How safe are EU's North Sea wind farms from attack?

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  As the number of wind farms increases, intentional sabotage and accidents pose a significant threat to their security (Photo: Kim Hansen)

By CHRISTIAN BUEGER

COPENHAGEN, TODAY

During its summit held in Ostend, Belgium, the EU and its partners, the United Kingdom and Norway, made an announcement to transform the North Sea into "Europe's biggest green power plant".

This ambitious plan would drive up wind energy production by at least 25 times by 2030. Building new energy islands would decrease Europe's reliance on non-renewable energy sources and Russian gas, and create numerous job opportunities in Scotland and other regions involved in the production of turbines, blades and electricity cables.

The announcement was made a week after Nordic broadcasters exposed the extent of Russian espionage activities in the North Sea, including gathering information on windfarm installations and the subsea cables linking them to the terrestrial electricity grid. These developments have made the North Sea a crucial area for both maritime and energy security, and imply new vulnerabilities.

The North Sea plans boasts an energy production capacity equivalent to several nuclear power plants, and the EU's energy supply will increasingly depend on it. However, while nuclear power plants are well-protected and inaccessible to the public, windfarms and cable installations are less secure.

The recent Nordic documentary showed how easily windfarms and cable grids can be accessed. As my colleague who is a passionate Danish kayaker confirmed, some individuals even visit them for recreational activities like diving.

As the number of wind farms increases, intentional sabotage and accidents pose a significant threat to their security. A recent example of this is the collision between a cargo ship Petra L and a rotor in the Gode Wind farm on 27 April in the North Sea, which resulted in severe damage to the vessel.

Although the cause of the accident is still being investigated, the incident highlights the potential risks of accidents that could occur and the need for greater safety measures.

The complete ramifications of the critical maritime infrastructure protection agenda, despite the heightened focus following the Nord Stream attack, have yet to be comprehensively grasped.

Can Nato fix it?

All North Sea coastal states are Nato members, and seven of them are also EU members. Nato has already announced plans to increase its efforts in critical maritime infrastructure protection, including in the North Sea. This is likely to boost security in the region. However, protecting wind farms cannot be exclusively a military task and requires a significant civilian component.

As acts of sabotage on wind farms or the underwater electricity grid are likely to be carried out as grey zone tactics, state-sponsored sabotage may be disguised as a civilian accident, or carried out from a vessel such as a leisure yacht or fishing boat, rather than from a military ship.

Therefore, preventing threats to maritime infrastructure requires close monitoring of civilian maritime traffic, and the response will often be in the hands of coastguards or maritime police rather than the military.

Nato alone cannot provide the necessary protection for critical maritime infrastructures in the North Sea. Further collaboration among the EU member states, the United Kingdom, and Norway is essential. Ideally, they would form a new maritime security community. This should be comprised of several elements: close collaboration among the various maritime security and energy agencies from the nine North Sea states is essential, but the different organisational structures of each country's maritime security sector make it challenging.

Denmark, for example, only operates a navy, while other countries like the UK involve several different agencies in maritime security. A coastguard function forum for the North Sea, for instance, could be established to promote collaboration and develop best practices for surveillance, protection, and response.

In order to effectively monitor and prevent threats to critical maritime infrastructure, it is necessary to share information, conduct surveillance, and report any suspicious activities at sea.

This requires the integration of data from various sources, including satellites, radar, patrols, CCTV, and subsea sensors. To facilitate this, the European Union is launching a Common Information Sharing Environment, which will be operated by the European Maritime Safety Agency.

However, the UK and Norway are currently not participating in this initiative, and as such, it is important to identify political solutions that would enable them to contribute to this structure.

Ensuring the safety and protection of maritime infrastructures cannot be solely accomplished by governments, as it also necessitates the involvement of industry players. It is important to develop shared regulatory standards for the measures that the industry must put in place and how it collaborates with state agencies in areas like information sharing, investigations and emergency management.

As the plans for the North Sea's green energy production become more ambitious, the demand for maintenance and repair capacities, including repair ships and cable depots, will increase. These capacities will be essential for responding quickly to acts of sabotage and minimising the impact on Europe's energy supply.

The nine states involved in this initiative must conduct a review to determine if their existing capabilities are sufficient to meet the needs of the planned infrastructure under different attack scenarios. They must also consider how these capacities can be shared and pooled with the industry.

AUTHOR BIO

Christian Bueger is professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, where he leads a research group on Ocean Infrastructures.

THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL

Socialists focused on boosting sustainable development
May 4, 2023
Peace, International Affairs & Cooperation

Pictured from left: European Commissioner for International Partnership Jutta Urpilainen, meeting Chair and Portugal’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Francisco André and PES Executive Secretary General Giacomo Filibeck.

The European Union must continue to be a driving force behind economic, social and environmental progress in developing countries, as a reliable international partner supporting effective Multilateral development banks.

Development ministers from the Party of European Socialists (PES) met in Brussels, Belgium, this morning to coordinate ahead of the Foreign Affairs Council (Development) taking place later today. On the agenda of the PES meeting: reform of Multilateral development banks, reconstruction of Ukraine, and joint initiatives to support sustainable development.

Francisco André, Chair of the PES meeting and Portugal’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, said:

“Europe must continue to be a reliable international partner which promotes multilateral cooperation and progressive values in development. By focusing on making Multilateral development banks more effective, we can strengthen human rights and environmental protections. The world’s poorest are facing a multitude of crises, which are exacerbating global inequality and poverty. We must take steps to help people in developing countries to ensure the progress that has been achieves is not lost.”

The meeting exchanged on Ukraine, condemning Russia’s brutal invasion and reaffirming its full support for Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction. Progressives stand ready to support all efforts to rebuild Ukraine. The participants also discussed the need to increase EU support for Africa and the situation around women’s rights in Afghanistan.

Ministers discussed the developing situation in Sudan, urging all sides in the conflict to observe and further extend the agreed ceasefire. The meeting commended efforts to evacuate EU nationals from the conflict zones and underlined the importance of continued engagement in Sudan to avert a humanitarian crisis emerging in the country.

Illegal mining threatens Ghana forests

A group of Galamseyers, illegal gold panner, work on a gold field in Kibi 
CRISTINA ALDEHUELA/AFP 

By Rédaction Africanews
with AFP 
GHANA

Ghana's widespread illegal mining activities are destroying the gold-rich West African country's forests, the government's forestry agency warned Tuesday at a news conference in Accra.

Ghana and South Africa are vying to be Africa's top gold producers. The mining industry in Ghana involves both large global players but also artisanal mining activities, many of which are illegal.

Since taking office in 2017, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo has promised to rid the country of "galamsey," the name given by locals to these illegal mines where deadly accidents frequently occur.

"Of the 16 regions of Ghana, seven have been affected by illegal mining activities," said the head of the Ghana Forestry Commission, John Allotey.

In addition, "34 out of 288 (forest) reserves have been affected," he said, and the total area destroyed is estimated at 4,726 hectares (larger than cities like Athens or Brussels).

Illegal mining activities not only reduce the size of forests, but also pollute rivers and create deep holes that are then difficult to rehabilitate, he added.

Authorities regularly launch operations against illegal sites, including removing excavators, but the practice continues.

"We want to intensify surveillance, use the military to conduct operations in sensitive areas and find additional funding," Allotey said.

Ghana has "revised laws, put in place measures and systems to ensure that our forests are well protected, but despite this, our forests continue to be destroyed," Ghanaian environmentalist Nehemiah Odjer-Bio of Friends of the Earth told AFP.

According to him, insufficient law enforcement, corruption and unemployment fuel deforestation activities, while "Ghana has a tropical forest rich in biodiversity, with different species of trees and animals that all perform important functions for the country and the world.

In addition to illegal mining, the main driver of deforestation in Ghana is the expansion of agricultural areas, but also illegal logging, forest fires, overgrazing and infrastructure development.

King Charles must rise above impotent talk of ‘sorrow’ for slavery

Jamaica and its people bear the scars of Europe’s royalty. Talk of ‘research’ into its atrocities is cheap

Carolyn Cooper
3 May 2023

People shopping at Coronation Market in downtown Kingston, Jamaica, 

in 2019. The market is the oldest and largest in the Caribbean |
Bloomberg/Getty

Hardcore royalists in Jamaica will be up by 1.30am on Saturday to watch live coverage of the prolonged build-up to the coronation of King Charles III.

Two hours and 45 minutes later, it will be time for the main event. Royalists will revel in all of the pomp and ceremony. They will be dazzled by the regalia: the silver maces carried before the king; the Sword of State; the Sword of Temporal Justice; the Sword of Spiritual Justice; the Sword of Mercy; the Sovereign’s Ring made of a sapphire with a ruby cross set in diamonds; and the golden sceptres.

Most of all, the crowns! The St Edward’s, for the king, with its solid gold frame, decorated with rubies, amethysts, sapphires, garnet, topazes and tourmalines; and the resplendent Crown of Queen Mary, for the Queen Consort, blinging with the infamous Kohinoor diamond. Mined in India, the precious stone was presented to Queen Victoria in 1850 by the deputy chair of the East India Company. Blinkered royalists will not be at all troubled by unsettling questions about how the monarchy accumulated the gross wealth that will be so conspicuously displayed at the coronation.

For most Jamaicans, Saturday will be just another market day. In downtown Kingston, some shoppers will go to the Coronation Market, named in honour of Queen Victoria. The market is popularly known as ‘Curry’. This familiarising diminutive completely erases the monarchal origins of the name. Then there’s the Jubilee Market, again named for Queen Victoria. In addition, there are the sidewalk markets on East and West Queen Streets, Princess Street and King Street. The streets of the city of Kingston have been branded with the stigmata of royalty, just as the bodies of enslaved Africans were disfigured with the beastly stamp of ‘ownership’ administered by savage Europeans!

Centuries of atrocities

As Jamaica slowly engages in the process of becoming a republic, the British monarchy is being held to account for centuries of atrocities. The research has been done and the evidence is indisputable: successive kings and queens of England were engaged in the trafficking of enslaved Africans for 270 years.

In 2004, historian Nick Hazlewood’s eye-opening book ‘The Queen’s Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls’ was published. Hazlewood painstakingly documented the role of the ‘Virgin Queen’ in the brutalisation of enslaved Africans. Elizabeth I entered into a heinous contract with the notorious pirate John Hawkins. She supplied a royal ship to transport human cargo in exchange for a share of the profit from the gruesome trade.

Almost two decades after Hazlewood’s book, Britain’s The Guardian newspaper published a report headlined ‘King Charles signals first explicit support for research into monarchy’s slavery ties’. According to a Buckingham Palace spokesperson quoted in the article: “Historic Royal Palaces is a partner in an independent research project, which began in October last year, that is exploring, among other issues, the links between the British monarchy and the transatlantic slave trade during the late 17th and 18th centuries.”

This “independent research project” comes rather late in the day. According to The Guardian, it is titled ‘Royal Enterprise: Reconsidering the Crown’s Engagement in Britain’s Emerging Empire, 1660-1775’ by Camilla De Koning, a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester. What is there to reconsider? The case is closed. One of the deadly enterprises in which the Crown was engaged was human trafficking. This ‘engagement’ cannot be reconceptualised in any other terms than as a classic manifestation of royal entitlement to brutality.

Rhetoric of sorrow

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has outlined a ten-point plan for reparatory justice. First, there must be a full formal apology. Next, the right of descendants of enslaved Africans to be repatriated must be acknowledged and enabled through all legal and diplomatic channels. Repatriation has long been the cry of Rastafari in Jamaica and the diaspora. A development programme for indigenous Caribbean people must be implemented.

Cultural institutions must be established to educate Caribbean citizens about crimes against humanity. In addition, the public health crisis that has its roots in the poor diet of enslaved Africans must be addressed. Illiteracy must be eradicated and African knowledge systems – such as the Creole languages, like Jamaican, created by Africans in the diaspora – valorised. Rehabilitation for the psychological trauma inflicted upon African people and their descendents must be undertaken. Technology transfer, reversing some of Europe’s systematic exclusion of the Caribbean from global industrialisation, must be prioritised. Debt cancellation must be recognised as an essential element of reparatory justice.

King Charles’ “explicit support” for research on “the links between the British monarchy and the transatlantic slave trade” may prove to be just as flaccid as his repeated declaration of “profound sorrow” for the trafficking in Africans that was enabled by the monarchy. Talk is, indeed, very cheap. Further research is nothing but impotent deferral of vigorous action. King Charles must translate the rhetoric of sorrow into the truly meaningful language of immediate reparations.

In the coronation, Britain’s ruling class will cast its dark spell on millions


OPINION: Charles’ crowning as king will encourage millions to keep marching to the beat of Britain’s posh boys

Adam Ramsay
30 April 2023, 

Charles Windsor |
Pool/Getty/Adobe Stock (edited by James Battershill)


Most of my friends don’t care about the coronation. With the world burning, why should they?

I think they’re making a mistake.

The ritual will gently bend how millions see the world. It is one of the planet’s most powerful examples of how a ruling class manipulates deep, human needs. This must be its last enactment.

But we can only understand this once we get why the coronation appeals to so many. There is something moving about being in a crowd. Whether it’s a protest or music festival, sports match or congregation, most of us change when we gather, particularly if we gesture or vocalise together. This phenomenon – the theorist Émile Durkheim called it “collective effervescence” – is central to politics.

Likewise, ritual is deeply human. Every society has greeting customs, death ceremonies, specific festivities in particular seasons. In The Dawn of Everything, academics David Graeber and David Wengrow show that societies are shaped by rituals as well as material needs, from ancient Egyptians growing grain to leave bread for the dead to ancient Britons trekking to Stonehenge. Studies have found they can improve sport performance and even align people’s heartbeats.

And it’s not just human. Dog species bow to initiate play. Birds sing and display. Male pufferfish build seafloor temples. Lizards have dance routines.

In 2019, a multidisciplinary academic team studied ritual in various animals, including humans. Its function, they concluded, is “homeostatic” – to keep things the same as the world changes.

Ritual isn’t the icing on society’s cake. It’s the baking soda that makes it work.

“One of the big mistakes people make,” says Maya Mayblin, an anthropologist at Edinburgh University, “is that they think about rituals as simply a mirror to society, reflecting back at us what already is. Rituals aren’t simply reflections of what already is. They are there to create new realities.”

Rituals are also things powerful people invent for us. Ruling classes use them to manage our moods, to encourage us to accept social hierarchies. Elites rearrange the jigsaw of humanity into beautiful images of the world, with them at the centre.

And because rituals make us feel good, we accept it.

If we shrug our shoulders at the coronation and move on, we miss the true purpose of monarchy. In fact, this attitude is a key reason why England’s left keeps losing.
Accepting debasement

The coronation won’t just do something to Charles Mountbatten-Windsor. It will do something to us. There is something profoundly humiliating about being declared inferior to someone you had no role in choosing. Accepting this debasement leaves people changed. It warps how they see the world. I suspect it affects how they vote.

But to understand how that happens, we need to think about the way we experience identity; how it is taught and retaught in specific settings.

Some of that will come in the carnival surrounding the coronation.

By February this year, royal spin doctors had announced 7,000 coronation events – street parties and the like – where more than a million people will celebrate. There will be more come May.

While some remain ambivalent, for others these events have become more important over the last decade. There were twice as many street parties for the 2022 platinum jubilee (16,000, involving a quarter of the population) as there were for the 2012 diamond jubilee (7,500).

Historically, coronations ended with vast feasts. Aristocrat guests passed surplus food to onlookers: literal crumbs from their table.

Today, the commodities being shared are conviviality and leisure time. The rituals of monarchy feed us morsels of company, giving us bank holidays and a ‘big lunch’; time to get to know our neighbours.

The resulting pleasant feelings will mentally map up to a sense of national ‘us’, and will forever be associated in millions of minds with the monarchy and the class system. ‘Britishness’ and ‘hereditary power’ will be fused with ‘friendliness’. Our hearts will be bumped to the right.

“In ritual excitement, social differences fall away and we feel more connected to the collective than we do in ordinary life,” says Mayblin. In that moment, we feel “more disposed to social messages than at other points. The symbols that get used become naturalised – we don’t question them in the normal way”.

Elizabeth II's coronation parade in 1953 involved a vast mobilisation of troops from Britain's then much bigger armed forces. |
Hulton archive/Stringer

‘Important work’

Royalists maintain a cognitive dissonance, claiming that the regent both has no real power, and does important work. Republicans often challenge the first premise, highlighting the financial cost or legislative influence of the monarchy, and of course this matters.

But the monarchy’s real power comes from that “important work”.

In The Enchanted Glass, the philosopher Tom Nairn quotes former French president Charles de Gaulle telling Elizabeth II she is “the person in whom your people perceive their own nationhood”. “Britons,” Nairn argues, “have learned to take and enjoy the glory of royalty in a curiously personal sense,” which makes it “genuinely important for British nationalism.”

Some of this happens through civil society. Windsors are patrons to more than a thousand charities. Millions of people, from birders to nurses, are members of royal societies of this or that. More than 100,000 people got honours from Elizabeth II. All of this fuses monarchy to Britain’s collective notions of virtue.

But much of it happens through the mystery of ritual, the connection to ‘sacredness’ and a mythical past.

On 6 May, Charles and Camilla will ride from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey in a black and gold carriage, then walk down the aisle in their ‘robes of state’. They will be greeted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the current holder of the post being an old Etonian whose mum (and, it recently turned out, his biological dad) was a secretary to Churchill.

The archbishop will ask the congregation to pledge loyalty to the monarch. Charles will swear “to govern the people of the United Kingdom and the dominions and other possessions and territories in accordance with their respective laws and customs,” and that he is a “faithful Protestant”.

Then, he will slip into a simple gown, sit in King Edward’s chair, (commissioned in 1296 to contain Scotland’s stolen Stone of Scone) and be basted in perfumed Palestinian olive oil using a gold jug and an old spoon.

Since 973, this anointment has come with a Biblical reading (Kings 38:40), describing Zadok crowning Solomon. Handel’s choral setting of it is a banger – expect an indoctrinating earworm.

While breathless commentators will likely imply the ceremony comes from some mystical ‘mists of time,’ we do in fact know its origins. As historian Judith Herrin explained to me, much of it comes from the early Christian Byzantine Empire.

The Byzantines adapted Rome’s “outdoor, military ceremony to an indoor ecclesiastical one,” she says. Fifth century emperor Leo I introduced coronation by a priest, and with it the idea that he was appointed by God.

Where Roman emperors struggled to establish dynasties, the new rituals seem to have helped Byzantine rulers hand over to their sons. “The powers [were] associated symbolically with these costumes, with the globe and crown. Usurpers don’t have that paraphernalia,” says Herrin.

Elements of those rituals trickled into monarchies across mediaeval Europe. Now, it’s only Britain that uses them, with a few tweaks.

Once anointed, Charles will be given this hoard of objects. There’s robes and furs. There’s a gold ball called ‘the orb’. These traditionally represented “mastery over the whole world”, says Herrin.

In 1953, the BBC said they represented “the world under Christ’s dominion”. Today, Buckingham Palace says they’re to remind the king (they really mean us) that his power comes from God.

Some of the bling used to 'make' Charles king. |
Image belongs to Charles Mountbatten-Windsor

There are two truncheons, each a metre long, known as sceptres. The ‘sceptre with cross’ represents “temporal power” and includes the world’s largest colourless cut diamond, plucked from South Africa in 1905. The ‘sceptre with dove’ represents “equity and mercy”, though the palace website also says that it’s the means by which “uprisings” in the kingdom are controlled (in other words, “don’t fuck with us”).

These are accompanied by four swords, for the monarch’s ‘kingly authority’ plus leadership of the armed forces, the Church of England, and the justice system. There’s also a ring and pair of bracelets, representing “kingly dignity, sincerity and wisdom”, and spurs for chivalry.

The Crown will be put on Charles’s head, to cries of “God Save the King,” followed by the various homages, including the new 'homage of the people,' where his subjects across the world will be encouraged to chant their support for the new king. This will channel the collective effervescence of a moment people can get caught up in, into a longer term sense of obligation: psychologists have long shown the power of oaths, pledges and vows to alter our future behaviour.

Finally, he will change into the ‘imperial robe’ and leaves, riding back to the palace with Camilla in the Golden State Coach.

In 1953, Elizabeth’s journey home took hours, taking a triumphant military parade on a five-mile detour. Britain’s empire being not what it was, Charles and Camilla will take a shorter trundle home, followed by some balcony waving.

All of this has a purpose. Like the republican Tom Nairn, pro-monarchy writer Walter Bagehot focused on the royals’ soft power. They exist, he wrote, to “excite and preserve the reverence of the population” – that is, to stir up feelings of deference – so that we don’t try to stop the government doing what it wants.

And much of that stirring up is done through these sorts of rituals.

The coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 clearly had an impact on British society. Later that year, sociologists Edward Shils and Michael Young interviewed people from London’s East End.

“Over the past century,” they write in ‘The Meaning of the Coronation’, “British society… has achieved a degree of moral unity equalled by no other large national state. The assimilation of the working class into the moral consensus of British society, though certainly far from complete, has gone further in Great Britain than anywhere else.”

They argued that this was greatly enhanced by the coronation ceremony, where “people became more aware of their dependence upon each other, and they sensed some connection between this and their relationship to the Queen. Thereby they became more sensitive to the values which bound them all together.”

What they don’t say is what those values are, who sets them, and whether they are good ones. They do say it had a political impact. Support for the then-incumbent Conservative Party increased, to the point that the media speculated that Churchill might call a snap general election. When the next election did come, in 1955, the Tories won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years. Churchillism was boosted, and the Conservatives have not had such a drought since.

Coronations are the moment at which each generation of British people signs a social contract. On average, they happen roughly every 20 years – if it seems alien to us, that’s partly because it’s the first time we’ve done it for 70 years. And while it is true that the monarchy is in crisis, that there are millions who won’t tune in, it is also true that there are millions who will find it all very moving - many, much more than they expected.

Elizabeth II's coronation parade in 1953, which involved a huge mobilisation of troops from Britain's then much bigger armed forces |
Hulton archive/Stringer

‘An alternative reality’

The meaning people take from the coronation will be vital. Studying 1990s Syria, anthropologist Lisa Wedeen showed people don’t have to believe the claims that rituals rely on for them to work. Participants often end up behaving “as if” they are true, reinforcing the system. These “as if” rituals are important in social control.

The coronation says Mayblin, “can’t afford to be a mere reflection of the way that society works. That would defeat the whole object. It would have to show austerity Britain, people going hungry. It’s a ritual that represents British society as it wishes it to be. It’s a moment in which, through symbol and pomp, you can create an alternative reality.”

So what might it be telling us? Firstly, that we – the intended audience – are British. That might seem odd. Charles is being crowned king of 43 states or dependent territories. But what is Britishness but a globalised identity? What Nairn calls this ‘symbolic supranationality’ (much of the ruling class see themselves as British as opposed to English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish) comes increasingly – since other imperial connections have been severed – from the Crown.

Where Britishness once connoted a set of feelings and legal rights pertaining across the empire, now it’s largely shrunk into the UK. But the fact that our monarchs continue to reign over vast chunks of the planet – and over more people outside the UK than in it – allows Britishness to maintain its global vibe. All of this functions to help the British, and particularly the English, feel like they aren’t just from a ‘normal’ European nation, but a temporarily embarrassed empire.

In other Commonwealth realms, the coronation will likely be jarring. Australia already has a ‘minister for the Republic’. Every Caribbean realm is talking about ditching the Windsors. But I suspect, for the organisers, attitudes overseas aren’t really the point. What matters is how their presence makes people in Britain itself feel.

The coronation is taking place in the middle of a period of unprecedented constitutional questioning in the UK. Over the last decade, support for Scottish independence, Welsh independence and Irish unity have all been higher than ever before. Beaming positive feelings about Britishness into the middle of all these debates is an important propaganda moment for unionists.

The second message is that there is something good about wealth and power being inherited genetically.

Obviously, this is anti-egalitarian. Where in other countries there is, at least, a pretence that everyone could reach the highest office, Britain glories in the opposite. There is no embarrassment at the riches: an extraordinary hoard of jewellery will literally be paraded before us. Many will be thrilled – more than two and a half million people visit the Tower of London every year.

Obviously, bloodline nationalism has nasty racial implications.

In more subtle ways, this messaging also celebrates forms of wealth that can be easily inherited – capital and land – over labour, which can’t. As such, it’s a ritualised celebration of Britain’s economic system, an attempt to legitimise rule by capitalists and aristocrats.

It is also a celebration of the British ruling class in particular. Westminster still has 92 hereditary peers. More prime ministers have been to Eton than to all state schools put together: we’re taught to believe toffs ought to be in charge, are ‘prime ministerial’ and ‘competent’.

There are other messages, too. Ancientness awes us with vast spans of time, demanding we kneel at the altar of status quo. There is a display of military might, even if it is diminished. There’s Protestant supremacy. But perhaps the most important of these is the message it sends about centralised power.

Many of Britain’s comparative weaknesses – its economic malaise, its regional inequalities, its peoples’ sense of political alienation – are connected to its over-centralised state. In most democratic countries, ‘sovereignty’ ultimately lies with the people. In Britain, it works the other way around.

Sovereignty is centralised in the crown, administered by Parliament. It doesn’t rise up from citizens but flows down from the monarch, like urine. Local, regional and even devolved national governments can be overruled or marginalised by Westminster in ways that wouldn’t be legal in a federal country.

The coronation of a new sovereign is a vast celebration of this disastrous centralisation of power. It is a glorification of our failing system.

If Britain’s social contract was one worth signing, the sense of solidarity created by national ritual could be positive. Amid environmental crisis, its power to help us preserve things could be vital. But the messages running through the coronation are terrible. The system it preserves is steep class hierarchies, grotesque inequalities and planet-destroying plunder.

Ambivalence is not enough. We can’t just ignore the monarchy. We need to oppose it, overthrow it, and replace it with rituals that really would help us build a better society.

Equal marriage has improved our lives, says LGBT Cubans

Cuba’s new Family Code approves marriage, adoption and assisted reproduction rights for same-sex couples

Eileen Sosin
6 April 2023

Evelin Rosales and Rocío Baró got married in Havana in 2022 |
Courtesy of Massy Carram


Rocío Baró and Evelin Rosales made history last year, when they were among the first same-sex couples to get married in Cuba since equal marriage was legalised in September.

Their first few days as a married couple didn’t feel that different, said Baró, 29, and Rosales, 24, because they have shared a home and daily life from the very start of their relationship, three years ago.

“But from a legal and rights protection point of view, the change is very big,” said Baró, a digital marketing specialist. “When it comes to carrying out any official procedure, being married is not the same as being an ‘unrecognised’ couple.”

Same-sex marriage came into force on the Caribbean island on 27 September 2022, two days after a referendum involving three-quarters of the electorate approved a new Family Code by 66% to 33%. As well as equal marriage, the new code recognises other rights previously denied to the LGBTIQ community, such as adoption and assisted reproduction.

Between 27 September and 9 March this year, 513 same-sex couples have married, according to official figures.

The possibility of allowing same-sex marriage had been raised in 2018, during discussions on reforming the country’s constitution. One draft proposed changing the definition of marriage to “a union between two people” rather than between a man and woman, but this was dropped following pressure from religious fundamentalist groups. Cuban society’s deep-rooted conservatism was also a factor in replacing the definition with vaguer wording.

Same-sex couples had to wait another four years for the new Family Code and its approval by popular vote. “When the law was passed, a lot of doors were opened, not only for me, but for many people who had been waiting years and years for something like this to happen in Cuba,” Rosales, an artist, told openDemocracy.

Cuban LGBTIQ+ magazine Q de Cuir applauded the new legislation, predicting that the number of same-sex marriages will continue to grow, and “an act so simple but so in demand will lose its novelty to settle into the natural rhythm of legal life in the country”.
A new divide

To date, nine of the 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have granted equal marriage rights to same-sex couples: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico and Uruguay.

In Cuba, the possibility of granting equal rights to LGBTIQ couples and families opened up a relatively new divide in a country previously characterised by a wedge between the single-party communist government and political dissident groups, considered illegal by the state.

The process pitched LGBTIQ, feminist and rights-based groups alongside progressive actors within faith communities and the state against anti-rights religious groups, conservative state actors and non-religious but traditionally conservative people, according to a 2020 article by Cuban feminist researcher Ailynn Torres Santana.

Baptist, Evangelical, Pentecostal and Methodist churches showed for the first time how wide their reach is in a country where Catholicism is estimated to be the main religion. They preached in churches, circulated letters and flyers, organised petitions and campaigned on social media against equal marriage and in favour of the “original design” of the family “as God created it”.

When the government announced this issue would be defined in the Family Code and decided by popular vote in a referendum, these Protestant groups followed the examples of other conservative Christian organisations elsewhere in Latin America. That is, they forged alliances and regional connections, and found common ground with the Catholic Church, which has long expressed its rejection of equal marriage.

Same-sex marriage encountered other obstacles: some of the political opposition actively campaigned against it, arguing that other human rights and regime change had priority over it, and some citizens, upset by the current economic crisis, voted against the government’s proposals.

Amid this backlash, one silver lining came in the various initiatives of LGBTIQ activists and their allies, who fought hard to win support for the Family Code. They also criticised the government’s attempt at ‘pinkwashing’, saying that human rights are not subject to the majority’s will and Parliament should have just approved a law on equal marriage.
Rights beyond marriage

For many couples in Cuba, getting married is not only a way to celebrate their love, but also a real chance to realise their life and family goals – such as having children.

Baró and Rosales have talked a lot about becoming mothers. “It gives us tremendous joy that we don’t have to manage this ourselves and have access to assisted reproduction. And also that any boy or girl born as a result is recognised within this marriage, that they know they have two mothers and that's how their family is composed,” Baró said.

Until the change in law, adoption and assisted reproduction were available only to heterosexual couples. The new regulations cover (non-commercial) surrogacy, which applies to people united by family or emotional bonds, women with a medical condition that prevents them from gestating, infertile people, single men and male couples.

Equal marriage also means more freedom for LGBTIQ couples to live abroad legally. Being married, and having the document to prove it, can make all the difference.

“For my husband and I, being married is of great importance in practical terms,” Adiel González, a theologian and LGBTIQ activist now living in Brazil, told openDemocracy. To bring his husband over to Brazil, he can now apply for a family reunification visa.

Laura Bustillo, a camera operator who moved to Spain with her girlfriend last year, explained the migration process has been difficult for them. Her girlfriend has a scholarship so can apply for residency status –that could have been extended to Bustillo if they had been married before leaving Cuba. But they didn’t. The timing was unfortunate, she said: “We left Cuba on 23 September, just two days before equal marriage was approved.”

Likewise, when Baró went to study in the UK a year ago, Rosales could not travel with her because they were not married. Now, finally, they can exercise a right that should have belonged to them. “If tomorrow I went abroad on another scholarship, Evelin could be with me there, for however long it lasted,” she said.

Some Cubans who have married foreigners abroad have also expressed a desire to have their marriages recognised in Cuba, according to the authorities. One of them is Ernesto Carrodeguas, a Cuban engineer living in Argentina, where he got married in 2011. Now, he would like to get married in his own country.

“My husband, with whom I have lived for almost 23 years, has the right to make decisions about my health, if I can’t,” he told openDemocracy. “And then there are hereditary rights. We live in a world governed by those rights, which have not been full for homosexual relationships. I have all that sorted out in Argentina. In Cuba, not yet.”

For him, same-sex marriage is also a tribute to those who fought for this right for so long. Lawyer Darsi Fernández, who has just married her partner Liliana in Cuba, after 13 years of being together, echoed this point.

“Neither of us has a special appreciation for the concept of marriage,” Fernández told openDemocracy: “We decided to marry as a kind of homage to all the people who couldn't do it, who wanted to and couldn't.”

Fernández and her wife sometimes forget they are married. “I keep introducing Liliana as my girlfriend, and so does she; and we also joke about it: ‘if I knew this, I wouldn't have gotten married!’.”

Years ago, even when he didn’t have a partner, economist Ahmed Ación fantasised about the idea of getting married; he wanted a wedding with an open-top car that would travel all over Havana, for everyone to see. “Now I look at marriage in a more pragmatic way; it is a contract that makes life easier in many ways,” he said.

Whatever the motivation for getting married, the ability to decide and plan is now available to everyone in Cuba.

Wage theft in Qatar didn’t stop with the World Cup

Qatar instituted many labour reforms during the leadup to World Cup. But have they made a difference?

Francis Nanseera
3 May 2023, 

Delivering food in Doha, Qatar in October 2022 |
Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images. All rights reserved

Francis Nanseera is a 36-year-old former migrant worker who has returned to his country of origin in Eastern Africa after spending nine months in Qatar. This is the story of his experience, told in his own words.

The people who say the World Cup made things better for workers in Qatar are probably tourists. Their experiences are coloured by visits to new places, shaped by interesting scenery, and marked by good memories. I know, because I’m one of the people who toiled to make those experiences possible.

Qatar made the World Cup a success. It was a splendid show. The fans enjoyed themselves in their designated places, while the workers, hidden away in filthy labour camps, stayed comfortably out of sight. Fans from every corner of the world were welcomed, while migrant workers were treated as something to be ashamed of.

The charade is over now. The spectacle is long done. But plenty of migrant workers remain in Qatar. And they are still suffering.

When dreams fall apart

I first arrived in Qatar in April 2022, seven months before the World Cup began. I had lost my job during the pandemic, and chose to make the journey so that I could provide for myself and my family. Arriving in Qatar filled me with hope.

My first impressions were positive. I was pleased by how advanced the infrastructure was, and felt a sense of promise that this would be my workplace for the next few months. Even seeing the police every five kilometres made me happy. It was different from what I felt back home in Eastern Africa. There the police presence bothered me, but in Qatar it gave me a sense of safety and security. I thought it meant that I could easily report an incident at a moment’s notice.

I will never understand why this level of violence gets meted out on people who are not threats.

How wrong I was. During my nine months there I filed numerous complaints, but never received a single reply. The police did not honor the experiences of people who did not speak Arabic. Instead they arrested us, maybe deported us, if we dared to file a report against our employer. It happened to me. I was arrested, cuffed, taken away to a filthy facility, and physically assaulted by the police. My colleagues suffered similar experiences.

I will never understand why this level of violence gets meted out on people who are not threats in any way. On normal people, on labourers, who are simply there to perform menial, relatively uninteresting work for the benefit of the people in Qatar.

Hell on a scooter

I was employed by Infinity Delivery Services, a subcontractor for the food delivery company Talabat. Owned by German company Delivery Hero, Talabat is like Deliveroo or Uber Eats for the Gulf states.

My job started in the summer, when the daytime temperature in Doha is usually somewhere in the 40s (100°+ F). It is a blinding heat, and enduring it during my 12-hour shifts left me dangerously dehydrated. The orders usually came from high-end restaurants. It filled me with humiliation to arrive, dripping with sweat, in a weather-beaten uniform carrying a bag covered in dust from the sandstorms outside.

Infinity treated us so negligently that if someone fell sick, they’d have to beg medication off others who had previously been in hospital. I’ve often wondered what the Germans would think if they knew how it was for us. I like to think that they would feel for us. At any rate, I can’t imagine that if we were working over there, with the original company, they would ever treat us the way Infinity did.

I never saw a penny for the months I spent working in the service of Talabat. My contract said I would be paid 1800 Qatari rials a month, or about $500. After arriving in Qatar an account was opened for me that, I soon found out, I could neither control nor access. I received notifications that money was being transferred into that account, but without a way to get to it the money never became mine. This did not just happen to me. It was the same for a team of over 160 riders.

We mainly survived on freebies and tips, and supported each other through it all by pooling funds and shopping collectively. We had one meal a day or, at times, no meal at all. It was only when the human rights organisation FairSquare intervened and asked Talabat to take charge that the situation improved. But I was deported shortly after that.

I couldn’t tell them I was going through the worst experience of my life.

After a few months without a single penny to make it worth my while, my mental health deteriorated. It became so bad, I became afraid of what could happen to me on the road. Delivering food while hungry myself didn’t help. Some customers tipped in appreciation. Others out of pity. They could easily see what was going on – it was reflected in my eyes, my voice, and my body language. I was failing. I couldn’t afford to eat, let alone take care of my little girl or her recently widowed grandmother back home. At one point I went so silent they thought I had abandoned them. I couldn’t tell them I was going through the worst experience of my life.

A support system designed to fail

When I sought help through the proper channels and filed a formal complaint with the Ministry of Labor, I learned there were thousands like me. Had our grievance succeeded, it would have changed our lives. But on the issue of back pay we’ve been given nothing. Not from the Qatari government. Not from Infinity Delivery Services. Not from Talabat or Delivery Hero.

If we were to receive the money we are owed by Infinity, it would be enough to set up small businesses in our home countries. We could live better lives and meet the goals that took us to Qatar in the first place. I could pay my daughter’s school fees and look after her granny, who cared for her while I was overseas.

Out there in Qatar, it is risky for us. My colleagues and I were not only fending for ourselves, but for our families back home. Your family expects you to take care of them when you migrate. We cannot afford mental health counsellors to cope with the trauma we experienced. The only thing that can help us to recover, if just a bit, is being paid what we are owed. We went out there and came back with nothing. Instead of being paid, I was treated as a criminal.

My time came an end when I was arrested and detained in January 2023. While in detention I was interrogated by an official who said he was from the Ministry of Labour. He promised to get in touch with my employer and demand they give me an ATM card. I never saw him again. I was deported that very night.

Instead of being paid, I was treated as a criminal.

My friend and colleague Hamza once told me that Qataris are not interested in us, our health, or our lives. He’s dead now, killed in a traffic accident while driving for Talabat. Even after months of unpaid salaries he continued to work, living off the tips he received. They were his only income.

I’ve come to realise this: Hamza was right.

Since the World Cup, Qatar has continued with a modern-day slave trade as the rest of the world looks on. They’ve announced a lot of changes, but that’s only to impress the world. Behind the façade of reform, workers are still chained to their employers with fake certificates and tied visas. Qatar is a safe place to visit – but not in which to work.

Nothing has changed. A worker can be labeled a ‘runaway’ if they try to escape their employer. They cannot change companies if mistreated, or leave a job as one would elsewhere in the world. Their complaints will not be heard.

I think about the workers who drove buses during the World Cup. These people – hundreds of them – were highly visible to fans and tourists during the World Cup. The world saw them. Yet in all likelihood they still haven’t been paid.

Editor’s note: We have published this personal testimonial so that the author could express his experiences in Qatar in his own words. We have not been able to verify the exact details of his version of events, beyond corroborating reports by the human rights organisation FairSquare.

openDemocracy contacted Talabat, its parent company, Delivery Hero, and Infinity Delivery Services, with a request for comment, but had not received a response at the time of publishing. In a communication with FairSquare, Talabat stated it is engaging strongly with the allegations put forward and had “terminated its agreement for cause with the Infinity entities based on such delayed payments.” Talabat and Delivery Hero also informed FairSquare that they can confirm the central allegations and have launched an investigation. They stated that the Ministry of Labour has also launched an official investigation in the organisation’s practices. Infinity Delivery Services informed FairSquare that they were “shocked and astonished” by allegations of wage theft, but did not provide evidence to refute the claims.

Ethiopia, Oromo rebels week-long talks end without deal

THURSDAY MAY 04 2023

Members of the Oromo Ethiopian community in Lebanon protest the death of musician and activist Hachalu Hundessa on July 5, 2020. Talks between the Ethiopian federal government and the Oromo Liberation Army ended on May 3, 2023 without any major breakthrough.

 PHOTO | ANWAR AMRO | AFP

Summary

The talks were largely mediated by Norway and Kenya.

Both parties were represented by a team of six delegates and mediators each.

The Ola armed group has been fighting Ethiopia's government since the 1970s for self-determination of Oromia.

By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE
More by this Author

The first round of talks between the Ethiopian federal government and rebel group, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) ended Wednesday without any major breakthrough.

However, the two sides expressed commitment to continue engaging in dialogue to peacefully end the long-running conflict in the Oromia region.

The negotiations have been going on for nine days since Tuesday of last week in Tanzania's semi-autonomous region of Zanzibar.

"While the talks have been largely constructive, unfortunately, it was not possible to reach an agreement on some issues during this round of the talks" Ethiopia’s prime minister’s national security adviser Redwan Hussein tweeted.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. PHOTO | AFP

"Both parties have acknowledged the need to continue these talks with a view to resolving the conflict permanently and peacefully," he added.

Related

Kenya, Norway mediate Oromo peace talks

TPLF: Party at heart of Ethiopia's war

Read: Ethiopia says Oromiya rebels killed 50 people

Ethiopia committed

Redwan, who was in the government’s negotiating team, reaffirmed Addis Ababa's firm commitment to the peaceful resolution of the conflict in accordance with the constitution and within the framework of fundamental principles that have guided this far.

He extended gratitude to those who have facilitated and hosted the talks without mentioning them by names.

The talks were largely mediated by Norway and Kenya, according to rebel sources.

In a separate statement later Wednesday, OLA said the initial round of talks concluded with some progress, but no agreement was reached on key political issues.

The rebel group expressed its determination to find a political solution to the conflict.

"The OLF-OLA would like to take this opportunity to reiterate its commitment to the peaceful resolution of the conflict through an honourable political settlement," OLA's Spokesperson Odaa Tarbii said.

People ride in the back of a pick-up van in Addis Ababa in celebrations a day before the return of formerly banned Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) to Ethiopia on September 14, 2018. PHOTO | AFP

OLA further expressed its gratitude to those who facilitated and hosted the talks.

Both parties did not state on which political issues they differ to agree on, nor did they disclose agendas they discussed on.

Read: Ethiopia faces challenge disarming militias

Meeting extended

The meetings were initially planned to end by the weekend but were extended by few more days.

According to sources close to the matter, Kenya and Norway played a leading mediation role in the first week-long negotiations.

It is not yet known where and when the next round of talks will take place.

Both parties were represented by a team of six delegates and mediators each.

Ethiopian government's negotiating team includes the country's Justice Minister Gedion Timotheos and the prime minister's national security adviser Redwan Hussein, both of whom were previously negotiating with Tigray forces.

It is to be recalled that Redwan on November 4, 2022 led the Ethiopian negotiating team that agreed on a permanent ceasefire with Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), with whom the nation's government had fought a two-year war from November 2020.

Read: Ethiopia region’s biggest military spender in 2022

OLA on its side is represented by their army commander's advisor Jiregna Gudetta, a historian Prof Muhammad Hassan, and Abdi Taha.

The OLA armed group has been fighting Ethiopia's government since the 1970s for self-determination of Oromia, the most populous and largest region in the Horn of Africa nation.

The rebels, who fight for the self determination of the Oromo people, largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, intensified their fighting in the last four years in a bid to topple Prime Minister Abiy's central government.

OLA was designated by Addis Ababa as a terrorist entity in May 2021.

“Caporalato”, the crooked system behind Europe’s kiwi fruit

Italy is Europe's leading kiwi producer and the third in the world. From the province of Latina come Zespri kiwis, sold across the continent. The industry relies on Indian pickers, underpaid and unprotected, whose welfare is delegated to shady third parties. Independent Italian publication IrpiMedia investigates.

Published on 4 May 2023 
Charlotte Aagaard, Kusum Arora, Francesca Cicculli, Stefania Prandi - IrpiMedia (Roma-Milano)
Translated by Harry Bowden
 

Kiwi field in Latina, Lazio| Photo: Stefania Prandi

With a low voice, hunched shoulders and glazed eyes, Gurjinder Singh recounts fifteen years of exploitation in the kiwi fields of Latina province in Italy’s Lazio region. Sitting in a bar in the central square of Cisterna di Latina, he has just finished work.

Gurjinder is fifty years old and has worked for several firms in the area, earning between €5 and €6 per hour. In the smaller ones he never had a contract and received his pay in cash at the end of the day. Recently, he worked in a company where over 70 workers were employed. They were supervised in groups by foremen who often insulted them and threatened to beat them up. His is not an isolated case.

Exploitation in the kiwi chain

In 2021 Italy exported 320,000 tonnes of kiwi fruit to fifty countries, for a turnover of over €400 million. This made it Europe's leading producer and the third in the world after China and New Zealand. Lazio is Italy's top region for growing the "green berry". Globally, one third of all retail-marketed kiwis come from the multinational Zespri. Founded in New Zealand, it is a market leader and present in six countries. In Italy alone it accounts for almost 3000 hectares of fields, plus hundreds of local producers and thousands of labourers.

It is difficult to know the exact number of farm workers employed in the kiwi harvest because "they often work illegally," explains Laura Hardeep Kaur, a trade unionist with FLAI CGIL in Latina province. Most of the labourers are Indians from Punjab, of Sikh religion.

According to Italian social-security data, there are approximately 9,500 Indian labourers in Latina, with more than one million days registered in fixed-term contracts. Marco Omizzolo, a migration specialist at La Sapienza University in Rome, estimates that there are about 30,000 Sikhs in the area. He is under protection after receiving threats for his efforts to fight the "caporalato" system – a designation for abusive labour – in Lazio's Agro Pontino (Pontine Marshes). Included in the estimate are those without residence permits, residents in other provinces, and those who have recently arrived but have yet to be counted.

More : The cheap labour behind the juicy business of Greek “red gold”

From more than fifty interviews conducted for this investigation in Italy and in India, between May and December 2022 – with workers, trade unionists, researchers, Indian families, Punjab travel agents and intermediaries – a picture emerges of singularly undignified working conditions. It is one of starvation-level wages, irregular contracts and the constant threat of violence. There is also the never-ending blackmail linked to the residence permit, which is impossible to renew without a company providing a formal job contract.

Wages are never more than €7 per hour, and tend to be lower, averaging between €5 and €6 – well below the approximately €9 gross per hour established by the provincial contract as the basic wage of an agricultural worker. The stratagem of so-called "grey work" is often used – the payment of wages partly regularly and partly in the black. It is a widespread system among entrepreneurs in the area, enabling them to pay lower social levies and taxes while maintaining a formal regularity that makes controls more difficult. Other abuses also seem commonplace: dismissals without justification, inadequate sanitary facilities, excessively short breaks, and a lack of – theoretically compulsory – personal protective equipment such as gloves and masks.

The business where Gurjinder Singh worked for three years sells kiwis to Zespri. In the fields, the "caporale" (supervisor) filmed him three times while he stopped to drink or because something got into his eyes. The videos served – at least that's what the supervisor threatened – as "proof" of his inefficiency, to be handed over to the head of the company. The "warning" could also serve to justify not paying other workers their full wages.

Stories of abuse by bosses and supervisors are frequent among the area's Sikh community. There have even been cases of punitive attacks on labourers who have tried to rebel. Some have been hit by cars as they cycled to the fields, others robbed and beaten up, or – on at least one occasion – threatened in front of their home with a shotgun.

Asked why he did not leave, Gurjinder Singh replies: "I had no choice, I had to earn for my four children and my wife. They stayed in India, I haven't seen them for thirteen years."
The responsible parties

From September to November, crossing the province of Latina means immersing oneself in a landscape of kiwi fields and coloured crates, called "bins" in the parlance. Each colour of bin corresponds to a Producers' Organisation (OP), cooperatives which take charge of the kiwis destined for the foreign market. Thirteen of these have a licence to sell to Zespri.

9 September 2022. In the province of Latina, there are many piles of empty kiwifruit bins. Harvesting bins are distributed to small and medium enterprises. When filled with kiwis, bins are transported to cooperative warehouses where they are packaged and marketed throughout Europe. | Photo: Stefania Prandi

The multinational is best known for its yellow-fleshed variety, the "SunGold", the most widely planted in Agro Pontino (69%, the rest being the green variety). Zespri is the owner of the international patent of the same name and only allows its plants to be cultivated on the basis of a contract. It determines the number of hectares and licences for cultivation, distributing them to consortia or cooperatives which, in turn, seek out farmers. The local producers do not pay for the licence, but are required to become members of the cooperatives that bear the costs of the packaging.

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“Caporalato”, the crooked system behind Europe’s kiwi fruit - VoxEurop