There is a clearer example of the ethical issues, than the
plantation labour in West Africa. For several years the
prostitution trade from Albania to Italy has been
publicised, apparently without any impact. A 1998 CoE report
brought no action, now the British charity Save the Children
has reported essentially the same problem.
Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Doc. 8284
18 December 1998, Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee
Situation of children in Albania
http://stars.coe.fr/doc/doc98/EDOC8284.HTM
Save the Children report Child Trafficking in Albania, 20
April 2001
http://193.129.255.93/pressrels/200401.html
The recent press release says: "The main cause for this
trade, says Save the Children, is the endemic poverty and
lack of opportunities in Albania today."
But that is clearly not true. 15 years ago Albania was even
poorer, and there was no such trade with Italy, none, zero.
15 years ago Albania was a closed totalitarian society, a
classic case of an undemocratic society. Albania is seen as
the most extreme case of the post-1989 transitions from
totalitarianism to democracy. It does have a full poliitcal
democracy with OSCE-supervised elections, a multi-party
system and a free press. It meets all the standard
political-science criteria for a democracy, and it does have
a genuine active political culture.
The forced-prostitution trade with Italy is a direct
consequence of the fall of totalitarianism in Albania, and
the arrival of the present system. There is a direct causal
relationship between the transition and the trafficking. The
dictator Enver Hoxha did not permit any mass emigration to
Italy. Albanians were simply not free to engage in
prostitution in Italy - even if they wanted to and Italian
law permitted. The phenomenon was simply impossible under
the totalitarian regime.
The causal relationship is exactly comparable with the
emergence of stock exchanges in post-communist states. A
stock exchange did not exist in a centrally planned
Marxist-Leninist economy. Without the regime collapse there
would still be no stock exchanges in Sofia or Ulaan Bataar.
The transition to a market democracy was, by definition,
intended to introduce market mechanisms and
market-democratic society. The supporters of the transition
process continue to see it as a virtue of the transition,
that society has changed in this way.
Substituting freedom and market for totalitarianism has
effects. Many of these effects are trumpeted by democrats as
reasons to support democracy. But others are embarrassing.
I am in no way trying to evade the issues: it is democrats
who evade the issues. Enver Hoxha ran a police state,
including a notorious prison camp at Burrell for his
political opponents. There is no doubt that the regime
tortured its opponents, and that it created a general
climate of fear with a wider political effect. The freeing
of political prisoners was one of the first phases of the
transition. Here too there is a direct causal relationship,
between the transition and the end of the political repression.
Democrats evade the issue, by referring to hypothetical
democracies where there is no unethical trade. But these
fictional democracies do not exist in the real world, to
which ethical judgement applies. A hypothetical Enver Hoxha,
who was 100% nice and generous to everyone, is also no basis
to judge the real Enver Hoxha.
We do not have a democratic Albania with no forced
prostitution trade to Italy. We have democracy *with* this
trade. We have a transition which brought this reality into
existence. To say that "this transition was good" is to
approve the world it brought into existence - unless you
simply abandon the idea of causal relationships.
The only possible ethical justification for what has
happened in Albania would be utilitarian. Democrats could
claim that, on balance, things had improved for the majority
of Albanians. I would flatly reject such a utilitarian
defence of the transition. But democrats are reluctant to
present it anyway, no doubt because utilitarianism is known
as a cruel doctrine. The ethical issue is simply evaded, put
out of mind. It is very difficult to raise any controversial
ethical issues in the academic community, and critical
geography is no exception.
--
Paul Treanor
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/dem.wrong.html
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