“Western Canada” Separatists Throw in the Towel

It ended quietly.  On January 28th, Canada’s electoral commission officially delisted the Western Block Party (W.B.P.) as a registered political party after it failed to raise the 250 necessary signatures.  Originally founded in the 1980s as the Western Concept Party, the Western Block advocated the secession of Canada’s four southwesternmost provinces—British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba—as a separate nation, generally envisioned under the name West Canada or Western Canada.  A Republic of Western Canada, with under 10 million people, would be the 12th-largest country in the world and an oil-exporting giant.

Doug Christie, wearing his trademark 37.85411784-liter hat

The W.B.P.’s founder, who died in March 2013, signaling the decline of the movement, was Doug Christie, a Winnipeg-born attorney in Victoria, B.C., who became notorious for defending neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and others in free-speech cases.  In the United States, this would be considered a moral stance, but in Canada, where most citizens are content to have their government decide which kinds of political speech are acceptable, the public presumes that only those with actual far-right sympathies would take on such a case.  Christie, though he swore up and down he was not a neo-Nazi, was indeed an ultra-conservative, and he tapped into many of the resentments rural western Canadians tend to have for government, urbanites, East Coasters, indigenous people, and, of course, French Canadians.  In fact, Western Canadian separatism has tended to rise and fall with separatism in Quebec.  But now, even though Québécois nationalism is on a bit of an upswing, with the Parti Québécois (P.Q.) in power in that province, it has taken on an intolerant, Islamophobic tinge (as discussed in this blog).  Maybe it is harder to rouse Francophobia on the prairies when Canadian sovereigntists tack hard to the right.  Or maybe it turned out to be only Christie that was holding the W.B.P. together, and that Western Canada never really made sense as an idea for a separate nation.  It’s also true that the rise of western-based Tea Party–style movements like the Reform Party in the 1990s stole a lot of votes from western separatists.

One proposal for a partitioned Canada.
Something tells me Newfies won’t like this plan.

Another separatist party, the Western Canada Independence Party (W.C.I.P.) (a.k.a. Western Canada Party, or W.C.P.), fizzled out in the late 1980s, though it still has some branch operations at the provincial level.  Its vision was a new nation consisting of the four western provinces listed above, plus the territories of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.  This would leave nothing in Canada but Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes.  The W.C.I.P. plan made even less sense than the W.B.P.’s.  If Christie and the W.B.P. had erred in thinking that the liberals of Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., would share the conservative views of Albertans and Saskatchewanites, it was a bigger error to think that the indigenous voters who dominate Canada’s north would be a good fit too.

The current flag of Alberta

There have been other separatist movements in western Canada.  The Separation Party of Alberta (S.P.A.) changed its name last year to the Alberta First Party and no longer makes independence a major part of its platform.  Alberta, with its oil riches and large religious conservative population (including communities of Mormons descended from those fleeing persecution in the U.S. in the 19th century), has earned it the name “the Texas of Canada.”  Its natural resources guarantee that it would be economically viable on its own, though landlocked.

The flags of Vancouver (the city), Canada, and B.C.

And in the 1950s and ’60s, British Columbia’s far-right-wing premier, W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett, wanted to make B.C. its own nation—and take Yukon with him when he pulled out of the union.  Today, B.C. is politically divided between its liberal coastal rainforests and cities and its conservative interior deserts and tundra.

The sun finally set
on W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett

What is left of active separatism in western Canada is actually mostly left-wing, not right-wing.  Last year (as reported at the time in this blog) saw the emergence of the Vancouver Island Province Initiative (V.I.P.I.), which aims to make the large island that contains B.C.’s capital, Victoria, into Canada’s 11th province.  Another group, the Sovereign State of Vancouver Island Party (S.S.V.I.P.), wants to take the island, which has long been ground-zero of the environmentalist and indigenous battle against clearcut logging, into its own republic.  In some ways it is an outgrowth of the quixotic, ecology-based movement to create an independent Cascadia from (in one common version) B.C. plus the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington.  But these movements are even more fringe than the W.B.P. once was.

This was the flag of Vancouver Island,
when it was a separate British colony in pre-Canada days.

For now, at least, whatever happens in Quebec, Canada’s western flank is likely to stay in one piece.  A regional feeling of nationhood never really did gel.  There was never even an agreed-upon flag.  Look at the “Republic of Western Canada” swag pictured at the top of this article.  The only flag shown is a Union Jack.  It’s as if all the movement could come up with as a distinguishing cultural feature was: “French not spoken here.”

Related articles:
“Quebec Cracks Down on Crimes against the State—Like Playing Hopscotch in English” (November 2011)
“Which Part of Wet’suwet’en Territory Don’t They Understand?” (November 2012)
“Vancouver Islanders Hope to Be Canada’s 11th Province—and Its Greenest” (August 2013)
“Separatists Challenge Canadian Tolerance with Proposed Islamic-Headscarf Ban” (September 2013)

“Quebec Free-Love Saucer Cult Joins Muslim Headscarf Debate, Suggests Censoring Religious Texts” (October 2013)

[You can read more about West Canada, Vancouver Island, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Yet Another Genocide Olympics: 10 Political Causes Sure to Disrupt the Sochi Games

Circassian nationalists (see below) protesting the Sochi Olympics

What, in God’s name, was Russia thinking?  If you’re going to host the Winter Olympics, there are only a few things to consider.  One, snow.  Russia covers between 10 and 15% of the land surface of the world, much of it perpetually blanketed in snow and ice (you’ve heard of Siberia, right?).  So where does Moscow choose, in all that territory, to have the winter games?  In Sochi, a Black Sea resort more famous for its beaches—practically the southernmost point in Russia—where, as of today, February 5th, there is no snow on the ground.  It sounds like the beginning of a Polish joke—except Poles would never be this stupid.

There’s no snow on the ground, but that’s okay, we bought some rolls of this kind of tarp stuff.
After a few vodkas, no one will care.

But that’s the least of it.  Snow can be created with machines.  Another thing needed for the Olympics is stability and security.  There’s a reason that places like Somalia and Afghanistan don’t host the Olympics.  There’s also a reason why countries at war don’t host the Olympics.  Five different Olympiads were cancelled during the world wars.  There’s also a reason why countries at the center of huge, divisive conflicts—or countries which are despised or not recognized by much of the world—don’t host the Olympics.  Having the Games in Israel or Palestine would be a disaster; it would be an invitation for boycotts.  Likewise apartheid-era South Africa, or Burma, or Taiwan.

Putin lights the fuse—um, I mean flame.

Russia, sadly, is pretty high in these “not fit for the Olympics” categories as well.  Through a series of draconian laws cracking down on dissent and free speech, Russia is gradually making itself a global pariah.  And it is also in the midst of failing to suppress a radical Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus region, just a short drive from the Olympic village.  Not only that, but it chose, as the Olympic city, the site of a horrific Russian-engineered genocide of one of the ethnic groups involved in the insurgency, and this year is the 150th anniversary of those events.  What kind of rotgut moonshine vodka were Russian officials drinking when they stabbed their finger on a map and chose Sochi as an Olympic city?

Russia’s Olympic Organizing Committee at work

Here, then, is a rundown of the top ten political crises that are threatening to disrupt these Winter Olympics.  (See my similar article at the beginning of the Summer Olympics in London in 2012.)  There are others, but these are the top ten.  In reverse order, building up the biggie, the one that many experts are saying will—not might, but will—bring terrorism to the Olympics for the first time since Munich in 1972.


10. Syria

Your tax rubles at work in Syria

Russia has been doing so many things to infuriate the international community lately, that it’s hard to recall that for a while it was in the news mostly for being one of the very few nations to openly back the embattled dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, who has been holding out against a massive popular revolution in the last two and a half years of civil war in the country.  And why does Russia cling to this?  Well, mostly because Iran is the other major country backing Assad, the Syrian regime being followers, like most Iranians, of the Shi’a branch of Islam.  Iran is trying to maintain regional influence through fellow Shiite government in places like Syria, Iraq, and southern Lebanon.  And Iran, dating back to the Cold War, has been a Russian ally mostly by virtue of its fierce antipathy, since the 1979 Islamic revolution, to the United States—and also because it such an alliance extends Russian influence to the Indian Ocean.  That is a key consideration for an oil-rich nation with few usable harbors to bring its commodities to market.  That was the whole rationale of Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, after all, and the only reason the U.S. is so cosy with Pakistan.  Does that sound like a ridiculously convoluted reason for Putin to stand nearly alone against the world in backing a dictatorship that tortures thousands of dissidents and uses chemical weapons on its own citizens?  Yes, it is, and, even though Syria is not competing in these Olympics, those concerned for the country’s plight will be making their views known this year in Sochi.  Putin helped broker the deal last year by which Syria will destroy its chemical weapons, but in the minds of many that doesn’t erase the original sin of funding and backing the regime in the first place.

Vladimir Putin waiting for a presidential aide to bring a phone book to stand on
for a photo-op with fellow mass murderer Bashar al-Assad

9. Iran

An anti-Iran protest at the last Olympic games in Vancouver, in 2010

And speaking of Iran, which is sending five skiers to Sochi, this pariah nation is also likely to draw some attention this year.  Iran is an authoritarian theocracy, where women have few rights, dissidents are tossed into medieval prisons, and the legitimate aspirations of Kurdish, Azeri, Talysh, Turkmen, Baloch, and Khuzestani minorities, among others, are crushed mercilessly.  It is also a close ally of Russia’s, and Russia has a few of those minorities within its borders as well.  Expect some colorful protests.

All of Iran’s ethnic minorities are mistreated.

8. Kosovo

The head of Kosovo’s Olympic committee—
even though Kosovo is not in the Olympics

But Syria and Iran are not the only dastardly regimes that are allies of Russia.  We could also mention the Republic of Serbia, which, though it is rapidly liberalizing and angling for eventual European Union membership, was supported by the Kremlin through all the dark years of the 1990s when Serbs were waging a brutal, almost genocidal war against the captive nations trying to break free of the old Yugoslavia.  The last of these to secede, the Republic of Kosovo, is still claimed by Belgrade as Serbian territory, and Russia is one of the few nations in the world that actively sides with Serbia on this question.  The Security Council veto powers of Russia and the People’s Republic of China are the only remaining barriers to Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations General Assembly.  Kosovo is also not recognized as an Olympic nation; in London two years ago, the only Kosovar athlete competed under the flag of neighboring Albania.  (Kosovo is mostly ethnically Albanian.)  There is a lot of Kosovo hatred of the Kremlin.  Expect some protests when Serbia’s eight-person Olympic team shows up in Sochi.  Russia has recently outlawed public advocacy for “separatism” (as reported at the time in this blog), and Russian foreign policy classifies Kosovo’s right to exist under that rubric.  Putin has promised that no one will be arrested for exercising free speech at these Games.  We’ll see if he holds to that.

Kosovars wave Albanian flags at a protest

7. Palestine

Unlike these summer Olympics, Palestine won’t be sending athletes to Sochi,
but its cause will be heard there.

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the few foreign-policy questions on which Russia has been on the side consistent with human rights and self-determination.  But don’t think that that’s why Russia, as the Soviet Union did before it, supports the State of Palestine.  Mainly it was, and is, as a way of defying the United States and a way to counter U.S. influence in the Middle East via Israel.  In a sort of inversion of the situation with Kosovo (see above), it is mainly the U.S. that blocks membership in the U.N. General Assembly for Palestine, a nation which most of the world recognizes as sovereign.  If the Palestinian cause manifests itself at Sochi, the anger is more likely to be directed against the U.S. or the United Kingdom or Israel.  Palestinians are not sending a team to these Olympics, but they have rarely missed an opportunity to use the Olympic stage to make their views known.  Luckily, they are unlikely to do so in the way that they did in 1972, when Palestinian terrorists abducted and executed 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich, West Germany.

The unofficial Olympic sharpshooting team sent by Palestine to the Munich games in 1972

6. Pussy Riot

Sometimes when an authoritarian regime tries to suppress a dissident movement, it actually feeds it, giving it a bigger stage and a bigger audience and turning up the volume on its message.  Never was this done so ham-handedly and stupidly than when Russia responded to a provocative 2012 performance by the obscure, unknown feminist punk band Pussy Riot.  The band staged a deliberately sacrilegious guerrilla musical event in a Moscow cathedral, protesting the Kremlin’s cosiness with the Orthodox church.  Five Pussy Riot members were arrested, charged with hooliganism and inciting religious hatred.  Two remain in prison.  This has made Pussy Riot a household name around the world and has galvanized even more people against the ludicrous intolerance of dissent in Putin’s Russia.  The band’s now millions of fans and supporters around the world include the Ukrainian nudist feminist protest collective Femen, which can be expected to at least attempt to champion the Pussy Riot cause with some of its anti-clerical, anti-patriarchal, anti-Moscow publicity stunts.

We haven’t seen the last of Femen.

5. Abkhazia and South Ossetia

One of the more high-profile Olympic boycott movements has been by those in the Republic of Georgia who want to stay out of the Sochi games in anger over two rogue territories within Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Russia set up as “independent” puppet states after Georgia tried to reclaim the rebel regions in a 2008 war.  Only Russia and a handful of inconsequential small nations recognize the two republics as independent, so there was never really a question of whether they would compete themselves.  The International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) shut down that idea quickly last year, and Moscow is not pushing the point (as I wrote about last year in this blog).  (Nearly all residents there are also, or only, Russian citizens, so Abkhazian and South Ossetian participation will be under the Russian flag.)  But Georgia is incensed at the Games being held so close to the conflict zone: the Abkhaz–Russian border is a mere 3 miles from Sochi.  And Russia recently upped the ante by declaring a “security zone” around Sochi which extends deep into Abkhazian—i.e., Georgian—territory.  Georgia said this week, with days to go, that it is keeping open the option to boycott the games.  That would hurt Georgia’s three slalom-racers, who are already in Sochi, more than anyone.  But Georgia is desperate to raise international awareness of what Russia did to their small country in 2008, so they may just play the boycott card.  Even if they don’t, there will be protests.  (Related recent article from this blog: “Is Ossetian Reunification Just Russian Irredentism by Another Name?”)

An anti-Russian protestor with a Georgian flag

4. Ukraine

Ukrainian protestor demolishing a Lenin statue recently
(but why was it still standing in the first place?)

The timing of the ongoing uprising in Ukraine could not be worse for Russia’s public image.  Since November, the streets of Ukraine’s cities have been filled with protestors, clogged with police barricades, shrouded in tear gas, and, occasionally, running with blood.  Ordinary Ukrainians have been rising up in the hundreds of thousands to protest President Viktor Yanukovych’s collusion with Vladimir Putin to place Ukraine into a neo-Soviet customs union with Moscow in lieu of, as most Ukrainians want, closer ties with the European Union (E.U.).  About 30% of Ukraine’s citizens are ethnically and linguistically Russian, especially in the east and south, so this has deeply divided this country, in what has turned into the most serious civil unrest in the European part of the former Soviet Union since that empire imploded in 1991.  As the protests drag on, opposing sides’ positions are hardening.  More and more of the red and black flags of Ukraine’s far-right nationalists are appearing at protests, while Russian-speakers are speaking now of partitioning the country by splitting off an independent Crimea (where Russians dominate) (as discussed recently in this blog) or creating a separate nation called Malorossiya (“Little Russia”—ouch, right?) in the east (see my recent article from this blog on that proposal, as well as my article listing Ukrainian partition as one of “10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014”).  Sochi is only about 150 miles from the Ukrainian (specifically, Crimean) border—in the other direction from the volatile Caucasus (see below), which means Sochi is squeezed directly between, essentially, two civil-war zones (see above in re: Russian Olympic planning committee, moonshine vodka, etc.).  Russian nationalists hate the Ukrainian protestors almost as much as Ukrainians hate Tymoshenko and Putin.  This will make things awkward for Ukraine’s 43 skiers, snowboarders, speed skaters, lugers, and figure skaters.  There will be demonstrations, believe me.

Members of the political collective Femen expressing their opinion of Ukraine’s President Yanukovych

3. Gay rights

Perhaps the cause of the most public vilification of Russia in the eyes of the world lately has been a result of recent legislation against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people—and lots else too.  The law criminalizes “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” and is worded so that essentially publicly admitting that you are gay can put you right in prison.  This kind of bigotry is hugely popular in ultra-patriarchal Russian culture and is being used by the Kremlin as an issue to whip up resentment of the West, where gay rights have made gigantic strides just in the past decade.  In addition to boycotts of Russian products like vodka, the cause has created a giant worldwide movement to boycott the Sochi games.  (No country has quite taken that step—though the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands is notoriously absent from the list of participating nations.)  Putin has said that no guests or athletes at the games will be prosecuted under this law, and that might open the door to all sorts of visible protests.

Activists in London in 2012 protesting Russia’s hosting of the 2014 games

There are lots of gay athletes (including biathletes—get it? biathlon? bi athletes?), and some of them, and their many allies and supporters, may unfurl gay-pride flags at key moments.  The LGBT movement is famous for wildly inventive and creative protests, so this could be good television—as long as Russian police can resist the temptation to crack some heads anyway (which is not out of the question, unfortunately).

2. The Circassians

This is how Russians treated Circassians in 1864,
and Circassians never forget.

Of all of the peoples and cultures shafted by Russian imperialism over the centuries, none has an emotional and symbolic stake in the Sochi Olympics quite like that of the Circassian people.  A predominantly-Muslim population speaking a language unrelated to any Slavic, Persian, or Turkic language of the region, the Circassians traditionally inhabited the plains along the Black Sea between the Crimea and the Caucasus.  These fiercely independent, warlike nation was more within the penumbra of the Ottoman Empire than under its actual thumb, but in the mid 19th century the Russian Empire pushed south to bring this region under its control, resulting in the mass extermination and expulsion of the entire Circassian population.  Many fled to places like Anatolia (Turkey) and the Levant (Syria), many were killed, and all were at least uprooted.  Some branches of the Circassian nation, like the Ubykh culture right around modern Sochi, were erased from the map.  The last speaker of the Ubykh language died in exile in Turkey in 1992.  The decisive massacre that sealed the fate of the Ubykh people occurred very near Sochi exactly 150 years ago.

For Circassians, this is no accident. It is the neo-Czarist Putin dancing like a Cossack on the mass grave of Circassian men, women, and children.  To them, this is like holding a celebration at Auschwitz.  There are just under a million Circassians (also called Adyghe people) remaining in Russia (compared to possibly as many as 3 million in Turkey), but unlike even many less numerous nationalities in the Russian Federation they do not rule their own republic.  They are divided among the Adyghe Republic just north of Sochi, where they are outnumbered by ethnic Russians three to one, and in two republics where branches of the Circassian nation share power with Turkic-speaking peoples: the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, which is only 11% Cherkess (Circassian), and the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, where Kabardins, who are Circassian, are 57% of the population.  (Some also classify the Abkhaz (see above) as Circassian.)  Circassian grievances are numerous: they want exiles to be allowed to return home, they want the international community to recognize what happened to them as a genocide, and they want a single autonmous republic that they can run themselves.  Some even want independence.  And these Olympics have set their tempers aflame.  There voices will be heard this month in Sochi.

Circassians marking the 1864 genocide (see also photo at top of article)

1. The Caucasus Emirate

The Circassians (see above) are traditionally warlike but for the most part have not used violent means to advance their goals in modern Russia.  That cannot be said of a network of terrorists mostly from other Caucasus ethnic groups, even some foreign ones, that have used Circassian and other grievances to mount a violent Islamist insurgency in Russia’s Caucasus mountains.  This group, known as the Caucasus Emirate movement, names itself for an imaginary Islamic state which they assert is the rightful government of the North Caucasus region, including the three Circassian and part-Circassian republics (see above), Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia (even though it is majority Christian), Dagestan, and even all of the nearby ethnic-Russian (i.e. Orthodox Christian) dominated regions, including Sochi itself in Krasnodar Krai.  The North Caucasus has been Muslim for centuries, but traditionally it is home to mystical strains of Sufism and other beliefs that were quite at odds with severer, harsher forms of Islam practiced farther south in places like the Arabian Peninsula and Iran—and were also liberally mixed with millennia-old indigenous traditions from these ethnically diverse mountains.  The picture changed drastically when the Soviet Union ended and Chechnya waged a war for independence.  To an extent, the Chechens won, and for a while in the 1990s Chechnya became de facto independent until Putin reabsorbed the republic in a Second Chechen War that was even more brutal than the first.  (See an article from this blog listing the Chechen exile government’s President Akhmed Zakayev as one of “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists.”)  Tens of thousands of Chechen civilians were killed as the capital city, Grozny, was reduced to rubble in what remains the worst violence of any kind in Europe since the Second World War.

Two Caucasus Emirate mujahideen with their flag

By this time the North Caucasus had become a magnet for jihadists fighters from all over—from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kashmir, the Philippines, everywhere, and soon the region came under the cloud of Wahhabism, a radical, puritanical strain of Sunni Islam that bans all music and art, approves the killing of infidels, and treats women like livestock.  Just a short drive east of the Olympic village in Sochi is a rugged mountain region ruled by traditional warlords, where Russian Interior Ministry troops can barely contain a violent insurgency that on an almost daily basis ambushes police patrols, levels government buildings with suicide bombs, and assassinates any moderate Muslim clerics that question the Wahhabist laws.  Alongside Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the North Caucasus is among the most dangerous parts of the world.  Chechnya is more or less pacified now, but Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, and Dagestan in particular are veritable war zones.  Not only that, but Islamist insurgents are intertwined not only with local politicians and mullahs but with lawless drug and weapons smuggling cartels who together run the region with impunity.  It is barely Russia at all.

Volgograd after a visit from the Caucasus Emirate movement

The world was reminded of this late last year when two suicide bombings of buses in Volgograd, the largest Russian metropolis near the Caucasus region, killed more than 40 people and injured dozens.  Credit for the crimes was claimed by Vilayat Dagestan, the branch or “province” (vilayat, in Ottoman administrative terminology) of the Caucasus Emirate movement for the mostly lawless Republic of Dagestan (see map above, where you will also see Sochi included in the Emirate’s “Vilayat Cherkessia”).  Though the Emirate’s leader, Dokka Umarov, is quite reliably rumored to be dead, the Vilayat Dagestan’s claim of responsibility makes clear that the organization’s cells are quite capable of dealing out deadly violence.  They have promised to deliver “a large present” to the Sochi Olympics.  But don’t worry.  In case that makes athletes and spectators feel unsafe, be reassured that Putin has sent 400 Cossacks—yes, actual Cossacks—to Sochi to provide security.  They will, in the words of one local governor, “do things to preserve order that the police can’t.”  Of course, the Cossacks were the ones who committed all that genocide right around Sochi in the first place.  Something tells me their presence won’t exactly calm things down.

Cossacks arriving in Sochi last week

These Olympics are going to be a wild ride.  Fasten your seat belts—and keep watching this blog for regular updates on political stories and entanglements about these and other causes and movements during the Games.

Related articles from this blog:
“10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the [London 2012] Olympics” (July 2012)
“Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012)
“Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (August 2012)
“Somaliland’s Own Mo Farah Clinches Olympic Immortality” (August 2012)
“Separatist Football Update: Carnage at a Dagestan–Netherlands Match, Alderney vs. Sealand, Barotseland’s National Team” (August 2012)
“Abkhazia & South Ossetia Won’t Compete in Sochi Olympics, I.O.C. Declares” (October 2013)
“‘Separatism’ Added to List of Things Russians Aren’t Allowed to Talk about” (November 2013)
“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014” (December 2013)
“Games Begin! Ukrainian Hijacking, Putin Rounds Up Dissidents” (Feb. 8, 2014)

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Minuscule Gagauzia Votes 99% to Declare Independence If Moldova Attempts Romanian Reunification

Ukrainians in their hundreds of thousands may be proclaiming loud and clear that they want closer ties with western Europe than with Russia, but in a nearby tiny sliver of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a small band of diaspora Turks are claiming nationhood and choosing Moscow over Brussels.

More than 70% of eligible voters in Gagauzia, an autonomous region within the Republic of Moldova (formerly the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic), turned out on February 2nd to answer a series questions about their tiny nation’s geopolitical future.

Welcome to Gagauzia

On the question of trade, 98.4% of voters in the region of 155,000 people said they wanted closer ties with the nascent Eurasian Union, a proposed bloc of Soviet successor states aligned with Moscow (probably to include Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Armenia at least; the first three have had a customs union since 2010).  97.2% of Gagauz said they were against any closer relationship with the European Union (E.U.).  Moldova, whose 3.5 million or so people are about 76% ethnic Romanian (Moldavia is one of the traditional three constituent portions of the Romanian nation, alongside Wallachia and Transylvania) and only about 6% ethnic Russian, is not a member of the E.U. but signed comprehensive trade agreements with the E.U. in November, including an Association Agreement, generally seen as the first step in the long path toward candidacy for membership.  Romania has been an E.U. member state since 2007.

A Romanian irredentist makes his (or her) point as well.

A third question on this week’s Gagauzian ballot asked whether Gagauz Yeri, the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, should declare independence in the event that Moldova and Romania attempted reunification.  98.9% said yes (following an official statement to the contrary by the Gagauz government back in 2012, as reported at the time in this blog).

Here she comes ... Miss Gagauzia ...
The Gagauz are pursuing all trappings of nationhood.

Independence may be a hard row to hoe for Gagauzia, which is a grapeshot of tiny discontinuous landlocked territories in southern Moldova totalling only about 700 square miles.  But there is a precedent.  Gagauzia and another, larger sliver of Moldova, running most of the length of Moldova’s official border with Ukraine, both declared independence in 1990 when the Soviet Union imploded.  Moldova soon wooed the Gagauz back into its politic by promising, and delivering, enhanced autonomy.  But the other sliver, called the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, or Transnistria or Transdniestria for short, remains “independent” (see map above).  No country recognizes it, but because ethnic Russians and Ukrainians make up almost 60% of its population and Moldovans (i.e. Romanians) less than a third, it is maintained by Russia as a puppet state, struggling along only with cash infusions from the Kremlin.  It has no real hopes of becoming a successful, recognized state; it is being maintained, with its own currency and security provided by Russia’s 14th Army.  (See an article from this blog on Transnistria.)  Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, keeps it running mainly to make a point, and to preserve Moscow’s last foothold in the Balkans.  With Ukraine threatening to turn sharply West, Transnistria would be even more isolated.  (It also has said it wants to join the Eurasian Union.)

Moldovan and Gagauz flags often fly side by side.
Moldovan and Transnistrian ones, never.

For the past nearly quarter-century of post-Communist history, the otherwise logical good idea of Romanian and Moldovan reunification has been put seemingly permanently on the back burner, since that would involve deciding the fate of Transnistria.  Right now, Moldova claims Transnistria but allows it its de facto independence.  That careful fiction would have to be replaced with something else.  There was already a war when Transnistria secured its independence-such-as-it-is.  No one wants another one.  Romania is also in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  Allowing a territory occupied by Russian troops to become E.U. territory would be unthinkable.  The E.U. already regrets admitting Cyprus, the northern third of which is a de facto independent puppet state of Turkey called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.  Plus, Putin is too pig-headed to be at all interested in a negotiated military pullback from Transnistria, certainly not while he’s fighting like hell to keep Ukraine in his orbit.

Gagauzia’s unofficial, and far superior, flag

Therefore, because Romania and Moldova are to all practical purposes unable to reunify, the Gagauz referendum question on independence is moot, until and unless there are drastic changes in the geopolitics of the immediate neighborhood.  But the ongoing Ukraine crisis might lead to just that.  Either way, the Gagauz have made their point.  They don’t feel very Moldovan and are just waiting for their chance to bolt.  Moldova had early said that the Gagauz referendum was illegal.  That they held it at all indicates they are already feeling pretty independent.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Shots Fired as French Authorities Arrest Tahitian “King” Issuing His Own Currency

French authorities in the colony of French Polynesia on January 30th arrested a Tahitian man claiming to be a Polynesian king, for issuing a phony currency.  Shots were fired from within the king’s compound as police moved in, according to news accounts calling it an “alleged rebellion.”  In the end, five people were arrested and three firearms were confiscated, but there were no injuries.  (French Polynesia was included a month ago in this blog’s list of “10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014.”)

Location of French Polynesia in the Pacific

The target of the raid was Athanese Teiri, who calls himself King Tanginui I of the Pakumotu Republic (Hau Repupirita Pakumoto) despite the fact that republics, by definition, do not have kings.  He was tried in absentia on January 22nd in Papeete, French Polynesia’s capital on the main island of Tahiti, on charges of issuing a fake currency, and sentenced to six months.  Earlier, in 2012, he had received a suspended sentence for issuing illegal identity cards, and last month a follower of his Republic had gotten two months in jail for trying to buy gasoline with a 100-patu note issued by the self-styled government.

Confiscated Polynesian funny money

After the shots fired and firearms seized, the King and the four followers arrested with him are now in even bigger trouble.  They are being charged with attempted murder of a police officer, armed rebellion, and forming a militia, in addition to weapons possession charges.  Life imprisonment is now a possibility.

Pakumotu perp walk

At the time of his in absentia trial last week, the defendant’s daughter, Mahina Teiri, was also given a six-month suspended sentence, on charges of defrauding the printing press producing the Pakumotu currency.

At the time of that sentence, a Pakumotu Republic spokesman reiterated his government’s June 2, 2010, declaration of independence from the French Republic.  “France no longer has authority,” said the spokesman, who was present in court along with several ministers of the republic.  “A state cannot judge another state.”

The king declares independence in front of the Pakumotu flag

The prosecutorial moves against the Republic this month seem to have been motivated by King Tanginui’s announcement late last year that the new currency, the patu, would become legal tender on January 1, 2014, at a specified fixed exchange rate.  He even sent a formal letter to France’s Institut d’Émission d’Outre-Mer, the central bank which issues the French Pacific franc (Change Franc Pacifique, or C.F.P.), notifying it that the Pacific franc would no longer be legal tender in French Polynesia.  The C.F.P. is also used in two other French colonies, New Caledonia and Wallis et Futuna.

King Tanginui I and his daughters display what appears to be the Pakumotu royal standard—
a modification of the national flag (see above), with a coat-of-arms included.

The Pakumotu group has been operating since 2008, when it campaigned as a political party aiming for the secession of the Tuamotu chain of atolls in French Polynesia.  Tuamotu includes the notorious Moruroa Atoll, where France has carried out nuclear tests that have poisoned the indigenous population.  In 2009, it proclaimed an independent Pakumotu Republic on the Moorea in the colony’s Society Islands archipelago and a shadow government was formed.  Mr. Teiri, initially the republic’s president, eventually called himself King (though without dropping the word republic to reflect that) and expanded his claimed realm to include all of French Polynesia.  In 2010, and again last year, the Pakumotu group tried and failed to occupy the territorial legislature in Papeete.  (Watch the Pakumotu declaration of independence here.)

Mahina Teiri with a banned 100-patu note

In addition to Teiri’s movement, another group claims the legitimacy of the Maohi Republic (République Maohi, or Hau Repupirita Ma’ohi), declared in 1982 by a Polynesian named Tetua Mai who later was arrested when one of his bodyguards injured a police officer.  This self-proclaimed state has also attempted to issue identity cards.

French Polynesia’s official flag

A more generally acknowledged heir to the Polynesian throne, Tauatomo Mairau, died last year.  He was a member of France’s secret service and an ardent monarchist activist.

Self-proclaimed president of the rival Maohi Republic

Pro- and anti-independence parties are about evenly divided in the territorial parliament, though polls show support for independence running a bit below 50%.  Indigenous people make up about three-quarters of French Polynesia’s quarter-million people.

What is not yet known is whether the king’s arrest marks the end of the Pakumotu Republic.  French authorities are wondering if more armed restorationists are out there, biding their time.


Related articles from this blog:
“Easter Island Wants to Split from Chile, Join French Polynesia”
“What Is a Colony? The United Nations’ Definition Needs an Overhaul”
“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014”
“France’s Far Right Wants Early Vote on New Caledonia Independence—but Only Because They’re against It”

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]