Rap: Iran’s sound

of protest
Stolen ancestors return
Scotland’s democracy
after Sturgeon
Vandana Shiva on the
‘poison cartel’

THE CRISIS OF
LONELINESS

Canada & USA $8.95

NI 543 May-June 2023
Publications Mail Reg No. 40063336
 Apply now for online studies in the
Economics of Sustainability
Enrolments are now open for the Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma and
Master’s Degree in the Economics of Sustainability at Torrens University Australia.

Our students come from all over the world and from all walks of life. We are training
a new generation of thinkers equipped to solve the problems of the 21st Century.

World class lecturers in ecological economics and MMT

Three intakes per year, study part time or full time
Interactive tutorials in multiple time zones

"The course is absolutely fantastic so far. It is WAY above my high

expectations. I have already learned so much and I can't believe we
are only a third of the way through the first two subjects. Thank you
again and I am so happy I did the course this year"
William Thomson, co-host of 6FRWRQRPLFVpodcast

"If you’re familiar with Mariana Mazzucato and Kate Raworth,

you can think of it as a melding together of our work."
Professor Stephanie Kelton, author of 7KH'HILFLW0\WK

www.modernmoneylab.org.au
EDITOR’S LETTER

CRAVING CONNECTION THIS MONTH’S

Joyce Carol Vincent. A woman whose name I’ll
CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE:
never forget.
In 2006, the body of Joyce – a vivacious, young, Kabir Agarwal is an
talented aspiring singer from West London – was independent journalist
discovered in her flat three years after her death. originally from India who
The TV and heating were still running, Christmas writes about food systems,
presents laid unwrapped from 2003. business, and political
Joyce’s story left me with lingering questions. economy. He writes the
How – as a society – have we become so atomized Unequal newsletter.
HUSNA ARA
for the New Internationalist that Joyce’s death could go unnoticed for so long? Tooba Syed is a writer
Co-operative newint.org What do we need to stop this from happening? Can and researcher working on
we be honest about the difficulties of community- gender, labour and ecology
building, while still welcoming it in to our lives? in Pakistan. She is currently
This edition of New Internationalist explores working on her first book
loneliness and social isolation – phenomena that go about the feminist movement
well beyond anomalous tragic cases, taking in the in Pakistan.
disappearance of public space and how algorithms are
leading us further down consumerist, chauvinist rabbit- Hana Pera Aoake (Ngaati
Mahuta, Ngaati Hinearangi,
holes, and away from intimate human connection.
Tainui/Waikato) is an artist
But there is also hope. As labour reporter Eve
and writer from Aotearoa.
Livingstone argues, loneliness can also be a catalyst
They are the curator at the
for thinking through how we might once again Sir James Fletcher Kawerau
reach each other (See page 21). From writings Mwuseum and a Mum.
about cinema’s social impact to coaxing men out of
patriarchal isolation, we hear about the myriad ways Ishika Saxena is an academic
people are are restoring social connections. fellow at the National Law
Elsewhere in the magazine we’ve launched School of India University.
a new way to support New Internationalist and Their research interests are
the next generation of readers. Hana Pera Aoake in Political Thought, Critical
reports on how New Zealand/Aotearoa has become Theory, Literature, Philosophy
a ‘world-leader’ in returning Indigenous ancestors and Ethics.
home and Lorraine Mallinder charts how rap has
COVER: MASKOT/GETTY become the language of protest in Iran.

THE NEW INTERNATIONALIST multi-
stakeholder co-operative exists to report on
the issues of world poverty and inequality;
to focus attention on the unjust relationship
between the powerful and powerless
worldwide; to debate and campaign for
the radical changes necessary to meet the
basic needs of all; and to bring to life the
people, the ideas and the action in the fight
for global justice. The New Internationalist
magazine was founded by Peter and Lesley
Adamson in 1970. Together with a range of
other publications it is published by New
Internationalist Publications Ltd which is
wholly owned by the New Internationalist
Co-operative Ltd and its co-owners.
Accounts: Katalin Szombati
Subscriptions and administration:
Louise Waters
Advertising: Michael York
Design: Andrew Kokotka
Editorial (Magazine and Website):
Dinyar Godrej, Amy Hall, Conrad Landin,
Husna Ara, Nick Dowson, Bethany Rielly,
Kabir Agarwal
Contributing editors: Vanessa Baird,
Chris Brazier, Jamie Kelsey-Fry
Funding and engagement: Laura Veitch
Mail Order: Emma Blunt, James Rowland
Marketing (Magazine): Rob Norman
Production: Fran Harvey
Web and IT: Charlie Harvey
SUBSCRIPTIONS
UK Website: newint.org/subscribe
Email: subscriptions@newint.org
Phone: +44 (0) 20 3868 4646
Phone (from Ireland): CallSave 1850 924 331
Post: New Internationalist, The Old Music Hall,
106-108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK.
NORTH AMERICA To update your
subscription with address changes etc or
to contact us with any other subscription
queries: newint.org/subscriptions
You will need your subscriber reference
number which is on the magazine address label.
Email: newint@kckglobal.com
Phone: 1-800-661-8700
Canada: PO Box 819, Markham, ON L3P 8A2
US: PO Box 1062, Niagara Falls, NY 14304-1062
SUBSCRIPTION PRICES
UK: Standard – £42.85; Institutions – from £120
Canada: Standard – $44 (plus GST or HST)
US: Standard – $44; Foreign (by air) – $70
Rest of World: Standard – £50.85/€59.85.
UK OFFICE New Internationalist, The Old
Music Hall, 106-108 Cowley Road, Oxford,
OX4 1JE. Tel: +44 (0)1865 403345
Email: ni@newint.org
ADVERTISING (MAGAZINE & WEB) US postmaster: send address changes to
NI Magazine, PO Box 1062, Niagara Falls,
Michael York +44 (0)1865 403339
NY 14304.
michaely@newint.org
Indexing: Indexed in the Canadian Periodical
Contract enquiries: ni_cg@newint.org
Index Quarterly (CPI.Q), Canadian Business
Web queries: tech@newint.org
and Current Affairs and the Alternative Press
Permissions & general enquiries:
Index. Available in full-text electronic format
+44 (0)1865 403345
from EBSCO and Proquest.
office.manager@newint.org
The New Internationalist is published
UK NEWS TRADE DISTRIBUTOR bimonthly.
Intermedia Brand Marketing Ltd, Unit 6,
The Enterprise Centre, Kelvin Lane, Manor
Royal, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 9PE.
Tel: +44 (0)1293 312001
NORTH AMERICA NEWSSTAND Regulated by IMPRESS: the independent
DISTRIBUTOR monitor for the press – impress.press
Natalie Dalton, Disticor Direct, ndalton@ For Complaints Scheme see:
disticor.com Publications Mail Agreement newint.org/about/complaints
number 40063336.
Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to
Circulation Department, NI Magazine,
PO Box 819, Markham, ON L3P 8A2.
@newint facebook.com/newint
All monetary values are expressed in © New Internationalist Co-operative Ltd 2023
US dollars unless otherwise noted. ISSN 0305-9529 ISO accreditation 9001-2008

MAY-JUNE 2023 3
CONTENTS

THE BIG STORY CURRENTS

Stories making the news
8 Greenwashing aggression in the Caucasus
Plus: Borderlines
9 Legal time travel in Bangladesh
Introducing: Petr Pavel
Plus: Seriously?
10 Bugging democracy in Greece
Replenishing forest in Kenya
Plus: Inequality Watch

ESTHERPOON/SHUTTERSTOCK
Plus: Sign of the Times
11 Finding refuge in London’s nature
12 IMF heaps demands on Pakistan
Plus: Open Window
13 Nigeria’s youth ponder fight or flight
Plus: Reasons to be cheerful

REKINDLING LOST CONNECTIONS REGULARS

6 Letters
15 The connection recession Plus: Why I…
Husna Ara explores how loneliness and social
isolation have become so pervasive across the 7 Letter from Nauta
world, and offers some ideas for how we find Stephanie Boyd reports from an Amazonian
our way back to each other. community fighting to save its language.

21 Remote solidarity 38 Country Profile: United Arab Emirates

In increasingly isolating work places, people
are finding new ways to organize, writes Eve 40 Southern Exposure
Livingston. Daniel Beloumou Olomo dazzles as he captures the
contenders for Cameroon’s Miss Curvy and Beautiful,
25 Keeping up with the Khans taking a break over a game of pool.
India’s ‘collective spirit’ is increasingly
challenged by the hold of neoliberalism – a shift 51 Temperature Check
that’s also reflected in the country’s cinema, Danny Chivers explores whether the Adani Group’s
writes Ishika Saxena. financial troubles could be good news for the climate.

28 A 101 in lovelessness 52 The Interview

Daisy Schofield reports from the ‘manosphere’ Indian physicist and food sovereignty activist
on the success coaches, ‘pick-up artists’ and Vandana Shiva reflects with Amy Hall on a life of
men’s rights activists sowing anti-feminist following her conscience.
sentiment among men and boys.
72 Hall of Infamy – King Mswati III
32 Chosen family Absolute monarchy is a great lark – so long as you’re
As threats against them increase, Pakistan’s the King. But the stability Eswatini’s opulent autocrat
gender non-conforming community are fighting has promised is starting to look like a mirage.
back with queer solidarity, says Tooba Syed.
80 The Puzzler
35 ‘Being racialized in patriarchal capitalist
settings, that does something to the mind’ 81 Agony Uncle
Husna Ara speaks to Samara Linton about race, A reader wonders whether to report a low-paid
mental health and the need for meaningful worker to their boss for dangerous behaviour.
community.
82 What if…
Children led the fight for their rights? Time to listen to
the natural rebels, argues Matt Broomfield.

4 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
OPINION MIXED MEDIA
45 View from Africa 74 Spotlight
As Uganda passes its anti-gay law, Rosebell Kagumire Senegalese singer- songwriter Baaba Maal speaks to
decries the way faltering governments make Graeme Green about music making a difference.
scapegoats of their most marginalized citizens.
Plus: Marc Roberts’ Only Planet 76 Book Reviews
Bodies Under Siege by Sian Norris; Shalash the Iraqi;
59 View from Brazil Dust Child by Nguyen Phan Que Mai; Siblings by
Leonardo Sakamoto on Lula’s efforts to give Brazil’s Brigitte Neimann.
Indigenous Yanomami communities a reprieve.
Plus: Kate Evans’ Thoughts from a Broad 78 Film Reviews
Harka directed and written by Lucy Nathan; 1976
73 View from India directed and co-written by Manuela Martelli.
Could Rahul Gandhi’s epic march reverse the
fortunes of India’s political opposition? Nilanjana 79 Music Reviews
Bhowmick deliberates. Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels by Mayssa Jallad;
Plus: Polyp‘s Big Bad World Les Égarés by Sissoko Segal Parisien Peirani.

FEATURES
41 Tough love
As Nicola Sturgeon departs Scotland’s political stage,
what kind of legacy does she leave behind? Conrad
Landin digs into the Scottish National Party’s past,
present and future.

46 ‘I am not going to stay quiet’

In Iran rap has become the language of protest, writes IN THE NEXT ISSUE: PALESTINE
Lorraine Mallinder.

56 Hope in the water

Magdalena Rojo reports on the Mexico Indigenous

60
communities finally gaining control over their water.

From the archive: The trans revolution

ONLINE FEATURES newint.org

Vanessa Baird on the liberating potential of
transgender rights for us all.
64 The Long Read – ‘They are my ancestors’
Hana Pera Aoake on how how an Indigenous-
led programme in New Zealand/Aotearoa is
returning the stolen remains of ancestors home to
their descendents.
17.03.23 Food barons are making a killing from this crisis
Global Justice Now’s Nick Dearden explains the
rise of ‘food billionaires’, and what we can do to
challenge their power.
8.03.23 Protecting trans lives goes deeper than laws
and representation
Priti Salian on how transgender activists are
fighting the colonial mindset to push for equality
in India.

21.12.22 The making of tax haven Mauritius

Naomi Fowler of the Taxcast investigates the
making of a tax haven that’s been hurting Indians
and Africans for years.
DPA/ALAMY

MAY-JUNE 2023 5
LETTERS
SEND US YOUR FEEDBACK
The New Internationalist welcomes your letters, but please note that they
might be edited for space or clarity. Letters should be sent to letters@newint.org.
Please remember to include a town and country for your address.
Rave reviews
I am a long-time and current
subscriber to NI and just
wanted to applaud you once
more for your excellent
Mixed Media (NI 542) section
of the magazine. I just
purchased the film All The
Beauty And The Bloodshed
(2022) and the album This
Stupid World (2023) by Yo
La Tengo based on your
reviews. I can’t tell you how
many excellent films, docs,
albums and books that I have
purchased over the years
because of your magazine
suggestions. Thanks! Keep
up the excellent and much-
needed work across the
entire magazine.
DOUG STRUTHERS HALIFAX,
CANADA
Carbon culprit
In many parts of Cumbria
it would be a 40-mile round
trip to ‘your local coffee
shop’ so why not buy a
kettle, a Thermos and a
jar of instant like many
impoverished (sic) folk
have to? (Re: Agony Uncle
NI 541) That would save all
the anxiety over carbon
emissions from driving
there, multiple boilings
of said kettle and leave
you with a lovely glass jar
which can be repurposed or
recycled in a month’s time.
You would also find your
addiction to black-stained
water rapidly declines.
ANNE GASCOIGNE VIA SOCIAL
MEDIA
6 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Can capitalism truly
be gone?
Regarding your 50th
birthday, I’m proud to say
that I’ve been a subscriber to
NI since the start and have
always appreciated the direct
and outspoken way in which
you’ve addressed inequality
and injustice on a global
level, with a special focus on
the planet’s poorer (sic) and
most oppressed populations.
But we still have, as your
March-April (NI 542) front
cover says A world to win
and must do so, as several of
your features point out, via
collective action to bring a
better new world into being.
The big question of course
is what is the nature of that
better world? It’s not about
things like ‘a more just tax
system’ or the tokenism of
the Wales’ Well-being of
Future Generations [Act],
which the magazine also
writes about.
The plain fact is that you
can’t transform our world
economic system (ie capi-
talism or the profit system)
through a gradual series of
social measures. Experi-
ence has shown that this
works neither in the world
of advanced capitalism nor
in the Global South. The
wages or money system
that operates on the basis of
exploitation of the major-
ity is simply incapable of
meaningful change short
of that majority establish-
ing, by peaceful means, a
classless, stateless, money-
less world, a real democracy
in which free and equal
men and women co-operate became painful and tiring. I
to produce the things they approve of the new paper and
need to live and enjoy life thinner binding. Not only
and to which they have free for the above reason but the
access in accordance with appearance, especially of the
the principle ‘from each photos, is now superior. I hope
according to ability, to each this becomes permanent.
according to need’. LAURA RAISON WILTSHIRE, UK
HOWARD MOSS WALES, UK
Who is the real
New paper gets problem?
thumbs up
How does wanting clean
When the magazine’s water and nonpoisonous
binding and paper were food make you a rebel
stiffened and thickened a but those causing those
while ago, I nearly cancelled things are just peaceful
my subscription. You see, businessmen? (Re:
suffering from stiff fingers and Temperature Check NI 542)
wrists from arthritis at my BERNARD SIMSIC VIA SOCIAL
age, holding the page open MEDIA
Why I... value group therapy
Before I started training in psychotherapy, I had the
perception that group therapy was a diluted form of
therapy – its function to minimize the costs of one-to-
one sessions. But my perception has profoundly shifted.
In a group, we can look together at our unconscious
interactions in a way that individual therapy doesn’t
allow us to. We can act as co-therapists – providing
multiple perspectives and adding to a sense of mutual
care and collective ownership. Evidence shows that
therapeutic groups for people who struggle with self-
harm can drastically reduce hospital visits. However,
services in the UK have shrunk under austerity. They
shouldn’t be so underestimated or underfunded.
ANONYMOUS UK
To share your passion, please email letters@newint.org
 LETTER FROM NAUTA

A VOICE FROM BENEATH THE RIVER

Stephanie Boyd reports from the Peruvian Amazon, where Indigenous communities
are fighting to save their language.

‘Mama, ikiaka tá…a…Ah…AHHH,’ groans

Miguel Angel as he stumbles over a
phrase in Kukama Kukamiria, his grand-
mother’s maternal language. The lanky
teen pulls at his short black hair in
frustration.
‘I can’t do it,’ he says, glaring at the
large studio microphone.
‘Breathe, son,’ says Leonardo, putting
his hand on Miguel’s shoulder. ‘Inhale.
Slowly. Exhale. Good. Try it again.’
We’re recording a voiceover for a film
which my husband Miki and I are making
with Leonardo’s Indigenous media outlet,
Radio Ucamara, and with a Kukama
women’s federation in Peru’s northern
Amazon region.
Miguel, our 15-year-old narrator/
victim, is interpreting for a young man Indigenous communities depend on attended classes, but the school closed
who disappeared into the depths of a the river for food, water and transport, five years ago due to lack of funds, before
swirling whirlpool. His body was never but the Marañón is also a sacred, living he could become fluent.
found because he didn’t die: instead entity and the centre of the Kukama’s According to Peru’s last census,
he transformed into a Karuara, which spiritual universe. Modern activities like fewer than 1,200 people speak Kukama
means ‘person of the river’ and lives with a natural resource extraction and pro- Kukamiria as their native tongue. The
silver-tongued mermaid in a spirit village posed dams threaten the river’s fragile majority of them are over 65. If bilingual
beneath the lower Marañón River. ecosystem. Eight years ago Leonardo education fails, this rich language and all
Karuara communicate with humans asked Miki and I to make a film with the knowledge it contains will be lost.
through dreams so Miguel Angel’s Ucamara to help protect the river and Our narration ends with a scream of
persona visits his mother while she’s spirit world below. terror as the protagonist flees ‘The Black
asleep to reassure her he’s still alive. Miguel’s haunting voiceover accom- Stain’ – an oil spill that envelops the spirit
‘Mama, Ikiaka tá, na ukriaitsi,’ he says panies an animation of a Karuara village, world, killing aquatic life and damaging
– which translates as: ‘Mom, I’m here, in hand painted by Peruvian artists and the Karuaras’ eyesight.
your dreams.’ based on hundreds of drawings by chil- Screams are universal, and Miguel
This is not fiction. It’s based on count- dren from Nauta and seven Kukama finds this part a breeze. A scream can
less stories that Ucamara has collected communities. signal the coming apocalypse – or the
over the past 20 years. Miguel was just seven years old when frustration of a teenager struggling to
Our hero shows his mother visions he took part in our first workshop. Now as master his ancestral language. Oil spills
of life beneath the river. His new home I watch him wrestling with the narration, and the loss of Indigenous knowledge are
is a mirror image of a Kukama village, a I see his round little boy face peering out two forms of destruction facing Miguel’s
parallel world with a few colourful differ- from a thin adolescent body. He still has people, with no happy ending in sight.
ences. Laughing children ride to school the same toothy grin that won me over, But today our young hero has won
on a water snake and play football with but he’s added a woolen tuque to his rep- his battle. We listen to the playback
an inflated blowfish. A male Karuara puffs ertoire in spite of the jungle heat. ‘It’s my and Doña Maria smiles and nods her
ILLUSTRATION: SARAH JOHN

on a piranha cigar, while a woman relaxes
in a boa constrictor hammock.
Despite their playfulness, the spirits
wield incredible power. They take care
of the river and all its life forms and
can even cure humans of physical and
mental illnesses.
style,’ he says. During breaks he strums
on an acoustic guitar or plays games on
his mobile phone.
Doña Maria sits beside him, correct-
ing his pronunciation. She’s a Kukama
elder who used to teach at a free language
school run by the radio station. Miguel
approval. The final noises in our studio
are the celebratory whoops and hollers
from a relieved teenager, his father and
some crazy filmmakers. O
STEPHANIE BOYD IS A CANADIAN FILMMAKER AND
JOURNALIST WHO HAS BEEN LIVING AND WORKING
IN PERU SINCE 1997.

MAY-JUNE 2023 7
CURRENTS
THE CAUCASUS
GREENWASHING AGGRESSION
Azerbaijan is far from the
first state to justify violent
expansion on environmental
pretexts. Israel, for one,
has repeatedly expelled
Palestinians from their West
Bank homes by establishing
nature reserves and
reforesting Bedouin cropland.
But Azerbaijan’s punishing
blockade of the Armenian-
populated Republic of
Nagorno-Karabakh, a
landlocked enclave known to
its residents as Artsakh, marks
a departure.
Legally part of Azerbaijan
but autonomous in practice,
the mountainous region is
home to around 140,000
Armenians. 2020 saw a
return of violence, with
militarily-superior Azerbaijan
seizing swathes of territory.
Soldiers within the Lachin corridor,
which links Nagorno-Karabakh with
Armenia, on 24 December 2022.
MARUT VANYAN/LE PICTORIUM/ALAMY
8 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Thousands, including
civilians, were killed.
Since a November 2020
ceasefire, the conflict has
continued by other means,
with a full-scale takeover of
the Armenian pocket. Turkey
has provided training and
military support for three
decades – and latterly drones,
enabling Azerbaijan to pursue
expansionist policies at
Armenia’s expense. Turkey
and Azerbaijan’s autocrats,
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and
Ilham Aliyev, have used
cultural and linguistic ties
via the Aliyev dynasty’s ‘two
states, one nation’ mantra to
justify military and economic
cooperation. Meanwhile,
Armenia is forced to rely on
an increasingly-preoccupied
Russia to broker flimsy
regional peace deals.
Azerbaijan’s 2023 blockade
of Nagorno-Karabakh has
seen government-sponsored
NGOs and, reportedly,
disguised military personnel
stationed in a camp nominally
established to protest
illegal mining, but which
– conveniently – severed
the sole road connecting
the enclave with the outside
world. Food and fuel were in
short supply. Now, Azerbaijan
is seeking the first-ever inter-
state ecological reparations
against Armenia, accusing its
rival of deforestation during
the conflict.
Armenia views these claims
as opportunistic cover, saying
the blockade was intended
to allow ‘ethnic cleansing’.
The UN Environmental
Programme report cited
by Azerbaijan has cited in
fact indicates both states
bear responsibility for
environmental destruction.
By weaponizing conservation
law, Aliyev’s government
has shown its willingness to
use all possible measures to
secure ethnic and political
supremacy.
MATT BROOMFIELD
BORDERLINES
Not welcome here
After Vladimir Putin
announced the
mobilization of Russia’s
reservist troops in
September 2022, tens of
thousands of men who
were due to be drafted left
the country. Those who
fail to enlist after being
called up face heavy fines
and, thanks to a criminal
law passed just before this
announcement, up to 10
years imprisonment.
‘I thought about what
taxes I would have paid in
Russia to go through with
this war, to kill Ukrainian
children and their parents,’
says Vladimir Pertsov,
who was on vacation with
his family in Germany
when the mobilization
was announced. ‘I do
not want to live with this,’
he explains. He has not
returned to Russia since.
Countries are split
over what to do with
men like Pertsov: should
they qualify for asylum?
It’s a complicated legal
question, which turns
on the extent to which
Russians are forced to
take part in breaches of
international law when and
if they enlist.
In Germany, Russian
deserters are recognized
as refugees on a case-by-
case basis, while in the
Balkans and Poland, draft-
evaders holding visitor
visas have been turned
away at the border.
As a result of these
disparate policies, many
Russians are left in limbo
as they wait to build a new
life away from everything
they know.
CHARLOTTE RUBIN

BANGLADESH
LEGAL TIME TRAVEL
Criminal charges against
Bangladeshi photojournalist
Shahidul Alam violate
international human rights
obligations, according to a
report published by TrialWatch,
a criminal law watchdog.
Alam was arrested in August
2018 after he posted pictures
of a student protest on social
media. He was accused of
‘spreading propaganda and
false information against the
government’, and says he was
tortured in custody.
Bangladesh has continued
to prosecute Alam – who is
now out on bail – despite
repealing the section of
the law under which he
was arrested. He faces 14
years in prison. Section
57 of the Information and
Communication Technology
Act was scrapped in October
2018 with a clause that allowed
for cases to continue providing
they had already been brought
to court. But, in Alam’s case,
no charge sheet had been filed
before the deadline.
KABIR AGARWAL
INTRODUCING...
PETR PAVEL
Any military man achieving
political power ought to be a
cause for concern for those
MAY-JUNE 2023
whose primary values are
peace and democratic rights.
So, a former NATO general
sweeping the 2022 Czech
presidential election would
usually set alarm bells ringing.
But Petr Pavel’s political
success is complicated – as
his victory speech indicates:
‘Values such as truth, dignity,
respect and humility won. I
am convinced these values are
shared by the vast majority of
us; it is worth trying to make
them part of our lives.’ Hardly
a championing of martial and
nationalist values.
The Czech Republic –
rebranded Czechia in 2016 –
has, over the last ten years, seen
the collapse of a once powerful
centre-left that emerged to
embrace democracy following
the collapse of the USSR.
Pavel succeeds the
presidency of the controversial
one-time socialist Miloš
Zeman, who made his peace
with the nationalist populism
of Andrej Babiš, a billionaire
oligarch and prime minister
until December 2021.
Babiš and his wealth
have become a political and
economic force propelling a
politics of corrupt nationalist
xenophobia typical of Orban’s
Hungary and Kaczyński’s
Poland. It was Babiš – acquitted
in January from fraud charges
relating to EU agricultural
subsidies – that Pavel defeated
to become the new president.
Pavel stands for a more old-
school form of globalist pro-
Western liberalism: socially
progressive and not requiring
scapegoats, be they gay, Roma
or refugee. He leans solidly to
the West, embracing NATO,
and is militantly opposed
to the Russian invasion of
Ukraine.
In his early 60s, Pavel is
relatively young and has a solid
administrative background,
both civilian and military.
But the discontent to which
populist demagogues appeal
remains built into the Czech
model of capitalism: high
levels of foreign ownership,
wages among the lowest in
the EU and around 10 per
cent of the whole population
entrapped in foreclosure
(exekuce) due to inability to
pay back private debts. Recent
demonstrations following
Pavel’s swearing-in speak to
the discontent in the streets of
Prague and elsewhere.
Without the democratic
and egalitarian emancipatory
project a coherent Left might
provide, it seems likely that
the tussle between nationalist
populism and corporate
globalism will continue to
define the politics of the Czech
Republic.
As president, Pavel must
depend on a friendly prime
minister and legislative
majorities to implement
his priorities, with formal
powers limited.
It is a rare military figure
with political ambitions that
can escape authoritarian
inclinations. One thinks
of the strong social justice
beliefs of Jerry Rawlings in
Ghana or Thomas Sankara
in Burkina Faso, whose
autocratic military tendencies
were at least tempered by a
vision that took them beyond
egotistical dictatorship.
While the Czech context is
much different, Pavel shows
at least some signs of thinking
outside the military box: ‘I
know what war is and I certainly
don’t wish it on anyone,’ he told
crowds in Ústí after he won the
election in January.
But for all his
understandable resistance
to Putin’s great Russian
chauvinism, especially given
Czech history, what is less
in evidence is a thoughtful
yet daring approach to
negotiations that might
have a chance of ending
this murderous war so close
to Czech borders. It seems
unlikely Pavel will bring such
qualities to the table.
RICHARD SWIFT
In the News
SERIOUSLY?
Out of the woods
The UK’s biggest polluter
made £731 million ($877
million) in profits last year –
while also receiving £650
million ($780 million) in
subsidies. Energy company
Drax runs an eponymous
power station in North
Yorkshire, which is also the
country’s largest single
emitter. It used to run on coal
but has now been converted
to biomass – ie burning trees –
and accounted for 13.2 million
tonnes of CO2 emissions in
2020 from biomass alone.
Drax previously claimed its
fuel pellets were made from
sawdust and waste wood,
but a 2020 investigation by
the BBC showed that many
were made from whole trees.
In 2021, Drax acquired the
pellet company Pinnacle,
known for logging on
Indigenous land in Canada,
and admitted to sourcing
wood from old-growth forests
in British Colombia and
Alberta – where clear-cutting
is common. The company
burned 16.6 million tonnes of
freshly cut wood that year.
But no fear – in a trick
that would make tax havens
proud, Drax’s emissions are
left out of the UK’s carbon
accounts, as regulators argue
they should be accounted
ILLUSTRATIONS: EMMA PEER
for in the country where the
trees are sourced. The magic
of borders – turning flames
carbon neutral!
NICK DOWSON
9
CURRENTS
GREEECE
BUGGING DEMOCRACY
A spiralling state surveillance
scandal has rocked Greek
politics ahead of elections
scheduled to be held in late May.
Over the last 12 months,
dozens of allegations of wire-
tapping and spyware attacks
against journalists, politicians
and military figures have
emerged, shaking Greek society.
The crisis came to a head
in January, when Greek Prime
Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis
narrowly survived a no
confidence vote put forward by
the opposition over his alleged
involvement in the affair.
The scandal first hit national
headlines in April 2022, when
financial journalist Thanasis
Koukakis revealed his phone
had been infected with the
Predator spyware, created by
the Israeli-linked firm Cytrox.
Since then, at least 13
journalists are thought to have
been targeted – including
those investigating the scandal
itself – along with political
allies and foes of Mitsotakis.
‘It was a systematic way of
surveilling journalists and
also other people that the
government considers enemies,
not of the state but of their
own government,’ Thodoris
Chondrogiannos, a journalist at
Greek media outlet Reporters
United, explains.
Mitsotakis sacked his
spy chief and top aide after
admitting the country’s
intelligence services
wiretapped the leader of
opposition party PASOK. But
he has denied giving the order,
or deploying Predator.
The affair has created a ‘toxic
environment’ for journalists in
Greece, with many ‘seriously
concerned about being under
surveillance’, Pavol Szalai, of
Reporters Without Borders
(RSF), says.
After Chondrogiannos
began digging into the
scandal, he says sources
10
informed him that he too was
under surveillance and was
being physically followed by
police officers.
The scandal shows that
Greece is ‘turning to more
authoritarian practices’, he
warns. ‘This story raises
concerns about freedom of the
press in Greece.’ RSF’s 2022
World Press Freedom Index
ranked Greece at 108 out of
180 countries – the lowest in
all of Europe.
BETHANY RIELLY
KENYA
HONEY TRAP
Beekeepers in Kitui, Kenya,
have been restoring depleted
acacia forests and the Muuku
tree in order to increase honey
output and tackle drought.
Studies show that planting more
trees can help boost rainfall,
thought to be down to the way
they react with cloudy air.
‘Since we started this
greening project honey
production has increased,
therefore making beekeepers
earn a decent wage, unlike
before when production was
just by grace of God,’ says
Euticus Kiyungu, chairperson
of the co-operative.
Farmers had previously
grown maize and mung
SIGN OF THE TIMES
A demonstrator holds a sign that reads ‘Resign murderer Dina’,
referring to Peru’s president Dina Boluarte. Since she assumed office
in December, when then-President Pedro Castillo was ousted after
attempting to dissolve Congress, at least sixty people have been
killed in a violent crackdown on protesters.
beans but recurrent droughts,
worsened by climate change,
were part of the reason
they moved to beekeeping.
Deforestation – including
for firewood and charcoal –
added to this problem as local
rainfall reduced along with
the tree cover.
‘Drought compelled the
farmers to beekeeping,
but deforestation has been
affecting them hugely’, says
climate mitigation expert
David Mutuku.
SHADRACK OMUKA
INEQUALITY
WATCH
THE WORLD’S
TOP 1% OF
EMITTERS
PRODUCE OVER
1,000x
MORE CO 2
THAN THE
BOTTOM 1%
Source:
International Energy Agency
UK
REFUGE IN NATURE
London’s concrete sprawl
SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA/REUTERS/ALAMY
isn’t often regarded as a
refuge for plants and animals.
And, thanks to the British
government’s draconian
deportation policies, it’s not
much of a refuge for humans
either. But at the Zoological
Society of London (London
Zoo), artists from New
Art Studio – a therapeutic
organization for asylum
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

seekers and refugees in
London – have been meeting
with researchers over the past
year for the ‘Refugia’ project.
The name comes from a
scientific term meaning the
area in which a population
of organisms can survive
through periods of
unfavourable conditions. New
Art Studio members and the
zoo’s conservation scientists
have shared knowledge,
insights and experience on
topics such as urban wildlife
and animal migration.
MAY-JUNE 2023
Empathy for humans and
other beings was at the core of
many of the works displayed
in a recent exhibition.
Mehmet, a 60-year-old
political cartoonist and anti-
government activist from
Turkey who fled his country
six years ago, points to the way
animals and even plants suffer,
and are forced to migrate
against their will.
In one of Mehmet’s
paintings, a hedgehog cries
and looks out to the sea
as other hedgehogs float
towards the shore. On closer
inspection, their spines
unravel into humans seeking
refuge in small boats. ‘My
job is to show the inequalities
between peoples, and the
inequalities between people
and nature,’ he says.
Traversing urban wildlife,
forest and waterways, the
artists reflect on the shared
struggle for safety during a
time of global crises. Artist
SK, 33, a political asylum
seeker, found peace of mind
in London’s parks and gardens
In the News
after she was forced to leave
Pakistan. ‘Nature always gives
you a comfort zone,’ she says.
‘It’s very important for asylum
seekers. When you’re going
through that, nobody gives
back better than nature.’
ALICE MCCOOL
The view over London Zoo and
Regent’s Park. As part of the ‘Refugia’
project artists have been meeting at
the zoo and reflecting on relationships
with nature and urban wildlife.
JOE DUNCKLEY/ALAMY
11
CURRENTS

PAKISTAN cent of the country’s GDP

– decimated the economy.
only lender Pakistan has to
negotiate with. China is its
Distributing supplies to flood
survivors in Rajanpur district in

IMF DICTAT Pakistan is suffering from

Pakistan has increased
taxes on goods, slashed fuel
a severe economic crisis
with precariously low
levels of foreign reserves,
largest bilateral creditor,
accounting for 30 per cent of
its total international debt. The
IMF demanded that Pakistan
2010. Pakistan dealt with flood
devastation again at the end of 2022
which devastated its economy.
REINHARD KRAUSE/REUTERS/ALAMY

subsidies and hiked interest
rates to meet the demands
made by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), after
the country requested an
emergency financial bailout.
Even as Pakistan scrambled
to meet these demands despite
the negative short-term
consequences for people living
in poverty, the IMF put in place
a new condition: an assurance
from ‘friendly countries’ that
Pakistan’s balance of payments
deficit will be fully financed.
This is just the latest in
a string of delays to the $7
billion bailout package since
2019. In that time Pakistan’s
economic situation has gone
from bad to worse.
Last year’s ‘biblical’ floods
that killed over 1,700 people
and caused over $30 billion
in damages – about 10 per
leading to acute shortages renegotiate terms of its already
and skyrocketing prices of outstanding debt with China,
essentials. All this on top of but China has so far refused.
the impacts of the pandemic KABIR AGARWAL
and spiralling global prices of
food and fuel.
Early in 2023, the risk of OPEN WINDOW
Pakistan defaulting on its Migrants Boats by Osama Hajjaj (Jordan)
international debt increased.
Its foreign exchange reserves
were sufficient just to pay for
about three weeks of imports.
Pakistan was in dire need of a
rescue and so it approached the
IMF, knowing it would place
stringent conditions.
The IMF team was supposed
to visit Pakistan in December
to negotiate the bailout
package, but only arrived
in January and imposed
conditions that Pakistan’s
prime minister described as
‘beyond imagination’.
But the IMF is not the

12 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 In the News

NIGERIA violence and a nationwide

STAY OR GO?
For many young people
in Nigeria, this year’s
presidential poll offered
another shot at change.
After the #EndSARS
mass revolt against police
brutality was quashed in
2020, there was an exodus
of young people from the
country. The number of
passport applications rose
by 38 per cent within a year.
And now, after the loss of
the presidential candidate
most popular with younger
people, some are questioning
shortage of physical cash in
the preceding weeks. REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
Widespread irregularities
were also documented.
According to the European
Union observation mission,
the election was marred by
lack of transparency and
operational failures. This
is in addition to sporadic
violence as thugs, mostly
supporters of the ruling
APC, descended on polling
booths – attacking voters and
snatching ballot boxes.
Although he finished
third in the country overall
– behind Tinubu and Atiku
Abubakar of the People’s

GOODBYE TO GAS GUZZLERS?

their future in the country
once again.
The high-stakes election,
which took place in February,
produced a new president in
former Lagos state governor
Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the
All Progressives Congress
(APC). But it was the Labour
Party’s Peter Obi that caused
a wave of excitement among
Democratic Party – Obi
secured 582,454 votes in
Lagos state, defeating Tinubu
who lost for the first time
in his long-time stronghold
where he served as Governor
between 1999 and 2007.
Obi is challenging the
presidential election result
in court. For Obi supporter
Lawson Oviasogie, the Abuja-
Nearly 15 per cent of all cars sold globally in 2022 were
electric vehicles (EVs), as sales passed 10 million for the first
time. The rise of the EV has been rapid – just five years ago
they made up only about two per cent of global car sales,
according to data from the International Energy Agency.
And in perhaps even better news, the overall sales of cars
fell in 2022, particularly in the US and Europe.

young people and the urban
middle class, becoming a
symbol of hope.
His seemingly austere
lifestyle and promises to deal
with corruption, while turning
Nigeria from a consumptive to
a productive economy, keyed
into the mood of a generation
that had grown resentful of
elite corruption and decades
of mis-governance. Roughly
70 per cent of Nigeria’s 206
million people are aged
based convener of advocacy
group the New Nigeria
Collective, all hope is not lost.
But he admits the election
has ‘shaken the faith of many
youths who had thought that,
for the first time, their votes
would count. Many, especially
first-time voters, are saying
they won’t vote again’.
For some, like accounting
graduate Chiwendu Chima, it’s
time to revisit plans to leave
the country. The day after
OCEAN REPRIEVE
United Nations members have reached a historic agreement that
aims to protect biodiversity in the so-called ‘high seas’, areas
of the ocean that lie beyond any national jurisdiction. Climate
change has warmed oceans and threatens marine life and
ocean ecosystems, while overfishing and plastic pollution have
also had a detrimental impact on ecosystems. The treaty, which
the UN chief has described as a ‘victory for multilateralism’,
will establish a new body to oversee efforts in tackling these
various threats, through international co-operation to safeguard
ecosystems in the largely unregulated oceans.

between 18 and 35 and many
are dissatisfied with the level
of funding for education,
lack of decent work, as well as
feeling left out of governance
processes.
At least 48 million youth
registered for the elections,
but in the end the overall
Tinubu was declared winner
of the presidential elections,
Chima posted a photo of
her Nigerian passport on
WhatsApp with the cryptic
message: ‘Time to dust my
passport.’
But Oviasogie has chosen
to stay and fight, adding: ‘On
BARCELONA BOYCOTT
The City Council in Barcelona has decided to cut all official
ties with Israel over the country’s systemic violations of
Palestinian rights. The decision was announced by Deputy
Mayor Laura Perez, who said the Catalan capital was at the
forefront of Palestinian solidarity. The city has also suspended
its twinning agreement with Tel Aviv, which had been in place
ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER

voter turnout was the lowest it a personal level, I have not for 25 years. Barcelona is the first city administration in the
had been in over two decades. given up.’ world to take such a step since the Boycott, Divestment and
Only 24 million people – 27 OBIORA IKOKU Sanctions (BDS) movement was started in 2005.
per cent of the 93.5 million
aggregate registered – KABIR AGARWAL
actually voted. This was
partly due to concerns over

MAY-JUNE 2023 13
 WHY SUBSCRIBE?

WE’RE A READER-OWNED
MEDIA CO-OPERATIVE
No billionaire media moguls tell us
what to do or what to publish and,
as one of the longest-running workers’
co-operatives in Europe, we have
a non-hierarchical structure. Just truly
independent journalism and analysis.

newint.org/go/subscribe
 THE BIG STORY
LONELINESS

THE CONNECTION
RECESSION
Loneliness and social isolation have become chronic issues across
the world. We must resist attempts to close down meaningful
human interaction, writes Husna Ara.

MAY-JUNE 2023 15
THE BIG STORY

he first time ‘Ms N’ shoplifted was when to cardiovascular and inflammatory dis-
she was 67 years old. eases – contributing to the recent medical
‘I was alone every day and feeling view that loneliness creates a risk similar
very lonely,’ she told Bloomberg during of 15 smoked cigarettes per day.7
her third stint in jail.1 ‘I wandered into As writer Apoorva Tadepalli explains
a bookstore in town and stole a paper- in The Atlantic, isolation can also impact
back novel. I was caught, taken to a police our behaviour: ‘“Hypervigilance” experi-
station, and questioned.’ enced by lonely people can lead to them
Although Ms N was financially secure perceiving snubs and exclusion where
and had a husband, two children and six none exist. Loneliness foments more
grandchildren the solitude of her day-to- loneliness.’8 With few people around
day life had become too much. In prison to practice conversation, anxiety can
she claims she didn’t feel lonely. increase, along with feelings of social
Japan is known as the world’s oldest abandonment. Hypervigilance also, inev-
society – over 75s account for over 15 per itably, can make it harder to socialize.
cent of the population. 2 And a perhaps When chronic, this set of mental states,
unexpected proportion of them are according to psychiatrist Freida Fromm-
ending up behind bars. Almost one in five Reichmann, can lead to a reduced
women in Japanese prisons is a senior, hope that ‘there may be interpersonal
often having been convicted for things
like shoplifting.1
Writer Yuki Shingo has documented
some of their stories and found that for
those without social networks, breaking
into a house can be a win-win. Unlike Ms
N, many turn to stealing due to financial
struggles and if they don’t get caught,
they can afford to eat. If they’re arrested,
they ‘get to live with many others in the
same boat’. 3
Social isolation is not only the pre-
serve of the elderly. In February 2021,
Japan’s government recognized some-
thing was going awry after it released
data showing that the number of people
who had died by suicide in October
2021 surpassed the death toll caused
by Covid-19 over 10 months that same
year. Women under 40 who lived alone
were over-represented in these figures. A
YouGov poll surveying the US and UK in
2019 found that 30 per cent of millen-
nials – those aged 26 to 41 – felt lonely.
Even more worryingly, 27 per cent of
this group admitted to having no ‘close
friends’ at all. 4
Loneliness, according to US Surgeon
General Vivek Murthy, ‘is the difference
between the relationships we want, and
the relationships we have’. 5 Much like stale
dating advice – join a sports club, go to a
bar, pick up a hobby – the common pre-
scription for this social ill seems to be: ‘put
yourself out there’ and scramble together
what community you can... on your own.
The effect of social isolation can also
take its toll on the body. In essence, when
chronically lonely, our bodies begin to
experience inflammation, a kind of ‘high-
alert mode’ for the nervous system.6
Living in this mode for too long can lead

16 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

Previous page: Rush hour – Workers scurry
speedily to their next destination. Since the 1970s,
Singapore and Guangzhou, China have seen the
highest increase in pedestrian walking speeds.
Calls for effiency in mobility can often come back
to bite us with reduced social empathy and ableist
attitudes.
ESTHERPOON/SHUTTERSTOCK
Below: A leisurely pace – New Yorkers watch the
world go by, socializing on a Manhattan East
Village stoop, on 8 November 2020 Five days later
new lockdown rules limited gatherings of more
than ten people.
ALAMY/WIRESTOCK
MAY-JUNE 2023
relationships in one’s future life’. If left
to fester, feelings of isolation can leave us
at risk of psychosis. Perhaps this is why,
as Reichmann explains, ‘it is a fear so
great, that even naming it is frightening.’
Through her work Fromm-Reichmann
has encountered patients who put pen to
paper to illustrate their experience. One
sufferer of schizophrenia wrote: ‘No one
comes near here morning or night. The
desolate grasses grow out of sight. Only a
wild hare strays, then is gone. The land-
lord is silence. The tenant is drawn.’ 9
Bowling alone
To be sure, feeling lonely from time to
time is part of the human experience, but
chronic loneliness appears to be on the rise.
In the US, a meta-analysis of research on
Loneliness
perceived social isolation found that 11-17
per cent of people felt lonely in the 1970s,
compared to over 40 per cent of middle-
aged and older adults four decades later.10
According to political scientist Robert
Putnam, the networks we once relied on
to commune and thus foster friendships
have been breaking down for the past 50
years. For his book, Bowling Alone, Putnam
analyzed the membership of trade unions,
churches, youth clubs, sports societies and
other groups in the US and found that
from the 1970s onwards, ‘silently, without
warning, that tide [of civic participation]
reversed and we were overtaken by a
treacherous rip current’.11
The culprits for this decline are multi-
ple. Writing in Jacobin, Anton Jäger states
that in the US, the forces of globalization
17
THE BIG STORY
Bon Appétit: Mukbang is a South Korean take
on virtual dinner companionship in which
thousands watch and tip bloggers on their
livestreams for meal-time company.
OLGA YASTREMSKA/ALAMY
and deindustrialization that have ramped
up since the 1980s have ejected people
not just ‘out of the factories, but out of the
public arena itself ’.12
It becomes harder to find places to
gather as accessible ‘third spaces’ disap-
pear. A concept coined by urban sociolo-
gist Ray Oldenburg, these are places to
meet that are not home or work: cafes,
clubs, bars, churches, barbers, leisure
centres, libraries.13 Oldenburg argued
that these were once the anchors of
community, places where relationships
began, spontaneous conversations took
place, inspiration for art flourished – and
that the disappearance of these places
was having a dramatic impact on social
connectedness.
In the UK, libraries, public swimming
pools and youth clubs were among the
first to be cut from public subsidy after
the 2008 financial crash. An investiga-
tion by politician Siân Berry found that
between 2011 and 2019 the number of
youth clubs in London alone halved.
Meanwhile, violent behaviour among
young people in the city has been rising
with researchers at the Royal London
Hospital finding that children under
16 were most likely to be stabbed in the
two hours after school – as the Guardian
reported, ‘a time when youth clubs would
normally be at their busiest’.14
Exclusive cities
Gentrification also has an impact on the
loss of more informal places to meet.
Long-treasured venues for live music
and clubbing are shut down by increasing
18
rents and objections from neighbours
who wish for quieter cities.
Anti-loitering, anti-communing sen-
timent has become the new normal in
many cities.
It struck me when I ambled along a
Brooklyn sidewalk a few summers ago –
I was genuinely surprised at how many
families and neighbours were gathered
together on stoops, watching people go
by, hooking up sound systems, having
a natter. I had become so used to Lon-
don’s increasingly hostile urban plan-
ning, designed to expel houseless people
from public space, with private security
buzzing around eager to shoo people
on. Even the architecture seemed to be
designed to stem interaction: the ubiq-
uity of sloped Camden benches, fit only
for leaning on, designed to repel skate-
boarders; sonic devices employed to
irritate teenagers out from the public
realm – many of these seemingly benign
details have led to a whole cross-section
of people to feel unwelcome outside the
parameters of their homes.15
Indeed the growth of neighbourhood
forums such as Nextdoor can often reflect
the hostilities that have emerged in real
public spaces. Originally intended as a
virtual notice board to report missing
pets or overflowing garbage in the local
area, the website has a significant mem-
bership of users that are what AP reporter
Barbara Ortutay calls ‘paranoid neigh-
bours spying on each other’, often com-
plaining about problems that could be
resolved by real life conversations.16 At
worst, its users have promoted open racial
profiling and police calls on residents and
passers by.17
Thankfully there are some hopeful
shoots of positive city planning that
encourage social interaction, including
the designation of car-free zones. Barce-
lona’s plan for 503 ‘superblocks’, pedes-
trianized zones aimed to rejig the pace
of local life, could be a boon to wellbeing.
Economist Noreena Hertz writes that this
urban model makes people ‘less likely
to retreat into buildings, away from the
public realm, and more likely to engage
with each other’.15
Rise and grind
With more than half the world’s popu-
lation now living in urban areas, the
quickened pace of life, intensification
of work and rising cost of renting has
resulted in longer commuting times and
undoubtedly cut in to the time left to
spend with loved ones.18 The ability to
‘switch off’, be present, and attend to the
emotional needs of our loved ones, and
ourselves, is crucial to maintaining our
relationships.
A 2011 OECD study found that rural
women in India and Kazakhstan, dispro-
portionately bogged down with house-
hold chores, lose out the most when it
comes to free time.19 Speaking about the
time theft brought on by labour inten-
sification in the neoliberal era, author
Eduoard Louis told Novara Media: ‘I
grew up in a de-industrialized village in
France, where there were not many jobs.
People were moneyless. When you suffer
that much, it’s kind of difficult to create
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

The ability to ‘switch off’,
be present, and attend to the
emotional needs of our loved ones,
and ourselves, is crucial to
maintaining our relationships
room for love in your life.’ 20 Attitudes
to vacation allowances across the world
mirror this. In the US, many are afraid
to take time off, for fear of replacement
or destitution – even high earners. Twit-
ter’s CEO Elon Musk – head of the inter-
net’s public square no less – is building
bedrooms for workers at Twitter HQ. We
must reject this logic wholesale.
Fortunately, there are some moves in
the other direction. As of 2023, 56 firms
in the UK have provisionally adopted the
four-day work week. 21 Results show that,
yes, productivity has not suffered, but
perhaps this is not its primary appeal.
Life is for the living, as writer Meagan
Day argues in Jacobin. More free time
for connecting with others is at the heart
of this vision. She writes: ‘The capital-
ists won’t like it, but they didn’t like the
weekend either. The weekend was won by
a powerful movement of working people
asserting that the time of their lives
should belong to them, not to those who
would wring them dry for profit.’ 22
Attention theft
It’s easy to see why many of us are
increasingly leaning on our devices for
quick doses of low effort human contact.
There’s a common joke among millen-
nials and members of generation Z that
they consume five different forms of
social media at once to prevent a thought
from occurring. An over-reliance on
digital spaces following the pandemic
has, according to Hertz, fragmented
‘our attention, creating a splintered self,
caught between the physical reality of an
MAY-JUNE 2023
Loneliness
intimate in-person conversation and the
tens, maybe even hundreds, of text and
image-based conversations happening
simultaneously on our screens.’15
She compares this digital de-social-
izing to the calculator’s impact on our
mental arithmetic. There’s no question
that most social media platforms can
be a hostile space for a person of any
age to navigate. The algorithm favours
engaging with others in an antagonis-
tic manner, while in real life, we find
ourselves extending more good faith to
strangers and interlocutors. The mis-
match between our digital and real life
selves can be stark, and a real impedi-
ment to empathy.
At the same time, our reliance on plat-
forms does not seem to be going any-
where. While AI companions and robots
have been depressingly touted as ways
to fill the gaps with elderly social care,
cyberfeminists argue that it’s important
not to cede all ground to Silicon Valley
when it comes to the internet’s potential
to connect movements. Web designer
and educator Mindy Seu emphasizes how
we mustn’t abandon the project of tech-
nology to the tech giants: ‘The internet
is not only a network of cables, servers,
and computers. It is an environment that
shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants
and their use.’ 23
For all of the miseries of the lockdown
periods, moving political organizing
online reallocated energy and resources
to bringing in those who aren’t usually
in the room. As disability justice scholar
Shayda Kafai writes: ‘For so many of us,
our beds, cars, and homes are not tem-
porary, transitional places we inhabit for
a few hours. Instead, they are the places
that tether us; they are our connection
to our communities. Our computers and
our phones become the crip-centric lib-
erated zones that ensure that we continue
to exist in community with one another
when we are too tired, too sick, and too
depressed to leave.’ 24
Privatizing intimacy
Nowhere is the yearning for social con-
nection more evident than matters of
the heart. Online dating has gradually
become the way people meet roman-
tic partners – in particular, mobile apps
such as Tinder, Hinge and Grinder. The
loss of physical spaces has led to what
Swedish sociologist Marie Bergström
calls ‘context collapse’. 25 The online,
anonymous nature of matching with
19
THE BIG STORY

someone means we rarely have mutual

friends in common, thus little account-
It could be, but it needn’t be. Intimacy
is a much more elusive thing; paying ACTION
AND INFO
ability against which to discourage acts more attention to who we connect with,
such as ‘ghosting’. Researchers have also and how we connect with them, feels like
found that the majority of dating apps a surer way toward it than a perfunctory
– most of which are owned by the mega- one night stand. Paler, quick-fix versions
firm Match Group – are governed by an of intimacy are likely to grant us mixed ACTION
algorithm which favours a law of aver- results – whether it be the growth of pla- Bapu Trust
ages. If a popular user swipes ‘yes’ on you, tonic intimacy services, or the likes of baputrust.com
it boosts your profile above the rest. 26 sophisticated AI companions spearheaded A grassroots mental health group in India
Users have also found that when they by Replika, the company whose owner
Coalition to End Social Isolation
tailor their profiles to reflect their idi- developed the idea based on text messages
endsocialisolation.org
osyncratic and eccentric personalities, with their deceased best friend.29
A US-wide advocacy campaign to end
they receive less matches. But when they Thinking back to moments of deep
social isolation.
follow boilerplate advice – to include a connectedness I’ve experienced – where
picture of a pet, or their grandparent, for a tender conversation filled with hearty Friends for Good
example – they collect more matches. belly laughs has made the room melt friendsforgood.org.au
We are encouraged to ‘shop for people’, away, cocooning the other person and An Australian chatline for people of all ages.
sifting through an endless inventory of myself into a strange, wonderful bubble The Silver Line
possibilities. For the Land of Giants, an of safety, intimacy and slowness – ini- thesilverline.org.uk
investigative podcast which delves into tially, those experiences felt incommuni- A 24-hour helpline for older people in
the origins and contemporary moment cable, spontaneous. the UK.
of online dating, researchers found that But on further reflection, it is free The Mix
apps had become an emotional crutch, time, freedom from stress, mutual themix.org.uk
and some users reported no longer being patience and the willingness to comb A crisis line for under-25s.
able to read signals of interest outside of through the details of each others lives
Widowed and Young
the parameters of a Tinder date. 27 with curiosity that has made those
widowedandyoung.org.uk
A recent New York Times op-ed really moments possible. Big Tech’s attempt to
A bereavement support group for
captured the despondent mood of the replicate this phenomenon is likely to
anyone who’s lost a partner before their
moment. Culture writer Magdalene J have mixed results, and why shouldn’t it?
51st birthday.
Taylor advised readers to have as much We are unpredictable, ‘boisterous beings’,
that deserve to be known. 24 O
INFO
sex as they can, as pleasurably as they
can, to combat loneliness.28 Indeed, much
In the UK, the distress helpline run by the Samaritans
contemporary research on the burgeon- can be contacted on 116 123. International suicide Cyberfeminism Index
ing problem makes a similar rhetorical helplines can be found at befrienders.org cyberfeminismindex.com
error, assuming that less sex, or celibacy, A compendium of resources collating
is akin to alienation. Or that a lot of it is a how marginalized people have used tech
grand boost to intimacy. for connection since the 1980s.
Dreams of a Life
nin.tl/3lN9F0Z
1 Shiho Fukada, ‘Japan’s prisons…’ Bloomberg.com, 16 March 2018, nin.tl/3lWtqTB 2 The Japan Times, ‘Over
A narrative documentary about the life
75s make up over…’,22 September 2022, nin.tl/3Zs7iyr 3 Vice News, ‘Some elderly people...’, YouTube, 6 December of Joyce Carol Vincent, whose death
2019, nin.tl/3FWSPne 4 Jamie Ballard, ‘Millenials are the loneliest generation’, YouGov America, 30 July 2019, triggered national discussions about
nin.tl/3Zkr1zS 5 ‘Poster presentations...’, Campaign to End Loneliness, YouTube, 3 February 2023, nin.tl/40LYNiu
6 Kimberly Smith, ‘Social isolation linked...’, The Conversation, 5 March 2020, nin.tl/40HOyfa 7 Michele M. Kroll, social isolation in the UK.
‘Prolonged social isolation...’, University of New Hampshire, 2 May 2022, nin.tl/3LWWsxa 8 Apoorva Tadepalli, Mental Health
‘Why do we look down on lonely people?’, The Atlantic, 29 July 2021, nin.tl/3Zrl97V 9 Frieda Fromm Reichmann,
‘Loneliness’, Psychiatry, Vol 22, Issue 1, 1959, nin.tl/3lYMDUJ 10 Stephanie Cacioppo, Angela J. Grippo, Sarah mentalhellth.xyz
London, Luc Goossens, and John T. Cacioppo ‘Loneliness: clinical import and interventions’, Perspectives on A newsletter about mental health under
Psychological Science. Volume 10, Issue 2, March 2015. 11 Robert Putnam, Bowling alone, Simon & Schuster,
neoliberalism.
2001. 12 Anton Jäger, ‘From bowling alone, to posting alone’, Jacobin, 5 May 2022, nin.tl/3TRLAm0 13 Ray
Oldenburg, The great good place, Paragon House, New York, 1989. 14 Dan Hancox, ‘Number of youth clubs...’, The Marginalian
the Guardian, 22 March 2019, nin.tl/3KfgIZF 15 Noreena Hertz, The Lonely Century, Currency, New York, 2021.
16 Barbara Ortutay, ‘Chronicling the best (and worst) of Nextdoor’, The Seattle Times, 25 July 2022, nin.tl/42OEiDE themarginalian.org
17 Jennifer Medina, ‘Website meant to connect neighbours...’, The New York Times, 18 May 2016, nin.tl/3JSwlF6 A literary newsletter on love, friendship,
18 Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, ‘Urbanization’, Our World in Data, September 2018, nin.tl/3ntWJ0v 19 Akshay mind and creativity.
Kohli and Chandrima Das, ‘Time poverty...’, LSE blogs, 12 March 2018, nin.tl/3G05QMC 20 Novara Media,
‘Literature is a weapon’, YouTube, 27 February 2019, nin.tl/3KfFitq 21 Heather Stewart, ‘Four-day week...’, the The ‘sexual marketplace’
Guardian, 21 February 2023, nin.tl/3G0ZYD4 22 Meagan Day, ‘One day off, every seven years’, Jacobin, 22 May nin.tl/40yjlLN
2019, nin.tl/42MMpAF 23 Marie Hoejlund, ‘Sharing as survival...’ Walker, 9 November 2020, nin.tl/3nyiIDe
24 Shayda Kafai, Crip kinship, Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, 2021 25 Marie Bergström, The New Laws of Love, Romance writer Annie Lord speaks to
Polity Press, Medford, 2021. 26 Land of the Giants: Dating Games, ‘The secret algorithms...’, Series 7, Episode 3, Novara Media about modern dating.
Vox Media Podcast Network, 25 January 2023, nin.tl/40GlEwB 27 Land of the Giants: Dating Games, ‘Tinder has
changed the game’, Series 7, Episode 1, Vox Media Podcast Network, 11 January 2023, nin.tl/40GlEwB 28 Magdalene J Sinsinvalid
Taylor, ‘Have more sex, please!’, The New York Times, 13 February 2023, nin.tl/3M1hnit 29 Land of the Giants: sinsinvalid.org
Dating Games, ‘AI to IRL: The future of dating’, Series 7, Episode 6, Vox Media Podcast Network, 15 February 2023,
nin.tl/40GlEwB A disability-justice performance project.

20 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

REMOTE
SOLIDARITY
Work from home policies aren’t going anywhere.
So, with many workers in the UK feeling the
strain of isolation, now is the time to ramp up
trade union organizing, writes Eve Livingston.
W
hen Sarah Davidson, now 26, gradu-
ated from university in the north of
England and entered the world of
work, she did so with a decidedly prag-
matic attitude.
‘I thought: I have to work to make
money, but it’s just that, a job,’ she recalls.
‘I didn’t particularly think I’d be friends
with my colleagues and I also didn’t think
that would bother me.’
But as she settled into her role at an
advertising agency which operated almost
entirely remotely, her beliefs began to
change. Every task and conversation was
managed through a different online plat-
form and there were no natural breaks
within which to make small talk or
MAY-JUNE 2023
Loneliness
whisper about company decisions; every-
thing seemed to happen in silos.
‘And it wasn’t freeing or flexible, it
just made me feel anxious and stressed,’
Sarah says. ‘You were always wondering
if people were having meetings without
you or if you were the only one who felt a
certain way about something. There was
no one issue or person I could point to but
it was the most insidiously stressful envi-
ronment I’ve ever worked in.’
Communication breakdown
Sarah’s experience of isolation at work is
one that has become increasingly famil-
iar across the world, along with the prolif-
eration of more precarious and insecure
work. While remote working has its ben-
efits for many people – including when
it comes to accessibility and managing
caring commitments – for others it has
contributed to their feelings of loneli-
ness and further blurred the boundaries
between work and personal lives.
Workplace isolation is a problem
that appears to have been brewing since
before the Covid-19 pandemic – and it’s
not just down to remote working.
A 2018 study of workplace loneliness
amongst workers in the US as wide-rang-
ing as truck drivers, administrators and
engineers, highlighted the self-perpetu-
ating nature of isolation: workers who feel
isolated not only feel less connected to
their workplace as a whole but also tend
to separate themselves further from col-
leagues, becoming hyper-vigilant to the
responses of others and therefore being
less likely to form relationships or seek
out the support of others.1
In a 2022 poll, Mental Health UK and
YouGov found that one in five workers in
Britain feel lonely at work on a typical
day, with the majority reporting that
they did not feel they had the time or
capacity to discuss how they were feeling
with others. 2
‘There aren’t any clear cut benefits
of worker atomization and isolation,’
21
THE BIG STORY

22 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

says Jamie Woodcock, a senior lecturer
‘For me who researches work at the University
of Essex. ‘Most work requires regular
personally, communication, between workers and
management, and between workers.
no other Atomizing workers breaks this down and
often results in negative outcomes.’
experience If workers are not interacting with
each other there can also be serious
has been as implications for building solidarity and
organizing. Where people might once
humanizing as have found common ground in a break
room conversation, or bonded over a
being an active shared workplace experience, now these
opportunities are often absent. ‘A lack of
trade union in-person contact can also make it harder
to identify colleagues [who are interested
member’ in workplace organizing] and to recruit.
Instead, new methods need to be used –
many of which existing unions are not
used to,’ says Woodcock. These might
range from the use of digital communi-
cations and social media to organizing
events which unite people around other
aspects of their identities, rather than
solely work.
‘However, there is emerging evidence
that workers are finding ways to success-
fully organize despite this fragmenta-
tion, and indeed these new experiences
of work can be a trigger for organizing
too,’ he says.
A problem shared
Perhaps the most vulnerable to this phe-
nomenon of atomization are gig economy
workers, who are often engaged via an
app and forced to compete with their
fellow workers for shifts and wages. The
International Workers of Great Britain
(IWGB) union, which was established a
decade ago to organize migrant cleaners,
has been organizing this traditionally
unionized workforce – tackling isolation
and atomization in the process.
ANDY K USING SHUTTERSTOCK
‘Being a minicab driver is very lonely
by its nature – we leave home early and
we’re on the road for 14, 15, 16 hours a
day,’ says 44-year-old Uber driver Helios,
who is from London. ‘Uber, TFL and
Bolt know this and they use it to exploit
us further. They can see all the data and
MAY-JUNE 2023
Loneliness
they know there will always be someone
desperate enough to take a job for £4 [$5].’
Life as an Uber driver involves long
hours, low pay and the constant risk of
abuse or harassment, says Helios, who
recounts several situations in which he
has found himself alone and in danger
while on shift. Drivers are actively in
competition for passengers and can only
pick up further jobs by being on the road,
reducing the time in which they can stop
and speak to each other.
To try and counteract this, the IWGB
has set up online discussion groups for
members which allow them to interact
flexibly around long hours spent driving.
‘The group is quite powerful because
it lets us share our feelings,’ says Helios
of being part of IWGB. ‘We can under-
stand the size of the problems we are
part of because other people are having
them too.’ These challenges might be
around low pay and long hours, or related
to physical health and safety. Recently,
one older driver posted a warning to
others about possible damage to their
knees from sitting in a car all day. Others
responded that they experienced the
same problems but hadn’t yet realized the
connection to their work.
The role of unions in addressing isola-
tion is vital, Woodcock adds, because in
their absence other responses may emerge
which serve to exacerbate the issues.
‘It is deeply worrying when these
trends are connected to individualized
mental health and wellbeing; the solution
becomes company-sponsored events or
counselling, neither of which address the
underlying problems,’ he says.
‘Many workers’ lives outside work are
becoming more precarious too,’ he con-
tinues, highlighting the fact that atomiza-
tion and loneliness can also be a feature
of living in private rented housing in in
the UK, where 20 per cent of the popula-
tion are renters. 3 ‘We can no longer think
of these as personal problems or failures.’
This is particularly important in the
context of declining workplace solidarity:
between 1995 and 2021, union member-
ship levels in the UK fell by nearly 10 per
23
THE BIG STORY
‘People need to understand how unions
and workplaces operate and they need
to have a theory of power - that’s what
builds solidarity’
cent and the proportion of employees in
a union fell from 32.4 per cent to 23.1 per
cent.4 While membership is slowly begin-
ning to increase again, it hasn’t yet made
up for those losses. 5
Building power
Increased insecurity and precarity are
not just issues in the gig economy. For
early career staff in UK universities, for
example, ‘the odds are stacked against
you developing relationships,’ says Uni-
versity and College Union organizer
María Elena Torres-Quevedo. ‘You’re on
a variety of short-term contracts and it’s
very competitive; it gets in the way of
building relationships.’
When she was a committee member,
Torres-Quevedo worked with colleagues
to respond to this by putting together
events designed to strengthen ties beyond
immediate campaigns: film nights,
drinks, discussions with organizers from
other unions and campaigns around
Edinburgh, where she is based.
While many unions primarily engage
with members through votes about indus-
trial action, Torres-Quevedo advocates for
their role in reimagining society and the
wider world: ‘For me personally, no other
experience has been as humanizing as
being an active trade union member.’
This echoes the experience of Sarah
Davidson, who eventually left her adver-
tising job and tried roles in a number of
sectors before settling at a publishing
company.
‘The scale and form of the problems
was different, but I recognized them in
every workplace,’ Davidson says. ‘I tried
other things first – employee engagement
groups and organizing socials off my
own back – but when I joined the union
24
and started talking to others from the
same sector, it was like a weight off my
shoulders.’
Unions should not assume that their
existence alone is enough, and members
will need to get active in order to reap the
benefits, warns Torres-Quevedo, who also
works as an organizer for tech workers in
Scotland.
‘People need to understand how
unions and workplaces operate and they
need to have a theory of power – that’s
what builds solidarity. ‘But when unions
provide these spaces and members show
up to occupy them, the issues of isola-
tion and atomization are targeted in the
process of fighting for better conditions.
‘When people have a space to come
together to talk and support each other,
that’s really productive and beautiful.’
She adds: ‘Having someone say: you’re
my colleague, you’re a person, your
problems are structural and shared and
they matter – that’s a very humanizing
experience. O
EVE LIVINGSTON IS A FREELANCE JOURNALIST
SPECIALISING IN SOCIAL AFFAIRS, INEQUALITIES
AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, AND THE AUTHOR OF
THE 2021 BOOK MAKE BOSSES PAY: WHY WE NEED
UNIONS. IN 2019 SHE WAS SHORTLISTED FOR AN
ORWELL PRIZE AND LONGLISTED FOR AN AMNESTY
MEDIA AWARD FOR HER REPORTING ON TRADE
UNIONS.
1 Sigal Barsade and Hakan Ozcelik, ‘The painful
cycle of employee loneliness, and how it hurts
companies’, Harvard Business Review, 24 April 2018,
nin.tl/cycle 2 Mental Health UK, ‘Loneliness and our
mental health at work’, nin.tl/health-uk 3 Generation
Rent, ‘About renting’, nin.tl/rent 4 Department for
Business, Energy & industrial Strategy, ‘Trade Union
membership, UK 1995-2021: Statistical Bulletin’,
25 May 2022, nin.tl/union 5 Institute of Employment
Rights, ‘One-in-ten are union members: trade union
membership increases from 6.6 million to 6.7 million’,
22 July 2022, nin.tl/members
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Loneliness

KEEPING UP
WITH THE KHANS
From rank and file unionist heroes to industrialist lone wolves,
Bollywood storytellers and ‘content creators’ have shifted to write
out India’s collective spirit. Ishika Saxena questions what this
means for how the country’s citizens can be brought together.

A
s a non-resident Indian (NRI) growing
up in Dubai in the early 2000s, my
experience of cinema revolved around
going to plush multiplex theatres, situated
in the world’s largest mall. Everything was
towering, stylish and attractive.
I could not relate to my parent’s stories
of home – drive-in theatres, single screen
cinemas and a Sunday film on televi-
sion. But still I romanticized this sort of
cinema with a strange nostalgia for some-
thing I did not experience. To me, it rep-
resented a sense of togetherness.
The movie halls of earlier periods
were designed in a way that encouraged
people to meaningfully engage with one
another. In my mother’s stories of going
to the cinema in India, it was often a col-
lective activity that was surrounded by
excitement and novelty. Friends would
plan to go together, and would some-
times buy tickets on the black market
outside the theatre. Watching a film was a
treasured experience and my mother, her
sister and parents often quote films of the
1970s and 1980s as jokes to each other in
conversation, even today.
But in the early 1990s, as the liber-
alization of India’s economy took hold,
India’s rickety single screen cinemas
– attended primarily by working class
punters – started to be replaced by cor-
porate multiplex theatres that aimed to
maximize profit for a new generation of
producers and distributors.
New dreams sold
As this process of liberalization was being
cemented in India, the impact could
also be seen in the nature of the content
shown on the Big Screen. ‘Consumerist
heroes’ became central to many narra-
tives, while the reality of India’s poorer
citizens became less visible on screen.
Bollywood megastar Shahrukh Khan
noticed this change too. In an interview
given to Filmfare in 2001, he notes: ‘If the
1970s hero was anti-establishment, as a
yuppie I promised a better world. The
yuppie doesn’t bash a truckful of goondas
[goons]. He’s smarter. He doesn’t have
to kill in the battlefield, he can make a
killing in the share market. The yuppie
believes in capitalism, not communism,’1
says the Indian actor and film producer.
The ‘anti-establishment’ hero of the
1970s described by Khan – whose per-
sonal wealth is now estimated at $770
million – often manifested itself in the
‘angry young man’, a character who raged
about social injustice. 2 He was usually a
working class person who moved to the
city to try and build his life.
Many films of the 1970s and 1980s,
such as Dastak (1970), Mazdoor (1983),
Deewar (1975) show, in different ways,
working class heroes attempting to carve
out a living in the city. They often also
include explicitly political characters
such as communist leaders, agitating
workers, trade unionists or members
leftist political parties.
Mazdoor tells the tale of a mill owner
in Mumbai named Mr Sinha, who was
generous and distributed profits through

MAY-JUNE 2023 25
THE BIG STORY

I could not relate to my parent’s stories

of home - drive-in theatres, single screen
cinemas and a Sunday film on television.
But I romanticized this sort of cinema
with a strange nostalgia for something
I did not experience

wages and bonuses amongst the workers.
Later, his profit hungry son takes over
and changes how everything works. One
of the mill’s workers, portrayed by Hindi
cinema legend Dilip Kumar, decides to
rebel and sets up his own mill, with the
help of Ashok Mathur, an engineer. They
recruit several employees from the Sinha
mill and workers are able to move away
from exploitative practices.
Another often used character was the
‘don’ – a mafioso character and useful
device to question the State’s supposedly
moral character. This continued to be an
important trope until the 2000s. Sarkar
(2005) dramatized and fictionalized the
politics of 1990s Mumbai. It showed the
possibility of an alternate government,
run by a morally upstanding ‘don’ who
broke the law to deliver justice.
Unlike an overtly political film which
may make one inclined to do something
about the state of affairs, these films were
more likely to leave the audience pon-
dering, revealing possibilities through
storytelling.
The new heroes
It would be rare today to see such char-
acters in Indian cinema or on television,
as the dream of ‘making it’ has become
the beating drum – a continuation of
the ‘yuppie’ narratives of the 1990s. The
widespread success of shows such as the
Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives and
Indian Matchmaking promote a more
individualized neoliberal self as we’ve
seen the catapulting of India’s billionaire
class into cultural consciousness. The
wealth and lifestyle of the super-rich are
assumed to be desirable and aspirational. consumerism in our storytelling, we may
Fabulous Lives shows us the super rich find our way back to one another. O
who, despite their wealth and success,
ISHIKA SAXENA IS AN ACADEMIC FELLOW AT THE
play a direct role in running their own NATIONAL LAW SCHOOL OF INDIA UNIVERSITY,
businesses. Actress and ostensible ‘girl- BANGALORE. HER RESEARCH INTERESTS INCLUDE
CRITICAL THEORY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE,
boss’ Neelam Kothari runs her own jew- CULTURAL STUDIES, GENDER, SCIENCE FICTION AND
ellery business, Bhavana Pandey has her POLITICAL THEORY.
own fashion line, and Seema Khan is a
1 Kaustav Bakshi and Samrat Sengupta, ‘Waking up
fashion stylist. While the series endorses to a Dream: Contemporary Bollywood, the Yuppie
a culture of the ‘grind’, we are not always Shah Rukh Khan and the Great Urban Indian Middle
Class’, Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences,
told about the background which led to
September 2009, nin.tl/yuppie 2 Gaurav Sonavane,
their stardom – nepotism. ‘Shah Rukh Khan’s Rs 6,300 Crore net worth, a sea-
The increasing domination of stream- facing bungalow worth Rs 200 Crore, an IPL team &
more’, GQ India, 2 February 2023, nin.tl/khan 3 bell
ing services is such a contrast to the expe- hooks, All about Love: New Visions, William Morrow,
riences I romanticized from my parents’ New York, 2000. 4 Barbara Kruger, ‘I shop, therefore
past – or even my own childhood. We can I am’, MoMA, nin.tl/shop
now more easily consume passively, and
alone, fantasizing, aspiring, and indeed
disassociating from what and who is
around us.
When it came to television, my
parents would watch one film a week on
state channel Doordarshan. Families
and neighbours would often gather and
watch these films together. Now it is more
common to ‘consume content’ on per-
sonal devices. Even the common space
of the living room is diminishing, along
with access to affordable housing.
Opposite page top: Throwback cinema: Mumbai
Neoliberalism requires competitive
movie-goers embrace an open-air film screening
citizens to sustain itself. Our yearning
on 5 November 2021, following Covid-19
for togetherness is, as bell hooks puts it,
restrictions over indoor gatherings.
‘constantly co-opted by the powerful
FRANCIS MASCARENHAS/REUTERS/ALAMY
forces of materialism and domestic con-
sumerism’, in other words, the beating Opposite page bottom: Behind the scenes: Painters
heart of the new ‘content churn’. 3 In India from the Ellora Arts workshop are the hidden
the adoption of ‘I shop, therefore I am’ talents known for dilligently crafting posters for
arrived later than in other countries, and anticipated Bollywood film releases, pictured on
is still in some ways taking on a concrete 10 February 2002.
shape.4 But if we can reject the worship of JOERG BOETHLING/ALAMY

26 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Loneliness

MAY-JUNE 2023 27
 THE BIG STORY
CASSETTE BLEUE/SHUTTERSTOCK

28 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

A 101 IN
LOVELESSNESS
Success coaches, pick-up
artists, men’s rights activists.
Popular influencers are
preying on men and boys’
emotional isolation.
Daisy Schofield reports on
how we might intervene.
MAY-JUNE 2023
F
elix* remembers feeling lost when he
first got drawn into watching videos by
anti-feminist men’s rights influencers
on YouTube. ‘I’ve never had a girlfriend,’
he says, ‘never had any success with
women. Never known how to fix it.
Things like “being myself ” didn’t work.
So I wanted answers.’
For Felix, who is 27, those answers
arrived with the discovery of the ‘mano-
sphere’ – a collection of websites, blogs,
and online forums promoting masculin-
ity, misogyny and opposition to femi-
nism. Communities within this network
include men’s rights activists (MR As);
incels (short for ‘involuntary celibates’);
Men Going Their Own Way (male sepa-
ratists); ‘pick-up artists’; fathers’ rights
groups; and ‘passport bros’ – men from
the Global North angling for ‘tradi-
tional’ and ‘submissive’ wives from
Brazil, Ghana, the Philippines and other
Global South countries. The rise of
Andrew Tate, a British-American men’s
rights influencer and self-proclaimed
‘success coach’ who was arrested in
December 2022 as part of a human traf-
ficking and rape investigation, has once
Loneliness
again propelled misogynistic subcul-
tures into mainstream consciousness,
including among young boys. A recent
poll in the UK found that 21 per cent of
16 to 17-year-olds were more likely to
know who Tate was than Prime Minister
Rishi Sunak.1
A slippery slope
Tate’s followers are told that they can
accumulate vast wealth if they sign
up to his ‘academy’, Hustler’s Univer-
sity, which poses as a ‘get-rich-quick’
scheme. But beneath the surface, men
are reportedly indoctrinated into right-
wing beliefs. 2 Tate is just one in a long
line of influencers who’ve made a name
for themselves spreading extreme ideas
about masculinity on the internet.
For Felix, it was the British YouTuber
Hamza who initially lured him into this
online world with content that offered
an explanation for his loneliness. In
one video titled ‘Women are clueless
to male loneliness’, Hamza says: ‘It’s a
hard pill for men to swallow when they
realize just how many options women
have compared to themselves.’ He then
29
THE BIG STORY
describes a scenario in which ‘unattrac-
tive’ women on dating apps still get ‘50
to 100 times more matches than you
do’, adding that ‘men’s standards have
become so low. Why? Because loneliness
is at an all time high. ‘Felix ended up
abandoning dating altogether. ‘I stopped
giving a shit about chasing after women
and relationships,’ he says. ‘If that’s what
dating is meant to be, I don’t want it. I’d
rather be single and alone.’ Eventually,
he recognized that the movement wasn’t
actually doing what it professed to do –
make men feel more emotionally ful-
filled. Felix now describes himself as a
‘red pill sceptic’ who realized the impact
so-called MR A influencers were having
on his self-esteem and wellbeing. 3 ‘I
just sort of looked at myself one day
and wondered why I was letting some
person online make me feel bitter about
an entire gender,’ he says.
‘Aggrieved entitlement’
Not everyone, however, has come to this
realization. In more extreme cases, the
frustration Felix felt can tip over into real
life violence, as evidenced by the rise of
incel terrorism. In May 2014, 22-year-old
Elliot Rodger killed six people during a
stabbing and shooting spree in Isla Vista,
California. He was apparently motivated
by a deep-rooted loathing of women and
an intense frustration over his virgin-
ity. More recently, in August 2021, Jake
Davidson, also 22, carried out Britain’s
worst mass shooting in 11 years, killing
five people in Plymouth. Davidson was
found to have participated in an incel-
adjacent online chat forum. 4
It’s important to state that the loneli-
ness many MRAs talk of is serious; in
the US and the UK it is often described
as a ‘silent epidemic’. In a 2019 YouGov
poll, 18 per cent of men in the UK owned
up to not having a single close friend. 8
Meanwhile one in three stated that they
didn’t have a best friend. For women
these figures were lower at 12 and 24 per
cent respectively. This suggests that, on
average, men in the UK are leading more
solitary lives compared to women.
This bleak reality is exploited by
MRAs to lure in their followers. Andrew
Tate makes the point that ‘most women
do not know how lonely most men are…
Why do you think it’s all the men that are
killing themselves, and not women?’ It’s
true that men are taking their own lives
at a much higher rate than women do – in
fact, 77 per cent of suicides are men.9 But,
30
‘We get together with men to
discuss patriarchy, and plot
the ways of being disloyal to it,
resisting it and challenging it in
tandem with healing from it’
as Felix puts it, MRA influencers tend to
‘take things which are true and then twist
them into some weird black pill thing’. 3
Mark McGlashan, a co-author of Toxic
Masculinity: Men, Meaning, and Digital
Media says that statistics such as those
showing higher rates of suicides among
men are weaponized by MRA influenc-
ers to ‘make people question: are women
privileged? Is it because women aren’t
isolated? Are women treated better? Do
they have better access to mental health?’
By pushing men and boys to these con-
clusions, it obfuscates the ways in which
women are genuinely alienated from
public life, by misogyny and the isola-
tion of child-rearing, instead, ‘women are
made to take the blame for men’s suffer-
ing over systemic issues, such as general
social isolation or the cost of living crisis’.
Hostile minds
Misogynist influencers’ use of mental
health talking points is a well-estab-
lished part of their extended recruit-
ment strategy. ‘Recruiters sympathize
with recruits’ struggles, then scapegoat
women and girls and frame them as the
ones responsible for recruits’ loneliness
and mental health issues,’ explains Kath-
erine Elizabeth Furl, a professor in the
sociology department at The University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ‘Once
women and girls have been established
as ostensibly responsible for this suffer-
ing, recruiters then condone gendered
violence. Ultimately, this recruitment
process uses potential recruits’ mental
health struggles and loneliness to sanc-
tion attacks directed at women and girls,
with varying degrees of coordination
and intensity, on and offline. ‘Furl says
that, generally, those who get sucked
into these subcultures are experiencing
‘aggrieved entitlement’. This theory, con-
ceived of by sociologist Michael Kimmel,
refers to the sense that formerly taken-
for-granted privileges afforded to pri-
marily white men are being taken away.
‘Misogynist subcultures [are] attractive
insofar as they provide an avenue to
reassert patriarchal social structures,’
explains Furl. Figures like Andrew Tate
recentre young men, locating the source
of their despair in the fact that women
are no longer reliant on men – and then
vowing to fight against it. In this sense,
influencers like Tate and Hamza can be
seen as profiting from a feminist back-
lash. Despite the gender wage gap and
endemic sexual violence, it’s true that
women in most countries have gained
more freedoms over recent decades.
But the idea promoted here is that the
loss of male domination is the reason
for a crisis of masculinity, overlooking
the way in which the continuation of
patriarchy also brings chaos upon men’s
emotional worlds. As bell hooks writes in
The Will to Change, ‘Patriarchy demands
of all males that they engage in acts of
psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off
the emotional parts of themselves. If an
individual is not successful in emotion-
ally crippling himself, he can count on
patriarchal men to enact rituals of power
that will assault his self-esteem.’ We can
see this assault on men’s self-esteem in
MRA spaces which degrade men’s capac-
ity for feeling.
Honest conversations
Misogynistic subcultures will continue
to flourish in a society governed by
capitalist patriarchy, but there are inter-
ventions which can help undo some of
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

these harms. Owen Jones is the director
of Hope Not Hate, an advocacy group
which campaigns against racism and
fascism. He stresses the importance
of social connection, arguing that the
nature of men’s friendship must change.
‘The awkwardness around talking
about your feelings needs to go away,’
he says. ‘So asking, how do we utilize
those friendship groups, so we don’t
just turn up and it’s constant banter?
When someone says “I’m really lonely”,
there has to be a place for that.’ Schools
also have an important role to play in
holding ‘honest conversation about
sexism’ with students, he says. But as
Jones points out, it’s not just young men
but increasingly older men being drawn
into inceldom. Community-led initia-
tives working to combat loneliness are
vital in this regard, such as Men’s Sheds
– a service supporting older men who
want to get together, share and learn
new skills.
We must also change how we talk
about incels. Mark McGlashan points to
the unhelpful stereotypes which frame
all men drawn to these spaces as ‘lonely
weirdos’ or ‘sad virgins’, and the need
for mental health charities to under-
stand individual concerns. This means
asking ‘Why do they feel isolated? Is it
because they haven’t had a job in a long
time? Why haven’t they had a job in a
long time?’
Only when there are efforts to under-
stand the reasons for their turmoil will
we begin to see change. The main-
stream mental health movement identi-
fies the symptoms people are suffering
from – whether it’s loneliness, depres-
sion or anxiety – but consistently fails
‘The idea that the loss of male domination
is the reason for a crisis of masculinity
overlooks the way in which patriarchy
brings chaos upon men’s emotional worlds’
MAY-JUNE 2023
to address its causes. It has not reck-
oned with the idea, summarized by bell
hooks, that ‘Patriarchy is the single most
life-threatening social disease assaulting
the male body and spirit in our nation’.
The will to change
Thankfully, there are also a number
of grassroots organizations looking to
address the harms caused by patriarchy
head on. Among them is Healing Justice
London which runs ‘Reimagining Mas-
culinities’ – a monthly workshop for men
and transmasculine people. ‘[Patriarchy]
is so heavily entrenched in our culture
and our media,’ says Alex Augustin, the
group’s communication and media coor-
dinator who also co-leads the workshops.
‘There are all of these things influencing
and conditioning people into being loyal
to the status quo. ‘With Reimagining
Masculinities, we get together with men
to discuss patriarchy, and plot the ways
of being disloyal to it, resisting it and
challenging it in tandem with healing
from it,’ says Augustin. ‘We just need dif-
ferent ways to do masculinity. We need
different ways to protect people.’ There
are certain policy and community inter-
ventions which can be taken, but Augus-
tin stresses that they do not provide
a silver bullet. ‘We mustn’t absolve
the wider system change that needs to
happen.’
There must be an understanding of the
way that online networks pretend to fill
emotional voids, while presenting misog-
yny and violence as the antidote. Taking
lessons from bell hooks, we must realize
the way men are socialized to numb their
emotions, and begin to collectively find
ways to undo these harms. O
Loneliness
DAISY SCHOFIELD IS A FREELANCE WRITER FROM
LONDON.
* Not his real name
If you or someone you know is in need of crisis support
please seek help. In the UK and Ireland you can call
Samaritans on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or
jo@samaritans.ie. Other international helplines can be
found at befrienders.org
1 Nick Lowles (editor), ‘State of hate 2023: Rhetoric,
racism and resentment’, Hope Not Hate, 26 February
2023, nin.tl/hate 2 Caolán Magee, ‘Why Andrew
Tate’s Hustler’s University appeals to men like me’,
The Independent, 11 February 2023, nin.tl/tate
3 Derived from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix,
in mansophere circles, ‘the red pill’ refers to the
moment in which people ‘open their eyes’ to
uncomfortable truths. An extension of this is the
nihilistic, fatalistic ‘black pill’ philosophy also found
in the manosphere. 4 Quinn Myers, ‘Redditor says
she reported Plymouth Gunman to Reddit 6 days
before mass shooting’, MEL, 13 August 2021,
nin.tl/davidson 5 Andrew Lawrence, ‘The short life
of dating guru Kevin Samuels’, the Guardian, 13 May
2022, nin.tl/samuels ; Mahima Jain, ‘The silent
pandemic of violence against India’s women’, 5 July
2021, Article14, nin.tl/india ; Gurpreet Kaur, ‘Incel
extremism in India: A view from the Global South’,
The Global Network on Extremism and Technology,
23 August 2022, nin.tl/india-view 6 Marina Amador,
Cassandra Townsend and Clea Guastavino,
‘Prevalence of incel ideology in East Asia, 12 December
2021, nin.tl/east-asia 7 Becca Monaghan, ‘Disturbing
footage shows huge number of Andrew Tate fans
protest in Athens’, indy100, 18 January 2023,
nin.tl/athens ; Sana Noor Haq, ‘Andrew Tate’s
Muslim fanbase is growing. Some say he’s exploiting
Islam for internet popularity,’ CNN, 16 February 2023,
nin.tl/fanbase 8 Connor Ibbetson, ‘How many people
don’t have a best friend?’, YouGov, 25 September
2019, nin.tl/friend 9 Priory Group, ‘Why are suicides
so high amongst men?’, nin.tl/priory
31

Tooba Syed on how Pakistan’s gender
non-conforming community are fighting
renewed attacks on their age old existence
and customs – through queer kinship.
32
I
t was a chance meeting that led to Hina
immersing herself in the khawaja sira
community – Pakistan’s recognized
gender non-conforming identity. Hina,
a development worker based in Karachi,
met Shahzadi Roy, another khwaja sira,
at her workplace. Shahzadi was seeking
counsel on behalf of a friend who was
experiencing domestic violence.
Shahzadi sensed instantly that Hina
needed others like her around. She
reached out, and not long after, invited
Hina to come and meet her friends, and
live in her communal household. This
isn’t unusual in Pakistan’s trans com-
munity where, often in the absence of
acceptance from families and broader
society, queer people have a recorded
history of relying on networks of their
own choosing, known as guru-chelas, or
mentors and disciples.
Over time, Shahzadi became Hina’s
guru, a person she could go to for advice
and support at a time when Pakistan was
renegotiating its acceptance of age-old
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

Full speed ahead: Khawaja sira people celebrate
the passing of the Transgender Persons (Protection
of Rights) Act in Lahore on 29 December 2018.
The bill allows people to declare their gender
– male, female or third gender (non-binary)
– without expensive and painstaking medical
transition.
KM CHAUDARY/AP PHOTO/ALAMY
customs such as badhai, in which trans
people are paid to perform and offer cel-
ebrations at births and weddings.
Hina had organized with leftwing and
feminist organizations in the past, but
being invited into a gharana – self-organ-
ized housing for queer people who have
largely been excommunicated by family
members – offered her something differ-
ent. ‘Every evening I would return from
my university, my friend Manahil from
her events, and Shahzadi would ask us
about our day,’ she says. ‘It was a ritual,
nobody judged or advised, everyone just
listened. Even if I cried, they would just
sit patiently and let me cry.
‘I had never experienced this in the
feminist spaces I had been part of previ-
ously. It was there I realized that the lone-
liness I had been feeling has a lot to do
with my identity as a khawaja sira person.’
Nazia, a 34-year-old khawaja sira
from a small village near Chichawatni,
Punjab, knows something of this too;
she left her home when she was 14 to live
with her guru. ‘I would be homeless if it
‘When I was growing up,
I saw that my brothers grew
increasingly uncomfortable
with my presence in the house,
they stopped me from going
out so the neighbours would
not see me’
MAY-JUNE 2023
wasn’t for her,’ she explains. ‘I used to go
with her for badhai, but now the trend is
dying in cities.’
She now earns a living through
begging – an increasingly common fact
of life for urbanite khwaja siras – and
lives by herself in a one-room house in an
Islamabad slum.
I meet Nazia at her local grocery
store in Islamabad. Sitting on the shop’s
stairs, she recalls a visit to her biologi-
cal family one week before: ‘My sister
asked me to hide when her in-laws came
over. I understand their position, they
get embarrassed in front of their in-laws,
you know I am not like them. I came back
after two days. That is not my home.’
She explained the impact that dis-
crimination against her had also had on
her family. ‘When I was growing up, I
saw that my brothers grew increasingly
uncomfortable with my presence in the
house. They stopped me from going out
so the neighbours would not see me,’
she explains. ‘They became the laugh-
ing stock of the entire neighbourhood.
What choice did I have? When I left,
they were relieved.’
Moral panic
In South Asia, the khawaja sira com-
munity has a recorded history span-
ning over thousands of years as traders,
land owners, and patrons of the arts and
culture. Khawaja, a Persian word, refers
to a teacher in Sufi Islamic traditions.
Loneliness
The full term ‘khawaja sira’ emerged as
an honourable title given to gender non-
conforming people in the pre-colonial
Delhi Sultanate and Mughal period of the
Indian subcontinent.
But today, Hina and Nazia’s day-to-day
reality is a far cry from the historic rev-
erence shown to khawaja siras invited to
Mughal courts, many of whom wielded
substantial power or may have had posi-
tions of authority as court advisors, royal
teachers and custodians of the harems.
After the 1857 Indian rebellion, the
British increasingly realized the vulner-
ability of the colonial state and how little
they knew of the native populations. To
discipline the gendered and sexual diver-
sity of their subjects, they enacted the
Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, criminalizing
the gender non-conforming community
and referred to them as ‘eunuchs’, instead
of the many locally used terms. The
khawaja siras were labelled an ‘outrage to
morality’, perpetrators of an ‘organized
system of sodomitical prostitution’.
Several legal cases were launched
against the community from the 1850s to
1870s, with people accused of sodomy and
kidnapping. A moral panic was created
around the existence of khawaja siras and
they were forced to register themselves
with police. During this increased sur-
veillance, the community further solidi-
fied its own dialect, the Hijra Farsi, to
protect themselves.
The Criminal Tribes Act no longer
exists but the colonial ideas of morality
became embedded in South Asian society.
Hypervisible
Thanks to activism by the community,
in 2018 Pakistan passed the Transgen-
der Persons Act, which gave people basic
protection under law and a right to self
perceived gender identity. Yet violence
against trans people is still widespread.
In 2022, religious rightwing political
party Jamaat-i-Islami fuelled a backlash
against this legal protection, calling it
‘against Sharia’.
Thousands of posts filled with hate
and disinformation started appearing
on Twitter with the hashtags #NoToHo-
mosexuality and #NoToTransgenderAct
trending in Pakistan. Videos began circu-
lating in WhatsApp groups condemning
33
THE BIG STORY
‘Most of us khawaja siras are working class,
oppressed by our gender yet have resisted
through history, created our own structures
of families, created our own homes from
nothing and have our own language. There
are lessons that other movements need to
learn from us’
the Act as a ‘Western agenda for the pro-
motion of homosexuality’.
In September 2022, Jamaat-i-Islami
Senator Mushtaq Ahmed Khan filed a
petition in the Federal Shariat Court.1
Elite liberal women also joined in to
‘protect’ the country from one of its his-
torically marginalized communities
leading to an increase in violence. One of
the most well-known is Maria B, a fashion
designer who actively campaigns against
the khwaja sira community on her social
media accounts. 2
Violence against the khawaja sira
community increased and at least three
people were killed that September. Hina
says that this was a pivotal moment. ‘Inti-
mate partner violence is not uncommon
for khawaja sira community’, she says.
‘Families also often kill us in the name of
honour but last year after the backlash at
least two murderers confessed that they
were “doing jihad” and protecting the
society from the evil that is our existence.
This shook us. The state was silent and
we were being persecuted – there was a
feeling of betrayal.’
Hina explained that around this time
khawaja siras from far flung rural areas
started calling her in a panic. ‘Neighbours
were showing up in anger, landlords were
asking them to leave their homes. People
stopped giving money when they visited
homes for badhai celebrations. “Why is
this happening?” they asked.
‘We had to sit and explain to people
about the court proceedings and Senate
discussions,’ she says. ‘That’s when we
started organizing for the Moorat March.
34
I remember Naseebo, our field worker in
Baldia town said to me: “We did not break
when the British came after us so why
would we surrender today?” We cannot
be exterminated.’
As the campaign against queer life
began, resistance also picked up pace. On
20 November 2022, hundreds of khawaja
siras gathered outside Frere Hall in
Karachi for the Moorat March, demand-
ing their basic fundamental rights to
health, education, housing and safety.
Through song, dance, Sufi music and
chanting powerful slogans, the march
appeared to be an assertion of khawaja
sira existence spanning over centuries.
Hundreds of working-class khawaja
siras gathered to speak of their history,
and their present. Many spoke of being
driven by Ishq, a Sufi concept of divine
love that exists between them and Allah,
asserting their connection to the land.
‘Most of us khawaja siras are working
class, oppressed by our gender yet have
resisted through history, created our
own structures of families, created our
own homes from nothing and have our
own language. There are lessons that
other movements need to learn from us,’
says Hina.
After the Moorat March, many organ-
izers went on the run for months due to
death threats. Hina’s guru, Shahzadi, was
one of them. She was barred from board-
ing a flight to Dubai in January because of
her gender identity was marked as X on
her documents. 3
This new wave of transphobia in Paki-
stan has meant that modern gharanas
are now strictly gate-kept due to con-
tinuous threats of violence. Residents
are very cautious about who comes into
their homes. But small gains continue
to be made. Hina’s Guru Shahzadi was
invited by the Sindh government to grant
social welfare support to the khawaja sira
community.
The inspiring mutual aid of Pakistan’s
khawaja sira community – from housing
networks to community fundraising –
is a strong defence against increasing
social abandonment. ‘Times are hard but
we will never stop fighting,’ says Hina.
‘No-one will protect us but our collective
struggles. We will be here.’ O
TOOBA SYED IS A WRITER AND RESEARCHER
WORKING ON GENDER, LABOUR AND ECOLOGY IN
PAKISTAN. SHE IS ALSO ASSOCIATED WITH VARIOUS
SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS IN PAKISTAN. TOOBA
IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON HER FIRST BOOK ON
THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN PAKISTAN.
1 Haroon Janjua, ‘Trans rights in focus amid
Pakistan legal battle,’ Deutsche Welle, 25 September
2022, nin.tl/legal 2 Tribune, ‘“It is my duty to raise my
voice,” says Maria B after sharing prejudiced views on
transgender rights’, 27 September 2022, nin.tl/maria
3 Shazia Hasan, ‘Two transgenders stopped from
boarding flight due to ‘x’ gender, DAWN, 21 January
2023, nin.tl/stopped
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Loneliness

‘BEING RACIALIZED
IN PATRIARCHAL
CAPITALIST SETTINGS,
Husna Ara speaks to Dr Samara Linton about The Colour of Madness,
her co-edited anthology that brings to life the varied experiences of
alienation for migrants and people of colour in the UK.

THAT DOES SOMETHING

MAY-JUNE 2023
TO THE MIND’ 35
THE BIG STORY
S
amara Linton moved to the UK from
Jamaica at the age of seven, later
attending medical school at Cam-
bridge University. But her experience
with medical and university institutions
was not frictionless. Quickly she real-
ized her mental health was deteriorating,
but more so she found ‘a real disconnect’
between her experiences of distress, the
conversations she combed through with
friends and family, and what was being
taught about mental health and psychia-
try. Samara’s dual experiences of mental
distress and role as a healthcare practi-
tioner sparked her curiosity as to ‘how to
reconcile those worlds’, as she puts it.
Samara is an award-winning writer
and multidisciplinary content producer
who worked as a junior doctor in East
London before joining the BBC. Her work
includes The Colour of Madness: Mental
Health and Race in Technicolour (2022), co-
edited with Rianna Walcott and Diane
Abbott: The Authorised Biography (2020).
Samara currently works as a community
manager at POCIT (People of Colour in
Tech) and is completing an MA in Health
Humanities.
She spoke to New Internationalist about
how we might go beyond the clinical lan-
guage of symptom-diagnosis-treatment,
to better envision what social connection
could look like for marginalized people.
Pretty much any
kind of social
disadvantage
that you can
experience in
society has links
with a risk of
schizophrenia
and psychosis
36
How do you navigate the tension between
reliance on institutions – accessing
diagnoses, medications or therapies on
the UK’s National Health Service, for
instance – and wanting to liberate your-
self from them?
I can only speak from my personal expe-
rience. When it comes to navigating insti-
tutions – even though I am a Black, queer
woman – I am also university educated.
I’m a trained doctor and I have the lan-
guage and the kind of connections to
navigate institutions in a way that many
Black people and marginalized people
can’t. I know what I need to say in order
to get put on the waiting list for therapy,
and I know what resources are available
to me. So I can advocate for myself in a
way that my peers can’t.
Ultimately, I think it’s ridiculous that
people have to play a game in order to
access services, that they have to accept
a framework that maybe doesn’t resonate
with them. They have to use language
about mental health and illness that we
know is steeped in a cruel and exploitive
history.
The balance is between survival and
what we’re working towards. I will engage
with these institutions, as is needed, and
then do what I can to reduce other peo-
ple’s reliance’s on those situations. I take
antidepressants, I have utilized mental
health services. Are those things that I
want to continue doing long term? Prob-
ably not. I’m trying to be practical, but
you know, without losing the hope and
the vision that we need in order to keep
doing this kind of work.
I came across a really shocking statis-
tic which suggests that that Black and
brown people are significantly more
likely to experience psychosis the whiter
their community is. You’ve written about
Black men with schizophrenia, what are
your thoughts are on that?
In the Caribbean, the rates [of diagno-
sis] are quite similar to the rates among
the white population in the UK. It’s only
among the Black population in the UK,
US, Canada or the Netherlands that we
see these really high rates of psychosis.
It’s not that there’s something inherent
to the Black body that is psychotic, but
rather, there’s something about being
Black, being racialized in these white
majority patriarchal capitalist settings,
that does something to the mind. I say
‘the mind’ very loosely, because even this
dichotomy between mind and body is
quite unhelpful, because we also see high
rates of what we consider to be physical
illnesses and conditions.
There is something about being a mar-
ginalized entity in a society that func-
tions for profits, for prosperity in the
very reductionist monetary sense. Com-
munity gives you a sense of self, a sense
of history and groundedness – the more
isolated you are from that, the more you
may struggle.
Was there anything in your research
that showed why Black men were more
vulnerable to schizophrenia? And how
much legitimacy do you give to the
concept of schizophrenia?
In The Protest Psychosis, Jonathan Metzl
talks about how in the US the diagnosis
of schizophrenia shifted from being a
diagnosis for middle-aged white women,
who were seen as emotionally fragile, to
a diagnosis given to young Black men,
who are seen as aggressive. Particularly
in the context of the American civil
rights movement, the language of vio-
lence came to be more closely associated
with schizophrenia. During that time
diagnosis was shifting towards young
Black men who were considered agita-
tors and disruptors.
I really try to steer away from using
diagnostic labels, apart from as they
apply to myself. I’m happy to talk about
my experience of anxiety and depres-
sion because I feel like people understand
what I mean when I say that, and they’re
not heavily stigmatized labels. Whereas
when it comes to other people, I tend to
just either let them describe their experi-
ences as they wish to, or talk about dis-
tress more widely.
And you’re asking about why it’s so
high in those groups – there’s kind of an
argument to be made against the legiti-
macy of that diagnosis and whether or
not people are being misdiagnosed with
schizophrenia who maybe have other
illnesses or diagnoses, or whether they
don’t have an illness at all and, actually,
it’s just disruptive behaviour that’s being
diagnosed.
We know schizophrenia is linked with
higher rates of unemployment, lower
socioeconomic status, poor educational
background and migration status. Pretty
much any kind of social disadvantage
that you can experience in society has
links with a risk of schizophrenia and
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Loneliness

psychosis. So I think if you have that
coupled with the fact that young Black
men can be extremely vilified, but may
be at risk of misdiagnosis, then it comes
together to make a lot of sense.
The Colour of Madness anthology ties
together a variety of perspectives, stories
and testimonies from racialized people
and migrant communities on their alien-
ation. There’s a phrase in the book that I
loved – ‘technologies of past, present and
How do you think about intergenera-
tional connections without romanticiz-
ing them?
I can really empathize with that tension.
I think anyone who’s tried to do com-
munity building, knows how unromantic
community can be. Because ultimately,
people can be pretty shit sometimes.
These communities our elders built, that
they maintained, that they grew – some
of that was fruitful and life giving. What
down with people from different ethnici-
ties, backgrounds, ages and class statuses,
and for that that short moment have
access to a world that was so much bigger
than my own. Are there other parts of
that community that I absolutely love to
leave behind? Absolutely. Part of the work
is deciphering what is life giving? And
how can you bring it into your spaces?
Samara Linton’s website is samaralinton.com

future healing’ – which, to me, brought
together some contradictions around
yearning for community so well.
I know I have a tendency to roman-
ticize community. The Colour of Madness
touches on intergenerational connection
– something which I feel is sorely lacking
today. In the South Asian community, for
instance, elders are good at holding gath-
erings and doing stuff that isn’t called
‘mutual aid’, but is effectively such. But
many in that generation can also have
profoundly damaging ideas about the
mind and the body, and wellness.
can I take from that into the communities
that I wish to be a part of?
I feel that we’re reinventing the wheel
in some ways, because there’s so much
to be learned from our elders. There’s
so much to be learned from what’s come
before us. But because of hurt, and
because of rejection, and in some cases,
sadly, abuse, we reject all in order to start
something new.
I grew up in an evangelical Christian
community, and there are so many things
from that community that I think are
missing in my life right now. I would sit

Spring into Summer at ethicalshop

FAIRTRADE
ORGANIC
HANDMADE New season
RECYCLED New range
VEGAN
GOOD CAUSES

Hemp & Cotton Sun Hat

Natural (CHHN) GARDEN
Striped (CHHS)
£23.95 HOME
GIFTS
Hand Printed
Cotton Sarong Flowers Coggs FOOD
Coggs (CSGR)
Flowers (CSFB) CLOTHING
Fern (CSFC)
£22.95 PERSONAL
CARE
Fern

ethicalshop.org
 COUNTRY
PROFILE
O
n Christmas Day, thousands of
couples and families wander
through the various exhibits at
Abu Dhabi’s Louvre. Among the price-
less items on display is a vase designed
by Keith Haring and impressionist
paintings from the likes of Manet and
Renoir. It is an impressive feat, resulting
from the city council’s $6 billion invest-
ment in the arts.
Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United
Arab Emirates, has sought to establish
itself as the cultural hub of the country,
distinguishing it from Dubai, which
is famous for its shopping malls and
restaurants.
The UAE is a relatively new country,
formed as a federation of seven emir-
ates. Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Fujairah, Ajman,
Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain were the
founder members in 1971, with Ras al
38
Khaimah joining the following year.
Qatar and Bahrain took part in the coun-
try’s founding talks too, but subsequently
withdrew.
Previously, the seven sheikhdoms
were known as the Trucial States, allied to
the British under a series of 19th-century
protectoral treaties. The UAE’s popula-
UNITED ARAB
EMIRATES
tion has grown rapidly, from just 70,000
at its founding to 9.4 million today. With
the discovery of oil in the 1950s, the
country has undergone a massive eco-
nomic and industrial expansion.
QATAR
SAUDI
ARABIA
Millions of people from around the
world settle here, seeking work and the
prospect of increased prosperity afforded
by the UAE’s lack of taxation on income.
Aside from oil, the country’s economy is
largely tourism-based, with 7.8 million
migrants supporting its financial and
service sectors and making up the major-
ity of the country’s population. By con-
trast, Emirati citizens are only a small
minority and enjoy free education,
housing and healthcare.
Much of UAE’s rapid development
can be attributed to the exploitation
of migrant workers. Cases of with-
held wages, confiscated passports
and racial discrimination have been
well-documented.
Dubai’s Expo 2020, held a year late
due to Covid restrictions, saw a new
metro station built two hours from
PE
RS Ras Al-Khaimah
IA
N G Ajman
UL
F Sharjah
Dubai
Abu Al Ain
Dhabi
OMAN
0 200 Miles
0 300 Kilometres
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

downtown Dubai. Expo was advertised
as an opportunity for every country to
showcase its technological and cultural
offerings, attracting businesses and celeb-
rities alike. But workers, primarily from
India and other Global South countries,
had a different experience. In order to
secure work, many paid fees to recruit-
ers and became heavily indebted, even
though such practices are illegal in the
UAE. Upon arrival, wages were report-
edly not fully paid on time, and workers
faced racial discrimination.
The government has attempted to
rehabilitate its image in line with the sen-
sibilities of the Western expats who now
call it home. Dubai opened the Gulf’s
first metro system in 2009, complete with
women-only carriages and driverless
trains. Disabled people, known as ‘people
of determination’, are being granted
AT A GLANCE
LEADER: Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
ECONOMY: GNI per capita $41,770 (Saudi Arabia
$46,130; UK $49,420).
Monetary unit: Emirati dirham.
Main exports: crude and processed oil, natural
gas, aluminium, precious metals and gemstones.
The UAE is the seventh largest producer and the
sixth largest exporter of oil. Its largest trading
partner is China.
HEALTH: Under-5 mortality 6.4 per 1,000 live
births (Oman 11, UK 4). Maternal mortality 3 per
100,000 live births.There are 181 doctors per
100,000 residents. In Dubai and Abu Dhabi,
private hospitals vastly outnumber government-
run facilities.
ENVIRONMENT: Per capita CO2 emissions:
20.50 metric tonnes. 80% of the UAE is desert.
Air quality in the cities is poor due to airborne
sand and dust; smog and poor visibility are
usual. Fresh water is scarce and agriculture is
threatened by further desertification. The UAE
has pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions
by 2050 and will host the COP 28 UN Climate
Change conference in November 2023.
Clockwise from top left: a farmer cutting the leaves of a palm tree in Sharjah; the sorting of fruit in
Dubai; three women take a stroll on a Old Dubai pavement; construction workers take a break on a beach.
ABIE DAVIES/SHUTTERSTOCK; ALEXEY STIOP/SHUTTERSTOCK; ANDRZEJ LISOWSKI/SHUTTERSTOCK; RASTOS/SHUTTERSTOCK
MAY-JUNE 2023
increased protection from discrimination,
as well as exemption from public transport,
vehicle registration, parking, museum and
public park fees.
In 2022, the government announced
the country’s first ever corporation tax,
in line with neighbouring Qatar and
Saudi Arabia, with the rate beginning
at nine per cent on profits exceeding
$102,000 per year. However, individuals
can still gain income from employment,
real estate or equity investments without
paying any tax. Recent economic
reforms suggest the UAE is attempting
to shed its reputation as a country solely
dependent on oil revenues. But reform
of the political system – fashioned
to service the exploitation of natural
resources and overseas labour – remains
a distant prospect. O
IBTISAAM BABIKR
CULTURE: Emirati culture blends influences of
Arabian, Persian and Islamic cultures, along with
those of the Indian subcontinent and east Africa.
'Barjeel' wind towers are a defining feature of
Emirati architecture.
RELIGION: Muslim 76%, Christian 9%, other 15%.
Islam is the official religion. Freedom of worship
is outlined in the country’s constitution, on the
proviso that it does not conflict with the law or
moral guidance of the country.
LANGUAGES: Arabic (official). Other languages
commonly spoken are Hindi, Malayalam, Urdu,
Pashto, Tagalog and Persian.
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: 0.911, ranked
26th globally out of 191 countries (Saudi Arabia
0.875; Oman 0.816).
STAR RATINGS
INCOME DISTRIBUTION +,,,, ,,,,
While a lot of wealth exists in
the country, the majority of it is
concentrated in the hands of rich
Emiratis. The country’s economy is
heavily reliant on migrant workers,
who make up 88% of the population
and are poorly paid. The poverty rate,
defined as a daily income of less than
80 dirhams ($22) is 19.5%.
LITERACY ++++++++,
98.13% (95.8% for women, 92.56% for
men). Unlike Emirati citizens, children
of expats are not entitled to free
schooling. Private international schools
follow a British or US curriculum.
LIFE EXPECTANCY ++++ ++++,
Has climbed rapidly from 41 in 1950 to
79 today (Oman 75, UK, 82). Migrant
workers remain at risk of potentially
fatal workplace accidents.
POSITION OF WOMEN ++ ++,,,
,,,
Women technically enjoy the same
legal status, access to education and
inheritance rights as men. However,
some rights are dependent on the
approval of a male ‘guardian’. Women
require a court order to get a divorce,
and marital rape is not criminalized.
Dubai’s ruler reportedly kidnapped
and imprisoned his own daughter after
she attempted to leave the country.
FREEDOM +,,,, ,,,,
Freedom of expression is supposedly
guaranteed under the constitution,
but the press is subject to censorship
and the UAE has become a world
leader in electronic surveillance.
SEXUAL MINORITIES +,,,, ,,,,
Homosexuality is illegal and
punishable by death, though this
penalty is rarely carried out. Gay men
risk deportation and imprisonment,
but many Western LGBTQI+ expats
are attracted to the region and there
exists a quiet, underground, gay
nightlife scene.
POLITICS +,,,,,,,,
There are no democratic elections
in this autocracy made up of seven
monarchies. Political parties are not
allowed to exist and criticism of the
government attracts strict penalties.
+++++
+++++Excellent
++++,
++++,Good
+++,,
+++,,Fair
++,,,
++,,,Poor
+,,,,
,,,,Appalling
39
SOUTHERN
EXPOSURE Highlighting the work of artists and
photographers from the Majority World

A moment of relaxation between participants in the Miss Curvy and Beautiful Cameroon contest, captured by
Daniel Beloumou Olomo. After growing up in France, Olomo is now based in Yaoundé, the West African nation’s
capital. He travels frequently on assignments and has been working with the Agence France-Presse agency for
over four years.
For a personal project called ‘Human Deed’, which he says was inspired by US photojournalist James Nachtwey,
Olomo takes photos of people at work. ‘I wanted to focus on humans; how they interact with their home environment,’
he says. ‘Why did they choose their work, is it something they love; could they do it all their life?’
Instagram: @yannelbold

40 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

TOUGH
LOVE
As Scotland bids farewell
to first minister Nicola
Sturgeon, Conrad Landin
looks at the state of the
democracy she leaves behind.
MAY-JUNE 2023
‘M
y decision comes from a place of
duty and of love,’ Nicola Sturgeon
said as she announced her resig-
nation in February. ‘Tough love perhaps
– but love nevertheless, for my party and
above all for the country.’
It’s an intriguing formulation. ‘Tough
love’ most commonly refers to authori-
tarian parenting or withdrawing financial
support from a drug-addicted relative –
often amid a mess of contradictions and
pain. Neither could represent, generally
speaking, the kind of relationship with the
public that a liberal politician would con-
sider desirable. But with Sturgeon having
now handed over the reins to Humza
Yousaf, a political ally if not a competi-
tor in the realm of charisma, it sums up
pretty well the uneasy settlement that
the modern Scottish Government has
reached with its people.
After devolution from Westminster in
1999, the first two terms of Scotland’s new
government were overseen by a coalition
of Labour and the Liberal Democrats
– both parties which support Scotland
remaining within the United Kingdom.
Labour had hoped devolution would take
the wind out of the separatist Scottish
National Party’s (SNP) sails. But instead
the party continued to grow, first as a
more leftwing alternative to New Labour,
and latterly as the voice of an aggrieved
population forced to bear the conse-
quences of Conservative governments
and a decision to leave the European
Union. Scotland voted for neither.
Too much, too long
One of the many reasons Sturgeon gave
for her departure was that ‘no one indi-
vidual should be dominant in any system
for too long’. The biggest issues in Scot-
tish politics were now debated ‘not on
their own merits, but through the prism
of what I think and what people think
about me’, she astutely summarized.
But it was not always so. Sturgeon,
after all, was for many years just one
half of one of Britain’s strongest political
partnerships since that of New Labour
duo Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Like
Blair and Brown, she and her predeces-
sor Alex Salmond struck a deal over lead-
ership succession, and like them again,
their relationship eventually turned sour.
In 2021, Salmond alleged that Sturgeon
Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland
had conspired to trump up charges of
attempted rape, sexual assault and inde-
cent assault against him. He had been
acquitted of the 13 charges which went
to court, but repeatedly said he was ‘no
angel’ and admitted having ‘lapsed into a
sleepy cuddle’ with one of his accusers.1
Meanwhile, the SNP’s approach to gov-
ernance stayed largely the same. Scotland
voted against independence in 2014 but
– especially since Brexit – the SNP has
demanded the right to hold a second
referendum, something the Conserva-
tive government at Westminster will not
countenance. Yet Sturgeon has turned
what would logically be a display of weak-
ness into strength, leveraging the anger
of Scottish voters understandably furious
that the people cannot have their say.
More still, despite her party being in gov-
ernment since 2007, the independence
stalemate has allowed her to act as an
opposition party, blaming Westminster
for every failure of her own government.
It’s not a coincidence that her depar-
ture followed her inevitable capitulation
to demands to voice a ‘Plan B’ – that the
SNP would declare the next UK general
election a ‘de facto referendum’, and seek
independence negotiations if it achieves
a majority.
Crude ambitions
In spite of the SNP’s avowed opposition
to the UK Conservative government’s
austerity policies, the party has also facil-
itated significant public spending cuts
north of the border. Though the recent
leadership election was deeply fractious,
this barely figured at all, with Yousaf and
his rivals Kate Forbes and Ash Regan
signed up to manage – and not fight – the
cuts they continue to blame on West-
minster. Having entered a coalition with
the Scottish Greens, Sturgeon won plau-
dits for implementing a temporary rent
freeze – but landlords can still up the
price of housing with each new tenancy,
and full rent controls have been delayed
till at least 2025. 2
Even prior to the deal with the
Greens, Scotland had established some
of the most ambitious carbon reduction
targets in the world, and had now almost
reached its target of converting domes-
tic electricity consumption entirely to
renewable sources. 3 But this significant
41
FEATURE
success, especially relative to England,
is not the whole story. The northeast of
Scotland remains the centre of Britain’s
fossil fuel industry, with average emis-
sions per barrel of oil actually increasing
since 2018.4
What’s decreasing, however, is any
hope that skills and jobs could be trans-
ferred to green energy. Production in the
renewable energy sector is far less labour
intensive, and the jobs in wind farm fab-
rication have been offshored to cheaper
and non-unionized labour markets
abroad. 5 It is often lamented that the story
of the North Sea is one of missed oppor-
tunity: while Norway used its oil riches
to establish a multi-billion-dollar sover-
eign wealth fund which is now support-
ing renewables, the UK sold off the North
Sea patch by patch to the highest bidder.
Under the slogan ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’,
nationalists weaponized the extraction of
the country’s natural resources in a nar-
rative that offered Scotland the wealth
to go it alone. But now in government,
the SNP and Greens have hindered the
42
economic and environmental sustain-
ability of a future independent Scotland
by auctioning off renewable production
rights to multinational corporations.6
Tough love takes many forms.
Broken promises
In contrast to its avowed philosophy, the
SNP has actually moved power further
away from citizens, centralizing powers
once held on a regional level while cutting
funding for local government and failing
to make good on a promise to abolish
council tax.7 Sturgeon’s landmark pledge
to close the attainment gap between rich
and poor school pupils by 2026 has now
been abandoned. The First Minister has
defended her record by comparing the
state of Scotland’s schools and its NHS to
those in England and ‘Labour-run Wales’:
a discourse in which everything is viewed
through the prism of the national ques-
tion serves her well.
It is only in the past few months that
an issue has superseded independence in
Scottish political discourse. Earlier this
Nicola Sturgeon has been a central figure in
Scottish politics since devolution in 1999. As First
Minister since 2014, she has offered an image of
stability in contrast to Westminster chaos. Here she
is pictured on the campaign trail during the 2015
UK general election, in which the SNP wiped out
Scottish Labour and won all but three seats north
of the border.
ANDREW WILSON/ALAMY
year, the Scottish Parliament passed a bill
to allow transgender people to change the
legal gender appearing on official docu-
ments such as birth, death and marriage
certificates.
It follows a similar law in Ireland and
now-abandoned proposals from the UK
Conservative government to make the
same change in England. Opposition
has been focused around claims that
it would impact equality law, which is
‘reserved’ – determined at a UK level.
The Equality and Human Rights Com-
mission says certain spaces – such as
domestic violence refuges – can still
exclude transgender people where there
is a ‘legitimate’ reason for doing so.
Rape Crisis Scotland supports the Bill
and most refuges are already open to
transgender abuse survivors.
Nonetheless, under pressure from
Scottish Conservatives who opposed the
Bill, the UK government has effectively
vetoed it from passing into law. The Scot-
tish government is now set to challenge
this in the courts.
Was this debacle behind Sturgeon’s
departure? The London press and oppo-
nents of transgender rights certainly
think so, and the tone of the First Min-
ister’s resignation speech – compared
internationally to that of former New
Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, who com-
plained she no longer ‘had enough fuel in
the tank’ earlier this year, might suggest
this was one fight too many.
Sturgeon’s social progressivism has
served as convenient cover for a govern-
ment unlikely to achieve or even demand
its stated goal – independence – and
whose economic agenda resembles, at
best, soft neoliberalism. The SNP, in
apparent terror of either spending any
money or implementing real reforms,
has maintained the illusion of activity
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

All of these laws carry the advantage
of requiring precious little
additional spending or the hard
work of changing minds
- it is government on the cheap
by implementing several punitive laws in
the social sphere.
Some such measures, like the ban on
smacking children and tougher anti-fox
hunting laws, are applaudable. Others,
like minimum pricing of alcohol, are
paternalistic and have a disproportion-
ate impact on the poor. Having covered
these obvious bases, Scotland’s political
class – across the parties represented at
Holyrood – has now moved on to pro-
posing legislation of an authoritarian
bent: outdoor smoking, disposable vapes
and fireworks have all been proposed for
bans. Scottish lawmakers have already
implemented the hysterical ‘Finn’s
Law’, which prevents anyone accused
of harming a ‘service animal’, such as a
police dog, from pleading self-defence.
Tough love indeed.
All of these laws appeal to perceived
base instincts rather than requiring the
hard work of changing minds. In both
financial and political terms, it is govern-
ment on the cheap. But the gender recog-
nition reforms are different. They propose
significant change in an area where public
opinion is divided and entrenched. And
they put the Scottish government on a
collision course with Westminster which
threatens the devolution settlement
more than any row over independence.
Gender recognition, after all, is devolved
– whereas the constitution is not.
Power couple
Yet much as Sturgeon has faced signifi-
cant pressure over the gender recogni-
tion issue, it seems unlikely that this is
the cause of her departure.8 Though the
attention from London-based and inter-
national media may be considerably
bigger this time, Sturgeon is well used
to vitriolic scrutiny. And having made
gender recognition a defining issue of
MAY-JUNE 2023
her premiership, the notion of Sturgeon
leaving it in the hands of a successor
seems dubious.
A more convincing explanation for her
sudden departure lies within two issues
closely connected to the SNP’s raison
d’être, and its fundamental inability to
make good on it. Firstly, the fast evapora-
tion of Sturgeon’s ‘Plan B’ – the de facto
referendum strategy – which even loyal-
ists of the outgoing First Minister have
suggested is unwise. With the proposal
due to go before a now postponed special
party conference in March, the prospect
of a defeat loomed large.
Secondly, mystery surrounds the
fate of SNP party funds ring-fenced for
a fresh independence campaign. Party
accounts showed £666,953 had been
raised for this purpose between 2017 and
2020, but despite no referendum cam-
paign taking place, the party only had
£97,000 in the bank at the end of 2019.
The new party treasurer says a match-
ing amount would be spent on referen-
dum campaigning, but police have now
launched an investigation.
Sturgeon’s role in this affair is not
limited to her position as leader. Her
husband, Peter Murrell – also the SNP’s
chief executive – loaned the party
£107,620 in 2021 ‘to assist with cash flow
after the Holyrood election’.9 Sturgeon’s
personal integrity and the pitfalls of
a wife and husband team occupying a
party’s two top positions already faced
scrutiny during the fallout from the
Salmond scandal, when Murrell was
questioned by the parliamentary inquiry
into the Scottish government’s handling
of harassment allegations.10
After her resignation, the relationship
came into the spotlight once again in
March when Murrell was forced to step
down after the SNP denied press reports
Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland
of falling membership figures – which
were in fact accurate. For Sturgeon, the
prospect of a repeat performance of
the personal scrutiny of the Salmond
inquiry, this time over party funds and
all while facing a political defeat on
the independence plan, may well have
seemed like a bullet worth dodging.
Sorting out the party finances will
probably be the easiest task for the new
leader, but securing a referendum cam-
paign on which to spend reserved funds
is still a distant prospect. Yousaf had said
he is not wedded to a de facto referen-
dum, instead suggesting regional citizens’
assemblies could be utilized to come up
with solutions.
Sturgeon’s ‘tough love’ will be received
with the usual pain of the toughee – in
this case a party and a country which has
grown used to a charismatic leader who
provided an image of stability as the UK
government rattles through successive
crises and leaders. But the quality of the
candidates to succeed her showed that
she stifled any real talent in her party, in
pursuit of unity and compliance.
At the same time, her tenure has
seen the re-shaping of Scottish politics
around a single objective – independence
– which her party has shown itself to be
incapable of achieving. Her apparent rec-
ognition that this is not a desirable state
of affairs for a democracy is welcome, but
how late it is, how late. O
CONRAD LANDIN IS A NEW INTERNATIONALIST
CO-EDITOR. HE PREVIOUSLY WORKED IN THE
SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT AS SCOTLAND EDITOR
OF THE MORNING STAR AND THEN AS HEAD OF
COMMUNICATIONS FOR SCOTTISH LABOUR.
1 Conrad Landin, ‘Holyrood awakening’, TLS,
15 October 2021, nin.tl/SalmondSturgeon 2 ‘Update
on the rent freeze and eviction ban’, Living Rent,
3 March 2023, nin.tl/RentFreeze 3 ‘Scotland
generates record amount of renewable electricity’,
BBC News, 13 October 2022, bbc.in/3nbCuo9
4 ‘Regulator warns North Sea production emissions
could rise’, BBC News, 21 September 2022,
bbc.in/3lpFz3r 5 See ‘Green jobs – puffery and
promise’, NI 534, nin.tl/GreenJobs 6 Jonathon Shafi,
’Bought and Sold for Corporate Gold’, Conter, 29
August 2022, nin.tl/Shafi 7 Scottish Labour’s
analysis showed councils’ funding settlements had
been reduced as much as four times the rate of the
Scottish Government’s own budget: ‘Scottish
Labour leader accuses SNP of quadrupling
Westminster austerity’, The Northern Echo, 29
November 2018, nin.tl/CouncilCuts 8 ‘Isla Bryson:
Transgender rapist jailed for eight years’, BBC News,
28 February 2023, bbc.in/3G3ITIH 9 ‘Nicola
Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell gave £100,000
loan to SNP’, BBC News, 14 December 2022,
bbc.in/40hTcAA 10 ‘SNP chief denies “plotting
downfall” of Alex Salmond’, BBC News, 8 December
2020, https://bbc.in/3naABIg
43
 C el e

g
brat

t in
ing 5

ra
leb
0 Year

Ce
s C el e
brat

0Y
ing

g5
in
at
br

50 Years Celebrating 50 Years Celebrating 50

Celebrating 50 Years Celebrating 50 Years Ce le
The gift
that
keeps
on giving
Over the past 50 years we’ve taken radical issues
mainstream.
A monthly donation will help get our magazine
to schools, campaign groups and activists – so we
can reach a new generation of readers.
Are you in? Head to newint.org/give
or email give@newint.org

#giveNI
VIEW FROM also reiterates a life sentence for homo-
sexual activities.
Museveni’s government is not starting

AFRICA
Choose your scapegoat
Every faltering government scours
society for something it can use to stem
the growing tide of mistrust among its
citizens, and take the heat off its own fail-
ings. This search often takes rulers to the
doors of the most marginalized.
In Uganda, the queer community
has been the target of political violence
whenever the government has attracted
significant public outrage due to the cor-
ruption, nepotism and general incompe-
tence within its ranks. President Yoweri
Museveni’s government – which has now
been in power for 37 years – has repeat-
edly stoked fears of ‘homosexuality’ and
promoted the deluded nationalistic call
to protect ‘African values’ from sexual
diversity. The state rallies the people, to
whom it has denied reliable, basic public
services and freedoms to find their power
in othering their fellow citizens.
In March, Uganda’s parliament lit the
fires once again by passing a new anti-
gay law. Gay sex is already outlawed
in Uganda’s colonially inherited penal
code but this new legislation further
violates the LGBTQI+ population’s
rights to freedom of expression and
association, privacy, equality and non-
discrimination. It bans identifying as
LGBTQI+ and could punish anyone seen
to be 'promoting' gay identity. The law
from scratch. The instigation of collective
fear and anger towards a minority group
most often builds on centuries of oppres-
sion and prejudice against that commu-
nity. Political leaders purposefully deploy
this prejudice for their own survival – if
society takes the bait.
It’s a tactic also used by newer gov-
ernments looking to consolidate power.
We need only need look to Kenya for an
example.
In early March the Supreme Court of
Kenya ruled that LGBTQI+ rights organi-
zations could be registered with the
words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ in their name
as the constitution protects anyone from
discrimination. However, conservative
groups went straight to work on a dis-
information campaign and President
William Ruto was quick to clutch onto the
tired, old rhetoric that ‘our culture and
religion does not allow same-sex mar-
riages’, despite the ruling being a ques-
tion of freedom of association.
Elsewhere on the continent, similar
tactics have been used to scapegoat
Black African migrants in Tunisia. On
21 February, during a National Security
Council meeting, the already unpopular
President Kais Saied said that ‘hordes of
irregular migrants from sub-Saharan
Africa’ had come to Tunisia, ‘with all the
violence, crime and unacceptable prac-
tices that entails’.1
The estimated 21,000 Black African
migrants in the country are facing a
violent crackdown by police and ordi-
nary people who have been emboldened
by the president’s remarks. 2 The African
Union issued a statement condemning
the racist rhetoric while Saied denied he
was racist – even as many West African
countries chartered flights to evacuate
their nationals.
Tunisia’s treatment of Black migrants
aligns with EU countries’ responses to
people crossing the Mediterranean –
many of whom are escaping some of the
harshest impacts of conflict and climate
change.
The intolerance that leaders are
tapping into during a time of crisis
demands that we stand in solidarity with
the marginalized. We must organize and
challenge our politicians whenever they
pick a section of the population to dehu-
manize. Solidarity is essential. O
ROSEBELL KAGUMIRE IS A PAN-AFRICAN FEMINIST
WRITER AND ACTIVIST WITH EXPERTISE IN AFRICAN
WOMEN’S LIBERATION, RACIAL AND GENDER
EQUALITY, PEACE AND SECURITY.
1 Amnesty International, ‘Tunisia: President’s racist
speech...’, 10 March 2023, nin.tl/tunisia 2 ACAPS,
‘Tunisia mixed migration – latest developments’,
8 March 2023, nin.tl/migration

MAY-JUNE 2023 45
FEATURE
 Rap in Iran

‘I AM NOT
GOING TO
STAY QUIET’
Rap is a genre intertwined with politics,
but the political courage of Iran’s rappers
takes some beating, Lorraine Mallinder finds.

W
hen rapper Toomaj Salehi was
imprisoned in 2021 for criticising
Iran’s hardline Islamic regime in
his lyrics, he came out fighting, record-
ing a video for a blistering new track just
outside the central prison of Esfahan,
where he’d been detained for eight days.
Set against a foreboding synth intro
layered with samples of distant screams
and the sound of advancing shock troops,
‘Bazmandeh’ (Survivor) rang like a battle
cry: ‘Give it to me, Iran is mine,’ he
demanded. ‘It’s completely destroyed. I
will build it myself.’
Just over a year later, Salehi was back
in prison, charged with ‘corruption on
earth’ and ‘war against God’. By this
point, the 32-year-old welder had shot to
fame, his music the soundtrack to a mass
uprising sparked by the death in custody
of Jîna (Mahsa) Amini, a young Kurdish
woman detained for wearing her head-
scarf in a way that showed hair.
Salehi’s unforgiving lyrics nailed the
mood of a public tired of forgiving – ‘Yes,
yes, sir,’ he rapped with mock deference
on ‘Normaleh’ (Normal), ‘some sleep in
tombs, while others own 10 high-rises’.
In ‘Soorakh moosh’ (Mousehole), he con-
demned elites ignoring the nation’s suf-
fering out of fear or self-interest, telling
them ‘you’re the hand of the tyrant,
you’re a criminal too’.
The sound of the devil
In Iran, rap is the language of protest,
banned by the authorities who view it
as the sound of Satan. Over the past two
decades its evolution has reflected polit-
ical developments – from the reform-
ism of Mohammad Khatami, who
served two terms as president to 2005,
to iron-fist incumbent Ebrahim Raisi,
also known as The Butcher of Tehran
for his role in the mass execution of
political prisoners in the late 1980s.
Artists like Salehi channel a growing
anger with the regime, passed down
through generations. ‘We’ve had four
decades of trial and error,’ says Nahid
Siamdoust, author of Soundtrack of the
Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran.
‘Ultimately the idea that the regime must
be brought down gained traction in the
past couple of years, once all avenues for
reform were shut down.’
Activist Arash Shahrokhi, 29, remem-
bers the first time he heard rap in his
home city of Tehran. It was around 15
years ago, when the genre was really
starting to take off. Fans with an inter-
net connection would download songs
and burn them onto CDs. A classmate
got him to listen to an unnamed song
by Pishro, one of the rappers in the so-
called ‘021 bax’ – the 021 gang, a col-
lective of artists named after Tehran’s
postcode. The track rocked his world.
Up until then, he’d only listened to ‘LA

MAY-JUNE 2023 47
FEATURE
Previous page top: Rapper Hichkas is surrounded
by people wearing photos of victims of the regime,
as he speaks at a protest to commemorate ‘Bloody
November’ in The Hague, the Netherlands, on
19 November 2022.
SOPA IMAGES LIMITED/ALAMY
Previous page bottom: A supporter of Mir
Hossein Mousavi, dances to hip-hop music on
a Tehran street, at a night-time rally just days
before the 2009 elections.
AP PHOTO/BEN CURTIS/ALAMY
This page: A protester in solidarity with former
prisoner Armita Abbasi.
MATTEO NARDONE/PACIFIC PRESS/SIPA US/ALAMY
music’, songs by artists exiled in the US
– old-timers like Ebi and younger pop
stars like Shadmehr Aghili.
‘Rappers are the intellectuals of this era,’
says Shahrokhi, a member of London-
based activist group United4Mahsa.
Ever since the Islamic Revolution of
1979, the regime has sought to eliminate
all threats to its supremacy, carrying
out mass executions of prisoners during
the ‘bloody decade’ between 1981 and
1989, and targeting dissidents and intel-
lectuals inside and outside the country
in the so-called Chain Murders of the
1980s and 1990s. ‘Intellectuals, poets
and writers were killed,’ Shahrokhi
says. ‘Young people started looking to
rappers for inspiration.’
Never apolitical
Back in the mid-2000s, in the wake of
the Khatami era, Iran was relatively
open. Some of the biggest names in
so-called ‘party rap’ were emerging,
including Amir Tataloo, who featured
on 2006 break-up track ‘Boro az pishe
man’ (Get away from me), and Zedbazi,
whose 2007 song ‘Tabestoon kootahe’
48
(Summer is short), a poignant paean to
sex and drugs on the beach, became an
anthem for a generation.
‘Iranian youths… had not heard such
messages before,’ says Hesam Garshasbi,
music producer, journalist and founder
of London-based Vaak Records. ‘It
should be noted that in a place like Iran
there is no issue that is separate from
politics. This means that when you talk
about parties, fashion, alcohol, friend-
ships, or other issues, all of these can be
political. Even in seemingly apolitical
rap songs, there is often a hidden type
of protest and a reflection of the confu-
sion and challenges faced by the younger
generation.’
In parallel, street rap was emerging,
led by Hichkas – translated as ‘Nobody’
– a lead figure of the ‘021 bax’. In 2006,
he released Jangal-e asfalt (Asphalt Jungle)
considered the country’s first hip-hop
album, fusing hip-hop rhythms with
classical Iranian music. It featured the hit
track ‘Ekhtelaf ’ (Disparity), summing up
the dog-eat-dog world of the capital city
with the immortal lyrics: ‘This is Tehran/
A city that tempts you till it saps your
soul/ And makes you see you were always
meant to be/ Nothing more than dirt’.
In the wake of the 11 September 2001
attacks on the US and George W Bush’s
War on Terror, which saw the invasion of
Afghanistan and Iraq, the regime in Iran
was perceived as less of a threat than the
hostile outside world. Unlike wannabe
US gangsta rappers, Hichkas cultivated
a notably homegrown style, his garb
no different to regular guys on the city
streets, his themes drawn from every-
day life. His music and his profanity-free
lyrics alluded to national pride and an
old-fashioned code of honour.
In the video for 2008’s (A bunch of
soldiers) the rapper stands with his gang,
rapping about solidarity and survival in
the mean streets of Tehran. ‘The flag is
flying high,’ he raps, a couple of Iranian
flags flapping in the wind. He is ready to
lay down his life for ‘God, nation, family
and friends’. He and his band of brothers
are standing alone – on the outside, but
not overtly in opposition to the regime.
But the pressure was mounting.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in power,
his rule marked by ideological zeal,
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

‘In a place like populist agitation and crippling sanc-
tions. Rapper Bahram Nouraei, now
Iran there is exiled in Sweden, voiced the growing dis-
satisfaction of young Iranians buckling
no issue that is under the repression in his 2007 breakout
hit ‘Nameyee be rayees jomhoor’ (A letter
separate from to the president) – ‘By God, the Qur’an on
your shelf needs dusting. It’s only empty
politics. Even slogans that you spout’.
Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009
in seemingly ignited a storm of protest. Millions of Ira-
nians who had placed their faith in the
apolitical rap ballot box took to the streets for months
amidst claims of electoral fraud. The
songs, there is elite Revolutionary Guard and their vol-
untary force, known as the Basij, fired
often a hidden into the crowds, killing dozens. By 2010,
Hichkas had fled the country, dropping
type of protest’ the anthemic ‘Yeh ruz-e khub miyad’ (A
good day will come) as his flight took off
from Mehrabad Airport. The lyrics were
hopeful: ‘After all this rain of blood /
Finally, a rainbow will emerge’. According
to testimony in Siamdoust’s Soundtrack of
the Revolution, Hichkas had been tacitly
nudged to leave by the regime.
Heavy costs
‘The state kills artists softly,’ says Shah-
rokhi. ‘They encourage artists to leave
the country, hoping they get discon-
nected from Iranian society.’ In exile,
however, Hichkas has remained on the
playlists of his compatriots, with songs
like ‘Dastasho mosht karde’ (He clenched
his fist), released after ‘Bloody November’
in 2019. In less than a fortnight, security
forces had shot dead as many as 1,500
people.1 Provoked by a sudden tripling
of petrol prices, the protests sparked the
calls for regime change that have since
‘The state kills grown louder. ‘They have caged the whole
country,’ rapped Hichkas. ‘And they say
artists softly - there are no prisoners here.’
The recent uprising has seen more
they encourage than 500 killed, with around 20,000
arrested, according to rights groups. 2
artists to leave ‘Hichkas and Toomaj are on the Insta-
gram pages of so many of the young
the country, kids who have been arrested. There is a
direct link between the youth and these
hoping they get kinds of rappers,’ says Nahayat Tizhoosh,
a journalist with Canada’s CBC, who
disconnected from interviewed Salehi shortly before he was
arrested. Armita Abbasi, a 20-year-old
Iranian society’ from Karaj, who became a new symbol of
MAY-JUNE 2023
Rap in Iran
the protest movement after being brutally
raped in prison, is a case in point. Released
in February, she took to Instagram, lip-
synching Hichkas’s ‘Chera nemimiri’
(Why don’t you die?), a song about the
regime’s brutal death cult.
Speaking truth to power from the
inside comes at a heavy cost. It’s some-
thing that Salehi, who comes from a
family of political activists, was only
too aware of, says German MP Ye-One
Rhie, who is acting as his sponsor. At the
time of writing, Salehi had been in soli-
tary confinement for four months, his
wounds from torture untreated, at risk
of losing his sight in one eye. ‘He was
beaten so badly, it was life-threatening,’
says Rhie. ‘They know he is a force to be
reckoned with.’
Also behind bars is Kurdish rapper
Saman Yasin, 27, who is currently being
held in Karaj, west of Tehran. Originally
from Kermanshah, Yasin won an appeal
against his death sentence in December,
shortly after trying to take his own life.
Carlos Kasper, his sponsor in the German
parliament, told New Internationalist that
Yasin is having trouble breathing as a
result of injuries sustained under torture.
‘Not only is he a strong voice against the
repression of the Iranian Regime, he
also highlights the perspective of young
Kurdish Iranians. This is especially
notable as Jîna Mahsa Amini was Kurdish
as well,’ says Kasper. In the video for his
song ‘Haji’, Yasin is arrested and led away
from his wife and child in handcuffs, a
harrowing omen of what would follow –
‘They treat me like an animal,’ he rapped.
‘I am not going to stay quiet.’
‘Rap is the best platform. You can
say what you feel without any filter. The
regime hates that,’ says Shahrokhi.
‘It’s the rawest form of music.’ O
LORRAINE MALLINDER IS A LONDON-BASED
INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST WHO WRITES ON
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS.
1 Reuters staff, ‘Special Report: Iran’s leader ordered
crackdown on unrest – ‘Do whatever it takes to end
it’, Reuters, 23 December 2019, nin.tl/iran 2 Human
Rights Activist News Agency, ‘A comprehensive
report of 82 days of nationwide protests in Iran...’,
December 2023, nin.tl/3LZMuLm
49
 CLIMATE
Gain the skills, knowledge and
MASTERS
DEGREES
networks to help create a zero
carbon world.

SOLUTIONS
Practical academic courses from
leading experts in behaviour
change, food, ecology, energy,
buildings, and architecture.

MSc Sustainability and Adaptation

MSc Sustainability in Energy Provision
and Demand Management
MSc Green Building
MSc Sustainability and Behaviour Change
MSc Sustainable Food and Natural Resources
MSc Sustainability and Ecology
MArch Sustainable Architecture

DISTANCE
LEARNING
AND
PART-TIME
OPTIONS AVAILABLE
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT

www.cat.org.uk | study@cat.org.uk | +44 (0) 1654 705953

@centre_alt_tech Centre for Alternative Technology centreforalternativetechnology
 TEMPERATURE
CHECK
COAL IN A HOLE
Not long ago, the Adani Group seemed
unstoppable. The Indian conglomerate –
whose activities span power generation,
mining and major infrastructure – had
been growing rapidly, reaching $260
billion in market value in 2022. The com-
pany’s founder, Gautam Adani, was the
world’s third richest man and a key ally of
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Then in January 2023, the invest-
ment firm Hindenburg Research released
a report, accusing the Adani Group of
large-scale stock market manipula-
tion and accounting fraud.1 As details
emerged, Adani’s share price tumbled.
As of March 2023, $150 billion has been
wiped off the company’s value, and Mr
Adani himself has slid from third to thir-
tieth in the global rich list. 2
A large part of the Adani Group’s
business is in coal, and the conglomer-
ate has long been under fire from local
communities and climate activists for its
aggressive plans to expand its mining,
infrastructure and coal-burning opera-
tions. Now, some of the Group’s most
notorious coal projects may be hanging
in the balance. A $850 million deal
to buy coal company DB Power has
already been shelved. 3 Could Adani’s
MAY-JUNE 2023
financial woes be good news for people
and planet?
After major investors including
Barclays, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank
expressed concerns about loans they’d
made to Adani, the conglomerate repaid
at least $1.1 billion of those debts in full.4
Campaigners are wondering if this leaves
Adani with less cash available for its own
expansion plans.
Since 2010, opponents of Adani’s
proposed Pench coal power station
near Chhindwara, India have faced vio-
lence and intimidation, allegedly from
agents linked to Adani. 5 Farmers forced
off their land have reoccupied the area
to grow crops again. Little of the plant
has actually been built and now, accord-
ing to the research group Adani Watch,
the project has vanished from the Adani
Power website.
Over in Australia, Indigenous tradi-
tional owners and their allies had already
succeeded in driving away international
investors from Adani’s notorious Carmi-
chael mega-mine, forcing the Group to
fund the project by itself. The mine was
originally planned to export 60 million
tonnes of coal per year; according to
climate campaigners at the Sunrise Project,
Words – Danny Chivers
An activist holds a placard featuring Gautam Adani
during a protest in Delhi, India on 6 February 2023.
ADNAN ABIDI/REUTERS/ALAMY
it only produced 5.5 million tonnes in
2022 and Adani executives are now down-
playing the rate of future expansion.
According to Coedie McAvoy (aka
Gurridyula Gaba Wunggu), cultural cus-
todian for the Wangan and Jagalingou
people who continue to oppose the pres-
ence of the Carmichael mine on their
lands: ‘Our people have said No to Adani
from the beginning and we’ve been
warning politicians and investors that it
is a dirty and destructive company with
no respect for our human rights.
‘Now that Hindenburg has accused
Adani of “the biggest con in corporate
history”, investors need to wake up, stop
funding the destruction of our country.’6
His words are echoed by Muneshwar Singh
Porte from Chhattisgarh, India. Porte told
me how, despite the Hindenburg revela-
tions, Barclays is continuing to finance
Adani’s coal expansion plans in the
region, which threaten 13 villages with
destruction: ‘My appeal is for the bank to
stop financing Adani. This would end the
destruction we are currently facing, and
ensure our water, lands and forests are
safe and protected.’
Campaigners are clear: Adani’s trou-
bles may be a moment of opportunity, but
to see more coal projects cancelled we’ll
need to stand in solidarity with the resist-
ing communities, and keep piling the
pressure onto international investors. O
How you can help:
1. Join #StopAdani stopadani.com
2. Send solidarity messages to frontline
groups in India via southasiasolidarity.org/
contact-us
3. Tell the London Science Museum to
#DropAdani sponsorship at nin.tl/museaum
1 ABC News, ‘Adani Group...’, Jan 2023, nin.tl/abc
2 Anviksha Patel, ‘Adani stocks...’, MarketWatch, Feb
2023, nin.tl/markets 3 The Economic Times, ‘Rs
7,017-crore...’, Feb 2023, nin.tl/db 4 Stephen Morris
and others, ‘Adani faced...’, Financial Times, Feb
2023, nin.tl/call 5 Ravi Nair, ‘Pench Part 1…’, Adani
Watch, July 2021, nin.tl/assault 6 Jonathan Barrett,
‘Adani’s Queensland…’, the Guardian, Jan 2023,
nin.tl/con
51
THE INTERVIEW
Vandana Shiva
The Indian physicist and veteran food sovereignty activist
speaks to Amy Hall about a lifetime of keeping smiling while
fighting the lies of the ‘poison cartel’.
You’re a long-standing opponent of
GMO crops. Given the current food
crises around the world, particularly
with the war on Ukraine, are you con-
cerned that there will be a renewed
support for them?
I call the group of companies that con-
tinue to make chemicals – and make
GMOs for selling more chemicals – ‘the
poison cartel’. They are Bayer, which
bought Monsanto, Syngenta which is
owned by ChemChina, and Dow and
DuPont which merged then split into
three companies, including Corteva.
They use every opportunity to push
GMOs. They’ve tried so hard to use the
Ukraine war to roll back Europe’s farm-
to-fork strategy [which includes targets
to reduce the use of chemicals in agri-
culture]. It’s purely propaganda because
genetic engineering is not a yield-
increasing technology; the yield comes
from the whole plant. GMOs are totally
irrelevant to increasing yield.
You’ve talked a lot about the violence of
agriculture and the ‘war’ that’s happen-
ing around it. Where are the main fronts
of this war currently?
One main area is the GMOs of the next
generation – gene-edited crops which
52
are being pushed for deregulation. For a
while you had UK prime minister Boris
Johnson who said he wanted to ‘liberate
the GMO’. His first task was not to liber-
ate the people; it was to liberate the GMO.
There’s a [Genetic Technology – Preci-
sion Breeding] Bill in the UK [parliament]
which is trying to deregulate GMOs.
The industry has tried so hard to
make it look like I’m saying something
trivial when I talk about violence. I
studied the Green Revolution, because
the state of Punjab had erupted in vio-
lence – 15,000 people were killed. Bhopal’s
pesticide plant leaked, thousands were
killed and thousands are dying still.
These chemicals kill and where did we
get them? Every chemical in agriculture
has its origins in war – and its conse-
quences are warlike against the Earth
and people.
In 2020 and 2021 the massive farmer
protests in India made international
headlines. How are you feeling about the
future for Indian farmers now?
The farmers stopped their protest
because the government made commit-
ments. Those commitments have not
been fulfilled and the farmers are saying
‘if you continue to lie to us and cheat us,
we will protest again’. India, age after
age, has risen to defend the right to farm.
Every fourth farmer in the world is in
India and there’s an attempt to grab this
huge market. But there’s definitely resist-
ance from the farmers – they will not be
pushed to extinction.
You’ve faced a lot of pushback from pow-
erful people, organizations and corpora-
tions. How do you deal with that?
Well, I wouldn’t call it pushback because
that means they would have to push me
back into something [she laughs]. It’s
propaganda attacks.
If someone did a serious critique, I
would really want to engage with it. I
don’t think they’ve ever led to a cancel-
lation of any of my talks but I remember
once I went to a university in Wisconsin
and there was huge security. I said to the
president: ‘Are you having student move-
ments? Are there protests going on?’ He
said: ‘There have been huge attacks on us
for inviting you and they have announced
they will disrupt your lecture. So, the
security is to protect you.’
People say: ‘She lies about farmers’ sui-
cides.’ No, those figures are government
figures. What I do is show the reasons
farmers got into debt – the high-cost
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
DRONA THE INTERVIEW

‘Every fourth farmer of the world is in India

and there’s an attempt to grab this huge market.
But there’s definitely resistance from the farmers
- they will not be pushed to extinction’

MAY-JUNE 2023 53
THE INTERVIEW
chemicals. The names of the farmers are
from the government; the linkage is what
my work is about.
They’ll say: ‘Oh she lies about ecologi-
cal agriculture feeding the world.’ At the
end of the day, that’s the only way we will
be able to feed the world.
They just cook up a narrative. I guess
because of my deep passion and love
for truth I take all these untruths, lies
and falsehood with a bit of a smile and
I keep on.
What are the main lessons you’ve
learned that you feel would be useful for
other people to know?
I think fearlessness. The interesting
thing is that each ecological problem
has behind it this major economic inter-
est. Whether it’s mining, or illegal GMO
introduction in India.
I learned from my parents that if you
follow your conscience there’s nothing
to be afraid of; there’s no external
power that’s more powerful than your
conscience.
54
Is there anything happening with food and vulnerable are the ones who are left
or agriculture that you’re particularly to live on diets of junk food which will
excited about at the moment? make them sick. The big change for me is
The fact that small farmers are being ensuring that the huge subsidies that are
celebrated again – that gives me hope today subsidising the chemical industry,
that this linear trend of bigger and the GMO industry, the junk food indus-
bigger, fewer and fewer farms, has got an try, should shift to supporting good food
alternative. for the last person in society. That money
Second, when I start to look at what is so huge that everyone could be fed with
I call ‘nonviolent agriculture’, ecologi- good ecological local food. O
cal farming, [I see that] there’s so much
VANDANA SHIVA IS THE AUTHOR OF MORE THAN 20
happening and it’s being given different BOOKS, INCLUDING ONENESS VS THE 1% (REPRINTED
names – agroecology, regenerative agri- IN 2021 BY NEW INTERNATIONALIST) AND TERRA
VIVA: MY LIFE IN A BIODIVERSITY OF MOVEMENTS
culture – and it’s just thriving and the (CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING, 2022). BOTH ARE
knowledge and the sciences are thriving AVAILABLE AT ETHICALSHOP.ORG.
with it. That to me is exciting because the
chemical lobby is still stuck with the old
rhetoric that soil is an empty container
and seed is an empty vessel.
It’s becoming even more clear that the
corporations are finding in seed and food
the place for their profits and that’s why
they are jumping into the food system.
Mr Gates has taken over – he’s one of the
world’s biggest farm-land owners. One
of the worst injustices is that the poor
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Space to

Space to

Space for

Leading the movement in workspaces for those who lead the change,
with spaces currently available to rent

Visit www.ethicalproperty.co.uk
Email sales@ethicalproperty.co.uk
or call 01865 207 810 ĴďťĊÌďķĴĉďīÐ

MAY-JUNE 2023 55
FEATURE

56 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

Hope in the water
After 17 years, Zapotec Indigenous communities in Mexico finally
gain control over their water sources, reports Magdalena Rojo.
A
lejandrino Pérez seems barely aware
of the heat as the sun rises above our
heads. One by one he proudly points
out three water pans – small reservoirs –
which the people of San Matías Chilazoa,
here in Mexico’s Oaxaca Central Valley
region, have created to collect and store
rainwater, mostly for animals to drink.
These pans were an important develop-
ment, as the village’s Zapotec Indigenous
community live mainly from rearing
sheep and goats and growing crops.
As he stands by the water pan closest to
the village, Pérez outlines plans to plant
native trees in the surrounding area. ‘It
could even be a nice recreational park,’
he muses.
The water access that Pérez and his
community now have is invaluable.
Oaxaca has some of the highest levels of
poverty in Mexico and climate change
has made it increasingly difficult to make
ends meet from agriculture.1
Opposite page top: San Matías Chilazoa resident
Alejandrino Pérez shows off a little bull he had
made from mud at one of the village reservoirs.
NOEL ROJO
Opposite page bottom: A drinking water delivery
in old town Oaxaca, Mexico on 14 February 2020.
WANDERING VIEWS/SHUTTERSTOCK
MAY-JUNE 2023
‘Many farmers could see no hope in
working the fields,’ says Beatriz Salinas
of the Centre for Indigenous Rights Flor
y Canto, a civil society organization in
Oaxaca.
Pérez says that many local people have
migrated to other parts of Mexico, or to
the US. Some have rented their plots to
companies that grow maguey espadín, a
type of agave used to produce the local
spirit, mezcal.
Strength in community
In 2005, farmers in San Antonino Castillo
Velasco, a town 15 kilometres away from
San Matías Chilazoa, received letters
from CONAGUA – The National Water
Commission – to say that they were using
too much water and had to pay fines. This
didn’t make sense to them as local access
to water was already so limited.
The farmers approached Flor y Canto
and asked for help. ‘We started inves-
tigating and found out that there were
many people in various communi-
ties with the same issue,’ says Salinas.
CONAGUA was at that time in charge of
granting concessions, or permissions, to
farmers to use the water on their com-
munal land. Around 80 per cent of the
land in Oaxaca is communal and legally
recognized as belonging to local Indig-
enous communities. 2 ‘CONAGUA was
Water rights in Mexico
supposed to take care of the aquifers but
it never did,’ Salinas remembers.
So, 16 Zapotec communities – includ-
ing the people of San Matías Chilazoa
and San Antonino Castillo Velasco –
started to organize. They formed the
Coordinator of Peoples United for the
Care and Defence of Water (COPUDA)
and concentrated their efforts to obtain
collective concessions for Indigenous
communities. ‘Normally, CONAGUA pro-
vides individual concessions to compa-
nies or municipalities,’ explains Salvador
Anta, a biologist from the Mexican Civil
Council for Sustainable Forestry.
Indigenous communities in most of
the Oaxaca municipalities were already
largely self-organized and this served as
a solid base for COPUDA. Decisions were
made at general assemblies to which local
families would send representatives.
In 2009 COPUDA took legal action
against the National Water Commission
at the federal level. It took a few years but
eventually the court in Mexico City ruled
that CONAGUA had to act on its obliga-
tion to ensure free, prior and informed
consultation with Indigenous communi-
ties. After that, several round table events
were organized where COPUDA repre-
sentatives discussed their demands with
representatives of the federal government,
alongside independent observers from
57
FEATURE
Women participate in an International Water Day
meeting, organized by Flor y Canto, to talk about
the issues Zapotec communities are facing.
NOEL ROJO
civil society. Flor y Canto was present to
advise and also to provide training for
farmers in law and leadership throughout
the legal process.
Finally, after 17 years of COPUDA
activism, Mexican President Andrés
Manuel López Obrador signed a decree
that guaranteed the titles of ‘Indigenous
Community Water Concession’ which
were delivered to the communities in
August 2022.
‘It took a lot of will power and dedica-
tion to achieve this success,’ says Pérez,
adding that they could not have done it
without the former director of Flor y
Canto, Carmen Santiago Alonso, who
died last year.
Useful lessons
Collective concession to water is of no
use if there is no water, as Salinas points
out. So, while the legal battle rumbled
on, farmers in the 16 communities kept
searching for ways to capture rainwater
and irrigate their fields.
María de los Angeles Santiago from
San Antonino Castillo Velasco, one of the
few women leaders in COPUDA, says that
older people remember when one could
find water in wells only a few metres
deep. But since the beginning of this mil-
lennium the cycles of rain have changed,
requiring people to extract from a depth
of 30 or 40 metres.
After a long day at her community’s
general assembly, Santiago explains how
58
the new absorption wells in San Antonino
harvest water. There are now more than
170 of them, some inside residential
areas, others on farmers’ plots.
The wells alongside roads collect
rainwater to a sand filter where it gets
cleaned. After that it goes to an aquifer
and from there the water fills extraction
wells. When the rainwater comes to a well
directly from a roof, there is no need for
the filter. ‘When we started with the first
absorption wells, we could see the results
very fast. Farmers were able to go from
being able to irrigate fields for 15 minutes
to 30 minutes,’ says Santiago who encour-
ages young people to be active in protect-
ing water sources.
All the water-capturing projects are
overseen by the local committees with
rules on water collection approved by
general assemblies.
The regulations were a condition to get
a collective concession. In San Antonino
and in San Matías they cover aspects of
water use in the area of the villages –
from building new water capturing pro-
jects to water pollution. Recently, Pérez
explains, the San Matías local committee
received a complaint that somebody was
polluting the waters through using pesti-
cides on maguey espadín. The committee
passed this onto the authority responsible
for investigating these cases.
Despite what has been achieved, access
to water is still not guaranteed. After all,
water capturing can only work if it rains.
So far, there has been water in two out of
the three water pans around San Matías
throughout the year and drought remains
a threat. ‘The situation has been critical,’
Pérez states. ‘In the past two years it did
not rain enough and this affected our
livelihood.’
But there are useful lessons for other
communities who want to take control of
their water supply. ‘The COPUDA model
serves as a reference and example for other
peasant and Indigenous communities in
Mexico,’ says biologist Salvador Anta.
Beatriz Salinas from Flor y Canto adds
that the success of COPUDA was also
made possible by the spirituality of local
Indigenous communities: ‘The connec-
tion with Mother Nature, the elements
and pillars of Indigenous culture gave
strength to the movement.’ O
MAGDALENA ROJO IS A SLOVAK FREELANCE
JOURNALIST BASED IN OAXACA, MEXICO. SHE
FOCUSES ON HUMAN RIGHTS, MOSTLY OF
WOMEN AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, AS WELL AS
GLOBAL ISSUES SUCH AS THE CLIMATE CRISIS
AND MIGRATION. WITH PHOTOGRAPHER NOEL
ROJO, MAGDALENA CO-FOUNDED A GLOBAL
DOCUMENTARY PROJECT CALLED WOMEN WHO
STAY, FOCUSSING ON THE LIVES OF WOMEN LEFT
BEHIND BY FAMILY MEMBERS WHO MIGRATE.
1 Coneval, ‘Poverty statistics in Oaxaca’, 2020,
nin.tl/poverty-stats 2 Gobierno de México, ‘En Oaxaca
el Registro Agrario Nacional…’, 29 August 2018,
nin.tl/oaxaca
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
VIEW FROM administration is planning to remove
between 20,000 and 40,000 miners –

BRAZIL
Brazilian Blood Gold
The images of malnourished, sick or dead
Yanomami children that spread across
the world’s media in early 2023 are some
of the most striking ‘monuments’ to Jair
Bolanaro’s time as Brazil’s president.
Bolsonaro’s government did little to
stop illegal miners bringing malaria, con-
tamination by mercury – used to clean
gold – and violence to the country’s largest
Indigenous territory, located in the state
of Roraima. In fact, Bolsonaro demobi-
lized law enforcement and made speeches
that encouraged mining companies.
At the same time, his government did
not provide much needed healthcare, vac-
cination, medicine or food, while repeat-
edly stymieing any progress in land rights
for Indigenous or Quilombola people,
descended from escaped enslaved Africans.
The result was an unprecedented
humanitarian crisis. Data released by the
Sumaúma journalism platform indicate
that 570 Yanomami children under the
age of five died of preventable causes in
the last four years. 100 more died this
January alone.
To try and halt this catastrophe,
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s
the exact number is unknown – and fight
those who profit from the exploitation of
illegal gold.
This began by closing the airspace
over Indigenous land and threatening to
shoot down aircraft transporting miners,
food, beverages, fuel, equipment and
gold. On the ground, the government has
launched a kind of siege, blocking the sale
of fuel, food and equipment to miners.
Meanwhile the Lula administration is
trying to undermine profits from illegal
mining, taking action against funders,
intermediaries and processors, and com-
batting ‘laundering’ of illegal gold. As with
illegal timber, this can be done by using
fake invoices to fabricate a legal origin.
Investigations conducted by Repórter
Brasil have shown that gold illegally taken
from Yanomami and Munduruku Indig-
enous territory is sold in cities such as Boa
Vista, Manaus and Itaituba, in Pará state,
and then enters the domestic and foreign
markets. The supply chain ends in jewel-
lery stores and the electronics industry.
The final piece of the new government’s
plan to combat illegal mining practices is
to forcibly remove miners who refuse to
leave. But in order for this process of ‘dis-
intrusion’ from Yanomami Indigenous
land, and elsewhere, to be effective, alter-
native sources of income and employment
opportunities will need to be created.
If that workforce is not absorbed, they
will migrate elsewhere – potentially to
other Indigenous lands, or eventually
returning. Identifying communities that
depend on illegal mining and public
policies to ensure a decent quality of life
is essential to stop the cycle of plunder.
Without this, the Yanomami will keep
seeing their way of life threatened, as
under Bolsonaro.
His administration systematically
denied food to the starving Yanomami,
as documents recently revealed by Bra-
zil’s largest online news portal, UOL,
show. Requests were sent to the Ministry
of Justice between June 2021 and March
2022, requesting food and warning about
famine. There was no proper response.
In other words: if the former presi-
dent had been successful in his bid for
re-election, the Yanomami could now be
on their way to extinction. O
LEONARDO SAKAMOTO IS A POLITICAL SCIENTIST
AND JOURNALIST BASED IN SÃO PAULO. HE IS
A CAMPAIGNER WITH THE INVESTIGATIVE NGO
REPÓRTER BRASIL, WHICH HE ESTABLISHED IN 2001.

MAY-JUNE 2023 59
FROM THE ARCHIVE

The trans
revolution
In a time of toxic ‘culture wars’, it may be hard to see
the liberating potential of transgender rights for us all.
But this piece from 2015, by Vanessa Baird, did just
that – while taking a pop at the tyranny of the binary.

T
When New Internationalistt dedicated an issue to transgender rights in 2015, he sun streams in through the open
our concern was that the topic affected too small a percentage of the windows of a corner house in Old
population to be of general interest. Little did we know that an extraordinary Street, East London.
backlash was about to break. Inside people are milling about,
Fierce resistance to trans people’s right to gender self-identity, primarily making coffee and tea, rifling through
expressed in far-right, evangelical circles on both sides of the Atlantic, found second-hand clothes – including an orig-
its way into the British mainstream as part of ‘anti-woke’ sentiment. But it also inal Vivienne Westwood T-shirt. Buying
grew in other, less predictable, crowds. Concerted efforts (in part funded by hand-knitted bears, home-made cakes,
the US far right) were made to separate the ‘T’ from the LGBT+ movement. What and getting their nails done.
was once a fringe and largely unsuccessful attempt by some radical feminists Most are teenagers, a few are parents,
to exclude trans women from women-only spaces morphed into a ‘gender some are volunteers. The teens chat about
critical’ movement with many prominent female academics and writers taking the usual things – music, social media,
up the cause. Their blanket objection to gender recognition fixated on the rare college courses. And puberty blockers,
possibility of violent men gaining access to women’s refuges or prisons by self- hormones and transitioning. ‘When did
identifying as women. you start?’ ‘How is it going?’ One is impa-
Such concerns, along with those around trans teenagers receiving puberty- tient for results. Another tells them that
blocking treatment, were coupled with beliefs that male or female sex is an it takes time.
immutable fact of biology and doubts about the very idea of ‘gender identity’, These are transgender – or trans –
especially when different from a person’s said sex at birth. youth and the event is a fundraiser for
In this context, the following excerpt from NI 486 seems to belong to a camping trip organized by Gendered
another, calmer and more open-minded time – before transgender became Intelligence, a group set up to help
weaponized. youngsters navigate a world dominated
And yet for the still small minority of people who are actually trans, and by very fixed ideas about gender and
who find themselves at the centre of this toxic storm, the struggle to try to be also ‘to spread a bit more intelligence’
themselves and enjoy human rights continues. about it.

60 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Trans rights

Trans and gender-variant people

present a challenge and an opportunity
for deepening equality and enlarging
citizenship rights for us all
MAY-JUNE 2023 61
FROM THE ARCHIVE
The idea that sexuality is on a spectrum is pretty
much accepted now. What gender-variant people
demonstrate is that so is gender. Why turn away
from a rainbow and insist on seeing the world
only in black and white?
In one part of the room, a screen is
showing video blogs. Young trans people
talk to camera about a range of issues
that concern them – voice, language,
make-up; the use of ‘they’ instead of the
pronouns ‘he’ or ‘she’; the impact of aus-
terity policies on health services. And
they give advice.
What I am witnessing here looks like
a gently evolving social revolution. Some
in this room are clearly trans boys, some
trans girls, some it would be hard to place
too precisely on the gender spectrum. But
they are expressing themselves authenti-
cally, talking about future plans, making
their own way in what is, in this space at
least, a supportive environment.
Jay Stewart, a founder of Gendered
Intelligence, says: ‘We are on the cusp of a
gender revolution.’
Judging by developments in the wider
world as well, that does not seem an out-
landish claim.
A different lens
A snapshot of recent global news through
a trans lens would show:
Tamara Adrian, a Venezuelan woman,
presenting herself as the first ever trans
candidate for her country’s Congress.
Nepal issuing its first ‘Third Gender’ pass-
port. AJ Kearns, an Australian trans man,
taking a break in his hormone treatment
and giving birth to a baby daughter.
And one rolling story you just can’t get
away from – Cait. Caitlin Jenner, former
Olympic athlete, whose transitioning is
followed like an addiction, her own TV
show – I am Cait – provoking a social
media snowstorm.
But another item, also from the US,
brings a different reality into focus. It’s
62
about Tamara Dominguez, a Kansas
trans woman who was seen getting
out of a black SUV, which then ran her
over, reversed, and ran over her again –
making her the 17th trans person to be
murdered in the US this year.
All the data on trans people and
their lives is relatively new and patchy.
But what is available paints a shocking
picture. Life expectancies that are half
the national average in some countries
of Latin America; unemployment and
poverty rates that are way higher; public
health services routinely denying trans
people even basic medical care.
Since 2009 the Trans Murder Moni-
toring project has been collecting inter-
national data. As the numbers have risen,
the age of victims has declined. In 2014
the youngest was an eight-year-old trans
girl in Rio de Janeiro, beaten to death by
her father.
The global suicide rates of trans people
are reckoned to be 50 times higher than
the average.
When I ask Jay Stewart to identify the
major issue facing the young people he is
working with in Britain, he says: ‘Mental
health. Some of our people are super shy
and lack confidence. They have bad expe-
riences with other young people who do
not allow for gender variance.’
Out of the shadows
At the same time, visibility is greater
than ever. ‘Trans women, trans men, and
non-binary trans people are suddenly
everywhere, claiming our rights and
claiming public spaces; even getting to
play ourselves in television drama,’ says
veteran British activist and writer Roz
Kaveney.1
The internet has played a vital role in
connecting trans people, supplement-
ing the work of underfunded self-help
groups. The meaning of what it is to be
trans has expanded, along with strategies
for dealing with ignorance, transphobia
and their impacts.
Nevertheless, trans people every-
where are still excluded and marginal-
ized because of the way they express
their gender identity. In much of Africa
and the Middle East transgender is syn-
onymous with homosexuality, which is a
criminal offence, punishable by impris-
onment and, in some countries, death.
Social rejection can be intense.
Transgender people are often publicly
humiliated, stripped, harassed by the
police and thrown out of their homes.
‘A transgender person should be a
prostitute, should be used for sodomy –
that is the general narrative,’ says Audrey
Mbugua, a Kenyan activist and suicide
survivor. Today she has become, in her
own words, ‘a trans warrior’, setting up
the Trans Education and Advocacy NGO.
She is battling the Kenyan authorities
to get her name on official documents
changed and to obtain gender reassign-
ment surgery, which is not allowed in her
country although there are medical staff
willing to perform it. 2
International campaigning focuses
heavily on legal gender recognition and
citizen rights. Having official documents
that reflect one’s gender expression is no
trivial matter; it’s essential for navigating
daily life – work, school, hospitals, police,
travel – safely, without harassment and
humiliation.
In ‘License to be Yourself ’, an Open
Society Foundation report, New Zealand
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

trans activist Jack Byrne outlines key fea-
tures for progressive laws and policies.3
They will: be based on self-defined gender
identity rather than verification by others;
include more than two sex/gender options
for those who identify outside the binary
characters of male and female; include
intersex people; apply to all residents,
including those born overseas; link to
broader human rights, particularly access
to health services that enable someone to
medically transition if that is their choice.
Equally important is what they will not
require: a medical diagnosis of gender
identity disorder, gender dysphoria,
or transsexualism; transition-related
medical treatment, such as hormonal
therapy or gender affirming surger-
ies; sterilization, either explicitly or by
requiring medical procedures that result
in it; living continuously or permanently
in one’s gender identity; divorce or disso-
lution of civil partnership. Nor will they
prohibit parenting now, or the intention
to have children in the future.
Beyond the binary
Trans and gender-variant people present
a challenge and an opportunity for deep-
ening equality and expanding citizen-
ship rights for us all. Often they strike
at the root of a concept that sustains a
much wider oppression: the tyranny of
MAY-JUNE 2023
the binary. This tyranny serves many
purposes – above all the maintenance
of patriarchy. Male domination depends
upon a constantly reinforced belief in the
innate difference between women and
men – and therefore their rights, roles
and privileges.
Capitalism too profits from such
thinking – whether in terms of lower-
paid jobs for women and the billions’
worth of unpaid female domestic labour
performed each year, or the ever-
expanding markets for products with
‘his’ and ‘hers’ versions. Childhood is
captured by marketing ‘girl’ or ‘boy’
toys, clothes, colours, activities, drum-
ming the anxious dogma of fixed gender
identity and division into the minds of
children right from infancy.
In fighting for their rights, trans
and gender-variant people face resist-
ance from several quarters: from tra-
ditionalists determined to obstruct or
punish all who deviate from established
norms; from sceptical gender conform-
ists, clinging to a fixed idea of male and
female as though their lives (and those
of their children) depended on it; and
even from essentialist radical feminists,
wishing to exclude trans women from
women’s spaces.
What’s needed is an opening of
minds, to let in what may seem like a big
Trans rights
conceptual shift but actually is not that
scary at all. The idea that sexuality is on
a spectrum is pretty much accepted now.
What gender-variant people demonstrate
is that so is gender. Why turn away from
a rainbow and insist on seeing the world
only in black and white?
Finally, an anecdote, from Jennifer
Finley Boylan. She recalls how, early on
in her transition, she passed a woman and
her young daughter while exiting a shop.
She overheard the little girl, who had
been staring at her, asking her mother:
‘What was that?’
‘That, honey,’ the mother replied, ‘was
a human being.’ O
VANESSA BAIRD IS A WRITER, ACTIVIST AND
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO NEW INTERNATIONALIST.
HER BOOKS INCLUDE THE NO-NONSENSE GUIDE TO
SEXUAL DIVERSITY.
1 Stonewall, ‘Stonewall and Trans’, Friends Magazine,
Summer 2015. 2 Voices of Africa, ‘Kenya’s
transgender warrior’, 10 April 2015,
nin.tl/transgender-warrior 3 Open Society Foundations,
‘License to be Yourself’, 2014, nin.tl/trans-license-report
A longer version of this article was originally
published in NI 486: ‘The transgender revolution:
and how it could free us all’. Subscribe at newint.org
for access to our full digital archive.
Left: In response to then US president Donald
Trump’s tweet to ban transgender people from
the military, a protest converged on the Military
Recruitment Center in Times Square, New York
on 26 July 2017.
STACY WALSH ROSENSTOCK/ALAMY
Previous page: Celebrations ahead of travelling
to the annual 18-day transgender festival in
Koovagam, Tamil Nadu, India on 22 April 2013.
ARUN SANKAR K/AP PHOTO/ALAMY
63
THE LONG READ

For centuries, museums have

‘They held human remains as artefacts

– including those sold, looted
and smuggled out of colonized

are my
countries. Hana Pera Aoake
explains how New Zealand/
Aotearoa has become a world-
leader in repatriation. What can

ancestors’
be learned from the Indigenous-
led programme driving the push
to bring ancestors home?

64 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

W
hen visitors first enter a marae,
a Māori meeting house,
the first thing they hear is a
karanga. For Māori people this call, issued
only by women, is a sacred expression of
welcome that provides the medium by
which the living and dead of the visitors
may cross the physical space to unite with
the living and dead of the people who
belong to the marae.
The kai-karanga (the woman making
the karanga) sounds as though she is
wailing or performing a stylized lament.
It is deeply spiritual, and the responsi-
bility she holds for her entire hapu (sub-
tribe) is expressed through her call.
MAY-JUNE 2023
For Te Herekiekie Haerehuka Herewini,
who is head of the Karanga Aotearoa
repatriation team at Te Papa Tongarewa
(Museum of New Zealand), understanding
these kinds of protocol is a crucial part of
the responsibility his team has in ensur-
ing the return of looted ancestral remains
from across the world, and that they are
treated with dignity and respect.
New Zealand/Aotearoa, not unlike
other colonized countries, was looted
not just of various taonga (treasures), but
the remains of hundreds of ancestors. It
is estimated that around 3,000 remains
have been taken from Aotearoa, and 800
returned since 2003.
Stolen ancestral remains
Elder Taharakau Stewart (in the
middle with cane), is joined by other
Māori people during a ceremony in
Berlin, Germany on 29 April 2019.
The event marked the handing back
of the remains of ancestors which had
been held as part of Charité – Berlin
University of Medicine’s former
anthropology collections.
JÖRG CARSTENSEN/DPA/ALAMY
65
THE LONG READ
It’s now been 20 years since the
Aotearoa government, then led by
Labour Party Prime Minister Helen
Clark, mandated Te Papa Tongarewa to
develop Karanga Aotearoa, a formal pro-
gramme for the repatriation of kōiwi and
kōimi tangata (Māori and Moriori skeletal
remains).
‘While they are overseas, their spirit
is not settled,’ says Herewini, noting that
these ancestors are ‘waiting’ to come
home. ‘Part of our responsibility is recon-
nection and allowing the cultural mecha-
nisms we have to let them come home.’
Often the records of who these
ancestors were, and where they were
taken from, are unclear or nonexistent.
Karanga Aotearoa researchers iden-
tify where the remains are being held
– almost exclusively in museums in
Europe and North America – and work
backwards, tracing the history of acqui-
sitions as best they can. The process is
akin to tracing a supply chain – identi-
fying buyers and sellers until a point of
origin is found.
The programme locates ancestors’
remains – whether within Aotearoa or
elsewhere in the world, negotiates their
return and brings them home to be stored
in a wahi tapū (a sacred space for holding
the dead). They are not displayed, but
66
are cared for until they can be identified
and repatriated, as Herewini explains:
‘While kōiwi are resting here, we confirm
provenance to the iwi [tribes] around the
country and then we start having conver-
sations. Our goal is to return them all to
where they came from.’
Karanga Aotearoa is the first pro-
gramme of its kind globally. It’s Indige-
nous-led and actively supported by an
Indigenous advisory panel made up of
respected elders. The team’s work is chal-
lenging; it can take decades, and involves
long-term negotiations with institutions
that are sometimes unwilling to part with
their collections, even if they were dubi-
ously acquired.
So much taken
Over the years, Karanga Aotearoa’s
painstaking work has paid off. In 2022
they secured the largest single repatria-
tion of ancestral remains to date with the
return of 111 Moriori skeletal remains
from London’s Natural History Museum,
where they had been held for almost a
century.
Moriori are the original inhabitants of
Rēkohu, the Chatham Islands, an archi-
pelago around 800 kilometres east of
New Zealand/Aotearoa. Following Euro-
pean contact in the late 18th century a
Te Herekiekie Haerehuka Herewini, who leads
the Karanga Aotearoa programme, stands by a
Māori bust at Göttingen University, Germany
on 12 October 2022. The university’s ‘Sensitive
Provenances’ research project launched in 2020
and aims to examine the origin of human remains
held in two of its collections. In February 2022 a
number of skeletons, taken by the anatomist Georg
Thilenius from Hawai’ i in 1897, were returned to
their descendants during a ceremonial event.
DPA/ALAMY
number of Europeans moved to Rēkohu
as sealers and whalers in the early 1800s.
The Moriori were a peaceful iwi and a
chief named Nunuku had forbidden war
many generations beforehand.
However, in 1835 the Moriori wel-
comed around 900 Māori from the
Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama tribes
of the Taranaki region. They arrived on
a hijacked European whaling vessel, the
Lord Rodney. Severely weakened, the
passengers were taken in by Moriori and
nursed back to health. But, once they
regained strength, the Moriori’s guests
unleashed a reign of terror where they
massacred and enslaved thousands of
Moriori. By 1870, more than 90 per cent
of the Moriori had been wiped out and
fewer than 200 remained. During this
time, and up until the 1970s, hundreds
of Moriori remains were taken from
Rēkohu.
There is a common myth by colonial
historians and politicians that Moriori
are extinct, but descendants continue
to live to this day and can count almost
2,000 registered tribal members. Follow-
ing the signing of their Treaty Settlement
in 2020, Māui Solomon, an Indigenous
rights activist and Moriori descendant,
explained in an interview with Radio
New Zealand that ‘the reason [the myth
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

of Moriori extinction] became so pow-
erfully ingrained in the psyche of New
Zealanders is because, if Māori could
push Moriori out of NZ, then later Euro-
pean migrants could push Māori off their
land... It suited the narrative, and it was a
justification of European colonization of
Māori land.’1
Solomon spent 20 years working
alongside Te Papa to ensure the return
of his forebears from national and inter-
national collections. ‘Moriori have had
so much taken. Our land, language and
liberty’, he tells me over the phone, after
the Moriori remains were returned from
London. The pain of his ancestors is
palpable.
He notes that throughout the repa-
triation process, Karanga Aotearoa and
the Te Papa team were vital in develop-
ing ongoing reciprocal relationships with
several cultural institutions, both within
Aotearoa and abroad. ‘[They] deserve so
much credit for their work. They led with
mana [status], grace and dignity,’ he said.
A museum that often acts as a reposi-
tory for other museums, Solomon also
acknowledged that the staff from Lon-
don’s Natural History Museum were
extremely respectful and driven in their
determination to unite these ancestors
with their descendants.
A grim trade
One of the most sought-after items for
trading from Aotearoa in the 18th and
19th centuries was toi moko, also known as
mokomokai, which are the preserved heads
of the dead. For Māori the head is tapū, or
sacred, and so these toi moko were kept
and cared for by whānau (family) in orna-
mental wooden boxes and used in various
sacred ceremonies. The heads would be
steamed, smoked, dried and sealed using
‘While they are overseas, their
spirit is not settled. Part of our
responsibility is reconnection and
allowing the cultural mechanisms
we have to let them come home’
MAY-JUNE 2023
shark or whale oil and kept as a trophy of
war, or to hold on to a loved one.
The first known ‘trade’ in toi moko was
in 1770 when the British botanist Joseph
Banks, while travelling with Captain
James Cook on board the HMS Endeav-
our, pointed a musket at a leader of a
Māori tribe to get him to part with a toi
moko of a 14-year-old boy, in exchange
for linen underwear.
Toi moko could be exchanged as a
peace broker during times of conflict.
Most were adorned with ta moko (facial
tattooing), a practice that has been revi-
talized today, but in pre-colonial Māori
society was given as a means to mark
someone’s whakapapa (ancestry) and
status within their tribe. The traditional
method for tattooing, before metal and
machines, was to chisel into the skin
using bird bones. This was a process
that was extremely painful and resulted
in beautiful curves and lines that repre-
sented a person’s genealogy and connec-
tion to the land.
In the early 1800s, as the appetite
for toi moko among European collec-
tors grew, it helped fuel Aotearoa-wide
inter-tribal battles, known as the Musket
Wars – a series of conflicts that took place
between 1818 and the early 1830s. Thou-
sands of Māori were killed and more were
enslaved or became refugees. Although
warfare had always taken place between
rival groups, conflict had been carried
out using hand-to-hand weapons, with
relatively few deaths. Muskets were intro-
duced by European traders, and much
more damage could be inflicted. 2
Toi moko were traded with Europeans
for muskets, which were used by certain
tribes to gain land and settle old scores
with others. Many tribes became a lot
less discerning about who they traded
Stolen ancestral remains
with, and some simply decapitated
enslaved people or lower status tribal
members whose heads were then pre-
served and traded.
The trade in toi moko peaked in the
1820s, and up to 300 were taken out
of the country at this time. But in 1831
the then governor of New South Wales,
Ralph Darling, banned the trade out of
Aotearoa, and by the mid 1830s demand
for firearms dramatically reduced as the
various tribes acquired a military parity.
However, the trade resumed just a
decade later, following the signing of the
Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 (a document
some Māori chiefs signed with the British
Crown in order to better control unruly
settlers) and then Aotearoa becoming a
British colony.
Colonial museum directors sought
Māori and Moriori taonga (treasures)
and remains to fill the newly established
museums around Aotearoa. From the
1860s, onwards, thousands of ancestral
remains were stolen and traded across the
country and abroad.
Disrespect
One of the methods that Karanga
Aotearoa have used to work out what
has happened to people’s remains is by
researching the archives of explorers and
other Europeans who came to Aotearoa.
One such person was the Austrian bota-
nist and grave robber, Andreas Reischek,
whose diary the team have been examin-
ing. Known for digging up pā sites (Māori
settlements) and burial caves, he often
stole human remains, tools and orna-
ments, completely disregarding and dis-
respecting the sanctity of the places he
took them from. Reischek also killed a
number of rare birds, which were at that
time close to extinction.
The most famous of the botanist’s
exploits was the pillaging of the so-called
‘Kāwhia mummies’ which were located in
areas around the King Country region in
the west of Aotearoa’s North Island. This
was an area that, from 1864 onwards, had
been closed off to Europeans, until the
Māori King Tāwhiao began re-establish-
ing contact. Reischek gained Tāwhiao’s
trust and was permitted to conduct expe-
ditions around Pirongia mountain and
Kāwhia harbour.
On one of these jaunts, Reischek
stole the remains of Tainui ancestors
from burial caves near the Awaroa river,
including Tūpāhau, a 17th century chief
and descendant of Hotorua, the captain
67
THE LONG READ
of the Tainui canoe that first brought
people to Aotearoa some 800 years ago.
Tūpāhau’s remains ended up in the
Natural History Museum in Vienna.
Reischek was fully aware of what he
was doing. In a 1888 diary entry he wrote:
‘Maori crania collected from caves,
crevices, hollow trees, battle-fields and
kitchen middens. It is one of the most dif-
ficult tasks, because all these places are
tapu, holy, and no one is allowed to enter
them without being noticed by the locals
early morning to evening, especially
when they’re mistrusting.’3
Another ‘collector’ who used the rela-
tionships he had built with Māori in order
to steal from them was Swedish natural
historian and grave robber Conrad Frist-
edt. In 2017 the Karolinska Institutet,
a Medical University in Stockholm,
returned ancestral remains that he had
taken in 1890.
Fristedt had spent time in the Bay of
Islands and recorded his journey into
the Whangaroa region to access Māori
remains from wāhi tapu, isolated sacred
repositories, in his diary. On this trip
he collected three toi moko but kept it a
secret from Māori living in the region.
Fristedt, Reischek and others took these
remains and other ‘curios’ that were sacred
to the communities that had welcomed
them. As disrespectful as their exploits
were, through their records the Karanga
Aotearoa team have been able to identify
where a number of ancestors came from,
and ultimately return them back to the
communities they were taken from.
Between the living and dead
The work Karanga Aotearoa does to secure
the return of ancestors’ remains builds on
the endeavours of Māori, and other Indig-
enous groups, for over 50 years.
In 1970, the UNESCO convention on
cultural property set new standards in
the interest of protecting objects of great
cultural importance from trafficking.
Article 7 provides provisions for states
party to the convention to prohibit the
import of looted objects, ‘stolen from a
museum, or a religious or secular public
monument or similar institution’ and,
when requested by ‘the State Party of
origin’, sets out that states should ‘take
appropriate steps to recover and return’
stolen cultural property imported after
entry into the Convention.4
In the late 1980s Maui Pomare, who
was then chair of Aotearoa’s National
Museum Council, undertook research
68
Fristedt, Reischek and others took
these remains and other ‘curios’ that
were sacred to the communities
that had welcomed them
locating looted items – and people – and
began the arduous process of ensuring
their return. In 1985, a project led by the
late Māori queen, Dame Te Atairangi-
kaahu – alongside museum directors
such as Pomare, and several politicians
– secured the return of the sacred head
that Andreas Reischek had sent to Vienna
more than 100 years earlier.
Pomare, who died in 1995, played a
key role in building the strong relation-
ships with many cultural institutions
in Germany that continue to this day.
Germany was one of the first countries
to agree to repatriate Māori and Moriori
remains with ancestors coming home
from the Hamburg Museum in 1991.
Since that time museums and institu-
tions in Bremen, Frankfurt, Cologne and
Berlin have returned over 150 ancestral
remains.
Interestingly, in an interview in 1985
with Tu Tangata magazine, Pomare – who
was also able to establish an appropriate
wāhi tapu (storage space for remains) in
the former National Museum – explained
that his mission was to ‘repatriate those
with tribal significance, personal con-
nection or of other major importance.
But I don’t believe all artefacts held over-
seas should be returned – we need to be
selective.’5
It is the work of leaders like Pomare
that laid the groundwork for Karanga
Aotearoa. In 1998, a series of wananga
(discussions or dialogues) were organized
by Te Papa, followed up with another
hosted by the Ministry of Māori Develop-
ment (Te Puni Kōkiri) in 1999. Through
these wananga it was decided that Māori
and Moriori tribes should be involved not
only in repatriation, but also in the deci-
sion-making around the resting place for
taonga and ancestral remains.
Te Papa’s approach was – and still
is – world-leading. It is Indigenous-led
and centred around a Māori methodol-
ogy based within tikanga (Māori law) and
whakawhanaungatanga (reciprocal rela-
tionship building with institutions and
an acknowledgement of the relations
Māori and Indigenous people hold with
the living/dead and human/non-human).
The identification process involves
working alongside those with particu-
lar expertise in various fields including
ta moko (traditional Māori tattooing). In
order to preserve the mana and dignity of
these ancestors they do not carry out DNA
or isotope testing, or carbon dating. For
Herewini these are people not objects and
to carry out such testing would require the
permission of the families they were taken
from. Once identified, their descendants
may choose to do many of these tests, but
it is rare, as most family members just
want to bury their ancestors in the places
from where they were taken.
All arrangements for repatriations are
led by descendants of those who were
taken. Iwi decide when and where the
remains will be put to rest and what kind
of funeral rites are performed. Te Papa’s
role in this stage of repatriations is to
simply honour the wishes of iwi.
Crucial to Karanga Aotearoa’s working
methodology is the Repatriation Advi-
sory Panel, which is made up of kaumatua
(respected elders) from iwi all over the
Pōwhiri (welcoming ceremony) at Te Papa for the
repatriation of items held by the Natural History
Museum Vienna, October 2022.
ABBIE DORRINGTON
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

country and who sit on the board based
on their expertise. Through relation-
ships with these kaumatua, the Karanga
Aotearoa team is able to seek advice
and guidance, ensuring that not only is
Karanga Aotearoa Māori-led, but it is
guided by a Māori way of doing things.
This helps to balance the emotional and
spiritual weight of the work that Karanga
Aotearoa do.
Upon the return of Māori and Moriori
ancestors from Vienna, academic Sir Pou
Temara, who is the Repatriation Advi-
sory Panel chair, remarked: ‘It is always
a spiritual relief and privilege to welcome
back our ancestors who have been victims
of such wrongdoing. Culturally we know
they are weeping with joy, now that they
have returned to Aotearoa where at last
they will rest in peace.’3
Often, members of the Advisory
Panel will accompany members of
Karanga Aotearoa to the sites where
ancestral remains are being held for
their journey home. Utilizing ancient
karakia (statement of intent, prayer),
karanga and moteatea (lament, chant),
these ancestors are greeted with words
that they know, reconnecting them back
to their people and their homes. ‘These
are the ways that bind us between the
living and the dead,’ Herewini observes.
Making headway
While Karanga Aotearoa works within
the national museum – an institution
that has itself also engaged in dubious
collecting practices – the team is increas-
ingly approached by cultural institutions
across the world who want to bring ances-
tors home.
The programme is a part of a global
repatriation movement, wherein many
museums have taken a serious look into
their collections. Many of these hold
cultural or sacred objects and, notably,
remains of people who were acquired
within a colonial context and appropri-
ated under unequal power relations.
The movement has been making sig-
nificant headway in recent years. One
example is the landmark agreement
Stolen ancestral remains
signed in 2022 between Germany and
Nigeria that will see the return of over
1,130 Benin bronzes looted in the British
ransacking of Benin City in 1897.
There is, however, a lot of scepticism
over what such returns mean, includ-
ing among some academics. Professor
of archaeology at Oxford University,
Dan Hicks, has questioned such actions
as being a ‘scramble for decolonization’,
rather than a genuine atonement for colo-
nial transgressions. This is in reference to
the Scramble for Africa, a period roughly
between 1884-1914 when European colo-
nial powers carved up the African con-
tinent into protectorates, colonies and
‘free-trade areas’.
Hicks is not alone in his doubts. Cam-
eroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe
has described the restitution of objects
from French museums as paternalistic
and legalistic.6 Mbembe sees the loss,
not merely of the objects themselves, but
of the world they were a part of.7 He has
often written about museums as spaces
that neutralize living forces and says it is
THE LONG READ
Herewini recalls a moment where
the chair of a medical institute in
the UK told him: ‘We are giving
them back, because they are of no
value to us’
necessary to establish an ‘anti-museum’,
that is not an institution but a place where
objects aren’t disconnected from the
many worlds ruined through the process
of looting or ‘collecting’.8
The issue is perhaps less about the
process of repatriation and more about
the use of the word ‘restitution’. The word
comes from the Latin restitutionem which
means ‘a restoring’.
Repatriation in contrast is the act of
sending or bringing someone, or some-
times money or other property, back to
the country that they came from. The
return of these looted objects and ances-
tors can not offer the repair of worlds
that were shattered through colonization,
but can offer a first step towards repair
and the beginning of more partner-
ships between cultural institutions that
are based within reciprocity, care and
understanding.
People not objects
The work that Te Herekiekie Haere-
huka Herewini and his dedicated team
at Karanga Aotearoa do is not only chal-
lenging but can often be distressing. There
have been moments where they have had
to witness a deep disrespect towards the
ancestors they are working to return.
Herewini recalls one conversation
with the chair of a medical institute in
the UK, who told him: ‘We are giving
them back, because they are of no value
to us.’ In this painful moment, Herewi-
ni’s anger subsided when he reminded
himself that, ‘the tūpuna ancestors want
us to offer dignity even to those who
don’t show them dignity’. So, Karanga
Aotearoa instead embraces a cultural
practice wherein they seek to offer a
Western museum, or other institution,
a connection to humanity by reminding
70
them that these are our ancestors – they
are people, not objects for display.
An act of return should not be treated
as a moment of closure, or of merely dis-
posing of undesirable ‘objects’ within
a museum’s collection. It must instead
create a space of remembrance and
repair, where a new relationship can
form that is based around understanding
and continually addressing the ongoing
legacy of colonialism.
Museums developed from Eurocen-
tric notions of ownership and domina-
tion, collected so-called ‘exotica’ from
around the world and shipped it back
to the ‘Mother Country’ to display as a
physical testament to the empire’s power
– whether British, French, Dutch or oth-
erwise. In Aotearoa, Australia and other
parts of the Pacific, the botanist Joseph
Banks was responsible for collecting plant
specimens, items from Indigenous mate-
rial culture and treasures, and display-
ing these ‘finds’ as curiosities in Britain.
Partly, this was done out of a commit-
ment to intellectual inquiry and the study
of the foreign world, but it also reflects a
sense of British entitlement to the lands
they encountered.
But, Herewini is hopeful for the
future. He notes that since taking the role
in 2017, ‘institutions are more proactive
in returning ancestors to their communi-
ties’, which he says is due to ‘new school
thinking’.
Although it has only been around for
20 years, Karanga Aotearoa offers a blue-
print towards how museums might begin
to start having difficult but necessary
conversations about what they have in
their collections.
With a number of Māori and Moriori
remains still scattered across the world,
Herewini is determined not to stop until
they have located each and every one and
returned them to their communities.
In 2022, Haiti Matangi, a sacred effigy
that had been taken from Māui Soloman’s
family urupa (graveyard) was repatri-
ated from the Auckland War Museum.
Soloman described it to the Guard-
ian as ‘the ultimate honouring of our
ancestors’.9
The rights activist believes that
museums holding human remains should
reflect on their collections and take
action. ‘Return them to the people who
will love and care for them... enter into
reciprocal relationships with iwi,’ he says.
‘You have to be realistic, but anything
sacred should be returned home.’
But, when talking about what these
repatriations have meant to his people,
Māui Solomon reiterates that, ‘these
are not curios or objects. They are my
ancestors.’ O
HANA PERA AOAKE (NGAATI MAHUTA, NGAATI
HINERANGI, TAINUI/WAIKATO) IS AN ARTIST AND
WRITER FROM AOTEAROA. THEY ARE THE CURATOR
AT THE SIR JAMES FLETCHER KAWERAU MUSEUM
AND A MUM.
This project was funded by the European
Journalism Centre through the Solutions Journalism
Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.
1 The Detail, ‘Setting Aside the Moriori myth’, RNZ,
25 February 2020, nin.tl/myth 2 Ministry for Culture
and Heritage, ‘Musket Wars’, nin.tl/musket 3 Te Papa,
‘Te Papa welcomes home...’, Scoop Media, 2 October
2022, nin.tl/home 4 UNESCO, ‘Text of the Convention’,
1970, nin.tl/unesco 5 ‘Maui’s mission devoted to
uncovering taonga’, Tu Tangata, Issue 22, 1 February
1985, nin.tl/mission 6 Achille Mbembe, ‘Ā propos de
la restitutions…,’ AOC, 18 March 2022, aoc.media
7 Malgorzata Ludwisiak, ‘How museums could
reimagine themselves...’, ArtNet, 15 April 2021,
nin.tl/after 8 Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Potential History:
Unlearning Imperialism, Verso, London, 2019.
9 Eva Corlett, ‘“Ultimate honour”: remains of
hundreds...’, the Guardian, 8 July 2022, nin.tl/3nrkWUR
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Share your light
Explore spirituality
with a caring
community

MAY-JUNE 2023 71
 HALL OF
INFAMY
KING MSWATI III
JOB: The King of Eswatini (formerly
Swaziland)
REPUTATION: Spoiled autocrat and
Africa’s only absolute monarch
It must be kind of fun being the king of
all you survey. Not just the title but the
real deal monarch able to marry whoever
your little heart desires, buy whatever
fancy car you like, or build whatever new
edifices that royal prestige demands. This
is the case with King Mswati.
And, if your subjects prove difficult
or critical, there are always the most
recent in repressive technologies to be
deployed by your constabulary (the
Swaziland Royal Police) to keep them in
good order.
Mswati is a royal sort of prodigy – he
gained the throne at 18, making him the
world’s youngest monarch at the time.
This was after a period of four years trus-
teeship by two of his aunts, after the death
of his father Sobhuza II (who had up to
125 wives during his reign of 82 years)
when Mswati was just 14. When he turned
18 he was called back from his public
school in the UK so he could ascend the
throne, on 26 April 1986.
And hasn’t he had a good time? He
is an absolute ruler in the sense that he
gets to appoint Eswatini’s Prime Min-
ister and other top government and
traditional posts. But like many feudal
monarchs (think of that delightful Saudi
Prince Mohammed bin Salman), Mswati
has reinstated Eswatini’s toothless par-
liament (shuttered by his father) but
intervened more in the life of his sub-
jects, banning such sins as miniskirts
and divorce.
The pervasive influence of Christian
fundamentalism hasn’t stopped Mswati
from having 15 wives and 36 children.
One was a high school girl who disap-
peared without her mother’s knowledge
and another, a 17-year-old, made a ‘royal
fiancée’, despite Mswati’s ban from 2001
to 2005 on girls under 18 having sex, in a
bid to curtail HIV rates.
The poor king fined himself a cow for
this violation.
72
Of course there is no shortage of
naysayers who complain about massive
inequalities – but it’s all a question of
maintaining a decent royal lifestyle.
Mswati’s fleet of 19 Rolls Royces and 120
BMWs might have cost some 19 million
dollars – but who’s counting? (Some 59
per cent of the Eswatini population live
in poverty, with about 29 per cent below
the extreme poverty line. In 2019, ine-
quality was very high with a Gini coef-
ficient of 0.51).
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways
to discourage grumblers – Mswati
banned photography of his automo-
biles after being criticized for owning
luxuries such as a $500,000 Daimler
Chrysler Maybach 62.
Allowing no independent media and
no legal political parties makes for a good
start in preventing unseemly outbursts of
democratic discord. Freedom of speech,
assembly and association are after all
privileges – not rights – under divine
kingship. But sadly, sometimes more
extreme measures are necessary.
Back in 2021, when the students and
others were out of hand, it was necessary
for the ‘terrorists’ and ‘vandals’ to be dealt
with harshly – Amnesty International put
the death toll at over 80. Tough love needs
to be dealt out also to critics such as Thulani
Maseko, a well-known Swazi human rights
lawyer, gunned down in front of his family
this January by unknown gunmen. Mswati
reportedly said in an address the previ-
ous day that those calling for democratic
reforms would be ‘dealt with’.
EDWIN REMSBERG/ALAMY
But it is best that such acts be
accomplished anonymously, avoiding
unwelcome publicity. A wide range of
troublemakers needs to be monitored
and kept in line. These include the LGBT
community, union leaders, and activists
against child labour, among other groups.
Compliant courts can be counted on gen-
erally to ignore the occasional official
(and entirely justified) abuse of power. O
LOW CUNNING: Mswati and the royal
regime have found it advantageous to peddle
themselves as the Switzerland of Africa –
an island of stability in a sea of continental
chaos. The royal system is contrasted to the
crime and violence that democracy in neigh-
bouring South Africa is said to generate. The
promise of stable autocracy has proved a suc-
cessful lure for foreign businesses (whose only
concern is the ‘right’ to turn a profit) whose
investments have increased tenfold over the
last two decades. But as resistance grows,
Mswati’s ‘stability’ teeters on a knife edge.
SENSE OF HUMOUR: Decidedly whim-
sical. Mswati woke up on his 50th birthday
(April 2018) and without notice, without
informing parliament, without debate,
decided to change the name of the country
from Swaziland. The name Eswatini invokes
(at least in the King’s mind) a pre-modern
monarchical state of bliss.
Sources: The New York Times; The Mail and
Guardian; The Conversation; The Harvard Political
Review; US State Department; Al Jazeera.
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
VIEW FROM would be launched by none other than
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Indian

INDIA
March for the nation
In 1990, at a time when India was
becoming rapidly more polarized, the
president of the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), LK Advani, led a religious-political
march across the country. The ‘Ram
Rath Yatra’ took place in support of
demands for a temple dedicated to the
Hindu god Ram to be built on the site of
the Babri mosque in the temple town of
Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.
It toured India from September to
October 1990 and left in its wake commu-
nal clashes between Hindus and Muslims
in the north of the country. Two years
later, the Babri mosque was destroyed by a
mob of fanatics, and in 2019 the Supreme
Court handed the site exclusively to
Hindus (See ‘Control alt delete’, NI542).
The yatra had an instant impact on
the political fortunes of the BJP which
sustained through to 2014 and 2018 when
the party won two consecutive mandates
under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Since these victories, India has also seen
increased discrimination against minori-
ties, especially Muslims, as well as spiral-
ling polarization.
It seems to be kind of a poetic justice
then that 32 years later, another yatra
National Congress, the BJP’s historic
rival. The BJP has left no stone unturned
to paint Gandhi as a useless and reluctant
politician, a member of the elite with no
real connection to the ground realities
or the people. Gandhi, for most of his
political life, also seemed to have been ill
at ease with being the chief of the much
embattled Congress party, a role that he
renounced in 2019.
The Gandhi dynasty – Rahul’s grand-
mother Indira and father Rajiv were
both prime ministers who were assassi-
nated while in office – have always had
a groundswell of popular support, but
none of them had to battle a constant
malicious personal campaign in the way
Rahul has had to.
So, in September 2022, when Gandhi
began his Bharat Jodo Yatra with the spe-
cific aim of dispersing polarization and
connecting with the people, no-one paid
much attention. Many dismissed it as a
publicity stunt ahead of campaigning for
the 2024 general election. Yet the yatra
soon proved itself to be so much more,
finding a life of its own despite being
barely covered by the mainstream media.
Gandhi walked miles everyday, alongside
ordinary people – talking with them, lis-
tening to them. It infused the Congress
party with a new energy. Many opposi-
tion leaders also joined him, as well as
actors, activists and other public figures,
along with thousands of Indian citizens.
Throughout cold, rain and snowfall
the march did not stop. Gandhi grew an
unruly beard, and showed up every day
in a white t-shirt, trousers and sports
shoes. The image of the well-shaven,
suave, foreign-educated member of the
elite was soon replaced with that of a man
who was approachable and available to
the common person.
How much of an impact this yatra has
had on battling hate in India remains to be
seen. The coming elections in Karnataka,
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattis-
garh will show what material gains might
have been collected for the Congress, and
whether Gandhi has forged a legacy that
will serve him in times to come. O
NILANJANA BHOWMICK IS THE AUTHOR OF LIES
OUR MOTHERS TOLD US (ALEPH). SHE TWEETS
@NILANJANAB
Stop press: As we went to print Rahul Gandhi
was removed as an MP after being found guilty
of defamation over comments he made about
Narendra Modi’s surname. There were widespread
protests in his support across multiple states, and
inside the parliament premises in Delhi.

MAY-JUNE 2023 73
MIXED MEDIA
‘I
feel great,’ says Senegalese singer-
songwriter Baaba Maal, when I ask
how he’s feeling about turning 70
this year. ‘I get to do something I love in
my heart. Music gave me the gift to see
the world, and to also be connected to
my community, family, home town and
culture. This balance has made me in
tune with myself. It makes me happy.’
Maal doesn’t look or sound like a man
readying to hit 70. His spirited new album
Being (reviewed in NI 542), mixing tradi-
tional African instruments like the ngoni
and kora with modern electronic produc-
tion techniques, also doesn’t sound like
the music of a late sexagenarian. ‘With
the West African guitar players, playing
the ngoni, I asked them to play not just
classical songs, but to get more crazy, to
be in tune with the power of the percus-
sion and wild vocals.’
Maal called the album Being because
‘to make music and write songs, you have
to open your soul and heart, and just be’,
he explains. ‘You don’t have to force any-
thing. You let the elements of life come to
you naturally, as a human being.’
Another life than one in music nearly
came Maal’s way. As a child from the
semi-nomadic Fulani people, growing
up in Podor on the Senegal river, he was
expected to become a fisher. ‘It was hard
for my father to understand but then he
trusted me and gave me the chance to
be a musician,’ he says. ‘Podor was a very
cultural town, where my mother and her
friends wrote songs. Podor also has people
with many West African family names who
came to live there. It was an opportunity to
74
go from community to community, lis-
tening to their songs. I was a curious boy. I
went on a deep journey to understand the
culture and traditions of West Africa.’
Maal later studied music in Senegal’s
capital, Dakar, then Paris, going on to
record albums with his friend, guitar-
ist Mansour Seck. ‘Our band was called
Daande Lenol, which means “the voice
of the people”. Suddenly, all my commu-
nity who didn’t have a voice, in Senegal
or Africa, said: “Yes, we have a band and a
voice.” Every concert we did in Dakar or
small villages was for a noble cause: edu-
cation, agriculture, the protection of the
environment.’
As well as recording solo albums, Maal
has collaborated with Brian Eno, Damon
Albarn’s African Express, Tony Allen,
U2, and Mumford & Sons, and featured
on soundtracks for The Last Temptation
of Christ and Black Hawk Down. More
recently, he worked on music for Black
Panther and Wakanda Forever. ‘I’m really
pleased those Marvel films don’t show
this Africa people mention, of war, prob-
lems and disease,’ he says. ‘The films show
Africa has the culture, music, costumes,
headdresses and jewellery, but also the
technology. Maybe Africa is the future.’
Since 2005, Maal has been running the
Blues du Fleuve festival in Podor, which
takes place yearly on the first weekend in
December. ‘The festival is not just music.
It’s a place where people can exchange
ideas, such as agriculture, education or
how to keep girls at school. This was a
problem, but since the festival started, I
see more young girls in Podor going to
Words: Graeme Green
Photo: Matthew Donaldson
school than boys. It’s had an impact on
things that matter.’
Maal has long used his voice to go
beyond music. ‘I have so many things I
want to say, especially in Africa and in
Senegal – good things, bad things. If I
didn’t have music, how could I say it?
Sometimes I can succeed where it’s diffi-
cult for political leaders to succeed.’
His NANN-K Trust recently launched
the largest solar irrigation project in
Senegal, aimed at combatting desertifi-
cation and supporting local communi-
ties through regenerative agriculture. ‘It
makes me so happy to think what I can I
do for people and what I can bring back
to my town,’ he tells me. ‘In Africa, we
have the impact of climate change. I live
on the edge of the Sahara Desert, and
always it’s gaining more kilometres. I said
to myself: “I have to participate.” I asked
why young people were going to Spain to
find opportunities – in Africa they don’t
have the job they want in fishing or to do
agriculture in a modern way. Solar can
make a big impact in Africa.’
Maal believes music and projects that
improve people’s lives go hand-in-hand.
‘It’s a process. You make the music, you
travel, you make people know about
your community and traditions. People
trust you. Africa has to move forward,
but it has to be its own children that start
things. We also have to count on friends
and partners around the world who
can help Africa develop itself. All of us
together will make a difference.’ O
baabamaal.com
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 ‘To make music
and write songs,
you have to open
your soul and
heart, and just be.
You don’t have to
force anything.
You let the
elements of life
come to you
naturally, as a
human being’

MAY-JUNE 2023 75
MIXED MEDIA

BOOKS
Bodies Under Siege Shalash the Iraqi
by Sian Norris translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren
(Verso, ISBN 9781839764738) (And Other Stories, ISBN 9781913505646)
versobooks.com andotherstories.org

the well-developed strate- Shalash gives voice to the

You’d be forgiven for thinking
that today’s attack on abortion
rights is rooted in theologi-
cal beliefs about when human
life begins. Sian Norris, in
this timely and chillingly rel-
evant investigation, exposes
a complex and much more
alarming reality.
Going undercover, she
attends anti-abortion activ-
ist meetings, training events,
conferences and social media
chat rooms. She finds: ‘There
is no longer any possibility
of ignoring the link between
anti-abortion, the far-right,
misogyny and racism.’
The ease with which Roe
v Wade was overturned in
the US shocked and sur-
prised many around the
world. But this book exposes
gies by which rights we take
for granted are ripped apart,
and how fascist ideas, prolif-
erating online and in fringe
groups, can enter mainstream
discourse and shape govern-
ment policy in authoritarian
regimes and liberal democ-
racies alike. These ideas
include not only a rejection of
women’s basic rights, but also
racist fears of ‘a great replace-
ment’ of the world’s white
population.
An investigative journal-
ist, Norris follows the money,
exploring the activities of big
players in the anti-abortion
world such as Alliance Defend-
ing Freedom (in the US and
Britain), CitizenGO (in Spain,
but with links to Latin America
and Africa), and the network of
Russian billionaire and mon-
archist Konstantin Malofeyev,
to name but a few. The author
puts it succinctly: ‘Those with
power and money are using
women’s bodies to get more
of both.’
If there is any good to come
from this rightwing attack on
reproductive rights it is that
it shakes progressives out of
any complacency. It reminds
us that once won, rights – all
rights – have to be constantly
defended. This excellent book
may help do that.
VANESSA BAIRD
From Autumn 2005 until late
2006 an Iraqi living in Sadr
City, Baghdad posted a daily
internet commentary on the
tribulations and absurdities of
life under US occupation. These
blog posts found an eager audi-
ence among a population suf-
fering power-cuts, corruption
and ever-present violence. They
were swiftly disseminated in
printed versions, hand-written
copies and by word-of-mouth.
Now, two decades on, these
witty and scathing missives
have been collected in book
form, annotated by the still-
anonymous author, ‘Shalash
the Iraqi’. Taken together,
they paint a very different
picture of ‘liberated’ Baghdad
to that seen through the lens
of Western media.
concerns of ordinary people:
the friendships, feuds, mar-
riages, deaths that are the stuff
of everyday life. Only tangen-
tially do we glimpse the events
which occupied the Western
gaze. The US-organized
elections, the Mahdi army
insurrection, and the trial of
Saddam Hussein all rumble in
the margins.
These pages are filled with
drunks, crooks, and chanc-
ers, as well as ordinary people
simply getting by. We meet
Nuwayra, the neighbourhood
busybody, Khanjar, the shape-
shifting opportunist and
Khadija the flirtatious school-
teacher. There is a walk-on
cast of actual Iraqi politicians
– Saddam officials re-invented
as ‘democrats’ or exiles
returning to feather their
nests – each of whom receives
a richly-deserved monstering
from our commentator.
The publishers compare
Shalash to Tristram Shandy.
Perhaps a more culturally apt
precursor would be Nasreddin
Hodja, the 13th century trick-
ster and storyteller. In donning
a jester’s cap to mock the
follies and vices of his betters,
Shalash proves his worth to
inherit the honourable mantle
of the holy fool.
PETER WHITTAKER

76 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 MIXED MEDIA

Reviews editor: Conrad Landin

Dust Child Siblings

by Nguyen Phan Que Mai by Brigitte Reimann
(One World, ISBN 9780861546381) (Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN 9780241555835)
oneworld-publications.com penguin.co.uk

trying to deny his involve- – her first response is simply to

What is the best way to deal
with the post-traumatic stress
experienced by a US helicop-
ter pilot in Vietnam? Or that
of a bar girl fallen pregnant
after being forced through
poverty to entertain US sol-
diers in Saigon? Or that of the
many thousands of children
condemned as ‘of the dust’,
born out of wedlock to Ameri-
can fathers and Vietnamese
mothers, abandoned, and
living on the streets? Hope?
Hate? Denial?
The three protagonists in
this compelling and chal-
lenging novel each have their
own way of trying to chase
away the ghosts of the past.
There’s Dan, the helicopter
pilot, weighed down by the
memory of wartime horrors,
ment and finding refuge in
drink and violence. Quy’nh
travels with her sister from
her home village to the big
city, in order to earn money
to pay off their parents’ debt,
and allows hate to sustain
her. Phong, brought up in an
orphanage and despised by
his own countryfolk, hopes
that if he can trace his Black
American father he will gain
validation for who he is. As
their stories intertwine, each
must finally come to terms
with the decisions they once
made, and with the impact of
these on family, friends and
erstwhile enemies. The dra-
matic tension grows as the
narrative moves towards its
denouement, making Dust
Child a thoroughly immer-
sive novel.
Phan Que Mai’s story has
an authenticity and atten-
tion to detail that brings the
narrative alive, reflecting her
use of factual PhD research
as its basis. Dust Child offers
a welcome corrective to the
US lens which so often shapes
the re-tellings of Vietnam that
pervade in the West.
JO LATEU
‘How can he want to be left in
peace in such an unpeaceful
world?’
Elisabeth, the narrator of
Siblings, is far from at peace
in East Germany, where she
lives and works as an artist
in a factory town. A commit-
ted communist – though not
a party member – she views
the system as flawed and the
revolution unfinished, but will
allow neither to dent her opti-
mism for the socialist state.
Her brother Uli, about
whom she poses the ques-
tion above, works in a nearby
shipyard. His own ideal-
ism is expressed through his
desire to defect to the West.
Elisabeth’s initial apathy at
his announcement that he
will leave in two days time
observe: ‘The day after tomor-
row is Wednesday’ – quickly
gives way to a taciturn fury:
‘You have lost your mind.’
The narrative skips
between touching meditations
on the pair’s childhood insep-
arability and the stark reality
of their increasing alienation
in the present. But the motif
of siblinghood is broader
than that of Elisabeth and
Uli, expanding to cover the
uneasy solidarity of citizens in
East Germany – among them
former Nazis and concentra-
tion camp survivors – and the
parting roads of the two blocs
which, at least at the time,
seemed worlds apart. Observ-
ing strangers in a West Berlin
cafe, Elisabeth finds herself
‘straining so hard to hear what
language they were speaking
that my heart nearly stopped’:
it is, of course, German.
Siblings is published for
the first time in English since
its release in East Germany in
1963. Lucy Jones’s translation is
occasionally grating: references
to ‘Kyiv’ and a ‘side hustle’ dis-
locate it from its time. In the
main, however, she renders
Brigitte Reimann’s sparse prose
at once raw and considered,
a yearning for solidarity and
artistic beauty in the face of a
traumatized civilisation.
CONRAD LANDIN

MAY-JUNE 2023 77
MIXED MEDIA
FILM
Harka
directed and written by Lofty Nathan
87 minutes
++++
‘Harka’ is an Arabic word
meaning ‘to burn’. It’s also
Tunisian slang for a migrant
without papers crossing the
Med to reach Europe. Both
could apply to twenty-some-
thing street vendor Ali, the
unlikely, unprepossessing
focus of British-Egyptian
Lofty Nathan’s first feature.
He sweats through the day
standing at the roadside with
cans to sell smuggled petrol
to motorists. He’s unwashed,
his clothes are grubby and
stained – he’s squatting in an
unfinished building – and he
never smiles. He’s riled that he
has to pay off the local police,
but he has almost got together
the dinars to become a harka.
Then he hears that his
father has died. His young-
est sister is still at school, but
when their father became ill
the other sister had to leave
to work as a housecleaner.
Ali can’t repay the loan their
father took out while sick,
78
so the sisters join him in the
squat.
Ali, taking on family
responsibilities, seethes with
frustration and anguish. He
fails when, for once wearing
a clean pullover, he tries to
claim his father’s job, which
Tunisian law gives him a
right to. When he tells the
cop demanding his payoff
that he’s sold nothing and
has no money, he’s beaten
up. He’s livid, tries to make a
complaint about the police at
the governor’s offices, but is
thrown out.
In the film’s realism,
rawness and desperation,
there are parallels with
the post-war classic Bicycle
Thieves. But it evokes too the
life and protest in Sidi Bouzid,
where the film is set, of street
vendor Mohamed Bouazizi,
which set off the Arab Spring.
Grounded, gritty, tense, this is
an unforgettable film.
MALCOLM LEWIS
1976
directed and co-written by Manuela Martelli
95 minutes
++++,
Chile, 1976. It’s the third year
after the coup that overthrew
the Popular Unity government
of Salvador Allende, South
America’s first elected Marxist
president. Carmen is staying
at her seaside villa, overseeing
its renovation. In a hardware
store she’s showing the assis-
tant the shade of paint she
wants by pointing to colours
in a tourist guide to Venice.
We hear a commotion in the
street – a woman is being
abducted. Another assistant
lowers the shutters. These kids
won’t learn, someone says.
On the car radio on the
way back to the villa we hear
a snatch of General Pinochet,
president and head of the mili-
tary, addressing the nation
about the clean-up of society.
Next morning, the local priest,
who Carmen clearly knows
well, asks for her help to care for
a young man who’s been shot.
Director Martelli’s meas-
ured debut builds in tension
and threat as political reality
gradually enters the every-
day life of this upper-mid-
dle-class, patronized woman
of leisure. She’s charitable,
gives shoes to the priest and
clothes to help the poor, but
she’s comfortably oblivious to
the bigger picture – and to the
silence and complicity of the
people around her.
It’s artfully done, and just
as the comfortable and con-
forming are never inconven-
ienced, neither Carmen, nor
the viewer, has to directly
confront violence. But the risk
she’s taking becomes more
and more clear to her, espe-
cially when she’s trying to
arrange the wounded man’s
move to a ‘safe’ house.
There’s a beautifully
restrained central perfor-
mance, brilliantly off-kilter
soundtrack, and with Car-
men’s growing awareness, a
heightened sense of forebod-
ing and fear. ML
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

MUSIC
ELY DAGHER
Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels
by Mayssa Jallad
(Ruptured Records, DL)
rupturedthelabel.bandcamp.com
+++++
Marjaa: The Battle of the
Hotels is an album that takes
Beirut’s recent history and adds
song, maps, and memories to
create something so extraor-
dinary that it gives one pause.
As a piece of political music, it
sits alongside Lebanese Mazen
Kerbaj’s ‘minimalistic improvi-
sation with the Israeli air force’
(Kerbaj on trumpet, the war-
planes on bombs) or Check-
point 303’s delicate songs from
off-limit Palestinian villages.
Marjaa is a work of reconstruc-
tion that uses modern Arabic-
language song to subtle and
breath-taking effect.
Based in Beirut, Mayssa
Jallad is both an architec-
tural historian and a musi-
cian. Her album revisits the
division of her home city in
1976, when a fortified border
(the Green Line) divided the
capital into east and west sec-
tions, marking the beginning
of the Lebanese civil war.
The five-month Battle of the
MAY-JUNE 2023
Hotels (1975-76) was fought
in the city’s hotel district (the
Holiday Inn was one focus).
Written in tandem with pro-
ducer Fadi Tabbal, the album
is in two parts: ‘Dahaliz’ is an
attempt to walk in the city
with the aid of a pre-war map;
‘Maaraka’ imagines being in the
embattled hotels themselves.
Despite this horror, the music
is usually delicate. Synths, oud,
a bit of guitar and percussion
and vocals, and that’s it. There
is very little drama, just a per-
vasive sadness; drones, often
made by strings, pervade and
contribute a feeling of tension
and foreboding. As a lyrcist,
Jallad is poetically laconic.
One track, ‘Kharita’, from the
Dahaliz section, has two just
lines: ‘I walk the streets alone,
in my hand a map/ That I don’t
understand.’ It’s this precise,
minimal weightiness that helps
make Marjaa such an accom-
plished and unusual album.
LOUISE GRAY
Les Égarés
by Sissoko Segal Parisien Peirani
(Nø Førmat!, CD, LP, DL)
noformat.net
++++,
First, there were four virtuosi,
then two star duos – kora player
Ballaké Sissoko and cellist
Vincent Segal; then saxophon-
ist Émile Parisien and accordi-
onist Vincent Peirani – and now
one superb quartet. This is the
first album from Sissoko Segal
Parisien Peirani and one can
only hope that there are more
releases on the near horizon.
Les Égarés (literally, ‘the
lost’, but a poetic transla-
tion would be ‘straying’) is a
luminous album that ‘strays’
across musical and geographic
boundaries. Bookended by
two West African Manding
tunes, ‘Ta Nye’ and ‘Banja’, the
musicians sway into other ter-
ritories, too. A loose cumbia, in
the form of the jaunty ‘Esper-
anza’, is launched by Segal and
quickly taken up by the other
musicians, intricately weaving
patterns around the main tune.
The album is an intersection
point between many musics
and its gentle echoes of some
MIXED MEDIA
Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird
GASSIAN
of the greats – John Coltrane,
Don Cherry, and Joe Zawinul
– are purposeful reminders of
the single currency that unites
all sonic genres.
Recorded in the French
Alps, there is an airy supple-
ness to the 10 tracks. All instru-
mentals (unless you count a
few spontaneous chuckles of
delight breaking through from
one of the players), musical
conversations switch this way
and that between the four. The
absence of percussion makes
for a fluid listening experience
in which one picks up rhythms
in less explicit ways: the move-
ment of the cello lines, the
breaths of the accordion.
‘Banja’, the last track, ends with
a crunch of accordion chords
and then, after a few seconds,
the delicate sound of bird-
song. Perhaps the musicians
wandered outside. It’s nice to
think so, for the message of
Les Égarés is to simply look
around you and listen. LG
79
 THE The crossword prize is a voucher for our online shop to the equivalent of £20/$30. Only the
winner will be notified. Send your entries by 15 May to: New Internationalist Puzzle Page,

PUZZLER The Old Music Hall, 106-108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK; or email a scan to:
puzzlepage@newint.org Winner for 261: Andrew Oldfield, Glasgow, Scotland.

CROSSWORD 262 by Axe 13 Galena – or Adele? Getting mixed up (4,3)

CRYPTIC ACROSS
6 Plain Indian owes much to frank
Iowan (5)
7 Leeward Islander’s opposing limited
fertilizer (8)
10 Finch gets to vote Communist, moving to
the Left (7)
11 Little run-of-the-mill northern town’s late
neolithic site (7)
12 Bun and blini almost alternating over
time making a comeback (7)
14 Part of Ireland girl ends up after crushing
CRYPTIC DOWN
1 Pep lied being unfit in charge at Celtic (8)
nut in shy (6,5) 2 Place, at the forefront of nacho and pizza
19 Organized – but defunct at the outset – orders, limoncello ices (6)
this council (7) 3 North of England town is delightful and
21 Wild West location for a Mailer novel (7) never in recession (10)
23 BBC-type is mustard! (7) 4 One that’s active reaches a peak in
25 Take knee, say, after exclamation of awe Italy? (4)
in Agamemnon’s capital (7) 5 Using chart from Ugandan starting point,
26 Ness, in South America, is to copy church get as far as a port on the Indian Ocean (6)
about old royal nave gateway (4,4) 6 Piece of Mozart, a bone, is found by a
27 One jumps in the car to see Nordic lake in Africa (6)
feature (5) 8 Windward Island’s in terrible danger
over bomb (7)
9 Dairy’s not state-supported in this part of
Wales (5)
13 Drop of Scotch sees one from Holland
falling about Como, steaming! (4,6)
15 State, the latest in Europe to support
Britain’s downfall (7)
16 Piedmont, once the home to Alberta’s
capital (8)
17 Native Americans, ancient fellows, both
almost 100 (5)
18 Welsh group from all points but the west
meet English bishop (6)
20 American’s pale, being subordinate to
a little Italian – and retreating in African
hotspot (6)
22 Concerning should the Church get its
grips on Pernambuco today (6)
24 Glasses needed in high definition to
view highest point in Oregon (4)
QUICK ACROSS
6 Native American, once a buffalo hunter
of the prairies and Great Plains (5)
7 Caribbean native whose capital is St
John’s (8)
10 Bird of the finch family named after its
distinctive markings (7)
11 Important late-Neolithic/early Bronze
Age site in Wiltshire (7)
12 Flemish or Walloon? (7)
13 Galena’s common name (4,3)
14 Administrative area of Munster (6,5)
19 Catholic council and Vatican basilica (7)
21 Old West town, now home to the
University of Wyoming (7)
23 International language by assumption (7)
25 Greek civilization of the Peloponnese (7)
26 Southernmost point of South America (4,4)
27 Deeply glaciated valley with access to
the sea (variant spelling) (5)
QUICK DOWN
1 Gaelic; non-Brythonic Celtic (8)
2 Italy’s second city, as they say there (6)
3 Northern English town, one end of the
world’s first passenger railway (1825) (10)
4 Europe’s tallest active volcano (4)
5 African capital, formerly Lourenço
Marques (6)
6 Zambia-Zimbabwe dam straddling the
Zambezi River (6)
8 Windward Island subject to an invasion
in 1983 (7)
9 Irish Sea county of Wales between 1974
and 1996 (5)
13 Scotland’s largest freshwater lake (4,6)
15 European nation, one of the four original
republics of the Soviet Union (1922) (7)
16 Canadian provincial capital named after
a northern suburb of London (8)
17 Mesoamerican people of Mexico’s Gulf
Coast (5)
18 Welsh Parliament: a devolved
government of the UK (6)
20 Ancient kingdom annexed by Ethiopia
in 1855, scene of sporadic guerrilla wars
(1975-present) (6)
22 Atlantic port and resort, capital of Brazil
1537-49 (6)
24 Mount ----, Oregon’s highest peak, within
the Cascade Volcanic Arc (4)
SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD 261
ACROSS: 7 Cuiaba, 8 Wesleyan,
9 Choctaws, 10 Austin, 11 KaNgwane,
12 Barsac, 13 East Anglian, 18 Anshun,
20 Armagnac, 22 Tatars, 23 Asturias,
24 Mahayana, 25 Kraals.
DOWN: 1 Bushman, 2 Rancagua, 3 Masada,
4 Istanbul, 5 Geysir, 6 Panipat, 8 Western
Sahara, 14 Tunisian, 15 Algerian, 16 In Salah,
17 Kavalla, 19 Huaraz, 21 Mitaka.

ASSOCIATION Solutions here are alluded to by ‘association’ words or phrases, eg

ICE as a solution could have association words like ‘melting (ICE)’ WORDSEARCH 108 Find the 20 sea straits
hidden here.

WORDS 29 or ‘(ICE) skating’, so the association words in each clue could appear
in a phrase before or after the solution word.
ACROSS DOWN
1 Building; Office (4) 1 Sleeping; Benefit (8)
3 Weigh anchor and; 2 The Lady and the;
For the open sea (3,4) Steamer (5)
8 Star; Pot (7) 3 Drama; Of events (6)
9 Oral; Season (5) 4 West End; Of dreams (7)
10 Nasty; And tuck (3) 5 Wow, that’s; Grace (7)
11 Hydro; Light 6 Shopping;
Orchestra (8) To starboard (4)
13 Pick; Of beef (5) 7 Ready, willing and;
16 Putt for an; Eyed (5) seaman (4)
18 New; Comedy (8) 12 Horse; One’s nest (8)
20 Polka; The year (3) 14 Bishop of Rome’s;
22 Three Day; Of Bath and Wells (7)
Horizon (5) 15 Your views are; Or flat
23 Steak; Sauce (7) roof (7)
24 Won the toss and; 17 Under; The obvious (6)
Difficult questions (7) 19 After; Home (4)
25 Ember; Of the 20 Princess; Ross (5)
week (4) 21 All by one’s: Service (4)

SOLUTION TO ASSOCIATION WORDS 28

ACROSS: 1 Douglas, 5 Staff, 8 Account, 9 Arena,
10 Field, 11 English, 12 Martyr, 14 Repair, 17 Nickels,
19 Lists, 22 Raids, 23 Express, 24 Highs, 25 Toenail.
DOWN: 1 Dwarf, 2 Uncle, 3 Laundry, 4 Setter, 5 Slang,
6 America, 7 Feather, 12 Monarch, 13 Racking,
15 Eclipse, 16 Ascent, 18 Eases, 20 Siena, 21 Sisal.
SOLUTION TO WORDSEARCH 107
The 10 London Underground lines were:
Bakerloo, Central, Circle, District, DLR, East London,
Elizabeth, Jubilee, Northern, Piccadilly.

80 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 AGONY
UNCLE
Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like
we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective.
Enter stage: Agony Uncle

Q: Last week I had a fright-

ening encounter on my
commute: I was cycling off
from a busy intersection
when a delivery van turned
left directly in front, nearly
clipping me. I was unhurt but
shocked – if I hadn’t stopped
it could easily have knocked
me down.
To add insult to almost-
injury, the driver wound
down his window and swore
at me before driving off.
I know from past experi-
ence police won’t act without
video footage – however,
I could complain to the
company. I’m worried this
dangerous driving could lead
to someone being injured or with vile untruths. I got home possibly write an email to a few days. This gave me time

ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER

worse, but I’m also aware that
many delivery drivers have
extremely insecure working
conditions and demanding
targets, and I’m not sure I’d
want to risk losing someone
their job. What should I do?
Dizzy of Dagenham
I was once waiting in a socially
distanced queue outside a DIY
shop when a man stormed
out of a neighbouring store
shouting racist obscenities at a
member of staff. A few people
expressed a very English kind
of muted outrage while the man
got into his minicab and drove
off. I noted down the company
name and number plate.
I drove home replaying
the awful scene in my head.
I imagined that the driver
probably spent his working
days listening to rightwing
talk radio, filling his head
and opened my email, found
the address of the CEO of the
cab company, and wrote a
livid email that identified the
driver. My mouse hovered
over the send button.
We have all been in situa-
tions where we’ve wanted to
act, fuelled by an intoxicat-
ing combination of anger and
righteousness. We rational-
ize our behaviour as for the
safety of other people – and
maybe it is. But we’re also
driven by a desire to satisfy
an itch for revenge. And
social media, e-mail and
online reviewing platforms
make this easy to do.
But, then, time passes.
Passions cool and the desire
to complain wanes. Though
clearly not for you!
I know your situation is
different. In your case, for
instance, you could quite
the company and tell them of
your experience without any
identifying details. You could
suggest that all it would take is
one cyclist with a camera on
their helmet for this to have
gone much worse for them.
You could strongly suggest
that they inform all their
employees – or, let’s be honest,
self-employed drivers – to
obey the rules of the road.
You’re right that many
delivery drivers are under
pressure. But this driver did
swear at you, which is not OK.
Precarious contract or not,
dangerous and aggressive
drivers should not be on the
road. Maybe, if you do send an
email, this episode will at least
serve as a reminder to the
company that driving safely
must always come first.
As for my own email, I let
it stay in my drafts folder for
to dwell on something else:
I thought about how, in the
heat of the moment, I went up
to the shaken employee and
offered him a few words of
consolation. This, it seemed to
me, was a more important act
than hiding behind the shield
of modern technology to seek
revenge on the assailant.
Then, I thought: no, that’s
not enough. This taxi company
should know that one of their
drivers poses a risk to the
public. I should tell them.
Then, another counter-
argument came to mind:
what if he loses his job? Is
that really a positive outcome
to the world? What if he has
children?
I opened the laptop. My
mouse hovered over the send
button... O
SEND YOUR DILEMMAS TO
ADVICE @NEWINT.ORG

MAY-JUNE 2023 81
 WHAT IF…
CHILDREN LED THE FIGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS?
It’s time adults stopped trying to mould kids into obedient neoliberal subjects,
argues Matt Broomfield.
Adult domination of children is the
most universal relation in human
society, which only the most utopian
political philosophies have sought to
overturn.
The eternal need to ensure social
replication means older generations
have long struggled to force their
offspring into ideological submis-
sion – particularly under capitalism.
Michel Foucault showed how
modern schooling disciplines chil-
dren, extinguishing natural creativ-
ity, compassion and solidarity, while
the Western nuclear family struc-
ture can reproduce a paranoid, self-
serving individualism.
Solutions to this reality are typi-
cally framed in patronizing, liberal
terms as an adult duty to guarantee
children’s rights against abuse, child-
hood labour and the poverty which
afflicts children across the globe at
twice the adult rate.1 If we recognize
our youngest citizens as a political class,
subject to various disciplinary and educa-
tional processes moulding them to enter
the global market (whether as workers,
administrators or bosses), a more trans-
formative set of solutions emerges.
For example, as Silvia Federici
demanded wages for housework, so we
might demand wages for schoolwork. Just
like the women with whom their social
position is entwined, children’s unremu-
nerated labour in the classroom is essen-
tial for the long-term reproduction of
capitalism.
Programmes in rural Mexico and
Colombia where parents were paid to
send their children to class saw dramatic
increases in school attendance and aca-
demic performance. 2 Could such ideas
open emancipatory horizons for children
otherwise fated for early entry into the
labour market?
When reformers demand univer-
sal ‘access’ to education, the form and
ANDY CARTER
content are often glossed over. Famously,
revolutionary educator Paulo Freire’s
‘dialogic’ pedagogy, which calls for a
82
mutual and ‘living’ exchange between
educator and student, rather than the
one-way imparting of ‘dead knowledge’,
has achieved significant results in foster-
ing literacy and personal emancipation in
the Global South.
But, historically, many Freire-inspired
education reform programmes have
relied on leftist mass movements like
the Brazilian Workers’ Party to which he
returned from exile in the 1980s. Cur-
rently, many Western parents sceptical
of the state-educational system under-
standably choose to home-school their
children, but the ‘anti-school’ movement
can be marred by a deep individualism
and a lack of solidarity with all children,
not just one’s own.
Only massive reorganization in and
alongside neoliberalized education
systems, perhaps even drawing lessons
from the way progressive Catholic ‘base
communities’ operated clandestinely
under South American juntas to create
dialogic spaces of learning, could produce
a future classroom genuinely open to
growth and dialogue.
We have a long way to go. At
present, children are even denied
suffrage, underlining the extent to
which they are not considered part
of society until they enter the labour
force. For good reason, we do not
impose literacy or intelligence tests
on adult voters, nor demand they be
free of external influence or mental
susceptibility. Children deserve a
political process which treats their
(presumably) more limited knowl-
edge and experience not as an auto-
matic barrier to participation, but a
challenge to factor into a reformed
electoral system.
Whether children achieve elec-
toral participation via special
assemblies or some more radical
democratic form remains to be
seen. But an ageing electorate in
many wealthy countries is a factor in
younger generations being merrily
ushered toward climate apocalypse.
In such circumstances, the urgent need to
grant our planet’s youngest inhabitants a
say in its long-term future seems clear.
The subjugation of the child also has
long-term effects on the family which
surrounds them, encouraging parents
themselves to employ coercive methods,
reproduce authoritarian norms and
accept the infinite postponement of their
own frustrated dreams.
By breaking the forms which mould
children into obedient capitalist subjects,
we would do more than just liberate the
springtime of their lives from discipli-
nary control. Rather, we would open
up our society to children’s rebellious
curiosity, disarming sincerity, playful
brilliance, and readiness to challenge
pre-existing values. What if we genuinely
listened to these natural rebels? O
MATT BROOMFIELD IS A FREELANCE JOURNALIST,
POLITICAL ANALYST AND ESSAYIST.
1 UNICEF, ‘Nearly 385 million…’, 3 October 2016,
nin.tl/child 2 Orazio Attanasio and others,
‘Education choices…’, The Review of Economic
Studies, Vol 79, No 1, 2011, nin.tl/mexico
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 WHY SUBSCRIBE?
WE HAVE A UNIQUE HISTORY
The first ever issue in 1970 carried an interview
with the President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere.
He had argued that 10 per cent of all overseas aid
should be spent on educating the ‘first world’ about
the real causes of world poverty.

We wanted to show that poverty was not the

result of a game of chance. It was caused by a set
of economic relationships, rooted in colonialism,
which enriched a minority by impoverishing the
majority. One way or another this has been the
message of New Internationalist ever since.

https://secure.kckglobal.com/care/nin/subscribe.php
 Through our eyes,
the world looks different
Over the past 50 years we’ve taken radical issues
mainstream.

A monthly gift will help get our magazine to schools,

campaign groups and activists – so we can reach a new
generation of readers.

Are you in? Head to

newint.org/give
or email
give@newint.org