“Maintaining stability” in China

“Everything we do is to make people’s lives happier, more dignified, so that society is more just and more harmonious.” - Premier Wen Jiabao

By Hui Gu

The word harmony is the key word now in China under the Chinese leader Hu Jintao's signature ideology of the Scientific Development Concept. It seems that the Chinese government will pay more attention to social and civil life development to resolve the imbalance of whole society. Since tian’an men square event 1989, Chinese leadership has been extremely sensitive about maintaining stability, so the ideology of harmony is the result of this anxiety. It has been six years since 2006 when the slogan “harmony society” first came out, then how Chinese society goes so far, does it keep stability as a harmony society.

Stability maintenance budget is rising - where has the money gone

According to caijing, which is one of the famous magazine in China, the spending on “stability maintenance” (Chinese weiwen) even surpasses the national defense budget. In 2011, the expense on national defense which is 601.156 billion yuan, in contrast, the expenditure on stability maintenance is 624.421 billion yuan, which is larger by almost 10 billion yuan than the national defense budget. This year 2012, accordingly, the stability maintenance expense is rising to 701.763 billion by 11.5 percent compared to the figure last year. Some foreign media even called China as “police country” .it shows that the social stability is getting more and more serious otherwise why the Chinese government spends such large amount of money on the stability maintenance.

Some citizens in China are also shocked by the news when they heard it, the questions are where does the money go and how do they use the money. According to wuyuesanren the freelance journalist, on one hand, the stability maintenance spending includes rigid expense such as police, jails which are the violence agencies established to deal with large-scale disturbances, besides, Chinese government imposes pressures on local authorities to use police and jails to crack down citizen discontent and petitions (Chinese shangfang) at all costs. One another hand, it also includes the soft expense such as the compensation to the death or the trouble-making groups and an industrial complex of paid informants and contractors. This has also created markets for people capable of filling this role – the hiring of informally recruited security forces (or more simply - “goons”) by some local authorities being one example according to southern weekend in China.

This is the overall category of the expense of stability maintenance, then how is this expense operated in the basic level. Take one of the small countryside in Guangdong province for example, the GDP of 2009 was 4.032 billion yuan, the local general budget revenue is 199 million yuan, and each year the local government will get 510 million yuan from the superior financial provision. In addition to this, there is also the special funding for the local stability maintenance, In 2010, the local town got 28.8million dollars stability funding for the small village, there is fixed asset investment for the stability maintenance, for example, one-time investment of the stability funding is 100,000 yuan including purchase of computers, motorcycles, cars and office furniture etc for 8 towns. In addition, there is the generally recognized local government policy that if the stability workstation can deal with one protest or so called trouble makers and groups, they will be rewarded 50-300 yuan each, and if there are no disturbance for the whole year they will be rewarded more.

They adopt the practice of “many against one” and carry out 24-hour surveillance of some “troublemakers.” Local governments mobilize large numbers of volunteers who will get paid by the government from time to time to coordinate with relevant agencies. In recent years, due to the increase of the dissident issues and human rights defenders, the government spent more money on the surveillance; a lot of dissidents in China have suffered torture, surveillance, disappearance and detention. The hot issue in China is the case of the blind lawyer chenguangcheng who helps the citizens fight against one-Child policy, according to chen, the government spends more than 600 million yuan on controlling him every year.

With the development of internet, the government also felt the threat from the open platform and space for freedom speech, so the media censorship accounts for large amount of money spent on the stability maintenance. The government spent billions of dollars to build Golden Shield Project which is so called Great fire wall to block and filter the information, besides, a lot of people have been employed and paid by the government to be the “internet police”. The money spent on media censorship is huge and the number is increasing year by year.

“Spend money to buy peace” could bring troubles or stability

Furthermore, if the government contributes such large sum of stability maintenance budget to make great efforts to maintain stability in China, then whether the social stability is moving forward and changing for the better in that sense.

The truth is that according to the statistics released from social blue book, the large-scale disturbances in mainland China have increased from 100, 00 to 600, 00 during the year 1993 to 2003.there are 87,000 cases in 2005, and it rises to 900, 00 cases in 2006 and since 2008, the number of mass disturbances is going up dramatically, on average, there is 1 case in every six minutes. Some researchers said that during the transition period, China is stepping into the “risky society”. In terms of 2005 statistics, among the human rights defense issues, farmers rights accounted for 35%, labour rights accounted for 36%, civil rights was 15%, social disputes and social disorder accounted for 10% and 5% respectively. These are the main causes of the mass incidents happening in China.

To be specific, firstly take farmers’ rights for example, because Chinese government is in blind pursuit of economic benefits, Rapid growth has transformed China’s party-state into the world’s wealthiest regime, the obvious case is the housing estate, Land grabs have become an explosive issue in China as officials seeking to cash in on a property boom increasingly force farmers off their land to make way for construction - an issue repeatedly condemned by Premier Wen Jiabao. This forced demolition is not only happening in the rural areas but also in the city. According to the study, nearly a quarter of farmers did not receive any compensation for their land. 

Therefore, The expropriation and demolition caused many complaints and mass disturbances, in 2006, there are more than 385, 000 farmer petitions .Xinhua News agency reported that the Mass disturbance in rural areas accounted for more than 65% among the all disturbance events in China. Secondly, the labor disputes issues are rising during these years, in 2005, there were 314,000 labor disputes cases compared with the figure of 2004, it’s increased by 20%, in 2009 that number rose to 318,000 and only in the first eight months of 2010 there were 207,400. 45% of the workers are forced to work overtime; the workers are fighting for their own rights to obtain back payment or better working conditions. Some of them are dismissed for no reason and some are even commit suicide.

Chinese economy has developed so fast in recent years but it makes the government become the wealthiest regime, the benefit which the development brings doesn’t go to the citizens and social wellbeing. The gap between the rich and poor is huge which causes a lot of social conflicts and hatred ,as what is mentioned above, farmer’s land has been robbed and people’s house has been demolished by force, many farmers lost the source of income ,what’s more, they don’t have social welfare ,which is making the poor people become more and more poor, in contrast, business men ,government officials for example are quite profited from the housing economic boom which makes them become more and more rich ,the huge gap is leading to the serious social unrest in China. According to the investigation, the income gap ratio per capita between Urban and rural areas rising from 1 .8:1 in 1979 to 3.33:1 in 2007.

How to invest the stability maintenence budget properly -  “Social stability” via guaranteeing rights

Now this leaves us a question to consider: The government spent so much money on the stability maintenance, however, Chinese social human rights defenders are increasing, and large scale disturbances are everywhere, large groups of people are fighting for basic human rights and better living condition and social welfare. In order to cease the social unrest and crack down the social disturbance, the Chinese government thereby providing endless funds for “maintaining stability”. Then the more stability maintenance money we spent, the more instability issues happening in China. However, what if they use this “stability funding “in another way, will China be more stable and harmony?

China’s public stability maintenance expenditure increase is due to the growth in financial revenue, not due to increased social instability. chen zhi feng points out that if China’s fiscal revenue increases, there are many areas needing the money. China’s national fiscal revenue was 1.04 trillion dollars in 2009, but the spending on health, education, social security and employment accounted for only 14.7% of the whole national fiscal revenue compared with US which spent 61% on people’s live hood.

The main causes of conflict in recent years have been land requisition, demolition, wages owed to migrant workers and labor rights. According to a recent study by the prestigious China Labor Bulletin, based on official data on a sample of 350 workers in Hainan about one sixth of migrant workers earn less than 500 Yuan a month (less than 50 Euro), far less than the minimum wage required by law., however, in comparison, the stability maintenance expense is 1500 yuan(188 Euro)person, if the money is used to improve the workers’ living condition and minimum wage, there may be less mass incidents according to kong xiangdong who is the writer in China.

What’s more, China’s health care spending is only 2% of the entire world’s public healthcare spending, in China to achieve public free healthcare needs 26.3 billion dollars each year, however, it’s only 25% of the stability maintenance budget every year. The medical expense for 2010 were only 1.2% of GDP and public education expenditure accounted for only 3.1% of GDP compared to the stability maintenance expense which is more than 4.3%of GDP in 2010.all in all, it’s shown that the investment on social welfare would be far lower than that on stability maintenance.

Generally, according to Andrew one of the political professor in Columbium university, if we invest the 624.421 billion on Children who drop out school, all children can have access to school to receive free education, if the money is used to improve farmer and worker’s living condition, create more job opportunities and offer job training, all the petitioners’ problem will be resolved.

The current massive investment in maintaining stability indicates that something more than mere rhetoric is at stake. In contrast, the public health care is not implemented all over the country, especially in the rural area, there are millions of people whose yearly income is less than 2000yuan. If the government can invest it on the live hood project and social welfare improvement, many tough issues can be resolved at a minimum cost rather than that the whole society has to pay such a high price to maintain the stability to resolve the issues.

In light of the report from a team of sociologists at Tsinghua University, it warns that “if the existing way of working is not changed, stability maintenance costs will become an increasingly heavy burden. More ominously, a number of reforms that are important for the improvement of the social welfare, people’s living standards and building a real harmonious and stable society may be delayed.”

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When Business Overruled Human Rights

Text and Photography by Liselott Lindström
 

The exact amount is unknown. But thousands, if not millions of people are yearly forced to leave their homes to make way for multinational corporations who bought their land to grow crops for export.  Since the food crisis in 2008, the need for land has increased enormously. International law makes it easy to grab land in Africa – and very difficult for the evicted people to get justice. 

Two big yellow eyes look up at me when I enter the small mud hut. Malitini Sheni rises from his chair with great agony and limps over to the door to greet me. Two of his children are chasing each other in the yard; the third, youngest one is chasing a hen, imitating its clucking. The small ones seem to be unbothered by the situation, or maybe unknowing. Within a month, they will have to leave their home. Where to go, they have no idea.

Food Security – For Whom? 

Since 2000, more than 1200 agricultural land deals have reportedly been made in developing countries, covering nearly 84 million hectares of land. The area that has been worst affected is Africa. The reported land deals on the continent cover nearly 5 percent of the agricultural area, which roughly equals the size of Kenya. In reality, the number can be much higher, leaving us with the question: what happened to the people who lived on this land? 

The targeted countries are typically Sub-Saharan, poor, hungry, poorly integrated in the world economy, have weak land institutions and high levels of investor protection. Most of the investors come from China followed by Saudi-Arabia, with also the US, the UK and Sweden making it to the top ten.  

"There’s nothing bad per se in providing protection to investors, but the problem is that so much less progress has been made in developing protection for people who might be affected by the investment,” says Lorenzo Cotula, Senior Researcher in Law and Sustainable Development at the International Institute for Environment and Development.
 

Development versus Devastation 

To reach Malitini’s home we drove for two hours along something that can barely be called a road. His village Kikundi lies in the Uluguru Mountains, outside of the city of Morogoro in Southern Tanzania.  As far as the eye can see there are dry mountain landscapes with banana and papaya trees scattered here and there. For generations, Malitini’s family has been living in this area, growing food for their living. But about a year ago, their lives turned to hell. Lack of investment in agriculture has caused the average yield per hectare in Africa to be more than three times lower than in East Asia. Investors often claim that they are enhancing development by leasing land that isn’t utilized. 

The reports on land deals however tell a very different story, a story about a fight for land between African farmers and multinational investors. Nearly half of the reported land deals target cropland, and more than 60 percent target areas with high population densities, which means good accessibility to near cities and already existing infrastructure. Due to the enormous lack of transparency, it is uncertain how many people have been evicted due to land deals. When it comes to compensation, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights affirms the human right to property. In principle this protects the farmer’s right to his land. “The problem is that the charter doesn’t require the government to pay any compensation if the land is taken. Development is very unlikely to happen in a situation where the law is so skewed,” Cotula says.
 
When compensation is paid, it often goes to local authorities, who put the money in their own pocket. “The whole development discourse around large land deals saying it will bring infrastructure, jobs and lead to food security is nothing but myths,” says Anuradha Mittal, founder and executive director for the Oakland Institute, an American think tank investigating land deals in Africa.
 

In the Footsteps of the East India Trading Company 

The ground to the problems for the villagers of Kikundi started already in the 1960’s when Tanzania became independent. The land where the village of Kikundi lies was given to an external cooperative under the condition that they should cultivate the land. None of this involved the today 1000 inhabitants of Kikundi, and they were able to continue their small scale agriculture as before. Recently it turned out the government had threatened to take the land back from the cooperative, since they had not fulfilled their promise of cultivation. In fear of losing their land, the cooperative sold it to a professor from Rwanda. He wanted the villagers out. 

The reason all this has been possible lies in the colonial heritage. Land in Africa is most often owned by the state or government, and the people living on the land are not the ones who own it. Anuradha Mittal says the engine driving this trend of land grabbing has been the World Bank, encouraging countries to loosen regulations to become attractive to investors.
“Look at the manifestos of the Tanzanian Investment Centre, Zambian Development Agency or the CPI in Mozambique [land investment agencies]. They are identical word by word, written by the World Bank.” 

What would be needed is investment in the smallholders. The same things being offered to foreign investors should also be offered to them: water, infrastructure, market, cheap land and tax benefits. “If you’re looking for 18-20 percent return, do it in your own country. Going into Africa and looking for such profit, that is old fashioned colonialism,” Mittal says. 

International Law Supports Companies 

“The professor came to my home one day, telling me I should go with him. I refused. Two days later, he came back with two men. They beat me up with wooden sticks,” Malitini says, and lifts his white t-shirt to reveal two big lumps on his back. He can no longer walk properly, which makes working difficult. After buying the land the professor put out guards in the village. People’s houses have been burned down and crops destroyed. 

There are currently nearly 3000 bilateral investment treaties in the world granting investors strong protection of their property rights. Arrangements for claiming and enforcing human rights treaties are nowhere nearly as effective.  

Whereas a company can go straight to international arbitraries and get a binding judgment in a dispute with a government, the road for an African villager is very different. Accessing international remedies can take years, because the farmer has to go through all the levels of the national courts first. 

“When you have done that you can go to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, leading to a non-binding recommendation. The commission can then decide on taking the case to the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, at which point you can get a binding judgment,” says Cotula. In other words, those already enjoying access to capital and influence, also have stronger rights. “The situation is very dire,” Mittal says. “We need research and advocacy leading to naming and shaming people involved in this trend. Local and national capacity has to be strengthened.” 

Also the public awareness of the peasants has to become stronger; they need to know their rights and how they can take action. Mittal says many investors involve pension funds and private equity funds, as well as universities such as Harvard. One example where media attention led to the cancellation of a deal happened in February this year. The State University of Iowa withdrew from a deal that a company called AgriSol was planning in Tanzania. The deal would have lead to more than 160 000 people being evicted from their land. The company says it is only a question of moving a Burundian refugee camp. A camp that has been the home of these Burundians for more than forty years.
 

Toothless Regulations

Next to the door, a small children’s shoe hangs, moving slightly in the wind. It is to remind of Malitini’s and his wife’s fourth child, who died as an infant. His wife, a small, slender woman, sits in the corner, looking anxious. 

”When our land was seized, we went to the regional representative, and even to the district representative. But they had been bribed by the professor. Even our own chief had taken money from him”, Malitini says. The villagers have now taken the case to lawyers in Dar es Salaam, thanks to the help from Mviwata, a farmer’s organization uniting smallholders to have a common voice in the fight for their interests. They are now awaiting trial.
In many countries there are provisions requiring investors to consult local communities before getting a land lease, but they are hardly followed. 

“We both need to change the law and make existing law work better,” Lorenzo Cotula says.
In May 2012 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO published guidelines on governance of tenure to improve the situation. The guidelines are a result of three years of work, and they are – voluntary. “Nice effort, they have no teeth. Given what is at stake and the consequences it is ridiculous,” Mittal says. 

Tuomo Heinonen, Land Tenure Officer at the FAO, says a large group of representatives from different countries have been involved in creating them. “We are trying to make the guidelines largely known, from which we hope a collective supervision will follow and wrongdoings will more easily become known to the large public.” 

Land grabbing is almost directly correlating with land tenure and ownership. The stronger and more developed a country is in this sense, the less land grabbing occurs. Tuomo Heinonen has worked with land registration in Africa, Eastern Europe and Palestine, and believes registration of land is one way to make land grabbing harder. ”The rush for natural resources creates great temptation for the leaders in developing countries to sell state land and take the revenue.” 

A paper showing that you own the land can be a guarantee that gives you a bank loan, but when hunger or drought strikes, the temptation to sell the land without understanding the real value of it can become too big, Mittal explains.

Unprecedented Consequences

 “This model is so incredibly unsustainable that it won’t last,” Mittal says. “Are we going to do nothing and then pay the huge price humanity will have to pay: human rights violations, complete degradation of our environment, loss of virgin lands and forests.”
The list of consequences from Tuomo Heinonen is no bedtime story. “Increasing poverty, hunger, malnutrition, diseases, loss of biodiversity and natural resources, increasing amounts of refugees, crime and conflicts.” 

Moving large amounts of people might also escalate the urbanization process, making the slums in big cities ever bigger and poorer. Mittal is concerned, especially after ten people were killed in South Sudan in May due to land disputes. “I don’t think the world can afford conflict in Africa anymore. That continent has been ravaged way too far.” 

I walk from Malitini’s house towards the car. The villagers have assembled outside a worn down house, the centre of the village. In front of it a homemade flagpole with the yellow and green flag of the ruling party lazily moving in the mountain breeze. The children give me pieces of sugarcane “specially prepared for you madam”, and all the sweetness makes me sick. It is August 2010, and elections are coming up in Tanzania. There is still hope in the eyes of the villagers. Since the land in Tanzania is vested in the president, he could claim the land back on behalf of the villagers. Not a completely vain hope, the current president Jakaya Kikwete spares no efforts to keep the throne. However, it is very unlikely that another car than the professor’s will make it through the rough landscape up to Kikundi. I leave. Two years later I try to contact Mviwata to get to know what happened to the villagers. Ten e-mails - no answer.


Links to sources used for background information:

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17099348
2. /http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/05/30/the-landgrabbers-who-owns-the-planet/
3. http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/9781905811731
4. http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4021-world-bank-report-on-land-grabbing-beyond-the-smoke-and-mirrors
5. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/ESW_Sept7_final_final.pdf
6. http://formin.finland.fi/public/default.aspx?contentId=219703&nodeId=23&contentlan=1&culture=fi-FI
7. http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/OI_FAQsjune5.pdf
8. http://www.fian-nederland.nl/home/208-land-grabbing-breaches-international-human-rights-law.html
9. http://fian.org/news/press-releases/fao-tenure-guidelines-a-modest-step-governments-must-commit-to-implementation
10. http://www.evidensresearch.dk/media/1242/land%20grab.pdf

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The story of the Erased - people who die twice

European Union and Human Rights

by Karmen Resman, written in May 2012

It was the summer of 1991. Katarina Stojanović was 20 years old and was just finishing the first year of her bachelor studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She was taking driver’s lessons for a few weeks already and her 10‐year‐old brother couldn’t wait for his sister to finally get a license and take him to the seaside. Katarina was madly in love with her boyfriend and they just started planning a trip with their friends. It was going to be a wonderful summer. But then her country became independent and everything changed. In a few months Katarina lost her home, family and friends. And her identity. She was erased.

Photo by www.siol.net

What happened in Slovenia 20 years ago is still a painful evidence of how a young government violated human rights. 25 670 people in the new country shared Katarina’s destiny. They were unlawfully deprived of their legal status after Slovenia declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).

While Slovenian citizens became citizens of the new country automatically, those, who were citizens of the former SFRY or another Yugoslavian republic and had permanent addresses in Slovenia had to apply for it. 

There was around 130 000 people like that – mainly from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and also Slovenia. The majority got the citizenship, but almost 26 000 of them did not. They either failed to apply, or their application was refused or discarded. In some cases the procedure was even terminated.

On February 26th 1992 those people lost their permanent residence status in Slovenia and by that all the economic and social rights tied to it. They lost their jobs, medical benefits, pensions. They did not exist “on paper” anymore. What happened that winter was “administrative ethnic cleansing”, it was “civil death”.
 

Katarina’s story

Katarina’s parents were Serbs, so when the war started and the tensions between nationalities rose, they decided to go back to Serbia. Katarina, who was born in Slovenia, insisted she wanted to stay in the country she was brought up in and start a life there.
“It was Friday,” she remembers, “when I went from Ljubljana, where I studied, to my home town Maribor for the weekend. I tried to unlock the door to our apartment, the same apartment I was raised in, and the key did not fit. I tried again and again, until a tall man opened the door and started yelling at me. He told me I was the enemy’s daughter and that I should be deported. As he threatened to call the police, I ran out of the building, in utmost and complete shock.”

Katarina had nowhere to go. All she had left was a little suitcase full of clothes and a note stand. After a few days of panic and thinking about what she should do, she decided to fight for her home. She first wanted to renew her identity card, but what followed then was beyond her understanding. The municipality official in Maribor simply took her identity card and cut it in half, saying “you are not from here, go back to Serbia!” As the lady threatened to call the police, Katarina, once again, ran away.

For the next six years this was her life - running away from everything. She was secretly living in a basement of a student dorm. Every day she had to take a shower in another floor, so people would not notice she lives there. For a few years she almost did not have any warm food. To earn at least some money she was working illegally. She had false ID’s and false student cards; when she had to go to the doctor, she used another name. She travelled with a false passport, and when they did not let her cross the Slovenian border with Croatia once, she crossed it illegally.

For years Katarina knew she was a criminal just by existing in Slovenia. Whenever she saw a policeman on the street, she turned around and went another way. A day did not go by without her looking over her shoulder.

Everybody knew about the “murders on paper”, even Europe. But it did nothing to bring 25 671 people back to life.
Slovenian Constitutional Court declared the act of erasing as illegal and unconstitutional and demanded from a country to provide redress for these violations. Twice. But Slovenia did not fully fulfill the demands; some of the people are still erased today. European Union had the chance to demand from the social state that was preparing to join the family of European Union states in 2004, to truly exercise the third article of its constitution and guarantee the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms to all persons irrespective of their national origin. But it did not. Why was the European Union looking away then and why is it looking away now?

The timing was right, but...

From the day Slovenia applied for the membership in the EU in 1996 and until it actually joined 8 years later, the issue of the Erased has been debated upon largely in the national politics and media. This is why it is even more surprising that in years of negotiations the Erased were never properly addressed by the European institutions. Was it that the Union did not want to raise the question of neglecting human rights because its motive was to get Slovenia to join as soon as possible and without any major problems?

Slovenia was always the most liberal of the republics in former Yugoslavia. After it established a stable democracy and moved easily to a market economy, it became clear to Brussels that this young country could quickly integrate into the European family. That would be Union’s first step towards the Balkan countries – then already it was clear that the EU’s goals for the future are to expand to the east.

In the late 90’ the Commission no longer needed to be wooed. With Slovenia’s GDP higher than Greece’s and close to Portugal’s and the unemployment rate lower than in Germany or France, the Commission was hooked. The negotiation period went by smoothly, Slovenia requested and was granted a very limited number of transitional periods, which, according to the Commission, only proved how well prepared for implementing the acquis the country was.

However, the Commission at that time already knew about the issue of the Erased. In a report about Slovenia in 1997, before the negotiations officially started, it first stated “no cases of inhuman and degrading treatment have been reported”. Then it mentioned the Erased, claiming there is “a group of around 5000 people who for various reasons have neither asked for Slovenian nationality nor claimed refugee status after the erasure”. The Commission proposed no remedy then, except of that about the government “taking the appropriate steps to resolve this problem”. However, no obligations for Slovenia because the Commission claimed it had “no jurisdiction” over the matter.
 

No jurisdiction – no problem!

The negotiations started a year later without even mentioning the human rights matters in Slovenia, not even in the chapter about home affairs. “The reason for that lies in the fact that the European Union was founded for economic reasons and economic reasons only, without any regard to the human rights,” says Neža Kogovšek Šalamon, a researcher at the Peace Institute in Ljubljana. Only later the Union developed other aspects of governing, among which there was the promotion of human rights, too.

Another reason for the Erased not being mentioned in the negotiations talks is that the negotiations were not individual; there were six countries in the so‐called Luxembourg group that were aiming to join EU at the same time. Since all of them had quite similar predispositions, the negotiations were executed in a group. “It was negotiation for “a package of countries”, we could say. The same frameworks were prepared for all of the six countries, which is why Slovenia’s “personal” issues were not as precisely debated,” Boštjan Udovič, a professor of EU Enlargement at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana is convinced.

Photo by www.siol.net

There is no doubt about the fact weather it was a political decision to include Slovenia in the Luxembourg “package”, according to Udovič. European enlargement is a matter of great political manipulations and not all countries in the accession process are treated the same. European Union had much greater demands from Croatia, for example. “After the incidents at the gay pride parade in Split last year, they sent a clear message to them how that cannot be a part of Europe,” says Udovič.
 

The first and last step towards the solution

It’s been 20 years from the erasure and some of the Erased, they estimate there is a few thousand of them today, still do not have their citizenship or residency. Slovenia has in the meantime enforced two laws and countless acts in order to solve the issue, which has been spiced up with a number of national disputes over it. That is also why most of the laws and acts are inadequate and require further thought and the adoption of additional measures. The first law (Act on Regularizing the Status of Citizens of Other State Successors of the Former SFRY in the Republic of Slovenia), which came in force after the Constitutional Court declared the erasure as illegal and unconstitutional in 1999, at least partially solved the issue. Some 12,000 people took advantage of the new law; 7,000 received citizenship, and 4,800 obtained permanent or temporary residency.

The Act was, even though not adequate for all of the Erased, an important milestone, giving back the status to some of them. Some credit for that goes to the European Commission, which in 1997 advised the government to take appropriate measures, says Neža Kogovšek Šalamon: “The combination of both international and national pressures on the government processed this act in 1999. As it showed later, in 2003, when the Constitutional Court for the second time declared the erasure illegal and unconstitutional, only the national pressure was not enough: the government did not act as the court ordered it. Why? Maybe because the pressure from the European Commission was gone by then. Slovenia already closed all the chapters of negotiations and was only waiting for the formal accession. The Slovenian government itself just did not have the interest to solve the matter.”

Katarina Stojanović got her citizenship back in 1999 with the “naturalization law”. She was erased for 7 years. Today she is Katarina Keček, a married woman and a mother of two. And a successful journalist. She’s working at a private TV station in Ljubljana, preparing short documentaries about people’s lives and struggles they have to go through. For years she has been reporting about the Erased, telling sad stories of how they were left without their jobs, homes, insurance, loved ones, but kept quiet about her own. Only this year, 20 winters after the one that turned her life upside down, Katarina decided to reveal hers.
International institutions still looking away

The lives of the Erased have been out there for a long time already. They appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and to many other international bodies for human rights in the last twenty years. Some of them decided to step up and help, most of them did not.

The European Union had the power to force the Slovenian government to stop ignoring the issue and to find a solution during the negotiation period for Slovenia’s accession to the EU. The effects of Commission’s opinion, which resulted in a naturalization law, proved that Slovenia cared about what Europe thought and it would easily enforce demands in-lined with the European aspect of human rights. Sadly, the Union was focusing too much on economic gain only.

Finding a remedy for the Erased would also be an important precedent for other countries that have pursued policies of mass denationalization: Cambodia with ethnic Vietnamese, Myanmar with Rohingya Arakanese, Syria with Kurds, Ethiopia with persons with Eritrean affiliation, Bhutan with ethnic Nepalese, Vietnam with ethnic Chinese 'boat people' and France with ethnic Germans.

But now it is too late. The Erased have become a Slovenian “internal issue”. It is also clear that the European Union is only a collection of national states that follow the logic of “mind your own business”. Which is why Slovenia and its politicians who would need a kick from the outside, cannot bring the Erased back to life for twenty years already.
“One of the most difficult things for me after I got my citizenship back, was to realize I don’t have to hide anymore,” says Katarina. “The need of looking over my shoulder... It will probably never go away.”

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Two men`s dreams of future energy Atom turned to nightmare of Fukushima

Text and Photography by Kiyomi Obo

A former president of Fukushima, Eisaku Satou, told to a journalist about Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that “It is like a nightmare”. During his administration, he got a fax from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency at the ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2002 that TEPCO (Tokyo Electronic Power Company) was deceiving inspection records to hide troubles and cracks of nuclear reactors for many years. More shockingly, Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency got the information from a whistle-blower in 2000, meaning the governmental watchdog hided the information for two years. It was because the Agency gave the whistleblowing to TEPCO, and TEPCO told the agency “it is not true”. Then nothing happened for two years.

Pictured: Matsutaro Shoriki                      &                        Yasuhiro Nakasone

Copyright Kiyomi Obo, Sep 19 2012

 
Former governor, Sato thinks “Fukushima accident is not natural disaster, it is man-made disaster. The government was only telling nations that “Nuclear is safe”. Even after the accident they did not fulfil accountability of the accident”.  The explanation “it is safe” is known as “myth of safety” in Japan, and dodges risks and problems of nuclear. The accident proved it is a myth. 

Tragically, it was the fourth exposure for Japan. Atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and Daigo Fukuryū Maru, which encountered a thermonuclear test on Bikini Atoll. Japan is the only country experienced atomic bomb attacks and experienced so many exposures. 

There is a question, why Japanese government could build 54 nuclear reactors in the country experienced so many exposures, and earthquake-prone country with “myth of safety”? The story started from an incident of Daigo Fukuryū Maru in 1954, and two key persons` ambitious dreams for nuclear energy.

The third atomic bomb exposure, Daigo Fukuryū Maru and speculation of U.S.
After the Second World War, there was cold war between U.S. and Soviet Union fighting for geographical hegemony, but also for priority of nuclear technological development and creation of nuclearized military bloc. In 1953, Soviet Union succeeded a hydrogen bomb test, and U.S. found difficulties to keep priority of nuclear weapon technology. Also U.S. felt a chance of spreading nuclear weapons through Soviet Union to other communism countries. To control nuclear weapon development, then president of U.S., Dwight D. Eisenhower made a speech, “Atoms for Peace” as the same year in United Nation. It was encouraging introduction of nuclear energy to other nations to create U.S.` nuclearized military bloc. At this moment, Japan was not on the list of countries that where allowed nuclear materials and technology, because it was enemy of Second World War. 

Four months later, on 1st March 1954, a tuna fishing boat, Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon 5) encountered to a secret nuclear bomb device test, U.S.` Castle Bravo, on Bikini Atoll. There were 23 crew members on the boat, and exposed from nuclear fallout. It was only nine years after the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People witnessed on the television that how crew members` health conditions got worse day by day. Due to the continuous nuclear bomb test by U.S., radiation was founded from tuna fish, and rain.

Moreover, one of the crews, Aikichi Kuboyama died in six and half months later by acute radiation syndrome. It was a huge shock for Japanese citizens, because people did not know what really happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at that time due to information control by the government. Then, anti-nuclear weapon and anti-American movement was escalated. Mothers in Tokyo started collecting signatures to against atomic and hydrogen bombs, and one and half year later, they collected about 30million signatures, which was more than half of adult population in Japan.

 At the time, United States was considering Japan as only one anti-communism bastion in the Far East. Thus, U.S. had a fear that Japanese citizens` anti-American movement can result Japan to turn over to Soviet side. A document from Department of State is reported about the Daigo Fukuryū Maru incident as following. 

The violence of Japanese reactions to any matter relating to nuclear weapons is an element in all of our relations with Japan and raises particular problems in connection with any further U.S. tests in the pacific as well as in relation to U.S.-actions in the development of peaceful use of nuclear energy. That moment, U.S. was seeking a new policy on Japan to ease up on anti-atomic bombs and anti-American sentiment.

After the incident, an agent from U.S. called Daniel S. Watson was meeting with one executive, Hidetoshi Shibata from Yomiuri Newspaper Company at sushi restaurant in Tokyo. It was to have a connection with the chairman of the company, Taro Shoriki. Daniel S Watson later answered to an interview from Japanese national television (NHK) that “It was obvious for me, you had to have newspaper in Japan. It must to be big one. It has strong influence on the society.”

 At this meeting, Hidetoshi Shibata advised him “Japan has a proverb that poison drives out poison. Nuclear is a double-edged sword. To drive anti-atomic bomb, we should spread peaceful use of nuclear power, and give them hope.” After one month from the accident, U.S. made a nuclear research treaty with Japan to offer enriched uranium. Yomiuri Newspaper, and its television station, Nihon Television took the “Atoms for Peace” campaign under the Hidetoshi Shibata and Matsutaro Shoriki.

 Media was under the control, but also there must be some politicians promote nuclear power development at the parliament. Ironically, a politician, Yasuhiro Nakasone, passed nuclear power budget in the parliament on the next day of Daigo Fukuryū Maru incident. He was the person who promoted nuclear power policy radically in the parliament, later with Taro Shoriki who became the first head of Atomic Energy Commission of Japan.  

Japan and U.S. governments made a deal that instead of giving nuclear power technology to Japan, Japanese government promised not to pursue legal liability of Daigo Fukuryū Maru. It was only after nine months from the incident, and politically completed with a little amount of consolation payment. The payment was only less than one third of estimated total financial damage, and it was not paid other hundreds fisher men who also exposed. One of the crews, Matahichi Oishi, stated in his book “Japanese nuclear power started from here. Victims from Bikini were used as sacrifices of Japanese nuclear power”.

A dream of Matsutaro Shoriki, a microwave network 

Matsuaro Shoriki is known as “Father of nuclear” in Japan. After he resigned from police, he started Yomiuri Newspaper with small number of circulations and it grew the biggest newspaper company in the world today. His success in media business and his connections from working experience in police, grabbed attention of CIA. U.S. government gave CIA names to Yomiuri newspaper (POBULK), Nihon television (PODALTON), and Matsutaro Shoriki (PODAM). It shows how Shoriki was close and important person for U.S. He used all his connections and chances to contribute promotion of nuclear energy development. 

He had one definite dream. It was to establish a microwave network in Japan. By doing so, he can gain all broadcast and correspondence business in his hand. To do so, he had to loan 10 million dollars from U.S., approval of the loan from Japanese government, and a license for Public Telecommunication to enter the business. He made every effort to achieve it, but he realized one thing. He himself had to be the Prime Minister of Japan to realize his dream.

When he met with the American agent, Daniel S. Watson who was meeting with Shibata, Watson told him about “Atoms for Peace” and how nuclear energy can be an important power supply in such a nation poor in resources. Watson looked back when he talked about it to Shoriki, “his eyes were sparkling”. Shoriki used “Atoms for Peace” as a political card to achieve his ambitious dream. 

In 1955, he became a politician and took an important role as the first head of Atomic Energy Commission. His contribution to shifting public opinion toward pro-nuclear energy made possible to build 54 nuclear reactors in Japan. A professor from Beijing University, Naoki Yamaguchi thinks “Closed relations between industrial, bureaucrat, and academic worlds were due to oblivion of Daigo Fukuryū Maru incident, and short view of richness. The oblivion was led by the “Atoms for Peace” campaign by Yomiuri Newspaper”. 

He was already 69 years old when he became a politician, so he radically pushed forward the nuclear energy introduction. However, due to his ambition for being Prime Minister, U.S. start taking distance from him, and the ambition was failed. Abruptly, his dream of microwave network was ended with telecommunication and broadcast satellite.

A dream of Yasuhiro Nakasone, future energy Atom 

During the war, he was in navy, and at the end of the war, he was a major of a feet. He experienced defeat of war at the forefront. Nakasone became politician, and he was invited to “International Problem Summer Seminar” at Harvard University in 1953. He was anti-communism politician. After the seminar, he visited nuclear facilities and in New York he saw new energy policy “Atoms for Peace” speech on newspapers, and thought “The age of atoms will come”. In a speech of Ibaraki nuclear station`s 50th anniversary in 2007, Nakasone also explained his feeling in New York “I thought it would be serious problem, Japan will tumble to an agrarian country (if we have no energy and scientific technology)”. Also he had a concern of Japan`s communization, due to the poverty.  

He also had another concern, the defeat of war was because of scientific technology`s backward. Moreover, Nakasone was one of military resurgence advocates. Therefore, it was necessary to promote nuclear technology research.  

However, from reflection of the war, many scientists were negative toward nuclear technology research. Thereupon, Nakasone and his comrades push nuclear budget of 235 million yen (the then general account of national budget was about 1 trillion yen) in the final stage of the budget resolution at the parliament. Later he noted the budget of 235million yen was just because of Uranium-235. The then ruling party, Jiyu-tou (Freedom Party) opposed the budget, but the party could not refuse, because it was at the final stage and they had to pass the budget at the Lower House. It was on 2nd of March 1954, only four months after the “Atoms for Peace” speech, and two weeks before Japanese nations know the Daigo Fukuryū Maru incident. 

Due to the budget, scientists started arguing how to develop nuclear research, rather than presence or absence of nuclear technology development. One month after the passage of the nuclear budget, Science Council of Japan declared “Peaceful statement of Atoms”, three principles of democratization, self-discipline, and openness to prevent military use of nuclear. Nakasone also involved to the creation of the three principles. It eased scientists to feel less guilt to involve nuclear development, and the budget attracted many scientists to the field. Later, it resulted to produce many scholars beholden to the government, and spread “myth of safety”, remaining only self-discipline, but not democratization and openness. 

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, Asahi Newspaper interviewed Nakasone (94) on 26 April 2011, and he stated “it was very deplorable for all the people who live on the periphery of the station. But nuclear policy should be maintained and promoted continuously”. His dream of nuclear technology development is still on the process, due to the failure of fast breeder reactor development, reuse technology of spent fuel, and waste disposal method. However, it is important to remember development of the first breeder reactor is already given up by U.S., England, Germany, and Italy. 

After the nuclear budget by Nakasone and nuclear campaign by Shoriki, there was a common view that nuclear weapon is vice, but nuclear power development is virtue.

Citizen`s anti-nuclear movements and myth of safety 

From 1960s, due to the industrial development, oil shocks, concern of CO2 emission, and development of nuclear technology escalated erection of nuclear power stations as firm national policy. But also, the 1970s was the period that environmental pollution was rising as a serious social issue, and nuclear accidents Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 reminded the its risks. Thus protest movements were also warming up in proposed area in countryside. The oldest anti-nuclear scientific citizens` organization (instituted in 1975), Citizens` Nuclear Information Center, Baku Nishio said “it was difficult to against proliferation after a foundation of the first reactor, but except one nuclear station, there is no new nuclear station was brought into operation from 1970s due to the citizen`s movements”.

However, the government and electric companies spread money and used media campaign with pro-nuclear scholars to restrain people. Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station in Okuma-town was one of these nuclear proposed that attracted local governors as local revitalization in the beginning of 1960s without risk and safety discussion.

 The “myth of safety” was created by strong governmental propaganda as Nakasone wished and media campaign as Shoriki did, resulted fourth nuclear exposure of Fukushima. Of course it is only several causes out of hundreds, but it is how started. Two men`s ambitious dreams did not come true, but their nuclear policy and system still exist even after the nightmare of Fukushima today in Japan.

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Dance Music in the Era of Copyright Controversy

By Angus Thomas Paterson

Life after the Digital Disruption

Matt Thomas, better known to the dance music community for the past decade as King Unique, is getting stuck into a normal day’s work that is as far removed from the flights, hotels and nightclubs of a touring DJ’s lifestyle that you can get. He’s in what he describes as the “remote location” of a “dilapidated old coal mining village out in Wales”, which happens to be where his studio is located. Thomas says part of the appeal of coming out here to lay down his tracks is that he can make as much noise as he wants, and nobody complains. Surprisingly though, even though all the wider industry seems to be talking about is how you can’t make a living solely as a producer anymore, Thomas is finding himself more and more in this small Welsh town.

“The whole economic thing has hit the amount of gigs going around for everybody, so I’ve been back in the studio a lot more,” he says. “The non-stop DJ thing during 2007 and 2008 just wasn’t quite as much fun as really bedding into the studio. It feels like it’s 2001 again when we weren’t really doing any gigs, because the money in the studio was so incredible. We used to sit here and make records back to back, and doing that again, I’ve had a fantastic time.” 

Like many others in the current climate, Thomas had been frantically chasing gigs in an effort to ensure his full-time existence in dance music would remain sustainable. “Funnily enough though, relaxing here and making records… if you’re on the right label, with the right releases and the right remixes, you can actually keep the body and the soul of it together in the studio.” 

The positive story that Thomas tells is in stark contrast to the very loud message of wanton chaos we’ve been hearing from the major players in the music industry, including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the major labels it represents, since the early days of what’s referred to as the ‘digital disruption’. It was a revolution, for better or worse, which began with the explosion in popularity of Napster’s pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing service in late 1999, popularising the notion of “sharing” MP3 files in a way that completely undermined traditional copyright laws, with no royalties paid to artists, labels or anyone else for that matter. 

There’s little doubt the industry was utterly changed in the years that followed, but the digital distribution of music was finally legitimized on a major scale when Apple’s iTunes service established a cheap and easy way for the industry to sell music to consumers. However, the debate rages on over how to tackle ongoing challenges in the era of copyright controversy, with a canyon opening between the big industry players who want to restore a copyright-protected world, and those preaching the virtues of a more open internet. 

The tension reached a boiling point in January when ACTA, the US-backed international treaty aiming for global consensus on copyright protection, was greeted with howls of derision from citizens, internet libertarians and parliaments alike. One of the main areas of contention was that ISPs would be held responsible for cracking down on piracy, potentially cutting off users who illegally share music. Protesters marched in several European capitals including London, Berlin, Helsinki, Paris and Vienna, before the bill eventually stalled in the European commission. 

Not surprisingly, the RIAA was far from happy with how things played out, with chief executive Cary Sherman throwing a blistering tantrum in the New York Times. “Policy makers had recognized that music sales in the United States are less than half of what they were in 1999, when the file-sharing site Napster emerged, and that direct employment in the industry had fallen by more than half since then, to less than 10,000.” 

Organizations like RIAA have repeatedly shown they are willing to exaggerate the economic costs and threat to jobs of piracy; but while they continue to bellow about the dark days ahead, the activity in the dance music sector tells a distinctly different story, and is much closer to the more positive account given by Thomas. 

While it took several years for the dust to settle, with many long-established labels unable to adapt to the digital era, in the years that followed, a huge range of robust independent labels demonstrated they were able to adopt new business models, plug into new distribution pipelines, taken advantage of new promotional opportunities, and otherwise leverage opportunities never available to them before; largely due to the new possibilities of the digital era.

Protecting the Future of Music 

One of the key organizations in the US working to tackle copyright issues in a different fashion is the Future of Music Coalition (FMC), a nonprofit organization with a mission statement of cultivating an industry where artists flourish, are compensated for their work, and can connect easily with fans. Casey Rae is the deputy director of the FMC, as well as a musician, sound engineer and, academic who speaks extensively on new business models for artists, and he says there is plenty that the wider industry could learn from dance music’s independents. 

“Their approach is actually very close to our own vision of what the world could be like after the digital disruption,” he says. “There would naturally be new business models that would arise, and artists and labels that can pivot quickly in this new marketplace would find success, because there’s no longer the bottlenecks and gatekeepers so common to the original industry.” 

Rae says the powerful thing about the independent sector is its ability to curate catalogs. “People can buy by brand, particularly within genre subsets. There’s a trust there that exists, and major labels are naturally going to have trouble with this in the new environment, because nobody buys something because it is on Universal. In fact, the majors actually earned themselves a negative reputation among consumers and fans, based on how they reacted to the shift, and the breakdown of their control over the traditional music distribution pipeline.” 

The FMC preaches open consultation across the industry, though it’s also critical of the RIAA and the major labels’ reactionary approach. “Historically, they’ve been resistant to changes that would make the digital marketplace run more smoothly, and allow more consumers to participate in legitimate access to music. I don’t think there has been any particularly avant-garde thinking coming from the major labels. It’s like the last season of The Sopranos, you have a bunch of aging wise guys and the turf is getting smaller and smaller. It’s just sad.” 

Rae asserts that in many ways, everybody is on more or less the same playing field now. “Even the biggest major label has to essentially work the same tools to some extent as an independent label, or even a non-affiliated artist. We’ve seen this tremendous flattening, in terms of access to audiences, and that is a very empowering thing for a lot of artists and independent labels.”
 

The Power of Independents

In the fragmented and sonically diverse world of club music, there are independent labels serving a widespread range of subcultures, each of them often connecting to a completely different and authentic audience.  That said, across the board, one of its big independent success stories is Anjunabeats, the label owned and A&R’ed by London DJ trio Above & Beyond, who were ranked last year in the top 5 of the world’s most successful club performer’s in DJ Mag’s influential ‘Top 100’ poll. 

Anjunabeats specializes in cutting-edge music for the trance community, a sound characterized by its euphoric melodies and driving, room-filling energy. In 2005 Anjunadeep was born into a sub-label that runs concurrent with Anjunabeats, which itself developed into a hugely respected vehicle for the deeper, more groove-focused sounds of progressive and underground house. 

Anjunabeats finds itself in an intriguing position, as it was established in early 2000, when physical distribution was the norm. The label was there to witness all the changes, and not only survived to tell the tale, but also thrived. Label manager Allan McGrath is responsible for coordinating and promoting its weekly releases, from a combined roster of more than 50 artists across the two labels, and he says there’s a positive story to tell. 

Responding to Thomas’s tales of making a living largely from recorded income, McGrath says there are several artists across the Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep labels who have also chosen to focus their energies mostly on studio work. “They’re definitely in a much better place to do that if they’re with an established brand who can push the release in a certain way, and ensure that if the quality of the music is strong, then it will reach its full potential, rather than being lost on a smaller label, not being promoted properly or finding the audience that it deserves.” 

However, it’s still far from the norm, and McGrath says most artists interested in a long term career would have to strongly consider the opportunities offered by live performances. “I would say definitely the model has undoubtedly, inevitably and probably irredeemably changed, to the point where live income needs to be the end game for 80 percent of artists in electronic music.” 

Does he see it as a negative development? “Not personally, and not necessarily,” he says. However, there’s room to lament how quickly the business model has been shaken down. “You could argue that for a very long time, the value placed on music was unfeasible and excessive, especially in certain parts of the market,” he says. “But it’s a shame things have moved with such swiftness, and often without any kind of safety net or precautions, towards a model where music has lost its value. I do think it’s a shame music is viewed as ‘free’ by a lot of people.” 

In the face of a decline in the value that consumers attach to music, Anjunabeats have adapted in a number of ways. McGrath says the market for physical products hasn’t completely vanished, though it has changed significantly. “It needs a lot of care and attention, so it looks like something you’d want to have on your mantelpiece or in your record collection. But there’s still a lot of people making high-quality, beautifully designed physical products.” 

Looking to the digital realm, Apple’s iTunes platform remains the platform of choice for the industry’s major labels, and McGrath confirms it’s also a crucial tool for taking Anjunabeats to a wider audience, with the independents often showcased alongside the major label heavies. “It’s got a very editorial based storefront, and you can often find yourself on the homepage alongside artists like Adele, or whichever other commercial artist is being played heavily that week.” 

There’s been concerns expressed over Apple gaining a chokehold on the industry; but dance music’s independents have leapfrogged this threat via several specialist digital platforms, the most important of which is Beatport, a site so ubiquitous its sales charts have become the de factoBillboard Hot 100 for dance music. It’s a quick, easy and cheap way for fans to purchase new music, and allows the labels plenty of flexibility in areas like price points and sound quality. 

“For a label often putting out one or two releases a week, that’s predominantly club music and in a DJ environment, Beatport is of massive importance to us,” McGrath says. “Seeing as DJ sets are where our music tends to live, whether in a club or on the radio.”
Otherwise, McGrath says their own online shopfront is a hugely important vehicle for selling music to their fans. “It’s an amazing way of building a very close and lasting connection with our most loyal and dedicated. You can offer them the product first, they’re getting it from the heart of the label, and that’s what they’ve pledged their support to.”
 

Cultivating Cultural Capital 

Maintaining the connection between artists and their fans is of crucial importance to Ajunabeats, and it’s the focus of a number of ongoing marketing activities. The weekly Trance Around the World radio show represents the starting point for much of this; the radio show/podcast can be an effective tactic for many independent artists and labels, allowing them to speak directly with fans and showcase their music, though Trance Around the World would have to be one of the most successful. Currently, the show is syndicated across 237 FM radio stations worldwide, with an estimated listenership of 30 million. 

Hosted by rotating members of the Above & Beyond trio every week, it often represents the first time the label’s music is unveiled to fans. Several years ago, Anjunabeats took the step of giving away the show as a free download via the podcast format in iTunes. Currently it’s ranked in the top 5 of the most popular music podcasts across the USA, Australia, and much of Europe. 

Though the whole industry hasn’t come around to the idea of giving away music for free as a promotional tactic, though McGrath validates it as a legitimate sales driver. “Whenever your music goes out there, you hope listeners will form a certain connection with it, and come back and buy it at a later date. Fans become part of the Anjuna family, and want to own a part of it.” 

The show represents the launching point for an array of other promotional activities and revenue streams. Social networking has been widely recognized as opening up a swathe of new ways that artists can connect with their fans, and unsurprisingly, Anjunabeats makes heavy use of Facebook and Twitter. Anjunabeats has nearly 100,000 likes on its Facebook page, with Above & Beyond close to a million, and they’re maintained as a place of ongoing activity, reflective of the fact that a constant presence is necessary to hold fans’ attention. 

The label’s biggest annual campaign sees an extended 8-hour episode of Trance Around The Worldbroadcast live from an international venue, to an audience of tens of millions; the 350th episode at the Hollywood Palladium saw the associated #TATW350 Twitter hashtag become the highest trending topic on the platform, while the 400th episode in Beirut in November last year saturated saw Twitter so heavily that #TATW400 was eventually removed several hours in. 

All of this results in increased attention and sales for the label’s weekly single releases, and regular long-player albums, including Above & Beyond’s heavily promoted Group Therapy album from last year, and the annual Anjunabeats and Anjunabeats Worldwide compilations that showcase the label’s music in a mix CD format. In addition, there’s an array of branded merchandise that includes t-shirts, jumpers, posters, sweatbands and more. 

However, as a reflection of McGrath’s assertion that live income is vital in the current climate, Above & Beyond and the rest of the label’s roster are often relentlessly touring the globe. Trance Around The World means Anjunabeats’ reach knows no global boundaries; last year Above & Beyond played more 140 shows across 40 different countries, typically with several other artists from the label in tow as support acts, and many of these shows took the form of one of their own branded Group Therapy events in support of the new album. 

On top of this, Anjunabeats hosts branded Group Therapy stages at some of the world’s most successful festivals, including Tomorrowland in Belgium, Dance Valley in Holland, and Electric Zoo in New York, which sees them playing to crowds upwards of tens of thousands. Touring opportunities for the label’s other artists have also proved exhaustive, with one of the label’s star producers Mat Zo currently underway on a 30-date tour of the USA, for example. 

Though if all of this appears lucrative, McGrath is also careful to emphasize that none of these opportunities comes easy for independent labels. “Gone are the days where you could just sign an artist with a bit of talent, build his name up a bit and put out a piece of vinyl with his name on it while he’s peaking, and then watch the cash roll in.” 

Artists need to work harder to promote themselves, and this puts an otherwise talented artist, who might be less than social media savvy, at a distinct disadvantage. “Is it a good thing they’re lost or ignored because they don’t have enough Facebook followers, or they don’t want to tour, even though their music might be the best anyone has ever heard? I’m not entirely sure; but it’s kind of the way things are.” 

These are the pros and cons of a restructured industry, and it again emphasizes the important role an independent label can play. “As a label, you need to learn to play that as best you can, and I guess that is one of the reasons why people do come to us.”
 

Listening to the Future 

If dance music’s independents have proved adept at responding to shifting ground, all signs indicate they’ll need to continue to do so, as the industry framework continues to rapidly evolve. Producer Matt Thomas says he’s witnessed dramatic changes in just the past few years alone, when it comes to the value attached to artistic output. 

“It’s reflective of the whole Facebook culture, that steady stream of activity running past your eyes all the time,” he says. “If you have a YouTube link, there’s no need to own 90 per cent of the music you’re hearing. There used to be a paradigm where you could make a fantastic tune, and rest on the laurels of that for a while. These days though, records have their day really quickly. There’s a living to be made in the studio, but you had better be prolific.” 

Rae from FMC says the industry is still looking for a long-term solution in the digital era. His organization has championed industry-wide consultation that would see the traditionally underrepresented independent stakeholders given a louder voice, to help negotiate a policy solution to adjust business models and copyright laws to make more sense in the new environment. His central criticism of ACTA is that it was drawn up in the dark with a lack of transparency, with the likes of the RIAA allowed a disproportionate influence. 

It’s part of a overall story of the larger end of town effectively trying to hit the net really hard with a big hammer. “The traditional industry trade organizations and lobby groups will put tons of cash and capital into trying to get the law to bend their way. This can have adverse repercussions on freedom of expression as well as development of future business models.”
The FMC asserts that at the end of the day, the ultimate goal should be to ensure artists are worth investing in. “As we rise from the ashes of Music Industry 1.0, it’ll have to be more artist centric. That’s the only way it’ll be sustainable. I sometimes question the real motives of the traditional players, because I don’t think they’re necessarily aligned with the artists at this point.” 

“Again, to champion the independent sector, I feel I can paint with a broad brush and say historically they’ve been more supportive of artists, because they’re closer to the ground.”

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