Fiscal waterboarding. That’s how previous Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, described the imposition of European and International Monetary Fund policies in the country. Austerity equates to having your head forced under water, only to be violently ejected up just as you feel you are losing your breath, drowning.
Between 2003 and 2006 in Polish secret prisons, and potentially Lithuanian and Romanian too, detainees like Bin Attash were violently strapped down by CIA officials, their faces covered with a cloth, and water poured over their nose and mouth to create a terrifying sensation of drowning. U.S. government lawyers and psychologists toiled, writing memos assuring officials that this did not constitute torture.
Yet, when the United Nations Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, called upon European institutions and the IMF to question austerity policies which “had not worked” in Greece and had, instead, caused a recession, he found himself almost alone against the sea of voices calling for Greece’s head, and for continuing suffering of the Greek people – for dues paid many times over.
Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Mason, and other renowned economists shouted against the insanity of continuing austerity in Greece. Greece’s debt is unsustainable, and vulnerable citizens are being crushed to pay unconscionable levels of interest back to wealthy French and German banks. Real wages have reduced. Engineers who had earned EUR 1,500 per month in 2007, are now being asked to survive on EUR 500, while doing the same job.
The Independent Expert called on European institutions and the IMF to ensure that any new agreements protected the “right to health care, food and social security” in light of a “humanitarian crisis” in Greece, “with shortages in medicines and food.”
On this occasion, Brussels went further. We did not only witness the customary ambivalence to economic, social and cultural rights. European institutions collaboratively denied the Greek people their basic right to political participation.
The UN Independent Experts on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, and on human rights and international solidarity, Virginia Dandan, commended the Greek referendum which resulted in a comprehensive “No” to austerity as an “eloquent expression of the self-determination of the Greek people,” and stressed that there is “much more at stake” than debt repayment obligations.
The result was ignored in Brussels, and the current Greek government was made to pay for instituting the referendum with punishing terms, including being forced to sell of more than EUR 50 billion worth of national Greek assets.
Countries quickly band together to create international treaties for trade – with problematic but powerful dispute settlement bodies which weaken the power of States to protect our human rights and the environment where corporate profits are threatened. At the same time, States consistently fail to subject themselves to binding mechanisms for the enjoyment of human rights, labor protections, and for the protection of the environment.
This is deliberate, and all too felt in Greece as its economy is pushed to the brink of drowning again.
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2 Comments
Sorry for the typos…I accidentally posted before proofreading…argh!!!
And what about the odious nature of the debt (as determined by the Parliamentary committee? Shouldn’t that have given the Greek government some leverage in negotiations? One of the legal principles of contracting is that the risk of loss should be borne by the party with the best able to carry or manage or bear the risk. In my humble opinion, the large financial institutions and their wealthy owners are better able to manage the risk and bear its negative consequences than pensioners and workers. But alas, as you know well, legal principles that gravitate against the corporate imperative to make profit (a legal mandate) seem to get lost in the fog of financial war. Thanks for the article.