Austrian Author Peter Handke was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on Monday despite his record of denying the Bosnian Genocide during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War and his outspoken personal support for former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. A move which led to a swift diplomatic response and strong condemnation by journalists and human rights activists. Despite strong reactions from all over the world calling for the award to be revoked, Handke received his prize on the International Human Rights Day.

In response, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia and Turkey all announced that their diplomats would boycott the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kosovo Behgjet Pacolli blasted the award decision saying: “Today is a shameful day for Europe and humankind the awarding of Nobel Prize to Handke. It shows that Europe has amnesia of what happened to us in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia. We have to counter these revisionist attempts. Grateful to all who spoke loudly against this act.”

Albania’s Acting Foreign Minister Gent Cakaj criticized the decision saying: “Justification of war atrocities during the Yugoslavia break-up must not be rewarded.” he wrote on his Twitter account.

While Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also slammed The Swedish Academy’s decision. During an event held on the occasion of Human Rights Day in the capital Ankara, he announced that Turkey also would not participate in the Nobel ceremony. Saying: “Awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to a racist individual will not mean anything other than awarding human rights violations,” He also added that this action tarnished the reputation of the award saying: “Nobel extinguished itself. Nobel ended up itself. Now Nobel has turned into a position that acting politically and ideologically. For me, Nobel has no significance. And we won’t attend this ceremony certainly. Furthermore, we ask some friend countries to not attend this programme” he said. 

The Swedish Academy awarded the Prize to Peter Handke “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.” On the Academy’s website he was also described as “one of the most influential writers in Europe after the Second World War”. The Academy has hesitated to discuss Handke’s views on the Bosnian Genocide and his connection to Slobodan Milosevic just as much as Handke’s himself avoided talking about the criticisms during his speech at the Academy. 

Handke’s denial of the Bosnian Genocide and support for Slobodan Milosevic was highly extensive. Handke visited Miloševic during his detention in The Hague and is remembered for making a famous speech at Milosevic’s funeral in Požarevac, Serbia, in 2006. In which he said: “The world, the so-called ‘world’ knows everything about Yugoslavia and Serbia. The world, the so-called ‘world’ knows everything about Slobodan Milosevic, so-called ‘world’ knows the truth this is why so-called ‘world’ is absent today. And not just today and not just here. I do not know the truth but I watch, I listen, I feel, I remember. This is why I am here today at Yugoslavia’s side, at Serbia’s side, at Slobodan Milosevic’s side.”

Handke also wrote about how the Serbs were misunderstood and were unfairly judged for the bloodshed that occurred during the breakup of the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In one of his books ‘A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia’ published 1996, Handke attempts to vindicate Serbia claiming that the media covered the war from a Bosnian perspective. In a review of Handke’s book by David Rieff of The Los Angeles Times, Rieff argued that Handke largely based his book on personal opinions rather than any factual analysis saying: “There is virtually no reporting and only the crudest sort of historical analysis… More astonishing, Handke, so full of opinions about the real nature of the Bosnian conflict about which, he states over and over again, he and not the various reporters who actually covered the war has the truest sense, declined to set foot in Bosnia itself”.

The award of the prize to Handke also provoked the ire of many journalists, particularly those who personally reported on the Bosnian War. Cristiane Amanpour of CNN criticized Handke’s award on Twitter saying: “I was there. We all know who’s guilty”.

The Times Reporter Anthony Loyd tweeted: “Her dress torn, mute with shock, a Bosnian woman is found by the roadside after weeks in a Bosnian Serb detention camp, June 1993. Those of us there know and remember the war’s realities”.

While Santiago Lyon of the Associated Press tweeted: “Shame on Nobel Prize and shame on Handke for his blindness and willful denial of genocide in Bosnia. I was there as a photojournalist and saw it firsthand”.

Another journalist Peter Maass of The Intercept heavily criticised the rewarding of Handke. Maass claimed that some of Academy’s jurors were inspired by books which the claimed the Bosnian Genocide was the creation of a PR company that worked for the US, thus falling for a conspiracy theory about the Bosnia war. Maass says: “Here’s what shocks me most about this Nobel Prize disaster. It’s not that the Nobel jurors fell for conspiracy theories. That’s terrible enough, of course. The worst is that the elevation of Peter Handke has also raised from the nearly dead a discredited rewrite of history and genocide. We are going back in time”.

Maass gave a scathing rebuke to the Academy after the award ceremony saying: “At that moment, the Swedish royal family and the Swedish Academy will have officially and fully endorsed the work of a genocide denier”.

This was an opinion that was also shared by Swedish journalist Christina Doctare, who returned her 1988 Nobel Peace Prize in protest of the Handke decision.

After the Swedish Academy’s controversial decision, two issues come to mind. Firstly, has this irrevocably tarnished the credibility of the Nobel Prize? Secondly, at a time in which far-right populism is rising, is the Academy complicit in the mainstreaming extremist views? While the Swedish Academy may believe its decision to award Peter Handke was a purely artistic one, in reality the award signalled a worrying endorsement of hate.

Written by Yeter Ada Şeko – ISTANBUL

In the first eight months of 2019, at least 529 migrant deaths have been recorded in the Americas. Many of them drowned while seeking asylum. This reality was captured in the heart-breaking photograph, taken in June, of the bodies of Salvadorians Oscar Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria Ramirez; their bodies washed up on the bank of the Rio Grande River at the US-Mexico border. The photograph was aired on TV, spreading quickly on social media. The image of Ramirez and his daughter provoked debate about immigration, but even this shocking picture could not change President Donald Trump’s intolerant anti-migrant attitudes and policies, but rather the power of his oppressive rhetoric has intensified and paved the way for mistreatment of refugees and migrants, including separating families and locking up migrant children at the border. He has also been criticized for inspiring the rise in white-supremacist violence.

In the lead up to the upcoming 2020 US presidential election, Democrats have blamed President Trump, claiming his migration clampdown made deaths more likely, Trump however, has offloaded the blame on the Democrats, who he said were hindering his government’s attempts at closing “loopholes” in US law that encourage migrants to apply for asylum in the country. The issue of immigration, has seemingly become a political football and the president is 1-0 ahead in shifting the social and political landscape of the United States. Ever since Trump first announced his candidacy for the president of the United States in 2015, he has been in the headlines regarding his offensive views towards migrants. On May 16, 2018, for example, Trump referred to undocumented migrants as “animals”. Sometime later, on January 11, 2019, Trump used the term “shithole” countries, referring to migrants from Haiti and other African countries. He denied having said this. While these words were met with some negative reactions, they did not cause a political crisis. Of course, an imbalance of power between Haiti and the US was a factor for this.

The president also promised the deportation of “millions” of undocumented migrants in early June. On July 12, Trump announced that potentially 2,000 undocumented migrants would be held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention over the weekend. He declared to reporters that “the ICE raids were very successful”. Later, on July 26, the president of the US was handed a victory on his major commitment — building a long wall on the US-Mexico border —  as the US Supreme Court approved the use of $2.5B in military funding for the purposes of wall construction. Despite the fact that Trump has taken concrete steps in recent days, he has already built a symbolic wall between Americans and migrants and attacked the multiracial, multicultural soul of America.

Since the beginning, the border crossings from Mexico to the US have always been on the top of Trump’s agenda. Prior to his candidacy Announcement Speech on June 16, 2015, he famously blamed Mexico and said: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” His words won him supporters and opponents in equal measure. On the one hand he is seen as a ‘straight talker’ on the other his opponents have accused him of being mad, reckless, racist and xenophobic.

In his Super Tuesday victory speech on March 1, 2016, Trump announced his “wall” project between the United States and Mexico in an attempt to prevent “illegal” migration: “We are going to have a wall. … I watched the ex-president of Mexico, the arrogance of this man. And I get along great with Hispanics. You saw in Nevada, I won in the poll, the Hispanic vote. I have thousands of people that work for me right now that are Hispanic. … These are great people.” From a social perspective of discourse, text reflects social and cultural biases against immigration, against migrants’ involvement in the economy, politics and daily life in the United States. Trump mentioned his electoral victories where Latin American people live. He has named his Latin American supporters as great people, but there is no mention of Mexican migrants. Hence, he has tried to legitimize his discrimination with an unclear example.

Othering migrants for politics: the symbolic power of language

President Trump has represented some ethnic and religious communities in a divisive and derogatory way. Muslims and Mexicans in the United States have been the main focus of his speeches. In response, while some people have stood with and praised him as a real American patriot, others including cultural icons such as George Clooney and Jimmy Kimmel, have spoken out against Trump’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric. With the “wall” rhetoric, Trump has already constructed a sharp “symbolic wall” between the United States and Mexico, Americans and Mexicans. Because, a wall between two countries generally reminds people of hostility. For instance, the wall between Israel and Palestine or the Berlin Wall.

The inflexibility of Trump’s discourse on migrants for almost five years is neither arbitrary nor a coincidence. Language has always been instrumental in politics. As Jean-Paul Sartre says ”words are loaded pistols”. From a political communication perspective, one of the easiest ways to gather people—even common enemies—under a single roof is by using divisive language. Sartre’s metaphor is apt with reference to the symbolic power of language at the basic level.

More comprehensively, as Pierre Bourdieu once said political power is closely related to the theme of language and symbolic power. Thus, politics achieves its ideological effects by exploiting the possibilities contained in language. In other words, holders of political power can legitimize their policies–even those that may be absurd to the public–by using the power of language. In this case, to create a group of unwelcome, wicked, troublemaker ‘others’. This way of describing migrants can even lead people to forget the fact that migrants are human beings.

Through the production of slogans and commentaries of various kinds, agents in the political field are continuously engaged in a labour of representation by which they seek to construct and impose a particular vision of the social world. From this point of view, words are vital for politicians. Every political speech may provide a field of study to examine the relationship between language, social position and symbolic values in the dynamics of power relations. However, a president’s message differs from others in terms of its openness to risk, assertiveness, construction of a political identity and re-positioning of social relations. In that sense, the US President Donald Trump has monopolized the media spotlight because of his political discourse on ethnic and religious communities since the beginning of his electoral campaign in 2015.

On the other hand, the political atmosphere of this era itself may be considered a protective agent to normalize Trump’s discourse. In other words, an unusual and irrational understanding of politics may legitimize his discourse and vice versa. This ‘post-truth’ politics may be defined as a new political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion rather than factual policies. There has to be an explanation as to why President Trump is willing to spend billions of dollars to build a wall in the age of globalization—because it works. Not the wall itself but the discourse against migrants.

Trump does not need a border to build a wall. Chants of “Send her back!” by Trump supporters against Ilhan Omar show that he has already put up walls in people’s minds and hearts. In the short term, the President’s anti-migrant discourse may make him have the edge for a while, but it may make the country lose in the long term. It is not difficult to see that how the anti-migrant discourse has easily turned into hate speech. The El Paso mass shooting on August 4, that left 22 people dead and 24 injured, may be a sign of what US soil will be facing in the upcoming days. Just minutes before the attack, a hate-filled message appeared on the Internet. The manifesto potentially linked to the El Paso killings states that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”.

In 2018, the British public was shocked to learn that its cherished aid agency Oxfam was mired by a sex scandal which involved its own workers in Haiti, which were essentially using their power to rape women, or at the very best forcefully exchanging sex with food and medicine. 

But should we really have been so shocked?

Indeed, in the world of international aid it is commonly known that western aid workers often carry out such practices. But how do they escape prosecution or any accountability?

Given that the UN conducted a report of its own staff in January of this year and concluded that a third of all those interviewed reported some form of sexual harassment with ten percent reporting actually being touched inappropriately, is it not unreasonable to assume that it is the UN itself which is setting the ‘example’ to aid workers in the field?

Guterres himself was quoted by the London Guardian in January wanting to make a stand. “As an organization founded on equality, dignity and human rights, we must lead by example and set the standard,” he said. But under his administration, the UN might foster a reputation of being the champion of both sexual harassment in the office but also a compliant offender in covering it up.

According to the Guardian, “The UN has tried to increase transparency and strengthen how it deals with such accusations over the past few years after a string of sexual exploitation and abuse accusations against UN peacekeepers in Africa”.

But is that really true?

The head of the UN agency for HIV and Aids Michel Sidibe stepped down in June, six months before his term ends, after an independent panel said that his “defective leadership” tolerated “a culture of harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying, and abuse of power.” His deputy, along with the Geneva-based agency’s head of the Nigeria mission also followed suite.

What these three individuals all have in common is not only were they incriminated in “a culture of harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying, and abuse of power”, but they are all likely of African origin.

Why is that relevant? Simply, because what we are witnessing now in the UN headquarters in New York doesn’t correspond with the clean up of UNAIDS and its scandal, which was called a “boys own” club. By contrast, the UN under Guterres seems to be blocking an investigations against white officials.

Western Sahara peace deal

Given that Sidibe, who became Mali’s health minister, wasn’t actually accused of any sexual misconduct himself, rather than covering up for a colleague, it is extraordinary now that Guterres won’t throw his weight behind an equally zealous campaign to investigate allegations against Canadian Colin Stewart, who is believed just about to have his contract as MINURSO boss extended in Western Sahara.

Unlike Sidibe, Stewart has very real allegations for his conduct in his previous post in Adis Ababa from both colleagues in New York and in the Ethiopian capital, according to an anti corruption website in New York, whose founder has just been banned from the UN headquarters for exposing the rank hypocrisy of Guterres.

Stewart is expected to continue in his role of MINURSO which is in Western Sahara, a disputed region bordering Morocco which took it over, when Spain abandoned it in 1975. Currently in the UN, a proposal for Western Sahara to gain partial independence from Rabat is being mulled by the security council and so it beggars belief that during such a delicate and tumultuous period, with so much riding on the peace deal, that Guterres would risk such a move, to support a friend and colleague.

Corruption seems to be a real problem in the UN. Cover ups seem to be more and more being reported at all levels from an institution which seems hell bent on not making itself accountable. Patrick Henningsen, editor of 21st Century Wire, who has seen the UN’s operations around the world with his own eyes, says it’s a cultural problem.

“It’s not surprising to see the UN would drag their heels an issue like sexual misconduct with their sordid record of covering-up sexual abuse and human trafficking in places like Bosnia, Haiti, Sudan and the Congo, and who knows where else” he says. “Clearly, there is a culture of corruption running through the wider institution.”

But with sexual harassment and the opportunities for cover ups that it creates, it’s hard to imagine how, in this day and age of social media and on line campaigns like “Me too” that such a calamity could remain. Putting aside how Stewart’s appointment as a UN chief where he could be compromised by blackmail for any sexual impropriety in his capacity as MUNURSO boss, let alone how a scandal could effect his ability to run the Western Sahara mission, there are other more important factors which we should consider.

Who really, genuinely cares about sexual harassment?

There are those who go as far to say that peace in a given country can be threatened by how you treat the women there. Lina Abirafeh, a women’s rights campaigner working with the Lebanese American University in Beirut claims she has also been the victim of sexual harassment and understands how in Haiti (with the Oxfam scandal) and in African with UNAIDS revelations that it remains perennial.

“There’s a humanitarian “culture” rampant with toxic masculinity. Boys will be boys and “locker room talk” attitudes are pervasive. Such attitudes easily lead to a sense of entitlement – and an abuse of power” she says.

“Funding to prevent sexual exploitation always fell short. And cases were often not addressed – unless there was reputational risk to the organization. Convoluted “internal processes” did not result in concrete action. Whistleblowers continue to be silenced, threatened, fired. If people aren’t speaking up, it is because we did not provide them with the means to do so” she adds.

Speaking specifically about the UN problem, Abirafeh spells out how a problem like the UNAIDS sex scandal came about and took so long to be tackled and gives a clue as to what’s slowing down the same process in New York and why, perhaps, the MUNIRSO boss is avoiding a full investigation.

“There’s a disturbing trend here: More and more senior officials of NGOs and UN agencies are implicated. But… they’re being put on fully-paid suspension, thanked for their years of service, and given a dignified exit.

“And the UN’s response to these increasing cases of sexual harassment? Our usual recipe is a study and a task force!”

And yet, in Stewart’s case, he is neither facing a dignified exit nor suspension, which raises the question whether there is a racist element in the somnolent, but visible crackdown on those involved with sex scandals. Are only African officials being targeted?

Racism is a factor and even an element of corruption in itself. Who gets chosen to be protected against investigation for sexual harassment over those who do, is a real factor which not only makes the UN chief even more powerful, but encourages corruption and sexual impropriety? If Stewart gets a get-out-of-jail card and is not investigated for the allegations which stand against him, then what message does that send to other British, Canadian, American and any European official who can’t control his hands in the office?

Common currency: sex and blackmail

What is clear is that big members like the U.S., Britain and France don’t really care about corruption within the UN and certainly not sexual harassment, regardless of the implications in poorer countries in the world. The author contacted three British Lib Dem MEPs in the European parliament but none of them – not even the one who recently became chair of a human rights committee – could be even bothered to respond to any questions. It’s as though even those who do not practice it or support it, know that it’s the essential currency of big international organizations, along with blackmail, and so prefer to keep quiet as at some point, will be effected by it. It’s not the sexual harassment itself. It’s the blackmail or preferential treatment to waiver prosecution which comes with it. 

In reality very few people actually care about sexual harassment at the UN or anywhere, which is one of the reasons it is rampant in the UN, whose members refuse point blank to hold it to account. Even Transparency International’s media operation couldn’t find one official in its vast international network to even make a comment about it. 

And so, consequently, although Guterres has a massive corruption problem in the UN with sexual harassment at the core of it. And even his own account comes into question for any journalist who wishes to probe deeper. A Lisbon based organization which paid him in 2016 – but which the editor of Inner City Press claims he didn’t declare as earnings – is being linked to Patrick Ho, the Hong Kong businessman politico who is in jail now for bribing UN officials. Questions over a proposed deal by the Lisbon organization’s sale of an energy utility to a Chinese firm in 2018 are a dark cloud hanging over the UN chief who, appears at least, to have broken the mould on corruption, compared to Ki Moon and Anan before him. Let’s make no mistake. “Me Too” might have arrived at the UNs headquarters but like the journalist who has been banned from reporting on graft there, has been left standing in the rain. It may be knocking, but no one is answering. This is Guterres’s legacy in the making only two and half years into his term. It’s sexual harassment. At the UN. Who cares?

Following the military coup in 2013, the new regime in Egypt has taken serious steps to limit the activities of civil society. The regime led by Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi took the initial attack on the Muslim Brotherhood movement, the largest non-governmental organization in the country. During 2013 and 2014, the Sisi regime targeted NGOs, health institutions, religious and educational centers, which were claimed to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The number of organizations that were closed in the post-coup period reached to over 10 thousand at the best estimate.

Non-governmental organizations and activists with secular and liberal ideology such as the 6 April Movement, Revolutionary Socialists, the Kefaya movement, and even the Tamarod movement became the targets of the Sisi regime.

On the other hand, non-governmental organizations and activists with secular and liberal ideology were also the targets of the Sisi regime. The 6 April Movement, Revolutionary Socialists, and the Kefaya movement as well as members of these organizations were subject to pressure from the regime and some were arrested for long prison terms. Even the Tamarod movement, which supported Sisi during the coup, failed to receive support from the post-coup regime that has been in place since July 2013.

In 2017, the Sisi regime took a step to institutionalize pressure on civil society with a new law that re-arranged the activities of civil society organizations. However, rather than liberalizing the functioning of civil society, the law further restricted their activities. The law made it difficult for 47,000 NGOs in the country to carry out their activities. In addition, the law stipulated that foreign NGOs need to pay $16,500 in order to start their operations in Egypt – a requirement that attracted concerns in regards to the motivation of the law. It is also requested that both domestic and foreign NGOs be approved by the committee established by this law and that they carry out their activities following this approval.

Following the NGO law of 2017, many civil society organizations were shut down and some foreign NGOs had to stop their activities in Egypt. Egyptian police stormed some of their offices.

Despite pressure from the government, NGOs have tried to remain active. However, following the NGO law of 2017, many were shut down and some foreign NGOs had to stop their activities in Egypt. In this context, on February 9, 2017, Egyptian police stormed the office of the country’s leading human rights organization, the Al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence.

In addition to Nadeem Centre, Nazra for Feminist Studies and the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA) also suspended their activities due to pressure from the government. The Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) relocated to its new headquarters in Tunis. Organizations such as the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) and the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) have limited their activities and tried to avoid government pressure due to their critical coverage. However, they continued to remain visible in the public sphere.

The Sisi regime’s repressive policies towards civil society continue in different ways. Recently, the arrest of 31 people, including workers of the human rights organization called Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, attracted the reaction of many civil society movements both inside and outside of the country. It is reported that one of the detainees is Aisha Al-Shater, the daughter of Hairat Al-Shater, who was one of the leading businessmen and influential figures in the Muslim Brotherhood organization before he was arrested in the post-coup crackdown on the movement.

Civil society in Egypt is far worse than it was during the Mubarak era. Government pressure has been increasingly limiting the activities of local and international civil society organizations in the country.

Meanwhile, many human rights organizations in the country have issued a joint statement against the operation, demanding the release of the detainees. The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, Al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, the Adala Center for Rights and Freedoms, the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, and the Community for Justice have jointly stated that the Egyptian government’s policies towards civil society is unacceptable. Amnesty International also condemned the raid and called for the release of human rights activists.

Civil society in Egypt is far worse than it was during the Mubarak era. Government pressure has been increasingly limiting the activities of local and international civil society organizations in the country. Many experts also agree that the situation of human rights, rule of law, and freedom of expression in Egypt is worse than that of the Mubarak era. From this point of view, it’s clear that the current regime in Egypt – far from any form of democratization – dragged the country into a more totalitarian rule.