Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Side 22

December 8 marks the two-year anniver-
sary of an event that was later turned into
a textbook example of political persecu-
tion. Thirty people tried to enter the public
benches of Iceland’s Parliament but were stopped
by guards and police. For almost a year now, nine of
those thirty—myself included—have been threat-
ened with between one and sixteen years in prison
for supposedly “attacking” the parliament.
In between the event itself and the start of the
court case, the nine of us—often referred to as the
Reykjavík 9—were part of a historical resistance
movement that, among other things, achieved top-
pling a government in January 2009. Forced to
recognise the legitimacy of these protests, the heads
of the current system also need to make sure that
bringing down governments or any acts of that kind
does not get normalised. To maintain ruling order,
every resistance movement, successful or not, has to
be punished. An example has to be set.
This is nothing new. Similar cases are happen-
ing everywhere around the planet, and have been
throughout history. Only a week ago, two women
were sentenced in Denmark for “organising and en-
couraging sabotage and violence against the police”
during the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in
December of last year. Thousands of people took to
the streets during the summit and protested against
green capitalist solutions, but not a single person
has been accused for executing the women’s alleged
plans. In the US, one man is facing a prison sentence
of up to 21 years for alleged property destruction and
concealing his identity during a mass protest against
World Bank and the IMF in Washington D.C., April
2009. And soon Greece will see four people—the
Thessaloniki 4—showing up in court for their par-
ticipation in resisting the 2003 EU Summit in The-
assaloniki, facing between four and eight years in
prison for “distinguished and repeated rebellion”.
Just like the thousands who protested in Copen-
hagen, Washington, Thessaloniki or anywhere
else, the movement that filled the streets of Iceland
after the 2008 economic collapse was far from be-
ing united. Conflicts rose during that winter’s
protests, about political aims and ideologies as well
as tactics and strategies. But sharing at least one big
common goal made the movement strong enough
to leave the internal conflicts behind when needed
and focus on getting rid of the right wing govern-
ment in office at that time. What would come after
the government’s collapse was a topic for discussion,
or more honestly, another fight on a different battle-
field. Some wanted a leftist government while others
wanted radical system change or better yet, the dis-
mantling of the system.
From those who were a part of this movement,
the case against the Reykjavík 9 should be treated
like the right wing government. Where one is lo-
cated on the axis of minimal to radical—or pacifist
to militant—does not alter the simple fact that po-
litical persecution is unjust. Entering the building
where the state’s most powerful people are located
and encouraging them to leave their seats of power
can rightly be seen as an act of civil disobedience in
a democratic society, as well as a living being’s natu-
ral reaction towards an oppressing and dominating,
globally totalitarian system. Similarly, a prison sen-
tence over people who dare to resist can be opposed
from a variety of perspectives. The fact that we don’t
all agree on how to categorise acts like this or court
cases like aforementioned ones, does not stop us
from uniting in resisting the oppression implied in
these cases.
The court procedure will finally happen during
three days in January, from the 18th to the 20th. The
third day will mark another two year anniversary,
this time of a series of protests that started with the
destruction of a yellow police line distinguishing
those who hold institutional power from those who
do not, and did not come to an end until a common
goal was accomplished.
By remembering these recent events and getting
influenced by them, we are able to achieve amazing
things. When it came to it, who had thought toppling
a government was as easy as it was?
The first multicultural conference was
held recently at the same time and on
the same day as the National Assembly,
where 1.200 people had been randomly
selected to meet and discuss their values and their
vision of the future of Iceland. Many attendees to
the Multicultural Conference (myself included)
were under the impression that this was a parallel
event to equal out that ''random selector'', which
was likely accidentally set to choose those who were
someone's son or dóttir. Oops!
Strangely, the two were not connected. We know
the current mayor and his staff are keen on us and
perhaps they wanted to give us some hot soup and
busy work to distract us from the harsh reality that
we are not considered a part of the nation. On the
other hand, maybe they wanted to involve us in
city’s affairs because that is what they have to work
with. Either way we were grateful.
What are our Values?
Most Nordic countries have long since adopted
strong societal positions on immigration which are
still absent in Iceland. For example, in 2003, the
government of Denmark adopted an action plan to
combat racism and promote equal treatment and
diversity. The list of services offered is long and
comprehensive and can be studied further at www.
nyidanmark.dk. They include three years of free
Danish classes, a complaints committee to receive
allegations of unequal treatment and a counsel-
lor to assist new citizens along their integration
Denmark's society. Iceland has none of these. The
Danish initiative states: "There is room for diversity
in Denmark and that we [should] learn to benefit
from it." Clear and strong objectives such as this are
sorely needed here and perhaps developing these
core values should be at the top of the "to-do" list
for the newly elected counsel to the Human Rights
Committee.
Reciprocity
In attendance was social scientist Michael Schultz,
a 30-year veteran of the International Red Cross in
the humanitarian field who also worked as a hu-
manitarian diplomat on migration issues, accredit-
ed to the U.N. in New York, and Geneva. He pointed
out that, "Icelanders are themselves migrants who
take 'hospitality' for granted when abroad but for-
get to ask themselves how they receive migrants at
home. Aren't there large diasporas in Canada and in
DK and UK? Don't Icelanders study in large num-
bers abroad? Don't Icelanders now, as one result of
[the financial crisis] seek jobs abroad by the thou-
sands, in Norway and everywhere else? Wouldn't
it be appropriate to apply—as it were—a categorical
imperative whereby one extends full reciprocity in
terms of hospitality and even exceeds other coun-
tries' hospitality should they fail as hosts?"
If we look to the Scandinavian model, where im-
migrants have a certain safety net of services which
ease transition and integration, we can avoid a fu-
ture where large groups of people feel marginalised
and ignored for long periods of time, which leads
to anger and unrest. We want to develop our values
now because the current status will not work for
much longer.
It has long been the unspoken rule in Iceland
that one must assimilate or die trying. It is unre-
alistic to continue with the attitude that those who
can leave their culture, religion, and customs at the
border and become Icelandic. We must allow people
to maintain aspects of their culture while forming
a pluralistic nation state where diversity is looked
upon as an asset and not, "the immigrant problem.”
Economically, artistically, and culturally Iceland
needs its foreign-born citizens. Moreover, those
citizens need to now take part in the political arena
of Iceland in order to ensure that we have a hand at
designing and rebuilding our society.
22
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2010 If you're interested in learning more about Iceland's annual
'Christmas flood of books', google "Noah's Freezer Trawler". We
dare you.
poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl Opinion | Snorri Páll Úlfhildarson Jónsson
Opinion | B.R. Neal
Each year, for about eight weeks, Icelan-
dic book culture loses its cool and turns
into a crazed media circus. When the
clock strikes ‘October’ literature suddenly
gets two-handedly drowned, literally strangled, with
attention—having been mostly ignored or patroniz-
ingly shrugged off for the previous 43 weeks of the
year (the final, remaining week, the last week of
the year, is kept free for actually reading books). All
of a sudden, as if somebody snapped their fingers,
literature becomes important enough to warrant a
series of author-interviews, book-reviews, the inces-
sant parlour games of ‘best cover’ and ‘best title’, and
the motormouthed drivel of ‘the author’s favourite
recipe’ and ‘fifteen personal questions’. Automatic
for the people, indeed.
All of this is performed in the rising harmony of
what has been termed “the inflation of adjectives”,
with books being judged as either “a superb piece
of unparalleled genius” or “an utterly immoral dia-
tribe which might have been worth reading were it
not also death-defyingly boring.” Granted, there are
varying degrees of poetic ecstasy and abject dismiss-
al, but what remains is that the only question ever
asked—in book reviews or among authors or read-
ers—is: “is it any good?”
Now, given how many books are published in
these eight weeks—this year 85 novels were pub-
lished, 747 titles counting all genres of ‘book’—this
approach to literature is hardly surprising. Reading
and contemplating 85 books in eight weeks isn’t
just impossible, it’s the dumbest thing you could at-
tempt, as you’d probably get none of all of them and
gain nothing but lost time. Therefore we try to figure
out which books we should try before we approach
them—to spare us the marathonian stupidity of try-
ing to gobble up the entire universe in one swallow.
But by doing this, notwithstanding all our honour-
able intentions, we turn literature into a competitive
sport and authors into racehorses.
To further simplify the enormous task of sifting
through a great body of literature in a manner of no
time and no patience, we’ve abandoned the more
complicated (and time-consuming) philosophical
approach to literature, and replaced it with a culture
of grading and gossip. The literati (popular and/or
intellectual) seems almost exclusively interested in
finding out where a piece of literature belongs on a
scale of 1–10, discarding its ideas, its message or even
its beauty (evident in the tradition of judging books
on a sliding scale according to genre—for instance
not putting any stress on the text in a suspense thrill-
er) as irrelevant.
The argument for this ludicrous race is that
without it Icelandic literature wouldn’t survive—fi-
nancially—as people wouldn’t buy enough books to
keep the industry afloat if they weren’t culturally re-
quired to educate their friends and relatives through
the obligatory gift of literature, force-feeding them
reading materials in fancy packaging. Intriguingly,
it is ritually maintained in political speeches that
Icelanders are a reading nation, while the fact that
very few people buy books for themselves remains
undiscussed.
Some people, of course, enjoy the excitement
of the Christmas book-flood. I’m being a bit of a
fuddy-duddy, honestly. Irritability towards this phe-
nomenon is hardly news. And I can understand why
people enjoy the f lood—all of a sudden authors and
(at least in a sense) their books are put in the lime-
light—with all its glitz and glamour, fun and games,
rivalries, beautiful heroes and horrifying foes—and
I won’t deny that it can be pleasurable and exhilarat-
ing, for writers and readers alike. But evidently, so is
crack cocaine.
This Is your Brain
On Crack Cocaine
political persecution:
Setting Examples
Baby Steps
Thoughts on the first
Multicultural Conference
“We tried this place
purely on the back
of its excellent
review on
Tripadvisor
and weren’t
disappointed. “ CAFE HAITI by the Old Harbour
Geirsgata 7b, 101 Reykjavík
tel: 661 5621 / 588 8484
Opening hours: 8.00 – 23.00
Quality coffee roasted on the premises