A forestry worker, wearing a face mask for protection against coronavirus, gathers fallen wood from a tropical area, in Guinée, Africa. Photo courtesy Aboubacarkhoraa Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

COVID-19 lockdowns have yielded dramatic scenes of natural recovery: smog disappearing from the skies of India, waterways of Italy becoming clear for the first time in memory, wild mountain goats roaming the streets of Wales, sea turtles returning to the beaches of Brazil. Many people, while confined to their homes, have had time to think about these revelations. Stories about everyday life brought to a standstill provide unique insight and allow for a reflective pause. Is this also a window of opportunity? Global Voices contributor Andrew Kowalczuk is a green technology engineer and former biomedical researcher. We interviewed him on implications for health, wildlife, and climate change in the post-COVID future.

Kevin Rennie (KR): We have seen the spectacular reappearance of animals in habitats and urban areas during lockdowns in the COVID-19 crisis. What are the new opportunities for or threats to wildlife?

Andrew Kowalczuk (AK): The resurgence of wildlife holds a powerful appeal, for several reasons. People, confined to these eerie quiets, find out they’re closer to nature than they had ever realized. And that is very hopeful, an atavism, or fascination with biodiversity, as contrast to urbanized living. The reverse side, however, is that humans are custodians of rare animals. Globally, eco-tourism is by far the number-one source of funding for national parks, wildlife reserves, and conservation initiatives. COVID travel restrictions directly caused the collapse of tourism, and therefore the economies, of those destinations. In Africa, Central America, and other locales, there has unfortunately been an increase in poaching. Desperation gives the motive, and absence of ranger patrols in wildlife preserves gives the opportunity. Hopefully, media attention will translate to better protection of vulnerable animals after COVID subsides.

KR: COVID-19 appeared in China in winter 2019, but there is still controversy about its exact origins, and whether that outbreak was preventable. How do these viruses get from the natural environment into humans?

AK: Historically, all of the largest pandemics were zoonotic. Meaning, a natural pathogen already present in animals, usually in mammals, jumped that gap between animals and humans. The Plague of Justinian, and the bubonic plagues in the Middle Ages, were a bacillus, originally from rodents. The 1918 influenza pandemic, that time was viral, by recombination of several mammalian viruses, from food livestock. Now with COVID-19, the difference today is that human overpopulation keeps encroaching further into natural environments, into more contact with previously exotic animals. That’s the lesson. Among coronaviridae, several closely related ones found in bats can cause human disease. SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing COVID, is again genetically very similar. And there were previous, recent warnings, in the form of the outbreaks of SARS-1 and MERS, in 2003 and in 2012. So, in theory, yes, COVID-19 could have been prevented, by curtailing those human-versus-nature transgressions in the first place.

KR: There has been speculation about the new coronavirus having been created or altered in a lab. Is that at all possible?

AK: Good question, actually. That’s what many people still want to know. SARS-CoV-2 definitely was not created de novo in a laboratory, that is not possible. So instead, let’s look at the more realistic possibility of deliberate genetic modification. Evidence found by mapping the DNA sequences and phylogeny makes that also very unlikely. The novel nucleotide inserts, found in the spike protein domains of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, are not something genetic engineers would logically do, in gain-of-function experimentation. Now, that doesn’t rule out the scenario of a naturally occurring strain, with features of clinical interest, having been isolated in a lab, then escaping. If that were so, history will tell that tale soon enough. What matters is that, in any case, prevention of future epidemics will depend on environmental responsibility. New viruses will continually emerge in nature.

KR: Some natural habitats are disappearing, as they are consumed and degraded by humans. Does slowing down by the pandemic buy time to reconsider those activities?

AK: Not necessarily, for example, deforestation in the Amazon basin in Brazil. The expectation was that lockdown would slow destruction of rainforests. Actually the opposite is the case, a sharp increase in deforestation by clearance of land beginning around April of this year as seen by direct observation and in satellite imagery. There’s a double-edged effect. First, Brazilian government choosing not to enforce environmental law, and even giving an amnesty for illegal logging. Next, tycoons whose legal businesses became unprofitable in lockdown turning their attention to the Amazon. The people directly cutting rainforest trees are impoverished laborers in a shifting, informal economy who know it’s illegal, often feel remorse, but have few other options for subsistence. Besides losing carbon dioxide sequestration, more intense fire seasons will result. And the loss of biodiversity is analogous, or synonymous, with the wildlife conservation question.

KR: Improvements in air quality have been reported around the world during lockdowns. How can we build on these?

AK: That aspect has been most remarkable to the most people, since smog occurs over dense urban areas. If suddenly, skies are more blue, and citizens breathe more freely, they realize a more healthy and sustainable life is within reach. COVID lockdowns were the largest restriction of population movement in human history. And that curtailed industrial and other sources of pollutants, particulates, and greenhouse gases. Global carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 will have had the largest annual percentage decrease since the Second World War, the effect is gigantic. Some major cities, such as Milan and Brussels, do intend to reclaim urban spaces from automotive traffic. And there’s an unprecedented baseline from which to estimate what it would be like without combustion vehicles. Compliance would otherwise be low, so yes, jurisdictions will take this opportunity to push through measures for improved air quality.

KR: Finally, what climate change challenges will we face in the post-COVID world? How can we best meet these?

AK: Well, thank you, and to all our Global Voices authors, for having taken such a comprehensive overview of the issues. In the short term, diplomacy on climate change policy has been somewhat interrupted by COVID. As for the economics, many gigawatts of renewably sourced electricity, which would have gone online in 2020, have been delayed in deployment. That said, the United States is expected, for the first time, to produce more electricity from renewables than from coal. Renewable energy can stimulate economic growth in the recovery from recession, in any nation. Especially as its production is decentralized. In science, the intense work on deciphering coronavirus genomics, epidemiology, and vaccines, has given more urgency and openness to international cooperation than ever before. That same model will be needed for climate change mitigation. So, there you have it. Thanks for the forethought in these questions and coverage, and in your foresight for the future.

Youth pose for a photo capture at a conference in Namibia. Image credit: Yusuf Kalyango Jnr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

This article is part of UPROAR, a Small Media initiative that is urging governments to address digital rights challenges at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). 

On paper, there are little if any restrictions on access to the internet in Namibia, which is one of Africa’s most stable democracies and least inhabited nations. 

However, recent bold moves to acquire various forms of spyware have posed a dilemma to observers: Are Namibia intelligence agents deftly walking a fine line to acquire digital spy equipment from both China and the European Union?

Digital surveillance may be underway in Namibia, given the inventory of spy technologies acquired over the last few years — especially public closed-circuit TV gadgets and International Mobile Subscriber Identity-catchers (IMSI), says Admire Mare, a senior lecturer in the communication department at Namibia University of Science and Technology. Namibia is not alone as, “many countries in  Southern Africa have been expanding their surveillance capabilities as part of a growing wave of authoritarianism in the region,” Mare told Global Voices (GV).

Frederico Links, a research associate for the Institute for Public Policy Research, agrees. “Evidence indicates that Namibia has acquired sophisticated communications interception and surveillance capabilities, and that those capabilities have been deployed,” said Links, who is also the chair of ACTION Coalition, which advocates for greater access to information in Namibia.

IMSI catchers, commonly called “grabbers” in the spy industry, are devices that can be placed conveniently to trigger GSM mobile cell phone base stations to halt encryption of users’ voice, video or text calls. All digital correspondence that goes through an IMSI-catcher can be harvested, viewed, copied or heard. With the help of centrally-registered SIM cards, firmly courted by Namibian authorities, an IMSI-catcher is a perfect eye inside a national cellphone network, says Yasin Kakande, a TED fellow and Africa online privacy watcher, in a Zoom interview with GV. 

In 2017, datasets from the UK Department For International Trade, revealed that Namibia’s secret police agency, The Namibia Central Intelligence Service (NCIS), ordered and bought IMSI-catcher eavesdropping gear from the British company CellXion Ltd, which markets “cellular intelligence solutions.” 

Over the last decade, Namibia’s state intelligence police have been robustly active in the European spy gear retail market. 

The Coalition against Unlawful Surveillance Exports (CAUSE) revealed in June 2015 that Namibia made bids to purchase internet eavesdropping armoury in Switzerland as far back as 2013. However, this attempt was rebuffed when the Swiss government began to clamp down on such exports, fearing that rogue states could use such machinery to harm domestic pro-democracy opponents. Swiss authorities promptly froze shipments of internet surveillance gadgets and software to Namibia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Yemen, Qatar, Malaysia, Taiwan, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates. 

In October 2014, Namibia was outed in an audacious bid to acquire internet scooping gadgets from the notorious Italian software vendor The Hacking Team (rebranded as Memento Labs after it was acquired by another cybersecurity company in 2019). An embarrassing data breach from WikiLeaks exposed Namibia as one of Hacking Team’s proposed customers and the mushrooming deal fell through. The Italian government also seized the moment to cancel Hacking Team’s permission to export intrusion malware. 

The Campaign Against Arms Trade lobby alleges that in 2011, and between 2015 through 2017, Namibia carried out transactions with the Danish corporation Sys-tematic, which sells expertise, web control equipment and advisory for states that seek “solutions, services and know-how for surveillance, prevention, analysis, threat assessment and crisis handling.”

Then there is the big elephant in the room – Huawei, of China. The company’s relationship with Namibia is over a decade-old, as the company is credited with installing 3G, 4G and now possibly 5G infrastructure.

Huawei, arguably one of the world’s most enthusiastic sellers of web control technology, has an enormous presence in Namibia. The company is both the supplier and fixer of gadgetry and infrastructure of Telecom Namibia, the national telecommunications operator. 

Along with MTC, a Namibia government-owned cellphone operator, Huawei has been locked arm-in-arm in a technological transfer relationship, especially via its showpiece SingleRAN radio access technology that allows Namibia’s mobile telecom operators multiple wireless services on a single network. Up to 2 million Namibians lean on Huawei-supplied technology to access voice communication, internet and digital TV, thanks to hundreds of radio base stations and thousands of miles of fiber-optic lines stationed in Namibia by Huawei. 

In all of this, “no one is sure whether this close partnership has allowed Huawei to have backdoor sneak into Namibia’s internet vault as it reportedly did at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, where the Chinese giant built up a computer network and craftily began to harvest data from the shadows,” worries Yasin Kakande. 

It is exactly the ultra-secretive digital-control maneuvers of Namibia’s intelligence agency which baffles activists. “It’s hard to measure the internet surveillance capabilities of Namibia, given the opaque nature of the budget of the security services sector and the way government-owned telecommunication operators deal with foreign service providers. Transparency is the missing link in all this,” adds Mare, the professor. “It’s a secretive space, hence informants won’t come to the front to confirm or disconfirm the practice.”

Observers notice something bizarre but interesting: When the top publication The Namibian ran the story “(Namibia) Spy agency gets N$217m…over 3 years” ($12,97 million USD) in 2019, observers suspected that some of the cash is to be slated for buying internet surveillance gadgetry. However, in the national budget these items are often hidden under clever headings like construction, renovations and improvements.

Namibia denies accusations that it is building an internet war chest to effortlessly check up on its domestic critics. Charles Siyauya from the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, wrote in response to a question from Global Voices that “to spy on citizen/s is the least on the priority list of execution of any progressive government. Only a predatory or failed government can spy on its citizens. Intelligence is about protecting the country and citizens from external and internal threats.” 

Namibia, like any state actor, has legitimate needs for using digital tools to guard its peace. It’s the secretive nature of the authorities’ digital manoeuvres that is unsettling. When purchased in secret—and used without the proper independent oversight— surveillance tools are a threat to fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to privacy and freedom of expression. 

“Germany, choke on your asparagus” reads this graffiti in Wedding, Berlin. Photo (c): Maxim Edwards, May 2020.

In late June, more than 1,500 workers at a meat processing plant in western Germany contracted COVID-19. Once the limit of 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants had been surpassed, the lockdown of the facility and its neighbouring village was later extended to the entire district of Gütersloh, in the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia. It was the first lockdown on this scale since Germany relaxed federal restrictions on May 10.

Most of those infected at the Tönnies company’s slaughterhouse were migrant workers from Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania. They are just a handful of the thousands of people from the EU’s eastern member states who head to Germany every year to work in the country’s food industry.

Germany’s epidemiologists have warned that these massive facilities, with their poor ventilation, running fluids, packed assembly lines, and oft-touched metal surfaces, constitute Petri dishes for infection. They have already noted a significant number of COVID-19 infections among slaughterhouse workers, who are now being tested en masse in at least five federal states. But some figures, including North-Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Armin Laschet, seemingly shifted the blame onto the workers themselves (Laschet has since “clarified” his statements, made in June, after criticism from federal politicians.)

Tönnies now adorns the frontpages of Germany’s leading newspapers; in some publications and on social media, it has become a popular quip to state that the pigs have a bigger lobby in Germany than the precarious workers who slaughter them. That may change. On May 20, Germany’s Minister of Labour Hubertus Heil presented a new law to ban the outsourcing of labour and hiring processes to subcontractors, obliging Germany’s meat companies to commit to minimum labour standards for migrant workers.

With this outbreak, another chapter has unfolded in Germany’s public discussion about the status of seasonal labour migrants. Labour activists from Europe, East and West, are warning that the COVID-19 pandemic has not only illuminated these existing inequalities — it has deepened them.

Choke on your asparagus

In Germany, the coming of spring is traditionally symbolised by the asparagus and strawberries. More recent tradition holds that they are picked by precarious Bulgarian and Romanian migrant workers — Germany’s agricultural sector hired 300,000 migrant workers in 2019 alone. So when the federal government closed the country’s borders in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the German agricultural lobby feared that tonnes of produce could be left to rot in the fields. Therefore, on April 2, Berlin agreed to open Germany’s borders to 80,000 seasonal labour migrants over the following two months. The EU instituted a union-wide exception to travel bans for seasonal labourers.

Almost immediately, thousands of Romanians heeded the call. On April 9, images hit social media of 1,800 people crammed into the small international airport in Cluj-Napoca, due to board four flights to Germany. According to some German media reports, several workers had arrived from the Suceava region, which was technically supposed to be under lockdown. What explained the crowds of people at Cluj airport that day?

Both at home and in Germany, these seasonal labourers were accused of recklessness and stupidity for choosing to work abroad during a pandemic. Rights activists and analysts alike criticised this framing as inaccurate, asking not why workers chose to take such risks, but what the German companies benefitting from their labour could do to keep them safe. After all they were, in the words of the EU directive which exempted them from travel bans, “critical workers.”

For many people in rural Bulgaria, Romania, and other eastern European states with poor employment prospects, seasonal labour migration is a matter of survival.

Polina Manolova, a migration researcher at the University of Tübingen, says that the Bulgarian government that the Bulgarian government’s lack of proactive measures to offer social support for workers intensified poverty, or the fear of impoverishment, during the pandemic:

These are people who have been laid off recently, people who aren’t entitled to any unemployment benefit because there are so many conditions they have to fulfil. A lot of people fall out of the social security net, or work in the grey sector, or are self-employed. I follow recruitment agencies on Facebook, and I have never before seen such massive interest in leaving to work on these jobs.

As this anonymous woman explained to Bulgarian National Radio in April:

Финансова е причината да искам да замина. С 20 паудна си пазарувам храна за цялата седмица и от нищо не се лишавам, а тук не мога да си позволя да си купя сьомга всяка седмица. На 30-и април летя, имам организиран чартърен полет от фермата. Пътувам за Англия. Тази година ми е девети сезон, ходя в една и съща ферма. Фермата е за ягоди, малини, къпини, боровинки. Не се притеснявам, там сме затворено общество. От познати, които са там, знам, че има карантинен период. Спим в каравани, по шест човека сме, имаме отделно баня, тоалетна

The reason is financial for me. With 20 pounds I can do my weekly shopping and I don’t deprive myself of anything. Here I can’t even afford to buy fish each week. I am going on a charter flight organised by the company on April 30. This is my ninth season in this farm. It’s a strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, and blueberry farm. I am not worried because we are like a closed society there. My friends there told me that there is a quarantine period. We are six people in a caravan, we have a shared bathroom and a toilet.

Her words also suggest, as several analysts explained to Global Voices, that wage differentials are a necessary but not sufficient way to explain seasonal labour migration. It offers young families a chance to save for their children’s higher education or houses of their own. It offers social capital; for young men in rural areas, it may as well be considered a rite of passage.

This mainstay of rural life in Romania and Bulgaria was not going to be cut short by the pandemic. Facebook groups recruiting farm workers in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands teemed with eager workers soliciting advice on how to head overseas. A handful of comments on the Bulgarian-language Brigada UK express concern about the coronavirus and social distancing measures, but most seem undeterred, even comments in April when the pandemic was far worse in many countries.

“With the amount of chemicals they spray over there, there’s no way you’ll get COVID-19!” joked one man on the same page.

Life on the fields

When seasonal workers arrived in Germany, caveats applied. EU regulations, as well as instructions drafted by the German Ministry of Agriculture, obliged them to take a generalised health test before entering the country, whereupon they would have to self-isolate for two weeks. Only chartered flights were permitted, rather than the long bus journeys taken by most labour migrants.

Yet much remained the same. Seasonal labourers were still hired by subcontractors and middlemen rather than the farms or slaughterhouses where they worked. Formally paid the German hourly minimum wage of 9.35 euros, they complain that much of that sum is in fact deducted — not always transparently — to cover flights, food, and accommodation which they consider substandard. Dominique John, project coordinator of Faire Mobilität, an NGO which enforces fair working conditions for migrant labourers in Germany, told Global Voices that his colleagues had noted a rise in complaints of this nature in recent months.

Fundamentally, this precarious employment relationship did not change during the pandemic. As one German farmer told the national tabloid Bild in April:

Deutsche kann ich nicht gebrauchen. Stundenlang gebückt auf dem Feld zu arbeiten, sind die meisten Deutschen nicht gewohnt. Sie klagen schnell über Rückenschmerzen… Der Spargel muss alle ein bis anderthalb Tage gestochen werden. Deutsche fordern die Woche ein, zwei Tage frei. Das geht in der Hochsaison nicht. Rumänen ackern auch sonn- und feiertags

I can’t use Germans. Most Germans aren’t used to toiling away in the fields for hours on end. They quickly complain about backaches. But asparagus has to be picked every one to one and a half days. Germans demand one or two days off per week. That doesn’t cut it in the harvest season. Romanians work away on Sunday and public holidays too.

According to an April 2 concept paper drafted by Germany’s Ministry of Agriculture seen by Global Voices, seasonal labour migrants had to be provided with personal protective equipment (PPE) and be able to work and live at a safe distance distanced from one another. However, in light of the usual standards of accommodation for such workers, researchers and activists such as Manolova doubt that even stricter sanitary measures could be enforced across the board.

The following examples, according to labour rights activists, are not unrepresentative of the living conditions of seasonal labour migrants on farms in Germany and neighbouring Austria:

In April, other labour activists voice concern at the potential health consequences of the rigorous work regime on the fields:

horror stories from Romanian seasonal workers in Germany continue:
1. Days of quarantine: one. Then, on the fields.
2. Pressured to work 14 hours a day, 100 hours a week!
3. If refusing to work in cold rain, fired on spot. https://t.co/CCdI9e3AWg

— Daniela Gabor (@DanielaGabor) April 20, 2020

On April 11, a Romanian man working as an asparagus picker in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg was found dead, and had tested positive for coronavirus. He is believed to have entered the country earlier, on March 20. The same month, Romanian workers from Suceava working at the same farm wrote the following letter to Monitorul de Suceava, a local newspaper, complaining about working conditions during the pandemic. The subcontractor who had dispatched them there, they continued, was no longer responding to their phone calls.

Vă scriu pentru că suntem într-o mare dilemă, suntem în locul în care a murit acel bărbat din Suceava, aici nu sunt condiții de protecție, sunt oameni în izolare care muncesc singuri pe câmp. Astăzi a izolat o echipă întreagă de oameni, aici este o femeie care se simte rău și așteaptă medicul de azi dimineață și nu vine nimeni să o vadă. Se lucrează și în hală la sortat sparanghel, aici oamenii stau unul lângă altul, avem măști pe care le purtăm de 5 zile. Au închis porțile firmei și au pus bodyguard, au mers apoi la oameni în câmp și le-au spus că dacă vine poliția să le spună că e totul bine. Vrem să mergem acasă, nu vrem să murim aici pe capete.

I write to you because we are in a great dilemma. We are in the place where that man from Suceava died. There are no means of protection; there are self-isolating people who work alone in the fields. Today a whole team of people were isolated; there’s a woman who feels ill, she’s been waiting for the doctor to come since the morning and nobody comes to see her. People sort asparagus in the hall and stand next to each other. We have masks that we’ve been wearing for five days. They closed the gates of the compound and put guards there, then went to people in the fields and told them that if the police come, they have to tell them that everything is fine. We want to go home. We do not want to die here.

There are grounds to believe that the distribution of working hours has improved in subsequent months. But in light of the employment relationship, a key question remains: what should happen if an agricultural worker in Germany falls ill from COVID-19?

Last year, the Federal Employment Agency stated that nearly 70 percent of agricultural seasonal labourers in Germany were marginally employed on short term “mini jobs,” and therefore did not qualify for health insurance and German social security guarantees. Furthermore, the maximum period in which foreign workers were allowed to work in Germany without them or their employers contributing to the social security system was raised from 70 to 115 days during the pandemic, potentially prolonging their precarious situation.

Throughout May and June, public interest in the fate of seasonal labour migrants rose, as did fears that the incoming labourers would bring COVID-19 with them.

But what went less widely remarked was that eastern Europe had been comparatively successful in its fight against the pandemic. Despite widespread tropes about migrants “bringing disease” to Europe, it was the Romanian and Bulgarian asparagus pickers, not the consumers, were at greater risk from working in Germany — where the number of COVID-19 infections was far higher than in their homelands.

When the crops have been saved and their saviours return to their home countries, it could be worth revisiting this social media user’s words:

Auch muss ich gerade an diese abstrusen Bilder von voriger Woche denken, wo tausende Erntehelfer eng gedrängt an rumänischen Flughäfen standen.
Und ich frage mich: Wie wahrscheinlich ist es, dass ein rumänischer Erntehelfer hier zum Arzt geht wenn er Husten hat? Wer hilft denen?

— Dr. Wu (@Dok_Wu) April 15, 2020

I have to reflect on these abstruse images from the past weeks, where thousands of migrant workers stand back to back in Romanian airports. And I ask myself: how likely is it that a Romanian migrant labourer will go to the doctor here if he has a cough? Who will help him then?

It is a good question. If, indeed, one of those workers is able to visit a doctor in Germany, nothing will be lost in translation — for Germany’s healthcare system, much like many others in Europe, runs with the help of thousands of Romanian doctors who have come in search of a dignified salary. Meanwhile, Romania fights COVID-19 with a shortage of medical personnel.

The management of fresh food supply chains in Europe’s transnational agribusiness relies on cheap, non-unionised, and privately managed labour from low-wage Eastern European countries. The costs and benefits of this material structure are under-appreciated. West European farming benefits from massive EU and national subsidies, crowding out agricultural exports from the Global South. Yet pay and work conditions in the parts of European food supply chains that are not yet automated (such as fresh produce or meatpacking) remain precarious. International supermarkets pit producers against each other, who in turn rely on wage suppression to defend the sectors’ relatively small margins. While in theory, the East European workers enjoy the legal protections awarded to formal labour by EU law, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed, and in some cases sharpened, their often exploitative work conditions. This occurred not just in countries with large informal sectors, weak labour unions a dual labor markets such as Greece, Spain or Italy, but also in countries like Germany, where economic informality is low and, for all the recent erosion, labour relations.

There’s a chronic demand for labour across Europe, and this shows it. You can have Brexit or no Brexit, you’re still going to need those workers, and there are few remaining places in Europe other than Romania where you can get them. Over the past 30 years, we’ve been through a process of liberalisation of economies, there have been much more short-term labour contracts and flexibility to recruit migrant labourers, and that’s in total opposition to the publicly stated desire to have less immigration; you can’t have both. You cannot on the one hand liberalise the economy and give more leeway to labour movement and then say that you want less immigration. Politicians play this game about closing borders because there’s political benefits, but at the same time it’s clear.

Trade unions also have to accept that local workers aren’t available for those jobs. It’s also not true that if the wages and conditions were improved, local workers would do that work — look at its social status. Perhaps students will do it, but once they graduate they’re not going to do this. Politicians can say that they want unemployed people to do that work, but the problem is that picking strawberries, asparagus isn’t an easy job! It requires getting up very early and being very motivated, and actually requires some skills. You won’t often find that among other workers. It has proven a complete illusion that you can do without this. We’re talking about very specific sectors — agriculture is one, care work is another, restaurants and dishwashing, hotel industry is another. These sectors can only exist because of that labour coming in.

Însă resursa umană cu care România a mai rămas nu mai este una super calificată, adică bine plătită, ci o resursă umană necalificată numită „forţă de muncă ieftină”. Aş spune chiar foarte ieftină şi prost plătită. Atât de ieftină, încît se vinde „sezonier”, „en-gros”, aproape ca buştenii. Dar dacă buştenii se reîntorc în ţară sub forma unor mărfuri prelucrate în fabrici şi cu un preţ mai mare, cetăţenii, „forţa de muncă ieftină”, revin în ţară mai obosiţi, mai bolnavi, mai bătrâni, chiar dacă cu ceva bani adunaţi. Citeşte întreaga ştire: Noul proiect de ţară este neoiobăgia. Statul nu face diferența între bușteni și oameni… […] Avem stare de urgenţă, sau dispare la un telefon din Germania? […] Ce garanţii au aceşti oameni, ce asigurări, ce condiţii sanitare etc.? Ei pleacă pentru câteva luni, căci sunt “sezonieri”: cine le plăteşte carantina când se întorc? Statul german, angajatorii sau statul român? […] Care este proiectul nostru de ţară?

The human resource Romania is left with is no longer highly qualified, or rather, well-paid, but an unqualified resource known as “cheap labour.” Cheap, or poorly paid. So cheap that it is sold “seasonally,” and “wholesale” — almost like logs. But if the logs return to their country of origin in the form of goods processed in factories, to be sold at a higher price, the “cheap labour” citizens return to their country more tired, sick, and older, even if they have raised a little money. Our country’s new project is neo-feudalism. The state does not differentiate between logs and human beings. […] So, do we have a state of emergency, or does it disappear with a phone call from Germany? […] What guarantees do these people have? What insurance, what healthcare? They leave after a few months, because they are “seasonal.” Who pays for their quarantine when they return: the German state, the Romanian state, or their employers? […] What is our national project?

As borders were closed across Europe, some of the continent’s most vulnerable workers saw themselves labelled “critical” and “essential” by Brussels and Berlin. It was a flattering acknowledgement, but one which implicitly invited comparison with their less than flattering employment rights and precarious existence.

If the post-pandemic world returns to “normal,” it behoves Europeans to ask once more about the how our normality came to be and at a cost to whom — the cost to those who toil unseen, the better to nourish our illusions that it may continue forever.

Monument commemorating the genocide in Rwanda. Photo from The Advocacy Project, used under license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

After 26 years on the run, Rwandan genocide suspect, Félicien Kabuga, was arrested in a Parisian suburb on May 16. He was then transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

At 84, Félicien Kabuga has long been one of the world’s most wanted fugitives. The United States State Department offered a reward of $5 million for any information leading to his arrest. After playing hide-and-seek with police in several different countries to avoid his many charges, he was finally arrested on May 16, in Asnières-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb.

He wanted to be tried in France, but French courts decided to transfer him to Tanzania, to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) on June 3. Kabuga is accused of being the financier of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, — a period of 100 days in which Hutu extremists killed nearly 1 million people, mostly Tutsi.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) charged Kabuga in 1997 on seven counts including genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, as well as crimes committed in Rwanda between April 6 to July 17, 1994.

Journalist Moutiou Adjibi Nourou summarised the charges brought against Kabuga:

Il est accusé d’avoir créé les Interahamwe (“ceux qui combattent ensemble”), des milices hutu considérés par l’ONU comme les principaux bras armés du génocide de 1994 qui fit 800 000 morts.

Visé par un mandat d’arrêt international, Félicien Kabuga présidait la Radio-télévision libre des mille collines (RTLM), qui diffusa des appels aux meurtres des Tutsi après l’assassinat de l’ancien président Juvénal Habyarimana. Il dirigeait également le Fonds de défense nationale (FDN) qui collectait « des fonds » destinés à financer la logistique et les armes des miliciens et aurait « ordonné aux employés de sa société (…) d’importer un nombre impressionnant de machettes au Rwanda en 1993 », avant de les faire distribuer en avril 1994 aux Interahamwe.

He is accused of having created the Interahamwe (‘those who fight together’), which is the Hutu militia that is considered by the UN [United Nations] to have been the main perpetrator of the 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 people.

Wanted under an international arrest warrant, Félicien Kabuga presided over the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines [RTLM], which broadcast calls for the murder of all Tutsis after the assassination of former President Juvenal Habyarimana. He also headed the National Defense Fund [FDN] which collected ‘funds’ to finance the logistics and the weapons of the militia and was said to have ‘ordered the employees of his company (…) to import a significant number of machetes to Rwanda in 1993,’ before having them distributed to the Interahamwe in April of 1994.

RTLM played a fundamental role in the genocide. Indeed, Sandra Ngoga, a junior analyst at the University of Sherbrooke, states:

Ensuite, durant les 100 jours qui suivirent, elle [RTLM] incitera quotidiennement la population hutu à faire son travail, terme qui faisait référence au massacre des Tutsis. Par ailleurs, les animateurs de cette Radio ont joué un grand rôle dans le déroulement du génocide, car ces derniers signalaient aux citoyens le nom et la localisation des victimes tutsi et incitaient la population à effectuer rapidement son travail.On estime que la RTLM a contribué à la mort d’un grand nombre de personnes.

Peu après le génocide, plusieurs journalistes qui travaillaient pour la Radio ont été accusés de complicité de génocide et de crimes contre l’humanité.

During the 100 days of genocide, every day, the RTLM would encourage the Hutu population to ‘do their job’, a term that referred to the massacre of Tutsis. Furthermore, the hosts of this radio station played a large role in the genocide, as they informed citizens of the names and locations of Tutsi victims and encouraged the population to carry out their work quickly. RTLM is believed to have contributed to the deaths of a huge number of people.

Shortly after the genocide, several journalists who worked for the radio station were accused of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity.

Kabuga’s time on the run came to an end during France’s lockdown due to COVID-19 measures. Eric Emeraux, head of France’s Central Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity (OCLCH), is quoted here:

La traque a commencé depuis un an lors d’une réunion à La Haye sous l’égide du Mécanisme. Les membres de sa famille sont alors placés sous surveillance par les polices belge, britannique et française, selon les pays où ils résident. L’attention des services français se porte sur un appartement où se rendent souvent des membres de la famille de Kabuga. La surveillance électronique leur permet de constater que, sur 365 jours, il y a toujours un enfant de Kabuga (il en a eu onze) présent dans cet appartement. On avait de bonnes raisons et de gros faisceaux d’indices qui nous permettaient de penser qu’il était derrière, mais jusqu’à ce qu’on ait poussé la porte de sa chambre, on n’était pas sûr. On aurait eu des certitudes si on l’avait vu sortir. Il était très discret. Et il était confiné. Il vivait sous une fausse identité avec un passeport d’un pays africain… Il a eu 28 alias quand même, en 26 ans.

The hunt began a year ago during a meeting in The Hague under the auspices of the IRMCT [the courts]. Members of his family were then placed under surveillance by the Belgian, British and French police, depending on their country of residence. The French police focused their attention on an apartment often visited by members of Kabuga’s family. Using electronic surveillance methods over the course of 365 days, they saw that one of Kabuga’s children [he had 11 in total] was still living in the apartment. We had a large body of evidence and good reason to believe that he was inside, but until we pushed open the door of his bedroom, we were not completely sure. We would have been certain if we had seen him come out, but he was very discreet and was quarantined in his home. He was living under a false identity with a passport from an African country … He had 28 aliases in total — over 26 years.

Did Kabuga receive protection?

Although many activists have celebrated Kabuga’s arrest, some are wondering how he was able to escape justice for over a quarter of a century. Alain Gauthier, president of the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR) is dubious about possible complicity which could have availed Kabuga on French soil.

According to an Agence France-Presse dispatch, the Rwandan Community Association of France (CRF) has already appealed to the Nanterre [city on the outskirt of Paris] public prosecutor’s office, demanding an investigation into who may have assisted Kabuga.

Many human rights activists and journalists have been asking the same questions on Twitter.

Ida Sawyer, deputy director for Africa at Human Rights Watch, stresses:

#Rwanda: Avec la mort confirmée du génocidaire présumé Augustin Bizimana, juste quelques jours après l’arrestation en #France de Félicien Kabuga, il faut redoubler d’efforts pour que Protais Mpiranya – le dernier fugitif majeur – soit traduit en justice https://t.co/ikh0535cZw pic.twitter.com/nc9WUKFIIT

— Ida Sawyer (@ida_sawyer) May 28, 2020

#Rwanda: With the confirmed death of the alleged genocidaire Augustin Bizimana, just a few days after the arrest in #France of Félicien Kabuga, we must redouble our efforts so that Protais Mpiranya, the last major fugitive, is brought to justice.

La cours d’appel de Paris ordonne le transfert de #FélicienKabuga au @unirmct. Nul doute qu’il va jouer la procédure et aller en cassation.
Ironie du sort, la cassation est l’autorité juridique & morale suprême et c’est précisément là que Kabuga va introduire son recours immoral

— Nadia Kabalira (@NadiaKabalira) June 3, 2020

The Paris Court of Appeal orders the transfer of #FélicienKabuga to @unirmct. No doubt he will play the procedure and go to appeal. Ironically, the court of appeal is the supreme legal and moral authority and it is precisely there that Kabuga will lodge his immoral appeal.

LUCHA, a civil society and human rights organization in Democratic Republic of Congo, laments:

Soupçonné et recherché pour genocide et crimes contre l’humanité, le rwandais Felicien Kabuga vivait en France avec un passeport Congolais ! https://t.co/Yamcpi1sMm

— LUCHA 🇨🇩 (@luchaRDC) May 29, 2020

Suspected and wanted for genocide and crimes against humanity, the Rwandan Felicien Kabuga lived in France with a Congolese passport!

Event in support of Julian Assange (Barcelona, 24 February 2020) – Photo courtesy of Assemblea Nacional Catalana Flickr account (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange’s hearing for extradition to the United States on February 24, 2020 led many people, both on the streets and online, to rally support for his release. Twitter user Bean summed up the attitude of many people across the globe:

Don’t be fooled: Julian Assange is a journalist, not a hacker, and the US wants to make his work—national security journalism—a crime. #DontExtraditeAssange #AssangeCase pic.twitter.com/bnnoDrqmeh

— Bean🔥 (@SomersetBean) February 23, 2020

Assange also has significant backing among mainstream journalists:

1200 journals from 98 countries: We urge all journos to speak up in defense of J Assange at this critical time. Dangerous times call for fearless journalism.#JournalistsSpeakUpForAssange.

World-wide journalists condemn court action against Julian Assange https://t.co/2SnV50TwVY

— 💧Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis) February 20, 2020

Background

It is nearly eight years since Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and a year since his imprisonment in the United Kingdom’s Belmarsh Prison for breaching bail.

In 2006 he launched the Wikileaks website, which has published leaked and classified information from the U.S. government and other sources. Major instances include the Afghanistan and Iraq War Logs, and Cablegate. Assange collaborated with US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning on these leaks.The extradition case relates to indictments for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and espionage. Assange faces up to 175 years imprisonment if convicted of all charges. He has been accused by the American government of putting lives at risk.

Hero or villain?

Assange is a controversial figure for a number of other reasons. In 2010, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for him in relation to sexual assault allegations; the charge has now expired. In 2016, the publication of Hillary Clinton’s private email archive blotted his copybook in the eyes of many progressives, who accused him of doing Russian President Putin’s dirty work and of helping to elect Donald Trump. Assange denies these accusations.

But many netizens dismiss attacks on Assange and Wikileaks. Some believe that what is paramount are the principles involved, not Assange’s character:

“Everyone has a view on Assange. But, frankly, our views should be irrelevant. We, the public, are not in the know. We’re easily manipulated. We can be wrong.” #FreeAssange #DontExtraditeAssange #auspol https://t.co/QGVr2YBuE9

— 💧fladdle (@fladdle) February 29, 2020

Others refuse to support him for a range of reasons:

Assange deserves no respect, he lost it when he helped Trump get elected.

— Nathan Lewandowski (@NamerElodin) March 6, 2020

Assange is no Saint. He’s put lives at risk with his actions. Due process is important, 100%, but let’s not ignore the bad shit wikileaks has done putting entire families at risk in places like Iraq. Unforgivable.

— Rantomon (@Rantomon) March 5, 2020

Former Australian ambassador to Israel and now government backbencher, Dave Sharma, has joined numerous politicians who have little time for Assange. Greg Barns, a human rights advocate and advisor to the Assange team, recently took Sharma to task:

@DaveSharma This is not an either/or proposition. #Assange must be supported as must other Australians detained overseas @AssangeCampaign Imprisoned academic deserves more sympathy than Assange, Sharma says https://t.co/SdF9rZATHW

— Greg Barns (@BarnsGreg) March 2, 2020

There is a small group of pro-Assange members in Australia’s federal parliament. Opposition backbencher Julian Hill backed the ‘other Julian’ in a House of Representatives speech:

They imprison and torture Julian Assange to silence him. I spoke up for his rights today … and the lights in Parliament literally go out…💡 pic.twitter.com/5T2zehSarU

— Julian Hill MP (@JulianHillMP) February 26, 2020

Campaigning to #FreeAssange

There has been a worldwide resurgence of protest meetings and demonstrations. New Zealand academic Alex Hill is an activist who coordinates Candles4Assange:

120 events being held this week for @DEAcampaign
with 35+ ONGOING weekly or fortnightly events worldwide
(25 cities in Germany!) @Candles4Assange
🇦🇺🇳🇿🇸🇮🇫🇷🇺🇲🇬🇧🇳🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇷🇰🇷🇸🇪🇲🇽
🇮🇹🇮🇪🇩🇪🇧🇪🇨🇦🇨🇭 🇳🇴🇦🇹🇪🇸🔥(=Catalonia)
24 FEB 2020 (37 cities in 22 countries)

🎵 @Pamariki + @GreenweaverArch pic.twitter.com/QtGPesJXei

— Antiwar☮AlexHills🎻🎵 (@GreenweaverArch) February 27, 2020

Catalan separatists, Assemblea Nacional Catalana, posted the photo at the top of the story on Flickr. It depits a protest in Barcelona on February 24. Part of the caption reads: “L’Assange va donar suport a l’autodeterminació de Catalunya: ara som nosaltres qui li’n donem!” (“Assange supported the self-determination of Catalonia: now we give it to you!”).

Guatemalan lawyer Renata Avila (a member of the Global Voices community) reported from the fourth day of the hearing about the latest issue involving Assange’s treatment in the judicial system:

Summary of #Assange extradition case today: the accused cannot “hear” the arguments and the Judge refuses to fix it: he just wants to sit next to his lawyers. Globally reasonable. She refused. She even threatened to extend the process. Due process? Or punishment by process?

— Renata Avila (@avilarenata) February 27, 2020

This follows earlier claims by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, that Assange “has been tortured & continues to be tortured” in Belmarsh Prison.

There are numerous Facebook pages such as Free Julian Assange and tens of thousands of Instagram posts petitioning for his release.

Chelsea Manning attempted suicide

Meanwhile, Chelsea Manning was reported to have attempted suicide in the US prison where she is being held, after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury about Assange:

This is devastating news. Chelsea Manning should be freed immediately! #FreeChelseaManning #FreeAssangeNOW https://t.co/P2c8QWghPa

— Ayrton Evans ⏳🌺 (@AyrtonEvans_) March 12, 2020

In a later development, a court has ordered her release as the grand jury has been disbanded. Wikileaks has responded:

The WikiLeaks Grand Jury running 10+ years has been disbanded. Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond have been released from its coercive machinations. Now drop all charges against #julianassange and release him. pic.twitter.com/qoHuUvvFcg

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 13, 2020

Online petition

Phillip Adams from Brisbane started an online petition in 2018 which has over 365,000 signatures. It calls on Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Prime Minister Scott Morrison to defend Assange: ‘Julian Assange is an Australian Citizen and as such it is the fundamental responsibility of the Australian Government to protect and ensure his human rights are not violated and to this end the Australian Government has failed.’

The radio broadcaster and media personality of the same name is also in Assange’s corner urging everyone to do more:

In The Weekend Australian Magazine today by @PhillipAdams_1

“It is we who are guilty of treason, treason against our principles. Not Julian Assange “#FreeAssangeNOW #DontExtraditeAssange pic.twitter.com/zRjxPtBqSA

— People For Assange (@people4assange) February 28, 2020

The extradition hearing resumes in May.

2019 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry winner Roger Robinson. Photo by Naomi Woodis, used with permission.

On January 13, 2020, Trinidadian-British poet Roger Robinson won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for his poetry collection “A Portable Paradise.” The T.S. Eliot Prize honours “the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland.”

The judges praised Robinson’s work for “finding in the bitterness of everyday experience continuing evidence of ‘sweet, sweet life.’”

The book is divided into five sections, each of which ends with a poem exploring the theme of paradise, with topics ranging from London’s tragic Grenfell Tower fire to the Windrush controversy. Issues of migration, racism, identity and inequity, are all presented in bold, raw, and honest ways.

Maybe it’s the sting of dissent, maybe it’s the hint of West Indian swagger that makes the reader curious to see where Robinson’s poems go, but he has a rare ability to place himself in the midst of things and yield to that immersion, yet remain a truthful observer. Robinson’s words are a balm to the bitterness of life — the collection compassionately recognises the humanity within us all, bound together by an almost reverent tone of dignity, even in powerlessness.

I got in touch with Robinson shortly after his win and chatted with via email about winning the prize, the collection itself, and why empathy is so important.

Janine Mendes-Franco (JMF): Congratulations! “A Portable Paradise” is a really important piece of work. Is the prize something you’d had your eye on, or did the win come as a happy surprise?

Roger Robinson (RR): I never have my eye on prizes, but I appreciate the prize. I’m always about getting the poems to people rather than trying to win a prize. I do like how the prize is getting me to a wider range of reader, though.

JMF: Interesting that Eliot himself was American-born but chose to live and work in England. You, on the other hand, were born in England and, having returned to Trinidad as a child, also chose to eventually settle in the UK. Have you thought about those parallels and why, for instance, Trinidad might be good for formation, but England might be better for creation?

RR: Hmmmm…interesting. I think Trinidad is also good for creation, but England is good for commerce and access to the international publishing industry.

JMF: The UK Guardian described you as a “British-Trinidadian dub poet.” Do you identify with that? How would you explain what “dub” poetry is to someone who’s never heard that genre of music or listened to a spoken word performance? 

RR: I’ve made a few dub albums. I think other people have called me a dub poet; I’ve not necessarily referred to myself that way. Dub poetry to me is poetry influenced by reggae rhythms, with a working-class focus.

JMF: It’s not coincidental that music has played such an integral role. You have a band (King Midas Sound), you’ve done recordings and music videos, and while all poetry has rhythm, yours has a musicality that stays with the reader. How did you hone your craft into something this unique and feels so authentic?

RR: I don’t know. I think I write from the things that interest me in a moment and I’m truthful to my interests. I don’t think it was a planned thing. Honing craft came through enjoyment of the rigours of practice.

JMF: It’s a daring thing, to be a truth-teller when the truth is a difficult thing to come by. Some of your work is almost like an intersection of journalism and poetry. Is it important to you that your collections are read by those who see “truth” differently from you?

RR: I think that I write like I am, so I’m no more daring than my own emotional truths. It’s no more important to me for people who see truth differently to read it, even though I like the idea of people developing and practicing empathy. The practice of empathy by all different types of people would be more important to me.

JMF: Were there truths you believed about yourself in Trinidad (which I assume was your benchmark for paradise), that did not translate in the UK? If so, did poetry help bridge the gap? What make you start thinking about the idea that paradise might be portable?

RR: I started thinking that paradise might be portable because I wanted it to be — and because my grandmother went to England and brought most of her 11 children to England on the money she made sewing dresses. Her children were her paradise.

I think in England I got a sense of myself as an international artist, which I did not get in Trinidad.

JMF: Quite a few of your poems in this collection have an underpinning of faith in something greater — a more enduring paradise if you will. What did you want this to accomplish?

RR: I wanted people to understand the power of prayer in their time of trauma.

JMF: The “hero” of many of your poems is the underdog in general and the migrant specifically. How, if at all, does the outsider experience inform your writing?

RR: Hmmmm…I can’t tell; I’m too close to it to see. I’m sure it does. I mean, when I came to England I lived in tower blocks so I knew about living in one. I guess it made me see things in a different way.

JMF: I understand you might be coming to Trinidad for the 2020 Bocas Lit Fest. Are you interested in connecting with other Caribbean writers?

RR: Yeah, I am coming to Bocas and I’m definitely interested in meeting other writers. Trinidadian poets like Andre Bagoo, Shivanee Ramlochan and Muhammad Muwakil are gaining in world recognition, and I’d love to connect with Caribbean writers when I’m there.

JMF: Who have been your greatest influences?

RR: Poets like Kwame Dawes, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Sharon Olds. People like Muhammad Ali. Musicians like David Rudder, Brother Resistance, and Bunji Garlin.

JMF: Poetry in Trinidad and Tobago is not necessarily well consumed, though it weaves its way into everything from soca and rapso music to spoken word performances, all reminiscent of the call and response tradition of the kalinda [martial art]. In a sense, all this is Caribbean poetry. Why do you think poetry is a powerful medium?

RR: I think it’s powerful because it helps people to practice empathy. Also it allows people to observe someone practicing vulnerability. A lot of inhumanity will occur without empathy and vulnerability.

JMF: Any advice for regional poets?

RR: Keep writing no matter what anyone says; don’t stop writing.

JMF: What are you most proud of when it comes to this collection?

RR: That I didn’t leave anything back. I gave it all.

Illustration of fact-check report “The IQ is OK, but journalist standards are at low level,” by Crithink.mk. CC BY.

This story is based on two different stories, one by CriThink.mk and another Meta.mk News Agency, both projects of Metamorphosis Foundation.

On July 2, 2019, Macedonian news site Fokus published an article titled “National IQ of Macedonia is 82, the lowest in the region.” It was illustrated with a color-coded world map ranking countries based on the average intelligence quotient of its populations, with Western Europe, North America, and East Asia at the top of the ranking. The article had over 3,500 Facebook reactions within a week.

The article lists as its main source the book “The intelligence of nations,” authored by Richard Lynn and David Becker and published by the Ulster Institute for Social Research, a think-tank based in Northern Ireland which Lynn directs. What the Fokus article lacks, however, is key background context on this source.

Richard Lynn is a highly controversial figure whose work has been consistently criticized by the scientific community for its lack of scientific rigor, misrepresentation of data, and for promoting a racialist political agenda. In April 2018, Ulster University stripped Lynn of his title of psychology professor emeritus after concluding that he advocated for “views that are racist and sexist in nature.”

Lynn’s think tank — which isn’t connected with Ulster University — also publishes the journal “Mankind Quarterly” which promotes various racial theories that the broader scientific community rejects. Lynn also regularly collaborates with ultra-right-wing publications such as Right NOW! and VDARE and is often praised by extreme right-wing figures around the world.

The Fokus article triggered a cross-border disinformation wave in the past weeks, according to anti-disinfo article by Meta.mk. Shortly after publication, it was widely plagiarized (copy-pasted with minimal changes of the text and without attribution) by several outlets based in North Macedonia, including the website Lider, which is part of a group of right-wing publications owned by Hungarians with ties to the regime of Victor Orban.

The Lider article, headlined “The lowest in the region: National IQ in Macedonia is 82,” was then listed as a source by the Serbian news site Kurir on an article titled “MACEDONIANS WILL DISLIKE THIS RESEARCH: They have the lowest IQ in the region, read here who is the smartest!” On the next day, back in North Macedonia, Kurir’s sister publication, news website Sloboden Pečat (both are owned by the Serbian company Adria Media Group), published a verbatim translation of that story in the Macedonian language, amplifying the visibility of the racist ideas.

The EU-supported project Critical Thinking for Mediawise Citizens – CriThink fact-checked the Fokus article, contextualizing its sources and raising questions about the journalistic standards of Balkans media. Journalist Jugoslava Dukovska, who signed the report, wrote: “Almost always these media fail to report on the sources of the alleged research and don’t attempt to verify their credibility. Instead, they exploit their potential for sensation.”

Not the first time

Screenshot of the article by Fokus with a map reflecting a white supremacist worldview.

This isn’t the first time Macedonian or the wider Balkans media have passed Richard Lynn’s ideas off as scientific fact.

In 2014 websites from around the region published a story claiming North Macedonia had an average IQ of 91, lower than most Western European countries but higher than those of Albania, Montenegro, and Serbia. That story was based on a Czech blog post that quoted another of Richard Lynn’s books, “Intelligence: A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences”, co-authored with Finish writer Tatu Vanhanen and also upholding racialist theories on intelligence.

At that time, Croatian portal Index.hr published a news item titled“This map shows the average intelligence of the peoples of Europe”. Immediately afterwards, Macedonian website MKD picked it up and published a story titled “Macedonian people are among the stupidest peoples in Europe.”

In 2015, dozens of Macedonian portals published similar news items about the allegedly smartest and stupidest people in the Balkans. These stories are still available online.

Only a few professional journalists and scientists have questioned the credibility of the viral articles. None of the websites have published the story have so far issued corrections or retractions.

Harmful stereotypes

In the Balkan context, stereotyping members of different ethnic communities is as old as it gets. There are folk tales from central North Macedonia dating back to the 19th century that say the Shopi — the people who lived in the today’s border region between Bulgaria, Serbia and North Macedonia — thought the sea was a huge fish soup, and that they took out spoons to eat it when they came to the shore. Later, in the former Yugoslavia, it was Bosnians who were the butt of many jokes.

The cyclical spread of pseudoscientific notions about IQ based on race or ethnicity taps into pre-existing stereotypes as well as it reinforces them in this region — no wonder they generate so much social media attention. But while this translates into more clicks for the media outlets who publish this disinformation, it also fuels resentment, discrimination, and hate.

Scientists have long dismissed theories that link ethnic or national origin with intelligence. Intelligence itself is a complex concept that is typically examined by considering the interplay between nature and nurture. Many studies have shown socioeconomic environment, education level of caregivers, and health and nutrition all play a role.

Despite all scientific evidence demonstrating otherwise, white supremacists in the United States and Europe systematically advocate for the notion that intelligence is primarily a result of genetic traits, usually postulating that a narrow subset of white people is genetically superior.

Ironically, the Balkan nationalists who typically deem US and Western European right-wing extremists as ideological alliesfail to see — or choose to ignore — that those pseudoscientific theories usually rank their own ethnicities below that of Western countries.

Article licenced under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Source: globalvoices.org