Dubbed the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ and the ‘Venice of the Pacific’, it features hundreds of islets and is an important part of pre-colonial Micronesia’s history. Nan Madol is just one example of many that show how much would be lost if these islands were completely submerged in water and vanished entirely.
United by this common threat, the governments of Pacific Island nations have also tried to strengthen their diplomatic ties. Fiji’s current prime minister, for example, has promised to accommodate climate refugees from Tuvalu and Kiribati in an effort to guarantee the safety of the citizens of these countries. While his promise is not legally binding on Fiji’s future leaders, the announcement indicates a step in the right direction. A paper from the World Bank has also argued that structured migration is the answer, whereby around a thousand people would migrate to Australia and New Zealand annually. This would prevent forced and harried migration in the future, giving them time to figure out how best to accommodate the refugees. While this is just a proposal, it can serve as guidance for policymakers, and the mere fact that a paper was published on this issue indicates that the threat posed to Pacific Island nations is being acknowledged internationally.
Fortunately, there is hope for the Pacific Island nations. Only two of the eight world heritage sites are officially classified as being in danger, and recent years have seen a rise in efforts to preserve other cultural sites. Perhaps even more importantly for the more than two million people living in the region, other countries in Oceania have pledged to help them. While Teitiota’s asylum application was rejected in 2015, New Zealand now plans to introduce the world’s first humanitarian visa for climate refugees, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern claiming they have a “duty of care” to their neighbours. The fact that Fiji presided over the 2017 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change also indicates that other nations are slowly starting to acknowledge the threat posed by climate change to the Pacific region. The increased international cooperation, both among nations in Oceania and worldwide, that climate change is leading to seems praiseworthy.
However, the proposals aimed at permanently relocating the populations of endangered countries have shown that civilian resistance may prove to be an issue. Many citizens of Pacific Island nations have expressed that they do not want to leave their homeland, or would only consider doing so as a final resort. They want to save their country, not attempt to start a new life elsewhere, and ensuring the cooperation of the people involved is essential for the success of relocation attempts. However, as the cyclones rage and the sea levels rise, it becomes hard to justify staying in such dangerous places, a threat that locals are eventually sure to recognize as well.
There are definitely efforts to help the Pacific Island nations, and the hope they provide is much needed. However, in what is just one of many similar examples, five islands in the Solomon Islands recently completely disappeared. All that was on the islands was destroyed, and their inhabitants had to flee. The question is, therefore, not whether we should be taking action to help the Pacific islands, but rather whether we are taking enough, and if it will be in time.
Aside from the populations of the Pacific Island nations, there are other things that the world stands to lose if climate change were to destroy these countries. There are eight UNESCO world heritage sites in the region,
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LESSONS FROM E-ESTONIA Verity Bligh
and targeted attacks to inflict severe damage. Defenders, who have much more at stake, need to be lucky all the time. For these reasons, the Estonian government effectively blocked all international web traffic during the three-week period of DDoS attacks, shutting the country off from the rest of the world. Yet such self-imposed dislocation is neither desirable nor feasible in the modern day, even as a preventative measure against cyber-attacks. This unwillingness to go “off-the-grid” is particularly true in e-Estonia, “the most wired country in Europe”.
Just over ten years ago, on 26 April 2007, Estonia was targeted in the world’s first known cyber-attack. A three-week wave of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks effectively crippled the country’s information technology infrastructure, including the websites of government institutions, banks, universities and newspapers. DDoS attacks work by flooding servers with irrelevant information, thereby blocking legitimate users from the website or entire network. Imagine no longer being able to shop online, read BBC News or call 999, and that is the level of attack that Estonia faced.
Estonia emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s with a strategy to “leap-frog” industrial development and dive straight into the digital age. Within two decades, the country was transformed from one in which only half the population had access to a simple telephone line, to one in which every citizen had access to free public Wi-Fi. Moreover, with the introduction of electronic ID cards in 2002, the vast majority of government services, including voting, taxes, and health care, now occur online. Nevertheless, Estonia’s dependence on the Internet also makes its information tech-
The dislocation caused by cyber-attacks in this way has since been recognised as a Tier One security threat by most developed countries, on a par with international terrorism, inter-state war or natural disaster. In our increasingly interconnected world, the success of individuals, companies and governments depends on their ability to operate effectively and safely online. Being disconnected is a critical disadvantage in our globalised economy. However, this threat is highly asymmetrical. Attackers need to get lucky only once using automated, low-cost
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nology system highly vulnerable.
programs line for line off hacker websites, clearly cannot be labelled as traditional combatants. More importantly, because cyber-attacks have not yet caused any loss of life, no true act of war has occurred. This is why Estonia did not invoke NATO’s Article 5, the principle of collective defence, in 2007. Ultimately, we lack the language to describe non-state non-violent action in cyberspace that causes severe physical, economic and social harms in the real world. “Virtual weapons” are essentially massless, made up of zeros and ones, but have the capacity to take down a country’s entire infrastructure, without the firing of a gun, according to Lucas Kello, Director of Oxford’s Centre for Technology and Global Affairs. Such technological innovation has disrupted the Clausewitzian framework and rendered it inadequate in the strategic analysis of these new developments. As a result, Kello has coined the term “unpeace” to describe such mid-spectrum cyber-attacks that lie below the physically destructive threshold of interstate violence, yet above the tolerable threshold of peacetime competition. These ideas matter because we cannot securitise a threat if we do not understand it. The inability to explain cyber-attacks in meaningful terms has arguably hindered policy-makers’ strategies to deal with them effectively, whilst inflating the threat in public perception.
It is in this context that the full-scale cyber-attack was launched against the Estonian government in 2007, in protest to the relocation of a Soviet war memorial, the Bronze Soldier. The removal had sparked mass riots on the streets of the capital Tallinn, predominantly by ethnic Russians, who make up a quarter of the nation’s population yet do not hold citizenship status. Cyber-attacks provided such a disaffected group with a highly effective tactic of retaliation. Even though the attacks came from Russian IP addresses, were discussed on Russian-language chat-rooms and are widely believed to have been orchestrated by the Kremlin, there is still little concrete evidence to identify or prosecute whoever is responsible. One twenty-year-old ethnic Russian, Dmitri Galushkevich, was fined the equivalent of £830 for the DDoS attacks, yet was not convicted with a criminal record. Moreover, Russia’s denial of Kremlin involvement and refusal to cooperate with the Estonian government’s investigation further complicates holding attackers to account. In this way, not only are such attacks asymmetrical, they are often anonymous and go unpunished, allowing attackers to act with impunity and forcing defenders to secure themselves continually against unknown threats.
This problem will only continue to get worse as cyber-attacks continue to surge and responses continue to lag behind. The head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Marin, has warned that a major cyber-attack on the UK is a matter of “when, not if”. However, it remains unclear what form this attack will take. Precedents include malware causing infrastructural damage (such as Stuxnet, which destroyed Iran’s nuclear facility in 2005), political kompromat (such as the DNC email leak in 2016) or ransomware (such as WannaCry, which disrupted the NHS in May 2017). Yet it is entirely possible that the next major
This points to the bigger problem regarding how to conceptualise cyber-attacks in existing international relations theory and national security strategies. Cyber-security itself is a contested concept, which does not fit neatly into traditional understandings of war and peace. Cyberspace has emerged as the fifth domain of warfare (after land, sea, air and space), and in the process has dislocated the dominant Clausewitzian framework, where conflict is defined as physical violence between states for political purposes. For instance, “script kiddies”, often young troublemakers who copy malware
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Cyberphobia, that the “weakest link in any security system is human beings”. For this reason, it is secure integration rather than going “off-grid” that provides the most feasible defence against future cyber-attacks. Now nation-states, which remain the primary actors of contemporary international relations, have an opportunity to establish informal “rules of the road” that would raise the political cost of cyber-attacks. These measures could include countries publishing their military policies in cyberspace, placing economic sanctions on states that fail to tackle online crime or an international “duty to assist” targeted governments. None of this will prevent actual cyber-war, but it could minimise the dislocation caused by cyber-attacks, such as those in Estonia, and thereby make the world a little bit safer.
cyber-attack is entirely new and different, such as the one that dislocated Estonia in 2007. Lessons can be learned from Estonia’s experience in dealing with the aftermath of the attacks. The government rapidly enlisted NATO cyber-terrorism experts to assess and stabilise the domestic situation. NATO also passed legislation to establish the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, which opened in August 2008, to research cyber-security in the fields of technology, strategy, military operations and the law. Its key outcomes include a standard protocol to deal with cyber-attacks, an international network of cyber-defence experts, and an annual cyber war-game, Locked Shields. Crucially, the Estonian government has recognised, as Edward Lucas wrote in
THE POLITICS OF MEMORY:
THE LEGACY OF UKRAINIAN DISLOCATION ON POLISH-UKRAINIAN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Julia Pieza
In the shared and tumultuous history of Poles and Ukrainians, 1947’s Operation ‘Vistula’ stood as a watershed moment on the road to reconciliation. ‘Vistula’ constituted the forceful re-settlement of 140,000 Ukrainians from south-eastern Poland to the recently recovered Prussian-German territories after World War II. Curiously, the dislocation of Ukrainians from the region would effectively disperse an ethno-cultural
antagonism between Poles and Ukrainians that dates back to the interwar period. Today, its legacy is present in what is perhaps a most unexpected place: a small town located on the north-eastern outskirts of Poland. Walking through Górowo Ilaweckie, a town with a population of less than 5000 people, you can find a Greek Catholic Church and a proudly modern Ukrainian boarding school. This stands in contrast to what one might
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expect given that the UN rates Poland as one of the most ethnically homogeneous nations, with only 0.2% of the population being foreign. Though it cannot be seen from a first glance, the memories of dislocation have profoundly shaped the multicultural nature of my hometown.
that dates back to the interwar period. In 1919 Poland gained its independence after 123 years of partition; conversely Ukraine, after a brief but doomed struggle for independence, became part of the Soviet Union. Poland’s post-war government, led by Marshall Józef Piłsudski, desired a multi-ethnic population loyal to the Polish state, but policies restricting the freedoms of minorities became the norm after his death in 1935. At the same time, an emerging Ukrainian nationalist sentiment accentuated territorial disputes on ethnic grounds; after all, some of Poland’s territory was in fact of mixed Polish-Ukrainian population. This ultimately led to the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918-1919, and Poland’s victory and subsequent control of much Western Ukrainian territory drastically worsened relations in the south-eastern regions. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, allied with the Nazis during World War II, orchestrated the massacres of 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia between 1943 and 1944. Violence on the Polish side cannot be left unmentioned as 20,000 Ukrainians were killed in the aftermath of the massacres that eventually led to Operation Vistula.
Founded in 1335, the town has alternated between German, Russia and Polish control for most of its history. With the exodus of Germans from the region, the end of the Second World War brought both new Polish and Ukrainian settlers to the town. Practically overnight, as result of Operation ‘Vistula’ around 42% of the town’s urban population became Ukrainian, and an even greater proportion settled in the rural outskirts of the town. Yet, integration efforts were virtually non-existent until the end of Stalinism. In 1957, the Ukrainian community established a Socio-Cultural Association that cooperated with the Polish community to provide primary education in Ukrainian and to create a place of Greek Catholic worship. Today, Górowo reaps the cultural and economic benefits of integration, and the Ukrainian community is an integral part of the town’s unique character. Every year in July, the Ukrainian cultural and music festival ‘Ekolomyja’ is a well-attended celebration of the town’s Ukrainian community by Ukrainians and Poles alike.
Until recently, relations between Poles and Ukrainians were characterised by what Yale historian Timothy Snyder called the “ethnic notion of national memory”. He argues that Polish and Ukrainian identities in the mid-20th century emphasised ethnic differences rooted in the historical memories of the inter-war years and subsequent conflicts. According to
In order to understand this process of recovery and integration one has to delve into the history of the ethno-cultural conflict
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Snyder, a nationwide conscious reassessment of ethnic conflict, arguably the darkest episode in the nations’ shared histories, was facilitated by a fundamental discursive shift from ‘ethnic’ to a ‘civic’ notion of national memory. This shift away from the nations’ ethnically charged social histories was replaced by a dialogue focused on the ‘civic’ historical struggles for the independence of both nations. By the end of 1991 both nations had found themselves in a similar position to the situation they faced in 1919: Poland was once again independent, and Ukraine continued to struggle against the Russian threat. However, history did not repeat itself. The new Polish state underlined the ‘civic’ notions of national memory as opposed to the ethnic terms that had become synonymous with tragedy, loss, and revenge. Crucially, a similar shift was evident within the Ukrainian political elites. Both nations came the share the common goals of independence and sovereignty, and both adopted the pragmatism necessary to ally against their common historical adversary.
darity) banner in the Ukrainian national colours of blue and yellow, above the headquarters of the Solidarity Union in 2014, has become a clear symbol of the unity of Poles with Ukrainians against democratic repression. Górowo Iławeckie remains a peripheral town, and yet it is a unique example that the dislocation brought about by the historically indefensible Operation Vistula can lead to positive dynamics of cultural integration in the long run. However, recent events have shown that such a détente is vulnerable. Since 2013, the centenary of the Volhynian massacre, ethnically motivated enmities in cities such as Przemyśl, where countless anti-Ukrainian slogans appear graffitied on the city’s walls, have become the new normal. A more recent dislocation of Ukrainians following the 2014 Crimean Crisis has given Poland’s ultra-nationalist Law and Justice government the political ammunition to awaken what Górowo’s mayor Jacek Kostka calls the “demons of nationalism”. As he put it, by “enabling anti-Ukrainian sentiments tacitly, or, paradoxically through vehemently condemning them, [this is] giving the nationalists greater impetus and motivation”. Screenings of ‘Wołyn’, a 2016 film portraying the 1943 massacre, have been banned in Ukraine for fear of protests, while many Ukrainian and Polish politicians believe the film’s message undermines decades of reconciliation efforts. Funding for the film came primarily from the government-owned TV station TVP (‘Polish Television’) which has led many to associate the government’s nationalist agenda with the production of the film. Thus, the malleability of national memory for the political agenda of the Law and Justice government contrasts with Górowo’s enduring vision of multicultural integration. Beyond this small town, the competing ethnic and civic visions of PolishUkrainian relations will nevertheless have significant implications for the future of both nations and indeed, for Europe as a whole.
Advocacy for Ukraine’s independence became the hallmark of Poland’s foreign policy after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In 1991 the nations signed a declaration recognising each other’s borders and the equal rights of Ukrainian and Polish minorities in both countries. In recent decades, former Polish President Alexander Kwaśniewski and former foreign minister Radosław Sikorski spearheaded the repair of Polish-Ukrainian relations after Poland’s ascension into the European Union in 2004. Acting as mediators between Ukraine, the EU, and NATO during the 2004 Orange Revolution and more recently in the aftermath of the Euromaidan protests, Kwaśniewski and Sikorski have become the strongest champions of Ukraine’s inclusion in these Western-oriented blocs. Snyder considers this active and vehement defence of Ukraine’s sovereignty the consequence of Ukraine’s status as a ‘parallel state’ to that of 1980s Poland. A depiction of Lech Walesa’s infamous red-and-white ‘Solidarność’ (Soli-
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“TRUE” CITIZENSHIP IN THE 21ST CENTURY Nathania Silalahi
words was also arguably in reference to his election opponent, the Chinese-Christian former Governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, as Baswedan had effectively played the anti-Chinese and pro-Muslim cards to win his campaign. Elsewhere, in Zimbabwe, hopes are high for Emmerson Mnangagwa to turn such situations around as he promises to be a representative of Zimbabweans from every ethnic, racial, and political background. After all, Robert Mugabe’s past land reform policies were seen as progress towards distributional justice for blacks, but were arguably interpreted as large-scale theft by whites. In defence of this policy, The Washington Post reports reports that Savior Kasukuwere, the minister of local government, said that “the whites had their turn. It’s time for our people to have a change.” White. Non-white. Pribumi. Non-Pribumi. Black. Non-black. Using or implying such delineations in political rhetoric legitimises the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality: the ‘othering’ of many peoples. Yet how can we and why should we do so when physical and cultural dislocations across continents have always been part of human history?
New year, same Trump. In early January, the 45th President of the United States caused chaos once again by making comments which were arguably impossible to interpret without hints of racist sentiment. Donald Trump was accused of describing African countries as “shitholes,” questioning the need to welcome more Haitians to the United States, and jokingly lamenting over the lack of Norwegian interest in immigration during an Oval Office meeting. His comments clearly demonstrated his lack of ability to see different peoples as equal citizens of his country, and he is not the only politician who has struggled to do so of late. In October 2017, the Governor of Jakarta, Anies Baswedan, sparked controversy with his inauguration speech. He stated that “we pribumi were oppressed [by the Dutch Colonists]. Now it’s time for us to be the hosts in our own land.” Pribumi, a derogatory term used during colonial times meaning “inlander,” refers to “indigenous” Indonesians (i.e those of Malay/Austronesian ethnicity) who were considered as third-rate citizens after the European settlers and the Chinese, Indian, and Arab traders. His choice of
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In the past, mass human migrations have remodelled the racial, ethnic, and linguistic makeup of populations. At times this mass migration was intentional. During the precolonial era in Africa, seasonal or circular migration for hunting, agriculture or pastoralism was common. Movement was a search for greater security, an effort to avoid wars and natural disaster, and an investment in trade and pilgrimage. The roaming of a population also has the power to significantly shape history for centuries to come. For example, how Europe looks today is a result of a number of early migrations involving the Slavic, Turkic and Germanic peoples. How the Americas, Australia, Oceania, the northern half of Asia, and parts of Africa look today is due to the overseas migration and conquests of over 60 million European people during the 16th to 20th centuries.
linked to this history of colonialism and movement. Evidently, we cannot deny that colonial history has and will continue to affect politics. Now, in the Middle East and Africa, borders drawn by Ottoman dynasts and European colonialists are breaking down as the situation of autocratic Arab states in the region continues to deteriorate. In international relations theory, postcolonialism highlights the impact that imperial histories still have in shaping a colonial way of viewing the world by exploring how different individuals, societies, and governments experience international relations. Postcolonialism is concerned with the disparities in global power and wealth accumulation, with dangerously asymmetric power between states, and with why some of these power relations seem natural or even inevitable. By zooming into the intersections of empire, race, gender, and class, questions often overlooked by other theories are explored, allowing for alternative readings of both historical events and current affairs.
Nevertheless, other times, this mass migration was carried not out by choice; for example, the slave trade was one of the largest mass migrations of labour in human history. Coordinated by the European slave traders in Africa from the 16th to 19th centuries, approximately 20 million slaves were sent to the Americas - with a substantial number of them passing away during the Atlantic voyage. The largest mass expulsions have probably been those imposed by 20th authoritarian regimes. Nazi Germany deported 7–8 million people during World War II and the Soviet Union forcibly expelled 9–10 million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe into Germany. Furthermore, multiple waves of Chinese emigration have occurred throughout history - the largest of which was caused by wars and starvation in mainland China, invasion from various foreign countries, as well as problems resulting from political corruption from the 1800s to 1949. Considering these dislocations, what does being a true citizen of a land even mean?
Considering the multicultural and multiracial melting pots many countries have become, it is no surprise that the complex individual search for personal identity has been somewhat reflected in the rise of identity politics. This very deep and private quest has permeated the realm of public politics, turning a sensitive process into a public cultural crisis of self-searching, belonging, and living together. Around the world, more and more people are seeking to belong, and more and more people are not counted as belonging. Who belongs? When? Where? Crucially, we must not let populist leaders provide the answers to these pivotal questions and continue to divide society. In The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha reasons that viewing the world as constituting of ‘separate’ and ‘unequal’ cultures - “Christendom” and “The Islamic World,” “The First World,” “The Second World,” and “The Third World” - perpetuates belief in the existence of imaginary peoples and
The idea of a subconscious criteria for an underlying hierarchy of citizens is arguably
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places. We are still not past thinking in these terms. We must counter such linguistic and sociological reductionism and continue to fight against the use of ‘othering’ language. Nevertheless, we also need to think about the alternatives - is it possible to lessen the importance of our ethnic heritage and history and focus on something else?
20th centuries. Instead of basing a country’s shared identity on the majority culture, Habermas argues that universalistic principles of human rights and the rule of law must be emphasised and reflected in institutions instead. The resultant distinctive political culture can lead to what Habermas thinks should replace nationalism as the focus of common identity instead - ‘constitutional patriotism.’ Even though this is merely the tip of the iceberg of literature surrounding the concept of citizenship, the point is that such debates must take place. We need to think about the right balance between the recognition of difference and the affirmation of common principles to which all citizens adhere. To do so, we must not let loud voices drown out earnest reflection.
Jürgen Habermas, a German sociologist and philosopher, believes that democracy and the nation-state need not always come hand in hand. Postnationalists like Habermas argue that the dissociation of democratic politics from its ‘historical moorings’ is both possible and positive. The growing internal diversity in today’s pluralistic societies is pushing the boundaries of the identity-affirming role that the nation-state performed in the 19th and
THE MODEL MINORITY:
DISLOCATION BY GENERALIZATION
Ria Mazumdar
economically successful than immigrants of other origins. This myth has been used to simultaneously dislocate Asian-Americans from a coherent cultural identity and perpetuate the marginalization of black, Latinx, and other minority communities.
Growing up as a member of the Indian diaspora, the checkboxes on official forms were always a source of confusion for me. My nationality, “American,” was certain, but the echoes of “you’re not Asian!” rang through my ears when it came time to mark my ethnicity. In America, “Asianness” is implicitly East Asian, while I fit somewhere in the odd realm of “brownness.” Such societal views of Asian-American identity are messy, dividing minority groups and dislocating individuals from their identities while undermining the alleged “unity in diversity” of American culture. A huge element of America’s convoluted perception of Asian-Americans is the model minority myth, which holds that “Asians” are more studious, hardworking, and
The model minority myth is ubiquitous in discussions ranging from pop culture to political science. Teenagers gripe about the plight of having “Asian parents” who push them to do five hours of maths homework everyday, and welfare economists use data regarding “Asians” to conclude that this privileged, educated group is not really in need of public support. This conclusion, as well as the lack of subcategorization that
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produces troubling generalizations, ignores the deeply problematic history and current reality of Asian immigration to America. Shifting policies resulted in increased incorporation of Asians into the American economy, and now Asians have the highest median income in the United States. Yet this phenomenon, far from being a consequence of deconstructed whiteness or the “American Dream”, has been built up by a continuous process of anti-blackness. In the nineteenth century, Chinese immigrants migrated to the United States, finding jobs in the gold mines and railroads. The 1870 Naturalization Act and 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barred citizenship and then migration altogether for Chinese migrants. When Japanese migrants largely replaced Chinese workers in the labor force, anti-Japanese sentiment escalated, continuing through to the Japanese internment of World War II. The Asian Exclusion League pushed Indians out of land ownership, resulting in informal agreements and sometimes complete expulsion. In 1965, the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act removed the nation-based quotas introduced in the 1920s, resulting in a sharp spike in immigration from Asia (particularly India and China). As of 2012, Asians compromised the fastest growing minority group in America. The broad success of Asians has, to a large extent, been used to wipe these memories of discrimination from historical memory and to neglect the heterogeneity of the Asian experience today. Even the cursory history outlined above indicates the variegated experiences of different groups. While, today, Indians on average tend to be high-skilled and linguistically proficient, many migrants from Southeast Asia are refugees or low-skilled workers, many of whom lack secondary education. When data glosses over “Asian Americans” by incorporating them into a single category, politicians miss vital information regarding subgroups that have been artificially pushed under the model minority label. The dislocation of poor Asian immigrants and Asian Americans is perpetuated when public services
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such as healthcare and domestic violence prevention remain inaccessible. In my home state of New Mexico, many Spanish language resources exist due to the understanding that Latinx communities face significant language barriers. In contrast, poor Chinese, Indian, and Southeast Asian immigrants are invisible, slid under the image of successful doctors and lawyers typical of the model “Asian.” Still, Asians enjoy privilege in the public sphere, saddled between being “not white” and simultaneously “not black” in an actively anti-black society.
In America, the usage of the phrase “people of color” posits whiteness as a dichotomous force. This ignores the critical effects of white supremacy within minority communities, and the vital fact that class, race, and historical background produce a world of varied experiences that simply cannot be clumped into the three letters “POC.” I identify broadly with being a non-white person, someone marked by my skin color particularly by the divisive rhetoric that is growing increasingly acceptable in American society. However, the layers of my identity are multifaceted: I am South Asian by ethnicity, American by nationality, and Hindu by religion. While Islamophobia and general racism regarding “brownness” have impacted my life, acknowledging my own privilege and complicity is the only way to fully grapple with my identity.
The model minority myth does not simply affect the economically disenfranchised, but has critical implications from those successful individuals who reap benefits from the myth. An Asian-American representative group filed a lawsuit against Harvard University in 2014, on account of Asian applicants being held to a higher standard than white students. This view holds that affirmative action disadvantages Asian (and white) applicants in favoring black and Latinx groups who do not fit the model minority. Yet how can one properly justify a “diversity rationale,” especially when discussing a group with so many heterogeneous identities? While many Asian applicants do possess tremendous educational and socioeconomic privilege, is it justified to argue that trends of overachievement threaten white applicants?
“Asian American” is a term used to describe a group of people comprised of dozens of nationalities, hundreds of languages, and millions of divergent experiences. If policymaking is to appropriately target the needs of minority groups, this term must be broken down and challenged at all levels. Asian communities must ally with movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, while simultaneously distinguishing themselves from the cause, and organizing political power on the plane of a deconstructed Asian identity. To speak of “Asian Americans” is to dislocate individuals from the specific nature of their historical narratives. Fighting continued economic inequities and the model minority myth require a collective campaign against both white supremacy and the internalized racism which supports the continued oppression of non-Asians. I anticipate the day when my identity is viewed as valid under the umbrella of Asianness, but simultaneously as a subcategory that deserves distinct attention and dynamic consideration. No checklist can capture the complexity of racial understanding that is urgently needed to develop political consciousness and institutional change in America today.
While none of these questions have concrete answers, one thing is clear. The insidiousness of the model minority myth lies in its intensification of anti-blackness and racism within Asian communities, causing “mobility” to become synonymous with achievement at the expense of other minority groups. The narratives of successful Asian immigrants reinforces the alleged guilt and laziness of undocumented immigrants and systematically poorer minority groups. It urges assimilation into white America, while simultaneously reinforcing the structure of a society with barriers to equality at all levels.
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INTA MIN WAYN?
Gabrielle Russo and Emily Roper * “Where are you from?” in Jordanian colloquial Arabic
willing to discuss their personal understanding of identity with us.
This article is based on discussions with a small sample of people that we encountered whilst living in Amman. It is by no means representative of the entire population of the city, nor does it intend to put forward the opinions of the writers, but merely presents a discussion with the city’s residents.
“I’m not just Circassian - I’m a Circassian activist,” asserts Haya. She was born in Amman but identifies strongly with her Circassian heritage. Centuries of conflict between Circassians and Russians culminated in the 1864 expulsion and genocide of an estimated 400,000 to 1.5 million Circassians and the creation of a diaspora throughout the Ottoman Empire. Concentrated today in Turkey, Syria, and Jordan, myriad Circassian communities operate their own schools and social clubs where the next generation is taught Circassian culture and history.
Between 1947 and 2017, the population of Amman, the capital of Jordan grew from 33,100 to 4 million residents, following independence in 1946. The city’s inhabitants include people of Palestinian, Circassian, Syrian, Bedouin, Iraqi, and Armenian descent alongside countless others. Although they live and work in the country’s capital, the question, “Where are you from?,” hardly has a simple answer, and street-side conversations rarely begin with an exchange of names but rather an exchange of heritage.
Despite the safeguarding of their own unique traditions, Haya notes that she considers herself and her people true Jordanians due to their role in Jordan’s development, building some of the first houses in the Amman region, living alongside the Bedouin, and fighting in the Jordanian army. “We died for this country just like any Jordanian did,” Haya said.
Throughout our year abroad, this question has defined a number of conversations. There is no single way to define what it means to live in Amman, but plenty of people were
Haya visited her father’s village in the Circassian region of the Caucuses and felt
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emboldened to continue expressing Circassian culture, yet, “felt as an outsider,” among its people. She stated, “There’s a huge difference in the way I think and the way they think. Mine is mixed with the Middle Eastern culture; theirs is pure Circassian.” She had noted how her parents were constantly reminding her that Jordan is not her country. “But I’m a part of it,” she said. Having been unable to visit his ancestral homeland, Ahmad describes himself as Circassian-Jordanian, being culturally Circassian but born in Amman. Whilst he feels grateful to Jordan for the safety it has given the Circassian community, he longs to return to the physical Circassian land and live a “one-hundred percent Circassian life.” When asked what characterises this life he responded, “I don’t know, but it’s not this.” He elaborated on the importance of the land, saying he would give up any status or money to be a farmer in his home village, feeling, “home” to be a place he’s never visited. Although Ahmad predominantly speaks Arabic and feels Jordanian, he referred to Arabic as, “their language,” and clarified that he feels Circassian first. Shireen’s concept of home is derived from Amman, the place where she grew up. Although her mother is Circassian and her father Jordanian, Shireen does not feel defined by these categories. Her perception of identity is very localised: “I’m an Ammani.” Shireen said that she feels this captures her life experience much more accurately than “Jordanian”, or even, “half-Circassian.” She considers Amman a modern concept and a “non-place,” not held by historical tradition, and consequently it is possible for culture to emerge from it. Shireen explores her authentic identity through dance. According to one Amman local, Nart, Jordan lacks an identity, and people tend to confine their identities to certain boxes. When asked where he is from, Nart said he is Jordanian but later conversation revealed that he has Circassian heritage. While he has this heritage, what matters to Nart is the present. Noting the utility of the Arabic language whilst living in Amman and the conse-
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and life have all occurred in Jordan, saying, “I don’t know Palestine.” She is connected to Palestine through her parents’ stories and their former homes there but describes herself as Jordanian first. Growing up in the Jordanian school system, children in Ishraq’s school were not taught about Palestine and instead their history classes covered Jordan, so they learnt that their history was Jordan’s history, and that influenced her relationship with the country.
quent waning usage of Circassian throughout the diaspora, Nart highlighted the importance of living in the present, and described ancestral heritage as shackles from which we can’t break out. For Nart, he is better defined by his mind and hobbies. Similarly, Omar finds that his identity is carved from his personal experiences instead of his family history. While he holds Palestinian papers and only a provisional Jordanian passport, Omar has spent his whole life in Amman and describes himself as a “Jordanian-Palestinian.” Although he included Palestinian in this statement, he admitted he didn’t like Palestine “as much as I’m supposed to like it.”
No man has a deeper perspective on the development of Amman than Mamdouh Bisharat, known as the ‘Duke of Mukheibeh’. Having lived in Amman before it became the capital in 1946, the Duke has seen it develop over the years. He has felt it is his duty to preserve artefacts and artworks of cultural interest in relation to Jordan, even safeguarding a number of stones from the Roman and Byzantine eras for the Jordanian Department of Antiquities. He desires to see a reawakening of Jordanians’ interest in their heritage, and a celebration of the varied identities that constitute Jordan today.
Sarah identifies as a Jordanian-Palestinian. Her connections to Jordan result from her family living there, but she feels a deeper relationship with Palestine and its people, despite never having visited. Palestinians consider their land occupied and their access to the area is restricted. Sarah detailed how she connects with Palestinians as they share history, experiences, and culture, and she occasionally finds it difficult to talk to Jordanians who lack the same understanding. For her being Palestinian is a daily experience and she wishes someday to go back without, “[asking] for a visa to [her] own country.”
When asked where he is from, the Duke said he is Jordanian. No one can deny that his house and artefacts represent an aspect of Jordanian identity, but beyond the walls of his residence, it is clear that identity in Amman is complex, and evolving for each individual. As experiences of a place interact with history and inherited memories, so identity is formed in the intersection.
Ishraq also considers herself Jordanian-Palestinian. She is Palestinian because of her family and history, but her memories
[We would like to thank everyone who took the time to speak with us and share their stories, of which only a fraction are represented in this article.]
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ON THE FRINGES: FROM GOGOL TO THE PRESENT DAY
Nicholas Ching and Max Randall For Ukrainians, the Zaporozhian Cossacks were an early example of an ethnic group asserting their authority and independence at a time when Ukrainians were viewed as more provincial and less powerful than the Russians, and commonly known as ‘Little Russians’ (malorosi). According to Eva Lynn Singer in her thesis, Reconciling the Exotic “Other” in Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba, “The Cossacks are both ‘other’ and self: while they were mostly of Slavic ethnicity, they had created a culture completely separate from their other Slavic brothers”. This shows the inconsistent relationship of Ukraine with Russia, as Ukraine can be seen both as Russia’s brother nation as well as its exoticised “other”. The Zaporozhian Cossacks, as a result of their foreignness and autonomous political system, provided the Ukrainians with an example to follow. Today’s frozen conflict on the Russian-Ukrainian border and fractured peace negotiations suggest the paralysis of Ukrainians today: they are being forced to identify as Ukrainian, and not Russian, as the conflict becomes more and more divisive.
When the term Ukraina was first conceived in 1187, no one understood how a nation with this name would assert its national identity. In Russian, Ukraina has connotations of ‘borderland’ and of a territory ‘on the edge’, whereas the same word in modern Ukrainian literally means ‘in the country’. If we take a step back, this linguistic nuance alludes to the divide between Russia and Ukraine, both culturally and historically. This is a divide which has persisted until the present day. The question of Ukrainian national identity first arose with the emergence of the Zaporozhian Cossacks in the 17th century. These Cossacks were responsible for the formation of the Zaporozhian Host, a military force in Zaporizhia, the territory beyond the Dnieper in central Ukraine. Historically, Russia has had an imperialistic agenda, whose focus was to unite the various Slavic ethnic groups in its vicinity. Ukraine, whose history has been defined by the interference of foreign powers, has always tried to foster its own historical narrative, emphasising its regional and cultural uniqueness.
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In 2009, the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Gogol’s birth, both Ukraine and Russia fought over this author’s nationality: was he Ukrainian or Russian? Gogol wrote in Russian; although as argued by Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University, language is not an exclusive marker of identity and nationality. In the 19th century, Ukrainian was viewed more as a dialect of Russian, and not as a separate language. Only since the politicisation of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict in 1991 has the idea of Ukrainian as a language distinct from Russian become more prominent. The designation of language versus dialect is primarily a political distinction. In 2017, Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko ratified a controversial bill that made Ukrainian, and not Russian, the required language of study in state schools from the fifth grade. On reflection, this might seem like a reckless decision. According to a NationMaster census carried out in 2008, 67% of people speak Ukrainian as their first language, while 24% of people speak Russian as their first language. In certain eastern areas of Ukraine, such as Donetsk and Luhansk, more than 50% of people practise Russian as their first language. Therefore, are Ukrainians not to some extent, being pressured into acknowledging their Ukrainian[ness], while forgetting their closely aligned culture and history with Russia?
This shows Gogol’s ambivalent attitude towards his own identity. Edyta Bojanowska, Professor of Slavic languages and literature at Yale University, also has a fluid view of nationalism, “National identity is not a fixed category, but a fluctuating process, in the course of which one or more identities can evolve side by side in the same person, in greater or lesser tension with each other.” She also points out that, in the same way someone can be Scottish and British, they can be Ukrainian and Russian. Gogol grapples with this issue of Ukrainian identity in his novel Taras Bulba which describes the life of an old Zaporozhian Cossack. Significantly, the work was first published in 1835, but then had to be called back and republished in 1842 with changes, because the authorities deemed the first version too pro-Ukrainian. In Nikolai Gogol between Ukrainian and Russian nationalism, Bojanowska argues that Gogol seems more in favour of Russian nationalism in the 1842 edition, as he “offers no redeeming factor or positive justification for the Cossacks’ decision [to go to war with Poland, with whom the Zaporozhian Cossacks were vying for territory]”. However, perhaps these newly found sympathies were simply Gogol’s way of abiding by the rules of the authorities. Indeed, certain ambiguities at the end of the story go against this nationalistic Russian interpretation. One example is Taras’ final threat to his Polish captors, after the Cossacks have lost the war against the Poles. The Ukrainian scholar Yuri Barabash highlights the ambiguity of when Taras mentions his “own Tsar”, because the timeframe of the novel could only span the period from the fifteenth to the first half of the seventeenth century. The events in the novel, however, happened prior to the Pereyaslav Council in 1654, an official meeting where Cossacks pledged allegiance to the tsar of Muscovy. Taras cannot, therefore, be referring to the rise of the Russian (Muscovite) Tsar. The
It was only when Gogol moved from Nezhin, in northern Ukraine, to St. Petersburg in 1828 that he fully came to terms with his Ukrainian upbringing. There, he was called a khokhol, which denotes a Ukrainian peasant with the connotation of rural backwardness. Funnily enough, instead of rejecting his name, Gogol embraced it, employing the diminutive form (khokhlik) for himself. Khokhlik was an endearing but pejorative word that Russians used to describe a Ukrainian. He wanted to highlight his exoticness. When Gogol was questioned by a friend on his national identity in 1844, he replied: “Two natures are united in me: that of a khokhlik and that of a Russian”.
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likelihood is that he means to refer to the eventual long-hoped for rise of the Ukrainian Cossacks’ very own “tsar”. Therefore, even in his ostensibly more pro-Russian 1842 edition, Gogol still maintains his sense of Ukrainian national identity. It has proven difficult to define Nikolai Gogol as either a Ukrainian or Russian author. But then again, what is the point of this categorisation, if not simply to fulfil political agendas? Both Ukraine and Russia want to lay claim to Gogol, in order to assert their own national interests. He himself could not answer this question, saying, “I don’t know whether my soul is Ukrainian or Russian. All I know is that I would never give preference to someone from Little Russia or to someone from Russia”. Gogol is caught up in a no man’s land between Russia and Ukraine, a dislocation that cannot be reconciled.
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STOMPING ON THE GROUND BENEATH HIS FEET: GENDER ON THE MOVE Magda Rodriguez Dehli Hundreds of thousands of women march in Washington. Westminster’s silent structures of sexism and harassment become a scandal on newspaper covers. Social media is flooded with stories sharing the hashtag #MeToo. You have probably stopped shrugging and passively accepting assertions from male colleagues on how gender inequality is “fake news.” Yes; with the exception of Catherine Deneuve - and she has already taken it back - women are fed up, rallying together, and fighting back.
gendered violence, opposition to objectification in the media and underestimation at work, and recognition of diverse identities are long-standing concerns among feminists. Why, then, does the earth seem to be quaking so hard these days? Many authors and activists agree that we are going through a new ‘wave’ of feminism. The first wave broke out with the suffragette movement; the second, in the 1960s and 1970s, chanted that “the personal is political” and focused on inequality between men and women. Unisex pants and collective bra burnings gave way to queer theory and the deconstruction of gender and sexuality in the postmodern 1990s, when subjectivity and individual empowerment were central, and technology offered a new world of alternatives for imagining the body. Our act, the fourth wave, started in 2012. Women and allies are gathering around the vindication of the public realm and protesting against male violence through networked channels - notably social media - in an increasingly inclusive conversation.
Certainly, feminist struggles against oppressive gender structures are not new. In the past, women who fought for the vote or for their bodily rights disrupted deeply embedded practices and ideas of hierarchy and entitlement. Philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1949 that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”. Author bell hooks decried the exclusion of racial struggles from mainstream feminism in her 1981 book Ain’t I a Woman, showing a need for intersectionality and for a plural form of feminisms. Safety from harassment in public spaces and
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Disrupted gender: new identities, new solidarities
sharing stories of abuse to help illustrate and interpret the pervasion of patriarchal structures go hand in hand with call-out campaigns, online boycotts, and hacktivism. Despite lodging trolls and hosting anonymous threats, social media also constitutes a frame for identifying common grievances and roads for feminist action, and a point of departure for further offline protest.
The notion of gender has experienced a radical process of deconstruction in the past decades. We know that it is socially crafted, and that the binary male/female is an oversimplified cultural artefact around which we learn to conform throughout our lives. These polarized categories do not respond to biological features nor inevitability; rather, they are mechanisms of reinforcement of patriarchal hierarchies that we internalise and reproduce daily. Rejecting the essentialism of gender not only strengthens the case for socioeconomic equality; it also opens up a spectrum of non-binary identities for individuals.
The language of fourth-wave feminism presents new dynamics linked to postmodern forms of mediatic consumption. Slogan writing has been taken to a whole new level through the use of 140 Twitter characters; arguments come in short packages, memes circulate in great numbers, and YouTube features clips for the busy and the profane. New words like ‘mansplaining’ or ‘manspreading’ become popular even in non-Anglophone countries. Irony and satire feature prominently as dialectical weapons of empowerment against toxic masculinities.
This dislocation of gender-as-usual allows us to think of ourselves through different lenses. Although most of us still identify following the male/female dichotomy, we can understand our collective affiliations through shared life experiences of oppression (and privilege), rather than by embracing imposed labels. Individual experiences and personal narratives provide the basis for knitting new ties and solidarities.
The most recurrent issues held by feminist movements are related to public space and gendered violence. Harassment in public spaces - such as catcalling and unwanted touching - and sexual abuse are central concerns. The #MeToo campaign made visible the incidence of these often untold phenomena and fostered a reflection on how our “femininity” becomes painfully acute while walking home on Friday nights. Gang rapes and college rape culture have triggered massive protests from India to the US in the past few years. Besides these and other forms of everyday sexism, the ones who (should) represent us are also in the focus of feminist movements. Public figures in politics and in the entertainment industry, two traditional sites of unbounded male power, are feeling how impunity structures tremble. Democratic representatives get caught in Pussygates and Westminster scandals. The orchestrators of Hollywood’s art of mimesis turn out to be serial rapists. UN senior officials are facing accusations of harassment. Feminists from
The core of feminist solidarities today is precisely the focus on common lived episodes of patriarchal abuse. Since identities are unique and plural and all voices are equally entitled to be heard, the shift towards collective grounds of experience offers a new terrain for intersectionality, providing new meeting points for people across the cleavages of race, class, gender, sexual orientation or ability. Twitterland against the locker room: spaces and forms of contention Social media has provided a powerful platform for weaving solidarity, gaining awareness, and organising the action. Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of media - precisely the quintessential spaces for image-building and self-promotion - emerged as key sites for connection, education, and activism. Using hashtags like #MeToo and
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inside and outside these institutions and industries speak up and demand that our public servants and role models, at least, respect women in their working environments. And, little by little, they are falling down from their privilege. The Mainstream is Dead; Long Live the New Mainstream One of the main criticisms of current feminism points at the co-optation of its discourse by brands and celebrities. Although the marketisation of certain features of the movement and its interested use for private benefit risk derailing it and emptying it of its meaning, mainstreaming feminism may also have advantages. On the one hand, the embracement of the ‘feminist label’ by celebrities helps countering negative stereotypes of feminism and establishing a normative framework that integrates feminism as common sense. Indeed, when the Merriam-Webster dictionary picked ‘feminism’ as the word of the year 2017, it contributed towards a greater visibility of the movement. As we have seen, one of the most important battles for feminism today is the fight against silence over abuse and harassment in our daily lives and inside institutions; spreading the word, raising awareness, and advancing the conversation are positive outcomes for the movement. On the other hand, mainstreaming feminism also means democratising its premises and forms, going beyond academic elitism, and becoming a more accessible tool of empowerment for women of all social strata. Gender is on the move, and our experiences of it make us keep moving. The ground is shaking more intensely under the feet of those in the locker-room who think they can get away with everything because they are ‘entitled to it’. And the upcoming months will see more marches, feminist strikes, combative songs and books, and victories over abusive men in power.
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A Note About Oxford IR Soc Lighthouse is the Oxford International Relation Society’s termly journal. In it is published a collection of studentwritten articles (both postgraduate and undergraduate) by a team of Oxford students. Each article is the result of a collaborative effort between writer and editor, and is written over the first four weeks of term. This finished journal is the final product of countless hours of work put in by the writers, editors, and the committee of IRSoc. If you are interested in being involved in next term’s edition of Lighthouse, please follow the Lighthouse Journal page on Facebook. Applications for editing positions will be opened in seventh week, and the call out for articles in the print journal will be at the beginning of next term; both will be published on Facebook. Articles are published on the blog on a rolling basis.
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Thanks go to this term’s team of editors: Editor in Chief Thomas Wells Co-editors Thomas Hunt Ria Mazumdar
Sub-editors Hugh Thomas Nathania Silalahi Gareth Hynes Viola Fur Graphic Designer Robert Harrison
February 2018 Issue 17 (Formerly ‘Sir’) editor-in-chief@oxirsoc.org Printed by Anchorprint Group Ltd. The fonts used are EnglishGrotesque (Front Cover), Didot (Titles) and Seravek (Body).
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