Since 2021, along with the British and Australian governments, the Canadian government has relaxed immigration policy for Hong Kong immigrants. This policy offers an unconventional path with lowered barriers for Hong Kongers to apply for permanent residency in Canada. Popularly framed as ‘lifeboat’ campaigns, these immigration policies directly respond to the post-2019 political situation in Hong Kong. This political contingency was instigated by the tumultuous 2019-2020 Anti-Extradition Law Bill Movement, and the subsequent implementation of National Security Law in June 2020. Against this background, the Canadian government has combined an economic narrative, i.e., Hong Kongers being economically productive, with a political narrative, i.e., human rights concern, to legitimise this ‘lifeboat’ scheme.
The Canadian ‘lifeboat’ scheme includes two pathways: Stream A and Stream B. Stream B requires candidates to have post-secondary education qualifications and one year of work experience within Canada before they apply for permanent resident status. Interestingly, the government cancelled the requirement on education qualifications on 15 August 2023, further lowering the barrier. Following Canadian activist Harsha Walia’s writing about borders (2021), I illuminate the way a democratic logic intersects with a capitalistic logic to control border mobility under the state’s purview. I seek to problematise this naturalised connection. Under the benevolent notion of democratic intervention, how does the state deploy the notions of human rights and humanitarian care to serve an economic purpose? Why do these migrants have to be first taxonomised as productive labouring subjects in order to be considered “worthy” of democratic intervention? Further, what does democracy mean within this existing liberal democratic regime?
Under the “lifeboat” policy, it is stated that “Canada shares longstanding ties with the people of Hong Kong and is concerned with the deteriorating human rights situation there. […] Canada has put in place a number of facilitative measures to help Hong Kong residents come to Canada” (Government of Canada 2021b). Clearly, human rights concern is identified as a key component to this policy. Paradoxically, it considers economic contribution rather than political risks at home as a legitimizing clause for permanent residency. In the policy, under the section “Public policy considerations”, it is stated that: “[The policy] recognises the contributions made by Hong Kong residents to Canada’s economy and social-cultural landscape through human capital, while also promoting democratic values” (Government of Canada 2021b). In another government press release issued on 4 February 2021, similar language was adopted: “The first Hong Kong residents arrived here over 150 years ago, contributing immensely to Canada’s economic, social and political life” (Government of Canada 2021a).
Border regimes serve to create differentiated entry of migrants in order to protect public interests within the border, such as job availability and welfare system. As Walia (2021, 19) suggests, borders ‘buffer against the retrenchment of universal social programs.’ In a liberal democratic regime with strict border control, citizenship is granted based on one’s expected contribution to the national economy. It is therefore not surprising that a neoliberal state rationalises immigration policies under the premise of economic calculations (Xiang 2007). Still, in this case, the economic logic is weaved into a democratic intervention in a language that renders this intersection rational, natural, and reasonable. In other words, democratic intervention is about human rights concerns—so long as it is also generative of economic benefits. To do so, the Canadian government racialises a history of Hong Kong diaspora; this taxonomises incoming Hong Kong migrants as productive labour, which becomes a strange but also naturalised prerequisite for democratic intervention.
Scholars have examined the way the global north extracts labour from the global south while imposing militarised border regimes to deter immigrants (Besteman 2019), resulting in ‘coloniality of migration’ (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2018). Nevertheless, the emigration of East Asia migrants, particularly the middle-class and the upper-middle-class, has complicated the way coloniality of migration is configured. In the case of Canadian ‘lifeboat’ campaign, I suggest that the Canadian government uses a democratic narrative to add moral fervour as they extract both skilled and unskilled labour from Hong Kong. There are two sets of repercussions. First, the democratic intervention is only enjoyed by those who are considered economically productive. Borders continue to facilitate accumulation of capital within a sovereign state. At the same time, borders preclude universal access to political refuge. Second, the democratic intervention becomes a rationalised labour extraction from East Asia to the global North.
In sum, political discourses about human rights and democracy are instrumentalised and repackaged by the West (by which I refer to as anglophone-speaking countries) to solidify their image as the global protector of human rights, while benefiting materially from westward movement of labour and capital from the global East, which sustain their roles as the civilised Man and a civilizing force in the unfinished project of modernity (Wynter 2003).
David Kwok Kwan Tsoi is a DPhil student at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. His research examines the relationship between housing, class, and migration amid political changes in Hong Kong. He also writes about informal economy and queer politics in Hong Kong.
References
Besteman, Catherine. 2019. “Militarised Global Apartheid.” Current Anthropology 60 (19): 26–38. https://doi.org/10.1086/699280.
Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Encarnación. 2018. “The Coloniality of Migration and the “Refugee Crisis”: On the Asylum-Migration Nexus, the Transatlantic White European Settler Colonialism-Migration and Racial Capitalism.” Canada’s Journal on Refugees 34 (1): 16–28. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050851ar.
Walia, Harsha. 2021. Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Wynter, Sylvia. 2003. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation–An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3 (3): 257–337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.
Xiang, Biao. 2007. Global “Body Shopping”: An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Cite as: Tsoi, David Kwok Kwan 2024. “‘Lifeboat’ Campaign for Hong Kongers: Why is Capitalistic Agenda a Mandate for Democratic Intervention?” Focaalblog 6 November. https://www.focaalblog.com/2024/11/06/david-kwok-kwan-tsoi-lifeboat-campaign-for-hong-kongers-why-is-capitalistic-agenda-a-mandate-for-democratic-intervention/
In 2021 a modest long-haired Sakha man named Alexander Gabyshev was arrested at his family compound on the outskirts of Yakutsk in an unprecedented for Sakha Republic (Yakutia) show-of-force featuring nine police cars and over 50 police. For the third time in two years, he was subjected to involuntary psychiatric hospitalization. Some analysts see this medicalized punishment, increasingly common in President Putin’s 4th term, as a return to the politicized use of clinics that had been prevalent against dissidents in the Soviet period. Alexander’s hair was cut, and his dignity demeaned. By April, his health had seriously deteriorated, allegedly through use of debilitating drugs, and his sister feared for his life. A private video of his arrest (possibly filmed by a sympathetic Sakha policeman) shows police overwhelming him in bed as if they were expecting a wild animal; he was forced to the floor bleeding, and handcuffed. Official media claimed he had resisted arrest using a traditional Sakha knife, but this is not evident on the video. By May, a trial in Yakutsk affirmed the legality of his arrest, and a further criminal case was brought against him using the Russian criminal code article 280 against extremism. Appeals are pending, including one accepted by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
What had elicited such official vehemence
against an opposition figure who had dared to critique President Putin but
whose powers and influence were relatively minor, compared to prominent
Russians like Aleksei Naval’ny? How did a localized movement in far-from-Moscow
Siberia become well-known across Russia and beyond?
In his 2018–2019 meteoric rise to national
and international attention, Alexander Prokopievich Gabyshev, also called
“Shaman Alexander,” “Sasha shaman,” and “Sania,” came to mean many things to
many people. For some, he is a potent symbol of protest against a corrupt
regime led by a president he calls “a demon.” For others, he has become a
coopted tool in some part of the government’s diabolical security system, set
to attract followers so that they can be exposed and repressed. Some feel he is
a “brave fellow” (molodets),
“speaking truth to power” in a refreshingly articulate voice devoid of egotism.
Others see him as misguided and psychologically unstable, made “crazy” by a
tragic life that includes the death of his beloved wife before they could have
children. Some accept him into the Sakha shamanic tradition, arguing his
suffering and two–three years spent in the taiga after his wife’s death qualify
him as a leader and healer who endured “spirit torture” in order to serve
others. Others, including some Sakha and Buryat shamans, reject him as a
charlatan whose education as an historian was wasted when he became a welder,
street cleaner, and plumber.
These and many other
interpretations are debated by my Russian and non-Russian friends with a
passion that at minimum reveals he has touched a nerve in Russia’s body
politic. It is worth describing how Alexander, born in 1968, describes himself
and his mission as a “warrior shaman” before analyzing his significance and his
peril.
Alexander’s Movement
Picture
Alexander on foot pushing a gurney and surrounded by well-wishers, walking a
mountainous highway before being arrested by masked armed police for
“extremism” in September 2019. Among over a hundred internet video clips of
Alexander’s epic journey from Yakutsk to Ulan-Ude via Chita, is an interview
from Shaman on the Move! (June 12, 2019):
I asked, beseeched God, to give me witness and insight….I went into the taiga [after my wife had died of a dreadful disease ten years ago]….It is hard for a Yakut [Sakha person] to live off the land, not regularly eating meat and fish….I came out of the forest a warrior shaman….To the people of Russia, I say “choose for yourself a normal leader,… young, competent”….To the leaders of the regions, I say “take care of your local people and the issues they care about and give them freedom.”…To the people, I say “don’t be afraid of that freedom.” We are endlessly paying, paying out….Will our resources last for our grandchildren? Not at the rate we are going… Give simple people bank credit.. . Let everyone have free education and the chance to choose their careers freely.. . There should not be prisons….But we in Russia [rossiiane] have not achieved this yet, far from it…Our prisons are terrifying….At least make the prisons humane…. For our small businesses, let them flourish before taking taxes from them. Just take taxes from the big, rich businesses….For our agriculture, do not take taxes from people with only a few cows….Take from only the big agro-business enterprises.[1]
In this interview and others, Alexander made
clear he is patriotic, a citizen of Russia, who wants to purify its leadership.
“Let the world want to be like us in Russia,” he proclaimed, “We need young,
free, open leadership.” While he explains that “for a shaman, authority is
anathema,” he has praised the relatively young and dynamic head of Sakha
Republic: “Aisen [Nikolaev] is a simple person at heart who wants to defend his
people, but he is constrained, under the fear of the demon in power [in the
Kremlin].” Alexander acknowledges the route he has chosen is difficult, and
that many will try to stop him. Indeed he began his “march to Moscow” three
separate times, once in 2018 and twice in 2019, including after his arrest when
he temporarily slipped away from house arrest in December 2019, was rearrested
and fined.
Alexander’s 2021
arrest, described in the opening paragraph, was hastened by his refusal to
cooperate with medical personnel as a psychiatric outpatient, and further
provoked when he announced he would once again try to reach Moscow, this time
on a white horse with a caravan of followers. His video announcement of the new
plans, with a photo of him galloping on his white horse carrying an old Sakha
warrior’s standard, mentioned that he would begin his Spring renewal journey by
visiting the sacred lands of his ancestors in the Viliui (Suntar) territories,
“source of my strength.” He encouraged followers to join him, since “truth is
with us.”[2] A multiethnic group of followers launched plans to gather
sympathizers in a marathon car, van and bus motorcade. Their route was
designated to pass through the sacred Altai Mountains region of Southern
Siberia. What had begun as a quirky political action on foot acquired the
character of a media-savvy pilgrimage.
At moments of peak
rhetoric, Alexander often explained that “for freedom you need to struggle.”
Into 2021, he hoped to achieve his goal of reaching Red Square to perform his
“exorcism ritual.” But his arrests and re-confinement in a psychiatric clinic
under punishing “close observation” conditions make that increasingly unlikely,
especially given massive crackdowns on all of President Putin’s opponents,
including Aleksei Naval’ny and his many supporters. One of Alexander’s most
telling early barbs critiqued the “political intelligentsia,” who hold “too
many meetings” and do not accomplish enough. He told them: “It is time to stop
deceiving us.” Yet he repeated in many interviews that numerous politicians in
Russia, across the political spectrum, would be better alternatives than the
current occupant of the Kremlin.
Among Alexander’s most controversial actions before he was arrested was a rally and ritual held in Chita in July 2019, on a microphone-equipped stage under the banner “Return the Town and Country to the People.” After watching the soft-spoken and articulate Alexander on the internet for months, I was amazed to see him adopt a more crowd-rousing style, asking hundreds of diverse multiethnic demonstrators to chant, “That is the law” (Eto zakon!) even before he told them what they would be answering in a “call and response” exchange. He bellowed, “give us self-determination,” and the crowd answered, “That is the law.” He cried, “give us freedom to choose our local administrations,” and the crowd answered, “That is the law.” His finale included “Putin has no control over you! Live free!” Only after this rally did I begin to wonder who, if anyone, was coaching him and why. Had he changed in the process of walking, gaining loyal followers, and talking to myriad media? The rally, with crowd estimates from seven hundred to one thousand, had been organized by the local Communist Party opposition. Local Russian Orthodox authorities denounced it and suggested that Alexander was psychologically unwell. Alexander himself simply said, after his arrest, “It is impossible to sit home when a demon is in the Kremlin.”
How and why was
Alexander using discourses of demonology? He seemed to be articulating Russian
and Sakha beliefs in a society that can be undermined by evil out of control.
When he first emerged from the forest, he built a small chapel-memorial in
honor of his beloved wife and talked in rhetoric that made connections as much
to Russian Orthodoxy as to shamanic tradition. He wore eclectic t-shirts,
including one that referenced Cuba and another the petroglyph horse-and-rider
seal of the Sakha Republic. Once he began his trek, he wore a particularly
striking t-shirt eventually mass-produced for his followers. Called “Arrive and
Exorcise,” it was made for him by the Novosibirsk artist Konstantin Eremenko
and rendered his face onto an icon-like halo.
Another popular image depicts Alexander as an angel with wings. He has called himself a “Holy Fool,” correlating his brazen actions and protest ideology directly to a Russian iurodivy tradition that enabled poor, dirty, beggar-like tricksters to speak disrespectful truths to tsars. His appeals to God were ambiguous—purposely referencing the God of Orthodoxy and the Sky Gods of the Turkic Heavens (Tengri) in his speeches. During his trek, and in some of his interviews, he has had paint on his face, a thunderbolt zigzag under his eyes and across the bridge of his nose that he calls a “sign of lightning,” derived from his spiritual awakening after meditation in the forest. He has claimed, as a “warrior shaman,” that he is fated to harness spirit power to heal social ills. While his emphasis has been on social ills that begin with the top leadership, he also has been willing to pray and place healing hands on the head of a Buryat woman complaining of chronic headaches, who afterwards joyously pronounced herself cured.
During his trek, on camera and off at
evening campsites, Alexander fed the fire spirit pure white milk products,
especially kumys (fermented mare’s
milk), while offering prayers in the Sakha “white shaman” tradition that he
hoped to bring to Red Square for a benevolent ritual not only of exorcism but
of forgiveness and blessing. He chanted: “Go, Go, Vladimir Vladimirovich
[Putin]. Go of your own free will . . . Only God can judge you. Urui
Aikhal!” He expressed pride that some of the Sakha female shamans and elders
have blessed his endeavor.
Resonance and Danger
Russian observers, including well-known politicians and eclectic citizens commenting online or on camera, have had wildly divergent reactions to Alexander, sometimes laughing and mocking his naïve, provincial, or perceived weirdo (chudak) persona. But some take him seriously, including the opposition politician Leonid Gozman, President of the All-Russia movement Union of Just Forces. Leonid, admiring Alexander’s bravery, sees significance in how many supporters fed and sheltered him along his nearly two-thousand-kilometer trek before he was arrested. Rather than resenting him for insulting Russia’s wealthy and powerful president, whose survey ratings have plummeted, Alexander’s followers rallied and protected him with a base broader than many opposition politicians have been able to pull together.
As elsewhere in Russia,
civic society mobilizers, whether for ecology protests, anti-corruption
campaigns or other causes, are becoming savvy at hiding and sharing
leadership. By 2021, Alexander had
become one of many imprisoned oppositionists, whose numbers throughout Russia
have swelled beyond the prisoners of conscience documented when the great
physicist Andrei Sakharov was exiled to Gorky in 1985.[3]
Alexander, despite being subdued beyond recognition after multiple arrests, has affirmed that he was hoping for “neither chaos nor revolution, [since] this is the twenty-first century.” He advocates for his followers an “open world, [of ] peace, freedom and solidarity,” one where all people believing in benevolent “higher forces” can find them. His significance is that he is one of the credible politicized spiritual leaders to emerge from Russia in the post-Soviet period, when in the past twenty years the costs of independent leadership have become increasingly dire, self-sacrifice is increasingly necessary, and multi-leveled community building with horizontal interconnections is increasingly risky.
Whether or not
defined as religious or shamanic, the bravery and force of individuals willing
to risk everything to change social conditions is awesome, transcending and
human wherever we find it. Far from insane, these maverick societal
shape-changers, tricksters and healers may represent our best
power-diversifying hopes against systems that pull in directions of
authoritarian repression. Perhaps once-populist power consolidating leaders
like Vladimir Putin, who warily watch their public opinion ratings, are
insecure enough to understand the deep systemic weaknesses that oppositionists
like Alexander Gabyshev and Alexei Naval’ny expose, using very different styles
along a sacred-secular continuum. President Putin’s insecurities magnify the
importance of all political opposition, creating vortexes of violence and
dangers of martyrdom in the name of stability.
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer is a Faculty Fellow in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University. At Georgetown since 1987, she is co-founder of the Indigenous Studies Working Group https://indigeneity.georgetown.edu and has taught as Research Professor in the School of Foreign Service and anthropology departments. She is editor of the Taylor and Francis translation journal Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia and is author or editor of six books on Russia and Siberia, including Galvanizing Nostalgia: Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia (Cornell University Press, 2021).
The anthropology of human rights has devoted increasing attention to how diverse groups and societies interpret and implement (or not) international legal norms. The pioneering work of Sally Merry and her collaborators on how global women’s rights norms are enacted in local contexts saw this as a “vernacularization” process.1 Numerous scholars have studied the ways civil society organizations build alliances across boundaries of language, nation, ethnicity, class, and religion; construct shared imaginaries; and take rights claims to international governance venues in hopes of legislating new global norms. Few, however, have explicitly analyzed this in terms of what we might term “vernacularization in reverse.”2 To be concrete, reverse vernacularization involves the development of shared understandings and demands between, say, residents of a community in the Philippines affected by the mining giant Glencore and their counterparts near Glencore mines in Colombia, Peru, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Or, to take another example, small farmers in western Europe who seek to overturn prohibitions on saving and exchanging seeds and those in Brazil who face similar restrictions.