Mahsa Amini, an Iranian citizen of Kurdish descent, was taken into police custody and dealt several blows to the head. She later died in a hospital in Iran’s capital, Tehran. The young woman’s only alleged crime was not correctly wearing her hijab. Iran’s theocratic regime requires all women to wear a head covering in public. 

In the weeks following Amini’s death, a protest movement erupted across the country. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement – named after the popular protest chant “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” – pitted women, even religious women who often support the Iranian regime, against the state and its repressive morality police. 

The movement showed the world a new side of Iran, one that is young, female, and defiant. 

In Iran, where freedom of expression is often curtailed, and the Internet is monitored and censored, artists emerged as significant representatives of this new movement. They also played a pivotal role in broadcasting it to the world. 

A new report from the Artistic Freedom Initiative, entitled I Create; I Resist: Iranian Artists on the Frontline of Social Change, highlights the role Iranian artists played in resisting the regime.

“Given the critical role that Iranian art played in inspiring and sustaining the movement, artists were among the first groups to be targeted by the Islamic Republic as the government cracked down on the protests,” the report reads. “From September 2022 to the present, Iranian artists have reported being threatened and harmed for their work in support of the movement. Further, the government has launched numerous attacks on Iranian artists, including work bans, arbitrary arrests and prosecution, torture and the solicitation of false confessions, restrictions on mobility, and transnational repression.” 

Remembering the artists

Johanna Bankston, one of the report’s authors, told Lazo Magazine that calling attention to Iranian artists ensures that the world they want to build isn’t forgotten.

“It’s important to highlight the artists’ contributions because their works were not only legitimate forms of dissent and protest, which are protected under international human rights law, but many of them were also poignant reflections of Iranians’ shared desire to create a future written on their own terms,” she said. “By censoring these works and attempting to imprison the artists behind them, the regime’s disregard for Iranians’ rights and freedoms is more clear than ever.”  

Many of these artists have been forced into exile to avoid persecution.

Here’s a look at some of the featured artists:

Nazanin Noroozi

Noroozi is an Iranian multidisciplinary visual artist living in the United States. She creates films, still images, and collages. She often uses her work to call attention to human rights abuses in Iran.

Jalz

Jalz is an Iranian graphic designer who created an image of Iran’s Azadi (Freedom) Tower superimposed behind Henri Matisse’s dancers.

Roshi Rouzbehani

Rouzbehani is a visual artist who uses graphic design to commemorate performative action and protest. She was the artist behind the 2023 work, My Hair is Not Your Battle Ground.

Arghavan Khosravi

Iranian visual artist Arghavan Khosravi creates art that represents the experience of Iranian women and women who face human rights abuses globally. She moved to the U.S. to study art in 2015. She has been forced to remain in the country ever since the Trump administration implemented its controversial Muslim ban.

Read the full report here.

The post Women, Life, Freedom: On the Iranian Artists Resisting the Regime first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

Emmanuel Macron, the slick, youngest-ever president who rose to power in 2017 with over 60 percent of the vote, promised to usher in a new era of politics that would transcend national divisions. He even renamed his newly minted political party Renaissance, in case you didn’t understand what he was aiming to achieve. But seven years later, Macron has learned that he is no exception to the rule.

Even if his approval ratings aren’t quite as bad as those of his predecessors, they have dropped to record lows.

The affairs of the Fifth Republic

The July snap parliamentary election — which Macron called in response to an increase in votes for the far-right during the European parliamentary elections in June — left no party in the 577-seat National Assembly with a clear majority. A left-wing grouping of various political parties, called the New Popular Front (NFP), won around 190 seats. Macron’s centrists came in second with around 160, and the far-right National Rally came in third with 140 seats.

The next French presidential election won’t occur until 2027, meaning Macron’s job is safe for now. But he must appoint a new prime minister to govern a divided legislature for the next several years. The NFP has put forward a candidate, arguing that they should pick the premier because they had the strongest showing. But so far, Macron has stalled and deliberated and refused to appoint the candidate the left wants.

Amidst all this mess, Lazo Magazine spoke to independent journalist Olly Haynes. He splits his time between France and the United Kingdom and can often be found “Franceposting” on Twitter (the platform we will never call X). This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why won’t Macron pick a prime minister from the NFP, given that they’ve won the most seats?

The short answer is that the NFP’s program is essentially to undo everything that Macron spent the last several years doing. Macron already didn’t have a parliamentary majority starting in 2022. But he had a working majority because he could sign into legislation lots of stuff with the help of the right-wing party Les Républicains. He could also use what’s called article 49.3, which is when the prime minister overrules parliament to pass laws.

He is only able to do this once per legislative session for something that isn’t a budget. But they’ve been very tactically clever in making lots of things that aren’t necessarily part of the budget a budgetary question. A lot of the anger over pension reform in France was about the fact that it was passed using this measure.

Macron has pursued this very ambitious program of what you might call neoliberal reforms. He’s also beefed up the police and implemented a low-key war on terror. He’s moved closer to the right on the question of the border. He doesn’t want any of this undone.

He came into politics to break apart the cozy duopoly of the socialists and Les Républicains. He sees himself as a modernizer. He wants to turn France into a startup nation, high-energy, dynamic, and he sees politics essentially as a dragging force.

A lot of people accuse him of what they call neo-Bonapartism. His philosophy of the presidency is that he was elected, and therefore power ultimately lies in his hands.

What do we know about the NFP’s choice of candidate, Lucie Castet? She has said the left would reverse the pension reforms and restore public services. Is that why Macron won’t appoint her?

The government resigned over 50 days ago. But we’re in this really weird situation where the ministers who quit are still acting as if they’re in power. The finance ministry has prepared an austerity budget. They’ve baked in a lot of cuts to the health system and schools and other public services. That’s partly a political maneuver to tie the hands of a potential NFP government.

Lucie Castets is a civil servant and an economist. She works in the administration of Paris. She headed a commission within the finance ministry looking at money laundering and financial crime. She’s a big “tax the rich” person. She’s got a similar line to the economist Thomas Piketty about taxation at the European level.

She was a member of the center-left Socialist Party. She eventually left the party over disagreements with Hollande, although she remained close with other members, like Anne Hidalgo, the Paris mayor.

The NFP chose her because she’s not the leader of any individual parties inside the alliance. Castets, because of her history in the Socialist Party, but then leaving it on a left-wing line, but never being affiliated with the La France Insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was an acceptable middle ground for everyone. She’s fairly radical on improving public services, but she’s within the institutional world that is acceptable to the Socialist Party.

What is Macron holding out for? He called snap elections. Shouldn’t he face the consequences and appoint the compromise figure?

The president can dissolve the parliament once every year. That means it’s pretty much guaranteed that there’s going to be a dissolution next July. One theory about why Macron is dragging this out is to run down the clock as much as he can.

There’s also a fringe within the Socialist Party. They’re going to try to bring a vote at the next Congress to change the line of the party away from the current leader Olivier Faure. That’s important because Olivier Faure is in favor of an alliance that includes La France Insoumise. He believes in left-wing unity, and the other faction in his party does not.

They would be much more open to joining a so-called “technical government” of center-left to center-right. That would be able to conserve, from Macron’s perspective, more of his reforms. It would be much less about breaking with Macron.

The longer he tries to hold out, to wear down the optimism of the voters of the New Popular Front, and the parties of the New Popular Front, the more he can try to exacerbate these divisions and maybe break off this socialist flank in order to build this technical government.

Macron has not put forward a candidate from the centrist block. They’ve proposed candidates such as Bernard Cazeneuve. These are figures in the Socialist Party who are not in agreement with an alliance with La France Insoumise, and this is an attempt to try to prise away the socialists from the New Popular Front into a centrist technical government.

Is it fair to say this is undemocratic?

Yes, I think that’s a fair assessment. The leader of the French Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, summed it up on television quite pithily. He said if this were happening in Latin America we would call this either a coup or a dangerous blow to democracy.

Partly this is a function of the Fifth Republic system itself, which was born of [Former President Charles] De Gaulle’s coup d’état and institutionalized a huge amount of power in the presidency. Lots of people think the system itself is quite undemocratic. Things like article 49.3 of the constitution allow for the overruling of parliament, often on an arbitrary basis.

That is not necessarily a problem until you have a figure like Macron, who is very clever, very creative, and incredibly stubborn. He also has this almost mystical belief about what democracy is supposed to be, which is that he incarnates the will of the people.

What is the mood in the country right now?

What keeps coming up in conversation is this word “bordel,” which kind of means catastrophe, and there’s this sense of irritation that there’s no government.

There’s a deep anger on the left at the frustration of their democratic expression. There’s lots of gilets jaune-style murmurings on Facebook pages about the lack of democracy in France. But in general, among the less political people, there’s a sense that they don’t like Macron, but this is a catastrophe, we don’t have a government, what is going to happen?

What does this say about the state of French politics and how the system works?

The line that people keep throwing around is that this is the emergence of the Fourth Republic within the Fifth Republic. This kind of chaos and disorder and parliamentary wrangling is exactly what the Fifth Republic was designed to prevent.

Alleviating the system and making it more democratic probably would help with things. However, fundamentally, what I think this is a product of is that there are three blocks within French society, and these blocks have fundamentally quite different interests and ideas.

France has become divided in a tripartite structure, where urban young people, educated but downwardly mobile people, vote overwhelmingly for the New Popular Front, as do the immigrant populations around the cities, in the banlieues.

The rich parts of the cities vote for Macron, and older people vote for Macron, so people whose pensions are not affected by his reforms because they are already taking them.

Then, in deep France, the France profonde, as it’s called, in small towns and villages, people tend to vote for the far-right.

Society is very divided, and I don’t think that will go away even with fixes to the system.

The post What Macron’s Latest Moves Say About Politics in France first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

On Saturday, April 6, nationalist candidate Peter Pelligrini won Slovakia’s presidential election, cementing the pro-Russian government’s power. 

Slovakia is a tiny Central Eastern European country with just over 5 million inhabitants. But despite its small size, many analysts argue that the country’s recent election could have longstanding consequences for European democracy. 

The presidential election pit Ivan Korčok, a pro-European former foreign minister, against Pelligrini, the speaker of Slovakia’s parliament and a close ally of its Russia-friendly Prime Minister Robert Fico. 

Election Time

Polling initially suggested that Pelligrini was a shoo-in for the job. But Korčok surprised everyone by winning the first round of elections with 42 percent of the vote. Korčok’s supporters, however, were soon disappointed. Pelligrini slid to victory in the runoff with a little over half of the vote. 

The presidency in Slovakia primarily has a ceremonial role. Nevertheless, many had their eye on the race because the president could curb some of the Prime Minister’s worst impulses by refusing to sign problematic legislation into law. And Prime Minister Fico has plenty of problematic plans for his country. Since returning to power last year, he has attempted to overhaul the country’s public broadcaster to make it more government-friendly. He’s also attempted to reform the penal code to protect himself and his allies. He also parrots pro-Russian talking points, threatens to block European aid to Ukraine, and ended Slovakia’s weapons shipments to Kyiv. 

An aspiring mafia state

Experts, meanwhile, describe the 48-year-old Pelligrini as a politician content to greenlight the Prime Minister’s policies if he can maintain a luxurious lifestyle. 

Despite all of that, some experts argue that the biggest problem with Fico is that he’s self-interested. Rather than being motivated by an affinity with Russia or an authoritarian ideology, Fico opposes systems that put a check on his power. Ultimately, he wants a mafia state with himself at the top, reaping the benefits. 

“Fico’s primary goal is not to create an authoritarian state, and not even ideologically to be Russia’s puppet in Central Europe or within the European Union. He’s doing that, but that’s not the primary goal,” said Michal Vašečka, a Slovak sociologist who focuses on populism and civil society. “The primary goal of these people is to recreate an oligarchic state, or the mafia state they lost in 2020.” 

“They are heading toward an authoritarian state, but that’s kind of a byproduct,” Vašečka added. “Because you cannot have an oligarchic mafia state within a full-fledged, functioning liberal democracy.”

A political comeback

Fico, a former Communist Party member, first became Prime Minister in 2006. For the following twelve years, he ruled on and off whenever his party, Smer, could cobble together a coalition. He often sided with the country’s oligarchs while claiming to be a man of the people. 

In 2018, he resigned after mass protests erupted over the murder of a young Slovak investigative journalist, Jan Kuziack. Kuziack was investigating corruption when hitmen shot him and his fiance dead in their home in Slovakia. 

Fico, who has called Slovak journalists “dirty anti-Slovak prostitutes,” attempted to link the demonstrations to the American financier George Soros. But when a sprawling court case revealed that the journalist was assassinated for investigating a corrupt businessman, Slovak society decided it was tired of Fico allowing oligarchs to dominate the country. The president then tasked Pelligrini, then deputy prime minister, with forming a new government. 

At the time, Fico assured his supporters that he wasn’t leaving politics for good. He returned to power on a populist platform following elections in 2023. 

“You’ll hear a sovereign Slovak voice from Slovak ministries and watch a sovereign Slovak foreign policy,” Fico assured his voters. 

Europe’s illiberal leaders

Analysts often compare Fico to his neighbor, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian leader has pursued a form of authoritarianism light, taking over the country’s judiciary and gerrymandering the country in his party’s favor. He also ensured people friendly to the ruling party owned most of the country’s media outlets.

In Brussels, Orbán has attempted to block EU assistance to Ukraine, often demanding concessions for releasing his hold on the money. 

But Lucia Yar, a Slovak candidate for the European Parliament, said that, unlike Orbán, Fico hasn’t attempted to stop the European Union from helping Kyiv yet. He also hasn’t demanded anything from Brussels in exchange for not blocking assistance. 

“The only thing Slovakia ‘gained’ from this, for now, is a low trust amongst European partners,” Yar said. “If you look into how he was voting in the European Council and how he was representing the country at the European Summits, in reality, he is toothless. The rhetoric remains different from the action, even if we can’t rely on the fact that it will remain that way.”

Populism in Slovakia

Fico’s approach is populism over pragmatism. Within Europe, Slovakia has one of the lowest levels of support for Western alliances, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And while many Slovaks opened their doors to Ukrainian refugees pouring across the border in 2022, support for Ukraine has dropped since the onset of Russia’s invasion two years ago. 

Fico successfully plays to a base that believes Europe is leaving them behind. He’s also forged alliances with ultranationalists and social conservatives who embrace traditional family values and gender norms.

The Prime Minister handed control of the Ministry of Culture to his coalition partner, the far-right Slovak National Party. That party claims to uphold European Christian values and rails against so-called “degenerate art.”

Under the Slovak National Party, the Ministry of Culture immediately resumed cooperation with Russia and Belarus.

When the party organized a conference against vaccines, Fico attended. In January, he appointed a member of the Slovak National Party and a known anti-vaxxer, Peter Kotlár, as the government envoy to lead an inquiry into pandemic management. 

Russia, meanwhile, has taken advantage of Fico’s populist rhetoric. Russian propaganda pushes Moscow’s agenda within the European Union, often in an attempt to undermine Europe’s support for Ukraine. Yar noted that Facebook’s moderators do very little to track or flag Russian disinformation in Slovak language on its platforms. 

Just this week, Fico met with a far-right politician from the Czech Republic, Jindřich Rajchl, who advocates against supporting Ukraine. 

The government has also proposed a foreign agents bill similar to laws in Hungary and Russia that target Western support for non-profits. 

Civil society resistance

Despite Pelligrini and Fico’s election wins, many Slovaks are deeply concerned about the direction their country is heading. Thousands of people have shown up across the country to resist the changes to the criminal code and the takeover of the public broadcaster. Protests against Fico and his rule spread across the country. They even reached smaller cities and regions that traditionally support the government. 

Fico’s plans to create a new government-controlled council that would determine who could appear on public radio and television channels received significant pushback. Journalists argued the council would destroy the public broadcaster’s editorial independence. 

And thanks to pushback from outgoing president Zuzana Caputova and the European Union, Slovakia’s Constitutional Court is now reviewing the proposed changes to the criminal code. 

Anti-corruption activists in Slovakia have started calling on the European Union to cut funds to their own country. They argue that Fico will not be able to consolidate power without European money to play with. 

And unlike in the cases of Hungary and Poland, when Brussels took years to address democratic backsliding, the European Union is already threatening to cut off some EU recovery funds if Slovakia doesn’t scale back its attack on the rule of law. This time, the EU isn’t waiting until Fico completely consolidates control before threatening to use structural funds as leverage. 

Echoes of history

Vašečka noted that there is reason for hope. Slovaks already lived under a populist government during the 1990s, that of Vladimír Mečiar, a former amateur boxer who served as Prime Minister on and off between 1991 and 1998. 

Like Fico, Mečiar attempted to turn Slovakia into his personal mafia state and faced political turmoil over a high-profile assassination. 

That experience means that Slovak civil society knows how to organize in the current political atmosphere. Concerns over democracy and the rule of law even occasionally unite culturally liberal and conservative Slovaks, who are usually locked in political infighting. 

“Slovakia is basically used to it,” Vasecka said about Fico’s populist approach to politics. “Civil society, pro-democratic, liberal, pro-European forces have been basically balancing on the edge of the canyon for thirty years, and still winning, more or less, even though it’s exhausting.” 

The post Rising populism leads to Russia victory in Slovakia election first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

However, unlike during the neighborhood’s last heyday 30 years ago, the faces you pass on the street in Kypseli are now more diverse than ever. Next to old traditional Greek cafes and tavernas, there are Polish delis, African hair braiding salons, and Middle Eastern-owned and operated restaurants. 

In a country as monoethnic as Greece, Kypseli is a beautiful anomaly. But for many residents of non-Greek descent, the reality of living here can still be challenging.

Immigration and multiculturalism in Greece

It’s hard to gauge how many people in Greece are of Greek heritage since the country only collects data on citizenship and not ethnicity. According to current citizenship data, 91 percent of those residing in Greece are Greek on paper.

Immigration in Greece is a relatively new phenomenon. The lack of economic opportunity coupled with civil instability in Greece throughout most of the 20^th century provided more reasons for Greeks to flee than for immigrants to arrive. However, that started to change after the fall of the country’s military junta in 1973, the reestablishment of democracy, and the economic growth of the 1980s.

People from neighboring countries started flocking to Greece at that time, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. 

Additionally, Greece’s relatively porous border (preventing undocumented entry in a country with over 2,000 scattered islands is nearly impossible) made it a common destination for many asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution.

By 2010, approximately 11.4 percent of the Greek population had been born outside of Greece, or 1.27 million people, according to World Bank data. Most migrants were born in Albania, Greece’s neighbor to the north, with smaller immigrant populations coming from Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia, Romania, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Kypseli: the center of Athenian diversity

Nowhere is this demographic change in Greek society more apparent than in Kypseli. Children of all races and ethnic backgrounds play together, while traditional Greek tavernas and coffee culture mingle with art and shops reflecting international influences.

But the experience of many people not of Greek ethnicity is less rosy than a stroll through the neighborhood may make it appear. There are significant challenges to inclusion and integration, and Kypseli’s new popularity could endanger the neighborhood’s multicultural nature. 

Robert Ian Kibet Ouko Babu, a psychologist, psychotherapist, and program director with Open Paths Athens, says gentrification is affecting Kypseli. 

Kypseli is “the place to be” for young Athenians, he said. But the neighborhood’s iconic diversity has decreased over the last few years, as rising rents in Athens push many ethnic Greeks to neighborhoods slightly outside the city center.

Gentrification and racism

The question of how to improve a community’s environment without unintentionally excluding the original residents is one that two artists raised in Kypseli – Grace Nwoke and Alex Loggovitis – grapple with. They are spearheading The Documatism project, which focuses on the Afro-Greek experience.

“We are Afro-Greeks,” reads their manifesto. “We started from the neighborhood of Kypseli, which for many of us is our true homeland.”

The two artists work with Greek filmmaker Menelaos Karamaghiolis to organize art events to “make this neighborhood change and no longer be considered a ghetto.” 

“I am afraid that it was considered a ghetto because of us,” the artists added. 

If Greek society perceived Kypseli as a ghetto because of its diverse nature, efforts to upgrade the neighborhood may not protect the diverse families who live there. 

Babu acknowledges that there have been benefits to gentrification. More young people are out on the streets, and there are more efficient government services and more shops. 

“Even the Municipal Market is thriving, where it used to be somewhat abandoned,” Babu said. 

Nevertheless, local families who have lived in the neighborhood for decades are slowly being pushed out. Babu worries that they won’t have any place to go. 

In an economic and political system that presents significant hurdles to integration and opportunities for those of non-Greek descent, the resurgence of Kypseli, accompanied by rising costs and demand for housing, may inevitably lead to a further decline in the neighborhood’s diversity. 

In this way, efforts to improve the area without addressing racism and the lack of socioeconomic opportunity in Greek society may end up driving out the very people who sought to create a better neighborhood for themselves and their families in the first place.

Kypseli’s Municipal Market and inclusive improvement

The Municipal Market is one example of how a revitalization project can be inclusive and benefit multiple people within a neighborhood.

In 2016, the Municipality of Athens renovated the market. The non-profit organization Impact Hub helped set up the market as a new “pole of attraction” to get Athenians from all over the city interested in the neighborhood.

Nia Zoi, who was involved in an educational program at the Municipal Market, said the project aims to create opportunities for people of all ethnic backgrounds in Kypseli. 

“We wanted to give opportunities to entrepreneurs and creators to see how it is to run your own shops for a short while, to understand your customer base, without the financial risks of setting up a brick-and-mortar store,” she said.

Many entrepreneurial immigrants who started a business with pop-up shops now run stores throughout the neighborhood.

The establishments carry some part of each person’s heritage. Their products and services showcase their parents’ culture or their homeland. One example is the multitude of African hair-braiding salons cropping up in Kypseli.

Zoi said she is proud of what her project accomplished. 

“I always loved Kypseli,” Zoi said. “Everyone from all these different immigrant groups was together and interacting. I haven’t seen that in many other places in Athens”.

Obstacles to Greek citizenship and identity

Despite some success stories, people working for organizations that seek to promote diversity and inclusion in Athens often feel they are alone in the fight without government support.

The exceedingly bureaucratic nature of the Greek state and the variable quality of government services are an endless source of frustration for many Greeks, regardless of their ethnic background. That means non-governmental organizations often provide services to immigrants that the state should offer.

New immigrants aren’t the only ones who experience these challenges. One significant obstacle second-generation children in Greece face is that the state grants citizenship through the principle of jus sanguini. That means being born in the country isn’t enough to be Greek in the eyes of the state. You also must be born to a Greek citizen. 

Many immigrants, especially those from low-income countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, have difficulty acquiring Greek citizenship. That can mean their children also don’t have citizenship despite being born and raised in Greece. 

Living your entire life in a country that does not recognize you as a citizen can create an identity crisis.

As Nwoke and Loggovitis say, “Racism based on color, prejudice, and racial discrimination have made it very difficult for us to define our identity, our homeland, and to feel Greek without being hindered by our origin and color, even though most of us were born here.” 

The issue of identity is especially nuanced for people who look different from the rest of Greek society. 

Babu does not immediately identify himself as Afro-Greek or first or second-generation Greek. Like many immigrants in Greece, he finds the questions that people ask him, like where he is from originally, intrusive. He doesn’t want to be put in a box.

“I dictate my own narrative,” he said. 

Inclusion: a legal, social, and cultural issue

In addition to the obvious legal obstacles to obtaining Greek citizenship, Babu wants to focus on the societal obstacles asylum seekers or second-generation immigrants experience.

“Many specialized people are talking about and working on the issue of paperwork and citizenship for immigrants to Greece. Even those of the second generation,” he said. “But not a lot of people are talking about the other issues which we focus on, like equity of health access, cultural access, and the like.”

In 2019, the center-right government changed the laws regarding healthcare access in Greece. 

The previous law stated that everyone in Greece must have an AMKA, the national identification number that provides access to government health services. 

But the new guidelines determined that only Greek citizens or permanent residents have the right to obtain an AMKA. That left recent immigrants and many second-generation residents without adequate access to healthcare.

Babu believes that one of the best services to provide minority communities is information. Due to both language barriers and a lack of knowledge about how the relatively complex Greek system operates, a lot of minorities in Greece don’t know their rights or what services they can access, leaving them vulnerable.

For example, in Greece, employers must put an official stamp on their employees’ work papers. The stamp is known as an ἐνσημα (ensima), and it gives workers proof of their job history so they can retire with a pension. Some employers, however, exploit an immigrant’s lack of familiarity with the system or language skills. 

Babu speaks to newly arrived immigrants and explains how they can receive the official stamps and the correct insurance coverage. 

“Sometimes employers will tell people they put stamps on their papers when they hadn’t,” he explained.

Perceptions of racism

A deeper and more amorphous hurdle is the refusal of many Greeks to see racism as a problem in their society. 

Greeks are often shocked by news of racist incidents in the U.S. They ask in disbelief how the U.S. can be so racist. The unspoken implication is that Greek society is not racist. 

Babu says that many Greeks see racism exclusively as an American problem and not endemic to their society. They only believe an action is racist when it is extreme and violent or when someone expresses outright hate towards those of a different ethnic background. 

While such examples do exist in Greece, that is not the type of racism most non-ethnic Greeks face every day. 

“Many people do not think of microaggressions as racism,” Babu said. 

The recent national elections in May and June brought these attitudes to light. The center-right party won reelection after passing laws that made life harder for non-ethnic Greeks. Meanwhile, far-right nationalist and anti-immigration parties like the Spartans, a continuation of Greece’s fascist Golden Dawn party, won 4.5 percent of the vote. Anti-immigrant rhetoric was prevalent throughout the campaigns.

But despite all the focus on immigration — especially after the influx of Syrian refugees began in the mid-2010s — the rate of immigration in Greece has leveled off. 

The news often focuses on the total number of refugee arrivals while failing to point out that Greece is just a transit country for most migrants. Most asylum seekers want to move to Germany, Sweden, or one of the wealthier northern European countries, where many have family and potential job opportunities.

Due to the widespread emigration of Greeks, the country is losing more people than it is gaining, leading to an annual population decline. Nevertheless, panicked media reports about an unmanageable influx of immigrants persist.

Countering false narratives

Negative narratives about immigration are pervasive, especially on Greek television, where many older Greeks get all their information. 

For example, many believe refugees come to Greece to live easy lives using state resources. The right-leaning media often repeats that narrative. 

In reality, refugees only receive around 150 euros a month from the government in Greece, far lower than the 780 euro minimum wage. Asylum seekers also don’t have the right to work for the first six months they are in the country. 

As a result, surviving as a refugee in Greece is extremely difficult. Many must undertake black-market work, including prostitution, to make ends meet. 

Younger Greeks have a clearer sense of the reality many migrants face than their parents or grandparents. Today, the children of the earliest waves of migrants, especially throughout Kypseli, grow up in the country. They speak the language fluently and navigate the public education system next to Greek children. People from diverse backgrounds are growing up together as classmates and friends. 

That has enabled greater integration among Gen Z and younger Millennial Greeks than has ever been possible. 

“The new generation will bring the change,” Babu said. “Because they had the chance to actually live with us instead of seeing us through the eyes of propaganda.” 

In the meantime, the reinvigoration of Kypseli, along with organizations like Impact Hub and Open Paths, is speeding up the process of cultural sensitization in Greek society.

Zoi from the Municipal Market says she has found joy and openness in the community of Kypseli.

“We asked the community what they wanted, and part of what they asked for was a festival for everyone,” she said. “So, we held multicultural festivals which included members of the Ukrainian community, Albanian community, the various African communities of Kypseli, and the Filipino community.”

Kypseli: a challenging present and hopeful future

Kypseli’s multicultural community faces hurdles that are as nuanced and varied as those experienced by all people of non-Greek descent living in the country today.

But with its focus on community participation, inclusivity, and empowerment, the various projects and businesses in Kypseli and the organizations working tirelessly in the neighborhood provide hope for a more inclusive city. 

“The first generation [of immigrants] was alone in Kypseli,” Babu said. “In the second generation, the kids were a little more open, a little more dispersed throughout the city. And the third generation seems to have spread through Athens even more, living a more inclusive life.”

Joanna Kalafatis is a writer and actress with a degree in economics from Barnard College. She currently lives in both Athens, Greece and Los Angeles, California. She’s interested in socioeconomic challenges, culture, and travel, and writes about all three subjects frequently. Her work has appeared in publications like Time Out New York, Matador Network, and Greek Reporter. She recently published a travel guide titled “Best of Greece” for Moon Travel Guides, and has a personal blog at LosetheMap.com.

This journalism was possible thanks to the generous support of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and its Pluralism and Civil Exchange program.

The post On Diversity, Gentrification, and Belonging in Athens’s New Hipster Neighborhood first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

That phrase has been used throughout history to describe empires whose reach is so extensive that it’s always daytime in some part of the world where they hold sway. One such example is the British Empire, which stretched from today’s Canada in the West to New Zealand in the East. And although the United States never explicitly claimed the status of an empire, Joffe’s statement about the country’s soft power – or its ability to influence global events using its appeal and persuasion rather than brute force –  held true in 2001 and still holds true today. 

The United States is a master of soft power. I witnessed that firsthand while working in the U.S. Embassy in my home country of Serbia, where I promoted American soft power in my role as a public diplomacy specialist from 1991 to 2010. 

For nearly twenty years, I designed and organized performances, exhibits, lectures, and workshops, all of which used the arts and culture to showcase American culture and values. These programs also promoted a uniquely American way of thinking and an American lifestyle more generally. 

That was no small feat in the Western Balkans region where I come from, a region torn apart by inter-ethnic conflicts during the 1990s. 

During those conflicts, the U.S. embassy played a significant role in bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table, and the Serbian public developed a largely negative perception of the United States. Many believed the Clinton administration worked against Serbian national interests at that time. 

After the conflicts ended in the early 2000s, the U.S. had to rebuild its credibility and reputation in this corner of the Balkans. The first cultural program I planned to restore the positive image of the United States was a three-week Jazz Ambassadors program. 

I hosted a jazz trio from New York City and organized eleven concerts, several workshops, formal and impromptu jam sessions, and media interviews throughout the country. 

Contrary to expectations, the American Jazz ambassadors were welcomed wholeheartedly and cheered by Serbian audiences. 

After this program, I implemented many other cultural and educational programs that were very well attended and accepted by people around the country. What was never entirely accepted was American politics toward Serbia. This dissonance between perceptions of American culture and values on one hand and the U.S. administration’s foreign policy on the other is present in many countries. Ordinary people often love the American way of life and the country’s entrepreneurial spirit but dislike American foreign policy.  

My former role in spreading U.S. soft power in Serbia inspired me to research the phenomenon of American soft power and its influence on people worldwide. Everything that I experienced and learned through my work, both positive and negative, led me to look back into history and find out how and why the United States has become and remains the “global empire of soft power” from World War Two until the present. During a decade of graduate studies, I analyzed U.S. public diplomacy and international development, two essential tools of American foreign policy that are used to wield soft power.

 My career and academic work allowed me to witness how American soft power works and how it influences everyone, even Serbia’s citizens and leaders. 

This is what I learned: 

1. America is the first truly global empire. Throughout history, empires have spread their culture, language, and way of life among the people they ruled. The Roman Empire extended from Great Britain to Egypt and from Spain to Syria. It left behind an immense cultural heritage in language, law, architecture, the arts, and many other areas of human experience. Similarly, the British Empire, at its height, occupied territories on several continents. But you cannot compare the influence of these former empires to the way the United States has spread its values, ideas, practices, and lifestyle. Many observers go so far as to equate American soft power with globalization itself.
   
   
2. American soft power does not recognize borders. Even before the rise of information technology, America’s democratic values, business practices, and culture were popular worldwide. American soft power reaches and affects people even in the parts of the world where the U.S. military, American businesses, and organizations are not present. American music, movies, television shows, online media, and social networks are strong even in the countries that systemically and purposefully try to roll back American soft power as Serbia did in the 1990s.
   
   
3. Every American is an ambassador. When Americans travel around the world, they don’t necessarily think about how they are perceived and judged by people from other nations. Nevertheless, the country’s position at the top of the global totem pole comes with significant responsibilities. Given the country’s unprecedented military might, economic power, and strong political and cultural influence globally, Americans abroad are constantly measured and assessed by whether they live up to their country’s stated ideals. Many observers say that Americans live up to American ideals, but the U.S. government does not.
   
   
4. Hollywood isn’t reality. The American entertainment industry portrays Americans in a monolithic way that does not do justice to the rich diversity of the United States. Other nations often form their opinions about Americans based on Hollywood blockbusters that depict Americans as aggressive, ambitious, and fearless superhumans. When ordinary people from other countries meet ordinary Americans, they are often surprised by how different they are from the characters in American movies. I often heard people comment on how “normal” and “ordinary” Americans were.
   
   
5. There is no such thing as a unified national American culture. Unlike the cultures of many countries that have distinct national characteristics, American culture is not uniquely American. It features a rich diversity of Americans who originate from many nations, ethnic groups, traditions, religions, languages, and walks of life. I hosted numerous American artists, performers, and managers of arts and culture in Serbia, including an African-American jazz musician, a Native American poet, a caucasian Broadway choreographer, an Asian pianist, and a Latino theater director, just to name a few. They all had different ways of thinking and communicating, together with a uniquely American way of performing to the highest standards and following their passions.
   
   
6. America is all about ideas. Because the United States is not a nation-state but is instead a state of many nations,  its soft power consists of a plenitude of ideas generated by people emboldened to envision, create, succeed, and even fail to bring their ideas to life. No other nation in the world has spread its ideas and values in the way Americans do. Most countries want to show the world the richness of their culture, arts, traditions, and history. But Americans promote their achievements as well as the values and motives behind these achievements. Although Americans don’t like to call their ideas and values an ideology, they have spread throughout the world an ideology of liberal democracy and liberal capitalism.
   
   
7. America’s influence is intangible. People worldwide wear American fashion, consume American culture, strive to learn from American business practices, and aspire to achieve personal freedoms inspired by the American democratic tradition. This influence is ubiquitous worldwide, but people who are influenced by American soft power are often unaware of that influence and its impact on them and their lives. Even when they protest against the United States and burn the American flag, they wear Levi’s jeans and Nike sneakers.
   
   

After dominating the world stage in the second half of the 20th century, American geopolitical influence started to decline.

Soft power, however, can remain influential for centuries after an empire’s demise, impacting traditions, languages, cultures, and even the habits of people around the world.  For example, many American business practices have taken root in other countries, such as open competition, a time-is-money attitude, a non-hierarchical management structure, and many others. Similarly, online social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become one of the most important ways of communicating and connecting people globally. 

Unlike the American soft power of the second half of the 20th century, today’s American soft power has melted into a mosaic of global values and practices that are spread primarily through online media and social networks. These networks belong to every nation, every group or organization, and to every individual worldwide. 

American soft power does not belong to the United States anymore. It has been adopted by everybody to love or to hate, to promote or protest against, to use or misuse. Ultimately, whether somebody loves or does not love American culture and values doesn’t matter because American culture and values have permanently affected people worldwide. 

Jelena Putre is a public diplomacy professional with over 25 years of experience designing and implementing U.S. government cultural, educational, and professional exchange programs. Since 2015, she has worked on international exchange programs in Washington, DC-based nonprofits that partner with the U.S. State Department. From 1991 to 2010,  Jelena worked in the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, advocating for U.S. foreign policy goals and promoting American culture and values.  Jelena holds a Ph.D. in International Relations and an M.A. in the Studies of the United States from the School of Political Science, University of Belgrade.

The post What I Learned Promoting American Soft Power in Serbia first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

I’m speaking with a 37-year-old Green Party member of the European Parliament, Daniel Freund. He came on my radar after arguing that the European Union’s infringement proceedings against Poland don’t go far enough. We talked about everything from democratic backsliding in Europe to corruption. Here’s what he had to say about how the European Union can put its house in order.

This interview was originally published on January 16, 2022, in Lazo Magazine’s weekly newsletter. It’s a conversation between Lazo Magazine’s founder and Editor-In-Chief, Cristina Maza, and  Daniel Freund. 

Cristina: You are a relatively new MEP. How long have you been involved in politics, and what made you decide to get involved at the European level?

Daniel: I have always been a political person. Fighting for the things that I believe in: justice, a sustainable future, and the European Union. I joined the Green Party in 2005 while at university as I was deeply impressed by Joschka Fischer’s vision for further European integration.

I come from a border area myself, Aachen, the city of Charlemagne. I went to kindergarten in Belgium, to school in Germany, and met my wife on an Erasmus exchange in Paris. When the European project, which had given me so much, came increasingly under attack by Brexiteers like [former UK Independence Party leader Nigel] Farage and illiberal politicians like [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán, I decided it was time for me to do something. I ran in the European elections in 2019 and was elected to the parliament.

Cristina: When it comes to the European Union’s crackdown on democratic backsliding in member states like Hungary and Poland, you have argued that infringement proceedings don’t go far enough. Why is that, and what measures would you like to see in their place?

Daniel: The European Union is in a severe crisis. There are several member states where the EU’s treaties are called into question, where independent judges are attacked, where independent journalism almost doesn’t exist anymore, where NGOs and universities are thrown out of the country, and where corruption by the political elites is rampant. Poland and Hungary are the most evident examples. But elements of this exist in several more member states, and the crisis is spreading.

The EU’s answer to this crisis was too little too late. The Commission only launched a so-called Article 7 procedure – for violations of the fundamental values of the Union – when the crisis had reached two countries. But Poland and Hungary promised each other mutual protection, thereby making Article 7 useless because it requires unanimity to work.

Infringements are an important tool to ensure that all member states respect the rules that were jointly agreed upon and that EU law is applied in the same way across the Union. But infringements alone are not going to solve the rule of law crisis. First, Hungary and Poland have over 100 ongoing infringement procedures between them. It’s doubtful that a few more will stop these governments from attacking democracy and the rule of law.

Second, infringements are often too slow. When Hungary kicked out the Central European University, the university went to the European Court of Justice. Two years later, it won on all accounts. Hungary’s actions violated the treaties. But the university had already left Hungary. Infringement was too slow.

The language that is understood by the Polish and Hungarian governments is money. The two countries are the biggest recipients of EU funds. Almost all public investment in new roads or fast Internet is co-funded by the EU. Those who do not play by the rules should not receive EU funds.

The Commission should use the rule of law conditionality and cut EU funds to both countries.

In the regions in Poland that declared themselves “LGBTI free,” we saw that just the threat of withdrawing EU funds made them retract their declarations.

Cristina: Tell me about your plans for the European Parliament’s Anti-Corruption Intergroup. What are its goals, and how will it function?

Daniel: Before I was elected to parliament, I led the EU work of the organization Transparency International. I have a lot of experience in the fight against corruption. So I knew that fighting corruption only works when it is coordinated across party lines and borders.

When I came to the parliament, I founded the anti-corruption intergroup. There are now 130 members from 6 political groups working together. It has been very successful in coordinating better legislation, and it is very helpful to hear from colleagues about their experiences and best practices from different member states.

The Biden administration made clear that the fight against corruption and kleptocracy would be one of their priorities. We have already seen Magnitsky sanctions against Bulgarian individuals, for example.

That’s why we’ve decided to join ranks with U.S. politicians in an alliance against kleptocracy. International cooperation and coordination are absolutely crucial in the fight against corruption.

Cristina: What kind of laws would you like to see in place to clamp down on corruption within EU institutions – including problems surrounding revolving door issues – and boost transparency in lobbying and consultancy in the Brussels bubble?

Daniel: The European Union actually has reasonably good laws to deal with different aspects of corruption. Also, with political corruption and lobbying. I would say that we should start by implementing those rules and using the tools we already have.

There are rules for revolving doors, which is when European Commissioners become lobbyists after leaving office. There is a two-year cooling-off period. At least on paper, because the Commission ignores the rules in practice.

We need independent oversight of the existing rules on lobbying, conflicts of interest, and revolving doors. And sanctions if the rules are broken. That is why I have proposed an independent EU ethics body, and a large majority in parliament has supported my proposal.

We also have a rule of law mechanism to deal with corruption and rule of law violations, but the Commission refuses to use it, despite being sued by the Parliament. We need to use all tools to fight corruption.

We also need to ensure that institutions that fight fraud, corruption, and mismanagement: the court of auditors, the European prosecutors, and the anti-fraud office, are well-funded and well-staffed.

And we should finally be able to know where EU money is being spent and who gets it.

It might sound bizarre, but the EU spends 160bn euros per year and we don’t know who gets it. We do not know, for example, who the biggest recipient of EU funds is in each member state. That makes it very difficult to track corruption and conflicts of interest.

Cristina: And how do you think MEPs can most effectively combat euro skepticism in their home countries?

Daniel: Transparency and communication are really important. Always showing and explaining to citizens that we are stronger together. The big challenges of our time are climate change, large companies not paying their taxes, and corruption. No country can face them alone. Our only chance is to work together in the European Union.

In my own work, I sometimes expose corruption and mismanagement in the EU institutions. Some might say that could fuel euro-skepticism. But I firmly believe that we need to keep our own house in order.

The EU should lead by example. I think that builds citizens’ trust in the EU.

The post How the European Union Can Fight Corruption first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

This interview was originally published on November 21, 2021, in Lazo Magazine’s weekly newsletter. It’s a conversation between Lazo Magazine’s founder and Editor-In-Chief, Cristina Maza, and Stefan Vladisavljev, an expert on Chinese influence in the Western Balkans at the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence.

Cristina: How did you get involved in this issue?

Stefan: For the past couple of years, I’ve been closely following the Chinese presence in the Western Balkans and Chinese influence through foreign direct investments like infrastructure projects and preferential loan agreements. I’m basically following all topics that are China-related in my part of the world.

I became interested in the Vietnamese workers because the company involved is the biggest foreign direct investor from China in Serbia since the beginning of the contemporary relationship [between Serbia and China] in 2009.

It is estimated to have invested around 900 million euros since 2018.

China had large investments before that in Serbia. But those were mostly the purchase of already existing assets, like old industrial socialist factories. This one started from scratch.

It’s interesting to follow because there was never this much foreign direct investment coming from China in this part of the world before this.

Cristina: What can you tell me about Zrenjanin, the Serbian city where Vietnamese workers are building a factory?

Stefan: It’s in the northern part of Serbia, called Vojvodina. It’s an autonomous province in Serbia.

Vojvodina itself is separated into three different regions, and Zrenjanin is the biggest city in the Banat region in Vojvodina. It is the regional center. It has a population of around 80,100 people, approximately, since we haven’t had a census since 2011. But it is an old industrial regional center that dates back to the communist period.

It is recognized as one of the most vivid industrial centers in Vojvodina still today. It has significant companies from different countries, not solely Chinese investment. There are big companies and factories from Germany. There are also big domestic companies there.

Cristina: How did these Vietnamese workers become a national story in Serbia?

Stefan: The workers came to the attention of some local NGOs who realized they were being abused. They’re being kept in deplorable living conditions and experiencing terrible working conditions.

Ling Long is the name of the Chinese company that we’re discussing. It is constructing a tire factory. When the factory is finalized, they will produce car tires for export.

The factory is still under construction now. But because Ling Long is not a construction company, they must hire subcontractors for the construction. That subcontractor hired Vietnamese workers.

This is one of the concerns with Chinese companies in Serbia. They often bring subcontractors and workers from abroad. Usually, those workers are from China. But in this case, they brought workers from Vietnam.

A few days ago, one of the major television stations in Serbia produced a report about the dire living conditions of these Vietnamese subcontractors. They are living without electricity. They only have access to one liter of water a day per person. Ten people are sleeping in the same room, often without mattresses. They don’t have appropriate winter clothes. Right now, at night in Serbia, the temperature is around 0 degrees Celsius.

They also said the company took documents from the Vietnamese workers. Some weren’t paid regularly. They aren’t getting enough food.

Following these initial reports, civil society organizations began saying that we are dealing with a case of human trafficking.

I think that’s probably an overstatement. The workers said they signed contracts with an employment agency. They knew they were going to Serbia. But the conditions in their contracts have not been met.

Civil society organizations went to the factory to check on the situation on the ground, and they confirmed the media reports.

Then the organizations sent an official request to the relevant government institutions about the need to inspect the situation and find out why basic living standards and the labor rights of those workers are not in line with Serbia’s national laws.

Cristina: What was the company’s response to these complaints?

Stefan: The Ling Long company hired private security guards. That gained a lot of attention because there were confrontations between the security guards and activists. There was no physical confrontation. It was mostly verbal.

The whistleblower, a Vietnamese worker who spoke to the organizations and the media, got fired. So, the activists tried to get him out of the factory compound, but the private security guards wouldn’t allow them to take him.

But then some of the workers made a human shield between the whistleblower and the private security, and they managed to get the whistleblower out to the civil society activists.

After that, the company closed all the access points to the media. But some journalists had the phone numbers of the Vietnamese activists, so they are still getting some information out.

Cristina: What has the Serbian government’s response been?

The first response was quite broad. They said that there are regular inspections, and they did see any misconduct.

Later, they said that they had reported the bad conditions and some steps would be taken.

The Minister of Construction stated that the living conditions are poor, but the Vietnamese workers are getting paid $900 a month, so they could afford to find better accommodation if they wanted to do so.

After that, the Prime Minister [Ana Brnabic] said the workers would be moved from the compound to a better location. But she pointed fingers at the civil society organizations and political opposition and said they wanted to criticize all Chinese investment in Serbia.

Now the workers have been moved from the compound, and there is barbed wire around the compound. That would never have happened without civil society and the local activists.

But still, this is a trend. This isn’t the first time there have been reports about the abuse of foreign workers hired by Chinese companies in Serbia.

Cristina: Was it confirmed that the Vietnamese workers earned $900 a month? Did any whistleblowers confirm that?

Stefan: No. That was what the Minister of Construction said. The original reports claimed they were earning between 300 and 400 euros a month but weren’t always being paid regularly.

Cristina: What do we know about how these workers were hired and how they arrived in Serbia?

Stefan: My understanding is that an employment agency has hired them. You can reach out to employment agencies if you’re investing in Serbia, and they will make all the arrangements for the workers coming here.

There is also a company in Serbia doing this, and they have connections with Vietnam. There are also Vietnamese workers in other locations in Serbia. Some reports say the workers had to pay around $2,000 to get a job in Serbia. That amount would presumably cover transportation costs to Serbia.

Cristina: What is the legal status of these workers in Serbia?

Stefan: That is a tricky question. When our government signs contracts with the Chinese government, either for infrastructure projects or foreign direct investment, some clauses in the contract exclude workers from Serbian laws.

So basically, while they are working on constructing a Chinese factory, they are excluded from the implementation of Serbia’s regulatory framework based on bilateral agreements that Serbia signed with China.

It is not a usual practice, but it’s an exception that Serbia is making for Chinese companies. The workers are not subjected to our laws because they are working for the Chinese.

Cristina: What do you think this case says about Chinese influence in Serbia?

Stefan: Well, I would put the ball in the Serbian court. No investment is harmful or corrosive on its own. It’s about how you treat investments and what benefits you give to investors.

In the case of China, we have not set any kind of standards, and we have not set any conditions that China must respect.

In the past decade, China has really become an essential economic partner in Serbia, especially in infrastructural development. China is the leading provider of loans for much-needed infrastructure projects. Serbia relies on Chinese foreign direct investment. We have had around 2 billion euros in investment.

Whatever Chinese companies are doing here is because Serbia allows them to do it.

The post Vietnamese Workers, Exploitation, and China’s Influence in Serbia first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

This interview was originally published on December 5, 2021, in Lazo Magazine’s weekly newsletter. It’s a conversation between Lazo Magazine’s founder and Editor-In-Chief, Cristina Maza, and  Abdul Saboor, an Afghan photojournalist based in Calais, France.

At least 27 people died this week, making a desperate attempt to leave the port city and cross the English Channel.

This week, I had a quick chat with Abdul Saboor, an Afghan photojournalist based in Calais, about his journey to the city and why people want to leave it.

Cristina: Where are you from originally, and how long have you been in Calais?

Abdul: I’m from Afghanistan. I’ve been in Calais now for about three and a half years. I left Afghanistan because life was hard. I worked with the U.S. Army, and I was shot and injured a few times. Then the U.S. left the city where I was working. They all went home, and I was left on the ground there, so I decided it was time to leave.

Cristina: How did you travel to France from Afghanistan?

Abdul: Walking. I crossed borders on foot. It took me two years. I stayed in forests, mountains, refugee camps, ‘jungles,’ anywhere I could find. I passed through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Italy. After that, I traveled to France and then Belgium and Spain. Eventually, I went back to France, and I have been here ever since. It was a very long, long trip.

Cristina: How did you support yourself during that time?

Abdul: When I was traveling, I did a little bit of photography. My family sent me a little bit of money for food.  Now I teach photography at a university one day a week, and I sell my photos.

Cristina: I know that there has been a recent uptick in the number of people trying to cross from Calais to the United Kingdom. Why is that happening now?

Abdul: Because the weather is bad. The camps are like hell. They are cold, windy, and rainy. They are so cold. People are finding the camps very difficult. They don’t have enough to eat. A lot of people made a quick decision to leave. Many people go with traffickers. Some people try to go alone, but some go with traffickers. It’s because they are in the camps, and they think, ‘what else can I do?’

Cristina: How much do the traffickers charge for their services?

Abdul: Different people charge different amounts. Some people charge €3,000,  some € 2,000, or some people say € 5,000.

Cristina: How many people do you estimate are in the camps now?

Abdul: I think there are maybe around 2,000 people. There are a lot of Kurds. There are people from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Mali, Eritrea, really everywhere.

Cristina: What is the relationship between the people in the camps and the French authorities?

Abdul: The police are harassing people. Police are trying to evict people. They cut their tents. They give them a very difficult time.

Cristina: Why do people want to go to the U.K. instead of staying in France?

Abdul: Most people going to the U.K. tried another European country first. I don’t want to go to the U.K. because I have asylum in France. They didn’t get asylum, so they decided to go to the U.K. once they were rejected.

You can find out more about Abdul and his work here.

The post Migrants in Calais Are Dying To Leave first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

Once upon a time in London (really, it was 2011), Artak Beglaryan and I were both completing master’s degrees at the University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Today, Artak is the Minister of State of Nagorno Karabakh, a disputed territory in the Caucasus to which Azerbaijan and Armenia lay claim. Nagorno Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but most of the population is ethnic Armenian and wants to govern itself.

The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh has been mostly frozen since the mid-1990s, but renewed fighting broke out in 2020. The violence lasted for six weeks, leaving over 5,000 people dead and tens of thousands displaced. If you want to know more about the history of the conflict and the recent dispute over prisoners of war, you can read my article for VICE here. But Artak and I spoke over the phone recently about what Nagorno Karabakh needs now and what it’s like to run the government of a disputed territory.

You can read our conversation below.

Disclaimer: The content of these conversations does not reflect the opinions of Lazo Letters. This is one interpretation of a very complex situation, and many other analysts, experts, and people on the ground will have their own interpretation of these events.

Cristina: Congratulations on your new position. Can you tell me about the job and what your plans are for the role?

Artak: Right now, I am State Minister, which is something like the Vice President because I am the second executive after the President. I am also coordinating the activities of several ministries, including the Ministry of Social and Labor Affairs, education, culture, science, and justice. And most humanitarian issues are also under my coordination. That’s all.

Cristina: That is an extremely broad role. How are you juggling all of that?

Artak: Most of the Ministers work independently, but I am coordinating their work. I’m not always jumping into the details. I’m giving them broad directions and setting goals. I am also monitoring how they are doing and carrying out the tasks the President and I have given them.

I have a staff of over 40 employees, and each ministry has even bigger teams. Many have more than 150 workers.

Cristina: What are your main goals going into this new role? What do you hope to accomplish?  

Artak: My most significant task is to deal with the humanitarian issues from the war. My first goal is to overcome the emergency situation because over 27 percent of our population is internally displaced persons (IDP).

That’s a huge number for us. It’s a population of over 40,000 people, which isn’t huge nominally. But for our country, it’s enormous. We need to tackle the housing problem. That’s the number one humanitarian issue.

Right now, we are building houses and providing temporary housing. But still, over 2/3rds of our IDPs are in Armenia because we don’t have enough temporary housing solutions in Nagorno Karabakh.

Secondly, we also have social problems, labor problems, and income problems. We need to solve these problems for IDPs but also for other socially vulnerable groups.

We give cash support to people, but we are also working on restoring the economy. We have some development project plans, and in 18 months, we will launch a few projects to develop the economy.

Still, we don’t have tangible international support. We get help from the Armenian government and the Armenian diaspora, but it’s not a lot for us.

The second goal is to implement long-term reforms to overcome systemic institutional problems. We’ve had a crisis, and a crisis is a chance for us to implement institutional reforms in education, in social affairs, and in the healthcare system.

Cristina: What kind of support does Armenia give you?

Artak: They give us a lot of humanitarian and financial support. This year, the government of Armenia provided us with over $180 million in humanitarian support. That’s quite a large sum for us.

They also gave over 80 percent of our annual budget, which is over $160 million. Without Armenia, we cannot live here.

The Armenian diaspora also sent a few hundred million dollars, around $250 million to support housing projects and other primary humanitarian needs.

Cristina: How have things changed since the outbreak of violence in 2020? And what is the security situation like now?

Artak: Things are getting better. The situation is much more stable than it was immediately after the war. Immediately after the war, it was winter, and people didn’t have housing. Now the situation is somewhat stable.

We’ve launched large projects to build new buildings, communities, and settlements. At the end of this year, we’re going to finish the first construction projects, and by the beginning of 2022, we expect the housing situation to be much better.

The security situation is also stable. The most problematic security situation was the constant uncertainty after the war. Now people see that they can plan their lives and have a future here.

But, of course, it’s a fragile situation. Azerbaijan and Turkey are pretty aggressive, and they want to destabilize the security situation. In Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia, they want to jeopardize the Russian peacekeepers’ security guarantees.

They sometimes make statements about the temporary status of the Russian peacekeepers to make people fear that they can’t have a future here. They say they will take all of Nagorno Karabakh with force, and the international community doesn’t react. Sometimes they violate the ceasefire with minor violations. It’s a way to pressure people to leave.

We currently have a population of 120,000 people. Before the war, we had a population of 135,000. That means over 85 percent of the population has returned, which is not so bad. 

Cristina: How do you assess the role of the Russian peacekeepers?

Artak: Quite positively. They are the number one factor for having peace here. There is no other international force keeping peace in Nagorno Karabakh.

Also, our army is weak after the war. We experienced significant losses, both human losses and a loss of arms. Azerbaijan and Turkey are both against us, and they have a lot of sophisticated weaponry. Given this, we can’t protect our homeland alone.

Russian peacekeepers are pretty essential for us. Unfortunately, there is no other international effort. There is no humanitarian or international human rights organization present.

We have three co-chairs for mediation efforts, Russia, the U.S., and France, under the OSCE Minsk Group. But even those co-chairs haven’t visited since the war. We want a peace dialogue and negotiations under the OSCE, but Azerbaijan blocks all of the efforts.

The United Nations organizations should visit Nagorno Karabakh. We are open to that.

But we haven’t gotten much international humanitarian aid because Azerbaijan blocks access to humanitarian organizations and politicizes all humanitarian efforts.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) gives money to the Halo Trust for demining, but nothing else.

We have many needs because of the war and long-term humanitarian needs, like access to water resources, education, and economic development. Over 50 percent of our kids are deprived of preschool education. Over 40 percent of our whole population has difficulty accessing clean drinking water. We need hundreds of millions of dollars just for our basic needs.

International human rights law says that, regardless of status, no area should be denied humanitarian support. Only the International Committee of the Red Cross is here.

That’s why I say the humanitarian community has failed to protect our human rights.

The post How To Govern a Disputed Land: A Conversation About Nagorno Karabakh first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

Margareta Matache is from a Roma family in Romania. In the early 1990s, following the fall of communism in Romania, her father began working as an activist in the local Roma movement. Activists gathered in her home near Romania’s capital Bucharest and listened to stories of the violence and discrimination the Roma people experienced.

This interview was originally published on August 22, 2021, in Lazo Magazine’s weekly newsletter. It’s a conversation between Lazo Magazine’s founder and Editor-In-Chief, Cristina Maza, and Margareta Matache. 

Roma people’s houses were burned. They were attacked and killed. Margareta’s father tried to work as a mediator in the community.

“I got to be a part of this in a very natural way,” Margareta told me about the activism of her youth.

Over the years, Margareta grew up to become a student activist working for Roma rights in her country. She later rose to become the director of a Roma’s rights organization in Bucharest and documented cases of discrimination and abuse against the Roma people.

After completing her Ph.D., she helped launch Harvard University’s Roma program using participatory action research methods.

We discussed structural racism against Roma people in Europe, the current research into Roma communities worldwide, and the main issues facing Roma today.

Cristina: What is your current assessment of the academic literature about Roma people and research in the field?

Margareta: There is a growing critical Romani studies field. Many of us look critically at what has been written about us. From methods to interpreting data, there are a lot of racist conclusions and assumptions.

One example was a survey. One of the questions asked if Roma parents value education. The answer was overwhelming ‘yes.’ But out of all of the questions asked, the researchers assumed that the parents were lying and giving the response the researchers wanted to hear. So why assume that Roma lied about only that one question?

Many things are not overtly racist but include unconscious bias. There is so much to say about research and objectivity.

Cristina: Can you tell me more about the work you’re doing now?

I’ve been at Harvard for 9 years, and we try to conduct Roma-related research. We collect data, but we are also trying to place Roma in current conversations about race and racism, enslavement, reparations, and so on.

We started work on reparations six or seven years ago with the idea that Roma enslavement in Romania, for example, hasn’t been included in the literature on slavery or reparations. The Roma victims of the Holocaust have not been acknowledged as much as they should have.

So we started this global conversation with the idea of creating a joint advocacy movement for reparations. We will publish a volume called Time for Reparations with the University of Pennsylvania in September. It takes a global perspective on reparations, and it includes two chapters on the Roma.

We’re also trying to work with the Roma global diaspora, so reaching out to Romani Americans.

Cristina: How many Roma people are in the United States?

Margareta: It’s hard to say. Estimates put the number at somewhere between 1 million and 1.5 million. But there is no suitable method to count because many identified with their country of origin. Many who have been here for one generation or two or three maintain the Roma language at home, but they don’t identify as Roma when they go outside of the home.

Some go to the same churches that preach in the Romani language. There are many in California. In addition, Texas, New York, and Connecticut have communities.

Cristina: If you could pinpoint the main issues in the Roma community that are being addressed by activism and research, what would they be?

Margareta: Anti-Roma racism is the main umbrella issue. But my goal is to unpack and deconstruct the many manifestations and pillars of anti-Roma racism.

By looking at manifestations and pillars, we can place the experiences of oppression that the Roma face within the larger conversations on race and racism.

For instance, a lot of our work looks at segregation in education. It’s a reality across many countries in Europe.

It’s not segregation by law but by practice. But, unfortunately, in many ways, that’s something we can also see still in the United States.

We did a study focusing on the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria, and we looked at case law.

The European Court of Human Rights had a few cases on segregation in education, including a very famous one from the Czech Republic. The court judgment said that Roma children were placed at a high rate in special schools and misdiagnosed due to racial bias.

That’s a phenomenon in various countries. The Open Society Foundations had a report on the placement of Romani children in special schools in Serbia, too.

There was an interesting study from the U.K. They looked at the experience of Roma children who came to the U.K. with their families from the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They were in special schools, but after arriving in the U.K. and being placed in an inclusive school system, they had the same level of performance as any other child in just a few years.

We look at this segregation as an overt manifestation of racism.

We also look at police abuse. In our studies of Romani Americans, one of the clear manifestations of anti-Roma discrimination in the United States is racial profiling.

There are many experiences of that here in the U.S., but also in Europe. For example, last month, a Romani man was killed by the police in the Czech Republic. A policeman knelt on his neck for six minutes. His name was Stanislav Tomáš.

There were many protests. Not at the same level that you see in the United States, but there are many cases of police abuse.

We also look at the connections between racism and health and how racism functions as a trigger for health inequities and as a stressor in itself.

Cristina: Is the experience of Roma people similar from country to country, or does it vary greatly?

Margareta: It varies greatly from continent to continent. The experiences of Romani Americans are different from those of Roma people in Europe. The policies against Roma in Europe have always been more targeted. In Europe, we deal with structural racism. Most of the laws and policies don’t even include Roma. They are very white in nature.

In the United States, the targets of structural racism are other communities, including Black Americans and Native Americans.

Roma faces discrimination in the U.S., but there is no intentional, continuous mechanism to keep Roma under oppression. However, you will notice that in some of the laws in the United States, at the beginning of the 1900s, Roma, or “gypsies,” were prohibited from entering the United States. So many people who came to the United States just claimed they were nationals of their countries.

During the Holocaust, when the Nazis took Roma to camps, the information they had was from the official census or other official channels. So many elders in the community started to tell people not to identify themselves to the authorities.

Cristina: Does the experience of Roma differ significantly in Eastern and Western Europe?

Margareta: I think there’s a difference because there are more Roma people in Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe than we see in the North or the West.

In the U.K., for example, you have Roma who were born in the U.K., and they have different experiences from the Roma from Romania or Bulgaria. So you will see this tension as well between Sinti and Roma in Germany.

There are power dynamics. There is some frustration from Romani groups born in these Western countries who have a little more access to wealth and resources. When Roma come from Romania and Bulgaria and beg on the street, the Roma born in those Western countries feel like we ruin their image and cause more racism against them.

There is also some tension over the names we call ourselves. Some subgroups don’t like that we use Roma as an umbrella term. There is also racialized poverty, which you see more in Eastern and Central Europe. So we can’t talk about a homogenous Romani diaspora.

Even in Romania, we have at least 20 subgroups of Romani people with different dialects and some different traditions and clothes. Some get more targeted by violence than others.

Cristina: Has the evolution of the European Union altered the experience of Roma people in Europe at all? Has the ability to move across borders changed the experiences of Roma?

Margareta: When the opportunity came to travel to other European countries without a visa, that made many Roma, together with members of the dominant population, decided to move to different countries.

People traveled to the U.K., France, or Spain. And they did much better. Some would work in construction or fruit picking, the same work that Romanians would do. However, the experiences of their children in school were much different.

But even if you only need an ID and a bus ticket, many Roma people can’t afford that.

That said, France and Italy in the 2000s wanted to start fingerprinting Roma, but the European Commission disagreed.

France had a voluntary repatriation program, and they would give 300 or 400 euros to migrants to return to their countries. Many used that opportunity. They would go back home for Christmas and then come back to France in January.

That was the impetus for the European Union to create the basis for the European strategy for Roma inclusion. It wasn’t because they cared about Roma. It was because these powerful countries were angry and thought there was a problem.

Many of the projects for Roma inclusion weren’t written together with the Roma, so you had these white organizations saying they were going to fix the Roma community, and then nothing happened.

Most EU states agreed to write a strategy for Roma inclusion, but when it comes to implementation, they didn’t put any money into it.

Part of the work I do at Harvard is to say the problem is not how to fix the Roma. The question is how to fix policies and practices that are racist in nature.

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