Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.10.2012, Síða 14

14
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2012 On October 20, Icelanders will be asked a series of questions on matters re-
lated to the work of the constititutional assembly, which includes some proposed
changes to the constitution. Does that sound vague?
List of licenced Tour
Operators and Travel
Agencies on:
visiticeland.com
Licensing and
registration of travel-
related services
The Icelandic Tourist Board issues licences to tour operators and travel agents,
as well as issuing registration to booking services and information centres.
Tour operators and travel agents are required to use a special logo approved
by the Icelandic Tourist Board on all their advertisements and on their Internet
website.
Booking services and information centres are entitled to use a Tourist
Board logo on all their material. The logos below are recognised by the
Icelandic Tourist Board.
FOSSHOTEL / SIGTÚN 38 / 105 REYKJAVÍK
ICELAND / TEL.: +354 562 4000 / FAX: +354 562 4001
E-MAIL: sales@fosshotel.is
WE ARE
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Book now at www.fosshotel.is
Welcomes you all year
Fosshótel
www.fosshotel.is
Iceland In The
International Eye
September
By Marc Vincenz
This month Peter Day
of the BBC World
Service attempts to
get to the bottom of
Iceland’s so-hailed
miracle economic re-
covery. Interviewing Ice-
landic officials, businessmen, writers
and the man on the street, he manages
to unpeel a few layers. Is this claim that
Iceland’s unemployment has gone from
about 11% to below 5% in two years even
mildly credible?
Business Editor of Morgunblaðið, Ag-
nes Bragadóttir, tells Peter that what the
Icelandic government is informing the
international media is simply untrue.
Iceland is no role model for unburden-
ing debt-laden economies, she says. “The
IMF wants everything to be wonderful
here, to make an example of us; but we
are not an example. And of course our
government want to claim that every-
thing is going so well.”
Interviewing Jón Sveinsson, a former
taxi driver, Peter comes to the conclusion
that much of this Arctic nation is heavily
in debt and suffering deep depression.
Strangely, it was only last month that
The Atlantic Monthly ran a feature on
Icelandic happiness. Supposedly Iceland
still ranks as one of the most joyful na-
tions in the world. Dóra Guðmundsdót-
tir, Head of the Division of Determinants
of Health in Iceland, told The Atlantic
that, “the impact of the economic crisis
on happiness in Iceland showed almost
no decrease in happiness measures from
2007 to 2012.”
This does not tally at all with what Jón
Sveinsson has to say: “Very many house-
holds in Iceland (somewhere around
30%), have a negative equity status, very
often causing people to contemplate just
returning the key and moving to Europe.
There is a big problem. A mental, social,
economical problem…There have been
three long years of depression, mental
depression with people also.”
Writer and activist Andri Snær Mag-
nason concurs: “People are broken, you
know. It takes a few years for people to go
through these psychological traumas.”
As Agnes points out: “…we have not
been creating any new jobs in this coun-
try so we have lost so many people to
Norway, to Sweden. They had just given
up. And therefore the government can
claim very proudly the unemployment
is only 4.6% now. I think approximately
10,000 people have left [the country].”
And understandably so, when there
are no new jobs being created, when
household debt is the way it is, and when,
as RTT News confirmed this month, the
price of grocery items has risen nearly
4% this last year alone.
So is there anyone benefitting from
this “crisis” aside from the IMF?—or, as
Jón wryly points out—those “who have
sheltered their money.”
Apparently not quite everybody is
suffering.
Sigurgeir Kristgeirsson, CEO of VSV,
a fishing company in Vestmannaeyjar,
explains that fishermen now receive
double the salary they had before the cri-
sis, as the króna is so weak, more of the
actual fish processing is taking place do-
mestically (which of course means more
jobs).
Yet, even for the well-paid fishermen,
there’s a dark cloud looming on the ho-
rizon. “Our future is terrible, absolutely
terrible,” Sigurgeir sighs. “Because the
government is increasing the tax on the
fishing industry. If we don’t see this bill
changed, in three years from now you’ll
see 50–70% of the whole fishing indus-
try bankrupt. This taxation will wipe out
all the value of the fishing industry as a
whole.”
And by now, most of us know about
that planned VAT hike on Iceland’s
growing tourism industry—a trebling of
the tax rate would you believe!
So, tell me—anyone at all—what
on earth are these politicians thinking?
Just when they claim things are on the
up and the IMF is blowing kisses across
the Atlantic, they begin milking the very
industries that are keeping the people in
jobs.
Back to Andri Snær: “[In Iceland
now], you will find this great distrust in
politics, distrust in the media, cynicism
towards institutions.” And as Jón says, it’s
the common man who bears the brunt
of Iceland’s massive debt. (If Bloomberg
is right, all told it’s something like $85
billion.) “It creates anger and resentment
towards our own countrymen. For ex-
ample, a banker was knocked down in
the street not long ago because he dared
show himself.”
When Peter asks Iceland’s Central
Bank Governor Már Guðmundsson if
Iceland actually has anything to teach
the battered countries of Euroland, he
answers: “The lesson in terms of how
to manage a crisis like this is that we
should not make a ‘bailing out the bond
holders’ some kind of a religion.”
I don’t know about you, but these
seem rather bizarre words coming from
the governor of the central bank of a
debt-burdened nation. Now what exactly
is Már recommending those European
governments do? Oh yes, never mind the
creditors.
As Peter rightly concludes: “Yes, there
is life after disaster, provided you’ve got a
plan.” And, ehem—what plan would that
be? Anyone?
Iceland | Animal Rights
Long before the Miss World crown
was a mere glint in her eye, Linda
Pétursdóttir was unafraid of speak-
ing up. When she was ten years old,
her family moved to Vopnafjörður
on Iceland’s east coast where she
remembers she immediately had to
fight for her beloved pet dog’s very
existence.
“There were no dogs allowed in the
town, but I still brought mine, and one
day it ran out without a leash. The mayor
came and told my dad that if it happened
again he would have to shoot the dog.”
Any other girl might quietly yield to
her elders—but not Linda. “When my dad
came and told me, I said to him: ‘If the
mayor comes here with a rifle, I’ll take it
off him and I’ll shoot him!’”
Constitutional guarantee
She has always been a dog lover: today
she has a cocker spaniel called Sterna.
The pictures of other pooches she has
kept through the years adorn the walls
of her office at Baðhúsið, the Reykjavík
beauty spa she has been running for
almost two decades after winning Miss
Iceland and Miss World beauty pageant
crowns in 1988. And it is this that drives
her to speak out for animal welfare, most
recently campaigning for the rights of
animals to be enshrined in the Iceland’s
new constitution.
This October, voters in Iceland are
set to be asked what they think of the
draft for the new constitution—the prod-
uct of almost two years’ work by the Ice-
landic Constitutional Assembly—before
it returns to Alþingi for full discussion.
Article 36 of the current draft explic-
itly states: “The protection of animals
against maltreatment as well as animal
species in danger of extinction shall be
ensured by law.”
Linda is among the many animal
rights activists calling on voters and par-
liamentarians to guarantee that this pro-
tection is built into the new constitution.
“We have a very old-fashioned way of
thinking about animals in Iceland,” she
laments. “I used to live in Vancouver and
there it’s like heaven for dogs. There are
special beaches for dogs; outside the
banks and cafes they have bowls of wa-
ter; if you go to the petrol station they’ll
give you a biscuit if you’ve got a dog in
your car. We don’t have any of that here.”
Animal welfare laws
Linda works closely with Árni Stefán
Árnason, a lawyer who specialises in
animal rights and welfare. “It’s important
to have animal rights in the constitution
because a constitutional act is of higher
authority than statute parliamentary law,
but also because the law as it stands is
not being upheld,” he says. “We have
had animal welfare legislation since
1914, but authorities are not following
the law as it stands. The law stipulates
a two-year limit on jail-time for cases of
animal cruelty, but in many cases any-
one convicted only faces a minor fine.”
Like Linda, Árni has history of taking
on the law and winning. “I got my first
dog when I was about twelve or thirteen.
My father was in the town council at
Hafnarfjörður, and I made a deal that I
would look after the dog if he worked to
change the rules to permit dogs in the
town.” The ownership of dogs in urban
areas in Iceland was restricted for many
years until surprisingly recently: “Dogs
were restricted in some areas because
of fears about tapeworm which they
could carry and pass on to humans, po-
tentially causing death.”
For activists however, the issues of
animal rights in Iceland go much further
than the quality of life for domestic pets.
“Factory farming has been increasing
rapidly in Iceland in recent decades,
and this is our main target because the
environments in which farm animals are
kept are unnatural and they are made to
suffer in tight spaces,” Árni says.
Factory farming
“I’m lending my voice to this campaign
because it’s important to educate people
about the way animals are being treated
in this country. I would like consumers to
ask themselves how their dinner ended
up on their plate: the way animals are
kept, how they are raised, how they are
killed,” Linda adds.
“Some farmers insist that animals
don’t feel things, that they’re not sen-
tient beings, but they’re so wrong. I’ve
been campaigning for animal rights for
thirty-five years, and when I look into
their eyes as they’re being taken to the
slaughterhouse, I can tell that they sense
something is coming,” Arni laments.
“Imagine if another race came from
Mars that was more intelligent than
human beings, and they saw us as ani-
mals. They put humans in factories, raise
them, kill them and then grill them. What
would their argument be to that?”
Persuading consumers to shoulder
the higher cost of organic farm produce
may seem a challenge, but they believe if
consumers were aware of the treatment
of animals in factory farms, they would
probably reject the product.
Animal rights are already guaranteed
in the constitutions of both Germany and
India. Even after the public has its say on
October 20, Linda and Arni will continue
the struggle to make Iceland the next
land on the list.
Iceland’s Article 36 Former Miss
World leads the fight for animal rights
Words
Mark O'Brien
Photography
Isabella Cohen