Some of Ukraine’s youngest defenders (clockwise from upper lefthand corner): Serhiy Dodurov, Oleksandr Romanuk, Deniz, Ivanna Tsimerman, and Sofiya Yanchevska
As Russia’s full-scale war enters its fourth year, a generation raised under air-raid sirens is now old enough to fight. Despite not yet being subject to conscription, these young Ukrainians are voluntarily joining the military, trading lecture halls for dugouts, or trying to balance both worlds.
Their decision comes at a time when Ukraine is facing mounting pressure to address critical manpower shortages. In 2024, the government lowered the mobilization age from 27 to 25 and later introduced one-year “special contracts” aimed at 18 to 24 year-olds, with Hr 1 million ($24,000) pay and free higher education.
Meanwhile, many young Ukrainians are making another choice — to leave the country — heightening fears of a looming demographic crisis.
The Kyiv Independent spoke to five young Ukrainians about why they enlisted, how they balance study and service, and what they hope for after the war.
Son of the renowned filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky, anthropology graduate and activist Andrei Khrzhanovsky moved to Israel in 2022. He almost immediately adopted a pro-Palestinian stance in the Middle East conflict, dubbing Israel’s actions genocide, and Zionism an ethnically supremacist idea. He says he is fighting for the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank due to his sense of guilt over the war in Ukraine. He spoke with Marina Berdichevskaya about his radical stance and his conflicts with his family.
Andrei Khrzhanovsky, 26, has been living in Israel since 2022. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he found himself in Tel Aviv with his entire family, including his famous father, grandfather, and grandmother. When the time came to fly home, there was nowhere to go. On February 24, Ilya Khrzhanovsky had begun circulating a petition, condemning the invasion of Ukraine, among cultural figures. Andrei flew to Georgia and applied there for Israeli citizenship.
Since March 2022, Andrei X, as he likes to be called, has enthusiastically plunged into the weeds of Israeli life and quite quickly chosen a side: he has taken up activism and, so he claims, journalism, on behalf of “the most vulnerable group on Earth at the moment,” the inhabitants of the West Bank. At the same time, Andrei has been doing battle with “the genocide in Gaza” and on this score has found himself at odds with his father, who has repeatedly said that, in the wake of 7 October 2023, he has felt himself to be Israeli first and foremost.
We talked at length and quite emotionally about how the profoundly erudite Khrzhanovsky, who has a degree in anthropology from the University of London, has decided to atone for the collective guilt of generations for world colonialism. Andrei happily juggles concepts and historical facts and is sure that this is the only way to do things: to always stand up for the downtrodden and to never succumb to propaganda. Whether he himself is suspectible to propaganda is an open question. Ah, yes. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Republic or its editors—nor should they.
“The closer you are to the empire’s center, the greater the blame”
— Let’s begin with where you live. Your Facebook page says you live in Jericho. Is this true?
— Nowadays, I don’t stay anywhere longer than a few days in a row. I rent a flat, but I won’t divulge its location, because I get several death threats a day. I come home once every month and a half for a couple of days and then I hit the road again. Yesterday, I came from Bethlehem.
— How do people on the West Bank relate to you? Do they understand that you have an Israel passport?
— I’ve never had any problems with this because this is a political conflict, not an ethnic one. I speak with Palestinians deep in Area A (the West Bank is divided into three areas; Area A, which makes up seventeen percent of the West Bank, is wholly controlled by the Palestinian Authority — Republic) whose relatives have been killed, who have done time in prison. Israel fosters the illusion that all Palestinians want to kill all Jews. But this isn’t an ethnic conflict, and not even a religious one at the end of the day.
— In February of last year you said in an interview, “When the war in Ukraine began, I had an enormous sense of guilt that I hadn’t done more [to stop it]. That’s why I’ve thrown myself into all political activism here.” You explained your activism in terms of not wanting to “squander another country.” Where does such a young man come by a sense of personal guilt for what is happening in and with a country? After all, many Russian nationals, especially the remainers, reject the very principle of collective guilt.
Karèn Shainyan, interview with Andrei Khrzhanovsky and Artyom Nikitin (in Russian, with no subtitles)
Today’s episode of Who Am I After This? is very sensitive for me personally. The conversations with its two subjects, leftists and human rights activists, were the hardest and most emotional in the whole project because they both touch on a very painful personal conflict of loyalties for me. This is the only episode where there are two protagonists at once: journalist Andrei Khrzhanovsky and architect Artyom Nikitin. Quite handsome and young, both moved to Israel after the war in Ukraine began, and both travel to the West Bank to support the local Arab [sic] population, even and especially now, when there is a war in [sic] Israel.
— Before February 2022 we all lived in a magical reality of sorts: there was a dictatorship in Russia, seemingly, but no one was getting killed, as it were; everything was sluggish, we had to tackle corruption and so on. But there was no sense of the disaster that any dictatorship represents. This illusion personally crumbled for me on 24 February 2022. The disaster started then, and then intensified after the genocide in Gaza began. Over the past few years, the feeling has only grown in me that we are all to blame for what is happening; some more, some less. The closer you are to the empire’s center, the greater the blame.
— And when did you personally start counting down that blame?
— If we speak of the entire timeline, there were three moments. The first was 24 February 2022. The second was an article by Yuval Abraham (an Israeli journalist and co-director of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land — Republic), based on conversations with soldiers fighting in Gaza who admitted that they had been tasked with firing on civilian targets. And the third was the morning when I woke up, opened Instagram, and saw the video of a man in Gaza burning alive after an IDF strike on a hospital.
Andrei Khrzhanovsky. Source: social media
— How did you get involved in political activism in Israel?
— I had an approximate, general notion of what was happening here when I turned up here. I grew up in the Russophone media space after all. But when I arrived I realized that I had to figure out what was happening. I started reading books and talking to people. The more I researched, the more horrified I was. Suddenly, I found out about the status of Palestinians in East Jerusalem: their land was annexed, but they weren’t granted [Israeli] citizenship. To get into the Shuafat refugee camp, which the Israelis annexed and surrounded with a wall, Palestinians have to go through a security checkpoint. The sheer number of different methods for constructing a state based on ethnic supremacy is insane.
Memorial for actor Joachim Gottschalk. When his Jewish wife Meta and son Michael were to be deported, the whole family decided to commit suicide on November 6, 1941. The bronze figure, which was created by Theo Balden in 1967, resembles the actor. It was initially located in a park but had to be moved due to the building of the local Sparkasse in the 1990s. Its new place is a memorial wall in the Joachim-Gottschalk-Straße 35.
The Impact of the Gold Rush on Native Americans of California
This inquiry lesson provides primary sources, maps, images, and background history to offer teachers and students insight into a little-known but vitally important aspect of one of the most iconic events in American history—the California gold rush. Students will analyze sources to answer the question: Do American actions against California Native Americans during the gold rush meet the United Nations definition of genocide?
The attitude of César Chávez and the UFW towards the undocumented changed over time and can be divided into three periods: 1962 to 1975; 1975 to 1993; and 1993 to the present. A look at these changes reveals much about Chávez, the union, and the times. Frank Bardacke is the author of Trampling Out the Vintage: César Chávez and the Two Souls of the UFW.
Whenever an infant heads to nursery, it can feel like an enormous step. Things are changing for everyone. There are all sorts of feelings flying around – relief, sadness, doubt, fear. But what’s going on behind the doors of nurseries and childcare settings in England? India speaks to Joeli Brearley from Pregnant Then Screwed about the current childcare crisis, child development psychotherapist Graham Music about how childcare impacts children, as well as economist Emily Oster on our choices around childcare. India then meets artists Conway and Young who have found a way to make the invisible labour of childcare pay.
Presented by: India Rakusen. Producer: Georgia Arundell. Series producer: Ellie Sans. Executive producer: Suzy Grant. Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts. Original music composed and performed by The Big Moon. Mix and Mastering by Charlie Brandon-King.
Childbirth is deadlier in the United States than in any other high-income nation, according to a study released Tuesday by the Commonwealth Fund that underscores the persistence of maternal mortality.
More than 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States are preventable, but factors including a shortage of maternity care providers, limited access to after-birth home visits and lack of guaranteed paid parental leave have increased the risk of maternal mortality, especially for Black people, researchers have found.
In 2022, about 22 maternal deaths happened for every 100,000 live births in the United States. For Black people, that number rose sharply to 49.5 deaths per 100,000, according to the report from the Commonwealth Fund, which conducts independent research on health-care issues. Two out of three maternal deaths occur up to 42 days after birth, highlighting the importance of postpartum care, which only some state Medicaid programs and private health insurers cover.
The study compared 14 high-income countries. It used data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — known as the OECD — which tracks health system metrics across 38 high-income countries, and from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Maternal Mortality Review Committees in 36 states.
Although OECD data is widely regarded as the gold standard for international comparisons, the authors note that discrepancies in how countries gather health data may affect the findings.
“We can’t just think of reproductive health at the time of pregnancy because a lot happens after the baby is born. If we’re not supporting women during this crucial time period, we’re never going to solve this problem,” said Munira Z. Gunja, the study’s lead author and a senior researcher at the Commonwealth Fund.
Ten of the countries listed in the report had a death rate of fewer than 10 per 100,000 live births; in 2022, Norway’s maternal death rate was zero.
Laurie C. Zephyrin, senior vice president for advancing health equity at the Commonwealth Fund, said these numbers paint a stark picture of health care in the United States. She called for more focus on community-led investments, including birth centers and health-care teams working with patients in the weeks before and after delivery. She also said health systems should have incentives and accountability involving equitable quality of care, particularly for communities of color.
With 65 percent of maternal deaths occurring after birth, many health experts emphasize the need for not only more prenatal care but an increase in comprehensive postpartum care.
“We want this to be the cultural norm. We want this to be federal policy. We want there to be a big change because we know that we can completely minimize the rate of maternal deaths in this country,” Gunja said.
Health disparities are not unique to the United States. In Australia, Aboriginal people are twice as likely to die of maternal complications compared with other people giving birth, according to the report. Still, experts are hopeful that policy changes and awareness will help bridge the divide and decrease the overall maternal mortality rate in the United States.
The report highlighted the importance of access to midwives, whose work has been described as an important factor in countries with the lowest maternal mortality rates, the report found. Teams involving midwivescould deliver 80 percent of essential maternal care and potentially prevent 41 percent of maternal deaths, 39 percent of neonatal deaths and 26 percent of stillbirths, the report said.
Some studies have found that teams led by midwives offer care comparable, or superior, to care provided by obstetrician-gynecologists. In the United States, Canada and South Korea, OB-GYNs outnumber midwives, but in most other high-income nations, midwives are more prevalent.
The United States and Canada face a shortage of midwives and OB/GYNs. Almost 7 million people in the United States live in areas without hospitals or birth centers offering obstetric care or any obstetric providers. The shortage is expected to worsen.
“We are setting ourselves up for an absolute reproductive health provider shortage, and contributing to that is this interference into the patient-provider relationship and the restrictions that are being placed on us,” said Tamika C. Auguste, a D.C. OB/GYN and chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Foundation Board who was not involved with the study.
The United States is the only high-income nation without a federally mandated paid parental leave policy and universal health care. Only 13 states and D.C. have paid family and medical leave laws; these policies have been shown to improve health outcomes for pregnant people.
“We are in a dire time in our country, where we’re seeing firsthand the impact of these policy changes at the state level and how they are impacting people’s lives,” Zephyrin said.
In recent years, abortion restrictions have sparked debates and legal battles. State legislatures have been enacting increasingly stringent laws aimed at limiting access to abortion services, such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasound requirements and bans on certain procedures.
The current wave of abortion restrictions has significantly affected broader health-care services, particularly obstetric care. States that have imposed abortion restrictions often face closure of clinics offering a variety of health-care services, such as cancer screenings, contraceptive services and general reproductive health care. As a result, people in these states encounter greater challenges that exacerbate existing health disparities.
“Women’s health-care providers are being driven out of areas due to the restrictions on practicing full-scope reproductive health care,” Auguste said. “This creates areas where there are no health women’s providers for women.”
The factors that led into the creation of their newest album aligns perfectly with the discussions this podcast is about. Just blocks away from the 3rd Police Precinct that burned down during the protests, Twin Cities country-folk band The Gated Community saw many of their recordings lost due a power outage. But being in the center of burning buildings, gunshots, and neighborly concern, Sumanth Gopinath was compelled to write about it. The result: songs about that tumultuous era that culminated in a new album filled with important issues and topics, which fit perfectly with their existing songs and socially conscious perspective as a band. Sitting around one table, I got to hear about the evolution of a band without egos, which is part of what makes The Gated Community so special.
In his new book, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (Island Press, 2024), Austin Frerick identifies contemporary “barons” in seven different corporations—such as Cargill, Inc., the Driscoll’s and the conglomerate JAB Holding Company—who have taken over food systems and re-shaped communities. Frerick writes in the introduction, “I refer to these people as ‘barons’ to hearken back to Gilded Age robber barons such as John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan because I believe that we are living in a parallel moment when a few titans have the power to shape industries.”
A fellow at theThurman Arnold Project at Yale University and former Treasury Department official, Frerick has been among the leading experts and researchers in competition policy and antitrust examining food industry consolidation. As co-chair of the Biden campaign’s Agriculture Antitrust Policy Committee, he helped advise several of the leading Democratic presidential candidates on agricultural policy leading up to the 2020 election.
Frerick’s interest in the barons of today’s food-industry is also personal. As a seventh-generation Iowan, Frerick’s interest in antitrust policy began as an undergraduate at Grinnell College where he researched corporate power in Iowa’s slaughterhouse communities.
Barn Raiser spoke with Frerick about how agricultural consolidation has changed the landscape of rural America, and how to bring rural people out from their local Walmart and back onto “Main Street.”
What is it like writing about your home?
It started off as angry and it changed into profound sadness. I think that’s because the origin of the book is in Iowa. “The Hog Barons” chapter is what started this whole thing. This book came about because I published that article in Vox on the hog barons at Iowa Select Farms in Iowa, and I got a book deal from that. I noticed that I changed the tone from when I wrote it as a magazine article and made it into a book chapter. It now reads to me as profoundly sad, like it all kind of fell apart in Iowa. It’s grappling with the Iowa I grew up in and what it’s become, from the anger that’s everywhere to just how industrial the landscape has become.
You wrote that “as farms consolidate, more and more of the wealth leaves rural communities and flows to the Cargills of the world.” You also describe how your hog barons live in a gated community in Des Moines — far from the pollution and working conditions they are creating. A few weeks after your book came out, Jeff and Deb Hansen of Iowa Select Farms, the hog barons you highlight in chapter one, published an op-ed in the Des Moines Register, where they called themselves “stewards of [their] land and communities.” What was your reaction to that op-ed?
They employ their own spokesperson, like someone’s job is to do this for a living, and I just thought it was so poorly written. It reinforced in my head that no one’s ever the villain in their own story. And they’re just delusional. They’re living in a delusional world. They’re just not living in the same world we’re living, and I think the op-ed reflected that. To call themselves stewards of the land with a straight face, it’s just like, no one in Iowa thinks that. That’s an accepted reality at this point.
You hosted a book event in Iowa Falls, where the hog barons are from. What was the reception to your book like there?
Honestly that one shocked me the most. I was actually nervous for that event. I really haven’t been nervous at all during this whole book process. That was the one time I was a little worried for my safety. I turned that tracking thing on my phone so my husband could follow me. It’s a little scary, it’s like you’re going into the heart of the beast. At every book event someone asked me am I worried about my safety, which was, you know, an unnerving question to get all the time. But I had a completely different reaction when I got there. I was shocked. Not only at the turnout—I mean, like 45-50 people—but that there was not one dissenting voice. It was among the most incredible after-talk experiences I’ve had because it felt like a third or half of the room came up and talked to me afterwards, because they all know Jeff and Deb, the hog barons.
They all told me a different story of how Iowa Select Farms bamboozled the community from promises they made and didn’t keep for Des Moines and the intimidation tactics they used to build their empire. Iowa Falls is a beautiful town. It was the epitome of the American Dream for a lot of people and then Jeff and Deb just come in and kind of destroy things to their own personal benefit, and then they hightail it out of there. That’s one thing I kept hearing from people, how they did all this stuff, and then they just left.
In the conclusion of your book, you discuss how “a sense of a distinct regional and local identity” disappears when local businesses disappear. “Unlike the barons, the owners of local businesses live in the communities they serve and are stakeholders in their success. Losing them means losing the glue that binds communities together.” What would need to change for the “Main Street” in rural communities to be revitalized?
This culture of efficiency we live in has stripped us of our community. It views everything as an Excel sheet. There are no coffee beans native to Iowa, you can get coffee anywhere. So much of what you’re buying into is interaction with another human, a sense of being. People bought coffee from my mom because of the human connection and Excel can’t capture that. I was really determined to make that point. Because I saw my mom, who used to work for her own coffee store, and later worked at a corporate Starbucks in Target.
These communities thrive when middle class family farms are around. The biggest way to do that is by putting animals back on the land. These confinements have just destroyed rural communities in every way possible. We also need old fashioned trust busting and antitrust enforcement.
Could you explain how CAFOs are connected to Main Street? How are confinements impacting Main Street?
Denise O’Brien in southwest Iowa really drove home this point to me. She’s a longtime activist, and she talked about how much her street has changed in her lifetime. First of all, one human being can only watch so many cows on pasture—you can’t do robotics for that. Family farms pay local taxes, send their kids to local schools and spend their money locally in town. When that consolidates to one person who owns a big metal shed stuffed full of animals, and the owner of the asset lives in an urban rich community, and then has a low wage worker pop by and take care of things, that’s a very different occupation. It’s the difference between watching a cow on pasture to hauling out dead pig bodies, which is what a lot of that work entails. There’s a whole undercurrent of trauma a lot of these low wage workers experience from basically being surrounded by this incredibly cruel production model that is full of death and destruction.
You write that to change the current system and to “build a more balanced food system” we need to “challenge power directly.” How are you hoping your book will mobilize others to build a more just food system?
That’s my nice Iowa way of rejecting the whole change the food system with your fork mentality that’s been the theory of change the last few decades. To me, it just bifurcated the food system between those that go to the New Pioneer Co-op in Iowa City and those go to Walmart. No one’s ever going to get you a seat at the table. So you have to fight for it.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, Te Pāti Māori Member of Parliament for Te Tai Tokerau, raised eyebrows recently when she claimed in parliament that the government of had a “mission to exterminate Māori.”
Kapa-Kingi was speaking on a proposed change to the processes under which children forcibly removed from their parents by the child welfare agency Oranga Tamariki are placed in foster care.
“The theory of the Minister is that Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles should be colour-blind, which is just another word for white supremacy, because to say we are all one people is really to say we should all be white people,” she explained.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, Te Pāti Māori Member of Parliament for Te Tai Tokerau. Photo: Tania Whyte
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon described the speech as ‘completely out of line’ and ‘unhelpful.’ Opposition leader Chris Hipkins agreed that it was unhelpful, adding “It’s certainly not language that I agree with.”
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders backed up their MP, however. Rawiri Waititi called it a brilliant speech. “This is how we feel and we will not be told how to feel,” Waititi said. “Many of the policy changes that this Government absolutely makes us feel like there [are] huge extermination processes and policies [aimed at] the very existence of tangata whenua in this country, so it was absolutely the right wording.”
When the facts don’t stack up, you can always appeal to feelings.
Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer concurred. She could hardly do otherwise, since she herself had used similar language in respect of another of the government’s reforms. Her own response last November to the incoming government’s move to roll back some recent restrictions on sales of cigarettes was equally immoderate: “There is absolute deliberate intention of this government, as I said, to create systemic genocide,” she said on that occasion.
Te Pāti Māori Co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer
The question, however, is not how Rawiri Waititi or anyone else feels about anything, but whether the claim is true. And as everyone who has not completely lost their head knows, such claims are preposterous. Genocide is not just cultural assimilation, but the physical extermination of a people. It is inconceivable without mass violence and ethnic killings.
The closest thing to ethnic violence against Māori on such a scale in New Zealand history was during the land wars of the 19th century. And even that was not a war of genocide, but a war of dispossession. As soon as the colonial authorities had their hands securely on the land, the fate of the dispossessed Māori became a matter of relative indifference to them.
A repeal of anti-smoking legislation, or of child welfare legislation – irrespective of one’s attitude to that repeal – does not constitute mass violence. To use such terms to describe what is happening in New Zealand today only debases the language and renders the terms themselves meaningless. And in doing so, it disorients anyone who takes the term for good coin, concealing the true nature of the problem, and disarming anyone who seeks to address it.
What drives Te Pāti Māori to resort to such histrionics and attention-seeking language?
The answer to that question lies in what Te Pāti Māori is. It is an electoral formation and nothing more. It has no existence outside of Parliament and its associated vote-gathering machinery. It is a parliamentary voice without a movement, like a head without a body, and is therefore powerless, despite its presence in parliament, to affect the course of politics in any significant way.
This powerlessness was exposed in the immediate aftermath of last year’s election, when, buoyed by its electoral gains and alarmed by the new government’s right-leaning course, it called for a National Day of Action to coincide with the opening of the new Parliament in early December. The declared kaupapa was to demonstrate the “beginning of a unified Aotearoa approach to the government’s assault on Tangata Whenua and Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. Their hype included the prediction that “The movement that we’re seeing from Māori will make the foreshore and seabed hīkoi look like something extremely small.” This was a reference to the protest of twenty years ago, in which 15,000 Māori and others converged on Parliament, and which triggered the Labour Party’s Māori MPs to quit to form Te Pāti Māori.
Nothing remotely comparable to this occurred in the December 2023 Day of Action, despite generous support of the action by the liberal news media, which publicised the assembly points in advance. A few hundred marched in Wellington, and groups of a few dozen rallied in various other towns and cities. In the largest working class concentration, Auckland, a handful of car drivers attempted to disrupt traffic on the motorways, with little effect. It was a rather stark revelation of the narrowness of support for Te Pāti Māori, especially among workers.
When its fighting talk in parliament produces zero effect, the party therefore has few options except to open their mouth wider, shout louder, and use more extreme language in order to win the ear of the ruling class. Not just ‘racism’, but ‘white supremacy’ becomes the order of the day. Not just ‘discrimination’ but ‘extermination’. Not just ‘extermination’, but ‘systemic genocide.’
Don’t be fooled by the truculent posturing and coarseness of tone: these appeals are directed to the rulers, asking “please, listen to us!” They hope to frighten the ruling layers into adjusting their course.
(On his side, Winston Peters of New Zealand First, the counterpart of Te Pāti Māori on the right wing of capitalist politics, uses equally hyperbolic language in his denunciations of Te Pāti Māori, accusing them of “cultural Marxism” and of wanting “anarchy – headed by their Māori elitist cronies turning this country into something akin to apartheid.” Believe me, Winston, nothing could be more alien to Marxism than the politics of feelings!)
But neither the government nor the broader ruling class will listen to Te Pāti Māori. They defend above all else the dictatorship of profit, and the rate of profit has now fallen to the point where it is incompatible with some of the most basic social rights and needs, such as affordable housing, equitable access to health care, basic infrastructure like water and roads, and more. Their ability to grant even small concessions is strictly limited: on the contrary, their present focus is to restore their profits by making even deeper inroads against our wages and social rights.
And among the things capitalist society today is incapable of delivering is the protection of children from violence. The child welfare ministry Oranga Tamariki has been in a permanent state of turmoil for many years, over the question of uplifting children from their parents. It is no closer to resolving this than it was five years ago, when a shockingNewsroom documentary by reporter Melanie Reid exposed the brutality of child ‘uplifts’.
On the one hand, Oranga Tamariki is rightly excoriated for the tearing apart of Māori families in circumstances where it is not justified, such as the case documented in the 2019 documentary, causing long-term trauma. On the other hand, it gets criticised – again with full justification, at least in some cases – for failing to protect the lives of children, who suffer violent deaths at the hands of their family members at a high rate in New Zealand.
Coming under fire from both these opposite directions, the institution lurches from one policy to the opposite, according to the nature of the most recent scandal. At the time of the 2019 documentary, Oranga Tamariki was uplifting hundreds of babies each year, in response to criticism for failing to prevent the violent deaths of babies at the hands of family members. About 70% of these uplifted infants were Māori. (Māori make up about 20% of the population). Oranga Tamariki was under pressure to act pre-emptively in many of these cases, before there was any clear evidence of danger to the child – and therefore these decisions were inevitably based on rumour, prejudice, and racial profiling of Māori as ‘bad parents’. In many cases, the decision to uplift was taken in secret, without any prior discussion with the family concerned.
An intense public outcry followed the documentary. Protests outside Parliament demanded an end to the unjustified snatching of babies, especially Māori babies, from their parents’ arms. The protests denounced the lasting trauma inflicted on the affected Māori families, and the damage to the social fabric caused by the high rate of children being taken into state care. A petition called Hands off Our Tamariki (children) gained 17,377 signatures.
Protest at Parliament demands “Hands off Tamariki forever” Photo: Lynn Grieveson
These protests prompted a switch to the opposite policy. Following multiple inquiries into the functioning of Oranga Tamariki, an amendment to the governing principles of Oranga Tamariki was introduced in 2019, called Section 7AA, which bound the institution to uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in matters concerning Māori children. In practice this meant placing uplifted babies with members of their own whānau, or with their wider iwi, wherever possible. Labour Party Minister for Children Kelvin Davis proclaimed “This report will end uplifts as we have known them. While there will always be a need for some children to be taken into care, this should only happen after all avenues with community and whanau have been exhausted.” The rate of uplifts fell steadily, from 963 uplifts in 2018 to 251 in 2022.
This was a small but significant gain for the whole working class. It pushed back state interference in Māori families and strengthened the bonds of solidarity within our class.
The death of another young child at the hands of his family has halted that momentum, and now the pendulum is poised to swing all the way back again. Wellington toddler Ruthless-Empire Wall was beaten to death by family members unknown, just shy of his second birthday, in October 2023 – after the boy’s uncle had alerted Oranga Tamariki to the dangerous environment he was living in, and requested them to place the boy in his care.
Now the government, at the behest of its Act Party component, seeks to restore the policy of wholesale uplifts. Act campaigned on the issue in last year’s election, and repeal of Section 7AA was part of the coalition agreement between the three parties that formed the new government in November 2023. The campaign is headed by Act’s Karen Chhour, the incoming Minister for Children and for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence. Chhour, who is Māori herself and was raised in state care, presented her own petition to repeal Section 7AA, which received more than 13,400 signatures.
Chhour claims that Section 7AA has led to Māori children being removed from safe and loving homes because their caregivers weren’t of Māori descent. “I consider that section 7AA allows the treatment of children and young people as an identity group first, and a person second, it creates a divisive system that has had a negative impact on caregivers. This repeal will make sure that Oranga Tamariki is entirely child-centric and is making decisions that ensure a child’s wellbeing and best interest. Over successive years, Oranga Tamariki has failed our most vulnerable children, and in part that has been because of Section7AA,” she said.
Karen Chhour Photo: Doug Mountain
Chhour presents no evidence to back these assertions, a point noted by the Waitangi Tribunal which entered the debate. If children are actually being torn from existing foster homes where they have already bonded with their caregivers, simply because their caregivers were not of Māori descent, that could be a matter of legitimate concern. But it is incumbent on Chhour to prove that this is in fact happening. Since she does not do so – beyond claiming to have seen it herself – this appears to be a spurious claim.
Nor does she make any attempt to explain why or how adherence to the Treaty of Waitangi should lead to Oranga Tamariki making decisions that are not in the child’s best interest. Her unsupported assertion hints at an unspoken racist explanation: that Māori parents and foster parents are less than competent caregivers. This is a debate with high stakes.
Thus, the issue Mariameno Kapa-Kingi was attempting to address is a real one, and the repeal of Section 7AA should be opposed. It is the ability to recognise a real problem, combined with the inability to do anything about it, that generates the flailing of arms in Parliament, and the politics of middle class hysteria in general.
Even if the repeal of 7AA is defeated, the social scourge of violence against children can only be expected to worsen in the short term. It is a consequence of, among other things, the divided, weakened state of the working class, which is increasingly being torn apart by the ordinary workings of the capitalist economy, exacerbated by the actions of its government and state.
Such violence against children is connected with massively increased economic and other pressures on families: the inflation eroding our wages, the growing insecurity of employment, the cuts to social services like health care, including mental health care, the breakdown of attendance at school, and above all, the housing shortage, which hurls ever-wider layers of workers down into the horrors of drug-riddled and gang-infested ‘emergency housing.’
Violence against children is closely connected with the scourge of violence against women, in which New Zealand ranks so shamefully high in the world. It is worth noting that Te Pāti Māori, along with the Labour, National and Green parties, supported legislation that undermined women’s single-sex spaces, including women’s refuges from domestic violence, by requiring them to open their doors to males. They took an active part in the attack which shut down a women’s rally in Auckland in March 2023 by force and violence. This fact alone should nullify their claim to speak in defence of children.
As long as these social conditions continue, there will continue to be situations in which children have to be removed from their parents’ care in the interests of their own safety. But such removals can also provide an opening for hostile class interests to drive in a wedge that tears apart working class families. This has been done disproportionately, though not exclusively, against Māori, who make up a substantial component of the working class. It is the built-in tendency of intervention by the capitalist state and its agencies like Oranga Tamariki.
It falls to a revived movement of the whole working class to oversee such situations and to ensure that the ties between children and their whānau are maintained as far as possible during their removal, and that they are returned to their parents’ custody as quickly as possible. Strengthening solidarity within the working class, along with raising the social status of women, is the road to ending the violence against children in a more permanent way.
This is not a new problem for the working class worldwide. Farrell Dobbs, a leader of the historic Teamsters Union strikes which organised truck drivers in the US Midwest in the 1930s, once described how these strikes took on the character of the mass social movement. The Teamsters Union Local 574 ‘flying squads’, which had been organised to shut down strike-breaking trucking operations across the city, expanded their operations to intervene when the union got news of unemployed workers being evicted from their homes for non-payment of rent. The arrival of the union flying squad quickly ended the attempts by landlords and their deputy sheriffs to evict the worker.
Farrell Dobbs, (with images from the 1934 strikes behind him)
“In a few instances, the union even adopted children,” Dobbs said.
He explained that at the time it was common for bourgeois charities to identify working-class families that in their view were unable to adequately provide for their children, and the charities would then arrange to have the children adopted out, against the wishes of their parents. The union organisation stepped in to prevent this happening, finding foster parents from among the union ranks to care for the children temporarily, so that they could be returned to their parents at the earliest opportunity. (The talks where Dobbs tells the story of the Minneapolis strikes are available on YouTube, and are very inspiring to listen to in full. Dobbs describes the adoption of children in the third talk, beginning about the 24th minute.)
Children demonstrate in support of their unionist parents
At this point there is little outward sign of such a revived fighting labour movement in New Zealand, so this political course is far from obvious to see.
What is abundantly clear, however, is that Te Pāti Māori, and all those like them who pursue the opposite course – of appealing to the capitalist rulers and relying on their parliamentary apparatus and state institutions – quickly find themselves in a blind alley.
Errollyn Wallen’s memoir Becoming a Composer is a look into the mind of the composer as well as the life of one. Born in Belize but now based in the far-flung north of Scotland, where she sometimes inhabits a lighthouse, she works at a brisk pace, composing prolifically for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and over twenty operas. Her major public commissions have included music for The Last Night of the Proms, the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and she joins us from her home in the Orkney Islands to talk about Becoming a Composer, and becoming a composer.
Music heard in the show:
Title: Horseplay i. Dark and mysterious Artist: The Continuum Ensemble/Philip Headlam Composer: Errollyn Wallen Album: The Girl In My Alphabet Label: Avie AV0006
Title: Dervish Artist: Matthew Sharp (cello), Dominic Harlan (piano) Composer: Errollyn Wallen Album: The Girl In My Alphabet Label: Avie AV0006
Schoolchildren from Mariupol will be able to learn new professions in Petersburg. The beginning of the third session at Camp Friendly, where 400 children will relax until July 21, was announced on July 15 by Petersburg city hall’s press service.
“We will tell them about the opportunities that our vast country, including Petersburg, has to offer. We will make sure to take care of the health of our young guests and provide treatment if necessary,” said [Petersburg governor] Alexander Beglov.
The camp’s theme is “Childtown: Territory of Masters.” The children will have the opportunity to try their hand at such professions such as blogger, actor, artist, and architect.
On June 1, 2022, St. Petersburg and Mariupol became sister cities. Since then, Petersburg city hall has has been actively involved in restoring the city, which was destroyed during the special military operation.
Since Putin’s announcement of the mobilization and other news, our efforts to help refugees in Russia have collapsed. Refugees, Ukrainian civilians, have been fleeing the war. Every day our foundation receives about fifty appeals for assistance, people asking to be clothed and fed. Who has been trying to solve these issues for all these past seven months? Volunteers and philanthropists. Where are those volunteers and benefactors now? In Kazakhstan, in Georgia. Or in Russia, but panicked or depressed and unable to do anything.
I (the foundation’s director and founder) have myself begun to handle applications from refugees as a curator. Today, I called a family — a woman with two small children. In Ukraine, she was a businesswoman, she had her own restaurant and two shops. The war came to her city, and now she has nothing, not even a bra or bed linen. She asked for a duvet cover, at least one. She said that she is renting a room in an apartment. There is one sofa, on which she and her two children sleep “like a jack in a deck of cards”; they have two pillows for three people and not a single duvet cover. We try to help refugees with underwear, so I asked whether she had a bra. She answered proudly, “No, but I’m not complaining, I don’t consider it an essential.” She asked for food and a duvet cover. We try to do something to cheer up children, so I asked whether her children wanted a scooter. She said they really want one: they envy the other children on the playground who have a scooter or a bicycle.
We were so proud that our foundation had 500 volunteer curators who managed refugee issues. Since the mobilization began, around 30% of those curators have dropped out, having left the country. I had a long list of philanthropists who were happy to help refugees in some way. Now about 50% of benefactors respond that they are no longer able to help.
Is there anyone left here [in Russia] who has the resources to help others? If you are here and willing to do something for people who have fled the war, the Refugee Relief Fund is in particular need of help now.
We really need curators — volunteers who are willing to spend an hour a day coordinating assistance to refugees. The application form is here: https://forms.gle/3WroeebLSz4m6guh8
We really need benefactors — people who are willing, starting from one thousand rubles, to donate once or regularly to pay for food, underpants, medicines, etc., for the refugees. If you can help out with money, write us a message in WhatsApp specifying the amount you are willing to donate, and whether you would like to donate on a one-time or monthly basis. We will send you a formal request from specific people whom you can pay online or to whom you can personally donate a pillowcase, chicken, or bottle of Nurofen. Write to Katya Chistyakova (our foundation’s fundraiser), at +7 966 140-8243 on WhatsApp.
If you do not want to help in a targeted manner and talk about specific families with curators, you can make a monthly donation to the foundation: https://mayak.fund/help-with-money
Source: Lidia Moniava, Facebook, 3 October 2022. Ms. Moniava is the co-founder of the Lighthouse Charity Foundation. I don’t think it is possible for people using non-Russian bank cards and western payment systems to make donations to Lighthouse at the moment, but you are welcome to try. Photo courtesy of Ms. Moniava’s Facebook page. Translated by the Russian Reader
As Russian forces laid siege to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol this spring, children fled bombed-out group homes and boarding schools. Separated from their families, they followed neighbors or strangers heading west, seeking the relative safety of central Ukraine.
Instead, at checkpoints around the city, pro-Russia forces intercepted them, according to interviews with the children, witnesses and family members. The authorities put them on buses headed deeper into Russian-held territory.
“I didn’t want to go,” said Anya, 14, who escaped a home for tuberculosis patients in Mariupol and is now with a foster family near Moscow. “But nobody asked me.”
In the rush to flee, she said, she left behind a sketchbook containing her mother’s phone number. All she could remember were the first three digits.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February, Russian authorities have announced with patriotic fanfare the transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia to be adopted and become citizens. On state-run television, officials offer teddy bears to new arrivals, who are portrayed as abandoned children being rescued from war.
In fact, this mass transfer of children is a potential war crime, regardless of whether they were orphans. And while many of the children did come from orphanages and group homes, the authorities also took children whose relatives or guardians want them back, according to interviews with children and families on both sides of the border.
As Russian troops pushed into Ukraine, children like Anya who were fleeing newly occupied territories were swept up. Some were taken after their parents had been killed or imprisoned by Russian troops, according to local Ukrainian officials.
This systematic resettlement is part of a broader strategy by the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, to treat Ukraine as a part of Russia and cast his illegal invasion as a noble cause. His government has used children — including the sick, poor and orphaned — as part of a propaganda campaign presenting Russia as a charitable savior.
As the bombs rain down on Eastern Ghouta, we learn what at least one Russian sports expert deems “genocide”: the disqualification of Russian athletes from international competitions for violating international anti-doping rules. Unfortunately, I am sure he is not alone in his cruel, rampantly nationalistic views. TRR
“Помните, что творилось во время Олимпиады в Бразилии? Клишину, которая живет в США, пустили, а не пускали только тех, кто живет в России. Или Исинбаева в Рио – на дату начала соревнований к ней персонально нет никаких претензий, а ее не пускают. Как и других, которые даже по правилам ВАДА были чистые. Это же форма геноцида. Реагировать следовало по линии МИДа. По международной правовой линии, а не только в спортивные и гражданские суды обращаться”.
“Do you remember what went on at the Olympics in Brazil? [Russian long jumper Darya]Klishina, who lives in the US, was allowed to compete. Only those who live in Russia were not allowed to compete. Or what about [Russian pole vaulter Yelena]Isinbayeva in Rio? On the date when the competition started there were no grievances against her personally, but she was disqualifed, like others who were clean even under WADA’s rules. This is a form of genocide. The [Russian] Foreign Ministry should have reacted. We should have reacted in terms of international law instead of just appealing to sports and civil courts.”
“Предложения Николая Крячкова по нормализации ситуации с допингом в спорте
— Предложить ЮНЕСКО новую редакцию Международной конвенции по борьбе с допингом в спорте.
— Поручить Минспорту РФ и РАН предложить научно обоснованную терминологию допинга в спорте для включения ее в новую редакцию Международной конвенции по борьбе с допингом в спорте.
— Осуществить стандартизацию новой терминологии допинга в спорте в Международной организации по стандартизации (ISO).
— Обратиться в Международный уголовный суд с исками по фактам преследования группы невиновных российских спортсменов по политическим, национальным и культурным мотивам.
— Обратиться с исками о возмещении морального и материального вреда невиновным российским спортсменам к лицам, нарушившим права российских спортсменов.”
“Nikolai Kryachkov’s proposals for normalizing [sic] the doping situation in sport
— Instruct the Russian Federal Sport Ministry and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) to propose scientifically sound terminology for doping in sport for inclusion in a new edition of the International Convention against Doping in Sport.
— File lawsuits with the International Criminal Court in response to the persecution of innocent Russian athletes for political, national and cultural reasons.
— Sue people who have violated the rights of innocent Russian athletes for emotional injury and economic loss.
— Identify our country as Россия [Rossiya] on the uniforms of the Russian national team, not as Russia.”
I don’t know what else to do on May 1 when LGBT people in Chechnya are facing flagrant genocide, so today this was how it went down. Now we have been detained and taken to the 43rd police precinct. A man who came out bearing a placard that read, “Putin, go away. Putin is evil” was detained with us. It’s forbidden to say that now, too.
Chechen Mothers Mourned Their Bloodied Children on Nevsky
On May 1, 2017, activists staged a performance on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main boulevard, during which Chechen mothers mourned and sprinkled their children with earth. Prone on the ground, the bodies of the LGBT people were covered with rainbow and Chechen flags. The performance was meant to express solidarity with the people of the Republic of Chechnya as well as draw attention to the horrifying events occurring there now.
Since the beginning of the year in Chechnya, which is part of Russia, there have been numerous illegal detentions, torture, and executions of homosexual men, including men deemed homosexual. We know of hundred of victims, dozens of them murdered. Even as they deny the occurrence of genocide, local officials have publicly justified these atrocities by citing medieval “ethnic traditions” and “Muslim values.”
The persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya and the North Caucasus is nothing new. The region has long been plagued by rampant corruption, violence, and murder, affecting everyone who lives there. However, targeted mass killings are a new phenomenon. Both local and federal authorities are to blame for the state terror. On the one hand, they have vigorously popularized “traditional religious values.” On the other, they have proved incapable of opposing the spread of radical Islam and ensuring the enforcement of the Russian Constitution and human rights. Impunity on the ground encourages terrorism and radicalization, leading to the deaths of civilians not only in Chechnya but outside its borders. Consequently, terrorists exploded a bomb in the Petersburg subway for the first time in the city’s history.*
“Cruelty is a severe infection that is prone to pandemic. It is not a one-off event. They started with the people of Chechnya and, although many imagined that would be the end of it, they continued with ‘their own kind,’ as is now the ‘patriotic’ expression,” wrote Anna Politkovskaya.
The escalation of terror is a vivid example of how the violation of human rights and violence against a particular group can quickly balloon into violence against everyone.
We demand the strict observance of Russian federal laws in Chechnya and preservation of the Russian state’s secular nature. We demand that religious fanatics who are calling for violence be punished according to the law. We demand an investigation of allegations of widespread torture and executions of gays in Chechnya and severe punishment for the guilty parties, including government officials.
Photographs by David Frenkel, Alexandra Polukeyeva, and Fontanka.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader
* NB. I have translated and posted the above out of a sense of solidarity and friendship with the people who staged this action during today’s May Day marches on the Nevsky in Petersburg.
However, I would be remiss not to note the striking Alexei Navalny-like anti-Caucasus/anti-Muslim rhetoric in the protesters’ communique, which, of course, is not unique to the otherwise admirable anti-corruption fighter, but is a commonplace in the non-thinking of many “ethnic” Russians. As thoroughly deplorable and despicable as the persecution of gay men in Chechnya and anywhere else is (what, are gay men not persecuted in “Russia proper”?), the activists quote the slain journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya while seemingly forgetting why she was assassinated: because she wrote truthfully about what Russian federal armed forces and police were doing in Chechnya. Moscow’s successive bloody invasions of Chechnya in the 1990s and the 2000s, involving the torture and rape of non-combatants, the wholesale slaughter of civilians, and mass displacement of the local populace might seem to be more appropriately described by the word “genocide” than what has been happening recently to the republic’s gay men, however horrifying. Not to put too fine a point on it, “Russians proper,” with the notable exception of Politkovskaya and a brave but tiny minority of others, have never been able to assign the responsibility for what happened in Chechnya where it belongs, and they have been aided and abetted by the other “world powers” (i.e., the “former” colonial and imperial powers), who were only too happy to turn a blind eye to what first Yeltsin and then Putin were up to in their own backyard, so to speak. If Chechnya is now an out-of-control autocracy, run by an “Islamist” strongman-cum-madman, Russians have only to look in the mirror to find out who is to blame for this deplorable state of affairs.
Nor, finally, is it a given that the recent bombing in the Petersburg subway (which wasn’t even the first such bombing, in fact) was the work of “radicalized Islamists.” Of course, that is one possibility. But there are other possibilities, as any “Russian proper” who hasn’t had his or her memory erased would realize.
When the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly passed its infamous homophobic law several years ago, there was no popular outcry against the law on the part of Petersburgers, the vast majority of whom are not Muslim and thus cannot be suspected of adhering to “medieval Muslim values.” Nobody but a handful of people “rioted” in the streets, and as far as I can tell, Petersburgers still, inexplicably, regard themselves proudly as “Europeans,” although they have this disgusting “medieval” law on the books, and many of the same local Petersburg riot cops (OMON) who wearily drag them into paddy wagons and kettle them when they occasionally want to exercise their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly were, as is well known, on active combat duty in Chechnya during the First and Second Chechen Wars and are, possibly, guilty of God knows what war crimes against the “uncivilized” Chechens, whose tiny, beautiful corner of the world has been ravaged at least three times in living memory by their Great Russian rulers. TRR
Suicide by Crimea
Nikolay Klimenyuk oDR
March 17, 2017
As long as Russia maintains its grip on the Ukrainian peninsula, significant changes for the better at home are impossible.
In the three years that have passed since the annexation of Crimea, a consensus has taken shape in Russia. Everything having to do with the Ukrainian peninsula is Russia’s internal affair, and far from the most important one.
The “accession” of Crimea has even quite succesfully happened in the heads of the regime’s opponents. In November 2016, while arguing on Facebook with Crimean Tatar journalist Ayder Muzhdabaev, Mikhail Khodorkovsky expressed a stance then supported by many publicly prominent liberals, including activists and intellectuals. Russian society, he argued, wants to deal with other problems. The opposition’s biggest task is regime change, but returning Crimea to Ukrainian jurisdiction by democratic means would be impossible because public opinion would be opposed. Crimea is not mentioned at all in Alexei Navalny’s 2018 presidential campaign platform.
Russian media outlets generally considered “liberal” (these media usually eschew the word “opposition”) havealso swallowed the annexation and most of the rhetoric surrounding it without a peep. TV Rain, RBC (even before its top editors were replaced), and the online Meduza, which operates out of Latvia and is not not subject to Russian laws, have all long routinely called and depicted Crimea as part of Russia. The standard explanation—it is required by Russian law, and insubordination is fraught with penalties—sounds like an excuse. The law does not require that questions about Crimea be included in a quiz on knowledge of Russian cities (which was amended after public criticism) or that reporters term the annexation a “reunification” (Meduzaedited the latter term to “absorption.”)
At the same time, Russian reporters usually have no problem demonstratively violating Ukrainian laws (which require them to enter the occupied territory through the checkpoint at Perekop) and flying to Crimea from Russia (as Deutsche Welle reporter Yuri Resheto did), because it’s cheaper, faster, and simpler, and because Ukraine’s rules are cumbersome, inconvenient, and nonbinding.
After that, you can write critical reports on human rights violations in Crimea till the cows come home, but it won’t change what matters. The voluntary observance of inconvenient Ukrainian rules is tantamount to acknowledging Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea, and hardly anyone in Russia wants to do that.
In fact, the seizure of Crimea has been the cause of many pressing problems in Russia that have been on the Russian opposition’s agenda. It has laid bare peculiarities of Russian society that existed longer before the attack on Ukraine.
For example, not only did the extent of imperialist moods become clear but also Crimea’s place in how Russians see themselves as a society and a nation. The imperial myth, still alive and well in Russia, was concocted during Catherine the Great’s reign. From the moment they were implemented, Peter the Great’s reforms had provoked a mixed response. They smacked of “sycophancy,” and modeling the country on Holland seemed somehow petty.
Catherine, on the contrary, conceived a great European power, rooted in antiquity, Byzantine’s direct heir, the Third Rome, a Europe larger than Europe itself. Her ambitious Southern Project, which involved defeating Turkey, uniting all the Orthodox countries in a single empire, and installing her grandson the Grand Duke Constantine on the throne in Constantinople, was brought low by political reality. The only one of her great fantasies she made come true was seizing the Crimean Khanate, in 1783.
The conquest was extremely atypical of Russia. A troublesome neighbor was not subjugated. Rather, the annexed lands were completely reimagined and rewritten. The rewriting was attended by the first mass expulsion of the Crimean Tatars. They did not fit at all into the pictures of the radiant past that Grigory Potemkin was painting in reality on the annexed lands. Crimea was resettled with Plato and Aristotle’s Orthodox descendants: Pontic Greeks, Great Russians, and Little Russians (i.e., Ukrainians). Naturally, all these particulars have been forgotten long since. What has not been forgotten is Crimea’s central place in the self-consciousness of a “great European nation,” as manifest, for example, in the absurd, endlessly repeated expression, “Crimea has always been Russian.”
The saying perfectly illustrates the peculiarities of historical memory in Russia. Crimea’s current “Russianness” is the outcome of over two hundred years of the uninterrupted genocide and displacement of the “non-Russian popuation,” which culminated during the Second World War. After the two Soviet deportations of 1941 and 1944 (ethnic Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians, Italians, Armenians, Karaites, and Crimean Tatatrs were deported), losses during battles, and the Nazi extermination of Jews and Crimeans, only a third of Crimea’s pre-war inhabitants were left. It was resettled with people from Russia and Ukraine, especially by military officers and veterans of the Party and the secret services.
Naturally, few people in Russia today regard Crimea as a conquered and ravaged country, in which a full-fledged state existed until relatively recently, an indigenous culture was long maintained, and Russians were never the ethnic majority even during the lifetimes of the present elder generation.
Regarding Crimea as a territory, not a society, and treating Crimeans as an annoying inconvenience, was a habit in Catherine’s times and has survived into the present. The formal excuse for the Russian incursion was the “defense of Crimea’s Russophone population,” and yet the “Crimea is ours” attitude of Russians to the peninsula’s residents has been quite skeptical from the get-go. They imagine the main business of Crimeans is leaching off tourists, and the only thing that attracts them about Russia is high wages.
Moreover, this opinion is common across the entire political spectrum. Sergei Parkhomenko, a liberal journalist and public figure, expressed it in a very telling way.
“If first you take five days to explain to the population of Crimea that if they return to Ukraine’s jurisdiction, their wages and pensions will be increased, and they’ll also be permitted to build even more chicken coops for holidaymakers in the coastal zone, and only then you ask them to vote in a referendum, 95% will vote for going back. […] These people have proved they could not care less what country they belong to. And if there is anyone for whom I now feel not an ounce of sympathy as I read about how they are being fooled, robbed, milked, and put under the rule of gangsters pretending to be officials and bosses, it is the population of Crimea.”
The massive support of Russians for the annexation has much more serious and immediate consequences than a display of deeply rooted chauvinism. Having signed off on “Crimea is ours,” Russians have deemed their own power above the law and sanctioned its use in violating all laws and treaties for the sake of higher interests or “justice.” The Russian authorities had behaved this same way previously, but now they have obtained the relevant mandate from society. Quite naturally, the crackdown following the seizure of Crimea has been chockablock with spectacular acts of lawlessness.
One such act was the demolition of commercial kiosks and pavilions in Moscow, which happened despite legalized property rights and court rulings. There was nothing accidental about the fact the Moscow authorities justified their actions by citing the law adopted for settling real estate disputes in Crimea. And the twenty-year-sentence handed down to Oleg Sentsov set a new ceiling for verdicts in political trials. Before Crimea, activists would get a dvushechka (two years) for especially vigorous protests. After Crimea, the Russian authorities have been sentencing people for reposts on VK and holding solo pickets.
Actually, any regime that tasks itself with establishing the rule of law in Russia will first have to annul this “mandate to lawlessness.” The Russian opposition’s attitude to Crimea shows the rule of law is not among its priorities at all. Bewitched by the figure of Putin, the opposition does not regard regime change as a product of the rule of law. The fact that it cannot offer a realistic scenario for regime change is not a problem in itself. Russia’s currrent regime does not presuppose a peaceful change of power. Systemic change might happen as it did in the Soviet Union, at the behest of the bigwigs and under the impact of external circumstances: the state of the economy, public sentiment, foreign policy factors.
The opposition’s most serious problem is that it doesn’t have a meaningful outline of what would come next.
If we believe the alternative to Putin is neither Navalny, Khodorkovsky nor anyone else, but a democratic state based on the rule of law, there are two obstacles in our way: Crimea and Chechnya. The opposition has no vision of how to establish control over Chechnya and incorporate it into Russia’s legal system, but it is possible in theory, at least. There is no such possibility with Crimea. It is impossible to hope for international recognition of the peninsula as part of Russia, and if we keep regarding it as part of Russia, it will thus remain a legal anomaly. Moreover, no rule rule of law is even formally possible without observance of international law.
When discussing Crimea, the Russian opposition evinces a notion of democracy that differs little from Putin’s, although it is consonant with the rhetoric of Donald Trump and the European populists: that democracy is rule based on majority support and not burdened by the observance of laws, procedures, and international obligations. Khodorkovsky, for example, considers “democratic procedure” not the restoration of law, but the adoption of a decision on Crimea based on the opinion of the majority, which, allegedly, is against giving Crimea back to Ukraine. Navalny has suggested holding a new, “normal” referendum.
Yet what the majority really thinks, whether there is such a thing as public opinion on any issue and how to measure it, obviously means nothing at all either to Khodorkovsky, Navalny or many other members of the opposition. By the same token, since Putin is supported by the majority of the Russian population, there is nothing for the opposition to do at all. All these contradictions can be eliminated only by unconditionally recognizing both the illegality of Crimea’s annexation and the total impossibility of keeping it in the Russian Federation on any grounds.
With Crimea in tow, Russia has no positive alternative to the current regime. And as long as the Russian opposition is concerned only about regime change and avoids discussing Crimea, the only thing it can offer is a Putinist Russia sans Putin. Whoever ends up in his place, however, the changes won’t be too noticeable.
Nikolay Klimenyuk writes about politics and culture in Germany and Russia. He was an editor at Forbes Russia, Bolshoi Gorod, and other periodicals. He has lived in Berlin since 2014 and writes for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and other German mass media. Translation and photo by the Russian Reader
After Apologizing for Genocide of Crimean Tatars, Vasily Gatov Attacked by Russian Channel One Employees 15 Minut
May 20, 2016
Well-known journalist and media manager Vasily Gatov, grandson of Ivan Sheredega, the NKVD Internal Troops commander who, in 1944, oversaw the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, has been targeted by his former colleagues at Russia’s Channel One after publishing a post on Facebook.
“Today is the anniversary of one of the most shameful events in the history of the Soviet Union, the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people. I don’t find it so easy to write these words: my own grandfather commanded this ‘operation.’
“In May 1944, the Soviet Army was in the midst of liberating the lands of Europe from the Nazi genocide machine, and the concept of ‘death camps’ was clear to the soldiers and officers. During these very same days, Stalin decided that another entire people, from its children to its heroes, was the ‘enemy.’
“As it is euphemistically called in the relevant documents, the ‘expulsion’ of the Chechens, Balkars, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians is nothing but a form of genocide. A genocide that has never been recognized, that has never been mourned, and that has never been paid for.
“The Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and Ingush are nations that have suffered at the hands of both the USSR and Russia.
“It is not only a shame. It is not only a sin.
“It is a crime that has been committed twice, an aggravated conspiracy by a gang whose objectives completely fall under the definitions of the crime as laid down by the International Court.
“And until a trial takes place in one form or another, any reasonable and sober person will have to repeat the same words:
“Forgive me if you can.”
Gatov also published his comment on the condemnation of his actions by his former colleagues on his Facebook page.
“Towards evening, I read the [minutes of] the long-distance Party meeting held on Facebook by Channel One employees and a few invited guests in order to condemn me. My thanks to Ksenia Turkova and Arina Borodina for their efforts to defend me in circumstances in which I cannot even reply to Svetlana Kolosva (director of Channel One’s documentary films department) and her fellow Party members.
“As for the claims made there, I have the following to say. Only a complete raving lunatic whose head was chockablock with propaganda and had been made insecure by continually lying to himself and others could have read into what I wrote yesterday everything my former friends and acquaintances discovered there. Basically, that’s all I have to say.
“Actually, it’s not quite everything. I discovered several interesting likes from people I didn’t expect to see on the list of invitees to the Party meeting. However, upon reflection, I concluded that the people who left those likes also completely fit the definition written above.”
Participants of the national Miss Russia 2016 beauty pageant on the stage of the Barvikha Luxury Village concert hall. Courtesy of Sputnik/Iliya Pitalev
I really like it when a big man in uniform speaks out with fanfare on perennial topics like the structure of society. You think it’s funny they all get Ph.D.s, but they really do consider themselves major theorists and are always willing to teach lessons in wisdom in their spare time. An entire genre has even emerged in Russian newspapers: lessons in political philosophy by generals.
For example, in today’s issue of Kommersant, General Bastrykin casually gives readers an unexpected lesson in democracy.
“For democracy or people power is nothing other than the power of the people itself, realized in its interests. It is possible to achieve these interests only by means of the common good, and not through the absolute freedom and arbitrary will of individual members of society,” he writes.
It must be admitted that this is the pure, unadulterated truth. We might rejoice that democracy in Russia has found a new supporter.
Then, however, Bastrykin the democrat’s argument takes an unexpected turn. He proposes setting things up so that he, Bastrykin, would decide himself what information should be considered extremist, and would limit Internet access without a court order! In addition, he would also decide in which cases providers are obliged to provide him with the personal information of their clients.
There are lots of other tasty tidbits in his article, including innovative tactics for fighting terrorism by confiscating property, but that does not concern us here.
So somebody comes and says, Now I am going to decide who is an extremist and who can read what. You will also be informing me everyone’s personal information. If this is not “absolute freedom and the arbitrary will of an individual member of society,” then what else would you call it?
I am going to have to upset Mr. Bastrykin. Democracy is, in fact, people power. Therefore, the main objective of democratic governance has been and will be preventing the usurpation of power, not defending the people from the machinations of external foes, not hunting down traitors, not surveilling unreliables, but combating usurpers. And so democracy’s main enemy is the guy who comes out and says he is going to decide who the extremists are round here.
The problem with these scholarly generals is that the only form of social organization they are capable of conceiving is the prison camp. And so whether they write about democracy, traditional values or economic progress, the same speech in defense of the prison camp always comes out.
* * * * *
“It’s time to erect an effective barrier against the information war” Alexander Bastrykin, chair of the Russian Federal Investigative Committee, on methods of combating extremism in Russia Kommersant
April 18, 2016
Chair of the Russian Federal Investigative Committee, general of justice of the Russian Federation, doctor of juridical sciences, Professor Alexander Bastrykin, special to Vlast magazine, on the ways and methods of combating extremism in Russia
In 2015, the Russian Federation witnessed negative trends in criminal extremism and terrorism.
1,329 extremist crimes were recorded, which was 28.5% higher than in 2014 (1,034 crimes). A growth in this type of crime was noted in fifty-six regions of the Russian Federation.
The numbers of such crimes as public calls to extremist activity (Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 280) and inciting hatred or hostility, and humiliation of human dignity has soared by nearly forty percent in comparison with 2014.
The crime of organizing an extremist organization was recorded 42 times (+2,4%).
A significant increase (+36.3%) in terrorist crimes committed in the Russian Federation has been noted. A total of 1,538 such crimes was recorded in 2015 (as opposed to 1,128 in 2014).
Seventy such crimes were prevented at the stage of planning or during the attempt. 133 terrorist crimes were committed with the help of the Internet network.
A particularly difficult situation has been observed in the North Caucasus Federal District, which accounts for the bulk of terrorist crimes: 1,168 crimes or 75.9% of all such crimes (leading to an increase of 32.3%). (In 2014, 883 such crimes were committed.)
Both external (geopolitical) and domestic political factors have contributed to the growth of this type of crime.
Over the past decade, Russia and a number of other countries have been living through a so-called hybrid war, unleashed by the US and its allies. The war has been conducted on various fronts, political, economic, informational, and legal. In recent years, it has moved into a new phase of open confrontation.
Professor Bastrykin
The main elements of economic pressure have been commercial and financial sanctions, dumping wars on the hydrocarbons market, and currency wars. Skillfully manipulating the huge number of dollars in circulation, the States have brought down the national currencies of developing countries. Russian organizations have had their access to channels of external long-term financing blocked, channels that formed the basis of investment for developing the real (productive) sectors of the economy. It is noteworthy that restrictions on the movement of financing have not affected short-term financing, which currently has been widedly employed to exert speculative pressure on our national currency. In many respects, the outcome of these measures has been the deep devaluation of the ruble, falling real incomes, a decline in industrial production, and economic recession. There has been a budget deficit and ensuing consequences in the form of cuts in expenditures, as well as an increasing fiscal burden to raise revenues.
Unfortunately, international law and the justice based on it have increasingly become tools of this war.
Obvious examples are the decisions in the Yukos cases, the decision in the murder case of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, the report of the Security Council of Netherlands on the investigation into the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, the FBI’s investigation of the legitimacy of awarding the right to hold the World Cup to Russia and Qatar in 2018 and 2022, and the extradition of our citizens Victor Bout and Konstanin Yaroshenko to the US and their sentencing to long terms of imprisonment.
However, the information war has caused the most devastating effects. By supporting radical Islamists and other radical ideological tendencies, the US has completely destabilized the situation in the Middle East. The effects of artificially initiated coups, revolutions, and crises in this region are still being experienced by Europe, overrun by mobs of refugees who profess qualitatively alien sociocultural traditions and have displaced the local population. Islamic State, the Al-Nusra Front, Al Qaida, and other terrorist organizations involved in the armed conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic have also been an effect of this policy. Manpower for replenishing these organizations are recruited all over the world, including in Russia.
More than a thousand Russian citizens have gone to the Syrian Arab Republic to participate in the armed conflict. 469 criminal cases have been filed against these persons. 135 of them have been killed in armed clashes with Syrian government troops.
The main channels of entry for Russian citizens into areas of heightened terrorist activity have been Turkey and Egypt, where they travel both directly and through third countries (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova) under the pretext of holidaymaking, receiving theological education, doing business, etc.
The main technique of the information war is the manipulation of an ideology that a particular social group finds congenial by radicalizing it. It is clear that the system of religious, ethnocultural, and confessional values is the segment of social existence that defines the most significant feature of any nation (ethnic group) and other such social groups as self-identification. Many of these values were shaped, preserved, and passed from generation to generation for centuries. Therefore, no nation is willing to give up its identity. Perhaps it is the only universal value it is willing to defend with arms and, as they say, until the last drop of blood is spilled.
Aware of the devastating effect of conflicts based on ethnic hatred, the US has bet on this informational element. At the current level of understanding of the issue, it is clear that the subversion of the Soviet Union’s ideological foundations, which were based on the principle of the brotherhood of nations, was also initiated from the outside and based on methods of ethnic strife. It was no accident that in the early 1990s numerous ethnic conflicts (Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia-Abkhazia, Ossetia-Ingushetia, Transnistria) broke almost simultaneously. At this time, the first mass rallies of nationalist-minded citizens took place in Kiev. In addition, the subversion of state power was carried out by means of anti-Soviet agitation and financing of the political opposition in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, and other countries.
Of course, in the minds of the local populace, those events were then regarded as local conflicts. However, it is now completely obvious that all these clashes were elements of the initial, as-yet-hidden phase of the information war.
Undoubtedly, the informational-ideological “weapon” will be deployed in the future. This is evidenced by the increase in US government spending on programs for the so-called development of democratic institutions in countries bordering on Russia and in the Central Asian states. The true meaning of these assets becomes clear from the name of this budget item, “Countering Russian aggression through public diplomacy and foreign aid programs, and the creation of stable government in Europe.”
About 4.3 billion dollars have been allocated under his item in 2017, and around a billion dollars will go to programs for the so-called fight against corruption and supporting democracy in countries neighboring Russia.
Funds already received under this program have been spent by by various non-governmental organizations under the guise of promoting education, developing civil society, and other seemingly useful purposes. The outcome has been the incitement of anti-Russian moods in neighboring countries, the shaping of the pro-American and pro-western so-called non-systemic opposition in Russia, and the spread of inter-confessional and political extremism within our country.
Recent events in Nagorno-Karabakh witness to the repeated attempts of forces opposed to Russia to undermine the peace between the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples and establish yet another hotbed of war on Russian’s borders.
It seems it is time to erect an effective barrier against this information war. We need a tough, appropriate, and balanced response. This is especially relevant in light of the upcoming elections and the possible risks presented by the stepping up of efforts by destabilizing political forces. Enough of playing at pseudo-democracy and following pseudo-liberal values. For democracy or people power is nothing other than the power of the people itself, realized in its interests. It is possible to achieve these interests only by means of the common good, and not through the absolute freedom and arbitrary will of individual members of society.
The following measures can be proposed to counter extremism.
It is extremely important to establish a concept of state ideological policy. Its basic element could be a national idea that would genuinely unite Russia’s unified multinational people. The concept could stipulate specific long-term and medium-term measures, aimed at the ideological education of our younger generation. Conscious resistance to radical religious and other ideologies could knock out the foundations on which current extremist ideologies are constructed. With this protection in place, even the most generous outside financing of destabilizing the situation in Russia will prove useless.
It is also important that youth are regarded by terrorist groups as a natural reserve. From this it follows that everything must be done to seize the initiative, to include young people at risk in the development and implementation of programs for countering armed extremism.
It seems appropriate for the supervisory and regulatory authorities to organize a wide-ranging and detailed verification of the compliance with federal legislation of all religious, ethnocultural, and youth organizations, suspected of engaging in banned extremist activity.
Using the know-how of the Northern Caucasus, we should organize specific and narrowly targeted preventive work with members of informal youth associations in order to adopt measures aimed at procuring information about negative processes underway in the youth milieu and identifying the ideologues and leaders of radical organizations who involved young people in extremist activity.
The positive know-how of the Republic of Ingushetia is also worthy of support. They have established a military-patriotic club that unites the children of law enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty and children of neutralized members of the bandit underground, which facilitates their rapprochement and shapes an atmosphere of mutual understanding among them.
The proposed concept sees it as expedient to define the limits of censoring the global Internet network in Russia, since at present this problem is causing a heated debate in the light of the stepping up of efforts by advocates of the right to the free receipt and dissemination of information. Interesting in this sense is the know-how of foreign states, opposing the US and its allies. Due to unprecedented pressure from information, they have taken steps to restrict foreign media in order to protect the national information space. Thus, for example, on March 10, 2016, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology introduced a ban on electronic media fully or partly owned by foreign residents. These media will no longer be able to disseminate information through the Internet and, in the best case, by means of print publications. Chinese media will cooperate with foreign online media only with the permission of the ministry. Only Chinese nationals will be able to work in the management of national media. Online media servers can be located only in the People’s Republic of China.
It seems this know-how could be employed in Russia to a reasonable extent.
Internet providers must be furnished with a integrated set of rules for storing the personal information of their clients and users in the right amount in the event that such information is required when investigating cyber security violations.
In public places (libraries, schools, and other educational institutions) with access to the World Wide Web, filters restricting access to sites containing extremist content should be established.
In addition, it seems appropriate to stipulate an extrajudicial (administrative) procedure for including information in the federal list of extremist content and blocking the domain names of sites that disseminate extremist and radical nationalist information. However, if the proprietors of this information do not consider it extremist, they can appeal the relevant actions of the authorized government agencies in court and prove their innocence there. This procedure will enable a faster and more effective response to the promotion of extremism on the Internet. It is necessary to step up work on introducing modern technology for the effective monitoring of the radio waves and the Internet.
It is necessary to expand the range of criminal law measures to stop the illegal actions of terrorist organizations committed on the Internet network involving recruiting. To this end, we should consider the criminalization of possessing such materials, collecting them or uploading them from a computer. Modern evidence technologies make it possible to present to the court and confirm technical elements of intercourse on social networks that testify to the connections between the accused and the relevant electronic messages.
To expose the real aims and intentions of Islamic extremists and establish the insolvency of their theoretical approaches, which contradict the realities of the modern world and the fundamental interests of Islamic countries, it would seem useful for the State Duma to regularly hold special hearings involving experts from the Federal Security Service (FSB), eminent Islamic scholars and authorities, and scholars of Islam. The hearings should be widely covered in the press.
Particular attention should be paid to the migration process. Migrants are often targets of espionage recruiting and radicalization. Many of them have overstayed their limit in Russia, dropping out of the sight of law enforcement. We must analyze the regulatory acts governing the presence of foreign nationals and persons without citizenship in the Russian Federation. Based on our analysis, we should take additional measures for improving the legislation.
It is necessary to improve the work of precinct police with foreign nationals in the realm of monitoring compliance with the established rules of residence in Russia (monitoring of persons letting and renting residential premises in the precinct, and obtaining information about the nature of these persons’ employment). The internal affairs departments of agencies should exclude possible corruption here. Full use of the public’s assistance should be made.
Certain features of extremist activity have taken shape in the Crimea Federal District, where attempts have been made to mold anti-Russian moods, by means of falsifying historical facts and distorting the interpretation of modern events, and call into question the outcome of the referendum on Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation. This act of the legal expression of the Crimean population’s popular will has become an integral part of Russian constitutionalism. Considering the place of this act in the hierarchal system of values of Russian state and society, it is certainly in need of special legal protection, including by means of criminal legal coercion.
It should be noted that criminalizing the denial or falsification of historical events of particular importance to a state and society is a widespread practice. For example, in many countries, including Russia, criminal punishment is stipulated for promoting fascism. France and a number of other countries have introduced criminal liability for denying the Armenian genocide. The State Duma of the Russian Federal Assembly is considering a similar law bill, No. 938567-6 (“On Criminalization of Public Denial of the Genocide of the Armenian People in Western Armenia and Ottoman Turkey in 1915-1922”). In Israel, it is a crime to deny the Holocaust.
In view of the above, it seems necessary to supplement the notion of extremist activity (extremism) contained in the federal law “On Countering Extremist Activity” with such a manifestation as denial of the outcome of a national referendum. It is necessary to decisively counteract the deliberate falsification of the history of our state. In this connection, we might also propose that Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 280 (public calls for extremist activity) include an additional stipulation, which would qualify the falsification of historical facts and events as a call for extremist activity.
In addition to countering the ideological component of the information war being waged against Russia, it is important to step up efforts to combat financial support for this activity, including tightening control over cross-border capital flows. As experience has shown, terrorism is often financed by virtual cryptocurrency, which has no central issuer, no single point of transactional control, and features anonymous payments. In addition, as a result of their wide dissemination, these currencies can displace legal money from the market, which threatens the state’s financial stability. It is therefore suggested that criminal liability be introduced for the illegal issuance and circulation of cryptocurrency and other money substitutes.
We should also review social security legislation concerning the close relatives of persons involved in terrorism, entitlement to survivor’s pensions, and other benefits. A person who is going to commit such crimes should know that in the event of death not only will he be buried in an unmarked grave but he will also deprive his loved ones of support from the state.
Another measure that would contribute to the effective fight against extremism, terrorism, and other dangerous criminal manifestations is confiscation of property as a form of criminal punishment. As we know, the relevant legislative proposals have been prepared and are in need of speedy legislative implementation. Unfortunately, this process has been unduly delayed.
No less important is improvement of the legal mechanism of international cooperation among law enforcement and other state bodies empowered to counter terrorism and extremism.
Russian law regulates only the procedure for submitting an international request for legal assistance, whereas international acts in this field stipulate the possibility of closer integration, including the establishment of international investigative teams. Such cooperation would help in cases where Russian investigative authorities need to perform a number of investigative procedures or even perform a preliminary investigation in a foreign country and that country has agreed to provide such assistance. This gap became apparent during investigation of the armed conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia in 2008 and the terrorist act committed on board the Russian Airbus 321 over the Sinai Peninsula.
Translated by the Island of Misfit Toys. Thanks to Greg Yudin for his courage.
Suicide by Crimea
