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Putin announces plan to ‘replace’ Wikipedia · Global Voices
Eilish Hart

Russian Wikipedia entry for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
On November 5, 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin convened the country’s language council to discuss, as he put it in his opening speech, “the war on the Russian language.” While much of the conversation concerned language norms at home, Putin also underscored the importance of “implementing an effective support system for the Russian language environment abroad, in the information, educational and humanitarian fields.”
In the same vein, Putin suggested replacing Wikipedia with an electronic version of the Great Russian Encyclopedia, which would provide “reliable information, presented in a good modern form.” Putin's words have provoked a heated online debate about the accuracy of Wikipedia, and the accuracy of the Russian government's replacement.
The president’s calls for a Russian online encyclopedia took place just days after the “sovereign internet” law came into effect on November 1. And in the context of the Kremlin’s ongoing internet crackdown (which includes recent laws banning “fake news,” “extremism” and “disrespecting state authorities” online, as well as a proposed bill to criminalize online “drug propaganda”), the idea of developing a state-approved digital encyclopedia appears to be one more attempt at controlling Russian-language narratives online.
The Great Russian Encyclopedia isn't new. Founded by presidential decree in 2002, its 35 volumes were released gradually between 2004 and 2017, under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A digitized version of the Great Russian Encyclopedia has been around since 2016 and the plan to expand it as a “replacement” for Wikipedia is already in the works. Back in October, the Russian media group RBK reported that the publishing house behind the Great Russian Encyclopedia had allocated two billion rubles (over $30 million) to the development of a “domestic equivalent” to Wikipedia by the end of 2022.
For some Twitter users, the authorities denouncing Wikipedia was the best possible endorsement for the platform:
Если Википедия была бы лажой, её бы не пыталась запретить российская власть, привыкшая врать и искажать исторические факты.
Если в России что-то пытаются запретить – это лучшая рекомендация для нормальных людей.
Империя зла ведёт борьбу с любыми проявлениями правды и добра.
— Вася в память о Сергее Мохнаткине (@br020201) November 6, 2019
If Wikipedia did suck then the Russian authorities wouldn’t be trying to ban it, they’re used to lying and distorting historical facts. If Russia is trying to ban something that’s the best recommendation for regular people. The evil empire is fighting a battle against any manifestations of truth and good.”
– Vasya #Shiyes (@br020201), November 5, 2019.
Lawyer Ilya Novikov expressed the belief that Putin's vendetta was personal:
Википедия о Путине: Путину 67 лет, рост 1.7 метра
Путин о Википедии: Лучше заменить ее Большой Российской новой энциклопедией в электронном виде pic.twitter.com/1ulgAdWVDo
— Ilya Novikov (@vertiporokh) November 5, 2019
Wikipedia on Putin: Putin is 67 years old, 1.7 meters tall
Putin on Wikipedia: It’s better to replace it with the Great Russian Encyclopedia in electronic form.
– Ilya Novikov (@vertiporokh), November 5, 2019.
Alexey Navalny, the prominent opposition activist and head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, was particularly critical of the project and its cost. During one of his regular livestreams on November 7, 2019, Navalny referred to Russian Wikipedia as a “triumph of the Russian language and the Russian people,” pointing out that Putin is famous for not using the internet (doing all of his work on paper) and concluding that the Russian President doesn’t really understand Wikipedia, or for that matter the internet:
Путин никогда не был в „Википедии“, он не знает, что это такое. Человек никогда не пользовался интернетом, он ни черта в этом не понимает и работает в окружении таких же валенков. Этот человек пытается сломать то, что он даже не создавал.
Putin’s never been on Wikipedia, he doesn’t know what it is… [He's] a man who has never used the internet – he understands nothing about it and is working with equally clueless people… This guy is trying to destroy something he did not create.
With the “sovereign internet law” officially in effect, Navalny's suspicion that the authorities were moving to “destroy” Wikipedia is not entirely far-fetched. As the Executive Director of Wikimedia.ru, Stanislav Kozlovsky, told Gazeta.ru, the idea of “replacing” Wikipedia (as Putin phrased it) is rather ambiguous:
Не очень понятно, что значит – заменить «Википедию»?. Заблокировать? Этот нюанс не прояснен. В принципе? Мы только за то, чтобы источников становилось больше. Если же это подразумевает уничтожение всего остального, то не очень понятно. Вряд ли Путин имел ввиду последнее. Я надеюсь
It’s not really clear – what does it mean to replace Wikipedia? Blocking [it]? This nuance hasn’t been clarified. In general? We only want to get more sources.  It's not clear whether this implies the destruction of everything else. It’s unlikely that Putin meant it as such. I hope.
Furthermore, it would be difficult to compete with Wikipedia's Russian language platform, which is the seventh largest by number of articles. As Kozlovsky pointed out in comments to the popular online publication Gazeta.ru, Russian Wikipedia already has nearly 1.6 million articles online, while the Great Russian Encyclopedia only contains about 80,000 entries that are each one to two paragraphs in length.
In a comparison of entries on the two platforms, the BBC's Russian Service also found some key differences in content. For example, while Russian Wikipedia has a wealth of information on the status of same-sex marriage in different countries around the world, the Great Russian Encyclopedia only includes one article on same-sex partnerships (not marriages), and underscores that they are neither legal or supported in Russia.
In this context, preventing access to the platform seems like the easiest way to “replace” Wikipedia. If the “sovereign Internet law” is implemented as planned, the authorities will soon have the technical ability to ban what they deem to be undesirable online content. The precedent has already been set: in 2015, the Russian government’s internet watchdog Roskomnadozor has briefly blocked individual articles from Wikipedia about certain types of narcotics.
Nevertheless, in a statement to state news agency TASS, Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov insisted that banning Wikipedia or limiting access to the site was “out of the question,” despite the fact that it’s an unreliable source:
При всем уважении все-таки информация, опубликованная в “Википедии” и регулярно обновляемая в “Википедии”, никем не гарантируется, не гарантируется ее правильность и достоверность.
With all due respect, no one guarantees all the information published and regularly updated on Wikipedia. Its accuracy and validity is not verified.
Some might argue that Peskov is right to question Wikipedia's trustworthiness. In spite of improvements to the platform's system of checks and balances and becoming stricter about sourcing in recent years, entries can be drastically different across languages. For example, while English Wikipedia has an article on the “Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation,” the Russian page concerns the “Accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation” (Присоединение Крыма к Российской Федерации) – a difference that is both linguistic and geopolitical.
Given Wikipedia's crowdsourced model, there's also little to protect the platform from attempts to use pages for political ends. Earlier this year, for example, independent news website Meduza reported that Wikipedia had blocked a group of Russian users for editing articles to include negative descriptions of opposition leaders and positive descriptions of local governors and their projects, ahead of local elections.
Furthermore, the Russian government has been known to make its own edits to Wikipedia. In 2014, @RuGovEdits — a Tweetbot that issues alerts whenever a Wikipedia page is edited from a Russian government IP address — flagged changes made to the article about the downing of Malaysian Airlines passenger flight MH17 just one day after the crash occurred in eastern Ukraine. On July 18, 2014, an IP address belonging to the state-owned All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) deleted text linking Russia to the Buk missile system that shot down the aircraft, rewriting the entry to reflect a popular Russian conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian military had shot down the plane.
A side-by-side comparison tracking the changes to the Russian-language Wikipedia article on the downing of flight MH17
A Norwegian programmer then compiled a list of 6,909 anonymous edits made to Russian-language Wikipedia pages from IP addresses belonging to Russian state agencies between 2003 and 2014. But given that Russian-language Wikipedia has the fifth highest number of edits (nearly 103 million), manually editing entries to fit the government's narrative would be an impossible task.
Therefore, building up the Great Russian Encyclopedia as an alternative “reliable” reference appeals to the authorities, as they continue their quest for greater technical and rhetorical control over the RuNet. As the well-known entrepreneur-innovator Georgy Vasiliev told the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta on November 8:
В «Википедии» нет главной редакции, человека, который своей властью правит чужой текст. Это не энциклопедия в обычном понимании. У одной статьи «Википедии» может быть сотня авторов, и все они равны в правах. Чтобы добиться изменений, ты должен убедить других соавторов. В этом смысле Большая российская энциклопедия — гораздо более управляемое издание.
On Wikipedia there is no editorial head, no person with the power to rule over another text. This is not an encyclopedia in the usual sense. One Wikipedia article can have hundreds of authors, and all of them have equal rights. In order to make changes, you have to convince your other collaborators. In this sense, the Great Russian Encyclopedia is a much more manageable publication.
In that sense, a move against Wikipedia reflects the Russian government's aspirations for a RuNet managed from above, not from below. In a word, a more “manageable” internet.

author: Eilish Hart


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Wake-up call or smear campaign? How an ad for sanitary pads is dividing Turkish public opinion · Global Voices
Sevgi Yagmur Bulut

Screenshot from an ad for sanitary pads that is causing a debate in Turkey.
In Turkey, a top sanitary pad brand launched a daring video ad and framed it as a campaign fighting femicide and social taboos associated with periods. Yet the video proved so divisive the company had to issue an apology and remove it as some perceived it as an attack on Turkey's reputation abroad.
The ad, named “Uncover the Shame”, or “Utanç Paketleri” in Turkish, was released in late October 2019 by the American company Procter&Gamble, under their local brand Orkid, the leading seller of sanitary pads in Turkey.
The video, which is about one minute and a half long, starts with a voice over saying: “In Turkey, sanitary pads are covered in newspapers upon purchasing due to period stigma. In a society with news filled with violence, discrimination and unfairness towards women, selling sanitary pads isn't what's shameful.”
One can then see a pack of sanitary pads being wrapped into a newspaper. Later, the story moves to a printing press where a newspaper is being printed with headlines touching on key challenges women face in Turkey, such as low employment and political representation, gender-based violence and insufficient literacy rates. The video ends with a shot of the packs stacked on supermarket shelves while wrapped in that newspaper. A final message says: “Our packs were sold over three days”.
The video won an award for its creativity at the 26th Golden Drum International Creativity Festival in Slovenia in October 2019. It then started circulating on Turkish social media, including via the company's Twitter account.
It immediately launched a heated debate dividing people on the interpretation of the message. While some embrace and support it, others experience strongly negative reactions, reading it as a “humiliation to Turkey” and calling for a boycott of the brand.
Those who support the content claim that the video is indeed telling the truth. Some netizens use the reference of the slap when describing it:
Ped satmaktan utanan zihniyetlerin,kadına yönelik suçlardan utanmadığını anlatmaya çalışan tokat gibi reklam..#Orkid pic.twitter.com/7OT49BMbSD
— Seloculuk ? (@yokcapon) 24 Ekim 2019
This is an ad that slaps you in the face as it tries to explain that the mentality that brings shame to selling pads is the same that is not ashamed of crimes against women.
Feyza Altun, a famous lawyer and feminist activist, notes that:
Pedlerin Türkiye’de ayıp bir şeymiş gibi gazete kağıdına sarılmasına ya da saklanmasına Orkid’den tokat gibi reklam. Türkiye’de kadınlara karşı işlenmiş utanç verici suçların ve olayların haberlerini basıp pedleri bu haberlere sarmışlar. pic.twitter.com/Mc7RAKQUyJ
— Feyza Altun (@feyzaltun) 23 Ekim 2019
Orkid's ad is a smack in the chops, in response to wrapping sanitary pads with newspaper as if it was something shameful or to be hidden. [The brand] printed news of crimes committed against women in Turkey and used it as packaging
The issue is perhaps best summarized by netizen Nisa:
#orkid Reklamındaki alınacak mesajları almayıp, “Ne yani Türk kadını aşağılık mı?” gibi bir düşünceye düşmek yerine, aşağılık olanın o gazetedeki haberler olduğunu anlasak keşke.
— ni•sa (@nisahahawashere) 24 Ekim 2019
Instead of not understanding the message in the #Orkid advert, and thinking “What do you mean, are Turkish women despicable?”, I wish we could realize instead that what is despicable are the news in those newspapers.
Those who strongly disagree with the ad claim it humiliates Turkey and its women, and spreads lies when it paints Turkey as a backward, conservative and a fanatical country. For example, one netizen writes on Twitter:
Adamlar Türkiye'de ped gazete kağıdına sarılıp satılıyor diye ülkemizi küçümsüyor bazıları da çıkmış tokat gibi cevap diyor.Kaçınız gazete kağıdına sarıp alıyor?This not shame @orkid !Ülkemizi yobaz,gerici olarak gösterenlere alkış tutmak kansızlık#orkid
pic.twitter.com/79TZN3gPc4
— Eda. (@karrtaliceee) 23 Ekim 2019
[Orkid] is humiliating Turkey for wrapping sanitary pads in a newspaper. Meanwhile others are saying, this is a smack in the chops advert. How many of you really do buy your sanitary pads wrapped in newspaper? This [is] not shame @orkid ! It is unacceptable to show our country as backward #orkid
Another netizen suggests foreigners are plotting to diminish Turkey's military glory with the ad/campaign:
#orkid bu reklamı 10 yıl önce yapsan belki doğruydu,ama şimdi böyle bişeyin olmadığını sen de çok iyi biliyorsun!Gelgelelim neden bu karalama reklamını yaptığına!Barış Pınarı Harekatı ile BOP'a vurduğumuz balyoz neticesinde tüm siyonist sermaye elindeki kozları oynuyor!
?Boykot pic.twitter.com/tr56T3QF0N
— çiğdemsel (@idemsel3) 24 Ekim 2019
“Orkid, if you did this advertisement 10 years ago, maybe it would have been true, but now you know very well that there is no such thing! Let's come to what is the reason of this ad? The Zionist capital plays their part as a reaction to our sledgehammer operation, the Peace Spring Operation.
After calls to boycott the brand increased in social media, Orkid removed the video from its official account and made a statement which was reproduced by Turkish newspapers:
Türkiye’de Orkid markası için tasarlanan mağaza içi kampanyası, Türkiye’de ve dünyada kadınların yaşadığı damgalanma, ekonomik kısıtlar nedeniyle hijyenik pede erişememe ve toplumsal cinsiyete dayalı şiddet de dahil olmak üzere bazı ciddi sorunlara ışık tutmak amacını taşıyordu. Bu sorunlar nadiren tartışılıyor, genellikle utanç duygusuna dönüşüyor ve genç kızlar, kadınlar ve aileleri için hayat boyu karşı karşıya kalacakları konuları oluşturuyor. Fikrin uygulanmasında niyetimizi tam olarak yansıtamadığımızı görüyoruz ve herhangi bir yanlış anlaşılmaya sebep olduysa bundan dolayı da üzgünüz.
The campaign designed in-house by the Orkid brand in Turkey was aiming to illustrate the lack of access to sanitary pads due to economic constraints, and the violence caused by gender inequality. These issues are rarely discussed, and often turn into sources of embarrassment, thus creating lifelong issues for girls, women and their families. We see that we can not fully reflect our intentions in the implementation of the idea, and we are sorry if it caused any misunderstanding.”
As nearly three-quarters of Turkey's population now live in cities, today fewer women need to hide purchased sanitary pads in newspapers or black plastic bags, which would have been necessary in the past, particularly if the person at the cashier was a man. This is probably still the case in remote villages.
Regardless, stigma remains widespread across Turkish society, which is why the school curriculum does not provide any teaching or information about gender and sexuality. The situation is in no way better in higher education: in February 2019, the Turkish higher education system also disavowed gender equality by removing the Gender Equality Attitude Certificate.
According to the Turkish organization We Will Stop Femicide Platform, femicide remains a daily reality: on October alone, 36 women were killed by men:
Ekim 2019 raporumuzu yayınlıyoruz.
31 günde #36Kadın erkekler tarafından öldürüldü. Şiddet ve çocuk istismarı devam ediyor.
Raporun tamamı ??https://t.co/T8xGJOcLPB pic.twitter.com/VuKdJV12fC
— Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu (@KadinCinayeti) 2 Kasım 2019
We published our October 2019 report:
In 31 days, 36 women killed by men. Violence and child abuse keep happening.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Sevgi Yagmur Bulut


text:
Belarus 2020: A course to decolonisation? · Global Voices
Ales Plotka

Belarusan and Soviet flags on parade, during a protest against the so-called “parasites’ tax” in Minsk, March 2017. Photo (c): Anton Matoĺka. Used with permission.
My last article “three naïve questions about Belarus” has prompted many questions. First and foremost, they concern the language we use in Belarus to talk about our national identity. The situation is unique, to put it briefly. In the worst possible sense of the word.
Belarus, the 13th largest country in Europe, is formally bilingual. But in practice things are different: this is not a bilingualism where one can simply indicate your preferred language of communication and speak it to a state official as you please. No, in common practice, officials interpret bilingualism not as an obligation to respond in either state language (Belarusan or Russian), but as their freedom to respond in either of the two. Fortunately, at least in the case of written appeals, there is a legal requirement to respond in the language used by the sender.
This is not the kind of bilingualism where people can freely choose what language they want their children to be educated in. In fact, if Belarusan-speaking parents want their children to have classes or study groups conducted in our national language, they often have to send them to schools in remote regions. Nobody compensates them for transportation costs. Their requirements simply cannot be fulfilled in schools closer to where they live. And this state of affairs is still called “bilingualism.” It is a bilingualism thanks to which Belarus has become the most Russified country of all those which were once under Soviet rule.
With that in mind, let's consider the results of the many “decolonising” projects carried out in Belarus between 2010 and 2019.
The well-known civic campaign “Budzma Belarusami!” (“Let's be Belarusans!”) began at the start of the decade. After the mass protests of the 2000s, the authorities decided on a “final solution to the opposition issue” and dispersed protesters with brutal force in 2010. Subsequent searches of activists’ homes and detentions forced many into a long depression. It was fertile soil for a campaign to strengthen national identity.
In a sense, the move was cognitive psychotherapy on a national scale: lead Belarusan society by the hand to the mirror, show it the beauty of its culture and say that Belarusan denotes success, stylishness. It's was a shock to colonial culture, where for decades everything original, everything indigenous, was dismissed as second-rate. During this period, Budzma helped launch the Ad.nak! festival, which gave a boost to the growing fashion of using the Belarusan language in advertising. Large businesses started to regard their native language as an effective tool for communication once more. At the start of the millennium, that had seemed unimaginable, and of no use to anybody.
Animation for the “Budzma Belarusami” song, one of the most viral of all the campaigns mentioned in this article.
An entire article could be written solely about the presence of the Belarusan language in business. In brief, the trend is towards the merging of medium- and small-sized businesses, which support Belarusan language and culture, while large business sometimes operate quite prominently in Belarusan. For example, the A-100 chain of petrol stations announced their transition to the Belarusan language. One company even produced cornflower-flavoured ice cream (the cornflower is a popular national symbol of Belarus), while the country's largest mobile operator made cultural development part of its company policy and supported, for example, the youth activist Andrej Kim's initiative to show films dubbed in Belarusan. The latter is particularly important given that despite the packed halls of the country's 60 or so cinemas, all state film distribution is still carried out in Russian.
Thanks to a systematic media campaign to “get culture out from between the weather forecast and sports and onto the front pages,” Budzma created the prototype of one of the most prominent domestic brands of the last decade: t-shirts bearing traditional Belarusan motifs. The campaign was unable to ensure their mass production, but nature abhors a vacuum, and by the middle of the decade Paval Bielavus, organiser of the events, developed Budzma's idea further and created the “vyshymayka,” a factory-produced product bearing folk art patterns. Together with Bielavus's online shop symbal.by, several small businesses with a slant towards Belarusan culture became visible in the market. Some of their products were at least, if not more aesthetically striking than Symbal's t-shirts. A good example was the urban brand LSTR.
Belarusans wearing Vyshymayki. Image from budzma.by and symbal.by. Used with permission.
The vyshymayka became by far the most popular trend. The idea of a vyshymayka parade was eventually appropriated by the state-run Belarusan Republican Youth Movement (analogous to the Soviet Komsomol movement). It was an ugly move, but it can also be credited with situating Belarusan identity at the forefront of all state media broadcasts, giving the population at large a simple and understandable signal—and permission from the authorities to think about their national identity. This fact became even more salient in Belarus in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war raging to the south, which began with calls for “unity” of the de-Ukrainianised east of the country with the so-called “Russian world.”
For a long time, Bielavus and his colleagues worked on both the symbal.by online store and Art-Siadziba, a civic cultural initiative, and only separated the two projects in 2017. Understandably, people often confuse the two initiatives, which collaborated for many years on many projects. The most prominent of these was the celebration of the centenary of the Belarusan Democratic Republic, or BNR.
Charter of the Belarusian People's Republic (1918-1919). Public domain image.
On March 25, 1918 the third charter of the Belarusan Democratic Republic (or Belarusan People's Republic) was signed. This short-lived entity at the end of the First World War was the first modern Belarusan proto-state, and one of several in the pan-European “independence parade” of 1918. After the restoration of Belarusan independence in 1991, the date acquired a renewed significance; in the era of current president Aliaxandr Lukašenka (also known as Alexander Lukashenka – ed.) it has become an important, if unofficial, public holiday. Accordingly, public processions for Freedom Day are dispersed with varying degrees of police brutality.
However, against the backdrop of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the authorities in Minsk chose to accommodate the centennial of the Belarusan Democratic Republic. They even set aside a venue in the heart of the capital specially for the celebrations. Art-Siadziba, which acted as technical operator for the event, went into emergency mode to ensure a good showing for the ceremony, and was able to gather more than 50,000 people on the streets. The last time Minsk had seen a public gathering of that size was during the so-called “Minsk Spring” protests of 1996 and the Plošča protests of 2010.
The mass celebrations made Bielavus and his partners Matolka and Palchys into a trinity of media heroes. Another coalition member, leader of the Belarusan Popular Front Ryhor Kastusioŭ, also showed his skills in negotiating with the authorities. The move of a single man greatly strengthened the image of his entire party, which had been marginalised after the successes of the early 1990s. The following year a split occurred in the ranks of the festival's organisers. Two separately organised Freedom Day celebrations took place in parallel. It is a bitter irony, given that exactly a hundred years before, in 1919, a split also occurred in the BNR itself, when two competing meetings of the Rada, its parliament, signalled the beginning of the end for the young republic. Every one hundred years, Belarus gets the opportunity to try to achieve something as one; many Belarusans can't even unite in an attempt to try.
After #BNR100, Art-Siadziba continued its painstaking attempts to organise decentralised cultural events, training seminars, and conferences for young people. Thus MovaChallenge was launched on Instagram, in which participants are given tasks to try and switch to using Belarusan in their daily lives, thereby overcoming one of the most enduring stigmas in Belarusan society. But while it may be easy to find a supportive community online, real life can be less welcoming to such initiatives.
However, life offline makes for stronger social ties, which helped create MovaNanova, an educational project whose name means “Language Anew” in Belarusan. Many initiatives feel removed from ordinary people. MovaNanova was different. Hleb Labadzienka and Alesia Litvinoŭskaja simply launched a chain of informal educational circles. Over the past five years, these courses have become an integral part of urban life in major regional centres as well as a dozen smaller cities, as there is not a single university in Belarus which operates entirely in the national language, and not a single wholly Belarusan language television channel. While there is one university project working in conjunction with the Partnership for the Belarusan Language, the state has so far expressed no interest in supporting it.
A strange fact is that Alesya Litvinoŭskaja taught the Belarusan language to Stefan Eriksson, who was Swedish ambassador to Belarus from 2008-2012 and won widespread affection from Belarusan society for the respect he showed to the national language and the warmth of his public appearances. Some of Eriksson's colleagues have clearly made note of his successful style. Perhaps they received recommendations from their communications consultants, or perhaps the new generation of diplomats coming to Belarus simply see the country as something more than a buffer zone.
When trying to understand the stark division between activists and “the ordinary masses,” many people invoke battlefields and military struggles between two irreconcilable camps. These metaphors aren't often accurate, but they certainly useful when describing Ihar Slučak, known as the “language inspector.” A real “forest brother,” a real lone partisan, Slučak, a qualified lawyer, started the initiative “Jurisprudence in Belarusan,” through which he methodically coerced state officials into answering correspondence in the language it was sent in. The words “one partisan made the whole region quake in fear” are well-suited in his case.
Map showing percentage of requests from citizens which received a response in the Belarusian language, based on data from 2012-2018. Image by Ihar Slučak / Alyaksandr Arsyonau. Used with permission.
Another campaign aimed to widen the use of the Belarusan language in sports. With their huge fan bases, sports clubs turned out to be far more attuned to the use of their native language than the old school Soviet state officials. From 2015 to 2018, the number of major league football clubs in Belarus which displayed players’ names on their uniforms in the national language increased from zero to 12 (out of 16). This has since become an established way of rating the “Belarusanness” of sports clubs.
By the end of the decade, Slučak realised that there were prospects in scaling up his language campaign. Alongside the activist Alina Nahornaja, he took the best suggestions from these initiatives and published them in the book Abaronim Movu! (“Lets Protect the Language!”), a compilation of practical recommendations for protecting Belarusan language rights.
The visual style of the “language inspector's” activism has become less pointed. These days, he increasingly opts for the carrot over the stick, and highlights the positive aspects of Belarusan language use. It's a sensible move, given that state functionaries are not merely bureaucratic automata who write official responses, but also human beings. After all, given that the Donbas scenario (i.e. Russian armed intervention in the country) can by no means be ruled out for Belarus, a functionary's acts tomorrow could be influenced by how he approaches such issues, even while they may seem insignificant to him.
However, the localised successes described above should not lull us into the illusion that here has been significant process for Belarus as a whole. Yes, the national language has appeared in business contexts, albeit timidly. The authorities have not crushed grassroots linguistic initiatives, but that doesn't mean they support them. Several monuments to princes of the medieval Grand Duchy of Poland-Lithuania, of which Belarus was a member, have been erected, alongside those to other figures who were not honoured under Soviet rule. But there is still no systemic support for the national language in education, culture, or the ideology of the state.
Given the domination of Russian-language media, many Belarusans see themselves stuck in an information environment which is run on somebody else's terms. That's why media activists have already launched a campaign to localise content in Belarus.
Without a doubt, the past decade has seen a growth in public interest in national identity, and plotted a course away from postcolonial stagnation. The question for the next decade will be whether external threats and globalisation will compel the Belarusan state to listen to these grassroots demands and follow that course.

author: Ales Plotka


text:
Hong Kong activists denounce court ban on ‘violent’ content as a threat to internet freedom · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Image from Hong Kong citizen media outlet, the Stand News.
Internet freedom activists in Hong Kong are challenging an interim injunction issued by the High Court prohibiting anyone from posting and re-posting any information that promotes violence, including on LIHKG and Telegram.
The request for injunction was filed by the Secretary of Justice at the High Court on 31 of October. It requests the court to restrain anyone from:
(a) Wilfully disseminating, circulation, publishing or re-publishing on any internet-based platform or medium (including but not limited to LIHKG and Telegram) any material or information that promotes, encourages or incites the use of threat of violence, intended or likely to cause (i) bodily injury to any person unlawfully within Hong Kong; or (ii) damage to any property unlawfully within Hong Kong.
(b) Assisting, causing, counselling, procuring, instigating, inciting, aiding, abetting or authorizing others to commit any of the aforesaid acts or participate in any of the aforesaid acts.
The High Court Judge Russell Adam Coleman granted the interim injunction for two weeks until a formal hearing for the application is heard on November 15.
However, internet freedom groups are concerned that the injunction would have a chilling effect on freedom of expression online in Hong Kong.
Internet Society Hong Kong Chapter launched a crowdfunding campaign to file a judicial review against the injunction. The organization expressed worries that the injunction could force ISPs to censor or restricting access to certain sites.
The injunction would not only affect individual users’ right to freedom of expression but would also force ISPs or platform operators to filter or take down political contents. Section (a) of the injunction could be used to target internet users who disseminate protest information online, while section (b) could affect ISPs and platform operators which could be accused of “aiding, abetting or authorizing” their users to disseminate such information. As explained by the Internet Society Hong Kong Chapter:
The injunction provisions are overbroad, anyone who issues comments on police brutality and criticism on the government could potentially be construed to be “inciting, aiding or abetting” others to commit unlawful acts. The injunction can even go further to include anyone who simply ‘like’, share and respond to the comments. It is possible that with the use of the injunction, the government may force online platforms and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to censor and restrict access to websites and applications, or request private information of online users who are aiding in the dissemination of the online content. The injunction will not only affect free speech online, it will destroy Hong Kong’s open and free Internet, as well as free flow of information, if the government seeks to invoke more power to censor the Internet.
Currently ISPs and platform operators in Hing Kong are required to block or take down illegal content including information that infringes copyrights and individual privacy. While copyright and privacy have clear definitions, the injunction covers “information that promotes, encourages or incites the use of threat of violence”, and such description could be interpreted as protest information in general.
If overseas platform operators fail to comply with the authorities’ takedown notices, they could be accused by the authorities of “aiding” the distribution of illegal materials and local ISPs would be compelled to block entire platforms such as Telegram and reddit-like LIHKG which are hosted outside Hong Kong. Hence, many believe that the injunction is aimed at blocking LIHKG and Telegram, which are two major communication platform for protesters.
Reports about government's plans to strengthen its control over the internet kept circulating since August 2019. Back on 28 of August, the Hong Kong ISP Association issued a statement warning that “any insensible restrictions on the open Internet would only result in more restrictions” and would put ”Hong Kong’s Internet behind a big firewall.” The association added in its statement:
Therefore, any such restrictions, however slight originally, would start the end of the open Internet of Hong Kong, and would immediately and permanently deter international businesses from positing their businesses and investments in Hong Kong.
The #KeepItOn coalition also issued an open letter to the Hong Kong government in early September against any policy that may harm the open internet:
Shutting down or restricting the internet and disrupting communications will not stop protests nor remove the triggers behind them. They only increase societal anxiety, and often hide human rights violations, creating greater difficulty for long-term stability and peaceful dialogue.
In early October, the Chief Executive Carrie Lam invoked the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to enact the Anti-Mask Law. At the same time, Ip Kwok-him, a pro-Beijing politician and a member of the Executive Council said that the government would not rule out passing a new law to restrict the internet as a means to curb the protests.
While Carrie Lam stressed that she would not pass laws to issue a ban on the internet, the High Court injunction may empower the authorities to force ISPs into blocking certain platforms and websites.
Internet Society Hong Kong Chapter pointed out that the current injunction would result in a climate fear and deter citizens and protesters from speaking out:
If the situation remains unchecked, the police could potentially use the injunction to persecute more innocent and law abiding citizens who have the courage to speak up against the government and injustice.
Internet Society (International) also expressed deep concern over the injunction:
The order will have the unintended consequence of interfering with the normal operations of the local and global Internet, jeopardizing the smooth delivery of Internet services in Hong Kong and its neighbors…This outcome would directly endanger the lives and livelihoods of many Hong Kong people, and will have serious repercussions on Hong Kong’s economy and its links to the global digital economy.

author: Oiwan Lam


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US withdrawal from Syria tests Russian soldiers’ social media use · Global Voices
Milan Czerny

“They knew exactly who would be coming to take over.” Pavel Remnev, correspondent for ZvezvdaTV (linked to Russia's Ministry of Defence) tours the abandoned US military base outside Manbij, Syria, on October 18, 2019. Image from ZvezdaTV's YouTube video “Уникальные кадры с брошенной базы США в Манбидже“.
“Yesterday they were here, today it's us.”
On October 15, the Russian conflict journalist Oleg Blokhin published several videos on social media of himself visiting the former US military base at Manbij, in northern Syria, following the departure of American soldiers. Photos taken by Russian soldiers in similar facilities then began to surface across Russian social media and Telegram channels. Russian TV channels and military-themed pages on VKontakte, a popular Russian social network, quickly relayed the soldiers’ posts in celebration, gloating at the GIs who left Syria in such a hurry.
These scenes stood in sharp contrast to the Russian military's recent efforts to limit its soldiers’ online activities. Earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin signed a new law prohibiting Russian soldiers from using smartphones and posting photos while on duty. Soldiers are now banned from possessing devices that take pictures and have access to the internet. At the time the law was adopted, the independent media outlet Meduza reported that “large numbers” of soldiers had been jailed and punished for infringing the new regulations. Some of them even faced retroactive charges: Yegor Kruglov spent 15 days behind bars for sending photos of himself to his girlfriend using social media months before the law entered force.
The bill's authors stressed that it was adopted because “military servicemen are of special interest to the security services of several states, to terrorist and extremist organisations.” However, many believe that the real impetus for the law were revelations by investigative journalists and researchers, such as Bellingcat or the Conflict Intelligence Team, which rely on open-source data, particularly from social media networks. These investigators were able to prove the Russian military's involvement in Syria thanks to its soldiers’ social media posts and GPS localisation before the Kremlin even officially acknowledged military intervention in the country. Similarly, VICE News’ Simon Ostrovky and researchers from Forensic Architecture were able to gather evidence of the Russian military's involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow firmly denies. Ostrovsky and his colleagues were also aided by selfies and YouTube videos uploaded by active servicemen.
“Selfie, photo, internet: expect a hello from the enemy!” reads this poster. Source: VKontakte/DKulbin (the user's page has since been closed to the public.)
Despite denials, these revelations clearly irritated Russia's military leadership. In fact, photos of what appears to be a series of educational posters reminiscent of the Cold War have even appeared online. The posters, which allegedly hang in military facilities, aspire to teach servicemen how to behave online. One poster urges soldiers not to share information on social networking sites. A second poster warns soldiers against using devices which can provide geolocations, which could then be discovered by NATO troops.
Although the authenticity of these posters has not been verified, they appear to be in keeping with a broader push by the Russian military to restrain its soldiers’ social media activity.
This was recently exemplified by a declaration by a former analyst from the Russian Presidential Affairs Department's Scientific Research Computing Center (GRCC), an agency which produces tools for high-precision online research for sale to state and private actors: “We said there aren’t any Russian soldiers in Syria or the Donbas, but they are there. And so we’re in a race against Bellingcat to geolocate all the posts where some idiot Russian soldier is taking selfies in a trench, posing with his rifle,” one anonymous former GRCC employee told Meduza.
This struggle was toned down when US troops left northern Syria. Empty American bases presented a unique opportunity for a huge symbolic victory. Indeed, the last “deliberate withdrawal” of US troops occurred in 2011 in Iraq; the last time that Russian soldiers set foot in an American base was probably in the aftermath of WWII. Soldiers filmed themselves going through GIs’ personal belongings and diaries, visiting dormitories, checking cans of Coke left behind and responding to messages left on whiteboards.
This reporting appeared to take place in various stages: first, Russian soldiers posted pictures of the bases, and VKontakte accounts reposted videos of Russian vehicles entering Manbij, welcomed by locals waving Syrian flags in the aftermath of the American withdrawal. Simultaneously, journalists following Russian mercenaries, such as Oleg Blokhin or the Abkhazian news agency Anna-News — which claims to “fight the western brainwashing machine” — staged their own visits to the US bases in a more elaborate manner, so as to channel the information in the desired way. Finally, larger Russian TV channels such RT filmed their own visits to the abandoned facilities.
Social media allowed the Russian government to instantly and forcefully communicate its presence and “success” in Syria. The erosion of the American role in the Middle East was staged live, and despite new information security measures, the Russian military is willing to weaponise its soldiers’ social media posts when it is convenient to do so.
In the short term, it seems that the rapid dissemination of these posts advanced Russia's interests. VKontakte videos found their way to a Western audience on Twitter, polarising discussions and fuelling heated criticism of Donald Trump's decision to withdraw US troops from northern Syria and give Turkey and Russia a green light to extend their territorial reach. Moreover, these posts probably harmed the morale of Western troops, as the live broadcast of the base's “takeover” was a cheap way for the Russian government to portray itself as the only superpower left in the region.
However, in the long term, the widespread use of such social media posts, whether by active servicemen or by mercenaries, might be detrimental to Russia's interests, undermining the spirit of the legislation passed to ban the use of social media on the battlefield. It appears as though Russian soldiers have had a hard time restraining themselves from boasting in front of tanks or posing in full military gear despite the implementation of the law. It could now be difficult to close this Pandora's Box in the coming months.
Finally, the strategy of mocking Western states by staging videos around sensitive information has recently backfired. In September 2018, the Kremlin-sponsored RT television channel held an interview with two men belonging to the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), the Russian military's overseas intelligence agency, who had been accused of poisoning Sergey Skripal in Salisbury, Great Britain, earlier that year. In response to British allegations that they had carried out an assassination attempt ordered by Moscow, the two men claimed that they were sports nutritionists on holiday in the UK. The footage proved to be very valuable to Bellingcat's attempts to establish the real identity of the two men; as a result, photos were discovered of the two men attending the wedding of the daughter of Major General Andrey Averyanov, a GRU commander.
We want to thank @m_simonyan and @RT_com from the bottom of our hearts — we never could have found out so much information about Chepiga/Boshirov without their decision to record a 20+ minute, high-definition interview with him, letting us match every mole and wrinkle he has. pic.twitter.com/6EHNlkyK3w
— Aric Toler (@AricToler) October 14, 2019
This shows that, for any military, playing with sensitive information for easy PR points can be a dangerous game. Although American troops may have felt humiliated by Russian soldiers’ posts of their former base at Manbij, it is likely that, in the long run, open-source investigations team will have plenty more data to analyse.

author: Milan Czerny


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Vanuatu journalist says his work permit was revoked for criticizing the government · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

A newspaper stand in Vanuatu. Photo and caption from Flickr user Commonwealth Secretariat. (CC BY-NC 2.0)
The media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post says his work visa was not renewed by the country's Labour Ministry because of the paper’s critical coverage of the government.
Dan McGarry wrote on Facebook and Twitter that his application was rejected because the government reportedly wants his position to be ‘localized’. But he believes the decision was as a result of newspaper stories that angered the authorities:
Source: Dan McGarry Facebook page
In July, the Prime Minister (Chariot Salwai) summoned me and berated me for my ‘negative’ reporting. ‘If you don’t like it here,’ he told me, ‘go home’. But Vanuatu is my home.
People will hem and haw and say all kinds of things, but it boils down to this: I spoke out, and was punished for telling the truth.
McGarry said the problem started when the newspaper ran a story in July 2019 about the deportation of six Chinese nationals to face prosecution in China, despite questions about the legality of the action.
McGarry is among those who questioned the decision of the Minister of Internal Affairs to deport six individuals to China without a court hearing:
He admitted he didn’t consider that at least some of the deportees were Vanuatu citizens. He appears to have issued orders without fully considering his responsibility to follow the law himself. He appears to have instructed Police to act as they did. Every one of those statements is cause for deep concern. Because whatever the Minister may think, we are not subject to Chinese law. And we don’t do things the Chinese way.
The issue reflected the growing political and economic influence of China in Vanuatu and other Pacific nations.
McGarry noted the link between the deportation issue and China's standing in Vanuatu:
Vanuatu is not China. But today, it’s looking more like it than ever before.
McGarry is a Canadian who has been a resident of Vanuatu for 16 years and is married to a Vanuatu citizen. He tweeted about how the Labour Ministry's decision affects his personal life as well:
I’m gutted right now. My future’s uncertain. I could lose everything I’ve built over the last 16 yrs, just for doing what any self-respecting journo would do.
But I take immense solace in seeing that in just over 24 hrs, we’ve reached over 60,000 people on Twitter alone.
— Dan McGarry (@dailypostdan) November 8, 2019
But Labour Commissioner Muriel Meltenoven insisted that her office is merely upholding the government's localization policy. She told the media that:
The decision to refuse the work permit is because, looking at his file, there is no succession plan or training plan that has been provided for a local counterpart.
Marc Neil-Jones, founder of the Vanuatu Daily Post, clarified that the company is locally-owned:
Trading Post Ltd is 100% locally owned and employs over 50 staff. We are being blatantly forced to localize a very senior expatriate position in our 100% Ni Vanuatu owned company.
He also warned about the implications of revoking McGarry’s visa:
We believe the real reason for [the] government cancelling McGarry’s work permit is because they are not happy with some of his news items. It has nothing to do with localization.
We urge this government to not use this Work Permit Amendment Act to get rid of expatriates they do not like […] as this precedent is dangerous and opens up the doors to abuse.
A report by The Guardian mentioned that McGarry's predecessor also faced harassment for criticizing some policies of the government.
The Media Association of Vanuatu also urged authorities to renew McGarry’s work permit by reminding them that there are other avenues through which to address complaints related to published stories. The statement emphasized that freedom of the media and the right to information are important in promoting the country’s development.
Journalists, scholars, and media freedom advocates in the Pacific region all criticized the denial of McGarry's work visa. Australia's Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance said the decision “is a disturbing development that raises concerns over press freedom and the public's right to know in Vanuatu.”
Professor David Robie, the director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of Pacific Media Watch, vouched for McGarry’s integrity as a journalist:
Dan McGarry is one of the leading investigative journalists in Vanuatu and the Pacific and has a commitment to development values.
Dan has also been a strong media freedom advocate and has followed the proud traditions set by the Daily Post founder and owner, Marc Neil-Jones, by publishing the truth and holding the powerful to account.
A loss of Dan McGarry to Vanuatu would be a huge loss to the region as well.
Journalist colleagues, readers and people who are committed to press freedom in the Pacific and everywhere stand with Dan McGarry at this time. Freedom doesn't mean easy; it means knowing we must guard and fight for what is precious https://t.co/hsSx8AjUeu
— Keith Jackson AM (@PNGAttitude) November 8, 2019
McGarry said he will appeal the Labour Ministry's decision.

author: Mong Palatino


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‘Brazil might not be a dictatorship, but it’s not a democracy either,’ says Brazilian journalist · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

Journalist and writer Mário Magalhães. Photo: Daniel Ramalho, used with permission.
Magalhães is a journalist from Rio de Janeiro who has reported for Brazil's leading newspapers, such as O Globo, O Estado de São Paulo, and Folha de São Paulo. His new book “Sobre lutas e lágrimas: Uma biografia de 2018″ (in English, “On struggles and tears: a biography of 2018″) is a collection of essays originally run by the Brazilian version of the news site The Intercept, plus a few new articles.
The essays focus on three events that rocked Brazil in 2018: the murder of Marielle Franco and Anderson Gomes on March 14; the arrest of ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on April 7; and the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president on October 28. He uses those events as lenses to look at Brazil's authoritarian past and how it still haunts the present times.
Magalhães has also authored a biography of Carlos Marighella, the founder of the communist guerilla outfit Ação Libertadora Nacional (in English, National Liberation Alliance) in 1968, one of the groups that engaged in armed struggle against Brazil's US-backed military dictatorship (1964-1985). A movie based on the book, starred by musician Seu Jorge and directed by Netflix's “Narcos” lead Wagner Moura, has had its release in Brazil delayed twice this year over bureaucratic issues with the country's cinema regulator — which has raised suspicions of censorship.
In September, Global Voices spoke with Magalhães about his new book, which has only been published in Brazil, and the first year of Jair Bolsonaro's administration. The interview below has been slightly condensed.
Global Voices: In the book, you draw a parallel between Marielle Franco's murder and that of Edson Luís, the teenage student killed by the Rio de Janeiro police in 1968. Was Marielle's death as much of a watershed as was Edson's?
Mário Magalhães: Todo o livro foi escrito à quente [como coluna do The Intercept Brasil e outros inéditos], com exceção do prólogo, que escrevo em 2019, amarrando o ano que tinha terminado. Para mim, a coisa que me impressiona muito, o fato de eu ter escrito na virada de fevereiro para março, contando que dias depois – 28 de março – o assassinato do Edson Luís ia completar 50 anos. Eu terminava falando de índices de violência no Brasil, sobretudo de mortes de jovens negros, que não provocavam uma reação a altura. No final do capítulo eu pergunto: qual seria a reação do Brasil hoje, se acontecesse alguma coisa semelhante?
Desgraçadamente, aconteceu. Duas semanas depois mataram a Marielle e o Anderson Gomes, motorista dela. Pode não ter sido a reação dos sonhos de humanistas, defensores de direitos humanos, mas o 15 de março foi impressionante. Sobretudo no Rio, que era a cidade dela, a mesma cidade que Edson Luís foi assassinado e mesma cidade das maiores manifestações estudantis de 68 contra a ditadura.

A morte dela virou um símbolo de muita coisa que estava fervilhando no país naquele momento. A morte da Marielle mexe com a letargia, tira de casa quem não saía de casa, ela é um apelo contra o silêncio. É o marco do ano.
Mario Magalhães: The entire book has been written in the heat of the moment, with the exception of the prologue, which I wrote in 2019, tying up the year that had just ended. What strikes me the most is the fact that I wrote [the chapter about Marielle and Edson] between February and March, considering that the 50th anniversary of Edson Luís’ death, on March 28, was then just a few weeks away. I concluded the piece by quoting violence rates in Brazil, especially to young black men, which don't generate the reaction it merits. By the end of the chapter, I ask: how would Brazil react today if something like that happened again?
Disgracefully, it did. Two weeks later, they murdered Marielle and Anderson Gomes, her driver. The incident might not have producd the reaction that humanists and human rights activists have dreamed of, but [the protests of] March 15 were impressive. Especially in Rio, her city, the same city where Edson Luís was killed and the city that held the largest student protests against the dictatorship, in 1968. Marielle’s death became a symbol of many things that were simmering underneath at that time. Her death shook the lethargy, brought to the streets people who usually didn't leave the house, it was an appeal against silence. It was the landmark of the year.
GV: For a country with such short historical memory, how do you see those past cycles repeating themselves in 2018?
MM: O livro é um túnel do tempo porque o Brasil de 2018 juntou muitos tempos históricos. O projeto eleitoral vitorioso é de viúvas da ditadura. É o ano em que ideias do nazifascismo ganham espaço no Brasil. Há uma espécie que a historiografia considerava extinta que é o integralista em ações violentas — o integralismo foi o nazifascismo tupiniquim, que existiu formalmente até ser colocado na ilegalidade em 1938. A gente teve em 2018 integralistas atacando uma universidade federal no Rio, roubando faixas antifascistas e queimando-as em um ritual que lembra muito a liturgia da Ku Klux Klan.
É o ano em que mais uma mentira influenciou uma eleição brasileira, e o livro volta para a década de 1920, onde inventaram cartas falsas de um candidato, Artur Bernardes; vai aos anos 1940, em que inventaram que o candidato, brigadeiro Eduardo Gomes, tinha chamado os brasileiros pobres de “marmiteiros”; vai a 1989, quando inventaram que, se o Lula vencesse o Collor no segundo turno, toda a família de classe média teria que entregar um quarto para uma família sem-terra. Só que nunca houve nada com o volume de mentiras e o efeito do “kit gay” – eu reconstituo a gênese desse boato, que começa na virada de 2010 para 2011. O Bolsonaro inventa o “kit gay” e 84% dos eleitores dele acreditaram que o Fernando Haddad (ex-ministro da educação, que seria responsável pelo material didático nas escolas ensinando sobre diversidade e identidade de gênero) implantaria um “kit gay”. Por isso que acho que há muitos fatores para a vitória do Bolsonaro, mas nenhum tem a importância da eliminação do Lula da corrida eleitoral.
O Datafolha, no fim de agosto, mostrava que Lula tinha aberto 20 pontos sobre Bolsonaro, estava crescendo, mesmo preso, com perspectiva de vencer a eleição no primeiro turno. Inventar que o Lula, que tinha governado oito anos, ia levar mamadeiras em formato de pênis para as creches, não pegaria. Com Haddad, é diferente, era um desconhecido para dezenas de milhões de brasileiros.
MM: The book is a tunnel of time because Brazil 2018 reunited many historical periods. The project that wins the elections is that of the dictatorship’s widows. It’s the year that Nazi fascist ideas gained ground in Brazil. There is species that historiography had long considered extinct, the integralists — the Brazilian version of Nazi fascism, which existed formally until 1938, when it was outlawed. In 2018, we saw integralists attacking universities, stealing antifascist banners and burning them in rituals that resembled the Ku Klux Klan's liturgy.
It’s the year when yet another lie influenced the Brazilian elections, and the book then goes back to the 1920s, when false letters from one of the candidates, Artur Bernardes, circulated; it goes back to the 1940s, when brigadier Eduardo Gomes was falsely accused of calling Brazilians living in poverty “lunchpackers”; it goes back to 1989, when the word on the street was that, if Lula ever won the elections, every middle-class family would have to give away a room in their houses for a landless family. But never before we had seen a volume of lies, or such devastating effects, as what we've had with the “gay kit” — I trace the origins of this rumor, which started in the end of 2010. Bolsonaro invents the “gay kit” farce and 84 percent of voters believed that Fernando Haddad [runner-up in the 2018 elections] would implement it in schools [Haddad served as education minister between 2005-2012, when he attempted, and failed due to social backlash, to roll out a gender diversity education program in secondary schools — ed.]. That’s why I believe that, while there are many factors that explain Bolsonaro’s victory, none are as important as Lula's removal from the presidential race.
A poll from the end of August by [the research institute] Datafolha showed Lula leading with 20 points ahead of Bolsonaro, he was going up on polls, despite the fact that he was in prison, with chances of winning in the first round. If you told people that Lula, who presided the country for eight years, was going to introduce penis-shaped baby bottles in day care centers, no one would have bought it. With Haddad it was different because he was unknown to millions of Brazilians.
GV: You say in the book that there are no doubts that the Workers’ Party’s (PT) engaged in wrongdoing during its 13-year rule. How do you explain Lula's enduring popularity?
MM: O anti-lulismo é uma força de polarização na política brasileira, mas ao mesmo tempo, ele liderava as pesquisas com chance de voltar a ser presidente em 2018. O livro fala de episódios em que o PT, para usar um eufemismo do hoje ex-senador Jaques Wagner, petista, “se lambuzou”. Foi mais do que isso. Houve vínculos do PT com esquemas de corrupção, que existiam havia décadas, e que o PT renovou em alguns casos, mas o prestígio do Lula está diretamente associado a um avanço do Brasil no governo dele. Pela primeira vez na História, mais de 30 milhões foram retirados das linhas mais agudas da pobreza, tem uma série de conquistas sociais.
Se o Lula tivesse concorrido, ele teria sido presidente da República. O livro recapitula uma série de métodos ilegais e imorais da Lava Jato no processo do triplex, que foi o processo que o tirou da eleição. Eu sustento, com base em fatos, que o Lula não teve direito a um julgamento justo. Tem uma síntese disso tudo, que é no final de janeiro de 2018, quando a segunda instância vota o processo, são três juízes do Tribunal Regional Federal da 4ª Região, eles não só mantém a condenação, como aumentam a pena. Um deles diz: “se é réu, é porque alguma coisa aprontou”. Significa que, em nenhum lugar do planeta, em qualquer época da História, um réu poderia ser inocente, porque ao se tornar réu teria cometido algum ilícito. Isso não só é um escândalo lógico, como viola a Constituição que assegura a presunção de inocência.
MM: Anti-lulism is a strong polarising force in Brazilian politics, but at the same time, Lula was leading the polls with chances of being elected president again in 2018. The book remembers episodes when the PT, to use a euphemism by former PT senator and former minister Jaques Wagner, “smeared itself”. It was more than that. The PT was linked to corruption schemes that had been going on for decades, and the party even renewed some of them, while Lula’s prestige is directly associated with Brazil’s advances during his tenure. For the first time in history, more than 30 million people left the most acute poverty lines and there were several social achievements.
If Lula was to run, he would be elected president. The book also recaps a series of illegal and imoral methods used by Operation Car Wash during the proceedings that allege he was owner of the triplex apartment, the one that took him off the presidential race. I sustain that, based on the facts, Lula wasn't granted the right to a fair trial. In January 2018, the appeals’ court ruling not only maintained his sentence, it also increased his jail time (it went from 9 years to 12). One of the three judges said: “if he is on trial, it’s because he did something”. Which means that, nowhere on the planet, in any given time in history, a defendant could ever be innocent, because when they become a defendant they are already guilty. This is not only a logical scandal, it also violates the Constitution which guarantees the presumption of innocence.
GV: The press is a recurring subject of your book. As a reporter yourself, how do you see the coverage of Bolsonaro?
MM: Em todo o mundo, o Bolsonaro é chamado de candidato de extrema-direita. Há jornal no Brasil que proíbe os repórteres de escreverem isso, está dito isso no livro. Acho importante enfatizar uma coisa: nenhum governo, nenhum regime da História gosta de jornalismo e jornalistas, se esse jornalismo for exercido de modo independente, com espírito crítico, fiscalizando o poder. Nenhum poder de esquerda, de direita, de centro, da orientação que for, gosta.
Só que a gente vem de décadas de relativa tolerância do poder com a atividade jornalística. Com Bolsonaro, em 2018, ele anuncia que isso vai acabar. Tem um capítulo chamado “A imprensa intimidada”, sobre o fato de segmentos jornalísticos parecerem intimidados diante do Bolsonaro. Quando a imprensa fica intimidada, ela deixa de exercer o seu papel histórico. Não adianta bajular Bolsonaro, porque ele não gosta de jornalismo e exige sempre mais. Um jornal pode publicar um editorial elogiando dele, e duas horas depois ele proibir a entrada do repórter do jornal em uma entrevista coletiva – como aconteceu. Bolsonaro é a maior ameaça ao jornalismo brasileiro desde o fim da ditadura.
MM: Everywhere in the world, Bolsonaro is described as a far-right candidate. There are newspapers in Brazil that forbid its reporters of writing this, which I mention in the book. I think it’s important to emphasize something: no government, no regime in history likes journalism and journalists, if such journalism is exercised independently, with critical spirit, overseeing those in power. No power, either from the left, the right, the center or whatever orientation, likes it.
However, we've had decades of relative government tolerance with the journalistic activity. Bolsonaro, in 2018, announced that this will be over. There is a chapter titled “The intimidated press” about how some media outlets seem intimidated by him. When the press is intimidated, it stops playing its historical role. There is no point in flattering Bolsonaro, because he doesn’t like journalism and always demands more. A newspaper may publish an editorial complimenting him in the morning, and two hours later he could forbid one of its reporters from attending a press conference — as it has happened. Bolsonaro is the biggest threat to Brazilian journalism since the dictatorship.
GV: You also say in the book that a Bolsonaro victory would be the hardest blow to Brazilian democracy since 1968, the year when the military dictatorship passed the Institutional Act Number 5 [a decree that severely limited civil liberties]. What do we have in Brazil now, then?
MM: Hoje temos um confronto entre civilização e barbárie. O Brasil de 2019 não é uma ditadura, mas não é uma democracia. O projeto do Bolsonaro, isso está no livro e várias vezes ele falou, é um regime nos moldes daquele que nasceu em 1964. Eu dou um exemplo claro, talvez seja melhor o exemplo histórico. Em 1935, em novembro, os comunistas tentaram um golpe de estado, que eles chamavam de revolução e o governo autoritário de Getúlio Vargas, porém constitucional, chamou de Intentona Comunista, e sobreveio uma repressão política gigantesca. Milhares e milhares de pessoas foram presas, houve tortura, morte, perseguição. Em 1936, o governo de Getúlio não era uma ditadura formal, mas ele cria um ambiente de asfixia das liberdades, ele cria um tribunal de exceção, o Tribunal de Segurança Nacional. A ditadura vai nascer em 1937, quando Getúlio dá um golpe de estado, fecha o Congresso e destrói as instituições.
Eu não sei o que vai acontecer com o futuro do Brasil, mas eu sei que democracia não existe. Na democracia governa quem foi escolhido soberanamente pela vontade popular. A vontade popular em 2018 era eleger o Lula, se essa escolha tem méritos ou deméritos, não trato disso. Mas ela foi proibida de se expressar por decisões judiciais com base em um processo em que o réu, Lula, não teve direito a um julgamento justo. Então, num sistema presidencialista como o Brasil, governa um homem que não era o preferido dos eleitores. Ou seja, a soberania da vontade popular não foi respeitada. Logo, é um governo ilegítimo.
MM: Today we have a confrontation between civilization and barbarie. Brazil in 2019 is not a dictatorship, but it’s not a democracy. Bolsonaro’s project, as I mention in the book and he himself has said several times, is a regime of the same mold of the one that began in 1964. I'll give you a clear historical example. In November 1935, the communists attempted a coup against Getulio Vargas’ authoritarian, yet constitutional, government, and it triggered a massive political repression. Thousands of people were imprisoned, there was torture, deaths, persecution. In 1936, Getulio’s government was not a formal dictatorship, but he created an environment that asphyxiated liberties. There was also an exceptional court, the National Security Court. The dictatorship starts in 1937, when Getulio himself pulls a coup d’état, shuts down Congress and destroys institutions.
I don’t know what is going to happen with Brazil’s future, but I do know that democracy doesn't exist. In a democracy, rules whoever was chosen by the people’s sovereign will. The people’s will in 2018 was to elect Lula, and if that choice has merit or demerits, that's not the matter here. But the popular will was forbidden to express itself by several court decisions based on a legal process in which the defendant, Lula, did not have the right to a fair trial. So, in a presidential system such as Brazil’s, rules a man who was not the voters’ favorite. Which means that the sovereignty of the people’s will was not respected. Therefore, this is an illegitimate government.
GV: Bolsonaro received 57 million votes in the second round of the 2018 elections. How can a country that was going to vote for Lula, according to the polls, ended up electing someone with opposite ideas?
MM: Bolsonaro foi o beneficiário da profunda insatisfação popular com os rumos do Brasil. Em vastos segmentos sociais, em particular aquele com renda familiar de dois a cinco salários mínimos mensais, a intenção de voto em Lula mudou para Bolsonaro. Talvez isso não tenha ocorrido tão intensamente em nenhum Estado quanto no do Rio de Janeiro. O voto em Lula seria um voto de oposição. Com sua ausência, Bolsonaro foi identificado como um outsider oposicionista, o que não era. Até o presidente Michel Temer declarou ter votado nele. Alguns fatores contribuíram fortemente para o triunfo de Bolsonaro: segurança pública em crise (recorde de homicídios); economia em frangalhos (disparada do desemprego); desmoralização da política tradicional; questões de moral e costumes. O antipetismo influenciou o resultado, porém Lula, o petista mais conhecido, venceria a eleição. Lula é eleitoralmente muito maior do que o PT.
MM: Bolsonaro was the beneficiary of a deep popular dissatisfaction with the path the country had taken. In many social segments, particularly those whose family income is of two to five minimum wages, the intent of voting for Lula switched to Bolsonaro. Maybe Rio de Janeiro is the state where this phenomenon was the most intense. A vote for Lula would be an opposition vote. With his absence, Bolsonaro was identified as an outsider and as opposition, which he is not. Even former president Michel Temer declared to have voted for [Bolsonaro]. Some factors contributed strongly for Bolsonaro’s triumph: the public security crisis (with record-breaking homicide rates); an economy in shreds (with skyrocketing unemployment); demoralization of traditional politics; moral and costumes issues. The anti-PT wave influenced the results, but Lula, the most well-known name in the party, would have won the elections. Lula is, electorally, much bigger than his party.
GV: Brazilian journalist Zuenir Ventura has a book named “1968: The year that didn't end.” Is 2018 over, or we are still living in it?
MM: Por décadas 2018 vai continuar. Milhões de brasileiros começam a voltar para a pobreza mais aguda em 2018 e cada vez mais gente volta. Em 2018, o governo eleito anuncia que há sim mais espaço para desmatamento na Amazônia; declara guerra contra a ciência e o corte em ciência e educação; os vencedores da eleição proclamam o projeto liberticida para a cultura brasileira e agora estão desenvolvendo o que chamam de filtros, mas que na verdade é censura.
As consequências de 2018 vão influenciar o Brasil por décadas ou, em alguns casos, não poderão ser reparadas. O que está se queimando na floresta amazônica, isso pode se reflorestar, mas não teremos mais a floresta como era. Gerações vão ser impactadas pela miséria e na diminuição do acesso ao ensino superior. Muitos cientistas estão indo embora, porque não tem como pesquisar e desenvolver pesquisa no Brasil.
MM: For decades on, 2018 will continue. Millions of Brazilians began to go back to extreme poverty in 2018 and that is happening to more and more people. In 2018, the elected government announced that there is still room for deforestation in the Amazon; it declared war against science and announced budget cuts on science and education; the election winners claim a liberticide project for Brazilian culture and are now developing a so-called system of filters, which is in fact censorship.
The consequences of 2018 will influence Brazil for decades to come or, in some cases, will not be repaired. What is burning within the Amazon forest region, you can replant, but it will never go back to what it was. Generations will be impacted by poverty and with the shrinking opportunities to enter university. Many scientists are leaving the country because they can no longer develop their studies and researches in Brazil.

author: Fernanda Canofre


text:
Former university lecturer jailed for online posts in Vietnam · Global Voices
The 88 Project

Mr. Ngo Xuan Hao. Source: Vietnamnet
This article is from The 88 Project, an independent news site covering Vietnam, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Vietnamese authorities continue to widen their crackdown on freedom of expression against ordinary citizens even when they do not engage in any grassroots activism or political movements. On October 31, 2019, the People’s Court of Ninh Kieu District, Can Tho City, sentenced Mr. Pham Xuan Hao (54 years old) to 12 months in prison for “abusing democratic rights and freedoms to infringe upon state interests” in accordance with Article 331 of the 2015 Criminal Code, which is often used to silence legitimate and peaceful acts of criticism in Vietnam.
Mr. Hao is an intellectual with a solid career and credentials. He is an architect, obtained a master’s degree, and has spent most of his life working as a lecturer at the Technology Faculty of the University of Can Tho, one of the major universities in southern Vietnam.
At the trial, the court described him as an expert with high social awareness but still accused him of using Facebook to “publish pessimistic information about Vietnam that negatively affects netizens and the public.” The judges also asserted that he tried to libel the policies of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam and the State.
This is not the only case the People’s Court of Ninh Kieu District has addressed concerning the right to freedom of expression of its local residents. On September 24, 2018, the court sentenced Mr. Doan Khanh Vinh Quang to two years and three months of imprisonment for the same accusation as Mr. Hao's. And on June 13, 2019, Mr. Quach Nguyen Anh Khoa was also imprisoned for six months by the same court. According to our research, their online posts are mere peaceful expressions on socio-political matters; most of them only criticized public policies such as the draft Law on Special Economic Zones, the costly development of Long Thanh Airport, and the lack of infrastructure investment in southwest Vietnam.
At the time of Hao's trial, according to data gathered by The 88 Project, there were 53 cases of harassments and 21 arrests, of which 12 are online commentators. Mr. Hao, who was likely arrested in 2019, is the 13th individual arrested this year for peaceful online political comments.

author: The 88 Project


text:
Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong responds to Thai Army Chief · Global Voices
Prachatai

Activist Joshua Wong holding a petition. Photo from inmediahk.net's Facebook page.
This edited article is from Prachatai, an independent news site in Thailand, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. In this interview, Joshua Wong responds to the allegations by Thai army chief Apirat Kongsompong that he visited Thailand many times and that he has been inciting young Thais to protest.
“If we are in a new cold war, Hong Kong is the new Berlin.” A video of Joshua Wong giving this statement in Germany was played at a lecture given to military students by General Apirat Kongsompong, Thai Royal Army Chief on 11 October 2019.
During the lecture, Apirat said that Thailand has lost territory 14 times and survived the cold war, but now it is facing new security challenges, articulated in the video. “I would like to pause at the picture of this person for a moment. This picture shows Joshua Wong, he is a leader who said ‘If we are in a new cold war, Hong Kong is the new Berlin’. I did not say it, Mr. Wong said it,” said Apirat.
Then Gen Apirat went on to make comparisons between Thai and Hong Kong youth and made allegations against Joshua Wong by trying to make connections between him and Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the leader of the Future Forward Party.
First of all, Hong Kong is an island. Now it is properly a part of China. Everybody sitting here may have been to Hong Kong, an attractive city and a city for shopping. But I ask what happened to make it that today no one wants to go to Hong Kong? But somebody went there, and took a picture and posted it for us to see.
(Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit said earlier that he went to an Open Future Festival organized by the Economist in Hong Kong, where he met Joshua Wong and had a brief talk with him for 5 minutes. The picture taken at that time was leaked, leading to criticism by many that it was an unpatriotic and interventionist act.)
[READ: For additional context, read Global Voices’ special coverage about the rise to power of the Thai military after the coup in 2014 and the continuing campaign for democratic reforms by various political forces, including student and youth activist groups]
Apirat’s talk about Hong Kong went on for several minutes making many claims:
“Joshua Wong came to Thailand for I don’t know how many times. Who did he meet? What kind of people did he meet? When they met, what was the secret agenda? Were they conspiring to do something? Plus, there is also a visit which looks like encouragement, support.”
“Importantly, the people who came out were all young. I’d like to ask young students if one day some disappointed people, instigators and agitators, people who use social media, people who use propaganda, come to brainwash you to go out like in Hong Kong, would you do it? Given pictures of the incidents of burning the city in 2010 – 2011, I feel that young students are very susceptible, and must be strong citizens who will have to know the truth.”
The lecture prompted the parliamentary Committee on National Security to call Apirat to attend an investigative hearing. The committee preferred it to be a confidential hearing. However, a response from Joshua Wong himself is also important. Prachatai contacted Joshua Wong by email and we have received a 10-minute audio file answering our interview questions about the latest situation in Hong Kong.
Prachatai (P): Can you update us about the Hong Kong protest?
Joshua Wong (JW): The Hong Kong protests have continued for more than four months, which shows our discontent and our course on free election and democracy. When the Hong Kong government turns such a global city into a police state with mob violence, it will just trigger more people with solidarity.
P: The Thai Army Chief mentioned you a lot recently. He said that Hong Kong is already a part of China. Can you give us your comments?
JW: Even [if] Hong Kong is under the rule of Beijing, we should deserve autonomy and that’s the promise of the Sino-British joint declaration. That’s the international treaty registered in the United Nations. I wish [the] Thai Army Chief could realize the importance of guarantee[ing] people freedom and democracy and human rights. Those are the universal value[s] that we believe in.
P: He said that Hong Kong is suffering from the protests and asked Thai youth not to do the same. Could you please comment on this?
JW: Hong Kong is suffering from the threat from Beijing. And when the Army Chief asked Thai youth not to do the same, my only response is if the government in Thai[land] does the same, the youth in Thai[land] they will do the same as Hong Kong youngsters did in the past four months. So it depends on the authorities instead of depend[ing] on us.
P: The Thai Army Chief said that you have been to Thailand many times and did not know who you met with and what your agenda was. Have you paid a visit to Thailand?
JW: I have never visited Thailand in the past few years, especially after being detained in Bangkok airport and being blacklisted by the Thai government in 2016. So, it is fake news. And it is a fake accusation to say that I have been to Thailand many times. The only travel to Thailand for me was [when I was] around 10-years-old having a family trip with my parents to Bangkok and that’s all.
P: Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the leader of opposition in Thailand, is under attack because he recently took a picture with you and talked with you for 5 minutes. What are your thoughts on this?
JW: I think it’s unreasonable because even [if] we share the same thoughts and recognize the importance of freedom and democracy, it does not mean that we can’t have any kind of communication. And we just show the white terror and how the Thai government does not respect the voice of dissident, does not respect the voice of free election.
P: What's the future of Hong Kong?
JW: And the future of Hong Kong should be in the hand[s] of Hong Kong people. We deserve the right to determine our own destiny instead of being dominated by the authorities. We just hope that Hong Kong can be the place with freedom and democracy. And we can be the one [who] could determine our own future when Hong Kong is suffering. In fact, more than three thousand activists were arrested, and activists face sexual harassment, and torture in police station[s]. Not only protesters, even first aid workers, journalists, and nurse[s] or doctors were all arrested. Which just shows the crackdown on human rights.

author: Prachatai


text:
In Mozambique, Frelimo’s landslide electoral victory rejected by opposition · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

Filipe Nyusi during the election campaigns in 2014. Photo: Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0
On 15 October, Mozambicans elected a new president, members of the National Assembly, provincial governors, and members of provincial assemblies.
Incumbent President Filipe Nyusi, of the Frelimo party, was reelected with 73 percent of the vote, against 21.88 percent for Ossufo Momade from the main opposition party Renamo. Frelimo also elected 184 out of 250 seats of the unicameral legislative and all 10 provincial governors.
All the provinces gave an overall victory to Frelimo, including Zambezia and Nampula where it had lost in other elections.
Mozambique's Constitutional Council hasn't yet made the results official.
On 21 October, Renamo declared that it “neither accepts nor recognizes” the election results, according to Deutsche Welle. A statement by its political committee said:
Considerando que alguns eleitores traziam consigo boletins de voto já assinalados a favor do partido Frelimo e do seu candidato antes de entrar na sala de votação, o partido Renamo considera que houve fraude semelhante àquela em que estudantes se apresentam na sala de exame com cópias de guias de correcção.
Face a isto, a Renamo distancia-se dos resultados que estão sendo anunciados pelos órgãos de comunicação social, por não corresponderem à vontade do eleitorado
Considering that some voters brought with them ballots already marked for the Frelimo party and its candidate before entering the voting room, Renamo party judges that there was fraud similar to if students came to the exam room with copies of answer books.
In view of this, Renamo is distancing itself from the results being announced by media, as they do not show the will of the electorate.
Deutsche Welle reported that Renamo’s president also called on “all Mozambicans to not accept the big electoral fraud [and] demand the immediate and unconditional release of all Renamo members, arbitrarily detained during the electoral process.”
MDM, another opposition party, similarly issued a statement rejecting the results:
O MDM não aceita os resultados que estão sendo publicados, por estes não reflectirem a vontade dos moçambicanos. Nem em sociedades civilizadas se admite este tipo de eleição.
MDM does not accept the results which are being published because they do not reflect the will of Mozambicans. In civilized societies, this type of election is not allowed
Frelimo and Filipe Nyusi publicly thanked the voters for their participation:
Obrigado a todos pelo apoio!
Este domingo, acompanhamos a divulgação dos resultados das eleições gerais e das Assembleias Provinciais pela Comissão Nacional de Eleições (CNE).
Estivemos atentos em todo o País em escutas colectivas. Eu e milhares de camaradas juntamos-nos na Escola Central do Partido, na cidade de Matola, Província de Maputo.
Vamos continuar a aguardar pela homologação dos resultados pelo Conselho Constitucional para no próximo ciclo continuarmos, com a nossa visão de trabalhar para um Moçambique próspero, equitativo e justo.
Thank you all for the support!
This Sunday, we followed the release of the results of the general elections and provincial assemblies by the National Election Commission.
Thousands of comrades and I were together at the Party Central School in Matola City, Maputo Province.
We will continue to wait for the Constitutional Council to ratify the results for the next cycle to continue, with our vision of working for a prosperous, equitable and fair Mozambique.
Frelimo has ruled Mozambique since the end of the civil war and the establishment of multiparty democracy in 1992. Since then, Renamo has never accepted election results. In 2014 and 2015, tensions led to a new armed conflict. Three new peace or ceasefire agreements have been signed since 1992.
In 2018, Renamo's historic leader passed away, and Ossufo Momade's current leadership is not accepted by a faction.
The 2019 elections took place amid armed conflict between Islamic insurgents and the military in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, which has left 200 dead since 2017. The climate of insecurity prevented around 5,000 people from casting their votes.
The Electoral Transparency Platform, an election monitoring initiative conducted by five civil society organizations, pointed to irregularities in some procedures. According to the newspaper O País:
O grupo de organizações da sociedade civil diz ainda ter detectado situações de enchimento de urnas nalguns pontos, detenções dos delegados de candidatura, mesmo quando estes gozam de imunidade.
A Plataforma de Transparência Eleitoral diz ainda ter encontrado dificuldades na credenciação dos seus observadores, tendo conseguido credenciar apenas 3,200 observadores, dos cerca de 7,000 pedidos para o efeito.
The group of civil society organizations says they detected occurences of ballot-box stuffing in some places, arrests of the polling station monitors, even when they have immunity.
The Electoral Transparency Platform also says that it has encountered difficulties in accrediting its observers, having managed to gain accreditation for only 3,200 observers of the approximately 7,000 requests for accreditation.
The Electoral Transparency Platform, at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, 15 October 2019
Also observing were the African Union (AU), the Community of Southern African Countries (SADC), the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), and the Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA).
The observation missions all reported that the elections were peaceful, except for violent incidents in Cabo Delgado which prevented people from voting.
Incidents during the election campaign, including killings of activists and election observers, were considered isolated and did not undermine the process’ integrity. According to news agency Lusa:
A missão da CPLP [Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa] considera que o ato de votação do passado dia 15 decorreu, na generalidade, em consonância com as práticas internacionais de referência.
A missão [da União Africana] observa que a transparência do processo foi assegurada, os partidos e observadores estavam presentes na votação.
Para a SADC as fases de pré-eleição e de votação foram conduzidas, no geral, de forma pacífica e ordeira.
The mission of the CPLP [Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries] assesses that the voting process on the 15th took place, generally, in line with internationally recommended practices.
The [African Union] mission notes that the process’ transparency was ensured, parties and observers were present at voting.
For the SADC the pre-election and voting phases were generally conducted in a peaceful and orderly manner
International observation missions prepare before a press conference. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, 17 October 2019
The European Union (EU) highlighted that the process was severely compromised by mistrust between the main actors, as well as inequalities in opportunity for electoral competition and dubious voter registration:
O processo eleitoral decorreu num ambiente polarizado e complexo, no qual a violência interpartidária foi prevalente, assim como desconfiança entre os principais partidos políticos e falta de confiança de que a administração eleitoral e os órgãos judiciais fossem independentes e livres de influência política.
The electoral process took place in a polarised and complicated environment, where interparty violence was prevalent, as well as mistrust between the main political parties and a lack of confidence that the electoral administration and judicial bodies were independent and free of political interference.
The European Union's observation mission gives a press conference. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, 17 October 2019
In a statement from November 8, the EU observation mission (MOE UE) again cited irregularities and this time called for a response by the Constitutional Council:
A MOE UE recebeu informação credível e observou casos de intimidação de delegados dos partidos políticos. Os observadores da UE tomaram conhecimento de centenas de casos em que presidentes de mesas de votação expulsaram delegados e membros de mesa nomeados pelos partidos da oposição, muitas vezes com a assistência da policia. Muitos membros da oposição, quer delegados dos partidos, quer membros de mesa nomeados pelos partidos da oposição, que reclamavam durante o processo foram considerados pelas autoridades como estando a perturbar o processo eleitoral e foram retirados do local ou expulsos com a assistência da policia. Quando a policia esteve envolvida na expulsão de delegados dos partidos, a situação tornou-se por vezes violenta.
A MOE UE considera que a administração eleitoral deverá assumir a responsabilidade em esclarecer as irregularidades constatadas. A MOE UE está consciente de que os factos constatados constituem um esforço acrescido para o Conselho Constitucional que tem a oportunidade de dar resposta a algumas destas irregularidades durante a validação de resultados.
The MOE UE received credible information and observed cases of intimidation of party delegates. EU observers were made aware of hundreds of cases countrywide of polling station presidents expelling opposition party agents and party-appointed poll workers, often with the assistance of police. Many opposition members, whether party agents, party-appointed poll workers or party-appointed election officials, who raised complaints during the process, were considered by the authorities to be disturbing the electoral process and police were called to either arrest or expel them. When police were involved in expelling party agents, it was sometimes violent.
MOE UE considers that the electoral administration should take responsibility in clarifying the irregularities observed. MOE UE is aware that the observed facts pose an additional effort for the Constitutional Council, which will have an opportunity to provide a response to those irregularities when it ratifies the results.
During the campaign, there were cases where journalists were prevented from attending meetings.
Regarding journalistic coverage, there was a case of threats against a journalist who made a radio broadcast on 15 October, which was highlighted by Zito Ossemane on Twitter:
O meu colega, Tome Balança foi siviciado na madrugada última por indivíduos até ao momento desconhecidos pela sua verticalidade e profissionalismo na noite das eleições. A residência do balança foi cercada por essa gente que o torturaram e proferiram diversas ameaças . pic.twitter.com/Hx0V8qfN6W
— Zito do Rosário Ossumane (@Zitodorosario) October 17, 2019
My colleague, Tome Balança, was attacked last night by individuals so far unknown, for his honesty and professionalism on election night. Balança’s residence was surrounded by these people who tortured him and made numerous threats.
Image: From Quelimane, the news arrives of another journalist tortured and threatened. Zito Ossumane, director of Radio Chuaba FM, a private station which operates in that city of Zambezia province, just told the DW Africa correspondent, Sitoi Lutxeque, that unknown people invaded the residence of the journalist Tome Balança…

author: Dércio Tsandzana


text:
Letter to China: My Uyghur friend Zainur has been detained in one of your camps for two years · Global Voices
Addy McTague

Letter from Zainur Turdi to the author. Photo by the author.
When I first came across the Xinjiang Victims Database, I clicked through maybe 100 testimonies. I took note of the testifiers and their relationship to the victim. Mother. Brother. Cousin. Niece. Family members. So many family members. Neighbor. Friend. Friend. Friend. Memories fogged my thinking, of people I knew who were detained. Of friends who were missing. Of people whose names I carelessly failed to remember. Of people whose names I mention in every prayer.
I thought I did not have sufficient information on anyone I knew to write a testimony. I knew no last names*. No Chinese ID numbers. But in packing up my apartment recently, I took a moment to open again the letters I had received from friends when I left Beijing in May 2017. Zainur (“Zeynur” in standard Latinization) penned the longest of these letters. The day I left, she sat holding my hand outside of my dorm. Other students from my program shuffled about, lining up their luggage, saying goodbye to friends. Zainur said almost nothing. When I stood to board the bus, she pressed the letter to my palms, kissed my cheek, and ran. I would later learn that she returned to her own dorm in tears. Meanwhile, I sat on the shuttle to the airport quietly crying. It was my 21st birthday.
Letter from Zainur Turdi to the author. Photo by the author.
We had known each other for 43 days. She says so in her letter. She had counted. A mutual Uyghur friend had introduced us, and we became rather inseparable from then on. So much of our friendship revolved around prayer. Even with sanctuaries as rare as they are in China, Zainur, like so many other Uyghurs desperately clung to any semblance of the sacred. Most times she would mime the gestures of prayer wherever she sat or stood.
Sometimes she dared to go through the actual motions in their entirety, once I assured her it was safe. And sometimes I watched as she hesitatingly mimicked the positions of ruku and sujood, bowing and prostration, with her finger. Her finger. One evening while on the train, she rested her head upon my shoulder and began to mumble al-Fatihah, the first chapter of the Quran, squeezing my hand for every change of position. She later told me how at home in Xinjiang, in the city of Kashgar, for every salah, or daily prayer, she sought out her mother and did the same.
“My mother is my masjid,” she told me. “Maybe sisters are the next best thing.”
Letter from Zainur Turdi to the author. Photo by the author.
Yet of everything I remember she told me, I do not remember her voice. I have one photo of her, shrouded in black, praying, her face turned away from the camera. The only personal effect I have from her is this letter and one sentence. I remember only one sentence in her voice: “I don’t know why.”
Padlock on the door of a mosque in Beijing. Photo by author.
She said it often when she would tell me about what was happening in her home town. They barred women from the masjid. They scanned the faces of anyone who entered the masjid. They scanned faces at markets and airports. They banned the hijab. They banned fasting. Neighbors are disappearing. Cameras are everywhere. We buried our books. They told us to remove the locks from our doors. They took my passport. “I don’t know why.”
Letter from Zainur Turdi to the author. Photo by the author.
One year later, in June 2018, I returned to Beijing. I landed the night before Eid. I removed my hijab, knowing full well that, without hijab, I had the advantage of being nothing more than an American with an English name. That way, I could better seek out Uyghurs I knew. I attended Eid prayer alone, with my hair in a braid, a scarf loosely thrown over my head. Only one year prior, I had attended this mosque each week with a crowd of Uyghur friends. On Eid 2018, there stood outside only a crowd of policemen, checking the identification documents of a trickling of Hui people and foreigners who entered. They inspected my passport. They studied my face. They waved me away. I would try to go to a mosque only once more during that trip. I would find the doors shuttered and padlocked. Signs indicating the structural integrity of the building was a hazard.
One old Uyghur friend was still at university, awaiting graduation. She knew she would be sent to a camp if she could not find a job. She mentioned her siblings. Prisons now claimed all of her brothers. Camps swallowed up a sister, cousins, and friends. Forced labor. Factory work. Police work. Disappearances. Unknowns. Some knowns. Zainur?
Zainur has been in a detention camp since July 5, 2017.*
* The information was confirmed to the author by multiple sources familiar with Zainur's situation. Her full name has been confirmed as Zainur Turdi.
The Xinjiang Victims Database is the largest searchable English-language database relating to victims of the ongoing repression in XUAR. Global Voices welcomes testimonies from friends and relatives of people who are victims of state repression in XUAR.

author: Addy McTague