anders deutsch

antropologi.info attends at reports about the conference "From Tahrir: Revolution or Democratic Transition" at the American University in Cairo (AUC).

Europe has reacted to the revolutions in the Arab countries with securing the Fortress Europe even further. Refugees are not welcome in Europe and are lucky, if they survive the journey across the Mediterranean.

I have repeatedly written how Tunisia has been much more welcoming to refugees. But now I read in the my German newspaper taz that there is a group of refugees, who is stuck in the camps at the border and is not allowed to enter Tunisia. These are people from countries like Somalia, Eritrea or Iraq. People unwanted not only in Europe but seemingly also unwanted in (some) Arab countries. The taz reported two days after the first article, that the camp was set on fire by local people. Hospitality seems not to be there for them, who have no other place to go.

BBC World reports on refugees from Libya coming to Niger (if they survive the flight through the dessert).

I guess not only European nationalisms and racisms are a problem but also Arab nationalisms and racism exclude and kill people.

PS 06.06.11: According to the taz refugees, who were rescued from a boat have been brought (back) to the camp at the Tunisisan border.

PS 09.06.11: According to the taz Germany is not offering any help for refugees from Libya, claiming that one has to help them in Libya itself and not doing that either.

In another article the taz reports about the estimated 1,5 million African migrants in Libya, who lived there before the revolution and now hardly get any support in fleeing from the violence (and securing their belongings). Nobody takes responsibility for their well-being.

Among the participants of the Young Media Summit there was also an lgbtqi activist (lesbian gay trans* queer intersex - in my reading). We talked a bit about the struggle for lgbtqi rights during the revolution. When is the right time to do what? How can one concentrate on different issues at different times without hierarchising between causes? How can one phrase the demands of lgbtqi?

She also told us that the embassy of a country from the global North had approached them and wanted to give them money to establish an lgbt (I do not know how far the embassy went in it's inclusion) organisation. They did not want the money. And in particular they did not want to be told from some embassy that they have to found an organisation. They know themselves what they want to do.

The lgbtqi activist also told us about an open gay blogger in Syria Gay Girl in Damascus.

PS 09.06.11: Gay Girl in Damascus has now been detained already several days. There is a Free Amina Abdalla Facebook site. German feminist blogs have published the news and now it also has reached the German newspaper taz.

It is good that there is so much publicity for 'Gay Gril in Damascus' and I hope it helps. But it has to be remembered - as was said at the Young Media Summit - there are (I am not sure whether I remember the correct number) something like 12.000 detainees in Syria and most of them do not have a facebook identity.

PS 12.06.11: The "Gay Girl in Damascus" seems to have been a hoax. One Syrian twitterer asks:

"Back to real activists in danger: are you going to support them like you supported "Amina"? or they have to be gay and speak English first?"

but says also:

"Re Amina hoax, I am utterly disgusted. That said, I'll always follow and love anonymous blogging till proved hoaxed."

With some of the participants of the Young Media Summit I was talking about the nationalism within the revolution. Everywhere there are nationalist graffitis, flags dominate the protests. I suppose Egypt is referred to to unite the people against the regime. But this is always linked to exclusions.

One of the participants tells us that after a football match between Algeria and Egypt he was taking pictures of the celebrations in Cairo. After his flatemate was sexually harrased they went quickly away and attention was focussed on them. The crowd attacked them, alleging they were Algerians. Some protected them and so they were able to get away.

So Egyptian nationalism can be dangerous. Is there a possibilty of a revolution without nationalist slogans?

I experienced the young media summit as pretty much non-hierarchical. The participants were heterogenous in their views, rather homogenous in their class background and (at least to me) no obvious and stable hierarchies among us were there (although situative hierarchies existed naturally). The immediate organisers provided the framework and had the task of disciplining us thus, but again it was my impression that they did so non-hierachically. Thus I quite liked the atmosphere.

But at the closing dinner this non-hierarchical atmosphere was broken. We were not only handed out certificates, which certified that we had successfully completed the summit (could we have failed?).



But this was also staged in a totally hierarchical way. The three immediate organisers, their boss from Germany and a representative of the German embassy stood in the center of the room, each of our names was called out, we were supposed to go to them, get the certificate and a hand shake from all of them. There are several aspects to this staging. First of all, it implies that this certificate has an importance, it really does not have (it does not certify anything valuable - our participation is certified already sufficiently through the blog). Secondly it implies, that they can certify us something, thus establishing a clear hierarchy between us.

Worst of all, however, was the explanation, which I got later, when I complained about it. One of the Germans explained to me, that the Arabs like this, it is important for them and thus we did it. This argument I know from an organisation, which I used to work for and which was also engaged in working with the global South. Also then I often heard that the 'Others' (in Asia or wherever in the global South) like certificates, formalities, etc. and thus we do things like this. That is so very paternalistic, Orientalist, racist and a collectivisation of the majority of the world population. Why sbould all of 'them' like something we can benevolently bestow on them?

The Arab participant next to me disliked the gesture just as much as me. Told me that she had never experienced anything comparable and did not understand the point of it. But she was more polite than I was and did not complain. The next day she told me that she had talked to another Arab participant and she had said, she had not cared about the ceremony but participated out of politeness. The participant I talked to assumed the German organisers were doing the whole ceremony for the funders and to legitimise themselves.

From my experience I believe that they really believe that 'the Arabs' like getting certificates and thus we are back to (degrading) German perspectives on the Arab world.

Not being an expert on the Arab countries and coming from Germany my focus on the Arab revolution so far has been mainly directed at how the revolutions are talked about in Germany, how they are reported about in the media and the role of anti-Muslim racism and Orientalism in this. I have written much on how Europe reacts to migration flows from the Arab countries with migration restrictions and the deadly affects of these measures.

During the summit these topics were not really part of the debate. The issues are different. A good experience for me to understand the Eurocentrism in my perspective and to provincialise Europe.

A next step would be (and then it really would be an Arab-German dialogue and not just a meeting of Arabs and Germans) to see what the transnational aspects of the Arab revolutions are, how the Germans/ Europeans are linked to it and how one can develop also joint agendas.

In Germany (and the Western world?) there is much talk about precarity. And it is a term, which I tend to use to describe my status of work. When I have work I am well off and I can save, but I am not always having work and there is insecurity about how things will go on. So it is insecurity linked with quite a good standard of living.

I used the term also here at the summit, when describing my means of income and had to explain what I meant by it. And somehow in this context it made so much less sense. There are revolutions going on, insecurity is there so much and so much more existential. My precarity is not very precarious in comparison.

I really seem to be delinking myself from all kinds of communication possibilities by not being technically up to date. How to stay in contact with my colleagues? How to organise meeting today? when I am lacking all the important access to media:

• no Egyptian mobile number
• no smart phone
• no facebook
• no twitter

At least I have a netbook and brought it with me. If not, what would I do.

The young media summit was about (social) media and for many reasons it makes sense to make this public: in order for other people to get to know about the debates, for them to have a possibility to engage in these with the participants and for the public relations of the organisers. All this is valid and fine. The blog fullfills many aims: make debates public, make discussion possible and advertise. The
videos are nice image films (although almost totally lacking content and in their production a bit too invasive). The panel discussion at Cairo University could have been a good opportunity to discuss, if there had been an audience. The TV Talk Show helps in making the debates public.

So each of these publication forms (as well as the twittering, the facebook page and the flickr picture gallery) make sense in themselves. But in total they are a bit too much. We were so very output orientated that little time was left to produce content. Our blogposts were written in a hurry, the preparation for the panel discussion was 30 minutes, the TV show cost us a whole evening.

Less output orientation probably would have produced more interesting output. And I might have been able to blog during the summit.

There was a lot of mobilising for the protests yesterday on Tahrir Square. Since I did not go, I tried to follow what was happening in the media. Since I do not understand Arabic, I was looking for English or German media coverage. That was really difficult. From Twitter#May27 I got some idea. But there has been not much more that I found. Al Ahram has a story before and Al Jazeera a report on the protest. German media seem to be interested only in the oppening of the border to Gaza.

When you are not a specialist, it seems difficult to follow what happens in the Arab countries from Germany.



PS: In my German newspaper there was little on the Cairo protests, but one article on court hearing of blogger Hossam al-Hamalawy.