Diplomacy & Crisis News

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The world needs new institutions for a new era—and nostalgia for a past that never existed won't help.

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Choosing the way that one dresses is a pivotal human right.

 

For any woman, choosing the way that one dresses is a pivotal human right. In both the US and Israel, we pride ourselves in the fact that a woman can dress however she pleases, regardless of whether it is Western, traditional Jewish, traditional Muslim or traditional Hindu clothing. Unfortunately, other parts of the world do not enjoy such basic freedoms. According to Iran Human Rights Monitor, the Iranian regime infamously banned traditional Kurdish dress in public. On the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities, many Iranian women are now fighting for the right to have their hair exposed, so that they can have the joyous feeling of having their hair blow in the air, a basic human right that many take for granted in the West. And for this reason, reports that a Hindu woman was compelled to wear a Muslim hijab at an international airport in Bangladesh are quite disturbing, especially after there was a Bangladeshi High Court ruling declaring that no woman can be compelled to veil in Bangladesh.

According to Shipan Kumer Basu, President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, a photo has emerged of a Hindu woman dressed in hijab at Dhaka International Airport. The source related, “The lady is working at Dhaka International Airport. She has a black hijab on her head, a yellow T-sheet and two hand bracelets as well as a red tip on the forehand and some ID card around her neck. From the picture, it is clear that she is a Hindu woman. Hijab is not her dress. She was forced to wear the hijab in order to protect her job.”

“I cannot find the words to express my extreme anger,” Basu added. “However, I doubt whether complaining to the airport authorities will be a remedy. Nevertheless, I am outraged that at a national airport of a country, where thousands of domestic and foreign passengers travel every day, a minority worker is subjected to this. No one should force any Hindu to wear the hijab. Just this one picture is enough to understand the condition of the Hindus in Bangladesh.”

The Bangladesh Minority Council noted that the abduction of young girls from minority communities, the indiscriminate rape of Hindu women and girls, and the forceful conversion of Hindu women is very rampant in Bangladesh. Recently, local sources reported that during the attempted rape of a minority woman in Pirgachha in Rangpur, the assailants cut off the hair of the victim. In addition, the minority woman and her daughter were left out on the road in Birnarayan village, where they were physically tortured, being left with their hands and feet tied up. In another incident, local sources noted that a helpless Hindu widow and her infant daughter were raped by Awami League leaders in Kishorgoni district in Bangladesh. And in still another instance in Mandasaur, local sources noted that a 7-year-old Hindu girl was taken away from school and brutally raped. The rapist also slit the girls’ throat with a wine bottle after raping her.

How many more Hindu women and girls need to be victimized under the present ruling Awami League government before there is a regime change? While the Bangladeshi government tries to pretend that they are moderates, they are actually a huge part of the problem for Basu noted that the authorities hunt down the minority woman or girl if she dares at all to stand up to her oppressors. According to the World Hindu Struggle Committee, in 2013, in another instance, when there was an attempt to rape a minority woman, the woman cut off the penis of the assailant with a sharp blade. In this case, the police launched an investigation against the minority woman and not the attempted rapist.

However, the mass rape of Hindu women and girls in Bangladesh is not the only indignity that they suffer. According to the World Hindu Struggle Committee, Hindu women in Bangladesh are also deprived of the right to make critical choices about how they want to present themselves at work if they want to stay employed. In an atmosphere of massive minority repression, naturally a Hindu woman has no right to say no if her boss wants her to wear hijab to work and this is a major part of the indignities suffered by Hindu women in Bangladesh. While the Bangladeshi government despises Israel, in the Jewish state, Muslim women are granted the right to wear their traditional dress including the niqab and hijab. We are not among the Western countries banning the burqa. This was best demonstrated in a recent video produced by Israeli Arab activist Sara Zoabi, who documented how numerous Israelis responded to her walking down the street wearing a niqab and how everyone treated her respectively. Nevertheless, Bangladesh and many other Muslim countries governments still have a negative perception of Israel in spite of this.

However, many Muslims also criticize various countries in Europe for banning the burka and hijab. Erdogan is a perfect example of this. According to the Independent, he referred to an EU ruling on whether employers can bar the hijab as a clash between Islam and Christianity. His foreign minister went further, warning that a holy war can begin soon. However, Mr. Erdogan and his government, who are known to be critical of Israel who respects the rights of Muslim women to wear hijab, are very much silent when a Bangladeshi Hindu woman is forced to wear the hijab, which demonstrates how little they care about the right of women to make their own choices regarding how they wish to dress and live their lives. It also demonstrates the increasingly good ties between Erdogan’s and Sheikh Hasina’s government. But nevertheless, Erdogan’s silence as Hindu women are raped and tortured merely for being Hindus highlights how much minority rights means to him. While Erdogan’s government often condemns the West for engaging in Islamophobia, his government does not say anything as the Islamic world continues to persecute countless minority religious groups Hindus among them. It is time for this charade to come to an end and for Hindu women to receive the dignity that they deserve as women.

The post Bangladesh, Please Don’t Compel Hindu Women to Wear The Hijab appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

>> Retrouvez l’article dont est extraite cette citation : « États-Unis : de nouvelles options nucléaires ? », écrit par Benjamin Hautecouverture dans le numéro d’été 2018 de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2018). <<

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Guerre d'Algérie, immigration, malaise des banlieues, psychose de l'après-11-Septembre : depuis cinquante ans, le football a reflété chaque étape d'une histoire toujours à vif. / Algérie, France, Colonialisme, Immigrés, Jeunes, Sport, Guerre d'Algérie 1954-1962, Banlieue - (...) / Algérie, France, Colonialisme, Immigrés, Jeunes, Sport, Guerre d'Algérie 1954-1962, Banlieue - 2008/08

The national soccer team celebrated its strong World Cup showing alongside a singer who glorifies the country’s fascist past. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

 

 

On June 11, major Chinese and Indian oil companies started a formal meeting in Beijing, discussing the establishment of an “oil buyers’ club” to negotiate better prices with OPEC countries. The chairman of China’s biggest energy company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Wang Yilin, and the chairman of refiner Indian Oil Corporation both attended the meeting. According to the India Times, the two largest energy consumers together accounted for almost 17% of world oil consumption last year. Should this “oil buyers’ club” become a reality, New Delhi and Beijing will have greater leverage to negotiate with OPEC about oil prices and will also have a significant say in matters such as importing more crude oil from the US.

Rising oil prices put pressure on big energy importers

OPEC and other oil producing countries, including Russia, have helped oil prices rebound from the last collapse in recent years. This has put pressure on economies of oil importing countries like India and China, which are both experiencing surging energy demand for their domestic economic growth as well as their global development initiatives. However, the cartel members, along their allies, have curtailed their oil supply by 1.8 million barrels per day since the beginning of 2017. They had further agreed to extend these cuts until the end of 2018 with an aim to boost their shrinking economies. In addition, the recent sanctions on Iran by the US government and the financial crisis in Venezuela further exacerbated the decline in the overall OPEC oil output. Thus, in order to compensate for the loss in oil supply from these two countries, Saudi Arabia, a key driver of the production cuts, and Russia, the largest Non-OPEC oil producer, are discussing easing off the production cuts at the next OPEC meeting. This also appears as a response to protect OPEC’s diminishing share in the global oil market due to the rapidly rising US oil supply.

Common front against OPEC dominance in Asian oil market

OPEC has dominated Asian oil market for decades. The cartel sends over 15 million barrels per day into Asia, over sixty percent of its exports, to the leading destinations of China, India, South Korea and Japan. Therefore, Asia will likely feel the biggest impact to any production cut of OPEC countries. As procuring oil at the lowest price becomes increasingly vital for energy-hungry Asian consumers, major oil importing countries in Asia are working on combining their efforts to reduce OPEC’s influence on the oil market. According to an official, possibilities of joint sourcing of oil as well as combined bargaining to reduce the Asian premium price were discussed in the meeting on June 11. “The similar collaboration will be proposed to Japan and Korea as well. With CNPC or its affiliates selling in the overseas market a large portion of oil produced from fields it owns in third countries, India expressed interest in buying the Chinese firm’s equity oil directly,” the official said.

The next move?

India and China’s move arrives in the backdrop of shifting the center of global oil market back to Asia. Potential cooperation among major Asian economies in establishing an “oil buyers’ club” will bring significant challenge to OPEC, giving rise to its competition with North America in exporting oil into the Asian market. India and China are likely to boost imports of US crude from Mexico Bay and Texas shale oil fields, a move aimed at putting pressure on OPEC members to keep oil prices under control.

China and India, the largest and second-largest importers of Iranian crude, will also have greater control over the Iran nuclear deal if they succeed in forming an “oil buyers’ club”. Regarding the recent tensions between Beijing and Washington D.C. on trade issues, China is not likely to support US action against Iran if it has the leverage to negotiate a lower oil price with the country. With its huge infrastructure development projects in Iran, such as the $3-4 billion development plan for the Farzad B gas field, India is also unlikely to abide by US sanctions against Iran in order to avoid friction and obtain a better oil deal.

This article was first published on Global Risk Insights, and was written by Yueyi Chen.

The post China and India Establish “Oil Buyers’ Club” to Counter OPEC appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’été de Politique étrangère
(n° 2/2018). Hans Stark, secrétaire général du Comité d’études des relations franco-allemandes (Cerfa), propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Christian Schubert, Der neue französische Traum. Wie unser Nachbar seinen Niedergang stoppen will (Frankfurter Allgemeine Buch, 2017, 320 pages).

La Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) est, on le sait, un très bon journal. On sait aussi que ce journal n’est pas insensible aux idées et positions que l’on peut classer à la droite libérale du spectre politique allemand. Si le correspondant économique de la FAZ à Paris depuis 2004 se livre à une analyse de l’évolution économique de la France durant ces deux ou trois dernières décennies, on ne s’étonnera donc pas que celle-ci soit plutôt critique. Pourtant, Christian Schubert ne se livre nullement à un French bashing gratuit, ni à une description misérabiliste de l’économie française. Bien au contraire, sur 320 pages il développe les forces et faiblesses économiques du principal partenaire et voisin de l’Allemagne, et donne à lire une analyse globalement équilibrée, qui en apprendra certes plus au lecteur allemand qu’au lecteur français. Mais celle-ci est intéressante dans la mesure où elle nous livre avec précision l’image que les milieux d’influence en Allemagne ont de la France.

Sans surprise, Schubert s’attaque d’abord à nos maux : la désindustrialisation, notamment dans le Nord et dans l’Est, les échecs consécutifs des politiques de l’emploi, la résignation face au chômage et notamment celui des jeunes et des seniors, sans oublier les « ravages » (selon l’auteur) provoqués par les 35 heures. Il consacre également des chapitres aux tensions dans les banlieues (y compris dans le contexte de la radicalisation islamiste), ainsi qu’au rôle des syndicats, au fort potentiel de nuisance mais peu représentatifs. Enfin, Christian Schubert ne travaillerait pas pour la FAZ s’il n’établissait un lien entre la politique budgétaire (systématiquement déficitaire depuis le début des années 1970) et la situation économique, et entre cette dernière et l’endettement public (17 % du PNB en 1981, presque 97 % du PNB en 2017).

Trois chapitres consacrés à l’histoire économique de la France depuis le XVIIe siècle permettent à l’auteur de souligner que le pays a d’abord inventé le libéralisme pour ensuite le rejeter, et à quel point les structures traditionnelles de l’économie française s’inscrivent dans la durée et le subconscient collectif de toute une nation. Mais ce constat ne le rend pas pessimiste pour autant quant à l’évolution future du pays. Le dernier tiers de l’ouvrage décrit avec précision les atouts de la France : une infrastructure qui n’a pas son égal en Europe, une formation des élites de très haut niveau (on aurait aimé que Schubert parle aussi de ceux qui n’en font pas partie). Un réseau de très grandes entreprises parfaitement intégrées dans les échanges mondiaux (mais Schubert évoque aussi les énormes difficultés des petites PME traditionnelles), une culture et une audace entrepreneuriales considérables, un exceptionnel savoir-faire technologique (notamment dans l’aéronautique), et surtout une e-economy s’appuyant sur des start-ups bénéficiant d’une vraie longueur d’avance sur leurs concurrents européens. Il ne manque donc plus qu’une force réformatrice pour éveiller ce potentiel. Et Schubert ne cache pas qu’il la voit s’incarner en Emmanuel Macron, élu à l’Élysée peu de temps avant la publication de cet ouvrage.

Hans Stark

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