Joumana Seif: My dream is 'to help build a democratic Syria'

Syrian human rights activist Joumana Seif has dedicated her life to gender equality and the recognition of sexual violence as a crime against humanity. For this, she will receive the Anne Klein Women's Award 2023.

Jennifer Holleis

DW
2/01/23

Joumana Seif is a good listener. The 52-year-old Syrian lawyer and women's rights activist doesn't fidget, her eyes focus patiently and it is easy to understand why women are able to open up to her.

"I've always fought for women's rights," Seif told DW in Berlin. Even back in the 1990s, when she worked at her family's successful Adidas franchise in Damascus, she was already focusing on staff welfare and supporting women in their positions.

However, those days now seem like a lifetime ago.

In 1994, her father, Riad Seif, spurred by the huge success he was having with his business, entered the political stage as independent member of the Syrian parliament. But his criticism of the corrupt elite and calls for economic reforms weren't received well by then-President Hafez Assad.

'It was a very difficult time for us'

Riad Seif and his family started to be increasingly in the focus of the security forces. In addition, production materials for his factory were withheld, and eventually the company had to be sold.

"I understood that I needed to know more about the law, to be able to defend my father and to join the fight for human rights in Syria," said Seif. With the support of her mother, who helped with her three young children, Seif started studying law at Beirut Arab University in 2003.

By the time of her graduation in 2007, Seif had long become politically engaged herself. After the Syrian strongman Hafez Assad died in June 2000, she joined her father's regular "Damascus Spring" meetings with other members of the political opposition in his living room in Damascus. Shortly after, the group founded the National Dialogue Forum, an initiative for political change and freedom in Syria.

Joumana Seif, here with her youngest daughter and her father at a 2015 demonstration in Berlin, continues to be politically active

Image: Privat

However, the initiative was soon without a leader: In September 2001, after Riad Seif had called for an end of the monopoly of the new President Bashar Assad's ruling Baath Party, he was sentenced to prison.

Joumana Seif became his sole connection to the opposition. "It was a very difficult time for us," she said. "We were almost isolated, under pressure from the security branches and scared that they would take us to prison as well," she said, adding that she "wouldn't be able to repeat this kind of life."

However, along with the increasing crackdown against dissidents by the new president, her father became more and more recognized on the international stage. In 2003, Joumana Seif traveled to the German city of Weimar to receive the Human Rights Award on his behalf.

But upon her return, their life in Syria didn't get any easier.

"In March 2007, I was arrested at a demonstration with many of my friends. They pushed us onto a truck and scared us by accelerating and braking hard," she said, adding that "they eventually released us with the warning that next time we will go to prison." Those words carried two meanings: the threat of being behind bars for years or forever, and that of sexual violence.

Leaving home for Berlin

Despite the growing number of people who were going missing in Syria's infamous prisons, including her uncle, cousin and younger brother, Eyad, it took two attempts on her father's life and the outbreak of the Syrian revolution that led to the civil war for Joumana Seif to decide it was time to leave her home country.

Together with her three children and her parents, she went to Egypt in September 2012.

Riad Seif, who suffered from prostate cancer and needed medical help, applied for a German visa. "I thought we'd stay in Cairo until my father returns from Germany, and will then see if we can return to Syria," she said.

However, the situation in Egypt changed in 2013. Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was ousted in a military coup led by the then-minister of defense, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who became president himself the following year.

"The rising sentiment against Syrians made it difficult for us to stay," she said. Since the civil war against the opposition was raging in Syria, she decided to follow her father to Germany, and the family left for Berlin in September 2013.

Fighting for human rights from Germany

By then, Joumana Seif was even more determined to fight for human rights and to help Syrian women. She co-founded the Syrian Women's Network in 2013, the Syrian Feminist Lobby in 2014 and the Syrian Women's Political Movement in 2017.

That year, when she joined the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights as a research fellow, Seif also started advocating for the recognition of sexual and gender-based violence as crimes against humanity. Her focus area: Syria.

In the run-up to the Al-Khatib trial, the world's first legal proceeding investigating the horrors of Syria's torture chambers, which took place at the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany between 2020 and 2022, she spoke to hundreds of male and female survivors of torture and sexual violence. "It is a lot of pain to bear when women open up; it follows me into my dreams," she said.

VIDEO

The Al-Khatib trial in Germany featured the testimonies of hundreds of male and female survivors of torture and sexual violence

Bernd Lauter/Getty Images/AFP

But the personal testimonies weren't the only remarkable part of the trial for Joumana Seif. Her father was questioned on day 26 as a witness, as he was the person who had helped the main defendant, Anwar Raslan, get a visa for Germany in 2014. Riad Seif had believed Raslan when he said he feared for his life after joining the opposition in 2012. However, Raslan was not able to prove that he was indeed an opposition supporter, and the trial ended with his being given a life sentence for murder, rape and sexual assault committed at the notorious Al-Khatib prison.

For Joumana Seif, however, this trial was a stepping stone on the way to justice in Syria. "The meaning of my life is to help build a democratic Syria that offers the same rights to men and women and a life in dignity," she told DW.

"Only then will the struggle will be over."

In March 2023, Joumana Seif will receive the Anne Klein Women's Award from Germany's Heinrich Böll Foundation on behalf of global activists against sexualized violence in armed conflicts

Edited by: Timothy Jones

NZ
Serafina Tane grew up in the Camp David religious cult. This is what it felt like to leave

As told to Conversations with Sarah Kanowski

Serafina Tane left the cult as an adult after abuse allegations emerged about its leader.(ABC RN: Stacy Gougoulis)

Serafina Tane was born into a religious cult on New Zealand's South Island. The leader was the charismatic but abusive Douglas Metcalf, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus. For Serafina, the cult was her family. But leaving Camp David for a life without religious rules was more complicated than she had imagined.

When I've been back, I'm like, "Wow, it's like something out of a movie."

A lot of people would think that it was like living in a castle. There were watchtowers painted white and padlocks on the gates. It's home, from the inside, but on the outside it's very walled, gated. You can't get in unless you have the combination, or somebody lets you in.

It was fun. There were lots of things to explore. We had this sunken garden and it was all paved and there were waterfalls and the inside of the walls had paintings of flowers and trees.

We had a different room [for everything]. So we'd have the library, we'd have the heraldry room, we'd have the sword room.

The rock room had these all these rocks that were gifted by people who had been into collecting rocks before they joined the cult. You go in and there's just these amazing rocks. Some of them, when you turn off the lights, glow in the dark.

My family was responsible for looking after all the animals, so we rode horses and I had pet lambs. We milked the goats. I was growing up on a farm with the other kids, running around, building huts, riding our bikes around – just having lots of fun.

We wouldn't celebrate Christmas, we'd celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles in October, and we'd have a week-long celebration.

We'd dress the horses up, we'd be all dressed up in costumes and we'd walk around [the property]. It was a festival and a celebration, and it was just getting dressed up and colourful. I loved it. I really loved it. It was really exciting.

 

 Instead of Christmas, the cult celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles in October.

(ABC RN: Stacy Gougoulis)

[Cult leader Douglas Metcalf] looked like Santa, but without the white beard. It was a dark beard. He was just like a friendly grandpa kind of person. He wasn't tall. He was a little bit tubby, I suppose. Not an imposing person.

And that's the fascinating thing – it was his personality that drew people to him, his openness, his friendliness. Wherever he walked around Camp David, people would always follow him. He just had that charisma.

On special ceremonial occasions he would have a cape, and everybody would have these staffs. His was always decorated and fancy looking. He'd dress up like a prince, I could imagine, from medieval England.

There was a lot of Middle Eastern symbology, because he spent a lot of time in the Middle East and brought that into the cult. He [said he] went into the desert and an alien spaceship came and he went on the spaceship.

And I'm not sure what happened on the spaceship, but somehow, because of that, he needed to come back and create this community in New Zealand.

It was a real mixture of his own concoction of his life experiences, what he wanted to pull together and create his own version of religion and Christianity.

We were taught that Jesus didn't die on a cross and that he died on a stake with his hands above his head, not with his arms out. So actually the cross became, in a way, an evil symbol for us.

For me, a lot of what was done was around fear. In cults, they control through fear, anything that is going to make people afraid.

YOUTUBE Serafina Tane on Conversations

[As a kid] you're just so naive to everything and you completely trust everything that's going on around you. You've been told there's bad things outside of the cult, or that evil was outside of the cult, but we're safe. The only people that were OK were the people who lived in Waipara, New Zealand.

As I got older, I'm like, 'How come only 300 people in Waipara, New Zealand are going to go to heaven and everyone else in the world is going to hell?' That didn't make sense. How can God do that to these people?

As females we had to wear skirts and dresses always below our knees. We weren't allowed to wear singlets or anything like that. Our shoulders always had to be covered. We had to wear a headscarf.

We weren't allowed to wear sandals or thongs. You weren't allowed to have anything that separated your big toe from your other toe because that's a sign of slavery, apparently.

We weren't allowed to wear makeup, nail polish, anything like that. We weren't allowed to have any piercings. We weren't allowed to wear black, purple, red, gold, royal blue. We had just black and white rules.

Hear more Conversations
Conversations draws you deeper into the life story of someone you may, or may not, have heard about — someone who has seen and done amazing things.


[After Douglas Metcalf died] Daryl, his son-in-law, got anointed by the elders to become the next leader. But he was very different. No charisma. He was very authoritarian, very structured in the way that he did things.

Things started to get very serious. It slowly started to fall apart from there.

I thought people were making up [abuse allegations] to discredit Douglas Metcalf, to discredit Daryl.

That was a really hard time. It's like you realise, OK, this is real. This man that I respected, that I loved, that I looked up to, is not a good person, is a bad person and hurt people. Everything that he said is a lie.

And then you start thinking, well, everything my parents believe is a lie. And everything they've told me is a lie. It was the ultimate betrayal, I suppose.

When I first took my scarf off [after leaving the cult] I was so sure I would be struck down by lightning. I took my scarf off and I was like, "Oh, I got away with that. Nothing bad happened. What else can I do?"

And then I got my ears pierced and nothing happened apart from it being very painful. I wore jeans instead of a skirt and nothing happened. And it was just like this progression.

Chaos was the best way that I can describe it. There's no rules and you've got nothing. Everything that guided you was gone, so you have to make this up yourself.


If you can't trust people in the world and you can't trust everything that you've been raised on and the people that have raised you, then who do you trust?

You don't trust yourself because you don't know yourself, because you've never been taught to know yourself. You don't have that confidence in yourself. So it was complete chaos and you're just making it up as you go.

I wanted to travel. I always thought I would never be allowed to travel because I'd be dead. So I was just waiting to travel when Jesus came back. And I thought, I can travel now.

So I set off overseas and I travelled for about five years backpacking and I spoke to a lot of different people from different faiths, different beliefs. It was exploration. I met so many amazing people.

I didn't realise the world was full of just incredible people. It wasn't what I'd been taught. And you learn that everybody has their different points of view, the different perspectives based on their upbringing. But the majority of people in the world are just really beautiful people.

Azerbaijani Activists Continue to Call for End to Illegal Mining in Karabakh Region

By Gunay Hajiyeva January 2, 2023

 
 
 
 
 

The visit of the representatives of Azerbaijan to the deposits was derailed in the wake of illegal intervention by ethnic Armenians living in certain parts of Azerbaijan's Karabakh region. This led civil society members and volunteers of Azerbaijan to protest along the Lachin-Khankendi road on December 12. / Courtesy

 
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Azerbaijani ecological activists, civil society members and volunteers on the Khankendi-Lachin road passing near the city of Shusha carried on with protests for a third week as they demanded an end to ecological crimes in the country's Karabakh region.

The rally continued in the same spirit on Monday night with the protesters chanting their demands in Azerbaijani, Russian and English to call for immediate measures to stop illegal mining activities in the Karabakh region.

In the meantime, the Khankendi-Lachin roads remain open to humanitarian traffic despite the mass gathering. On Monday morning and afternoon, supply vehicles of the temporary Russian peacekeeping mission deployed in the region moved safely and freely from Khankendi to Lachin with no interruption from the protesters. Since December 31, more than ten vehicles of peacekeepers have been seen moving in both directions.

On December 28, a convoy of ambulances of the International Red Cross Committee evacuated three patients of Armenian origin from Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region to Armenia. The convoy returned on the same day to the Karabakh region carrying medicines and medical supplies for the hospital in Khankendi.

Since December 3, 2022, a group of experts from Azerbaijan’s Economy Ministry and Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry, and the State Property Service under the Ministry of Economy and AzerGold Company, held negotiations with the command of the peacekeeping contingent on the illegal exploitation of mineral deposits, as well as on environmental and other secondary consequences in the Azerbaijani territories under its temporary monitoring. As a result of consecutive meetings on December 3 and 4, the two sides agreed to ecological monitoring by the Azerbaijani experts at the Gizilbulag gold and Demirli copper-molybdenum deposits.

However, on December 10, the visit of the representatives of Azerbaijan to the deposits was derailed in the wake of illegal intervention by ethnic Armenians living in certain parts of Azerbaijan's Karabakh region. Back then, the Russian peacekeepers did not take preventive measures to facilitate the previously agreed visit of the Azerbaijani experts.

This led civil society members and volunteers to protest along the Lachin-Khankendi road on December 12.

Armenian authorities and media outlets interpreted the peaceful protest as an attempt to block the road that connects Armenia with the partial Armenian population in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. However, the Azerbaijani government and media have come forth with evidence proving that the Lachin-Khankendi road is used freely by the Russian peacekeepers for humanitarian cargo shipments, as well as for ambulances and civilians, including the family members of the peacekeepers. The activists even provided a hotline number to address the appeals of the Armenian citizens of Azerbaijan residing in the Karabakh region.

The armed Russian peacekeeping contingent had earlier blocked the Lachin road amidst the protests in an attempt to prevent protesters and journalists from gathering there.

The Azerbaijani authorities have been calling for more efficient control over the Lachin highway by the Russian peacekeeping contingent. The demands gained momentum after reports surfaced about the illegal transportation of minerals from the Azerbaijani territories temporarily monitored by the peacekeepers to Armenia via the Lachin road. Baku-based Caliber.Az news agency reported on November 30 that eight Kamaz trucks accompanied by a Nissan Patrol SUV with an Armenian license number 731 - AB - 61 ER, made their way from the Khankendi city of Azerbaijan to Armenia between November 10 and November 14. Moreover, on November 16-18, identical vehicles were seen along the Lachin road from Armenia to Khankendi.

According to operational data, raw materials extracted at the gold mines near the village of Gulyatagh of the former Aghdara (current Tartar) region of Azerbaijan, located in the zone of temporary responsibility of the Russian peacekeepers, have been transported on these Kamaz trucks. The materials were moved by the Base Metals company, a subsidiary of Vallex Group Company based in Switzerland, engaged in the looting of precious metals in Kalbajar, Zangilan, and Aghdara during their occupation by Armenia and currently in the area where Russian peacekeepers are stationed.

President Ilham Aliyev said the developments on Lachin road are crystal-clear legitimate rights of Azerbaijanis as their natural resources are being exploited and shipped out.

“Those plundering our natural resources are criminals according to any international legal norm. This is our territory recognized by the international community, and we have a legitimate demand for our public representatives, first of all, representatives of state bodies, to be able to conduct monitoring there,” President Aliyev said on December 24, 2022.

“They should see what is going on there and demand that all illegal activity be stopped. This is our legitimate demand. However, this situation is being presented in a completely distorted manner. There are lies again, there is slander again, and we all know who is behind that. Let me say again that the state of Armenia is not in the foreground here. But this will not deter us. We have repeatedly proven this – the Second Karabakh War and the subsequent two years have demonstrated that. No one can influence us.”

Armenia Abandoned By Allies, Says Pashinian

DID RUSSIA MAKE A SECRET DEAL WITH TURKEY

Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian visits Armenian army positions on the border with Azerbaijan, December 31, 2022.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has again criticized Russia and other ex-Soviet allies of Armenia for not defending it against what Yerevan regards as Azerbaijani military aggression.

“The aggression against the sovereign territory of Armenia from May 2021 to September 13, 2022 was doubly painful because our security allies abandoned us, preferring to remain in passive observer status or offering active observer status as an alternative,” Pashinian said in his New Year’s address to the nation.

“But we were not alone in the world and I want to thank those countries and international organizations that were not indifferent to this situation and, having no obligation to our country, took unprecedented decisions to support the establishment of security and stability in our region,” he said in an apparent reference to Western powers.

Armenia appealed to Russia and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) for support during the September clashes along its border with Azerbaijan which left at least 224 Armenian soldiers dead. Armenian leaders afterwards accused the Russian-led alliance of ignoring the appeal in breach of its statutes.

The CSTO proposed what its outgoing Secretary General Stanislav Zas called a set of “measures to assist Armenia in this difficult situation” during a summit held in Yerevan in November. However, Pashinian vetoed a corresponding decision by the leaders of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, citing the absence of any language condemning Azerbaijan.

Zas said in December that the proposed measures included “military-technical assistance.” He declined to specify the types of weapons which other CSTO member states were prepared to send to Armenia.

Pashinian renewed his criticism of the CSTO amid growing friction between Moscow and Yerevan caused by Azerbaijan’s ongoing blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s sole land link with Armenia.

Pashinian charged last week that Russian peacekeepers have become a “silent witness” to Baku’s efforts to “depopulate” Karabakh through the blockade. He said Moscow should come up with a plan to unblock the corridor or seek a larger and multinational peacekeeping mission in Karabakh.

Russian officials rejected the criticism. They also denounced some Armenian officials’ claims that Moscow is using the three-week blockade to try to force Armenia to join the “union state” of Russia and Belarus and open an “exterritorial corridor” to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave.

Peru’s Oil Industry Is An Environmental Disaster

Editor OilPrice.com

Fri, December 30, 2022 

As an intense political crisis engulfs Peru, the country’s beleaguered oil industry continues to suffer from conflict with local communities. For nearly three decades a swath of environmentally damaging oil spills, pipeline leaks, and other contaminating discharges have wreaked havoc on Peru’s Amazon Basin and coastline. This is driving anti-petroleum industry protests in Peru’s Amazon, many of which have turned violent, over the last decade leaving the industry in crisis. Those demonstrations are responsible for production outages, dwindling energy investment, and foreign energy companies withdrawing from Peru. The social license of Peru’s crisis-torn petroleum industry continues to deteriorate despite efforts by the national government in Lima to gain greater community cooperation and reboot operations. The latest political crisis, where tensions have boiled over into days-long violent anti-government demonstrations, since leftist President Pedro Castillo was arrested after attempting to dissolve congress, will sharply impact the petroleum industry which has long been an environmental disaster.

Oil spills remain a hazard in a country where environmental protection, especially of the Amazon, has not been a significant government priority for decades. Those spills and other environmentally damaging incidents are fueling community anger with Indigenous peoples claiming they are wreaking damage to their ancestral lands. According to a report from (Spanish) Oxfam and Peru’s National Coordinator for Human Rights (CNDDHH – Spanish initials), between 1997 and 2021 there have been 1002 oil spills in Peru with 566 in the Amazon and 404 on the coast. It is the 200,000 barrel-per-day Northern Peruvian Pipeline (ONP – Spanish initials), used to ship oil from the Amazon to the Pacific port city of Bayovar, that is drawing considerable negative attention. The Oxfam report shows that the ONP alone was responsible for 111 oil spills for the 24-year period starting in 1997.

The ONP’s latest oil spill occurred (Spanish) on 16 September 2022, when the pipeline spewed an estimated 2,500 barrels of crude into the Cuninico River a tributary of the Marañon, which is a river that eventually flows into the Amazon River. The crucial industry pipeline is owned by state-controlled Petroperu which in a statement (Spanish) claimed that the spill was the result of intentional damage or sabotage of the pipeline. The energy company asserts that the spill occurred because of a 21-centimeter cut that was made to the pipe. The ONP, which is the only effective means of transporting oil from the Amazon to the coast, has long been the target of sabotage. Peru’s National Society of Mining, Petroleum, and Energy claims the pipeline has suffered 29 such acts over the last nine years and various industry participants are blaming local Indigenous communities. Those spills have disrupted local water and food supplies including damaging regional fisheries as well as crops.

Such events are fueling considerable community anger and distrust which is being fanned by the perception that Lima is unwilling to address many of the deep-seated social and economic inequalities that exist in Peru’s Amazon. This is creating a tinderbox that regularly ignites unrest that includes anti-oil industry demonstrations, road blockades, seizures of pipeline pumphouses, and oilfield invasions. In response to the September 2022 spill, a river blockade was mobilized by the Asociacion Indigena de Desarrollo y Conservacion de Bajo Puinahua, a civil society and environmental protection coalition. That saw a boatload of tourists detained on 3 November 2022 only to be released the following day. Then on 25 November 2022, a barge traveling to Brazil carrying crude oil purchased from Canadian small-cap driller PetroTal was seized and the crew taken hostage, only to be released 48 hours later.

While the blockade was lifted on 14 December 2022 it sharply impacted operations at PetroTal’s Block 95, which contains the company’s flagship Bretana oilfield. The blockade forced PetroTal to sharply reduce production which from the end of November 2022 plunged to around 4,500 to 5,000 barrels per day, or roughly a third of the 14,000 barrels per day being pumped prior to the blockade. This event will impact Peru’s overall oil production because PetroTal, despite being a small-cap intermediate driller, is the Andean country’s largest oil producer. The region containing Block 95 has long been at the center of violent demonstrations against Peru’s oil industry. Some of the worst protests occurred in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic magnified many of the key issues and inequalities being experienced by Indigenous communities in Peru’s oil-rich Amazon. During August 2020, PetroTal was forced to shutter operations at the Bretana field after protestors attacked the ONP’s number 5 pump station and then violently clashed with police near the oilfield. The intensity of the skirmish left dozens injured among the police and demonstrators with three protestors later dying from their injuries. It wasn’t until 30 September 2020 that PetroTal was able to restart the Bretana field, while it took until 29 December for the ONP to restore full operations allowing PetroTal to recommence oil deliveries for sale in the pipeline.

The river blockade and earlier violent protests occurred because local Indigenous communities are seeking to pressure Lima into recognizing the severity of the oil spills and declaring a state of emergency. It is claimed that for many incidents the oil spills are not fully cleaned, and slicks linger contaminating water supplies and nearby land as well as damaging fisheries. The unraveling of the social license for Peru’s oil industry and the intensity of the community conflict in the Amazon saw energy companies abandon various blocks in the area. Canadian intermediate oil producer Frontera Energy abandoned Block 192 because of recurrent community blockades, while Chilean driller GeoPark handed Block 64 back to Peru’s government.

It is not only Peru’s Amazon that is being affected by oil spills and other industry-related environmental incidents. In January 2022, a pipeline being used for a routine tanker discharge at the Repsol-owned La Pampilla refinery, on Peru’s coast near Lima, ruptured spilling an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 barrels of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean. The spill, which is classified as Peru’s worst-ever coastal environmental disaster, left a deep slick on 25 beaches and polluted three marine reserves. This further tarnished the reputation of Peru’s already troubled oil industry leading to further community dissent and weighing heavily on its social license. For these reasons there is little respite ahead for Peru’s oil industry which has a long history of oil spills and environmental degradation which typically impact the Andean country’s poorest and most vulnerable communities.

By Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com

Pelé was ensnared by ‘Brazilian-style racism’ but stood firm as dictatorship tried to keep him playing

THE CONVERSATION
Published: January 2, 2023 

Pelé inspired millions with his exploits on the soccer pitch, but also had to confront power to extract himself from the sport’s social constraints. 

Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images

As arguably the greatest soccer player of all time is laid to rest, Prof José Paulo Florenzano of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo considers Pelé’s incredible legacy off the field. This article was originally written in Portuguese.

Pelé occupies a central, albeit problematic, place in the construction and affirmation of Brazil’s national identity. His role in helping forge the identity of modern Brazil has roots in helping the country win the World Cup in Sweden in 1958 and in the global role taken on soon after by his club team, Santos.

Santos in the Pelé era travelled the planet as sporting diplomats, crossing ideological divides between communism and capitalism and celebrating the political emancipation of nations emerging from colonialism.

There is no doubt that the main achievements of the teams led by Pelé were encouraging the playing of soccer in countries where the sport was rarely played, and, conversely, to have transformed the way the game was played in traditional soccer nations. In doing so, Pelé transcended the role of “national idol.” He became something much more significant: a symbol of the Black diaspora, a pan-African reference point and a cosmopolitan icon.

It was no coincidence that Bob Marley – who similarly was held up as a hero to the Global South – made a point of wearing Pelé’s number 10 shirt during the singer’s brief visit to Brazil in 1980. To Marley and others, Pelé embodied the aesthetic of soccer as art and an expression of freedom.

Outside Brazil, nowhere was Pele’s presence as an icon of Black achievement felt more than in a decolonising Africa.

The Mozambican footballing great Eusébio – who represented colonial masters Portugal on the international stage – first found his soccer identity playing for “Os Brasileiros” (The Brazilians), a team created in the suburbs of what is now the capital Maputo, in homage to 1958 World Cup winners.

Indeed, countless African players from the capital of Mozambique were given the nicknames of “Pelé”, “Garrincha”, or “Didi” – three Black heroes of the Brazilian national team, and an inspiration for millions across the African continent.

Global inspiration, domestic force

Pelé’s professional career, falling between the years 1956 to 1974, coincided with the period in which Brazilian authorities held claim to what was called “racial democracy” – the belief that discrimination against non-white Brazilians did not exist.

But this ideology only served to muffle the very real struggle of Afro-Brazilians and blocked debate over racial inequality. It placed racism as something apparently unthinkable in national society, as the scholar Antonio Sergio Alfredo Guimarães states in his book “Classes, Raças e Democracia”.

These were the conditions under which Pelé’s trajectory took place, and his experiences lay bare how Brazilian-style racism operated.

Shortly after winning the country’s third World Cup in 1970, Pele decided to retire from the national team to dedicate himself to his business ventures and club career. When he did so, the unanimity that had been woven around his image in Brazil quickly fell apart.

Pele faced pressure to continue playing for the national team by a dictatorial regime keen on extracting political dividends from any soccer triumphs on the international stage. At the same time, he was admonished by white elite that sought to limit his role to that of an athlete – and in so doing reiterate the place afforded to Black people in Brazilian society.

Pele’s approach to dealing with the Brazilian dictatorship has been criticised – the implication being he could have been more direct in his opposition to it. But from 1971, when he announced his departure from the national team, until 1974, when he ended his career at Santos, Pelé faced coercion, threats and blackmail in attempts to make make him bow to the converging interests of the military dictatorship and structural racism.

Such intimidation included the cancellation of two farewell games that were due to be held in mid-1971 in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to honor his achievements.

Pelé would not back down in the face of severe criticism from certain quarters made in the name of an exacerbated nationalism that cast him as a mercenary or traitor.

Greatest political legacy

The contested nature of his farewell from the pitch in effect, closed one of the most fascinating chapters of the unsubmissive will of a Black player in the face of the power structures of Brazilian society.

Pele’s stance was informed not only by his disgust at the torture that had been carried out by the Brazilian dictatorship, but also a personal desire to be able to be rewarded for his fame and soccer. Nonetheless, Pelé’s determination to stand up to a military dictatorship and structural racism represents the greatest political legacy of his life.

Pelé demonstrated that sport and entertainment did not constitute the “natural place” for the Afro-Brazilian as it had been conceived in racist discourse. He went on to acquire a university education, become a businessman and even held the role of minister of sport in the 1990s.

Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva talks with Pele.

  Joedson Alves/AFP via Getty Images)

Pelé’s trajectory reveals that soccer can be transformed into a space for the anti-racist struggle. In steadfastly refusing to be seen as simply a soccer player and in pursuing a career away from the pitch, Pele exerted a right that Afro-Brazilians not be excluded from activities historically monopolised by the more privileged white groups.

The historical significance of Pelé chimes with the present context Brazil finds itself in. After four years of an extreme right-wing government, the return of a government not inclined to diminishing democracy, and committed to the anti-racist struggle, represents the resumption of a trajectory for Brazil that Pelé’s own journey illustrated.

Author

José Paulo Florenzano
Professor of Social Sciences, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo

BAKUNINISM IS FEDERALISM

Moscow Allows One Kind of Federalism to Rise while Continuing to Suppress Another, Kolebakina-Uzmanova Says

Paul Goble

Monday, January 2, 2023

            Staunton, Jan. 2 – In its prosecution of the war in Ukraine just as was the case with its efforts to combat the covid pandemic, the Kremlin began by insisting that it could do everything on its own and then decided that it needed the involvement of federal subjects to be able to achieve its goals, Elena Kolebakina-Uzmanova says.

            That pattern, which has occurred even as Putin has sought to destroy the remnants of federalism as outlined in the Russian constitution means that Moscow is intentionally or not opening the way for a new kind of “spontaneous” federalism even as it has broken much of the existing federal system, the Kazan commentator says.

         Indeed, Kolebakina-Uzmanova says, “one can say that spontaneous federalism has been strengthened in the country” [emphasis in the original] because “ life itself has shown again and again that only such an arrangement works, even though by inertia, Moscow has continued to liquidate the former remnants of this very federalism” (business-gazeta.ru/article/578693).

            These two vectors are often at odds. The destruction of the remnants of federalism has attracted the greater attention; but the rise of spontaneous federalism has limited what Moscow can or at least chooses to do. The compromise on the title of president in Tatarstan is a clear example of this, the commentator says.

            Forced to give up the title “president” for the republic leader, Tatarstan forced Moscow to agree to the term “rais,” “a term which in Arab countries designates the head of government” and which highlights among other things the strength Kazan has as the bridge to the Islamic world, Kolebakina-Uzmanova says.

            In this way, both Moscow and Kazan “showed wisdom,” he continues, with each side recognizing the importance of cooperating with the other and not insisting that the other submit to its demands, at a time of military conflict. That may not be the federalism some would like to see; but it is hardly the end of federalism either.

 

Black Eyed Peas anger Polish politicians by wearing rainbow armbands during New Year’s TV concert

One politician condemned the "homopropaganda" while another called it "deviance.” 

However, the band's frontman clapped back with a message of unity.

By Daniel Villarreal 

Monday, January 2, 2023

The Black Eyed Peas wear rainbow armbands during a Polish New Year's Eve broadcastPhoto: Twitter screenshot


All four members of the pop group The Black Eyed Peas angered anti-LGBTQ+ politicians in Poland by wearing rainbow armbands during a live TV New Year’s Eve performance broadcast throughout the country.

While performing on the TVP channel’s “New Year’s of Dreams” show, the group’s frontman Will.i.am spoke against discrimination faced by the LGBTQ+ community and other groups. The band’s performance was seen by an estimated 8.3 million viewers.

“We dedicate this next song to those who have experienced hate throughout this year,” Will.i.am said. “The Jewish community, we love you. People of African descent around the world, we love you. The LGBTQ community, we love you. This song that we’re going to do is called ‘Where’s the Love?’ and it’s dedicated to unity.”

During the broadcast, TVP presenter Tomasz Kammel said onstage that every aspect of the event was pre-planned and approved by broadcasters, “including every element of [performers’] outfits.”

The display angered deputy agriculture minister Janusz Kowalski. He wrote via Twitter, “Homopropaganda on TVP for $1 million,” mentioning the event’s production cost.

Marcin Warchol, a member of Poland’s anti-LGBTQ+ Law and Justice Party (PiS) was also angered.

“LGBT promotion in TVP2. DISGRACE!” Warchol tweeted. “It’s not a New Year’s Eve of Dreams but a New Year’s Eve of Deviance.”

At the start of 2020, PiS began a push to declare regions across the country as “LGBT-free zones” in an attempt to remove LGBTQ+ “propaganda” from the public as a form of “Western decadence” that “threaten[s] our identity, threaten[s] our nation, threaten[s] the Polish state.” Both the U.S. and the European Union condemned the zones as violations of human rights.

Will.i.am responded to Warchol’s tweet, writing, “#WHEREStheLOVE??? Unity, tolerance, understanding, oneness, respect, diversity & inclusion…THATS LOVE…people are people & we should all practice to honor & love all the different types of people on earth & learn from them…I LOVE YOU your country…”

Warchol responded by asking the performer why he didn’t “boycott the Qatar World Cup over [the] country’s treatment of women, migrants, and the LGBTQ+ community?”

“You sold principles for profit,” he wrote. “Hypocrisy.”

Will.i.am responded, “We went to these places to spread LOVE…why boycott when you can go directly to the source that needs to be inspired and try your hardest to inspire them and spread LOVE…it’s called #LOVE.”

Will.i.am simultaneously live-streamed his New Year’s Eve performance through his social media, holding his cameraphone while speaking and singing to the audience, his rainbow armband clearly in view. He even continued speaking to his live-stream viewers after he went backstage.

“We stand for unity, love, tolerance, oneness. Listen to our music,” he said on his live-stream. “And sometimes you gotta go to where people don’t have the same views to inspire them on difference, to inspire them on what tolerance looks like.”

“Poland is an awesome country,” he continued. “Never forget your heart, purpose, and standing together when people need a voice, when people can’t be there to speak for themselves…. Let’s pray for them, send them positivity, uplift them as we get ready to enter into this new year 2023.”

Former Spice Girls star and LGBTQ+ ally Melanie Chisholm had initially planned to perform for Poland’s New Year’s Eve broadcast, but declined, citing “issues that do not align with the communities I support.”

In November 2022, the Supreme Administrative Court of Poland ruled that the country could potentially recognize same-sex marriages of Polish citizens that were performed in other countries, even though the country itself still doesn’t perform marriages between two people of the same sex.

Protect Komodo dragons and punish the slayers

INDONESIA
Sunday, 01 Jan 2023


Tourism and conservation: A plan to charge visitors to Komodo RM1,000 has been scrapped over an outcry by tourism operators. — AFP

RESPONSIBLE, enlightened wildlife tourists, and hefty fines for irresponsible ones – that’s my wish for 2023.

As a huge animal lover, seeing wildlife in their natural habitats is always a treat.

On one of my many treks to national parks, a Sumatran orangutan trotted out its entire family, suckling babies. On another trek, the elusive Javan rhino would show only its footprint.

A Komodo dragon gave me a scare when it crept up behind me, swishing its muscular tail and flicking its forked tongue.



A ranger handed me a long, double-branched stick and told me to raise it in the air. Thinking I was another predator, the reptile retreated.

Earlier this year, the Indonesia government announced a plan to raise Komodo National Park’s entrance fee by 25 times, from 150,000 rupiah (RM42) to 3.75 million rupiah (RM1,060), starting in January 2023.

The aim was to protect against mass tourism, but tour operators went on strike, saying the move would kill their livelihoods. Tourists complained the fee was too high.

On Dec 15, Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno said the plan had been scrapped.

Some years ago, Indonesian authorities busted a smuggling ring that confessed to stealing 41 Komodo dragons and selling them.

During my visits to safari parks and zoos, I have seen tourists throwing trash at animals to get their attention. All for a selfie.

Perhaps, instead of charging responsible tourists expensive fees, the government should fine those who endanger wildlife, and channel the proceeds towards conservation. — The Straits Times/ANN

IMPERIALI$M THE HIGHEST FORM OF CAPITALI$M

Export ban means Chinese firms will have to build plants in Zimbabwe to process lithium

Harare has barred exports of the metal – used in electric-vehicle batteries – in its raw form as part of efforts to have it processed locally.

Harare has barred exports of the metal – used in electric-vehicle batteries – in its raw form as part of efforts to have it processed locally

Observer says facilities will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and it could take two to three years before they can get up and running


Bikita Minerals’ lithium mine in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. Chinese firm Sinomine Resource Group acquired Bikita Minerals in January. Photo: Handout

2.1.2023
by South China Morning Post

Chinese companies that have made multimillion-dollar acquisitions in Zimbabwe will have to build lithium processing plants after the southern African nation banned the export of the metal in its raw form.

Companies must either set up local processing plants or provide proof of exceptional circumstances – and receive written permission from the government – before lithium can leave the country.

Zimbabwe is estimated to have the largest unexploited reserve of lithium in Africa and is the sixth-largest producer in the world. It imposed the export ban last week, as part of efforts to have lithium – the key raw material in electric-vehicle batteries – processed locally.

The government also wants to stop artisanal miners who reportedly dig up and take the mineral across borders. Harare says it has lost US$1.8 billion in mineral revenues due to smuggling, artisanal mining and externalisation to South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.

Chris Berry, president of commodities advisory firm House Mountain Partners in New York, said the export ban was a textbook example of resource nationalism.

“We saw the same example with Indonesia with nickel and Chile even tried to build a deeper lithium supply chain several years ago, though those circumstances were different and the country didn’t attempt to ban lithium exports, but instead levied huge royalties on lithium producers in the country,” Berry said.

Chinese firms that had made recent lithium investments in Zimbabwe would need to build processing facilities there at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars so they can export higher value lithium chemicals, he said.

“There is a great deal of capital required to build chemical conversion facilities outside of China, not to mention the two- or three-year lead time necessary to actually complete construction and commissioning,” he said.

Berry added that if more countries followed suit, it could have wider implications – such as higher prices for lithium and other raw materials such as cobalt.

Lithium prices have surged by about 1,100 per cent to a record in the past two years, with supply struggling to keep up with high demand. Lithium carbonate spot prices in China – the world’s biggest electric-vehicle market – climbed to a record US$84,000 per tonne in November, according to Benchmark Minerals’ lithium price index.

In the past year, three Chinese companies – Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Sinomine Resource Group and Chengxin Lithium Group – have acquired lithium projects in Zimbabwe worth a combined US$679 million, amid the worldwide race to go green.

Huayou Cobalt and Chengxin Lithium are already developing processing plants that would mean they are exempt from the export ban.

Huayou Cobalt acquired the Arcadia hard-rock lithium mine outside Harare for US$422 million from Australian company Prospect Resources last year. The battery maker told the South China Morning Post in September that it was investing US$300 million to develop the mine with an aim to expand production for the electric-vehicle market.

When Huayou Cobalt bought Prospect’s stake in the mine, one of the conditions from the Zimbabwean government was that the firm would process the mineral locally to make lithium-ion batteries.

The company said it would process first-line lithium concentrates of spodumene and petalite in the first phase.

“We are not going to export raw ore,” Huayou Cobalt said. “Lithium is one of many inputs needed for the production of batteries – and we do not enjoy access to all others at the same time. In phase two of our work here, we are targeting production of lithium sulphates, and that is as far as we can see feasible under local conditions.”

Meanwhile, Chengxin Lithium spent US$77 million on a deal last year that includes mining rights in the largely unexplored Sabi Star lithium and tantalum mine project in eastern Zimbabwe. A groundbreaking ceremony was held there earlier this month for a US$130 million lithium processing plant.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa during a groundbreaking ceremony for a lithium plant at the Sabi Star mine in Buhera district, Manicaland province on December 14. Photo: Xinhua

Lauren Johnston, a China-Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said that “if African and Chinese interests diverge on minerals, and since Europe wants them [minerals] too, it might be most efficient to do the process at source and then share the fruits across those markets”.

She said this was especially the case if the manufacturing could be done from renewable energy sources in the first instance, like hydrogen.

But she said “if more African countries ban the export of key renewable minerals but are not ready yet to do the processing at home due to governance, infrastructure, energy and labour challenges, then this could impede the development of renewables globally”.

According to Gorden Moyo, director of the Public Policy and Research Institute of Zimbabwe, the export ban was long overdue.

“It makes perfect economic sense for Zimbabwe and all other countries to break the vicious circle of commodity export,” said Moyo, a former Zimbabwean minister for state enterprises.

“Raw materials fetch low prices in the global markets while at the same time exporting commodities is equivalent to exporting jobs.”

He noted that lithium was a key mineral in the clean energy transition. “If well managed, the massive lithium deposits in Zimbabwe may contribute towards public debt settlement, job creation and increased economic activity in the country,” Moyo said.

But he said the export ban would not stop smuggling.

“In reality the ban is meaningless simply because there is no political will to curb illicit mineral trade in Zimbabwe,” Moyo said, adding that it was being carried out by “military businessmen and women, senior government officials and politically exposed persons”.

“The law enforcement agencies have their hands tied by the very fact that the gamekeepers are actually the poachers themselves.”

Post published in: Business