Light at the End of the Tunnel? - A "Mental Health Emergency" in Lesbos

A disturbing recent report from Medecins sans Frontieres has called for an emergency evacuation of vulnerable individuals from the perilously overcrowded Moria refugee camp on  Lesbos. The reason for this desperate plea is the dramatic increase in self-harm and suicide rates amongst the ‘trapped’ population of the camp, many of whom are being held indefinitely on the island waiting to be given asylum in one of the EU’s member states. As time wears on, the hopes that this passage will be granted are diminishing.

MSF reports that nearly a quarter of the children (aged between 6 and 18) they observed between February and June this year had self-harmed, attempted suicide or had thought about committing suicide. Others were suffering from panic attacks, anxiety, nightmares or had voluntarily become mute. In a separate report from Moria published in July this year, MSF spoke to Kasim al Salih, who had fled Syria with his family a year prior to the interview for a chance of a better life away from Assad’s barrel bombs. Despite risking everything to get to safety, his treatment in Moria and the lack of support from the European community prompted him to tell MSF “I wish I had stayed in Syria and died”. With 1,500 new refugees arriving on Lesbos in the first two weeks of September alone, the hopelessness of Moria has led MSF to declare a “mental health emergency”.

With around 15 to 18 MSF referrals a week for cases of acute mental health problems in Moria, including in children, something must be done to end this suffering. The period of 1^st January to 22^nd April this year saw 18,939 refugees arrive in Europe via the Mediterranean routes, and 570 die in the process, according to IOM. These people are predominantly fleeing conflict in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, the DRC and Sudan, and are risking their lives to make it to the safety of Europe. Once here they are subject to further violence, dangerously overcrowded living conditions, rampant disease and a sense of hopelessness. As Greece argues that it is carrying the greatest “weight” of the refugee crisis, EU member states squabble over how best to respond, or rather whose responsibility it is to do so. Meanwhile, people die.

Part of the reason that it is so difficult for the refugees at Moria to leave the camp is the unwillingness of the rest of Europe to accept their presence within our borders. The wave of anti-immigrant fervour that shapes attitudes towards the refugee crisis continues to grip much of the Union, with nationalist parties gaining political support in Sweden, Germany, Poland and other states. Hungary’s Viktor Orban has been particularly vocal in passing anti-immigration laws and threatening a backlash against EU immigration initiatives. On the 10^th of September it was announced that the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, would be sending teams to Italy and Austria to investigate “alarming” anti-migrant violence in the countries. In Czechia and Slovenia, anti-migrant militias have prompted security fears. In the UK, 58% of people would like to see immigration levels reduced, though anti-migrant, and anti-refugee, views appear to have softened since the Brexit referendum. 

But this negative view of refugees (and immigrants more broadly) is largely unfounded. Reuters UK reported in 2015 that despite claims across Germany that increased immigration from Syria and Eastern Europe was responsible for rising crime in the country, young males from those countries were in fact less likely to commit crime than their German counterparts. A 2013 LSE study found much the same for immigration and crime rates in the UK, even suggesting that increased crime rates in high-migration areas were attributable to crimes committed against the migrants, not by them. In relation to the recent rise in crime in Germany following the influx of refugees in 2015, the BBC reports that whilst the new arrivals do account for a higher percentage of crime than their representation in the population, this is largely attributable to the demographics of the refugees in question. Young, poor, disenfranchised males are often more likely to commit crimes than other sectors of society. In addition, much of this increase in crime was perpetrated against other refugees, not the German population. Such reports match those of MSF regarding violence, theft, sexual assault and other crimes in the camps in Lesbos. Again, in desperate situations crime is more likely to occur, and overwhelmingly it is the victims of the societal inequalities that lead to crime that also become the victims of the crime itself.

Refugees can benefit their new host societies as well. You can read endless stories of successful refugee integration on the UNHCR’s stories page. Immigration more widely can, and does, (contrary to what many tabloid newspapers in the UK might suggest) benefit the economy. It promotes a greater understanding of the world and opens up minds to new ideas, which is something that I believe we should value greatly. More importantly than all of this, and something that transcends the argument over whether immigration and the acceptance of refugees is a help or a hindrance to us as European citizens, is a simple fact: these refugees are human. They are just like us.

And they are dying. Not those that stayed behind in the warzones that were once their homes. Not those that drowned in the deadly Mediterranean crossing trying to reach our shores. Not even those that made it to Europe but were struck down by illness in the camps that were supposed to only be temporary. They are dying because they think they have nothing left to live for. They are dying because they are killing themselves, because they see no end to the misery they have been subjected to through no fault of their own. They are dying by their own hands, after doing the bravest thing imaginable. They are dying because we are failing them.

Find out more about MSF’s work in Lesbos here.

The Bar Stool Preachers - DIY Punk with a Heart

It’s a small achievement, but I like to think that in general I know more about punk music than my mum. However, she made me question that assumption a few weeks ago when she introduced me to a new Brighton-based band called The Barstool Preachers. Blending angsty politically-charged anthems with bouncy ska tunes reminiscent of ‘90s California bands such as Operation Ivy and Rancid, The Barstool Preachers are quickly becoming one of my favourite new bands. And, judging by the number of records and t-shirts they are sending off through the post office my mum works in, I’m not alone.

Their new album, Grazie Governo, is a 13-song powerhouse that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go until it’s done with you. Never letting energy levels drop, Grazie Governo delivers both scathing political commentary on angry songs like DLTDHYOTWO (a title that took me a shamefully long time to decipher, despite listening to the lyrics repeatedly), Warchief, and Grazie Governo alongside rock radio-friendly hits like Choose My Friends (with a great guest appearance from The Interrupters’ Aimee Interrupter). This blend ensures that the album never starts to sound preachy (ironically) or self-important; this is still just a group of guys singing from the heart about stuff that matters to them and having some fun with it.

The Preachers are at their strongest when they tackle topics closer to the heart, and the tortured love songs dotted throughout Grazie Governo are the ones that have kept me coming back. Songs like 2:22, (8.6 days) All the Broken Hearts, and Raced through Berlin – my personal favourite song on the album – tell the whiskey-soaked tales of against-all-odds love that manage to be at-times melancholic but also mostly hopeful. The album works because of this dynamic. The energy levels are never allowed to drop throughout the 45-minute run-time and this leaves the songs that could otherwise be depressing instead feeling impassioned and defiant.

The lyrics, the musicianship, and the feel of the album is desperate and relentless, and in that way, it engages the listener throughout. Personally, I have not heard an album that has kept me enthralled the way Grazie Governo has in a long time. It captures the attitude and feel of the old-guard punk and ska groups (and the nod to Madness in the lyrics to All the Broken Hearts – “she doesn’t know why she likes him, she says it must be love” – hint at this inspiration) with a youthful exuberance that heightens the intensity driving the record.

You can tell that this album was a labour of love by a group doing it all on their own. This is DIY, and that passion shines through. You get the feeling that they would still be doing this even if nobody was listening. Fortunately, for us as much as for them, more and more people are. The success of Grazie Governo and their excellent live shows will undoubtedly keep their profile growing and put them firmly on the map as a band to watch out for. Here’s hoping that as they grow they keep that relentless energy pushing them forward.

On top of this, my mum says they’re really nice people too. So make sure to check out the video for All the Broken Hearts here and give Grazie Governo a listen. You won’t regret it.

From Complicity to Consent - The Role of Myanmar's Civilian Government in the Rohingya Crisis

In November last year, at the height of the Rohingya exodus from Myanmar, I wrote a piece for the Post-Conflict Research Center examining Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in the military’s ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State. In it, I argued that whilst she absolutely deserved international condemnation for her refusal to speak out against the actions of the military, she in fact had little power to prevent General Min Aung Hlaing from continuing his violent crackdown. Myanmar’s military is a force that is both independent of the civilian government, and extremely influential in the politics of the country. Suu Kyi’s complicity in what is now being referred to as a genocide by the United Nations was, and is, reprehensible, but until now she has not actively contributed to the suffering of the Rohingya, merely stood by and allowed it to happen.

However, on September 3^rd 2018, two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were sentenced to seven years imprisonment for their role in uncovering a massacre of 10 Rohingya men by the Myanmar military and Buddhist villagers in September 2017. They were convicted for a supposed breach of a colonial-era law, the Official Secrets Act, despite the fact that a key witness (and member of Myanmar’s police force) testified that senior police chiefs had in fact framed the defendants in order to suppress the story. The decision was immediately condemned as a brazen attempt to discredit and suppress journalism critical of the regime, with several civil society organisations from Myanmar taking to Twitter to declare the case “neither free nor fair and… completely manipulated”.

For Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government, this arguably marks a step away from disinterested accomplice in the anti-Rohingya violence and into the realm of explicit supporter. As Ye Htut, a spokesperson for a previous administration, told Reuters: “If you arrest and punish the journalists who are doing their job in Rakhine it means you have something to hide”. In response, Deputy Information Minister Aung Hla Tun told the same journalist that the government was simply following the rules the law had laid out, and that they were aware that these were unfair and were trying to change them. However, this statement ignores the fact that the Official Secrets Act is often left unenforced due to its status as an out-of-date law that no longer applies to the modern situation in Myanmar. Rather, Suu Kyi’s government, at first a supporter of press freedoms, has gradually taken steps to discredit the media throughout her tenure as de facto leader of the country.

Around 20 journalists were prosecuted in 2017 under dubious ‘defamation laws’ and one US official claims that when he confronted Suu Kyi about the now-convicted Reuters journalists when they were awaiting trial, she angrily referred to them as “traitors”. Meanwhile, she has also vehemently denied other reports of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine as “fake news”, at the same time that evidence has emerged that the Myanmar military has released faked images of Rohinyga refugees in a “sinister re-write of history”. Suu Kyi denounces the free press whilst the military cover up their crimes. As a result, support for both the civilian and military arms of the government remains relatively strong in Myanmar.

Any aspiring genocidaire will tell you that in order to get away with murder you must first gain the support of the people by moulding them to conform to your agenda. A free press prevents the party line from becoming the only line, and that is why it is instrumental in securing a healthy democratic system. Without it, alternative opinions melt away and all that is left is the voice that silenced the others. In Myanmar’s case, this is the voice of the military. Suu Kyi continues to be outside of the decision-making element within the military brass – Min Aung Hlaing remains the architect of one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time – but she is an integral, and increasingly important, cog in a machine that allows the killing to continue.

On August 21^st of this year, Suu Kyi asserted that the biggest threat to Rakhine state remained terrorism, and that violent Rohingya factions posed a major threat not just to Myanmar but to the region. The implication here is that the military crackdown in Rakhine is not only necessary but should be actively encouraged. In the August 25^th 2017 militia attacks on police checkpoints in Rakhine that sparked the military response and the start of the crisis, around 71 people were killed. The suspected figure of 43,000 dead Rohingya, and well over 1 million displaced, suggests either an overreaction on the scale of absurdity, or a planned-out military operation for which Aung Hlaing and the military brass simply needed an excuse.

Meanwhile, clearing operations in Rakhine continue as 48 investment projects in the state, many backed with Chinese and Indian money, are given the green-light. Despite international condemnation, both the Indian and Chinese governments continue to support Myanmar’s stance on the Rohingya ‘terrorists’ in Rakhine.

Whatever the reasons for the violence perpetrated against the Rohingya population, the Myanmar military now undoubtedly has the blood of thousands of innocent civilians on its hands. No longer content simply to bury her head in the sand, Aung San Suu Kyi instead has doubled down on her support for the military operations and hardened her rhetoric against the Rohingya. This is a very slippery slope and the bottom is a long way down. As the UN calls for military generals in Myanmar to be summoned to the International Criminal Court to face charges of genocide, Suu Kyi, the peace icon and Nobel Laureate, plants herself firmly on the wrong side of history.

Slave: The Dark Spectre of the Modern Sex Trade

Slave tells the true story of “Anna”, a Romanian girl who was snatched off the streets of London in 2011 and forced into the darkest corners of Ireland to work as an unwilling prostitute for her captors. The book is a difficult, often harrowing, read that reveals some of the inner workings of a global enterprise, the international sex trade, as seen from the perspective of one of its innumerable victims. As Anna herself explains, she was the product of the trade, the victim of the crime, and – in the eyes of many of the ‘respectable’, naive public – a complicit criminal in an extremely lucrative business.

How does one become a victim of human trafficking? In Anna’s words, “they took me because I would not be missed”. Women, and men, like Anna are targeted for trafficking because they can be disappeared without drawing attention from authorities or friends or family members that might raise the alarm. A few carefully constructed Facebook status’ supposedly from the victim, a new name (or several new names), a new country, and enough beatings to break the person’s will to fight, and one more individual has simply ceased to exist. Now they can be taken anywhere, made to do anything, bought and sold on the black market and forced to work constantly until their bodies are bruised and beaten enough that they are no longer desirable to the hardworking, respectable family men – the ‘assholes’ as Anna refers to them – who frequent the underground brothels present in major cities all over the world. If, after all that, they wind up dead then nobody investigates because they never existed anyway.

The secrecy of this world allows the cogs to keep turning in a global machine. This is no small enterprise; the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in 2012 that human trafficking accounted for around $32 billion in the shadow economy every year. This is a conservative estimate, with the International Labour Organisation placing the global forced labour economy at $150 billion. Although this includes those trafficked for labour, child trafficking, and the organ trade, by far the most lucrative business for traffickers is sex. Anna tells in Slave of how she was personally valued at £30,000 when she was first taken. By the end of her captivity her traffickers, Ilie Ionut and Ancuta Schwarz, considered her their “million-pound girl”. The true numbers that traffickers and pimps make per victim will never be known, but it is clear that through systematic abuse, torture and manipulation, they are making a killing.

Following Anna’s ordeal, Northern Ireland passed the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act, Europe’s strictest anti-trafficking law, which not only tightened existing laws on traffickers but also introduced a new offence that made it illegal to pay for sexual services. Now the “assholes” would be criminals too. The Act was controversial at the time of its inception, with police arguing it would be impossible to enforce, and some sex workers arguing that it would only force the trade further underground and make things more dangerous for them. Anna supports the Act, arguing that criminalising those who pay for sex may drive them away from the trade. If the demand dries up and the business becomes less lucrative, maybe the traffickers will have to find new ways to make their money.  

Again, due to the immense secrecy of the business it is difficult to tell how successful the Act has been since it was passed in 2015. In 2017 the National Crime Agency reported that modern slavery was a “significant problem” for Northern Ireland. However, as Anna’s story demonstrates, the nature of modern slavery is international. The issue may simply be more visible in Northern Ireland due to its stricter laws. The National Crime Agency also warns that human trafficking affects every major city in the UK, and the true scale of the industry continues to elude the authorities.

The uncomfortable truth of the sex trade is that it is only as lucrative as the level of demand allows. And the level of demand is extremely high. Some estimates suggest that as many as one in ten men in the UK have paid for sex at least once. In the US, this figure rises to around 15-20% of men. In the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal and regulated, the figure also hovers between 13 and 22% of men. This would suggest that laws governing prostitution do not significantly alter the percentage of men who are willing to pay for sex. As was argued in Northern Ireland, this is perhaps because laws that make prostitution illegal criminalise the sex worker, not the customer. Arguments surrounding the legalisation of prostitution argue that a legal and regulated system can help to protect the women and men engaged in sex work, but as Anna argues, this does nothing to protect those who are trafficked. Instead, some activists are now calling for a new change to prostitution laws, where the selling of sex is legalised but buying it is illegal. Criminalise the trafficker and the buyer, not the seller. This arguably would reduce demand and therefore dismantle the shadow economy built around the trade.

Debates around the best ways to combat the modern sex trade will continue, and the nature of the industry means facts, figures, and evidence will always be hard to come by. The sex trade makes us uncomfortable, and that is why it has been able to operate in the darkness for so long. It is this darkness that allows girls like Anna to be disappeared in order to be used as a slave for people in positions of power, whose actions may never be revealed. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of men living their lives today who paid to use Anna, who contributed to her trauma, and who will never be forced to face up to that.

Modern slavery thrives because ordinary people do not want to discuss it. It is a dark and scary world, and it should be brought into the light. Only then can we begin to make a change.

He Said, She Said: Corbyn and the Media

Jeremy Corbyn has had a difficult few weeks as far as his media image is concerned. Firstly, following the emergence of evidence that he was present at a wreath-laying event in Tunisia that supposedly (if you choose to believe certain sources) commemorated the terrorists responsible for the Munich massacre (he claims that he was present to commemorate Palestinian victims of Israeli violence and to promote dialogue as a path for peace, not to memorialise the Munich attackers), he was then dogged by reporters seeking to confirm or disprove his prejudices, and a barrage of news articles were published claiming he was present, he wasn’t, he laid a wreath, he didn’t lay a wreath, the ceremony was to commemorate the Munich attackers, the memorial to the attackers just happened to be nearby, Corbyn’s stance on Israeli aggression against Palestinians is anti-Semitic, it isn’t, he should resign, he shouldn’t, and so on. Throughout it all, Corbyn flopped and floundered and seemed largely unable to cope with the media storm that had descended upon him. Then shortly afterwards, he was found apparently unable to answer a simple question put to him by Channel 4 reporters regarding whether or not he thought the UK would be better off outside the EU.

This is just the latest trauma in a long and rocky relationship between Corbyn and the media. A 2016 report by LSE asserts that “Jeremy Corbyn was represented unfairly by the British press through a process of vilification that went well beyond the normal limits of fair debate and disagreement in a democracy”. The report goes on to suggest that Corbyn was delegitimised by the media through personal attacks and systematic ridicule (p12). A report from Loughborough University showed that negative press coverage of the Labour Party far outweighed positive in the run-up to the 2017 general election (figures 3.1, 3.2, 3.3). Interestingly, the same report revealed that all newspapers, regardless of political leaning, devoted more time to attacking their opponents than to supporting those they endorsed. You could therefore perhaps forgive Corbyn for his comments made on the 23^rd August on Twitter that whilst a free press is essential for democracy, “much of [the UK’s] press is not free at all”.

His argument, that press freedom in the UK is inhibited by it’s ties to business and the state, certainly holds weight. For example, a 2015 report by the Media Reform Coalition found that just two companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp UK and the Daily Mail Group, account for nearly 60% of newspaper circulation in the UK. At the local news level, the 3 largest distributors have a 52% share of circulation. On television, Murdoch again looms large, with Sky (of which Murdoch owns 39.1%) dominating the news programming. It is undoubtable that corporate interests shape what stories make the headlines and it is certainly possible for those in power to push agendas that suit their needs. The dominance of a few news corporations in the UK has enabled outlets to be more aggressive in their campaigning than in other European countries, and the tabloid press in particular is often portrayed as amongst the most unforgiving in the world.

Corbyn’s media treatment may have been unfair, but his response has also raised eyebrows. In his speech in Edinburgh on the 23^rd August he evoked the now unanimous idea of “fake news” in his call for media reform. Whilst this was used to point towards the issues of the “billionaire domination” of the media, and the rapidly-declining trust in respected institutions like the BBC, it also, quite clearly, draws comparison to Donald Trump’s attacks on mainstream media that fails to support his agenda. Almost immediately The Independent responded to Corbyn’s speech saying effectively that. Somewhat ironically, the use of the phrase “fake news”, constructed to discredit the media, has in this instance been used by the media to discredit Corbyn’s argument.

Whether you agree with Corbyn’s stance on media freedoms or not, the case of his treatment and response raise important questions about the role and responsibility of journalists globally. Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive diatribes against the media are harmful to a free press and a threat to democracy. Globally, press freedoms are shrinking, and this is a very scary trend that threatens peace and stability everywhere. But the flipside of this is that the media should take responsibility for what they publish. Due to declining sales of newspapers, a free, corporate press is increasingly consolidating into larger entities in order to stay afloat. It is becoming the only way to survive – and turn a profit – in the media. When subject to corporate interests and/or reliant on advertising revenue, a free press isn’t always that free. Social media, far easier and cheaper to produce, comes with even less oversight than the mainstream media. It’s growing influence fuels the phenomenon of “fake news”, both imagined and real.

Corbyn is right that journalistic freedoms should be protected. He is also right that the current state of the media in the UK is poor. But this debate goes beyond him. If anything, his performance in responding to the anti-Semitism accusations and his inability to respond to questions regarding his personal opinions on Brexit simply reinforce that he, like any other politician, should not be relied upon to tell the truth. Telling the truth is the job of the journalists. It seems that somewhere along the line that sentiment has been lost. Personal attacks, unfair coverage, click-bait headlines and a lack of real, investigative journalism only make it easier for the enemies of the free press to attack it.

It is tempting to write the story you want to write, not the one that is true. This is also true of the media that we consume. We accept what we agree with and attack what we do not. But this makes political discourse almost impossible. Corbyn is not a terrorist-sympathising communist. Nor is he a benevolent saviour of the poor and disadvantaged. He is a political leader with an agenda that you may or may not support. We as the public are owed the right to make our own mind up about that by knowing his policies and his actions.

The free media should do its best to ensure it is protected against these claims that it cannot be trusted. It is too valuable to be lost.

Weathering the storm? – Disaster Mitigation and Political Instability in Bangladesh

It has now been a year since a violent military crackdown in Rakhine state displaced over 1 million Rohingya people from Myanmar and left many in perilous circumstances across the border in Bangladesh. The mass influx of refugees into Cox’s Bazar and surrounding areas left humanitarian agencies deeply concerned about the potential chaos resulting from this year’s monsoon and cyclone seasons (something I detailed in this blog post). However, at a UNHCR press briefing on the 10^th August, the disaster-mitigation efforts of the first-responders in Bangladesh were praised, with the acknowledgement that many of the camps had weathered the storms despite 2018 being one of the heaviest monsoon seasons in recent years (the average rainfall for July is 600mm, but this year has seen over 1,000mm, with 463mm falling on the 25^th of July alone).

Despite the relative success of mitigation efforts, which undoubtedly prevented a far larger humanitarian crisis, the UNHCR briefing reported that “since 11 May, an estimated 49,000 refugees [have been] affected by adverse weather – more than 25,000 by strong winds and storms, over 15,000 have been affected by landslides, another 5,400 by flooding.” And life is not easy for those still living in the camps. Kutupalong, now the world’s largest refugee camp, has suffered from landslides in the wake of the overpowering monsoon rains, and the use of kerosene to light water-damaged firewood for cooking is having adverse health effects on many families. The World Food Programme and others are providing food to many in Kutupalong, but many more are forced to go hungry. The reaction of the humanitarian responders in Bangladesh has been exemplary and many lives have been saved but needs remain dire and great uncertainty remains over the heads of the Rohingya.

A recent trip to Myanmar from Bangladeshi foreign minister Mahmood Ali, in which he visited the conflict-ravaged Rakhine state, ended without a decision on the process for repatriation of refugees. Back in November Bangladesh and Myanmar nominally agreed to Rohingya repatriation, but the process has been delayed due to international concerns that it is not yet safe for the refugees to return home. Despite the assertions of many of the Rohingya that they do want not want to remain in Bangladesh and would prefer to go home, the threat that the Myanmar government poses to them is still a largely unaddressed concern. In a rare public appearance on the 8^th of August, Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and disgraced Nobel laureate, danced around the repatriation issue and made no clear promises that steps were being made to move the process forward.

Meanwhile, the political situation in Bangladesh appears to be rapidly deteriorating. On the 29^th July 2018 two schoolchildren were killed by a bus on the notoriously dangerous streets of Dhaka, the country’s capital, sparking protests over the lack of road safety laws in the country. Police responded to these protests with teargas and rubber bullets, and a crackdown on journalists reporting on the violence followed. This stifling of press freedoms and violent response to what was an otherwise peaceful protest is the latest move to have prompted suggestions that the country’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is moving towards an authoritarian leadership.

Hasina, who has led the country since 2009, has progressively eroded press freedoms in a move that the BBC claims could threaten Bangladesh’s fragile democracy. The Rohingya crisis has widened political divisions in Bangladesh, with the pressure of the mass influx of people straining the country’s resources and threatening stability particularly in the disaster-affected regions around Cox’s Bazar. This turmoil has allowed Hasina to consolidate her power ostensibly as part of the crisis response, and the ramifications of this remain to be seen. What is sure is that Bangladesh appears to be drifting towards authoritarianism at a time of incredible uncertainty. As the international community condemns Aung San Suu Kyi for Myanmar’s military actions against the Rohingya, Hasina finds herself under pressure from India, who support Myanmar, to stay silent on the issue. Meanwhile, increasingly vocal factions in her opposition are calling for a condemnation of Myanmar and Suu Kyi, with some Islamist elements in Bangladesh threatening to wage Jihad against Myanmar if violence in Rakhine continues.

This context of rising political tension, stifling of press freedoms and the violent reaction to a peaceful protest from students all paint a very uncertain picture of the future of Bangladesh. The Rohingya influx has had a part to play in destabilising what was already a fragile democracy, and the failure of the Myanmar government and the international community to hold anybody to account for the ethnic cleansing that continues in Rakhine state means that the Rohingya remain isolated and displaced in an increasingly unstable region. The humanitarian response to prepare for the monsoon season has been a success, but the Rohingya people remain in a deeply fragile position.

The Real Life Exorcist: Good vs Evil, Or A Search for Meaning?

The other night I made the mistake of watching The Devil and Father Amorth alone and just before going to bed. The documentary, made by The Exorcist director William Friedkin, follows a real-life exorcism that took place just outside of Rome in the summer of 2016. The film itself, whilst interesting, leaned towards embellishment and shock tactics and should certainly be taken with a pinch of salt. However, Friedkin’s interviews with neuroscientists and psychiatric professionals regarding the tape of the real exorcism warrant discussion, particularly in the light of the recent increasing demand for exorcisms across the western world.

At the beginning of the documentary, Friedkin makes the claim that 500,000 exorcisms are carried out every year in Italy. This is supported by reports that the Vatican is now training exorcists at a greater rate than ever before. In the last decade, the number of trained exorcists in the US has quadrupled from 12 to 50 in an attempt to keep up with demand. In the UK, claims of enforced exorcisms have left people traumatised. This all sounds like Middle Ages witchcraft, but these incidents have all occurred since 2015. The devil is getting busier.

A fascinating book by Jennifer Percy, Demon Camp: A Soldier’s Exorcism details a Christian camp in Georgia that ‘rehabilitates’ US veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through exorcising their demons from them. Many claim that the priests worked miracles. The subject of the book, Caleb, was suicidal and suffering with severe PTSD upon his return from Afghanistan, but it was a dark presence that he felt following his every move that eventually led him to an exorcism. In a bid to rid himself of the ‘Black Thing’, he turned to the priests, and from them he received some respite.

The parallels between demonic possession and mental illness are numerous (consider Caleb’s ‘Black Thing’ and it’s similarity to Winston Churchill’s description of his depression as the ‘Black Dog’ that followed him). Many of the symptoms of demonic possession are also associated with PTSD; watching Cristina’s (the subject of Father Amorth’s exorcism attempt) violent reactions to her exorcism could be compared to the panicked responses to trigger events in sufferers of PTSD – the soldier who hits the ground when a firework explodes behind them – and her claim to not remember the ritual also shares similarities with the experience of PTSD episodes. In Friedkin’s film, a psychiatrist compares Cristina’s reactions to those of patients suffering with delirium and hallucinations.

As someone with an interest in psychology it is easy to reduce stories of demonic possession to something I better understand; mental illness. However, as Friedkin’s interviews with neuroscientists and psychiatrists highlight, it is not always possible for science to explain an individual’s behaviour. There are things in the mind that we simply do not understand. The problem with people, though, is that we do not like what we cannot explain.  Humans are hardwired to find meaning in everything, regardless of whether it is there or not. That is why we might lay awake at night overthinking a single sentence that someone said to us in passing that day – what did they mean, why would they say it like that? It is why we find patterns and pictures in the clouds that pass overhead. Everything has a reason. That much we believe.

But sometimes we cannot find that reason, and that scares the hell out of us. Friedkin introduces Father Amorth by stating that his first fight against evil came as a young man, when he joined the resistance against Mussolini’s fascist regime. As soldiers, revolutionaries, and Hollywood movies will tell you, having something to fight for, or against, will give life meaning. It makes what you are doing worthwhile. Where we stumble is where we do not know what it is that we are fighting. As poor, possessed Cristina put it when describing her desire to take part in her ninth exorcism (as the previous eight had been unsuccessful): “Father Amorth was funny and ironic. He didn’t scare me. He helped me to understand what was happening to me.” Her ‘spiritual illness’ that had resulted in her being unable to keep a job and struggling to maintain relationships now had a diagnosis, and the exorcisms were her treatment. So far they had not worked, but now she had a potential cure she could try.

In the room where the exorcism took place, surrounded by her family and friends, listening to the authoritative words of Father Amorth and feeling the effects of the Rite on the demon inside her, Cristina was fighting her affliction. Her family were fighting it with her. As one psychiatrist interviewed after watching the video put it, together they created a ‘shared meaning’ of the events that unfolded. It gave both Cristina and her family hope that she would be cured. They believed in its effectiveness. Even in psychiatric therapy, before treatment can work the patient must want help, and then they must believe that it will be effective. The patient must be open to the suggestions of the therapist and willing to engage with the process in order for progress to be made. If you believe in it, it will work.

For individuals like Cristina who are suffering and have no diagnosis an exorcism provides context for their affliction. For soldiers like Caleb, who have experienced the most horrific things and are struggling to deal with the psychological consequences of that, a demon makes a good scapegoat. If you know what the problem is you can fight against it, even if that problem is the devil. In an uncertain and unstable world, at a time where we are only just beginning to understand the myriad reasons why we think, act, and feel the way we do, exorcism, as scary as it might be, can be a comfort to some people who need answers. Or maybe that is just what I’m telling myself so I can sleep at night...