Month: May 2019

If you ask a business owner if they would like to make more money the answer is usually "Yes", followed swiftly by "but what's the catch?"

The default competitive market has bred a naturally suspicious mindset, which creates a challenge for ideas that promote reciprocity, co-operation and collaboration – especially those that promise more profit.

That challenge, to overcome suspicion, and maintain interest for long enough to explain to business owners the nature, and benefits of the opportunity is the core task of a new project known as the UK Mutual Credit Network.

Mutual credit is not a new idea. Most people have heard of LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems or Schemes) in which people exchange goods and services without the need for money, but business to business (B2B) schemes are not commonly understood. Despite several successful examples, mutual credit is often viewed with skepticism – until the penny drops.

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B2B mutual credit networks can have huge benefits for their members. Take the WIR for example, which has been increasing the turnover of Swiss businesses since 1934. Or the Sardex network in Sardinia, which facilitated over €41 million worth of trades for its members in 2017. These, and other examples around the world, prove that when enough people agree to collaborate it is perfectly possible to conduct business and generate increased profits without the need for conventional 'money'.

How does mutual credit work?

Mutual credit works in the following way:

1. Businesses that join the network offer goods and services to other member businesses in exchange for credits, at the same prices they charge in their regular currency.
2. Businesses receive an interest free line of credit enabling them to trade with other members of the network without needing cash.
3. Each business is listed in a directory of "offers and wants" enabling other members to find the goods and services they need, and to find new customers and suppliers.
4. Trades are conducted in a 'blend' of traditional (fiat) currency and credits – to ensure businesses are able to cover the costs of raw materials and other necessities which are not available in credits, and cover their tax liabilities (i.e. VAT is still payable on mutual credit trades)
5. The buyers credit balance goes down, and the sellers balance goes up. The overall balance of the network remains at zero at all times.

What are the benefits of mutual credit?

There are multiple benefits of using mutual credit (which, just to clarify, is not an alternative currency since there is no "currency"). The biggest and most important benefit is the ability to turn 'spare capacity' into revenue and additional profits.

Take Mrs Pie's restaurant as an example. Mrs Pie has a number of fixed costs: the ingredients, pie chef, the waitresses, as well as her rent, rates and utility bills. No matter how many pies she sells she still has to pay these costs. If only 20 of the 30 tables in her restaurant are full, the other 10 tables are her spare capacity. They are not generating any income whilst they sit empty without people eating pies – they are dragging down the profit margin of her business.

Now, suppose Mrs Pie joins the UK Mutual Credit Network, and agrees to receive credits in exchange for pies at 10 tables, she will encourage customers who may not have cash, but do have credits, to eat in her restaurant. If she fills all the empty tables with credit paying customers she has 'optimised' her business by turning her spare capacity into revenue. Now she can spend the credits she received to buy supplies for the restaurant with other businesses in the network. For example, she might buy ingredients, drinks, or pay her accountant or hairdresser in credits. If her cash-flow is not looking great she could even buy goods and services from the network before taking a single credit, by using her interest free 'overdraft' in the mutual credit system.

So, thanks to the mutual credit network, Mrs Pie has optimised her business, she has generated more revenue, which has in turn increased her profit margin. Plus, she's probably made a few new friends along the way by accepting credits at her restaurant and trading with other network members.

But the benefits don't stop there. Being part of a mutual credit network helps grow your customer base via the directory through which you can promote your goods and services to other businesses. Accepting mutual credit avoids 'discounting', which undermines profits. It frees up precious liquidity (cash in the bank) for essential purchases. The interest free credit limit (calculated according to your businesses turnover, number and size of trades etc) can be used to cover running costs or fuel expansion to help your business grow. Plus mutual credit schemes consistently report increased loyalty, and stronger and more supportive relationships with other members of the network. The reciprocal, collaborative nature of the network changes the fundamental nature of trade. Members are united through the network, rather than divided and extorted by the conventional banking system which has monopolised the 'creation of money' for too long.

The UK Mutual Credit Network is being developed as a not-for-profit co-operative and is supported by the Finance Innovation Lab. To find out more, express interest in joining, or to add your support please visit The Open Credit Network.

In a small town in the north of Italy, fog and humidity make parmesan cheese and ham tasty. But most of the time it smells of a tomato sauce factory and pigs. I hated life there. When I go back to my hometown, I argue with my brother who has joined a neo-fascist group, I argue with my farmer friends spraying glyphosate on their fields and with acquaintances who have transformed the historically communist region into a right-wing stronghold.

As a younger sibling, I always tended to look up to my older brother. But we had different life opportunities and ended up in very different places. One in Brussels supporting the idea of an open democratic Europe and the other rejecting the establishment and fearing the loss of identity over the arrival of immigrants to Europe.

When European votes electing the next European Parliament are counted on Sunday, the Italian far-right party League is expected to be the first party in Italy with more than 30%, it is likely to be the largest party in a number of seats – 25 and to compete to create the third largest group in the assembly.

At the rally with European far-right leaders in Milan last Saturday, Salvini wanted to boost his campaign. With the scandal of the Austrian far-right leader resigning and the small presence at the rally, he failed. But he pledged himself to opposing the Europe of finance and immigration and fighting against tax evasion for the good of the people.

In reality, Salvini’s party does not protect people’s interests. Far from rejecting the ‘establishment’ they criticize, the League has always represented the interests of corporate powers, as well as rich and powerful people. As a recent Corporate Europe study unveiled, League’s MEPs accumulated side jobs to enrich themselves, they have been investigated for fraud and bribery linked to organized crime, and they entertain long-lasting relations with the main employers’ association and none at all with trade unions.

Populists don’t respect people’s freedoms: censorship is the current modus operandi for Salvini. A teacher was suspended for letting her students compare the recent security and migration decree to the fascist racial laws on Holocaust Remembrance Day. A banner against the Interior Minister hanging on a balcony where the leader was expected to hold a meeting was removed, showing dissent is not tolerated in the country. The new security and migration decree drafted by the Interior Minister is aiming to restrict the freedom of assembly.

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The League does not protect workers’ rights, it disdains them. Its voting records in the European Parliament show how they have opposed the interest of working people and low income communities. Research shows the League voted against a minimum 25 per cent corporate tax rate, opposed the creation of a pan-EU tax evasion authority and the directive to promote decent work for all workers.

Finally, the obsession with refugees and migrants coming to Italy does not reflect the contribution of immigrants in the country. Where I come from in the North of Italy, Indian Sikh and North African workers contribute substantially to our local economy. They work for and alongside farmers to grow, pick and process tomatoes: they are employed in the factory to pack cured meat, often in exploitative conditions.

On Sunday, rather than attacking migrants and refugees, fueling hatred towards already discriminated Roma communities, I will vote for the progressive parties to protect workers’ rights, fair labour conditions of work for all, and will fight for equal redistribution of wealth. I hope my brother will too.

There are moments in politics that simply and neatly crystalize everything. Today it was the absurdity of Labour expelling Alastair Campbell for voting Lib Dem last week. The only analogy my mind can conjure up is the prison guards on the Berlin Wall shooting the first people flocking through the gaps on 9th Nov 1989 before releasing the futility of it, giving up, taking off their uniforms and merging into the crowd – forever trying to hide their Stasi past.

Last week tens of thousands of card-carrying Labour members voted Green or Lib Dem in the EU elections. Many of them voted tactically to stop the rise of Tommy Robinson. Should they be expelled too? They did so because for them their party’s equivocation over a second referendum was too much and had gone on too long.For them it was Brexit or Remain. Personally, I’m more sympathetic to a politics that tries unify the country but that’s another debate. What is clear is that this attempt to instil fear and an iron discipline to back the Party or else is hopelessly misplaced in the 21stcentury.

Why? Because this is not the age of the factory – where everyone knew their place and took their orders. An age of paternalism and no questions asked deference. Rather it is the age of Facebook and a sentiment in which you join and leave different groups all the time, where loyalty is fleeting as the aggerating and accelerating effects of social media take their toll and people swarm from this to that group at a whim. You can like it or not, but this is how things now are.

The main point is that this form of leadership and command and control disciple may have worked in 1917, but todays looks foolish. But it’s hard to resist the secondary and cheaper point that the leadership are hypocrites. Much of the early Corbyn wave was powered by people coming over from the Greens and the Lib Dems. And is it impossible to ignore that Corbyn voted against the Labour government and with other parties all the time, or that he publicly congratulated candidates like George Galloway when they defeated Labour candidates? We won’t go near the non-expulsion of anti-Semites. Its not wrong to stand by your principles as Jeremy and Alastair have in their own ways done, it is wrong to say one thing and do another and all the time fail to realise the rest of the world has simply moved on.

Of course, there is argument that’s says that if you belong to a party then you must always and forever vote for it. But it’s a claim made for a world that has gone. The future will be negotiated by all of us, not imposed by any one of us. In part this must be the case because the problems we now face as a society are too complex for any single party to solve.

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But if this model of discipline, getting out the vote, winning an election, gaining a majority and pulling the levers of power is over, so must be the archaic rules that go with it – rules that say no matter what a party does or doesn’t do you must back it at all times, that only votes for the two big parties count and that MPs should be whipped to vote against their beliefs. The control freaks of the left and right won’t be able to take it any of this.

Instead we should take a leaf out of the Women’s Equality Party book, who allow their party members to join other parties. This makes utter sense in a world where we all need to be egalitarian, green, liberal and democratic. One size no longer fits all. It’s not two TV stations we have a choice of but hundreds, each on demand. If our politics fails to catch up with this complex modernity then it will get left further and further behind.

Some will simply rejoice that Campbell has been thrown out. An evil Blairite who had it coming. I had little truck with New Labour but a world of binaries – it’s black or white, good or bad, them or us – isn’t a world I want to inhabit. As Albert Maysles has said ‘tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance’.

Instead of expelling Alastair Campbell the Labour leadership should debate and discuss Europe with him, it’s the only way to learn and develop your argument – it’s the way to make yourself stronger. Instead this just looks brittle and weak.

Fight the expulsions, the left always used to say. Well everyone who wants a politics that is tolerant, open and respectful should fight any expulsion that simply makes no sense in the modern world.

Maryinka, a satellite town outside Donetsk, is under constant artillery attack. Today, the once million-strong city of Donetsk is under the control of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR), while Maryinka is under control of Ukrainian forces. In some places, the distance between firing positions is a few dozen metres. Many streets on both sides are frequently under bombardment. Some houses are still occupied by their owners, others by military.

Before June 2015, Tetiana Peredelska and her family lived in a house in the grounds of a boarding school on the outskirts of Maryinka, alongside similar private houses. Since the beginning of the conflict, Ukrainian forces have occupied the nearby hospital, then the boarding school buildings and later other residential buildings.

In 2014-2015, the Ukrainian army was still a poor substitute for a fighting force. With no experience of actual armed conflict, demoralised and plundered through corruption, the army was mostly reliant on volunteers – both people who provided equipment and supplies and those who stood ready to fight. Yet these hastily thrown together volunteer battalions also included a certain number of looters and sadists.

By spring 2015, few residents would stay overnight in Maryinka. But during the day, when there was no fighting, people would come to work on their gardens – many still believed that the war would be over quickly. Nobody expected to have to abandon their homes for long: some houses on the front line had already been occupied by fighters and pillaged.

“Then they started to fire single shots at us from the hospital,” Peredelska tells me.

“Someone was working in their allotment and ‘bang’, a bullet flies into a fruit tree. Or they’re walking over to their garage and a bullet hits it. One day I went out onto my porch and a bullet landed in the handrail. In other words, we realised that they wanted to scare us off and get rid of us. The only road we could use to take anything out went past the hospital, but they said to us clearly: ‘As soon as we see anyone, whether on foot or in a car, we’ll fire.’ All the paths out of town were crossed by tripwires, which we had to step over wherever we went. And then they started firing automatic rounds at our feet. This is how they got rid of us.”

It was four months before residents were able to return to their homes. They spent that time going through all possible channels. Eventually, they were allowed to collect their belongings. But it was all too late.

“Most of my stuff had disappeared,” says Tetiana. “My fridge had been replaced by an old one which they needed to store their food. There was no crockery, no bed linen, no secure entrance doors – they had even stole the motor from our jacuzzi. And other people’s stuff was lying all over the floor.”

Tetiana Peredelska has spent more than two years trying to get compensation from the Ukrainian government for the loss of her home. But her application is still in the primary court. The Maryinka houses, which were used by the Ukrainian troops, became a target for the opposing side and are now seriously damaged or demolished by gunfire.

According to approximate estimates, more than 20,300 homes have been damaged or demolished in the Kyiv-controlled parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions alone since the start of the war. Responding to an information request, the Ministry of Justice informed that there are currently 158 applications for compensation in Ukrainian courts at various levels. Some cases have already gone to the Supreme Court and been sent back round again. And not a single family has received any compensation from the state.

A political issue

On 4 April 2019, Ukraine’s Supreme Court was supposed to decide on a compensation application over a domestic property destroyed during bombardment. This decision was to provide a benchmark for lower level courts. The long awaited decision, however, wasn’t taken: the court ruled that it required more time to examine the case papers.

All issues connected with the war are controversial and deeply political. The Ukrainian courts do all they can to delay taking decisions, wanting to avoid as much political responsibility as possible. Meanwhile, many of the courts are effectively paralysed by Ukraine’s stop-start judicial reform. This means that some judges are temporarily unable to carry out their work. In Kyiv’s Pechersky district court, for example, where most lawsuits against the government are lodged, “only a third of judges are working”, says Yulia Naumenko, a lawyer with the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.

Naumenko has lodged around 30 lawsuits connected with compensation for property damaged or destroyed in the conflict. “The first positive decision taken in the lowest court was confirmed on appeal,” she tells me. “The respondents then lodged a counter-appeal, which was accepted for examination in June 2017. The old Higher Specialised Court didn’t manage to examine the case in time, so in June 2018 it was passed to the new Supreme Court. It has still not been even allocated a date for examination. There is also my appeal against the appeal court’s decision, which was immediately allocated to the new Supreme Court and assigned a date of 19 March 2018, but has still not been examined. This constitutes a breach of procedure, and there is no constitutional explanation for it.”

Until recently, all compensation claims cited Ukraine’s anti-terrorism legislation, which obliges the government to compensate citizens for damages caused by a terrorist act. Prior to May 2018, the war in eastern Ukraine had the official status of an anti-terrorist operation. But this status was changed a year ago, and the conflict is currently known as the Joint Forces Operation.

As a result, Ukraine’s courts have begun to base their practice on a Civil Protection Code. This has meant that courts reject claims on the grounds that applicants have not contacted their local authorities to transfer them their damaged property in exchange for compensation.

This situation reached the height of absurdity in August 2018. Then, Ukraine’s Supreme Court rejected a 17,600 hryvnya (£519) compensation claim for property harmed in the course of military action, partly because its owner hadn’t officially applied to transfer her property to the Donetsk regional military-civilian administration.

Meanwhile, in February 2019, a Kyiv appeal judge tore apart the argument made by a representative of Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers, who couldn’t describe the procedure to transfer property to a local administration: there are no legal provisions for it. The regional military-civilian administrations in Luhansk and Donetsk refuse to buy damaged property, citing the lack of a mechanism for the process.

People who have won their cases in two courts also find it hard to get their decisions carried out. Yulia Naumenko and other lawyers have had cases where they have managed to contact the treasury service for their allocated payout before the government has lodged an appeal. But the treasury has the same answer for everyone: the state budget contains no lines on compensation caused by terrorist acts.

On the front line

“We won our appeal nearly a year ago. We took our forms to the treasury twice. But they gave us a manipulative answer, saying that there was currently no mechanism for paying compensation and that we would be given it as soon as it appeared. Yulia Naumenko wrote another letter, stating that there were reserve funds, but the answer was the same. The regional government refused to take our damaged property,” Olena and Ihor Loshadkin from Piski, a village near Donetsk, tell me.

At the start of the war, control of Piski was won and lost several times. But at the end of July 2014, the Ukrainian Army established firm control.

“Flying squads of three to five people, well kitted out, and without identifying marks, would visit local people to announce a clear-up operation,” the Loshadkins recall.

“We don’t know who they were, but their behaviour suggested they were cops. They walked along the street, systematically opening any locked house. They would then turn out every cupboard, searching for money and jewellery, and after that they started collecting any valuable office equipment. That was the first round of pilfering. After that, the Ukrainian Army and volunteer forces went through the remaining houses looking for food. Anything they found, they took. Another couple of months – and somebody needed new clothes. Then they started removing any consumer electrics – washing machines, TVs and fridges.

“Sometimes volunteer fighters would buy sell these consumer goods for next to nothing, and then buy arms and ammunition from the Ukrainian Army troops.”

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The cellars of houses in this formerly prosperous suburb became shelters not only for the local population, but also Ukrainian troops and volunteer battalion members. And they were also, of course, targets for the other side. Over a few months Piski, which was located near Donetsk Airport, a very intense area of fighting, was almost razed to the ground, and its population plummeted from around 2,500 to eight.

“Our house burned down ‘just at the right moment’, when the airport had lost its strategic significance. Then, the main aim was simply not to lose Piski to the separatists,” says Ihor Loshadkin.

Together with the house, Ihor Loshadkin lost a unique blacksmith’s workshop, which he’d put together over 30 years. The compensation the Loshadkins can expect will also be miserable compared to the real value of their property, and the assessment of the material loss suffered by people affected by the war usually includes just buildings and not their contents.

After 2015 the war entered a new phase, says Ihor Shantefort, a UNHCR cluster coordinator for housing and non-food consumer goods in Ukraine. Intensive fighting continued not on the frontline, like before, but in seven flashpoints in the two border regions – Piski is one of them.

Troops no longer permit local residents to enter the village. State representatives and surveyors cannot visit these kind of sites due to the danger, but this means they cannot draw up official papers on damaged property, or evaluate the amount of damage. Local people, however, manage by hook and by crook to get photos and videos proving that their homes have genuinely been destroyed.

For a long time, some villages and small towns here had no legitimate local government (some still don’t) which could at least collect data about the destruction. And in this sense, Piski has been lucky.

At the beginning of the conflict, village leaders fled to parts of Donetsk region outside of Ukrainian control. In 2015, the Loshadkins assembled Piski’s remaining inhabitants and effectively announced the creation of a new local council. “The regional powers didn’t object,” Ihor tells me. “We organised an official form for volunteers, confirming that they were involved in the fighting, and another one for the courts, about rules and regulations. Nobody knows that Piski has neither a council head nor a secretary. Our forms are accepted by all official organs. Nobody has re-elected us.” More of Yulia Naumenko’s clients come from Piski than anywhere else.

The EHCR lever

“My son stayed in Piski. He said, ‘Mum, at least I can save my house.’ At the age of 31, his heart stopped during a bombing raid. My husband was ill with cancer, and the soldiers brought him here…”

Anna Lashkevych still has two houses in Piski. She now rents a place, with her second son and her grandson, in Pokrovsk, which is in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk region.

“I organised it all in the name of all the villagers. We wrote to the presidential administration, the Ombudsperson, the MPs, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry for Temporarily Occupied Territories. They all replied that the Ukrainian government was happy to pay us compensation, but that there was no mechanism or legal provision for doing so at present. We have also asked to be given documents on damaged property. But the officials tell us that we are no longer residents of the village of Piski, that we voluntarily abandoned our houses and now have the status of internally displaced persons,” says Anna Lashkevich.

Anna has more than once asked human rights groups for help with the legal issues around her official status, but her case has never come to court. The organisation that currently holds the documents of the former resident of Piski claims that some essential papers are still missing. And the lawyers at the “Right to Defence” charity have been focusing on cases with a clear chance of some success in court. The idea is not so much to access compensation for individual victims, but to create a mechanism for putting pressure on the Ukrainian government.

“Our goal is to take cases through our national courts in order to prepare cases for examination by the ECHR [European Court of Civil Rights]. One successful case at the ECHR will be enough to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to create an effective compensation system. The ECHR can also take the issue to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. In that case, the Committee will produce instructions for Ukraine to create an appropriate system,” says Darina Tolkach, a lawyer at “Right to Defence”.

The lawyers are simultaneously sending submissions to both the ECHR and the Ukrainian courts. Yulia Naumenko notes that the very absence of any conclusive decisions from the courts over compensation for property damage caused by the war is in itself proof of the ineffectiveness of the country’s national security system.

But these decisions take time. At the start of this year, the ECHR announced that it wouldn’t look at individual complaints until it had investigated the interstate dispute between Ukraine and Russia. And even earlier, in December 2018, the ECHR stunned Ukraine’s legal community by announcing a practically unprecedented decision: to ban one lawyer from representing anyone’s interests in Strasbourg for life.

The plan that fell apart

“It doesn’t matter what I do now,” says Natalya Tselovalnychenko, head of the Luhansk human rights group. The ECHR has effectively threatened her entire legal and human rights career.

It’s hard to evaluate the court decision on its own merits: the court didn’t publish the text of its decision, just a press release stating that Tselovalnychenko submitted both complaints containing fake documents and complaints from people who were dead. She was also accused of sending the ECHR submissions that were not backed up by any documents other than copies of affected people’s ID documents, as well as mass submissions containing practically identical wording. The court paid little attention to the fact that she also appealed to the ECHR directly, ignoring Ukraine’s national courts.

I managed to speak to several people who had asked Natalya Tselovalnichenko for help. None of them had paid her for her services: the most she had taken in some cases was 150 hryvnya (approx. £4) for composing and posting documents. Her one condition was that she would take half of any compensation awarded to people who had made an agreement with her, with a warning that about 90% of submissions addressed to the ECHR are rejected.

These stories are also united by the fact that after a certain period of time, Tselovalnychenko would break off all contact with her clients. She says she has made around 2,000 complaints, most of them from displaced person or people whose postal address is in an area where there hasn’t been a postal service for a long time. And it’s not surprising that some of the people she helped submit appeals to the ECHR were dead by the time they reached it.

The legal strategy chosen by Natalya Tselovalnichenko was well known in Ukraine’s human rights community from the start. But none of the respected organisations ever supported her, although their own experience proved what she saw as obvious from the beginning: that the Ukrainian government, from the beginning of the war and to this day, has had no means of protecting its peaceful citizens from the conflict.

“We have no specific law that would guarantee a positive outcome for a case of property damage caused by war. We don’t even have any way of calculating this damage,” says Tselovalnychenko. “We’re talking about events either on the demarcation line or in occupied territory. What kind of papers can an citizen produce in such conditions? They are in a situation of legal uncertainty precisely because the state is doing nothing. Not a single military-civilian administration has taken any measures to help the local population report on damage and losses, and the police refuse to accept reports of crimes from the public.”

The lawyer explains that she was hoping to send missing documents to the ECHR as and when their owners retrieved them. It wasn’t a matter of winning a case, Tselovalnychenko says, but of drawing the Court’s attention to the situation of the victims of the conflict. The ECHR could take “emergency measures” to force Ukraine’s leadership to fill the current legal and regulatory vacuum.

“We imagined the ECHR would resolve all our problems,” says Tselovalnichenko. “We thought that those people in Strasbourg would understand that there was an armed conflict happening here, that we wouldn’t have to prove its exceptionality and the fact that people couldn’t immediately lay their hands on official papers in a situation where there was no local government system in operation.”

No future

The worst damage the war brought to the residents of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions was in 2014-2015, the most violent period of the conflict. People could only apply for compensation for war damage within a period of three years after the damage occurred. Which means that the overwhelming majority of war victims have had no chance of any legal comeback.

The database of damaged and demolished property assembled by the UN Refugee Agency contains 18,500 items from the Kyiv-controlled areas of the two regions alone. And it includes only residential structures, not out-buildings of any kind. The Ukrainian government has also still not set up a database of members of the civilian population affected by the conflict or even of structures destroyed by the war.

According to Ihor Shantefort, about 80% of buildings on the UN database have or had light or medium damage that would cost $1,500 to repair. Most of this damage, in areas without constant bombardment, is being repaired by international humanitarian and religious organisations, who are also building new houses for families and individuals belonging to vulnerable social groups, to replace those destroyed. A small family with an average income can’t, for example apply for this kind of aid: all they can hope for are endless legal wrangles or some help from the state.

Ihor Shantefort feels that Ukraine’s legal procedure for assessing damages is too unwieldy. “Even just reporting broken windows involves taking measurements of the house and describing the materials it is built from,” he says. “And only registered specialists are permitted to do this work. But these guys won’t enter the combat zone – it’s too dangerous. It would be a good idea to adapt regulations for Donbas, so that any engineer or architect, of whom there are plenty working in NGOs, could draw up a job spec for domestic repairs. We can’t give our database to the authorities, as they would immediately come up with questions about who did the estimate and what method they used – there is more than one way.

“Aid from humanitarian organisations also mustn’t be confused with compensation for damages,” Shantefort tells me. “Even people whose wrecked houses have been replaced with new ones are still war victims. But in Ukraine it’s still politically unwise to discuss this issue. And those who have nevertheless managed to take their case to court are then made to feel guilty for getting involved with the government. Meanwhile, officials toeing the government line in these cases nonetheless admit behind closed doors their embarrassment at having to defend the state from their own fellow-citizens. Somewhere in the corridors of power a decision is slowly taking place, to pass special legislation to open the way to the defence and satisfaction of all the affected citizens’ grievances."

“I see it like this,” says Ihor. “Ukraine voluntarily passes a law and pays compensation to all its citizens. At a price, of course. And it tells the ECHR: this is the loss we’ve made. The Russian Federation is an aggressor: it needs to be called to account. So Ukraine can then still defend its citizens. But it doesn’t do that. Instead, it announces to the global community: “We are being subjected to terrorist acts, but the courts say: show us how you’re a victim of a terrorist act”.

“Ukraine needs to collect the evidence itself and take it to international courts,” says lawyer Yulia Naumenko. “Unless it takes measures to defend its war-weary citizens, it will sooner or later be forced by the ECHR to carry its own financial burden.”

Naumenko’s clients are ready to wait, possibly years for the repayment of the damage caused by the war, and then only with help from Strasbourg. And as Shantefort notes, global experience shows that however the situation develops the payout of the compensation could last many years.

On top of all this, the displacement crisis has revealed a general housing problem in Ukraine, with a lack of accessible homes for people in various socially vulnerable groups of the population. In the next few years, hundreds of thousands of old high rise buildings will pass their use-by date, which will guarantee new local crises and social conflicts throughout Ukraine. It’s not too late to avert this, says Shantefort, but the state needs to act now – with the next 30 years in mind.

This is the only time I am going to mention Nigel Farage in this election campaign. And I’m going to do it just to ask you to please stop mentioning him too.

Clearly both Brexit, and the rise of the far right that it has fuelled, are deeply concerning. We are seeing the return of language that I thought was left behind in the days of my childhood, and both women and our diverse communities are feeling fearful. But fear is the currency of the far right and we should be brave enough not to fall into their communication traps.

Labour’s main message now is that only they can stop Farage. The Liberal Democrats are trying to portray themselves as the party that can ‘beat’ the Brexit Party. These narratives are both distortions of what these European Elections are about – electing members of the European Parliament – but they are also ceding ground to Farage in a way that is disastrous for the future of our democracy. Putting Farage at the centre of the debate like this is exactly what he wants.

All the smaller parties have set their own targets for these elections. For most of them maximising seats is important. Not so for Brexit and UKIP, who have never used their seats for the purpose of being political representatives. Their ambition here is to use these elections, as they use all elections, to spread their hateful ideology and to fan the flames of hate and racial and religious conflict. They work together, using a good-cop-bad-cop strategy, where the excesses of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon makes the Faragistas look respectable. So while UKIP candidates are putting out vile videos on YouTube and engaging in street fighting, Brexit candidates can sit in hustings and in studios wearing their suits and making the politics of division look respectable. Just as in the referendum, where Vote Leave and Leave.EU played a similar double-hander, in this campaign Farage can keep just this side of the line of overt racism, knowing that his dog-whistles and the UKIP attack dogs will do the dirty work.

Anything we do to legitimise them or normalise them is an affront to tolerant, democratic politics and an insult to those in our communities who are their targets. Hence my decision not to share a debating space with UKIP candidates. This has meant turning down invitations to hustings. Although I did accept an invitation to be part of a BBC programme that included a video attendance by Carl Benjamin, I was soon aware that this was a mistake. My refusal to respond to him beyond restating my solidarity with the communities against whom he targets hatred still felt like too much of a compromise.

Their strategy works brilliantly on social media, where they can take clips from their TV appearances. To argue, as many media pundits do, that they can ‘beat’ fascists and their fellow travellers in rational debate is to entirely miss the point. The pundits’ incisive intellectual parries will be left out of the version of the video their opponent shares with loyal followers. The TV studio will build the authority of interviewee, an authority he will use like oxygen to stoke the fires of hate. And every time we share pictures of Farage with a red cross through his face, or attack him, or respond to one of his trolls, we are helping this dangerous communications machine.

In this sense, Farage has already won the European Elections because he has been allowed to portray himself as the most powerful man in British politics. He has made a claim on a seat at the table for the forthcoming Brexit negotiations, using votes for a single issue to enhance his personal power and thus undercutting democratic processes. The way the EU referendum facilitated this creation of a single-issue division in our politics is why Farage and his acolytes sat in the European group for ‘direct democracy’ and it is also why the German constitution strictly controls the use of referenda which helped the rise of the Nazis.

It’s probably my experience of working with UKIP politicians in the European Parliament that makes me sensitive to their methods and the way you can get sucked into unwittingly fuelling their political project. To avoid doing so requires self-awareness and discipline. It means keeping your understanding that politics is complex and relies on choice between a number of parties and vision. It means sticking to your own narrative of hope and a positive vision of the future.

The ideologues of the far right are on the rise in Britain and they are playing us all. Please think carefully about social media hygiene and stop your own collusion. Don’t share pictures of them. Don’t engage with their trolls. Don’t feed the beast.

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Musa* arrived in Greece alone. He was 16. After fleeing Afghanistan on foot, he crossed the Evros River, which runs along the border between Greece and Turkey. His first encounter in Greece was with the police.

Thousands of unaccompanied children, like Musa, travel to and across Europe, through mountainous terrain and across dangerous seas in flimsy boats. They hope to reach countries where they a have chance of finding safety and asylum, and to be reunited with lost family. Musa has an older brother living in Germany.

Musa had been in Greece only hours when the police arrested him and locked him in a cell with adults. They confiscated all of his belongings including the small amount of money he had and his identity documents. The police refused to help him request asylum. After being locked up for a week, Musa was released onto the streets, alone.

He hid on a train to Athens. For several weeks he slept in parks. “I was not safe, people were carrying knives, selling drugs and people stole my phone. Older men would come and ask me to do bad things to them for money.”

Eventually Musa moved into an overcrowded squat with hundreds of strangers. He shared a bedbug infested room with 16 other young boys. “The rooms are cold and often we don’t have electricity. There is one toilet for 200 people.”

Musa had been in Greece for five months by the time he found us. We’re a small team of lawyers, interpreters and support workers. We work out of a tiny room in an office near Larissa station, the central train station of Athens. There are three of us who work full-time, two part-time and intermittent experienced volunteer lawyers. We’re called Refugee Legal Support. We provide free legal advice and support to people claiming asylum in Greece and people who wish to be reunited with their family members in other European countries.

Musa’s rights are enshrined within the so-called Dublin III procedure: when member states are deciding where in the European Union an unaccompanied minor will live, the best interests of the child must take priority.

We worked together on Musa’s asylum application and request for family reunification in Germany. Musa’s social worker wrote a 40-page best interest assessment documenting the dangerous living conditions he faced living alone in Greece, conditions recognised earlier this year by the European Court of Human Rights.

Meanwhile Musa’s young life is on hold in Greece. “The situation is so bad,” he said. “I went to register for school here, but the schools won’t let me join. I have no rights. No right to housing, family, health or education. It feels like I don’t have a right to life.”

Best interests of the child?

Musa’s claim was strong, but Germany rejected it. Why?

Something got lost in translation. The Greek authorities had submitted a witness statement, in Farsi. The German authorities had it translated into English. In Farsi one crucial sentence read: “Musa does not live with family.” In English, the sentence became: “Musa lives with family in Athens.”

We appealed the decision, submitted the correct translation, supported by three statements from organisations that helped Musa, explaining the difficulties of his life as a homeless child in Athens. It was a very strong claim.

“In Iran, after fleeing Afghanistan. I realised there is no legal way for me to go directly to Germany,” Musa said. “The only legal way for me to join my brother is to come to Greece and apply for family reunification. Because I’m sick I can’t go illegally with smugglers. It’s too hard, passing through mountains walking, being hungry and not being offered food.”

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It’s my job to tell Musa about the result of his appeal. We sit together in a small room at a youth centre RLS is closely partnered with. From the window there is a beautiful view of Lycabettus Hill, the sun shines through the clouds. The smell of chickpea biryani, an absolute favourite of the young people in the centre, wafts through the door. The room is cluttered with board games, language books and a projector. They give us the space to hold legal clinics for two hours a week.

Musa’s been in Greece for 11 months. I tell him the German authorities have denied his application again.

“How can they do this?” asks Musa, his head in his hands. I tell him they’ve said “the transfer would be too stressful” for him and therefore they argue it is not in his best interests to be reunited with his brother. The colour drains from Musa’s face, he stares at the floor.

In the room next door, music plays, the young people sing along with enthusiasm, out of tune, they laugh.

Musa raises his head, wide eyes full of tears: “I can’t take so much rejection, I feel like nothing. I am unwanted and I don’t matter.”

I tell Musa that Germany’s refusal is unlawful. We can challenge it. We will appeal. I ask him to be strong while we wait for Germany’s response. It feels surreal and wrong to be asking so much of a homeless unaccompanied 16-year-old.

Musa stands up, slaps his cheeks bringing the colour back, flips his hair to one side, takes a deep breath and with his shoulders back, goes off to join his friends playing ping-pong.

Delaying tactics

Musa did everything he should have done. He made his application within three months of applying for asylum in Greece. He provided evidence of family links, and multiple expert opinions that it was in his best interest to be living with his brother rather than in unsafe conditions and surviving alone in Athens. Yet 11 months on he is still in Greece, reeling from his second rejection.

In 2018 Greece made 4,619 requests for family reunification under the special provisions for unaccompanied minors, close family members and vulnerable people. It’s not unusual for other member states to slow and frustrate the process, by misapplying the law, misreading applications, demanding further documentation that is not required by law or demanding documents that are already in their possession.

Is this done deliberately, to free member states from their legal obligations? Lawyers believe it is. They speak of “exhaustion tactics”, intended to exhaust and confuse applicants.

And so, states abandon vulnerable children to perilous conditions in Greece. Unaccompanied minors 16 and over are denied housing, denied cash assistance, denied an education, denied their legal documents for months on end, unable to access medical treatment, are easy prey to abusers. In parks and hostels around Athens, states’ neglect has produced a market in children’s bodies.

A decision for Ali*

A few days after telling Musa the bad news, I meet with Ali in the Refugee Legal Support office. Ali is 16. “I ran here,” he says panting, his face flushed. “I have an hour for lunch in between my English classes so I have time if I run.”

Ali teaches English in a community centre in Athens. They are lucky to have him. He’s enthusiastic and bright.

He sits and gulps down a glass of water. I tell him that Germany has rejected his case. Ali frowns. “But that doesn’t make sense. We gave them everything they need. DNA, social worker reports, really everything. I thought they had another few weeks to decide … why reject so quickly when the evidence they need to accept is with them now?”

That’s a good question.

By law Germany has 60 days to decide. But instead of utilizing the full time permitted by law, allowing them to appropriately consider the best interest of the child, they decided Ali’s case almost immediately. Such a quick response is almost unprecedented.

The reason for the rejection?

“Insufficient evidence” to prove his relationship with his sister, they claimed. But the case worker had been informed that DNA evidence which certified Ali’s relationship with his sister would be with them within hours.

Ali can appeal. Germany will be bound by law to accept. But the German authorities’ speedy decision leaves Ali struggling to survive in Greece for many more months, without any family support, his young life on hold.

“They know the situation I am living in,” Ali says. “I must fight for my food. How can Germany ignore how bad it is for us? This all feels like a nightmare for me. I have scary dreams. I just want to cry. I don’t have any hope because I’m so scared that I will have to stay in Greece. Not knowing makes a lot of changes to my daily life. A lot of my friends have already left Greece. I was playing in a football team with six people. All of them have now gone. I am the last one here.”

Musa and Ali are the lucky ones. Countless children have no access to lawyers to help them challenge unlawful decisions. They must fend for themselves; some will certainly risk their lives and take underground routes out of Greece.

Ali had found us, and put his faith in the law. “It was a big hope for me that I would safely go to my sister without the police chasing me, crossing many borders and hiding in forests. I know the illegal ways are dangerous. People died on that way.” he says.

“I now know that going by foot from Greece to Germany could have been quicker. Maybe it would have even been safer than being homeless and alone in Athens. All I can do now is wait for a positive answer and concentrate on surviving.”

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^{*Names have been changed to protect identities.
Edited by Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi and Clare Sambrook for Shine A Light.}

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“The Bible, borders and Brexit” will “make Europe great again”, declared Ed Martin to roaring applause. The Republican pundit who co-wrote 'The Conservative Case for Trump' was speaking at a global gathering of religious conservatives in Verona this March. Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, was a headline speaker.

Verona, Italy’s ancient 'city of love', is emblematic of how Europe is changing. It is now a stronghold for Salvini’s Lega party which, together with right-wing populists across the continent, is challenging the laws and social norms that have defined European life for decades.

Even discounting Farage's Brexit Party, anti-EU populists are expected to win a record number of seats in this week’s elections to the European parliament in Brussels. There’s been feverish speculation about how attempted Russian interference will skew the results. Pollsters predict the far right could redraw the political map of Europe. But what does actually mean?

Some commentators question whether Europe’s far right will actually be able to function as a unified bloc, given their nationalist priorities. The Poles and the Italians can't agree about Russia. The Austrians and Italians can’t agree about their border.

This misses the point. Far less attention has been paid to the extent to which these European groups rely on each other – and often on American, as well as Russian, assistance. Together, they are seeking to redefine individual rights and freedoms in ways that will affect a majority of people in every European country.

There are obvious common policy priorities: many of Europe's populists rail against Brussels 'elites' and say they want to repatriate a range of legislative powers, and they have common cause on migration, too. The difference between President Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is that Orbán actually built a wall – explicitly, as he put it, to “keep out the Muslim invaders”.

But there are also deeper alignments, often around an overtly conservative religious worldview. Many far-right leaders talk openly about defending or taking back 'Christian Europe'. Orbán put it in his party’s European elections manifesto. He and other far-right leaders frequently attack concepts such as “gender ideology”: a not-so coded pushback against hard-won women’s and LGBTQI rights. The far-right Vox party in Spain has vowed to roll back laws against gender-based violence, and Poland’s Law and Justice Party has pushed limits on contraception and abortion.

Implicit, often explicit, is the premise that women, LGBTQI, people of colour and migrants should not have equal protection under the law. (‘Protection’ instead means something quite different – like the Lega’s proposed policy of chemical castration for rapists.) To roaring applause in Verona this year, Salvini denounced Europe’s crisis of “empty cribs”, mocked feminists as “interesting for anthropologists to study” and pledged that “the ‘theory of gender’ is something I will fight until it changes”.

It’s a strategy which seeks to shift power away from individuals who have universal rights, and onto powerful institutions: churches, patriarchal family structures, the police and ‘strong leaders’.

This isn't surprising when you track where a lot of their financial support comes from. There’s a lot of focus on Russian interference; less on the increasing influence of American religious conservative groups, some with links to the Trump administration and his former adviser, Steve Bannon. A recent investigation by openDemocracy found that America’s religious right spent at least $50 million on “dark money”-funded campaigns and advocacy in Europe over the past decade. (In context, the total spend on the 2014 European elections by all of Ireland’s political parties combined was just $3m).

Notably, some religious campaigners and their far-right allies now appropriate European 'secular' language to make their case: of science or bioethics to advocate against 'gay propaganda' in schools; of ‘freedom of speech’ to refuse business to same-sex couples; of ‘men's rights’ to roll back on domestic abuse protections.

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These efforts are far more connected than they first seem. Another openDemocracy investigation last month revealed how a right-wing Madrid-based campaign group, backed by both American and Russian ultraconservatives, has been acting as a 'Super-PAC' across the continent, working to drive European voters to the far right.

European lawmakers fear that Trump-linked conservatives are working with allies on this side of the pond to import an American model of political financing, opening up the door not only to “extraordinary coordination” between different far right groups, but to large amounts of ‘dark money’ flowing unchecked into elections and referenda. Former Democratic senator Russ Feingold, who worked alongside Republican senator John McCain for reform of electoral finance in the US, has warned that “Europe has an opportunity to get ahead of this and not make the same mistakes that were made here in the United States.”

There are many underlying contradictions in the demands of Europe’s far right and their religious conservative allies. The ‘religious freedom’ they push for is, of course, highly selective: religions other than Christianity are not part of the plan for ‘Christian Europe’. Second, the punitive laws they champion to stem the flow of migrants haven’t worked – people are still dying at sea – and are having consequences which could, in time, affect their popularity. Hundreds of EU citizens, including priests, elderly women and firefighters, have been arrested or charged in recent years for basic acts of kindness, such as offering food, shelter or transport to refugees.

For now, there are “winds of change across Europe that secular liberals could never have imagined”, as Conservative YouTube star Steve Turley put it to the ultraconservative Verona summit in March. But there are signs of a pushback, too. For the first time in the history of the annual event, the crowds protesting outside were far larger than the audience inside. Over 30,000 people from across Europe, even Argentina, made the journey. Speaking afterwards, an Italian feminist activist said: we feel “stronger” and “more united”. “We are worried”, she added, “but not scared”.

This article is part of an editorial partnership with the Fund for Global Human Rights.

Amandine Mbonimpa has not forgotten anything about the afternoon of 3 August 2015. That was when her father was shot.

She had known he was in danger. Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa was the founder of a human rights organisation, APRODH, in his home country of Burundi, and it had worrying information: the ruling party was secretly distributing weapons to its youth wing.

APRODH had also investigated the military training of young Burundians across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Burundians had been involved in a long-running conflict – without unofficial support from their government.

In 2014 Mbonimpa had been imprisoned by the Burundian authorities, which accused him of “smearing the government and lying”. Thanks to an international mobilisation, including a call from Barack Obama, then US president, he had been released on parole, but the regime kept an eye on him. Somewhere, a plan to murder him was put in place.

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On 3 August “assassination rumours had circulated on social media the whole day”, says Amandine Mbonimpa, now a refugee in Quebec, Canada. “Around 3pm, I called Dad, to reassure myself. He told me that he too had heard [the rumours], but as always, he did not feel any fear, he was serene.”

Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa was used to threats. But that day, the killers meant them. It was in the evening that the news dropped. Pierre-Claver had been shot. Word spread rapidly: ‘Mutama’, the ‘old man’, as he is affectionately called, is well-known and respected for his commitment to human rights in Burundi.

Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa remembers well what had happened. He had been in his car with his driver. “I saw behind us a motorcycle that was riding at a breakneck speed. The bike got to us at a fast pace. The man shot four bullets. The shooting was almost close-range. A bullet hit me on the neck and blood spurted.”

Bleeding heavily, he was rushed to hospital in a critical condition. I went there to see what was happening: at the time I was still a journalist in Burundi before being myself forced into exile.

The crowd was already at Bujumbura Central Polyclinic. That’s where I saw another daughter, Zygène Mbonimpa, his wife, Marceline Tamatama, friends and many human rights activists. But he wasn’t safe yet.

“Security guards sent by various embassies came to ensure my safety at the Polyclinic, because there was a rumour that I was going to be killed in my hospital bed,” says Pierre-Claver. “All the embassies worked in synergy for my evacuation.

“Despite my weakness, my pain, I would like to say that I saw a great surge of solidarity at that moment,” says Pierre-Claver. “In my room I saw distinguished individuals such as diplomats of the African Union, those of the European Union and ambassadors.”

Fast-moving fund

It was clear to his supporters that Pierre-Claver needed to leave the country immediately. Currently in Belgium as a refugee, Zygène Mbonimpa remembers with overwhelming emotion the support of The Fund for Global Human Rights: “Doctors quickly noticed that Mutama had been seriously affected. He needed care he could not find in Burundi. And then, we were afraid he would be finished off on his hospital bed. I wrote to Tony Tate [programme officer at the Fund] and his reaction was quick. He agreed to pay for flight tickets, and the organisation also contributed to the payment of hospitalisation costs in Burundi.”

Tate confirms Zygène’s account. The Fund had been funding and working closely with APRODH for five years at the time, although Tate has known Pierre-Claver since 1999, when they were both working for different organisations. “He was at ABDP [Burundian Association for the Defence of Prisoners’ Rights] at that time and I was working for Human Rights Watch.” When he heard that his long-time colleague had been shot, Tate moved fast.

“Upon learning the information from Zygène and Richard [Nimubona, director of programmes at APRODH], I immediately sought approval from my directors and board members to make an emergency grant,” he says. “We were able to wire the money to APRODH’s account within 24 hours. After the money arrived, it became clear that Pierre-Claver would receive other money and assistance from other funders as well. The money The Fund provided was combined with others to pay for the travel costs of one of his family members to accompany him to Brussels.”

That financial support was critical. The Belgian embassy had agreed to give Pierre-Claver a visa, but the family had to find air fares in a very short time.

“Without this support, we would have had a big problem to raise this money while Dad’s life was in a very critical condition,” says Zygène.

Tate says he was pleased that the Fund was able to respond to the incident and ensure the safety of one of its long-time partners: “My hope was that the family would see that as an organisation, we stand by our grantees in good times and in bad,” he says.

“As a human rights funder, we have an ethical responsibility to provide emergency funding when activists we support are in danger. Human rights work is inherently risky and those who support it must stand ready to respond quickly when defenders are in need.”

Struggle for survival in Brussels

After operation in Brussels | Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa. All rights reserved.

In Brussels, Pierre-Claver was quickly operated on. Doctors first fastened a metal frame on his head to hold his skull together. He spent 121 days in hospital, fed by serum and then a kind of porridge, as he could not open his mouth or chew food. He sat in an armchair, unable to lie down, and his weight went down from 82 kg to 54 kg.

But his ordeal did not stop there. As they had missed him, those who wanted to kill him went after his family. First, his son-in-law, Pascal Nshirimana, was killed, and while he was still in the hospital, his son Weli, 24, was also killed.

“My wife received a very short message via WhatsApp. Weli had just been killed, my wife informed me,” says Pierre-Claver. “I did not know what to say or do. I was totally helpless. I called some friends and asked them to bury my little son in dignity. That’s all I could do.”

Through all this, the now seventy-year-old activist has remained a man guided by peace and justice. We have never heard him speak of revenge.

Prisoner turned activist

He first made himself known by creating ABDP, an association dedicated to defending the rights of prisoners, after he himself had spent time inside. He says that prison opened his eyes. “When I got unjustly imprisoned, I discovered that detainees had no rights in prisons. They could stay in jail for years without ever being tried.” As soon as he was released, he began to defend the rights of prisoners, later extending his fight to the defence of human rights in general.

His work has made a difference. “It should be known that it was not until 2009 that the criminal code of Burundi made torture an offence! Until then, confessions obtained under torture were taken into account by the judges. Having made people understand that torture is an offence is one of the fights of which I am very proud. Thanks to APRODH, every 26 June, the World Day against Torture is celebrated in Burundi.”

Still in exile, Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa is still working to defend human rights in Burundi. With the support of international organisations APRODH remains effective. “We knew that if he were to return to Burundi, he could be arrested or killed,” says Tate. “But we continue to fund APRODH in its global advocacy campaign denouncing the ongoing human rights violations in Burundi.”

“He is one of the most informed about human rights violations in Burundi,” says a diplomat in Brussels, who asked to remain anonymous. “With all that he has done there, this man has a vast information network. In any corner of Burundi, in any area of ​​the country’s life, he has a source, a contact, a friend.”

“It is important that international organisations continue to support him and his organisation,” says a member of a human rights NGO, also speaking anonymously.

Always on the phone, Pierre-Claver continues to encourage teams on the ground. He also travels very often in the sub-region. “It is important that the international community continues to support independent human rights organisations in Burundi,” he says, “because with the closure of UN organisations and the ban on international media including the BBC, there is a risk that human rights violations will be committed behind closed doors. Organisations such as APRODH still have focal points. But they need means to work.”

Pierre-Claver remains modest and accessible despite two honorary doctorates by major Belgian universities and several international awards. Asked what he thinks of those who tried to kill him, he simply answers:

“I forgave those who shot me and those who killed my son and my son-in-law. But I want justice. If the assassins were arrested, I would be happy to see justice doing its job. For my part, I will not ask for any compensation. What would they give me for the death of my child and my son-in-law?”

On Saturday, the Algerian Constitutional Council has officially ceased to accept submissions of candidates seeking to participate in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled to take place on the 4th of July of this year. Key political figures and parties have suspended their participation in the controversial elections as they consider the continued popular protests to have invalidated the poll. Only three leaders of political parties have submitted documents to the council along with over seventy independent candidates none of which are expected to rally significant popular support. The council is due to release a final list of approved candidates within ten days from the deadline of submission in line with Article 141 of the organic law organising elections.

These elections were set up following the resignation of Bouteflika and the suspension of the presidential elections of April 18th. For fourteen weeks, Algerians have been taking to the streets every Friday afternoon to protest for change. It all started when their incapacitated president who had been in office for twenty years attempted to run for a fifth consecutive term despite both health and constitutional impediments. The incredible numbers that poured onto the streets every Friday placed unprecedented pressure on the elite in power. After multiple failing attempts to present a solution to the crisis that would both keep Bouteflika in power and also send the angry protesters back home, the long reigning president resigned from office opening the door for an array of possibilities and scenarios for Algeria’s future.

Protests continue and momentum decreases

Despite the achievement that the Algerian movement attained which was hitherto unthinkable with the country’s history overweighing prospects of a mobilisation, Algerians saw in their peaceful and successful movement a rare chance to overhaul more than just one figure of the corrupt system. To many Algerians, overthrowing Bouteflika was a milestone to be celebrated, but only a first battle in a long war against corruption and injustice. Demands of the protesters grew with every new Friday and Bouteflika’s resignation made even the most ambitious goals seem attainable. Algerians vowed to continue to protest until they have seen real and significant change.

The past few Fridays, however, have seen relatively smaller numbers of people participating in the weekly protests as reports estimate thousands rallying in the capital Algiers while earlier protests against Bouteflika’s fifth term were estimated in millions. This decrease in momentum could be explained by the fact that Algerians have welcomed the Islamic holy month of Ramadan three weeks ago and have been fasting for the past three Fridays. Temperatures have been on the rise so fasting and marching in a protest could prove very challenging to many. Similarly, a turn from protests could also be attributed to the fact that a faction of Algerians is happy with the status quo. Algeria is currently ruled by an interim government awaiting new elections in July. Moreover, after a series of accusations initiated by the army chief, Genral Ahmed Gaid Salah, some of the most conntroversial figures in the disintegrated regime have been arrested and remain in custody. Many Algerians are happy to see these people brought to justice and praise the army chief for triggering these arrests. Others are very sceptical about the reality of the matter and a few even criticise the way the arrests are carried out especially after a leader of a prominent opposition party was summoned for questioning and testimony. The buzz around these high-scale arrests have taken centre-stage and partly overshadowed the continued protests.

Differences resurface

Fighting against an unconstitutional fifth term for the ailing Bouteflika was successful in bringing all the different sects of Algerian people together for one undisputed common goal. Once this shared goal was achieved however, many of the differences characterising these groups were quick to resurface resulting in an incredible polarisation of views. The Algerian public is mainly divided on how the post-Bouteflika period should follow through and although the views on the matter are fairly nuanced, they do more or less poor into two opposing factions.

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Even before Bouteflika officially resigned, it was clear that the military was a significant and powerful actor. After all, the resignation of Bouteflika did not come through until after General Gaid Salah, who was considered a strong ally of Bouteflika’s, pulled the rug from under the president’s feet and called for his removal. Since then, the military had become the number one player in the arena with accusations on the army chief’s part initiating arrests of major regime figures. These moves that Gaid Salah has undertaken since he first declared his stance against Bouteflika and the prominent role he has come to play since then have made him the most controversial figure in Algeria today. The divide of the Algerian public regarding the future of the country can roughly be drawn in relation to where Algerians stand in relation to him.

Constitutional vs unconstitutional paths

One side of the divide is represented by those enthusiastic supporters of Gaid Salah who see in him a protector of the country against external threats and a leader ready to cleanse the system of some of its most corrupt figures. This is the group of people that has turned back from participating in protests and is happy to participate in the upcoming presidential elections. This group also remains in favour of the constitutional path that outlines new elections following a transitional period of 90 days. The army chief’s supporters argue that those politicians who oppose elections are confident in their inability to win by means of a popular vote and would rather, therefore, opt for a political vacuum and chaos.

On the other hand, vocal opponents of Gaid Salah represent the other end of the spectrum and are comprised of a myriad of people. There are those who are championing a civil state and are pessimistic about any future for the country that involves military participation in politics. Others disapprove of elections as overseen by the current administration which continues to be represented by a prime minister and head of state who were appointed by Bouteflika and a corrupt Constitutional Council that has approved an unconstitutional candidacy of the ousted president. This group mainly disputes the army chief because he continues to advocate for elections under the current administration. Finally, some people consider Gaid Salah as corrupt as the people he is accusing of plotting against the country and view him as an opportunist who saw in the mobilisation of the people a chance for him to come to the forefront and settle the scores with his rivals. Many of the army chief’s opponents were quick to brand the army chief’s calls for a constitutinal removal of Bouteflika as long overdue and while some advocate for a solution outside of the constitutional framework, others propose constitutional alternatives to the scheduled elections. Only recently, three national personalities have issued a joint statement calling the Army Command to engage with representatives of the popular movement as well as opposition parties, and advocated for a transitional period that precedes elections. For the most part, many Algerians are not satisfied with a change that boils down to ousting Bouteflika and have all vowed to carry on with the protests and boycott the July elections should they take place.

Surface and deep differences

On a grass roots level, this polarisation of the Algerian public is less ideological than it is a mere conflict of visions on how the critical period after Bouteflika’s removal should be managed and by whom. However, ideological differences do exist, and they mostly feed the views of the upper political crust which seeks to steer the public in favourable directions to its agendas. For example, some of the most vocal opponents of Gaid Salah today were all in favour of the military intervention that took place in the early nineties following the victory of the Islamic party in Algeria’s first multi-party elections. Among these vocal opposition figures are members of Mouwatana Movement of the likes of Zoubaid Assoul who were appointed to the National Council of Transition following the military coup of 1991. This solidifies the argument that plenty of these outspoken political figures against General Gaid Salah only oppose his role in as far as it does not serve their agendas which means their stance against him does not come from a deep conviction that the military’s power should be limited.

Fear of a worse alternative has, therefore, prompted much of the public to take the side of the military chief and reserve judgement of his role until the future unfolds further considerations. After all, the experiences of other countries like Egypt are still fresh in the minds of Algerians and plenty of them fear a counter revolution, and dread to see a deep state emerge from the ashes of the overthrown regime. Nonetheless, the Algerian divide remains one of views, and just like Algerians united against a new term for Bouteflika that was leading the country towards the unknown, they could unite again once time has unraveled a clearer picture of where a better future for Algeria lies.

A Brexit Party running mate of Nigel Farage in Thursday's European election helped spread fake news for a Bosnian Serb warlord later jailed for crimes against humanity, an investigation by SourceMaterial and openDemocracy has discovered.

John Kennedy, a former Tory now standing in the South East region on a list headed by Farage, was for a time monitored by the security services for his close work with Radovan Karadžić, who in March was sentenced for life on charges including genocide, murder and extermination.

A former equerry to Prince Michael of Kent and one-time owner of the Almanach de Gotha, a directory of Europe's aristocracy, Kennedy in July 1992 organised a Westminster press conference with Karadžić at which they distributed a pamphlet listing Bosnian atrocities against Serbs that were later disproved.

Kennedy was a prominent “influence within parts of the British establishment at the time and drew several MPs from across the political spectrum into his circle,” said Carole Hodge, author of ‘Britain and the Balkans’.

Kennedy said yesterday that his involvement with Karadžić ceased “long before any persons were charged with any crime”.

“I met with Karadžić together with UK MPs and Privy Councillors from all parties, including Paddy Ashdown and others. These meetings were not secret or criticised or commented upon by the media at the time, only some years later when I became a Conservative parliamentary candidate.”

While acknowledging that he may have been “naive”, Kennedy did not comment on whether he knew at the time that the 1992 pamphlet contained falsehoods.

In 1996 the High Court ordered the Labour Party to pay him unspecified damages after it wrongly alleged he had retained links with Karadžić and suggested he was not fit to stand for public office in the UK. The party’s lawyer said it accepted Kennedy had “acted at all times with the best of intentions and motives consistent with the wishes of the international community in making a peaceful solution to the conflict”.

But even after his ties to Karadžić ceased, Kennedy continued to spread baseless rumours about Bosnian atrocities. In a 1997 letter to The Guardian, he repeated claims that Bosnians bombed their own civilians as they queued for bread in a bid to engineer international sympathy – a conspiracy theory promoted by a UN peacekeeper later shown to have accepted payments for speaking engagements from a pro-Serb lobby group.

“The claim that the bread queue massacre was a false flag operation was very quickly widely denounced by many people at the time as propaganda on behalf of the Serb extremists” said Marko Hoare, a Balkan historian.

Kennedy did not respond to detailed questions from SourceMaterial and openDemocracy about his past relationship with Karadzic.

The Brexit Party is riding high in the polls, but the source of the party’s funding is being reviewed by the elections regulator and senior officials have resigned over racist and anti-Semitic social media posts.

Kennedy, seventh on the Brexit Party’s South East list, appeared alongside Farage in Frimley, Surrey, on Sunday night. He accused Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn of working on a “Fisher Price guide book to treaty making” in their failed negotiations on securing Brexit.

‘Unsubstantiated claims and gross falsehoods’

Born Jovan Gvozdenovic, Kennedy twice stood as a Tory candidate in general elections in the 1990s. Following the outbreak of war in the Balkans, Kennedy emerged as a young and suave advocate for the Serbs in the UK, often briefing journalists and appearing on television news while also deploying high-level connections to win MPs to the Serbian cause.

During the brutal early stages of the war, as Serbian forces opened a campaign of ethnic cleansing, Kennedy helped organise trips to Belgrade for British politicians to meet Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian president who later died in the Hague while on trial for war crimes.

The dossier distributed by Kennedy and Karadžić at the 1992 London press conference denied ethnic cleansing by the Serbs – allegations which were later proven at a tribunal in the Hague. The dossier instead levelled that very charge at rival Bosnian Muslim forces. It contained lurid descriptions of alleged Bosnian crimes, including claims that Bosnians executed Serbs by the “extraction of the brains of living humans”.

It was “propaganda that contains unsubstantiated, fantastical claims and grotesque falsehoods,” said Marko Hoare, a Balkan historian.

Paddy Ashdown, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats who later became de facto governor of Bosnia, recalled Kennedy as a Karadžić confidant and lobbyist who was so well-connected with the warlord that he could rouse him to the telephone “at 2:30am in the morning!”.

“Kennedy in good form, having just come back from Geneva,” Ashdown wrote in diaries published in 2000. “Full of the old bullshit, however,” including a warning that Serbs would shoot down planes and even had “tactical nuclear weapons near Sarajevo”.

“He clearly thinks they have won and has seventy-three different reasons why we should not support the Muslims. A remarkable man. Extraordinary self-confidence but lacking in plain common sense. Somehow, he is good company, even if – or perhaps because – he is so provocative.”

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Kennedy said: “These are all events that took place 27 years ago, when I was 27 years of age. This was an appalling and tragic conflict, all of my endeavours were entirely based on the belief that something could be done to shorten that conflict."

Brexit: ‘Nigel’s own private political party’

In a matter of months, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has emerged as a major force in British politics. Kennedy is not the only Brexit Party hopeful with a controversial record over the war in the Balkans. Four other candidates – Claire Fox, Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, James Mountfield and Stuart Waiton – were previously involved in the Revolutionary Communist Party or its offshoots such as Living Marxism, Spiked and the Institute of Ideas.

The RCP, an unabashed backer of the IRA, took a strongly pro-Serb line in the Balkan conflict, culminating when Living Marxism magazine accused ITN of broadcasting deliberately misleading footage of Bosnian Serb war crimes. ITN and two journalists won a libel case against the magazine, bankrupting it.

Kennedy said he has no connection with the RCP or Living Marxism and did not know Fox “until a couple of weeks ago”.

Revelations about Brexit Party candidates’ links to Living Marxism and other groups raise questions in particular for Nigel Farage who, according to a party insider, personally oversees the selection of candidates.

“It’s Nigel’s own private political party,” said the insider, who asked not to be identified.

Mixing business and politics

Kennedy began his public relations career working for Ian Greer, a lobbyist whose reputation was destroyed in the ‘cash-for-questions’ scandal in the mid-1990s. After the imposition of sanctions against the Serbs, he struck out on his own, playing a role in facilitating a donation to the Tories by a Serbian-born business partner of Serbia’s foreign minister. The affair prompted an internal Conservative Party investigation which concluded that there was no impropriety.

Kennedy’s influence extended beyond the Tories. David Clark, a Labour minister, and his assistant John Reid – himself later a minister – apologised for not declaring that Kennedy paid for their 1993 trip to Geneva to meet Karadžić.

Kennedy also appears to mix politics with business. In 1993 he founded two companies with Harold Elletson, a pro-Serb Tory MP. Henry Bellingham, who hosted the 1992 Karadžić press conference and for a time employed Kennedy as a researcher, was also a director in a company established by Kennedy.

Bellingham chaired the Conservative Council on Eastern Europe, for whom Greer threw a lavish reception in February 1992 at the National Portrait Gallery, where Milošević supporters mixed with politicians and businessmen, according to The Guardian.

In the late 1990s The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Guardian reported that Kennedy had come into the sights of MI6, who allegedly warned Downing Street that he may be a conduit for Serbian money to the Tory party and obtained warrants to tap his telephones.

“I have not arranged any donation of this kind or from any foreign company or individual,” Kennedy wrote in a letter published by The Guardian in 1997.

Kennedy’s career after his Yugoslav work saw him become a private secretary to Prince Michael of Kent. At one point he was accused of blackmailing a Libyan prince (he has said he was vindicated and no charges were brought).

More recently Kennedy has spoken of capturing the commercial benefits of Brexit in St Lucia, the Caribbean island where his investment fund has been pushing a property development that would take advantage of a citizenship-by-investment scheme.

In July 2016, just days after the European Union referendum, Kennedy wrote that he had briefed the leaders of Saint Lucia’s two main parties about the likelihood of a Brexit vote and called for the country “to be positive in embracing the new opportunities that are already emerging.”