Mutual bond endures but Canada at a crossroads as king’s coronation looms

Story by Leyland Cecco in Toronto • 
The Guardian

Photograph: Tim Graham Photo Library/Getty© Provided by The Guardian

More than 800 dives beneath metres-thick ice were not enough to prepare Joe MacInnis for the stress of bringing a member of the British royal family deep into the blisteringly cold depths of the Arctic Ocean. Especially a future king.

“This is one of the most hostile places on the planet and hazards are everywhere,” he said of the waters near Qausuittuq, an Inuit hamlet on the north shore of the Northwest Passage, where the royal dive took place in 1975. “So yes, I was nervous.”

MacInnis, the famed Canadian scientist and explorer, guided then-Prince Charles through a two-metre deep shaft cut through the ice to give access to the ocean.

As they moved through the water, Charles seemed enraptured by ice stalactites and tiny amphipods, later commenting on his love for the “sacred qualities” of the natural world.

Half a century later, MacInnis sees that moment under the ice as a reflection of the broader challenges the new king will face.

“With Charles, you have a set of eyes that have seen a world under the ice as well as on the surface – and are less able than he’d like to make the changes that are needed to fix things,” said MacInnis.

“As a scientist, I’ve watched as this world slowly cascades into a different kind of place. And there’s a real feeling of helplessness.”

As the coronation of King Charles III approaches, the monarchy is at a crossroads in Canada, with the country increasingly apathetic towards a new head of state.

But Charles’s ascension comes at a time when the causes he has long championed –combatting the climate crisis and repairing the damaged relationship with Indigenous peoples – are central to Canada’s national conversation.



Joe MacInnis and the then Prince of Wales prepare to dive below thick ice in 1975. Photograph: Anwar Hussein/Getty© Provided by The Guardian

As a commonwealth country, Canada will formally commemorate the king’s coronation with a series of speeches, performances and artistic events planned in the nation’s capital.

The solemn ceremony will be broadcast on televisions across the country, but – unlike Elizabeth’s coronation 70 years ago, when many students were given the day off – school boards across the country have made no special plans to mark the occasion.

“This is very much about Canadians considering whether they wish to have somebody born and raised in another country, who got their job through hereditary title, continuing to be Canada’s king and Canada’s head of state,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the non-profit Angus Reid Institute.

Kurl points out that demographic shifts have dramatically reshaped the country’s makeup since the last coronation.

“Culturally, linguistically, ethnically, Canada [today] is not the Canada of 1953,” she said. “The last bastions of monarchic support in this country tend to be among older, more conservative people.”

Less than 10% of the population consider the coronation an important event. “Forget it being the most important event of the decade or century or of their lifetime – only 9% say it’s the most important day of the year,” she said.

Charles has made 18 official visits to Canada since 1970 and has expressed a deep love of the country, the second-oldest Commonwealth realm.

“Every time I come to Canada … a little more of Canada seeps into my bloodstream and from there, straight to my heart,” he told a crowd of supporters in Newfoundland in 2009.

Related: Canada’s ties to crown are loosening but cutting them could be tall order

And yet, the monarchy has increasingly fallen out of favour with Canadians, a majority of whom would prefer to see it abolished.

For some, the pomp surrounding the upcoming coronation – the orbs, sceptres and holy oils – feels like a relic of the past. For others, the crown bears both the weight of history, and the responsibility for centuries of injustice against Indigenous peoples, who were dispossessed from their lands through broken treaties and failed promises.

John Geiger, chief executive officer of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, said Canada’s unique constitution meant severing ties with the monarchy would be a near-impossible task that few politicians would want to take on.

He sees the coronation on 6 May as a moment to help Canadians better understand the structure of the country’s government.

“The crown is central to our constitution. And that’s not about to change. Charles might not be a young man and he’s had some personal baggage,” said Geiger.

“But while he represents a role that is ancient, his views are somewhat visionary, especially his concerns over climate change and the environment. In a way, he’s the right guy for the moment we’re in.”

In his visits to Canada, Charles has prioritised visiting Indigenous communities, which have borne the brunt of racist colonial policies and, more recently, the effects of a changing climate.

On a recent trip to Canada, Charles endorsed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action, as well as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, but has stopped short of formally apologising for the crown’s complicity in Canada’s residential school system.

The relationship between Indigenous peoples and the British royal family is also complex: the arc of Canadian history is one of broken promises, dispossession and overt attempts to erase Indigenous cultures. But the relationship predates Canada itself, and was founded in treaties signed in the 1700s.

Related: UK faces reckoning after unmarked Indigenous graves discovered in Canada

“Nations make treaties, treaties do not make nations … the sanctity of this covenant was made between not just [the] crown of Great Britain, but with the creator and all of our grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ spirits bearing witness,” said Perry Bellegarde, the former national chief for the Assembly of First Nations. “That’s why we say there’s a sacred covenant that cannot ever be broken.”

Many Indigenous people feel that when the crown devolved responsibilities of governance to Canada’s federal government, the spirit of those treaties was damaged and the government put in place overtly racist policies, like the Indian Act, which Indigenous leaders have been trying for decades to abolish.

Despite waning public support for the monarchy and a career spent advocating for Indigenous self-determination, Bellegarde nonetheless sees Charles as a key ally and friend.

“The power of the monarchy is a modern one – because he has the ability and the power to bring people together.

“He can convene CEOs, prime ministers and presidents and Indigenous leaders to work on the issues that really bind us together: climate change and biodiversity loss.”

In 2001, alongside the late Elder Gordon Oakes, Bellegard gave Charles the Cree name Kīsikāwipīsimwa miyo ōhcikanawāpamik, meaning “the sun watches over him in a good way” and draped him in a star blanket, a nod to the importance of the relationship between the crown and Indigenous nations.

“What a fitting name, because of his commitment to the environment. It even speaks to the nature of the treaties, that they will last as long as the sun shines, the rivers flow and the grass grows.”

“These treaties will remain in effect for generations now and those yet unborn.

“And at his coronation, he will carry that name too – and the relationship that we have with him.”

UK republicans eye coronation to rally support

By AFP
April 30, 2023

Pressure group Republic, which wants an elected British head of state, plans to protest at the coronation 

- Copyright AFP Paul ELLIS

Valentine GRAVELEAU, Joe JACKSON

Despite his surname, Ryan King will not be among those waving Union Jack flags at the coronation of King Charles III next week.

Instead, he plans to protest on the historic royal occasion, dressed in a yellow T-shirt with the provocative slogan: “Abolish the monarchy.”

“The monarchy has no place in modern society given how outdated and undemocratic it is,” King, 40, told AFP.

He aims to join other protesters rallied by the pressure group Republic, which wants the monarch replaced by an elected head of state.

Republicans have long been a fringe group in Britain. But their voices have been getting louder since the death of Queen Elizabeth II last year.

Charles, who inherited the crown automatically, has been trailed by protesters holding up signs proclaiming: “Not my king!”

Republic’s chief executive Graham Smith sees the spectacle of dazzling jewels and golden carriages as a chance to make their case, particularly as Britons struggle with the rising cost of living.

That makes it “more fertile ground” for recruitment. “People are far more willing to listen and engage,” he added.

Times have also changed since Britons gave deference to those deemed their social superiors.

“People are far more critical generally of our political system, which comes into this whole debate not just about the royals but about the constitution and the government and parliament,” Smith said.

“And they are far less interested in the royals.”

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams agreed that for the first time, the republican movement was “showing its teeth”.

But he said it still failed to have major political support.

– ‘Tepid’ –

To get its point across, Republic has become more active than ever on social media, to try to mobilise its 130,000-strong base and expand its numbers.

It sends out regular emails about upcoming protests, including last week for a visit by the king and queen to Liverpool, in northwest England.

“Not my king” placards have as a result become more visible. Such protests were virtually unthinkable during Elizabeth’s reign.

A recent YouGov poll indicated that most Britons (58 percent) still support the monarchy. But Smith still sees that as at most “tepid”.

“You’re still going to get a good crowd in London (on coronation day),” he added.

“A lot of people will go because they want to see something which is historic… it doesn’t necessarily translate into royalism.”

Republicans prefer instead to concentrate on levels of support among younger people.

The YouGov poll indicated that 32 percent of those aged 18-24 supported the monarchy, against 38 percent who wanted an elected head of state.

“Polling that shows attitudes towards the monarchy are changing as the younger generation comes to the fore and quite rightly asks themselves, what’s the point of the monarchy?” said King.

But Sean Lang, a history professor at Anglia Ruskin University, disagrees: young people have never been enthusiastic about the monarchy, he said.

“I think republicans who see the polling as evidence that the end of the monarchy is round the corner are indulging in wishful thinking,” he added.

– Democratic –

Unlike the revolutionaries of old, who brought down foreign kings and queen with violence, Smith does not see the current crop of republicans as radicals.

“What we’re proposing isn’t particularly radical, it’s democratic,” he argued.

Instead of the hereditary principle of monarchy, they want a fully elected parliament and elected head of state, plus a written constitution that clearly separates powers.

“Our focus is getting the public on board and to push for a referendum,” he said.

Unlike recent direct action protests in London by environmental groups, Smith says they have “no plans to disrupt the actual procession”.

They are expecting supporters to be spread out along the route with about 1,000 at Trafalgar Square to chant “Not my king” as Charles passes by.

“There are huge swathes of society in desperate need of help and those are all far worthier causes for where our money should be spent,” said King.

“Parading a gold carriage through the capital isn’t going to solve any of these problems.

Descendants of UK slave owners call on government to apologise

Story by Amelia Gentleman • Yesterday 

The Guardian

The descendants of some of Britain’s wealthiest slave owners have launched an activist movement, calling on the government both to apologise for slavery and begin a programme of reparative justice in recognition of the “ongoing consequences of this crime against humanity”.

A second cousin of King Charles and a direct descendant of the Victorian prime minister William Gladstone have joined journalists, a publisher, a schoolteacher and a retired social worker, to create the Heirs of Slavery campaigning body, which will lobby the UK government to acknowledge and atone for its role in the transportation of 3.1 million enslaved African people across the Atlantic.

“British slavery was legal, industrialised and based entirely on race,” Alex Renton, one of the group’s founders, said. “Britain has never apologised for it, and its after-effects still harm people’s lives in Britain as well as in the Caribbean countries where our ancestors made money.”

The group includes the Earl of Harewood, David Lascelles, the retired social worker Rosemary Harrison, businessman Charles Gladstone, the former BBC correspondent Laura Trevelyan, her film director cousin, John Dower, the author and publisher Richard Atkinson, retired schoolteacher Robin Wedderburn, and the journalist Alex Renton. They hope descendants of other slave-owning dynasties will come forward to join them.

Members of the group acknowledge that their families’ wealth was derived in part from the profits made on plantations worked on by enslaved Africans. Their slave-owning ancestors all received compensation from the British government after slavery was abolished in Britain in 1833.

The group supports the plans for reparative justice devised by Caricom – the political union of 20 Caribbean countries. The Caricom Reparations Commission states that European governments instructed genocidal actions on indigenous communities and failed to acknowledge their crimes or to compensate victims and their descendants. Its 10-point plan for reparatory justice asks for a full formal apology, debt cancellation, and calls for former colonial powers to invest in their health and education systems.

Asked if the descendants of families who received compensation from the British government in 1833 should be encouraged to pay some of that money back, Lascelles, whose ancestors received about £26,000, said: “That certainly should be part of the discussion.”

In a written statement, Charles Gladstone said: “I joined this group in an attempt to begin to address the appalling ills visited on so many people by my ancestor John Gladstone.” John Gladstone, father of the prime minister William Gladstone, was paid £106,000 compensation after abolition (worth at least £17m today).


Laura Trevelyan said last month she was leaving the BBC to become a full-time slavery reparations campaigner. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images© Provided by The Guardian

Last month, Trevelyan said she was leaving the BBC to become a full-time slavery reparations campaigner and announced that she and relatives had donated £100,000 to education projects in Grenada.

Renton, the son of a Conservative cabinet minister, said the group wanted to use their inherited privilege to put pressure on the government for change. “As descendants of wealthy families, we inherited disproportionate influence and power in modern Britain. We’re encouraging everybody who finds themselves in this position to look at what they can do to help,” he said.

Renton’s 2021 book, Blood Legacy, investigating his family’s slave-owning past, prompted other descendants of slave-owning families to contact him asking for advice on what they should do. As well as directing people to charities, he hopes that the new group will work to support existing campaigns, seeking apologies and reparative justice.

“We’re keen not to do what people like me are educated to do, which is to take centre stage and try to take charge of things, but instead to offer our skills to support the hard work others are doing,” Renton said.

Richard Atkinson, a publisher with Penguin, has also researched his family’s slave-owning past. “There must be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of families in this country who have a version of that history. Individuals should give money, according to their means and their conscience, but it’s too big a subject to be just down to individuals,” he said. Political parties should be writing commitments to reparative justice into their manifestoes, he said.

Olivette Otele, distinguished research professor of the memory of slavery at SOAS, University of London, was cautiously welcoming. She said: “It is an important initiative and potentially transformative but it needs to be more than half a dozen people. There are many, many other people who ought to be on that list.”

She stressed it was important to make sure the group collaborated with already existing movements, to avoid being labelled white saviours, “trying to tackle racism on their own … But I want to applaud it. It reminds me of the movement to abolish the slave trade, where you had enslaved people in the Caribbean fighting for their own freedom but also you also had abolitionists in European capitals, and it was this collaboration that brought slavery to an end,” she said.

The announcement follows a recent surge in support for the reparations movement. Last December, the Netherlands became the first major national government to apologise for its role in enslaving Africa; Mark Rutte, the prime minister, made a formal apology and pledged to commit £200m of government funds towards restoration work in the former Dutch colonies.

The Guardian has this month published research into its founders’ links to slavery and King Charles has recently signalled his support for research into the British monarchy’s historical links with transatlantic slavery. The all party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations is hosting a meeting on Tuesday to debate “why now is the time for official apologies for African enslavement”.

Rosa Luxemburg Was the Great Theorist of Democratic Revolution

The latest volume of her Complete Works provides a unique perspective on her political thought

AUTHOR
Peter Hudis
Peter Hudis is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Oakton Community College and the General Editor of the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg.

This article first appeared in Jacobin.


Generations of socialist thinkers and activists have grappled with the life and thought of Rosa Luxemburg. Yet there are many surprises still in store for those interested in her legacy, as seen in the recent publication of Volume Four of the English-language Complete Works. Along with the previously published Volume Three, the new collection brings together her writings on the 1905 Russian Revolution, one of the most important social upheavals of modern times.

Luxemburg’s analysis of 1905 in her pamphlet The Mass Strike, the Political Party, and the Trade Unions is already well-known (and appears in Volume Four in a new translation). However, more than four-fifths of the material in the new volume, covering the period from 1906 to 1909, is appearing in English for the first time. Most of her writings that were originally composed in Polish — about half of the volume’s 550 pages — have never appeared in any other language.
Learning to Speak Russian

Luxemburg, like most Marxists of her generation (as well as Karl Marx himself) held that a democratic republic with universal suffrage was the formation best suited for waging the class struggle to a successful conclusion. Like many of her contemporaries in the Second International, she saw no contradiction between fighting for democratic reforms within capitalism while reaching for a revolutionary transformation that would abolish capitalism — even as she relentlessly battled those who separated the two.

In doing so, Luxemburg distinguished between forms of struggle employed in “peaceful” as against those used in revolutionary periods. The aim in both scenarios was to enhance the consciousness and power of the working class. However, “in peacetime, this struggle takes place within the framework of the rule of the bourgeoisie”, which required that the movement operate “within the bounds of the existing laws governing elections, assemblies, the press”, trade unions, etc.

Luxemburg referred to this as “a sort of iron cage in which the class struggle of the proletariat must take place”. Hence, mass struggles in such periods “only very seldom attain positive results”. A revolutionary phase was very different, she argued:


Times of revolution rend the cage of “legality” open like pent-up steam splitting its kettle, letting class struggle break out into the open, naked and unencumbered ... the consciousness and political power [of the proletariat] emerge during revolution without having been warped by, tied down to, and overpowered by the “laws” of bourgeois society.

For Luxemburg, the activity and reason of the masses during the 1905 Revolution, in which millions engaged in mass strikes aimed at bringing down the tsarist regime, was a clear example of such a moment. As she wrote in early 1906: “With the Russian Revolution, the almost-sixty-year period of quiet parliamentary rule of the bourgeoisie comes to a close.” The time had come for the socialist movement in Western Europe to begin to “speak Russian” by incorporating the mass strike into its political and organizational perspectives:


Social Democratic tactics, as employed by the working class in Germany today and to which we owe our victories up until now, is oriented primarily toward parliamentary struggle, it is designed for the context of bourgeois parliamentarianism. Russian Social Democracy is the first to whom the hard but honourable lot has fallen of using the foundations of Marx’s teaching, not in a time of the correct, calm parliamentary course of state life, but in a tumultuous revolutionary period.
Immediate Tasks

In the years since Luxemburg penned these words, numerous commentators have praised her efforts to push the rather staid social democratic parties in a more revolutionary direction, while others have criticized Luxemburg’s perspective on the grounds that it downplays the stark differences between the absolutist regime in Russia and Western liberal democracies. There are several points worth noting in this context.

Firstly, Luxemburg held that the mass strike “is and will remain a powerful weapon of workers’ struggle”, but went on to stress that it was “only that, a weapon, whose use and effectiveness always depend on the environment, the given conditions, and the moment of struggle”. Secondly, she held that the Russian proletariat was “not setting itself utopian or unreachable goals, like the immediate realization of socialism: the only possible and historically necessary goal is to establish a democratic republic and an eight-hour workday”.

In Luxemburg’s view, socialism could not be on the immediate agenda in Russia for two main reasons: the working class at the time constituted only a small minority of the populace of the Russian Empire (less than 15 percent), and it was impossible for socialism to exist in a single country:


The socialist revolution can only be a result of international revolution, and the results that the proletariat in Russia will be able to achieve in the current revolution will depend, to say nothing of the level of social development in Russia, on the level and form of development that class relations and proletarian operations in other capitalist countries will have achieved by that time.

In a lengthy essay addressed to the Polish workers’ movement, she further developed this point:


In its current state, the working class is not yet ready to accomplish the great tasks that await it. The working class of all capitalist countries must first internalize the aspiration to socialism; an enormous number of people have yet to arrive at an awareness of their class interests ... When Social Democracy has a majority of the working people behind it in all the largest capitalist countries, the final hour of capitalism will have struck.
A Workers’ Revolution

However, this did not mean that the Russian Revolution would be confined to a liberal or bourgeois framework. Much like Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik current — and in direct opposition to their Menshevik rivals — Luxemburg held that the immediate task facing revolutionaries in the Russian Empire was the formation of a democratic republic under the control of the working class. Since the liberal bourgeoise was too weak and compromised to lead the revolution, “the proletariat had to become the only fighter and defender of the democratic forms of a bourgeois state”.

She stressed that conditions in Russia today were not like those existing in nineteenth-century France:


The Russian proletariat fights first for bourgeois freedom, for universal suffrage, the republic, the law of associations, freedom of the press, etc., but it does not fight with the illusions that filled the [French] proletariat of 1848. It fights for [such] liberties in order to instrumentalize them as a weapon against the bourgeoisie.

She further expanded on this point elsewhere:

The bourgeois revolution in Russia and Poland is not the work of the bourgeoisie, as in Germany and France in days gone by, but the working class, and a class already highly conscious of its labour interests at that — a working class that seeks political freedoms not so that the bourgeoisie may benefit, but just the opposite, so that the working class may resolve its class struggle with the bourgeoisie and thereby hasten the victory of socialism. That is why the current revolution is simultaneously a workers’ revolution. That is also why, in this revolution, the battle against absolutism goes hand in hand — must go hand in hand — with the battle against capital, with exploitation. And why economic strikes are in fact quite nearly inseparable in this revolution from political strikes.

Luxemburg consistently upheld the need for majority support from the exploited masses in achieving any transition to socialism, including those pertaining to freedom struggles in the technologically developed capitalist lands. As she later wrote in December 1918, on behalf of the group she led during the German Revolution: “The Spartacus League will never take over governmental power except in response to the clear, unambiguous will of the great majority of the proletarian mass of all of Germany, never except by the proletariat’s conscious affirmation of the views, aims, and methods of struggle of the Spartacus League.”
One Step Forward

Luxemburg’s perspective on the 1905 Russian Revolution raises a host of questions, which relate to the problems faced by revolutionary regimes in the non-Western world in the decades following her death. How can the working class maintain power in a democratic republic after the overthrow of the old regime if it represents only a minority of the populace? How can it do so if, as she claims, “Social Democracy finds only the autonomous class politics of the proletariat to be reliable” — since the hunger of the peasants for landed private property presumably puts them at odds with it? And how is it possible for such a democratic republic under the control of the proletariat to be sustained if revolutions do not occur in other countries that can come to its aid?

Luxemburg addressed these questions in a remarkable essay written in Polish in 1908, “Lessons of the Three Dumas,” which has never previously appeared in English. By 1908, the situation in Russia had radically changed since the revolution was by then defeated. She surveyed the course of its development, encouraging Marxists to “redouble their commitment to subjecting every detail of their tactics to rigorous self-criticism.” She did so by evaluating the history of the three Dumas — the parliamentary bodies established in the Russian Empire from 1906 as a concession to the revolution, with a restricted franchise that became progressively more biased in favour of the upper classes:


The Third Duma has shown — and from this flow its enormous political significance — that a parliamentary system that has not first overthrown the government, that has not achieved political power through revolution, not only cannot defeat the old power (a belief the First Duma vainly held), not only cannot hold its own against that power as an instrument of opposition (as the Second Duma tried to do), but can and must become, on the contrary, an instrument of the counterrevolution.

She proceeded to look ahead in thinking about the possible fate of a future revolution that, unlike the one in 1905, did succeed in overthrowing the old regime:


If the revolutionary proletariat in Russia were to gain political power, however temporarily, that would provide enormous encouragement to the international class struggle. That is why the working class in Poland and in Russia can and must strive to seize power with full consciousness. Because once workers have power, they can not only carry out the tasks of the current revolution directly — realizing political freedom across the Russian state — but also establish the eight-hour workday, upend agrarian relations, and in a word, materialize every aspect of their program, delivering the heaviest blows they can to bourgeois rule and in this way hastening its international overthrow.
Revolutionary Realism

Yet the question remained: How could the workers maintain themselves in power in a democratic republic over the long haul if they constituted a minority of the populace? Luxemburg’s answer was that they could not — and yet the effort would still be worth it:


The revolution’s bourgeois character finds expression in the inability of the proletariat to stay in power, in the inevitable removal of the proletariat from power by a counterrevolutionary operation of the bourgeoisie, the rural landowners, the petty bourgeoisie, and the greater part of the peasantry. It may be that in the end, after the proletariat is overthrown, the republic will disappear and be followed by the long rule of a highly restrained constitutional monarchy. It may very well be. But the relations of classes in Russia are now such that the path to even a moderate monarchical constitution leads through revolutionary action and the dictatorship of a republican proletariat.

Shortly before writing this, in an address to a Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, she made the following remarks:


I find that it is a poor leader and a pitiful army that only goes into battle when victory is already in the bag. To the contrary, not only do I not mean to promise the Russian proletariat a sequence of certain victories; I think, rather, that if the working class, being faithful to its historical duty, continues to grow and execute its tactics of struggle consistent with the unfolding contradictions and the ever-broader horizons of the revolution, then it could wind up in quite complicated and difficult circumstances ... But I think that the Russian proletariat must have the courage and resolve to face everything prepared for it by historical developments, that it should, if it has to, even at the cost of sacrifices, play the role of the vanguard in this revolution in relation to the global army of the proletariat, the vanguard that discloses new contradictions, new tasks, and new paths for class struggle, as the French proletariat did in the nineteenth century.

She did not shy away from acknowledging the implications of this argument:


Revolution in this conception would bring the proletariat losses as well as victories. Yet by no other road can the entire international proletariat march to its final victory. We must propose the socialist revolution not as a sudden leap, finished in twenty-four hours, but as a historical period, perhaps long, of turbulent class struggle, with breaks both brief and extended.

This was a remarkable expression of revolutionary realism. Luxemburg was fully aware that even a democratic republic under the control of the working class — which is how she as well as Marx understood “the dictatorship of the proletariat” — was bound to be forced from power in the absence of an international revolution, especially in a country where the working class constituted a minority. And yet, even though the revolution would therefore have “failed” from at least one point of view, it would have produced important social transformations, providing the intellectual sediment from which a future uprooting of capitalism could arise.

In short, Luxemburg did not think that it made sense to sacrifice democracy for the sake of staying in power, since the political form required to achieve the transition to socialism was “thoroughgoing democracy”. If a nondemocratic regime stayed in power, the transition to socialism would become impossible, since the working class would be left without the means and training to exercise power on its own behalf. Yet on the other hand, if a proletarian democracy existed even for a brief period of time, it could help inspire a later transition to socialism.
Self-Examination

This argument speaks to what would unfold a decade later, when tsarism was finally overthrown in the February 1917 Revolution, followed in short order by the Bolshevik seizure of power in October of the same year. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were fully aware at the time that the material conditions did not permit the immediate creation of a socialist society, even as they proclaimed the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was why Lenin worked so hard to foster proletarian revolutions in Western Europe.

However, two fundamental issues separated Lenin’s approach from that of Luxemburg. Firstly, his regime did not take the form of a democratic republic, as seen in its suppression of political liberties — a development that Luxemburg sharply opposed in her 1918 critique of the Russian Revolution. Secondly, Lenin held that once the Bolsheviks seized power, they intended to keep it — permanently. This was very different from Luxemburg’s statement that “the inability of the proletariat to stay in power” would not be the worst outcome, so long as the vision of liberation projected to the world through its creation of a democratic society based on the rule of the working class inspired others to take up the fight against capitalism.

Luxemburg’s position is especially striking because she was fully aware that the bourgeoisie would always resort to violent suppression in the aftermath of a defeated revolution. Indeed, she lost her own life following the defeat of the January 1919 Spartacus League uprising in Berlin, which she initially opposed on the grounds that it lacked sufficient mass support. However, Luxemburg was equally aware that any effort to forge a transition to socialism through nondemocratic means was doomed to fail. In this sense, she anticipated the tragic outcome of many revolutions in the decades following her death.

Whatever one makes of Luxemburg’s reflection on these issues, one thing is clear: she developed a distinctive, though rarely discussed, conception of the transition to socialism (especially for developing societies, which is what the Russian Empire was at the time) that has received far too little attention. The publication of these writings in English will hopefully remedy that neglect.

Although many of Luxemburg’s ideas speak to issues that democratic socialists, anti-imperialists, and feminists are grappling with today, on at least one critical issue, her perspective has not stood the test of time. It is to be found in her oft-repeated insistence: “When the sale of workers’ labour to private exploiters is abolished, the source of all today’s social inequalities will disappear.”

Luxemburg’s contention that the abolition of private ownership of the means of production would provide the basis for ending “every inequality in human society” was not hers alone. Virtually every tendency and theorist of revolutionary social democracy in the Second International shared it, including Lenin, Karl Kautsky, Leon Trotsky, and many others. Yet it is hardly possible to maintain this view today.

Neither the social-democratic welfare states, which sought to limit private property rights, nor the regimes in the USSR, China, and elsewhere in the developing world, which abolished them through the nationalization of property, succeeded in developing a viable alternative to the capitalist mode of production. A much deeper social transformation that targets not alone private property and “free” markets but most of all the alienated form of human relations that define capitalist modernity is clearly needed.

That is a task for our generation, which can be much aided by returning with new eyes to the humanist implications of Marx’s critique of the logic of capital. This entails a critical re-evaluation of the meaning of socialism that may not have been on the agenda in Luxemburg’s time, but which the overall spirit of her work surely encourages. As she wrote in 1906:

Self-examination — that is, making oneself aware at every step of the direction, logic, and basis for the class movement itself — is that store from which the working mass draws its strength, again and again, to struggle anew, and by which it understands its own hesitation and defeats as so many proofs of its strength and inevitable future victory.

https://www.rosalux.de/en

 ABOLISH lèse-majesté laws
Activist sentenced to 28 years in Thai prison for insulting monarchy on Facebook


59
Michelle De Pacina
Fri, January 27, 2023 

A political activist was sentenced to 28 years in prison for insulting the Thai monarchy on Facebook.

Mongkol Tirakote, a 29-year-old online clothing vendor and activist, was found guilty in two separate royal defamation cases by a court in the northern city of Chiang Rai on Thursday.

He was arrested in August last year. According to the court, Tirakote violated Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws in 14 of 27 Facebook posts. His prison sentence was originally set to 42 years, but the court reduced it to 28 years following his testimony.

While Tirakote intends to lodge an appeal, the court has granted him bail of 300,000 baht (approximately $9,144), according to his lawyer

Sunai Phasuk, a Human Rights Watch senior researcher, said that Tirakote’s 28-year sentence is the second-highest prison term given by a Thai court for a royal defamation case.

Tirakote also faces a third royal defamation charge over online posts from last year.

He is expected back in court in March for the separate charge.

Those convicted under the lèse-majesté laws face imprisonment of three to 15 years per count.

According to critics, the laws are often taken advantage of to suppress public debate.

In 2021, a former civil servant was sentenced to over 43 years in prison after she posted several audio clips critical of the Thai monarch on social media.

There have been more than 200 royal defamation cases since November 2020, when mass youth-led protests called for democratic change, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.

Petition to strip royal loopholes from Scottish laws becomes Holyrood's most popular

Steph Brawn
Mon, 16 January 2023

A PETITION demanding the Scottish Government abolish royal exceptions and adaptations to legislation has become the most popular on Holyrood's website.

The petition launched by Our Republic has amassed over 6000 signatures in just over a week – nearly twice as many as any other submitted in the past year.

It calls for all details of instances where the monarchy has lobbied for changes in Scottish law to be made public, for them to be reversed, and for any future communications between the monarchy and government to be “fully transparent” to prevent any such alterations to Scottish laws being implemented in the future.

Our Republic convenor Tristan Gray said it is important for people to realise the monarchy are not simply “neutral figureheads”.

READ MORE: BBC Scotland radio host calls Nicola Sturgeon 'our leader'

He said: "We wanted to draw attention to the secretive ways in which the royal family have been interfering with our laws to their own benefit.

“While many people think of the royals as simply neutral figureheads and tourist attractions, the reality is that, behind the scenes, they are anything but.

"News stories this week, from the clear strategy of anonymous briefing to shape media reporting to revelations Charles yet again interfered with environmental regulations in 2019, show how much of an immediate concern these ongoing royal manipulations should be.

“The first step towards changing this is to lift the shroud of secrecy."

READ MORE: An SNP shift to the left could boost independence campaign

A constitutional mechanism called Crown Consent sees the monarch given an opportunity to look over prospective laws that could affect his or her property and public powers. It is not the same as Royal Assent, which is given to bills to make them acts of Parliament.

Gray added: “We're calling on the Scottish Government to ensure all future communication between the Crown and the Government are public and transparent, publish all past correspondence, abolish past exemptions implemented on the monarchy's behalf, and work to prevent such alterations to our laws in the future."

The popularity of the petition has come amid a rocky time for the royals after the publication of Prince Harry's autobiography Spare, which made claims about how the family has sought to shape media reporting and "plant" stories.

The National: Prince Harry's autobiography Spare included revelations about how the family can shape media reporting

Prince Harry's autobiography Spare included revelations about how the family can shape media reporting (Image: Archant)

Reports said that the late Queen was given advance sight of Holyrood bills – allowing her to secretly lobby for changes – on at least 67 occasions. These included bills dealing with property taxation, protections from tenants, and planning laws.

It emerged at the weekend the UK Government asked King Charles for permission to pass its post-Brexit Environment Act because laws requiring landowners to enhance conservation could affect his business interests.

In letters sent in October 2019, then environment minister Rebecca Pow informed Charles: “This bill contains measures on conservation covenants which affect the interests of the crown, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall.

READ MORE: UK's richest one per cent has more wealth than bottom 70 per cent

“Part 7 (conservation covenants) of the bill applies to crown land as it applies to any other land.”

Letters then show that the prince’s private secretary, Clive Alderton, gave his consent for the law.

Gray said that he feels republicanism is growing in Scotland and now is the right time to talk about the future of the monarchy.

He said: "We have members from parties across the political spectrum and republicanism is growing in Scotland. A recent poll showed that only 45% of Scots still support the monarchy.

“We think the time is right to have a proper conversation about the future of the royal family in Scotland, and the vital importance of the concept that all of us should be equal under the law."

The petition can be signed here and will continue to collect signatures until February 2. It will then be considered by the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee.

How two men shaped Haiti’s bloody revolutionary history

Paul Lay
Sat, January 7, 2023 

In this article:

Toussaint Louverture
Haitian general and revolutionary

Henri Christophe
President and King of Haiti (1767-1820)

Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Leader of Haitian Revolution and first ruler of independent Haiti (1758-1806)


'Black Spartacus': Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution by de Baptiste (1875) - Photo 12/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images

By the time of the French Revolution, France’s colony of Saint-Domingue, the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), was the most valuable plot of land on Earth. The wealth of the “Pearl of the Antilles” came from the new-found European taste for sugar and coffee – it produced half the world’s supply of both and was responsible for one third of French maritime trade.

But the economy of Saint-Domingue was underpinned by the violence and suffering inflicted on almost half a million enslaved Africans, who vastly outnumbered the white population of 40,000, and the slightly smaller – and free – mixed-race population. More than 300 Africans arrived in chains every week to be “fed into the slave machine”.

A slave revolt had long been feared, and brute force was the plantation-owning class’s way of maintaining order. Memories remained fresh of the fate of François Makandal, a Maroon – an escapee from slavery – who had been taken to the bustling, metropolitan city of Cap-Français to be burned at the stake in 1758 for inciting rebellion. The fear was finally realised in August 1791, amid tensions between the ruling classes exacerbated by the French Republic’s declaration of the Rights of Man and its opposition to slavery. Hundreds of plantations in the fertile north were ravaged, and both white and mixed-race settlers were massacred on a horrendous scale.

The aftermath of these tumultuous events is now the subject of two very different books. Sudhir Hazareesingh’s Black Spartacus (★★★☆☆), an “epic life” of François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, has already won high praise and the 2021 Wolfson History Prize. Scholarly and highly readable, it is occasionally too much of a love letter to its subject: “Great Man” history, long disparaged among academics, is still acceptable, it seems, with a change of cast. Paul Clammer’s Black Crown (★★★★☆), however, a life of the less well-known Henry Christophe, who became King Henry I of Haiti in the years after the revolution, grasps the essential tragedy of history, in all its ambiguity and contingency.

Christophe, born into slavery on Grenada, would become a lieutenant of the much-feted Toussaint Louverture, a former coachman who became a free man in his 30s. Louverture subsequently owned slaves of his own, as a coffee-planter.

The Rebellion of the Slaves in Santo Domingo by the French School, an 18th century coloured engraving of the 1791 insurrection - Archives Charmet

Where historical fact is sparse, mythology flourishes, and there is uncertainty about what role Louverture actually played in the 1791 slave revolt. The plot appears to have been hatched on August 14, and unleashed a week later, when the Colonial Assembly was due to meet in Cap-Français. Its leader was Boukman Dutty, another coachman but also a priest.

The violence, according to one witness, “would make Nero blush”, and panicked whites fled to the cities and towns. It can be said with some certainty, however, that Louverture saved the wife of his former master by escorting her to safety from their plantation. Louverture, unlike many of his fellow revolutionaries, was open to white allies and believed to the end that the plantation system – albeit one manned by free labourers – was essential to future prosperity.

The embattled white colonists invested their hopes of restoring the old order in the British, who arrived to do just that in 1793; they failed when their forces were devastated by yellow fever. France, desperate to keep Saint-Domingue within its orbit, endorsed its commissioners’ decision to abolish slavery there in 1794.

By then, Louverture’s star was in the ascendant, though dependent upon the support of his army of former slaves and a strong relationship with the governor, Etienne Laveaux, who was the first to proclaim him “Black Spartacus”. He was faithful to France, sending his two sons to be educated there, but with Laveux’s departure, the metropole became ambivalent in its commitment to the freedom of Saint-Domingue’s black population – a red line for Louverture.

Napoleon, now similarly ascendant, had no such uncertainty and, having made peace with Britain in 1802, he launched an expedition to Saint-Domingue, led by his brother-in-law, Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc. Louverture was outlawed and cracks appeared in his already fractious alliance. Then he made a fatal mistake. He sought a truce with the French, but was arrested, transported to France – on a ship called The Hero – imprisoned in a medieval castle in the Jura mountains, and died within eight months.

An illustration of English General Thomas Maitland and Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture as they sign a treaty in March 1798 - Science Source/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images

The fate of his cause was now in the hands of two men, once his deputies, who may have conspired against him: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe. Learning from the errors of Louverture, they sought to eliminate all rivals, press labourers back to work on the plantations, and indulge the French forces on Saint-Domingue just long enough that they would succumb to yellow fever, just as the British had done and Leclerc would do.

Their plan worked, and at the Battle of Vertières they defeated the weakened French. Soon the last of the colonial forces would be shepherded into captivity on Jamaica courtesy of the Royal Navy. On December 5 1803 – the same day that, 311 years before, Columbus had made landfall on the island – a new free nation was born: Haiti.

A Declaration of Independence was signed on January 1 1804, first by Dessalines, then by Christophe. Dessalines’s secretary observed that the ideal arrangement would be for “the skin of a white to serve as parchment, his skull as an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen”.

The slaughter of French residents followed, as did war against the French garrison that remained in Santo Domingo, the Spanish, eastern side of the island. It was clear that power rested on military strength and the regime commissioned the vast Citadelle fortress, designed by Henry Barré, which was to tower over northern Haiti. Restrictions were placed on labour and movement, and Dessalines became Emperor Jacques I. He would soon fall victim, in the southern city of Port-au-Prince, to an alliance of northern Maroons and the southern free mixed-race population crushed by Louverture. “Cruel poetry,” observes Clammer.

Civil war followed between north and south, with former ally Alexandre Pétion president of the southern Republic of Haiti. After Dessalines’s death in 1806, Christophe declared himself King Henry I. Apologists argued that the institution of monarchy was a link to Africa’s own dynasties: “Are there not in Africa an infinity of empires, kingdoms, and independent states?” And did the Taino, Haiti’s original inhabitants, not have their own hereditary chiefs, the caciques?

‘Destroyer of tyranny’: King Henry I of Haiti (formerly Henri Christophe); - Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo

Whatever the reasoning, Christophe enjoyed the trappings. He took the additional titles of “Destroyer of Tyranny, Regenerator and Benefactor of the Haitian Nation…” and so on. He expanded the aristocracy, threw banquets, and built a palace, Sans Souci (named, probably, after a celebrated Maroon rather than Frederick the Great’s Potsdam residence). It was decorated with Greek gods and heroes depicted as Africans.

More productively, his navy intercepted slaving vessels, freeing those aboard to make a new life in Haiti. On one occasion, rescued Hausa children danced before him at court. His actions caught the attention of Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, who wrote: “To see a set of human beings emerging from slavery, and making rapid strides towards the perfection of civilisation, must I think be the most delightful of food for contemplation.” The abolitionist William Wilberforce paid for the passage to Haiti of Prince Saunders, a teacher in Boston’s African school, who introduced smallpox inoculation and played a key role in education policy.

But amid the progress, there was capricious brutality. Typical of this was the fate of a merchant, Vilton, a godfather of Christophe’s daughters, who in 1802 had tried to persuade him to surrender to Leclerc. He was put to death in 1819 for an alleged affair. An adulterous countess, meanwhile, was “obliged to ride through the streets of Sans Souci in a state of perfect nudity, at noon-day, on the back of a donkey, with her face toward the tail”.

It all came crashing down when, on August 15 1820, the king had a stroke while attending mass, just as a huge fire swept through Port-au-Prince. Knowing both the south and the French were empowered, King Henry committed suicide with a shot to the heart. Amid scenes of more brutality, his male heirs were butchered and his wife and daughters sent into exile. While Toussaint Louverture’s story is a heroic one, it is Henry’s tragedy that is the more compelling.

Black Spartacus by Sudhir Hazareesingh is published by Penguin at £10.99. To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books

Black Crown by Paul Clammer is published by Hurst at £25. To order your copy for £19.99. call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books

ABOLISH THE MONARCHY
King Charles and Camilla's visit to Canada for Platinum Jubilee cost at least $1M

From left to right: Prime Minister of Justin Trudeau, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Charles, Prince of Wales attend an evening reception hosted by Governor General Mary Simon (not pictured) at Rideau Hall on May 18, 2022 in Ottawa.

 PHOTO BY IAN VOGLER - POOL /Getty Images

Author of the article:
Canadian Press
Stephanie Taylor
Published Dec 19, 2022 

OTTAWA — Canadian taxpayers spent at least $1 million hosting King Charles III, who was the Prince of Wales at the time, when he visited Canada earlier this year.

The RCMP provided a breakdown of the nearly $450,000 in costs it incurred for his three-day visit in May, accompanied by Queen Consort Camilla, who was then the Duchess of Cornwall.

The Mounties spent about $235,000 on travel and about $212,000 on overtime pay.

There may be additional costs to process, the RCMP said, adding that those totals do not include regular salary costs, benefit plans or supporting units.

The price tag is just a portion of what the visit cost taxpayers.

Other departments, such as Canadian Heritage, were also involved in hosting the royals during their travels to Newfoundland, Ottawa and the Northwest Territories.

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez approved nearly $18,700 worth of food and drink expenses for department officials and members of the former prince’s staff who journeyed to Canada for the visit, according to a briefing document he signed that was released to The Canadian Press under access-to-information laws.

“It is customary for hospitality costs, including those for Clarence House staff, to be assumed by the host country,” it read, referring the King’s London residence.

The Department of National Defence said it spent about $568,000 to transport the royal couple using military aircraft.

“This includes the costs of flying the Airbus Polaris and associated support services to transport members of the Royal Family, along with personnel for the royal tour as identified by Canadian Heritage,” a spokesperson said.

King Charles visited Canada to commemorate the Platinum Jubilee of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September.

Student, 23, charged with threatening behaviour after eggs were thrown at King Charles during walkabout says he 'intends to ask the Monarch to give evidence in his defence'

Patrick Thelwell, 23, has been charged with threatening behaviour

He is charged after eggs were thrown at the King during a walkabout in York

 
The CPS said Thelwell would appear at York Magistrates' Court on January 20

By DANYA BAZARAA FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 20 December 2022


A student has been charged with threatening behaviour after eggs were thrown at the King during a walkabout in York - and revealed he intends to ask the Monarch to give evidence in his defence.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it had authorised North Yorkshire Police to charge Patrick Thelwell following the incident on November 9.

The 23-year-old will appear at York Magistrates' Court on January 20 next year charged with threatening behaviour contrary to Section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986.

Charles and the Queen Consort had just arrived in the city to unveil a statue in honour of the late Queen at York Minster when a figure in the crowd threw four eggs, all of which missed.

Patrick Thelwell, 23, will appear at York Magistrates' Court on January 20 next year charged with threatening behaviour contrary to Section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986

Mr Thelwell said today: 'I am charged with section four of the public order act.

'My plea hearing is on the 20th of January I will plead not guilty, of course.

'The charge relates to someone feeling fear of imminent physical violence.

'The question is did the King fear imminent violence? So I don't know how to get an answer to that without getting a statement from him.'

Asked if he would also call the King to give live evidence, he replied: 'These are questions for my solicitor I think. It should be fun.'

Eggs were seen flying past King Charles III and breaking on the ground beside him as he was being greeted in York in November

Nick Price, head of the CPS special crime and counter terrorism division, said: 'The CPS has authorised North Yorkshire Police to charge Patrick Thelwell with threatening behaviour contrary to Section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986.

'This follows an investigation by police into an incident in which eggs were thrown at HM The King in York on November 9, 2022.

'The Crown Prosecution Service reminds all concerned that criminal proceedings against Patrick Thelwell are active and that he has the right to a fair trial.'

A statement by the CPS added: 'It is extremely important there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.

'The function of the CPS is not to decide whether a person is guilty of a criminal offence, but to make fair, independent and objective assessments about whether it is appropriate to present charges for a criminal court to consider.'

'Cry for change' across Iran as students & strikers challenge the Islamic Republic's clerical rulers

Issued on: 06/12/2022 - 

Video by:Mark OWEN

Iranian shops shut their doors in several cities on Monday, following calls for a three-day nationwide strike from protesters seeking the fall of clerical rulers, while the head of the judiciary blamed what he called "rioters" for threatening shopkeepers. Iran has been rocked by nationwide unrest following the death of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16 in police custody, posing one of the strongest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution. For more on the unprecedented civil uprising, FRANCE 24 is joined by Tara Kangarlou, Author, Award-Winning Journalist and Professor at Georgetown University.

Iranian lawmaker says the government is “paying attention to the people’s demands”

Issued on: 05/12/2022 - 

Video by:Angela DIFFLEY

An Iranian lawmaker says the government is “paying attention to the people’s demands.”. But many remain skeptical in the face of reports that the regime’s so-called morality police has been disbanded. 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody back on September 16th. She was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women and her death sparked a wave of nationwide protests. Listen to the Iran foreign minister followed by the Iranian president speaking over the weekend. FRANCE 24's International Affairs editor Angela Diffley gives us her expertise.

French street artist JR's performance to support women's rights protests in Iran

Issued on: 05/12/2022 - 

Hundreds of people have helped the French street artist JR with a performance to show art is supporting the ongoing women's rights protest movement in Iran. The volunteers standing to represent the hair of 16 year old Nika Shah-karami who went missing and died after attending a protest in Tehran. The artwork part of a series of works by JR and Iranian artist at the For Freedoms art collective on Roosevelt Island. Listen to participant's opinion.

Iranian press sceptical about claim morality police has been abolished
Issued on: 05/12/2022 -

01:55 An Iranian policewoman prepares to patrol the streets of Tehran in this file photo taken in July 2007. © Behrouz Mehri, AFP

Iran's conservative press on Monday ignored reports that the Islamic republic has scrapped its morality police after weeks of protests, a story that ran on the front pages of only four reformist dailies.

Even some of the reformist newspapers raised questions about the news.

Iran has been rocked by more than two months of protests triggered by the death of Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22, following her arrest by the Tehran morality police for allegedly violating the country's strict female dress code.

In an apparent gesture to the protesters, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said the "morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary and have been abolished by those who created them," in comments carried by the ISNA news agency Sunday.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew Iran's US-backed monarchy, authorities have monitored adherence to the strict dress code for women as well as men.

The morality police – known formally as the Gasht-e Ershad or "Guidance Patrol" – were established to "spread the culture of modesty and hijab".

They began patrols in 2006, and their role has always been controversial.

But on Monday only four newspapers, all from the reformist camp, referred to the stated end of the morality police, and some did so with scepticism.

"The end of the morality police," read a headline by the reformist daily Sazandegi. It reported that "after 80 days of protests caused by the morality police, the prosecutor general announces its abolition".

The Sharq newspaper, however, asked on its front page: "Is this the end of the patrols?"

"While the prosecutor general has affirmed that the morality police have been abolished, the police public relations department has refused to confirm this abolition," it reported.

The paper added that the Tehran police head of public relations, Colonel Ali Sabahi, when asked about Montazeri's statement, had replied: "Don't even mention that you called us.

"The moment isn't appropriate for this kind of discussion... and the police will speak about it when it is appropriate," Sabahi reportedly told Sharq.

Another reformist publication, Arman Melli, questioned whether this really was "the end of the morality police?"

A fourth newspaper, Ham Mihan, emphasised: "The judicial authority made a declaration but no other authority has announced the dissolution of the morality police."

(AFP)

Iran activists, US brush off claim morality police abolished
Story by AFP • Yesterday 

Iranian activists and Western nations on Monday dismissed a claim that the protest-hit Islamic republic is disbanding its notorious morality police, insisting there was no change to women's rights.


Iran's attorney general was quoted as saying the special police unit that enforces dress rules in Iran had been closed down

© Behrouz MEHRI

In a surprise move over the weekend, Iran's Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted as saying that the morality police units –- known formally as Gasht-e Ershad ("Guidance Patrol") -- had been closed down.

But campaigners were sceptical about his comments, which appeared to be an impromptu response to a question at a conference rather than a clearly signposted announcement by the interior ministry.

"Unless they remove all legal restrictions on women's dress and the laws controlling citizens' private lives, this is just a PR move," Roya Boroumand, co-founder of the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center rights group, told AFP.



Iran's dress code requires women to cover their heads and to wear long clothes

There were also calls on social media for a three-day strike in Iran, culminating Wednesday on the annual Student Day, nearly three months into a nationwide wave of unrest sparked by the death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini.

Morality police officers had arrested Amini, 22, in Tehran for allegedly flouting Iran's strict dress code demanding women wear modest clothing and the hijab headscarf.

"Nothing we have seen suggests Iran's leadership is improving its treatment of women and girls or ceasing the violence it inflicts on peaceful protesters," the US State Department said.

Germany's foreign ministry said Iranian protesters "want to live freely and in self-determination", and disbanding the morality police, "if it is implemented, won't change that".

Amini's death on September 16 triggered women-led protests that have spiralled into the biggest challenge to the regime since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Hundreds of Iranians, including some members of the security forces, have been killed.



A woman walks past a closed shop along Satarkhan Street in Iran's capital Tehran, after calls on social media for a three-day strike

© ATTA KENARE

- 'Create societal fear' -

Abolishing the force, activists argued, would mark no change to Iran's headscarf policy -- a key ideological pillar for its clerical leadership -- but rather a switch in tactics on enforcing it.


Did Iran actually abolish the Morality Police? Iran's Hijab law under review after massive protests
Duration 11:30
View on Watch

1:46
Iran’s morality police disbanded?


2:22
Iran Hijab Protest: Morality police abolished, big win for protesters


And scrapping the units would be "probably too little too late" for the protesters who now demand outright regime change, Boroumand said.

"Nothing prevents other law enforcement" bodies from policing "the discriminatory laws", she noted.

The morality police have been a familiar sight since 2006 when they were introduced during the presidency of the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But the rules, including the headscarf, had been strictly enforced well before then by the clerical leadership in charge after the fall of the secularist shah in 1979.

It was anger over the obligatory headscarf rule that sparked the first protests following the death of Amini, whose family says died from a blow to her head sustained in custody. The authorities dispute this.

But the protest movement, fed also by years of anger over economic grievances and political repression, is now marked by calls for an end to the Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Norway-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) told AFP on Monday that at least 504 people had been executed in Iran this year -- far more than in the whole of last year.

Reports from Tehran have suggested the feared morality police vans had already become much less common or even vanished after the protests broke out.

According to witnesses, numerous women in the fashionable north of Tehran as well as in the more modest and traditional south of the city are now going with their heads uncovered in signs of protest.

- 'Civil disobedience' -

"The alleged suspension of Iran's morality police doesn't mean anything," argued Omid Memarian of the group Democracy for the Arab World Now, citing "the massive level of women's civil disobedience".

He described the mandatory headscarf as "one of the pillars of the Islamic republic", and abolishing it "would mean a fundamental change in the Islamic republic's identity and existence".

Montazeri's declaration and the confusion that ensued were seen as a sign of the disquiet within the regime over how to handle the protests, which continue despite a crackdown that the IHR said has left at least 448 people dead.

Universities have been among the protest locations, and ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi is expected to visit two campuses in Tehran on Student Day, Wednesday, state news agency IRNA reported.

Conservative newspapers in Iran on Monday ignored the prosecutor general's comment, with only reformist dailies putting the issue on their front page.

"Is this the end of the patrols?" the Sharq newspaper asked, noting the police public relations had not confirmed it.

Memarian said it was an example of "deceptive moves the Islamic republic employs at times of desperation" and warned that "other restrictive policies and measures" may follow.

The hijab is "still compulsory", said Shadi Sadr, co-founder of London based group Justice for Iran. While the protests started over Amini's death, she predicted, "Iranians won't rest until the regime is gone."