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Women are leading the protests in Sudan · Global Voices
Romy Haber

“No to corrupt dictatorship,” a drawing by Tibyan Albasha. Used with permission.
Since December 2018, protests in Sudan that sparked over the tripled price of bread have turned into nationwide protests against the nearly three-decade rule regime of Omar Al Bashir.
Finally, on Thursday, April 11, 2019, Bashir was forced to step down.
AL-BASHIR IS OUT !! WE DID IT !!! #Sudan
— Alaa Salah (@iAlaaSalah) April 11, 2019
Bashir's government has used repressive tactics and measures to quell the protests. More than 40 protesters have been killed, hundreds detained and tortured.
The brutal response did not stop women from placing themselves firmly at the heart of the protests.
“There is no amount of beating or detention that could make us stop.”
These women and many more like them, are leading the huge protests against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.#SudanProtests l #SudanUprising pic.twitter.com/CWBr45Nbhn
— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) April 6, 2019
Today in Sudan we walk for women. Incarcerated women. Revolutionary women. Oppressed women. Refugee women. War torn women. Raped, battered and beat women. Women who are too loud and too brave for a country made for men.#مدن_السودان_تنتفض #موكب10فبراير #تسقط_بس #SudanUprising
— Qutoufy (@Qutoufy) February 10, 2019
They lead the march chanting a Zagrouda, an ululation commonly used by women in the Arab world to express celebration.
‘Zagrouda’ (or the women’s chant) has become the calling code for every protest in the street. When people hear these women’s voices, they know it’s the revolution call and that it’s time to start their march. #Sudan_Uprising pic.twitter.com/E2RasMe6tF
— Nandini (@nandi_naira) March 21, 2019
During the month of March, women wore the traditional white thobe in support of the protests and women's rights. Social media platforms filled with pictures of female protesters wearing the white robe, using the hashtag  #whitemarch (#مارس_الابيض)
Happy International Women’s Day
.
Impact Hub Khartoum Family
.#IWD19 #impacthub #impacthubkhartoum #WhiteMarch pic.twitter.com/HnJicvsLDQ
— Impact Hub Khartoum (@ImpactHubKRT) March 8, 2019
Women who protest regularly face police brutality. Authorities have fired tear gas and live ammunition and have even threatened with rape. Women have also reportedly been beaten, their faces have been branded and their hair cut off inside detention centers. Every day new footage of Sudanese women getting beaten and humiliated circulates on social media:
Excessive brutality against elderly and women by police force in Khartoum North #SudanUprising #Sudan_Revolts pic.twitter.com/usTEXp1c3f
— SudanUprising (@uprising_sudan) January 14, 2019
But the same hashtags are also used to show the bravery of women in Sudan.
#SupportSudan
Video showing a Sudanese girl throwing tear gas canister back at the security forces. #Sudan ese girls and women have shown bravery beyond belief during the #Sudanuprising. #مدن_االسودان_تنتفض #موكب14مارس pic.twitter.com/84XbERPwyg
— SUPPORT SUDAN (@All4Sudan) March 14, 2019
This week, a photo and a video from the protests have gone viral. A 22-year-old engineering and architecture student named Alaa Salah raised her right arm as she led the crowd in a chant called “Thawra” (Arabic for ‘revolution’). The video and photo would end up going viral and Sudanese activists are now referring to her as “Kandaka,” the title given to Nubian queens of ancient Sudan.
Don’t know her name, but this Woman in #Sudan is leading rallies, standing on car roofs, and pleading for change against autocratic Bashir.
Here she is singing “Thawra” (Revolution). Remember this voice: pic.twitter.com/0JG31Tp4rZ
— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) April 9, 2019
Illustrations shared on social networks transformed Salah into the “Sudanese Statue of Liberty.”
If one day I have a #daughter, I want her to be just like her♥ #AlaaSalah 22 year old engineering and architecture student chanting and leading protest in #Khartoum she is now a symbol of #Sudanese #Revolution and became the voice of #WomenRevolutions #Sudan #WomenLove #Peace pic.twitter.com/pWxqJvCKN1
— Houda Henniche (@HoudaHenniche) April 10, 2019
Behind the screen, Facebook groups once dominated by conversations about marriage and crushes are now used to expose police brutality. The women in these groups disclose videos and pictures of abusive security forces. When the identity is revealed, the agent concerned is often beaten up and chased out of town. The impact of these groups is remarkable — many security agents are now hiding their faces.
The Sudanese authorities have tried to block social media in the country, but the women bypass the blockade by using Virtual Private Networks (VPN), which can hide a user's location.
A revolution is never complete without art:
Happy women’s day .. To all the revolutionary phenomenal women out there .. keep up your حركات نسوان ; )
A post shared by  Alaa Satir (@alaasatir) on
Female painters, digital artists, and musicians have produced works of art to complement street protests. They use art to honor the endurance of the people, especially women. They make art to document the events and portraits of the victims and depict the reality of living under an oppressive system.
“Women are front, left and center of the revolution. When people started protesting, they were like, ‘Women should stay at home.’ But we were like — no.” said Islam Elbeiti a 24-year-old jazz bass player.
On March 12, the emergency court of appeals in Sudan, amid pressure from families of the women who rallied outside the courthouse, scrapped the flogging punishment of nine female Sudanese protesters that were sentenced to 20 lashes and one month in prison for rioting.
Flogging is a common form of punishment particularly for women in Sudan — they risk flogging for crimes like indecent clothing or adultery.
In 2014, a woman was sentenced to death for marrying a non-Muslim, which is considered adultery. In 2015, a woman was lashed 75 times for marrying a man without her father's consent.
In 2017, 24 women were arrested for wearing trousers, a violation of the country's strict Shari'a Law.
Sometimes the brutality goes beyond flogging: Many Sudanese women have been sentenced to death by stoning.
According to Reuters, Bashir defended his position on strict adherence to Shari'a law in Sudan in 2011:
We want to present a constitution that serves as a template to those around us. And our template is clear, a 100 percent Islamic constitution, without communism or secularism or Western (influences).
The Sudanese Penal code, which is based on an interpretation of the Shari'a (Islamic Law) allows girls as young as 10 to get married, and states that a woman's rape by her husband cannot be qualified as such.
On top of that, women have to face “morality laws” that chain them and oppress them on a daily basis.
For this reason, Sudanese women are on the front lines of the protests, fighting for change.

author: Romy Haber


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Argentina’s Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo find 129th child who went missing during 1970s dictatorship · Global Voices
Romina Navarro

A march by The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. Image by Emergentes, used with permission.
The Argentinian human rights group Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo found one more child that had been separated from their parents during the military dictatorship. The 42-year-old woman, who lives in Spain, is now the 129th child identified by the group, which has been locating and reuniting missing children with their biological families since the 1980s.
About 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared in Argentina during the 1976-1983 military rule. Many kidnapped women have birthed babies while in captivity, who were then appropriated by the state and illegally given for adoption to families of allies of the regime.
In 1987, the Argentine government established a national DNA database with blood samples of the missing grandchildren's family members, a crucial tool used by the Abuelas to confirm the parenthood of the located children. The group estimates the dictatorship has stolen 500 babies, now all adults in their middle age.
The 129th child, whose identity hasn't yet been revealed, is the biological daughter of Carlos Alberto Solsona and Norma Síntora, two engineering students who became leftist militants after the army overthrew the elected-government of Isabel Perón in 1976. Síntora was eight months pregnant with the couple's second child when she was kidnapped and forcibly disappeared by the state in March 1977.
The newfound daughter had been in touch with the Abuelas since 2013, but only agreed to take a DNA test in 2019. She is yet to meet her biological father and elder brother.
In a press conference organized by the Abuelas, Solsona said: “I created a sort of defense mechanism, a shield so that this wouldn’t destroy me. I am in my seventies, and I started searching for my daughter when I was in my thirties. (…) No one has any idea about the thousands of sleepless nights I spent waiting for this moment.”
But he also acknowledged that, thrilling as the prospect of the encounter is to him, it will certainly be difficult for his daughter, as it has been for many of the Abuelas’ found children who've come to learn about their true origins.
““
The Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo's mission has always been a difficult and delicate one, but it became particularly challenging since the 1990s after the missing children became legal adults with life stories of their own. The group's work requires not only deep archival research and DNA analysis but also psychological support for those involved.
Those are reunions in which someone's need for closure poses a threat to someone else's very sense of self. Not all families find healing, not all nietos embrace their lost past.
A series of documentaries produced by the Abuelas along with TV channel Canal Encuentro tells the stories behind some of those reunions. As its description says, they “give a voice and a face to stories in which the personal and the intimate are combined with the social and the political.” The videos are available on a playlist by the Abuelas’ YouTube channel.
One of the videos features testimony by Catalina de Sanctis. She confronted her adoptive family in the 1990s after seeing an Abuelas’ television advert, who then confessed to her they had appropriated her. After a life of skepticism of her biological origins, she says, the advert suddenly “made everything clear.” She remarks:
Es como si [la vida] fuera una foto fuera de foco, que se ve borrosa y ahora se ve nítidamente la imagen. Toda mi vida fue un esfuerzo. Un esfuerzo por adaptarme, por que me quieran, por todo […] tener miedo de lo no conoce, me sentí tironeada, manipulada […] En un punto es sentir que traiciona al otro.
It’s as if [life] was a picture out of focus, a blurry picture and now the the image is clearly seen. All my life has been a struggle. A struggle to adapt, to be loved, for everything […] having fear of the unknown, I felt torn, manipulated […] At one point it was feeling like having betrayed someone else.
In another video, Mariana Zaffaroni describes what it was like when she found out the truth:
…cuando a vos te vienen a decir que toda tu vida pasa a ser completamente diferente porque ni siquiera te llamas como te llaman y cumples años cuando festejas el cumpleaños, ni tus padres son tus padres y vos sos quien sos [Uno le echa la culpa] al que viene a decírtelo [Después, cuando] lo puede racionalizar se da cuenta de que es una estupidez […] Si ellos no hubiesen buscado yo no hubiese enterado y yo seguiría con mi vida normal como la tenía esta recién entonces
When they come and tell you, all your life becomes something else, because your name is not your name, nor is your birthday the day you celebrate it, your parents are not your parents and you're not who you think you are. [One blames] the person who told you. [Afterwards, when you think it through] you realize it's stupid. […] If they hadn't looked for me I would have learned nothing and would have continued with my life as it was.
I kept on getting to know [my real family] and they told me more about how my parents were, little as it was because I didn't want to listen [in the beginning]. [Some time later, during a summer trip] with all my cousins […] we were sitting and we were all in flip flops, and we looked at each other… We all had the same feet, it was crazy! We all had the same ears. It was like when the ugly little duckling finds the swans.
Just as with every person found by the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, the news of the discovery of the 129th child was celebrated in Argentina. On social networks, people used the hashtag #Nieta129. In the following tweet, Claudia Acuña, who contributes to online media and collective “La Vaca”, says:
Cuando te secuestraron y desaparecieron tenías 24 años y estabas embarazada de 8 meses. Hoy recuperamos algo. A tu hija, nada menos. Y un cachito de dignidad social. De a poquito vamos mejorando. Faltan 300. #Nieta129 pic.twitter.com/fF3va1sJTq
— Claudia Acuña (@muclaudia) April 9, 2019
You were 24 when you were kidnapped and you were eight months pregnant. We have recovered something today. Your daughter, no less. And a small bite of social dignity. We're getting better, little by little. 300 to go.
Meanwhile, user “Pato” quotes Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano to highlight the resilience by the Abuelas, who were once called “those crazy women” by the government.
“… En Argentina, las locas de la Plaza de Mayo serán un ejemplo de salud mental, porque ellas se negaron a olvidar en los tiempos de la amnesia obligatoria…” (Eduardo Galeano)
129 goles contra el olvido, y contando.
Que vivan las locas de Plaza de Mayo. Que vivan. #Nieta129 pic.twitter.com/r6cJBobhuf
— Pato ? (@PatriciaCC89) April 9, 2019
“…In Argentina, those crazy women of Plaza de Mayo will be an example of mental health, because they have refused to forget in times of compulsory amnesia…” (Eduardo Galeano) 129 goals against oblivion, and counting. Long live the madwomen of Plaza de Mayo. Long live. #Nieta129

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Romina Navarro


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Easter in Trinidad & Tobago looks (and tastes) like this · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

A post shared by Solitary man (@barefoot.wanderer868) on
The Easter holidays fall smack dab in the middle of Trinidad and Tobago's dry season — which means that “staycationers” choose a lot of outdoor activities to pass the time. Here's a glimpse at some of them, as well as a few other celebrated traditions that define Easter in the twin-island nation.
This is the time of year that the Tabebuia (or Poui, as it is locally known) goes into full bloom, dotting the hillsides and roadsides with blazing yellow flowers. One strain of Poui produces delicate pink flowers, reminiscent of Japan's cherry blossoms. No matter the colour, the sight of a Poui tree in full bloom is nothing short of breathtaking, and each year, social media users share their snaps on Facebook and Instagram. It just wouldn't feel like Easter without that Poui perfection!
A post shared by Trinidad & Tobago (IZATRINI) (@izatrini_com) on
A post shared by Riaz Mohammed (@riaz_mohammed_) on
It's a delicious treat any time of year, but this brightly coloured combination of crushed ice, syrups of varying flavours and (quite often) condensed milk, seems extra refreshing around Easter time. Vendors frequent popular beaches and the Queen's Park Savannah (the capital's main green space) to attract potential customers.
A post shared by InSeason Tours Ltd. (@inseason.tours) on
A post shared by Natalake ???? (@iamnatalake) on
Another popular Easter tradition is kite-flying, with a contest held each year on Easter Sunday at the Queen's Park Savannah.
A post shared by Petal Howell (@petal1hunned) on
Easter Sunday kite-flying contestants, Queen's Park Savannah, Trinidad. Photo by Georgia Popplewell, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
It's also a common sight at this time of year to see cricket teams decked out in their “whites”, playing friendly matches in community sports grounds (and yes, at the Savannah).
A post shared by Chris Leuenberger (@leuenbergerchris) on
Easter wouldn't quite be Easter without the special treat of hot cross buns. As far as religious denominations go, Trinidad and Tobago's population is predominantly Christian, and the buns are traditionally eaten on Good Friday.
A post shared by Peche Patisserie (@pechepatisserie) on

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Free by day, jailed by night: Egyptian activists speak out against conditional release · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

Shawkan enjoying a day out, before he is locked again for the night. Photo taken by Wael Abbas and posted on the photojournalist's Twitter account.
Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan, spent five years in prison for simply doing his job as a journalist.
He was detained on August 14, 2013 as he was photographing the deadly dispersal of the Rabaa El Adaweya sit-in, in which supporters of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi gathered to protest a military coup that ended his presidency on July 3 that same year. Egyptian security forces killed at least 817 people and injured many more, according to Human Rights Watch, when they dispersed the sit-in.
Shawkan, who was working for Demotix at the time of his arrest, spent almost four years in pre-trial detention before his trial, along with 739 other defendants in what came to be known as the “Rabaa Dispersal Case,” began. In September 2018, a Cairo Criminal Court convicted him on spurious charges of murder and affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, and a few months later he was released from jail.
Shawkan’s supporters were thrilled to see him reunited with his loved ones when he was released on March 4. But the journalist is actually only partially free. Every evening at 6pm, he has to report to his local police station where he has to spend the night, before he is free again at 6am the following morning. Shawkan needs to do this every day for five years after his release.
“I want to be free so I can return to normal life,” Shawkan told Deutsche Welle after his release in reference to his probation period.
On Twitter and Instagram, the journalist has been reflecting and posting about his life under these restrictive conditions and his daily hours of freedom, from 6am to 6pm.
On March 31, he posted about his visit to the pyramids in Giza.
الاهرامات من ورا ..
فسحة قريبة من مكان المراقبة عشان الوقت.#pyramids #Egypt#halffreesom#from6to6 pic.twitter.com/wS1iGfoUxd
— Shawkan (@ShawkanZeid) March 31, 2019
The pyramids are at the back.
A trip nearby the place of supervision [police station where he has to spend the night] because of the [lack of] time.
On April 6, using the hashtag نص_حرية# (“half freedom” in English) he posted a photo on Instagram, taken from his seat on a motorcycle. He explained that in order to arrive to the police station on time each night, he travels by motorcycle so he can avoid traffic.
Shawkan’s story is not unique in Egypt. Prominent Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, who was released from jail on March 28, is also under a similar probation period. Alaa spent five years in jail for defying a protest ban, and like Shawkan, he has to spend the night at a police station for the next five years.
”Freedom for Alaa”. Since his ”release”, Alaa has been speaking out against the conditions of his probation. Photo by the Freedom for Alaa campaign.
Alaa has also been reflecting on life under probation.
“I am happy to see your joy over my release, but I am unfortunately not free,” Alaa wrote on Facebook days after his release. “Every day I surrender myself to a humiliation called [police] monitoring.”
In another post, he wrote: “I do not know how to describe the beautiful feeling of seeing [his son] Khaled’s swimming lesson for the first time. I also don’t know how to describe the cruelty of leaving him in mid-lesson to be on time for the monitoring.”
Alaa’s sister, Mona Seif, who is also a human rights activist, likened the conditions of her brother’s imprisonment every night to “solitary confinement”.
Alaa has to turn himself in to Dokki police station every day at 6 pm and they let him go at 6 am.
When he turns himself in, they keep him isolated from all others in a small wooden kiosk within the police station. They lock him in for 12 hrs.
These are worst conditions than the ones he had to endure in prison for five years. Alaa is practically now spending half his day in solitary confinement in the police station, and he is looking at five years more of this nightmare
Alaa has also learned that speaking out against these conditions can pose a risk of additional jail time. On the night of April 9, security officers threatened to throw him back in jail if he keeps exposing the conditions of his probation.
Ahmed Maher, a political activist with the April 6 Youth Movement, spent three years behind bars for illegal demonstration. He was released in January 2017 and placed under police monitoring a period equal to the amount of time he spent in jail. On Twitter, he described the conditions of this period:
في المراقبة، بيكون مكان النوم أكثر قذارة من السجن، والتعسف بيكون اكتر، رغم إن بالقانون مش من حقهم يحبسونا في القسم ولا يحرمونا من عيالنا وشغلنا ودراستنا وحياتنا الطبيعية.
بالقانون ممكن المراقبة تكون ألطف وأكثر آدمية، لكن واضح إن المحرك هو الرغبة في التنكيل والإذلال ليس إلا. https://t.co/vIARjRLS3K
— ِAhmed Maher (@Ahmed_Maher08) April 4, 2019
Under police monitoring, where we sleep is much dirtier than in prison and there is more arbitrariness, even though according to law, they do not have the right to imprison us in a police station or to deprive us of our children, our work, our studies and our normal lives. According to law, monitoring should be more gentle and more humane, but it is clear that the motivation is nothing but a desire to abuse and humiliate.
This practice of locking former prisoners overnight is an abuse of power. According to legal analysts and human rights NGOs, those placed under monitoring are supposed to be able to spend the night in their homes. Only those who are without a place to live in the area of their local police station, are required to spend the night in official custody.
Yasmin Omar and Mai El-Sadaby of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy wrote:
After an individual is sentenced to a probation period decided by the judge at sentencing, the law empowers the sentenced individual to designate a residence at which to serve his or her probation period. However, the law additionally authorizes authorities to select a location for probation if no residence is provided, as well as to determine whether or not a location selected by the defendant is appropriate for police surveillance. This discretion has been used to systematically erode the right of individuals to complete their probation periods at their stated residence—a right guaranteed to them under law—and instead force individuals who have residences where police surveillance can clearly occur to spend them at police stations.
Yet at the end of each day, many Egyptians are forced to retreat to a small cell in a police station, away from their loved ones and the rest of the world: they are out of prison, but not really free. Many are activists, protesters and journalists, whose only crimes were to exercise their fundamental rights to freedom of expression, assembly and protest.

author: Afef Abrougui


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How Uzbeks learned to love (and live on) the Telegram messenger app · Global Voices
Murodjon Tuhtasinov

In Uzbekistan, when parting with a good friend, it is customary to say “gaplashamiz” or “telefonlashamiz”. In translation, this means “let’s talk again” or “we will call each other.” Increasingly, however, Uzbeks are saying “telegramlashamiz” to one another: Let's talk on Telegram.
Telegram is the most widely used social messenger in Uzbekistan and for many people it has essentially usurped the very concept of the Internet.
At the time of writing this article, Telegram was the second-most downloaded application on iOS in Uzbekistan, after Instagram, and the second most downloaded on Android behind Share (see screenshots above and below).
On Telegram – an app created by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov and subsequently blocked by authorities in his home country – users can send private messages to their contacts, chat in group chats and run a microblog, or “channel.”
The low-maintenance and user-friendly nature of channels has made them the largest source of information in Uzbekistan.
Currently, there are several Uzbek-language telegrams channels among the service’s largest 20. They are eclipsed only by Persian-language channels followed mostly by users based in Iran, where Telegram-mania took off long ago.
The largest Uzbek channel in terms of subscribers is Kanallani Dodasi, which means “best channel” in Uzbek. It has 810 thousand subscribers, equivalent to 2.5% of the country’s population.
Powering the rapid growth of messenger services as a whole in Uzbekistan was a sharp increase in the cost of mobile communications in 2013, when authorities introduced a so-called subscription tax, obliging mobile operators to pay a tax on each subscriber.
For some time, Uzbek users resorted to various messengers before settling on Telegram, which did not release a version for android until the end of that year.
Word of mouth and personal recommendations helped to boost the popularity of the service, where administrators share experiences of healthy eating, solving problems at school or starting their own business.
Groups, meanwhile, are places of energetic discussion.
If before, important problems of Uzbek communities were solved over meetings at long tables heaving with teaware and bowls of pilau, now these issues are adjudicated via Telegram. While the messenger has not yet displaced the Uzbek mahalla or neighbourhood, it has embedded itself into it, and looks to be there for the long haul.
One of Telegram’s main advantages in a country where the internet remains slow is the fact that the platform is quite economical in terms of traffic consumption vis-à-vis other messengers.
Another is its relatively good encryption. This has been a sore point for the Russian internet regulator Roskomnadzor which blocked the service last year, after Telegram refused to hand over its encryption keys. Uzbek labor migrants working in Russia are among the hundreds of thousands of users who have turned to tools to circumvent the block.
Back at home, the government has not yet tried to censor the service despite imposing blocks of over a year from October 2017 on social networks like Facebook. In fact, the loss of speed and unnecessary traffic consumption entailed by VPN use to access Facebook during the block, which was brought to an abrupt end in January 2019, drove many well-known bloggers into the arms of Telegram.
It is perhaps surprising that authorities have allowed the service to grow so rapidly.
After all, Telegram is a magnet for the type of content Uzbekistan has censored in the past, such as pornography, while the fact that users can remain anonymous has also made it a hub for blue language, trolling, and all of the other bad etiquette associated with the Internet. Locally tailored clickbait abounds.
More importantly, perhaps, Telegram has become a forum for unprecedented levels political discussion as the country eases itself into a slightly more relaxed form of authoritarian rule following the death of long-ruling leader Islam Karimov in 2016.
The most obvious example of this was in autumn of last year, when pictures of farmers being made to stand in a ditch in front of officials as punishment for poor harvesting emerged online.
Telegram helped “channel” indignation over the humiliation of farmers by regional officials. Photo widely shared and republished by local media.
Telegram became indignation central in the days after the picture appeared. Users called for Zoir Mirzayev the deputy prime minister, who, along with regional officials watched over the punishment, to stand in a ditch himself. Photos circulated showing Uzbek users standing in ditches in solidarity with the farmers, and faux adverts for long waterproof boots as “the best remedy to counter angry officials.”
Mirzayev was subsequently sacked by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who stressed officials’ role as servants of the people.
But the government has its own significant presence on the service too. In addition to countless pro-government accounts and bots, state organs and even Mirziyoyev’s office — 250,000 followers and counting — all have their own channels.
Finally, Telegram is becoming a hub for economic activity.
Just like on Instagram and YouTube in other countries, the best-loved bloggers look to expand their audiences aggressively and monetise content, while a number of Telegram shops have thrown open their virtual doors in recent times.
Major Uzbek companies, such as mobile operator Ucell spend significant sums of money on keeping adverts running across channels with lots of followers. A single advert-clip on a channel with around 50,000 subscribers costs $24 at present.
Far from being a passing fad, Telegram is putting down stronger and stronger roots in Uzbekistan. The service whose growth in the country at one point felt almost accidental is now a mirror to a nation on the move.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the block on Facebook in Uzbekistan lasted from October 2018 until January 2019. The block actually began in October 2017.

author: Murodjon Tuhtasinov


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Game of Thrones and climate change: brace yourselves, summer is coming! · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Photo: Public domain via PXhere. https://pxhere.com/en/photo/780571
By Cassia Moraes
Imagine a world where political clans fight for power while ignoring a threat never seen before—and which could annihilate their societies without much consideration for human-made boundaries.
That narrative could describe the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, set for release on April 14, in which the fate of Westeros will be sealed as the army of the dead finally makes its way through The Wall. It could also describe the current state of world politics, where figures such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro wage war against multilateralism at the moment we need it the most. Political distractions like billionaire walls and celebration of past dictatorships occupy their agenda while the real — and potentially irreversible — threats posed by climate change are already upon us.
In the HBO series, the Great Houses fail in addressing the worst danger Westeros has ever faced, and in real life, the scenario is not much different. Those who have historically been the main contributors to climate change are not taking action to offset their activities, while emerging countries like China, today's major emitter of greenhouse gases, use the poor response from developed countries as an excuse to postpone their own. Although the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities reinforces emerging countries’ position, they will also be losers if we fail to tackle climate change as a global community. Perhaps the metaphor of the white walkers makes it easier to understand why the prisoner's dilemma strategy of maximizing individual benefits is an illusion. If Westeros loses the war against the white walkers, there will be no throne for Cersei or anyone to sit in.
So why is so difficult for most Westerosi to respond to the imminent catastrophe coming from the north of the Wall? One can say that it is hard to understand something you have never seen, and which contradicts the experiences from your ancestors. Perhaps that was the reason Jon Snow risked his life and the future of Westeros to capture a “living” white walker (if there is such a thing). As the show’s Don Quixote, Snow believes he can win political inertia by literally throwing the problem in decision-makers’ faces. After all, who would deny the existence of a creature if it almost bit you?
It’s interesting to consider how people would behave if there were no more doubts about the existence or dangerousness of white walkers. There are three basic responses, all of which have analogues in the current climate change crisis:
Perhaps you did not previously believe in white walkers (or climate change) or underestimated the risk they posed. But recent facts forced you to rethink your position and everything you considered important so far. This happened to Daenerys Targaryen, who took a break on her quest for the throne to deal with a more pressing and irreversible issue. Jaime Lannister also breaks his unwavering loyalty to his sister Cersei and joins their former enemy to fight for everyone's survival. Jon Snow goes even farther and teaches the enemy how to kill a white walker, revealing a military secret for the common good. In real life, actions such as Elon Musk's release of all Tesla patents remember us that there is no competitive advantage that would survive in a disrupted world.
Like the characters mentioned above, Euron Greyjoy had his world view and priorities shaken by an encounter with a white walker. Nevertheless, he still chose not to join the coalition led by Daenerys. After Jon Snow confirmed that white walkers cannot swim, Euron decides to abandon Cersei and everyone else and return to his island, where he believes he will be safe from the army of the dead. He even advises Daenerys to do the same, saying that they both could rule the world when this crisis ends.
Would there be anything to rule by then, though?
To return to the climate change analogy and multilateral cooperation, countries like the United States or Brazil may have less at stake than Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. But it is an illusion to believe that they would be immune to the impacts of climate change. No one will.
Cersei believes she can keep—or even increase—her power while the rest of the world freezes to death. She not only refuses to join the resistance—she is also planning to attack them and maximize her short-term gains. Countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia also block international cooperation for the sake of their fossil fuel industries. But while those industries provide short-term earnings to their GDP, fossil fuels will not protect those countries’ populations from the increasing effects of climate change.
Another similarity between the white walkers and climate change is the unpredictability of their attacks. Both threats are somewhat alien to humans, and there is not much time left to prepare for them. After almost 25 years of discussing what to do at annual UN conferences (COPs), world leaders are now being pressured by school children to stop talking and start acting. Brazil even gave up the presidency of the next COP, set to happen this year in that country, thus closing the door to new investments and cooperation opportunities.
Game of Thrones exemplifies what can happen if we do not heed the children's cries. When Daenerys loses one of her dragons to the Night King, the impact of the army of the dead is immediately intensified. This single event changes the whole scenario in a flash, potentially condemning everyone to death.
The effects of climate change, likewise, could intensify quite abruptly: a future level of warming could push the global climate to a tipping point, causing unforeseen and irreversible changes to physical systems. It is uncertain what this level is for different processes, but it increases dramatically for temperatures above 1-3 C. These processes could also intensify over time. Given that most aspects of climate change will persist over centuries, and higher increases in temperature could result in positive effects that leverage warming even more, mitigation policies should apply the principle of precaution to avoid catastrophic and irreversible changes to the earth’s climatic system.
Cassia Moraes is the founder and CEO of Youth Climate Leaders (YCL). She has an MPA degree in Development Practice from Columbia University and serves on the Lemann Fellows board of the Columbia Global Center Rio de Janeiro. Learn more about Youth Climate Leaders 2019 Immersion programme here.

author: Guest Contributor


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Inside the Lebanese campaign to stop a World Bank-funded dam project · Global Voices
Hassan Chamoun

Armed forces enter the Bisri valley to counter protesters on March 24, 2019. Photo by “Save the Bisri Valley”. Used with permission.
A group of activists and protestors calling themselves the Save the Bisri Valley campaign have been organizing and standing against the construction of a Dam in the Bisri Valley in Lebanon. The Birsi Dam is a project mainly funded by a loan from the World Bank.
The group recently disrupted a talk by the World Bank's vice president at the American University of Beirut.
إحتجاج خلال محاضرة نائب رئيس البنك الدولي
طلاب الجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت وبعض الناشطين والأهالي يحتجّون على مشروع سد بسري خلال محاضرة لنائب رئيس البنك الدولي.
#أنقذوا_مرج_بسري
Posted by Save the Bisri Valley أنقذوا مرج بسري on Wednesday, 27 March 2019
“You and your project are not welcomed here,” an activist told the vice president in English. She then continued in Arabic:
You come to us and patronize us and say that you explained [the dam] to the Lebanese people [but] there are numerous campaigns against the Bisri dam. It is you who are closing your ears and it is you who don't want to hear the people. Your papers and studies were all opposed by other papers and studies. But you don't want to hear anyone. This is your choice because you want to apply your private project. We are against your project, and against everything the World Bank is doing in Lebanon!
Roland Nassour, coordinator and co-organizer of Save the Bisri Valley Campaign, said that the goal of the action was to “contest the World Bank's ill-advised and destructive water policies in Lebanon.”
According to Nassour, the dam's construction hasn't started yet but is planned to begin in a couple of months.
“Most of the lands have been expropriated and the contractor is getting ready to start working on site in parallel with the archeological excavation,” Nassour continued.
The campaign, which mainly communicates through its Facebook page, stands against the dam for several reasons.
According to the campaign, the dam threatens the environment, public health, historic and cultural heritage, agriculture. The dam will also impoverish residents of the region who rely on the fertile lands of the valley, and force them to move out. It will disconnect residents of the area from each other due to the new artificial lake being created between them.
Additionally, the loan given by the World Bank will be added to Lebanon's public debt. Lebanon has one of the highest general government gross debt to gross domestic product ratio (157.8 percent) in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The group also argues that the dam will be threatened by cyanobacteria that already infects Lake Qaraoun in the Bekaa Valley in East Lebanon. Mixing the water of the Bisri Valley and the water of the Qaraoun dam, which is also intended to be sent to the Greater Beirut region, will contaminate the water and risks its usability as a water source.
On April 1, the campaign published a song with the same melody as the Italian resistance anthem “Bella Ciao.” Multiple people sang against the Bisri Dam. A child at the start of the song sings: “We want nature, we don't want to sell it, we want flowers, we want birds, we want gardens and fields.”
بدنا محمية طبيعية
ما بدنا سد بمرج بسري ♪♫
بدنا محمية طبيعية ♫♪
#أنقذوا_مرج_بسري
Posted by Save the Bisri Valley أنقذوا مرج بسري on Monday, 1 April 2019
Roland Riachi, a researcher at the American University of Beirut (AUB) on natural resources management, food economics, water policies, social and ecological justice, said in an interview with the Lebanese activist group Megaphone that the dam cannot even be filled due to the porous rocks of the region.
مقابلة مع رولان الرياشي
هل السدود حلّ مناسب لأزمة المياه؟
Posted by Megaphone – ميغافون on Tuesday, 12 March 2019
He also added that the World Bank already funded dams that failed. He added that geologists believe the project will destabilize the region and may result in earthquakes. According to a paper written by  Dr. V. P Jauhari
The most widely accepted explanation of how dams cause earthquakes is related to the extra water pressure created in the micro-cracks and fissures in the ground under and near a reservoir.
When Riachi was asked about why the government is insisting on the dam project, he answered that dams are profitable to the Lebanese ruling class and serve as symbols of power, comparing the megalomania of Lebanese officials to the likes of Mussolini and Franco.
On March 24, a march to stand against the Bisri Valley was met with militarized vehicles of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces. Nassour said that armed forces weren't used to protect the project in itself,
…but rather to protect the politicians’ interests that lie behind this dam. Evidence of corruption and conflict of interests has been presented to the relevant authorities but no action has been taken until now.
Tarek Serhan, an activist and protestor from You Stink movement, an environmentalist and human rights group in Lebanon, had his megaphone confiscated when he protested alone at the headquarters of the World Bank in downtown Beirut.
Speaking to Global Voices, he said that he made the decision to protest alone when he saw the pictures of the armed vehicles in the Birsi Dam. He blamed the state of finding “easy solutions” that just bring in lucrative deals. “They are not considering serious solutions that will take into consideration citizens’ health and the environment,” Serhan said.
After speaking through his megaphone for nearly an hour, police handcuffed him and brought him to a police station. He was blamed for causing public disturbance, according to him. He was asked by Internal Security Forces to pledge not to protest  again, but Serhan refused to sign it. His megaphone is still confiscated.
As for Nassour, the Save the Bisri Valley Campaign coordinator, he said that the campaign is growing and that it will eventually succeed, adding:
The Lebanese are more and more aware of the project's catastrophic impacts.

author: Hassan Chamoun


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For the first time in the country’s history, a woman will lead a public university in Mozambique · Global Voices
Alexandre Nhampossa

Emília Nhalevilo, dean of Púnguè University. Photo by Emília Nhalevilo, used with permission.
In March 2019, Mozambican professor Emília Nhalevilo took office as dean of the recently-created Púnguè University, becoming thus the first women to ever lead a public university in the African country.
She was nominated by President Filipe Nyusi, but the decision about the recently-created universities was announced by the Council of Ministers on January 29. Nhalevilo will remain in office, in principle, for a period of four years.
Born in Nampula, the most populous province in Mozambique, Nhalevilo holds a doctorate and master's degree in education from the University of Perth, Australia, and a bachelor's degree in science education from Pedagogical University (UP).
From 2005 to 2007, she worked as Professor at Curtin University of Technology, in Australia. In 2008, Nhalevilo became the head of the chemistry department at UP, and then took office as deputy director of the Center for Mozambican Studies and Ethnoscience, a research center at the same institution.
In 2017, she was a fellow with the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development of New York University, in the United States.
Nhalevilo was the vice-dean for research and extension in the UP since 2018.
As dean of a public university, her current position is equivalent to that of a minister in Mozambique.
Eliana Nzualo, an activist and feminist blogger, says Nhalevilo's appointment is a historic moment:
UM DIA NA HISTÓRIA
Professora Doutora Emília Nhalevilo é a primeira mulher na liderança de uma Universidade Pública em Moçambique. Parabéns à Magnífica Reitora!
Por mais mulheres nas Universidades,
Por mais mulheres na liderança!
HISTORY DAY
Professor Emília Nhalevilo is the first woman to lead a Public University in Mozambique.
Congratulations to the Magnificent Rector!
For more women in the Universities,
For more women in the lead!
In Mozambique, women still face challenges in accessing leadership and management positions. But there have been improvements: in the current parliament, for example, both the president of the assembly and the heads of the two largest political caucus are women.
But gender inequality still prevails in the southern African country.
The UNDP's 2016 Africa Human Development Report, whose title is “Accelerating Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Africa,” revealed that Mozambican women and girls continue to suffer from inequalities, such as poor access to justice, poor access to school and health care, and repeated acts of violence.
In 2018, there were 25,356 cases of domestic violence in Mozambique, of which 12,500 were against women and 9,000 against children.
Mozambique ranks 10th in the world for child marriages, according to a UNICEF report from 2015. The organization defines “child marriage” as a marital union in which at least one person is under the age of 18.
In mid-2018, pilot Admira António became the first woman to ever captain a flight in Mozambique, while in December 2018, an all-female flight crew took to the skies for the first time.
In 2014, when the Police of the Republic of Mozambique turned 39, Arsenia Massingue was presented as the first woman general in the corporation.

author: Alexandre Nhampossa


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Teenager’s tragic death at Baku school directs anger towards Azerbaijan’s broken system · Global Voices
Rahim Shaliyev

Elina Hajiyeva. Illustration provided by Meydan TV and used with permission.
The shocking suicide of a 14-year-old girl at a state school in Azerbaijan's capital Baku has brought to light the stigma surrounding school bullying in the ex-Soviet country and sparked demands for officials to be held accountable.
Elina Hajiyeva's mother Sevil Hüseynova says her daughter had repeatedly complained of suffering bullying at the School No. 162 in Baku that she was recently enrolled into, but noted that the director of the school, Sevinj Abbasova, had ignored the complaints and insisted all was well.
Wilful reluctance to engage with allegations of bullying is not uncommon in Azerbaijan's schools and on this occasion it had tragic consequences.
On April 4, Hajiyeva threw herself out of a third floor window in the school and died after being hospitalised.
The lengths Abbasova allegedly went to cover up the death proved a tipping point for many Azerbaijanis, who have been posting news and views about Elina's death under the hashtags #BullinqəSon (end bullying) and #ElinaÜçünSusma (Don’t be quiet about Elina).
Activists like Nijat Mammadbayli provided the initial push to amplify the story, which trended all week on Azerbaijani social media.
#ElinaüçünSusma pic.twitter.com/zR8kTr9sAC
— Bahruz Samadov (@bahruz_samad) 10 Nisan 2019
Specifically, Abbasova has been accused of pressuring one of Elina's classmates not to talk about the incident with the press and also pressuring journalists to cover the event in a way favourable to the school.
The first of these accusations was issued by the classmate herself in an interview with independent journalist Nurlan Libre.
The second emerged after news website Mövqe.az released what appeared to be a recording of Abbasova telling one of the website's journalists to “write it in this way”:
Write it in this way. She is a child of an immoral, failed family. Her mother got married for the second time and has other children and she does not care about her (Elina).
On April 12, Abbasova, her deputy Lala Maharramov and school psychologist Konul Agayeva were all dismissed. Many users have called for them to be prosecuted.
Video blogger Alikhan Rajabov made a heart-rending clip about Hajiyeva's death that was widely shared.
On April 11, Hijran Huseynova, the chairperson of the Azerbaijani State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs said that Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev had taken the investigation into Hajieva's death under his personal control.
But the incident is already fostering revulsion at the authoritarian system he oversees, not least due to claims that school officials delayed sending Elina to hospital as part of a damage limitation exercise, and that hospital staff violated procedures while she was in their care.
Regionally-focused website Eurasianet reported:
Videos have emerged on social media that show an injured Hajiyeva in the office of the principal after the incident. In these videos, administrators try to make a half-conscious Hajiyeva admit to suicidal tendencies and place the blame on family difficulties rather than bullying issues at the school. Nearly two hours after the initial attempt, an ambulance was finally called.
Yet according to information obtained by Meydan TV, the person who questioned Hajiyeva in the video was not a school official but Khalida Bayramova, the deputy head of Sabail District Executive Authority and a friend of school director Abbasova.
The apparent involvement of a local government official in a country where school officials are perceived as benefiting from political patronage and nepotism has further politicised the tragedy.
Public criticism also homed in on hospital staff after a distressing video filmed by journalist Gulnara Ramazanova on April 7 showed scenes of disorder after Hajiyeva's life support was turned off, reportedly without her father's consent.
“Where are the doctors? Where are the officials of the hospital? Why is it (hospital) security who are talking to us?” Ramazanova can be heard asking.
A post by Meydan TV journalist Habib Muntazir indicates the potential scope of blame for Hajiyeva's death.
The following persons, who either caused the suicide of Elina Hajiyeva, ignored her death or remained indifferent to it, and who lied to the public must be investigated. If they are found guilty, they must be punished accordingly: Sevinj Abbasova, director of School No.162; Chimnaz Hajiyeva, teacher of the schoolgirl; [name redacted due to status as a minor], a pupil of 11th grade at school No.162; Doctors at the hospital “Semashko”: surgeons Vagif Nagiyev, Ilgar Ibrahimov, Fazil Aliyev the reanimatologist, Azer Maqsudov, the Head of Toxicology Department; Adalat Dadashov, the Chief Medical Officer, Adil Salahov, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Clinical Medical Center No. 1; Parviz Abubakirov, the spokesman for the Health Ministry; the school psychologist and (Abbasova's) husband who is trying to save her from blame.
On April 11 parents of pupils at School No. 162 held a memorial for Hajiyeva in front of the school and called for the director's arrest. One protesting parent said that she had raised the school management's unprofessionalism with local authorities recently after her own child had had problems at the school, but had been ignored.
A year ago, I complained to government agencies about the school administration. If these complaints had been considered, Elina would not be dead today.

author: Rahim Shaliyev


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‘I invented the term Afroczech’: An interview with Czech-Nigerian author Obonete Ubam · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Obonete Ubam (centre) at the public presentation of his book “Sedm let v Africe,” (“Seven Years in Africa” in English) at a major bookstore in Prague, Czech Republic. Image by Filip Noubel and used with permission.
Obonete Ubam is a Czech-Nigerian former activist and author who recently released a new book, “Sedm let v Africe,” or “Seven Years in Africa,” which recounts the years he spent in Nigeria.
Ubam was born to a Czech mother and a Nigerian father, and lived, until the age of 15, with his mother in Bruntál, a provincial city of then-Czechoslovakia, as the only mixed-race child in the community. His parents met as foreign students in Soviet Kyiv but his mother eventually returned to then-Czechoslavkia and his father returned to Nigeria after completing their studies.
Ubam spent one semester in Lagos, Nigeria, at a military school and was perceived in Nigeria as an oyibo — a foreigner or a mixed-race person. He also served as the first Afroczech military personnel in the Czech army and also worked for a number of years at the head of the League of Ethnic Minorities.
At the age of 28, Ubam lost his father and it was his responsibility as the eldest son to lead his family and take care of his father’s business. He spent seven years there and in his book, he narrates how he discovered and embraced his Nigerian heritage, and eventually became a chief in his native Anaang ethnic group.
The Czech Republic, particularly outside of Prague, remains a predominantly white society with very few ethnic minorities, except for Roma and Vietnamese communities, who often experience daily racism and discrimination. While some political parties have an openly anti-Muslim, and anti-refugee agenda, the issue of race is seldom addressed in the public space.
After seven years in Nigeria, Ubam moved to Spain to enjoy more sunny days and also because he felt that he could blend in better in Spain than in the Czech Republic.
Ubam's book created a media sensation in the Czech Republic with major radio and TV stations interviews.
Global Voices’ managing editor Filip Noubel interviewed Ubam in Prague upon the publication of his book.
Obonete Ubam during the interview in Prague. Image by Filip Noubel and used with permission
interviews
Obonete Ubam (OU): Identity was the basic thing because I was growing in a little mountainous town on the then Czechoslovak-Polish border. There were a few mixed-race kids in the county, but back then, we didn’t know each other, and it would have been five such kids in a population of 70,000. I grew up in a very Czech environment and faced some problems. Because when you go out, the world lets you know that you are visually different. When you go back home, your family is composed of people for whom you are also visually different. That leaves you alone, with nothing to relate to. And there comes a moment when you realize you are missing something.
I have lived in the Czech Republic, in Nigeria, now I live in Spain. In every part of the world, you have a different social status, and you need to adjust your behavior. That process changes you. In the end, I developed a different identity for every place where I live. Of course, those identities overlap at a certain point, and that’s where I am really me: I am not the writer from the Czech Republic, I am not the chief from Nigeria, I am not the cool guy from Spain, I am just me.
OU: I actually invented the term of Afroczech — because it defines people like me most precisely. Back in 2000, I founded the League of Ethnic Minorities and invented that word. In the late 1990s, the Czech Republic was proudly accepted to NATO and preparing to join the EU. A number of social issues started to be debated, including racism. (…) With a few friends, we created a [digital] info system about ethnic minorities, then expanded our work to launch nationwide media campaigns. Our biggest contribution was to say publicly that being Czech doesn’t equal being white.
On the issue of race, the Czech Republic is actually going backwards. The rhetoric used by certain Czech politicians now would have been unthinkable just ten years ago. … Certain politicians are channeling the frustration of people towards discrimination and attacks. I witnessed that in the late 1990s with the emergence of an extreme-right movement. Roma people died as a result. I attended their funerals, and that’s why we created the League. I then personally received death threats on my phone. Now we are getting back to that, and it’s scary.
There are probably several hundred, perhaps thousands of Afroczechs, but we are not recognized as an ethnic minority. The majority of Afroczechs I know consider themselves Czechs, and that’s it. There has been no attempt to set a group, establish a census. There is indeed a sense of ‘us’ but not of community. In fact, there are so few of us that we all know each other. Considering how few Afroczechs there are, it is amazing to see what they have been able to accomplish. Yet, there is clearly a glass ceiling: I can’t imagine an Afroczech president, for example.
Obonete Ubam's newly released book describing the seven years he spent in Nigeria. Image by Filip Noubel and used with permission.
OU: Suddenly, my father was no longer, and as per the tradition, as the eldest son, I was supposed to take over this role. Of course, no one believed I would do it — drop my life my Prague, and go the other way — when so many Africans try to move to Europe.
…It was rough, and yet the best thing that happened in my life. I discovered who I was and was able to help my family overcome tough situations. Initially, I had planned to stay one or two years at most in Nigeria, but I realized I was still needed; I couldn’t leave until it was over. … I rebuilt my personality: I went to Africa to Europeanize it and came back Africanized.
…I hope this book can change people’s mind about migrants from sub-Saharan Africa: The media often shows migrants who are well dressed-up, with iPhones, allegedly coming “to invade our culture”.
When people read my book, they should be able to understand why they leave.

author: Filip Noubel


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Jailed UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor continues hunger strike · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

Human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor is currently serving a ten-year jail sentence in the UAE. Photo Credit: Martin Ennals Foundation, via Citizen Lab.
Emirati human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor has endured an open-ended hunger strike since approximately mid-March 2019. His supporters say his health is rapidly deteriorating.
Security officials arrested Mansoor from his home on March 20, 2017 over comments he posted online. In May 2018, he was convicted under the 2012 Cybercrime Law of “insulting the status and prestige of the UAE” and “publishing false reports and information on social media to damage the UAE's relationship with its neighbouring countries.” A court sentenced him to ten years in jail and fined him 1,000,000 Emirati Dirhams (US $270,000).
Mansoor has been advocating for democratic reform and protection of human rights in his country and the region for more than a decade. He is the 2015 laureate of the Martin Ennals Foundation, which supports human rights defenders who are at risk. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa Advisory Committee.
This is not Mansoor's first time behind bars. In 2011, he and four other political activists were jailed in relation to their connections to UAEHewar.net, an online discussion forum run by Mansoor. He also used the forum to publish a petition calling for democratic reforms in the UAE. State officials used this as a basis for charging Mansoor with insulting UAE leaders. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, but was released on presidential pardon after serving only seven months.
Prior to his 2017 arrest, he campaigned online on behalf of jailed activists in the UAE and elsewhere in the region. The day before his arrest, he tweeted his concern about the continuous and arbitrary detention of Emirati activist Osama al-Najjar, who remained in prison despite having completed his three-year jail sentence. According to Human Rights Watch, he also signed a joint letter with other activists in the region calling on leaders at the Arab League summit in Jordan in March 2017 to release political prisoners in their countries.
In December 2018, the State Security Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court, whose verdicts are final, confirmed his ten-year sentence.
According to the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR), Mansoor began the strike to ”protest poor prison conditions and his unfair trial”:
Mansoor is believed to be currently held in Al-Sadr prison in Abu Dhabi, where he is kept in isolation. A source told GCHR that he is being held in “terrible conditions” in a cell with no bed, no water and no access to a shower. His health has deteriorated greatly and he is in bad shape.
Human rights groups expressed concerns about the activist's health, calling on the UAE authorities to set him free.
“Ahmed Mansoor is risking his health to call attention to his deeply unjust imprisonment simply because he advocated for the kind of tolerant, progressive society the UAE claims to be,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “UAE authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Mansoor so that he can continue to serve as a voice for justice in a region desperately in need of it,” she added.
The International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE called on the authorities to treat Mansoor in accordance with international human rights standards and to allow international rights groups to visit him in prison:
We reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of Ahmed Mansoor. Pending this, we urge the Emirati authorities to treat him in line with the UN’s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, which guarantees the provision of medical care and sanitary prison conditions. To ensure this, it is imperative that international NGOs be allowed access to al-Sadr prison to visit Mansoor.
Learn about the physiological effects of a hunger strike with the infographic below, created by our partners at Visualizing Impact.


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“Our languages are not dying, they are being killed” · Global Voices
Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil

Screenshot of the video showing Yásnaya's speech and its translation in Spanish.
To commemorate the International Year of Indigenous Languages, governmental, academic, and civil society institutions are engaged this year in a broad range of activities. One such event took place in Mexico's Congress on February 26, when Mixe linguist and activist Yásnaya Aguilar delivered a speech in the Mixe (or Ayuujk) language in the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro about languages and the reasons they live or die. This history-making speech forcefully unveils the historic wounds, injustices, plunder and discrimination that hide under the name of Mexico.
The following text is a translation of the re-edited version of a Spanish translation of the speech. The original text in Mixe can be found here.
Nëwemp. The place of water. Mixe.
Giajmïï. Atop the water. Chinateco.
Nangi ndá. The land amidst the water. Mazateco.
Kuríhi. Within the water. Chichimeco.
Nu koyo. Humid village. Mixteco.
It was the name that they gave this city. Then, the State, the Mexican State: Mexico. What hides within the waters of Nëwemp?
I intend to discuss some ideas and answer a question. Why are languages dying? Currently, approximately 6,000 languages are spoken in the world. From the University of Hawaii’s Catalog of Threatened Languages in the United States, it is reported that, on average, a language dies every three months in the world. On its behalf, UNESCO reports that in 100 years, at least half of the planet’s languages will be extinct.
Never in history has this ever happened. Never have so many languages died. Why are languages dying now? Around 300 years ago, the world began to divide and create internal borders: it remained divided and, without papers, it was no longer possible to travel to other places. The Earth remained divided into close to 200 countries, each with a government, each with a flag that it honored, with a privileged way of thinking: and, to construct this internal homogeneity, a single language to which the value of the State was assigned. Different languages were discriminated and fought against.
200 years ago, the State that we now call Mexico was established. After 300 years of the Spanish Conquista, in 1862, 65 percent of the population spoke an indigenous language. Spanish was a minority then.
Today, we speakers of indigenous languages make up 6.5 percent. Spanish has now become the dominant language. Two centuries ago, Náhuatl, Maya, Mayo, Tepehua, Tepehuano, Mixe, and all of the indigenous languages were in the majority, but have now become the minority.
How did they become the minority? Did we suddenly decide to abandon our languages? Not quite. It had to do with a process driven by government policies that stripped them of their value in favor of a single language: Spanish. To rid us of our languages, our ancestors received blows, punishments, and faced discrimination for having spoken their mother tongues.
“Your language is worthless,” they were told repeatedly. “To be a Mexican citizen, you must speak the national language, Spanish. Stop speaking your language,” they insisted.
The State made arduous efforts to impose a forced Castilianization, with the goal of eradicating our languages, above all starting from the school system.
It was Mexico that took our languages away, the water of its name erases and silences us. Even when the laws have changed, they continue being discriminated against within the education, health, and judicial systems.
Our languages are not dying, they are being killed.
They kill our languages when they do not respect our lands, when they sell and concede them, when they murder those that defend them.
How are our languages going to flourish when those who speak them are murdered, silenced, or vanish?
How is our word going to flourish in a land from which we are stripped?
In my community, Ayutla Mixe, in Oaxaca, we do not have water. About two years ago, armed groups stripped us of the natural spring that we historically used to provide for ourselves and this injustice continues to this day, despite the fact that we have denounced it and come out in demonstration for our cause. Despite the laws stating that water is a human right, it does not reach our homes and takes a toll, above all, on children and the elderly.
It is the land, water, and trees that nourish the existence of our languages. Under constant attack on our land, how will our language be revitalized?
Our languages are not dying, they are being killed. The Mexican State has erased them. The only train of thought, the only culture, the only State, with water in its name, is erasing them.
A video of the complete speech in Mixe can be viewed below:

author: Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil


text:
Russian state media scolds independent outlets for ‘neutral’ word choice in counter-terror operation reports · Global Voices
Alexey Kovalev

Russian FSB officer during the operation in Tyumen. Via nac.gov.ru with permission to use with attribution
On April 13, 2019, a counter-terrorist operation unfolded in the Siberian city of Tymen. An assault squad surrounded a house in Tyumen’s residential suburb, evacuated the locals, and exchanged fire with two people holed up inside, killing both. There were no other casualties or victims. The FSB, Russia’s domestic security agency, declared the operation a success and said the two men were Islamic State militants who were plotting a domestic terrorist attack.
The agency didn’t offer much evidence to back up its claim, but it criticized the media for live-streaming the operation. A source in the security services told Znak.com, a regional news outlet:
Мы недовольны стримом, который вели СМИ. Он появился в лицее [там был оперативный штаб] до того, как начался штурм. Террористы могли увидеть стрим, тем более один из них довольно хорошо ориентировался в соцсетях, как показывает его страница.
We are unhappy with the media’s livestreaming [of the operation]. It had originated from a school (where the operation’s HQ was stationed) before the assault began. The terrorists could have seen the livestream, given that one of them was quite well-versed in social media, as his page shows.
Typically, Russian state media outlets take these claims at face value, calling persons killed in such operations “terrorists” without adding any qualifiers such as “suspected” or “alleged.” This time, however, RT’s Russian-language website went even further and attacked other media outlets for using neutral language such as “killed” instead of “liquidated” or “neutralized.”
Террористов в Тюмени ликвидировали, а у «Медузы» и «Дождя» — «убили». Ок pic.twitter.com/wCyMvSFc9f
— RT на русском (@RT_russian) 13 апреля 2019 г.
The terrorists in Tyumen were liquidated, while according to Meduza and Dozhd [independent news website and TV channel] they were “killed”. Okay then
RT’s tweet reignited an ongoing debate about “dehumanizing” language in news reports about terrorism. State loyalists defended RT’s decision to use words such as “liquidated” and its subsequent criticism of publications who had abstained from doing so. Andrey Medvedev, a war reporter for the government-owned Rossiya channel, wrote on his Telegram channel:
Убить можно человека. Или даже животное. Вот живодеры, скажем, убивают собак. Террориста, который поставил себя вне закона, можно только ликвидировать. Или уничтожить. Или вычистить. Потому что тот, кто пришел в наши города чтобы взрывать мирных людей, убивать (вот тут уместно именно это слово) их,  нести смерть, расстреливать и сеять горе – он уже перестал быть человеком. Он порождение тьмы. Его можно только ликвидировать. Как ликвидируют очаг заболевания. Как ликвидируют колонию опасных бактерий. Как вырезают опухоль и ликвидируют метастазы с помощью облучения.
A person can be killed. Or even an animal. Animal abusers, for example, kill dogs. But terrorists who put themselves outside the law can only be liquidated. Or annihilated. Or cleansed. Because those who come to our cities to blow up innocent people, to kill (this is where this term is appropriate) them, to bring death, shoot and sow misery — they are beyond humanity. They were born of darkness. They can only be liquidated. Like a hotbed of disease or a colony of virulent bacteria. Like a cancerous tumor and its metastases are removed by radiation.
Other media professionals warned that journalists shouldn’t adopt the language of government agencies, even when there’s a credible threat. Dmitry Kolezev, the deputy editor of Znak.com, wrote:
Даже если мы в целом доверяем нашим силовикам, ФСБ и НАК, мы не должны описывать реальность удобным им языком. Терроризм — страшная угроза, но ярлык «террорист», повешенный в пресс-релизе ФСБ, не должен затуманить наше сознание и заставить слепо верить всему, что говорится в сообщении. Потому что сегодня «террористами» могут быть действительно бородатые террористы с бомбой, а завтра — экстремисты из телеграм-чатика, послезавтра — организаторы митингов, а потом и вы сами. Ярлыки — опасная вещь.
Even if we fully trust our security services, the FSB and the NAK [National Anti-Terrorist Committee], we’re not under an obligation to reflect reality in a language they are comfortable with. Terrorism is a grave threat, but the label of “terrorist” dispensed in a FSB press release should not cloud our judgement and make us take at face value everything the press release says. Because today the “terrorists” are actual bearded, bomb-wielding terrorists, tomorrow it’ll be extremists from a Telegram chat, the day after tomorrow it’s protest organizers and then it’ll be you. Labels are a dangerous thing.
Ironically, RT’s own English-language social media feed used exactly the kind of language they were mocking their Russian colleagues for:
Хахаха pic.twitter.com/gEnWPJ8cpU
— Philipp Kireev (@mynameisphilipp) 14 апреля 2019 г.
Hahaha
The “killed vs. liquidated” debate is far from new. Back in 2013, Oleg Kashing, a prominent Russian journalist, wrote on the independent website Colta.ru:
Но вдруг когда-нибудь редактор очередного новостного сайта, получив от государственного агентства пресс-релиз об очередном подвиге силовых структур, сядет его переписывать и вместо «уничтожены» напишет «убиты», а вместо «террористы» — «люди». Впишет в двух местах фразу «как утверждают в ФСБ», а в заголовке вместо «спецоперация» напишет «стрельба». Ничего сложного и ничего принципиально важного, но когда такое произойдет, я подумаю, что мы действительно живем в другой стране.
One day an editor at one of the news websites will receive in their mailbox a press release from a state news agency, praising another heroic feat of the security services. A quick rewrite will follow, replacing “eradicated” with “killed” and “terrorists” with “persons.” They’ll throw in a qualifier “according to FSB’s claims” in a couple of places and then put in “shooting” instead of “special operation” in the headline. It’s nothing complicated or critically important, but when something like this finally happens, I’ll believe that our country has indeed changed.
Russia in 2019 is indeed in many ways different from what it was in 2013, and not necessarily in a positive way. But Oleg Kashin must probably appreciate the fact that many Russian news editors do now consciously eschew the language of government handouts in favor of more neutral wording when dealing with sensitive and controversial subjects like terrorism, as the social media exchange above in this article shows.

author: Alexey Kovalev


text:
‘The army didn’t kill anyone,’ says Bolsonaro after soldiers fire 80 times at family car in Brazil, killing one · Global Voices
Global Voices Portuguese

Army officers on patrol in Rio de Janeiro, in 2018. Image: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil, republication permitted with attribution.
On April 7, a Sunday, musician Evaldo dos Santos Rosa, 51, was on his way to a baby shower in Guadalupe, a poor neighborhood in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In the car with him were his father-in-law, his wife, their 7-year-old son, and a friend. The sun was up, and it seemed like a regular weekend in Brazil's largest coastal city.
As they drove by an army compound nearby, soldiers fired a hail of bullets towards the car. Evaldo was killed on the spot, while his father-in-law along with a passerby that was near the scene were injured. The other passengers managed to escape.
The police, which inspected the scene, later revealed the car was shot 80 times. Leonardo Salgado, police chief, said he believed the officers mistook Evaldo's car to another one used by criminals which they were after, according to news website G1. He added that police didn't find any weapons on Evaldo's car.
Luciana Nogueira, Evaldo's wife of 27 years who survived the shooting, told Estado de S. Paulo:
Os vizinhos começaram a socorrer (o meu marido), mas eles continuaram atirando. Eu botei a mão na cabeça, pedi socorro, disse pra eles que era meu marido, mas eles não fizeram nada, ficaram de deboche.
The neighbors started to help (my husband), but [the soldiers] kept shooting. I put my hands on my head, cried for help, told them that he was my husband, but they didn’t do anything, the just stood there with debauchery.
While the brutal murder of an innocent man by state officials has shocked Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro remained silent about the incident for six days.
When he finally spoke, at a press conference on April 12, he said: “The army didn't kill anyone, the army is of the people, and you can't accuse the people of murder.”
Previously, the only words that came out of Planalto Palace, the executive's seat, was through the president's spokesperson, who referred to Evaldo's execution as “an incident” without offering condolences to his family.
In the evening of April 8, Rio de Janeiro's State Governor Wilson Witzel, an ally of Bolsonaro, declared that “it wasn’t up to him to make a judgment”
Two days later, Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro only said the killing was “unfortunate” during an interview to a TV show.
Número de menções no Twitter do primeiro escalão do governo Bolsonaro ao fuzilamento de um carro de família no Rio de Janeiro
Sim, o gráfico está VAZIO, pois ninguém se posicionou, nem ao menos para lamentar o ocorrido
O carro foi atingido por 80 tiros disparados p/ militares pic.twitter.com/K2tbvxwrff
— Gabriel Zanlorenssi (@gzanlorenssi) April 9, 2019
This is the number of mentions on Twitter by Bolsonaro’s cabinet to the shooting aimed at a family car in Rio de Janeiro. Yes, the graphic is EMPTY, because no one manifested themselves, not even to say they felt sorry for what happened. The car was shot 80 times by military men.
Shortly after news about the episode began circulating in the media, the army put out a statement saying its men were responding to “unfair aggression by assailants.” Later in the evening of April 7, it released a different note, this time saying that it would conduct an investigation.
Although the civil police inspected the scene, they will not investigate the case. The army itself will do it instead, and a military court will eventually try the soldiers. That's thanks to a 2017 law that says armed forces themselves are responsible for investigating homicides committed by their personnel while on duty.
Human Rights Watch, who has criticized the law at the time of its approval by President Michel Temer, put out a statement on April 9 calling for an impartial investigation of the murder of Evaldo, and for the law to be repealed.
On April 8, the military arrested 10 of the 12 officers who had been deployed to the scene and charged them with homicide and attempted homicide, according to local newspaper Extra. A judge released one of the 10 officers on April 10 following a hearing.
Brazil's police are known for “shooting first, asking later,” a saying that has been proven right time and again.
An International Amnesty’s report released this year says Brazilian police is the most deadly in the world. Only in 2018, 15,6 percent of all homicides in the country were committed by law enforcement agents. Just in Rio de Janeiro state, and just in January 2019, police have killed 160 people.
A bill dubbed “anticrime package” which the Bolsonaro's government is proposing in Congress could potentially increase those already-staggering figures. The bill seeks to change several directives that will either scrape or significantly reduce penalties of police and military officers when they kill someone while on duty.
The circumstances of the murder of Evaldo, a 51-year-old black man, is not an exception but the rule in Brazil, as Samira Bueno and Renato Sérgio de Lima, directors of the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, have said in an article for Folha de São Paulo:
Evaldo teve sua vida ceifada por aqueles que juraram defendê-la. Seu filho jamais se livrará do trauma de ter assistido ao pai ser fuzilado por agentes estatais. Mas que fique claro que a culpa não é apenas daqueles que apertaram o gatilho. Ou começamos a responsabilizar toda a cadeia de comando pelos atos cometidos, ou vamos continuar contando os nossos mortos e desacreditando as nossas instituições.
Evaldo has had his life taken from him by those who had sworn to defend it. His son will never be over the trauma of watching his father being shot at by state agents. But let us be clear that the fault lies not only with those who have pulled the trigger. Either we start holding the entire chain of command accountable to their acts, or we will continue to count our dead while discrediting our institutions.

author: Global Voices Portuguese


text:
The scent of revolution: The story behind Sudan’s legendary perfume label remix · Global Voices
Amanda Lichtenstein

Image of Bint El Sudan perfume label remixed to show the iconic image of 22-year-old Alaa Salah, a protester who brought global attention to Sudan's revolution. Image by artist Amado Alfadni, used with permission.
Sudan's uprising has been in the works for months now, but the iconic image of 22-year-old Alaa Salah chanting poems and slogans of resistance while standing on top of a car in Khartoum, the capital, went viral, bringing global attention to the revolution. Salah has been likened to Sudan's Statue of Liberty, the nation's Nubian Queen.
I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. The struggle for a democratic and prosperous Sudan?? continues. We will not bow down to Al-Bashir, the tyrant dictator! #DemocraticSudan #Sudan pic.twitter.com/r9ntXBnUfv
— Alaa Salah (@oalaa_salah) April 11, 2019
The original photo of Salah, taken by Sudanese student, Lana Haroun, has inspired artists around the world to exalt Salah as a symbol of the revolution. Artist Amado Alfadni, born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, with Sudanese roots, seized the opportunity to remix the image with the classic “Bint El Sudan” or “Daughter of Sudan” perfume label.
Created in the 1920s by WJ Bush in London, the best-selling perfume has been dubbed Africa's “Chanel No. 5″ and is worn widely by women throughout Sudan and East Africa. The ubiquitous non-alcoholic scent — a musky mix of jasmine, lilac and lily — was first sold not in exclusive shops but public markets, eventually becoming an essential part of weddings and circumcision rituals as a staple in Sudanese women's lives. The scent triggers notions of feminity, power and allure. It's also recognized as having magical and medicinal qualities that stem from Sudan's ancient aromatic and herbal traditions.
Alfadni explains: “Bint El Sudan was my mother's perfume and so [it] was a part of the identity I made for myself as a Sudanese person.”
Original Bint El Sudan perfume label features a photo credited to Eric Burgess, who first brought the idea of creating a perfume to his London-based company WJ Bush & Co. in the 1920s. Photo shared by artist Amado Alfadni, used with his permission.
The original perfume label featured a photograph of a topless young Sudanese woman wearing a traditional Sudanese elephant-hair skirt and adorned with bridal jewelry on her ankles and wrists. It was taken by Eric Burgess, a representative for WJ Bush's business interests in Sudan.
For decades, the image of this young woman traveled from Khartoum, Sudan, to Kano, Nigeria, as traders reportedly began using the heady scent as a form of currency.
Twenty years ago, Alfadni says, Sudan's Islamic regime changed the original image of the topless girl to one wrapped in a modest black burqa in alignment with Islamic values.
Omar al-Bashir ruled Sudan for 30 years (1989-2019) and introduced penal code reforms — based on strict interpretations of Sharia (Islamic Law) — in 1991.  Bashir's reforms relegated women to the status of legal minors and restricted their freedom of movement by enforcing strict “morality laws” and gender segregation in public spaces. Women have faced flogging and death by stoning for violating these laws.
The modest Bint El Sudan perfume bottles were introduced 20 years ago under strict interpretations of Islamic law. Photo by Amado Alfadni, used with his permission.
“What she wears — that is actually what women used to dress like in my home town in northern Sudan,” Alfadni said in an interview via Facebook messenger. “The same with Nubians of Egypt, I am also Nubian,” he wrote.
Not much has changed about Bint El Sudan's unique formula in 100 years, but the clothing of the young woman on the label has been modified over time to reflect enduring debates about women's modesty.
Bush Boake Allen, the company that produced various Bint El Sudan products beginning in 1966, re-imagined the label with a young woman who resembles the original traditional Sudanese bride but draped in red to cover her chest — a slight modification to accommodate more modest markets, depending on where the Bint El Sudan products were sold.
Bint El Sudan moisturizer features the young Sudanese woman but in this version, her chest is covered by a red cloth. Photo via Instagram by genaropiano.
Women have been on the frontlines of protests that kicked off in December 2018 over the price of bread and spiraled into full-scale demonstrations confronting women's oppression in public and private spaces, among other grievances.
Eventually, protesters called for the resignation of Bashir — who is also wanted for the role he played in numerous alleged crimes against humanity.
Long before women of #Sudan were on streets chasing Bashir out of power, they were on streets protesting morality police, protesting public lashing, protested the sentencing to death of 19 year old Noura Hussein who killed her rapist husband she was forced to marry#SudanUprising https://t.co/UWeSpdZ8pE
— Rosebell Kagumire ♉ (@RosebellK) April 13, 2019
On April 11, after protesters surrounded security headquarters in Khartoum, Bashir was arrested by the military in what has been described as a military coup — that only lasted one day. General Ibn Auf, Sudan's defense minister, called for a three-month state of emergency and two-year transitional government led by the military but stepped down as the transitional leader as protesters insisted on civilian-led leadership.
Ironically, the spicy, sweet scent of Bint El Sudan is now produced in a small factory in Kano, northern Nigeria, — a region terrorized by Boko Haram, a militant group aligned with ISIS. The tightly-secured factory produces approximately seven million 12-milliliter bottles per year, at least 80 percent of the world's demand.
While Alaa Salah's image has brought global attention to Sudan's struggle for regime change — and inspiring artists like Alfadni and others to exalt her as a symbol of the revolution — feminists and activists have warned against the dangers of any single person carrying the burden of revolution, noting that many unnamed women have come before her and that Salah herself has received death threats.
As for Alfadni, he said his decision to remix the famous perfume label with Salah's image was about challenging notions of Sudanese identity: “I am trying to represent the image of Sudan away from anger and extremism.”
A print of the Bint El Sudan perfume label by the artist Amado Alfadni, 2011, photo by the artist and used with his permission. This is part of Alfadni's project exploring the history and significance of Bint El Sudan as both a perfume and part of Sudanese culture and history.

author: Amanda Lichtenstein


text:
Material Culture art exhibition communicates deep personal experiences to transcend cultural borders · Global Voices
Omid Memarian

Maryam Khosrovani. Imprint | Location 3, Brooklyn | 2015 – 2016.
Material Culture, a new exhibition in New York, features the works of five Iran-born artists who use “nonrepresentational forms” and a range of materials to create a visual language that not only communicates deep personal experiences but also transcends cultural borders.
Curated by the award-winning independent curator and cultural producer Roya Khadjavi, the show features the work of Maryam Khosrovani, Aida Izadpanah, Dana Nehdaran, Maryam Palizgir, and Massy Nasser Ghandi.
All but one of the five received their BA in visual art in Iran, from where they each emigrated at various points in their lives. Four of them now live in the United States, and Massy Nasser Ghandi lives in France.
They each work in the abstract mode, creating art that reacts to and comments on the integration of their culture of origin and that of their adoptive countries. Their works incorporate traditional materials such as clay, porcelain, fabric, iron, paint and wood into new forms and techniques that adapt to their new circumstances.
Through line, color and the use of porcelain, clay, iron, wire, gold and linen canvas, these five artists have produced sculptures, constructions and paintings that, in the words of Artscope national correspondent and Material Culture catalogue essayist Nancy Nesvet, allow “no strict cultural allusions or boundaries” and provide “steps toward understanding… [which is] perhaps the purpose of art, to reveal and to provide an understanding of the culture and mind of the artist, and to draw an empathic response from the viewer.” Nesvet says, “Certainly, the artists in this show are successful at that mission.”
Roya Khadkavi (left), the curator of “Material Culture”, Maryam Palizgir (middle) and Maryam Khosrovani (right) at the opening night of the exhibition. Photo courtesy of Roya Khadjavi.
Curator Roya Khadjavi, who is based in New York, has focused on the work of young Iranian artists working in and outside Iran, seeking to support their artistic endeavors and facilitate awareness and cultural dialogue between artistic communities. Since 2008 she has led exhibition committee efforts to show the art of the Middle East for institutions including the Guggenheim Museum and Asia Society, where she sat on the steering committee of the critically acclaimed exhibition Iran Modern (2013).
Khadjavi told Global Voices that Middle Eastern art in general, and art by Iranian artists in particular, has always been positively received by the art community in the United States. “Americans who attend my shows are really curious about the way my artists express themselves and often ask the unavoidable question of censorship and self-expression,” said Khajavi. “They love how varied the art coming out of Iran is and how wonderfully our artists are able to express themselves through symbolism and metaphors.”
Khadjavi co-founded the Institute of International Education’s Iran Opportunities Fund, and currently serves as president of the board of New York-based non-profit Art in General. For her efforts to advance, support, and promote international education she received the Women’s Global Leadership Award from the Institute of International Education, and an Order of Academic Palms (Chevalier dans L’Ordre des Palmes Académiques), from the French Minister of Education.
Khadjavi said that U.S. sanctions on Iran have affected the price of art, as the rial keeps being devalued and the work of artists in Iran is decreasing in monetary value, which is a major problem.
“In addition, artists cannot get visas to attend their exhibitions, which is very discouraging and sad. On the other hand, Iranian artists who are on “artists’ visas” in the US are afraid to leave the U.S. frightened that they can’t come back, and so many have not seen their families in years.”
“Many of the Iranian artists are under tremendous pressure to pick galleries just to be able to have someone sign off on their artist visa status rather that intelligently spend adequate time to figure out which gallery program fits their work better,” said Khadjavi.
Maryam Khosrovani. Installation photography on paper. Le Vide Series. Edition 5 + 2 AP. 2017
Each of the artists writes about his/her art in the exhibition’s catalogue.
Maryam Khosrovani’s current work, a photography, plaster and collage installation, was started four years ago when she moved to New York City. She writes: “the sight of New Yorkers drawing their clothes on drying lines outside their windows would trigger an imagination of the life behind those windows and the people who wear those clothes. Their life clashed with my solitude, which I resolved by blurring the lines between the buildings in a series of plastered replicas of the photos. The project aims to illustrate the way garment, architecture, and people are bound to one another to become one.”
Khosrovani received her Master’s in Art Direction and Graphic Design in 2011 from ESAG Penninghen (Julien Academie) in Paris. In 2012, her solo exhibition Incubus, Succubus, Pendulus: The Secret Rules of Gravity at Aun Gallery in Tehran received broad critical acclaim. She now resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Aida Izadpanah. Alignment 3- Handmade, fired, painted porcelain on wooden board 30 x 24 inches, (2019).
Aida Izadpanah’s Alignment features a series of “hand-made, formed, carved and fired glazed porcelain works mounted on wooden boards” which represent an “ancient and essential alchemy [that] seems to connect humans and earth.” Izadpanah lives and works in New York City, specializing in large-format mixed media and porcelain sculptural painting. She holds a PhD in Environmental Psychology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a Master’s in Urban Planning from Tehran University (Iran). Her solo exhibitions include Emancipation (Stony Brook, NY, 2017), Transcendence (New York City, 2015), and Revelation (Los Angeles, 2013).
Massy Nasser Ghandi. An interpretation of the Horizon. Painted porcelain plate. 33x33cm. 2019.
Massy Nasser Ghandi also works with porcelain, with pieces inspired by the landscapes and intensely colored skies of Nice, Côte d’Azur, France, where she has been living for the past 18 years. For her, porcelain “proves a wonderful canvas to recreate the liquid beauty of the sun, a dramatic sky enflamed by sunset piercing through or even the crystal quality of sea foam.” Born in Tehran, she studied with acclaimed porcelain painting masters at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, from where she graduated in Fashion Design. She exhibits regularly in the US, Iran, London and Monaco.
Dana Nehdaran. Six 3D squares, Polyptych 40×53.5×2 inch, each 21.4×17.5×2 inch and 17.5 x 17.5 x 2 inch, Gold leaf, copper leaf, silver leaf, Canvas, wood frame, 2019.
Dana Nehdaran’s work focuses on the tension between past and present. His current series, Fe26 (the chemical symbol and atomic number for iron), explores the process of oxidation and “the creation of images that faded into the canvas: unstable surfaces that betrayed a deeply personal relationship to images of the past.” He writes: “Upon arrival in New York, I was surrounded with old iron rebar, beams, storm water covers and other ironwork, the backbone of the city, a visual language full of rust and beautiful imperfections…. This new body of work is created in a dialogue with my new surroundings.” Born in Isfahan to parents who were art aficionados, Nehdaran studied painting at the Soureh Art University in Shiraz. His most recent series, Esther’s Children, was shown in Tehran, Dubai and Los Angeles.
Maryam Palizgir. Epiphany# 0078, 18×24 inches. Archival pigment print. Edition 8 + 2 AP. 2018.
Maryam Palizgir‘s work contemplates, in her words, “the real and unreal.” She uses color, lighting, painted wood panels and architectural materials to “capture the tensions existing between traditions and contemporaneity, reality and aspirations, individuality and community, localism and universality, authority and freedom, conformism and self-expression.” Through the “cross-fertilization” of drawing, printmaking, sculpture, painting and photography, she seeks a “questioning of vision and perception.” Palizgir is an interdisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in Iran. She received her MFA from Georgia State University in 2018.
*Material Culture is exhibited at the Elga Wimmer PCC at 526 West 26th Street, 3rd Floor, #310, New York City, from April 4 to April 18, 2019.

author: Omid Memarian