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Bahrain: Regime and Opposition Begin National Dialogue · Global Voices
Mona Kareem

This post is part of our special coverage Bahrain Protests 2011.
Since the Bahrain protests of February 14, 2011, the idea of opening a dialogue between the opposition and regime has been discussed on and off. A large number of people have refused any debate, perceiving it as useless and unable to serve their intentions and demands.
On Saturday July 2, the long-awaited dialogue finally started with the Waad secular group and the Wefaq Shia group participating, despite having members of their groups in jail facing military trials.
Social media reactions
When talking about the discussions, Bahraini Twitter users are mainly focusing on the names in charge of the debate, the way the opposition is being treated within the dialogue's sessions and their reactions, and the 400 persons detained since February 14 (some of whom were released recently), beside the fact that those protestors who were fired have not get their jobs back again.
Notable Bahraini Twitter user Abu Saber (@Moawen) wrote about those who lost their jobs saying:
@Moawen: While Bahrain claim it started a national dialogue, employees are still interrogated and fired from their jobs
Another Twitter user nicknamed Obeez (@Ba7rainyaWaft5r) who is using the picture of the Bahraini king as his avatar, attacked Shia Opposition group Wefaq writing:
@Ba7rainyaWaft5r: Wefaq entered the National Dialogue aiming withdrawing from it not reform!we know all their games by now.
Online Bahrain (@ONLINEBAHRAIN), a Twitter account for Bahraini news, also wrote critically about Wefaq saying:
@ONLINEBAHRAIN: Some1 should tell Wefaq 2 stop criticizing the dialogue in the media cos the more they do the sillier they look for participating
On the other side, Wefaq (@Wefaqsociety) [ar] itself has written its reactions on the national dialogue through Twitter, quoting their leader Ali Salman:
الأمين العام الشيخ علي سلمان:اثناء الحوار من حق أن الناس أن تعتصم وتتظاهر، وإن لم ينجح الحوار سنعود للشارع
Activist Maryam AlKhawaja (@maryamalkhawaja), the daughter of detained opposition figure Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, warned people of arguing and creating clashes between opposition, she wrote saying:
@maryamalkhawaja: Bahrain, plz remember ur grievances r not with each other, whether Sunni or Shiaa, whether you're with the ND or not, it's with the regime
The older sister of Maryam, Zainab (@angryarabiya), has tweeted several times about the national dialogue and how she refuses it. Zainab's father, husband, and uncle are all detained and she went on a hunger strike for them over a month ago:
@angryarabiya: This is not a dialogue, this is the king trying to put up a show. He's not even trying to make it seem fair.
She adds:
@angryarabiya: The future we want for Bahrain will include putting these torturers on trial, not giving them an important role in the dialogue.
A Bahraini woman called Om Haidar (@FREE_BAHRAIN1) also criticizes the dialogue saying:
@FREE_BAHRAIN1: Naivety of the Government of Bahrain to spread an atmosphere of national dialogue and practiced killing against each opponent!
She also wrote:
@FREE_BAHRAIN1: National dialogue must be accompanied by an atmosphere of calm from the police not to fire on all demonstrators out in this period!
Founder of Al-Wasat newspaper Mansoor AlJamri (@MANSOOR_ALJAMRi) who along with other journalists is facing charges from the government of fabricating news during the protests, tweeted in the past three days his notes on the debate, noting among others the following point:
الأجندة التي وزعت على الحوار الوطني ااختفت منها اي إشارة الى موضوع التمييز، ولكن اغفال هذا السرطان يعني موتا بطيئا للجسد البحريني
Abu Ahmed (@safybh) tried to be helpful:
@safybh: we have to stop fearing, opp joined ND relying on your determination, we shouldn't fear the outcome,cause we have the power to change things
Khalid Mohammed (@Khalid0901) was already hopeful and seemingly trusting of the dialogue writing:
@Khalid0901: Bahrain National Dialogue will be a healing process that will allow it to recover from the unfortunate incidents of the past.
This post is part of our special coverage Bahrain Protests 2011.

author: Mona Kareem


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Barbados: Authentic Anime  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The Bajan Reporter profiles young entrepreneurs/comic book creators who he thinks may well “become the Marvel/DC of the West Indies!”

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Barbados: Questioning the CCJ  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“Since the court was established to service 14 member states and now only services three, it would appear that [since] the [Caribbean Court of Justice]…is not over burdened, it would be able to take time and deliver well researched and well reasoned decisions”: Barbados Underground takes issue with the findings of that court in a case involving Barbadian public officers.


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Belarus: Anti-revolutionary videos · Global Voices
Vilhelm Konnander

Tetyana Bohdanova of Good Girl Gone Ukrainian draws attention to the occurrence of purportedly home made videos warning for the consequences of revolutionary developments in Belarus and the potential overthrow of president Lukashenko.

author: Vilhelm Konnander


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Belarus: Independence Day Clapping Protest (Videos) · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

Streets of several Belarusian towns and cities were flooded with people on Belarus Independence Day on July 3, 2011. People just stood there, clapping.
They showed up for the clapping protest, even though clapping was officially forbidden on that day and the Vkontakte social network group that had coordinated the action had been deleted. As they said, they came not even to protest, but rather to fight the fear inside them.
Clapping – a crime?
As in the previous cases, the Belarusian government has been amazingly creative in its attempts to discourage people from gathering in the streets.
On June 28, Viktor Golovanov, the Belarusian Minister of Justice, said [ru] that the moment a large group of people came to “the square” and started clapping, “their freedom would end and the freedom of those who […] came to the square to rest or to walk with their children would begin.” “This [clapping] crowd disturbs them [the ordinary people],” he said. He added that the clapping people would be moved to another location.
On July 2, 2011, a video was released [ru], which said that the non-violent protests in Belarus had been planned by the United States and urged Belarusians not to succumb to U.S. propaganda.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV8FnS9bfqI
Police Twitterer @GUVD_Minsk continued to play a “good cop,” giving advice [ru], sharing pictures [ru], tweeting about getting journalists released [ru], and trying to help [ru] human rights activists.
A Vkontakte group “Against the Orange Revolution in Belarus” [ru], created against the non-violent protests, hasn't been very successful: its audience does not exceed 2,000 members.
A 'girl-tractor' and perhaps the only person in Minsk who was allowed to clap. Photo by Anton Motolko, used with permission.
On July 3, a Vkontakte group “Future Movement” (with over 216,000 members) was closed. It was restored only on July 4 (at the moment, only 17,000 members have re-joined the group). Facebook groups (1, 2, 3), which were used as substitutes, didn't have even a small part of the audience of the deleted group. Vkontakte explained [ru] that the group had violated the terms of use and its members had been sending spam to other users.
A truly Kafkian parade vs a clapping action
This year's Independence Day parade wasn't usual, either. Aside from the military parade, it featured the appearance of Alexander Lukashenko with his son Nikolay, who was wearing a military uniform, just like his father. This led some twitterers to conclude that Lukashenko had already found a successor. There were also some grotesque kids with flags that had “God is With Us” written on them, a boy-tractor and a girl-tractor, hockey players on roller blades, and much more (see a complete report at Anton Motolko's blog [ru] and the video of Lukashenko's speech [ru]).
On the same day, a less bizarre, but nonetheless Kafkian events happened at the Minsk Railway Station Square (as well as in other places in Belarus). The police kept its word and detained all the clapping people (videos 1, 2).
The most intense videos, which became actively tweeted and re-tweeted, were the following: 1, 2, 3:
Aside from offline actions, the Belarusian security services have been actively using Internet blocking. For some time, social network LiveJournal was unstable [ru], the uploading speed was intentionally decreased [ru] to 2 megabytes per second.
Summing up
Harsh reactions on the crackdown followed. A Swedish twitterer and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt tweeted:
Independent thought banned on Independence Day in Belarus. They closed down social media. A regime waiting to collapse. #belarus
Pavel Sheremet, a Russian journalist, wrote [ru]:
Лукашенко страшно, очень страшно. Он сходит с ума, когда слышит аплодисменты. Поэтому в воскресенье хлопать президенту не разрешали даже ветеранам.
[…]
Спецслужбы бесятся. Они начали массированную атаку на молодежь еще накануне. Еще в субботу арестовали несколько десятков человек, как им казалось, – организаторов акции.
[…]
Но люди все равно вышли. Тысячи людей по всей стране.

author: Alexey Sidorenko


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Bhutan: State Funding For Political Parties · Global Voices
Rezwan

Dipika argues against any system of state funding for political parties in Bhutan as advocated by the ruling party.

author: Rezwan


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Bulgaria: A Day Without PM Boyko Borisov · Global Voices
Veni Markovski

July 5, 2011, presented an interesting challenge to the traditional Bulgarian media: would they follow a Facebook appeal for “A Day Without Boyko Borisov” [bg; the page is currently unavailable, as after the end of the event the organizers decided to delete it, in order to avoid spam] – or would they continue to report on the activities of Bulgaria's Prime Minister?
Reuters noticed the Facebook event, and let it run through its cable, under the title that fit quite well with the intent of the organizers: “Bulgarians beg for a day without busy PM Borisov.”
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. Image by Flickr user kaladan (CC BY-SA 2.0).
However, the Bulgarian media, with the two memorable exceptions – news agency BGNES and Internet site Mediapool – did not follow the initiative and continued to feature the PM in their news items. Bulgarian blogger and former member of the Parliament Borislav Tsekov shared BGNES’ opinion in full, just saying “completely agree.” Other bloggers also noticed and wrote about the initiative, sometimes with ironic and sarcastic comments or titles of their publications, aimed at the Prime Minister.
In a very passionate and sad entry, Nelly of Politics is arts was quite critical [bg] towards the Bulgarian media, asking why “do I have to read news from foreign sites, watch foreign tv stations, and prefer the bloggers’ opinions, instead that of the journalists.”
Prime Minister Borisov himself announced that he was not interested in such events, and then immediately commented that the organizers were being paid by the opposition. One of the organizers of the event, Mr. Atanas Palov, noted that this is ridiculous, and joked that if the prime minister pays enough, they could create an alternative “One day with Boyko Borisov” event.
The three young people (the other two are Ms. Kamelia Encheva and Ms. Valia Krusheva) who had come up with the idea denied any political involvement; one of them lives in Austria, one in Belgium, and one in Bulgaria, and they do not seem to be politically motivated.
The date of July 5 was chosen because it marked two years since the 2009 elections, in which Borisov was the winner.
After the end of the event, the organizers published an open letter, in which they explained that the initiative was not aimed against the Prime Minister, but rather towards the attention the Bulgarian media give to Boyko Borisov. At the same time, they acknowledged that the idea had been borrowed from the Italian “No Berlusconi Day” and the Polish “Day Without Smolensk“.

author: Veni Markovski


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“Century of the World” · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Former Malaysian Prime Minister and popular blogger Mahathir Mohamad discussed the prospects of the 21st century and concluded that it would be “neither an Asian century nor a European century. It is more likely to be the century of the world.”

author: Mong Palatino


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Chile: President Piñera’s Approval Ratings Drop · Global Voices
Silvia Viñas

Robert L. Funk reports that June poll results show “President Piñera's approval ratings, at 35%, have dropped by 12%.” Robert comments on the President's July 5 speech where he announced his plan for education reform, an issue that has sparked massive protests.

author: Silvia Viñas


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China: 2 Year Anniversary of Urumqi Riots · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Josh from Xinjiang: Far West China reflects upon the 2009 Urumqi Riots. The years has passed, but the blogger still feels that the event remains clouded in confusion.

author: Oiwan Lam


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China: Debt and inflation · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Vitaliy Katsenelson, an investment expert, analyzes the conflicting situation of China economy with the rising of debt and inflation.


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Cuba: A Nation Divided?  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“We have a long way to go.   This will involve educating people in a different perception of society and its members, regardless of their orientation or preference”: Writing at Havana Times, Dariela Aquique responds to a comment about an article she wrote on gay pride in Cuba.


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Cuba: Exciting First Meeting of Twitter Users in Havana · Global Voices
Elaine Díaz

The first meeting of users of the social network Twitter was celebrated in Havana on July 1 at 4:00 pm at 23rd and 12th of the Vedado district and in the Pabellón Cuba, headquarters of the Saíz Brothers’ Asssoication [es].
The event hosted almost 100 people, mostly young journalism students, administrators, professors of the University of Havana [es], the Polytechnic University Jose Antonio Echeverria and the University of Information Sciences [ES], journalists and bloggers, among others.
Group of tweeters that joined together on July 1 at 23rd and 12th in Havana. Photo by Elaine Díaz.
“I want to meet you” and “Come from behind the @” were the motivations of the principal organizer, a young man named Leunam Rodríguez (@leunamrguez) [es], administrator of the Cuban Radio Portal [es] and author of the blog Twitterencuentro [es].
Despite the change, a day before, from the original location at 23rd and 12th to the Pabellón Cuba, which motivated discrepancies among those who remained faithful to the original venue and those who decided to go to the Pavilion, the majority of the Cuban tweeters met up at the Carmelo restaurant bar after 5:00 pm also located in Vedado and then moved to the park's Amadeo Roldán Theater.
Leunam Rodríguez and the author Elaine Díaz, two of the principal promotors of Twitthab.  Photo courtesy of Elaine Díaz.
@iroko and @unaprevia at the meeting of Tweeters in Havana. Photo by Elaine Díaz.
About the disagreement, the journalism student, Rafael González (@rafauniversidad) [ES] shared on his blog [ES]:
Mi espíritu de romántico impenitente me indicó que debía permanecer fiel a la idea original, al Cinecittá primigenio, aunque fuéramos dos gatos, aunque la prensa nunca hablara de ese lugar, aunque no hubiera salas de navegación ni burocráticas complacencias.
No le resto legitimidad al otro lugar de reunión, solo que nunca entenderé ni apoyaré cambios a deshora, cualesquiera que sean las razones, sobre todo porque ninguna ameritaba el traslado imprevisto (otros dicen que imperativo).
I don't delegitimize the other location, it's just that I will never understand or support changes at last minute, whichever the reasons, especially because no reason warranted the unexpected move (some say it was imperative).
During the 15 days before the event, around 200 people on Facebook confirmed their presence and the hashtag #Twitthab [es], one of the most active in Cuba, brought together opinions about the event from different parts of the world.
Eduardo Estevez, @estevez121 [es], specialist in information technologies and member of the Cuban community for free software said in his blog:
Estando ya en el Carmelo nos presentamos uno a uno, tomamos unas cervezas, tarareamos alguna que otra canción y pasamos a ser acogidos por el parque que se encuentra frente al teatro Amadeo Roldán. Fue una tarde especial hay que reconocerlo. Lo más interesante fue que luego de estar un rato en el Parque se unos unieron los amigos que habían ido para la actividad del Pabellón Cuba, en ese momento los que parecíamos periodistas éramos nosotros preguntando cómo había acontecido todo por la otra sede.
Estevez also requested the Cuban government to, “Trust a little more in the Youth of Today.”
Some tweeters preferred to remain on the margin of the event. Such is the case of @VICcollor [es] who reflected on his Twitter account: “yesterday I exchanged two boring Twitthabs for an interactive concert”. While, other Cubans residing abroad like @jorgedearmas [es] asks “when will there be an open, virtual Skype meeting?”
From Stockholm, @reinaldogarcia2 [es] sent [es] congratulations to Twitthab, and the Cuban journalist @dianikflores [es] lamented that she hadn't been able to attend for work reasons:
@dianikflores: Quiero acompañarlos en la próxima Odisea, ya vi las fotos, que envidia, debí haberme escapado[…]
For their part,@sol24 [es] and @arielissac [es], Cubans living in Miami, followed Twitthab through social networks and sent real-time messages [es] to the participants and shared what was being published on the web.
For the author @elainediaz2003, “Twitthab was controversial and historic, it was beautiful, it was exciting”. Lety (@laeconomista) [es] who met up with participants in the park of the Amadeo Roldán theater, was happy to “meet many people” and stated that it had been “a special moment”.
Group of Tweeters in Havana. Photo courtesy of Elaine Díaz.
The international press echoed the event, and prestigious media outlets like the Washington Post and USA Today, as well as the Associated Press, EFE, Reuters and the Inter Press Service covered the event that didn't receive equal attention in the national press. According to @yohandry8787, Cuban reporting was missing.
After the meeting, the participants exchanged photos and videos to publish on social networks and began planning future events. Paola (@cubamar) [es], a Cuban residing in Mexico, proposed to have the next meeting at the beach, nicknamed Twittbeach; while @cubanitoencuba [es] suggested that it be on the first Friday of August in Almendares Park located in the capital.
The last report on internet access in Cuba published by the National Statistics Office illustrated very low levels of penetration in the Cuban population. However, Cuban internet users have overcome the technological difficulties in order to create a nascent and varied network of Twitter users.
The first known user of this network in Cuba is the specialist Orlando Ignacio Romero (@orlandoignacio) [es] who now works as deputy artistic director of the Cuban weekly Bohemia [es] and signed up for Twitter at the end of 2007.
In 2010 Twitter exploded in Cuba and the accounts created on the island have increased although the actual number of users continues to be less than in other Latin American and Caribbean countries.
*To see more photos of #Twitthab, please look at Elaine Diaz's gallery.

author: Elaine Díaz


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Macedonia: Concert Against Police Brutality · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Arangel informs through a photo gallery that protests against police brutality continued with the concert of Bernays Propaganda during the celebration of the 20th anniversary of radio Channel 103 called “Channel 103 Free Zone” on the riverbank in Skopje on July 5, 2011.

author: Filip Stojanovski


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Macedonia: Views from Abroad on Protests Against Police Violence · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

This post is part of our special coverage Macedonia Protests 2011.
Ordinary people's reactions to the protests against police brutality in Macedonia indicate the strength of the grip of the traditional media, which is not very keen on relaying such “unpopular” news, and highlights the opportunities for solidarity once the information gets through.
Jovana Tozija, a Macedonian woman residing in Germany, wrote [mk, en] about the reactions of her friends:
Many of my international friends asked what’s going on in Macedonia after they saw me spamming on Facebook with links to sites with strange letters and when they saw that I'd changed my profile picture. I briefly explained to them the incident with the murder of Martin Neshkovski. Here are their responses and my personal analysis of their initial instant reactions.
A Russian woman: So? The police killed a man. Why are you making such a big deal out of it? There is nothing you can do about it.
Obviously, the awareness about freedom of speech in this country is not on the highest level. I don’t know if it is because they are afraid or because it is not developed enough. But I do know that there is over-centralized power of the oligarchs and there is literally nothing you can do about it.
An Iranian man: Only one person was killed?
This was his instant reaction. It’s not easy for him as well. He has seen worse. Last year, during the green revolution in Iran, the government was killing young people, just because [Ahmadinejad] would not recognize the electoral fraud. A bunch of progressive young people were protesting and they failed. Many of them were killed and Ahmadinejad is still in power.
A German woman: How can it be that for 2 days it was not known who the boy was and the case was not reported?
The people of this country are used to the fact that the institutions do their job by default. She was not interested in how a member of the special police units could kill a young man, but how the case could stumble throughout the institutions.
A Croatian man: OMG, the police is going to send us to our graves.
I don’t have a comment on this and don’t know what to think about it. I suppose he is a proponent of the [ACAB] theory.
Bulgarian blogger Yurukov wrote [bg] on his blog several days after protests started:
Why no Bulgarian media have informed about this protest for a week? Why do I have to learn about it from Twitter, and only because by chance I follow several Macedonians? What are they waiting for? An official position from the Ministry of the Interior or from [Prime Minister Boyko Borisov]? Has it come that far? Are we afraid that the media would be blamed for inciting unrest if the protests spread to Bulgaria? Why even the publications that are considered freer keep silent? Or should we wait for the news to become popular, so we can talk about it?
Yurukov noted that in the week after the protests started, only two internet portals published information in Bulgarian: Dir.bg and News.bg. (In addition, these two exceptional media outlets did not post follow-up articles in the next few weeks.)
The website Stop police violence published an article [mk/sr] about the support for the protests from the female choir “Kombinat” [sl] from Slovenia:
We are sending a photo of support, taken during our concert in [Celje], dedicated to you, who protest against police brutality in Macedonia. We'll send you [a petition] signed at the concert. People in Slovenia have no idea what's going on in Macedonia, because the media do not write or speak about it… Accept our solidarity and support, we are with you in our thoughts and hearts…
No Pasaran!
Kombinat concert in Celje, Slovenia. Photo by Kombinat, used with permission.
Macedonian protesters keep inviting people from abroad to show their support for the protests by writing or making videos about them.
This post is part of our special coverage Macedonia Protests 2011.


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Online map of Cambodia  · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Sihanoukville Journal recommends Smart Page Cambodia for its reliable online map of Cambodia.


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Peru: Sacrilegious Theft in Motupe · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón

Update (Wednesday July 6, 2011): the Holy Cross of Motupe was found without its gems, cut in five parts and with burn marks.
On Tuesday, July 5, 2011, Peruvians woke up to shocking news: the popular and very well-known Holy Cross of Motupe [es] had been stolen.
The Holy Cross of Motupe, from the district of Motupe in the region of Lambayeque, north of Peru, dates back to 1860. It is celebrated annually every August, and the central point is a cross that, according to the tradition, was made by Fray Juan Agustín de Abad, a Franciscan priest.
It is said the much-beloved priest left all of a sudden, without a trace. Previously, he had let some people know that in Cerro Chalpón, Cerro Rajado and Cerro Penachí, he had left behind huge crosses made with his own hands out of wood from the guayacán [es] tree; those crosses were to be found and considered the protectors of the whole area. Many people tried unsuccessfully to find the crosses.
Prayer notes left at the Holy Cross of Motupe. Image by Flickr user joestrada (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Some years later, on August 5, 1868, a 22-year-old villager named José Mercedes Anteparra Peralta found the Holy Cross hidden in Cerro Chalpón, embedded in a sort of grotto or cave. The Bishop of Trujillo named Anteparra First Superintendent, a position he kept until his death, on April 10, 1921.
This is how some bloggers reported the robbery.
The blog Tu docente [es], by teacher Jaime Quispe Casas, republished from La República [es]:
La Cruz de Motupe, simbólico objeto venerado y admirado por miles de fieles y peregrinos no solo de Lambayeque sino de todo el país fue robada en la última madrugada. La misma, se encontraba ubicada en el cerro Cruz de Chalpón.
[…] unos ladrones llegaron al lugar y, tras golpear y atar al vigilante, no tuvieron el menor reparo en cometer el sacrilegio.
The Cross of Motupe, a symbolic venerated object, admired by thousands of parishioners and pilgrims not only from Lambayeque but from the whole country, was stolen last night, during the early morning. It was located at Cerro Cruz de Chalpón.
[…] some burglars got to the place and, after attacking and tying up the night watchman, had no qualms about commiting the sacrilege.
José Zeña del Valle, the blogger from Del Valle para todos [es], added some more details:
The cross is covered with silver and white gold, which makes it attractive for burglars.
On Twitter, the hashtag #cruzdemotupe became a local trending topic. User Aurelio Mata (@AurelioMatta) said:
Que maleados, se robaron la @cruzdemotupe. Que se roben el cristo de @gordovago mejor
And Jorge Campos (@jorgelpotter) tweeted:
#cruzdemotupe Cortina de humo? Al margen de las creencias, el robo de la #cruzdemotupe muestra que en el pais ya no hay respeto a nada…
Kandy Fuentes (@kandydfg) was saddened with the news:
Este año no pude ir a la #cruzdemotupe a cumplir mi promesa =( me siento muy triste
And Alian Molina (@aliomp) said:
Alcalde de Motupe sobre robo de la #cruzdemotupe: “No hay señales de forcejeo”
About the robbery, the blog El Perú Ra-rá [es] tells us:
El Cmdte. PNP Alesandro León Roque, a cargo de las investigaciones pidió paciencia. “Pido a los periodistas que tengan un poquito de cuidado al respecto, las investigaciones son reservadas. Lo que quisiera es que mantengan la calma, déjennos un poquito trabajar”, exhortó.
Unfortunately, this is not the only sacrilegious theft reported in Peru in recent months. For example, last October, M. Antonio Agapito Manco, from the blog Poder Político [es], posted:
Hermosos trabajos de orfebrería distinguia al altar del SEÑOR DE LOS MILAGROS, el valor material supera los $ 30,000.oo dólares, fueron aportes de vecinos y personas lleno de fe, también fue obtenido mediante muchas actividades social-religiosa.

author: Gabriela García Calderón


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Poland: Article authorization abolished · Global Voices
Vilhelm Konnander

Max Steinbeis of Verfassungsblog writes about [GER] Poland having to abolish its law that interviewed people have the right to see articles before printing and prevent publication. So at least is the meaning of a ruling from the European Court for Human rights in Strasbourg.


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Russia: Infamous ‘Vanishing’ Charity Foundation Resurfaces · Global Voices
Vadim Isakov

The heartwarming performance of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin playing the piano and singing the song “Blueberry Hill” at a charity concert in December 2010, was darkened by the scandal surrounding the ‘Federaciya’ (Federation) foundation that allegedly tried to disappear with the money raised by the event.
It is easy to think that this reputation would render the foundation blacklisted. However, Federaciya has resurfaced again, advertising through new billboard posters [ru] in the center of Moscow.
The posters are promoting another charity concert set to take place on July 9-10, 2011, featuring such stars as Larry King, Woody Allen, Kevin Costner, Francis Ford Coppola, among others.
History repeating?
One of the Federaciya posters featuring Sophia Loren. Photo by Stepan Yakovlev.
It is only logical that Russian bloggers are concerned about the possible repetition of the previous scenario, when the charity's fundraised money found its way to the sick children it was intended for only due to the persistence of netizens and reporters.
Blogger amapai suggests [ru]:
У Ларри Кинга есть свой The Larry King Cardiac Foundation. Я полагаю, что если внятно и понятно объяснить им, во что вылилась предыдущая акция, то слова будут услышаны.
“Or you can ask him on Facebook,”LJ user dkuraev adds [ru] and gives a link to Larry King's CNN profile.
Looking at the list of invited stars, drugalev makes [ru] an interesting point:
OЧЕНЬ любопытно присутствие среди приглашенных актёра Энди Гарсия. Именно он сыграл Саакашвили в недавно вышедшем прогрузинском фильме “5 дней августа”.
Another blogger leo_nardo replies [ru]: “He [Garcia] is a professional. All he cares about is money.”
The hope is that this time the Federaciya foundation will try to rebuild its shattered reputation by quickly transferring the funds raised by the event to the intended recipients.
If not, Russia's watchful bloggers are there to raise the alarm and prevent this money from disappearing into other pockets.

author: Vadim Isakov


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Russia: Return of decentralization? · Global Voices
Vilhelm Konnander

Joera Mulders of Russia Watchers discusses recent trends towards the return of decentralization of political power in Russia, after the long period of Putinist power centralization.


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Russia: Some fishy business · Global Voices
Vilhelm Konnander

John Helmer of Dances with Bears speculates on whether Russian business mogul, Gennady Timchenko, really is so innocent of the allegations against him using political contacts to forward his business interests as the businessman claims. Timchenko's recent involvement in the Russian fish industry supposedly points in another direction.


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Sao Tome and Principe: Insight on Rare Birds · Global Voices
Sara Moreira

The blog Island Biodiversity Race features an expedition to learn about the birds of Sao Tome and Principe, “to show how rich and  unique the biota of the islands is and at the same time, how poorly  known”.

author: Sara Moreira


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Thailand: Writers against Lese Majeste · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

More than 300 writers in Thailand signed a petition urging the amendment of the Lese Majeste Law which is being used to suppress freedom of expression in the country.


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Togo: Fragile Truce Emerges After Five Weeks of Student Protests · Global Voices
Julie Owono

This post is part of our special coverage Global Development 2011.
West African country Togo's students’ struggle for better education conditions is now in its fifth week and despite a recent truce, tensions remains high in the capital Lomé.
A wind of appeasement seemed to blow on the demonstrations organized by the Mouvement pour l'Épanouissement des Étudiants Togolais – MEET (Movement for the Fulfillment of Togolese Students), when students managed to obtain from authorities the reinstatement [fr] of the president of their association on June 30. Abou Seidou, a student of the University of Lomé, had been previously expelled for allegedly causing troubles on the campus.
This reinstatement was expected to open the way to negotiations. Despite this first symbolic victory however, and despite the subsequent call from MEET to not demonstrate on Friday July 1, 2011, a fringe of the student population decided to maintain the pressure on the government and went to protest.
The July 1, 2011 demonstration in Lomé, Togo. Image by Morgan Coolpot Bello on Facebook.
Charles Le Bon, a local blogger [fr], describes in a post written on the following day the events of the  July 1, 2011, demonstration. According to him:
en craignant que cette journée ne soit un vendredi noir, vu le soutien de la quasi totalité des parti politiques, de la société civile et des organisations de défenses des droits de l’homme, le gouvernement est revenu dans la nuit du jeudi 30 juin sur la décision d’exclure pour six (6) ans le président du MEET.
A violent scene showing security forces beating up a student was filmed on July 1 and posted on YouTube on July 4, by Sylvio Combey, a Togolese journalist. Combey claims that he also was beaten up by public forces while shooting the video. At 0:25 minutes you can hear a policeman, asking him in French to hand over his camera, which the journalist refuses to do, saying “Why, because I am working?”:
Meanwhile, Togolese students still have not won out their main demands for better  education conditions, among them an increase in and the payment of their grants.
This post is part of our special coverage Global Development 2011.

author: Julie Owono


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Trinidad & Tobago: Accomplishments or Spin? · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Plain Talk takes issue with an article citing the accomplishments of the government, calling it “Merlin-esque” and adding: “It should have begun ‘Abra Cadabra’ and ended ‘Tah Dahhhh!!!!’ with a flourish and an elaborate bow.”


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Trydar y Cymry! The Welsh Language Thrives Online · Global Voices
Ayesha Saldanha

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.
“Trydar y Cymry” means “the twittering of the Welsh” or “the Welsh twitterers” (the verb “trydar” now being used in connection with Twitter) and is an example of the Welsh language adapting and developing as it is used online.
Global Voices has spoken to blogger and researcher Rhodri ap Dyfrig (@Nwdls) about Welsh-language blogging and tweeting, how Welsh compares in this regard to other minority languages, and the challenges Welsh speakers face online.
Global Voices (GV): First of all, can you give us an idea of how many people speak Welsh? And what is the official status of the language?
Rhodri ap Dyfrig (RD): According to the 2001 UK census 582,400 (20.8%) people over 3 years of age are able to speak Welsh, with 661,526 (23.6%) people able to understand spoken Welsh. (Percentages refer to the population of Wales.) Although the UK has no official language written in law, the Welsh Government passed a measure in 2010 to give Welsh official status in Wales. However, although it receives a degree of official and state support it remains a language which the UNESCO Atlas of World Languages has designated as “unsafe”.  Most Welsh speakers are bilingual in that they are able to speak English too, but many feel more comfortable communicating in their first language.
Rhodri ap Dyfrig (photo reproduced with permission)
GV: How large is the Welsh-language blogosphere? Are all Welsh bloggers in Wales?
RD: Numbers range from 200-300 blogs, although some of those may not be active. The Welsh tech wiki Hedyn has started compiling a list of blogs which has reached 260 so far, noting that 37 new blogs have appeared in 2011 already. Most bloggers live in Wales but there are many from the Welsh diaspora or who are Welsh learners elsewhere. There are or have been Welsh-language blogs from the USA, Australia, Spain, Argentina, Japan and China. There is a very small Welsh-language colony in Patagonia, Argentina (7,000 speakers) but at present only one blogger writes from there and she is from Wales, working there as a Welsh teacher in a primary school.
Y Blogiadur is the only Welsh-language blog aggregator, which pulls through new posts from nearly all Welsh-language blogs as they are published. There was a time when all Welsh-language blogs would link to each other but as the blogosphere has grown it has become more difficult to keep track of all blogs being written. The amount of new Welsh blogs a year has grown consistently although there is a general feeling that more people could and should be blogging if compared with the amount of activity in say Iceland (over 11k tweeters according to this) who have just under half the amount of speakers as us. I guess it shows what having the backing of a state does for a language in terms of normalising its use online (or offline for that matter!).
GV: What kind of topics do Welsh-language blogs look at? Is there a sense of them filling a gap, doing what mainstream media is not doing?
RD: Welsh-language blogs cover a range of topics that you would expect any other blogs in other languages to cover, from technology and personal blogs through to baking and music. However there is a definite slant towards political blogs. The reason for this I would hazard is that the Welsh press (in both languages) is relatively weak, leading to a gap in discussion of political events. The irony in Wales is that as we have become more responsible for our own governance, with a devolved government established in 1999 with many powers to change the lives of the people of Wales, the media has seemed to wither on the vine. Plurality in television news has diminished, and the printed press is suffering from dwindling circulation. Into this gap have stepped many excellent and committed bloggers who, although often commenting upon stories generated by the traditional press, can give a wide variety of political standpoints, enriching the public sphere.
GV: How much Welsh content is there online? What are both the challenges and the opportunities that you can see for Welsh developing on the internet?
RD: It’s difficult to know exactly how much Welsh-language material is out there. Search for material in a specific language is not yet at the stage where we can say, “I want to find everything about Barack Obama that’s in Welsh” and see a list of pages in Welsh about Barack Obama. Finding the right material in the mass of online content is not a question limited to minority languages, but it is more difficult. The sheer scale of the English-language web is such that there are innumerable filters, aggregators etc. that can help to direct you to what you want to find. In Welsh that is not the case yet. There are a few aggregators but still there is much that remains undiscovered by most Welsh speakers who probably surf the web according to the patterns (and languages, which create patterns) laid out by search and content platforms.
In the analogue age, being a Welsh-language media supplier in a limited spectrum made you a big fish in a small pond with a captive audience. Now that the paradigm of scarcity is gone, Welsh-language content is having to fend for itself, and that is a tough place when competing for audience.
I carried out some research with Dr. Daniel Cunliffe of the University of Glamorgan into the Welsh language on YouTube (to be published in a forthcoming book by Multilingual Matters) and one of the immediate conclusions was that YouTube does not make it easy to find material in languages other than those supported by the platform. Mutations in the Welsh language mean that searches are often blunt tools, and internal searches rely on association between tags and titles rather than any linguistic analysis. Often videos are badly tagged or described, which means they are more difficult to find. It is for that reason that I created fideobobdydd.com, which filters the best of Welsh-language video online. There really is some great stuff out there.
Rhodri introduces (in Welsh) the website fideobobdydd.com which gathers the best of Welsh-language video.
GV: Welsh is one of the languages featured on Indigenous Tweets. What connections have Welsh speakers made with speakers of other minority languages? Do you see similarities with other language communities?
Welsh 'Twitter dragon', based on the dragon that appears on the national flag. Image by Flickr user Foomandoonian (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
RD: I would say that if looking to make comparisons then the most similar in sociolinguistic and demographic nature is Euskara, the Basque language. They have roughly the same size population and percentages of speakers meaning that they are often the place to which we compare ourselves. It is of course important to see what the other Celtic languages are doing but their languages are all in very different positions to Welsh and make valid comparison difficult. This is not to say that lessons aren’t shared and learned, and festivals such as the Celtic Media Festival play an important role in learning from each other, though I have argued that the festival is yet to fully embrace internet media in its widest context. It is still mainly a festival for broadcasters to network, and I wish it would broaden out to include creators of amateur online media too. There has been some collaboration between minority language online media, especially for language-learning tools developed by the BBC, who cover Welsh, Gaelic and Irish for instance, but on a non-professional level it tends to be seen as too difficult to coordinate. I have however, through connections made in my previous job, been able to cooperate with a Basque company on some exciting software.
GV: Speaking of tweets, how many people are tweeting in Welsh? Can you tell us something about your involvement with Umap (the project you just mentioned)? How is this connected to your current research?
RD: Use of Welsh on Twitter has really taken off in the last year and a half. I am responsible for Umap Cymraeg, which is a Welsh-language tweet aggregator. The site, which was developed for the Basque language initially but was subsequently implemented in Catalan and Welsh, aims to provide a Welsh-language Twittersphere. I felt that Welsh discussions and tweets can get lost in the sea of English tweets, but through language-recognition algorithms and some clever software, this was a chance to see what the true nature of the Welsh discussion was, and maybe see if any interesting patterns emerged. The site filters tweets and calculates trending topics and a “top news” feed created by counting the outgoing links with most mentions. I guess one of the main uses initially is as a place to find Welsh speakers on Twitter. The site now follows over 2,000 Welsh language tweeters and gives a leaderboard of those who are most active in the language. I’ve heard that Welsh-language TV producers are also using the site to monitor buzz around their shows and that is great to hear.
My PhD looks at online participatory media and collaborative content production, specifically in minority languages such as Welsh. I’m going to be looking at Umap and developing other platforms to see what the dynamics are when dealing with internet phenomena such as collective intelligence that thrive on a large scale, but in reality can only achieve small scale due to the potential number of speakers/users. I hope that the results will enable me and others to better understand how to improve the level and quality of online participation and collaboration in smaller languages.
Whatever the results though, Umap Cymraeg has already shown me that the language is alive online, and in a completely natural way. Although much of the trending topics relate back to Wales, Welsh politics or the language, it is obvious that the language is used to discuss nearly everything that goes on in people’s lives, and in a variety of registers and dialects. I hope Umap goes some way to showing that Welsh is a living language, with no sign of retreating into obscurity any time soon.
Rhodri will now be covering Welsh-language blogs for Global Voices – watch this space!
This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

author: Ayesha Saldanha


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Zimbabwe: Women’s Lib Online and Unplugged · Global Voices
Madalitso Mwando

This post is part of our special coverage Global Development 2011.
In a country largely described as conservative, where women are generally reminded of their place by being told what they can openly discuss and what they cannot, a society many see as being still steeped in that African time-warp, the Internet has offered a priceless platform to discuss issues that otherwise remain taboos. After all, this is Zimbabwe where the president is world-renowned for his strong views against issues such homosexuality.
Women bloggers and Facebook users especially have taken up these platforms to discuss issues relating to their sexuality and everything else that no doubt would make President Mugabe blush. They have created on these platforms everything from their own cyber-based “agony aunts” to unpacking women's role in politics and the economy.
The Internet has offered a priceless platform to discuss issues that are usually considered taboo. Photo source: Makhox Women's League Facebok page.
Blogger Delta Ndou describes her blog as “the musings of a feminist,” and this being Zimbabwe, that's a bold statement. Ndou has become somewhat of an e-celebrity with her blog where she writes about anything from pap smears, marriage, sex, women picking themselves up from cheating husbands. In a blog post titled “The Hilary example,” she discusses the future US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and how she dealt with husband Bill and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Ndou writes in one of her blog posts about pap-smears:
I mean if women can sit through a 5 hour hair-braiding session; and the time we sacrifice towards looking good in salons – we can actually spare a few hours for our cervixes to get inspected. For the record, having done the pap-smear; I am not expected to show up for another one until after 2 years so the convenience and peace of mind was worth the experience. Do yourself a favor… if it means wearing a disguise, traveling to another city where no one knows you or whatever – get a pap-smear.
It is stuff that has made her blog popular. She continues:
You need it and it’s free. While issues like male circumcision have enjoyed much prominence in media coverage; the need for pap-smear testing remains a very obscured but pressing health care issue. So this article is a modest contribution to address this oversight. Men go and get circumcised. Women go and get a pap-smear.
She is not alone in speaking her mind online. Blogger Fungai Machirori takes the “feminist discourse” a notch higher. She writes about vaginas and everything else that would “shock and awe” the average person in Zimbabwe, and it is writing that defines the essence of blogging: free expression.
In one of her posts, Machirori asks in that “in your face” cool, “What does a vagina look like?”:
What does a ‘normal’ vagina look like?
This might be a startling question for you, but when you really think about it, it is quite valid.
They come in all shapes and colours, but we never dare investigate…
Unlike men who know about average inches and centimetres for their appendages, we women don’t really know much about our sexual organs…
We women rarely look at our own vaginas, let alone anyone else’s – so how should we know?! Unlike men who have to interact with their penises each time they urinate or change their underwear, we women hardly ever pay attention to our vaginas. Besides, it’s not like it’s easy to get them in full view anyway. Mirrors and strange positions are required and this just adds to the awkwardness of trying to become knowledgebale about your own body.
And sadly, the only time many young women become aware about the appearance of the vagina is when they are forced to alter it from its own natural state.
Blogger Shonavixen has just began a 30-day blogging challenge no doubt in what will be considered prodigious output by her netizen buddies.
Facebook has not gone unnoticed by women who have created their own group called Makhox Women's League.
Posts are generally written in the local SiNdebele language, a pointer perhaps that the use of local languages to give voice and space to all is gaining ground in cyberspace. It here where women switch roles as “agony aunts” and the “agonisers,” and the exchanges are priceless. The group is an attempt to utilise this space through personal expression tha ttraditional media has failed to fill in, and or by the nature of the exchanges among members, would never see the light of day “in a family newspaper.”
The latest topic on their page  reads:
What are the disadvantages of being a stepmom or are there any advantages or something you've seen either good or bad…. Let's share makhosikazi. RM.
Facebook has indeed become a place where Zimbabwean women confront “taboo” subjects.  In one of her blog posts, Machirori discusses women dating much younger men, and some women taking this discourse to what has veritably become the world's social networking behemoth, Facebook.  Machirori asks, “If Zimbabwean women on Facebook are saying they don’t mind a younger man, could the times be a-changing?”
This is particularly interesting because it is a topic which traditional Zimbabwean society would not openly discuss, but of course men are expected to marry much younger women! Perhaps these feminist bloggers are exposing the inconsistencies through the only outlet they have: the blogosphere and Facebook.
The times they are a-changing for real as Dylan strummed back then. And it is thanks to the Internet and the growing presence of Zimbabwean women online.
This post is part of our special coverage Global Development 2011.

author: Madalitso Mwando


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Armenia: Eurovision Choices · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

Unzipped: Gay Armenia says that while many outstanding issues still remain to be resolved in terms of Armenia's participation in next year's Eurovision Song Contest to be held in estranged neighbor Azerbaijan, the country's entry should not be political. However, the blog warns, the two choices  said to be under consideration at present could suggest otherwise.

author: Onnik Krikorian


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Azerbaijan: Depardieu promotes local cuisine · Global Voices
Onnik Krikorian

Kebabistan reports that French actor Gerard Depardieu has signed a contract to publicize and promote Azerbaijani cuisine. The deal comes after recently starring in an advertisement for the national air carrier of Azerbaijan's estranged neighbor in the region, Armenia.


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Belarus: An Overview of Political Situation · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

At OpenDemocracy.net, an overview of the situation in Belarus, by Janek Lasocki.

author: Veronica Khokhlova


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Bermuda: Corruption in Motion?   · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

As news breaks that the former Premier plans to open a new health agency with “the consultant who coordinated Dr Brown’s trip to India last year”, New Onion asks: “How is this not corruption?”

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Bosnia and Herzegovina: Photos of Sarajevo · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Piran Café has visited Sarajevo and is now beginning to post photos from the trip: a series of timelapses is here, more photos – at Flickr.


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Caribbean: West Indian Immigrants  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The Caribbean Camera reports that of the 245,000 Caribbean immigrants to Canada, the largest populations [were] from Jamaica followed by Haiti and then Trinidad and Tobago.”


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China: Rumor Debate · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

ESWN has translated a discussion among mainland journalists and public intellectuals in Weibo on the spread of rumor in the Internet.


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Cuba: Twitter Truce · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“The exchange started cold, with scorched looks and the logical suspicion between persons who reside in a nation where debate of opposite opinions is a rare bird”: Iván García blogs about TwittHab, “the first encounter between official and alternative ‘twitterers’ [where]…both groups could look face to face and even exchange greetings.”


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Hungary: A Roundup on Politics · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Belatedly, links to some of Hungarian Spectrum‘s posts: on the Hungarian “oligarch” and PM's ally Sándor Demján; on the opposition rally and gay pride parade that took place in mid-June; on Hillary Clinton's visit to Budapest; and on a lecture by Aladár Horváth, the chairman of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation, who is currently visiting the United States.


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India: Health Minister Stirs up Gay Sex Controversy · Global Voices
Aparna Ray

This post is part of our special coverage Global Development 2011.
India's Health Minister, Mr. Ghulam Nabi Azad, has stirred up controversy and angered the gay community and gay rights activists with his recent comments at a HIV/AIDS conference in New Delhi. Mr. Azad was widely quoted in both national and international mainstream media as having referred to homosexuality as “unnatural” and a “disease” that had come from the West and was unfortunately spreading fast in the country.
The resulting uproar soon forced the Minister to issue a clarification regarding his controversial comments. He blamed the media for misquoting him and stated that he was referring to HIV as the disease and not passing judgement on sexual orientation or preference.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and Indian Minister of Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad. Image by U.S. Embassy New Delhi (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Despite Mr. Azad's clarification (which many have not bought into), his initial controversial comments soon went viral and generated a lot of buzz, not only within the country but internationally as well. Some went so far as to draw comparisons with the controversial AIDS-related theory propounded by the former South African President Thabo Mbeki in 2000.
Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS was present at the conference where Mr. Azad made his controversial comments. UNAIDS promptly issued a press statement announcing their position on the issue of homosexuality and denouncing homophobia as ‘prejudice’. Saying that the comments were not in line with the country's policy, Sidibé commented:
India’s rich tradition of inclusivity and social justice must include men who have sex with men and transgender people
The buzz was very much evident online – on Twitter, blogs, forums, Facebook etc. The reactions were varied, ranging from humor to outright anger and demands that Azad be sacked.
Both the Health Minister and his alleged gay gaffe soon became the butt of jokes on Twitter. Comments were often laced with sarcasm. Some examples:
@YearOfRat: Health Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad clearly blames Manoj Kumar for bringing ‘admi hoon admi se pyar karta hoon’ disease from Pashchim (West). [Funny reference to an old Hindi film song from the 1970s, whose lyrics when literally translated, says – I am a man who loves men]
@gkhamba: Breaking: Ghulam Nabi Azad outlaws homosexuals from eating Naturals Ice Cream.
@rameshsrivats:So, is Ghulam Nabi Azad okay if homosexuals take medical leave to go have sex? #JustAsking
@meradelhii: All's not gay after Ghulam Nabi Azad homophobic barb http://bit.ly/qHs27x
@sunilea: BREAKING: Will bring a bill to change the name of human species to Hetrosapiens ~ Ghulam Nabi Azad
@Roflindian: Ghulam Nabi Azad probably has finished reading the newspapers by now. At the moment, he must be quite Glum Nabi
@madversity: Someone who has both Ghulam (slave) and Azad (free) in his name should not be complaining about people who swing both way.
@khairyalonto: He must be very welcome in new york RT @TIME: India's health minister derided homosexuality as an unnatural “disease” from the West.
However, not everyone was seeing the humor in the Health Minister's comments and subsequent predicament. Many of the tweeters felt that the comments were indeed unhealthy, regressive and reeked of ignorance if not outright prejudice.
@kirankarlmarx: Ghulam Nabi Azad's comments on homosexuality reeks of a hangover of an Self-righteous Victorian attitude. Good that he has disowned them
@juhipande: Congratulations Ghulam Azad. You've invented time travel. You just took this country twenty years back in time.
@vdehejia: Ghulam Nabi Azad's comments today were reprehensible and shocking, coming as they do from the Health Minister. Truly shocking.
@IamOnir: Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad needs urgent counseling for his regressive statement. His “unnatural” stand is dangerous for healthy democracy
@calamur: Ghulam Nabi Azad's statement on homosexuality – is not about tolerance. it is about competence. Imagine a Health Minister not knowing…
@PankajPachauri: Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad calls homosexuality a disease during a conference on HIV/AIDS. Now that is really unhealthy talk.
@ediedisapproves: Is this guy qualified? RT @TIME: India's health minister derided homosexuality as an unnatural “disease” from the West | http://ti.me/qe8c1k
Many of the netizens saw these comments as a setback for gay rights and the country's fight against HIV/AIDS. Gord Barnes, a fieldworker with of Amnesty International, tweeted:
@GordBarnes: India's Health Minister’s homosexuality remarks a setback for gay rights | Amnesty International amnesty.ca/media2010.php?… #India #gayrights
Not everyone was buying the Health Minister's subsequent clarifications either. Wonderman wrote on his blog:
A disease? We went from sin, demons and now a disease. However Mr. Azad says he was taken out of context…Good luck with the back tracking, Boo Boo.
Canadian blogger James wrote on his blog:
Epic ignorance from India’s Health Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, was  displayed Monday… How can an authoritative figure who spews out myths like this keep his job? Ahh, fiction-based politics.
Many other gay blogs/sites too appeared unmoved by Mr. Azad's plea that he had indeed been misquoted and misunderstood. An online petition has been started denouncing the Minister's comments.
Interestingly, amidst all of this outrage, there is a section of netizens who are quietly supporting the Minister's comments.
@elArequipeno: to be fair to ghulam nabi azad, homosexuality is indeed unnatural in that it goes against natural urges for reproduction.
@samdondagson: Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is true. I hope Indian people fight against this disease.
That these tweeters are not alone in their support of the Health Minster, is evident from this tweet:
@ikaveri: And now I know there are many people on my timeline who agree with Ghulam Nabi Azad.
However, others were quick to denounce these homophobic comments as regressive.
@juhipande: I have ppl who're tweeting to say they support the Health Minister. I was wrong.We're already in the Dark Ages. We don't need a time machine
Currently, the debate seems far from over and it remains to be seen what (if any) damage control exercise will be undertaken by the government to contain/ alleviate this ongoing controversy.
This post is part of our special coverage Global Development 2011.

author: Aparna Ray


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Iran: A Blogger’s life in danger · Global Voices
Fred Petrossian

Hossein Rongahi‘s father says that his son's life is in danger. Hossein is a jailed blogger who needs urgent medical care. He was sentenced to 15 years of prison.

author: Fred Petrossian


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Jamaica: The Power of Social Media  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Diaspora litblogger Geoffrey Philp “woke up this morning to the true meaning of social media.”


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Latin America: Blogging About the ‘2011 Copa América’ · Global Voices
Silvia Viñas

Blogger ‘Marsares’ is covering the 2011 Copa América for equinoXio [es], providing analysis about each football game. Argentina (the host), Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela are participating in this edition of the South American football tournament.


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Malaysia: Online Reactions to Bersih 2.0 Rally · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

The Bersih 2.0 rally in Malaysia on July 9, 2011, will proceed but it will no longer be a street march, since it will be held inside the Stadium Merdeka. The Bersih (clean) event has earlier been declared illegal by the government and some of its organizers and supporters have been detained by police forces.
The first Bersih democracy walk gathered more than 50,000 people on November 2007. The objective of the planned rally this weekend is to push for electoral reforms. Bersih 2.0 has eight demands to the government which includes the elimination of dirty politics:
Malaysians are tired of dirty politics that has been the main feature of the Malaysian political arena. We demand for all political parties and politicians to put an end to gutter politics. As citizens and voters, we are not interested in gutter politics; we are interested in policies that affect the nation.
Aside from its website, Bersih 2.0 has a Twitter and Facebook account. Supporters are also encouraged to post picbadges on their online profiles:
Malaysiakini quotes KSN who insists that Bersih 2.0 must be organized all over the country:
The protests must be held all over the country by Bersih 2.0 so that the people from all walks of life have the opportunity to participate and understand the message of Bersih on free and fair elections without disruptions from the police and the hooligans from Umno, Perkasa, etc. (Note: Umno is the country’s ruling party)
Koh Lay Chin responds to those who are worried about the traffic impact of the protest event:
These groups seem to forget that peaceful protests are a hallmark of democratic, developed nations, and that avoiding some amount of traffic disruption is not more important than citizens’ civil rights.
June Rubis encourages the ‘average good Malaysian’ to join Bersih 2.0:
The Bersih 2.0 march will bring about change, whatever that brings, but we cannot fear that. The alternative is to stay unhappy, complaining, morally outraged but not doing anything significant about it until the next generation has enough of our staid complacency.
We need courage, and we need faith. We need you — the average good Malaysian — in large numbers to come down on July 9 to stand together, and say, we need a better electoral process for our country. We need a better democracy that works.
This is why we need to march.
Concerned academicians signed a statement criticizing the exaggerated reaction of the government:
Since the pursuit of such a campaign is undeniably noble, and timely, we are extremely perturbed that the government has resorted to harsh measures and use of draconian legislation to prevent the organizers from mounting a public rally.
JoFan Pang believes the change of rally venue does not matter:
Contrary to what many of my friends think, in my opinion, having the rally in a stadium really isn’t such a bad idea after all. Now that the rally is legal, and the FRU will not act violently in a legal assembly, more people can just decide to join the rally, wherever it may be. My parents for instance now feel more secure to let me go. Friends who thought it was not a good idea to join an ‘illegal’ rally now have decided to go as well. A stadium overflowing with an ocean of people in yellow-tshirts would send a strong and bold statement to the government and authorities.
Charles Hector thinks the stadium will not be able to accommodate all supporters:
A peaceful assembly in a Stadium would surely attract a much smaller number – because for many it would have been to lobby for more support from other ordinary Malaysians – who are sitting on the fence now. In a stadium, this audience will not be there & it may be more just people of the same stand coming together.
Here are some reactions from Twitter:
@KHKoh: ”I'd rather they blind me with teargas, than i blind myself with fear” -posted on Bersih 2.0 FB page
@greeneyesjelly: i'm not against p/r supporting bersih, but do it in a more subtle way. we all knw whom e/c's working w/, u don't have 2 remind us tht
@FandiRuffey: “@khalids: If the police have the same determination against criminals as they are against #Bersih , Malaysia would much more peaceful.”
@ZainiShukor: M'sians should b able to distinguish a genuine quest for a fair elec. & the hidden agenda of a deeply flawed politician! NO to #Bersih !
Aside from the hashtag #bersih, Malaysians used the hashtag #roadblock as police mounted several roadblocks in many parts of Kuala Lumpur a few days before the planned Bersih event. The roadblocks created a monstrous traffic jam in the city. Here are some of the related tweets:
@SyazwanHassan: Pleaze ok..stop roadblock against me..I had to suffer up to 2 hour stranded in traffic jam..it took about 1 hour for 500M distance ahead..
@farouqq: RT @samteyy: The most roadblock ever in the history.
@RidaBWasHere: I just pass a 5 roadblock otw back home in Gombak. Suddenly, I dun feel like I live in Malaysia. Omg.
@EvelynHua: It's madness. Bad traffic. Roadblock everywhere. I'm staying home.
@hafizkl: U cannot blame who make the roadblock but blame who lead the #BerSHIT.
Bersih 2.0 organizers have another problem since the Stadium Merdeka has rejected their application to use the venue on July 9.


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Mexico: Reactions Following Elections in the State of Mexico · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

On July 3, 2011, residents of the State of Mexico went to the polls to choose their next governor, who would succeed Enrique Peña. According to official preliminary information [es], the favored candidate was Eruviel Ávila from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the so-called “United for you” coalition, which obtained 62.54% of the votes.
As we anticipated in a previous post, the opinions expressed on citizen media regarding the topic in question were varied and energetic. As such, we have on the day of the electoral session, blogger, academic and analyst John M. Ackerman [es] warning against an election with abstentionism, while simultaneously expressing his opinion about the spread of opinion polls (questionable for him) regarding electoral preferences that favored Ávila:
En el Estado de México, la campaña de Eruviel Ávila apuesta precisamente a la abstención. Por ejemplo, la reiterada divulgación de encuestas que supuestamente reflejan un margen de victoria de más de 30 puntos porcentuales de Ávila sobre Alejandro Encinas y Luis Felipe Bravo Mena tiene precisamente el fin de desalentar la participación al convencer al ciudadano de que el resultado ya estaría determinado y que no importa si vota o no. El candidato del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) sabe muy bien que cuando se eleva la tasa de participación es mucho más difícil “dirigir” los resultados por medio del voto corporativo, el acarreo y la compra y coacción.
Eruviel Ávila, new governor of the State of Mexico. July 3, 2011. Photo from Flickr user Eruviel Ávila (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Regarding the topic of abstentionism in the election, Alberto Aguirre M. [es] also expressed his opinion in blog Revoluciones México, at the same time as he spoke about that which, to his understanding, were the motives behind PRI's success:
Paradojas del regreso del viejo PRI: ¿cómo explicar que en una jornada electoral pasada por agua y con baja participación -sólo cuatro de cada 10 ciudadanos del Estado de México inscritos en el padrón de votantes- Eruviel Ávila haya conseguido 2.4 millones de votos? En territorio mexiquense, el padrón crece año con año, pero la ciudadanía se aleja cada vez más de las urnas. Habrá quienes atribuyan a la buena reputación del priísta Enrique Peña Nieto, al innegable acuerdo popular con su desempeño como gobernante, esta victoria calificada como histórica. Otros pensarán que la centena de alcaldes se plegaron al proyecto 2012 y acataron las instrucciones del secretario general de gobierno, Luis Miranda, de cumplir con las metas del plan electoral que desplegó el PRI mexiquense, bajo la conducción del diputado federal Luis Videgaray. Pero las proyecciones de quienes idearon el programa de “redes humanas” era conseguir 3.4 millones de votos…
Nevertheless, contrary to Ackerman, the author did not question the truthfulness of the polls, nor labeled the tendencies as “assumptions” that they demonstrated:
Es pertinente indicar que también ganaron los encuestadores, porque recuperan la capacidad para prever escenarios. Y quedan exhibidos los candidatos y los dirigentes políticos que los descalificaban.
Regardless of abstentionism, some social network users like jurist Miguel Carbonell (@MiguelCarbonell) encouraged the vote:
La participación ciudadana es la columna vertebral de toda democracia. Tenemos un compromiso con México, que nos necesita como nunca.
In the same sense, Dr. Carbonell expressed [es]:
Ninguna democracia puede sobrevivir sin participación democrática. Votar es un derecho y una obligación cívica.
In another order of ideas, for El Ciudadano X [es], the author of the blog México en Descomposición, the result was not surprising:
No ocurrió nada que no se esperara, el PRI con su candidato Eruviel Avila aplastó brutalmente a sus oponentes con el 64 de la preferencia electoral según encuesta de salida.
Additionally, upon expressing himself regarding the consequences of the election's results, El Ciudadano X, reflected on the future in the interim period for the current governing official of the entity in question:
Muchas cosas se pueden deducir de estos resultados, pero definitivamente la primera de ellas, es la muestra de poder que ha dado Enrique Peña Nieto, actual Gobernador del Estado de México y quien se perfila como el candidato del PRI a la presidencia de la república, tras estos resultados, no queda duda que es quien ocupará esa posición y que no hay nadie capaz de hacerle sombra, empezando por Manlio Fabio Beltrones.
One of the candidates that was not favored made use of social networks to send his message following the election. Luis Felipe Bravo (@LF_BravoMena) from the National Action Party debased the electoral process, far from recognizing defeat:
Fuimos testigos de un proceso claramente inequitativo. Que refleja la amenaza presente del autoritarismo en el EDOMEX.
Columnist Leo Zuckerman (@leozuckermann) spoke out regarding the candidates that lost and criticized the electoral process:
Me chocan los malos perdedores: “Si ganan, bien. Si pierden, cochinero” en http://t.co/q49od3t. Saludos.
Although later he clarified [es] his pronouncement:
Yo no digo q la elección en Edomex haya sido limpia. Simplemente: los q dicen q hubo “cochinero” q lo prueben. Y vayan a los tribunales. (sic)
On the other hand, Corajecivil [es], for the blog Mexicanos al Grito, pointed out the credibility crisis which the Mexican political system is going through:
La realidad es muy diferente, sin embargo… no se habla de un partido fuerte que recupera el espacio perdido. Se habla de la total falta de credibilidad en el marco político, ya no se habla de PAN, PRI, PRD, etc. Se habla de la clase política como aquélla que no encuentra soluciones ni respuestas para las problemáticas políticas, sociales y económicas del país.
Un país que se encuentra en guerra no únicamente por los errores de la derecha panista, sino también por la omisión del PRI y del PRD por defender los derechos de una sociedad civil indefensa.
The reality is very different, however… a strong party that recuperates lost space is not spoken of. We speak of the total lack of credibility in the political framework, not of PAN, PRI, PRD, etc. We speak of the political class such as that which does not find solutions nor answers to the country's political, social and economic problems.
A country that finds itself in war not only due to the errors of the PAN right, but also due to the omission of the PRI and PRD for defending the rights of a defenseless civil society.
In this way, with many expressions, the Mexican blogosphere reacted to the local electoral session in the State of Mexico, while social networks served as a forum not only to the public in general, but also to the protagonists of recent history, in this case, academics and the actual candidates.

author: J. Tadeo


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North Korea Behind Cyber Attacks, Computer Security Firm Said · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

U.S. computer security firm McAfee said that North Korea or parties closely related to the country were behind the cyber attacks on March 2011 which disrupted several major South Korean websites, wrote Martyn Williams from the North Korea Tech blog.

author: Lee Yoo Eun


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Puerto Rico: Resident Sends Message to Mayor Through Blog · Global Voices
Alfredo Richner

A polarizing figure in Puerto Rican politics, Jorge Santini is currently serving his third term as the Mayor of San Juan. During his years in office, Puerto Rico's capital has faced plenty of tough challenges that affect the entire island – slow economic growth, rise in crime, the ongoing drug wars, more homeless people living in its streets, and more.
There are, however, very specific issues that affect San Juan's residents and business owners, administrative issues, for example, that slowly take their toll on the day to day lives of voters and leave them wishing for better leadership. Such is the case with Giancarlo González, born and raised in San Juan, and currently residing in the historic district of Old San Juan. Giancarlo runs the blog JorgeSantini.com [es], dedicated to improving the life of sanjuaneros by reporting on the particular issues that affect him and his neighbors, as well as those who visit the district.
www.jorgesantini.com
Poor administrative handling of issues such as traffic, city planning, and energy conservation are all discussed in JorgeSantini.com in an effort to form a discussion between fellow residents, businessmen – and of course, their mayor. Global Voices sent some questions over to Giancarlo in order to learn more about his experience with the blog.
Global Voices (GV): When did you acquire JorgeSantini.com and what did you intend to do with the URL in the first place?
Giancarlo González (GG): I first acquired JorgeSantini.com in 2005, after noticing that for the 2004 elections it pointed to the opponent's website (Puerto Rican Senator Eduardo Bhatia of the Popular Democratic Party). I found it funny and showed it to different people when the subject came up… One day, I checked the domain and found that the opposing party had let the name expire, so I bought it.
I had no plans for it initially, but I did have ideas for San Juan, so I thought it was a good URL name to have in case I had an opportunity to talk to the mayor.
GV: What motivated you to start the JorgeSantini.com blog?
GG: I wanted to get the mayor's attention. I ran into him several times and mentioned that I had the name, and he always said that “he would get in touch with me in regards to some ideas he had.” He also left me some contacts – which I called, but never received a response…
One day, I just decided to start blogging about the situation with JorgeSantini.com and the fact that the mayor didn't care enough about the name nor the potential opportunities that we could develop [through it].
During the 2008 elections, his ad-agency (Publicidad Tere Suárez, which I am familiar with) contacted me in regards to the blog, and requested that we redirect the name to the official election site – santinialcalde2008.com [no longer online] – which we did. But the relationship never went beyond that, so after the election was over, I reactivated the blog.
GV: Have you always lived in the municipality?
GG: Yes, born and raised in San Juan. This past year, however, I moved to Old San Juan.
GV: Has the blog allowed you to get closer to your neighbors? How has it impacted your community?
GG: Unlike the suburbs, Old San Juan has a lot of issues – traffic, the homeless, construction, commerce, activities, etc. After experiencing numerous traffic and parking issues, I decided to focus the blog on Old San Juan issues, reporting situations that I considered important for every resident of the area.
People email me their concerns and complaints, and I post them on the blog. In many cases, it's as simple as noticing a “closed street” that is currently open [es], and cars keep going in, only to have to back up because the street has no exit. Visitors encounter issues of poor guidance and the municipality does a bad job of keeping order with incoming traffic. This is my number one concern. If a resident of Old San Juan has a medical emergency on a Saturday or Sunday, there is a high probability he will not have aid arrive on time [es] (or he will not be able to leave fast enough) because of the log-jam traffic.
Traffic in Old San Juan on a typical weekend. Image by jorgesantini.com.
GV: What do you think is the role of citizen journalism? Do you consider yourself a citizen journalist?
GG: Peole say “the world is smaller” in terms of technology connecting remote places and allowing people to communicate easier. This also means that there is a lot of “news” that happens in specific areas, that is much easier for individuals to report on – the major newspapers can't cover every single issue that is ocurring in specific sectors of Puerto Rico. For example: Santurce, Hato Rey, Ocean Park, Viejo San Juan, Condado, Miramar – each particular neighborhood or district within the municipality of San Juan has issues affecting the residents of that community. How do you get the message accross to those who can do something about it?
I think the role of citizen journalism, at least on my end, is to try and make the life of those around you better by reporting and proposing solutions to daily situations that may be improved. Why should Old San Juan residents feel like they live in a prison, when it takes them twenty minutes to exit their home, spending time in eternal traffic jams, or having to hear a “symphony orchestra” of car horns every Saturday and Sunday?
I consider myself part of a problem that has a solution – but the municipality is too inept to implement the necessary rules and restrictions to solve the problem. If this means I am a “citizen journalist” then I guess I am, but I don't consider myself to be one. I just want to solve a problem that affects all of us in Old San Juan.
GV: Have you received any communication from Jorge Santini or his staff? Do you think he has read it?
GG: Not from Mayor Santini, but people within his circle have read it. I also report on positive news related to Old San Juan.
Lampposts throughout the city waste electricity during daylight. Image by jorgesantini.com.
GV: Would you consider ceding the URL to the mayor's upcoming campaign efforts?
GG: Probably not. I already did that in 2008 and the advertising agency that handles the campaign hasn't expressed any interest in providing access to the municipality for us in order to be able to present issues that need to be solved, so I don't think they deserve it.
I'll probably step up the content and promotion of the blog during his campaign – if it results in more efficient management of the insane traffic jams around “La Puntilla” on weekends I'll be happy.
Maybe the blog provides fuel for the mayor's opponents, resulting in controversy – which would drive attention to the issue. Think about it: Jorge Santini cannot provide for decent traffic management in Old San Juan… How come? Isn't the role of a mayor to provide efficient administration for the city?
GV: What are some of your favorite spots in San Juan?
GG: In Old San Juan: Cuatro Sombras [es], Baccaro, Fefo's, Cafeycultura, Antonella's (best pizza in town!) and a new Waffle Place on Tetuan St. Very nice!
GV: What is the biggest challenge facing your community right now?
GG: The lack of a leader who truly cares about his residents’ and businesses’ particular situations. A great leader would make the entire municipality proud by implementing efficient handling of access to Old San Juan.
Those in government expect this traffic mess and don't care to make it better – while those who do care, end up running into issues with people who stand in the way. For example, local businesses set up in areas where they end up contributing to limitting traffic flow, and there are local restaurants who have managed to close down access to specific streets, etc. Taxis in Old San Juan need to make inefficient turns on Paseo Covadonga because Tetuan Street no longer pulls up to Fortaleza St. This was made to please the restaurants in the area, but it affects the traffic flow.
How can the municipality continue closing and fixing streets without avoiding the monumental collapse of the local economy due to limited access and the insane traffic to enter and exit the city?

author: Alfredo Richner


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Recent Cases of Journalists Killed in Honduras and Mexico · Global Voices
Silvia Viñas

The Knight Center's Journalism in the Americas blog reports on the latest killings of journalists in Mexico and Honduras.

author: Silvia Viñas


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Russia: Anglophone Russia Watchers’ Blogs · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

The Kremlin Stooge reviews and ranks “Russia watchers'” English-language blogs; Sublime Oblivion interviews Mark Chapman, the blogger writing The Kremlin Stooge.


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Russia: Chechnya’s Police Bosses; al-Zawahiri and North Caucasus · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

In Moscow's Shadows writes about changes in the leadership of Chechnya's interior ministry, and about changes in al-Qaeda's leadership and the little if any impact it may have on the North Caucasus.


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Russia: Ex vice premier banned to travel abroad · Global Voices
Vilhelm Konnander

Ilya Yashin of El pueblo unido jamás será vencido reports [RUS] that opposition politician and ex Prime Minister of Russia, Boris Nemtsov, has been banned from leaving the country for the next half year due to a libel suit by financial mogul Gennady Timchenko.

author: Vilhelm Konnander


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Russia: Expert Goes Public to Prevent Passing New Law on Private Data · Global Voices
Alexey Sidorenko

Yevgeni Tsarev, security and privacy expert and blogger, publishes an open address [ru] to president Medvedev. Following the meeting with the bloggers Medvedev promised to adjust the law on private data in order to make it closer to the European and international norms. The draft bill that was prepared after the meeting is even worse than before and can lead to a serious stagnation in IT industry, Tsarev claims.

author: Alexey Sidorenko


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Russia: Fewer Conscripts From North Caucasus? · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

On Jamestown Foundation Blog, Valery Dzutsev writes about what appears to be a decrease in North Caucasian draftees in the Russian army: “It thus seems that a separation of Russia and the North Caucasus is already underway, even though officially it is still a semi-taboo topic in the country.”


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Russia: Interviews With Author Daniel Treisman and Filmmaker Maria Yatskova · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

For New Books in Russia and Eurasia, Sean Guillory of Sean's Russia Blog interviews author Daniel Treisman on his book The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev and filmmaker Maria Yatskova on her film Miss Gulag.


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Russia: Orenburg Migrant Workers · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

On OpenDemocracy.net, Elena Strelnikova writes about Central Asian migrant workers of Orenburg, Russia.


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Russia: Prison System · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Svetlana Reiter's text on Russia's “dead end prison system” -at OpenDemocracy.net.


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Russia, U.S.: RT and American Media · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Mark Adomanis of Forbes’ The Russia Hand writes about RT, a Russian TV news network previously known as Russia Today, and the American media.


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Russia: Why Government and People’s Front shared website · Global Voices
Vilhelm Konnander

LJ user Navalny has finally received [RU] a letter explaining why the People's Front website initially was hosted by that of the Russian government, telling him that this support of an NGO is part of the Prime Minister's  general societal and political activities.


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Russia: Women’s Rights · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Miriam Elder writes about the situation with women's rights in Chechnya.


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Serbia: A Documentary on Belgrade’s 1990s Rock Scene · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Belgraded.com posts a subtitled version of Ghetto – the Secret Life of the City, a documentary about Belgrade's alternative rock scene “of the worst period in the nineties, when turbo-folk became the way of life in Serbia.”


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Serbia: “Interesting Buildings” of Kragujevac and Majdanpek. · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Nothing Against Serbia: A Virtual Notebook writes about “interesting buildings” in Kragujevac and Majdanpek.


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Slovenia: No Early Elections · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Sleeping With Pengovsky explains the current political situation in Slovenia and concludes that the early elections aren't likely in the near future.


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South Korea: Marine’s Shooting Spree Reveals Collective Bullying Tradition · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

In South Korea on June 4, 2011, a marine opened fire at several of his fellow soldiers, killing four and injuring two.
On the day of the incident the majority of blame fell on the culprit; however, as the days passed by, accusations began to fall on the leadership of the Marine Corps camp, where a tradition of collective bullying is believed to have contributed to several deaths.
Corporal Kim, 19 years old, (identity protected by law), was arrested on July 4 for stealing ammunition from a weapons storage room and fatally shooting his fellow marines. A private surnamed Jung is suspected of helping Kim in this alcohol-fuelled shooting rampage. Kim himself tried to commit suicide by  detonating a hand grenade, but failed and is now hospitalized. Local reporters revealed that Kim told  investigators that bullying in the camp has made him to plan the shooting spree.
Image of 'Non-Violence' (also known as 'the Knotted Gun') Sculpture near Malmo Central Station, Sweden. Image by Flickr User @sTe (CC BY 2.0).
‘Rank Exclusion’
In South Korean society where able-bodied men are obliged to undertake two years of military service, the revelation of systemic bullying in the highly esteemed Marine Corps has terrified and enraged the public.
The practise of “Rank Exclusion”(in Korean ‘기수열외’, pronounced ‘Gi-su-yeol-wae’) which has been blamed as part of the reason for the rampage, is a new word unfamiliar to most Korean people. A direct translation of the word would be “exclusion from an army rank/peer group”. The exclusion is not officially effective but very powerful. Being excluded in one's rank equates to a sentence of social death in the army.
While peers treat the victim as non-existent, the victim's subordinates and juniors talk down to him and physically and mentally torture him, since they no longer have to treat the victim as their senior. It causes extreme humiliation to Korean men who grow up in a society where it is a social norm to pay a certain amount of respect to older one and receive respect from the younger ones.
A day after the incident took place, a post [ko] written by an anonymous marine private who had also been collectively bullied in the camp, was spread online:
선임병들은 저에게 “너는 기수열외라고 후임병들하고 너는 아무 사이가 아니니 후임병들이 저에게 반말을 해도 되고 불만삼지말고 후임병들에게 저는 마치 민간인 아저씨같은 존재”라고 말합니다[…] 소등 이후 침대 2층에서 자고있으면 제가 코곤다고 하루에 2~4번씩은 제 옷의 카라 부분잡고 단추가 뜯어질 정도로 끌어당겨서 깨우는데 저는 아프고 깜짝놀라서 허둥지둥 깨어서 멍하게 있으면 제 옷잡고 코골면 죽여버린다고 잠깰때까지 밖에 나가있으라고 합니다 저가 자다가 깨서 잠시 정신을 들어서 다시 잘려고 눈감았는데 그때 와서 저깨우는데 그거 보고 이건 뭐지 할정도 입니다. 진짜 새벽에 2~3번 그렇게 당하고 잠못자고 갈데 없어서 화장실에 있다가 돌아오면 누워서 자고있는 머리통을 부셔버리고 싶은 충동도 생길정도입니다.
The harassment mentioned by the author of the post includes several more torture methods, such as messing around with his property and training schedules, and also physical menacing him. The author wrote that he had witnessed a case where the authorities had tried to solve the problem by transferring the victim to other camp, but it failed as the current bullies called the other camp and asked them to continue bullying the victim.
Social media reactions
Twitter user Specialshs who introduced himself as fervent reader of progressive news papers tweeted [ko]:
해병대의 기수열외 그 자체가 인격살인입니다 총기난사는 보복의 한 형태이지요 왕따가 가장 비열한 짓이라는 인식이 확산되어야 합니다[…]
Blogger Filefree wrote [ko] that no matter how harsh the living condition had been, there is no possible excuse for murder:
김상병… 당신이 있는 곳은 학교가 아니라 군대다…그것도 우리나라에서 가장 힘들다는 해병대로 지원을  해놓고…'기수열외'때문에 너무 힘들어서 다 쏴죽였다는게 핑계거리나 되는건가? […]그리고 기수열외 한마디에 동정론이  왠말인가. […] 저긴 엄연한 군대이고 해병대다. 전쟁만 안났을뿐 목숨이 위태로운 전장이란 말이다.
While a majority of Twitter users expressed anger at the evil tradition, E.S. Bahk (@holistic64), a Chinese-medicine practitioner and acupuncturist, defended [ko] the Marines:
해병대의 군기를 나무라는 말들이  많은데..해병대던 군대던 시회이던 학교던 어떤 조직에서도 왕따는 존재한다.[…] 그 조직의 아주 극히 일부분의 행동때문에  전체 조직을 폄하 할수는 없다.
Twitter user Ryunan (@Ryunan9903) stressed [ko] that system does not deserve supports:
해병대의 기수열외는 암묵적으로 ‘왕따'와 ‘타인에 대한 배척’ 등의 사회에서 없애야만 할 잘못된 병폐를 오히려 하나의 문화로 인정하고 적극적으로 권장하는 앞뒤가 안 맞는 제도라고 생각한다.
As more similar testimonies sprang up, even the mainstream media has started paying attention to bullying cases. South Korea's online news outlet, Cookie news [ko] introduced a tweet on July 6 which read that a day earlier the  shooting spree took place, one private from the same camp, committed  suicide after being bullied. The tweet written by user Tennis***** (hidden for privacy reasons) suspected that the Marine Corps is trying to cover up the case.
This suicide allegation needs to first be verified, but there is no denying the fact that the Marine's internal brutality has been raised as serious issue. A local newspaper revealed [ko] that in March 2011, South Korea's Human Rights Commission advised the Marines to set strict rules on collective bullying, but the Corps merely promised the change in late June.
The Human Rights Commission has launched a thorough investigation to this case.


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Trinidad & Tobago: A Space for Art  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Pleasure looks at the work of Trinidad and Tobago-born artist Karyn Olivier.


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Ukraine: Education Ministry on Twitter, Cabinet of Ministers on Facebook · Global Voices
Tetyana Bohdanova

Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science, Youth and Sport is the country's first government institution to launch an official Twitter account (@monUkraine), Watcher.com.ua reports [uk], also noting that the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers has recently set up its official Facebook page [uk].

author: Tetyana Bohdanova


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Belarus: Guilt by association? · Global Voices
Vilhelm Konnander

LJ user budimir claims [RU] that Michail Myasnikovich, Prime Minister of Belarus, has announced that employees will be fired if they or members of their family participate in protests against the Lukashenko regime – a measure the blogger “supports”.


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Belarus: One-way ticket to the west · Global Voices
Vilhelm Konnander

Kyle Keeton of Windows to Russia ridicules Belarus president's, Lukashenko, proposal to send all political prisoners in the country to the West, if Europe will have them.


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Brazil: #ForaMicarla as Protest Against Corruption in Natal · Global Voices
Mariana Freitas

Since 2010, denunciations of corruption [pt] concerning the mayor of Natal, Micarla de Sousa, have led Brazilian citizens to mobilize in protest via Twitter with the hashtag #ForaMicarla (Out with Micarla!). The movement [pt] has grown from the web to the streets.

author: Mariana Freitas


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Cameroon: Anti-Corruption Application Developed · Global Voices
Julie Owono

Hervé Djia, a Cameroonian E-entrepreneur, introduced on his Twitter account [fr] the Android Application he has created: NoBakchich [fr]. The tool intends to fight against corruption by allowing users to report any case of bribery witnessed. Using crowdsourcing, NoBakchich will also enable users to give information regarding administrative procedures and associated costs. It is currently available in a Alpha test version, with a final version due in August.


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Caribbean: Indigenous News  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Review of the Indigenous Caribbean posts a video of “a fairly elementary but well synthesized historical overview of the indigenous people of Dominica”, while The Voice of the Taino People Online notes the passing of Ricardo Alegria, “a Puerto Rican scholar known for his pioneering studies of the island's native Taino culture.”


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China: Exploding Watermelon Is Safe?  · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

A few months ago, local state media exposed that farmers in China's Jiangsu province were affected by the problem of “exploding watermelons” due to the overuse of chemicals. On 5 July, 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture asserted [zh] that the chemical growth enhancer for watermelon is safe as the toxic residue level is low.
The Ministry also stated that if growth chemicals banned in China, the whole agricultural industry sector would be affected.
Exploding watermelons found in Eastern China
According to Hutong news summary [zh], the watermelons were exploding in the fields like balloons. The growth enhancer involved in the incident is Forchlorfenuron, which is also legal in the United States. As the growth enhancer drains fruit of its flavor, farmers have also been applying chemical sweeteners and dyes to the watermelons.
Don't blame the watermelons, according to the Ministry of Agriculture
Here is Caijing's report summary at Weibo [zh]:
【农业部：西瓜膨大剂毒性残留量低很安全】7月5日，农业部农药检定所相关负责人对我国个别地方出现的“膨大剂西瓜炸裂事件”作出正式回应，称植物生长调节剂的毒性和残留量非常低，只要按照批准使用方法使用，不会出现安全事故。如果不使用植物生长调节剂，农业生产就会出问题。http://t.cn/apCbAA
The public statement made by the Ministry of Agriculture has not restored consumers’ confidence. Instead, netizens are skeptical of the lack of regulation in the application of additives to watermelons.
Plastic watermelon
The latest scandal is the discovery of plastic material inside a watermelon in Jinan city. Below is a television news segment showing what a plastic watermelon looks like:
In addition, netizens have read between the lines of the statement made by the Ministry of Agriculture and are criticizing for being irresponsible. Below is a selected translation of comments from Sina Weibo's news thread [zh]:
焦然blog 你农业部只考虑你的农业生产了，别的不管了？还真是各司其职，希望你说的“安全”食品别都吃到你自己嘴里，最后蹬腿之前，宁可说是憋死的也别说是毒死的~ (7月6日 13:53)
@DQ肥龙 我们的ZF越来越…从字面意思理解，毒性肯定有，只不过是多少的问题；发新闻的目的不是为了处理事件，而是为了稳定生产；农业生产远比食品安全重要，一干人等不得以任何方式任何言论影响农业生产，钦此～～ (7月6日 13:48)
林川-大脚八 我只想知道，我们每天吃的还有哪几种食物没有添加这剂那剂的？西瓜留一点土豆留一点猪肉留一点鱼虾留一点鸡鸭留一点，这些是不是都不会累加？？？(7月6日 12:37)
人民视点 植物生长调节剂不同于动物激素，莫恐慌。但现有管理制度不能保证不滥用，这是个问题。(7月6日 11:28)
苏格拉秀 不用农业生产就会出问题啊？这个比阳光和水还重要吗？农业部去shi吧！！还我们天然绿色的农产品！(7月6日11:20)
gloria98 专家以及相关负责人说的话，现在已经没人相信了……(7月6日 11:03)
小武yeah 转发此微博:现在国人都已炼成金刚不坏之身，吃啥都无所谓啦，领导请放心！(7月6日10:21)

author: Oiwan Lam


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China: The box office of Beginning of the Great Revival  · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Ministry of Tofu explains how Chinese cinemas cheated on the ticket office figure of the propaganda movie Beginning of the Great Revival .


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Cuba: Political Opposition  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Uncommon Sense links to statistics about politically motivated arrests and deduces that “the numbers, although different, agree on one point about repression in Cuba.  It is getting worse.”