Almeno 730 bambini tra le persone colpite, bruciate o picchiate a morte nello stato di Rakhine tra agosto e settembre
Una donna Rohingya e un bambino attraversano il campo profughi di Jamtoli in Bangladesh. Più di 640.000 Rohingya sono fuggiti dal Myanmar. Fotografia: Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Più di 6.700 musulmani Rohingya, tra cui almeno 730 bambini di età inferiore ai cinque anni, sono stati uccisi nel primo mese di una repressione iniziata ad agosto nello stato del Rakhine settentrionale del Myanmar, secondo Medici Senza Frontiere.
Si ritiene che le cifre rilasciate giovedì dall’agenzia umanitaria siano una stima prudente e superino di gran lunga il bilancio ufficiale delle vittime del Myanmar di 400.
“È probabile che il numero dei decessi sia sottostimato, poiché non abbiamo esaminato tutti gli insediamenti di rifugiati in Bangladesh e poiché i sondaggi non tengono conto delle famiglie che non sono mai riuscite a lasciare il Myanmar “, ha affermato il dottor Sidney Wong, direttore medico di MSF. .
La maggior parte delle persone uccise (69%) è stata fucilata, mentre altre sono state bruciate e picchiate a morte. “Abbiamo sentito notizie d’intere famiglie che sono morte dopo essere state rinchiuse nelle loro case, mentre venivano date alle fiamme”, ha detto Wong.
Più di 640.000 Rohingya sono fuggiti dal Rakhine da agosto. Soldati, polizia e milizie locali hanno bruciato e raso al suolo centinaia di villaggi Rohingya, accusati anche di stupri di gruppo su donne e bambini, oltre a massacrare civili indiscriminatamente.
I paesi occidentali hanno condannato la violenza come pulizia etnica, accusa che il Myanmar nega con forza. I funzionari del paese hanno attribuito la colpa ai “terroristi estremisti” appartenenti a un nuovo gruppo militante Rohingya. Non è stato possibile raggiungere immediatamente un portavoce del governo del Myanmar per un commento.
Si ritiene che alcune delle peggiori violenze siano avvenute a Tula Toli, in un villaggio nella cittadina di Maungdaw, dove i sopravvissuti affermano che i residenti sono stati radunati sulle rive del fiume e fucilati mentre cercavano di fuggire. Il Guardian ha visto i video girati dagli abitanti del villaggio che mostrano i cadaveri dei bambini portati a riva.
I sopravvissuti credono che migliaia di persone possano essere morte solo in quel villaggio.
L’alto bilancio delle vittime coincide con le segnalazioni di numerosi giornalisti e gruppi per i diritti umani.
“L’ultimo rapporto si aggiunge a un lungo elenco di resoconti strazianti che Human Rights Watch ha raccolto dai rifugiati Rohingya fuggiti dalla campagna di pulizia etnica e dai crimini contro l’umanità nello stato settentrionale di Rakhine”, ha affermato Rich Weir, ricercatore asiatico di Human Rights Watch.
“I numeri dovrebbero scuotere le coscienze della comunità internazionale e spingerla all’azione. I responsabili devono essere chiamati a rendere conto e sanzioni devono essere imposte a coloro che sono dietro queste atrocità”, ha affermato.
Myanmar e Bangladesh hanno concordato di rimandare i Rohingya nel Rakhine, in un accordo che è stato criticato dai gruppi per i diritti umani come prematuro e privo di garanzie per la minoranza perseguitata.
“Attualmente, le persone stanno ancora fuggendo dal Myanmar verso il Bangladesh e coloro che riescono ad attraversare il confine riferiscono ancora di essere stati oggetto di violenze nelle ultime settimane”, ha dichiarato Wong di MSF. “Con pochissimi gruppi di aiuto indipendenti in grado di accedere al distretto di Maungdaw nel Rakhine, temiamo per il destino dei Rohingya che sono ancora lì”.
Il Myanmar insiste sul fatto che i resoconti di omicidi di massa e stupri sono invenzioni inventate dalle centinaia di migliaia di Rohingya che ora vivono in squallidi campi profughi in Bangladesh.
Due giornalisti di Reuters che indagavano sugli eventi sono stati arrestati questa settimana . Wa Lone e Kyaw Soe Oo sono stati arrestati mentre trasportavano mappe e documenti relativi alla regione, dopo aver incontrato gli agenti di polizia a cena nella capitale commerciale del Myanmar, Yangon.
L’ambasciata degli Stati Uniti ha definito le detenzioni “altamente irregolari”. L’esercito del Myanmar ha sporto denuncia contro i giornalisti ai sensi della legge sui segreti ufficiali, che prevede una pena detentiva massima di 14 anni.
Un funzionario del Bangladesh afferma che i potenziali rimpatriati temono per la loro sicurezza nello stato di Rakhine
Rifugiati Rohingya nel campo profughi di Nayapara a Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Fotografia: Allison Joyce/Getty Images
Un secondo tentativo di rimpatriare le migliaia di musulmani Rohingya fuggiti dal Myanmar in Bangladesh è fallito dopo che le autorità non sono riuscite a convincere i rifugiati che sarebbe stato sicuro tornare.
Il governo del Myanmar aveva approvato il rientro nel Paese di oltre 3.000 Rohingya a partire da giovedì ma, come durante il primo tentativo di rimpatrio a novembre, nessun rifugiato ha accettato di salire volontariamente sugli autobus diretti in Myanmar.
Un funzionario del governo del Bangladesh ha confermato che quattro famiglie, o circa 18 persone, del campo 26 di Shalbagan a Cox’s Bazar avevano inizialmente espresso interesse a tornare indietro. Erano quasi saliti a bordo di un veicolo per attraversare il confine, ma sono stati dissuasi dai compagni rifugiati che hanno detto loro che non sarebbero stati in grado di tornare ai loro villaggi di origine o di avere un percorso verso la cittadinanza.
Una dichiarazione dell’agenzia delle Nazioni Unite per i rifugiati afferma: “Finora nessuno degli intervistati ha indicato la volontà di rimpatriare in questo momento. L’UNHCR continuerà ad assistere il governo del Bangladesh in questo processo per garantire che tutte le persone autorizzate al rimpatrio siano intervistate”.
Mohammad Abul Kalam, commissario per il soccorso e il rimpatrio dei rifugiati del Bangladesh, ha dichiarato giovedì che gli sforzi continueranno nei prossimi giorni. L’UNHCR ha intervistato solo un terzo dei 3.450 rifugiati, o 1.037 famiglie, nell’ambito delle indagini sulle intenzioni dell’agenzia, ha affermato.
“Nessuno dei rifugiati elencati si è presentato esprimendo la volontà di tornare in Myanmar oggi”, ha affermato. “La maggior parte dei Rohingya che hanno preso parte al sondaggio sulle intenzioni ha affermato molto chiaramente di avere molta paura della propria incolumità fisica nel Rakhine e questo è il motivo principale per cui non vogliono andare in Myanmar adesso”.
Kalam ha espresso disappunto per il fatto che il rimpatrio si sia nuovamente bloccato e ha affermato che il Bangladesh ha “fatto del proprio meglio per aiutare i Rohingya a tornare alle loro case”. Ha detto che ora spetta alle autorità del Myanmar affrontare le questioni dei Rohingya “sinceramente e in modo convincente”.
Secondo quelli nei campi, circa 20 rifugiati Rohingya che vivono nel campo di Kutupalong a Cox’s Bazar hanno attraversato di propria iniziativa il confine con il Myanmar all’inizio di questo mese e sono finiti nei campi di transito nel Rakhine.
“Quelle quattro o cinque famiglie sono scomparse dal campo di notte”, ha detto Jafor Alom, un altro residente del campo. “Al mattino i vicini li hanno trovati dispersi. Giorni dopo, attraverso alcune fonti, è venuto alla luce che si trovavano in un campo di transito a Rakhine. Hanno anche detto che non sapevano se o quando avrebbero potuto tornare ai loro villaggi ed erano preoccupati per questo”.
I falliti sforzi di rimpatrio arrivano quando un rapporto delle Nazioni Unite ha rivelato fino a che punto l’esercito birmano, noto come Tatmadaw, ha usato sistematicamente la violenza sessuale, compreso lo stupro di gruppo di uomini e donne, come parte di una strategia per intimidire i Rohingya durante “operazioni di sgombero”. ” nel 2016 e nel 2017. Sono state queste repressioni che hanno accelerato l’esodo di oltre 700.000 Rohingya verso il Bangladesh, dove vivono ancora in squallidi campi.
La missione di accertamento dei fatti delle Nazioni Unite ha concluso che il Tatmadaw ha utilizzato la violenza sessuale come “parte di una strategia deliberata e ben pianificata per intimidire, terrorizzare e punire una popolazione civile”.
La continua mancanza di responsabilità per questi crimini, vissuti o testimoniati da centinaia di migliaia di rifugiati che vivevano a Cox’s Bazar, è stata citata da molti di quelli nei campi come uno dei motivi principali per cui si sono rifiutati di tornare in Myanmar.
“Il nostro villaggio è stato bruciato dai militari e dai moghs [i buddisti del Rakhine] e abbiamo assistito allo stupro di molte ragazze e donne”, ha detto una donna che figurava nell’elenco dei 3.450 rifugiati approvati per il rimpatrio. “Nessuno di quei criminali è stato assicurato alla giustizia, quindi come possiamo sentirci sicuri di tornare alle nostre case?”
I falliti tentativi di rimpatrio di questa settimana coincidono con il secondo anniversario della repressione del 2017 in Rakhine. Con poche prospettive che tornino in Myanmar, i Rohingya “si sentono come se fossero in un limbo senza fine in vista”, ha detto Elizabeth Hallinan, responsabile dell’advocacy di Oxfam per la sua risposta ai Rohingya. “Sono vivi, ma semplicemente sopravvivono.”
Un alto funzionario per i diritti umani denuncia “un’operazione brutale” contro la minoranza musulmana nello stato di Rakhine
Il modo in cui il Myanmar tratta la sua minoranza musulmana Rohingya sembra essere un “esempio da manuale” di pulizia etnica, ha detto il massimo funzionario delle Nazioni Unite per i diritti umani.
In un discorso al consiglio dei diritti umani delle Nazioni Unite a Ginevra, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein ha denunciato la “brutale operazione di sicurezza” contro i Rohingya nello stato di Rakhine, che ha definito “chiaramente sproporzionata” rispetto agli attacchi dei ribelli compiuti il mese scorso.
Più di 310.000 persone sono fuggite in Bangladesh nelle ultime settimane, con altre intrappolate al confine, tra segnalazioni d’incendi di villaggi e uccisioni extragiudiziali.
“Chiedo al governo di porre fine alla sua attuale crudele operazione militare, assumendo la responsabilità di tutte le violazioni che si sono verificate, e d’invertire il modello di grave e diffusa discriminazione contro la popolazione Rohingya”, ha detto Hussein. “La situazione sembra un esempio da manuale di pulizia etnica”.
Con l’aumento della pressione internazionale lunedì, il ministero degli affari esteri del paese – guidato dalla leader de facto del paese, Aung San Suu Kyi – ha dichiarato di condividere le preoccupazioni globali per lo sfollamento e la sofferenza di “tutte le comunità” nelle ultime violenze.
La dichiarazione non ha menzionato i Rohingya , che non sono un gruppo etnico riconosciuto in Myanmar, ma ha elencato altre comunità colpite nello stato di Rakhine, compresi altri gruppi musulmani, il cui destino è stato “tristemente trascurato dal mondo”.
Ha aggiunto che le forze di sicurezza erano state istruite “a esercitare tutta la dovuta moderazione e ad adottare tutte le misure per evitare danni collaterali e danni a civili innocenti”.
Le violazioni dei diritti umani e altri crimini sarebbero affrontati “in conformità con le rigide norme di giustizia”, ha affermato.
L’ultima repressione contro la minoranza musulmana è scattata il 25 agosto quando un gruppo di ribelli Rohingya ha attaccato più di due dozzine di siti di sicurezza e ucciso 12 persone.
Gruppi di milizie, forze di sicurezza locali e l’esercito birmano hanno risposto con “operazioni di sgombero” che hanno costretto i rifugiati in Bangladesh e lasciato altre decine di migliaia di sfollati all’interno dello stato. Il ministero degli Esteri ha affermato che gli attacchi sono stati deliberatamente programmati per sabotare il rilascio di un rapporto dell’ex segretario generale delle Nazioni Unite Kofi Annan che consiglia sui modi per superare la tensione decennale tra i Rohingya e i leader del Myanmar.
Il rapporto di Annan, che su richiesta di Aung San Suu Kyi non nominava nemmeno i Rohingya, raccomandava al governo d’iniziare a revocare le restrizioni di lunga data sulla capacità della comunità di partecipare alla vita politica, muoversi liberamente e ottenere la cittadinanza.
Domenica scorsa, il ministro degli Esteri del Bangladesh ha accusato il governo del Myanmar di aver commesso un genocidio contro i Rohingya. Gli analisti hanno affermato che la lingua di AH Mahmood Ali era la più forte mai vista dal vicino del Myanmar e rifletteva un’intensa frustrazione a Dhaka per il continuo afflusso di rifugiati Rohingya.
Durante il fine settimana, il Dalai Lama è diventato l’ultimo premio Nobel per la pace a parlare della crisi, dicendo alle forze birmane coinvolte negli attacchi alla minoranza etnica musulmana di “ricordarsi di Buddha”.
Ali ha detto domenica ai diplomatici che fonti non ufficiali avevano stimato a circa 3.000 il bilancio delle vittime dei Rohingya a causa degli ultimi disordini nel Rakhine.
“La comunità internazionale sta dicendo che è un genocidio. Diciamo anche che è un genocidio”, ha detto Ali ai giornalisti a Dhaka. Ha detto che l’afflusso di rifugiati nell’ultimo mese ha portato il numero totale di Rohingya in Bangladesh a più di 700.000. “Adesso è un problema nazionale”.
Ali ha detto che circa 10.000 case sono state bruciate nello stato di Rakhine, una cifra che non può essere verificata poiché il Myanmar ha limitato l’accesso indipendente allo stato.
A Washington, lunedì l’amministrazione di Donald Trump ha rotto il silenzio sulla crisi, ma la portavoce della Casa Bianca Sarah Huckabee Sanders non ha menzionato i Rohingya per nome e sembrava incolpare la violenza di entrambe le parti.
Sanders ha dichiarato: “Gli Stati Uniti sono profondamente turbati dalla crisi in corso in Birmania, dove almeno 300.000 persone sono fuggite dalle loro case ha seguito degli attacchi ai posti di sicurezza birmani il 25 agosto. Ribadiamo la nostra condanna di quegli attacchi e delle conseguenti violenze”.
Decine di rifugiati in Bangladesh hanno reso conto d’incendi dolosi da parte delle forze di sicurezza birmane. Domenica Human Rights Watch ha dichiarato che l’analisi satellitare ha mostrato prove di danni da incendio nelle aree urbane popolate da Rohingya così come nei villaggi isolati.
Il Myanmar afferma che sta prendendo di mira ribelli armati, compresi i combattenti dell’Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), il gruppo che ha rivendicato la responsabilità degli attacchi di agosto e che, secondo quanto riferito, controlla piccole aree del Rakhine.
Arsa, che è stata accusata di aver compiuto attacchi contro civili buddisti e indù, domenica ha chiesto una “pausa umanitaria” di un mese per far fronte alla crisi dei rifugiati. La tregua è stata annullata dalle autorità del Myanmar, che hanno affermato di non aver negoziato con i “terroristi”.
L’Organizzazione internazionale per le migrazioni ha stimato che circa 313.000 Rohingya siano entrati in Bangladesh entro lunedì, osservando che l’afflusso sembra rallentare. Molti nuovi arrivati erano in movimento all’interno del Bangladesh e non potevano essere contati, ha detto.
I Rohingya sono stati sistematicamente perseguitati per decenni dal governo birmano, che, contrariamente alle prove storiche, li considera migranti illegali dal Bangladesh e limita i loro diritti di cittadinanza e l’accesso ai servizi governativi.
Le Nazioni Unite hanno descritto le precedenti operazioni di sicurezza come possibili “crimini contro l’umanità”, ma la portata delle ultime violenze – e le accuse secondo cui le forze birmane stanno minando il confine – hanno portato a ipotizzare che i militari stiano cercando di rimuovere definitivamente i Rohingya dal paese.
Venerdì il Dalai Lama ha parlato per la prima volta della crisi. “Quelle persone che stanno in qualche modo molestando alcuni musulmani, dovrebbero ricordare Buddha”, ha detto ai giornalisti. “Darebbe sicuramente aiuto a quei poveri musulmani. Quindi ancora lo sento. Quindi molto triste.
La popolazione del Myanmar è prevalentemente buddista e c’è un odio diffuso per i Rohingya. I nazionalisti buddisti, guidati da monaci tizzoni, hanno condotto una lunga campagna islamofoba chiedendo loro di essere espulsi dal paese.
Aung San Suu Kyi è stata condannata per il suo rifiuto d’intervenire a sostegno dei Rohingya.
Associated Press e Agence France-Presse hanno contribuito a questo rapporto
Muslims in Burma, most of whom are Sunni, constitute at least 4 percent of the country’s entire population, with the largest concentration in the north of Rakhine State (also known as Arakan), especially around Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Rathedaung, Akyab, and Kyauktaw.
There are a number of distinct Muslim communities in Burma, not all of which share the same cultural or ethnic background. While the country’s largest Muslim population resides in Rakhine State, it is actually made up of two distinct groups: those whose ancestors appear to be long established, going back hundreds and hundreds of years, and others whose ancestors arrived more recently during the British colonial period (from 1824 until 1948).
The majority of Muslims in Rakhine State refer to themselves as ‘Rohingya’: their language (Rohingya) is derived from the Bengali language and is similar to the Chittagonian dialect spoken in nearby Chittagong, in Bangladesh. Rohingya consider themselves to be indigenous to the region, whereas the Burmese government and Buddhist nationalists view them as descendants of people who arrived during the British colonial administration. A second group of Muslims in Rakhine State does not consider themselves as Rohingya, as they speak Rakhine which is closely related to the Burmese language, claim their ancestors have lived in the state for many centuries, and tend to share similar customs to the Rakhine Buddhists. They identify themselves as ‘Arakanese Muslims’, ‘Burmese Muslims’, or simply ‘Muslims’.
There are additionally other distinct groups of Muslim minorities throughout much of the country, and in particular in most Burmese cities or towns. Most of these disparate, though at times quite substantial, groups are the descendants of ‘migrants’ from various parts of what is now India and Bangladesh, though they may have been established for generations in the country.
Many of these latter groups of Muslims speak Burmese and/or their language of origin. Some of them, however, have gravitated to some degree into the linguistic and cultural spheres of other minorities. In Karen State, for example, many Muslims have integrated into Karen communities, speak Karen, and sometimes refer to themselves as ‘Black Karen’.
Historical context
Rohingya and most Muslims whose ancestors originate from India and Bangladesh would have been considered citizens of Burma under the 1948 Constitution and civilian administration until the military coup d’état of 1962. Their status was subsequently downgraded under the 1974 Constitution, which does not officially recognize them, and the Citizenship Act of 1982, which states that citizens must belong to one of 135 ‘national races’ as recognized under the constitution, or whose ancestors settled in the country before 1823. Given the lack of documentation to satisfy the latter requirement, the result has been a hugely discriminatory denial of citizenship for most Rohingya and many other Muslims, effectively rendering them stateless. As a result, they have faced numerous discriminatory obstacles in access to education, health, travel, many areas of employment, and even in terms of receiving permits allowing them to get married.
The cycle of violence, rebellion, and the crackdown by authorities which has marked much of Burma’s history following the end of civilian rule, as well as the particular repressive and systematic measures against Muslims – and Rohingya in particular – resulted in waves of hundreds of thousands, perhaps even over a million, fleeing to Bangladesh in the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. In 1991, for example, a crackdown on Rohingya may have resulted in as many as 250,000 refugees taking shelter in the Cox’s Bazaar district of neighboring Bangladesh. While most were subsequently repatriated to Burma, some are still in exile in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, with smaller numbers in Thailand and Malaysia. International pressure on the Burmese government to stop military action and begin a process to enable the Muslim population to return home has meant most of these have been repatriated, though some reports suggest that many returns were not voluntary. Reports from organizations such as Refugees International and Human Rights Watch indicate there were severe and systematic abuses of the refugees by camp officials, the police, and the local population.
Since 1982 and their loss of citizenship, Rohingya have been systematically persecuted and oppressed. They have been particularly targeted for atrocities committed by the Burmese army (the Tatmadaw) such as torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and punishment, extra-judicial killing and summary execution, arbitrary arrest and detention, rape, destruction of homes, forced labor, forced relocation and eviction, and confiscation of land and property.
State Peace and Development Council/State Law and Order Restoration Council (SPDC/SLORC) policies since the 1990s appear to be aimed at reducing the presence of Muslims in Rakhine State through a series of discriminatory policies: large areas of arable land are expropriated, usually without any or with inadequate compensation. These areas were either left to revert to the jungle, used for military and police camps, plantations, shrimp farms, and other economic projects controlled by military interests, or handed over as part of a massive colonization project to settle Buddhists in ‘model villages’ on lands confiscated from Rohingya in the northern part of Rakhine State. Since this colonization project is part of official government policy, the (mainly) Buddhist families in these model villages not only benefitted from ‘free’ land (about 4 acres), they also received a pair of oxen and a house – the latter sometimes constructed by Rohingya of neighboring villages through forced, unpaid labor.
The religious activities of these minorities have also been severely curtailed. Many mosques and religious schools have been demolished since the 1980s, and repairs to them are often prohibited. There have been substantiated reports of waqf land (mosque land) and Muslim cemeteries being appropriated by authorities, as well as Muslim monuments, place names, and historical sites being destroyed.
Travel restrictions were also imposed in 2001, which has increased the intensity of the breaches of human rights for Rohingya in particular. Many of the areas of northern Rakhine State where Rohingya are concentrated have been subjected to travel restrictions so that traveling from one place to another without a pass is banned. Because of the difficulty in obtaining these passes, which have to be paid for, visits to hospitals, doctors, and markets, employment opportunities, and even the ability to attend school beyond the primary level have all been drastically curtailed. This is especially true at the higher education level. As the capital, Sittwe, has the only university in Rakhine State, Rohingya students living outside the capital are effectively unable to join the university on a full-time basis because of the travel restrictions and can only study through distance education: even if, in theory, they could obtain a pass to sit their examinations in the capital, in practice they face serious difficulties in obtaining such passes.
The denial of the basic human rights of Rohingya and some other Muslims has not been limited to the actions of the army. Government policy and regulations – often associated with the discriminatory refusal to recognize them as citizens – have a knock-on effect on other rights: Rohingya do not have an automatic right to education, work, or necessary social services. Because they are considered non-citizens, even their right to marry is in fact obstructed since they must obtain a variety of authorizations before being issued a ‘marriage permit’, which may take years.
Lack of citizenship has meant that for the last couple of decades most Rohingya and many other Muslims have been excluded from a large number of employment categories: public school teachers, university lecturers, government doctors, and health personnel, and most other government employment opportunities are restricted to citizens; thus in practice Rohingya are banned from all of these jobs because of the discriminatory nature of the citizenship requirements.
Current issues
The Rohingya are considered to be one of the most persecuted minorities on the planet. Tensions between Rohingya and Buddhist Arakanese in Rakhine State have led to large-scale attacks on Rohingya. Though violence often grows from back-and-forth retaliations, it has quickly developed into a humanitarian crisis with hundreds of thousands of mostly Rohingya Muslims driven from their homes.
In May 2012, a Rakhine woman was raped and murdered; the assailants were reported to have been three Muslim men. A week later, an incensed Rakhine mob attacked a bus and beat to death 10 men perceived to be Muslim. The violence sparked a series of retaliatory attacks. According to official estimates, the attacks left 80 people dead and displaced a further 90,000, mostly Rohingya, by the end of the month. Aid workers warned of a burgeoning humanitarian crisis for Rohingya Muslims fleeing the violence. Conditions in temporary camps were described as ‘alarming’, with health experts expressing particular concern over malnutrition rates among displaced Rohingya.
The violence saw many Rohingya attempt to flee Myanmar in boats, only to be turned back by neighboring Bangladesh, where tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya already lived in official and unofficial refugee camps. In a report based on interviews with fleeing Rohingya, the UK-based Equal Rights Trust charged that the military had not only turned a blind eye to the violence against Rohingya but that it had actively participated in ‘state-sponsored violence against them
Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims were also arbitrarily jailed in 2012 after a wave of clashes with Buddhist Arakanese, with the majority of those killed and arrested being Muslim. The UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Burma, Tomas Quintana, who toured the country in October 2012, cited evidence of ‘systematic torture’ against Rohingya inmates. Other reports indicated that many Rohingya prisoners had died in detention.
The eruption of anti-Muslim violence in 2012 corresponded with the launch of a Human Rights Watch report that accused the state of colluding in a campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Rohingya Muslims. A state-backed investigation published around the same time blamed the violence on ‘contentious border issues with Bangladesh’ and fears that Bengalis – referring to Rohingyas – were planning to take over the state through overpopulation. Shortly afterward, the government reaffirmed its ‘two-child policy’ for Rohingya, further promoting a xenophobic narrative of Muslims in the country.
The violence against Rohingya spread to a number of Burma’s cities, resulting in religious segregation and increased marginalization of non-Buddhists around the country. Over 140,000 Muslims were expelled from cities in Rakhine State, while thousands more are in isolated ghetto-like camps outside Sittwe, Rakhine State’s capital. A fraction of Sittwe’s Muslims – who until the violence comprised almost half of its population – remained in Aung Mingalar, now the city’s only Muslim neighborhood, which they were not allowed to leave. Many shops and businesses belonging to Rohingya Muslims in Sittwe were destroyed or taken over by Buddhists.
Burma’s Muslim population has also been targeted in Mandalay, Burma’s second-largest city, where an estimated 200,000 Muslims reside. In July 2014, violence erupted following allegations that a Buddhist woman had been raped by two Muslim teashop owners, leading to the deaths of two men and many more being injured in apparent riots by Buddhist gangs. However, unlike previous riots that have escalated into large-scale communal violence, most Mandalay residents refused to participate and locals tried to defuse the situation. Nonetheless, the riots had a crippling impact on the economic lives of the city’s Muslims, many of whom run family shops and businesses.
Other government policies have also been a cause for concern. Muslims frequently report various problems in securing National Registration Cards (NRCs), including the requirement that Muslims provide extensive documentation regarding family lineage that is often impossible to obtain, the flat-out denial of an NRC card to Muslims, and the refusal by authorities to register Muslims as solely Bama (the majority ethnicity in Burma). Instead, they are demanded to add another nationality in their NRCs from a majority-Muslim country, such as Pakistan or Bangladesh, regardless of having no family connections with that country. In turn, this has resulted in a precarious situation of statelessness whereby a vision of a Bama-Buddhist nation is enforced, dominating all other minority groups and in which the Rohingya effectively have no place.
In April 2014, the government reneged on a promise to allow minorities the right to self-identify in the country’s first census in over 30 years. Instead, some 1 million Rohingya were told to register as ‘Bengalis’, indicating that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, or be excluded. A government scheme to grant citizenship to Rohingya Muslims has similarly demanded that they accept the government’s designated ethnic term. In early 2015, some half a million Rohingya Muslims were stripped of their temporary identification cards and remaining voting rights, spelling disaster for the largely stateless community.
Millions of ethnic and religious minority individuals were prevented from voting in the November 2015 poll, as a result of either conflict or discriminatory electoral rules. Notably, hundreds of thousands of temporary identity card holders – mostly Rohingya Muslims in western Burma, but also ethnic Indian and Chinese residents – were stripped of their voting rights due to concerns about their citizenship. This represented a complete change of policy from all previous elections, including the 1990 election won by the National League for Democracy (NLD) but later annulled by the junta. The decision was broadly viewed as an effort to placate escalating hostility towards Rohingya. By June 2015, some 100,000 were estimated to have fled the country by boat since the outbreak of communal violence in 2012, culminating in Southeast Asia’s worst refugee crisis in decades.
In Rakhine state, Rohingya Muslims live in isolated ghettos and unsanitary displacement camps, which they can only leave if they have an official permit. The community does not have access to higher education, healthcare and employment opportunities, let alone the right to practise their culture freely. The Myanmar government, which describes the minority as ‘Bengalis’, has led a systematic campaign to erase the Rohingya name and ethnic identity from the country’s history. Rohingyas are prevented from marrying, bearing children, or accessing medical care without official permission, and security forces have been implicated in mass violence against them. A report by the advocacy group Fortify Rights concluded that there was ‘strong evidence’ that genocide was taking place, calling on the UN to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate abuses.
The situation of Burma’s Rohingya continued only to deteriorate, stoked by brutal and indiscriminate military assaults that have continued since the NLD came to power. On 9 October 2016, an attack on three border posts in the Maungdaw district in northern Rakhine State left nine officers dead, setting off retaliatory military operations, a renewed state of emergency, and denial of access to journalists, monitors, and aid workers to the area. Government security forces, blaming the attacks on a Rohingya militant group, responded by conducting violent village sweeps, including the use of helicopter gunners, summarily killing, raping, and torturing civilians, and burning 430 buildings. The government said it had arrested 300 Rohingya suspects. At the end of the year, according to the UN, 130,000 men, women, and children were being denied aid, and 30,000 are likely displaced in these restricted areas.
These events were the worst since the massive 2012 violence against Rohingya, which many have called crimes against humanity that could amount to ethnic cleansing and genocide. State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi has been widely criticized for her response to these and subsequent atrocities, denying that any violations have taken place. A government commission launched towards the end of 2016 subsequently found that no human rights abuses had occurred – a conclusion that many rights activists condemned as a whitewash.
The persecution of Rohingya, while loaded with strong ethnic dimensions – community members are frequently vilified as ‘Bengalis’ – also has a religious dimension. The religious freedom of Muslims has also been targeted under the new government. Two Muslim interfaith activists, Zaw Zaw Latt and Pwint Phyu Latt, who conducted a well-publicized interfaith peace visit to the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and a humanitarian mission to Chin State, were charged in April 2016 for illegally crossing into India and associating with banned organizations. They were sentenced to two years with labor for each charge, in what many have called an intimidation tactic for their peaceful activism. In April 2017, two Islamic schools, madrassas, were closed by the authorities in Yangon’s Thaketa Township after demonstrations by Buddhist ultranationalists. In addition, since 2012, there has been a rising number of villages where locals, backed by the authorities, have erected signboards warning Muslims not to enter. At least 21 cases have been documented by local activists. Examples of messages written in these signboards include ‘Muslims are not allowed to stay overnight’, ‘Muslims are not allowed to buy or rent properties’, ‘No one is allowed to marry Muslims’, ‘If you try to feed the tiger it will eat you’ and ‘If you give any space to Kalar, your country, race, and religion will be eliminated’. The existence of these villages is a testament to the toxic effect of the prevailing narrative that depicts Muslims as a threat that needs controlling, leading to further segregation and hatred.
In 2017, the situation facing Rohingya worsened drastically, with catastrophic consequences for the community. By early September, over 70,000 Rohingya had left Burma for Bangladesh within just a few days, due to renewed violence. The government blamed the situation on the armed opposition Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which it said had killed 12 government officials in attacks on police posts on 25 August. The government also alleged that ARSA had been setting fires in Rohingya villages during the fighting. But independent human rights monitors reported that the Burmese military together with armed citizens were attacking villages across Rakhine State. Survivors described victims of all ages, including children, having been killed. Soldiers reportedly also opened fire on Rohingya as they tried to flee across the border. Protecting and assisting Rohingya civilians became difficult as the government also denied access to UN aid agencies. By the end of September 2017, nearly half a million Rohingya had fled the country and tens of thousands had been displaced inside Burma, with the UN condemning what it considered to be a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. Over 20,000 mainly ethnic Rakhine and other non-Muslims had also been displaced, due to the actions of either ARSA or the Burmese military.
By the end of September 2017, nearly half a million Rohingya had fled the country, with the UN condemning the Burmese government for its deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. With the total Rohingya population in Burma having been estimated to be approximately 1.2 million, this meant that over a third of the community had been evicted from the country in the space of little more than a month, while tens of thousands had also been displaced within the country’s borders.
In the months that followed, , the United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) reported that a total of approximately 745,000 Rohingya, including some 400,000 children, fled into the narrow strip of land around Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh. As of March 2019, over 909,000 Rohingya lived in camps in the area. They live mostly in 34 extremely crowded settlements, including the largest single site, the Kutupalong-Balukhali Expansion Site, where approximately 626,500 Rohingya refugees live. Many are extremely traumatized, having seen whole villages burned to the ground, and families forcibly separated with women and girls being subjected to gang rapes.
In addition, by the spring of 2018, there were approximately 120,000 Rohingya internally displaced, mainly restricted to crowded camps in Rakhine state. Without freedom of movement, they lack access to employment and essential services, including health care and education. The government has claimed that they are free to move around, as long as they hold a National Verification Card (NVC). These cards were introduced as part of a Citizenship Verification Programme, launched in 2014; however, they require Rohingya to self-identify as ‘Bengalis’. The government states that they are a necessary first step before applying for citizenship, promising that it can be obtained within 5 months. Most Rohingya question why they should have to go through this process when their families have lived in the country for generations and their parents held NRCs.
The destruction of villages appears to be a particularly deliberate and targeted tactic. Using satellite imagery, Human Rights Watch recorded a total of 354 villages having been burned to the ground by the end of 2017. At least 118 were either partially or completely destroyed after 5 September when the government had stated that it was ending its clearance operations. A further report in February 2018 concluded that at least 55 villages had been bulldozed. Local activists recorded mass grave sites also being destroyed in a clear effort to remove evidence of atrocities.
In March 2017, the UN Human Rights Council authorized an independent fact-finding mission to Myanmar, with a focus on the ongoing violations in Rakhine, Kachin, and Shan States. The investigation met with Myanmar resistance; Suu Kyi stated that the purpose of the mission was not ‘in keeping with what is actually happening on the ground.’ And the foreign ministry said that it would not issue any visas to mission members. Nevertheless, in September 2018, the mission issued its findings. It found patterns of gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law in Kachin, Rakhine, and Shan States, amounting to the gravest crimes under international law. The mission report calls for Myanmar military generals to be investigated for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Indeed, the mission chairperson Marzuki Darusman stated at the end of 2018 that there was an ‘ongoing genocide’ in Rakhine State. The report was met with total denials from the Myanmar authorities. Some months later, the mission members went to Cox’s Bazaar to report directly to members of the Rohingya community.
In October 2018 there were moves by the Bangladesh government to begin returning Rohingya refugees to Myanmar. A repatriation agreement between the two governments was reached in January 2018. The Myanmar authorities had apparently stated that they would be receiving 1,500 Rohingya per week, although human rights activists feared that the returnees would simply end up in camps for the displaced. When the first trucks with returnees were meant to leave in November, no Rohingya were willing to go. The UN has been highly critical of these moves, stating that it had inadequate access to areas of return, the attacks against Rohingya were still ongoing and their rights – particularly citizenship – had not been secured. At the end of February 2019, Bangladesh’s Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque announced at the UN Security Council that it would no longer allow Rohingya refugees to cross the border.
Also in February 2019, the UN launched an investigation into its own mission in Myanmar, following considerable pressure from within the organization. In particular, the investigation will focus on why the UN had been so slow in heeding the warning signs ahead of the massive outbreak of violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya community in 2017.
What do the persistent rumours about the Russian president’s health do and do not tell us about the country’s future?
A cross depicting Putin’s tomb at a checkpoint outside Dnipro, Ukraine. Photo by Jorge Silva / Reuters
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on 2 June 2022 and has been re-published in light of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 19 January, where he questioned whether Vladimir Putin was still alive.
Vladimir Putin is dying from blood cancer. Or thyroid cancer. Or maybe abdominal cancer. No, it is Parkinson’s. He has dementia. He is losing his sight. His limbs are “shaking uncontrollably”. On any given day, depending on which news outlets you believe, the Russian president is terminally ill with any number of different diseases. Or perhaps, as several British tabloids have suggested recently, he is already dead.
Citing an unnamed intelligence source at the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service MI6, the Daily Star reported on 28 May that Putin was “very ill”, possibly “already dead”, with the Kremlin using lookalikes to conceal his demise. Not to be outdone, the Sunday Mirror followed up the next day with its own wholly unverified assertions under the headline, “Vladimir Putin may already be dead with a body double taking his place, MI6 chiefs claim.”
The rumours about Putin’s decline spread so far and so fast that Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was forced to deny them during an interview with the French television channel TF1. “President Vladimir Putin makes public appearances on a daily basis,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian news agency Tass. “You can see him on TV screens, read and listen to his speeches. I don’t think that a sane person can suspect any signs of an illness or ailment in this man.”
To be clear, there is no verifiable evidence that Putin is seriously ill. Still less so that he is dead. The unnamed sources who are quoted in these articles do not offer definitive proof, perhaps unsurprisingly given the secrecy surrounding the president’s health and security. Instead, they rely largely on rumours swirling within the intelligence community and the old Soviet-era practice of Kremlinology, in which analysts scrutinize the leader’s public appearances for signs of physical decline and clues as to who might be in favour or out, in the absence of reliable information.
The most compelling reporting to date as to what, if anything, might be wrong with Putin’s health has come from the independent Russian media outlet Proekt, which used leaked travel documents to show that Putin is, at a minimum, under close medical supervision. According to an investigation published on 1 April, he has frequently been accompanied on trips to his Black Sea residence in recent years by a team of top doctors, including an oncology surgeon and two otolaryngologists, which the outlet said was consistent with treatment for thyroid cancer. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed the claims as “fabrication and untruth”.
Other purported proof of the 69-year-old’s imminent demise is circumstantial at best, relying on the subjective analysis of video footage that some observers insist shows the president attempting to conceal a tremor or grimacing in pain. A televised meeting with the defence minister Sergei Shoigu on 21 April, for instance, attracted particular scrutiny as Putin slouched in his seat and gripped the table in front of him throughout the 12-minute encounter, prompting speculation that he was trying to hide a trembling hand or the involuntary movements associated with Parkinson’s disease.
More unnamed Western intelligence sources have noted his “ashen and bloated” face during recent appearances, and his “increasingly erratic behaviour”, as signs that he is receiving steroid treatment for cancer or a degenerative neurological condition. Likewise, his decision to use a woollen blanket to cover his knees while watching the Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square on 9 May has been held up as evidence of his rapid decline. As the Sun newspaper reported, “‘Cancer-stricken’ Putin watches the military parade with BLANKET over his legs as rumours swirl around the tyrant’s health”.
Maybe it is all true, and the Russian leader is in his final days. But perhaps he is just an ageing despot with a lousy temper and a bad back, who sometimes feels the cold.
It is easy to understand why the rumours about Putin’s health generate so much coverage. They are irresistible clickbait. Who doesn’t want to read about how long his doctors have given him to live, and how this explains his obsession with his place in history and his otherwise nonsensical assault on Ukraine? The president and his propagandists also bear some responsibility for this state of affairs by placing so much emphasis on his supposed physical prowess during his early years in power, staging photographs of him riding a horse bare-chested and swimming in a Siberian lake to demonstrate his literal fitness for office, after the shuffling, frequently drunken figure of his predecessor Boris Yeltsin.
The insatiable interest in the Russian leader’s purported maladies is also surely motivated in part by a degree of wishful thinking about how his increasingly repressive rule and the devastating war in Ukraine might come to an end. Instead of a long, bloody conflict that might go on for many years, it is tempting to believe that its architect might simply disappear, leaving more reasonable minds to call back the Russian troops and end the senseless violence.
This presupposes, however, that whoever comes after Putin would be more reasonable, less paranoid about Russia’s place in the world, and remotely interested in democracy or the rule of law. But there is no reason to believe that this would be the case.
According to the Russian constitution, if Putin dies, prime minister Mikhail Mishustin should take over as acting president, followed by a new election within three months. But Mishustin is a low-profile technocrat with little previous political experience, and while it is possible that his mediocrity could be seen as a selling point by some among the regime elite, who might view him as a loyal frontman who would do as he was told (as Putin was similarly viewed by his early backers), he is unlikely to be a serious candidate.
In fact, there is every possibility that Putin’s successor will be even more autocratic than he is. Leading contenders from within his inner circle would likely include the security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev, who is a scholar Mark Galeotti has described as a “hawk’s hawk” and “the most dangerous man in Russia” for his hard-line nationalist, anti-Western views; and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), one of the successor agencies of the KGB. In other words, the death of Putin isn’t likely to solve any of the West’s problems with Russia.
Yet Putin is mortal, and while the latest rumours of his death may be greatly exaggerated, the persistent speculation about his health could become dangerous for the president if these questions linger, and he starts to be seen as yesterday’s man. Nobody wants to be the first to raise the issue in public, but if it becomes clear that Putin is ailing, his allies and enemies – and those in both camps who would like his job – will begin manoeuvring in earnest to replace him.
The Russian president has embraced the Soviet cult of fear and control. His invasion of Ukraine is a colossal gamble to secure his place in history.
When guests used to visit Vladimir Putin in his office in the Kremlin’s Senate Palace, he’d point at the bookshelves and ask them to choose a book from Joseph Stalin’s library. Half of Stalin’s books – usually marked up by the Soviet leader himself with red or green crayons – remain in Putin’s office. As one of his ministers told me, Putin would ask the visitor to open the book, and they would look together at whatever marginalia Stalin had written: sometimes it was a grim laugh: “xa-xa-xa!”; sometimes a snort of disdain: “green steam!”; at others, it was just a word: “teacher” was written in the biography of Ivan the Terrible.
Across the world today, people are asking if Putin is a new Stalin. Karl Marx joked that “history repeats itself twice, first as tragedy then as farce”. It doesn’t, but any ruler of the Russian state faces some of the same issues as earlier Romanov tsars and Communist general secretaries. Most Russian leaders have aspired to emulate the achievements of the two pre-eminent modern rulers, Peter the Great and Stalin, both revolutionary tsars, both brutal killers. One day, hopefully, Russia will be governed by someone who admires neither. Yet Putin is not Stalin. Stalin was a Marxist; Putin is a 21st-century tyrant, who, while co-opting elements of Romanov and Soviet imperialism, is a populist and nationalist, a practitioner of 21st-century identity politics who deploys both old-fashioned military heavy metal and the new hi-tech weaponry of social media.
Yet, Stalin could not be more relevant. Stalin’s influence is imprinted everywhere in the state structure of Russia; he remains omnipresent. Putin’s repression at home increasingly resembles Stalinist tyranny – in its cult of fear, rallying of patriotic displays, crushing of protests, brazen lies, and total control of media – although without the mass deportations and mass shootings. So far.
This is no surprise because the modern Russian state that Stalin forged in the early 1920s was never dismantled in the democratic turbulence of the 1990s. Despite its democratic façade, the Russian executive remained an autocracy in which presidents – similar to early tsars – chose their own successors, as both Boris Yeltsin and Putin have done. The security organization founded by Lenin, the Cheka, shaped and micromanaged by Stalin, and known by a succession of dreary acronyms – OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB, FSB – was divided by Yeltsin but never disassembled.
A former KGB lieutenant colonel, Putin is a proud Chekist. Then there is Ukraine, a country that was brutally repressed by Stalin and is now attacked by Putin. The Russian president shares a part of Stalin’s determination to liquidate the nationality and independence of Ukraine at any cost. The differences between the two are as great as the similarities. But perhaps it is the similarities that count today.
Stalin has overshadowed Putin’s life in many ways. In 1952, when Stalin had a year to live, Putin was born in Leningrad in the multi-ethnic Soviet Union sculpted by Stalin, whose achievements dominated Putin’s world. At an unbearable human cost, Stalin had mercilessly forged the USSR into an industrialized force, defeated Hitler, stormed Berlin, conquered Eastern Europe, and made Russia a nuclear superpower. The 1945 victory became the lodestar that justifies Putin’s autocracy today. Putin has praised Stalin’s achievements, pointing out that “from 1924 to 1953, the country that Stalin ruled changed from an agrarian to an industrial society”. Of the Second World War, he said, “nobody can now throw stones at those who organized and stood at the head of this victory”. He sees Stalin as a flawed titan born, like Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon, for revolution: “Stalin was a product of his time,” Putin told the sycophantic Hollywood director Oliver Stone. “English history has Cromwell… Napoleon’s almost a god in France. History is full of such characters.”
Stalin and Putin share the belief that autocracy, backed by coercion, is the best way to manage Russia. “Russians need a tsar,” the Marxist Stalin reflected. Putin agrees, embracing the panoply of tsarist magnificence and mysticism. Both were obsessed with history. Whenever Putin meets historians, he asks “how will history judge me?”. History is constantly present for both. When the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, W Averell Harriman, congratulated Stalin on taking Berlin, he replied, “Yes, but Alexander I took Paris.”
But the differences are striking too. Stalin was a Georgian, born with the surname Dzhugashvili. Putin, born in Leningrad, emphasized in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine “I’m a Russian”. Stalin was a fanatical internationalist Marxist; Putin believes in the exceptionalist “Russian world” starting with the Orthodox conversion of Vladimir the Great in 988. He despises Marxist ideology, believing the Leninist revolution shattered the Russian imperium. Eschewing Communism, he promotes Kremlin-KGB-capitalism. Stalin, who had no interest in money and only possessed a couple of uniforms (though he enjoyed the use of comfortable mansions) would be disgusted by the vulgarity of the yachts and planes of Russia’s ultra-rich.
Stalin lived for 20 years as a secret revolutionary, in and out of prisons and Siberia in senescent tsardom; Putin rose as a minor KGB operative in the monumental stagnance of Soviet bureaucracy. Stalin believed that socialism could only be delivered “through a social system of bloodletting” – in other words, murder, and terror. Stalin killed as many as 20 million innocent people; 18 million entered his gulag camps; many never returned.
Putin uses surgical if spectacular assassinations, often favoring exotic poisons. But Stalin’s achievements, he has said, “were achieved at an unacceptable price. Repressions happened. Millions of citizens suffered.” Yet Stalin was central: “Excessively demonizing Stalin,” Putin told Stone in 2017, “is a means to attack the Soviet Union and Russia.”
Although Communism is gone, Stalin’s secret police force is intact and remains central to Putin’s reign. Stalin deliberately co-opted Russian criminal culture into the Cheka, personifying this gangster-Bolshevik nexus himself. He won Lenin’s favor by organizing bank robberies with a gang of Mafiosi and psychopaths in order to fund the Party. When a fastidious Marxist complained to Lenin about Stalin’s thuggery, he replied, “He’s exactly the type we need.” Putin has a special link: his grandfather Spiridon Putin was a chef who started at the Astoria Hotel in St Petersburg, where he cooked for Rasputin, but then joined the OGPU/ NKVD “service staff” who worked at state dachas, serving Lenin and Stalin himself. As a young law student, Putin joined the KGB in 1975. During Leonid Brezhnev’s sclerotic reign (1964 to 1982), the KGB under the talented Yuri Andropov was the only organization that retained its prestige as an order of “Soviet knighthood”. In 1991 Putin was working as a KGB lieutenant colonel in Dresden, east Germany when the Soviet Union collapsed. He drove home despondent.
When Putin came to power as prime minister in December 1999, he trusted Chekists above all others, joking that “the group of FSB officers you sent to work undercover in the government has achieved the first stage of its assignment”. His long-time friend and former director of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, who now serves as Putin’s security council secretary, explained that the KGB officers “aren’t in it for the money… they’re the new nobility”. But it is a nobility with a gangster ethos: as Putin said when he attacked the Chechens, “We’ll whack them even in the outhouse.” Those who betrayed the noble order – such as Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal – would be liquidated just as Stalin assassinated Trotsky and many others. Stalin’s visitor’s book reveals he spent many hours every day with his secret police chieftains. Putin rules through a cabal of Chekists – the Siloviki power men.
Along with the KGB, the Stalinist institution that formed Putin’s world was the Soviet Union. Many Bolsheviks were Georgians, Armenians, Jews, Letts, Ukrainians, and Poles because Romanov tsars had embraced Russian nationalism and excluded the minorities who made up more than half their own population: Lenin called Russia “the prison of nations”. The overthrow of the Russian monarchy in 1917 was followed by civil war, and after 1918, Ukraine was the battlefield, enjoying a short, chaotic, and blood-spattered independence. Lenin lost Poland, Finland, and the Baltics but reconquered the most essential territory: Ukraine.
Lenin and Stalin, his commissar for nationalities, debated how to structure their new state to “liberate” the Ukrainians and other nations, while actually reassembling the empire in the cause of Marxism to be ruled by the Kremlin. Stalin wanted to place Ukraine within a Russian federation; Lenin, denouncing “Russian chauvinism”, designed a union in which all the socialist republics, most prominently Ukraine, equaled that could secede. In fact, they could never leave.
Stalin regarded Lenin’s structure as a façade to control Ukraine but to Putin it was “separating, severing what’s historically Russian land”. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin came to power. He paid lip service to the union and, as Putin put it, “ruled in his own way” – a totalitarian dictatorship – but Stalin was determined that Ukraine must stay Soviet at any cost. Any national aspirations must be smashed.
In 1929, when Stalin launched his collectivization campaign to industrialize the Soviet Union, Ukrainian peasants and intelligentsia resisted. Stalin cracked down brutally, deporting and executing millions of Ukrainians. From 1931 to 1933 famine struck Ukraine; when his comrades reported the growing starvation Stalin called it a “fairy tale”. Fearing that, as he wrote to his lieutenant Lazar Kaganovich, “we may lose Ukraine”, he blamed Ukrainian nationalists for encouraging peasant resistance. Stalin requisitioned grain from the starving Ukrainians in a genocidal manmade famine, known as the Holodomor: nearly four million Ukrainians – one in eight – perished. Millions starved outside Ukraine too in North Caucasus and Kazakhstan. Stalin told Winston Churchill that ten million people died altogether. Ukraine, similar to the rest of the USSR, then endured the terror that killed and deported many more.
During Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, small Ukrainian fascist militias – one of them under the nationalist politician Stepan Bandera – helped the Nazis launch the Holocaust against Ukrainian Jews, before falling out with the Germans and continuing to resist Soviet reconquest for five years after 1945. Many Ukrainians also helped shelter Jews. But it is these “Nazi-Banderites” that now rule the fantasy hellscape in Putin’s warped vision.
Stalin deported the Chechens and other nationalities suspected of treason, joking he would have deported the entire Ukrainian nation if there were not so many of them. In 1946-47 another million Ukrainians died in a second famine, also ignored by Stalin. Ukraine between 1918 and 1945 was one of the most hellish places on earth, the crucible of the worst of the 20th century. It was part of what the historian Tim Snyder simply called “Bloodlands” – the area of central and eastern Europe scourged by both Hitler and Stalin.
At the end of his life, Stalin decided to award Crimea to Ukraine to celebrate the 1654 Pereyaslav Agreement – when the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, agreed to a Romanov protectorate. Such Bolshevik meddling infuriates Putin.
“The demise of the Soviet Union,” Putin said, “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”: in 1991, it enabled Ukraine to claim independence. Unlike Stalin – an expert in nationhood who recognized the existence of the Ukrainian nation but was determined to repress it – Putin claims Ukrainians are part of the Russian world and Russians and Ukrainians are “one people”. But both dictators would agree that Ukraine is essential to Russian statehood. In the tradition of Peter the Great, both Stalin and Putin consider military victory the mark of a great tsar. Putin made his presidency by an ever steeper gradient of gambles – crushing Chechens, striking Georgians, bombing Syrians. In 2014, when Ukraine leaned towards Nato and the EU, Putin annexed Crimea and launched a war in its Russian-speaking eastern provinces that consolidated the very Ukrainian nation he feared.
Stalin’s victims: builders of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, 1933. It is estimated up to 240,000 gulag inmates died working on construction of the canal. Photo by Laski Diffusion/Getty Images
On 21 February, three days before the invasion, Putin humiliated his bewildered courtiers at a televised security council that resembled one of Stalin’s plenums. Putin’s director of the foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, clearly did not know an invasion was planned. Putin, ever the Chekist, reveled in the surprise of his own secret decision-making.
Ironically, Putin’s launch of a traditional invasion of Ukraine today is a more strategically reckless act than those Stalin committed. The Georgian was a prolific killer but in diplomacy and war, he was cautious: his 1939 invasion of Finland was agreed upon with Hitler as part of a carve-up of eastern Europe, and his 1945 takeover of eastern Europe was agreed with the US and UK. He never acted on a solo whim like Putin has in Ukraine. But like Putin in Ukraine, Stalin grossly underestimated the brave patriotic ingenuity of his enemy: the Finns killed more than 100,000 Russians. And similar to Putin, Stalin cared little for conscripts’ lives; Russian armies first blundered then adapted with grinding slowness but ultimately triumphed with overwhelming force and clumsy lethality. The Finns were crushed.
In the nuclear age, Stalin was careful. In 1948, he tested the US resolve in the Berlin blockade but, faced with a defiant airlift, he retreated; in 1950, he launched the Korean War – but carefully kept his distance, using North Koreans and Chinese as proxies. Monstrously murderous as he was, I believe that in 2022, even Stalin would not have invaded Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine.
Putin is now set on hegemony over the Soviet and Romanov empires. At a dinner at his Kuntsevo dacha at the end of the Second World War, Stalin called for a map and approvingly reviewed his conquests, pointing with his pipe: “Let’s see what we’ve got then,” he told his henchmen. “In the north, everything’s all right; Finland wronged us so we moved the frontier back; Baltic states which were Russian territory in old times are ours again; all the Belorussians are ours now; Ukrainians too; and the Moldavians are back with us too. So to the west, everything’s all right.” If he wins in Ukraine, Putin might have a similar conversation with Patrushev and his defense minister Sergei Shoigu.
Both dictators were spoiled by victory; neither was mad but the conviction of infallibility is a dangerous pathology. At 69, Putin is the same age as Stalin when he blockaded Berlin. It is hard to imagine anyone could be more isolated than the old Stalin, who for years kept his circle to around ten henchmen, for whom he hosted soused dinners at Kuntsevo as he planned an anti-Jewish purge to liquidate any final threats.
Yet, bizarrely, in an era when information is freely available on the internet, Putin is just as isolated. After 20 successful years of dictatorship, sequestered at his Novo-Ogaryovo mansion, terrified of Covid, distanced from once-trusted barons, and deluded by a warped fetishistic nationalistic fixation on Ukraine, Putin has fatally misread the passionate patriotism and courageous resistance of the Ukrainians.
Yet at home, modern young Russians, long accustomed to international travel and social media, are less tolerant of irredentist imperialism: bravely they are protesting; thousands have been arrested; even the elite – ex-ministers, professors, music artists, daughters of oligarchs, even FSB agents – have denounced the war. Tens of thousands of Russians have rushed into exile. It may be that many – missing Soviet power and prestige – support him, wearing the “Z” marking of the Russian troops, and denouncing traitors. But it looks as if Putin has now switched from authoritarian rule to totalitarian oppression. Stalinist trials, camps, and executions may well follow: after all, Stalin is in the bloodstream of the Russian body politic – and Putin himself.
Putin’s decision is rational – within his own distorted worldview – but it’s a colossal gamble to secure his legacy, change the course of history and restore a Russian empire in this new hi-tech interconnected world. As this atrocious war and Western sanctions corrode Russian society, Stalinist terror will become essential to Putin’s hold on power. If Putin loses he may be deposed by his own courtiers – tsars and general secretaries are usually destroyed by palace coups, not protests – but he could also survive, as Saddam Hussein did after two defeats. If Putin wins, he joins Peter the Great and Stalin in the histories. “Victors,” said Stalin, “are never tried.”
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s books include “Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar” and “Catherine the Great and Potemkin” (both Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Germany’s baffling reluctance to authorize the transfer of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine has highlighted Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s confusion over what is at stake in this war, but also Ukraine’s dependence on this sort of decision-making. This has been a difficult couple of weeks for Ukraine, with many civilian deaths and its hold on Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk, weakening. President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that only with a major package of support can Russian forces, apparently indifferent to casualties, be overcome as they seek to consolidate their occupation of Ukrainian territory.
The tank issue dominated reporting of the Ukraine Contact Group’s meeting at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where 50 countries, including all 30 members of Nato, met to discuss future levels of support for Ukraine. Lloyd Austin, the US secretary of defence, urged the members to “dig deeper” and, leaving aside the tank issue, by and large, they did.
The package of support measures announced is impressive. The US package, worth some $2.5bn, included 59 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 90 Stryker Armoured Personnel Carriers, air defence systems, and tens of thousands of rockets and artillery rounds. On 19 January, nine of Ukraine’s more robust supporters, including the UK, announced a raft of new measures with lots of ammunition, training, and anti-aircraft guns, as well as 600 Brimstone missiles from the UK, 19 French-made Caesar howitzers from Denmark, and Sweden’s Archer artillery system. The Poles are waiting for German permission before donating a company of Leopard 2 tanks with 1,000 pieces of ammunition. The statement from the nine explained: “We recognize that equipping Ukraine to push Russia out of its territory is as important as equipping them to defend what they already have. Together, we will continue supporting Ukraine to move from resisting to expelling Russian forces from Ukrainian soil. By bringing together Allies and partners, we are ensuring the surge of global military support is as strategic and coordinated as possible. The new level of required combat power is only achieved by combinations of main battle tank squadrons, beneath air and missile defence, operating alongside divisional artillery groups, and further deep precision fires enabling targeting of Russian logistics and command nodes in occupied territory.”
Meanwhile, known support from other countries for Russia amounts to Shahed loitering munitions and the Mohajer-6 drones from Iran, and tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and trucks from Belarus. So Russia remains largely dependent upon its own defense industry to make up the losses of the past year and equip the new units being formed from mobilized troops, while Ukraine can look forward to a boost from fresh supplies of better equipment.
Russia’s rhetoric
While the official Russian line is insouciant, insisting that this new weaponry will make little difference, there are also signs of anxiety. One reason for this is that it represents the complete failure of Moscow’s efforts to coerce and cajole Western (and especially European) countries into abandoning their support, or at least a hope that they would tire of the war and forget the moral and geopolitical imperatives that led them to commit to Ukraine.
The increasingly erratic former president Dmitry Medvedev has warned that the “defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear war”. This reveals not so much a new position – he has said similar things many times before – but that a possible Russian defeat is being contemplated. The thought was echoed in a sermon by Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who was praying to “the Lord that he bring the madmen to reason and help them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world”. Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, pulled together all the clichés after the report that the US would send Bradley fighting vehicles to Ukraine, observing that: “It is finally becoming clear to the whole international community that in 2014 the US unleashed a real proxy war against Russia by supporting Nazi criminals in Kyiv. Any talk about a ‘defensive nature’ of weapons supplied to Ukraine has long become absurd.
“Nobody should still have doubts about who bears responsibility for prolonging this conflict. All the actions by the administration indicate a lack of any desire for a political settlement.… All this means that Washington is committed to fighting with us ‘to the last Ukrainian’, while the destiny of the people of Ukraine means nothing to the US.”
Speaking to journalists in Moscow, Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, observed that the US had assembled a coalition that used Ukraine as a proxy. He compared this effort against Russia with Hitler’s against the Jews. They are “waging war against our country with the same task: the ‘final solution’ of the Russian question”, he said, adding that “they clearly say Russia must suffer a strategic defeat”. This comparison is as odious as it is ludicrous. Russia is not the victim of this war.
This rhetoric should leave ordinary Russians perplexed about the future. It hints that defeat is on the cards, and warns that it might be necessary to blow up the world while promising a never-ending struggle with Nato, an alliance of states self-evidently far stronger in the aggregate, which, if it really did want to destroy Russia, would have the capacity to do so.
Nor is the rhetoric consistent. Moscow appears unsure of who is the puppet and puppeteer. Is Kyiv playing Western states as unwitting saps, getting them to neglect their economic interests in favor of a disgraceful, Russophobic cause, or has Ukraine been so beguiled by promises of membership of the European Union or even Nato that it is prepared to sacrifice lives and infrastructure to help the US and its allies subvert and weaken Russia? For the moment Nato takes precedence in the Kremlin’s demonology. Perhaps it is more credible to be struggling against a mighty alliance than against a supposedly artificial neighboring state with an illegitimate government.
Much of this can be dismissed as noise, possibly relevant to reassuring the Russian people that the sacrifices now being asked of them are worthwhile and that the consequences of abandoning the war would be much worse. What it does not do is make any difference to Western governments and their policies. They face constraints, but these are more of capacity and caution than any caused by the impact of Moscow’s torrent of fake news.
If Russia wanted to cause splits in the Western alliance and encourage disagreements with Kyiv it is going the wrong way about it. One reason why even the more lukewarm members of Nato have felt that they have no choice but to back Ukraine is that Putin has offered nothing to suggest that he is interested in a diplomatic solution to the conflict except on his own maximalist and predatory terms. Yet a combination of strong hints from Putin of concessions to come and a balance of military power tilting in Russia’s favor could lead to some awkward conversations between Ukraine and its main sponsors. This is a scenario that bothers many in Kyiv, but it has yet to transpire because Moscow shows no interest in compromise and there is still confidence in Ukraine’s military prowess. Nonetheless, it points to an important dynamic in this conflict that could yet become important.
Proxy wars
With a less absurd framing, Lavrov’s reference to a “proxy war” might have been one way to encourage a wedge between Ukraine and its supporters. The term is heard quite frequently in Western discussions of the war. It is not a new idea and has been employed regularly in recent years. Unfortunately for those who like their strategic concepts to be as precise as the best modern weaponry, “proxy wars” lack an agreed meaning and is used in different ways.
The basic idea is that you get someone else to do your fighting for you. The term has been most used in recent times in conflicts in which the US and its allies were reluctant to commit ground forces to a conflict, for fear of casualties turning public opinion against the commitment. The formula, therefore, was to provide air power and perhaps some other specialist capabilities, while indigenous forces provided the infantry. One example came in the early stages of the Afghanistan war in 2001 when the Northern Alliance was already fighting the Taliban, and the US was able to provide it with a boost. Another was the battle for Mosul against Isis in which most of the work on the ground was conducted by Kurds and the Iraqi army while the US and allies provided air support.
The US was in command of these operations, managing the key intelligence and communications systems and controlling the air assets. No objectives were going to be pursued that had not been approved by Washington. Hence the idea that the indigenous forces were “proxies” for the Americans. But the term was misleading because the indigenous forces always had their own objectives and were quite capable of hanging back when they felt they were being used unnecessarily. And in the end, it would be their war aims that mattered most: armies are better placed than air forces to influence local political developments, and if they are on home ground they expect to stay around long after their outside partners have left.
This highlighted the problem with the proxy concept: it implies a simple hierarchy and so misses the elements of bargaining that are evident in all war-time coalitions. The challenge facing the different parties is always to get their core interests into alignment.
In the case of Ukraine, there is no military coalition. The Ukrainian government sets the objectives and Ukrainian commanders are in charge of the operations. So if this is a proxy war it must be an extreme case because it assumes that somehow Ukraine, despite taking all the pain and claiming all the gain, is somehow under another country’s control.
One difficulty now is that the idea that proxy wars are good things for the US, precisely because somebody else does the fighting, is so ingrained that the term has been embraced by some former US officials, although not by President Joe Biden. Thus the former supreme allied commander of Nato General Philip Breedlove stated in an interview last April: “I think we are in a proxy war with Russia. We are using the Ukrainians as our proxy forces.” The former CIA director Leon Panetta declared, when arguing that as much military aid as possible should be given to Ukraine: “We are engaged in a conflict here. It’s a proxy war with Russia, whether we say so or not.” All of these statements have been seized upon by critics of the war in the West as revealing the true intentions of the West.
Blaming Nato
For the critics, who rarely go so far as to endorse the Russian invasion, the best course for the West is to work to bring the war to a quick conclusion through a negotiated peace. Instead, the Ukrainian war machine is being fed. Kyiv is encouraged to keep fighting, despite the high costs and possible hopelessness of its struggle given Russia’s immense resources and firepower. A soft version of this argument explains this decision as naivety as if a natural desire to support the underdog led to a suspension of strategic judgment. It would have been better if Western countries had confined themselves to economic sanctions and strong words.
In the hard version, which is close to the more alarmist rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin, this is not naivety but a conscious strategic judgment. Here we get to the question of proxy wars. The allegation is that the West’s aim is to reduce the long-term challenge Russia is able to pose to Nato by maximizing its losses in men and equipment. If pushed hard enough the Russian Federation might even break up as the Soviet Union did just over 30 years ago and a great power threat would be removed forever. In this reading, Ukraine has been exploited to change the geopolitical landscape. This fits naturally with the familiar accusation that “Nato is fighting to the last Ukrainian”, which accepts that Ukrainians are the victims in this war, but of Nato as much as Russia.
Yet despite the assumption in this critique that Nato’s interests in this war are offensive, in practice they are defensive. It has an interest in an act of blatant aggression being thwarted. If Ukraine had been occupied and Russian forces moved to its borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania this would have led to continual and dangerous tension, especially if these countries were acting as sanctuaries for Ukrainians engaged in irregular warfare against the occupiers. Alternatively, a ceasefire line, with some of Ukraine occupied while the rest remained free would also have been a recipe for continued instability. To sustain any sort of deterrence the West would have had to boost its defense spending (the first reaction to the Russian invasion last February) while working out how to support Ukraine’s resistance to the occupation over the long term.
The most serious objection to this critique is that it denies Ukraine agency, which is the basic problem with all talk of a “proxy war”. It suggests that the Ukrainians are only fighting because Nato put them up to it rather than because of the more obvious reason that they have been subjected to a vicious invasion, with those in occupied territories treated brutally. Ukraine has set its war aims as getting Russians out of its country but not as destroying Russia as a great power.
It is the case that the outcome of this war will leave Russia much diminished. Its economy has taken a downward turn, and it has lost markets for its energy exports even as prices start to revert back to pre-war levels. Its armed forces have suffered heavy losses. Although Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, has been announcing ambitious plans for the military’s future expansion and reorganization it is hard to see that much can be achieved with a weakened economy for some time – perhaps a decade. Even if Moscow clings to its aggressive stance Nato countries will have time to strengthen their forces and replenish their depleted arsenals.
Russia has been severely weakened by this war and that potentially helps the West. This is the respect in which Western supporters of the war have been happy to talk of this being a proxy war. This was explained clearly by Hal Brands in May: “The war in Ukraine isn’t just a conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently declared. It is a ‘proxy war’ in which the world’s most powerful military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is using Ukraine as a battering ram against the Russian state.
“Lavrov is one of the most reliable mouthpieces for President Vladimir Putin’s baseless propaganda, but in this case, he’s not wrong. Russia is the target of one of the most ruthlessly effective proxy wars in modern history. And the less US officials say about it, the better.
“Proxy wars are longstanding tools of great-power rivalry because they allow one side to bleed the other without a direct clash of arms. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union bled the US by supporting communist proxies in Korea and Vietnam.”
The same thought might be behind Austin’s suggestion last April that the US wants “Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine”.
But this is not why Western countries came to Ukraine’s aid and will not be the measure of their success, which is getting Russian forces out of Ukraine. Nobody suggests that Ukraine will be encouraged to carry on fighting once this has happened just to weaken Russia more. Clearly, the effect of the war on Russia’s ability to do more mischief to neighboring countries is a bonus for Nato but that is not why the war is being fought. That muddles cause and effect. The impact on Russia is a measure of Moscow’s folly and not Nato’s intent. If it wanted to stay strong it should not have embarked on this reckless war.
Furthermore, beyond welcoming a Russia that is less able to throw its weight around and bully others, few in the West relish the prospect of Russia falling apart, for that would simply unleash yet more unruly forces. Again, it is possible that there might be instability in Russia after this war, but that will not be because the US and its allies have willed it but because Putin set events in motion that he was unable to control.
Ukraine and its suppliers
There is another use of the proxy war concept that is more neutral. It is evident that Ukraine is only able to sustain its military effort and have any prospect of victory because of the West’s support. In practice, this gives the US, which is by far the most important supplier, important leverage over Ukraine’s war aims and how they are pursued. From this comes an argument, often heard in Washington, that this should be more of a proxy war, in that Washington must ensure that its interests are fully taken into account by Kyiv, and in particular the need to avoid a nuclear war and ensure that they do not empty their own weapons inventories to the point where they cannot defend security interests away from Europe, to consideration of post-war relations with Russia.
These critics warn that Washington has been unwise to allow Kyiv to set the alliance’s war aims, for these may be unrealistic, and to play down the possibilities of a serious negotiation and the likelihood that at some point to end the war some Ukrainian territory might have to be conceded. They worry, for example, that a Ukrainian move to try to take Crimea might be the one that could lead to a Russian nuclear response. From this perspective, it is the US and its allies that have become the proxies, drawn further into Ukraine’s fight than is really wise. To redress the balance they must be more prepared to use their leverage to either rein Ukraine in or push it toward negotiations.
From this perspective, proxy war is not an accusation or an allegation but a description of a relationship that could become difficult and unbalanced at some point. The term is still unhelpful but there is a real issue here. There are great commonalities of interest between Ukraine and its suppliers but they are not complete. This was evident early on in the war when the Biden administration rejected Kyiv’s calls for a no-fly zone to protect Ukraine’s cities against air raids, as this would have led to direct confrontations between Nato and Russian forces, or the reluctance to supply Ukraine systems that would enable it to hit targets well into Russian territory (which of course we might have expected to be pressed on Ukraine if the real aim was to damage Russia as much as possible). As the tank issue demonstrates, this type of issue has not gone away.
The relationship between Ukraine and its supporters is not always smooth. A frustrated Kyiv regularly complains that Western dithering leaves their forces at the front suffering heavy losses because they lack vital equipment. For their part, Western governments have wanted to be sure that Ukraine is getting the equipment it truly needs and that the demands of training and maintenance are fully taken into account, as well as the wider political impact. It is not that one is the puppet and the other the puppeteer but that there is a natural back and forth, reflecting the distinctive interests and perspectives. The boundaries set on arms deliveries have been progressively eroded over time, with the early preferences for solely “defensive” capabilities giving way to an appreciation of the need to send capabilities suitable for offensives. Much of this has been the result of Western capitals coming to terms with the logic of the conflict, accepting that there was no point willing the ends of Ukrainian survival and possible victory without willing the means. So one big decision after another has been taken – in Washington from Himars in May, Harm anti-air defense missiles in July, Patriot air defenses in December, and now infantry fighting vehicles.
The scale of the supplies confirmed at the Ramstein meeting is impressive. It represents a hardening of Western attitudes. They recognize that the war is now reaching a critical moment as both sides prepare for their spring offensives and that there is no current prospect of negotiations. Ukraine is now being given a better chance of prevailing in these coming battles. But the scale of the support also adds to the stakes. Will it be possible to maintain these levels if Ukraine is unable to make another military breakthrough? Might the prospect of a prolonged stalemate encourage those in the West who worry about open-ended support for Kyiv to start to call again for negotiations?
For now, Western governments trust the Ukrainians to use their growing capabilities wisely and professionally. They can think of no other way to move the war to a satisfactory conclusion. If there are no military breakthroughs then the overall picture does not change but the way forward becomes harder to discern. Ukraine will not suddenly be abandoned but we can expect future support to be less substantial and more geared to keeping Ukraine viable and less geared to victory. The test of the new package is not whether it can add to Russian losses but whether it can make it possible for Ukraine to win.
Ardern became a national and global sensation – but her fortunes soured as the pandemic persisted.
It was as sudden as it was predictable. On Thursday morning (19 January) Jacinda Ardern announced that she was resigning as prime minister of New Zealand. She will step down on 7 February and a general election will be held in October.
Ardern made the announcement at the Labour Party’s annual caucus. “It’s time,” she said. “I’m leaving because with such a privileged role comes responsibility. The responsibility is to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple.”
Ardern was first elected in 2017 at the age of 37, becoming the youngest female head of government in the world. Her victory soon sparked “Jacinda-mania”, as her progressive ideals and star power propelled her onto the world stage. In between cover profiles in magazines, including Vogue, she received international plaudits for everything from giving birth while in the role to her compassionate handling of the March 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, in which 51 people were killed. She won re-election by an increased margin in October 2020, achieving Labour’s best result since 1946 and leading New Zealand’s first majority government since the introduction of proportional representation in 1996.
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, Ardern was initially praised for her approach: swiftly locking down the country’s borders and introducing mask and vaccine mandates. But as the pandemic dragged on, she became a lightning rod for criticism. Though the measures kept New Zealand’s death count relatively low (fewer than 2,500 deaths), the economy was hit hard and Ardern’s widespread support began to shrink. In September 2022 Ardern’s government abandoned the majority of Covid restrictions.
She ended 2022 with Labour polling at 33 per cent, which raised the spectre of defeat at the next general election. Ardern had also endured an increasing number of violent threats from those enraged by lockdown and vaccine measures. Infuriated protesters twice tried to run the prime minister’s vehicle off the road.
Yet Ardern was careful to emphasize in her resignation announcement that her decision did not rest on the surge in threats against her. “I don’t want to leave the impression that the adversity you face in politics is the reason that people exit,” she said. “Yes, it does have an impact. We are humans, after all, but that was not the basis of my decision.”
Instead, she hinted at the pragmatism that had been a defining feature of her leadership: “I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused. And that you can be your own kind of leader – one who knows when it’s time to go.”
Covid failures are keeping the Chinese leader away from Lunar New Year celebrations.
During his decade in power to date, Xi Jinping has established a ritual of conducting an annual inspection tour before the Lunar New Year to show off his credentials as a man of the people. State media outlets run adoring coverage of the Chinese leader’s visits to humble family homes to share home-cooked dumplings and marvel at how living conditions have improved under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s rule. In 2014, Xi was lauded for “braving the cold” of Inner Mongolia to learn about the lives of forestry workers, while three years later, he called in at the home of an “impoverished villager” in Hebei province to help him “sort out his household budget”. You get the idea.
The new year is once again upon us. Yet in 2023, there were no intrepid mountain ascents and not a single dumpling was consumed (on camera, at least). Instead, Xi conducted his 2023 inspection tour by video link. Perhaps he has just adapted to remote work like the rest of us and prefers the efficiency of a quick video call, but it is more likely that the shift online is due to the extraordinary spread of Covid-19 infections across China following the abrupt reversal of his zero-Covid policy last month (which I wrote about here and here).
Xi insisted during his video calls that China had made “the right choice” in introducing strict controls for most of the first three years of the pandemic, and glossed over the sudden about-face as merely a “new phase” of the country’s Covid-19 response. “Tough challenges remain,” he briefly acknowledged during his virtual tour on 18 January, “but the light of hope is right in front of us. Perseverance means victory.” (Until November 2022, he had used this same formulation to stress the importance of sticking with the zero-Covid policy.)
The true scale of China’s outbreak is hard to measure as the government has dispensed with much of its testing infrastructure, and the official statistics are not credible. According to a study by Peking University, however, an estimated 900 million people had been infected with the virus by 11 January (or 64 percent of the population). The figures are much worse for some areas, with 91 percent of people in Gansu province in the north thought to have been infected, and 84 percent of people in Yunnan in the south. The UK health data firm Airfinity estimates that as many as 36,000 people will die every day this week as Lunar New Year travel helps to spread the virus across the country, especially to rural areas where the public health system is poorly equipped to cope with surges. So perhaps it is no wonder Xi opted to stay in Beijing this year – rather than confront the consequences of his policies for himself.
Ekonomia e Japonisë, e treta më e madhe në botë, ka qëndruar në stanjacion prej vitesh
Në Japoni, shtëpitë janë si makinat.
Sapo të hyni në shtëpi, shtëpia juaj e re vlen më pak se sa keni paguar për të dhe pasi të keni mbaruar shlyerjen e hipotekës në 40 vjet, nuk vlen pothuajse asgjë.
Kjo është ekonomia e tretë më e madhe në botë. Është një vend paqësor, i begatë me jetëgjatësinë më të gjatë në botë, me shkallën më të ulët të vrasjeve, me pak konflikte politike, me një pasaportë të fuqishme dhe me Shinkansenin sublim, rrjetin më të mirë hekurudhor të shpejtësisë së lartë në botë.
Amerika dhe Evropa dikur i frikësoheshin fuqisë ekonomike japoneze, në të njëjtën mënyrë që i frikësohen fuqisë ekonomike në rritje të Kinës sot. Por Japonia që bota priste nuk arriti kurrë. Në fund të viteve 1980, japonezët ishin më të pasur se amerikanët. Tani ata fitojnë më pak se britanikët.
Për dekada, Japonia ka luftuar me një ekonomi të ngadaltë, të frenuar nga një rezistencë e thellë ndaj ndryshimit dhe një lidhje kokëfortë me të kaluarën. Tani, popullsia e saj po plaket dhe po zvogëlohet.
Japonia është bllokuar.
E ardhmja ishte këtu
Japoni për herë të parë në vitin 1993, nuk ishin rrugët e ndriçuara me neoni të Ginza-s dhe Shinjukut që më goditën – as moda e egër “Ganguro” e vajzave “Harajuku”.
Ishte sa më e pasur ndihej Japonia se kudo tjetër në Azi; sa jashtëzakonisht i pastër dhe i rregullt ishte Tokio në krahasim me çdo qytet tjetër aziatik. Hong Kongu ishte një sulm ndaj shqisave, i zhurmshëm, me erë të keqe, një qytet ekstremesh – nga pallatet e turpshme në Victoria Peak deri te dyqanet “e errët satanike” në skajin verior të Kowloon.
Në Taipei, rrugët mbusheshin me zhurmën e skuterëve me dy goditje që nxirrnin tym të ashpër që mbështillte qytetin në një batanije smogu aq të trashë sa shpesh mund të shihje mezi dy blloqe.
Nëse Hong Kongu dhe Taipei ishin adoleshentët e egër të Azisë, Japonia ishte e rritura. Po, Tokio ishte një xhungël betoni, por ishte një xhungël e bukur.
Distrikti Harajuku i Tokios ka qenë prej kohësh një magnet për nënkulturat dhe modën alternative
Përpara Pallatit Perandorak në Tokio, horizonti dominohej nga kullat prej xhami të titanëve të korporatave të vendit – Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Hitachi, Sony. Nga Nju Jorku në Sidnei, prindërit ambiciozë u luteshin pasardhësve të tyre që të “mësonin japonisht”.
Japonia kishte dalë nga shkatërrimi i Luftës së Dytë Botërore dhe kishte pushtuar prodhimin global. Paratë u derdhën përsëri në vend, duke nxitur një bum pronash ku njerëzit blinin gjithçka që mund t’u vinin në dorë, madje edhe copa pylli. Nga mesi i viteve 1980, shaka ishte se trualli i pallatit perandorak në Tokio vlente njësoj si gjithë Kalifornia. Japonezët e quajnë atë “Baburu Jidai” ose epoka e flluskave.
Më pas në 1991 flluska shpërtheu. Tregu i aksioneve të Tokios u shemb. Çmimet e pronave ranë nga një shkëmb. Ata ende nuk janë rikuperuar.
Një mik kohët e fundit po negocionte për të blerë disa hektarë pyll. Pronari donte 20 dollarë për metër katror. “I thashë që toka pyjore vlen vetëm 2 dollarë për metër katror”, tha miku im. “Por ai këmbënguli se i duheshin 20 dollarë për metër katror, sepse kjo ishte ajo që ai kishte paguar për të në vitet 1970.”
Mendoni për trenat e hijshëm të plumbave të Japonisë, ose mrekullinë “vetë-në-kohë” të Toyota-s të prodhimit në linjën e montimit – dhe mund të faleni nëse mendoni se Japonia është një fëmijë për efikasitet.
Përkundrazi, burokracia mund të jetë e frikshme, ndërkohë që shuma të mëdha parash publike shpenzohen për aktivitete me dobi të dyshimtë.
Vitin e kaluar, zbulova historinë pas mbulesave mahnitëse të pusetave në një qytet të vogël në Alpet Japoneze. Në vitin 1924, kockat e fosilizuara të një specie të lashtë elefanti u gjetën në liqenin aty pranë. Ai u bë një simbol i qytetit – dhe disa vite më parë, dikush vendosi të zëvendësonte të gjitha mbulesat e pusetave me të reja që do të kishin një imazh të elefantit të famshëm të hedhur në majë.
Kjo ka ndodhur në të gjithë Japoninë. Tani ekziston një Shoqëri japoneze për mbulesat e pusetave që pretendon se ka 6000 dizajne të ndryshme. E kuptoj pse njerëzit i duan kopertinat. Janë vepra arti. Por secili kushton deri në 900 dollarë.
Këto mbulesa mahnitëse të pusetave mund të shihen në të gjithë Japoninë
Është një e dhënë se si Japonia ka përfunduar me malin më të madh në botë të borxhit publik. Dhe fatura e balonës nuk ndihmohet nga një popullsi e plakur që nuk mund të dalë në pension për shkak të presionit mbi kujdesin shëndetësor dhe pensionet.
Por sa më gjatë që jetoni këtu, edhe pjesët zhgënjyese bëhen të njohura, madje të dashura. Ju filloni t’i vlerësoni veçoritë – si katër punonjësit e pompës së benzinës që pastrojnë të gjitha xhamat e makinës tuaj ndërsa mbushin rezervuarin dhe përkulen në unison ndërsa niseni.
Japonia ndihet ende si Japonia, dhe jo një riprodhim i Amerikës. Kjo është arsyeja pse bota është kaq e emocionuar nga të gjitha gjërat japoneze, nga bora pluhur te moda. Tokio është shtëpia e restoranteve të shkëlqyera; Studio Ghibli bën animacionin më magjepsës në botë (më falni, Disney); Sigurisht, J-pop është i tmerrshëm, por Japonia është padyshim një superfuqi e fuqisë së butë.
Të çuditshëm dhe të çuditshëm e duan atë për çuditshmërinë e tij të mrekullueshme. Por ajo gjithashtu ka admirues të së drejtës alt-e për refuzimin e imigrimit dhe ruajtjen e patriarkatit. Shpesh përshkruhet si një vend që është bërë me sukses modern pa braktisur të lashtën. Ka disa të vërteta për këtë, por unë do të argumentoja se moderne është më shumë një rimeso.
Kur Covid goditi, Japonia mbylli kufijtë e saj. Edhe banorët e përhershëm të huaj u përjashtuan nga kthimi. Pyeta ministrisë së jashtme për të pyetur pse të huajt që kishin kaluar dekada në Japoni, kishin shtëpi dhe biznese këtu, po trajtoheshin si turistë. Përgjigja ishte e prerë: “Janë të gjithë të huaj”.
Njëqind e pesëdhjetë vjet pasi u detyrua të hapte dyert e saj, Japonia është ende skeptike, madje edhe e frikësuar nga bota e jashtme.
Faktori i jashtëm
Që nga vitet 1970 ata kishin parë të rinjtë që largoheshin për punë në qytete. Nga 60 të mbetur, kishte vetëm një adoleshent dhe asnjë fëmijë.
“Kush do të kujdeset për varret tona kur të ikim?” një zotëri i moshuar u ankua. Kujdesi për shpirtrat është një biznes serioz në Japoni.
Por mua, vdekja e këtij fshati më dukej absurde. Ajo ishte e rrethuar nga pellgje orizi me kartolina dhe kodra të mbuluara me pyll të dendur. Tokio ishte më pak se dy orë me makinë larg.
Fermerët japonezë janë më të vjetërit në botë
“Ky është një vend kaq i bukur,”. “Jam i sigurt se shumë njerëz do të donin të jetonin këtu. Si do të ndiheshit nëse do të sillja familjen time për të jetuar këtu?”
Ajri në dhomë ishte i qetë. Burrat shikuan njëri-tjetrin në siklet të heshtur. Pastaj njëri pastroi fytin dhe foli me një pamje të shqetësuar në fytyrë: “Epo, do të të duhet të mësosh mënyrën tonë të jetesës. Nuk do të ishte e lehtë.”
Fshati ishte në rrugën e zhdukjes, megjithatë mendimi se do të pushtohej nga “të huajt” ishte disi më keq.
Një e treta e japonezëve janë mbi 60 vjeç, duke e bërë Japoninë shtëpinë e popullsisë më të vjetër në botë, pas Monakos së vogël. Po regjistron më pak lindje se kurrë më parë. Deri në vitin 2050, ajo mund të humbasë një të pestën e popullsisë së saj aktuale.
Megjithatë armiqësia e saj ndaj emigracionit nuk është lëkundur. Vetëm rreth 3% e popullsisë së Japonisë është e lindur jashtë vendit, krahasuar me 15% në MB. Në Evropë dhe Amerikë, lëvizjet e krahut të djathtë e tregojnë atë si një shembull të ndritshëm të pastërtisë racore dhe harmonisë sociale.
Por Japonia nuk është aq e pastër etnikisht sa mund të mendojnë ata admirues. Ka Ainu të Hokkaidos, Okinawans në jug, gjysmë milioni koreanë etnikë dhe afër një milion kinezë. Pastaj janë fëmijët japonezë me një prind të huaj.
Këta fëmijë bikulturorë njihen si “hafu” ose gjysma – një term poshtërues që është normal këtu. Ato përfshijnë të famshëm dhe ikona sportive, si ylli i tenisit Naomi Osaka. Kultura popullore i idhullon ata si “më të bukur dhe më të talentuar”. Por është një gjë të jesh idhull dhe krejt tjetër të pranohesh.
Nëse doni të shihni se çfarë ndodh me një vend që refuzon imigracionin si një zgjidhje për rënien e lindshmërisë, Japonia është një vend i mirë për të filluar.
Pagat reale nuk janë rritur këtu për 30 vjet. Të ardhurat në Korenë e Jugut dhe Tajvanin kanë kapur dhe madje kanë kaluar Japoninë.
Por ndryshimi ndihet i largët. Pjesërisht është për shkak të një hierarkie të ngurtë që përcakton se kush mban levat e pushtetit.
Të vjetrit janë ende në pushtet
“Shiko se ka diçka që duhet të kuptosh se si funksionon Japonia,” më tha një akademik i shquar. “Në 1868 Samurai dorëzuan shpatat e tyre, prenë flokët, veshin kostume perëndimore dhe marshuan në ministritë në Kasumigaseki (distrikti qeveritar i Tokios qendrore) dhe ata janë ende atje sot.”
Në 1868, nga frika e një përsëritjeje të fatit të Kinës në duart e imperialistëve perëndimorë, reformatorët përmbysën diktaturën ushtarake të Shogunatit Tokugawa dhe e vendosën Japoninë në një kurs industrializimi me shpejtësi të lartë.
Por restaurimi i Meiji, siç dihet, nuk ishte stuhi në Bastille. Ishte një puç elitar. Edhe pas një konvulsioni të dytë të vitit 1945, familjet “të mëdha” mbijetuan. Kjo klasë sunduese me shumicë dërrmuese meshkuj përkufizohet nga nacionalizmi dhe bindja se Japonia është e veçantë. Ata nuk besojnë se Japonia ishte agresori në luftë, por viktima e saj.
Ish-kryeministri i vrarë Shinzo Abe, për shembull, ishte djali i një ministri të jashtëm dhe nipi i një kryeministri tjetër, Nobusuke Kishi. Gjyshi Kishi ishte pjesëtar i juntës së kohës së luftës dhe u arrestua nga amerikanët si i dyshuar si kriminel lufte. Por ai i shpëtoi xhelatit dhe në mesin e viteve 1950 ndihmoi në themelimin e Partisë Liberal Demokratike (LDP), e cila ka qeverisur Japoninë që atëherë.
Disa njerëz bëjnë shaka se Japonia është një shtet njëpartiak. nuk është. Por është e arsyeshme të pyesim pse Japonia vazhdon të rizgjedhë një parti të drejtuar nga një elitë e drejtë, e cila dëshiron të heqë pacifizmin e imponuar nga Amerika, por nuk ka arritur të përmirësojë standardet e jetesës për 30 vjet.
Ekonomia lokale varet nga prodhimi i çimentos dhe hidrocentralet. Në një qytet të vogël takova një çift të moshuar që po shkonin drejt qendrës së votimit.
“Do të votojmë LDP-në”, tha burri. “Ne u besojmë atyre, ata do të kujdesen për ne”.
“Jam dakord me burrin tim,” tha gruaja e tij.
Çifti tregoi përtej luginës një tunel dhe urë të sapopërfunduar që ata shpresojnë se do të sjellë më shumë turistë të fundjavës nga Tokio. Por shpesh thuhet se baza mbështetëse e PLD-së është prej betoni. Kjo formë e politikës së fuçive të derrit është një nga arsyet pse pjesa më e madhe e vijës bregdetare të Japonisë është e djegur nga tetra bishtajat, lumenjtë e saj të rrethuar me beton gri. Është thelbësore të mbahet pompimi i betonit.
Sfida më e madhe ekonomike e Japonisë është popullsia e saj në plakje
Këto fortesa rurale janë vendimtare tani për shkak të demografisë. Ata duhet të kishin reduktuar pasi miliona të rinj u shpërngulën në qytete për punë. Por kjo nuk ndodhi kurrë. LDP-së e pëlqen kështu sepse do të thotë se votat e vjetra, rurale numërohen më shumë.
Ndërsa ky brez i vjetër kalon, ndryshimi është i pashmangshëm. Por nuk jam i sigurt se kjo do të thotë se Japonia do të bëhet më liberale apo e hapur.
Japonezët e rinj kanë më pak gjasa të martohen ose të kenë fëmijë. Por ata kanë gjithashtu më pak gjasa të flasin një gjuhë të huaj ose të kenë studiuar jashtë shtetit sesa prindërit ose gjyshërit e tyre. Vetëm 13% e menaxherëve japonezë janë gra, dhe më pak se një në 10 deputetë.
Kur është intervistuar guvernatorja e parë femër të Tokios, Yuriko Koike, u pyetë se si planifikonte administrata e saj të ndihmonte në adresimin e hendekut gjinor.
“Kam dy vajza që së shpejti do të mbarojnë universitetin”, i tha gazetari. “Ato janë qytetarë japonezë dygjuhësh. Çfarë do t’u thoshit atyre për t’i inkurajuar që të qëndrojnë dhe të bëjnë karrierën e tyre këtu?”
“Unë do t’u thoja atyre nëse unë mund të kem sukses këtu, po ashtu edhe ato,” tha ajo.
Po, shqetësohem për të ardhmen. Dhe e ardhmja e Japonisë do të ketë mësime për ne të tjerët. Në epokën e inteligjencës artificiale, më pak punëtorë mund të nxisnin inovacionin; Fermerët e moshuar japonezë mund të zëvendësohen nga robotë inteligjentë. Pjesë të mëdha të vendit mund të kthehen në natyrë.
A do të zbehet gradualisht Japonia në pa rëndësi, apo do të rishpik veten? Koka ime më thotë se për të përparuar sërish Japonia duhet të përqafojë ndryshimin. Por zemra më dhemb nga mendimi i humbjes së gjërave që e bëjnë atë kaq të veçantë.
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