Digital rights defenders gather in Taipei to tackle mass surveillance, online propaganda, authoritarianism

Culled from my notes, here are some of the most interesting things I heard last week in Taipei at RightsCon, the world's leading summit on digital rights for technology, commercial, civil society, and government sectors.

A dragon towers over the 2025 Taiwan Lantern Festival in Taoyuan.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Chinese Surveillance Technology

China is methodical in suppressing conversation around the world about the repression of the Uyghur people, according to representatives of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). Within days of her speaking at the Hudson Institute, WUC Chair Rushan Abbas said, her sister and aunt in China disappeared. Chinese officials sometimes approach venues hosting conferences that will discuss the Uyghurs and offer them double the price to cancel the conference contract, according to Haiyuer Kuerban, director of the WUC Berlin office. Now governments in England and Germany are keen to buy from Chinese firms such as Huawei the very tech that Chinese authorities use to surveil Uyghur activists and their families, Kuerban said, a perverse reward for the facilitation of human rights abuse.

Linjiang night market bustles in Taipei.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

If you use a China-based media service such as WeChat even outside China, you might be helping the Chinese surveillance apparatus. Open Technology Fund Fellow Pellaeon Lin explained that censors scan files shared online and "fingerprint" them to tailor the blocking of sensitive content from recipients in China. Scanning and fingerprinting happens on Chinese tech even when when users share content wholly outside China. Chinese users, meanwhile, can't penetrate "the great firewall" as easily as in the past, Lin explained. Authorities can see when a VPN is used, if not the content, and that's reason enough to bring someone in for questioning. Tor is better than a VPN because it wraps and disguises internet traffic within innocent transmissions. But Lin warns, it's a game of cat and mouse; the censors are always refining their methods.

Undersea Infrastructure

Remember that all of these panels took place in Taiwan, so criticism of China carried a grave sort of resonance. While discussion of digital rights naturally suggests the metaphysics of cyberspace, the infrastructure of the infosphere exists very much in the real world. One fascinating panel of experts fretted over the vulnerability of the world's undersea cables. Recent outages, such as the cut cable in the Gulf of Finland at Christmas, concerningly exhibit indicia of human agency. Professor Yachi Chiang, of the National Taiwan Ocean University, said, to my surprise, that Taiwan is located at right about the world's highest-density crossroads of undersea traffic. She's right; you can see it at the Submarine Cable Map by TeleGeography:

Submarine Cable Map CC BY-SA 4.0

The security challenges of this network are massive. About 20% of damage results from natural forces, such as deterioration and shark bites, Chiang said; sharks like to bite cables. About 70% of damage is caused by people. A lot of that is inadvertent, anchoring by fishing vessels. But there's no easy way to determine whether there was a malicious act, much less a nation behind it. In the Christmas incident, Finnish officials have alleged a deliberate anchor drag by a Cook Islands-flagged vessel doing Russia's bidding, NPR reported in December.

Taiwan had five incidents already in 2025, Chiang said, with four domestic lines and one international line disrupted. In one incident, the Taiwan Coast Guard took a vessel into custody and detained the crew. That incident was suspicious, because the boat had irregular routing for fishing and inexplicably bore a changeable nameboard. But the capture was exceptional, only possible because the ship was in Taiwanese waters, Chiang explained. On the high seas, ships bear flags of convenience, and any claim against the vessel must be taken up with the flag nation. Those claims in distant and ill developed bureaucracies go nowhere. So some better coordinated legal response is needed to protect the undersea information infrastructure, Chiang concluded.

Authoritarianism in Africa

While the United States retreats to some amalgam of isolationism and opportunism, China is dominating the developing world technologically. China built more than 70% of the 4G network in Africa, Amnesty International's Sikula Oniala said, and now is working on 5G. Chinese-made TVs are flooding the market, Oniala said, but to work, they must be connected to the internet via their Chinese software, raising specters of surveillance and control.

Starlink deployment over
Rhode Island, February 2025.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Authoritarian impulses in Africa are ever more complemented by Chinese technology and strategies. Governments control the gateways for internet access; last year, protests were met with internet shutdowns in Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Mauritius and Equatorial Guinea, VOA reported. Amid the civil war in Sudan, both sides have used internet shutdowns strategically, cutting off information about unfriendly protests, permitting access when it undermines the enemy, and charging usurious rates for access to vital information, according to Hussam Mahjoub, co-founder of Sudan Bukra, an independent television channel.

While Starlink seems to promise liberation from government gateways, authorities in countries such as Sudan refuse to license the service and are pressuring the company to limit roaming access for accounts opened abroad, such as in neighboring Kenya, Mahjoub said. Worse, Tor Project Executive Director Isabela Fernandes warned, beware the gift bearer. The Bolsonaro regime in Brazil used Starlink data to track down and kill indigenous activists, she said.

Correspondingly, public access to information (ATI, freedom of information, or FOI) law is on the wane. In Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, mass surveillance is chilling human rights activism. And governments—even Kenya, the ATI law of which, on paper at least, I praised—are following Chinese examples in ATI law, Oniala said, reducing transparency purportedly in the name of national security.

Data Protection in Africa

Even with the best of intentions, African governments hardly can be expected to stand up to tech giants such as Meta, with turnovers that dwarf nations' GDPs, Open Technology Fund Fellow Tomiwa Ilori said. Speaking to African countries' efforts to establish meaningful enforcement of data protection laws, Ilori analogized: "You only get to kill snakes because they don't move together." In other words, African countries must coordinate their efforts. Franco Giandana Gigena, an Argentine lawyer and policy analyst for Access Now, described a similar dynamic in Latin American countries' inability to resist incentives from the U.S. government and American corporations to look the other way on data protection enforcement.

In the vein of collective action, the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection came into force in 2023, upon accession by Mauritania. However, the convention, adopted in 2014, already is dated. Ilori suggested it would benefit from optional protocols on extraterritorial application and stronger enforcement, and overall, African people need more education about their rights.

At that, there might be cultural impediments to EU-style data protection. Thobekile Matimbe, a senior project manager for the Nigeria-based Paradigm Initiative, said that the convention perspective on privacy, while inspired by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is more communitarian than individualist. Curiously, the African perspective, which prizes the integrity of the family, for example, over self-determination or the right to dissent, marks the same ground from which the human right of data protection emerged in the European tradition. The problem, Matimbe explained, is that authoritarians invoke the communitarian perspective to subordinate personal freedoms to the purported imperative of national security. That rationalization has seen surveillance deployed in Malawi, for one example, targeting human rights advocates, critics of government, and journalists, Matimbe said.

Disinformation Regulation

The classical dichotomy between true and false no longer works to balance free expression and disinformation regulation, according to Lutz Güllner, head of the European Economic and Trade Office in Taiwan. As Ukrainian journalist and Public Interest Journalism Lab CEO Nataliya Gumenyuk put it, debunking just isn't working anymore.

The problem, Güllner said, is that disinformation can have truth at its core, but the dis arises in the spin. That's why, he said, the EU's new Digital Services Act (DSA) aims not at content, but at manner of presentation: imposing on Big Tech a responsibility to police platforms for manipulative amplification of speech or suppression of others' speech (for example, planting an item of disinformation in a flood of mundane but accurate news). That isn't to say that the DSA strikes the right balance. Dionysia Peppa, a Greek lawyer and senior policy analyst for Beirut-based SMEX, said that the DSA rule on takedown of illegal content does not define "illegal," devolving authority to member states. In a time of right-leaning elections in Europe, states might disagree sharply over politically charged questions, such as when policy criticism of Israel becomes illegal hate speech.

In a similar vein, Liliana Vitu, chair of the Audiovisual Council of Moldova, talked about the challenges of combatting Russian propaganda in mass media. Banning "primitive propaganda" in "news" and talk shows was easy, she said. The devil lay in entertainment. For example, Russia-originating programs might consistently portray European characters as gay, effeminate, or weak, playing to stereotypes, she explained, while Russian characters appear masculine and strong.

Ukrainian journalists Nataliya Gumenyuk and Angelina Kariakina
talk about The Reckoning Project, which trains conflict journalists
in the preservation of evidence to prosecute war crimes.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

As mere debunking doesn't work, Gumenyuk described research from The Reckoning Project seeking to figure out how journalists should combat disinformation. Viewers suffer from "compassion fatigue" at all the suffering in the world, she said. So when confronted with fact-based news accounts, such as the appearance of a drowned Syrian boy on a Bodrum beach, or the torture and murder of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, viewers resisted and complained that journalists are out to manipulate them emotionally. The same viewers, though, proved receptive to people's firsthand accounts in documentaries. Gumenyuk described her astonishment at one study subject's testimony that he trusted the documentary more than the news because journalists were not telling the story. He seemed utterly unaware that the documentary form is a product of journalism and no more or less capable of conveying viewpoint than a news story.

The Reckoning Project, which Gumenyuk co-founded, occupies a compelling position at the junction of journalism and law. Gumenyuk said she tired of seeing reports collected by journalists excluded from war-crime investigations and prosecutions because the journalists did not understand rules of evidence. The Reckoning Project brings together journalists and lawyers to accomplish their complementary missions in seeking truth and justice. Gumenyuk gave as an example the questions a journalist might ask of a witness of atrocities, such as those committed by Russian forces against civilians in Bucha. Ordinarily, a journalist might ask, "How did the Russian soldiers kill this man?" But a leading question yields exclusion of the response as evidence in a legal proceeding. So journalists are trained to ask instead, "Tell me what happened that day."

Apropos of lawyering skills and picking up on the point that tech and its ill-intentioned users evolve faster than law and regulators, Armenian attorney and former head of the Armenian Data Protection Authority Gevorg Hayrapetyan played my tune when he told an audience:

One of the most important disciplines in law is philosophy of law, what law is and what it ought to be. One of the most important steps in developing human rights is recognizing the right.

Data protection, after all, was not a thing until someone thought of it. Maybe that's why it's not a thing in the United States. If we strip black-letter law of theory and policy and dumb down the American law school curriculum to comprise a glorified bar course and skills-training program, then we're headed in the right direction. Right? Asking for a friend.

Time to Save the World

Even were we all so inclined, is there time yet to save the world? Probably not. Law and regulation can't keep up, Güllner said, so the answer has to come from education, to develop people's sensory reflexes to detect disinformation. That will take a generation. "Ask my Ukrainian colleagues," he said. "We don't have that long."

Vitu described complex Moldovan legislation with multi-factor tests to determine whether disinformation conveys falsity and threatens national security. But that took years to develop with civil society stakeholders at the table to protect free expression; propaganda meanwhile grew yet more sophisticated. "Moscow never sleeps," she lamented. 

And Raša Nedeljkov, with the Serbian Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, summed up the anxiety wracking the world:

A beacon of light for us was U.S. democracy. Now look what is happening.

Maybe that's the silver lining, journalist Tess Bacalla of the Asia Democracy Network suggested: The rest of the world, especially the European Union, will have to step up.

Civil conflict in Mali devastates innocents, while indifference, deference to Russia undermine U.S. policy

U.N. peacekeepers, here a Togolese soldier near Mopti in 2018,
provided enough security for local markets to function.
MINUSMA (UN Mission in Mali) photo via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Putin-backed Wagner Group is among the aggressors responsible for ongoing violence against civilians in Mali, and the United States is sabotaging its own future by ignoring the multiplying atrocities there. 

As the Trump Administration cozies up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently to redraw the borders of Europe Munich Agreement-style, it's worth remembering who our new partner in peace is. Correspondingly, U.S. withdrawal from U.N. aid operations suggests minding what it is we're withdrawing from.

A friend in central Mali, from a village so small it's not on Google Maps, but west of Bandiagara, wrote last week pleading for support for foreign intervention there. He reported civilians murdered and displaced and villages and food stores burned in the region in recent weeks. I am not naming my friend for his security, as he remains in the area.

Mali
ECHO Base Map via GetArchive, public domain

The situation is complex, as both rebel Islamist militants and government counterinsurgent forces, the latter partnered with private contractors such as "Africa Corps" né Wagner, are at war, de facto, with both sides ruthlessly victimizing civilians caught in the middle.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirmed in a December report:

The JNIM [al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims)] has burned homes and looted livestock in Bandiagara region since June. JNIM fighters attacked several villages in the Doucombo and Pignari Bana district areas, setting over 1,000 homes on fire, stealing at least 3,500 animals, and forcing thousands of residents to flee, according to witnesses. Residents said the attacks were in apparent retaliation against communities that the JNIM accused of collaborating with [a collective self-defense militia organized to secure area villages].

Neither side in the conflict boasts a moral record. HRW reported:

Since May 2024, Malian armed forces and the Wagner Group have deliberately killed at least 32 civilians, including 7 in a drone strike, forcibly disappeared 4 others, and burned at least 100 homes in military operations in towns and villages in central and northern Mali. Two Islamist armed groups, [JNIM] and [Group for the Support] of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), have summarily executed at least 47 civilians and displaced thousands .... Human Rights Watch received credible reports of hundreds more civilians killed, but due to the difficulties of conducting research in central and northern Mali, the numbers in this report are conservative. 

At the request of Malian authorities, a U.N. peacekeeping mission withdrew from Mali in December 2023 after itself coming under attack in the cross-fighting. French forces had withdrawn the previous year. The U.N. mission had been in Mali for 10 years, but its presence did not prevent two military coups in the last five years. The junta now in control of the government seems intent on extinguishing the insurgency at any cost, but it's far from clear whether either side can prevail.

The worsening situation in Mali is indicative of destabilization across west and central Africa. Military coups toppled governments in Burkina Faso in 2022 and in Niger in 2023. Now the three military governments of Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali have withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Meanwhile, combatants' calls for U.N. withdrawal are growing in other hot spots, such as DR Congo, where rebels have taken the key city of Goma.

ECOWAS (2018)
St.Krekeler via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

In my travels in West Africa, I found ECOWAS to be a profoundly stabilizing force and engine of economic development. The free trade group, formerly 15 countries, allowed fragile economies a chance to level the playing field in the global market. A common currency, the "eco," was planned to supplant and surpass the CFA franc.

Indicative of the progress made possible by ECOWAS, my friend in Mali messaged last year, keen to get the word out about his nascent tourism venture. Bandiagara is within a day's travel of Timbuktu, the UNESCO World Heritage Site that has been mostly inaccessible to outsiders for more than a dozen years because of armed conflict.

Now social and economic progress in the region is disintegrating.

To be clear, I do not contend that the United States or the United Nations should ride to the rescue with military force in Mali. Neither side in the conflict there wants western intervention, and we would sink into a lethal quicksand by merely adding a third side in the fighting.

However, diplomatic intervention to start with, and international peacekeeping later, could be vital to save generations of innocent people from murder, abuse, and starvation. I am mindful that my International Law class will soon study use of force, a unit that prompts sorrowful consideration of the western indifference that permitted the Rwandan genocide to play out unhindered.

HRW decried the conflict in Mali for both sides' utter disregard of "the laws of war." Between U.S. willingness to reward Putin's invasion of Ukraine with gained territory and a repeat of willful western blindness to the trampling of human rights in Africa, the entire project of international law that was built upon the ashes of World War II is now in jeopardy.

The Trump Administration seems content to let the United Nations fall by the wayside in favor of a transactional approach to foreign policy. Thus, for example, the key to a Trump peace plan in Ukraine, and any hope that Ukraine would recover lost territory in such a plan, seems to turn on a deal for U.S. access to rare-earth minerals in the country's east.

But it is in fact a transactional foreign policy that I suggest will suffer if we disregard Africa. Development of extractive industries—Mali has diamonds, gold, and uranium—is a desirable goal; the question is, who will benefit?

ECOWAS, after the model of the European economic community, and U.N. peacekeeping, which makes free trade possible, represent a west-leaning African future in which ordinary people benefit from development with rising standards of living. This isn't charity. The United States would benefit from vibrant, free-market commerce with an economically developed West Africa. All boats float.

In contrast, Russia seeks to expand its sphere of influence by undermining democratic participation and capturing governments with authoritarian oligarchy. That means an east-leaning African future in which ordinary people are subordinated and impoverished. The United States loses in that scenario; our only benefit from wealthier eastern oligarchs will be the sale of more prime U.S. property to foreign owners.

As the United Nations has been nothing but a thorn in the side of neo-imperial Russian ambitions, Putin would like nothing better than to put the organization to death. In corollary, he must be delighted by the demise of USAID, which represents our foreign policy leverage in Africa.

The United States lets its influence wane and turns its back on the world at its own peril.

Here is a list of NGOs, IGOs, and charities working in Mali.

Demonstrators in Poland support Ukrainian POWs

The war in Ukraine drags on, but central European resolve against Putin remains firm.

Last week in Kraków, Poland, the main square, Rynek Główny, was packed with Poles and foreign tourists in the days before the Christmas Market's weekend opening. Even amid the festive atmosphere, a small group of demonstrators held flags and spoke through amplifiers about the war in Ukraine and demanded the release of prisoners of war. Passersby were supportive, and some paused to listen (though the speaker spoke Ukrainian rather than Polish when I went by) and to look at the faces of POWs and MIA.

Poles have been unwavering in support of Ukraine. Polish history engenders empathy with victims of Russian oppression. And there's the simple benefit of having at least one friendly neighbor to the east. Poland's Baltic Sea border abuts Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, and Poland has been besieged by passive-aggressive threats on its eastern border with Belarus.

Unfortunately for Krakovians, especially university students such as mine last week, the influx of Ukrainian refugees drove up the price of housing. Refugee populations have evened out, but, as these things go, housing prices have remained high. That's been a drag on university enrollment: just one more small way that the war burdens the region.

Image by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Contemporary sculpturist comments on Ukraine war

Lakenen considers the war in Ukraine in this 2022 sculpture.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited artist Tom Lakenen's Lakenenland, a sculpture park in the Marquette area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

I'm a sucker for an outdoor art installation, and Lakenen's work does not disappoint. I only had a couple of hours, but I could have spent the day exploring the inviting woodsy trails.

Composed of "junk," Lakenen's art in its very existence speaks to capitalist materialism and environmental sustainability. About and even besides such themes, Lakenen has a lot to say, and much of it resonates with the ordinary American, especially in terms of economic frustrations. I could not help but notice that vehicles in the parking lot boasted bumper stickers of both "red" and "blue" American political extremes. But insofar as any visitors expressed outrage, it was along with the artist, not at him.

Lakenen is always adding new pieces. I was especially moved by his 2022 work on the war in Ukraine. Above and below, I share some images of that piece. I thank Tom Lakenen for sharing his art with visitors. All photos by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, with no claim to underlying sculptural works, presumed © Tom Lakenen.

Kyiv law school strives for normalcy

The dean of a Kyiv, Ukraine, law school spoke to American Bar Association (ABA) lawyers Thursday via Zoom about teaching law in a war zone.

I once had a class halted by a (false) fire alarm. That was a hassle.

I've never had a class disrupted by an alarm warning of an incoming hypersonic missile.

Dean Volodymyr Venher
Zoom, Feb. 15, 2024

Volodymyr Venher has. He's dean of the law school at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (KMA). Alarms happen once or twice a week, he told the ABA Seasoned Lawyers Interest Network. Russian attacks target civilian infrastructure.

"Sometimes it's really scary," Venher said.

Kyiv has a protective barrier that includes U.S. Patriot missiles, Venher said. But some Russian missiles get through. Two weeks ago, he said, a missile struck 300 meters from his apartment. He lives on the 11th floor, and the building shook, loosening bricks and concrete.

A KMA professor in biology was killed at her home in January.

Kyiv has it a little worse than Lviv, which sees fewer missile attacks, Dean Venher said. But Kyiv is "paradise," Venher said, compared with Kharkiv, where Russia has targeted universities.

This missile attack on a residential complex in 2023 killed five.
State Emergency Service of Ukraine via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0

Faculty and students at KMA Law carry on. Venher said that to endure the constant threat of war, it helps to maintain some semblance of normalcy. His law school ceased operation for only one month, he said, in March 2022. Classes resumed online in April and in hybrid form for the start of a new academic year in September 2022.

Naturally the school was worried about what enrollment would look like. But students wanted normalcy, too. Of an admitted class of 120 in fall 2022, 110 turned up in person to start the year, Venher said. There are occasional setbacks in loss of electricity and internet outages. The internet problem was solved when the school bought two Starlink subscriptions, Venher said.

KMA, 2009
Роман Днепр via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Law faculty try to continue both their teaching and research, Venher said. Many focus their work on what it will take to rebuild Ukraine after the war. Some focus on humanitarian needs. Some, including Venher, focus on the law of war and problems of accountability.

There is a mental toll. After missile strikes, one can see people's unhappiness, Venher said. Many people are afflicted with depression and survivor guilt.

"The human brain can adapt to anything," Venher said. "We hope for a better future."

KMA Law is keen to connect with partners abroad. Connecting electronically with the outside world helps to keep spirits up and maintains a status quo ante, a connectedness that would have been ordinary before the war. Venher said that the school welcomes even opportunities for law students to practice speaking English with their counterparts elsewhere. The school is keen too for faculty to find opportunities to present research and expertise.

The school also welcomes resources. A French benefactor recently donated a collection of law books, and the school could use more legal resources in English and French. Under the circumstances, the school cannot afford pricey legal database subscriptions, Venher explained. So students and researchers are more dependent than usual on hardcopy resources.

The school website provides guidance on financial contributions.

This story was updated on Feb. 19 at 9:30 a.m. when I confirmed the death of KMA Prof. Lyudmyla Shevtsova.

Russians travel in Asia despite, or because of, war

An Aeroflot plane awaits departure in Almaty, Kazakhstan,
earlier this month. EU and U.S. sanctions banned the airline in 2022.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A joke, belatedly to honor Ukraine Independence Day, August 24.

This summer, traveling in the Caucasus and Central Asia, I crossed a lot of borders. Sometimes back and across again.

I also met a lot of Russians. Most often, we exchanged pleasantries, as if there were nothing going on in the wider world. I didn't want to ask, and they seemed content not to talk about it.

I did meet a number of Russian men who had fled conscription. One fellow, late 20s I estimate, in a craft-beer bar in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, was especially warm company. We never talked directly about Putin's position on Ukraine. But he made clear that he believed Russia's war adventure is socially and economically disastrous for ordinary Russians at home.

Anyway, my friends and I grew accustomed to the questions asked by immigration officials with limited English.

Usually, the border officer asked,

"Occupation?"

"No," a Russian traveler answered.

"Just visiting."

Polisci papers track Ukraine war to Arctic, UN, internet

The war in Ukraine occasioned several papers at last weekend's annual meeting of the New England Political Science Association (NEPSA) in Mystic, Connecticut.

The NEPSA meeting offers an outstanding opportunity to preview cutting edge research presented in a low-stakes and supportive setting. Long-time NEPSA Executive Director Steven Lichtman, a professor of political science at Shippensburg University, is the brilliant maestro, setting the right collegial tone while supervising a rigorous selection process that guarantees top-shelf work.

Rotating location in New England states, NEPSA has become one of those regional conferences that is so highly regarded as to draw participation from across the country and from neighboring disciplines including law. The program is open to faculty and graduate students; law students of mine have participated in the past. This year the program opened two panels to undergraduate researchers. An extremely selective submission process yielded undergraduate presenters fully capable of going toe to toe with working scholars.

Prof. Steven Lichtman, 2016
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

There is scarcely a corner of politics and its study not being reshaped by the war in Ukraine. So it's no surprise that the war motivated many of the papers at this year's NEPSA. For all that I learned from myriad presenters, I thought I might share just a taste of takeaways related to the war.

★

A Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), Tim Hoheneder is thinking about the effect of the Ukraine war on Arctic politics. He explained that Russia assumed the rotating chair of the eight-state Arctic Council just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The United States said it would not participate on the council during the term of the Russian chair, which ends this summer, in 2023. The United States did say it would continue to work bilaterally with other states on Arctic issues.

Now what will become of the council is up in the air. Major issues affecting global security, involving nuclear proliferation, militarization, indigenous rights, and climate change, hang in uncertainty. Hoheneder's paper is "Science Diplomacy as a Neofunctionalist Tool in a Post-Ukrainian Invasion Arctic."

★

A master's student at UNH, Sarah DeSimone is considering how the U.N. Security Council might be made functional since the Russian veto has neutralized any meaningful response to the war. She explained both the long history of attempted Security Council reform and the recent history of failed resolutions on Ukraine. 

The only reform to the Security Council to gain traction has been the recent Liechtenstein "Veto Initiative," DeSimone explained. The initiative modestly would require that a council state explain a veto. DeSimone voiced support for an amalgam of proposals that have been floated before: First, the veto should be prohibited in matters of genocide, human rights violations, and serious violations of international law. Second, in conjunction with the prohibition, an oversight mechanism should preclude countries from voting on matters in which they are directly concerned. 

Without Security Council reform, DeSimone warned, lack of credibility will render the United Nations "obsolete." DeSimone's paper is "Reforms to the Security Council: Salvaging the Liberal World Order by Examining the Crisis in Ukraine."

★

A senior at Providence College and editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Cowl, Sarah McLaughlin spent 46 unenviable days immersed in a Russian social media image board, Dvach (Двач). Her findings are fascinating. She discovered a world of hyper-masculine Russian nationalists almost as disgusted with Vladimir Putin as they are with Ukraine. The community evinces nostalgia for a perceived past of conservative values and faults Putin for not living up to anti-western and anti-liberal values. The community opposes the war in Ukraine and the mobilization of Russians to support it, even as participants depict the idealized Russian man as strong, hardworking, and dutiful to country. Animals, especially pigs and monkeys, represent Ukrainians, women, and Putin in demeaning memes.

McLaughlin's paper is "Russia the Bear, Putin the Pig: Russian Nationalism and the Imagined Community of Memes."

 ✪

NEPSA's next annual meeting is slated for spring 2024 in Newport, R.I.  Look for a call for papers by September with a December 2023 deadline.

Weapon of Putin's war, anti-gay law jars NHL in US

The NHL Chicago Blackhawks Sunday will host an annual Pride Night, but the team will not be wearing warm-up pride jerseys as intended, for fear of jeopardizing the safety of Russian players and their families.

Yesterday I got to talk about the story with Sasha-Ann Simons of Reset on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. You can hear the segment online. HT @ ace producer Micah Yason.

WBEZ sports contributor Cheryl-Raye Stout related the facts and layered some nuance on the story. She expressed concern that Blackhawks staff had not consulted their three Russian players. In a Philadelphia Flyers case in January, a player refused to wear a pride jersey, citing his Russian Orthodox religion. It's unclear where the Russian Blackhawks stand.

No one disputes, though, that wearing the jerseys might be problematic for the players as a matter of Russian law and policy. In December 2022, Russia doubled down on the 10-year-old anti-gay law that was a source of controversy during the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 FIFA men's World Cup.

Under international pressure, Russia was permissive in enforcement of the law during those tournaments. But the failure of the International Olympic Committee and FIFA to reconcile their bold anti-discrimination rhetoric with host-country legal jeopardy for athletes and fans was a bad look and did no favors for human rights. More or less the same drama just played out again with the FIFA World Cup in the fall in Qatar, where homosexual acts are criminalized.

As enacted in 2013, the Russian law imposes civil fines on persons and business, and detention and deportation for foreigners, who engage in "propaganda" promoting same-sex relationships. Propaganda, though, really means any representation of social acceptability, including even the rainbow flag.

The law was enacted as a child protection measure and referred only to expression to children, though that scope encompassed mass media. In 2022, President Putin signed into law an amendment to broaden the law to cover expression to any person, child or adult, and to make plain that trans representations are prohibited, too.

Russian refugees march in New York in 2013.
Bosc d'Anjou via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Thus, a Russian athlete photographed wearing a pride jersey in America might face legal repercussions upon returning home. But the risk is really much greater than just civil fines, I explained to Simons on Reset. Informally, the law has signaled indifference by Russian authorities to brutal violence inflicted on LGBTQ persons, or even persons suspected of being LGBTQ, by vigilantes, if not law enforcement. An athlete abroad fairly might fear such reprisal upon returning home, or fear for her or his family meanwhile.

One thing I did not get to say on Reset, that I think is important, is that Putin's expansion of the anti-gay law is complementary of his war in Ukraine, because he perceives both as integral to preserving Russian identity against Western acculturation. Foreign Policy called the issues two sides of the same coin, and Putin has spoken of Western territorial aggression and social policy in the same breath. Doubling down on the anti-gay law in December was calculated as just another salvo in the war. That means, if Brittney Griner were not warning enough, that Putin is prepared to weaponize the law.

Robbie Rogers, 2013
Noah Salzman via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Our Reset discussion touched on other related matters, such as the Iranian side's protest at the Qatar World Cup, which I wrote about here in November and spoke about in Poland. I've written previously on the World Cup and sexual equality (with Jose Benavides), the World Cup and human rights, and football and development. 

A paucity of representation in top-flight world sport indicates that laws such as those in Russia and Qatar are hardly the only source of hostility toward LGBTQ athletes. In 2022, in the run-up to the men's World Cup, there was only one openly gay international footballer, and he didn't make the final cut for Australia's squad in Qatar. (There are openly lesbian players in women's world football.)

A good read in this area is Coming Out to Play (2014), an autobiography by Robbie Rogers, co-authored with Eric Marcus. An American and a Christian, Rogers played for Leeds United in the UK and for the U.S. Men's National Team. In 2013, he publicly disclosed that he is gay at the same time he announced his retirement from football, though he returned to the sport to play for four more years with the LA Galaxy in the U.S. MLS.

Program to examine Genocide Convention, Ukraine

The Jagiellonian Law Society has announced a follow-up seminar, on March 14, 2023, on the subject of Polish-Jewish attorney Rafał Lemkin, his role in creating the UN Genocide Convention, and the relevance of Lemkin and the convention to the war in Ukraine.

In a previous seminar in December, speakers detailed the historical context of Lemkin's life and work. A featured guest in the March program will be the Hon. Stephen J. Rapp, U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice from 2009 to 2015, and more recently a visiting fellow of practice at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Here is the program description and information about registration, free but required, CLE credit available, from the Jagiellonian Law Society.

We would like to invite you to another webinar on Raphael Lemkin, Genocide, and the Modern World, keynoted by Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp and featuring distinguished international faculty!

Rafał (or Raphael) Lemkin was a Polish Jewish lawyer best known for coining the term "genocide" and a key person behind the UN Genocide Convention. For that work, he was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. On the 50th anniversary of the Convention entering into force, Lemkin was honored by the UN Secretary-General as an inspiring example of moral engagement.

The upcoming seminar is the second part of the webinar series discussing the crime of "genocide" and its applicability to the current events in Ukraine and beyond. We will discuss whether Lemkin’s ideas are helpful in the prosecution of mass murders and other crimes aimed at eliminating or erasing entire groups of people. We will also address the likelihood of a successful prosecution of atrocities committed in Ukraine, be it as "war crimes," "crimes against humanity," or a "crime of aggression," via either international or national courts or via special tribunals.

The webinar is presented by the Jagiellonian Law Society with support from the Kosciuszko Foundation and co-sponsored by many organizations, among them ABA, NYSBA, UBA, NJSBA, etc.  It is free and open to the public. Spots are limited. Registration is required.

We are honored and proud to announce that Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp, the United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, will be our keynote speaker, and we are honored and delighted to present to you our most distinguished international Faculty:

Professor Agnieszka Bieńczyk-Missala, Professor in Political Sciences at the University of Warsaw

Prosecutor Thomas Hannis, former lead prosecutor, UN International Criminal Tribunal Yugoslavia

Professor A. Dirk Moses, Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York, CUNY

Professor Ana Filipa Vrdoljak, The UNESCO Chair in International Law and Cultural Heritage, Technical University, Sydney, Australia

Dr. Mykola Yurlov, International Humanitarian Law and Policy Advisor, member of the Council of the Ukrainian Bar Association in Kyiv

Moderator: Dr. Elizabeth M. Zechenter, Visiting Scholar, Emory University

Time: Mar 14, 2023, 12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

To Register 

We offer Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits. If interested, please contact Jagiellonian Law Society.

Ukraine Bar Association soldiers on

Lawyers have never stopped work in Ukraine, and the bar has been a catalyst in the development of democracy there, I learned today at a presentation of the Federalist Society.

Gvozdiy via Zoom from Kyiv today.

Via Zoom from Kyiv, Dr. Valentyn Gvozdiy, vice president of the Ukraine Bar Association, joined the Federalist Society International and National Security Practice Group to talk about the evolution of the profession in Ukraine and the role of lawyers in the present war. Dr. George Bogden interviewed Gvozdiy.

The talk came on the heels of news of the firing of a slate of top Ukrainian government officials in a corruption scandal. Gvozdiy addressed that developing story, too, in response to questions.

After the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union in 1991, the legislature adopted a "Law on the Bar," in 1992, Gvozdiy recounted. The enactment liberated the bar from "complete state control," but instituted only "quasi self-governance."

Ukraine had long looked to join the European community of nations, and work began promptly after independence to move the country in that direction. A key plank in the platform of European standards, Gvozdiy explained, is the existence of an independent bar. A 1995 resolution in the Council of Europe provided an incentive, recommending the organization of Ukrainian lawyers. The recommendation later became a precondition of the landmark Ukraine-EU association agreement in 2014.

Formal progress was long stalled by the very conflict that animates the present war. The fledgling Ukrainian state was weak, and political leaders were susceptible to corruption by easterly interests. Like popular opinion and the commercial sector, the developing bar leaned westward. By the time Donetsk Oblast-born Viktor Yanukovych claimed the presidency in 2010, to the dismay of the United States, the Russian-leaning leader was walking a tightrope that could not hold. Katya Gorchinskaya explained for Eurasianet:

The catalyst for the Yanukovych administration’s downfall was Ukraine’s stop-and-start efforts to sign an association agreement with the European Union. By late 2013, a majority of the population backed a draft agreement. But the pact to draw Ukraine closer to the EU placed Yanukovych in a tough situation. The treaty would open the way for substantial EU economic assistance and other perks, such as visa-free travel to Europe for Ukrainian citizens. But it would also mandate compliance with transparency and accountability provisions that gave Yanukovych and his associates reason to pause. In addition, Russia, the Ukrainian president’s main foreign patron, was steadfastly against seeing Ukraine take even the tiniest step toward Europe.

Amid the push and pull, Parliament coughed up landmark legislation in 2012 that established the Ukraine Bar Association as fully self-governing. Two years later, the Maidan Revolution deposed Yanukovych, Ukraine and the EU concluded the association agreement, and Russia invaded Crimea.

"'An obstacle is often a stepping stone,'" Gvozdiy said of Yanukovych, invoking a maxim usually attributed to U.S. Revolutionary War Colonel William Prescott. "The former president is not only not popular in Ukraine, he is the worst person we can imagine in our recent political history."

The recent ouster of top Ukrainian officials amid a corruption scandal has unsettled supporters of Ukraine with fear that the Zelensky Administration looks unstable. The news broke at a sensitive time, as the Biden Administration is navigating German reluctance to provide advanced tanks to Ukraine and skepticism over military investment in Ukraine from House Republicans. Meanwhile, Joanna Kakissis explained for NPR, Putin will seize on the news to bolster his characterization of Ukraine as a western puppet and threat to Russian security, incompetent in purported independence without Russian intervention.

In fact, the ouster is a good sign for Ukraine and should bolster western support, Gvozdiy said. Zelensky is signaling to Ukrainians and the world that contemporary Ukraine has "complete intolerance to the corruption."

Formerly, politicians robbed public coffers, and any court order to halt corruption was unenforceable, he said. The ouster now demonstrates Ukraine's remarkable progress in only a few years.

Yet in the present war, the bar is among democratic institutions fighting for survival, Gvozdiy said. The bar "would wither and absolutely disappear under Russian law."

Ukrainian advocates have "never stopped practicing law during the war," Gvozdiy said. Their work has included the defense of prisoners of war, if often to the chagrin of Ukrainians. (Other members of the legal community, such as prosecutors and judges, are busy too, for example, collecting evidence of war crimes. They are law-educated, but, unlike advocates, not members of the bar, as Ukraine follows a bar model in the European civil law tradition.)

Upholding the rule of law is the lawyer's constitutional obligation, Gvozdiy said. "We're not defending their crimes," he said of the POWs. "We defend their human rights."

One program attendee asked what American lawyers can do to help. Relayed by Bogden, the questioner expressed frustration that we don't have on-the-ground skills with obvious application, like other professionals have. 

I often have shared this frustration. We can't charge to the rescue like healthcare workers, nor mission like clergy. Even for pro bono projects at ABA conferences in the United States, I've picked up litter and organized dogs for vaccination, but I've never been asked to use my skills as a lawyer.

Gvozdiy's response was revealing, but not gratifying. Ukrainian lawyers need not just financial support, he said, but mental health support.

"We need professionals who can help us in a professional way to understand better how we need to behave and work and combine war with the practice of law," he explained. "We need training ... which will teach us how to react and how to reflect, how to communicate, how to live in peace with yourself and with all this pressure as a professional."

I'm not sure we're well stocked in the United States with experts in practicing law in a war zone. But when the conflict finally comes to an end in Ukraine, I know where we can find some.

In shadow of Ukraine war, webinar tells story of UN Genocide Convention, Polish-Jewish jurist Lemkin

The Jagiellonian Law Society and its President Elizabeth Zechenter, a visiting scholar at Emory, have put together another superb program prompted by the legal implications of the war in Ukraine.

"Lemkin, Genocide, and the Modern World" will run on Zoom in two parts, the first on December 1, 2022, at 12 noon U.S. EST, 1700 GMT, and the second in January, TBA. Free registration is required.

Here is a summary:

You are invited to a webinar on Raphael Lemkin, the UN Genocide Convention, and the likelihood of prosecution of the crime of genocide. Distinguished academics will discuss Lemkin and the Genocide Convention in light of the recent Russian aggression in Ukraine. Lemkin was Polish and Jewish and survived WWII. He had complex, divided loyalties and life experiences that influenced his work. He is often portrayed as a lone ranger, but he was effective in gaining support for his ideas, especially among women groups, who made the convention possible. Lemkin had a complex relationship with Stalin, which influenced his approach to the convention.

The Holocaust Encyclopedia has more on Raphael Lemkin.

Speakers include:

• Professor Donna Lee-Frieze, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, a genocide studies scholar specializing in memory and aftermath; 
• Professor Doug Irvin-Erickson, Carter School Director of the Genocide Prevention Program at George Mason University;
• Professor A. Dirk Moses, Australian historian teaching in political science at the City College of New York, CUNY;
• Professor Roman Kwiecien, Department of International Law at Jagiellonian University, arbitrator at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague) and the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration within the OSCE in Geneva;
• Professor Marcin Marcinko, Jagiellonian University Law School, chair of the National Commission for Dissemination of International Humanitarian Law at the Main Board of the Polish Red Cross, and co-organizer of the Polish School of International Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict.

The Jagiellonian Law Society hopes also to feature contributions from Ukrainian scholars, arrangements pending.

The program is a result of the collaboration of the Jagiellonian Law Society with support from the International Human Rights and Women Interest Committees of the American Bar Association; the New York State Bar, New York City Bar, and New Jersey Bar; the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; and the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University.

Again, registration is free.

As Jacoby talk commemorates Kristallnacht, Ukraine recurs in historical record of flights from oppression

An upcoming talk on Kristallnacht, a recent experience in the Paraguayan Chaco, and the ongoing war in Ukraine have me thinking lately about cultural and religious freedom.

In commemoration of Kristallnacht, award-winning Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby will speak at the S. Joseph Solomon Synagogue of the Maimonides School in Brookline, Massachusetts, on Sunday at 7 p.m. The talk will be livestreamed.

Jacoby's father was the sole survivor of his family at Auschwitz. 

"He didn’t hate God for what he had lost and didn’t abandon the Judaism in which he had been reared," Jacoby wrote of his father. "On the contrary, he deepened it with observance, study, and prayer."

Last week I had the privilege of visiting Mennonite communities in the Chaco region of Paraguay. Mennonites arrived in Paraguay in three waves, circa 1875, 1930-32, and 1947. Each time, they sought refuge from regimes that wished to extinguish their religious freedom, if not their lives.

Restored "Koloniehaus" at Filadelfia, Paraguay
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

On a world map at the Fernheim Colony House in Filadelfia, I was struck in particular by one remarkable line tracing Mennonite migration. The journey ran eastward from Ukraine, then Austria-Hungary, to Siberia in 1908; then further east to China, turning south to Indonesia in 1927; then turning back westward across the Indian Ocean and isthmus of Suez, to Europe; and at last on to Paraguay to join the end of the second migration there in 1932.

Besides the astounding odyssey it represented, the line resonated with me both because of the current conflict in Ukraine and because my own grandfather's Jewish family fled what is today western Ukraine at about the same time.

Map at the Filadelfia Mennonite Museum,
similar to the one at the Colony House
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
with no claim to underlying work

As has been widely reported, one Russian strategy in the present war in Ukraine is the forced relocation of Ukrainians, especially children, to Russia, whether to be given passports and politically and culturally Russified, or, in the case of dissenters and combatants, to be condemned and disappeared in remote parts. The strategy is not new.  Just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, I wrote about the forced relocation of Polish ethnic minorities, such as the Lemkos, from western Poland to Soviet Russia in 1947.

The parallels are not coincidental.  The Mennonites fled increasingly unstable Austria-Hungary for Russia before the outbreak of World War I. Then, scarcely a decade after the Russian Revolution, rising nationalism rendered even Siberia inhospitable, prompting the exodus of the late 1920s. After World War II, Mennonites remaining in an eastern Germany about to be gifted to the Soviet Union departed in another migratory wave, in 1947. They were not alone; justifiably afeard Christians of other sects departed as well.

Engrossed in the map in Paraguay, I muttered something unkind about Putin. Standing nearby, Fernheim archivist Gundolf Niebuhr said quietly, "History repeats itself."

Niebuhr and I talked about the complex relationship of the contemporary Mennonite Paraguayans with their Latino and indigenous neighbors.  They work closely together, literally, on farms, in schools, and in governance.

But the legacy of repeatedly fleeing oppression, Niebuhr told me, is that even in prosperous and peaceful times, people are dogged by a lurking anxiety over the inevitable impermanence of the idyll. To look around, the Mennonites and their partners have defined the unique cultural identity of the human Chaco. Yet are the Mennonites still only visitors? Will the day come when Asunción says, assimilate, or else? And it will be time to move on again.

Struggle and perseverance are enduring themes in Jewish identity. The former seems inescapable, as expressions of antisemitism abound. Hate simmers now in the Twitter scandals of Kyrie Irving and Kanye West.  Last week, mourners marked the fourth anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack. Yet the Jewish tradition teaches that anxiety is counter-productive. God will light the way, as always he has. That seems to have been the remarkable faith walk of Jeff Jacoby's father. Still, there are scarce few among us who do not struggle to eschew fears and doubts.

The Jewish people have a strong claim to unrivaled familiarity with persecution. But assimilation and expulsion of the other seems well ingrained in the human mode of operation, regardless of the nature of the otherness. An elder of my Christian church reminded me yesterday that being Christian is not supposed to be easy. The "Good News" might offer salvation, but leisure and luxury are not part of the methodology, at least not in this life.

I live without fear of being alienated in, or exiled from the only home I know. That is a blessing. All of us possessed of that blessing owe open hearts to anyone who loses it, whether in Pittsburgh, Paraguay, or Ukraine.