Hui Muslims in China’s ‘Little Mecca’: Fusing Islamic and Han Practices

Article by Dr Catherine Owen and Syed Ahmad Ali Shah

March 14, 2019

Hui Muslims in China’s ‘Little Mecca’: Fusing Islamic and Han Practices

There has been much discussion in the global media of China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in its far western province of Xinjiang. Meanwhile, much less is known about the Hui, China’s other major ethnic group that follows Islam, and which enjoys a considerably more peaceful relationship with Beijing. According to the 2010 census, Uighurs and Huis each constitute almost 0.8% of China’s overall population, but while the Uighurs are concentrated mainly in Xinjiang – in some southern areas constituting up to 90% of the population – the Hui are scattered across China. Unlike the Uighurs, who speak their own Turkic language, the Huis’ native language is Mandarin Chinese (with the occasional Persian or Arabic word thrown in). Nevertheless, while Huis are far more integrated into the dominant Han Chinese culture than Uighurs, centres of Hui culture can be found in China’s northwest regions, including in Xinjiang, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Province, the city of Xi’an in Shaanxi Province and Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu Province.

During a recent trip to Linxia, we had the opportunity to meet local Huis and observe their religious practices. We were particularly struck by the way in which their Islamic practices have fused and blended with practices associated with Buddhism and Taoism, two more of China’s five officially recognised religions, primarily associated with the dominant Han ethnicity. Perhaps this goes some way to accounting for the contrasting relationships between the two ethnoreligious Muslim groups and the Chinese government.

While the dominant form of Islam among Uighurs is Sufism, Hui Islam is split into four sects. The most popular sect is the Gedimu (Qadeemiya in Arabic), who constitute around 70% of Hui Muslims, and are the group in which religious syncretic practices are the most obvious. For instance, Gedimu Imams recite the Quran using a Sinfied Arabic dialect of Arabic, often without understanding the meaning of the text.

The second group, the Ikhwani, emerged during the 19^th Century in Linxia; they criticize the Gedimu’s ritualistic approach and emphasise a return to original Quranic meanings. Hence, religious materials in Chinese are available in Ikhwani mosques. Indeed, the only mosques we found with Qurans in Chinese were in those belonging to Ikhwani. During our visits to the various mosques, we found Qurans published in all corners of the Islamic world – Kuwait, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia – though notably none were published inside China.

Thirdly, many Hui follow two globally prevalent traditions of Sufism, also shared by Uighurs: Qadriya and Naqashbandiya. Within Naqashbandiya, two further sub-sects can be discerned – the Hufia and Jehriya, which are specific to Chinese Islam. As one of the birthplaces of Chinese Sufism, Linxia is the centre for both of these subgroups of Naqashbandiya. Finally, a tiny minority of Hui Muslims are Salafis, or Chinese Wahhabis, who follow a Saudi version of Islam.

Thought to descend from Persian and Arabian traders that came to China along the ancient Silk Road, Chinese-speaking Muslims are known as Dungans in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Over the centuries, Hui cultural practices have blended and fused with the dominant Han culture. In Hui cuisine, for instance, Han recipes such as egg and tomato, spicy cabbage and other dishes are readily available, the only difference being that restaurants are certified Halal, which provides a guarantee that pig fat is not used in the preparation of any dishes. The Hui signature dish, Lanzhou beef noodles (named after the provincial capital of Gansu province), can be eaten in Halal canteens across China and is not markedly different from other types of Chinese noodle soup. By contrast, Uighur restaurants serving its Central Asian cuisine such as the rice and lamb dish, ‘polo’, and round nan breads are extremely rare sight outside of Xinjiang.

Hui women generally, but not always, wear headscarves, with different sects wearing different types. Ikhwani women can be distinguished via the headscarf popular among Western Muslims; Gedimu women tend to wear a hat with a light cloth attached to the back and bottom. Hui men wear three types of round hat, although these are not distinguishable according to sect. Chatting to local Huis, everyone we met had their Chinese name and their informal Muslim name, introducing themselves by their Chinese name, but giving their Muslim name – usually Sinifications of Mariam, Aishah, Bilal or Ibrahim – when we asked them. Hence, Hui practices of Islam, though subtle, are evident if you scratch away the veneer of Han culture.

Thanks to the number of mosques and Sufi shrines in the city, Linxia has gained the moniker of ‘Little Mecca’ among Muslims in China. It is easy to see why – the city’s skyline is scattered with domes, minarets and cupolas, an astonishing sight in a predominantly atheist country. Hui Mosques and Sufi shrines are an interesting blend of Islamic symbolism and Han architecture. Ikhwani and Salafi mosques are usually built with domes and minarets, while Gedimu and Sufi mosques tend to follow the Chinese architecture. Usually just one story high, they have Chinese-style minarets that resemble pagodas: circular structures with the characteristic Chinese upturned eaves. Since it is difficult to distinguish between Buddhist temples and mosques, Gedimu and Sufis attach a crescent moon to the top of the building. The spatial design inside the mosques is broadly similar to mosques elsewhere, comprising a large area for worshippers to kneel, and a place at the front for the Imam to preach.

As the centre of Sufism in China, myriad Sufi shrines are scattered across Linxia and into the adjoining mountains. Known in Chinese as ‘gongbei’, a Sinification of the Persian term ‘gunbed’, the shines are graves belonging to great Sheikhs and Imams, many of whose lineage can be traced back to Muhammed. Indeed, legend has it that the 29^th generation descendent of Muhammed, Khawja Abdullah, introduced Sufism to China at the end of the Qing and beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and is buried at a shrine in north Sichuan Province.

Unlike Uighur Sufism, Hui Qadriyan Sufis have incorporated Buddhist and Taoist practices into rituals at their shrines, and are hence particularly interesting from a religious syncretic perspective. For instance, worshipers and pilgrims burn papers and light incense at the entrance to the shrine, practices which are not mentioned anywhere in the Quran. Similarly, the Chinese characters indicating the name of the shrine are often written from right to left, following Arabic writing tradition, instead of left to right.

Debates among the anthropologists of Hui consider the question of whether the Hui are ‘Muslims in China’ or ‘Chinese Muslims’ – in other words, to what extent have they become embedded with the broader Han culture. The level of Chinese cultural practices exhibited by the Hui suggest to us that unlike the Uighurs the Hui are indeed Chinese Muslims. However, just a small scratch at the surface of Hui culture reveals a complex, vibrant and meaningful Islamic tradition.

Of course, the most important factor in the troubled relationship between Xinjiang’s Uighurs and the central government concerns the region’s dense Uighur population and consequent concerns regarding separatism. Scattered across China, the Hui have no pretensions towards separatism. Yet, another important reason why Hui Muslims have managed to exist more harmoniously within China’s atheist state is the way in which they have Sinified Islam. Our visit to Linxia revealed to us the numerous ways in which these two very different cultural worlds have fused together.

Catherine Owen is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Exeter and a FPC Research Fellow; Syed Ahmad Ali Shah is completing his PhD on Pakistanis in China at Shaanxi Normal University, and is about to begin a book project on Hui Muslims in China.

Topics

Civil Society

Freedom of Religion

Human Rights

Minority Rights

Regions

Asia

China

East Asia

The state of Islamic threat in Central Asia: assessing the threat of terrorism from Central Asia

Article by Dr Saipira Furstenberg

March 11, 2019

The state of Islamic threat in Central Asia: assessing the threat of terrorism from Central Asia

As Islamic State faces its demise as a territorial unit in the Middle East it is worth considering why it was so attractive to so many Central Asians

The spate of attacks by Central Asians overseas in 2017 and the spectre of ISIS emerging in the region after the attack on four foreign cyclists in Tajikistan in July 2018, have generated alarm about Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and other jihadist groups in a region with historically very low levels of terrorist attacks. Analysts have sought to identify ‘root causes’ in the region such as the rise of radical or non-traditional Islam, increasing poverty since the end of the Soviet Union coupled with domestic authoritarianism and repression. However, such observations although important need be to unpacked as the reality is more complex.

Conditions for radicalization: routes not roots

A report from the International Crisis Group in 2015 argued that state repression alongside poverty leads to radicalisation.[1] While these factors may offer a foil for explaining why many of Central Asia’s extremists have left the region for Iraq and Syria, they fail to take into account a range of other conditions that explain radicalisation, both psychological and social.

Assessing the psychological processes of the individual might help to shed light on their motivations to terrorist involvements. As seen in the terror attacks in Stockholm and New York, the perpetrators left the country a decade ago.[2] None of them showed tendencies towards extremist or religious behaviours in their home countries. It appears, instead, that they developed such views whilst being abroad. Available research suggests that the large majority of fighters who decide to travel to Syria are labour migrants in Russia and have often been recruited by Chechens in Moscow.[3]

This means that we need to look beyond domestic political and economic grievances and look more in-depth into the personal stories of the individuals to understand why Central Asians become terrorists. In Central Asia local and regional identities are more important than national identities. As pointed out by many experts such as Ed Lemon and Noah Tucker, when individuals leave their local communities to travel to Russia for work purposes, they are often cut-off from their familiar communities and network. Disassociated to some degree from home their transcendent identity as Muslims comes to the fore,[4] and may be hardened by the experience of discrimination.[5]

When Central Asian migrants move to Russia, they are often faced with socio-economic struggles such as poor living conditions, exploitation, uncertainty regarding their documentation, and physical and racial abuse. Faced with these difficulties, some individuals experience personal crisis and are drawn to the margins of society, becoming more vulnerable to the external influences of terrorist recruiters. Extremist groups recognised this opportunity. As Noah Tuckers highlights, ‘it is clear that both AQ-affiliated groups and ISIS devoted specific recruiting resources to ethnic Uzbeks working in Russia, both online and in real life’.

The role of Islam: more complex than one might think

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 hugely accelerated an ongoing process of the revival of Islam in the region. The reinvention and restriction of Islam in the late Soviet period, also meant that in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the level of Islamic literacy in the region was very low. The switch from Arabic script in 1926 made Central Asian scholars lose their ability to read the Arabic religious scripts and isolated the region from the Muslim world.

The rebirth of Islam in the region offers new opportunities, but also creates new risks. The new connections with the Islamic world brought more extreme interpretations of the faith from abroad, such as Salafism from the Middle East and the North Caucasus. Moreover, Islam has often been viewed as an important social mobilising force challenging the region’s authoritarian leadership. In this regard, radical Islamist activism is perceived as a serious threat to the internal stability of these countries and to the survival of Central Asian secular regimes.

The Soviet legacy of atheism means that the new generation of Central Asians didn’t grow up with strong religious traditional education that could form a counterweight to extremism. Yet as argued by Heathershaw and Montgomery there is little evidence that socially conservative Muslims are more likely to be politically radical than more secularised Muslims.[6] As the profile of Akbarjon Jalilov, the suspect in the St Petersburg terrorist attack demonstrates, few Central Asian terrorists are pious or followed a religious education. Most of the Central Asian perpetrators adopted religion (discovered Islam) while being abroad often in a very short period of time.

Such observations point out that religion perhaps has little to do with the suicidal attacks but rather is the specific narrative framework within which the recruits could identify and fulfil their aspirations that matter. In this sense, as observed by Oliver Roy, while reflecting in the case of the European jihadists recruits to Islamic State, ‘terrorism does not arise from the radicalisation of Islam, but from the Islamisation of radicalisation’, religious ideology plays very little role here.[7]

The response from state authorities: potential cure or proximate cause?

In response to terrorist threats, Central Asian governments adopted a series of counterterrorism programs and laws to combat terrorism and religious extremism, often curtailing human rights and the rule of law. Central Asian governments have also been taking advantage of the perceived security threats posed by Muslim radicals to enforce repressive policies domestically. States have repeatedly played the ‘Islamic terrorism’ card to reinforce and legitimate their repressive measures against actors presumed to be a terrorist menace.

In Tajikistan the regime banned the only legal Islamic political party (IRPT), in Central Asia in September 2015, naming them as a ‘terrorist organization’. Similarly, in Kazakhstan the regime has designated Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, a political opposition movement led by former regime insider, Mukhtar Ablyazov, as an extremist organization.[8] Further as the Central Asia Political Exiles Database demonstrates, the regimes target political enemies by labelling them as ‘terrorists’.[9] A similar rationale is applied in the regime’s abuse of the Interpol’s notice system to persecute national human rights defenders, moderate Islamic believers, civil society activists and critical journalists.

Under the pretext of religious extremism, states have further portrayed violence linked to local political struggles as ‘terrorists’ attacks. The incidents in Aktobe, in the Western oil rich part of Kazakhstan in 2011 and 2016 have revealed the rising socioeconomic grievances among the population against the government.[10]Both incidents targeted law enforcement agencies. As the incidents demonstrate, the government’s failure to respond to political and economic injustices have affected citizens’ inclination to commit violent acts as protests against the government’s policies. The START Database further validates these observations.[11] As the data below illustrates, most of the attacks in Central Asia are targeting government and law enforcement agencies.

START Database 2000-2017 Central Asian Terrorist target attacks (%)[12 ]

The terrorist threat in Central Asia needs to be taken seriously and demands broader engagement in the region. However, as the article illustrates, in Central Asia the ‘threat’ has often been manipulated and exaggerated by state actors to pursue strategic domestic policies and increase regime’s legitimacy. We need to reflect more in-depth on the contested and political nature of terrorism in Central Asia.

[1] International Crisis Group, Syria Calling: Radicalisation in Central Asia, January 2015, https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/central-asia/syria-calling-radicalisation-central-asia

[2] David Gauthier-Villars and Drew Hinshaw, Stockholm Attack Puts Focus on Terrorists From Central Asia, Wall Street Journal, April 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/stockholm-attack-puts-focus-on-terrorists-from-central-asia-1491764083 and BBC, New York truck attack: Sayfullo Saipov pleads not guilty, November 2017, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42161549?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cggpe1p9dwqt/new-york-truck-attack&link_location=live-reporting-story

[3] Daniil Turovsky, How Isis is recruiting migrant workers in Moscow to join the fighting in Syria, Guardian, May 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/05/isis-russia-syria-islamic-extremism

[4] Noah Tucker, What Happens When Your Town Becomes an ISIS Recruiting Ground?, Central Asia Program, July 2018, http://centralasiaprogram.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Tucker-CAP-Paper-July-2018.pdf

[5] Arne Seifert, The problems of Central Asian migration to Russia, January 2018, https://doc-research.org/2018/01/the-problems-of-central-asian-migration-to-russia/

[6] John Heathershaw and David W Montgomery, The Myth of Post-Soviet Muslim Radicalization in the Central Asian Republics, Chatham House, November 2014, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/myth-post-soviet-muslim-radicalization-central-asian-republics

[7] Olivier Roy, Who are the new jihadis?, The Guardian, April 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/apr/13/who-are-the-new-jihadis

[8] Eurasianet, Kazakhstan: Court Dubs Opposition Movement Extremist, March 2013, https://eurasianet.org/kazakhstan-court-dubs-opposition-movement-extremist

[9] For more on the Central Asian Political Exiles Database see here: https://excas.net/projects/political-exiles/

[10] United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 – Kazakhstan, July 2017, https://www.refworld.org/docid/5981e43413.html

[11] The Global Terrorism Database (START) https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/

[12] Based on author’s own calculation

Topics

Conflict Resolution and Security

International Relations and Geopolitics

Rethinking Refugee Support: Responding to the Crisis in South East Europe

Article by Dr Gemma Bird, Dr Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik, Dr Amanda Russell Beattie, Dr Patrycja Rozbicka

February 22, 2019

Rethinking Refugee Support: Responding to the Crisis in South East Europe

This report finds that recent changes in EU border management have limited refugees’ movement across Europe, and as such, have resulted in outsourcing of refugee settlement and care to states previously described as ‘transit’ countries along the Balkan Route(s): Serbia, Greece and Bosnia. This report analyses the problems related to refugee provisions and accommodation in these countries and along the Balkan Route(s) towards Western Europe. It highlights the disparity of refugee services, housing and living conditions across the region, and acute and ongoing humanitarian crises. The report discusses the key factors affecting poor living conditions for refugees, including: overcrowding, fragmentation of services along the routes, and a lack of consistency in camp management. Subsequently, the report discusses a range of other refugee housing options existing in transit countries – including informal and makeshift camps, squats, hotels and UN-supported housing schemes known as ‘urban shelters’ – and notes the strengths and weaknesses of each. The findings are based on the authors’ field research in Serbia, mainland Greece and the islands of Lesvos, Samos, Chios and Kos, between 2017 and 2019.

A number of key conclusions can be drawn from the report:

(1) Population size and levels of overcrowding are one of the fundamental factors affecting provisions and quality of life in all types of refugee housing. Mainland camps and informal housing provision such as squats, are able to control the number of residents they have whereas island reception centres have far less control.

(2) Relationships between camps, reception centres and third sector provision plays a key role in determining access to healthcare, sanitation, psycho-social support and community spaces and whether these are provided inside or outside of accommodation spaces.

(3) Lack of clarity and transparency surrounding asylum procedures leads to increased anxiety about the process.

(4) Different forms of housing support are dependent on individual circumstances; however, provision lacks flexibility, particularly surrounding vulnerable cases where a ‘one size fits all’ approach is not suitable.

(5) Refugees are driven towards informal housing such as squats and makeshift settlements for two main reasons: poor camp conditions or overcrowding, and uncertainty over the asylum process, including long waits for asylum interviews in Greece.

(6) There is a lack of formal support for people living in informal accommodation, particularly healthcare, food and sanitation.

The report makes a number of recommendations for policy change:

(1) The urgent need to manage the numbers of people living in the island reception centres, by increasing the number of transfers to mainland Greece or elsewhere in Europe; and improving mainland living conditions and provision.

(2) The need for greater transparency and increased dialogue between some reception centres and third sector provision.

(3) Urgent increase in capacity to process asylum registrations in Greece and thus reduce current waiting times and overcrowding in reception centres. More, and better quality of information provided to refugees in the early stages of the asylum process, about each stage, predicted waiting times and what each stage means; to reduce anxiety for people living in reception centres.

(4) Greater flexibility is required in the provision of housing, especially for vulnerable cases where the needs of individuals differ greatly. To achieve this greater resource is required.

(5) Increased funding and support for the UN ‘Urban Shelter’ scheme which transfers refugees from camps and settles them in apartments. Increased capacity of non-camp housing, and creation of incentives for local authorities reluctant to cooperate with the scheme.

Introduction

This report focuses on refugee housing and welfare provision along the key hotspots along the Balkan Route(s). The report draws on field research[1] carried out between 2017 and 2019 in:

Belgrade
Thessaloniki
Athens
The Aegean Islands:
- Lesvos
- Chios
- Samos
- Kos

The report assesses the current welfare and housing provision for refugees in this geographical region, analysing the strengths and weaknesses of both formal (municipality, state and international) and informal (NGO and informal collectives) provision and highlighting key areas for improvement. It also makes reference to funding usage and the gaps in the system (including, but not exclusively: treatment of vulnerable people and minors). It is broken down into four key themes to highlight specific areas of concern in the region:

The disparity of refugee accommodation and provision along the route
The limited continuity of provision and availability of information between geographical regions
Squats, informal housing, and makeshift camps
‘Urban shelters’ and apartments

Each area is further broken down into three sections. First, a problem is identified and described. The problem is then situated in the findings. Finally, a recommendation is given.

This report is based on the work of four researchers:

Dr Amanda Russell Beattie (Aston University)
Dr Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik (Aston University)
Dr Patrycja Rozbicka (Aston University)
Dr Gemma Bird (The University of Liverpool).

The report’s findings are based on primary research including: interviews with NGOs and their beneficiaries, European Union officials, local and national government staff dealing with migration (Serbia, Greece), informal and formal housing providers, social workers, housing officers, aid organisations (MSF and UNHCR), as well as insights gained from longer periods of time spent in the region working with the third sector.

The disparity in accommodation and service quality across transit regions

The main differences in reception centre or camp conditions are caused by 4 identifiable variables:

Camp management
The physical space repurposed into a camp
Population size relative to number of spaces available
Presence of third-sector providers

Type of Space

The conditions in Reception Centres (RICs) on the islands of Lesvos, Chios and Samos vary considerably from the rest of the region. All three reception centres visited are re-purposed military bases and struggle to adequately deal with the current influx of refugees. A majority of the RICs are overcrowded with a disproportional number of refugees living outside the Centre’s delimited borders. The ad hoc accommodation is provided in containers, tents, and makeshift shelters, which are not suitable for the local weather conditions (too hot in summer and not providing enough protection from the cold and rain in winter). They are permeable and rain, snow, and vermin easily penetrate the fabric of the makeshift homes.

For example, on the island of Samos, there are currently (January 2019) over 4000 refugees accommodated in Vathy RIC with an official capacity of 700 and an overflow space referred to as ‘The Jungle’. Similarly, on Lesvos Moria RIC which has its own overflow space, ‘The Olive Grove’. In July 2017, the population of the RIC plus the ‘Olive Grove’ was approximately 7467 individuals, rising to 9000 in 2018 (New York Times, 2018). In January 2019 a single tent, housing 50 individuals, burnt down. While no one was killed in this incident it did reveal the unsuitable nature of the ad hoc shelters resulting from overcrowding (AYS Daily Digest 2019).

Third Sector Provision/Support

The support offered by the third sector differs between the various areas investigated, as does the relationships between camp or reception centre officials, local and national government, and third sector providers. For instance, MSF had a strong presence on Lesvos and Chios. In November 2018 they undertook a vaccination program for all children in the RICs. However, their involvement on Samos is limited as they are unable to carry out these programmes inside the RIC. Whilst the vaccination programme will go ahead it happens outside of the RIC on Samos. Their lack of access to the RIC limits them to working with and supporting volunteer networks and providing funding to smaller grassroots NGOs.

The variations in service availability and quality is evident when comparing Lesvos and Samos. There are more than 40 NGOs working on Lesvos to support the refugee population with some having access to Moria RIC and others working in the neighbouring town of Mytilene and with nearby Kera Tepe and Pikpa camps. Conversely, on Samos, there were until recently fewer than 10 registered NGOs. Against a backdrop of a rapid increase in the size of the refugee population on Samos and a clear need for additional support for provision of basic needs and services (i.e. access to toilets, medical attention, laundry and legal support) this number is increasing. For example, between 2 January – 24 January 2019 the NGO Refugees 4 Refugees set up a distribution centre for women and children while Attika Human Support began distributing clothing to men.

Similar variations in NGOs’ access to official camps exist across the Balkan Route(s). Two official reception centres in the vicinity of Belgrade have completely different arrangements with NGOs. Whilst the Krnjaca Reception Centre hosts multiple local and international NGOs providing a range of services, the Obrenovac Reception Centre with a much larger population, allows access to far fewer NGOs. Authorities claim that access is controlled so as to avoid duplication of services. However, NGOs do also act as watchdogs of camp conditions. Across the region, there is evidence that third party access seems to be more restricted in camps known for poorer conditions.

NGOs need to remain flexible and responsive to changing needs. NGO Samos Volunteers, for instance, is facing over-crowding in its social centre and their basic English language classes have waiting lists. They are not granted access to the RIC. They support the refugee population within ‘The Jungle’. Interviews with Reception and Identification Service officials suggest the reticence for a strong working relationship with NGOs is to ensure that the refugee population are not provided with false hopes from the NGO/volunteer sector about the asylum process. Yet this message is not consistent with those of refugee camps in Athens, for example, which rely on NGO support to deliver mother and baby spaces, community centres, sewing rooms and English lessons.

NGO and support networks are in constant flux, partly as they rely on volunteers. For instance, in July 2018, the voluntary support network on Kos had disintegrated. In January 2019, a number of NGOs including groups from Chios, Lesvos and even further afield in Calais, have put out calls for additional volunteers, since refugees continue to arrive but organisations tend to be understaffed in winter and spring, with most volunteers arriving in the summer.

Population Size

There are significant differences in living conditions in overcrowded camps, as compared to those functioning at or below capacity. Skaramagas, a refugee camp just outside Athens, and the Krnjaca centre in Serbia are seen by residents and NGOs as ‘better’ than many other camps. In Skaramagas, the containers used for the accommodation have heating and air conditioning and the camp offers a range of support and activities, such as mother and baby sessions. The residents are also able to build chicken coops and sell eggs in the camp. The camp has a population of 2000 with around half being under 18. Similarly, the Krnjaca centre outside Belgrade hosted 300 people in 2018, though it has capacity for around 1000 people. This allows minimum camp standards to be met, services not to be overloaded and stretched, and staff to get know most of the residents personally and respond to issues in a timely and more informed manner. The lower populations of camps in Serbia and mainland Greece are often the result of border management policies which mean that fewer people are managing to leave the islands (whilst arrivals continue) and move northwards, as well as through constant changes in the route. The Krnjaca camp ‘emptied’ as the route moved towards Bosnia. Whilst the Krnjaca camp is under capacity, several thousand people are now living in makeshift camps in Bosnia, particularly around the Croatian border.

RECOMMENDATION: Alleviate overcrowding of island camps by increasing transfers to the mainland. Improve all camp conditions to ensure that minimum standards can be met.

The limited continuity of provision and availability of information between geographical regions

Management of refugee camps and reception centres

One of the most significant factors in camp conditions is management. There is a multitude of actors involved: including the military, private sector companies and municipalities, with overall responsibility for camps as a system delegated to relevant national Ministries. The Moria reception centre is run by the First Reception and Identification Services and the Ministry of Migration Policy. The nearby, Kara Tepe, is a refugee camp housing women, children, and vulnerable people, and is run by the Municipality of Lesvos. Pikpa, a ‘community-based space’, is organised by Lesvos Solidarity and offers an alternative to RIC’s and refugee camps. It is built on the principles of solidarity, empowerment and active participation and provides a variety of activities for residents. Both Pikpa and Kera Tepe are widely thought to offer superior forms of accommodation and support in comparison to the far more overcrowded Moria.

Who runs the camp has a direct impact on the lines of communication within the structure itself. Interviews with RIC officials discussed the confusion of the population surrounding their roles: they manage and are the outward facing representative, of the reception centre, but are also viewed by residents as representing the Asylum Services and the Ministry of Migration. Yet they are unable to communicate the decisions of these bodies and have little impact on them. Consequently, there is confusion on the part of the refugee population stemming from inconsistent information, case scheduling and outcomes, the awarding of open cards, and the cancelling of meetings. This in turn, has contributed to a lack of transparency and accountability within the spaces governed by First Reception.

Limited Lines of Communication

There is a lack of effective and efficient communication within and between governing bodies themselves, between governing bodies and NGOs, as well as NGOs and the wider third sector, and, importantly, to the refugee population, particularly on the islands of Lesvos Chios and Samos. This has consequences for the delivery of refugee support.

Refugees are in a precarious position when waiting for a decision to be reached about their ‘open card’ (document allowing travel off of the island hot spots). In the first instance they are informed that their papers are ineligible for renewal. This means one of two things, a rejection or an open card. The time period for confirmation is variable and generates a high level of uncertainty and fear for those awaiting a decision. A quicker process and clearer information would reduce anxiety.

Once an individual is given an open card, there are also concerns about what happens next. Whilst NGO’s such as refugee.info provide certain amounts of information to populations, they are often underserved by UNHCR and First Reception with regards to information sharing. The time and location of the transfer from the RICs are provided but little else. Refugees rely on social media and formal and informal online resources to learn details of their next location.

There is a heavy reliance on rumours and often unreliable information, compounded by inconsistencies in rules of accommodation in different regions. People given a space in mainland Greek camps lose the space if absent for twenty four hours or more. This is less the case in Serbia where it appears that camp residents do not lose their allocated place due to absence (usually attempts to cross borders) even though rules stipulate this should be done. This is again due to under-capacity, but does have a stabilising effect in that refugees are not left destitute and in a precarious situation once they fail to cross borders and return to Serbia.

Unaccompanied minors

A lack of consistent information has a particular effect on unaccompanied minors (UAM), who grow accustomed to the independence of the RICs. Unaccompanied minors leaving the Aegean Islands are given limited information about the next stages of their journey, other than from third sector organisations. As a result many find themselves leaving the NGO support network of the islands and entering major cities of Athens or Thessaloniki with a limited support package in place. Housing provision for UAMs on the mainland relies on a UNHCR system of shelters and apartments run on the ground by a number of different organisations including Caritas and Praksis; partially funded by the European Union. The influence of multiple organisations means that UAMs often fall through the gaps of a heavily bureaucratic system finding themselves, as interviews suggest, struggling with drugs, prostitution and crime. As of December 2018 there were 552 unaccompanied minors reported as homeless in Greece and a further 203 with no reported location, this is a large percentage of 3741 currently known to be in Greece (EKKA, 2018).

In contrast, in Serbia, UAMs have more stable and regular access to a dedicated social worker than in Greece, even when they arrive into Serbia ‘irregularly’. For instance, the NGO network in Belgrade is able to quickly identify and meet UAMs soon after they arrive, and refer them to social workers contracted specifically for UAM protection, who then see them through the registration ad settlement into a centre. Again, the system works better than in Greece due to smaller numbers but even so, there are gaps in UAM protection (particularly outside of ‘office hours’) and each social worker has a high case load.

RECOMMENDATION: Clearer information provided to those seeking asylum. A transparent system for how to communicate and ask for support from officials to better understand the process.

Squats, informal housing, and makeshift camps

Large numbers of refugees have ended up in informal housing and makeshift camps. Reasons include, but are not limited to: poor camp conditions, difficulty accessing camps, not wishing to register in a transit country, or transiting a country without a functional or adequate camp infrastructure (currently, Bosnia, but also Serbia and Greece in 2015).

Informal housing includes squats (occupied or repurposed derelict buildings, often supported by grassroots networks) and makeshift camps and ‘tent cities’ often along country borders. Informal housing sets up more quickly than formal camps or other NGO initiatives, all of which are subject to multiple levels of regulation and governance. Most makeshift camps and settlements have no facilities and rely on volunteers for basic services, but in some cases, local authorities indirectly support them through a lack of intervention or providing additional services such as waste disposal.

Informal housing allows a degree of flexibility, but there are limitations. Despite some informal housing being relatively well established and tolerated by the authorities particularly in Athens, some services (healthcare, tax) do not accept squat addresses as a ‘proper’ address for registration and access to that service. Residents of squats also have no access to services that refugees would normally have when they are registered with the asylum service, such as financial support for food. Conditions in squats vary but many urban squats have sewage, heating or structural problems, and rely on volunteers or residents with carpentry or plumbing skills to resolve them.

Photo ‘Informal Housing’ here, caption: Informal refugee housing (squat) in central Athens.

Makeshift camps often form out of necessity, but are inadequate. Multiple makeshift camps have formed along the Balkan Route(s) as the route shifted – Idomeni in Greece, camps along the Serbia-Hungary border, and more recently, along the Bosnia-Croatia border. The makeshift camps generally have no running water or electricity, nor adequate shelter, food, waste disposal or facilities of any kind other than aid provided by small volunteer groups – local and national governments tend to discourage aid provision on these sites as they claim it creates a ‘pull factor’. Multiple problems exist: smugglers can sometimes ‘seize’ a makeshift camp, or a part of it, and ‘rent’ it out to refugees. Poor or non-existent infrastructure make it difficult for volunteers to provide services such as hot food, and individuals helping near the sites are criminalised or penalised by local authorities.

Makeshift camps and ad hoc informal support (whether organised by refugees themselves or aid providers) are vulnerable as they are ‘unregulated’ or informal. Authorities can invoke any number of regulations to shut them down: evictions, sanitation inspections, or ad hoc restrictions on volunteers. Restrictions on aid near informal sites are also linked to EU funding: for local authorities in transit countries, funding is channelled primarily to camps, border management and the formal sector, meaning that thousands of refugees living informally outside of it, are entirely reliant on volunteer and NGO aid.

RECOMMENDATION: Recognition of residents of informal spaces when registering for healthcare provision and refugee support. Greater support for NGOs and services they provide in informal housing.

‘Urban shelters’ and apartments

The UNHCR ESTIA programme (Emergency Support To Integration and Accommodation) managed to relocate around 27,000 vulnerable people (as of 31^st December 2018)[2] from camps in to ‘urban shelters’: apartments that are not only located in cities, but also in some rural areas and islands such as Crete. The programme is run a cooperation between UNHCR, municipalities and third sector providers – the overall responsibility is now being transferred to the Greek national authorities.

Once refugees are identified as vulnerable and relocated out of a camp to an apartment, they are assigned a team which includes a social worker, housing officer and translator, and from whom they receive regular visits. The team meets with residents in their home and helps with issues like liaising with landlords or referring residents to relevant services. Each social worker is assigned a group of apartments/cases to look after and they work exclusively in the ESTIA context (not local social services more generally), meaning that they often get to know individual residents well and can respond to their needs.

Whilst some parts of the scheme work well – apartments are well provisioned, for instance, and the social workers are well trained and responsive – there are issues, however, mostly related to resources.

Not all refugees can be relocated out of camps into apartments as there is no capacity for this. There are not enough suitable apartments as not all municipalities in a city sign up to the scheme, or support it. The limited resources also mean that normally, two families or groups of single men/women, have to share a single apartment.
Apartment sharing has proven at times to be problematic when cohabitants are torture victims, traumatised or have psychiatric issues.
Currently the scheme is open only to vulnerable people. UNHCR and camp managers identify who is ‘vulnerable enough’ to be transferred. Consequently the system puts large responsibility on the camp managers who are not always engaged and/or fully aware of individual situations (especially in large, overcrowded camps).

The apartment scheme highlights the complex needs of vulnerable populations. Gathered evidence concludes that this system can only work if it is well resourced and thus able to find appropriate apartments and provide ongoing psychosocial support.

RECOMMENDATION: Increased resource and flexibility in support packages provided by ESTIA programme. Implementation of the scheme across transit countries.

Conclusions

(3) Lack of clarity and transparency surrounding asylum procedures leads to increased anxiety about the process.

(6) There is a lack of formal support for people living in informal accommodation, particularly healthcare, food and sanitation.

Authors:

Gemma Bird, Lecturer in politics and International Relations at The University of Liverpool.

Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Aston University, Birmingham.

Amanda Russell Beattie, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham.

Patrycja Rozbicka, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham.

The report is a part of the authors’ larger project, IR Aesthetics, @IR_Aesthetics, which focuses on refugee journeys across the Balkan Route.

This report is based on primary research carried out by the authors, and funded by the Aston Centre for Europe, Aston University, and a University of Liverpool Early Career Researcher Grant.

[1] Funding for this research has been provided by the Aston Centre for Europe and a University of Liverpool Early Career Researcher Grant (https://www2.aston.ac.uk/lss/research/lss-research/aston-centre-europe/index).

[2] http://estia.unhcr.gr/en/home/

Topics

Asylum and Extradition

Conflict Resolution and Security

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Human Rights

Regions

Europe

Greece

The Balkans

Understanding the Romanian Diaspora

Article by Andra-Lucia Martinescu and Rares Burlacu

February 21, 2019

Diasporas have been researched extensively, in both current and historical contexts. This essay is the first in a series that aims to deliver a fresh perspective by focusing on the complex relationship between homelands and diaspora communities. Bureaucratic and institutional practices in the home country have shaped to certain degrees, at times considerably, how diaspora communities interact, associate and organise themselves abroad. In particular, by examining the Romanian diaspora we can glimpse into larger issues of governance and more specifically, into Romania’s fight against corruption.

For over a decade now, the authors of this study have been part of an expansive diaspora. And whilst fully integrated in the societies that have welcomed us and made use of our expertise, we remained committed to bringing about positive change in our home-country. This is precisely what motivated our current project, which explores in-depth how diaspora communities interact, between themselves, with home and/or host country public institutions as well as other entities (i.e. civil society, media and businesses). Moreover, this networked approach (employing Social Network Analysis methodology) helped us visualise the impact and geographical scope of diaspora initiatives worldwide. We believe such an endeavour is relevant in the context of evidence-based policy-making, in both the homeland and countries of residence. By mapping the associative models of diaspora communities, the principles and motivations for their organisation, as well as the scope of their initiatives, the analysis places diasporas at the confluence between the homeland and their host societies. Diasporas should be viewed as a strategic resource, uniquely positioned to benefit from the ever-expanding geographies of interconnectivity, and thus capable of advancing the nation-states’ resources and foreign policy interests, at a transnational level.

This introductory brief examines the Romanian diaspora in light of the more recent political events and the widespread civic mobilisation, which demonstrates a shifting diasporic identity. The study also explores the response of home country institutions and the different strategies of engagement that shape diaspora involvement in policy and decision-making processes at home and abroad. We also focus on the Romanian institutions’ perception of diaspora issues and identity, by examining the strategies and state-sponsorship of diaspora organisations. We argue that civic activism is gradually becoming an organising principle for Romanians abroad, largely in response to the political turmoil affecting the home country.

The Romanian Diaspora. Aspects of civic mobilisation and political activism

Civic mobilisation has been commensurate with a collective perception of the importance of particular issues. In other words, what takes precedence in a nation’s consciousness that makes civic and political activism possible? In the case of Romanians living and working abroad, the fight against corruption at large, or against the constant political meddling in the justice system, has bolstered public dissent and led to widespread civic mobilisation. The impulse to emigrate in the first place is also attributed to the precariousness of home country politics – a lack of stability, of prospects or economic security. Such dynamics are interwoven. On the one hand, Romanians emigrate in search of a stable future, but in most cases, they remain attuned to homeland politics. On the other hand, and quite paradoxically, it has been the same protracted uncertainty of home country politics, public mistrust in institutions, and the past experience of communist dictatorship that made Romanians abroad weary of political involvement and active participation in their host societies.

On the 10^th of August 2018, diaspora communities organised an anti-corruption protest in Bucharest. Participation was wide and not limited to the diaspora: public intellectuals, members of the opposition, civil society organisations, Romanian citizens at large congregated in Victoria Square (where the Romanian Government is headquartered) to voice dissent against a regime that is perceived to encroach on democratic values, particularly the rule of law. The protest made international headlines also in light of the repressive use of force deployed by security forces (the Gendarmerie) to disperse the crowds. The continued lack of accountability for the events that unfolded on the 10^th of August infuriated the court of public opinion, both Romanian and European.

The anatomy of this protest is particularly interesting because it indicates a convergence of interests: Romanians in the home country and those abroad hold similar grievances with regard to Romania’s political trajectory. Moreover, the protest and the exposure it received acted to internationalise home country politics. Those who could not mobilise in Bucharest assembled in European capitals in solidarity with the movement at home. We witness a complex dynamic by which diaspora communities export the sets of communitarian values and good governance principles internalised in host societies back into the home country. Thus, a system of political and civic expectations emerges, at a transnational level. Of course, this is not to idealise host societies in their entirety, but rather to emphasise the context of reflexivity, which diaspora communities experience through livelihoods in more developed societies. Invariably, a comparison is drawn in relation to the homeland and the perceived vulnerabilities or disparities (social, economic, political) that drove the decision to emigrate in the first place. Home politics are therefore internalised, stimulated and reshaped through these new experiences and the perpetual aspirations that arise through migration.[1]

Homeland Institutions and the Romanian Diaspora

Although the mobilisation of Romanians abroad has been significant, particularly in response to the fight against corruption back at home, transnational initiatives^[2] stemming from diaspora organisations are relatively modest. In the same vein, political activism remains sporadic, construed as a reaction to political events in the homeland. Our analysis indicates that diaspora associations are less prone to cooperate, partly due to their limited organisational capacity, and lack of online visibility. To a certain extent, the same mistrust in institutions translates into apathy when it comes to formal organisation. In explaining the weak transnational impact of diaspora initiatives, institutional attitudes towards Romanians abroad, are perhaps the most relevant. The various but largely ineffective engagement policies are characterised by a lack of evidence and publicly available information on the Romanian diaspora. Upon embarking on this research project we became aware of such caveats, particularly the institutional urgency to produce new strategies in absence of an informed basis.

Despite having an institutional framework in place, with a Ministry for Romanians Abroad, Presidential Advisors, as well as substantial European funding available for diaspora associations abroad, little has been achieved in terms of addressing this persistent knowledge gap. Moreover, engagement with the diaspora so far mirrored the patronage practices that largely characterise Romanian politics. Funding allocation, administered by the Ministry for Romanians Abroad has often lacked transparency and failed to address the most pressing issues facing communities abroad and the domestic effects of continued migration. We partly attributed this to a persistent cognitive dissonance in how the Romanian diaspora is perceived inside the very institutions that seek to represent its interests.

Another issue pertaining to institutional attitudes is that diaspora communities are pre-eminently viewed as a financial resource. Although, financial remittances[3] constitute a significant contribution to the country’s economy, the defective administration and distribution of resources towards the public sector (education, healthcare or infrastructure, for instance) render such cross-border flows almost inconsequential for actual domestic growth. To complicate matters further, domestic authorities advanced a bill proposal (April, 2018) requiring Romanians to provide justifying documents when sending back sums exceeding 2000EUR, despite Romania’s heavy reliance on the steady influx of remittances. This largely attests to the politicisation of diaspora issues within Romanian institutions – if the voting preferences of diaspora communities are clearly not favouring the current government, then the vast bureaucratic apparatus is selectively deployed to suppress dissent, wherever it may stem.

The disproportionate funding of events promoting traditions and culture abroad (without any standardised framework of how such events should be organised in the first place) shows that Romanian institutions tend to favour a cultural-populist model for diaspora engagement. Concerning the capacity to access funding, our study shows that many diaspora organisations across different countries are dependent on governmental funding, thus exposing a dynamic by which, associations align their objectives with those elaborated or at times, dictated by Romanian authorities, irrespective of the needs of those communities they aim to serve. This has led to an entrenched patronage system and increased politicisation of diaspora issues. In many cases, these funding patterns led to a mushrooming of diaspora organisations that opportunistically syphon public funding, with the knowledge and tacit consent of domestic public authorities. This is precisely why an evaluation of such practices becomes momentous also within the wider context of anti-corruption measures. We are not completely discarding the role of diasporas in promoting and conducting cultural diplomacy, however, we consider that in the current political and social climate institutional priorities are severely misaligned. More importantly, these state-driven policies had so far negligible impact on strengthening the (political) representation of Romanians abroad, in their homeland and elsewhere.

Similar to other CEE (Central Eastern European) and Balkan countries the Romanian diaspora has a significant demographic presence, not only in Europe but also across the globe. Despite this, its organisational capacity remains precarious and Romanians abroad are poorly represented in their host countries. Political representation seems to be equally poor in Romania. With an official estimate of 3.5 million Romanians living abroad, they are represented by only four deputy mandates in the Parliament’s lower house and two senators. Ever-changing electoral procedures have increasingly hampered diaspora voting. The more recent Romanian Presidential elections (2014) saw innumerable queues forming in front of voting stations across Europe (mainly Romanian Embassies and Consulates), diaspora communities waiting for hours on end to cast their ballot. Apparently, not enough voting stations were made available by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (tasked with organising the elections) and a great many did not get a chance to exercise their constitutional right. This failure and lack of institutional accountability fomented dissent and led to an almost unprecedented civic mobilisation. To put this into perspective, political participation, particularly diaspora voter turnout, has been low, in the previous elections not exceeding 9% (abroad).

Conclusion

This introductory brief aimed to emphasise the many paradoxes that epitomise the relationship between the Romanian state and its diaspora. Such caveats partly stem from a persistent cognitive dissonance, with institutions consistently failing to build the trust needed for a civic-public partnership. Our research showed that Romanian institutions tended to endorse what was perceived as a benign form of diaspora engagement, centred on promoting a specific ethnic-cultural identity abroad. Current state policies largely, albeit intentionally, ignore the civic dimension of diasporic identity. Despite this, civic and political activism increasingly forms an organising basis for diaspora communities. Common themes such as good governance and the fight against corruption have become rallying points for collective mobilisation, at home and abroad. The following briefs shall expand on the networked approach in studying diasporas, as well as on the associative models pursued by Romanian communities living abroad.

We believe that mapping the Romanian diaspora is a momentous and necessary endeavour. For the homeland it goes to show the political influence that can be harnessed through activism abroad. Unfortunately, we are yet to witness a constructive institutional response, which aligns policies to make use of this vast social capital abroad. For host societies or countries of residence, the study will hopefully highlight the transnational potential of diaspora communities as an alternative source for more effective, future bilateral engagement.

Authors

Andra-Lucia Martinescu is currently pursuing a PhD in International Relations with the University of Cambridge, focusing on geopolitical developments in the Black Sea region. She also completed an Mphil with the same department, analysing the transformation of national security doctrines in the post-Soviet space. She has extensive experience in operational and strategic research having worked for the British Army, RAND Europe and the Royal United Services Institute for Security and Defence (RUSI, London) in various research and analysis capacities. She is currently an independent consultant, focusing on civil society projects, diasporas as well as public policy and good governance. She is an FPC Research Fellow.

Rares Burlacu is a doctoral candidate at the École Nationale d’Administration Publique in Québec (Canada), focusing on Canadian digital diplomacy in relation to the EU and China. From 2009 he has been teaching high-level courses in public diplomacy at ENAP. Rares currently coordinates Romania’s rotating EU Presidency in Canada through diaspora initiatives. His publications can also be accessed on HuffPost Quebec, La Presse and Le Devoir.

[1] Ruxandra Trandafoiu (2013). Diaspora Online. Identity Politics and Romanian Migrants (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books). P.: 17;

[2] By transnational initiatives we refer to those actions that benefit diaspora communities across multiple countries of residence, as well as the homeland. Such initiatives stem from close cooperation/coordination between diaspora organisations and have a transnational impact.

^[3] World Bank reports 4.94 billion USD for 2017 in financial remittances.

Topics

Civil Society

Diaspora

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

International Development

Regions

Europe

Romania

Academic Freedom in Hungary’s Authoritarian State Capitalism

Article by Dr Gabor Scheiring

February 18, 2019

Academic Freedom in Hungary’s Authoritarian State Capitalism

Authoritarian leaders find it hard to tolerate independent voices, and academic freedom is no different. After Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán announced the year of the ‘culture war’, the government effectively banished Central European University from Budapest. The prestigious research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences are next in line. The pretext is the need for boosting innovation. However, the truth is that governmental policies under Hungary’s authoritarian state capitalism go against knowledge and innovation, and lock the country into an economy specialised in low value-added precarious production. After summarising recent developments on academic freedom, the article puts these into the context of Hungary’s economic model.

From democratic backsliding to academic unfreedom

The recent governmental attack on the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) is part of a broader political crackdown on democracy, independent institutions, and academic freedom. In 2010, following eight years of the Socialists-Liberal coalition being in power, Viktor Orbán conquered the Parliament with a sweeping electoral success. He started off a massive restructuring of political and economic institutions. The new Parliamentary majority unilaterally passed a new constitution and has, over the years, systematically dismantled the system of checks and balances, starting with the constitutional court and most recently the judiciary in general.[1] State propaganda campaigns, with a budget ten times bigger, than the total budget of the opposition, directly underpin Fidesz-propaganda[2], state-owned companies graciously fund loyal civil society groups organised from above[3], while attacking independent NGOs.[4] Hungary is the first country in the European Union (EU) that is no longer categorised as free by Freedom House.[5]

Significantly increasing political control over university affairs, the government placed all universities in the country under the supervision of so-called chancellors in 2014. In Hungary, universities are headed by the rector, elected by the senate of each university, a position similar to the vice chancellor in the UK. The chancellors are appointed directly by the Prime Minister, with the minister for education acting as their superior, not the rector. They have significant decision-making authority in strategic, organisational and financial issues. Rectors were thus left overseeing educational and research matters – as long as they do not involve financial questions. Although there is no direct control over what university staff does in terms of teaching and research, the increased political dependence has created an environment prone to soft censorship. Last summer, the government went further and banned gender studies from universities, the first time an EU member state has unilaterally barred universities from issuing degrees in a certain subject. The male-dominated Fidesz government has a deeply conservative, outdated vision about women’s role in the household and see women as living wombs tasked with reproducing the nation. Viktor Orbán’s right-hand man, László Kövér, once infamously declared “We don’t want the gender craziness. We don’t want to make Hungary a futureless society of man-hating women”.[6] Beyond the obvious culture war dimension of this attack, anti-genderism is also used to bolster support among working-class voters. There is no word for gender in Hungarian, which in itself makes the gender movement suspiciously elitist for many.

In April 2017, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law which regulates the status of foreign universities operating in the country and modifies the National Higher Education law (also known as Lex CEU). The government used this regulation to stymie the functioning of Central European University (CEU), an institution that has long angered Orbán.[7] CEU was founded in 1991 by Hungarian-born investor George Soros, with the mission to promote the values of democracy and open society. Over the years, CEU has emerged as one of the best universities in the region, until it became one of the prime victims of Hungary’s authoritarian turn. The government stripped CEU of the right to issue US degrees in Hungary, thus forcing CEU to move most of its degree programmes from Budapest to Vienna.[8]

Attacks on the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, founded in 1825, is the dominant research organisation in the country and a major centre of cultural life. It employs 5000 people, including 3000 researchers. It consists of multiple parts, from a library through to a publishing house and a membership-based academic body. The research network of the Academy comprises 15 independent research centres, involving 44 basic-research institutes as well as more than 130 research groups at universities co-financed by the Academy, accounting for one-third of all scientific publications produced in Hungary. This network was thoroughly reformed in 2011–12 by President József Pálinkás, a scholar and former conservative minister of education, giving it its current form, also introducing a new scientific performance evaluation and increasing the role of tender-based financing. Until now, the Academy was allocated an independent budget, and strategic decisions about the direction of research were made by the researchers and the heads of research institutes.

The latest attack on the Academy began with a smear campaign against researchers at the Academy. An article in conservative magazine Figyelő – a pro-government mouthpiece – listed all researchers at the Centre for Social Sciences who study immigration, gay rights and gender, attempting to ridicule their work.[9] The article claimed that the research at the Centre is politically suspicious and argued for greater governmental insight into the Academy’s work. In parallel, the government created a new ministry, the so-called Ministry for Innovation and Technology, led by Minister László Palkovics. This was followed by a decree approved by the Parliament in July 2018, which ordered a complete restructuring of the organisation and funding of academic research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The decree also ordered an evaluation of the Academy’s research centres to be finished by March 2019, the outcome of which will determine which institute stays open, which ones will be merged with a university or closed.

However, the sincerity of this evaluation was put in doubt as the government also announced that from 2019, the Academy’s 28-billion forint (US$98-million) research budget will be transferred to the Ministry for Innovation and Technology – without waiting for the results of the evaluation. In December last year, Innovation Minister László Palkovics said that the Ministry would release funds from the academy’s budget for the salaries of the academy’s researchers for the first 3 months of 2019 until the “new structure and financing model” for research is put in place.[10] At the same time he also said that the Ministry will continue to withhold running costs for the institutes in this period and that the Academy should secure the money for overheads from other academy resources and through external (mostly EU) applications.

After April, the entire funding of the Academy will be based on applications. The Ministry divided the entirety of science into four sections: (1) secure society and environment; (2) industry and digitalization; (3) health; (4) culture and family. Social scientists and humanities researchers are expected to apply for financial support under the ‘culture and family’ heading. The funding of these fields will also be slashed by about 40%. However, in addition to the cuts, the call for proposals – that will redistribute the money taken away from the Academy – will not only be open for the research institutes of the Academy, but also for other universities and state-funded research institutions. The whole system is put together in three months, and although the evaluation criteria of the 4,000-words ‘applications’ requested by the Ministry are unclear, we know that they will be judged by a body under the direct control of Palkovics’s Ministry.

Understandably, this whole procedure infuriated the staff and the leadership of the Academy, who point out that the whole manoeuvre of the government is illegal, as the 2019 budget accepted by the Parliament guarantees the funding of the Academy. However, the Academy is not completely hostile to the reforms. The Presidium of the Academy declared that “Based on the results of the audit, we are ready to make the necessary structural changes”, at the same time rejecting sacrificing social sciences at the altar of fake economic innovation.[11] However, the views of scientists have not been appropriately taken into consideration. Péter Somogyi, a HAS academic who is based at the University of Oxford, UK, says that the Ministry’s actions have created an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear.[12]

Facing a government unwilling to change its policy, the employees of the Academy have launched a solidarity campaign[13] and welcomed a spontaneous demonstration that formed a human chain around the Academy of Sciences building in Budapest. Despite growing international solidarity[14], the EU has done nothing to stop the process. Notwithstanding the occasional condemnations here[15] and European Parliament (EP) resolutions there[16], overall, European elites have been paralysed by Orbán’s attacks on academic freedom. Article 7, triggered last year by the EP, was never really meant to lead anywhere, and the European People’s Party (EPP) keeps Fidesz among its members. In December 2017, the European Commission referred Hungary’s higher education law to the European Court of Justice on the grounds that infringes on the rights of universities, but the court has not yet discussed the case, allowing CEU to be banned from the country. European academics, all Jean Monnet Chairs, have also previously decried the EU’s ‘inaction in the face of the Hungarian government’s attacks on CEU’ in an open letter to the President of the EU council.[17] Recently, the EP has voted to tie the new EU budget to the rule of law, but we have yet to see how this will play out in the future.

Authoritarian state capitalism against the knowledge economy

The government’s pretext for the massive overhaul of the funding and organisation of science is the need to promote innovation and increase the country’s global competitiveness. But is that really the case?

Through a series of overt and covert measures, the government has indeed attempted to prop up capital accumulation, also for transnational investors, but especially for national big businesses[18]. Among others, the government eliminated the second tier of the corporate tax (previously 19%) and introduced a flat 9% tax in 2016. In reality, the largest corporations pay much less tax due to various tax incentives and allowances offered by the government, so that the government calculated with an effective tax rate of 5% for the 2019 tax year.[19] The largest companies are able to reduce even this level with intra-company transfer pricing and other mechanisms. The actual corporate tax paid by 30 of the largest companies in Hungary on their income before taxes is only 3.6%.[20]

The Orbán-regime has significantly increased the subsidies to large corporations. Between 2004 and 2010, the total value of subsidies was 130 billion forint ($456 million), between 2011 and 2018 this has grown to 347 billion forints ($1.22 billion). The state has also signed Strategic Partnership Agreements with the largest, mostly transnational corporations in the country, altogether 79 until the end of 2018. This helped to pacify transnational business engaged in technology-intensive production. In fact, the editor of Budapester Zeitung, a leading German-language newspaper in Hungary, said in a report by WirtschaftsWoche that 90% of German investors in Hungary would vote for Orbán.[21] As long as German big business enjoys Hungary’s authoritarian state capitalism, it is unlikely that the EPP – dominated by German conservatives – will step up against Fidesz, or the EU would enact substantial measures against the Hungarian government. Angela Merkel was rather friendly in February this year at the latest meeting of the Visegrád 4 (the political grouping comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), avoiding any criticism of the Hungarian government’s attacks on academic freedom.

Although these measures might be able to bolster the support of the government among local and international elites, they have not been enough to improve the country’s innovation potential or its international competitiveness. In fact, many of the government’s measures were explicitly directed at reducing the knowledge intensity of the economy. The government’s most important aim is to make big money and to make Hungarian big money happy, the ignorance towards education is a direct result of that. Hungarian national capital is overwhelmingly located in low-skill, non-tech sectors of the economy: construction, agriculture, retail, as well as non-tech industry manufacturing basic materials. To increase their production, these companies need low-payed low-skilled workers.

László Parragh, chair of the Organization of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, one of the central lobby groups of Hungarian national capital and a major figure behind the government’s educational reforms, proudly asserted, “We have been partners in crime with the government”. Although, he thinks that economic rationality would have necessitated the compulsory education age to be reduced to 15.[22] Altogether, the state slashed education spending from 5.4% of GDP to 4.9% between 2009 and 2016 (EUROSTAT, 2018b), reduced the compulsory education age from 18 to 16, and also curtailed state-funded higher education, which led to a 15% decline in tertiary school enrolment from 2010 to 2016.[23]

If promoting innovation and increasing the country’s global competitiveness was really the goal of the government, it has done very poorly over the past eight years. The economy’s declining innovation-potential led to a decrease in the share of high-tech goods in the export since 2010, with a continuous decline in the country’s economic complexity index, an indicator created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to measure the knowledge intensity of an economy.[24] Focusing on low-skill labour also did not help to close the productivity gap between Hungarian and transnational corporations. In fact, it has slightly grown from 2.96 in 2010 to 3.14 in 2015 (a foreign-owned company produces 3.14 times as much added value per employee as a nationally owned company) according to my estimates based on data from the EU’s FATS database.[25] The post-2010 government has thus effectively locked Hungary’s economy into a model specialised in low value-added precarious production, the exact opposite of an innovation-led knowledge economy.

Instead of genuine concern for innovation, the government’s aim is more likely purely political. The reorganisation of the Hungarian Academy closely follows Putin’s attack on the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2013–14 and echoes Erdogan’s purge of dissenting intellectuals.[26] The goal is to reduce the Academy to an innocuous ‘academic club’ of mostly retired members, while the government gets a free hand in allocating scientific funding. When successful, these attempts will contribute to cementing Orbán’s power and increase the stability of Hungary’s variant of authoritarian state capitalism.

Photo by Aisano, published under Creative Commons with no changes made.

[1] The New York Times, 2018b. Hungary’s Judges Warn of Threats to Judicial Independence. Benjamin Novak and Patrick Kingsley, The New York Times, 2 May 2018, URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/world/europe/hungary-judges-independence.html

[2] Atlatszo.hu, 2018. Hungarian government spent €40 million on anti-Soros propaganda in 2017. Katalin Erdélyi, atlatszo.hu, 4 February 2018, URL: https://english.atlatszo.hu/2018/02/04/hungarian-government-spent-e40-million-on-anti-soros-propaganda-in-2017/

[3] Hungarian Spectrum, 2017. Fidesz’s very own ‘NGOs’ stuffed with public money. Éva Balogh, Hungarian Spectrum, 13 May 2017, URL: http://hungarianspectrum.org/2017/05/13/fideszs-very-own-ngos-stuffed-with-public-money/

[4] The New York Times, 2018. How Viktor Orban Bends Hungarian Society to His Will. Patrick Kingsley, The New York Times, 27 March 2018, URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/world/europe/viktor-orban-hungary.html

[5] Freedom House, 2019. Democracy in Retreat: Freedom in the World 2019. Washington DC: Freedom House. URL: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2019/democracy-in-retreat

[6] Zsubori, Anna, 2018. “Gender studies banned at university – the Hungarian government’s latest attack on equality”. The Conversation, 9 October 2018. URL: https://theconversation.com/gender-studies-banned-at-university-the-hungarian-governments-latest-attack-on-equality-103150

[7] Enyedi, Zsolt, 2018. “Democratic Backsliding and Academic Freedom in Hungary”. Perspectives on Politics, 16(4), 1067-1074. doi:10.1017/S1537592718002165

[8] CEU, 2018. CEU Forced Out of Budapest: To Launch U.S. Degree Programs in Vienna in September 2019. Press release, 3 December 2018, Central European University, URL: https://www.ceu.edu/article/2018-12-03/ceu-forced-out-budapest-launch-us-degree-programs-vienna-september-2019

[9] Science|Business, 2018. Orbán allies target Hungarian social scientists, in battle with Academy of Sciences. Florin Zubașcu, Science|Business, 22 June 2018. URL: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/orban-allies-target-hungarian-social-scientists-battle-academy-sciences

[10] Science|Business, 2019. Government continues crackdown on academic freedom in Hungary. Florin Zubașcu, Science|Business, 22 January 2019. URL: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/government-continues-crackdown-academic-freedom-hungary

[11] Science|Business, 2019. Government continues crackdown on academic freedom in Hungary. Florin Zubașcu, Science|Business, 22 January 2019. URL: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/government-continues-crackdown-academic-freedom-hungary

[12] Nature, 2018. Hungary’s government throws science academy into turmoil. Alison Abbott, Nature, 17 December 2018. URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07440-8

[13] Hungarian Academy Staff Forum (HASF) website, URL: https://adf2019.wordpress.com/english/

[14] Hungarian Free Press, 2019. Alberta’s Wirth Institute in solidarity with Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Hungarian Free Press, 12 February 2019. URL: http://hungarianfreepress.com/2019/02/12/albertas-wirth-institute-in-solidarity-with-hungarian-academy-of-sciences/

[15] Science|Business, 2019. EU vice president decries ‘systematic pressure’ on academic freedom in Hungary. Florin Zubașcu, Science|Business, 31 January 2019. URL: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/eu-vice-president-decries-systematic-pressure-academic-freedom-hungary

[16] Inside Higher Ed, 2018. EU Acts Against Hungary, Citing Academic Freedom. Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, 13 September 2018. URL: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/09/13/eu-acts-against-hungary-citing-academic-freedom

[17] See the whole latter at https://verfassungsblog.de/europes-shameful-silence-an-open-letter-to-eu-leaders-from-jean-monnet-chairs/

[18] Scheiring, Gábor. 2018. “Lessons from the Political Economy of Authoritarian Capitalism in Hungary”, Transnational Institute, Challanging Authoritarianism Series, No 1, April 2018. Amsterdam. URL: https://www.tni.org/en/publication/lessons-from-the-political-economy-of-authoritarian-capitalism-in-hungary

[19] Menedzsment Fórum, 2018. Here is the proof that Hungary is a Tax Haven (In Hungarian: ‘Íme a bizonyíték, hogy Magyarország adóparadicsom’). Zoltán F. Baka, mfor.hu, 5 July 2018, URL: https://mfor.hu/cikkek/vallalatok/ime-a-bizonyitek-hogy-magyarorszag-adoparadicsom.html

[20] G7.hu, 2018. 30 of the largest multinational companies could siphon off 48 billion forints each year from Hungary (In Hungarian: ‘Évi 48 milliárd forintnyi társasági adót trükközhet ki az országból 30 magyarországi multi’). Péter Bucsky, g7.hu, 12 November 2018, URL: https://g7.hu/piac/20181112/evi-48-milliard-forintnyi-tarsasagi-adot-trukkozhet-ki-az-orszagbol-30-magyarorszagi-multi/

[21] WirtschaftsWoche, 2018. Deutsche Firmen in Osteuropa: Geschäfte machen beim Europafeind. Simon Book, WirtschaftsWoche, wiwo.de, 30 January 2018, URL: https://www.wiwo.de/my/politik/europa/deutsche-firmen-in-osteuropa-geschaefte-machen-beim-europafeind/20903608.html

[22] 168ora.hu, 2017. László Parragh: I admit that we have been partners in crime with the government (In Hungarian: ‘Parragh László: Tettestársak voltunk a kormánnyal’). Attila Buják, 30 November 2017, 168 óra, URL: https://168ora.hu/itthon/parragh-laszlo-tettestarsak-voltunk-a-kormannyal-13254

[23] World Bank, 2018. World Development Indicators, 1960 – 2017. Available online at http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators (last accessed on 07 December 2018), The World Bank.

[24] MIT, 2018. Economic Complexity Rankings (ECI). The Observatory of Economic Complexity, MIT Media Lab, last accessed on 20 December 2018, URL: https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/rankings/country/eci/?year_range=2011-2016

[25] EUROSTAT, 2018a. Foreign affiliate statistics (FATS). Eurostat Foreign affiliate statistics (FATS), Last update: 22 February 2018, URL: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statistics/data/database

[26] Zgut, Edit, 2019. Orbán’s Next Victim: the Hungarian Science Academy. The Visegrad Insight, 11 February 2019. URL: https://visegradinsight.eu/orbans-next-victim-the-hungarian-science-academy/

Topics

Civil Society

Democracy and Elections

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Human Rights

Regions

Europe

Hungary

Responding to terrorism requires social cohesion, not censorship

Article by Katie Morris

February 5, 2019

Responding to terrorism requires social cohesion, not censorship

Governments across Europe regularly invoke the threat of terrorism to limit freedom of expression beyond what is permitted under international law. Journalists, activists and ordinary social media users are subject to arbitrary restrictions in relation to their online expression. There is little evidence of the success of such restrictions in preventing terrorist attacks, while their chilling effect on freedom of expression is widely documented.[1]

And yet terrorism remains a very real threat, both in Europe and globally. Terrorist attacks, of various ideological, political or religious motivations, have increased across Europe over the past decade.[2] This has been accompanied by violent groups’, notably ISIS and violent far right movements’, increasingly professional and strategic exploitation of social media networks in order to recruit and radicalise. Radicalisation, particularly online, poses an evolving threat to societies, warranting some form of governmental response. This article explores why overly broad terrorist legislation is so problematic and explores alternative approaches to effectively tackle terrorist threats, while respecting the right to freedom of expression and other associated rights.

Abuse of counterterrorism legislation

In December last year, Dunja Mijatović, Commissioner of Human Rights at the Council of Europe, published an article describing the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation as one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression in Europe[3].

In Turkey, for example, an estimated 175 journalists have been arrested following the July 2016 coup attempt.[4] Many face charges of affiliation with, membership of, or propaganda for a terrorist organisation; however, independent trial monitors, myself included, have documented the almost total lack of evidence in such cases. The cases rely almost solely on articles written by defendants, or posts on social media, which contain no calls to, or apologies for, violent acts.[5]

Mijatović identifies ‘vague or unduly broad’ definitions, such as ‘glorification’ or ‘propaganda’ to terrorism as particularly problematic. These have proliferated across Europe, targeting musicians, activists and ordinary citizens, particularly those expressing themselves on social media. For example in 2017, a Spanish court sentenced student Vera Cassandra to a one year suspended sentenced for ‘glorification’ of terrorism’ (Article 578 of the Spanish Penal Code) in relation a series of tweets she sent, joking about a Franco-era Minister, killed in an ETA terrorist attack.[6]

Meanwhile, at the European Union level, the European Commission has proposed a new Regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online.[7] The inclusion of vague and broad definitions of ‘terrorist content’ have been sharply criticised by freedom of expression advocates as potentially enabling the arbitrary removal of content, particularly that produced by human rights defenders, independent media and minority groups.[8]

International human rights law is clear that, in very limited circumstances, the right to freedom of expression may be restricted in order to ensure national security and prevent terrorism. However, any legislation must be precisely formulated, to avoid broad or abusive application, and strictly necessary for the purposes of national security. In practice, this means that, when imposing any sanction against terrorist speech, a court must demonstrate that the expression is intended to incite imminent violence; it is likely to incite such violence; and there is a direct and immediate connection between the expression and the likelihood of violence.[9]

International human rights standards maintain that offensive, shocking or disturbing speech must be permitted.[10] When states prosecute such expression, or invoke anti-terror legislation to silence criticism, they make our societies poorer, limiting dialogue and obstructing pluralism and diversity. Moreover, unfounded restrictions seed distrust towards authorities, delegitimising efforts to prevent genuine incitement to violence.

Beyond restrictions on expression

This does not mean there is no role for government in responding to terrorist speech. In May 2017, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2354, urging UN Member States to support positive and credible alternatives to audiences vulnerable to extremist messages.[11]

Counter narratives have also been advanced as a solution to offensive, shocking or extremist speech, where it doesn’t meet the threshold of severity that would warrant a restriction. [12] Such expression, which might also be called ‘hate speech’[13], does not pose a direct threat to national security; however, it raises serious concerns about societal cohesion and may undermine others’ enjoyment of rights, particularly the right to equality and non-discrimination. It is entirely legitimate that a government, and indeed broader society, would challenge such expression through non-coercive and non-restrictive approaches.

Aimed at discrediting and deconstructing terrorist and/or extremist messaging, counter and alternative narratives providing alternative viewpoints that promote democratic values and human rights. The underlying theory, that compelling positive speech will win out against terrorist or extremist narratives, is appealing. However, in reality, counter narratives vary in quality, often struggling to secure sufficient funding to produce content of the same quality of the propaganda that they are trying to debunk.[14] Moreover, there is a myriad of challenges in reaching a vulnerable audience at risk of consuming violent extremist content with credible counter narratives; and a high risk that, in targeting the wrong people, or deploying off-message content, you actually exacerbate the problem.

Methodologies such as Google Jigsaw’s Redirect Method,[15] which uses Google Adwords targeting tools to connect at-risk individuals with online counter narratives, may help tackle this problem. As pressure grows on social media companies to respond to the growth of extremist content on their platforms, we will likely see ever more complex technological solutions to content moderation. However, it seems likely that both tech companies and governments may need some persuasion to adopt transparent tools for responding to online terrorist content that adhere to international human rights standards. Civil society, particularly freedom of expression advocates concerned by the over-removal of content, can play a further valuable role in advocating for governments and businesses to adopt and support human rights compliant that promote online counter narratives, over the cruder method of content removal.

Finally, much radicalisation occurs offline; therefore, efforts to prevent radicalisation must also operate offline. Academics and experts have advanced various theories on the drivers of radicalisation, including socio-economic exclusion, concerns about poor governance, inequality and poverty and psychological issues at the individual level.[16] While counter narratives may go some way to addressing these, the role of outreach workers and community mobilisers working with at risk individuals is critical.

Conclusion

Overly broad restrictions on ‘terrorist’ are not only a human rights violation; they are also unlikely to prevent violence as they fail to recognise the complexity of radicalisation. The work of civil society organisations and human rights watchdogs in monitoring and exposing governments’ misuse of anti-terrorism legislation to restrict freedom of expression is thus essential. However, their work would be strengthened by a clear evidence base demonstrating the effectiveness of non-legislative approaches to challenging terrorist, extremist or divisive content. This requires broad cooperation between tech companies, academia and civil society, underpinned by state support, to measure the impact of the recent proliferation of counter narrative initiatives; and ensure such approaches comply with human rights.

Katie currently works for Moonshot CVE, a tech start up working to disrupt violent extremism. She previously worked as Head of Europe and Central Asia at ARTICLE 19, a human rights NGO focused on freedom of expression. She oversaw a number of projects across the EU, Eurasia and Turkey, focused on media freedom and pluralism, access to information, hate speech and freedom of expression online. Prior to this, Katie worked as Conflict and Security Advisor for Europe and Central Asia at Saferworld, a conflict-prevention and peacebuilding organisation.

[1] Amnesty International, Europe: Dangerously disproportionate: The ever-expanding national security state in Europe, 17 January 2017 https://cdt.org/insight/letter-to-ministers-of-justice-and-home-affairs-on-the-proposed-regulation-on-terrorist-content-online/, pp.37 – 44

[2] Europol, EU Terrorism Situation & Trend Report (2018), https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/tesat_2018_1.pdf

[3] Dunja Mijatović, ‘Misuse of anti-terror legislation threatens freedom of expression’, Council of Europe Human Rights Comment, 04/12/18 https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/misuse-of-anti-terror-legislation-threatens-freedom-of-expression

[4] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2019, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/turkey#803bf5

[5] See for example: Article 19, Turkey: Aggravated life sentences in Altans trial confirm absence of rule of law’, 03/10/18 https://www.article19.org/resources/turkey-aggravated-life-sentences-in-altans-trial-confirm-absence-of-rule-of-law/ Bar Human Rights Committee, ‘Trial Observation Interim Report, Şahin Alpay & others v Turkey Zaman Newspaper: Journalists on trial June 2018’, http://www.barhumanrights.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Zaman-TRIAL-OBSERVATION-INTERIM-REPORT-FINAL-1-1.pdf

[6] Amnesty International, ‘Spain: Counter-terror law used to crush satire and creative expression online’, 13/03/18 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/spain-counter-terror-law-used-to-crush-satire-and-creative-expression-online/

[7] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/soteu2018-preventing-terrorist-content-online-regulation-640_en.pdf

[8] Letter to Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs on the Proposed Regulation on Terrorist Content Online, 04/12/2018 https://cdt.org/insight/letter-to-ministers-of-justice-and-home-affairs-on-the-proposed-regulation-on-terrorist-content-online/

[9] See, the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, which authoritatively interpret international human rights law in the context of national security https://www.article19.org/resources/turkey-academics-peace-trials-violate-free-expression/

[10] Human Rights Committee, Draft General Comment No. 34, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/GC/34/CRP.2 (2010) https://www.refworld.org/docid/4ed34b562.html

[11] UN Security Council, Resolution 2354, U.N. Doc S/RES/2354 (2017) http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/2354(2017)

[12] See for example: Council of Europe, WE CAN! Taking Action against Hate Speech through Counter and Alternative Narratives, 2017 https://rm.coe.int/wecan-eng-final-23052017-web/168071ba08

[13] There is no universal definition of ‘hate speech’ under international law. The worst cases of ‘hate speech’ may be prosecuted under charges of incitement to violence, hostility and discrimination; however much ‘hate speech’ cannot be restricted, despite being offensive. Such expression nevertheless demands a robust government response, including condemning such expression and the implementation of positive policy measures aimed at promoting dialogue and equality. See Article 19’s ‘Hate Speech Tool Kit’ (2015) for an overview of international legislation standards in this area: https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38231/’Hate-Speech’-Explained—A-Toolkit-%282015-Edition%29.pdf

[14] RAN Issue Paper, Counter Narratives and Alternative Narratives (2015) https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/networks/radicalisation_awareness_network/ran-papers/docs/issue_paper_cn_oct2015_en.pdf

[15] https://redirectmethod.org/

[16] ODI, ‘What do we know about drivers of radicalisation and violent extremism, globally and in Niger?’, February 2017, https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/11405.pdf

Topics

Civil Society

Council of Europe Reform

EU Reform

Freedom of Expression

Freedom of Religion

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Human Rights

Media and Online Freedom

OSCE Reform

Rule of Law

UN Reform

Regions

Europe

Turkey

Why would a Third Country Root for Soft Brexit? Views and Lessons from Turkey

Article by Dr Yaprak Gürsoy

January 29, 2019

Why would a Third Country Root for Soft Brexit? Views and Lessons from Turkey

The British and the Europeans are not the only two publics, holding their breath and waiting for the outcome of Brexit. Turkey is also observing the situation, hoping for the approval of a Brexit deal by the UK Parliament. But why is Brexit significant to Turkey? Why would the UK’s ‘divorce’ from the European Union ( EU) be a concern for Turkey, a non-EU country?

There are two sides to the story, one political and the other economic. When the Brexit campaign started in 2016, the economic consequences for bilateral relations between the UK and Turkey was not the most important item on the agenda given that the VoteLeave campaign demonized Turkey [1]and its prospects of EU membership. This was worrisome especially because consecutive British governments had been supportive of Turkish aspirations for membership of the EU[2] and the two countries had, for the most part, enjoyed good relations since 1945. With Brexit, Turkey would lose a significant diplomatic ally inside the Union.

However, in the aftermath of the referendum, the VoteLeave campaign was quickly forgotten and there were hopes in Ankara and London that Brexit might, in fact, be an opportunity to reinforce bilateral ties. The then UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s visit to Turkey in September 2016, where he announced the desire to sign a “jumbo trade deal,”[3] strengthened these hopes. Positive sentiments continued and in May 2018 when President Erdoğan visited London, it was mutually agreed that steps would be taken to increase the volume of trade by over 30 %[4].

The reality, however, turned out to be more complicated than these high profile bilateral visits would suggest. As I was doing field research and interviews in the past three months for a project on Anglo-Turkish relations, funded by the British Institute at Ankara[5], I learned from Turkish officials and business community that a no-deal Brexit would be an undesirable outcome. As some of my interviewees stressed, Turkey could possibly incur significant economic losses in the event of a no-deal Brexit because it is a Customs Union country, but not an EU member. In other words, if the United Kingdom leaves the EU without a deal, and hence no Customs Union, Turkey would lose its comparative advantage in the UK market with no immediate bilateral mechanism to replace it.

Among the 28 trade partners in the EU, the UK has been an important destination for Turkish exporters. The volume of trade between the two countries was over 16 billion USD[6] in 2017 and rising. While the UK exports high-value-added goods to Turkey, it imports basic goods resulting in a ‘traditional trade structure’[7] that seems to favour British businesses. However, in terms of trade balance, the UK is the only major European country with which Turkey has a surplus. Turkey exported 9.6 billion USD worth of goods to the UK in 2017 and imported 6.5 billion USD. Both figures were increased by 62 and 89 % respectively in the past eight years[8]. The UK is Turkey’s second biggest export destination after Germany and this, coupled with the trade surplus, explains the special place credited to the British market by Turkish businesses and government officials.

The success of Turkish exporters to the UK, especially in the textile and automotive sectors, is attributed to two factors. Firstly, Turkish products have comparative advantage over some other nations, such as China, due to geographical proximity, which results in faster and less costly shipments. And secondly, as a member of the Customs Union, there has been no tariffs and quotas that adversely affected trade relations in the exchange of goods between the countries.

The latter is now at risk due to Brexit. If Britain leaves the EU without a deal that would keep it in the Customs Union, then Turkish exports would lose their comparative advantage. Although London has declared its intentions to sign bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) after it leaves the EU, this does not seem to be a viable option in the case of its partnership with Ankara. Turkey’s Customs Union obligations make it difficult to sign FTAs independent of the EU. Indeed, Turkey’s relationship with the EU is ‘asymmetric and dependent’[9] because it is obligated to follow EU commercial policy without having a say in it. It is no surprise that, Ankara has not signed many meaningful FTAs since joining the Customs Union and has been requesting to modify its trade arrangement[10] with the EU. Now Turkey faces the additional danger of losing its comparative advantage in the UK market vis-à-vis third countries, who would be able to sign FTAs.

If the UK Parliament approves a deal, this would help Turkey buy time. It is likely that the Customs Union will continue at least two more years, during which the EU and the UK will try to sign another deal to manage trade relations. However, Turkey will have to wait on the side-lines (as it has been mostly doing until now) since it has no decision-making powers in the EU. If in the end, the UK decides to leave the Customs Union, then Turkey would find itself in the situation that it dreads now: the possibility of losing its trade advantage in Britain, even if the EU and the UK sign a trade deal (because EU FTAs do not automatically cover Turkey).

The ambivalent position of Turkey during the Brexit negotiations should also serve as a valuable lesson to keep in mind for London. Despite the advantages Turkish businesses have gained in the European markets (exports to the UK being certainly the most successful example), Ankara’s hands have been tied with regards to FTAs with third countries. If the UK eventually stays in the Customs Union, it would certainly be a positive outcome for Turkey, but then the UK would be unable to sign FTAs in the goods with other countries as it wishes, a point which was alluded to by others, including Donald Trump[11].

The implications of Brexit are beyond Britain and the EU. While the negotiations have revealed once again how Ankara has been left out of the decision-making process in the EU, the gloomy long-term prospects of bilateral trade between Turkey and the UK is also a good reminder of how Brexit has consequences outside the EU borders.

Photo by Matt Dunham/Pool via Reuters.

[1] James Ker-Lindsay (2018) Turkey’s EU accession as a factor in the 2016 Brexit referendum, Turkish Studies,19:1, 1-22, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14683849.2017.1366860?journalCode=ftur20

[2] Britain: An ally of Turkey in Europe? Othon Anastasakis, Insight Turkey, Vol. 6, No. 4 (October – December 2004), pp. 38-48

[3] Boris Johnson wants ‘jumbo’ Turkish trade deal, BBC News, September 2016, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37483088

[4] Turkey, UK aim for $20 billion in trade volume, Erdoğan says, DailySabah, May 2018, https://www.dailysabah.com/diplomacy/2018/05/13/turkey-uk-aim-for-20-billion-in-trade-volume-erdogan-says

[5] The British Institute at Ankara website https://biaa.ac.uk/

[6] Commercial and Economic Relations between Turkey and the UK, Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs , 2018 http://www.mfa.gov.tr/commercial-and-economic-relations-between-turkey-and-england.en.mfa

[7] Britain’s relationship with Turkey in charts, Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/content/91c8a1ba-54fb-11e8-b3ee-41e0209208ec

[8] Türkiye, İngiltere ekonomik ilişkilerde altın çağını yaşıyor, May 2018, ‘Dunya’ Turkish news website, https://www.dunya.com/ekonomi/turkiye-ingiltere-ekonomik-iliskilerde-altin-cagini-yasiyor-haberi-415718

[9] Turkey is no model for Britain’s post-Brexit trade policy, Open Europe, October 2016, https://openeurope.org.uk/impact/turkey-no-model-britains-post-brexit-trade-policy/

[10] EU–Turkey Customs Union Prospects for Modernization and Lessons for Brexit, Chatham House, December 2018, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2018-12-12-eu-turkey-customs-union-hakura.pdf

[11] Yes, Donald Trump is talking perfect sense on May’s Brexit deal, The Guardian, November 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/27/donald-trump-theresa-may-brexit-deal-peter-mandelson

Topics

Brexit

Regions

Turkey

United Kingdom

The China–US Trade War and the Future of the Liberal Economic Order

Article by Dr Catherine Owen

January 28, 2019

The China–US Trade War and the Future of the Liberal Economic Order

The topic on every internationally minded Chinese person’s lips when in conversation with a Westerner appears to be the US-China trade war. The following text summaries my informal discussions over lunch and during walks, with friends and colleagues in Shanghai, on the reasons behind, and potential consequences of, growing economic tensions between the world’s two largest economies. My interlocutors are researchers and postgraduate students at some of Shanghai’s elite universities, as well as start-up entrepreneurs and employees of major Chinese tech firms. Our discussions highlight a troubling thesis: many worry that this trade war may be a precursor to a greater conflict, driven by US reluctance to cede its hegemonic position to a rising China. Ultimately, the discussions illustrate that the trade war embodies two irreconcilable visions of global economic order.

Background to the Trade War

The roots of the trade war lie in accusations by the US and other countries of economic malpractice by the Chinese government, in particular, the violation of intellectual property rights and the privileging of Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in the domestic market. First, intellectual property theft has allegedly occurred in two ways: through the requirement that foreign companies share their technology when accessing Chinese markets, and through the use of spyware and hackers, both by the Chinese government [1] and by businesses, such as Huawei (though no evidence for this has yet emerged). Second, the Chinese approach to economic management, consisting of state subsidies for SOEs and preferential treatment for SOEs vis-à-vis foreign companies, is seen to violate WTO regulations stipulating a level playing field for international trade. In short, the US is demanding profound structural changes in the way that Beijing manages the Chinese economy – that it ditches, or at least softens, its commitment to a managed economy.

Thus, the Trump administration launched an investigation[2] immediately upon taking office in January 2017, having long been critical of Chinese financial practices. Since March 2018, the Trump administration has applied over $250 billion worth of trade tariffs onto Chinese goods imported into the USA, arguing that the tariffs will make Chinese goods less competitive and encourage consumers to choose products made in America, thereby reducing the US’ large trade deficit with China. Predictably, Beijing responded by applying $110 billion of trade tariffs onto US goods. At the time of writing, the trade war has been paused to allow negotiators to try to reach a deal before the 2^nd March deadline when a further $200 billion of US tariffs on Chinese goods are due to come into force. Progress, unfortunately, is slow.

The perceived poster child for these practices is arguably ‘Made in China 2025’[3], China’s strategic plan to move away from its position as the global ‘shop floor’ for cheap manufactured goods, and catch up with high-tech Western companies in the fields of robotics, transport, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and energy and agricultural equipment. Launched in 2015, the aim is to increase the market share of domestic high tech suppliers to 70% in ten years and ensuring that a specific number of component parts in various products should be produced domestically. Critics argue[4] that in order to achieve these lofty goals, MiC2025 will involve a smorgasbord of economic malpractices, including both intellectual property theft and preferential treatment for Chinese companies. In the wake of this criticism, MiC2025 has mysteriously disappeared from the media limelight in recent months; it is however unlikely that the project has been abandoned.

Obscured in the British media by the omnipresent and all-consuming Brexit coverage, the trade war is an issue with far reaching consequences, not only slowing growth in China, but also in other Asian economies, such as Japan and South Korea, which depend on exports of specialised parts to China that are then used to make technical equipment and mobile phones. Furthermore, the trade war is also impacting the US economy, and the IMF[5] and World Bank[6] have both issued concerns that it could trigger a global recession.

Chinese Views

The Chinese intellectual classes have been following developments very closely. Yet, due to the lack of diversity of viewpoints represented in the Chinese media, several common themes emerged during my discussions. The most prevalent view among my interlocutors, also widely promulgated in the Chinese popular press, is that the West believes that China is rising too fast and has applied a trade war in order to prevent China from becoming a global superpower. The phrase, ‘Thucydides’ Trap’[7], coined by US political scientist Graham Allison to describe the near inevitability of war when a rising power seeks to displace the hegemonic power, is well known.

More than one Chinese linked the discussion to a consideration of why Xi Jinping last year extended his presidency indefinitely. Was it because the defining task of his presidency is to ensure China becomes the new global hegemon and, in order to do this, a war is necessary? Friends pointed to the defining acts of other important Chinese leaders – Mao Zedong’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up of the country – and suggested that Xi believes his historic task is to finally place the Middle Kingdom at the centre of the global order. This is not a prospect that my interlocutors relish; comfortable members of the nascent middle class, they do not want military conflict to threaten new-found stability.

Other, less sensationalist perspectives acknowledge that China has been violating WTO regulations for some time, and that its transparency record is indeed poor. However, they also observe that China is far from alone in failing to adhere to WTO best practice and fall back on the fear of China’s rise thesis to explain why the US is targeting them over other states. Some point to the personal characteristics of Donald Trump, a businessman with a ‘zero-sum’ mentality, who is thought unable to see trade from the ‘win-win’ perspective of the Chinese. A third, much smaller group suggest that the impact of the trade war has been overblown by the Chinese government to mask other failings in the Chinese economy, such as the impossibly high tax rates for small and medium sized businesses, the ageing population, and slowing consumption patterns.

An Ideological Impasse?

The trade war, in some senses, can be seen as a battle of capitalisms. China’s rise has demonstrated that countries able to control their economies, especially via protectionist measures in particular sectors, are able to achieve remarkable economic performance. Indeed, the ‘China model’ of state capitalism has lifted over 500 million people out of poverty since 1981, reducing the percentage of those living on less than two dollars a day from 88% to 6.5%; meanwhile the poverty rate in the US has remained more or less constant between 11.5 and 15%.[8] This fact rankles the current defenders of global free market capitalism; yet, ironically, in demanding that China opens its economy, the US imposed trade tariffs actually damage the openness of global trade on which this order is founded. While the astonishing growth of China’s middle class is now inevitably levelling off, China’s rise nevertheless poses an existential challenge to the universal applicability of Western-oriented capitalist model. Could this trade war constitute the first sign of the death throes of the liberal economic order?

[1] Chinese Officer Is Extradited to U.S. to Face Charges of Economic Espionage, October 2018, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/us/politics/china-spy-espionage-arrest.html

[2] Section 301 Report into China’s Acts, Policies, and Practices Related to Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, and Innovation, March 2018, Office of the US States Trade Representative https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2018/march/section-301-report-chinas-acts

[3] State Council of The People’s Republic of China, http://english.gov.cn/2016special/madeinchina2025/

[4] How ‘Made in China 2025’ became a lightning rod in ‘war over China’s national destiny’, January 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2182441/how-made-china-2025-became-lightning-rod-war-over-chinas

[5] US trade war would make world ‘poorer and more dangerous’, BBC, October 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45789669

[6] WTO chief warns of worst crisis in global trade since 1947, BBC, November 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46395379

[7] Is war between China and the US inevitable?, Ted Talks, September 2018, https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_allison_is_war_between_china_and_the_us_inevitable

[8] Following the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Statistical Policy Directive 14, the U.S. Census Bureau uses a set of dollar value thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty see https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.pdf

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In Azerbaijan, big brother is watching you everywhere: offline, online, on mobile devices and social media apps

Article by Arzu Geybulla

January 15, 2019

In Azerbaijan, big brother is watching you everywhere: offline, online, on mobile devices and social media apps

On January 7^th 2019,VirtualRoad, the secure hosting project of the Qurium – Media Foundation published[1] a report documenting fresh attacks against Azerbaijan’s oldest opposition newspaper Azadliq’s website (azadliq.info). The report concluded: “After ten months trying to keep azadliq.info online inside Azerbaijan using our Bifrost service[2] and bypassing multi-million dollars DPI deployments, this is one more sign of to what extent a government is committed to information control”. The DPI deployments also known as Deep Packet inspection have been used in Azerbaijan since March 2017 and is best described as digital eavesdropping that allows information extraction.

But Azadliq newspaper wasn’t the only media outlet targeted. On December 27, 2018 another opposition media outlet Abzas.net was informed by Facebook, that its Facebook page had been removed due to “community standards violations”. Just days prior to the removal, the admins of the page reported being attacked by hundreds of trolls and they believe the page was taken down as a result of anonymous reports alleging the page was in such violation. The page remains inaccessible at the time of writing of this piece.

Other outlets that have been under attack since November of last year, include the independent news platform Azadliq Radio (unrelated to the newspaper), the Azerbaijan Service for Radio Free Europe, which reported its Facebook page was hacked on November 24^th 2018 and in the space of several hours, all of the videos and photos shared on the page up until the day the page was still active, were removed. Since the attack, the radio was able to take back control of its Facebook page. Last January, the Facebook page of the Berlin-based Meydan TV – a news site which covers events in Azerbaijan in three languages – also lost control of its Facebook page.[3] The hacker, deleted all of the posts, videos and photos that were shared on the page since its launch in 2014.

For pundits observing this sequence of recent attacks it is nothing surprising or new since Azerbaijan started expressing its interest in purchasing surveillance spyware since as early as December 2011 when the National Security Services (which was officially dissolved in December 2015 and replaced by a new body of National Security Services) reached out to NICE Systems (an official reseller for Hacking Team based in Israel) with an interest to purchase “lawful hacking solutions”. In one of the leaked Hacking Team emails dating to May 2012[4], the following message further clarified the specific interest of the National Security Services. “[…] the customer stressed that they are interested in ISP-based infection (HT NIA), and mobile infections.” The next email exchange[5] between the providers zooms further into the details of the demo, mentioning the “interception of skype through ISP/MIM; interception of Skype on mobile (android, IOs and windows) and PC (IOs and Windows)’’. Among other tools offered by the Remote Control System, the Ministry of National Security was especially interested in the TNI (Tactical Network Injector), a RCS module that monitors a target’s network and injects an agent into selected Web resources and RMI (Remote Mobile Infection) which allows RCS agents to be installed on mobile phones.[6]

What RCS technology allows is for data collection on infected devices both online and offline. The data is obtained through records by keystroke loggers and the system also allows hackers to turn on device cameras and microphones without the user’s knowledge.

One of the examples of this technology being used to target civic activists was reported by Amnesty International in its 2017 report[7]. According to Amnesty, malware was detected on a computer of Ramin Hacili, the President of the Azerbaijan European Movement in 2015. The malware opens a bundled document that acts as a decoy once run by the victim. “It profiles the victim’s system (collecting IP addresses and system settings. The agent then continually records the keystrokes of the user and captures screenshots, most likely in order to obtain credentials for online platforms such as email and social media”. The same malware was used against human rights lawyer and former political prisoner Rasul Jafar, and others.

Other forms of attacks have included artificial internet network congestion, as documented by the VirtualRoad 2016 report,[8] which helped to prevent access to a number of news websites in Azerbaijan (majority of those websites have been officially blocked as of May 2017). In its following report published in 2017, VirtualRoad also showed evidence of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) and other attacks traced to government associated IP address against independent media outlets.

With the most recent attacks against Azadliq newspaper, Azadliq radio and other platforms, it is now clear, that in addition to resorting to a media crackdown, political intimidation and other forms of government pressure against media freedom and free speech, the government of Azerbaijan has successfully deployed a range of specialised and technical information control systems such as DDoS attacks, website blocking, hacking of social media accounts and emails of independent civil society activists, content takedown requests from YouTube, mass deployment of civil servants and youth volunteers as trolls, and the use of Deep Packet Inspection tools.^[9]

Where does this technology come from?

According to VirtualRoad’s assessment, the DDoS attacks observed between October 2016 and March 2017 originated from dedicated servers operated by Azerbaijani system administrators, which made VirtualRoad conclude that the attackers were close to the country’s cybersecurity community. VirtualRoad also discovered botnet attacks against abzas.net and azadliq.info before these websites were blocked after the legal amendments in 2017.

Another report released in April 2018 showed evidence of the government of Azerbaijan using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) since March 2017. The report also found out that this specialised security equipment was purchased at a price tag of 3 million USD from an Israeli security company Allot Communications.[10]

Having done work with NICE Systems, the government of Azerbaijan was well accustomed to be doing work with Israeli companies. In their newly released report[11], VirtualRoad also looks at how it became evident that Azerbaijan was also using Procera-Sandvine, a networking equipment company specializing in network traffic management and Deep Packet Inspection based in Waterloo, Canada in conjunction with Allot Communications technology. Previously the same company’s devices were used “to deliver nation-state malware in Turkey and indirectly into Syria, and to covertly raise money through affiliate ads and cryptocurrency mining in Egypt”, according to the detailed Citizen Lab report[12].

Why any of this should matter?

In a country where independent media has been reduced to a handful of operating journalists, with prisons notorious for ‘welcoming’ reporters and civic activists with open arms, and courts renowned for being efficient in sentencing on false charges, deployment of such sophisticated technology that allows the ruling government to have an open back door to citizens’ online and offline history, isn’t just alarming, but a direct violation of basic rights to privacy, anonymity, and safety.

In a most recent case of crackdown is Mehman Huseynov. A citizen journalist who had been documenting government corruption, social inequalities and other issues on his popular YouTube channel Sancaq TV. Huseynov was sentenced two years ago on charges of slander. Due to be released in March 2019, Huseynov is now facing new charges for allegedly “resisting a representative of the authorities with the use of violence dangerous to his health and life,” which could carry an additional sentence of up to seven years in prison[13]. On December 26^th 2018 after hearing about the new charges, Huseynov went on hunger strike.

The new accusations prompted mass support on social media, while some activists attempted to rally in support of Huseynov in an unsanctioned protest in Baku which resulted in administrative arrests and fines. An international outcry followed suit with several rights watchdog groups as well as the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, calling on the authorities of Azerbaijan to immediately drop the new charges and release Huseynov[14].

Huseynov insists he is innocent and so does the community of supporters who believe the new charges carry the sole purpose of keeping Huseynov behind bars while authorities disagree. Since his hunger strike, and the start of the international pressure, government representatives have stressed that Huseynov is in jail for breaking the law and thus serving his time for committed crimes.

On January 11^th2019 a statement apparently ‘written’ by Huseynov was circulated on social networks. In the statement, addressed at the media, Huseynov writes that “he is well, and that he is recovering from the earlier hunger strike. And that he expects the criminal investigation launched against him to be just”. But very few believed in the authenticity of the statement.

His lawyer, Shahla Humbatova who saw Huseynov just a day before, said he never mentioned anything about a statement. “Unlike what is written in the statement, he told me he will continue refusing to eat solid foods and only drink juice and milk. He told me he will do so until March 2, which is the scheduled day of his release”, said Humbatova in an interview with Azadliq Radio, Azerbaijan Service for Radio Free Europe[15]. Mehman’s brother, Emin Huseynov, confirmed the letter was fabricated.

In a country where justice rarely prevails, forced and fabricated statements should come as no surprise. The question that remains to be answered however is how much further, can one government go when already it has all the power it can possess.

[1]Qurium, Political motivated attacks against azadliq.info, January 2019, https://www.qurium.org/alerts/azerbaijan/political-motivated-attacks-against-azadliq-info/

[2] Circumvention Of Internet Blocking, https://www.qurium.org/bifrost

[3] Arzu Geybulla and Hebib Muntezir, Azerbaijan’s authoritarianism goes digital, Open Democracy, February 2018, https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/arzu-geybulla-hebib-muntezir/azerbaijans-authoritarianism-goes-digital

[4] Azerbaijan – request for demo, May 2012, https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/443070

[5] RE: Azerbaijan – confirmation of the 14^th, May 2012 https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/443601

[6] R: Bom Azerbaijan – Urgent, January 2013, https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/443734

[7] Amnesty International, False Friends: How Fake Accounts and Crude Malware Targeted Dissidents in Azerbaijan, March 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2017/03/False-Friends-Spearphishing-of-Dissidents-in-Azerbaijan/

[8] Qurium, Political motivated attacks against azadliq.info, January 2019, https://www.qurium.org/alerts/azerbaijan/political-motivated-attacks-against-azadliq-info/

^[9] Arzu Geybullayeva, Match made in heaven: Authoritarian states and digital surveillance. Case study from Azerbaijan, , 1 January – 30 June 2018, https://www.academia.edu/37482634/Match_made_in_heaven_Authoritarian_states_and_digital_surveillance_Case_study_from_Azerbaijan

[10] Qurium, Corruption, Censorship and a Deep Packet Inspection Vendor, April 2018, https://www.qurium.org/alerts/azerbaijan/corruption_censorship_and_a_dpi_vendor/

[11] SUS-759: SANDVINE AND INTERNET BLOCKING IN AZERBAIJAN, Stockholm, 9th January 2019, Qurium.org https://www.qurium.org/alerts/azerbaijan/sandvine-and-internet-blocking-in-azerbaijan/

[12] BAD TRAFFIC, Sandvine’s Packet Logic Devices Used to Deploy Government Spyware in Turkey and Redirect Egyptian Users to Affiliate Ads?, March 9 2018, https://citizenlab.ca/2018/03/bad-traffic-sandvines-packetlogic-devices-deploy-government-spyware-turkey-syria/

[13] Azerbaijanis pressure government to #FreeMehman after blogger endures 12 days on hunger strike

8 January 2019, Global Voices, https://globalvoices.org/2019/01/08/azerbaijanis-pressure-government-to-freemehman-after-blogger-endures-12-days-on-hunger-strike/

[14] Commissioner calls on the authorities of Azerbaijan to drop charges against Mehman Huseynov, January 2019, Council of Europe, https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/commissioner-calls-on-the-authorities-of-azerbaijan-to-drop-charges-against-mehman-huseynov?fbclid=IwAR0-DIBSuuwYOdxZ2bS6W62zEcQ5EhsokS582DdE5X-JqH7czPVcLDdVayY

[15] Mehman Hüseynovun vəkili: ‘Bu sürpriz oldu’ ( In English: Mehman Huseynov’s lawyer: It’s a surprise), January 2019, Azadliq Radio, Azerbaijan Service for Radio Free Europe https://www.azadliq.org/a/mehman-huseynov-mektub/29704605.html

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FPC Briefing: The Authoritarian-Populist Wave, Assertive China and a Post-Brexit World Order

Article by Dr Chris Ogden

January 7, 2019

FPC Briefing: The Authoritarian-Populist Wave, Assertive China and a Post-Brexit World Order

Over the last decade, the rise of authoritarian tendencies represents an increasing illiberal wave in international politics. Such a wave is not limited to smaller countries but increasingly typifies the political leadership and underlying nature of the international system’s foremost powers, in the guise of the United States (US), Russia, China and India, who are normalizing authoritarian-populism as a dominant global political phenomenon. In this regard, we must recognise that authoritarianism and democracy are not opposing political systems but are fundamentally inter-related on one continuum, whose characteristics co-exist and significantly influence each other. China is at the vanguard of this phenomenon and provides a clear counterpoint to western liberal democracy. With western democracies heavily reliant upon China’s continued economic growth and facing significant political upheavals and crises, in particular, Brexit, the essence of the liberal world order may soon be on the verge of capitulation to China’s preferred authoritarian basis.

Authoritarian and populist tendencies are escalating in the international system, transforming the nature of domestic and global politics. Permeating the domestic proclivities of countries ranging from Hungary, Poland and Turkey, to Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines, ‘nearly six in ten countries … seriously restrict (their) people’s fundamental freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression’[1]. Authoritarian-populism is now also a shared phenomenon among the world’s most influential countries, and the rise of authoritarian tendencies among the great powers characterises an increasing illiberal theme in international politics over the last decade[2].

‘Anti-elitist’, assertive and nationalist-minded leaders all currently lead the world’s great powers – the United States (US), Russia, China and India – with each proactively proclaiming a common nationalistic goal of restoring their countries’ past glories and status. Via their economic, military and diplomatic strength, as well as substantial, growing and evermore vocal populations, it is these four major powers – more than any other countries – that will determine and delineate the foundations of world politics – and of the prevailing world order itself – in the decades to come.

As such, in the US, the populist President Trump openly questions civil liberties, attacks the media, and side-lines and undermines major bureaucratic and legal bodies. In China, President Xi’s repressive government has increased internet surveillance, imprisons human rights activists, and threatens and re-educates religious activists. In Russia, an autocratic President Putin silences liberal opposition groups, restricts free speech, and controls media outlets. And in India, Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu nationalist rule is typified by heightened state censorship, the frequent banning of non-governmental organisations, and increased violence towards minority groups.

A range of key factors critically binds these four leaders together; primarily their highly personalistic leadership styles, their desire for centralized political control, their appeal to mass public audiences, and their sustained intolerance of dissent. Of note too is that even before President Trump gained power, the US was downgraded to the status of a “flawed democracy” in the Economist’s Democracy Index 2016[3]. India holds a similar standing, whilst Russia and China are considered authoritarian. The Index bases its comparison across a range of factors, including the electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties, underscoring the commonalities between these countries.

Given the vital role that these great powers perform as the shapers and creators of global institutions – and therefore of accepted behaviours and practices in the international sphere – as they become more authoritarian in nature so too will the dominant world order. Moreover, how they understand, demonstrate and deploy authoritarian-populist traits via their autocratic leaders has the potential to threaten the stability of democratic societies throughout the world, including in Britain and the European Union. Critically, we need to see that authoritarianism and democracy are not opposing and exclusive political systems but that they are fundamentally inter-related on one continuum. In this way, there is no fixed, binary divide between democracies and authoritarian regimes but instead, they are essentially fluid, inter-connected and impermanent entities, whereby democracies can display particular authoritarian inclinations and vice versa.

Chinese-Style Authoritarianism

Through a one-party state dating from 1949, the Chinese Communist Party presently rule with an authoritarian political basis that seeks to inhibit political pluralism, sanction political participation, imprison opponents (including political, ethnic and religious groups, most notably China’s Uighur population), and use state apparatuses to strictly monitor, control and command their population. China’s specific political nature relates to core elements of its specific world vision, in particular a set of desires pertaining to centralized control, territorial restoration and restored recognition, along with the continued impact of Confucian beliefs concerning harmony, peace, hierarchy, respect and benevolence – principally across East Asia. These various factors are informed by particular leadership styles, especially the more assertive and nationalistic Xi Jinping, who in October 2017 pertinently stated that ‘no one political system should be regarded as the only choice and we should not just mechanically copy the political systems of other countries’[4].

China’s authoritarian-populism is deep-seated in nature and is the hallmark of the country’s bureaucratic, legal and security institutions. These elements produce a political basis that critically contrasts to core dynamics integral to the current world order orientated around Western liberalism, as based upon democratic practices, tolerance, the rule of law, and protecting individual (rather than collective) human rights. As China’s stature increases, via the country’s ongoing economic, military and diplomatic rise, its global pre-eminence will allow the country to influence the functioning of the international system and threaten the predominant parameters of the current world order. This will allow for the realisation of Xi’s ‘Chinese Dream’ that ‘is a dream about history, the present and the future’, and inter-connects China’s longstanding values with its ambitions. By enabling a new world order, China’s supremacy in 1) economic, 2) institutional and 3) normative terms will be paramount and echo the country’s specific domestic values, which are deeply historically engrained in the mind-sets of its leaders, thinkers and people.

Economics

With China now possessing the world’s largest economy[5], it is acquiring a system-determining capacity that allows it to cast its own vision of authority, order and control throughout the contemporary international structure. The country’s gradual embrace of liberal economics – often merged with specific Chinese values and characteristics based upon state control and a blurring between public and private ownership – has given it this ability. This has resulted in an economic system defined as being authoritarian-capitalism that diverges from the western liberal economic ideal. In addition, China’s ever-increasing demand for resources, markets and energy has made the world’s composite national and regional economies dependent upon it as a major import and export market, cheap labour provider and fruitful foreign investment destination[6].

Beijing’s wild success in rapidly transforming the economic fortunes of its population, pulling hundreds of millions out of poverty and conducting its international trade in a non-ideological manner, also acts as an inspirational developmental model for countries across Africa and Asia – particularly those with authoritarian regimes. By doing so, China deeply questions the legitimacy of western liberalism’s declaration that economic growth inevitably leads to democracy, and – by presenting a viable alternative to it – shows that such a world order can be usurped and replaced. Beijing’s planned Social Credit System[7], which will come into force in 2020, inter-links educational achievements, financial behaviour and social media activity to produce a transparent and publicly available social score, will extend the Chinese state’s capability to control its people. The technologies central to this control are being exported to other countries[8], and their underlying principles are evident in the west, such as for credit scoring or screening terrorists[9].

Institutions

By binding members together around particular values, practices and understandings, and providing their instigators with a managerial role to govern and regulate international affairs, multilateral regimes aid the creation and maintenance of world orders. Such institutions innately reﬂect the specific interests, concerns and values of their creators, and are vehicles to disseminate particular visions of the world onto the global stage, as displayed by the western-originated International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United Nations. For most of the latter half of the twentieth century, these institutions encapsulated the US-led vision of a western-orientated world order resting upon an image of international security via liberal free trade and democratic politics.

Underscoring this system-ordering potential, and also its differentiation from existing groupings, China’s beliefs concerning multi-polarity, global governance, human rights, peaceful development and non-intervention are engendering a new form of world order. China’s creation of different regimes, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB, a multilateral development bank founded in 2015), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO, a Eurasian security organization initially initiated in 1996), encapsulates how its differing attitudes are inculcating a Chinese-led world order. Such an order inherently challenges rival western institutions, and – by extension – the very liberal values upon which they have been crafted, imagined and legitimized.

Normative

Drawing upon how leading great powers not only create world order but also provide leadership, as well as territorial, ﬁnancial and existential security, a Chinese world order would necessarily change the very conduct and nature of global affairs. China’s domestic identity, history and behaviour pertaining to the acceptance of an autocratic and benevolent form of single- party rule all critically inform this discussion. So too do the wider realization and enactment of the notion of tian xia (“all under heaven”) that seeks to create a China-centred world order that is built upon tenets of hierarchy, paternalism and harmony in its various diplomatic relations across the world.

China’s underlying indigenous authoritarian values, practices and ideas have already altered the structure and workings of the international system, and as China becomes increasingly influential and powerful, they will lead to further significant transformations. Moreover, because authoritarian-populism is increasingly present in the politics of the great powers – as well as in many medium and lower tier countries – it acts as an enabling and legitimizing mechanism for China’s worldview. Such a convergence, accompanied by the weakening of western liberalism, the challenge that China poses to it, and the US’s continued retreat away from leading global affairs, illustrates how China’s authoritarian world order is becoming both feasible and achievable.

Thinking Ahead

The international system is currently experiencing a period of transition as economic, institutional and military power is being amassed by China, which is depleting the relative influence and stature of western countries and their associated values and worldviews. Moreover, Beijing is now able to articulate an alternative vision of world order premised upon different economic, institutional and normative conditions that are becoming increasingly legitimate in the eyes of many world leaders. Growing authoritarian and populist traits across the world – and its dominant great powers – accelerate this trend, as do pressure from domestic populations negatively affected by globalization, increased migration and growing economic disparities.

To effectively counteract the risk posed to their country by the authoritarian-populist wave, leaders in the UK – particularly in the context of Brexit – must remain aware that political systems are inter-connected and evolutionary in nature, and that such systems are all highly susceptible to:

Shock: Periods of tumult – in the form of a profound economic shock, recession or depression – will only serve to further accentuate and speed up a country’s assimilation to the authoritarian-populist wave. In such an atmosphere, nationalist tendencies will rise as domestic pressures and international uncertainties increase, especially in countries experiencing a deep identity crisis, such as the UK post-Brexit;
Slippage: In order to prevent them from being replaced by other worldviews, national values – and thus values underpinning particular world orders – require regular maintenance. Populations need to be actively (and regularly) informed concerning their rights, and how such rights were originally won, in order to better sustain the liberal world order. Without such a basis, citizens will be evermore vulnerable to alternative narratives; &
Isolation: countries separated from dominant economic and political groupings are more exposed to the core factors personifying the authoritarian-populist wave. This means not only nationalist forces – and more extreme political beliefs – but also alternative sources of financial and trade security, which China (and also the US) may be willing to provide but only subject to a tacit acceptance of its preferred worldview.

[1] Quoted in People Power Under Attack 2018 (Monitor Civicus), https://monitor.civicus.org/PeoplePowerUnderAttack2018/

[2] Economist, Democracy Index 2016: Revenge of the “Deplorables” (London: Economist Intelligence Unit), http://www.transparency.org.nz/docs/2017/Democracy_Index_2016.pdf; Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 – Populists and Autocrats: The Dual Threat to Global Democracy (Washington DC: Freedom House), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017; Polity IV, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions 1800-2013 (Vienna, VA: Center for Systemic Peace), 2014, http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4x.htm

[3] Economist, Democracy Index 2016: Revenge of the “Deplorables” (London: Economist Intelligence Unit). Accessible at http://www.transparency.org.nz/docs/2017/Democracy_Index_2016.pdf

[4] Quoted in Tom Phillips ‘Xi Jinping Heralds “New Era” Of Chinese Power at Communist Party Congress’, The Guardian, October 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/18/xi-jinping-speech-new-era-chinese-power-party-congress

[5] See ‘Country Comparisons – GDP (Purchasing Price Parity)’, CIA World Factbook, 2017, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/208rank.html#CH

[6] See ‘Foreign Direct Investment’, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 2018, http://unctadstat.unctad.org/wds/ReportFolders/reportFolders.aspx

[7] Celia, Hatton, ‘China “Social Credit”: Beijing Sets Up a Huge System’, BBC News, October 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186

[8] Rui Hou, ‘The Booming Industry of Chinese State Internet Control’, openDemocracy, November 2018, https://www.opendemocracy.net/rui-hou/booming-industry-of-chinese-state-internet-control

[9] Jimmy Tidey, ‘What China Can Teach the West About Digital Democracy’, openDemocracy, October 2017, https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/jimmy-tidey/what-china-can-teach-west-about-digital-democracy

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Hui Muslims in China’s ‘Little Mecca’: Fusing Islamic and Han Practices

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The state of Islamic threat in Central Asia: assessing the threat of terrorism from Central Asia

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Rethinking Refugee Support: Responding to the Crisis in South East Europe

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Understanding the Romanian Diaspora

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Academic Freedom in Hungary’s Authoritarian State Capitalism

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Responding to terrorism requires social cohesion, not censorship

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Why would a Third Country Root for Soft Brexit? Views and Lessons from Turkey

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The China–US Trade War and the Future of the Liberal Economic Order

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In Azerbaijan, big brother is watching you everywhere: offline, online, on mobile devices and social media apps

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FPC Briefing: The Authoritarian-Populist Wave, Assertive China and a Post-Brexit World Order

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