Recapturing the future. By MILO RAU
In his keynote speech to the ‘Dialectics of Liberation’ symposium, delivered in Vienna on 24 November 2017, theatre director Milo Rau describes a nightmarish global economic system that, paradoxically, ‘began with the demand for liberation.’ He asks: What is to be done?
Dear friends
During the past two weeks, I was touring with my latest film The Congo Tribunal, which documents a civil society tribunal that we set up in the part of the eastern Congo afflicted by civil war. The tribunal put the local government, the United Nations, the World Bank and the large mining multinationals on trial. My tour took me to Germany, Switzerland and Belgium (unfortunately we have no Austrian screening licence, though one might be granted at some point).
Every evening, I watched my film about the Congolese mining industry once more. It is probably the same for most directors: the interesting part begins after the film is over, when the debate with the audience gets going. When in July we showed the film in the eastern Congo, in towns hit by the civil war and in mining villages, the screening was scarcely over before the audience started handing over evidence in the form of photos and written witness statements to our investigating judges and to myself. They reported that the economic crimes and massacres presented in our film continued to happen or they referred to completely different cases of which we should take note. Since 1996, the civil war, which is in truth a war over the coltan and gold in the eastern Congolese earth, has left seven million people dead following over 1,000 cases of mass expulsion, mass rape or simply – intentional and planned – deprivation.
When we screened our film in Hamburg, Berlin, Brussels, Zurich or Geneva, something similar happened: the audience came to us, they told of comparable cases, almost every Swiss, Belgian, German firm is implicated in a crime of the same or greater magnitude as the two companies that we cover in the film. Names were mentioned such as Monsanto, Glencore, VW, KiK. The longer one listened, the stronger the feeling became that we are all living in a nightmare, except that we are fully conscious.
And that was also the final conclusion that Robert Misik drew, one of the stenographers in our World Parliament, the so-called General Assembly held in Berlin three weeks ago – a parliament of all those who are affected by European politics but have no say in our parliaments. Misik listened for three days, for 20 hours to the statements of textile workers from Bangladesh, carmakers from Brazil, Congolese mine workers and he said: the World Parliament is not a site of dreams but of nightmares. So abominable, so absurd, so unjust is the world in which we live.
The title of my speech is ‘Recapturing the future’ – for the nightmare of which I speak does not only stretch back into the past like the typical nightmares that one hears about at school, but also into the future. Allow me to explain. Before a mine can be opened in the eastern Congo, an average of 12 years passes from discovery until the day on which all of the machines, ventilation systems, accommodation, supply chains, etc., are in place and mining commences. The finance required amounts to billions of dollars, with costs often multiplying several times over due to the civil war.
Such sums mean that the competition is limited to a few European and North American firms – in the eastern Congolese mining sector, for example, only one single company mines gold: the Canadian firm BANRO, on which my film The Congo Tribunal focuses. Neoliberalism once competed with state monopolies, it was celebrated as the great liberator and hated as the great deregulator. It was only as a result of the World Bank causing the break up of the Congolese mining industry in the 1980s that BANRO, an investment company, entered the gold business in the first place.
Today, neoliberalism no longer represents free competition but signifies an almost absurd monopolistic system that is reminiscent of the medieval church – an economic system that is not only supported by local government militias but also by the regulatory and ultimately the ethical laws of European and American parliaments, the absurd requirements of which push local producers into illegal operations.. read more: http://www.eurozine.com/recapturing-the-future/
Since 1996, the civil war, which is in
truth a war over the coltan and gold in the eastern Congolese earth, has left
seven million people dead following over 1,000 cases of mass expulsion, mass
rape or simply – intentional and planned – deprivation.
Dear friends
During the past two weeks, I was touring with my latest film The Congo Tribunal, which documents a civil society tribunal that we set up in the part of the eastern Congo afflicted by civil war. The tribunal put the local government, the United Nations, the World Bank and the large mining multinationals on trial. My tour took me to Germany, Switzerland and Belgium (unfortunately we have no Austrian screening licence, though one might be granted at some point).
Every evening, I watched my film about the Congolese mining industry once more. It is probably the same for most directors: the interesting part begins after the film is over, when the debate with the audience gets going. When in July we showed the film in the eastern Congo, in towns hit by the civil war and in mining villages, the screening was scarcely over before the audience started handing over evidence in the form of photos and written witness statements to our investigating judges and to myself. They reported that the economic crimes and massacres presented in our film continued to happen or they referred to completely different cases of which we should take note. Since 1996, the civil war, which is in truth a war over the coltan and gold in the eastern Congolese earth, has left seven million people dead following over 1,000 cases of mass expulsion, mass rape or simply – intentional and planned – deprivation.
When we screened our film in Hamburg, Berlin, Brussels, Zurich or Geneva, something similar happened: the audience came to us, they told of comparable cases, almost every Swiss, Belgian, German firm is implicated in a crime of the same or greater magnitude as the two companies that we cover in the film. Names were mentioned such as Monsanto, Glencore, VW, KiK. The longer one listened, the stronger the feeling became that we are all living in a nightmare, except that we are fully conscious.
And that was also the final conclusion that Robert Misik drew, one of the stenographers in our World Parliament, the so-called General Assembly held in Berlin three weeks ago – a parliament of all those who are affected by European politics but have no say in our parliaments. Misik listened for three days, for 20 hours to the statements of textile workers from Bangladesh, carmakers from Brazil, Congolese mine workers and he said: the World Parliament is not a site of dreams but of nightmares. So abominable, so absurd, so unjust is the world in which we live.
The title of my speech is ‘Recapturing the future’ – for the nightmare of which I speak does not only stretch back into the past like the typical nightmares that one hears about at school, but also into the future. Allow me to explain. Before a mine can be opened in the eastern Congo, an average of 12 years passes from discovery until the day on which all of the machines, ventilation systems, accommodation, supply chains, etc., are in place and mining commences. The finance required amounts to billions of dollars, with costs often multiplying several times over due to the civil war.
Such sums mean that the competition is limited to a few European and North American firms – in the eastern Congolese mining sector, for example, only one single company mines gold: the Canadian firm BANRO, on which my film The Congo Tribunal focuses. Neoliberalism once competed with state monopolies, it was celebrated as the great liberator and hated as the great deregulator. It was only as a result of the World Bank causing the break up of the Congolese mining industry in the 1980s that BANRO, an investment company, entered the gold business in the first place.
Today, neoliberalism no longer represents free competition but signifies an almost absurd monopolistic system that is reminiscent of the medieval church – an economic system that is not only supported by local government militias but also by the regulatory and ultimately the ethical laws of European and American parliaments, the absurd requirements of which push local producers into illegal operations.. read more: http://www.eurozine.com/recapturing-the-future/
