from John Lloyd:
After the U.S. fades, whither human rights?
The shrinking of U.S. power, now pretty much taken for granted and in some quarters relished, may hurt news coverage of human rights and the uncovering of abuses to them. But not necessarily. Journalism is showing itself to be resilient in adversity, and its core tasks – to illuminate the workings of power and to be diverse in its opinions – could prove to be more than “Western” impositions.
When the British Empire withdrew from its global reach after the World War Two, the space was occupied, rapidly and at times eagerly, by the resurgent United States, at the very peak of its relative wealth and influence in the immediate postwar years. What it brought with it was a culture of journalism that was increasingly self-confident in its global mission: not just to describe the world, but to improve it. Some European journalism had that ambition too, but these were nations exhausted by war. The Americans, at the peak of their influence in the postwar years, had the power, wealth, standing and cocksureness to project their vision of what the world should be.
Now, American power too will shrink, and the end of U.S. hegemony (it was never an empire in the classic sense) will mean that there will be a jostling for power, influence, and above all resources by getting-rich-quick mega-states like China, India and Brazil. They will project their view of what the world should be -- they have already begun, some (China) more confidently than others (India, Brazil).
Whether this will mean that the illumination of the workings of power around the globe will be better or worse will be one of the large themes for journalism of the next decades. In his The World America Made, Robert Kagan thinks, by implication, that it could be worse, because he believes the U.S. did most for human freedom round the world and a loss of American power means a threat to the protection it offered to democratic change. He writes that “perhaps democracy has spread over a hundred nations since 1950 not simply because people yearn for democracy, but because the most powerful nation in the world since 1950 has been a democracy.” I think he’s right in this, and that his “perhaps” is pretty definite. And if he is right, it means that the impulse to probe and expose will be weaker.
The U.S., however imperfectly, often hypocritically, and at times mendaciously, nevertheless possesses a default mode in favor of freedom and human rights. So do the European states. But though the European Union is more populous and has a higher GDP than the U.S., it’s disunited and likely to stay that way. So the decline of the U.S., even if it remains only relative rather than absolute (as Kagan believes), is the important issue. It could mean that the narratives of human rights, told by Western governments, by NGOs and above all by journalism, will become fainter.
Western journalism has developed human rights, and their abuses, into one of its major themes. Where the “something must be done” approach to issues was once largely confined to domestic matters, it is now writ globally. Western journalists, especially those from Anglophone countries, feel empowered to report and comment critically on the authoritarian and despotic policies of every country everywhere – the more so since the end of the Cold War meant that the pressure from Western governments to soft-pedal the abuses of tyrants who were on our side was no longer felt in the editorial offices.
Russia’s Muslim Chechnya to ban energy drinks
Russia’s Muslim Chechnya region is planning to ban the sale of non-alcoholic energy drinks such as Red Bull to under 18s, saying they are un-Islamic and dangerous, health officials said.
The ban would be the latest restriction from authorities in Chechnya, where shops can only sell alcohol during a small morning time frame, eateries are shut during the Ramadan fasting month and women must wear headscarves in state buildings.
“Energy drinks are comparable to beer,” the deputy minister of health in Chechnya, Rukman Bartiyev, told Reuters, adding that they were harmful to health.
The proposed ban was met with praise from the more conservative sectors of society, but angered ordinary Chechens who are growing increasingly frustrated at laws that only apply to Chechnya and sometimes contradict the Russian constitution.
“There are just too many restrictions lately. We are building a small Islamic state in Russia that looks like Dubai,” said a Grozny resident who gave her name only as Aset, 41.
A decade after Moscow drove separatists out of power in the second of two wars since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin relies heavily on Chechnya’s strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov to keep insurgents in check and maintain a shaky peace.
But critics of the hardliner say he runs the republic of 1.1 million as a tiny fiefdom, consolidating power by leading a violent crackdown on opponents and imposing his own vision of Islam, leading analysts to warn that Chechnya could move to autonomy once again.
Top Kremlin aide says Putin is God’s gift to Russia
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was sent to Russia by God to help his country during one of its most turbulent times, the Kremlin’s chief political strategist said on Friday in rare public remarks. “I honestly believe that Putin is a person who was sent to Russia by fate and by the Lord at a difficult time for Russia,” Vladislav Surkov, a staunch Putin supporter and one of Russia’s most powerful men, was quoted by Interfax news agency as telling state-run Chechen TV.
“(Putin was) preordained by fate to preserve our peoples,” said Surkov, who is also the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff.
Putin, 58, was president between 2000-2008 before becoming prime minister and is widely viewed as Russia’s key decision-maker. The former KGB spy, picked by an ailing President Boris Yeltsin as his prime minister and heir apparent, restored national pride by sending troops back into Chechnya to quell a burgeoning insurgency and presided over a long economic boom following the chaos of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
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Russian Muslims ask Moscow to lobby Saudis for increased haj quota to Mecca
Spiritual leaders from Russia’s large minority of Muslims asked President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday to press Saudi Arabia to increase the number of worshippers allowed to perform the annual Haj pilgrimage. Almost three million Muslims flock to Mecca every year for Haj, a duty every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must perform at least once in their lifetime. Riyadh allocates quotas for Muslims around the world.
Russia, home to 20 million Muslims, or around one seventh of the population, is allowed to send 20,000 Muslims a year for Haj, Mufti Ismail Berdiyev told Medvedev. They were attending a meeting with other Muslim leaders in Kabardino-Balkaria’s capital Nalchik in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus.
“So many people want to go. Maybe you could bring this up in talks with Saudi Arabia?” asked Berdiyev, who heads the Muslim community in Karachay-Cherkessia, not far from Nalchik.
Since the fall of Communism 20 years ago, Russia’s Muslims have embraced a spiritual revival after decades of Soviet authorities forcing all religions underground. Mosques across the North Caucasus are swelling in number, learning Arabic has become popular amongst the young and Muslim media outlets are sprouting up across the country. Around half of Russia’s Muslims live in the North Caucasus, a patchwork of mountainous republics on its southern fringe, also home to a growing Islamist insurgency.
Medvedev vowed to bring it up with Saudi officials next time they meet. “We have open dialogue with them on all issues,” he told Berdiyev and other muftis.
Read the full story by Denis Dyomkin here.
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Moscow’s “Holy Rus” religious art show spotlights sacred Russia
Russia opened an unprecedented exhibit of religious art pulled from across the country and abroad at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery on Thursday, in a show of Kremlin support for an Orthodox Church growing more powerful since the fall of Communism.
The state-sponsored exhibit “Holy Rus” displays art works from the Old Eastern Slavonic state, which existed in the middle ages and united the lands of modern Belarus, Ukraine and the European part of Russia, with its capital in Kiev.
Russia inaugurated a new holiday last year to mark its adoption of Christianity in 988 by the leader of the Kievan Rus Prince Vladimir more than 1,000 years ago. “It isn’t the political state called Russia, whose history we are telling here, it’s the historic period of ‘Rus’ we are showing,” Orthodox church representative Father Nikolai Kim said.
The exhibit, which combines 420 masterpieces from 25 Russian museums and from the Louvre in Paris, opens with massive 600-kg, gold-leafed gates from a cathedral in Suzdal, a town 200 km (120 miles) northeast of Moscow with a historic center that dates back to medieval times.
Fragile 11th-century icons, gem-encrusted and metal-bound copies of the New Testament, priestly robes and rich iconostases are displayed behind glass in cross-shaped stands.
The director of the Tretyakov Gallery said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had been behind the government’s sponsorship of the costly and stunning exhibit. “It’s a very expensive project, and we wouldn’t be able to pull it off without the state’s help. No investors would provide us with that much money,” Irina Lebedeva said. She did not disclose the cost of the display.
Vladimir Putin is saint and saviour for Russian cult
(Svetlana Frolova pauses during a service at her sanctuary at Bolshaya Yelena, a village near central Russia's city of Nizhny Novgorod May 15, 2011/Natalia Plankina)
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cultivates the image of a bare-chested macho man, but a nun-like sect in central Russia thinks actually he’s the reincarnation of St. Paul, the apostle. Or, if not that, he may in a past life have been the founder of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“I say what the Lord has revealed to me,” the sect’s leader, former convict Svetlana Frolova, said.
Putin’s advisers disclaim any link with the sect led by the former railway manager, who was jailed for fraud in 1996. “He (Putin) does not approve of that kind of admiration,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said by telephone.
But Frolova and her followers are only the most extreme illustration of a personality cult building up around Putin before the 2012 presidential election. An opinion poll by the independent Levada Center showed that more than half of Russians believe a Soviet-style personality cult is being cultivated for Putin, who has refused to say whether he will run for president in the March vote.
“I love Putin as our No. 1, our commander, the captain of our great ship, and he is worthy of our love,” said Frolova, who says she was “reborn” as Mother Fotinya after serving a 21-month sentence. She says God spoke to her and revealed Putin’s past lives included that of Grand Prince Vladimir of Rus, credited with founding the Russian Orthodox Church more than a millennia ago.
“Every one of us has many incarnations. Saint Paul was indeed one of Putin’s,” she told Reuters, her high-pitched voice bouncing off the icon-hung walls of her sanctuary in Bolshaya Yelnya, a village near the city of Nizhny Novgorod, some 410 km (255 miles) east of Moscow.
Russian Church: Ditch beer for books in nightclubs
Russian revelers can now swap vodka and dancing for tea and reading at new “spiritual nightclubs” being set up by Orthodox Church, media said quoting a top religious official. In the latest suggestion by the increasingly powerful Church, youths will be able to “have the opportunity for serious dialogue, reading, unhurried conversation so they can have a cup of tea,” said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin.
“A nightclub does not have to be a place where debauchery, boozing and drug addiction reign,” said Chaplin, who added that the Church-inspired clubs will stay open till 5 a.m. like most of Russia’s drinking holes.
Endorsed by Russia’s leaders as the country’s main faith, the Orthodox Church has grown increasingly powerful since the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union in 1991.
Its efforts to influence education and secular life have drawn criticism from rights groups and members of minority faiths. Russia’s 20 million Muslims make up a seventh of the country’s population. Chaplin outraged feminists earlier this year when he said women should dress more modestly and refrain from walking down the street “painted like a clown.”
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Russia’s Muslim elite vows to tackle Islamist extremism
Russia’s Muslims on Thursday set up a council of experts to devise ways to tackle extremism, two weeks after a suicide bomb attack on the country’s busiest airport killed 36. Earlier this week Islamist leader Doku Umarov said he had ordered the devastating attack on Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.
“People need to be protected from extremism and terrorism, and educated away from this,” said Ravil Gaynutdin, the chief Mufti of Russia, which is home to some 20 million Muslims, or a seventh of the population. “These experts will play a very important role towards making things better… for Muslims to be more involved in Russian society,” Gaynutdin, clad in a flowing black robe and crowned by a silk white hat, told Reuters in an interview before chairing the council’s first meeting.
He added that the council, comprised of 38 Russian Muslims involved in politics, law and media, will regularly meet to analyse how Muslims live in today’s Russia and make recommendations to government on how their lives can improve. Initiatives could include offering religious guidance to Muslim youths, setting up sports clubs, building more mosques and making sure Muslim literature is easy to find.
A decade after federal troops drove separatists out of power in a second war in Chechnya, the North Caucasus — home to around half of Russia’s Muslims — is plagued with violence and rebels there want to carve out a separate Islamic state.
President Dmitry Medvedev has told security officials terrorism is Russia’s biggest threat.
Read the full story here. Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld
Islamist rebels take aim at Russia ahead of election year
A suicide attack on Russia’s busiest airport shows Islamist rebel leader Doku Umarov is serious about inflicting “blood and tears” on the Russian heartland ahead of the 2012 presidential election. Umarov, a 46-year-old rebel leader who styles himself as the Emir of the Caucasus, claimed responsibility for the January 24 attack that killed 36 and said he had dozens of suicide bombers ready to unleash on Russian cities.
Russia is struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency along its southern flank nearly 12 years after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rose to popularity by leading Russia into a second war against Chechen separatists.
In his 16-minute video, posted on several Islamist websites, Umarov vowed more attacks “on the territory of Russia. They will be carried out, God willing, there is no doubt about it.”
Chechen-born Umarov wants to create a separate state with Sharia Islamic law across the patchwork of Muslim republics along Russia’s south that he considers to be “occupied” territory.
“There will be hundreds of brothers who will be ready to sacrifice themselves for the establishment of the word of God,” Umarov, clad in camouflage and sporting a long black beard, said. On Friday he said that five or six dozen men were presently ready for “martyrdom.”
Russian Orthodox Church clergy allowed to enter politics
Russia’s Orthodox Church has allowed its clergy to enter politics in certain cases, in the latest sign of its growing presence in Russia’s secular society. Endorsed by Kremlin leaders as Russia’s main faith, the Church has grown increasingly powerful since communism fell two decades ago. Its role has drawn criticism from human rights groups who say it undermines Russia’s constitution.
On Thursday, President Dmitry Medvedev backed a decision by the Church to allow clergy to enter politics in certain cases. “The Russian Orthodox church is the largest and the most respected social institution in the modern Russia,” Medvedev told top clergy visiting the Kremlin.
The Church, which made the announcement on Wednesday, said it had made some exceptions allowing clergy to enter the political arena in cases where the Church encounters hostility from other faiths and factions. It did not elaborate.
“Exceptions to this rule can be made only in a case when the election (to government) of clergy … arises from the need to counteract forces…,” a statement posted on Patriarch Kirill’s official website mospatriarchia.ru said.
Although Russia officially separates church from state, Medvedev said the two should work more closely. “In order to strengthen social stability today …(the state and the Church), probably like never before, need to act together,” he said.
The consolidation and dominance of the Church is criticized by human rights campaigners who say its power is encroaching on Russia’s separation between religion and state and the country’s large Muslim minority says it feels excluded.
It’s a better propostion than secularization of church and state!
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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Yes, I was wondering about that “wither” (whither?), too.