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Do you really need to learn Japanese to live in Japan? · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Japanese textbooks and learner dictionaries. Image by Nevin Thompson.
In late April, the New York Times Books section posted a tweet that set off a firestorm of debate and condemnation about whether or not a long-term foreign resident of Japan should actually have to learn Japanese if they live in the country.
The tweet in question linked to a review in the New York Times of Pico Iyer's new book, Autumn Light. Iyer is a well-known essayist and travel writer who has lived in Japan off-and-on for the past twenty-five years.
The debate touched on matters such as Orientalism and how Japan has traditionally been portrayed by Western writers, the status of women in intercultural marriages and the unpaid labour that foreign-born men often rely on simply in order to function from day to day in Japan, and the hierarchy that exists in the foreigner community in Japan.
According to Iyer's publisher, the new book is intended to be “a far-reaching exploration of Japanese history and culture and a moving meditation on impermanence, mortality, and grief.”
Although he has lived in Japan for 25 years, Pico Iyer doesn’t choose to learn more than a smattering of Japanese because he says needs mystery and “a sense of open space in life, something to offset the sense of the familiar.” https://t.co/0JpPZ4e03m
— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) April 23, 2019
It's unlikely that many people on Twitter actually read the New York Times review of Iyer's book. Most of the 290-some-odd replies to the original tweet, as well as a number of conversations among “foreign-residents-of-Japan Twitter” focused on Iyer's never having learned to speak Japanese despite having lived in the country for a long, long time.
Others commented on the anonymity of Iyer's “Japanese wife” who, presumably makes sure Iyer can live his life easily in Japan.
In other words, he lives the life of an eternal toddler, unable to engage like an adult with everyone arround him. Good thing his wife is there to take care of every single thing that needs doing to actually live here. https://t.co/UUTgg3O5T1
— Nulla Crux, Nulla Corona (@EasternSmooth) April 23, 2019
As an on-and-off foreign resident of Japan who has invested a significant amount of time learning Japanese and just trying to fit in, I was irritated by the New York Times Books tweet as well. I left a few comments on Twitter expressing my own disgust with Iyer's supposed attitudes about Japan, although I generally refrain from criticizing fellow writers and residents of Japan in public. The community of long-term foreign residents in Japan active on social media is pretty small, and the number of foreign residents writing about the country is smaller still. A disparaging remark can set up a social media feud that never ends.
On top of that, there is a small but significant number of long-term foreign residents of Japan (some of whom have naturalized and have become Japanese citizens) who stalk and harass journalists, academics and other writers who have the “wrong” opinions about Japan. It's a toxic culture that I've experienced first-hand writing about Japan at Global Voices, and that I don't want to participate in.
And yet still I left comments here and there expressing my irritation with Pico Iyer.
Why does Pico Iyer's refusal to learn Japanese inspire such vitriol? One reason could be that almost every non-Japanese Westerner who spends time in Japan feels both a sense of accomplishment for mastering simple tasks such as reading a train timetable or ordering from a restaurant menu, and a sense of disdain for other foreign visitors or residents who have not.
Not every long-term foreign resident of Japan has the time and energy to master the Japanese language, which makes it easy for those of us who can speak and read Japanese to feel smugly superior (although, in the foreign hierarchy of Japan, there is always someone who has achieved an even higher mastery of Japanese than you, and who can therefore feel even more smugly superior).
It also takes a lot of time and effort for a Westerner to establish a life in Japan. Besides learning approximately 1,800 Chinese characters and mastering 10,000 words, foreign-born residents of Japan have to become near-experts on an almost infinite number of subjects, including etiquette, tax law, history, food, and the importance of always possessing a pocket handkerchief (public lavatories almost never have paper towels for drying one's’ hands).
Doing the hard work of fitting in and making a life in the country results in a sort of feeling of ownership of the country and the culture: “How would you know anything about Japan? You don't even know the rules that govern municipal election campaigning!” (This is a real criticism I actually received recently from another long-termer trying to put me in my place.)
There's also something protective about the “long-termer” reaction to how others write about Japan. Tired tropes regularly reported in Western media about how Japanese people are not having sex or how the destroyed nuclear power plants at Fukushima are poisoning the Pacific are almost obsessively derided and debunked on Twitter and Facebook.
Twitter user @deivudesu has parodied the complicated social hierarchy of foreigners in Japan in a widely-shared diagram that, in spite of being tongue-in-cheek, shows just how much status matters.
“Who looks down on whom in Japan's foreign community.” Image courtesy Twitter user @deivudesu, not for reproduction without permission.
Yet the more hard-won the lessons we learn about the country, the more some of us realize how mundane life in Japan actually is. Specialty Kitkat chocolate bars, vending machines, Zen temples, and capsule hotels and trains that run on time are all just background noise and are totally unremarkable. Fax machines are actually still regularly used in many countries around the world, and not just in Japan. It's actually quite straightforward to take part in a supposedly insular culture.
Do you really need to learn Japanese to live in Japan? Like anything else in life, the correct answer to this question is entirely personal. At the end of the day, no matter where in the world you live, it's totally up to the individual whether life is mundane, rich with variety, or mysterious.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Ugandan regulators order 13 media outlets to suspend staff over coverage of opposition figure · Global Voices
James Propa

Popular singer Bobi Wine speaks at a protest against the social media tax on July 11, 2018. Photo shared widely on Twitter.
The Ugandan Communications Commission (UCC) has directed 13 media houses to suspend 39 employees including producers, heads of news and heads of programming.
The media outlets affected by the directive include six TV stations and seven radio stations.
This directive comes following the arrest of parliamentarian and pop music icon Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, on April 29. Public protests mounted after the MP was arrested as he made his way to a police station to record a statement about utterances he made during a press conference following a canceled concert by authorities.
Later that day, Wine was remanded to Luzira prison after appearing before a court. He was accused of “holding a public meeting” — a reference to the social media tax protests — without approval from the inspector general of police as per the Public Order Management Act (POMA). Wine has since been granted bail.
The court proceedings of April 29 were live streamed on a few television stations while breaking news segments about Wine and the protests around his arrest dominated other outlets.
The UCC says the reporting of these outlets was sensational and gave Wine, a persistent critic of the ruling government, undue prominence. The UCC directive reads:
This [directive to suspend staff] follows concerns over the nature of content aired on these broadcast stations particularly during live programmes, breaking news, and main news bulletins which do not comply with the Minimum broadcasting standards.
The Commission observes that these programmes contain content that:
Further, the said programmes are presented in a manner that is unbalanced, sensational and often give undue prominence to specific individuals and/or groups of people, which is a breach of the Minimum broadcasting standards as enshrined in section 31, schedule 4 of the Uganda Communications Act, 2013.
The UCC further threatened to take action against the media houses that fail to comply with this directive, even vowing to cancel their license or temporarily switch their programmes off air.
The UCC and armed forces have on several occasions in the past raided and temporarily closed media outlets for reasons relating to a breach of minimum broadcasting standards. Many journalists, associations and organizations across the country came out to condemn the directive that was issued just a few days prior to World Press Freedom Day.
Journalists reporting from the Ugandan parliament under the umbrella Uganda Parliamentary Press Association issued a statement highlighting the role of the media in a society where the freedom to protest has been curtailed. Their chairperson further noted that live broadcasts and breaking news are a way to keep the public informed, not to incite violence or unlawful acts:
The freedom to protest is also guaranteed by our constitution and all other constitutions of other countries of every civilized society. And you have been hearing concerns regarding this matter that right now the Uganda Police is misusing the the Public Order Management Act to curtail the freedoms of other actors especially the opposition.
The president of the Uganda Journalists Association, Kazibwe Bashir, called for unity among journalists and other media practitioners, urging them to stand united and speak out about such injustices.
It's at this time that journalists and all media practitioners ought to speak out further and louder in unity as a body, otherwise our future stands ripe to be eaten pieces. These disturbing events only serve to remind us that: The pen is mightier than the gun.
The African Center for Media Excellence purported that the UCC does not wish the media to report on the abuse of power by armed forces:
…UCC directive beggars belief and brings into question the regulator’s motives. It appears that UCC will not tolerate coverage that shows the government, especially the security services, in unflattering light. It is not as if when journalists carry live feed of an egregiously brutal arrest of a prominent public figure they are making up the story.
During a parliamentary sitting, several opposition MPs also asked parliament to intervene in the matter and block the directive while MPs from the ruling party told those affected to seek legal support from courts of law:
On Twitter, NTV Uganda journalist Sheila Nduhukire asked UCC Executive Director Godfrey Mutabazi whether it was actually the Commission's role to direct media houses to suspend their employees for simply performing their roles:
Hello @UCC_ED, Where do you derive the mandate to order media houses to suspend journalists for doing their work ? https://t.co/It4hIQi2Pn
— Sheila Nduhukire ?? (@Snduhukire) May 2, 2019
Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of Oxfam and wife to Ugandan opposition leader and four-time presidential candidate Kizza Besigye, opined that Uganda has reached a point where human rights are no longer respected:
Bobi Wine Saga: UCC Suspends Top News Managers of TV, Radio Stations – https://t.co/cpC4aJqN6v Any semblance of a free media and respect for human rights and equality under the law have been dropped. It is a naked dictatorship!
— Winnie Byanyima (@Winnie_Byanyima) May 1, 2019
Twitter user Mugerwa Michael asked the commission to instead take those who breach the minimum broadcasting standards to court as a response to UCC's press release tweet:
If you feel like they have breached the minimum standards take them to courts of law we will fight till we achieve the Uganda we want. Don't be used and at the end yo come out apologizing we won't forgive you
— mugerwa michael (@mumdantie) May 1, 2019
The UCC will be meeting the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) on May 7 for a dialogue about the directive.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: James Propa


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New Russian documentary brings the horrors of the Gulag to the YouTube generation · Global Voices
Alexey Kovalev

Filming conditions in Kolyma, far in Russia's northeast: -55C outside. Photo: Yuri Dud's YouTube channel, screencapped by Runet Echo.
Yuri Dud seems an unlikely figure to rekindle Russia’s conscience about the darker chapters in its history. The former sports reporter now runs his own YouTube interview show where he interviews celebrities and other public figures. Each interview generates millions of views, making Dud a serious competitor even to state-owned TV. Although Dud has interviewed activists and politicians such as Alexey Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner, he is considered more of a society columnist than a “serious” reporter.
That's why the subject of Dud’s latest show shocked his both 5 million and the general public: a two-hour documentary about the Kolyma region, in Russia’s far northeast, that is almost synonymous with Stalin-era repressions.
This frozen, mostly impassable Arctic wasteland was home to the most notorious camps of the Gulag, the Soviet network of forced labor compounds into which thousands of petty criminals and political prisoners disappeared. It’s hard to tell exactly how many people perished from extreme cold (temperatures in winter routinely drop below -50C), or of hunger and toil in the mines, but even conservative official estimates put the number at 150 thousand victims in just one of the biggest Kolyma camps from 1932 to 1957.
Dud is aware of the contrast between his usual subject matter and the sensitive theme of his latest episode. As he explains in the opening sequence:
А почему вообще после рэперов, юмористов, музыкантов, актеров и режиссеров мы двинулись к такой сложной и тревожной теме? Причины две. Первая: в октябре 2018 года ВЦИОМ опубликовал социологическое исследование, которое привело нас в ступор. Почти половина молодых людей в возрасте от 18 до 24 лет никогда не слышала о сталинских репрессиях. Мы восприняли это как вызов и ждали момента, чтобы этот вызов принять.
After all the rappers, comedians, musicians, actors, and directors, why in the world are we engaging this complex and disturbing subject? Two reasons. Number one: In October 2018, VTsIOM [Russian Public Opinion Research Center] published a survey that left us in a stupor. Almost half of young people aged 18-24 have never heard of Stalin’s repressions. We've treated that as a challenge and awaited the right moment to tackle it.
Dud adds that his parents have always warned him: “Don’t attract unnecessary attention. Don’t stand out. We’re simple people, we don’t decide anything,” even in circumstances of obvious injustice. He says how he has always wondered about the origins of this fear among older Russians and concludes that “it was born in the first half of the 20th century and reached us through generations.” Kolyma, Dud says, is “the birthplace of our fear.”
Dud’s words have struck a chord with exactly the audience he was aiming for: younger Russians oblivious or only barely aware of their country’s brutal recent history.
Смотрю выпуск #дудь по репресси, мне папа и дедушка рассказывали как все плохо было, но я даже не думал что на столько.
— Aleksei Korotkov ⭕ (@theonephobos) 24 апреля 2019 г.
Watching the #dud episode about repressions, my dad and grandpa told me it was bad, but I’ve never realized how bad.
The film is structured as a travelogue: Dud’s crew travels two thousand kilometers along the Kolyma highway, a mostly unpaved road between two regional capitals, Magadan and Yakutsk. So many prisoners died during its construction in the 1930s that the highway is colloquially known as “the road of bones.”
Along the road, Dud reaches or nearly reaches the sites of some of the deadliest camps, including Butugychag where inmates were forced to mine uranium ore without protective gear. He meets local activists fighting to preserve the memories of the victims from the forces of public indifference and unforgiving nature.
Dud also interviews descendants of Gulag inmates such as Natalia Korolyova, the daughter of Sergey Korolyov, father of the Soviet space program. Korolyov was arrested in 1938, spent several months in a labor camp in Kolyma and, nearing death from starvation and exhaustion, was transferred to a prison-like facility for researchers in Moscow until his release in 1944. Korolyov survived, but was not fully exonerated until 1957.
Korolyov’s daughter struggles to hold back tears as she describes the torture he suffered at the hands of his interrogators. Yet Dud is stunned by Korolyova’s opinion of Joseph Stalin. Her answers provide an insight into how complicated the issue of Stalin-era repressions is in modern Russia, even for people acutely aware of the horrors they inflicted on millions. While acknowledging the terrible toll of the Gulag system, including on her own family, Korolyova says:
Но многое было сделано, конечно, и хорошего. Например, при Сталине была дисциплина более стойкая. Потом, то, что Сталин не уехал из Москвы, когда враги, фашисты, стояли буквально у стен Москвы. Парад на Красной площади состоялся. Трудно судить, конечно.
But he did a lot of good things. For example, under Stalin we had stricter discipline. Stalin didn’t abandon Moscow when the enemies, the fascists, were literally at Moscow’s walls. He even held a parade on Red Square. It’s hard to judge, of course.
Anticipating the criticism that followed his documentary’s release, Dud ends the episode by stressing that the horrors of the past still have consequences in society today:
Некоторые из тех, кто досмотрел наше видео до конца, скажут: «Дудь, ну что тебе этот Сталин? Что ты так часто о нем говоришь? Тебе же недавно сказали, в чем одна из главных проблем в России: в том, что она живет прошлым, что до сих пор постоянно обсуждает, был Сталин прав, не был Сталин прав?» Мы проехали трассу «Колыма» не чтобы обсуждать, прав Сталин или нет. Дать правильный ответ на этот вопрос совсем не сложно и без нашего участия. Мы проехали трассу «Колыма», потому что это […] про наше настоящее. Страх — главный враг свободы. […] Не бойтесь. Уважайте себя. И, возможно, тогда периодов, когда к людям относятся хуже, чем к животным, в нашей стране больше никогда не случится. Всем мир.
Some of those who watch our video to the end will say: “Dud, what is it with you and Stalin? Why do you keep bringing him up? Didn’t someone tell you not that long ago that one of Russia’s main problems is that it lives in the past? That it’s still busy discussing if Stalin was right or wrong?” We didn’t travel the Kolyma highway to discuss if Stalin was right or wrong. You don’t need us to give the right answer to that simple question. We traveled the Kolyma highway because it’s […] about our present. […] Fear is the greatest enemy of freedom. […] Don’t be afraid. Respect yourself. Maybe then, our country won’t see any more times where people are treated worse than animals.
Dud’s documentary was an instant hit, even for his high standards: in the first week after its release, it received almost 12 million views. But with such a complex, controversial subject, the documentary predictably attracted critics. Award-winning writer Zakhar Prilepin in an op-ed, accused Dud of being a paid agent of the West on a mission to discredit Russia’s glorious history and undermine patriotism. Others disputed the figures mentioned in the episode, arguing that the real number of Gulag victims was lower.
По интернету бегают красные уроды с историями, что Дудь налажал с цифрами, тут мол пару миллионов накинул лишних, здесь на 25% преукрасил.
Тогда ладно! Раз уж есть неточности и гора русских трупов на 25% меньше оказалась, черт с ними – прощаем красным. Спасибочки им за гуманизм!
— историк-алкоголик (@AlcoHistory) 25 апреля 2019 г.
Stupid reds are running around the internet, claiming that Dud screwed up the figures. See, they’re saying, it’s two odd million here, or he exaggerated by 25 percent there. Well then! Since there are irregularities and the pile of Russian corpses is actually 25 percent smaller, then to hell with it; let’s forgive the reds! Thank them for their humanism!
Some, echoing Natalia Korolyova, conceded that many innocent people perished in the labor camps, but argued that the situation still compared favorably to today’s (perceived) lawlessness:
По поводу лагерей: да, многие сели за хуй собачий и было очень жестко…каждый боялся что-то спиздить (сейчас этого не хватает). Но блять, наше время ничем не отличается, наказание проще стало, можно украсть 30 лярдов и посидеть лет 5, никакого расстрела
— Evgeny Zorin (@Valeez) 24 апреля 2019 г.
Began watching Dud and turned it off after 30 minutes, the entire episode is steeped in hatred towards the Soviet Union and Stalin, I wouldn't be surprised if Dud ended it with “It's a shame Hitler didn't win.” As far as the camps are concerned: yes, many did time for a dog’s dick of a reason, it was brutal indeed… But everyone was too scared shitless to steal anything (that’s what we’re lacking today.) But damn, our times aren’t all that different, it’s just that the consequences are smaller: you can steal 30 billion and spent some five years in jail, no firing squads.
Such comments are quite common among contemporary defenders of Stalin’s policies. A record 51 percent of Russians told the independent polling agency Levada Center in March 2019 that they viewed Joseph Stalin positively. “Stalin is seen as a figure who ensured social justice, something Russians are increasingly seeking amid discontent with falling living standards and a government reform of pensions,” Karina Pipia, an analyst at Levada, told Bloomberg.
Despite the best efforts of Yuri Dud, alongside those of countless other civic activists, Russia will probably remain deeply conflicted over Stalin’s legacy many years from now. Russians’ fondness for Stalin and nostalgia for his era cannot be simply attributed to the government “whitewashing” the past. In fact, most contemporary efforts to commemorate Stalin are private initiatives, whereas many high-ranking government officials, such as Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, readily condemn Stalin and his repressions. In 2017 Vladimir Putin himself unveiled a memorial to the Gulag’s victims, declaring that “this terrible past must not be erased from our national memory and cannot be justified.”
A negative view of Stalin's legacy might be one of the few things shared by both Putin and his many critics, some of whom have appeared on Yuri Dud’s show.
The latest episode of Yuri Dud's show is available on YouTube with English subtitles:

author: Alexey Kovalev


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The Brumadinho dam tragedy in Brazil has caused alarm in São Paulo, a state with over 7,000 dams · Global Voices
Agência Mural

Residents participated in a Legislative Assembly session | Image: Guilherme Gandolfi/Used with permission
This article is published under a partnership between Global Voices and Agência Mural. It was authored by Jéssica Moreira and Ira Romão.
On 25 January, 2019, a dam burst at Mina do Córrego do Feijão, in the city of Brumadinho, in Minas Gerais state, which was run by the mining company Vale. The tragedy left 235 people dead and 35 missing. The Public Prosecutor of Minas Gerais spoke of environmental crimes and voluntary manslaughter.
The disaster became a much-discussed concern in the neighbouring state of São Paulo, more specifically in Perus, a district of the state capital. Out of São Paulo state's 7,449 dams, two are located in Perus, but most of its residents had never heard of them, even 30 years after their construction.
On 20 March, residents and members of social movements in the district held the event “Are We Safe?” to discuss the condition of the dams and inform people about precautionary measures taken by the mining company and the region’s Civil Defence.
The director of a local school, professor Franciele Busico Lima, said she was asked questions about the dams on a daily basis. The 49-year-old teacher joined with other members of social movements in the neighbourhood to hold meetings and work out how to inform the residents about the risks linked to the dams.
“Everybody found out through the media. We didn’t know. We knew about the existence of the quarries but not the dams, nor the problems that this involves. We want to know”, she said.
When members of the Movement for Those Affected by Dams (MAB), a nationwide rights group, went to the state's Civil Defence offices to collect the dams’ contingency plans (to be used in emergencies), they were told that it would be ready on March 8. By the end of March, the community still hadn't seen a plan.
Franciele works at Cieja Perus, where students were asking about the dams | Image: Ira Romão/Agência Mural
Sought for comment by Agência Mural, the Civil Defence stated that the preliminary version was delivered. However, “before its release to the community, there will be an institutional review and subsequent adjustments and alterations to the Contingency Plan”.
São Paulo residents have been mobilizing since the first few days after the damage caused in Brumadinho (a city 554 km away).
In February, MAB organized a public hearing in the Legislative Assembly (Alesp), bringing together over 200 people affected by dams across the state, including the neighbourhood of Perus, as well as the cities of Pedreira, Americana, Votorantim, Vale do Ribeira, Santos, Cubatão and Bertioga.
“It’s surprising, the number of dams present in the state. There are more than 7 thousand – they are a type of “bomb” that at any moment could explode”, said 38-year-old Liciane Andrioli, a member of MAB.
The event acted as a starting point for the public activism surrounding those developments. “The impression it gives us is that we’re opening a black box in São Paulo state with incidents which, to our surprise, were made invisible”, Liciane said. “Both Vale and the German certification company [TÜV-Süd, responsible for the appraisal which certified the safety of the dam in Brumadinho] presented information that there wasn’t any problem, but we've experienced one of the biggest social, worker, and environmental tragedies in the country’s history”, she commented.
“Nobody knows what happens inside the companies. They only know that they want to exploit. And the question of safety is left at its mercy. Everybody is afraid, everyone who lives near a dam is worried” said 34-year-old Cleiton Ferreira, a resident of Perus and coordinator of the Quilombaque Cultural Community.
Without access to the contingency plans, it is not clear how many residents could be affected in the region. Just over 144 thousand people live in the district of Perus, and since the Brumadinho disaster the population has been concerned. There was much discussion of the topic online in groups such as “Friends of Perus Official”, which has 77 thousand members and saw over 300 comments expressing concern and distress due to the lack of information.
The feeling of fear also hangs over the streets, schools, health clinics, and other public places in the region. The big question is: where is the emergency plan and why was it never shown to the residents?
One of the region’s dams is called Pedreira Juruaçu. It's a reservoir with a capacity of 3.1 million cubic metres, occupying an area of 192,000 square metres, that holds waste material from the production of gravel, essentially fine sand and clay. It belongs to the company Embu S.A., created in 1988.
Agência Mural contacted Embu, and, according to engineer Marco Antônio Martins, the reservoir is already practically at capacity. “The structure was designed, executed and operates using the downstream method of construction, regarded by engineers as the safest for this type of dam,” he said.
He added that the company had already taken the decision to look for alternative processes for the treatment of waste material, even before the Brumadinho tragedy. “The management of Embu S.A. and the technical team feels secure and comfortable to vouch for the safety and stability of the Pedreira Juruaçu dam,” he said.
The other dam contains a water reservoir and belongs to the company Territorial São Paulo Mineração Ltd, created in 2000.
This dam is 25 metres tall, approximately 160 metres long, and has a reservoir capacity of approximately 66 thousand cubic metres. In the past, the reservoir served as a depository for material taken from rocks during the production of sand used for construction.
According to Patrícia Bueno Moreira, chief legal officer at Territorial, the dam was also built using the downstream raising method. She also emphasized that the dam has been inactive for over a year.
“It no longer receives waste material from processes of sand-washing. All the necessary studies for the confirmation of stability are continually done and our technical staff state that the structure is safe”, she asserted.
In 2017, the Public Prosecutor of São Paulo conducted a review of the two companies. In the Territorial dam, they highlighted inconsistencies linked to drainage, such as the failure to locate the outlet of the dam's internal drain. According to the report, “the obstruction of the internal drainage outlet of a dam can contribute to processes that cause a potential break.”

author: Agência Mural


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Brazilian indigenous people buy shares in railway company to denounce its failed environmental obligations · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

Indigenous peoples say the newly expanded railway impacted the area's wildlife and threatens their safety. Image: Pedro Biava, used with permission.
On April 24, the shareholders’ meeting of Rumo Logística, a Brazilian railway consortium, had a few new, unexpected faces: a group of five indigenous people of Guarani and Tupi ethnicities who had recently bought six shares of the company.
They each represent one of the five officially designated Indigenous Lands in the southeastern state of São Paulo that was affected by a 90-year-old cargo railway which Rumo operates and, in 2014, began to expand. In order to compensate for the impact caused by the railway expansion, the state contractually obligates the company to “build new houses, prayer sites, a bridge, community gardens and acquire micro-tractors” for the communities. Around 5,000 people live across the five Indigenous Lands impacted by the railway's expansion.
But indigenous representatives say the company has failed to fulfill such duties, according to a story by Folha de São Paulo. The Federal Prosecutor's Office confirms this: 63 out of the 97 renovation works provided for in the concession contract are frozen. On April 19, prosecutors recommended Ibama, Brazil's national environmental agency, to immediately suspend the new railway's construction as well as Rumo's operation license. They also recommended the agency to fine Rumo in 10 million reais (2,5 million US dollars).
In a letter read at the April 24 assembly, the five indigenous shareholders detailed their plight. They've described how the trains have affected wildlife in the area, as well as limited people's circulation. In addition, they've reported their struggle in dialoguing with the Rumo, and also discredited the corporation's latest Annual Sustainability Report, which states Rumo it is “perfectly fulfilling their obligations, in a participatory and inclusive way, with the affected indigenous communities.”
Speaking with reporter Pedro Biava of newspaper Brasil de Fato, Adriano Karai, of Guarani ethnicity, said the indigenous shareholders’ goal was simply to have their voices heard by the company's investors rather than profiting from the shares (which they bought for 17 reais each, around 4,30 US dollars).
Karai also described how the newly expanded railway has affected his community of Tenondé, located in the city of Paralheiros:
Tem o barulho do trem, que é a noite toda. Os animais não frequentam mais os locais de caça. A gente não tem mais uma noite calma. Eles também transportam muitos grãos que acabam se espalhando pelo território, e a gente sabe que aquele alimento não é de qualidade, é transgênico. (…) E a gente acaba convivendo com o perigo: o trem passa pelos nossos territórios, onde costumamos visitar as aldeias, nas trilhas. A gente corre o perigo de ser atropelado pelo trem, porque agora o trem passa a cada dez minutos.
There is the noise of the train, which runs all night. The animals don't show up at hunting places anymore. We don’t have any quiet nights. They also transport a lot of grains that end up spilling on the land, and we know that that food isn't of good quality, it is transgenic. (…) Our lives are also in danger: the train passes through our territories, where walk visiting communities through trails. We are in constant danger of being hit by a train, because now there is one every ten minutes.”
According to the Folha story, the indigenous communities initially proposed to Rumo that it outsourced the renovation works to a local committee run by the communities themselves. According to the Prosecutor's Office, the company had initially agreed, but shortly after the October 2018 election of President Jair Bolsonaro, who ran on an explicitly anti-indigenous platform, it shifted its approach. On November 20, Rumo suddenly canceled its participation at a meeting with the communities, and since then hasn't shown up at any other meetings.
Speaking with Folha, the company said it never signed any agreement with the indigenous communities of outsourcing the renovation works to their committee.
The shareholders’ assembly on April 24 ended without any formal agreements, but Rumo's representatives said that the indigenous claims will be discussed at an internal meeting in May.
Expansion works began in 2014. Around 5,000 indigenous peoples live in the area. Image: Pedro Biava, used with permission.
The Guarani and Tupi aren't the only ones engaging with so-called “shareholder activism,” a practice that isn't very common in Brazil.
In 2010, the group Articulation of those Affected by Vale (Articulação dos Atingidos e Atingidas pela Vale) purchased the company's shares in order to sit at their assemblies.
Vale one of the largest mining corporations in the world, and the operator of the dam that ruptured in the city of Brumadinho in January 2019, killing 236 people (34 are still missing).
On April 30, the day of a shareholders’ meeting, Articulation members pinned posters with the deceased people's names on the walls of Vale's headquarters, as reported by newspaper O Globo.
By voicing their concerns at those meetings, the companies are forced to register the activists’ demands in their minutes. One of the Articulation members, Carolina de Moura, herself a Vale shareholder, told O Globo:
Não vamos nos calar. A empresa tem que investir tudo o que ganha na melhoria dos rios e se preocupar com vidas humanas.
We will keep speaking up. The company must invest everything they make in improving our rivers and caring about human lives.

author: Fernanda Canofre


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Despite the release of detained Reuters reporters, free speech remains under threat in Myanmar · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Two Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo walked free from Insein prison in Yangon. Photo and caption by Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy is a content partner of Global Voices.
Media groups and human rights advocates are celebrating the release of Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo who spent more than 500 days in detention for their role in investigating the massacre of some Rohingya residents in northern Myanmar. But despite their release, the state of free speech in the country is still undermined by the continued detention and persecution of some artists, journalists, and activists. Consider the following cases:
A defamation complaint was filed by the military's Yangon Region Command against The Irrawaddy's Burmese-language editor U Ye Ni over the news website's alleged unfair coverage of the armed clashes between government forces and the insurgent Arakan Army in Rakhine State. The Irrawaddy said it did nothing but report the escalating armed clashes in the region since the start of 2019. Here is U Ye Ni’s response to the case filed by the military:
I feel sorry about the military’s misunderstanding of us. Journalism dictates that we reveal the suffering of people in a conflict area. Our intention behind the coverage is to push those concerned to solve the problems by understanding the sufferings of the people.
The Irrawaddy is a content partner of Global Voices.
Meanwhile, five members of the Peacock Generation Thangyat troupe were sent to Insein prison to await trial for their satirical performance mocking the army. Thangyat is performance art similar to slam poetry featuring folk verses with traditional musical notes and is combined with song, dance, and chants. The group was charged with violating article 505(a) of the penal code which criminalizes the circulation of statements, rumors, or reports with the intent to cause any military officer to disregard or fail in his duties.
Zeyar Lwin, one of the accused, said:
All of our cases are political issues so that they need to resolve them as political issues. And also, I’d like to say all of us need to join the work for amending the 2008 constitution being done in parliament. In my opinion all of these issues can be resolved if we can do the primary work of amending the constitution.
Zeyar Lwin is referring to the 2008 constitution which many analysts believe was designed to reinforce military rule even after the restoration of civilian leadership.
The case of filmmaker Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi also reflects the restrictions imposed on critical artists. A complaint filed by a military officer against the filmmaker's ‘defamatory’ Facebook posts led to his arrest. Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi is the founder of the Myanmar Human Rights Human Dignity Film Festival and a known critic of the military's involvement in politics. His supporters are calling for his release on humanitarian grounds, since he has had half of his liver removed due to cancer and suffers from heart and kidney problems. The Human Rights Film Network, a partnership of 40 human rights film festivals around the world, sent this letter to the government:
As a concerned international human rights community, we seek reassurance from the Myanmar government to ensure that Section66(d), which was meant to enhance progress of telecommunications, will not be used to silence the voice of Myanmarese civilians seeking to voice their opinions and take part in the democratic process in Myanmar.
The letter refers to the controversial Section 66(d) defamation law which has been used by authorities to charge critics, activists, and journalists.
Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi's petition for bail was rejected by a local court. His next hearing is scheduled for May 9, 2019.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were sentenced to seven years in prison for violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The Supreme Court upheld their conviction last April with finality but they were released from prison after they were granted a presidential pardon during the country’s traditional New Year.
Groups like the Southeast Asian Press Alliance welcomed the release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo but they also highlighted the injustice suffered by the two reporters:
They should never have been jailed in the first place, because they committed no crime.
While we welcome this positive development, the case of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo is proof that journalists are in constant risk of political reprisal for keeping power in check.

author: Mong Palatino


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Mauritanian blogger escaped the death penalty, but remains behind bars · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

Ould Mkhaitir was sentenced to death in 2014 over an opinion piece published online.
Despite having his death sentence commuted more than a year ago, Mauritanian blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir is still in prison.
Ould Mkhaitir was sentenced to death in 2014 over an opinion article published on the website of the newspaper Aqlame. In the article, entitled “Religion, Religiosity and Craftsmen”, Ould Mkhaitir criticised the role of religion in Mauritania’s caste system, using stories from the lifetime of prophet Muhammad to support his argument. The original article has since been taken down by Aqlame, but is still available online.
A court convicted him of “apostasy” and sentenced him to death under Article 306 of the Mauritanian Penal Code.
In April 2016, a court of appeal upheld his sentence and referred his case to the Supreme Court, which then returned it to the appeal court for ”procedural irregularities”. In November 2017 his death sentence was commuted and reduced to two years in jail and a fine by the court of appeal. However, despite having already served more than two years in prison, the authorities did not release Ould Mkhaitir. Almost 18 months after the appeal court's decision to release him, he remains behind bars.
On April 24, 2019 Mauritania's justice minister said that Mkhaitir was in “temporary detention” and that “only the Supreme Court can rule on his fate.”
Article 306 of the Penal Code previously provided that if the convicted person “repents” before his or her execution, the Mauritanian Supreme Court could commute the death sentence to a jail sentence of between three months and two years, and a fine.
But in April 2018, the Mauritanian National Assembly passed a law making the death penalty mandatory for anyone convicted of “blasphemous speech” and acts deemed “sacrilegious.”
“The timing of the enactment of the law just a few months after the court of appeal ordered Mkhaïtir’s release appears to be related to his case,” Human Rights Watch said in November 2018.
Critiques of racism and the caste system are taboo in Mauritania, and have spurred many political and legal threats against journalists and activists in recent years. In 1981, Mauritania became the last country on earth to officially abolish slavery, and only criminalized the practice in 2007. But since that time, UN officials and human rights workers have documented evidence that thousands of people, many of them ethnic Haratines of black African origin, are still enslaved, living in situations of forced labour, or otherwise facing caste-based discrimination.
The Mauritanian government denies that slavery still exists in the country, and many people like Ould Mkhaitir, who speak out against the practice and discrimination against Haratines, have been jailed and prosecuted. Last September, authorities jailed and charged activist Abdallahi Salem Ould Yali with incitement to violence and racial hatred for posting messages in WhatsApp group denouncing the plight and the marginalisation of his community.

author: Afef Abrougui


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Mozambican journalists are released pending trial, after months in detention · Global Voices
Alexandre Nhampossa

The journalist Amade Abubacar. Photo: Screengrab, caiccajuda/Youtube.
Journalists Amade Abubacar and Germano Adriano, who were detained earlier this year while covering the military conflict in northern Mozambique, were released pending trial on 23 April, 2019.
Amade, who contributes to various local media outlets including Zitamar News and A Carta, was detained on 5 January while he interviewed internally displaced people in the Macomia district of Cabo Delgado, a northern province of the country. Germano, a reporter for the local community radio Nacedje, disappeared on 6 February and was found to have been detained on 18 February.
According to the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Amade and Germano were charged with “spreading defamatory messages against members of the Mozambican Armed Defence Forces via a Facebook account that announced attacks which occurred in villages in the district of Macomia.”
The journalists were released from the provincial jail of Mieze in Pemba, Cabo Delgado’s capital, and will be on probation as they await trial before the provincial judicial court of Cabo Delgado. Their first hearing is scheduled for 17 May.
Since 2017, groups armed with knives have carried out attacks on villages in Cabo Delgado, burning houses and decapitating residents. More than 90 people have died since the attacks began, according to the police. To date, no group has publicly claimed responsibility for the attacks.
In December 2018, the newspaper A Carta de Moçambique revealed the existence of a Facebook page, run under a name that appears to have been falsified, that praised the armed groups’ attacks in Cabo Delgado.
It unknown whether or not the accusations against Amade and Germano are concerning this same page. The journalists’ defence team says there is no connection between them and any illegal activity via Facebook.
The proceedings against the journalists have been marked by irregularities. After detaining Amade, the police placed him in military custody. He was put in a military prison, where he spent 12 days incommunicado before being transferred to a civilian prison.
The journalists were only charged on 16 April, violating the deadline of 90 days set out in the Mozambican Law of Pre-trial Detention in the case of Abubacar.
In court proceedings during their pre-trial detention, both journalists were accused of “crimes of violating state secrets through digital means and public incitement to a crime using digital means.” These accusations differ from the formal charges that have now been filed against them, which MISA described as “spreading defamatory messages against members of the Mozambican Armed Defence Forces via a Facebook account that announced attacks which occurred in villages in the district of Macomia.”
During the 106 days he spent in prison, Abubacar faced a lack of food and refusal of medical assistance, according to Amnesty International. His family told the newspaper @Verdade that they were stopped from visiting him during the whole time that Abubacar was in custody.
What has happened to these journalists may be part of a trend of intimidation against media workers in northern Mozambique. Independent investigative journalist Estácio Valoi was detained in December 2018, also in Cabo Delgado on legally dubious terms. He was later released, without any charge, but his work equipment remains in the army’s custody.
Cídia Chissungo, an activist and organiser of the #FreeAmade campaign, celebrated the news:
#AmadeAbubacar and #GeramanoAdriano are finally FREE
after almost 4 months detained.
Ofcourse we have to celebrate but we won't forget how everything started. We said a long time ago:
Journalism is not a crime
Thanks for your hands#FreeAmade #CaboDelgado #HandsForJustice pic.twitter.com/Lhb0b1ALCi
— Cídia Chissungo (@Cidiachissungo) 23 avril 2019
Angela Quintal, coordinator of the Africa Program for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), commented:
Now to ensure charges are actually dropped and that #AmadeAbubacar can continue with his journalism without fear of reprisal. The fact that he had to endure detention without trial for 106 days before getting bail is unconscionable. He should not be facing trial at all! https://t.co/kA2bV4D4KB
— Angela Quintal (@angelaquintal) 23 avril 2019

author: Alexandre Nhampossa


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Is Stella Nyanzi ‘weaponizing the vagina’? Ugandan feminist goes to court in free speech case · Global Voices
Amanda Lichtenstein

Dr. Stella Nyanzi. Photo via Flickr / Chapter Four Uganda / Human Rights Convention, 2018 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Professor Stella Nyanzi was back in court on May 9, in a case in which the Ugandan government claims the word vagina is lewd and offensive.
It shall not be forgotten! State violence against Stella! #FreeStellaNyanzi#PushforStellaNyanzi ✊?✊? https://t.co/DMU3xPMoZ1
— Rosebell Kagumire ♉ (@RosebellK) May 9, 2019
Nyanzi, 43, was arrested in November 2018 after writing a poem critical of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and posting it to her Facebook page. The poem asserts that Uganda would have been better off had Museveni died at birth and includes several vulgar descriptions of the vagina and clitoris of Museveni’s deceased mother.  Nyanzi's Facebook page currently has 207,895 followers.
The state says Nyanzi intentionally harassed and humiliated the president with her poem and has charged her with violating the Computer Misuse Act sections on cyber harassment and “obscene, lewd, lascivious or indecent” content production. Although Uganda's law does not indicate special provisions for criticism of the president, international free expression doctrine recommends increased protections for critical speech targeting government officials.
Nyanzi has remained at Luzira prison in Kampala, the capital, for over 180 days. Although she was offered released on bail, she rejected it, stating that her freedom would only be an illusion with the case still pending. She faces a one-year prison sentence if convicted.
The “vagina case” has dragged on for months as the court delayed several hearings. The May 9 court session includes a cross-examination with Assistant Superintendent of Police Bill Ndyamuhaki, the main witness in the case, who also testified in a hearing on March 20, 2019:
Mr. Ndyamuhaki says he finds the lines he has read out offensive in nature and lewd. He is asked why. He says that he finds the content offensive because it is sexual. Says it is sexual because it refers to sexual parts which is offensive to any reasonable member of society.
— #PushForStellaNyanzi (@bwesigye) March 20, 2019
In the packed courtroom, the judge offered Nyanzi a seat but when it came with a comment about how it might be too much for her as a woman to stand, she decided to “stand for the women” as described in this tweet:
Magistrate Kamasanyu offers Stella a seat, says as a woman it may be too much for her to keep standing. Stella is about to take the seat then refuses it after hearing the comment about her being a woman. She announces that she'll stand for the women#PushforStellaNyanzi
— #PushForStellaNyanzi (@bwesigye) May 9, 2019
The entire timeline of Nyanzi's online behavior was projected on a large screen in court to discuss each of the posts in question, including the “vagina” poem. Writer and lawyer Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire has been tweeting updates on the case:
Stella Nyanzi's timeline is projected on the court big screens so that ASP Bill Dickson Ndyamuhaki can identify the posts he investigated and ascertained were made by the prisoner. #PushforStellaNyanzi #FreeStellaNyanzi #DroptheCharges
— #PushForStellaNyanzi (@bwesigye) May 9, 2019
Still, there is no closure and the case was adjourned again until May 13.
Derrick Bazekuketta concludes his part of the cross examination. The case is adjourned to May 13, 2019 when Isaac Ssemakadde will cross examine prosecution witness number one: ASP Bill Dickson Ndyamuhaki. #PushforStellaNyanzi #FreeStellaNyanzi #DroptheCharges
— #PushForStellaNyanzi (@bwesigye) May 9, 2019
Stella Nyanzi has worked as a professor of medical anthropology at Makerere Institute for Social Research with a focus on gender and sexuality. As a queer poet and scholar, she uses metaphors and strong language in her messages on human rights, freedom of expression and queer feminism.
Known for her “radical rudeness” and penchant for challenging power through insult, Nyanzi has been arrested on other occasions, also for insulting the president. These tactics follow a long history of social activism in Uganda dating back to the 1940s under British colonial rule. Ugandan activists intentionally critiqued colonial order through deliberate, disorderly, obnoxious rudeness as a way to attack and disrupt British social norms.
In 2017, Nyanzi faced similar charges in what is known as the “pair of buttocks” case, when she called the president these words and also targeted his wife for being “empty brained.”
That is what buttocks do. They shake, jiggle, shit and fart. Museveni is just another pair of buttocks … Ugandans should be shocked that we allowed these buttocks to continue leading our country.
Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, failed to deliver on a campaign promise to provide sanitary pads to all schoolgirls before the 2016 elections. Nyanzi critiqued this and other development failures under Museveni's leadership through her viral rhetoric on social media.
Nyanzi was soon arrested for the “pair of buttocks” comment and spent one month in prison, prompting the hashtag #FreeStellaNyanzi, which is still trending on Twitter, along with #PushforStellaNyanzi. The case was adjourned on April 24, 2019, with a constitutional petition pending.
According to The Guardian:
Nyanzi describes herself as ‘a lyricist, poetess, creative writer and analyst’ on a quest for good governance. She’s unflinching in her criticism of government and is unafraid to tackle taboos around sex and gender and stand up for LGBT rights.
Hashtags like #weaponizethevagina and massive support from human rights and free speech activists keep Nyanzi hopeful, vocal and resolute, but her health has suffered and she has lost her job at Makerere University as a result of her activism. Radical rudeness can take its toll even on the fiercest of activists in the fight against poverty and oppression.
In the words of one Ugandan netizen:
Stella Nyanzi committed no offence, her offence was only that she said what everyone else sees. Now the courts are being used to oppress her. Magistrate judges no longer have conscious.
— Jonah Mulindwa (@JonahNow) May 9, 2019

author: Amanda Lichtenstein


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The police were the ‘surprise guests’ at a fundraiser at Budapest’s Auróra community center · Global Voices
Atlatszo.hu

Hungarian police during their visit in Auróra, Budapest. Photo by Atlatszo, CC BY-NC-SA 2.5.
This story was published in Hungarian and English by the Hungarian investigative journalism non-profit, Atlatszo. This edited version appears here as part of a partnership with Global Voices.
Atlatszo is a media and transparency organization in Budapest that rents office space at the Auróra Community Center, a space that hosts volunteer groups and organizations working on community and art-based practices of activism. The following is a brief account of a recent event held at Auróra, by Atlatszo staff members.
On the afternoon of 27 April, we hosted a public event at Auróra, where we presented our work and answered questions from our readers who were in attendance. We broadcast the event live on Facebook. After a Q&A, there was a documentary film screening, followed by a small concert in the basement.
At 10 p.m. the police arrived. One of the guests posted a photo of them entering the space on Instagram.
Since Prime Minister Viktor Orbán took power in 2010, his right-wing populist Fidesz party has been accused of eroding democratic freedoms by controlling the media and the judiciary, as well as curbing academic freedom.
The space for work for civil society organizations, independent media and academic institutions like Auróra has been shrinking under Orbán's increasingly authoritarian government.
Auróra is located in the 8th district of Budapest, which is led by a mayor from the governing Fidesz party. The local council is also dominated by Fidesz.
The municipality has been trying to shut Auróra down for years. Two years ago they tried to shut it down because small amounts of marijuana were found on some of the guests. Last year they tried to close Auróra because of an inconsistency in dates listed on two official documents (the lease and the founding document).
The district even contacted the owner of the house and offered to buy it, in another effort to shut the community center down.
Citing complaints from local citizens, the district clerk ordered the Auróra bar, called Kioszk, to be closed at 10 p.m. every night. The police and the clerk have checked several times since then to confirm that the bar really closes at 10 p.m. The latest check took place during Atlatszo’s fundraising party on Saturday.
Zsuzsa Mekler, a manager of Auróra noted:
Az önkormányzattól jöttek ellenőrizni, a rendőrség csak kísérte őket. Azt ellenőrzik, hogy bezárt-e a kioszk, felvesznek egy jegyzőkönyvet arról, hogy mit látnak a házban. Számos alkalommal volt már ilyen, eddig egyszer sem találtak semmilyen szabálytalanságot, ami miatt eljárást lehetett volna indítani.
The municipality sent people to check on us, the police only accompanied them. They check whether the bar is closed and they write a report on what they see in the house. They have done this several times already but never found anything that could have prompted them to start official proceedings.
Some of the guests complained that they felt like “they were back in the 1980s” when the governing party used the police to harass the people at “inconvenient-looking” events.
Read more about Auróra and the attacks against it in this CNN report.


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How the word ‘gender’ became a slur in Bulgaria · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Bulgarian newspapers using the word ‘gender’ (джендър) in different ways: a derogatory sense, by the tabloid Telegraf, and in a sarcastic sense, by Pras Pres. Photo by Global Voices, CC-BY.
“Charlize Theron is raising her child as a gender,” states a headline in the April 20 print edition of the Bulgarian tabloid Telegraf, pictured above. “A gender enraged athletes,” says the title of a story by Classa.bg about a transsexual weightlifter, also seen above.
Such is the way the English term gender, in its direct transliteration (джендър), is being used in Bulgaria: to belittle sexual minorities and gender nonconforming people. Often, the term is also used to degrade feminists and human rights defenders.
Когато слушаш нещо българско и някой спомене думата “джендър” по оня начин и ти седиш и се чудиш дали е сериозно или саркастично.
— Mi. (главно мрънкало) (@mirelatheadult) May 4, 2019
When you hear something in Bulgarian language and someone mentions the word “gender” as such and you wonder whether they mean it seriously or are sarcastic.
An article on the April 17 edition of local satirical magazine Pras Pres by Emil L. Georgiev, titled “The gender doesn't surrender [and] the fight continues” (Джендърът не се предава но борбата продължава), addressed this recent use of the word.
Do you fear “the gender,” that dangerously naughty, multi-sexual, anti-constitutional boogeyman with Western European origins, born in Istanbul? He was sent to our country with a subversive mission to sneak into the beds of healthy Bulgarian families at night, and to destroy them in the most abnormal manner. It is horrible, but the healthy forces, represented by the presidency, Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian Socialist Party, larger part of the Constitutional Court, and tens of patriotic and religious organizations and foundations, so far has managed to restrain it – to a degree. Because “the gender” doesn't give up so easily.
In the 1990s, Bulgarian feminists pushed for the use the existing Bulgarian term for gender (род) instead of the English transliteration, but it seems that the latter, with its demeaning connotation, has taken root in the media and society at large. The transliterated term even titles the “gender” entry in Bulgaria's Wikipedia.
Indeed, the use of the term in this way reflects rising homophobia and transphobia in Bulgaria, along with the country's sharply deteriorating records in the treatment of LGBTQ+ populations and in respect for human rights in general — all spearheaded by nationalist formations that have joined the ruling coalition in 2017. Since then, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov of the center-right party GERB has cozied up with three extreme right-wing nationalist parties who call themselves United Patriots. Their platforms are a mix of national and social conservatism, right-wing populism, euroscepticism, anti-globalism, Islamophobia, and Russophilia.
According to the article on Pras Pres, anti-gay caricatures were featured at the 44th National Exhibition of Caricatures, a show that opened on April 1 in the capital Sofia. The same month, officials of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the right-wing VMRO BND party (a member of the United Patriots) attempted to shut down a photo exhibition named “Balkan Pride” in the city of Plovdiv, which is co-hosting the 2019 edition of the European capital of culture along with Matera in Italy. They've demanded the city council fired Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva as artistic director of the public foundation behind the festival, but they've failed — on April 8, she said in a TV interview the exhibition will take place as planned.
But what's perhaps most representative of Bulgaria's rising homophobia is its refusal to adopt the principles of the Istanbul Convention into law. The Istanbul Convention is the “Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence” and was signed by 46 European countries, including Bulgaria, in 2011. In 2018, the Bulgarian Constitutional Court ruled by 8 to 4 vote that the convention's principles were unconstitutional because its definition of “gender” as a social construct “relativizes the borderline between the two sexes – male and female as biologically determined.”
At its 2018 Annual Report, the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, the oldest human rights organization in the country, has noted the societal effects of the Constitutional Court's ruling:
Една от целите на мащабната кампания против Истанбулската конвенция бе изключването на защитата както от домашно насилие, така и от основано на пола насилие, която ратификацията на конвенцията би дала на нехетеросексуалните и трансджендър жените и мъжете. Страничен и неочакван ефект на това бе и произнасянето на Конституционния съд, че евентуален бъдещ закон, въвеждащ процедура за промяна на пола в личните документи на трансджендър лица, би бил противоконституционен – извод, който няма опора в Конституцията.
One of the goals of the large-scale campaign against the Istanbul Convention was the exclusion of protection from both domestic violence and violence based on sexual orientation which the ratification of the Convention would give to non-heterosexual and transgender people. A strange and unexpected effect of this was the ruling of the Constitutional Court that a possible future law introducing a procedure for gender change in the personal documents of transgender persons would be unconstitutional – a conclusion that has no support in the Constitution.
Presentation of the 2018 Annual Report by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee in Sofia, April 23, 2019. Photo by BHC, CC-BY.
The report also notes that, during the second half of 2018, there were several changes in legislation that affected freedoms of expression, assembly, and religion, safety of women, and rights of LGBT people, Roma, refugees, as well as people confined within psychiatric or other interment institutions.
In the end, the term gender in its derogatory effect merely joined a wider repertoire of hateful words used against proponents of human rights and civil society activists.
Another such term is “liberasti” (либерасти), a combination of the Bulgarian equivalents of the words “liberal” and “pederast,” or “Sorosoidi” (Соросоиди),  a derogatory term (which might have originated in North Macedonia) applied to anyone allegedly connected to US philanthropist George Soros.

author: Filip Stojanovski


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In India, Rooh Afza lovers rejoice as the drink returns to shelves in time for Ramadan · Global Voices
Rezwan

Rooh Afza Syrup (Lal sharbat). Image via Wikipedia by Miansari66. Public Domain.
As followers of the Islamic faith begin to observe Ramadan this May, the many beloved foods and drinks consumed by the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent during this month are worth noting. One of the common drinks in many Muslim houses in this region is a concentrated herbal squash called Rooh Afza (Soul Enhancer). However, as this year's Ramadan drew near, Rooh Afza lovers in India were faced with an unprecedented crisis — the syrup (made by Hamdard Laboratories) had been off the shelves for months and was unavailable across the country.
#ramzan without #roohafza at iftaar is unimaginable. My 8 years old has been looking around for it for the past 3 days in all shops. Seems there is shortage of supply #hamdard ?@roohafzaindia
— Anisa Draboo (@Drabooanisa) May 7, 2019
This complete summer till now I had been looking for #RoohAfza in almost all markets near me. It's not available locally anywhere. Ramzan started now, but #RoohAfza is out since the start of this summer. So let's not make it #Muslim drink.. it's a drink of India in summer. https://t.co/bow1zVuL6O
— ??मैं भी चौकिदार सा? (@pagal_panthi) May 8, 2019
As a herbal concoction to beat the heat, the drink was first formulated in 1906 by Hakim Mohammed Kabiruddin, a physician of Unani herbal medicine in Ghaziabad, British India, and was later launched by Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed from Old Delhi, India.
In 1907, #HakeemAbdulMajeed launched a non alcohoalic medicinal concentrate called ‘Rooh Afza’ (Soul Enhancer) to combat Delhi’s hot loo winds.
Soon #RoohAfza became one of the most iconic delicacies of Delhi along with Nihari and Bedami poori.#RoohAfzaGO https://t.co/7qBjovy28V
— Heritage Times (@HeritageTimesIN) May 8, 2019
Rooh Afza is commonly associated with the month of Ramadan, in which it is usually consumed during iftar (breaking the fast). It is sold commercially as a syrup to flavor sherbets, cold milk drinks, iced waters, and cold desserts. Around 20 million bottles are produced per year in India alone.
Thirst quencher! #RoohAfza #Ramzan2019 pic.twitter.com/LQbbIZqtdC
— M E H R E E N (@MehreenTweets) May 8, 2019
After the partition of India until now, Rooh Afza has been manufactured by the companies founded by Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed and his sons which spread throughout India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Mayank Austen Sufi writes in LiveMint:
Exoticizing itself as the “Summer drink of the East”, Rooh Afza in Pakistan tastes exactly the same as its Indian counterpart. After East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, the property in Dhaka was transferred to a local entrepreneur, who carried on the legacy that began in Old Delhi’s Lal Kuan.
The company is allegedly undergoing a management dispute which potentially contributed to the Indian Rooh Afza shortage crisis. Shivam VJ writes in the online newspaper the Print.in:
The dispute is over the chair of Chief Mutawalli (equivalent to CEO) of Hamdard, which is currently held by Abdul Majeed, the great-grandson of Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed, the Unani medicine practitioner who founded the company in old Delhi over a century ago. The company also owns traditional medicine brands such as Safi, Cinkara, Masturin and Joshina.
Abdul Majeed’s cousin Hammad Ahmed has been trying to take over the company, claiming rightful inheritance. He even went to court for it, and the legal battle put a stop to the production of RoohAfza.
The Rooh Afza shortage brought more attention after Hamdard Laboratories Pakistan offered to supply Rooh Afza to India during the Ramadan period.
Usama Qureshi, MD, and CEO of Hamdard Pakistan tweeted:
Brother @DilliDurAst, we can supply #RoohAfza and #RoohAfzaGO to India during this Ramzan. We can easily send trucks through Wahga border if permitted by Indian Government.
— Usama Qureshi (@UsamaQureshy) May 7, 2019
The Hamdard Laboratories in India, however, refuted the media reports about the management dispute and blamed a shortage of ingredients as the reason for product unavailability. As per the latest report, the company mentioned that the product is now available again.
#RoohAfza-maker #HamdardLaboratories India said, its popular drink is now available in the market after a temporary shortage due to short supply of certain herbal ingredients pic.twitter.com/MI2le6lgqs
— ET NOW (@ETNOWlive) May 9, 2019
And citizens rejoiced the comeback:
113 yrs old देश की शान , हमदर्द वालो का सबसे popular शर्बत #RoohAfza is Back after 6 months…cheers ?? pic.twitter.com/4yJ4iFjVU7
— Pawan Gogna (@pgogna) May 9, 2019
113 yrs old Pride of the country, the most popular herbal drink of Hamdard #RoohAfza is Back after 6 months…cheers ??

author: Rezwan


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Tencent’s new game shows how censorship rules are implemented in China · Global Voices
The Stand News

Screen captures from Game for Peace. The killed character would wave goodbye and blood was replaced with a spark of light. Image from Stand News.
A Chinese language version of this report was published on the Stand News on 8 of May 2019.
On May 8, China internet giant Tencent released a new mobile game entitled “Game for Peace” （和平精英） on Weibo.
On the same day, the original version of the game, “Player Unknown Battlegrounds”（PUBG 絕地求生）, a web-based multiplayer battle royale game, was removed from the app store, after it was denied a commercial game license.
In 2017, Tencent had successfully obtained the right to release PUBG which was published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole in China. But the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) criticized the combat game for violating the “socialist core value” and harming youth.
In March 2018, regulators decided to stop issuing commercial operating licenses for all online and mobile games, effectively preventing most games from making a profit in the Chinese market. Some of these games, like PUBG, were released in non-commercial beta versions while waiting for their licenses to be approved.
Regulators began issuing game licenses again last month, and also introduced a new set of rules, which demand that all online and mobile games be aligned with socialist core values. The rules also prohibit the following types of content from all games available to players in mainland China:
The new regulation also compels game publishers to promote Chinese values, culture and images through their games.
The newly released “Game for Peace,” effectively a censored version of PUBG, is obviously in alignment with the new rules. It is a relatively positive game emphasizing peace, it is much less violent than its predecessor, and what would normally be blood now appears as a spark of light. The word “Killed” （擊殺）has been replaced with the word “Out” (淘汰）. Once a player has been shot, instead of becoming a corpse covered with blood, the character waves his or her hand, signalling a friendly farewell.
The “Game for Peace” had already obtained its commercial operating license and Tencent stressed that the game's plot would focus on the theme of “anti-terrorist competition”.

author: The Stand News


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Netizen Report: Widespread throttling puts social media out of reach in Kazakhstan · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Almaty, Kazakhstan at night. Photo by Ребров Олег via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
The Advox Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in technology and human rights around the world. This report covers news and events from April  26 – May 10, 2019.
Kazakhstani netizens had virtually no access to major social media platforms or messaging services from May 7 to 9, according to local media reports and testimonies of internet users.
Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube were the platforms most heavily affected by what appears to have been a nationwide wave of “throttling”, a practice that slows users’ access to specific services, to the point that it becomes impossible to reach them.
The timing of the throttling wave appears to be intentional, as Kazakhstani political opposition leaders announced planned demonstrations for May 9, a national holiday in Kazakhstan marking the end of World War II.
On May 6, a young Kazakhstani man was arrested after he stood in a public square, holding up a blank sheet of paper. Police released him shortly thereafter. The man later wrote in a comment, “I have just put our authorities’ absurdity and insanity under [the] spotlight.” News of his ordeal prompted Kazakhstanis to post photos of themselves holding blank signs on social media.
The throttling of websites and services, alongside this peculiar act of intimidation by police, underline the ruling government’s deep discomfort with public acts of free speech, whether online or off.
Kazakhstan is undergoing an unprecedented political transition as former president Nursultan Nazarbayev announced on March 19 he would step down after almost three decades of undisputed rule. New elections are scheduled to take place in April 2020, leading to a renewal of political activism from the opposition as well as from civic activists.
Officials in Sri Lanka officially lifted a nationwide ban on major social media services on April 30. On April 22, within hours of the bombings that killed hundreds of people at churches and hotels in and near the capital, authorities blocked Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Viber, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger. Reactions to the move were mixed, with many expressing frustration with both the government and social media platforms, which have proven inept at controlling the spread of violent speech and disinformation in times of public emergency.
Ugandan scholar and feminist activist Stella Nyanzi appeared in court on May 9 on charges of violating the Computer Misuse Act sections on cyber harassment and “obscene, lewd, lascivious or indecent” content production. At issue is a poem that Nyanzi published on Facebook, where she has more than 207K followers. The poem asserts that Uganda would have been better off if President Museveni had died at birth and includes several vulgar descriptions of the vagina and clitoris of Museveni’s deceased mother. As such, media have come to refer to Nyanzi’s as the “vagina case.”
Nyanzi, who is known for her radical activism on issues of gender and sexuality, is an outspoken advocate for girls’ education. She was arrested on similar charges in 2017, after she compared Museveni to a “pair of buttocks” on her Facebook page.
American CIA agents paid an impromptu visit to the Palestinian-born blogger and social media critic Iyad el-Baghdadi last week at his home in Norway, where he has political asylum. The agents warned him that he had become a possible target of the Saudi Arabian government. El-Baghdadi has criticized the kingdom’s human rights record, and spoke out forcefully after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in October 2018.
El-Baghdadi is a well-known online advocate for human rights and democracy in the Arab region. His blog became hugely popular in 2011, due to his coverage and commentary on the uprisings across the region.
The person behind StalinGulag, an immensely popular Russian-language Telegram channel and Twitter account known for acerbic, profanity-laden critiques of Russia's political system, recently revealed his true identity in an interview with BBC Russian.
Alexander Gorbunov, a 27-year-old Moscow resident, had been outed prior to the interview, by a different media outlet, RBC. After many months of attempting to disaggregate the two identities in the public imagination, Gorbunov came forward. In an interview with BBC, followers learned that Gorbunov is wheelchair-bound and suffering from a chronic, rapidly progressing condition known as Werdnig-Hoffman disease, the most severe type of spinal muscular atrophy. A bitter debate about the ethics of revealing Gorbunov’s identity has since ensued among local journalists.
After Venezuelan opposition leaders launched what they call the “definitive phase” of a transfer of power from the government of Nicolas Maduro to the opposition leadership of Juan Guaidó (which has yet to take place), major social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube became inaccessible, while broadcast connections for both CNN and BBC were cut off altogether.
Internet censorship research group NetBlocks reported that services were restored 20 minutes prior to Nicolás Maduro's streamed speech on May 1.
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Alexey Kovalev, Amanda Lichtenstein, Filip Noubel, Taisa Sganzerla and Laura Vidal contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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The road signs that stirred up Albania-Greece relations yet again · Global Voices
Ardi Pulaj

Roads signs in the south of Albania, with the Greek language coming first followed by Albanian. Photo: Protothema. Fair use.
On May 5, Albanian authorities removed 35 road signs in Greek and Albanian languages located in the south of the country, provoking controversy about national sovereignty and Albania's Greek minority.
The Albanian Road Authority (ARA) has stated that the road placards didn't meet safety norms nor respected legislation regulating the order, size, and font in which Albanian and minority languages should be displayed. The road signs in question showed the Greek words first, in yellow, followed by Albanian.
Albania has a Greek minority comprised of 0.9 percent of its 2,94 million-strong population, mostly living in an area of 5,000 square kilometers in the south, near the border with Greece. Greek is an official language in municipalities where that ethnic population exceeds 20 percent, and road signs in both languages in such areas aren't uncommon.
This time, however, many took issue with the bilingual signs. A Twitter user in Albania said:
Ndërsa politika Shqiptare e përçare dhe e korruptuar po destabilizon vendin, Shovinistët Grekë vazhdojnë planin e asimilimit të Jugut. Skandali me tabelat në gjuhën Greke… https://t.co/A3c12IQMJQ
— Everest Haxhi (@everesthaxhi) May 3, 2019
As the divided and corrupt Albanian politics destabilizes the country, the Greek chauvinists continue with their plan to assimilate the south (of Albania). A true scandal with the road sings in Greek.
There were reactions on the other side of the border, too:
@GreeceMFA @HellenicLeaders @Zemenides @HellenicCouncil @TheAHlinDC @mignatiou @OrderOfAHEPA @Greek_Genocide   Albania must stop the multiple illegal acts against the Greek minority. With such actions they will never enter the European Union. https://t.co/tReMUDCQO4
— Κυναίγειρος (@kynegeiros) May 6, 2019
Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama endorsed ARA's statement about the signs not meeting road safety regulations. He added that the operation was not aimed at the Greek community and criticized nationalist rhetoric around to the issue.
I would like to say to all of those who play the ultra-nationalist, raising the alarm about road signs written in Greek in an area where the Greek minority lives, that we’re a European country and, when we talk about Europe, we talk about this too.
In Greece, foreign minister George Katrougalos also considered the matter to be technical rather than political. He said on a radio interview on May 6:
The new road signs with the Albanian language at the top and Greek below were put up on May 7. Photo: Vizion Plus TV. Fair use
Είμαστε σε επικοινωνία, μέσω της εκεί Πρεσβείας μας, για να δούμε τι γίνεται. Έχουν προβάλλει ορισμένους ισχυρισμούς ότι οι δίγλωσσες πινακίδες στην Αλβανία πρέπει να έχουν πρώτα την αλβανική γλώσσα, μετά την ελληνική, ορισμένα θέματα αρμοδιότητας. Εμείς προφανώς έχουμε προειδοποιήσει ότι οποιαδήποτε κίνηση, η οποία θα φανεί ότι είναι εναντίον των συμφερόντων της μειονότητάς μας, θα αντιμετωπιστεί με τον τρόπο που προβλέπει το διεθνές Δίκαιο.
We are in contact, through our embassy, to see what happens. They have argued that the bilingual signs in Albania must first have the Albanian language, and then Greek. We obviously have warned that any move that appears to be against the interests of our minority will be dealt according to the international law.
In an interview with the Independent Balkan News Agency, the former rector of the University of Tirana and dean of the Albanian Language faculty Shezai Rrokaj said the Albanian language should come first and Greek second. He says: “Minority languages should be used locally and they cannot act as a primary language.”
On May 7, the ARA began to put up new road signs in the area with Albanian language at the top.
The news has traveled fast — this Twitter user shared it with fellow Greek language speakers on the same day:
Albania to reinstate bilingual Greek/Albanian roadsigns in the Finiq/Φοινίκη areahttps://t.co/DILnv3Fa1n
— Alex Rawlings (@alex__rawlings) May 7, 2019
Albania and Greece have a friendship agreement, and about 600,000 Albanians have immigrated to Greece over the past three decades. Still, the two governments have struggled to put an end to a few issues — such as the rights of Albanians expelled by Greek nationalists at the end of the World War II (in what is known as the Cham issue), or the rights of the Greek minority living in Albania.
In 2016, Albania agreed to allow Greece to build cemeteries on Albanian territory for its soldiers who died in that country during World War II. It also approved a law that made Greek a second official language in some Albanian municipalities.
Meanwhile, Greece refuses to acknowledge the Cham issue. Negotiations on maritime borders between the two countries are also stalled.
Road sign in Macedonian, English and Albanian language in the center of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. In one of them, the Albanian text was tarnished by black paint spray. Photo by Global Voices, CC-BY.
Language politics aren't uncommon in the Balkans, especially when current events unearth painful experiences from the past.
In January 2018, North Macedonia's parliament expanded the use of Albanian language to the whole country under virulent protests by the right-wing, former ruling party VMRO-DPMNE, who professed slogans such as “no to bilingualism” and “this is our red line.” The 2018 provision is an expansion of a 2008 law, which in turn is based on the Ohrid Agreement, the peace deal that ended the 2001 armed conflict, which allowed official use of Albanian and other languages spoken by more than 20 percent of the local population at municipal level.
Sporadic acts of nationalistic-inspired vandalism still happen, such as the one displayed on the photo on the side, of a road sign in the center of the capital Skopje, where words in Albanian language have been tarnished with spray paint.

author: Ardi Pulaj


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Looking back at Feral Tribune, Croatia’s doomed but legendary satirical newspaper · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

The infamous Feral Tribune front pages with Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milošević from 1993; a 1995 version with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic. Photo courtesy by Lupiga and Leo Niikolic, via BIRN.
Balkan Insight has published a two-part series of articles about the history of Feral Tribune, a Croatian magazine that combined satire and investigative reporting to stand up to corruption and promote human rights during the turbulent years of war in former Yugoslavia.
Founded in 1993 by a group of rebellious young journalists working to speak truth to power under the repressive regime of Franjo Tudjman, Feral Tribune achieved legendary status across the region at a time when the press was generally expected to perform “patriotic” self-censorship in the service of nationalist political agendas.
But direct and indirect pressure from the government, including a hostile takeover of their initial publishing house by government cronies, and then a host of lawsuits and legal fees, caused the newspaper to lose its advertisers. It was ultimately forced to close down in 2008.
15 years after it closed, Croatia's most famous satirical magazine, the ‘Feral Tribune’ remains a symbol of independent journalism.
This is the story of how this legendary anti-establishment outlet went up against Croatia's 1990s regime: https://t.co/ZZCD0nGY5M pic.twitter.com/c0QJ467mZV
— Balkan TJ (BIRN) (@BIRN_BTJ) July 2, 2018
The first part of the series explains the origins of Feral Tribune in the coastal city of Split, and how it achieved impact through uncompromising reporting from the field, shining light on the war crimes committed by people on all sides of the wars in Yugoslavia, and featuring front page caricatures that ridiculed the nationalist leaders of their own and neighboring countries.
When the photo montages (above) were published, presenting the macho leaders of belligerent Croatia and Serbia, and later also Bosnia, lying in bed and embracing each other, they caused outrage in conservative circles.
The 1993 headline read “Is this what we were fighting for?” referring to the Croatian War of Independence. The 1995 version read “Is this what we were arguing for?” referring to the Dayton Peace Agreement.
The images were intended to reflect the popular opinion that the politicians were actually colluding with one another, perpetrating the wars as a way to accumulate power and other benefits. This position was later confirmed in a ruling of the International Criminal Court.
In retaliation, the Croatian government tried to force editor-in-chief Viktor Ivančić to enlist in the army. His colleagues expressed fear that he may become a casualty of an unfortunate incident of friendly fire, publishing a front-page montage titled “Watch your back.” As explained by the publisher and journalist Boris Dežulović in this video, Croatian editors and journalists were exempt from army recruitment at that time. Under international media pressure Ivančić was released from the army soon after.
The second part of the series narrates how Croatian authorities hit back against the iconic anti-establishment magazine, crippling the satirical publication’s finances with lawsuits and taxes, and ultimately forcing it to close in 2008. This model of targeting critical media, which included intimidation of advertisers, was used repeatedly by repressive regimes across the Balkans in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2007, Global Voices documented the final days of this struggle, as well as blogger reactions.
In 2012, as editor of Feral Tribune, Ivančić received the Duško Kondor Award for Affirmation of Civil Courage. Another online resource that chronicled these events is “A Mirror of Evolving Society,” a short documentary filmed at the time, and published with English subtitles by the Bosnian educational charity Gariwo.
In the documentary, former Croatian president Stipe Mesić confirms that his predecessor Tudjman had a direct telephone line with former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević installed in his office.
I remember buying my first copy of Feral Tribune in 1993 from a newsstand in Makarska. The exact cover escapes me, but its wild look and cutting humor were splashed across every page. Brilliant all the way round. I miss Predrag Lucić. 1964-2018.https://t.co/YohGs7t1Kj
— Edin Hajdarpasic (@_edinh) January 12, 2018
Feral Tribune served as a model for independent newspapers in neighboring countries, such as Fokus from Skopje, established 1995, which faced similar challenges during the period of state capture in North Macedonia. Nevertheless, it survived and continues to use photo-montages and comics to satirize politicians.


text:
‘No votes until the road is built’: why some Goan villagers are boycotting the Indian elections · Global Voices
VideoVolunteers

Screenshot from YouTube video by VideoVolunteers.
This post was written by Grace Jolliffe and originally appeared on Video Volunteers, an award-winning international community media organisation based in India. A slightly edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.
While India is going through a major general election spread over seven phases from 11 April to 19 May 2019 in order to elect its 17th parliament (Lok Sabha), some Indian voters have taken the unusual step of boycotting the electoral process.
In Goa, a southwestern state of India, residents of a tribal hamlet in Canacona block (district subdivision), Marlem Village refused to vote on 23 April during the third phase of the general election, alleging that the government had been oblivious to the problems of their village. Their main grievance is that basic facilities, such as proper roads and water supply, have not been provided by the government.
A video by Community Correspondent Devidas Gaonkar, a member of the aboriginal shepherd tribe of Goa called Velip, documented the protests of the villagers:
In this video, Pandurang Gaonkar, a resident from Marli village, states that:
Tirwal to Marlem is a three-quilometres road stretch, which is incomplete. To date, no action has been taken by the authorities. They only make false promises, but no implementation. For this reason, we haven’t cast our votes.
The residents of Marlem have been living in this village for more than 20 years. In 1968, the Forest Department declared Marlem village part of a wildlife sanctuary. This makes the construction of roads, or any development work in this area, a rather complex issue. According to reports, an underground power cabling project for carrying electricity to the area had been initially approved, but when digging work commenced, it was soon halted following objections coming from the state Forest Department.
Another source of frustration for the local population is the absence of proper roads. One has to navigate a 2.8 km unpaved and broken road to reach the first household at Marlem from the main road. Finally, the supply of electricity and safe drinking water remain a challenge for the villagers.
Having publicly and repeatedly voiced their complaints, but failing to get any answers, the residents of Marlem, as well as residents from two other villages decided not to vote in the elections in order to draw the attention of the authorities towards their issues. “Polling officials came to talk to us, but our decision of not to vote, still stands”, added Pandurang.
Isidore Fernandes, an opposition (Indian National Congress) member of the legislative assembly of Cancona, also met the locals. After hearing the grievances he assured his support in favour of their agitation. “It is important for any government to provide road, water, and electricity to people. Till now, all government officials have neglected these facilities in Marlem Village”, stated Fernandes.
Boycotting elections is now becoming a way of protest, although voting is not mandatory in India. Apart from Goa, villages in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, the western state of  Maharashtra, and the eastern state of Odisha are employing this method in order to get pressing issues addressed by the authorities in charge.
So far, none of those boycotts seem to have translated into action on the side of government. Ultimately, voters are adopting such tactics as a show of frustration towards officials and politicians who often reach out to neglected communities only before elections, in hope of securing their votes, but fail to deliver once the elections are over.
In the end, if boycotting elections does not heed changes in society, what else can members of neglected communities do to get the attention of those supposed to hear them and take proper action?

author: VideoVolunteers