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The Case of Dr. Anna Younes: Solidarity Outshines Shortfall of Berlin Civil Court’s Ruling

Statement by the European Legal Support Centre

The Left Berlin
14/06/2024

Case update – Despite a negative ruling, solidarity persists and ELSC funding campaign covers all costs for the court case.

In 2019, a secret dossier was created by RIAS Berlin and MBR aimed at misinforming the public about Dr. Younes’ work and opinion misrepresenting her as antisemitic and supportive of sexism and terrorism. The latter depictions resulted in excluding her from an event on anti-racism and combating right-wing networks where Dr. Younes was invited to present her work. Moreover, it was only after a public media campaign and a complaint against the Berlin Data Protection Authority (DPA) that the DPA finally acknowledged Dr. Younes’ right to access her data. On 2 May 2022, almost two years later, RIAS/MBR hence withdrew their original position that Dr. Younes had no right to access her data, released the secret dossier previously disseminated and finally acknowledged the merits of her claim. A few days later, the Berlin District Court (Amtsgericht Berlin Mitte) also handed down its decision in favour of Dr. Younes.

In the heading of the dossier, however, it was indicated that more information can be retrieved upon request of those receiving it. To this day, it remains to be clarified whether RIAS and MBR have been storing further data on Younes other than those revealed in the disseminated and leaked dossier. Practices such as these are, however, reminiscent of the work of intelligence agencies. In this case, the existence of said dossier has only been exposed through a whistleblower. This highlights once more the structural deficiencies to combat racism of the German legal system and the unwillingness of German authorities to protect Palestinians from anti-democratic surveillance by state funded organisations.

In April 2024, the Berlin State Court (Landgericht Berlin) ruled that albeit an existing breach of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Dr. Younes is still not entitled to damages, because the dossier had already been leaked to her and was thus in her possession.

Additionally, since it took the DPA two years to finally acknowledge Dr. Younes’ rights had been violated, Dr. Younes, her lawyer, and the ELSC had decided to file a complaint against its “inactivity” in an administrative court, while also filing another complaint to the civil court (Landgericht Berlin) to request damages from RIAS and MBR for withholding her data for so long. The request for damages was also rejected.

The court has missed an opportunity to protect individuals’ data rights against the distorted use of the “journalistic exemption” rule for unlawful surveillance practices as argued by RIAS/MBR. It also fails to hold state-funded organisations such as RIAS Berlin and MBR fully accountable for their repressive practices, which have serious consequences for individuals’ reputation, ability to find jobs in the future, and fundamental rights, and freedoms.

ELSC’s lawyer Alexander Gorski remarked:

“The court took the safe way out and fails to acknowledge the dangerous potential of creating a chilling effect for communities of scholars, activists, and in the arts. The court disregarded the intention of limiting freedom of expression by instilling in them the fear that their personal data and work could be constantly tracked and used against them, thereby preventing them from exercising their academic freedom.”

He further added:

“German courts have also been very conservative in handing out compensation in data protection cases.”

This case shows once more that ultimately our solidarity is our best protection: Not only did solidarity expose the secret dossier, but it also covered all costs for the lawsuits so far. We must keep pushing collectively to expose the illegal surveillance practices. The administrative case launched by Younes’ case is pending.

We are expecting the administrative court to recognise that the dossier’s preparation in and of itself as not legitimate nor lawful. So far, the DPA only acknowledge that the transmission of the data was unlawful, not its preparation. We expect the next hearing to take place next year

We would like to thank the generous donors who covered all legal costs for Dr. Anna-Esther Younes’ case.

Covering legal costs for people who suffer from misrepresentation and surveillance has been an important part of this long case and journey, and we would not have been able to see it through without your political and financial support!

Your support got us to not only meet the targeted amount needed to cover the costs, but even surpassed it. In total, we raised EUR 8,956! The surplus funds raised in this crowdfunding campaign for Dr. Younes will go into the German legal aid fund that is handling other cases challenging censorship of Palestinian rights advocates such as this case.

Furthermore, we also want to thank the 1000+ signatories who signed a letter in support of Dr. Anna Younes and against the censorship of academics, activists and journalists in Germany.

The support the ELSC’s campaign received, especially from academics and activists, highlights this shared concern against the structural issue of profiling Palestinians and Palestinian rights advocates in Germany and beyond. There remains a lot to be done. The journey is long, and the fight is not over: Your continuous support matters!

Read a recent interview with Dr. Younes on the situation in Germany by M. Hill, April 2024: The Left Berlin – “A lot of Palestinians here have the feeling of being invisible”.

The ELSC is an independent organisation that relies on the movement for its growth and impact. Support us in our fight against state repression with a minimal recurring donation. Click here to learn more.

Is Modi’s Mandate of Heaven About to Expire?

Indian voters have delivered a remarkable rebuke to the BJP in spite of all the obstacles Modi’s government has placed in their way.

Swaggy
12/06/2024

On June 8th, 2024, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India for the third consecutive time. He became the second person to achieve this feat, the first being Jawaharlal Nehru, the founding Prime Minister of the Republic of India. Despite this rare accomplishment, his victory might be a Pyrrhic. To understand why, we need to examine India under Modi’s regime from 2014-2024 and the conditions under which the 2024 General Elections were conducted.

Narendra Modi, who was once a volunteer in the fundamentalist Hindu (Hindutva) fascist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has been the face of its political front, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), since their victory in 2014. Our comrade Momo has written an excellent article on his rise and his atrocities since then. What kept Modi in power and boosted his cult of personality were three things: money, muscle, and media.

With the promise of total liberalization of the economy to make India reach a GDP of 5 trillion USD and usher in an Age of Prosperity like the ancient times (Amrit Kaal), Modi opened the doors for the most abhorrent oligarchs to support his party financially. Then, with the passing of the Electoral Bonds Scheme of 2018 in Parliament, an illegal and opaque financial instrument for political funding which the Supreme Court of India struck down in 2024, the BJP became the richest political party in India with official assets worth $72B while having more active members than the Communist Party of China.

However, two of his oldest financiers, the Adani Group led by Gautam Adani and Reliance Industries Limited led by Mukesh Ambani, were the primary beneficiaries. They were allocated key national state-owned enterprises in sectors such as energy, logistics, transportation, defense, and telecom when the state-owned enterprises were either sold off or crippled beyond measure to allow them to take over the market. Additionally, they were allowed to take over industries dominated by small and medium-scale enterprises, such as retail. This occurred while the government conducted financial and income tax raids on other companies as an indirect way to extort donations for the ruling party.

With deep pockets, the BJP used its army of trolls to harass and issue death threats to journalists and any member of civil society who dared to oppose them, first on the internet and then on the streets. They would then start spreading fake news via WhatsApp, a phenomenon now called WhatsApp University in India.

Through this propaganda network, they were capable of broadcasting slander and malice against anyone to almost every household in the country. Moreover, they encouraged their kleptocratic oligarchs to take over media houses and stopped allocating news broadcasting licenses to new channels. This made the prime-time news an organ of fascist propaganda, always maligning dissenters and upholding Modi’s cult of personality to an almost divine status. While the Prime Minister would shy away from any press conferences, he would join the newsroom with his loyal anchors who would ask him questions like, “Do you eat mangoes?” or “Is the 2024 general election just a formality because you alone would be winning?”

Any independent organisation trying to practice journalism despite all these restrictions would face the wrath of the income tax department or get handed defamation cases. Even the BBC was not spared. The BJP would then try to bribe opportunistic members of the opposition to switch sides and join the party or threaten them with legal and financial actions that could bankrupt them and end their careers, to the extent of arresting a sitting Chief Minister. All the opposition leaders had to do was jump into the BJP’s washing machine, get themselves clean, and see all their charges, both spurious and genuine, dropped; in turn, the BJP would be able to pass motions of no confidence in multiple state assemblies and further weaken the struggling opposition.

With all these in place, the BJP started to staff bureaucrats and judges as lackeys in key positions of institutions such as the Supreme Court and the Election Commission, which act as watchdogs of democratic practices and policies in India. The Election Commission decided to flatly ignore the flagrant violations of the Model Code of Conduct committed by Narendra Modi himself, such as calling Muslims infiltrators and claiming that the opposition, if in power, would give away wealth to Muslims.

This was a strategic shift from his previous narratives where he, unlike his party workers, would stay away from hate speech, relying only on misinformation and false ad-hominem attacks on the opposition leaders to display their ineptitude. He used this strategy to run a presidential-style campaign in a country used to Westminster-style elections. He successfully used these narratives of communal identity politics, caste-based discord, and economic growth to divert attention from rising unemployment, inequality, and inflation.

In this election, the BJP’s target was to gain more than two thirds of the seats in Parliament, a comfortable majority to make constitutional amendments. These include gerrymandering the legislative jurisdictions in their favour, striking off the secular and socialist values of the republic from the Constitution’s Preamble, and effectively ending democracy in India with an elected autocracy. There were also reported cases where the Election Commission rejected the candidatures of key opposition candidates, effectively making the BJP candidate win.

However, the Indian electorate unexpectedly stopped this seemingly inevitable fate. It somehow came as a shock to observers and pollsters that people, who seemed so intoxicated with religious fervour, finally came out to vote in record numbers against inflation, unemployment, and inequality. Analysis revealed that poor rural voters of lower class and caste switched their allegiances and voted for the opposition coalition, thereby protecting the amendment of the Constitution which might have ended their reservation status – an affirmative action program to equalise the effects of the millennia-old social evil that is the caste system in India.

To make the situation more ironic, the BJP and its upper-class, upper-caste urban voters never expected to lose the coveted seat of Faizabad (Ayodhya), where they erected a newly built Ram Temple, as promised in their manifesto for decades, on the grounds of the historic Babri Mosque that was demolished out of hate to legitimise their fictitious history of the subcontinent. To make it even worse, Modi was only able to win in the nearby seat of Varanasi by a meagre margin of 150k votes in a constituency of 2.5 million people, where his party workers claimed he would win by a margin of at least 1 million. Meanwhile, the Indian National Congress, the leading party in the opposition coalition of INDIA, whom Modi claimed would win fewer than 53 seats, went on to win 99 seats.

Now, with 240 seats, the BJP, which would scoff at the opposition for forming alliances and claim it would lead to unstable governments, has to rely on two extremely turncoat allies to reliably cross the threshold of 272 seats to gain a simple majority. However, given the BJP’s backstabbing treatment of its allies and snatching away seats by defecting members from their allies to their own party, raises the question of how much the BJP can rely on them. To make matters worse, these allies rely on a significant Muslim vote bank to retain their power from time to time. For now, the BJP would need these crutches to survive and struggle immensely to pass their neoliberal and fascistic agendas, which their core urban supporters voted for.

This election saw veteran incumbents fall and new faces doing grassroots campaigns for years rise. It gave many of us Indians hope to never lose trust in the 1.4 billion people of the country who can be misdirected at times but cannot be fooled all the time and can silently do magic, defying the expectations of the elite. However, there is a long road ahead to totally eliminate fascism in India, and the struggle will carry on.

The Indian people might have gotten a respite, but the pendulum can swing back anytime. Human rights activists, journalists, academics, and students are still in jail without trial under non-bailable offenses; and dissent will continue to be crushed either by censorship and threats or by bulldozers. However, after this election, I have restored faith in my fellow countrymen, and I believe we can make sure this is BJP’s and Modi’s Pyrrhus of Epirus moment at the Battle of Asculum.

Forty years without Enrico Berlinguer

Remembering a great Communist and anti-fascist

Rafael Sergi
11/06/2024

Forty years ago, on 11 June 1984, Enrico Berlinguer passed away, leaving a void in Italian politics that would never be filled again.

Berlinguer’s life was just extraordinary. A Sardinian anti-fascist, in 1943 he joined the Italian Communist Party (here mentioned as PCI), whose youth section he helped found. The following year he was arrested for participating in the “bread revolt” (rivolta del pane) in which Sassari’s working class demanded basic essentials such as bread and sugar. Two years later, in 1946, he joined the Central Committee, together with legendary names from the party such as Palmiro Togliatti, Luigi Longo and Gian Carlo Pajetta. Here he begins his ascent to the leadership, which he would hold from ‘72 until his death.

It is 7 June 1984 and, like now, the European elections are approaching. Berlinguer is in Padua, where he’s giving what would be his last election speech. “Once again it has been shown that it is not possible, in Italy, to safeguard democratic institutions if you exclude the communists”. Thus he opens his address, which would go down in history. He speaks of freedom, of democracy, of the fight for rights “even for those who are opponents of the communists”. Of peace, culture, equal rights for women. That is what communism meant to him. His views are more relevant than ever.

Towards the end of the speech, what many suspect becomes clear: Berlinguer is not well. From the crowd you can hear shouts of “Enough Enrico!”, but he does not stop. He shall finish that speech, at any cost. The broken voice, the pain in the eyes of a man fighting a stroke. He slumps slightly, then continues in front of an audience who fears the worst. Berlinguer pauses a short while, then resumes with the words for which everyone would remember him: “Comrades, you all work. House by house, company by company, street by street, talking to the citizens”. He takes off his glasses and smiles with the satisfaction of one who has done his duty. In his eyes you can see the ethics of a man who puts his work above everything else. At the same time, he can no longer hide a sense of concern. “For the proposals we present, for what we have been and are, it is possible to win new and broader support for our lists and our cause, which is the cause of peace, freedom, work and the progress of our society.” He is immediately taken to his hotel, where he falls into a coma. He’s then transferred to the hospital, where he dies of a cerebral hemorrhage after four days.

He is remembered as a mild man, by some as “the mute Sardinian”. Nothing to do with the vulgarity of today’s Italian politics. He is the most loved Italian politician of all time, who led his party to 34.4%, its all-time high, making it the most important Communist Party in the West. He began the process of breaking away from the Soviet Union, cutting off Russian funding to the PCI. In ‘73, in Bulgaria, he survived a car accident that many considered an attempt on his life. In ‘76 he declared in an interview with Italy’s main newspaper Corriere della Sera that he would feel safer under the umbrella of NATO than the Warsaw Pact. The following year he flew to Moscow for the anniversary of the October Revolution and in his speech to the Kremlin said that “democracy is the historically universal value on which to base an original socialist society”. After General Jaruzelski’s seizure of power in Poland, Berlinguer uttered another of his historic phrases at a press conference in 1981: “The driving force of the October Revolution has exhausted itself”.

His popularity grew and he became a central figure in international politics. Loved by the people, he was criticized and feared from right to left, by the USA and the USSR: for the West, he was still a communist in the context of the Cold War and a world divided into blocks of influence. For Russia, his insubordination to the Soviet model was unacceptable. Together with Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democrats, Berlinguer theorized the “Historical Compromise”, which would have led to a coalition government between Communists and Christian Democrats. The project never materialized as Moro was kidnapped and killed by the communist armed group “Brigate Rosse”, who wanted to prevent its realization. The coup d’état in Chile in 1973 engineered by the CIA that led to the ousting of Salvador Allende’s leftist government was a turning point for Berlinguer: there he realized the danger of external reactionary interference in the event of communists entering government. A thesis confirmed by a particularly harsh exchange between American President Henry Kissinger and Aldo Moro, where the former told the latter “[…] you must stop pursuing your political plan to bring all the forces in your country to collaborate directly. Here, either you stop doing this, or you will pay dearly for it”. As a result, Berlinguer focused on the development of “Eurocommunism”, a democratic alternative to the Soviet model based on the collaboration between European communists, particularly the French and Spanish. Berlinguer was also the father of the “moral question”, by which he urged the commitment of political parties to the principles of honesty and fairness in the management of public money. He was a bold supporter of the campaign for the divorce referendum.

Berlinguer’s funeral was attended by 1.5 million people. It was the largest state funeral in Italy after that of Pope John Paul II, and by far the largest for a politician. His legacy is immense, such that anyone who has tried to follow it has struggled. And no one has really succeeded – if anyone has really tried. With him the Italian left died. We remember him because the need for personalities like him is more relevant than ever, as are his ideas. But as long as the memory of what he was and what he represented remains alive, there will always be hope that someone will come along and carry on what he was unable to continue. In his song “Somebody was a communist” the great Italian composer and singer Giorgio Gaber wrote that “some were communist because Berlinguer was a good person”. I would argue that was the main reason for almost everyone. Thank you, Berlinguer, for showing us the way. You will never be forgotten.

An excerpt from “Somebody was a communist” by Giorgio Gaber (1992)

Someone was a communist because they dreamed of a different kind of freedom.
Someone was a communist because they thought they could only be alive and happy if others were.
Someone was a communist because they needed a push towards something new, because they were willing to change every day, because they felt the need for a different morality, because maybe it was just a force, a flight, a dream, it was just a drive, a desire to change things, to change life.
Someone was a communist because with this impetus everyone was like more than themselves, they were like two people in one. On the one hand the personal daily grind and on the other the sense of belonging to a race that wanted to take flight to really change life.
No, no regrets. Perhaps even then many had spread their wings without being able to fly, like hypothetical seagulls.

Unity is required to beat the Fascists

The rise of Le Pen is not inevitable. We can stop them with radical action by the whole of the Left

Colin Falconer

Socialists in France should call for strikes and occupations after the fascist victory in the 9th June European election. But we should also welcome the decision by the four main left-wing parties – including the Labour-type Socialist Party – not to split the left vote in the 30th June general election.

On the far right, discussions are taking place between Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) and the smaller Reconquest party of her niece Marion Maréchal. Now a leading MP of the traditional right-wing Les Républicains has called for an electoral alliance with the RN.

We need the biggest possible block of MPs to give a voice to left voters and anti-racists.

Many workers and people in hard-hit small towns in rural areas voted for Le Pen’s National Rally. But in some working-class and multiracial suburbs Mélenchon’s France Insoumise (LFI) movement did extremely well. Their MPs have a high profile in opposing Israeli genocide and a young Palestinian woman has been elected as an LFI Euro MP.

Trade union leaders and progressive movements such as Attac and the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme played a crucial rôle in forcing parliamentary leaders to agree in time for Macron’s snap election, as did pressure from voters and party activists.

Other groups have been invited to join the “New Popular Front”, in a reference to the 1930s electoral pact between Socialists and Communists. After introducing some reforms, the Popular Front government ultimately failed. But it showed the potential of mass action from below and unity between the Socialist and Communist rank-and-file, especially in the struggle against fascism.

Right-wing Socialists have condemned the agreement, preferring to support Macron’s party against the fascist Rassemblement National, while some sectarian groups counter the call for a left vote with the abstract slogan of a general strike (they are a small minority).

We need local meetings to organise the campaign, mass canvassing and leafletting, and rallies against the fascists in every town and city. Pro-Palestine and antiracist activists should get involved to make sure their voice is heard.

500 Thousand Crimes Against Humanity

It’s difficult to argue with a living writer, but much easier with a dead one.

Ilya Kharkow

At the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, I told my mother that if she died because of the shelling, I would take revenge. I was leaving Kyiv, and persuaded her to go with me. My mom said that if she dies, rather than devote my life to revenge I should continue living in memory of her. Through these words I felt her love for me. The words of the government – “go and die for me” – make me feel nothing but in danger.

The famous writer Leo Tolstoy considered war a manifestation of human stupidity and selfishness. But if this is so, then how can war produce heroes? Laziness does not breed productivity. Then why does war, being stupid and selfish, become proof of heroism?

Tolstoy also wrote that war prevents a person from achieving true progress and prosperity. But he died more than a century ago. Both the First and Second World Wars happened after his death. After his death, too, the European Union came to be. After his death, the Soviet Union was formed and collapsed. In a post-Soviet space, Leo Tolstoy’s portrait is required furnishing in school literature classrooms. Once an idol of intellectuals, he turned into thousands of identical old-fashioned portraits hanging in identical classrooms in identical post-Soviet schools.

The lesson sounds easy: if you want to kill something, make it holy. Today Leo Tolstoy is more synonymous of boredom than he is an idol. Anyway, he wrote a lot of wonderful things. And that’s it, this life hack works flawlessly: if you want to kill it, make it holy. For some reason it didn’t work with the war. Not with this one.

No matter how war is portrayed in the news or art, even now there are those who go to war voluntarily and talk about it as an act of heroism. But in Ukraine, the volunteers ran out after the first few months, everyone else has been forced to go to war for 2 years now, although the media say we have democracy and free will.

Classics do not become obsolete; the creators certainly do. Therefore, it is easy to reassess values when the one who inspired them has been reduced to a stupid portrait. Therefore, it was easy for my generation to forget that war is a manifestation of stupidity and selfishness, and it was also easy to say out loud the following before 2022: “We are unhappy because not a single great historical event has befallen our lives.”

Why did the rise of cinema lead us to films without ideas? Why is great literature a thing of the past? Why do poets’ performances take place in cramped cafes, and not in stadiums, as it used to be in 60s? We knew the answer. The absence of a great historical event is what made our reality contemptuously flat. But we needed this event, merciless in its grandeur. We missed the Great Depression. Missed a war. A new dictator. Protracted political conflict. We dreamed of doing something heroic, knowing it also required a big evil.

The scale of a person is determined by the scale of his problems, and the same is true for a generation. Well, we got our war. But we quickly had to realize that war does not need culture. War nullifies everything, makes it meaningless. Culture is created not because of war, but in spite of it. We realized this too late. And yet, it is more pleasant to read about even the naivest love than about a young man’s eyelids burned out as a result of a bomb explosion on the battlefield.

Yes, we’ve been dreaming about a big historical villain for a long time. As big as the biggest rainy cloud or KFC’s advertising budget. After all, only a cloud or an infinitely huge number could embody our valor.

We dreamed of becoming heroes for so long without becoming them that we were simply tired of dreaming about it. We got fed up and locked ourselves in offices. Allowed our posture to become distorted. We began to communicate with doctors more often than with relatives. And then the villain appeared. It burst into our homes through crime scene reports, when the first bombs exploded loudly in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Then, it turned out, our problem was with ourselves, and not in the absence of an enemy.

The problem was that we believed that economic freedom was the basis of other freedoms. It’s as if human rights will automatically grow on us like an additional layer of warm clothing the moment we have money. But this did not happen. Oil prices have increased. Money appeared in Russia, but not rights. In Ukraine there were neither rights nor money. Although I damn well want to believe that life was good before the war. And this is what propaganda claims today, but this is just one of its levers.

We are used to talking about Russian propaganda, but we don’t like to talk about Ukrainian one. If Russian propaganda is aimed at making Ukrainians a target, then Ukrainian propaganda is aimed at forcing this target to voluntarily or forced-voluntarily enter the battlefield. But what should I do if I don’t want to be a target? Or a sniper. I don’t want to kill anyone at all. Why am I denied this right? Facing this choice is tantamount to exposing your chest to a bullet.

I can’t imagine how Jean-Paul Sartre wrote philosophical works while being a prisoner of war during WWII, because I see that war tends to simplify reality, and suppresses any analysis of it other than the official one. During a war, the ruling political party becomes the maximum personification of the country. To some extent, a political party becomes a country, and one of the goals of propaganda is to make you realize that a person who disagrees with a political party does not agree with the entire country, which means that such person is a traitor.

From the first day of the war, men were forbidden to leave Ukraine. Soon new restrictions were enacted. For example, a man in Ukraine cannot sell an apartment or obtain a driver’s license without notifying the military registration office. If a man voluntarily goes there, he will not return. If a man visits a hospital, the doctor is obliged to inform the military registration office about this. If you disagree, you are a traitor, so it is better to remain silent.

Employers must declare their male workers to the military registration office. Police and representatives of the military registration office catch men near the metro and at public transport stops. I have to run away. Hide. Ask girls to bring me some food. Girls are threatened only by missiles, but guys are threatened by missiles and Ukrainian police, as well as patriots and old people whose boys have already died, but you dared not to. Nah, you can’t trust anyone. Is this the great historical event that we so lacked before culture could become great again?

While democratic countries are collecting money and weapons for Ukraine, Ukraine is destroying its own democracy. Human rights are on hold. Paused! Damn. What are these rights worth if they can be paused so easily? Everyone suddenly owes their life to their homeland. But what did I do that caused me to have such a large debt? Be born there? Just this? But I didn’t choose where to be born. Does this have anything to do with racism? Gender discrimination? My state had to protect me with a private army, but in the end I myself need to defend myself from my own state. And no one can do anything. Everybody just watching. So funny.

One human rights is to seek asylum in another country if a person is in danger in his own. But the borders are closed. To leave Ukraine, a man needs to pay about 10 thousand dollars. And as usual, we all pretend that we don’t know anything about this “exit tax”.

In order for peace to come, it is necessary to fight not only the aggressor, but also the image of war. Our cinema, our poetry and literature are completely stuffed with the idealization of military operations. War does not create heroes; it maims and kills. It is necessary to show how senseless and cruel the war is, so that a person does not even think about joining the army.

To hell with the medals. To hell with heroism. All this is not worth human life. The current war is not about people, but about borders. The cities will be rebuilt, but the people will never be brought back to life. So, it turns out that a great historical event does not create, it kills. Those who could have become great writers or directors – turned into silent corpses with burnt eyelids.

In 2024, 500 thousand men will be mobilized in Ukraine. 500 thousand crimes against humanity will merge into the word “war” and will be justified by it. At best, they will turn into a monument, at worst, they will be forgotten. Recently I saw a video of a guy with amputated legs asking for money for prosthetics. He has given more for the state than he could afford to give.

Have you ever kissed a burn? Have you seen eyelids that, when closed, cannot completely cover the eye? Leo Tolstoy considered war a manifestation of human stupidity and selfishness. Ask a guy with burnt eyelids what he thinks about that.

Remember, if you want to kill something, make it holy.

Put it to a frame.

Hang it on the walls of classrooms.

Keep it this way and you’ll see how the idol turns into the personification of boredom.

What did he write about war? Don’t you remember, ha?

One year ago, on May 18, 2023, the Leo Tolstoy station in the Kyiv metro was renamed the Square of Ukrainian Heroes.

This piece is a part of a series, The Mining Boy Notes, published on Mondays and authored by Ilya Kharkow, a writer from Ukraine. For more information about Ilya, see his website. You can support his work by buying him a coffee.