Slippery slope my ... bum.

Thanks to Wess for pointing me to this piece on HuffPo, which makes it clear that the "slippery slope" that comes from preventing a woman's choice in the matter of abortion is actually more like a steep incline.  In the piece, Soraya Chemaly discusses statements by a Georgia Republican State legislator who supports a law that would force pregnant women to carry a fetus to full term or 'natural' birth.  His justification?  Pigs and cows do it.  No, I'm not (and Soroya isn't) making that up and that's not taken out of context.  He said that life gives us many lessons and one of those that he's experienced is delivering stillbirth cows and pigs and it "breaks your heart" when those animals don't make it.  He literally compared women - their bodies, their emotions, and their psychological welfare - to cattle.  Let me give you a hint:  lots of things that we have already tried to put an end to.

By the way, he goes on to talk about a "salt of the Earth kind of [person]" who once said they'd give up all the chickens they use for cock fighting (though I guess they do chicken fighting?) if only Georgia would outlaw abortion.  Because women aren't salt of the Earth, so our opinion matters less and, apparently, we should give up our own ability to make choices logically and with full knowledge and consent just so we can save chickens from the cruelty of cock-fights.  Because those two things should be related.

Being Pro-Choice as a Christian: 8 Reasons

I was originally going to eschew discussing religion (or really anything very personal) on this page. My friend, Nat, however, encouraged me to take a few statements from a facebook discussion to share here. So, I should be upfront: I am a Christian. Yes, a go-to-Church, believe-in-the-Bible Christian. I'm also pro-choice and here are eight reasons why. I know some of them are oft-cited reasons by pro-choice Christians, but Nat assures me others are not.

(1) The belief that life begins at conception is a religious belief, and I am a firm believer that religious beliefs are for the religious believers to follow, not for society to impose on others. Science doesn't determine when life begins; at best, it tells us when a life is viable.  If it did indicate the point of "life", I believe that brain activity would be the standard. But even this is an unclear standard. The brain forms around week 3 of pregnancy (week 5 under scientific standards that apparently take into account 2 extra weeks before conception). The brainstem is fully formed around the end of the second week, and this controls the majority of our non-conscious brain activity. Our conscious brain, though, is the last to form. It is during the third trimester that the fetus learns to "think" and can recognize smells, etc.  So which of these constitutes "brain activity" for the purpose of determining life?  

And brain activity is, of course, not the only option for determining "life." It could be viability - which is much earlier than cerebral thought. It could be at conception. In Jewish law, life appears to begin with the first breath, or perhaps when the baby is more than halfway through the mother's body in the birthing process, and then it is not fully viable until after 30 days.  It appears Jewish teachings suggest abortion may at times be required to save the mother's life or health (including psychological health), or may be permitted if the child will be born with a birth defect.  The truth is, there is no clear Judeo-Christian, let alone all-religious, determination of when life begins.

We recognize that many questions about life and death are religious choices and religious beliefs, and in other aspects of society we honour that recognition.  We allow 7th Day Adventists to refuse life saving treatment - even for children - because their religious convictions require it. Yet, we wouldn't recognize that women have rights to determine the appropriateness of an abortion if they disagree with Catholic and evangelical Christian teachings on whether "life begins at conception"? That's an imposition of religious beliefs where society should not be imposing them.

I honestly don't see a great difference between forcing women to carry children to term in the US and forcing women to wear burkas in Afghanistan. Both stem from religious men telling women - who may or may not be religious - how God wants them to act, especially what God wants them to do with their own bodies, and then forcing them to comply with that dictate. They do not necessarily come from a woman's own belief system or her own choice. That, to me, is not what God calls us to do.

As a Christian, I believe that the Bible sets out rules for our relationship with God, but those rules are meant specifically for those who believe. While those rules may be good and right for any individual or society, they are *intended* for those who choose to believe in God and Jesus. Jesus never called on us to force non-believers to live by our rules; if anything, the Apostle Paul seems to expect the exact opposite. When Jesus told his followers to "teach[] [all nations] to obey everything I have commanded you" he did so only in the context of those nations becoming Christians first.  "[G]o and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Once people have accepted Christ's divinity and saving grace, they are to follow Christ. The inverse is not true. The Bible should be followed because of faith, not because of dictation, and anything else has the potential of turning a whole lot of people into Pharisees.

This does not mean that there is no standard of morality for society, but I take a Thomas Aquinas approach to this: not everything that is immoral should be illegal and not everything that is illegal is immoral. To do otherwise is to undermine the very foundation of free religious choice, justifying even the persecution of Christian converts in Islamic societies (because the religious ideology determines whether a crime is worthy of death). A pluralistic and secular society must decide morality not from religious ideology but from what is necessary for the preservation of society. Theft and murder clearly fall in that category; infidelity or religious conversion, for example, do not. Therefore, while I would consider infidelity immoral, the government has no place in enforcing this determination; while the Iranian government considers conversion to the Christian faith immoral, it should not be the state's place to enforce this. 

(2) Society regularly makes determinations as to who lives and who dies, often deferring determination to those closest or most knowledgeable about a situation, but sometimes even that isn't required.  In the case of abortion, society should defer to the mother, who is closest and most knowledgeable about the situation.

We (in the US and as a global society) don't provide universal health care, which often results in people needlessly dying; we have constructed intellectual property rules that allow for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs without having to distribute them to those who need them, resulting in millions of children dying from preventable and curable diseases; we have the death penalty; we allow family members to remove brain-dead individuals from life support; we allow individuals to sign 'do not resuscitate' forms that dictate when we can and cannot try to save their lives; we allow contraception, which prevents a fertilized egg (and therefore a conceived egg) from implanting; we allow war; we allow people to kill in self-defense, and we allow the use of the death penalty, which is imposed on behalf of society by twelve random individuals selected solely because they have driver's licenses or have registered to vote. And again, we allow 7th Day Adventists to refuse medical treatment because their religious convictions require it. These are just some of the times when society says that a collective on behalf of society or single individuals within society get to determine who lives and who dies - or when or how they die.

God may be pro-life, but our society is not. We regularly assign responsibility for life and death decisions to individuals or segments of the population. Abortion is no different.  We put the choice regarding abortion - which has a myriad of implications for mothers and those who love them - into the hands of those with the best knowledge of the situation and who are most directly impacted by it. This story is a perfect example of the need to give the choice to those closest to the situation. Who gets to decide when the pain of a child is so much that the appropriate medical choice is to allow it to die? The parents. Not society, not a bureaucrat in Austin, but the individual closest to the actual case at hand who is affected in the most unique ways.

(3) As this case demonstrates, there are times in which abortion may be the kinder thing to do for the sake of the child.  This child will never have an opportunity to "believe" in Christ because that requires some level of cognizance. Yes, the child may have proven to be a miracle baby, but the person who should get to decide whether that possibility is worth the pain is the parent. We do this for all types of other medical choices: when should a child's chemotherapy be stopped; when should life-sustaining treatment be stopped; when should feeding tubes be removed. These are all times when we entrust the family to make the judgment about what is kindest, what is most caring, what is most appropriate.

(4) Women disproportionately bear the burden of pregnancy and child-rearing, emotionally, physically, and financially.  Development studies indicate that giving women power over their own reproductive choices is an important step to ensuring economic independence and growth, both of the individual and the society. Countries with comprehensive sex education have better life expectancies, better economic growth, less maternal mortality, and higher levels of education for individual woman and those in her family. Educated and empowered women have a disproportionately greater impact on their communities than their male counterparts. Ensuring women can be educated and empowered requires them to have control over their reproductive rights. Taking choices away from women and providing them to others is not just disrespectful to the autonomy of a woman, but it is harmful to women's health and to society as a whole.

(5) Outlawing abortion has never worked. There is evidence of abortions occurring in Biblical times. If you outlaw it, you simply make it unsafe and expensive. So instead of harming one life - if you believe it to be a life - you harm two. The best we can ever do is to make abortion safe and rare and you don't do that by outlawing it.

‎(6) I believe that if you want to fight against abortion, you should do so in a way that empowers women rather than shames them. The best way to make abortion rare is to take care of societal health in other ways, including universal health care and better options for higher education, ensuring that people know about sexual health and reproductive choices and that when a woman does get pregnant, it does not mean that she'll be unable to experience educational and financial independence. Abortion rates are much lower in countries with universal health care, lower costs for higher education, and better sex education. Empowered women actually means fewer abortions.

If we as a society are going to address the causes of abortions, we need to do so first from a proactive, non-criminalizing way. Provide universal health care, address higher education costs, address maternity leave, provide paternity leave so that women don't bear the only burden of childbirth. If you want to fight against abortion, fight for better poverty-reduction strategies, such as more equal education for children and greater loan assistance for those pursuing higher education. Fight for greater financial assistance for young and unwed mothers, fight for more affordable housing, fight for universal and affordable prenatal care (something, by the way, that Planned Parenthood provides in certain areas for women who would not otherwise get it), fight for greater pay equality between men and women, and fight for more comprehensive sex education for children and teens. This has proven more effective than outlawing abortion and it ensures greater protection for those voiceless and defenseless children once they are born than the current tactic of the GOP legislators around the US.

(7) As we have seen in this election cycle, it is not a particularly far leap to go from abortion rights to government interference in other choices about parenthood. This future interference will inevitably focus first and foremost on persecuting mothers and women. First it was abortion, now it's contraception. A legislator in Wisconsin has presented a bill that would make single parenthood - which is disproportionately a problem for women - child abuse. So, now single women who do get pregnant and choose not to have an abortion are criminals who could lose their child. That's a *great* way to handle the situation. A woman who is abused and leaves her husband - a Biblical ground for divorce - is now also a criminal for taking care of her child.

When we treat women as nothing more than baby-producers and care givers, then these are the natural consequences: women are forced to give up their careers, they are forced to singularly bear the burden of the mistakes of two people (or non-mistakes, as in the case in the story), and they lose their own voice and are forced to adopt the choices made for them by others. Suddenly, maternity leave is not a choice, but a forced determination. Women aren't compensated for that time because it is expected of them and they aren't allowed to return to work because that's no longer their 'place'. Women start to be treated like cattle.

When we treat women like cattle, it leads to things like domestic abuse, rape, incest, FGM, etc. It all becomes slightly more acceptable. I realize it's easy to roll one's eyes at these very real possibilities and suggest this is just an exaggerated slippery slope argument. But those in the human rights world deal with the very real consequences of taking choices from women and empowering men or society to make those choices for women.  I see all of these things stemming from the same belief systems: a woman's principle role in life is not one she chooses but one that society forces upon her. 

(8)  I am not "pro-abortion."  In fact, I know no one who is. I am instead for making abortion safe, legal and rare. I have never had to face the question of whether I would have an abortion, but I believe that coming to this conclusion is a terribly painful process for most women who face this decision. I know a lot of women who as children dreamt about becoming mothers when they grew up; I know none who wanted to have an abortion when they grew up. By nature, pregnancy is what most (but not all!) women desire so when they are considering terminating a pregnancy, it is not an easy decision and it is usually done with consideration of the growing child inside them. I think there is no need for the state to make this decision even more difficult and painful for them.

I find hypocrisy, and even sometimes cruelty, in the anti-choice movement's treatment of abortion. I'm tired of members of the "pro-life" movement in the US claiming to care about children but also stating that we should stop providing international assistance to developing countries.  I'm tired of those same people justifying an unjustifiable war in Iraq.  In 2003, people operating on behalf of the American population started a war that cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, including thousands of Iraqi children. These were children God also knit together in their mothers' wombs; children who were defenseless and voiceless and helpless. Where was the voice of our pro-life movement then? Where is it now for children in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan who are killed in drone attacks or who are lumped together in the terrifyingly disrespectful term of "collateral damage" for our wars?  Where was the objection based on "every life is sacred" and "every child counts?" In this situation, we didn't even defer to those closest to the situation.  Someone in Washington makes a choice, not knowing whose lives will be terminated.

There are millions of defenseless, voiceless children who will die from poverty around the world because successive generations worth of US Presidents and Congresses have constructed trade and aid policies that actually harm those communities and are likely to ensure their continued impoverishment rather than sustainable growth. There are millions of children who die because our intellectual property laws protect big pharmaceutical companies at the expense of those children's access to medicines. Millions who will be left orphans for the same reason. Millions left without one or both parents - both in the US and outside of it - because of US health policies ranging from a failure to discuss and distribute contraception in AIDS affected countries to a failure to provide universal health care here at home. Children in the US and around the world die because they don't have access to food, medicine, or safe living conditions.  Our girls are sold into sex slavery, advertised regularly on sites like Backpage.com.

We abdicate our rights and responsibilities to fight for life in all these situations and the consequence is that children suffer. It is cruel to the mothers of those Afghan children, those Yemeni children, those Pakistani children, and those American children to treat the unborn as more sacred than the living. Let us give a voice to the voiceless amongst us; defend the defenseless on Earth.  When we have systematically, and as passionately, done that, then we should engage in the questions that we can only truly learn the answer to in Heaven, such as when life begins and what protections should be afforded to the pre-born.

Oh David...

Poor David Cameron.  He really thought he was giving Obama a great British gift.  But instead, he was giving him a Chinese manufactured gift that was just designed and branded in the UK.  Not quite the epitome of British excellence I'm sure DC was going for. Oh well, maybe next time... 

Links for today: my top news stories for today

Since part of the point of this blog is to free up my friend's facebook newsfeeds from my incessant posting, but some of my friends have admitted they principally get their news from my facebook feed, I'm going to occasionally use this blog to collect links I find interesting., interspersed with a little commentary. Here are today's:

• A gunman shot at children attending a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, killing three children and one teacher, and injuring at least one other teenager. It follows similar shootings of North Africans in the same region. It's unclear if they are linked. The BBC says if so, then it's likely a serial killer who has changed their pattern. I can't help but wonder if this isn't an anti-immigration spree similar to that which Norway faced with Anders Behring Breivik.

I'm glad the news media isn't (currently) rushing to judgment on the motive for the shootings, but I can't help but suspect this is a bit of French nationalism run amok. In the four years that I've been in Europe, I've felt a distinct increase in anti-immigration sentiment within the news media. Compared to my first stints in Europe - in 1998 and 2003 - the increase is even more dramatic. Anti-immigrant sentiments used to be passed to me in veiled references, usually with the speaker beginning with "some people in this country" or "it's not unreasonable for people here to feel..." without ever owning their own racism or anti-immigrant position unless I bluntly asked them how they felt. Now, politicians like Nikolas Sarkozy freely talk about the need to ensure France stays French, expelling Roma, promising to get tough on immigrants, and threatening to pull out of the EU visa-free zone if other European states don't get tough on illegal immigration. The Daily Mail makes ridiculous - and often untrue - proclamations about immigration in the UK, and the UK Home Secretary once wrongfully claimed that the immigration courts were so bad that a man wasn't allowed to be repatriated because he owned a cat (the court noted the existence of the cat in a recitation of the facts, but not in a "wow, this judgment hinges on his adoption of a cat" conversation).


In the trickle-down way I find political sentiment works, I am now regularly subjected to taxi drivers and people in coffee shops telling me about how Britain isn't British anymore, Europe isn't European anymore, and all the immigrants should go back to their own country. Except me, of course, because Americans aren't really immigrants, not in the true sense of that word. Plus, I'm such a nice girl, and I'm here studying and contributing to society and all (at least that's what they say until I tell them I'm studying human rights law).
In this climate, it would not be fully surprising to find some French find Sarkozy's position to suggest that anti-immigration sentiment is not only acceptable, but may be patriotic (it definitely gave him an election cycle boost in the polls). It would not be surprising to me to find out that this shooter was on an anti-non-French-French spree to kill all the people "invading" his country who aren't "really really French."
I am not attributing these shootings - if they are even based in anti-immigrant or racist sentiment - to Sarkozy. Even if the shootings were done in the name of French nationalism, responsibility rests solely with the shooter. But, I fear that this may not be the last shooting if European politicians don't pull back on the rhetoric. The fringe element that already feels "under attack" by immigrants may find solace in public statements by politicians and use that as "permission" to undertake actions they may otherwise not feel empowered to commit.

• Fighting in Syria is continuing, as is Russia and China's resistance to any UN intervention. This time the fighting is centred in Damascus, in a "wealthy and well-protected" area of the city. The explanation? “Nobody knows what exactly was going on,” [a local businesswoman] said. “Some say a very important person wanted to defect, but the funniest and most ridiculous version I heard was that a little girl got kidnapped, and the security came to rescue her.” Obviously, there's a discrepancy in how many people were killed, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in London saying 18 members of the Syrian military were killed, while Syria claimed only one was killed in a fight against "terrorists." Every time I read Assad's response to the killings, I'm reminded of how detrimental George W. Bush's "war on terrorism" is in the international community. Tamils in Sri Lanka? All terrorists. Fighters in Syria and Libya? Terrorists. Opposition party in Thailand? Yup, terrorists. Human rights activists and reporters worldwide? Definitely terrorists. Sure, all these countries would still be calling all these opposition workers terrorists, but they wouldn't then be able to point to the US's decade long "war on terror" as proof of their "right" to combat the "terrorists" so strongly. They might even, though unlikely, admit they're subject to Geneva Convention Common Article 3 or Additional Protocol II (though I'm unsure if any of these states are party to APII). But, I digress. Back to Syria. The area at the heart of the fighting yesterday (though there is fighting going on throughout the country, it just flared up in this area yesterday, apparently) is close to significant security installations and the homes of prominent leaders. The fighting is just one indication that Assad's strategy of stopping "protestors from getting into the city" has failed.

• And speaking of the Arab Spring... We should learn the fate of six Zimbabweans who were arrested for watching video of Arab Spring protests later today. Apparently Mugabe doesn't like people watching video that could be instructional in how to peacefully topple an oppressive regime that has been ruling for decades. I can't imagine why.... By the way, am I the only one who loves that CNN threw in a little note about Mugabe's call for elections at the end? As if he's calling for free and fair ones. Cute, CNN.

• I'm highlighting this article on the impact of drone attacks on the US-Pakistan relationship particularly for my flatmate, Rob, as he'll write an essay on the legality of drones in the next few weeks. I'm anticipating many a dinner discussing this issue.

• Most of my friends know that I'm not a conspiracy theorist and generally believe that in the modern age, you can't do a large-scale conspiracies. You can't keep 3,000 US Navy sailors quiet about not really burying Osama bin Laden at sea. You can't keep the entire US national security infrastructure quiet about secretly planning 9-11. You can't get all the GOP officials in Hawaii to agree to cover for Obama being secretly born in Kenya. Seriously, in the age of Wikileaks, how can one believe that all these things are being planned without anything coming to light? JFK being killed by multiple shooters? Maybe. Twitter, facebook, and the entire internets hadn't been created yet. 9/11? No. So, I'm filing the Taliban's conspiracy that there was more than one US soldier involved in the horrific killings of Afghans in the same folder I file every thought I hear on the US planning 9/11, that bin Laden wasn't really buried at sea (or was killed years in advance), and Obama being secretly born in Kenya. I have a military family member and I know how quickly rumours, gossip, and reports spread in the military. If it was more than one shooter, someone from the US military in Afghanistan likely would've spoken up, at least to a family member. After all, it was American personnel who took and exposed the pictures of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. It was American personnel who came forward to tell the real story of how Saddam Hussein was captured. It has been American military lawyers who have led the way in revealing and challenging the legality of treatment at Guantanamo Bay. Does the US have a few asshats in the military? Yes, every organisation has a few. But does everyone fall into that category? No, and generally there will be one or two people brave enough to come forward and tell the truth. A mass conspiracy can't go one for very long. I am sorry to see that the Taliban has decided not to continue "understanding" talks with the US as a result of the killing and the potential (likely?) transfer of suspected Taliban members to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. I wasn't confident the talks would lead anywhere, but it's generally better to have ongoing negotiations than not.

• On the topic of the Afghanistan killings, I'm a little disturbed by this profile by the NY Times that is trying to make sense of how Robert Bales came to be such a heartless killer. To undercut the "solid guy" reputation Bales apparently has amongst friends and family, the NYT relies on an assault against a woman (fair enough), a car accident that we have no real reason to doubt was caused by falling asleep at the wheel, and "and an accumulation of rejections and disappointments." During law school, as I applied for clerkships and jobs, I could have accumulated a large stack of rejections and disappointments. Would not be evidence of a "darker side" that could have foretold a killing spree. For starters, I don't know how to use a gun, but more importantly, rejection and disappointment isn't a justification for killing people and in most people it doesn't trigger this kind of murder. So while, yes, it's disturbing to me that "Bob" Bales grew up on a street I probably drove down or around while I was doing my J.D., the amount of attention he is receiving and the attempts to justify his "transformation" into a killer seems misplaced to me.

The constant need to "understand" the makings of a killer is normal, and it makes for riveting made-for-TV movies, but I'm disturbed by the constant attention the media gives to figuring out what made someone kill 16 individuals. In many ways, this article reminds me of the immediate aftermath of the Chardon High School killing, when everyone assumed it related to bullying and then it turned out the killer had no reason for killing. He just did. I'm glad psychologists are attempting to determine signs and signals that we can use to identify people at risk of killing, but (a) those are at best hypothesis, not signs and signals that are proven to be present only in would-be or soon-to-be killers; and (b) let's leave it to the psychologists, not the media.
This case raises particular concerns for me as the attention on the killer is coming at the expense of discussing what the results of the killing spree were: who was killed, what was lost for a family or a community? I recognize that some of the consequences have been discussed, but those have tended to focus on what the killing means for the US mission in Afghanistan, rather than what does it mean to the families and communities affected. To my knowledge, NYT hasn't sent someone in to do profiles on the 16 victims killed in Afghanistan. Had they been innocent US citizens, we would know lots of details about how they lived their every day life, what their hopes and dreams were, and who their surviving relatives were. But, since the victims were Afghanis, I've seen little more than a death toll.
We don't know what was lost in that killing. What future leaders were killed? What future hopes? What is the toll of death in these communities? How are they coping and grieving? What processes for healing have begun there? How do *the victims* feel about his being sent to the US for trial? The victims should be the focus, because in humanizing them and in understanding what is lost when violence is let loose, we have a potential to reexamine what the real costs of war are. This wasn't a legitimate act of war, but it is a clear consequence of it, and we need to better recognize and understand those costs before we start bombing anywhere else. NYT - and other media outlets - could do a lot of good by focusing on the victims here rather than the perpetrator.

• East Timor (Timor-Leste) will get a new President once the official vote counting is all done. With over 70% of votes counted, Jose Ramos Horta, is in third place and has bowed out. Ramos Horta won the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize (along with countryman Bishop Ximenes Belo) for his work in "hindering the oppression" of the East Timorese before they gained independence. He was then elected President after East Timor had its independence recognized and restored in 2002. Perhaps most heartening of the story? "Ramos Horta said he was not disappointed and that both men were capable of ensuring peace and stability for the tiny nation, which was his only real concern." If only other leaders could so gracefully accept democratic defeat...

• Two British journalists were freed by Libya. Good news for their families, and the principle of free speech and journalistic protections, but it did remind me of a great piece that I read last week about the way in which foreign correspondents have become bigger than the stories they cover. We are unlikely to remember the names of the victims of the Iraq War, the Syrian resistance, or the Libyan conflict, but we are likely to be able to recall the names of reporters detained or killed in these conflicts. They become the story, rather than a conduit for us to learn. (If anyone knows where it was that I read this comment, please tell me so I can link it.)

• Thinking of the reporters in Libya reminded me to check on the NGO workers subject to at travel ban in Egypt. 43 foreign and Egyptian NGO workers have been charged with violating Egyptian laws regarding the registration of NGOs. They're, of course, pro-democracy NGOs and Egypt did the thing that lots of non-pro-democracy countries do: they require registration from NGOs, don't necessarily decide anything on the application, allow the NGOs to operate all the same, and then they are able to kick the NGO workers out - or arrest them - as soon as they're disgruntled by the work being done. It's a similar pattern to what happens worldwide to human rights defenders, both foreign and domestic. I hadn't heard about their release, but apparently earlier this month the US government allowed funds given to the relevant NGOs to pay for the bail for the US citizens involved. Since the defendants are unlikely to return for trial, the US paid the Egyptian government $330,000 each for the 6 US workers who were otherwise unable to leave the country. Shockingly (see above regarding the use of 'shocking'), there were then protests outside the US Embassy in Cairo aimed at criticizing the US government for funding NGO. I'm sure all the protesters showed up on their own volition.

• The Maoists in India's eastern region responsible for kidnapping two Italian tourists are either really smart or really lucky. It's the first kidnapping of westerners in the region, and as every human rights or humanitarian NGO worker in the world knows, if you're going to kidnap someone, kidnap the Italians. Their government, unlike the UK and US, is willing to negotiate and pay ransoms for the release of Italian citizens. If you're going to kidnap westerners for the first time in a bid to raise awareness and sympathy for your cause, it should probably be the people you can get money for. This way you get the publicity without the dirtiness of actually have to murder people. (This should not be interpreted as encouraging people to kidnap Italians. It is sarcasm. I have many Italian friends and would appreciate it if they all remained un-kidnapped.)

• Last week, Alex de Waal detailed his position on what should actually be done about Joseph Kony. In short: he adopts the six point plan that International Crisis Group set out in January 2006. His scorecard for the international community on these objectives is fairly positive, with only one objective - capturing ICC indictees - ranked as a failure, despite repeated effort. His solution for Invisible Children? Continue what the international community has already been doing and stop advocating simplistic, paternalistic "solutions".

• There's a problem with schools in England illegally excluding "problem" students, sometimes informally. I'm afraid if I just say "shocking" people might not read the sarcasm in there. I would be willing to bet that these exclusions disproportionately affect minorities, including, but not limited to, immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, special needs children, and Irish Travellers or Roma. I'm apparently not the only one who suspects this, as Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg says the same thing in this article. This is not a problem just for the UK - similar issues have arisen in every country I've lived in and in a number of countries I've studied. The only thing truly shocking to me about this report was that a head teacher was willing to admit, on the record, "We will get their parents in and ask them to keep their children at home for the rest of the academic year; otherwise it's permanent exclusion." Hmmm... gotta wonder if this investigation operated on the principles used in the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission: if you're honest and provide a full account, we will give you immunity. Otherwise, his job should be in serious jeopardy now.

• The UK inquiry into the news media's illegal wiretapping continues, with a retired police officer stating that the media could have hampered police investigations by putting a tail on the police and then picking up the witness and then attempting to lose police surveillance.

• Albemarle County, Virginia Sheriff J.E. “Chip” Harding Calls for an Innocence Commission and a Prosecutorial Misconduct Commission in Virginia. I remember well Joe Deter, Hamilton County (Ohio) Prosecutor (responsible for the county that houses Cincinnati) telling my law school that he understood that there was a "liberal" "fad" surrounding the proclamations of innocence, but he was confident that his office had never prosecuted an innocent person. Of course no one wants to believe they would ever be involved in making a mistake that cost an innocent person days, weeks, months or years of their life for something they didn't do. But ultimately we're human; the justice system is fallible; and we should always be looking for ways to ensure any mistakes we do accidentally make are corrected as quickly as possible. In response to statements like Deter's, Albemarle County, Harding notes “The Innocence Project is about justice ... It’s not just some liberal thing like a lot of people make it out to be.” Harding is calling for the establishment of two commissions in Virginia, one to investigate cases after conviction, and one that would investigate police and prosecutorial misconduct. I wish we had more Sheriffs like this in the US.

• And finally, since pointing out the craziness of the GOP primary is currently one of my favourite past times: when you tell people who speak English that they need to speak English, and that they have no right to / shouldn't embrace their linguistic heritage, they are unlikely to vote for you. So Rick Santorum can chalk this up to another lesson learned on this year's campaign (right after, um, file the forms appropriately so you can appear on all the ballots). Also on the list of things to learn for him? Puerto Rico

ICC Lubanga decision: some initial thoughts.

The ICC found Charles Lubanga guilty, as a co-conspirator, of enlisting children into the internal armed conflict in the DRC. The judgment is as important for what it says about international criminal law procedure as it is for what it says about Lubanga's crimes in the DRC. Two important notes:

• As my friend Nikki noted today, the OTP did not pursue conspiracy charges against Lubanga for ordering the use of rape as a tool of war. Instead, the charges were limited to the solicitation of child soldiers. I haven't followed this case closely - and must admit to not being an expert in international criminal law - so I'm not sure why this decision was made. Was the OTP unable to procure enough evidence? Did they consider the child soldiers issue a more serious crime? Did they want to stay conservative so as to ensure their first trial resulted in a conviction? I'm not sure about any of the answers to any of these questions, but would be interested in my friends who do know commenting below. I think these questions can help define the move forward.

• As my friend Indi pointed out, the Court slams the OTP in the judgment for failing to adequately supervise the investigations, resulting in a mishandling of evidence and the corruption of witness statements so they are no longer reliable. In para 842 (with relevant facts set out earlier), the Court states that "[a] series of witnesses have been called during this trial whose evidence, as a result of the essentially unsupervised actions of three of the principal intermediaries, cannot safely be relied on. The Chamber spent a considerable period of time investigating the circumstances of a substantial number of individuals whose evidence was, at least in part, inaccurate or dishonest. The prosecution’s negligence in failing to verify and scrutinise this material sufficiently before it was introduced led to significant expenditure on the part of the Court. An additional consequence of the lack of proper oversight of the intermediaries is that they were potentially able to take advantage of the witnesses they contacted." The criticism by the Court is therefore two-fold: (a) the OTP's failure to oversee the investigations adequately compromised the evidence, and essentially wasted the Court's time; and (b) the failure also put vulnerable former child soldiers in a position to be manipulated.

Since I don't have any answers for the first issue, I'm going to concentrate on the second. The criticisms of the ICC reflect interesting work done by Nancy Combs, who has concluded that most international criminal trials suffer from deficiencies in evidence and testimony that should call into question their legitimacy and accuracy. Amongst the problems that Combs identifies is that there is not a "smooth flow of questions and answers between counsel and witnesses." While counsel may ask for a detail about the events, the response they receive does not address that question asked, but instead may provide information on another issue or may not provide the court with relevant information at all. There are also contradictions by witnesses, who state one thing early in the process and another later on, or whose testimony overlaps with someone else whose story is vastly different. While Combs recognizes that some of the testimonial inconsistency is a natural consequence of time and memory, the prevalence of inconsistent and unclear testimony is widespread.

Yet, it rarely undermines the prosecution's case. According to Combs, inconsistencies are not always even acknowledged in judgments, and when they are, the inconsistencies are "unquestioningly" attributed to innocent causes. Convictions are then based, sometimes exclusively, on this testimony.

The problematic nature of this international legal precedence is exacerbated when we consider that international tribunals are specifically targeted to states that are unable or unwillling to undertake the process of prosecutions themselves. This is now a hard law requirement under the ICC's complementarity principle, but it was also evident in the choice of the establishment of previous international criminal tribunals and international intervention into transitional states. In a 2009 HRQ article, Laurel Fletcher and others established that prosecutions and international intervention are most likely to happen in states with a weak rule of law, a history of low public confidence in the judicial system, a history of international intervention, and that are new or weak democracies. The international community intervenes in these situations, requires, or highly encourages (to be read euphemistically) the use of prosecutions, sometimes through an international tribunal. Then, it fails to implement standards that we would expect from these states if they are to demonstrate their ability to provide fair and genuine trials. Instead, our international criminal prosectuions come to resemble the type of prosecution we most fear in transitional states: vengeance prosecutions.

The purpose of international criminal law is supposed to be to ensure the perpetrators of international crimes face justice. But justice cannot be had where the judicial process lacks credibility. Prosecutorial misconduct undermines the credibility of the process and harms the ultimate goals of the system: to ensure those who are most culpable are recognized as such and suffer the legitimate and just consequences of their action. If we utilize inadequate or inappropriate testimony or evidence to convict those we "just know" have committed atrocities because "everyone knows their guilty", we have given power to those who claim the ICC is nothing more than "victor's justice" or neo-Colonialism. We have also undermined the purpose of providing international criminal tribunals for states that unable or unwilling to undertake genuine prosecutions on their own because we haven't provided that genuine prosecution.

The international criminal legal system should be a light to those who have little experience with legitimate judicial processes. It should be both a symbol for those who struggle under domestic oppression and a teaching tool for those who seem uncertain about how to effectively implement the rule of law domestically. Currently, though, it does not accomplish this latter purpose and it undermines the former. With the current troubles with testimony, those who struggle with oppression can not hope that one day an , full and credible report of what has occurred will be made. They cannot hope that, like Nuremberg, one day the evidence used for a criminal conviction can also be used as a historical record to show what was known. They aren't provided the promise of learning the "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," but rather they are being provided a judgment, order, and ultimately, history, that is based on a compromised system of justice. When the international criminal system is so fundamentally broken, it is difficult to imagine local citizens in contentious States Parties feeling protected and encouraged by the supposed "rule of law." And as a consequence, one of the recognized principle means of reparations in the field of transitional justice - historical acknowledgment - becomes disconnected from the realm of international prosecutions to which they are supposed to be intricately linked.

In the end, this type of misconduct by the OTP - coupled with the international courts' willingness to unquestionably rely on witness testimony - leaves a legacy for weak states that the rule of law is a fallacy and that prosecutions do not need to be fair and honest and transparent. And surely this, in and of itself, undermines the purpose of the ICC.

I'm sure this will be blogged elsewhere in the days to come and I'm looking forward to hearing some solutions or paths forward for the ICC and international criminal law.

A quick and worthy read

I've long loved reading Amanda and Katie and WrongingRights, in part because of how well they do snark. I can't do snark. When I try, I come off asshatty or stupid. But, Amanda and Katie can and do so quite well. Their recent piece in the Atlantic Monthly, though, is not a snark piece but a thoughtful and important answer to the question of why so many in the international human rights and humanitarian fields had an immediate "ick" reaction to Kony 2012, even if they couldn't already put it into words.

Professionalizing Human Rights (in which I point out the slightly obvious fact that Invisible Children’s Jason Russell isn't alone)

Human rights is my first true love. Long before I knew the term "human rights" - and definitely long before I realized I thought boys were cute rather than cootie-filled - I understood the concept. When I was about six, I gathered a few friends up to go collect money for poor children. I had seen a particularly sad story on the news – well, particularly sad to my six-year-old brain – about poor children. I don’t know if it was that they wouldn’t have food or they wouldn’t have toys for Christmas, or that they had lost their home in a fire, but it was the kind of story that my thirty-something brain is now used to seeing a couple of times a year on the local news. At six, my parents had already drilled into my head that I could do anything I wanted, and I wanted to help. So, we got a tin can and went around the neighborhood asking people to donate. Of course, I didn’t realize that I was living in a poor area of our city so a significant number of people who said they couldn't donate really meant it, some chuckling at us as they closed the door, likely thinking, "They don't realize they're poor! Silly kids." Then, there was a woman who told us we couldn’t collect money like this, that we needed to hand out receipts and have a register of all donors. That is true, by the way, but I was six so she could’ve just given me fifty cents and allowed me to learn about the intricacies of charitable donations and finance when I was seven or eight.

But, a few people were highly encouraging. They told us how wonderful we were for being such giving and caring children. I don’t remember how much we ended up collecting that day – probably just a few dollars, but my dad took it to some organization to ensure it got to the poor people I had seen on TV. I felt good about what we had done; I felt good about the kind of a person I had become (yes, at six I had “become” all that I needed to in my mind - I mean, I needed to get taller and learn to put on makeup at some point, but intellectually, I was obviously super smart and all I needed to become).

By eight years old, I had decided I wanted to be President of the United States so I could end poverty and ensure peace throughout the world. It is a self-indulgent and idealistic dream, but it was an appropriate idealism and self-indulgence because, well, I was eight years old. And fair enough, my idealism and self-indulgence lasted until my twenties when I realized that world peace is a lot harder than Miss America contestants make it out to be and that human rights isn't about me. Until that point, though, I really thought that I could be the one to change the world. I would bring about lasting changes in Rwanda. I would get the former Yugoslavia to love each other again. I would shape little hearts and minds, build schools, feed the world’s poor, etc. I. I. I. Because I could change the world and only I cared enough to do it well and do it right.

At some point in my twenties, I realized that I was actually unlikely to accomplish much of anything close to my goals. I could accomplish something only by pairing up with other people who were intelligent, thoughtful, knowledgeable, creative, and dedicated. (This was not, by the way, a realization made from a point of humility or out of self-doubt. As I told an ex-boyfriend more recently than I should be willing to admit to, I really do consider myself to be kind of f-ing brilliant. Not on everything - I increasingly need a calculator for simple mathematics, but on the whole.) More importantly, any contribution I make is only relevant to the extent that it is the contribution desired by those who need my great solution.

If I decided I was going to feed the entire Middle East by developing pork farms, I would be useless. My great plan to eradicate poverty in the Middle East would be a waste. Similarly, starting a beef emporium in India would be a laughable solution to hunger there. These “solutions” are an obvious mistake to anyone who knows even the smallest bit about Islam, Judaism, or Hinduism. But, the principles at the heart of this lesson are lost when we get to more complex problems in human rights, international assistance and development. We lose our recipient-focus and it suddenly becomes all about the donors: it is the donors who determine the projects; it is the donors whose interests need to be met; it is the donors who dictate what should be done and who should be targeted and how they will rebuild a country, start building a country, or provide security and human rights to a state or community or group in need. Sure, they all “involve” and “engage” the “local community” in decisions, but the longer you work in human rights, the more you realize that so often that that “involvement” and “engagement” is not widespread, it’s not democratic, it’s not representative, and often it's not honest. It’s a manipulation of the local population to get them to agree that what you are saying you are going to do is what they actually need. Even if they've already had someone do exactly that same thing last month or two years ago. As David Damberger, founder of Engineers Without Borders Calgary, pointed out in a Tedx Talk, this leads to the rebuilding of wells in cities that had a well built there five years ago but because no one trained the local population how to maintain the well, it no longer works.

In the last month, I’ve felt a little pelted with the egocentric nature of some in the field of human rights, development, and international aid. One only needs to spend a little time on Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like to get a sense of the me-ness of the field, but I love SEAWL for its self-critical snarkiness, so it never sends me on the downward spiral of questioning the professionalism of human rights or railing against the current status quo of our field. Instead, it started when I read a fantastic report from the International Legal Assistance Consortium about their Assessment Mission to South Sudan. In what at times is a quite scathing report, ILAC notes that most of the projects undertaken on rule of law in South Sudan are done so for the benefit and goals of the donor, not necessarily in view of the needs and desires of the indigenous population.

Then, I read this Q&A with Jason Russell, one of the founders of Invisible Children who narrates the viral Kony 2012 video. Russell and Invisible Children have been pilloried in the media and by human rights and humanitarian activists for the video. A collection of criticisms can be found here and here, and in a brilliant video by Ugandan Rosebell Kagumire that can be seen here. In this brief intro into Russell’s mind, we find two answers, which I think say more about him and Invisible Children than anything we’ve read in the media or on their website:

3: Where are you from and where are you going?

I am from San Diego California with an upbringing in musical theater. I am going to help end the longest running war in Africa, get Joseph Kony arrested & redefine international justice. Then I am going to direct a Hollywood musical. Then I am going to study theology & literature in Oxford, England, and then move to New York to start “The Academy” – which will be a school where the best creative young minds in the world attend.

4: Who is your biggest hero?

If Oprah, Steven Spielberg and Bono had a baby, I would be that baby.

Now, in fairness to Russell, I want to point out that this was released a year ago, well before Kony 2012, and perhaps he would change some of his answers. I’m not sure how old Russell is – I can’t find it anywhere in media reports or on Wikipedia, and so I’m done attempting, even though if I put my lawyerly sleuthing hat on I’m sure I could find it out eventually – but he was an undergraduate student in 2003 when he and his two mates went to make a video about Darfur and discovered that the LRA existed and had been abducting child soldiers for their campaign in Uganda. Jason, Laren Poole and Bobby Bailey decided they were going to free all the child soldiers in Uganda and they were going to do this by raising awareness of the situation in the US. Based on the time they were there in relation to my own life, I'm guessing they're about 30 years old and were 21 or 22 when they started this ride.

Unfortunately for them, Joseph Kony left Uganda three years after they decided they would track him down in Uganda, arrest him, and free the entire country. But why let a little fact spoil a good story and an ever gooder goal (yes, that gooder was intention)? So, the Kony 2012 film focuses pretty much on Uganda, leaving the impression that Kony is still a massive threat (he’s not), still operating in Uganda (he’s not), and that the only way we will save Uganda – or in Russell’s words “end the longest running war in Africa, get Joseph Kony arrested & redefine international justice” - is if Americans and other westerners buy a $30 kit so they can wear a bracelet and plaster Kony’s picture around… Cleveland? Washington DC? Colchester, England? All of the above, I guess. (It isn't.) Uganda? They don't really need posters of Kony, so … no need to be sending money there, I guess.

Now, it would be easy for me to just pick on Russell. After all, he compared himself to the hypothetical offspring of Oprah, Bono, and Steven Spielberg. And he declared he would help end the war in Africa and redefine international justice. I'm not sure how he thinks international justice works, but if he wanted to redefine it by ensuring a war criminal is arrested, he really needed to be involved sometime prior to 1994, or at least in the early years of the ICTY and ICTR. By now, arresting a war criminal doesn’t redefine international justice, unless that war criminal is Omar al Bashir and you’re getting to arrest the first sitting head of state for trial before the ICC. But, whatevs. Details, details.

The point is that Russell’s answers are all about what he is going to accomplish. Not partnerships, not service, but, rather, Russell is going to singularly (or in connection with the others at IC, I guess) end a war and redefine justice. Now, here’s the thing: unless you’re actually Ugandan, you’re probably not going to end a war in Uganda. You might be particularly important to process if you’re of the stature of Kofi Annan and are asked to mediate the negotiations. But, the heads of NGOs – particularly those involved in denouncing one side as war criminals – don’t get to mediate peace negotiations. That’s left for diplomats, because, well, they’re diplomatic and are less likely to make arrests and prosecutions a requirement of the peace process.

I was supposed to be in Uganda a few months ago to help in a training program on the oil industry. Because of funding cuts, I didn’t get to go, but I did help prepare the training program and advised on embedding human rights into two draft Petroleum bills. I also learned a lot about Uganda and what Ugandans are concerned with. Not as much as I would like, but I got a good sense of it because even though others had to find out exactly what the Ugandans wanted through extensive discussion with Ugandans, I wouldn’t have been able to do my job without some insight (and extensive meetings). Joseph Kony isn’t on the list.* Not really, anyhow – he might be there, but he’s pretty far down, as evidenced by the “growing outrage” in Uganda over the film. Because he doesn’t pose a threat anymore.

*I do realize that he is probably on the list for some people in Uganda, and this is not intended to be a statement on behalf of all Ugandans. I am not Ugandan, so it would be unwise of me to speak on behalf of them - they're able to speak for themselves - but that's the general, situational assessment I've made. And it seems to be backed up, at least from some news reports.

Is Kony a bad guy? Yes. Is he a war criminal? Probably (but I do believe in the presumption of innocence until conviction). Does that mean that Ugandans would be better off if he were arrested and brought to justice? Maybe in the justice-as-deterrence sense, but not in the immediate needs-oriented sense. Yet, Russell is resolute, rebuffing criticism and telling NBC’s Today show that “[w]e can all agree we can stop him this year. … We’re not going to wait.” So what’s keeping Russell’s commitment to arresting Kony alive? My guess – with particular insight from that interview? Russell’s needs. Not Uganda’s, but Russell’s.

I wish the problem was limited to Russell, and then I could just join in the fun with those making snarky comments about the white guy from southern California with a saviour complex who is, probably unwittingly, a great patsy for the military industrial complex in the US. Instead, the ILAC report on South Sudan indicates that there are a lot of Russells out there in the international aid and humanitarian business. Here are a few highlights from the report:

To address the lack of judicial manpower, the Chief Justice has proposed hiring an additional 100 judges. Given the lack of lawyers in the country, it is unclear where qualified personnel can be found to fill these positions without decimating other institutions. UNDPKO apparently has funding to hire more than 40 new judges and prosecutors, including a majority of non-South Sudanese. … However, under the current restrictions on the UNDPKO program, these professionals will have limited functionality, and it is unclear if they will provide any significant assistance to the beleaguered judiciary.” (pg. 12)

So, UNDPKO has the funding to provide individuals who will ultimately provide no real relief to the South Sudanese judiciary?

“First, a tremendous number of international organizations, NGOs and contractors ostensibly have worked on constitutional and rule of law issues in South Sudan before and after independence. If their reports and websites are to be believed, each has accomplished remarkable feats, made all the more remarkable by the fact that many seem to have accomplished the same feat.” (pg. 20)

“Why has this occurred? Based on our observations, three reasons emerge:

Some projects are driven more by the donor/implementer’s needs than the recipient’s needs. In this era of matrices, management theories, and deliverables, donors insist on tangible results for a project. Goals must be set and met, regardless of the situation on the ground. Accordingly, international consultants “assist” their indigenous counterparts … Boxes get checked for goals and milestones – set by donors – that are met.” (p.20)

In South Sudan, the bureaucratization of the technical assistance effort, coupled with the scarcity of committed indigenous partners, often has meant that projects proceed primarily to meet the bureaucratic goals of the donor/implementer, with little meaningful long-term impact on the South Sudanese system. (p.21)

I eliminated some of the other quotes that targeted specific organizations (in part, admittedly, because I may need to interview / work with them for my PhD research), but I found the entire tone of the report quite telling. There doesn’t appear to be that much difference between Russell’s treatment of Kony and that of some in the IGO and NGO community toward the rule of law in South Sudan. It’s not about servicing the client – unless you really believe the “client” in South Sudan is the UK, US, or Norwegian governments, or a mega grant writing organization. It’s about meeting the “me” needs of the donors. What do I want to see? What do I think would be important? What do I believe South Sudanese would benefit from? And what will prove that I am the one “saving” South Sudan?

Coming from a law background, I can’t help but believe that these attitudes harm not just the individual missions they are supposedly designed for, but also the perception of the benefit, reality and professionalism of what we do in the fields of human rights, international assistance and development. We are supposed to be field orientated around a professional service. In other professional service-oriented fields, though, the needs of the client are sacrosanct, not the needs of the service provider. As a lawyer, I can give advice based on what my clients want and need, but I can’t tell my client I’m going to franchise his business because I think franchising is important, or it's what I've been working on for another client, or because if he just trusted me a little bit, he would see it's real benefit and potential. The client gets to dictate what she needs and my job is to answer that with a quality product that provides her with protection and both short- and long-term benefits. Similarly, when you go into the ER (or A&E to my British friends) for a broken leg, the doctors don’t get to take out your appendix because they really want to bank more surgery hours. If I tell a doctor I've broken my legs, he'll give me the best treatment for my broken leg, not for some condition I haven't mentioned because I don't have it and am not exhibiting any symptoms.

Professionalism demands a set of ethics that puts the client at the heart of the work. You might have great ideas and grand plans for what you as an individual or you as an organization can accomplish in a community. Unless you know that your grand plan is meeting the needs and desires of your client, though, your greatness is useless. It is filling up a me-me-me need that you have, but it’s not addressing the client and therefore it’s not actual service.

My six- and eight- and eighteen- year-old selves were all about me. My feelings, my goals, my need to change the world. At some point in my twenties, though, I realized that human rights isn’t about the good internal feeling you get when you hand someone a bowl of food at the soup kitchen. It’s about serving the people not because it feels good, and not because at the end of the day I get some great pictures and some weak praise, but because it is what elevates their human dignity. It’s about figuring out how to get the guy in the soup kitchen that bowl of soup (or something more fulfilling and healthier) in a way that is more regular, more sustainable, and more addressed to their needs and their human dignity than the daily trip through a soup kitchen.

The great Woody Hayes (Go Bucks!) once said, “Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect.” I don’t actually agree with that statement because human dignity demands that we sometimes ensure people have basic necessities so they have the opportunity to find their inner strength, but I do think that we can alter the quote a bit and provide at least one guiding principle for human rights ethics and professionalism:

“Any time you give a man, woman, or community something they don’t need and desire, you cheapen them.”

If we put that at the heart of our work, perhaps we'll stop thinking about our own needs and desires - to ensure the rule or law or to transform international justice - and start focusing on the needs of those we profess to serve.

Remembering Naraha, one year later

I have avoided dealing with the anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake, but today I feel I have to face the reality. A year and one day ago, I woke up to BBC news discussing the earthquake. I had fallen asleep the night before with the TV on, as I sometimes do when I have trouble sleeping. Inevitably, this backfires as I wake up at a much earlier time in the day than I would without the TV. So, it was around 6.00 or 6.30 when I heard the news talk about a strong earthquake that was affecting Tokyo. I have friends there and decided to stay awake long enough to learn the epicenter. When they said Sendai, I remembered my 23rd birthday celebrations. One of my closest friends Joe and I have birthdays a week apart. That year, we celebrated on his birthday, spending a bitterly cold January night drinking and dancing; the following year, we would do the same in Seoul on my birthday. I had visited temples and gone shopping in Sendai - my goodbye present from my town was a lacquered jewelry box and mirror I picked out in one of the shopping centers there. It was distressing that an earthquake then reported as an 8.7 - later adjusted to a 9.0 - hit so close to my second home. I wondered if there was much damage in Naraha.

I had lived through many an earthquake when I lived in Japan, but none stronger than a 5.0 or so. They lasted a few terrifying seconds, just long enough for me to jump from my bed, run through the small room separating my bedroom and the kitchen, and double-check that I had turned off the stove's gas. Inevitably I had and by the time I got in a doorway, the trembling had stopped. The one time it didn't, some cups had shattered on the ground. No real damage. And, inevitably, in the minutes that followed, I always heard the familiar man's voice come over the loud speaker system in the town: "Tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen." "There is no fear of tsunami."

I didn't always understand everything the town speaker said to me, but tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen, I understood. I was told to listen for it when I first arrived, shortly after being told to turn off the gas in case of an earthquake. I would be safe from tsunami, I was assured, because I was so far up the hill, but I should still listen for the confirmation. I don't remember when BBC told me about the tsunami -- how long had I been sitting in bed waiting for reassurance about the safety of my area? -- but I remember thinking that the loud speaker must be saying something other than "tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen." What does the speaker say when there is a tsunami, I wondered? Would I have even known? Would I have known to drive towards the mountains as quickly as I could? Later, as they showed cars being tossed by the waves that flooded highways north of where I lived, I wondered how many of them were trying to do exactly that. Had they not heard or understood the warning? Did they not have enough time to move away from the shore? When did the warnings come? Or were these the ones who were so used to tsunami warnings that even that did not scare them into action?

I was in Japan for two years, in a tiny town called Naraha. For ten years after leaving Japan, I used to have to tell new friends, "It's about 100 miles northeast of Tokyo; just south of Sendai, if you know where that is?" March 11, 2011, would be the start of a new answer: "I lived where the nuclear crisis is now." Naraha is ten to fifteen km south of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. I used to drive past the plant for Friday nights out in Namie and Futaba and Sunday mornings at church in Ookuma. I passed the Fukushima Daini plant more frequently - whenever I went grocery shopping, or for tea with Maya. The power plants were a part of our daily routine, and yet we rarely noticed them.

When we did notice the power plants - when their presence seemed overwhelming, rather than normal - we discussed the danger of living so near the plants. We discussed the strange cluster of cancer diagnoses in our schools; diagnoses that targeted people we considered much too young to be dealing with such abnormal cancers. Joe, who is Canadian by birth, Maya, a NZ kiwi, and I had grown up learning about the dangers of nuclear power plants. We have one outside of Cleveland, my hometown, but my greatest association with that plant is from the movie Howard the Duck, which is not the most pleasant association. The plant is far enough away that while I know of its presence, I had never seen it other than in the movie. The Fukushima plants - Daiichi and Daini - were my first up-close-and-personal experience with nuclear power. The Japanese in our community, though, regularly assured us that the plant was safe. Nuclear power was safe. It was good for the community. It supplied jobs and clean energy with no risk to the communities around us because of how well-managed it was. When we discussed the plant, Maya, Joe and I wondered how honest these assessments were, how much danger did our communities really face. Yes, the plants paid for our jobs - teaching English at junior high school in three different communities in the same gun (county). And yes, the local economy thrived because of the plant. And yes, the only time we weren't the only Westerners in our towns - and therefore not a principle source of entertainment - was when the plant was visited by GE employees from the US. But, was it safe? Was it worth it? Were the cancers 'normal' or unique? We assumed we were safe - or at least safer than the locals - but was the change in my hair texture (and color, as I found my first grey hair in Japan at the age of 22!) normal? We just were never quite convinced.

I don't remember how long I had been googling "Naraha" in the hopes of learning the state of my town when the news reported that the Fukushima nuclear plants were having trouble. First Daiichi then Daini, then Daiichi again. The power plants closer to Sendai were fine; it was the two located almost halfway between Sendai and Tokyo that were causing the trouble. Some who defended TEPCO in the days after said they couldn't have prepared for a 9.0 earthquake with an 18 foot tsunami. But, the earthquake as it struck the plants was not a 9.0. We were south enough that it was a smaller range. At the time, I believe I read it was around a 6.5-7.0. Still strong, but not the 9.0 that Sendai experienced. As I watched an endless stream of news hoping for more information, I would yell at the TV that Fukushima City was nowhere near the plants and to please tell me which towns were really suffering. Not surprisingly, the reporters did not hear me and would continue to discuss "Fukushima" as if it was a single city rather than a massive prefecture.

My town was evacuated. It is still evacuated. Those who were in the town were forced out quickly. Over the past year, small groups of residents have been occasionally allowed back in to collect a few belongings. The community had initially been evacuated to two different places - Iwaki to the south and Aizumisato to the west - but since people have moved throughout the country. Without a continued town presence, it has been difficult to learn the fates of some of my former students and fellow teachers. I am in contact with some friends still - and all that I have heard from have been fine. But I can't help but wonder about some of my students. Shouta, who I used to sit with every day just so he would do his homework. Or the Shiina family, whose 5th son, Kazumi, was one of my favorites despite his absolute hatred for English. Shinobu's family, who took me to the hospital when I had food poisoning and who used to bring me over for dinners and Japanese conversation. Shinobu's niece should be in middle school about now. How is she? I can ask people I know - and some of my friends are still trying to locate others for me - but as with many natural disaster diaspora, members of the community have been flung about throughout Japan. They do not run into each other at the grocery store, they can't stop by to check in on each other, and they do not necessarily know where their old friends have landed. If they have landed.

It is not just my Naraha. It is all the towns around us. With the exception of Hirono, and potentially Katsurao (which I can't find information on), all towns in Futaba-gun, our county, have been evacuated.

For a few weeks after the earthquake, there was no news coverage of the conditions facing Naraha, or Namie, Tomioka, Hirono, Futaba, or Ookuma. The only news from inside the exclusion zone related to the power plant. In the months since, though, there have been plenty of stories, all equally depressing. It is not the fault of the news reporters that they did not know our beautiful towns when they flourished, but their reporting of the nuclear no-go zone is always depressing. It is empty houses, and beer cans in a flooded vending machine. It is dogs wondering the streets, and bicycles abandoned on the side. "It's hard to believe someone once lived here" a reporter once said about a street that looked like many I had known. It is not so hard when you spent many a day under the cherry blossom trees in Tomioka, on the beach in Naraha, at church in Ookuma, eating sushi in Futaba, or singing karaoke in Namie. It is instead harder to believe that it may be 5 to 30 years before people are living there again.

I had taught English in Naraha for two years as part of a sister-city exchange program. Each day, I woke up, crossed the school's softball and baseball fields - the only thing separating my apartment from the junior high - and entered the front doors greeting almost every one of my students with a "Good morning!" followed by "I am fine, thank you. And you?" It was one of the first things they learned in my first classes. I would take my shoes off and place them in my cubbyhole, putting on my "inside" shoes for the day. I would settle down to my desk across from Katano-sensei or next to Katsumi-sensei and the teacher's assistance would make me green tea. I would flip flash cards, and chit-chat with the other teachers, talking to Kubota-sensei about his most recent trip to Vegas - or his upcoming one, as he went as frequently as he could - and trying surreptitiously to figure out if the rumors about Terashima-sensei's dating another teacher were true. I eventually found out they were. I'd teach a few classes and supervise the students assigned to "cleaning time" in the English classroom. I'd laugh with the students in between classes and after school, telling them once again that No, Joe-sensei was not my boyfriend, even though they had seen me with him in the grocery store last week. And no, neither was Tony-sensei event though we had had ramen together on Friday. And yes, I liked Justin-sensei, but just as a friend, even though we had been spotted by some of his students talking together at the shops on Saturday. I would take my trash to the school's bin as I was instructed to do. I waited until 10pm or so to do it so I didn't run into students on the way. Inevitably, the young, single male teachers would still be "working" as they were expected to do. As often as not, though, this consisted of them sitting around reading the newspaper. They would see me crossing the field and come to the window to say hi, and did I need anything. I didn't, but would make fun of them for "working" so late and tell them to go home to get a life.

On the weekends, I would hop around the gun, running errands, seeing friends, hanging out with Maya and Joe. The city supplied me with a car and insurance so I wasn't tethered to the train schedule to do my grocery shopping (thank goodness!). Since each town in the gun had no more than 2 Westerners permanently present, and we were all English teachers, our students learned the names of the other town's English teachers quite quickly. It never surprised me when a student wearing a Namie junior high uniform - one of Kristin's kids - would come up to me at Tom-Tom, the local mini-mall, and say, "Tara-sensei, do you like baseball?" (pretty much the second thing they learn in junior high English!). "Yes, I like baseball. Do you like baseball" I would reply. They would say, "Yes," giggle, and run away. Maya and Karen's students - they shared two junior high schools between them - would get more bold over the two years and would begin to mimic my own: "Tara-sensei, do you like Joe-sensei?" "Joe-sensei is my friend," I would reply. "Does Maya-sensei like Joe-sensei?" before erupting into more giggles. They really wanted our love lives to be more interesting than they were; but when we were 12-15 years old, didn't we all want to believe our 20-something selves will have really interesting love lives?

I left Naraha in 2002. That was also the first of three years that the Fukushima Daiichi plant stopped operating. The Japanese government had found TEPCO had falsified data reports relating to routine government inspections. The plant's closure ultimately resulted in a huge financial loss for the towns in the gun, which received a lot of tax money from those plants. With the cuts, Naraha to opt out of using teachers from its sister-city, instead opting into the government-run JET program. In 2005, TEPCO reopened the plant, safer and more secure, they assured the public. In 2008, the IAEA told Japan that the Fukushima plants were built with safety standards that were now outdated. Little was done to answer the IAEA's concerns, but a control center that was used in 2011 was added. On February 28, 2011, the Japanese government announced that TEPCO had admitted to submitting fake inspection and repair reports. Amongst the problems was that TEPCO failed to inspect vital infrastructure, including cooling boards. The earthquake hit 11 days after the report's release.

In the year since the earthquake, I have not gone a full week without thinking of my town and the surrounding county. I wonder about the sweet old man who gave me pottery when I visited. I wonder about the kind lady who gave me kiwis at the grocery store on my first day on my own. I think about the countless community members who rode the bus with me to town events, -- like a festival in our intra-prefecture sister-city, Aizumisato, where people would evacuate for a while, -- the ones who taught me traditional Japanese dances and helped me understand what a daruma is. Last night, I had a dream about some of the teachers from Naraha getting together for a picnic under the cherry blossom trees in Tomioka. I don't know if I will ever see or hear about those teachers again, but I will return to Naraha as soon as is practical after the evacuation is terminated. I want to allow the residents to return and settle in without having to worry about me (the people in Naraha would always worry about taking care of me, no matter how long I'd been there or how self-sufficient I had become). Then I'll go back. I'll visit my old school, I'll talk to the new students, and, hopefully, I'll get to see some cherry blossoms.