Obituary: Muammar Gaddafi, 1942 – 2011

Fourty-two years of rule are a very long time. No matter if historians will explore Middle Eastern or African matters, they will encounter the Gaddafi factor, time and again. When exploring European matters, they will, to some degree, happen on his traces, too. When he or his clan opened their big wallets, European institutions were happy recipients.

No room here for the ways European and other leaders celebrate the death of a bad man today. No matter on which side they stood in March this year – there are too many big mouths in Europe on both sides.

Berlin Friedenau, memorial plaque: "In this house on the 5th of April, 1986, young people were murdered by a criminal bomb attack" (Wikimedia Commons, click photo for source)

There isn’t much reason to listen to those who mourn Gaddafi either.

But there are people who should be remembered – people like those who were killed by assassins from the orbit of Libya’s East Berlin embassy, or Yvonne Fletcher, who died from shots from inside the Libyan embassy in London.The victims of the Lockerbie bombing – with some likelihood, they were victims of Gaddafi’s government, too.

And that would only be those killed in Europe.

“Tunisia now lives in fear”, The Economist quoted Gaddafi in January:

Families could be raided and slaughtered in their bedrooms and the citizens in the street killed as if it was the Bolshevik or the American revolution.

That would have been too high a price to pay for Tunisian democracy, but not when it came to the defense of Gaddafi’s own rule. In February, the brother-leader reportedly vowed to kill Libyan protesters house by house.

What was, or will be, the price for Libyan democracy? Some sources put the number of deaths as a result of civil war as high as thirty-thousand, in April. If there will be democracy, remains to be seen.

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Related

» Relocating from LSE, March 3, 2011
» A Celebrity and a Politician, Tai De, Nov 27, 2009

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Obituary: Luke Kanyomeka, 1960 – 2011

Professor Luke Kanyomeka, an agronomist, was a Zambian national, but taught and researched at the University of Namibia, where he was the deputy dean of the faculty agriculture and natural resources at Ogongo. He was best known for his leading role in a project to grow rice in in Kalimbeza, Caprivi, Namibia, a region which borders both on Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Production in Kalimbeza reached commercial stage in 2008/2009, and is hoped to make Namibia less dependent on, if not independent of, rice imports, from countries like South Africa. Much of the project was modeled after Indonesian rice production.

Kanyomeka was Zambia’s Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) National Assembly candidate in elections scheduled for September 20 this year, for Nangoma Constituency in Zambia’s Central Province.

He died on July 22, in a hospital in Windhoek.

Obituary: Yelena Bonner, 1923 – 2011

Yelena Bonner, née Lusik Georgievna Alikhanova, an Armenian-Jewish USSR citizen and then a Russian citizen, died in Boston on June 18, 2011, after a heart attack. Her father and one of her uncles were killed during Stalin’s “Great Purge“. Her mother served a term in a labor camp, and lived in internal exile afterwards.

Decades after, Bonner and her husband Andrei Sakharov would live in internal exile, too, in Gorky, from 1980 to 1986. Bonner was a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, together with Yury Orlov (who was the  first head of the group), Ludmila Alexeeva, Mikhail Bernshtam, Alexander Ginzburg, Pyotr Grigorenko, Alexander Korchak, Malva Landa, Anatoly Marchenko, Vitaly Rubin, and Anatoly Shcharansky. During world war 2, she volunteered as a nurse with the Red Army and was wounded, Russland Aktuell wrote on Monday. Her eyesight had been impaired ever since.

EU Parliament president Jerzy Buzek said that

Elena Bonner fought fiercely for the rights of the individual and family of every ethnic group and every state. She witnessed and influenced the 20th century. Along with her husband, scientist and human rights defender Andrei Sakharov, she gave hope to the people in desperate need for freedom and justice.

During Sakharov’s internal exile in Gorky, Bonner was his only contact to the outside world, Dutch evening paper NRC Handelsblad wrote last Sunday, quoting  memories of one of its former correspondents. She travelled to Moscow once every six weeks, smuggled his memoirs abroad (the script had twice been stolen by the KGB), gave press conferences, and kept calling on relatives.

Theirs was a joint cause, the Economist writes this week:

he radiating quiet composure, she nervy, passionate, sucking on cigarettes while she talked; he abstracted, lost in his writing, while she made jam, stewed chicken, washed floors and organised dissent, a “doer” always.

He went on hunger strike for her, at last persuading the authorities to let her go abroad for medical treatment. While there, in 1975, she collected his Nobel peace prize and delivered his speech for him.

Bonner wouldn’t compromise in the 1990s either. Gregor Ziolkowski, a Berliner Zeitung correspondent at the time, described his impressions in October 1995, after listening to a discussion between Bonner and former German television correspondent Gerd Ruge.

Nobody would manage to turn her into a hypocrite in her late years either, wrote Ziolkowski, and therefore,

she talks Turkey: about “democrats” only attracted to their booties, about intellectuals who try to be close to the powerful, and communists who strive for enrichment.

But then comes a surprising turning point. Somehow, the whole misery begins to look like the prerequisite for hope. The dilemma of disillusionment can be a healing thing. And therefore, she sees potential for the better right in those young people who reject the political circus, because they see through the lies. Only once, she gets vocal, and you sense the civil rights activist’s verve: “With the Chechen war, we have left a magic circle, and the West, by virtually tolerating it, has become complicit.”

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Related
» Vitaly A. Rubin (1976): Thoughts do not Die, Nov 29, 2008

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Claudia Kotter, 1980 – 2011

I’ve carried an organ donor card for decades, ever since I was a student. I found that piece of paper in the entrance hall of some official building, filled it out, and put it into my wallet, feeling that it was the right thing to do. But I have never lobbied others to do likewise, even though just 14 to 17 percent of Germans are donors, while – paradoxically - around 60 percent of people say they think its a good idea, according to a Deutsche Welle article of June, 2008.

Donating your organs is voluntary in Germany, and it’s one of the issues about which I have no clear-cut opinion. For sure, organ donation shouldn’t be mandatory. To be a donor seems to require some kind of trust in other people (medics who conduct transplants, for example, and who are faced with people who want to live, but may have to die, because there is no organ for them within reach). Trust doesn’t go without saying. There’s no obligation to trust. There may be no way to trust, and there may still be many other individual reasons to dislike the concept. But maybe it would be a good idea to have reluctant people carry a paper that states that they do not want to donate organs when they die. Maybe.

The strangest thing about the issue would be the discrepancy between liking the idea, but not making it happen – if the statistic quoted by Deutsche Welle  is accurate.

Claudia Kotter, a organ-donation activist, died in Berlin on Tuesday. She had suffered from a rare immune deficiency disease. In her late years – she only became thirty years old -, she lived with someone else’s lung. She didn’t advocate mandatory organ donation. “A disease is no license to blackmail others”, she said.

But she and the association she founded, “Young Heroes” (Junge Helden) would talk to people, grown-ups and schoolkids alike. Frequently, they threw parties to promote organ donation. “There is no ‘later’ and no ‘some day’. Life is now.”

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Related
» Junge Helden website

Obituary: Osama bin-Laden, 1957 – 2011

The last act of Osama bin-Laden‘s life, just as many acts before, comes across as a mix of planning and improvisation. One of the US Navy SEAL team members had a microcamera attached to his helmet so as to transmit the operation Geronimo live onto a screen watched by president Barack Obama and members of his administration – a final showdown. The global public got a photo, not a movie, of Obama watching the Abbottabad operation. The president looked both tense and dignified, like a Chinese emperor watching the dismemberment of a rebel – even if from the White House situation room, and not from a wall within Beijing’s Forbidden City. The photo is meant to become iconic. The live coverage from Abottabad itself was probably much more poorly choreographed – OK, it was probably very messy.

Osama bin-Laden was aged 22 when he began to take on the Soviet Union. A Green Left article of September 19, 2001, describes the  – Soviet-backed - Afghan government of 1978 as follows:

In April 1978, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country’s repressive government.
The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan’s relationship with the Soviet Union.

Something neither landlords nor a Muslim religious establishment would put up with:

They immediately began organising resistance to the government’s progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.

Which suited Zbigniew Brzezinski‘s plans to block or roll back Soviet influence in Afghanistan. America took sides with the Mujaheddin, including Osama bin-Laden’s forces:

Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more.

From 1992 to 1996, Afghanistan’s militias were left to themselves and to doing what they were best at: they kept on fighting, now against each other. In 1996, the Taliban took control of the country, with support from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin-laden personally. Also in 1996, bin-Laden wrote a fatwa – a religious opinion concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar: his “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places”.

It is doubtful that Osama was in a position to write a fatwa at all, but let’s think of him as the Julian Assange among the Islamists of the 1990s. There will always be people who feel that they have the right to read and write everything, so long as they fervently believe in their own views.

What strikes me, now that we could take stock of bin-Laden’s life, is how little his sympathizers and those who welcome his sudden death (me included) alike seem to know about his actual thoughts. To either side, he seemed to be a projection screen for personal world views, rather than a fighter or believer in his own right. He would be a liberator for certain quarters of global opinion (somehwat beyond the Islamist quarter,  as his fan club seemed to include some rather secular do-gooders, too), and his name would be a metaphor of evil to others. Osama bin-Laden’s view of the world was radical, but simple. Most catechisms would be harder to learn by heart. But that  didn’t really help to spread his doctrine. How people perceived the man himself mattered much more.

Until Sunday night (or Monday morning GMT), when president Obama announced bin-Laden’s death and when feelings of happiness poured out publicly in Washington D.C., New York, and elsewhere, it had appeared as if bin-Laden had become history long before. Now that he is dead, he will fade away even faster, in the memories of most.

How will his death influence Islam-driven terrorism? How will it influence the development of civil society in Islamic countries?

The second question is no easier to answer than the first, but it will probably become the more relevant question, as Islamic societies, rather than fatwa authors, appear to have begun to search for answers – in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and maybe in Saudi-Arabia, too.

The most predictable effect of operation Geronimo will be on America itself. Obama may gain more clout domestically, on issues of education, innovation, and industrial policies. And maybe he has now gained the stature it takes to begin an overdue “war-on-terror”-related task, too: the restoration of rule of law in the field of “security legislation”, in Guantanamo and on U.S. soil. Hopefully, in legal terms, it will take less than ten years to recover the scorched earth of the past decade.

But bin-Laden’s effect on American and global politics has been huge. America lost about a decade in the Pacific region – being distracted in central Asia and the Middle East -, and many opportunities at home.

Maybe it is indeed time to forget bin-Laden.

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Related
General V K Singh: We Can, Too, Times of India / Economic Times, May 4. 2011
Jiang Yu: Pakistan can, too, Times of India, May 3, 2011

Update
Pleased or not (Berlin), CS Monitor, May 5, 2011

Obituary: Zhou Haiying, 1929 – 2011

Zhou Haiying [update - Chinese: 周海婴] was born in Shanghai on September 27, 1929 as the only child  of Xu Guangping (许广平) and Lu Xun (魯迅, real name Zhou Shuren / 周树人), probably the (internationally) best-known vernacular-Chinese writer of the 20th century.

Zhou Haiying was a cadre and a politician – vice director at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television’s (SARFT) policy and regulations department, member of the CPPCC, and a member of the CCP. He studied at Peking University’s (北京大学) physics department in the early 1950s (from 1952).  He is said to have been a wireless / radio expert (无线电专家),  and – in his spare time -  a passionate photographer.

Zhou had suffered from vasculitis since May last year and had been hospitalized all the time since then. He died in Beijing on Thursday, April 7, 2011. He is survived by his wife Ma Xinyun (马新云). Their children, a son and a daughter, live in Taiwan and Japan respectively.

A farewell ceremony is scheduled at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetary on Monday.

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Related
China’s Orwell, Jeffrey Wasserstrom / Time, Dec 7, 2009
Seminar on 6-4 held in Beijing, May 24, 2009

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Obituary: Andrew Hao Jinli, 1916 – 2011

Bishop Andrew Hao Jinli (郝進禮) of Xiwanzi (西湾子), northern Hebei province, died at Gonghui village church at the age of 95, on March 9, 2011, UCAN (Union of Catholic Asian News) reported one day later. Bishop Hao was faithful to the Pope, Vatican Radio noted in its obituary, which means that he was an “underground” bishop, not recognized by the CCP, which established the  Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (中国天主教爱国会) in 1957, under the Religious Affairs Bureau’s supervision.

The UCAN article’s last four paragraphs give a short account of Bishop Hao’s life.

Hao was born on November 30, 1916. Radio Veritas‘ Taiwan edition wrote last Tuesday that he didn’t live in Xiwanzi, but used to celebrate mass with some 2,000 faithful in Zhangbei County‘s Gonghui town (公会镇, referred to as “village” by the UCAN article quoted above) parish church. Gonghui was reportedly the place where he was sent for “reform through labor”, and where he worked as a parish priest after his release in 1981.

His funeral was held on March 17, Radio Veritas reported. The radio station also cited some statistics, according to which there are currently 35,500 Roman Catholics in the diocese of  Xiwanzi / Chongli County (崇礼县), with 20 priests, and 28 nuns.

Little appears to be known about Bishop Hao’s death and funeral, except that there was a priest at his bedside when he died. According to unnamed sources qoted by Radio Veritas, Hao had been refused hospital treatment, and access to Gonghui Town had been barred for people who wanted to pay a visit.

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Related
How Secular is the Chinese State, February 25, 2011
Science in Action: China’s Golden Vase of National Unity, December 26, 2010
We-Can-Stop-the-Music, October 20, 2008

Obituary: Mohammed Nabbous, 1983 – 2011

Mohammed Nabbous, a Libyan blogger and founder of Libya Alhurra TV, the first private television station established in territory controlled by the National Transitional Council (Benghazi), was reportedly killed on Saturday, while reporting on continued efforts by pro-Gaddafi forces to recapture Benghazi, in violation of an immediate ceasefire declared by the Gaddafi government itself one day earlier.

Nabbous was married, and his widow is pregnant, writes the Toronto Star, in an article with a link to a statement attributed to her.

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Related
Libya calls for International Observers, CNN, March 18, 2011
Second Battle of Benghazi, Wikipedia
Mohammed Nabbous, Wikipedia