Rant about the Truth -- as told by White People

A few months ago I was passing by the Peace Palace, the UN complex here in Geneva.  It is the site of many demonstrations, and on this particular day a group of Tamils was displaying posters with shocking pictures of cruelty, accompanied by slogans of what was happening in them.  According to the descriptions, the picture was in each case that of a Tamil, sometimes a child or a civilian woman, tortured/raped/killed (or all three) at the hands of the Sinhalese.

The allegations in the posters were shocking, outrageous. 

I marched to the info stand and told the gentlemen manning it that I knew what the Tamils had been through during the last months of the civil war in Sri Lanka, and that what had occurred probably amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.  I told them that I supported their cause and that they were right to protest in front of the UN, as it was about time the international community did something about the atrocities.

The reason I did this was that I had seen all the images on their posters before.  I had seen them, and the slogans, put into context.  I knew who the kid was (Balachandran, the son of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the founder of the Tamil Tigers), I knew who the woman was (Isaipriya, a Tamil news anchor).  I knew all this because not long earlier I had seen a documentary called “No Fire Zone”, which had made me hate humanity and have nightmares.  If anyone is interested in seeing what people are capable of during civil war, watch this documentary, it is really good.  Even if it will make you feel anything but good.

I don’t know if the Tamils holding the protest outside the UN cared about my expression of solidarity.  But I’m guessing that not all that many passersby gave such unqualified endorsements of their cause.  This is because not many people had seen the documentary.  This fact gave me pause, because if it had not been for the documentary, I would have been quite suspect of the protesters’ claims, outrageous as they were.

Would I not have believed the protesters so easily if I had not seen the documentary, because I, along with many others, have become jaded by fake and manipulated images of atrocities in Syria and elsewhere?  If this is the answer, then it is a healthy one.  In the days where everyone can easily falsify pictures, one should be slightly wary of photographic evidence, especially when emanating from interested parties.  (Even if countries such as Iran or North Korea haven’t quite completed the advanced course on photoshop yet ...) 

Or was it because “No Fire Zone” had been made by – let’s be blunt about it – a bunch of Whities?  Do I trust Whities to tell the truth more than I trust the Tamils actually on the ground, suffering through it all?  A worrying thought, but one that I have not been able to entirely shake.  It is a frustrating example of internalised racism.  Frustrating because (if it is true) I can’t rid myself of it and frustrating because it is so profound.  Somebody please pass the brain bleach, I don’t want to be like this!

On the more important, and less self-important, issue of what happened to the Tamil people and will there be consequences for this, there are some good news.  The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution on 27 March 2014 to open an enquiry into war crimes in the final stages of the civil war in 2009.  I don’t know if this was because of the Tamil protests or the documentary.  “Who cares?” one could say, the main thing is that something is happening.  Or then again, if the world in general is suffering from collective internalised racism, then that would indeed be a problem.  So let us assume that the UN is not (only) finally reacting because a bunch of white people said so.

Rant about the 2 million

My guess is that you’re bored of hearing of Syria.  Pictures and stories about the chemical weapons, the Islamists that are taking over the democratic revolution, the bulging refugee camps and the frustrating diplomatic wranglings feature in the media every day, but we’re bored and have kinda stopped caring.  Same old, same old ... lots of cruelty and misery, we know.  Moving on.

And that is the real tragedy.  I was just a little bit too young to really grasp the context, history and development of the Rwandan genocide, which has given me the presumed moral superiority of being able to shake my head at the humanity of my youth and just wonder “how on earth did the previous generation let Rwanda happen” with the obvious implication that we’re better people now and if MY generation had been old enough to understand, the genocide would never have happened.

I don’t have that luxury now.  I’m old enough to get what’s happening, and I’m watching it happen.  When my future kids ask me 25 years from now in their moral righteousness how the hell could my generation let Syria happen I will have very little to say.

If you’ve not gotten too bored, but have at least read this far, let me assure you that I’m not talking about bombing.  I may have opinions on what should or should not be done on the diplomatic or military level, but neither my writing about that nor you reading my ranting is going to change anything.  What I want to focus on is what you or I can actually do, and that has to do with the human tragedy that is unfolding on a mind-boggling scale.

There’s more to this war than guns and tanks and sarin and fighters of all creeds and unimaginable acts of cruelty.  There’s the lack of hospitals to treat the wounded or ill and there are the squalid and overflowing refugee camps with 2 million – let me repeat that number – TWO MILLION people who are getting bored and frustrated when not being bought or abused.  When we want to act to help those that are suffering, we can and do.  Donations for the survivors and rebuilding after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami reached US$ 10 billion.  I wonder how much that money would do in the camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.  The refugees could not only have food and shelter, but schools and hospitals and small businesses to start getting people back on their feet and earning their keep.  This would not just alleviate immediate suffering, but increase the chances that the people will be mentally and physically fit to return to rebuild their country once the atrocious war is finally over.

There are plenty of organisations that have not been waiting for the US and Russia to be done with their diplomatic posturing and chest pumping to DO SOMETHING about the humanitarian crisis.  Medecins sans Frontières for example runs clandestine hospitals inside the country.  Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations is a collective of Syrian (and Syrian origin) medical organisations and professionals providing and co-ordinating medical aid.  Lots of the big, traditional guys such as UNICEF and Red Cross/Crescent work inside the country as well as in the camps.  The UNHCR obviously tries to run most of the show in the camps, and is chronically underfunded.  Smaller organisations, such as Kirkon Ulkomaanapu in Finland or Caritas in Switzerland, also do their bit.  If you don’t want to part with your cash, Amnesty International in the UK, for example, is running a campaign to pressure the government to do more to help the refugee crisis.

Please let’s not get jaded and callous about this, but do whatever small thing we, as individuals, can.

Rant for Less Science and More Marketing

I don’t know if you’ve noticed the same phenomenon, but every time I read an article online that in any way touches upon global warming, the comments section gets immediately inundated with the “climate sceptics” regurgitating their mantra, which is never limited to “I don’t believe that climate change is happening”, but inevitably includes some data and/or references to scientific “evidence”, in order to make it appear more convincing.*  The comments remind me of the scientific-sounding mumbo-jumbo that you can sometimes read in alternative media telling you, for example, that sun doesn't give you cancer, sunscreen does.

It makes me wonder whether this is what comments sections of internet articles on the health effects of smoking cigarettes would have looked like in the 1970s if internet had existed at the time.  We now know that all the data that denied the harmful effects of smoking was pathetic in scientific terms and financed by the tobacco industry, but as a case study of how scientific discourse can be distorted by vested interests we seem to have learnt nothing from it.

I have not heard about the “scientific” “facts” about the non-existence of climate change only on internet noticeboards, but also in real life - and sometimes from pretty smart people. 

I will not enter into a discussion about the scientific evidence of climate change, because I’m not a climate scientist.  What do I do instead?  I take the word of the experts, i.e. the climate scientists, as I do with just about every scientific question.  Here’s the non-news-flash: They all say it’s happening.  We rarely get such consensus on a contemporary scientific phenomenon as we do on climate change, thanks to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with 195 member states, uniting THOUSANDS of experts from all around the globe.  When climate sceptics try to get me into a discussion about the science of climate change, I always ask whether they have read all the IPCC’s reports and why they disagree with the evidence and conclusions in them.  The conversation ends there, because inevitably they have not read the reports.

Despite the impressive amount of evidence, the persons screaming the loudest, getting their opinions not only heard, but accepted by a mind-bogglingly large part of the population, are these non- or pseudo-scientific climate changes sceptics – in other words the people who are not interested in the evidence itself.  How can this be?  The evidence is all there!  Why is it being ignored and dismissed in this era of easy access to information? 

The problem is clearly not one of facts, but presentation.  Science journalists, for example, are not (collectively) doing their job as they are not writing engaging and easily comprehensible articles on the scientific data and new evidence as it emerges and is analysed.  The organisations that employ the scientists themselves are doing no better.  The IPCC, the UN Environment Programme and national meteorological organisations should hire less scientists and more PR and marketing professionals.  The story is compelling, but it apparently needs to be written on glossy paper with tabloidesque headlines and colour pictures for it to be of interest.** 

If that is what it takes, then do it.  The message is too important to be lost because of shoddy and boring presentation by uncharismatic and (probably also) self-satisfied scientists.


*Those of you that read Finnish can find a good example of both: a good, readable article debunking the recent efforts of climate sceptics and the comments that follow here.
**It can already sometimes be found in fairly user-friendly format, such as on Skeptical Science, but I should not have to go look for it myself, as I currently do.

Rant about How to Solve the Mother of All Basket Cases

Wherever there is a conflict or corruption or the like, there might not always be immediately available solutions, but there are inevitably immediately available culprits.  There is always someone to blame.  Preferably that someone has money, so that they can be guilted into parting with it in order to right the wrong they’ve done.  In rural Kenya, for example, where corruption, small scale scamming and thievery were all rampant, many people seemed to have internalised the message that this was all the fault of the English, having been the colonial masters and royally screwed the country.  (That last part is true, of course – it’s just the causal link to the current woes that I sometimes failed to see.)  A few individuals seemed to take it one step further, and imply not too subtly that I was in fact at fault.  That seemed to have something to do with the colour of my skin, I presume.  Or maybe something had led them to understand that Finland and England were the same thing, I’m not sure.

Sometimes you do not have to go that far into the past to find the culprit.  In the case of Iraq it is the United States in more ways than one.  In the case of Russia it is not Putin-the-dictator-in-the-making, but evil capitalism.  Or so they say.

However, there is one current international basket case that doesn’t fit this pattern: it is the mother of all basket cases, the Israel-Palestine conflict.  We may be more inclined to sympathise with the Israeli or the Palestine point of view, but we’re likely to give little thought to how on earth the whole mess came about.  So let me remind everyone whose fault it is: Great Britain’s.

Not only did you not immediately think of that, but there is a chance you didn’t even know that.  It’s true, though.  Take it from the International Court of Justice:

“Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire.  At the end of the First World War, a class ‘A’ Mandate for Palestine was entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations ...  The territorial boundaries of the Mandate for Palestine were laid down by various instruments, in particular on the eastern border by a British memorandum ...  In 1947 the United Kingdom announced its intention to complete evacuation of the mandated territory by 1 August 1948 ... In the meantime, the General Assembly had on 29 November 1947 adopted resolution 181(II) on the future government of Palestine, which ‘Recommends to the United Kingdom ... and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation ... of the Plan of Partition’ of the territory, as set forth in the resolution, between two independent States, one Arab, the other Jewish, as well as the creation of a special international regime for the City of Jerusalem.”*

There you have it.  The Arabs didn’t like the plan, the Jews used it as a basis to declare independence and it went downhill from there.  But it was all started by the United Kingdom (supported by the UN), who ruled the territory for a few decades and then got the great idea to settle the terrorised, holocaust-survived Jews on the promised land, as if it was some abandoned territory, as opposed to an area populated by Arabs.  Ingenious.  Who could have possibly guessed that that might lead to trouble?

So while I don’t have any answers to how to solve the Israeli-Palestine conflict, I don’t need to, since England and Finland are in fact two different countries and I hail from the latter.  What I would like to know is what is England (and the UN) doing about it?  I expect all Brits reading this to populate the comments section with ideas ...

*Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Advisory Opinion), 9 July 2004, ICJ Reports 2004, paras 70-71. 

Rant about Impotence

North Korea is in the news again, but for all the wrong reasons.

We are so bombarded with images of misery and despair that the natural human reaction is to become jaded and stop caring.  That is why I was almost surprised at myself when I read a long piece on the Guardian website about the experiences of Shin Dong-hyuk, the so far only known escapee from the North Korean gulag system who had been born into it.  The article was based on and promoting his book, Escape from Camp 14, written by Blaine Harden.  I would have desperately wanted to link the article, but it is no longer available on the website as its copyright has apparently expired.  Here is a shorter and less harrowing review of the book.  The book is also now available in Finnish, in September it topped the best-selling list for non-fiction.  Here is a link to the short article in Helsingin Sanomat reporting on Mr Shin’s visit to Helsinki.

I was absolutely aghast upon reading the article.  The matter was probably made worse by the fact that I had only slightly earlier finished Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, the definite account of the Soviet Gulag system written from the viewpoint of a former victim, and later Nobel-prize winner.  The one thing that kept me from having nightmares when reading Solzhenitsyn was the thought that “this was in the past, we wouldn’t let it happen now”.  Well it is happening now and we are aware of it and letting it happen.

I was at a loss.  I felt I needed to do something, but didn’t know what to do.  So I wrote to Amnesty International, the organisation that I’ve supported for years and whose (original) mission I firmly believe in asking them why THEY weren’t doing anything in the face of possibly the worst human rights violations our world was witnessing.  (As an emergency treatment to any kind of moral guilt, I recommend blaming someone else, preferably those close to us and actually doing something worthwhile...)  The UK and Swiss sections both replied to my e-mails admirably swiftly (take note all companies, public bodies and any other entity to which I may ever have addressed a customer/citizen query).  They explained that they had ran a campaign in late 2011 (that I had somehow missed entirely), and were increasing their lobbying with the appointment of the new “ultimate leader”, which is usually a moment in time when changes are more likely in a totalitarian regime.  Nothing seems to have come of it, though, as recently recognised by UN’s Navi Pillay, who is calling for an inquiry into what “may” amount to crimes against humanity.  Understatement of the year.  Meanwhile it is business as usual for the estimated 200,000 political prisoners in the gulags.

The Economist also ran an editorial deploring the situation, attacking nuclear-scared Western governments, the UN and China for their inaction.  The last one of these, the only government that actually COULD do something, is of course deaf, if not worse, to pleas from Western magazines or HR organisations.  Instead of putting pressure on North Korea to stop the abominable practice, China returns escapees to the hands of the North Korean authorities.

The feeling of impotence has certainly not gone away.  Apart from donating money to Amnesty’s North Korea campaign, and raging at some of my closest people (F and mum the most obvious targets...), I have done nothing.  This is largely because I have heard no good ideas.  Amnesty has a few, so I’ve supported them.  The Economist didn’t mention anything that an individual could do, nor did the Guardian or the UN.  Most depressingly, Mr Shin himself has not been reported giving any practical tips of what we can do with the very painful, personal information he is touring the world spreading.

Ideas more than welcome.