Martin Luther King’s Message Shook the Powerful: Vital People can Hear it Today

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Opinion

Dr. Martin Luther King and Mrs. King are greeted by Ralph Bunche on a visit to the United Nations in 1964. Credit: UN Photo

 
Ralph Bunche received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s work as a United Nations mediator in the Palestine conflict. He called himself ‘an incurable optimist’. Bunche was the first African American and person of color to be so honored in the history of the prize.

ROME, Jan 9 2024 (IPS) – All through this week, leading up to January 15th, the world will commemorate Martin Luther King. In a world as wounded as ours is today, the lessons of his life’s work offer a vital opportunity for healing.

But the opportunity to hear his message continues to be obstructed: too many of the soundbites of TV pundits and the tweets of politicians are, once again, not distilling the insights of Dr King, but are serving instead to obscure a library of wisdom behind wall-to-wall repetition of the same few lines, extracted from their context, of one speech.

This is not a mistake, it is a tactic, and we owe it not only to the legacy of Dr King but to the future of our world to ensure that his authentic message is shared.

The true message of Martin Luther King is not a saccharine call for quietude or acceptance, but an insistence on being, as he put it, “maladjusted to injustice.” It represents not an idle optimism that things will get better but a determined commitment to collective action as the only route to progress.

When Dr King said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”, he didn’t mean this process is automatic; as he noted, “social progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of people.”

And he was clear that advancement of progress requires the coming together of mass movements, “organizing our strength into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands.”

Children from a dozen countries met with the President of the General Assembly and toured the United Nations on a federal holiday in the United States honouring the late civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martin Luther King Jr. 17 January 2023. Credit: Paulina Kubiak, United Nations

Justice, Dr King taught, is never given, it is only ever won. This always involves having the courage to confront power. Indeed, he noted, the greatest stumbling block to progress is not the implacable opponent but those who claim to support change but are “more devoted to order than justice.” As he put it, “frankly I have yet to engage in a direct action movement that was ‘well-timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly; this ‘wait!’ has almost always meant ‘never.’”

When the civil rights movement’s 1962 Operation Breadbasket challenged companies to increase the share of profits going to black workers and communities, it was only after the movement showed that they could successfully organize a boycott that those companies, in Dr King’s words, “the next day were talking nice, were very humble, and [later] we signed the agreement.” As he noted when challenged by “moderates” who asked why he needed to organize, “we have not made a single gain without determined pressure…freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Advancing progress, he emphasized, involves challenging public opinion too. Organizers cannot be mere “thermometers” who “record popular opinion” but need to be “thermostats” who work to “transform the mores of society”. In 1966, for example, a Gallup Opinion poll showed that Dr King was viewed unfavourably by 63 per cent of Americans, but by 2011 that figure had fallen to only four per cent.

Often, people read the current consensus view back into history and assume that Dr King was always a mainstream figure, and imagine, falsely, that change comes from people and movements who don’t ever offend anyone.

Dr King’s vision of justice was a full one. It called not only for the scrapping of segregation, but for taking on “the triple prong sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism.” He challenged the “economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few” and noted that “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it understands that an edifice which produces beggars, needs restructuring.”

He spoke out against war not only for having “left youth maimed and mutilated” but for having also “impaired the United Nations, exacerbated the hatreds between continents, frustrated development, contributed to the forces of reaction, and strengthened the military-industrial complex.”

He noted how “speaking out against war has not gone without criticisms, there are those who tell me that I should stick with civil rights, and stay in my place.” But he insisted that he would “keep these issues mixed because they are mixed. We must see that justice is indivisible, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

When I went to Dr King’s memorial in Atlanta I did so to pay my respects at his tomb. But arriving at the King Center I found a vibrant hub of practical learning, at which activists and organizers working for justice were revisiting Dr King’s work and writings not as history that is past but as a set of tools to help understand, and act, in the present.

Together, we reflected not only on his profoundly radical philosophy, but also on his strategies and tactics for advancing transformational change. Conversations with Dr King’s inspirational daughter, Bernice, were focused not on her father’s work alone; instead, she asked us what changes we were working for, and how we were working to advance them.

This year, on 10th January, the King Center is hosting a Global Summit, a series of practical conversations accessible to everyone, for free, online. I’m honoured to be panelist. It is open for sign ups here.

“Those who love peace,” noted Dr King, “must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” And he even guided us how.

Ben Phillips is the author of How to Fight Inequality, Communications Director of UNAIDS, and a panelist at the King Center Global Summit on 10th January.

IPS UN Bureau

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US diplomat outlines an ambitious vision for Zimbabwe

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BOTTOM LINE

– The US Embassy in Harare has identified the potential for Zimbabwe to become a growth hub for Southern Africa.

– This is a curious conclusion to draw given the fact that Zimbabwe currently ranks near the bottom of the DHL Global Connectedness Index.

– The State Department’s Integrated Country Strategy for Zimbabwe neither conceptualizes what it means to be a growth hub for Southern Africa nor explains whether it would be in the US national security and foreign policy interests for Zimbabwe to become one.

– It is unclear what conditions and interventions would be required to transform Zimbabwe into a growth hub.

– The US Embassy Harare should pursue the transformation of Zimbabwe into a growth hub for Southern Africa as a mission security interest.

– Congress should play an active role in the planning process to ensure congressional support and resources to achieve this objective.

The Integrated Country Strategy for Zimbabwe (ICS Zimbabwe) declares that “Zimbabwe’s strategic importance to the United States is as a potential growth hub for southern Africa.” This is a remarkable conclusion to draw for a country that currently ranks near the very bottom of the DHL Global Connectedness Index – a major index that measures globalization based on international trade, capital, information, and people flows.

This not only begs the question of under what conditions would Zimbabwe emerge as a growth hub for Southern Africa, but also whether it would be in the national interest of the US government to help Zimbabwe achieve that outcome. The ICS Zimbabwe fails to shed light on those questions. The embassy should be encouraged to answer them. Below is a list of some possible starting points for bringing about that state of affairs.

Recommendation #1: The ICS Zimbabwe should be amended to further develop the concept of Zimbabwe as a growth hub for Southern Africa.

In the Chief of Mission Priorities, the ICS Zimbabwe refers to Zimbabwe as a “potential growth hub for southern Africa,” and this is described as strategically important to the US government.

Nowhere in the ICS is it shown that Zimbabwe has the potential to become a growth hub or why this outcome would be strategically important to Washington.

Moreover, this is a perplexing observation given that Zimbabwe is a landlocked country currently ranked 160 out of 171 countries on DHL’s Global Connectedness Index 2022. This places it below all its neighbors, as well as impoverished Sub-Saharan African countries such as Sierra Leone and Gabon.

There is a clear and present need to define these terms and their relationships more fully. Fortunately, other actors have done so:

– Network theorists have defined a hub as a highly connected node in a group of interconnected nodes.

– The World Bank defines economic growth as the increase in the value of goods and services produced by an economy over time.

– The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is composed of Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, United Republic Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. This collective of countries is commonly understood to be Southern Africa.

The US Embassy Harare should borrow from these concepts. This would provide a way to conceptualize the “growth hub for southern Africa” as an SADC member state that is highly interconnected with other SADC member states through linkages that drive positive change in volume of output or in the real expenditure or income of their populations.

Recommendation #2: The ICS Zimbabwe should contain a detailed explanation of the conditions under which it would be (and would not be) in US national security and foreign policy interests for Zimbabwe to become a growth hub for Southern Africa.

The government of Zimbabwe has strong relationships with major-power competitors of the United States and other authoritarian revisionist states who have expressed a manifest desire to change the world order.

The ICS Zimbabwe acknowledges that China has “expanded its influence” in Zimbabwe, and this is providing Beijing with “near-unfettered access to Zimbabwean natural resources,” including base minerals that are critical to the global clean-energy transition.

At the same time, the ICS declares that the Zimbabwean economy is currently functioning “for the benefit of a privileged few, including the president, his family, senior military officials, and a small group of elite ruling party and private sector actors.”



In this context, there is a need to make clear the conditions under which the transformation of Zimbabwe into a growth hub for Southern Africa would contribute “to local job creation, greater transparency, local economic development, citizen empowerment, gender equality, climate-smart solutions, and improved labor and environmental standards,” among other things.

In parallel, there is a need to identify the conditions under which the transformation of Zimbabwe into a growth hub for Southern Africa would support the administration’s policy of focusing on the transnational aspects of corruption.

One cannot assume that the transformation of the country into a regional growth hub would be of much benefit to ordinary Zimbabweans. It could very well fuel the spread of corruption and widen the already massive inequities that exist across the country.

Recommendation #3: US Embassy Harare should seek to partner with the government of Zimbabwe to develop a stand-alone roadmap for Zimbabwe to become a growth hub for Southern Africa.

In coordination with appropriate US government departments and agencies, the US Embassy Harare should develop a roadmap for American and Zimbabwean policymakers that depicts a strategic pathway for transforming Zimbabwe into a growth hub for Southern Africa, in a way that simultaneously advances US national security and foreign policy interests and SADC economic prosperity and opportunity.

This roadmap should clearly describe the resources, activities, outputs, short-term objectives, and long-term goals that would advance a “shared vision of a better, more sustainable, healthier, and more prosperous future” through transforming Zimbabwe into a growth hub for Southern Africa.

These activities should include specific risk management approaches that will be used to try to achieve the conditions necessary for the transformation of Zimbabwe into a growth hub for Southern Africa to be aligned with US national security and foreign policy interests over the coming decades.

Recommendation #4: The State Department should involve Congress early in the planning process to ensure congressional support and resources to pursue the transformation of Zimbabwe into a growth hub for Southern Africa as a US national security interest.

The transformation of Zimbabwe into a regional growth hub would be a resource-intensive, long-term goal that would require political and budgetary support over a span of time that likely exceeds the life-span of a single ICS.

The State Department would need to involve relevant committees of Congress in the early stages of the planning process to garner the support needed for a robust pursuit of this policy goal.

Congress would likely be receptive to innovative approaches for partnering with a country known to have large deposits of rare earth metals that are used in the manufacture of electronics, batteries, and magnets. Members do not want these important resources to fall under the control and direction of major-power competitors.

However, Congress would likely be sensitive to the costs and risks of pursuing such a long-term goal with a government that has long been hostile to US interests.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.

Michael Walsh – African Studies Program

Michael Walsh is a Senior Fellow in the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is a senior subject matter expert who regularly advises companies, governments, nonprofits, and think tanks on democracy, development, humanitarian, and security affairs. Mr. Walsh is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California Berkeley. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for African Studies at Howard University. He is a Visiting Researcher in the African Studies Program at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. He is a Guest Lecturer on African affairs at the Foreign Service Institute. Mr. Walsh was the Course Director for the Humanitarian Security Risk Management Course for United Nations Development Program staff. He served on the Security Advisory Group for the Türkiye-Syria Earthquake Response at Team Rubicon. Mr. Walsh is a regular commentator on Africa and Near Eastern affairs. Recent radio, television, and print outlets include British Broadcasting Corporation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, European Consortium for Political Research, and Voice of America.

Ambassador Charles A. Ray, a member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, served as US Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe. In addition, he was the first U.S. Consul General to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, opening the Consulate General there in 1998.

From 2006 to 2009, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, responsible for DoD efforts to account for those missing in combat from World War II to the then current conflicts and for policy related to the rescue of personnel who become isolated, missing, or taken in service abroad.

During his diplomatic career, Mr. Ray served as deputy chief of mission in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and at consular posts in Guangzhou and Shenyang, China, and Chiang Mai, Thailand. He was diplomat-in-residence at the University of Houston during the 2005-2006 academic year; responsible for outreach and recruiting at colleges and universities in South Texas.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 1982, he served 20 years in the United States Army, with postings in Europe and Asia, including two tours in Vietnam during the war. He retired in 2012 from the Foreign Service and is now engaged in consulting, public speaking, and writing. He is the author of more than 30 works of fiction and nonfiction, including a historical series about the Buffalo Soldiers, the African-American soldiers who served on the western frontier, and is the author of an Amazon best-selling mountain man adventure series. His nonfiction works include books and articles on management, leadership, international relations, and history. He is the author of over 250 works of fiction and nonfiction.

Ray is currently a member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Diplomacy, communications director for the Association of Black American Ambassadors, a member of the American College of National Security Leaders, a member of the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, and a member of the board of directors of the Cold War Museum.

In addition to his government service, Mr.Ray has worked as a newspaper/magazine journalist, photographer, and artist, and was editorial cartoonist for the Spring Lake (NC) News, a weekly newspaper in central North Carolina during most of the mid to late-1970s.

He has a B.S. in business administration from Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas; an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California; and an M.S. in national security strategy from the National Defense University. In 2001, he received the Thomas Jefferson Award from American Citizens Abroad (ACA) for his work in support of American business in southern Vietnam.

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The conscious martyr John Chilembwe

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*BY STEVIE M KAUKA

When we talk of martyrs the first thing that comes to mind is the Christians who died for their belief in Jesus Christ, and closer to AFRICA the martyrs of Uganda., to which most catholic and Anglican churches and establishments derives their names to signify the importance of their actions, St Kizzito, Charles Lwangwa , St Luke, St Denis among others.

 In Malawi we have people of different divides , religions, and political affiliations but they almost agree that John Chilembwe is a martyr ,

A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, refusing to advocate an ideology …. of which they do not believe in. One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle. A great show of suffering in order to arouse sympathy from the wider public.

However, the focus here is about John Chilembwe. A lot of literature has been written about John Chilembwe and I will not belabor you with that, but I would like to focus on him as a conscious martyr.

Conscious is a Latin word whose original meaning was “knowing” or “aware.” So, a conscious person has an awareness of her environment and her own existence and thoughts. If you are “self-conscious,” you are overly aware and even embarrassed by how you think, you look or act.

 To follow the analogy of Chilembwe being a conscious martyr let us understand that while in Nyasaland then John Chilembwe was just an ordinary person, but when he travelled to the United States, he met people who were critical of whites. When he left home Nyasaland was under British protectorate.

He had traveled to the United States in 1897 to fundraise for the Mission to which he belonged to back home. There in America, Chilembwe was plunged into an environment that was overly critical of whites. He met and was influenced by the radical Zulu missionary John L. Dube from South Africa, Dr. Lewis Garnett Jordan of the Negro National Baptist Convention and many other African American preachers and radicals. Staying behind in the United States as Booth returned to Nyasaland, Booth was the one who arranged that John Chilembwe should go to America having been impressed with his character as his servant then, Chilembwe attended Virginia Theological Seminary and College at Lynchburg, Virginia in 1898 and 1899. In the United States, Chilembwe gained an increasingly global perspective on the struggle of people of African descent against injustice and white supremacy. He took these newly acquired political ideas back to Nyasaland in 1900, returning as an ordained Baptist minister.

Once returned, Chilembwe founded the Providence Industrial Mission with aid from the American National Baptist Convention. By 1912, he had established a chain of independent African schools, constructed a brick church, and planted crops of cotton, tea, and coffee. His attempts to uplift the local population, however, were undercut by continuing exploitation of Africans by the British. Triggered by British mistreatment of famine refugees from Mozambique as well as the conscription of natives to fight the Germans in Tanzania during World War I, Chilembwe invoked the name of the American abolitionist John Brown and organized a rebellion against the British. The Chilembwe uprising is a story for another day.

While in America he started to have goals, he was powered with faith in the outcome of his native Nyasaland, coupled with   the exposure he was having he started noticing the opportunities to fulfill that dream, but for the time being it was beyond the reach of the conscious mind

Back home he wrote letters seeking justice and equality for the Black people about the thangata system.

The subconscious mind is the powerful secondary system that runs everything in your life. Learning how to stimulate communication between the conscious and the subconscious minds is a powerful tool on the way to success, happiness, and riches.

The subconscious mind is a databank for everything, which is not in your conscious mind. It stores your beliefs, your previous experience, your memories, your skills. Everything that you have seen, done or thought is also there.

It is the issues that he had learnt observed and read while in America that were in his subconscious mind that something was wrong and needed action to correct the wrongs. He was conscious of his surroundings in Nyasaland before and after America that he saw poverty, oppression and to this end he encouraged hard work, dressing smartly, he discouraged drinking and encouraged people to get an education perhaps because of what he had seen in America and wanted a just society for the people of Nyasaland.

Martin Luther King the Black civil rights campaigner in one of his speeches had this to say and I quote …” Well, I do not know what will happen now. We have some difficult days ahead. But it really does not matter to me now, because I have been to the mountaintop. And I do not mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I am not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I have looked it over. And I have seen the Promised Land. I may not go there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!’ end of quote.

I can envisage that John Chilembwe in his conscious mind on the path he had taken was aware of what lied ahead but he did not mind as it was in his conscious that something was wrong and had to be corrected he knew that of the issues that lied ahead he was aware of the implications but in his conscious he still had to do it. Nature has given humans absolute control over the information that enters the subconscious mind, through the five senses. However, this does not mean that everyone exercises this control. Even more, in the majority of cases the average person does not exercise this control. This is why so many people go through life in poverty, denial and waiting for others to rescue them. I

it is this premise that after his demise John Chilembwe should be considered as a conscious martyr as his surrounding and actions are stated.

With the passing of time things do change and facts become twisted to suit a particular sect of society for their selfish ends, but the fact still remains that events happened that qualifies the so-called victims to be martyrs and John Chilembwe qualifies as a conscious martyr.

It is worth remembering that there is a price to be paid in order to be able to influence your subconscious mind. That price is called persistence. You have to keep taking the steps for autosuggestion, you have to keep repeating your goals aloud and you have to keep having faith in the outcome and the end-result. John Chilembwe to this end led an uprising to the unjust of the white rule he died while fighting for a worthy cause for a Black man.

The difference between those who succeed and those who fail may just be a few days. Or it could be the availability of a back-up plan. Those who always say: “In case I do not succeed, I will do this and that” will always do this and that. Because their conscious mind would always keep thinking about the way out.

While Martyrs Day and Kamuzu Day have been there since independence, it was after 1994 when the then president, Bakili Muluzi declared 15th January as Chilembwe Day holiday. In 1944, during the formative period of the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), George Mwase from Nkhata Bay and other members of the executive committee then, pressed the colonial Nyasaland Government to set 15th January as Chilembwe Day. To no avail.

The author is a fellow  of IPMM who writes on assorted topics in his own personal capacity.

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Fear as Russian Anti-LGBT Law Comes into Effect

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Civil Society, Crime & Justice, Democracy, Editors’ Choice, Europe, Featured, Freedom of Expression, Gender, Headlines, Human Rights, LGBTQ, TerraViva United Nations

Human Rights

The Russian Supreme Court ruling making the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization will come into effect on January 9, 2024. Graphic: IPS

The Russian Supreme Court ruling making the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization will come into effect on January 9, 2024. Graphic: IPS

BRATISLAVA, Jan 3 2024 (IPS) – “This is what you get after ten years of state propaganda and brainwashing,” says Anatolii*.

The Moscow-based LGBT rights activist’s ire is directed at a recent ruling by Russia’s Supreme Court declaring the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization.

Details of the ruling, made on November 30 after a closed hearing, have yet to be made public—it will not be enforced until January 9, 2024, and until then, no one is likely to be any the wiser about its practical implementation, says Anatolii.

But its vagueness—critics point out that no “international LGBT movement” exists as an organization—has already fueled fears that it could lead to the arbitrary prosecution of anyone involved in any activities supporting the LGBT community.

And the potential punishments for such support are draconian, with participating in or financing an extremist organization carrying a maximum 12-year prison sentence under Russian law.

In the weeks since the ruling was announced, fear has spread among LGBT people.

“Russian queers are really scared,” Anatolii tells IPS.

But while fearful, many see it as the latest, if potentially the most drastic, act in a decade-long campaign by the Kremlin to marginalise and vilify the LGBT community in the country through legislation and political rhetoric.

The first legislative attack on the community came in 2013, not long after Vladimir Putin had returned to power as President, when a law came into effect banning “the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to anyone under the age of 18.

This was followed by increasingly homophobic political discourse, and Kremlin campaigns—prominently backed by the country’s powerful Orthodox Church—promoting ‘traditional family values’ in society and casting LGBT activism as a product of the degenerate West and a threat to Russian identity.

Then in 2022, the ban on “LGBT propaganda” was extended to cover all public information or activities supporting LGBT rights or displaying non-heterosexual orientation and implicitly linked the LGBT community with paedophilia—the law refers to the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations and/or preferences, paedophilia, and sex change.”

A ban on same sex marriage has also been written into the constitution; authorities have labelled a number of LGBT organizations as “foreign agents,” stigmatizing them and forcing them to adhere to a set of funding and bureaucratic requirements that can be liquidating, and earlier this year a law was passed banning transgender people officially or medically changing their gender.

With each new piece of pernicious legislation, and an accompanying rise in intensity and normalization of homophobic hate speech from politicians, the LGBT community has suffered, its members say.

“The Supreme Court ruling is just a continuation of Russia’s homophobic policies. The amount of physical violence against LGBT people has been growing in Russia for 10 years. After each such law, it intensifies even more noticeably,” Yaroslav Rasputin, editor at the Russian-language LGBT website www.parniplus.com, told IPS.

“We expect homophobes will feel justified in attacking LGBT people [after the ruling], both through cyberbullying and physical assaults,” he added.

Members of the LGBT community and rights campaigners who spoke to IPS said there was a desperate fear among many LGBT people now. While the threat of physical violence was often felt as being very real, there was also a crippling concern over the uncertainty many would now face in their daily activities.

Many do not know what will constitute “support” for the LGBT community. Some are trawling through years of social media records, deleting any possible positive references to LGBT or reposted messages on the topic for fear of the information being used against them by authorities.

And there are worries that simply being openly gay could somehow be interpreted as extremism.

Lawyers who have advised LGBT people and groups in the past say that it will be much easier for security forces to initiate and prosecute cases of extremism than propaganda, as the latter is more difficult to prove.

“Although the government says these ‘repressions’ concern only political activists, in reality this is not the case. We know this from previous homophobic laws. Sometimes people spontaneously get caught for who they are. No one knows when it will be safe to come out and when not,” said Rasputin.

Anatolii said the organisation he works for has been inundated with calls from people “in panic and despair” over the ruling, many of whom are looking for help to leave the country.

LGBT groups outside Russia have also reported a huge uptick in calls from people trying to find safe passage to other countries.

“We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people contacting us, perhaps three or four times more. LGBT people in Russia are really worried about the ruling; they don’t know what might be defined as extremist,” Aleksandr Kochekovskii from the Berlin-based organisation Quarteera e. V, which helps LGBT refugees and migrants to arrive and find their way around Germany, told IPS.

“Unfortunately, a lot of people will leave Russia because of this ruling because they feel in danger. There is a ubiquitous psychological pressure on LGBT people in Russia now,” he added.

Even some openly gay figures in Russia have publicly acknowledged that LGBT people may be forced to flee the country.

“This is real repression. There is panic in Russia’s LGBT community. People are emigrating urgently. The actual word we’re using is evacuation. We’re having to evacuate from our own country. It’s terrible,” Sergei Troshin, a gay municipal deputy in St Petersburg, told the BBC.

But others warn the Kremlin may be looking to use the ruling to crack down on the community as a whole as much as individuals.

“At this point, the state’s main goal is to erase the LGBT community from society and [the country’s] history,” Mikhail*, a Russian LGBT activist who recently left the country and now works for a pan-European NGO campaigning for minority health rights, told IPS. “It is hard to imagine how many organisations defending the rights of LGBT people will be able to exist in Russia any more since such support is [considered to be] advocating terrorism,” he added.

Some such organisations have already decided to close in the wake of the ruling. The Russian LGBT Sports Federation announced it had stopped its activities, and one of the most prominent LGBT groups in the country, Delo, which provided legal assistance to people in the community, also closed following the court decision.

But other mainstays of the LGBT community are also shutting their doors. The owners of one of the oldest gay clubs in Russia, “Central Station” in St Petersburg, said they had been forced to close the club after the site’s owners refused to rent to them. Its closure came as other gay clubs and bars in Moscow were raided by police just 24 hours after the Supreme Court ruling. People’s names taken, and ID documents copied.

Although police said the raids were part of anti-drug operations, LGBT activists said they could see the true purpose behind them.

“The state has made it very clear that it is ready to use the apparatus of force against LGBT people in Russia,” said Mikhail.

But the ruling is also expected to have effects for LGBT people beyond their interactions with other individuals or groups within the community.

Accessing specific healthcare services, for instance, seems likely to become more difficult.  Some practitioners, such as psychiatrists and psychologists, have until now openly indicated their services as LGBT-friendly. But according to some Russian media reports, it is thought many will no longer be able or willing to do so, and that others may simply stop providing their services to LGBT people altogether out of fear of repercussions.

Experts warn that without qualified help, the risks of suicide, PTSD, and the development of other mental disorders will rise, especially among children, something that was seen after the first law banning the promotion of LGBT to minors was passed in 2013.

International rights groups have condemned the court ruling and urged other countries to provide a safe haven for those forced to flee Russia and to support Russian LGBT activists working both inside and outside the country.

Whatever the effects of the law eventually are once it is fully implemented, it looks unlikely there will be any improvement for the LGBT community in the near future.

Activists predict anti-LGBT political rhetoric will probably only intensify as President Putin looks to cement support among voters ahead of elections in March, and as the Kremlin tries to draw the public’s attention away from the country’s problems, not least those connected to the war raging in Ukraine.

“It’s easier to create an artificial enemy than to struggle with the real problems the war has caused. The LGBT+ community in Russia is a kind of collective scapegoat, taking a punch and feeling the people’s wrath,” said Anatolii.

Others say that as the war drags on, repression of the LGBT community may start being repeated among other minority groups.

“Everything the Kremlin does in Russia is an attempt to divert people’s attention from the war. ‘Othering’ is typical for all dictatorial regimes. I am quite sure that soon [the Kremlin] will start targeting other groups like migrants and foreigners,” Nikolay Lunchenkov, LGBT Health Coordinator for the Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender, and Sexual Diversity NGO, which works with the LGBT community in Russia, told IPS.

Note: *Names have been changed for safety reasons.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Amidst a Horrendous 2023, Civil Society is Fighting Back Society

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Armed Conflicts, Biodiversity, Civil Society, Climate Change, Climate Change Justice, COP28, Economy & Trade, Education, Environment, Featured, Global, Green Economy, Headlines, Health, Human Rights, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

TORONTO, Canada, Dec 22 2023 (IPS) – The year 2023 has brought so much tragedy, with incomprehensible loss of lives, whether from wars or devastating ‘natural’ disasters, while our planet has seen yet more records broken as our climate catastrophe worsens.

And so as the clock ticks towards the (mostly western) New Year, readers are traditionally subjected by media outlets like ours to the ‘yearender’ – usually a roundup of main events over the previous 12 months, one horror often overshadowed by the next.

Farhana Haque Rahman

So forgive us if for 2023 IPS takes a somewhat different approach, highlighting how humanity can do better, and how the big depressing picture should not obscure the myriad small but positive steps being taken out there.

COP28, the global climate conference held this month in Dubai, could neatly fit the ‘big depressing’ category. Hosted by a petrostate with nearly 100,000 people registered to attend, many of them lobbyists for fossil fuels and other polluters, it would be natural to address its outcomes with scepticism.

However, while Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations, described COP28 as “imperfect”, she said it also marked “an important and unprecedented step forward in our ‘course correction’ for a just transition towards resilient and greener economies.”

UN climate chief Simon Stiell acknowledged shortcomings in the compromise resolutions on fossil fuels and the level of funding for the Loss and Damages Fund. But the outcome, he said, was also the “beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era.

Imperfect as it was and still based on old structures, COP28 hinted at the possible: a planetary approach to governance where common interests spanning climate, biodiversity and the whole health of Earth outweigh and supersede the current dominant global system of rule by nation states.

As we have tragically witnessed in 2023, the existing system – as vividly reflected in the repetitive stalemate among the five veto-bearing members of the UN Security Council – is failing to find resolution to the major conflicts of this year, Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza. Not to mention older and half-forgotten conflicts in places like Myanmar (18.6 million people in need of humanitarian aid) and in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (seven million displaced).

The unrestrained destruction of Gaza and the disproportionate killings of over 17,000, (now the death toll is “at least 20,000 people” according to Palestinian officials) mostly civilians– in retaliation for 1,200 killings by Hamas and 120 hostages in captivity– have left the Palestinians in a state of deep isolation and weighed down by a feeling of being deserted by the world at large.

The United Nations and the international community have remained helpless– with UN resolutions having no impact– while American pleas for restrained aerial bombings continue to be ignored by the Israelis in an act of defiance, wrote IPS senior journalist Thalif Deen.

The hegemony of the nation-state system is surely not going to disappear soon but – without wanting to sound too idealistic — its foundations are being chipped away by civil society where interdependence prevails over the divide and rule of the existing order. And so for a few examples encountered in our reporting:

CIVICUS Lens, standing for social justice and rooted in the global south, offers analysis of major events from a civil society perspective, such as its report on the security crisis gripping Haiti casting doubt over the viability of an international plan to dispatch a Kenya-led police contingent.

Education Cannot Wait, a global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, lobbied at COP28 for a $150 million appeal to support school-aged children facing climate shocks, such as the devastating drought in Somalia and Ethiopia, and floods in Pakistan where many of the 26,000 schools hit in 2022 remain closed.

Leprosy, an ancient but curable disease, had been pegged back in terms of new case numbers but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 made it harder for patients to get treatment and for new cases to be reported. Groups such as the Sasakawa Health Foundation are redoubling efforts to promote early detection and treatment.

With 80 percent of the world’s poorest living closer to the epicenters of climate-induced disasters, civil society is hammering at the doors of global institutions to address the challenges of adaptation and mitigation.

Lobbying on the sidelines of COP28 in Dubai was activist Joshua Amponsem, co-director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund who questioned why weather-resilient housing was not yet a reality in Mozambique’s coastal regions despite the increasing ferocity of tropical cyclones.

“My key message is really simple. The clock is ticking for food security in Africa,” Dr Simeon Ehui told IPS as the newly appointed Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture which works with partners across sub-Saharan Africa to tackle hunger, poverty and natural resource degradation.

Dr Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which has received record-breaking pledges in support of its largest ever replenishment, warns that under current trends 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030.

“Hunger remains a political issue, mostly caused by poverty, inequality, conflict, corruption and overall lack of access to food and resources. In a world of plenty, which produces enough food to feed everyone, how can there be hundreds of millions going hungry?” he asked.

Empowering communities in a bid to protect and rejuvenate the ecosystems of Pacific communities is the aim of the Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity conservation effort launched at COP28 by Palau’s President Surangel Whipps who noted that the world was not on track to meet any of the 17 sustainable development goals or climate goals by 2030.

A scientist with a life-long career studying coral reefs, David Obura was appointed this year as the new chair of IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

“We really have reached planetary limits and I think interest in oceans is rising because we have very dramatically reached the limits of land,” says Dr Obura, “What the world needs to understand is how strongly nature and natural systems, even when highly altered such as agricultural systems, support people and economies very tangibly. It’s the same with the ocean.”

An ocean-first approach to the fight against climate change is also the pillar of a Dalhousie University research program, Transforming Climate Action, launched last May and funded by the Canadian government. Traditional knowledges of Indigenous People will be a focus.

As Max Roser, an economist making academic research accessible to all, reminds us: for more people to devote their energy to making progress tackling large global problems, we should ensure that more people know that it is possible.

Focusing on the efforts of civil society and projecting hope amidst all the heartbreak of 2023 might come across as futile and wasted, but in its coverage IPS will continue to highlight efforts and successes, big and small, that deserve to be celebrated.

Farhana Haque Rahman is the Executive Director of IPS Inter Press Service Noram and Senior Vice President of IPS; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015 to 2019. A journalist and communications expert who lived and worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development IFAD.

IPS UN Bureau

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‘Pastoral Confusion’: Conservative Church Leaders Reject Vatican’s Blessing For Same-Sex Couples

Posted on by emandowa

Conservative bishops around the world are pushing back against the Vatican’s recent comments on blessing same-sex couples, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Vatican announced Monday that same-sex couples can receive a blessing from the Church so long as it doesn’t confuse with the Sacrament of Marriage, which the Vatican said is still only for between a man and a woman. Many international church leaders, however, have expressed concern and even outright dismissal of the decision, arguing that it creates “pastoral confusion” and could lead to blessing same-sex relationships, according to WSJ. (RELATED: Catholic Church Authorities In The Holy Land Accuse IDF Of Killing Two Women, Targeting Convent)

Church bishops in Zambia, Malawi and the principal archdiocese of Kazakhstan have opted to ban their priests from giving these kinds of blessings, according to WSJ.

The Zambia bishops said they would not comply with the Vatican’s directive “in order to avoid any pastoral confusion and ambiguity as well as not to break the law of our country which forbids same-sex unions and activities, and while listening to our cultural heritage which does not accept same-sex relationships,” according to a statement released on Facebook.

Bishop Wilton Gregory addresses the opening session of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops opening session at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas, Texas on June 13, 2002. - Gregory, from Belleville, Illinois is the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the first African-American to head the group. (Photo by Rick WILKING / REUTERS POOL / AFP) (Photo by RICK WILKING/REUTERS POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Bishop Wilton Gregory addresses the opening session of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops opening session at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas, Texas on June 13, 2002.  Gregory, from Belleville, Illinois is the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the first African-American to head the group. (Photo by Rick WILKING / REUTERS POOL / AFP)

Ukrainian bishops warned that the Vatican’s directive was too ambiguous and could lead to an endorsement of same-sex relationships, according to the WSJ. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said Monday that the Vatican’s decision was nothing new and that it did not alter the church’s teaching on the subject of marriage, according to a press release.

In Pope Francis’ message Thursday, he warned against “rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward,” according to the Vatican. Francis has been criticized for his comments on this issue in the past, even appearing to call for civil union law for same-sex couples in a 2020 documentary.

The Vatican did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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