Papal Bull
How 2nd Class Citizenship, International Law & Genocide Happened
issue: 0007
This week has been dominated by my reflections upon the return of the language of the European Ethnostate. There are two issues which have dominated my reflections and forgive me for writing an article longer than I usually do but I think that these matters are extremely important for us to be aware of and consider.Â
Birthing 2nd Class Citizenship
The first is the upholding the revocation of Shamima Begum citizenship case by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which has confirmed my worst fears. This judgement confirms the decision of Sajed Javid the then Home Secretary, that there are now tiers to British Citizenship, for if Shamima Begum was not born of immigrant parents this judgement would not be possible.Â
Here is the background Shamima Begum was born in the UK to Bangladeshi parents, who had immigrated from Bangladesh to the UK. In 2015, at the age of 15, She and her two underage friends from Bethnal Green in Tower Hamlets, and from Bethnal Green Academy, illegally smuggled themselves out of Britain to join ISIS after having been groomed on the internet. There had been multiple failures by the authorities, from social and educational services to the police. They failed to intervene when it became increasingly clear that there were issues at Bethnal Green Academy, eight girls from this school had now gone to join ISIS. David Cameron stepped in to absolve the institutions of any responsibility, stating that individual institutions should not be made into scapegoats. How he came to this conclusion when 8 girls from one secondary school were all radicalised in connection to this institution is beyond me. But the plot thickens, according to evidence uncovered by the Emmy award winning journalist Richard Kerbaj in his book The Secret History of the Five Eyes, they travelled through Turkey and their journey was facilitated with the knowledge and participation of the Canadian intelligence services, who facilitated the illicit journey of three underage British girls, into a warzone and the hands of a terrorist organisation and two of the girls are now dead. If ever there was a case of multiple failures of institutions we needed look no further. And of the many questions these circumstances raised?
Since Begum was born to Bangladeshi parents, she was deemed to have dual citizenship, which the Bangladeshi government categorically denies and they have stated that she would not be allowed to enter Bangladesh. If her parents had not been Bangladeshi immigrants this would not have been possible according to International Law, since It is illegal for a state to deprive a citizen of citizenship and so leave a citizen stateless.Â
The ramifications of Begum's case extend far beyond her individual circumstances, touching upon broader issues of immigration, national security, and the rights of citizenship. The emergence of a tiered system of citizenship, which seemingly allows for the arbitrary revocation of citizenship based on one's familial background, threatens to erode the very foundation of citizenship and equality before the law for British citizens upon which modern Britain is built. This is not a commentary on the nature of Shamima Begum’s crime but upon the implications of the judgement. Begum should be in a British prison, and the fact that she fled as a minor facilitated by our ally to a terrorist organisation raises worrying questions. Her crimes notwithstanding, she is a British Citizen and a British problem, and should be held in a British prison. Now that we have opened this door how will this change the nature of British citizenship and what derivative judgements will come in the future.
Papal Bull & International Law
My second reflection is the genesis of International Law, which allowed Britain to dispossess Palestinians and facilitate the establishment of a Jewish State, displacing the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, which has now led to an ongoing genocide facilitated by Western governments. I’m digging up the roots of the development of International Law and the Doctrine of Discovery which allowed Europeans to claim, displace and enslave indigenous peoples and dispose of colonial territories across the world.
On April 4th 1418 Pope Martin V issued a papal bull or papal ruling against the followers of Jan Hus called The Hussites, who were declared heretics. The ruling is called the Sane Charissimus Bull, which would roughly translate as The Truly Most Beloved Bull (no irony intended) in which he inserted permission to the Portuguese Kings to Crusade against the Muslims and Pagans of North and West Africa. The Catholic Church held that ​​'Outside of the Catholic Church, there is no salvation" and so the pope held universal authority over all mankind. From 1418 to 1514 successive Papal Bulls in the exercise of papal universal authority over all mankind, would grant Africa to the Portuguese crown in perpetuity and eventually separate the lands of the Americas between Spain and Portugal in a 1506 a Bull named Eximiae Devotionis which roughly translates to Of Outstanding Devotion.
These laudably named Bulls would flesh out the blessed details The Romanus Pontifex (1455) Bull added:
We, in virtue of the Apostolic authority by which we are bound, declare, adjudge, and define... to the King... full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be... and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.
And this was laudably followed by the wonderful 20th century sentiment While Diverse or Dum Diversas (1452):
We grant you [King Alfonso V of Portugal] full and free power, through the Apostolic authority... to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens and pagans... and other infidels and other enemies of Christ... and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude.
The Africans were now condemned to perpetual bondage by none other than the blessed holy father of Christendom the Pope. The people in their jungles, plains, mountains, hills, valleys, savannahs, great lakes, kingdoms, tribal lands, with their one to two thousand indigenous languages (Europe has 230 indigenous languages), diverse cultures, religions, belief systems, castes, guilds, economies, wars and peace, were unaware that they were now under the benevolent care of the holy Catholic Pope, who in his blessed munificence had sold them into perpetual slavery (he got himself the first batch) by virtue of being the unknowing enemies of the Prince of Peace. Pope Martin V did gift them two enviable and unique gifts, the first is that they were casted irretrievably into one supra ethnic group called the Africans after the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis which combine Africa Nova (North Africa) and Africa Vetus (regions further south of Africa Nova which possibly include areas as far south as Niger and Chad) and that for this enviable gift many of their descendants would provide the unpaid human machinery for European enrichment for 400 brutal years of perpetual servitude, genocides and ruthless resource extraction.
What would emerge is the Doctrine of Discovery would be the basis for legalising colonial claims and the development of International Law. It is ironic that such laudable titles concealed such brutal conquest, enslavement and venal intent. But laudable titles, brutal conquest, venal intent, subjugation, domination and universal authority would continue to characterise the European Colonial project whether it was religious or secular humanist. This has become utterly unveiled in Gaza. In fact under the instruments of the Papal Bulls the entire legal and governance framework for European colonisation would be fleshed out as a Christainising African Crusade. What would later happen with the transformation of Christendom into secular Judeo-Christian Europe, the Christianising colonial mission became the Europeanising colonial mission unleashed upon the globe. It has made me wonder if the Crusade ever stopped! And I am beginning to look at the Gaza Genocide in a whole new light.
So what does this mean for activists, looking for a way beyond the world destroying strictures of empire? It means that the framework of International Law is Empire itself, and it embeds within law the structures, attitudes and intent of the colonial world-destroying subjugation, genocide and domination. Our challenge is to imagine and venture beyond empire, we literally have to turn away, as it does not have the answers. The legal framework in praxis was never meant to give Saracens sorry I meant Palestinians justice or their land, it is meant to subjugate them, and the genocide and ethnic cleansing is a means to that end. So I must ask myself what as the British born child of Guyanese immigrants, what on earth does my second tier citizenship now mean? What protections will it reliably give? And what else will change in the coming years?
As I think of the rule of humanitarian law, equal rights and the great protections of citizenship that were supposed to be the touchstones of civilisation I think what Sane Charissimus Bull or in plain English Truly Most Beloved Bull. Well I have Pope Martin V to thank for that! He is a gift that just keeps on giving!
Bibliography:
David Cameron concerned over Syria-bound London girls - BBC News (no date). Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20190126003932/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-32134575 (Accessed: 24 February 2024).
Shamima Begum case shows how little power courts have to check government national security decisions – University of Bristol Law School Blog (no date). Available at: https://legalresearch.blogs.bris.ac.uk/2023/03/shamima-begum-case-shows-how-little-power-courts-have-to-check-government-national-security-decisions/ (Accessed: 24 February 2024).
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Adiele, P.O. (2017) The Popes, the Catholic Church and the Transatlantic Enslavement of Black Africans 1418-1839 / Volume 16. s.l.: Georg Olms Verlag.