Basque Peace

A Basque Peace

By TONY BLAIR

The unconditional declaration by the Basque separatist group ETA this week that it is finally ending 50 years of violence, during which it killed hundreds of people and wounded thousands more, should be welcomed by all governments and peoples. It is a victory for democracy, as well as a victory for the people of Spain and the Basque regions of Spain and France.

The Spanish government — in particular Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his deputy, the long-time interior minister, Alfredo Rubalcaba — has taken courageous risks for peace and paid a heavy political price when ETA responded by blowing up part of Madrid airport and returning to killing in 2006.

Zapatero and his colleagues never stopped fighting ETA, consistently defending Spanish democracy, and, with the support and cooperation of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, successfully weakened the terrorist movement by arresting its leadership and disrupting their attacks.

But Zapatero also never stopped offering the hand of peace. He made it clear that there would be no secret negotiations, that there would be no political concessions to ETA, and that another cease-fire would not be enough: ETA must unilaterally, publicly and unambiguously declare that it was ending the armed struggle for good if there was to be peace.

The opposition Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy, has also always demonstrated its seriousness and responsibility on this issue.

The firmness paid off this week. ETA has now done exactly what was demanded. Its leaders have put violence behind them for good. This really is the end of the last armed confrontation in Europe.

In its declaration ending the armed campaign, ETA asks for talks with the governments of Spain and France to deal with the “consequences” of the conflict. These talks are necessary to assure the dissolution of ETA as a military force.

Just as we did in our talks in Northern Ireland, these talks will deal with the decommissioning of weapons, explosives and military infrastructure, with the issue of prisoners and exiles, with the rehabilitation of those caught up in the violence, with security normalization and with recompense for victims.

As in Northern Ireland, there will be a “peace dividend” for Spain. The billions of euros that have been spent on security can now be redirected to more socially useful ends, a welcome benefit in a time of cutbacks and budget restraint.

As in Northern Ireland we must remember the victims and ensure that the families left behind are properly recognized and supported.

Above all, it will now be possible for all parties in Spain and the Basque region to pursue their aims politically without violence or the threat of violence.

I believe there also are wider lessons from the end of this conflict.

The first is that governments must firmly defend themselves, their principles and their people against terrorists. This requires good police and intelligence work as well as political determination.

But governments must also recognize the need to “talk to their enemies.” Firm security pressure on terrorists must be coupled with offering them a way out when they realize that they cannot win by violence. Terrorist groups are rarely defeated by military means alone. Peace is always made between enemies, not friends. This is as true in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas as it is in the Basque region.

I learned from our experience in Northern Ireland that ending violence and making peace irreversible requires patience, taking risks, suffering setbacks and a constant commitment. It also requires creativity, generosity and statesmanship. In Spain these qualities have been demonstrated by all and will be needed to secure a lasting peace.

Spain will hold national elections on Nov. 20 and a new government will have to take on the hard work of clearing up the consequences of the conflict. This is the point in peace processes when the participants often collapse in exhaustion — but it is when efforts need to be redoubled. The European Union and the wider international community should strongly support the new Spanish government in this effort.

ETA has made a historic declaration. The opportunity for peace must now be seized. I will work to support Spain, France and the citizens of the Basque region in any way I can in their effort to secure the lasting peace and democracy they have long demanded and fully deserve.

Tony Blair was prime minister of Britain from 1997 to 2007.

The Welcome

4th of July - Independence is Good

Map Of Kurdish Language

India & Kashmir

Many years ago, I met two journalists from India in London and we found ourselves talking about Kashmir. Mostly, they listened patiently to my impassioned tale of what goes on, but the moment I touched upon the brutal counter-insurgency methods employed by the Indian security apparatus in the disputed territory – among them notorious "catch-and-kill" operations to execute suspected militants – they looked incredulous, made a quick excuse and left. Later, I learned that at least one of them believed that Kashmiris liked to exaggerate the excesses of the Indian armed forces.

In the reaction of those two men, I had witnessed the frightening success of India's policy of denial and misrepresentation on Kashmir. India's decision to censor the Economist last week, following the publication of a map that shows the disputed borders of Kashmir, represents two unsurprising but ominous things: that the country's age-old intransigence over Kashmir still runs deep; and its willingness to curb freedom of speech over what it sees as sensitive matters of national interest. On Kashmir India continues to behave as a police state, not as the champion of democracy and freedom that it intends to be.

There is nothing astonishing or new in this. For decades, India has not only been unwilling to solve one of the world's most tragic conflicts but has scuttled any attempt at meaningful discourse on the issue, both internationally and within the country. The ultimately pointless attempt at censorship by asking the magazine to paste stickers on a representation of areas controlled by India, Pakistan and China is, sadly, in line with its inflexible and deeply flawed Kashmir policy. To come good on its insistence that "Kashmir is an integral part of India" – and it does lash out at any attempt to suggest otherwise – it maintains the world's largest military presence in a single region, to suppress the revolt that erupted against its rule in 1989. An uprising that continues in the form of a civilian resistance.

Last year, in what we now remember as Kashmir's bloody summer, its paramilitaries and police killed more than a hundred protesters, most of them young men and schoolchildren. Among those killed was Sameer Rah, a nine-year-old boy from Srinagar, who was bludgeoned to death and his body dumped by a kerb. The image of his bruised, purple body is now permanently etched in the collective consciousness of Kashmiris at home and across the world, and may haunt India's political and intellectual elites for a long time. In response to this brutalisation of a people – the Kashmir valley remained in virtual siege for weeks – a cogent narrative of what I call "new dissent" began to evolve in Kashmir and India, scripted by Kashmiris themselves and by some of India's bravest public intellectuals, writers and journalists.

However, both the central government and its clients in the state tried everything to suppress this new wave of dissent; they introduced draconian measures to silence the voice of Kashmiris and their supporters in Delhi. TV channels were forced off air, newspapers were not allowed to print for weeks, text messaging was banned, and later on, in India's capital, a lower court even charged Arundhati Roy with sedition. But the urge to report to the world what was unfolding in Kashmir was ultimately unstoppable. Kashmiri youth turned to social media to get the word out.

And it did get out, aided by India's fascinatingly diverse intelligentsia and those sections of the Indian media that have of late started to look at Kashmir with new understanding and empathy, and not through the disingenuous prism of national interest.

The Economist's map on Kashmir – which must have received many more page views than had it not been declared contraband – contains nothing that contests historical facts or misrepresents ground reality. Essentially, the magazine has produced a graphical account of geopolitical status in the region – namely, Kashmir is a disputed territory, with India and Pakistan as the main contestants, but Kashmiris as the central party as it is their future that has been a point of dispute. A dispute that the UN recognises as such in its charter of 1948 – and in its maps. I have found maps produced by the UN to be the most accurate and impartial.

When, and why, do states censor maps? Mostly when the operating principle seems to be denial and obfuscation. For years, the Indian state has attempted to delegitimise people's aspirations in Kashmir, either by raising the bogey of Islamism or lumping together the challenge to its authority in Kashmir with the US-led war on terror. For most of the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium it succeeded. Ironically, as a consequence of the emergence of "new India" and the burgeoning of the country's affluent middle classes, the Economist – a magazine previously considered the preserve of business elites – is now selling more copies in India. It is seen as influential, and capable of altering opinion – hence the kneejerk reaction to the map. The Indian government is doing a huge disservice to its democratic credentials by trying to confiscate the truth about one of the world's most tragic, intractable and dangerous conflicts.

Basque, Leftwing & Separatist

Kurd, Leftwing & Separatist

Does Belgium Exist?

PITY the books of Leuven, a seat of learning since 1425. The Dutch humanist Erasmus taught at the university; Mercator, the Flemish cartographer who projected the globe, learnt maths there. But besides intellectual ferment, Leuven has known much cultural vandalism. Some manuscripts were carted to Paris when French revolutionaries closed the university. The library was set ablaze by the Germans in the first world war. It was rebuilt with international (mainly American) help, and burnt again in the second world war.

In 1968, though, it was the Belgians themselves who cleft the book collection during their language wars. To Flemish students’ cries of Walen Buiten (“Walloons Out”), the French-speaking bit of the university was ejected. The library’s 1.6m books were divided, often by the crude expedient of keeping odd-numbered tomes in Leuven and sending even-numbered ones to the new campus of Louvain-la-Neuve, in French-speaking Wallonia.

The 1968 partition divided the Catholic church (both universities are Catholic) and brought down the government. Belgium’s conservative Catholic party split into Francophone and Flemish halves, followed by the liberals and the socialists. Belgian politics became tribal, with each party championing its own linguistic agenda. Over the years these rows have turned Belgium into a near-ungovernable federation, with powers devolved downwards. The Belgian state has become a hollowed-out shell, with a little-loved flag and a forlorn sovereign, Albert II, who could yet end up as the last king of the Belgians—indeed, the last Belgian.

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• Brussels
• Culture and lifestyle
• French language
• Language and linguistics
• Flanders

Chronic bickering since the election in June 2010 has left a caretaker government in office for 230 days and counting, a European record. Belgium is on course to beat Iraq’s 289 days without a government. Yet the country has so many layers of administration that daily life goes on. Belgian ministers made a decent fist of their country’s six-month rotating presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2010. Eurocrats in Brussels are only faintly aware of living in a paralysed country. And, despite a few recent wobbles, the bond markets seem largely unconcerned about Belgium’s giant public debt of close to 100% of GDP. It was only on January 23rd that Belgian students organised protest rallies to urge their country’s politicians to get a move on.

The world gives little thought to Belgium. Yet it may soon have to pay more attention. As the crisis drags on, a break-up of Belgium looks less unthinkable than it was. The effects would be felt far beyond the fantasy world of Tintin and Magritte’s bowler-hatted men falling from the sky.

Paradoxically the slow dissolution of Belgium, the most pro-European of countries, goes hand in hand with the (uneven) deeper integration of the EU. Belgium is facing its worst troubles just as the EU confronts the gravest challenge to the euro. One way of looking at Belgium’s divide is as a counterpart to the EU’s split between a Germanic, frugal north and a subsidy-dependent Latin south. Financial markets stand ready to dump Belgian bonds at any hint of formal partition, because of uncertainty over who would repay the country’s debts. But, for the moment, the euro gives all parties the luxury of intransigence. Without it, the stalemate might have triggered a run on the Belgian franc.

Today’s blockage is unlike previous ones in that an avowedly separatist party, the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), has for the first time become dominant in Flanders. Led by Bart de Wever, a charismatic bruiser, the N-VA’s appeal stems precisely from popular exasperation with the messy, unsatisfying compromises of the older political groups. It wants a decisive shift of powers to Flanders, and makes little secret of its wish to see Belgium “evaporate” within the EU. Danny Pieters, the N-VA president of the Belgian Senate, says he sees no need for a Flemish army: one day Belgian forces will be part of a European one. For the N-VA, Europe is the acid that will help to dissolve Belgium.

Strangely, perhaps, this same erosion of sovereignty is seen as an antidote to violent nationalism. European integration overcame the historic enmity between France and Germany. Ireland’s entry into the EU helped to end the worst of Northern Ireland’s sectarian war. In the Balkans, the EU offers the balm of membership to heal the trauma of the Yugoslav wars. But is this not all romantic nonsense when Belgium, a founder of the EU as well as the host to its capital, struggles to hold together? No, says Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank. By “taking the gun out of politics”, the EU has contradictory effects. It makes it easier to draw violent groups into politics; but it also allows peaceful nationalists to act up, and voters to support them, because there is no danger of bloodshed.

Put the carving knife away

This does not mean that Belgium can dissect itself without anybody worrying. Spain and Italy would not be the only places to fret about the precedent of rich regions pulling away from poorer ones. Scottish nationalists speak of independence within Europe. Many ex-communist countries have big national minorities: think of Hungarians in Slovakia. Redraw Belgium and break the mystique of European tolerance—and one creates doubts across much of the EU’s eastern swathe.

Changing national borders only rarely resolves nationalist and ethnic disputes. Where communities overlap, tolerance, minority rights, autonomy and cross-border co-operation are better democratic tools. Take Brussels. If Flanders breaks away from Belgium, could Brussels, officially bilingual but overwhelmingly Francophone, leave Flanders? Indeed, this conundrum offers the best hope that, in the end, Flemings and Walloons will live together somehow. Splitting a city is harder than breaking up a university—luckily for Belgium, and perhaps for Europe.

A New Country is Born

The Last Conflict in Europe?

Forgotten Kashmir

Once known for its extraordinary beauty, the valley of Kashmir now hosts the biggest, bloodiest and also the most obscure military occupation in the world. With more than 80,000 people dead in an anti-India insurgency backed by Pakistan, the killings fields of Kashmir dwarf those of Palestine and Tibet. In addition to the everyday regime of arbitrary arrests, curfews, raids, and checkpoints enforced by nearly 700,000 Indian soldiers, the valley's 4 million Muslims are exposed to extra-judicial execution, rape and torture, with such barbaric variations as live electric wires inserted into penises.

Why then does the immense human suffering of Kashmir occupy such an imperceptible place in our moral imagination? After all, the Kashmiris demanding release from the degradations of military rule couldn't be louder and clearer. India has contained the insurgency provoked in 1989 by its rigged elections and massacres of protestors. The hundreds of thousands of demonstrators that fill the streets of Kashmir's cities today are overwhelmingly young, many in their teens, and armed with nothing more lethal than stones. Yet the Indian state seems determined to strangle their voices as it did of the old one. Already this summer, soldiers have shot dead more than 50 protestors, most of them teenagers.

The New York Times this week described the protests as a comprehensive"intifada-like popular revolt". They indeed have a broader mass base than the Green Movement does in Iran. But no colour-coded revolution is heralded in Kashmir by western commentators. The BBC and CNN don't endlessly loop clips of little children being shot in the head by Indian soldiers. Bloggers and tweeters in the west fail to keep a virtual vigil by the side of the dead and the wounded. No sooner than his office issued it last week, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, hastened to retract a feeble statement expressing concern over the situation in Kashmir.

Kashmiri Muslims are understandably bitter. As Parvaiz Bukhari, a journalist, said early this week the stones flung randomly by protestors have become "the voice of a neglected people" convinced that the world deliberately ignores their plight. The veteran Kashmiri journalist Masood Hussain confessed to the near-total futility of his painstaking auditing of atrocity over two decades. For Kashmir has turned out to be a "great suppression story".

The cautiousness – or timidity – of western politicians is easy to understand. Apart from appearing as a lifeline to flailing western economies, India is a counterweight, at least in the fantasies of western strategists, to China. A month before his election, Barack Obama declared that resolving the "Kashmir crisis" was among his "critical tasks". Since then, the US president hasn't uttered a word about this ur-crisis that has seeded all major conflicts in south Asia. David Cameron was advised a similar strategic public silence on his visit to India last fortnight.

Those western pundits who are always ready to assault illiberal regimes worldwide on behalf of democracy ought not to be so tongue-tied. Here is a well-educated Muslim population, heterodox and pluralist by tradition and temperament, and desperate for genuine democracy. However, intellectuals preoccupied by transcendent, nearly mystical, battles between civilization and barbarism tend to assume that "democratic" India, a natural ally of the "liberal" west, must be doing the right thing in Kashmir, ie fighting "Islamofascism". Thus Christopher Hitchens could call upon the Bush administration to establish a military alliance with "the other great multi-ethnic democracy under attack from Muslim fascism" even as an elected Hindu nationalist government stood accused of organising a pogrom that killed more than 2,000 Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat.

Electoral democracy in multi-ethnic, multi-religious India is one of the modern era's most utopian political experiments, increasingly vulnerable to malfunction and failure, and, consequently, to militant disaffection and state terror. But then the west's new masters of humanitarian war, busy painting grand ideological struggles on broad, rolling canvases, are prone to miss the human position of suffering and injustice.

Indian writers and intellectuals, who witnessed the corrosion of India's secular democracy by Hindu supremacists, seem better acquainted with the messy realities concealed by stirring abstractions. But on Kashmir they often appear as evasive as their Chinese peers are on Tibet. They may have justifiably recoiled from the fundamentalist and brutish aspect of the revolt in the valley. But the massive non-violent protests in Kashmir since 2008 haven't released a flood of pent-up sympathy from them.

Few people are as well positioned as the much-revered Amartya Sen to provoke national introspection on Kashmir. Indeed, no one can fault Sen's commitment to justice for the poor and defenceless in India. Yet Sen relegates Kashmir to footnotes in both of his recent books: The Argumentative Indian and Identity and Violence.

Certainly, as Arundhati Roy's recent writings prove, anyone initiating a frank discussion on Kashmir risks a storm of vituperation from the Indian understudies of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. The choleric TV anchors, partisan journalists and opinion-mongers of India's corporate media routinely amplify the falsehoods and deceptions of Indian intelligence agencies in Kashmir. Blaming Pakistan or Islamic fundamentalists, as the Economist pointed out last week, has "got much harder" for the Indian government, which, has "long denied the great extent to which Kashmiris want rid of India". Nevertheless, it tries; and, as the political philosopher Pratap Bhanu Mehta, one of the few fair-minded commentators on this subject, points out, the Indian media now acts in concert with the government "to deny any legitimacy to protests in Kashmir".

This effective censorship reassures those Indians anxious not to let mutinous Kashmiris sully the currently garish notions of India as an "economic powerhouse" and "vibrant democracy" – the calling cards with which Indian elites apply for membership to the exclusive clubs of the west. In Kashmir, however, the net effect is deeper anger and alienation. As Bukhari puts it, Kashmiris hold India's journalists as responsible as its politicians for "muzzling and misinterpreting" them.

"The promise," Mehta writes, "of a liberal India is slowly dying". For Kashmiris this promise has proved as hollow as that of the fundamentalist Islam exported by Pakistan. Liberated from political deceptions, the young men on the streets of Kashmir today seem simply to want to express their hatred of the state's impersonal brutality, and to commemorate lives freshly ruined by it. As the Kashmiri writer Basharat Peer wrote this week in a moving Letter to an Unknown Indian, Indian journalists might edit out the "faces of the murdered boys", and "their grieving fathers"; they may not show "the video of a woman in Anantnag, washing the blood of the boys who were killed outside her house". But "Kashmir sees the unedited Kashmir."

And it remembers. "Like many other Kashmiris," Peer writes, "I have been in silence, committing to memory the deed, the date." Apart from the youth on the streets, there are also those with their noses in books, or pressed against window bars. Soon this generation will make its way into the world with its private traumas. Life under political oppression has begun to yield, in the slow bitter way it does, a rich intellectual and artistic harvest: Peer's memoir Curfewed Night will be followed early next year by a novel by Waheed Mirza. There are more works to come; Kashmiris will increasingly speak for themselves. One can only hope that their voices will finally penetrate our indifference and even occasionally prick our conscience.

Multilingualism as a Separatist Crime

Legal Proceedings against Politicians in Diyarbakir

Multilingualism as a Separatist Crime

Public prosecutors in Turkey are bringing an increasing number of politically motivated court cases against Kurdish local politicians in south-east Anatolia who are standing up for the recognition of the cultural and social rights of the Kurds. The charge is always the same, namely the dissemination of separatist propaganda. Ömer Erzeren has the details

There is currently a shortage of organ donations in Turkey. Numerous organisations and the Ministry of Health are running campaigns to counteract this situation. The major of the municipality of Sur in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Abdullah Demirbaş, wanted to do his bit for the campaign and instructed the city administration to print posters in Turkish and Kurdish encouraging organ donations.

However, instead of sending words of gratitude or recognition, the government sent investigators from the Ministry of the Interior. They came because they considered the printing of posters in Kurdish by the city administration to be an illegal activity.

Denying Turkey's multilingual diversity

These investigations were followed by even more investigations because Demirbaş also used the language spoken by the citizens who elected him for other services offered by the city administration. A study commissioned by the municipality concluded that 72 per cent of the population speaks Kurdish and 24 per cent Turkish. It was also discovered that the mother tongues of the remaining population are Armenian, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic.

The mayor defended the multilingual services provided by the municipality in a speech to the European Social Forum. This address was also held against him. Eventually the Ministry of the Interior initiated proceedings to remove him from office. He was then charged by the Supreme Court of Administration and removed from office, as were the members of the council that approved Demirbaş' decisions.

The judges ruled that the multilingual services offered by the city administration were unconstitutional. Demirbaş now plans to bring the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.

"We just want to offer our citizens a better service by addressing them in their language," said Demirbaş, whose official car has been confiscated by the police, "after all, announcements on Turkish Airlines flights are made in Turkish and in English!"

Demirbaş is not only fighting to reverse his deposition, he is also fighting criminal proceedings that have been brought against him for allegedly disseminating "propaganda for a terrorist organization". On the first day of the hearing, he defended himself with the words: "Standing up for a Turkey with multiple identities, cultures, and languages is not separatism!"

Not an isolated case

Demirbaş has not, however, been singled out for this treatment; many other local politicians who are members of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) have also had similar experiences.

There are currently a dozen proceedings pending against the Lord Mayor of Diyarbakir, Osman Baydemir. In one such proceeding he is charged with having made available a municipal ambulance for the funeral of a deceased combatant of the illegal Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Baydemir received 58 per cent of the vote in the last municipal election. Ever since DTP members have been elected mayors in a number of Kurdish cities, local politicians have been put under pressure.

Many of the reform laws that have been passed in recent years have not been implemented in Kurdish regions and a war of attrition is being fought against anyone who tries to exercise these new rights.

Denouncing the DTP as the "fifth column" of the PKK

The general consensus would seem to be that the DTP is the "fifth column" of the PKK. It is completely excluded from the political decision-making process at national level.

The reason for this is that in order to enter parliament, a party must receive at least 10 per cent of the vote. The DTP received over 6 per cent of the vote in the last parliamentary election.

However, despite the marginalization of the DTP mayors and despite the court cases and the intimidation, the region's governors, who represent the central government in Ankara, have reached a kind of understanding and cooperation with the mayors.

The mayors have been in office for years and know and understand the concerns and needs of the citizens. They often act as mediators. When young PKK supporters flexed their muscles in Diyarbakir in March of last year, the governor and the security forces called on the mayor to intervene in order to avoid an escalation of the situation.

Despite the fact that the PKK undoubtedly has a strong influence on the party, the DTP certainly does not take orders from the PKK guerrillas. DTP politicians who are critical of the PKK have gained people's trust as local politicians.

Just how much support there is for the DTP in the Kurdish regions became evident last week at the funeral of Orhan Dogan, a former member of the national parliament, in the city of Cizre. Over 100,000 people came to the city to pay their last respects.

Together with Leyla Zana and other Kurdish MPs, Dogan's immunity was lifted. In 1994 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for engaging in "separatist activities". He spent over ten years behind bars. Following his release, Dogan, who has always distanced himself from the PKK, has been active in the DTP.

Because of the 10-per cent hurdle, the DTP has decided not to run as a party in the parliamentary election that is due to be held in Turkey on 22 July. Instead, 42 of its members will run as "independents" in the various constituencies.

The reason being that independent candidates are not subject to the ten-percent hurdle. The DTP estimates that at least 20 independents will enter the next parliament. They could then re-join the party and form a parliamentary party.

Kurdistan in Europe

New roadblocks spring up to obstruct peace with Turkey’s Kurds

SOON after Turgut Ozal, a former Turkish president, spoke in 1993 of an amnesty for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 33 Turkish soldiers were killed by PKK rebels in an ambush. His hopes for lasting peace went up in smoke. There was a sense of déjà vu on December 10th when the PKK claimed responsibility for the deaths of seven soldiers in Tokat, a Turkish nationalist stronghold in the north-east. The attack came soon after bold reforms by the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party to improve the lot of the country’s 14m-odd Kurds and perhaps end the PKK’s 25-year insurgency.

Kurdish and Turkish nationalists alike promptly declared the government’s so-called Kurdish overture dead. Clashes between Turks and Kurds intensified when the constitutional court voted unanimously on December 11th to ban the biggest Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), on the grounds that it had become “a focal point for terrorism”. Two DTP parliamentarians, including its co-chairman Ahmet Turk, were stripped of their seats and 37 party officials were banned. Some 19 other DTP deputies said they were pulling out of parliament with the aim of regrouping under a new label.

On December 15th two Kurds died in Bulanik, in the south-east, after a shopkeeper fired on protesters. Fears of ethnic conflict are growing. Might this be part of a plot hatched by rogue members of the security forces (and the PKK) to weaken the AK government? This is being claimed as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, ponders his next move.

Mr Erdogan’s overtures—easing restrictions on the Kurdish language, restoring Kurdish names to Kurdish villages, and reintegrating PKK fighters untainted by violence—have spooked the terrorists, who thrive on state repression. Nobody more so than Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, who ignited the protests in early December when he claimed he had been moved to a smaller cell. “I can hardly breathe,” he said, though it emerged that his quarters had barely shrunk. More reforms mean less support for the PKK. It seems that Mr Ocalan does not like being sidelined—and he still commands the allegiance of millions of Kurds.

Now he has decided to take a bloody gamble by unleashing the PKK once again. He may want to blackmail the government into direct, public negotiations. He also wants to be moved from solitary confinement into house arrest. Neither demand is likely to get very far. As ever, ordinary Kurds will pay the price as support for the AK’s Kurdish reforms fizzles out. Banning the DTP has reinforced the belief of many Kurds that they can get change only through bullets, not the ballot box. By walking out of parliament, the DTP has cemented this belief. Murat Karayilan, a PKK commander in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, has exhorted the Kurds to “flow to the mountains.” He says recruitment is up.

What should Mr Erdogan do? Pressing ahead could mean losing votes to nationalists. AK has already frozen its plans to ease penalties for Kurdish youths accused of “terror crimes” (usually chanting PKK slogans or hurling stones at the police). Yet Mr Erdogan could call Mr Ocalan’s bluff and pursue Kurdish reforms with greater vigour. The AK might lose a few votes, but Turkey could still win the peace.

Catalonia in Europe

Catalonia votes on independence

By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Catalonia

This weekend, 700,000 people in Catalonia are eligible to vote in the region's first ever referendum on independence from Spain.

Organised by activists and volunteers, the vote is not officially binding but it is taking place at a tense time in relations with Madrid.

Supporters hope it is the first step towards a formal ballot for a separate state.

Deep in the nationalist heartland of Catalonia, campaigners have been drumming up support for the vote.

In the medieval town of Vic, hundreds of residents have already cast an early ballot at a tent in a corner of the main square.

Many say the autonomy Catalonia already has is not enough, and they are voting "Yes" to independence.

"More and more people think we have no room in the Spanish house, so we need a house of our own," organiser Alfons Lopez Tema says.

"[The Spanish] don't want us, they don't love us, they don't give us what we want. So the best thing is to vote and decide."

'Subversive'

Almost 170 Catalan towns and villages are holding ballots, staffed by thousands of volunteers.

Vic has traditionally favoured independence but the vote will be a first indication of whether views here are spreading.

The referendum has been the topic of daily debate on local radio.

Speaking Catalan on air was forbidden as subversive during General Franco's dictatorship.

Today, it is an official language, used in schools and government, and Catalonia itself has broad autonomy.

But three years ago, people across Catalonia voted for more. They approved a new statute - the law that sets out the relationship between Catalonia and the Spanish state - which defined this part of eastern Spain as a distinct nation.

It gave more jurisdiction to the local authorities and what many believe is a fairer share of the revenue collected.

For the moderate-minded majority of Catalans, that was enough.

The law was approved in a referendum, passed by the Catalan and Spanish parliaments and signed by the king.

“ People are disillusioned by what's happened ”
Vic Radio presenter Joan Turro

But Spain's main opposition party is contesting the statute in the Constitutional Court and many Catalans fear key provisions of the law will soon be overturned.

"People are disillusioned by what's happened. They're fed up. That's why so many are involved in organising this vote," Vic Radio presenter Joan Turro explains during a break in the schedule.

"People here in the interior of Catalonia have always wanted independence. We want this vote to show that it's not just us now."

Many people in Catalonia say they feel different from the rest of Spain, with their own distinct language, culture and history.

Sunday's referendum will test how far that feeling translates into actual support for a separate state.

Economic help

But frustrations about the relationship with Madrid are as much about money as identity.

Home to some 7m people, Catalonia is a prosperous place.

The pretty cobbled streets of medieval Vic are lined with boutiques and alluring delicatessens - industry and agriculture are both strong here.

But many complain that too much of that local wealth is drained away subsidising poorer parts of Spain and the return investment from Madrid is minimal.

A key provision of the new statute adjusted the balance but the improved system has not been implemented yet.

One pig farmer told me he believed breaking away from Spain would help the local economy.

"If you add everything up, we support the rest of Spain and they don't support us," he said, though like many people he struggled to name anything specific Catalonia has missed out on.

National identity

The Catalan government agrees that the balance of payments to Madrid was deeply unjust.

But Finance Minister Antoni Castells says that the new statute does correct that, adding more than 2 billion euros to the local budget this year.

He points out that only one in five Catalans usually express support for independence.

Still, he says, the fight over the statute has frustrated many and left "a strong feeling of disappointment".

For the minister, the thing to watch at this weekend's unofficial referendum is the turnout.

"If it's high, that suggests an increased number of people think the relationship between Catalonia and Spain should be reconsidered, that too many things are not going in a good way and that a lot of people think Spain is not respecting our self-government and our national identity," Mr Castells explains.

Catalans are certainly passionate about their identity.

Back in a smoky bar in Vic, most of the young crowd watching a Barcelona football match on TV have draped themselves in yellow and red Catalan flags.

Their songs in Catalan are a mixture of swearing at Spain and their own national anthem. There is a map of Catalonia on the wall, with the rest of Spain blanked out.

Most voters in this town will clearly say "Yes" to independence.

Mass Murder

Can you imagine Palestinians killing 500 Israelis because they suffered 16 loses in 10 years due Israelli attacks? Shocking, isn't it?

Hot Spots: Kashmir

Greenland Referendum

Greenland referendum could pave the way towards independence

Greenlanders will head to the polls today for a referendum on whether to expand the Danish territory’s autonomy and thus possibly pave the way for total independence for the Arctic island.

Some 39,000 people are eligible to cast their vote on the local government’s proposal for self-rule that could be a first step to ending nearly three centuries of Danish hegemony in Greenland.

The proposal is the result of a Danish-Greenlandic commission report in May calling for “the people of Greenland (to) be considered a people in line with international law ... with the right to self-determination.”

If the “yes” side wins, the local government in Greenland, which was granted a semi-autonomous status in 1979, has the chance to take over control of new areas such as natural resource management, justice and police affairs and to a certain extent foreign affairs.

Greenlandic would also be recognised as the island’s official language.

Also at stake in Tuesday’s referendum is how to share the potential revenues from the natural resources under Greenland’s seabed, which according to international experts is home to large oil deposits.

The commission report on self-rule proposed among other things that “the revenues from activities related to raw materials be distributed to Greenland” in return for reducing annual subsidies from Copenhagen.

A recent poll conducted by the University of Nuuk and broadcast on Greenlandic radio on November 16, indicated that an overwhelming 75 percent of Greenlanders who had already made up their minds were in favour of expanding the island’s autonomy.

Just 25 percent said they were against the move.

This referendum “is not about independence,” local government chief Hans Enoksen stressed in a radio interview, adding however that he hoped “Greenland will be independent in 12 years ... for my 65^th birthday.”

“Agreeing on self-rule is the only road forward,” he said, pointing out that “the Greenlandic people have wished for many years to be more independent.”

Like most of the parties in the local parliament, as well as the Greenlandic media, the Social Democratic prime minister has called on voters to “take advantage of this opportunity.”

He is not the only politician who believes full independence can be achieved in the not so distant future.

Lars Emil Johansen, one of two Greenlandic members of the Danish parliament, says he dreams the day will come by 2021, in time for the 300^th anniversary of Denmark’s colonisation of Greenland.

“Of course we can be the masters of our own destiny and fly on our own wings,” he told AFP.

Not all Greenlanders are dreaming of breaking loose from Denmark however. A fringe movement, backed by a single political party, the Democrats, has emerged as an outspoken critic of the proposal.

“Greenland will never be an independent state,” Finn Lynge recently stated, much to the dismay of his Siumut party, which is part of the government coalition and strongly in favour of a “yes” vote in the referendum.

“There are only between 50,000 and 60,000 of us living here in geographically and climatically extreme conditions. With such a tiny population it is impossible to provide the human contributions needed to turn Greenland into a modern and independent state,” he said.

And while the island’s biggest daily, Sermitsiaq, has called on voters to support the self-rule motion, it has stressed that “it is wrong to talk about independence now” because “independence is indissolubly linked to an economy that can support it.”

In 2007, the territory received subsidies of 3.2 billion kroner (432 million euros, 540 million dollars) from Denmark, or about 30 percent of its gross domestic product.

With its 2.1-million square kilometer (840,000 square mile) surface, 80 percent of which is covered by ice, Greenland is the world’s largest island. It counts 57,000 inhabitants, 50,000 of whom are native Inuits.

In 1985, it voted by referendum to leave the European Union, of which Denmark remains a member.

Spain(s)

(From The Economist)

NO LONGER is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero the accidental prime minister. In March 2004, luck helped to bring the leader of Spain's Socialists to power: he was trailing in the polls until a cack-handed attempt by the ruling centre-right People's Party to blame the Madrid train bombings three days before the election on Basque separatists. This time he consistently led his PP rival, Mariano Rajoy, and duly won re-election on March 9th. Yet his second term promises to be far harder than his first.

For one thing, the Socialists again fell short of an absolute majority in parliament, so Mr Zapatero will need a regional party's backing (see article). His best bet is to dump the left-wing Catalan separatists in favour of their moderate rivals, Convergence and Union (CiU). The CiU may well demand still more autonomy for Catalonia, but it is broadly liberal on economic policy. This matters, for the economy will be Mr Zapatero's biggest headache.

Spain has been one of the European Union's biggest success stories. Thanks to the macroeconomic stability afforded by the euro, lavish EU subsidies, a property boom and a huge influx of immigrant workers, the economy has grown by some 4% a year. Over the past four years, Spain has created two-thirds of all new jobs in the euro area's biggest four countries. But the good times have come to an abrupt end. GDP growth has slowed sharply, unemployment has shot up, house prices are falling and inflation has risen. EU money is running out and immigration will follow the economy down. Consumer confidence is at a 13-year low.

Spain's vote was the first post-credit-crunch election in a big Western country. Economic woes did indeed cost Mr Zapatero some support. Yet he persuaded many voters that the slowdown was not really his fault; and that the sensible choice in such risky times was his reliable finance minister, Pedro Solbes. The PP failed to come up with a convincing cure for the ailing economy. Mr Solbes presides over a healthy budget surplus worth 2% of GDP, giving him plenty of room for tax cuts and a splurge of public spending on infrastructure.

Yet fiscal expansion will not be enough, for the end of the good times is exposing deeper weaknesses. Successive Spanish governments worked strenuously to get the country into the euro, then sat back, accepting the benefits in lower inflation and interest rates, but failing to promote the more competitive markets that the discipline of euro membership requires. Spanish labour laws are too restrictive. Rising costs are denting the competitiveness of manufacturing, which makes up a big chunk of the economy. Productivity is held back by poor education and training. Immigration and the property bubble made up for these failings for a while, but no longer.

In search of bipartisanship

Economic liberalisation is hard, as many other European governments have found, because reforms tend to be fiercely opposed by unions and other vested interests. That makes it desirable to seek bipartisan support for the more controversial ones, such as labour-law changes. In the past four years, Spanish politics has been characterised by a rancorous bitterness. But Mr Rajoy's concession speech was dignified, and Mr Zapatero wisely responded with a promise to work “without tension, without confrontation”.

Defusing Spain's regional tensions also demands a new bipartisanship. Here Mr Zapatero threw caution to the winds in his first term, drawing up a new statute for the Catalans and negotiating with ETA, the violent Basque separatist group, in the teeth of PP opposition. Yet the Catalans always seem to demand more concessions, and other regions tend to copy them. The talks with ETA failed (the terrorists seem to have been responsible for the killing of a retired Socialist councillor in the Basque country two days before the election). And Basque nationalists are threatening to go ahead with a referendum this autumn on their future status in Spain.

Unity among politicians helps solve big questions of national identity. Britain had to adopt a bipartisan approach to settle its Northern Ireland problem. Spain's experience suggests that it needs to do the same.

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