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Ed Webb

Tunisia's War on Islam | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...tunisias-war-on-islam

Tunisia politics transition extremism terrorism policing police torture repression conservatism laicite

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 17 - Cached
  • Ayari had no ties to terrorist groups. But it soon became clear that his appearance had turned him into a suspect in his own right. He was charged with terrorism, detained for several days, and savagely beaten. “The police officer spat in my face and beat me,” the 29-year-old Ayari told me later. “My face was bruised, my mouth was bleeding. A beard and traditional clothing mean ‘terrorism’ for security forces in Tunisia. That’s the bitter reality.”
  • “Today there’s a sort of trivialization of torture, especially in terrorism cases,” said Amna Guellali, the Tunisia director of Human Rights Watch. “When we speak up about the torture of terror suspects, we risk being considered traitors in the holy war against terrorism — and if we denounce torture, we’re considered pro-terrorist.”
  • Inclusion in the terrorism list also prevents people from obtaining copies of their criminal records. Since these have to be included with job applications, this amounts to an employment blacklist as well. This procedure means that hundreds, if not thousands, of Tunisians, most of whom are already from the most vulnerable segments of society, are subject to economic discrimination.
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  • a sort of social persecution of men and women who look religious — something that could further exacerbate Tunisia’s terrorism problem. Alienation pushes these people to the margins of society, making them psychologically fragile and more receptive to radical discourse targeted against the state. “How do you expect people to feel when they’ve been subjected to this sort of treatment?” said Ghaki. “They’ll feel hatred and a desire for vengeance.”
  • experiences frequent harassment by police and security personnel because she wears a face veil, the niqab. She said she once had to wait 45 minutes before she was allowed into a hospital. Though she offered to show her face and allow the security personnel to check her identity, she said they made sure to humiliate her before letting her go inside to visit her ailing relative.
  • While people have gotten used to seeing women wearing the hijab in Tunisia’s streets, niqabi women and bearded men are the country’s new scapegoats. Chaima said that she was once called a terrorist by a group of people in a passing car. “It’s not easy to be who we are in Tunisia,” she said. “Some people want to let us know that we have no place here.”
  • a group of lawmakers tried to exploit the rising fear of terrorism by proposing a law that would make it illegal for women to cover their faces in public. The draft law drew comparisons to a controversial 2010 law passed in France under president Nicolas Sarkozy. This is no coincidence. France is Tunisia’s former colonial power, and French law, culture, and values have had a profound impact on modern Tunisian society, particularly among the upper classes.
  • Decades of forced secularization under the Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes made people less accustomed to the sight of traditional clothing and long beards. Displays of conservative religiosity are less common than in other countries in the region, and thus tend to draw scrutiny.
  • This kind of treatment inevitably contributes to the alienation and sense of exclusion felt by many of Tunisia’s most vulnerable people. It should be no surprise if some of them actually end up joining the terrorists who society has already classed them with. Sometimes it seems that the security forces aren’t even trying. Ahmed Sellimi, another of Mona and Tarek’s brothers, went to a police station one day to try to convince them to stop the harassment. “Why are you here?” asked the agent he addressed. “Why don’t you just go the mountains with the rest of the terrorists?”
Ed Webb

Cutting Subsidies to Rein in a Budget Deficit: A Necessary Trade-Off? - Tunisia Live : ... - 0 views

www.tunisia-live.net/...tting-subsidies-necessary-evil

Tunisia economy subsidies prices

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • the continuing costs of inflation since the revolution of January 2011
  • the current government is only a transitional body and that according to constitutional bylaws, it is not allowed to make any crucial decisions that have direct effects on consumers and the country’s economy. Zarouk went on to explain that the decision will harm consumers; The cost of household consumption has already increased by 5.9% between January 2012 and January 2013. Fuel is also vital to various segments of the economy, averaging 13% of general production costs in areas such as clothes and food. It also accounts for 50% to 60% of total expenses in the production of cement and bricks, which represent an important element of the country’s economy. “So it [the rise in fuels prices] harms such sectors,” he said. “And they are crucial in our economy.”
  • savings rates are insignificant in Tunisia – 17% – and decreasing, according to Zarouk. “People can no longer afford to save,”
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  • Though economics professor Mohsen Hassen echoed Zarouk’s assertion that increasing fuel prices will negatively affect consumers, he said the government’s decision was justified in order to salvage the country’s economy. Hassen told Tunisia Live that the budget deficit grew by 12.6% since the revolution; in 2012, alone it rose by 6.6%. “It is extremely dangerous that the deficit keeps growing,” Hassen said. “That’s why better management of subsidies funding is crucial.” Goods are generally subsidized in order to preserve consumer purchasing power, especially for citizens with low incomes. “Only 12% of the poor are benefiting from the fund…” he stated, adding that a larger proportion of Tunisians with high incomes are the ones gaining the most from subsidies. “Subsidies are serving those who don’t need them most,” Hassen said. “That’s the dilemma that was unveiled by the revolution thanks to transparency in statistics.”
Ed Webb

Balochistan: too small an olive branch | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...chistan-too-small-olive-branch

Baloch Baluch Balochistan Baluchistan human rights rights nationalism Pakistan democracy authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Pakistan’s security agencies have left us no political way forward. They have radicalised all the liberal forces by torturing them
  • Not long ago, the student was a patriotic Pakistani. He had a poster of a war hero, Captain Karnel Sher Khan as a teenager. “Pakistan needs to reflect upon what made me hate Pakistan”, he said. “They make us feel that we are slaves. I can wear western clothes and move freely in the city but if I’m wearing my baggy Baloch shalwar, they’ll strip search me.”
  • many Baloch nationalists are socialists and abhor religious fundamentalism. “There is no solution with packages, and our problem can’t be solved with dialogues either. Our ideology is different from Pakistan’s. We can’t live under an imposed and fake religious identity. We are secular people
Sherry Lowrance

Tunisia's Forgotten Revolutionaries | The Middle East Channel - 0 views

mideast.foreignpolicy.com/...ia_s_forgotten_revolutionaries

Tunisia protest transition

shared by Sherry Lowrance on 06 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • "Nothing to invest. No businesses. No land. Nothing." His words make up the refrain to Tunisia's desperately undeveloped and long-neglected interior region, the birthplace of the Arab spring. What have the revolutionaries gotten out of their revolution?
  • During Ben Ali's 23-year rule, Tunisia focused 90 percent of its investment projects on the coastal regions, leaving the interior disproportionately underdeveloped. Unemployment in the region has increased to 18 percent, twice the rate on the coast, and while Tunisia's average national poverty rate is 18 percent, it ranges from 6 percent in Tunis to more than 30 percent in the center-west governorates.
  • Bread riots in December 1983 in the same cities launched the most serious challenge to the Tunisian regime. If things don't improve, as seems grimly likely, rebellion may return.
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  • "Are we even a part of Tunisia?"
  • "We don't have faith in politics. Not before, not now. Just show us projects and development, no fancy ideas," he demands. "We'll vote for the party of bread."
  • The October elections, originally slated for June, but delayed to give parties more time to organize, will appoint an assembly to rewrite Tunisia's constitution.
  • Tunisians across the country worry that their leaderless and non-ideological revolution will be stolen by former Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) members in new clothes, or Islamists who've returned from exile. "The question isn't even how to stop the RCD from coming back," says Zied Mhirsi, Tunisian doctor and co-founder of the English-language news site "Tunisia Live." "It's how to limit their existence."
  • "We still don't know who's truly in charge," he says, donning a ‘No to censorship' bracelet. "We have a government that's led by an old man [85-year-old interim Prime Minister Beji Caid-Essebsi] and manipulated by hidden forces."
  • "You all think this came out of nowhere," says Tunisian General Trade Union (UGGT) activist Slim Rouissi. "That [Mohammed] Bouazizzi got mad one day and started it all. But we've been planning for a while." Locals and analysts alike say popular opposition had been growing the past two years, punctuated by strikes and protests throughout the region.
    • Sherry Lowrance
      Sherry Lowrance on 06 Aug 11
       
      Just like Egypt - google exec Wael Ghanem said nearly the same thing.
  • Rouissi claims that far from being a non-politicized symbol of frustration, the 26-year-old fruit vendor had participated in a "Day of the Land" protest in Sidi Bouzid last July in solidarity with consistent strikes across the region.
  • Over the past 10 or more years in the region, there were streams that finally came together to form one big river of a revolution," says Chris Alexander, author of "Tunisia: Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb."
  • Alexander says the main challenge during Tunisia's transition is to continue to pull together constituencies that transcend class and regional distinctions, that will unite unemployed young people in the interior with professionals on the privileged coast-line, namely in Tunis. But thus far such linkages have not been formed.
  • he banned movement played an almost non-existent role in the revolution, but since Ben Ali's flight and the consequent January 30 return of exiled leader Rached Ghannouchi, al-Nahda has grown with astounding speed.
  • A recent survey found support for the party at just below 30 percent, almost three times that of its closest rival
  • "El Nahda said they'd build a school here," said 45-year-old resident Nina Hadhari, buying watermelons from a vendor. "I don't really like them or politics, but that's good and there's no one else here."
  • "There is a big problem today for the liberal and secular revolutionaries to transition to political life," says Bougerra. "They know how to get people to protest in Tunis, but can't mobilize and connect with the real Tunisian streets."
Ed Webb

Picking up the pieces - 0 views

www.synaps.network/picking-up-the-pieces

Syria society identities war civil_war

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Apr 19 - Cached
  • Syrians have shown relentless ingenuity in adapting to every stage of a horrendous conflict, salvaging remnants of dignity, solidarity and vitality amid nightmarish circumstances
  • The decimation of Syria’s male population represents, arguably, the most fundamental shift in the country’s social fabric. As a generation of men has been pared down by death, disability, forced displacement and disappearance, those who remain have largely been sucked into a violent and corrupting system centered around armed factions
  • 80 of the village’s men have been killed and 130 wounded—amounting to a third of the male population aged 18-50. The remaining two-thirds have overwhelmingly been absorbed into the army or militias
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  • “If you want to protect yourself and your family, you join a militia,” remarked a middle-aged man in the Jazmati neighborhood. “The area is infested with crime associated with the National Defense militias. Each group has control over a certain quarter, and they sometimes fight each other over the distribution of spoils. Shop owners must pay these militias protection. One owner refused, and they torched his store.”
  • Another resident of the same area explained that he and his family could scrape by thanks to his two sons’ positioning in the Iran-backed Baqir Brigade—which provides not only monthly salaries, but also opportunities to procure household items through looting.
  • Syrians also dip into precious resources to pay officials for information, for instance on disappeared relatives or their own status on Syria’s sprawling lists of “wanted” individuals. For those wishing to confirm that they won’t be detained upon crossing the border to Lebanon, the going rate is about 10 dollars—most often paid to an employee in the Department of Migration and Passports.
  • An industrialist in Aleppo put it simply: “I talk with factory owners and they say they want to reopen their factories, but they can’t find male workers. When they do find them, security services or militiamen come and arrest those workers and extort money from the owners for having hired them in the first place.” With no large scale returns on the horizon for local industries, this economic impasse will take years to resolve.
  • Although virtually every problem that sparked Syria’s 2011 uprising has been exacerbated, society has been beaten down to the point of almost ensuring that no broad-based reformist movement will be able to coalesce for a generation to come
  • the unraveling of Syria’s productive economy, and its replacement by an economy of systematic cannibalization in which impoverished segments of Syrian society increasingly survive by preying upon one another
  • a new term—taafeesh—to describe a practice that goes far beyond stealing furniture to include extremes such as stripping houses, streets and factories of plumbing and electrical wiring
  • “I watched uniformed soldiers using a Syrian army tank to rip out electrical cables from six meters underground,” remarked a fighter with a loyalist Palestinian faction, who was scrambling to retrieve belongings from his apartment before it could be pillaged. “I saw soldiers from elite units looting private hospitals and government offices. This isn’t just looting—it’s sabotage of essential infrastructure.”
  • I returned to my apartment just to retrieve official documents and some hidden pieces of gold. I did so, and then destroyed my own furniture and appliances because I don’t want these people making money at my expense. I was ready to burn down my own apartment, but my wife stopped me—she didn’t want me to cause harm to other apartments in the building.
  • micro-economies in their own right—from the recycling of rubble to the proliferation of taafeesh markets, where people buy second-hand goods stolen from fellow Syrians. Many have no choice but to use these markets in order to replace their own stolen belongings
  • This cannibalistic economy, which encompasses all those who have come to rely on extortion for their own livelihoods, extends to the cohort of lawyers, security officials and civil servants who have positioned themselves as “brokers” in the market for official documents such as birth, marriage and death certificates
  • Just as Syrians are forced to be more self-reliant, they have also come to depend evermore on vital social support structures. Indeed, extreme circumstances have created a paradox: Even as society has splintered in countless ways, the scale of deprivation arguably renders Syrians more closely interdependent than ever before.
  • Today, even the most senior lawyers in our practice are working as document brokers. A well-connected broker makes 30 to 40,000 pounds [60 to 80 dollars] per day; this roughly equals the monthly salary of a university-educated civil servant. As a result, many government employees resign and work as brokers to make more money.And this truly is a business, not a charity: Every broker takes money, even from his own brothers and sisters. Last week a colleague brought me his brother-in-law. I asked him why he needed me, when he could make all the papers himself. He explained that he can’t take money from his own brother-in-law, but I can do so and then give him half.
  • Multiplying forms of predation have accelerated the outflow of Syria’s financial and human capital, leaving behind a country largely populated by an underclass that can aspire to little more than subsistence
  • Syria’s predatory wartime economy is slowly but surely turning into a predatory economy of peace
  • As some Syrians put it, Damascus has been particularly effective in reconstructing one thing amidst the immeasurable destruction: the “wall of fear” which characterized the regime before 2011 and which momentarily broke down at the outset of the uprising
  • active surveillance, intimidation and repression are not the only contributors to this leaden atmosphere. A pervasive exhaustion has settled over Syrians ground down and immiserated by war, disillusioned with all those who purport to lead or protect them, and largely reduced to striving for day-to-day subsistence
  • At one level, the war has wrenched open social and economic fractures that existed long before the conflict. The city of Homs stands as perhaps the starkest microcosm of this trend. A Sunni majority city with sizable Christian and Alawi minorities, Homs was the first major urban center to rise up and the first to devolve into bitter sectarian bloodletting
  • While vast swathes of Syria’s Sunni population feel silenced and brutalized, Alawi communities often carry their own narrative of victimhood, which blends legitimate grievances with vindictive impulses vis-à-vis Sunnis whom they regard as having betrayed the country
  • crude divisions based on sect or class fail to describe a complex and fluid landscape. Some fault lines are less dramatic, all but imperceptible except to those who experience them first-hand. Neighbors, colleagues, friends and kin may have come down on opposing sides, despite having every social marker in common. Each part of the country has its own web of tragic events to untangle.
  • Many Islamic State fighters swapped clothes and joined the [Kurdish-led] Syrian Democratic Forces to protect themselves and their families. But they haven’t changed; those people are bad, and will always be bad. There will be vengeance. Not now, while everyone is busy putting their lives together. But eventually, everyone who suffered under ISIS, whose brother was killed by ISIS, will take revenge.
  • A native of a Damascus suburb remarked: “Charities typically want to help those who fled from elsewhere. So, when I go to a charity, I say I’m displaced.”
  • The divide between conservative and more secular Sunnis has calcified, manifesting itself even in differential treatment at checkpoints. “I have an easier time driving around because I don’t wear the hijab,” remarked a woman from the Damascus suburbs. “If you veil, security assumes you’re with the opposition.”
  • While dialogue is sorely needed, some Syrians warn against emphasising dialogue for its own sake—even at the cost of burying the most substantive issues at stake. A businessman from Damascus described his own abortive experience with talks proposing to link disparate elements of Syria’s private sector: “There’s this whole industry around ‘mediation,’ including between sides that don’t actually disagree on anything. Meanwhile, all the problems that caused the uprising have gotten worse.”
  • Most who can afford to leave the country do so; others benefit from an exemption afforded to university students, while another subset enjoys a reprieve due to their status as the sole male of their generation in their nuclear family. Others may pay exorbitant bribes to skirt the draft, or confine themselves within their homes to avoid being detected—making them invisible both to the army and to broader society. Some endure multiple such ordeals, only to remain in an indefinite state of limbo due to the contingent and precarious nature of these solutions
  • remittances from relatives who live abroad
  • The country’s middle and upper classes have long extended vital forms of solidarity to their needier compatriots, with Syria’s merchant and religious networks playing a leading role. What is unique, today, is the scale of hardship across the country, which is so vast as to have changed the way that Syrians conceptualize the act of receiving charity. A businessman from central Syria noted the extent to which dependency, which once demanded some degree of discretion, has become a straightforward fact of life. “People used to hide it when they were reliant on charity. Not anymore. Today you might hear workers in a factory wondering, ‘Where is the manager?’ And someone will say that he’s out waiting for his food basket. The whole country is living on handouts.”
  • People still do charity the Islamic way, based on the premise that you must assist those closest to you. If there’s someone you should help—say, a neighbor—but you’re unable, then it’s your responsibility to find someone else who can. These circles remain very much intact, and the entire society lives on this. Seven years of war didn’t destroy that aspect of Syrian culture, and that’s something Syrians are proud of.
  • There will be no nationwide recovery, no serious reform, no meaningful reconciliation for the foreseeable future.
Ed Webb

As garbage piles up in Tunisian cities, waste pickers demand recognition | PLACE - 0 views

www.thisisplace.org/i

Tunisia waste environment work workers labor labour economy

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • The system of plastic recycling in Tunisian cities is largely reliant on an informal workforce of waste pickers, known as barbechas, meaning someone who searches, digs or investigates
  • Many waste pickers live in poverty, selling the waste they find to middlemen recyclers who then sell it on for a marked-up price to the national waste collection system or, more often, a private recycling factory.
  • a proposed law to establish a "social and solidarity economy" which would support collectives and self-governed businesses that both make a profit and have a social objective
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  • The idea is to create a halfway house between the informal sector and regular employment by giving workers the opportunity to self-organise and register their activity without setting up a company
  • the law, which was proposed by Tunisia's UGTT union in 2016 and finalised a year ago, is still waiting to be debated by parliament
  • "The number of barbechas has not stopped rising, because there is an unemployment problem (and) at the same time, there is a problem with waste management,"
  • International Alert estimates that there are 15,000 barbechas in Tunisia, who collect two-thirds of the country's recycled plastic waste. Waste pickers say the work often puts their safety and wellbeing at risk and earns them between 10 and 40 Tunisian dinars ($3.50-$14) a day.
  • Mokhtar Hammami, the minister of local affairs and environment, said barbechas are not the state's responsibility. "They are outside the state (system), they work in the private sector. In most countries it is like this,"
  • According to a report published in June by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), less than 5% of plastic waste in Tunisia is recycled - a long way off the government's previous goal of recycling 70% of plastic waste by 2016.
  • About 80,000 tonnes of plastic waste - the equivalent of more than 6,000 double decker buses - end up in Tunisia's environment each year, with much of it flowing into the Mediterranean Sea
  • In an attempt to build a support system for Tunisia's waste pickers, the non-profit Environmental Protection and Recycling Association (EPRA), based in Ettadhamen, provides vaccines as well as protective clothing for its 70 members, and operates its own waste disposal unit
Ed Webb

'The threats continue​': murder of retired couple chills fellow activists in ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...lls-fellow-activists-in-turkey

Turkey environment economy Erdogan murder violence activism business

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Turkey boasts 40% of the world’s marble reserves and nine out of 10 quarries are found in Anatolia. They are a mainstay of the regional economy and the country’s $2bn-a-year natural stone export business. China is currently the biggest customer, but Turkish marble is also found in Disneyland, the White House, the Vatican, Burj Khalifa, the Bundestag and luxury hotels across the world
  • Ali, Aysin and their fellow campaigners launched a successful challenge that shut down two marble companies Bartu Mermer and Bahçeci. Bartu Mermer fought back with a defamation lawsuit against Ali. But he won again in March 2017. The judge not only acquitted him, but also cancelled the company’s operating license. Hailing the victory, Ali predicted it would be the first of many. “Before, citizens were scared to sue companies – now the decision will encourage all environmentalists,” he declared.
  • A suspect – Ali Ymaç – was quickly found and arrested. He confessed to carrying out the execution in return, he said, for a promise of 50,000 lire (£10,000) from a quarry owner who he knew only by the alias “Çirkin” (Ugly). Yumaç said he was paid 3,000 lire up front and promised the rest on completion. He was instructed to make the killing look like a robbery. That ought to have been where the Turkish justice system cranked into high gear to track down those behind the assassination. Instead, it was the starting point for months of delays, obfuscations and another death that has frightened and frustrated activists and raised wider questions about the country’s slide away from democratic rule of law.
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  • Last month, the public prosecutor was finally ready to submit his indictment, which meant the family’s legal team would get their first opportunity to question Yumaç on the record. He had told them he was ready to reveal everything. He never got the chance. Days later Yumaç reportedly committed suicide in a high-security prison where he had been moved for his safety. Guards claimed he hung himself in a toilet with elastic from his clothing. Many find this incredible.
  • For Turkey’s environmental campaigners, this is part of a broader alarming trend.
  • The attack on the environment now is the biggest in our country’s history.
  • Erdoğan refutes such claims. He says his pro-business policies are in the national interest and accuses those who try to impede development as traitors and terrorists.
  • Eight people died and thousands were injured in clashes between the riot police. “For what?” a scornful Erdoğan asked afterwards. “For 12 trees!” Since then, he has pushed ahead with several massive infrastructure projects – a third airport, a third bridge over the Bosphorus and a new canal – that environmentalists say has led to the felling of 100 million trees.
  • “To be an activist in Turkey is to be constantly worried. We have to protect ourselves as well as the environment.”
  • With forest conservation now such a sensitive political subject, supporters of Ali and Aysin are in a difficult position. They plan to turn the dead couple’s home into a eco-residency, to establish a memorial park in Antalya, and to continue the campaign against the quarries and to get justice for the killings. “This is the first time two people have died trying to protect nature in Turkey. If we win, it will set a precedent that will help others in a similar position,” said one of those close to the campaign. “It would be a big step for Turkey. Ali and Aysin may be dead but they can still help the living.”
Ed Webb

Ghosts of Nationalisms Past | Newlines Magazine - 0 views

newlinesmag.com/...ghosts-of-nationalisms-past

Turkey history books review opinion Ataturk Kemalism nationalism memory ideology Ottomans military AKP Erdogan coup

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Jun 21 - Cached
  • as the current Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu stated blandly in 2019, “We are proud of our history because our history has never had any genocides. And no colonialism exists in our history.”
  • Under enormous pressure as the Empire fell apart before their eyes, the CUP, helmed by the bullish visage of Mehmed Talât, came to obsess with frightening fervor of a single question: How can we save the state? Initially reluctant to take power directly, they were plagued by paranoiac dreams of fracture, collapse, and decay. In response, the CUP developed a powerful siege mentality — a constant sense of existential threat that justified the worst kinds of violence. To salvage the country from imminent defeat, they used clubs and guns to steal the parliamentary election of 1912, and in 1913, they executed the war minister, finally taking power directly.
  • As much he tried to deny it, what Kemal inherited was, in essence, the entirety of the CUP shorn of its Central Committee (soon to be cathartically liquidated by Armenian assassins as nemesis for the genocide). Even the guns and cash needed to shock the nationalist insurgency into action in mid-1919 had been arranged by Talât’s enforcers as part of a Gladio-like stay-behind plan. The great majority of the movement’s leading men were identical to those who had staffed the CUP’s government. Eighty percent of the state bureaucracy continued into the Republic; nine out of every 10 army officers still served; hundreds of party bosses, provincial governors, and police chiefs remained in their jobs.
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  • Without the sickly and frantic fervor of CUP ideologue Ziya Gökalp’s imaginings of the Turks as Übermensch, there would be no mythical “nation” to appeal to
  • After 1923, homogeneity, sameness, consistency, and obedience were qualities strictly enforced — a kind of ethnic chauvinism that repudiated the weak pluralism of the Ottoman state.
  • As Philliou meticulously demonstrates, “only by insisting officially on total rupture between the Ottoman and Republican Turkish states could the hesitations, about-faces, and imperfect pedigrees of the new nationalists be effaced. And only with total rupture could the myriad and possibly incriminating habits, associations, and values of Unionism be expunged from the record. Only with the insistence of total rupture could the resemblances in political culture, affiliation, and habits be submerged.”
  • What remained, buried underneath all this repression and change, was the fundamental power of the state and the siege mentality inherited from the CUP. Despite winning the War of Independence and expelling the occupiers, its leaders were still beset by fever dreams of crisis, disintegration, implosion. Everything was thought to be fragile. The Republic thus had to become more than just a nation: a fetish guarded with extreme paternalism by a self-appointed noble few.
  • Even after the Kemalists had been explicitly voted out in 1950, the siege mentality lingered because the Democrat Party was (again) not a break from the past but an outgrowth of the Republican People’s Party. Menderes’ victory “did not signal the entrance of an entirely new elite,” Philliou insists. “The new trappings of freedom and democracy were built on the quasi-fascist foundations of the republic and the RPP. … The institutional foundations of political authority had not been fundamentally altered.” It was not a leap for those who considered themselves guardians of the Kemalist legacy to intervene if they thought the nation to be at risk; it was a duty.
  • The 1971 and 1980 interventions were carried out to better smash the emerging Kurdish movement, labor militancy, and the spree of Armenian shootings of Turkish diplomats. And it is not by chance that the 1997 “Memorandum” — the so-called postmodern coup — came not long after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) used suicide bombing for the first time in the summer of 1996.
  • Finally, Erdoğan and his party inherited the role that had once been the preserve of the men in bunkers and directorates. Clothed in the aura of honor, they gave up the delusion of democracy to guard against anything that might threaten the sacred state. Finally, they fulfilled the only authentic political tradition that has ever existed in Turkish history.
  • Throughout “A Past Against History,” Philliou evokes the concept of muhalafet to examine the liberal wing of Ottoman and Turkish politics from 1908 to 1965. It is clearly meant to evoke the plight of journalists and writers in Turkey today; Refik Halid can stand in for a Can Dündar or an Ahmet Altan, or any number of imprisoned nonconformists.Muhalafet is a slippery term, though, malleable and effervescent, meaning anything from “internal dissent” to “partisan opposition.” Philliou writes, “Today, the word carries a charged valence, of the principled heroism — often doomed to tragedy — of someone from a position of privilege, that is, within the Turkish elite, who speaks truth to power.” Yet if there is anything that can be gleaned from human struggles for liberation, it is that “speaking truth to power” has never worked. So long as it remains a principle and not a practice, so long as “speaking truth” remains in the realm of the imaginary, it will always be defeated. Power, in the form of a mass of organized people all heaving in one direction, must be wielded, not just spoken about.
  • Kemal understood this basic point, too. The nation would succumb to its partitioners unless its people — newly homogenized — could be hauled up from their postwar despair and pointed in the direction of a clearly defined enemy
  • a liberal or even a socialist opposition will be doomed if it rests on a purely aesthetic model of politics. Morals and theories alone won’t save you. “Cease quoting laws,” the Roman general Pompey once said, “to men with swords.”
Ed Webb

Life stands still in Egypt's City of the Dead amid virus fear - 0 views

news.trust.org/...20200508041855-vvtdg

Egypt economy pandemics labor workers

shared by Ed Webb on 21 May 20 - Cached
  • It is a Friday morning in Egypt's City of the Dead, the day of the week when families usually visit cemeteries to remember their deceased loved ones. But these days there are barely any visitors in the vast Cairo cemetery, which stretches over four miles and where tens of thousands of people have been living and working among the tombs for decades.
  • "We used to get money and food from people who visit the cemeteries. But now as everyone is afraid there are almost no visits,"
  • About 40% of Egypt's total workforce of 30 million people works in the informal sector, according to Egypt's manpower ministry, but groups such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) say the number is closer to 60%.
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  • two-thirds of Egypt's informal workers have already lost their jobs due to the policies and public fear around the virus
  • Some 1.6 billion informal workers around the world, representing nearly half of the global labour force, are in immediate danger of losing their livelihoods due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ILO said last week.
  • Ibrahim Radwan, 33, a street vendor who sells bread to people visiting the cemeteries at Sayeda Nafisa mosque, a five-minute walk from the City of the Dead, used to get between 15 and 30 customers a day. Now, he says, he is lucky if he gets four customers over a whole weekend.
  • Built only as a burial site in the 7th century, the City of the Dead has transformed into one of the country's largest slums, home to more than 1.5 million people
  • Haq said he and other workers in the cemetery have been given no guidance on how to protect themselves from contagion while they do their jobs. "We do not know how to bury people who die of coronavirus," he said as he washed down one of the tomb markers. Traditionally, the deceased's close family members clean the body themselves, before simply wrapping it in a white cloth. The family then performs the funeral prayer, and male family members, with the help of cemetery workers, bury the body. All of this happens within 24 hours of death. But in the midst of the outbreak, Egyptians who die after having developed COVID-19 must be buried under the supervision of the country's health ministry, said Mona Mina, general coordinator of Doctors Without Rights, a lobby group.
Ed Webb

Constitutional or Unconstitutional: Is That the Question? - Arab Reform Initiative - 0 views

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Tunisia authoritarianism politics analysis constitution emergencylaw exception

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Aug 21 - Cached
  • This piece aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the constitutionality of the measures taken by the President of the Republic Kais Saied, by examining both the text of the Constitution and the context. This piece argues for a contextual interpretation approach in order to adjust to the dynamic nature of societies.
  • Article 80 is conditioned on the existence of an “imminent danger threatening the nation’s institutions or the security or independence of the country and hampering the normal functioning of the state.” It is worth noting that, during the Constitutive Assembly’s (NCA) voting on the above-mentioned article, concerns over the broad wording of the article were voiced, due to the absence of definition of what constitutes an ‘imminent danger’ and ‘exceptional circumstances’, those concerns were dismissed by the Rapporteur-General to the NCA, who maintained that the formulation of the article was “clear”.
  • the intent and real desire did not seem to be there from the beginning to endow the country with a constitutional court formed of competences and working to guarantee the supremacy of the Constitution. Its formation was hindered by the failure of the Assembly to elect its 4 appointees,11The President of the Republic, the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, and the Supreme Judicial Council shall each appoint four members. motivated by disagreements between parliamentary blocs. In April 2021, to unblock the situation, an amendment was proposed to the Article 10 of the Constitutional Court’s Law to cancel the order of the parties that have the authority to appoint members of the Court12The Article lists “successively the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, and the President of the Republic.” . The bill was rejected by the President Kais Saed and sent back to the parliament for a second reading.13Parliament has preserved the same amendments that were proposed, allowing the Supreme Judicial Council and the Presidency of the Republic to choose 8 members of the Constitutional Court without waiting for Parliament to complete the election of 3 out of 4 members of its appointees.  His decision was motivated by the fact that the passing of the law exceeded the constitutional deadlines provided for in Paragraph 05 of Article 148 of the 2014 constitution
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  • In the midst of the current crisis, the long-delayed Constitutional Court is the missing key that could have averted the political crisis culminating in the turmoil Tunisia is currently going through.
  • Paragraph 2 of the Article 80 of the Constitution provides that “The Assembly of the Representatives of the People shall be deemed to be in a state of continuous session throughout such a period. In this situation, the President of the Republic cannot dissolve the Assembly of the Representatives of the People.” Legal experts, notably the Tunisian Association of Constitutional Law,[17] disagreed with this decision to freeze the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, explaining that the article meant that the Assembly takes part of the actual management of the state of exceptionality, and is not excluded from it.
  • other legal experts and jurists17Including Pr. Amine Mahfoudh, Me. Hedi Kerrou. have agreed with Saied’s interpretation, considering that he acted within his prerogatives under a state of exception since he simply “froze” the Parliament’s activity, rather than dissolving it
  • a study has shown that only 19% of respondents19On methodology: “these findings are based on nationally representative public opinion surveys that included approximately 1,800 respondents. Respondents were chosen randomly, meaning the results can be generalized to the broader population. The surveys were weighted to account for any random variations that may exist by gender, age, level of education, or geographic area. The margin of error for each country is less than ±3 percent.” have confidence in the legislature.  Popular demands for its dissolution have been mounting over the last few months as  violence broke out more regularly in the parliament, “despite the fact that the country’s parliament was freely elected, the institution inspires very little trust among the public. The failure of parliament to address the country’s economic challenges, combined with relatively weak attachment to political parties are major factors driving this low level of confidence.”
  • In this context, Saied and his supporters argue that the Assembly has become part of the problem.
  • Article 80 Paragraph 2 only addresses the case of removal of the Head of Government by the Assembly: “A motion of censure against the government cannot be presented”. There are no similar prerogatives granted to the President of the Republic during this state nor during normal times. Hence, to justify such a dismissal, it would have to be considered “measures necessitated by the exceptional circumstances.”
  • What happened would better fit what doctrine has termed to be a ‘constitutional dictatorship,’ legitimized by exceptional circumstances and limited in time. A ‘Constitutional Dictatorship’ is when “individuals or institutions have the right to make binding rules, directives, and decisions and apply them to concrete circumstances, unhindered by timely legal checks to their authority. Clothed with all of the authority of the state […] subject to various procedural and substantive limitations.”
  • Some of those who defend Saied’s actions have cited De Gaulle’s famous citation that " there is first France, then the State, and finally, as far as the major interests of both are safeguarded, the Law,"27Cited in Mohamed Kerrou. « Kais Saied ou la revanche légitime de l’État et de la société ». Leaders. 28/07/2021. to argue that in terms of its importance, the Constitution is superceded by national interests.
  • Tunisia has entered a period with almost no checks and balances, under ‘a constitutional dictatorship.’ In this context, a lot will depend on the person of Kais Saed and his commitment to “ethical standards or principles that are part of a political credo,” that are considered supra-constitutional principles
  • Close oversight of the situation by free media and strong watchdog organisations are the only guarantees against potential abuses
  • referrals of civilians (MPs) before the Military Court of First Instance in Tunis are causing great concern, especially with the dismissal of State Attorney General, Director of Military Justice and the Minister of National Defense without appointing replacements. These decisions are inconsistent with constitutional principles and international conventions
  • the presidential order ‘suspending the work of the Assembly and lifting of parliamentary immunity for deputies for the duration of the suspension’ was issued on the night of 30 July 2021, in the Official Gazette, stipulated for “the possibility of extending the mentioned period (ie the month) by virtue of a presidential decree,” without specifying the number of extensions, opening the door to unlimited extensions. National Organisations30The National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists, Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, The Tunisian General Labor Union, The National Bar Association of Tunisia, Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, Tunisian Judges Association, Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights. have warned against “any illegal and unjustified extension of the disruption of state institutions, stressing the need to adhere to the declared month period stipulated in the constitution.”
  • A real impasse is looming on the horizon, however, if, thirty days after the entry into force of these measures, the “Speaker of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People or thirty of the members thereof (want) to apply to the Constitutional Court with a view to verifying whether or not the circumstances remain exceptional.”  Presidential Decree N°80 has stipulated that the extension is made possible by virtue of a presidential order, in clear contradiction of Article 80 of the Constitution, conferring the right to decide on the extension to the Constitutional Court.
Ed Webb

'She just vanished': Ethiopian domestic workers abused in Lebanon | Conflict | Al Jazeera - 0 views

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Lebanon Ethiopia Ghana migrants abuse rights workers labor labour

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Aug 21 - No Cached
  • Aster left Ethiopia in search of work. But after a Lebanese family hired her as a live-in housekeeper in 2014, she found herself cut off from the outside world and labouring without pay. Aster’s family, unable to contact her, feared she was dead.
  • Driven by Ethiopia’s rising living costs and unemployment, hundreds of thousands have gone to Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Kuwait. But what many find, activists and domestic workers say, is a cycle of exploitation and modern-day slavery that is hard to escape.
  • Rights groups have long documented cases like Aster’s, finding “consistent patterns of abuse” under Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries’ “kafala” or sponsorship system. The system links a migrant domestic worker’s legal status to the contractual relationship with her employer.
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  • This is Lebanon caseworkers studied the files of both Meskerem and Meseret for most of 2019. A few weeks after Al Jazeera visited the Emebet’s home, the group called Meseret’s Lebanese employer, Dr May Saadeh, a single mother of three daughters. This is Lebanon activists told Saadeh they would post Meseret’s story to the group’s Facebook page if she did not release the Ethiopian woman. Saadeh gave Meseret some cash and booked her a flight back to Ethiopia. Within days, Meseret was free. By September 2019, Meseret arrived back home.
  • Local traffickers in Ethiopia work in tandem with recruitment agencies in Beirut. Ethiopian traffickers are known to have charged up to $500 to facilitate the travel of recruits to Lebanon, where domestic workers make on average $150 a month.
  • Some Lebanese employers force their domestic workers to put in extremely long hours, deny them days off, withhold pay, confiscate their passports to prevent them from leaving, and severely restrict their movement and communication
  • Following reports of abuse, Ethiopia, in 2008, banned its citizens from travelling to Lebanon for work. But the ban has never been properly enforced and the numbers of women migrating to Lebanon for work swelled in subsequent years.
  • “I kept asking ‘when are you going to pay my sister?’ She would say that after six months, Meskerem would receive the accumulated pay,” Tsedale told Al Jazeera by phone from Beirut. In March of 2015, with Meskerem yet to see a penny for more than two years of work, an exasperated Tsedale reached an agreement with her sister’s employer: Meskerem would be paid by the end of the month or she’d be permitted to leave. But when Tsedale went to visit her sister towards the end of March, she found an empty apartment.
  • Meseret started working for a Lebanese family as a domestic worker shortly after arriving in the city of Jounieh in February 2011. Things started off well, Emebet said. Her daughter received her salary and sent money home. But a little over a year after departing Ethiopia, she was suddenly unable to reach Meseret by phone and the monthly remittances stopped coming in. “I don’t know why she suddenly stopped calling,” Emebet said. “She just vanished.” Meseret’s parents made the trip to Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry, a two-hour bus ride away in Addis Ababa on at least two occasions to plead for help in locating their daughter. “They took our names and opened a file for her. We hoped they might provide answers.” But none came
  • “This is Lebanon”, a Canada-based domestic worker rights organisation that works to locate and free women who have been abused under the kafala system
  • “Since 2017, we’ve looked into over 6,000 complaints of various types of abuse,” Uprety told Al Jazeera. “Many are resolved through negotiations, in particular when it’s cases related to unpaid salaries. We escalate things only when abusers refuse to cooperate.”
  • The group helped free Filipina domestic worker Halima Ubpah. According to This is Lebanon, Ubpah was confined without pay in the home of a family with close connections to Lebanon’s political elite for 10 years.
  • Oula Keyrouz admits Aster is still owed six years of wages, but denies her family mistreated Aster, saying she has pictures she took of Aster enjoying herself in the family home. “I saw her like a daughter to me, like another one of my children.”
  • In Lebanon, where as many as 400,000 Ethiopians live, migrant workers are also excluded from the protections of the country’s labour laws – putting their lives and livelihood at risk of abuse and exploitation.
  • Meseret boarded a late-night flight back to her homeland, with nothing but the clothes on her back and the cash she was handed. She had no luggage and was still owed seven years worth of pay, more than $12,000.
  • When she was taken by her employer to renew her residency papers, Meseret pleaded with officers at the Ethiopian consulate in Beirut for help. But they turned her away, she said. Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry, as well as an official Meseret said she spoke to at the consulate did not respond to requests for comment. Saadeh also did not respond to Al Jazeera’s repeated requests for comment.
  • Meskerem boarded a plane and returned to Ethiopia as part of a group of formerly imprisoned domestic workers whose one-way tickets were covered by donations from members of the large Ethiopian community in Lebanon. Meskerem was a free woman again, but returned to Ethiopia last June, terribly scarred by her ordeal. Emaciated, drained, Meskerem had also lost most of her teeth.
  • After months of recuperating, Meskerem gradually opened up about her time in Lebanon, and spoke of the physical and mental abuse endured, the lack of food and how she was locked in at all times and forbidden contact with the outside world
  • “Aster is happy in our home, she is like one of my daughters,” Oula Keyrouz told Al Jazeera by phone. “I don’t understand what the family in Ethiopia wants because we don’t speak their language. But we treat her well.” But Aster told Al Jazeera that she has endured years of abuse, in particular at the hands of Oula’s husband Michel, allegations Oula denied. Aster explained that years ago Michel nearly strangled her with a belt, as punishment for an ill-fated escape attempt.
  • Oula Keyrouz admitted that Aster was owed six years worth of pay, totalling thousands of dollars. “We keep her money for her in a safe. She will take all of it when she returns to her country one day.” When asked when that might be, Oula Keyrouz said that “because of the dollar crisis in Lebanon,” the family couldn’t afford to send Aster home.
  • On June 17, 2020, a taxi pulled up to the Keyrouz family home. Aster, who had made coffee for Oula Keyrouz, walked outside, pretending to be taking out the trash. Instead, she stepped into the waiting vehicle, never to be seen again by the family that had stripped her of her dignity for six years. She was dropped outside the Ethiopian consulate, where members of a community group who had called the taxi, paid the fare and took her in. “It was like being freed from prison,” Aster later said.
  • Aster was part of a group of 90 Ethiopian domestic workers who were repatriated in September, with the help of Egna Legna Besidet, a Beirut-based nonprofit organisation.
  • Aster successfully escaped the Keyrouz home, but like Meseret and Meskerem, she returned from Lebanon empty-handed after years of toiling without pay.
  • “Out of nowhere, she suddenly told me that I would be going home. I wasn’t allowed to use a phone for seven years. That day, she handed me the phone and said, ‘call your mother, tell her you will see her soon’.”
  • When asked about the three women’s cases, Lebanese Labour Ministry official Marlene Atallah said her office was aware of such cases and was working on preventive measures. “We have set up a committee at the ministry tasked with dealing with complaints from domestic workers,” Atallah explained. “There is now an emergency hotline number workers can call in case of violations. We have also begun giving orientation sessions for domestic workers to learn how to bring their cases to Lebanese courts.” But Lebanese courts have rarely sentenced abusive employers to jail time, and any kind of justice is often out of reach for migrant workers.
  • authorities estimate that at least two domestic workers die weekly on average. These are mainly deaths by suicide or from botched escape attempts.
  • the deaths of most migrant workers in Lebanon are rarely looked into.
Ed Webb

Egyptian households turn to credit as inflation bites - Al-Monitor: Independent, truste... - 0 views

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Egypt economy inflation credit

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • Consumer finance is on the rise against a backdrop of price hikes in Egypt, where many households are struggling to make ends meet. Consumer finance rose by roughly 7% to 7.32 billion pounds ($374 million) in the second quarter (Q2) of 2022, against 6.84 billion pounds in 2022 Q1, according to data from the state-run Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA).
  • Egyptian breadwinners are buying clothes, school books, stationery and groceries on credit. Consumer finance companies are prospering with more and more customers due to high inflation rates that have made it rather hard for many households to buy in cash.
  • although the law has laid out clear-cut regulations to protect consumers and traders, several unauthorized companies and some individuals offer consumer credit, taking advantage of this highly prospering business.
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  • “In the past, people used to buy only durables in installments. Nowadays, we literally can get anything on credit, even lunch. Living costs are on the rise. This is a global issue. Prices are going wild everywhere,”
  • “It’s not about buying cars or luxury goods. I have to pay school fees for my kids. I cannot under any circumstances get a loan from a bank as it is too expensive. A consumer financier is cheaper and offers easier terms,” Nahed Khalil, a 45-year-old pharmacist, told Al-Monitor. “The interest rate on my consumer finance averages around 8%, which is cheaper. As a consumer, a bank loan is out of the question,”
Ed Webb

Egypt: Why inmates are dying in Sisi's new 'model' prison | Middle East Eye - 0 views

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Egypt prisons prisoners Sisi rights

shared by Ed Webb on 13 Mar 23 - No Cached
  • Since becoming president in 2014 Sisi has built at least 28 new prisons, more than a third of Egypt's total number, which is now estimated to be 81.
  • Sisi promoted the new prison facilities as a model in human rights compliance, but rights groups have criticised them for falling short of international standards. 
  • Badr 3, where many high-profile political prisoners have been held after being transferred from the notorious Tora Prison complex in mid-2022
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  • Several Egyptian and international rights organisations have denounced the poor human rights standards at Badr 3, which they claim have led to the deaths of several detainees and prompted mass hunger strikes. Amnesty International said its detention conditions are "comparable to or even worse" than Tora.
  • bans on family visits and inadequate healthcare
  • prisoners said "we are dying", citing poor living conditions, lack of healthcare, inadequate food, absence of winter clothes, and the spread of diseases among detainees
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