UPDATED

The Financial Destruction of Palestine

RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images


Jun 7, 2024

RAJA KHALIDI

While the United States recently warned that Palestine is facing fiscal collapse, few informed observers are surprised that the Gaza war’s economic fallout has spread to the West Bank. The G7 and the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee must help the Palestinian economy tap international financial assistance like any other developing country.

RAMALLAH – Ahead of the recent G7 summit, US Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, in a rare rebuke of Israel, warned that its plans to cut off Palestinian financial institutions from the global banking system would threaten the West Bank’s economic stability. But her warning may have come too late to stop Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who seems bent on undermining the last vestiges of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) already-limited self-governance in the West Bank.

The sanctions that Smotrich wants to impose – specifically, revoking the waiver that allows Israeli banks to facilitate transactions with Palestinians without fear of legal action – are in response to Ireland, Norway, and Spain formally recognizing a Palestinian state. Ironically, the PA is on the verge of collapse, owing to Israel’s actions and the world’s inaction.

Yellen seems to understand that Smotrich’s plan to sanction the PA cannot be attributed solely to the ideological underpinnings of the most annexationist government in Israel’s history. They are also indicative of an isolated Israel doubling down on its offensive in Gaza even as global pressure to end the war intensifies. But perhaps Yellen should bring her legitimate concerns about the PA’s financial solvency to US President Joe Biden, given his staunch support for Israel, before expecting other countries to take up the cause.

While the international community has recently expressed concern about the West Bank’s looming economic catastrophe, the Palestinians living there (and elsewhere) remain fixated on the war in Gaza – already a catastrophe in every way. In fact, few informed observers have been surprised at the scale, intensity, and speed with which the war’s economic fallout has hit the West Bank and the PA, given their deep dependence on Israel for jobs, trade, and currency. This asymmetrical relationship has been forged over decades of occupation, characterized by a constant struggle for land, resources, and rights, and increasing violence by extremist Israeli settlers, who have long enjoyed impunity.

Part of the dependency dynamic involves Israel collecting and clearing customs and import taxes on behalf of the PA. So, when faced with European efforts to build momentum toward a political settlement of the crisis, Smotrich decided to seize these tax revenues, in addition to threatening new financial sanctions. Prior to the war, the PA was entitled to an average of $270 million per month in total clearance revenues – enough to cover the salaries of 147,000 civil servants, its most essential current expenditure.

But for many years, Israel has made unilateral deductions, starting with unpaid utility and health bills owed to Israeli providers (based on government calculations). Since 2018, it has also deducted payments made to families of people whom the PA deems martyrs and to families of people imprisoned in Israel. By the end of 2023, these additional deductions amounted to around $1.2 billion. This does not include deductions for unpaid utilities, health bills, and other deductions called “net lending,” which totaled $662 million in 2023 alone.

After the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, Smotrich began deducting the amount that the PA spends on staff and pensioners in Gaza. By April 2024, these deductions, coupled with a steep decline in private consumption and imports, left the PA with under $100 million per month in “eligible” revenues, around a quarter of its monthly budget.

Smotrich has threatened to freeze the transfer of that amount and any clearance funds, while also pushing legislation to expropriate the deducted funds – which have been held in escrow accounts – to finance Israel’s war deficit. In yet another Israeli twist of the financial screws, the Bank of Israel has yet to accept the periodic exchange of accumulated stocks of Israeli shekels with Palestinian correspondent banks for foreign currency as stipulated under the Oslo Accords. This has led to panic among clients unable to deposit Israeli shekels. Meanwhile, the PA’s salary arrears have reached at least six months. And that is only part of its $8 billion public debt, which is around 60% of West Bank GDP. Hence, the PA is facing imminent fiscal collapse, with the West Bank “on the brink, risking an explosion any time,” as the normally cautious Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa recently put it.

The G7 leaders and the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, an international donor group for Palestine that met last week, must heed this warning as they consider making far-reaching decisions that could be as momentous as the war’s outcome. Moreover, policymakers should be clear-eyed on what can and cannot be done. It is absurd to demand that the PA implement reforms, build state institutions, reconstruct Gaza, and police its people while Israel simultaneously withholds its main source of finance.

In the early days of Biden’s presidency, some Palestinians, still reeling from the hostility of the Trump era and without a viable path to independence, hoped that he might push for Palestinian rights. In 2021, I proposed a US-sponsored financial New Deal for Palestine, which would reinforce the PA fiscal position, without requiring US diplomatic recognition of Palestinian statehood. The idea would be to grant Palestine formal status or reach an ad hoc arrangement at the International Monetary Fund so that it can tap international financial assistance like any other developing country, a small step towards sovereignty.

Implementing this plan is more important than ever. If the countries that have recognized Palestinian statehood – either recently or in the past – want their declaration to be more than a symbolic gesture, they must start treating Palestine as the state it will eventually become. And if the United States wants to prove that it is more than an accessory to Israel’s war, it must lift its veto on Palestine’s bid to become the state it deserves to be. The march toward Palestinian fiscal sovereignty is inevitable, but it must happen sooner rather than later.




RAJA KHALID
Writing for PS since 2021
3 Commentaries
Raja Khalidi is Director-General of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS).

Gaza war crushes Palestinian private sector, with $19m daily losses in first four months

Total unemployment in the enclave and the occupied West Bank is expected to rise to 668,000 in 2024, ILO says

The gross domestic product of Palestinian territories is projected to decline by 16.1 per cent this year, compared with 2023, according to the International Labour Organisation. EPA


John Benny
Fareed Rahman

Jun 07,2024

The war on Gaza has dealt a major blow to the Palestinian private sector with production facing its most significant decline along with unprecedented levels of unemployment expected this year, a report has shown.

Between October 2023 and January 2024, about half of the private sector establishments in Palestinian territories – 29 per cent in the occupied West Bank and 100 per cent in the Gaza Strip – experienced either complete cessation or reduced production, the joint report by the International Labour Organisation and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.

Overall, Gaza and the West Bank incurred an estimated loss of $2.3 billion in private sector production value during the first four months of the war, or about $19 million a day, excluding losses in properties and fixed assets, the report added.

“The private sector production witnessed its most significant decline in construction, followed by industry and services and other branches,” the report said.

“The Gaza Strip experienced notably more severe deterioration compared to the West Bank, with the construction and industry in the strip nearly collapsing,” the report said.

The extensive damage caused by the Israel-Gaza conflict, now in its ninth month, and the continuing destruction of infrastructure in the narrow strip of land means it is likely to take several years for Gaza and the broader Palestinian economy to regain stability and recover.

The private sector, which makes up 66 per cent of total employment in the Palestinian territories, consists mainly of small to medium family-owned enterprises that are highly reliant on Israel for either inputs or as a market.

“Looking at the current status between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, there are a lot of worries that blockades and large-scale restrictions of movement will be out for months,” Cyril Widdershoven, an analyst at Hilltower Resource Advisors, told The National.

“Without any direct access to Israel's economy or infrastructure, the future looks very bleak.”

READ MORE

War has brought ‘complete collapse’ of Gaza’s economy

Nearly half a million jobs lost in Palestine as financing gap nears $1.2bn

Economic forecast

Based on the assumption that the war will continue until the end of August 2024, the gross domestic product in Palestinian territories is projected to decline by 16.1 per cent this year, compared with 2023, alongside an 18 per cent drop in per capita income, the ILO-PCBS report said.

If the war continues for three more months, the unemployment rate in the territories is expected to rise substantially, reaching 47.1 per cent this year, the report added.

Total unemployment is expected to hit 668,000 in 2024, an increase of 222,000 from 2023.

“The projected unemployment rates … show that the unemployment rate for the year 2024 under the new scenario is unprecedented, exceeding by far the unemployment rate registered in the Palestinian territories at the height of the Second Intifada in 2002,” the report said.

In a recent report, the World Bank also highlighted the level of unemployment in Palestine amid the continuing war.

The multilateral lender said an estimated 200,000 jobs have been lost in the Gaza Strip, while 144,000 people are no longer employed in the occupied West Bank as a result of the escalating violence.

About 148,000 cross-border commuters from the West Bank were also denied access to the Israeli labour market due to the continuing war, pushing unemployment levels higher in the Palestinian territory, it added.

“In Gaza, the whole economy has been decimated. I don't think there's anything left standing. The Gazan economy will have to be recreated from scratch … rebuilt from the ground up literally,” Raja Khalidi, director general of the Ramallah-based Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, told The National in an interview.

“The physical devastation, which just makes it impossible for businesses to reopen, especially the productive sector, or the services and trade … stores and supermarkets and simple services. ”

The occupied West Bank’s economy is “grinding to halt”, Mr Khalidi said, as he noted that its economy is powered by two sources of income – government salaries and Palestine workers earning in Israel.

“About 40 per cent of West Bank’s income was coming from those two sources. So, those two sources no longer exist and what can the rest of the 60 per cent of the economy do?”

Business impact

Surveys conducted jointly by the ILO and Palestinian industry bodies revealed that 98.8 per cent of enterprises in the West Bank acknowledged that they had been negatively affected by the conflict.

The businesses have encountered myriad challenges, ranging from reduced monthly sales and the loss of customers or suppliers, to decreased production capacity, supply chain disruptions and heightened transportation costs, the survey found.

“To mitigate the adverse impacts of the war, businesses implemented different measures, including reducing workforce size, hours of work and wages,” the report said.

Small and medium enterprises involved in food and trade will be under pressure from “all sides”, Mr Widdershoven said.

Future economy

The ILO-PCBS report said that Palestine’s economy needs immediate and long-term support, including financial assistance for reconstruction, business recovery support, social protection measures and income-generation initiatives.

Structural reforms are essential to reduce dependence on external factors, foster a diversified economy and ensure fair and decent wages, the report added.

A “Marshall Plan” supported by Arab countries, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank could pave the way for Palestine’s battered economy, Mr Widdershoven said.

“Maybe something could even come out of it that is much better [such as] an emerging future-proof economy, based on technology, IT, artificial intelligence or other sectors,” he said.

However, even Arab countries are not willing to take the risk of putting in cash without guarantees of a positive change, the analyst added.

In February, the UN Conference on Trade and Development estimated that tens of billions of dollars would be needed to rebuild Gaza when Israel's war against Hamas is over.

The Marshall Plan, which was officially called the European Recovery Programme, was a US programme passed in 1948 to help western Europe rebuild its economies after the devastation of the Second World War.

The plan provided billions of dollars in grants, loans and technical assistance.

Russia’s invasion has also stirred calls to muster a similar plan for Ukraine, whose economy recorded a 30 per cent decline in 2022 due to the war's disruption of businesses, infrastructure damage and a decrease in exports.

Updated: June 07, 2024,

Gaza unemployment since start of Israel’s war soars to nearly 80%: ILO

International Labour Organization says joblessness in occupied West Bank stands at almost 32 percent, resulting in a combined total of more than 50 percent.

A young Palestinian pushes a bicycle past a rubbish site at al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on June 5 [Eyad Baba/AFP]

Published On 7 Jun 2024

Unemployment in the Gaza Strip has hit a “staggering” 79.1 percent since Israel launched its military onslaught on the besieged and bombarded territory in October last year, according to the United Nations labour agency.

In its latest assessment of the impact of the war on employment, the International Labour Organization (ILO) also said on Friday that joblessness in the occupied West Bank, which has also been hit by the crisis, had also reached nearly 32 percent.

This brings the average unemployment rate across the occupied Palestinian territory to 50.8 percent.

The figures, however, do not include those who have exited the labour force altogether amid worsening job prospects, the ILO said, warning that the actual numbers were higher.

“This excludes Palestinians who have given up on finding a job,” said Ruba Jaradat, ILO regional director for Arab States. “The situation is much worse”.

Israeli attacks on Gaza since the start of the war have killed at least 36,654 people and wounded 83,309, with thousands more missing under the rubble and presumed dead, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel launched its assault after Palestinian group Hamas led an attack in southern Israel on October 7 that killed about 1,140 people, according to Israeli tallies.

In the West Bank, meanwhile, the Palestinian toll in Israeli attacks over the same period includes more than 530 killed and some 5,200 wounded.
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In terms of the economy, the real gross domestic product (GDP) has contracted by nearly 33 percent in the Palestinian territory since the start of the war, with an estimated contraction of 83.5 percent in the Gaza Strip, where about half of its 2.3 million people lived below the poverty line even before the war.

“Imagine with this very high level of unemployment, people will not be able to secure food for themselves and for their families,” Jaradat said.

“This is also impacting their health … Even if they have money, there are no hospitals that can accommodate the catastrophic situation there.”

In the West Bank, the GDP drop was 22.7 percent, the ILO data showed.

“In the occupied Palestinian territory and particularly in the West Bank, the reduction in incomes has pushed many families into severe poverty,” Jaradat said.
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SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

OPINION

The battle is lost, but not the revolution. Georgian protesters gear up for a rematch in October

LONG READ

7 June 2024
Vadim Dubnov
Radio Liberty observer, Echo of the Caucasus correspondent


High Representative of the European Union Josep Borrell has called on Georgian officials to heed the recommendation of the Venice Commission and withdraw Tbilisi’s infamous new “foreign agent law.” In response, parliamentarian Salome Kurasbediani, a member of the ruling selfsame Georgian Dream party that pushed through the “Russian” bill, dismissed the commission's judgment as biased. Still, according to political columnist Vadim Dubnov, Georgian Dream’s lack of visible concern over the backlash the law has inspired — along with its demonstrative confrontation with the West — signal that hope remains for Tbilisi to reverse course. Even if its opposition has so far failed to expand its traditional constituency, time remains before the final confrontation takes place during the parliamentary elections this fall.

RU

From the very moment — February 2023 — when Georgian authorities first announced their intention to adopt a law regarding “foreign agents,” the opposition's outrage has been rivaled only by its utter bewilderment: why was Tbilisi’s Moscow-friendly ruling party taking such a step? Before the introduction of the bill, Georgian Dream, the political brainchild of the country’s leading oligarch and informal ruler, Bidzina Ivanishvili, appeared well on its way to another victory in elections scheduled for October 2024. Sociologists, both those sympathetic to and opposed to the party, were unanimous in predicting its victory. But now, with five months left before the election, the authorities have actually brought into force the very law that has inspired massive anti-government demonstrations two years in a row. Why?

April Theses

Some believe that the law “On Transparency of Foreign Influence” (as the official title goes) is a ploy to weaken the opposition on the eve of the elections. Ivanishvili's staunch opponents insist that he was spooked by rumors of Washington allegedly plotting yet another “color revolution” — a reference to the popular uprisings that ensured legitimate democratic transitions in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004) — and the Georgian government itself has occasionally raised such ideas as well. Others, however, argued that Ivanishvili's seemingly inexplicable stubbornness simply stems from resentment over last year's failure. Last but not least, a separate camp has theorized about the involvement of Vladimir Putin, who allegedly coerced Ivanishvili into pushing through the bill by threatening to expose the oligarch’s hidden past misdeeds — or even to physically eliminate him.

Remarkably, each of these various versions implies that, for one reason or another, Ivanishvili is acting irrationally — something his twelve years in power have not offered cause to suspect. On the rare occasions when Ivanishvili has made mistakes, he has been quick to correct them. And this time may not actually offer an exception to the rule.

As sources close to Georgian Dream admit, the authorities initially assumed that last year's turbulence would not repeat itself, as the country’s youth, which formed the backbone of the protests in 2023, had apparently changed their attitude. Not only bureaucrats and analysts, but also Ivanishvili himself possibly fell prey to this misconception.

Ivanishvili's appearance on the podium at a grandiose pro-government rally indirectly confirms that the scale of public discontent came as a surprise to those in power. The leader's speech can be boiled down to three key points: first, he spoke of a “global party of war” that seeks to destroy Georgia, just as it has allegedly already subverted European and Euro-Atlantic structures; second, the oligarch claimed that the “foreign agents” law was designed to save Georgia from this very adversary; third, he asserted that Georgia nevertheless will join the European Union in 2030.

The scale of public discontent came as a surprise to those in power


While many Georgian opposition members were quick to dismiss his “April theses” as an example of paranoia and inclination towards conspiracy theories, Ivanishvili’s address may have provided an exhaustive answer to the biggest question of all — “Why?”
So is the law indeed pro-Russian?

Ivanishvili's statement is consistent with his traditional, rather straightforward line of thinking.

While the “foreign agent law” was immediately labeled «Russian,” this accusation could not be further from reality, even from a technical perspective. If we were to draw parallels, it bears more resemblance to a Hungarian analog. Both the Georgian and the Hungarian versions differ from the Russian law in one fundamental detail: the lower financing threshold — 20% in Georgia’s case. Russia does not have one, meaning a “guilty” party can be labeled a “foreign agent” simply because someone sent along a couple of pesos from somewhere in Mexico.

Of course, there are examples of Ivanishvili acting to strengthen Tbilisi’s ties to Moscow. He has expanded air traffic with Russia, is yet to impose anti-Russian sanctions, and generally likes to keep his Moscow-based peers happy. However, none of his steps so far could be reliably interpreted as a sign of willingness to team up with the Kremlin.

Over his 12 years of effective control, Ivanishvili has been intently preserving the reform momentum set in progress during early years of pro-Western ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s time in office (2004-1013). As a result, the achievements of Saakashvili, whom Ivanishvili’s forces still hold in prison, may have become irreversible. Despite lacking unanimous support, Georgia’s Westernization has come to be an inherent element of the country’s identity, one that is unlikely to be subjected to any revolutionary revision.

Ivanishvili argues that Russia may not be Georgia’s friend, but it should not be regarded as the enemy Saakashvili painted it to be — and while Georgia wholeheartedly aspires to become part of Europe, regular direct flights to Moscow will do no harm in this regard.

Ivanishvili argues that Russia may not be Georgia’s friend, but it should not be regarded as the enemy


Before February 24, 2022, such understandings between Moscow and Tbilisi were reached on a case-by-case basis. But when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began — and when, largely as a result, the European Union quickly offered Ukraine and Moldova a fast-track rapprochement — the Georgian opposition urged their own authorities to jump on the bandwagon. Such a move would have seemed to have been perfectly timed. After all, Georgian Dream had by then already found a certain equilibrium in its relations with Europe.

A state that by all accounts appeared to have been usurped by a Kremlin-friendly oligarch could not join the league of Western darlings, of course. But the reputation Georgia had gained as the most successful South Caucasian democracy, multiplied by the weight of the 2008 war with Russia and the risks of losing Tbilisi to the gloomy east, enticed Brussels to be less scrupulous than usual. Besides, Georgia did not pester the European authorities with urgent pleas to join their ranks as soon as possible. Both sides realized that a real rapprochement would compel Europe to re-assess the Georgian reality in an entirely different way, and neither was in a hurry to obtain clarity.

Therefore, the opposition's plan looked realistic: it deprived the authorities of their usual comfort and forced Brussels to be more critical of Georgian Dream. However, Ivanishvili turned the war in Ukraine, which at first appeared to be working in favor of the opposition, to his own benefit. And he was not the only one.
The stakes are rising

With the start of the full-scale war, all empirical observations of the Georgian authorities gained the force of an ideological doctrine. The original thesis that if you live next to the Kremlin's Minotaur, it is desirable not to make it angry, has been transformed into a call to Georgian citizens who remember 2008: look at what has become of Ukraine, and see what horrors we have saved you from.

Back in 2022, Brussels could still afford to accommodate the powers-that-be in Tbilisi. After all, EU candidate status comes without any pressing obligations. Turkey, for one, has had it for decades. Despite the political turmoil in Tbilisi, European authorities may have considered granting Georgia this status as the lesser evil. For Georgian Dream, securing it was a domestic policy jackpot. Meanwhile, the opposition suffered another failure, all the more offensive because their chances had — albeit fleetingly — looked brighter than ever.

But this year, when the relationship between Tbilisi and Brussels was no longer a question of mere candidate status, but the start of actual accession talks, the stakes rose. And while the rules were the same, an entirely different game began.

The new schism in Georgian society is far less clean-cut than the old pro-Russian versus pro-Western dichotomy. Georgian Dream may still be moving the country it governs towards Europe, but it is doing so in the manner of Euro-skeptic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who like Ivanishvili has expressed concerns regarding the Western “party of war.” In fact, Hungary's international stance has allowed Georgian Dream to customize European integration to its domestic political needs.
The real purpose of the “foreign agent law”

A “foreign agent law” indicates that the authorities are incapable of controlling everything in the country. In some ways, it is a healthy sign: if the government wants to fight civil society, it means civil society is still alive and kicking. Even in Russia in 2012, no one could imagine how changed the atmosphere would be just a decade later. To compare, Azerbaijan does not need such a law — and it never did. As Azerbaijani journalists explain, no one prohibits receiving money from donors, including foreign ones. However, every beneficiary must first obtain permission from the Ministry of Justice, which determines whether the organization's activities align with the national mentality, national interests, and other relevant considerations. As a result, Azerbaijan has jailed dozens of journalists and NGO workers even without a “foreign agent law.”

As Venice Commission experts concluded, Georgia’s legislation already has enough mechanisms to control the transparency of foreign funding. Moreover, this law will do little good for the October elections, as the NGOs set to participate will not start filing their tax declarations until next year, thus making it all but impossible for them to be excluded from the process due to any supposed “foreignness.” More than that, however, there are significant areas of potential repression where Georgian Dream could easily exert its influence without the need for any new legislation.

Georgia’s legislation already has enough mechanisms to control the transparency of foreign funding


In other words, the Georgian law is not first and foremost a tool of domestic control, but an open challenge to Brussels — a provocation consistent with Georgian Dream’s plans and similar to Azerbaijan’s behavior on the eve of its presidential elections. In that case, Baku’s objectives extended beyond merely electing a leader — they sought to elevate Ilham Aliyev to the status of founding father, and the West had to be prevented from spoiling the festive occasion. Western leaders showed understanding, assuming that Azerbaijan’s delusion would fade into the background after the elections, and time proved them right.
No more bets

Georgian Dream's quarrel with the West is too demonstrative to end in a breakup. It goes along the lines of Azerbaijani leaders’ statements at PACE this past January, when the organization suspended Baku’s membership. However, for Georgian Dream, a breakup with the West is an unacceptable outcome for many reasons — primarily because it would hardly make Georgian voters happy.

Ivanishvili’s party sometimes leans towards slogans that could have been penned by Russian nationalists Alexander Dugin or Sergei Markov, targeting a very specific domestic audience — one that the authorities would hate to antagonize. Georgian Dream even employs a “task force” of utterly replaceable deputies for this purpose.

In parallel with the “foreign agent law,” the authorities are launching a separate proposal to combat those who propagandize “pseudo-liberal values” — in other words, a ban on “LGBT propaganda.” Aside from an attempt to identify opponents of the “foreign agent law” within the LGBT community, Georgian Dream might also be pushing voters toward the formula expressed by current Georgian Dream leader Irakli Garibashvili: “Georgia will join Europe while keeping its own traditions.”

Most importantly, actually replacing Georgia’s pro-Western course with a pro-Russian one is the potential step Ivanishvili fears taking most of all: he knows the Kremlin’s ways better than any Georgian and understands that the games he has been playing with Europe won’t last him a month if Moscow really were to be sitting across the table.

Replacing a pro-Western course with a pro-Russian one is something Ivanishvili fears most of all: he knows the Kremlin’s ways better than any Georgian


In short, as Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis remarked in May, characterizing the new “foreign agents” law as “Russian” is nothing but a catchphrase, a good slogan for mobilizing protest. However, the question about the goals of the protest remains unanswered — despite its importance for future developments.

Faced with unexpected resistance, Georgian Dream must have experienced many unpleasant moments, all the more so considering that it could not afford a second retreat following its initial withdrawal of the bill last year. Initially, people with insider knowledge of Georgian Dream say the party considered the possibility of offering concessions if things did not go according to plan, as the text of the bill had been written in such a way as to include a “margin of safety.”

However, it appears that further proposals to discuss possible changes were no longer a search for compromise, but a trap to lure opponents into putting the law into force. The opposition and President Salome Zurabishvili saw through this maneuver, but by failing to achieve what they wanted with protests, the opposition lost much more.

The strategy of damage minimization earned Georgian Dream an advantage, as the protests essentially marked the start of the election campaign. Getting a grip on themselves, the officials reassessed the stakes and gamed out realistic scenarios. Meanwhile, opposition groups never made up their minds: was this a revolution, which had to play out here and now, or the start of elections — a game played in the long run? These two scenarios required two different approaches.

In itself, demands to change the country’s political direction were insufficient to bring about a massive revolutionary upheaval. Similarly, the phase of Ukraine's Euromaidan that began in November 2013 following the refusal of then-president Viktor Yanukovych to sign an association agreement with the European Union soon exhausted itself, and its political masterminds had always seen the demonstrations only as a warm-up for the upcoming presidential campaign. The story could have ended there had it not been for the inexplicable ferocity of the Ukrainian authorities, who beat protesters without giving them enough time to disperse. The Maidan was over, and the uprising began.

The Georgian government certainly kept that scenario in mind, and for all the ruthlessness of the Georgian police, their actions never crossed the fatal line, thereby remaining a far cry from the brutality of the Ukrainian Berkut troops.
The opposition's defeat

At the end of the day, the Georgian opposition lost on two main counts: they failed to prevent the passing of the law, and they did not derive any political capital from the crisis. Centering the protest around geopolitical considerations, the opposition could not come up with any idea for engaging new audiences, and in the current circumstances, even a draw counts as Georgian Dream’s victory.

Unable to thwart the government's plans even with such strong support in the streets, the opposition once again disappointed hesitant voters, and perhaps the West, which saw that it will still have to deal with Georgian Dream in any foreseeable future.

The opposition once again disappointed the West, which saw that it will still have to deal with Georgian Dream


Judging by the patience that the West has shown for years towards the Belarusian regime — formerly known colloquially as “Europe’s last dictatorship” — Ivanishvili remains a safe distance from any such red lines. Finally, even a crisis of such scale that some perceived it as a preamble to a revolution was not a powerful enough incentive for the opposition to unite. Calls voiced by Georgian opposition leaders, including Saakashvili, still resembled a contrived continuation of intraspecies political struggle more than a search for even a temporary, tactical compromise.

Meanwhile, Georgian Dream achieved its goal, if at a much greater political and emotional cost than expected. It also managed to minimize critical losses and risks. The law has been passed, and those who hoped for the weakness of the Dream will have to reckon with it. Moreover, the ruling party has accomplished a strategic goal at the cost of only a few hiccups, walking the fine line between satisfying the population’s expectations for European integration and maintaining their own political habits — even in the face of European shows of decency. For their part, the opposition slowed down Georgia’s progress towards Europe without stopping it completely.

Inside Georgia, the ruling party largely succeeded; even if on the international level, the game is more complicated. The red lines have become noticeably closer, and the West is threatening Georgia with sanctions and withdrawal of unconditional benefits, including visa liberalization and EU candidate status. However, from a technical or political standpoint, neither step appears likely to be taken.

For instance, changing the visa regime requires EU consensus, which could be problematic. As for EU candidate status, there is no formal procedure for revoking such an offer, and Brussels currently appears too busy to develop one. In short, these risks exist but not in the near future. And time is of the essence, judging by the rumored internal deliberations of Georgian Dream.

So far, the dynamics of the war in Ukraine appear to be playing into the Georgian authorities' hands. The ruling party awaits the European Parliamentary elections — and with them the arrival of new faces in the European Commission. The Georgian Dreamers are also waiting for Trump, believing they will have an easier time dealing with him. In any case, they still have time, at least until October. No one is going to seriously stress test the situation before then. And if something does go wrong, the authorities have been willing to haggle over the particulars of the law from the outset.

And if something goes wrong, the authorities have been willing to haggle over the particulars of the law from the outset


None of the credible recent polls have given Georgian Dream less than one-third of the votes — and this is even according to the results of studies done by opposition-minded sociologists. Pro-government services are even more bullish, assessing the ruling party’s support at 60%. According to the most optimistic (although not the most realistic) estimates, the two main opposition parties, the United National Movement and its affiliated Strategy Aghmashenebeli and Akhali, can count on slightly below 20%, and their peers are unlikely to improve the opposition's chances.

The opposition could well succeed at inspiring those young people who did not go to the polling stations before. But their current enthusiasm may subside before October, especially given that Georgian Dream has finally dotted the i’s on the law. Moreover, so far the opposition has failed to produce any opening other than claims that Georgian Dream has lost a majority and will therefore rig the election in October — which means betting on street protests once again.

This will provide the government with an opportunity to mobilize its supporters — which it invariably does whenever the opposition makes a move — and its success in such endeavors has repeatedly exceeded forecasts. The ruling party can also fight to maintain its level of support by using “administrative resources,” especially in rural areas. Finally, Georgian Dream’s main trump card is control over the European integration process, which can be unfrozen if the necessity arises. Thus the revolution continues. And as befits any revolution, it awaits its October.

China sends glacial water from Tibet to the Maldives, raising concerns

Tibetans meanwhile are being told to save water as Beijing engages in water diplomacy.

By Lobsang, Tenzin Pema and Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan
2024.06.05

Maldives residents carry jugs of water distributed by Red Crescent and security personnel after a fire at a desalination plant affected water supplies in Malé, capital of the Maldives, Dec. 5, 2014.

 Haveeru/AFP

China gifted 3,000 metric tons of Tibet’s glacial water to the island nation of the Maldives in two separate batches in March and May — the same months it unveiled and implemented water conservation regulations at home.

The Water Conservation Regulations set limits on water usage within administrative regions and prioritizes water conversation work in Tibet and other parts of China. 

They were issued by China’s State Council on March 20, a week before it sent the first delivery of 1,500 metric tons of water in jugs to the Maldives, which is experiencing a scarcity of fresh water. 

The regulations then went into effect on May 1, weeks before China donated the second batch of water jugs. 

China finalized the deal with the Maldives during a November 2023 visit by Yan Jinhai, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to the low-lying archipelago threatened by rising sea levels.

The Maldives has forged strong bilateral relations with China and is a beneficiary of the Belt and Road Initiative, under which it has borrowed more than US$1 billion from Chinese banks in the past decade, according to Western think tanks. 

Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu signed 20 agreements, including one for financial and military assistance, with Beijing during his inaugural state visit to China in January 2024.  

The Maldives thanked the people of Tibet for their “generous donation,” which it expects will greatly support its island communities. Its freshwater resources are affected by erratic rainfall patterns and rising sea levels.

Water shortages in Tibet

But Tibetans inside Tibet said they face water shortages themselves because Chinese authorities have implemented systematic water conservation and management campaigns across various Tibetan villages and towns for over a decade.

This has occurred while authorities have restricted the availability of water and set limits on water usage at the local level.

Maldivian security personnel load a water tank onto a military vehicle to fill it with treated water in Malé, capital of the Maldives, Dec. 5, 2014. The capital is located on a low-lying island in the Indian Ocean that has no natural water source and depends entirely on treated seawater. (Sinan Hussain/AP)

“I have heard that China is donating bottled water from Tibet to other parts of the world for free for political gain,” said one source from the Tibet Autonomous Region, where Chinese authorities have carried out water conservation campaigns for over a decade. 

“However, in Tibet, the local Tibetans do not have enough drinking water,” he said. “At times there isn’t enough water to even brush our teeth.”

On March 27, the same day the Maldives said it received the first batch of water, the Water Conservancy Bureau of Ngari Prefecture, or Ali in Chinese, the birthplace of key South Asian rivers, began a series of year-long events for the general public to promote water conservation.

In Nyingtri city, or Linzhi in Chinese, authorities have implemented the strictest water resources management system over the past several years and boast of its effectiveness. 

“The water used to wash rice and vegetables can be used to mop the floor and water the flowers. ... Nowadays, water-saving behaviors like this have become a conscious action of many citizens,” said a 2023 announcement by the city government.

Meanwhile, Tibetans who have grown up on their ancestral land in Gangkar township in Dingri county, called Tingri in Chinese, are being forced to relocate to make way for the expansion of China’s water bottling facilities and industry, two sources said. 

“Gangkar is known for its fertile pastureland and significant water resources from glaciers with 15 water springs in the region, which the local Tibetans have always relied on for their livelihoods,” said the first source. 

Chinese authorities plan to move about 430 residents to take control of the water resources from the land, he said.

Weaponizing water

China’s move signals it is engaging in “water politics” and playing the long game for geopolitical gains in South Asia, experts said. 

The Chinese government has projects underway to extract clean, clear and mineral-rich water to support the expansion of its premium mineral bottled water industry, they said.

H.E. Yan Jinhai (L), chairman of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, pays a courtesy call to Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu in Malé, capital of the Maldives, Nov. 21, 2023. (President’s Office/Republic of Maldives)

Beijing also wants to control water flows to lower riparian states such as India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, to further its own aspiration of regional dominance, experts said.

“The imperative to address the threat of China weaponizing water in Tibet cannot be overstated,” wrote scholars Neeraj Singh Manhas and Rahul Lad in a March report titled "China's Weaponization of Water in Tibet A Lesson for the Lower Riparian States" in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.

With approximately 87,000 dams built, China poses a historic threat, having already dammed most internal rivers, they add, while calling for proactive measures to implement enduring policies to protect these vital Tibet’s water resources.

Tibet is at the forefront of China’s “water wars” in the region, said Anushka Saxena, a research analyst at the Takshashila Institution, a public policy think tank in India. 

Tibet’s eight major transboundary river systems have the capacity to turn China into “Asia’s water hegemon,” given that their water can be used for both domestic economic and foreign policy-related interests, as well as can be weaponized to cause harm to lower riparian states, she said.

“In that light, China’s moves vis-à-vis export of water to Maldives cannot be isolated from the larger approach China is adopting to using Tibet’s water resources,” she added.

Additional reporting by Dorjee Damdul for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

The New-Old Authoritarianism

Jun 7, 2024

LONG READ 

INTERVIEW 

RUTH BEN-GHIAT


With US think tanks having already drawn up plans for instituting an authoritarian government under a second Donald Trump administration, the stakes in the year's presidential election are difficult to overstate. Around the world, "strongmen" are turning democratic institutions on themselves and learning from each other.

Over the past decade, Ruth Ben-Ghiat has emerged as one of the English-speaking world’s leading experts on, and chroniclers of, authoritarian leaders in the twenty-first century. A professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, she warns against complacency in the face of growing threats to democracy around the world.

Project Syndicate: What is your working definition of a twenty-first-century “strongman”? Or more specifically, which contemporary political leaders do you include in this category, and what features do they share?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: I use the term strongman for authoritarian leaders who damage or destroy democracy using a combination of corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo (masculinity as a tool of political legitimacy). A strongman’s personality cult elevates him as both a “man of the people” and “a man above all other men.” Authoritarianism is about reorganizing government to remove constraints on the leader – which in turn allows him to commit crimes with impunity – and machismo is essential to personality cults that present the head of state as omnipotent and infallible.

Strongmen, as I define them, also exercise a form of governance known as “personalist rule.” Government institutions are organized around the self-preservation of a leader whose private interests prevail over national interests in both domestic and foreign policy; public office thus becomes a vehicle for private enrichment (of the leader and his family and cronies).

Personalist rule is associated with autocracies. A good example is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where a kleptocratic economy allows for the systematic plundering of private and public entities for the financial benefit of the leader and his circle. Yet personalist rule can also emerge in degraded democracies when a politician manages to exert total control over his party, develop a personality cult, and exert outsize influence over mass media. That happened in Italy under Silvio Berlusconi (who owned the country’s private television networks and much more) and in America during Donald Trump (through his command of Twitter and his alliance with Fox News).

Because personalist leaders are always corrupt, they and those closest to them usually will be investigated when they come to power in a democracy. In such cases, governance increasingly revolves around their defense. More party and civil-service resources will be devoted to exonerating the leader and punishing those who can harm him, such as judges, prosecutors, opposition politicians, and journalists. In the United States, the Republican Party has lent itself fully to this personalist endeavor. The House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, chaired by Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, is just one example of a government mechanism created for the sole purpose of targeting anyone who threatens the leader.

Even where investigating the leader is no longer possible, as in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, a formidable army of lawyers, trolls, bureaucrats, and others will sustain the leadership cult and watch for any cracks in the armor. Hence, the Turkish government spends considerable time and public funds pursuing tens of thousands of “insult suits” against Erdoğan’s critics.

Finally, while democratic leaders can be deeply flawed as individuals, the strongman’s corruption and paranoia ineluctably leads him to develop highly dysfunctional governance structures such as “inner sanctums” composed of sycophants, family members, and advisers chosen for their loyalty rather than their expertise. As a result, strongmen will gradually come to lack the proper objective input to make reasoned decisions. Their impulsive and mercurial personalities will make their cabinets a circus of hirings and firings, with the chaos further drowning out sound advice. Trump, who made his daughter and son-in-law top advisers, is in this lineage. “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things,” he said in 2016, when asked who advises him on foreign policy. When the strongman is ripe to be overthrown, he may be the last to know.

PS: Would you also include those CEOs and business leaders who, like Elon Musk, wield absolute power within their organizations?

RBG: There are many “little tyrants” in business who create decision-making structures that are beholden to their whims, and who dwell in a semi-fantasy environment rooted in their demands for loyalty. Adam Neumann, the former CEO of WeWork, is a good example. Of course, corporate leaders generally must answer to boards of directors and other fiduciary structures that exist to preserve the integrity and profits of the business entity; that is why Neumann eventually was removed. But this does not always happen, as the case of Musk (at Tesla) shows.

NORMALIZING EXTREMISM

PS: How should we understand Trump’s evolution since he first announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015? In what ways has he become more dangerous, and in what ways has he become simply a “known quantity”?

RBG: Trumpism started in 2015 as a movement fueled by conservative alarm and white rural rage at a multiracial and progressive America. It continued as an authoritarian presidency – what Trump’s advisers envisioned as a “shock to the system” – that unleashed waves of hate crimes against non-whites and non-Christians. It then reached a new stage with the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, which deployed violence not just to keep Trump in office, but also to keep Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and other representatives of social and racial progress from taking power.

Normalizing extremism has been critical to this success. Trump has worked very hard to condition Americans to accept authoritarianism as a superior form of government, and this emotional re-training has proceeded along several vectors. For example, he has sought to change perceptions of political violence, using his rallies since 2015 to market it as necessary and justified – the preferred way to deal with differences. He has also repeatedly praised dictators around the world in an effort to change Americans’ perceptions of tyrants. And he has led a massive, concerted campaign to delegitimize democratic leaders and institutions, from elections and the courts to the free press. All are depicted as inefficient, corrupt, and dangerous.

Trump surveyed the political marketplace and made himself into an exponent of the causes and emotions that he felt American politics was neglecting. He identified and named a new constituency: the “forgotten” – white rural and exurban working-class voters whom Democrats had ignored. He told them he loved them, proclaimed himself their savior, and made himself a victim on their behalf. None of this is new for authoritarian politics, but it was new for America, given the scale it has reached.

PS: There is a long-running debate over whether Trump is more of a symptom or a cause, with the “symptom” camp arguing that a similar politician would fill the void were Trump to exit the stage. Do you agree with that, or is there something uniquely compelling about a figure like Trump (or historical antecedents like Mussolini)?

RBG: Strongmen use their personality cults to proclaim their uniqueness. As individuals, they are indeed innovators in repression and communication, capable of presenting themselves as the symbols of all that is most wanted at the moment (safety from racial enemies, protection from leftist anarchy and globalists abroad, and so forth). They can connect on an emotional level with their followers. Nazis felt that Hitler was speaking directly to them and expressing things they had not known how to articulate, and you can find many quotes from people at Trump rallies who feel the same way about their leader.

But the strongman also breeds imitators (in Nazi Germany they were known as “mini-Hitlers”). Though these figures are often hated by the people, even as the original remains loved, they perform an important function by institutionalizing the tyrant’s values and style. Sometimes, however, a strongman can become too much of a liability for a country’s conservative elites, so support builds for someone who is equally extreme but appears and sounds more acceptable.

This happened in the Philippines, where former President Rodrigo Duterte’s loose-cannon pronouncements about killing people earned him an International Criminal Court investigation and bad press for the country. That created an opening for the current president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., the son of the former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. Bongbong is a known quantity to the country’s elites, and he is much more respectable on the surface. When Duterte resigned to help his own daughter be elected as vice president, the Marcos family returned to power. That is how the legacy of dictatorship is institutionalized and normalized.

In the US, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the more polished extremist that Republicans could use to ditch Trump (along with all of his legal and other baggage). But DeSantis proved unsuitable. Although his autocratic leadership style and repressive policies were just fine for the GOP, he was too unlikeable, and his personality too wooden. Some also hoped that Nikki Haley could assume this role (and she has continued to get votes in primaries even after dropping out of the race). The maxim once applied to Berlusconi is applied to Trump: there is no alternative.


PS: What will it mean for America if Trump wins in November? Do you agree with The Washington Post’s Robert Kagan that America would become a “dictatorship”?

RBG: To understand the stakes of this year’s election, one need only read The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a neutrally named plan for converting America into an autocracy, and listen to what Trump says he will do to America and Americans. I was one of the very first to see Trump as an authoritarian, and I have seen nothing to give me comfort since then. In a January 2017 CNN commentary, I predicted how he would behave in office. Unfortunately, my warnings proved accurate in every detail, from his attacks on judges and the press, to his efforts to delegitimize institutions and cultivate a personality cult.

I have no doubt that Trump would try to exert dictatorial power so that he could end his legal troubles and repress his critics and investigators without consequences. He will continue to turn party structures into vehicles for personal enrichment. The Republican National Committee had already been paying his personal legal expenses long after he left office, and now his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is its co-chair.

Meanwhile, Trump’s enablers at Project 2025 have been working for years to facilitate his destruction of democracy. It is telling that they see an “existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.” Dictators always justify their crackdowns as necessary responses to some kind of national emergency. Now add Trump’s quest to achieve personal immunity for any crimes he will commit, his efforts to attract more unscrupulous cronies by promising pardons, and his vow to grant police officers immunity from prosecution. It becomes easy to see how the rule of law would be transformed into rule by the lawless, with Trump as chief thug.

THE ILLIBERAL INTERNATIONAL

PS: Why did the MAGA movement identify so eagerly with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, rather than with other figures like Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland (before his party’s recent ouster from power)?

RBG: Orbán has an unusual history. I call him the strongman “made in America and Hungary.” Having lost re-election as prime minister in 2002 to a Socialist coalition, he embarked on a journey of reinvention as a far-right politician. In 2008, Binyamin Netanyahu, then the leader of the opposition in Israel, introduced Orbán to Arthur Finkelstein, a Republican political consultant who specialized in crafting campaigns designed to spark anger and fear in voters and polarize the electorate.

It was Finkelstein, along with his protégé George Birnbaum, who created the villainous “George Soros” of the right’s imagination, turning the billionaire defender of democracy into an all-powerful exploiter and predator. Orbán was back in power two years later, and “George Soros,” the anti-Semitic creation of two American Jews, has helped him to stay there ever since.

Orbán has portrayed himself as a defender of white Christian civilization against “globalists,” a talking point that is now central to GOP platforms, too. The GOP is also enamored with “illiberal democracy,” Orbán’s slogan for a model of governance in which elections are free but unfair, because they are weighted to produce the desired results. He and his party have done this through domination of the media, so that opposition candidates’ messages don’t really reach voters outside of big cities; and through purges of non-loyalists from the judiciary and the electoral apparatus, so that any challenges to results can be turned back swiftly.

While we hear about people falling out of windows or being poisoned in Russia, Orbán relies on more surreptitious forms of threat and pressure. That makes him palatable to suit-wearing extremists such as The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, who wants autocracy without seeming to dirty his hands. Owing to Hungary’s captured press, we don’t know the full back story of how Orbán persuaded owners of 500 media properties to “donate” their assets “voluntarily” to a government-allied foundation in 2018. But it is pretty easy to see why he became the poster boy for MAGA, and for far-right elites who work behind the scenes more broadly.

“It’s like we’re twins,” Trump exclaimed when he hosted Orbán at the White House in 2019. After a few years of Trump, America could indeed resemble Hungary.


PS: According to many commentators, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has transformed herself into more of a moderate, mainstream politician, despite leading a party with fascist roots. What do you say to that?

RBG: I am not among those who see Meloni as a moderate. She is a far-right militant who presents herself as a conservative abroad while staying silent when Mussolini sympathizers salute Il Duce publicly in Italy. Meloni plays a double game. On foreign-policy issues, she takes pro-democratic positions (notably on helping Ukraine) that keep Italy in good standing with its funders at the European Union. That quiets the conservative elites and technocrats at home, giving her a freer hand to pursue an authoritarian agenda domestically.

That agenda includes restricting reproductive and LGBTQ rights (she is for the “natural” family of one man and one woman, and does not support same-sex marriage or adoptions by same-sex couples); revising the constitution to strengthen the executive; and using her position to attempt to shut down critics with lawsuits. For example, she is suing the eminent (81-year-old) classicist Luciano Canfora for calling her a “neo-Nazi at heart” six months before she took office, and her lawyer in this venture is the sitting minister of justice.

PS: Which is more dangerous, a deeply unpopular strongman or a popular one? On the one hand, Netanyahu is so desperate to avoid prosecution that he seems willing to do just about anything to stay in power. On the other hand, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has trampled on civil and human rights, but boasts a sky-high approval rating.

RBG: As I write in Strongmen, the most dangerous authoritarian is the one who can no longer risk removal from power. That is the factor that matters most. Since leaving office usually means meeting a bad end – in the form of prosecution, exile, jail, or worse – a leader in this desperate position will do anything to stay in power.

Netanyahu is indeed a case study. First, he allied with extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir (who was previously convicted on charges of supporting terrorism) to return to power and avoid prosecution. Then, he tried to push through a self-serving “judicial reform” that sparked mass protests in Israel. Now, he wants to expand his war with Hamas. Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet (the internal security service), recently stated outright that Netanyahu would gladly prolong the war to avoid leaving office, since thousands of Israelis continue to protest against him and demand his resignation.

The recent round of purges to the Israeli defense leadership may have been a move to clean house as punishment for intelligence failures before the October 7 attacks. But it bears mentioning that dismissing insiders is also something autocrats do when they feel their power is threatened.


RUTH BEN-GHIAT
Writing for PS since 2019
6 Commentaries
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University, is the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (W.W. Norton & Company, 2020).

A migrant family is undeterred by Biden’s push to restrict asylum

Arelis R. Hernández | The Washington Post


CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico - Ingrid Orasma had spent weeks trekking through Mexico by foot, train and bus with her two young sons. She reached the border Tuesday only to find out the man she calls “Papa Biden” had imposed new restrictions on how many asylum seekers like her are allowed to stay in the United States.

The thought of remaining a day longer in Mexico was unbearable. Along the journey, she said, Mexican authorities had robbed the group of friends her family was traveling with, pulled them off trains and abandoned them in the desert. She feared what getting stuck south of the U.S. border might bring next.

“To Mexican immigration officials, we are animals,” Orasma, 47, said. “It’s been abuse and mistreatment at every step.”

So on Wednesday, as President Biden’s new asylum policy went into effect, the Venezuelan woman and her family headed to the border, hoping immigration officials might still let them in. They waited to board a bus toward the border wall. And they prayed.

Deemed ineligible

The stakes were high: Migrants deemed ineligible for protection will be returned to their home countries or Mexico unless they express a convincing fear of harm that qualifies them for an exemption under tougher screening procedures.

Orasma had a long list of complaints about life in Venezuela. But it was unclear if any of them would be enough to convince an immigration officer that they should get to stay.

“What options do I have?” she asked, caressing her 10-year-old son as they took shelter from the blistering heat under the shade of a tree. Sweat glistened on her forehead. The only thing left to do, she decided, was to try to cross and “leave it to God.”

In Venezuela, their life felt like a steady spiral downward.

There was the government that permitted little dissent. The blackouts that made running any kind of business a losing prospect. The fear that came with expressing a contrarian viewpoint. Her salary as a schoolteacher was hardly sufficient to raise two children on her own.

Friends had made it to the United States. And cousins in New Jersey had offered them a place to stay. Why shouldn’t they leave, too?

Two months ago, they packed their bags and set off on a quest to reach the United States. They traveled first toward Central America and reached Mexico without any major complications. But as soon as they reached the last country on their journey, their troubles began.


There were long nights where the only place they could find or afford to sleep was the floor of a plaza or outside a gas station. During one 20-day stretch, no one offered them a ride and they had no money for a bus, so they walked. Her two children - the eldest of which is 15 - developed painful blisters on their feet.

As the trek to Mexico’s northern border stretched on, her sons had grown steadily skinnier.

They were defenseless

But nothing, she said, shocked her quite as much as the treatment they experienced at the hands of Mexican authorities. The group of friends they made along the way tried to protect one another, but often, they were defenseless. When they managed to get on a train recently, officials found them and forced them off, she said, leaving them in a desert.

The only way they’d managed to find their way out was by following the faint glow of lights from a town on the horizon.

All along, she’d predicted, U.S. immigration officials would let them in. The Biden administration had repeatedly shown generosity toward Venezuelan migrants. A new parole program permitted several thousand to enter the country each month, though they’d need to apply from Venezuela. Still, thousands of others had had success making long trips through Central America and Mexico and surrendering to officials at the border.

She figured her family would be treated the same. But when they finally reached Ciudad Juárez on Tuesday, news began trickling in about Biden’s new policy. U.S. immigration officials would start sending migrants back.

The next day, Orasma and her friends gathered under a tree in the city’s downtown, trying to find news stories and social media posts that might offer them some hint of what to do next. The new policy blocking migrants’ access to the U.S. asylum system when illegal border crossings are at emergency levels had gone into effect, and officials were already starting to enforce it.

Orasma said she tried to make an appointment with an immigration officer through the Biden administration’s CBP One app. But there aren’t enough slots to meet demand.

From her perspective, there was just one option.

‘Open the door’

“We want Papa Biden to open the door,” she said.

Over the last two months, the group of Venezuelans, Mexicans and Hondurans Orasma and her sons were traveling with had built an indestructible bond. They affectionately referred to one another by nicknames. Orasma was known as “Mama.”

Their plan: Take a bus somewhere close to a stretch of the Rio Grande that other migrants had told them was near a border gate where they could easily surrender to officials on U.S. soil.

At this point in their journey, they were running out of money. Bus drivers across northern Mexico were barring immigrants from boarding to avoid trouble with authorities.

They stood at a bus stop and waited.

A driver stopped and opened his door. But when they explained where they were going, he shook his head and drove away. Twenty minutes passed. No one would take them.

“Just the thought of coming back to Mexico,” Marco Morales, 46, a teacher from Venezuela traveling with the group, said. He paused for a moment. “It makes me want to cry.”

Then came a refurbished school bus painted green. The driver stopped and agreed to allow them on for 40 pesos each - a little more than two dollars. They would try to get to “La X,” a giant sculpture in the form of an X near the border wall that migrants use as a landmark to indicate they are close to Gate 36.

Got off at the wrong stop

The bus driver was surprisingly kind, calling the group to board again after they initially got off at the wrong stop.

“If you get off here you’ll have to walk too far,” he said.

“And there’s no police there, right?” Morales asked.

The driver said there was no one there last time he’d checked.

They boarded again, spreading themselves across the bus between Mexicans heading home from work and others dozing off in the 100-degree heat. The children couldn’t help but fall asleep as the bus rolled eastward. Songs from the band Queen blared over the radio.

“Los del 36!” the driver suddenly yelled, snapping them awake. They stood up and grabbed their bags of water bottles and small backpacks, their only remaining belongings. No one knew which direction led to the border but they figured heading north would take them there.

The group navigated their way through traffic-filled highways, dodging angry drivers who honked their horns. They passed giant fenced-in factories for foreign manufacturers. When they reached a carwash, a worker yelled out to them to stop.

Orasma felt her heart stop. The group froze, confused.

The man ran inside a nearby fast-food restaurant, grabbed a bag and handed it to them. There were burritos inside, spicy ones. They hadn’t eaten much at all that day. Orasma’s boys thanked the man with a smile.

When they finally reached the river, a levee blocked their view. A man known as Flaco because of his tall and skinny frame approached. He craned his neck and peered over the top.

“It’s clear!” he yelled, barely audible over the traffic. “Vamanos!”


No troops in sight

They walked, ran and skipped toward the edge of the Rio Grande, no Mexican federal troops in sight. The river had been reduced to a mere creek by the hot weather and drought.

A Texas National Guard Humvee purred across the water alongside a state trooper’s black and white SUV. Rows of razor wire lined the river on the other side. The dry river silt they were leaning against as they hid in the nearby brush was so hot it burned their backs if they stayed still for too long.

Orasma wasn’t sure what to do next. She was a mother with children. Would border agents really turn them back?

Her 15-year-old son took out his phone and shot a video zooming through the tree leaves toward the rust-colored panels of border wall. He uploaded it on WhatsApp to share with friends and family.

At the bottom of the image he captioned it: “Todo con el favor de Dios.”

“May we have God’s blessing.”

Then he took a photograph of himself. He was straight-faced and tired. But he gave a thumbs-up. He typed in two prayer emojis and an image of the United States flag. The border was in sight. They would try.

WWIII
Chinese armed vessels patrol waters around disputed islands, angering Japan

It was the first time that four Chinese vessels carrying what appeared to be cannon entered its territorial waters in the East China Sea.
PHOTO: Reuters

PUBLISHED ONJUNE 07, 2024 


TOKYO — Japan lodged a protest against Beijing on June 7 after four armed Chinese Coast Guard vessels entered waters that Tokyo considers its territory.

The Japanese government said it was the first time that four Chinese vessels carrying what appeared to be cannon entered its territorial waters in the East China Sea surrounding the disputed islands, which Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing calls the Diaoyu.

"I am not in a position to state what the Chinese side's intentions are, but the intrusion of vessels belonging to China's Coast Guard into (our) territory is a breach of international law," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a press conference.


China's Coast Guard said separately that it had patrolled the waters with vessels carrying weapons.

Tokyo lodged a "strong protest" through diplomatic channels calling for a swift exit from the area, Hayashi said. The four vessels stayed in the area for more than an hour and left shortly after midday, he said.

"The intrusion into our territorial waters is extremely regrettable and cannot be tolerated. We will continue to do our utmost to be vigilant and monitor the areas surrounding the Senkaku Islands with a sense of urgency, while dealing calmly and resolutely with China," Hayashi said.


The two countries have repeatedly faced off around the uninhabited Japanese-administered islands.

China's run-ins with the Philippine navy have also been escalating in disputed areas of the South China Sea.

 

Vietnam decries China’s ‘illegal’ activities in Tonkin Gulf

A spokesperson said a Chinese naval survey ship has been operating without permission in Vietnam’s waters.

By RFA Staff
2024.06.07

The Chinese navy survey vessel Hai Yang 26 in Vietnam’s waters on an unspecified date.

 Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Vietnam has expressed concern and demanded that China end “illegal” survey activities in Vietnam’s waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, a Vietnamese foreign ministry spokeswoman said.

A Chinese navy Type 636A hydrographic survey vessel, the Hai Yang 26, has been operating in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, said the spokeswoman, Pham Thu Hang, on Thursday without giving details.

Hang told reporters in Hanoi that the Vietnamese government “has engaged in multiple diplomatic exchanges” with the Chinese to demand the ending of the Hai Yang 26’s “illegal activities.”

Radio Free Asia is not able to verify whether the vessel is still inside Vietnam’s waters as it has not turned on its AIS (automatic identification system) for tracking.

In 2000, Vietnam and China signed an agreement on the demarcation of the Gulf of Tonkin, which is shared by both countries.

An exclusive economic zone gives a coastal country exclusive access to natural resources in the waters and seabed so the Chinese vessel’s activities are deemed unlawful, according to Vietnam’s foreign ministry.

“Vietnam also demands that China not repeat such illegal activities, fully respect Vietnam’s sovereign rights and jurisdiction, respect international law,” the spokeswoman said.

In March, China released a new “excessive” baseline for its claims of sovereignty in the Gulf of Tonkin, known in China as Beibu Gulf. Vietnam responded with a request that China “respect international law and bilateral agreements.”

Edited by Mike Firn.

Sweden’s foremost opera and ballet theater fined $300,000 for 2023 fatal fall of stage technician





This photo shows an exterior view of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 22, 2024. Sweden’s national theater for opera and ballet, the Stockholm-based Royal Swedish Opera, has been fined 3 million kronor ($300,000) after a stage technician died in 2023, when he fell around 13 meters (more than 40 feet) from a balcony as he was carrying out work inside the building. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP)Read More

This photo shows a view of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 22, 2024. Sweden’s national theater for opera and ballet, the Stockholm-based Royal Swedish Opera, has been fined 3 million kronor ($300,000) after a stage technician died in 2023, when he fell around 13 meters (more than 40 feet) from a balcony as he was carrying out work inside the building. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP)

 June 7, 2024


COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Sweden’s national theater for opera and ballet, the Stockholm-based Royal Swedish Opera, has been fined 3 million kronor ($300,000) after a stage technician died last year when he fell around 13 meters (more than 40 feet) from a balcony as he was carrying out work inside the building.

The fatal fall had been investigated as “a work environment violation” and Prosecutor Jennie Nordin said the death could have been avoided, Swedish broadcaster SVT reported Friday.

According to SVT, Nordin said that the Royal Swedish Opera “had failed to investigate and assess the risk of the work in question,” and “that the stage worker was allowed to perform the work in question despite the risk of falling over the railing.”

The Royal Opera employee, Petter Sundelin, 57, died after falling on Sept. 21. He was flown in a helicopter to a hospital where he later died from his injuries.

Following the death, which was investigated by police, the Royal Opera decided to cancel all performances and tours of Sweden’s national theater for opera and ballet, founded in 1773. The downtown Stockholm stage offers a mix of performances and classical masterpieces with opera, ballet and activities for children and adolescents.