On the Urgency of Launching the ArtLeaks Gazette (London)

Presentation of the international platform ArtLeaks
On the Urgency of Launching the ArtLeaks Gazette

Wednesday, 7 November 2012
19:00-22:00
Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London

This is part of the 9th Annual Historical Materialism Conference ‘Weighs Like a Nightmare’, London, November 7th-12th, 2012

ArtLeaks is an international platform for cultural workers where instances of abuse, corruption and exploitation are exposed and submitted for public inquiry. ArtLeaks’ mission is to create a space where one could engage directly with actual conditions of cultural work internationally – conditions that affect those working in cultural production as well as those from traditionally creative fields. Furthermore, ArtLeaks is developing in the direction of creating transversal alliances between local activist and cultural workers groups, through which we may collectively tackle repression and inequality.

While building on previous models that emerged in the highly politicized milieus of the 1970s and 1980s, such as the institutional critique practice of left-wing collectives, ArtLeaks seeks to expand the scope of these historical precedents towards international geopolitical engagement. One of the outcomes of ArtLeaks working assemblies and workshops was the establishment of alliances with international groups such as W.A.G.E. (NYC), Occupy Museums (NYC), Arts & Labor (NYC), Haben und Brauchen (Berlin), the Precarious Workers Brigade (London), Carrotworkers’ Collective (London), Critical Practice (London), and The May Congress of Creative Workers (Moscow). It is our strong belief that only an internationally coordinated movement would be able to expose and denounce exploitation and censorship in contemporary culture, and collectively imagine new types of organizational articulations.

For the 2012 Historical Materialism Conference, members of ArtLeaks will present the outcome of their previous working assemblies which took place this year in Berlin, Moscow and Belgrade, and bring up for discussion the urgent need to establish the ArtLeaks Gazette (forthcoming 2013). This regular, online publication aims to be a tool for empowerment in the face of the systemic abuse of cultural workers’ basic labor rights, repression or even blatant censorship, and the growing corporatization of culture that we face today.

After these brief introductions, we will break into four working groups, each focused on a different theme outlined in our Gazette. These will be:

1) Critique of cultural dominance apparatuses

Here we will address methodological issues in analyzing the condition of cultural production and the system that allows for the facile exploitation of the cultural labor force. We will try to relate methodology with concrete case studies of conflicts, exploitation, dissent across various regions of the world, drawing comparisons and providing local context for understanding them.

2) The struggle of narrations

This working group will develop and practice artistic forms of narration which cannot be fully articulated through direct “leaking”. Our focus will be finding new languages for narration of systemic dysfunctions. We expect these elaborations to take different forms of artistic contributions, such as comics, poems, drawings, short stories, librettos, etc.

3) Education and its discontents

The conflicts and struggles in the field of creative education are at the core of determining what kind of subjectivities will shape the culture(s) of future generations. It is important therefore to analyze what is currently at the stake in these specific fields of educational processes and how they are linked with what is happening outside academies and universities. Here we will discuss possible emancipatory approaches to education that are possible today, which resist pressing commercial demands for flexible and “creative” subjectivities. Can we imagine an alternative system of values based of a different meaning of progress?

4) Best practices and useful resources

In this working group we invite people to play out their fantasies of new, just forms of organization of creative life. Developing the tradition of different visionaries of the past we hope will trigger many speculations which might help us collect modest proposals for the future and thus counter the shabby reality of the present. This also includes practices which demonstrate alternative ethical guidelines, and stimulate the creation of a common cultural sphere.

At the end of the working group session, we will present our findings to each other and come together for some final conclusions and future common aims.

Facilitators of the event: Corina L. Apostol, Vlad Morariu

The editorial board for the first issue of the Gazette will consist of Corina L. Apostol, Vladan Jeremić, Vlad Morariu, David Riff and Dmitry Vilensky.

More about the ArtLeaks Gazette: http://art-leaks.org/artleaks-gazette/

More about Historical Materialism: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/about-us

Thanks to Historical Materialism for hosting us!

Stop the Crackdown against Russian Anti-Fascists! (open letter)

Original in Russian published here: www.colta.ru/docs/7991

The crackdown against anti-fascists in Russia has recently gained momentum. The country’s repressive law enforcement authorities view involvement in the anti-fascist movement as a crime in itself.

Moscow anti-fascists Alexey Sutuga, Alexey Olesinov, Igor Kharchenko and Irina Lipskaya are currently in jail in connection with dubious and unproven accusations of “disorderly conduct.” Anti-fascists Alexandra Dukhanina, Stepan Zimin, Alexey Polikhovich and Vladimir Akimenkov are among those accused of involvement in “mass riots” on Bolotnaya Square on May 6 in Moscow, when riot police brutally dispersed an authorized opposition rally. Clear evidence of their guilt still has not been presented.

In Nizhny Novgorod, law enforcement authorities are attempting to have anti-fascists declared an “extremist group.” Although on October 18 a court sent the case against the fictional organization “Antifa-RASH” (whose alleged IDs “anti-extremist” police detectives planted on activists during a search) back to the police for further investigation, the Nizhny Novgorod political police are unlikely to leave the activists alone. Igor Kharchenko has also been charged under this same article of the Russian criminal code (“involvement in the the activities of an extremist group”). Alexey Olesinov and Alexey Sutuga’s defense attorneys also expect that authorities will attempt to have their clients declared “extremists.”

The attorneys and comrades of the arrested activists believe this is being done to make it easier for police to prosecute anti-fascists and social activists. If guilty verdicts are returned in the Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod cases, a wave of similar “extremist” cases will follow all over Russia. Anti-fascists are today officially stigmatized as “extremists.” What is next? A court ban on anti-fascist views?

We consider it unacceptable that an individual can be persecuted simply for political views and activities dedicated to the fight against racism. We demand a fair and partial investigation in these criminal cases, and prosecution of all law enforcement officers who abuse their authority and flagrantly fabricate criminal cases against civil society activists.

[signed:]
Svetlana Reiter, journalist
Pavel Chikov, civil rights activist
Andrei Loshak, journalist
Oleg Kashin, journalist
Artyom Loskutov, artist
Pavel Pryanikov, gardener, journalist
Shura Burtin, journalist
Arkady Babchenko, war correspondent
Igor Gulin, poet, literary critic
Maria Kiselyova, artist
Ilya Budraitskis, leftist activist
Alexander Chernykh, journalist
Victoria Lomasko, artist
Anna Sarang, sociologist
Tatyana Sushenkova, photographer, artist
Jenny Curpen, journalist, political exile
Sergei Devyatkin, journalist, political exile
Mikhail Maglov, civic activist
Pavel Nikulin, journalist
Alexei Yorsh, artist,
Maria Klimova, journalist
Nikolay Oleynikov, artist
Alexander Tushkin, journalist
Daniil Dugum, journalist, anarchist
Andrei Krasnyi, artist
Dmitry Grin, artist
Alexander Litinsky, journalist
Isabelle Makgoeva, leftist activist
Yuliana Lizer, journalist, documentary filmmaker
Dmitry Vilensky, artist
Ilya Shepelin, artist
Tasya Krugovykh, photographer, filmmaker
Vyacheslav Danilov, political scientist
Tatyana Volkova, art critic
Yegor Skovoroda, journalist
Georgy Rafailov, leftist activist
Dmitry Tkachov, editor, journalist
Alexander Delfinov (Smirnov), poet, journalist
Nadezhda Prusenkova, journalist
Anton Nikolaev, artist
Yulia Bashinova, journalist
Denis Mustafin, artist
Matvei Krylov, artist
Olesya Gerasimenko, journalist
Grigory Tumanov, journalist

______

Articles (in Russian) on the cases mentioned above:

“Antifa-RASH” case
«Лента.ру»: Экстремисты из Нижнего
Открытое информагентство: Свидетель обвинения дал показания против оперативников Центра «Э»
«РБК daily»: В Поволжье судят «придуманных» экстремистов
«Автономное действие»: Нижегородское дело

The case against Alexey Olesinov and Alexey Sutuga
«Новая газета»: Когда я спросила, почему Алексею не разрешили позвонить, следователь промолчал
«Новая газета»: В Москве продлили срок ареста двум антифашистам

The case against Igor Kharchenko and Denis Solopov
«Известия»: Антифашиста хотят вернуть в Россию новым уголовным делом
«Газета.ру»: Четыре статьи за ненависть к националистам
«Новая газета»: Игорю Харченко снова продлен срок содержания под стражей

The case against Irina Lipskaya
«Каспаров.ру»: Задержанные антифашисты проведут 2 месяца в СИЗО
«Автономное действие»: Дело об инциденте у клуба «Баррикада»: двое антифашистов заключены под стражу

The case against the screening of the “extremist” film “Russian Anti-Racist Skinheads” in Vladimir
Openspace: Кино на букву «Э»
Открытое информагентство: Эксперты нашли в фильме москвича призывы к действиям против скинхедов и пропаганду их неполноценности

On attempts to have the entire Russian anti-fascist movement declared “extremist”
«РБК daily»: МВД «повысит» статус антифашистов с хулиганов до экстремистов
«Большой город»: Социальная группа «гопники»
«Эхо Москвы»: Фанаты-единороссы, «удостоверение анархиста» и другие способы посадить антифашиста
«Новая газета»: Антифашистов пытаются объявить вне закона

Golden Dawn, 1980-2012: The Neo-Nazis’ Road to Parliament

borderlinereports.net

REPORT: GOLDEN DAWN, 1980-2012. THE NEO-NAZIS’ ROAD TO PARLIAMENT

by Augustine Zenakos

425,000 Greek voters sided with a neo-Nazi political party in the last election. Though Golden Dawn is implicated in a surge of violent attacks, and while its views range from the ridiculous to the downright racist, its popularity is rising by the day. What exactly is Golden Dawn, where does it come from, what is its true nature? What is the extent of their relationship to the police? And who are the people that vote for them?

Golden Dawn storm troopers in the city of Corinth

“The political party of the crisis par excellence”. This is how Golden Dawn is described by Efthymis Papavlassopoulos, a political scientist and pollster.  And Christophoros Vernardakis, another political scientist and pollster, says: “It is the only political party that is clearly rising in popularity”.[1]

In response to this rising popularity, the principals of Golden Dawn have made some effort recently to disguise the nature of their party. Especially after their electoral successes, they have attempted through a series of public statements to pass their organization off as a “nationalist” party that is honestly interested in the well being of Greek citizens and has taken up the struggle against the austerity policies imposed by the Greek governments at the behest of the troika.

They are not being truthful in the least: Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi organization, upgraded to a crowd-pleasing political party by riding on the wave of popular discontent with the established political system. Like their original source of inspiration–the German Nazis–the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn have held views as varied as they are laughable, including mystical beliefs in the ancient Greek god Pan and other gods of Mount Olympus, as well as satanist beliefs dressed up in the theatrics of Black Metal music. They have also subscribed to wildly irrational or conspiratorial views, such as that the once number two in the German Nazi party Rudolph Hess was of Greek descent, or that Adolph Hitler roamed the streets of Berlin for forty days after his apparent suicide, only to ascend to the heavens at the end.

Unfortunately, again like their source of inspiration, they can by no means be dismissed as plain charlatans, though charlatans they certainly are. In addition, however, Golden Dawn is responsible for a web of intimidation and fear that is ever intensifying, and its members have been repeatedly connected–though few of them convicted–with assaults, racial violence, beatings, extortion, and attempted murder.

Read the rest of this disturbing and well-researched report here.

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Russia’s Homophobic Laws Will Not Silence Side by Side LGBT Film Festival

www.bok-o-bok.ru

Russia’s Homophobic and Discriminatory Laws Will Not Silence Saint Petersburg’s Side by Side LGBT Film Festival, Which Starts October 25th and Runs through November 3, 2012

In the face of increasing discrimination and violence towards the LGBT community in Russia, organizers of the Side by Side LGBT Film Festival remain defiant. Throughout the festival’s ten days, maximum visibility and openness will be sought in order to bring home to the public and the authorities the message of respect for the human rights of LGBT people in Russia.

The major theme this year is local and global processes of the LGBT movement: we will explore discourses and practices relating to LGBT politics, activism, and sexual and gender identity rights at the local and global levels. In total, 37 films will be screen, and among the countries providing the focus are Russia, Uganda, China, Cuba, Chile and South Africa, places where LGBT movements are still in their infancy and face great opposition.

The Chilean film Young & Wild, directed by Marialy Rivas, opens the festival. After the screening, Rivas will take part in a Q&A with the audience. She states: “I firmly believe Side by Side stands as a necessary voice for the diversity and visibility of the LGBT community. We need to see our stories on the screen to understand who we are and be able to deal with an aspect as profound and delicate as our own sexuality.”

A major topic of discussion this year is state-sponsored homophobia, drawing on the experiences of Uganda and Russia. Following the screening of the hard-hitting documentary and multiple award winner Call Me Kuchu, which documents the courageous efforts of David Kato and his team to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the fight for LGBT rights in Uganda, Stosh Jovan, a human rights activist from Uganda, will participate in the discussion, along with Igor Kochetkov (LGBT Network) from Russia. Also joining in the debate are Andrey Tolmachev a representative of the office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights in St. Petersburg, and Robert Bierdron, Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

For the first time in its history, the festival will present a program of Russian films, “The Beginning,” compromised of new work from directors from around the country. The discussion to follow will address the issue of the visibility (or its lack) of LGBT in art and cinema. Seva Galkin, director of the short film Three Times About It, comments: “We need calm conversation. We are, after all, the same as they are. We have the same aspirations, by and large. We fall in love, think about our career, as well as dream of the sea. We are one of them.” And Svetlana Sigalaeva, director of the documentary Not With Us, says, “I learned the lesson the hard way that your country, or your house, can be a prison, if you’re a girl in love with a girl.”

Other guests include Eytan Fox (Israel), Yang Yang (China), organizer of the Beijing Queer Festival, and Michiel van Erp (Netherlands).

In cooperation with the Swedish documentary film festival Tempo, Side by Side will be screening the work of filmmakers Sara Broos (For You Naked) and Mette Aakerholm Gardell (Not a Man in Sight). Both directors will take part in Q&As following the screening.

As part of the festival, Side by Side will be launching an interactive campaign, Stop Homophobia in Russia! Details to follow.

The complete festival schedule can be viewed here.

Petersburg “Cossacks” Force Cancellation of One-Man Show Based on Nabokov’s “Lolita”

‎”Cossacks” in Petersburg have forced the cancellation of a one-man show based on Nabokov’s novel Lolita and starring well-known local actor Leonid Mozgovoy. The show was scheduled for today (October 21) at Erarta, a contemporary art center in the city’s Vasilievsky Island district. In a threatening letter addressed to Erarta management, subsequently published by several local media outlets, the so-called Cossacks claimed that Nabokov “commits the sex act with a 12-year-old girl several times during the course of his work”; that Mozgovoy himself was “not afraid to portray Hitler as a positive character” (in Alexander Sokurov’s film Moloch); that Sokurov himself is “a well-known promoter of sodomy and a homosexualist”; and that the event’s organizer (Artyom Suslov) is “known for sodomy and anti-ecclesiastical actions, has been convicted several times, and is a drug addict.” The “Cossacks” then cited Petersburg’s newly minted “law” against the “promotion of pedophilia and homosexuality” amongst minors and hinted that the show’s organizers had already violated said law by advertising the show. According to Internet Russian-language newspaper Bumaga, these arguments were enough to persuade Mozgovoy and Suslov. Mozgovoy is quoted as saying one that one cannot argue with “scum” (bydlo), that “they tried to argue with them in 1917” (and what?); while Suslov is quoted as saying that Mozgovoy “respects their opinion” (i.e., the opinion of the “scum”) and therefore decided to cancel the show. (!) A quite unbelievable turn of events considering that, as far as we can tell, no one even knows who these “Cossacks” are. More details, including a reproduction of the threatening letter, here (in Russian):  http://paperpaper.ru/no-lolita/

Yevgeniy Fiks, Homosexuality Is Stalin’s Atom Bomb to Destroy America (New York)

Yevgeniy Fiks
Homosexuality Is Stalin’s Atom Bomb to Destroy America

October 26 – December 22, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, October 26, 2012

Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present Homosexuality Is Stalin’s Atom Bomb to Destroy America, our third solo exhibition by New York-based artist Yevgeniy Fiks. Taking its title from a 1953 article by the Cold Warrior and pundit Arthur Guy Mathews, this exhibition explores the historical and ideological links between anti-Communism and homophobia in the United States, as well as the intersections between Communism and sexual identity as it played out during the 20th century. Works in the exhibition range from dry factuality to humor, and farce, and posit the 20th century queerness as the shared Other of the Communism-Capitalism dichotomy, while tracing the uneasy yet tangible historical links between the early 20th century Communist activism and the gay rights movement of the second half of the century.

The exhibition delves into the interlocking histories of the “Red” and “Lavender” scares during the McCarthy-era, when anti-Communist and anti-gay sentiments were fused together in the Cold War witch-hunt rhetoric. Pundits and government officials went as far as envisioning a sinister conspiracy: the Soviet Union is promoting homosexuality as a tool to destroy America. Concurrently, the federal government purged homosexuals that it employed, calling them “security risks”—vulnerable of being blackmailed by Soviet agents into working for them.  Ironically, in response to and mirroring its ideological enemy, the American Communist Party also purged known gays from its ranks—marking them as “security risks”—for fear that gay Communists were vulnerable to blackmail and could become informants for the Feds. The official charter of the Communist Party USA even before its 1950s anti-gay purge strictly prohibited gays from membership, adhering to the policies of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union where homosexuality was officially criminalized under Stalin and stigmatized as a “capitalist degeneracy.”

Works in the exhibition include Stalin’s Atom Bomb a.k.a. Homosexuality, a series of prints that highlights paranoid anti-communist and anti-gay quotations from American politicians and pundits of the era. Another series, Joe-1 Cruising in Washington, DC includes photographs of a six-foot cutout of the 1949 Soviet nuclear test explosion RDS-1—codenamed in the US as “Joe-1″—posing, in 2012, at locations that had been popular gay cruising sites in Washington D.C. circa 1930s-1950s. The Security Risk Map of Manhattan maps gay cruising and Communist meeting sites of the 1930-1950s, presenting an open ended question about the “conspiracy” and overlap between the two groups.

Two installations focus on a particular historical figure whose life epitomized this ironic and widely unknown intersection of policies. The piece History of the CPUSA (Harry Hay) consists of a 1952 edition of History of the Communist Party of the United States by William Z. Foster, with inserts about the life and work of Harry Hay (1912–2002). Harry Hay was a communist activist who was forced out of the CPUSA during the McCarthy era, and who later became one of the founders of the gay rights movement in the United States. The work Marxism and the National Question (Harry Hay) is an installation that consists of Joseph Stalin’s 1942 English edition books, Marxism and the National Question, in which Stalin outlines his definition of national minorities. This book sparked Harry Hay’s groundbreaking concept that “gay” constitute a minority—similar to African-Americans or Jews—and as a separate people they are entitled to civil rights. In a whim of historical irony, Hay appropriated the writings by the oppressive Soviet Thermidorian dictator and turned them into a tool of liberation, laying a foundation for the gay movement in the United States.

Yevgeniy Fiks was born in Moscow in 1972 and has been living and working in New York since 1994. Fiks has produced many projects on the subject of the Post-Soviet dialog in the West, among them: Ayn Rand in Illustration, a series of drawing pairing descriptive text from Atlas Shrugged with uncannily complimentary Soviet Socialist Realism classic artworks; “Lenin for Your Library?” in which he mailed V.I. Lenin’s text “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” to one hundred global corporations as a donation for their corporate libraries; “Communist Party USA,” a series of portraits of current members of Communist Party USA, painted from life in the Party’s national headquarters in New York City; and “Communist Guide to New York City,” a series of photographs of buildings and public places in New York City that are connected to the history of the American Communist movement. Fiks’ work has been shown internationally. This includes exhibitions in the United States at Winkleman and Postmasters galleries (both in New York), Mass MoCA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Marat Guelman Gallery in Moscow; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, and the Museu Colecção Berardo in Lisbon. His work has been included in the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011, 2009, 2007 and 2005), Biennale of Sydney (2008) and Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007).

For more information, contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or edward@winkleman.com.

Image above: Yevgeniy Fiks, Joe-1 Cruising in Washington, DC (Monument Grounds), 2012, photograph.

Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
t: 212.643.3152
www.winkleman.com

Why Did a Danish NGO Finance a Manual Depicting Migrant Workers in Russia as Tools?

As first reported on social networks yesterday and then later picked up by local online media outlets Fontanka.ru and The Village, Petersburg city hall has recently been involved in the publication and distribution of a “Manual for Migrant Workers” in which the migrant workers, presumably from the former Central Asian Soviet republics, are depicted as a paint roller, a whisk, a spatula and a paint brush.

The manual is available in four languages—Russian, Tajik, Uzbek and Kyrgyz—and can be downloaded as a .pdf file from the web site of Petersburg city hall’s “Tolerance” program, where it was apparently posted on August 30 of this year.

An accompanying text explains that the brochure was published by the “regional public organization Future Outlook” with support from the Petersburg and Leningrad Regional office of the Federal Migration Service and the [Petersburg] Municipal Center for the Prevention and Monitoring of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Diseases. Its stated aim is to promote “social adaptation and HIV/AIDS prevention among migrant workers from Central Asia.” To this end, the brochure has, allegedly, been made available at several locations around Petersburg and distributed at “training sessions” for migrants, also conducted by by Future Outlook.

While the Central Asian migrant workers are depicted throughout the manual as tools typically used in building renovation and maintenance, fields in which such workers are employed in large numbers in Russia’s major cities, the Russian law enforcement, immigration and health officials “welcoming” them to Russia, along with ordinary Russians encountered by the migrant workers during their stay, are depicted as human beings.

“Arrival in Russia”

“Crossing the Border”

“HIV Prevention: ‘Remember, You’re Expected to Arrive Home Healthy!'”

The Central Asian anthropomorphic “tools” are also given “useful advice” and “simple rules” for “feeling comfortable” in “Russia’s cultural capital.” Among other things, they are advised not to “wear ethnic clothing at all times and everywhere,” because it attracts “unwanted attention”; not to “wear sweatsuits constantly,  especially with classic dress shoes”; not to “go outside in a housecoat”; not to “squat on [their] haunches in public”; and not to “spit and litter.”

“Don’t Litter!”

Despite the fact that Central Asian migrant workers (along with other foreigners and members of Russia’s numerous ethnic minorities) have been frequent targets of neo-Nazi violence in recent years (the Moscow-based Sova Center has recorded 490 such assaults and murders in Petersburg during the period from 2004 to late September 2012) and are routinely exploited, conned and abused by Russian employers and government officials, the manual’s authors discourage them from “judging the city as a whole by one or even several unpleasant incidents that have happened to [them] or to people [they] know.”

And indeed, the manual’s final cartoon shows the Russian officials and a stereotypical Russian babuskha giving the Central Asian tools a warm farewell at the airport. The babushka comments, “What a good job you did with the renovations.”

According to an article published earlier today on news web site Newsru.com, spokespeople for Petersburg city hall have denied that it has anything to do with the brochure—even though it remains posted on the web site for the city’s “Tolerance” program as of this writing. In the same article, Gleb Panfilov, identified as the “head” of Future Outlook, the brochure’s publisher, is quoted as claiming that the illustrations provoked no “questions” or “negative emotions” among the migrant workers his organization had worked with, including a “focus group.”

“Generally speaking, when choosing these pictures of construction instruments, we had in mind not migrant workers, but simply helpers. They are helpful illustrations, characters in the booklet, like Clippy in the [Microsoft Office] computer program. And not a single migrant complained to us about this. […] We wanted our project to show that [migrant workers] should be treated as people, not as a labor force,” said Panfilov.

One aspect of the scandal that has so far gone unnoticed by Petersburg media is that the manual was, apparently, published with financial assistance from the Danish NGO DanChurchAid, as indicated by the acknowledgements in the manual’s colophon.

According to a statement on its web site, DanChurchAid’s mission is to “help and be advocates of oppressed, neglected and marginalised groups in poor countries and to strengthen their possibilities of a life in dignity.” Among its programs is one focused on providing relief to “poor migrant workers” from Central Asia and the “fight against HIV/AIDS” amongst such workers.

Is DanChurchAid aware of the content of the “Manual for Migrant Workers,” apparently published with its financial support? If it is aware of this content, does it believe that depicting “poor migrant workers” as construction tools is consistent with own mission?

We urge our readers to contact DanChurchAid for answers to these questions:

DanChurchAid
Nørregade 15
DK-1165 Copenhagen K
Denmark

Email: mail@dca.dk
Phone: +45 3315 2800
Fax: +45 3318 7816

Central Asia Regional Representative
Tatiana Kotova
Email: tk.russia@dca.dk

UPDATE. A reader has alerted us to the fact that the .pdf files of the manual have subsequently been removed from the Petersburg city hall web site. Here they are, in all four language versions, for downloading.

vostok-zapad-rus

vostok-zapad-kyrg

vostok-zapad-uzb

vostok-zapad-tadj

 

Craig Murray on Uzbekistan Today

. . . 1.4 million Uzbek children are today working in regime forced labour in the Uzbek cotton fields. They work at physically very tough labour for twelve hours a day in conditions identical to those in which black slave workers suffered in the Southern United States 200 years ago – indeed several US slave owners would have scrupled at the wholesale use of children as young as eight in the fields, as is done by the Uzbek government. They sleep in barracks on concrete floors, live on weak vegetable soup and drink dirty water from the irrigation ditches.

Of course it is not only children who are forced into the fields, and the system requires extreme compulsion. On October 6 in Kashkadarya, 18 year old Navruz Islamov was beaten to death by police for attempting to leave a cotton field when suffering from sunstroke. There are scores more such instances we do not hear about.

I have never felt so outraged as I did two years ago, when a European Commission official told me that the EU would not act on child labour in Uzbekistan as there was “no official evidence” of the practice, only “rumour”. This year – with the active connivance of EU nation state diplomats in Tashkent, particularly the German Ambassador – the Uzbek Government for the third successive year refused a request from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to visit Uzbekistan to monitor child labour in the cotton harvest. At the same time, the EU says it will not act without this report from the ILO.

This is also the position of the British Government, which has never made a single comment or statement on child labour in Uzbekistan (except by me while Ambassdaor). Indeed the coalition government has never made any statement on human rights in Uzbekistan at all, having no interest in the fate of its 8,000 political prisoners and ever-lengthening list of tortured and killed by the British “ally”, President Karimov.

Cuba has just announced the abolition of exit visas. Uzbekistan is now one of a tiny number of extreme regimes which still locks its people in, retaining the old Soviet exit visa system. The Cameron/Clegg government refuses to raise this with the Uzbek regime.

Britain and the EU are again selling weapons and providing military and secret service training to the Karimov regime, and the UK, US and other NATO countries are negotiating to “gift” huge amounts of arms and military materiel to Karimov as they withdraw from Afghanistan. Nobody in the West, and particularly in the Western media, appears to have any interest at all in our collusion with the most repressive and corrupt regime in the world.

Source

No Culture Icons

Given the events of the past year, here is a truly timely contribution to the “debate” and the “discourse” from publishing house Routledge and a group of western Slavists. The Russian grassroots (i.e., a “tiny minority”) should rest assured knowing that “scholars” in the west have their backs covered. Bravo, ladies and gentlemen!

Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon

Though in recent months Putin’s popularity has frayed at the edges, the dearth of comparably powerful and experienced political leaders leaves no doubt that he will continue to be a key political figure. During his tenure as Russia’s President and subsequently as Prime Minister, Putin transcended politics, to become the country’s major cultural icon. This book examines the nature of his iconic status. It explores his public persona as glamorous hero, endowed with vision, wisdom, moral and physical strength—the man uniquely capable of restoring Russia’s reputation as a global power. In analysing cultural representations of Putin, the book assesses the role of the media in constructing and disseminating this image and weighs the Russian populace’s contribution to the extraordinary acclamation he enjoyed throughout the first decade of the new millennium, challenged only by a tiny minority.

And now, a musical pause while we go to the toilet to vomit: