Death of a non-comformist

Pepe Rubianes...

He defined himself at the beginning of his shows as a Galaico-Catalan actor, joking that he was born in Galicia -where he never lived long- and lived all his life in Catalonia -where he was never born-. He was a nonconformist actor, director and humorist always ready to criticize the powerful and the conservative. He always spoke up very strongly against Spanish right wing nationalism, what got him in trouble with several Spanish theaters canceling his shows, and fascist Spanish nationalist groups demonstrating at his premieres with their Francoist flags and their Nazi-like salutes. He lived the last years of his life receiving death threats and insults from this groups. He was also very vocal against the policies of the state of Israel against the Palestinians.

He was famous for his unique (and hylarious) way of always speaking half in Spanish half in Catalan, continuously mixing both languages in every phrase, and also for his outrageous, politically motivated cursing in public, something that also drove snobbish right wing people crazy and got them to say that he was a "ghetto" (or our equivalent word in Catalan and Spanish), tastless and talentless character.

He was a talented, passionate critical thinker, a deeply politically committed artist, a free spirit that made of speaking up against the ultra-conservative establishments his mission in life. He made us think while he made us laugh.

He died yesterday, while the right wing Spanish nationalist party of Manuel Fraga -old school Facist who was in charge of executions of political dissidents during Franco's dictatorship- won the elections in Pepe's Galicia of birth for the 8th time in a row. Pepe and his efforts to keep us all alert against fascist tendencies in democratic disguises will be greatly missed.

Read more in English here


Pepe's famous phrases (not for sensitive ears):

"With so may imbeciles with rights of opinion-maker out there, the wise remain silent "
"I will continue to shit on that fascist, deandruff-covered and ultra-reactionary Spain"
(said as a response to the death threats cried out by ultra right wing Spanish nationalist groups at the premier of Rubianes' critical play "Todos Eran Lorca")


Rest in Peace, Pepe. May your spirit live in our struggles forever.

Catalan basketball stadium filled with chants of “Palestine!”

Activist waving a Palestinian flag storms the court during a Barcelona-Tel Aviv basketball match.

One activist interrupted the basketball match between the Barcelona team and the Maccabi of Tel Aviv that took place yesterday in the Catalan team’s stadium, in Barcelona. During the first time of the game, the activist found his way to the court waving a Palestinian flag and was first reduced by Mossad agents and later by members of the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan Police). After dragging him out of the court, police informed him he would be banned from entering any other sports stadium and would have to pay a fine. The six Mossad agents that had traveled with the Israeli team kept insisting on taking the activist away, clearly challenging the jurisdiction of the local police.

Meanwhile, two spectators pulled out a Palestinian flag and held banners in English and Catalan reading “Freedom for Palestine, Boycott Israel” and “Isolate Israel, stop the Palestinian genocide”. After a few moments, seven police officers stormed in and started pulling the banners and flag away from the two women, while the Barcelona supporters sitting around them spontaneously started trying to prevent them from doing so. The agents finally threw the banners to the floor, but at this point the entire stadium, angry with the police action, was booing the agents and chanting “Palestine! Palestine!”.

After the game, seven police officers were waiting for the two women outside the stadium and attacked and verbally abused them. A friend who had come to pick them up tried to intervene and was kicked in the leg by the agents, that also threatened him with “breaking his neck”. The police asked the three of them for IDs while they pushed one of the women against the wall and held her hands behind her back in an aggressive and painful manner. The other woman sat on the floor and refused to show her ID, telling the agents that they had not committed any crime and asking them to identify themselves. The officers were not displaying the mandatory identification on the right sleeve of their uniform and refused to identify themselves, but they stopped the harassment and finally left. The victims called the Police Station to complain about the agents’ refusal to identify and this morning they filed a complaint.

To see a picture of the events go to: http://www.elmundodeportivo.es/web/gen/20080404/noticia_53453264988.html

(the article is in Spanish, but the picture talks by itself)

For the Catalan speakers, here’s some audio archives of the whole thing, from a Catalan radio station that was broadcasting the game life: http://www.palestina.cat/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=326086&Itemid=1&lang=c

Even if you don’t speak Catalan, you can still hear the chants and the boos of the public.

Christmas holiday in Boston

On my way to work the other day I walked by one of the many homeless people that populate the streets of Boston. It was early afternoon in a busy shopping street two days before Christmas, and people were rushing around him in their shopping frenzy. In front of me, a woman in a fur coat dragging a dozen shopping bags just walked by without turning her head to the “spare change?” request of the man. I’ve talked to the man some other times on my way to work so when I walked past him right behind the woman we greeted each other and he said “Merry Christmas”. I started replying but the phrase died in my mouth, suffocated by the compassionate “Aaaaawww thank you!” coming from the woman with the fur coat and the load of shopping bags who was now turning around with the perfect compassionate look in her face and almost running me over in her quest to reach into her purse and give some money to the man.

I felt lucky. Is not often that one has the chance to witness first hand the effects of the Christmas Spirit at work. For at least 30 seconds a man was rescued from his permanent invisibility and a woman became a movie-like heroine, and all thanks to Christmas!

Because that is what these holidays are about, isn’t it? Every year we are reminded by the well intentioned media that we should be more compassionate, more kind-hearted, better persons for the holidays. And we are also showed the best path to do so: buy more and more expensive, consume more, waste more, get the brightest lights for your house, the bigger Christmas tree, the fanciest Santa Claus balloon for your garden, and, in the midst of all that, have a thought and give a little help to the poor (isn’t it amazing how lazy these people are? Can’t they just get a job for God sake?). Oh, and peace in the world, of course.

Who cares if our governants and our way of life are the main threat to peace all year round? Why worry about the powerful stealing less instead of the poor being given a little bit more? The system is great for a few, and the rest, well the rest can get the crumbs and be thankful.

Color light bulbs, bright wrapping paper, big bows, expensive useless presents. Christmas postcards, Santa Claus hats and a thousand versions of “Rudolph the red nose reindeer” hammering our brain from the speakers of every store and office. Bigger, brighter, louder! Because everything is allowed when it comes to maintaining collective brainwashing and manipulated consent and covering individual alienation and void ness.

By the way, the picture is not Disneyworld, is not a scene of a movie, is not taken out of a TV commercial for light bulbs. It’s a real house in Boston.

fed-up women's manifesto

Different countries, different ethnicities, different cultures, but surprisingly similar struggles. Social justice, revolution, solidarity, BUT...
Here's to all the amazing women from so many different origins who have shared their stories, their frustrations, their dreams and their strenght with me and thus, shaped this manifesto. And to all men who want to listen...

Love is not only about love. It is also about friendship, respect, and passion. And if there is one of these things I am not willing to trade any more at this point of my life, that is RESPECT. Because every time I let you disrespect me by unconditionally understanding, forgiving, forgetting, yielding, I take the risk to end up loosing my self-respect too, and after all, is with myself that I will have to live all of my life.

I am an emotionally strong woman. I’ve proven it to myself several times even I didn’t always believe it. But that doesn’t mean I need or want to impose my points of view on you, fight with you, control you, guide you, parent you. My strength doesn’t need to constantly reassure itself through superficial assertiveness but believe me, I am an emotionally strong woman who works hard every day to find out what she wants, and definitely knows what she does NOT want.

I do NOT want to be your ideal muse, your sacred object, your pure virginal lover, your sex toy, your worshiper, your mother, your therapist, your watchdog, your savior.

I do NOT want to hear how you admire me and don’t deserve me, how I am too good for you, how your jealousy is nothing else than a proof of love, how your failures to remain faithful just help you see how special I am…

BULLSHIT

I don’t want to be adored, nor mistreated; nor worshiped as a delicate piece of art, neither used as a pillow for your miseries. I don’t want your compliments but your deeds, not your protection but your support, not your better mask but your real face, not your void self-contempt but your meaningful desire to know yourself an evolve. I don’t want you to give up your social life for me, to change your clothes, your job, your hair or your dreams for me. I don’t want you surrendered, desperate, on parole…

In short, I don’t want you to love me because you need me, but to need me because you love me.

I am sorry if intelligent, independent women stir your male insecurities, if feelings make you run scared and act like a freaking teenager. And is not that I don’t understand your point. I do, sometimes more than is advisable for my mental health. We are ALL insecure, we are ALL afraid, but some of us don’t allow these fears and insecurities to turn into an excuse for never assuming mature responsibility of our life, of our acts, of the pain we inflict in others and in ourselves.

I know, the whole thing is about that commitment-phobia you –and half of the world’s population- claim to suffer due to the most diverse reasons, including childhood traumas, evil ex-lovers, the pursue of career goals and my favorite, deeply progressive political believes (!!!).

Well, let’s make something clear once and for all: there is not such thing as a contagious commitment-phobia illness that justifies your behavior; only high doses of insecurity, need of attention and emotional immaturity put together in a lethal cocktail. And here's some more news: erasing the word commitment from our vocabulary doesn’t make feelings disappear or free us from the responsibility we have to act like mature adults and to be critical with ourselves, respectful to others and honest to both.

I WILL LOVE YOU, BUT I WON’T SUBMIT TO EXTORTION

I will surrender my body and my soul freely and unconditionally, but I won’t tolerate or take responsibility for your selfish, attention-addict’s behavior; neither will I cut my wings, change my clothes, my job, my friends, my manners to calm down your insecurities and protect your male ego.

I have my ego, too. And it carries the footprints of all women who have been for centuries submitted, silenced, abused, victimized, mocked, raped, insulted, prosecuted, blackmailed, beaten, killed, ignored, labeled as stupid, neurotic, manipulative, weak, insane, nymphomaniac, frigid, witches, bitches.

You say it’s a personal matter between you, your “issues”, and me. I say it is also a pattern that shows a face of the many that sexism takes. You might not be aware of it as such, I know it’s not easy to get rid of centuries of cultural determinism, but excuse me if I can’t get to feel much sympathy for you right now… I need all my energies to get myself out of the virgin-whore-understanding mother stereotype all t hese centuries have lent me as a heritage.

Transitions

Transitions are always difficult. It takes time and struggle for societies and individuals to cope with them and assimilate the feelings of hope and anticipation but also ddisorientation, unrest and disappointment they awaken. This post was supposed to come way earlier and be way more specific but, you know, transition times are hard...

Transition part 1: Bye Prishtina

"Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments of lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends."
Richard Bach

My last weeks in Prishtina were a compound of last-minute visits and interviews. The country it'’s been living in transition for the last 7 years, waiting for their final status to be defined out of the negotiations with the UN and the Serbian government, and hoping that final status will be full independence.

(Check all the pictures fromKosova and further explanations at koreland pictures )

In the municipality of Shterpce, where a Serbian local government building raises right across the UN monitored official Kosovar local government, I learned more about the reality of parallel institutions in the country. From a report of the CERI (Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationals):

"“Exercise of the authority of UNMIK and Provisional Institutions of Self-government (PISG) throughout the entire territory of Kosovo has continuously been challenged by the existence of parallel structures supported and directly controlled by Belgrade. Parallel structures, including courts and other outlets of the Belgrade government, which operate in Kosovo without hindrance, drastically undermine both the identification of citizens with the rule of law and their trust in the system. [...] The persistence of parallel structures is generally seen as a political demonstration of Serbia's presence in Kosovo as well as a reflection of mistrust between the two largest ethnic communities, which seriously undermines the implementation of the rule of law in the entire territory of Kosovo."

Another hint on the evolution of the Kosovar transition to whatever the decided final status is: Right before I left, citizens of Prishtina protest on the streets showing their frustration and discontent with the UN role.

(Check all the pictures from Kosova and further explanations at koreland pictures )

After 2 months, I finally left Kosova on July the ^th with that usual feeling of my time there having been too short.

Things I took with me from Kosova:

• A very basic level of Albanian and a thick self-teaching book that I hope will help me get beyond the basic level someday.
• The RAGE of seeing once again how people are reduced to numbers and their feelings and sufferings dehumanized and monopolized by the powerful.
• Some HOPE after seeing how this same people keep struggling, laughing, crying, loving, being human beings despite all.
• A new interest for the books of Albanian writer Ismail Kadare and Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, induced by my Kosovar friends.
• A renewed distrust for those international institutions, workers and NGOs that rock unashamedly their arrogant, colonizer manners without trying to understand the reality (and the language) of the regions they pretend to save, and who measure people'’s development based on how good their English is.
• The struggle of so many wonderful, special women that, like in so many other places around the world, are trapped in the stereotypes and oppressive structures of the patriarchal societies in which their live and, despite all, dare to challenge them.

Things I'’m leaving there:

• My copy of PARECON, left for the cause with my Kosovar host.
• New friendships of the unique kind that comfort you, expand your horizons and help you evolve.

Transition part 2: overview of Catalonia

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."
Nelson Mandela

Ten days is, as it states John Reed'’s famous book, what took for the Communist Revolution in Russia to take off. Also ten days was the duration of the war between Slovenia and Yugoslavia after the former country declared independence. So ten days might look like a fair amount of time, but they are absolutely insufficient when this is the only time one can get to spend at her home place after being away for more than half a year and before being away for another year at least.

(Check all the pictures from Catalonia and further explanations at koreland pictures )

I arrived to Barcelona at the beginning of the vacation season on the 1^stof August, and the side effects of the approval of the new Catalan Constitution 3 months before were still on the air. Graffiti like the one in the picture as well as people's conversations in general show how high sensitivities are.

Things I took with me from Catalonia:

• Some of my dearest books: Miquel Marti i Pol and Amin Maalouf, Jose Luis Sampedro and Merce Rodoreda.
• Some of my favorite music to keep me in touch with my roots: Lluis Llach and La Cabra Mecanica, Maria del Mar Bonet and Obrint Pas.
• A fear of the growing racism against the growing numbers of immigrants arriving to the country.
• The comforting feeling of being immerse for 10 days in an environment where nobody doubts of the evilishness of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and US occupation of Iraq.
• The horrible and every time more familiar images of the hundreds of Africans that every summer try to reach Spain by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in home-made boats, and too often die on the attempt or face immediate deportation at their arrival.
• A full heavy suitcase of Catalan crafts, cooking devices, liquors and T-shirts.
• The re-energizing effects of the Mediterranean sea and sun.

Things I'’m leaving there:

• Family, friends and a 4 months old niece and 2 months old nephew that I just met for the first time.
• The discouraging and enraging picture of the more recalcitrant Spanish right wing manipulating people's identity feelings and spitting out its repressive nationalism in the form of boycotts of Catalan products, pleas to the Supreme Court to try to invalidate the Catalan Constitution, and incendiary speeches in the media portraying Catalans and Basques as almost-terrorist fascist oppressors of Spaniards (ironic, isn't it?).
• Tasty oranges, tomatoes and olive oil at reasonable prices.
• Life easily measured in Celsius, kilos and meters.
  

Transition part 3: the way back... home ??

"I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within."
Lillian Smith

(Check all the pictures from New York at koreland pictures )

A flight to New York, a couple days sharing my experiences and jet lag with friends in the city, and a ride on the China Town Bus have been the last steps of this crazy story of transitions. I am finally at... home?? Well, I'm starting to get confused in using the word “home", let’s just say I'’m back in the US.

Digesting, processing, adjusting... now is when the hardest part of the trip starts.

Check out all the pictures and descriptions of my trip here.

No boundaries for Israel's state-terrorism

First of all, the best first hand updated information about Israel's attack on Lebanon at http://electronicLebanon.net

As I follow the news about the new Israeli horror campaign in Lebanon I keep sinking in rage, frustration, sadness and more rage.

Kosovar TV is reporting it extensively. My friends here translate from Albanian for me, even though the images speak for themselves and I already have all the details by reading the dozens of articles and reports that pour into my email everyday from conscious organizations and friends around the world.

Frustration and rage. I can’t listen any more or read the comments of the racist amoral members of the Israeli government or the shameful UN representatives. It just makes me sick. At this point, I don’t feel like quoting the dozens of International regulations Israel is permanently breaking any more, because at the end is not about law, it’s about justice, but the real human justice, the one that doesn’t hold hands with the rotten ambitions of the colonizers and the powerful, and which exists despite the set of rules and institutions they manipulatively use on the name of International law and Justice to back up their ill, amoral, behavior. That justice.

This article from counterpunch website reflects some of the thoughts I have been immerse in all day:



"The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel"
Atrocities in the Promised Land. By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON

18 July 2006 http://www.counterpunch.org/

Words fail; ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the horrors Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for years, against the Palestinians. The tragedy of Gaza has been described a hundred times over, as have the tragedies of 1948, of Qibya, of Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin -- 60 years of atrocity perpetrated in the name of Judaism. But the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel, in the U.S. political arena, in the mainstream U.S. media. Those who are horrified -- and there are many -- cannot penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite in Israel, even more so in theU.S., and increasingly now in Canada and Europe, from seeing, from caring.

But it needs to be said now, loudly: those who devise and carry out Israeli policies have made Israel into amonster, and it has come time for all of us -- all Israelis, all Jews who allow Israel to speak for them, allAmericans who do nothing to end U.S. support for Israel and its murderous policies -- to recognize that we stain ourselves morally by continuing to sit by while Israel carries out its atrocities against the Palestinians.

A nation that mandates the primacy of one ethnicity or religion over all others will eventually become psychologically dysfunctional. Narcissistically obsessed with its own image, it must strive to maintain its racial superiority at all costs and will inevitably come to view any resistance to this imagined superiority as anexistential threat. Indeed, any other people automatically becomes an existential threat simply by virtue of its ownexistence. As it seeks to protect itself against phantom threats, the racist state becomes increasingly paranoid, its society closed and insular, intellectually limited. Setbacks enrage it; humiliations madden it. The statelashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.

The pattern played out in Nazi Germany as it sought to maintain a mythical Aryan superiority. It is playing out now in Israel. "This society no longer recognizes any boundaries, geographical or moral," wrote Israeli intellectual and anti-Zionist activist Michel Warschawski in his 2004 book Towards an Open Tomb: The Crisis ofIsraeli Society. Israel knows no limits and is lashing out as it finds that its attempt to beat the Palestinians into submission and swallow Palestine whole is being thwarted by a resilient, dignified Palestinian people who refuse to submit quietly and give up resisting Israel's arrogance.

We in the United States have become inured to tragedy inflicted by Israel, and we easily fall for the spin that automatically, by some trick of the imagination, converts Israeli atrocities to examples of how Israel is victimized. But a military establishment that drops a500-pound bomb on a residential apartment building in the middle of the night and kills 14 sleeping civilians, as happened in Gaza four years ago, is not a military that operates by civilized rules.

A military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a house in the middle of the night and kills a man and his wife and seven of their children, as happened in Gaza fourdays ago, is not the military of a moral country.

A society that can brush off as unimportant an armyofficer's brutal murder of a 13-year-old girl on the claim that she threatened soldiers at a military post -- one of nearly 700 Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since the intifada began -- is not a society with a conscience.

A government that imprisons a 15-year-old girl -- one of several hundred children in Israeli detention -- for the crime of pushing and running away from a male soldier trying to do a body search as she entered a mosque is nota government with any moral bearings. (This story, not the kind that ever appears in the U.S. media, was reported in the London Sunday Times. The girl was shot three times as she ran away and was convicted to 18 months in prison after she came out of a coma.)

Critics of Israel note increasingly that Israel isself-destructing, nearing a catastrophe of its own making. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy talks of a society in "moral collapse." Michel Warschawski writes of an "Israeli madness" and "insane brutality," a "putrefaction" of civilized society, that have set Israel on a suicidal course. He foresees the end of the Zionist enterprise; Israel is a "gang of hoodlums," he says, a state "that makes a mockery of legality and of civil morality. A state run in contempt of justice loses the strength to survive."

As Warschawski notes bitterly, Israel no longer knows any moral boundaries -- if it ever did. Those who continue to support Israel, who make excuses for it as it descends into corruption, have lost their moral compass.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is theauthor of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.


Some examples of actions being done around the world to oppose the Israeli brutal attack:

On Friday July 14th, 100 Stockholm-based activists blocked the entrance to the Foreign Ministry building in the Swedish capital. They formed a human chain at the front gate for 2 hours, and delivered a letter of protest to a representative of the Ministry. Police tried to break them up by means of violent pushes, pepper spray and dogs.

On Sunday July 16, 600 people joined together in Tel-Aviv to protest the war in Lebanon. The demonstration included veterans, young people, refuseniks, and various Israeli and international peace groups. The demonstrators marched through the streets of Tel-Aviv until they were stopped by riot police.

On Monday July 17, over 200 Palestinians and internationals marched through the center of Ramallah to protest Israel's actions in Lebanon and Gaza.

Also on Monday, English protesters blockaded EDO MBM Technologies Ltd, a Brighton-based company that produces electrical components for Israeli weapons. The action was designed to prevent the production of Israeli weapons for use in Lebanon and Gaza. Early Monday morning, protesters erected two roadblocks outside each gate of EDO MBM Technology, preventing vehicle access to the factory. Activists locked themselves to barrels filled with cement in front of the gates to create immoveable human obstructions.


Several Human Rights and activist groups are planning more actions for the next days.

If you are in the US, check out http://www.endtheoccupation.org/ to see what can you do in your area. Other interesting links:
http://electronicintifada.org
http://www.democracynow.org

For those in Catalonia, get in touch with XEP (Palestine Linkage Net) at info@xarxapalestina.org to learn about the new actions being planned. Also:
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/
http://www.vilaweb.cat/

Building on rotten foundations

Six years after the war, the picturesque city of Prizren, in the South West area of Kosova, seems fully recovered, with his old streets packed with young people searching for the right spot to have a drink and listen to some music on the weekend nights. The city lies at the bottom of a beautiful valley, watered by a river and several streams coming down from the surrounding hills.

Climbing up one of these hills to visit the city’s castle, finally some signs that remind us of the current situation are visible: an old orthodox church under permanent surveillance of a NATO patrol, and several destroyed houses on the hillside; houses that once belonged to Serbs and were burned during the March 2004 events, a series of protests and riots of albanians, which were a reaction to the very slow and uncertain process of rebuilding life in Kosova by international community.

Similar events had occured in other areas: after the NATO air rides against Serb positions, when the Albanians were able to return to their homes and towns, there were some cases of destruction of Serbian houses and churches in revenge. For the international community, that proves their point of the need to give Kosovo only “conditional independence” as, for them, Albano-Kosovars seem to have a problem with respecting their minorities, and working towards reconciliation.

Reconciliation… the great sounding word. Well, the question is: what concept of reconciliation are UN, NATO or EU trying to sell to the population? Reconciliation at any price, without dealing with the past oppression and abuses, will not bring real peace as it will not bring justice, and, of course, the local population is not going to buy it.

Going back to Prizren: the Serbian destroyed houses on the hillside are visible scars that make the international community feel uncomfortable; the hundreds of Albanian houses destroyed by the Serbian troops are not obvious any more because they have been rebuilt, but that doesn’t mean the wounds are healed. From the Human Rights Watch report on Prizren:

At the outset of the NATO bombing campaign, the OSCE has reported, Serbian military and police shelled a few areas of the city and destroyed the historic seat of the "League of Prizren," an important historical monument for Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. Yet, with the exception of the Tusus neighborhood, the "ethnic cleansing" of Prizren was carried out with a lesser degree of violence and fewer wanton attacks than in many other parts of Kosovo. […] In April 1999, on at least two occasions, Serb police and military rounded up hundreds of men in Prizren and forced them to serve on trench-digging brigades near the border with Albania. […] The May 26 attack on the Tusus neighborhood of Prizren, in which Serb forces killed some twenty-seven to thirty-four people and burned over one-hundred homes, was the most violent episode in Prizren during the conflict.

(Read the full Human Rights Watch Report here)

Of course, no one can deny that some factions of the KLA (Kosova Liberation Army) also committed atrocities on the Serbs after the NATO air raids. But the tendency of the international community to level the systematic, widespread and state supported abuses of the one powerful side with the fewer cases coming from factions of the enraged, for years oppressed other side, without going further in their analysis, cannot be a good fundament for reconciliation. And cannot be so because this approach lacks the fundamental principles of justice.

There is no justice in giving “conditional independence” (isn’t that a contradiction in itself?) to Kosova arguing that they are not ready to deal with minorities rights based on their tense relations with the Serbian minority that, on the other hand, is not doing anything either to integrate into the local institutions and keeps tightly linked to the Serbian government in Belgrade.

And with that I’m not denying that there are minority issues to take care off in Kosova. There are, and some very urgent, but curiously the international community is not really taking effective care of these ones, thus making its whole discourse about minority rights sound like a big excuse to preserve the interests of Belgrade in the region.

I already learned that when most of the international actors here talk about “minorities’ problem”, they are really talking about “Serb minority”. But there are also some important Turkish and Bosniac minorities in Kosova and also a good number of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian population, being these last three groups the ones in the worse situation right now. It is true, their numbers are smaller than those of the Serbs, and they are definitely not as powerful as the Serbian minority -with the support of Belgrade- is; but, precisely because of that, shouldn’t the international community have especial care of them and make sure that these historically prosecuted and discriminated groups had their rights ensured?.

The truth is that, while NATO troops and barbed wire surround orthodox churches and Serbian enclaves in Kosovo to protect them from possible attacks and Serbian minority’s rights are a keystone in the negotiations about Kosova’s final status, Roma and Ashkali population are still fighting for their basic rights. Their situation after the war was extremely difficult, as they were seen by the Albanian population as collaborators of the Serbs, and were prosecuted and denied basic Humanitarian help. Six years later, most of them still live in the called Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps, places without the most basic sanitary conditions where several cases of deaths by lead poisoning have already happened. From a European Roma Rights Center report:

The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has known of the scale of the health emergency since as early as 2000, when the World Health Organization (WHO) issued its first report analyzing the effects of lead pollution on the Mitrovica region. […] By October 2004, the WHO had declared the area in and around the IDP camps uninhabitable, issuing a report that revealed that the soil in Zitkovac camp was 100.5 times above recommended levels, while in the Cesmin Lug camp, the levels exceeded by 359.5 times those considered safe for human health. […] In spite of the volume of evidence indicating the extreme harms to the inhabitants of the camps caused by their continued residence there, the Roma concerned have still not been moved to a safe place after 6 years.

(Read the full article here)

Where is the interest of the international community for protection of minorities Human Rights in this case?

The relation between the different cultural groups in these region is not easy, it’s true, especially regarding the issue of independence: Serbian government is playing the card of the rights of its minority in Kosova to pressure the international community and avoid independence of the region, while independence is a MUST for the Albanian population that suffered the oppression of the Serbian government for decades. But, on the other hand, minorities such as the Roma and Ashkali, which were trapped in the games of power of the other two during the conflict and are seen by Albanians as collaborators of the Serbs, are afraid that an independent Albanian-ruled country will oppress them. Seems like a closed circle…

I’ve been thinking a lot about these circles -or rather spirals- of oppression and power, in which it seems to be always a more, disfavored group being mistreated by whom is at the same time being oppressed by a most powerful group. The spiral in Kosova, like everywhere else, needs to be broken, and I admit I don’t have the absolute answer on how to do it in the most just possible way. But it is clear to me that favoring the more powerful, the top layer of the spiral of oppression, forcing a reconciliation without justice into one of the oppressed groups, is just a way to feed the stream of violence and distrust all the way up and down. It is like building our house on rotten foundations. And we know that the international community is very fond to this option in the name of the sacred “stability”.

See more pictures of Prizren here

Sorry for the lonng post, I think I'm having too much time to think lately...