Make sure that you thoroughly trim your beard or remove the face veil of your burkhaa if you plan to visit Xinjiang, whether for tourism or for business (or, education – if our search for foreign degrees has taken Lankans that far). Xinjiang, China’s largest but least populous province, may be enticing for the awesome scale of its mountains and deserts, steeped in the glittering history of the Silk Route and, rich in fossil oil and gas. But, the embers of its lingering ethnic conflict between indigenous Turkic communities and, recently settled Han Chinese, are now fanned by the awful winds of Islamist fundamentalism.
In new measures to stamp out (Turkic) Uyghur secessionism, the Chinese government, notwithstanding the many lessons learned globally (including here) that force alone cannot resolve identity conflict, has reportedly banned the face veil part of the burkhaa along with long beards. While a veil can be donned or doffed in an instance, imagine if you live in a country where men must have long beards (as in the so-called ‘Islamic State’) and, having reduced your beard to a safe stubble to enter Xinjiang, now wanted to fly back home. How long would you have to spend on a stop-over to re-grow your beard?
These are but the latest restrictions on the cultural practice of the largely Muslim Uyghur community that comprises 40 per cent of the population of Xinjiang. So, we have yet another travel advisory, amid increasing ‘bans’ globally in the effort to combat Islamist violence.
The US’ travel ban on some Muslim countries is yet held up by court rulings. But the formal step last week by the UK to begin its exit from the European Union may soon see new twists in visa procedures for Sri Lankans travelling to the UK and EU as, over the next two years, UK and EU entry regulations are adjusted for Brexit. Sorry, folks, the files you have to lug in support of your visa applications won’t get lighter.
As it is, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has not included immigration procedure in the many aspects of Brexit highlighted in her formal letter sent to EU President, Donald Tusk last week.
This avoidance of a critical issue will not dilute its significance. There are over a million EU citizens settled in the UK while several hundred thousand UK citizens live in different parts of the EU whose future lives and prosperity are immediately affected by Brexit.
In implementing Brexit, the UK must impose a new, non-EU, immigration policy vis-à-vis EU citizens, which, if to fulfil the promise of Brexit, must restrict and reduce European immigration. In doing so, London must craft new rules governing those EU continentals already residing in the British Isles while Brussels must do the same for the UK citizens already residing in EU countries.
Both groups of migrant people are those who have taken advantage of EU immigration laws primarily aimed at creating a single labour market which, in turn, is a vital pillar of the economic integration needed for Europe to wield its current clout in the capitalist world economy.
When the UK leaves the European Union, logically, that departing country then loses the right to participate in and, benefit from, that gigantic continental labour force. Indeed, since a xenophobic, anti-immigrant wave drove the pro-Brexit vote in last year’s referendum, the current UK government is highly likely to bring in new immigration laws and practices that will seek to stem the European labour migration.
While thousands of Brits are scattered all over the Continent in employment – usually high-skilled jobs – many tens of thousands more elderly UK citizens are concentrated in warmer southern Europe, mainly Spain and France, in Britishized residential retirement havens. The moment the UK exits the EU immigration regime, all this will change. Both EU and UK officials admit that it will be painful for these people.
The exit from EU’s immigration regime will automatically result in the exit of the UK from the European Common Market, the principal economic plank of Europe’s current power and success. This is because the basic requirement of membership in the Market is the full participation by member states in collective and standardized economic practices, such as trade, investment, industrialisation and labour deployment across the Market region.
In the lead-up to the Brexit launch by formal letter sent to Brussels last Wednesday, the EU’s political leadership as well as the governments of EU remaining big powers, Germany and France (UK was the third), had clearly indicated that neither the Union’s member states nor its unified business sectors will allow an exited UK to enjoy the immense benefits of the Common Market if it did not remain within the common continental labour force.
True to its post-World War 2 promise, the Common Market has grown over the decades into a single gigantic, transnational economy that is now necessarily paralleled by a transnational government in the form of the European Union.
The fundamental strategy that has worked is the creation of massive economies of scale through the unification of national economies into a single economic entity. Thus, while the labour market provides for rationalised labour flows across the whole region, simplified regimes administering taxation, currency, industrial capacities and standards, capital investment and, trade volumes, among many other things, has enabled the creation of this world economic force we call, the EU.
While just over half of those voting in last June’s Brexit referendum voted ‘Leave’ nearly half voted ‘Remain’. EU President Donald Tusk candidly pointed that out in his public statement on receiving Premier May’s ‘divorce’ letter (as many news media have dubbed it) last Wednesday. He added that many people, therefore, both in Europe as well as in the UK are unhappy over Brexit, even if Brexit advocates try to give it a wholly positive spin.
This continent-wide unhappiness over Brexit is because, alongside Germany and France, the UK was the third big power guiding the destinies and fortunes of the 28 nations comprising the EU. It was on the success of this unity that the EU, with a combined population of 510 million, built up a gross domestic product of €16.5 trillion as at 2016, making up 22.8% of nominal the world’s total GDP. The UK’s departure will thus weaken Europe.
If Theresa May and her colleagues in the currently dominant anti-EU faction of the Conservative Party think they can wreak havoc across a whole Continent and still try to get a future deal for the UK in Europe, as good as it has under the EU umbrella, they are indeed very optimistic.
The EU leaders have clearly dismissed such optimism. If the UK, for example, hopes to negotiate a future economic relationship with Europe even as it negotiates itself out of the EU, the EU has already indicated otherwise.
The EU’s official policy is that any negotiation of post-Brexit economic ties with the EU can only come after Brexit is complete. However, an EU position paper indicates that if sufficient progress is shown in the 2-year transition process, at a moment decided by Brussels, the EU will be ready to begin discussing future relations with the UK. At the same time Brussels is firm that the UK must pay back the huge costs to be incurred in the adjustment of the complex trade and industrial processes and, financial regimes in the course of exiting. This is estimated as likely to be at least € 65 billion.
But, given all these mountains to be climbed, will the UK actually, really and, finally, leave the EU? Already, many voices are emerging in the UK, including influential ones like former Premier Tony Blair, who hint that, in the course of the complex negotiations and the detailed legislation that would have to be enacted, the Brexit momentum may lose its way.
They argue that as the intense negotiations move from one issue to another in the coming months, the repercussions will become apparent and could reduce public support for the divorce. And even before that, negative changes in economic performance could add to negative perceptions.
In any case, there is also the prospect that the Conservative government could lose power on sticky political and economic performance issues even before Theresa May could see through the divorce.