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An upcoming British edition of ‘Capitalism and Slavery’ makes news, but the Caribbean has always known the book’s worth · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Photo of Eric Williams’ ‘Capitalism and Slavery,’ the ninth printing of the British, Andre Deutsch, edition (dated 1990), by Nicholas Laughlin, used with permission.
“Capitalism and Slavery,” the published form of Eric Williams’ doctoral dissertation, famously argues that the decline of the transatlantic slave trade was precipitated, not by the sudden moral enlightenment or conscience of slave owners as the prevailing British narrative claims, but rather, by economics.
Williams, who later became Trinidad and Tobago's first prime minister, put forward a compelling case for this revolutionary argument in the late 1930s during his time at Oxford University; he described the work as “first, a study in English economic history and second, in West Indian and Negro history […] a study of the contribution of slavery to the development of British capitalism.”
The book, light years ahead of its time when it was first published in the United States in 1944, is currently receiving new interest after both the UK Observer and Guardian erroneously claimed this week that after more than 80 years, the groundbreaking work was finally getting a British publisher.
As Trinidadian Reginald Dumas pointed out in a letter to the editor of the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, however, his copy of the book “states very clearly that it was published by Andre Deutsch of 105 Great Russell Street, London, in 1964.” Meanwhile, British writer and academic Paul Gilroy tweeted:
Eric Williams’ autobiography puts the idiocy in yesterday’s Observer straight. pic.twitter.com/1D1Nqkhyqv
— Paul Gilroy (@bungatuffie) January 24, 2022
The Guardian subsequently issued a correction stating that it had amended its headline and original article due to its incorrect claim that Capitalism and Slavery was first published in the UK “in 1966 when a small university press gave it a very limited print run,” noting:
It was published in 1964 and then reprinted a number of times; and the André Deutsch publishing house was not a university press.
Nevertheless, the fact that the book is enjoying a resurgence is unsurprising to many in the Caribbean. At the Trinidad and Tobago-based Bocas Lit Fest‘s 2019 event, the year that marked the book's 75th anniversary, there was a discussion about “Capitalism and Slavery” as part of Bocas’ “Big Ideas” segment. The literary festival — arguably the premier such event in the region — credited the book with “chang[ing] the way we understand colonialism, the British Empire, the institution of slavery, and the rationale for Emancipation.”
The panel, which was chaired by academic Gabrielle Hosein, comprised historians Selwyn Cudjoe and Heather Cateau, as well as writer Caryl Phillips. Festival director Nicholas Laughlin introduced the book as “a work of economic history that's very much based on things like trade statistics […] but that also has a much wider cultural significance because of the arguments it makes [and] the ground it covers, [as well as] how it fits in to our contemporary understanding of our past, but also our present.”
The tone of the book might best be reflected by a quotation from Williams himself, which the moderator used to kickstart the discussion:
The West Indian historian of the future has a crucial role to play in the education of the West Indian people in their own history, and in the merciless exposure of the shams, the inconsistencies, the prejudices of metropolitan historians.
Panellist Selwyn Cudjoe, who praised the book for “giving voice to the voiceless,” made the point early on that “Capitalism and Slavery” is “not about stale facts and history, but the philosophical attempt to understand a particular social phenomenon.”
Caryl Phillips, the sole novelist on the panel, acknowledged the ways in which writers often stand on the shoulders of historians like Williams, who once said, “History is the basic science” — which Phillips took to mean, “If we don't understand the various forces that have shaped our past, we just cannot possibly understand the present [and therefore] no possibility of shaping the future […] particularly in the Caribbean context, where so much of our history has been corrupted and corroded by others interpreting our lives for us.”
Admitting she's never found it an easy book to read, historian Heather Cateau said that it is a multi-layered text which at its most basic level says, “This is what the world is like.” She also stressed that only someone like Williams, with his particular experience as a well educated and well travelled black man born into colonialism, could have written the book — with Phillips adding that, like his compatriot C.L.R. James, Williams had a profound love of the English language, which comes across strongly in the text.
With regard to the issue of Emancipation, the economic fulcrum on which it hinged, and the question of whether it came “from above” or “from below,” Cateau explained:
The [restless] action of the enslaved towards Emancipation was preempted with official Emancipation from above; however […] if they did not move to create Emancipation from above, they would not have been able to maintain economic control. Hence, we have an Emancipation Act that does not speak anything about freedom and equality; it speaks about economics.
As for the book's contemporary significance, Phillips said that it is now held “as a complete truth” that slavery funded the Industrial Revolution. For Cateau, it was Williams’ warning that “the ideas built on these interests” continue. “We have to guard,” Williams says in the book's conclusion, “against these old prejudices, but also against new, which are being constantly created; no age is exempt.”
In a time when African Americans have had to form movements to make their compatriots see that Black lives matter, Williams’ words ring true, solidifying him as the visionary that he was:
[These points] are not offered as solutions [to] present-day problems. They are noted as guideposts that emerge from the charting of another sea which was, in its time, as stormy as our own. The historians neither make nor guide history [but] if they do not learn something from history, the activities would be cultural decoration or a pleasant pastime, equally useless in these troubled times.
You can watch the full panel discussion, here.


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Armenian president resigns amid dual-citizenship scandal · Global Voices
OC Media

“Armen Sarkissian, President of Armenia, speaking to the Horasis delegates” by Horasis is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
This article was first published on OC Media. An edited version is republished here under a content partnership agreement.
Armenia’s fourth president, Armen Sarkissian, announced his resignation on January 23. Replacing him, is Alen Simonyan, the president of Armenia’s national assembly. In a statement shared by Sarkissian, the former president criticized the limited powers of the presidential office and decried attacks on the presidential office from “various political groups.”
However, a new investigation by Armenian investigative journalism media platform Hetq in partnership with the Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP) revealed that the resignation came after the President was probed for his dual citizenship. “Sarkissian, who announced his resignation from the presidency on Sunday night, had reportedly done so shortly after being contacted for comment about his Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship by journalists,” reported OC Media.
“We had information that the president had a St. Kitts and Nevis passport, which was confirmed in correspondence with Sarkissian. We cannot provide many details of the investigation at this stage as it is a cross-border investigation and not yet complete,” reported Hetq.
According to Armenian law, as explained by journalist Eric Hacopian, a president cannot hold dual citizenship before assuming the presidency for a five-year period. With these new developments, Sarkissian's presidency was illegitimate. In his defense, Sarkissian told the journalists that he was unaware that his dual citizenship was still valid.
Hetq said the questions of legitimacy around his presidency could have ramifications for all of the laws he passed and appointments he made in office, reporting:
Sarkissian told us that he believed that he was no longer a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis from the moment he requested to put his citizenship on hold after he received it in return for investments. President Armen Sarkissian is unlikely to return to Armenia since he could be prosecuted for forging official documents.
The fact is that Armen Sarkissian started the official process of renouncing his citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis not long before he was elected president in March 2018. According to the Armenia’s Constitution, he thus wasn’t eligible to be elected president.
Hence, all the decrees he signed, including various laws, the appointments of officials, the elections, even the appointment of the prime minister, are illegal.
The president resigned shortly after having this phone interview reported Hetq.
Omitting these recent developments, Sarkissian instead focused on critiquing the institution of the Presidency. “The President does not have the necessary tools to influence the radical processes of domestic and foreign policy in these difficult times for the country and the nation,” wrote Sarkissian in a statement published on the presidential website. “We have a paradoxical situation when the President has to be a guarantor of statehood without actually having any real tools.”
But the president knew from the start all the limitations of his seat, explained Eric Hacopian.
The president's role is largely ceremonial in Armenia while the executive power is held primarily by the prime minister. Armenia switched to a parliamentary system in a 2015 referendum. According to the state constitution, the president is responsible for ensuring the functioning of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial powers of the Republic of Armenia. While the president holds the power to intervene in these branches, the role does not allow for direct control of any of them. As such, the role of the president is limited to approving, signing, and revoking international treaties, and appointing or recalling diplomatic representatives to foreign states and international organizations based on recommendations of the acting Prime Minister. The president also adopts decrees and executive orders.
Sarkissian said the root of the problem was the Armenian Constitution which, according to the president, “presupposes the supremacy of one institution over another” and “creates obstacles for well-known diaspora specialists.”
To solve this, the now-former-president, suggested creating “a system based on checks and balances,” rather than switching from a parliamentary system to a presidential republic.
According to the Constitution of Armenia, the head of the National Assembly — presently Alen Simonyan — will serve as acting president before a new president is elected by the parliament. Members of parliament should present their nominees for the position within 35 days.
According to DW reporting, Sarkissian disagreed with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over his decision to remove the chief of general staff in March 2021 on the grounds that the military was plotting a coup to overthrow the prime minister. The country's constitution grants the President the powers to appoint, and dismiss the supreme command of the armed forces, as well as the highest military ranks and of other troops upon recommendation of the acting prime minister.
In lieu of recent developments, Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has sent a request to the National Security Service (NSS) to investigate the now-former president's citizenship status. Meanwhile, the President's Office issued a statement on January 25, denying claims that Sarkisian's dual citizenship was what prompted the president to resign. In another statement issued the following day, the office said, the president's concerns related to “the real problems and challenges facing the state” and that it won't “comment on ‘conspiracy theories and political myths.'”
A career diplomat who had served as Armenia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1998 to 2018, Sarkissian was elected president on March 2, 2018. In 1996, he briefly served as the country’s prime minister for four months, having been appointed by Armenia’s first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan. He was then replaced by Robert Kocharyan.
His tenure as president began in turmoil as the Armenian revolution broke out only a month after he had assumed the post, and catapulted opposition political figure Nikol Pashinyan to power.
Despite becoming president under Armenia’s old regime, Sarkissian appeared to have few public disagreements with Pashinyan in the years following the revolution. However, an open rift opened up following Armenia’s defeat in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, with Sarkissian calling for Pashinyan’s resignation as the country's Prime Minister and the creation of a new government of “National Accord” in November 2020.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: OC Media


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How Assamese Villages use traditional wisdom to guide climate preparedness · Global Voices
Moushumi Basu

( From left to right) Gajan Borah, Pradeep Neog and Narayan Neog, village elders from Sumoni Chapori village of Jorhat district can well predict the approaching weather disturbances. Image by the author.
(The interviews in this story were conducted in-person as a part of field research between October–December 2021)
India’s north-eastern state of Assam is more impacted by climate change than any other part of the country. When it comes to predicting the ways of rivers, rains and floods, observations of elders based on their traditional experiences and folk beliefs are still considered credible early warning systems in many villages, even when most villagers today have access to smartphones and weather applications.
Udhab Borah, 28, was among the first to begin using smartphones in his home village of Sumoni Chapori in the Jorhat district, about five years ago. This gave him access to various weather applications. “Though I do browse through their different forecasts on my mobile phone, or pause to hear the announcements made over radio and television, I still think that my village elders are almost 80 percent correct, in their weather predictions,” he says.
The village elders from Sumoni Chapori — Narayan Neog, Gajan Borah and Pradeep Neog — are known for accurately predicting impending rains, floods or cyclones. According to them, nature sends out her own signals to alert us about the upcoming calamities.
“Ame baan, kothale dhaan”, goes a popular adage in the village, says Narayan. Translated it means that mango flowers blooming in abundance herald floods for the year. While bountiful jackfruits appearing in the trees indicate a good paddy harvest ahead (lesser chances of floods).
“Animals around us are much quicker to sense the changing weather conditions and often behave in out of ordinary or erratic ways,” says Gajan. Years of observing some of these behavioural changes help them to predict the approaching natural calamities. He explains that if cows for instance suddenly become restless, start running hither and thither and go out of control, it is a sign of imminent rains and floods.
Pradeep further explains a popular folk belief based on the behaviour of cows at dawn, during their auspicious occasion of Goru Bihu (a festival dedicated to the care and worship of livestock). The head of the family enters the cowshed at the crack of dawn, to offer obeisance to the cows. If he finds the cows standing or restless, it is a sign that there will be a flood that year.
Worse still if there are dark (black) cows that are uneasy and jittery, this indicates the floods may be more severe than normal. However, on rare occasions, if the cows are found sleeping or even lying on the ground, it is time to rejoice, as it means there would be no floods that year.
But with the vagaries and impacts of climate change becoming more and more unpredictable, they admit that even the behaviour of the animals is becoming somewhat unreliable.
The villagers further believe that if the water level of the river Brahmaputra rises on a particular day of Ambubachi (another sacred occasion falling in the month of June, observed statewide), there would be floods for the rest of the year. On the other hand, if the river does not rise on that day, the floods would be less serious.
Rajib Morang, a village elder from Majdolopa village of Golaghat district, explains his ways of predicting the weather. Image by the author.
According to them, the uninterrupted croaking of frogs or the sudden appearance of trails of small ants in the soil also warns of heavy rain and floods. Further, if the water bodies are found to have no fish or less fish during the early part of the rainy season (April–May), there could be floods in that year.
“The behaviour of the rarely seen vultures also help us to forecast storms and cyclones,” says Rajib Morang, from Majdolopa village of Golaghat district. Vultures are known to build nests on top of tall trees, he explains. They can perhaps sense the approach of cyclones in advance and accordingly choose trees in safe locations to build their nests. So, easily spotting their nests indicates lower chances of cyclones.
Rajib further points out thick dark grey clouds blanketing the sun and the sky, shrouding the horizon and distant hills are warnings enough that there is heavy rain on the upper reaches of the neighbouring states of Arunachal or Nagaland.
“We further observe the direction of the wind, the height of clouds, and their proximity to the mountains. These give us an idea on the state of rains and that of floodwater in the higher ranges,” he says. Accordingly, they are able to estimate the time within which the rainwater would tumble down the hills and flood the villages.
Community members dwelling on the hills also warn them when they experience heavy rains that might lead to flooding. “Normally we get about 24–36 hours in hand and this helps us to decide in advance the preparatory measures to be adopted — whether we can cope with it from our homes or would have to rush out with our essentials and cattle to higher lands near embankments,” he says.
These folk beliefs have been passed on as oral traditions among the villagers for generations. However, in an effort to preserve them, some enthusiastic educated youths in certain villages are also documenting them. Non-profits such as Balipara Foundation are interviewing and video recording the village elders to preserve their folk beliefs and traditional knowledge.
“We may find it difficult to establish these beliefs scientifically, yet they are found to be at least 75 percent to 80 percent correct”, says Ratul Mahanta, Professor in Economics from Gauhati University, working on climate issues with indigenous communities. According to him, these local communities have been living on the banks of the River Brahmaputra for generations. While co-existing with the local ecosystem and biodiversity, they have been observing the behaviour of the flora and fauna and accordingly adapting to the changing natural phenomena.
“All these aspects put together have shaped their local customs, indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom, which enable them to predict the upcoming weather with a fair amount of accuracy,” he says. Most importantly the predictions of elders according to him help their fellow community members to prepare themselves in advance for the approaching weather disturbances.

author: Moushumi Basu


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‘Rebel’ candidates risk it all: Elections in Bangladesh · Global Voices
Civic Media Observatory

Illustration by Giovana Fleck
Welcome to Undertones, the Civic Media Observatory newsletter! In each edition we'll analyze an event, emerging trend, or a complex story, identifying key narratives of urgent public interest, delving deep into the context and subtext of local, vernacular and multilingual media. Undertones also offers an entry point into the public datasets that underpin our Observatory work.
Bangladeshis will head to the polls for the last phase of their local elections on January 31 and February 7. The election period has been mired in political violence. In 2021, 126 people were killed and 7,989 injured during local campaigns, according to human rights organization Ain o Salish Kendra.
Contrary to what one might think, the clashes are not always between the country’s leading party, the center-left Awami League, which has been in power since 2009, and its long-time opposition rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Electoral violence in fact has flared up within the ranks of the Awami League itself, as prospective candidates compete to be nominated by the party. Party outsiders are strongly discouraged from participating in elections. The Awami League has a strong hold on Bangladeshi politics which has been bolstered by the weakening of the opposition due to corruption allegations and repression by the ruling party.
Why care?
Despite being formally a multi-party state, the ruling party Awami League has placed significant obstacles to power before opposition parties and independent candidates. Use of violence is common against political opponents, scholars, journalists, and activists, and its 2018 Digital Security Act stifles freedom of press.
The Awami League effectively squelched its opposition in 2014, the year in which the BNP began refusing to participate in elections at all on the grounds that they were rigged.
Today, nomination by the Awami League is a golden ticket to being elected. Candidates who are not chosen by the party but still run for election are labelled “independent” or “rebel,” and are at the highest risk of being the targets of lethal violence. In the previous round of elections in January, independent candidates led in the polls.
The largest daily newspaper in Bangladesh, Prothom Alo, reported that Abul Kalam Azad, an Awami League candidate, had ordered party workers to draw a list of independent candidates and make sure they voted for the Awami League, as these candidates were essentially “the shield of [the opposition] BNP.”
Screenshot of item BD_32
Posted on Facebook, the Prothom Alo story garnered many critical reactions against the way the Awami League does politics. Our researcher assigned this item a score of +2 in the Observatory’s ranking of civic value, as unbiased reports on election violence are rare in Bangladeshi mainstream media. More analysis here.
Another popular target of pro-government politicians and oligarchs are scholars, journalists, cartoonists, activists, and others who publicly critique and scrutinize Bangladeshi politics. People who criticize the government online risk imprisonment under the country’s Digital Security act, and may also be physically attacked and, in extreme cases, forcibly disappeared. The number of instances of political violence fluctuates from year to year, but in some years has reached more than 26,000.
As a result, mainstream media outlets exercise selective self-censorship when reporting on powerful politicians and oligarchs. Protests have also erupted these past few years calling for the repeal of the Digital Security law.
This mainstream news item showcases a video of the son of an Awami League candidate for local office encouraging his father’s supporters to “commit murders if necessary” to win the election.
Screenshot of item BD_21
The video went viral—at the time of writing it has received 15,931 reactions and was posted 180 times on Facebook, as well as viewed over a million times on the YouTube channel of Jamuna TV. Most commenters argued that the video reveals—or confirms—the way the Awami League conducts politics. The post, according to our researcher may incite violence.
See the analysis of this item here, as well as another similar item.
Image via Pxhere. CC0 – Public domain.
Using the Observatory methodology, researcher Ananya uncovers the ways Indian media and politicians covered the Bulli app case, in which a hundred Muslim women found themselves up for auction online. “The severity of the crime,” she writes, appears to be “determined by the identity of the victim and perpetrator.” Read the story.
RUSSIA: “Russia always wins”: the narratives surrounding Russia-Ukraine crisis
As Russia threatens the US and NATO with stationing armies near Ukraine’s borders, pro-government editorial media and social media treat the crisis as a “joke” and a “baseless accusation,” while others observe that Russia is a nuclear “superpower” that has never lost a war.
PAKISTAN: #BoycottMuree: a hashtag trend exposes gaps in tourism in Pakistan
Tourism is central to the messaging of Pakistan’s ruling party, including for Prime Minister Imran Khan, a self-proclaimed environmentalist. Yet when more than 22 people died while trapped in their vehicles due to heavy snowfall at a popular mountain resort earlier in January, Khan’s reaction largely placed the blame on the victims for visiting the area at this time, drawing widespread criticism from the public.
NICARAGUA: Anti-indigenous violence and persecution in the Caribbean
Local and international media outlets report that settler-motivated violence in Nicaragua and state-sponsored persecution of indigenous groups in the Caribbean region are not random events, but part of a larger policy to control and reserve the territory for the expansion of other models of development, economy, and enrichment.

author: Civic Media Observatory


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Tennis star Peng Shuai and Professor Gulnar Obul: From captives to actors · Global Voices
Kok Bayraq

Peng Shuai in 2017. Photo credits: JC on Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Tennis star Peng Shuai’s and Professor Gulnar Obul’s personal stories differ, but the course of their stories, especially the dramatic changes in their statements after reemerging in public, are quite similar. The similarity proves that Chinese citizens can mysteriously transform from captives into actors.
In November 2021, Peng Shuai went missing for 15 days after publishing a “negative” post about Zhang Gaoli, former vice-premier of China. According to screenshots of that post, the tennis champion accused Zhang of pressuring her into having sex at his home three years ago.
In September 2018, Gulnar Obul, a professor at Kashgar University in Xinjiang, went missing and disappeared from the university's website for two months after a negative interview with the magazine of the Beijing-based Economic Research Institute, in which she described China’s campaign of anti-religious extremism in the Uyghur region as “oversized,” and said that “It is … impossible to put all the problems [in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region] into a large basket of extreme religious forces.”
As the Uyghur crackdown intensified, she was branded a “two-faced” Uyghur official and accused of publicly supporting Communist Party rule in the region while secretly chafing against state policies.
Before her disappearance, Peng Shuai said “… it doesn't matter if I’m hitting a rock with an egg or being a moth that flies towards the flame; I am telling the truth about what happened between us.”
Gulnar Obul also predicted possible punishments she could encounter in the future, stating, “Resisting ideas with weapons, not ideas, is not only a sign of weakness but a sign of savagery.” As she predicted, she was taken to a camp with a black hood over her head in September 2018. Radio Free Asia investigated Gulnar’s fate, and a university official said she was “one of the four professors detained three weeks ago [who were] accused of being two-faced.”
Gulnar Obul in Kashgar, in an undated photo from Radio Free Asia, used with permission.
When speaking at a press conference on February 1, 2021, held by the regional government of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Gulnar Obul stated that she had not been in captivity and that separatists were fabricating rumors to blackmail China.
Just as Gulnar Obul reappeared in publicon television dismissing claims of her detention, Peng Shuai suddenly appeared on television after her disappearance was discovered by international media and the Woman’s Tennis Association reacted.
Peng Shuai also changed her words when speaking with Lianhe Zaabao, claiming that her social media post was a “misunderstanding” and that “It is [about] personal privacy, [and] there [should be] no distorted interpretation.”
Clearly, the story of Peng Shuai is moving in the same direction as that of Gulnar Obul. The world should not be surprised if Peng Shuai carries the torch in the front line at the ceremony prior to the Beijing Winter Olympics because after Gulnar Obul returned, she spoke at the 47th regular session of the Human Rights Council and peddled the Beijing-sponsored line claiming the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are “the happiest Muslims in the world.”
Peng Shuai is now denying the sexual assault she had previously claimed, stating, “Regarding the recent news released on the official website of the WTA, the content has not been confirmed or verified by myself, and it was released without my consent.” It should come as no surprise that individuals and organizations who care about Peng Shuai are being called “Western hostile forces that are jealous of China's development,” because this situation is similar to when Gulnar Obul spoke at various conferences, including on stage at the UN in June 2021, when she testified that “vocational training centers” are urgently needed to “eradicate religious extremism because overseas separatist forces like WUC are spreading [the] seeds of terrorism.” Despite her interview with the Economic Research Institute, Gulnar Obul has openly said, “Uyghurs themselves launched a campaign against religious extremism 70 years ago and succeeded. [They] do not need state intervention.”
The course of the stories shows that today's Gulnar Obul is tomorrow's Peng Shuai; Gulnar Obul’s reality is quickly becoming Peng Shuai’s reality. Peng Shuai may be promoted to an official position in the near future, as Gulnar was promoted to vice chairman of the Xinjiang Association for Science and Technology after being released.
But they both are no longer the original tennis star or professor on the stage; they are mere (political) actors. Who is speaking, is not Peng Shuai, nor Gulnar Obul, but China’s system. The message sounds like this: “Don’t cast doubt on our legitimacy; we will and should always continue to be on the shoulders of these innocent people.”

author: Kok Bayraq


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The Gambia’s AFCON debut: from underdogs to title contenders · Global Voices
Beng Emmanuel Kum

The Gambia vs Burkina Faso team. Image by Kyselak, 23 October 2010, Wikimedia Commons, The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).
When The Gambia arrived in Cameroon for the Africa Cup of Nations, many thought they were just there to make up the numbers and won’t surely be a force to reckon with. But they have proved everyone wrong and have hit form at the continent’s premium sporting tournament in devastating fashion.
The Scorpions have enjoyed one of the most spectacular debuts in the history of the Africa cup of Nations reaching the quarter-finals in their maiden appearance.
After finally ending a long wait to feature at the Nations Cup, The Gambia navigated a sequence of testing fixtures en route to reaching the last eight and will certainly look at their past games with great pride.
The statistics back up the assessment. Drawn in Group F of the delayed Nations Cup, The Gambia finished second on the logs with 7 points from three unbeaten games. They edged Mauritania 1-0 to earn their first ever win, drew with Mali (1-1) and beat Tunisia (1-0) to seal a spot to the knock-out stage.
Their heads did not drop as they eliminated Guinea to reach the quarter-finals. In a nutshell, The Gambia won three of their four AFCON games scoring 4 goals and conceding just once.
The Gambia has produced some tactically brilliant displays and few teams have been able to match them for quality. Questions have been asked how a team that once looked doomed in the past, now seems increasingly capable to mount an unlikely title chase in a competition that provided them with dark moments.
They have three more hurdles to negotiate before they can claim the Holy Grail. Cherno Badja, a coach in Gambia and member of the country’s football players association believes the Scorpions are driven by the desire to improve and can do the unthinkable. “It’s beyond our wildest dreams being here, given the poor preparations we had before the tournament. But we are very happy and now we believe that we can go all the way and bring the trophy home,” he told Global Voices.
The Gambia has come a long way and its rise to prominence at the Africa Cup of Nations hasn’t been a straight forward journey.
Its history is dotted with frequent disappointment and failures. Before making their debut at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, The Gambia was the only West African country yet to qualify.
In 1975, they entered their first qualification for the Africa Cup of Nations but failed to reach the 1976 finals in Ethiopia after a humiliating 6-0 aggregate defeat to Morocco. Since then, there have been recurrent themes of frustration as every attempt to break the spell seemed futile.
In May 2014, The Gambia was banned from CAF competitions for two years after deliberately falsifying players’ ages. Due to the ban, Africa’s smallest mainland nation missed out a chance of qualifying for the 2015 AFCON. That verdict from Africa’s football governing body, only added more misery and pain to their quest of playing elite football on the continent.
But in 2019, they almost broke the jinx. They came so close to qualifying for their maiden competition after finishing four points behind second place Benin. It was a new era for the team that was completely bolstered. During the qualifiers, they held Algeria twice to a 1-1 stalemate. Those were genuine signs they had recovered from their setbacks and had plotted to overturn their misfortunes.
Their remarkable form helped them to qualify for the following edition of the AFCON. It was an appropriate reward for their endurance and a well-established plan facilitated by an abundance of talents.
Kebba Touray, first vice president of The Gambia Football Coaches Association, who is also head coach of Bakau United FC, told Global Voices that “we’ve been yearning for this moment which has never come. Our first game and first goal was a great moment in AFCON. I’ve followed the team through the qualifiers, and I’m not surprised. It is a tactically disciplined team.”
“Talent has never been our problem. In 2005, we hosted the Under-17 AFCON and won it on home soil. The same year we qualified for the African championship. From the Under-17 team they graduated to the Under-20 where we went to the U-20 championship and ended up with a bronze medal. Then proceeded to Canada for the Under-20 World Cup. Rebranding sounds funny for many Gambians but I think that is what paved the way for us now,” Kebba said.
The Gambia’s domestic league has also been instrumental in the last couple of years. About 95% of the current squad is made up of local grown players, most of whom started with community football. The championship is now highly ‘competitive’ and there have been improvements in the teams.
Their stunning debut at the Africa Cup of Nations means Gambian's football will enjoy a new lease to life in future. With some Gambian players also attracting the interest of European clubs, there is optimism that more and more talents will make moves abroad. Kebba further asserts that:
The league has been very competitive and very positive. Now we see players moving out of the country which is a sharp contrast from the olden days. Overall it has been very much progressive for The Gambia. Now, I think the players have opened up to the world and the world has seen what The Gambia is made of. Although people are moving out of the country to play professional football in Europe, I think this time around people will know that there are talents in that small tiny country.
Buba Jallow, a Gambian football expert who’s been covering the team for the last five years believes it’s high time for football in the country to gain elevated status after several years in bondage.
“Some players didn’t have opportunities. We had talents at our disposal but we didn’t have the exposure. That’s why we have arrived late at the continental stage. Our performance at the AFCON is a wakeup call for the government, for the entire private sector to invest more on sport, especially our football. The success and the story of Scorpions will pave the way for greater opportunities in Gambia,” Jallow said.
The Gambian's Scorpions celebrating a goal in the ongoing 2022 African Cup of Nations. Image by The Gambia Football Federation.
The Gambia faces host nation Cameroon in their first ever quarter-final of the Africa Cup of Nations on Saturday, January 29, at the Japoma Stadium in Douala.
The game promises to be full of twists and turns. But the Scorpions will fancy their chances and pose a real threat to five time African champions, the Indomitable Lions.
It will be another huge challenge for coach Tom Sainfiet who was appointed in 2018. By then, The Gambia were ranked 172nd in the FIFA rankings but today they have settled at the 150th position.
Saintfiet, a former gaffer of Togo and Zimbabwe national teams has no doubt been one of the main catalysts behind their decent display. He has been able to turn young prospects in a team capable of playing at such an elite level and plausible winning titles. Jallow further emphasised that:
I think the Gambia can go a long way. I’m optimistic. This is a unique story. The coach has been putting a lot of confidence on these players and the players in turn believe in themselves. This AFCON means a lot to the Gambia as a nation. The more games we have, the more our confidence swells. There have been celebrations throughout the tournament since we won against Mauritania. We believe in ourselves. The last time Cameroon won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2017, they didn’t have the best squad. They had a good coach and great players but it wasn’t the best of the team. And Zambia also did so when they won the Africa Cup of Nations back in 2012. All these are inspirations especially for the players.”

author: Beng Emmanuel Kum


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Thousands of Nigerians sign petition to reform IELTS · Global Voices
Pamela Ephraim

A Nigerian addresses the Commonwealth Youth Forum Closing Ceremony. Image by Commonwealth Secretariat taken on Thursday, 14 November 2013 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
An online petition launched by Policy Shapers, a Nigerian youth-led advocacy platform, to demand a reform of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) has gathered about 40 thousand signatures in just 14 days.
The IELTS is an examination administered to non-native English speakers. Nigerians seeking to study, migrate or work in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are required to take the test or its equivalent to provide evidence of English language skills. From its inception in 1989, IELTS has been jointly managed by the British Council, International Development Programme (IDP) Australia, and the University of Cambridge English Language Assessment.
Authors of the petition are seeking to have Nigerian citizens exempted from writing the English proficiency test which cost between 83,000 Naira (about $200 USD) for academic and 89,000 Naira ($216 USD) for general tests. The IELTS which expires after two years, is more expensive than the French language proficiency test, DALF/DALF examination which costs only 16,000 Naira (about $39 USD).
A report by the International Center for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), a Nigerian online newspaper, estimates that between 2016 to 2021, the British Government generated $771.2 million (N319.2 billion) as gross profits made off the backs of prospective Nigerian students and visa applicants who took the tests.
Nigeria’s English proficiency band is ranked high as the third-best country in Africa and 29th best in the world by the 2021 EF English Proficiency Index. Policy Shapers argue that Nigeria’s level of English proficiency is higher than some of the 18 countries exempted by the UK Home Office.
As a former colony of Great Britain, English is Nigeria’s lingua franca and language of instruction in schools. Yet Nigeria and other African countries, who are former British colonies and belong to the Commonwealth, are not exempted.
Many social media users believe the IELTS is a money-spinning venture:
No single Anglophone African country is exempted from writing the IELTS because they know we are their cash cow.
I can argue that majority of the profit from IELTS might come from Nigeria.
It’s time to put an end to this exploitation.#ReformIELTSPolicy pic.twitter.com/FCvFs2M0kp
— Uncle Charles (@AkwariCharles) January 26, 2022
I join Nigerians asking for a change in IELTS policy
Why should my English proficiency expire after 2yrs?
I heard the French proficiency test does not expire & it's way cheaper than IELTS
Help spread this till they respond. It's a win for all@UKinNigeria
#ReformIELTSPolicy
— Samuel Ajayi 🇳🇬🗣🌐 (@SamdGreat01) January 26, 2022
IELTS is pure extortion.
Nigeria with English as its lingua Franca should not be mandated to write IELTS before working or schooling in the U.K.
it makes no sense at all.
I took up a job in the UK and I didn’t have communication issues even without IELTS#ReformIELTSPolicy
— General Okwulu Okalisia (@RapidMax01) January 26, 2022
Nigeria's Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, agreed that the IELTS needs to be reformed. On October 31, 2021, while speaking with Ebenezar Wikina, a 2021 Mandela Washington Fellow, Osinbajo said, “I entirely agree that as an English-speaking country, we should be beneficiaries of some concession as opposed to being forced every two years to take the same test especially if one has passed it before.”

author: Pamela Ephraim


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Tongans share stories of how they survived the volcano eruption and tsunami · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

An area of Tonga that shows the heavy ash fall from the recent volcanic eruption within the Tongan Islands. Source: Wikipedia. Photo by NZ Defence Force, (CC BY 4.0)
The Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai underwater volcano erupted on January 15 spewing ash into the atmosphere and surrounding regions, and triggering multiple tsunamis that devastated several islands in the South Pacific nation of Tonga.
Scientists estimate that it was the strongest volcanic eruption on the planet in the past 30 years. The Hunga explosion was also the loudest noise on Earth in the past century. Tsunamis related to the eruption were recorded as far as Japan, the United States, and Peru.
According to the Tonga government, ashfall and a tsunami from the volcanic eruption affected an estimated 84 percent of the population. It took several days for power and internet connection to be restored on the main island.
Matangi Tonga Online, a news website, reported that communication lines continued to be unreliable almost a week after the eruption:
This is a traumatic time for everyone in Tonga and also for our families overseas who are anxious for news. We are disrupted from our normal activities.
Our communications were knocked out along with our main power.
We've received many incoming emails yesterday, Friday Jan. 21, but our email responses are not going out. We are receiving text messages but our text messages are not going out.
Slowly, bit by bit services are being restored. We do not have full internet in our office. We are able to upload today thanks to a service provider, sharing a limited satellite link.
When internet was partially restored in some areas, Tongans were able to post photos of the destructive impact of the eruption:
Scenes from Tongatapu… Lots of dust, damage and clean up to do! But generally calm and stable. People are ready to get to it. Praise God we are still standing. #Tonga #TongaVolcano #tongatsunami pic.twitter.com/7VCWOFriow
— Josephine Latu-Sanft (@JoLatuSanft) January 19, 2022
Some Facebook users, such as Tevita Tai Fukofuka, also shared their experiences during the eruption:
…it felt like the heavens cracked open and the world exploded inside my ear. It left my ears ringing as if I’m in a descending plane and I’m half deaf for a couple of seconds. I’ve never heard a louder noise in all my life. Everything shook. The car, house, earth. I look up the sky and see a dozen flocks of birds heading in all directions
… Down came the sulphur ash rain in the form of pebbles, ash and dust. We can hear it on the our roof and the houses along the road. The sky darkened full of ash clouds forcing night on us.
The owner of Ha'atafu Beach Resort recalled how their family and guests were able to survive the first tsunami wave:
According to Moana [the resort manager], the first tsunami wave actually hit before the major eruption happened. So they actually didn’t even have time to do anything as the waves continued to sweep through the land. Once the guests had escaped, Moana, Hola and the kids actually had to climb up a mango tree to escape the waves before fleeing into our family friends car and eventually rushing off in land in the nick of time.
A survivor remembered the tsunami reaching as high as a coconut tree:
“The sea was already as high as the coconut tree. We dropped everything and jumped in the car. As we drove off, the clouds darkened.” Ma’ata, 10, from Kanokupolu Village in Tonga.
An estimated 85,000 people, including 36,500 children, have been affected by the tsunami. pic.twitter.com/RpaIvAz9LN
— UNICEF Pacific (@UNICEFPacific) January 26, 2022
Hon. Frederica Tuita saw the roads covered with three inches of ash. She was separated from her children and was relieved to see her family again:
As we drove on the road, no other vehicle was moving, everyone had been told to find shelter, anyone found driving around by police were instructed to park there. Everything was covered in at least 3 inches of ash. The road was dark and the island was completely still with uncertainty lingering in the air. We turned into my home and relief washed over me as I saw candle light shining out from inside. As I walked up I greeted my sister and her husband who had sought safety there and walked inside to all 3 of my children running towards me. I knelt down and embraced them all at once, this was all the sustenance I needed.
She also posted a video showing the extent of the ash fall in her community:
We're all still cleaning up after the volcanic eruption. Some roads are a little better than others with the dust. The impact of the volcanic ash and dust on our people will start to show months maybe years from now #TongaVolcanoEruption pic.twitter.com/I6wbU7N9WB
— Frederica (@FredericaTuita) January 25, 2022
Lisala Folau remembered not responding to his son while he was washed away by the tsunami so that his son will not follow after him:
This was 7pm.
We floated at sea, just calling out to each other. It was dark and we could not see each other. Very soon I could not her my niece calling any more but I could hear my son calling. The truth is no son can abandon his father. But for me, as a father I kept my silence for if I answered him he would jumped in and try to rescue me. But I understand the tough situation and I thought if the worst comes and it is only me.
My thinking was if I answered him he would come and we would both suffer so I just floated, bashed around by the big waves that kept coming.
He floated in the waters for 27 hours before he was rescued. His story was covered in the news:
A 57-year-old Tongan man, Lisala Folau, is being hailed a real-life ‘Aquaman’ for surviving 27 hours at sea after the devastating tsunami struck his island. Folau told @Reuters he went under nine times before latching onto a log and making it to safety https://t.co/7UtwLEeooD pic.twitter.com/mWLuEzvKIE
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 21, 2022
The Facebook page Ordinary Tongan Lives shared photos and interviews with some survivors. One survivor lamented that they could no longer go back to their island:
There’s a yearning to be back home. But there’s only very few houses, a church, and a school building standing there. Everything else is gone. The middle of the island has long ditches running across from the waves. It’s only been a week but the memory of it all will take a while to go away. Last night, my daughter called at 2:30am asking me what noise she’s hearing. Imediately, I panicked. Every noise, even a roaring vehicle can strike fear. That’s a reality we have to live with now.
Relief and recovery efforts are ongoing in Tonga. Since the devastation, residents have organized clearing campaigns to clear the airport runways so that aid from other countries can be delivered.
Tongans sweep the runway of Salote Pilolevu Airport in Ha'apai with brooms following the #TongaVolcanoEruption. Not sure what happens with the ash but I've heard ads on the local radio livestream from at least 1 local company willing to buy the stuff in bulk. #TongaVolcano #Tonga pic.twitter.com/XBcRN2ShLZ
— Josephine Latu-Sanft (@JoLatuSanft) January 23, 2022
Tongans have started rebuilding their lives and communities but many are worried about the future since the island nation is also at risk from the harsh impact of climate change.

author: Mong Palatino


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Azerbaijan is silent as other nations announce plans to boycott the Beijing Olympics · Global Voices
Arzu Geybullayeva

A screenshot from the Washington Post YouTube video “Inside the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics”
While a growing list of countries have announced they will boycott the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympic Games next month by not sending diplomats as is customary, Azerbaijan is abstaining from boycotting the games. While it is not clear whether the country will send any official representatives at the time of writing this article, the country's leadership and its National Olympic Committee have remained notably silent when discussing the host country's dismal human rights record.
Azerbaijan is sending two athletes, Vladimir Litvintsev and Ekaterina Ryabova, who will be representing its national team in the figure skating competition. Azerbaijan has hosted a number of international sporting events in the last seven years, and similar to China, UAE, Qatar, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, it too has been accused of covering up grave human rights violations in the country through grand sporting events.
Most recently, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People's Republic of China to Azerbaijan Guo Min told Report, a local news platform, “A diplomatic boycott is not right at all. This is, first of all, an Olympic solemnity. We need solidarity to show the Olympic spirit, especially against the backdrop of the pandemic. In this regard, we are very grateful to the Azerbaijani government for its assistance and support. We wish the Azerbaijani delegation and athletes great success in advance of Beijing 2022.”
In the run-up to the games, China has been criticized by a number of international organizations and governments for employing “sportswashing,” the practice of using sports to draw attention from scandals or accusations of human rights abuse. Azerbaijan is all too familiar with the term, as it was coined when Azerbaijan was preparing to host the first-ever European games in 2015.
“Such sporting mega-events operate as a means to launder a national government’s global image and reputation — even to the extent that adversarial countries will be prepared to engage with them. The effect is similar to greenwashing, whereby organizations use PR and marketing to claim their environmentally-friendly credentials in order to boost their reputations,” wrote authors César Jiménez-Martínez and Michael Skey for The Conversation in 2018.
Just as Beijing is being boycotted in today, back in 2015, most European leaders avoided traveling to Azerbaijan to attend the opening ceremony of the European Games, “though a roll call of local autocrats, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, were in attendance at the opening ceremonies,” reported Joshua Keating for Slate at the time.
Examples from Azerbaijan are not limited to the European Games, a sporting event similar to the Olympics organized by Europe’s national Olympic committees. It also played host to the Islamic Solidarity Games, the F1 Grand Prix, the 2019 Europa League final, and the Euro 2020 quarterfinals.
But in addition to sportswashing, diplomatic ties, and a standing agreement between each nation's olympic committees on technology and sports, the most important similarity between China and Azerbaijan is the extent of information control deployed by both governments. As Sarah Cook, a Research Director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House recently pointed out in The Diplomat, “As Beijing prepares to open the 2022 Winter Olympics on February 4, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership will be dialing up the world’s most sophisticated apparatus of information control, using censorship, surveillance, and legal reprisals to curb political, religious, and other speech that deviates from the party line.”
Back in 2015, when Azerbaijan was ready to welcome some 6,000 athletes to the country for the European Games, the country was already in possession of sophisticated DPI surveillance equipment that allowed the national security apparatus to monitor social media and communication apps such as Facebook, Viber, and WhatsApp. It is still unclear why the Ministry of National Security was interested in monitoring these platforms.
In 2017 during the Islamic Solidarity Games, officials in Baku blocked access to WhatsApp, Viber, and Skype throughout the entirety of the games, at first, denying responsibility, only to admit it once the games were over. At the time, the Ministry of Transportation, Communication, and High Technologies said it decided to block access to these apps for security reasons. No further explanations were given as to how exactly the ministry was able to do that. The research available to date indicates that such throttling was possible due to an extensive arsenal of surveillance technology the government has been accumulating over the years.
Surveillance aside, often these sporting events in countries like China, and Azerbaijan are a tool to deflect attention on rights violations and curbs on freedoms.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2015, Denis Krivosheev, deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International, said, “Far from advancing the goals of press freedom and human dignity enshrined in the Olympic charter, the legacy of these games will be to further encourage repressive authorities around the world to view major international sporting events as a ticket to international prestige and respectability.”
Amnesty International representatives were prevented from traveling to Azerbaijan ahead of the games where they were planning to launch a new report highlighting the state of freedom in the country. Four years later, just as Azerbaijan was getting ready to host the Europa League final between Arsenal and Chelsea in 2019, the Amnesty International UK director, Kate Allen told The Guardian, “All too often, governments are using high-profile sporting competitions to distract attention from repressive policies and human rights violations, to instead project an image of openness. This couldn’t be further from the truth with the current administration, and the Arsenal-Chelsea clash is just the latest reminder of this.”
Little has changed in recent years when it comes to how repressive leaders use sporting events. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Beijing Olympics are taking place “against a backdrop of Chinese government crimes against humanity targeting ethnic Uyghurs, repression in Hong Kong, and Tibet and risks to athletes unprecedented in modern Olympic era.” HRW added:
Designed to “sportswash” the Chinese government’s abysmal human rights record, these Winter Games are a centerpiece of President Xi Jinping’s effort to burnish China’s image on the world stage.
Athletes have also been warned against speaking out at the Olympics by the Beijing Organizing Committee. But for some athletes like Azerbaijan's Vladimir Litvnitsev, thats the least of their problems. In an interview with Global Voices, Litvnitsev, who will also be Azerbaijan's flag-bearer at the opening ceremony in Beijing said, “I am concerned about the training time allocated during the stay. Not sure if its because of pandemic restrictions, but we only have 35 minutes per day for a training. This is very little. It's less than half of a normal training time, and I normally have two of those.”
Meanwhile, Rob Koehler, director general of the Global Athlete, most high-profile international sports athlete advocate organization, has advised athletes not to speak up. “We want them to compete, and use their voice when they get home.” Litvnitsev agrees, “perhaps you ask me again after I am back,” said the athlete in an interview adding, he had “no further comments at this time.”

author: Arzu Geybullayeva


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Caribbean virgins, Caribbean whores: Unlacing goodness/dismantling perversion · Global Voices
Shivanee Ramlochan

A row of Poui trees at the Queen's Park Savannah in Port of Spain, Trinidad, not far from which the body of Japanese steel pan player Asami Nagakiya was discovered on Ash Wednesday 2016. Photo by Georgia Popplewell, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Editor's note: January 29 will mark one year since 23-year-old Andrea Bharatt went missing; her body was discovered nearly a week later. Though she is not the only woman to have been brutally murdered in Trinidad and Tobago, her death seemed to touch a nerve with the public. Writer and poet Shivanee Ramlochan dismantles why, even as she hopes for justice for all women. This essay was first published in the regional online literary magazine Pree; an edited version appears below with permission.
If a girl tumbles down a ravine in the Trinidadian mountains, does she make a sound? What about each of the moans she made in the advent of her falling? If a girl cries out into the muffling of her strangulation, does the voice emerge as music or mourning?
Though I left my parents’ house when I was 18, I still live in Las Lomas, Caroni. The connection is spiritual more than geographical, though I deeply love and treasure the verdant, ungovernable land. ‘Home’ has never been my series of apartments in the urban development hubs of St. Augustine and Tunapuna. No. Home is the smell of cow shit, freshly cut grass, the silhouettes of trees flanking the narrow and pockmarked roads leading to the two-story house where I grew up, the lower floor of which is a still-functioning village rumshop. Las Lomas was first colonized by the Spanish who gave it its name of ‘the hills,’ then predominantly settled into by East Indian indentured labourers. The place has shifted in its agrarian origins, acquired a semi-rural, as opposed to full-donkey-cart signification, largely because of its proximity to the country’s national airport.
As an oily-plaited schoolgirl attending a Roman Catholic Convent in Port of Spain, I’d often hear my white or white-aspiring classmates bemoan the long distance it took to get to Piarco International Airport from their  suburban domiciles in western Trinidad. The insult of being so far past the lighthouse [located in the capital, Port of Spain] that you could actually see cows placidly chewing cud and tethered goats bleating in the flat pastures was an astonishment at best, a cheap vulgarity at worst. For me, it was my daily commute. So it’s remained. Whether I visit Las Lomas once a weekend, or once a month, I am there every day, as indivisible from the landscape as its brown big-bellied bovines and their odorous shit.
The first time I can remember being physically afraid of a man was at my Las Lomas home, during a Hindu puja. The man in question was our family pundit. I will not name him, though I’ll say that any one of my paternal relations reading this will be able to identify him from my descriptions. I was less than 10, and the occasion was either a thanksgiving or a funeral. I remember being dressed all in white, dutifully sitting cross-legged with my two plaits falling into my lap like tamed or dead snakes. The pundit gestured towards me to come closer, the nail of his littlest finger grown out and curling. I felt an illness in my stomach, not unlike the menstrual cramps I had recently begun experiencing: I first bled when I was nine. Sitting, garlanded in the aromas of Lord Shiva incense sticks, cheap red perfume and gobar (cow dung), I began to wish I truly were bleeding so I could absent myself, run to my bedroom filled with things I could hide behind: abridged classics, stuffed animals, and a solid wooden writing desk. Yet it would have been impolite and worse, defiant, to run away during the middle of a puja. So I stayed where I was folded for the chanting, the aarti, the doling out of parsad and enduring cheek-pinching from distant aunties wearing thick, artfully applied swathes of too-light foundation.
This recollection has no dramatic teetering point, no showdown between barely pubescent girl and grown man of the cloth. The truth is that I don’t remember whether or not I obeyed. Sometimes I believe I deliberately occluded the facts from myself, but clearly I haven’t been able to suppress everything. As the years and pujas rolled onwards and that particular pundit returned, the sensation of dread never lessened. My spine became acquainted with teenage underpinnings of a true terror: not at the thought of anything the pundit had actualized against me, but of everything unspoken in the glint of his eyes. The curl of his smile beneath a thick moustache. The crook of that elongated and slightly yellowed fingernail, a grotesque elegance demanding focus. Of all the components of this man, I found that nail the most difficult to look away from; I confess it has slivered its way into my most amorphous and confusing nightmares. It was impossible and remains so to associate the pundit with holiness. He is poised to return for a significant religious celebration at Las Lomas very soon. I already know I will be conspicuously and yes, defiantly, absent. Let anyone say what they will. I am now too old, too fat, and too queer to care. At least, that’s the song I sing stubbornly to myself.
On February 4, 2021, in the Heights of Aripo, Trinidad, the body of Andrea Bharatt was found at the base of a precipice. A scrap-iron vendor, looking for the discarded and abandoned materials of his trade, saw the partially-clothed corpse while on his route. Bharatt had been missing since January 29th, when as was her custom she entered a taxi headed homeward after work, and never made it in safely. This taxi, we later learned, was bearing fraudulent plates. Those who engineered that deception never intended Andrea to return home, at all.
The country had been in a nervous state of anxiety, dwindling hopefulness and ratcheting dread over Bharatt’s disappearance for a week. Countless prayers were offered to all the deities our melting pot nation possesses — and likely to other supernatural forces whose names are less openly invoked, but no less powerfully incanted. Radio stations’ call-in lines rang incessantly, mounting cash rewards were advertised for anyone with information that could aid the police in their investigations; talk show evangelists and snake oil salesmen beat their chests on privately-paid-for primetime air, bemoaning the state of affairs. This machinery of concern and consultation over gender-based violence in Trinidad and Tobago was nothing new: a brief look at our femicide and sexual assault statistics is telling and beyond the scope of what I find I can bear to say in this space. Yet something was markedly, particularly different about the public furor and fear over 23-year-old, University of the West Indies graduate, Andrea Bharatt.
It was that she was a good girl. And girls who are markedly that industrious, that loyal to their elders and diligent in their studies, that slender of form and fresh of face, deserved to die less than the scores of disappeared and dismembered prostitutes, married women, hot bad gyal in pum-pum shorts with tattoos splayed across their thighs. Very few were saying it, but the feeling was there, ripe and redolent as a rotting fruit. You felt it wherever you went, from almost anyone with whom you talked; you heard it preached from the pulpit and temple, repeated in whispers in supermarkets and Starbucks. And it only increased its sotto voce rhythms when Andrea’s body was found, like a stretched-out cassette tape that still carries a melody the crowds want to hear. Insist on hearing.
Even the death of 18-year-old Ashanti Riley, whose beaten and knife-punctured body was found in a watercourse exactly two months earlier on December 4, 2020, did not garner nearly as many candlelit vigils, expressions of solidarity, full-page ads of condolence from the corporate community. Was it because there was no corresponding photograph of Ashanti in graduand’s blue and white robes to show? Or because she was Afro-Trinidadian, while Andrea, lighter-complected and straighter of hair texture, was Indo-Trinidadian? Again all of this might not be spoken aloud in what passes for polite society. Such transcripts might be absent, for example, from a civil discourse at the President of the Republic’s dining table, or on the official ledgers of the Houses of Parliament. Yet you can depend on it: this conversation slithered through its usual channels, the almost-silent ones: the hushed speculation between security guards, the auditory eavesdropping in high and less high places alike. You can be certain that these are not new whispers, either. As old as racial division and class warfare have existed in the 868, is where you’ll find the head of that specific snake, slithering its forked tongue in animosity, malice, and separatist ire. The creature, an indolent and fat mapepire, is well fed. We sustain it daily in the lies we tell ourselves, and the ways we demand that our daughters of the Caribbean Sea be good, be obedient, be quiet and rigid and bright.
Maybe it was the pundit who inculcated in me a certainty that I would never, never, date or marry an Indian man. True to form, my romantic attachments in their most active years covered several mixtures and classifications and genders, none of them Indian. I’d decided, pre-eighteen, that no Prashants or Viveks or Anils would grace either my doorstep or the guarded walls of my vagina. My grandmothers would simply have to resign themselves to it — at one point, I was in a four-year relationship with someone they’d both have had wait on their porches like hired help or alms-seeking vagrants. At another, I courted and wooed someone whose very existence might have, might still, compel either of them to jharay me back to my senses, or introduce me to fresh sanity.
In my immediate circles, it wasn’t that I had any cause for complaint: my father and two younger brothers weren’t monstrous, never gave me intimations of extreme unease, kept their fingernails reasonably tidy and short. Not even in my extended family could I pinpoint male aggressors and abusers, so what reason did I have for my, it might be said, self-racializing proclivities? To answer this, you must consider the village rumshop. From the balustrades of the balcony above, I spent much of my childhood observing the effects of alcohol excess in drunk, incoherent, braying men, most of them Indian. Fortnightly contract labourers, big-time moneylenders, high-rollers cruising the cow-shit countryside from out of town: every single one of them could be rendered insensible by puncheon rum. It wasn’t uncommon to hear the sharp lilt of a broken bottle smashed against a concrete tabletop as a fight over a rowdy game of All Fours, a gambling bet or a big-breasted woman broke out. It’s not uncommon now. More than the casual and reckless aggression, the volume of raised angry baritones slurring with cheap and copious drink, the rare but harrowing sight of someone’s wife, girlfriend, or side piece stumbling out of the bar with a reddened cheek and a sonorous wail; more than all these facts of my fear and mistrust were the responses to their inevitability.
I came to understand, right around the time my nine-year-old panties filled up with thick menstrual blood, that men, markedly Indian men, could do what they liked to their own bodies and the bodies of those they controlled without consequences. Motilal the mechanic might break a barstool, cuss out one of the proprietors of our bar, and slap up his woman on the government road, a hawk and spit’s distance from our shopfront, but he’d be allowed back in without any furor the next week … and if there were complaint, it’d be for the smashed chair, not his lady’s purpling jawbone. Maybe, I reasoned to myself, clutching my copies of The Call of the Wild and Treasure Island close at night, there were ways men dealt with these things in-house, a private council of testosterone, fisticuffs and the faint but persistent odour of piss. If these secret tribunals of masculine dignity and fairness were being carried out in mysterious locations, I certainly didn’t see any effects of their protocols in the living world of Las Lomas or beyond it. Women still turned up outside the bar, weeping.
In some parallel dimension, I am a better girl. An obedient woman who wears pressed pantsuits and sensible heels, who drives her three fully Indian children to school in a minivan, who has sex with her dark-haired, brown-skinned Indian husband every night except Sundays which we reserve for post-mandir meditations and visits to both sets of grandparents. In this world, I can make perfect sweets for Divali, I know how to hem school clothes and how to fix my husband’s ties. This version of me saved myself for marriage, never watches pornography with my hand under the covers, and definitely didn’t put my mouth between a redhaired girl’s athletic legs, avidly and with the full intention of writing ghazals about what I tasted there. She prays. She never slays. So maybe in that other world, I’m good enough not to be hurt.
This is the agony haloing Andrea Bharatt, still and perhaps forever: that a young lady so ineffably decent, so morally upright, could be dispatched with as much disregard as if she were ‘lesser,’ somehow: less imbued with a virtue we’d decided she had, without her living seal of approval. Is this the reward, Trini women asked ourselves in our WhatsApp groups and Facebook forums, for doing everything the proper and society-approved way? This sweet, angelic-faced girl had a vision for her life that never included its abrupt end, but so too did the less-publicly-mourned Ashanti Riley. So too did every woman and girl abducted, abused, raped, dismembered, damaged and newspaper headlined, or swept-under-rug-sidelined, in Trinidad and Tobago, no matter how many men they took or beers they necked, how many panties they’d ripped during sex or how many times they’d sinned against themselves and their beloveds.
Maybe in some world, an even more distant and improbable one, there are no virgins and no whores. No Good or Bad Girls. Only survivors. Only women rendered unkillable through respect and constant affirmation, as solid and reliable as the Antillean sun shining on your face, beaming with the knowledge that you are loved, you are loved, you are loved. In that world, Andrea Bharatt and Ashanti Riley are alive. Maybe they’re even best friends. I picture them at Carnival with Asami Nagakiya, poui trees laden with yellow music, pealing in every laugh, echoing between linked arms and feminist camaraderie, bouncing off the rhythms of each unrestrained footfall.

author: Shivanee Ramlochan


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Hong Kong’s Lunar New Year is ruined by Omicron outbreak · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Police officers stand by a flower market to prevent crowds from gathering. Image from inmediahk.net. Used with permission.
This year, the Chinese Lunar New Year is on February 1. Yet, thanks to the community outbreak of Omicron and the city’s zero-COVID policy, the mood around town is subdued rather than festive.
Only a few weeks ago, Hong Kong was hopeful for a normal Lunar New Year celebration as the city had sustained zero local COVID-19 infections for a few months.
Yet, such a “success” comes with a huge price as Hong Kong has been cut off from the rest of the world for the past two years thanks to its strict lockdown and quarantine policies. All inbound travellers have been required to stay in a list of designated hotels under a 14–21 day compulsory quarantine. The city also implemented compulsory mask-wearing in all public spaces, restrictions on public gatherings, contact tracking, community lockdowns, mandatory mass testing whenever a local infection is detected, and more.
In preparation for year-end gatherings, the majority of local residents had been vaccinated in preparation for the year-end gatherings. Wholesalers had ordered flowers and decorations to stock the year-end flower markets, plus, more than 500,000 local residents had downloaded the cross-border health code mobile application to prepare for the reopening of Hong Kong, Macau, and the mainland China border, hoping that they could visit their extended family during the new year break.
However, all these plans have been dashed. In the past two weeks, the city has seen outbreaks of both the Delta and Omicron variants of the coronavirus.
A number of residential districts in Hong Kong have seen clusters of outbreaks. In Kwai Chung, the number of Omicron infections surpassed 300 as of January 26, forcing thousands of residents from 16 different building blocks to quarantine at home for seven days.
Unlike from previous local-transmission cases, which were transmitted through close contact, because Omicron is air-born and more contagious, the virus has spread vertically through buildings’ air shafts in Kwai Chung, as highlighted by Twitter user Nelson Lee:
Most recent SARS-CoV2 outbreak in HK fuelled by ‘vertical transmission’ in estate buildings, not explainable by common space sharing alone -likely upward aerosol spread via air shafts as reported for SARS-1 pic.twitter.com/ujKrKdXinX
— Nelson Lee (@NelsonL_VirRes) January 26, 2022
In alignment with Beijing’s zero-COVID policy, the Hong Kong government has tightened the pandemic restriction since early January to contain the spread of the highly contagious Omicron and Delta variants.
Currently, all restaurants have been forced to stop providing dinner service after 6 pm; all public parks, libraries, and sports centres are closed; and all schools have shifted to online learning. Additionally, the government has imposed tougher quarantine rules on aircrew, meaning air cargo will be affected, and some supply shortages are expected. The government also announced that there will be no Lunar New Year flower markets, temple visits or dragon dance activities this year.
People all over Hong Kong are worried that they will have to line up for COVID tests and isolate for one week if a single case is found in their building, like what had happened to residents in Kwai Chung:
Lunar New Year is coming, but HK people have to line up for Covid test here and there,very disturbing and increase possibilities of the virus affection https://t.co/VBdEmQScu4
— hong kong is not china 02 (@hongkon03674876) January 24, 2022
As Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist from the University of Hong Kong, pointed out, the zero-COVID contact tracing strategy is not effective in tracing the highly contagious COVID-19 variants:
For COVID-19, contact tracing works by identifying people who have been exposed to known cases typically based on prolonged close contact. It looks like contact tracing won't work as well against Omicron in HK — transmission appears to be occurring without close contact? 1/4
— Ben Cowling (@bencowling88) January 22, 2022
Vaccination has become the key strategy for the government to tackle the current crisis.
As of January 27, more than 70 percent of the city’s population have been fully vaccinated, and more than 78 percent have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines. However, only about 30 percent of the elderly aged 80 or above are vaccinated.
Experts have suggested at least a 90 percent vaccination rate target before pandemic restrictions are loosened, a goal which the government authorities hope to achieve by February 24.
To further boost the vaccination rate, the government has introduced a vaccine bubble policy for schools, restaurants, government service contractors and more.
Under the policy, all public and subsidized school employees are required to be vaccinated. The new policy will also prohibit face to face instruction until 70 percent of school kids are vaccinated. As for restaurants, all dine-in customers must show proof of vaccination before entering an establishment. Other public sector spaces such as libraries, markets and museums, and private sector facilities such as beauty parlours and gyms will also be put under the vaccine bubble.
However, some have argued the 90 percent vaccination threshold is too high as the majority of countries that have loosened pandemic restriction with a “living with COVID” mindset have a 70–80 percent vaccination rate.
Some also raised the question regarding the strategy in addressing the vaccine hesitancy among the elderly population who need the vaccine protection most. As finance news editor Mike Bird highlighted:
Hong Kong may end up as a testing ground for the transmissibility and lethality of two strains of Omicron, because it is one of the few places where there's very been little Covid, and which also has a huge number of unvaccinated elderly people. Congrats. https://t.co/9PMVRbfBmv
— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) January 26, 2022
After two years of pandemic control efforts, more and more Hongkongers would prefer “living with COVID”. A recent poll conducted by the Democracy Party shows that 65 percent of the 600 respondents are in favour of the “living with COVID” policy, while  21 percent oppose the policy change.
More and more people are frustrated that after two years, the pandemic restrictions have not been loosened:
All that zero COVID nonsense in HK today like it was in March 2020. 🤦♂ https://t.co/Ft1CiwMZQ7
— Andy Chow *#GotVaxxed*💉 (@acnetj) January 27, 2022

author: Oiwan Lam


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Seed exchange in Colombia promotes traditional knowledge and food sovereignty · Global Voices
Johana Fernanda Sánchez Jaramillo

Men and women exchange seeds in Silvia (Cauca). Photo by Giovanna Landazabal, used with permission.
Mónica Solarte is an agronomist from the Polindara Indigenous people, who live in the municipality of Totoro, 30 kilometers from Popayán, in Cauca, southern Colombia. The Polindara Indigenous nation obtained recognition as such in 2014.
Solarte is a high school teacher and is part of a project called “Flavors and Knowledge” of the Polindara, which encourages the consumption of local foods such as arracacha tubers, sweet potatoes, and cacha beans.
For the Polindara, agroecology ensures the availability of healthy food for consumption, preserves its traditional production systems and ensures the conservation of biological diversity through its orchards.
In Colombia — a country that, due to imports, is increasingly losing its food sovereignty — the exchange of native seeds helps recover and preserve ancestral knowledge. It is also a form of peasant and Indigenous resistance that brings awareness about the importance of consuming food produced locally by farmers.
In Solarte's community, people plant small amounts of seeds that they also use to barter, rather than sell. In addition to contributing to community subsistence, “the knowledge of the seed that we collect relates to gastronomy, ethnobotany, and ethno-veterinary medicine, our own technology, and agriculture,” says Solarte.
There are two types of gardens in her community: the home garden located next to the house — where people plant medicinal plants and fruit trees (such as arracacha, sweet potato, and coriander), grown in small quantities for daily consumption throughout the year; and the cementera — an orchard that is cultivated once a year, where there are mixed crops of corn, beans, peas, potatoes and “ulluco.”
In September 2021, Solarte attended the seed exchange organized by the Las Delicias Botanical Garden association, led by the Indigenous Misak people in Silvia (Cauca). She believes in the need to preserve the seeds, explaining to Global Voices that “if the farmer does not consume or cannot sell the seed, then it is not planted and so it is lost together with the knowledge associated with the seed.”
This meeting was part of two projects led by Las Delicias Botanical Garden: the “Guardians of the Earth” project, financed by Cultural Survival; and “A Ciencia Cierta” (“True knowledge”), a contest won by Las Delicias Botanical Garden.
Different species of potatoes and corn, among other foods, are exchanged during bartering, seeking to recover traditional ways of consumption. Photo by Giovanna Landazabal, used with permission.
Solarte accepted the invitation of Giovanna Landazabal, a biologist from the National University and one of the collaborators and organizers of the event, who points out that one of the purposes of this meeting is to bring together organizations, guardians, and custodians of seeds in order for them to share their experiences related to their defense and preservation.
Another objective was to bring awareness about Las Delicias Botanical Garden, and about its own economy and governance project, the recovery of ancestral practices, and the defense of the territory. For this reason, one of the activities was visiting family orchards and the “house of seeds” (casa de las semillas), where diverse seeds are preserved.
Misak people gathered for the exchange of seeds, which involves the ancestral knowledge that passes from generation to generation. Photo by Giovanna Landazabal, used with permission.
“It was important for seed custodian Julio Guauña from the Puracé seed house (Cauca) to participate in this meeting. He is a guardian who tries to conserve and recover native seeds, who brought about twelve varieties of potato. Some of which are also being preserved by seed guardian and Mama Misak Cayetana Almendra (…),” adds Landazabal.
With its seed house, the Botanical Garden aims to conserve the diversity of potatoes, recover ullucos, tubers, and other species that were consumed in the past and were important in the territory.
Clara Sierra, from the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, explains that her ministry develops the program “True Science for Local Development,” which recognizes and supports the projects of community organizations in the country.
“As the core of its strategy, the program emphasizes processes of Social Appropriation of Knowledge through Science, Technology, and Innovation. This strategy implies the articulation of local and ancestral knowledge with academic knowledge to generate new knowledge in specific contexts, thus fulfilling its objective to strengthen community management and development to achieve local change,” adds Sierra.
Sierra highlights that seed agroecology and conservation contribute to the food sovereignty of peoples and recover ancestral knowledge that guarantees the well-being of communities.
“Communities will prioritize the use of native seed which each time provides well-being. The exchange between communities and the adaptive benefits will highlight the efforts of the communities for defending the use of seeds in each territory,” emphasizes Sierra.

author: Johana Fernanda Sánchez Jaramillo


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To flee or not to flee? That is the question in Sri Lanka · Global Voices
GroundViews

Jayathma Wickramanayake, the current United Nations Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth, addressing a youth parliament in Sri Lanka. August 2013. Image via Wikipedia by Sankachandima. CC BY SA 4.0
This post originally appeared in Groundviews, an award-winning citizen media website in Sri Lanka. An edited version is published here as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
Once known as being the best fed, most educated and healthy people in South Asia, Sri Lankans are facing the bleak prospect of a full-blown economic crisis that will dramatically push back hard-won social gains of several decades. The Sri Lankan economy had a brief recovery after the 30-year civil war which ended in 2009.
The World Bank estimates that 500,000 people had fallen below the poverty line by 2021. Food and fuel shortages, escalating costs of basic goods, import restrictions, school closures and strains on the health system, partly due to the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, have resulted in long queues at the passport office as one in four Sri Lankans, mostly the young and educated, say they want to leave the country. Skyrocketing food prices have left breadwinners struggling to feed their families, as government leaders go with begging bowl in hand to all and sundry. Even Bangladesh, which faces its own economic challenges, has turned into a benefactor.
The passport office queues, heavy demand for immigration lawyers, and many grievances about daily life aired on social media are pointing to the fact that most people are not happy with their lot. They feel there is no hope in a country riddled with corrupt politicians, systemic discrimination and an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor.
The less fortunate are forced to endure harsh conditions as migrant labourers working for demanding employers in Middle Eastern countries households, factories and offices while the more educated and privileged get to try their luck in a Western country where the weather, quality of life and unequal treatment are challenges.
A recent survey by the Institute for Health Policy (IHP) showed that increasing numbers of Sri Lankans want to leave the country, more than at any time in the past five years. About one in four Sri Lankans would like to migrate if they had the chance. The youth and the educated want this most, with around half of them wanting to leave the country. One in four who wish to migrate already had plans to do so. Apart from inadequate incomes and skyrocketing prices, selling off of national assets and haphazard governance were also reasons for leaving.
In this desperate scenario, what should stop anyone who can just leave? Why sacrifice their children’s futures to serve a country that has no hope of redemption? Leaving must be the right answer.
But not according to Prashan De Visser, president and founder of Sri Lanka Unites, an organisation working to empower the younger generation and motivate them to coexist peacefully, while giving back to their country. “Just because a bunch of robbers come to your house and ransack it, you don’t pack up and leave; you stay and fight. We have to stay and fight and do our part and we can,” he told Groundviews in an interview:
Groundviews (G): Why are people leaving the country or feeling they need to leave?
Prashan De Visser (PDV): There has always been an exodus of capable people, with an estimated three million Sri Lankans living offshore. Waves of people are leaving and the brain drain has a direct impact on hopes of becoming a developed country. This generation sees the world more clearly because of social media, access to information and interaction with other young people across the world. The choice is to go because they are not going to achieve their potential here. There are some who are not seeking to leave the country forever but intend to return. However, once you get sucked into life there, it becomes impossible to come back. We need to address this because the country can’t withstand another generation or two of a brain drain.
G: How can people be convinced to stay?
PDV: Not everyone will be inspired by their duty and responsibility to the nation. People who are leaving are the privileged ones who can get visas to go abroad, but we have a responsibility to those less privileged. People who want to leave should realise that if you go to the West, your success is not guaranteed, so these exaggerated notions should be taken away. There are people who have made a success here, having seen opportunities and achieved more here than they could have anywhere else. We have an ageing population, parents who provided and cared for us.
G: How can minorities be made to feel they are part of the country so they don't want to leave?
PDV: Governments and politicians have failed us and created a divisive culture of divide and rule. Fellow citizens are treated as second class. We have a responsibility to speak out against injustices; for too long we have been passively against it or turned away. The cost to pay is that people will embrace extremism and send the country back through cycles of violence. You and I can’t continue to be silent about discrimination and racism and have to speak out. People are realising that politicians have created hate to hide their political incompetence.
G: What gives you any cause for optimism?
PDV: Given everything we have been through as a country, we have to be optimistic regardless of how bad the situation is, as it is darkest before light. This generation can be the generation that thinks beyond themselves and have a vision for the country where no one is a second-class citizen. Young people want to serve, be honest, and be held accountable, living beyond the parameters of their own selfish needs so we need to invest in them to come together across ethnic, religious, professional and regional lines. This is what gives me hope. For 15 years I have been dedicated to working with young people, mining for the incredible talent of young Sri Lankans who are the greatest asset of our nation. We need to ensure that they are not depressed or lose the capacity to hope.
G: What changes have you seen through your work with Sri Lanka Unites?
PDV: Students who believed that violence was the only way and hated others today believe in peace. Sinhalese from the south who thought every Tamil was a terrorist now see the injustices done and speak out for them. There are hundreds of stories of young people whose minds have been transformed; they want to be part of the solution.
G: What do you hope for your children's future?
PDV: We have two sons aged three and four. If we went abroad we could have a more affluent lifestyle but we decided to stay and serve here. The question is whether our sons will curse us 20 years from now and ask why we didn’t leave. That means I have a responsibility to work hard so that they will proud of our generation for not giving up, and we can talk about the history of violence, broken structures, poverty and corruption in the past tense. We would have lived up to our potential and become a model to other nations — a success story from bankruptcy to a thriving nation. It seems improbable and impossible right now but all things that inspired us seemed improbable until they were done.
We have to give it a shot, give it with everything we have got. Politicians and political parties have no solution or vision so it is we the people who have to transform the country.

author: GroundViews


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Russia rose to second place globally in Twitter content removal requests · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay, Pixabay license.
Microblogging platform Twitter saw record numbers of state requests for content removal in the second half of 2021, according to the company's latest transparency report.
During this period, governments around the world submitted 43,387 demands for content removal from 196,878 Twitter accounts – the highest number since Twitter began publishing transparency reports in 2012. These demands were in addition to 12,370 requests for user or account information made by state bodies.
Ninety five percent of the total content removal requests were made by just five countries: Japan, Russia, Turkey, India and South Korea. Twitter uses this metric to account for “legal demands,” which it defines as “a combination of court orders and other formal demands to remove content, from both governmental entities and lawyers representing individuals.”
Removal requests from Russia between 2012-2021. Screenshot from Twitter.
Japan remained the top requester, accounting for 43 percent of all global requests received. Russia came in second place after Japan and accounted for 25 percent of global takedown requests in January-June 2021.
Russian government entities made 10,448 content removal requests – a record for the country and a 56-percent increase compared to the previous six months (July-December 2020), when Russia submitted 6,351 removal requests. The removal requests included 438 court orders and 10,010 “other legal demands.”
Over two thirds of Russian government removal requests (71 percent) related to content reported by Russia that was alleged to violate local laws against suicide promotion. Twitter partially credits the Russian law with the overall spike in the number of tweets withheld: over 52 percent of all withheld tweets in this reporting period involved content connected to suicide promotion in Russia.
Removal requests from Russia in January-June 2021. Screenshot from Twitter.
Twitter reportedly complied with 47 percent of Russia's removal requests, withholding 76 accounts and 5,345 individual tweets (making them unavailable to users in Russia), as well as suspending 1,309 accounts (of those mentioned in the requests) for violating the platform's own terms of service.
The microblogging platform also noted a continuing trend of states targeting the accounts of verified journalists and news outlets. Though in the first half of 2021 there was a 14-percent decrease in accounts targeted with removal requests since the previous report, 172 accounts of verified journalists and news outlets from around the world were subject to 231 removal requests, including 40 legal demands from Russia. Of the total 11 withheld tweets by journalists and news outlets, eight tweets were withheld in Russia for containing information about methods of committing suicide and one tweet for sharing extremism-related content.
Sinead McSweeney, Twitter's vice president of global public policy and philanthropy, said in a statement:
We're facing unprecedented challenges as governments around the world increasingly attempt to intervene and remove content. This threat to privacy and freedom of expression is a deeply worrying trend that requires our full attention.
Twitter has faced government pressure, fines and censorship in Russia over accusations of failing to remove content deemed illegal, including posts relating to unsanctioned mass rallies and protests. In March 2021, Russian censors began throttling Twitter loading speeds using DPI (deep-packet inspection) equipment operating as part of Russia's new “sovereign internet” strategy. At the time, Russian state media and internet regulator Roskomnadzor said the platform could be fully blocked in the country if it did not “satisfy the demands of Roskomnadzor, and the requirements of Russian legislation.”

author: Tanya Lokot