For most Afghans, the last 20 years has felt like an eternity. Add the 'Taliban 1.0' years and the civil conflict before that, and the Russian occupation, and it seems somehow more than twice as long. The violent uncertainties of warlordism and invasion have for a long time prevented significant reform of the country's sexual politics. Despite the renewed cosmopolitanism under the Karzai and Ghani governments, and the 'nation-building' efforts of Western powers, 3.7 million Afghan children remain out of school. In other words, more than a third of Afghan children lack formal education. Of that figure, 60 per cent are girls.

Progress has been made in education since the 2000s, but the money spent by the United States on war-making could have paid for five years of education at Roedean, the top English girls' public school, for every single girl in Afghanistan. You'd still have $500 billion change rattling around in your pocket.

There has however been one very major change in Afghan society: the turning of the generations. Today's youth cohort is very different. A new generation of Afghan girls believe that women have an extended role to play in their society, and are unwilling to give up the precious gains they have struggled for in the last two decades.

The Afghan education system has a lot of responsibility on its shoulders. It needs to produce outstanding outcomes to overturn the years of neglect and insecurity. The youth of Afghanistan need to be able to access the best universities in the world to enable them to return and build their state.

To explore these themes in more detail, Maqshosh chief correspondent Ahmad Soheil Ahmadi spoke with women's education activist Rita Anwari Soltani. Ms. Soltani, who now lives in Australia, is the founding director of Women Empowerment and Leadership in Australia, an organization dedicated to the welfare of women, and has worked to improve educational opportunities for Afghans as well as mobilizing Australia's Afghan community to support their compatriots.

MQ: As an Afghan woman living in Australia, what made you decide to become a civic and social activist, and what valuable experiences have you had over the years?

I have been active in civil society for ten years. Back then, when I was in college, I worked with people from many different countries, not just Afghans. I could see that our projects were making a positive difference in their lives. However, I always dreamed of doing something for Afghanistan specifically by helping Afghan students to study in Australia. So, in 2017 I introduced an Australian diploma education course in Afghanistan to help Afghans prepare at home for studying here in Australia.

When I finally managed to visit Afghanistan in 2017, I spoke with many women and girls, from ordinary members of the public to politicians, to understand what they think and need. I came to the conclusion that Afghan women are confronted with numerous social problems, and that their lives can be improved. Helping Afghan women access good-quality education will show the world what we are capable of.

I'd been away from Afghanistan for 25 years, but after that one trip, I returned to Australia and founded the Women's Empowerment and Leadership Organization. Our aim is to empower women, and especially Afghan women.

Back in Afghanistan, I designed a program to help women gain IELTS qualifications [International English Language Testing System] that opens access to international education institutions such as universities and colleges. Once our students had IELTS qualifications, they still needed advanced level qualifications in their chosen subjects. We helped them complete diploma-level courses remotely, and once they had diplomas, they were then eligible for Australian scholarships.

Throughout this time there have been both sweet and bitter experiences. I have met and communicated with many girls and women who are now close friends, even though some of them I have only ever known in the virtual world because they have not yet come to Australia. The bitterest experience for me was in visiting Afghanistan, where I could see that our girls and women have many valuable talents, yet lack the opportunities to deploy them usefully. Doing so in Afghanistan takes incredible courage.

I made another trip to Afghanistan in 2019. When I talked to women there, including those working in government ministries, I could see their capabilities, but in their eyes was an awareness of the social limitations that they suffer. Then there are the huge problems of war, insecurity, and poverty, in the face of which all people feel helpless, but especially women. I want to help change their outlook, but I don't think real change is possible until the war in Afghanistan is over.

MQ: After 20 years of spending on social programs in Afghanistan designed to help women and girls, we remain in a situation where the future of women there is uncertain. Has all that work merely been symbolic, or will the strong and capable women now in leadership roles be able to protect women's rights?

Before the Karzai government, women were in a bad situation in Afghanistan. The Karzai and Ghani governments have overseen significant progress in the lives and attitudes of Afghan women. We have been able to study and work internationally and even globally. So ministers and officials have had some success. It's harder to say whether the women in leadership positions are merely there symbolically because some positions are filled by quota, with 25 per cent of parliamentary seats reserved for women. But the fact remains: we still have plenty of successful women. Where women used to be flogged, now they are delegates to international conferences.

Yet the country remains very patriarchal, and women continue to overcome social prejudices by working as journalists, lawyers, or academics. The Afghan National Army has 7000 female soldiers. So women are trying to defend the rights they have gained. We need ongoing help and support from international institutions such as the United Nations to maintain our position, which is now more in line with global norms and aspirations.

MQ: In the current, very troubled, situation in Afghanistan, do you think that women in the media, including in television, have been able to bring to the world the voices of Afghan women?

You are talking to an example right now! I was born in Afghanistan. I have lived in Australia for many years, but today I am fighting for the rights of Afghan women. There are hundreds of Afghan women just like me who want to make their voices resound around the world. We have worldwide support, including in the White House. People and organizations all over the world want to assist Afghan women.

MQ: Do you think that recent gains in Afghan women's rights are vulnerable to future attempts at rollback?

The Taliban have their world view and might think they can reintroduce their old policies, under which women were housebound and subject to public floggings. However, back then, awareness of the rights women have elsewhere in the world was very limited. Women refugees with successful lives in safe countries could not communicate with women inside Afghanistan.

Today, it is all different. Technological advances in communications mean that individual acts of oppression are now both known and protested by the international community. The Taliban will have to accept that women in Afghanistan are no longer the women they were 20 years ago. A new generation has grown, and it is a stronger generation. As a result, there is no way in my opinion that the Taliban can silence the song of Afghan women. Even if they assassinate all the women leaders in the country itself, they cannot reach Afghan women around the world, such as myself in Australia. We will continue to fight for women's rights in Afghanistan will all our strength and capabilities.

MQ

Pray never to be 'liberated' by the United States of America. Politicians there have quite a different image of 'freedom' than yours. Like the nasty philosophy of Ayn Rand, the Russian-born novelist who gave so many Stateside politicians a fig leaf for being egotistical, selfish, and greedy, American 'liberation' is half-baked, morally repugnant, and cynically self-serving. It is the 'freedom' to be exploited.

In Afghanistan, after two decades of corruption and chaos, drone attacks and door-kicking and cold-blooded executions, the Taliban gliding back into power. For the entirety of their occupation, Washington turned a blind eye to gross abuses of power and position by the government they installed. Just as in Viet Nam, they're running away and leaving an unholy mess, with more than three million internally displace people. They still can't win a war, and Afghan irregulars have once again defeated a superpower (two down, none to go). Do locals feel grateful that The President chose their distant country as a locus for weapons system testing? Seemingly not.

The Afghan government is so criminally inept that its expensively equipped regular soldiers are as redundant as Joe Biden's dog walker. Trained at vast expense by American and British officers who won hearts and minds with seminars on topics such as personal hygiene, Afghan soldiers are as sick as everyone else of the destruction. Rather than fight the Taliban, they run away as fast as their legs can carry them. It seems that all those infantry training manuals expensively translated into Pashtun and Dari and Tajik omitted the importance of 'having something to fight for'.

Establishing a government with a monopoly of violence was the one key aim of the occupation, so the latest wheeze of rearming the warlords must be counted a retrograde step. These are the same tribal militias expensively bribed with Yankee dollars to disband not so many months ago. Now they are being 're-bribed', as it were, to fend off the Taliban. Where are the ANA's 200,000 men, funded to the tune of $4bn a year from the imperial treasury? 'Overstretched', we're told, despite repeated assurances from as early as ten years ago that the ANA is 'finally a fighting force' which can handle these bearded amateurs on their own.

The United States is not a force for good, or anything like it. It is not a benign actor on the world stage. It is a huge baby with a hammer looking for things to smash. And like a baby, it will show you the broken pieces from its latest fit of violence and tell you how much of an improvement it is on what went before. This seemingly endless capacity for self-delusion, an essential part of America's mythology, means that while much of the rest of the world sees the United States for what it is, a deranged imperialist baby with a hammer wandering loose in the world, at home criticism of the military is completely taboo, despite the U.S.'s multiple war crimes over the years.

[500 words]

MQ

There is an air of inevitability, and trepidation, and déja vu, gripping Afghanistan. The Taliban are back, and they are closing their fingers around Ashraf Ghani's government like a fist, squeezing.

Casualties are not yet on the scale of the civil war. The Taliban are biding their time, encircling cities, waiting for the Americans to depart. Many local garrisons have surrendered anyway, while elsewhere, tribal elders have negotiated bloodless transfers of power.

When Ghani and his government, riddled with corruption and edging rapidly towards irrelevance, look down, they see only paint. They're in a corner from which no amount of U.S. 'support' (bombs) can extricate them. Their collaboration with foreign powers has marked them with a black spot, too, that no soap can wash off.

Yet in strict terms, the Taliban were created from the same geopolitical rib: Ghani's government and the Taliban are both cotton sugar confections spun by foreign powers. The U.S.A., Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and India are all up to their necks in this multiplayer iteration of the Great Game. The Talibs are not so much the 'scholars' their name implies; they're more of an armed faction. They reconstituted themselves to fight the invaders, and they have an ideology that because of its Islamic flavour makes them generally comprehensible. The failure of statecraft in Afghanistan by Ghani has fueled their revivification.

Meanwhile, enthusiasm for the Talib 'scholars' is rather thin on the ground, worldwide. China is not a big fan, ill-disposed as it is to anything with the word 'Islamic' in it (the Taliban intend to set up the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan', a political entity with the same name as the one they established in 1996). Russia isn't mad keen on them either. The Western powers loathe the Taliban, but they saw they could never win the conflict and simply had to cut their losses. The Taliban have attended the talks just enough to keep the ball rolling as they position themselves in-country, and have been regularly accused of bad faith in Doha. They used their special UN travel permissions not to fly back to the UAE but to visit Moscow.

In Afghanistan itself, many remember the excesses of Taliban 1.0, and scratch militias are popping up to fight them off. The Taliban are widely reviled for their adolescent neuroses over women and music, and their propensity for ultraviolence, so what does their de facto control of the countryside say about the standing of the central government? A trillion dollars and more has utterly failed to provide Afghan citizens with a sense of security.

None of it bodes well, unfortunately. Once the Yanks go home, Taliban forces will make their final push on urban centres, at which point the body count will rise once again. Will America 'do a Vietnam' and deal decades of spiteful passive aggression, having been whupped yet again in a war of invasion? The ingredients are there for a long-run tragedy to befall the Afghans yet again. We all hope not.

[500 words]

MQ

We've seen the barbaric methodology of Eritrean and Ethiopian forces, hard at work making Tigray a modern-day terra nullius. The burning of crops in the field and the slaughtering of livestock were a time bomb. 350,000 souls are now afflicted with famine, with millions more at grievous risk.

The purposeful starvation of hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans is under way.

You'd think that starvation as a weapon of war is an egregious enough crime against humanity to be scrutinized and acted upon by the international community. Yet despite being prohibited by Article 54(1) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Convention, prosecutions are rarer than thirty-dollar bills because 'intent to starve' is as hard to prove as it sounds.

The systematic starving of Yemenis, South Sudanese, and Syrians prompted the United Nations to 'act' in 2018 with a stern message of opprobrium. Politicians from Washington to Riyadh to Damascus to Khartoum to Addis Ababa have carried on regardless. Their impunity is mutually noted.

A paper by the Global Rights Compliance project sums up just how heinous is this slow murder: 'Every instance of famine or acute food insecurity today is, at its core, man-made. ...Starvation has a compound effect on international peace and security surpassing the (atrocious) death tolls: mass displacement and social disruption, intergenerational physical and cognitive harm, and severe economic deprivation are only a fraction of the terrible consequences visited upon the unfortunate victims.'

Like a monstrously familiar and death-dealing shape emerging from a highland fog, the contours of the impending massacre in Tigray are loping, wolf-like, into view. When the war began last November, it looked like a dust-up between the federales and the now-marginalized Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, which used to run the whole country. The TPLF's leaders are still smarting from the demotion imposed on them by Ahmed's parliamentary manoeuvrings in 2018. What's happening now is a famine precipitated by a cock-fight between two preening demagogues. Ahmed wants to crush Tigray, while the TPLF leadership is sacrificing its population in a crazed tilt at secession.

Meanwhile, Eritrean gang rapists tell Tigrayan victims 'This season is our season. Not your season. This is the time for us.' They make a point of committing anal gang rape too, knowing that in this conservative Christian region their victims' lives are utterly destroyed.

As before, so now. The 1984 famine in Tigray and Eritrea (then part of Ethiopia) was blamed on drought, but Alex de Waal's comprehensive 1991 report for Human Rights Watch demonstrated that drought conditions did not affect the regions until months after the famine had struck. A survey reported in the journal Cultural Survival found that 95 per cent of Tigrayan refugees questioned had had their crops, and stores of harvested grain, destroyed by the Ethiopian military. Army worms and low rainfall were the other elements in the apocalyptic triple whammy that caused 1.2 million deaths.

Now, in 2021, it's 1984 all over again: war and preventable famine. Surely it's time for some indictments.

[500 words]

MQ

Refugees experience many traumas, but one of the worst is being forgotten by the international community. War, violence, drought and, most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic have displaced thousands of Afghans. They have fled, many to neighbouring countries, and some as far as Europe. Unfortunately, the dearth of news coverage at home means that families and relatives of these refugees often imagine them luxuriating in spacious chalet comfort on the Mediterranean coast. Few at home in Afghan villages hear of the drownings in the Mediterranean, or the squalor, or the week-long wait for a slot in the filthy shower block. For these seekers of asylum, hope itself drowns. Clinging to what is left of their dignity in densely packed tumbles of humanity, they're also at the mercy of Covid-19.

Many refugee and displaced populations, in the remote wastes of drying Africa, won't even be aware of the existence of a vaccine and will probably never receive a dose: that is how far removed they are from the world-shaking events in the rest of the world.

June 20, 2021 is World Refugee Day. At Maqshosh Free Media we hold in our thoughts the millions of forgotten fellow human beings lost in the desert of statelessness. We shall not forget. We shan't give up trying to highlight all the hardships, iniquities, and trauma faced by refugees, whether from Afghanistan or Mali or Myanmar. As global heating starts to desertify swathes of our planet, the one river we'd like to see dry up is the river of refugees. The river of heart-rent misery..

On World Refugee Day we go back to the camps. Maqshosh chief correspondent Ahmad Soheil Ahmadi interviewed Afghan refugee Neda Torabi. Ms. Torabi is currently housed in Camp Ritsona on mainland Greece and is a civic activist, photographer, and artist.

MQ: How far do you think the images and news that are published in the media about the migration route reflect the true realities of immigration and asylum?

The media reflects a maximum of twenty to thirty percent of the facts. Much of the truth remains hidden because politicians impose restrictions on the media. After all, no government wants to be portrayed badly in the media, as a result of which no one has ever seen the reality of the refugee world. The media tends to cover events in general, or just the very worst injustices out of many. Many refugees have tried to present the facts to the public via the internet. For example, in Ritsona camp, we have tried and are trying not to let issues such as Covid-19 stay hidden from the world. Refugees have always stood up to the police and the government here.

The reason the media covers only a small part of the events and news of the refugee world is, as I said before, because the media have restrictions imposed on them.

It isn't that journalists think covering the world of refugees is uninteresting to the public. I have talked to various reporters and they have acknowledged that they are restricted in what they can publish.

Although some asylum seekers use apps such as Facebook to freely report events freely through personal accounts, the reason why they fail to make their voices heard by all the people of the world is that the voices of immigrants and refugees have always been weak.

Sometimes some photos, such as those of the Syrian child whose body was found on a beach, and images of the fire at Moria Camp do have an impact and really affect people. Members of the public protest and advocate more human policies. But governments have the final say in policy, and even when the people protest widely, governments still make poor decisions.

Unfortunately, protests by anti-refugee groups and movements often get more coverage than protests by refugee and civil society activists. This is because civil society activists are on the side of refugees, and refugees also have needs that governments are unwilling to meet. When governments do not want to accede to these demands and protests, no amount of protest will be successful.

All refugees in Greece believe that the Greek government has no respect for, or belief in human rights. The government accommodates us in the camps because it receives money from the United Nations to take care of each refugee.

MQ: European countries have vaccinated large numbers of their citizens in recent months. What has been happening regarding vaccination in refugee camps?

Registration for the vaccine has begun at Camp Ritsona, where I live, but people are worried about the side effects because a lot of rumours are flying around. So far, though, it is only registration which has taken place. There have been no vaccinations.

The vaccination model in the camps is different to the rest of the world because there is no system of vaccination according to age category. That is, the authorities did not say that in the first stage, only elderly refugees would be vaccinated. They said that all refugees over the age of eighteen should come and register now.

I think the main officials know that the refugees are upset about the Covid-19 situation, but since they have not protested en masse yet, they are not paying much attention to this issue.

Health advice and advice on social distancing has been made clear. However, unfortunately, there is no place to quarantine Covid-19 patients. If someone contracts Covid, they have no choice but to remain living right next to all their neighbours. This lack of distancing is potentially very dangerous because there may be a sick, old, or even pregnant person living right next door to a confirmed case. Families share bathrooms and kitchens.

At our camp, food cartons are distributed every week or two to people who do not have a bank card to receive money. Camp officials deliver food packages to families with Covid cases. But these families need other facilities, so they have to leave quarantine to meet their needs.

MQ: Since World Refugee Day 2020, stricter rules and conditions have been imposed on migrants and refugees, including a ban on admitting Afghan refugees to Greece from Turkey. As a refugee living behind camp walls, what is your message to others considering seeking asylum?

Given that laws in Europe are constantly changing, people must make informed decisions. They should also consider the many potential dangers of migration routes. And they should not expect the governments of Turkey and Greece to take care of them effectively.

MQ: Given that you are a photographer, how have you managed to help in portraying the suffering of immigration and asylum?

I started my activities in Moria. There I became a member of the photography group. After I came to the Greek mainland and to Camp Ritsona, we started the Voice of Refugee project. We also held spontaneous demonstrations to make our voices heard. In addition, I have worked with various news agencies and reporters.

MQ

The current suffering of the people of Afghanistan is in some ways greater even than in previous years. This is because the country's immediate future remains wholly uncertain. A tantalizing peace might be at hand, or it might not. The peace process isn't exactly a smooth operation, with peripheral argumentation causing delays to the schedule of the Istanbul talks, where the Taleban have agreed to sit down with the other parties, though on conditions that are problematic. The situation remains unresolved, despite American sources' assurances that they're hopeful of a commencement soon.

Until a few months ago, the main debate centred on whether the talks could be a truly national peace process, or whether they would merely be a locus of foreign policy manoeuvring by exogenous powers. Today, though, people are asking each other a more difficult question: will conferences and negotiations even take place? The media are currently unable to provide an answer to this question.

To try and get some answers, Maqshosh chief correspondent spoke to Professor Mohammad Akram Gizabi, the Afghan writer, journalist, and political activist. He gave us a seasoned perspective on today's media and journalistic landscape in Afghanistan and the jockeying among participants of the peace talks.

MQ: Given the lack of real-time information which characterized the Doha talks, do you think the Afghan media can freely cover the daily news of the upcoming conference, or will much of the process be kept secret like in Doha?

The answer depends on the circumstances. If the Turks allow the Afghan media to access the news at the Istanbul Conference, there will be no problem for the media to report facts and issues to the people. I should point out that in Qatar, the visa issue was a major problem because people are not easily granted visas, but at a possible Istanbul conference, this weakness may be remedied and Turkey will allow Afghan journalists to go there. Should this happen, there should be fewer problems publishing the latest developments.

MQ: At the time of the Bonn conference in 2001, there was almost no Afghan media infrastructure. Is the situation better today?

Yes, I think this time the situation is better than in 2001. At that time, there was almost no foreign media in Afghanistan and people did not have access to free media. Today, the media is much better than it was 20 years ago. We have good reporters and we think the situation is better than in 2001.

MQ: Do you think freedom of the press and media will be affected by the debate over amendments to the Afghan constitution which is almost certain to take place?

The status and freedoms of the press are perhaps two of the most pressing agenda items to be resolved in the constitutional debate. Of course, there is a real question here: how much do the participating factions in the Istanbul talks actually believe in the freedom of the press? Since half are from the Taliban, and the other half are representatives of the Ghani the government, major questions of commitment arise.

In my opinion, these groupings do not believe in a free press. Although the fate of the constitution will not be discussed in the forthcoming negotiations, in the future the Taliban, with their potential influence over a future parliamentary session on constitutional amendments, will do their utmost to stifle the voice of the free press.

MQ: What do you see as the future for Afghan journalists and news outlets?

Unfortunately, I am very pessimistic about this. Currently, the Taliban are not in the government of Afghanistan, but Afghan journalists are nevertheless extremely cautious on a range of issues. In the last one or two years, the press has become very restrained and self-censored. Journalists have been threatened and assassinated. Targeted assassinations have forced journalists to flee the country. When the Taliban take control of Kabul and other provinces, they will certainly stifle the press if they do not shut it down completely.

MQ: Does Mr. Ghani's government support journalists or do they want to suffocate the press in the current situation so as to make bargaining easier?

No, and yes. There is no doubt about this. Some journalists have been destroyed and assassinated by factions within the government. So it is not only the Taliban who are to blame for these assassinations, but also others, about whom the police have no leads. Nonetheless, we should not indulge in too much speculation about the role of the government in these matters.

What we can say is that some prominent journalists have been assassinated in cases where the Taliban and ISIL have been ruled out as perpetrators. So we can by no means assert that all journalists are killed by ISIL and the Taliban. Definitely not. There are numerous other interests and factions that want to keep the enormous corruption and embezzlement that is happening in the country away from the eyes of the people and the media.

For example, a number of embezzlements were recently exposed relating to the Code 92 fund [editor's note: the allegations relate to the use of a fund designated as an 'emergency fund', which paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to individuals in or closely related to Ghani's government, including former president Hamid Karzai. The payments, allegedly for numerous items ranging from car rental expenses up to apartment purchases, were channelled through the Office of Public and Strategic Affairs of the President, run by Ghani ally Waheed Omer. Details of the ode 91 and 92 accounts were leaked to the press in 2019 and a parliamentary commission began investigating the matter in January 2020] The reporting of this had a severe impact on public perceptions of the Afghan government. If they can find a way to prevent such corruption from being exposed, they will definitely do it.

MQ: The Ashraf Ghani government has been making a lot of demands since the Doha talks. Will such insistence pay off?

On issues such as early elections, we have witnessed the government's insistence, but there are many things that are beyond the power of Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai's government. There are factions in the government that do not agree with the continuation of the system as it is. In fact, the government has become a three-person administration.

Many of the government's decisions are in the hands of three people, but the Afghan people and other politicians do not want to follow these decisions, made by people inserted from abroad. It is true that they are of Afghan origin, but they have spent most of their lives abroad and are not fully aware of the internal situation in Afghanistan, such as the stances, ethnic relations and opinions of the general public. In addition, they still have prejudices and opinions that are unfortunately ethnic. As a result, they will not be able to overcome all the problems facing Afghanistan and will not be able to produce positive results in Istanbul.

MQ: In your opinion, at the end of the Istanbul talks, who is likely to be the candidate for the presidency of the interim government?

In the past, some names were mentioned that may have a share in the interim government. Two different factions are facing each other and it is not at all clear whether the future government will be an Emirate or a Republic. If supporters of an emirate gain power in the negotiations, the Taliban candidate will definitely be chosen, but if the chances of a republic are stronger, then someone will be chosen by agreement between the two parties. It is unlikely that they would choose a relative unknown, as they did at the Bonn Conference. There, negotiations reached a dead end, so they selected the political unknown Hamid Karzai.

MQ

Despite the efforts of UN vaccine donation schemes such as COVAX, refugees around the world stand naked in the gale of this pandemic. We should heed the words of UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic, who this week warned: 'The pandemic will be defeated only when vaccinations become available everywhere on an equitable basis.' Equity is proving hard to achieve.

More than 80 per cent of refugees are hosted by developing countries, which are struggling to vaccinate even small proportions of their own citizens. Almost 30 per cent of refugees are in camps in the world's least developed states, with healthcare systems that barely function even for regular citizens.

Refugees are typically last in the line in any crisis, but most particularly in this one. Confined to camps or corralled in remote border areas where they're prevented from moving on by pandemic protocols, it's hard even to estimate their numbers. In many places (South Sudan, Tigray/Ethiopia, Central African Republic) aid agencies are struggling to gain sufficient access. Conflict, pandemic regulations, and geographical hurdles hobble their efforts.

Those fleeing conflict and climate blight are a forgotten meta-population who should be front and centre in our humanitarian efforts. They personify our failures and malignancies as a species fatally attracted to power, and wealth, and ideologies that make us surrender our humanity. The violent among us destroy living communities as well as the ecology gracious enough to host us. The corrupt and the violent will in the end make all of us refugees.

As vaccine manufacturers fight to keep their taxpayer-subsidized 'intellectual property' in their bespoke pockets, UNHCR is appealing for more donations to COVAX. With 80,000,000 refugees and displaced persons worldwide, even a lower-than-median Covid mortality of 1.2 per cent would cause a million deaths. Covid-19 mortality is far higher than this in the camps, however.

Of the states hosting the most, only Turkey and Uganda have lower than one per cent mortality, with Lebanon and Ethiopia around 1.5 per cent. Iran and Pakistan are each reporting mortality of well over two per cent. The seriousness of the Yemen crisis for its traumatized population is reflected in mortality of almost 20 per cent (down from a shocking 30 per cent some months ago).

A new study in the Lancet [paywall] focuses on Lebanon, which has the highest refugee population in the world relative to its own population (1.7m out of 6.85m). The authors argue that even in a state whose health system is crumbling, failing to vaccinate its mostly Syrian and Palestinian refugees would precipitate a catastrophic public health crisis. Covid mortality among displaced people in Lebanon is more than three times the country average (1.43 per cent). Without a major push by aid agencies, the camps in Lebanon will see thousands of deaths. Lebanon has secured vaccine supply for less than a third of its population, which means millions there are vulnerable to whatever new Covid wave washes ashore.

UNHCR needs support for COVAX. Governments need to clean out their ears and listen.

[500 words]

MQ

The figures are bad, any way you slice them. 50 journalists killed last year, the toll since 1990 stands at more than 2,600 dead. Hundreds more than the number of U.S. soldiers killed in the whole Afghanistan débacle. Not even in Europe are reporters safe. Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb in Malta in 2017 for her exposés of corruption.

The killings have become less random, too, and more targeted. Four women media workers in Afghanistan have been murdered this year alone. Horrific and public deaths, and the many threats made against media personnel, have resulted in talent exiting the profession at an alarming rate.

The destruction in Gaza City of more than a dozen media facilities by Israeli bombs, including those of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, would have been unconscionable just a few decades ago, though not to the U.S.A., as we'll see. People got out, but notes, equipment, hard drives, family photos were crushed in the rubble of war. Lost in the dust is any remaining sense of personal security for the dedicated reporters there.

Recent decades have plumbed new depths, from Islamic State beheadings in Syria through Mexican drug cartel wet work, to the bullet-riddled body of much-loved former TOLO news anchor Nemat Rawan in Kandahar a few days ago.

Impunity and lack of accountability is a salient feature of the murder of journalists. UNESCO says more than 90 per cent of cases remain 'unresolved'. For families, and the societies in which they live, there is no justice. Anthony Bellanger, the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, summed it up best in a report on a quarter of a century of media murders: 'First, the levels of violence on journalists have dramatically increased to reach record levels in recent years. Second, the single biggest contributing factor to violence in journalism remains the impunity enjoyed by those who attack and kill journalists and other media personnel.'

The United States, where police love nothing more than to crack some P.C. media heads, kicked off the current trend towards systematic silencing back in April 2003 with a missile attack on Al Jazeera's Baghdad office, killing a journalist. George W. Bush wanted to go even further and bomb the channel's Doha HQ, according to a leaked transcript of a phone conversation with then U.K. prime minister Tony Blair. Two civil servants were indicted for the leak, while the official British response was that Bush's threat was 'humourous, not serious' (unlikely, given the tone of the conversation, but if true, a truly evil truth: the world's 'defenders of democracy' spend their time kidding around about bombing a news organization. What wholesome fun.)

What's the deal with journalists, you may ask, when so many civilians are slaughtered each year in conflict?

When you murder reporters, you're purposely silencing the voices of a nation, shutting down vectors of truth that allow citizens to form fact-based judgments about the world around them. We are all injured by this.

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MQ

'Israel stands on the other side of despotic Middle Eastern regimes. We have rule of law. We have democracy.'

Benjamin Netanyahu, January 19, 2021

'We'll return peace and quiet, for the long term.'

Benny Gantz, Israeli defence minister, May 11, 2021

We're seeing the kind of contortionist doublespeak in Israel that we thought passed into history with the defeat of apartheid in South Africa. Netanyahu speaks of the rule of law when that law is deployed in enslaving another nation. Israel's 'law' facilitates ethnic cleansing: evictions from their homes in East Jerusalem of decades-long residents of non-Jewish origin. For Jewish Israelis, the law functions as it should, in protecting property rights, contract law, and civil rights. Not so for the Palestinians.

For Palestinians, serfdom and dehumanizing subjugation is to be their fate, it seems. Now that the Israeli government has aligned itself with the most despotic of those Arab regimes, it no longer needs to watch its back so hard and can get on with the process of colonization.

Israel, like China, is happy playing a long game. They're eating the elephant, one bite at a time. Their settlements, strategically sited to control resources and access (more than 130 official ones now) are decried by the international community in what has become a morose ritual. The opprobrium becomes fainter as the decades pass. Foreign ministers around the world are even now trotting out their 'appeals for calm' and 'calls to end the violence'. They keep the template in a handy file on their desktops.

The populations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are, essentially, prisoners in their own land, and their overlords can now infantilize them, by assuring that 'peace and quiet' will be restored. These are the words of parents admonishing unruly children. The underlying mindset of superiority seeps through the condescension.

The Oslo Accords were a whole generation ago. Since then, things have only deteriorated. Successive right-wing Israeli governments have relied for power on ultra-orthodox Jewish parties whose revanchist rhetoric has played midwife to an unchecked pandemic of 'otherness' and hatred. Palestinians, meanwhile, need no ersatz motivation to seek vengeance.

The Palestinians have not so far succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome, despite the fact that in two years it will be the 75th anniversary of their dispossession. But they are losing friends, and fast, as the bloodshot eye of Middle-Eastern geopolitics shifts to Iran.

This is not a fair fight, either. Israel is like a poker player moaning about their terrible hand while holding all 52 cards. The attitude is psychopathic. It's not far wrong to compare Israel to a home-invading sadist who imprisons children in their own basement, and whips them for requesting a drink. Deep South plantation owners come to mind.

This is what happens when ideology trumps humanity, and all means are justified. For militant Zionists, this has always been true. In human history only two predictions can be made with certainty: violence breeds violence, and despotisms are doomed to rot on the trash heap.

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MQ

Thousands of refugees fleeing indiscriminate artillery and aircraft bombardment in Myanmar have been pushed back across the border by Thai authorities, in a clear violation of international law on refoulement.

Rights groups are also calling on the Thai government to suspend deportation proceedings relating to three journalists and two activists from Myanmar, who fled for their lives to the self-styled 'Land of Smiles'. The journalists worked for the Democratic Voice of Burma.

Local officials confirmed to the human rights organization Fortify Rights that 2,000 refugees held in the Thai border town of Mae Sariang had been sent back across the river to Myanmar. Karen activists in touch with Fortify Rights say a further 3,000 have been prevented from reaching safety in Thailand.

Leaked minutes of a Thai government meeting discussing the issue on March 19 show Thai prime minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha instructing agencies to prevent 'illegal immigration' from Myanmar. Since illegal immigration into Thailand from its neighbour is a perennial issue in any case, Prayut's intervention can be read as a coded authorization of pushbacks, which are illegal under international law for all nations, including those who aren't parties to the United Nations' Refugee Convention. Thailand refused to sign the 1951 UN Refugee Convention as well as its 1967 Protocol.

Thailand, however, ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which specifically outlaws refoulement, in 2007. The Convention's Article 3 prohibits parties from returning, extraditing, or refouling any person to a state 'where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture'.

The illegitimate Myanmar junta headed by Min Aung Hlaing has in recent weeks targeted Karen villages with air strikes and artillery bombardment in retaliation for Karen support of the CDM or Civil Disobedience Movement, and the National Unity Government of ousted parliamentarians, all of whom are now either imprisoned or in hiding. NUG and its affiliate organizations were designated 'terrorist entities' by the junta on May 5.

Prayut's instruction has indeed been adhered to by local border agencies, who have stepped up patrols along the Salween River border between Thailand's Mae Hong Son province and Myanmar. Karen activists in Myanmar itself say that close to 5,000 refugees fleeing Tatmadaw (the name of the Myanmar armed forces) attacks have been turned away and sent back to the danger areas.

The policy contradicts Prayut own comments at the end of March that 'we will not turn them away', as well as a statement by Thailand's foreign ministry spokesperson Tanee Sangrat that 'it is Thailand's policy not to push back anyone fleeing from fighting in Myanmar'.

Meanwhile, Thai authorities are still refusing humanitarian organizations' requests for access to the area, including that of the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees. The UN's position on access to refugees during the Covid-19 pandemic states explicitly that 'Denial of access to territory without safeguards to protect against refoulement cannot be justified on the grounds of any health risk.'

Fortify Rights executive director Amy Smith said: 'Ensuring protections for refugees is first and foremost a humanitarian issue that demands an appropriate response from the Thai authorities to prevent the loss of life.

'Public health concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic and national security can be addressed and managed through proper screening mechanisms. Rather than restrict and sideline U.N. and humanitarian organizations who are ready to assist, Thai authorities should draw on their technical expertise and resources to facilitate a coordinated response.

'The Thai government should be preparing to protect refugees rather than prevent border crossings,' she added.

[See map below for geographical context]

MQ

Play on

Music and song brings a joy able to transcend the human condition even amidst the ruins of war and migration. Making music provides Afghans with solace in their troubled times but is also a way of protesting against the unspeakable pain inflicted by the long wars in that land. Protest songs report the poverty, discrimination, violence, and insecurity suffered by Afghans, as well as the indignities of occupation. In doing so they seek to add weight to calls for change.

Maqshosh chief correspondent Ahmad Soheil Ahmadi discussed the power of song as protest with Pouya Raufian, an Afghan refugee singer and musician who has made a name for himself in Germany. He spoke of his motivation to learn music during the years of Taliban rule, music as an integrating force in host societies, the style of protest music in Afghanistan, and his work on his first album.

MQ: What motivated you to take up music during the period of Taliban rule, and how did it help you cope with the struggles you have endured?

I have always loved music, and that's why I play and sing. But many things in my childhood, which did coincide with the Taliban regime, led me to music. First, my father bought me a keyboard, which I tried to learn how to play without instruction and alone. I had to practise playing music in a closed room, because if the sound of it leaked out, the Taliban might cause a problem. Yet I also sang and played for some Taliban in secret, and in friendly circles.

In every area of my life, and particularly in my years as a refugee, music has helped me psychologically. During my refugee journey, when I'd meet a group of asylum seekers sitting in a room, I would pick up a pot or bowl and play it like a drum. I'd sing, and the refugees enjoyed it. Whatever the situation, music would cheer us up.

MQ: Do you think music can help integrate refugees into host societies such as Germany?

One hundred per cent. I'll use myself as an example. When I arrived in Germany, not only did I not speak German, but I was completely unfamiliar with the country's culture and lifestyle. While I was in a camp, a German teacher asked if we wanted to go out with him to learn about the German way of life. We agreed and went to a Turkish cafe. This was the first time I had done anything like this, something cultural, in Germany. The cafe had singers and musical instruments all over the wall. Our German companion introduced me manager of the cafe and told him I was a musician and singer. The manager asked me to sing and play and I told him I would, another time. He replied in English, joking, that I could not be a musician, otherwise I would not be shy to perform in public. I took the challenge, went on stage, and sang an Afghan song as well as two other songs. This led to an introduction to a group of musicians, and helped my integration into German society. A year later I performed on stage with 12 other musicians.

MQ: You are known as a protest singer today. Why did you choose this musical form, and what have you been able to do to promote empathy for the people of Afghanistan?

We express people's pain and suffering through this style. Afghans both at home and abroad have endured pain and injustice. When one sees such problems, one feels an urge to protest. It is a privilege to give voice in this way to people's suffering, where they have no voice. We try to express it through music. I have always tried to protest against injustice and this style of music has the ability to bring people together.

For example, when the deportation of Afghans started, I sang a song that asked simply "Why are you deporting Afghan refugees? Stop this forced deportation of Afghans." I think protesting in this way helped to put a stop to the deportation of several asylum seekers. They now live in Germany and have escaped possible danger. This form of protest, in live and TV performances, has I hope helped save the lives of some refugees and at the very least put a smile on their faces.

MQ: Do you think that protest music has found its place in Afghan music today or is the musical culture more in favour of fun and happy music?

Until a few years ago, Afghan protest music was not valued much. Let me give you an example. I performed at a big concert attended by a range of people. I performed a protest song with the orchestra called 'Generation of War'. After the performance, a friend came over and asked me to sing 'Qatghani', a movie tune by Khalid Khan and sung by Ramin and Umer Sharif.

However, I do also work on happy songs. In a concert that was attended by more than a thousand people and was also broadcast on television, I performed a protest song in Dari and its translation was subtitled on television. At the end, all the guests of that concert stood up and cheered me on.

Fortunately, we can promote protest music in Europe. In Afghanistan, this style has started and is being applauded by the people, but it has not yet reached the level we see in Europe. For example, some time ago I was happy that my friend Shakib Mossadegh, who is a famous protest singer, was invited onto the Afghan Star TV program. We are happy with the progress that has been made.

MQ: You're aiming to release your first album. What sort of songs are you recording for this?

My first album is called Do Not Be Afraid, and includes eleven songs in German and Dari. Most of the tracks are protest songs and in addition to rap songs, there are some in traditional style. I wanted to include songs in various styles on my first album, and I even have a rock song. So far, a German song and two Persian songs called 'Mother' and 'Generation of War' have been prepared and its video can be accessed through social networks.

MQ

The right to security

We're seeing the dark and looming shape of a breakdown in the global system of asylum and refuge-seeking. It takes the form of a hardening of state attitudes, a disregard for refugees' dignity and legal rights, and a calculation on the part of those responsible for systematic mistreatment of refugees that their crimes will go unpunished.

In the 'developed' world, governments have lost their nerve when it comes to taking seriously their responsibility to protect. Illiberal eastern states in the EU, notably Poland, Hungary, and Croatia, have point-blank refused to meet their EU member obligations regarding asylum, and turn a blind eye to the violence and indignities inflicted by their own police and border patrol personnel. Worse, they encourage such viciousness. In the Balkans, asylum seekers are beaten and robbed, and their phones smashed. It's a picture of Europe depressingly familiar to historians of the Reconquista and the pogrom. Seven countries, all EU states, topped a poll in Autumn last year as being the world's least welcoming to refugees.

Off the coast of Greece, boats are towed back out to sea by coastguard vessels in defiance of international laws on refoulement. Minority racist attitudes, tails that wag the dog in the politics of fear, have pushed politicians rightwards in a number of EU states, abetted by a rhetoric of 'purity' adopted by leaders stoking nationalist paranoia power politics. Recall that in 2016, when German chancellor Angela Merkel admitted hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, local authorities were overwhelmed with offers of help from ordinary citizens. Yet Merkel and Germany were on their own.

Instead, the European Commission has sought to extend its borders to stop migrants even before they cross the Sahara Desert. Thousands languish in prison in Niger, where $750 million in targeted EU aid persuaded the government to crack down. Policies such as these actually destabilize West African states further. So much for the Enlightenment values of Europa.

If things are bad in Europe, they're way worse in the world's forgotten neighbourhoods, where conflict, insecurity, and poverty are endemic. Malnourishment and starvation are on the rise. A new report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) cites conflict and its attendant displacement as the number one cause of rising dependence on food aid. 20 million more people than in 2019 suffer 'acute food insecurity', which means they will starve without this aid. 155 million people across more than 50 states, from Haiti to Sudan, from Lebanon to Afghanistan, are now in that category. More than 50 million are children, many of whom will suffer lifelong from the effects of malnourishment and stunted development.

It's not just that Covid-19 is preventing relief from getting to where it's needed, either. In a multipolar world where international institutions are losing their influence, the catastrophes facing the displaced today are spawned by base geopolitics, with the U.S. in the lead as it helps to crush non-pliant Yemen and Venezuela. Elsewhere, warlords and oppressors are taking note.

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MQ

Afghanistan's musical tradition: a health check

In the midst of war, insecurity and chaos, the music and songs of Ahmad Zahir, Farhad Darya, and others make the souls of Afghans happy. In durhams and nightclubs, whether in Kabul or in foreign countries, there is the sound of the tambourine, the tar, and the rabab, sounds that remind all Afghans of the good days. If Afghan music does not make you happy, it will at least reduce the grief of isolation or war. The question that is important for art lovers and artists these days is whether we will see Afghan music in Afghanistan after the peace with the Taliban.

That is why Maqshosh’s chief correspondent Ahmad Soheil Ahmadi spoke with Ms. Farideh Taraneh. Ms. Taraneh is an Afghan singer of renown, who came onto the Afghan music scene many years ago. Since fleeing to Europe, Farideh has developed her talent and become a beloved artist among the Afghan people.

In this interview, we talked about the current state of Afghan music, women's post-peace activities with the Taliban, reform or struggle against the Taliban, the younger generation of Afghan musicians, and the potential post-peace future of Afghan music.

MQ: How do you see the situation of women in Afghanistan after the possible coming peace?

It generally depends on the peace agreement and what commitments the parties sign up to. However, we are negotiating with those who do not recognize our official government, and Afghan society has a dark and terrifying experience from the time of the Taliban in their minds, and they cannot forget the past.

I very much wish for peace, as seeking an end to the fighting has cost a lot of effort and money. Women have been struggling to maintain their rights and liberties during these years and not to lose their relative freedom. Unfortunately, we do not see a happy future for women and the country of Afghanistan.

MQ: Do you think the Taliban should be fought or should civil activists seek to reform them?

I am a moderate, both in my personal life and in my work. Our concern is not the Taliban who speak at the negotiating table with domestic and foreign observers, but the Taliban who are on the battlefield and resort to violence. These are different. Naturally, just as people are tired of war, we are tired of hearing and seeing scenes of violence and crime. We want a peaceful atmosphere in which the rights for which women have made such sacrifices are preserved, and women keep their basic rights as citizens after peace. I would be satisfied with a situation where there is no war and we can talk to the Taliban in peace in a war-free atmosphere and have a government together, but I find this unlikely for the Taliban.

One of the reasons the Taliban are showing flexibility today is because they have accepted that after two decades negotiations are overdue. Today, women have entered the cultural, economic and political arenas, and naturally the Taliban cannot ignore them one hundred percent. Otherwise, no one will go to the negotiating table with them. Their ideology will be determined in the future. It takes a long time from words to deeds.

MQ: How do you see the situation of Afghan music after the peace? Can women artists continue their activities?

In essence, ideology is important, and it does not matter at all whether the Taliban are familiar with the internet or not. I should not have to point out that many people can co-exist with this kind of extremist thinking in European countries. It is true that the Taliban have access to social media and see the world around them, but the bottom line is that they do not accept the world around them and cover up the changes.

In my opinion, the Taliban's minimum flexibility will be for women to study and work in special conditions, and Afghan music, like other countries in the region, will continue to operate abroad. The point is not that we have a problem with the Taliban, but I do not think that the Taliban will allow singing to take place in the country. I know many singers from the region who are not allowed to perform in their own country. Our artists will probably be forced to move abroad as well, and people inside the country will be forced to follow Afghan music through social media.

MQ: How has your music developed since fleeing Afghanistan?

I try to do what I can do, the best I can do. After migrating to Europe, my artwork became more colourful. Because of the freedom and security that prevails in Europe, my musical art has come to the fore. I take music seriously and I do not have a business view of music. I participate in festivals and concerts in foreign countries and I have had many performances to raise funds for the people of Afghanistan.

I and most of the Afghan academic artists have not learned this art. I work as a professional amateur. I know many in world music who do not have an academic background but work as professional amateurs. Music is centrally important to me. I try to produce songs that are artistically valuable so that I and others can enjoy it. It is better for others to review my music and history will judge.

MQ: Why don't we have singers of lasting fame, like in the past?

Existing conditions have affected artists. We are dealing with chaotic conditions in Afghanistan, and this is the opposite of other countries. Unfortunately, in Afghanistan, in addition to the security problems, daily life and events that are going on in Afghanistan, it also has a negative impact on the psyche of artists. As a result, young artists become famous like a wave and then fade away. We have not yet been able to have a stable atmosphere in Afghanistan. The waves pound the fortunes of the artists from one side to the other. After a while, the young artist has to support himself financially by taking extra work. Music in Afghanistan, unlike in other countries, cannot itself fund an artist.

One of the reasons is that in Afghanistan music is not promoted academically. Also, male and female singers who raise their voices in traditional society face massive psychological pressure from people to give up music.

MQ: How do you see the music of Afghanistan today?

Afghan music has its place and history. Unfortunately, it has suffered in recent decades and has not progressed as much as it deserves in the world of music. The current state of music is also valuable. I hope it gets better in the future.

There is no critical discussion of music. We have seen artists like Ahmed Zahir in the past, but we cannot and should not stay at the same level. Music should also improve, but a country at war should not expect miracles from musicians. We are talking about a country where women were once not allowed to raise their voices. We cannot say that our music was good in the past and not today. We must also support today's singers .

Undoubtedly, they want to become global.

MQ: How should Afghan music develop in the future? What is the opinion of foreigners about the music of Afghanistan today?

In essence, the music itself is complete. However, we need modernity and the space where it should be in our music is empty. Although we have artists inside and outside the country who have tried to make progress in music and work for innovation, they are not well received and the Afghan people are not very keen on innovating in music. This makes artists a little one-dimensional.

Afghan music is, though, loved by foreigners. Music has no borders. We cannot make music that is truly unique. Every country and every region has its own indigenous music, that is for sure. However, in terms of music science, all music is related and foreigners can appreciate our music.

MQ

Activism in action

It's natural to assume that seeking and finding asylum in a foreign country makes resettled refugees aspire to a quiet life. They have enough to do in reformulating their lives from scratch, and learning a new language. The process of seeking asylum as a refugee itself is traumatic and vulnerable to political and social vicissitudes. Despite these factors, many refugees (resettled or not) spend their time as community activists supporting asylum seekers and refugees. They provide a vital service: fluent in the relevant languages or able to find people who are, they give much-needed support and updated information to those seeking refuge.

Take Europe as an example. Perhaps the majority of European nations have tinkered with their asylum laws in recent years to make the asylum process tougher to navigate. Some have used rule changes to repatriate asylum seekers despite the evident dangers and poor social infrastructures of countries such as Afghanistan, where nowhere is safe from violent attack, even in the major cities. Assessing your chances as an asylum seeker in such a shifting environment is immensely difficult, but in many places refugee activists are at hand to help.

Maqshosh chief correspondent Ahmad Soheil Ahmadi spoke with one indefatigable refugee activist in Sweden, where asylum law has undergone dizzying changes. Qasim Vahedi has spent years helping refugees in his adoptive country, providing up-to-date and accurate information and advice. We asked him about his motivations for civic activism, the Refugee Cooperation Council, of which he is a member, and the impact of Sweden's latest asylum laws on the circumstances of the country's asylum-seeking and migrant population.

MQ: You've been a civic activist on behalf of refugees since your arrival in Sweden years ago. What motivated you to take up this work?

From the first days I arrived in Sweden, I started programs to teach Swedish, as well as finding ways to integrate refugees into their host communities. Learning to communicate with the host community helps us progress and find work. From the very first days, I sought to benefit myself and other young people through such programs and to be able to have a better life. This fired my motivation for civic and social activity.

Among the actions I have taken so far are researching and providing information on various aspects of the asylum process, including how to file a case, how to enter the labour market, and learning the language. I was able to personally serve different people who needed help of this kind. I have also organized sports, cultural, and language-training programs.

As a newcomer to Sweden, I knew what problems refugees faced arriving in Europe. When we give accurate advice to someone in Europe, it is a real practical help because it allows them to make better decisions. My own personal life experiences helped me to better advise my compatriots.

MQ: In what ways does the Refugee Cooperation Association you're a member of help in practice?

The House Association in Sweden was established in 2019 through the cooperation of a number of Afghans and Swedish people. While I am a member of this association, I also work as a manager. One of the main goals of the association was to organize programs for young people who have just come to Sweden.

A large group of homeless Afghans immigrated to Sweden in 2015. The group included 9,000 refugees who were spread out in different cities in Sweden. This relates to one of the most important challenges of migration. Refugees living alone are much more prone to suffering mental health problems. Factors such as living alone, work stress, study, the long asylum process, and being away from family are some factors contributing to psychological problems.

Reducing this sense of isolation is one of the main goals of the association, so we hold various programs for the refugees' leisure time so that they're not stuck alone at home. Many refugees value this support as learning the language takes time and the language barrier is a real and immediate torment.

The association focuses more on immigrants living in Swedish society. We have been in contact with refugees in countries such as Turkey and Greece, and we have provided advice to those refugees. We decided to visit a number European camps, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic this program has been cancelled for now. A central aim of this campaign is to collect donations, including clothes for refugees, and take them to refugee camps. The refugees in those camps are in a very bad situation, and once Covid-19 restrictions are eased, we continue this mission.

MQ: How will the ongoing changes to Sweden's asylum law affect the situation of the more than 8,000 refugees living in the country with temporary student permissions to stay?

The large group of Afghan refugees that arrived in Sweden in 2015 had great difficulty processing their cases. The asylum process took so long that the delays themselves caused problems in Swedish society. Various parties decided to grant study residency to refugee youth through an interim legal arrangement. This granted residency to 8,000 Afghan refugees, who were required to receive training within three years, and the law allowed them to find permanent employment for at least six months after that period in order to obtain permanent residency.

When Covid-19 hit, most of the job opportunities for young people dried up and there is still a shortage of work. The government, in cooperation with the Green Party, has sent a new proposal to parliament to remove all permanent admissions in Sweden and not to grant permanent residency to anyone, as in other European countries. After completing a three-year temporary residence permit, the refugee can take up residence if he or she has a workplace, a private home, is fluent in Swedish and is familiar with the state of society.

In the second part of this law, the issue of humanitarian residences is mentioned. The government watered this down under pressure from anti-immigrant parties, but the new law nevertheless proposes such a model for people who need to stay. However, this section does not apply to people living in Sweden who have received a negative response to the asylum process. This section is for subsequent entries and is not retroactive. Various parties oppose the law.

In general, this law will have a very positive effect on future refugees who come to Sweden alone and live in temporary study accommodation.

MQ: Since you are in contact with many refugees, how familiar are they with the current asylum laws across Europe? Are the current asylum laws legally in line with the United Nations refugee convention of 1951 and its 1967 protocol?

Information on the various asylum laws in Europe is clearly relevant to the people we support. Undoubtedly, activists across Europe are trying to provide information to the people. But how people react also varies, as does their motivations for coming to Europe in the first place.

In my opinion, most refugees are aware of the asylum laws in Sweden, for example. The important thing is whether we can make people respect the law and move forward through it. Unfortunately, some people make no attempt to learn about their legal circumstances, yet it should be the duty of every refugee to learn about the legal system in their country.

The current laws are legally similar to the 1951 Convention, but in that convention the aim was to define the terns 'refugee' and 'asylum'. Today, European countries are trying to eliminate the issuance of permanent residency. Europe has slowly come to the conclusion that refugees should not be granted permanent residence. In the mentioned convention, the residences are specifically divided into different categories. The most important difference today with that convention is the attempt to eliminate permanent residence on the asylum route.

MQ

Beatings and indignity

The grimness grinds on for the world's 80 million forcibly displaced persons, 34 million of them children. Covid-19 is proving to be hard to beat, putting severe, months-long restrictions on activist support for refugees in transit and host nations alike. Ali (not his real name), who spoke to us from Ritsona camp in Greece, has been contributing to camp life as a volunteer educator.

The psychological and educational toll of living as a refugee child is a blight on young lives. With education services often overstretched even in refugee camps where agencies have easy access, teaching the young is vital activist work for many asylum seekers who despite their own tough circumstances, seek to better those of others, particularly the young.

Ali is a well-educated Afghani who has negotiated a perilous path to Europe alongside his wife. In this first interview, he spoke to Ahmad Soheil Ahmadi about the terrible conditions of his journey.

MQ: Mr Ali, you spent time in Iran and studied at one of Teheran's colleges. How did you get to Greece?

Like many Afghan refugees, we travelled overland to get to Greece. I want to share two bitter experiences we had along the way. While moving from Turkey to Greece, illegally, the Turkish police arrested my wife and I and we spent that night in detention. However, by the next day my wife had been taken elsewhere and I could not find her. I asked the officers where she was and they told me they'd taken her to a migrant camp and that I'd join her there soon.

I was taken to the camp, but it was for male migrants only and there were no women there. I asked the police why my wife was not there and they said they didn't know. During the anxious week I spent in that camp, I could not find out where my wife was located. No one would answer my questions, and our phones had been confiscated.

Because the authorities were going to deport me back to Afghanistan, I had to escape, though it was very difficult. However, when I asked the police where my wife was, they still gave me no answer and claimed not to know of her. After three days, I discovered that female refugees were being held in a separate camp. When I went there and gave officials my wife's details, they said she was indeed there but that I needed an official legal document to release her. I asked them how I could get one of these as a foreigner in Turkey, but they could not assist me.

After three days of continuous attempts, I was able to save my wife, who by then was suffering greatly from grief and anxiety. During all this time, neither of us had heard from the other.

While I was separated from my wife, they took her to the Afghan embassy several times to pressure her into signing up to a voluntary return to Afghanistan, but she resisted and said that she would not allow herself to be deported without her husband. Many refugees and migrants have experienced this tactic, and it is among the worst misfortunes that can happen to migrants in Turkey.

My second unforgettably bitter memory is of our attempt to reach Germany via Greece. Among refugees, Croatia is notoriously brutal in dealing with defenceless asylum seekers, and there have been numerous reports of assault and violence by the Croatian border police. We tried to make this journey in a truck full of sheep, which was very uncomfortable, smelly, and dirty. However, the Croatian police stopped the truck and found us. They beat us viciously, without asking any questions and without assessing out situation, and regardless of gender. Unfortunately, this happens to many migrants.

I passed out. When I woke up, I saw that I was in the emergency room. A nurse came to my bedside and checked whether I was concussed. He asked me if I needed anything, and I asked him how I came to be there. He replied that I had been unconscious for two days. I was hospitalized there for another two days. I asked them to feed me but they made fun of me and laughed at me. Sometimes they even went so far as to say, 'If you are hungry, why did you come here?' I told them that we were all human, and I had not eaten anything for a week.

On the last day, after much insistence, they gave me apple juice. They were standing and laughing while I was drinking. They insulted me and my human dignity. We experienced many misfortunes on our journey to Germany.

MQ: Why did you want to make it to Germany from Greece?

Although the Greek people are good people, there is no economic security there. From the beginning, we wanted to go to Germany and I did not want to stay in Greece. While I was living in Greece for ten months, the government not only did not grant me a residence permit, but also withheld financial aid from other refugees.

They did not give me shelter when I was vulnerable. Camp officials stated that they did not accept me as a refugee on the pretext that I had not initially resided on the Greek islands and had entered directly into mainland Greece. If I protested, they would definitely have deported me. I know refugees whose applications were accepted but who fled because of the bad situation in Greece, so I had no reason to stay there even though I was not recognized as a refugee.

MQ

Just in case they're short on historical examples of Western perfidy, the leaders of 'rogue states' around the world need remember just one name when they're courted by the 'civilized' West: Gaddafi. The deceased Libyan ruler's downfall has been an axiomatic argument against making concessions ever since.

The lawless Libyan mess has turned into a highly efficient migrant funnel which has facilitated right-wing rhetoric in a Europe that appears to have forgotten why the UN refugee conventions were instituted. No doubt Europol focus groups are telling representatives that ethics don't sell. Libya is a textbook example of Western hubris, where 'decisive'/'surgical' violence is labelled 'humanitarian', though followed by Stone-Age living conditions and warlordism. It's taken ten years to finally fix an agreed a date for new elections, due in December, but the social legacy of the Western intervention will take much longer to heal.

In the decade that Libya has been a deadly place to live, migration from Africa to Europe has risen sharply. Sub-Saharan applications for asylum in Europe were barely 50,000 in 2010, but close to 170,000 in 2017. Most transited via Libya. Libya's hundreds of miles of coastline, effectively unpoliced, was an own goal in the classic Western mold: ('We had to destroy the town to save it.').

Gaddafi's regime's brutality held together its fissiparous regional factions and tribes. It's these which have generated the Scrabble bag of militia handles that litter today's situational maps of the country.

Everyone and their mother seems to want to find and sponsor (or create) a proxy in this civil conflict. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates sponsor rival groups, and even ISIL (funny how the Wahhabists turn up wherever there's oil and gas in the mix, isn't it?) has had a presence. The new coyotes were former logistics people forced to swap cargoes or fail to feed their families. They borrowed the old oil smuggling routes to get their human charges to the coast. The competition burgeoned; prices tanked from a thousand bucks to just 90 in a few years.

The real idiocy of the forced endgame of Gaddafi's regime was the yawning chasm of a power vacuum it created. The 'humanitarian' bombing campaign led by the U.K., France, and the U.S., was Iraq-thorough, destroying not just military but also civilian infrastructure. For the air forces concerned, it was like Yemen today for the Saudis: target practice.

European policies towards Libya were the proximal cause of the migrant flows to Sicily and Italy. They're still leaving, and sinking, and drowning in their hundreds. All the Libya crisis has done is create a North African escape hatch from the continent for the millions of migrants mired in sub-Saharan resource wars and poverty.

This was an entirely avoidable tragedy. Gaddafi offered to mount elections by the end of 2011 and accept the results. His offer was ignored. One recent NGO report advised the international community to 'prioritize economic development'. Better advice would have been not to destroy it in the first place.

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MQ

Violent pushbacks in Croatia as rights advocates vent criticism of EU refugee response

We're getting reports which are as yet unconfirmed that Croatian border security forces have employed violence, including dogs, against asylum seekers attempting to cross into the European Union nation.

One update, from Bihać, reports a surge in violent pushbacks in recent days, with groups of up to 100 migrants violently assaulted and robbed of their possessions. The reports accuse Croatian police of inhumane tactics: In several cases, dogs were used in their arrest, and at least one person was bitten.

A social media post from the refugee NGO No Name Kitchen team based in Sid, Serbia, and accompanied by photographs of bandaged limbs, said: 'One group of approximately 30 people was intercepted by some 13 Croatian police officers, beaten and forced to strip naked. Among them was a boy of about 15, who was forced to take off all his clothes, while the others remained in their underwear.'

A recent report by the same group of multinational volunteers has highlighted the extreme and illegal tactics of the Croatian police and border security personnel. The document marks one thousand testimonies collected: 'One thousand cases of police violence, abuse, and sometimes torture on the Balkan border, affecting more than 15,000 people in total over the past four years. In 75% of cases people were beaten, and in 20% guns were used by the police. Most of those who are pushed back end up in Bosnia, often in the Bihać area.'

Local mosques are attempting to provide any assistance they can.

The EU is coming under renewed attack over its treatment of asylum seeker at its borders.

MQ

Starvation 'used as weapon' by Ethiopian federal forces in Tigray conflict

A significant new report accuses the Ethiopian government of using hunger as a 'weapon of war', and warns of imminent famine unless swift action is taken.

The report, released by the Word Peace Foundation based at Tufts University, excoriates Addis Ababa for limiting access by journalists and humanitarian organisations, and says systematic crop destruction and population displacement of hundreds of thousands are set to cause a major famine. Both Federal armed forces under the control of the central government, and Eritrean forces who have made incursions into Tigray, are accused of multiple atrocities.

The report comes amidst serious blowback for Ethiopia's government, who have been accused by U.S. secretary of state Anthony Blinken of 'ethnic cleansing'. More than 150 massacres, as well as numerous rapes, have been documented.

WPF Director Alex de Wall said: 'Tigrayans are hungry today because starvation is being used as a weapon of war—relentlessly and systematically.

'The United Nations estimates that 4.5 million people in Tigray are in need of food assistance—80 percent of the region’s population. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a global hunger monitor established in the mid-1980s with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, puts Tigray in “emergency” status—one step short of a declaration of famine, with death rates on the rise. Accurate data from the region is hard to come by, but a reasonable guess is that 100 children are dying each day.

'At the World Peace Foundation we have reasons to fear the situation could get even worse.'

MQ

We're monitoring developments in several other regions and will update readers in the next few days.

Maqshosh and the arts

Introduction

The arts might seem like an odd subject to select as a focus for a site devoted to refugees and their problems, especially since our core focus is Afghanistan. War, insecurity, poverty and nationwide tragedy have caused Afghans, as well as many others in zones of conflict and trouble, to forget how important art is to the soul of civilized society. Today, there is little news of all the artists who, before leaving Afghanistan, were regarded as masters, their works loved by people all over the country. But the bigger pain is that the small but valuable artistic projects that take place everywhere in Afghanistan are largely forgotten by the media, both written and visual.

One year has passed since the beginning of our efforts as Maqshosh Free News Media to maintain regular coverage of arts and artists. We have gone to great lengths to interview painters, poets, novelists, musicians, as well as activists and organizations who conduct projects using these media.

Here's what our interviewees from the world of the arts had to say about Maqshosh's first year of coverage on the topic of the arts in general.

Dr. Batool Heydari

Unfortunately, we do not have a media in Afghanistan that specializes in art and culture. Although from time to time newspapers and other media cover cultural news and events, we do not have any broad media support of this field. In my opinion, Maqshosh has been quite successful, and one of the very good and remarkable things that Maqshosh has done is to introduce coverage of women artists and writers. Women must be able to express their concerns in Afghan society through the media. Maqshosh has allowed the new generation of Afghan women and girls artists and writers to be introduced to our broader community through their free news media.

Maqshosh has had a high profile in the short time that it has been on the scene I hope that in the future, they will be able to work more successfully and deeply on issues related to their field of work, and that other young figures will be introduced through this medium.

Professor Radvin Anwari

As far as I know, there is no independent media for art, and it is a little unrealistic to expect such a provision given the political, social and cultural conditions of Afghanistan. Commentators, and even artists themselves, as well as the general public, do not have a nuanced understanding of art and the artist. The word artist, like the words caliph and master, is widely used, but the cultural esteem of artists have been downgraded to the point where, for example, the written word has been reduced to copywriting. This is one of the effects of not conducting serious discussions about art and the artist, as well as the lack of professional and constructive criticism. I hope that with more professional approaches to this issue, we will see the expansion and growth of the arts in general in Afghanistan.

The censored media has wanted to fulfil its mission as a tribute to this issue. But our complaint is that they do not have a professional outlook and instead have a very superficial approach to this issue. The commentators are often not well-versed enough in their fields to provide properly informed judgments. My suggestion in this case is to consult with experts in each field and learn from them before covering people from the arts in order to make this discussion more informative.

Doing this would be generally a good thing in that it would attract an audience by informing them properly, eliminating the current shortcomings. It could provide a stronger bridge of communication between artists, writers, philosophers, and creative people in general on the one hand, and the people of our nation on the other.

Mehdi Ahmadi Rafia

Our media in Afghanistan used to cover the arts, but now, as in the past, we do not have specialized media in the field of culture and art.

In my opinion, Maqshosh has been in the fortunate position of specialized artistic and cultural media in the short time that has passed since its establishment. I wish more and more success to all those involved in free media.

MQ

2021: A global pandemic, new wars, and new refugees

It's been a tough year for the world's refugees. The Covid-19 pandemic has hit them hard, and not just because refugees represent a vulnerable, often closely-packed cohort. Governments the world over have pressed the pause button on their societies, imposing lockdowns and strict rules of association that even those with their own homes and stocked larders have found hard to endure Migrants and asylum seekers have all too often been left out in the cold.

For refugees, the crisis has been yet another existential challenge to add to the many they have already endured. Government departments, non-governmental organizations, aid agencies, and all those who support the refugee and migrant populations in their own countries, have inevitably had to curtail their operations to follow pandemic protocols. Asylum seekers labouring to support their families have been unable to work. Vital community help such as winter clothing handouts have been curtailed.

The Mediterranean has been a sea of death and despair, with new and more dangerous routes taking extra lives. Attempts to bypass Greece from Turkey and sail to Italy instead have brought a higher risk to poorly prepared and overloaded vessels. 'Pushbacks' at sea are on the rise.

Meanwhile, a new breed of coyotes are exploiting the desperation of many Africans to escape violence and poverty and make something of their lives. The mid-Mediterranean crossing from Libya northwards can be extremely hazardous at this time of year, with frequent and dangerous storms just off the north African coast. 39 people drowned when their boat capsized off Kerkennah Island just a week ago. But for the efforts of the Tunisian coastguard, a further 134 would certainly have perished. An average of three people a day are currently dying on the crossing from North Africa to Europe.

Conflicts in Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Yemen, and elsewhere have flared up in the past twelve months, while ongoing tragedies continue to generate streams of destitute civilians fleeing random violence in Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, and South Sudan. Refugee emergencies are afflicting Burundi, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Impoverished Venezuelans still stream across the nation's borders. Rohingya continue to be oppressed in Myanmar, especially since the coup d'état, and there's no sign of and end to the plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Refugee reception centres are being set up in Thailand, close to its long, porous border with Myanmar, for people fleeing death and oppression by the China-backed junta. Karenni villagers, members of an ethnic group which had negotiated peace with Aung San Suu Kyi's government, are once again being shelled, shot, and raped by a now-unrestrained Tatmadaw, Myanmar's gangsterized military.

In Afghanistan, there's been a surge in violence as parties jostle for leverage before the Americans' slated departure on May 1 this year, while in Syria, winter storms and renewed violence in the north have heaped despair on vulnerable refugees unable to cross into Turkey.

We can only hope that 2021 brings some hope and perhaps a little peace to these many war-torn regions.

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Dozens of refugees aboard stranded vessel remain in need of 'immediate' assistance

Dozens of Rohingya refugees aboard a boat adrift and in distress on the Andaman Sea in South Asia remain in grave danger despite some assistance from the Indian Navy, according to reports.

Indrika Ratwatte, director of the UNHCR Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, told reporters on February 22 that the agency received reports of an unconfirmed number of Rohingya refugees aboard a vessel in distress on the evening of February20. The refugees reported having departed from Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf, Bangladesh, approximately ten days previously. Many are in a highly vulnerable condition and are apparently suffering from extreme dehydration. A number of refugees have already lost their lives, and fatalities had been rising over the last weekend.

Refugees told the Bureau that the vessel ran out of food and water several days ago, and that many of the passengers are ill. The vessel has reportedly been adrift since the engine broke down, well over a week ago. The Indian Navy located the vessel on February 22 and supplied water, food, and first aid, but then departed, tracking the boat’s progress towards the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a highly restricted area reserved for Myanmar naval operations. The UNHCR could not confirm the number of refugees, but reports from Asian human rights group Fortify Rights say the complement of 90 refugees includes 65 women.

The UN alerted regional maritime states and appealed for assistance, a call apparently heeded by the Indian Navy. Yet the vessel remains at sea.

Indrika Ratwatte told Maqshosh English: ‘As always, saving lives must be the priority. In line with international obligations under the law of the sea and longstanding maritime traditions, the duty to rescue persons in distress at sea should be upheld, irrespective of nationality or legal status. We appeal to all governments to deploy their search and rescue capacities and promptly disembark those in distress.

‘UNHCR stands ready to support governments across the region in providing any necessary humanitarian assistance and quarantine measures in the coming days for those disembarked, in line with public health protocols.

‘The fact that refugees and migrants continue to undertake fatal journeys accentuates the need for immediate and collective regional response to search, rescue and disembarkation.’

Fortify Rights, who managed to make contact with relatives of individuals on the boat, reported this week that

‘Too many Rohingya lives have already been lost at sea due to the callous inaction or pushbacks of regional governments,’ said Amy Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights. ‘Regional governments in South and Southeast Asia should urgently protect those on board to prevent any further loss of life.’

Under maritime law, and also according to long-held norms, boats in the region are supposed to provide assistance to those in distress. Yet some nations in South and Southeast Asia are guilty of ‘pushback’ actions which leave refugee boats adrift at sea. These pushback actions and policies violate the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits the ‘rejection at the frontier, interception and indirect refoulement’ of individuals at risk of persecution. The principle of non-refoulement is part of customary international law and binding on all states. Under this principle, all countries are obligated to protect Rohingya from being returned, including through returns that are informal, such as pushbacks out to sea.

‘We’ve seen this emergency before, and it can be avoided,” added Amy Smith. ‘Governments should urgently rescue and provide immediate protection to Rohingya stranded at sea.’

MQ

Rohingya: The Sufis of Arakan

‘It was absolutely shocking, how children aged five or six were hunted down and had their throats slit. I was thinking ‘this is ISIS-type stuff’. I told Aung San Suu Kyi ‘you have moral standing in this country. You have to stop this. Why are you hiding it?’ She said [the United Nations] needed to share more evidence with her.’

That was the former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, speaking about the way the Myanmar army, the Tatmadaw, dispatched Muslim children from Rohingya villages in Rakhine state, Myanmar. Hussein, though, was talking about his shock at massacres that took place in late 2016, almost a full year before the crisis exploded into the public consciousness in September 2017.

The massacres, including one at a village called Dar Gyi Zar in November 2016, shocked the UN. But this was nothing new or different. Those who pay attention to Myanmar events already knew that this was business as usual for the Tatmadaw: vicious brutality, the systematic rape of women and girls, the burning of villages, they’re all in the Myanmar army’s day-to-day playbook. The murders may have been committed with extra gusto, the villages razed 100, rather than 75 per cent, only because of the Rohingya’s status as Muslims. It’s ironic to see and hear Burmese soldiers filming themselves telling teenaged Rohingya youth to ‘come here you black Indian mother******’, since they’re not all that different physically.

The difference is in the religion, culture, and heritage. Rohingya are the descendants of Muslim traders who settled centuries ago in western Myanmar. They originally had their own small kingdom, Arakan. They have not only a fascinating history but a mighty interesting culture. They subscribe to a Sufi variant of Sunni Islam, speak their own language, and in many cases trace their local ancestry back decades, if not centuries.

Yet right from the off, in 1948, the Burmese government denied this history, refusing to grant the Rohingya (Rohang means ‘Arakan’ and ‘gya’ means ‘from’ in their dialect) any legal status as citizens. To the local Buddhist population, they are ‘other’. And local Buddhists can easily be encouraged to join a scratch militia and take part in the violence.

The rest of the world probably doesn’t know that it means to be stateless in the sense that the Rohingya are and have been since Burmese independence. You are without legal status or rights, you can’t operate as a normal citizen in a nation of (however poorly observed) laws. You’re prevented from doing almost anything that might lift you out of poverty, such as own a business or get a land title. You’re reduced to a non-person, living hand-to-mouth, often going hungry.

The slit throats, the bodies riddled with bullet holes, the charred bones and blackened earth where soldiers tried in some cases to burn the evidence: these things only shocked the world because much of the world was ignorant about the Tatmadaw. In the case of the Rohingya, it was straight-up killing and rape (then killing) and razing. Elsewhere, in other parts of the country, the Myanmar army tends to get more creative: slavery and the sale of women have not been uncommon. Here, ethnic cleansing was the order of the day. Spread the panic and terror, and force the Rohingya out, into Bangladesh.

The blood-letting did not start in 2017, nor did the discrimination. Kutupalong, across the border from Rakhine state in Bangladesh, is the world’s largest refugee camp. It’s a slum city, really. In early 2020 there were 600,000 refugees living there and a total of 905,822 in camps spread out along the western bank of the river Naf, which forms the border with Myanmar itself. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya had already fled in previous years, since institutionalized discrimination and non-random violence have plagued the state for at least a decade. The population was denied ethnic rights in 1948, which would have given them the Rohingya the same status as the Shan and the Kachin, among the country’s 150-odd ethnic groups. They were excluded from the 2014 census and labelled ‘illegal immigrants’ when in fact most had longstanding ties to Rakhine and Myanmar. They have been denied voting rights, forced to pay cash to army and police at checkpoints just to leave their village and go to the market, and their communities left to rot in the direst poverty: 78 per cent of Rohingya in Rakhine live below the poverty line, compared to the national average of 35 per cent (already one of the world’s highest).

After decades of dehumanization, some young Rohingya had had enough, and a newly formed militia called the ARSA, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, attacked 30 of the hated police posts in late August 2017. That brought the slaughter (6700 dead in 2017 alone, 730 of them under five years old) down upon them. At the time of the 2016 Dar Gyi Zar massacre, which followed a smaller round of raids on police posts, Aung San Suu Kyi said of those responsible: ‘According to the principles of justice, everybody must be considered innocent until proven guilty.’

She was lying. The opposite was true, because Min Aung Hlaing was supervising the reprisals. Min Aung Hlaing is the Tatmadaw’s commander-in-chief, the very same one who thanked Aung San Suu Kyi for her Janus-faced support in the International Court of Justice in The Hague (where she denied genocide and ethnic cleansing in 2018) by imprisoning her and all her mates in his dog-in-the-manger putsch this year. He’s responsible for burning 288 villages to the ground and killing thousands of the residents.

Let’s see what others had to say about the 2017 brutality, which forced 700,000 refugees to flee.

The United Nations report on the Rohingya crisis, published in August 2018, said the Tatmadaw were committing ‘mass killings and rapes with genocidal intent’.

The Independent Commission of Enquiry (Myanmar’s state-run judicial watchdog) reported ‘war crimes, serious human rights violations, and violations of domestic law’.

The International Criminal Court, which is, unsurprisingly, not recognized by Myanmar, handed down a ruling in January 2020 that ordered Myanmar government forces to ‘take all measures within its power’ to prevent genocidal violence. The ICJ made this ruling on the basis that since the refugees have fled to Bangladesh, and Bangladesh does recognize the court, it has jurisdiction in international law. Commenting on the judgment, Reed Brody, counsel and spokesperson for Human Rights Watch, said: ‘This is the most important court in the world intervening in one of the worst mass atrocity situations of our time while the atrocities are still happening. It doesn’t really get more significant than that.’

In reality, the whole of Rakhine state is a crime scene. The country’s current dictator, Min Aung Hlaing, is up to his neck in it. Aung San Suu Kyi left her ethics and her humanity at the gate when she denied the barbarities perpetrated by her own armed forces. The Lady is no longer a Lady but an apologist for ethnic cleansing and murder. In that moment in The Hague, when she gazed right and left while lying through her teeth, she must have known two things: that she was setting fire to her own international credibility, and that any other response from her would have precipitated an immediate coup by the Tatmadaw. Yet look where we are now. Perhaps we should rename her The Ker, after the violent female death spirits of Greek mythology. What happened to her compassion?

MQ

The ethics of fellowship

Let’s get it up front: the ‘problems’ with economic migrants are matters of human psychology and of politics, not of economics. And refugees have a right to escape conflict to a place of safety. Here we are, in the realm of human ethics.

It’s not up for debate that economic migrants are chancers. How few fellow species members have felt such anxiety for their future survival that they have made the awesome decision to leave the place they know and travel to unknown lands?

Refugees flee, but migrants flee too. They’re not tourists. They leave their beloved family members and their homeland knowing that most likely they will not come back for many years, if ever. They have the same level of uncertainty about their futures as Vasco da Gama or Olaudah Equiano. And in virtually every case, when asked why they are undertaking such an arduous, expensive, and mortally dangerous journey, they reply: ‘We have nothing at home but poverty and injustice. Who would accept such a hopeless situation? Would you not seek better for your children?’

Many flee environments, as in Central America, which are not outright civil wars in a strict legal definition, yet few do not know a victim. You may be as foolhardy as you like, but you’ll sure as hell get your kids out of there. If you have the will and your whole family can muster the cash.

Lost in the tangled web of causes of this globally distributed movement of people are are innumerable local and global factors: criminal American stupidity, proxy battles between geopolitical rivals, down-dirty bouts over resources and power, and myriad others. The flavour may vary from place to place, but one thing is surely constant: the great mass of populations suffer, not those in power. These ordinary people suffer the blight of corruption and insecurity. Imagine being a parent in such a place?. What would you do if you had the mettle?

It’s really all about perspective. Those most responsible for the illegal killing fly over it in helicopters and patronize swanky spas in Paris. They are beyond your troubles.

Looked at this way, should not migrants be admired for their fortitude rather than seen as criminal interlopers?

The reality is that except for (in some cases) minor and short-term adjustments in the employment sector, influxes of migrants have been demonstrated to be of enormous net benefit. Few indigenous people are put out of work; the market restructures quickly, and in the absence of migrants many jobs would merely be mechanized. Check out David Cane’s 1990 analysis of post-migration demographics.

It’s so easy for politicians to subtly, or not, play race, but when they do, it’s just a distraction from systemic inequities in whatever polity the blandishments are megaphoned. Few elected politicians are far enough into the detail to assimilate the other end of the migration route, where desperate families save for a generation to send a male nephew anywhere where there might be a decent, humane future.

MQ