Eclectic Grounds

The Dutch government seems to have adopted a new terminology for ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. The term “bicultural” is now used in official communication rather than “allochtoon” for people of non-Dutch (or rather non-white) ethnicities. In February, the organisation Innovation for Integration will start a media campaign to promote the term.

The word bicultural is a positive counterpart for the word allochtoon,” Yesim Candam, the Turkish founder of IVI, said last year. “We used to say ‘guest labourer’, ‘new Dutch’ or ‘allochtoon’. ‘Bicultural’ is the first term that expresses the fact that two cultures are more than one!”

"I am Antoon" - "I am Allochtoon"

The term “allochtoon” has become widely used in the Netherlands for people of non-Dutch descent. In popular use, the term is only applied to non-whites, such as people with Turkish or Moroccan ancestry. The Dutch bureau of statistics makes a differentiation between “western” and “non-western” allochtoons in their census categories. While the state agency refers to “allochtoons” only to first- and second-generation immigrants, in everyday usage all non-white people are seen as “allochtoon”.

Historian Ian Buruma described the term “allochtoon” as “an ugly, and relatively new, bureaucratic term for people of alien, but more specifially non-European, origin”. It’s an example of how citizenship in Europe is often defined racially. Like in most European countries, citizenship law in the Netherlands is based on the “jus sanguinis” principle (literally: right of blood”). It confers citizenship rights based on the belonging to the national community of the Dutch, whatever that might look like. 

The introduction of the term “biculturalism” is another step toward recognising that citizenship should be based on political principles rather than ethnic and racial fault lines. 

Source: Crossroads Magazine

There has been considerable controversy about a speech by Khalid Yasin at the Islamic University Rotterdam over the last few days. The Islamic lecturer is a notorious figure who in the past was quoted saying that, according to the Qu’ran, homosexuality was an immorality punishable by death, and also that the US was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the development of the AIDS virus. Before his speech yesterday, some politicians in the Netherlands demanded from the government to deny Yasin entry into the country.

Quite surprisingly then, his actual message was one of peace and understanding between Muslims and Non-Muslims. He did condemn Geert Wilders and the likes but he also had a message directed at Dutch Muslims.

The NRC Handelsblad quotes this sections from his speech about Muslim youth in the Netherlands:

Yasin, who converted to Islam after being inspired by Malcolm X, expressed criticism for the Dutch Muslim community, which he said is not doing well. No wonder, then, that Dutch people talk about “those Moroccan youths,” according to Yasin. He also criticised pious, fundamentalist Muslims. “Don’t be so full of your own righteousness. Islam is not a religion of hermits.”

He also called for integration efforts and understanding between believers and non-believers:

Indeed, he said, “Western society offered Muslims the best possibilities for development.” He said, paraphrasing John F. Kennedy, “This nation wants to know what one million Dutch Muslims can do for their country.” He also warned Dutch Muslim youth: “Don’t come to me with the nonsense that you won’t obey the kafirs (non-believers).”

This is not to forget Yasin’s previous remarks about homosexuals, but it has to be said that it is quite refreshing to have a Muslim authority speaking so self-critically and with such candour to Muslims. Where are Muslim voices from within Europe who speak in this way? I have met some personally. But either they are not heard in the Muslim community or they are ignored by the media.

Update (2-2-09): The blog ‘Salafi Burnout’ has an interesting discussion on Yasin here, on his alleged scams, his conspiracy theories and on how he is seen by Muslim communities in the US, Australia and Britain.

A great commentary by Israeli novelist A. B. Yehoshua at Project Syndicate:

They [the Palestinians] are our neighbors, and they will be our neighbors in the future. So, when we decide to fight a war against them, we have to consider very carefully the character of that war, its duration, and the effect of its violence. We Israelis have no power to extirpate the Hamas government from Gaza, much as we did not have the power to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the voice of the Palestinian people’s national aspirations, or Hezbollah from Lebanon in the war of 2006.

Ariel Sharon and Menachem Begin went all the way to Beirut in the early 1980’s, paying a terrible and bloody price, to try to eliminate the PLO – a result that could never be obtained. And what happened? In the end, Sharon and then Binyamin Netanyahu both ended up sitting down at the negotiating table with Yassir Arafat and his representatives to try to reach an agreement. Now Arafat’s former deputy, Abu Mazen, is a frequent and welcome guest in our country.

We Israelis must begin to realize this simple fact: the Arabs are not metaphysical creatures, but human beings, and human beings have it within themselves to change. After all, we Israelis change our positions, mitigate our opinions, and open ourselves up to new ideas. So we would do well to get out of our heads as quickly as possible the illusion that we can somehow annihilate Hamas or eradicate them from the Gaza strip.

Instead, we have to work, with caution and good sense, to reach a reasonable and detailed agreement for a lasting ceasefire that has within it the perspective that Hamas can change. Such a change is possible and can be acted upon. Such fundamental changes of heart and mind have happened many times in the course of history.

Read the full text here.

When Barack Obama’s support platform “Change.Gov” asked supporters to submit queries to the new administration, the most popular question turned out to be whether Obama would appoint a special prosecutor to “independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping.” Obama’s team ignored answering the question. Obama himself, being forced to respond during a TV interview, said he would rather move forward than look back.

Dealing with the past

It seems widely accepted today that the Bush administration systematically committed war crimes in the “war against terrorism”. “Extraordinary renditions”, the Guantanamo prison, or authorised “enhanced interrogation techniques” speak clearly.

This leads to a wider question: if such an investigation was to find evidence of systematic war crimes, would it makes sense to convict the political leaders responsible? There is a vast amount of information available in the field of peace research on how to deal with crimes committed by states, and on how to best achieve justice and reconciliation concerning human rights abuses by past political regimes. From cases such as post-communist states, authoritarian regimes in Latin America or Europe after WWII, historical patterns have been identified and comparisons have been drawn that may help the US administration to decide whether or not to investigate or even to punish former government officials.

To punish or to pardon?

Many of the 76,000 people who voted for an investigation into war crimes by the Bush administration to be Obama’s top priority were likely guided by a feeling revenge. I can’t say that I don’t feel the same way. After seeing the videos I linked to above, it is hard not to have a sickening feeling. Yet, emotions of this kind aren’t always the best guiding principles for political action.

There are two key questions when addressing state crimes. One is the question of acknowledgement: should past crimes be addressed, or should they rather be swept under the rug for the sake of “moving forward”, as Obama would put it. The second question is the one of accountability: Should sanctions be imposed on perpetrators or not? Here, too, the principle of looking backward or looking forward comes into play, because there is always some trade-off between justice and reconciliation.

Sending Bush and Cheney to prison?

There are some good reasons to punish political leaders if their personal responsibility can be attested. The central one is that it allows for a morally just order to be established. If respect for human rights and the rule of law are basic tenets of a society (as any US American would be eager to assert), then violations against these principles should be punished. A second reason is that punishment for state crimes stands symbolically for a change of regime. Obama based his message of “change” on being different from the Bush regime. A prosecution of Bush’s crimes would consolidate the trust people in the US and internationally have in the new government to embody a genuine break with the past.

It is questionable, however, if the “ghosts of the past” can really be chased away by means of retributive justice. As Raoul Alfonsin, first Argentinian president after the military regime, said: “In the first analysis, punishment is one instrument, but not the sole or even the most important one, for forming the collective moral conscience.” One important element in this is an independent judiciary. Who, after all, will have to sentence former leaders? It can be stated that the democratic principle of the separation of powers suffers when courts are used for political decision-making (and political it would be, considering that Bush has represented one of the two main parties in the US). Seen from that angle, also special prosecutors with the task to “independently investigate” easily become instruments of partisan vengeance.

Generally, punishment is not always a productive or functional way of solving social conflicts, even when justice would require punishment. Where civil society is fractured and divided between supporters of the previous regime and supporters of the new regime, “tolerace” might achieve more for human rights in the long run than further divisiveness. In the US case, Republicans could see it as an attack on their own conservative beliefs. In the worst case, former Bush voters – as well as bureaucrats and other officials – would feel alienated, creating the grounds for a destabilising backlash against the new administration.

The process of collective amnesia

What would an alternative be? Simply moving on? There have been many cases of state crimes where that happened, Spain being one of them (though it may be argued that the collective trauma in Spain after Franco can’t be compared to the US after Bush). For societies with past atrocities, amnesia is a tempting and psychologically almost normal reaction. On a collective level, this may happen unconsciously, like in Spain. But denial may also take an organised form whereby state institutions attempt to rewrite history. The Turkish atrocities against the Armenians are a powerful example of this.

Criminologist Stanley Cohen has identified a pattern of how governments react to allegations of human rights violations. The reactions normally have three elements: 1. Nothing happened (“We did not not torture”). 2. Something happened but it was no human rights violation (“It’s not torture”). 3. What happened was for the morally good (“We saved peoples’ lives with this”). Knowing that, it is worth lhaving another look at the interview with former CIA director Tenet.

To look forward, know about your past

Now there’s a problem with this kind of amnesia, which those who want to reconcile – like Obama – need to have in mind. Without truth-telling, there can’t be reconciliation. It is impossible to achieve reconciliation if parts of society refuse to acknowledge that there was ever anything wrong. Truth is a value in itself that would justify conscious dealing with the past, but there are other reason for this. They have to do with the victims, deterrence and the rebuilding of political structures that facilitated torture, and deterrence for potential perpetrators in the future.

New Yorker’s Lawrence Weschler has argued that torture victims’ demand for truth is usually greater than their demand for justice and punishment. This is mainly due to the “double problem” of torture victims: They are accused of being liars those by who do not want to acknowledge that torture happened (e.g. officials like Tenet). Thereby, their dignity is taken a second time after they have survived torture. Only by acknowledging victims’ suffering they have the chance to regain their dignity. Recognition creates a more positive identity for them: They cease to be victims and now become survivors.

Rebuilding political structures

Truth-telling is a key act of prevention as it may weaken potential support for any future repetition of abuses like torture. Imagine a commission set up by the new US administration to investigate war crimes and human rights abuses. If it described  in detail that atrocities were committed, who was responsible, and that universal principles were breached, then those who did support the Bush regime would likely feel a collective shame. It would make it harder to push an agenda of torture in the foreseeable future. This process would need to include a wider discussion and “moral cleansing” within society, where acts of torture will become clearly outlawed and not secretly tolerated or even admired, e.g. in pop culture.

There is also a need for a more immediate look at structures that facilitated torture. Regimes of torture develop laws, bureaucracy, language, rituals and justification. These structures need to be rebuilt, people involved need to be re-educated. Within the military and the bureaucracy, limits of obedience and the duty to intervene must be established. Social conditions under which crimes of obedience were possible need to be identified and reversed. Truth-telling is integral to mobilise the resources and the political will for this difficult task.

Striking the balance between justice and political prudence

Everyone can agree that crimes should not go unpunished. Still, as I have pointed out, sometimes there are good reasons for not punishing state crimes. The fundamental question is whether a criminal trial is the right legal strategy in the political realm? Here, arguments that warn the state not to ignore its moral principles and issue a blank cheque to future leaders stand against those that caution new regimes not to alienate supporters of the old regime and drive a wedge through society.

This does not mean though that “moving forward” is the right strategy. Dealing with the past is necessary to de-victimise former torture victims, to deter, and to rebuild structures that facilitate torture. The new US administration would be well advised to look into previous crimes in order to make a credible break from the past and make sure that the US will not descent into torture in the future.

The case of the US differs from all previous examples of state crimes in one respect. Here, human rights abuses did not happen within a society. Bush had built up a global system of torture where victims were not US citizens, and “extraordinary” renditions made use of global power to make other countries comply with these policies. Amnesia is tempting for US Americans because victims are far away and not part of their own society; but it’s a prerequisite for renewing American diplomacy. A public investigation into the Bush administration’s war crimes would be the first case of a global process of truth-telling.

For more information see:

The US Institute of Peace
The Project on Justice in Times of Transition
“Transitional Justice” by N. Kritz
“State Crimes of Previous Regimes” by S. Cohen (in Law and Social Inquiry)
“A Miracle, a Universe” by L. Weschler

Jörg Lau (in German) made an interesting recommendation to Europeans interested in what’s going on in the Middle East. He’s been watching Al Jazeera during the ongoing Israeli invasion in Gaza and brings up interesting points why the channel might be a positive addition to the media landscape. Al Jazeera has been the only news channel with a correspondent in Gaza from the start of the attacks, and it presents the conflict in a totally different light as compared to what we are used to.

These are the principal observations that he makes:

•  The framing is set differently: It is “War on Gaza” as opposed to “War against the Hamas”
• The civilian casualties of the invasion are at the centre of the coverage. 
• At the same time, the reporting is not populist or unfair: The Israeli government is being interviewed and confronted with questions about war crimes in Gaza.
• Al Jazeera is not a propaganda medium for Arab governments. Spokespersons from Hamas, the Israeli government and Arab leaders all get their share of airtime.

Lau concludes that a counterveiling power has been established when it comes to framing the Israeli-Palestinina conflict. Al Jazeera in his opinion is a credible and relevant news source that could rock the boat of “Western” media hegemony.

I definitely agree to this. But I would go further even. I think that Al Jazeera also has opened up a space for dialogue that has not been there before. By giving airtime to Hamas and the Israeli government, it creates new communication channels between groups who refused to talk directly and thereby it also undermines the propaganda machines that work best when there is no dialogue at all. It presents an Israeli perspective to an Arab audience, and at the same time it can legitimately ask critical questions to the Israeli government that the “Western” media seem to refuse to ask. Another aspect: for me as a non-Arab and non-Muslim it is new to listen to Hamas spokespersons directly as it’s not something that I usually get to hear. 

Lau says he finds Al Jazeera coverage of the war in Gaza too one-sided, and he laments that Hamas power in Gaza is a blind spot in the coverage. I agree. But it is not really the point, because this not a matter of presenting the news in a way that an please an Arab, an Israeli and a Western audience. It can’t be done. It is primarily a matter of all sides listening to each other and – while expressing concerns, grievances or even hatred – to at least recognise the other side as human beings and as potential partners in dialogue. That would already be a step into the right direction.

Alastair Crooke posted an admirably reasonable and far-sighted comment on the Gaza crisis in a time when most commentators can’t seem to look beyond the immediate.

Any psychologist however might have advised the European and US policy-makers that putting one-and-a-half million Palestinians ‘on a diet’, as an earlier chief-of-staff to the Israeli Prime Minister described it, and shredding any plans or hopes that they may have had for their futures, does not make humans more docile or more moderate. After a while in the Gaza pressure-cooker, anger and despair boil-up: Gaza ultimately was set to explode — one way or another.

If this was not discerned by western policy-makers, it was well understood by Hamas. In other words, what is happening in Gaza was all too foreseeable. A few Israelis saw this too, but their ‘grand narrative’ of the global struggle between ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’ overrode their instincts in respect to the local Palestinian conflict.

The thesis that literally ‘everything’ must be done either to lever ‘moderates’ into power or prevent them from losing power — euphemistically called ‘supporting moderation’ — lies at the heart of the Gaza crisis. [...]

Britain and the US have instead [of dealing politically and non-ideologically with Hamas] busied themselves in training a Palestinian ‘special forces’ militia around Mahmoud Abbas, which has been used to suppress political activity by Hamas, and to close-down welfare and social organisations that are not aligned directly with Abbas. A policy of political ‘cleansing’ of the West Bank, cloaked in the rhetoric of ‘building security institutions’, predictably has been met with an equivalent counter-reaction in Gaza. The paradoxical consequence of this has been to create such a schism within the Palestinian body politic that no Palestinian leader now enjoys the legitimacy to bring a political solution before the people: The West has sacrificed its wish for a political solution to its ideology of ‘moderation’ versus ‘extremism’.

Security officials have made clear that Israel will not permit fresh elections in Palestine — for fear that Hamas will win; and whereas the West probably will continue to bestow Mahmoud Abbas with the trappings of legitimacy after his term in office expires on 9 January 2009, he will enjoy no such legitimacy amongst Palestinians. Indeed the very effort to leverage such spurious legitimacy will discredit him further.

Read the full post at Conflicts Forum

One of the biggest media frenzies in Germany last year was created by the populist re-election campaign of conservative state governor Roland Koch. Back then, Koch said Germany was facing the problem of too many “criminal young foreigners.” He made his central campaign statement that “foreigners who don’t stick to our rules don’t belong here.”  

In the campaign, Koch tapped into longstanding xenophobic sentiments in Germany. He used latently racist language, using the word “Ausländer” (foreigner) as term generally referring to immigrants, and he argued that ethnic minorities need to accept and assimilate into the country’s predominant “Christian-Occidental culture.” (find an overview of the debate here)

While Koch was not successful with his campaign because he put off moderate conservatives with his overly right-wing tone, he did achieve one thing: for months, the issue of “violent young foreigners” made headlines and it became a truism in the public debate that “foreigner” or immigrant youths are more criminal than non-immigrant youths.

In a recent interview with the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Bernd Holzhausen from the German Youth Institute puts the debate into wider perspective, not only looking at the immediately visible aspect of race/ethnicity, but also taking gender and social class into account.

Holzhausen rejects the racial distinction between white non-immigrant youth and “foreigners” as useless. In a more differentiated analysis of ethnic background, male youths with a Turkish background are more prone to be involved in violent acts than others. This, according to Holzhausen, is due to masculine gender roles in Turkish immigrant families that legitimize violence.

Yet: The predominant finding is that most perpetrators have a low level of education and come from low-income families. Taking this factor into account, the level of violent offences levels out between “Germans” and “foreigners.”

This is not to deny that there is youth criminality and violence (on a steady level; not rising dramatically as suggested by the popular media in Germany). But looking at it from a wider angle relativises the “ethnic content” of the issue, and it fundamentally questions conclusions that demand cultural assertion, such as ‘being tough on immigration’, ‘asserting Christian-Orthodox German values’ or ‘deporting perpetrators’ (whereto anyway?). 

Instead it points to issues such as spatial segregation, social status of immigrants and the three-tiered school system that reinforces these divisions.

Interview with Holzhausen in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (in German)
Website of the German Youth Institute (in English)

In early December the Anne Frank Foundation and Leiden University issued the annual ‘Racism and Extremism Monitor’ for the Netherlands. Its key conclusion:

The problem of ‘Islamophobia’ in the Netherlands has worsened significantly in recent years.  Not only is there a negative climate of opinion towards Muslims, violence against this community has increased and there is greater tolerance of anti-Muslim offences. This is one of the most striking findings of the Racism and Extremism Monitor.

Violence against Muslims rising in an increasingly anti-Muslim climate:

The number of violent incidents against Muslims has grown significantly while overall incidents of racist violence were decreasing, the report states. The violence is accompanied by a general anti-Muslim climate which tends to facilitate the violent attacks. The appearance of the anti-Islam party PVV (by ‘Fitna’ author and populist Geert Wilders) has made Islam-bashing politically tolerable. The party is become part of the reason why right-wing extremisms seems to be more acceptable again to a larger part of the population.

The government targets Islamic radicalism, while letting neo-Nazis grow:

The government’s activities against political radicalism seem to worsen islamophobia rather than create a realistic picture of the origin of radical ideology. The government monitors political Islam rigidly while leaving right-wing extremism virtually unchecked, despite the growth of neo-Nazi activities from 40 to 400 in the last four years. 

The report cites the annual school inspection report saying that: “Schools are much more likely to face “white” extremism (…) and clashes between native Dutch students and students from an immigrant background than religious extremism.” More than half of the no-Muslim youth between 14 and 16 years, according to a poll, have negative attitudes toward Muslims.

The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports in English on the publication of the Racism and Extremism Monitor here and here.

For more than a year now, my university in the Netherlands has been hosting a number of students from Zimbabwe with a scholarship paid for by the Dutch government. All of the students (by now they are 17) were suspended from Zimbabwean universities for involvement in the opposition movement. Some of them were active in critical student movements or members of the opposition party MDC, others were involved in other civil society organisations that were critical of the government.

A good diplomatic move in the long run. In the Netherlands, the students are able to obtain a university degree despite their suspension, and once they return home they will be well-prepared to assume responsible position in a “post-Mugabe” Zimbabwe. As for the Dutch government, this programme equips them with an excellent relationship with the opposition movement and possibly with future leaders.

Besides these international interests for the Netherlands, the programme also has an impact on the university. On campus, the students contribute to an international climate and cause some interesting encounters. In class, human rights become concrete issues and not merely an abstract topic of political theory. The Zimbabwean students bring examples from a reality that the other students would have no access to otherwise. They are actively involved in organising public presentations and debates on the issue of human rights in Zimbabwe, and they establish contacts with expat political movements of Zimbabweans in Europe.  It’s a good piece of diplomacy.

If you’re interested, here is an article on the issue by a Maastricht university student in the webmag Crossroads.

An image that is almost invisible in the Western media: Israelis protesting against the war in Gaza. Is it because the Israeli peace movement is so insignificant that it is not worth reporting about it? Or is it rather a way of manufacturing consent for the war in Gaza by making it appear a natural move with universal support; something no Israeli would dare to criticise?

A Jerusalem Post article from December 30 (before the ground invasion started) gives an overview over the activities of the peace movement in Israel and its stance toward the army’s activities in Gaza. It sums up the campaigns of Meretz and Peace Now as moderate criticism of the army (“no anger of fury at the government yet”), while advocating diplomatic alternatives and pointing out the dangers of getting stuck in Gaza.

Photo from guardian.com, found here.