Red Pepper » Tim Baster

Tunisia: A second political assassination, strikes and calls for the dissolution of the national assembly

admin — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 11:10:56 +0000

Photo: Tim Baster
The UGTT, Tunisia’s largest trade union went on general strike on Friday to protest at the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi, a deputy in the National Constituent Assembly. The national newspaper ‘La Presse de Tunisie’ reported demonstrations in most large cities; one demonstrator died.
Brahmi was the leader of his party, the Movement of the People, up until July, when he split from it to form another party. Movement of the People is affiliated to the Popular Front, the left wing coalition which opposes the religious Ennahda government.
On the same day, interior minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said in a press conference that Brahmi was hit by 14 bullets in front of his home the previous day. The weapon was the same used in the assassination of Chokri Belaid, another left winger murdered on 6 February. The minister accused a Salafist group of the crime. No arrests have been made for either assassination.
Demonstrators accuse the Ennahda government of assassination
But demonstrators did not accept the minister’s version of events. At the National Constituent Assembly building, a crowd gathered shouting: ‘Civil disobedience’ and ‘Assassin Ghannouchi’ (the political leader of Ennahda).
One demonstrator explained their demands: ‘resignation of the National Constituent Assembly, an end to manipulation, and a government of national safety.’ These are similar to the demands of the Popular Front and those of the Tunisian ‘Tamarod’ (rebellion) movement, which takes its name from the Egyptian movement that preceded the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s President Morsi by the army on 3 July.
Photo: Tim Baster
On Saturday a large crowd accompanied the body of Mohamed Brahmi to the Jellaz cemetery where only five months before Tunisians had buried another Popular Front leader, Chokri Belaid. The crowd chanted: ‘After the bloodbath this government has no more legitimacy.’
Later, in front of the National Assembly building, pro-Ennahda demonstrators fought with demonstrators from the Popular Front.
The demands of the revolution are not being met
Tunisia’s religious Ennadha government is a provisional one elected in October 2011 with a timetable to deliver a new constitution and fresh elections by the end of 2012. The constitution is still in draft and the elections have not been held.
Tunisian youth and poor communities are facing the same enormous economic and social difficulties they faced prior to the revolution, but the government appears unwilling to deliver the social and economic demands of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. At the same time, it is accused of stalling the political process to entrench itself in power before any elections.

Turkey: A people imprisoned

admin — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 08:59:14 +0000

Demonstration outside the court in Ankara in October 2012. Photo: Isabelle Merminod
Lami Özgen can speak in a loud voice. This is useful for trade union rallies, which are often held in the open air outside high security courts these days in Turkey. He is the president of KESK, Turkey’s independent confederation of public service trade unions.
On the day of our interview with him in December 2012, he was organising a rally for 15 KESK women trade unionists facing terrorism charges. He himself is on appeal against one conviction and awaiting indictment in another case, both for trade union activities.
At the time of the interview, 67 members of KESK were in prison facing terrorism charges. On 19 February this year, another 169 KESK members were taken into custody in one of the biggest police operations since 2011.
‘Political genocide’
Lami Özgen says of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government: ‘We cannot be optimistic. The new policy of the government is that they do not shut the institutions but pick up their officials, activists and others to prevent their activities.’ This allows the government to say to the international community, particularly the EU, that civil society is still alive as the hollowed-out institutions are still in place.
Sebahat Tuncel, a member of the BDP (Peace and Democracy Party), the legal pro-Kurdish progressive opposition party, jokes with the interpreter as she is being interviewed on 25 November 2012. She is, at present, a member of the Turkish parliament. But she has just been sentenced to eight years on charges of being a member of a terrorist organisation. She says that if the supreme court confirms her conviction, the Turkish parliament will remove her immunity. Elected to parliament in 2007 while in prison, she may return there directly from parliament if her immunity is lifted.
‘In practical terms the BDP is already closed because since 2009 [the police] have taken . . . members, officials, managers.’ The numbers change as people are released and others take their place. She calls it ‘political genocide’.
Tuncel says that five previous pro-Kurdish parties have been closed down. Why does the government not just do the same with the BDP? ‘If they close the BDP they are going to be in a difficult situation in front of international opinion and Turkish society. They do not want to be seen as an undemocratic country,’ she says.
Thousands in prison
The International Crisis Group, a respected NGO working on conflict resolution, estimates that the number of people in prison on terrorism charges was about 7,000 in August 2012. Andrew Finkel, who writes for the International Herald Tribune, quotes a figure of about 8,000 in October 2012.
Most of the defendants are Kurdish. Most are charged with being members or supporters of the KCK (the Union of Kurdish Communities). Prosecutors allege the KCK is an urban wing of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), the armed Kurdish movement fighting for autonomy. The defendants are from every part of society: students, academics, lawyers, journalists, elected BDP mayors, trade unionists and members of the BDP party.
Once picked up by the police, activists face anti-terrorism laws drafted in such wide terms that they allow prosecutors to lay charges against almost anyone. ‘Individuals have been prosecuted and tried under the anti-terrorism legislation . . . simply for having participated in public demonstrations by showing banners and shouting slogans,’ according to the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers in a report in mid-2012.
If charged, activists are put before Turkey’s justice system, which has been condemned by human rights agencies and the European Court of Human Rights. Defence lawyers don’t have the same access to evidence as the state; very long pre-trial detention is the norm; the prosecution use secret witnesses; a close relationship exists between prosecutors and judges; and the judiciary is not independent. ‘Judges and prosecutors at different levels [give] precedence to the protection of the state over the protection of human rights,’ warned Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe human rights commissioner, in a January 2012 report about the Turkish justice system.
Blocking local government
In 2009, the local elections gave an electoral bloody nose to the AKP and delivered large gains to Kurdish politicians in the Kurdish areas. The AKP’s share of the vote rose from 34.4 percent in the 2002 national elections, climbing to 42.2 percent in the 2004 local elections and then 46.6 percent in the 2007 national elections. But the 2009 local elections saw it fall back to 38.9 per cent. The BDP’s predecessor, the pro-Kurdish DTP, won 59 mayoral posts – up from 36. But in December the DTP was closed down by the constitutional court. The arrests and trials started in the same year.
Lami Özgen explains the reason for the continued arrests: ‘In 2014 there will be elections for municipal governments. The government wants to capture the administration in the provinces, especially where it was held by Kurdish parties. So as a part of this policy many officials from the BDP and the other opposition voices and trade unionists are arrested . . . Many mayors in the eastern and south east region [the Kurdish area] are arrested. Not only mayors but also the members of the municipality are also arrested. And therefore the government blocks the work of the municipality.’
Anti-communism and local politics
Büşra Ersanlı, 62 years old and a university professor of political science, is a defendant in one of the trials. She replies to our questions amid the traditional flow of glasses of tea. She was imprisoned in the 1970s. Prosecutors are now demanding at least 15 years imprisonment.
Ersanlı says that the various strands of the right wing in Turkey are unified by their anti-communism. Anti-communism has been a force in Turkish politics since the creation of the Turkish state in 1923.
She says that human rights violations had encouraged Kurds to become active in local politics: ‘It is easier for people to participate in local politics because of the face-to-face relations, most especially women. So that created organisational activity in Kurdish cities . . . The Kurdish people, especially the left wing and the poor, have been affected in a similar way. All they could do was local politics. That is why they became active and dynamic, and even creative, at local level.’
She says that also there had been an upsurge of local political action as a result of the 1999 earthquake in the Marmara region of Turkey. The absence of an adequate central government response to the loss of life and damage required local political responses.
Ersanlı says that local politics have become more important in Turkish politics: ‘So if you relate this to decentralisation and left-wing politics, then [local politics] becomes dangerous and [controlling it] becomes part of anti-communism.’
Kurdish autonomy and democratisation
‘This is an authoritarian country, it is patriarchal, so we always have fathers and big brothers who decide for us. Therefore the women’s struggle is the most important in our country: first, women’s and second, the Kurdish political movement. Without these two there can be no democratisation,’ says Büşra Ersanli.
The AKP government was first elected in 2002, led by a former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is still the prime minister. Many Turks feared another military coup because the AKP was an Islamic party and the military had intervened previously using the protection of Turkey’s secular state as a justification. But the army did not react, although some military officers have since been charged and convicted for plotting a coup in 2003.
In 2002, many Turks and Kurds hoped for democratisation and an end to authoritarian government because the AKP seemed open to a pragmatic approach. Negotiations with the EU seemed to be going smoothly. The EU’s requirements for reform were transformed into positive political change in the first few years of the AKP’s control. Negotiations with the PKK appeared to be moving towards a successful conclusion.
But by 2009, with entry to the EU becoming less likely, reform slowed. In 2011 the AKP won the national elections with 49 per cent of the vote and since then appears to have become more authoritarian. There are increased casualties on both sides in the war between the army and the PKK in the south east; religious education has been expanded; education reforms encourage girls to leave school earlier. And arrests under terrorism laws are increasing. For example, in August 2012, the Turkish press reported that the minister of justice had stated that between January and August, 2,824 high school and university students had been arrested or charged.
Hunger strike
In September 2012, Kurdish prisoners across Turkey went on hunger strike. They demanded the right to speak Kurdish in court, along with the right to mother-tongue education. They also called on the government to grant better conditions to Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, held in isolation on the island of Imrali.
At the last moment, with fears that prisoners would soon be dying, Öcalan sent out a message saying that the hunger strike should stop. It ended on 18 November as reports circulated in the Turkish press that negotiations between the AKP government and the PKK were re-starting.
Kurdish sources have suggested that the murder of the three Kurdish women activists in Paris in January 2013 was an attempt to stop any negotiations. On 25 February the Turkish press quoted Öcalan as saying that continued negotiations required that parliamentary parties agree to the right to mother-tongue education, a redefinition of citizenship to stop discrimination against Kurds, and the decentralisation of the Turkish state by increasing local government powers.
Continued repression?
Sebahat Tuncel says: ‘We are realistic people, we are not in a daydream. We know that the Kurdish problem has a history of 200 years in the Middle East and 100 years in Turkey. We know that this problem [will not be] solved suddenly.’
Büşra Ersanlı says she fears a cycle of reciprocal violence if the trials and repression continue. But she also has hope that ‘there is the chance of a swift re-direction by the government in the belief that they could better survive as a political power if they stopped the arrests. And that is correct, of course.’
She declares: ‘I always want to believe that some people are intelligent enough within the government to change their attitude.’
Our thanks to Lami Özgen, SebahatTuncel and Dr Büşra Ersanlı for agreeing to be interviewed despite the circumstances in Turkey. Sign the online petition.

A rebel with many causes

admin — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:30:08 +0000

Hundreds packed into the largest room in Golders Green crematorium in October to say goodbye to Irene Bruegel. These people and hundreds more from all over the world sent messages to her partner Richard Kuper and children Dan, Jo, Martin and David expressing their sadness and paying tribute to her achievements. The sheer volume shows how much her decades of service to so many peoples, organisations and causes are appreciated. As Richard said, ‘It’s so desperately sad she isn’t alive to enjoy them herself. Perhaps we all need to learn to recognise and express our love, gratitude and appreciation to others as we go along.’

The span of her activities, commitments and intellectual engagements was dizzying. ‘A rebel with many, many causes,’ as her daughter Jo Kuper put it. She always drew attention to the cause or the idea, not to herself, and to find some way to strengthen it. So here, instead of an obituary, Sue Himmelweit, Lynne Segal and Tim Baster focus on three causes and movements that Irene held dear – and celebrate her contribution to them.

A Jew for justice in Palestine

For the past seven years, I have been involved in a variety of groups and campaigns to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, with the goal of creating peace and justice for both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. One person alone was pivotal in drawing me into this work: that hugely missed, dynamic political optimist, Irene Bruegel.

After visiting the occupied West Bank in 2001, just after the start of the second intifada, Irene contacted many of her former comrades – especially her old socialist feminist friends who happened to be Jewish – with her ‘modest proposal’ that we protest against the denial of human rights and other brutalities ensuing from Israel’s continued and expanding colonisation and enclosure of Palestinian territories. Our voices would be all the more effective, she indicated, if we spoke out as Jews.

That very evening the wheels were set in motion to create Jews for Justice for Palestinians, a group whose numbers and activities increased rapidly over the following years, becoming one of the most influential Jewish organisations campaigning against Israeli occupation and for peace in the Middle East.

We have always been up against the world, especially given the four and a half billion dollars the USA pays annually into the terrifying Israeli military machine. Here in Britain, it was without doubt Irene’s unique levels of energy, creativity, insight and intelligence, supported by that of her partner Richard Kuper, that kept the wheels turning. One thing she knew for certain is that Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, must work together in as many initiatives as we can manage to sustain the determination to end this tragic and barbarous conflict.

The early death of Irene Bruegel leaves the world a poorer place, bereft of one of the most vital and passionate people ever to have taken up the cause of justice for Palestinians, and many others as well. Our search to further the goals for which she fought so strongly will continue. But it feels hard to live up to her uniquely inspirational presence, spurring others into action, thinking up new projects, and ensuring that they came to fruition. I have always been inspired and moved by Irene’s intrepid courage and perseverance.

Lynne Segal

A researcher for liberty

Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) had been set up in 1998 against a backdrop of xenophobia and rising detention. Volunteers and pro bono barristers fought to obtain bail for detained asylum seekers and migrants.

The government’s policy was to use detention to crush asylum seekers into returning to their countries. The lack of legal aid for bail applications meant that many detainees had no access to the courts. When they did get to court, they were required to prove the impossible – that they would not abscond. The Immigration Service constantly repeated that detained asylum seekers would abscond if released – with no evidence to back this up. We knew from our work that this was simply untrue – detainees who were released largely kept in contact with the Immigration Service. In 2002, Irene, furious at this injustice, volunteered to research the issue. No such research had been carried out before.

She assembled a team in record time and started work. This involved working in a tiny office surrounded by files, ringing solicitors, immigration officers and refugee networks.

We felt that we should be congratulated for our human rights work. None of it! Irene was utterly scathing about our files. She never took any prisoners. At the end, she sent the draft to the Home Office for their views before showing me a copy! I nearly had a heart attack as I had no idea what it contained. But her intellectual and academic rigour allowed no other course of action.

The research, published in June 2002, eviscerated the Immigration Service. It found that more than 90 per cent of the sample remained in contact. It added that the Immigration Service ‘lacks the ability to forecast absconding with any degree of accuracy’. The barristers who fought for detainees’ freedom in the immigration courts needed no second invitation – they went on the attack against the Immigration Service and the tide began to turn.

Irene’s report was key to establishing new guidelines that require immigration adjudicators to grant bail unless the Immigration Service has strong evidence against it. The burden of proof in bail applications was reversed. Many hundreds of detainees have been and continue to be released, often without sureties, because of Irene’s work. This is just one of her many legacies to the human rights movement.

Tim Baster

A socialist feminist

Irene was a wide-ranging thinker and activist, a socialist feminist, who was one of the founders of the women’s movement in the early 1970s. She took an active part in many of the socialist feminist conferences of the following decade that defined a distinct socialist agenda for feminism, aiming to challenge the ways in which women’s oppression was linked to class exploitation.

At the same time, she was an active member of the Conference of Socialist Economists, a lively non-sectarian movement aiming to provide socialist understandings of the workings of modern capitalism. Although at the time involved in the International Socialist group (now the SWP), her activism was never limited by it, and she left at the end of the 1970s over its political dogmatism and hostility to autonomous women’s organisation.

Irene was active in campaigns for abortion rights, nurseries and for women’s employment rights: equal pay and an end to the forces that led to women ending up in low paid, dead end jobs. She didn’t see this as a result just of simple discrimination, but of a whole interlocking system in which gender divisions interacted with capitalist employment relations to produce different and unequal roles for men and women. As a feminist economist, she made important contributions to the understanding of this system, as well as taking part in many campaigns to change it. Debating whether class or gender was the primary cause of it all was unnecessary and meaningless – what mattered was to understand how the whole system worked.

Irene was always an internationalist, putting much energy into, for example, the European Socialist Feminist Forum to foster socialist feminist campaigns across Europe. It was typical of her approach that when feminists from eastern Europe became involved, for whom the term ‘socialism’ was redolent of an oppressive state, she argued against fierce opposition to include them by changing the name of the organisation to the ‘European Left Feminist Forum’. She was also a long-term supporter of Women in Black, standing up for peace against militarism and war.

Irene was open to new ideas and new people at all times. She was a terrific organiser, if always over-committed, and recognised that one had to give time to both the big and the small, and to people as well as movements, fighting injustices wherever they occurred. Non-sectarian, inclusive, passionate and sometimes infuriating, she will be greatly missed.

Sue Himmelweit

A fighter for a better world

Earlier this year, having been subject to some of the police harassment at this year’s climate camp, and knowing she was ill, I expressed concern about my mother Irene coming to the mass day of protest. She came anyway, of course – that was my mum.

Many tributes allude to the searing hole left in the social justice movement by her untimely and deeply cruel death. I know my own work will suffer greatly. I have always sent her articles and reports I am working on. No matter that she was no expert on, say, tuna overfishing or climate change, she would always provide a fresh perspective and challenge assumptions I could no longer see.

Irene would always tell us that ‘life’s not fair’ and yet she refused to let herself be overwhelmed by it – there was no time for that. Her motivation was always her resolute belief in the possibility of a better world.

I hope those reading this feature will be inspired to keep fighting – the only way to keep her spirit alive, and do justice to what she achieved.

Jo Kuper