Month: July 2019

A couple of weeks ago, Greece’s statistical services, ELSTAT, published some interesting data comparing and contrasting the periods of austerity between 2015-18 during the Syriza government, and 2010-15, the period of centrist coalition government. Under Syriza, the rate of impoverishment of Greek society was 20,4%, whereas during the period of coalition governments the rate was 19,1%. In simple terms this meant that Syriza would lose the election of 7 July.

But will matters improve under the right-wing government of New Democracy (ND)? No. New Democracy will honour the country’s international obligations, that is first and foremost, the commitment to having Greece under a permanent primary surplus until 2060; intensify the layoffs in the public sector and deepen the medieval regime in industrial relations. This, of course, will have a number of side-effects, including the continuation of migration and the fall in the birth-rate – more than 700,000 Greeks under 40 years old emigrated over the last ten years.

ND, Σύριζαand the ever-present PASOK that was renamed KINAL, (Movement for Change), have begun to amalgamate a new government bloc drawing power from Brussels and legitimacy from the Greek people by convincing the Greeks that There Is No Alternative (TINA). This locks out the people from the centres of governmental power and any resistance to Brussels-led austerity becomes impossible.

The austerity has enduring features and the systemic parties need to make sure that people cannot project their interests onto the power-centres. Thus, given the fragmentation of the anti-systemic Left – the Popular Unity party, the Course to Freedom and Diem25 – there will be a certain stabilisation of a bi-tri-party system managing a dilapidated state machine, itself a mirror image of those systemic parties, registering at the same time their clientelistic and class interests in it. However, July 8 will confront the three systemic parties with three major and inter-linked problems, which are already under way.

A new Eurozone crisis cannot be ruled out

A new grand crisis of the Eurozone is not out of the question, especially if we take into account the situation in the banking sector across the EE, or developments in Italy with the issuing of a parallel currency there.

Brexit, also, is not a simple affair for either Britain of the EE. The City of London is still pondering whether to support a dollar-sterling alliance or to back-up the Euro – just the amount of currency swaps that take place daily in the City’s shadow banking sector is monumental. This has not yet been decided and a better picture will emerge as we head towards October. In all, a new crisis in the European theatre is possible and this will challenge all European polities – indeed the West as a whole – with some new-old tasks, as to what, for example, to do with their debt obligations and whether a return to national currencies is the best solution – something which some mavericks have been arguing since at least 2010. And this will be a real issue, because it is not certain at all that the Euro-system will be able to absorb another crisis.

Combine this eventuality with the regime of enduring austerity in Greece and the frailty of the new bi-tri-party system becomes more than obvious. This will open up massive space for the anti-systemic parties of the Left – and the Right, but we are not examining this here – pushing peoples’ preferences to anti-austerity and demolishing TINA.

It’s the geopolitics, stupid!

Let us now briefly glance at geopolitics. A crisis is looming in the Eastern Mediterranean at the centre of which is Turkey’s policy not to be excluded from the scramble for the gas bonanzas found around the Republic of Cyprus. Turkey has begun drilling in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Republic’s territorial waters. A crisis in the Mediterranean, or a more generalised crisis caused by the USA’s attack on Iran with the possible involvement of Russia and/or China, would create a wholly different dynamic within Greek society and politics, necessitating an active role of the state in its social economy and defence.

Furthermore, if the systemic parties were to pursue a policy of appeasement towards Turkey, something which is very probable given their subordination to their American master, then the anti-systemic Left would have a massive space for intervention on a socialist-patriotic line. This has happened many times in the past, for example, in the late 1950s and 1960s, when the United Left’s leader, Elias Eliou, and young Andreas G. Papandreou, revealed centrist plans to partition Cyprus between the two NATO powers, Greece and Turkey, at the expense of an independent Cyprus Republic as proclaimed by its charismatic leader, Archbishop Makarios.

A similar scenario where Cyprus is to be sacrificed on the altar of keeping the peace with Turkey in a NATO context is not to be excluded if a geopolitical crisis erupts in the Mediterranean and beyond.

The Constitutional issue

Last but not least, there is a Constitutional issue. As argued above, Greece is earmarked by its lenders to be under a regime of enduring austerity for at least another 40 years. This aspect is buttressed by a new state authoritarianism which, as such, is embedded in the regime imposed by three bail-out agreements (Syriza initiated auctions of households that owe money to banks, imposed extraordinary taxation measures, deprived households of electricity in the event that new taxes are not paid, etc.).

The pressure for the revision of the 1974 Constitution is real in that this Constitution is a pro-Keynesian, demand-led document that does not conform to the supply-side austerity requirements signed by the entire Greek political class, referred to here as the “systemic parties”. In general, post-war Keynesian Constitutions across Europe and the de-colonised world, were demand-led legal arrangements with pronounced popular participation and guaranteed social provision and welfare.

However, these arrangements, only partially upheld by the EE’s so-called acquis, are in tatters after the crisis. The new Treaties introduced, such as the Fiscal Compact and the European Semester, dictate the deepening of supply-side policies across Eurozone members and strict adherence to these new rules.

This can hardly be implemented at state level without drastic changes to Constitutions. Any attempt to change the Greek Constitution in order to legitimise a regime of enduring austerity will be met with staunch resistance.

Put this together with the eventuality of a new crisis across the Euro-system and a geopolitical crisis and you have the perfect mix for blowing up the entire bi-tri-party system, pushing left anti-systemic parties to power under national, radical political agendas. From this perspective, July 8 will not bring happiness to the winner and, indeed, to any systemic party. July 8 will bring them only anxiety, perplexity and fear, because of all those previous years in which they have failed to prepare the country for an orderly and planned exit from the Eurozone and a carefully designed, multi-vector, international alliance policy for the country in a world that is changing with monumental speed.

Vassilis K. Fouskas, a professor of international relations at the University of East London, stood for election in the Greek parliament in the district of the island of Lesbos with the party of Popular Unity.

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In May 2018, the Colombian Congress approved the construction of the Port of Tribugá, as part of package of improvements in connectivity linked to the four-year National Development Plan (PND) and the Multi Year Investment Plan (PPI) proposed by President Ivan Duque.

This gives the project the political legitimacy it needs in the medium term, which, along with its financial, technical and legal feasibility, could turn the port into one of the most important undertakings for infrastructure, and regional and national development, by the current government.

However, the proposal still needs approval from the National Agency for Environmental Licenses (ANLA) due to the significant impact it will have on one of the most important biodiversity “hot spots” in the world. The proposal is a concern not only because of the 3,600 meters of length and 20 meters of depth proposed for the port but also because it will require the construction of access roads that will cross more than 200km of virgin forest.

Added to this, is the lack of social legitimacy for the project, that would impact on the ancestral territories of black and indigenous communities who make up the majority of the regional population and who have special constitutional protection. “They are ignoring our right to self-determination” said Harry Mosquera, a representative of the Community Council of the region, at a public hearing where the project was discussed.

The most remote regions have historically been excluded from shaping the development of the country

The Gulf of Tribugá is located in the Chocó region of Western Colombia, in the centre of the second most biodiverse and humid region of the world. Despite having an enviable geostrategic position, with coasts facing onto both the Pacific and Atlantic, the region is virtually disconnected from the rest of the country: neither of the access roads are paved and more than half of the region’s municipalities are not connected to the capital by land.

This level of isolation has meant that social conditions are in inversely proportional to the biodiversity and resource abundance: the basic needs of 80% of the 490,000 people are not met and 50% live in extreme poverty. There are also illegal armed groups operating in the region involved in drug production and trafficking, smuggling and illegal mining. Tribuga is located in one of the key corridors with Panama and is therefore involved in the shipment of drugs to the north of the continent.

But these remote conditions are not exclusive to Chocó. In fact, half of Colombia is not accessible by road. In the Pacific regions, for example, there are only 2 roads along the 1,300 km of coastline and there is no road that links the centre of country with the Amazon. This clear abandonment by the state has created social inequalities for the population, especially when compared with the central regions of the country.

The intervention by the centre on the periphery has been vertical and violent

The state historically arrived at remote regions of Colombia in two ways. Firstly, via colonisation of poor farmers and people who have been internally displaced by the various political conflicts that have taken place since Independence. This was case with the colonization of the Antioquian region in the late 19th century and the progressive expansive from the “piedmonte llanero” to the Amazon region in the mid 20th century, for example.

Secondly, the state has arrived via development projects such as roads, ports and hydroelectricity or in conjunction with the private sector through mining, timber and oil projects. These initiatives, rather than generating regional development, have often meant the deepening of social and economic inequalities and exclusion and often brought violence as well. Examples include:

In the 1960s, the most ambitious hydroelectric in Colombia’s history began with the construction of the Guatapé dam in the West of Antioquia region, which currently generates approximately 20% of Colombia’s energy. The construction of the dam led to the flooding of the urban area of the municipality of Peñol and the displacement of thousands of families. The community was not involved in the development of the hydroelectricity project, this then led to the creation of a civic movement in Antioquia to demand fair compensation for those who were affected and the freezing of energy prices.

The movement was stigmatized by the political elite and businesses in Antioquia who supported the dam project as well as by the media that supported these elites, triggering the systematic murder of dozens of the movement’s leaders and the displacement of hundreds of its members in the mid 1980s. This created a breeding ground for the arrival of illegal armed groups in region who fought to try and take control of the territory until a decade ago, leading to the displacement of a further 20,000 inhabitants. There were 33 massacres in the municipality of San Carlos alone, where some of the most important hydroelectric generators were located.

However, the clearest case is that of the port of Buenaventura, located in the middle of the Pacific coast, the most important in the country. 60% of Colombia’s products enter and leave through Buenaventura. Of a population of nearly half a million, 66% live in poverty and 10% in extreme poverty. Unemployment exceeds 60% and 90% of the population live in areas without access to a hospital and can access drinking water for less than 10 hours a day. Despite its strategic importance, the territory is controlled by illegal armed groups, and has one of the highest rates of homicides and torture in the country.

This history means that there is a question as to whether the imposition of development projects from the centre to periphery of Colombia can actually serve as a tool for the social and economic welfare of its inhabitants. The central issue, then, with regards to the Tribugá port is including indigenous and local communities in discussions about the future of the land and how to find a balance between development and the protection of the environment and ecosystems.

According to the government of Duque, it is important to improve the country’s port capacity to improve Colombia’s connections with the rest of world. However, some claim that, in fact, Colombia is only using 50% of its current port capacity and that even the Port of Buenaventura is only moving 28 million tons, much less than its potential of 34 million tons.

Is it necessary, therefore, to build another port or can we make use of and improve the ones that already exist? Even more important, it is absolutely necessary to include the communities who have historically lived on the land in the conversation. So far, the project has been promoted by the Archimedes society, a public-private partnership that includes actors such as governors, chambers of commerce and decentralized bodies of the coffee sector, but Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities have been left out of the conversation despite the fact that these communities view the land as an essential part of their identity.

Are we repeating the mistakes of the past?

In Tashkent, women facing violence at home have nowhere to go. No one has heard of shelters, and if a woman has no friends or relatives, the situation becomes impossible: no hotel will take a locally registered single woman, on suspicion of prostitution. It’s pointless contacting the police, even in the most desperate circumstances. In a recent case, police refused to accept a statement by a 14-year old girl that she had been raped, because she was “of the age of consent and had no obvious signs of injury”.

Cases such as these happen in Uzbekistan more often than one can imagine. Neither the law, nor society is interested in protecting victims, instead telling them to find their own way out of difficult circumstances. Uzbekistan was and remains one of the few countries in the world that lacks legislation on domestic violence.

Furthermore, women experience restrictions in a range of spheres. Until 2017, for example, women couldn’t travel freely – in order to leave the country, a woman needed a sticker (the equivalent of an exit visa) from the visa and registration department, and this required the permission of her parents or husband.

Since the death of president Islam Karimov in 2016, however, attempts have been made to improve women’s rights – at least legally. Here’s an overview of them.

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Draft laws

In April this year, Uzbekistan’s Women’s Committee published a draft law designed to prevent sex discrimination. The Women’s Committee, set up in 1991, aims to improve women’s status in society, and this draft legislation is the first ever document of its kind published in Uzbekistan. It goes into relevant terms (gender equality, discrimination) in great detail – and, for the first time in Uzbek law, discusses the concept of societal stereotypes about gender. It also describes future mechanisms to protect these rights and establishes penalties for violating them.

In February, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree that aims to “fundamentally improve support for women and strengthen the institution of the family”. The law criticised the current situation with women’s rights and their participation in affairs of state.

This decree also created the Oila (“Family”) research centre, which aims to strengthen marriages, study issues of reproductive health, investigate problems faced by modern families and compile lists of low income households. Staff at the Oila centre travelled across the country, talking to women about violence and their own family situations. The centre was also given responsibility for “strengthening families” and for divorces. Previously, if you wanted to end your marriage, you had to ask your local council office for permission, but now the Oila centre is responsible.

This official initiative to support women is, of course, important in itself, but there is a built-in contradiction. On the one hand, the Oila centre should do everything it can to help women and try to resolve difficult situations. On the other, the centre has to do everything it can to keep a family together. This can lead to serious conflict: in situations where divorce should be permitted, centre staff attempt to persuade the couple to continue living together.

Help is unavailable

In 2018, the Women’s Committee opened a hotline for women who had experienced violence – you now can dial the number 1146 to contact a doctor, psychologist or lawyer. Tanzila Narbayeva, who heads the committee, tells me they didn’t expect the number of phone calls and requests for help that were triggered by the line.

Last year, the committee also opened the first shelters for women who are victims of domestic violence. People familiar with the situation tell me that initially committee members weren’t entirely sure what the shelters were for and, instead of offering refuge, organised handicraft groups.

“The Women’s Committee reports on opening shelters and hotlines, but there are either too few shelters or they haven’t opened yet, and all this information has to be verified,” says psychologist Liana Natroshvili. “It’s the same with the hotline: some of my clients have tried to call the number when they have been in a difficult situation, but the line was either down or inaccessible.”

Natroshvili believes that these steps remain critically inadequate: “This is still a new issue for our country. We’ve been talking about violence and gender questions for a year or two, but everything is still at an early stage. People in the regions who need to react quickly to new policies still share the old stereotypes about women. They aren’t ready for the new realities.”

A turning point in the protection of women from violence was the “Preventing Domestic Violence” draft legislation published in September 2018. For the first time since Uzbekistan became independent, the country has draft legal definitions of psychological, economic, domestic and other types of violence. Discussion of the project’s proposals ended a month later, but there’s been no further progress – the draft bill remains in a state of limbo.

Then in May 2019, the Women’s Committee published a new draft bill against domestic violence, which would also protect women from harassment or bullying at work and at home. This draft is an updated version of a bill on domestic violence from the previous October. Discussion lasted for a week, but there is no certainty that it will be passed in the future.

Impunity

Faina Yagafarova, a feminist activist, believes that these initiatives aren’t enough – it’s still difficult for women in Uzbekistan to have their rights observed. As proof of this statement, Yagafarova tells me that it’s still not easy for women to work and be mothers – companies in Uzbekistan have to pay maternity benefits, but believe mothers should pay these costs themselves, and are therefore unwilling to take women on.

“You can receive maternity benefits until the child is two years old, but nurseries only accept children when they reach their third birthday,” says Yagafarova. “It turns out that if you don’t have relatives to take care of the child, a woman has to live without state support or work for a whole year.”

According to Yagafarova, the situation is similar in the judicial system – the police confirm that fines for domestic violence are paid out of family budgets, although legislation provides for alternative punishments, from community service to imprisonment or house arrest.

“The violence prevention law still hasn’t gone through Parliament. No one in the regions complies with the Criminal Procedure Code. Local doctors refuse to accept complaints about beatings, saying that ‘they have had enough of resolving family feuds’. The police won’t throw abusers in jail and medical examiners re-traumatise women who come to them [after being attacked].”

There are also problems with divorces: even a court ruling against a husband for beating his wife isn’t sufficient grounds for divorce in judges’ eyes. And high court fees for divorce deprive many women of the opportunity to file a complaint, even if they are living daily with domestic violence.

“Those feminists have some nerve!”

But change is happening. While the government tries to figure out the “women issue”, ordinary Uzbeks are gradually shifting their position on gender equality – at least in the capital and other large cities. In Tashkent, for example, there are local projects on feminism and violence prevention, and there is even a growing independent feminist community. Social media channels focusing on sexism are also appearing and the press is writing about gender inequality issues.

One important project is the “Speak Out!” online discussion group. This channel, which was set up a year and a half ago on Facebook and Telegram, helps women who have experienced violence. It also explains terms such as sexism, debasement and feminism to other users.

This channel began by explaining what was wrong with the debasement of women and why reactions in the spirit of “it’s her own fault” are bad, as well as how to help anyone who has experienced violence. The most difficult thing was to build up a loyal following that grasped the importance of the issue and didn’t try to devalue victims’ experience.

After a time, having acquired a more or less loyal and appreciative following, the project produced an anonymous form for women who had experienced or were experiencing or witnessing domestic violence. The “Speak Out” forum then shares the experience of victims of this violence.

Irina Matvienko, the human rights defender who set up the project, feels that public attitudes to feminism are changing, but the changes are not major ones.

“According to Facebook, the target group for my project are generally Russian-speaking people living in Tashkent,” says Matvienko. “And it’s unlikely that our experience can be applied across the country. But I can see from our followers that some attitudes are changing. Many people, for example, have discovered the concept of ‘blaming the victim’ and learning why we mustn’t put the emphasis on the victim. The choice of violence, after all, is always down to the attacker, who decides whether to inflict pain or not. And we need to think about the person inflicting the violence, not the behaviour of their victim.”

Despite the recent draft legislation on gender equality, Irina Matvienko believes there is still not enough being done to fight against societal stereotypes on gender. There is a need, Matvienko believes, to re-examine television content on the basis of how it portrays gender stereotypes.

Are these changes happening in the world?

Each year, international research bodies look at women’s position in society and publish reports on the question, using a system of league tables. One of the best known is the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, which monitors gender equality throughout the world. Last year’s report predicted that it would take at least another century to wipe out the economic, social and political inequality between men and women – and that only if the trend towards equality continues.

In 2018, all Central Asian states, apart from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, were included in the index, with Kazakhstan in 52nd place, Kyrgyzstan in 81st and Tajikistan in 93rd (out of 200). Uzbekistan was nonetheless included in a recent World Bank report (“Women, Business and the Law 2018”), which analyses attitudes towards women across the world. The statistics on Uzbekistan do not make for happy reading, with most of its figures at the low end of the scale – on the “protection from domestic violence” line the country has zero points. After all, Uzbekistan has no law on domestic violence. In this respect, the report’s authors compare Uzbekistan with Russia and Myanmar.

A more detailed look at the tables reveals that the situation with women’s rights in Uzbekistan is, however, better than in the Middle East and North Africa, where women’s rights are strictly de jure. Uzbekistan limits women’s rights de facto: most Uzbeks believe that the man is still the head of the family; it is he who decides what to spend the family’s income on, where his children will go to school and whether his wife can work outside the home. These points are unlikely to come up in reports by the World Bank, the World Economic Forum or the UN. Uzbek law is by and large on the side of women, but local officials or the public mood are not.

Liana Natroshvili thinks that society’s role is one of the most important when it comes to understanding a woman’s place in Uzbekistan.

“Currently people look to traditions and persistent stereotypes which have been passed down from generation to generation. We need to change society’s perception of how things have to be. We need to change things in all social groups: a family’s attitudes towards a daughter, for example. She shouldn’t just amount to free labour who will eventually get married and then cease to be part of the family. This all needs to be discussed and explained in schools and nurseries, workplaces, universities and colleges and elsewhere.”

Meanwhile, the Women’s Committee is proposing that the Uzbek public examine its draft legislation and comment on it. As far as gender equality goes, there are still far too few women engaged in the country’s political life. There are very few women’s faces to be found at meetings of ministers and officials. And the business sphere is the same: it’s a man’s world which lives by its own laws.

Uzbekistan wants to downplay its problems, rather than nipping them in the bud, concludes Faina Yagafarova. “There’s no point in explaining to people what gender equality is if you start with the premise that ‘the man is the head of the family’. This automatically makes the woman subordinate. I think we need another model of relationships – one of partnership and equality, where no one is more important by virtue of their gender.”

A woman goes missing. Bloodstains were found in her home. A surveillance camera catches her ex-husband and his current girlfriend throwing away garbage bags filled with items stained with her blood. They are accused of fabricating or tampering with evidence. It sounds like something out of a movie based on a book, or rather, that’s what the ex-husband wants people to think.

Connecticut woman, Jennifer Dulos, has been missing for more than a month, disappearing shortly after she was seen dropping her kids off at school. Now, the attorney of her ex-husband is trying to say she pulled a “Gone Girl.” That’s where you fake your own disappearance and frame your husband to get revenge and/or escape from your life. “We don’t know what had become of Jennifer but the ‘Gone Girl’ hypothesis is very much on our mind,” Norm Pattis, the lawyer of the ex-husband, said.

But Gillian Flynn, the author of Gone Girl is calling b.s. on the defense. “I have been following the story of Jennifer Dulos’s disappearance. This situation is so incredibly painful, I can’t imagine what her children, her family, and all those close to her are going through. I am deeply sorry for Jennifer and her loved ones,” Flynn said in a statement.

Furthermore, Flynn is not happy that the ex-husband is trying to drag her book into the case. Gone Girl is a work of fiction – not a legal defense. “I’ve seen in recent coverage that Jennifer’s husband and his defense attorney have put forward a so-called ‘Gone Girl theory’ to explain Jennifer’s disappearance. It absolutely sickens me that a work of fiction written by me would be used by Fotis Dulos’s lawyer as a defense, and as a hypothetical, sensationalized motive behind Jennifer’s very real and very tragic disappearance,” Flynn continues.

Anne Dranginis, attorney for Jennifer’s mother, says that comparing the disappearance to Gone Girl is an attempt to “slander the victim.” Dulos isn’t around to defend herself because she literally disappeared. “This is not fiction or a movie. This is real life, as experienced every single day by Jennifer’s five young children, her family, and her friends. We are heartbroken. Jennifer is not here to protect her children, and these false and irresponsible allegations hurt the children now and into the future,” Dulos’s friend Carrie Luft said on behalf of her family.

What happened to Jennifer Dulos remains a mystery, but there’s one thing we know for sure. There will inevitably be a lot of true crime podcasts made about this case.

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Last Friday, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, presented his report on UK poverty in front of the UN Human Rights Council.

Fourteen million people in poverty, one and a half million of them in destitution, proliferation of food banks, rising homelessness and rough sleeping, stagnant social mobility, closure of libraries and of bus lines in rural areas, local government funding cuts… In parts of our country more than half of the children are growing up in poverty. If you are a woman born in a deprived area you can expect to die younger than you would have done ten years ago. The poor have borne the cost of unfair taxes and social security cuts introduced since 2010.

All this, despite historically high employment levels. The conclusion is both clear and bitter: Cuts to public services do not work, and simply hurt far too many people. If the Government had meant to harm the British social fabric on purpose, their masterplan would not have had to look substantially different from what we have seen over the past decade.

The world’s fifth largest economy must do much better than this. But Friday was not about Mr Alston’s report. It was about the Government’s response. It is time neither for complacency nor histrionics. As pointed out by fifty UK civil society leaders in an open letter published last week, the Government needs to come up with far more responsible and constructive feedback than what they have been offering recently.

The UN Special Rapporteur came to monitor compliance with international human rights treaties that are binding upon the UK, and it is a general principle in international law that countries must act “in good faith” to comply with international treaties they have voluntarily subscribed to.

When Mr Alston made his report public on 22 May, the Work and Pensions Secretary, Amber Rudd, said it was “biased”, “barely believable” and “a completely inaccurate picture of” the Government’s approach to tackling poverty.

A few days later, the Government added in its official response to the United Nations: “We regret the inflammatory language and overtly political tone of this report, and strongly refute the claim that the design and delivery of welfare reforms, including Universal Credit (UC), are deliberately punitive”.

Last Friday the UK delegation in Geneva simply referred to this written response, with no more comment (min 31:58).

However, only last month ago something rather odd happened at a in a parliamentary committee of one parliamentary committee. A senior civil servant acknowledged: “We did a fact check of the Special Rapporteur report, he made a lot of good points, a lot of it was factually correct; (…) in terms of the facts, austerity, cuts to local government funding (…) all of those things were really good points.” An opposition MP could not believe what he was hearing and turned to the visibly uncomfortable Minister, who added: “It was more the tone and some of the language used which I thought was unnecessary, but of course there are areas in there that I will be working with officials on”. So much for a biased, inaccurate and barely believable report.

A few days earlier, in early June, the Chancellor Philip Hammond said on BBC: “I don’t accept the UN Rapporteur’s report at all. I think that’s nonsense. Look around you. That’s not what we see in this country”. Poverty, deprivation and social exclusion are, of course, not the sort of things he sees from his windows in Downing Street. And that may be part of the problem. It would be helpful for the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and other Cabinet members to take a walk around the country and meet the people trapped in poverty, with no choice, with no freedom, the people that are most affected by the policies they have been implementing.

Those who spoke with Mr Alston in November were not under the illusion that their living conditions were going to improve massively as a result of his presence or his subsequent report. They thanked him for having come to them, instead of expecting it to happen the other way around. It was as if they were not used to that sort of deference from people of authority.

We did not expect the Government to U-turn in Geneva after a decade of ideological austerity. But it is an opportunity for a new Prime Minister. Not everything is about resources, and there’s something the Government could do right now. Get out and talk to people. Certain decisions would not have been adopted if the relevant ministers had spoken with those that are struggling the most in our society. For example, we are convinced the digitalisation of social services would never have been signed off. It is unrealistic to take for granted the confidence and the digital literacy of vast numbers of potential claimants of Universal Credit. “Digital by default” is simply unfit for purpose, and it would not have taken them long to realise that if they had made the effort.

Mr Alston concludes in his report that “key elements of the post-war ‘Beveridge social contract’ are being overturned” in contemporary Britain. Over 600,000 copies of Beveridge’s report were sold when it was published in the early 1940s. We wonder how many people will have downloaded Alston’s report for the UN in 2019; the world record number of submissions from all around the country, the media coverage and above all the testimonies of people that met with him give us reasons to be optimistic. We are witnessing an unstoppable movement to end poverty, fight inequality, preserve public services and champion human rights. Poor people, whether in work, unable to work or unable to find work that pays, deserve to be heard. Mr Alston’s verdict is out. It’s the Government’s turn now. The world is listening.

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In the last 6 months there has been a flurry of activity in the UK relating to climate action and deliberative democracy. Bursting onto the scene earlier this year, Extinction Rebellion have demanded a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice to provide dithering politicians with nuanced guidance and a mandate to act.

Subsequently, the UK parliament and over sixty local authorities have declared a climate emergency. Oxford, Camden and several other councils have announced that they will be holding citizens’ assemblies on climate action.

But the most significant announcement came a couple of weeks ago, when six select committees of the UK parliament announced plans to hold a citizens’ assembly on “combating climate change and achieving the pathway to net zero carbon emissions”, which the government has committed to achieving by 2050. Though the exact remit remains unclear this development is promising, both for our democracy and our climate. It is now vitally important that the process is done properly.

Democracy in the balance ?

In general terms, democracy seems like an ideal system for tackling complex issues like climate change. Democracy, we tell ourselves, enables cooperation. A free press supports political learning and democracies encourage the critical assessment of policy, meaning major challenges can be overcome through experimentation and adaptation.

The problem is, this process requires time – a luxury we lack, given the urgency of the situation. An emerging argument, popular in some environmentalist circles, asks whether there are systemic flaws in our democracies which prevent us from acting fast enough to prevent irreversible climate change.

Political leaders in democracies, the argument goes, are short-sighted. Electoral cycles create biases in favour of the short-term which discourages the adoption of far-sighted policies to capture distant benefits. In a democracy, the will of the people generally trumps technical expertise, so decisions reflect the short-termism, naivete and prejudices of voters regardless of what climate scientists say. Misinformation is stoked by lobbyists and industries with an economic stake in the status quo (not least fossil fuel industries themselves) and money distorts the incentives of politicians seeking re-election.

These dynamics may be more extreme in the US, but they exist in many established democracies: climate policies don’t attract votes or political donations and so action often remains elusive. Add to this the characteristics of the issue (climate change mitigation is complex, has long-term effects and requires major lifestyle changes) and we start to understand the scale of the problem.

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For some, tackling climate change requires the suspension of democracy itself. In recent years, several environmentalists have concluded that democracy is not up to the task of climate change. The election of Donald Trump in America and his subsequent withdrawal from the Paris Agreement give credence to this view. Perhaps some kind of enlightened, environmental authoritarianism would fare better.

What these democracy sceptics don’t consider is the politics of the issue. Environmental evidence – as compelling as it is – doesn’t automatically translate itself into policy, even if pushed by a benevolent dictator. Effective climate action requires social and political action which in turn requires public buy-in. There will be major social, political and economic obstacles, many of which are not yet apparent, and the public needs to be on board with this journey. If we are to scale this challenge, we need the legitimacy conferred by a responsive democracy. In short, we need more democracy, not less.

More democracy

A citizens’ assembly on climate action took place in 2017 in Ireland and showed that, given the time and the evidence, diverse citizens can agree on courageous proposals, including the national roll-out of low-carbon public vehicles and state support for community energy generation. Remarkably, 80% of the members said they would be willing to pay higher taxes on carbon intensive activities.

Deliberative democracy, involving careful and lengthy reflection by regular citizens, could offer the deepening of democratic norms and the improvement of public debate that we need. Deliberation helps citizens to confront the complexities of an issue like climate change and arrive at coherent and nuanced responses. Insulated from the pressures of party and money, regular people can prioritise the long-term common good rather than what is politically exigent or personally advantageous. When deliberative processes are properly publicised, they can improve the quality of discussion and information in the wider public sphere.

Citizens’ assemblies enable effective and legitimate action against climate change. They could provide a democratic route out of our current malaise, but need to be influential, high-quality and systemic in their focus. The emerging plans for citizens’ assemblies are important and constructive. Now we need to make sure we do them properly. The stakes are high.

Today – 5th July – is the NHS’s 71st birthday. The NHS is, of course, an institution that is dear to the hearts of the British public, and, ostensibly at least, to the hearts of our political leaders. So it was unsurprising that last year’s 70th birthday provided an occasion for a good deal of celebration, including much self-congratulation about the UK’s global leadership in providing its citizens with a universal, publicly-funded health system that is the envy of the rest of the world.

One year on, it’s a good time to reflect on how all this back-slapping measures up to the reality. And when we do, we see a rather less uplifting picture. Years of chronic underfunding have resulted in massive staff shortages (and low staff morale), increases in already-alarming waiting times, patients being treated in corridors due to lack of beds, etc. In the past few days, the Chief Inspector of Hospitals asserted that ‘the mounting pressure on the system is having a direct impact on how people are experiencing inpatient care’, the Health Foundation think tank argued that an additional £8 billion funding is needed or else the Government’s long-term plan for the NHS will fail, the Chief Executive of NHS England has decried that the hospital bed cutbacks have gone too far, and the Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation acknowledged that “Hospital bosses face crippling staff vacancies, rising demand for care, lack of investment in buildings and equipment, and the drastic cuts to social care and public health that are fuelling extra demand on A&E and other frontline services.”

All of which confirms what patients of the NHS have known for years: the values of universal, free access to quality services that underpinned the creation and early history of the NHS are no more than an increasingly distant memory. The neoliberal drift can be seen more and more even in our framing of patients as ‘consumers’ of healthcare rather than patients, health becomes our own personal responsibility rather than a collective one in the public good.

And there is no great mystery concerning the reasons for this sad state of affairs. Successive governments have pursued a relentless agenda of privatisation of health services – not least the promotion of Public-Private Partnerships, despite the mounting evidence of their long-term, massively detrimental effect on quantity and quality of services. Combine that with the deleterious impact of the Government’s austerity programme, and you get the health services that we see today.

Sadly, the scenario is much the same at the global level. Next week, Westminster MPs will be debating ‘Universal Health Coverage’ – the aspiration that everyone in the world will have access to the good quality health services they need, without incurring financial hardship. And later in the year, governments will get together at the United Nations to renew their commitments to achieving UHC by 2030 (UHC being the core health-related target in the Sustainable Development Goals).

Unfortunately, as with the celebrations of the NHS, these commitments bear little relation to what’s going on in the real world. For example, according to the World Health Organisation, at least half the world’s population cannot obtain access to essential health services; and 800 million people spend at least 10 per cent of their household budgets on health-related costs, with 100 million being pushed into extreme poverty by their health expenditures.

Last year, the respected health journal The Lancet published extensive WHO research into the costs associated with achieving UHC. The research estimated that the annual cost to poor countries of meeting UHC targets by 2030 would be $112 per person. This is a significant increase on previous estimates, and would leave poor countries facing an annual funding gap of up to $35 billion. The WHO estimates that poor countries will need to spend up to 20% of GDP on health in order to bridge this gap – which of course is economically and politically impossible.

So what does all this mean for the fight to ensure that everyone, everywhere enjoys the right to health? To save the NHS, we need to ditch our obsession with privatisation, and instead provide the level of investment that is needed to restore the original values of a universal, publicly-funded health service. And the answer is essentially the same at the global level. Again, we have to desist from promoting the discredited Public-Private Partnership approach as the means to achieve UHC. And we also have to abandon the other elements of the neoliberal economic agenda that is depriving governments in the Global South of the financial resources they need in order to provide universal, free, high quality, and gender responsive public services. This means radical reform of the iniquitous global tax and trade regimes, a progressive and just approach to addressing the global debt crisis, regulation of the profits of large corporations, and bearing the appropriate burden of the costs of climate change. Health is a human right which can be achieved for everyone, everywhere. It is a political choice which leaders in the Global North can make but are refusing to do.

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The general public may have been rudely awakened by Donald Trump’s recent vacillations about whether the NHS is “on the table” in trade talks, but a perfect storm around the NHS and NHS patients’ data in particular has been building for some time.

As OurNHS Editor Caroline Molloy and Philip Aldrick, Economics Editor of The Times, have both laid out, simplistic notions of privatisation in service delivery fail to attend to the really juicy NHS trade targets – which are patients’ data, drugs, and devices (the latter including much of what’s currently referred to as ‘apps’ and ‘AI’).

The “negotiating objectives” for a UK trade deal, published by the White House in February 2019, make it abundantly clear what the US is seeking: “…[patients’] data access, powers to use that data under its own laws, full intellectual property protection for its algorithms and an unrestricted market in which to sell the final product.”

Such ambitions sit neatly alongside the Government’s post-Brexit intentions, about which it has been explicit for years. One of the top “Strategic Goals” of the Government’s 2017 Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, written by Professor Sir John Bell, is to “create 2-3 entirely new industries over the next 10 years”, using: “…data stored centrally to create a unique, secure and appropriately consented dataset of more than a million whole genomes alongside rich clinical datasets.” (p16)

In other words, using the mass collection, linkage and commercial exploitation of NHS patients’ data to drive economic activity. If this all sounds in the realm of fantasy, unclear until the Office of Life Sciences have industry write the rules (page 2), then check Principle 10 of DHSC’s ‘Code of conduct for data-driven health and care technology’, updated in February: “When the basis of the commercial arrangement is NHS data, it must adhere to the new guiding principles described in the Life Sciences Sector Deal 2.”

The last time we heard this sort of language, the focus was on GP records and care.data. This time there is clear intent to include genomic data (i.e. data derived from your DNA) as well.

The ‘Big (Health) Data’ held by the NHS is so valuable precisely because it is so much richer in detail and wider in scope than anything the private sector – in the UK or elsewhere, with the possible exception of Israel – could hope to accumulate in their own right.

As Rosie Collington correctly identifies, while patients’ data held by NHS bodies may be “decentralised and messy in parts” (i.e. the data quality can be low, as care.data and other initiatives have revealed) even so, it is mostly far more structured, comprehensive and directly clinically relevant than the sort of ‘lifestyle’ health data amassed by private sector companies. This is, of course, particularly true of the linked genomic data generated by and within the new NHS Genomic Medicine Service.

Medical histories

Value is not solely limited to genomic data. Our medical histories are just as valuable and as highly sought after by the Big Tech “AI” companies, as demonstrated by deals such as the unlawful one between Google DeepMind and the Royal Free Hospital in 2015. This was an arrangement – largely secret, until it blew up – entered into by a single NHS Trust, in which the Trust agreed to assign Google exclusive rights to any Intellectual Property (IP) developed from half a decade’s-worth of 1.6 million NHS patients’ medical histories.

This, in exchange for just five years’ free use of an app (snapped back into Google US last November, for global “scaling up” and monetisation). And how ground-breaking is this reward? DeepMind’s own lawyers described it thus, in 2018: “Without intending any disrespect to DeepMind, we do not think the concepts underpinning Streams are particularly ground-breaking. It does not, by any measure, involve artificial intelligence or machine learning or other advanced technology.”

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The ‘Streams’ app was used to treat just a handful of NHS patients with particular kidney conditions that never affected the vast majority who attended the hospital, none of whom were properly informed as to what was being done with their data, but whose medical histories Google DeepMind fully intended to feed to its AI…

Intellectual property

While other deals Google DeepMind has made with various NHS Trusts have not been found illegal, they do all share a common characteristic: Intellectual Property Right exclusivity clauses – see here, and here, and here.

The Department of Health and Social Care’s recently announced ban on NHS Trusts making “exclusive data deals” may have been prompted by DeepMind’s and similar arrangements (of which more later), but the real issue is Intellectual Property Rights, about which the ban on data exclusivity says nothing.

Elsewhere, the Secretary of State’s favourite, Babylon Health (whose investors include the founders of Google’s DeepMind) has ongoing NHS deals to provide 111 and ‘remote’ GP services, including AI chatbot ‘advice’ via app. What is perhaps less obvious to those using Babylon’s apps is what’s buried in its ‘privacy policy’ – that, with the flip of a single ‘consent switch’, the company uses your medical information to “improve the performance of our artificial intelligence” that then underpins its commercial offerings to the NHS, to UK and other health insurance companies, and around the world. “…medical information (de-identified in the way described above) may include your medical record (both records received and created by us), transcripts and recordings of your consultations, and your interactions with our artificial intelligence services…”

“Pseudonymity” and NHSX

To be clear, “de-identified in the way described above” means merely removing or replacing the most obvious identifiers like your name, address and contact details – leaving all the rich linked data in your medical history to feed to its AI, and to package up and pass on to others.

Meanwhile, the ‘new’ NHS app – launched nationally this week – is, according to the new head of the new department now responsible for it, NHSX, to become a “platform for innovation”.

NHSX CEO Matthew Gould has a somewhat different vision for the NHS app than his tech-enthusiastic boss’ bloated ‘one app to rule them all’ ambitions – an approach several British health IT suppliers said threatened the online GP services they are already providing to 14 million patients. Mr Gould would instead prefer the NHS app to be a “thin” platform, for “other app developers to plug into and use in their products” – passing around patients’ data and NHS numbers, that could then be linked to other online identifiers by third party commercial providers competing to provide functionality on top.

There are a whole range of commercial ‘Skype your GP’-type apps, but none of these work with NHS111. If video consultations are genuinely clinically useful, why would such functionality not be part of the main NHS app? And, in paring back its ‘new’ app, is DHSC (NHSX being one of its arm’s-length bodies) moving us all into a future where live ‘chat agents’ linked to commercially-hosted Electronic Health Records serve NHS patients’ data up in real-time to companies based overseas – and subject to very different data protection regimes?

Despite Matt Hancock’s bold protestations in response to President Trump’s “on the table” remarks, few appear to have registered that under Schedule 1, Chapter 5 of EU Exit Regulations quietly passed in February it won’t be Mr Hancock, but rather the Secretary of State for DCMS who defines what is and is not on the table for data trade deals – whether wholesale or retail, including NHS patients’ data. Once the UK has left the EU, whoever's in charge of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport will have sole authority to grant ‘adequacy status’ for the transfer of citizens’ data outside the UK.

Fair exchange?

A blurring of the line between ‘research’ and ‘commercial exploitation’ will be all too familiar to those who remember the care.data programme. And as research published recently by Future Care Capital shows, demand for data controlled by the NHS is unceasing – and the ultimate beneficiaries are far from clear. As with Google DeepMind, patients’ data is often merely the raw material; the ‘crude oil’, if you will – though such ‘data-is-the-new-oil’ analogies fall apart in other ways. The real value lies in ‘refined end products’: the tools, services and Intellectual Property derived from people’s private lives, from their DNA and their medical histories.

With so much at stake, don’t we – the people whose data could be up for sale – have a right to know?

And let’s be clear: it’s not just the US and Silicon Valley BigTech we need to be watching. In the furore following President Trump’s recent comments, Lord Drayson’s ‘ethical AI’ poster child Sensyne Health used a survey it had commissioned back in March, attempting to draw a distinction between what ‘naughty multinational companies that don’t pay UK tax’ do versus its own patriotic use of NHS patients’ data.

At first glance, offering 4% of future royalties back to the NHS might seem ‘generous’, until you realise this 4% must be split between every Trust that signs on – the NHS providing more and more patients’ data over time, for an ever-diminishing morsel of a small slice of pie.

And of course, ‘information intermediaries’ like Sensyne – a predominantly privately-owned publicly-traded company – can always be bought out. So who’s to say it won’t be acquired by a giant multinational with a hankering for data? Data that is “pseudonymised” – and can therefore be de-anonymised, as the law now recognises and as medConfidental has been arguing for years.

So, will it be Google’s Streams app, hoovering up your hospital histories? Or the NHS’ new ‘App-as-a-Platform’ spitting out your NHS number and GP records, with or without Babylon’s AI chatbot or remote consultations? Maybe it’ll be through Sensyne’s ‘data trust’ approach to servicing industry, or NHS England refilling its Data Lake with your individual level data as part of its Long Term Plan? Frankly, it could be all of these – and a million and one other eager ‘innovators’ currently circling the NHS – who’ll end up funnelling your medical records into their bottom lines.

If you think this is all about old-fashioned ‘privatisation’, you’re missing a trick. Privatisation happens to organisations; exploitation happens to people. If you really want to know what’s going on, you can’t just follow the money, you must follow the value – and for that, you must follow the data.

Botswana recently became the latest African nation to decriminalise same-sex sexual activity, much to the elation of LGBTQ+ rights advocates who had pushed for years to reform the country’s colonial era law which criminalised these acts.

On 11 June, the High Court issued a historic ruling in a case challenging the constitutionality of sections of the penal code and how they’ve been interpreted. Before a packed courtroom, Justice Michael Leburu said: “there is nothing reasonable and justifiable [in] discriminating against members of our diversified society”.

Against commonly-heard claims that Africans are not ‘ready’ to accept homosexuality, he continued: “criminalising consensual same sex in private, between adults, is not in the public interest”. There is “no victim”, he said, and “it perpetuates stigma and shame against homosexuals and renders them recluse and outcasts”.

This judgement not only removes a long-standing means of oppression but it also upholds Botswana’s human rights record. It stands in contrast to another recent ruling, by the Kenyan judiciary, which refused to decriminalise consensual same sex activity in March.

Significantly, it follows a two decades-long institutional war between LGBTQ+ rights advocates and successive governments in Botswana. It is a significant part – but not the end – of the struggle for rights and equality in our country. After decriminalising queer lives, must come legislation to protect them including from hate crimes.

A long fight

Internationally, Botswana is often praised as a peaceful nation with a relatively good human rights record. The criminalisation of queer lives stood in stark contrast to this reputation.

When Letsweletse Motshidiemang, a 24-year old student at the University of Botswana, filed his petition with the High Court last year, he added to a slate of cases brought by LGBTQ+ people and organisations against the government to change this.

Botswana inherited its penal code from Britain. By independence in 1966, it had adopted and internalised other colonial imports – including Christianity and the belief that queerness was not part of African sexualities. Along with general social silence around sexuality, this created a climate where LGBTQ+ people were assumed to be criminals

No one, it seemed, was willing to talk about the humanity and dignity of LGBTQ+ people – until the establishment of the Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO) association, in 1998. At that time, authorities blocked its application to register as an NGO. It was only in 2016, after a long legal battle, that it was allowed to do this.

Since then, the Botswana's highest courts have issued two jugements to allow trans people to change their gender on legal documents. LEGABIBO has played a fundamental role in cultivating and fortifying LGBTQ+ culture and community, and was admitted as amicus curiae (‘friend of the court’) in the most recent, legal case, permitted to submit arguments.

With this month’s ruling, the LGBTQ+ community can be more confident that Botswana’s judiciary is committed to progress. The court’s judgement struck down sections and interpretations of the penal code that criminalised same-sex sexual activity through language prohibiting “carnal knowledge” that is “against the order of nature”, for example.

It overturned the 2003 Kanane case, in which two men were charged with performing such ‘unnatural’ acts, as a legal precedent for LGBTQ+ related matters.

Justice Leburu, the judgement’s author, went into great detail to provide a critical global overview of these issues (going as far as unpacking Bible verses, part of the Indian penal code, and a 1957 report against the criminalisation of homosexuality in the UK) – and also took care to debunk locally-popular claims used to oppress LGBTQ+ people.

The court further considered how the clauses of the penal code under question affected rights to privacy, dignity and security against non-discrimination in general.

Among its affirming statements, it said a person’s “sexual autonomy… to choose his/her sexual partner is an important pillar and an [inseparable] facet of individual liberty” – and: “if the reason or rationale for the law ceases, the law must also cease … sodomy laws therefore deserve archival mummification, or better still, a museum peg”.

Significantly, ahead of general elections in October this year, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party issued a statement supporting the court’s judgement and committing to defending human rights of all people. Duma Boko, leader of the opposition, was a defence lawyer on the 2003 Kanane case that interpreted the law to criminalise same-sex relations.

Does this bode well for further inclusion of LGBTQ+ people and issues going forward, including the possibility of parliamentary action in support of rights and equality? Indeed, there is more work to be done. One step, after the decriminalisation of queer lives, must be legislating means to protect them – including against hate crimes.

These cases are poorly documented though there have been some high-profile attacks against LGBTQ+ people. Last year, a video circulated on Whatsapp of person assumed to be a trans woman being stripped and abused in a club. In 2017, I wrote about alleged abuse and harassment of a trans woman by the police.

While the queer community attends to policy reforms (on gender options on official documents, for example inheritance and marriage) which will allow them to live more rounded lives, the fighting spirit which steered Botswana to this point still burns strong. This diamond rich, ‘democratic jewel’ of Africa is yet to truly sparkle.

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In May 2019, media reported that the investigations into the disastrous 1980 Munich Oktoberfest radical right bombing are going to be closed. According to the federal prosecutor who has opened the investigations for a second time, there has been no breakthrough and therefore no clarification on what could be achieved during the inquiries.

On 26 September 1980, one of the most devastating terror attacks in the history of post-WWII-Germany took place, directed at visitors of that year’s Oktoberfest: 12 festival guests were killed in the explosion as well as the perpetrator, a 21 year old student by the name of Gundolf Köhler. Over 200 people were wounded in the attack, some severely. Shortly afterwards, Köhler was not only identified as the perpetrator but his radical right background was revealed, too. He had participated in several military training exercises organized by the Wehrsportgruppe (WSG) Hoffmann (Paramilitary Sports Group Hoffmann), a radical right paramilitary organisation led by Karl-Heinz Hoffmann. This group mainly operated in Bavaria until it was banned before the attack in January 1980.

The motivation for this bombing remains as yet an unresolved question. An explanation might be that the attack aimed at adding fuel to an already fractious political climate by putting the blame on left-wing terrorists. In the politically tense election year of 1980, debates on “internal security” and terrorism were highly polarized; both among politicians and within the media. It is also possible that the attack was inspired by another far-right terrorist attack; directed shortly beforehand at the Bologna railway station in Italy on August 2, 1980, killing 85.

Likewise, the precise details of the Oktoberfest attack have not been clarified. The Public Prosecutor General of the Federal Court of Justice (Generalbundesanwalt) decided to close the investigation in 1982 because it was assumed that Köhler had acted alone.­­ However, public discussions continued to question this and to raise the possibility of whether the attack was in fact carried out with the help of accomplices.

Reopening the investigation

In 2014, the federal prosecutor's office reopened the investigation. This was due at least in part to massive political pressure and heightened popular interest after the discovery of the radical right terrorist group NSU in 2011. In particular, the victims’ lawyer Werner Dietrich and the journalist Ulrich Chaussy had brought to light new facts and important witnesses through their research into the topic.

Subsequently, investigators have examined the case from the ground up; exhuming a huge amount of official files (420,000 pages) related to the 1980 Oktoberfest attack. They have heard from over 1,000 witnesses, many of them victims who were wounded during the attack, albeit with no resounding success. Hundreds of other possible lines of inquiry were kept open; however, according to the investigating authorities, all proved to be dead-end roads.

Instead, the investigators have now concentrated on two aspects that were already at the centre of inquiry in 1980. First, they have tried to figure out how Köhler purchased the explosives he used, especially the grenade shell that covered the bomb. In that context, the role of Heinz Lembke is puzzling. Lembke was a radical right activist who amassed an enormous amount of explosives, munitions and weapons in the early 1980s. He had established a far-reaching network of like-minded persons and was known as a supplier of explosives and weapons within the far-right terrorist scene. When Lembke’s arms cache was detected in 1981, he was arrested. In custody, he agreed to give testimony, also on the Oktoberfest case. On November 1, 1981, one day before that testimony, he hanged himself in his arrest cell.

The second important line of inquiry was the testimony of witness, Frank Lauterjung, who stated shortly after the attack that he had seen Köhler talking to two young men only 25 minutes before the bomb exploded. However, police were never able to track down these two men. Interestingly, Lauterjung – who died in 1982 at only 38 years of age – was known to the police as an activist of the radical right organisation, “Bund Heimattreuer Jugend” (BHJ, “League of Patriotic Youth”). In the 1960s and 1970s, the BHJ served, among others, as feeder organisations for radical right terrorists. This information, however, was disregarded by the prosecutors in the early 1980s.

Last but not least, obstacles were put in place around access to information gathered by domestic intelligence (Verfassungsschutz) and other intelligence services around the attack. It took a long time until even the prosecutor’s office was allowed to search the intelligence files.

For the general public, lawyers, journalists or even Members of Parliament, it is more or less a physical impossibility to receive access to this information. However, when the factions of the Green Party and the Left Party in the German Bundestag sued for disclosure, the Federal Constitutional Court proved them partly right – with the court stating that in the very few cases in which the parliamentary right of information outweighed governmental interests, Parliament had a right to disclosure. More interestingly, such would be the case if a certain person had died a long time ago.

As a consequence, therefore, the German government saw itself forced to disclose that Heinz Lembke had not been a confidential informant of any German intelligence service – a complexity which haunts the NSU trial to this day.

It seems, then, that with the closure of the investigations into the Oktoberfest attack every last chance of casting light on some key questions in the case has vanished. The irregularities in the case point to the fact that the reappraisal of the radical right’s history in post WW-II Germany is still at an early stage, especially since many important files and information are still classified.

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