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

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

Carolyn Cooper
3 May 2023

People shopping at Coronation Market in downtown Kingston, Jamaica, 

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

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

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

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

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

Centuries of atrocities

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

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

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

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

Rhetoric of sorrow

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

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

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

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


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

Adam Ramsay
30 April 2023, 

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


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

I think they’re making a mistake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Important work’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘An alternative reality’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obviously, bloodline nationalism has nasty racial implications.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Equal marriage has improved our lives, says LGBT Cubans

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

Eileen Sosin
6 April 2023

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Francis Nanseera
3 May 2023, 

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

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

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

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

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

When dreams fall apart

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

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

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

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

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

Hell on a scooter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A support system designed to fail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ethiopia, Oromo rebels week-long talks end without deal

THURSDAY MAY 04 2023

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

 PHOTO | ANWAR AMRO | AFP

Summary

The talks were largely mediated by Norway and Kenya.

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

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

By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE
More by this Author

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

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

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

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

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. PHOTO | AFP

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

Related

Kenya, Norway mediate Oromo peace talks

TPLF: Party at heart of Ethiopia's war

Read: Ethiopia says Oromiya rebels killed 50 people

Ethiopia committed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read: Ethiopia faces challenge disarming militias

Meeting extended

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read: Ethiopia region’s biggest military spender in 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kiwi field in Latina, Lazio| Photo: Stefania Prandi

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

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

Exploitation in the kiwi chain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEHIND PAYWALL CONTINUE READING

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

Ukraine’s workers are fighting an internal threat, too. They need support

Ukraine’s reconstruction cannot be used to justify transforming the economy in favour of oligarchs and corporations

Hanna Perekhoda
30 April 2023

Trade unions have raised concerns that the war has become a 'window of opportunity' for passing controversial legislation |
(c) Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP via Getty Images. All rights reserved

For nearly 15 months, millions of Ukrainians have been living under the threat of missiles that can reach any part of the country at any time.

Russia has engaged in a deliberate and systematic strategy of terror against civilians. Those who have found themselves under Russian occupation are victims of forced displacement, murder, rape and torture. Tens of thousands of children are thought to have been deported from the occupied territories to Russia, where their national identity is forcibly erased. With every liberation of a Ukrainian village or town, new crimes come to light, showing the whole world what awaits any territory seized by Russia.

This is why, regardless of political disagreements, all of Ukrainian society is united in the view that Ukraine can only survive if it succeeds in expelling the Russian army from its entire territory. Faced with the explicit genocidal intent of the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s civic and political forces are unwavering in their resistance.

The war has pushed Ukraine’s economy into a deep recession. In a single year of war, the country's GDP has fallen by roughly 30%. High inflation has meant falling real incomes. Only 60% of Ukrainians have been able to keep their jobs, of which only 35% were full-time. Not only did many people lose their jobs – they also lost homes and relatives. There have been tens of thousands of civilian casualties and military casualties must surely exceed that.

Despite these difficult conditions, the Ukrainian people refuse to be passive victims. The capacity of ordinary Ukrainians for self-organisation has been, and remains, one of the keys to the country’s resistance to Russian imperialist aggression.

But instead of focusing on adapting the economy to the needs of war, the Ukrainian authorities have launched a vast privatisation programme. Taking advantage of martial law and the restrictions on demonstrations, the government has also dismantled labour legislation and pushed through a series of other unpopular measures.

This is undermining social cohesion at a time that Ukraine needs it most. Unfortunately, Ukrainian workers are facing attacks from their own government even as they defend the country from an external enemy. Meanwhile, the state fails to meet both security and consumption needs of the population.

After the war, Ukraine will face a colossal task. It will have to deal with the massive destruction of infrastructure, relaunch industry and cope with a major demographic crisis: eight million people, most of them women, have left the country. A significant number of refugees may not return from abroad; some because of the deterioration of social rights and working conditions.

We need to ensure that post-war reconstruction is not used to justify the radical transformation of the Ukrainian economy in favour of oligarchs and corporations,

Yet instead of adopting measures that would encourage Ukrainians to return home after the war, the authorities are calling for the commercialisation of healthcare, the total privatisation of state assets and public service cuts in order to attract foreign investment. In the name of neoliberal dogma, the government is undermining the economic and political sovereignty for which ordinary Ukrainians are giving their lives.

Even in these harsh conditions, Ukrainian workers are mobilising against policies that attack their social rights and while left-wing and trade union activists are supporting their efforts to organise. But these people, who are heroically fighting for their sovereignty on every front, need allies. The international left and labour movement can help Ukrainians regain their independence from the Russian aggressor, as well as to defend themselves against neoliberal dependency.

Military, financial and diplomatic support for Ukraine is essential in order that it achieves not just a ceasefire and a peace that doesn’t last, but the immediate withdrawal of Russian occupying troops from all territory.

Yet we also need to ensure that post-war reconstruction is not used to justify the radical transformation of the Ukrainian economy in favour of oligarchs and corporations, rather than the people. The only way to guarantee national security both in wartime and afterwards is to put in place decent labour conditions in accordance with European and international standards. Ukraine also needs to develop an effective policy on the protection of workers’ rights.

Three initiatives are doing a great deal to bring the voices of Ukrainian progressive organisations to the wider world. The European Network of Solidarity with Ukraine, the US Solidarity Network and Elected Left for Ukraine were founded to provide concrete support to Ukrainian popular resistance. Using their links to civic organisations, trade unions and feminists in Ukraine, as well as Belarusian and Russian anti-war organisations, the two initiatives are supporting the Ukrainian resistance by means of international solidarity, funds and aid convoys.

It is the workers who are keeping Ukraine’s factories, hospitals, schools, trains and offices running, often at risk to their own lives. And it is the workers who are fighting on the front line, ensuring the survival of the state. That is why only Ukrainian workers can decide the future of their country. We must ensure their voices are heard.

American gun violence is so bad that countries should warn against US travel


OPINION: The ‘land of the free’ is currently a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ nation. It’s not safe

Chrissy Stroop
25 April 2023,

Protest held on 18 April 2023 in front of US District Court in Kansas City, Missouri on behalf of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, shot by an 84-year-old white homeowner after going to the wrong house to pick up his brother |


Iam tired of writing about gun violence in the United States and the abject failure of our political system to provide a means of effectively addressing the problem.

But here I am revisiting the topic, because horrific recent incidents are generating headlines. And, while mass shooting incidents have skyrocketed since 2018, after which each year has seen more than one such event per day, it’s not just mass shootings Americans have to worry about.

Since two individuals were shot within four days of each other – one fatally – simply for accidentally approaching the wrong house, the US public sphere is currently abuzz with discussion of the so-called ‘stand your ground laws’ that have been passed in more than half of the 50 states since 2005.

Superseding the common law ‘castle doctrine’ that provides wide latitude for the use of deadly force against an intruder inside one’s home, stand your ground laws expand this laxity to public spaces, where, the American legal norm otherwise holds that individuals have a ‘duty to retreat’ from violent confrontation if possible.

The first US state to pass a ‘stand your ground law’ was (not especially surprisingly) Florida. (At this point, all southern states have them.) The issue does not seem to have generated much media buzz, however, until 2012, when George Zimmerman, a light-skinned Latino and neighbourhood watch captain, fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager who was simply trying to walk back to his father’s home in a gated community in Sanford, where he was staying.

Zimmerman’s trial – he was found not guilty for reasons of ‘self-defence’ in what many, myself included, consider an egregious miscarriage of justice – did not ultimately hinge on Florida’s stand your ground law. But this series of events highlighted the racist differential treatment with respect to gun laws that is pervasive in the US legal system, and the potential for stand your ground laws to falsely ‘legitimise’ even more white violence against Black Americans than was already occurring.

On 13 April, Black high school student Ralph Yarl misinterpreted directions about where to pick up his brothers and ended up going to the wrong house in Kansas City, Missouri. After Yarl rang the doorbell, homeowner Andrew Lester, an 84-year old white man, opened the main door and immediately shot Yarl in the head through the glass exterior door. He then shot Yarl a second time, in the arm. Lester reportedly said: “Don’t come around here,” as the 16-year-old Yarl, who is thankfully and remarkably on the road to recovery, attempted to retreat.

Missouri has a stand your ground law and, given the state’s reactionary politics and the facts that Yarl is Black and Lester is white, it is likely that Lester will be acquitted of the felony charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action that he faces. If stand your ground comes into play, Lester will, theoretically, have to convincingly demonstrate he had a “reasonable fear” that Yarl would harm him. From what we know about the shooting, it seems absurd to think that Lester could make such a case, but conservative American juries often do not take much convincing when a white defendant stands accused of violence against an African American person.

On 17 April, a 20-year-old white woman, Kaylin Gillis, turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York. Kevin Monahan, the 65-year-old white homeowner who killed her, now faces second-degree murder charges. New York does not have a stand your ground law, so Monahan’s defence presumably faces a higher bar.

What both these shootings have in common – besides the fact that both occurred in conservative areas – is that they could happen to anyone (of course American white supremacy makes it more likely for African Americans in these situations to face violence). Who among us is immune from getting our directions mixed up in confusing or simply unfamiliar neighbourhoods? The thought that such a commonplace mistake could cost us our lives is absolutely chilling. And as it turns out, the two incidents that made recent headlines are far from isolated.

Meanwhile, like mass shootings, road rage shootings have also surged in recent years. According to a disturbing new report by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organisation, incidents have steeply risen year after year since 2018. The report states that one American was “shot and either injured or killed in a road rage incident in 2022 every 16 hours, on average”.

Using data from the Gun Violence Archive, the report notes that road rage shootings occur in every US state, but that there are patterns.

Southern states, which on the whole have particularly lax gun laws, experience “the highest rates of victimisation from road rage shootings” according to the report. By contrast, the north-eastern states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont have the lowest rates of road rage shootings – about half those, per capita, that occur in southern states. These states have much stricter gun laws. Compare, for example, Florida’s rate of 1.64 road rage shootings per million residents to New York’s rate of 0.7 per one million residents.

Another study found similar stark regional differences in all gun homicides as opposed to just road rage incidents. The deep south has by far the highest per capita gun homicide rate, which makes Republicans’ claims that America’s progressive cities are “war zones” absurd.

While other factors may be in play –for example, public intellectual Colin Woodard argues that policy is ”downstream from culture” and attributes regional differences in gun violence to the cultural legacies of distinct groups of colonisers – Everytown for Gun Safety’s report provides clear cut evidence that a serious approach to gun control reduces gun violence rates. Unfortunately, acting on this obvious fact at the national level would require not only a strength of political will too often lacking among Democrats, but also the cooperation of some Republicans.

Frankly, as sad as it is to say this, if I were an official serving in another country’s foreign ministry, I would recommend that that government issue a warning against travel to the United States – and especially its most violent regions. There’s just no avoiding the conclusion that for the time being, the ‘land of the free’ will remain a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ nation.

What will the UK’s Illegal Migration Bill really do to trafficking survivors?


This legislation is going to make some traffickers very happy


Lauren Crosby Medlicott
28 March 2023, 

Rishi Sunak speaks on the Illegal Migration Bill |
Leon Neal/Getty Images. All rights reserved

Today, members of Parliament will debate the trafficking-related changes proposed under the Illegal Migration Bill. The bill was first presented in early March as a way to “prevent and deter unlawful migration”. If passed, it will give the government the power to deny both asylum and protection under the human trafficking and modern slavery system to anyone entering the UK via irregular or “illegal” routes.

Charities and organisations in the asylum sector have condemned the bill as the “Refugee Ban Bill”, and more than 300 academic experts have signed a letter saying the policy is not “evidence-based, workable, or legal under human rights law”. A second letter, signed by nearly 50 NGOs, outlines how the bill’s removal of protection for a large swath of trafficking victims will “cost lives” and “inflict harm on survivors”.

“The [bill’s] primary impact is going to be that modern slavery victims who arrive through routes that the UK government deem as irregular will be banned from accessing support,” Jamie Fookes, of Anti-Slavery International, told openDemocracy.

A flawed system now in danger of breaking

The National Referral Mechanism is the government’s system for formally recognising and supporting trafficking victims in the UK. It is the only way to receive this status. People cannot submit an application to the NRM – they must be referred by so-called first responders, such as the police, Border Force, local authorities, and select charities. In 2022, the NRM received nearly 17,000 referrals.

The current administration has argued that the size of this number demonstrates “an alarming rise of abuse within the modern slavery system”. No evidence of abuse has been made public to support this claim, and many organisations – including the government’s own Office of Statistics Regulation – have called on the Home Office to stop repeating it until it such evidence can be provided. The fact that 90% of trafficking claims receive a positive final decision from the Home Office casts further doubt on the suggestion that the NRM is teeming with false claims.

Traffickers will have the perfect leverage to hold over their victim

If the Illegal Migration Bill passes, it is likely that many genuine victims will be denied support. Say, for example, that someone is picked up by the Border Force shortly after crossing the English Channel by boat. “That person would be immediately detained as far as we can tell,” said Fookes. “They will start processing that person’s removal regardless of if they’ve been trafficked or not.”

This is not only a breach of human rights, Fookes said, but a logistically unworkable plan.

“The UK Government doesn’t have any [relevant] return agreements,” he said. It “People will be detained indefinitely. We’ll end up with some kind of long-term detention system. And right now, we don’t have that level of detention capacity, so there will be widespread destitution of migrants and refugees. Not only is the idea of removal incredibly cruel, but there just isn’t the infrastructure to do it.”
The groundwork for more exploitation

The 50 NGO signatories of the open letter are further worried that this legislation will drive modern slavery underground by removing survivors’ ability to report trafficking and access help. Fookes agreed. “It’s a boon for traffickers,” he said. “They’ll have the perfect leverage to hold over their victim.”

Traffickers, Fookes explained, will from now on be able to threaten victims with detention and deportation if they go to the authorities. “Victims essentially aren’t going to be able to say they are a victim of crime, because if they do, and say they entered the UK irregularly, then immigration enforcement kicks in,” he said. “The government will have a duty to block them from accessing support.”

“[Traffickers] will be able to exploit that position very efficiently,” he said.

We are going to have a lot of missing 17-year-olds

Children are at particular risk. At the moment, any child who arrives in the UK unaccompanied is taken into the care of local authorities, to be looked after in the same way that any other child in care would be. When these children exit care at 18, they are given access to care leavers’ support until the age of 25.

That future could look very different if this bill passes in its current form. “Once a child turns 18, the bill will kick in and apply to them,” Lauren Starkey, an independent social worker working with trafficked, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, told openDemocracy.

“Children’s legislation all says we have a duty and responsibility towards care leavers,” Starkey said. “This bill removes that provision for children who arrived in the country irregularly. Any other child who enters the UK care system will be eligible for leaving care support, but unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who arrive by boats or lorries won’t. They’re creating a two-tiered care system where some children get leaving care support and others don’t. It goes against the principles of social work.”

Starkey predicted that many children who arrive irregularly will find a way to disappear in order to avoid being detained and deported on their 18th birthday. “We are going to have a lot of missing 17-year-olds,” she said. “Those children will be extremely vulnerable to exploitation and modern slavery. Gangs wait for them.”

Starkey said she and her fellow social workers aren’t sure how they are going to proceed on a professional level if this new legislation moves forward. “Our primary responsibility is to make children safe,” she said. “I’m a registered social worker and have made a commitment to the children I work with to safeguard and protect them. But I work in a country where my own government is working against those principles. It’s a difficult position to be in.”

The police, who are responsible for investigating modern slavery and human trafficking claims, will also be put in a difficult position by this legislation.

“Policing has already been struggling because of the complexity of modern slavery,” said Phil Brewer, former head of the Met’s modern slavery unit. “It has always been quite a specialist crime to investigate. It’s about to get more complex. It’s going to disadvantage victims because it is going to make things far more difficult to navigate.”

Under the bill, if an officer were to discover someone had arrived irregularly, they would be required to detain them. “I’d be massively surprised if they made the caveat for people who make an allegation of crime,” said Brewer. “That they would then be treated as a victim before considering their immigration status. It’s just not going to happen in the government’s narrative as it stands.”

Brewer went on to say that he thinks the police will feel torn between adhering to the new rules and following current police guidance on sharing information with immigration enforcement, which says to treat someone who reports a crime first and foremost as a victim.

“You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats its most vulnerable,” concluded Fookes. “It’s not a good look for the UK. It’s a dark day for the UK’s claim to be a country which in any way respects human rights. It’s an abandonment of international duty, and an abandonment of being a nation that respects law and rules and human rights.”

What does Nigeria’s new president stand for?


Garhe Osiebe
May 4th, 2023

Despite a long career in politics, many in Nigeria are uncertain about the political intentions of the country’s president-elect. Garhe Osiebe examines why.

Following his victory in Nigeria’s presidential election in February 2023, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is poised to be sworn in as president of Africa’s most populous nation on 29 May. It is important therefore to have a sense of the politics behind the figure. This is even more pressing after the blind side Nigerians received when the outgoing president Muhammadu Buhari assumed power in 2015. The outcome was a cabinet that took over six months to be inaugurated, and to this day, Nigerians are unsure about the political philosophy of their outgoing president.

The current fragile situation of Nigeria and the polarising nature of its recent election makes knowing more about the man slated to become president even more important.

The career

Tinubu was elected senator representing Lagos West in 1992. He last held elected public office as governor of Lagos state between 1999 and 2007. His subsequent position as national leader of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was largely ceremonial, and in the intervening years, people have lost track of what he stands for.

During his time in Lagos, Tinubu tried to lay claim to the political ideology of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a Nigerian statesman who played a key role in Nigeria’s independence movement between 1957 and 1960. Awolowo founded the Yoruba nationalist group Egbe Omo Oduduwa, and his political philosophy came to be known as Awoism – a form of social democracy.

A good number of Tinubu’s policies while he was governor of Lagos State were consistent with his Awoist vision. For example, the ‘Jigi Bola’ program offered treatment and free eyeglasses to patients with cataracts and other eye defects. He also initiated the payment of the senior secondary school examination fees for students in Lagos State schools to the West African Examination Council, an examination board in English-speaking West African countries. He also established scholarship schemes at the higher education level. These are a few of the policies by Tinubu as governor of Lagos that are said to have touched the lives of the common man. Despite this, Tinubu remains a polarising figure.

The principles

Some commentators consider labelling Tinubu as an Awoist or social democrat as nonsense. They instead see him as a neo-liberal in the same vein as most politicians in Nigeria. This predominant group of politicians believes the market and the private sector are the solution to all ills in government, economy, and the larger society. Tinubu is also shrouded in much controversy regarding his age, origins, health and constitutional fit for the office of president of Nigeria. A newspaper report from 1998 states that he was 52, but in 2023 Tinubu officially marked his 71st birthday, leaving a six-year gap. Demands for a full health disclosure have been ignored, and investigative journalist David Hundeyin has released files about a background in drug trafficking while Tinubu lived in the US. These stories, together with his possession of Guinean citizenship, have been widely shared on social media.

Tinubu’s much touted symbol is of ‘broken shackles’ – intended as liberation from the woes of colonialism and neo-colonialism – which he wears on his head at public events. Yet, this symbolism now appears lost on the public. His time out of office and establishing a reputation as a wealthy godfather and kingmaker of Nigerian politics has disconnected him from the public. Tinubu’s campaign slogans of “Yoruba lo kan” [It is the turn of the Yorubas] and “Emi lo kan” [It is my turn] almost completely replaced whatever ideological leanings he might have had. The chances of Mr Tinubu running a government to which most of the citizenry would be enthusiastic seem low due to the tribal nature of these slogans.

Tinubu got elected with almost 9 million votes. However, his opponents together amassed over 14 million votes. Mr Tinubu’s mandate is thus not an overly popular one. His presidential style, people-centred programs and populist policies could earn his mandate much needed popularity and legitimacy. During his spell as governor of Lagos state, the president-elect displayed a penchant for selecting very capable hands to build an efficient team. It will be vital he can repeat this trick now he oversees the national government.

That some consider Tinubu to be neoliberal, while others see him through the prism of Awo-ism speaks to the divisions within Nigerian politics and the fragile political environment he inherits. Whatever governing philosophy emerges during his tenure, time will tell whether he can galvanise the Nigerian economy out of its present doldrums and unite the country.

About the author

Garhe Osiebe is with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Hargeisa, Republic of Somaliland. He has researched and written on elections in Africa for over a decade with several publications in journals on the subject.