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Fonseca Says High Voter Abstention Doesn’t Diminish His Presidential Win in Cape Verde · Global Voices
Manuel Ribeiro

Jorge Carlos Fonseca (center) on an official visit to the Seychelles (2014). Photo:: Archive Wikimedia / CC BY 4.0
Jorge Carlos Fonseca was sworn in on Thursday, October 20, for a second term as Cape Verde’s president. Without a strong opponent, he won 74 percent of the votes in the October 2 election, the country’s sixth democratic contest. Fonseca won with the support of the Movimento para Democracia political party, which won a majority in legislative elections earlier this year, as well.
O POVO DIZ SIM CABO VERDE E ELEGE JORGE CARLOS FONSECA PARA O SEGUNDO MANDATO https://t.co/cVhSTMsRRo pic.twitter.com/2Xkh5XPIOa
— Luis Carlos Silva (@luiscarlossilva) October 3, 2016
THE PEOPLE SAY YES CAPE VERDE AND ELECTS JORGE CARLOS FONSECA FOR A SECOND TERM
According to local media reports, abstention was the toughest adversary any of the candidates faced, with more than 64 percent of the electorate refusing to vote. High though it was, the rate of abstention “does not take the shine off the victory,” Fonseca says.
Speaking to Deutsche Welle-Àfrica, the re-elected president stated that:
Nas democracias amadurecidas, altas taxas de participação normalmente só acontecem em períodos de ruptura política. Veja, por exemplo, o que se passa em Portugal e nos Estado Unidos, qual é a percentagem dos americanos que participam na eleição do Presidente. O Presidente americano terá menos legitimidade por causa disso?
In mature democracies, high rates of participation normally only happen in periods of political instability. Look at, for example, what is happening in Portugal and U.S., at the percentage of Americans participating in the presidential elections. Will the American president have less legitimacy because of that?
The dean of the University of Mindelo, Albertino Graça, was the second most popular candidate, winning 22.5 percent of the votes. Joaquim Monteiro, meanwhile, came away with just only 3.4 percent.

author: Manuel Ribeiro


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Instagrammers’ Photos Document the Smog Enveloping Khabarovsk · Global Voices
Isaac Webb

Source: Instagram. Catherine Afanasyeva (@kazhetsyatak)
Residents of Khabarovsk in Russia’s Far East have been staying indoors or wearing masks when they go outside since a thick smog blanketed the city on Tuesday. As reported by news website 2×2.su (yes, .su is the top-level domain for the Soviet Union), locals say the smog has been accompanied by a burning smell and intensified over the last two days as fires rage in Khabarovsk and surrounding regions. Russian officials are monitoring carbon monoxide levels, which have increased 1.5 times since the smog rolled in.
Smoke began to descend on Khabarovsk about two weeks ago and seemed to originate from the Chinese border province of Heilongjiang and the Jewish Autonomous Republic, a Russian region next to Khabarovsk. Khabarovsk officials said that straw fires in Heilongjiang were responsible for the smoke, and sent a letter to the Heilongjiang Department of Environmental Protection asking that provincial authorities get the situation under control and take new measures to prevent future fires. Authorities in Heilongjiang denied the Russian officials’ claims, telling the Global Times today that farmers in the province had not yet begun to harvest crops or burn straw—and won't begin do so until early November because of recent precipitation.
Ас satellite imagery from “Fire Map,”(a Russian website that shows where forest fires are currently burning across the globe) shows, when the smoke began to envelop Khabarovsk two weeks ago, fires were indeed mainly in Heilongjiang and the Jewish Autonomous Republic:
Satellite imagery of the fires on October 14. Source: http://fires.kosmosnimki.ru/.
By the time Heilongjiang officials responded today, however, the fires were almost all to the north and west of Khabarovsk:
Satellite imagery of the fires on October 27. Source: http://fires.kosmosnimki.ru/.
While the regional governments went back and forth, Instagram user unimat093 joked that he had found out who was really responsible for the fires, posting a photo of smoke emerging from a small chimney in Khabarovsk.
A photo posted by @unimat093 on
Over the past two weeks, Instagrammers have documented Khabarovsk as the smoke has come and gone; taken as a composite, their images provide a kind of Instagram reportage on the situation:
A photo posted by Aleksеi Belyaevskii (@aleksei_80) on
A photo posted by Таня Никифорова (@belayanik) on
A photo posted by Халикова Юля (@yulia_khalikova_a) on
A photo posted by Catherine Afanasyeva (@kazhetsyatak) on
A photo posted by Juliya Samokhvalova (@ptiz_siniz) on

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Isaac Webb


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Russia’s 2018 World Cup Mascot Has a Hilarious Name and You Don’t Even Get It · Global Voices
Yulia Savitskaya

Image by Kevin Rothrock.
Last week, Russia revealed its mascot for the upcoming 2018 FIFA World Cup. It's a wolf named “Zabivaka.” The cute little guy has orange sunglasses (some have said they look like ski goggles) that never leave his furry head, and he's dressed in shorts and a t-shirt.
It's too soon to know if this creature will make a good ambassador for Russia or the world's grandest soccer tournament, but it's fair to say already that Zabivaka has gone viral.
If you don't speak Russian, it might be hard to grasp what's so damned funny about this relatively anodyne-seeming wolf person. To understand what has Russians across the world giggling, let's review some of the linguistic subtleties and cultural references at play.
Заместитель Председателя Правительства Российской Федерации по вопросам спорта Виталий Мутко, Иван Ургант и легенда мирового футбола Роналдо в компании официального талисмана ЧМ-2018 – Волка Забиваки! #ВечернийУргант #ЧМ2018 #FIFA #Забивака #Ronaldo #Zabivaka #WorldCup2018
A photo posted by Вечерний Ургант (@vecherniy_urgant) on
Zabivaka made his first public appearance on Russian late night television. Pictured above, you'll find, going left to right, Zabivaka the Wolf, former Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, TV host Ivan Urgant, and soccer star Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima.
Ironically, the man tasked with announcing the mascot's name was Vitaly Mutko, who is infamous in Russia for butchering the English language in various public settings in recent years. He's made such a reputation for himself that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev even teased him in front of the government cabinet on October 20, when Mutko was promoted to deputy prime minister, reciting one of his most infamous English-language gaffes.
You can already visit FIFA's website and read a charming little biography about Zabivaka, who's described as “confident and social.” Wondering what's up with his headwear? According to FIFA, those glasses are magic: “He has taken to wearing cool sports glasses when he’s in action; he believes they give him special targeting powers on the pitch. And he loves to pose for photos!”
The name “Zabivaka” derives from the verb “zabivat” (забивать), which has several meanings. The first and the most straightforward translation is “to score,” so Zabivaka is someone who scores goals. Apparently, that’s what the wolf’s creator, Russian designer Yekaterina Bocharova, had in mind, when she came up with the name.
In Russian, however, you can “zabivat” a whole lot of other stuff, too.
“Zabivaka” sounds pretty close to “zabiyaka,” which is a “bully” or a “troublemaker.” A zabiyaka is someone who provokes a fight. This word is not used very often today in Russia, and you're most likely to see it in a children's book or a Soviet movie about school kids, but it's still common enough that any Russian speaker would recognize it. A zabiyaka will tease you and push you, until you punch him.
Bully the Wolf welcomes you to the 2018 FIFA World Cup? Image: Pikabu forums
“Zabivat” can also mean “to get over something” or “to give up on something.” You could use the verb to talk about missing classes, ending relationships, ignoring someone’s opinion, or refusing to face your problems. This use of the word is slang, and it's a shortened form of an idiom that also contains the word “khui,” which is Russian's most adaptable and foulest obscenity. A fine association for the mascot of a multibillion-dollar sporting event, no?
True Zabivaka pic.twitter.com/5GMmK7ZKmi
— Здесь Шепелин (@ilya_shepelin) October 22, 2016
Another translation for “zabivat” is “to beat someone dead.” In this context, the word is often used in criminal news stories and in conversations about slaughtering livestock.
Most importantly for Internet users, “zabivat” has special meaning in drug culture. “Zabivat” means to fill an empty cigarette with marijuana. It's an old slang word, which has been around for several decades, and it's not widely used now. Nevertheless, anybody in Russia over the age of twelve — even the ones who've only laid eyes on pot in movies — knows what this slang means.
Snoop Almost-A-Wolf Dog “Zabivaka” and his well-known oral fixation. Image: Russian image boards

author: Yulia Savitskaya


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After Rejecting the Peace Agreement, Colombia Seeks a New Path · Global Voices
Lully

Peace march in Bogotá. Image published by Elmer Montaña on his Facebook page  and shared with his approval.
Colombia was plunged into surprised uncertainty after learning on October 2, 2016 that the result of a popular vote on whether to endorse a peace agreement between the government and a militant group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was “No.” Neither side of the debate was prepared for this outcome, which many have referred to as the Colombian Brexit, in reference to the UK's referendum vote to leave the European Union.
One such person, columnist Luis Fernando Álvarez, compared precisely those two events in newspaper El Colombiano:
El Gobierno Británico lo convocó convencido que podía obtener un gran apoyo popular para legitimar su permanencia en la Comunidad Europea; sin embargo, cuando se dieron a conocer los resultados, los más sorprendidos fueron quienes votaron por la salida de la Unión (Brexit). Ningún sector tenía un plan B para enfrentar dicho resultado, cuyo principal efecto político fue la renuncia del Primer Ministro.
En Colombia la situación parece similar, con la salvedad de que no es prudente ni conveniente solicitar la renuncia del Presidente.
The British Government called for [the Brexit vote], convinced that they could garner large, popular support in order to legitimize their continued presence in the European Community; however, when the results came out, those who were most surprised were those who voted to leave the Union (Brexit). Neither side had a plan B for dealing with said result, whose main political effect was the prime minister's resignation.
In Colombia, the situation appears to be similar, with the exception that it is neither prudent nor convenient to ask for the president's resignation.
Polls beforehand had showed Colombians were in favor the “Yes” side, but no one foresaw the level of abstention, which was the highest it has ever been in the history of Colombia: only 37.43% of the electorate voted. In addition, the small difference of 53,894 votes between the two sides reaffirmed the polarization that has characterized Colombian society throughout its history and that has intensified since the beginning of the peace process with the FARC.
With the “No” result and the lack of a road map from either side, the population is abuzz with questions. After more than 50 years of war, will peace ever be won? Was there an excess of confidence? Did a wave of ignorance win? How much influence did Christian and Evangelical Church groups have? Did gender ideology — leading up to the referendum, there was a push to link a “Yes” vote for peace as a vote against traditional values — have an effect? Do the guerrillas truly desire peace? Did people punish Santos’ shortcomings in other sectors? Was it necessary to present a vote to Colombians? Did Hurricane Matthew influence anything when it went through the Caribbean-Colombian region? Did hate towards the FARC win? Did a baseless fear of “Castro-Chavismo” defeat us? Will a new constitution be needed?
And what happens now?
The final agreement with the FARC to end the conflict and to establish a stable and long-lasting peace was signed on September 26 in Cartagena, and maintains its legal validity in spite of the referendum vote. Although President Juan Manuel Santos was not legally bound to hold the referendum, he unilaterally decided to have the vote, optimistically believing democracy would back him up.
Despite the unexpected outcome, all sides involved pronounced themselves in favor of continuing the peace process: the government, the advocates for “No,” and the FARC. This helped to facilitate a meeting between President Santos and his opponents, who began working on suggestions for a new peace proposal a week after the vote. Those who voted for “No” insist that they did not fight against peace, but only want Colombia to search for a “better” agreement.
Regarding Colombia's other group of leftist, insurgent guerrillas, the National Liberation Army (ELN), the government announced it would hold public conversations with ELN delegates on October 27, 2016 in Quito, Ecuador. The ELN has about 1,300 militants and was created in 1964 by intellectuals with Marxist and pro-Cuban revolution ideologies who mixed their ideas with those of liberation theology. The group formed in San Vicente de Chucurí, a municipality of the Santander Department located in the northern part of Colombia.
As for the ceasefire with the FARC, President Santos has announced its extension through December 31 of this year and confirmed that it could be renewed.
In addition to this, a new factor shined a beacon of hope for a new peace agreement: the Nobel Peace Prize award given to Santos, who after receiving the news of the recognition, reaffirmed that he will continue working to achieve a peace agreement. He also announced on Twitter that he will donate the money from the prize on behalf of the war victims.
#NobelDePaz es de los colombianos, sobre todo de quienes sufrieron la guerra. Con mi familia decidimos donar el dinero a las víctimas
— Juan Manuel Santos (@JuanManSantos) 9 de octubre de 2016
Nobel Peace Prize belongs to Colombians, especially those who suffered from the war. My family and I decided to donate the money to the victims
A tweet by Héctor Abad Facio Lince, in response to what President Santos expressed about the Nobel Peace Prize, offers a summary on how some of the population feels regarding the usefulness of the award for Colombia's peace process:
También en el ajedrez hay jugadas geniales que cambian toda la situación del tablero cuando una partida parecía perdida. ¡Gracias Noruega!
— Héctor Abad F. (@hectorabadf) 7 de octubre de 2016
In chess there are also brilliant plays that change the entire situation on the board when a game seemed lost. Thank you, Norway!
There were also, however, skepticism and opposition towards the timing of the award:
No entiendo??? Juan Manuel Santos premio nobel de la paz que la mayoría del pueblo de Colombia rechazó en las urnas democráticamente.
— Xes (@xesoul) 7 de octubre de 2016
I don't understand??? Juan Manuel Santos Nobel Prize for a peace that the majority of the people of Colombia rejected democratically in the ballot boxes.
Buenos días país sin paz pero con Nobel, con acuerdos sin aprobación, y con oposición pero sin argumentos y/o honestidad.
— (A)✯ZombieWolf✯ (@vultriaisk) 12 de octubre de 2016
Good day, country without peace but with a Nobel, with unapproved agreements, and with opposition but without arguments and/or integrity.
For their part, the opposition — lead by ex-President and current Senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez, together with other members of his political party Centro Democrático (Democratic Center) — is under scrutiny, thanks to a criminal complaint of voter fraud that contends the group led a supposed discredit campaign against the peace agreement. The allegation is tied to certain statements made by the campaign manager, Juan Carlos Vélez Uribe, in an interview by the newspaper La República.
Those who have lived closer to the war, such as the populations of Cauca, Chocó, Putumayo, and Vaupes Departments, among others, appeared to be mainly in favor of the vote, giving an exemplary message of forgiveness and reconciliation towards other Colombians. Many took the opportunity to show their solidarity and indignation after they learned the “No” side had won:
Quién va a ir a las regiones que votaron por el SI, a explicarles cuál es la ruta a seguir producto de la elección nacional del NO? pic.twitter.com/xoqzKRAD9t
— H Andrés Ramírez H (@AndresR_) 3 de octubre de 2016
Who is going to go to the regions that voted for YES to explain to them what's the route to follow after the NO won in the national referendum?
This indignation was precisely one of the motivations for youth, students, indigenous groups, and different sectors of the civilian population to take to the streets, marching and shouting different slogans that reflect the interests of Colombian citizens who do not desire more war. The marches have become a constant in various regions.
“Not a step back, we want peace!” was the cry of thousands of Colombians who promoted an improvised protest with the hashtag #PazALaCalle (Peace to the Street) on October 3, the day after the referendum, in different Colombian cities. Below is eye-witness video of the protest from YouTube user jacastillo9101:
And this other video by Ricardo Galán shows one of the protests in Bogotá that happened on October 12. As their main slogan, the multitude shouted: “Peace Now!”
Even with the past record of hate and offenses published on social media, now people are asking for peace on all sides under the hashtags #BrigadaDigital (Digital Brigade) and #PazALaRed (Peace To The Internet). In this regard, Mauricio Jaramillo pointed out:
Ya me metí de cabeza en #PazALaRed.
Pero eso no implica no criticar o defender ideas.Paz no es ausencia de diferencia ni de debate.¿Se unen? pic.twitter.com/8b5X0puj08
— Mauricio Jaramillo M (@MauricioJaramil) 9 de octubre de 2016
Now I have dived headfirst into #PazALaRed (Peace to the Internet)
But this does not mean one should not criticize or defend ideas. Peace is not the absence of difference or debate. Unite?
The past weeks have been intense, but they have also seen the country's youth empowered by the hope of their own future and that of new generations. Another hashtag showing their protests efforts was #EnLasCallesLaPazRenace (In The Streets Peace Reawakens):
Mañana viernes 14 oct a las 7pm! Toda la ciudadanía cordialmente invitada a la Asamblea de #PazALaCalle! Difundir! #EnLasCallesLaPazRenacepic.twitter.com/o8QYZIWZxS
— Jairo Andres Rivera (@jairoriverah) 14 de octubre de 2016
Tomorrow Friday, Oct. 14 at 7 pm! All citizens cordially invited to the #PeaceToTheStreet Assembly! Spread the word!
#InTheStreetsPeaceReawakens
Demonstrators are demanding that the government and ex-President Uribe unite their efforts in order to come to an agreement — and don't let the peace process, which has been in the works since 2012, go to waste.
The state of things from here on out revolve around the government's discussions with both sides: those in favor of and those against the peace agreement. The president and his team have been in conversations with both, and are now presenting proposals which will later be negotiated with the FARC.
This possible political and social union — for which a large number of Colombians are on track — would be a solution for achieving the longed-for final peace agreement. But will this unification be possible? The reality is that Colombians are tired of war and want peace.

author: Lully


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Hello Vodafone: What Does It Mean When a Global Telco Giant Enters Iran? · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Vodafone has announced it will be indirectly entering the Iranian telephone and Internet market. Photo by Tom Purves via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
UK-based telecom giant Vodafone announced on October 18 plans to enter Iran's telephone operating market. Vodafone says it will work with Iran's HiWEB, a small privately owned phone operator.
According the Vodafone-HiWEB announcement, these new services will be marketed to consumers through HiWEB branding. Vodafone will aid HiWEB in “modernizing infrastructure and expanding landline and mobile internet services for personal and business customers,” according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The agreement will also allow international Vodafone customers to access mobile service in Iran through this partnership, similar to the partnership that US-based telco AT&T recently formed with Iranian mobile operator RighTel to provide cell phone coverage to US SIM cards in Iran.
While Vodafone will not be a direct partner (calling it a ‘non-equity Partner Market agreement”), the potential for complicity between Vodafone and Iran's existing telecommunication surveillance infrastructure is hard to ignore. Most countries have a precedent of forcing foreign telcos to cooperate with governments in communications surveillance. Iran, of course, is no exception.
In Iran, observers got a taste of this problem in 2010, when Nokia Siemens aided in the surveillance and arrest of Iranian journalist and political reformer Isa Saharkhiz in June 2010. He was arrested after Iran's intelligence tracked his mobile phone location through a Nokia Siemens surveillance tool sold to Iran's state-controlled telecommunication providers.
And Vodafone does not have a perfect in history when it comes to protecting the privacy of users’ communications. Edward Snowden's 2013 NSA leaks shed light on a Vodafone-affiliated telco aiding the UK's GCHQ in collecting Internet data from undersea cables. A Financial Times report also revealed Vodafone has been involved in the handover of massive troves of customer call records to the British police between 2009 and 2014. Most notable, however was in February 2009, when Vodafone revealed they had handed over communication data over to Egyptian authorities in their quest to identify the anti-government rioters protesting over the bread crisis.
Wiretapping has been common practice within Iran since the 1950s. After home telephone service was introduced after World War II, the term shunood — Persian for “listening” — became a household word associated with government monitoring of communications. A telephone operator would often be privy to your conversations, initially establishing your connections once the customer requested who they wanted to be connected with. The telephone operator was thus known to be “listening” in to your conversation. Later this term was re-appropriated for all manner of communications monitoring. The Wikipedia Farsi page for surveillance is thus entitled “shunood ertebatat mokharebati,” or the “listening of telecommunications.”
Cartoon by Doaa Eladl, licensed for reuse.
In recent years, advances in communication technologies have changed the state’s surveillance apparatus from mere listening to data mining and eavesdropping through Deep Packet Inspection, control over meta-data collected by telecommunication companies, and through physical wiretapping, which remains the most popular method inside Iran. While there are laws that protect the privacy of individuals, they often contradict the laws and practices of the state, thereby making room for justifications of surveillance if the “Islamic Revolution” (this refers to the ideals of the founding of the Islamic Republic, as well as the power structures that maintain the positions of the elite) is faced with any form of threat.
Over time, incidents such as Yahoo!'s aid to the Chinese government to arrest a journalist in 2002, or the Saharkhiz arrest with Nokia Siemens in 2010 have triggered increased pressure by rights groups to hold technology companies to account for the services and capabilities they give governments for the purposes of surveillance and oppression.
This and other recent international partnerships come in the wake of US sanctions related to the country's nuclear program. Until they were lifted earlier this year, sanctions prevented international partnerships with all kinds of companies, including telcos. This is a welcome change in the field of Internet and communications infrastructure, as there is great potential for important improvements in Iran's fixed and mobile broadband networks, which are notoriously slow and heavily censored.
From what the companies have made public, it appears that Iranians will still be signing on to service plans from HiWEB, a telecommunications company privatized in 2009 that works closely with the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology to exclusively provide high speed internet access for a period of 10 years in 25,000 villages across Iran.
Vodafone's entrance into Iran however, does not seem to indicate the company's brands will be used to sell telephone or Internet plans to Iranians. This might mean less accountability on the part of Vodafone in the its practices affecting Iranian consumer rights, but the company has made no public statements on the matter.
Image of the Iranian flag and the Vodafone logo remixed by author.
Iran's Internet infrastructure is built to centralize state control over the operations of telcos and ISPs. All ISPs and telcos require operations licenses and accountability to the Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI), a operational branch of the Ministry of ICT that effectively controls the main ISP of the country.
When the government tried to privatize the TCI, the Revolutionary Guards bought about 50% of the shares of the TCI through one of their affiliated companies. The Revolutionary Guards are a branch of Iran's armed forces that is often involved in intelligence, surveillance and repression of dissidence, journalists and other elements they deem a threat to Iran's “Islamic Revolution”. All bodies of Iran's communications and Internet operations come under the influence of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, a body accountable to the office of the Supreme Leader.
Conditions aside, Vodafone's decision to work with HiWEB does mean it will be entering this centralized web of government oversight.
Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards, who are involved in the operation of the countries central telco authority, remain under economic sanctions by the US government for activities associated with terrorism and human rights abuses. When France's telco Orange SA entered the Iranian market in September, the company released a statement acknowledging their efforts to avoid working with the Guards and violating sanctions in this system:
We are conducting feasibility studies to understand and assess what's possible in this complex environment, particularly with regards to certain economic sanctions that apply to Iran.
Vodafane has conceded that they need to abide by the various definitions of “lawful intercept” according to the local laws of the countries they operate in. As a result, the company launched a Law Enforcement Disclosure Report in 2014, outlining requests by governments and data handovers for each country in which they operate. It is unclear if this loose partnership in Iran through HiWEB will merit a country addition to this transparency document.
Despite this welcome step towards diversifying Iran's telecommunications market, it will be necessary to keep steady pressure and watch over the operations of Vodafone with Iranian carriers, especially with the precedent Vodafone has set in the UK and Egypt in cooperating with government surveillance efforts.

author: Mahsa Alimardani


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How a Glove Factory in Rural Armenia Is Beating Back Labour Migration to Russia · Global Voices
Chaikhana.media

A woman at work at the huge glove factory in Choratan, a village near the Armenia and Azerbaijan border. Photo: Chai-Khana.org.
The following is a version of a partner post that first appeared on the website Chai-Khana.org.
Over 700,000 Armenians find work abroad, mostly in Russia, and send back remittances worth the equivalent of a fifth of GDP. Unemployment in the Caucasus country is high, especially in rural areas and areas close to the border with Azerbaijan, with whom the republic has a bitter conflict over the contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh stretching back to before the pair gained independence from the Soviet Union.
In such places, infrastructure is sorely underdeveloped.
This is what makes the decision of one entrepreneur from the Tavush region in Armenia to set up a glove factory in precisely such a location so remarkable.
In the subtitle-enabled video below produced by Global Voices’ partner Chai-Khana.org, employees of the factory, many of whom are women, explain why they took a job at the glove plant instead of one in Armenia's political ally Russia.
Currently the factory in Choratan village has 150 employees, and sales of gloves — mostly to Russia are growing.


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Netizen Report: Protesters Flush SIMs, Set Fire to Modems in Saudi Telecom Boycott · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Screen capture from video of Saudi Telecom router being destroyed with blowtorch. Video shared on YouTube by راح نفلسكم.
When Saudi Arabians began a boycott of mobile providers on October 1, they planned for it to last a day. Yet nearly one month later, it is still going. Protesters are pressuring Saudi Telecom Company, the country’s state-owned provider, to lower service rates and push back against bans on select services offered by Viber, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Skype. Protesters are refusing to use mobile networks, ceasing all text messaging and declining to add credit to their data packages.
While a handful say they are relying exclusively on broadband connections for communication, Global Voices’ sources in the country say that most people involved have switched to smaller service providers including local competitor Mobily and Kuwaiti telco Zain. The campaign has gained significant traction on Twitter under the hashtag #wearegoingtobankruptyou (in Arabic:#اليوم_32_راح_نفلسكم) and on YouTube, where several supporters have posted videos of people destroying modems (some with the Saudi Telecom logo clearly visible) and flushing SIM cards down the toilet.
A local source for Al Alam news indicated in an October 3 article that the company had lost an estimated 23 million rials to date. Fadal Bou Al-Ainain, an economist interviewed last week by local outlet Arab News, says Saudi Telecom could lose up to 50 million rials (equivalent to more than USD $13 million) if the boycott continues through the end of the month.
In other news from Saudi Arabia, social activist Mamdouh Alshammari, also known as Al Monsadah, was arrested by law enforcement authorities for allegedly publishing critical videos on Snapchat, according to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. ANHRI reports Saudi security officials have begun a campaign of arrests against social media critics over the past several days, including arresting one teenager and the activist Aboud Bad. It is anticipated that they will file charges against Al Monsadah for “disrupting the public order, the religious values or public morals, or any false accusations.”
LinkedIn, the world’s largest online professional network, is at risk of being blocked in Russia, where federal censors have convinced a Moscow court to outlaw the network. A judge found that LinkedIn illegally shares non-users’ personal data without their permission. The court also ruled that LinkedIn collects personal information from users in Russia without storing the data on servers located in Russia — a legal requirement introduced last year that few foreign Internet companies respect.
The Russian search engine Yandex plans to stop featuring articles from news outlets that have not registered with the Russian government in its “top news” lists. Yandex is being forced to make the change in order to comply with a June 2016 law regulating online news aggregators with over 1 million daily viewers. The changes are anticipated to take effect by January 2017.
Moroccan authorities have unexpectedly lifted a ban on VoIP applications that left subscribers unable to use voice calling features of tools like WhatsApp and Skype since January 2016. As of 24 October, Moroccan users have been able to access these and other applications without using VPNs or other circumvention tools. Moroccans suspect that the change is temporary, and in anticipation of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP22) set to take place in the city of Marrakesh between November 7 and 18.
A police report leaked last week from China's Xinjiang province describes Internet censorship circumvention tools as falling into a special category of “second class violent and terrorist software.” The report does not describe an actual crime taking place; rather, it anticipates that a crime might have taken place because the suspect attempted to access censored web content with a circumvention tool. There is no public information describing how or why certain technologies are classified as such, or what other products share this classification. For users in China — where VPNs are relatively common in major cities and at private companies — the leak has raised major questions about the legalities of circumvention tools now and in the future.
Google quietly dropped a line in its privacy policy promising not to combine the data it collects from browsing activity with users’ personally identifiable information. This effectively ends a ban on personally identifiable web tracking. The result of this change, according to a new report from ProPublica, is that the massive amount of data Google collects on your web browsing activity through DoubleClick web cookies – which monitor your clicks not only on Google sites but across the wider web – can now be combined with any personal information you give Google to set up a user account for Gmail or its other products.
In order to opt out of the tracking system, go to Google’s My Account page, click on activity controls and uncheck the box next to “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services.”
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Weiping Li and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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Report Shows How Ghana’s Politicians Are Using Social Media Ahead of Elections · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

The cover page of the Governance Social Media Index.
Penplusbytes has released the second edition of the Governance Social Media Index (GSMI) report, which assesses and ranks the presence of political parties, political party leaders and key election management bodies in Ghana on social media based on their followers and level of engagement on Facebook and Twitter.
Generally, the report shows that political actors in Ghana have increased their use of social media ahead of the 2016 general elections.
The flurry of politically minded social media activity hadn't gone unnoticed, even before Penplusbytes's report. Ghana's Inspector General of Police John Kudalor hinted in May 2016 that Ghanaian authorities might consider shutting down social media platforms during the December 7 elections to “maintain peace”.
Following a public debate among major stakeholders after his statement, Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama declared on August 14 that “the government has no intention to shut down social media on election day.”
Penplusbytes is a non-profit organisation promoting effective governance using technology in Africa. The organisation aims at driving change through innovations in three key areas: using new digital technologies to enable good governance and accountability, new media and innovations, and driving oversight for effective utilisation of mining, oil and gas revenue and resources.
The Governance Social Media Index tracks the relevance and effective use of social media in governance. The first index report was published in June 2016.
The second edition of the GSMI was compiled on September 30 after the disqualification of 13 presidential candidates from the 2016 general elections by the Electoral Commission of Ghana. These candidates were included in the report because they were part of the first GSMI.
The report shows that President Mahama is ahead of other presidential candidates on Facebook with 1,007,595 likes — 125,171 more than his June figure of 880,620. Nana Akufo-Addo, the leader of the largest opposition party, New Patriotic Party, comes in at 981,057 likes on Facebook, which represents an increase of 265,341.
When it comes to Twitter, the report shows that Akufo Addo has taken better advantage of the platform to communicate and interact with his followers, as evidenced in his over 4,000 tweets as compared with President Mahama’s 842 tweets.
In terms of political parties, the New Patriotic Party continues to lead with a whopping 307,963 likes on Facebook. Then comes the Progressive People's Party with 33,193 followers, which beats out the ruling National Democratic Congress, who have 24,743 likes on Facebook.
Early this year, Penblusbytes released its first Social Media Index (SMI) report on Ghana’s print, radio and television media houses.
Download the full Governance Social Media Index here.

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Rural Women in Northern India Are Challenging Patriarchy by Removing Their Veils · Global Voices
Rezwan

Veiled women going to work in the Thar desert, Northern India. Image from Flickr by Nagarjun Kandukuru. CC BY 2.0
The practice of women wearing full face veils in northern India is not a trademark of any particular religion. In much of the region, particularly in rural areas, Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Muslim women, especially those who are married, are forced to observe the ritual of veiling the body. A ghoonghat (also called a laaj, chunni or odhni) is one such veil or headscarf that they cover their faces with.
It is greatly debated how this practice evolved to be in this particular region, but what is certain is that the veiling tradition has been in India for centuries. Throughout history more and more women have started to ditch the covering. However, in rural areas and some parts of urban centers, it still prevails.
My “highly educated” in-laws made me wear “the veil” post marriage!!! #marriednotbranded #topplepatriarchyhttps://t.co/mSU9oXSvzw
— snehanjali (@handfulo_luv) October 26, 2016
Manju Yadav, a teacher from Mirzapur in Faridabad, Haryana, has started a campaign to help stop women from covering their whole faces. Her campaign has picked up and spread to 47 villages. The video below by Keep Trending news explains:
The video explains how the practice of ghoonghat is considered a sign of modesty and respect by some villagers. They say that it is important to cover women's faces to show respect for men.
Chander Shekhar, the deputy commissioner from the local administration, has supported the campaign, saying that the practice of ghoonghat affects women's self-respect.
For her part, Yadav says men ask women to cover their faces to keep them under control. “Ask a man to cover his face for a day, he will not be able to do it,” she says.
Forty-seven female village self-government heads (sarpanch) from Faridabad district took an oath in July to free their villages from the practice of ghoonghat.
Many Indians have reacted to this news. Chanchal Mishra wrote on Facebook:
[I]n the name of culture and tradition many such hypocrisy has been practiced for ages now. I was wondering why is the list for men missing when we are blessed to have such long list of illogical customs for women.
In a comment on BBC India's page, Ash Chowdhury explained the practice in further detail:
I'm from this kind of villages where these customs still survive and the veil (ghunghat ) where you don't have to do all the time its only when the lady is married and she is with in her in laws house or in front of husbands relatives
And Kavaseri Vasudevan Venkataraman Iyer opined:
If women want to wear veil let them. If they do not want to wear veil let them. It is ad [sic] simple as that. Men should understand and behave properly and not harass them.

author: Rezwan


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Yet Another Scandal for Russia’s Orthodox Church as Clergyman Is Spotted Wearing $40K Rolex · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Image: St. Petersburg Archdiocese
The Russian Orthodox Church has another scandal on its hands, or rather on the wrist of one of its top clergyman in St. Petersburg, where the archdiocese recently published photographs taken on Metropolit Varsonofiy’s travels to Greece. In one of the happy images, journalists spotted what appears to be a Rolex Daytona 116509 — a wristwatch that retails for roughly 2.5 million rubles ($40,000).
Varsonofiy went to Mt. Athos on Oct. 23, where he met with the new abbot at a monastery operating within the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.
According to Varsonofiy’s own account, he congratulated the abbot on being selected to his new position, and gifted him a holy cross. To mark the occasion, the church released several photographs of the meeting, including one picture revealing part of what appears to be Varsonofiy’s very expensive wristwatch.
Rolex introduced its Cosmograph Daytona series in 1963, designed specially to “meet the demands of professional racers.” A watchmaker in St. Petersburg reportedly told the Fontanka news agency that a Rolex Daytona 116509 could likely be purchased on Russia’s black market for about 25,000 euros.
The press office for St. Petersburg’s archdiocese says Varsonofiy is still in Greece, telling reporters that clarification about his wristwatch will have to wait until he’s back in Russia.
There was a similar controversy four years ago, when Internet users noticed that the Russian Orthodox Church edited photos of Patriarch Kirill to conceal his $30,000 Breguet wristwatch. Sadly for the church, its photo editors forgot to remove the watch’s reflection on a tabletop.
The church first denied the story, but later blamed an “inexperienced staff member.”
Image: Patriarchia.ru
Outside Russia's clergy, Vladimir Putin's longtime official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, landed in the center of a political scandal in August 2015, when anti-corruption activists spotted a $620,000 Richard Mille RM 52-01 wristwatch in his wedding day photos. Peskov claimed the watch was a gift from his bride, and insisted that it was worth just $3,500, but this wasn't the first time he was pictured wearing the timepiece.
The story was one of the first and biggest revelations made by activist Alexey Navalny about the vast personal wealth of individuals in Vladimir Putin's inner circle. Navalny has continued to publish similar investigations for the past year.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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100 Years of Beauty in Central Asia and the Caucasus · Global Voices
Abdulfattoh Shafiev

Following in the footsteps of Cut.com's 100 Years of Beauty series, filmmakers in several countries of the former Soviet Union have made their own videos documenting the history of women's fashion in their respective corners of Eurasia, helping to perpetuate a well-celebrated global meme.
Among the countries that once constituted the underbelly of the Russian empire, inspiration came first to Kyrgyzstan, a country of six million people in Central Asia's mountainous and comparatively water-rich east.
The history takes viewers through the traditional nomadic attire of the Kyrgyz, whose conversion to Islam from shamanistic beliefs was a drawn out process that did not reach a peak until the middle of the 19th century.
Even today there is controversy over what religiously-acceptable dress in the country should constitute, with the country's outspoken and occasionally bellicose President Almazbek Atambayev supporting the proliferation across the country of banners warning against the foreign influence of the niqab veil.
A common feature of the 100 Years of Beauty videos in the ex-Soviet Union is a pause for sadness during the 1940s, when the bloc fought on the allied side against fascism in what is most commonly referred to across the regıon as the Great Patriotic War.
In Kazakhstan's version the model also cuts a solemn figure during the 1930s when Kazakhstan, along with Ukraine, experienced the sharp end of a famine enforced by Stalinist agricultural policies.
Under the Kazakh video, YouTubers debated the model's seemingly mixed ethnicıty:
Bakittas Sanitas: 60% Asian 30% Turk 5% Iran 5% Slavic
Zhyldyz Urazalieva: 50% Kazakh+50% Kazakh!!!
Below is an  alternative Kazakhstan video endorsed by local news outlet Tengri News:
In the oil-wealthy Turkic nation of Azerbaijan there are also two separate 100 Years videos vying for the attentions of users:
Both videos show how Azerbaijan, like Turkey, has adopted elements of Western and Eastern fashion while retaining its own special stylishness.
Although a slow-burning military conflict over the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh makes it very difficult to travel directly to Armenia from Azerbaijan in real life, that is our next stop.
The Armenian model showcases the unique dress associated with what is possibly the world's oldest majority Christian society, pausing for sadness around the time of the Armenian genocide that took place during the twilight of the Ottoman empire.
Oddly, the model is also found in possession of a pocket-sized mobile phone ahead of schedule, in the 1980s.
The most recent of the 100 Years of Beauty videos from the region comes from Tajikistan, and was uploaded onto YouTube on October 22.
The model's dress reflects that seen over the years in the conservative north of the country and in the ancient Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara that comprise part of modern-day Uzbekistan but retain a special cultural importance for speakers of the Iranian-family Tajik language.
The video demonstrates a notable lack of influence from the West but also a style of clothing distinct from that seen in Islamic cultures in the Middle East.
While videos from Georgia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are still needed to complete the collection, the existing videos have already done much to further the cause of diversity in a world that tends increasingly towards homogeneity.
This was a point made by YouTube user Das Staubkorn:
I am usually in favour of globalization, but it definitely ruined the unique and beautiful clothing of every country. Folk costumes are so beautiful, we should wear them again.

author: Abdulfattoh Shafiev


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Ethiopia’s Regime Faces Precarious Times as Diaspora Plans for the Future · Global Voices
Endalkachew Chala

Ethiopia's Simien National Park. Free to use image from Pixabay
In November 2015, residents of a small town called Ginchi launched protests against a proposal by Ethiopia’s government to expand Addis Ababa, the capital, into the surrounding farmlands in the Oromia region. The protests have since grown into a movement demanding greater self-rule, freedom and respect for the ethnic identity of the Oromo people, who have experienced systematic marginalization and persecution over the last quarter-century.
In Amhara, the country's second largest region, protests started in Gonder on July 31 this year, and rapidly devolved from addressing localized identity questions of the Welkait community into a region-wide movement that has spread into numerous other provinces in just four months. Though the large-scale July 31 incident in Gonder marked the first  major confrontation between Amhara protest leaders and the Ethiopian government, the dispute between the Amharas and the regime can be traced back as far as the early 1990s, when the Tigrayan-dominated regime redrew the district boundaries of the Welkait community that belonged to ethnic Amharas into Tigray region. Some Amhara activists have described the ongoing Amhara protest as ‘25 years of anger unleashed’. The protesters in Gonder have also expressed slogans of solidarity for the protests in Oromia.
Although the protests in Oromia and Amhara started for different reasons, they both stem from Ethiopia's complex identity politics. In both regions, demonstrators are challenging the dominance of elites from one group — the Tigray — in Ethiopian politics. The Tigray make up 6% of the population but dominate the ranks of the military and government, while the Oromo are at 34% and the Amhara represent 27% of the country's population.
Since November, hundreds of protesters have been killed and thousands arrested. Early this month, at least 52 people were killed at a gathering for the Irreecha holiday in Oromia, after security forces triggered a stampede with smoke bombs and live bullets.
The protests’ amazing spread from Amhara to Oromia seemed to represent an important turning point in the year-old movement challenging the 25-year rule of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the ruling political coalition, which is dominated by Tigrayan ethnic minority elites.
For observers and critics alike, these protests represent a watershed moment in modern Ethiopian political history. In mid-October, the government even declared a six-month state of emergency for the first time in 25 years.
State officials have continued to promise reforms, reaching out to what observers call “friendly opposition figures” like Lidetu Ayalew. Last week, however, there were mass arrests, and the authorities cut off digital communications. State propaganda and mandatory large-scale “training programs” for civil servants seem to signal that the government is struggling to contain the widespread anger and discontent.
Meanwhile, a significant number of the 251,000 members of the Ethiopian diaspora community who live in the United States are marking this historical moment by honoring the victims of the violence and holding vigils. More importantly, they have started to contemplate life without the incumbent regime.
As the protests gradually eat away at Ethiopia’s basic political and economic structures, the regime appears more wobbly that ever before. Consequently, the Ethiopian diaspora has convened conferences to discuss regime change, constitutional reforms, and others transitional issues. The conferences are organized by a number of diasporic political groups and individuals who are nevertheless divided along various ethno-national and ideological lines.
Of the events happening now in the Ethiopian diaspora, two prominent conferences stand out.
The Oromo Conference for National Consensus was a pre-convention gathering at which political groups of the Oromos, the single largest Ethiopian ethnic group, deliberated about the Oromo Leadership Convention scheduled to take place this November in Atlanta, Georgia.
The pre-convention began in London on October 22, 2016, and concluded the following day. While the conference was underway, a division quickly emerged between the Oromo elites in the diaspora regarding the inclusiveness and the framing of the convention planned for Atlanta. The organizers of the Atlanta convention appeared to support the convention's proceeding as planned, despite remarks by prominent Oromo activists, journalists, and academics, who raised challenging questions and proposed various and complex alternative themes and frames for the convention.
The pre-convention reached a dramatic climax, however, when Liben Wako (a representative of an Oromo political group) caused a firestorm by saying, “The struggle of the Oromos is not to democratize Ethiopia but to rip it into pieces.”
Funny how the diaspora make up and break up Ethiopia while we the locals eat our breakfast, have a coffee with our neighbors and go to work.
— Amare Mekonnen (@Amare_Mekonnen) October 26, 2016
The statement was a remarkable crystallization of the country's existential crisis, demonstrating that ethnic nationalism remains a potent and unresolved issue in Ethiopia today. In the current heightened ethno-national political climate, these kinds of statements threaten to exacerbate attitudes against non-Oromo Ethiopians who have supported the ongoing protest with the aim of democratizing Ethiopia.
Political movements in #Ethiopia can be supported by the diaspora, but should not be dictated by it. The People know what is best for them.
— Hallelujah Lulie (@halelule) October 27, 2016
This conference took place on October 22 and 23, 2016, bringing together various individuals and political groups in Washington, D.C. The October event marked the the second time the event was held this year, with the first gathering in April 2016.
Scholars and political groups based in the diaspora presented papers, concept notes, and ideas about the ongoing protests and their repercussions in Ethiopia. Reportedly, most conference participants reached a consensus on an overarching Ethiopian civic national identity, while recognizing various ethnic identities. Most of the papers presented at the conference reflected this agreement.
Broadly speaking, two opposing political groups — ethno-nationalists and civic nationalists — have dominated the rhetoric that's shaped the two conferences. This dichotomy sometimes breaks down into conflicts between secessionists and unionists.

author: Endalkachew Chala


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Tension Mounts After Demonstrators Promise to “Take Back Venezuela” in Countrywide Protests · Global Voices
Laura Vidal

Street movements in Venezuela appear to mark the beginning of impassioned demonstrations against the government's refusal to hold a recall referendum against president Nicolás Maduro. Image: Detail from a photograph taken by María Alejandra Mora during the marches in Maracaibo in 2014. Published under Creative Commons license.
Following the Venezuelan government's refusal to hold the recall referendum as requested by the opposition, Venezuelans took to the streets in their thousands in the face of what they see as a dead end in negotiations over the country's political and economic crisis.
Images of these protests and the arguments both for and against the referendum can be followed via the #LaTomaDeVenezuela [The Taking of Venezuela] hashtag. The conversation also has local elements with marches that have taken place in parts of the country other than the capital Caracas, such as in the plains region of Barinas, the Andean regions of Mérida and Táchira, the central northern state of Carabobo, and Margarita island in the region of Nueva Esparta.
Economic and political instability — heavily linked to the collapse of the oil price — has been steadily growing in Venezuela, resulting in acute shortages of food and medicine for ordinary Venezuelans. For many opposition supporters, the exit of President Nicolás Maduro and his administration could help usher in much-needed changes, while Congress, where the opposition now holds a majority, has been pushing in vain to bring impeachment proceedings against Maduro to the Supreme Court he retains control over.
While the national electoral body agreed to holding a referendum, the Maduro administration has backed away from endorsing what would effectively amount to a vote on its mandate to continue governing, ensuring that six different courts rejected the process.
Maduro has also refused to recognise a symbolic “political trial” of the president that Congress has promised to hold in the absence of an impeachment trial.
In her most recent article about the government's decision, Venezuelan Global Voices author Marianne Díaz explains:
En un contexto de crisis social, política y económica, con las tasas de violencia e inflación más alta del mundo (se predice que la inflación cierre el año en 500%), y un grave y complejo contexto de desabastecimiento de alimentos y medicinas, para muchos la realización del referendo revocatorio era el único camino que permitiría al país recuperar la institucionalidad perdida y generar un pacto de gobernabilidad.
In the context of social, political and economic crisis, with the highest violence and inflation rates in the world (it is predicted that inflation will close out the year at 500%), and against a backdrop of grave and complex food and medicine shortages, for many Venezuelans a recall referendum was the only path that would allow the country to recover its lost institutional structures and create a governance pact.
An announcement made by the Democratic Unity Roundtable or MUD (a coalition bringing together parties and politicians opposed to the ruling party) urged demonstrators to join a rally on October 27 in support of Congress, to take part in a 12-hour strike the following day, and to march on Miraflores palace – the seat of the Venezuelan government — on November 3.
Twitter reacted quickly to the announcement:
#LlegóLaHora Venezuela: mañana @AsambleaVE, viernes paro cívico nacional y el #3N todos a Caracas para la marcha a Miraflores. Corre la voz! pic.twitter.com/9ZyVGldNry
— Freddy Guevara (@FreddyGuevaraC) October 26, 2016
#LlegóLaHora [It's time] Venezuela: tomorrow @AsambleaVE [National Assembly], Friday national civic strike and #3N [3 November] everybody to Caracas for the march on Miraflores. Spread the word!
.@MariaCorinaYA con @soyfdelrincon “Mañana estaremos en la calle acompañando a la #AN para la ruta de la destitución de @NicolasMaduro “
— Victor Santiago R. (@PichiSantiagoR) October 27, 2016
.@MariaCorinaYA with @soyfdelrincon “Tomorrow we will be on the streets accompanying the #AN [National Assembly] for the dismissal of @NicolasMaduro“
The first of the protests under “The Taking of Venezuela” slogan took place on Wednesday, October 26.
Images shared in real time from the marches showed sizeable participation in different parts of the country and also confrontations between demonstrators, police and the pro-government camp.
Amongst the most shared photos was one of a protester shouting through riot shields: “You're going to kill me because I'm hungry?”
“Me vas a matar porque tengo hambre” era lo que exclamaba este Venezolano.
Ya estamos cansados nojoda.#AMirafloresHoy#LaTomaDeVenezuelapic.twitter.com/k8LlZwrp4D
— Brenner Alexander. (@brenneralexandr) October 26, 2016
“You're going to kill me because I'm hungry?” is what this Venezuelan man was saying. We're tired. Stop screwing us. #AMirafloresHoy [To Miraflores Today] #LaTomaDeVenezuela [The Taking of Venezuela]
Images of confrontations and reports of abuse and repression spread across Twitter. One of the most shared stories was of police heavy-handedness in the northern city of Maracay. There protesters say they took refuge inside the city's cathedral to escape police and other armed, pro-government groups. Hours later the demonstrators were able to get out to safety, but the protests continued.
In other parts of the country, some demonstrators attempted to stop the advance of police, like this woman in the Andean state of Táchira:
#LaTomaDeVenezuela Las mujeres en #Tachira no usan faldas xq se le vería lo que muchos GNB no tienen ! pic.twitter.com/VpMV28SE0p
— La Guerrera #GAR (@MayVenezolana) October 26, 2016
#LaTomaDeVenezuela Women in  #Tachira don't wear skirts because you'd be able to see what many National Guards don't have!
Meanwhile, an infographic totalling the day's repression circulated on social media:
Así reprimió la dictadura en el interior del país. pic.twitter.com/HomWK20QGL
— CelinaCarquez (@CelinaCarquez) October 27, 2016
How the dictatorship suppressed the interior of the country.
For many, the presence of large numbers of people on the streets reinforces the legitimacy of the recall request, something government representatives have been attempting to undermine.
As Myteks Media Labs puts it:
Nicolás y Diosdado dicen que las firmas del 1%
Son falsas!
Aquí esta tu revocatorio! En la calle#LaTomaDeVenezuelapic.twitter.com/iojnCb7Kck
— Myteks Media Labs (@myteks) October 26, 2016
Nicolás and Diosdado say that 1% of signatures are false. Here is your recall! On the streets #LaTomaDeVenezuelapic.twitter.com/iojnCb7Kck
Independent media such as Efecto Cocuyo and Prodavinci regularly share information, images and clips that demonstrate the size — and volume — of opposition to the Maduro administration.
Así se vio #LaTomaDeVenezuela en la autopista Francisco Fajardo de Caracas pic.twitter.com/Q5SN8AALe3
— Efecto Cocuyo (@EfectoCocuyo) October 26, 2016
This is what #LaTomaDeVenezuela looked like on the Francisco Farjado motorway in Caracas
The planned strike on October 27, however, attracted smaller numbers. Some Venezuelans told media they were too hungry to participate in a strike that involved not working and not shopping.

author: Laura Vidal


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‘The End of the World’: A Poet’s Journey from Syria to Algiers · Global Voices
Budour Hassan

Dima Yousef. Source: Budour Hassan
This story was originally published on Budour Hassan's blog.
Last year, on November 25, Dima Yousef, her mother, and two sisters landed in the Algerian capital. Her mother had decided that living in war-torn Syria was a gamble that the family could no longer risk.
Dima Yousef, a 30-year-old poet and Arabic language teacher, is the third of five siblings. Born and raised in Yarmouk refugee camp in the southern outskirts of Damascus, she belongs to a family uprooted from the Palestinian village of Hosheh, east of Haifa. The village had been the site of a fierce battle between the Arab Liberation Army and Haganah paramilitary forces in April 1948. It fell to the Haganah’s Carmeli Brigade on the 16th of that month, forcing all residents to flee either to neighboring villages or to Lebanon and later to Syria, where Dima’s grandparents settled.
A lone palm tree, a graveyard, and some ruins bear witness to what was once a peaceful agricultural community. Physically destroyed, Hosheh was revived through the stories and memories passed on by the survivors to the second and third generations of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias in 1948.
When Dima bid Damascus a final farewell, she was overwhelmed by the jarring sense of permanent loss and uprooting, the feeling experienced and often articulated by Nakba survivors in Yarmouk.
There are no regular power cuts and fuel shortages in Algiers, no random mortar shells or military checkpoints tearing the city asunder. Yet, somehow, Dima always felt “safer” in Damascus. “It would be ungrateful of me to complain or talk about nostalgia,” Dima told me. “I am lucky to be alive, to have a room of my own, but I miss everything about Damascus, even all those long days without electricity.”
Upon leaving Damascus, Dima could only fit her most precious belongings in her bag, including the books a dear friend had given her. But she left behind a heart torn in two: one piece lay in the timeless streets of Damascus’ Old City; the other remains in Yarmouk, or what is left of it.
Dima is eloquent in her vivid poetry, yet still struggles to put into words what she misses most about Yarmouk. She hasn’t been able to set foot in the camp for over three years, and deep down, she knows she will never go back again. She writes:
No, not just the streets, the alleys, the houses or my memories that are still floating there. Not just people’s faces, their clear eyes, their raw emotions and their astounding intimacy. These are not the only things I miss about Yarmouk.
Not just my father’s grave, the presence of which I haven’t gotten used to yet. Not only do I miss the things I used to possess, the things that were mine: my home, my family, my friends, my life.
Life! This is precisely what I miss the most when I think about the camp. Life, in all of its noise, its anguish, and its exhaustion. Yarmouk and its people were masterful at imbuing everything around them with life, pulse, warmth and spark.
‘Yarmouk never sleeps,’ this is what anyone who knew the camp used to say. It never slept as though it were scared of missing something. Yarmouk has always been true to this habit. And even when death arrived, Yarmouk stayed awake and missed none of it.
It was in July 2013, just before Syrian government forces imposed a full siege on the camp, that Dima and her family fled Yarmouk. Dima had to face so many losses: the high schoolers she used to teach, who were both her students and her friends in Yarmouk; her home in the camp, which was destroyed by shelling; and her father, who succumbed to his wounds in that same month after being shot by a sniper.
Photo taken in Yarmouk by Niraz Saied. Source: Budour Hassan.
Death by a sniper, Dima would later conclude, is still more merciful than the slow death under siege.
In an untitled poem, translated by Fawaz Azem, Dima explains that her father “would have surely been destroyed by his indignation at seeing hunger rampaging on the bodies of the young, unstoppable!”
She goes on to say:
Thank you, bullet that claimed father’s life before it was claimed by indignation!
Thank you, sniper, who performed his ablution with his blood!
Thank you father’s blood, which brought closure to the scene!
In another cruel twist, Dima, then encouraged by friends to begin seriously contemplating the idea of publishing her first poetry collection, was arrested by Syrian security forces on November 27, 2014. The reason for her arrest was a complaint presented against her two years earlier. It stated that she was “active” on Facebook pages opposing the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, Dima has been explicit in her support for peaceful protests and has spoken out against repression. Yet, she has never considered herself an activist, arguing that rejecting injustice and oppression is the natural thing to do, not a form of activism.
“I’m not a hero and what I faced in prison pales in comparison to what most detainees go through,” Dima reiterates. “You do not need to be a political activist to express solidarity with people under siege and shelling.”
Dima believes she was lucky not to have been tortured or humiliated like the others. She spent two weeks in detention, but knows that people can spend years and even die in Syrian prisons on the basis of reports linking them to political activism.
“A year ago today, I learned that there are places that God never visits,” Dima wrote on the first anniversary of her arrest, referring to the security branches run by the Syrian government.
Although she often preferred not to rub that unhealed wound, in an unpublished diary, titled “The End of the World,” Dima tried, for the first time, to articulate what her experience in detention was like.
“Now I know what the end of the world looks like,” she begins.
It is a wall covered with many scribblings and indecipherable words written by the prisoners; a wall filled with pleas and the counting of endless vanishing days; a wall that testifies to the voices of those who try to create noise out of the inaudible screams buried in their throats.
I would open my eyes and close them to a prayer scrawled in black large letters, as if the person who wrote it had tried to release all the darkness and indignation inside her through one last supplication.
On prison walls, so many women left their names behind like stains of blood. With an eyeliner forgotten in one woman’s pocket, the edge of a button, or with their nails, they scratched the harsh face of truth embodied by a prison wall upon which life begins and ends.
Or perhaps, they simply wrote down their names to make sure that they still exist and that their names have not been thrown into oblivion.
In her prison diaries, Dima also remembers the screams of tortured detainees — the screams that are too painful for “just one heart and two ears” to handle — the everyday “tricks” used by women to cope and survive, and the wait for prison doors to open, for the guard to call the names of those selected for release, and for the arrival of the “morning bus” — the bus that transfers detainees out of jail, “from a certain death to a possible life.”
She writes about her anger at being dragged to a corner by a prison guard and photographed by an officer, known as Abu Ali, without being allowed to smile.
“If only he’d let me smile, smile to all the faces of prisoners photographed for the last time of their life, by Abu Ali.”
During her two weeks in detention, Dima’s family insisted on maintaining utmost secrecy for fear of possible repercussions.
Dima, too, was reluctant to talk about her brief arrest due to the stigma associated with political detention and the fact that she was a public-sector employee in Syria.
For Dima Yousef, exile and imprisonment bear many similarities: the alienation, the loneliness, the uncertainty, and a feeling that time is frozen and that her life is on hold.
Dima is finding it hard to break free from the shackles of memory and longing just as she struggled after her release from prison.
Her free-verse poetry gives her strength and solace.
The fact that her poems are only published on her personal Facebook page means that Dima’s poetry has yet to receive the publicity or the readership it deserves. But thanks to Azem’s translations, the poems reached unexpected audience, when Chicago-based flautist Shanna Gutierrez adapted one into a musical composition.
“Songish” meant a lot to Dima, who is also a big fan of the flute. It reaffirmed her faith that poetry and music have the power to break borders she is forbidden from crossing, and to show the human face of a tragedy mostly reduced to numbers and geopolitical calculations.
In a journey that continues to be marked by uncertainty and marred by individual and collective losses, Dima has no idea where life will take her next. What she does know for certain is that distance is measured by heartbeats rather than miles. And Yarmouk lives in each and every heartbeat.

author: Budour Hassan


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A Syrian Refugee in the US Wants Americans to Understand Their Country’s Vetting Process · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Asmaa Albukaie, Idaho's first Syrian refugee, in her new home. Credit: Courtesy of Asmaa Albukaie
This story by Jason Margolis originally appeared on PRI.org on October 20, 2016. It is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Asmaa Albukaie was married at age 14. She had two children by the time she was 15. Then she took an unusual step for a stay-at-home Syrian mom: She signed up for a university degree in library science in Damascus.
“I noticed that women in movies, American women, decide whatever they want to decide. This is not acceptable in Syria. So I made my own decision to learn and study, but I hid in the bathroom because my husband didn’t allow me to study,” said Albukaie, laughing about that now.
Albukaie told me her story in a coffee shop in downtown Boise, where we spoke for about 90 minutes. The city of Boise, the capital city of the northwestern state of Idaho, is taking in a lot of Syrian refugees: 122 so far this year. That’s more than twice as many as Los Angeles, Boston and New York combined.
Albukaie and her two teenage sons — who arrived in November 2014 — were the first Syrian refugees in Idaho.
Boise has been resettling a lot of refugees, from many nations, because of the affordable housing and need for workers in sparsely populated Idaho.
Albukaie told me a lot of details about her life in Syria, then would ask me to please not share certain parts of our discussion. She wants to protect her family that’s still in the war-torn country — it’s a learned survival defense, not to criticize anybody.
“If I spoke in a bad way, you would not see me alive here,” she said.
Here’s what she said I can share: Albukaie’s husband and her two young boys were kidnapped. She never saw her husband again. But she got her boys back then immediately left for Jordan, then Egypt, where she applied for refugee status through the United Nations.
The UN focuses on resettling its most vulnerable cases first, and she qualified as a single mother. After two years of interviews and background checks, she got a ticket for the United States.
“And then on my flight it’s written: ‘Boise, ID,’ which is Idaho, now I know. But before I didn’t know. And I Googled that,” she says.
Naturally, it was a difficult transition being the very first Syrian refugee in the entire state of Idaho.
“The hardest part? Everything,” said Albukaie. “Learning how to pay the bills, learning how to drive because I got a stick shift car. People were yelling at me in the middle of the street because my car died. They'd call me names, and crazy, and the ‘F-word’ and very bad words. I just smiled and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m a new driver, this is the first time I’m driving.’”
Albukaie received the car as a donation. She said she didn’t drive in Syria because the buses were convenient, so a car wasn’t necessary.
Thanks in part to all those American movies she watched, Albukaie’s mastery of English quickly landed her a job as an interpreter. Then after a few months in Boise, Albukaie got hired as a resettlement officer helping other refugees arriving from nations across the globe.
She's come a long way very quickly. Last month, Albukaie was honored at the White House for her outreach work, along with seven other refugee community leaders, as part of Welcoming Week, an event run by the Welcoming America, an organization that promotes innovative ways to integrate immigrants into US communities.
Today, Albukaie says she feels like she hit the jackpot living in Idaho.
“First of all, it’s beautiful, it’s really beautiful and green. And also I have a lot of nice friends here, I’m working, and I’m safe. This is the most important thing. I left my country because I was not safe, and I came here for peace and safety,” she says.
Angry drivers aside, Albukaie says Boise has been a very welcoming community. She talks about the small details that make Boise feel that way: for instance, a Jewish family who invited her family to their home for Thanksgiving.
But that warmth is changing. Albukaie wears a hijab, and she says people have screamed at her and called her a “terrorist.” A man recently assaulted her 16-year-old son.
“He was with his friend, and this American guy asked him: ‘Are you Muslim?’ And my son said, ‘Yes, I am Muslim.’ And he punched him in his face.”
The assailant was arrested and charged under Idaho’s hate crime law.
Albukaie wouldn’t criticize any American politicians for the heightened animosity toward Muslims. She’s afraid if she says the wrong thing, that she might get deported. Legally, that can’t happen.
Albukaie spoke to me because she said she wants Americans to understand the refugee vetting process to get here. All applicants are first screened by the UN, then three US government agencies: the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Overall, the process to admit Syrian refugees generally takes 18 to 24 months, if applicants pass all the hurdles. Around 10,000 Syrian refugees have been accepted to the US over the past 12 months. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said she’d like to increase the annual intake to 65,000.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said we know “nothing” about the background of Syrian refugees. At the third presidential debate on Wednesday evening, Trump echoed that point again when talking to Clinton.
“[Clinton] is taking in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who probably in many cases, not probably, who are definitely in many cases ISIS aligned. And we now have them in our country. And wait until you see, this is going to be the great Trojan Horse. And wait until you see what happens in the coming years,” said Trump.
“This is what upsets me, because I love the country, I love America,” Albukaie said. “This country is my mother. When [Trump] said Syrians are coming without any paperwork, he should see my paperwork and other people’s paperwork, it’s huge. We went through a lot of interviews, a lot of background checks … More than 10 interviews, and a lot of them were scary and not comfortable, in small rooms, no windows, like an investigation.
“Scary because they ask a lot of questions, and a lot of embarrassing questions too. Like, ‘Answer yes or no, do you want to bomb airplanes?’”
I asked Albukaie: What about the people who are scared of Muslims coming from Syria? How do you assure them that you’re not a terrorist?
“When people say ‘terrorist’ to me… when I smile and wave and say hello, their face changes from somebody that’s mad to somebody who’s welcoming, more calm,” said Albukaie. “I believe Muslim attitudes can change what American people think about Muslims.”
Albukaie recently gave a TED Talk in Moscow, Idaho, so more people can get to know a Syrian refugee.

author: PRI/PRX's The World


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Caribbean Bloggers Week 2016 Seeks to Amplify the Region’s Online Voices · Global Voices
Atiba Rogers

Screen shot from SiliconCaribe.com website.
Jamaican tech entrepreneur Ingrid Riley believes it's high time the Caribbean's bloggers emerged into the sunlight and made their voices heard in the online world.
She and her award-winning Caribbean tech media and events brand SiliconCaribe are launching Caribbean Bloggers Week 2016 (#CBW2016) from December 5-10, 2016. The theme of the first CBW is “The Power of Digital Influence,” and the main goal is to provide an outlet for Caribbean bloggers and bloggers of Caribbean descent to be recognized. They are out there, and they do have voices.
SiliconCaribe Editor-in-Chief and founder of Caribbean Bloggers Week Ingrid Riley. (Screenshot from SiliconCaribe.com)
Ninety per cent of the action will be online, where emerging and professional digital influencers will be profiled and interviewed.
The week-long event will also organize blogger meetups hosted by bloggers of Caribbean descent. Odessa Chambers, owner of the lifestyle and entertainment blog oaccessjamaica.com will host the meetup in Kingston, Jamaica. Port of Spain's Mel Gabriel, who is a writer, editor and owner of CaribbeanLookBook.com, will be the Trinidadian host. The New York meetup will be hosted by Mikelah Rose, founder of StyleandVibes.com. In London, the meetup host will be Ursula Barzey, founder of the Caribbean travel and luxury blog CaribbeanandCo.com.
The CBW might just be the ideal opportunity for Caribbean writers and commentators to step out of the shadows of their Facebook threads, hashtags and retweets, and start making a greater impact in the global online dialogue.

author: Atiba Rogers


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Iran Is Poised to Limit Press Freedom Even More Than It Already Does · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Activist protest the ban of newspapers in Iran. Photo from payvand.com.
When President Hassan Rouhani was elected to office in 2013, he was lauded for his mandate of “hope and prudence” and promises to bring more freedoms to the media and telecommunications realm.
Yet today, his administration is making significant changes to the country's press laws that may restrict freedom of expression even more so than the status quo.
Read Iran's current Press Law, ratified in 1986, on the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center website. Article 3, 6 and 7 are the sections that will be transformed under this new legislation.
His administration reportedly plans to do this through two bills: one designed to ultimately replace the current Press Law and the other to create a state media commission. While the new Press Law may appear relatively similar to the current one, it leaves more room for interpretation when determining if someone has committed an offence. This could make it easier for prosecutors or judges with political motivations to silence journalists or newspapers through arbitrary charges.
The proposed Media Affairs Commission bill to “oversee the journalism profession” would make journalists and media agencies more directly accountable to the government. The Commission will be responsible for issuing permits to journalists, draft a Journalism Ethics Code and ensure “high moral standards” in the media. At present, local Iranian journalists do not need permits to work for publications, in contrast to foreign journalists who go through a rigorous accreditation process through the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance's foreign press department. Only special accreditation is applied for journalists through their new agencies to attend official settings such as Parliament, or speeches by the President and Ministers.
The majority of the commission would be staffed by state officials or people who have the state's interests at heart, not media workers.
Hardline politician Hossein Entezami, well known for repressing media freedoms, reportedly will take a leading role in the Commission. His appointment to this post, by the Rouhani Administration, is leading to feelings of disquiet for freedom of the press in Iran.
Media are already restricted in Iran — year after year the country comes in near the bottom in world press freedom rankings — and the country's current Press Law bans a litany of things, including:
The proposed Comprehensive Mass Media Regulatory Plan would take things a step further. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Article 20 criminalizes some new types of content and brings greater specificity to some of its previous items:
When talking about these two bills on August 6, 2016, former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Jannati gave the impression that they were necessary and for the good of Iran's media:
The Comprehensive Mass Media Regulatory Plan will be introduced as a bill to reform the Press Law and is designed to prevent many of the problems facing media publishers that sometimes result in the closure of newspapers or the arrest of journalists. There is also a need to introduce changes to incorporate digital media…One of the things people in the journalism profession have always asked for is a Media Affairs Commission, similar to what doctors have, that would streamline relations between journalists and the government…
Jannati's mention of journalist arrests is important. While arrests of journalists are nothing new in Iran, they often face charges under relatively broad sections of the law such as spreading propaganda against the ruling system, conspiring against officials and insulting authorities. Some recent cases of journalists newly sentenced to jail terms because of these broad offences typically reserved for political prisoners, include Afarin Chitzaz, Ehsan Mazandarani and Saman Sadarzaee, all of whom were writing for publications sympathetic to the Rouhani administration. These arrests are often interpreted as ways the judiciary and intelligence undermine the Rouhani administration. The newly proposed changes signal a complicity in this from his administration.
The newly proposed law does offer greater specificity, thereby theoretically indicating where the “red line” falls. Yet Iranian legal experts caution that this can still be subject to interpretation within the bill such as ‘undermining the foundation of Islam’ and ‘sowing discord among various classes of society’.
The Media Affairs Commission was originally proposed in September 2014, but it was set aside after much criticism from the journalism community. A closer look at some of its conditions will clarify why it has caused such alarm within Iran's media (translation by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran).
“The Passage of the Media Affairs Commission Bill Will Mean the End of Independent Journalism”, read this ILNA headline.
Reformist journalists who have been subject to extensive repression have noted that this bill comes by way of elements within Iran's intelligence establishments — namely the Intelligence Ministry, the Revolutionary Guard’s Intelligence Organization, the police forces, and national security organizations.
The Rouhani administration's appointment of Hossein Entezami as deputy of media affairs within the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance, the body responsible for press regulation, has further exacerbated the worries of media workers.
Amongst the many appointments that Entezami has attained throughout his career, a few define his hardline position. He started his press career in 1989 as the Tehran bureau chief for Qods, an ultra-conservative daily newspaper. He was also the founder of Jam-e Jam newspaper in 2000, the official mouthpiece for the national broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, taking a vocal and hostile stance toward the reformist administration of Mohammad Khatami between 1994 and 2004.
Throughout the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Entezami was involved in the founding and administration of a number of other hardline media outlets.
Apart from his direct role within the media, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran mentions that Entezami has connections to Iran’s intelligence apparatus.
Ali Asghar Ramazanpour, a former official in the Khatami administration and reformist journalist now living in exile, cautioned in an interview with Radio Farda on August 17, 2016 about Entezami's motivations:
Entezami is a former Intelligence Ministry analyst who has been intent on controlling the press from the very beginning…With [these bills], he’s mostly trying to satisfy the wishes of the intelligence agencies and the Judiciary to gain more control of the media. This will be a shameful stain on Mr. Rouhani’s government if it goes forward with this bill.
Such developments and appointments are sobering warnings of the values held by the Rouhani administration, which previously had established themselves as darlings of reformists (the popular former reformist President Mohammad Khatami famously endorsed Rouhani), or those expecting improvements in rights and freedoms under his relatively progressive 2013 election campaign. These proposed changes to Iran's media regulation indicate that the moderate administration still favors the repressive tendencies of the Islamic Republic.


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Protests Erupt in Morocco Following Fish Vendor’s Brutal Death in Garbage Compactor · Global Voices
Mariam Elmaslouhi

Widely used image of Mouhcine Fikri with the two most popular hashtags used on social media “#طحن ـمو” (‘crush his mother’) and “#كلناـمحسن ـفكري” (‘we are all Mohsin Fikri’). Source: SaphirNews.
Mohsin Fikri is dead. On Saturday, October 29, the 31-year-old fish vendor from El Hoceima, North Morocco (Rif), was crushed to death in a garbage truck while trying to retrieve a swordfish — his only source of income. Police had confiscated the fish earlier, in accordance with a ban on swordfish sales this season. Activists say police gave the order to activate the trash compactor while Fikri was still inside.
When the news of Fikri's brutal death, protests erupted across Morocco, spreading from El Hoceima to Marrakesh and Rabat, the capital. Using the hashtag “#طحن_مو,” which means roughly “crush his mother,” Moroccans have expressed their outrage and uploaded videos and photos of ongoing protests. The meaning of the hashtag is that the phrase is reportedly what one of the police officers said shortly before the compactor killed Fikri.
Many Internet user have uploaded live videos of the protests on their Facebook accounts. The following video was taken by Moroccan photographer, filmmaker, and activist Nadir Bouhmouch on the night of Sunday, October 30, in Marrakesh.
Moroccan activist and former Advox director Hisham Almiraat shared a video of Fikri's funeral:
Funeral of fishmonger killed on Friday night turns to mass protest agnst police abuse in #Morocco – #COP22 #طحن_مو https://t.co/xuc3b7B7mY
— Hisham Almiraat (@almiraat) 30 October 2016
And Samir Kinani shared a photo of the funeral taken from afar:
لآن:مقدمة الجنازةبمدخل إمزورن#طحن_مو pic.twitter.com/yGKhqiZEZg
— samira kinani (@samirakinani) 30 October 2016
Unsurprisingly, many have compared Fikri to Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, in response to the confiscation of his wares, becoming the catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring.
Mouhcine Fikri est désormais le Mohamed Bouazizi du #Maroc 😔
Comme la #Tunisie en 2011, le Peuple manifeste sa révolte ✊
#Martyr#طحن_موpic.twitter.com/e5LllR2R2t
— Tranquille… (@GadjoDelSol) 31 October 2016
Mouhcine Fikri is now the Mohamed Bouazizi of Morocco. Like Tunisia in 2011, the people are expressing their outrage.
Le #Maroc a desormais son Bouazizi, il s'appelle Mohcine Fikri. Demain rassemblement à 19h devant l'ambassade du Maroc à Paris. #طحن_مو
— Marianne Roux (@AlGaouria) 30 October 2016
Morocco now has its own Bouazizi and his name is Mohcine Fikri. Tomorrow protest at 7pm in front of the Moroccan embassy in Paris.
This is the latest in a series of protests that have rocked Morocco in the past few years. Earlier this year, thousands of student trainees took to the streets to protest against government cuts, which they say have made it harder for them to find jobs in education.
Protests against police brutality in general and the practice of “hogra” (humiliation) in particular have become all too common in Morocco. Since 2011, more than a dozen Moroccans set themselves on fire out of desperation. In April 2016, a woman street vendor set herself on fire when police confiscated her bread and cake. That same month, a street vendor also immolated himself after his motorcycle was confiscated.
In 2015, street vendors in Casablanca unified to protest against the constant harassment by police. This union was caused by the arrest of street vendors in Casablanca. Street vendors are systematically harassed, beaten, and arrested.
In 2013, three cases of self self-immolation were reported by women who say the justice system failed them. Amina Fillali, who was forced to marry her rapist back in 2011, killed herself in March 2012. In August 2016, a girl committed suicide after her eight rapists were released by police and threatened to post pictures of her being raped online.
King Mohammed VI inherited Morocco in 1999 after the death of Hassan II. The latter led several crackdowns in the Rif, a mainly mountainous region of northern Morocco. During the 1958–59 uprising in the Rif, Hassan II deployed 80 percent of Morocco's troops to put down demonstrations. In 1984, during nationwide bread protests, Hassan II gave a famous speech where he called the Riffians “thugs.”
King Mohammed VI has chosen a different path.
Between 2011 and 2015, Morocco underwent a high-speed privatization process. In 2014, in Rabat’s Guich Oudaya, state authorities destroyed the homes of citizens, in order to sell the land to a real estate company. Residents were driven from their homes and forced to live in huts.
In 2015, thousands of Moroccans protested high electricity bills by the French company Amendis.
Back in 2008, protests erupted in the fishing town Sidi Ifni after police cracked down on unemployed fishermen killing ten protesters.
In 2014, Morocco signed a fishing deal with the European Union. For a shockingly low €30 million per year, up to 120 ships from 11 EU countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, and United Kingdom) bought the rights to fish near the Moroccan coast.
The big fishing companies leave very little for the local fishers. In some cases, local fishers aren't even allowed to cast their nets, leaving people like Mohsin Fikri jobless and desperate.

author: Mariam Elmaslouhi


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Revellers in Costume Descend on Tokyo by the Thousands for Halloween · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

CAPTION: Roads were blocked off for pedestrians for Halloween 2016 after participants overflowed off of sidewalks onto city streets the previous year. Under strict security, Shibuya was turned into a “pedestrian paradise” for Halloween. Screencap from ANN News YouTube Channel.
One of Tokyo's most popular entertainment districts was shut down on Saturday, October 29 to host a giant Halloween Party. Shibuya, a “city within a city” in Tokyo, is ground zero for youth culture in Japan.
Its fashionable 109 department store and Bunka Mura Dori street are popular destinations for young people, and Shibuya itself is filled with nightclubs, karaoke bars and other places to have fun. And, each year, Shibuya is the scene of the biggest Halloween party in Japan.
司法の限界を感じる#渋谷ハロウィン pic.twitter.com/DBGzDwZ6Vo
— ゆるふわ陸士☆埼玉 (@yuruhuwa_rikusi) October 29, 2016
[Photo shows Shibuya participants dressed up as Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and Mickey Mouse]
These guys are risking getting sued for copyright infringement.
While there were some fears that rain and cool temperatures would keep crowds away, in the end thousands of people descended on Shibuya on Saturday night.
渋谷
ハロウィン pic.twitter.com/osFtVIsNED
— ネコスポ（気軽にフォローどうぞ♫） (@nekospo) October 29, 2016
Halloween in Shibuya
This is the first year that roads in and around Shibuya were closed to motor vehicle traffic for Halloween. According to independent news outlet Japan Today, in previous years “sidewalks were so jammed with people that it was almost impossible to move between 10 p.m. and midnight.”
Happy Halloween…#halloween #ハロウィン #shibuya #渋谷ハロウィン #渋ハロ #渋谷 #渋谷スクランブル交差点 #写真好きな人と繋がりたい #写真撮ってる #ファインダー越しの私の世界 #tokyo #japan pic.twitter.com/4Z5Lowjzn9
— onotch (@onotch_x) October 30, 2016
Happy Halloween…
#halloween #shibuya #shibuya halloween #shibuya scramble #photography #tokyo #japan
Sankei News explained:
閉鎖されたのは、ファッションビル「ＳＨＩＢＵＹＡ１０９」前を経由して東急百貨店本店に向かう文化村通りの約２７０メートルと、１０９ビルから道玄坂を上る約２５０メートルのＹ字形区間。普段は多くの車が行き交う道路が鉄柵で遮断される珍しい光景をカメラに収めようとする人の姿が目立った。
The closed-off [part of Shibuya] included a 270-meter stretch in front of the SHIBUYA 109 Building, the Tokyu department store and Bunka Mura Dori [street], and another stretch of Dogenzaka from the 109 Building, to make a giant Y-shape [of closed-off space]. City streets normally dominated by cars were blocked off by barricades, and instead there was the rare sight of camera flashes going off amidst the people crowding the roadway.
Besides the fact roads were closed for pedestrian traffic, Halloween 2016 in Shibuya was notable for an effort to keep mess to a minimum and preserve order through a large police presence:
2016年渋谷のハロウィンの
現在の様子はこちら(笑)
出勤後人やばすぎて
歩けなくて萎えてたら
ピクミンがラジオ体操してて
かわいすぎて癒されたw#渋谷ハロウィン #渋谷 pic.twitter.com/QoKGsjV7yD
— おーぬまん（大沼 類） (@onumaaan) October 30, 2016
2016 Halloween in Shibuya: what it looks like right now (LOL)
This must be murder for people just getting off of work… it's impossible to move.
Pikmin [a popular video game character] is doing radio calisthenics… too cute! #shibuya halloween
ハロウィンで賑わう、渋谷。警察の多さが異常！ pic.twitter.com/gLNpXcVVkG
— 中山夏美 (@zao_natsumi) October 29, 2016
It's Halloween and it's crowded in Shibuya. And there is an abnormally huge number of police!
In a tweet, Sankei News also decided to focus on the participation of presumably non-Japanese (i.e., “foreign”) people in the Halloween festivities
黒人男性が「フォーッ！」いきなり路上に飛び出し歓声　ハロウィーンで厳戒の渋谷、交通規制開始 https://t.co/tkCKN4NIkA #ハロウィン pic.twitter.com/Pi6CLiefOn
— 産経ニュース (@Sankei_news) October 29, 2016
A black person shouting “Whoo!” suddenly rushed onto the newly closed-off street. Under tight security, Shibuya closed down to cars for Halloween.
Since litter seems to have been a problem in previous years, organizers provided Halloween-themed garbage bags:
渋谷駅のゴミ捨て場 pic.twitter.com/EyN8Gfd0OK
— かっつー (@kattsuw) October 29, 2016
Garbage bags at Shibuya Station.
Newscasts reported on the size of the crowds, and provided some footage of costumes.
Halloween has been growing in popularity in Japan over previous years. In 2016, there was more money spent in Japan on Halloween than on Valentine's Day.
GRAPH: Red plot represents Valentine's Day spending, purple plot represents Halloween; in 2015 revenues were roughly equal; in 2016, Halloween revenue (US1.345 billion) surpassed Valentine's Day revenue (US$1.340 billion). Screencap from ANN News YouTube Channel.

author: Nevin Thompson