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‘Queer Japan’ documentary introduces Japan’s vibrant, multifaceted LGTBQ+ community · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

A few of the interviewees featured in the documentary Queer Japan, including Nogi Sumiko, Atsushi Matsuda, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Gengoroh Tagame, Akira the Hustler, and Tomato Hatakeno. Image courtesy Graham Kolbeins, used with permission.
A documentary that explores the lives of Japan’s multifaceted LGBTQ+ culture has recently been released on streaming platforms. “Queer Japan,” a documentary by Canadian queer filmmaker, writer, and designer Graham Kolbeins, explores the lives artists, activists, trailblazers and just regular folks in Japan's LGBTQ+ culture.
“‘Queer Japan’ is about self-love, community, and resilience,” says director Graham Kolbeins in an interview with Global Voices. “It’s about the ambiguous nature of gender and sexuality, and the way language shapes our fluid understandings of these concepts.”
The documentary was first screened in July 2019, and was shown at film festivals around the world. “Queer Japan” features interviews with nearly three dozen members of Japan's LGTBQ+ community.
The film features a variety of individuals involved in art, activism, nightlife and politics in Japan, including a university instructor, a dentist, a drag queen and the parties she hosts for the LGTBQ+ community, the first openly transgender elected official in Japan Aya Kamikawa, and queer visual artist Nogi Sumiko.
Nogi Sumiko. Image courtesy Graham Kolbeins, used with permission.
“Queer Japan” also includes interviews with Gengoroh Tagame, the well-known gay erotic manga creator who has enjoyed mainstream success in Japan and around the world is also a featured interviewee.
“Gengoroh Tagame is not only a master of gay erotic art; he also created a renaissance of gay manga through the magazine he co-founded, G-men [an influential magazine aimed at gay men in Japan],” says Kolbeins. “Tagame's influences and references are eclectic, drawing on everything from the Marquis de Sade to Go Mishima and Tom of Finland.”
The documentary also includes another co-founder of G-Men magazine, writer, magazine editor and activist Hiroshi Hasegawa. Ever since Hasegawa was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1992, he has lobbied for more and better treatment in Japan for the condition. Hasegawa has also played a prominent role in Japan campaigning to reduce the societal stigma who people living with HIV and AIDS.
Hiroshi Hasegawa at Tokyo Rainbow Pride. Image courtesy Graham Kolbeins, used with permission.
Kolbeins says the genesis for what would become the “Queer Japan” documentary dates back to nearly a decade ago and his love of Japanese manga.
“I was just a very big fan of the gay manga genre and perplexed as to why no publisher in North America had put out English-language translations of these artists’ work,” says Kolbeins. “At the time, I was writing for art and culture magazines, and decided to try conducting some interviews to spotlight gay manga artists.”
While there are no laws prohibiting consensual sexual acts between adults, there are no laws that address and prohibit discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace in Japan, and same-sex marriage has not yet been formally legalized.
Kolbeins says he decided to connect with Anne Ishii, a writer and translator, who currently serves as executive director of Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia.
“We started working together around 2012, when we traveled to Tokyo to work on the anthology we edited together, ‘Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It,'” says Kolbeins. “Soon after, we co-founded a fashion and publishing brand called Massive Goods [a fashion brand, publisher, and creative agency representing queer and feminist artists from Japan], continuing our collaborations with queer and feminist artists from Japan.”
Based on this work, Kolbeins and Ishii were the recipients of the 2016 Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission (JUSFC), which allowed them to spend three months in Japan interviewing documentary subjects.
Queer Japan movie poster. Image courtesy Graham Kolbeins, used with permission.
“After receiving the JUSFC’s fellowship, we raised the rest of the production budget for the documentary through crowdfunding,” says Kolbeins. “Because of the work Anne and I were doing at Massive, we were able to reach out to a community already interested in many of the film’s themes.”
The documentary ultimately took Kolbeins and producers Iida and Anne five years to complete before being released on the film festival circuit in 2019.
Kolbeins says “Queer Japan” producer, Hiromi Iida, also played a key role with the documentary by connecting him with Japan's LGTBQ+ community.
“I met Hiromi on Twitter, reaching out after watching several short documentaries she had made in Tokyo’s drag scene.
Hiromi Ishii introduced Kolbiens to community leaders such as Margarette, who operates iconic bookstore Okamalt and also hosts Department H, which is known as “one of Tokyo's most venerable fetish parties.”
Over the past decade, Kolbeins has been able to connect with an LGBTQ+ culture in Japan he describes as “multifaceted, robust and thriving.”
“At the same time, members of the Japanese queer community face plenty of legal obstacles, family pressure, and discrimination,” says Kolbeins. It’s a situation that leads many to stay selectively closeted, especially in workplace settings, Kolbeins says.
“Visibility and acceptance keep growing year after year, and as you can see in ‘Queer Japan,’ there are plenty of individuals living loud and proud in defiance of societal pressures,” says Kolbeins. “There is a growing spirit of solidarity and collective power in the community.”
The documentary is now available to watch in some regions on a variety of online rental streaming services. Kolbeins says there are hopes to release the film in Japanese cinemas in 2021, depending on pandemic conditions. Updates about the film are posted on the documentary's Twitter account, @queerjapan.

author: Nevin Thompson


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To revitalise their ‘severely endangered’ language, Gitxsan internet users get creative · Global Voices
Ella Hannon

T-shirt and hat promoting the Gitxsan Got Talent contest. Photo by Erica Williams, used with permission.
Even during a global pandemic, Indigenous communities all over the world are coming up with ingenious ways of keeping their languages alive. Take the Gitxsan people of British Columbia, Canada: This April, dedicated language activists Cheyenne Raven and Jessica Starlund set up a Facebook group that promotes the Gitxsan language and encourages community participation in the form of an online talent show, aptly named Gitxsan Got Talent.
The group has over 600 members who regularly post their renditions of popular songs, poems, and voice-overs in this First Nations language, Gitxsanimaax/Gitxsanimx. Members are invited to comment on these performances, which are judged by tribal elders, with prizes being given to the winners.
Jessica Starlund, one of the co-organizers of the Gitxsan Got Talent contest. Photo by Talon Gillis Photography, used with permission.
According to the Report on the Status of B.C. First Nations Languages 2018, the Gitxsan (also rendered as Gitksan in some sources) language has about 523 fluent speakers, with an additional 983 who somewhat speak, understand, or are learning across the six Gitxsan communities in British Columbia. Classified by UNESCO as “severely endangered”, the language is spoken primarily by elders and is not being passed down to younger generations.
According to academic Dr. M. Jane Smith, the Gitxsan originated in T’lemlaxamit. Their ancestral homeland is the upper Skeena valley in Northwestern Central British Columbia, an area in which they still reside.
The Gitxsan culture has a rich oral history, told through the language and offering a completely different perspective to the dominant Western worldview. It is a view that has, for centuries, contributed to the destruction of Indigenous cultures through European colonial ventures and restrictive measures imposed by successive governments. In contrast, the Gitxsan culture prioritises community and harmony with the land over Western notions of material wealth and individualism.
Unlike some other Indigenous communities in British Columbia, the Gitxsan have never signed any treaties with the Canadian government, and their land has never been purchased from them — which is not to say that they have been unaffected by governmental measures designed to repress their culture and their language.
Residential schools — essentially boarding schools designed to ‘kill the Indian, save the man,’ — have adversely affected not only those who were forced to attend them, but also subsequent generations of Gitxsan people. These schools caused a break in the tradition of passing on the Gitxsan language to younger generations; the tribal members who went there either never learnt the language or were so severely punished for speaking it that they thought it would be a hindrance for their own children to learn it.
Screenshot of a news, weather, and traffic report by Cheyenne Raven for the Gitxsan Got Talent contest. Click on the picture to see the whole video.
The legacy of residential schools is not the only challenge that language initiatives like Gitxsan Got Talent face. The increasing importance of English as a global language, the necessity of speaking it in order to get what is perceived as a decent job, and the rise of English media content all contribute to Indigenous language loss.
These very factors, however, make the Gitxsan Got Talent Facebook group even more impressive: by harnessing the very technology that once threatened to erase it, the group is renewing interest in the language. Gitxsan communities also have a mobile app, available on both the Google play store and the Apple App store, which they use as a resource for learning the language by listening to stories and spoken words.
An email interview was conducted with one of the organisers of the Facebook contest, Jessica Starlund. According to Jessica, the contest has been a great success so far, “reach[ing] a lot more people than planned.” Speakers, learners and silent speakers from Gitxsan territories have all participated, and community members who live in urban areas have also taken part. The purpose of the contest includes extending the use of the Gitxsan language into more mainstream domains by doing voice-overs in Gitxsan for things like airplane safety videos, episodes of popular shows like “Grey's Anatomy” or “Sesame Street” and singing popular songs in the language.
The contest has undoubtedly inspired creativity. One participant, Skyla Olivia, who goes by the YouTube username “gitxsanbushgirl”, created this stop-motion video for her submission:
She points out that the virtual contest has been especially important during COVID-19, as it is a way of “promoting the language from a safe, virtual distance”, and helps “lift spirits” within the Gitxsan communities. The Facebook group is public for this very reason: to interact with as many Gitxsan people as possible and to promote the language, even during a global pandemic. Members of the group have described listening to the contest entries as “so healing”, and consider the group's posts “great for learning”.
Starlund says the community has recently sought funding to establish a language nest for young children — similar to those in operation in Hawai’i, or in New Zealand among the Maori — so that they will be immersed in the Gitxsan language and grow up bilingual in Gitxsan and English. The community has also applied for funding to establish language-cultural camps in their territories.
Another initiative that is helping to save the language is the establishment of successful Master-Apprentice programmes, similar to those run in California and other US states, whereby an elder is paired with a younger member of the community and they communicate exclusively in their Indigenous language. The Facebook group itself has garnered financial support in the form of prizes donated or funded by local organisations, and honorariums for the judges who are fluent speakers of Gitxsan. Monetary prizes are offered to the winners, and there are participation prizes for those who send in particularly good entries.
More than a place for the Gitxsan community to express themselves and have fun in their language, Gitxsan Got Talent has become a testament to the continued adaptability and resilience of the Gitxsan community. Gitxsan living anywhere in the world can join and contribute to the group, which will serve to not only strengthen the ties among Gitxsan people, but also between Gitxsan people and their language.

source: news-globalvoices

license: Creative Commons - Attribution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

author: Ella Hannon


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‘It’s not just a joke!’ Nigerian comedians unite against rape culture · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Screenshot of Nigerian comedians against rape from video uploaded on YouTube by HerStoryOurStoryNG.
Fourteen Nigerian comedians have taken a definitive stance against rape culture by making a commitment to stop making rape jokes.
This was done in a 1.43-minute video clip featuring top Nigerian comedians in this order: Ali Baba (Atunyota Akpobome), Seyi Law (Lawrence Aletile), Broda Shaggi (Samuel Perry), AY (Ayodeji Makun), Lasisi Elenu (Nosa Afolabi), Frank Donga (Kunle Idowu), Mr. Macaroni (Debo Adebayo), Maraji (Gloria Oloruntobi), Real Warri Pikin (Anita Asuoha), EmmaOhMaGod (Emmanuel Edunjobi), Taooma (Apaokagi Maryam), Kenny Blaq (Otolorin Peter), Josh2Funny (Josh Alfred) and MC Lively (Michael Amanesi).
The clip starts with Ali Baba, Seyi Law, Broda Shaggi and AY emphasizing that these lame excuses are usually made for these jokes: “Telling a rape joke doesn’t mean I condone sexual violence,”  “Come on! It’s just a way to get people to laugh,” “It’s just a joke,” or “If it’s so bad, why did everyone laugh?”
This was followed by Lasisi Elenu stating that “these excuses are no longer acceptable” because, according to Frank Donga, “one in three women have experienced some form of sexual and gender-based violence, (SGBV).” This  “means that when you joke about rape, one out of every three women in your audience is negatively affected,” Mr. Macaroni asserted.
Maraji, Real Warri Pikin, EmmaOhMaGod and Taooma further emphasised: “So, basically they have bought a ticket to relive their worst nightmare. Adding to their pain and undermining their suffering.” As though these were not cruel enough,  jokes of this nature, normalise rape culture and perpetuate violence, which makes it harder for survivors to speak out, “especially when audiences laugh…We have to stop turning survivors of sexual and gender-based violence into collateral damage, just for laughs. Because rape is not a joke!”
Kenny Blaq admitted they have “contributed to this [rape joke] culture” in Nigeria, before coming together to put a stop to it.
Six years ago, Nigerian comedian Basketmouth, known as Bright Okpocha, drew public ire with a joke that inferred that Nigerian women deserved to be raped if they decline sex by the second date, reports the Nigerian Guardian newspaper.
The backlash against Basketmouth did not die out. In 2019, he was listed as an ambassador for the sexual and gender-based violence campaign by the delegation of the European Union to Nigeria and ECOWAS (EU in Nigeria). This instantly revived public outrage by Nigerian social media users which resulted in his losing the appointment.
Last last, #RapeIsNoJoke ??♂ pic.twitter.com/gRjLUFATY4
— Frank Donga™ (@frankdonga_) November 27, 2020
Sexual violence is pervasive in Nigeria. Women at Risk International Foundation asserts that “about 30 percent of women in Nigeria experienced one form of domestic violence or another” between 2012 and 2013 alone.
Yet, most sexual assault cases are underreported in Nigeria, due to the stigma and propensity for victim-blaming. The United Nations Africa Renewal programme estimates that about “2 million Nigerian girls experience sexual abuse annually and that only 28 percent of rape cases are reported. Of those, only 12 percent result in convictions.”
In 2017, out of the reported 1,639 Nigerian survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, only “156 survivors accessed case management services and 226 benefited from legal assistance” from the Access to Justice project in northeast Nigeria, supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Nigerian Bar Association’s (NBA). However, only “109 SGBV perpetrators were arrested, with 58 convicted and others on trial in Adamawa and Borno States,” according to the ReliefWeb.
The low rate of arrests and conviction can be linked to the fact that very few survivors tend to report these assaults to the police because the assailants are neighbours or family members.
A retrospective review of survivors’ case records (between January 2008 and December 2012) by Nigerian gynecologist, Dr. Fatimat Akinlusi, and four others at the College of Medicine, Lagos State University, Ikeja, revealed that out of 39,770 gynaecological cases, 304 were sexually assaulted. The study also showed that 73 percent of survivors, who were below 19 years old, “knew their assailants (majority were neighbours)” and most assaults (54 percent) “occurred in the neighbours’ homes.”
Nigerian culture scholars Sunday Adesina, at the University of Ibadan, and Ibukun Filani, at Central European University, assert that Nigerian stand-up comedians shape contemporary culture. This is because “by joking with cultural beliefs and representations within the performance space,” these comedians “mediate and negotiate what ‘contemporary culture’ should be,” say Adesian and Filani.
The comedians’ initiative is spot-on because “the Nigerian entertainment sector has done so much harm by propagating and normalising sexual violence and rape culture so it is very encouraging to see a major part of that sector take a stand against rape,” Wuraola Abulatan, communications team lead of the social enterprise, Stand to End Rape Initiative told Global Voices via email.
Abulatan is optimistic that the comedians’ stance against rape jokes will “advance the conversations” around rape and SGBV and their pledge will go a long way to fight against rape culture, victim-blaming and “the treatment of women as sexual objects.”
This will swell the ranks of Nigerians who stand up “against rape in all spheres of their lives” and move toward creating “a safe space for everyone,” Abulatan affirmed.

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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What the international press did not understand about the demonstrations in Peru · Global Voices
Carla Ramos

Demonstration in Berlin, in solidarity with the protests in Peru. Photo by Yudy Berlly Muguerza Diestra, used with permission.
As a Peruvian living in Germany, the main way for me to find out what was going on in Peru was through Peruvian social networks and the Peruvian press. The coverage in Germany on the subject has been minimal, and within the limited amount I have seen, most has come from sources that specialize in covering current issues in Latin America (such as the Deutsche Welle network in Spanish). A cousin of mine, a Peruvian woman in the United States, told me exactly the same thing: the media there have not covered the demonstrations in Peru either. And I doubt that these are isolated cases.
Between November 9 and 17, Peru was shaken by large civic demonstrations that were brutally repressed by the security forces. The protesters blamed Congress for unconstitutionally removing the country's president from office. Although the demonstrations calmed down after Francisco Sagasti was nominated as the new president until the next elections, it sparked a political crisis that continues to this day.
The way the international press dismisses news coming from developing countries takes me back to anthropologist Greg Beckett's concept of “normal emergency.” Beckett points out that these countries are seen from abroad as always being in a state of emergency, so much so that the nuances are missed when events happen at unprecedented levels. So, those extreme situations are not given the proper coverage, because every emergency, even the most serious, is “just another emergency” from the outsider's point of view. I came to the conclusion, after seeing the absence of an analysis that goes beyond the actual events, that the international press was also considering the events in Peru to be a “normal emergency.”
In this sense, the international press failed to recognize in a timely fashion that the type of emergency that Peru went through last November was something much more complex than a demonstration: on the one hand, it is a historical milestone in the contemporary political life of Peru; and on the other hand, within the international community, it represents another case of police violence and human rights abuses.
First of all, it is a turning point because it was the first time in contemporary history that such a demonstration took place in which the majority of the protesters were not politicized. This makes me think about what author Carlos León Moya points out when he says “we work in a counterintuitive way: it is not ‘first you organize, then you march;’ it is ‘first you march, then you organize.'” The vast majority of protesters have no affiliation whatsoever to political organizations or parties, and they certainly won't have any in the future, either. But this has not been a prerequisite for going out to protest. It seems that the condition, more than anything else, is that we are weary; we are tired of our political leadership, so we go out to protest.
And the fact that they have been able to jump over pre-existing organizations and still protest effectively points to Leon Moya's second reflection: the relevance of internet and virtual communities to rallying people and relaying information (from sharing the techniques used in Hong Kong to neutralize tear gas bombs, to spreading the list of those who disappeared after the demonstrations).
At the end of November, we learned that 13 per cent of the nation actively participated in the protests and 73 per cent of the nation has expressed support for the protesters. This has now become part of the contemporary history of Peru, for this is the first time since the March of the Four Corners that so many Peruvians have come together for a common cause. It is for this reason that I have been struck by the relative lack of importance given to the case in the press at the global level.
Also, I am shocked that the international press has not highlighted the blatant violation of human rights by the Peruvian National Police: almost a hundred people injured, dozens of young people disappeared for days, and two dead in a country that is (in principle) a democracy. How is it possible that the foreign press does not consider this to be newsworthy?
The year 2020 will not be remembered only as the year of COVID-19 on the global scene, but also as a year in which police forces around the world have shown that they can trample on the right to protest, and on human rights in general: we have witnessed police brutality in the United States against the Black Lives Matter protesters; the unjustifiably violent response by the police to people demonstrating against SARS in Nigeria, and we have also seen how the Free Youth movement in Thailand faced harassment and intimidation by the Thai Armed Forces.
Don't we see a pattern? The level of police violence in Peru between November 9 and November 15 is easily compared to the events in the United States, Nigeria, and Thailand as mentioned above. The Peruvian case is yet another compelling example of why this type of situation is not only a national problem, but also a problem for the global community, and why it is so urgent that the authorities respond not only to local justice but also to the entire global community who are defending human rights.
Counting on the global community as allies to put pressure on the authorities in cases of abuse of power would be a precious resource to help balance the power between the governments and its citizens and thus increase the degree of power of the average citizen. We already have technology on our side to do this. But the ability of individuals to get their message across on the Internet is still far from having the same reach or impact as the institutionalized press, both nationally and even more so, internationally.
Therefore, I think it is coherent with the mission of journalism as a discipline that the press—not only Peruvian or Latin American, but global—should also be concerned with what is happening in Peru and anywhere else in the world, especially when it is an issue that directly concerns human rights. There are no normal emergencies.

author: Carla Ramos


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Citing tweets and op-eds, Hong Kong police charges media tycoon Jimmy Lai with foreign collusion · Global Voices
The Stand News

Image from the Stand News. Used with permission.
This is an English translation of story originally published in Chinese on The Stand News. It is published here under a content partnership agreement.
Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai could face life in prison should a court find him guilty of violating the national security law by colluding with foreign forces.
The 72-year-old founder of Next Digital, which publishes the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was arrested in August when he was charged with fraud over a commercial dispute with a tenant.
Last week, the national security police pressed an additional charge of “colluding with foreign governments,” a crime under Hong Kong's national security law.
Lai appeared in court on December 12, where his application for bail was denied.
Documents supporting Lai's collusion charge include social media posts, interviews with foreign media outlets, and meetings with foreign politicians and alleged donation to an advocacy group, “Stand with Hong Kong”.
Many of those acts, however, took place before July 1, when the national security law was enacted. In June, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in a pre-recorded message to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council that the law wouldn't be applied retroactively.
Pro-democracy activists see Lai's charge as speech-related persecution. Exiled activist Nathan Law said:
The media tycoon, democratic veteran Jimmy Lai was chained as Class A Felon when he was escorted to appear in court. He faces a charge of collusion with foreign elements to endanger national security because of his tweets and interviews. It’s a speech crime and fabricated charge. pic.twitter.com/5KcTTvBoW4
— Nathan Law 羅冠聰 ? (@nathanlawkc) December 12, 2020
Police documents supporting Lai's charge highlight 18 posts he made on Twitter, where he has over 126,000 followers.
Among them is a retweet of a statement made in July by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in which the latter expressed support to pro-democracy candidates contesting Hong Kong's district council elections. On his retweet, Lai thanks Pompeo for the support. In the same thread, Lai says that the international community should “resist China's Communist Party suppression of freedom in Hong Kong.”
The document also points to another tweet that Lai sent in July in which he uses the hashtags #SafeHabourAct and #PeoplesFreedomandChoiceAct — referring to proposed U.S. legislation that would expedite asylum applications from Hong Kong citizens — saying such acts would have a positive effect on Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.
Also cited as evidence that Lai sought foreign interference in Hong Kong is an August tweet, following the detention by the Chinese coast guard of 12 Hongkongers who were fleeing to Taiwan by boat, in which Lai said: “Can the U.S. government find ways to save these kids?”
The charge sheet also points to Lai’s columns published on Apple Daily News between December 2019 and June 2020 which were titled, for example, “We have to carry on and have hope,” “Absolute dictatorship — where does Xi Jinping’s confidence come from?” and “Suffocating Hongkongers struggle between escape and resist.”
Excerpts of those columns are highlighted, such as “regardless of how many people decide to stay, we will stand up to resist, we will serve as the pillars of the struggle and of the conscience of the society,” and “[Xi Jinping] should know that it is a bad game to implement the ‘wolf-warrior,’ national security law in Hong Kong. He does not want any trouble, but the international reactions to the NSL have brought a lot of troubles to him.”
The document also indicates that between July to December 2020, after the national security law was enacted, Jimmy Lai appeared on Apple Daily’s talk show, streamed on Facebook live, with foreign guest speakers, including former South China Morning Post's chief editor Mark Clifford, former U.S.-Chinese ambassador Raymond Burghardt, Israeli politician Natan Sharansky, U.S. journalist Nicholas Kristof, among others. In the talk shows, Lai was critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping and has called for international sanctions, the documents say.
Nicholas Kristof tweeted that it was “infuriating” to see their conversation being waged against Lai:
This is infuriating: As China throttles Hong Kong, one of the police allegations justifying Jimmy Lai's imprisonment is that he joined a public Web chat with me. I asked Jimmy then if he would get into trouble, and he said he had to speak up for Hong Kong. He's a brave man. https://t.co/whmNROmm4P
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) December 13, 2020
The document also cites the launching of the English version of Apple Daily News in June, and the streaming series “Live Chat With Jimmy Lai” on Twitter, as evidence to back the charge.
The document also mentions a series of interviews Jimmy Lai gave to foreign media outlets between May and June, such as Bloomberg, The New York Times, BBC Chinese, and Japanese magazine FACTA.
It highlights an excerpt of Lai's interview to Radio Free Asia on June 10 in which he said: “The U.S should sanction China and then Hong Kong, Hong Kong would eventually benefit from the sanctions (…). Foreign countries should exercise as much pressure on China as possible, followed by sanctions as a means to block the despotic act.”
Independent journalist Rachel Cheung highlighted another excerpt listed by the police in the charges’ document:
In the charge sheet against @JimmyLaiApple for collusion with foreign forces, police listed excerpts of his interviews with media as well as commentaries he wrote, including this op-ed on New York Times, where he asked: pic.twitter.com/8ir6QMFxZ7
— Rachel Cheung (@rachel_cheung1) December 12, 2020
Journalist William Yang said:
HK police is now making @JimmyLaiApple‘s #NSL case as an example of what constitutes speech crime in #HongKong under the new #NSL regime: activity on his Twitter account, live chats with commentators and the founding of an English version of his newspaper. https://t.co/6BlAQuIQ3a
— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) December 13, 2020
In addition to speech-related allegations, the charge documents also cover activities related to meetings with foreign politicians.
The documents state that Lai met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in July and August 2019, shortly after the anti-China extradition protests broke out in Hong Kong, where they've allegedly discussed possible U.S sanctions on Hong Kong and mainland Chinese leaders.
In August, Lai also met with Samuel Chu, the executive director of Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington DC-based organization, as well as four Republican senators in the U.S. capital.
The document also points that LAIS Hotel Properties Limited, a hotel in Canada of which Jimmy Lai is allegedly the main stakeholder, paid $1.47 million (US$189,600) for a pro-protest advertisement in Japanese newspaper The Nikkei, published in August 2019. The advertisement campaign was coordinated by a online advocacy group called “Stand with Hong Kong, Fight for freedom” which has been calling for international attention to the political situation in Hong Kong since the anti-China extradition protests broke out in June 2019.
The acts mentioned above took place prior to the enactment of the national security law.

author: The Stand News


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How global tech companies enable the Belarusian regime — and the Belarusian revolution · Global Voices
Maryia Sadouskaya-Komlach

Protest rally against Lukashenka in Minsk, capital of Belarus. Photo CC BY-SA 3.0: Homoatrox / Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.
Belarusians continue to protest against longtime ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka, braving police violence and the cold. As the EU prepares its third package of sanctions against Belarusian officials and enterprises, demands are growing for the West to apply greater economic pressure, in particular to consider banning the supply of certain IT products.
Could such sanctions really work? It’s true that disentangling the country’s supply chains from the West would be no easy feat. But in today’s globalised world, there’s no shortage of alternative options.
One of the most prominent struggles is disconnecting Belarus from SWIFT, the global banking communications network.
This month, Golos (“Voice”), an online platform started by the team of jailed presidential hopeful Viktar Babaryka, polled Belarusians on whether they would support excluding Belarus from SWIFT. Out of more than 400,000 respondents, 64 percent supported the measure.
SWIFT may not be an official EU institution, but as a Belgium-based cooperative it has to follow EU rules and regulations. Should it be instructed to disconnect Belarus, as it did to Iran in 2012, SWIFT will effectively be supporting the Belarusian opposition’s demand for greater economic pressure on Lukashenka’s regime.
Lukashenka himself has acknowledged that threats to disconnect Belarus from SWIFT have been successful at least once. In his interview for the Ukrainian website GordonUA just three days before the August 9 election, the Belarusian leader recounted his 2009 meeting with the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy Javier Solana. “I asked him what would happen if we recognised the sovereignty [of Abkhazia and South Ossetia]… He was prepared for that question. He took out a notebook and started listing: ‘Mr President, Belarus would immediately get disconnected from SWIFT transactions. That was the most serious of the sanctions,” recalled Lukashenka. The Belarusian leader went on to claim that as Russia had not provided any assurances to compensate Belarus for such losses, two breakaway territories in Georgia were never officially recognised by Minsk.
The idea has once again gained traction during recent protests. On November 10, Nikolai Khalezin, director of the dissident Belarus Free Theatre, stated that the West should disconnect Belarus from SWIFT as a response to the authorities’ decision to freeze funds to victims of repressions which had been collected through the #BY_help crowdfunding campaign.
“Today Lukashenka’s power is based on the greed of the security forces, the cowardice of state officials and the indecisiveness of part of the population… Any significant pressure from the international community is perceived by the pyramid of power as a weakness for the dictatorship’s foundations”, explained Khalezin in an interview with GlobalVoices. “These measures deprive the dictatorship of the resources to pay wages to security forces and state officials”.
Many in the Belarusian opposition appear to share these hopes. In November, opposition presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya repeated these calls.
Lukashenka was outraged, claiming that those who called for Belarus to be disconnected from SWIFT wanted to “destroy the country”.
But then the pro-government line changed, attempting to downplay the significance of such a move.
According to the Nasha Niva newspaper, in late November the National Bank of Belarus sent a letter to private banks asking them to connect to the Russian-run Service Bureau SPFS system as soon as possible. This means that even if the EU and US can persuade SWIFT to disconnect Belarus, all major payments will be routed through Russian banks.
Then on December 4, pro-government analyst Pyotr Piatrouski told the state news agency BELTA: “Since the 1990s when Belarus was threatened with sanctions, the country created its own domestic banking system, Belkart. We’re also plugged into the Russian system. We’re connected to the Chinese system. At present, SWIFT has no monopoly on enabling monetary operations.”
“On the other hand, Belarus’ disconnection from SWIFT will deliver a most powerful blow to the Belarusian radical opposition… because the opposition will not be able to get funding via bank cards”, concluded Piatrouski in the same interview.
The Golos platform dismisses these arguments, stating that “the Russian system that was created as a backup for Russia’s own SWIFT disconnect will not help.” The banks of trade parties are not connected to it, while the SPFS service only allows transactions in Russian rubles, reads the statement, which predicts that import and export would stall in the case of a disconnect.
Previous attempts to limit access to technology used by the Belarusian government have not been tremendously successful. In 2011, the EU introduced an embargo on any arms and on equipment which could be used for internal repression, as a reaction to violence against protesters after the December 2010 presidential elections. The US has also banned economic relations with a range of Belarusian officials and enterprises, although by 2019 some sanctions had been removed or frozen due to a hope for normalised relations.
Despite these efforts, stun grenades used against protesters in the streets of Minsk in the summer and autumn of 2020 were of Czech origin. While they were presumably purchased before the 2011 embargo, the DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) technology used to limit access to dozens of independent websites in Belarus is a product of contemporary design. It was developed by the US-owned Canadian company Sandvine, whose representatives demonstrated technology to the Belarusian authorities as recently as May 2020.
After an investigation by Bloomberg and international outcry, the company revisited its internal code of ethics and ended the agreement with Minsk. “By ending the agreement, Sandvine said it would stop providing software updates and technical assistance for its equipment being used by the state-controlled National Traffic Exchange Center, which manages all internet data flowing in and out of the country. But that doesn’t mean the equipment will cease to function, and it will still be usable in the short term”, a spokesman of the company told Bloomberg in September 2020.
These two examples are just a tip of the iceberg.
According to a press release provided to Global Voices by representatives of the Belarusian diaspora in San Francisco, the true scope of cooperation may be much higher. These Belarusians have been protesting outside the offices of Silicon Valley companies due to their links with the Belarusian government. They claim that over 20 leading global IT companies are supplying technology to the Belarusian authorities, including Seagate Technology, Kingston Technology, IBM’s subsidiary Red Hat software, SAP SE, VMware Inc, Oracle Corporation, Broadcom Inc, Supermicro, Intel, NVIDIA and many others. Mentions of some of these companies’ products (such as VMWare, Seagate and Oracle) can indeed be found on the state’s portal for tenders.
While Western hardware and software is used to power the digital systems of most Belarusian state institutions, it is important to note that some are more deeply involved in repression than others.
“Supermicro, an information technology company based in San Jose, California, recently has won a tender with the Belarusian KGB for the supply of their equipment for 100 thousand dollars. Before the tender, the Belarusian community of San Francisco Bay Area sent them a letter about the situation in Belarus and asked them to stop the tender”, an event description of the November 24 protest says.
Supermicro has yet to issue a public response. It is plausible that Supermicro’s servers would help the country’s domestic security service store its data, although this cannot be known for sure.
But stopping the export of technology to a repressive regime would not be so easy. In reality, according to the official Belarus state tenders website, Supermicro’s servers would be supplied to the KGB via the private Belarusian company MAP INFO. On paper, the American company would not be involved in supporting the Belarusian KGB. In order to avoid this in practice, Supermicro would have to stop selling its equipment to any Belarusian private companies. The same can be said about the Vmware licensing software for servers which is used by the Informational and Analytical Center at the Presidential Administration – the September 2020 tender for it was won by the private Belarusian company Kvadrosoft.
Even if US companies did cease cooperation with their Belarusian private counterparts, it may not be enough. Given the small size of the Belarusian market, Russian private and state suppliers could then enter the game.
“Given the scarcity of domestic resources and the high dependence on external financing to fund trade deficit and to serve external debt, any restrictions imposed on capital flows may significantly deteriorate the economic situation and make Belarus more dependent on Russian financing”, concluded Julia Korosteleva in her study of the efficiency of sanctions targeting Belarus, published by the European Action External Service in 2012.
Eight years on, that remains the case. It is also true when it comes to supply chains. Close economic ties with Russia or Kazakhstan, as well as growing relations with (and dependency on) China would provide another opportunity for Minsk to purchase whatever equipment or goods it is denied by the West.
Importantly, open source technologies can also be used for many purposes — and cost nothing. They are already being used not only to circumvent censorship, but also to enable it, the case of the Austrian-owned mobile operator A1 shows.
When the Belarusian authorities attempted to shut down mobile internet access across Minsk during heated protests, A1 appeared to acquiesce to their demands. The company then came under scrutiny from the Austrian press. According to the Quirum Media Foundation, A1’s Belarusian subsidiary used this widely available Squid software in order to filter access to those independent media and other websites which displeased the government.
“Squid is just free open code software that can be installed on a powerful computer”, explained Vadzim Loseu, a Belarusian digital security analyst and consultant with extensive experience on Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan. “Its licence does not include any limitations about using the software product for internet filtering”.
For its part, A1 seemingly suggested that enforcing internet shutdowns is the price of doing business in Belarus. In its reply to the open letter of KeepItOn coalition, an NGO which campaigns against internet shutdowns, the provider stated: “It is obvious that limitation of access to internet services goes against the interest of the company and its clients. However, A1 Telekom Austria Groups is obliged to follow the local legislative and normative rules in every country of its operations”.
Moreover, it is worth remembering that although Belarus is a small market, it has a vibrant and well-regarded domestic IT sector. Some Belarusian companies already complain that they have faced aggressive online campaigns accusing them of ties with the Belarusian regime. For example this autumn, several opposition-run social media channels accused Synesis of providing the police with face recognition technologies via its Kipod software. In its defence, the company explained to Onliner.by that its cameras are only present in Minsk’s metro and railway stations, and can only recognise specific faces from its existing database, not from footage uploaded from protests as social media users speculated.
In the end, one thing is certain: Belarus has become globalised enough to be damaged if technologies and supplies become less accessible, but also globalised enough to be able to reorient itself to larger markets in the East. Certain open source products and its own IT sector’s potential would also complicate the effectiveness of any unilateral sanctions. So what can be done?
A more efficient approach by western governments and companies alike might be to  expand technologies to Belarus and make them more accessible. They already have good examples to follow within the IT sector: in August 2020, the Telegram messaging platform and secure VPN providers saved Belarusians from the total blackout by deploying anti-censorship tools and providing free traffic. The Poland- and Belarus-based broadcaster Euroradio also used mobile technology to launch a cellphone-based free access line to its newscasts during internet shutdowns.
“Imposing limitations on the distribution of technology in 2020 would most probably be impossible due to the interconnectedness of the Belarusian software and hardware market. Many companies are present on that market and if Sandvine leaves, somebody else could take their place tomorrow”, concluded Vadzim Loseu, the digital security analyst. “In general, responsibility for censorship and internet filtering lies with the states or other parties who apply those tools. If your neighbour keeps beating his cat with a shoe, you can talk to the producers and suppliers of shoes all you want, but it’s still important to remember who’s beating the cat.”
This article is made possible through a partnership with Transitions, a Prague-based publishing and media training organisation

author: Maryia Sadouskaya-Komlach


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WATCH: Belarus 2020: Still uploading? · Global Voices
Global Voices

In this inaugural edition of our Global Voices Insights series, media analyst Maryia Sadouvskaya-Komlach, artist Rufina Bezlova and scholar Gregory Asmolov join Global Voices’ Filip Noubel and Maxim Edwards to revisit the events that erupted in Belarus following the August 2020 presidential elections.
The session was live-streamed on December 14, 2021.
Read Global Voices’ Belarus coverage at https://globalvoices.org/specialcoverage/belarus-in-turmoil/.

author: Global Voices


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Trinidadian comedian uses humour to say gender-based violence isn’t funny · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Rhea-Simone Auguste, better known as the comedian Simmy De Trini. Photograph courtesy Auguste, used with permission. Photo credit: Mark Lyndersay for www.causeaneffect.co
Trinidad and Tobago, which has been grappling with increasing cases of gender-based violence and femicide, is still reeling over the murder of teenager Ashanti Riley, who was stabbed to death after being abducted by the driver of a private hire (PH) taxi on November 29.
Since then, online discussion has been rife over the tendency to victim-blame and put the onus on women to protect themselves, as opposed to focusing on changing the culture and socialisation of men.
One comedian decided to start pushing for that shift to happen in a rather unconventional way. On Facebook, Rhea-Simone Auguste, better known as Simmy De Trini, has published a series of scenarios, presented in local parlance, that play as reverse sexual harassment. The impact of this unexpected role reversal has emphasised the absurdity of what women are made to endure in the hyper-masculine Caribbean culture.
Via WhatsApp, Simmy chatted with Global Voices about the gravity of gender-based violence and why she believes that humour is a good way to jump-start productive public discussion on the issue.
Janine Mendes-Franco (JMF): Was this series inspired by the most recent spate of femicides or is this a theme you have been mulling over for a while now?
Simmy De Trini (SDT): As a survivor of both domestic violence and rape, I have been vocal over the last few years about the injustice women face and the inability of our current system to protect women from harm or worse, murder. The “reverse harassment” posts were not planned. I just got fed up of saying the same things so I switched it up and just started doing sarcastic posts about the situation.
JMF: Each of your instalments has attracted hundreds of likes, comments and shares. What kind of discussion did you want to get going?
SDT: When I realised the first post started gaining traction, the others were done with the hope of sparking discussions about the harassment women experience and the kind of attitudes we encounter that we need men to revisit and review in themselves and their friends.
JMF: Some people seem to be missing the point though.
SDT: The people who did not get it were in the minority and did not have an impact on me continuing. I felt like more people understood where I was coming from so I did not hesitate to keep sharing the posts.
JMF: How disturbing is it to you that most women can identify with some measure of what you speak about in these scenarios?
SDT: Very disturbing but not surprising. In conversations with friends, I have heard so many women talk about these situations with men that I already knew many others would have similar experiences and stories.
JMF: Tell us about your journey to becoming a comedian. Your brand of humour always seems to address serious issues by presenting truths in non-threatening ways. Why is this important to you, and as a woman in what remains a macho society, do you feel a responsibility to provoke thought to a greater degree than a male comedian might?
SDT: I started doing stand-up in 2017, as a creative outlet to help me cope and explore topics that had affected or impacted my life. I have some superficial stuff mixed in but try to explore aspects of mental health and domestic violence prevention and abuse when I can. I don't think much about it in terms of a responsibility but hope my messages sink in for those who can relate.
JMF: How do you tap into this ability to place yourself in the midst of an issue, yet find a way to witness the injustice through laughter?
SDT: I really don't overthink things. If something is going on that I want to talk about, I just do it spur of the moment and from my perspective.
JMF: Is there a difference between Simmy the Trini and Rhea-Simone? How do you draw the line?
SDT: Huge difference. Simmy is a stage name and a different personality. Simmy is loud and funny and all about the public life. Rhea-Simone [is] who I am as a person. I am a loner and like to be in quiet spaces where I can hear my own thoughts. People are usually surprised when they meet me and realise that Simmy can be “turned off,” and that I am mostly serious and able to speak on a range of topics that are not necessarily funny, but hold importance. That's why aside from comedy, I have been trying to do more public speaking and motivational speaking engagements because I enjoy talking to people in different settings.
JMF: You’re the mother of two boys. How is your work teaching them to change what seems to be a pervasive objectification of women in Trinidad and Tobago?
SDT: My sons are being raised to respect and value women. The women around me and by extension them are usually strong, vocal and from different walks of life. It is important to me that they grow up seeing women as equals and worthy of respect.
JMF: What do you want this series to accomplish?
SDT: More dialogue about what we have come to accept as the norm — but in reality is a degradation and devaluing of women — leading to these instances of violence, abuse, harassment or murder.
JMF: How do you think we can begin to solve the problem of gender-based violence?
SDT: Just as there is a sexual offenders registry, we need to have a domestic violence registry for repeat offenders. If you check the background of some of the men who end up murdering a woman in a domestic violence scenario, they sometimes have a clear history and pattern and it was escalating. Counselling for both victims and abusers is necessary to help people with anger management and conflict resolution techniques and strategies. Education is important too. I would love to see a full campaign in the public space that shows a no tolerance aspect for abuse and violence against women.
JMF: What role has social media played when it comes to sharing and promoting your work?
SDT: Facebook, in particular, has been important as it has allowed me to grow a following for my work and opened doors for me to get more work not just as a comedian but as a self-employed journalist and content creator.
JMF: Who have been your greatest influences?
SDT: My mom. My sons. Professionally, as a writer, I was trained by and worked with [journalists] Keith Smith, Deborah John and Angela Martin. In terms of comedy, Wanda Sykes — and I hope to work with her one day.
JMF: Imagine you’re doing a show and your audience is only men. What would you say to them, all jokes aside?
SDT: Women are important to the very fabric of our society. You stand to benefit when you see our value, our contributions and our worth.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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After years of protests, the Islamabad Zoo will convert into an animal sanctuary · Global Voices
R Umaima Ahmed

Lion at a Zoo. Image via Wikipedia by Carlosar. CC BY-SA 3.0
The Islamabad Zoo, long a source of complaints from Pakistani animal activists, is officially closing down and converting into an animal conservation centre, city officials announced on December 8.
In May, the Islamabad High Court ordered all of its 878 animals to be relocated to conservation centres. The court also ordered that the zoo's management be handed over from the Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (IMC) to Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB), on whose recommendation the Ministry of Climate Change decided to convert the 82-acre space into a wildlife conservation centre.
Among the animals relocated is Kavaan, who in 2012, after the death of his partner, became known around the world as “the world's loneliest elephant.”
The zoo has been closed to the public since April due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Rina Saeed Khan, a climate activist and a non-official member of the IWMB, tweeted:
IWMB resolution on future of Islamabad Zoo passed yesterday at our board meeting! Look forward to being part of this exciting new beginning for Margalla Wildlife Conservation Centre! pic.twitter.com/3lK50nGCI6
— Rina S Khan (@rinasaeed) December 9, 2020
Pakistan's Federal Minister of Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam also reacted to the news:
As per recommendations of the @WildlifeBoard the @ClimateChangePK has initiated the process to convert #IslamabadZoo to a world class #WildlifeConservationCentre pic.twitter.com/3DrgFzhHXI
— Malik Amin Aslam (@aminattock) December 10, 2020
Animal abuse dominated the conversation in Pakistan in 2020.
In July, two lions died of suffocation in the Islamabad Zoo after caretakers lit a fire inside the cage in order to force them to come out. Videos of the ordeal circulated on social media, causing widespread outrage.
In August, concerned citizens in Peshawar filed a joint petition to the city's High Court complaining of the treatment Peshawar Zoo dispensed to its animals. The petition claimed 18 animals had died in the zoo during the previous nine months.
In October, civil society organizations sued the Karachi Zoo after a viral video showed a Syrian brown bear with signs of exhaustion and thirst.
Mahera Omar, a documentary filmmaker and co-founder of Pakistan Animal Welfare Society, recently shared an older video of Karachi zoo, showing chained elephants.
At 9am on a Sunday in the winter of 2018, I happened to see elephants in chains inside the Karachi Zoo. Caught as babies from the wild in Tanzania, NoorJehan and Madhubala were chained by three legs each in solitary isolation. #FreeTheKarachiElephantshttps://t.co/XOk1mH3hJZ pic.twitter.com/JgS6oOJ2SM
— Mahera Omar (@afewmofilms) December 3, 2020
This week, a video showing a lion forcefully being brought to a rally of the opposition party Pakistan Democratic Movement also caused outrage. The lion was later confiscated by the authorities. It is common for some political parties in Pakistan to bring animals to rallies as mascots.
Wildlife biologist and nature conservationist Uzma Khan tweeted:
How disgraceful and cruel is this! Wild animals dragged to political rallies & visibly took stressed and uncomfortable. Pakistan needs to ban exotic big cats as pets & their trade #MaryamNawazLahoreRally @ZacGoldsmith @WWFPak @CITES @ARYNEWSOFFICIAL @PunjabWildlife @hnaqikhan pic.twitter.com/nIdYNjdwzx
— Uzma Khan (@commonleopardo) December 10, 2020
Keeping wild animals such as big cats as pets is common amongst Pakistan's wealthiest.
According to Dawn News, “Pakistani laws make it easy to import exotic animals, but once inside the country, regulation is almost non-existent.” It is believed that the country is full of private breeding farms of endangered animals, whose trade is internationally banned.
Pakistan is also famous for the hunting of the large terrestrial bird houbara bustard, which has protected status internationally. The government also makes millions of dollars annually through the sale of permits for trophy hunting of the markhor, Pakistan's national animal.
Laws against criminal abuse are also considered weak.
A British colonial-era law against animal torture stipulates a fine ranging from 50 to 500 Pakistani rupees (approximately 0.30-3 USD) as punishment for mistreating animals. The national minimum wage in Pakistan is 17,500 rupees (USD 109).
The current government has promised to update the laws regarding harm to animals.

author: R Umaima Ahmed


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Ecuador’s transgender communities organize first-ever National Trans March · Global Voices
Carlos E. Flores

The first National Trans March of Ecuador, November 20, 2020. Photo by Andrea Romero, used with permission.
Rita Hester, a black transgender woman, was brutally murdered in her United States apartment in 1998. Her death became one of the catalysts behind the International Transgender Day of Remembrance held every November 20. The day memorializes members of the transgender community who have lost their lives to acts of violence caused by transphobia.
On 2020's Transgender Day of Remembrance, Ecuador's transgender community organized its first-ever National Trans March which was celebrated in cities across the country. La Red Comunitaria Trans (the Trans Community Network), based in Guayaquil, was in charge of organizing the march. Pachaqueer, one of the participating collectives, sent out a press release explaining the importance of the march:
#marchamostrans en ruptura cøntracultural y pølítica pørque #estamoshartas de las élites y cønsevadurismøs lgbtiq+. marchamøs para reclamar espaciøs dønde læs persønas trans pødamøs ser recønøcidæs desde la autønømia de nuestras existencias. marchamøs en memøria de nuestræs muertæs y en resistencia de nuestræs cuerpæs.
#marchamostrans (We walk as trans) against culture and pølitics because ##estamoshartas (We've had enough) øf the LGBTIQ+ elites and cønservatism. we march tø claim spaces where trans peøple can be recøgnized starting with the autønømy øf øur existence. we march in memøry øf øur dead and in resistance før øur bødies.
Coca and Mota, both founders and managers of Pachaqueer, spoke with Global Voices on Zoom.
The first National Trans March of Ecuador, November 20, 2020. Photo by Andrea Romero, used with permission.
Carlos E. Flores (CF): What was the objective and political agenda for the first National Trans March in Ecuador?
Coca: Uno de los principales detonantes para la organización desde la autonomía y desde la colectividad de esta marcha fue que estamos hartas, estamos cansadas de la deuda social, de la deuda estatal, de la mercantilización de la lucha trans. Entonces, sentimos que estos 23 años en Ecuador la despenalización [de la homosexualidad] está vigente, ya no somos detenidas simplemente por el hecho de existir pero sigue habiendo una discriminación social, una penalización en las calles hacia las cuerpas trans.
Y las élites o las hegemonías que han llevado la lucha LGTBI, aquí en el país, durante todo este tiempo, lo único que han hecho ha sido lucrar de las muertes de las personas trans, de las necesidades de la población trans. Sentimos que ha llegado a un punto en que nosotras ya no queremos dialogar con estas organizaciones porque nos sentimos instrumentalizadas a pesar de que esta lucha por la despenalización [de la homosexualidad] en el país fue encabezada por personas travestis y transexuales e, irónicamente, esta misma población es la que ha sido rezagada durante toda la historia […].
Coca (C): We organized the march on our own with the community mainly because we are fed up, we are tired of the social debt, of the State debt, of the commodification of the struggle of trans people. Since the decriminalization [of homosexuality] in Ecuador 23 years ago, we are no longer being arrested simply because we exist, but there is still social discrimination and criminalization in the streets against the female trans body.
During all this time, the elites or the leaders that have fought for the LGTBI in our country only have profited from the deaths of trans people, from the needs of the trans population. We feel that we have reached a point where we no longer want to dialogue with these organizations, because we feel instrumentalized, despite the fact that the fight for the decriminalization [of homosexuality] in the country was led by trans people. And, ironically, it is this same population that has been left behind throughout history […].
The first National Trans March of Ecuador, November 20, 2020. Photo by Andrea Romero, used with permission.
CF: What concrete demands did you make to the State with this march?
Coca: Bueno, hay un sinnúmero de demandas. Por ejemplo, la inserción del cupo laboral trans dentro del Código de Trabajo, las garantías y derechos para niñez y adolescencia, el acceso libre y gratuito de procesos de hormonización, los inhibidores para adolescencia trans, las garantías para adultas y adultos mayores trans, garantías para trabajadores sexuales […] Estas son las que más encabezaban esta necesidad de demandar al Estado.
También la reparación para las compañeras y compañeres asesinades en la época de los 80s y 90s en el régimen de dictadura de León Febres Cordero, cuando era penalizada la homosexualidad y había el [artículo] 516 [del entonces Código Penal] que permitía la persecución a personas transexuales y travestis por las calles donde eran asesinadas, desaparecidas, torturadas.
Ahora hay una demanda ingresada a la fiscalía, al Estado, por caso de lesa humanidad donde hace más o menos un año y medio que se ingresó el trámite y esta denuncia no avanza, entonces era una posibilidad de generar un poco de presión. Los mismos policías que fueron los que se encargaron de todas estas vejaciones a la población trans, ahora ellos gozan de jubilaciones, de una estabilidad económica y nuestras compañeras, nuestras próceres de la despenalización cada vez son menos y están en la precarización absoluta, están olvidadas. Entonces, [la marcha] es también por el ejercicio de la memoria y de la visibilidad.
C: Well, our demands are countless. For example, the introduction of a quota on trans labor within the Labor Code, guarantees and rights for children and adolescents, free access to hormonal procedures, inhibitors for trans adolescents, rights for trans adults and older adults, rights for sex workers […] These are the ones that mainly pushed us to take action against the State.
Also, the compensation for our fellow trans people who were murdered during the 1980s and 90s under the dictatorship of León Febres Cordero, when homosexuality was criminalized and when [Article] 516 [of the then Criminal Code] allowed the persecution of trans people and transexuals in the streets, where they were murdered, forcibly disappeared, and tortured.
Now a lawsuit was filed about a year and a half ago with the prosecutor's office, with the State, for cases against humanity. The lawsuit is still pending, so the march was an opportunity to create some pressure. The same police who were responsible for all of the abuses against the transgender population, they are now retired and they have economic stability, while our sisters, our champions of decriminalization, are fewer and fewer, and they are in a state of absolute precariousness, they are forgotten. So [the march] is also an invitation to remember and to demand visibility.
La primera Marcha Nacional Trans de Ecuador, 20 de noviembre 2020. Foto de Andrea Romero, utilizada con permiso.
CF: When you talk about compensation, what are you referring to?
Mota: Principalmente la reparación debería ser que el Estado reconozca que hubo tortura, asesinato y desapariciones por parte de la policía nacional en complicidad con el Estado de turno contra la población trans y contra la población LGTBI. Esta sería la mínima reparación, tener el reconocimiento del Estado.
De ahí hay obviamente otras reparaciones como la económica, reparaciones en el campo de la seguridad social, por ejemplo. Esto se está gestando obviamente para las personas que fueron víctimas de estas agresiones en esas épocas. Hay una lista larga de personas que se va acortando con el tiempo; lamentablemente mientras se espera que la justicia llegue, las mujeres trans siguen muriendo.
Mota (M): The main compensation is that the State recognizes that there were cases of torture, murder and forced disappearances carried out by the national police, in complicity with the State, against the transgender population and against the LGBTI population. This would be the minimum, to get the recognition of the State.
From there, there are obviously other types of compensation, such as economic compensation and social security compensation, for example. It is an ongoing process for the people who were victims of the aggressions at that time. There is a long list of people, but the list is getting shorter over time; as we are waiting for justice to be made, unfortunately, trans women continue to be killed.
CF: Finally, do you know what the situation is like for trans people in prisons in Ecuador?
Mota: Nosotras tenemos información cercana de la Red Comunitaria Trans que trabaja muy de cerca con el tema de mujeres trans privadas de libertad y también con mujeres transmigrantes. Lamentablemente, como decíamos en el inicio de estas declaraciones, existe un monopolio no solamente en el Ecuador sino en la región que se acreditan como organizaciones de lucha LGTBI u organizaciones y federaciones trans que lo único que hacen es lucrar de lo que son las muertes de las personas y lo que hacen es levantar cierta información que está disponible públicamente pero no recaban más allá, es decir, no se hace un seguimiento al tema de reparación y justicia. Eso por un lado.
Por otro lado, por supuesto que el sistema carcelario en el país tiene un déficit absoluto en el término de igualdad, en el respeto de género, de reconocimiento de la identidad trans. Lamentablemente, las mujeres trans tienen que ser destinadas a los reclusorios de hombres, ahí es donde tienen que hacer su tránsito. Muchas incluso tienen que parar su transición o tienen que de alguna u otra forma buscar las posibilidades de iniciar esa transición dentro de la privación de la libertad, estando encerradas, siendo privadas de libertad. Es una cosa humillante para una mujer trans tener que ingresar a un calabozo de hombres. Es humillante. Además es también exponernos una vez más a doble, triple, cuádruple vulneración porque vamos a ser objeto de violaciones, de vejaciones y un sinnúmero de maltratos por el tema de nuestra identidad de género.
M: We receive regular information from the Trans Community Network, which works closely with trans women who have been deprived of their liberty and also with transmigrant women. Unfortunately, as we said at the beginning of the interview, there is a monopoly of organizations, not only in Ecuador but throughout the region, that place themselves as pro-LGBTI or pro-trans federations, but they only make profits on the deaths of people and they only gather information that is publicly available. But they do not go beyond that, in other words, they do not follow up on the issue of compensation and justice. That's one thing.
The second thing is, of course, the prison system in the country fails tremendously in terms of equality, respect for gender, and recognition of transgender identity. Unfortunately, trans women are sent to men's prisons, which is where they transit. Many of them even have to put a stop to their transition or they somehow have look for ways to start their transition while being locked up and deprived of their liberty. It is humiliating for a trans woman to have to go to a men's prison. It is humiliating. It is also exposing us once again to two, three, four times as much vulnerability, because we are going to be subject to rape, humiliation, and countless other abuses because of our gender identity.

author: Carlos E. Flores


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Extension of Temporary Protection Status provides a moment of relief for Salvadoran immigrants in the US · Global Voices
Eddie Galdamez

“Protesters marching in support of immigrants” by Fibonacci Blue is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Hector Amaya entered the United States illegally from El Salvador in 2004. Despite currently being allowed to live and work legally in the US under the government's Temporary Protection Status (TPS), Amaya lives in constant fear of deportation.
The TPS was set to expire for Salvadorans on January 2, 2020, but an agreement was reached between the Trump administration and the Nayib Bukele administration which pushed back the cancellation date to January 2, 2021.
In early December 2020, the end date for the TPS program was extended to October 4, 2021, because of ongoing legal battles that have temporarily barred the Trump administration from ending the program. According to the Miami Herald,
On Monday, DHS said that although a U.S. appeals court in September overturned a Northern California lower district court's temporary injunction barring President Donald Trump from terminating TPS, the appellate court has not yet issued its directive to the district court to make that ruling effective.
As a result of the court's delay, the injunction ordered in the lawsuit Ramos vs. Nielsen on behalf of TPS recipients from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Sudan remains in place.
TPS immigration status was given to Salvadorans after the devastating 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador that left more than a thousand dead and hundreds of thousands of homes damaged. This program provides temporary legal status to Salvadorans who entered the US after 2001 and were unable to return home because of the natural disaster. In addition, the TPS has allowed immigrants from Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Nepal, Honduras, Liberia, South Sudan, Yemen, and Syria to remain in the US because of similar natural disasters or armed conflicts in their home countries.
Like many of the approximately 250,000 Salvadorans who live in the US under TPS, Amaya is having a hard time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic, he lost his construction job where he had been working for more than ten years after the company shut down during the pandemic.
He is worried about his employment situation, but he worries more about his parents back in El Salvador. Amaya told Global Voices via a phone interview that he has not seen his family, who still live in El Salvador, in over 15 years. His immigration status has always been temporary, and under the rules, he cannot leave the country and then re-enter legally. Amaya said:
It has been more than 15 years since I hugged my parents. All I want to do is sit with them and talk. Also, I want to see my mom smile and cook for me all the traditional Salvadoran foods, something she loves doing. It is the little things that I miss the most. My parents are older and live in a rural area of Berlin in Morazan. I am afraid they will get COVID and have to go to a Salvadoran Hospital. The fear of them getting sick and dying keeps me awake at night more than losing my job.
Besides COVID-19 and losing his job, Amaya has had to worry about his precarious immigration status. Despite the recent additional extension announcement, Amaya's prospects for becoming a permanent resident or a US citizen within the TPS program are still quite difficult. TPS holders can get permanent residence (Green Card) by other means such as family-based or employment-based petition. However, TPS recipients face another struggle. Even if they find a way to get permanent resident status, they must leave the country for 3 to 10 years and have their visa processed at a consular office.
If the TPS program is not extended past October 2021, he will be forced to leave the United States, a country that he calls home. His other option will be to stay in the US and be an undocumented immigrant, something he does not want to do. Amaya stated:
I live in constant fear that the TPS program will end before I find a way to become a permanent resident. I have done everything right; I am fluent in English, pay my taxes, and follow the law. I am looking to permanently legalize my status but haven't found a way yet.
Amaya hopes that the new administration of Joe Biden will extend TPS and allow him and others a path to become a lawful permanent resident.

author: Eddie Galdamez


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China’s imposition of electricity restrictions this winter gets a chilly reception · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Winter scenery in West Lake, Zhejiang province. By zhiyin586@163.com via Wikimedia (CC: AT)
Winter has come, yet many regions in southern China — including Hunan, Zhejiang and Jiangxi — have recently issued notifications regarding the limited supply of electricity. Because temperatures in these regions could fall to below zero degrees Celsius and some of the affected cities are highly developed, thousands of posts — all discussing how people are struggling — emerged on Chinese social media last week.
While some associated the restriction on electricity usage with China’s recent ban on Australian coal, others pointed out that the policy was related to Chinese president Xi Jinping’s commitment to cut carbon emissions. Regardless of the cause, China will likely feel colder than usual this winter, and people are unhappy about it.
Yiwu, a city in Zhejiang province that's known for its light industry trade, is among the most affected by the energy restriction policy. Many factories were told to cut 20 to 30 percent of their production capacity, and some must cease operating altogether until the end of December. In addition, the majority of the city's street lights have been turned off and the authorities have banned the use of heating system in trading centers, shopping malls, and other public venues such as libraries.
Complaints from Yiwu residents have flooded Weibo:
别的什么都能理解，晚上马路关灯什么的真出事了怎么办。我们这说冬季空调不能高于十六度，十六度什么概念吹出来的全是冷风！
I can understand the majority of the power-cut measures, but turning off street lights at night? What if there are robberies and accidents? We are asked to keep our air conditioning to 16 degree Celsius the highest; do you know how cold the wind is at 16 degree Celsius?
所在地：义乌，房东在租客群转发街道社区的通知，晚上12点前不允许开空调，街道和派出所会巡查，如发现开空调，罚款400元每次。
I'm in Yiwu. My landlord just sent me the notification from the street committee. We can’t turn on the heating before 12 am, or else we'll receive a RMB 400 yuan [approximately US $61] fine.
他妈的，不给开空调就算了，来检查发现我这栋楼有人开空调，把整栋楼的电都停了，无语子，难道供电不是国家的义务吗？？？我也没有不交电费，凭什么把我点给停了。神经吧！！！！
Well, banning heating is one thing. Once they find someone violating the rule, they shut down the lift. Speechless. Isn’t electricity supply a basic responsibility of the government? I pay for my electricity, how could they shut it down? This is insane.
Other cities, like Jinhua and Wenzhou (in Zhejiang) and Changsha (in Hunan), have suffered from similar restrictions.
Notifications about the cuts in electricity use were issued amid the trade spat between Australia and China, in which China’s list of sanctions on Australian products include barley, beef, lamb and lobster, wine, cotton, timber and coal.
However, since the amount of Australian coal exported to China amounted to only about two percent of China's total coal consumption in 2019, Hu Xijin, chief editor of the state-affiliated tabloid Global Times, rebuked the association of the energy shortage with China’s ban:
说这是打击澳大利亚对华煤炭出口导致的供电短缺，纯属胡扯。从澳大利亚煤炭进口的煤炭以焦煤为主，中国的电煤资源很丰富，问题在于开采和运输的组织，澳大利亚方向的进口即使有调整，那点波动对全国供电形势的影响也微乎其微。对澳政策打了我们自己，这种说法是境外势力和国内一些人的恶意杜撰。
It is nonsense to say that the electricity shortage is being caused by sanctions on Australian coal. The majority of imports from Australia are coking coal and China has huge thermal coal resources. The issue at stake is the organization of coal mining and transportation. The impact of Australian coal imports is not worth mentioning. The talk about us being hurt by our own sanctions is a malicious fabrication of fact by foreign forces, and some from within the country.
Hu stressed that the shortage was temporary: partly due to excessive demand in winter, and partly because of China’s commitment to cut carbon emissions.
Earlier this month, President Xi told the Climate Ambition Summit that by 2030 China would cut emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by “at least” 65 per cent compared with 2005 levels. However, China's energy supply continues to rely heavily on coal power, and its main strategy for meeting the target is to impose carbon emission quotas to local governments.
Hu Xijin’s explanation was in alignment with a number of investigative reports which pointed out that many governments in southern China had exceeded the carbon emission quotas handed down to them by the National Development and Reform Commission, and were therefore compelled to cut energy consumption towards the end of 2020.
Such explanations have attracted more critical comments, since the general feeling is that the commitment to cut carbon emissions should be driven by a shift to clean energy, rather than abruptly shutting down cities by turning off electricity in winter. As anticipated, angry responses followed Hu Xijing’s post:
民生是第一位的，是天。外交必须为国计民生服务。千万不能再像60年前那样，自己人饿死那么多，还在外面打肿脸充胖子。
People’s livelihoods should come first. Diplomacy should serve the people and we should not revert to the policy back in the 1960s, when people starved to death while the country was at war with others just to show its strength.
Under the leadership of former Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, the policy in the second five year plan under the slogan Great Leap Forward had resulted in a great famine which led to the death of about 45 million people between 1958 and 1961. In the period between 1955 and 1965, China had engaged in several military operations including Taiwan Strait Crisis (1955 and 1958), Tibetan Uprising (1959), China and Burma border conflict (1960), Xinjiang conflict (since 1960), Sino-Indian War (1962) and Vietnam War (1965-1969).
但是，如果是为了节能减排，我看说好多商家都在用柴油机发电，这不是脱裤子放屁了吗
If the aim is to cut carbon emissions, many entrepreneurs are now using fuel oil electric generators [which have high carbon emissions]. The policy is like taking off one’s pants to fart.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
‘Stop silencing MENA critical voices,’ say activists in open letter to Twitter and Facebook · Global Voices
Dahlia Kholaif

A mobile phone stacked with many major social media platforms. Photo by Tracy Le Blanc from Pexels, a free photo database.
Seventeen human rights organizations from the Middle East and North Africa region issued a joint statement on Thursday to Facebook and Twitter, denouncing social media platforms’ shushing of dissent voices by pulling down their accounts.
The letter, in which Global Voices is a signatory, marked the 10th anniversary of the so-called Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia and rippled across the region. Over the past decade, activists and peaceful protesters have heavily relied on social media to expose corruption and police brutality in their countries, as well as to organize mass demonstrations that tore down long-time dictatorships and disrupted others. During the uprisings that swept across the region, social media was used so heavily to organize and communicate that the period was nicknamed “Facebook revolutions.”
As freedoms and rights have diminished in many countries throughout the region in recent years, social media platforms remain a rare window of respite for voices of dissent. However, the group of signatories noted, Twitter and Facebook have targeted activists and opposition users.
“As we mark the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring, we, the undersigned activists, journalists, and human rights organizations, have come together to voice our frustration and dismay at how platform policies and content moderation procedures all too often lead to the silencing and erasure of critical voices from marginalized and oppressed communities across the Middle East and North Africa,” wrote the signatories.
The statement added:
Arbitrary and nontransparent account suspension and removal of political and dissenting speech has become so frequent and systematic that they cannot be dismissed as isolated incidents or the result of transitory errors in automated decision-making.
Along with Global Voices, endorsers of the open letter included parties from across the MENA region, including Access Now, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), Article 19, 7amleh, Daarb bees website, Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP), Gulf Centre for Human Rights, and other leading human rights organizations and journalists.
Listing a series of incidents in which activists and journalists in the region have had their accounts unplugged by Facebook and Twitter in Tunisia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, the letter stated that “examples such as these are far too numerous, and they contribute to the widely shared perception among activists and users in MENA and the Global South that these platforms do not care about them and often fail to protect human rights defenders when concerns are raised.”
The statement also noted that the two popular social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, often rush to respond to public outcry from Western activists or private advocacy by human rights organizations, while advocates in the MENA region are mostly ignored, with end-users being “frequently not informed of which rule they violated, and are not provided a means to appeal to a human moderator.”
The letter further said:
Remedy and redress should not be a privilege reserved for those who have access to power or can make their voices heard. The status quo cannot continue.
Urging Facebook and Twitter not to “be complicit in censorship and erasure of oppressed communities’ narratives and histories,” human rights groups called on the two giant social media platforms to follow four main measures to address raised concerns in a region they described as having “one of the world’s worst records on freedom of expression.”
The measures put forth by the human rights defenders include that Facebook and Twitter do not engage in arbitrary or unfair discrimination, by actively engage with local users, activists, human rights experts, academics, and civil society from the MENA region to review grievances, as well as rely on necessary local and regional expertise in order to develop and implement context-based content moderation decisions that are aligned with human rights frameworks in the MENA region.
The letter also called on platforms to “pay special attention to cases arising from war and conflict zones to ensure content moderation decisions do not unfairly target marginalized communities,” and to offer greater transparency than public apologies for technical errors that persist as “erroneous content moderation decisions.”
At the time of writing, Twitter and Facebook have not responded to the letter.

author: Dahlia Kholaif


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In Belarus, a new civic culture is born out of recycled historical symbols in urban yards · Global Voices
Ales Plotka

Minsk's industrial suburbs united, with their own white-red-white flags: Altayskaya, Anharskaya, Sokal, Partyzanski district and Shabany. The latter is the most stigmatised district of the Belarusan capital, often compared to Harlem in New York. Photo by Kanstancin Kasiak, used with permission.
In Belarus, people continue to resist and protest, having in their majority refused to recognize the results of the August 9 presidential election in which Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed a sixth consecutive term. Every Sunday, massive protest marches continue to take place in the capital Minsk, some being the country’s largest demonstrations since the restoration of independence in 1991. But on working days, a new form of protest is developing: inhabitants of a few high rises on the outskirts of the city gather in the spaces between their buildings, and march displaying their own local visual identity based on revisited old symbols of national history.
For months, the brutality of the police has been concentrated mostly in the city center, where the movement started in August, and where most of the Sunday marches also take place. Media sources such as Nasha Niva now estimate that over 30,000 people have been detained since the protests began. The independent monitoring initiative Project 23.34 has examined over 3,200 detention cases; one-third of the respondents, most of them under 30 years old, had been subjected to physical violence. Furthermore, 144 political prisoners remain in jail. This is why, in order to overcome this trauma and yet to continue resisting state violence, part of the protest has moved to local neighborhoods.
What hasn't changed though, is the reference to an old, yet powerful, symbol: the historical, white-red-white Belarusan flag. Given that the official authorities use a green-red flag, intellectuals never expected such seas of the white-red-white flag and its imagery on the streets of Minsk and other major cities across the country. Precisely because it was demonized by the authorities, people decided to claim it as a symbol of their opposition to Lukashenka, to dictatorship, and of solidarity in their protest, giving it a new meaning.
Flag of the Selmash district in Homiel featuring the image of a typical gopnik. Photo by Dzmitry Novikau, used with permission.
So once it started to reappear in the streets, people started creating very local variants of the white-red-white flag for their districts and neighborhoods. In just a couple of weeks, cities and towns, districts, and sometimes even streets of Minsk, came up with their own, new flags. Local identity is, indeed, strong in Belarus, a society that for long was steeped in peasant culture proud of its local specificity. There are now literally hundreds of those flags, which are printed in different formats and sizes, and adorn windows, walls, but also cars, protest signs, clothes.
What is particular is the process of “desacralisation” of historical symbols: the new flags and coats of arms relate to modern-day, popular culture, as well. For example, the industrial district of Semash in Homiel, Belarus’ third city, adopted the figure of a gopnik, a figure of urban subculture associated in former Soviet cities with poor education and background and specific music and dress code.
On November 12, 31-year-old Raman Bandarenka confronted a group of strangers who had arrived to remove the white-red-white ribbons in his Minsk yard; he was beaten and later died in hospital.
The white-red-white ribbons in Bandarenka’s courtyard were just one expression of this hyperlocal activism. Initially, courtyards like these served as refuges during the first days of protest: their inhabitants assisted those who were fleeing riot police by hiding them. Today, protesters are claiming back the urban space by organizing sporadic and decentralised acts of civic resistance. Some are coordinated over the platform Dze.chat, an interactive map showing local Telegram channels, the encrypted messenger service that is most favored in Belarus. The project, which was inspired by urban blogger Anton Matolka, quickly became an indispensable tool for local communities’ self-organisation. It was a logical continuation of protest marches in suburbs, which had never happened before in new Belarusan history.
Yards thus started organizing their lives themselves. The newly created flags have triggered further interest to know what stands behind their imagery, and people have invited poets, musicians and cultural creatives to stage concerts, lectures, workshops and film screenings, something unprecedented in Belarus. As with the case of Bandarenka, some of those events did not go well: on September 21, the rock musicians Alyaksandr Pamidorau and Lesley Knife were arrested and spent several days in prison.
But some actions have also gained national popularity, and have a second life online: the Yanka Kupala State Theatre, a major cultural institution in the country, resigned en masse in August after its director, Paviel Latushka, was fired for supporting the anti-Lukashenka protest. The now underground actors have since become the heroes of the courtyards: their YouTube channel, with nearly 150,000 viewers, is growing in popularity. A rock band, called J:Mors, also held an impromptu concert on a balcony on September 12, narrowly evading arrest. The performance can be viewed on this YouTube video:
The concert took place on a balcony overlooking what is now called the Square of Changes, or Ploshcha Pieramien in Minsk. Once a nondescript courtyard with no formal name, the Square of Changes has become well known in Belarus. It is the location of a mural depicting two DJs who were detained by police after playing Viktor Tsoi’s famous song “Peremen” (“Change” in Russian) at an official event, in reference the protest culture at the end of the Soviet state. The mural has been guarded by police, vandalised, and painted over many times.
Not least, the Square of Changes was where Raman Bandarenka was last seen alive.
This new yard identity is a powerful source not only of resistance but also of self-governance: those locations are now gradually gaining public use due to popular sayings, images online, and even their use in newspaper headlines.
All these steps of real and natural grass-roots activities, together with the local Belarusan community, whose consolidated position and support have become an influential factor of this year’s never-ending resistance, form a new Belarusan society. The process goes the way it should: from low and local to high and national and even global.
This article is made possible through a partnership with Transitions, a Prague-based publishing and media training organisation.

author: Ales Plotka


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Combating misinformation in under-resourced languages: Lessons from around the world · Global Voices
First Draft News

Illustration by First Draft News and used with permission.
Editor's note: The following article written by Ali Abbas Ahmadi was originally published on the First Draft website. It is being republished as part of a partnership for the webinar on December 10.
The languages we speak greatly determine our access to reliable information and fact checks that debunk half-truths or false claims. A recent webinar by First Draft and Global Voices investigates how linguistic minorities can overcome this information inequality.
The year 2020 has taught us that virtually all communities struggle with the effects of misinformation. While those that speak majority languages have access to fact-checking and verified information in their native tongues, the same is not always true of other communities. Minority languages are often under-resourced by both platforms and fact-checking organizations, making it even more difficult to tackle misinformation and build up media literacy in these communities.
As part of its Rising Voices initiative, Global Voices’ Eddie Avila and First Draft’s Marie Bohner spoke to experts from around the world to see how local communities are tackling the threat of misinformation in their native languages. Among them is Rahul Namboori of Fact Crescendo in India, Endalkachew Chala, of Hamline University in the United States, and Kpenahi Traoré, of RFI from Burkina Faso, who shared perspectives on tackling this unique challenge.
India is home to 22 official languages excluding English and at least 500 unofficial ones, making it especially difficult for fact-checkers, journalists and educators to ensure everyone has access to verified information. The spread of false information has had especially dangerous repercussions in the country, as rumors have incited attacks and riots against ethnic and religious minorities, leaving dozens dead in the past few years.
It is in this context that Fact Crescendo is fighting false information, Namboori explained. The organization verifies information in seven regional languages, in addition to English and Hindi, with the help of localized teams to both find rumors and prevent their spread. Fact Crescendo’s regional teams are made up of local journalists who speak the local language and understand their unique cultural and political environments where they operate. Using tools such as Facebook’s CrowdTangle, the teams monitor hundreds of Groups and social media accounts to track misleading and false information. Fact Crescendo also uses WhatsApp tip lines and groups so their fact-checkers can communicate directly with local communities and provide them with verified information in their own languages.
It is not just about how misinformation travels between major languages spoken in India such as English or Hindi, but also how misinformation from abroad makes its way into the country. False claims about the coronavirus from Italy or Spain jumped from Spanish and Italian into English and Hindi, before making its way into regional languages, Namboori said. A layer of localized context is added with each jump, making the misinformation that much more believable and allowing it to echo in linguistic communities with little or no access to reliable information.
Ethiopia is similarly diverse when it comes to languages, with three major ones and 86 others spoken in the East African country. “Most of these languages are under-resourced, and there is no fact-checking in these languages,” said Endalkachew Chala, from Ethiopia. Even though several of these languages are heavily used on social media platforms, their speakers do not have easy access to verified or reliable information.
Recently, internet shutdowns in the northern Tigray region due to the conflict in the country have exacerbated the issue of under-resourced languages. It has led to the creation of “two universes of information, where people living in the Tigray region do not know what is going on,” said Chala. The people there only have access to information broadcast by regional media, which has led to a “disjointed” understanding of the situation as those within Tigray have a different perspective to those living outside, Chala added.
Chala has also seen health-related misinformation proliferate across Ethiopia. False claims about the COVID-19 pandemic were rife in Ethiopia in several languages, spreading both within and across linguistic communities. The lack of fact-checking organizations or access to reliable information in under-resourced languages allowed these rumors to permeate into smaller rural communities and linguistic minorities.
“There are people from across Ethiopia who are willing to verify and fact check,” said Chala, but foreign funding almost always goes to those with political connections or speakers of dominant languages in urban centers. He added that platforms and foreign companies need to hire native speakers of minority languages to help verify the information for these communities so as not to rely on non-native speakers.
Elsewhere in Africa, speakers of the minority Bambara language in the western part of the continent are also dealing with similar resourcing issues. Although members of the Bambara communities receive their news from local media on TV and radio and may therefore avoid the tsunami of online misinformation, they are also entirely dependent on traditional media outlets, said Kpenahi Traoré. The responsibility of these outlets to report factual information is therefore even greater because Bambara communities often do not have access to the internet to fact check what they hear. Although local organizations do not currently have the resources to transmit factual information to their communities, there are foreign organizations including RFI Mandenkan that fact-check information in Bambara and other local languages, said Traoré.
In the Amazon, where indigenous communities predominantly communicate orally, it has been key that resources — particularly those around the coronavirus — were similarly “localized,” said Avila of Global Voices. “Who or what may be trusted in one culture may not be the same in another culture, and so keeping that in consideration is really important in the kinds of things we’re seeing online.”
While individuals and certain organizations are making an effort to provide speakers of under-resourced languages with factual information, linguistic minority populations are still at a distinct disadvantage to those who speak dominant languages. Even as the world has become more globalized through the internet, those with less connectivity or who communicate differently are left behind. Media outlets and social media platforms can invest in these local communities to build media literacy and so they can have the same access to verified information in their languages as everyone else.
And yet, these globe-spanning examples also underscore the need to address broader questions like literacy rates or internet connectivity when designing solutions to counter the problem of misinformation in minority languages. Understanding how linguistic communities communicate is key to building the required infrastructure to improve media literacy.

author: First Draft News