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Citizens Overwhelm Macedonia’s Election Commission With Reports of Suspicious Voters’ Registry Data · Global Voices
Goran Rizaov

Part of the protest performance called “Macedonia provides housing” organized in Skopje on February 15. Activists are holding fake IDs to represent fraud in recent election results. Photo by Vancho Dzambaski (CC BY-NC-SA).
Less then a week after the Macedonian State Election Commission (SEC) introduced a feature on their web app that allows citizens to report irregularities in the Voters’ Registry online, they are shutting it down.
In the time between the feature's publication in the beginning of the month and March 13, around 5,000 people had submitted suspicious data. The official reason for stopping the online reporting feature, according to the SEC, is because they apparently had too much work pouring in from it and not enough capacity to deal with it:
„Ова е од причина што за пристигнатите пријави е потребно време ДИК соодветно да ги обработи, да ги спореди со податоците од вкрстените проверки и да утврди кои од пријавените случаи треба да бидат предмет на теренска проверка“, велат од Комисијата во вчерашното официјално соопштение.
“It takes time for the SEC to properly analyze the reported irregularities and compare them with the cross-checked data in order to determine which cases should be subject of spot check,” the SEC said in yesterday's official statement.
The SEC is tasked with thoroughly cross-checking the Voters’ Registry with databases from 10 other institutions including the Ministry of Interior, the Public Revenue Office, the State Statistical Bureau, Employment Agency, and National Bank.
The results of the cross-checking of the registry will be discussed at a public meeting on March 16, and immediately afterward that they will start preparations for spot-checks — when SEC representatives drop by addresses where people have reported irregularities.
In its announcement of the reporting tool's shutdown, the SEC added that all citizens who want to report irregularities in the Voters’ Registry can still do it, but only in person at their offices across the country.
Election fraud has been suspected for years Macedonia. However, authorities are only now investigating allegations that government workers interfered with voting to ensure victories for the ruling party, VMRO-DPMNE, as part of an agreement to end the country's political crisis.
On March 3, the SEC published a new version of the web app, which allows users to confirm their status in the Voters’ Registry, after several weeks of it being unavailable due to security issues. Citizens soon began combing the data for phantom voters, posting evidence to social media of unknown names being registered at their homes or of dead relatives or acquaintances still being listed.
On March 9, the SEC released the new feature that allowed these citizens sleuths to report the irregularities online instead of having to do it in person. Four days later, they announced they were shuttering the tool because they were receiving too many reports.
This decision triggered fierce reactions among the online community. On Facebook, Nebojsa Gelevski, an activist and a designer from Skopje, publicly asked “What’s wrong with the SEC?!” and claimed that not even 10% of the people who want to report irregularities would actually do it in person:
Па дал се здрави бе овие од ДИК!? Наместо он лајн да пријавуваме треба да одиме по тешко збутаните канцеларии на ДИК!? Ова е тешка дестимулација на пријавувањето, ни 10% од граѓаните што имаат забелешки никогаш нема да се потегнат во подрачна канцеларија :-(. Ова е постапка за да си ја олеснат работата, а комплетно спротивна на целта да го прочистиме списокот!
Instead of reporting online, we now have to search for the obscure SEC offices?! This will discourage reporting by citizens, not even 10% of those who have complaints would put in the effort to go to the field offices. This act makes SEC work easier, but is completely opposite to the goal of cleaning the Voters’ Registry
Others reacted on Twitter, saying that the decision was unnecessarily rushed.
Се исклучува проверката на #СеПоСписок на вебот на ДИК. 12год чекаме попис, сега за 2 недели им се брза формално да се затвори проверката 👏
— Great Manitou (@FireWaterMe) March 13, 2016
They are shutting down the online reporting of #AllFromTheList on SEC's website. We've been waiting for a census for 12 years and now they are rushing to formally close the cross-check in two weeks *applause*
It's actually been 14 years since the last complete census, which took place in 2002. That count set the number of inhabitants to just over 2 million, making the total of registered voters in the country — 1.8 million — suspiciously high. Macedonian law requires that the government conduct a population census every 10 years, but in 2011 authorities stopped the census mid-way without providing a reason why.
Civil society organizations monitoring the clean-up of the Voters’ Registry before the early general elections in June fear that the shutdown of the online reporting tool will represent a serious dark stain on the whole election process.
On the other hand, Prime Minister Emil Dimitriev, who replaced Nikola Gruevski in January after he stepped down, said all reports of issues with the Voters’ Registry should be examined by the SEC, but he also accused the opposition of “hyping” the registry clean-up:
We welcome all reports from citizens regarding the voting registry. They need to be well argumented [sic] and they will help contribute to quickly clearing up this hype that is being developed over the examination of the voting registry. The State Electoral Commission knows its jurisdiction and it will consider all relevant laws and regulations. At my meeting with the SEC on Thursday I was informed that these reports will be examined in a very short period of time, because the deadlines to respond to each of them is between three and five days.

author: Goran Rizaov


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Hear That? The Global Voices Podcast Is Back. · Global Voices
Sahar Habib Ghazi

After a three year break, the Global Voices Podcast is finally back. We are calling the reincarnated version, “The Week That Was at Global Voices.”
In this edition, Global Voices News Editor Lauren Finch and I — Managing Editor at Global Voices– take you to Mexico, China, Tajikistan, Macedonia and Russia.
In Mexico, we tell you a story about Arne Aus den Ruthen, a Mexican public servant, who uses Periscope to expose lawbreakers, in a story brought to us by Global Voices author J.Tadeo.
Next we tell you about our censorship story of the week from China, which our Northeast Asia editor Oiwan Lam alerted us to. Later we take you to Tajikistan, then Macedonia and have a conversation with our RuNet Echo editor Kevin Rothrock about a new film that snubs Harry Potter while showcasing Russia's paranoid patriotism.
We are thrilled about bringing the Global Voices Podcast back.  Many thanks to our authors, translators and editors who helped make this episode possible.
In this episode of the Week that Was at Global Voices, we featured Creative Commons licensed music from the Free Music Archive, including Please Listen Carefully by Jahzzar (CC BY-SA 4.0); Mexico by Jimmy Pe (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0); Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie (CC BY 4.0); Rainbow Street by Scott Holmes (CC BY-NC 4.0); and A Russian Circus Story by The Freak Fandango Orchestra (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Expect to hear our voices again in two weeks.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Sahar Habib Ghazi


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Kyrgyzstan Keeps Half an Eye on Renewables · Global Voices
Zhenya Tsoy

A functional model of the wind turbine developed by Emil Tursunov. Personal photo archive. Used with permission
An energy deficit in Kyrgyzstan is stimulating a rise in renewable energy practices and optimized consumption, but the shift cannot come quickly enough.
Sometimes supported by international organizations, other times self-funded, both local businesses and individuals have started implementing a number of innovative projects tapping the country's wind, solar and hydro potential.
Emil Tursunov is the proud designer of the truly innovative wind turbine in the photo at the top of this article.
Its benefits are clear: ease of manufacturing and installation, mobility, low operating costs and the ability to function in both high and low speed winds.
The object's adaptability to different weather conditions and the smart integration of solar panels ensure reliable and efficient energy conversion.
The payback period is around three years — a relatively short term made possible by the low construction costs ($1,000-2,000 depending on production volumes) — while the turbine can produce enough energy to power household devices and provide electricity and heating for a small apartment.
Before an intended switch towards mass production, Tursunov plans to display the model at EXPO-2017, an international exhibition themed on ‘energy of the future’ in neighbouring Kazakhstan.
Wind energy remains relatively untapped in Kyrgyzstan, even though it could cover up to 7% of the energy needs of rural communities that make up over half of the country's total population.
Yet whether generating electricity for household consumption or powering water pumps for farms, wind's popularity is growing, especially in the north.
Local media outlet Kloop.kg recently covered  the story of another rural innovator, Beshenbei Saadabaev, who created a cheaper, simpler contraption following years of power outages in his village.
Solar batteries on the rooftop of the school in Ak-Tilek. Photo by BIOM
While the government introduces new changes to school schedules, extending the winter break in order to reduce consumption of heating, an experimental school in the south of Kyrgyzstan has taken a different approach to saving energy.
For the last four years, school No. 52 has been benefiting from energy-efficient infrastructure and solar batteries on its roof.
The batteries, although expensive, have significantly reduced the school's utility bills.
Solar energy is used to heat the water for the canteen, bathrooms, and gym showers.
Elena Rodina, then coordinator of the United Nations Development Program's pilot project Improving Energy Efficiency in Buildings, explained at a meeting with government officials following the school's renovation:
During the heating season in 2012-2013, the school spent 600,000 soms [approximately 8,000 USD], whereas similar schools had expended around 2,500,000 soms [approximately 33,600 USD], and achieved a 53% reduction in energy use.
The innovations are expected to pay off their initial investment in less than nine years.
American University of Central Asia, the new eco-friendly campus. AUCA archives. Used with permission
The American University of Central Asia that opened the doors to its new campus in 2015 was the first private company to introduce geothermal heating in the Central Asian region.
The practical value of geothermal heating systems, known for years, has been mostly ignored in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia as a whole.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said at the opening of the new campus last year:
This new campus is special because it is the first private construction project in Central Asia that is clean green all the way –- that means geothermal heating and cooling, state-of-the-art sewage, irrigation systems, and the highest standard of energy efficiency in the entire region.
In simple terms, a geothermal pump exchanges heat between a building and the ground.
During the cold months, it uses the heat absorbed from the ground and transfers it into the building. For cooling, it goes the other way: extracting  heat from the building and taking it down to the ground to cool.
Geothermal heating's efficiency and low maintenance costs make it attractive from an economic standpoint. The university expects to have reduce energy consumption by 87% over time, justifying an expensive initial investment in the pump.
Currently, it is the start-up costs of such projects, combined with the Soviet legacy of subsidised electricity, that is discouraging more businesses in the country from taking the same route.
Nevertheless, with the country's Soviet-era system visibly wilting, Kyrgyzstan's energy future seems destined to be determined by off-grid responses to on-grid failure.

author: Zhenya Tsoy


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Polarization and Dehumanization: Two Keys to Understanding the Assassination of Honduran Activist Berta Cáceres · Global Voices
Leila Nachawati

Berta Cáceres in Río Blanco, Honduras, joined by other members of the Lenca indigenous community in a ceremony commemorating the comrades killed in the battles between the Honduran government and multinational players. Berta Cáceres spent years leading their struggle until her murder at the beginning of this March. Photograph from the Goldman Foundation, a group devoted to environmental causes.
The murder of Berta Cáceres is part of a large and growing number of indigenous and environmental activists being killed in Honduras. The country, one of the most violent on the continent, is home to ongoing struggles over the protection of lands, equality among citizens and respect for native communities. That is why to understand the death of Cáceres, along with too many others throughout the region, you have to look at the wider context in which the violence is occurring.
The morning Berta Cáceres was assassinated, her friend Hedme Sierra Castro was at a conference advocating freedom of expression: the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain.
The walls of the collaborative space, where more than 800 anti-censorship activists from around the world were meeting, soon filled with posters paying homage to the indigenous leader and human rights and environmental advocate.
“Berta Cáceres was murdered this morning by the Honduras government.” Posters put on display during the Internet Freedom Festival held in Valencia, Spain. Photograph shared by ACI Participa and published with permission.
Bertita era muy querida en toda Latinoamérica y una figura muy importante en todo el mundo, como demuestra su reconocimiento post-mortem. Era muy cercana a mi familia desde antes del golpe [de Estado de 2009]. Trabajábamos juntas en defensa de Derechos Humanos en Centroamérica, que es una región barómetro de la impunidad, la falta de protección a la ciudadanía, la falta de rendición de cuentas de las cúpulas de poder, el ataque a los movimientos sociales…
Our dear Berta was beloved across all Latin America and she was a very important figure in the world, as evidenced by the recognition she received following her death. She was very close to my family since the coup [of 2009]. We worked together in defense of human rights in Central America, a region that is a barometer of impunity, with a lack of protection for citizens, a lack of accountability in the powerful elite, and attacks on social movements…
Hedme Sierra Castro, a systems engineer coming from a well-known family of Honduran human rights advocates, has been working since 2009 in digital security with a gender focus. Her organization ACI Participa is dedicated to helping women's groups, journalists, indigenous peoples, farmers, the LGBT community, and other human rights advocates to protect themselves from the surveillance and persecution that are increasingly taking place on digital channels:
Todos estos grupos tienen en común que son de riesgo, vigilados y perseguidos por el Estado y otros grupos.
What all of these groups have in common is that they are at risk, monitored and pursued by the state and other groups.
The assassination of Cáceres and other activists in the region can be better understood with an eye on the political context of Honduras. The story of Hedme and her family is another case in point. Hedme and her relatives constitute an at-risk group, in as much as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights takes certain precautionary measures on their behalf. But that does not necessarily translate into more safety: “Bertita also had [these protections] and that didn't help her at all…”
It's all linked to the political events of 2009. In that year, a coup d'état carried out by Roberto Micheletti against the government of Manuel Zelaya sparked large popular protests. However, judicial proceedings against the participants soon followed. Hedme, along with her mother, father and godfather (founder of ACI Participa and the first ombudsman of Honduras) took part and played key roles in the movement. Hedme says the mobilization was an illustration of the inequalities in Honduran politics and showed how, against all odds, the Honduran people who took part gave each other strength:
Nos manifestamos, miles de personas de todo el país, durante tres meses consecutivos. El ambiente era festivo. Con gente trayendo merienda para compartir, otros trayendo café, compartiendo todo, donde uno come, comen tres, cuando uno se caía, el resto lo ayudaba. Nos dispersábamos y al poco nos volvíamos a juntar en otro sitio, la calle era un espacio compartido y un vínculo de unión. Eran jornadas enteras como de trabajo, uno salía a las 7 de su casa y no volvía hasta la noche. Fue muy bonito ese hermanamiento, y cuando luego estalló la Primavera Árabe y el 15 M, nos veíamos tan reflejados… Tahrir nos removió todo lo que habíamos vivido.
We gathered, thousands of people from around the county, over three consecutive months. The atmosphere was festive. With people bringing snacks to share, others bringing coffee, sharing everything, where one person could eat, three would eat, when one person would fall, the rest would help. We would disperse and then soon we would meet again in another place, the streets were a shared space and a hub to unite. Those were full days, like a job, we would leave home at 7 in the morning and wouldn't return home until night. That joining together in brotherhood and sisterhood was so beautiful, and when later the Arab Spring and the 15M movement [in Spain] burst onto the scene, we saw ourselves reflected… Tahrir stirred up everything we had lived through.
Just like in Tahrir, the Liberation Square that spearheaded the Egyptian revolution in 2011, the heavy hand of the repressive government came down on the protesters months later:
Se llevaban a los manifestantes en pickup y los desaparecían, la gente corría tras la pickup para ver adónde se llevaban al compañero.
They carried away protesters in pickup trucks and they were ‘disappeared,’ people would chase after the pickups to see where they were taking our comrades.
The background to the conflict centers around the corruption scandals of 2008. During that year, the Public Prosecutor's Office discovered hundreds of documents that implicated senior officials, among them ex-President Carlos Flores and his uncle, business mogul Miguel Facussé. Both were blamed for assaults on rural families in Bajo Aguán, in northern Honduras, to forcibly vacate lands and use them as part of their project cultivating seeds for African palm oil. The forcible evictions left thousands of people living in tents, displaced from the territory they had inhabited and worked for generations.
The role of the prosecutors, after uncovering the documents, was key in what Hedme describes as “the dawn of the [Honduran] popular social consciousness.” In March 2008, the public prosecutors began a strike, which was joined by well-known figures in Honduran society, among them the Jesuit activist priest Ismael Moreno Coto, the singer and storyteller Karla Lara, and numerous defenders of human rights:
La gente los acompañaba, organizaba jornadas culturales a su alrededor, no los dejaba solos… Esos 35 días de huelga de hambre fortalecieron nuestra conciencia social, aunque no sirvieron para frenar el golpe.
[Roberto] Micheletti perdió las elecciones. Dio el golpe de Estado el domingo por la mañana y por la tarde ya estaba asumiendo. Desde la plaza, meses antes, lo veíamos despreciar a los huelguistas. ‘¿Cuántos habrá ahí, 300?’, decía, señalándonos despectivamente. ‘Trescientas personas no me van a arruinar mi carrera política'”.
The people accompanied [the prosecutors], they organized cultural events around them, they never left them alone… Those 35 days of hunger strike strengthened our social consciousness, although they were not able to stop the coup.
[Roberto] Micheletti lost the elections. He led the coup d'état on Sunday morning and by evening he was assuming power. We had seen him in the plaza, months earlier, dismissing the strikers. ‘How many are they, 300?’ he said, pointing down at us with disdain. ‘Three hundred people are not going to ruin my political career.’
The outcome of these power struggles led to new elections, in which Porfirio Lobo emerged as the winner, although many national and international bodies have refused to recognize his government. Roberto Micheletti, meanwhile, delegated the government administration to the Council of Ministers in 2010.
State institutions, large business groups, armed forces, the police. The list of those responsible for Berta Cáceres’ assassination is long, according to theHonduran Platform for Human Rights Organizations.
The Platform directly accuses the Energy Development Company SA (Empresa Desarrollos Energéticos Sociedad Anónima, or DESA), a stakeholder in the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project. Also to blame, they say, are the banking institutions that financed the project, the municipal corporations of Francisco de Ojuera, and the military police. Before her murder, Berta herself had pointed to the DESA board and the municipal president as the people responsible behind numerous threats against herself and her community.
Cáceres led a bold fight against the construction of a hydroelectric dam in the Gualcarque River in the state of Santa Bárbara in northeastern Honduras. The construction put at risk access to water for the Lenca indigenous community, to which Cáceres belonged. As a result of the strong resistance movement in this community — including road blocks to hinder access for construction machinery — the project was halted. However, the Lenca community was victim of many violent acts. Several of Berta's colleagues were threatened and killed in the process.
“The murder of Doña Berta is a very hard attack on social movements, not only in Honduras but in all of Latin America,” explained the Mexican activist known as Anamhoo, hours after the assassination, to the other participants of the Internet Freedom Festival:
Nuestro compañero mexicano Gustavo Castro Soto estaba con ella cuando le dispararon, a él lo hirieron, le rozaron el oído y comenzó a sangrar por la cabeza, los matones lo dejaron allí, dándolo por muerto. Eso lo salvó. Si no les importó que estuviese con Doña Berta alguien tan reconocido en la región como Gustavo, clave en la lucha contra las mineras e hidroeléctricas y fundador de Otros Mundos Chiapas, significa que se sienten intocables.
Our Mexican colleague Gustavo Castro Soto was with her when she was shot, they injured him, a bullet hit his ear and he began bleeding from his head, the killers left him there, given up for dead. That saved him. If they didn't care that Doña Berta was with someone as well known in the region as Gustavo, a key leader in the fight against mining and hydroelectric companies and founder of Otros Mundos Chiapas, that means they feel untouchable.
Gustavo Castro Soto is also a recognized Mexican leader in defense of environmental rights. For having been the sole witness to the murder of Berta Cáceres, Castro Soto has been detained in Honduras while the investigation iscarried out. However, allied organizations for environmental causes and human rights fear for his life and demand that Castro Soto be allowed to leave the country. Follow these reactions with #SeguridadParaGustavo (#SafetyForGustavo).
In addition to asking for accountability from the Mexican and Honduran governments, the Latin American participants of the festival appealed to the conscience of the anti-censorship community and the need to question the processes of North-to-South exploitation:
¿Cómo es que aquí hablamos de tecnología, privacidad y seguridad digital, y no incidimos en el hecho de que esta tecnología está construida en base a la explotación humana y de los territorios del Sur? La tecnología se hace de una forma muy concreta ¿cómo vamos a liberarla si no liberamos las formas en las que se construye?
How is it that we are here talking about technology, privacy and digital security, yet we aren't emphasizing the fact that this technology is built on a base of human exploitation in the Global South? Technology is made in a very concrete way. How will we liberate it if we do not liberate the ways in which it is built?
When asked about the future, Hedme has doubts:
Es muy difícil pensar más allá de la polarización actual. Desde el golpe, o eres ‘resistencia’  (‘ñángaras’, ‘vagos’, ‘chusma’ , para los golpistas), o eres ‘blanquito’, como nos referimos a los golpistas, las instituciones y empresas privadas que apoyaron el golpe, por las camisas blancas que llevaban en sus manifestaciones.
It's very difficult to think beyond the current polarization. Since the coup, either you are ‘resistance’  (‘ñángaras‘ [leftists], ‘bums’, or ‘riffraff’, to the coup leaders), or you are blanquito, (whitie) as we refer to the perpetrators of the coup, the institutions and private companies that supported the coup, for the white shirts they wore during their rallies.
And she adds:
Llevaban carteles de agradecimiento a Estados Unidos y gritaban consignas como ‘Hemos salvado la Constitución’ y ‘Defendamos a nuestro Presidente, que nos da de comer y calidad de vida'”, recuerda. “Con ellos había muchos trabajadores obligados, entre ellos de la empresa de Facusse, a los que se les daba órdenes de no hablar con periodistas, y de emitir comentarios sólo positivos del Presidente. O acudías a sus concentraciones, o estabas con la ‘chusma’.
La segregación y la deshumanización llegaron al extremo de que algunos médicos dejaron de atender a heridos durante las movilizaciones. Por eso es difícil pensar en el futuro… y también mirar al pasado. Una aprende. Aprende a vivir día a día
They carried posters thanking the United States and they shouted slogans such as ‘We have saved the Constitution’ and ‘We defend our president, who gives us livelihood and quality of life.’ Along with them were many forced laborers, some of them from Facusse's company, who had been ordered to not speak with journalists, and to say only positive messages about the president. Either you attended their rallies, or you were with the ‘riffraff’ (la chusma).
The segregation and dehumanization got to such an extreme that some doctors quit attending to those injured during the mobilizations. That's why it's difficult to think about the future… and to look at the past. One learns. Learns to live day to day.

author: Leila Nachawati


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Uber Is Now Sharing Data With the Moscow Transportation Department · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Uber is now cooperating with the Moscow authorities and sharing their car movement data with the local transportation agency. Images edited by Tetyana Lokot.
Uber, the alternative taxi riding service, has signed a collaboration agreement with the Moscow authorities. As part of the agreement, the company will have to part ways with unlicensed taxi drivers—and, allegedly, to share driver and passenger data with the local government.
RBC news agency reports that Uber, the world's largest mobile taxi ordering service, was given 90 days by the Moscow transportation department to make sure all its registered drivers are licensed by the state. Both the department and Uber's press service confirmed the signing of the agreement.
The collaboration agreement has two main provisions. First, Uber agrees to work only with licensed taxi drivers who have a state permit to drive a taxi cab. This differs from Uber's policy in the US, for instance, where the company offers an alternative to hard-to-get and expensive taxi cab licenses, allowing ordinary drivers to earn cash by offering their transportation services through the Uber app. Because of this lenience, Uber's work is banned in several other countries that impose stricter regulations on the taxi cab market and insist that using unlicensed drivers is unsafe and illegal.
The Russian capital's authorities insisted that Uber sign an agreement with them in 2015, but the company kept asking for extra time to hold consultations with its top management in San Francisco. In February 2016, the Moscow transportation department even threatened to sue Uber and ban it from working in Moscow if they failed to deal with the license requirements. RBC's sources also claim some of Uber's top managers visited Moscow for negotiations with local authorities and demanded access to the state Interior Ministry data bases to check for the drivers’ criminal records. This demand got no sympathy from the city's transpotration department, whose officials claimed such information was outside their reach.
Beyond only working with “legal” drivers, the agreement obliges Uber to share their car movement data with the city's transportation authorities. The data on Uber cars and their movements about town is supposed to be passed on to the Moscow city government's Traffic Organization Center, which the transportation officials believe will improve the work of the city's new Intellectual transportation system that pools data from the various municipal transportation networks and monitors traffic in real time.
Little is known about how exactly Moscow officials use the data from their transportation partners, beyond pooling it with information from state-funded public transport. The Intellectual transportation system in Moscow uses a combination of methods to monitor and aggregate traffic data, including GPS monitoring systems, a CCTV network for recording traffic violations, parking cameras, tools regulating street crossing lights, and a networked alerts system for drivers and passengers.
Uber's main competitors in the Russian market, Yandex.Taxi and Gett, have already signed collaboration agreements with state agencies (Yandex.Taxi signed theirs back in 2014, and Gett signed theirs in January 2016), and both now employ only licensed drivers and share their ride data with the Moscow transportation department.
Uber currently works in 400 cities in 68 countries around the world. In Russia, the service is available in eight cities, but Uber's VP Ryan Graves told RBC that the company plans to be operating in 17 Russian cities by the end of 2016.
Uber, dubbed the most expensive startup in the world, counts several Russian businessmen among its investors: Ziyavudin Magomedov (owner of Summa group), Alisher Usmanov (through his company USM Holdings), and Mikhail Friedman, whose LetterOne investment fund invested $200 million in the service.

author: Tanya Lokot


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For 237 Weeks, Maheen Taseer Never Gave Up Hope Her Kidnapped Husband Would Return · Global Voices
Sheema Khan

Maheen and Shahbaz Taseer. Photo courtesy Maheen Taseer and used with her permission.
March 4, 2016, marked the last Friday that Maheen Taseer had to spend without her husband. Anyone who followed her updates on Twitter or Facebook knew that Friday was the hardest of all days, as that was the day of the week when her husband had been kidnapped from Lahore, Pakistan. They had only been married for a little over a year when it happened.
The long five-year wait came to an end on March 8, International Women’s Day, when Shahbaz Taseer was found in Kuchlak town near Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani region of Balochistan.
Reports say Shahbaz was being held by militants, although it isn't clear by which group. The circumstances of his release are also under debate — whether he was rescued in a raid by authorities or was released as part of a settlement of some kind.
But this isn't a story about all that. This is a story about love, unimaginable grief and a joyful reunion for a family that has been through a lot.
In the past, rumors had circulated regarding Shahbaz’s release. This time, when the news broke it was confirmed by General Asim Bajwa, director general of Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s public relations wing, via Twitter:
Latest pics of Mr Shahbaz Taseer taken at Quetta,9:30 PM today.In full protection,he is hale and hearty pic.twitter.com/MqmfYtEzcX
— Gen Asim Bajwa (@AsimBajwaISPR) March 8, 2016
Upon hearing the news, Shahbaz's wife Maheen tweeted the number of days her husband had been missing, with a short prayer in Arabic that is typically recited to ease hardship:
237 Weeks- “La ilaha illa anta, Subhanaka, Inni kuntu minaz-zalimin”
— Maheen Taseer (@MaheenTaseer) March 4, 2016
There is no god but Allah, Be Thou Glorified! I have been a wrong-doer.
Shahbaz is the son of former governor of the Punjab province, Salmaan Taseer, who was murdered by his own bodyguard over his critical stance on Pakistan’s blasphemy law. Shahbaz had been kidnapped months after his father's assassination, and his dramatic release came a week after the hanging of his father’s killer, Mumtaz Qadri.
The family was made to endure painful speculations and never-ending questions since, such as in 2013, when a few media outlets falsely reported that Shahbaz had been killed in a drone stroke.
Regardless of the rumors, his mother Aamna and wife Maheen never lost hope:
The media/newspapers only print false stories about our family and Shahbaz. I wish there was some concept of liability.
— Maheen Taseer (@MaheenTaseer) March 4, 2013
Every Friday, Maheen would ask people to pray for her husband's safe return, share verses from the Quran, and publish quotes that kept her going as well as letters from her father. Each week had a number, and that number would go up on all the mediums she shared her thoughts on, week after week:
230 Weeks- Its also our wedding week- 6 years mA yet we have only spent one together. To many more in health. Ameen pic.twitter.com/2tRtYN71ae
— Maheen Taseer (@MaheenTaseer) January 15, 2016
My brave @ShahbazTaseer was kidnapped on #LaylatulQadr 4 yrs ago-There has only been one prayer on my lips.May Allah hear us this year.Ameen
— Maheen Taseer (@MaheenTaseer) July 14, 2015
Today marks the 200 Weeks that Shahbaz has been in captivity. First Roza, First Sehri & First Friday. Please pray for him. May Allah be kind
— Maheen Taseer (@MaheenTaseer) June 18, 2015
During this long period, Maheen established her fashion label Maheen Ghani Taseer (MGT) and dedicated an entire collection to her husband:
Capsule collection “Vaillant”- the french word for brave, heroic and determined. Dedicated to my brave @ShahbazTaseer pic.twitter.com/chxAZabKsE
— Maheen Taseer (@MaheenTaseer) September 11, 2015
Shahbaz’s mother Aamna also counted the days since her son’s abduction, often sharing photos of his childhood and praying for his safe return:
From the little acorn grows the mighty oak. May Allah be with you and end this ordeal my son @ShahbazTaseerpic.twitter.com/hMYxXGXUSV
— Aamna Taseer (@AamnaTaseer) April 26, 2014
General Bajwa shared photos of the reunion between Shahbaz and his loved ones:
Shahbaz Taseer flown to Lahore, lands and reunites with his family pic.twitter.com/eLkgDJRXSn
— Gen Asim Bajwa (@AsimBajwaISPR) March 9, 2016
As for Shahbaz, he finally broke his public silence on March 9 when he posted a status on his wife's Facebook account announcing his return:
I dont know my facebook password. But good to be back dude!- shabby
On Twitter, he made a comeback with a quote:
Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free – good to be back
— Shahbaz Taseer (@ShahbazTaseer) March 12, 2016
According to some reports, Shahbaz was said to have paid 350 rupees (3.3 US dollars) for a meal after kidnappers dropped him at a local hotel in Kuchlak, Quetta. Shahbaz took to Twitter to clarify his position with some of his signature humor (nehari is a local meat and gravy dish):
Just to be clear.. I never ate anything for 350 rps first meal was nehari #lahoriforlife #taseerforlife
— Shahbaz Taseer (@ShahbazTaseer) March 14, 2016
A family friend, writer and actor, Mira Sethi expressed her joy via a Facebook note:
My family and I met Shahbaz today. The story is his to tell. And it is a story that will inspire millions. But I will say one and two and three things: Shahbaz Taseer is a living, breathing, jokes-cracking, irony-appreciating, hope-giving, immensely lovable, resilient, intelligent, weathered, transcendent human being.
Shabby's return is the shedding of an old and hardened Pakistani cynicism. It is the embrace of an equally frenzied Pakistani hope.
It is the sloughing off of a psychological tiredness. It is the embrace of life.
It is also an understanding of the capriciousness of the State.
It is an appreciation of one man's courage, his father's legacy, his mother's love, his brothers’ loyalty, his sisters’ courage, his wife's grace, his friends’ endless, praying hope.
Meanwhile, Maheen couldn't be happier, writing “My heart is home mashAllah” and sharing a photo on Facebook of her hugging her husband:
Screenshot of Maheen Taseer's Facebook post.

author: Sheema Khan


text:
I Found My Voice in Spanish, a Language Once Used to Subjugate My Ancestors · Global Voices
Shirley Campbell Barr

Girl in front of her school in the middle of the jungle in Costa Rica. Photo by Diego David García. Published under Creative Commons license.
In part one, Shirley Campbell explains how her Afro-Caribbean parents decided not to speak to her and her siblings in English, perhaps as an attempt to give them one less reason to be different in Spanish-speaking Costa Rica.
In part two, she explores how language and identity intertwine — and can sometimes seem at odds with one another.This post was originally published on the site Afroféminas. It has been republished on Global Voices in two parts with permission.
It is through language that we incorporate ourselves into the world and learn from songs and stories and myths and religions. Language allows us to delve into the history and spirituality of our people and teaches us to feel and to live in a certain way. Language isn't just the way we enter someone else’s world, but it immerses us into our own worlds by helping us get to know ourselves and recognizing ourselves as part of something.
On the other hand, language is also a powerful instrument for domination and discrimination and is an effective tool for transmitting and imposing values. People of African descent like me have been victims of this from all sides. At the same time, in every language and every territory, Afro-descendants have resisted in various ways in order to preserve part of their hard-won legacy that they were barely able to treasure in the process.
In the case of my mother and father, they grew up and learned from their position in the world through the English language, and later, out of necessity, they were forced to leave part of that legacy to their children, but in another language.
This story is not unique to my family; on the contrary, it is a story that repeats itself in the lives of people of African descent. It has been necessary for us to reinvent ourselves time and time again – a story that is repeated over and over in different languages. There have been centuries of forced migrations where we have had to resign ourselves to living in other language environments and in other countries in adverse conditions.
My parents and my community taught me everything I know in different languages and in various accents. What I didn’t know, I’ve had to gather along the way by collecting bits and pieces of stories and songs and lore, and thus, try to establish associations, create links, and find similarities with others’ lives – transporting myself to other scenarios and continents to build my identity.
With all of that inherited and reconstructed identity, my extended family and my community instilled in me, in various languages and accents, this urge for irreverence and activism that no language can take away from me.
I understand, however, that this reality does bring with it the implicit fact that this language was brutally imposed on us and we were deprived of speaking our own languages. We were abused for using our names and singing our songs. I understand that my ancestors were cruelly isolated in order to prevent contact between members of the same tribes and, consequently, prevent communication and insubordination. However, and more importantly, they attempted to slowly kill the soul and passion of these ancient peoples. Consequently we began to forget our most sacred forms of communication, affection, and spirituality. As a result, we had to invent and reinvent ourselves again, through brutal, but creative ways in order to survive.
I understand that before my mother other languages were spoken and that communication took place in other accents with which they prayed, fought, sang and played games that they had brought with them from some place in Africa, from which they were taken and to which my research has not yet brought me.
This story does not only have to do with me; it concerns millions and millions of people and families and communities and entire peoples around the world. Communities that have been forced to grow up under different languages, and in each one create, recreate, invent, write, rewrite and reimagine a wealth of history and lore and songs in order to strengthen ourselves and once again exist. Along the way, we have had to reestablish the links to our ancestry and build new bridges that connect us with the spirituality and wisdom necessary for our survival.
Even today we continue to be subjugated and marginalized. In spite of this, we continue to triumph by being the heirs that we are of extraordinary people who are still rising up and strengthening their spirit and continue to leave their mark on the land.
My mother, my father, and my community managed – using a new language – to give us the tools necessary for resistance, ancestry, spirituality, as well as the culture that they were personally rescuing along the way. That same culture that their ancestors were slowly recovering and rebuilding with great effort and a tireless desire not to die during the journey.
In spite of myself, Spanish is the language that I profess today. And despite speaking other languages, Spanish seduces and transports me; it is a tool that helps me break free. It frees me because it allows me to feel the way I feel and lets me write with the passion with which I write.
It is this language that gives me poetry. And although I understand its sins, I can no longer deny it, because with it I can challenge those who are trying to destroy us, those who use hate-speech to oppose our struggles. With this language, I have been able share the sweetest conversations with women just like me, with the same skin color who needed words just like theirs to feel confident and beautiful.
This language has given me magic and a voice. What once angered me today enables me to have contact with others. With Spanish, I convey love for my children and I’m filled with passion for myself and for my people. I speak it, I write it, I proclaim it, I declare it, I scream it, and I sing it. And through it, I try to impart wisdom, culture, spirituality, and most importantly, I cry out for justice for my people.
Today, this language gives me that pleasure.
It was my destiny to speak this language and it is what gives me a voice. It is however only one language, because other peoples from the diaspora are speaking and expressing and singing in many other languages, and like me, enjoy it today because it is their voice. I reinvent my Spanish daily, and by using it to my advantage, I try to shine a light based on my story of vindications and victories. I construct and deconstruct it every day and use it as an instrument of affirmation and not of oppression and racism against my people.

author: Shirley Campbell Barr


text:
Should Brazilian Students Study Portuguese Literature? · Global Voices
Adam Lee

Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa's last words. Image: Manu Dreuil/Flickr. CC 2.0
As Brazil continues the process of streamlining its primary and middle school curriculum, one issue has grabbed the attention of educators and news outlets: whether Brazilian students should be forced to study Portuguese literature.
The directive behind the debate is the National Foundation of Common Curriculum, or BNCC in Portuguese, created in 2015 and which establishes new guidelines for what a Brazilian student should know by the time they leave school.
The question is how to interpret the new guidelines (p. 61) – two of which are as follows:
Ler produções literárias de autores da Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea, percebendo a literatura como produção historicamente situada e, ainda assim, atemporal e universal.
Interpretar e analisar obras africanas de língua portuguesa, bem como a literatura indígena, reconhecendo a literatura como lugar de encontro de multiculturalidades.
To read literary productions from authors of Contemporary Brazilian Literature, perceiving the literature as a localized, but still timeless and universal historical production.
To interpret and analyze Portuguese-language works from Africa, as well as indigenous literature, recognizing the literature as a meeting place of multiculturalism.
The non-mention of Portuguese literature in the quoted statements above has made waves both in Portugal and in Brazil. Some argue that respected authors from Portugal such as Luís Vaz de Camões, Fernando Pessoa, Eça de Queiroz and José Saramago are being axed from the curriculum or that students will lack important context for Brazil's literary tradition.
Others say the guidelines are far too narrow in scope, and even if Portuguese literature were added back into the mix, literature from across South America and even the world would still be missing.
In an open-letter at the Portuguese news site O Mirante, Brazilian writer Eliezer Moreira slammed the BNCC:
Ora, para que a literatura brasileira, ou qualquer outra, seja reconhecida como “lugar de encontro de multiculturalidades” (que linguagem pomposa!) é preciso infinitamente mais do que acrescentar-lhe duas outras. O viés ideológico e o ranço doutrinário da BNCC, nesse tópico, são indisfarçáveis e de um reducionismo ridículo. Na verdade, o que se pode deduzir do texto é algo mais calamitoso do que simplesmente pôr de escanteio a literatura portuguesa. Os professores de ensino médio – aquela fase do ensino em que os alunos costumam decidir suas vocações e seu futuro –, podem se desobrigar de incluir em seus programas de ensino também as literaturas francesa, inglesa, norte-americana e russa – ou seja, nada de Shakespeare, Camões, Dostoievski, Kafka, Fernando Pessoa, Faulkner, Camus e Hemingway, por exemplo.
Well, for Brazilian literature, or any other, to be recognized as ‘a meeting place of multiculturalism’ (what pompous language!) infinitely more is needed than adding two others to it. The BNCC's ideological bias and rancid doctrine, on this topic, is undeniable and ridiculously reductionist. In truth, what one can deduce from the text is something more calamitous than simply putting Portuguese literature in the corner. Teachers of middle and high school – that learning phase in which students usually decide their vocation and their future – can relieve themselves of including French, English, North American and Russian literature from their learning programs – that is, nothing of Shakespeare, Camões, Dostoievski, Kafka, Fernando Pessoa, Faulkner, Camus and Hemingway, for example.
Image: Farley Santos/Flickr. CC 2.0
In Brazil's Folha newspaper, university professor Flora Bender Garcia and high school teacher José Ruy Lozano penned an opinion piece touching upon an apparent chronological injustice attached to the removal of Portuguese literature:
Como compreender a cultura popular nordestina, suas canções, seus repentes, seus cantos de aboiar, sua literatura de cordel, sem reconhecer a presença da literatura medieval da Península Ibérica, em particular as cantigas trovadorescas e as novelas de cavalaria?
E Morte e Vida Severina, de João Cabral de Melo Neto, e Auto da Compadecida, de Ariano Suassuna, nada devem ao teatro humanista português de um Gil Vicente? Fugir ao diálogo Brasil/Portugal é negar origens e contextos produtivos.
How does one understand popular northeastern culture, its songs, improvised poetry, cowboy cattle calls, and folk literature without acknowledging the presence of medieval literature from the Iberian Peninsula, in particular, its troubadour verses and romantic prose?
And ‘Morte e Vida Severina’, by João Cabral de Melo Neto, and ‘Auto da Compadecida’, by Ariano Suassuna, they owe nothing to the Portuguese humanist theater of Gil Vicente? To flee from the Brazil/Portugal dialogue is to deny its productive origins and contexts.
Brazil was a Portuguese colony between 1500 and 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom following the transfer of the Portuguese Court to its largest colony during the Napoleonic invasions of Portugal. In 1822, after the royal family had returned to Portugal, Brazil acquired its independence. The main legacy the Portuguese left behind was the language, now widely spoken across Brazil and the country's only official language.
Recycling many of the ideas in Flora Bender Garcia's piece in Folha, Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias attributed the curriculum decision to the current Brazilian Federal government. It also added mention of another controversy in 2011 when a Brazilian textbook for middle-schoolers supposedly downplayed a grammatically incorrect sentence as a means of shedding light on the ways Portuguese is spoken across Brazil's social classes:
O governo do Partido dos Trabalhadores, de centro-esquerda, é acusado de populismo e de agir de forma ideológica, ao querer privilegiar a cultura indígena e ao ser mais permissivo em relação a questões gramaticais já desde 2011, quando causou choque na classe educadora que num manual escolar distribuído pelo MEC fosse considerada “inadequada e passível de preconceito” mas não errada” a expressão, sem concordância, “nós pega o peixe”.
The center-leftist government of the Workers’ Party is accused of populism and of being ideologically driven by giving priority to indigenous culture and by being more permissive of grammatical issues since 2011, when a textbook distributed by the Ministry of Education caused an uproar among educators by stating that the expression ‘nós pega o peixe’ [we takes the fish], which lacks verbal concordance, was ‘inadequate and subject to prejudice, but not incorrect’.
Brazilian university professor Anderson da Mata took issue with the idea that Brazilian folklore has its origins in Portuguese literature, which was central to the Folha piece and repeated in the Diário de Notícias article. He also defended the proposed changes on his personal Facebook page:
Que vergonha desse texto publicado em Portugal que anda circulando por aí sobre a Base Nacional Curricular Comum. Só a ideia de que “Portugal criou o Brasil”, pelo colonialismo rasteiro, já merecia fazer com que o texto fosse ignorado.
Não custa lembrar que a história da literatura portuguesa foi “excluída” dos currículos da educação básica no Brasil há quase vinte anos. O objetivo não poderia ser mais claro: menos história da literatura, mais literatura.
E ninguém está proibido de ensinar a meninada a ler com Camões, Alcoforado ou Pessoa, ok? Mas o foco é esse: ensinar a ler.
What an embarrassment this BNCC story published in Portugal is. The mere idea that “Portugal created Brazil”, for its trivial colonialism, should be enough for the whole thing to be ignored.
It doesn't hurt to remember that the history of Portuguese literature was ‘excluded’ from the curricula of Brazil's basic education almost 20 years ago. The objective couldn't be more clear: less literature history, more literature.
And no one is prohibiting kids from read Camões, Alcoforado or Pessoa, OK? But the focus is this: to teach how to read.
With all the blowback it received, the Ministry of Education issued a follow-up statement with a guarantee that Portuguese literature would definitely not be dropped from the curriculum. Instead, they said that what may occur is a change in the way the content is presented, but failed to go into further detail:
Na proposta de Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC), o estudo de obras literárias brasileiras deve ser realizado em conexão direta com a leitura e o estudo de obras clássicas da literatura portuguesa.
In the BNCC proposal, the study of Brazilian literary works will be performed in direct connection with the reading and study of classic works of Portuguese literature.
At the blog O Jornal do Romário, Brazilian linguist Marcos Bagno used a wider lens to question why the debate doesn't reflect other important literature connected to Portugal and Latin America, rather than looking at how Brazilian culture reflects its Portuguese ancestry:
Por que ninguém faz protesto contra a não obrigatoriedade do ensino na escola da literatura africana de expressão portuguesa — uma literatura com fascinantes identidades próprias, fecunda, que recicla os cânones ocidentais, que fala de realidades sociais e culturais muito próximas de nós? Cadê o abaixo-assinado?
Por que não se convoca passeata para que se torne obrigatório o ensino da literatura latino-americana, a mais rica e influente da segunda metade do século XX, produzida em países do nosso próprio continente, com uma variedade de gêneros e temas tão vasta quanto a porção do mundo que se estende de Tijuana a Ushuaia?
Why doesn't anyone protest against the non-requirement for schools to teach African literature of Portuguese expression — a fertile literature with its own fascinating identities, which recycles Western canons, which speaks of social and cultural realities so close to our own? Where's the petition?
Why aren't marches being called for so that what becomes required teaching is Latin American literature, the richest and most influential of the second half of the 20th century, produced in countries on our own continent, with a variety of genres and themes as vast as the part of the world that extends from Tijuana to Ushuaia?
The matter of what to include in the new curriculum is open to public comments until March 15, 2016, on Brazil's Ministry of Education and Culture website. It will be only the first step in solidifying Brazil's future school curriculum, as it will also be reviewed by state and city school networks as well as individual schools before going into effect in June 2016.

author: Adam Lee


text:
Syrians Mark Fifth Anniversary of Revolution with More Protests · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

“3.7m #childrenofsyria under 5 have known nothing but a lifetime shaped by war,” tweets @UNICEF.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the Syrian revolution, which has turned into a bloody civil war estimated to have claimed the lives of up to a quarter of a million people.
And while the number of those killed since the protests started in Syria are disputed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria's five years of conflict. The observatory provides other staggering figures of the toll on Syrians this revolution-turned-civil war has had so far: 2 million people have been injured, many with permanent disabilities, and 11 million Syrians have been internally displaced or forced to flee the war-torn country altogether.
This video of the first protest which took place in Damascus on March 15, 2011, shows scores of people marching and chanting: “Where are you Syrian?” in a rally call to encourage more protesters to join them to demonstrate against the regime of Bashar Al Assad, which met protesters with bullets, barrel bombs, mortar and aerial bombardment and chemical attacks.
The narrator says this was the first anti-regime protest and that Syrians of all sects, including Sunnis and Alawites, were involved. Protesters are also heard chanting: “Allah, Syria, and only freedom!” and “Peaceful! Peaceful!” indicating that they were after a peaceful revolution. But that was not to be. As the protests got out the regime's control, Jihadists from around the world, bankrolled by money from oil-rich Gulf countries, rose to protect their Sunni brothers against the onslaught of the Alawite rulers of Damascus. Those fighters formed the nucleus of what was to later on become ISIS, which has carved itself an Islamic caliphate across Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, Iran and Lebanese militia group Hezbollah came to the rescue of the Assad regime, followed by the Russians, who just announced the withdrawal of their land troops yesterday while maintaining airstrikes.
Amnesty International tweets the following infographics to illustrate the price Syrians had to pay:
A Syrian Flees his Home Every 20 Seconds
Every 20 seconds a Syrian is forced to flee their home. #withSyria #Syria #Syria5years https://t.co/eg5l8jBHaF pic.twitter.com/3yr5wSwyvC
— AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) March 15, 2016
Five People are Killed in Syria Every Hour
5 people are killed in #Syria every hour. This MUST stop now. Stand #withSyria! https://t.co/xFogHIM9BF pic.twitter.com/DRfSoJWyxD
— AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) March 15, 2016
35 People Disappear in Syria Every Day
#Syria: 65,000 people ‘disappeared’ since 2011. That's 35 people every day. #withSyria https://t.co/mU6m7RIWrQ pic.twitter.com/tEEQEU7afI
— AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) March 15, 2016
One in Every Three Syrians Live Under the Poverty Line
According to the World Food Organisation:
Today, 1 in 3 Syrians live under the poverty line. We are standing #WithSyria. #IamSyrian pic.twitter.com/KyagOa2FuK
— World Food Programme (@WFP) March 15, 2016
Chemical Weapons Used 161 Times:
Report: Chemical weapons used at least 161 times throughout Syrian conflict https://t.co/JfIytiDBI5 via @syriahr #سوريا
— Derek Bowler (@BowlerDerek) March 15, 2016
And Unicef shares this drawing by a Syrian refugee describing his plight and that of his people:
Heartbreaking.This is a Syrian refugee boy's drawing. #childrenofsyria @UNICEFHrvatska pic.twitter.com/ZYzmj0cvGq
— UNICEF (@UNICEF) March 15, 2016
306,000 Syrian Children Born as Refugees
In last #FIVEyears, 306,000 #Syrian children born as #refugees, incl Riyan in #Iraq v/@unicefiraq pic.twitter.com/Tf5AP3BFZr
— Kent Page (@KentPage) March 15, 2016
Today's anniversary is being marked on social media under the hashtag @withSyria, which shows many people lending their support to the campaign which encourages supporters to take photographs of themselves with their hands folded like a dove (sign for peace).
Even former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright got on the bandwagon:
Today marks 5 years of tragedy for the Syrian people. They deserve our protection and support. I stand #withSyria pic.twitter.com/ZcZnsrKhkP
— Madeleine Albright (@madeleine) March 15, 2016
Others are using the hashtag #FIVEyears calling for an end of the war in Syria:
And Syrians are back to the streets to claim their country and revolution back. Activist Hadi Al Abdallah shares this photograph taken today at Kafranbel:
ليست حربا أهلية.. ليست أزمة .. ليست صراع
اسمها #ثورة #ثورة #احكيها_صح #كفرنبل pic.twitter.com/D5FYjyBKpD
— هادي العبدالله Hadi (@HadiAlabdallah) March 15, 2016
It is not a civil war. It is not a crisis. It is not a conflict. It is a revolution!
Kafranbel, a small Syrian town in Idlib, has had massive media coverage since the start of the revolution, thanks to the photographs and videos its activists share of protesters carrying banners, like the one above, addressing the world.
Here are more photographs of Syrians protesting across the country to mark their revolution's fifth anniversary:
#TheRevolutionContinues #Syria demonstrations against #Assad, every photo is taken from a different city.
2016/03/11 pic.twitter.com/z7yPBne4hU
— Kafranbel English (@kafrev) March 11, 2016
#TheRevolutionContinues #Syria demonstrations against #Assad, every photo is taken from a different city.
2016/03/11 pic.twitter.com/naX4YguC42
— Kafranbel English (@kafrev) March 11, 2016
#TheRevolutionContinues #Syria demonstrations against #Assad, every photo is taken from a different city.
2016/03/11 pic.twitter.com/S6XIjZGbwL
— Kafranbel English (@kafrev) March 11, 2016

author: Amira Al Hussaini


text:
Ten Years on, Families Keep the Memories of 65 Miners Killed in Mexico Alive · Global Voices
Mas de 131

The organization Pasta de Conchos Family. Photo by Daliri Oropeza (@Dal_air) for Másde131. Used with permission.
The organization Pasta de Conchos Family has a very clear motto: “Lives are worth more than coal”. Their work has expanded beyond demanding the recovery of the bodies of their loved ones, abandoned by the federal government in 2006 in a mine owned by Grupo México, to defending other miners’ rights, protecting the environment, creating memorials, and creating alternative jobs for workers with disabilities caused by mining accidents. Their goal: to ensure that what happened to their family members does not happen again.
Ten years ago, during the wee hours of February 19, 2006, 65 miners became buried in Mine 8, Pasta de Conchos Unit, a property of Grupo México managed by Germán Larrea. The main cause of was a lack of security, supervision and sanitation. After the accident, rescue efforts lasted only a couple of days, while the country's president at the time, Vicente Fox, sent a message saying “he prayed to God for the miners”. The secretary of labor announced five days later that the miners had died.
In 1889, 300 miners died in the El Hondo Pit. It's the first documented record of an accident in the region's carbon mines. Thirteen years later, 135 persons died in the same place. According to a document given to Másde131 titled “Our History”, in which Pasta de Conchos Family's work was documented, it's calculated that 402 miners have perished in Grupo México's mines alone. In total, around 3,000 miners have died in the region since the end of the 19th century.
Cristina Auerbach, a human rights defender and member of Pasta de Conchos Family, described how in the coal region there is a shared sentiment between the miners and their families: since nobody considered the violation of their rights to be reprehensible, death in the mines became natural, a usual death. Miners say they know where they will go in, but not where they will come out. There are families in the town where the grandfather died in a pit, the orphan son once grown perished there too, and so on for three or four generations. Auerbach added:
Es una historia de muerte con la que es necesario reconciliarse.
El aporte de estos 10 años fue romper ese enclave, romper la lógica de muerte que había. Ese es el aporte que hemos podido dar.
It's a history of death that we need to come to terms with.
The value of these past 10 years was that we broke this embedded idea; we broke the established logic of death. That is what we have accomplished.
Memorial marking 10 years since the tragedy of Pasta de Conchos. Photo by Mariana Sarava for Másde131. Used with permission.
In the coal region, isolated and alone, building an organization where people feel like a family is an achievement. Pasta de Conchos Family is not a union; it's a group of fathers, mothers, children, active workers, survivors, and community members affected by mining. Many of the people from the region emigrated from San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas. The organization has people from all parties and churches.
On March 3, 2006, a few weeks after the accident, the Pasta de Conchos Family first marched to the office of the International Labor Organization (Organización Internacional del Trabajo) in Mexico's capital city to demand the retrieval of their loved ones’ bodies. Their efforts did not end there. Nearly a year later, they arrived again all together at a memorial in front of the corporate offices of Grupo México located in the luxury neighborhood Polanco, this time with families from other mines: Lulú, Pocitos Ferber, Vertical 4, Mine 5 (The Emerald) and AHMSA's Mine 7 (Saltillito). There were people from the towns of Palaú, Nueva Rosita, Progreso, Barroterán in the caravan.
“Something that we did was to own the symbolic ground,” Auerbach remembered. She recounted that in 2007, on the first anniversary of the tragedy, they planted crosses outside the mine with the names of each worker, the owner, and the date of death. “The first 65 were Pasta de Conchos, but after we put the names of other miners too”. Today, authorities want to take down the dozens of crosses at the entrance of the mine.
The topic of coal mining is complicated. It goes through three levels of government. The concession is granted by the Ministry of Economy, but the mayor gives permission for land use.
Pasta de Conchos Family works with various towns in the region, including Cloete, where mining pits can be found on community lands, on the streets, almost under the houses. People joke: Cloete is the only place where mines have an address and postal code.
Residents of Cloete and Pasta de Conchos Family succeeded in stopping the loud, dusty, and contaminating work of the pits officially. Their next step is to ask for them to be covered.
Auerbach explained:
Lo que nos une es la certeza de que la vida vale más que el carbón y de ahí no nos mueven, está encima de contratos, concesiones, acarreo. Si para sacar el carbón vas a afectar la vida no te dejaremos sacarlo.
We are united by the certainty that life is worth more than coal, and no one can make us change that. It's a belief that goes beyong the contracts, concessions and transportation. If by digging for coal you are going to affect life, we will not allow it.
Additionally, it is common in the area to see disabled miners in wheelchairs who do not have a job anymore and can't find anything to do. Some even resort to begging. Various of these former miners organized themselves and formed social cooperatives to look for some type of livelihood. For example, in the Ejido de Minas de Barroterán community, workers who survived accidents in mines have a farming cooperative of an hectare where they plant piquin and Japanese chili peppers. They have discovered that there are other means to work beyond digging for coal.
In the years following the tragedy of Pasta de Conchos, the situation for miners worsened, especially in 2011. That year, a record number of two miners per month died.
During the 2011 memorial, Pasta de Conchos Family presented the report, “Dime desde allá abajo” (Tell me from the underground). They showed official documents stating the conditions of mines from 2008 to 2010. Ever since, the organization has presented annual reports proving that tragedies in the coal region are not accidents, spontaneous or unavoidable. In 2012, 33 coal miners died inside the mines.
After former Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano, who repeatedly acted in favor of Grupo México, resigned in 2012, the government granted Pasta de Conchos Family access to mine inspection reports since 2000. They noticed then that the miners had been complaining of the same conditions for years.
After that, they changed their strategy. Since August 2013, Pasta de Conchos Family has accompanied the secretary of labor's inspectors. They launched a campaign among miners and their families urging them to report to authorities when security and sanitation regulations and labor rights were violated. They handed out 30,000 cards with phone numbers and addresses so they could make accusations anonymously.
In 2012, 33 workers passed away; in 2013, two died; in 2014, three perished; and in 2015 one person died.
“They saw that we did not have to put an end to mining; rather we had to put an end to the deaths,” explained Auerbach, who shared that now they even receive these reports of poor conditions through Facebook and Twitter.
Remembering Pasta de Conchos. Photo by Daliri Oropeza for Másde131. Used with permission.
Regarding those responsible for the security of miners, Auerbach said:
Creo que señalamos claramente desde el inicio al Estado, más allá de si eran los presidentes Fox, Calderón, Peña Nieto, hay una institucionalización de la impunidad.
Para nosotros como Familia Pasta de Conchos, da lo mismo si es del PAN, del PRI, el resultado es igual: No es un asunto ni de personas ni de partidos, sino del Estado, el que está obligado de tutelar, promover los derechos humanos y laborales.
I believe we have clearly pointed out that the state, beyond just presidents Fox, Calderón, Peña Nieto, there is an institutionalized impunity.
For us, Pasta de Conchos Family, it is the same if it's the PAN [National Action Party] or PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party], the result is identical. It is not a matter of people or parties, rather the state. It is the state who is obliged to enforce protection and to promote human and workers’ rights.
“Turn in those responsible for Pasta de Conchos so that society will believe that you'll retrieve those who disappeared,” Pasta de Conchos Family told former Attorney General of Mexico Jesús Murillo Karam. The government official told them that rescuing the bodies was a presidential decision, but he later changed his mind.
On September 1, 2015, after the case was juggled among different judges who prevented the families from entering the mine to retrieve the remains of the workers, the attorney general's office declared itself incompetent to continue the inquest opened on November 13, 2013. Karam left the position and now Arely Gómez, the current attorney general of Mexico, says that the crimes have reached their statute of limitations. But Pasta de Conchos Family is questioning why the attorney general's office claims it cannot prosecute the crimes when it was them who let them reach the statute of limitations in the first place.
An audit, paid for by Grupo México and conducted by expert D.G. Wooton in 2007, said rescuers cannot go down into the mine because of the risks of HIV and tuberculosis infections due to contaminated water. The company points to the audit as a reason not to hand back the miners’ bodies. There's also a rumor that in 2016, the Pasta de Conchos mine will open under another legal name: Mina Reunificación Fresnos (Fresnos Reunification Mine), which is legally impossible because two years ago the Ministry of Economy suspended the concession. Pasta de Conchos Family has been waiting since 2010 for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to take up their case.
Four whistles into pre-hispanic seashells purified the memorial place. In front of the Jesuit priests and Pasta de Conchos Family an offering was placed. In the middle, a cross made of coal rocks was set, an element that gives life and death — at once providing the region with work, but also bringing accidents and environmental destruction. Around the cross, the names of the 65 miners were written; and next to it, a yellow rope. The rope that miners use to communicate if they run into trouble.
The ceremony was part of a commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the tragedy on February 19, 2016. The families of Pasta de Conchos had traveled one full day to remember the miners in front of Grupo México's corporate offices.
“The rope is what should be followed if an accident happens in the mine. It brings the message, the word is tied to it. The rope encircles the symbol of Pasta de Conchos Family. The rope, in a way, is the guide for the rescue.” Photo by Daliri Oropeza (@Dal_air) for Masde131. Used with permission.
One of the widows, Elvira Martínez, said:
Voy a volver aquí las veces que tenga que venir hasta que los logremos rescatar. Seguimos en pie y a Germán Larrea (director ejecutivo de Grupo México) le decimos que no olvidamos y vamos a estar viniendo hasta rescatar lo que es de nosotros.
I am going to come back here as many times as I have to, until we manage to rescue them. We are still standing; and we tell Germán Larrea (executive director of Grupo México) that we will not forget and we will keep coming back until they rescue what is ours.”
At the beginning, all the attendees received a cloth embroidered with the name of each miner. After the families lit 10 candles, one for every year of waiting, they placed the clothes behind them.
The memorial ended on the idea of continuing their fight in the coal region. That perseverance is their rope, and if it had a little slip of paper on it, it would read, “Life is respected”. If the rope was Fox's, Calderón's, Peña Nieto's, it would say, “Life is purchased”.
Once they reach the other side of that rope, these families will finally have peace.

author: Mas de 131


text:
#WhereisBassel: Imprisoned Syrian Technologist Is Still Missing · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

#WhereisBassel campaign image, for wide distribution.
Friends and supporters of Syrian-Palestinian web developer and open-source enthusiast Bassel Khartabil today re-ignited a campaign demanding information on his whereabouts. In October 2015, the technologist, who is also known as Bassel Safadi,  was moved from the notorious Adra civilian prison in Damascus to an unknown location.
Supporters across the globe are calling for information on his whereabouts and safety, and organizing public demonstrations in multiple cities in Europe and the United States for March 19, 2016.
Khartabil, who had spent four years in prison before his forced disappearance, was a Creative Commons leader in Syria and worked actively projects like Mozilla Firefox and Wikipedia before his 2012 arrest. He is credited with opening up the Syrian Internet and extending online access and knowledge to the public. According to the European Parliament, his detention is part of Syrian government's efforts to restrict access to online communities and stifle freedom of expression in the country.
On social media, Creative Commons is taking the lead in asking for Khartabil's whereabouts:
On March 19, help raise awareness about Bassel Khartabil's disappearance #WhereIsBassel https://t.co/OeNFA9Ompr pic.twitter.com/AsTelU5foQ
— Creative Commons (@creativecommons) March 11, 2016
In this video, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls for a global protest on March 19 as part of the #WhereisBassel campaign:
On freebassel.com, a website set up by Khartabil's supporters, Wales further explains:
Today is March 15th. This is an important anniversary for two reasons. For the world, this is the fifth anniversary of the beginnings of the Syrian conflict. For me personally, and a lot of the other people who are in the Wikipedia movement, the open source movement, it's the fourth anniversary of Bassel's detainment in Syria. Four days from now we're going to be holding protests in many different cities around the world. You can see the list here on the website. The real question we're trying to put out to the world, the message that we want you to carry to your friends, to your family, to the media everywhere is: “Where is Bassel? We need to know what is going on with Bassel.”
Protesters are being encouraged to create life-sized cardboard cutouts of Khartabil and pose with him, hug him and take selfies.
Join the global #WhereIsBassel campaign in SF on March 19th! #FREEBASSEL @jwalesF https://t.co/aiGfRjT92V pic.twitter.com/mKY3yZLlPX
— Barry Threw (@barrythrew) March 14, 2016
#London Protest Confirmed: https://t.co/Ge4PsgafLn #WhereIsBassel is in MARBLE ARCH 19/03 at 2pm @JWalesF @lurnid pic.twitter.com/B3Csuig1gG
— #FREEBASSEL (@freebassel) March 10, 2016
Supporters are also being encouraged to show their support, wherever they are:
We would like you to protest in your own cities, offices etc..
Find Bassel cutout and take selfies with him and upload it with #WhereIsBassel on social media
Khartabil was arrested on March 15, 2012, on the first anniversary of the start of the Syrian revolution. He was interrogated and tortured for five days by Military Branch 215 and was then transferred to the Interrogation Division Branch 248 and detained incommunicado for nine months.
Join a #WhereisBassel Demonstration
London: Marble Arch at 2pm
Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou at 2pm
Berlin: Alexanderplatz Berlin at 2pm
San Francisco: Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park at 12pm
Boston: Copley Square at 3pm
On December 9, 2012, Khartabil was brought before a military prosecutor without an attorney present, and charged with “spying for an enemy State”. He was then sent to the Adra Prison, where he was held until his disappearance on October 4, 2015.
On November 12, 2015, Khartabil's wife, Noura Ghazi, reported a rumor that her husband had been secretly sentenced to death by the Syrian government. This information was never confirmed, and those close to her believe this may have been communicated to her as a scare tactic.
Meanwhile, friends and supporters continue to ask #WhereisBassel and to wonder what has happened in the five months since his disappearance.
Donatella, a Creative Commons community leader from Italy, asks:
today marks the 4th year of imprisonment for Bassel & the 5th month of his disappearance from Adra jail in #Syria we r asking #whereisbassel
— dona (@donatelladr) March 15, 2016
From San Francisco, artist and supporter Niki Korth tweets:
4 years today Bassel is missing from public conversation. We miss his inventive thoughts #freebassel https://t.co/ZpD1AP3wUC #freebassel
— Niki Korth (@KikiSurvives) March 15, 2016
She also shares this tool to share Khartabil's tweets. She explains:
This site is a framework that uses the public archive of Bassel’s tweets to bring his voice back into contemporary conversation. By reading, quoting, and sharing his words from the past, we can make him more present today, and work toward a future in which he is free and this site is no longer necessary.
And long-time friend and campaigner for Khartabil's freedom Mohammad Najem, from Lebanon, shares this petition. Najem writes:
On Saturday March 19, the FREEBASSEL Campaign is joining forces with the Jimmy Wales Foundation for freedom of expression to create a #WhereIsBassel day of awareness. They are asking supporters and friends of Bassel to create masks for Bassel and take selfies and share it online. You can print the masks and share the selfies on this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/199940690370370/. Be sure to share on Twitter using #WhereIsBassel.
To learn more or support Bassel, attend a public event, visit the website (freebassel.org), or tweet the above image using the #WhereisBassel hashtag.


text:
All Holds Barred in Cage ‘Fight’ Between Two Kazakhs · Global Voices
Akhal-Tech Collective

Screenshot of the Mixed Martial Arts fight in Shanghai between Aibek Nurseit and ethnic Kazakh Gabit Turganbek from a video uploaded by QAIMAQ TV.
Kazakh social media networks have been discussing a bizarre Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) cage ‘fight’ between one of their own citizens and an ethnic kinsman from China in Shanghai, which ended in mutual disqualification after both fighters appeared to be simply going through the motions.
The reason for that, as learned by RFE/RL and a host of local Kazakh news websites, was that the two Kazakhs did not want to harm one another.
The display of brotherliness, which saw some light grappling but none of the destructive knee, kick and punch combinations for which the sport is famous, did not impress the judges, who promptly disqualified the pair.
A video from the fight is below:
One of the fighters, Aibek Nurseit, told RFE/RL:
Gabit [Turganbek] and I, we both made it to the finals. I had beaten a French fighter and Gabit beat a Ukrainian guy. We never agreed beforehand that we wouldn't hit each other. [But] when I entered the ring and the fight started, I felt immediately like Gabit was avoiding hitting me. I understood that he didn't want to fight with me, and I couldn't raise my hand against another Kazakh either.
RFE/R'L's report continues:
Nurseit said a large sum of money and a championship title were at stake, but he didn't want to win them by beating a fellow Kazakh.
“I met Gabit after the fight at the banquet. We shook hands and that was it,” he said.
Judging by YouTube comments, the gesture was well appreciated by ordinary Kazakhs:
рахмет жигиттер , керемет! Жаса қазағым
Thanks a lot lads, good work. You did us proud!
Gabit Turganbek is one of 1.5 million ethnic Kazakhs hailing from China's western Xinjiang province. Kazakhs are the most populous Central Asian minority living in the province bar the Uighurs (est. 8.5 million), while Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tajiks also live in the region.
Ethnic Kazakhs make up over 65% of the population of ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, with around a fifth of the state's population made up of ethnic Russians.

author: Akhal-Tech Collective


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American Reporter’s Assault Reveals How Common Sexual Violence Is in Mexico City · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

Screenshot of Andrea Noel discussing her sexual assault with El Universal.
Independent American journalist Andrea Noel (who was previously the editorial coordinator for VICE News Latin America) reported she was the victim of a sexual assault by a stranger on the streets of Mexico City. The incident occurred on March 8, the day in which International Women’s Day was celebrated.
The attack took place in broad daylight in the district of Condesa, a trendy spot frequented by foreigners and tourists. As Noel was walking, the assailant came up from behind, pulled down her underwear, and lifted up her skirt before running away. After regaining her composure, Andrea sought out store owners in the surrounding area to ask if they had captured images of the assault on their security cameras.
After obtaining the videos, Noel went to the authorities to report what had happened and then shared this video on Twitter:
Si alguien reconoce a este imbécil, favor de identificarlo. Women should be able to walk safely. (Las mujeres deberían poder caminar seguras) #FelizDiaDeLaMujer pic.twitter.com/U7flOoJoks
— Andrea Noel ϟ (@metabolizedjunk) March 9, 2016
If anyone recognizes this moron, please identify him. Women should be able to walk safely. #HappyInternationalWomensDay
VICE News published a statement in which they condemned the attack, saying:
En VICE nos parece prioritario establecer un diálogo constante en torno a la violencia de género que se vive en este país, y éste sin duda es un ejemplo más de la persistencia diaria del fenómeno en México. Al enterarnos de los hechos, los miembros de VICE Media hemos expresado nuestro apoyo personalmente y como medio, por lo que estamos trabajando en una cobertura amplia que contextualice el fenómeno de la discriminación y el abuso sexual en México.
Here at VICE we believe that it is critical to establish a constant dialogue on the gender violence that is experienced in this country, and this is certainly a reflection of the daily persistence of this phenomenon within Mexico. Upon learning the facts, the members of VICE Media have expressed their support personally and we are also working on comprehensive coverage that contextualizes the phenomenon of discrimination and sexual abuse in Mexico.
In an interview with Mexico's El Universal TV, Noel commented that it was not the first time that she was a victim of crime in the Mexican capital and that in the past prosecutors have pressured her not to formalize her complaints.
Tres criminales violentos siguen en las calles ya que las autoridades callan a víctimas.
Three criminals remain in the streets while the authorities silence the victims.
In spite of the difficulties that she said she has faced trying to achieve justice, she maintained that she has no intention of returning to the United States:
Yo a México lo considero mi país más que a Estados Unidos, no pienso volver y si me voy, va a ser a fuerza ¿sabes?
I consider Mexico to be my country more than the United States, I will not go back and if I do go, it will be by force, you know?
Noel also referred to the cultural issues that surround sexual harassment in Mexico, including the implication that women should be submissive to men. A form of aggression is the piropo, a vulgar verbal advance towards women that occurs on a daily basis and is, sometimes, socially accepted.
Professor and journalist Gabriel Páramo has said the following on this type of abuse:
Así, las mujeres se convierten en blancos, a veces sin que víctimas ni victimarios se den cuenta cabal, de expresiones que las colocan en un segundo plano, en objetos que están para ser admirados. Ya lo hemos hablado, los hombres mexicanos creemos que tenemos el derecho de juzgar a las mujeres por su apariencia.
La conclusión de mis alumnas, ambos grupos son mayoritariamente de mujeres, es que no debiera ser así, y tratan de mostrarlo en sus campañas #PodríasSerTú, en la que el objetivo es mostrar que el hostigamiento vulnera; y #nonosgustanlospiropos (aplican restricciones) en el que piden a los hombres dejar de opinar sobre mujeres con las que no tienen relaciones de ningún tipo.
Thus, women become targets, sometimes without either the victims or victimizers being fully aware of it, of expressions that place women second [to men], that turn them into objects to be admired. As we have already said, Mexican men believe that we have the right to judge a woman by her appearance.
The conclusion of my students, both groups are composed mostly by women, is that it should not be this way, and they try to demonstrate this in campaigns like #PodríasSerTú [#ItCouldBeYou], in which the goal is to show that harassment is a violation; and #nonosgustanlospiropos [#WeDontLikeYourCompliments] (restrictions apply) in which men are asked to refrain from expressing their opinions about woman with which they have no relations of any kind.
Sadly, sexual harassment on the streets of Mexico City is common, especially on public transportation which serves a lot of people. Although, as Global Voices has previously reported, a small number of passengers have begun to consent to these caresses and other touching by strangers, referred to as arrimón consensuado in Mexico, or consensual frotteurism.
In any case, it is unacceptable that violence and attacks against women in Mexico go unpunished, and it is an issue that we will continue to report.

author: J. Tadeo


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Gymnast Thema Williams’ Long, Fraught Road to Representing Trinidad & Tobago in the Olympics · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

A community gymnastics centre; photo by North Devon Council, used under a CC BY 2.0 license.
Two weeks ago, the Trinidad and Tobago Gymnastics Federation (TTGF) announced that it would meet to discuss topless photos being shared online of two Olympic hopefuls and decide whether disciplinary action should be taken against them.
At the time, the organisation, which sets the policies for the sport in the country and is charged with its promotion and development, made the point that neither Thema Williams, the Trinidadian first pick for the Rio Olympics, nor Marissa Dick, the Canadian-born alternate with Trinidadian roots, was owed a place, saying that the spot belongs to the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee (TTOC).
On March 16, the TTGF finally announced that Williams made the cut for the 2016 Rio Olympics Test Event scheduled to take place on April 13-18, 2016, but the decision has come after much controversy.
Months ago, Williams had briefly posted a topless photo on Instagram with the caption that it was always an honour to be a black woman. Dick had posted a topless pic on Snapchat. In both cases, the women's breasts were obscured.
People using fictitious names sent the photos to the TTGF. In response, the local gymnastics organisation promised to decide both athletes’ fate before a disciplinary committee — and then drew out the process.
News site Wired868 made the observation that:
News that the TTGF is prepared to find a third gymnast at short notice, if necessary, to represent the country, may not appease concerned fans, who are anxious to see the country get the best possible representation at the upcoming Olympics.
And it certainly won’t calm the nerves of the two young gymnasts, who are anxiously awaiting their fate.
That initial disciplinary committee meeting was delayed, allegedly over the unavailability of an attorney willing to offer pro bono advice. Although the TTGF insisted that the matter would be handled “with an open mind”, it did make the pronouncement that both athletes were in breach of their contracts — leaving many to speculate over whether the disciplinary meeting would affect which athlete represented the country in April’s Rio Olympics Test Event.
While that decision hung in the balance, local celebrities, including Williams’ godmother comedian Nikki Crosby, came out in support of the gymnast by posing topless (albeit with their backs to camera), and using the hashtag #WeSupportThema:
Local female celebrities in a campaign intended to show support for gymnast Thema Williams; widely shared on Facebook. Photo credit: Gary Jordan.
Wired868 lamented the fact that both athletes — Williams (first choice) and Dick (the alternate) — whose pictures were sent to the TTGF by people using fake names and personas were being left in limbo over such an important decision. Several Facebook users were agitating for netizens to place further pressure on the TTGF.
#ThemaforRio #ThemaWilliams pic.twitter.com/mVb8SUaBGA
— Leslie Ann Boisselle (@trinilab) March 15, 2016
Things soon started to snowball. The TTGF's disciplinary committee referred the matter to its council, further drawing out the process. The country's Minister of Sport Darryl Smith took a controversial hands-off approach.
Williams’ American coach, John Geddert, accused the TTGF of compromising her Olympic preparations by refusing permission for her to attend a critical meet. Moreover, the finer details of Williams’ contract came under scrutiny. Wired868 explained:
Williams’ Olympic Games contract gives the TTGF the right to take the ultimate sanction against the athlete for performing at a meet that is not directly sanctioned by either the local body or the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG).
The TTGF determined that the meet which Williams’ coach wanted her to enter was beneath the athlete's skill level (regardless of the fact that she competed in the same event last year). An anonymous TTGF executive member maintained that “Section 1.3 of the athletes’ contract meant that the gymnasts could only participate in FIG or TTGF events and not that they could compete in other events once sanctioned”:
If the federation should breach clause three, then Marisa should sue us and go to Rio. Because the contract would be null and void.
The TTGF was not prepared to open itself up to a lawsuit and warned William's coach that if his athlete competed in the meet in question, she would be in breach of contract.
Williams’ father, himself fed up with the TTGF's extended silence on the matter, called it as he saw it:
I remember, as a young boy watching Sesame Street, (seeing) a child ask an adult: ‘Is silence a sound?’ […] To this day, they [the TTGF] have remained so silent it is deafening. I want to believe that their silence in this case is a sound. [..]
It is a sound of incompetence. It is a sound of unfairness, it is a sound of disbelief, embarrassment, biases, mischievousness.
In a curious development, one member of the local gymnastics fraternity, in an interview with Wired868, claimed “that race is a factor and Dick, who was born in Canada but qualifies to represent Trinidad through her mother, Hannifa, is the gymnast who is being victimised and not the other way around”:
The federation is divided because there are people who want to see a black girl from tots and tumblers go to Rio. They don’t want the best gymnast to go, they want a black girl to go!
The source also insisted that the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee (TTOC) president, who stated early on that Williams had already earned her spot, “cannot tell the federation who can go to the Olympics”.
As it turns out, the TTOC was right. Thema Williams will represent Trinidad and Tobago in Rio. The TTGF has come out the worst in the entire debacle, losing any semblance of public trust and intensifying calls to “hear the sound of feet shuffling out of office, giving way for knowledgeable and competent people to take the helm and take gymnastics out of the dark ages.”

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


text:
In Iran, It’s Norooz Tradition to Jump Over Fire for Good Luck · Global Voices
Tori Egherman

By Philippe Giabbanelli. CC BY 3.0 via Wikipedia Commons
All over the world people will be celebrating Norooz (Persian for New Day) this coming March 21. The new year holiday isn't simply a day, however. It is a two-week festival of cleaning, cooking, family, and celebration.
During that time, many in Iran will take a vacation from work. They will drive on mountain highways to villas in the north of the country. They will camp out in the warm cities of the south. They will get stuck in traffic, visit loved ones, and eat delicious foods. And it all begins with a bit of fire jumping.
The Iranian calendar, unlike the Gregorian calendar, which marks the new year on January 1, starts at the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere. Norooz gets underway on the evening before the last Wednesday of the year, known as Chaharshanbe Suri (چهارشنبه سوری) or Red Wednesday. To celebrate, it's a tradition for people in Iran to build bonfires and jump over the flames as well as light fireworks.
As revelers hop over the fire, they say:
زردی من از تو ک سرخي تو از من
Take away my yellow, give me your red.
This can probably be better understood as “take away my weakness and give me your strength”. It expresses hope for good fortune in the new year.
Instagram user mojtabadorbidi shared a montage of photos of Chaharshanbe Suri celebrations ahead of the holiday, while the Iranian Instagram account for VitaeneC, a Vitamin C drink, shared a quirky video.
About a month before the new year, Iran hosts its annual Fajr Film Festival. The movies featured at the festival often end up in cinemas around the country. Tehran Bureau, a news outlet focused on Iran and hosted by the Guardian, published an article previewing the films that will be playing during Norooz. The author writes:
What are going to be the most successful films at Nowruz around the country? I’d say Bodyguard, and Life Without Parole. The silver screen will portray two very different – yet both deeply scarred – Irans.
Bodyguard examines the life of a man who protects a high-ranking politician and his grapple with compromising idealism, while Life Without Parole follows the drama of a family preparing to part with a sister, due to wed in Afghanistan in an arranged marriage.
Ebrahim Hatamikiya will bring the story of Heydar Zabihi, the Bodyguard, to Iranian theaters this #Nowruz. #Iranfilm pic.twitter.com/IAuV23kmJy
— Sidewalk Lyrics (@pedestrian) March 15, 2016
On the small screen, many are sharing a music video uploaded on March 3 of American singer LaToya Jackson — the sister of the late Michael Jackson — and popular Iranian singer Andy, who lives in the US. They both sing in Persian about how much they miss Tehran:
Another video being shared is a new release by Iranian musician Moslem Rasouli titled “Nowruz 95″ and published on the Facebook page of alternative music site Radio Gramaphone. It features shots of people's feet as they dance to his instrumental, beat-heavy song. The video is also available on YouTube:

author: Tori Egherman