.

Kenneth Roy

The expert view is wrong.
These deaths could
have been prevented

Bob Cant

What does
'Tutti Frutti'
say to us now?


6

John Cameron

The great 'Chariots
of Fire' was the
purest hokum
4

7

Andrew Hook

Down with
everything: the new
American mantra
5

7

Ronnie Smith

Tanned and smiling,
Mr Blair arrives
among us
5

7

Islay McLeod

Villages of
Scotland:
(3) Thornhill
5

22.02.12
No. 517

John Cameron

When protestors set fire to a German flag and the old Gestapo headquarters in central Athens, it indicated that the Greeks are starting to see the big picture. Germany turned a blind eye to the financial jiggery-pokery involved in Greece's euro entry and then stood by for years doing nothing about the obvious mismanagement.
     Its firms encouraged and profited from Greek profligacy and, as Angela Merkel well knows, much of the bailout money will end up back in Germany.
Instead of using cheap EU loans to boost its competitiveness, Greece blew the lot on the 2004 Summer Olympics and vast amounts of imported German products.
     In 2008 Greeks bought 9 billion euros worth of German cars and goods but Germany imported less then 2 billion euros worth of Greek textiles and agricultural produce. In fact Germany repeated this pattern across Spain, Portugal and the rest of the indebted southern tier of Europe which still accounts for 15% of all German exports.
     The bubbles which grew on the periphery were a mirror image of the German surplus and produced the disaster predicted by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods in 1944. Selling to the captive Greek market was a fabulous deal for Germany's large, politically connected export industries and the German workers employed in them.
     It was sustainable as long as European banks bought Greek debt, and German banks in particular – especially government-owned ones – were delighted so to do.
     German banks, pension funds and insurance companies hold 30 billion euros worth of Greek government bonds and these institutions expect to be paid off by the bailout. Indeed, if they do not get paid off they will be in serious trouble and the consequences for the German economy and taxpayer are what keeps Merkel up nights. Instead of lecturing everyone else, the Germans should stop being so high and mighty about a fiasco they helped create and use it as a learning experience. It was Angela Merkel's misplaced reluctance to support a floundering Greece which allowed the contagion genie to escape and spread the crisis to other weak states.
     In the long term, it is clear Europe can sustain neither the economically-dysfunctional Club-Med banana republics nor a Germany addicted to export-led growth.




Should we cut aid to

countries where gay

people are abused?

 

Elizabeth Goodwin

 

Last year, David Kato, a prominent gay rights activist, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer outside his home in Kampala, Uganda. The attack came just three months after a newspaper published his photo in a list of the country's gays and lesbians under the headline 'Hang them'.
     In many African countries, members of the LGBT community live in fear: fear of being outed and losing their jobs, fear of arrest and fear for their lives. The criminalisation of homosexuality in 38 of 51 countries means that, far from ensuring any access to justice for persecution, governments condone and even instigate it.
     The UK's department for international development gives millions of pounds of aid money directly to these governments in the form of budget support (this is money paid straight to their finance ministries). Seen one way, this makes UK taxpayers complicit in active discrimination and oppression. Seen another, it means the UK voice has power when it argues the case for upholding human rights.
     The question is, then, how can the UK best use its influence to support the African gay rights movement?
     What it should not do, according to development experts, is to withdraw budget support over this issue. This is the policy that David Cameron announced in October. Such a drastic step would destabilise already fragile economies, undermine democratically-elected governments and hurt the poorest people most.
     On top of this, African leaders deny that the proposed funding withdrawal would have any effect at all. The Ghanaian president John Atta Mills said that 'societal norms' in Ghana were so different he 'would never initiate or support any attempt to legalise homosexuality'. And the Ugandan position is: 'If they must take their money, so be it'. So, what is the case for the UK's new policy?
     Public rejection of same-sex relationships in Africa is deeply entrenched. A recent survey of 11 countries showed that, in most, over 95% of people refuse to acknowledge non-heterosexual identity. Among law-makers, not only are there vocal objections to the repeal of hangover colonial laws, but ever more punitive legislation continues to be introduced. New anti-gay bills are currently before parliaments in Uganda and Nigeria. These bills are believed to have been initiated by fundamentalist western-backed churches and they receive support from a media whose articles calculatedly confuse homosexuality and paedophilia by telling tales of gay and lesbian teachers.

 

In July 2011, the UK government, along with other international donors, suspended budget support to Malawi. The move followed a worsening
of the human rights situation, not now just for the LGBT community,
but for all citizens.


     Attitudes towards 'women and gay people are the litmus test of whether a society is democratic in respecting human rights; we're the canaries in the mine'. This quote from Peter Tatchell accurately depicts the slippery slope of rights abuses. Malawi, for example, has followed its recent criminalisation of lesbian relationships with restrictions on media freedom and increased police powers. There is no sign of increased public understanding and all the time that civic education is interpreted as illegal 'promotion', this will not change. That is why an outside catalyst is needed. It is what gay rights activists want and it is what they say is working.
     Gift Trapence is executive director of CEDEP, a Malawian human rights organisation. In 2010, it supported two men who were convicted after getting engaged. There was international condemnation. Despite that diplomatic pressure, there was no let up for vulnerable same-sex couples and CEDEP is now fighting two new cases, including one of two men arrested for cross-dressing.
     In July 2011, the UK government, along with other international donors, suspended budget support to Malawi. The move followed a worsening of the human rights situation, not now just for the LGBT community, but for all citizens. Gift Trapence described how the cut in budget support has interrupted the supply of foreign exchange, of fuel and of medicines, making life hard for everyone. He then told how the government is using the LGBT community as cover for the cuts to divert people's attention away from governance issues.
     Despite the blame being attributed to the group he represents, he welcomes the decisive and coordinated pressure from donors. As well as managing the aid-dependent economy badly, he said, the government is directly funding the Pentecostal churches and inviting the pastors to preach hate messages on state television. The suspension of budget support has had a great effect and compelled the government to start listening. In December, the Ministry of Justice referred a large number of restrictive and unpopular laws to the Malawi Law Commission for review. Among them are the sodomy laws.
     According to Gift Trapence, should these laws be repealed, there will still be a lot of work to do to change public attitudes starting with members of parliament and the traditional and religious leaders, who are the gatekeepers of society. An especially important project will be one to build the capacity of the media to report LGBT issues objectively.
     Until the laws are repealed, this work has to wait. Though, with the support of the UK, and other international donors, he hopes to start it sooner rather than later.

 

Elizabeth Goodwin works for VSO UK but is writing here in a personal capacity. She delivered this paper at a recent Young Thinker of the Year
event organised by the Scottish Review team.