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Venezuela’s crisis of political legitimacy has rocked Wikipedia — and might have led to its blocking · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle

Wikipedia Venezuela posted a series of updates and explanations of what has been happening locally, and the editing war that appears to have triggered the block.
Wikipedia became inaccessible for most Venezuelans on January 12, following a high-stakes conflict over the legitimacy of two dueling political leaders: President Nicolás Maduro and the National Assembly President Juan Guaidó.
Reported by users and then confirmed by technical experts at Netblocks, the block was likely triggered by the inauguration of Nicolás Maduro. On January 11, Maduro began his second term as president, despite broad international condemnation of Venezuela's 2018 presidential elections, in which popular opponents were banned from running.
Shortly thereafter, opposition politician and National Assembly President Juan Guaidó threw himself into the political spotlight when he publicly denounced the legitimacy of Maduro's re-election and proposed to take on presidential powers on the basis of a constitutional statute and call for new elections.
In so doing, Guaidó effectively poured gasoline onto an already-blazing dumpster fire within Venezuela's political crisis.
This triggered sharp responses in public and online, and a bitter “editing war” between Venezuelan Wikipedia contributors, who were at odds over the same question: Who is (or should be) the legitimate leader of the country?
In short order, Wikipedia became inaccessible on Venezuela's most widely-used internet service provider (ISP), CANTV, which is effectively controlled by the government. And by January 14, the site was back online.
The dispute that sparked the “editing war” started with Juan Guaidó's proposal to invoke certain articles of the Venezuelan Constitution that stipulate what should be done if the President of the Republic is deemed incapacitated, or is not fit to hold office. According to Guaidó's interpretation of the Constitution, he would be first in line to assume the Presidency of the Republic until free and fair elections could be held.
Amid public calamity and outrage within the ruling government, Guaidó was arrested by Venezuelan Intelligence Services (SEBIN) two days later on January 13. He has since been released.
Guaidó's position is more complicated than it might sound. The 35-year-old politician is the new president of Venezuela's National Assembly, traditionally the country's highest-level legislative body. But Nicolás Maduro effectively dissolved the National Assembly in 2017, after opposition politicians claimed the majority of seats in 2015 elections, and created a new “Constitutional Assembly” in its place. This and other attempts to consolidate power led to violent protests that lasted for months and claimed the lives of around 100 people.
Although the National Assembly remains active, its powers have been effectively absorbed by the Supreme Court of Justice, the Constitutional Assembly, and the Presidency since 2017. In 2018, Maduro was elected president through a process that opposition leaders, foreign governments and the Organization of American States (OAS) denounced as unfair and illegitimate. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro later endorsed the proposal from Guaidó on Twitter.
On January 12, Twitter users reported they were unable to access Wikipedia using CANTV, the country’s predominant internet service provider (ISP), which is majority-owned by the Venezuelan government. Users noted that they were able to access Wikipedia using Movistar, a privately-owned ISP.
Technical evidence gathered by Netblocks, a non-profit group that runs technical tests for internet censorship, confirmed that the site was inaccessible via CANTV on January 12. Government-affiliated Twitter accounts have denied blocking Wikipedia, but no official statements have been issued on the matter.
Venezuelan authorities have blocked access to news and information websites in the country on many occasions. But blocking Wikipedia — the world’s largest open knowledge and multilingual information resource made mostly by volunteers — would take the practice to a new level.
Wikipedia's unique structure played a key role in what led to the controversy. Unlike resources produced by professionalized experts, Wikipedia is built on the contributions of thousands of volunteers who write and update articles on the site. Volunteers have also built rigorous procedures for information verification and vetting, and works hard to prevent contributors from publishing inaccuracies.
Wikipedia English article for Juan Guaidó, as of January 15, 2019. Spanish Wikipedia identifies Guaidó as President of the National Assembly, not the Republic. Both begin with disclaimers about the current nature of the topic.
When we contacted Jan Gerlach, a senior manager at the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia's parent organization) for comment, he told us:
The Wikimedia Foundation does not write, edit, or determine what content is included on Wikipedia or how that content is maintained – our volunteers do….contributions to the site must meet a series of volunteer-developed standards around neutrality and reliable sourcing.
On January 11, Guaidó's official title on his article page changed from “President of the National Assembly” to “President of the Republic” ten times in about two hours’ time. As their edits revealed, some Wikipedia contributors took an extreme view of Guaidó's position, by actually referring to him as president. Others did not.
Guaidó has not declared himself the president, but rather has proposed that he temporarily assume the role until free and fair elections can take place.
Mientras, la página en Wikipedia con el título “Presidente de Venezuela”. pic.twitter.com/K7KNNmfjjd
— Kris Viñas. (@KrisKV) January 11, 2019
Meanwhile, the Wikipedia page of the “President of Venezuela” [looks like]
Wikipedia swiftly moved to close the page for further edits, in an effort to quell the conflict and seek outside counsel on the matter. Wikipedia's Venezuela team also tweeted an explanation of how the organization handles disputes at this level.
Soon, the entire website was inaccessible via CANTV. Despite technical evidence of what has happened, politically-fueled rumors about the block have spread rapidly. Numerous accounts claimed — with no evidence — that Wikipedia supported Guaidó's presidency. At the same time, many of those who outwardly support Nicolás Maduro have falsely claimed that Wikipedia was blocking requests from CANTV subscribers, something that would strongly contradict the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation, which denied the claim.
“Wikipedia is not blocking any ISPs in Venezuela or elsewhere,” Gerlach told us. “We are still investigating the circumstances of this particular incident.”
Venezuelan social media scholar Iria Puyosa, who is a Global Voices contributor, sought to squash these rumors on Twitter, describing them as “disinformation”:
Según los conspiranoicos chavistas: CANTV no bloqueó Wikipedia. Es al contrario Wikipedia bloqueó a CANTV.
“Wikipedia censura a Venezuela”, es el mensaje desinformativo chavista. #InternetVE #Desinformacion#InfoDisordersVE
— Iria Puyosa (@NSC) January 13, 2019
According to paranoid and chavista conspiracy theorists: CANTV didn't block Wikipedia, but Wikipedia blocked CANTV. “Wikipedia censors Venezuela” is the chavista's disinformative message.
Ultimately, the Wikipedia dispute is just one manifestation of the broader conflict at play. Nicolás Maduro called Guaidó's strategy a “Twitter coup” and a “Hollywood-esque show,” but that didn't stop either the blocking of the world's largest open information resource, or Guaidó's arrest.
For now, the President of the National Assembly is free, and as of January 14, Wikipedia appears to be accessible once again in most parts of the country. But the episode sends a message about how authorities can react when the legitimacy of the presidency is called into a question.

author: Ellery Roberts Biddle


text:
Introducing DigiGlot, a newsletter about languages and tech · Global Voices
Rising Voices

Elmo Bautista and his late father Espíritu Bautista digitally record words in the Yanesha language of Peru during a workshop organized by the Living Tongues Institute. Photo by Eddie Avila and used with permission.
Welcome to the inaugural edition of DigiGlot, a bi-weekly collaborative newsletter that reports on how indigenous, minority, and endangered language communities are adopting and adapting technology to increase the digital presence of their languages, and in the process changing the internet landscape by increasing linguistic diversity online. This collaborative publication will be compiled by a team of volunteers. The contributors will be listed at the bottom of each issue.
As this is our first issue, we expect that the format and the content of DigiGlot will evolve over the next few months. We’re always looking for reader feedback as well as suggestions for items to be included in future editions. You can get in touch with us through the Rising Voices contact page.
Contents
With the arrival of 2019, the International Year of Indigenous Languages is officially underway. Back in December 2016, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2019 the year for an awareness campaign coordinated by UNESCO and focusing on five areas, including capacity building and increasing international cooperation. A consortium of language-related organizations is being formed to highlight the campaign on social media using the hashtag #IYIL2019. As an additional component of the campaign, UNESCO announced a call for research papers, with one of the key topic areas being “Technology, digital activism, and artificial intelligence (e.g. language technology).”
One of the immediate legacies of European colonialism in present-day Africa is a disjointed patchwork of writing systems for local languages. While many African languages have been written using the Latin alphabet for several decades, languages have varied greatly in their use of special and accented letters, or the “extended” Latin characters. Some languages were even written differently on either side of national borders. In this series of essays [parts 1, 2, 3], Don Osborn reflects on four decades of African language standardization and explains how early decisions about orthography may have consequences for digital media production today.
Osborn suggests that the challenge presented by using extended Latin orthographies—those that force users to work their way through unstandardized input interfaces to type the “special” characters in their language—may be limiting the development of some African Wikipedias. His analysis finds that African Wikipedias “written in extended and complex Latin hav[e] on average about a third the number of articles” as those Wikipedias written in a simpler Latin alphabet. While Osborn acknowledges that his analysis is preliminary, his observations usefully highlight some of the complexities of building digital ecologies in local languages.
Ayokunle Odedere is a Nigerian Wikipedian and coordinator of the Wikimedia Hub in Ibadan, Nigeria. He  organizes and mobilizes activities and campaigns such as the recent AfroCine project. Working on Wikipedia, Odedere noticed that both new and experienced editors were having trouble typing the necessary diacritical marks in Wikipedia articles for national languages such as Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo.
While there are special keyboards such as the Yoruba Name keyboards for Mac and Windows and other virtual keyboards that allow users to display these special characters, they require some degree of technical knowledge to install and utilize. Odedere envisioned a solution built into Wikipedia itself. He put in a request on the Wikimedia Community Wishlist to have Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo incorporated into the Universal Language Selector (ULS), a facility available for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects to “allow users to type text in different languages not directly supported by their keyboard, read content in a script for which fonts are not available locally, or customize the language in which menus are displayed.” The request was granted and the Wikimedia Foundation Language Team included the three West African languages in the ULS. Now Wikipedia editors using a desktop or laptop computer can incorporate the special characters into their texts by typing the tilde (~) character before the corresponding letter.
The Hawaiian language has a long tradition of writing, with more than 125,000 newspaper pages published in the 19th and early 20th century. Unfortunately, most of that text was written in an orthography devised by missionaries which, unlike the standard modern orthography, doesn’t fully reflect the sound system of the language. This means that these older texts are both difficult to read for today’s speakers, and also cannot readily be used for training natural language processing systems. This paper, by researchers at the University of Oxford and Google Deep Mind, describes a system that combines so-called “finite state transducers”, a well-known technology in the field, with deep learning to develop a system for automatically modernizing Hawaiian texts. This approach could possibly be applied to the numerous other languages which have undergone orthographic changes or standardization.
The Welsh government's Welsh language minister Eluned Morgan has asserted the importance of smart speakers and voice-driven devices such as Alexa and Siri accommodating speakers of the Welsh language. This goal is part of the government's Welsh Language Technology Action Plan, which was launched on October 23, 2018.
The plan recognizes the role that technology plays in everyday life and the importance for Welsh speakers of being able to use their language when using technology: “We want people to be able to use Welsh and English easily in their virtual lives at home, in school, in work or on the move.” The Welsh Technology Language Act recommends the development of artificial intelligence so that machines can understand spoken Welsh, and the improvement of computer-assisted translation, as part of the government's wider aim of having a million Welsh speakers by 2050.
A team of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States is developing voice recognition technology to assist with the documentation and transcription of the Seneca language. Seneca is an endangered Native American language spoken fluently by fewer than 50 individuals, hence the urgency of  documenting and preserving the language. As recording and manually transcribing speech is expensive and time-consuming, researchers are seeking to exploit voice recognition technology to assist with this task.
Voice recognition is a technological process that recognizes the sounds produced by the human voice and transcribes them automatically into written form. Develop voice recognition systems for languages with few sources of data is a challenge, as these systems requires a large amount of data to “train” them to recognize the language. For this cutting-edge research the team was awarded $181,682 over four years by the US National Science Foundation.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Rising Voices


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Is the Nigerian government gagging the judiciary ahead of presidential elections in February? · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

The Nigerian government is pursuing criminal charges of financial negligence and fraudulence against Walter Onnoghen, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). Premium Times reports that since 2016:
Screenshot of the swearing-in of Justice Walter Onnoghen as the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa in Abuja, [March 7, 2017.
Mr. Onnoghen [only] partially declared his assets, but still failed to declare a series of bank accounts, denominated in local and foreign currencies. … The government consequently filed six charges of non and fraudulent declaration of assets by Mr Onnoghen, with trial expected to commence on January 14 at the Code of Conduct Tribunal.
The charges against the CJN are based on a petition sponsored by the Anti-corruption and Research-based Data Initiative.  According to Signal media, the group has links with current President Muhammadu Buhari. The petition's author, Dennis Aghanya, was the president's former media aide between 2009-2011 and currently serves as executive secretary of the research and data group that initiated the petition.
In the lead up to Nigeria's presidential elections in February, the CJN's criminal charges have triggered speculation that ethnoreligious political dynamics have played a role, as religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria deepen between the Christian-majority south and the Muslim-majority north.
The CJN has denied any wrongdoing.
The appointment of Nigeria’s chief justice is usually a straightforward process. The National Judicial Commission (NJC) normally forwards the name of the most senior justice to the president, who appoints and then the legislature confirms the appointment.
But that was not the case with Onnoghen, where his religious identity as a Christian man from southern Nigeria may have been a factor. On November 10, 2016, Buhari, a Muslim man from northern Nigeria, “inaugurated Onnoghen as ‘acting CJN’ following the retirement of Justice Mahmud Mohammed at the attainment of the mandatory 70-year retirement age,” according to Punch newspaper. This fueled speculation that Onnoghen might not be made the substantive CJN and could be eased out to make room for Buhari to appoint another northern Muslim in his place. Buhari’s penchant for making “parochial appointments” has deepened the ethnic and religious fault lines in the country.
Onnoghen's appointment as ‘substantive CJN’ came three months later by Buhari’s deputy, Yomi Osibanjo (also a Southern Christian), while performing duties as acting president during his boss's medical vacation.  Making this appointment while Buhari was away further deepened the suspicion.
The executive arm of the Nigerian government has a sordid history of intimidating other arms of government. On September 22, 2015, the administration filled similar charges of non-declaration of assets against the Senate President Bukola Saraki (head of Nigeria’s higher legislative house). On July 6, 2018, Nigeria’s Supreme Court dismissed the false charges against Saraki.
Similarly, in October 2018, Nigeria’s secret service agents raided the residences of judges at midnight in Abuja, the nation’s capital and five other states “in search of evidence linking the judges to corruption.” This “distressing and unfortunate incident” was condemned by lawyers as “totally unacceptable in a democratic society.”
Outspoken Premium Times journalist Samuel Ogundipe shared his skepticism on the Justice Onnoghen situation:
I'll be waiting to see the media outlets that would carry this propaganda from the presidency about Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen. If Buhari truly knows nothing about the top jurist's planned arraignment, he should openly eschew it as a circus and ensure heads roll.
— Samuel Ogundipe (@SamuelOgundipe) January 12, 2019
Paul Usoro, president of the Nigerian Bar Association asserts “the speed of the investigation and trial of Onnoghen as validation that President Muhammadu Buhari’s federal executive has directed the current development.”
He points out that the Code of Conduct Tribunal arraignment was scheduled for January 14, with only three working days between processing the petition the investigation, charges, and arraignment:
Such unprecedented speed and efficiency in Nigeria’s criminal justice administration! It is clear, given the rush with which this matter was conducted, that the CJN was not privy to it and did not conduct its mandatory required disciplinary processes prior to the filing of the Charge before the CCT.
A senior advocate of Nigeria (the equivalent of a queen's counsel) and constitutional lawyer, Sebastine Hon described the charges against the CJN “as a deliberate attempt to gag the judiciary”. He sees this move as “dangerously political and tendentious”:
Suddenly, we woke to see a petition leaked to the informal or social media, allegedly received by the Code of Conduct on [January 9.] Suddenly, we are told charges have been filed against the CJN. Suddenly, the Presidency is reportedly asking him to step aside! Was he interrogated or interviewed and his own reactions obtained?
Nigerian netizens were quick to point out the hypocrisy of what seems to be a selective war against corruption:
Babachir is chilling at home
Ganduje is walking free
But 48 hrs later, CJN is arraigned https://t.co/WcXGpbQKkh
— Dolapo Oni (@Dolarpo) January 13, 2019
Babachir David Lawal, former secretary to the government of the federation, was sacked on October 30, 2017, following a grass cutting scandal unraveled by a legislative panel of inquiry that Babachir's company “received consultancy contract for an intervention agency under his office”. Babachir has not been persecuted — he is campaigning for Buhari’s re-election.
In videos widely circulated on social media, the Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, was seen allegedly receiving bribes of US$5 million from contractors. Ganduje, a member of Buhari’s ruling party, the All Progressive Congress, is yet to be prosecuted. Despite this, President Buhari described Ganduje as “a very responsible man”.
Many see the chief justice's trial as yet another form of silencing under President Buhari since he took office in 2015:
Under Buhari, the press has been silenced. The labour and trade unions have been silenced. The civil society organisations have been silenced. Public intellectuals have been silenced. The judiciary is being silenced.
But nothing is truly lost unless the people are silent.
— Ayo Sogunro (@ayosogunro) January 13, 2019
Buhari and his coterie of lemmings are desperate to rig the elections. From the wild figures reported for primary participation, to the appointment of an (allegedly) loosely related senior INEC official, to the latter day attack on the CJN. You don't have to be pro-PDP to see -
— T. Rankïn’ ∆ (@AfroVII) January 12, 2019
An editorial in ScoopNg described the trial as dubious, pointing out that the judge presiding over the CJN case, Danladi Umar, is also corrupt. Prosecutor Festus Keyamo has conflicting interests as the strategic head of communications for Buhari's reelection campaign.
On this basis alone, the trial of the CJN, a person who has served the country for almost 35 years without a charge should make every Nigerian fretful, suspicious and vigilant … All fingers are pointing to the 2019 elections.
An Abuja Federal High Court has halted the planned arraignment of Onnoghen — “to maintain status quo till January 17.”

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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Netizen Report: Zimbabwe’s internet goes dark amid protests, nationwide strike · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Soldiers at an anti-Mugabe demonstration in November 2017. Photo by Zimbabwean Eyes, licensed to public domain.
The Advox Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This report covers news and events from January 3 – 16.
When the long-standing economic crisis in Zimbabwe reached a tipping point this week, social media sites went dark — and then, internet connections on two of the country’s largest providers went down altogether.
After officials announced a crippling 150 percent hike in fuel prices, trade unions and activists called for a three-day nationwide strike, urging Zimbabweans to refrain from going to work or school starting January 14. Military and security forces have used violent force against protesters and have detained at least 200 people, according to Al Jazeera. Several people have been killed and dozens were injured.
The economic crisis is the result of a massive shortage of foreign currency in the country. Zimbabwe has relied on foreign currency, mainly the US dollar, since 2009 when the government of Robert Mugabe stopped printing Zimbabwean dollars in an effort to quell hyperinflation.
This move has now come back to haunt the still relatively new government of Emmerson Mnangagwa, who only narrowly won the presidency in August 2018.
Authorities may have ordered ISPs to restrict access, in response to the ongoing protests. As of January 16, the internet was not accessible on TelOne or EcoNet networks in and around the cities of Bulawayo and Harare, the nation’s capital. NetBlocks, a non-profit group that studies internet censorship, published results of technical tests in the country showing the outages.
Writing for TechZim, Tinashe Nyahasha commented:
I am personally embarrassed for our government. Blocking information flow is a cowardly and pathetic thing to do. Zimbabwe is open for business but not open to information flow?
As they prepare for a nationwide referendum on a new version of the country’s constitution, Cuban activists have observed that SMS messages containing phrases like “yo voto no” (“I vote no”) or referencing abstention are not reaching their intended recipients. Independent media outlet 14ymedio tested multiple versions of such messages with more than 100 people in various regions of the country, all of whom found the same results. The draft constitution preserves Cuba’s one-party system, but legitimizes private business and sets term limits for the presidency, among other changes.
Wikipedia became inaccessible for most Venezuelans on January 12, following a high-stakes conflict over the legitimacy of two dueling political leaders, President Nicolás Maduro and the National Assembly President Juan Guaidó. After Guaidó publicly invoked a constitutional statute that could position him to assume the presidency until free and fair elections are held, Wikipedians went to war over the question of who should be listed as president of the republic on the site. Wikipedia became wholly inaccessible for several hours on CANTV, the country’s predominant internet service provider, which is majority-owned by the Venezuelan government. It is now accessible again. But the questions driving the controversy remain red-hot.
Two Myanmar reporters who were sentenced to seven years prison for violating Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act had their legal appeal of the verdict denied on January 11 by a Myanmar court.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were originally arrested in December 2017 for possessing state documents regarding military operations while covering the killing of Rohingya in Rakhine state. They were sentenced on September 3, 2018, after a nine-month-long trial.
In court proceedings, police testified that they had handed the documents to the reporters without explanation, shortly before the arrest, effectively entrapping them.
The Southeast Asian Press Alliance condemned the decision that rejected their appeal:
The denial of their appeal is an appalling reaffirmation of Myanmar’s rejection of genuine democracy and sends an unmistakable signal that press freedom is in great peril in a country, once a pariah state, that had held out hope that it was making great strides toward democratic reform.
Iranian internet regulators say they are prepared to block Instagram, one of the last and most popular foreign social media platforms still accessible in Iran, as Twitter and Facebook have both been blocked in the country for nearly a decade. Just this past year, Telegram messaging service was blocked following large-scale protests over economic hardships and broken promises of the ruling government. Although many Iranians likely will continue using to the service over VPNs, the move will mark another step for Iran in the direction of limiting online connections to services and communities in other parts of the world.
Two Chinese internet users are currently facing fines for using VPNs and similar tools to access overseas websites that are blocked by China’s Great Firewall. While VPN use is permitted in certain contexts — mainly for government agencies and large private companies — China's vigorous internet control regime has in recent years put significant resources towards preventing people from using these and other similar tools. The 2017 Cybersecurity Law explicitly targeted VPNs, triggering multiple arrests of individuals selling unlicensed VPNs, and compelling Apple to take down VPN apps from its China app store.
The new law does not explicitly address or criminalize the individual use of such technologies, but authorities used the 1996 “Rules for Provisional Regulations of the Administration of International Networking of Computer Information in the People’s Republic of China” to fine the two users. Both cases indicate that, today, the very act of circumventing the internet through an unregistered channel is considered illegal.
Imprisoned Azerbaijani video blogger Mehman Huseynov began a hunger strike in protest of what he says is the latest in a series of bogus charges levied against him by authorities in Azerbaijan. After 12 days without food or water, Huseynov began drinking water and milk, but continues to refuse solid and other foods. Other activists and supporters have joined the strike, including acclaimed journalist Khadija Ismayilova.
Prior to his arrest, Huseynov ran a popular Facebook page where he shared videos on social issues in Azerbaijan, ranging from poor working conditions to the lavish lifestyles of government officials. His page had more than 300,000 followers and is the subject of defamation charges filed against him by the government. He also faces new charges stemming from an encounter with a prison guard, that could result in additional prison time.
Eduardo Avila, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Marianne Diaz, Arzu Geybullayeva, Rohith Jyothish, Oiwan Lam, Mong Palatino, Taisa Sganzerla and Laura Vidal contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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Syrian refugees in Lebanon face brutal snow storms and inhumane conditions at camps · Global Voices
Hassan Chamoun

Arsal Camp in Lebanon battered by snow during “Norma” storm, January 6, 2019. A widely shared photo on social media, re-used with permission.
Syrian refugees in Lebanon face floods and freezing temperatures amidst a series of storms called “Norma” that hit on January 6, 2019. It brought five days of high levels of rain on the Lebanese coast and snow on Mount Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. The storm caused widespread damage in Lebanon, flooding highways and closing schools for two days in some regions of the country.
Syrian refugees had to battle the storm in makeshift informal camps, as Lebanese authorities do not allow for permanent structures to be built. According to a U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) report published on January 9, “70,000 refugees living in around 850 informal settlements could be at risk of either flooding, heavy snow or extreme cold”.
Another UNHCR article stated that more than 11,300 refugees had been affected: settlements in Dalhamiya in the Bekaa Valley have been completely flooded.
One refugee, Juriya Ramadan, told the UNHCR:
People are sick. Everywhere there is water. We cannot sleep at night. It has been three days like this. All night we sit and watch the kids and we cannot do anything for them. Their situation is very bad.
Sixty-year-old refugee Amina al Darak said:
We’ve never experienced such a situation before. The mattresses and the duvets got wet. We didn’t sleep all night. I had to put blankets on wooden boards and lie there. I can’t even make myself a cup of tea because of the flooding.
According to the Associated Press, the refugee settlement in Bar Elias in the Bekaa Valley, near Lebanon's longest river, the Litani, was flooded during the storm. It is home to approximately 420 refugees, including 100 children.
The AP also reported that a Syrian girl lost her life after she drowned in an overflowing river north of Lebanon.
Additionally, the Lebanese Red Cross said that 200 people were forced to evacuate from their camp on Lebanon's northern border with Syria after a local river overflowed.
The camp of Arsal in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains received heavy snow and subsequent damage, and videos of the camp were widely shared on social media:
Some Syrians activists and Twitter users lamented the poor living conditions, adding that Syrian refugees are increasingly stuck between a rock and a hard place. In other words, between poor living conditions in Lebanon, and serious security risks in an Assad-controlled Syria if they return.
Do you know why people are still here?
The answer is because Assad is still in his position.
The moment #Assad goes, it is moment when their suffering ends pic.twitter.com/1fuM3fi5VD
— @Mr.Alhamdo (@Mr_Alhamdo) January 7, 2019
Some Syrian refugees denounce the negligence of local authority in the Bekaa. For example, Hussam Mansour told Al Jazeera that he had called the local municipality of Ghazze in the Bekaa many times to raise the ground levels of the tents, to no avail.
Syrian refugees in Lebanon will have to face a new storm that will bring wind gusts of over 100 Km/h and 5 meters waves. The storm, named Miriam, will peak on Tuesday, January 15.
UNCHR stated that emergency stocks and sanitation supplies were replenished in anticipation of the new storms.
Despite the difficulties endured by Syrian refugees throughout the country, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said that “the refugee crisis still weighs [on Lebanon] economically and socially and on security” and that refugees should return to Syria so that they could live “with dignity.”
This is in line with the anti-refugee rhetoric taken by his party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) over the years, and notably by his son-in-law and foreign minister, Gebran Bassil, who also heads the FPM.
Read: Why Syrian refugees in Lebanon fear going back to an Assad-controlled Syria
Aoun, an ally of the pro-Assad militant group Hezbollah, is pushing the international community to return Syrian refugees back to so-called ‘safe areas’ in Syria. Some ministers in the Lebanese government denounced the push and claim that dozens of refugees who returned were killed.
Stories of returned refugees facing imprisonment, forced conscription or death have been floating around anti-Assad Syrian circles, particularly in the past couple of years.
Wessal al Mustafa, a refugee in Lebanon, told Aljazeera that “there is nothing to return to.”
Another refugee, 25-year-old Sleiman Ahmad, told the Independent: “If I go back, I would be conscripted or arrested, [..] I have a small daughter. What would happen to her?”

author: Hassan Chamoun


text:
Facing targeted attacks, Yemen’s Christian minority struggles to survive · Global Voices
Romy Haber

Galileo in Sana'a, Yemen. Photo used with his permission.
Away from the media's spotlight in Yemen, the country’s Christian minority is struggling to survive amidst an increase in targeted attacks.
Religious facilities have been destroyed. In 2015, there were three attacks on Christian institutions in the southern port city of Aden, according to Human Rights Watch.
In 2016, also in Aden, an Indian priest was kidnapped and tortured during an attack on a Missionaries of Charity home during which four nuns were killed. The gunmen, presumably with the Islamic State (ISIS), wrote on the walls: ‘“There is no God, but God. Mohammed is the messenger of God. The Islamic State. God’s curse on Christians and Jews.”
Due to these difficult conditions, many Christians in Yemen have been reduced to practicing their religion underground.
‘Galileo’ (an alias) is in his late twenties. He became an atheist for a few months before converting to Christianity three years ago. He believes that this has put his life at risk on a daily basis.
He is part of an estimated 41,000 Yemeni Christians in the country, although he believes the number to be higher at approximately 70,000. He describes the religious risks he faces amidst the country's ongoing conflict:
It would cost them less than a dollar to kill me.  It may happen at any time. They killed my friends; can you imagine what it’s like getting killed for praying? For being peaceful? You think it is scary? My friends were not afraid. I may die at any time but I am not afraid. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer.
Christians in Yemen experience persecution for their faith. Leaving Islam is seen as a betrayal by many and may be punishable by death. Hence, they keep their faith hidden. They may not even tell their parents:
Many [Yemeni] had to flee but many are converting and getting baptized. Christianity in Yemen is growing despite the risks we have to face. They are seeing the truth in the bible, there’s some sort of spiritual catharsis they feel. And the violence they’re facing is making them seek peace. They found peace in the bible.
Those who do find a Christian community often pray in empty apartments and delete their chats online:
We keep on changing our location. We don’t want them to notice our regular meetings underground. Christians in Yemen dream of praying in a church. Christian women dream of wearing a necklace with a cross. I want to get the cross tattooed on my chest. It is an act of revolt that my soul needs. But I am aware it is a suicidal act. I can’t even like posts about Christianity on social media.
He confirms that he is not afraid of death but afraid of leaving his community:
Death doesn’t scare me, but leaving Christians who need me does. They need my support, I have a mission here.
Galileo believes actions speak louder than words, and his actions got him arrested in Sana'a, where he is based. In 2017, he dressed up as Santa Claus on Christmas and gave kids toys and food. Houthis arrested him and tortured him for days.
They humiliated me. They beat me nonstop for 4 days. When I convinced them that I am not Christian, that I was just helping kids; they let me go.
The pro-government forces are based in the southern port city of Aden while Houthis control key central provinces in the north, including Yemen's capital, Sana'a. Al-Qaeda and ISIS have also spread as a result of the multifaceted regional, local, and international power struggles.
Despite the torture, Galileo has no regrets. He believes that Christians have become doubly vulnerable during the conflict between Houthi rebels and Yemeni government forces supported by a Saudi-led coalition.
We need help, I don’t know how or who should help us. We’re dealing with militias, not a government, which makes it harder for us to find a solution. I am glad you’re helping me get my voice heard; I’m tired of living in the shadows. The media shows Yemenis starving but what we crave the most is freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Food is for the body but freedom is for the soul.
Galileo struggled to travel to Lebanon but finally made it in November 2018, when he was finally able to realize his dream to pray in a church without fear.
He did not want to stay in Lebanon for too long however, as he believed his community in Yemen needed him.
When he went back to Sana’a, he was contacted by the Houthis, which control the region. He tried to run away and seek refuge in Al Hudaydah where his mother is located. But when he told her about his faith, she did not accept him. He had to go back to Sana’a, where he was arrested.
During the time of writing this piece, Galileo was unreachable for some time. We later learned from him that he had spent around 20 days in jail before being released on January 9, 2019. He said he faced physical and psychological torture.
Galileo is now in hiding because he believes they let him out so that they can track his community. His name is with the Houthis, so escaping from the region they control is difficult. He says he needs public and diplomatic support to get out of Yemen as soon as possible because his life could end at anytime.

author: Romy Haber


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Has Kyrgyzstan’s new fine for spitting violated the country’s ‘social contract’? · Global Voices
Elita Bakirova

‘The spitting Turtle’ by Jon Bragg. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0). For illustration purposes only.
Kyrgyzstan began 2019 with uproar over controversial amendments to the Criminal Code that introduced steep fines for new administrative offences and increased charges for pre-existing misdemeanours. One new stricture that really seems to have stuck in the throat is the newly devised Article 71, which officially bans public spitting with a fine worth a third of an average monthly salary in the Central Asian country.
Countries such as China and Singapore have introduced similar measures on hygiene grounds in the past. Kyrgyzstan also suffers from high rates of tuberculosis which can be spread through saliva. The country's Prime Minister Mukhametkhali Abylgaziyev said the measures were necessary to form “social consciousness” but hinted that some of the fines might be pared down. President Sooronbai Jeenbekov lent his support to the new fines, particularly those related to road safety, and said Kyrgyz citizens should learn to “keep discipline”.
The new fine for spitting is around 5,500 Kyrgyz soms, or $80, a fortune in a country where average monthly wages hover just over $200.
That point was rammed home by a young man who filmed himself spitting demonstratively through the gates of Kyrgyzstan's main government building, known locally as the White House, holding up 5,000 and 500 som notes to the camera.
“Here, come and get your fine,” said Ramis Zakiriyev, who directed his message towards “the former and current bureaucrats who steal from the country and have put it in debt.”
Police confirmed that Zakiriyev was later charged for the offence.
The furore over fines brought the best out of Kyrgyzstan's lively and eloquent civil society, however. Azim Azimov, director of the Media Kitchen and a noted political commentator looked to place the fines in the grander scheme of Kygyzstan's 28-year-old independence. The result was a remarkably deep piece of political analysis in his video blog called Context.
Channeling French thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau and English counterpart Thomas Hobbes, Azimov argued that the fines had challenged an unattractive but functioning version of the “social contract” between government and its people.
In the recent past, he noted, Kyrgyz governments were overthrown when they attempted to squeeze more money out of the population without offering public goods in return. That was because they had violated the mutual understanding in which the contract was grounded: “You don't touch us and we won't touch you.”
But while Azimov criticised the government for failing to inform the population about the fines, he argued that the government should not back down in the face of public rage having introduced them. Doing so would undermine the very idea of law itself, while empowering the “Facebook mob.” Plato would probably have agreed with that.
In addition to erudite analysis, the spitting law inspired plenty of silliness. The music video “Law” below was one example. The clip popular on Facebook shows tracksuited, cap-wearing young men known commonly throughout the former Soviet Union as ‘gopniki’ attempting to defend their right to behave badly in public while protesting the new fines.
A cheeky Kyrgyz-language mock anecdote shared widely on social media meanwhile suggested that the real motive behind the new fines was paying off Kyrgyzstan's billion-dollar plus debt to China.
If the country's six million citizens spit three times each, the government will have enough to do this, one ape told another.
невозможно здесь находиться. вся лента в плевках.
— Bermet (@BermetBukasheva) January 11, 2019
I can't stay here any longer. My (Twitter feed) is covered in spit.
If the civil disobedience of video-spitter Ramis Zakiriyev represented a wet projectile warning to a reform-shy government, there may be at least one man who is prepared to embody the discipline and social responsibility talked up by the national leadership.
A short clip filmed from inside a car showed what appeared to be a man pounding the pavements of the national capital Bishkek, bucket in hand, inviting passersby to hock. Could these big fines be the beginning of something truly beautiful after all?

author: Elita Bakirova


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Meet Nigeria’s presidential candidates of 2019 · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, will hold presidential elections on February 16, 2019. Although there are 73 presidential candidates, the race for Aso Rock — the seat of Nigeria's presidency — will be between two major contenders and candidates from the so-called “third force,” a group of hopefuls who are relatively new to Nigerian politics.
The 2019 Nigerian presidential candidates [Collage by Nwachukwu Egbunike].
The two major Nigerian parties, All Progressive Congress and Peoples Democratic Party, will, of course, be fielding their candidates:
Muhammad Buhari, president of Nigeria. Creative Commons.
The incumbent candidate of the All Progressive Congress, Buhari won the 2011 presidential election after defeating former president Goodluck Jonathan. Buhari's ascendance to power was based on his integrity and perceived ability to curb corruption and the Boko Haram militancy. However, under his watch, Nigeria has witnessed continued insecurity with pastoral conflicts between herders and farmers as herders from the north move further south in search of arable lands. Also, human rights have taken a nose drive in his administration, with impunity and corruption at the highest levels of government.
Atiku Abubakar [Image from Campaign Organisation Website].
Abubakar is the former vice president and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party. He has tried in the past to win presidential elections but has not been successful. However, his campaign received a major boost with the reconciliation with his boss, former President Olusegun Obasanjo — who had described Buhari's administration as a failed government. As vice president, Abubakar oversaw the privatization and sale of hundreds of loss-making and poorly managed public enterprises.
A few other presidential hopefuls to watch are:
Oby Ezekwesili [Image released by campaign organizers as media resource]
Ezekwesili, the only major female candidate in this year's race, served as the minister of solid minerals and later education during the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999 to 2007. She was also former vice president of the Africa division of the World Bank from May 2007 to May 2012. Ezekwesili has been at the forefront of the call to rescue about 200 school girls who were abducted by the Boko Haram militant Islamic group in 2014. She is a co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) Movement. She is also the presidential flag-bearer of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria.
Kingsley Moghalu [Image from campaign website].
Moghalu is a professor of international business and public policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, USA. Moghalu had previously worked in the United Nations from 1992 to 2008. He was deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2009 to 2014, where “he led extensive reforms in the Nigerian banking system after the global financial crisis.” He is the candidate of the Young Progressive Party.
Omoyele Sowore [Screen shot from CNBCAfrica interview, Dec 13, 2018].
Sowore is the founder and publisher of SaharaReporters (SR), an investigative online newspaper. SR has been described as Africa's Wikileaks. This human rights activist is running under the banner of African Action Congress.
Buhari and Abubakar are the major contenders in this race. Both men have been constants in the political arena in Nigeria. On the other hand, Ezekwesili, Moghalu, Sowore, the “third force”, are a  group making their first entry into the partisan political space.
Buhari will be running on the “gains” of his administration over the past three years and must contend with the fact that Nigeria was recently ranked as the poverty capital of the world. The Punch newspaper described Buhari’s “parochial appointments” as “unprecedented” and has left the country deeply divided. His fight against corruption appears selective and punitive. The recent move to try the Chief Justice of the Federation — so close to the presidential election — was described by the Nigerian Bar Association as “a pattern of consistent assault on the heads of the two independent arms of government” by the Buhari administration.
Abubakar, on the other hand, is riding on the “gains” of “multiple lucrative business interests”. However, he has an uphill task considering the power of incumbency of his major opponent.
Whoever wins the 2019 elections will face enormous challenges like the strengthening the economy, internal security, restructuring power and power devolution, and ethnoreligious politics.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this post stated that there are 35 presidential candidates and has been updated to reflect that there are 73 presidential candidates.


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Nigerien man stranded at Ethiopian airport for months · Global Voices
Faaris Adam

Eissa Muhamad, from Niger, has been stranded at the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for two months now. Photo by Eissa Muhamad, used with permission.
Eissa Muhamad, from Niger, says he has been stranded in the transit section of Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for more than two months, starting on November 6, 2018. Muhamad, 24, was deported from Israel where he lived for eight years as a migrant.
I met Muhamad on December 12, 2018, at Bole International Airport while in transit in Addis Ababa.
Muhamad tells me he has been deported twice from Israel in 2018. When he returned to Niger the first time, Muhamad's Israeli travel documents were still valid, so he turned around and booked another flight back to Israel. When he arrived in Israel, authorities confiscated his travel documents and deported him again back to Niger. When Muhamad returned to Niger the second time, authorities requested proof of citizenship but he failed to produce valid documents, either Israeli or Nigerien, to support his citizenship.
Muhamad remained in Nigerien custody for eight days before being deported back to Israel via Ethiopia on an Ethiopian Airlines flight. When he arrived at Bole International Airport in Ethiopia, Ethiopian authorities, in collaboration with the Israeli government,  prevented him from boarding his connecting flight to Israel. They informed him that Israel was not willing to accept him, and since then, he has been stranded inside the airport, stuck between Niger and Israel.
I slept on the chairs, sometimes I slept in the mosque, I didn’t take [a] shower for two months because [the] airport [has] no place for a shower, I only wash my face, my hands and my legs, that’s all.
Muhamad has attempted to contact the Niger embassy in Addis Ababa, but because he was not able to provide valid documents to prove his Niger citizenship, Muhamad says they were unable to assist him.
As of 2018, Israel currently has 34,000 African migrants who undertook perilous journeys to Israel in search of a better life. But Israel claims many are economic migrants who have put a strain on the economy. Opting to stay meant jail time and significantly fewer resettlement options.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing Likud party remain focused on targeting those deemed “infiltrators.” Israel Democracy Institute study says 66 percent of Israelis support government policies to deport African immigrants.
Muhamad claims that he was legally living in Israel and worked in a factory, and told me the government took away his residency status and threw him out of the country.
Ethiopian authorities have not arrested Muhamad and have provided meals for him while staying at the airport. Technically, Ethiopia is a signatory to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol as well as the 1969 Organization of African Unity (OAU) Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and nearly all refugees entering Ethiopia are granted asylum on a prima facie basis, but Muhamad told me he is not willing to apply for asylum in Ethiopia.
In this video interview, Muhamad explains to me what it has been like to stay trapped at the airport in Addis Ababa without a clear idea of the future:

author: Faaris Adam


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Under Peña Nieto, Mexican journalists endured threats, killings — and digital surveillance, say researchers · Global Voices
Giovanna Salazar

Protest of the murder of Javier Valdez in Mexico City (2017). Photo by ProtoplasmaKid. Published under Creative Commons License 4.0
More than a year after Mexican journalist and writer Javier Valdez was murdered, the details of his case are finally coming to light. Towards the end of 2019, a new wrinkle emerged: Just one day after Valdez's death, two of his colleagues received mobile phone messages infected with the surveillance software Pegasus.
Javier Valdez was a dedicated journalist who, among other things, covered stories about corruption, impunity and organized crime for the independent media outlet Ríodoce, which he co-founded in Culiacán, Sinaloa (a disputed territory that both the Jalisco Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel claim). On May 17, 2017 Valdez was shot 12 times in broad daylight, just outside Ríodoce's offices.
According to a research report by the Digital Rights Defense Network (R3D) and a partnership of international NGOs, both Ismael Bojórquez (director of Ríodoce) and its director of information, Andrés Villarreal, suffered hacking attempts on their cell phones via text message.
Combined with other cases that we have reported previously, this amounts to a total of 28 cases of attempted infection with Pegasus, against various journalists, activists, and human rights defenders in the country.
The report, jointly researched by Article 19, Digital Rights Advocacy Network (R3D), SocialTIC and the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, shows how journalists have been detected as targets of espionage through such malware:
Journalists and civic media have been a favorite target of government users of NSO Group spyware. Pictured below is a list of journalists @citizenlab has identified targeted with Pegasus. https://t.co/8j6fTVOoqk pic.twitter.com/PSA2KZTQ7S
— profdeibert (@RonDeibert) November 27 2018
Attempts to infect Valdez's colleagues followed a similar procedure to other attacks with Pegasus. The messages were received via SMS, and were allegedly sent by a popular news service called “UnoTV”. The content was difficult to ignore — particularly since the messages referencing the then-recent murder of Valdez and significant related events.
At the end of each message there was a suspicious link that, when clicked, would immediately install the surveillance software or spyware. This allowed the spyware to monitor any information hosted on the device and even take control of the microphone and camera.
Image taken from the report “Reckless VI. Mexican Journalists Investigating Cartels Targeted with NSO Spyware Following Assassination of Colleague”. Citizen Lab 2018.
One of the most noteworthy conclusions of the report was that there seemed to be a common attacker in all cases, given the methods of infection and the use of the same infrastructure. Moreover, it was noted that the software was used in situations affecting Peña Nieto's outgoing administration.
Pegasus is a sophisticated tool sold exclusively to government agencies. The technology was acquired by the Mexican government in 2014 and 2015 for the alleged purpose of fighting organized crime. As such, this series of revelations is now colloquially referred to online under the label #GobiernoEspía (#SpyGovernment in English).
The report listed their most recent findings alongside other uses of spyware in Mexico. With this information in hand, the organizations involved called on the new government to ensure an independent investigation into government use of surveillance software. They asked officials to carry out a comprehensive reform of the possession and use of surveillance systems by the government:
With this seventh publication on abuses of NSO Group spyware in Mexico, Citizen Lab and our partners R3D, SocialTic, and Article 19 have identified a total of 24 cases of abusive targeting by Mexico-linked NSO Group customers. Our previous investigations identified infection attempts against multiple journalists, lawyers, international investigators, public health practitioners, senior politicians, and anti-corruption activists.
A correspondent for media outlets AFP and La Jornada, and a co-founder of Ríodoce, Javier Valdez was a prolific writer who wrote at least nine books on drug trafficking in Mexico, always putting victims at the center of his stories. He was credited with numerous awards, including the 2011 International Freedom of the Press Prize, awarded by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). At the awards ceremony, Valdez said:
Ahora en Culiacán, Sinaloa, es un peligro estar vivo; y hacer periodismo es caminar sobre una invisible línea marcada [por los que están en el narcotráfico y en el gobierno] en un piso filoso y lleno de explosivos. Esto se vive en casi todo el país. Uno debe cuidarse de todo y de todos; no parece haber opciones ni salvación y muchas veces no hay a quién acudir […] Esta es una guerra, sí […] por el control del narco. Pero nosotros, los ciudadanos, ponemos los muertos; y los gobiernos de México y Estados Unidos las armas. Y ellos, los encumbrados invisibles y agazapados dentro y fuera de los gobiernos, se llevan las ganancias…
Right now in Culiacán, Sinaloa, it dangerous to be alive, and to be a journalist is to walk on an invisible line drawn [by those inside drug trafficking and the government] on a sharp floor full of explosives. This is the case in most of the country. One must protect oneself from everything and everyone. There seems to be no option or salvation, and often times there is no one to turn to […] Yes, this is a war […] for the control of drug trafficking. But we, the citizens, supply the dead, while Mexico and the United States supply the weapons. And they, the ones that are invisible but high above, crouching in and out of those governments, take all the profits for themselves…
After more than two decades of pursuing critical journalism, Javier Valdez became an exemplar, on a national and international level, on issues related to the violence that is devastating the northern part of the country. Many thought that this would protect him, but it did not.
The journalists’ guild showed profound indignation in response to Valdez's death, through protests, acts of denunciation, and labor strikes throughout the country.
The assassination also marked a breaking point for journalism in Mexico, as Froylán Enciso described in an essay for Horizontal, a digital media outlet:
Si matan a Javier Valdez, nuestro querido Javier, el más conocido, el más premiado, el más divertido, el más protegido del gremio: ¿qué puede esperar el resto? Es como si a todos nos hubieran puesto un blanco en el pecho.
If they killed Javier Valdez, our beloved Javier, the most well-known, most acclaimed, most fun and most protected member in the field, what can the rest of us expect? It is as if we all have a target on our backs.
The Mexican government has a terrible record when it comes to human rights and the circumstances facing journalism in the country are especially grave.
On this note, the organizations that are reporting on #SpyGovernment cases see it as a positive sign that current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently stated at a press conference that his government will not engage in such practices. However, those declarations will not be much of a guarantee if crimes against journalists remain unpunished.

author: Giovanna Salazar


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India’s Sabarimala row: How women fought against religious patriarchy for the right to pray · Global Voices
Devika Sakhadeo

Ayyappa Temple, Sabarimala
In India's southern state of Kerala, a July 2018 decision taken by the country's Supreme Court allowing women to enter and pray at an iconic temple is creating controversy.
The Sabarimala temple, which honours the Hindu celibate deity Lord Ayappa, is located on a hilltop in Kerala and women of menstruating age have been historically barred from entering the religious shrine because of their alleged ‘impurity‘ — a widespread belief in the Indian subcontinent.
The Supreme Court verdict, seen as groundbreaking by activists, allows women between the ages of 10 to 50 years to enter the premises of Sabarimala temple. However, it created a political firestorm as India's ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters clashed with Kerala's state government over the ruling.
The historic verdict and the overruling of the ban have led to a series of controversies. Politically-aligned groups and religious zealots protested against women entering the religious premises. Hundreds of Brahmin men and women also joined protests.
Kanaka Durga and Bindu Ammini, two women who made history by becoming the first in centuries to enter a hill temple in southern India, are in hiding after threats by hardline Hindu groups. Read more: https://t.co/oyCZ9ou1Yv ? Sivaram V pic.twitter.com/uiO0Xkie3m
— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) January 11, 2019
In January, Kanaka Durga and Bindu Ammini entered the temple. The two women met on Facebook soon after the court's decision was made public. They both had tried to enter the temple earlier but had been stopped several times.
After videos of Durga and Ammini entering the temple went viral, more women followed suit. Soon afterwards, there were reports of protests and clashes as rightwing religious groups, family members and political parties denounced the move.
One of the women, Kanaka Durga, who entered #Sabarimala, is hospitalised after she was allegedly attacked by her mother-in-law on her head. Incident happened early today morning, as she returned home, say sources close to her. Stable, referred for tests. @ndtv
— Sneha Koshy (@SnehaMKoshy) January 15, 2019
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while bringing political ideologies to the forefront, attacked Kerala's state government drawing criticism from activists.
PM in Kerala: The conduct of Kerala LDF govt on Sabarimala issue will go down in history as one of the most shameful behaviour by any party & govt. We knew that communists do not respect Indian history, culture and spirituality but nobody imagined that they will have such hatred. pic.twitter.com/rlQtRbVyMI
— ANI (@ANI) January 15, 2019
Meanwhile, right-wing supporters, including movie celebrities, started commenting on the issue:
#Sabrimala is going to take many down. Specially, #FakeFeminists. #StupidMedia and #UrbanNaxals. Do not underestimate Lord Ayappa or his devotees. https://t.co/zjPGjjrsS0
— Vivek Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) January 4, 2019
Historian Hindol Sengupta wrote on a Twitter thread:
many centuries, the voices of women are being heard, a shrine that bars women of menstruating age, seems dysfunctional to all of us. The question arises, how can this even be an issue today – after all these years of battling for liberty? This is a vital and important question
— HindolSengupta (@HindolSengupta) January 3, 2019
Amid political protests supported by the ruling party defending the ‘sanctity of the temple’, many organisations championing women's rights and activists have been attempting to enter the temple. Protests from opposition groups have resulted in violence and arson, while police authorities have stepped in to send back female devotees or safeguard them while entering the venue.
Women entering Sabarimala are the “most sinful”? What are we prime minister?
— Charmy Harikrishnan (@charmyh) January 15, 2019
Indian politician Shashi Tharoor wrote:
It is all very well to say that religions must adhere to the normal rules of liberal democracy, but the truth is they don’t. Gender equality is a vital principle in civic society and in political democracy, but it is by no means universally observed in the religious world. Muslim mosques don’t allow men and women to pray together in the same space. The Catholic Church does not permit female priests. Some Shinto monasteries are off-limits to women altogether. Eight Hindu temples in India do not allow men to enter during specified periods, and the Kumari Amman temple situated in Kanyakumari does not permit them at all. The law does not interfere in such matters. But in Sabarimala, it has chosen to.
The Sabarimala controversy has resulted in a conflicting battle of viewpoints. The ruling BJP, affiliated with Hindu volunteer organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has strongly taken an anti-state government stance against its leftist policies which the right-wing central government wants to dismantle to win a turf war in Kerala ahead of general elections.
The Prime Minister's Office India tweeted:
Every Temple has their own beliefs.
There are temples where men are not allowed.
We should read minutely what the Respected Lady Judge said on the Sabarimala case: PM @narendramodi
— PMO India (@PMOIndia) January 1, 2019
And the analogy with Kashmir:
Terror Apologia has reached a sickening height at The Telegraph. What Indian military does in Kashmir is counter-offensive against the terrorists but don't let your anti-national agenda stop you from equating them with #Sabrimala devotees pic.twitter.com/oez30ZWxxW
— Monica (@TrulyMonica) January 4, 2019
Police arrest 3 women enroute to Vavar Mosque in Kerala. Same state police that smuggled women anarchists inside #Sabrimala on orders of CM @vijayanpinarayi are now alleging that communal tension was being created. Different communities, different rules?
https://t.co/DHLb4r9wW7
— Priti Gandhi (@MrsGandhi) January 8, 2019
The feminist issue combined with political protests stood at the centre stage of India's struggle for gender justice as the argument of ‘impious’ woman has been used at mosques, temples and other religious celebrations in the South Asian sub-continent. But women have dared to fight in courts and remained triumphant.
The outrage of this saw many feminist activists publishing articles and decoding the convoluted issue:
#Sabarimala stains India's image on women's rights. No point celebrating Indira Gandhi or the cool quotient of a woman Defence minister if female blood is still a blot. My take in @washingtonpost. Read, share and tell me how much you disagree :-) https://t.co/uix8NjYVqG
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) January 4, 2019
When is the SC taking note of this alleged “purification” of the #SabarimalaTemple & sacking the priest? Women are untouchables? Absolutely disgusting
— Swati Chaturvedi (@bainjal) January 2, 2019
God has created men and women to compliment each other. God doesn't discriminate but men do. Traditions should be respected but such concepts such as ‘impure women’ should be discouraged. Is there any parameter to judge men who visit the holy shrine? #Sabrimala
— Pallavi Kaushal Dani (@dani_pallavi) January 6, 2019
This entire chain of protests and events have set an example for women to now have equal rights as that of men. After Sabarimala, the recent High Court verdict provides women with legal access to the Agasthyakoodam peak, an 1868 meter high peak situated in Thiruvananthapuram district in the state of Kerala.

author: Devika Sakhadeo


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Correspondence between Arundhati Roy and Shahidul Alam shares resilience and hope · Global Voices
Samaya Anjum

Shahidul Alam (left) and Arundhati Roy (right). Image from Flickr by Christopher Michel and UCL News. CC BY and CC BY-NC-ND.
On November 14, 2018, a day before the PEN International's Day of the Imprisoned Writer, Indian author Arundhati Roy wrote a letter to the award-winning Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam, following the completion of the 100th day of his incarceration. Shahidul Alam was subsequently released on bail and had written back another letter to Roy in response. Both of these were published as open-letters and have since been widely publicized, with numerous media outlets featuring them on the opinion sections of their news coverage.
Shahidul Alam, an eminent photographer, social activist, and teacher from Bangladesh had been picked up by at least 20 officers from his home in Dhaka at about 10 AM on August 5, 2018, hours after his interview with Al Jazeera had been broadcasted. The next day he was charged under Section 57 of Bangladesh's Information Communications Technology Act for making ‘provocative’ comments against the country's government on the subject of the student protest for road safety, which lasted from July 29 to August 9. His counsels submitted a bail petition on August 28 but he was denied a few times and a long legal battle ensued while his supporters all over the world demanded his release.
It is one hundred days since the award-winning photojournalist Shahidul Alam was arrested without a warrant. A group of South Asian writers and activists here urge Sheikh Hasina and Bangladesh Government to release him immediately:https://t.co/2KMHhKPDrw
— Ramachandra Guha (@Ram_Guha) November 13, 2018
Following Arundhati's letter, 34 prominent South Asians, including writers, historians and actors signed a letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina calling for the unconditional release of Shahidul Alam.
The arrest also sparked outrage among supporters who then organized numerous protests, solidarity rallies and online campaigns demanding the justice be served. The Shahbag Square in Dhaka swelled with people chanting slogans as a public gathering titled “Let democracy be free” was held on September 9, in protest of the imprisonment of Shahidul.
“Let Democracy be free”. An innovative protest in Shahbag Square in Dhaka, demanding the release of Shahidul Alam. Image by Pranabesh Das, used with permission.
Arundhati Roy mentioned in the letter her deep concern for Shahidul, having feared the worst when news channels first broadcasted the details of his arrest. She also expressed her strong disapproval and anger towards the ICT laws of the country. Arundhati wrote:
Section 57 potentially criminalizes all forms of speech except blatant sycophancy. It is an attack not on intellectuals but on intelligence itself.
After spending months behind the bars, Shahidul was released on November 20, 2018, five days after the High Court granted him permanent bail. Although the charges are still held against him, he cannot be imprisoned without a court order.
Iconic shot of Bangladeshi photojournalist and rights activist Shahidul Alam, shared by the #FreeShahidul campaign. He finally got bail today after more than 100 days in prison, accused of spreading propaganda. He was arrested after posting on Facebook about protests in Dhaka. pic.twitter.com/tgg87ODfgn
— Poppy McPherson (@poppymcp) November 15, 2018
Shahidul wrote in his letter to Arundhati that despite the tremendous efforts that were made to prevent his release, victory was still on his side. “…we held hands and sang songs as I left the jail gate,” inscribed Shahidul.
In his response, Shahidul Alam highlighted that what made the letter from Arundhati special was that, unlike other letters sent to the Prime Minister which called for his freedom, this had been addressed to him in particular.
He describes his encounter with different people, emotions caused by living away from the comfort of his home, his goldfish and his wife Rahnuma, and his experience of the jail routine. He also writes about the collective grief, legacies, and struggles that he and Roy both share.
As Arundhati had concluded her letter yearning to witness better days, Shahidul sent an assurance on his, with lots of hope:
But yes, Arundhati, the tide will turn, and the nameless, faceless people will rise. They will rise as they did in 1971. We will have secularism. We will have democracy. We will have social equality. We will win back this land.
Supporters worldwide shared and retweeted the letters, a token of Shahidul and Arundhati’s comradeship and mutual appreciation of each other’s work.
Amal Nassar, a permanent representative to the ICC of FIDH, tweeted:
“the tide will turn, and the nameless, faceless people will rise. They will rise against the entire state machinery”.
A beautiful letter from Shahidul Alam to
Arundhati Roy with reflections on his time in prison, from which he was released in Nov. 2018. https://t.co/CK4UPhoeuJ
— Amal Nassar (@AmalNassar_) January 12, 2019
Arabindu Deb Burma from Tripura, India tweeted:
The life of Tripuris in India is no different from that of Bangladesh. We are on the same situation now suppressed and oppresses yet we leaved in so called democratic country. https://t.co/HomevSFUVD
— arabindudebburma (@arabindu) January 12, 2019
Bangladeshi American poet Thahitun Marium said:
I really enjoyed this exchange, especially him writing about people he met in the jail who reminds him of characters from Arundhati’s book. Shahidul is a beautiful soul.
— Thahitun Mariam (@thahitun) January 9, 2019
Australian activist Tasneem Chopra tweeted:
This brought me to tears. Utterly raw. https://t.co/6v979nyO9Y
— Tasneem Chopra (@TasChop) January 13, 2019
As more and more Bangladeshi journalists are self-censoring themselves out of fear of repression, Shahidul's words should encourage them to carry on:
The case against Shahidul still hangs over my head and the threat of bail being withdrawn is the threat they hope will silence my tongue, my pen, and my camera. But the ink in our pens still runs.

author: Samaya Anjum


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Mayor of Odessa could face criminal charges after his security attacked a local reporter · Global Voices
Kanykei Tursunbaeva

Odessa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov seconds before his security shoved off Radio Svoboda reporter Mikhail Shtekel out of courthouse where he gave a press briefing. Screengrab from Shtekel's video posted on Twitter.
Odessa's police will investigate the city's mayor Gennady Trukhanov for “impeding the lawful professional activity of journalists”, a punishable offence by Ukraine's criminal code, following an incident in which his security detail physically assaulted a local reporter.
On December 27, Radio Svoboda journalist Mikhail Shtekel posed a question to Trukhanov at a press briefing, to which the mayor responded by pushing him away while his security proceeded to expel the journalist out of the building.
Shtekel, whose employer Radio Svoboda is the Ukrainian version of Radio Free Europe, recorded the whole incident on camera and posted the video on Twitter soon afterward:
Замість відповіді на запитання @radiosvoboda міський голова Одеси Генадій Труханов разом зі своєю охороною відпихнув мене і залишив приміщення Малиновського суду. Допомогала їм в цьому поліція. @NPU_GOV_UA @MVS_UA це 171-ша чи ні? pic.twitter.com/NRO7U7OohA
— Michael Shtekel (@mishajedi) December 27, 2018
Instead of answering the question by @radiosvoboda [Radio Liberty in Ukrainain] mayor of Odessa Gennadiy Trukhanov and his guards pushed me away and left Malinovskyi court building. They were helped to do it by the police. @NPU_GOV_UA [National Police] @MVS_UA [Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine] does this fall under the Article 171 or not?
Article 171 of Ukraine's criminal code typifies the crime of “impeding lawful professional activity of journalists,” which covers illegal seizure of reporting materials, denial to provide access to information, among other actions. It imposes fines and a maximum prison time of three years.
On December 29, Shtekel stated, on his Facebook profile page, that with the help of his lawyers he had filed a criminal complaint related to Article 171 against Trukhanov, his guards, and the police officers who participated in the aggression. On January 2, the police of Odessa confirmed for Detector Media that they had initiated a criminal investigation of the incident.
This is only the most recent episode in which Trukhanov or his subordinates have attacked journalists. In July 2018, when reporter Bogdan Osinskyi asked him why he had referred to a group of environmentalists as “green worms,” the mayor grabbed the journalist's phone and tried to hit him with it.
In April 2018, British journalist Andy Verity, who had come to Odessa with the BBC to report on a corruption probe that involves the mayor, was pushed, knocked down, and kicked in the groin by Trukhanov's security guards after he approached him with a question. The BBC has captured the whole incident on camera.
Finally, just before the end of 2018, Trukhanov said that Member of Parliament Mustafa Nayem, a former journalist, asks “stupid questions.”
Separately, Trukhanov is a defendant at an emblezzlement case related to the sale of Odessa's city hall building known as the Krayan plant. A trial began in October — the press briefing where Shtekel was attacked on December 27 followed a court hearing of this trial.
The mayor has also received harsh criticism, including in international fora, for the behavior of his “municipal guards”. Those are private security officers hired by the city of Odessa under suspicious circumstances who have been accused of multiple human rights violations, including against journalists.
Trukhanov is expected to run for re-election in 2020. However, if any of the criminal cases he's facing ends in conviction, he might find himself fighting for his own freedom rather than for his seat as mayor of Odessa.
On November 30, Trukhanov presented his own work in a positive light at an annual ceremony at Odessa's city hall. Such enthusiasm probably isn't shared by the city's journalists, for whom press freedom feels ever more elusive.

author: Kanykei Tursunbaeva


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What’s wrong with mainstream media’s interpretation of Taiwan’s referendum results? · Global Voices
I-fan Lin

The candidates in Taiwan usually need to go to the markets and talk to people on the streets to show that they really care about the need of their voters. We call it ‘street sweeping.’ Photo by Chia-Chi Jessica Hung, published with permission.
Taiwan finished its mid-term elections and multiple-referendums on November 24, 2018. Several western mainstream media outlets have interpreted the results as a victory for China and the comeback of conservatism; however, this type of analysis overlooks the political dynamics within Taiwan. This post attempts to clarify the picture by providing readers with more political context on the elections and referendum results.
There was an obvious setback for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as it has only retained 6 out of the 22 mayoral and county magistrate seats. President Tsai Ing-wen took responsibility for the election losses and stepped down as party chief on the same day.
The multiple-referendum voting consisted of 10 questions ranging from LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage, the choice between “Taiwan” or “Chinese Taipei” at international sporting events, the development of nuclear power, among others. Below shows the referendum results:
Screen capture from Wikipedia: 2018 Taiwan Referendum.
Quite a number of mainstream media outlets saw China as the biggest winner in last year's Taiwanese elections as the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party won a majority. The KMT opposition party is seen as the preferred political party by Chinese leaders because it has traditionally sought closer economic ties with China. Baohui Zhang, a professor in Lingnan University in Hong Kong, even wrote an opinion piece on CNN arguing that the election results were a setback for U.S foreign policy and suggested an adjustment of its China policy.
Figure 1. Data from the Central Election Commission.
Figure 2. Data from the Central Election Commission. To compute the percentage, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ votes are divided by total valid votes.
The analysis has made a mistake by assuming that voter support for the KMT means support for China. Many people think that a better relationship with China, which would lead to resumed diplomatic contact that was suspended after Tsai Ing-wen took over the presidential office, would be good for Taiwan in the long run. In fact, some analysts, like sociologist Thung-Hong Lin, see the DPP's loss at the polls as the result of unpopular domestic policies like annuity reform more than any positive public sentiment for the cross-strait relationship.
The result of the Olympic referendum is a better reflection of public sentiment towards China.
Do you agree that Taiwan should apply to participate in all international sporting events and the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, using the name ‘Taiwan?’
For years, Taiwanese athletes have competed under the name “Chinese Taipei” because of pressure from China which claims the island as Chinese territory. In the November elections, a 55 percent majority voted to keep the name “Chinese Taipei” (Figure 2). The choice reflects a preference for the status quo for fear that the name change would jeopardize Taiwanese athletes’ right to participate in international games.
Although some media outlets see this loss as a victory for China, it is important to note the fact that, despite decades of threats from China, 45 percent of the voters still voted for a name change — a move which is taken as a declaration of Taiwan’s independence. Also worth considering is the fact that polls still show that many Taiwanese citizens favor Taiwan's independence.
It is true that the results of several referendums related to same-sex marriage disappointed LGBTQ rights advocates. However, the results can not be taken as an outright rejection of same-sex marriage — a mistake made by a number of mainstream media outlets such as CNN.
The right to same-sex marriage is guaranteed by Taiwan’s Constitutional Court, and no referendum can override such decision. The wording of the referendum on same-sex marriage is directed at the marriage regulation in the “Civil Code” :
Do you agree that marriage defined in the Civil Code should be restricted to the union between one man and one woman? (Majority 72.48 percent agree)
Do you agree to the protection of the rights of same-sex couples in co-habitation on a permanent basis in ways other than changing of the Civil Code? (Majority 61.12 percent agree)
Do you agree to the protection of same-sex marital rights with marriage as defined in the Civil Code? (Majority 67.26 percent against)
The results of the referendum show that the majority of voters prefer another set of legal procedures such as civil union or partnership instead of the current marriage regulations in the Civil Code to protect rights for same-sex married couples. In other words, these voters agreed to defend the rights of the LGBTQ group, but they did not want to change the marriage regulation in the Civil Code.
The trend towards accepting equal rights for the LGBTQ community is still progressing; for the first time in Taiwanese history two lesbian candidates, Lin Ying-meng and Miao Poya, won the city council elections.
The nuclear energy referendum wording goes like this:
Do you agree with abolishing the first paragraph of Article 95 of the Electricity Act, which means abolishing the provision that ‘all nuclear-energy-based power-generating facilities shall cease to operate by 2025'?
If you are confused by the question, you are not alone. This referendum is asking for the flexibility to extend the usage of nuclear power after 2025.
A majority of the voters were in favor of abolishing article 95, which means they don't want to rule out nuclear power as an energy source in the future. However, it is far from a victory as depicted by many western media outlets including this article from Forbes.
The referendum does give Taiwanese citizens more choices when the current three nuclear power plants are due to be decommissioned. However, if Taiwan plans to delay the decommissioning of these three nuclear power plants, another referendum may be needed. And if Taiwan intends to continue the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant, it will definitely take another referendum. Taiwan has already mapped out its new energy model. After the new gas-fired power plant starts to generate power in the near future, the concerns for energy deficiency will be eased, and the pro-nuclear movement is expected to lose the momentum.
To conclude, dissatisfaction for the ruling DPP party has resulted in its loss this election, but it doesn't mean that the voters are explicitly in favor of China. There is still a long way to go before Taiwan genuinely has equal rights for the LGBTQ community, but same-sex marriage is now guaranteed by Taiwan's Constitution and cannot be taken away. The vote for nuclear power as a possible energy source cannot be taken as equal to the failure of anti-nuclear movements.

author: I-fan Lin


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Jordan stalls on official poverty statistics amid tax law controversy · Global Voices
Maram Alkayed

A tent in Tal Al Rumman, Jordan, where an elderly woman and her children used to live. Living conditions in Jordan have become dire for many. Photo by Farrah Matalka, June 2018, used with permission.
Until 2010, reports assessing poverty in Jordan were done regularly every two to three years by the Department of Statistics (DoS). A 2010 report on poverty issued by the Jordanian government, showed that 14 percent of the population lived under the poverty line at an annual 813 Jordanian dinars ($1,144 USD) per individual, showing a rise of 1 percent since 2008.
Since then, however, poverty statistics in Jordan have been completely absent due to what critics are calling “a stalling technique”.
In the latest House discussions regarding the controversial Income Tax law, the Lower House’s Economy and Investment Committee called for the need to provide all statistics, data and studies on the issue. No figures, neither rough nor accurate, were provided, and the law passed without determining a scientifically-studied poverty line.
The law, which was already a sensitive topic before the Lower House brought up poverty statistics, is part of a series of measures instituted since Amman secured a three-year credit line of 723 million US dollars from the International Monetary Fund in 2016.
That loan, intended to support economic and financial reform, has the long-term objective of reducing Jordan's public debt from about 94 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 77 percent by 2021.
The Income Tax Law was not favorably received and resulted in the overthrowing of the Hani Mulki government in May. Later on, under a new government and with a new draft, the law passed both houses of parliament but is still regarded as a “harmful” decision by experts.
In an attempt to calm the waters, Director of the DoS, Qasem Zu'bi, recently said in a press conference that a comprehensive report will be launched during the first quarter of 2019.
Although no official figures have been presented, the 2019 report is looking at a state of deterioration that has caught up with Jordan, according to various reports launched toward the end of 2018.
Jordan stepped down on the Legatum Prosperity Index in 2018 to stand at 91 out of 149. The World Bank classified its economy as “a low-growth scenario”, UNICEF studies showed that 20 percent of children in Jordan suffer from multidimensional poverty, and only 38 percent of aid required to finance the Jordan Response Plan (JRP) for the 1.4 million Syrian refugees was met.
Moreover, the United States reduced its funding to UNRWA by 350 million USD, putting 711 schools and 526,000 Palestinian students in Jordan at risk.
Activist and community activist Sarhan Taamari, who lives in the impoverished Mamouneyeh neighborhood in Maan, 218 kilometers southwest of the capital Amman, said:
The government will try and pin this on the Syrian crisis, but the truth is that billions of dollars have been donated by the international community, donations that could have covered refugees’ living costs for more than ten years.
Taamari stated that “the real reason behind a collapsing GDP” is the 2006 IMF deal. In the deal, Jordan agreed to sell key state companies to foreign investors.
Now, almost all critical services and natural resource productions are foreign-owned. The water company, the Total gas station, and one of the three telecommunications companies are French, while the Potash and Phosphate mines are almost all privatized and foreign-owned.
Moreover, the World Bank plays a critical role in Jordan's energy sector, and over 1 billion US dollars on investments in power and energy come from the private sector.
Additionally, Jordanian businessmen have been selling their shares in state companies, something that the government has been “trying to conceal”, according to Taamari. In a country whose public debt has risen to 96 percent of its GDP, frustrated individuals have been trying to help as many people as their limited-resources allow.
In July 2018, when an offensive by the Syrian government displaced 40,000 Syrians at Jordan's border, Jordanians lent a hand despite the government's insistence on closing the borders.
In 2018, Farrah Matalka, a graduate in social economics, launched Bringing Joy By Giving Joy, an independent campaign to help distribute 600 food parcels monthly and renovate houses. Unaffiliated with the government or privately-run organizations, Matalka relies solely on donations from individuals via her Instagram account. She posts images and videos of dilapidated houses and areas and asks followers for donations.
Other than monthly parcels, the campaign takes on short-term projects. She has raised funds for the operation and recovery fees of child victims of fires, as well as the distribution of school essentials and winter clothing.
Farrah Matalka launched Bring Joy By Giving Joy, a charity initiative that fills the gap where the Jordanian government has been unresponsive. Seen here with a new trailer for a family in need.
These simple acts of kindness can not overshadow the clear and growing frustration with living conditions in Jordan. Two waves of protests, one that resulted in overthrowing former MP Hani Mulki's government and another that was filled with anti-monarchy chants are obvious expressions of citizens’ anger.
The governates’ series of refusals to listen to ministers’ explanations for why the Income Tax law is critical is yet another sign of the government's disconnect
With people paying 70 percent of their incomes to cover personal debts, the rise of public debt and unemployment standing at 19 percent by the end of the year, and a 30 percent rise in drug addiction cases, tackling poverty in Jordan needs a multiple-faceted strategy.
As DoS Director Qasem Su'bi said in a recent press conference, “people are anxious for the report on poverty, but what is more important is how the government plans on reducing it.”
DoS Spokesperson Saeda Momani said the report may not be published in early 2019, as the committee working on it has decided to widen the sample and include more Syrian refugee representation as well.
“I suggest we delay talking about the report for at least six months,” Momani concluded.

author: Maram Alkayed


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Tobago’s tourism industry faces setback as Sandals hotel chain walks away from a deal · Global Voices
Flora Thomas

“Sandals Grande”; photo by Chris H, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
If you've come to the Caribbean on vacation, chances are you've stayed at a Sandals resort, the regional chain of all-inclusives started by Jamaican businessman Gordon “Butch” Stewart. The ever-expanding franchise had been in negotiations with the Trinidad and Tobago government to open a resort on the island of Tobago, until news broke on January 15, 2019, that the company was “pulling out”.
Although the two parties signed a memorandum of understanding on October 10, 2017, no contracts were forthcoming — and according to Sandals, “the cumulative effect of the negative narratives” surrounding the 700+ room hotel was the deciding factor in its decision to opt out.
With Sandals’ exit, high hopes for diversifying the country's economy with the help of a successful tourism brand were dashed. Trinidad and Tobago's gross domestic product still leans heavily towards the energy industry; diminishing oil and natural gas resources have prompted successive governments to peddle the idea of diversification. Now, many are saying it's all talk and no action, and blame is flying every which way.
Several online discussion threads questioned the authenticity of the negative publicity rationale as Sandals’ reason for discontinuing talks. On Facebook, Mariano Browne, a former minister in the Ministry of Finance, suggested:
[…] This talk of [sic] negative publicity is a sham. There are other reasons why talks broke down […] the MOU was poorly structured.
However for political purposes it is useful to lay blame at the door of those who asked sensible questions.
Brigitte R. Joseph said in a private Facebook status (quoted here with her permission):
[S]tudy that in reality no company the size of Sandals would care one rat’s ass about the opinions of a couple people on an island if they REALLY wanted the business.
Also please google the following:
• what is gaslighting
• Sandals St. Lucia La Source
• Sandals lawsuits
• Sandals tax exemptions & concessions
• Ecological benefits of Mangrove
• Food Security
Yet, Sandals has been firm in its defense of its brand and its praise for the current administration, saying the Trinidad and Tobago government was supportive and transparent throughout the process.
Critics maintain that the deal could not withstand scrutiny, as its terms did not favour Trinidad and Tobago. Legal actions taken by blogger Afra Raymond forced the government to publicly divulge the terms of the MOU before any binding legal contracts were put in place.
The MOU revealed that Sandals was not investing capital to develop the resort, yet were qualifying for the same concessions (duties and taxes) typically afforded to hoteliers that do put out development money. Additionally, there was no guaranteed percentage of local labour.
While tourism minister Randall Mitchell emphasised that the MOU is a non-binding document, Raymond's argument is that an MOU sets out the intentions for how a project will proceed and civil society has both the right and responsibility to ask questions.
In a scathing criticism of both the country's media and opposition after the pullout, Prime Minister Keith Rowley maintained that his government had consistently answered those questions despite “misinformation” — from the exact location of the proposed Sandals and Beaches resorts to the scale of the project — being bandied about “by the truckload”. Rowley said:
We have lost the opportunity to have a brand that will bring to Tobago the kind of airlift that we wouldn't have had to pay for in the model that we have been using for the last decades.
The government's hope was that Sandals would have been “a rising tide lifting all boats”. Supporters of the project claim that the model has been used before, at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, and at the Hyatt Regency. Facebook user Rene Charles said:
Both these hotels are government owned but managed by foreign entities in the case of the Hyatt I have yet to receive a note saying that they were [a] loss making entity. Hilton […] have [been] playing catch up now but over time and further upgrade works and they will be placing cash into the coffers. So we do know that we can make money out of a hotel investment.
For his part, Raymond said the success of the Hyatt and Hilton models is up for debate, as there are no audits available to track their financial performance. Charles, meanwhile, challenged suggestions that the Sandals project would have cost Trinidad and Tobago taxpayers TT $7-8 billion dollars (approximately between US $1 and $2 billion), saying that despite the inherent challenges, the two previous hotels established a precedent — although Tobago would need to upgrade a lot of its support services and infrastructure to use its tourism product as a viable form of diversification.
Despite this — and the prime minister's assurances — the proposed location for the hotel remained a concern for many conservationists who felt that constructing the hotel on the state-owned Buccoo and Golden Grove estates, a mangrove-rich area close to Buccoo Reef, was environmentally irresponsible. The group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) called Sandals’ withdrawal “a win” for the environment”:
Development of our country is always welcomed — but must conform to the laws of our country. Sustainable development is the key to striking a balance between economic development and ecological justice.
Our Buccoo Reef is temporarily saved. Now is the right time to give Buccoo additional protection. Make Buccoo an Environmentally Sensitive Area.
The Facebook page “Save No Man's Land” also dedicated itself to challenging the wisdom of erecting a Sandals resort in this location, not only because of its potential environmental impacts, but also because a major fault line runs through the proposed site, which could have meant much more money having to be poured into construction costs.
The only people who may ever know first-hand the factors that contributed to the pullout are the ones at the negotiating table, but as it stands, both sides of the political divide are being accused of trying to win political points. Tourism industry stakeholders, though, are swallowing their disappointment and pressing on.

author: Flora Thomas