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The Trump-May axis

28/01/2017 21:49 / 1 Comment on The Trump-May axis

I have just watched the news about Trump’s latest executive order – banning Muslims for 120 days and Syrians apparently permanently. Then on comes Theresa next to Turkey’s President Erdogan, failing to condemn Trump (“America’s immigration rules are a matter for America and the UK’s immigration rules are a matter for us”) and, after securing a £100m fighter deal with Turkey, failing to condemn Erdogan for locking up more journalists than China. Her latter failure defended by her spokesperson later, and on roughly the same grounds used in the Cold War era: Turkey is a valuable ally in the fight against _________ (fill in the gap).
    By coincidence, and before I heard the Trump news and the news, basically from her own mouth, of Theresa’s support for him and Erdogan, I had just this afternoon read the late Harold Pinter’s description of his encounter with the US ambassador to Turkey in 1985. He had gone to Turkey with Arthur Miller on behalf of International PEN to investigate allegations of torture and persecution of Turkish writers. He wrote afterwards:
“We met dozens of writers. Those who had been tortured in prison were still trembling but they insisted on giving us a drink, pouring the shaking bottle into our glasses. One of the writers’ wives was mute. She had fainted and lost her power of speech when she had seen her husband in prison …Turkey at this time was a military dictatorship, fully endorsed by the United States.
    “The US Ambassador, hearing of our presence … gave a dinner party at the US embassy in Ankara in honour of Arthur [and] they had to invite me too. [At the dinner Pinter had an argument with an embassy political councillor and then] Arthur rose to speak … He discussed the term democracy and  asked why, as the United States was a democracy, it supported military dictatorships throughout the world, including the country we were in? ‘In Turkey,’ he said, ‘hundreds of people are in prison for their thoughts. This persecution is supported and subsidised by the United States. Where,’ he asked, ‘does that leave our understanding of democratic values?’ He was as clear as a bell. The Ambassador thanked him for his speech.”
A few minutes later, wrote Pinter,
“I saw the Ambassador and his aides bearing down on me. Why they weren’t bearing down on Arthur I don’t know. Perhaps he was too tall. The Ambassador said to me: ‘Mr Pinter, you don’t seem to understand the realities of the situation here. Don’t forget, the Russians are just over the border. You have to bear in mind the political reality, the diplomatic reality, the military reality.’ ‘The reality I’ve been referring to,’ I said, ‘is that of electric current on your genitals.’ The Ambassador drew himself, as they say, up to his full height and glared at me. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you are a guest in my house.’ He turned, as they also say, on his heel and his aides turned too. Arthur suddenly loomed up. ‘I think I’ve been thrown out,’ I said. ‘I’ll come with you,’ Arthur said, without hesitation. Being thrown out of the US embassy in Ankara with Arthur Miller … was one of the proudest moments of my life.”
Theresa wasn’t thrown out. She fully endorsed Erdogan. No surprise. But what we need to find when faced with Trump in America and Theresa May over here is the courage to resist and the determined, unremitting, no-concessions clarity of argument of the Miller-Pinter partnership back then. All of us. Because if we can’t, the future doesn’t bear thinking about.

Conventional wisdom

20/03/2016 10:41 / Leave a comment

The Refugee Convention was once a text that all its signatories were supposed to take seriously. States were asked to sign it, ratify it and act on it. Now, in the shadow of the ongoing refugee crisis, the responsibilities and obligations signed up to by those states are being set aside in favour of an incomprehensible, unnecessary tit-for-tat deal with Turkey so that this human-rights-abusing, press-freedom-denying state can slip into the EU with all that inconvenient stuff ignored.

The Refugee Convention is far from perfect. With a bit of deft manoeuvring its founding principles can be (and have often been) sidestepped. But it was created for good, historical reasons and it’s still (just about) with us. Today The Guardian calls it “a hallowed text created in the aftermath of the Holocaust”.[1] This makes it sound religious, “more honoured in the breach than in the observance” maybe, with perhaps a suggestion that it might be out of date too, although The Guardian should know that the Holocaust can never be just another past event, the memory of it should follow us, haunt us, from generation to generation. But the Convention is neither just a hallowed text nor out of date. It is, however, inconvenient to many states and it won’t be long before the cry will go up (again) that it should be repealed and be done with. In fact, instead, it should be strengthened. It will certainly be needed in the foreseeable future, at least until we manage to learn to build a future other than one of perpetual war.

In 2009 I wrote a bit about the history of the Refugee Convention. You can find it here in Chapter 1 of Dealt with on their Merits? (pp 7-20):

https://www.academia.edu/3981192/Treatment_of_asylum_seekers

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/18/eu-deal-turkey-migrants-refugees-q-and-a