Off the Tangent Issue 0.5 - The Pilot
Being Human “Shadows make the best conversation.”
Tracks Laila Sumpton This morning I used a toothbrush to scrub Bosnian mud off my jazz shoes more used to polished wood they had wrinkled under this gritty mask
who has a grenade on her t-shirt drawn with skill in felt-tip pen. Her friends have written names and hearts Zlatko, Svetomir, Emira, Nikolina, Sejad.
Out in the field in Prijedor the bog had squelched through to my skin I worried for their ice white trainers so like scouts on coffee, sensing danger we marked out ponds with ribboned sticks but they laughed and splashed right through, telling the story of Goran aon a boys day out with the army. Goran, with his five languages and blonde Mohican is tiered of religious dog tags, he and his heavy metal band carry the force and signed the census as Jedi Knights.
The volunteer draws leaves, colours the grenade yellow, turns it into a pineapple, whilst the girl holds onto her sleeve says her brother took her pencil case.
Walking past the hall by the bog, you can feel the pot-marks on white washed walls , beyond your reach, an eye stares through plaster into fields. an eye that was left by the thing that flew in and made the roof sigh. It blinks when the kids run in from the rain and discover the new attic where graffiti crouches behind murals and timbers sprayed with slogans are leaning in. Below them in the hall, next to the crate of spam sandwiches a volunteer sees a girl;
A few blown-up houses down from our field moss is making ground on a toppled minaret cows plod there now held down by chains of grass addiction and tugging calves. A few religious fingers have been raised they poke at clouds and droplets hit cold tiles. Kids charge into the ruin next door to hunt for their football that’s lost in the seeding grass where the kitchen once was. No window smashed. No vase shattered. No parent stomped slippers through Sunday dew, the ball just sailed through frames and nestled - where they used to reach to fix the dripping tap Football in hand they chase the leader up the stairs and jump off the seventh step and fall through spectral floors. Twenty years from here the clattered chorus would have entered the verses
of upstairs rooms, but now the song sticks on repeat. There is no landing, you simply arrive. There are no upper walls to corridor the view, no curtains to let the landscape sleep, and you can be a sentry on the seventh step. or a surveyor plotting walls or a child, teasing vertigo. We pass the half stairs each day for a week as we walk to the festival on wall-shards that have been swept into paths that lead us into the carnival where children are making maps with each rectangle snap they take they make the world they see the fairy princess being saved by Samuri the forging of the spaceship the twisting breakdancers, testing gravity. But we couldn’t ask the children to photograph their homes to capture the sofas, lamps and paintings that used to stay in other children’s home the sofas, lamps and paintings that their parents took from down the road and carried home. The children down the road would see their things, things that had left dust marks where they used to dwell, and silhouettes of lamps still etch their rooms like chalk lines at crime scenes. For one week we shredded the news washed it in water and doused it in glue then stuck the slants back together to make alien masks for the show and mortar for spaceships that stand like whales tip-toeing on tales. On festival day we bring out the glitter, jars of powdered disco balls and the meercats sense a party
leave their spam sandwiches for the bugs and sprinkle a camouflage which would only work in a kaleidoscope The chatter is thriving in the circus tent turning up the shade of red and stretching out the ropes. The French acrobats are giving the kids imaginary hats and are trimming the brims and fastening feathers till they stop wobbling the tightrope and can hold their heads up high. Our team juggle dialects and dangle from the trapeze, Emir’s daughter is swinging above the spot where his village got rounded up twenty years from here, when the man who guarded him in prison enters the tent to watch. Emir walks past the girls on stilts and the pyramid of boys and embraces him, saying it is time to forget. It’s in Hyde Park when he tells us this a dancer, actor and artist just back from the field and sitting under a tree because this is England and it is raining, we’re sharing pear brandy brewed by his father in Prijedor, he’s made us all Russian salad, too much of it, and we’re wishing for the circus red to be our sky again, and for English cucumbers to have more taste. I bought back some ground from Bosnia on the soles of my jazz shoes so I can keep dancing there until I find another old toothbrush and scrub the rest away.
Content Spotlight
Features 6 Brazilian in London, Londoner in Brazil 11 Why the earthquake saved Haiti
18 Meddling or duty? 20 Marrakesh Markets
2 Bosnia Poem 24 Blocking Roads, Fighting Governments 27 Foreign Ocean, Fiery Skies
Credits Editors: Kaamil Ahmed and Celeste Houlker Contributors: Roma Nesi-Pio Rachael Dos Remedios Petrina De Gouttes Anna Christofides Leigh Ginn 4
Poets: Laila Sumpton Anthony Hett Photography: Alan Gia (Flickr) Page 7 Pasqual Gorriz (United Nations Photo Library) Page 13 Marius Arnesen (Flickr) Page 15 Kaamil Ahmed (All others)
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Brazilian in London Londoner in Brazil As a person of the world I have returned to the land of my parents. People always ask me where I come from, an easy question you’d assume. But that question has haunted me for some time. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am Brazilian in London and English in Brazil. Confusing, I know, but this blend of cultures and upbringing just means that I am exposed to very different realities, polar opposites in fact. Brazil land of women, football and samba, not a bad place to reside in for my gap year and to find out what Rio is to me. Looking out to the Redentor that embraces this beautiful city, it is impossible not to notice the favelas that permeate the hill side. The other side of my apartment looks down on Moro dos Prazeres (hill of pleasures), another big shanty town. Even though my father does not stop reinforcing the fact that this is not Lon-
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don, wondering into a shanty town isn’t the cleverest idea, the desire to see, understand the unknown and the forbidden is mounting. Sunday in Santa Teresa (a bohemian district here in Rio) is exciting, the soft thuds of samba waft through the narrow streets, the continuous sound of chatter from the local bars and the general laid back atmosphere is not out of the ordinary. On the street some kids start singing to me some samba song – slightly embarrassed, I smile none the less. On the other side of the street, a band has set up, a 70 year old man is dancing determinedly when he is joined by a young woman, who quickly becomes his samba partner. The place is filled with people from the community, soft chatter, drinks and the rhythmic samba is the norm on a Sunday afternoon.
Words Roma Nesi Pio Photography Alan Gia
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Editor's Note You’ve just flicked through the first eight pages of the first ever issue of Off The Tangent. What do you think? It has taken us a while to put this together and if you’re one of the people who has constantly heard me going on about putting together a magazine, i apologise for the wait. The reason we’ve taken so long in getting this to you is that we’ve wanted to get it right. We know that we want something completely new in the world of magazines. Something that is inspiring and thought-provoking but that also gives you a bit of entertainment when you just want to relax. We might not have got that mix quite right yet but we’ve had a go at it so hopefully you’ll like it. Check out the rest of the website as well and let us know what you think. You can e-mail me personally if you want. This is also meant to be a creative outlet for young people so if you’re a journalist with an idea for an article or a photographer with what you think is a great image or anyone else, let us know. We need artists, designers, film-makers, script-writers, poets etc. Anyone who can give some kind of input. The next issue will be called London Underground and is about the everything in London that is usually missed and that will hopefully be a much easier task now that we’ve learnt from making this issue. In the meantime, enjoy this issue and we’ll keep making sure that the website always has something new. Kaamil Ahmed - Editor kaamilahmed@thinkgrowth.co.uk
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Why The Earthquake May Have Saved Haiti... Now before you start saying, “What an awful thing to say!” hear me out. Yes, it is truly devastating what the earthquake has done to Haiti, but how many of you knew that Haiti was in a state of humanitarian crisis long before it struck?
executions are commonplace as up to thirty armed factions fight for dominance. The Red Cross commented that “[Cité Soleil] is a microcosm of all the ills in Haitian society: endemic unemployment, illiteracy, non-existent public services, insanitary conditions, rampant crime and armed violence”.
In two centuries of existence Haiti has suffered 32 coup d’etat, all of them leading to lasting instability. Almost all Haitians are aware that their country is the only country in the Western Hemisphere to undergo a successful ‘Slave Revolution’, yet this crowning achievement is overshadowed by a history of oppression by dictators and rampant corruption. According to Transparency Internatonal’s ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’, Haiti has one of the highest counts of corruption. The litigious nature of Haitain politics has led to both the US and France having to repeatedly intervene since the country’s founding.
Because of Haiti’s extreme poverty around 225,000 Haitian children are forced into slavery and unpaid work as household servants. Foreign Aid makes up almost 40% of the National Governments budget. In the years 1990 – 2003, Haiti received more than $4 billion dollars in financial aid from the US, Canada, and the European Union. Even before the earthquake struck, only 40% of Haiti’s population had access to basic healthcare. According to the World Health Organisation, over half of all deaths in Haiti are attributed to HIV/AIDS, respiratory infecPerhaps the most damaging government in Haiti’s history tions, meningitis and diarrheal diseases, such as cholwas that of François Duvalier, commonly known amongst the era and typhoid, with 90% of all Haitian children sufferHaitians as ‘Papa Doc’.Often described as the most repres- ing from waterborne diseases and intestinal parasites. sive in the Western world there are estimates that he killed almost 30,000 political opponents. Haiti was a broken country long before this year’s earthquake brought it to our attention. The world had almost forgotten Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Cité that the only country who had the tenacity to overthrow slavSoleil, the largest slum within the capital Port-au-Prince, is ery in a successful revolution, was in dire need of our attendeemed by the United Nations as “The Most Dangerous Place tion. Throwing money at the situation was not enough to save on Earth.” Nearly all of Cité Soleil’s 300,000 residents live in Haiti from slowly destroying itself. Maybe the earthquake gave extreme poverty. There is no police presence. It is controlled Haiti the media coverage it needed to show the world that it’s by armed gangs and militants. Murder, rape, kidnapping and not only stability in the Middle East that we should be worlooting are an everyday occurrence. Street shootings and ried about, but literally what’s going on in our own back yard. Words Rachael Dos Remedios Photography Pasqual Gorriz - UN Photos
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As soon as we got to Gaza it was a different feeling. You just saw everything and you didn't know if it was real. We got there late at night and we were driving around and when we got in they welcomed us. They welcomed us as if we were family...they're always smiling. Said Looch - Gaza
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Should Western countries intervene to stop abuses of human rights? Petrina De Gouttes argues that to do so is a must but Anna Christofides says that it is just a case of Western countries meddling in the affairs of others.
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Where outrageous acts are taking place - intervention is a must.
Defending the notion that humanitarian intervention is unjustifiable suggests that we should accept mass violations of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law, consequently allowing the actions of a state to become relative. If we consider the African nation of Uganda, where homosexual acts are currently illegal and where parliament are discussing an anti-homosexuality bill, which states that ‘Gays and lesbians convicted of having sex would be sentenced, at minimum, to life in prison’ and ‘People who test positive for HIV may be executed’ among other things, is it acceptable for this bill to be passed, and consequently state that countries would not have the right to interfere. Non-interventionist claims that states are forbidden to exercise their power within the jurisdiction of other states at first glance seems fair, yet, if we agree that a universal moral standard exists – such as believing that murder, slavery and theft are forbidden actions - then we can rightly decide that actions which suppress human rights are universally wrong. When a state defies laws that support human rights, the international community has the moral duty to protect the victims. It is only in extreme cases – such as ethnic cleansing and genocide – where humanitarian intervention is justifiable; governments have the duty to aid those in danger. Of course, everyday situations of social change do not permit the use
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of military force from intervening states, but it is without a doubt that in certain situations, where outrageous acts are taking place – intervention is a must. The responsibility to protect is an important notion within international politics, claiming that if a state is unable – or unwilling - to protect its citizens from avoidable disaster, then the responsibility must be taken on by the wider community of states. When intervening in another state’s matters, governments are often criticised for acting egoistically, however instances do exist where states have acted altruistically, such as Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti led by the United States in 1994, where the country went in and aided the citizens - at their request - from the overthrow of a duly elected government. Intervention by force is necessary in order to prevent serious human rights abuses. It is the duty of democratic governing powers to protect those whose rights are being exploited - even if they are citizens of other countries. Interventions neither disrespect international laws nor undermine the powers of other sovereign states. What humanitarian intervention does is seek to help those in need, through a number of steps, which included talks with other countries and imposing sanctions. Intervention is a last and necessary resort where human lives are at risk.
Words Petrina De Gouttes (For)
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Humanitarian intervention cannot be justified if the interveners do not live up to their own standards.
Universal human rights, freedom, justice… important words. But soon this may be all they are; mere political rhetoric. Undoubtedly, we cannot stand by before extreme human rights violations, but if humanitarian intervention is to be sincere and effective, it cannot fall to the prerogative of individual states. We must be realistic; state actions can never be completely removed from their own self-interest and already humanitarian intervention is falling subject to a selective basis where states only intervene where it suits them. Who came during the Rwandan genocide of 1994? To Darfur, 2003? Simultaneously, many UN missions have limited success as they remain severely under-funded by its most powerful members. Humanitarian intervention entails a moral obligation to all humans; we cannot allow states to pick and choose who receives help in practice. Furthermore, past state-led interventions have proven badly planned, with little thought to exit strategies or long-term resolutions meaning conflict and suffering continues. In Kosovo 1999, reckless interventionist forces caused deaths of innocent civilians, whilst post-war Kosovo remains beset by revenge killings and border clashes. Indeed, intervention often requires the use of force which can just spark more violence and hence must only be a last resort. Importantly, it is not a solution in itself, yet we risk individual states rushing to spend massive amounts on armed intervention, turning humanitarian intervention into a spectacle of western media whilst loosing focus on the less glamorous but just as important root causes of these problems. Already less than 1% of state budgets funds matters like poverty reduction.
Anna Christofides (Against)
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Worse still, we risk humanitarian principles being used to mask less altruistic aspirations altogether. Consider Iraq 2003: once claims of weapons of mass-destruction came false, the coalition now turned to humanitarian justifications for their now widely condemned illegal intervention. We cannot allow important principles be reduced to insincere political rhetoric, for human lives to become pawns in power politics. Indeed, this damages the cause, not only providing future culpable states ammunition to oppose genuine humanitarian missions, but making many western states themselves suspicious, willing to contribute less and less since. Besides the West itself is hardly perfect in its human rights record; during this same 2003 intervention US forces transpired guilty of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Plus, they continue to openly support some of the very states culpable, like an Israel currently denying its Palestinian civilians vital supplies. Humanitarian intervention cannot be justified if the interveners do not live up to their own standards. No, the only way it can be so, and these dangers reduced is under the auspices of a supranational-body, the UN, with universal regulations to when and how it is done. It shouldn’t be a matter of justifying states to act if, how and when they please, but rather the obligation to commit to UN missions already in place. Human rights are universal; so must humanitarian intervention be. Human lives must be treated with care; so must humanitarian intervention. Until so, we cannot risk it becoming an accepted justification.
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MarrakeshMarkets Picture the scene; you walk down a long entrance street weaving in and out of floods of old motorcycles, battered taxis, and horse drawn carriages. You reach the city walls, the signal that you are close and and continue, following hordes of tourists, all headed towards the Djemma el Fna - the heart of Marrakech. Snake charmers, performing monkeys and storytellers mingle among the famous orange juice stands and food stalls. This is just the start, every corner of the square reveals an entrance to the labyrinth beyond. Dark, windingstreets filled with stall after stall, selling anything and everything. Tourists spend hours, hiding from the heat of the day, exploring the souks all in search of one thing; a piece of Marrakech.
both parties must have been happy with the price. However the problem here is that the consumer, fresh off the plane, has no idea of the true value of any good. Therefore the salesman tries to milk them for all he can. Why wouldn’t he? The first lesson we were taught by our trusty tour guide Haj was the rule of 3; ‘divide any starting price by 3 and don’t pay any higher’. With that bit of local knowledge we could really get those bargains. This was the case at a rug stall in which the seller was adamant his goods were worth 800 Dirhams (about £65.00) - a bit of haggling and he was soon begging us to take it off him for a quarter of the price. The problem with fly-by tourism is that it doesn’t give visitors enough time to understand the real value of things. A prime example was when the price of orange juice - which had previously been stuck at 3 dirhams at all stalls across the square - suddenly switched to 4 dirhams on our last night.When we questioned the vendors they had a cheeky smile, shrugged their shoulders and tried to make out there had been no change. If you had arrived that day, 4 Dirhams would just have been the norm, just as 3 Dirhams was to us. What is to say it wasn’t 2 the day before we arrived?
While tourists search for the perfect memory, Marrakech’s traders also have asole interest; money. It is this which makes for an extraordinary economic market situation. There are hundreds of stalls selling the same thing, whether it be decorative candles, jewellery or orange juice. Not long after you’re told a product is unique you move 50 yards along to another stall and realise that it really isn’t. There are an infinite number of buyers in the Djemaa, thanks to the budget airlines which ship in a daily batch of Europeans to replace As an economist visiting Marrakech I was fascinated by those returning to reality. the peculiar workings of the market. It is not the colourful At a glance many may see the souks of Marrakech as a rare bedspread, red Fez hat, leather belt, or beautiful spices I took practical example of perfect competition, where buyers and home which will act as my personal piece of Marrakech. It sellers can come together in harmony to a mutually beneficial instead will be the memory of a true barter economy which price. But this is by no means the case and the stumbling i hope won’t get destroyed by an ever increasing Western block is knowledge. There are no fixed prices in the souks influence in the Red City. and tourists need to quickly get used to haggling. A barter economy - in principle - is perfect. If a deal is made then Words Leigh Ginn Photography Kaamil Ahmed
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Blocking Roads Fighting Governments Kaamil Ahmed speaks to Law Student Janani Paramsothy about her year of protesting, campaigning and investigating.
What have you been doing for the last year? I’ve been volunteering with the Newham Monitoring project and more recently i worked on the Ed Miliband [leadership] campaign and all the Tamil stuff! What was all the Tamil stuff about? I joined the Tamil Youth organisation when i was 16. Their main thing was that they have an orphanage in Vanni which was in the Tiger controlled area and they funded it. They paid for the education for all the kids. We did events to raise money and on the side tried to get MPs to give support. Since 2009, when the Sri Lankan armed forces invaded Tiger controlled area, they’ve been a lot more politically active and there have been loads of protests. The main one was in April and that went on for 73 days continuously. What was your role in the protests? They made me media co-ordinator, which is why i was in all the newspapers at the time. I just had to make sure that when journalists came there were people talking to them.
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Some people did expect that the protest was going to stop the war there even though realistically it really wasn’t. From my point of view, the main thing would have been the media attention because up until that point, no one really cared what was happening. So we blocked a road and all the media came running down.
What’s going on in Sri Lanka now? There’s been a lot of stuff going on about war crimes, committed by either side but really the Tamils are looking at what the government did. However many hundreds of thousands of people came out and they stuck them in concentration camps which they then wouldn’t release them out of until the international community really put pressure on them and there are still about 60,000 people missing. What are you goign to do now? I’m probably going to drop in now and again with the Newham Monitoring Project. There’s a Tamil Society at UCL and they’ve asked me to join as a campaigning officer. Oh, and i was going to join Amnesty International.
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Foreign Oceans Fiery Skies Anthony Hett Pencil laid dreams in watermelon skies. Fingernail wipers for smog screened eyes. Hope longing, impatient bodies swaying with the waves. Leg to toe athletes twitch in time with wagging tongues. Grey haired memories sit side by side with mere glimpses of life. Following washed away water ways, made by long dead sailors who sleep in deep foreign oceans, reflecting fiery evening skies.
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