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The Muslims You Cannot See · Global Voices
Sahar Habib Ghazi

The Women's March in San Francisco on January 21, 2017. Photo by Sahar Habib Ghazi. Used with permission.
Allow me to take you back to the Women’s March last January in San Francisco. I was there with a neighbor and dear friend. I trust her with my 4 year old daughter, she trusts me with her children; she’s my rock.
One minute we are shouting slogans for women’s rights. The next we are chanting for trans rights. We are in a sea of umbrellas and people, some carrying the iconic image of a hijabi wrapped in an American flag, some chanting slogans against Islamophobia. My friend looks at me and says, “You don’t have to deal with that stuff, right?” “Why, because I'm not Muslim?” I ask?
I have had this conversation before. People I work with, or people who have known me for years, separate me, the Sahar they know, from the popular idea of “Muslims” built in their imagination.
They de-Muslim me.
There are 1.7 billion Muslims worldwide. We don't all look the same. We practice our religion differently. We identify with being Muslim differently. But somehow we all get packed into the same Muslim box. This box is so well constructed in our collective imaginations that when Muslims like me don’t fit in it, we get de-Muslimed.
I am not alone in this. It's even happened to the best-selling poet in America: Rumi. What images come to your mind when you think of him? Love? Peace?
When Jalaluddin Rumi was my age, he was an orthodox Muslim preacher and scholar. Islam, the Quran and Prophet Muhammad were central to his poetry until the day he died. But Rumi’s religion has been erased from Western imagination and most popular translations of his poetry.
This erasure is a big part of the story of the world's 1.7 billion Muslims.
Another is the reductionist images of Muslims that have colonized western books for centuries. This seductive imagery is defined by the dark men you should fear and the exotic women you should save. The path-breaking Palestinian American scholar Edward Said deconstructed the history behind these images in the 1970s. But these images stand tall today. Our politicians, the news industry, and Hollywood all continue to perpetuate them.
Take the 1998 film The Siege, where Arab American men are actually rounded up in an internment camp in New York. On the right, you'll see Denzel Washington with the bad dangerous Muslim at the top and the good patriotic Muslim FBI agent below.
Screenshots from the 1998 film The Siege.
I’ve worked in the news industry for 13 years, and I’ve seen this powerful flawed narrative dominate our newsfeeds.
This narrative overshadows the reality that nine Muslim women have led their countries in the last three decades, while the US couldn’t even elect its first real female presidential candidate in 2016.
This narrative fails to recognize that French Muslim women prevented from wearing their hijab in public buildings and Saudi Muslim women forced to cover their bodies by their government, are two sides of the same coin. It’s one powerful group exerting its “control” on the “other”.
This powerful narrative diminishes Muslim women leading movements for change. It ignores that the first Muslim prayers on American soil were said by Africans brought here on slave ships. It erases the existence of Queer Muslims.
This narrative has captured our collective imaginations so deeply and so inaccurately that Sikh men and children are often targets of anti-Muslim attacks and bullying.
Because of the stories we tell, and the way we tell them, Islamophobia today, isn’t just fear of Islam, the religion, it is fear of the “other”.
In the news industry, we tell more than just stories based on facts. Or alternative facts. We also build narratives that help you make sense of the world. And my industry has epically failed at capturing the narrative of the 1.7 billion.
And we’ve failed them here, where 7 million Muslims make up the most “diverse” religious group in America. About a third of the total Muslim population here is made up African Americans. Six out of 10 American Muslims are first-generation immigrants who come from 77 countries.
The author's parents in 1976, in New York. Used with permission.
Four decades ago, my immigrant parents arrived in New York to live their American dream. My mother placed her first jewelry designs on 5th Avenue, and my father worked hard in the skyscrapers of New York; skyscrapers made possible by a Bangladeshi Muslim American structural engineer named Fazlur Rahman Khan. Back when Khan was reimagining the skylines of the world, my parents were unapologetically Muslim and American.
But am I unapologetically Muslim and American now? Sometimes when people ask me why I don’t eat pork, instead of pulling out my Muslim receipts or my handy pocket Quran that all Muslims carry, I say, “out of respect for Peppa Pig”.
I'm joking, we don’t all carry pocket Qurans. We don’t have to be theology experts to be “Muslim” or to almost always get selected for extra security checks at the airport. There are hundreds of stellar Muslim scholars, Muslim activists, and interfaith activists trying to combat pervasive lies about Islam.
These lies are churned out by a well-oiled Islamophobia machine with financial backers, think-tanks, and misinformation experts who swept in and easily manipulated our already flawed image of what a Muslim is; of what Islam is.
Because of the stories we tell, and the way we tell them, Islamophobia is more than a stranger snatching a hijab off a woman. Or the horrifying map of attacks on mosques across the US below.
Screenshot from the ACLU website.
Islamophobia in its ugliest forms attacks our belonging. It attacks our identity, which is so vast, varied, and intersectional that it cannot possibly fit into a box.
The author in her kindergarten class picture in 1986. Used with permission.
Let me explain. I was born Muslim, but being Muslim was born into my imagination, when I was 4 years old, in a makeshift mosque in the basement of a Presbyterian Church in New York.
When social scientists describe religious life, they refer to the three Bs: belief, behavior, and belonging. My Muslim belief and behaviour may not always be visible, but it’s there. Perhaps my friend, my neighbor, my rock, would see that I’m Muslim if she could see through the 50 feet of concrete and air that separates our homes. She’d see the nighttime ritual with my daughter, cradled in the crook of my arm, me whispering the Arabic protection verses that seal the Quran called the Quls. Repeating them three times each. Asking her to be protected from the evil that can be seen and cannot be seen.
My Muslim belief may not always be visible, but my Muslim belonging is always part of my shadow.
The author's grandmother winning an Ikebana competition in Karachi, posing with her sisters sometime in the 1960s. Used with permission.
Belonging is the image of my maternal grandmother with her sisters; winning a flower art competition decades ago in Karachi. It is the image of her that I see right now, when I close my eyes: Nano, surrounded by her finished and unfinished canvases of painted Sufi saints; and a heavily bookmarked Quran, a book with one hundred and fourteen chapters that she knows practically by heart. Being Muslim is saying the prayers she tells me to say when I’m having a bad day.
Being Muslim is how she taught me to refer to God: Allah Mian, which means God, my only master. For a people colonized– for centuries–by an “empire” that started as a corporation called the Honorable British East India Company, calling God, my only master, has deep meaning.
The author with her grandfather Nanajan in 1987. Used with permission.
Belonging is growing up hearing men don’t cry, but also seeing my refugee grandfather cry. In between writing books on Modern Islam and Kashmiri independence, Nana Jaan cried unapologetically for his family in Indian-ruled Kashmir, family he wasn’t allowed to embrace in half a century. Belonging is knowing that there are millions of Kurds and Palestinians, like my grandfather, whose families were torn apart by colonialists who divided the Muslim world like a game of risk.
Being Muslim is knowing that Europeans “colonized” all but four Muslim countries in the last two centuries. It is knowing that the first aerial bomb ever was dropped a century ago on a Muslim country.
It is knowing that around the same time, my grandmother’s grandfather, an Indian Kashmiri British imperialist subject, was called “dangerous” by newspapers of the time for running the first mosque in England. Before airplanes existed, he traveled to more parts of the world than I have been, preaching the radical word of love, peace and social justice. The word of Islam.
Image of the author's great grandfather taken in 1920. Photograph from the Woking Muslims website archives.
Belonging to my Muslim tribe of 1.7 billion runs deep into our unforgettable bloodlines; our unacknowledged histories.
It is remembering that fourteen years ago, the most powerful military in the world, with troops currently spread on every continent except Antarctica, went into Iraq chasing Weapons of Mass Destruction that didn’t exist. It’s knowing that now more than half a million Iraqis are buried under the rubble of war. Being an American Muslim is knowing that the rate of suicide among our veterans has jumped more than 32 percent since 2001.
It is knowing that when tragedy strikes in the US and a suspect has a Muslim name, the story receives four times more coverage than a story involving a white attacker.
It is knowing that fourteen hundred years ago, the first call to prayer, the Azaan, was said by a freed black slave named Bilal. It is knowing that an African Islamic scholar named Bilali Muhammad was enslaved and brought to this land two hundred years ago.
It is calling Malcolm X an American hero. It’s the warmth I felt when people overwhelmed the airports to fight the Muslim Ban. It’s the hope I feel when we stand up for our Dreamers and when we say Black Lives Matter. Being an American and a Pakistani and a Kashmiri and a Pahari and a Punjabi and a Muslim and a journalist is knowing the inherent intersectionality of our multi-hyphenated identities, but failing to communicate it to you. The narrative of the 1.7 billion has more possibilities than a Rubik’s cube, but it is portrayed in reductive binaries: “Us” versus “Them.”
Being a mother it is the worry I carry for my child, and all Muslim children, knowing that powerful, privileged people build structural Islamophobia on these binaries.
Structural Islamophobia is the Muslim registries that began with President Bush, and expanded under President Obama. It’s pervasive mosque surveillance. It’s the immigration officer who handcuffed a 5 year old child. It’s a country closing its borders to people from the very countries it is bombing. It’s an inaccurate and vague “no fly list” that target Arabs and Muslim broadly. It’s the wars we wage and the bombs we drop on Muslim countries.
Because of the stories we tell, and the ones we don’t tell, here we are today.
In a study called the Ascent of Man, researchers at Northwestern University showed participants a scientifically incorrect image and asked them to rate groups on a scale of 1 to 100 in terms of evolution. Muslims scored the lowest.
We are too deep into de-humanizing the Muslim or the “other”. We are decades behind on recognizing the roots of our fears and the flawed dangerous tropes we perpetuate in our newsrooms.
At least there is a growing movement led by American Muslims within the media industry that tries to capture our multi-hyphenated identities and forgotten histories. Buzzfeed’s See Something, Say Something podcast; the #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast; the Secret Lives of Muslims viral video series; Sapelo Square on Black American Muslims; Simon & Schuster's Salam Reads, an initiative to publish more Muslim authors; and Ms Marvel, the Pakistani Muslim American superhero—all of these give me hope.
Screenshots of media initiatives aiming to show the complexity and intersectionality of Muslim American life. Collage created by author.
But I’m worried about this difficult global moment we are in. And this moment has consequences beyond the 1.7 billion.
There’s a reason conspiracy theorists that existed in the dark corners of the Internet now run the White House. They rose exponentially because they “othered” Muslims.
There’s another group that rose exponentially by creating the “other” out of all of us. They didn’t exist a few years ago; now they control large areas of Syria and Iraq.
I’m worried about the realities and histories I was unaware of when I was my daughter’s age, but that make me unapologetically Muslim today. Things I left breadcrumbs for throughout this talk. Things that might have triggered memories in you too, because in all the intersections that make up our humanity, there might lurk a story of being “othered.”
Right now, there are conversations happening at the 8th annual Islamophobia conference across the bridge at Berkeley. More than a hundred academics are talking about our problems with the “other”, “structural racism”, and “American militarism”. But these aren’t terms we throw around casually in our schools or read in our newspapers.
Poster from the Islamophobia Studies Network Facebook page.
All of us need to ask ourselves, why? Why am I telling you this at a TEDx talk at Stanford in 2017, when Edward Said, the man who showed us how wars are waged and people are dehumanized by creating the “other” in popular imagination, was a scholar at Stanford four decades ago.
We need to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions about our roles in consciously and unconsciously perpetuating the “other”; like my friend and I did in the rain at the Women’s March, because the work of imagining a new future, where we don’t have a President eating chocolate cake while bombing broken countries and “othered” people, goes way beyond the visible and invisible 1.7 billion. It starts here with all of us.
Sahar Habib Ghazi is the managing editor at Global Voices. This article is a modified version of a TEDx talk she delivered at Stanford University on April 24, 2017. If you are interested in learning more, please visit the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project and explore the crowdsourced #IslamophobiaIsRacism Syllabus.

author: Sahar Habib Ghazi


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‘Financing Venezuelan Narcos the Goldman Sachs Way’ · Global Voices
Elizabeth Rivera

“Bolivar, the weak”. Photo by Flickr user Mariely Hernández. Used under CC 2.0 license.
On Sunday, May 28, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S.-based multinational finance firm Goldman Sachs purchased $2.8 billion dollars in Venezuelan bonds at 31 cents on the dollar. The bonds were issued by the state-run oil company PDVSA and will mature in 2022, effectively giving the cash strapped, highly questioned Venezuelan government more than $865 million dollars.
Advertising technologist and entrepreneur Juan Bermudez wrote a post on Medium titled “Financing Narcos the Goldman Sachs Way,” aiming to “explain the political scenario in Venezuela and understand the profound disregard for ethics at Goldman Sachs.” According to Bermudez:
Most people might think there is nothing unethical about taking advantage of a potentially lucrative deal. But once you understand who they purchased the bonds from, you might think you are watching a new Netflix crossover of Narcos and The Big Short.
Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chavez's handpicked successor, has not commanded public support and respect at the level of his predecessor. Amid a three-year economic crisis and record levels of violent crime and poverty, Maduro's popularity dipped even more after a self-inflicted coup d’état on March 30, when the Supreme Court assumed the role of the National Assembly and permitted President Maduro to take over some of the functions of the legislature — a move that was reversed three days later. The Venezuelan opposition was not alone in condemning the political move: the U.S. sanctioned eight Venezuelan Supreme Court judges, freezing their assets and banning them from traveling to the United States, as punishment for stripping the Venezuelan Congress.
Three months of daily protests have passed since, and at least 60 people have died in clashes between demonstrators and security forces. At least 1,000 protesters have been jailed. Bermudez adds:
What makes matters worse is the fact that even though Venezuela has carried out elections, there is no real separation of power. The judicial system has been used to silence political opposition and free press but has given a pass to corrupt politicians, drug traffickers, kidnappers, and murderers. This has made the country one of the most violent and dangerous places in the world, with more than 25,000 reported murders in 2016 for a population slightly over 30 million.
But authoritarianism and blatant disregard for human rights aren't the only accusations against Maduro's regime. Under his rule, the country has become a “sanctuary for crime, terrorism, and corruption,” Bermudez says:
Venezuela is known as one of the largest drug bridges in the world. It is home to “El Cartel de los Soles” (Cartel of the Suns), a drug ring run by government officials and high ranking officers in the armed forces, in collaboration the Colombian narco-terrorist organization FARC. The cartel gets its name from the the medals high ranking officers carry on their shoulders.
Important members of the military and government have been charged by the US for drug trafficking. Among the more prominent cases are the nephews of Venezuela’s first lady, convicted of conspiring to transport cocaine to the United States and the Venezuelan Vice President Tarek El Aissami who had $3 billion in assets frozen under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
So far, Maduro's solution has been to call for a “popular constitutional assembly” that would replace the country's current Constitution (another move poorly received by much of Venezuelan society) and escalate the crackdown on dissents by expanding the state of emergency and escalating police brutality against protesters. In the middle of all this chaos, Bermudez weighed on Goldman Sachs’ controversial purchase:
[…] Goldman Sachs seems to not care if they are in fact giving working capital to the authoritarian drug ring that runs the country so it can stay afloat. And before someone jumps in and argues that the bonds were purchased from Venezuela’s central bank and not these criminals, understand that these national organizations are run like personal businesses by the ministers, hand picked by Maduro. There is not oversight and the more than $800 million paid by the investment institution will be most likely used keep them in power.
On top of the immediate damage Goldman Sachs is doing to the Venezuelan people, in 2022 when the bonds mature, the country will most likely not be recovered from the economic disaster caused by the 21st century socialist revolution. They have sold off and bankrupted a large part of the country’s productive apparatus, failed to invest in infrastructure, created no alternative sources of income, amassed debt with China, Russia and international banks and is already at high risk to default.
But looking back at how Goldman Sachs operates, they most likely don’t care that Venezuela will not be able to be held accountable for the bonds. By that time they probably will have already packaged and sold the bonds to the American people and hedged against them, exactly like they did a decade ago.
Read more related articles on our Venezuela special coverage.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Elizabeth Rivera


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From Kazakhstan, A Tale of Famine and Flight · Global Voices
Eurasianet

Kazakhs escaping famine on foot in the early 1930s, when Kazakhstan was in the grip of a man-made catastrophe that would claim millions of lives across the Soviet Union. (Photo: Kazakhstan’s Central State Archive of Film, Photo and Audio Documents)
The following is a partner post from EurasiaNet.org written by Joanna Lillis. Republished with permission.
When Nurziya Kazhibayeva was six years old, a famine swept across Kazakhstan.
“One day back then my mother told me: ‘We’re going to China. You can walk, can’t you? You’re a good girl. We’ll be going there on foot.’ I asked: ‘Is it far?’” recalled Kazhibayeva.
It was the early 1930s, and Kazakhstan was in the grip of a man-made catastrophe that would claim millions of lives across the Soviet Union.
To avoid the same fate, Kazhibayeva’s family of nomadic herders trudged from their home in east Kazakhstan across the border to China in March 1933, recalled 91-year old Kazhibayeva, her tone lucid and resonant despite her advanced years.
It was the sight of dead bodies piling up on the byways that made up her father’s mind. “One day, he came home asking: ‘Will we survive or not?’ Because there were so many dead bodies on the road… My father saw many of those. That’s what I know about the famine,” Kazhibayeva told EurasiaNet.org in a March interview sitting in the apartment of her daughter Nazira Nurtazina, a historian who has published her mother’s memoirs.
Kazhibayeva’s father had already made the arduous journey to Xinjiang in northwestern China. In 1916, to avoid a decree issued by Imperial Russia mobilizing Muslims for rearguard work in World War I that sparked a Central Asia-wide uprising, he escaped to China, returning only after the Russian Revolution.
Nearly two decades later, he set off again, with his family in tow. A guide agreed to show them a route to evade Soviet border patrols that might shoot them on sight. In exchange, the family would feed the guide and his son with the bulgur wheat they had prepared for their journey, and carry the boy, who was sick.
“We set off at night and I was among them,” said Kazhibayeva. “I was the youngest of all — I was six years old. My uncles, my father’s younger brothers, led me by the hand. We walked by night and slept by day.”
It took 15 days to march across the mountains to the town of Tacheng, where the family bartered jewelry for food. Later, they exchanged some possessions for cattle and joined a nomadic Kazakh auyl (village) in the countryside.
There, they survived the Asharshylyk, as Kazakhs call the famine, which is commemorated in Kazakhstan on May 31 – an annual day remembering victims of Stalinist repressions.
The famine was the consequence of collectivization policies instituted by Josef Stalin in the late 1920s. In Kazakhstan’s case, this meant corralling nomadic herders and their cattle into collective farms, where everything would be collectively managed for the good of the people. The accelerated pace of the effort, which involved massive requisitioning of grain and cattle, led to widespread starvation across Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
“The main reason [for the famine in Kazakhstan] was the liquidation of the Kazakhs’ traditional animal husbandry,” said Talas Omarbekov, a history professor at the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty. “At the start of the 1930s, the Kazakhs had almost 40 million heads of cattle. Three years later, there were 4.5 million left.”
Kazakh nomads had previously roamed in small groups that fed themselves, but the mass requisitioning of their herds to feed other parts of the Soviet Union left them facing starvation.
“Meat requisitioning was particularly alarming and ruinous for the Kazakhs,” said Omarbekov, who has been researching the famine for a quarter of a century. “The Kazakh, who was a nomad and herder, had always been saved by his cattle, its meat, its milk, its kymyz [mare’s milk] — so he automatically perished.”
“Their only wealth was their cattle — their only wealth,” said Smagul Yelubay, a writer whose family survived the famine by fleeing western Kazakhstan and ended up living in Turkmenistan in a village on the border with Afghanistan. “When their cattle was taken away, they perished.”
Overall, an estimated one million Kazakhs ran for their lives. Of those, maybe 400,000 later returned.
Yelubay was the first writer to chronicle Kazakhstan’s famine in fiction, in his novel The Lonely Yurt.
The book brings to life the horrors of 1930s. The novel was written in secret in the 1980s, when there was a taboo on discussing the famine in the Soviet Union, and published after independence. “I wrote it from the heart,” said Yelubay, who recently turned 70. “I couldn’t not write it. It was burning my soul up too much.”
To this day, nobody knows how many people died due to the famine in Kazakhstan. Low estimates put the death toll at 1 million. Omarbekov’s research suggests up to 2.3 million people perished from hunger and disease — that is more than one-third of Kazakhstan’s pre-famine population of 6.2 million.
For the Kazakhs, it was a demographic disaster that reverberates to this day.
“If the famine hadn’t happened at that time, the size of the Kazakh population today would have reached several tens of millions,” said Boris Dzhaparov, the director of the Archive of the President, in an interview in his office in Almaty.
In the dusty archives, one researcher spends some of her time trying to document the names of the famine victims for a project launched last year, using mainly archival evidence, but also submissions from the public. “It is very difficult,” said Aynash Seysenbayeva, demonstrating on her screen the Asharsylyq.kz database, where the information is collated. “You see a name [in a document] but you have to read it and try and work out what that name is… and work out if the person died of hunger or not.”
It is a mammoth task. In just over one year, Asharsylyq.kz has managed to confirm just 415 names.
In Ukraine, the famine, which is known there as the Holodomor, is officially designated a genocide. Many historians there argue, in a reading of history that is violently disputed by many of their Russian colleagues, that the famine was engineered to wipe out the Ukrainians as a people.
The prevailing mainstream view in Kazakhstan, which prizes its alliance with Russia, is notably different. President Nursultan Nazarbayev depicts it as a collective tragedy for which the totalitarian system was responsible, although some people would like to see a historical reckoning.
Kazhibayeva counts herself lucky that her family managed to outlive the famine and was able to return to Kazakhstan after six months.
“We came to the border post — I remember it — and three or four horsemen came galloping up. They had red armbands on,” she recalled. When her father explained that they were coming home, “these Russians tapped my father on the shoulder and cried: ‘Well done! Good man!… So we came back to our country safe and sound.”

author: Eurasianet


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A Hashtag in Support of Victims Takes Off on Japanese Twitter After a High-Profile Journalist Is Accused of Sexual Assault · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Captions: Shiori (28), freelance journalist; “I knew I had to say something.” Screencap from YouTube.
In late May 2017, the hashtag #FightTogetherWithShiori started to trend on Japanese Twitter. The hashtag was created in support of a woman, known simply as “Shiori”, who appeared on television to allege she was sexually assaulted by a well-known journalist in 2015.
Following a May 29 deposition at Tokyo District Court, “Shiori” held a press conference in which she accused high-profile journalist Yamaguchi Noriyuki of drugging and then sexually assaulting her in a hotel room in 2015. Yamaguchi Noriyuki is the former Washington bureau chief of Japan's TBS network. He has close ties to and has written several books about Prime Minister Abe Shinzo.
In Japan, as in other countries, many sexual assaults go unreported. In an emotional presentation to reporters, Shiori said she took the unusual step of going before the media to describe what happened, explaining, “I knew I had to say something.”
Using the hashtag, one Japanese Twitter user said:
Here in Japan, rape victims are always blamed, humiliated by everyone & give up suing. Crazy society! #Fighttogetherwithshiori
— ミルテの花 (@liederausmyrten) May 30, 2017
Shiori took to the airwaves after the weekly news magazine Shukan Shincho — and other news organizations — reported that investigators had dropped the case because of instructions from higher-ranking police officials, allegedly because of political pressure from the prime minister's office.
Another tabloid, Nikkan Gendai, reported that earlier in May 2017, Yamaguchi had mistakenly sent an email asking for help to Shukan Shincho rather than to Kitamura Shigeru, an official in the prime minister's office, for whom the correspondence was intended. Shukan Shincho also received and published detailed email correspondence between Yamaguchi and Shiori that corroborates parts of her story.
Even before Shiori appeared on television, the allegations reported earlier in the month by Shukan Shincho generated a firestorm of debate. In a tweet shared thousands of times, one Twitter user noted:
週刊新潮。山口敬之氏の準強姦事件。第3者の証言や防犯カメラ映像、さらに女性への謝罪メールまでありながら、上層部が捜査を打ち切ったというのが怖い。取材した結果、中村刑事部長本人が「私が捜査中止を決裁した」と認めている。刑事部長がそこに口をはさむのは異例と。忖度した結果の隠蔽としか。 pic.twitter.com/ly1tAkRFv5
— Tad (@CybershotTad) May 10, 2017
Reported by Shukan Shincho: the Yamaguchi Noriyuki ‘quasi-rape’ (i.e., ‘drug-facilitated sexual assault‘). The idea that, despite third-person testimony and surveillance footage, as well as an email of apology sent to his female victim, police leadership cut short the investigation is scary. It's been confirmed that head of the (Tokyo Metropolitan Police) bureau of investigations said he ‘authorized the investigation be suspended’. It's exceptional that the head of investigations would insert himself into the story like this. Like he was suppressing the results of the investigation.
Under Japanese law, Yamaguchi could be investigated for committing “quasi-rape” (jun kyokan, 準強姦), which the Asia Japan Women's Resource Center explains is a criminal charge “applied when a person commits rape or other types of sexual assaults by making a victim incapable of resistance — for example, by using drugs or alcohol to make the victim unconscious.”
The fact that Shiori had to resort to appearing on camera in the hope of receiving justice led some to observe that she was being victimized a second time. Using the hashtag #FightTogetherWithShiori and quoting a Buzzfeed Japan article which provided key details about the assault, one commenter noted:
山口敬之氏の件。逮捕状まで出ていたのに「上からの指示」で、最終的に不起訴に。なぜ被害者が顔を出してまで戦わざるを得ないのか。既にセカンドレイプの言葉がはびこっている。許しがたい。#FightTogetherwithShiorihttps://t.co/mbrPgDLZhj
— 諏訪原 健 (@swa_swa_swatch) May 29, 2017
Even before Yamaguchi had actually been arrested, ‘under orders from above’ the case was closed with no indictment. Why did the victim have to take it this far and show her face? This is why the term ‘second rape’ has become so common. Unforgivable.
That tweet was also shared more than a thousand times.
There is the perception that the Japanese establishment is circling the wagons to protect the former TBS journalist and supporter of the prime minister. Quite apart from Yamaguchi's 2015 email asking the cabinet office for help, this impression is being fueled by other missteps. After the Shukan Shincho article was published, Yamaguchi took to social media in early May to explain his side of the story — and Abe Akie, the prime minister's wife, “liked” the post:
「女性の味方」がこれですよ。
レイプ報道の安倍応援団・山口敬之が“セカンドレイプ”的反論！ それに昭恵夫人がなんと「いいね！」を https://t.co/oW46KArjSV @litera_webさんから
— はるみ (@harumi19762015) May 10, 2017
This is ‘an ally of women': After news reports that Abe supporter Yamaguchi committed rape, his response was like a ‘second rape'! Yet Abe Akie decided to ‘like’ Yamaguchi's Facebook post.
The sarcastic jab about being “ally of women” is a reference to a series of speeches Abe akie has made, calling women “the future of Japan“. After being called out for “liking” Yamaguchi's post, Abe Akie remarked, “Who thought that simply liking a Facebook post would generate so much persecution!”
For now, Shiori hopes her case will be reopened. Her May 29 deposition was to an inquest committee, which, after deliberations, will vote on whether or not to recommend that prosecutors indict Yamaguchi.
In the meantime, Shiori's television appearance has sparked debate on social media in Japan — and around the world — about justice for victims of sexual assault:
No means no! And ONLY yes means yes!!ノーはノーだし、主体的・具体的・積極的イエスだけがイエスなのよ。それ以外はノーです。
— 女性と人権全国ネットワーク (@JapanWomensNet) May 30, 2017
No means no! And ONLY yes means yes!!
Independently, tangibly, actively: only yes means yes. Anything else means ‘no’.
— Japan Women's & Human Rights Network
The conversation can be followed online in English and Japanese at the hashtag #FightTogetherWithShiori.

author: Nevin Thompson


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A Ugandan Woman Thought She Was Going to Teach in Kuwait. Instead She Was Trafficked. · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Ugandan teacher Prudence Nandaula was duped into taking a job in Kuwait. She thought she was going there to be a teacher but instead she was a domestic servant to a family. Credit: Jasmine Garsd
This story by Jasmine Garsd and Andrea Crossan originally appeared on PRI.org on May 25, 2017. It is republished here as part of a partnership between PRI and Global Voices.
The world is importing labor more than ever before. According to the UN, more than 244 million people globally have left their home countries in search of opportunities.
For women, that often means jobs in child care and the service industry. But what they sign up for is often not what they get.
In this video, an anguished Ugandan girl in a blue headscarf asks that her parents be contacted. She says she’s sick and not allowed to come back home.
No one knows where the video was shot — it’s believed to be from inside an Arab country.
But it sparked outrage in Uganda. Though no one should have been surprised. When you think of slavery, you might think about the historical trade from Africa to the Americas. But the business of slaves being sent to the Middle East is ancient, too. And right now, business is booming.
Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world. Nearly 80 percent of the country is under 30. Most are unemployed.
Prudence Nandaula had a job — as a teacher in Masaka, a town in central Uganda. She made about $160 a month — which is good by Ugandan standards. Enough to pay rent, send her son to school, and Prudence even had a maid.
Still, when she was offered a job teaching in Kuwait, making twice as much, she was thrilled.
“I was so excited. I thought when I go there, maybe get the money,” says Nandaula. “I’ll be able to support my boy.”
She’d been told by a friend of her brother's that it was a great opportunity.
“You are told they will give you food and shelter. Save, and come back and do something important.”
“Most of the girls recruited in Uganda are recruited by their friends and relatives,” says Mayambala Wafrika, chair of the Justice for African Workers campaign.
Wafrika says this is usually how it goes: A friend of an extended family member or maybe a buddy of an acquaintance hits you up on social media.
When Nandaula arrived in Kuwait, things unraveled pretty quickly. The family she was staying with took her passport and told her to start cleaning. Nandaula says at that moment it dawned on her: She’d gone from being a teacher to a servant in a foreign country. Against her will.
“And I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. I used to have a housemaid back home. And now I’m working in someone’s house.'”
Still, she stuck it out for a few months. But the family was verbally abusive. Nandaula says she watched other women who worked there be physically abused. She told her employers she wanted to leave.
“And they're like, ‘No, you’re not supposed to go, you are supposed to finish the contract.’ They’re talking about a contract [I] have not even signed.”
Typically, a Kuwaiti family pays a recruitment agency as much as $4,000 for a maid, on a two-year contract. A local recruiter in Uganda can make as much as $500 per girl. Everyone got paid — except for Nandaula.
She actually made less than what she made back home. And she was stuck. Even though there are an estimated 100,000 Ugandans working in the Middle East, there’s only one embassy — in Saudi Arabia. There isn’t even a consulate in Kuwait for Ugandans to get help.
“They get these girls and treat them in the same gruesome way as they would a slave,” says Wafrika.
He says the recruitment agencies judge the girls the same way slave traders would have — over a century ago.
“Someone comes, looks at you, checks your height, your weight, your skin color … decides whether you are worth the amount of money he’s going to be paying for you.”
But they are recruited because, unlike women in other sub-Saharan countries, most Ugandans speak English.
Nandaula's luck changed one day, when the family she worked with invited some friends for dinner. Those friends brought their own maid, also a Ugandan woman. Nandaula says maids are discouraged from talking to each other. But they chatted anyway, and Nandaula told this woman about the abuse.
The woman encouraged her to get out.
And she did. One morning, while the family slept, Nandaula quietly left the house.
But her odyssey was far from over. As soon as she walked out that door, her employment visa was canceled. Nandaula turned herself into the police. She spent three weeks in jail, waiting to get deported. She was lucky — some girls spend months there. An acquaintance managed to get her passport back from her furious boss. That's not usually how it goes.
The Ugandan embassy in Saudi Arabia often has to intervene.
Nandaula was able to come back to Uganda. She’s teaching again. She makes a decent living. But the economy in Uganda took a dip in the last year. Everyone’s pocket is a little tighter. She says she might try her luck in the Middle East again. But this time, she’d be so much more cautious.
“I can’t say I wouldn’t go back. If they change the system that is there, I’ll be free to go back.”
Civil rights activist Wafrika wants to see some changes, too — starting with a ban on domestic workers from Uganda in the Middle East. Uganda, he says, has enough educated professionals it can export instead. And he wants to see girls like Prudence educated about the dangers of taking work overseas. But if they do decide to go — there should be government offices in every country.
The government’s response last year to the outcry over women being abused by their employers was to ban Ugandans from traveling to Saudi Arabia to be maids.
Wafrika says the government should also have an emergency fund that Ugandans can access when they’re in trouble working abroad.
It’s a tall order for a country as poor as this. But Wafrika says if the Ugandan government doesn’t protect its girls, who will?

author: PRI/PRX's The World


text:
In a Much-Criticized Display of Wealth, the Angolan President’s Son Spent Half a Million Euros at a Charity Auction · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

Eduane Danilo dos Santos, in the amfAR auction in Cannes. Screenshot/YouTube.
A video circulating on social media showing one of the Angolan president’s youngest sons spending 500,000 euros (about US $560,000) at an auction in France has sparked criticism in Angola.
Eduane Danilo dos Santos, 25, is son of José Eduardo dos Santos, who will mark 38 years as president come September.
The video captured the moment when Danilo bought an item — at first speculated to be a watch, but then later confirmed to be a set of photographs — for half a million euros at an auction organized by amfAR, an organization combating AIDS, held on 25 May in Cannes. amfAR holds the auction annually and it is known for being attended by Hollywood celebrities.
In the recording, American actor Will Smith, who seems to be acting as auctioneer, remarked, while complimenting Danilo and his companion on the stage: “They look way too young to have 500,000 euros”.
The vídeo was shared originally on Instagram stories by the luxury watch blogger Anish Bhatt, whose account boasts 1.7 million followers. Before disappearing from the site, the video was recorded and published on YouTube and soon went viral, provoking a lot of indignation among Angolans.
The luxurious lifestyle of the Dos Santos family is frequently an object of scrutiny for the international press – and of anger on Angolan social media. The second biggest oil producer in Africa, Angola remains among the world’s 40 countries with the worst human development indices. A third of the population lives on less than 2 dollars per day.
Meanwhile, the fortune of José Eduardo dos Santos has been estimated at US $20 billion, which would put him among the world’s 50 richest people.
There are rumours about the current state of his health – JES, as he is nicknamed, recently spent 28 days in Spain for medical treatment and everything indicates he will leave the presidency in August 2017. For the first time since 1992, when general elections were established in Angola, his name will not be on the list of candidates of his party, MPLA – this time, the list is headed by current Defence Minister João Lourenço, his probable successor.
But José Eduardo dos Santos has not spared any effort in ensuring that his legacy continues through his family. The most famous of his children is businesswoman Isabel Dos Santos, 44, the only female billionaire in Africa. As well as being president of the Administrative Council of the state oil company Sonangol, she has investments in various multinationals, from banks to telecommunications, totalling a fortune of US $3 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
For his part, Eduane Danilo dos Santos oversaw the privatization of Angola Telecom, apparently his only job so far.
After receiving criticism on social media for his auction purchase, Danilo, as he is known, decided to write on his personal Facebook page. He said that the story was nothing more than a misunderstanding and that the 500,000 euros were related to the purchase of art works for his foundation “Child’s Spirit’ — an entity that turns up no traces online, except for his own mention at the auction.
The message, which he subsequently removed, but was copied by other sites, read:
[…] Gostaria de informar que eu participei sim num Leilão de caridade, não para a aquisição de um relógio, mas sim de uma colecção de Quadros de George Hurrell, em representação da minha associação “Espírito de Criança”.
Tenho forte convicção que devo estar envolvido nesta causa, e acredito que existe uma cura para HIV/SIDA, e devemos continua a procura deste tratamento. O valor monetário desta doação de 500.000€ vai se reflectir para continuarmos de uma maneira unida, a combater este mal que afecta a sociedade em Angola, e o mundo em geral, de forma difícil nos dias de hoje.
A saúde, a cultura e a educação são coisas importantes que defendo, e esta coleção de Quadros de George Hurrell fará parte da Associação ” Espírito De Criança “. […]
[…] I would like to inform you that I participated in a charity auction, not to acquire a watch, but a collection of paintings by George Hurrell, representing my association “Child’s Spirit”.
I have a strong conviction that I must be involved in this cause, and believe that there is a cure for HIV/AIDS, and we must continue to search for this treatment. The monetary value of this donation of €500,000 will show itself as continuing to move us in a united way, to combat this evil that affects society in Angola, and the world in general, in a difficult way nowadays.
Health, culture and education are important things that I defend, and this collection of paintings by George Hurrell will be a part of the “Child’s Spirit” Association. […]
Blogger Anish Bhatt wrote on Instagram in support of Danilo, saying they are friends. The original English-language post was deleted, but the website PlantinaLine republished a translation of it in Portuguese:
O Meu amigo Eduane Dos Santos não comprou ‘NENHUM’ relógio no Amfar – American Foundation for AIDS Research.  A Amfar é uma organização sem fins lucrativos que tem contribuído muito para a pesquisa da AIDS e HIV, o seu tratamento e educação. […]
Fizemos a compra em ‘conjunto’ das peças de arte como uma doação de 500 mil e pretendemos oferecer estas peças de arte (10 no total) , para usar uma parte na exposições em museus em Angola (4 no total) e as outras (6) para um evento no início de Julho de angariação de fundos.
My friend Eduane Dos Santos did not buy ‘ANY’ watch at Amfar – American Foundation for AIDS Research. Amfar is a not-for-profit organization which has contributed a lot to research on AIDS and HIV, its treatment and education. […]
We made the purchase ‘together’ of the pieces of art as a donation of 500,000 and intend to offer these pieces of art (10 in total), for use as part of exhibitions in museums in Angola (4 in total) and the others (6) for an event at the beginning of July to raise funds.
Angolan internet users, however, did not buy the story. The criticism kept coming: for example, this post by Maka Angola, a website critical of the regime:
Uma primeira correcção a Danilo: não foi uma colecção de quadros que ele comprou, mas sim uma colecção de fotografias. Hurrell não foi pintor, foi fotógrafo. Relógios, quadros ou fotografias… Nada muda. Apenas sublinha a leviandade do gesto. Em vez de 500.000 dólares, Danilo gastou ainda mais dinheiro: 500.000 euros, ou seja, cerca de 560.000 dólares. Em vez de um relógio de luxo, comprou uma colecção de fotografias de luxo de George Hurrell. Muitas das suas fotos originais estão à venda no e-Bay por cerca de 100/200 dólares cada. Entregar as fotos à sua associação é um gesto oco. Para que quer a associação essas fotos? Relógios de luxo ou fotografias de Hollywood por 500.000 euros são sinónimo de total falta de discernimento.
First, a correction for Danilo: it was not a collection of paintings that he bought, but actually a collection of photographs. Hurrell was not a painter, he was a photographer. Watches, paintings, or photographs… Nothing changes. It just underlines the flippancy of the act. Instead of 500,000 dollars, Danilo spent even more money: 500,000 euros, that is, around 560,000 dollars. Instead of a luxury watch, he bought a collection of luxury photographs by George Hurrell. Many of his original photographs are for sale on e-Bay for around 100/200 dollars each. Giving the photographs to his foundation is an empty gesture. What does the foundation want those photographs for? Either luxury watches or Hollywood photographs for 500,000 euros are synonymous with a total lack of judgement.
And in the comments on the above post, Elsa Beatriz, a resident of Angola’s capital, wrote:
O que está em causa para nós Danilo não é o que você comprou, mas sim com que dinheiro comprou, se for seu terás que ajustar contas com a justiça, mostrar como é porque ganhou este dinheiro, sendo que apenas tens 23 anos, por seres filho de quem és nós desconfiamos que este dinheiro saio dos cofres do Estado, quer dizer nosso dinheiro, então pedimos que nos proves que nos proves o contrário.
The question for us, Danilo, is not what you bought, but what money you used, if it was yours you will have to settle the accounts with the courts, showing how and why you earned this money, given that you are only 23 years old [sic], being the son of who you are, we suspect that this money came out of the state coffers, that is to say it is our money, so we ask that you prove to us the contrary.

author: Dércio Tsandzana


text:
‘Justice for All’ Initiative Seeks Judicial Reforms and an End to High-Level Corruption in Bulgaria · Global Voices
Ruslan Trad

Protesters in Sofia, Bulgaria carrying the ‘Justice for All Initiative’ banner and photo of assassinated Italian anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone on May 23, 2017. Photo by Konstantin Pavlov, used with permission.
Several protests were held across Bulgaria on May 23 and May 30 to push for reforms in the judiciary. Led by the ‘Justice for All Initiative’, the protests were part of a broader citizen movement calling for the implementation of the democratic standards set by the European Union (EU).
In Central and Eastern Europe, the term “European” does not only refer to geographical position, but it also signifies strong political connotations related to achieving the level of democratic and economic development of the original EU members. Formerly Communist Bulgaria had made great strides in this direction and became an EU member in 2007, although many believe it still needs to implement more political reforms.
On May 23, almost 2,000 people gathered in the center of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, demanding judicial reforms. They marched united by the slogans ‘March for European justice’ and ‘Protest to release the country from the Mafia’. The protest was supported by several civil society organizations, as well as prominent public intellectuals, lawyers and even some judges.
Protests were also held in the cities of Plovdiv and Varna.
The day of the demonstration was not chosen by accident. On that day, in 1992, the Italian prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, who dared to attack the Sicilian mafia was killed in a car bomb explosion.
Poster for the May 23 demonstration organized by civil society. The slogans are shown at the top part of the poster: “We will not be silent!” and “March for European Justice”. Photo by Justice for All Initiative.
The latest European Commission (EC) progress report on Bulgaria's cooperation and verification mechanism considers the government's anti-corruption strategy as unsuccessful:
The development by the government of an updated national strategy for the fight against corruption was an important step, but the challenge remains to ensure its implementation, to adopt the necessary legal framework and to set up the envisaged institutions.
The report also mentioned issues of corruption and lack of trust in the judicial system which hinder investments. The EC recommends the enactment of a new anti-corruption law and the creation of an anti-corruption body to deal with high-level corruption and conflict of interest.
The appointment of Chairperson of the National Assembly Tsetska Tsacheva as Minister of Justice disappointed many people who believe she is incapable of implementing reforms because of her extreme loyalty to the ruling party.
During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Prime Minister Borisov promised to resign if his party's candidate, Tsetska Tsacheva, lost the election. On 6 November 2016 Tsacheva finished second in the first round to Bulgarian Socialist Party-backed Major General Rumen Radev, receiving only 22 percent of the popular vote compared to Radev's 25.4 percent. Borisov subsequently resigned his position.
Last March 2017, parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria amid a political crisis which resulted in a coalition between Borisov's center-right party, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria or GERB, and the nationalist bloc, the Patriotic Front. Borisov became the prime minister again because of the coalition. But this provoked a scandal as photos of some members of the Patriotic Front doing Nazi salutes had been widely circulated in the past.
On May 30, the ‘Justice for All Initiative’ returned to the streets by organizing a ‘drinking coffee’ protest in front of the president's office while leaders of political parties and top state officials were entering the building for the meeting of the Consultative Council on National Security. They urged President Radev, who is regarded by many as the symbol of unity in the country, to support their demands for judicial reforms.
"Правосъдие за всеки" иска президентът да поеме инициатива за съдебната реформа https://t.co/iuIGWboH9C
— Реформи.орг (@ReformiOrg) May 30, 2017
Tweet: “Justice for All” Demands that the president take initiative for judicial reform.
Photo: Prime Minister Borisov waving to citizens while entering the president's office.
The protests were ignored by various mainstream media outlets. One online news website even accused the protesters of being unpatriotic because a participant was seen holding a placard with a  misspelled Bulgaria, and blamed them for “abuse of their children” claiming that the May 30 protest undermined the Children's Day, which in Bulgaria is actually observed on June 1.

author: Ruslan Trad


text:
Kabul Violence: “We Are Dying Every Single Moment!” · Global Voices
Samea Shanori

Kabul, Afghanistan street market. Photograph by Scott Clarkson. CC 3.0 ShareAlike.
Warning: The following post contains images of a graphic and distressing nature.
Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, is locked in a state of indefinite agony.
At least seven people died and many were severely wounded when security forces answerable to President Ashraf Ghani opened fire on protesters on June 2. The demonstration was taking place at the site of a powerful explosion in the center of Kabul that killed almost 100 people. A day later several blasts targeted a funeral held for one of the June 2 protesters killed by police –also the son of the Afghan senate's deputy speaker — killing at least twenty people.
The massive blast that began the latest cycle of violence in Kabul was one of the deadliest to hit the city in recent years and came a few days into the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. No group has claimed responsibility yet.
The anti-government demonstration that followed it started peacefully and was headed towards the presidential palace. Demonstrators chanted “Death to Ghani” and demanded the National Unity Government's resignation, accusing it of singularly failing to ensure security in the country. When protesters tried to enter the palace, security forces opened fire.
According to the Kabul police chief, Gen. Hassan Shah Frogh, the rally was not peaceful and protesters were carrying guns. He also claimed initially that only one or two people were wounded. Eye-witnesses said that the protesters were throwing stones but were not armed.
The police also used tear gas and water cannon to prevent the angry protesters from entering the presidential palace, and arrested many.
At least 4 Afghans shot & killed by police in anti-government protest after #Kabul bombing: https://t.co/KEVKr8FnLA pic.twitter.com/dgMKmKdCwE
— Saulo Corona (@saulocorona) June 2, 2017
Among those arrested by the police was Haroon Mutaref, one of the organizers of the protest.
Flash: Reports say, Haroon Mutaref, civil society activist & one of the leaders of Khair Khana crowed was arrested by police. #KabulBleeds
— Hesamuddin Hesam (@Hesamuddin5) June 2, 2017
The police's extreme reaction towards the protesters has left Afghans living in one of the most insecure cities in the world feeling besieged.
Tahir Qadiry, an Afghan journalist tweeted:
An ugly image from today's protest in #Kabul : Police shooting live bullets. pic.twitter.com/raISFSRgi9
— Tahir Qadiry (@tahirqadiry) June 2, 2017
Later, he added:
Irony is the number of bullets #Kabul police fired at 2day's protestors could have used against insurgents 2 save Konduz, Baghlan, Fariab…
— Tahir Qadiry (@tahirqadiry) June 2, 2017
Many are worried that opportunists may use the security vacuum to create further instability. Omid Sharifi, co-founder of the creative collective Art Lords, asked Afghans to unite instead of fighting one another.
Let #Afghanistan heal! Fighting each other and losing precious lives is what the enemy wants! Come to your senses #Kabul. pic.twitter.com/ZiS0BKNzMp
— Omaid Sharifi (@OmaidSharifi) June 2, 2017
A few hours after the protest had begun, President Ghani issued a statement:
Civil and peaceful protests are the rights of all citizens of the country. But among them, those who want to agitate and hurt public order, their issue is separate — they will not be allowed to use the people’s emotions against the people’s interest.
In its aftermath, Amnesty International called for an independent investigation:
The security forces’ use of excessive and fatal force on protesters voicing anger over one of Afghanistan’s deadliest attacks ever illustrates the authorities’ contempt for the lives of ordinary people. While there are reports that a minority of protesters used violence including throwing stones at the police, this does not justify such an excessive and deadly response.
The explosion on May 31 claimed the lives of more than 90 and injured over 400 people, left thousands traumatized, and destroyed a recognised central area of the capital.
Abdul Waris Ahmadzai, an Afghan resident, posted graphic images of the aftermath of the attack and its victims.
Summing up the feeling of desperation amid recurring violence in the Afghan capital, a civic activist posted on Facebook:
Those who die once, die forever; those living die every single moment! We are dying every single moment!
#Kabul
But there was to be more bloodshed before the week was out, at the June 3 funeral for Salem Izidyar, the son of a well-known politician in the senate and the most high profile of the protesters shot on Friday. It is likely that the attackers were targeting a number of prominent political figures attending the funeral.
ویدیوی صحنه انفجار در مراسم خاکسپاری سالم ایزدیار در کابل
blast footage at Kabul funeral pic.twitter.com/BkDCRNrEiW
— 1TVNewsAF (@1TVNewsAF) June 3, 2017
The three suicide strikes killed at least 20 people, injuring many more, while further casualties cannot be ruled out.

author: Samea Shanori


text:
The Controversy Eroding Trust in Trinidad & Tobago’s Judiciary Culminates in Chief Justice ‘No Confidence’ Vote · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Judiciary of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Image by Mark Morgan, CC BY 2.0
In one of the largest turnouts ever, members of professional organisation Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago (LATT) met on the night of June 2, 2017 and passed a motion of no confidence against the country's chief justice, Ivor Archie.
Members voted on five resolutions — a loss of confidence in the chief justice and in his position as the chairman of the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC), a loss of confidence in the JLSC itself, and finally, a call for both the chief justice and JLSC members to resign.
The JLSC is an independent service commission established under Section 110 of the country's Constitution. It enjoys, among other things, the authority to advise the president on the appointment of judges (other than the chief justice), to discipline those holding high legal office, and even to revoke such appointments.
LATT members who voted in favour of passing the resolutions were, in most instances, double those who voted against. One of the country's most respected Senior Counsels, Martin Daly, interpreted the vote — which was mostly a symbolic move, as the chief justice is not a LATT member — as “a watershed moment for accountability”.
The whole to-do started back in April 2017, after the JLSC announced the appointment of several new judges to the High Court, including Marcia Ayers-Caesar, the country’s first female chief magistrate.
Despite the hearty welcome Ayers-Caesar received, things quickly unravelled when it was revealed that she had failed to declare a backlog of unresolved cases to the commission. Several people charged with crimes who were imprisoned while awaiting trial before her created a disturbance in the cellblock area of a courthouse when they were told that her appointment to the High Court would result in their matters being delayed.
Trinidad and Tobago's justice system is already beleaguered, with defendants often being held in remand for years without having their cases heard.
Ayers-Caesar subsequently resigned, but the fallout has been immense. On April 27, in an effort to contain the damage to the JLSC's reputation, the chief justice — who chairs the body — issued a press statement responding to Ayers-Caesar's admission, in which he said she “failed to manage the transition from the magistracy to the High Court in a way which ensured that undue hardship was not placed on stakeholders”. He added that both he and the JLSC “were not made aware of the full extent of her obligation” before she was sworn in as a judge.
When the court of public opinion did not buy into the premise that the JLSC was unaware of Ayers-Caesar's unfinished case load, the chief justice provided a second statement, in which he maintained that the magistrate told him in a telephone conversation that “she had no other outstanding matters”.
It was at this point that the JLSC asked for an audit “to ascertain the true state of affairs”. The audit revealed a very different reality — the list of Ayers-Caesar's outstanding trials had risen from three to more than 10, and the total number of cases in excess of 50. An emergency meeting was called on April 27:
The JLSC was unanimously of the view that the discrepancy […] was large enough to call into question one of the bases upon which Mrs. Ayers-Caesar had been selected — her case management ability — and [that] it could seriously erode public confidence in the administration of justice and, by extension, the whole selection process.
While much of mainstream and social media were pegging the situation as a “judicial crisis”, attorney Justin Phelps, who was interviewed on one of the popular morning shows, assessed the ordeal as an administrative error, not an error in judicial function. Further explaining his view to Global Voices, he said although the chief justice and the JLSC may have fallen beneath the standards of due diligence, there was no moral or legal infringement of the office that would warrant a call for resignations. Phelps boycotted the no confidence motion, taking the position that it was not valid LATT business.
While the JLSC's statement admitted that “the situation was sufficiently grave to trigger a disciplinary enquiry”, in the end, Ayers-Caesar was allowed to resign from the High Court and return to the Magistracy to tie up loose ends. This, according to attorney and former temporary opposition senator Gerald Ramdeen who had raised the issue of assessment criteria long before the scandal broke, was unlawful, and he went as far as to threaten legal action.
But from there, the plot thickened. It was only after the chief justice met with Ayers-Caesar on April 28 that it came to the JLSC's attention that on March 22, 2017, she had dismissed 16 outstanding cases, a move that the chief justice admitted was “unusual”.
Finally, in a third media release, the JLSC noted that potential judges are asked when they would be in a position to assume duty, and said it would welcome consultations with the law association to improve the selection and appointment process:
It would be impractical for the JLSC to delve into the case files of a successful applicant from the Magistracy. […]
There is no electronic case management information system in the magistracy, records are kept manually. […] It is the professional responsibility of every judicial officer, irrespective of the nature of the record keeping system, to keep track of his/her case load.
One lawyer who attended the LATT meeting, who preferred not to be identified, said that in the heated discussions prior to the vote, it was suggested that Ayers-Caesar could very well have misled the chief justice and the JLSC — and that if this were indeed the case, it would amount to an abuse of office for which she could be charged.
Public perception, however, was that the chief justice and the JLSC were dodging some measure of responsibility when it came to oversight. There was also little sympathy for Ayers-Caesar.
I'm uninterested in how hurt she is. Did she tell the #JLSC the truth about her caseload and can she prove that she did?#imprudentjurist pic.twitter.com/jbIvZ9yDQB
— rhoda bharath (@rhodabharath) May 13, 2017
By the time attorney — and former attorney general — Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj weighed in, Facebook users suggested that the situation was getting “curiouser and curiouser”. Ayers-Caesar had sought legal advice from him regarding the JLSC's statements and subsequent actions with regard to her appointment, and in a press conference, Maharaj said the chief justice “would have access to all information regarding the workload of magistrates and judges” and that it was the duty of JLSC to “obtain this information if it considered it relevant”.
The lawyer that Global Voices interviewed felt differently:
This is where it gets muddy. Where did the responsibility for Ayers-Caesar's backlog fall? If you were applying for a job, your prospective employer would ask you about your notice period, and you'd let them know you were available to start immediately or in a month, or whatever the case might be. It's not the employer's job to then ask, ‘Do you have any other loose ends that you need to see about before you take the job?’
The situation may have dealt a serious blow to people's confidence in the judiciary. Martin Daly asked, “How could the JLSC have sought to restore someone who allegedly duped it to the Magisterial bench?” and political commentator Rhoda Bharath, who has been actively advocating for the country's president to come clean about his receipt of a controversial housing allowance, said on Facebook:
This had clear implications for her returning to her post as Chief Magistrate. Who wants to appear before a Magistrate that has been publicly outed as being dishonest? […]
This also has implications for the rest of the Judiciary. […]
Have other promoted magistrates or judges lied about their caseloads to be promoted?
How is the JLSC going to ensure this doesn't happen again?
The cut and thrust which has been the hallmark of this controversy has left some social media users incredulous. Facebook user Patricia Worrell issued a tongue-in-cheek public service announcement:
The show Law & Order has been discontinued in TnT [Trinidad and Tobago] for the time being…In its place we introduce a tragicomedy: ‘The law's an Ayers’.
Jokes aside, it is a very complicated affair to get rid of a sitting chief justice. Although the legal community has sent a clear message, a no confidence motion alone will certainly not do it, given that the chief justice is not even a member of the law association body, but rather is the head of the judiciary. And it is unlikely that he will resign of his own volition.
Meanwhile, another senior counsel, Israel Khan, has called on Trinidad and Tobago President Anthony Carmona to launch an inquiry into whether the chief justice is guilty of misbehaviour in public office.
However, some legal professionals who spoke to Global Voices under condition of anonymity believed that the no confidence motion against the chief justice was politically motivated, claiming that “90% of those who signed the initial petition are UNC supporters”. The United National Congress (UNC) is a political party that leads the opposition in parliament.
The government is trying to reassure citizens and economic partners that the country's judiciary is stable. For his part, the director of public prosecutions, whose role it is to undertake criminal prosecutions, has said that before he can act on the 53 cases now in abeyance thanks to the Ayers-Caesar controversy, he needs to know the “unequivocal” position of the former chief magistrate.
It's clear that the prisoners whose remand has been extended as a result of this blunder are the ones least being served by the administration of justice.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


text:
Artists and Writers Celebrate the Work of Missing Syrian Developer Bassel Safadi · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

Bassel Safadi and his wife Noura. Photo from Noura Ghazi Safadi's Facebook page.
Syrian-Palestinian web developer Bassel Khartabil aka Bassel Safadi has been missing for more than a year. But he has not been forgotten. More than five years after he was arrested by the Syrian regime, his supporters and loved ones continue to campaign for his freedom and celebrate his contributions to the open web.
This year's edition of re:publica, the annual digital culture conference held in Berlin, featured a session dedicated to the #FreeBassel campaign.
Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, a researcher at the France-based CNRS Institute for Communication Sciences, and Barbara Rühling, the CEO of Book Sprints, a rapid book production and publishing company, read excerpts from the book Cost of Freedom: A Collective Inquiry.
The book, published last year and available in the public domain, contains a series of essays reflecting on free culture in the face of oppression. It is a tribute to Bassel and his work. The introduction reads:
This book wants to discuss how free knowledge movements are built and the real costs attached to them. Activists, artists, designers, developers, researchers, and writers involved with free knowledge movements have worked together to see further than the fog of our news feeds and produce some sense from our different experiences. This book is born in an attempt to free Bassel Khartabil, loved and celebrated Internet volunteer detained in Syria since 15 March 2012. His name has been deleted from the Adra Prison’s register where he was detained, on 3 October 2015. We have not received any information about his current status or whereabouts since. The introductory part of this book called Collective Memory gives voice to his friends and family that have been urging for his release and want him back in his normal life and freedom, immediately. Seeing Bassel paying a high price for his participation in free culture, many of us have started to reflect on our own fates, actions, and choices. Why are we here today? What have we chosen? What have we given up in this process of sometimes extreme belief?
The open source web developer and digital activist has been in the custody of Syrian government authorities since March 2012. In October 2015, Bassel was taken from Adra prison, a civilian facility, to an undisclosed location. His wife, writer and lawyer Noura Ghazi, reported that “military police took Bassel from his cell in Adra with a ‘top secret’ sealed order from the Military Field Court.”
On November 12, 2015, Ghazi reported that she was contacted by people who identified themselves as insiders in the Assad government who informed her of an alleged death sentence against her husband. However, his location and condition remain unknown.
A Creative Commons leader in Syria and active in projects like Mozilla Firefox and Wikipedia, Bassel played a pivotal role in extending online access and knowledge to the public in Syria.
Barry Threw, a designer and technologist who is currently the interim director of New Palmyra, a project founded by Bassel, writes on pages 10 and 11 of the book:
Perhaps none of Bassel’s cultural prototypes were more prescient than the work he started around 2005, with a group of archaeologists and 3D artists, to virtually reconstruct the ancient ruins of Palmyra. One of the world’s most important archaeological sites, Palmyra stood at the crossroads of several civilizations, with Graeco-Roman architectural styles melding with local traditions and Persian influences. Little could Bassel know that ten years after he began, Daesh fundamentalists would be actively deleting this architecture embodying Syrian, and the world’s, cultural heritage. But his foray into digital archaeology and preservation created a time capsule that will be invaluable to the public, researchers, and artists for years to come. Tragically, Bassel has not yet been able to complete this project.
Noura Ghazi also contributed to the book, writing about her husband's passion to share knowledge with others, even while in prison:
I’ve lived all my life dreaming of Freedom, and Bassel taught me to embrace it. I feel overwhelmed when I mention his name. Bassel taught me to master English, even while he’s been in prison. I’ve learned to read, write, and speak English well. He has always shared his knowledge with everyone who asked, and has also taught many prisoners to read, write, and speak English. Bassel opened the door to technology for me, he taught me to use both computers and smartphones. He taught me the Internet. He also taught other prisoners to use computers theoretically, without having one in their hands.
Ghazi is also the author of Waiting, a prose book written to her husband between 2012 and 2015, while he was in prison. Bassel and Noura spent a year working together on the book. She smuggled the texts to him when she visited him, and he would translate them from Arabic into English. The book is available in the public domain.
Book cover by Youssef Abdalki. Book dedicated to the public domain.
Here is an excerpt entitled “It happens”, from Noura's book:
It happens on every visit
that I sink into the world of your magical eyes
that I lose consciousness in the moment we embrace,
that I don't care about any of the dangers,
any of the fences, chains and guards
I forget the hustle of the jail
and I penetrate into every detail of your voice and words
that I carry with me with passion,
when your eyes say goodbye
and I leave another piece of my soul with you…
I return quickly to my solitude,
to retrieve all the moments,
and cry your absence and smile.
I convince myself that you will return soon…
On the first anniversary of Bassel's imprisonment, Ghazi wrote:
A year passes, my soul
While
I'm in your cage,
And you are still
In the cage of the monsters
Bassel's story is not unique in Syria. Since the beginning of the protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in 2011, more than 65,000 people have disappeared, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Those who have been arrested or forcibly disappeared by the regime have faced torture and even executions. As of 2016, at least 17,723 Syrians had died in custody since 2011, according to the international human rights group Amnesty International. The stories of many more people remain unknown.
The Global Voices community has called for Bassel's release since 2012. We repeat our call today in the hope that it will be our last.

author: Afef Abrougui


text:
An Exiled Tycoon Rattles China’s Politics With His Corruption Exposés · Global Voices
Jack Hu

Screenshot from Guo's June 3, 2017 YouTube video.
Exiled Chinese tycoon, Guo Wengui, who is now residing in New York, has rocked Chinese politics for months by claiming to expose the corrupt lifestyle of high-ranking Communist Party officials. Guo made the allegations ahead of the looming transition in the standing committee of the party's politburo.
Guo, a billionaire who claimed to have worked closely with the Chinese secret police on overseas operations for years, left China in 2013. In January 2015, China arrested the government's spy head Ma Jian on suspicion of corruption. Soon after prominent economic news outlet Caixin published an investigative report on Guo and his association with Ma Jian, suggesting that his success in business has been backed by the secret police. In return, Guo accused Caixin's chief editor Hu Shuli of extortion.
Beijing decided to prosecute Ma Jian on corruption charges in December 2016.
Guo opened his Twitter account in early 2017 and started revealing details of the corrupt practices of government officials including those with hidden wealth outside China. By end of May, Guo had 225,000 followers on Twitter.
Guo has explained that his intentions are personal: reclaim his money and life, as well as retaliate against those who persecuted him. He has put forward seven principles for his personal campaign:
反對以黑反貪、以貪反貪、以警反貪、以警治國；不反人民、不反國家、不反習近平。
Against using illegal means in anti-graft, against corruption in fighting against corruption, against using public security force in anti-graft, against police-state; would not stand against people, the country and [President] Xi Jinping.
Chinese Twitter users are divided over Guo's motivations. Some believe once Guo is able to negotiate with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to unfreeze his assets, he will happily work with the party again. For example, @liushui1989 said:
支持郭骗者早应该看清楚，郭骗“只反贪官不反皇帝”，目的是和当权者做交易——保钱、保命和报仇，并非为社会进步和国家民主。他将自己从罪犯装扮成英雄，拿民意、黑幕作为交易工具。一切美好的东西，都会被他在交易中无情地戕害。那些攀附者和支持者，都将是他的子弹和炮灰。事实上也成为助纣为虐者。
For those who support Guo the liar, please understand that Guo is “against the corrupt, not the emperor”. His intention is to make a deal with the ruler — reclaim his money, life, and retaliate — not work for the sake of social progress and democracy. He has transformed himself from a criminal into a hero, manipulating public opinion and evidence of corruption as a negotiating chip. He will destroy all the beautiful hearts in his deal. All his supporters will turn into bullets and ashes. And they are helping the villain rather than the weak.
Yet many also believe that as an insider of the political system, Guo's revelations of the internal power struggle and corruption in the top bureaucracy can shake up the political status quo.
Among those accused by Guo of being corrupt is Fu Zhenghua, China’s executive deputy minister of public security. In response, the Ministry of Public Security’s social media account released a video confession of Ma Jian accusing Guo of bribing him with RMB 60 million yuan (approximately US $8.72 million).
Guo issued a rejoinder by appearing in a live interview with US government-funded news outlet Voice of America on April 19, which he described as a “nuclear bomb” about Chinese politics.
However, the Voice of America interview was abruptly cut short with an alleged order from its director Amanda Bennett, who said Chinese officials that Guo named must be given an opportunity to respond “in advance” to any accusations of corruption.
Hours before Guo's interview was scheduled, China had asked Interpol to put out a global warrant for his arrest. Many Chinese believe Beijing was behind Voice of America's decision. Below is a typical criticism of the Voice of America (VOA) incident on Twitter:
新闻平衡是借口，实质是不敢得罪中共，屈服于压力。新闻平衡是让双方都充分表达，而不是修剪原始表达。如果中共不对相关内容做出回应，为了所谓新闻平衡，另一方就应被剥夺发声机会吗？免责声明就是平衡的法律形式。不过要谢谢VOA的恶作剧，让世界知道中共打心里害怕草根郭文贵，敢撞石头的一颗鸡蛋
Balanced news is just an excuse. The reality is that [VOA's leader] dares not offend the CCP and had submitted to its pressure. Balanced news is to let both parties express their views in full, not to edit the original expression. Should [VOA] take away the other side's opportunity to speak out in the name of balanced news because CCP refuses to respond? Disclaimer is a form of balance in legal term. But we should thank VOA for its malicious act. Now the whole world knows that the CCP is really scared of Guo Wengui, an egg who dared to crash the wall [meaning political system].
Guo's wife and daughter, who were previously barred from leaving China, visited Guo in New York in mid-May after he had kept low profile for a month.
But the reunion has not stopped Guo from making further allegations on Twitter.
Notably, Guo’s posted a series of photos and shareholding charts on his YouTube and Twitter accounts, identifying relatives of China’s anti-graft czar, Wang Qishan, who allegedly has secret shares in the HNA Group, a prominent aviation conglomerate which went on a global acquisition spree, including the Hilton, aside from owning massive wealth offshore. Guo also accused Wang of having illegitimate children and owning many overseas properties; according to Guo, his family wealth could allegedly reach 2 trillion yuan (approximately US $300 billion).
The 19th National Congress of the CCP will be held in Beijing in the autumn of 2017, and there are speculations that 69-year-old Wang Qishan will remain a key figure in the standing committee of the party's politburo.
News and information about Guo are strictly censored in China, though official media outlets have published stories accusing Guo of bribery, fraud, and rape. However, the comment sections on these news websites have been disabled.
Meanwhile, Chinese tycoon Pan Shiyi, whose name has also appeared in Guo's allegations, responded with an open letter accusing Guo of working with the secret police in building his business empire.
Both Pan Shiyi and Hu Shuli have filed documents in the United States to sue Guo for libel. Opinions are also split over the legal action.
Some believe that Pan and Hu represent Wang Qishan in the internal political power struggle. Others believe the legal action will help reveal more information about corruption in government.
The allegation against Wang Qishan has attracted hundreds of thousands of Chinese netizens flocking to Guo’s YouTube and Twitter accounts to express their support for him. Many of his commenters have slammed the party’s corrupt top leaders as traitors and called for China’s network firewall to be dismantled so more Chinese will have access to the “truth”.
Others have urged Guo to put aside his personal interests and work to change the political system because only rule of law and democracy can protect individual rights.
@wtuo said:
真的，老郭千万不要高估了自己的爆料，即便今天这个级别的爆料，中国人都已经麻木了……除非牵涉到自己的利益，不然他们只会当成热闹看。老郭一定要记住鲁迅的话，就算看到同胞被杀头，中国人也只是在旁边看热闹。所以当务之急还是能把墙推倒。
Really, Bro Guo, don’t overestimate the impact of your revelations, even such explosive information relating to China’s top leader. Chinese people have become so numb to politics that they will just be onlookers unless their own interests are involved. Remember Lu Xun's depiction of how Chinese people reacted to pubic execution, they just consumed the bloody scene as onlookers. So the top priority should be pulling down the wall [meaning the political system].
@milpitas95035 explained the significance of Guo's allegations:
江习斗逻辑不仅把一切坏事推给江派，而且美化习王主政以来的所谓反腐运动，认为要将江派余孽全部以反腐的名义收拾干净，鼓吹反腐运动深得民心。而郭文贵事件的最大意义之一就是否定了这场反腐运动，这是一场破坏法治、践踏人权、假反腐、真抢劫的危害整个国家、麻醉人民、延缓民主法治诉求的运动。
The power struggle between Jiang [Zemin, a now-retired top leader of the CCP from 1989 until 2003)] and Xi [Jinping] is that the latter has accused Jiang and his faction for all the wrongdoings and glorified the anti-graft campaign under the leadership of Xi and Wang. They want to take power from Jiang and his faction using anti-graft as the pretext to gain public support. Guo Wengui's revelations have denounced the anti-graft campaign, revealing to the public how the campaign has destroyed the rule of law, stood upon human rights. It is a fake anti-graft campaign aimed at robbing money [from one political camp] and the campaign has endangered the whole country, intoxicating the people and deterring the reform of rule of law and democracy.
Bao Tong, 85-year-old former CCP official who has been in exile since the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement, expressed his support for Guo Wengui (via reporter Gao Yu's Twitter) because Guo has put forward a new agenda for Chinese political transformation:
有人问我郭文贵是体制内的富豪，他一定是不干净的。我回答：郭文贵与鲍彤是一样的。郭文贵是体制内的富豪，鲍彤是体制内的高官…他作为中国一个体制内的富豪他看穿了中国崛起跟中国腐败的关系…显然郭文贵的诉求是反对“黑”，这一点是明确的。他翻来覆去说我反对“以黑反贪”。就这一点来说他是打开了我的眼界, 知道在考察中国社会的时候，不仅可以从“红色”来研究，也可以从“黑色”来研究，而且还可以从“比黑社会还黑”这个观点来研究，…
Some said that Guo Wenguo is a billionaire within the current system and hence he is not clean. My answer is that Guo is the same as me. He was a billionaire inside the system, and Bao Tong was a high ranking official inside the system… As a billionaire, he understands the relationship between the rise of China and corruption… Guo's demand is against illegal criminal acts, he keeps talking about his position against using illegal means in anti-graft, this point alone has opened up my horizon. I have learned that we can study China from its “red” tradition as well as from its “black” [criminal and illegal] tradition. [The system] can be darker than the triad society…

author: Jack Hu


text:
In Face of Government and Military Pressure, This Pakistani Newspaper Stood Tall · Global Voices
Mariam Khan

Screenshot of Dawn's e-paper on May 11th, 2017 reporting on the Dawn Leaks inquiry.
For the last eight months, an explosive news story with anonymous sources about a confrontation between Pakistan's Prime Minister and the country's top intelligence chief has resulted in several government officials losing their jobs and a newspaper being intimidated, revealing Pakistani state and military officials’ limited regard for press freedom.
Soon after the story was published at Dawn, the country's oldest and most respected English daily, Pakistan's Information Minister was fired from his job. Both the civilian government and the military believed his job was to “prevent” the news article from being published.
State officials soon began pressuring the newspaper to reveal its sources. But eight months on, the newspaper has stood its ground, sparking a conversation in the country about the rights of journalists to protect their sources, especially when it comes to “national security” concerns.
In October of last year, journalist Cyril Almeida published a front-page scoop revealing a confrontation between the Prime Minister and the military's now former Inter-Services Intelligence chief, Rizwan Akhtar. The story revealed that at a top-secret meeting, members of the civilian government complained to the Akhtar that when their law-enforcement agencies took action against armed groups, his “security establishment … worked behind the scenes to set the arrested free.”
Almeida's scoop, which cited anonymous government sources, confirmed long-suspected rumors of a rift between the country's civilian and military leaderships over counter-terrorism efforts. The revelations have since become known as “Dawn Leaks” .
Pakistan's interior ministry first denied the story and put Almeida on the Exit Control List (ECL), an extraordinary measure usually reserved for hardened criminals or people involved in mass fraud and corruption. When Almeida's publication stood by him and refused to reveal their source, the government was forced to remove Almeida from the ECL and launched its own investigation into the source of the leak.
Shortly after the investigation into the leak began, top state authorities fired Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed from his job, as the government felt Rasheed should have stopped the story from being published. A statement from the Prime Minister's office read:
Evidence available so far points to a lapse on part of the Information Minister, who has been directed to step down from office to enable holding of an independent and detailed inquiry.
In a video interview several months after his dismissal, Rasheed spoke to media channels and said his job as an information minister isn't to stop the press from publishing reports. In a video aired by several news channels, Rasheed said:
Under a democracy, one can only inform journalists about the factual errors and share your point of view with them, however, you cannot force your views on them.(…) If the state wants information ministers who can stop news stories, it should instruct universities “to teach journalism students a course, titled ‘How to block news’
An inquiry committee created to investigate the leak submitted a report to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recommending that action be taken against additional staff, including Rao Tehsin Ali, the principal information officer of the Ministry of Information and Tariq Fatemi, special assistant to the prime minister on foreign affairs.
The report also recommended referring Dawn to the All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) for “necessary disciplinary action,” but did not elaborate on what the charges against Editor Dawn or journalist Cyril Almeida are if any.
The Prime Minister's office subsequently issued directives to remove Fatemi from his post, alleging he was responsible for “leaking” information to Almeida.
A few hours later, the director of military's media wing said that the military had rejected the notification (the order that led to the firing of several key government members):
Notification on Dawn Leak is incomplete and not in line with recommendations by the Inquiry Board. Notification is rejected.
— Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor (@OfficialDGISPR) April 29, 2017
Under Article 243 of the Constitution of Pakistan, the military chief is appointed by the President with the consultation and confirmation needed from the Prime Minister. Therefore the tweet from a military officer rejecting the notification issued by the head of state is seen as insubordination.The tweet was a rare public contradiction of the civilian government's orders by the military and created an uproar that exacerbated civil-military tensions in public.
This tweet by investigative reporter Matiullah Jan sums up the reactions and scrutiny that followed:
@OfficialDGISPR How dare a notification by prime minister is “rejected” by the officer in ISPR.
— Matiullah Jan (@Matiullahjan919) April 29, 2017
Following the uproar, the military's media wing “retracted” the tweet and said it was not aimed at any government office or person.
Several activists and reporters have weighed in on the issue on Twitter. Media rights advocate Iqbal Khattak shared his concern about #Dawnleaks issue being used to suppress journalism:
Both govt and #ISPR should not use #DawnLeaks issue to suppress independent and investigative #journalism in #Pakistan#COAS
— Iqbal Khattak (@khattak63) May 10, 2017
Netizen Hassam Tahir raises the issue of reporters being forced to reveals sources:
Journalists cannot be made to give away sources, this is not what freedom of press stands for #DawnLeaks
— Hassam Tahir (@hassamt) April 27, 2017
Journalists Umar Cheema and Nadeem Malik shared their concerns about the investigation and the subsequent firing of government officials:
#Dawnleaks issue resolved after taking jobs from 3 men; none of them had made any leak. How national security was breached? Still unknown.
— Umar Cheema (@UmarCheema1) May 10, 2017
Why action against a newspaper & journalists for #DawnLeaks, while saying nothing who committed “Security Breach” from a closed door meeting pic.twitter.com/xXaljAWWD6
— Nadeem Malik (@nadeemmalik) April 29, 2017
Dawn's editors concistently stoody by their story and Almeida despite pressure from both the millitary and civillian authorities, renowned achorperson Asma Shirazi lauded their decision:
Salute to the editor #Dawn newspaper @abbasz55 @cyalm for the unflinching fight to protect freedom of expression.
— Asma Shirazi (@asmashirazi) May 10, 2017
Despite the fact that the official inquiry is now complete, the issue has raised serious concerns about the future of journalism and whistleblowing in Pakistan.

author: Mariam Khan


text:
Small Farmers in Madagascar Say Chinese Investors Forced Them to Sell Their Land for Dirt Cheap · Global Voices
Karolle Rabarison

Lake Tsimanampetsotsa, southwestern Madagascar. Phot by Frank Vassen from Brussels, Belgium – CC-BY-2.0
Chinese foreigners are forcing farmers in southwest Madagascar to sell their land for a mere 7 ariary (less than US $0.01) per square meter. That’s according to news from TV Plus Madagascar, as reported by journalists Ivon Mahandrisoa and Angelo Ranaivoarisoa on May 24, 2017. A similar land deal in Kenya in 2008 was priced at  about US $0.05 per square meter for a total of 40,000 hectares. (The cost of a loaf of white bread is 1,481.85 Ariary).
Already more than 12,000 acres have been acquired by the Chinese investors, who have shown up with papers for the farmers to sign over the land. Farmers in the rural communes of Antanimieva and Befandriana Atsimo say they feel they can’t say no—for fear they would be evicted anyway, in which case they would lose both their land and the small amount of money being offered.
Jean Renoavy, a farmer in Antanimieva, told the news channel that the investors acquired land where cattle used to graze, and so far three cows that wandered over to the now Chinese-owned plots have been shot. In some cases, he said, the investors already started to put the land to use, and so people felt they had no choice but to sign the papers and take the money.
Online reactions to the report have been a mix of resignation and criticism of Madagascar's government. User Mirija974 wrote:
Fanambakana tsotr’izao ‘zany tany namidy 7 Ar/m2 ‘zany. Fa tany tsisy fanjakana intsony angaha i Madagasikara?
Land being sold for 7 ariary per square meter is simply a racket. Is Madagascar no longer a state with a government?
Land acquisition by foreigners are not unique to Madagascar. It’s increasingly common for rich countries or international corporations to acquire farmlands in poor countries. The rich countries have rising demand for food and other products such as rubber alongside constraints in land and natural resources, while in the poor countries, production is cheap and resources abundant. With almost no international regulations on land trade, companies have no legal incentive to ensure their investments and supply chains don’t involve land that was seized from the people living on it.
Global Witness, an international NGO that sounds the alarm on natural resource-related conflict and corruption, has reported land grabs in countries such as Liberia and Myanmar. Their investigations revealed land deals that involved forged documents and permits awarded in violation of local laws. Similar reports have surfaced from Oxfam on sugar lands in Brazil connected to Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, and from Friends of the Earth on Ugandans displaced by Wilmar International’s palm oil plantations.
Proponents argue these land investments are mutually beneficial opportunities that could bring a significant number of jobs to rural people living in poverty, as well as encourage the development of infrastructure, schools, and health centers. Land rights advocates warn of the links between land acquisition, corruption, environmental destruction, and local conflict—and of the legacy of illegal land grabs on already marginalized communities. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in Madagascar deals to lease 1.3 million hectares for maize and oil palm might have contributed to conflicts leading to the 2009 coup and the subsequent political and economic crises.
Organizations such as Global Witness are calling for the establishment of international laws that promote transparency in land deals and protect the rights and livelihoods of local communities. Meanwhile, IFPRI proposes strong collective action by smallholders, with the backing of civil society, as a promising strategy to advocate better national and local policy around land use and rights.
Theo Rakotovao, a popular musician who is originally from near Antanimieva, is among the citizens working to draw more attention to land rights issues. Speaking to TV Plus, Rakotovao said he is traveling to communes to speak with both the people being evicted and the people facilitating evictions. His message is simple: Tricking smallholder farmers is unjust and shouldn’t be done, and all Malagasy need to be aware of the situation.
A YouTube user named manarivo, commenting on a copy of the TV Plus news segment uploaded there, criticized the lack of government action:
Aza ny vahiny no homena tsiny na enjehana hanaovana fitsaram-bahoaka, ireo Malagasy ampiasain'izy ireo na mpitondra na iza na iza no ataovy hazalambo. Avy eo dia avereno amin’ny ireo olona tena tompony ny tany. Misaotra an'i Theo Rakotovao amin’ny fijoroana amin’ny marina.
Don’t blame the foreigners or chase them for vigilantism and public execution. It’s the Malagasy who work for them or whoever in the administration that should be hunted. Then, return the land to its rightful owners. Thanks to Theo Rakotovao for standing up for what is right.
While Herinirina Doris Ratovondrahona asked:
Azo atao ve ny maka ny ampahany amin itony(sp) vaovaontsika itony sy mizara izany ao amin’ny tambazotra sosialy!? Mila mahalala izao fanamparam pahefana ataon’ny sinoa sy ny fanjakana izao ny any antsimo. Ny tambazotra sosialy no afaka izarana izao vaovao izao malaky ho an ireo tsy mahita vaovao.
Is it possible to take clips from these news stories and to share them on social media!? People in the south need to know about these abuses by the Chinese and the government. Social media is the way to share this information quickly for those who don’t watch the news.
The popular Facebook page “Malagasy ve ianao” (“Are you Malagasy?”)—followed by a community of more than 170,000 people—also raised awareness about these suspicious 7 Ariary per m2 deals with a brief report from Evah Randrianotahiana.
The Facebook users in the group echoed frustration and resignation. A comment by Nirina Andriatiana captures the sentiment well:
Dia tsy hisy azontsika vahoaka madinika atao mihitsy ve hiarovana ny tanintsika e? Mitaraina etsy sy eroa na @haino aman-jery na @n'itony tambanjotra itony fa tsy misy mahasahy mijoro miaro, mila manambatra hery isika hamerenana ny hasin'ny tanintsika ry mpiray tanindrazana fa raha izao ny mitohy dia tsy hay intsony izay hiafarana.
Is there anything that regular people like us can do to protect our land? We air complaints to […] the media or on social media, but no one dares to stand up. We need to join forces to restore the dignity of our country and fellow citizens, because if this continues, we don't know anymore what our fate will be.

author: Karolle Rabarison