“We felt it necessary to publicly inform politicians that if they supported and continued to support Israel in its actions they could be liable for prosecution for war crimes,” says international lawyer from London.

Kristina Bozic interviews Tayab Ali, a lawyer with one of the richest and most impressive résumés of experiences and victories in fighting for justice, respect of human rights and international law. In 2009 he succeeded in obtaining an arrest warrant for Israeli politician Tzipi Livni for her role in Israeli war crimes committed during the 2008-2009 bombings of Gaza. He is the director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians and a partner and the head of International Law at London law firm Bindmans LLP, determined to hold those in positions of power to account. This interview took place on the day South Africa filed a complaint against Israel at the International Court of Justice before the news was announced. 

You have said your aim is to end the impunity of Western politicians for their support of Israel, abetting and aiding its crimes and violations of international law. How far, do you feel, have you managed to come?

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has the strategy as an investigative group to look at the primary crimes or primary criminal allegations. This is important. These are the crimes committed by the Israeli government; allegations have also been made against Hamas, particularly concerning the events of October 7. Pursuing a case for justice or prosecution demands this clarity. 

What you have mentioned, demanding the responsibility of the political class, looks at the secondary crime and liability for that demands the primary atrocity or violation of the law. We are looking at Article 25 of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It defines as an offence if someone aids or abets or in any other way assists – and I add encourages – the commission of a war crime. 

In the current situation there is a significant number of third party or third country politicians – from the UK, the USA, across Europe and in other countries –, who support Israeli atrocities by words or encouragement. This includes failing to recognize what is very plain to see on the ground. All of these fulfil the conditions for secondary liability. 

However, we are also witnessing that armaments are supplied to Israel by, for example, companies and corporations based in the UK. These weapons are likely to be used in the current atrocities and the British government has had to issue licenses for all these shipments of weapons. In my view that is an offence, recognized, as mentioned, in the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court. Furthermore, we know that the UK has sent warplanes for what they say are surveillance operations. They claim that they are supporting efforts to release the hostages by satellite and photographic imagery but likely the British government actually provides the Israeli government with deep surveillance of Gaza, which the Israelis can use as they choose. Supporting efforts to release hostages can be a euphemism for many things. Besides dismantling Hamas this is the reason given for all Israeli actions and the facts on the ground tell us that this aim obviously is not real. When Western politicians say they do things to aid one small part of the Israeli operation, they create fiction. If they were confident in the legality of Israeli actions, they could say their actions assist Israeli operations in Gaza. But they cannot say this because they are aware it would make them complicit in war crimes that will legally become clearer in the next months although they are already clear given what is happening in Gaza. 

As human rights, criminal and international lawyer I find the position that we gift to the political class really disturbing. We buy into their nonsense that they do certain actions as political figures, as if this is their temporary role, dislocated from their lives and them personally. As society we have failed to hold politicians to account at least since the end of the World War II. It is time we make politicians accountable – whether they are in a war zone or not – for the decisions they make. Complicity is a good example: when they give cover to a war criminal, when they give impunity to a war criminal, when they protect a war criminal. These are criminal acts. We need to look at and analyze them and hold politicians accountable. 

We hear, at least in Slovenia, politicians distancing themselves from calling with a proper name what we are witnessing in Gaza. They say it is for the courts to decide if Israeli actions amount to genocide. How to ensure that those who commit secondary crimes do not use as an alibi the fact that the primary crimes have not yet been judicially established? We know that the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide demands of states to act to prevent genocide. And we have seen this happen in the case filed at the International Court of Justice against Russia after its aggression on Ukraine. 

Justice comes after an atrocity. It cannot come before. When states deal with terrorism they move dangerously close to the realm of thought crime but we are talking about war crimes. Generally it is after war crimes are committed that we collect evidence, find the perpetrator, detain, arrest, prosecute and convict. This is important.

However, at ICJP we have established sufficient evidence to show a prima facie case of war crimes Israel has perpetrated against Gaza inhabitants. This means that prosecutors could be prosecuting Israeli officials for war crimes. They could be issuing arrest warrants – and also for those, complicit in these war crimes. We are in a unique position where we have passed the time period when prosecutions could have begun – the International Criminal Court and national jurisdictions could be seeking arrests. And this is what we are working towards. 

Moreover, the Genocide Convention includes an important clause that is unique in international law. Not only is to commit genocide an offence, the parties of the Genocide Convention have an obligation and a duty to try to prevent it. And this is to happen before the criminal event. 

Therefore, state parties to the Genocide Convention have an obligation to assess and analyse what is happening in Gaza. If they consider there is sufficient evidence – which there is – to cause them to believe there is a risk of genocide happening in the near future, they can trigger the Genocide Convention mechanisms. These include complaints to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is a really important pre-emptive step. The ICJ can accept such a complaint and on request issue interim measures, which would force the alleged perpetrator state, in this case Israel, to take actions to prevent genocide. This is important. If the state fails to meet the ICJ’s ordered interim measures, it is in violation of the highest court we have. This means that the Security Council can take action but also individual states, parties to the Genocide Convention can in their own right take actions against such violations. They can, for example enact sanctions or restrict trade. With this important pre-emptive tool we can take actions before a crime of genocide happens.

The crime of genocide, concretely Holocaust during the World War II, made the states come together. Never again resonated. The Genocide Convention was adopted. And in the case of Ukraine we have seen how this tool can work when there is political will. 

Prosecution consists of two important parts – first is evidence. Without it you cannot do anything. The second part is the will of the institutions designed to hold violators of international law to account to do it. The USA, the EU and the UK acted when the events in Ukraine made them believe that what was happening amounted to war crimes. Therefore, we know that the international legal machinery can operate phenomenally well. The ICC has got funded by the non-Rome Statute party member, the USA and has been supported by the UK and the EU and others so that it intervened directly on the ground in Ukraine during the war in a war zone. The ICC supported the Ukrainian prosecutors as they arrested, detained, prosecuted and convicted Russians for war crimes – during the war. 

Where there is political will, we can see how effective international law can and should be. Furthermore, the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has issued an arrest warrant for Russian commander in chief, president Vladimir Putin. It carries an important message that Russian actions are unacceptable. If Putin travels to an ICC state, he could be detained and transferred to Hague for prosecution.

With Palestine and Gaza, we see a difference in speed. If with Ukraine we were paddling downstream, with Israel, and with the USA and the UK complicit in the criminal acts, the ICC and international framework have to paddle upstream. It is slower, less effective and it could prove to be completely ineffective. 

It demonstrates a significant disassociation between the political, ruling class that supports Israel and its criminal acts on the one side, and everybody else, the general population who sees very clearly what is happening on the ground. This clarity builds on clear definitions of the principles of the international law during the war in Ukraine. The West has supported Ukraine – financially, militarily and in principle. The Ukrainian flags fly across Europe. 

We have very recently seen how the world should respond to alleged atrocities from a powerful state. Yet in Gaza everything is flipped on its head – people have been told what is right and wrong in international law but now they are told that this is different. 

Why? 

Because it just is. 

However, people do not accept it. There are hundreds of thousands in countries across the world coming to the streets, protesting against their political classes. This relation can become very volatile and dangerous. If the ICC and international mechanisms fail to deal with Israeli war crimes in the way they should, we will see an existential threat to the institution of the ICC and tearing of the fabric of the international humanitarian law and international law. People will see these for what they should not be – imperialistic tools for powerful states against weaker states and people. And this is unsustainable. 

If the international legal mechanisms do not work and fail to hold Israeli alleged war criminals accountable, we will find ourselves in a situation where people will think that the only solution left for them when they have a grievance is to take to the streets, to protest and ultimately, resort to violence. The values we have built, lived and cherished for 75 years, which we thought were real and honest and true, were actually a figment of our imagination and were in fact used to suppress people, not to protect them. Such situation would be very dangerous. 

Could countries be held accountable for not acting to prevent genocide? In October you sent letters warning the British politicians of the consequences their actions might have. Was this a precondition for future actions to prevent the claim that they were unaware about the situation and the law? 

Not preventing genocide would be a failure of a state, party to the Genocide Convention. However, we should remember that states are run by people. And I am more interested in building cases to achieve personal, criminal individual liability of the politicians.  

What happens if states do not prevent genocide? Genocide happens. Personally, I think the criteria to characterize the crime as genocide has in Gaza already been met. Primarily for two reasons. First, we can see the actions on the ground, and second, the difficult part to prove is the intent. However, numerous Israeli politicians – because of the Israel’s impunity – are not frightened to say what they are doing: calling people human animals, saying that everybody in Gaza is a terrorist, that there are no civilians, and referencing the Biblical scripture of Amalek, where the called upon response is to destroy utterly, “slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey”. If these are not genocidal calls, then I do not know what are. 

We are therefore in a position where we could already be prosecuting and bringing a legal case against Benjamin Netanyahu for genocide. This means that individual actors supplying weaponry, finance and political cover – assisting – Israeli government could be prosecuted for war crimes. If somebody somewhere signs a document that says these planes, missiles, and money can go to Israel, they could be held accountable. 

The reason we wrote at first private letters to British politicians was foremost, to give them the benefit of the doubt that they might have got the law wrong. As lawyers we have to take this as the first step. We explained the law and why we thought they had misstep and what they should do. Nothing happened for a week. After another three days we decided to write public letters. This is unusual for us. We want to keep our legal documents for courts but European and British politicians were championing Israel’s right to respond to October 7 in an uncontrolled way and did not remind Israel of its obligation to restrain and target only military aims. At the time we already saw that Israeli actions had violated every concept of self-defence, whether Article 51 of the United Nation’s Charter that does not apply to this situation or just the basic concept of self-defence when one defends oneself against an unlawful attack. We felt it necessary to publicly inform politicians that if they supported and continued to support Israel in its actions they could be liable for prosecution for war crimes. In a few hours we noticed a change in rhetoric: Israel has a right to self-defence but should abide to international humanitarian law. 

However, as far as I am concerned this is not good enough. It is equivalent to saying to a terrorist organisation that they can perpetrate their acts of terrorism as long as they abide by the international humanitarian law, knowing full well that they will not. And this is really important. If politicians followed the change in rhetoric by notifying Israel that they see it does not abide by international humanitarian law and therefore, they are removing their support, then this would suffice. A few states have done this. But most have not. 

If we look at ceasefire votes, we have to remember that the hard part to prove in any context is the intent. As a defence lawyer who has worked on defence in terrorism and national defence prosecutions in the UK for twenty years I know how skilled prosecutors prove intent – they build an image for the jury about what is inside someone’s mind by their paraphernalia, computer content, statements and actions, which are not criminal in themselves, but constitute a mindset material to understand what is happening in someone’s mind. Therefore, if we have a politician in our parliamentary establishment who do their job, yet vote against ceasefire despite the evidence that one or both perpetrators are engaged in massive war crimes, they express with this their approval for war crimes to continue. If they continue to provide weapons and other support, this means that they agree to be participants in war crimes, either recklessly or purposefully. And that is a criminal act for which they should be held accountable. The vote against ceasefire in a parliament might not be a criminal offence because it is part of a parliamentary process but it is a crime in international law and prosecutable under universal jurisdiction of the Geneva Conventions and under the Rome Statue of the ICC. 

To put it into stark terms: imagine, we are looking at the Holocaust and parliamentarians vote to allow a resolution for the military to turn on the gas in gas chambers. Just because they voted for that in a parliament as part of their job and changed the British laws to allow that to happen, does not make it lawful in international law. They would be prosecuted and rightly so. In this way we prosecuted Nazis at the Nürnberg trials and ninety-year-old Nazis are being prosecuted for what they did in World War II. 

Personally, I see no difference between a politician explicitly carrying out war crimes by ordering an army to do it and politicians supporting a foreign state in doing that. And it is a duty of lawyers and prosecution authorities around the world to hold politicians when they violate international law to account.  

You have mentioned individual responsibility. And we see support expressed by a number of European politicians for the ICC. However, a court that can act effectively and fast is the ICJ. Are states avoiding their duties and shifting the weight of action onto the ICC prosecutor? And how big of a problem can subsidiary jurisdiction of the ICC be? Israel is known for not holding their army to account even if it conducts trials but the ICC can act only if a state cannot or will not ensure justice.

Israel has a very poor record in prosecuting its own military personnel or politicians for war crimes. But if Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were arrested and prosecuted by Israel – and convicted by Israeli courts, that would be a good start, would it not? And that would be the least what were needed. 

I do not have an answer why states are not en masse breaking relations with Israel other than perhaps the pressure from the USA. That is one immediate step they should take. I also have no understanding why states are not triggering the ICJ protection under the Genocide Convention. I know Israel as a state and its propaganda machine are frightened beyond belief about people using the word genocide to categorise what Israel is doing in Gaza. The reason being that you cannot satisfy the need to prosecute genocide, which is systematic, by prosecuting one or two soldiers. Therefore we see accusation of anti-Semitism against people who use the word genocide. I do not refrain from this expression because, again, I believe there is a prime facie case to meet the allegation of genocide that should be prosecuted as we speak. 

Individual states appear to fear the Israeli lobbying that happens in their parliamentary establishment. This is very apparent in the UK. Many politicians are contacting me and telling me about the pressure on them to not call out Israel’s war crimes. I have seen messages, threats, and attacks to prevent them from speaking out – from other politicians and from lobbyists. 

So it might be easier for a state to say, let the ICC do it. And the ICC is in an extremely difficult position. It feels the massive weight of states like the USA and the UK trying to protect Israel from any kind of accountability. The ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has found himself in an extraordinarily difficult position: if he does not hold Israel accountable through the ICC infrastructure, the ICC is finished – at least in my view. It becomes irrelevant. Khan’s legacy will be the failure to hold Israeli leaders accountable for clear violations of international law. This will be the last nail in the coffin of the ICC. However, if he does something, he faces similar quandary – he almost puts the nail on the coffin of the ICC because the USA and the UK and some European states might not allow him to do his work, as he should be allowed to. 

My advice would be to simply look in himself and understand why he became an international lawyer. I have given the same advice to his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda. The position of the ICC prosecutor is one of the most powerful legal positions on this planet. At the stroke of a pen they can save thousands of lives. And by withholding that stroke of a pen they can be effectively responsible for allowing deaths of thousands of people to continue. 

If taking the right decision in this situation means the end of the ICC because certain states will not allow Israel to be prosecuted, then this is an important thing to happen. It will show us, the people, that this institution that we have created and that our money finances, is not worth having. It is crucial that we see institutions work in a way we want them to work because if they do not, what is the point of them?

You work a lot on the universal jurisdiction you have already mentioned. In 2009 you succeeded in getting an arrest warrant, which was later retracted, issued by the British court for Tzipi Livni because of her role in 2008-2009 Israeli bombings of Gaza. Later the politicians have changed the laws. Is it today more difficult to build on universal jurisdiction despite its successful use in Germany in cases regarding human rights violations in Syria and Russia, for example?

In 2009 we obtained an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni in a really important case. We showed to a higher court and to a senior judge, Chief magistrate, that Israeli war cabinet had given an order to the military to attack a civilian structure. We demonstrated it on prima facie level – this means that we were not showing reasonable grounds to suspect something happened but we demonstrated a case already prosecutable in court and therefore the arrest warrant was issued. 

As the result of that the British government changed the law to provide political interference or protection for such processes. They said they wanted to avoid sensationalist lawyers making a political point. However, what they really did was affronted the judiciary.

I do not think the situation today is harder. In a way it is easier. What the British government has done is diverted us from doing the work ourselves, on our own expenses, to doing it with the UK police, Scotland Yard, and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Something is true for almost every lawyer or police officer. Hardly any go into their jobs to protect criminals. A Crown prosecutor does not take the job to protect war criminals. Therefore, when you present evidence of war crimes – the type we are gathering, with pictures and videos and testimonies that are harrowing beyond one’s imagination – to a police officer, I am confident they will do their job. I am also confident the Crown prosecutors will do their job. Whether politicians will then try to protect the alleged criminal is a different matter. 

But the law does not allow politicians to protect war criminals – that is assistance and we will refer also cases of such assistance to the ICC, to the British Police and Prosecution Services and to the law enforcement services around the world. To Slovenian, Ukrainian, Australian, Brazilian, South African authorities – we will provide them with the materials they need to hold British, American, Israeli and other politicians complicit in war crimes to account. At some point somewhere someone will take action. I am confident of that. 

No one expected the British Court to issue an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni. Nobody expected it. But it did. And these legal actions are very important. 

For a couple of years after 2009 I had Israeli mothers come to my office to ask if their child, taking part in military exercises, could be complicit in war crimes because of their actions. That for me was a phenomenal lesson. The reaction in Israel was also interesting. The Jerusalem Post interviewed me after I led some war crimes cases there. They asked if I would represent a settler against a Palestinian. I answered yes, if a Palestinian violated settler’s rights. Because that is what the law says: everyone’s rights must be protected. I remember the newspaper headlining the article to convey the message that I am a Palestinian lawyer, who would represent a settler, as if that were something bad. Palestinians in London asked me if I really said that. I told them I did. They responded that they had finally found a lawyer who knows how to do his job – it is about the rule of law and justice being applied equally to everybody.

I am not worried. The fight is against impunity and we have to do everything we can to break it. Otherwise it could be any one of us, fighting for justice because of different violations, facing a political class protecting the perpetrators from accountability. This cannot be allowed. It cannot be allowed. 

You have mentioned the Israeli ministers who blatantly call for killings or erasure of Palestinians. The USA and the EU have demonstratively hyperbolized that they will ban extremist Israeli settlers who illegally live in the West Bank but have not clarified if this might apply also to illegal-settler ministers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. What do you make of these measures?

We have to be very careful not to be fed a morsel when what is needed is much more given the level of violations. The establishment is realising that the situation is getting harder for them. They have decided to do something, tiny, to satisfy people’s hunger for justice.

My answer is, it is correct that violations of the UN resolutions and international law are met with sanctions by countries across the globe. Illegal Israeli settlers are a small aspect of a war crime. And travel bans are a small aspect of possible reactions. But such a measure does not get the USA off the hook for supplying weapons, providing billions of dollars in aid and giving political cover for the majority of crimes. It is like chopping someone’s head off and putting a plaster on their finger. It is not acceptable.

You have mentioned the attacks misusing the charges of anti-Semitism to stop any criticism of Israeli policies and we see equating of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. How dangerous do you feel are the restrictions of free speech we are currently witnessing?

It is interesting that I have never been called anti-Semitic by anybody with any credibility. But this is important. As a lawyer fighting for justice I of course recognise anti-Semitism as a great evil. I recognise what happened to Jews during the World War II as a great evil. What happened to the Jewish people and others during the Holocaust and the World War II played a pivotal role in my personal legal development. 

I remember the first time I read about the events of the World War II as a teenager and learned about the massive number of people who died across the globe. It was mind blowing. In school we learned about historic battles and hundred soldiers dying here, there. But here there were millions killed. And that set me off on my human rights journey to become a lawyer and look at what is right and what is wrong. 

I work in countries from Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan to Uganda, Egypt … One of the accusations cast on lawyers who work on Palestine and Israel is that those are the only violations they see. They cannot say that about me. My work is about the rule of law and justice and there is no space in my environment for people who discriminate or are prejudiced against a Jewish person because they are Jewish. I have no time for that and I have no interest in supporting that. I think very strongly that minority groups, wherever they are, should never be persecuted because of their race, religion … Simultaneously I find it equally disturbing how people use anti-Semitism and sometimes even Islamophobia to protect violations of international law. 

Can you explain?

When somebody points out that a person is committing violations but this is then interpreted as an attack on this person because of their race, religion or ethnicity. Such use of allegations of discrimination is terrible. 

Furthermore, there is a difference between criticising a state or its actions and criticising a group of people because of who they are. We have to be very clear about this and differentiate these.

In the fight for Palestinian rights and accountability for Israeli violations of international law there are massive numbers of Israelis and Jews across the world who do not agree with the Netanyahu government, with Smotrich or Ben-Gvir, or with actions currently unfolding in Gaza. It is really important that we see and recognize this and understand that the battle should not be between races or religions but between right and wrong in accordance with what we say our law should be and is. That for me is very important. 

I am often asked if I am anti-Zionist or pro-Zionist and I have stopped allowing people to use that word to describe any aspect of anything I do. I believe that every group, be Jewish, Muslim, whoever, has a right to self-determination. And this right to self-determination is limited to the extent that it does not violate anyone else’s right to self-determination. If you can establish a situation where you create a state and live in it with other people without violating other people’s rights, there is no problem. The minute this state starts to violate other people’s rights it violates international law and that is wrong. You can give that whatever label you want. I am not particularly interested in labels. I am more interested in what is behind a label. People have been using labels to attack and silence others, which is also unacceptable. 

It is not right that there is fear among British politicians of being called anti-Semitic for highlighting what is happening in Gaza or calling out war crimes in Gaza or saying that Gaza is a prison camp, something the British Prime Minister David Cameron said in 2010. This fear is counter-productive. This shield, impunity, false arguments to deconstruct accountability only create a continuous cycle of violence where people feel that there is no accountability and that the only way to be heard is through violence. The end result is no security for Israelis or for Palestinians, just conflict. This is what we are trying to avoid. Because the international community and politicians across the world are demonstrating a phenomenal historic failure at it.

Just to clarify – the right to self-determination and to establish one’s state in which one feels safe does not include the right to create “ethnically clean” state that violates other people’s rights so that it remains “ethnically clean”. 

Correct. It does not. It cannot. In order to do that you would engage in war crimes. If you claim to be a democratic state, you have to abide by democratic values and principles – and that does not include creating an apartheid system within your state.

This is not new. In South Africa the white citizens created an apartheid state trying to keep the “sanctity” of the white race. That is unacceptable. It is not allowed. And nobody should support it. The same applies to Palestinians – the Palestinians should not be allowed to create a Palestinian state that denies and violates the rights of other minorities in their state. This is not and cannot be part of the equation. Yes, it makes the solution difficult. But that is the reason why I refer to what is happening in Israel and Palestine as 75 years of political failure. That is what it is. If we cannot find the political solution to it, what are we saying? That militarily the greatest might wins? We have seen the consequences of this in the past as well. It is not acceptable. 

You have mentioned that you are submitting evidence about the last 75 years of violations of international law in Israel and Palestine to the ICC, which is looking into the prosecutions of individuals for crimes after 2014. Has the ICJP shared the gathered evidence also with the teams working on the case in front of the ICJ about the il-legality of the Israeli occupation? 

At the moment we are not working directly on the ICJ case, which is a state-level case. We have supported individuals with material and legal support when asked but we are not directly involved in that case. 

You have mentioned your work across the globe to support rule of law and justice, from Uganda to Pakistan. How do you see does the international criminal law infrastructure affect the strength and effectiveness of national courts? 

The ICC is a relatively young institution and still in development. It is also why I feel the current fight is so important if it is to become an effective institution. At the moment anyone can fund it, from individuals to states. I believe that while ensuring its independence there should also be a more stable funding for the ICC. 

In British domestic law there is an important principle that makes perverting the course of justice an offence. If a person interferes with an investigation, seeks to interfere or does an act that causes an investigation to be interfered with, that is a criminal offence. The ICC should be able to operate in a similar manner. It needs to be distinctively more independent and if it gets this right, I think, it will get there.  

For example, Boris Johnson wrote in a letter that he does not support the ICC investigation into Israel because Israel is an ally. That should be a crime – he was seeking to pervert the course of justice by interfering with an investigation. It might already be criminal and it is something we are looking into. 

If the ICC is to work right and properly, it should work as it did in Ukraine. With its mechanism, infrastructure, knowledge and ability it should support local prosecutors to prosecute. It should train and enhance the local judiciary systems. The idea is to spread the concept of international humanitarian law across the globe so that people start to take it seriously and understand it. 

Some of the national jurisdictions are not yet capable of dealing with domestic criminal actions that fall under international criminal law. Therefore it is better that the proceedings happen outside. Sometimes the perpetrators are the ruling class. A lot of criticism of the ICC has been that it is an imperialistic tool. I litigate at the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. When I asked the Commission to do its job properly I made the argument that African countries complain a lot about the Western interference. However, the only way they can push away the Western interference is if they take responsibility for what happens in their states – individually or jointly through institutions like the Commission. That is really important. It is unfortunate that we have political leaders, who can be greatly influenced through personal protection and wealth by Western states to dominate their systems, retain an autocratic regime and violate the rights of people. It is still imperialist colonialism, just of a different form. One manipulates an individual in government, supplies weapons and money to that individual to the detriment of all the people in that country. Interfering and patronizing people by saying this from London is not really the way to do it. It is something that people in those states need to do for themselves and they are doing it – my work in these countries often supports them at this. 

At the same time Western states need to start living up to their promise of justice, human rights, international law and democratic principles. One should not do business with people and governments that violate democratic rights and principles. No mater the amount of money. 

It is very sad that despite what happened in the World War II our political leaders seem to be forgetting about that. They put personal and financial interests way ahead of people and their common interests. This is apparent also in the decline of different systems – from financial, economic to political. In the UK the government increasingly manipulates people through political discourse. It tells people what they should think and feel and what to be upset about, so that they forget and ignore what they are actually upset about – from personal hardship, cost of living to increasing homelessness. 

However, I sense a shift, a change in geopolitical situation around the globe. People are starting to wake up and realize that the political class are not working for their interest. People are starting to think about how they can change the hold and the grip that political class have on them. Unfortunately, this sometimes means that they turn to the far-right but hopefully this is short-lived as people see that the far-right politicians have no worthy answers. Then there can be a return to the enlightened period of understanding that everyone is equal and same no matter what they look like or where they come from. Everybody strives for the same, which is security, housing, food, education, welfare and health systems. That is what we all really want. Unfortunately, the world is orientated towards enriching the rich ever more. And that is the major obstacle – which the people, though, are starting to recognize.

 

The article was also published in Slovenian at Mešanec.

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