Archive 1986 – 2017

1. The “Normalization” of Northern Ireland Politics There is (without doubt) a peace process going on in Northern Ireland. One of the most recent surveys has shown how these events are off-set by “persistent insecurities” about the return to violence./1/ However, a basic aspect of this on-going “peace process” is that the key issue underlying the conflict, the advocacy of “republic” or “union”, will become less and less salient as time passes on. But of the ten parties currently represented at the Belfast Assembly (based in the old Parliament buildings of Stormont) at least seven are clearly linked to that issue, at least in the name, and the name will always be indicative of some of the discourse. One might hope that, in time, party leaders might respond with imagination to new political discourses, perhaps even so as to develop a new variety of politics in Northern Ireland where the...

LONDON – It would be perhaps expecting too much for the world to learn one thing from the Yugoslavian imbroglio – that its ethnic wars were a figment of the political imagination. The Balkans is not, as Robert Kaplan famously put it, ” a region of pure memory” where “each individual sensation and memory affects the grand movement of clashing peoples” and where the processes of history were “kept on hold” by communism for forty-five years, “thereby creating a multiplier effect for violence.” If ethnic war is when “ancient hatreds” lead one ethnic group to become the ardent, murderous and dedicated opponent of everyone in another group this was not it. It was,as professor John Mueller of Ohio State University has written in the current issue of “International Security”, a situation in which “a mass of essentially mild, ordinary people unwillingly and in considerable bewilderment came under the vicious and arbitary...

Western politicians insist that Slobodan Milosevic must be brought to the Hague Tribunal and stand trial as a war criminal. Media and commentators raise the issue time and again. But there are reasons to believe that this is make-believe. The indictment of Milosevic leaves much to be explained – for instance, why he is indicted only for crimes committed in 1999 but not before – and certain Western countries would hardly want him to be on record in the Hague with a few things that he may know about them. The West would therefore do wise to drop this issue now and let Yugoslavia deal with Milosevic. It seems that few have bothered to read the text of the indictment of Milosevic and four other high-level government officials of Thursday May 27, 1999. Among other things it states: “As pointed out by Justice Arbour in her application to Judge Hunt,...

Milosevic certainly did not even think the thought. The opposition had hoped for it but hardly foreseen it would happened just like that. Western leaders and commentators had predicted about everything else but this: that nonviolence by the many would sweep away the authoritarian power presided over and solidified by Slobodan Milosevic over 13 years. It was a miracle unfolding, minute by minute, in front of our eyes. Unarmed citizens were stronger, finally, than Milosevic’ force. They also achieved in about 24 hours what NATO violence could not achieve in 78 days. It’s yet another remarkable victory for non-violence. But do we see it like that? The power of nonviolence The Shah of Iran lost power mainly due to nonviolent struggle. The Marcos regime in the Philippines did too. Solidarnosc in Poland would not had won had it used violence. The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia is yet another. The East-West...

LONDON – Poets as diverse as William Blake and Yehuda Amichai have sung the praises of the heavenly Jerusalem, a land without strife or rancour, war or bitterness, envy, acquisitiveness or hatred. Mankind now has the historic opportunity to take a giant step towards making the present day Jerusalem acquire, at least in some of its aspects, the earthly prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem. For once we can see whether the work of imams, rabbis and priests has born fruit. The secular politicians may be the ones doing the negotiations and ordering the compromises but it is the teachers of the three great deistic religions who have been exerting their mandate to teach compassion, goodness, tolerance and brotherhood. These traits of virtue, as common to them all as is their God, now will be tested in the hottest of fires. Have their peoples imbibed the true message of their faiths? Or...

1. Humiliation and the Human Condition: Mapping a Minefield Evelin Gerda Lindner, forthcoming in Human Rights Review in October 2000 A major cause of socio-political violence is the social process of humiliation, whose main elements are closely related to central aspects of the cultural repertoire of complex societies. This paper presents a theory of humiliation, showing that the capacity to humiliate and be humiliated are aspects of a dense web of ‘hot’ filaments wired into the tissue of culture, giving it a potentially explosive character that is too little recognised. This paper probes this dense web and explores how it acquired its present character. It is shown that our conceptualisation of humiliation has changed as our sense of human dignity has grown. Humiliation should be understood as not simply an extreme or marginal condition but a central feature of the social order. Viewed within this broader context, the elements that...

En film av Maj Wechselman By Sverigespremiär den 29 september i Stockholm på Grand Biografen, i Göteborg på Svea,i Malmö på Spegeln och i Lund på Kine  Denna film är resultatet av det första stora filmsamarbetet mellan Sverige och Sydafrika – 600 statister deltar. När Gandhi steg i land i Sydafrika var han en bortskämt överklassyngling, utbildad som advokat i England. Indier var inte populära i Sydafrika och snart blev Gandhi det nya landets mest skarpögda kritiker. Ändå bildar han en frivillig indisk ambulanskår och blir själv ambulanssoldat i det blodiga Boerkriget. I det isolerade indiska gettot i Johannesburg slår pesten ned. Gandhi ser till att isolera de pestsmittade indierna och improviserar ett pestsjukhus där han själv med ett fåtal andra tar hand om de döende. Ett par år senare gör zuluhövdingen Bambatha uppror i Natal. Åter marscherar Gandhi ut som ambulanssoldat. Men det finns knappast någon sårad europeisk soldat...

LONDON – “It was a famous victory” of large proportions – of that there can be no doubt. President Bill Clinton’s announcement that he was not going to be rushed into implementing a national anti-ballistic missile defence drew not only plaudits from Russia and China which were threatened by it, but from India, Britain and Germany, among many others, all of whom thought from their differing perspectives that it would upset the balance of power in pursuit of a purpose that was at best unproved, at worst ill-thought out and which had all the ingredients of a nasty back-fire when there were other ways of reaching the same end. One last word should be added before the issue leaves the front pages and awaits resurrection, hopefully in new form, under a new president- there is nothing wrong with anti-missile defence, if nuclear disarmament is moving apace. If nuclear weapons were reduced...

Bakgrundsorientering för departementets nya Beredningsgrupp UD använde fyra kriterier vid fördelningen till svenska organisationer. Men kan de förklara varför andra fick och TFF åkte ut? Stiftelsens internationella stödkampanj och appell har vid början av september resulterat i 1136 personliga brev, kommentarer och namnteckningar från en bred krets i 62 länder. Om man bortser ifrån uppskattande kommentarer om TFF är den mest frekventa kommentaren att människor inte finner beslutet om slopande av organisationsbidrag till TFF förenligt med den bild de hade av Sverige och av svensk utrikespolitik. Analysen har skickats utrikesminister Anna Lindh och Beredningsgruppen tillsammans med vår ansökan om bidrag för år 2001. Se också vår analys av vem det är som känner TFF är viktig och se de underbara ord om vårt arbete från runt om i världen. 1. UTGÅNGSPUNKTER Den Transnationella Stiftelsen för Freds- och Framtidsforskning, TFF, i Lund har sedan 1991 haft förmånen att få organisationsbidrag ifrån UD, till en...

What people around the world wrote to and about TFF 1136 letters, comments and signature by September 12 – and more come in every day! From people of all walks of life in 62 countries. We did not know that we had SO MANY friends. More than one-third chose to not only write their name in support of TFF but also add very warm, sometimes strong, appreciaiton of our work. You may find your own words here. We are overwhelmed. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. All messages were copied and sent on September 14 to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, HE Anna Lindh and to the Ministry’s preparatory committee which recommends which organisations to give organisztional support. Please see also the analysis of the worldwide constituencies and our analysis in Swedish of the Ministry’s decision. The Swedish government shoul be proud to support TFF and its efforts to a...

LONDON – It seems a strange time to organize a millennium meeting of the world’s heads of government at the UN this week. What are they supposed to do? What are they supposed to say? Is anything new afoot? (Indeed one could ask, in all seriousness, are there enough toilets for them all with their mammoth entourages?) Isn’t it the same old dreary UN that everyone loves to use as a punch-bag and which they occasionally run to when they are in trouble? The millennium changes nothing- eight months on that is very clear. The thing that could give the UN a jolt, a charge, that would give it a chance of re-capturing its old idealism is not a poorly prepared meeting of bosses, nor is it a new Secretary General. It would be for the world’s only superpower to take it seriously. Not only does the U.S. need to pay...

Pyongyang, August 2000 – PeaceBoat, a Japanese NGO of which Japan can be very proud, just concluded its voyage No. 3 to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), with more than 200 participants. I conducted workshops on reconciliation and had the occasion to have dialogues with a number of well placed DPRK officials. My focus was on how North Korea sees the damage/suffering caused by Japanese imperialism, what kind of compensation they seek, and what they mean by “real apology”. Some of the answers are well known, others are not; for completeness they are all included. They mention six forms of damage/suffering: one million killed/tortured (also hibakusha); six million forced into war service including 200,000 comfort women; economic looting; cultural treasures seized or destroyed; the zainichi situation in Japan; and Japanese responsibility for the division of Korea between the USA and the Soviet Union, as a Japanese colony. Compensation according...