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Riverbank erosion disaster in Bangladesh leaves thousands homeless · Global Voices
Palash Ranjan Sanyal

A building engulfed by the Padma River in Bangladesh. Screenshot from YouTube Video by user TechTV BD.
As the mighty Padma River in Bangladesh experiences unprecedented levels of soil erosion, a vast area of Dhaka's Naria Upazilla region in the Shariatpur District has vanished.
The Padma river is currently facing increased water flows after extended periods of heavy monsoon rains in the upstream areas. More than 5,000 families and over 500 businesses in Naria have lost all their land and belongings in the last few months, according to Relief Web. In one week, 3,000 families in the area of Mokhtar Char lost everything. In addition to homes, many roads, bridges, culverts, businesses, shops and other critical infrastructure were submerged underwater.
The #River #Padma devours a three-storey building in Shariatpur's Naria upazila. #Erosion of this river bank has taken a serious turn; 4,000 families become homeless in few months.@riverine_people @ClimateHist @ErosionCntrlMag @ClimateAdapt@Climatebriefing @ErikSolheim pic.twitter.com/lYSn9nBbnL
— mohammad azaz (@mohamma64508589) September 8, 2018
The Padma devours a 200-year-old village overnight and reduces a 300-year-old Mulfotganj bazar into ruins at Naria, Shariatpur, Bangladesh. Photos by @ShafiqAlam1, Dhaka Bureau Chief, @AFP. pic.twitter.com/1W341YTErl
— Nazmul Ahasan (@nazmul_ahasan_) September 13, 2018
Dataful.xyz, a non-profit data journalism project, plotted Satellite data sourced from the United States Geological Survey, providing Padma River erosion visualizations over the past decade. International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) have deemed river erosion as a silent disaster in Bangladesh.
Shocking videos have surfaced online of the massive damage caused by soil erosion along the Padma, with entire buildings engulfed within seconds:
Md. Nowfel Mahmud Bhuiyan, a PhD candidate at the Tennessee Technological University, posts information on soil erosion impact on Facebook:
The Padma river has eroded approximately 0.4 sq km near Naria Upzilla (Shariatpur) in last few weeks. A quick analysis using satellite images shows at least three mosques, one health complex, one school, and one bank have been partially or totally engulfed by the Padma river. In the meantime, approximately 1.5 km of road and hundreds of houses and commercial infrastructure were lost although 2018 has not yet been a flood year in that area.
A qualitative damage assessment due to the Padma River erosion near Mulfatganj Bazar (Naria, Shariatpur) as on September 11, 2018. The analysis was done using satellite imagery and Google Earth data as field surveyed data was not readily available for verification. It should also be noted that the damage in that area must have changed by the time this article was prepared as the Padma River is eroding on a daily basis. Image credit Md N M Bhuyian, used with permission.
Inhabitants along the Padma River often experience damage from soil erosion due to the river's changing course but the rate at which the Naria region has vanished is alarming.
The site is a little more than 20 kilometers downstream from the Padma Bridge project, Bangladesh's largest bridge in the making.
The Bangladesh government has placed some geo-bags and sandbags along the free-flowing Padma River, but not enough to manage the deluge of water and debris breaking through the large, fragile sand beds along the riverbanks. The government has also prepared 39 crisis centers to provide food and shelter for victims.
In early 2018, the government approved a 255 million USD budget for the Flood and Riverbank Erosion Risk Management Investment Program so that the Bangladesh Water Development Board can construct at least 50 kilometers of riverbank protection structures and rehabilitate at least 89 kilometers of flood embankments, but the project never commenced and is now stalled due to flooding.
Netizen M.A. Latif wrote:
…The devastating erosion of the Padma river is ongoing for the last couple of years, no initiative to build a dam or embankment was taken by the local administration. A big portion of Naria Upazila Health Complex and a mosque adjacent to the hospital already washed away…
Mr. Latif believes the government should declare the area a disaster zone and start dredging the river along with building embankments to prevent further damage. The following video shows everyday citizens struggling with relief efforts along the riverbanks:
During the monsoon season, Bangladesh's approximately 24,000 kilometers of waterways carry huge amounts of silt, sand, and murky water. According to an August 2018 report published by the NASA Earth Observatory, over 66,000 hectares (256 square miles) of land has been lost due to erosion caused by the Padma River since 1967. Every year, at least 200,000 people become environmental refugees due to land lost from soil erosion:
A 2018 study by the Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) projected a loss of around 2,270 hectares of land in 2018 due to riverbank erosion. The report also predicted 22 probable vulnerable locations along the banks of the Jamuna, the Ganges, and the Padma rivers.
Journalists Mohammed Norul Alam Raju and Afroza Taznin wrote in an Op-ed in the Daily Star:
The government initiative is mainly focused on some subsidy programmes including relief distribution, Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF), Vulnerable Group Development (VGD), etc., however, these programmes are often inadequate, disorganized, politicized, ad-hoc and ineffective; thus there is much scope for improvement of government initiatives.
The government should include river bank erosion disaster in its five-year programmes and a clear vision should be set for addressing it.

author: Palash Ranjan Sanyal


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Serbian president apologizes for ‘stupidly’ citing The Onion, a satirical news platform · Global Voices
Marko Angelov

Screenshot of President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić publically apologizing for using information from The Onion, by N1 TV.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić publicly apologized to citizens on Friday, September 14, 2018, for claiming that a window washer dies every ten seconds in the United States as part of his remarks on the tragic death of two workers at a Belgrade Waterfront construction site.
Serbian social media users quickly debunked the statement, causing an uproar against the president:
Vučić kaže da u Americi svakih DESET SEKUNDI pogine jedan perač prozora.
To je objavio satirični portal THE ONION.
Što je njihov NJUZ.
I članak je naravno izmišljen.
Po toj logici pogine više od 8500 perača DNEVNO. https://t.co/3OMLDLHhlN pic.twitter.com/3bdqrmb6SC
— Beba Balašević (@kenobibaby) September 14, 2018
Vučić claims that in America a window washer perishes every TEN SECONDS.
It was published by the satirical portal THE ONION, which is similar to [Serbian satirical portal] NJUZ.
The article is of course a fabrication.
If true, it would mean that more than 8500 window washers perish on DAILY basis.
The next day Vučić retracted his false statement, explaining that he had not thought his statement through carefully due to exhaustion:
‘Želim da se izvinim građanima, ja sam sinoć na konferenciji za novinare govorio o nesrećama u građevisnkom sektoru koji se dešavaju svetu i rekao kako na svakih deset sekundi ginu perači prozora u Americi, a to je podatak uzet sa nekog šaljivog sajta. Nisu krivi moji savetnici, da sam malo razmislio i da nisam bio umoran shvatio bih odmah’, rekao je Vučić i dodao da je normalno grešiti.
‘I want to apologise to all citizens, yesterday at a press conference I spoke about accidents that happen across the world within the construction sector and I said that every ten seconds a window washer in America dies, which is an information taken from some satirical website. I don't blame my advisers, if I had thought that through and if I wasn't tired I would realize it's odd,’ Vučić said, adding that it's normal to make mistakes.
The article used as a source for the quote by Vučić was published by The Onion, a United States-based satirical media platform, under the title “Study: Every 10 Seconds A Skyscraper Window Washer Falls To His Death” in March 2011:
A study released Monday by the Department of Labor found that every 10 seconds, on average, a window washer somewhere in the United States accidentally plummets to his or her death.
A video clip published by regional CNN affiliate N1 TV shows smiling Vučić saying:
“To što sam ja ispao glup i što je to bila glupost šta da radim, bez loše namere je bilo”.
‘I can't change the fact that it made me look stupid and that it was all stupidity, but there was no ill intent.’
Media who are friendly to Vučić's regime conveyed the apology with a slant that painted him as “a cool guy,” using the term “šmeker”. Vučić's team used the blunder as an opportunity to add that the state will take care of the cancer treatment for Dušan Todorović, a cancer-stricken four-year-old.
In fact, the 191,000 Euro (approximately 225,000 USD) that enabled Dušan Todorović to travel to a Barcelona clinic last Saturday, September 15, had been raised in a frenzy by everyday citizens to save his life.  Over half the funds was gathered through the Support Life Foundation (Podrži život), while an anonymous donor paid the remainder directly to the Spanish clinic.
Netizens criticized Vučić's actions, blaming him for capitalizing on the error to gain political favor, and blaming the media as sycophants who enable his propaganda:
Poginu 2 radnika-on lupi glupost veka i proglase ga šmekerom.
Proda Kosovo-proglase ga patriotom.
Gradjani Srbije se ubiše da plate Dušanovo lečenje,on ne mrdne prstom dok sve nije plaćeno-proglase ga najvećim humanitarcem i dobročiniteljem.
A mi ćutimo?
Ako.
I treba nas jebati.
— šlager pevač? (@vucko1966) September 17, 2018
Two workers die – he states the stupidity of the century and they declare him šmeker (a cool guy).
He sells Kosovo – they declare him a patriot.
Citizens of Serbia gathered money on their own to pay for Dušan's treatment, he didn't do anything until it was over – they declare that he's the greatest humanitarian and benefactor.
And we keep silent?
OK then. We deserve to be screwed.
On Monday, September 17, Serbia's popular satirical website NJUZ NET (“njuz” is Serbian transliteration for “news”), reacted with its own satirical story entitled: “The president promised that in the future he would be more careful while obfuscating deaths of workers”.
Predsednik obećao da će ubuduće pažljivije relativizovati svaku smrt radnika https://t.co/4uEc6yQ4DG
— Njuz Net (@njuznet) September 17, 2018
“The president promised that in the future he would be more careful while obfuscating deaths of workers”
According to Meta.mk, a news agency, the results of the investigation into the death of two workers have not yet been made public. Since the beginning of 2018, 28 workers have died on the job in Serbia.
Belgrade Waterfront is a controversial project of urban renewal which the Vučić government often showcases as a huge success to attract foreign investors. Since its inception in 2014, the project has been steeped in controversies, scandals, and cover-ups.
The media has faced immense political pressure against reporting on the organized crime associated with the illegal demolition of existing buildings within the project's designated areas. This sparked a citizen protest movement known as “We won't let Belgrade D(r)own,” accusing the project of money laundering and corruption.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Marko Angelov


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A film about a Montenegrin freedom fighter seeks to keep anti-fascist values alive · Global Voices
Milica Bogdanović

Screen-shot from the film “The Fight of Mare Bogdanova.”
When we first told Mare Lakovic's daughter that we wanted to make her late mother the focus of a documentary marking 70 years of anti-fascism and female emancipation in Montenegro, she reacted to the idea with astonishment. “This must be some kind of a scam,” she told me and my co-author, Dragan Koprivica.
But Vidosava Laković, who is now 80 years old, later came round to the idea. Five months after that initial phone call, and in large part thanks to the memories she shared with us, her mother's story now been made known to tens of thousands of Montenegrins after it was aired by Balkan country's national broadcaster on  July 12 2018.
Mare Lakovic, who was born in 1910 in the Montenegrin city of Cetinje, lived an ordinary life during extraordinary times. She was just over 30 and a mother of four children when she became a widow, after Nazi forces invaded the country then known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Her husband Bogdan, a Communist partisan. was killed in action during the battle of Pljevlja in December 1941. Mare not only witnessed the defeat of fascism in 1945, but was an active participant in the underground partisan struggle.
In the turbulence that followed the communist nation's dramatic split with the Soviet Union in 1948, she was almost interned in a political prison on a barren island in the Adriatic. It was her tireless efforts for the partisan cause during the war and her network of Balkan allies that saved her, as power-brokers at the very top of the Yugoslav hierarchy intervened. She lived to see the collapse of Yugoslavia, nearly five decades after women in the country earned the right to vote, but died 10 years before her native Montenegro gained independence in 2006.
Lakovic was not a complete unknown before we made our film. We had found her among a host of characters that featured in a gripping chronicle called “Eagle's Rock—100 years of a Montenegrin Family's Life” written by the famous Montenegrin broadcaster and publisher Nebojša Bato Tomašević. Tomašević, a survivor of the 1958 Munich air disaster that killed 23 people including members of the British football club Manchester United, died last year, at 87. But “Eagle's Rock” stands as a permanent testament to the heroic roles played by ordinary Balkan women such as his early mentor Lakovic during times of unimaginable hardship, and helped inspire the film we called Mare Bogdanova's Fight (published online with English subtitles).
By researching and sharing the story of an ordinary person's struggle, we wanted to remind younger generations how the rights that we now enjoy were won, and show that each freedom and right has its own battlefield, where huge sacrifices were made. The title reflects the Balkan custom of calling the wife by the name of the husband, which was common during her lifetime. Within her community Mare Laković was known as Mare Bogdanova, meaning Bogdan's Mare.
Mare Bogdanova (1910-1996)
The Mare Lakovic that emerges from Bato Tomašević's work is a strong role model who provides the author with his first real connection to the partisan movement in Cetinje, which was under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 44. It was Mare who assigned Tomašević many of his early errands in the movement, who sent him to observe public executions of captured anti-fascist resistance fighters. Informing on the behavior of those sentenced to death was important for the movement, in order to determine whether they'd cracked under torture. Mare sent him to carry food to the prisoners, to share news from the radio and to keep her informed of everything he saw on his journeys through the town.
The partisan struggle propelled women like Mare, who was illiterate at the time, into positions of quiet leadership. It proved they could be indispensable not just inside the home, but to their communities and country, and led to a gradual shift in values across Yugoslavia.
But if women like Mare formed the background of the antifascist resistance, the movement also needed its trailblazers.
Unlike Mare, League of Communist Youth and Women’s Antifascist Front member Bosa Vuković was steeped in political literature from a very young age. Vuković was a more vocal opponent of patriarchal conservatism than the vast majority of women of the time. After her participation in the anti-fascist movement, she became the editor of a magazine called “Our Woman”, which came to be viewed as vital to the education and emancipation of women in Montenegro. The women's movement in Montenegro is another focus of our film.
One of our main motivations for preserving the memories from this era of constant struggle was the fact so many of the people who knew Mare and her husband Bogdan are now quite elderly. Luckily we were able to talk to these vital sources of human memory, who helped us to build up a picture of a life of which there is little documentation in the state archives.
The Radio-Television of Montenegro (RTCG), the country's public broadcaster, in turn helped us build historical context into the work by providing some great footage from the era sourced from Lovćen film, Montenegro's communist-era state film studio. The fact that the public broadcaster aired the film shows that the anti-fascist struggle still resonates with society. After all, Montenegro's statehood day on July 13 commemorates the anti-fascist uprising on that date in 1941.
But despite avoiding some of the right-wing populism seen in other Balkan countries, Montenegro is not immune to the conservative trends coursing through Europe and the world as a whole that fly in the face of the anti-fascist movement's principles. The stress conservatives place on family values and religious values threatens to limit individual rights and undo much of the progress forged in extreme circumstances by Mare and others. Abortion and a potential law on same-sex partnerships are two key targets for these groups, but there is no guarantee they will stop there. The distance between various social groups in society is growing at a worrying rate, and the vulnerable are at risk of being cut adrift.
This is where education comes in. Those who create educational policies must be aware of these trends and pay more attention to civic education in schools. It is not enough to simply criticize young people for not knowing or for showing interest in the events that their great-grandparents lived through. It is the responsibility of teachers to show them that the values of anti-fascism are not just a part of history, and that history is studied not to glorify the past, but to safeguard the future.

author: Milica Bogdanović


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Netizen Report: Authorities shut down mobile internet in Ethiopia’s capital, as ethnic and political conflict persist · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Protest in Ethiopia's Oromo region, 2016. Photo from Abdi Lemessa's Facebook page. Used with permission.
Just five months into the administration of Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, protests rooted in ethnic conflict and the administration of land rights policies have once again taken Addis Ababa by storm and led to the deaths of at least 20 people.
On September 17, in what appeared to be an effort to quell social unrest, mobile internet networks were shut down across the capital city. Ethio Telecom, the country’s sole, government-owned internet and phone service provider, did not offer any public statement about the shutdown.
Abiy Ahmed came into office in April 2018 after nearly three years of mass protests, ethnic conflict and violent military interventions in some regions of the country. Former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn voluntarily resigned from office in February 2018 after his once-ruling coalition had splintered beyond repair, opening the window of possibility for Ahmed’s election.
Hailed as a reformer, the new prime minister has ordered the release of thousands of political prisoners, removed top-level police and security officials from the previous regime and worked to rekindle relations with Eritrea. He also lifted the country’s state of emergency, which had been in place intermittently since 2015.
The resurgence of protests and corresponding internet shutdown, both hallmarks of public life under the previous regime, have raised fears that Ahmed's efforts to restore peace and uphold human rights in the country are already faltering.
Reacting to the shutdown, activist and former prisoner of conscience Atnaf Berhane tweeted about the irony of this move on the part of the new government:
- On June 22, gov announced that it has unblocked websites that were critical of the government.
– On Sep 17, gov shutdown mobile internet in the capital, Addis Ababa, following a protest that was conducted to condemn the ethnic-based attack. #Ethiopia #KeepItOn pic.twitter.com/co0JQZYKB8
— Atnaf Brhane (@AtnafB) September 18, 2018
Ukrainian journalist Aleksandr Gorokhovsky was arrested in the northwestern Kazakh city of Uralsk while he was training a group of Kazakh journalists in fact-checking methods. The workshop was organized by regional newspaper Uralskaya Nedelya, that has long been the target of state harassment, due in part to its precarious position near the Kazakh-Russian border, where there are strong political currents of pro-Moscow sentiment. Gorokohovsky was fined two days later by a local court, where the public prosecutor argued that when entering Kazakhstan, Gorokhovsky had failed to indicate who had invited him to the country on his migration form
The Cameroonian government is targeting the spread of misinformation online with presidential elections approaching on October 7. Online campaigns promoting ethnic violence have become a growing force in Cameroon’s internal conflict, where a separatist movement in English-speaking areas has led to clashes between armed separatists and military forces, with military attacks on Anglophone villages forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes. For 230 days in 2017 and 2018, Anglophone regions of Cameroon also suffered one of the longest continuous internet shutdowns known to have occurred on the continent.
Cameroonian officials recently met with Facebook over concerns that the platform poses a threat to public security as calls for ethnic violence continue to spread on the platform.
Writing for Quartz Africa, Amindeh Blaise Atabong questioned whether the officials may have other additional motives: Facebook has been used to share videos that local experts say depict Cameroonian soldiers killing unarmed civilians in the separatist regions, and that the government may have hopes of blocking this material.
Malaysia’s Senate blocked an attempt by the lower house of Parliament to repeal the country’s “Anti-Fake News Law”, which penalizes the distribution of “news, information, data and reports which is or are wholly or partly false” with fines of up to 500,000 ringgit (USD $123,000) or a maximum sentence of six years in prison. The law has been criticized by a group of UN special rapporteurs for enabling restrictions on freedom of expression, and its repeal was one of the election priorities of the recently elected Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. It will now return to the lower house for another vote.
After leaving the Chinese market in 2010, citing human rights concerns, Google is now preparing to launch a censored version of its search engine in China. The “Dragonfly” app would automatically identify and censor websites like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, BBC, Global Voices and many others that are currently blocked in China, and remove Google search results that government officials deem sensitive.
According to new findings by The Intercept, the app will also link users’ searches to their personal phone numbers so that the company (and presumably Chinese state officials) can monitor their queries. This reinforces the concerns of a coalition of 14 human rights groups expressed in an open letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai that the storage of Google data in China could make users’ data vulnerable to government surveillance, and could make Google complicit in human rights violations.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK’s mass surveillance programs violate the right to privacy and freedom of expression. The ruling, which responds to a challenge brought by organizations including Amnesty international and Privacy International, found that the programs lacked sufficient oversight for how data is collected and violated human rights doctrine and laws. It fell short of stating that the existence of a bulk data collection scheme would itself be in violation of the law.
Afef Abrougui, Mahsa Alimardani, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Rohith Jyothish, Karolle Rabarison and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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Uighurs in the laogai: how China’s persecution of a minority turned my fiction into fact · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Two Uighur mullahs in Xinjiang in the 1920s. PHOTO: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
By Karen Kao
Laogai the third novel in my series Shanghai Quartet is set in a Chinese labor camp. It will be a series of interlocking short stories about the men incarcerated in that place—the jailers and the jailed, the victims and the perpetrators.
One of the prisoners I’ve simply called the Uighur. He works as an enforcer for another prisoner who runs all illegal activities inside the camp. The Uighur is an emotionless brute who takes pleasure in harming others. A blunt instrument in more ways than one.
Clearly, this character needs a lot of work. An utterly evil character is a boring character. But now I have a new justification for recasting my Uighur prisoner, thanks to Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China.
Turban-headed people
Uighurs are a Turkic people who originated in Central Asia. They’ve been in China since the Bronze Age. At one point in time the Chinese referred to them as the turban-headed people. The Mandarin term used nowadays is wéiwúĕrzú (维吾尔族).
Most Uighurs live in China’s Xinjiang Province, which borders several countries, including Mongolia, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, as well as the Tibet Autonomous Region. Many of them are Sunni Muslim. The men grow long beards and the women wear headscarves. They observe Muslim dietary laws. Pigeon shish kebab is a local specialty.
There is a long history of attempts to declare an independent Uighur state, and the Chinese have always been sensitive to any unrest on the border. In July 2009, ethnic violence erupted in the capital city of Urumqi. More protests, deaths and military shows of force followed. Then, in 2016, Xi Jinping appointed Chen Quanguo as the new Communist Party chief for Xinjiang Province.
A police state
Chen immediately rolled out new surveillance measures. Police confiscated passports. They built 949 “convenience police stations” in Urumqi alone. Now, there’s facial recognition software to hunt down undesirables. That includes anyone wearing a long beard, who doesn’t smoke, using the Uighur language, accessing foreign websites or contacting overseas relatives.
In 2017, 21% of all In some areas of Xinjiang, there are arrest quotas as high as 40% of the local population. The police take Uighurs into custody under the pretext of terrorism or religious extremism. But few of those incarcerated are ever charged, let alone tried in a court of law.
Rahile Dawut may be one of them. She’s an international expert on Uighur culture. The Chinese Cultural Ministry has funded her research. Last December, Professor Dawut hastily boarded a train for Beijing. No one has seen her since.
Rian Thum drew on Dawut’s work to write his own Uighur history. By following the trail of public bids, Thum found evidence of a massive state-funded infrastructure project intended for Xinjiang Province. An invitation posted on April 27, 2018 sought bids forq
compounds of up to 880,000 square feet, some with quarters for People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary security force. Local governments are also placing ads to recruit camp staff with expertise in criminal psychology or a background in the military or the police force.
Xi Jinping doesn’t want roads and bridges. He’s building prison camps.
Sinification
The purpose of these camps is to sinify the Uighur people—to make them Chinese. To become Chinese, the Uighurs must eat pork, drink alcohol and dance. It would all be laughable, but for the deadly intent.
Inside the prison camps, prison officials teach Uighurs not to be Muslims and to protect China. They march inside crowded cells, chant slogans and are made to watch propaganda videos. It’s a description of laogai life that perfectly matches the eyewitness account of Prisoner #42816.
Last month, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that up to one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are being detained in a no-rights zone. But there are no prison camps in Xinjiang, China says. We call them “vocational education and employment training centres”. We call those detained “criminals”, and the ones who spread false rumors, “anti-China forces”.
The Chinese foreign ministry issued the following statement:
People of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang cherish the current situation of living and working in peace and happiness.
Uighur hell
When talking to the West, Beijing refers to its labor-prison complex as an educational institution. But for its domestic audience, Sigal Samuel reports, there’s a different narrative. According to Beijing, these prison camps are actually hospitals and their inmates are patients in urgent need of treatment:
They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient. … The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine, which confuses the mind of the people. … If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumor.
The Chinese government uses the analogy of an infectious disease to further three goals. First, to justify its large-scale internment. After all, if you want to eradicate smallpox, you have to inoculate all the children.
Second, to explain why it is necessary to quarantine the Uighur for such lengthy periods of time. Sometimes you need multiple courses of treatment to cure the patient. And when the patient finally recovers, he will need vigilant and perpetual out-patient care.
Finally, to stigmatize the Uighur people. Religious extremism and terrorist tendencies are diseases of the mind and, as such, likely to recur. Such a slur comes as no surprise to the Uighurs. As Sigal Samuel notes, calling Islam a disease is
part of China’s attempt to eradicate Muslim ethnic minorities and forcefully assimilate them into the Han Chinese majority.
Laogai
History repeats itself. You can see it in the quotas. You can hear it in the propaganda. In the early 1950s, Mao Zedong called his enemies poisonous weeds. Now, they’re malignant tumors. Xi Jinping is following in the footsteps of the Great Helmsman. Or, as Chris Buckley and Austin Ramzy put it:
Xi Jinping, the country’s president and Communist Party leader, is determined to redraw the boundaries of what is permitted in religion, academic research, civil society and ethnic expression.
I’m not going to aid Xi Jinping’s propaganda campaign. Or let my novel perpetuate cultural prejudices. Maybe my enforcer doesn’t need to be Uighur or a member of any other minority group in China. Wherever my enforcer comes from, he’ll need to have more interests than simply beating people to death.
But at least there’s one thing I don’t have to worry anymore. Now I know for sure there are Uighurs in the laogai.
Karen Kao is a poet, fiction writer and essayist based in Amsterdam. This original version of this essay was published on Inkstone Press.

author: Guest Contributor


text:
While some Brazilians tried to school Germans on Nazism, others apologized in shame · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

In the video entitled “how they teach History in Germany”, the country's Embassy says: German people do not hide their past | Image: Reproduction/Facebook
Over the past few years, it has become a trend in Brazil to assert that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party were leftists. The idea is based on the simple—and quite literal—fact that the party’s full name translates as German Workers’ National Socialist Party. And “socialist” equals left, correct?
That is not accurate, of course. But, the ludicrous theory has resurfaced once again among Brazilians after the Germany Consulate in Recife, Pernambuco, in the Northeastern region of Brazil, posted a video explaining how Germany values “knowing and preserving its History, so it won’t have to repeat it.”
In a little over a minute, the video, which has 829,000 views at the time of writing, asks what would happen “when the extremist right-wing comes back to the country?” It answers with a quote from Foreign Affairs minister Heiko Mass:
“We need to oppose to extremists from the right, we shouldn’t ignore them, we have to show our face against neonazis and anti-Semites (…) Whoever protest agains Nazis is not from the left, is normal”.
Os alemães não escondem o seu passado. Saiba como se ensina história na Alemanha:#história #alemanha #museus #deutschland #passado #futuro pic.twitter.com/VuTWj1VA3A
— AlemanhanoBrasil (@Alemanha_BR) September 5, 2018
German people do not hide their past. Know how they teach History in Germany #history #germany #museums #deutschland #past #future
After posting the video, the Consulate’s official page was flooded with comments from right-leaning groups questioning how Germans themselves view Nazism:
Embaixada alemã fala aquilo que ela quer que acreditem. Pior são os comentários dos historiadores que nunca leram nem gibi. Nazismo nunca foi de direita. É só buscar a historia que ja está escrita. Bobo daquele que acredita em tudo que qualquer um fala.
— Renan – GAB?@urenan (@urenan) September 17, 2018
German embassy say whatever they want you to believe in. The worst part is comments from historians who never even read a comic book. Nazism was never from the right. You just have to look at the history that is written. Those who believe in anything anyone says are dummies.
Another commentator on the German Consulate's Facebook page questioned the video's claim that the country created a law in 1976 forbidding people to question “the veracity of the Holocaust, because specialists were unmasking this farce”. A different person responded, saying “the holofraud's days are numbered.”
Back in May, a veteran news anchor from TV Globo, Alexandre Garcia, also tweeted a statement in support of the theory:
Você que que eu diga o nome do partido nazista de Hitler? Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. Traduzindo: Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Alemães. Penso que ficou claro. Pelos métodos, não é coincidência.
— Alexandre Garcia (@alexandregarcia) May 8, 2018
Do you want me to say the name of Hitler’s Nazi party? Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. Translating it: German Workers’ Socialist Party. I think it’s clear. According to the methods they used, it’s no coincidence.
This time, however, the reaction was quick. While some Brazilians were putting the nation to shame (to an extent one Twitter user joked was worse than the 7 to 1 score in the 2014 World Cup), others were apologizing for them:
A embaixada alemã tá errada. Quem tá certo é o Juquinha da quitanda, que se informa através de memes no WhatsApp https://t.co/2RVo77skz3
— Bic Müller (@bicmuller) September 17, 2018
The German embassy is wrong. Little Joe from the grocery store, who only gets his info from WhatsApp memes is the one who is right.
One user even coined a new term especially for the moment:
BRAZILIANSPLAINING:
brasileiros emocionados que nunca ligaram pra política, (mas nos últimos meses viram uns vídeos, entraram em grupos no face e hoje se acham autoridade MÁXIMA no assunto.)
querendo explicar pra ALEMÃES o que foi o NAZISMO e HOLOCAUSTO.
— Zelune (@zelune) September 18, 2018
BRAZILIANSPLAINING: thrilled Brazilians who never cared about politics (but saw a couple of videos in the past months, joined Facebook groups and today believe themselves as MAXIMUM authorities in the matter) are trying to explain to GERMANS what NAZISM and the HOLOCAUST were.
Following the controversy, in an interview for O Globo newspaper, the German ambassador to Brazil, Dr. Georg Witschel, declared that “saying that Nazism was a leftist movement is bullshit”.
Making it clearer
In an interview with the newspaper El Pais, Damaris Jenner, the press spokesperson for the Embassy, explained how they came up with the idea for the video:
“Na semana em que pensamos em fazer esse vídeo, aconteceram as manifestações em Chemnitz e vários jornais brasileiros noticiaram”, diz ela. Os protestos foram realizados por militantes da extrema direita desde o final de agosto contra a morte de um alemão, supostamente esfaqueado por dois imigrantes, e que terminaram em atos de violência. “Achamos que seria interessante ligar esses dois assuntos para mostrar essa discussão na Alemanha”, afirma Jenner. Mas a reação dos internautas surpreendeu. “Não imaginávamos que repercutiria dessa forma”, diz.
“The week we thought about making this video, the manifestations at Chemnitz were taking place and several Brazilian news outlets were reporting on it”, she says. The protests were led by extremist right-wing militants since the end of August against the death of a German man, alledgedly stabbed by two immigrants, that ended up in more violence. “We thought it would be interesting to connect both subjects to show this discussion in Germany”, states Jenner. The reaction took them by surprise. “We couldn’t imagine that it would have these kinds of repercussions.”
The paper also mentions that there is a German word to describe this episode: Fremdschämen—when you’re ashamed by somebody else’s actions.
The magazine SuperInteressante tried to put the discussion to rest, explaining that Nazism was much more aligned to the right than to the left. In spite of carrying “socialist” in its name, the regime despised Soviet-style communism and leaned more toward with economic liberalism, a political system traditionally connected with the right.
Mais importante do que estar à direita ou à esquerda, o que realmente definia as políticas e os objetivos de Adolf Hitler não era nem o capitalismo nem o socialismo: era o racismo. O nazismo, da forma como se consolidou na década de 1930, era caracterizado por um nacionalismo para poucos, os alemães “arianos”. Qualquer outro grupo que não se encaixasse nisso não poderia participar do Estado alemão.
More important than being part of the right or the left, what really defined Adolf Hitler’s policies and goals were neither capitalism, nor socialism: it was racism. Nazism, and how it consolidated itself in the 1930s, was characterized by a nationalism for few people, the “arians” Germans. Any other group that did not fit into this idea was not allowed to be part of the German State.
The Holocaust was “one of the most brutal episodes in History“. The Nazi's “Final Solution”, a plan to exterminate Jewish people from their country and the lands conquered by the regime, ended with millions dead. And, as the BBC explains:
The Jews were not the only victims of Nazism. It is estimated that as many as 15 million civilians were killed by this murderous and racist regime, including millions of Slavs and ‘asiatics’, 200,000 Gypsies and members of various other groups. Thousands of people, including Germans of African descent, were forcibly sterilised.

author: Fernanda Canofre


text:
Will Brazil’s forthcoming data protection law actually protect peoples’ privacy rights? · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

Michel Temer sanctions the Personal Data Protection Bill | Image: Valter Campanato/Agência Brasil/CC
After two years of negotiation at the National Congress, Brazil’s Personal Data Protection Bill was finally sanctioned by president Michel Temer on August 14. The original text was approved in both houses of Congress by a unanimous vote.
The bill, as defined by members of Congress, is a “legal framework for the protection, use and treatment of personal information”. The law intends to give individuals greater power to control their data, by requiring corporate entities to obtain a person's consent before collecting their information. This is an important move in Brazil where pharmacies, public transportation and other services often capture people’s data without their explicit consent or prior notice.
After the misuse of data captured on Facebook became a worldwide concern with the Cambridge Analytica scandal in early 2018, the Congress expedited its process on the bill.
But there is a catch. The text signed by Temer is not exactly the same one approved by at the Parliament. Temer vetoed some elements of the original.
Global Voices talked to Bia Barbosa, an activist part of the collective Intervozes and a member of Coalizão Direitos na Rede (Net Rights Coalition), to learn the groups’ concerns about the bill.
Barbosa explains that the text has a series of problems, mainly caused by the Temer's vetos. She highlights three of them:
O primeiro o veto à criação de uma autoridade independente e de um conselho de proteção de dados pessoais, que estaria vinculado à essa autoridade, garantindo participação multissetorial. Hoje, isso deixa a lei sem condições e garantia de sua aplicabilidade. O governo tem declarado que vai enviar um projeto de lei ou uma medida provisória para o Congresso para criar essa autoridade, mas as informações que a gente tem é de que o modelo que vai ser enviado pelo Executivo não respeita o modelo de autoridade que foi negociado nesse texto no Parlamento. Esse é o principal problema para a gente, porque sem uma autoridade realmente independente, com autonomia administrativa e poder sancionatório, a lei corre sérios riscos de não sair do papel.
Outro risco que nos parece bastante preocupante é o veto ao artigo 28 que estabelece o dever do poder público informar, de maneira pró-ativa a sociedade quando ele compartilha dados pessoais com outros órgãos do poder público. Esse artigo foi vetado, de uma maneira, na nossa avaliação, sem justificativa e gera uma deficiência de transparência no tratamento de dados pelo poder público.
O terceiro aspecto, que para as organizações de defesa de liberdade de expressão também é significativo, é o veto dado ao artigo que garantia a proteção dos dados pessoais dos requerentes de informação via LAI. Ou seja, os dados das pessoas que pedem informação ao poder público, tinham uma previsão garantiste de proteção aos dados desses requerentes e isso também foi vetado. Na nossa avaliação, apesar da grande maioria da lei ter sido respeitada, esses vetos são preocupantes.
The first one is the veto of the creation of an independent authority and of a personal data protection council, that should be submitted to this authority, ensuring a multi-sector participation. With this section removed, the bill no longer articulates conditions or protections for its enforcement. The government says it will send a new law to the Congress to create this authority, but the information that we've received indicates that the Executive’s model doesn’t respect the model that was negotiated at the Parliament. Without this, the bill has serious risks of not coming to fruition.
Another risk that is very worrisome to us is the veto of article 28, which establishes the public duty to inform society, in a pro-active manner, when sharing personal data with other public offices. This article was vetoed, in an unjustifiable way, limited the transparency of how public data is treated by public power.
The third aspect is the veto given to the article that guaranteed the protection of personal data of those who required information via the Access to Information Act (LAI). There was a provision to ensure protection of people requesting data, but it was also vetoed. To us, even though the majority of the bill was respected, these vetoes are concerning.
The collective Net Rights Coalition warned of the possibility that the president would veto the creation of a National Data Protection Authority (ANDP) before signing. The ANDP was meant to work as an independent regulatory agency. According to the federal government, it would be “unconstitutional” if the Congress was to create such authority, therefore a governmental office should have oversight in the process, in order to ensure its functionality.
Most importantly, the group noted that the military has been working to incorporate the Institutional Security Cabinet into the policy. The Brazilian Intelligence Agency falls under the authority of the Cabinet.
A possibilidade de deixar para um órgão do próprio governo a tarefa de garantir o respeito à lei pelo poder público coloca em total risco sua eficácia.
Por isso, o texto aprovado no Congresso prevê uma Autoridade independente administrativamente do Executivo. Este modelo de autoridade não é nenhuma novidade no Brasil e é o padrão da grande maioria dos países que têm leis gerais de proteção de dados pessoais.
The possibility of leaving an organ that is part of the government with the task of ensuring respect to the law puts its efficiency at a total risk. Therefore, the text approved by the Congress has foreseen an Authority that is administratively independent from the Executive. This model is no news in Brazil and is a pattern to a large majority of countries with general data protection laws
The vetos can also affect the enforcement of Brazil's unique Marco Civil or “Internet Bill of Rights” that was passed in 2014. As Barbosa notes, currently, there are around 200 proposals under review in Congress that would change Marco Civil. Most of these proposals are focused in two areas. The first is to remove a key check on state entities that wish to access personal data held by companies — the current legislation requires state actors to obtain a court order before doing this, but many of the pending proposals would remove this requirement.
Na nossa avaliação, isso abre um precedente muito perigoso, para risco de vigilantismo total do poder das forças de segurança, do poder investigativo para o cidadão comum, por isso a gente tem combatido esses projetos.
In our evaluation, this opens a very dangerous precedent, risking a total vigilantism for the power of security forces, or investigative power of a regular citizens, that’s why we’ve been fighting against these projects.
The second line of proposals would obligate social media and other platforms to immediately remove content after receiving a request, rather than awaiting judicial review. Many of them using the “blue whale”, an internet challenge that allegedly drives teenagers to commit suicide, as an excuse.
Para a gente isso também é perigoso, porque coloca nas mãos dessas plataformas a responsabilidade de avaliar esses conteúdos e, não necessariamente, isso vai ser feito de uma maneira equilibrada com a defesa do princípio de liberdade de expressão. Então, a gente tem combatido esses processos no sentido de manter o marco civil na sua integralidade, entendendo que é uma lei principiológica, bastante atual.
We also see this as dangerous move, because it puts on the hands of these platforms the responsibility to evaluate content and, not necessarily, this would be driven in a balanced manner, defending the principle of free speech. So, we’ve been fighting these processes in the sense of keeping Marco Civil at its integrality, understanding this is a principle law, very up to date.
Bia Barbosa also points to the fact that collecting data through apps, credit card, internet browsers, is now an “indiscriminate practice” of many companies. This leads to leaking, wrongful commercialization, sharing without consent. “All our data is being constantly treated and collected, without people knowing or being informed about it”, she says.
She also notes that although Marco Civil has multiple provisions ensuring protections for users’ privacy, the text has been disrespected or ignored, which has led civil society to propose a specific law aimed at personal data protection.
A gente espera agora que com a aprovação dessa lei, o Brasil comece a mudar a cultura da coleta de dados porque a ideia da lei não é impedir o tratamento de dados, mas definir em que condições isso pode acontecer, que o usuário seja informado, que respeite direitos fundamentais, que haja limites para esse tratamento, que a comercialização não seja feita de uma maneira indiscriminada e massiva como é feita hoje.
We now hope that with the approval of this law, Brazil will begin to change the culture of data collection, because the bill’s goal is not stopping data processing, but to define under which conditions that can happen — it says that users must be informed about it, respecting fundamental rights, and that puts limits on how data can be treated, stopping indiscriminate and massive commercialization as it’s done today.
Brazil is currently approaching presidential elections. Temer, who came to power after the controversial impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, being her vice-president, will leave office on January 1.
When sanctioning the bill he promised to send a new bill to create the agency “soon”. How the agency will operate or if it will be submitted to the Ministry of Justice has yet to be defined.
Valor newspaper quoted him saying:
“Eu vou mandar logo, muito brevemente um projeto de lei, mais ou menos com os mesmos dizeres, mas sem vício de iniciativa”, explicou o emedebista. (…) “Vou deixar mais ou menos como está”, sinalizou.
I will send, very soon, a draft law, with similar language, but without the initial vice (the fact that the Legislative power was creating and could make it unconstitutional, according to the Executive)…I'll leave it more or less how it is.


text:
Journalist’s expulsion from restaurant leads to debate about racism in Angola · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

Hossi Sonjamba’s clothes on the day | Photo used with Hossi’s permission – 26 August 2018
The alleged violent eviction of a journalist from an upscale restaurant in Luanda has caused an online controversy, leading to debates about racism and discrimination in Angola.
On 26 August, journalist and activist Simão Hossi visited the Café Del Mar restaurant with a group of friends. On the instructions of the managers, two employees followed Hossi when he was on his way to the restroom. The employees then allegedly assaulted and expelled him from the restaurant with the excuse that Hossi was poorly dressed.
Afterwards, Hossi took to Facebook and shred his version of events in a post:
Ontem, domingo 26 de Agosto, desloquei-me a Ilha de Luanda, em companhia de 3 amigos sendo um deles um Cidadão Norte Americano que esteve em Angola a trabalho, trata-se de Jeremias Dito Dalí, Massilon Chindombe, e o Rudy Massamba que veio de Washington DC.
(…) enquanto procurava-se pelo lugar para sentarmos decidi ir ao banheiro e, como não conhecia a casa perguntei a uma atendente, esta indicou que fosse sempre em frente por estar apresada, como não achava, perguntei a uma funcionária de limpeza, está por sua vez questionou-me logo de onde vinha, eu respondi a ela no caso a funcionária que estava no interior do restaurante e que precisava do banheiro, ela indicou-me e fui usar o mesmo.
Tão logo saí do banheiro deparo-me com mais ou menos 4 a 5 seguranças internos vulgos Caenches que abordaram a minha pessoa com as questões, o que estava aí a fazer, de onde vinha e, estes por sua vez obrigavam a segui-los eu questionei para onde eles queriam levar-me se estava acompanhado. Foi assim que eles a força, um deles pegou me a força como se um bebê até fora do recinto do restaurante onde fui atirado ao chão, este mesmo que carregou deu-me bofetadas, para além destes em conjunto terem preferidos palavras de que, aquele não era o local para mim, mesmo eu tendo insistentemente afirmado que estava acompanhando com mais 3 pessoas.
Quanto a questão das minhas vestimentas, eu estava de chinelas de facto, estava com uma calça e camisola normal, havia pessoas com calções e chinelas mas fui mesmo o alvo.
Para mim o pessoal da segurança não agiu isoladamento, tiveram cobertura da gerência do restaurante.
Yesterday, 26 August, I visited the Ihla de Luanda, in the company of 3 friends, one being a USA citizen who was in Angola for work, they were Jeremias Dito Dalí, Massilon Chindombe, and Rudy Massamba who came from Washington DC.
(…) while looking for a place for us to sit I decided to go to the bathroom and, as I did not know the place I asked an attendant, they said it was straight ahead as he was busy, as I did not find it, I asked a cleaning employee, for her part she asked me quickly where I came from, I answered her like the employee inside the restaurant and that I needed the bathroom, she showed me and I went to use it.
As soon as I left the bathroom I came across more or less 4 to 5 muscly internal security staff that accosted me with questions, what was I there to do, where did I come from and, they then forced me to follow them, I asked where they wanted to take me while accompanied. It was then they used force, one of them took me by force like a baby outside the restaurant area where I was thrown to the floor, the same one who carried me also struck me, and as well as this they also chose words that, this was not the place for me, even though I had been insistently saying that I was accompanied by 3 other people.
As for the question of my clothes, I was actually in flip-flops, I was wearing normal trousers and a long shirt, there were other people with shorts and flip-flops but the target was just me.
For me, the security staff did not act alone, they were covered by the restaurant’s management.
The story was widely shared on social media and many people have publicly criticized and protested the restaurant's actions — among them long-time clients. Hossi was also invited to discuss what happened on the most watched television channel in Angola, TV Zimbo.
In a Facebook post, which was later shared in the newspaper O País, Presidential advisor Ismael Mateus claimed that this case of racism against Simão Hossi is only one of thousands that occur in the country.
According to Mateus, racism in Angola is nothing new, but people prefer to pretend nothing is happening. In some companies, he explained, having lighter skin is a passport to a job or preferential treatment:
Acontece nas nossas barbas e enquanto não tomarmos consciência disso, as coisas vão continuar. Um dia, quando alguém perder a cabeça e acontecer um incidente grave, ninguém se irá lembrar das pessoas que andam há anos a dizer que precisamos de discutir o racismo contra a grande maioria negra.
It happens in front of us and while we do not take notice of it, these things will continue. One day, when somebody loses their head and a serious incident happens, nobody will remember the people who have been saying for years that we need to discuss racism against the large black majority.
In their own defense, the restaurant wrote that Simão Hóssi had been dressed inadequately and unacceptably. According to their version of the incident, Hossi was approached by a member of the cleaning staff who reproached him for his poor state of dress. The restaurant management then alerted the head of security who asked Hossi to leave the area which created an unpleasant situation for other clients.
Outside the establishment, police officers on patrol in the area were called in to intervene on behalf of Simão Hossi, who alleged that he had been assaulted. This was disregarded by the officers as he did not show any signs of being assaulted.
In a Facebook post, Joaquim Lunda, a friend of Hossi, said he did not understand how something like this could happen:
…várias vezes eu já estive neste local em que mencionas, de calções e chinelos e ainda hoje estive lá de calções e chinelos, mas tive um bom tratamento pelos funcionários…será que discutiste com algum funcionário, coisa parecida? Acho mesmo muito estranho isso que acabas de mencionar.
… I have already been several times to this place that you mention, in shorts and flip-flops and even today I was there in shorts and flip-flops, but I was treated well by the staff…could it be that you had an exchange with one of the staff, something like that? I think that it’s very strange, what you just mentioned
Buddy you provoked this situation, you treated the cleaning staff member badly, the security staff came on the basis of the information given by this lady. I think that the question the lady asked you was normal
Buddy you have to go further with this. You cannot tolerate injustice or discrimination. I am with you, if you need my help, you know where to find me. For that matter, I can do some work on this
Presenter Salgueiro Vincente jumped to Hossi's defense,using Facebook to organize a protest near the restaurant, as well as debates, songs, and poetry.
Action taken in support of the activist and journalist Hossi Sonjamba | Photo used with permission
In response to Vincente's call to protest, Elísio dos Santos Magalhães highlighted the need for a country united against racism:
Estamos todos ligados nesta causa o racismo divisionismo, tribalismo, perconceito racial basts chega, chega, chega, chega Angola sem racismo todos somos um só! E muitos felizes ,chega de perconceito de cor da pele chega, um dia eu ja sofri isto ando muito magoado pelo os meus ex sogros e depois de vinte anos tiraram-me a mulher por eu ser mistiço abaixo o racismo nas familias ja destruiram muitas familias em Angola chega chega basta…
We are all linked in this cause, divisive racism, tribalism, racial prejudice, enough, enough, enough, enough, enough, Angola without racism, we are all one! And very happy, enough of prejudice about skin colour enough, one day I already suffered this I am very hurt by my former parents-in-law and after twenty years they took away my wife because I am mestizo, due to racism in families, families are destroyed in Angola, enough enough enough
On 9 September, the day of event, demonstrators shared photos of the protest in front of the restaurant:
Demonstration in front of the restaurant | Photo used with permission – Hossi Sonjamba (09.09.2018)
Demonstration in front of the restaurant | Photo used with permission – Hossi Sonjamba (09.09.2018)
According to Hossi’s online posts, the case is still being investigated by Angolan authorities.

author: Dércio Tsandzana


text:
Venezuelans say they are unable to access key Google services · Global Voices
Marianne Diaz Hernandez

Illustration by Eduardo Sanabria. Used with permission.
During the first days of September, many Venezuelan Internet users reported having difficulties accessing Google services through the state-run Internet service provider, CANTV, the largest telecommunications company in Venezuela. The service seemed to be working again by mid September, but the conversation revealed the many ways online users are deprived of information and communication online.
Blogspot, Hangouts, Google Drive, and image services, including Gmail attachments were among the services affected.
Creo que los amiguitos de ABA de CANTV están bloqueando el acceso a una CDN específicas a Google. No estoy seguro de la extensión de la falla/bloqueo pero es consistente. Prueba rápida abran el Play Store y vean si se descargan las imágenes de las apps.
— Aníbal Rojas (@anibal) September 9, 2018
I think our little friends from the broadband Internet service (ABA) at CANTV are blocking access to specific Google CDNs (content delivery networks). I'm not sure of the breadth of the service outage/block, but it is consistent. Run a quick test by opening the Play Store to see if the app images are downloaded.
In the absence of official information, users began to speculate about the reasons behind this outage, pointing to an intentional block by CANTV as a possible cause.
Venezuela Inteligente, a Venezuelan civil society group, said that Facebook and Twitter had also been affected by the outage, suggesting that content distribution platforms may have been the intended target. It could not confirm, however, if this blackout was caused by an intentional block:
Seguimos revisando los problemas para acceder a varias plataformas importante por #CANTV, muchos de los problemas tienen que ver con plataformas de DCN (que sirven archivos comunes más rapidamente)
Hasta este momento NO PODEMOS CONFIRMAR un bloqueo intencional #internetve #9Sep
— VE sin Filtro (@vesinfiltro) September 10, 2018
We are continuing to review the problems of accessing several important platforms via #CANTV, many of these problems are occurring in the CDN platforms (content distribution networks, which load common files more quickly) At this time WE CANNOT CONFIRM an intentional block #internetve #9Sep
Meanwhile, Fran Monroy, a technology journalist, declared that the blackout stemmed from a combination of technical failures:
Según explica el colega especialista en telecomunicaciones @fmonroy Con #CANTV están pasando DOS problemas en este momento en #Venezuela
Abro hilo…#SinInternet
— Karla Avila ૐ (@LaTuristaKAM) September 9, 2018
A colleague specialized in telecommunications @fmonroy explained that #CANTV has two problems at this time in #Venezuela Read the thread.
It is worth mentioning that frequent outages have been an enduring characteristic of state-run Internet services. It not only happens with the Internet connection, but also with the electrical grid.
In Venezuela, attacks against the Internet are not new. Among other cases, in June 2018, the anonymous browser Tor, and various pornography sites were blocked.
Furthermore, a recent study by Venezuela Inteligente, IPYS Venezuela and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) found that the censoring of news websites in Venezuela by means of DNS tampering and HTTP filtering is a wide-spread practice.
When content is blocked by means of DNS tampering, the domain name server does not respond to the Internet protocol (IP) request. When a specific web address is entered in the browser, the IP request is prevented from being carried out. Meanwhile, HTTP filtering blocks access to information whose principal code contains a syntax seen as invalid by the system.
In the past, Venezuelans have reported being unable to access of radio frequencies, but more recently, stricter control has been seen with the direct blocking of independent news sources and the arrest of journalists. A few days before the latest reports of blocked platforms, international media outlets had already condemned attacks against independent news sources.
Meanwhile, other limitations linked to the political and economic crisis have also meant less freedom of press and expression. The shortage of basic goods such as paper, or the recent economic measures (that include, for example, a 60-fold increase in the minimum wage, due to soaring inflation rates) have forced several media outlets to close their doors.
As a result, the number of news outlets that could oppose Nicolás Maduro's government are being reduced in a sustained and ever-accelerating manner.
A study co-written by the author of this post and Derechos Digitales (Digital Rights) reports a deterioration in online communications in Venezuela. The study also indicates that the restriction of information and communication that has been documented in Venezuela and the lack of transparency in the use of personal information are a violation of human rights.

author: Marianne Diaz Hernandez


text:
Amidst typhoon rescue efforts in Japan, a Taiwanese diplomat dies. Did misinformation play a role? · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Screenshot from a viral video showing a Chinese representative from the Chinese consulate in Osaka, Japan, explaining evacuation efforts to stranded Chinese tourists during Typhoon Jebi in September 2018.
Taiwanese diplomat Su Chii-cherng died by suicide on September 14, 2018, while stationed in Osaka, Japan.
According to NHK (Japan's national broadcasting station), the 61-year-old diplomat left behind a letter saying he was deeply pained by public criticism accusing his office of not doing enough to rescue Taiwanese tourists stranded at the Kansai International Airport in Japan when Typhoon Jebi struck the region in early September 2018.
When mainland Chinese media outlets circulated several stories praising the Chinese consulate in Japan for successfully evacuating its citizens, Taiwanese netizens slammed their own consulate for failing to assist Taiwanese tourists with equal measure.
Some social media reports said that Taiwanese citizens had to feign Chinese identities to get a seat on evacuation buses. Taiwan has been a de-facto self-ruling state since 1949 and the majority of Taiwanese want to distinguish themselves from mainland China. A proclamation of Chinese identity would signal an acceptance of the “One China Principle” and is, therefore, an insult to Taiwanese dignity.
Amidst a flurry of outrage and criticism, Taiwanese authorities tried to clarify that they were following rescue protocols set by the Japanese government, but misinformed criticism and complaints continue circulating online and the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they would thoroughly investigate the situation.
Following the death by suicide of Su Chii-cherng in the early morning of September 14, criticism aimed at his consulate halted. The following day, a journalist group, Taiwan Fact-check Center published a report denouncing the mainland Chinese versions of the rescue story circulated widely online.
According to officials at Japan's Kansai International Airport, Japanese airport authorities arranged evacuation buses for all stranded passengers, regardless of nationality. Japanese authorities rejected a demand by the Chinese consulate to send their own buses.
However, during the evacuation procedures, representatives from China Southern Airlines grouped only mainland Chinese tourists into one of the buses and, after they arrived at the collection point, the Chinese consulate allegedly arranged its own transport to rescue others.
The Chinese consulate in Osaka first shared information about their rescue efforts for Chinese citizens in a brief announcement:
截至日本当地时间9月6日凌晨，驻大阪总领馆协助因台风滞留中国旅客1044人（包括香港同胞117人，澳门同胞5人和台湾同胞32人）分六批安全撤离关西国际机场。
Until September 6 midnight, China consulate in Osaka had assisted 1044 Chinese tourists, including 117 Hong Kong fellows, five Macau fellows and 32 Taiwanese fellows, to retreat from Kansai international airport in six batches.
Another announcement claims the consulate sent representatives to the Kansai airport after midnight on September 4 to discuss a rescue plan that was then implemented by the Japanese authorities on September 5 specifically for Chinese tourists:
经我馆积极协调，日方于9月5日上午11时30分（原计划8时开始，因故推迟）启动集中转运中国旅客工作。
After the consulate’s proactive coordinating work, the Japanese side started transporting Chinese tourists [to downtown transit center] at 11:30 am on September 5 (the original plan was at 8 am but deferred due to other causes).
This gave readers the impression that transit buses arranged at Kansai International Airport was the result of negotiations by the Chinese consulate on behalf of Chinese citizens.
Chinese state-affiliated Guan Cha Net published a video on the night of September 5 further exacerbating this narrative, with Chinese consulate staff reporting that 15 buses had been arranged for Chinese tourists.
The video also shows an interview with a Chinese traveler named Mr. Wang who confirmed that a bus arranged by the Chinese consulate picked up Chinese travelers stranded at the airport, adding that he was proud to be a Chinese passport holder.
The report included a WeChat post:
【中國人先上車】昨天3千人滯留大阪關西機場，中國駐大阪總領事館准備了15輪大巴，優先安排中國公民撤離關西機場，並給大家發了吃喝的，離開機場的時候，日本人和其它國家地區的群眾還在排隊，一眼望不到頭。為強大的祖國點贊。PS 遇到幾個台灣同胞問，我們能上這輛車嗎？統一回答可以呀，只要你覺得自己是中國人就可以上車跟祖國走。
[Chinese get onboard first] Yesterday 3,000 people were trapped at Kansai International Airport, the China consulate in Osaka arranged 15 buses to transport Chinese citizens away from the airport. It also distributed food. When departing the airport, Japanese and people from other countries were still lining up and you could not see where the queue led. Please praise for the strength of our mother country. P.S. We ran into a few Taiwanese fellows who asked if they could get on the bus. We all said yes. If you identify yourself as Chinese, you can get on the bus and follow mother country.
The state-affiliated media outlet Global Times also ran a story on September 6 boasting that Chinese tourists were the first to be evacuated. The report credited the Chinese consulate for rescue coordination:
就在今天一早，被困机场的中国旅客却得知了一个令他们很受感动的好消息：中国领馆来接他们了!
Chinese tourists who were trapped in the airport heard a moving good news early this morning: the China consulate had come to fetch them!
Reports and commentary on the evacuation efforts in Japan originally appeared on September 6 on PTT (a Taiwanese forum). Taiwanese media outlets then picked up the story, eventually running sensational headlines like “Taiwanese follow China bus,” “Taiwanese had to rely on Chinese transportation to get away” and “To get on the bus, one has to pretend Chinese”.
Taiwanese officials’ continued attempts to clarify the situation fell on deaf ears and netizens continued to blame Taiwanese diplomats such as Chii-cherng in Japan. Taiwanese politician Frank Hsieh attempted to address the misinformed criticism of Taiwan's evacuation response:
中國大阪領事館網站登出他們派巴士車去機場載受困中國旅客，而我們沒有，更傳言有國人偷偷去搭他們的車，還要表明自己是中國人，消息傳出，網民羞憤，有人趁此宣傳感覺持有中華人民共和國護照是驕傲的事情，我的網站因此被灌爆，我現在無暇仔細說明許多查明的細節，承受大家憤怒的出口，也沒有關係。但請大家冷靜想想，如果9/5日私人巴士或汽車可以到機場接人，那麼機場一定大亂，寸步難行，反而不能有效率地疏散。所以日本做法是只准出不准進，所有人都是坐機場的巴士或高速船離開機場到泉佐野站（電車有通）或神戶港。
China consulate in Osaka posted on their website that they had sent buses to the airport to pick up Chinese tourists. On the other hand we did nothing. Some hearsay even claimed that Taiwanese had to proclaim themselves as Chinese in order to get on the buses. The news had enraged [Taiwanese] netizens. Some made use of the incident to propagate the sense of pride in holding a PRC [People's Republic of China] passport. My website was flooded with negative comments. I could not explain all the details at this moment and it is OK for me to take the blame. But please stay calm. If Japan allows private vehicles to enter the airport on September 5, the airport would be very chaotic and no one would be about to get out. It would effect the evacuation work. That’s why Japan had forbidden vehicles to enter, all people in the airport had to take airport buses or turbo ship to leave the airport and go to Rinku (where there is tram service) or Osaka harbour.
But Hsieh's explanation sparked angry comments and the demand for his resignation. Then came the news that his colleague Su Chii-cherng took his own life.
The incident begs series reflection on the collective psychological stress that stems from years of political tension between China and Taiwan that so easily stoked the spread of deadly misinformation.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Beijing authorities slam Swedish police for humiliating Chinese tourists, but there’s another side to the story · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Screenshot of the clash between Chinese tourists and Swedish police on September 2, 2018, posted by the Swedish media out Aftonbladet.
On September 14, 2018, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a safety alert for Chinese travelers visiting Sweden, after claiming that three Chinese tourists had been brutally abused by Swedish police while vacationing in Stockholm.
A number of Chinese media outlets reported the incident as “brutal” with vivid details and video clips that showed three Chinese tourists screaming and crying for help outside the Generator Hostel in an apparent confrontation with Swedish police.
Reports from Chinese outlets quickly stirred patriotic sentiments on Chinese social media. However, a video released the next day from the Swedish media outlet Aftonbladet offered a different side to the story, leaving viewers to question the veracity of the debacle.
According to a report from the Global Times, a media outlet affiliated with the Chinese Community Party, the Zeng family of three arrived in Stockholm past midnight on September 2, hours before their official check-in time, and demanded to rest in the hostel's lobby. The staff allegedly felt threatened by the Zengs’ demands and called the police, who forcibly dragged all three out of the hostel.
Zeng claims his father then had a heart attack and fainted while standing outside the hostel and that the police did nothing to assist. Zeng also told the Global Times that the police later dragged them into police vehicles and beat his parents. Instead of taking them to the police station, Zeng claims the police “dumped them in a cemetery at least 30 kilometers south of the hostel.”
In response to the safety alert announcement made by the Chinese government, Swedish Chief Prosecutor Mats Ericsson said that authorities investigated Zeng's allegations of the incident and on September 7, they exonerated the police of all wrong-doing.
Ericsson denied allegations that the Swedish police had beaten Zeng's parents. However, he did admit that the police did lead the Zeng family into a police vehicle and dropped them off at the Skogskyrkogården subway station near the famous cemetery-garden tourist destination, located only eight kilometers south of the hostel. The police explained that anyone who creates a public disturbance in Stockholm is typically brought to this subway station and expected to fend for themselves.
Hu Shijin, the chief editor of the Global Times, agreed that the Zeng family's behavior was ‘uncivilized,’ but insisted that the Swedish police should not have stranded them at the subway station.
The Swedish media outlet Aftonbladet released a video of the altercation and also interviewed the hostel manager who said they only called on security guards when Zeng's demands became threatening:
We only know that we have done everything we could do for this guest, but at the same time we cannot accept that our staff are exposed to threats and that other guests will suffer from a threatening situation. [English translation of the interview via Guardian]
One passerby interviewed by Aftonbladet says that Zeng’s family was making a scene and pretended to fall down when approached by police. This testimony was backed up by the video released via Aftonbladet.
As the Aftonbaladet video of the incident circulated on social media, Chinese public opinion began to shift. One Twitter user reposted the video and used the term “china” (meaning “ceramic”) to mock what he calls a “staged crash”:
这尼玛不就是典型的碰瓷吗?中国碰瓷走出国门，中国碰瓷走向世界，中国碰瓷让瑞典警察胆战心惊，中国碰瓷让世界刮目相看，真给中国人长脸啊，最后来句中国名言，不转不是中国人。 pic.twitter.com/KjqHgoe9ex
— 极简大叔 (@COOOTV) September 15, 2018
Isn’t this a typical staged crash? Chinese china steps out of the country, Chinese china steps out to the world, Chinese china scares the Swedish police, Chinese china shows off to the world. It makes Chinese face’s shine. Let’s use this Chinese saying – repost this or you are no Chinese.
The following are some popular comments from Weibo, China's largest social media platform, where netizens critiqued both the Chinese government and the family:
外交部本来想借这事煽动民族情绪，给向来都不把大天朝放在眼里的瑞典政府压力，可这届网民的是非观太強，没被忽悠。煽自己脸了。
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted to make use of the incident to stir patriotic sentiment to exercise pressure on Swedish government. But netizens know too well what’s right and wrong and now it slaps its own face.
深夜抵达斯德哥尔摩，却不预定酒店，妄图赖在酒店大堂里，横躺，睡觉，不被允许，就一哭二闹三上吊，碰瓷，这招很好用，但是，瑞典是法治社会，跑到瑞典去这么闹，瑞典警察才不惯着这些无赖呢。 外交部还为这种无赖站台，真是丢人现眼，那些对瑞典喊打喊杀，引导粉蛆，煽动民粹的官媒，要脸吗？
Arrived at Stockholm late at night without booking a hostel and expected to sleep at the hostel lobby. When rejected, cried, yelled, hung themselves and staged crash. This is an effective strategy [in China], but not working in Sweden. The Swedish police don’t care about such scoundrels. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs backed them up, this is so embarrassing. Party mouthpieces which kept attacking Sweden, channeling patriotic sentiment and inciting populism, do they care about their reputation?
On Twitter, more critical comments surfaced about China's motives for circulating this story:
三个中国人在瑞典无理取闹被驱离，众多中国媒体和爱国贼进行了声嘶力竭的谴责。但是，北京在零下八度驱赶外地农民工，大人小孩夜宿街头时，这些人却完全缄口不言，屁都不敢放一个。这使我明白了一个道理：那些善于在无需勇气时义愤填膺，在需要勇气时却噤若寒蝉的人，不但是懦弱的，而且是虚伪的。
— 麒哥 (@14z3R) September 17, 2018
Three Chinese made a scene in Sweden and were forcibly moved away. So many Chinese media outlets and patriots protested and condemned the act. However, when Beijing evicted rural workers at negative eight degrees Celsius and both adults and children were left homeless in the streets, these people kept silence and didn’t dare making a fart. The whole thing makes me understand one thing: those who talk in righteousness when no courage is required while choose to keep silence when courage is needed, they are not cowards but hypocrites.
Joe Chung, a political news columnist, provided a list of reasons why the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs would bother to comment on such a minor dispute:
一，是在瑞典公民桂民海被中國政府長期綁架一事上拒絕合作，到本年6月，更有37份包括瑞典大報的瑞典報章，發聲明敦促中國政府釋放桂民海，並指控中國政府嚴重違反人權。現在中國駐瑞典大使譴責瑞典當局違反該三名中國旅客的人權，就是想令外界，尤其是中國人相信，瑞典政府也違反人權，哪有資格向中國指手畫腳。
二，瑞典作為一蕞爾小國，竟敢於今年6月，將為中國政府蒐集瑞典流亡藏人信息的特務人員多傑嘉登（Dorjee Gyantsan），判監22個月。
三，容許達賴喇嘛於上週訪問瑞典。
1. Sweden refused to keep silence on the abduction of its citizen Gui Minhai. Last June [2017], 37 Swedish newspapers co-signed a statement urging the Chinese government to release Gui Minhai and criticizing the Chinese government for infringement of human human. Now the Chinese Embassy in Sweden condemns the Swedish authorities for infringing on the rights of three Chinese tourists to make Chinese people believe that Sweden has no position to criticize China.
2. Sweden, a small country [in the eyes of China] dared giving a 22-month jail sentence to Dorjee Gyantsan, a Chinese spy responsible for collecting exiled Tibetan communities’ information in June this year [2018].
3. Sweden accepted [Tibetan] Dalai Lama visit to the country last week [Tibet and China have longstanding political issues].
Chinese party-affiliated media outlets have not apologized for spreading misinformation on the incident. Instead, they criticized Chinese netizens for acting like ‘slaves’ to Western opinion and taking the wrong position.
In an interview with Swedish newspaper Expressen on September 17, Chinese Ambassador Gui Congyou defended the family's rights, insisting that the Swedish police had threatened and humiliated the Zeng trio.
The Chinese version of the interview was widely circulated online.


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A sea-change in Maldives politics as opposition presidential candidate declares a win · Global Voices
Rezwan

Two contestants of the Maldives 2018 Presidential Election: Left: Incumbent President Abdulla Yameen. Right: Opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. Image via Wikimedia Commons from Public Domain.
The Maldives, an archipelago nation situated in the Indian Ocean, has faced political turbulence as citizens at home and abroad lined up to vote on Sunday, September 23 in the 2018 presidential elections.
Incumbent Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom of the Progressive Party (PPM) ran against opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). Under Yameen's leadership, the island has faced a series of political crises that left citizens desperate for change.
Solih has been a member of parliament since 1994 and played an instrumental role in establishing multi-party democracy in the Maldives in 2009.
According to the BBC as of 2 a.m. in the Maldives (GMT+5) Solih “said he had won by a 16 percent margin over incumbent Abdulla Yameen, with 92 percent of votes counted” and urged for a peaceful transition on the troubled islands.
Yameen was elected president in controversial 2013 elections in which he defeated former president Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), who worked to establish a multi-party system alongside Solih.
In fiercely contested 2013 election results, Naheed and the MDP claimed a clear lead. But strong disputes led to the annulment of the original election. Yameen ultimately won with a very narrow margin in the re-elections and Nasheed was forced into exile.
In his first five-year term, Yameen has gained notoriety for the imprisonment or forced exile of many of his political rivals. He boldly locked down parliament after a vote of no-confidence and survived a few impeachment attempts through creative measures such as the anti-defection ruling, which prevents members of parliament from switching parties.
Yameen's government has been accused of silencing dissent and media crackdowns, including the arrest and exile of journalists and newspaper shutdowns. Yameen also pulled the Maldives from The Commonwealth in 2016 after threats about its human rights record.
In September 2016, Al Jazeera released Stealing Paradise, an investigative report that revealed how President Yameen and his associates embezzled millions of dollars, bribed judges and other high-level officials and maneuvered to remove government workers who got in the way.
Yameen survived a judicial coup in February 2018 when the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of nine opposition leaders, including Nasheed who remained in exile. The court reversed its decision after Yameen declared a state of emergency and ordered the arrest of two judges.
Last June, Nasheed decided to exit the presidential race after the Election Commission barred the candidacy to anyone convicted of criminal charges, leaving the opposition coalition to chose Solih for the 2018 elections.
The Maldives election commission boasted an “extraordinary high turnout” from its pool of 250,000 potential voters and extended polling by three hours as voters complained of long delays in the voting process.
Voting is my fundamental right, I voted #Maldives #MaldivesElection2018 #PE2018MV pic.twitter.com/iG1rdC5p8Y
— Ilham Mohamed Waheed (@Hakatha) September 23, 2018
#Maldives Presidential election 2018 .#MvElection18 pic.twitter.com/fdmvNOxFtE
— Maldives Voice (@MaldivesVoice4) September 23, 2018
Voting at Maldives Embassy in Colombo. pic.twitter.com/jDQDSPyVWC
— Ali Hashim Didi (@hashimex) September 23, 2018
No violence or disruptions were reported as per government sources:
MPS is pleased to state that #MvElection2018 voting queues have officially been closed with no violence and minimal complaints from the public. Thanking Maldivians for your cooperation and your service to the nation.
— Maldives Police (@PoliceMv) September 23, 2018
On the eve of Sunday's election, international election monitors who were banned from the Maldives expressed concerns about a free and fair election after Maldivian police raided opposition campaign headquarters.
Just hours before the polling begins in the presidential election, Maldives police raid the campaign headquarters of joint opposition presidential candidate @ibusolih. This is a worrying development. https://t.co/IBdOrsBY7l
— Husnu Al Suood (@hsuood) September 22, 2018
Complaints mount as news breaks of national ID card 'buying' @ElectionsMv #MaldivesElection2018 #Maldives pic.twitter.com/xRSgor5Tpj
— Ilham Mohamed Waheed (@Hakatha) September 23, 2018
They are showing the profiles of all Presidents of the Maldives, and look how they are hiding President @MohamedNasheed’s face.
Oh PSM ? pic.twitter.com/bIwKWxKvQw
— Mickail Naseem ? (@MickailNaseem) September 23, 2018
Opposition leaders also expressed concerns about a free and fair election. In a recent press release, the Maldives Election Commission refuted claims of vote rigging and massive voter fraud.
Maldivian citizens impatient for democratic change stood in long lines, sometimes up to eight hours, to cast their votes.
23 sep 2018: People wait for voting results at Ameenihyyaa school Male’ Maldives #afraaphotography #MvElection2018 pic.twitter.com/JdISjBXDDl
— Mohamed Afrah (@aphrah11) September 23, 2018
I feel like these initial results sets the tone of what people are feeling in the Maldives. If the counting goes uninterrupted & untampered with,the coalition will win this hands down. Everyone is just done with this madman. Done. #YAGOUT
— umay mohamed ? (@umaymohamed) September 23, 2018
Early polling results showed a clear lead for opposition candidate Solih.
#Maldives: After long polling day, votes are now being manually counted. According to early, provisional numbers here (https://t.co/UEdhiSNDzW), opposition candidate @ibusolih is leading as of 9.05 pm Male time (IST 21.35). #MvElection2018 #MaldivesElection2018 @the_hindu
— Meera Srinivasan (@Meerasrini) September 23, 2018
Live statistics from the Maldives news portal Miharuu.com showed voter turnout at 88 percent of the eligible 262,135 voters. Another site called mvdemocracy.com continues to stream live results.
Maldivian citizens eager for a new beginning, especially when it comes to measures to protect the archipelago from the negative impact of climate change, will watch carefully in the coming days to see how the transition plays out.

author: Rezwan


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As xenophobic policies sweep Central and Eastern Europe, refugee aid is criminalized · Global Voices
BlueLink

Illegal migrants living in a hostel room in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: courtesy of the project by the Center for Legal Aid “Voice in Bulgaria”/José Antonio Sanchez Manzano via BlueLink Stories.
This article is based on Refugee-Fear Politics Targets NGOs, originally published by BlueLink Stories as a part of the project “Remembering Europe: Civil Society Under Pressure Again”, implemented by the BlueLink Foundation with co-funding from the European Union's Europe for Citizens Programme, and republished through a partnership with Global Voices, written by Ksenia Vakhrusheva.
The political hysteria against refugees entering Europe is on the rise although migration in the region has decreased since 2017. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has taken the toughest anti-migrant stance, followed by politicians in the ‘Visegrád Four’ or V4 (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia).
On World Refugee Day, June 20, 2018, the Hungarian Parliament ironically adopted legislation criminalizing help for asylum seekers, refugees, or undocumented migrants. A two-thirds majority of the current ruling party Fidesz passed the new Article 353/A into the Criminal Code which states that any person providing legal help or distributing leaflets and other materials on the refugee rights and housing opportunities should be arrested and cited for “facilitating illegal migration.”
If conducted on a regular basis or in the context of an organisation or network, the punishment is up to one year in prison. The government can also shut down these organisations, halt or severely limit their activities, or slap them with a fine.
The Venice Commission issued a detailed explanation of why this code violates basic human rights principles, limits the work of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and breaks international standards and legal protocols. They say the law does not effectively target illegal migration, for which regular provisions are already in place under Article 353.
Orbán, who believes United States philanthropist George Soros is responsible for facilitating migration to Europe, named the legislation “Stop Soros,” and clearly targets the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC), an NGO providing legal aid to refugees and asylum seekers that is funded by Soros’ Open Societies Foundation. [Editor's note: Global Voices also receives funding from Open Societies Foundation].
The law came into effect on July 1, 2018, with questions from both the Jobbik and Socialist parties about how the law would actually work. Hungarian NGOs are still unclear about how the new law will impact their work.
In a press release following the adoption of the anti-migrant law, the HHC stated:
[We] will continue to provide legitimate and free-of-charge legal assistance to asylum-seekers and will seize all available legal and advocacy opportunities to challenge this law that breaches fundamental rights and [European Union] EU law.
The HHC office. In 2017, they received the Calouste Gulbenkian Prize in Human Rights for its “unique and exemplary” character in providing regular and free legal assistance to asylum-seekers, refugees and stateless persons in Hungary. Photo: Ákos Stiller, used with permission.
The anti-migrant law has sparked fierce debate among Hungary's political parties as well as citizens. Hungary's two major political parties, the ruling Fidesz party, and the far-right Jobbik party, both support the law, holding 80 percent of seats in parliament.
The third largest party, the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), considers the law useless in fighting illegal migration. MSZP chairman Bertalan Tóth says:
The interest of this government is to keep this problem alive instead of solving it.
The Democratic Coalition (DK) also opposed the law with chairman Ferenc Gyurcsany calling it “not just political but historical sin” and
an attack on people seeking safe haven from persecution and those who carry out admirable work to help them.
Surprisingly, even Jobbik leader Márton Gyöngyösi, in his comment to BlueLink.info, acknowledged:
this is the most ridiculous piece of legislation we’ve seen in a while.
He says his party faced a “difficult dilemma” prior to voting on the bill that remains unresolved. He admits:
…real measures were omitted from the new bill, while several new elements were added, concerning judicial reforms or a constitutional amendment. Therefore we see it as a clearly politically motivated piece of legislation, that’s only goal is to satisfy Fidesz’ voters who expect aggressive rhetoric from the government. In our opinion, measures envisaged in this law are ridiculous and not likely to have a real effect. Voting for this legislation had no real importance.
Fidesz representatives did not answer the inquiry for a comment at the time of publishing this article.
Those who oppose the law say it doesn't match the reality of current statistics showing a significant drop in the number of refugees entering Hungary. Around 20,000 people in 2017 were blocked from entry at the border fence or escorted to the external border. According to the HHC, 267 refugees were granted protection in 2018 while rejecting at least 326 applicants, mostly hailing from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
In neighbouring Slovakia, approximately 79 percent of citizens surveyed report negative perceptions of immigration. These sentiments were then stoked by politicians to gain support during parliamentary elections held in March 2016.
However, since August 2015, the government has regularly consulted with NGOs helping migrants and allocated 500,000 Euro (nearly 589,000 USD) for immediate humanitarian assistance as well as ongoing projects. In 2016, the government created a 20 million Euro (nearly 24 million USD) “reserve” fund for migration-related issues.
According to statistics, Slovakia has one of the lowest numbers of asylum seekers among all EU countries.
Alena Krempaska, a programme director at the Human Rights Institute in Slovakia, confirmed in a comment to BlueLink.info that the Slovak government supports NGOs working with migration issues. The Human Rights League received a grant from the Ministry of Interior in 2016 for working with migrants. Yet, Krempaska sees it all as a “political game, a discourse, rather than real steps.”
CEE governments tend to comply with international and EU standards by providing funds to NGOs who provide a wide range of refugee support services, all free of charge to their clients. Yet, from Poland to Bulgaria, aid looks different across the CEE region depending on how well NGOs and state authorities cooperate.
According to Radostina Pavlova, a legal expert with Voice in Bulgaria, Bulgarian authorities often help migrant-support organizations that the state, in principle, should fund. Access to State Agency for Refugees (SAR) funds is tricky, often dependent on a strict timetable misaligned with real-time needs. Pavlova notes, however, that
the Ministry of Interior has significantly improved in the past two years and many organisations now work in the closed centres for migrants which are under its supervision.
A Council of Europe report published in April 2018 corroborates this funding dilemma and SAR itself noted in its annual report that cooperation between local and international NGOs and state authorities is limited, leaving a huge burden of care on the NGOs.
Following Hungary's new anti-migrant measures, Pavlov worries the same could happen in Bulgaria. While Bulgaria's refugee numbers have also significantly dropped since 2017, Bulgarian authorities still monitor Turkish borders, where they say a newly built fence with a surveillance system does not always work and refugees can still cross illegally.
While many CEE governments acknowledge the need to finance refugee support activities, NGOs lament a lack of support for their work on the ground, with governments preferring to support external activities in crisis zones.
An education project in Syria by Free Syria Foundation with the donations collected in Poland. Photo by wolnasyria.org.
Samer Masri of Free Syria Foundation in Poland acknowledged in his comment to BlueLink.info that Polish NGOs face difficulties in cooperating with state authorities even though his foundation receives at least half its funds from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
We are realising projects that are in line with the Polish government’s policy … We also brand our project as an act of gift from great Polish Nation to Syrians … and we use Polish national symbols … So, everybody likes us and we can do what we want and of course we get support if we need it.
During the European Council summit in June 2018, a majority of leaders supported policies to prevent migration to Europe, including tactics such as strengthening relations with “origin and transit” countries, halting illegal border crossings, and supporting refugee facilities in Turkey — keeping refugees out of Europe's backyard.

author: BlueLink


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A new indie film festival features the struggles and triumphs of indigenous Papua, Indonesia · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

A few participants in the second Papuan independent film festival. Source: Facebook page of Papuan Voices, used with permission.
Papuan Voices, a video advocacy organization, has organized two independent film festivals since 2017 to celebrate the lives and struggles of indigenous Papuans in the southeastern province of Indonesia.
In 2015, Global Voices first featured Papuan Voices as a project with EngageMedia, and during the same year, Papuan Voices established itself as an independent organization with a presence now in six Papuan regions.
As the country’s most resource-rich but cash-poor area, a recent influx of Indonesians from other regions has displaced many indigenous Papuans. Some Papuans decry it as an illegal occupation and demand their independence from Indonesia.
Map of Papua and West Papua province of Indonesia. Image courtesy Google Map.
Within this context, as the first film festival held in Papua, it aimed:
to highlight the issues of the indigenous people of Papua through documentary films as well as to build public awareness of the important issues impacting them.
Nearly 30 films were submitted, 50 people participated in the pre-festival production workshops, and 10 films were produced through youth-focused workshops.
Inspired by its inaugural success, the organization held a second film festival last August 2018 with over 1,000 audience members. A total of 19 films from different areas in Papua were submitted.
Today is the first day of a pre-festival film workshop in Keerom regency Papua (after last week in Jayapura) organized by the #PapuanVoices community. These workshops are encouraging local filmmakers to prepare and submit films for the #FestivalFilmsPapua2018 Stay tuned for more pic.twitter.com/q4C4xk9MvX
— EngageMedia (@EngageMedia) June 4, 2018
Mecky Yeimo, a film festival participant, said that the films provided a lot of information about the land disputes between indigenous Papuan landowners and investors acquiring local lands for mining and palm plantations.
Franky Samperante, the director of Pusaka, an indigenous Indonesian non-governmental organization, noted the importance of the film festival:
In Papua, there are very limited options to obtain information by ordinary people because information is controlled by certain dominant groups. The information in these films will be very useful for many people at the local, national and international levels.
Many of the films featured during both festivals depict the everyday struggles of Papuans.
For example, the 2017 Best Film award winner ‘Monce Truck’ is a documentary directed by Imanuel Hindom about a former truck driver for a palm oil plantation in Keerom Regency who found a way to help Papuan women sellers (“Mama-mama” in Papuan) find a new source of income by transporting their vegetables to new markets in the capital city of Jayapura:
‘The Caretaker of Isio Hill Forest’ is another inspiring short documentary which narrates the story of Alex Waisimon who turned a lush forest in Papua into a famous bird-watching spot for tourists. The film was directed by Asrida Elisabeth, Harun Rumbarar, Bernad Koten, Yosef Levi.
Since 2011, both Papuan Voices and EngageMedia have trained more than 50 filmmakers and produced approximately 100 films which were screened in more than 50 locations in and out of Indonesia.

author: Mong Palatino