What is Zelensky going to do for Ukraine now that he has been swept into office with a landslide majority? Nobody actually knows and this may include Zelensky himself. But Ukrainian voters are no fools
Ukraine has a new President and he’s a comedian. Oh, wait a minute, that’s not such a big deal. Guatemala was the first country to elect a comedian as President: Jimmy Morales in 2015. Although Morales turned sort of serious once he took office: He’s a Right-wing nationalist, who supports death penalty and opposes abortion. Whereas Volodymyr Zelensky hasn’t turned.
Right through the presidential election campaign in Ukraine, Zelensky avoided speeches. Mostly, he just toured the country with a comedy troupe, performed in skits and did stand-up. And he’s not just a comedian, he’s a Jewish comedian — the very best kind. His style is south Ukrainian, sort of vaudeville, with a distinctive Jewish inflection and people love it.
Congratulations to Ukraine, by the way, for having Jews as both President and Prime Minister (Volodymyr Groysman) at the same time in the heart of traditionally anti-semitic Eastern Europe and not even making a fuss about it. But what is Zelensky going to do for Ukraine now that he has been swept into office with a landslide majority (73 per cent)? Nobody actually knows and this may include Zelensky himself.
When Zelensky did offer more than jokes, in the short videos he released from time to time during the campaign, it still wasn’t policies. More like mood music, really.
“He’s from a family of Jewish Soviet intellectuals from a Russian-speaking industrial region (in eastern Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Likhachev of the National Minorities’ Rights Monitoring Group in Kyiv told the Haaretz newspaper. “He has repeatedly made fun of over-the-top (Ukrainian) national patriotic discourse.”
“Zelensky might make some symbolic gestures toward nationalist sentiment to fend off accusations that he’ll sell us out to Russia,” Likhachev continued, “but that seems unlikely to me. He probably realises that it’ll be hard for him to win over the most nationalist-oriented part of society, so he’ll wash his hands of them so as not to alienate the majority.”
That will be a welcome change after five years of the pompous nationalist bilge of billionaire Petro Poroshenko, who won the presidency in 2014 after a popular revolt overthrew the pro-Russian stooge Viktor Yanukovych.
In a video Poroshenko released just before the sole presidential debate in Kiev’s huge Olympic Stadium last Friday, he tried to play the patriotic card: “There’s no room for jokes here. Being a President and supreme commander is not a game… it means being responsible for the people, for the country.” It would have sounded more persuasive if Poroshenko had done something about the corruption that has made oligarchs like him rich.
Zelensky’s response was lethal: “I’m not your opponent. I’m a verdict on you. I am the result of your mistakes.” And by a majority of almost three-to-one, Ukrainians voted to put their future in his hands. Although, to be frank, most of them doubt that he can really deliver the future of peace and prosperity that they hope for.
The only evidence they have of Zelensky’s industry, honesty and wisdom is the television series he writes and stars in, Servant of the People. It’s a heart-warming story of a humble high school history teacher, whose rant about the dreadful state of the country is secretly recorded by his students and goes viral when they upload it to You Tube. So he is elected President of Ukraine.
Zelensky is not a high school teacher; he is a show business millionaire with his own production company. He may be just as warm and sincere in person as Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko, the former teacher and accidental President, whom he plays in Servant of the People. (It’s one of Ukraine’s most popular series and is now nearing 50 episodes). Or he may not be.
Journalists are now working their way through all the box sets of Servant of the People, trying to glean some clues about what the new President has in mind. But that’s a thankless task because a lot of the show is sheer fantasy (like the sequence where the frustrated Holoborodko machine-guns the entire Parliament).
Ukrainian voters are not fools. They know they are buying a pig in an poke. But they calculate that things might change if Zelensky becomes President, whereas they certainly wouldn’t change if any of the usual suspects won the presidency. And things are certainly not good now.
Ukraine has become the poorest country in Europe — far poorer than Russia. Millions of Ukrainians have left the country seeking work in Poland or Russia and the low-intensity war against the Russian-backed separatists in the east drags on endlessly. No post-Soviet leader of Ukraine has made even a dent in the corrupt rule of the oligarchs. Indeed, most of them have been oligarchs themselves. So why not vote for Zelensky? Most Ukrainians feel that they have nothing left to lose.
(The writer’s new book is Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work)
Writer: Gwynne Dyer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
A Kerala institution’s decision to prohibit women from wearing niqab is about right interpretation of texts
The decision by the Kerala-based Muslim Educational Society (MES), prohibiting female students from wearing veils in its institutions across the country, is not only about keeping to its reformist legacy but more about challenging the theological discourse set by powerful revisionist groups, who control mosques and madrasas. It is a brave attempt to uphold the true spirit of the holy texts and the Prophet amid a sea of interpretations by variant scholars, some of which have set the rigid template of Islam in our perception. It is about reinstating the position of women in Islam as it was intended and not circumscribing them by patriarchal interventions and culture constructs of the later years. At a time when Islamophobia has overpowered a true understanding of the religion, such voices are needed to dispel mistruths and begin where it is needed most, in education. The group runs 35 colleges, 72 schools and has around one lakh students, the future generation which MES president PA Fazal Ghafoor believes should be mainstreamed rather than feared, feel respected rather than reviled. In its circular, the MES even quoted a Kerala High Court order from December 2018, which dismissed a plea filed by two female students of Christ Nagar Senior Secondary School in Thiruvananthapuram, seeking to wear headscarves. The rationale being that the disadvantages of being marked out narrow down the advantages of maintaining parity. Although it would appear that the IS-operated blasts in Sri Lanka and the resultant swoop in South India may have set a precautionary context, Ghafoor has been consistent in his stand against veiling for far longer, saying it was un-Islamic and a cultural import. He had also said that wearing the niqab continuously can cause Vitamin D deficiency in Muslim women. Most importantly, such a move would actually uphold the identity of women as the misuse of the veil as a subterfuge has cost the community, the latest suicide bombers turning what should be a matter of choice to a matter of concern. Many purist scholars, too, maintain that the Quran does not specifically mention the burqa or tell women to wear confining clothes and cover their faces. Instead, it instructs men and women to dress and behave modestly in society and lower their gaze when interacting with each other. Much of the legitimacy of the burqa is drawn from the Hadith or traditions of life in the days of Prophet Muhammad and are, therefore, attributed to him. These have been conflated to embody the very idea of religiosity. However, he himself had always professed followers to go by the Quran. Besides, women in his times were progressive, were allowed to work unveiled and even today, they are not allowed to cover their faces during Haj, the idea being there should be no barrier between the devotee and her experience of divinity.
Of course, one must understand that in the backdrop of a growing Islamophobia, the veil has returned as an identity marker of the revivalist fervour of the times. This has resulted in the veil being politicised and tokenized as a tool for impact. Little wonder then that the extreme rightists at home raised the issue of banning the veil given its misuse by terrorists in Lanka. So long as it continues to be a power tool to perpetuate the politics of religion, the veil can only generate controversies and be used for point-scoring. Real victory is when women themselves are comfortable about choosing or shunning it.
Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer
Putin wants to isolate Russia’s internet from the rest of the world, much like China. This is not a good thing
Vladimir Putin is the archetypal strongman; his “muscular” presence has allowed a Post-Soviet Russia to punch way above its weight in global geopolitics. Of course, it helps when you have tens of thousands of nuclear warheads at your disposal. Now, Putin wants to emulate the Chinese and create a purely Russian internet. According to a law signed by the President, November onwards, it will be possible for Russian authorities to cut off access to the wider world-wide web in certain situations and thus create a purely domestic internet. A simple reason for Putin to do so is to prevent the spread of information or misinformation on Western social media networks that can be used to destabilise a state. Twitter and Facebook, as well as other public social networks, have become ‘enemies of the state’ in several countries, particularly quasi-dictatorships. Russia has even acted against one of its homegrown networks ‘Telegram,’ an extremely secure instant messaging service favoured by terrorists across the world.
This action of Russia has sent shivers not just in other countries but also among activists. Can Putin’s actions give ideas to the next Indian government? However, Putin has realised and so should Indian politicians that services like Twitter and Facebook are extensions of the United States’ foreign policy. They can very easily manipulate information flows and how they serve up that information to transform electoral results. This is why defence analyst Abhijit Iyer-Mitra has filed a suit against these companies in the Delhi High Court, as their actions can manipulate (and are, according to some evidence) Indian elections. So should we also go down the same path and have a purely ‘Indian’ internet? No. The beauty of the internet is that it has democratised information flows as well as how people react and talk with each other. That has to stay. However, governments are right and must be concerned about how the internet has encouraged and enabled coercive activities. While the Supreme Court did enshrine the right to privacy, it does not allow anyone to work against the state. India should remain part of the world-wide web but protect its own interests. It should force foreign companies to not only store their data here but explain their actions when it comes to blocking users and their algorithms since these can be weaponised against Indians.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Neither is the Ashraf Ghani regime in Kabul a Shia-centric dispensation, nor does India have a commonality of religious denomination. Yet both inspire more trust among Iranians
As a nation, Pakistan has had a historically unsettled and restive relationship with all three neighbouring countries that touch its land borders ie, India, Afghanistan and Iran. However, recently, Prime Minister Imran Khan took his national obsession with the “borders” of other countries to another level of imagination when he waxed eloquently to a befuddled audience in Iran, “Germany and Japan killed millions of their civilians until after the second World War when they both decided to have joint industries on their border regions!” Imran Khan’s political nemesis Bilawal Bhutto soon tweeted a stinging, “Our Prime Minister thinks that Germany and Japan share a border. How embarrassing, this is what happens when you @UniofOxford let people in just because they can play cricket”. Beyond the obvious embarrassment emanating from such “deliveries”, the former cricketer-turned-politician returned back to Islamabad from a lukewarm trip to Iran, which refused to offer any strategic succour or sound-bite that could thaw the Pakistan-Iran coldness, beyond diplomatic courtesies and officialese.
The backdrop to the recent visit by the Pakistani Prime Minister to its Western neighbour, Iran, came at a most unpropitious phase of acute mutual suspicions, with both nations having recently accused each other of having allowed “terrorists” to operate and attack the other country. Few weeks back, Pakistan had pointedly blamed Iranian-based “terror outfits” for a deadly bus jacking incident on the coastal highway, wherein the “terrorists” entered a bus and identified passengers on the basis of their IDs and then killed 10 of them who served with the Pakistani Navy, Air Force and the Coast Guard.
Earlier, Iran had unequivocally blamed Pakistan for harbouring Sunni jihadist group Jaish ul-Adl (Army of Justice), who had killed 27 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Sistan-Baluchistan region of Iran. The undeniable undercurrents of sectarian rift have beset the Iran-Pakistan narrative, with Islamabad increasingly relying on the Saudi bloc, much to the chagrin of the Shia-centric sensibilities of the Iranian identity. The umbilical cord of Pakistan with the Saudis has got strengthened with the life-sustaining financial bailout afforded by the Saudis and the Emiratis — besides the appointment of former Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, General Raheel Sharif, as the head of 41-nation (Sunni ruled), Riyadh-based, Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, that is at the forefront of battling Iran-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen. Pakistan’s own fractious societal divide that pits its vulnerable “minority” of Shia Muslims at the hands of the supremacist and extremist groups — for example, the recent terror attack on the Hazara Shias that killed over 20 — is a matter of perennial and irreconcilable distrust between Pakistan and Iran.
Recognising the sectarian angularity, Imran Khan went with a retinue of Shia Ministers, like the Minister for Human Rights, Dr Shireen Mazari and Minister for Maritime Affairs, Syed Ali Haider Zaidi. The Pakistani delegation’s port of disembarkation was not the capital Tehran but a symbolic first stopover at the historical town of Mashad, where Imran Khan paid obeisance at the holy shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam, before proceeding to Tehran. Post the symbolism, Imran Khan began his maiden visit with a laborious endeavour to explain the ostensible Pakistani commitment towards fighting “terrorism”, besides common pain-points of smuggling narcotics, human trafficking, hostage taking, money laundering and abduction.
However, both sides had extended agenda and pet peeves with Iran euphemistically alluding to the US as the “enemy” blocking regional peace; whereas Pakistan unwarrantedly dragged Jammu & Kashmir into the bilateral discussions in a desperate attempt to elicit some expression of interest or text, only to draw a studied silence. Iran, which has its own strategic convergence and understanding with Delhi on many fronts, including that on the Chabahar port, Afghanistan, oil exploration and supplies among others, did not take the Pakistani bait. Under pressure from the more experienced Iranians, Imran Khan made yet another amateurish move by confessing the obvious, “We have come to the conclusion, we will not allow any militant group to operate from Pakistan.” Expectedly, Imran Khan was roasted at home, with the Opposition parties referring to the same as an unpardonable admission of complicity and guilt, especially when the International Monetary Fund was linking the much-needed bailout package to the findings of Pakistani guilt via the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
It will take the Pakistani leadership more than charm offensives and half-meant confessions to overcome its deep-rooted perceptions in Delhi, Kabul or even Tehran. Rote and banal attempts by Islamabad to invoke the line of “brother Muslim country” have so far failed the Ashraf Ghani regime in Afghanistan and Iranians, who keep a hawk eye on the growing Saudi-Wahhabi influence and control of the Pakistani establishment. The delicately placed chessboard of institutional fiefdoms within the Pakistani state, entailing the trinity of military, politicos and clergy, cannot allow any major course-correction from the historical Pakistani intransigence as that would amount to deligitimising, any one or more, of these three institutions.
Beyond a point, Imran Khan is beholden domestically to the GHQ in Rawalpindi and to the elements of sectarian religiosity within the Pakistan narrative, as well as to the survival-linked beneficence of the Saudi-bloc that by default militates against the aspired behavioural changes sought by Iran. The proximity of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) elements to the Iranian-Pakistani border as also the common ground of Tehran and Beijing on the US do offer the opportunity for China to play a more substantial and strategic role in Iran to the benefit of Pakistan. However, as of now, such geopolitical evolutions are only in the realm of strategic possibilities; whereas the more tangible, visible and secure footprint of the Indian state abounds and resonates in Iran, currently.
Honesty of purpose has triumphed both religious and sectarian pandering in Iran as neither is the Ashraf Ghani regime in Kabul a Shia-centric dispensation, nor does India have a commonality of religious denomination. Yet both these nations inspire more trust with the Iranians as opposed to Pakistan or even the so-called ‘Naya Pakistan’.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)
Writer: Bhopinder Singh
Courtesy: The Pioneer
As we gear up for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020, young people must lead from the front to take on climate change challenges
Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 each year. But few people understand the conditions under which this major initiative was introduced in 1970 by a visionary leader, US Senator Gaylord Nelson. The Earth Day Network’s (EDN) website explains the conditions under which the first Earth Day was organised in 1970. It mentions the height of counter-culture in the United States (US), the resistance to the war in Vietnam, the very basic morality of that war and the role of the US in waging violent aggression on one of the poorest countries in the world, so remote from the aggressor nation. Concurrently, the state of the environment in the US was badly degraded with powerful automobiles using large quantities of leaded gas, several industries emitting large quantities of smoke and sludge and no legal remedies as a recourse or reporting by the media on these terrible and negative impacts. Air pollution was generally accepted as the other side of prosperity.
Yet, it was in 1962 that Rachel Carson published a powerful account of the state of the environment in that nation, the widespread use of pesticides and chemicals, which were harming not only the human society but all living species and in general, exposing the link between pollution and public health. On the very first Earth Day, 20 million Americans took to the streets and gathered in parks and auditoria to demonstrate against the shocking conditions under which the so-called progress was being achieved with massive damage and degradation to the environment and its effects on human life.
Significantly, there was bipartisan support for this massive show of concern and determination for action by the people of the US. According to EDN, people — both rich and poor — urban dwellers and farmers, industrial tycoons and labour leaders joined hands to express their concerns. What was particularly important is that Senator Nelson asked a young person called Denis Hayes to organise this nationwide effort involving 20 million people taking part in a set of events, with which all Americans made common cause.
Today, the state of our planet and its fragile ecosystems are under progressive assault and since 1970, the ecological footprint of human activities has grown in gigantic proportions. One reason for this is the universal desire of people across the world to own, produce and consume goods and services, for which a benchmark and style has been set by the countries of North America. The unsustainability of this escalating uniformity of desires and aspirations hardly needs any explanation because the earth’s population today is moving towards eight billion people. The population in 1970 was around 3.7 billion and, therefore, demands on ecosystem services and the value that nature provides to life across all species has not only increased on account of this substantial increase in population but also led to a boost in income and wealth. The GDP of the world is at an unprecedented level of 87.37 trillion dollars. Despite this exponential increase, disparities in income and wealth have grown to an unhealthy degree. As per the Oxfam International report published in January 2019, the combined fortunes of the world’s 26 richest individuals reached $1.4 trillion last year, which represents the same amount as the total wealth of 3.8 billion poorest people.
Even more serious is the growing problem of climate change, which, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has shown, is the result of the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. As Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen stated, this combination of effects on planet earth represents a period of the anthropocene; we are clearly within an era when human beings have become responsible for geological changes defined by earlier epochs. Today, thoughtful voices of despair and determination are being heard all around by which human society will hopefully move us forward in limiting the risks from the impacts of climate change. This, therefore, becomes a relevant mission for celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020.
The current challenge facing human society is to bring about a disruptive shift in paradigm from the totally unsustainable path, which we have embarked on since industrialisation. A massive change with a sense of urgency is what would be required to reduce the risks of climate change, for which the youth of the world must take the lead.
On Earth Day 2016 in Mexico City, the POP (Protect Our Planet) Movement, a major programme of action focussing on the youth of the world, was launched. Essentially, every young person has to work towards minimising his/her carbon footprint. This would involve the development of educational institutions, which meet the goals of sustainable development, mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Just imagine, if every educational institution across the globe becomes a centre for action to deal with climate change, this would not only transform the lives of those who pass through the portals of such institutions, but also influence the communities around them, including adults who come directly in contact with the students. In reality, the youth of the world have to make major shifts in their lifestyles and behaviour so that they are at the vanguard of change.
The 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020 needs a massive effort on the part of young people and others to celebrate Youth CAN (Youth for Climate Action Now). While we have less than a year left for this major set of activities, young people need to make plans, form partnerships and build up their efforts towards a global movement that would truly bring about a paradigm shift in the very concept of growth and development pursued by human society since the beginning of industrialisation. This would hopefully embarrass adults as well in changing their own lifestyles.
(The writer is former chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2002-15)
Writer: RK Pachauri
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Japan’s Emperor Akihito is abdicating his throne, the first one to do so in two centuries, in a major culture shift
The Japanese monarchy is the oldest continuing hereditary royal line in the world. Some legends date it back to 600 BC and as the sun rose over Japan today, the 126th Emperor of the Chrysanthemum throne, Naruhito took over from his father Akihito. The 85-year-old emperor decided to abdicate from his throne because after surgery for prostate cancer and a heart bypass, he felt he could not continue in his ceremonial role and made a rare heartfelt address to his nation in 2016 on this issue. The public sympathised with him as did the Japanese government, which passed a law, allowing him to abdicate. Naruhito will be just the third emperor of Japan after the end of World War II, where the Americans sensibly allowed the imperial family to continue so as to display a sense of continuity to the defeated Japanese. Although stripped of their “divinity” — some always said that following the Allied victory, it was American General Douglas MacArthur who was God in Japan — Emperor Hirohito continued in power. It was the stability that the royal family symbolised in Japan that played a role in that nation’s tremendous economic turnaround from the ashes of war. And while the imperial family in Japan is like most other monarchies in democratic nations, a notional one, it is deeply important and holds cultural significance. The Japanese people and media are respectful of their monarch and their families quite unlike in Great Britain.
But there are challenges ahead for the Japanese monarchy as well, not only the fact that people are living longer — Emperor Akihito is eight years younger than Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain, the world’s longest serving and oldest monarch by quite some distance — but it does not allow a female succession. The royals have a male hereditary line, meaning that Naruhito’s daughter Princess Aiko cannot inherit the throne. It will eventually be her cousin Hisahito who will be eligible for the next generation through his father Fumihito. Japan might be a deeply patriarchal society but even there many realise that this is something that needs to change in the modern era. Holding on to traditions is one thing and may be vital for countries to be moored culturally. But those should also adapt gradually to the changed gender dynamics of the time. Considering that Akihito himself redefined the role, renouncing divinities, breaking norms and interacting with the common people, Japan’s lawmakers must consider the possibilities of an empress, going forward.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
With Pakistan being the sole loyalist of Belt and Road in the sub-continent, President Xi Jinping engages in hyperbole
Before we go red with rage at China promising to be “iron friends” with Pakistan despite talks of building a separate bubble for India through more Wuhans, we must realise that China will always look out for itself. That it will always have a forked tongue. That we have a huge trade deficit and Chinese technology has a hold over our economy. So it comes as no surprise that when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday for bilateral talks, the latter said Beijing considers Islamabad a priority in its diplomacy. Jinping even classified Pakistan as his “all-weather strategic cooperative partner,” one he was looking to deepen ties with. This came in the backdrop of a meeting of his pet Belt and Road Initiative, something that is stuttering across South and Southeast Asia because of the inherent debt traps built into the programme, in effect converting smaller states into China’s economic colonies. Pakistan is the only nation which has reported progress on that front with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and though it has issues with servicing the debt, these are minor creases, isolated as it is by the world for exporting terror. China, too, has no option but to stick to Pakistan, as it is diplomatically “friendless” for turning a blind eye to the terrorism the latter breeds, particularly after the Pulwama attacks and India winning the world’s support on it. Besides, it can no longer be sure of North Korea. So they can’t come unstuck so soon. All Jinping could do about sensitivities and anxieties in India was to ask both sub-continental neighbours to meet each other halfway without committing to any move on designating Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. In its strategic quest, the Jinping era believes in direct, one-to-one dealings with each country and will not deal on a comparative scale and prize one over the other.
Back channellists, of course, continue to argue that privately, China did try to work out consultations with the US-led initiative on the language designating Azhar to a version more acceptable to itself. China was seemingly more willing this time around to work out a compromise within the UN 1267 sanctions committee. This despite its quid pro quo with Pakistan which means that it doesn’t look at Azhar to insure itself from IS spreading to its Muslim-majority provinces and attacks on the CPEC. However, when the US chose to pressure it with a new UN Security Council resolution on Azhar, it felt cornered. Besides, China’s own human rights record is under threat, given its severe crackdown on minorities in Uighur and Xinjiang provinces and confining them to detention centres. China has, of course, denied the accounts, saying it was running educational training centres as part of a fight against Islamic extremism. It is counting on Pakistan as the buffer against IS.
Getting Chinese support to designate Azhar as a global terrorist at the UN, in any format, would be no mean achievement and particularly be a salve for an outraged India, which has been at the worst receiving end of the Jaish attacks. But how then can India and the US succeed on this count? Of course, there’s the Financial Action Task Force, which monitors terror funding and which put Pakistan on the grey list with China’s knowledge. This means there is an incisive scrutiny of its financial system. Pakistan has been given a list of 27 actions to be completed by October 2019, if it wants to avoid the blacklist. But it hasn’t even shown any intention of doing so and is risking a ban on grants from the World Bank and IMF. By October, China will become the next president of the FATF as a result of a deal with India and the US, where China placed Pakistan in the grey list in return for endorsement by both US and India. Can these two countries now extract a return privilege? Perhaps that explains Jinping’s grand statements to please Pakistan momentarily. But China must realise that if it refrains from acting on Pakistan’s terror factory, India’s leadership would have a tough time justifying Wuhan to its people.
Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer
Economic pressure must be exerted to stop the slaughter of seals in Canada, which is supported by the powers that be. As I write, what the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) describes as “the largest slaughter of marine mammals on the planet”, continues in Canada. It occurs in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and off the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, and usually in spring, the breeding season for seals when pups are born and are nursed by their mothers.
The scale of the carnage can well be imagined from the fact that, as pointed out by the HSUS, “More than one million seals have been slaughtered in the past five years alone.” The actual number is likely to be higher as many of the seals, wounded after being shot from moving boats, are left to die slowly and painfully. This happens principally because the main seal-skin processing firm in Canada deducts $2 for every bullet hole found. Hence, seal-killers are reluctant to shoot more than once, leaving the wounded in agony.
The main victims are Harp seals though hooded seals are also targeted. The HSUS further points out that 97 per cent of the Harp seals are pups below three months of age. This is because their fur is softer and more in demand. As can be imagined, the mass murder is primarily for fur, which is used for coats and other fashion garments. Seal oil and body parts are also sold in Asia, the latter as aphrodisiac.
The mass slaughter is perpetrated in the cruellest manner possible. Besides guns, the weapons used are wooden clubs, hakapiks (large clubs looking like ice axes), and harpoons. In an article in the Observer dated April 18, 2017, Michael Sainato quotes Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of Humane Society International/Canada, as saying, “For 18 years, I’ve observed the Atlantic Canadian seal slaughter at close range and witnessed a level of suffering most adult people can’t bear to watch on video. Almost all of the seals killed are pups just a few weeks old, and they are treated brutally,” She adds, “Baby seals are routinely shot and wounded and left crawling through their own blood over the ice, crying out in agony. Many conscious, wounded baby seals are impaled on metal hooks and dragged onto the bloody decks of the boats where they are clubbed to death. Wounded seal pups also escape into water where they die slowly and painfully.”
It is not that the Canadian Government is unaware of the stomach-turning savagery involved in the mass killing. Organisations like the HSUS, Humane Society International, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, In Defense of Animals and many others devoted to animal protection, rights and care have been for years strongly protesting against the utterly savage exercise. Public opinion the world over is increasingly assertive against it. Jane Dalton wrote in The Independent of Britain dated March 27, 2019, that in 2009, the demand for seal fur plummeted after the European Union banned imports, following uproar over clubbing. According to Jani Actman in an article published in the National Geographic on April 5, 2017, campaigns against the killings have led to more than 35 countries, including Russia and the European Union, to ban seal imports while allowing imports of products from Canadian Inuit, the country’s original population, who have their separate hunt, different from the massacres for commerce.
All this and the protests have hurt the seal products industry. In his piece, Actman cites Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans as stating that sales had declined from $34 million in 2006 to only $1.6 million in 2016 (his articles, published in 2017, speaks of “last year”). Canada’s Government, however, continues to support the annual massacre, as does Norway’s, which provides significant financial support to a company which buys up close to 80 per cent of the seal skins produced, tans and re-exports them. Both Governments challenged the European Union’s ban but the WTO upheld it in 2013 on the ground that it was in keeping with canons of public morality.
Notwithstanding the uproar, the Canadian Government not only sanctions the massacre every year but subsidies it. The HSUS cites reports from the Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment, as stating that more than $20 million in subsidies were provided to the sealing industry between 1995 and 2001. These were for a variety of purposes, including the funding of salaries for seal processing plant workers, market research and development trips and capital acquisitions for processing plants. In 2004, the Canadian Government provided more than $400,000 to companies for the development of seal products. Not only that, as Jani Actman points out in his piece published in the National Geographic on April 5, 2017, that “Documents released under freedom of access laws in Canada revealed that the Canadian Government was spending five times the amount of money — $2.5 million — to monitor seal hunts than the income generated by the hunts themselves — $500,000.”
Two arguments are generally advanced to defend the massacres. The first is that the seals consume so much cod that there is a decline in their numbers, which is inimical to Canada’s fishing industry. This is patently untrue. Cods account only for a very small part of seals’ diet. Harp seals, the HSUS points out, consume only three per cent of cod fished commercially. Not just that, Harp seals eat up many predators of cod like squids. If stocks of the cod have fallen, the cause is overfishing.
The other argument is that the slaughter represents a “cultural tradition” and generates economic activity. Both hold little water. As to the first, a cultural activity that involves massacres, it hardly deserves to be nursed. As to the second, as the HSUS points out, an average fisherman on Canada’s east coast, who hunts seals as an off-season activity, derives only one-twentieth of his income from it. The rest comes from commercial fishing. Even in Newfoundland, where most sealers live, income from the hunt accounts for less than one per cent of the province’s economy and less than two per cent of the landed value of the fishery.
The harsh fact is that the annual slaughter continues because those in power in Canada support it. It can only end if sufficient external pressure is applied. Animal lovers the world over must urge their Governments to join the process and hold all economic and cultural ties with Canada in abeyance till the horrible slaughter ends.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
Writer: Hiranmay Karlekar
Courtesy: The Pioneer
It’s time to identify the right sources as attacks on faith shrines are increasing in South Asia, with the Sri Lanka episode being the largest in the history of South Asia. The terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka are a reminder of how militant groups are now sparking up new hotspots where they had no influence before. And they are doing them on a visually soul less scale, like attacking faith shrines, to attract global shock and awe besides working up least expected touch points in the Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. That also explains why the Islamic State (IS) chose the relatively calmer Sri Lanka to imprint its signature despite having an operative base in neighbouring Maldives. Besides, most of South and Southeast Asia are multi-cultural and eclectic societies, which may not host the idea of a monolithic socio-religious identity but where divisions can be fomented by playing on latent communal fears and insecurities. The mosque attacks in Christchurch or the church blasts in Sri Lanka are the manifestations of a global trend of an increasing pattern of hitting at faith shrines in South Asia, a sort of theatre for the new-age crusades, according to the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database. The study shows that the region alone accounts for about 24 per cent of all terror strikes on places of worship worldwide between 2000 and 2017. Of the total 1,909 terror attacks on religious institutions globally, 458 incidents have been recorded in the South Asian region, which comprises Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. After Pakistan and Afghanistan, India is reportedly the third-most affected country in the region with 63 terror attacks on religious shrines.
Clearly the IS, which is increasingly under fire in its old strongholds and almost floundering in both Iraq and Syria, has some funding and the digital infrastructural network to rebuild its relevance. So it is spreading to virgin areas, setting off new counter-polarities easily and keeping its need for a global jihad alive. As usual, operatives are using online propaganda to radicalise disaffected youth in Europe, recruiting from waning organisations like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Boko Haram in Nigeria and looking for places that have a security vacuum. Sri Lanka fits the bill perfectly on this count because post the decimation of the Tamil militants, the island nation has by and large been peaceful, developed itself as a booming tourist economy and risen on the world map of top beach hotspots. The casualties would be high in such a porous set-up. The surprise element was such that till two days after the blasts happened, nobody had talked about simmering tensions between Sinhala Buddhists and Muslims, which were inherent but never explosive enough. You could say they were contained flash points that militant organisations are now linking to stage a new global conflict. If we look at Southeast Asia, then Thailand and the Philippines have had long-standing conflicts along territorial and religious lines. In Indonesia, the Aceh province and Papua island have been in conflict with Jakarta while Bali continues to hold off fundamentalism. Myanmar is riven by issues of ethnicity, territory and religion as the purging of Rohingya Muslims, which sparked an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and further deepened divisions, has shown. Sadly, these attacks have also set up polarised contexts that have further fuelled hate speech and increasingly led to an assertion of identity through new faith shrines. As hate speeches encourage the intolerance of otherness, becoming the new normal, and the attendant fake news factory rapidly unleashes a communication war, the terrorists get a swell of divided sentiments to play upon. As for the States, they are left with little option but to crack down, somewhat at the cost of existing religious freedoms. But curbing terror is just one facet, there is a new face of terror emerging in 2019, one that is not confined to the Middle East but to the former Soviet republics. In 2017, at least 8,500 fighters from former Soviet republics had flocked to Syria and Iraq to join the IS and are now being deployed, given their ease with some European languages, to newer areas. In short, the only way to kill rapidly mutating terror is to be prepared for the unexpected. Till governments form an alliance to think two steps ahead, terror will continue to be the worst scourge of human history.
Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer
The refusal by India to be part of BRI will not derail bilateral relations. China needs India’s market. In China’s Foreign Ministry offices in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, there are many departments, including a few that deal with Chinese history, looking at historical treaties that predecessor states of the People’s Republic of China signed, whether it was the Qing dynasty or in Tibet. From historical border treaties and surrendering of land to demands for restitution from nations like Japan that colonised it, everything China does today has some sort of historical context. Few other foreign affairs ministries in any other nation have similarly dedicated units. And after China successfully enforced the treaty that the Qing dynasty had with the British over Hong Kong, they have become even more aggressive on this front under President Xi Jinping. The modern People’s Republic of China wants to return being the Middle Kingdom, a land between heaven and earth which has dominion over the rest of the planet. And while the ancient Middle Kingdom was built by conquest, the new one will be built on replicating history and by spending money. Thus the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive series of infrastructure projects, including building ports, high-speed railways and airports across the world, is funded by China and built by the Chinese. Huge, expensive projects such as Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka and the Lahore Metro have led to massive public debts in both nations. The BRI may not state this explicitly, but the subtext is one of Chinese economic conquest of nations and their resources aided by corrupt politicians.
But China has always had one painful neighbour, one from whom it has been separated by a massive Himalayan barrier. A neighbour with whom it has had cultural exchanges — after all Buddhism and martial arts were gifts from it — but geography has always meant that population exchanges and war, other than in modern times, have been limited. This has meant that there has always been an underlying distrust of each other in Beijing and New Delhi. But is the Indian government’s disapproval of the BRI just one of a jealous neighbour? That’s untrue. India knows that it has lost out to China economically over the past decade and it sees China’s BRI for what it is, an unbridled attempt at colonisation by economic means. Yet, India realises it has to live with China considering its investments here are extensive and we have become a major market for Chinese products. Our eastern neighbour’s interests are best served by a economically rising India in the medium-term because it will be forced to buy more Chinese products. Hence all talk of another Wuhan and sharing bilateral concerns. Yet, India’s next government should continue to be wary of China, which like a dragon has a forked tongue. It wants to keep India militarily weak and will continue to fund global terrorism through Pakistan. While the new Indian government should engage with China from a new perspective, it should remember that the latter considers everybody below it, including people beyond the mountains.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
The recent fire outbreak at the Notre Dame broke millions of hearts around the world, but assurances of it being rebuilt are having a calming effect
Paris is the most visited city in France, the most popular destination for tourists across the world. So while the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe are the most popular icons of this city, there is also the Notre Dame Cathedral on a small island on the Seine river, which is an example of the Gothic architecture of the medieval ages and a sign of how the Frankish people started to assert their identity as French. It is visited by millions annually, the famous stained glass and gargoyles on the structure becoming iconic in their own right. It has been at the centre of French life for centuries, having played a role during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. The great general was coronated there. Few Western capitals with the exception of London are so closely identified with their religious centres.
Even though religion and religious adherence are on the downside across France let alone its wild Capital, home to shows like Moulin Rouge which are hardly something the Catholic Church would approve of, the sight of the church’s spire collapsing in an inferno must have been deeply disheartening. It is a miracle that the main stone structure of the Cathedral itself managed to be saved. And President Macron, who held an extraordinary national address dressed in black, assured that the Cathedral would be rebuilt. The religious allegory was not lost on many with the fire occurring days before Good Friday, the day the Christians believe that Christ was crucified. And with several French billionaires and entrepreneurs putting their hands up and opening their wallets, donating millions to the rebuilding of the structure, it is heartening to see that the French are willing to rebuild what was lost. And many of the millions of global citizens who have visited Paris over the years are also contributing small sums towards the rebuild. Several crowd-funding initiatives have been started.
This fire should also come as a warning sign in a country like India where several monuments of archaeological note are in an awful state of disrepair and may not survive a fire like the one Notre Dame suffered. A fire at the Meenakshi Temple last year was almost fatal for the heritage site. India’s cultural heritage is also part of the world’s cultural heritage and this fire should be a wake-up sign. The French firefighters followed a proper procedure in saving the Cathedral. One wonders if such procedures exist at the Taj or other monuments, many of which are surrounded by small illegal shops and narrow streets where fire engines cannot pass. We should make contingency plans straightaway lest our heritage burn away.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
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