Return the Parthenon marbles. The British Museum has too much stuff anyway

The Guardian

These relics from the fountainhead of European culture don’t belong in a cold, grey Bloomsbury chamber.

The Parthenon marbles row is beyond silly. Rishi Sunak screeches “Mine, mine” like a child in a playground. (...) The nation yawns – polls show over half are happy to see the marbles returned and just above 20% want them to stay. Any civilised Briton knows they should be displayed where they belong – in their former home of Athens. (...)

(Text continues underneath the photo.)

Visitors to the British Museum in London view sculptures that are part of the Parthenon marbles collection, 28 November 2023. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP.

[A]s any visitor to Greece knows, what to Britain is a boring scholastic quarrel is to Greeks a burning sense of grievance that will not go away. This is an asymmetrical row.(...)

Of course Britain has legal title to the statues, but laws can be changed. Of course Lord Elgin probably saved them from destruction, though they were later damaged in cleaning. (...)

The marbles issue is simply about the integrity of one of Europe’s greatest artistic compositions. These statues came from the fountainhead of European culture at its most formative moment, in the 5th century BC. That fountainhead was on the Acropolis in Athens, gazing out over the sunny Aegean with marble from the adjacent mountain, not imprisoned in a cold, grey chamber in Bloomsbury. (...)

Science could satisfyingly replicate the Parthenon marbles in both Athens and London. But to the Greeks – far more than any Britons – this is indeed about authenticity. The Parthenon is their ancestral temple and the marbles their crown jewels. They badly want them back. And surely a cultured country such as Britain should have the dignity to oblige. It has the power to restore integrity to this stupendous composition in the land of its creation. (...)

But a post-imperial arrogance has crept into the marbles debate. Britain’s government is telling the rest of the world: you may have got your independence back, but you are not getting your stuff. (...)

The great collections of antiquity are more or less confined to a few grand museums in Europe and America, products of national aggrandisement in the 19th century. These institutions are fanatically reactionary. (...)

There is nothing sacred about a museum. It is an unnatural place to leave thousands of objects frozen in time and place, vulnerable to theft and decay. (...)

The truth is that most museums have too much stuff, far too much. They should distribute it to the rest of the world. Returning the Parthenon marbles might indeed be a precedent, and an excellent one.

Hele artikel

Tags: #greece #great_britain #united_kingdom #british_museum #parthenon #elgin_marbles #parthenon_marbles #looting #art #museum

Europe’s lurch to the right rolls on. Only unity on the left can stop it

The Guardian

Recent polls in Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Finland tell the story of voters swayed by fear and prejudice. Progressive parties – take note Keir Starmer – need a clear, principled agenda to turn that tide.

Why does the left keep losing? It’s not a question liberals and progressives particularly want to confront, but look around. Reactionary parties of the political right and far right are once more on the rise and on the march across Europe, as shown again by last week’s lopsided election results in Spain and Italy.

(Text continues underneath the photo.)

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap general election in July after crushing polls setbacks in the country’s regions and cities last weekend. Photograph: Dumitru Doru/EPA.

Each country is different, its circumstances unique. Yet a broad pattern is discernible – and it’s not difficult to trace. The banal common denominator is that parties of the European left, hard and soft, are too fractured and fractious to build winning coalitions that offer convincing alternative solutions to voters’ problems. (...)

It’s not as though rightwing conservatives, populists, nationalists and assorted radicals and extremists have all the answers. Anything but! (...)

How may this Europe-wide tendency be reversed? Maybe resurrection for the left will be found in the example of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister and Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) leader. (...)

In trying to rally the left, Sánchez seeks to expose his opponents’ divisiveness and hate-mongering. An alternative approach to neutralising the right is to absorb it – as attempted last month by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the Turkish opposition’s presidential candidate. (...)

The radical right’s resilience should ring alarm bells in Britain, too, which, despite itself, is not immune to European trends. By shifting rightwards in hopes of winning power in 2024, Starmer’s Labour risks empowering its opponents. Better to draw a line like Sánchez, Spain’s socialist leader, then set one’s own agenda, offer a clear choice and trust voters to decide. It’s not that complicated. Unity, plus well-defined, principled policy programmes, is the way the left stops losing – and learns to win again.

Complete article

Tags: #politics #elections #far-right #spain #greece #turkey #finland #france #italy #hungary #uk #united_kingdom #labour_party #starmer #keir_starmer #Giorgia_Meloni #meloni #Europe #Pedro_Sánchez #Viktor_Orbán #orban #Recep_Tayyip_Erdoğan #erdogan #mitsotakis

In de laatste Britse kolonie kon je in 1973 nog als een beest worden gedeporteerd

NRC

Kolonialisme - In zijn nieuwe boek vertelt Philippe Sands de boeiende geschiedenis van de strijd om zelfbeschikking van de inwoners van de Chagos-archipel, de laatste Britse kolonie. (...)

De laatste kolonie, heet het boek dat de Brit Philippe Sands schreef over de Chagos-archipel. Het is geen verhaal dat het grote publiek zal kennen, maar één van de eilanden doet waarschijnlijk wel een belletje rinkelen: Diego Garcia. De Amerikanen hebben er een grote luchtmacht- en marinebasis die onder andere werd gebruikt in de oorlog tegen Irak. Later kwam Diego Garcia ook in het nieuws als vermoedelijke black site van de CIA, voor het verhoren en mogelijk martelen van terreurverdachten. (...)

De laatste kolonie is een ogenschijnlijk ‘klein’ verhaal. Het gaat over de strijd van de 1500 gedeporteerde bewoners van de Chagos-archipel om te mogen terugkeren naar hun geboortegrond. Maar Sands verbindt dat verhaal listig met internationale rechtszaken en verdragen, waardoor het zich ook laat lezen als een geschiedenis van het recht op zelfbeschikking van volkeren – een principe dat centraal staat in vrijwel elk naoorlogs conflict, zoals ook nu weer in de oorlog tussen Rusland en Oekraïne.

De Chagos-archipel was onderdeel van de Britse kolonie Mauritius, ook al ligt de eilandengroep daar zo’n 2000 kilometer vandaan. Voordat de Britten instemden met de onafhankelijkheid van Mauritius in 1968, maakten ze de Chagos-archipel los van het Afrikaanse eiland. In feite creëerden ze daarmee een nieuwe kolonie – vandaar de titel van het boek, De laatste kolonie. (...) De kleine eilandjes waren onderdeel van een groot geopolitiek spel: eind jaren vijftig, de Koude Oorlog was in volle gang, begonnen de Amerikanen plannen te maken voor militaire bases overal in de wereld. Daarbij lieten ze ook hun ogen vallen op onbeduidende atollen als Diego Garcia. De Britten wilden hun bondgenoot ter wille zijn, en stelden het eiland gratis ter beschikking. De Mauritiaanse leiders werd voorgehouden dat hun onafhankelijkheid in gevaar was als ze niet meewerkten aan het plan. De internationale gemeenschap werd verteld dat de eilanden geen permanente bewoners hadden – een leugen.

Aan die bewoners werd niks gevraagd. (...)

De Amerikanen legden een landingsbaan aan. Camp Justice werd de basis genoemd, ‘zonder enige ironie’ merkt Philippe Sands op. Ironisch is wel: juist de Britten en de Amerikanen stonden aan de basis van moderne ideeën over zelfbeschikkingsrecht voor volkeren. (...)

Aan de hand van een aantal concrete zaken (over Zuid-Afrika dat het internationale recht schond in Namibië, de VS in Nicaragua en Rusland in Georgië) legt Sands uit hoe de tijd langzaam rijp werd voor een zaak over de Chagos-archipel bij het Internationaal Gerechtshof. (...)

Mauritius wint de zaak, en vervolgens nemen de VN een resolutie aan waarin staat dat Chagos ‘een integraal deel’ van Mauritius is en dat de hervestiging van Chagossianen ‘een kwestie van urgentie’ is. Alleen: Groot-Brittannië weigert tot op de dag van vandaag om daar gehoor aan te geven. (...) ‘Terwijl Groot-Brittannië klaagt over de illegale bezetting van Rusland in Oekraïne bezet het zelf nog altijd illegaal een deel van Afrika.’

Hele artikel

> Zie ook: Laat de Chagossians terugkeren naar Diego Garcia (mijn blog)

Diego Garcia, het grootste eiland van de Chagos-archipel, waar de Amerikanen een grote militaire basis hebben. Foto Getty Images.

Tags: #diego_garcia #imperium #koloniaal #kolonie #kolonialisme #dekolonisatie #mauritius #mensenrechten #militaire_basis #us #united_kingdom #verenigd_koninkrijk #verenigde_staten #vs #koloniale_geschiedenis #Atlantisch_Handvest #handvest_van_de_Verenigde_Naties #handvest_van_het_oorlogstribunaal_in_Neurenberg #verenigde_naties #volkenrecht #zelfbeschikking

Dark things are happening on Europe’s borders. Are they a sign of worse to come?

The Guardian

With a disregard for people’s lives, countries from the UK to Poland are toughening up, as if in preparation for climate displacement.

It is bad enough when states break their own rules and mistreat people – but it’s when they start to change the rules that we really need to worry. Three recent stories, from three different corners of Europe, suggest that governments are crossing a new threshold of violence in terms of how they police their borders. (...)

In the UK, the Home Office has quietly tried to amend its draconian nationality and borders bill, currently at committee stage, by introducing a provision that gives Border Force staff immunity from prosecution if they fail to save lives at sea. (...)

In Poland, the government has just passed an emergency law allowing authorities to turn back refugees who cross into the country “illegally”. It is the latest development in a diplomatic standoff with Belarus. (...) Poland’s hardline response leaves many people trapped in the no man’s land between the two countries. (...)

In south-eastern Europe, an international team of investigative journalists have revealed that Croatia and Greece are using a “shadow army”, balaclava-clad plainclothes units linked to those countries’ regular security forces, to force people back from their borders. (...) Just as shocking as the claims themselves is the fact that the revelations have largely been met with a shrug of indifference by EU officials, whose funding helps prop up border defences in both countries. (...)

Together, these stories suggest that the “push-back” – the forcing away of migrating people from a country’s territory, even if it places them in harm’s way or overrides their right to asylum – is becoming an entrenched practice. Once something that would take place largely in the shadows, it is being done increasingly openly, with some governments trying to find ways to make the practice legal. (...)

This is not only a problem for today: it is a dress rehearsal for how our governments are likely to deal with the effects of the climate crisis in years to come. (...) [A] new report by the World Bank projects that 216 million people could be displaced within their own countries by water shortages, crop failure and rising sea levels by 2050. (...)

Unfortunately, many of our politicians are primed to see displacement first and foremost as a civilisational threat. (...)

Richer parts of the world have already begun to militarise their borders, a process that has accelerated in response to the refugee movements of the past decade. (...)

This, however, is a false kind of security. Restrictive and violent border control just makes the societies that wield it more authoritarian – and it doesn’t stop people moving entirely, either. What it does is force people to make more dangerous journeys, becoming even greater targets for xenophobic backlash. (...)

What’s required, instead – beyond action to reduce emissions – is a plan to help people adapt to changing living circumstances and reduce global inequality, along with migration policies that recognise the reality of people’s situations. (...)

The next few years are likely to mark a turning point in the way our governments respond to displacement. Either they work together to build a system that protects people’s lives and dignity, and that can adapt to the changing realities of the 21st century, or their borders will continue to harden, at considerable human cost. If we want to avoid the latter, then now is the time to challenge the violent logic of the push-back, before it becomes written into our laws.

Full article

> See also: Europe’s Deadly Border Policies (Human Rights Watch)

‘In Poland, the government has passed an emergency law allowing authorities to turn back refugees who cross into the country “illegally”.’Border guards are seen guarding Afghan refugees at the Polish and Belarusian border, August 2021. Photograph: Attila Husejnow/SOPA Images/Rex/Shutterstock.

Tags: #europe #borders #border_policy #fort_europe #pushbacks #frontex #libya #mediterranean #human_rights #migrantion #migrants #refugees #coast_guard #border_police #poland #belarus #greece #uk #united_kingdom #croatia #eu #european_union

The Covid Report 21-04-20: What Price A Life?

"What will be the consequences of the lockdown, how might we get out of it, and what will the new economic order look like after all this is over?" Must-watch UK programme interviewing four experts from the world of health, economics and law.

#covidreport #pandemic #covid #covid19 #covid_19 #covid-19 #sarscov2 #sars-cov-2 #sars_cov_2 #coronavirus #coronavirusdisease #coronavirusdisease2019 #ppe #personalprotectiveequipment #facemask #facemasks #uk #unitedkingdom #united-kingdom #united_kingdom #lockdown #economy #academic #health #economics #law