Middle East – Pike & Hurricane

Moving on as a nation: Collective trauma and ways forward

Merle Emrich — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 14:08:03 +0000

Wars, accidents and natural disasters seem to be on the news almost on a daily basis, and we only need to open a history book to find an entire plethora of terrible events of the past. It is no wonder then that, just like individuals, whole communities and even nations can experience trauma which can pass on to future generations either through socialisation or even genetically and can affect cultural or national identity. As with all trauma the question of how to process it and how to – ultimately – move on, so as not to become paralysed by it stands in the room.

In between past and future

‘A crime takes place in two acts. First, the act of killing. Then, that of getting rid of the evidence’, Lebanese film director Ghassan Halwani, son of Wadad Halwani who is president of the Committee of disappeared and kidnapped people [during the Lebanese civil war], told journalist Emmanuel Haddad. After the civil war, in August 1991, an amnesty law was quickly passed and a second law, in 1995, urged the families of those that had disappeared (a total number of 17 415 people in addition to 150 000 deaths) to declare them dead if they’d been gone for more than four years.

Yet, instead of enabling the nation to reconstruct and face the future, this course of action trapped a large part of the population in a state of frozen mourning. Not knowing what happened to their loved ones, if they were dead or alive, possibly imprisoned in Syria or Israel, they were faced with a government that would rather have everyone forget about the years in between 1975 and 1990, and turn the page.

The conflict between the wish to move on and the necessity to find justice or at least answers and process the past is not unique to Lebanon. Describing a post-conflict Kosovo, German journalist Carolin Emcke writes about a group of women protesting for their husbands taken hostage during the war and missing since then: ‘But all those politicians who are not prepared to speak to the disheartened women are all too prepared to mention their fate if they can instrumentalise it in their speeches on independence and the possibility of reconciliation with Serbian civilians. […] The crime committed against them is of use, the victims of the crime are overlooked: No one wants to be reminded of their pain, their presence disturbs the general pursuit of normality. […] One year after the war, there is not only the issue of territorial ghettos but also that of mental enclaves’ (Carolin Emcke, Von den Kriegen: Briefe an Freunde, 2004, pp.122-124).

Healing society

‘What I’ve learned is that when traumas are ignored, they are passed on from generation to generation’, says filmmaker Andres Lubbert who investigated the past of his father who fled Chile after being forced to work for Pinochet. ‘The only way to heal a society is by starting a dialogue.’

But how to start a dialogue when society is expected to forget and move on?

In Lebanon, some of the families of the disappeared have been organising since 1982 to find out what happened to them, to achieve justice and act against forgetting. After 36 years, on 28 November 2018, the Lebanese parliament passed a law (no. 105) which recognises the right of the victims’ families to know the fate of their loved ones. To grant this right, an independent commission is supposed to be created to localise mass graves and identify the bodies buried there.

Despite suspicions that this law is merely a strategy to gain respectability in the eyes of the international community without there being any sincere intent to apply it in practice, as was the case with 39 other laws on various issues, it still denotes an achievement of those demanding justice and clarity. For the first time the telling of the story of the civil war is up to them.

A group of Syrian women pursued a similar strategy as they protested outside the United Nations (UN) headquarters in Geneva in 2017. Their demand to the UN was to bring up the disappearance of their family members in the Geneva talks. For years now, these women have been trying to find out what happened to their loved ones, to no avail. But still they continue. One of the protesters, 63 year-old Fadwa Mahmoud, stated that even though they were only five women at the protest in Geneva, there were thousands more in Syria supporting them. ‘It’s different when politicians claim to speak on our behalf. We are the ones that represent the real people’, she said.

To move on from collective trauma, there needs to be a dialogue – an act of balancing remembering and active forgetting as a step toward letting go. Policies that instead seek to suppress all memory of the events that have created the trauma or to deny the traumatised the knowledge of what happened in the first place will merely leave society paralised by its inability to process its traumatic past.

The comfortable horrible

After the end of the dictatorship in 1983, the Argentine government (under Raúl Alfonsín) set in motion the 1985 Trial of the Military as an ‘exemplary educative trial’. Yet, responsibility for the disappearances during the dictatorship extended beyond the most senior ranks of the military to which the trial was limited and public demands for more trials grew as they were seen as an effective way to find answers and pursue justice. However, both Alfonsín and his successor Carlos Menem introduced a series of amnesty laws and pardons in the name of reconciliation. Menem went so far with his policy of reconciliation that stands in contrast to public demands for justice and the establishment of collective memory as to suggest the demolition of the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), a building used as a secret detention centre during Argentina’s ‘dirty war’.

The plan was ultimately stopped by a court ruling which decrees that the victims’ relatives have a right to the preservation of the ESMA in addition to there possibly being further evidence inside the facility that might offer knowledge about the whereabouts of the victims’ remains and what happened to them. In 2004, the government of President Néstor Kirchner gave in to public demand and opened up a new pathway to deal with the nation’s trauma by deciding that the ESMA should be turned into a pedagogic space of public memory.

Unlike judicial procedures and court trials that aim to establish justice, commemorative spaces such as museums provide the opportunity to create and establish collective memory that is entirely accessible to the public and can serve as a placeholder for justice. From the Liga Argentina por los Derechos Humanos’ opinion that the ESMA should be reconstructed to appear exactly as it was when it was used as a torture centre to the suggestion of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo to turn the building into an art school, a debate ensued about how to tell the story of the place. What needs to be remembered and what forgotten? How can the past be connected to the present and future? Should art be included to mediate, to create the ‘comfortable horrible’ that prevents defensive ignorance? How can the memory of the past be passed on and how can the singularity of being alive be recovered that was stripped from the victims as their existence was turned into bare life? In essence: how to move on from collective trauma as a nation?

Written by Merle Emrich

Photo Credits

Lebanese Town Opens its Doors to Newly Arrived Syrian Refugees, M. Hofer (UNHCR), CC BY-NC 2.0

Basement Area – Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada (ESMA) – Detention and Torture Center – Buenos Aires – Argentina – 01, Adam Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0

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Masters of War—Bypassing Morality

Merle Emrich — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 08:25:47 +0000

Rheinmetall—a German arms producer, bound by regulations of the German state and international agreements. In theory, arms deals and moral values are balanced out. Yet, the devil is in the details.

Built to Destroy

Let us leave aside the question if military production and arms deals can ever be morally right. Let us assume that a balance between humanitarian values and arms deals can be achieved through (inter)national regulations, and that that is as good as it gets. Now, let us take a look at Rheinmetall and how these regulations are supposed to work.

Rheinmetall is a German, internationally active company which, aside from car parts, produces military equipment. In Germany, arms exports need to be permitted by the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA), and in special political cases even by the Federal Security Council, which limits Rheinmetall’s export options. Usually, weapon exports to countries that are involved in conflict, or that are likely to be involved in a conflict soon, will not be approved. Through these regulations exports, especially to countries in the Middle East, are supposed to be limited if not prevented entirely. But how come bombs produced by Rheinmetall are used in Yemen’s civil war? How come the UN had to stop a Rheinmetall export to Iran?

Running Gun Blues

What would a regulation be without any loopholes to bypass that very regulation? In the case of Rheinmetall, the loophole takes on the form of production abroad. Having production locations in, for example, Italy (RWM Italia) and South Africa (Rheinmetall Denel Munition), allows Rheinmetall to sell military equipment to countries that the German government does not permit exports to.

In regions with high unemployment rates, such as Domusnovas on Sardinia, Rheinmetall’s subsidiary company RWM Italia is a welcomed source of employment irrespective of possible moral considerations. In October 2016, organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, reported that Saudi Arabia had used MK 83 bombs in Yemen. These bombs had been produced in Italy by RWM Italia. Even though it is questionable whether the export of bombs to Saudi Arabia is reconcilable with Italian law, RWM Italia was able to go through with the deal due to an unclear allocation of responsibility. While Germany sees the responsibility for export controls on Italy as it is the country of production, the Italians argue that RWM Italia is Germany’s responsibility since it is part of Rheinmetall, a German company.

In South Africa, the situation is a similar one. Since 2008, Rheinmetall has a joint venture (RDM) with Denel, a South African aerospace and defence technology company. Rheinmetall profits from South Africa’s less strict export regulations and can thus bypass German export controls. In 2017, Denel planned to sell surface-to-air missiles to Iran that supports the opposition fighting Yemen’s government which is supported by Saudi Arabia. The propelling charges for these missiles are produced by RDM. Had the UN Security Council not stopped the export, Rheinmetall would have been part of arms deals with two opposing parties in the civil war in Yemen.

Through subsidiary companies and joint ventures abroad, Rheinmetall is able to bypass German regulations on arms exports. This way, military equipment produced in, for instance, Italy or South Africa reappears in countries such as Saudi Arabia which is involved in the civil war in Yemen. It is thus not merely national restrictions that are bypassed, but regulations that have a specific, and very important, purpose: the prevention of weapons being delivered to conflict zones and to governments with a disregard for human rights. All legal considerations aside, this is a matter which is highly morally questionable.

A Matter of Habit

Arms production and the following arms deals always drag along moral questions. They are a balancing act on a thin rope between humanitarian values and profit, and not only profit of the weapons producer but in form of increasing employment through arms companies. Countries such as Germany try not to fall off this metaphorical rope by placing restrictions on military exports—even though some decisions regarding arms deals remain controversial. And yet, companies such as Rheinmetall are able to bypass these regulations—to bypass morality, one might say—by moving production locations abroad where there are less restrictions or where responsibilities are not clearly defined. Thereby, they turn the moral balancing act into a one-legged spectacle that, while being profitable, is hardly going to de-escalate conflicts.

By Merle Emrich

Photo Credit:

Panzerhaubitze 2000, Tobias Nordhausen CC BY 2.0

Child in Ruins, Felton Davis CC BY 2.0

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Neither Friend nor Foe – Shades of Grey

Dora Car — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 19:11:36 +0000

If the European Union were a person, it would more than likely be going through a period of severe existential crises right now. To say it has a lot on its plate at the moment would very much be an understatement; from Brexit and all the joys that come with the territory, to several of its other key members having significant internal political issues, all the way to the by-now pretty much constant worrying signs coming from both the West and the East, as led by Trump and Putin respectively. The former’s commitment issues to the EU and NATO alike, and the latter’s need to constantly show off its military dominance (as if we could ever even get the chance to forget) are very much a constant in the Union’s priority agenda. But not too far behind all these lies Turkey, in all its nationalist, yet utterly unpredictable glory.

The perfect utilitarian friendship

Apart from being NATO’s second biggest armed force, Turkey also has the (mis)fortune of being placed in a geopolitically incredibly interesting location, one that quite literally acts as the bridge between the East and the West. Although its nationalist agenda has become clearer than ever during the past year and a half, ultimately Turkey remains critically unpredictable, making its role of a strategic fault line that much more potentially perilous.

Out of the 38 percent of Turkey’s generals that were sacked, the majority were pro-Western secularists, according to one military analyst. The 400 Turkish military envoys to NATO that were ordered home were replaced by not-quite-as-qualified Erdogan-loyalists. Many of these are antagonistic towards NATO and more than friendly with its enemies. Another not so insignificant worry is Turkey’s increasingly warmer relationship with Russia ever since the coup, with Erdogan being increasingly enamoured of and looking up to his Kremlin equivalent.

The warming of Turkey’s relationship with Russia implies a certain message to both the EU and NATO, one with not-too friendly of a tone. For Putin, Erdogan is merely a means to an end, a pawn to weaken and deepen the divide between NATO and the West even further, a strategic objective at the game he has been playing way before Erdogan ever took notice. The new constitution put forward by the referendum epitomises the concept of illiberal democracy, one that some EU members are no strangers to either, and one with Russia very much at the forefront.

Keep your friends close, and your friends with questionable motives – closer

Despite all this, Turkey remains a crucial ally to the EU, even if the allyship is being tested on a regular basis. Turkey matters, not just because of its size, both in terms of population and armed force, but also because of the vast impact it continues to have in shaping the political forces of the world. In many ways, it must walk the thin line between Western liberalism and authoritarian nationalism as epitomised by Russia & Co. In more than one sense it bears the brunt of the burden of the violence that is still spewing from Syria, even though in absolute terms in much smaller numbers than just a year ago. In a way, the referendum in April 2017 was a test of whether democracy and political Islam can be reconciled, even though the result of the referendum should not be taken as a definitive answer to that question.

During the campaign for the referendum, both German and Dutch officials were accused more than once of ‘Nazi practices’, with the accusation against the mayor of Rotterdam being particularly ironic due to both the history of the city in the context of WWII and the personal background of the mayor himself. Even after the referendum result Erdogan wanted, he continued to provoke the EU with things not big or significant enough to justify an actual retribution, but not quite small enough to go completely under the radar either, and these things keep piling up.

Although de jure the Turkish accession talks haven’t been suspended yet, de facto they are at this point moribund at best, with both sides being more than aware of this. Some in the West will use Turkey and its current situation to justify their claim that Islam and democracy are fundamentally incompatible, and partially, they would be right. But to completely admit that would be to give up on Turkey in the state that it’s in today, and that’s not something the EU is ready to do at this point, no matter how provoked it may feel.

Partly, of course, this is due to self-interest. Both as a crucial NATO member and a vast regional power, Turkey is simply too important to cut off. It has played and continues to play an indispensable role in the remains of the fighting in Syria. Giving it that final boost to jump right into Russia’s arms would also make no sense, strategically-speaking. Then there is of course also the EU-Turkey refugee deal, bringing with it the obvious consequences.

Sometimes the best action is no (re)action

With European parliamentary election fast approaching, the general consensus tends to be not to react to provocations by Turkey, and the main idea is that we have seen it all by now, so just ‘endure’ another year. But what if there is more to come? Is patience and tolerance really a virtue at the point when it means waiting just that tiny bit too long, or tolerating something that should not be tolerated? Depending on who decides and the pretext that led up to that decision, the line can potentially become even more blurred than it is now, and the grey zone between the EU and its not-friend, but not-quite-foe-either – even greyer. For now, however, Turkey and the European Union remain in a loveless marriage.

By Dora Car

Photo credits:

Image 1 by geralt, ‘europe-turkey-conflict-germany‘, CC0 Creative Commons

Imge 2 by DimitroSevastopol, ‘putin-policy-the-kremlin-russia’, CC0 Creative Commons

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Life Keeps Going on: The Life of the Ones Who Fled

EditorChief — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 12:49:58 +0000

When the first tents went up at the IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camps of Nineveh, Iraq, no one had figured how permanent the camps would become for all their inhabitants. As 800,000 people were displaced from their homes between October 2016 and June 2017 in just the city of Mosul alone, the need for humanitarian aid and planning was grave. A plethora of organisations and locals continue to work together daily to bring in necessary equipment and help to those in need. I had the chance to speak with Osama, a 24-year old Project Officer for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, regarding the situation in North-West Iraq.

Longing for Home

Some people come to stay in the camps for longer.

“It can take months or even years to leave the camps”, Osama says.

The city of Mosul, from where more than one million people had fled, is far from normality. It will take a long time for all families to be able to return to their homes, often without a loved one. Homesickness is present, and many can not wait to return back home, whether the security risks are still high or not. Returnees have already started to head back to the ruins of their hometowns, by the thousands, still leaving a mass of people living within camp borders.

From markets you can buy fresh produce, something you would do back at home, too. Photo: Osama

Life for those in the camps is not easy. The tents are vulnerable to weather conditions and life can be really boring without jobs and the normality of weekdays. Osama describes how families inhabiting the thousands of tents are very susceptible to disease and food and water shortages, while going back to school can also be very difficult due to injuries and trauma.

Although many children can be seen to have physical injuries, many more suffer with hidden psychological pain from the war. Many volunteers and staff members are passionate about working with children—slowly teaching the traumatised children to be children again, after everything that they have seen and been through.

“When you are walking down the streets, you will see kids playing and hear them laughing”, Osama says.

“Through the children, you can see the future.”

Bringing Back the Mundanity

“There are two types of ways to work,” Osama says.

“The camp guards allow some of [the IDPs] to leave the camp to work.” Then the people can work in nearby villages and towns, and in a way touch upon the regularity of life back home. “They can then work as anything they want!”

When the IDPs cannot leave, they find work within the camp borders as marketplace sellers or barbers. Unused supplies, such as lentils and rice—which families get through the distributions—are sold forward in markets around the camps. This gives people a sense of purpose and a job, the Project Officer explains. Some NGOs also hire IDPs to work in projects within the camp.

Barbershops have popped up within the borders of the various refugee camps. Photo: Osama

“Some NGOs [organise to] build a water tank or bathrooms … so the IDPs can work in [those projects] and get paid,” Osama says.

The UNHCR administered project in Jordan is a good example, in which refugees were involved in the installation of solar panels for the camp they were inhabiting.

Humans will continue to be humans, no matter what the conditions are. Although, Osama notes that life in the camps is far from an ideal one, people can be seen putting up their own shops and services, almost as if trying to mimic their life back home. People in the camps want livelihoods, they want jobs and an income, something to do. The existence of normality within camp life is what gives the inhabitants hope, hope to continue to live their lives and hope to one day be able to return home.

The use of Osama’s full name has been omitted by the editorial team to protect his identity.

By Laura Korte

Photo Credit:

Iraq Red Crescent Society. All Rights Reserved
Osama, All Rights Reserved
Osama, All Rights Reserved
Osama, All Rights Reserved

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Stories of Palestine Told with the Oud

Anna Bernard — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 12:15:33 +0000

Hopes and dreams and desires are inherent to the human condition. When far away from loved ones, we experience a sense of longing and nostalgia. Different people find different ways of expressing these feelings; some find a language in art, some in music or poetry. The editors of Pike and Hurricane had a unique opportunity to sit down with Adnan Joubran, a world renowned Palestinian musician, to discuss the language and power his oud gives him.

Musical evolution

The oud is an ancient stringed instrument popular in the Middle East. The expertise in the instrument has been in Joubran’s family for a long time:

“I come from […] a family of oud makers and musicians, my father is the third generation in the family who builds the instrument and my brother is the fourth.”

Joubran explains to us how he was enticed by the oud in his youth:

“[…] in the year 2003 there was this kind of phase where I just started to play the oud on my own in the house and I felt it could be my language.” His big brothers supported him and that is how Le Trio Joubran came to be. He explains his path in more detail:

“In 2004 we formed the band Le Trio Joubran, and in 2014 I made my own band. Here I am in Sweden making my own show.”

Many things have happened in the world and in the music scene as Joubran’s career has evolved:

“The oud was only for the old people, culturally the instrumental music is only for the old people. We’ve made a big movement, not only us, but a lot of other musicians too. Young people find it trendy to listen to Trio Joubran.”

Dimensions of hope

When asked what music can do that politics cannot Joubran answers:

“I think with my art I can prove I have existed, I can prove that there is culture,” he says. Further in the interview he explains:

“I am always pro-culture. We should be building history. Whatever we do good today one day will become folkloric, one day will become tradition. In 50 years my music will become tradition. Mozart was contemporary then, he was rebellious then, but now it’s classical,” Joubran asserts. He continues by explaining that music cannot come just from an idea, it comes from history:

“There is culture, there is Palestine, it was there, it is still there.”

Like many other Palestinians, Joubran is a part of the Palestinian diaspora, splitting his time between London and Nazareth. According to him the diaspora is important in preserving Palestinian identity and culture because “each member is a whole nation,” he emphasises and adds:

“I’ve been lately in Chile. There’s more than 400,000 Palestinians in Chile. [Many of them] went in the 1920s. And it’s nice to see in their houses ouds from that time. For me that was so moving.”

During our interview we try to stay away from politics. Nevertheless, we briefly discuss his hopes for the future of Palestine:

“I said earlier I am a bit hopeless, but my mission is to give hope”, he asserts. Joubran’s mission of giving hope comes out of necessity:

“Unfortunately we live in a world where you wake up and you see the news and you suddenly get paranoid: […] is [this] the life that we came for or is [this] the world that we are living in?”

Joubran tells us about a track called ‘I wish I were a tree’ from his latest album:

“We are here only to grow just like the trees. […] we are here just born to love and just born to grow the one next to the other, not to be uprooted, not to be killed. This tree can have red leaves, I can have different coloured leaves, we are different but we should just live this difference and enjoy the beauty that we give to this world, with our differences,” Joubran describes. In addition to giving an awareness of cherishing our differences and a dimension of hope to the listeners, he wishes to provide a space to drop a tear or to get a smile on their faces.

Tears or smiles, Joubran does not seem to give up hope:

“Everyday I wake up with a different dream. I think my pleasure in life is just to dream, to keep dreaming. The way home is nicer than home. […] The pleasure is not fulfilling your dreams, it’s the pleasure of dreaming.”

By Anna Bernard

Photo credits:

Captain.orange, Oud, Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Ida Sharla Løjmand, All Rights Reserved
Ida Sharla Løjmand, All Rights Reserved

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Boycott: A Silent Revolution

monta.nitisa — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 12:07:12 +0000

In the classic story of nonviolent resistance “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story”, Martin Luther King, Jr. states six principles of nonviolence. The first principle is as follows—nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. It does take audacity to directly oppose anything, to stand against injustice. I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Ronnie Barkan, an Israeli human rights activist, who could be one of those people who King wrote about 60 years ago.

Ronnie Barkan defines himself as a privileged Israeli Jew. Besides being a human rights activist, Barkan is a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which is a global Palestinian-led campaign for freedom, justice and equality. It started in 2005, combining 170 different Palestinian organisations that signed up to a shared mission, which urges to put pressure on Israel until Israel acts in accordance with international law and respects fundamental human rights.

How Does a Boycott Work?

Barkan looks at the BDS campaign as a grassroots movement. He states that there is a way how boycotts can be something that everyone of us can participate in:

“When you choose where your money goes, you choose whether you buy products that are produced in a sweatshop or not, and you can also choose whether you buy products that come within the expense of oppressing Palestinians.’

Nonetheless, BDS goes far beyond economic consumer boycott; it also involves around cultural and academic spheres. One part of boycotting is divestment—the controlling of companies which fund, for example, pension funds. Students can ask universities not to invest in companies which are acting against human rights.

When talking about who is being boycotted, Barkan explains:

“For cultural and academic boycott, we have clear BDS guidelines, which make sure that we are not boycotting every Israeli simply because they are from Israel. We are only boycotting those that are the representatives of that state. We don’t boycott the individuals.”

Even Music Takes Part in Boycott

As and example of cultural boycott Barkan mentions the recent case with an artist from New Zealand, Lorde:

“There was a call on her not to perform there and she decided to hear the call and not to perform and this raised a lot of international attention. This is more about symbolism. The fact that a certain artist doesn’t perform in Israel doesn’t harm the economy or any individuals. It is just that some artists decide not to perform there but it really touches the nerve.’’

Nonviolent Resistance versus Arms

When being asked about the role of nonviolence, Barkan does not hesitate to share his thoughts on the present situation:

“I am not here to condemn Palestinian armed resistance, but it is not very effective. When you struggle to fight against the fourth of fifth largest nuclear superpower in the world, it doesn’t really make sense to resist with weapons. I am happy that I have the opportunity to not use weapons against anyone […] Our power as activists is gained by doing things transparently and not being ashamed by what we do.’’

The Unclear but Promising Future

Towards the end of the discussion, Barkan shifts towards the hopeful picture of the upcoming. He talks about reassuring signs that keeps his outlook on the future positive:

“Firstly, I am very optimistic about the media’s campaign to change the discourse and it is definitely happening. This discourse is slowly seeping into the mainstream media. Secondly, that I am optimistic about is the whole blockchain technology—cryptocurrency. There are a lot of discussions, misconceptions about that but we are just at the beginning with this revolution, which makes banks and authorities pretty much abundant. There are endless possibilities that come up with that—from the distribution of wealth to the redistribution of information.”

In the fast-paced world we live in today, it has become too effortless to accept the illusions of equity. Slipping out of this mindframe, re-evaluating our values is indeed challenging, but if nonviolence combined with courageousness is our hope, I think we are on the right path.

By Christiana Nitisa

Photo credits:

Gaza, Elvert Barne, 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Politics in Verse

Merle Emrich — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 17:58:14 +0000

While one might think that mere words stand no chance against the power of governments, poetry is banned and censored, and poets are imprisoned and exiled out of fear of a few verses. Yet, there is still hope. Words possess a power that violence can never have, and it is difficult-if not impossible-to silence everyone who speaks.

Iran, 1988-today

From 1988 to 1998 over 80 Iranians, among them poets, are killed for political reasons. One of the killed poets is Mohammad Mokhtari. His ‘crime’: Mokhtari intended to re-start the Association of Iranian Writers. Even today, poetry is censored in Iran – at times seemingly randomly. Some poets are even forced into exile. Yet, no matter how many poets’ works are censored, they continue to write and make their political voice heard. And sometimes there even is a chance to get away with it. After all, what is better suited than poetry and metaphor to hide meaning between the lines?

Israel, 2000

Israel’s minister for education, Yossi Sarid, seeks to include Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s work in the school curriculum. Following Sarid’s suggestion, right-wing members of the government threaten to introduce a motion of no-confidence should Darwish’s poetry be included in Israel’s school curriculum. The poet comments: “It is difficult to believe that the most military powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem.” As it turns out, a few verses might have the power to make even the smallest voice heard, and to bring down a government.

England, 2017

It’s been two months since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, a few days since he announced his Muslim ban. From 10 Downing Street to Westminster Station the streets are flooded with people. They are here to protest against Trump, his Muslim ban, and Theresa May’s “appeasement policy”. Somewhere in the ocean of bodies and protest signs, somebody holds up a piece of cardboard that shows a drawing of the Statue of Liberty and a quote from Emma Lazarus’s poem The New Colossus. The poem was written in 1883 and it is still relevant today: a symbol of hope used to express political discontent with governments, and solidarity with fellow human beings.

(Protest in London, January 2017. Photo: Merle Emrich)

Turkey, 2017

Bulaşıcı Cesaret (Contagious Courage) is the title of Selahattin Demirtaş’s poem that is banned because it contains “terrorist propaganda”. In November 2016, Demirtaş, the co-leader of the pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP (People’s Democratic Party), was sent to prison for five months. There he wrote the now banned poem: “They will say, let there be no voice/ Let there be no color, they will say./ You have rebelled by laughter […] They will say let there be no sunrise/ They will hold Hope at gunpoint/ You have rebelled, running/ They will put the blame on you/ Let us run then.”

Poetry Is the Fuel That Feeds the Fire

Audre Lorde wrote that poetry “forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change.” Throughout time, all over the world, poets have framed their hopes and dreams in words-be they personal and individual, or political. UK-poet Matt Abbott’s call for a Labour government got nearly 250 likes on facebook. Rhythmical Mike’s poem on immigration receives applause, and Salena Godden’s poem written for the Nasty Woman movement remains uncensored. Elsewhere, poets are imprisoned and their work censored or banned completely. In Iran, for example, Godden’s poem would be censored since it is forbidden – especially for women-to write about the body.

The Sword and the Pen

Poetry is not a privilege-not for the writer at least. Poetry is existence and survival, identity and catharsis, boiled down to a few lines. Like a novel or a newspaper article, a poem contains a message. Sometimes that message is a call for action and change. But unlike most newspaper articles, poetry does not only function on an intellectual, but on an emotional level. And therein lies the (political) power of poetry. After all, there is a reason why “the pen is mightier than the sword”. As the cases of Turkey and Iran, Israel and England show, there is a power in language that authority and violence-be it physical or nonphysical, legitimate or illegitimate violence-can never possess. While state power demands respect and obedience and at times induces fear, the power of words sparks inspiration, fuels dreams and worldviews, and gives hope that opposes fear. And if you give back hope to those starved of it, who can tell what might happen?

By Merle Emrich

Photo Credit:

Burning Book, August Allen, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Iranian Flag, Blondinrikard Fröberg, CC BY 2.0

Mahmoud Darwish, Reham Alhelsi, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Turkish Flag, erdalde, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Salena Godden, Isabelle Adam, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Propaganda by Body Image

Yaroslav Mikhaylov — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 09:05:25 +0000

Political photos are usually a fairly boring subject, but modern internet trends and ubiquitous high-definition cameras have given us some very peculiar images – intentional or not – of some of today’s top political leaders. Some are caught shirtless at the back of a wedding and others are caught with their hands around a mysterious glowing orb, while another merely looks knowingly at packages of chicken. However, all of those images have one thing in common: they are designed to shape public perception of the subject. No matter how weird or peculiar, they try to make their subjects look good. Here are some successful and some unsuccessful attempts at propaganda by body image.

Politicians using images of themselves for political purposes is hardly a new phenomenon. Kings and political leaders as far back as the middle ages had portraits of themselves painted that exaggerated certain traits and concealed others in order to elicit a certain kind of feeling in their subjects. When one thinks of England’s Henry VIII, it is almost certainly Hans Holbein’s painting that comes to mind. In it, a well-dressed and muscled Henry is standing tall, a master of his domain practically daring the viewer to challenge him. The painting would make a great representation of Henry, if it wasn’t completely made up. Henry had just suffered an injury that left him physically weakened and, as a result, was losing strength and gaining weight. He had also lost control of the northern part of the country to a tax rebellion, making his defiant and in-control posture in the painting a complete farce. In short, the portrait was a brazen attempt at propaganda: “I’m still tough; let me show you!”. However, given that it is the image that we remember Henry VIII by 500 years later, one can say it was a quite successful attempt at passing a lie off as reality.

Being able to read their patrons and predict how they wanted to be portrayed was a key skill for medieval and early modern painters. Rembrandt van Rijn is considered to be one of the great Dutch masters, but even his legacy was not immune to the whims of the political leaders he was depicting. One of his most famous paintings is The Night Watch, depicting a group of Dutch upper class men engaging in their civic duty to defend the Dutch Republic. Like Holbein’s painting, it was also a lie: as the town’s mayor, Frans Banninck Cocq – the man in the center of the painting – would have almost certainly never seen actual combat. It was a success however, in no small part because it depicted the subjects exactly as they saw themselves. However, his most ambitious work was the giant 25 square meter painting of the revolt of the Batavians – the germanic people who lived in what is now The Netherlands during Roman times. The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, named after the leader of the Batavians, was met with far from the same acclaim as The Night Watch. Instead of depicting the Batavians, with whom the Dutch aristocracy identified, as civilized modern Europeans, he painted them as historically-correct rugged barbarians, led by a warlord Civilis. Instead of hanging the painting in the Amsterdam city hall, for which it was commissioned, it was returned to Rembrandt, who had to cut it down to a much smaller size before he managed to sell it for a small portion of its worth. While the two paintings were probably not intended as propaganda pieces, their different fates still show that powerful individuals are very aware of how they are depicted and strive to maintain an image that shows them in a good light.

When it comes to propaganda images, few are as bizarre and peculiar as those of North Korea’s ruling Kim family. While they do their share of autocratic speeches in front of mass rallies or military parades, it is the North Korean media’s steady flow of pictures of their leaders looking at things that stands out as the most peculiar. All of the images follow roughly the same format: Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un, surrounded by government and military officials hanging on to every word, looking at something comically mundane. From food to industrial machinery, there is practically nothing the Kims have not literally taken a look at. While it may seem like a strange form of propaganda to Western eyes, this ritual actually has great significance to the North Korean regime. One of the duties of North Korea’s leader is to observe various activities – mundane or otherwise – and suggest how they can be improved. The practice is referred to as on-the-spot guidance, and represents both the Kims’ vast knowledge and their ceaseless quest to improve North Korea. While its effect on the actual productivity of North Korea is debatable, it is nonetheless a brilliant, if perplexing, propaganda effort.

The reigning king of absurd propaganda photos is, however, Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Based on the official photos released by his staff, the president of Russia is the most interesting man in the world. He has done everything in the past two decades, from horseback riding and wrestling with tigers to piloting submarines and leading a biker gang, making one wonder when the arguably most powerful man in the world has time for the actual business of governing. The idea behind those propaganda shots, however, is easy to understand: Putin is a strong and powerful man, projecting an image of a strong and powerful Russia abroad. The unspoken corollary – that he is too strong to be opposed – is likewise an effective message in a country fond of revolutions. However, as Putin has aged – he is turning 65 this year – his displays of machismo have increasingly began bordering on ridiculous. It is very difficult to imagine him outscoring Olympic hockey players, for example, without seeing the whole thing as an exaggerated photo-opp. Nonetheless, Putin continues to be very popular both in Russia and abroad, making the mighty sexagenarian act a successful propaganda coup.

Putin’s shirtless world leader’s club has recently been joined by an unexpected new arrival – Canada’s Justin Trudeau. Yet while Putin’s photos depict him engaging in exciting and extraordinary activities, Trudeau is often not even the center of attention in his photos. Many of his most popular photos are of him in the background or joining ordinary Canadians in activities such as hiking or surfing. Even when he is pictured with other celebrities or world leaders, it is their reactions – usually very positive – to Trudeau that draw the eye. It is all, of course, much more likely to be a well-organized propaganda strategy than a series of lucky coincidences, but it nonetheless tells us a lot about how Trudeau sees himself – as a youthful and captivating frontman for Canada’s inclusive, welcoming and engaged society. Considering the collective Internet excitement every time a new photo of Trudeau pops up, the unorthodox strategy seems to be working quite well.

While some of the strange PR strategies seen in this article worked out well, it is important to keep your audience in mind, which is something that the US President Donald Trump’s team clearly did not when a photo emerged of him clutching a glowing orb together with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Meant to symbolize the opening of a Middle Eastern anti-terrorism surveillance center, the image of three men holding a globe in their hands may have served as an effective message in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, neither of which can be classified as a democracy. In the US and Europe however, the image was immediately met with ridicule, comparing Trump and his fellows to comic book villains. The story of the Orb should serve as a cautionary tale that a propaganda photo that goes viral is not always bound to be successful.

Oscar Wilde said that “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” For politicians in today’s 24-hour news cycle, that adage continues to hold true. Thanks to the ubiquity of access to digital media, even in closed-off countries like North Korea, politicians have to compete with cats, ponies and Harambe the Gorilla for the public’s attention. With the internet’s natural attraction to the surreal and the peculiar, it is no surprise that some of the most well-known politicians in the world are those with weird and unusual media strategies. While shirtless Justin Trudeau is unlikely to enter the canon of world art the same way Hans Holbein’s Henry VIII did, the two are both part of the same ancient artistic tradition.

By Yaroslav Mikhaylov

Photo credit

Cover Photo: Amanda Lucidon, Official White House Photo, official government work

Image 1: Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger 1497/8, Public Domain via Google Art Project

Image 2: Rembrandt van Rijn, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Image 3: Rembrandt van Rijn, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Image 4: Korean Central News Agency via kimjongillookingatthings, official government work

Image 5: Office of the President of the Russian Federation, official government work

Image 6: GoToVan, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

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Iran: Photos From The “Forbidden” Middle East

Sascha Simon — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 22:27:22 +0000

When I told anyone about my plans of traveling to Iran, the first reaction was always scepticism. They were concerned if it was safe to go. After a lifetime of mostly negative news from the Middle East, I wanted to go myself and see if I could dispel the narrative. That was the main reason for me to visit. Iranians are painfully aware about their country’s reputation abroad and that only amplifies their hospitality, which is unlike anything I have ever experienced anywhere else. If a foreigner has a confused look on his or her face, it will result in multiple pedestrians coming to offer help. These people have extended their kindness and I was invited to dinner more often than not. Some have even become my impromptu guides and accompanied me around their cities, like showing me the backdoor entries of mosques. They would always insist on paying for my expenses and refuse to take any of my money for buses, restaurant bills or taxis. In the beginning this makes a guest sometimes feel quite uncomfortable, but the argument quickly becomes tiring and pointless so one should just accept their fate of constantly being invited.

Considering the swamp of negative news coming out of Iran since the 1979 Revolution, it was remarkable to me how safe I felt. I could walk the streets until dawn. Apart from my friends and family worrying about my safety, the most prominent worry they also had was me supporting such a government as Iran’s by simply visiting. While I cannot and do not want to dispute that, I would argue that actually going there encourages average civilians that the rest of the world still appreciates them even if their government is flawed (something Iranians frequently speak out about in private), and spending money in the tourism industry can only help with the struggling economy.

Apart from politics, the sites in the cities, like Isfahan and Shiraz, are breath-taking, as are the dunes of the Varzaneh desert or the alien-like colourful rocks and sands on Hormuz Island. Transportation from A to B is easy and accommodation and food are comparatively cheap. The Middle East does not have many countries to choose from if you want to travel within the region, but Iran ought to be on the top of everyone’s list. In my opinion, traveling is the best way to challenge Islamophobia and the predominant negative reputation of the Middle East and its people.

Photography by Sascha Simon

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She’s Still Here: Muslim Women on the Frontlines

Mariah Katz — Wed, 10 May 2017 13:05:58 +0000

How Islamophobia Took Root

What have you heard about Muslim women recently?

“They are meek.”

“They are oppressed.”

“Their hijab is a barricade.”

“Feminism is unknown to them. Equality is denied.”

But what if I told you these are gross generalities? There is a rich fabric of various women’s movements throughout the Middle East and the Muslim communities around the world. It is a revolution, though, quite apparently, an underground revolution. Being misunderstood or simply written off, it is a flower blooming in a dark room.

Before today’s events like the Arab Spring or the Syrian Civil War, Western interventionism killed millions of civilians, made wastelands out of cities, complicated international affairs to the point of proxy wars. It is questionable if interventionism is what solely caused the politics in today’s Middle East. I would say it is the reason why Islam has radicalized and Islamophobia persists in response. People are still trying to make sense of the aftermath of the War on Terror to this day. The United States sunk trillions of dollars into it for various reasons, either myths of weapons of mass destruction or patriotic visions of democratization in the Middle East. Throughout the early 2000’s, former president, George W. Bush, and his wife, Laura Bush, made claims that intervening would also liberate Muslim women. But do Muslim women really need saving? More so than other demographics? This assumption that Muslim women need to be saved has spurred prejudice against Muslim communities. The logic being that Muslims are supremely oppressive toward women. What can be made certain, Western countries are conflicted with how they respond to Muslims in their own borders: headlines calling for hijab and burqa bans from Germany to France. There is rampant Islamophobia. War can create peace, but it more often creates hatred.

Muslim Women Reclaiming Respect

Syria is an ongoing war for seven years. It all started with the idea for a ‘revolution of dignity.’ A people’s movement. By and large, it is still a people’s movement. Those who still remain in Syria have taken up arms, learned first aid, teach children left behind, care for abandoned animals. They are the ones who tend to Syria and protect its people against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, ISIS and other terrorist groups.

Made up of about 7,000 volunteer fighters between the ages of 18 and 40, the YPJ–or “Women’s Protection Unit”– is the all-female Kurdish military branch. Around 80 YPJ fighters are stationed in the Kurdish region in Syria, Rojava Kurdistan. The YPJ is trained to protect the area from ISIS, Assad’s Syrian Army and various terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda. In 2014, the YPJ made headlines when they rescued a large Yazidis community from ISIS on Mount Sinjar.

They also made headlines for the death of 22-year-old Kurdish fighter, Asia Ramazan Anta, because she was beautiful. The headline was from pop culture juggernaut, The Sun. Their article’s message ignores the actual importance and bravery of YPJ fighters. Anta died on the frontlines protecting her community. To focus on the beauty of a fallen fighter objectifies and trivializes the fighter and her work.

Therein lies the hurdle Muslim women have to face: Western media, sexism and misunderstanding.

Nesrin Abdullah, the spokeswoman for YPJ, said to the Independent UK, “War is not only the liberation of land. We are also fighting for the liberation of women and men. If not, the patriarchal system will prevail once again.”

There is not another feminist movement like YPJ: a group of women who carry guns and train themselves to protect their communities against violent and patriarchal terrorist groups. All-female fighter groups are a startling and rare phenomenon. The YPJ is not representative of the entire Muslim feminist movement, but the YPJ is worth mentioning as a reminder that Muslim women in the Middle East cannot be stereotyped as “weak” and “docile.”

And yes, some of them do fight in hijabs.

Muslim women in the Middle East have various political leanings, values and religious beliefs that are on a spectrum, like any other demographic of women on any other corner of the planet. YPJ fighters are on one end and maybe a stay-at-home mom in a burqa living in Abu Dhabi is on the other end of the spectrum. Yet, there is a feminist movement in Abu Dhabi as well.

Again, media and prejudice overshadow these stories.

Deborah Williams at the New York Times recently penned an article about her time teaching at New York University’s portal campus in Abu Dhabi. It is titled, “Discovering Feminist Students in the Middle East.” Williams was the professor of a literature class where all of the books were by female authors. Her students happened to be all women as well. They came from Pakistan, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and other areas of the world. The diversity created a globalist perspective of what it means to be a woman. Often, feminism came up in class discussion alongside the question of what it means to be a woman. The students from Abu Dhabi dubbed themselves feminists. As well as the woman from Hong Kong. Also, the woman from Pakistan. It seemed a necessity for most women in the class who were told to be married, keep quiet and be subservient. The students came to one conclusion they agreed on: the patriarchy is still very much alive everywhere. If they kept facing setbacks simply because of their gender, if their mothers kept telling them to get married and that their education at NYU seemed excessive and unecessary, then they say feminism is vital.

Moving Forward Together

In a world that is imagined to be divided and constructed along gender and ethnic lines, it is a more nuanced approach to have a globalist perspective that is open to pluralities and contradictions. Yes, there is sexism in the Middle East, but there is sexism in your home country, too. Yes there are Muslim women in the Middle East, but there are Muslim women in Western countries too. Some are even blonde, some are African, but all are Muslim in their own way. It may be difficult to stretch one’s mind to accept and appreciate each person in a group of nearly 2 billion, but it is at least correct to assume not all Muslims are the same in a group that large. In this diverse group of 2 billion, feminism exists despite an overwhelming bias that says otherwise.

Some Muslims see an overarching cause for this bias, or Islamophobia, that has taken root in the West. There is the abovementioned theory that much of the bias occurred because of Western interventionism. From Canada, Fariha Róisín, a writer and feminist, wrote about her Muslim culture and identity:

“Lots of people talk about the misogyny of Muslim culture, without examining the overwhelming patriarchal blunder of the West, without questioning why the Muslim world has been radicalized in the last fifty years, which has led to the stern crackdown on women…This is a time where I encourage all of us to try and understand context, and understand the beauty of Islam. I hope that we can decolonize together. When I was kid I wanted to be anything other than Muslim, today, with tears in my eyes, I say: ‘Mashallah, I am so lucky to be a Muslim woman.’”

Being Muslim is interpreted by its followers in diverse ways. This diversity lends itself to many iterations of Muslim feminism as well. Outsiders and Western feminists all over the world can benefit from seeing beyond prejudice to learn from their Muslim counterparts about the sacrifice, bravery and intellectualism of Muslim feminism.

If Westerners can look beyond prejudice and media, a great lesson on feminism can be brought out from the shadows and illuminated.

By Mariah Katz

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