the slow death of european liberties

fieldnotes, entry three, w/c 10th february

Poorly thought through notes of things that have prompted my thinking recently, across a variety of mediums. Low levels of proof reading, moderate levels of fact checking, high levels of yapping.

Mazen al-Hamada and a decade of European failures

There are many insightful things that have and will be said about Syrias future over the last couple of months; none of them by me. But there is something to one specific story that emerged late last year that is worth considering for those of us across Europe who will no doubt at some point in the near future feel the need to pontificate about the future of a country and a people whose existence we had politically abandoned to Russia. As Syrian’s began freeing regime prisoners in December, the body of anti-Assad activist Mazen al-Hamada was recovered in Saydnaya prison. Mazen, a man who dedicated his life to toppling the Syrian regime, did not manage to live to see it fall. Reports from independent observers suggest that his killing was one of the last things regime forces did before rebels arrived to liberate the prison and Assad’s soldiers fled - if the cruelty the regime has inflicted on the Syrian people could not be adequately captured by Mazens life, it was certainly captured by the last, desperate, snakes tail lashing of his death.

Mazen was born in Ad-Deir, Eastern Syria’s largest city, on the banks of the Euphrates river. His activism didn’t start with the anti-Assad protests that preceded the Syrian Civil War - one of his first forays into regional politics was as a whistleblower against the human rights abuses being committed by the oil company he worked for in Deir El-Zor. But his life, and indeed his death, were undoubtedly shaped by his struggle with the Assad regime - as a protestor in those initial jubilant months in 2011 Damascus, where he was first arrested in 2011 for organising pro democracy protests (the first of two arrests - he was arrested again in 2012 for attempting to smuggle baby formula in to Damascus, via the regimes blockade). In 2013, upon his release from prison, where he had faced torture at the hands of the regime, he fled the country, and was granted asylum in the Netherlands.

Like many asylum seekers, particularly those fleeing from authoritarian regimes, Mazens needs were complex. He suffered from severe PTSD as a result of the regimes torture, and that PTSD was worsened throughout the course of his time in Europe, as he sought to do what he could for Syrian people from outside the country. Mazen travelled Europe and beyond as a speaker, giving evidence and testimony wherever and whenever possible, regularly reliving, in detail, the torture he had faced while a prisoner in Damascus. He quickly became one of the most vocal and prominent voices for the thousands of people held by the regime across Syria, and one of the loudest voices pressing policymakers for action.

But in early 2020, just before the COVID pandemic started, Mazen returned to Syria, in a move that shocked those who knew him. We’ve since learned that since 2018 he had been subject to repeated approaches by Syrian regime agents across Europe, particularly across Germany and the Netherlands, and that a combination of his disillusionment with the international community on Syria, regime agents promises that his friends would be offered safety if he returned to Syria and ended his anti-Assad campaign internationally, and their threats that his family would be harmed if he did not, contributed to his decision to return home. He was last active on whatsapp in February 2022 - he had not been heard from since. Indeed he had not been seen since, until partially blurred, battered photos of his face emerged last week, from whatsapp groups filled with those coordinating rescue operations amongst those still remaining in Saydnaya prison.

Western government’s strategic geopolitical decisions to abandon the Syrian people to the regime, and to Russia’s control, were most significant in the way they manifested domestically. Syrian regime agents were allowed to operate with near impunity via the regimes embassies across Europe, ensuring that the terror and control they operated at home followed asylum seekers who had tried to flee to safety abroad.

While this question in the Syrian context feels out of date for us now, what Mazen’s death lays bare for us is the danger of replicating this laissez faire approach to the operations of the agents of despotic regimes within Europe. Already in the UK, threats from the Iranian regime against journalists in London have led to the shutdown of worldwide Farsi language news media; Russian agents have killed Russian dissidents on British soil, and Chinese and Cantonese students have been harassed by CCP agents at universities across the UK.

Offering a safe haven for those speaking out against regimes across the globe holds more value than just a signal that freedom of expression, commitment to democratic values and human rights, are things we see fit to value and prioritise on an international stage. It allows us to create an environment within which the activists who have been working for decades to imbue these values in their own countries, and to secure freedoms and rights for their families and friends, are best supported to continue this work in Britain, without fear. While this requires some initial outlay of geopolitical capital, and indeed financial capital, the UK benefits immeasurably from the work of these people, who in many cases pose a far more credible threat to various regimes than Britain could ever hope to without launching a full scale conflict. To abandon these people, and to fail to ensure that the protections afforded to us by the rule of law within Britain are extended equally to all, is a derogation of our duty, nationally and internationally, to both ourselves and others.

(Don’t) Keep it in the Family

Mixed responses to Richard Holdens Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationships) Bill in the Commons last December - and by mixed, I mainly mean one (1) MP, and one (1) eccentric outrage bait commentator pretending there are valid reasons for opposing common sense legislation that should have been on the books decades ago. One particularly erroneous part of Iqbal Mohammeds opposition to the Bill was largely overlooked, however; namely his assertion that Holden’s case that banning cousin marriage was a women’s rights issue in addition to a health issue was overreach.

“Instead, the matter needs to be approached as a health awareness issue and, where women are being forced against their will to undergo marriage, as a cultural awareness issue.”

Much like the arguments against raising the marriage age from 16 to 18 that we heard from many of the same highly socially conservative quarters, he puts forward the idea that women being ‘forced against their will to undergo marriage’ is somehow a cultural problem outside of optimal regulatory control. These increasing calls from these quarters will only get louder if progressive voices are not willing to speak out against them loudly and urgently - so called ‘cultural’ practises that involve the stripping of rights and autonomy for women and girls are not issues to be managed via awareness programmes and PSAs - any state committed to women’s rights must categorically prohibit - and enforce the prohibition of - these practises.

It’s contextually important, I think, to mention that the kind of cultural environments within which these underage marriages, cousin marriages, and forced marriages generally occur are not just ‘bad’ because of the statistically poor outcomes they lead to (though that is not to undermine the difficulties caused by poor health and life outcomes for the children of those marriages). Even absent those things, the oppressive environment alone that is created by these kinds of cultural norms should be enough to warrant a ban - it is not right or okay that in Britain today, there are women and girls whose educational, professional, social and familial aspirations are choked by archaic cultural expectations of marriage, that require a total gutting of autonomy, personality, and aspiration on the part of the women they are imposed upon.

These problems are disproportionately present in cultures that practise a ‘clannist’ approach to community, with strict codes of modesty and honour, that strip women of a right to choose a future they identify with, often before they’re even old enough to recognise they might want to. It’s no accident that cultures with the highest rates of cousin marriage often face disproportionately high rates of partner violence, and other forms of violence misogyny. A Labour government that takes the protection of women’s rights, and indeed the stamping out of violence against women seriously, would do well do adopt this Bill, which is in and of itself just one small but useful step towards ensuring that such antiquated social attitudes do not become enshrined in any British communities, by virtue of our aversion to cultural critique and conflict.

The notion that criticising these violations of rights necessitates lending a narrative to right wing grifters whose critique of these customs is borne of racism rather than a desire to uphold peoples rights must be something we rid ourselves of on the left. We owe it not just to our ability to present a functional alternative to the populist right wing politics currently sweeping much of Europe, but also to the many minoritised groups we let down with this infantilising reluctance to remain consistent in our values with respect to the rights of many groups, in this case particularly with respect to the rights of women.

The now

Reading: Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal, by Mohammed El-Kurd

Listening to: Goodbye mum: the ruthless fight for child custody (on the use of ‘experts’ and diagnoses of parental alienation by family courts), by Tortoise Investigates

Writing: A long-form piece on grooming gangs; what’s true, what’s not, and how the national conversation has spun so drastically out of control so quickly.

Working on: exploring barriers to green skills apprenticeships via a pilot programme for young workers in areas of industrial transition - aiming to prevent industrial decline, and reindustrialise areas in decline, via green jobs. Piloting this month in Cornwall and Lincolnshire.