Bosnia now: the past and the future facing each other.

On the same day that the trial of Radovan Karadzic began in the Hague, war criminal Biljana Plavsic, who succeeded Karadzic as President of Republika Srpska was released from prison, after having served seven of the eleven years to which she had been convicted by the ICTY for her role on the war in Bosnia.

These two events occurred just a few days after the failure of the Butmir talks, the latests initiative to overcome the current political situation in Bosnia, which some define as crisis, but I prefer to define as deadlock, because, unlike in a crisis, the current situation perfectly serves on of the parts involved. While the current situation doesn’t satisfy anyone, doing nothing, leaving things as they are is clearly beneficial for the leadership of the Serb entity.

Headed by Milorad Dodik, the government of the Republika Srpska is actively working towards the disintegration of Bosnia by systematically obstructing the process of decision making, proving by its behaviour that any power-sharing is worthless when the actors are not willing or at least complied to share power.

Upon her release from prison in Sweden, Bijlana Plavsic flew to Belgrade in the jet of the government of the Republika Srpska, and upon her arrival, was warmly received by Milorad Dodik. The image of this encounter are striking: the past and the future holding hands, like a mother and her son.

Both were, at a certain point, considered by the international actors involved Bosnia as moderate politicians worth backing. This tells a lot about the fallacy of the opposition between moderates and hardliners when it comes to Serb nationalism. Their moderation, Plavsic’s as well as Dodik’s, proved to be merely tactical. Through their seemingly moderate policies, when compared to those of Radovan Karadzic and his supporters, they gave a very important contribution to advance the cause of pursuing with the goal of disintegrating Bosnia and reinforcing the homogeneous ethnic composition of the serb entity.

During the war, Plavsic, aka the ‘iron lady’, was known by her extreme nationalism and her outright racism. A Professor of Biology, Plavsic had no problem in abusing the authority of science to justify her racism, by presenting ‘ethnic cleansing’ as “a perfectly natural phenomenon” and claiming that the Bosnian Muslims were “genetically deformed material”:

“That’s true [i.e. her imagination that the Bosnian Muslims were originally Serbs]. “But it was genetically deformed material that embraced Islam. And now, of course, with each successive generation this gene simply becomes concentrated. It gets worse and worse, it simply expresses itself and dictates their style of thinking and behaving, which is rooted in their genes…“

This was the ‘moderate’ politician who, after the war the international actors chose to back. And when she voluntary surrendered after being indicted by the ICTY, her ‘moderation’ seemed to be confirmed.  Thus, Plavsic had as her defense witnesses prominent figures such as Madeleine Albright and Carl Bildt, whose testimony was an important mitigating factor for the judges (here, see note 20). Plavsic went as far as showing remorse and appealing for reconciliation, and the sincerity of her words was confirmed by the statement of the witness Elie Wiesel.

In fact, by pleading guilty on the count of persecutions as a crime against humanity, she managed to obtain a bargain in which the prosecution dropped all other charges, including two counts of genocide. Her plea thus represented not a positive step towards reconciliation, but a lost opportunity to prove that a genocide was committed in Bosnia, by the Serb forces against the Muslims.

Early this year, Plavsic retracted her confession, in an interview to the Swedish Vi magazine :

“I sacrificed myself. I have done nothing wrong. I pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity so I could bargain for the other charges.”

By pleading guilty on crimes against humanity so that she could get away with genocide, Biljana Plavsic sacrificed herself for the sake of the Nation, but her sacrifice was obviously not as hard as the one she thought it was right to impose on her own co-nationals. Indeed, for the sake of ‘Greater Serbia’ considered that the dead of as much as half the total ethnic Serb population would be a worthy sacrifice:

“There are 12 million Serbs and even if six million perish on the field of battle, there will be six million to reap the fruits of the struggle“.

So, through her ’sacrifice’, not only she managed to get her sentence substantially reduced, but she also avoided a conviction of genocide that would contribute to highlight the illegitimacy of the very existence of Republika Srpska.

If we look at the concept of legitimacy as springing from the founding act of any politically organized society, what do we see? We see the need to deny genocide, because legitimacy is the glue that binds people together in a politically organized society, while genocide is the ‘original sin’ upon which Republika Srpska was built. If someone like Bijlana Plavsic, or Milorad Dodik for that matter, chose to oppose the warmongering faction led by Karadzic, it was because they understand that violence was merely an instrument among others to achieve a goal.

Until now, the only conviction on the account of genocide by the ICTY was the case of General Radislav Krstic, the commander of the Drina Corps. However, his conviction for genocide covered solely the case of the Massacre of Srebrenica. The chance to get a conviction for genocide on a wider area than Srebrenica was also missed at the trial of Momcilo Krajisnik, in which the prosecution failed to establish the Krajisnik genocidal intent ( read Bosnia’s ‘accidental’ genocide, by Edina Becirevic. Krajisnik was convicted to 27 years in prison, but acquitted of genocide, and as a result of his appeal, the sentence was reduced to 20 years, overturning the convictions in several charges.

This appeal revealed major flaws in the prosecution’s strategy and sparked the fear that similar or even greater difficulties will be faced to convict Radovan Karadzic of genocide(about this debate, read ‘What Karadzic Prossecutors learnt from Krajisnik Trial’, by Simon Jennings).

Thus, bearing in mind the failure of the International Court of Justice (about this, read ‘The ICJ and the decriminalisation of Genocide‘, by Marko Attila Hoare, and ‘Vital Genocide documents concealed‘, by Florence Hartmann), and the fact that Ratko Mladic is still at large and most likely will never be captured, the trial of Radovan Karadzic represents the last chance to establish through international law, the full extent of the genocidal character of the aggression against Bosnia-Hercegovina (about this, it’s worth reading this post by Kirk Johnson at Americans for Bosnia).

The stakes are high. The result of this trial cannot but have an important impact on the Republika Srpska. It is not at all a matter of ‘collective guilt’, since guilt is always individual, but it is a matter of political legitimacy. The political identity of the serb entity is being built now as if it was an alien land, but the past keeps coming back and the urge for justice won’t go away so easily, as the case of the Spanish Civil war highlights.

However, for something to change in the current trend of ’smooth’ disintegration, it is necessary that what is called the international community, meaning the relevant international  players in Bosnia, should make a serious reflection on what went wrong on their approach both of the conflict and of the post-conflict phase. That reflection is not at all happening and the result is clearly shown in the predictable failure of the Butmir talks.

Nonetheless, I do believe there are grounds for hope, for the simple reason that the future is not written in the stars but is rather built in the present and can always be changed. I believe real change must come from within the Bosnian society. Imposed solutions have already proved their limits, but international support for change will always play a crucial role. But for change to happen, we must stop waiting for a miracle, because time is not working on our side.

Danilo Kiš, the last Yugoslav writer.

Thanks to Richard Byrne at Balkans via Bohemia, I came to know that today we are commemorating twenty years over the death of the great Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš.

One of the things that keeps me attracted to Yugoslavia and its successor countries is the quality of writers and intellectuals, which by contrast, make the dominant narrow minded nationalism even more appalling. In Serbia and in Bosnia I was able to meet vibrant people, cultivated cosmopolitans trapped in societies dominated by parochial concepts of national interest.  Meeting such people was always produced in me a contradictory feeling of being intellectually stimulated by them and at the same time absorbing a certain sense of hopelessness, the feeling of frustration of realizing how difficult it is to promote one’s cosmopolitan perspective agains the narrow mindness of parochialism.

On his short story “A man with No Country”, published in Balkan Blues: Writing out of Yugoslavia, such feeling is, I think, clearly expressed in the final paragraph:

The great idea of the community entered drawing rooms and market-places, and under its banner rallied the wise and the stupid, noble souls and rabble, people linked by no affinity whatsoever, by no spiritual kinship, except for that banal, kitsh and dangerous theory of race and social origin.

Danilo Kiš is considered to be the last Yugoslav writer. As Richard Byrne highlights, the conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart were rooted in the paranoia and ignorance belittled by Kiš, and the cultural artifacts of that era trafficked in the banality and kitsch that he so savagely ridiculed.

This is not to say that Yugoslavia was a cosmopolitan paradise, but just to remember how its potential was destroyed. Every time I go to Belgrade, a city that I love and where I feel almost as much at home as in my own native Lisbon, I have the impression that, had the dissolution of Yugoslavia been conducted through non-violent means, Belgrade would be by now one of the great cities of Europe, probably the cultural and economic centre of South Eastern Europe. Of course, this is nothing comparing to the damage cause to a city like Sarajevo, a city where more than ten thousand people were killed, a city which had to endure the longest siege in modern History and whose identity was severely damaged.

Unfortunatelly, looking around in contemporary Europe, I see too often, at least too often for my taste, the same narrow mindness, the same ‘repli identitaire’, to use the french expression, the same kitsch that so much appalled Kiš. For that reason, I think that Danilo Kiš is mandatory reading to anyone who appreciates subtety and values an open commitment against totalitarian mentality.

Democratic Serbia defeated once again: Belgrade Pride cancelled.

The decision to call off the Belgrade Pride Parade represents a serious set-back for the liberal sector in Serbia and a significant victory for the darkest nationalist forces.

Only once has a LGTB Pride Parade been organized in Serbia, in 2001. The Milosevic regime had been overthrown some months earlier, in October 2000, and, led by Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, Serbia seemed to be experiencing, for the first time, an environment allowing the full expression of the liberal ambitions of one part of its society. The Parade was violently disrupted by extreme right youth groups, led by the clero-fascist organization Obraz. The violent attack and the failure of the state to garantee the security of the event, held only two days after Milosevic’s deportation to the Hague, revealed the height of the challenges that those committed into building a civic society in Serbia would have to face. It didn’t take long until hope in positive change started to be replaced by increasing scepticism.

For the LGTB community, the event highlighted the need to return to the semi-clandesitne status in which it had previously been living. To say semi-clandestine statues when refering to Serbia’s gays and lesbians is to mention only the small minority of gays and lesbians organized in NGO’s or informal associations. For most, being homosexual means to live in total clandestinity, hiding and denying one’s identity even from the closest friends, not to mention the family, and in the case of many men, to make a serious effort to look as macho as possible. Homophobia in Serbia is so widespread and homophobes feel so free to express their contempt towards those who don’t share their brutish way of being men that it is very frequent for heterossexual young men to be harrassed for not looking macho enough (this is not to say that all homophobes are men, but usually physical assaults are perpretrated by men). It’s also quite common to find civic-minded individuals being labeled as gay or lesbians as an attempt to discredit them, independently of their real sexual orientation.

Many people (and here I am not restricting myself to Serbia, but speaking generally) tend to dismiss the importance of Pride Parades, viewing them basically as gatherings of excentric people and even qualifying the participants as ‘freaks’ and exhibitionists. But the fact that such events get sucessfully organized all over the developed world reveals the level of adheasion towards the idea of tolerance and civic values more generally, and the fact that such events have been attracting an increasing number of participants, to the point that in some cities they are becoming valuable touristic attractions, reveals not only the level of tolerance, but above all, an important shift in mentalities in which differences no longer bother ‘normal’ people. Usually led and organized by LGTB activists as a way to claim their right to be different, the sucess of such events gives a clear signal to all homossexuals about their status in society, thus allowing them to claim also the right to indifference, meaning not only the right to be tolerated but the duty of society not to act in a discriminatory way.

Thus, Pride Parades and similar are nowadays a valuable measure of the level of autenticity of a given society towards civic values and a very important contribution to reinforce the freedom of expression of each of us, independently of our sexual orientation and of how we wish our sexual orientation to be known by others. This is a recent development, which has taken momentum in the last two decades. Since 2001, Serbia has been lagging behind, while in most european countries we have been witnessing the increasing recognition of equal rights for homossexuals.

The victory of the pro-european option in the elections in May 2008 provided a new opportunity for the civic sector to advance their causes. I had the opportunity to spend time in Belgrade last year in three different moments (February, July and September-October) and could observe how the political environment changed in a positive way once the new government was formed, but also how the reactionary nationalist forces were realigning themselves to face an unfavorable environment.

Clearly, it was in the interest of the government to project the image of positive change in Serbia. As I was told by a member of the NGO Youth Initiative for Human Rights while conducting a research on extreme right youth groups, everytime they thought of organizing any event, they had to bear in mind that there was a chance that it would be disrupted by extremists, but since the current government took office, the attitude of the authorities had changed completely, with real measures being taken to guarantee the security of such events.

The same message was given to LGTB activists, and, while homophobic incidents continued to be frequent, the approval, last March, of a law on non-discrimination which prohibited discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity gave strenght to the idea that Serbia was on the right track. Approved in face of strong opposition of the Serbian ortodox Church and other religious organizations, which unsuccessfully lobbied to have any mention to sexual orientation withdrawn, this law was crutial to meet the requirements of the European Union in order to fulfill the government goal of EU integration. This is a very relevant point. If Serbian citizens have been granted a Visa-free regime, it is, among other things, because the state committed itself to the fight against sexual discrimination. Minority rights don’t benefit only the minorities, they benefit society as a whole, including the sectors that oppose such rights.

During the last two weeks, I had been waiting with excitment for this event to happen. Everyday, Sladjana, my Serbian colleague, and I would engage in discussions about the importance of the Parade for Serbia’s european ambitions. Last week, a series of personalities had publicly given their support to the Pride Parade, and the serbian Ombudsmen declared he would be personally attending the event. While not openly supporting the Parade, the government declared, last Friday, “that state authorities should ensure the free expression of equality and diversity“, and President Boris Tadic reinforced this statement by saying that “the state will do everything to protect all its citizens regardless of their religious, sexual or political affiliation“.

Despite such statements, yesterday the government tried to relocate the Parade, due to be held today at the centre of Belgrade, to the area of Usce, on the periphery of the city, considering that it didn’t have the means to guarantee security otherwise. The organization refused this and instead preferred to cancel the Parade. Apparently, the government failed to grasp the meaning of relocating the Parade from the centre to the periphery of Belgrade. If the Parade aims to fight the marginalization to which the LGTB community is relegated, to have it on the periphery of Belgrade would completely undermine its goal.

The way the government in the end widrew its support reveals its essencial weakness and is paradigmatic of the commitment of the pro-european government towards the civic values that form the core of the european integration project.

The threat to disrupt the Pride parade had been publicly stated by the leaders of extremist groups like Obraz and ‘1389′. As one of  ‘1389′ leaders, Misa Vasic, declared to Osservatorio sui Balcani, “We all will be there, us, other patriotic movements like Obraz, the Red Star ‘Delije’, the Partizan ‘Grobari’, even the supporters of the smallest teams in the city (…) We’ll make a front of the ’sane and normal’ decided to stop the gay parade in Serbia“.  Belgrade’s walls were covered by graffittis and posters with threatening messages such as ‘cekamo vas’ (we are waiting for you).(Photo: Blic)

The extremist are not completely dumb and know, unlike the Serbian government that deterrence lies upon the credibility of the will to use force. So, to make sure the message was heard, nothing better than a ’small’ demonstration. Thus, last Thursday, a group of French supporters of the football club Toulouse were violently attacked by a group of hooligans supporters of Partizan. One of the victims, 28 year old Brice Taton, was seriously wounded and is in critical condition.

The failure of the police to garantee security in the Pride Parade would undoubtedly represent a serious blow in Serbia’s image, and it was better to recognize the state’s powerlessness upon such a threat than to allow violence to happen and people to get injured or killed. But the question is, why preventive measures were not taken?

Furthermore, why is it that a democratic government does not take measures against individuals, groups and organizations that openly threaten to use violence? B92 reports today that calls reemerge for banning extremist organizations, including by Belgrade’s mayor Dragan Djilas. But why haven’t these organizations been banned already?

If Serbia’s pro-european government is to take a meaningful lesson from this episode is that Serbia cannot progress into the european path as long it doesn’t tackle the roots of intolerance, and that means openly adressing and refuting the heavy legacy of nationalism upon which these groups build their strenght.

UPDATE: 28 year old french citizen Brice Taton died today from his injuries.

CHECHNYA: another humanitarian worker abducted and killed

Zarema Sadulayeva, an activist of the humanitarian NGO  Save the Generation, which works with chechen children victims of the war, and her husband Umar Dzhabrailov were found dead today, after having been abducted yesterday from the office of the NGO.

Human Rights Watch describes the NGO  Let’s save the generation in these terms:

“”"Save the Generation is a nongovernmental organization in Chechnya founded in 2001 that provides psychological and physical rehabilitation to disabled children, orphans, and other socially vulnerable groups. The group also works closely with UNICEF, among other groups, to provide training about landmines, and promotes protection of the rights of the disabled.“”"

Update: Owen posted on the comments a press release from the swiss-based Society for Threatened Peoples that is worth reading.

NATALIA ESTEMIROVA’s tragic death: Are we doing enough to support Human Rights defenders?

Much as I need to write and like to blog, sometimes it’s difficult to find the time and the motivation to post, especially because it is not possible to have an original perspective or a deep understanding about all issues and the internet is already full of common sense remarks about everything. But something got my attention and reminded me of the usefulness of blogs to raise awareness about issues which are important devoting our attention to.

Last Tuesday, 15 July, Natalia Estemirova was abducted in front of her home in Grozny, Chechnya. Her dead body was found a few hours later. A Human Rights activist working for the NGO Memorial, she dedicated her life to investigating and denouncing Human Rights violations in Chechnya. Her assassination follows a pattern of eliminating dissident voices in Russia, with a level of impunity so high that not even the fact that some of the victims of such policy benefited from international recognition protected them.

One year ago, I met a Russian Human Rights activist, who gave me an account of the political situation in Russia and on how it was becoming increasingly difficult for them to work, especially after the aproval of the Russian NGO Law. As I was particularly interested in the situation in Chechnya, and complained about the lack of accurate information about it, which I thought was the outcome of the option to make access to the region as difficult and risky as possible, she gave me the contact of a friend who she said could provide me with more information and possibly useful contacts. Her friend was Natalia Estemirova. I never did send her an email. I wrote one, but kept it on my drafts to send it in an appropriate moment in the future.

On the reply to my condolences, my russian friend enphasised the goal to keep working in Chechenya and with the Chechen people, but despite her determination, her tone was of deep sadness and frustration, as it is so obvious where the orders for this murder came from.

Natalia Estemirova’s tragic death should make us think whether we do enough to support people like her, who risk their lives so bravely to document and denounce Human Rights abuses. As citizens of the EU, we have the power to pressure our leaders, however, we are clearly failing to do so, and if we look at the evolution of the relationship between EU and key EU member states and Russia, it is appalling to see how the issue of Human Rights gets sidelined.

Every time something like this horrible murder happens, Russia becomes poorer, and so does the world. I’m sorry that people like myself, who are aware, do not do more to support those who take serious risks to defend Human Rights. I guess we are too caught up on our small problems or too busy enjoying our comfortable lies or complaining about meaningless things.

Note: the photo was taken at a tribute to Natalia Estemirova held in St. Petersburg on 16 July and sent to me by my russian friend.

The meaning of saudade

In just a few weeks I will be leaving Portugal and start living in Norway. This, up to a certain point, explains why I have been neglecting my blog for so long. I have been busy making arrangements, taking care of different things, but mostly it’s that I have been using the small amount of time that I have left to do things that will not be possible once I start living in Norway, namely, spending as much time as possible with friends and family and also spending as much time as possible at the beach, taking as much sun as possible before I move to a place where in winter time there are only three or four hours of sun light.

As I am getting ready to leave, I find myself being sometimes touched by this nostalgic feeling that in portuguese is called saudade. This word, we are often told, has no accurate translation in foreign languages. I really don’t know if this is so, only that in the foreign languages that I know I can’t find any appropriate equivalent.

Saudade is supposed to be something very deep and distinctively Portuguese in character, but its importance is, I always thought, greatly magnified, and that, in turn, keeps people too much attached to the past – or rather to an idealized past made only of pleasant memories- and implies a certain amount of fatalism, as if what the future might bring us could never match that past. This feeling is strongly connected with the act of leaving and is cultivated by the Portuguese as a way to keep a link to their roots, since we are traditionally a people of emigrants and travellers. It is an ambivalent feeling, both positive and negative, and it is that blend that provides its deepness and subtlety. However, as far as I perceive it, it has been too much influenced by the excessive value that is attributed to suffering, something that is culturally induced by the catholic religion, which overloads this feeling. Those who leave are supposed to be making a great sacrifice, while for me to leave means rather an opportunity to improve one’s life and expand one’s knowedge and worldview.

Until now, I could only experience the saudade felt by those who stay, and only after I leave I will really grasp what does it mean. I’m not particularly worried about that, but still, just in case, I am pre-emptively engaging in what we call portuguese ‘matar saudades’, killing this feeling, by enjoying the things  that I will have to give up when I leave, like the sun, the mild weather, the tasty food, the company of people I love, while already looking forward the new experiences that this change in my life will bring me.

With this post I am resuming my regular blogging. I want to thank my readers for the nice messages that they wrote during my absense.

Time Out

My regular readers are probably by now asking whether I forgot the password to my blog, or something like that. I have spent some time travelling and was also busy taking care of things that took most of my time and mental space, and because of that the blog has been a bit (a lot) neglected during this month.

The good thing about blogging is that there are no commitments, we write what we want when we want to, however, after a while, when we having a regular audience and people commenting, we realize the blog is not exclusively ours and we feel we need to correspond to the readers’ expectations. For a long time before I had my own blog I was commenting regularly on other people’s blogs, so I like that feeling of my blog not being totally mine anymore, but rather a space where some people feel comfortable coming to.

That works as a stimulus to write better, but sometimes it can become also perceived as a pressure to write more or to keep a regular pace. Usually I tend to write long texts, and it’s very rewarding to realize that some of the visitors actually read them all, instead of just skimming through. Time is limited for everyone and nowadays with so much information available most people lost the habit of spending more than just a few seconds in a text. Being myself a slow reader (and a slow writer), I appreciate it particularly that people come and read my posts, so I think it’s better not to write anything than to publish texts that would represent for the readers a waste of time and for me a source of embarrassment.

I intend to come back and start blogging regularly again soon, hopefully with renewed inspiration.

Italy sliding into fascism.

In a seminar that I attended last year, there was a lecture on the problem of corruption in Serbia. When we got to questions and awnsers, an Italian professor made the following comment: “Well, at least you manage to get your garbage collected”. Far from dismissing my worries about the seriousness of the problem of corruption in Serbia, this comment made me reflect on how weak is the italian state and how fragile is italian democracy.

I think the political situation in Italy is not having the attention it requires. Italy is a fascinating country, and if I had to briefly define its main features, creativity would come on top. The italian society shows an extraordinary tendency for inovation, while being able to also keep its more traditional features. This caracteristic explains why Italy is such an attractive country, having a privileged image in the imaginary of western societies as a place where tradition and modernity stand side by side. This romantic image of Italy, with its fantastic monuments, cities like Florence and Venice, fashion, Ferrari, nice food, beautiful women and handsome men makes it easier to downplay the worrying signs that are coming about the erosion of democratic values.

Politically too, Italy has been on the vanguard of inovation. It was in Italy that fascism was invented. Although Mussolini never managed to have the degree of control over society that Hitler enjoyed in Germany, his defeat did not mean the erradication of the fascist ideology. The post-war political system was caracterized by a significant degree of disfuntionality, which led to the collapse of its party sistem, under the weight of corruption and the penetration of organized crime at all levels of society. The void gave the fascist forces a golden opportunity to emerge, and, since the appearence in italian politics of of Silvio Berlusconi in 1993, the pattern of italian politics is one of polarization between the radical right (with the moderate right having practically disapeared) and the left forces, which only manage to win by forming fragile negative coalitions, but seem to be powerless to respond to the challenged posed by the populist appeal of the radical right.

This became particularly clear with the victory of  the neo-fascist polititian Gianni Alemanno, member of Alleanza Nazionale in the local elections for Rome’s city council, who vowed to expell from the city 20 000 roma immigrants. The problem of immigration is being used to exploit fear within the population and to make it less resistant to the erosion of key features of democracy. As usual, gipsies appear as a point of minor resistance, due to the prevailing prejudices among the population and their marginal existence. Blamed on the increasing levels of violence, they are now the target of extremist violence. The fact that Italy faces a serious problem with immigration is not at stake here. That problem is indeed being welcomed by extreme-right politicians whose power is built largely upon their ability to expoit fear and prejudices. Thus, it is not surprising that incidents like burning alive a homeless immigrant from India, to which my friend Max Spencer Dohner raised my attention.

From last year, the signs of how Italy is increasingly sliding into fascism are becoming more and more visible:

At the level of foreign policy, in Berlusconi fascination towards Vladimir Putin and Russia;

Internally, the recent emergency laws allowing the creation of citizen street patrols, after three episodes of rape that outraged italian society. Please note that, dramatic as these crimes are, they are not representative of a rise in crime, as it happens that the number of sexual assaults fell last year. Here, the fears associated with the crime of rape converge with xenophobia, as the alledged authors of this crime were immigrants.

The technique  is to make use of a climate of sentimentalism and tension, induced, in great extent by the media, which Berlusconi as a media tycoon and Prime-Minister has largely under his grip. The right moment is seized, thanks to the disregard for the normal legislative procedures, to which I have already pointed out in the case of Eluana Englaro, where, through an emergency decree, the government tried to defy the sovereign decision of Italy’s highest court, thus also the principle of separation between legislative, executive and judicial power.

Berlusconi’s contempt towards democratic principles is also clearly patent in the aproval of laws granting the President, leaders of the upper and lower chambers, and Prime Minister (the four highest offices of the state) immunity from investigation whilst in office, just in time to avoid investigations to his own activities.

Now, it’s the right to strike that comes under attack, with the approval draft law to restrict strikes in the transport sector.

To this we could add Berlusconi racist and sexist comments, which reveal a deep comptemp towards equality and tolerance, but are very much in accordance with his style of  (frustrated) ‘macho latino’, which makes him appealing to sectors of the italian society, still too much dominated by the tradicional patriarchical model.

The resemblances between the current political situation and that of non-democratic countries are growing. This is particularly worrying because, as I have said in the begining of this post, Italy stands out as a very innovative country in the field of politics, and it’s experiments sooner or later have an impact also on other european societies. In this sense, Italy can be seen as a ‘lab’ for political scientists and commenters in search of new and old fashion tendencies…

The question that this process raises in my mind is: in which point of decay does a political system stop being democratic?

Congratulations to Kosova on the first anniversary of its Independence !

One year ago, I had the chance to be present for the big party launched to celebrate de Declaration of Independence of Kosova! It was a great party that revealed above all a sense of relief that a day for which the people had waited for so long had

finally come. I am very glad I was there and witnessed such a happy event. From all the countries that I’ve visited, Kosova is the one that brings me warmest memories, because never elsewhere have I found a friendliest people.

One year later, I’m also very glad to see that none of the grim predictions about the consequences of the Independence materialized. State building is not an easy process, even less at a moment when the World is facing an economic crisis whose proportions are yet not clear, and many challenges lie ahead, but struggling to overcome huge obstacles is something the albanians know all about. (I’ll write another post about this, hopefully).

I’m posting two photos from my collection of children from Kosova. I’m very grateful for the generosity with which albanian parents allowed me to take their children’s photos. The pride they take on their children is simply moving.

One year of blogging at Café Turco

This month my blog is completing one year since it was launched. Time for an assessment…

This is a small blog, in one year I had just a bit more than 15 thousand visits, and, although my audience has been steadily growing, it seldom goes above 100 visits a day. I really don’t mind that at all and to make that clear to anyone passing by I have left on my side bar the number of visits. It is the fact that this is a small blog that allows me to have comments without prior moderation. This gives me a particular pleasure, since I find the interaction of readers through comments very stimulating, and I am very glad that steadily my posts started receiving more comments, sometimes simple messages of people that liked what they read, sometimes more elaborated comments, most of them relevant. The cosy environment of this blog clearly made it unattractive to hate comments, because I don’t usually get those, but when I do I erase them because I don’t like trouble makers coming here and disrupting this nice environment.

The year that is now drawing to a closure was very intense and rewarding. I travelled a lot, worked a lot and met very interesting people. I tried to reflect that in the contents, by writing about different subjects, sharing my experiences and my perspective. I wish I had written more, but living things intensively has a side effect, stress, which sometimes makes it harder to focus, and the fact that I am not using my own native language, Portuguese also makes it harder to express myself, and I’d rather not post anything than to say dumb things or commonplaces. I guess this is rather common, most bloggers pass through this, and eventually this feeling goes away, inspiration returns and I really don’t think we should make our blogging an aditional source of stress, when we can avoid that (sometimes it’s unavoidable, especially when nasty people comes with their hatred and tries to defeat us through exhaustion, but in those cases, our sense of duty provides us with a resilience unknow to such people).

The best about blogging is that the absense of an editorial filter allows us to get in touch with people and ideas which wouldn’t be so easily accessible. Furthermore, the possibility to establish informal networks with other blogs very widely expands the impact of each of those blogs. The interaction thus created can be very rewarding and stimulating.

So, to conclude, I am very happy with my cosy blog and would like to thank my readers, regulars and passers-by, as well as the writers of the blogs that have linked me, in particular Marko Attila Hoare, from Greater Surbiton, who wrote a very nice post that helped boost my audiences, and Daniel from the Srebrenica Genocide Blog, whom I really admire for the way he is devoted to the cause of keeping alive the memory of the Srebrenica genocide.

Plans for the year that is about to start: lots of them, but mostly I hope to start writing more about my own country, Portugal, since it is so under represented in english language blogosphere.

Now, some posts that I think are good enough (well, at least the photos are good enough):

April 25th about the politics of memory, or rather the politics of oblivion of Portugal’s fascist past;

Srebrenica some impressions on my trip to Srebrenica last July;

Defending animals’ well being in Belgrade some impressions about a city where I feel particularly at home;

and Why Serbia? in case someone may be curious about…