State Papers 1990: Joe Biden motion on Birmingham Six added to growing pressure on UK

President-elect Joe Biden speaks at The Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del., Tuesday, Dec 22, 2020. Picture: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

SUN, 27 DEC, 2020 - 
SEAN MCCARTHAIGH
IRISH EXAMINER

A resolution proposed by US president-elect, Joe Biden, in March 1990 on the Birmingham Six while a US senator added to growing pressure on the British government to re-examine the group’s conviction for the largest ever IRA bomb attack in Britain.

State papers released under the 30-year rule by the National Archives show a Department of Foreign Affairs memo listing Biden’s intervention as one example of mounting international action seeking a fresh inquiry on the case.

Biden, who had unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination to contest the 1988 US presidential election two years earlier, was the second-ranking Democrat on the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee at the time.

The resolution proposed by Biden on March 9, 1990, which secured 13 co-sponsors including other leading Irish-American politicians, Senators Edward Kennedy and Patrick Moynihan, called for a re-opening of the case and for US president, George Bush, to raise it with the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher
.
The Birmingham Six outside the Old bailey in London, after their convictions were quashed.
Left-right: John Walker, Paddy Hill. Hugh Callaghan, Chris Mullen MP, Richard McIlkenny,
Gerry Hunter and William Power.

It was similar to a motion that had been tabled by US Congressman and chairman of the Friends of Ireland, Brian Donnelly, two months earlier which also called for the quashing of the convictions.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it understood that the British Embassy in Washington had actively lobbied against the motion.

The Birmingham Six – Hugh Callaghan, Gerard Hunter, Paddy Hill, John Walker, Richard McIlkenny and William Power – were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 for two IRA bomb attacks on pubs in Birmingham on November 21, 1974 which killed 21 people.

Their convictions were based on forensic evidence and confessions that were contested from the outset of the case.

A newsletter published by the Birmingham Six Committee in April 1990 noted that Donnelly’s motion was “more radical” than Biden’s


.
Staff photographer Denis Minihane's picture of the Birmingham Six
following their release at the Old Bailey in London.

However, Paddy McIlkenny, Richard’s brother, who had campaigned for the group’s release, said the support of leading US politicians in early 1990 had given an important boost to their campaign and said the two resolutions by Biden and Donnelly would generate more publicity when they were debated in the US Congress and Senate.

“That will be very embarrassing for the British Government,” McIlkenny said.

A short time later, the British Home Office ordered a fresh police inquiry into the case following the submission of new evidence by the men’s solicitor, Gareth Peirce, which subsequently led to it being referred to the Court of Appeal for a second full hearing.

McIlkenny admitted being sceptical about the outcome of the police review as he believed its announcement was timed to defuse mounting pressure from the US.

The convictions of the Birmingham Six were finally declared unsafe and quashed by the Court of Appeal in March 1991.

Opinion
Editorial

Sliding into isolation: Russia and the world

Published: Dec 26,2020


‘A letter to Russia’s enemies’. — Open Democracy

While losing leverage on its neighbours, Putinist Russia has adopted a means of exerting influence and exercising control that is more characteristic of the secret police than diplomats. Only if Russia transforms into a genuine social democracy at home will we see change in its external actions, writes Kirill Kobrin

SINCE Peter the Great, Russia has had two types of foreign policy. The first type is ideological, the other is pragmatic or realpolitik, as it was called in the 19th century.


Naturally, neither one nor the other has ever existed in its purest form. In practice, ideologically driven policies have often proven to be quite down to earth, while pursuing practical tasks has sometimes led the state into the ideological wilds. But still, as tendencies — or rather, as intentions — these two types of foreign policy can be found in any period of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet history.

The following discussion about the foreign policy features of Putin’s Russia will be conducted with an eye to the middle of the 19th century and the reign of Nicholas I.

The sense of stability

THERE is a great temptation to think in terms of so-called historical analogies. In this case, the temptation is especially strong. Here are just a few points of comparison between Putin and Nicholas I. A Russian ruler who has been in power for more than 20 years. A regime propped up by official censorship, criminal prosecution of political dissenters, and an ideology of state conservatism. (After all, it was under Nicholas I that count Uvarov coined the famous triune formula ‘orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality’.) Wars in the Caucasus. The stupid sadism of the sentences handed out to alleged radicals, as in the New Greatness case today, and 170 years earlier, in the case of the Petrashevsky Circle, among others. Finally (and here the Russian liberal nourishes a faint hope) there is Crimea, imagined as a symbol of ultimate collapse. Some people think nowadays that Crimea will one day be the end of Putin, as it was for Nicholas I, who died of pneumonia at the end of the Crimean War.

Of course, historical analogies are a way of deceiving ourselves, nothing more. ‘History is a metaphor for our consciousness,’ said the philosopher Alexander Pyatigorsky. He was right. On the other hand, the metaphor does exist in our public consciousness, and it is exceptionally strong: all of us — society and the authorities — act out our hypotheses about reality, which are shaped, in particular, by ideas about history. In terms of historical metaphors that have become ideological fads, influences, and sometimes even constructs, our comparison of the first 20 years of the 21st century with the middle of the 19th century does makes sense when it comes to what is happening now with the Putin regime’s international policy, and what may happen to all these things soon.

The historical comparison is especially apt if we note the oscillation between ‘ideology’ (lofty) and ‘realpolitik’ (pragmatic) in Putin’s foreign policy. Nicholas I considered himself the sovereign heir of Peter the Great and the successor to the ‘chivalric’ principles of Paul I. He adopted an expansionist approach towards the Ottoman empire, passing it off as a commitment to the sacred cause of protecting Orthodox Christians. In Europe, Russia played the role of a distant, not very pleasant relative from whom you never knew what to expect.

Despite seemingly decent relations with Prussia, Austria, and (before the 1830 July Revolution) France, and its defence of the legitimist values of the conservative Holy Alliance, which, after 1825, seemingly no one had any use for except the Russian emperor himself, Russia slowly withdrew from the system of international relations, from the ‘concert of continental powers,’ and it did so of its own free will. Relations with Great Britain were altogether strained over the ‘Eastern question.’ This is not to mention France: first the overthrow of its Bourbon monarchy and then, in 1848, the overthrow of the monarchy as such turned the country into a personal nemesis of Nicholas I. The French retaliated by supporting the rebellious Poles in 1831 and taking in Russian political exiles.

The more powerful self-isolating Russia seemed, the worse it fared in the international arena. The situation was not saved even in 1849, when the Russian army aided Austria in quelling an uprising in Hungary. The European revolutions of 1848–1849 played a fatal role in Russian history. On the one hand, Nicholas I tightened the screws inside the country, finally alienating the educated class with his senselessly cruel persecution of ‘malcontents.’ On the other, Russia earned itself the nickname ‘the gendarme of Europe.’ At the first opportunity, European countries and the Ottoman empire organised an anti-Russian coalition, which, given Austria and Prussia’s hostile neutrality towards the Russian tsar, brought Russia to disaster in the Crimean War. The ‘Don Quixote of autocracy,’ Nicholas I either died or committed suicide in the finale of his infamous Crimean campaign.

We should also note the following quite important historical circumstance. The west’s current nationalist right-wing populist wave is largely based on reviving the ideological principles of the mid-19 century. The ‘traditional values’ to which Orban and Kaczynski appeal today are an invention of the Romantic era, and the ‘national spirit’ hails from the same place, from the time of so-called national revivals. This is not to mention Russian ideological constructs that until recently looked like mouldy relics of pre-Soviet times, but suddenly seem relevant again. For example, the disputes between ‘westerners’ and ‘Slavophiles’ about Russia’s ‘special path,’ and, of course, ‘orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality.’ Naturally, the world today is completely different from the time of the opera ‘A Life for the Tsar’ and field marshal Radetzky. But the zeal with which our world dresses up in the uniforms and tailcoats of the 19th century is extremely curious.



Putin’s foreign policy has always been hostage to ‘stability,’ another echo of the Tsarist regime, although ‘stability’ is not even an ideological postulate, rather a sentiment. From the early 2000s, ‘stability’ was imagined both as post-Soviet Russia’s only worthy goal and its best means of conducting policy. But, here, in contrast to the century before last, Putin’s ‘stability’ was, as it were, uprooted from the ideological field. It was painted neither communist red, nor anti-communist white. ‘Stability’ was not supposed to have any positive content, only negative content.

Stability equals no instability, period. Or, rather, Russia’s 21st century stability is the opposite of the ‘reckless 1990s’. Hence the supposedly pragmatic nature of the country’s policies, both domestic and foreign, which have been focused on immediate problems and sometimes medium-term objectives, but not on long-term strategic goals. Such opportunism was especially palpable in Russia’s foreign policy in the noughties. All possibilities were probed, including joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, but none of them was perceived as absolute. Everything depended on the balance of power, first, within Russia, and on the propaganda campaigns triggered by those exigencies.

A lonely Doctor Evil

THAT was how things were, and they have remained this way. The Soviet Union collapsed, leaving behind two geopolitical layers in which the emergent Russian Federation found itself cocooned. The outer layer, consisting of the former Warsaw Pact countries, quickly defected almost en masse to the side of the Cold War’s winners. It was no longer possible to win them back in the late 1990s because Russian influence there was weak, mainly consisting of corrupt financial schemes.

The internal post-Soviet geopolitical layer (the former Soviet republics), in turn, was divided into two parts. With the west’s urgent help, the Baltic states quickly moved from the inner layer to the outer layer, although not completely, due to the neglected issue of their Russian-speaking populations, an issue that the ethnically-oriented ruling classes of these states did not want to solve, resulting in a profound and painful problem. Russia has exploited it to try to interfere in the affairs of the Baltic countries, but not very successfully. Russian policy towards the other countries in this internal geopolitical layer has been mostly ineffective. The Putin regime can only boast of a friendship with Armenia and several Central Asian states, which use Russia rather than support it.

As I write this, the Russian authorities are trying to make the most of the situation in Belarus, but they are doing it rather clumsily — both the Europeans and the Belarusians themselves are simply afraid of another episode of military aggression on Moscow’s part. If that happens, Minsk will be lost to Russia just as Kyiv and Tbilisi were lost. As for the so-called far abroad, Russia has almost no patrons, friends, or even clients there. Among the latter, one can name only the bloody Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. China has been pragmatically exploiting Moscow’s weakness, nothing more. The American ruling class and the new US president will never forgive the Putin regime for its interventions (even if they were of a hypothetical nature only) in the 2016 US elections and many other things. This is not to mention the EU countries, especially now, after Alexey Navalny’s poisoning.

In discussions of any truly global issue, from climate change to the US-China conflict, Russia’s opinion plays absolutely no role. The only global role left for president Putin is that of a universal scarecrow, a slightly comical but relatively dangerous Doctor Evil who dispatches clowns to sprinkle poison on doorknobs in quiet English towns, or to poison his own opponents at home. Or steal a COVID-19 vaccine from the west. Or hack into the computers of employees of the US state department. Or to organise a coup in tiny Montenegro for some reason. But, if you subtract the cinematic trappings, the truth is quite plain and sad.

When a country finds itself in such circumstances in international relations, it is usually called ‘isolation’.

The sea and the cliff

IN THE case of Putin’s Russia, it is mainly a matter of self-isolation, or more precisely, of isolation resulting from the mutation of a certain foreign policy direction. Embarked on as something absolutely practical, in the spirit of realpolitik, it eventually turned into a sinister ideological quixotism, an attempt to attain greatness using unsuitable means. Let us take a closer look at how cautious pragmatism transformed into great-power fanfare.

I would argue that the very nature of the concept of ‘stability’ has largely caused this transformation. While losing leverage on its neighbours — and on countries distant but important — Putinist Russia has adopted a means of exerting influence and exercising control that is more characteristic of the secret police than of diplomats. This method has involved maintaining hotbeds of instability in countries that Moscow wanted to keep in its sphere of influence. It has often artificially fuelled these conflicts for decades, thus getting the opportunity to act as an arbiter, as a guarantor of stability in particular zones of instability.

Back in the 1990s, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and Transnistria in Moldova were such hotspots. The 2008 Russo-Georgian War was the apotheosis of this policy: it transpired that by exploiting such hotbeds of instability, the Kremlin really could keep Russia’s neighbours on its hook, if not under its control. Then the Putin regime moved from maintaining such hotbeds to igniting them, thus launching the war in Donbas in 2014. Simultaneously, the regime moved from the concept of ‘protecting our borders from the enemy’ to direct aggression by occupying Crimea. From the viewpoint of realpolitik, these actions were completely senseless: they forever drove a wedge between Russia and Ukraine (or, at least, the current Russia and the current Ukraine), and Russia and the west, while generating intractable conflicts on Russia’s own borders. The Putin regime got its hands on its own Ulster and its own Palestine when it invaded Donbas.

Interestingly, these foreign policy mistakes, if not crimes, were made in obeisance to considerations that were anything but practical. Putin’s stability has ceased to be hollow. It has been filled with a Russian version of western right-wing conservatism, mixed with the ideological principles of Nicholas I’s foreign policy, especially in the last decade of his reign. The Putin regime fancies itself an indestructible cliff rising above the stormy waters of a radicalised west, as described in Fyodor Tyutchev’s famous 1848 poem ‘The Sea and the Cliff’:

Waves of violent surf,

Constantly rolling,

Roaring, whistling, screaming, howling,

Smash into the coastal cliff,

But calm and haughty,

Not driven mad by the waves’ whims,

Immobile, unchanging,

Coeval of the universe,

You stand, our giant!

This messianic embrace of stability and the reckless belief in the invincibility of their own political system gave the Russian leadership the illusion of their own impunity, which, of course, was facilitated by the weakening of the United States during the Trump presidency and the European Union around Brexit. Consequently, the Putin regime convinced itself of its own greatness and began acting accordingly. The rhetorical cover for the cautious foreign policy of a vulnerable and not very influential country eventually became that policy’s content.

From isolation to a post-conservative international

THIS is how the current, extremely dangerous situation has come about. In a sense, the Putin regime today has moved from combating the import of democratic (‘colour’) revolutions (and thus imitating Nicholas I) to importing counter-revolution. The problem is that there is no need to import counter-revolution anywhere. No one invites Russian soldiers to quell their indignant subjects, not even Alyaksandr Lukashenka (at least not yet). Moreover, the countries neighbouring Russia are, for the most part, ideologically as conservative (ie, new-model right-wing populist conservative) as it is, or even more so.

Semi-official and official ethnic nationalism in Ukraine and Hungary, respectively, is much more viral than in Russia. Official support for ‘traditional values’ in Poland and Lithuania would give the ultra-conservative Russian member of parliament Yelena Mizulina a run for her money. At the same time, ideological kinship does not make today’s Russia a political ally of these countries. Suffice it to recall Poland, to which liberals like Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron are incomparably closer than Putin. The result of 20 years of foreign policy is that Russia is perceived as an outsider — often as an enemy — even by those who inhabit the same ideological landscape.

It is unclear how Russia can exit this impasse. Two possible options stand out. Either the country’s self-isolation becomes definitive, and Russia comes more to resemble North Korea than Tsarist Russia. Or, a new ideological consensus within the country (no matter whether it happens under a late-period Putin or without him) will enable it to blend a cautious, culturally conservative ‘liberal westernism’ with a rejection of everything truly revolutionary in the modern world, especially feminism, environmentalism, anti-racism, and socialism. Russia would then be able to build a bridge to similar forces in Europe and America, and be involved in establishing a cutting-edge post-conservative international.

Russia could thus regain some measure of international influence, but the price for it certainly would be many acquisitions of the last 10 years, including territorial ones. While it seems purely ideological, this course would sooner or later mutate into a realpolitik, however, depending on the new balance of power both in the world and in Russia itself. In any case, the rundown two-stroke engine of Russian foreign policy will continue to rattle on. It can only be stopped by a total reform of Russia’s socio-economic and political system, only by transforming the Russian state into a true social democracy — one that would express the real will and interests of society, including in foreign policy.

OpenDemocracy.net, December 23. Kirill Kobrin is a writer, historian and journalist. He is an editor of the Russian intellectual journal Neprikosnovennyi Zapas.

Is society collapsing?
....there’s still a few days left in a year that has exposed 

the weaknesses of the world system as never before

Kirkpatrick Sale | Published: 00:00, Dec 27,2020

Abandoned passenger train car, Astoria, Oregon. — Counter Punch/Jeffrey St Clair.

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, when the high-tech Second Industrial Revolution had just begun, I made a bet with an editor from Wired magazine that global society led by the United States would collapse in the year 2020 from a confluence of causes created by modern technology out of control.

It would be, I said, a mix of ecological disasters including earth overheating and polar ice melting, political disintegration including failed states worldwide and uprisings in major cities, and economic chaos including insurmountable debt and a stock-market crash and depression. He said, ‘We won’t even be close’, and slapped down a $1,000 check on my desk. Though a tidy sum in those days, I matched it and we settled on a mutual editor friend as the arbiter, to make the call when the time came.

That time, the end of the year 2020, has now indeed come. Who wins?

As to ecological disaster, the evidence is ample even though the response to it has been negligible. The ten hottest years on earth have been between 2005 and 2020, with 2019 the hottest ever recorded and 2020 very close. That means ice melting at a record rate, with significant loss at glaciers around the world, in Greenland, and at the poles, with ice going three times as fast in the last three years in the Antarctic as just ten years ago and the Arctic in what a scientist at the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University has called a ‘death spiral.’ The UN climate panel, which puts the blame for global warming on ‘greenhouse gasses’, says these must cease by 2030, a goal that not a single major country is capable of meeting.

Add to this the assault on the world’s oceans through acidification and overheating, including 60 per cent of the world’s fisheries fished to capacity and 33 per cent overfished, and the extinction of species at a rate that one scientific team in 2017 said offers ‘a dismal picture of the future of life’, and it may fairly be said that an ecological collapse is well underway if not yet quite complete.

As to political disintegration, take first the alarming state of the world where no less than 65 countries are now at war and there are said to be 638 other conflicts (involving separatist militias, armed drug bands, terrorist organizations, and the like) now raging. An annual index of ‘fragile states’ that came out earlier this year found 24 countries at a ‘high warning’ level, 22 at an ‘alert’ level, 5 at ‘high alert’, and 4 ‘very high’— amounting to 30 per cent of the world’s governments being equivalent to failed states. And that was before the pandemic hit, a catastrophe that has added almost all third-world and a few developed countries to that list.

But the really interesting case of political collapse is right here. The inability of our political institutions to cope with the coronavirus for a year, and the spread now at record levels, and then the inability of the nation to hold an election without at least the strong suspicion of fraud, has certainly undercut a confidence in national government that has grown increasingly meager in the last few decades anyway. In the Wall Street Journal recently Gerald Seib pointed out that ‘this year’s election can be seen as the culmination of a two-decade period of decline in faith in the basic building blocks of democracy’ — quite an obituary for a system once happy to proclaim its virtues around the world.

Add to that a general feeling that the Federal government just isn’t working, or as the Pew Research people put it, only 17 per cent of Americans trust the government ‘to do the right thing just about always.’ It seems clear that loyalty to a cause or a race or an ideology is far greater than loyalty to the state, no longer quite seen as legitimate, and many commentators these days suggest that some form of separation, even a civil war, is inevitable. Political collapse, then, if not here would seem to be just around the corner.

And lastly the underlying depression that we have been in since March — despite the frantic gyrations of a central bank-fueled stock market — is just one sign that the American economy, like those of most of the Western world, is foundering. And no wonder: it is straining under the weight of a national debt of at least $27 trillion and national unfunded liabilities of more than $100 trillion, with a GDP of just $21 trillion to manage it with. But we have plenty of company — the world’s debt was a staggering $258 trillion at the start of the pandemic, some 320 per cent bigger than the world’s GDP, meaning we’re all living in a pipe dream unable to pay the piper.

And there’s still a few days left in a year that has exposed the weaknesses of the world system as never before.


CounterPunch.org, December 25,2020. 

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of 12 books over fifty years and lives in Mt Pleasant, South Carolina.

https://www.newagebd.net/

Coronavirus pandemic has exposed inequality in Singapore and Hong Kong. To tackle it, start with wages


While Covid-19 pandemic has made clear the importance of essential workers, showing appreciation should translate into better pay and working conditions

Yew Chiew Ping
Published:  27 Dec, 2020

Street cleaners wait in line to receive free face masks in Hong Kong on February 14. Photo: EPA-EFE

Growing up in Singapore and perhaps other Asian societies, you would have heard your elders warn, “If you don’t study hard, you’ll grow up to be a road sweeper/garbage collector/labourer.”

In these societies, blue-collar jobs have traditionally been seen as undesirable and even a sign of failure in life. While we may be embarrassed to voice such thoughts aloud today, the bias against blue-collar jobs persists.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made clear the importance of essential workers. Grocery clerks had to work harder to replenish supplies after bouts of  panic buying, security personnel are doubling up as temperature screeners, and  cleaners have to disinfect public facilities more frequently. During lockdown, our creature comforts depended on  delivery workers who brought everything we need to our doorstep.


Thanks to these essential workers – whose modest earnings are grossly incommensurate with their contributions to society – the rest of us can carry on with our everyday life with little deprivation in these challenging times.


VIDEO 02:05
Disabled food delivery rider on front line of Malaysia’s fight against Covid-19 pandemic

But how have essential workers fared in this pandemic?

Covid-19 has thrown inequality into sharp relief. The risk of contracting the virus is uneven across society and so is its impact. And it is exactly these blue-collar and essential workers who are the most vulnerable.

Unlike professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs), most essential workers cannot work from home because their job requires their physical presence at the workplace. Yet they may not even be equipped with adequate protective gear.

At the onset of the pandemic when face masks were in  short supply, many cleaners were not provided with sufficient masks. Some could not even afford to buy disposable masks. This was the case in Hong Kong at the beginning of the year when a box of 50 surgical masks cost HK$200 (US$26), forcing the socially disadvantaged to resort to washing and reusing their face masks.

Quitting is not an option for many essential workers despite the job hazards and low pay. The salary of general cleaners in Singapore can be as little as HK$6,970 excluding allowances, in Hong Kong, cleaners are paid around HK$10,200 including allowances.


Hong Kong charity distributes hygiene kits to street cleaners to fight coronavirus
Social distancing is also tricky when you are poor and confined to small spaces. In Hong Kong, the July and August wave of Covid-19 was more severe in low socioeconomic districts and public housing estates, including Tsz Wan Shan in Wong Tai Sin district that has the highest poverty rate. In Singapore, migrant workers’ dormitories with poor living conditions became hotbeds of Covid-19 transmission.

Blue-collar workers also suffered sharper pay cuts and greater job cutbacks. In Singapore, lower-income earners with a monthly salary of under HK$17,435 were more likely to have suffered a pay cut of 10 per cent to over 50 per cent. Non-PMETs also faced a higher rate of job loss in the second quarter of 2020.

Similar trends have been observed in Hong Kong, where the unemployment rate of blue-collar and service workers from August to October was generally higher than that of PMETs.


VIDEO 01:53 Singapore migrant workers under quarantine as coronavirus hits dormitories

If the pandemic has laid bare to us the essentials for a decent life – food security, a clean and safe environment, adequate personal space – then we ought to reflect on how society has fallen short of ensuring that all have access to these essentials. We should accord greater value and respect to the members of society who enable us to live decently, because leading our own life with dignity should not be predicated on others living theirs with less dignity.

This means that we must seriously reconsider our approach towards poverty and inequality. The Singapore government has pledged to improve the living conditions of migrant workers. However, the proposal for a universal minimum wage of HK$7,538 was dismissed in Singapore’s parliament in October. In September, in Hong Kong, business leaders
rejected the call to increase the hourly minimum wage from HK$37.50 to HK$39.

Such resistance to very modest increases in the income of the lowest-paid workers is incongruous with society’s growing appreciation of workers – against the backdrop of Covid-19, eight in 10 Singaporeans have expressed a willingness to pay workers more for essential services.

The pandemic has shown us the importance of what we used to take for granted. As we transition to a post-pandemic world, we could either waste this opportunity for meaningful change, or seize the chance to forge a “new normal” that is more inclusive and compassionate, and less unequal.

Dr Yew Chiew Ping is head of Contemporary China Studies at the Singapore University of Social Sciences

THE BOURGEOIS CLAMOUR FOR THEIR ENTITLEMENTS

Rich people are offering huge sums of money to skip the queue for the coronavirus vaccines.

THE .01% LIKE RUPERT MURDOCH HAVE GOTTEN HIS, SO HAS TRUMP, JOHNSON, GUILIANI 

Wealthy Britons 'are offering private doctors up to £2,000 to jump Covid vaccine queue and get the jabs early'

Dr Roshan Ravindran has told clients they will have to wait their turn for vaccine

He owns private clinic in Wilmslow, Cheshire, and has been offered money 

Vaccine can only be obtained through NHS. More than 355m doses pre-ordered 

AYE AND THERE'S THE RUB, 

AMERICA IS A FREE MARKET WILD WEST FOR HEALTHCARE

By MAX AITCHISON FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

PUBLISHED: 26 December 2020

Rich people are offering huge sums of money to skip the queue for the coronavirus vaccines.

The jabs can currently only be obtained through the NHS, but several private British doctors say they have been bombarded with requests from wealthy individuals offering to pay to have theirs ahead of time.

Dr Roshan Ravindran, owner of Klnik, a private clinic in Wilmslow, Cheshire, claimed some clients had offered £2,000 for injections.


Rich people are offering huge sums of money to skip the queue for the coronavirus vaccines, which can currently only be obtained through the NHS

'People inquiring of it often have had a relative who has passed away – the virus hasn't been selective,' he told The Sunday Times.

'The poor and rich have all been affected and all lacked control. And so now what people are looking for is a degree of control.'

He added: 'It's priceless. I have people with almost infinite money, who would do anything because they've had relatives pass away with Covid.'

But Dr Ravindran has told such clients that they will have to wait their turn.

The Government's vaccines taskforce pre-ordered more than 355 million doses of seven of the most promising vaccine candidates.

Britain was the first country to approve the vaccine manufactured by Pfizer and BioNTech in early December.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine – of which the UK has bought 100 million doses – is expected to be approved in days.

However, Dr Ravindran predicted that private vaccines could arrive within months, with some companies charging as much as £20,000 for the jabs.


The Government's vaccines taskforce pre-ordered more than 355 million doses of seven of the most promising vaccine candidates

'We'll probably start getting a private supply from April. People will come up with a vaccine the Government won't buy – then flood the market. Every drug company is trying to come up with a vaccine.'

Dr Neil Haughton, president of the Independent Doctors' Federation, expressed horror at such a situation.

'We are in a national emergency. If some people were able to jump the queue by paying for it, there'd be a national outcry,' he said.

'We are being very clear that there's absolutely no way round the system – much to their annoyance, sometimes.'

Dr Mark Ali, medical director of the Private Harley Street Clinic, said he is also receiving regular calls from clients anxious to secure the vaccine, but believes the private sector could help the NHS to roll-out the vaccine.

'It is important that elderly and vulnerable people receive the vaccine first, but once that process is up and running, private practice may have a crucial part to play in mass roll-out,' he said.

Delivery drivers working to death amid online shopping boom in S. Korea

Stress and physical strain also has led to 16 deaths so far this year from overwork, 

known as gwarosa in Korea

"We need to work to live. It's ironic that people are dying from it."

By Thomas Maresca

Kim Do-gyun is one of the more than 50,000 delivery drivers working grueling hours as shipments skyrocket during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI

SEOUL, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- While the COVID-19 pandemic has taken an economic toll on many industries, online shopping and delivery services have thrived in this year of shuttered storefronts and social distancing.

In South Korea, however, the delivery drivers at the heart of the pandemic economy say that the boom has left them working brutal hours, with an alarming number of injuries and even deaths on the job.

"This year has been very tough," delivery worker Kim Do-gyun, 48, said as he made deliveries on his route northeast of Seoul on Christmas Eve. "There's no other sector where so many workers have died. It's a serious systematic problem."

Couriers have been logging an average of over 71 hours per week during the COVID-19 era, according to a September survey by the Center for Workers' Health and Safety -- an increase of 30% over pre-virus days.

Stress and physical strain also has led to 16 deaths so far this year from overwork, known as gwarosa in Korean, a union for the drivers says.

The most recent death came this week, when a 34-year-old delivery worker in the city of Suwon was found dead Wednesday at his home. The worker, identified as Mr. Park by the union, had routinely worked from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. and had lost more than 40 pounds since July, according to family members.

Long days such as these have become the norm for the more than 50,000 delivery workers in South Korea such as Kim, who has been a driver for six years.

Kim said he wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to get to the distribution has center where he starts his day before 7 a.m. There, like most couriers, he spends the next several hours sorting his packages as they come tumbling down a conveyor belt -- work that is unpaid, as drivers only receive a commission for each parcel they deliver.

He usually finishes sorting between 1:30 and 2 p.m. before finally beginning his deliveries, which he wraps up each night at 9 or 10 p.m. Kim carries out the routine six days a week, often skipping meals and subsisting on snacks in the cab of his truck.

Profits have soared for South Korea's delivery giants, such as CJ Logistics, Hanshin Shipping and Lotte Global Logistics, on the back of shipments that have grown more than 20% this year, but the benefits have not been trickling down to the drivers.

Only a tiny fraction of the couriers work for the major shipping companies directly; the rest are contract laborers for agencies that act as intermediaries. As such, they remain in a legal limbo without worker protections such as a 52-hour maximum workweek introduced by President Moon Jae-in in 2018.

"The reason why they are working under conditions like this is because the companies do not hire them directly -- they are classified as special workers and do not fall under the Labor Standards Act," said Kang Min-wook, head of training and publicity for the National Association of Delivery Drivers, the union that supports the couriers.

"The companies don't pay them hourly, and they are not protected by the law. So the [courier] companies are making more money, but the workers are not seeing the same benefits," he said.

Delivery drivers are paid by the parcel, a commission that has been squeezed this year by competition between the big courier companies, Kang said. It currently stands at around 65 cents per package.

The couriers have seen their sheer volume of packages delivered rise dramatically this year, according to the September survey. Before the pandemic, an average daily total of deliveries for a driver was 247. This year, it's been 313. On Christmas Eve, Kim had 352 parcels to deliver.

However, drivers face a host of expenses that eat into their earnings. They must supply and maintain their own delivery trucks, as well as pay for everything from packing tape to waybills to the specialized delivery app they use. The couriers also don't receive any paid time off, and most are not covered by accident insurance.

As South Korea dipped into a recession in the first half of the year due to the pandemic and is currently trying to recover from a third wave of the virus, gig workers such as couriers find themselves without many alternatives for employment.

"Most delivery workers used to work in another sector, but now we have nowhere else to go," Kim said. "We're at the end of the road."

Protests, strikes and news coverage has heightened awareness of the plight of the delivery drivers, and the public has responded with social media campaigns and gestures such as leaving thank-you notes and snacks for the couriers.

The government has also begun taking steps to improve the situation, passing legislation earlier this month that will offer unemployment benefits and accident insurance to gig workers beginning later in 2021.

This week, the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced that it would set up a dedicated department for gig workers and more closely regulate delivery companies.

"Currently, anyone can establish a delivery service without restrictions, which limits the protection of delivery workers," Employment and Labor Minister Lee Jae-kap said during a press briefing Monday.

The shipping companies have announced a series of changes, including adopting flexible hours and adding manpower. CJ Logistics, the largest firm in the industry with some 21,000 workers, announced in October it would hire 4,000 more employees to help sort packages.

Kim, however, said he hasn't seen any difference yet in his daily routine.

"The companies have announced the solutions and they say they will take place, but I question whether they'll really happen," said Kim, who is active in the driver's labor union.

"I don't have any hope that things will change unless we fight," he said. "Because if we don't fight against this, nothing will change. Nothing will improve."

In the meantime, Kim said he fully expects there to be more injuries and more cases of gwarosa in the days and weeks ahead.

"I believe there will be more deaths," he said. 

"We need to work to live. It's ironic that people are dying from it."

Seo Jieun contributed

Politico | Remembering Li Wenliang: the Wuhan doctor who warned the world about coronavirus


In China, Li’s passing triggered public outrage over the government’s suppression of vital information in the early days of the pandemic

Months after his death, Li is being remembered for what he was like for most of his life: not a global hero, but a lover of fried chicken and TV dramas


POLITICO
Published:  27 Dec, 2020

Dr Li Wenliang died of coronavirus in February at age 34. Photo: Weibo


This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Audrey Jiajia Li on politico.eu on December 26, 2020.

Dr Li Wenliang was an active user of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, over the past 10 years. He posted his last words on February 1: “Today the nucleic acid test result turns positive,” he wrote of the test that confirmed he had Covid-19. “The dust has settled, and the diagnosis is finally confirmed.” He died less than a week later, at the age of 34.

An ophthalmologist, Li had sought to warn his colleagues at a hospital in Wuhan – the city that was ground zero for the coronavirus outbreak – of the then-unknown disease. In response, the police reprimanded Li for spreading “rumours” about something so real it eventually took his life. In the days and weeks that followed, across China and the world, Li came to be regarded as a courageous whistle-blower and a martyr for freedom of expression.


In China, his passing triggered an unusual level of public outrage over the government’s suppression of vital information in the early days of the pandemic. In a certain way, the outpouring has borne fruit, as over the past 10 months Chinese authorities have become more transparent about the pandemic. The government now releases daily reports about confirmed or suspected Covid-19 cases. Testing has been widely available. And doctors’ and scientists’ professional expertise is treated with well-deserved respect. Compared with the warlike situation at the beginning of the year, most people’s lives are now mostly back to normal.

But that does not mean people have forgotten the important role Li played in drawing attention to the deadly virus. More than 10 months after his death, his presence is still very much alive. As of early December, there were more than 1 million comments under his last Weibo post; only posts by China’s most popular superstars have harvested more responses. Yet the sentiments that drive people to pay homage to him have evolved.

Health workers must have permission to speak freely if China is to learn and move forward after the pandemic
2 Sep 2020


Early on, Weibo users went to Li’s page to express sorry and sympathy. But more recently, they have expressed thanks. “This coming Chinese New Year I will be able to go back home to Wuhan and reunite with my family. Dr Li, thank you,” a Weibo user commented. Others simply go to his Weibo page to talk to him – about everything from who they have a crush on to how their day went to what their wishes are for the next year

After reading his thousands of previous Weibo posts and learning more about the warm and kind soul he was, hundreds of thousands of strangers now regard him as a friend or a peer, even if they’ve never met him. Months after his death, Li is being remembered for what he was like for most of his life: not a global hero, but a lover of fried chicken and soapy TV dramas, just like most Chinese millennials

It is said that in ancient times people would go into the woods to find a “tree hole.” They would tell their secrets to the tree hollow and then fill it with mud so the secrets would be sealed forever. Li’s Weibo account has become, in a sense, a modern-day tree hole – a place for people to share and confide. (Most people on Weibo do not use their real names.)

Coronavirus: can China recover from diplomacy missteps made during the pandemic?
19 Dec 2020

The only time Weibo has seen anything like this kind of very public yet very personal outpouring was eight years ago, after a young Chinese woman suffering from depression died by suicide and left her last words on Weibo. Netizens who also struggled with depression flooded to her page to share their frustration and desperation.

Most people visit Li’s page seeking strength. “Wenliang, please allow me to call you that. I feel so powerless when it comes to life and work, and I always want to change. I think you had those moments too. Next spring, I will leave this city, I’m 40 already, but still am able to gather courage. I should follow my heart, would you agree?” one user posted.

His Weibo has attracted a range of life stories – happy and unhappy, confused and determined – as people grieve, vent, make wishes and seek solace. People also read each other’s stories and encourage one another. If the vibe was mostly sorrow 10 months ago, optimism has gradually found its way back – with a young doctor from Wuhan, perhaps improbably, ushering it in, and helping a nation to cope.

As one commenter said, “2020 was hard for me, but I managed to endure. Although there will be other difficulties ahead, I believe things will get better and better.”

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
COVID vaccines: Prisoners excluded from US plans

Outbreaks of the coronavirus in prisons and jails in the United States have been widespread, but inmates have been neglected as policymakers determine who should be prioritized for vaccinations.



Prisoners face a high risk of getting COVID-19 in US facilities


Inmates of US prisons and jails have largely been left behind as the country rolls out its first set of COVID-19 vaccines. Public health experts and advocates have been pushing for states and the federal government to make this vulnerable population a priority.

More than 1.3 million people are incarcerated in the United States. Onetracking project reported more than 270,000 cases and more than 1,700 deaths in the prison system since April. Inmates are twice as likely to die from the coronavirus as the general population, and 19 of the top 20 hotspots in the US are inside prisons, according to the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice. Poor living conditions and overpopulation have exacerbated the problem.

"They have been the source of so many cases because they are a confined population, because they can't do social separation," Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University, told DW. "They are a high-risk circumstance."

Health experts warn that the consequences could be disastrous if nothing is done to mitigate infections among the incarcerated. The American Medical Association had recommended inmates and correctional workers "should be prioritized in receiving access" to the vaccines in the first phase of inoculations.


Conditions in prisons make preventing the spread of the virus especially difficult

Still, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory committee in mid-December did not recommend prisoners be included in the initial phase. The federal government has largely left state governments on their own to determine how to distribute the vaccines.

"The federal government has mismanaged this process, specifically developing logistics," said Ryan King, director of research and policy at the Justice Policy Institute. "This was avoidable ... there's been a lack of real federal leadership."
Public backlash

A handful of states have added prisoners and staff to the first tier of candidates, but most have not designated them as a priority.

In Colorado health officials had recommended prisoners be part of the second tier of vaccine recipients. That prompted a backlash driven by state Republicans and conservative media. Colorado Governor Jared Polis changed course in early December, saying "there's no way prisoners are going to get it before members of a vulnerable population."

Civil rights advocates are concerned that as the numbers of COVID-19 cases continue to grow, more politicians will cave to public pressure because vaccines and resources are limited.

"Science should dictate this, not politics," says Denise Maes, director of public policy at the ACLU of Colorado. "Science tells us that we do need to start vaccinations in the prisons."
Dangerous jails

Jails, too, are especially risky. They hold suspects for short periods of time — sometimes only for hours — before sending them back into their communities, possibly exposed to infected people.

"Jail settings are heightened because of the degree of people coming in and out," said King. "They are coming from the highest risk environments."

Correctional staff and prison inmates are also constantly being moved to balance out the population size, and in the process, making contact with people outside prison walls. State prisons throughout the country are not taking the necessary measures to protect the public, prisoners or staff, according to DeAnna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadership USA, an organization focused on cutting the prison population.

"They transfer prisoners from facility to facility. They are not testing them," she said. "This is a super-spreader situation."


A court ordered California to reduce the population at San Quentin after a coronavirus outbreak

After a major coronavirus outbreak in San Francisco's San Quentin Prison in late May, the US Appeals Court ordered the facility to cut its population to 1,700 people, or by one half.

Some states have decided to thin out their prison populations in the hopes of creating more space to allow for social distancing. Officials have been releasing prisoners who are either near the end of their sentence or don't pose a threat to the community. In New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy freed more than 2,000 inmates in November to reduce the spread of the coronavirus there.
Stuck in cells

Prisons are facing another ethical dilemma as coronavirus deaths multiply and they impose lockdowns to limit interaction between inmates and staff. Civil rights advocates say that isolating people for long stretches punishes them for something that is not their fault and essentially creates a prison within a prison.

"They are stuck in their cells, and that creates a serious situation," says Maes. "They don't get visitations, outdoor activities or cafeteria time and that cannot be sustained."

Hoskins said prisoners are afraid. They are getting sick and worried they're going to die. It's "like a burning building" that they are stuck inside without any help, she said.

The vaccines could relieve those problems, if prisoners could get them. Advocates say that the handling of the virus in the correctional system is adding stress and unnecessary burdens to inmates' lives and infringing on their rights as human beings.

"You are sentenced to prison, not to die," King said.

SPORTS
Hooligans in 2020: How 'militant neo-Nazis' have spearheaded coronavirus protests

At anti-lockdown protests, hooligans have provided the muscle to break through police lines. They may have their roots in football, but they're now more likely to be found practicing combat sports than on the terraces.



With football matches in Germany taking place behind closed doors since March, many football supporters have found different ways to spend their time. Some have launched initiatives to support vulnerable members of their communities; others have helped develop concepts for financial reform.

But one element has found an alternative pastime, with football hooligans latching on to the "Querdenker" – the so-called lateral-thinkers — who protest government measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus. When a Querdenker demonstration spiraled out of control in Leipzig on November 7, football hooligans were at the forefront.

After police had officially ended the demonstration because attendees failed to maintain social distancing or wear face coverings, hooligans fought police using weapons, pepper spray, pyrotechnics and their fists. The police gave way, and the demonstrators were free to march around the ring road that encircles Leipzig's city center.

It wasn't the first time that football hooligans have acted as the catalyst for politically motivated violence in recent years. In Chemnitz in 2018, far-right hooligans led violent protests following a fatal stabbing in the city. And ahead of the next planned Querdenker event in Dresden in December, images circulated on extreme-right social media channels calling on "Hooligans, Nationalists and Ultras" to gather in the Saxony state capital.
'Militant neo-Nazis'

The Dresden event was ultimately forbidden by the authorities, but who exactly are the hooligans and what have they got to do with measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus?




A call for far-right hooligans to attend a Querdenken event shows suspected members of Leipzig's neo-Nazi hooligan scene at the protest there on November 7

"These hooligans are militant neo-Nazis who provide the muscle for these marches," said Robert Claus, a researcher and author who specializes in right-wing extremism, and who witnessed the events in Leipzig firsthand. "They don't write the speeches, they don't man the info stands: They're there to help the demonstrators break through the police lines."

Claus estimates that as many as 400 hooligans were present in Leipzig, many wearing insignia linking them to various German football clubs. But, more important than their alleged footballing allegiances, according to Claus, are the combat-sports gyms in which the hooligans train.

"When we talk about 'hooligans,' people often think we're talking about football fans, but I don't think that is so important here," Claus said. "What we're talking about is a very specific crossover between militant neo-Nazis and the hooligan scene.

"People take part in combat sports for all sorts of reasons: sport, weight loss, letting off aggression, fitness. But, for militant neo-Nazis, it's about training for political violence and street battles. That is what we saw in Leipzig: several hundred well-organized, well-trained experienced fighters."


Protesters on Leipzig's Augustusplatz

From the terraces to the ring

Among the hooligans present in Leipzig, for instance, were suspected members of the Imperium Fight Team, a mixed martial arts (MMA) team and gym that acts as a networking point for the Leipzig neo-Nazi scene. IFT members are accused of being involved in a neo-Nazi attack on the left-wing alternative Leipzig suburb of Connewitz in 2016, and one member is accused of a racially motivated assault on a bouncer outside a Mallorca nightclub in 2019.

"There is a well-established fascist combat sports scene in Germany and Europe, with its own events and fashion labels," a spokesperson for Runter von der Matte (Down off the Mat, or RvdM), an initiative that seeks to raise awareness of the issue of far-right extremism in combat sports, said in a statement to DW.

"For years now, neo-Nazis have been organizing in professional structures and holding their own combat sport events at which they can recruit people to their cause," according to the statement.

According to RvdM, it is more important than ever that gyms, sports clubs and federations take a clear stance when it comes to racism and fascism.

"Combat sports take place in a social arena in which young people develop their values," according to RvdM. "The federations therefore have a responsibility to explain why racism and other inhuman ideologies have no place in the ring, and to take an active part in the discussion."

The German Mixed Martial Arts Federation, which regulates the sport, distances itself from extremism and discrimination and insists that extremists make up only a small fraction of those who practice the sport.

The federation works with the Vollkontakt: Demokratie und Kampfsport(Full Contact: Democracy and Combat Sports) project to identify and battle the development of extremist ideologies in the sport, and bars athletes who have expressed extremist views from its events. But it nevertheless recognizes that combat sports hold a certain attraction for right-wing extremists.

"We are, of course, appalled that there are people who misuse martial arts, but the abuse of martial arts and the values associated with them can unfortunately not always be completely ruled out," a spokesperson said in a statement to DW.

"The use of violence is a fundamental element of extremist world views and martial arts and their use outside of sport are therefore of interest to such people," according to the statement.
Neo-Nazis and Querdenker

Though the attraction of combat sports for militant Neo-Nazi hooligans may be clear, it is less apparent for some of the other participants in Querdenker protests. However, the researcher Claus said, there may be a greater overlap than first meets the eye.

"Right-wing extremists dream of the collapse of liberal democracy," he said. "However, they know that they can't achieve that on their own, so they latch on to movements that share their social Darwinist ideology. They try to further radicalize those movements and encourage social conflict in order to bring about a situation in which the state is no longer able to protect minorities."

That, essentially, is what happened in Leipzig in November. The police were criticized for retreating in the face of the hooligans. Should the authorities have been better prepared?

"Hooligans have been taking part in these protests since August, and it was predictable from social media that they would be coming together again in Leipzig," Claus said. "You could see them from early in the day, and you could identify them. But the police didn't take any strategic measures to kettle them."

Officers faced off against protesters in Leipzig

Paradox for police

The authorities face a difficult balancing act. They are dealing with a movement that takes advantage of basic civil rights such as freedom of assembly and expression in order to attack the very system that guarantees those rights, accusing it of taking them away.

"These demonstrations represent a new type of gathering, which poses new challenges," said Jörg Radek, the acting chairman of the GdP police union, in a recent interview with the German media industry magazine Journalist.

"The police could probably have prevented the breakthrough in Leipzig had they formed three lines, but what sort of image would that have produced, on the very spot where people revolted against a dictatorship 31 years ago?" Radek said. "Those images would have been used to portray the police as bailiffs of a health dictatorship."

Radek did add, however, that the police are "capable of learning" — and so it seemed when the next Querdenker demonstration in Dresden on December 12 was officially prohibited.

Police nevertheless made 72 arrests and issued more than 160 orders to leave the city, and almost 300 people have been charged with summary offenses. Among them are known football hooligans who attempted to travel to Dresden by train.

Militant neo-Nazis may have their roots in football hooliganism, but their activities are no longer limited to the terraces. They can now be found in combat sports studios, training professionally for violent political conflict, and spearheading political protests on the streets.

VIDEO How far-right hooligans hijack MMA

Sextortion in Syria: Young women support each other

The sexual exploitation of women in Syria is nothing new — but it has increased as predators take advantage of social media and the ongoing conflict to pursue their victims. A number of initiatives are fighting back.




Several initiatives are providing support for victims of sexual exploitation

Like most girls her age, 19-year-old Nour* was blinded by love for her boyfriend. For six months, Nour felt she was living a fairy tale until he asked her for nude pictures.

"In the beginning I refused. But after multiple requests and promises that he will never betray my trust, I gave in and sent him a couple of pictures," she says.

Soon afterwards he started asking for more. "This time it wasn't just pictures. When I made it clear that I will never accept this, he started threatening to send the pictures to my family. If my family discovers I sent such pictures, they will disown me," she says.
Taboos prevalent in Syrian society

In Syria, premarital sex or any acts of that sort are a source of disgrace and shame, especially for women.

Nour didn't know what to do until a friend of hers told her about the Gardenia** initiative in late 2019.

Syrian doctor Zainab AlAassi established Gardenia in 2017 as an initiative to empower women by raising awareness about women-related issues. In 2019, Gardenia launched the "It Is Your Right" campaign to encourage young women who have been subjected to sexual exploitation and harassment to break their silence.

Alassi says messages from a sextortion victim prompted her to start the Gardenia campaign.

To date, 1,100 Syrian women have come forward with their stories, the campaign says. All these cases had one thing in common: "Fear," says Dr AlAassi. "Fear of parents; fear of society." This is one of the biggest challenges for our campaign too," she adds.
Support and advice for victims

The campaign tries to help sextortion victims at both the legal and socio-psychological levels and collaborates with a number of lawyers to provide free-of-charge legal consultations.

"We helped around 90% of the cases to file a lawsuit. In most cases, the defendant backs down once he knows that an official complaint has been filed with the police," AlAassi says.

According to Syrian criminal law, extortion is punishable by up to two years in prison in addition to a fine. This penalty is doubled if the crime is carried out online, according to laws regulating online communication and countering cyber crimes. Moreover, online material violating privacy is punishable by a prison term ranging from one to six months, in addition to a fine between 100,000-500,000 Syrian liras (€65 – €325,50).

After getting legal advice through the campaign, Nour confronted her ex-boyfriend and told him she would take him to court if he carried out his threat. "Once he knew I was serious about filing a lawsuit, he stopped and disappeared from my life," she says.
Mental scars remain

But the mental and emotional effect of the experience does not just disappear. Therefore, Gardenia's campaign continues to work with these survivors through sessions given by a network of volunteer psychologists and therapists to help these women go back to their normal life.

Gardenia is not the only non-government initiative in Damascus that is helping sextortion victims from different parts of Syria.

Bara Altrn, a lawyer, also offers legal advice to women who've been subject to sexual threats online.

"It all started with a posting about legal provisions that protect women against sextortion on social media two years ago after observing several cases of sextortion happening to people around me," she says.

Afterwards, women started to approach her asking for help and that's when she started offering legal consultations for sextortion victims for free, she says.

Damascus' old court complex in Al-Hamidiyah, where special courts for electronic crimes look into sextortion lawsuits.

Altrn doesn't keep count of the women she helps but says there are many. "I have filed three lawsuits myself on behalf of the victims. There are others whom I know that have referred the issue to court after consulting me, but I wasn't their lawyer," she says. "Interestingly, once the case goes to court, the defendant backs down and tries to reach a solution outside court."

Altrn agrees that fear of their parents' reaction is the main concern for all the young victims who contact her.

She recalls an incident when a university student in Homs Province took her own life a few months ago after being threatened by her boyfriend to publish nude pictures of her.

"Unfortunately, Syrian society blames the victim of sextortion. They believe she is the one who agreed to share these pictures and, hence, she deserves what happens to her," Altrn says.
Social media, COVID-19 exacerbate the situation

Sexual harassment and sextortion are not new to Syrian society. But the spread of social media and 10 years of conflict have made it easier for harassers to target their victims for sex, money or both.

COVID-19 has also made things worse, forcing people to stay home and, hence, spend more time online, which has led to an increase in such cases on social media.

Sham Alsahhar says through their campaign they've been able to shut down a number of Facebook accounts that target women.

Twenty-year-old Sham Alsahhar faced online sexual harassment several times, which prompted her and three of her female friends to launch the "No to Electronic Sexual Harassment" group in September.

The group's main goal is to shut down Facebook accounts that are harassing women. The group does this by asking its members to report these accounts.

"We came across many cases, in which the Facebook accounts of young women were hacked and private pictures of them were posted online," Alsahhar says. "We try to close these accounts as soon as possible before the pictures circulate widely."

She points out that taking legal action against the harasser takes time and "by the time a lawsuit is filed, the pictures will be all over social media and the damage will be already done."

So far, the group, which currently has 2,400 members, has successfully closed dozens of Facebook accounts, Alsahhar says. "We also seek to involve young men in the solution. Therefore, our group is open to both men and women and we encourage female members to add male friends and family members to the group."

*Name changed to protect her identity.

**Gardenia and the other initiatives mentioned here are completely independent from the government, which neither supports nor opposes them given their non-political nature.

This article was written in collaboration with the media network Egab. 

VIDEO Sextortion in Syria: Young women support each other | Middle East| News and analysis of events in the Arab world | DW | 26.12.2020