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The CIA’s Online Museum Offers a Glimpse of US Military Intervention in Southeast Asia · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

The Airmen’s Bond, Oil on Canvas by Keith Woodcock, 2008, Donated Courtesy of the Air America Association Board. Source: Flickr / U.S. government work
Out of the 211 artifacts in the online collection of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, 24 are categorized as part of the agency’s operations in Southeast Asia.
The CIA's online museum provides a glimpse of the agency’s history in the past half-century. It is also intended to pay tribute to CIA officers and other “heroes” of the U.S. government.
For non-Americans, the interactive collection is a useful website to study the role of the U.S. in shaping world affairs. These interventions could be seen as either good or bad, but there’s no doubt that the work of the CIA had left a lasting influence in the countries it operated.
Take the case of Southeast Asia, for example, a region where U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War led to the expansion of the CIA’s paramilitary operations in Laos and Cambodia.
The painting above depicts a rescue operation conducted in Laos by Air America, a CIA-operated commercial company.
During the 1960s, the CIA led a “secret war” in Indochina to prevent the communist-controlled north of Vietnam from attacking the south through Laos. The CIA trained a paramilitary group aside from providing air support to anti-communist forces.
It is revealing that the description of the painting in the CIA website makes reference to Laos as “one of the most bombed places on earth”. What it failed to mention is that most of the bombs failed to detonate and these unexploded bombs continue to injure and kill Laotians up to this day.
The painting also depicts the Air America operation in the Plain of Jars, an important archeological site that remains unexplored because of the bombs dropped by the CIA more than 40 years ago. Last year, Global Voices reported how drones are making it possible to see the Plan of Jars again from the sky.
Elephant counter. Source: CIA
This CIA device known as “elephant counter” was used during the Vietnam War to monitor the number of people and goods which are being transported by communist forces in the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam to South Vietnam along the borders of Laos and Cambodia. But many of the trail watchers recruited by the CIA could not read, write, or count and so the “elephant counter” was invented. Here’s how the device works:
The device featured “pictograms,” such as symbols representing troops, trucks, motorcycles, carts, bicycles, tanks, cannons, small artillery, missiles, donkeys, and yes, occasionally elephants, a common beast of burden in Laos. Alongside each pictogram was a knob that could be set to a number, and then the data could be transmitted to an airplane by activating a toggle switch.
Saigon evacuation facilities map. Source: CIA
Near the end of Vietnam War in 1975, the CIA had prepared an evacuation plan for Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. This map identifies the 14 emergency assembly sites in Saigon as contained in the operation named “Frequent Wind”.
Infrared lantern beacon. Source: CIA
According to the CIA:
Modifications by Agency technicians transformed this commercial Coleman lantern into an infrared beacon that could be seen from as far away as 250 feet. Gasoline powered and painted dull black, the beacon emitted a narrow vertical infrared beam as well as some visible light, making it useful for marking air-drop and landing-field locations during the Vietnam war.
Patch of Free Thai. Source: CIA
The CIA was first known as Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and one of its first operations during World War II included the training of Thai students in the U.S. to fight for the liberation of Thailand, which was occupied by Japan at the time. The OSS helped in establishing the Free Thai Movement.
Paratrooper pocket knife. Source: CIA
The CIA writes:
This OSS paratrooper’s knife, issued to a member of the Free Thai Movement, went into the parachutist’s breast pocket for use in the event he landed in a tree and had to cut himself free of his parachute lines. The blade is spring activated to enable opening it with one hand.
Bolo knife with leather sheath. Source: CIA
The bolo knife was used by OSS and US combat forces in the tropical jungles of Southeast Asia during World War II. The description in the website mentioned that it was first used after the Spanish-American War (1898-1899), which could also mean that it was adopted by the U.S. army during its occupation of the Philippines. The bolo knife is a popular weapon in the southern part of the Philippines.
Woodsman’s Pal knife. Source: CIA
The CIA writes that this was part of the survival kit for American forces in the Philippines, China, and Myanmar during World War II. This knife was also said to be ideal for cutting through jungle brush. As a combat knife, its manufacturer-provided instructions on how to use the Woodsman’s Pal to defeat a Japanese soldier armed with a samurai sword. During World War II, Japan invaded several countries in the Asia-Pacific.
Distortion measuring set. Source: CIA
According to the CIA:
Atlantic Research Corporation’s distortion measuring set was used to analyze the percentage of distortion on a communications circuit in Bangkok, Thailand. This unit is dated “9 July 1969.”

author: Mong Palatino


text:
The Day Latin America Declared Itself Feminist · Global Voices
Emergentes

#NosotrasParamos (#WereOnStrike). Collaborative coverage. Photo from Emergente. Used with permission.
This is an adaptation of an original article published by Facción Latina in Medium, reproduced here with consent.
On March 8, women throughout Latin America participated in the International Women's Strike, joining mass demonstrations in countries around the world. Footage from the rallies shows how well attended and energetic the crowds were:
What brought thousands of women into the streets earlier this month? To answer that question, women from five different countries — all activists in the Facción Latina (Latina Faction) Collective — recently sat down and explained why the strike was important to people in their areas. You can read their responses below.
Federica Turbán is a social worker, a specialist in gender and generational violence issues, and a feminist activist who belongs to Mujeres en el Horno (Women in the Oven) and Diez de Cada Diez (Ten Out of Ten). She says the demonstrations on March 8 were rooted in longstanding historical claims:
Este 8 de Marzo, las Mujeres Uruguayas, organizadas e independientes, trabajadoras remuneradas y no remuneradas, autónomas o autoconvocadas, adherimos y convocamos a una jornada de Paro, Lucha, Resistencia y Movilización, nucleadas y articuladas en una Plataforma que es Nacional, Latinoamericana y Mundial, con la consigna #SiParamosLasMujeresParamosElMundo.
Se realizaron múltiples y diversas actividades en todo el territorio nacional, desde las capitales de los Departamentos, hasta los pueblitos del interior rural. Las convocatorias fueron variadas y han venido surgiendo de la sociedad civil organizada, los movimientos sociales, sindicales, estudiantiles, organizaciones feministas, entre otras. A su vez el Gobierno, mediante algunas circulares Ministeriales, manifestó su apoyo y compromiso con el Paro de Mujeres.
Los motivos por los que paramos, son diversos, heterogéneos, individuales, colectivos, simbólicos, materiales, culturales, económicos y sociales. Obedecen a los históricos reclamos de las mujeres en términos de igualdad de oportunidades y derechos en todos los ámbitos de producción y reproducción de la vida pública y privada, pero fundamentalmente por el Derecho de las Mujeres a vivir una Vida Libre de cualquier tipo de Violencia, que atente contra la Autonomía de nuestros cuerpos, como territorios históricamente en disputa.
On March 8, Uruguayan women — organized and independent, paid and unpaid workers, unconnected or self-organized — assembled and called for a day of strikes, fighting, resistance, and mobilization. They were concentrated and cooperating on national, Latin American, and global platforms with the slogan #SiParamosLasMujeresParamosElMundo [#IfWomenStopTheWorldStops].
There were various activities throughout the country, from the department capitals to the rural interior villages. The assorted gatherings had gradually emerged out of organized civil society, social and student movements, trade unions, and feminist organizations, among others. In turn, the government, through some official newsletters, expressed its support and commitment to the Women's Strike.
The reasons for our strike are many and diverse. Our reasons are individual, collective, symbolic, material, cultural, economic, and social. They follow women’s historical claims relating to equal opportunities and rights in all areas of production and reproduction in public and private life, but fundamentally for women to have the right to live a life free from any kind of violence that threatens the autonomy of their bodies, as if they were historically disputed territories.
The stats:
Driade Aguiar, editor of the journalist group Midia Ninja and member of Fora Do Eixo (Off the Grid), a collaborative and decentralized network of Brazilian artists and producers, said:
En el caso de Rio de Janeiro, el Paro Internacional de las Mujeres se vió como una oportunidad de conectar a las mujeres de nuestro país con América Latina. Para nosotras esta es una lucha incansable, para que Brasil se entienda como parte de la región, porque es momento de la lucha de las mujeres se unifique. Así mismo, la marcha contra Trump de las Women’s March también fue motivante. En este contexto, el Paro Internacional de Mujeres es una excusa para mostrar que las mujeres estamos unificadas en una sola pauta.
Aquí, en Brasil, se está pensando bien fuerte como trabajar el eje económico. Hay que entender que pensar en un paro en este país es sumamente simbólico por el peso y el tamaño de nuestra economía. Desde este lugar se están pensando acciones para concientizar a la mujer sobre su rol en la economía brasileña.
In the case of Rio de Janeiro, the International Women's Strike was seen as an opportunity to connect the women of our country with Latin America. For us, this is a relentless battle; for Brazil to be understood as part of the region, it's time for the women's struggle to unify us. The Women's March against Trump was also motivating. In this context, the International Women's Strike is a way to show that women are unified around a single agenda.
Here in Brazil, we are thinking very hard about how to work in the economic hub. You have to understand that thinking about a strike in this country is extremely symbolic because of the weight and size of our economy. It's from this place that we're considering actions to raise women's awareness about their role in the Brazilian economy.
The stats:
Elena Apílnaez Piniella, a feminist activist from from Ni una Menos Bolivia (Not One Less Bolivia), explained:
#NiUnaMenosBolivia somos un movimiento ciudadano colectivo, no institucional, no político partidario impulsado por mujeres feministas indignadas y hartas de la creciente situación de violencia machista y feminicida contra las mujeres y niñas en Bolivia, cuya máxima y más dramática expresión es la ola de feminicidios que está viviendo el país. #NiUnaMenosBolivia queremos denunciar la persistente situación de explotación y subordinación de las mujeres en nuestro país.
#NiUnaMenosBolivia is a collective, non-institutional, nonpartisan, grassroots movement driven by feminist women who are outraged and fed up with the growing situation of misogynistic violence and femicide affecting women and girls in Bolivia, whose biggest and most dramatic focus is the wave of femicides the country is experiencing. #NiUnaMenosBolivia wants to denounce the constant exploitation and subordination of women in our country.
The stats:
#NosotrasParamos (#WereOnStrike). Collaborative coverage. Photo from Emergente. Used with permission.
Parwa Orbitas, of the Ni Una Menos Peru (Not One Less Peru) grassroots group, summarized the grievances and ambitions of the women's strike:
Este 8M las mujeres peruanas usaron el color morado, el color feminista, paramos nuestras actividades de trabajo durante las 12 y 13 horas, dejamos el trabajo doméstico y de cuidado con el fin de que deje de ser invisibilizado. Marchamos por la igualdad, en contra del giro neoconservador que ha inventado una supuesta “ideología de género”, nos organizamos en muchas regiones del país, hicimos temblar la tierra.
Esperamos que el Estado comience a tomar la igualdad y la violencia machista como un prioridad.
This March 8, Peruvian women wore purple, the feminist color, we stopped our work activities from noon to one, and we dropped our domestic work and caregiving tasks in order to stop being invisible. We marched for equality, against the neoconservative shift that has invented a supposed “gender ideology,” we organized in many regions of the country, and we shook the very earth.
We hope the state will begin to make gender equality and violence against women a priority.
The stats:
Guillermina Soria is a member of the Information Network for Safe Abortion, the School of Popular Feminism, Revolutionary Identities, and Sexualities. She singled out the demonstrations as a way to protest patriarchal injustices in modern medicine.
En Venezuela vamos a centrar el paro en el tema de la violencia obstétrica, que viene afectando fuertemente a las mujeres, sobre todo en el marco de la guerra económica que está enfrentando el país, las dificultades para el acceso a los insumos y el permanente saboteo médico hacen que la situación de las mujeres más pobres sea dramática al momento de parir.
Nosotras paramos en contra de la violencia ejercida cotidiana y categóricamente en contra del cuerpo de las mujeres. Paramos en contra de la colonización de nuestros cuerpos y de la medicina ejercida desde la lógica capitalista y patriarcal. Paramos en contra de la violencia obstétrica, que aprovecha las situaciones de mayor vulnerabilidad física y emocional para atacarnos. Paramos para denunciar que la gran mayoría de las cesáreas realizadas en Latinoamérica se planifican en función de los intereses de los médicos y no como forma de cuidar nuestros cuerpos y nuestras vidas. Para denunciar que somos víctimas de maltratos y humillación cuando decidimos interrumpir embarazos no deseados. Paramos para denunciar que la dignidad y la salud de las mujeres no forman parte de los criterios a considerar por la mayoría de los sistemas de salud al momento de planificar las políticas de atención. Paramos porque el maltrato médico durante el parto y la interrupción del embarazo no es condenado, ni legal, ni moralmente. Paramos como un cuerpo colectivo que protege y defiende cada uno de nuestros cuerpos maltratados en las salas de espera y cuartos de atención hospitalaria. Paramos para que todo cambie.
In Venezuela, we are going to focus the strike on the issue of obstetric violence, which is strongly affecting women, mostly in the context of the economic war the country is facing. Difficulties accessing services and constant medical sabotage dramatically worsen the situation for the poorest women when giving birth.
We’re on strike against the violence that is exercised daily and categorically against women’s bodies. We’re on strike against the colonization of our bodies and medicine being exploited by capitalist and patriarchal logic. We’re on strike against obstetric violence, which takes advantage of and attacks us in our most physically and emotionally vulnerable situations. We’re on strike to denounce the fact that the great majority of the C-sections performed in Latin America are planned according to the doctors’ interests and not as a way to take care of our bodies and lives. And we denounce that we are subjected to abuse and humiliation when we decide to terminate unwanted pregnancies. We’re on strike to denounce the fact that women’s dignity and health are not part of the criteria considered by most health systems when planning care policies. We’re on strike because medical mistreatment during childbirth and the termination of pregnancies is not condemned — neither legally nor morally. We’re on strike as a collective body that protects and defends each of our bodies that are abused in waiting rooms and hospital rooms. We’re on strike so that everything changes.
The stats:

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Emergentes


text:
A Brazilian Judge Demands a Blogger’s Sources, Testing the Limits of Media Freedom · Global Voices
John Razen

Eduardo Guimarães, from Blog da Cidadania, at the II National Conference of Progressive Bloggers — a network in Brazil known to be closely allied to the former Worker's Party government. Photo: Rogério Tomaz Jr./Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
A veteran leftist Brazilian blogger named Eduardo Guimarães has found himself embroiled in a legal case concerning his writings about the landmark Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) corruption scandal that involved dozens of politicians and tycoons.
Authorities confiscated Guimarães’ laptop and two phones and judge Sergio Moro, who is in charge of the Lava Jato investigation, ordered the disclosure of Guimarães’ telephone records, summoned him for questioning, and according to Guimarães, attempted to force the blogger to reveal his sources. The judge took these actions despite the fact that Brazil's constitution protects journalists from revealing the identity of their sources.
Moro later reversed his decision, but the action highlighted the weakness of the legal protection mechanisms of citizen journalists in Brazil.
The prosecutors in the ongoing Lava Jato investigation are currently working to stymie the efforts of a network of civil servants who are leaking confidential information on the probe to the press. They allege that Eduardo Guimarães is among those who have received confidential information.
In March 2016, Guimarães revealed on his blog that Brazil's former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Worker's Party, would be summoned to testify by the Lava Jato investigators — which indeed happened a few weeks after the story's publication.
Guimarães’ blog, Blog da Cidadania (Blog of Citizenship), is well-known and aligned with the former government of the Worker's Party.
On March 21, Eduardo Guimarães was forcibly taken to testify by the Federal Police in São Paulo, following a court order issued by judge Moro. Guimarães said he was forced to give passwords of his phone and computer to the police agents, who stormed his house in the early hours of the morning, and also that he was questioned at the police headquarters without the presence of his lawyer. He added he was surprised by all this as, according to him, the police already knew who his source was.
Documents released by the Federal Police on March 23 showed that the investigators checked the social media profiles of the civil servants who had access to the files on Lula last year, and opted to pursue a court order for disclosure of the phone records of those with left-leaning posts and likes. According to the documents, this is how they found Guimarães’ source, before judge Moro ordered that his telephone records also be disclosed.
This triggered a wave of online protests in the country's blogosphere (including from right-wing bloggers) who denounced what looked like a flagrant violation of Brazil's Constitution that enshrines journalists’ rights to protect the identity of their sources. The federal prosecutors then issued an official statement in defense of the measure, saying that the constitutional protection wouldn't apply to Guimarães because his blog was a “platform to present personal opinion and political propaganda.”
The official note of the Federal Justice of Paraná states:
Não é necessário diploma para ser jornalista, mas também não é suficiente ter um blog para sê-lo. A proteção constitucional ao sigilo de fonte protege apenas quem exerce a profissão de jornalista, com ou sem diploma
Although a degree in journalism isn't requirement for being a journalist, having a blog isn't enough to be one. The constitutional protection to the confidentiality of sources applies only those who exercise the profession of journalist, with or without a degree.
The criticism only intensified after the note's release. The NGO Reporters Without Borders declared that it was worrying that one judge could dictate a definition of journalistic activity based merely on the content of the publication. The National Federation of Journalists and the Union of Journalists of São Paulo co-signed a note condemning the decision, which they consider to be inspired by the times of the military dictatorship.
Even Reinaldo Azevedo, who edits Brazil's most popular right-wing blog, defended Guimarães, pointing to the arrest of the blogger as a violation of the constitutional rules that protect journalistic activity. Many journalists and activists, from a wide ideological spectrum, also joined the critics on social media.
After the protests, judge Moro reversed his decision. On March 23, he issued a ruling requesting the exclusion from the investigation of all the information collected on Guimarães’ testimony, as well as from the sweep through his electronic equipment. The prosecutors also stated, in their defense, that the objective of the measure was not to identify the sources of the information published by Guimarães, which they already knew, but to collect additional evidence in relation to all of those involved in the leaks.
The 1988 Constitution provides for the right of journalists to protect the identity of their sources. But it also lacks a legal definition of who can be considered a journalist.
The profession was previously regulated by the Press Law, edited in 1967 by the former military regime, which defined the journalistic profession as one exercised only by employees and frequent collaborators of communication companies registered with the government, who also had to have obtained a degree in journalism. But in 2009 the Supreme Court revoked that Law, ruling that it had an ‘anti-democratic inspiration’ and was incompatible with the new Constitutional order instituted in 1988.
Today — in Brazil and internationally — there is no clear legal definition of the profession of journalism. Neither degrees nor employment by traditional media outlets are criteria for its definition, and the lines are even more blurred with the widespread of alternative media outlets over the internet.
But the experience of Guimarães may indicate that Brazil's standards of press freedom are decreasing. In the Reporters Without Borders‘s annual report on media freedom, Brazil fell five positions in a worldwide ranking from 2015 to 2016, now occupying 104th place out of 180 countries. The concentration of media outlets in the hands of a few wealthy families and lack of a national mechanism for the protection of reporters are the main reasons for its current status.

author: John Razen


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Happy April Fool’s Day from the Russian Embassy · Global Voices
RuNet Echo

Screenshot. Source: YouTube.
It's April Fool's Day—“Day of Laughter” in the Russian-speaking world—and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has seized the opportunity to indulge in some geopolitical satire, delighting in the attention Russia has drawn for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election.
The MFA posted a video of a joke Russian Embassy voicemail recording on its Facebook page this morning with the caption, “The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has worked out a full voicemail recording for all Russian diplomatic missions abroad.”
Добрый день! Вы позвонили в посольстве России. Если Вы хотите заказать звонок российского дипломата Вашем политическим конкурентам, нажмите 1. Чтобы воспользоваться услугами русских хакеров, нажмите 2. По вопросам вмешательства в выборы, нажмите 3 и ждите начала избирательной кампании. В целях повышения качества услуг все разговоры записываются.
“Good day! You have reached the Russian Embassy. Your call is very important to us. To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent, press 1. To use the services of Russian hackers, press 2. To request election interference, press 3 and wait until the next election campaign. Please note that all calls are monitored for quality control and training purposes.”
Take a listen here (the English version of the voicemail begins at 0:29):

author: RuNet Echo


text:
Inside the Organisation That’s Way, Way More Worried About Fake News Than You · Global Voices
Allen Smithee

Isn't it rich? PHOTO: Public Domain via Pixabay
Once the province of sleazy tabloids, propaganda machines run by shady dictatorships and compulsive liars, the thing that has come to be known as “fake news” is now everywhere. Stories based on lies, fantasy and all manner of spuriousness are being fabricated for global online consumption by individuals with axes to grind, as well as by paid operatives and others in search of a fast buck. It’s a scenario being played out not only in the metropolis and Season 6 of “Homeland”, but in unlikely places such as small towns in the Balkans.
Fake news would have little traction were it not for the existence of a naïve, echo chamber-dwelling audience with an insatiable appetite for the stuff, with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter functioning as a massive feed trough. News organisations and media-focused nonprofits find themselves in a state of panic, cooking up fact-checking and hoax-spotting projects and initiatives designed to stimulate dialogue across political lines, all in an effort to stem the tide.
But perhaps no one is as threatened by the deepening quagmire of fakery as the April Fool’s United Congress, the secretive committee tasked with overseeing global observances of April Fool’s Day. AFUC, often referred to as “the Illuminati of the prank world”, last week convened an emergency session to address rumours that the online portion of the 2017 April Fool's observances risked cancellation, in light of increasing competition from the burgeoning of blatant untruths masquerading as fact in global media.
In addition to April Fool's Day, celebrated annually in many countries on April 1 with the playing of pranks and practical joking, AFUC also oversees El Día de los Santos Inocentes, which is observed in Latin American nations on December 28, and a little-known Finnish festival in which parents taunt their pre-teen children by telling them they were adopted. AFUC also certifies hoaxes pulled by reputable news organisations such as the Guardian, the BBC and, of course, Global Voices, to commemorate April 1. A Global Voices April Fool's post from three years ago proved uncannily prescient about the fake news phenomenon.
The AFUC rumour, first reported on Breitbart News, is believed to have stemmed from comments made by AFUC secretary general Jamais Sérieux at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Sérieux was allegedly overheard at a Davos caviar-tasting complaining that the average person can't tell the difference between April Fool’s prank pieces and “some of the fake shit that’s out there.” Sérieux denies having made such a statement, but according to AFUC's Latin America representative, Mu E. Chistoso, who chaired the emergency session, the “upsurge of mythomania in international news is of grave concern to AFUC.”
The session, like all AFUC meetings, took place at an undisclosed location and was strictly members only, but at a press conference held afterward AFUC public relations officer and Western Europe representative Nie Ernst formally dispelled the cancellation rumours and announced that the 2017 observances would go ahead as planned. Ernst reaffirmed AFUC's commitment to “unfettered prank-making and practical joking”, and said that in spite of AFUC's concerns about the fake news phenomenon, the organization refused to be cowed into submission by “those who fiendishly seek to sow the seeds of hatred and discord, hijack the satirical space and prevent us from having nice things.”
Critics of the shadowy body have objected to the stranglehold AFUC allegedly tries to exert on “defactualized content”, as an Infowars.com news article put it in a March story. An editorial that appeared recently in Russia's state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta declared that AFUC's “salacious desire to retain the monopoly on fabricated stories is dangerously anti-competitive.”
At the AFUC press conference, outreach officer Ochen Smeshno confirmed that several news organizations had already signalled their intention to publish satirical pieces on April 1, including a handful of newcomers on the US alt-right and their European counterparts. According to reports, the April Fool's piece from France's National Hebdo will be authored by Marine Le Pen.
“It's left to be seen, however, whether readers will be able to distinguish the alt-right's satirical pieces from their other stories,” said AFUC's South East Asia representative Yomomma Sofat.

author: Allen Smithee


text:
Ready your Vaseline and face mask—it’s hay fever season in Japan · Global Voices
Sarah Lee Stones

Surgical masks are ubiquitous in Japan, particularly during hay fever season. Image from Flickr user David Shackelford. License: Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0).
Mild weather and beautiful cherry blossoms make spring arguably the best season in Japan. Many visitors to the country carefully time their trips to coincide with the blooming of the cherry trees dotted all across the country.
However, some Japanese are less than eager to welcome the warmer weather. Instead, spring in Japan brings with it an invisible menace.
Floating in the springtime air is a cloud of pollen grains that induce sneezing, sniffling, and itchy eyes and noses in hay fever sufferers all over the Japanese archipelago.
When you think of springtime in Japan, the first thing that comes to mind is iconic clouds of cotton candy pink blossoms, known as sakura (桜) in Japanese. The flowers bloom earliest in Japan's southwest, advancing north- and eastward across the archipelago in what is known as the “cherry blossom front” or sakura zensen (桜前線).
おはよーござまーす??早咲きの桜が満開だった！ pic.twitter.com/h9G9lbaGrc
— きるしー@鞄鯖 (@kilcy_kilcy) 2017年3月28日
Good morning! The early flowering cherry blossoms are in full bloom!
But the blossoms aren't the only thing making their way across Japan as the weather starts to warm up. Clouds of pollen also move from north to south, wreaking havoc on hay fever sufferers’ sinuses in the process.
It isn't flowers that cause hay fever in Japan. The culprit is pollen from trees, in particular the Japanese cedar or sugi (杉, cryptomeria japonica) and Japanese cypress or hinoki (檜, chamaecyparis obtusa).
A cedar tree releases clouds of allergy inducing pollen. Image from Flickr user Andy Heatwole. Image license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
For western and eastern Japan (including Tokyo), hay fever season starts between late January and mid-February, as the weather begins to warm up. Cedar pollen production peaks in late March to early April and then steadily declines, while cypress pollination lags behind by about a month.
Many Japanese netizens are taking to Twitter to document their symptoms.
花粉症がもろ出ちゃってつらい…?
ティッシュがない時は鼻水垂れっぱなしだけど、それもファッションです。
— はやしん【レイターズ】? (@laters_hayashin) 2017年3月9日
My hay fever's acting up and I feel awful…!
Whenever I'm caught without my tissues my nose runs constantly, but it's all part of my look.
今日だけでクシャミ６０回はしてます??
キタキタキターーーー花粉！！！
— 前田まみ(吉本新喜劇) (@mami_8224) 2017年3月9日
I must have sneezed about 60 times just today!
It's heeeeeeere… the pollen!!!
Japanese media tracks and reports on the pollen season each year in much the same way it reports on the blooming of the cherry blossoms. The map below shows the progression of the “cedar pollen front” or sugi kafun zensen (スギ花粉前線) across the country.
その鼻水、風邪？花粉症？今年もあの季節がやってきた！２０１７年スギ花粉前線 https://t.co/3jr0Tjvahv pic.twitter.com/eWyyktddBP
— まとめっツイ (@suvosuludov) February 8, 2017
Is your runny nose from a cold? Or is it from hay fever? It's that time of year again. Here's the “cedar pollen front.”
The Japan Times reports an estimated one quarter of Japan’s population of 123 million people suffer from seasonal hay fever. But it hasn't always been this way. In fact, pollen allergies were rare in Japan until the 1960s.
The rise of hay fever is closely linked to Japan’s forestation policy after World War II. As the nation rebuilt itself, demand for timber surged, and cedar and cypress were the trees of choice for the forestry industry.
However, a wide availability of cheap, imported timber and the resulting decline of the Japanese forestry industry has meant that a lot of the trees that should have been cut down by now have been left to grow. Many of these trees are at least 50 years old—their peak pollen producing age.
Cedar pollen. Image from Flickr user Tam Tam. Image license: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0).
While one might expect hay fever to be more common in rural areas with a lot of trees, in fact the opposite is true. In cities, pollen particles fall on concrete and asphalt rather than being absorbed by the soil. From there, they are swept up again by winds to recirculate.
Japan's urbanization has also eliminated many of the farms and windbreaks that had once helped keep much of the pollen from reaching the city.
Another contributing factor to Japan's hay fever problem is air pollution. In addition to exhaust gas emissions, PM2.5 pollution from China is an ongoing problem in Japan. Research shows that hay fever is exacerbated when pollen mixes with other pollutants in the air, another reason why the highest hay fever rates are found in cities, even though they typically have lower pollen counts than rural areas.
Hay fever sufferers in Japan have no shortage of products to choose from. Photo from Flickr user Andrea Hale. Image license: Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0).
At least hay fever sufferers have a wide array of products, such as masks and goggles, to choose from to aid them in their fight against pollen. Japanese company Unipac has even developed an air-conditioner filter capable of absorbing about 99% percent pollen within an hour.
Hyposensitization treatments, where patients are given small doses of pollen extracts via injection or drops into their mouth to help prevent the body from overreacting to pollen, are also increasingly popular.
花粉症ヘヴィユーザーの一日は入念な準備から始まる。薬を飲み、ワセリンを粘膜に塗り、マスクとサングラスを着け出かける。一瞬の油断が命取りだ。たった一発のくしゃみでダムは決壊する。その日一発目のくしゃみをいかに抑えるかが勝負の鍵を握る。戦いの日々は続く。 pic.twitter.com/is5UNyF4wy
— クボティ (@tfkuboty) 2017年3月9日
A severe hay fever sufferer's day begins with careful preparation. Take your medicine, apply Vaseline to your nostrils, put on your mask and sunglasses and step outside. Let your guard down for just a moment and it's game over. That first sneeze opens the floodgates. The key to winning the fight is holding back that first sneeze. Each day, the battle rages on.
The hay fever season winds up around May, bringing much needed relief to those with pollen allergies. But as the cedar and cypress trees (and their pollen) are unlikely to be going anywhere in the near future, Japan can expect another round of hay fever misery next year.
On the bright side, it's a boon for the companies that produce pollen-filtering masks.

author: Sarah Lee Stones


text:
They’re Terminally Ill, Learning to Cope With Death, and Doing Standup Comedy · Global Voices
Rezwan

Screenshot from YouTube Video by End Of Life Care India.
Caring for a terminally ill person is a stressful and demanding challenge for any family or loved one. The experience is typically painful and uncomfortable for the patient, as well. The Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPC) is doing something about this problem, through a campaign to discuss death using humor.
The videos, tagged #LaughAtDeath, are available at YouTube. They feature terminally ill patients performing standup comedy for their families and doctors. The aim is to help very sick people conquer the fear of death.
Talking about death is not a taboo.Accepting it is essential for end-of-life care. Visit https://t.co/Ss6kGBVvsl to know more. #LaughAtDeath pic.twitter.com/M0XEJaTUD9
— End Of Life Care IN (@EndOfLifeCareIN) March 30, 2017
Palliative care (pronounced pal-lee-uh-tiv) is a specialized medical care for providing a comfortable experience for seriously ill patients and their families. In this process, terminally ill patients are taken out of intensive care units, so they can spend their last few days alive surrounded by their families and loved ones.
IAPC was established in March 1994 as a national forum to connect, support, and motivate individuals and institutions involved in palliative care. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Indian government provided consultation in setting up the association.
Last year, IAPC commissioned Medulla Communications, an India based healthcare communications agency, to create and run its campaign “#LastWords.” The product, a two-minute video, collects excerpts from interviews with working and retired nurses across the country who had the opportunity to hear the last words of dying patients. The film raises issues about the quality of death people are provided and the dignity of the death specifically in India.
The short advertisement won two Gold Lions at the 63rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
IAPC's latest video campaign, also created by Medulla Communications, was uploaded to Youtube on March 29, 2017. In just a day, the video drew more than 387,000 views. There are already another four videos in the series, and the hashtag #LaughAtDeath briefly trended in India, as Internet users shared the videos.
In the video above, a group of patients urges people to “laugh at death” through their standup performance. The individual chosen to deliver a comedy routine were selected from hundreds of terminally ill patients in the IAPC network. They were then trained by professional standup comedians.
The training paid off. Watching the videos, it's not at all obvious that these dying people are mere amateurs in the comedy world.
Narendra Mhatre, who had a kidney transplant, joked, “Americans wish their new president would be like me. So he doesn't last long”. Sixty-five-year-old Janice Powell said, “This is the first time I am doing this type of a show. Who knows, maybe it's the last time.”
This campaign by Medulla Communications for IAPC will make you #LaughAtDeath. Read: https://t.co/YyumdAdhqQ
— Brand Equity (@ETBrandEquity) March 30, 2017
A group of terminally ill people perform standup comedy. It’s wonderful. 3 mins of your life well spent. #laughatdeath #ASP2017 #hpm https://t.co/dQ7QEB1Ckv
— Katherine Sleeman (@kesleeman) March 31, 2017
Praful Akali, founder and MD of Medulla Communications, said in an interview with Campaign India that “this is not just a campaign but an ongoing project and platform for terminally ill patients to share their stories and spread awareness on palliative care.
Death is the only truth, we have to live with every passing moment of life , doesn't matter happy or sad #life #LaughAtDeath
— Prashant Kumar Singh (@sinprasha) March 30, 2017
#LaughAtDeath with Manudevi Singh
Is it OK to #LaughAtDeath? Yes! If anyone in ur family is terminally ill, u must! Your family must! And the patient, most definitely MUST!
— Vinay Sharma (@sharmajeekabeta) March 30, 2017
For many, the videos are bittersweet: full of laughs, but undeniably sad at the same time. Twitter user Ganashan Iyer, for example, wrote:
Just watched #LaughAtDeath video. Very teary. It's indeed a tough thing to cope with a certain death but as they say, zing up every moment!
— Ganeshan Iyer (@ganeshan_iyer) March 31, 2017

author: Rezwan


text:
‘Why Can’t I Kiss My Girlfriend in Public?’ The Story of an Armenian Queer Woman · Global Voices
OC Media

Photo: Anna Nikoghosyan for OC Media. All photos used with permission.
The following is a version of a partner post written by Anna Nikoghosyan that first appeared on the website OC Media.
I was 19-years-old when I met a lesbian girl who liked me. I told her I was not one of “them”, but suddenly, for no reason, I kissed her. It was with her that I first realised what love is.
Eva (not her real name), 24, is a queer woman living in Yerevan. She went through many stages while discovering her sexuality. At first, it was classical self-identification as a heterosexual woman, which then transformed into a bisexual identity. Having realised her affection towards transgender individuals, she then thought that she was pansexual. Now she does not want to associate herself with a distinct sexual category or search for a label for her sexuality.
“I am just a person who loves another person; I am queer,” she says.
Parandzem and Taguhi. Photo: Anna Nikoghosyan for OC Media
On the façade of an old building in downtown Yerevan, there is some graffiti that reads, ‘Parandzem and Taguhi [two female Armenian names] were having sex the whole night’. This spot of graffiti feminising the male-centric public space of the city is actually a defiant take on well-known advertising slogan from bygone times: ‘Parandzem and Taguhi were cooking pasta the whole night’.
“This really influences people,” Eva says, without specifying who daubed the graffiti.
Queer people are one of the most marginalised and discriminated groups in Armenia. A 2016 research paper entitled ‘Hate Crimes and other Hate-Motivated Incidents against LGBT People in Armenia’ found that of 200 queer people interviewed for the study, 198 had been the victim of or witness to hate crimes or other hate motivated incidents.
Recognising the need to stop violence and prejudice against queer people, more and more activists and human rights defenders in Armenia have started to push for the protection of queer rights, for equality, and to end discrimination. However, within the queer rights discourse, the voices of lesbian, bisexual, and trans women remain marginal.
“As in generally all women’s experiences, LBT women’s stories remain invisible,” Eva says.
According to her, in a society where all women face barriers speaking about their issues, it is even more difficult for women with a non-heteronormative sexuality to speak out.
Queer women in Armenia thus face a multi-layered oppression that targets their gender and sexual self-expression simultaneously. Since there are a lack of opportunities to freely expose their problems, queer women are psychologically vulnerable and are often unable to share their emotions with the outside world.
These pressures sometimes manifests themselves in depression or panic attacks.
“We do everything in secret. There are small communities where I can feel safe, but at home, among other friends and relatives, I can’t be who I am,” says Eva.
Isolation and emotional problems are only one example of the challenges faced by queer women in Armenia. Eva says that if a queer person's sexuality is revealed, that person can sometimes be subjected to “corrective rape” as heterosexual men look to assert their definition of what is ‘normal’ on the victim.
The security risks faced by queer women are still very real in the country. Eva tells of how often, after leaving a pub or a café, or simply while walking down the street with her girlfriend, that she is followed by men.
“I get really scared because I don’t know what could happen to me. The guy is in a car, physically stronger than I am. He can do whatever he wants and nobody will care.”
Eva does not believe that the police would help her because even if she goes to them to seek protection, the police will laugh at her sexuality and ask questions that make her feel uncomfortable. That has happened to her lesbian friends many times, she says.
Once, Eva and her transgender friend were attacked in a park by men, who started to beat and curse them. Other men in the area, instead of trying to stop the perpetrators, approached and demanded they stop cursing as there were other women in the park. “So it was totally fine that they were beating us, but they had to do it in silence, exactly the way they beat women in their homes,” says Eva.
While there is widespread violence and aggression against queer women, lesbian relationships are also not considered to be serious. Statements such as, ‘she is a lesbian because she hasn’t met a real guy yet’ and ‘you need to try it with a man to know what ‘real sex’ is’ are commonplace.
Lesbian women are often objectified by men. For many, a lesbian is a sexy woman from a porn movie who is there to serve as an object for men’s gazes, and to fulfil a heterosexual man’s craving.
“There were many times when they approached me and my girlfriend to suggest that we have sex with them. When we would refuse, they would ask if we could at least have sex in front of them,” Eva says.
The pressure felt by queer women in Armenia does not come only from the outside world. According to research carried out by Pink Armenia and Socioscope, queer people are very often subjected to different types of violence by their family members, in an attempt to change their ‘incorrect’ sexual orientation or gender identity.
Eva’s parents do not know about her sexuality. However, according to her, she feels lucky, because there is no hatred in her family against any group.
“Many of my LGBT friends come to our apartment. Even my trans friends come. We all drink coffee with my mum. She’s really chill with them.”
Once, Eva’s mother asked her if she was a lesbian. Eva was not ready to come out to her mother, so she lied to her. She regretted this afterwards, since coming out became much harder.
Notwithstanding the relative tolerance of her family, Eva still experiences some psychological pressure from her relatives. To her grandmother, Eva is already an ‘old maid’. Once, when Eva’s mother asked her why she does not get married, Eva asked her in return why she does not do the same.
“I said, ‘I don’t ask you to have a baby so that I have a sister, do I? Then why do you tell me you want a grandchild and a son-in-law?’ After this, they never had any conversations [with me] like that again.”
On other occasions, Eva is not afraid to talk freely about her sexual orientation, however. Once, some of her old friends were talking about queer people with hate speech, saying that they needed to be burned or killed.
Eva said she told them to burn or kill her, because she is a lesbian too — one of ‘them’ — too. Eva said her remarks made her friends rethink their abusive behaviour and ignorance.
For Eva’s partner, who comes from abroad, the way people look at her and her girlfriend when they walk together is very strange. Every time they’re at a bus station, Eva’s girlfriend comes closer to kiss her before entering the bus. But Eva feels compelled to resist, at the same time wondering what is wrong about kissing her beloved in public.
Eva believes that she would never face such challenges were she in a heterosexual relationship. She recalls her earlier years of adulthood, when she was with a young man.
“We could walk freely, hold hands, nobody would pay attention”. However, in a same-sex relationship, she says, life becomes full of fear and lies; a double life where everything requires overthinking.
“I don’t know why I need to lie to my mother. I have a person whom I love, I have tender feelings towards her, what could be better than this? I am in love, and I want to be able to talk about this with others. We live a happy life together, we walk, we go to cafés, we dance, we smoke. Isn’t this beautiful? People should be happy for us, shouldn’t they? But no, nobody’s happy; people just want to kill us,” Eva says, her voice beginning to tremble.
Eva often thinks about moving. Locally conducted research shows that in 2011–2013 alone, almost 6,000 Armenian citizens left the country due to some form of discrimination. A non-accepting society can take a tremendous toll on a person's mental health .
Even seeking consultations from a psychologist is an issue, as psychologists who are queer-friendly and are aware of queer people’s specific challenges are the exception.
“I now have a real struggle inside myself. Should I stay here and try to change our society, or, as I only have one life, should I go to a safer place and have a happier future?”
Photo: Anna Nikoghosyan for OC Media
Eva believes that homophobia has recently become trendy in Armenia, a heavily militarised country that lives in constant fear of full blown war with neighbouring Azerbaijan. Even those who do not necessarily have a problem with queer people express hateful, homophobic attitudes just because it is popular to do so.
Moreover, queer people quite often become a target in political games. Whenever domestic politics in the economically depressed country threatens to boil over, articles on queer topics suddenly become widespread, and people shift their attention from the controversies of government to the ‘preservation of Armenian values and traditions’.
Among possible examples of this are the arson attack on a queer friendly pub two days after the disputed parliamentary elections in 2012, and the ‘anti-gender’ movement in 2013, that emerged as Armenia was choosing between an Association Agreement with the EU and joining the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union.
Queer people in Armenia are thus politically constructed by the media as ‘enemies’. Queer women are particularly targeted.
Eva thinks that in small states on a war footing, like Armenia, where people's lives are absorbed by the struggle for survival, women’s rights and queer rights are not a priority.
“If nobody has died today, everything is good,” Eva says. “Therefore, as long as Armenia is [locked] in a military conflict and is one of the most militarised countries in the world, there is little hope that anything will change for us,” she surmises, lighting the last cigarette in her pack.

author: OC Media


text:
International Fact-Checking Day Celebrated Worldwide: #FactCheckIt! · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Artwork for International Fact-Checking Day by Gianluca Costantini, used with permission. See more at bit.ly/factcheckit.
While April 1 celebrates jokes and white lies, April 2 has become a day of sobering up and fact-checking. As of this year, truth-seekers around the world introduced their own holiday — International Fact-Checking Day.
April Fool's Day celebrations possibly have their roots in the Roman Saturnalia, a carnival time when social roles were reversed, and when normally forbidden activities like gambling were allowed. Two thousand years later, it still takes the form of masquerades and a reversal of moral norms, allowing for pranks and harmless lies.
International Fact-Checking Day is promoted by the International Fact-Checking Network, founded by the Poynter institute in partnership with dozens fact-checking organizations around the world. International Fact-Checking Day is not a single event, but a diverse range of activities aimed at raising public awareness about the importance of facts — and fact-checking — in politics, journalism, and everyday life.
Bill Adair, Professor of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University, and the creator of PolitiFact, tweeted:
Ten years ago there were a handful of fact-checking sites; today, the world’s 115 sites celebrate Intl. Fact-Checking Day. A great day!
— Bill Adair (@BillAdairDuke) April 2, 2017
People celebrating the International Fact-Checking Day use the hashtag #FactCheckIt to promote activities which range from public events and workshops to a fake news sprint conducted by PolitiFact.
Celebramos el día internacional del Fact-checking. Esta noche, verificamos a políticos extranjeros #Factcheckit https://t.co/02GbayS3zD pic.twitter.com/iIWG2Cin4I
— El Objetivo (@ObjetivoLaSexta) April 2, 2017
We celebrate the international day of Fact-checking. Tonight, we check foreign politicians.
Alexios Mantzarlis, the director of the International Fact-Checking Network, has been using his Twitter profile to document and inform about many of the activities related to the day around the globe:
In Braamfontein, @AfricaCheck got students to “vote with their feet” on whether a news story was fake https://t.co/9m9KiklBa1 #FactCheckIt pic.twitter.com/015S20lEOP
— Alexios (@Mantzarlis) April 2, 2017
In Rio, at @agencialupa‘s workshop, journalism students said fact-checking should be in the curriculum https://t.co/0ZrhKzOh78 #FactCheckIt pic.twitter.com/Q8DTl7BiZl
— Alexios (@Mantzarlis) April 2, 2017
In Milan, @factcheckers_it is holding 4 back-to-back hands-on fact checking workshops with high school students #FactCheckIt pic.twitter.com/YjGH910aoF
— Alexios (@Mantzarlis) April 2, 2017
In Nairobi, @PesaCheck held a seminar with tips on fact-checking claims about public finances #FactCheckIt https://t.co/mfCMipaFPX pic.twitter.com/ZpdS83hHI1
— Alexios (@Mantzarlis) April 2, 2017
Taking into consideration the pressing need to incorporate media literacy and especially fact-checking into the educational system, the members of the fact-checking network prepared a free lesson plan, which has already been translated into 12 languages, with more translations on the way.
Introduce your class to the basics of fact-checking, and help them navigate through an ocean of information, rumors, hoaxes and lies with our lesson plan. The lesson plan was designed by fact-checkers and endorsed by instructional designers. It is conceived for students aged 14-16 but can be used with students of other ages too.

author: Filip Stojanovski


text:
Missing Taiwan NGO Worker’s Wife Travels to Beijing to Rescue Him · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Taiwanese NGOs Press Conference on the disappearance of Lee Ming-cheh on March 31, 2017. From Where is Lee? Facebook page.
Taiwanese NGO worker and human rights activist Lee Ming-cheh disappeared on March 19 after entering China from Macau. Now, his wife has decided to travel to Beijing in order to retrieve him.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Ma Xiaoguang said Lee was being investigated on “suspicion of endangering national security”, some ten days after his disappearance. But Chinese authorities have not disclosed his whereabouts.
His wife, Lee Ching-yu announced on March 31 that she would travel to Beijing to rescue her husband. She explained her decision in a press statement (translated by China human rights advocacy site China Change):
我知道在白色恐怖歷史裡面，在一個國家的法治依然沒有達到國際水平的時後，任何的法律辯護，都是沒有用處的。我們只作人道與人權辯護。因為該特別法不是建立在普世的價值之上。
因此，我很慎重的向大家宣布，我將放棄聘請律師，不做法律性的無謂辯護。
所有的人權工作者，所有把希望帶到任何一個需要人權伸張的角落，都是無罪的。因為此類奉獻行為將增益人類文明。
我先生帶著這樣無私的對人類的愛，我相信他的行為絕對是值得被尊敬的
我決定，親自前往北京，去瞭解狀況，去營救我的先生。
I know from the history of the White Terror in Taiwan that when a country’s system of rule of law hasn’t risen to international standards, all attempts to offer defenses according to the law are useless. We can only offer a defense of humanity and human rights — but the legal systems in such countries aren’t built upon universal conceptions of human rights.
It is for this reason that I make this considered announcement: I am not going to hire a lawyer and thus engage in pointless legal wrangling.
All human rights workers, all those who bring hope to corners of the world that need human rights upheld, are innocent. It is precisely through the contributions of such individuals that human welfare and civilization grows.
My husband acted selflessly and with love for mankind, and I am full of confidence that everything he has done is worthy of the utmost respect.
I’ve decided to travel to Beijing, find out what is going on, and rescue my husband.
Born in 1975, Lee is a former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) employee and an advocate of human rights in China. He started using WeChat in 2014 to share with friends from mainland China news of Taiwan's transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy. Between 2015 and early 2016, he joined a human rights NGO, Covenants Watch, as a volunteer.
Since February 2016, he has started working for a community university in Taipei city.
Taiwan has been a de facto independent state since 1949 after the Kuomingtang of the Republic of China was defeated by the Chinese Communist Party in the civil war and fled to the island. Yet Beijing has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and treated the self-ruled state as a rebel region to be united with mainland.
Since Tsai Ing-wen of the pro Taiwan independence DPP won the presidential election last year, Beijing has ceased official communication across the strait. The arrest of Lee Ming-cheh has been widely considered as an example of collateral damage in this new cold war between the two administrations.
Soon after Beijing confirmed Lee Ming Cheh's arrest, Lee Ching-yu, together with a number of civil rights groups, condemned Beijing for holding him incommunicado for undisclosed reasons, and called for his immediate release. Lee’s wife stressed in a press conference on March 30:
Lee Ming-che has shared Taiwan’s democratic experiences with friends through the Internet. He pays attention to human rights issues and spreads hope to people who need warmth. Those behaviors are not criminal in any civilized country.
Human Rights organization Amnesty International urged Beijing to provide further details regarding his detention:
The Chinese authorities’ detention of a Taiwanese NGO worker on vague national security grounds raises fears the authorities are broadening their attack against those carrying out legitimate activism.
Wang Dan, an activist in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement in mainland China believes Lee's arrest is related to a recently passed foreign NGO management law:
從目前外界掌握的資訊來看，李明哲被中共國安部門拘留，最大的可能就是與中國去年新通過的規範管理境外NGO在中國國內的活動的新法規有關。這個新法規嚴格限制境外的非政府組織的活動性質，特別加入了類似「不能違反國家利益」這樣的條款。了解中國政府的人都知道，這樣的條款因為用詞和定義模糊，幾乎就是一個大框，什麼都可以往裡面裝。
政府看誰不順眼，都可以給他扣上「損害國家利益」的大帽子。李明哲長期關心中國人權狀況，在微信上發表支持民主自由的言論，在中共眼裡，這就是「損害國家利益」。
Based on all the available information, it is most likely that the arrest of Lee Ming-cheh by CCP's security department is related to the foreign NGO management law passed in China last year. The law restricts NGOs activities with stipulations such as “cannot violate the country's interest”. Those who have basic knowledge of China's government know that such a framework can be used to restrict all kinds of activities.
The [Chinese] government can assign the label “harmful to state interests” to anyone that it does not like. Lee Ming-cheh has followed China's human rights closely and expressed his view on democracy and freedom openly on WeChat. All these activities can be viewed as “harmful to the the interest of the state” by the CCP.
Taiwanese media worker Tsai Yu-Ching meanwhile worried that the failure of the Taiwanese government to protect its citizen would result in a governance crisis:
李明哲的妻子李凈瑜放棄聘請律師，要親自前往北京救援丈夫。這說明目前海基陸委會跟海協國台辦系統聯繫是完全中斷的，體制內的所有辦法無效，家屬才需要揚棄官方管道自力救濟，尤其選擇自行前往北京，就是希望自己去建立聯繫管道。…如果政府沒有政策，官僚應對鄉愿，救援留在口頭，以小見大，民進黨不只失去救援李明哲的時機，也正在流失民眾對政府處理兩岸關係的信心。
Lee Ming-cheh’s wife Lee Ching-Yu has given up assigning a lawyer and traveled to Beijing to rescue her husband. This shows that the communication between the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Mainland Affairs Council, and between the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council of the PRC has been totally cut. There is no official channel to settle the incident, which is why Lee’s family has to give up on official channels and travel to Beijing to find another means to communicate… if the Taiwanese government does not have an effective strategy and continues to handle the case in a bureaucratic manner […] the DPP will not only miss the opportunity to save Lee Ming-cheh — people will lose confidence in the government’s ability to handle cross-strait relations.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
The Evolution of Sri Lanka’s #Instameet · Global Voices
GroundViews

Citizen power: Posters for an upcoming Janatha Vimukthi Peramuṇa party rally outside the old Negombo market on Sea Street. Photo by @amaliniii. Taken at this years Instameet, held in Negombo.
This post by Raisa Wickrematunge originally appeared on Groundviews, an award-winning citizen journalism website in Sri Lanka. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
On March 26, 2017, a group of 13 or so people created some confusion among the vendors at the old market on Sea Street in Negombo city at the West coast of Sri Lanka.
“Where are you from?” was an oft-repeated question. Armed with cameras and smartphones, perhaps the group did look like tourists.
In fact, the group was participating in Instameet Sri Lanka – part of a global event where users of Instagram in a particular country or locality connect. There are usually two Instameets held a year, and across the world, Instagram users organise their own meetings on that date.
Yet while the group might have looked like tourists, the participants of Instameet all had something in common – a desire not just to meet the people they otherwise would only know of from scrolling through their timelines, but also to explore and document the chosen location – Negombo.
“I personally think Negombo is a great place [to have an Instameet] because it’s very diverse. The architecture and its landmarks are testament to its rich culture and history.” – participant and resident of Negombo, Aadil Marzook (@aadil.marzook)
Some of the asides of Aadil Marzook during the walk revealed much about Negombo’s culture and history that wouldn’t be found in a guidebook, and would often go un-captured by the tourist’s lens.
Some participants from this year's meet:
Thank you @amaliniii ❤ Creating memories with this bunch is always a pleasure ? #srilanka #wwim15❤ #WWIM15 #WWIMSriLanka #negombo #fire #WWIM15SriLanka
A post shared by hashiabey-curious footsteps (@hashiabey) on
The front of St. Mary’s College for instance, was emblazoned with the words ‘No Hair Cuts.’ This was actually retaliation from students, Aadil explained.
“A lot of students who attend this school are from the fishing community. They are reacting to the strict rules on uniforms. The school doesn’t allow spiked hair or pants that are too tight – sometimes they cut the student’s hair as punishment,” Aadil explained.
Snippets of information like this are what make Instameet unique. The participants take care not just to capture iconic landmarks or sunsets but also slices of the area’s culture and the daily lives of residents.
These conversations have long been a part the Sri Lankan chapter of Instameet, which began when Abdul Halik Azeez (@colombedouin) floated the idea in 2013 to people attending, ironically, another event based around a social media platform – TweetUp, for Twitter users.
@gopiharan @nazly @Hayahz @Ayshmarq @ApsaraGamage playing with the idea of doing an #instameet in #lka would you guys be interested?
— Abd-al-Khaleq (@HalikAzeez) November 27, 2013
“Sri Lanka has a tradition of online communities meeting in real life… such as the open mic events for users of blog aggregator Kottu,” Halik said. “I saw people hosting meet-ups all over the world on Instagram, and I thought it would be interesting to have one here too, so I asked people whether they would be interested.” The answer was yes.
Photos from the first Instameet in Mardana Railway Station in Colombo in 2013
Nazly Ahmed (@nazlyahamed), one of the organisers of this year’s Instameet comments that “Instameet hasn’t been commercialised. Brands often try to hijack an event, but here we just try to keep it simple – it’s about connecting with the community and exploration. You can try much more things together as a group than if a brand was involved,” Nazly added.
Since that first meetup, there have been changes, not just in terms of participation but also in the way Instagram itself has been used.
Another change was the shift from using smartphones to cameras to take photos. The result meant that there were fewer photos instantly uploaded using this year’s hashtags. “I think when people are on the move, it becomes cumbersome to stop and upload photos. Also, it’s about what each user is most comfortable with. Personally, I try to capture emotions. I like to get close to my subjects – and a DSLR helps me capture that,” Nazly explained.
Hashinika Abeygunasekara (@hashiabey) said that it was actually after attending an installation of Instameet, held in Kompannaveedya, that she was inspired to buy a camera and more seriously pursue photography.
Photos from the Instameet in Kompannaveedya in Slave Island in 2015
“I find that using a camera gives a better framing and perspective. You can do much more with focusing too. Sometimes I find people feel a bit alienated or scared when I use my phone to take photos. Yet now when I walk around Pettah for instance, I find people are happy for me to take their picture when they see my camera.”
InstaMeet #SriLanka 2016
Follow #WWIMI14SriLanka to see the awesome captures of above folks around Colombo. We hope… pic.twitter.com/fKprpbtmec
— Hashtag Sri Lanka (@HashtagSriLanka) September 18, 2016
While there have been shifts in the way people use Instagram, one aspect hasn’t changed – and that is the participants desire to capture the essence of the locations they visit. Beyond Instagrammers connecting with each other, the participants also connected with the environment and the different people they met along the trail.
Amalini de Sayrah (@amaliniii) an organiser of this year’s Instameet said:
Instagram is meant for people to express their creativity. The beauty of the platform, and of Instameet itself, is that it is a window into many different perspectives. When we first put out word of this Instameet, we had several people ask us if it was for professional photographers only – the meets and the app itself is for everyone and most of those who use the app are simply people who have a passion for photography, self-taught and curious to explore. Instagram allows people a place to tell their story, regardless of the device you use, or can afford to use.
Photos from this year’s Instameet in Negombo
This year’s event kicked off from near the Negombo lagoon. The participants visited the old market on Sea Street, St. Mary’s Church and the fish market before looping back to walk along the canal, ending up by the beach for sunset.
Graffiti in #negombo #srilanka @SRajasegar #instameet pic.twitter.com/Eg0k7PNUHE
— RCPradeep (@RcSullan) March 28, 2017
The rest of the photos from this year’s Instameet can be viewed through the hashtag #wwim15srilanka.

author: GroundViews


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Criminal Case Against Indian Poet Provokes Controversy Over Speech Rights · Global Voices
Devika Sakhadeo

Image from Flickr by Jennifer Moo. CC BY-ND 2.0
A poet in West Bengal, India has been charged with “deliberate acts intended to outrage religious feelings,” a criminal offense punishable by a minimum of three years in prison.
His crime? A poem alluding to State Assembly elections in India. Srijato Bandopadhyay's 12-line poem entitled ‘Abhishap’ or ‘Curse’ references the recent elections in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party swept opponents aside and elected Yogi Adityanath as the state's Chief Minister.
Yogi Adityanath, who is a Hindu priest, was a surprise appointee by the Bharatiya Party. The poem referenced the election and the ‘Trishul’, a trident said to be used by Hindu Gods and Goddesses.
The poem was posted on Facebook on World Poetry Day — but its verses were not welcomed by everyone.
A complaint was registered against the contemporary poet at the Siliguri Metropolitan Station for hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus. The Siliguri police pressed non-bailable charges against Srijato under Sections 295A (deliberate or malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 57 of Information Technology Act on Wednesday. They also reportedly contacted Facebook and asked the company to remove the poem.
Some spoke out in defence of freedom of speech, while others condemned the poet's writing:
On international poetry day, there is an FIR against beloved bengali poet Srijato, few voices remaining in Bengal, who dare,a translation. pic.twitter.com/TiHJTab2qc
— Sudeshna Basu (@basusudeshna) March 22, 2017
Exclusive interview with Poet Srijato on FIR booked against him for hurting religious sentiments https://t.co/rDrJpyGGRV
— Samya Sen (@Samya_tweets) March 22, 2017
The likes of Srijato may please note that they don't have the right to insult any community/culture under the pretext of creativity.
— Surajit Sengupta (@sgsura1) March 22, 2017
The furore over the poem has also highlighted cleavages between followers of the country's two largest religions.
Why was Srijato silent when I was hounded out of Bengal by Muslim fundamentalists: Taslima Nasreen https://t.co/XokN2BZUsL via @dna
— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) March 30, 2017
A Bengali blogger expressed support for both poets on Twitter:
Both r Bengali authors.Both r hounded by religious fanatics. Both r incredibly brave.Both r fantastic writers. #Bengal stands with #Srijato https://t.co/xa6MFYBxvy
— Saileena (@saileenas) March 24, 2017
Stop.interference with the freedom of writers .freedom of speech is the fundamental human rights.attack on mandakranta &srijato is barbaric pic.twitter.com/ArdyOJe5Gz
— Bikashranjan (@bikashranjan51) March 30, 2017
After much uproar, the poem was removed from Facebook on March 26:
#Facebook has removed my poem: #Srijatohttps://t.co/wYNKJ8ajUr
— EnglishPost (@english_post) March 26, 2017
It is unclear whether the US-based social media company removed the poem in response to a direct request from the Indian government, or simply due to users flagging the poem under Facebook's “Report Abuse” system. Facebook's internal “Community Standards,” which dictate the rules for participation in the network, do not explicitly prohibit this type of speech. However, the company does implement country-level censorship if it receives a legitimate court order proving that a specified piece of content stands in violation of the country's laws.
On March 27, the social networking site restored the poem and apologised for removing it.
#Facebook apologises for ‘mistakenly’ removing poet #Srijato‘s controversial poem, restores post#ReligiousSentimenthttps://t.co/ii9R3zbMxF
— India Blooms (@indiablooms) March 27, 2017
Mandakranta Sen, another poet hailing from West Bengal, expressed public support on Facebook for Srijato Bandopadhyay and his poem. She reported to police that soon after, people on Facebook began sending her obscene messages and threats of gang rape. These messages stand in violation of Facebook's Community Standards, which explicitly prohibit harassment and threats of violence.
The right to freedom of speech is enshrined by India's Constitution, but not without limitations. And recent events have raised doubt over the extent to which this particular freedom is tolerated in the world's largest democracy by population in practice. This intolerance has been widespread, and multiple artists such as authors, comedians and filmmakers have found themselves on the wrong side of the issue.
Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to freedom of speech and expression. The freedom of speech and expression means the right to express one's conviction and opinions freely by word of mouth, writing, printing, pictures or any other mode. This is one of six fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. These fundamental rights however aren’t absolute. The Freedom of Speech and Expression cannot be extended to sedition, slander, defamation and obscenity since all citizens are equal before the law and have a right to seek legal help.
Artists have a right to publish their work and express their opinions — and so can those who feel offended by their work and ideas. Debate is a vital component of any democracy.
But when it comes to freedom of speech in India, cases like this suggest that the question of “how free” still is yet to be answered.

author: Devika Sakhadeo


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Five Years at Global Voices and RuNet Echo · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Image edited by Kevin Rothrock.
This month marks my fifth anniversary at Global Voices, where I’ve edited RuNet Echo alongside three talented individuals: Andrey Tselikov, Tanya Lokot, and Isaac Webb. I’ve also worked with dozens of very gifted volunteer writers — both professional journalists and scholars, and others just breaking into the field. And it’s been my honor to follow the leadership of people like Executive Director Ivan Sigal, Managing Editor Sahar Habib Ghazi, and Advocacy Director Ellery Biddle.
I can’t vouch for RuNet Echo’s readers, but I am having a very good time writing for you.
Our website tells me that I’ve written 445 texts since I started and this little ditty makes 446. I joined Global Voices in the spring of 2012, just as Russia’s so-called “Winter of Discontent” was coming apart at the seams. Vladimir Putin was just a few days away from a blowout presidential victory, and Dmitry Medvedev was still (technically speaking) the president.
In the last five years, some things in Russia have come full circle, while others seem to be gone irrevocably. Dmitry Medvedev once embodied many Russians’ hopes that the government would prioritize political freedom and end the country’s demonization of democracy.
Today, Medvedev is the face of corruption, thanks almost singlehandedly to opposition leader Alexey Navalny, the blogger king who cut his teeth exposing graft and dirty dealing in Russia’s state-owned corporations.
Five years ago, it was still possible to map LiveJournal pages and treat it like a visualization of the Russian blogosphere. Today, as with most places in the world, blogging in Russia as it’s traditionally understood is dead. There are still millions of Russians using LiveJournal, but civil society’s pulse — an admittedly elusive and possibly ludicrous concept — has now scattered across a dozen popular platforms.
On Facebook, Moscow’s journalists and activists dump political exegeses and trade ad hominems in confusingly-threaded comments. On Twitter, anonymous accounts with national flags in their avatars ankle-bite each other and anyone reacting to breaking news. You can follow the anti-Kremlin opposition’s hipster parties on Instagram, where there’s also footage of the even more luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by the sons and daughters of prominent Russian officials. There’s something called Telegram now — launched by the ousted creator of Vkontakte, which is what most ordinary Russians use, instead of Facebook — and on Telegram you can subscribe to “channels” that share what is ostensibly “insider political analysis.”
All this is to say nothing of YouTube, Internet forums like Dvach, managed communities like TJournal, satirical news projects like Lentach, and what I’m sure are boatloads of other corners of the Web that I’ve never even heard of.
While at RuNet Echo, I’ve witnessed several waves of the Russian news cycle. When I started in 2012, lawmakers in Moscow were just rolling out the Internet blacklist that’s now such a core feature of Russian censorship. The “registry,” as it’s known formally, started out innocently enough as a shield to protect young children from the nastiest stuff online. The first legislation even had the support of Ilya Ponomarev, the only deputy in Russia’s entire parliament who would later vote against Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.
Five years later, the state of Internet freedom in Russia is still murky, but it’s worse than it used to be, and — more importantly for me, as someone who writes about this — it’s not something that surprises people much anymore, which is another way of saying that people outside Russia (RuNet Echo’s main audience) now don’t care as much.
Of course, Americans, at any rate, care more about Russia today than they have since the 1990s, when you-know-what came crashing down. But we’ve seen the Internet censorship story before. And we’ve seen the report from the Moscow protest where the riot police arrest the peaceful demonstrator.
Four burly cops carried off a young woman, kicking and screaming? There’s a photo?
Tragic, yes, but also totally familiar — a phrase you could add as a caption to just about anything there is to say today about the Putin regime. The Russian news cycle isn’t new anymore.
But some day it will be, again. Whether it’s a youth revolt sparked by one of Navalny’s viral videos, or a quiet reshuffling of Russia’s presidency, the Putin era has an expiration date, and that will be new.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking I’ve gotten a bit hifalutin. After all, what business does an American with his nose in the RuNet have pontificating about the future of Russian high politics? On a daily basis, when it comes to most of what goes on in Russian cyberspace, Vladimir Putin doesn’t matter. Many of the best stories there are to tell about Russia don’t have a thing to do with Putin.
But the Kremlin’s role in society is still enormously influential on Russia’s Internet culture — particularly among the activists seeking a voice and the journalists who know more than they can say at work.
When sitting down to write this, I hoped I’d work my way to a grand conclusion right about now. Something about how it’s impossible to write “the RuNet thinks Y about Z,” though there are trends and moods, and it is feasible to imagine “Russian Internet culture” as a semi-coherent concept. And, yes, there are all the politics. There’s Putin and the State Duma and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, flooding Facebook with snark.
There is, in the end, too much to count and consider. I’ve been doing it for five years, and I hope to be here for many more. Thank you, everyone, for reading RuNet Echo. Tell your friends. Tell anybody.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Pre-Vote Shenanigans — And Fake News — Cloud Armenia’s General Election · Global Voices
Akhal-Tech Collective

Armenia's National Assembly. Wikimedia image creative commons.
The Republican party loyal to outgoing Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan looked set to score a win in polls held on April 2, but the vote was stymied by a series of alleged violations, apparent government attempts to thwart the online activities of journalists and activists, and at least one incident of fake news.
The election is important as far as constitutional changes passed in 2015 mean that Armenia's president will be elected by parliament, while the office of the prime minister has become the most powerful in the country. Election results had not yet been announced at the time of publication, but exit polls indicated a substantial lead by Sargsyan.
Sargsyan has said that the changes he lobbied for in the controversial referendum were not intended to benefit him, although some expect him to take up the premier's position if his party earns itself a majority in parliament.
Watching the vote intently was Russia, and a number of journalists based in the country and the broader Caucasus region flagged a fake news item spread by Twitter accounts that appeared bot-ish with a strong pro-Kremlin agenda.
The image distributed by the accounts was a purported USAID memo calling on civic groups to back the opposition. Washington's representatives in Armenia had earlier labeled the memo as a fake, but it began circulating once more on the eve of the vote.
Interesting. Russian accounts starting to spam #armvote17 w/ the fake @USAID memo that @usembarmenia has already debunked. #armelections2017 pic.twitter.com/hBbQ4wlD3V
— Onnik J. Krikorian (@onewmphoto) March 31, 2017
Regardless of whether or not Moscow, which backs Sargsyan, was behind the disinformation, there is also plenty of evidence of local attempts to manipulate the vote.
One prominent civil society figure, Babken DerGrigorian reported notifications from Google that government-backed hackers were attempting to hack his email account, while several leading journalists found their access to Twitter suspended just prior to the vote.
They later had their accounts restored following a concerted campaign by Armenian Twitter users.
Reputable media sources, inc. @CivilNetTV & @Hetq_Trace from Armenia have had their Twitter accounts suspended the night before #armvote17 pic.twitter.com/4LmJsJBU7c
— Babken DerGrigorian (@Babken) April 1, 2017
In a round-up of these concerning reports, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab produced an informative brief titled Fakes, Bots, and Blocking in Armenia. The piece concluded:
With a landmark vote imminent, Armenia’s online space is particularly vulnerable to manipulation and disinformation. The attempts identified so far have been small scale and of limited reach, but they illustrate the various ways in which online actors can attempt to manipulate the digital space.
Around a third of citizens in the South Caucasus republic of 3 million people live in poverty. In 2015, the capital Yerevan was rocked by protests over a utility hike that came to be christened as Electric Yerevan and revealed massive dissatisfaction over endemic corruption in the country.

author: Akhal-Tech Collective


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Six Years On: How Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate Are Recovering From the Tsunami · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

“View of Shizugawa, Minami Sanriku (Miyagi) from Shizugawa High School.” Shizugawa was devastated by a tsunami in March, 2011, and the region is still rebuilding. Photo taken in October, 2016. By Flickr user Cheng-en Cheng. License: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Earlier in March 2017, the Kahoku Shimpo, a Japanese daily newspaper covering northeastern Japan, documented the progress that has been made over the past six years to reconstruct the lives of people affected by the March 2011 “triple disaster” of a massive earthquake, tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear accident.
The Kahoku Shimpo is headquartered in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, which was one of several prefectures in Japan's northeast that experienced both the earthquake and the resulting tsunami. Hundreds of thousands of people Miyagi and its neighbors Fukushima and Iwate were forced to evacuate as the tsunami wiped entire coastal cities off the map. Fukushima Prefecture also experienced a nuclear accident that, alone, forced 160,000 residents to be evacuated from their homes.
Six years on, the Kahoku Shimpo's special coverage provides a local perspective on what progress has been made rebuilding the lives of people living in the region. The newspaper's in-depth feature includes statistics from Japan's Reconstruction Ministry as well as surveys of evacuees themselves.
The Kahoku Shimpo reports that as of December 2015, 77 per cent of planned replacement housing (災害公営住宅, saigai kouei juutaku) has been completed in Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. Of the three prefectures Miyagi has experienced the most success, with 80 per cent of planned replacement housing completed. Iwate Prefecture has completed 75 per cent of such housing, while Fukushima lags behind at 70 per cent.
At the same time, six years on there are still efforts to move evacuees from prefabricated temporary housing (仮設住宅, kasetsu juutaku) to permanent replacement housing. Following the triple disaster, nearly 80,000 people were forced to live in temporary housing. As of December 2016, there were still 36,000 people from Miyagi, Fukushima and Iwate living in such housing.
Nearly 40 per cent of 2011 evacuees from Fukushima still live in temporary housing, while Miyagi has been more successful; more than 75 per cent of evacuees residing in prefabricated housing post-disaster have been moved to permanent homes. With Iwate, the figure is 34 per cent.
The Kahoku Shimpo found that 1,074 of 1,100 (or nearly 98 per cent) of schools in three prefectures affected by the March 2011 disaster had been reopened by December 2016.
Six years on, it's clear that rebuilding industry in the three prefectures has been more difficult. While close to 100 per cent of fishing ports in Iwate and Miyagi are now operational, just 30 per cent of fishing ports have reopened in Fukushima.
The tsunami and nuclear accident affected a large area of agricultural land in the three prefectures. Miyagi has been able to rehabilitate 93 per cent of affected farmland, while just 66 per cent of farmland in Iwate and less than 50 per cent of farmland affected by the disaster in Fukushima has returned to use.
It's unlikely this is just because of the nuclear accident. Of 5,400 hectares of farmland in Fukushima affected by the disaster, 690 hectares lie within the “nuclear exclusion zone.”
Tourism has largely rebounded in two of the three prefectures, but, once again, Fukushima still lags. Tourist visitors to Iwate and Miyagi have returned to about 90 per cent of pre-disaster levels, while the number for Fukushima is just 75 per cent.
However, the Kahoku Shimpo also reports that nearly half of people in coastal settlements feel that earning a livelihood has gotten tougher since the disaster.
The paper conducted numerous surveys of local residents and evacuees to determine everything from the state of reconstruction to how perceptions have changed about the risk of tsunamis. In its introduction to the feature, the Kahoku Shimpo explained:
住民の津波防災意識を探る調査を実施した。今後起きる地震や津波に備えて対策をしているとの回答が８３．１％と意識の高さがうかがえる一方、実際の備えに不安を感じている人も５５．９％と半数を超え、課題があることを示した。
The Kahoku Shimpo conducted a survey to learn more about tsunami awareness among local residents. The survey found that 83.1 per cent of local residents had taken steps to prepare for a future earthquake and tsunami. However, 55.9 per cent of respondents (more than half) still feel not enough has been done to prepare for the next disaster.
In its anniversary coverage, the Kahoku Shimpo also paid special attention to the status of evacuees from Fukushima Prefecture. Besides experiencing the powerful earthquake and devastating tsunami, Fukushima Prefecture also witnessed Japan's worst nuclear accident as a result of the disaster.
Out of 160,000 evacuees from Fukushima, nearly 63,000 people were evacuated outside of the prefecture itself. By early 2016, a little more than 23,000 people had been relocated to permanent replacement housing back within Fukushima. As of 2017, approximately 40,000 Fukushima citizens still reside outside of their home prefecture.
The majority of evacuees from all areas affected by the disaster who are still living in temporary shelter are over the age of 50, and it's thought one obstacle to moving them back into proper housing is that efforts to rebuild Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures are competing against massive construction projects that are part of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Taxi Drivers, Ordinary Citizens Offer Free Rides in Wake of St. Petersburg Attack · Global Voices
RuNet Echo

Source: https://vk.com/spb_today.
On Monday afternoon, an explosion in the St. Petersburg metro left nine dead and nearly two dozen hospitalized in an attack some Russian officials have described as an act of terror—though authorities have not yet determined who is responsible or what motive they may have had. Shortly after the blast occurred, law enforcement authorities shut down the city's subway system and discovered an undetonated explosive device several stations away, which they subsequently disarmed.
With the closure of the metro coming in the middle of the work day, thousands of people were left stranded away from home. But St. Petersburg officials and ordinary residents came through for each other in a big way: in addition to the city declaring that all other types of public transport would operate free of charge, car owners and taxi drivers throughout St. Petersburg pitched in together to help get their neighbors home safe.
Taxi drivers across the city were said to be giving free rides, and ride sharing companies Uber, Taxovichkof, and Yandex.Taxi offered their services free of charge in the wake of the blast.
Residents who weren't able to use those services began using the hashtag #домой (#home) on social media to indicate that they needed a ride home. Within hours, thousands of social media users across Facebook, VKontakte, and Twitter had used the hashtag.
RT
Кто не может вызвать Яндекс.Такси, Uber, Таксовичкоф: пользуйтесь хештегом #домой в соцсетях. С помощью него можно найти свободную машину
— Максим Казанский (@mkazanskiy) April 3, 2017
For anyone who can't call Yandex.Taxi, Uber, Taxovichkof: use the hashtag #home on social media. With its help, it's possible to find a free car.
В ~ 21:00 еду с района Новочеркасской (шоссе Революции) до пролетарской . Могу подвезти. 3 места #домой
— Artem Kozhevnikov (@rtem_x) April 3, 2017
At around 21:00 I'm going from the Novocherkassy district (Revolution Highway) to Proletarskaya [metro station]. I can drive people. 3 places #home.
In the “Accidents and Emergency Situations in St. Petersburg” VKontakte group, almost 1,500 people posted in the span of two hours to request or offer rides.
A little after 20:00 from the circus to the fountain at Sertolovo. There are two car seats.
Others said they would avoid driving to keep the roads free of traffic.
Сегодня пойду #домой пешком, чтобы не загружать транспорт.
Кто не готов 2 часа идти по городу,
помогайте друг другу – хештег #Домой
— Vladimir I. Matveev (@vi_matveev) April 3, 2017
Today I'm going home on foot so that I don't overload transportation. Those who aren't willing to walk 2 hours around town, help each other – the hashtag is #home.
Someone even created a Telegram channel called “Auto-transfer” specifically to connect people needing rides with drivers. The channel currently has more than 1,300 members.
The “Auto-transfer” Telegram channel.
Though many drivers gave rides out of the goodness of their hearts, others were less charitable: social media users reported that some drivers working for taxi companies offering free rides had refused to pick up people stranded in the city.


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After Moving Servers to Russia, LiveJournal Bans ‘Political Solicitation’ · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Image: Pixabay, edited by Kevin Rothrock
Last December, the blogging platform LiveJournal — purchased in 2007 by the Russian company SUP Media — finally relocated its data servers from California to Russia.
Calling attention to the shift, Anton Nossik (a former advisor to SUP Media) declared, “LJ’s servers have moved ‘closer’ not to its authors and readers, but to those who want to monitor them.”
This Tuesday, April 4, LiveJournal released an updated user agreement, revealing what steps it's taking to adjust to its new existence as a blogging platform in full compliance with Russia’s stifling Internet laws. In particular, users like Nossik have expressed concerns that the website’s data will now be fully accessible to Russian police snooping, in accordance with recently enacted “anti-terrorist” legislation.
One of the most chilling revisions in the new terms of service is Article 9.2.7, which forbids users from posting “political solicitation materials” without specific permission from LiveJournal.
Damir Gainutdinov, a lawyer specializing in Internet issues with the Agora Human Rights Association, told RuNet Echo that Russian federal law doesn’t actually use the term “political solicitation,” and regulates only “campaign agitation,” imposing administrative liability in just some cases.
“These [legal] procedures are absolutely not connected to the LiveJournal terms of service,” Gainutdinov explained.
LiveJournal published two versions of its user agreement: one in Russian and another in English, which begins with a disclaimer that reads, “This translation of the user agreement is not a legally binding document,” followed by a hyperlink to the “valid” Russian document. LiveJournal added no disclaimer to the Russian version.
According to Gainutdinov, this probably means the company is simply stating that the Russian text prevails over the English version, if any differences between the two are discovered. “This also means that all LiveJournal users, including people outside Russia, must follow the Russian text,” he said.
Frightening as it might seem to sign up for a blog and find yourself beholden to a Russian “legally binding, valid document,” the user agreement itself is just a generic contract that allows LiveJournal to suspend or delete your account, if you break the rules.
“The terms of service don’t establish any corpus delicti [concrete evidence of a crime] in terms of criminal procedures,” Gainutdinov said.
LiveJournal’s sudden turn on “political solicitation” follows a similar crackdown on political fundraising by the online wallet Yandex.Money, which abruptly suspended service this January to users pursuing “political aims,” less than two months after opposition leader Alexey Navalny began online fundraising through his campaign manager, Leonid Volkov.
Responding to criticism that the service was trying to handicap Navalny’s presidential campaign, Yandex.Money’s press service told the news site TJournal that it was simply protecting itself and its users from the potential risks of “legally ambiguous” activity.
Irina Borogan, coauthor of the books “The New Nobility” and “The Red Web,” told RuNet Echo that LiveJournal's new terms of service represent the Russian government's fear of social networks in the wake of recent demonstrations organized by Navalny. She explained that a ban on political agitation could serve as a pretext for deleting or suspending any accounts that share information about “unsanctioned” protests.
Russia will hold its next presidential election in March 2018. Though he hasn’t yet announced his candidacy, incumbent Vladimir Putin is widely expected to seek and win a fourth term in office.


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Ecuadorian Elections Marked by Website Outages, Twitter Suspensions · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle

“The vote is secret.” Ecuadorians vote in presidential elections in 2013, at the Colegio Benalcázar. Photo by Fernanda LeMarie for the Cancillería del Ecuador, via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
In the days surrounding Ecuador’s closely contested April 2 primary election, online activists and digital rights groups witnessed a wave of social media account suspensions and technical attacks that they suspect were politically motivated.
This came as no surprise to those who have been expressing their views about the candidates online. Representatives from media rights NGOs including Fundamedios and Usuarios Digitales say their websites have suffered technical attacks over the past three months, which have typically followed the publication of election-related materials, such as guides on where and how to cast your vote and how to keep track of poll numbers as they come in. Along with pro-opposition websites, they saw a sharp decline in traffic on the evening of the election, over local ISPs.
Pressure began to rise on the afternoon of March 30, when the Twitter account of Usuarios Digitales (Digital Users), a Quito NGO that specializes in Internet access and other Internet-related policies, was suddenly put on notice by Twitter for a tweet that they published in July 2016:
#AlertaDigitalEc bloquean cuenta de @Twitter d @usuariosdigital por contenido relacionado a candidato presidencial https://t.co/iFMF4Of4N1 pic.twitter.com/ruiQmrRX5y
— Usuarios Digitales (@usuariosdigital) April 3, 2017
#DigitalAlertEc the Twitter account for @usuariosdigital has been blocked for content related to the presidential candidate
Seen below, the offending tweet, published nine months before it was reported as abuse, violated neither Twitter’s rules nor Ecuador’s laws.
Translation: #DigitalAlertEC account of @SathBoss suspended for a tweet that contained tax-related information about @LeninMorenoPAIS
In a blogpost describing the incident, Usuarios Digitales wrote:
Esta situación altera el normal desenvolvimiento de nuestro trabajo y nos mantiene al margen de nuestra competencia de monitorear amenazas al libre ejercicio de los derechos en internet.
Nuestro trabajo lo hacemos con el fin de que autoridades e involucrados garanticen el libre ejercicio de los derechos en internet y que los sectores involucrados en la gobernanza en internet tengan un panorama completo de la situación para generar mejores políticas públicas desde un punto de protección de derechos humanos.
This situation affects the regular rhythm of our work and severely limits our ability to monitor threats against online rights.
We do our work in an effort to ensure that authorities and others in positions of power guarantee the free exercise of online rights and that the agencies involved in Internet governance have a complete understanding of the situation, in order to improve public policies in the interest of protecting human rights.
The next day, on March 31, Usuarios Digitales’ web servers underwent what they believe was a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. This took place shortly after they published a tweet reporting that website belonging to the party of leading opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso appeared to have been knocked offline.
On April 2, researchers at Usuarios Digitales monitored technical tests showing that on local ISPs including Movistar, CNT and Netlife, there was a network-wide disruption in traffic from 18:05 to 19:20. Following the disruption, researchers saw a sudden drop in traffic to websites known for their opposing views of Alianza PAIS candidate Lenin Moreno, while the website of the National Elections Center resumed normal activity. On VPN services, Claro and TvCable, the same websites were not affected.
The website for Usuarios Digitales has had multiple brief server failures since, including one that took place on April 3, while this story was being written:
Online attacks approaching the elections have also become routine for political activists on social media. For nearly a year, Twitter users expressing criticism of Lenin Moreno, a former Vice President of Ecuador and the candidate considered as victor in the general election — despite fraud accusations — have been met with account suspensions. Although many of these have been denounced on copyright grounds, users suspect they were filed with a political motive.
For many, Lenin Moreno in the presidency will be a continuation of power for the ruling party of current President Rafael Correa. A populist leftist leader lauded by many for reforming economic policies to benefit the poor, Correa has lost popularity in recent months due to corruption allegations.
Correa also has been criticized for weakening protections for freedom of expression in Ecuador and does not hesitate to speak ill of citizens (including state employees) who fall out of his favor. Numerous journalists, activists and satirists have experienced harassment after criticizing Correa and his policies.

author: Ellery Roberts Biddle