NEPAL: You Told Me I Matter

You told me something that I was supposed to hear years before.

Dear Claire,

My fingers were trembling as I texted you three years ago. The decision to give away my secret after years of silence was terrifying. But I knew I had to do it, so I began typing.

Hey Claire! I’ll see you at 4pm in front of the office gate for the interview.

I stopped typing, weighing the option of choosing silence over voice. Honestly, it seemed the better option. With a racing heart, a long breath,  trembling fingers, and a very weak determination to end the hurt, I added: Oh, and I have to tell you something important.

I closed my eyes and pressed send.

I could hear the pounding of my heart and feel it beating faster. Then, five minutes later, you replied, “Okay Reeti. See you there.”

I spent the rest of the day debating whether to tell you my story or not. I cursed myself for considering sharing it with a person I’d only met about a week prior. I was in the Women LEAD 2014 program, and I didn’t know anything about you apart from the little information I had learned when I researched the organization in preparation for interviewing you, the co-founder of the organization. It was my first interview as a reporter for my high school assignment.

As an introvert it takes some time for me to trust people, so I don’t know why I chose to confess everything to you. You were an enigma to me with your ocean blue eyes and curly blond hair.

It was 3:30 pm, and I was all ready to leave for Women LEAD with my father. I was terrified for the post-interview conversation, and I was still doubting my decision. I met up with you at 4:05 pm and we went to a café nearby. I ordered Cappuccino and you ordered Milk tea. The interview began and ended within 30 minutes.

Then you asked, “So, what was the important thing you wanted to talk about?”

I was freaking out. In my head, I was screaming the loudest I could. The strong coffee was giving me a headache. Or maybe it was caused by the urge to tell being at odds with my fear of speaking up.

I took a long deep breath and with a quivery voice I started, “I wanted to talk about …”

I spoke. I’d never spoken like that before. I went on and on. I told you the story of what happened three years ago. The embarrassment in school, people pointing at me and laughing, failing in three subjects, parental and school pressure to do well, slowly falling into depression, dissatisfaction and shame over my body size, feeling unworthy, undervalued, failure, and a burden. I told you about the sad diaries I kept: depressing stories and poems I wrote during that time. I told you about crying every single night for three years straight. I told you about having only one thought in my mind during that time, “I want to end it all. I want to die”.

I watched your blue eyes turn red as tears dripped down. At that moment I knew why I chose you to confess my story to. Your blue eyes mirrored my brown ones, red and tearful. You understood me, my pain and guilt. So, I went on even though the lump in my throat and tears in my eyes were making it very difficult. Other customers in the café were staring at us. It didn’t matter; I didn’t care. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care what other people thought of me.

I vividly remember what happened next. After hearing me out, you simply stood up, spread out your arms, and I slipped into them. We cried while we hugged each other. I was staining your beautiful shirt with my tears, but it didn’t matter to you. I cried like a baby. I’d never cried like that before. I released the pain that I had had for so long. No one had cared so much about me before. Then you told me something that I was supposed to hear years before.

You said, “I’m so proud of you. You are strong, and you do matter. If you need anything, I’m always there for you, okay?”

I needed to hear that so much. Until that moment, I believed I had never made anyone proud no matter how much I had tried. I was a bad daughter, and I was a bad student. I had failed three subjects. I was not a good friend because I felt safer in my room alone rather than with others. I hated myself. I didn’t matter to anyone—not even myself. I had two entire diaries filled with tear stains and sentences that stated I hated myself. I felt no one cared. But you did. You listened to me and cried for me!

This small conversation changed my life.

After that day I burnt the two sad diaries that I had, and I started ranking first in my high school. I still rank first in my university as a third year Media Studies undergrad.

Claire, because of you I realized that nothing is impossible when you believe in yourself. You told me, “If you don’t believe in yourself, surround yourself with people who believe in you”.

These words seem inadequate to express my gratitude. There have been so many opportunities that have opened up for me just because you taught me to believe in myself. You helped me make very first Curriculum Vitae. I got my first internship at a magazine then moved on to my first paid job as a reporter for an international news organization. At 18, I gave my first speech as a guest speaker on Women’s Day 2015. Afterwards, a young girl came up to me and said, “You are so inspiring!” Just years before, at age 15, I had run off the stage during a speech competition due to stage fright.

I always complained about not having a Godmother, like in the Cinderella story. But Claire, you made me realize I am my own savior. Still, I couldn’t have done it without a little boost from my strong and inspiring real-life fairy Godmother who has blue eyes and curly blond hair.

From,

Reeti

Is France in a permanent state of emergency?

France has been in a state of emergency for nearly two years and law enforcement is using the measure as cover to target minorities and political activists completely unrelated to "terror".

On the evening of November 13, 2015, France stopped breathing, having just undergone one of its bloodiest attacks in modern history. The previous one, in 1961 was orchestrated by a right-wing French paramilitary organization opposed to Algerian independence, leaving 28 people dead.

The country was in shock.

While the Bataclan hostages were being taken, the then-French President Francois Hollande, announced a state of emergency, an exceptional state that gave administrative authorities, such as prefects and police the power to limit freedoms - without recourse to a judicial mandate or warrant.

Initially intended to last twelve days when it was announced by the government, the state of emergency voted in by Parliament on November 20, has now been extended six times. It has lasted almost two years. It has in effect been institutionalised.

This exceptional measure was created in 1955 to counter Algerian independence revolutionaries at war against colonial France. 

Since then, the present circumstances mark only the third time that this measure has been applied. From 1985 to 1987, in New Caledonia, it was put in place to stave off a pro-independence anti-colonial uprising. In 2005, it was again used when revolts broke out in French inner cities, following the deaths of two innocent youths of colour, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore.

Today the list of the victims of the state of emergency include a large number of French citizens from post-colonial immigrant backgrounds. These measures, aside from targeting Muslims accused of “radicalisation” have also been used against ecological activists or anarchists.

Heavy handedness 

The law authorises house arrest with the interior minister’s permission if a person can be justified as showing “serious reasons to think that his behaviour is a threat to public security and order”.

Additionally, administrative searches, data seizures, and even holding minors on the site of a searched premises for up to four hours is authorised. Neither a warrant nor a formal charge is required.

The Human Rights Watch in France has received several complaints denouncing abuses tied to the state of emergency. The report involves complaints of discriminatory raids, warrantless searches, erroneous addresses and even a case of mistaken identity – where one such case ended in violence and a wrongly targeted disabled man had four teeth broken by a police officer.

Two days after the Bataclan attack, a mosque in the Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers, was not only searched but left in a state of pillage (destroyed ceilings, turned over furniture, religious books thrown on the floor) - and nothing was discovered there. 

France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve later conceded the error.

In Nice, RAID (Intervention Unit of the National Police) mistakenly burst into an apartment, using shotguns. The ceramic bullets hit the bed of a sleeping 7-year-old girl who was wounded by fragments of wood.

In January 2016, HRW conducted interviews with 18 people believed to have been placed under house arrest or searched in an abusive manner. A single mother had her children taken and placed in foster care following a search. Several witnesses admitted being afraid of the police and experiencing rejection and suspicion by their neighbours.

Give an inch, take a mile

The state of emergency has not merely been used in “terror” related investigations.

When the UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris (COP 21) was kicking off in November 2015, ecology activists had planned demonstrations aimed at world leaders attending the event. A few days before the opening of the COP21, twenty-four of the activists—having committed no crime—were placed under house arrest which wasn’t terminated until December - conveniently the date the conference ended.

The state of emergency, intended to contain the terrorist threat, had been hijacked by the French government to squash an environmental movement.

A few months later, the country was overrun by strong opposition to a labour reform law proposed by the government, which gave rise to frequent and massive demonstrations.

Under the spectre of the “terrorist threat” the interior minister decided to banish certain activists from protest marches. Ten people in the Paris region were forbidden to participate in the May 17th march. The right to demonstrate is protected by the Constitution of France and therefore should be impossible to revoke.

Since the initial declaration of the state of emergency, there have been over seven thousand administrative measures, thousands of searches and identity stops, hundreds of people placed under house arrest, visa refusals and demonstrations banned.

Yet 80 percent of searches carried out up until February 2016, when they were at their most frequent, yielded no infractions. Only twenty-three cases made it to the anti-terror court in Paris.

Already in July 2016, the Parliamentary Investigative Committee concluded that the state of emergency had a “limited impact” on security. According to the commission, more effective intelligence analysis would have led to better prevention of attacks.

Sleight of hand

Recently, President Macron, elected under the supposed banner of a “new world” announced the end of the state of emergency. The truth is that his new law reinforcing national security and the fight against terrorism, in effect since November 1, 2017, institutionalizes the provisions of the state of emergency by maintaining four of its provisions. 

This is the beginning of a regime of exception giving priority to a so-called "public order" which is in fact to the detriment of public freedoms. The identity checks, known to target and profile minorities, are more or less legalised as they are authorised in a dizzyingly wide array of zones during twelve hours periods, without the existence of any real threats to public order or safety.

Why? To maintain an illusory feeling of security in the collective mind of a public still gripped by fear from the risk of terrorism.

Human Rights Watch denounced the “anti-terrorist laws based on vague terms subject to excessive interpretations on the part of authorities and favouring abuses that can be said to be counter-productive as far as security is concerned”. They add that the laws “sap certain of the most fundamental principles of the state of laws and of human rights and the way the French people have lived and conceive of their democracy since WWII”. 

Several NGOs and institutions have expressed similar concerns, from the Magistrate’s Union to the Human Rights League, Amnesty International, the European Council as well as the United Nations.

The trivialisation of a measure employed under an exceptional circumstance, that gives excessive powers to the police, constitutes a danger because it allows a disproportionate—even rogue use—that saps citizens’ confidence in their institutions. Ironically, it is in this climate of defiance that hate and extremism can prosper.

France is on the eve of an uncertain future and it is purportedly the country of “human rights”. As a nation that has always proclaimed that its values are inherited from the Enlightenment, it owes it to herself to show the world that she is still a healthy democracy, sure of herself and her values - and capable of protecting the fundamental rights of her citizens.

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT World.

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Germany's Merkel promises quick deal on coalition government

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday she aimed to get a government in place as quickly as possible after she was left scrambling to find a way to govern when three-way coalition talks collapsed last Sunday.

"Europe needs a strong Germany, it is desirable to get a government in place quickly," Merkel told a party meeting, adding, however, that her acting government was able to carry on day to day business in Europe's biggest economy.

She added she was prepared to talk to the Social Democrats (SPD) after the centre-left party reversed an earlier decision and said it was prepared to talk to Merkel's conservatives, but she stressed any talks should be based on mutual respect. 

The about-turn by the SPD, which had said it would go into opposition after suffering its worst result in 70 years in September's election, could help avert a disruptive repeat vote in Europe's economic and political powerhouse.

SPD leader Martin Schulz told a news conference on Friday the party leadership had reached the decision out of a sense of responsibility to Germany and Europe after Merkel's attempt to form a government with the pro-business Free Democrats and environmental Greens smaller parties collapsed.

"There is nothing automatic about the direction we are moving in," Schulz said. "If a discussion results in us deciding to participate, in any form whatsoever, in the formation of a government, we will put it to a vote of party members."

Schulz told 300 members of the party's youth wing - who rejected another "grand coalition" at a conference in Saarbruecken - that nothing had been decided.

But he suggested that governing could offer better chances to achieve his primary goal of improving the lives of people in Germany and around the world.

"From which position is that best possible? What is more important? The radiance of our decisions, or the improvement of the everyday lives of people?" Schulz told the group.

He said he noted the group's position and thanked them for their support in the September election. But he said he expected their loyalty and "constructive cooperation" with whatever path was ultimately decided by the party's leadership.

Over her 12 years in power, Merkel has embraced a succession of coalition partners who then went on to suffer painful electoral defeats. 

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will host a meeting with Schulz, Merkel and Horst Seehofer, leader of the CDU's arch-conservative Bavarian sister party, next Thursday.

Steinmeier, a former SPD foreign minister, has urged his former party to reverse its pledge to go into opposition, having made clear that he saw fresh elections as a last resort.

Trump says he turned down Time's 'Person of the Year'

US President Donald Trump on Friday said that he turned down being named Time's "Person of the Year" after the magazine asked him for an interview and photo shoot but did not confirm he would be chosen.

He tweeted: "Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named 'Man (Person) of the Year,' like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot."

"I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!"

Time responded on its own Twitter account: "The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6."

Former editor Richard Stengel went further, retweeting Trump's tweet with the comment: "Hate to tell you but that PROBABLY means you're NOT Person of the Year.

"They just wanted a photo shoot. But I'm sure you still have that fake TIME cover somewhere in storage."

The magazine confers the distinction on the person who "for better or for worse... has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Trump was named the magazine's 2016 "Person of the Year" following his election, in an edition which carried the title "President of the Divided States of America."

The former real estate tycoon keeps a close eye on the award, and complained on Twitter in 2012, 2014 and 2015 about not being picked.

In June, The Washington Post revealed several of his golf clubs prominently display a framed copy of a fake Time cover featuring several positive headlines and Trump as its cover.

Since announcing his presidential run, Trump has had an antagonistic relationship with much of the US media, accusing critical outlets of peddling "fake news."