The article is published with the permission of Postimees. Original version published in Postimees 19th Oct 2024
(in web 18th Oct: https://arvamus.postimees.ee/8117573/ak-maailma-ahvardab-taiesti-uut-tuupi-kolonialism)
Estonia, through Linnart Mäll, has had the honor of playing a special role in raising awareness of indigenous peoples’ issues, as several meetings of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization were held here. Its current Secretary General, Mercè Monje Cano, mentions that issues of neocolonialism and the environment are increasingly coming to the forefront. For example, there have been cases where indigenous peoples are driven from their homes under the guise of environmental protection, and China’s neocolonialism in Africa is only just beginning to be recognized.
The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) was founded on February 11, 1991 in The Hague. Its main initiators were Estonians, Tibetans, and Uyghurs. The first leader of the organization was Linnart Mäll (1938–2010), representing the Estonian Congress. But with the restoration of independence, Estonia’s direct involvement in UNPO also came to an end.
To date, the UNPO’s membership has grown to 44, and six former members (Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, East Timor, Latvia, and Palau) have achieved independence. From the former Soviet Union, the Crimean Tatars, who were among the founders, are still part of the UNPO. Though many nations have been sidelined due to pressure at home, UNPO has expanded significantly, especially toward the so-called Global South.
The new Secretary General of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, Mercè Monje Cano, contacted me. I can’t say that I had forgotten about this organization, but we hadn’t heard much about them lately either.
The last forum for unrepresented peoples we held was in December 2010 in Tartu, and it took place as a memorial conference for Linnart Mäll, with many peoples from Russia invited. In fact, the UNPO was not directly involved, as it was organized by the Institute of Rights of Peoples. The atmosphere under the regime led by Vladimir Putin in Russia was already quite oppressive, and fewer guests arrived than we had invited.
The glorious beginning of this story is, of course, linked to the fact that Estonia once played a central role in the creation of the UNPO. Even after the restoration of Estonia’s independence, the UNPO General Assembly met here several times, and the UNPO’s Eastern European Coordination Center operated in Tartu. Many different groups visited here: Chechens, Tatars and Crimean Tatars, Buryats, Yakuts, Tuvans, Chuvash, Komis, Udmurts, Maris, Ingrians, and others.
At the UNPO General Assembly in Tallinn in February 2001, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples was adopted. Its very name engages in a semi-ironic dialogue with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which had been adopted by the UN General Assembly more than half a century earlier (in 1948). Through its mere existence, the UNPO serves as a living indictment of the UN, pointing to the problems that the UN either cannot or does not want to solve. The biggest issue is that human rights do not encompass a people’s collective right to identity, self-expression, and self-realization.
Over time, the UNPO’s activities distanced themselves from Estonia, and the organization lived its own life, while Mäll’s work in Tartu somewhat diverged from it. This led to an attempt to develop activities somewhat separately, with the help of the Institute of Rights of Peoples. However, the peoples of Russia came under increasing pressure, contacts began to disappear, and former partner organizations could no longer operate. In February 2010, Linnart Mäll passed away, having dedicated the last years of his life once again to translations and science.
So, who is Mercè Monje Cano, the Secretary General of the UNPO, and how did she come to the organization? She is Catalan by nationality. Indeed, the Catalans, one of Europe’s most influential and largest unrepresented peoples, joined the organization fairly recently (in 2018).
Mercè Monje Cano: “I have always been fascinated by questions of identity. I first studied humanities and then international relations, particularly the relationships between different cultures. From there, I moved on to human rights more broadly.
In 2017, I was involved in a film festival, and we had the idea to organize a debate between the President of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, and a representative of the Spanish government. I was deeply shocked when the central government completely refused and instead began to put pressure on the festival. Until that point, I had believed that, regardless of our positions, there would always be a willingness to discuss and argue.
At that point, I turned to the UNPO for advice, and this interaction ended with the then Secretary General Ralph J. Bunche offering me a position to work for the UNPO. My role was to be an advocate for unrepresented peoples at the UN, to make their voices heard and to secure support for some projects.Of course, this was a big challenge because the UN’s cooperation formats have different statuses. We have no hope of obtaining a status that would allow us to independently raise issues before the UN, like the official partners of the Economic and Social Council can. It is extremely politicised, and countries like China or Pakistan won’t let us get anywhere near that. Therefore, sometimes we have to be very creative to still get through closed doors with our issues and collaborate on certain programs. And it must be noted that it is easier to achieve cooperation with UN local representatives on the ground, rather than from the center.
It seems that this work did bring some success, and as a result, I was asked at the beginning of 2023 to start acting as the interim Secretary General of the UNPO, and in April 2023, the UNPO General Assembly appointed me as Secretary General.
In more than 30 years, the world has changed, and we need to take that into account. To move forward, we must first understand the past. It became quite clear to me that a large part of very valuable information about the creation of the UNPO and its early activities is in the personal archive of Linnart Mäll in Tartu. Accompanying me is Fiona McConnell, a professor of political geography from the University of Oxford, who is also a member of our advisory board.We are convinced that the materials in Mäll’s archive are well-preserved and very interesting, so we definitely plan to return here. And I would love to come here with my family and stay for at least two weeks.”
Of course, I wasn’t the first person Mercè contacted in Estonia. She initially reached out to Linnart Mäll’s daughter, Maaja Mäll. Maaja then directed her to Märt Läänemets, Märt referred her to me, and I pointed her to the member of parliament Juku-Kalle Raid, who in turn referred her to Jaak Prozes, and so on, leading to a series of meetings, including with Estonian active politicians (such as former Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, among others).
The main goal is to create a clear picture of Estonia’s and Mäll’s role in the creation of the UNPO. There are many documents, but there are also the memories of those who were present. For example, how, in the early spring of 1990, a meeting took place in Tallinn between the Foreign Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Lodi Gyari, Mäll, and the Dutch professor of international law, Michael van Walt van Praag. Allegedly, the creation of the UNPO was agreed upon in Sven Grünberg’s kitchen.
Of the founding trio, the only one still alive is the 72-year-old Michael van Walt, who was the UNPO Secretary General from 1991 to 1998. He still advises the organization today. Mercè is aware of the Tibetans’ role in the founding of the UNPO and knows that van Walt, who also advised the Dalai Lama, provided a strong legal foundation. She asks whether Mäll—the first president of the UNPO (1991–1993)—might have been the one from whom the foundational philosophy of the initiative came, and she visibly becomes more animated when I started talking about the Russian Soviet orientalist of Baltic German descent, Nikolai Konrad.
I assume that it was precisely Konrad, whom Mäll considered his mentor, from whom Mäll derived his core understanding of history’s driving force. In short, this idea is expressed in the belief that it is not states and empires—however powerful they may be—that shape the course of history, but rather peoples and the cultures they create. Such a profound conviction provides the strength to raise one’s intellectual arms against both the Russian and Chinese empires and even the UN, which has been held hostage by them. States disappear, but peoples endure.
The new Secretary General of the UNPO is, of course, aware that in the early days of the organization, there were many peoples involved who have since withdrawn under various pretexts. Each case is different, but the common denominator is that the increasing pressure on the peoples of Russia made cooperation increasingly difficult and very dangerous for their activists. However, when times change, it will be necessary to reestablish contact with them.
The UNPO’s membership has always been fairly volatile, even though it has grown. The peoples of Russia have disappeared, but the Asia-Pacific region and Africa are increasingly represented. China, in the context of the UNPO, is also somewhat like Russia. The Tibetans have always been represented in the UNPO through their government-in-exile, and the Uyghurs through the World Uyghur Congress.
The peoples of Russia do not have long-standing exile organizations, but such organizations can be developed in the future. The UNPO likely requires political legitimacy with broader support than what the often still marginal exile organizations of oppressed peoples can offer. A certain disconnect from the organizations that operated 20 years ago is inevitable. The only fully formed government-in-exile belongs to the Chechens, and they were represented in the UNPO until 2010. Why their participation ended afterward is unknown to the current Secretary General, but contact has now been restored with the allies of the assassinated presidents Dzhokhar Dudayev and Aslan Maskhadov.
Among the issues that the UNPO is currently dealing with, climate change has increasingly come to the forefront. This is something where the UNPO can get its foot in the door, even at the UN. At the same time, environmental issues have been of central importance to peoples since the organization’s founding. Mercè gives an example of the peoples living on the islands of the Pacific Ocean. They are facing the climate crisis with the threat of rising seas and the endangerment of their living environment. As part of one project, the UNPO simply conducted interviews with the indigenous peoples living there to ask how they perceive the situation. Strangely enough, no one had thought of doing that before.
Mercè Monje Cano: “In my opinion, climate and the environment must be a priority for all organizations. Politically speaking, the issue lies in the scarcity of resources, and the fight for these resources is becoming increasingly intense. Why are small peoples often oppressed? In most cases, it is because there is a geopolitical interest in their land, the location where they live, and the resources found there.
A good example is the Ogoni people living in Nigeria (one of the first African members of the UNPO – A.H.), who are harmed by oil extraction. Their interest is to protect their land and extract resources in a sustainable way. But international companies, and often other countries, have different interests, which frequently lead to the forced displacement of people. And this is not just a domestic issue for countries. Look, for instance, at what China is doing in Africa, pushing weaker countries to hand over their resources.
We see that there is a direct connection between this kind of colonialism—often neocolonialism—and climate issues. That is why it is so important that wherever climate issues are discussed, representatives of the peoples and communities directly affected by specific environmental actions are present.
One can also give examples of how some countries appear to start protecting the environment by creating a national park for tourism purposes, but to do so, they forcibly relocate the people living there, as the indigenous population gets in the way. In this manner, they attempt to get rid of them under the guise of environmental protection.
Each case is, of course, different, but the general rule is that if a people is not at the table during climate discussions, they are usually the first to suffer because of climate change.”
For me, the key concept that Mercè uses is ‘colonialism.’ It is only recently that Russia’s actions against its subjugated neighboring peoples have begun to be referred to as colonialism. Russia’s trick with the so-called Global South is that while the memory of Western colonialism is still strong there, Russia is not perceived as a colonial power at all. Russia has successfully pulled off a real illusion, being an empire of evil that colonizes others, yet presenting itself to much of the world as an anti-colonial state.
Could the cure for Russia’s problems be decolonization, the breakup of Russia? It reminds me of the dismissive statements made by influential figures opposed to Putin, such as Yulia Navalnaya and Yulia Latynina, who have criticized calls for decolonization.
In September, Yulia Navalnaya spoke at a security conference in Slovenia, where she criticized those advocating for the ‘decolonization’ of Russia. She argued in her carefully prepared speech that the threat of dividing Russia into several parts benefits Putin and should not be part of the opposition’s strategy.
In the spring, Yulia Latynina gained attention during a debate with Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Portnikov, where she refused to understand why Ukrainians want to go their own way rather than fight together with ‘honest’ Russians against Putin’s regime. She has continued to ridicule calls for decolonization since then.
Given these events, everything related to colonialism seems particularly relevant. One of the peculiarities of Russian colonialism is that it refuses to recognize itself; the Russian sees imposing their world on others as an act of generosity, not a crime.
However, I admit that my experiences with Mercè regarding the issue of colonialism are somewhat different. I inevitably see Russia first, finding it a bit absurd when anti-colonialists in Western Europe censor the old statements of various colonial-era figures and topple their statues. Mercè, on the other hand, doesn’t seem interested in fighting these statues, but she does immediately point to one of the most pressing issues of today—China’s colonialism in the Third World.
Mercè Monje Cano: “People are mainly accustomed to talking about Western colonialism, but it needs to be viewed more broadly. We are currently working on this, led by Michael van Walt van Praag, to recognize and understand what the new forms of colonialism are. Right now, our African members still feel the effects of Western colonialism, but at the same time, China’s colonial economy is making inroads, and this is a new, powerful influence that is only just starting to be fully noticed.
Russia is also trying to establish a foothold in Africa using military force. Likewise, the Pacific islands are targets of China’s new type of colonialism.
Russia’s colonialism towards its neighbors is still traditional colonialism. What’s happening in Ukraine has clearly shown that Russia wants to continue as a colonial power and represents a great threat to its neighbors. We need to take this very, very seriously.”
