A Bit More Detail

In late February, high school student Ajla Bugaric took the stage in this city of roughly 100,000 to recite “Why Venice Is Sinking,” the poet Abdulah Sidran’s tribute to multiculturalism and the Bosniak nation.

“I look up into the sky above Venice,” Bugaric recited. “Nothing’s changed, in the last / seven billion years. Up above, is God. He / created the universe, in the universe seven billion / worlds, in each world numberless peoples, a multitude / of languages, and for each world - a Venice.”

The poem goes on to describe the Bosniak people, Slav Muslims who make up the majority in Serbia’s Sandzak region on the border with Montenegro, as “meek” or “peaceful.” It’s a message of national identity few Bosniak children will have heard in Sandzak schools, where the curriculum has traditionally focused on the Serbian nation and where – optional – classes in their mother tongue, Bosnian, are offered only twice a week.

But that's about to change. When the new school year begins in September, Bosniak primary and secondary students in Sandzak will be able to study in Bosnian and take new “national culture” courses in Bosniak history, literature, music, and art.

The poetry reading was part of a celebration on 21 February, International Mother Language Day, to mark the launch of the pilot program in 12 schools. The day was carefully chosen to start this “new era for the Bosniak people in Serbia,” Bosniak National Council President Esad Dzudzevic said in a speech.

Responsible for shaping local policy on culture, media, and education, the council is one of the several state-financed bodies representing Serbia's ethnic minorities. Dzudzevic called the new Bosniak curriculum – nine years in the works – among its most significant achievements, returning to Bosniaks “their self-confidence and self-respect as they get to know and value their language, history, and culture.”

And despite longstanding international concern that such a change could reinforce ethnic division in a region still struggling toward reconciliation after the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, everyday Bosniaks are also enthusiastic.

The Reconquista was not one but many things. It was at once a crusade against the infidel, a succession of military expeditions in search of plunder, and a popular migration. All these three aspects of the Reconquista stamped themselves forcefully on the forms o Castilian life. In a holy war against Islam, the priests naturally enjoyed a privileged position. It was their task to arouse and sustain the fervour of the populace – to impress upon them their divinely appointed mission to free the country of the Moors. As a result, the Church possessed an especially powerful hold over the medieval Castile; and the particular brand of militant Christianity which it propagated was enshrined in the three Military Orders of Calatrava, Alcántara, and Santiago – three great creations of the twelfth century, combining at once military and religious ideals. But while the crusading ideal gave Castilian warriors their sense of participating in a holy mission as soldiers of the Faith, it could not eliminate the more mundane instincts which had inspired the earliest expeditions against the Arabs, and which were prompted by the thirst for booty. In those first campaigns, the Castilian noble confirmed to his own entire satisfaction that true wealth consisted essentially of booty and land. Moreover, his highest admiration came to be reserved for the military virtues of courage and honour. In this way was established the concept of the perfect hidalgo, as a man who lived for war, who could do the impossible through sheer physical courage and a constant effort of the will, who conducted his relations with others according to a strictly regulated code of honour, and who reserved his respect for the man who had won riches by force of arms rather than by the sweat of manual labour. This ideal of hidalguía was essentially aristocratic, but circumstances conspired to diffuse it throughout Castilian society, for the very character of the Reconquista as a southwards migration in the wake of the conquering armies encouraged a popular contempt for sedentary life and fixed wealth, and thus imbued the populace with ideals similar to those of the aristocracy.

It was typical of the medieval Catalans that their pride in their constitutional achievements should naturally prompt them to export their institutional forms to any territories they acquired. Both Sardinia (its conquest begun in 1323) and Sicily (which had offered the Crown to Peter III of Aragon in 1282) possessed their own parliaments, which borrowed extensively from the Catalan-Aragonese model. Consequently, the medieval empire of the Crown of Aragon was far from being an authoritarian empire, ruled with an iron hand from Barcelona. On the contrary, it was a loose federation of territories, each with its own laws and institutions, and each voting independently the subsidies requested by its king. In this confederation of semi-autonomous provinces, monarchical authority was represented by a figure who was to play a vital part in the life of the future Spanish Empire. This figure was the viceroy, who had made his first appearance in the Catalan Duchy of Athens in the fourteenth century, when the duke appointed as his representative a vicarius generalis or viceregens. The viceroyalty – an office which was often, but not invariably, limited to tenures of three years – proved to be a brilliant solution to one of the most difficult problems created by the Catalan-Aragonese constitutional system: the problem of royal absenteeism. Since each part of the federation survived as an independent unit, and the King could only be present in one of these units at a given time, he would appoint in Majorca or Sardinia or Sicily a personal substitute or alter ego, who as viceroy would at once carry out his orders and preside over the country's government. In this way the territories of the federation were loosely held together, and their contacts with the ruling house of Aragon preserved.

The area’s relative obscurity is not just name-related. With a combined population of less than 1.5 million, the Guyana Three are hardly a hotspot for news. If you know three things about French Guiana, it’s probably these: there’s a pepper (and a Porsche) named after its capital, Cayenne; the notorious French penal colony of Devil’s Island was located off its shore; and it’s the site of the European Space Agency’s spaceport, at Kourou. Suriname? Two things: the Netherlands traded it with the English for New Amsterdam, and it’s the only Dutch-speaking country outside of Europe. Guyana? The Jonestown Massacre of 1978.

But as a set, the three entities are a significant anomaly, and a case study in the way that geology and the environment can combine with geopolitics to shape a region’s history.

Since Belize won independence in 1981, French Guiana is the last territory on the American mainland controlled by a non-American power. But in fact, all three Guyanas are Fremdkörper in Latin America: they are the only territories in the region without either Spanish or Portuguese as a national language. These are coastal countries, culturally closer to the Caribbean.

Moreover, these shores are cut off from the rest of the subcontinent by dense rainforest. And that jungle remains virgin by virtue of the Guyana Shield, a collection of mountain ranges and highlands seemingly designed to conserve the interior’s impenetrability. The shield is best known for its tepuis: enormous mesas that rise dramatically from the jungle canopy and are often home to unique flora and fauna (tepuis feature prominently in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” and, more recently, the animated film “Up.”)

The Principality of Sealand is a textbook example. Literally. Open any book or Web page on micronations, and you’re likely to see its unmistakable silhouette: a two-legged marine platform. Sealand is one of the first, arguably one of the most successful, and possibly the best-known example of modern micronationalism. It’s also one of the most intriguing experiments in state-creation in history.

Start with its geography, as it were: Sealand was founded on an abandoned World War II sea fort six miles off the coast from Felixstowe, in the southern English county of Suffolk. The installation, officially known as Her Majesty’s Fort Roughs, is one of the half dozen so-called Maunsell Forts, built during World War II to provide antiaircraft defense and abandoned by the British Army in the 1950s. Predictably, the hulks of concrete and steel left to rust in the busy waterways just off the English coast were accidents waiting to happen. In the deadliest one, the Norwegian ship Baalbek collided with Nore Army Fort, in the Thames estuary between the Isle of Sheppey and Southend-on-Sea, killing four people and destroying two of the fort’s towers.

The mid-1960s saw the re-occupation of some forts, this time by pirates rather than privates. Not cutlass-and-peg-leg pirates; these were of the broadcasting variety (though some swashbuckling was involved). One of the more colorful radio pirates was Screaming Lord Sutch, who established Radio Sutch in Shivering Sands Army Fort, a collection of outlandish huts on stilts also in the Thames estuary. “Britain’s First Teenage Radio Station” was quickly rebranded Radio City by its new manager, Reginald Calvert. Other pirate stations were set up at the Red Sands Army Fort and the Sunk Head Navy Fort, all competing with the more established, ship-based pirate stations, most notably Radio Caroline.

These heady radio days were hardly halcyon. The pirates took to the sea to operate on or beyond the fringes of the law. Arguments were settled by violence. Mr. Calvert was killed in a dispute over, among other things, radio crystals. In 1965, a group of feral DJs under the command of Roy Bates ejected a rival crew from Knock John Navy Fort; it then became the base for Radio Essex, the first pirate to broadcast around the clock. The next year, a conviction for illegal broadcasting forced Mr. Bates to abandon Knock John, which was located within the three-mile radius of British territorial waters, to Fort Roughs, which was just outside.

In response, the Marine Broadcasting Act of 1967 made it illegal for pirate radios, even those outside territorial waters, to employ British citizens. Mr. Bates promptly declared independence, probably hoping to circumvent the strictures of the act. Henceforth, he would be Prince Roy, ruler of the Principality of Sealand.

Mr. Bates never got around to resurrecting his radio station. The accident of statehood turned into his core business. On the Web site, noble titles are for sale (“Lord, Lady, Baroness — from £29.99”). Until 1997 it even issued passports (Mr. Bates suspended the practice because of widespread fraud). Over the years, Sealand’s supposed sovereignty has attracted the interests of some who seek sanctuary from the law, from gambling operators to, more recently, WikiLeaks, which was examining whether to move its servers to the principality.

The Palestinians on Monday made a formal bid to have the no-longer-so-little town of Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus Christ, added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites.

"We are very proud to announce that we have submitted the nomination file of Bethlehem: birthplace of Jesus -- Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route ... to the World Heritage Centre," tourism minister Khulud Daibes told reporters.

The addition of the West Bank town to the UNESCO list should have been almost automatic and accomplished a long time ago, but like most issues in the Holy Land, it has become entangled in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And the Palestinians are hoping that getting the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to recognise Bethlehem as a part of Palestinian cultural heritage will give impetus to their struggle to establish a state.

"This timing is crucial for us, it is part and parcel of our plan to end the (Israeli) occupation and build the institutions of the state of Palestine," Daibes said.

In the absence of constructive peace talks with Israel, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad has been leading an effort to build institutions for a de-facto state.

They feel they have a strong case for Bethlehem's recognition when the UN committee meets to decide on the nominations in July 2012.

Recent visitors to Kilinochchi, the former capital of the Tamil Tigers, had noticed something unusual — there was a single, new building standing among the bombed-out ruins of the abandoned city in northern Sri Lanka.

It was a whitewashed Buddhist shrine, strewn with flowers. “We thought it strange because there was no one there except soldiers — the civilians had all fled,” one of the visitors said.

Officers told them that the shrine had been damaged by the Tigers and renovated by the army — recruited largely from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority — after the rebels’ defeat a year ago next month. “It’s an ancient site,” Major-General Prasad Samarasinghe, the chief military spokesman, told The Times.

Many Tamil archaeologists, historians and politicians disagree. They say that the area had been populated for centuries by the ethnic Tamil minority, which is mostly Hindu. “There was nothing there at all,” Karthigesu Sivathamby, a retired professor of Tamil history and literature at the University of Jaffna, said.

The true origins of the site may never be known without independent analysis — which is impossible while the army restricts access to the area. Many Tamil community leaders fear that the shrine is part of a plan to “rediscover” Buddhist sites and settle thousands of Sinhalese across the north to undermine the Tamils’ claim to an ethnic homeland.

When the British took control of the country in 1815, they were unsure of its ancient history but soon embraced the legend of the Mahavamsa — a text written by Buddhist monks in about AD500.

It suggests that the Sinhalese are descended from Prince Vijaya, an Aryan prince exiled from northern India in about 500BC, and that Tamils did not migrate from southern India until 200 years later.

That theory — still taught in schools — underpins the Sinhalese chauvinism that ultimately drove the Tigers to launch their armed struggle for an independent homeland in 1983.

In fact, archaeologists had discredited that after independence by excavating settlements in the north that dated from long before 500BC and showed similarities to sites in southern India — suggesting a much earlier migration.

When the conflict began, they were forced to suspend excavations and many Tamil archaeologists fled into exile overseas.

Here in Catalonia, this persistently separatist-minded region of Spain, bullfighting has been in trouble for ages. And the economy hasn’t helped. Ticket prices are akin to opera’s. Fights are expensive to produce. The number of bullfights plummeted across Spain this year.

But José Tomás still draws enormous crowds. For aficionados, he is the last best hope for toreo, as bullfighting is called. Reclusive, a matador of unearthly fearlessness and calm, steeped in history and mystery, he retired in 2002, at 27 and the height of his fame, only to return unexpectedly five years later in Barcelona for what turned out to be the first sellout in 20 years at the 19,000-seat Plaza Monumental, this city’s beautiful old brick-and-tile bullring.

Sunday he was back, for another special occasion: perhaps the last bullfight ever in Catalonia.

Over the last three decades or so, dwindling interest among young Catalans has combined with pressure from animal-rights advocates and from Catalan nationalists to cripple toreo in Catalonia. Across the region’s four provinces, bullrings have closed; Barcelona’s is the only one still active.

Now a referendum before the Catalan Parliament would end bullfighting here altogether. There has long been talk in this part of Spain about a total prohibition on toreo. Fans have played it down. But this time, even aficionados think a ban is likely to pass.

[. . .]

That the issue remains, above all, political is demonstrated over the border, in the Catalan region of southern France, where bullfighting is embraced as fiercely as it is opposed in Spanish Catalonia, for exactly the same separatist reasons, in that case because it is banned in Paris.

“At a point when Europe is becoming bigger and more multicultural, Barcelona is becoming smaller and more Catalan,” is how Robert Elms, a British travel writer who has lived here, saw the situation. He had come to see José Tomás and remarked, before the corrida, how the dark but magical city he once knew has become a shiny, designer-label hub that nonetheless looks increasingly inward.

Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader who seized power in Russia in 1917 has been praised and condemned for many things, but now a Bashkir scholar has celebrated him for a role few have yet acknowledged: Lenin, Rustem Vakhitov argues, deserves recognition and honor for his role as the founder of the Russian Federation.

In a 4,000-word essay posted online this week, Vakhitov, an Ufa-based academic who writes frequently on contemporary affairs, says that that Lenin’s importance for Russians today lies in his role as the creator of the Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic, the predecessor of the Russian Federation (contrtv.ru/common/3111/).

Arguing that "the cult of Lenin" in Soviet times was not only something the man himself did not want but also has gotten in the way of focusing on what Lenin actually did, Vakhitov says that the best way to begin is by asking the question: "When did the state by the name of the Russian Federation in which we live arise?"

"Many people consider that this took place in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR, but this is not true," Vakhitov insists, adding that in fact "on December 25, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR passed legislation according to which the RSFSR was renamed [Vakhitov’s italics] as the Russian Federation."

In support of that contention, the Ufa scholar notes that the law began with the following words: "The Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR affirms: 1. The State the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) from now on will be called the Russian Federation (RF)," as it is known to this day.

What that means, Vakhitov continues, is that in 1991, the RSFSR simply changed its name, out of which were eliminated the words ‘soviet’ and ‘socialist’ as an indication that the Russian Republic had changed its political system and state ideology." "But," he continues, "no new state arose as a result."

The relationship of these sovereign states has created the scenario wherein the Crown has both a separate and a shared character[dubious – discuss], being an institution that operates separately within the jurisdiction of each Commonwealth realm, with the Queen in right of each country being a distinct legal person, acting on the advice only of the government of that state. The Crown is thus unitary through its shared character, but divided in its jurisdictional operation, meaning that in different contexts, Crown may mean the Crown as shared or the Crown in each realm considered separately.

The monarchy is therefore no longer an exclusively British institution, although it may often be called British for historical reasons, for convenience, or for political (usually republican) purposes. One Canadian constitutional scholar, Dr. Richard Toporoski, stated on this: "I am perfectly prepared to concede, even happily affirm, that the British Crown no longer exists in Canada, but that is because legal reality indicates to me that in one sense, the British Crown no longer exists in Britain: the Crown transcends Britain just as much as it does Canada. One can therefore speak of 'the British Crown' or 'the Canadian Crown' or indeed the 'Barbadian' or 'Tuvaluan' Crown, but what one will mean by the term is the Crown acting or expressing itself within the context of that particular jurisdiction". Expressing this concept, through the proclamation of Elizabeth II's new titles in 1952, in each realm the Queen is known by the title appropriate for that realm; for example, in Barbados she is known as "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Barbados," or, simply, the Queen of Barbados.

As a consequence of this relationship, as per the preamble to the Statute of Westminster, any alterations to the line of succession to the throne must be approved by the parliaments of all the realms in order to guarantee continuity of a single monarch.[14] For example, there have been suggestions of removing the religious requirements from the Act of Settlement, which currently defines the succession.[15] In practice, since each realm is a sovereign state, this requires the voluntary cooperation of all 16 of the countries. Alternatively, a realm could choose to end its participation in the shared monarchy.

[. . .]

Though the Queen's constitutional position is virtually identical in each realm, she lives in the United Kingdom. Consequently, the constitutional duties she personally exercises as Queen of the UK are in other realms generally performed by a Governor-General, who serves as her representative. The extent to which these duties are explicitly assigned to the Governor-General, rather than the Queen, varies from realm to realm, but the Queen does act personally in right of any of her other realms when required, for example when issuing Letters Patent, or on occasions of significant political importance. Similarly, the monarch usually performs ceremonial duties in the Commonwealth realms to mark historically significant events during visits at least once every five or six years, meaning she is present in a number of her realms outside the UK every other year, or on behalf of those realms abroad. She is also represented at various ceremonial events throughout all the realms by other members of the Royal Family, such as the Queen's children, grandchildren or cousin, who also reside in the United Kingdom, but act on behalf of the government of the particular realm they're in; meaning the Royal Family also has both a unitary and divided nature. The other realms may receive two to three such visits each year.

The political party comprising former members of the Maoist insurgency (1996-2006) succeeded in garnering support sufficient to leave its democratic rivals far behind. The scoreboard on April 10 placed the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) on top with 119 of 240 seats in the first-past-post segment of the poll. The nearest rival, the Nepali Congress, was trailing with 34 seats while the moderate communist party, Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML), stood third with 31 seats.

Pre-poll estimates had put the Nepali Congress ahead of others, expected to be followed by the UML. The Maoists were expected to be reduced to an unenviable 50 seats. But all such predictions failed, to the pleasant surprise of Maoist leaders. On the contrary, their party looked set to win a majority of the 335 seats filled through proportional representation of the electoral system. The remaining 26 seats in the 601-strong Constituent Assembly are to be occupied by government nominees.

"We have achieved more than what we expected," Baburam Bhattarai, a senior Maoist leader, said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Since his party was emerging as the leader among the three main contestants, it would be logical, he said, for them to head the next coalition government whose job is to assist the assembly to draw up a constitution that replaces the one promulgated in aftermath of first pro-democracy movement of 1990.

The poorest country in South Asia has suddenly catapulted itself to the vanguard of democratic reform and political transformation in the region. India, which basks in the glory of its democratic way of life, at once looks a little bit archaic and tired in comparison. After 60 years of uninterrupted democratic pluralism, vast sections of Indian society are yet to realize the potentials of political empowerment. The Nepalese people have come from behind and overtaken the Indians in expanding the frontiers of "bourgeois" politics.

Politics in India still meander through alleys of caste and parochialism and eddies of religious obscurantism and Hindu nationalism. The upper-caste Hindu elites in Nepal used to share social kinships with the Indian political elites. The Maoists have upturned Nepal's entrenched caste politics. The Indian electorate is yet to explore in full measure ideology-based secular political empowerment, which is the bedrock of democratic self-rule. Unsurprisingly, India's main opposition party, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which thrives on Hindu fundamentalism, has been stunned into silence. It feels let down that a country that it dearly cherished as the world's only "Hindu kingdom" has taken to secular democracy with such panache.

The Maoist government will proceed to dismantle the pillars of Nepal's feudal structure and will take recourse to radical economic and political reforms based on distributive justice and egalitarian principles. That is bound to catch the attention of impoverished Indians in the sub-Himalayan belt sooner or later. The Indian states (provinces) bordering Nepal are notorious for their misgovernance.

In a remote corner of the Himalayas, a small Tibetan refugee community felt helpless as it watched protests erupt all over the world against Chinese rule in their homeland. For in the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, ethnically, culturally and linguistically close to its giant northern neighbour Tibet, demonstrations are not allowed. Young Tibetans were even reluctant to give their names for fear of trouble.

"We want to demonstrate but we don't have the right to, and that is very bad for us," said a 24-year-old who gave her name as Tenzing. "If we could, people would know that Tibet belongs to Tibetans."

Sixty years ago, Tibet and Bhutan were both reclusive feudal societies virtually shut to the outside world, under absolute rulers viewed as close to Buddha in most people's eyes.

But after Tibet was swallowed up by China, Bhutan befriended India and embarked on a gradual path of modernisation and opening up that culminated in last week's parliamentary elections, ending a century of royal rule and ushering in democracy.

Despite the advances, Bhutan remains a tightly controlled society where criticism of the elite, let alone protests, is almost unheard of.

Tibetan refugees were welcomed into Bhutan in the 1950s and given land by the king. In the small village of Hongtsho in central Bhutan, Tibetan families grow potatoes and have planted apple orchards, selling their produce by the roadside.

[. . .]

Despite their cultural links, Bhutan's people hardly seem to care about the problems of their Tibetan neighbours, a function of their long isolation in the Himalayas.

But Tibetans say they do mix with Bhutanese people and at least are free to practice their religion inside the country.

"As a refugee life goes, this is not too bad," said one young man.

Yet parents usually send their children off from a relatively young age to be educated in Indian towns like Darjeeling and Dharamsala, where Tibetan schools teach them their language and culture and give them the chance for higher education.

Bhutan has a population of less than 700,000 people and after an influx of Tibetans in 1959 it closed its northern borders for fear of being swamped. New refugees are no longer welcome.