Communism

• WASHINGTON, Feb. 06, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Constant and vigorous protection of religious freedom is essential to world peace and democracy, an array of human rights experts and religious freedom leaders told the audience at a recent event hosted by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) and The Washington Times Foundation.
• Religious freedom serves communities as well as individuals, said Prof. Cole Durham Jr., director of the Brigham Young University's International Center for Law and Religious Studies.
• UPF and The Washington Times Foundation are committed to protect, defend and advance religious liberty universally.
• Together we will roll back the tyranny of all God-denying ideologies and build a better world.”
  The UPF and Washington Times Foundation event was covered in a Jan. 31 Washington Times article, under the headline, “Japan’s dispute with church a test of liberty everywhere.”

• Religious Freedom Requires Constant Protection,
  If a nation disrespects religious freedom, “all other rights
  Constant and vigorous protection of religious freedom is essential to world peace and democracy, an array of human rights experts and religious freedom leaders told the audience at a recent event hosted by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) and The Washington Times Foundation.
• Religious freedom serves communities as well as individuals, said Prof. Cole Durham Jr., director of the Brigham Young University's International Center for Law and Religious Studies.
• UPF and The Washington Times Foundation are committed to protect, defend and advance religious liberty universally.
• Together we will roll back the tyranny of all God-denying ideologies and build a better world.”
  The UPF and Washington Times Foundation event was covered in a Jan. 31 Washington Times article, under the headline, “Japan’s dispute with church a test of liberty everywhere.”

• Today, however, Sulyandziga, 61, and his family members continue to be harassed by the Russian government.
• Beyond repression at home, the Russian government is increasingly trying to silence activists like Sulyandziga even after they leave Russia.
• This kind of harassment is called transnational repression, and it means that Indigenous activists are vulnerable in exile as well as at home.

Indigenous people of Russia

• Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has legally recognized 47 Indigenous peoples, though more than 150 groups claim Indigenous status.
• There was a flowering of Indigenous activism in Russia during the more open politics of the 1990s.
• But Indigenous peoples remain among the most socially and economically marginalized groups in Russia.

Indigenous activism and Russia’s war in Ukraine

• Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has created new problems for Indigenous communities in Russia.
• Driven by poverty and patriotic appeals, young men from Indigenous communities enlist in the military in disproportionately high numbers.
• Some Indigenous exiles have exercised their new freedoms by protesting Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Russian government’s pressure on Indigenous people

• The Russian government uses the tools of transnational repression against Indigenous activists who have left Russia.
• These include damaging activists’ reputations in media coverage, initiating spurious legal cases, confiscating their property and harassing relatives and colleagues who remain in Russia.
• Ruslan Gabbasov, an activist from the Bashkir ethnic minority in the Russian region of Bashkortostan, left his homeland in 2021 due to increasing pressure on his activism.

A foreign policy concern

• These anti-war groups compare Russia’s violence toward Ukrainians with their own histories of oppression and call for decolonization in the region.
• Repression also is designed to drive a wedge between Indigenous communities in Russia and activists abroad who maintain connections via online platforms such as Telegram.
• The Russian government had labeled his original organization a foreign agent, even before he fled to the U.S.
• Pavel Sulyandziga, president of the Batani International Indigenous Fund for Solidarity and Development and visiting scholar at Dartmouth College, contributed to this article.

Laura A. Henry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• It has become an article of faith among many economists that China’s pro-market reforms of the 1980s and 1990s ushered in a sustained reduction in poverty.
• That’s a fair chunk of the world population, which is currently about eight billion.

It depends how you define purchasing power

• The World Bank calculations use purchasing power parity, which is a standard way of comparing general purchasing power over time and between countries.
• But this approach does not tell us about people’s purchasing power over the specific goods and services that are necessary for survival.
• It reached a peak of 68% as price deregulation pushed up the cost of basic food and housing, cutting the buying power of low-income people.

Under communism, China subsidised necessities

• Socialist policies can keep the cost of meeting basic needs low in a way overall price measures don’t pick up.
• This seems to have been the case in China.
• This meant US$1.90 was able to buy more basic necessities in China than in comparable capitalist countries.
• But other social indicators support our finding that extreme poverty was lower in China than in India, Indonesia and Brazil in the 1980s.

Economic growth by itself is not enough

• China’s impressive industrial development has, of course, led to substantial improvements in access to modern appliances, information technology and other goods.
• Read more:
  China's population is now inexorably shrinking, bringing forward the day the planet's population turns down

Jason Hickel acknowledges support by the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Dylan Sullivan and Michail Moatsos do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.