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Yale-NUS college draws criticism in Singapore after canceling a class on ‘dialogue and dissent’ · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Yale-NUS College campus at dusk. Photo by Nick Allen. Wikimedia, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
The Yale-National University of Singapore College of Liberal Arts (Yale-NUS College) has canceled a class on dissent that would have directly involved students with some of Singapore’s activists, critical artists, and independent journalists.
Yale-NUS initially approved a class titled ‘Dialogue And Dissent’ to be led by playwright Alfian Sa'at in tandem with a faculty member. It is part of the Learning Across Boundaries program of the college scheduled to run from September 29 to October 5.
On September 13, the college informed students who enrolled in the class that the topic had been scrapped.
Yale-NUS college president Tan Tai Yong explained the decision to cancel the class:
The project in question does not critically engage with the range of perspectives required for a proper academic examination of the political, social and ethical issues that surround dissent.
The fundamental reason why we took the decision we did was risk mitigation, particularly for international students, who could lose their student pass for engaging in political activity.
Aside from lectures and workshops, the class was supposed to feature interviews with activists. A film documentary on Hong Kong protest leader Joshua Wong was also part of the program.
Chuan-Jin Tan, speaker of Singapore’s parliament, questioned the rationale of offering this kind of program to students:
Given what is happening in Hong Kong and elsewhere, do we believe that this is the way to go? Is this the liberal education that we need to get us into the future?
But Alfian Sa'at clarified that the class was meant to spark a discussion about dissent and not to organize a public protest:
It is designed to guide students to think about dissent in Singapore. What is a dissident? Why does the media persist in labelling certain individuals or groups as ‘troublemakers’? Who are they making trouble for?
One of the best ways to get these insights is to meet some so-called dissidents face to face. To give the students unfiltered access. Why is your art or cause so important to you? What do you consider acceptable risks? What are the creative tactics you have used to express dissent WITHIN the bounds of the law?
In Singapore, public protests can only be held in a designated place called Speakers’ Corner located within Hong Lim Park. Foreigners are barred from participating in political causes.
News about the cancellation of the class prompted Yale President Peter Salovey to issue a statement of concern about the decision:
In founding and working with our Singaporean colleagues on Yale-NUS, Yale has insisted on the values of academic freedom and open inquiry, which have been central to the college and have inspired outstanding work by faculty, students, and staff…Any action that might threaten these values is of serious concern, and we at Yale need to gain a better understanding of this decision.
Established in 2013, Yale-NUS is a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore.
The issue also highlighted the state of political freedom in Singapore. The People's Action Party, which has been in power since the 1960s, is accused of implementing harsh policies and laws that stifle dissent, undermine media independence, and persecute opposition forces.
Daryl Yang, a graduate of Yale-NUS, lamented that a workshop on dissent can be considered an exercise in “liberal” radicalization.
I was disappointed that we even needed to have a course to learn how to dissent and resist. It reminded me of the pathetic state of affairs in our society, that university students have to be taught how to be socially engaged and democratically responsible citizens.
Kirsten Han, an activist and journalist who was scheduled to give a talk in the canceled class, noted the contradiction surrounding the existence of a ‘liberal college’ in an authoritarian country.
The issue about exposing students to legal liabilities and operating within Singapore laws also points to one of the major criticisms of @yalenus from the beginning: that it’s a liberal arts college in an authoritarian country where civil liberties is not respected.
— Kirsten Han 韩俐颖 (@kixes) September 14, 2019
Jolovan Wham, an activist who was charged for organizing an indoor forum featuring a Skype interview with Hong Kong protest leader Joshua Wong, also shared a similar point.
Elections are coming in #Singapore, so the government and ruling party are hypersensitive to such events. The irony of a liberal arts college in an authoritarian state. https://t.co/NlmzalGgNf
— Jolovan Wham (@jolovanwham) September 14, 2019
Filmmaker Lynn Lee has a suggestion for Alfian:
Maybe Alfian should have included a module called “Obedience and Compromise”, or “Strategic Sucking Up”. Because apparently, a “range of perspectives” is very important at Yale-NUS.
In a Facebook post, Alfian wrote his concept of dissent:
For me, the idea of dissent is a simple one. It is the art of saying no. Not just saying no to the state but also to certain ideologies, practices, ways of thinking and doing. If we cannot make space and listen to the person that says no, then democracy dies. It’s that fundamental.

author: Mong Palatino


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Netizen Report: Pro-government doxxing campaigns rock Hong Kong, Serbia · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle, Netizen Report Team

‘It is U who taught me that peaceful marches are useless.’ Photo: May James/HKFP.
The Advox Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in technology and human rights around the world. This report covers news and events from September 14-20, 2019.
Doxxing —  the practice of publishing someone's personal information online without their permission, with the intention to threaten or intimidate — is becoming an increasingly common tactic of state actors seeking to silence their critics.
This week in Hong Kong, a doxxing campaign targeting protesters gained increased prominence when China Central Television (China's state television broadcaster) published a video on its official Weibo account, in which it urged people to use a special doxxing website — hkleaks.ru — to “take off the masks” of the Hong Kong “rioters”.
The website launched in late August and has since published personal information including photos, residential addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers and social media accounts belonging to protesters and journalists covering the demonstrations.
The site has thus far published more than 90 individuals’ personal data. Most of those targeted are pro-democracy lawmakers, student activists and journalists from Apple Daily and the Stand News. The site labelled them as ”pro-Hong Kong independence rioters”.
Why a Russian top-level domain? The doxing website was originally registered as hkleaks.org, but was moved to a Russian hosting service after a complaint was filed invoking Hong Kong’s privacy laws, which prohibit the unauthorized publication of personal data. With the site now hosted in Russia, Hong Kong’s privacy commissioner has little recourse but to submit a complaint to the Russian domain registry, which is state-administered.
Just a few weeks prior to the developments in Hong Kong, Serbian journalists uncovered the origins of Istraga.rs, a website that launched in January 2019 and has become known for targeting journalists and opposition figures by posting their personal information and photographs, and publishing smear stories about their work.
VOICE, a research center run by the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, revealed that the previously unidentified owner of the website Istraga.rs is a business partner of pro-government media mogul Luka Rakočević.
Instraga bills itself as an investigative journalism site, but exclusively focuses on opposition figures and independent media, and regularly publishes stories with no cited sources or data to support its claims.
The Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia previously warned that the site had introduced a new genre “pointless investigations” – as an excuse to write defamatory articles which were then promoted on social networks by profiles linked to Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), the ruling party in Serbia. SNS has developed a massive online apparatus similar to troll armies of populist parties in Russia and North Macedonia. These profiles — known as SNS bots in Serbian slang — regularly promote posts and articles from Instraga.
An 18-year-old university student won her petition to the high court of Kerala, a state in southern India, and brought about a victory for internet rights in the process. Faheema Shirin appealed to the judiciary after she was expelled from her hostel (a student housing establishment) at Sree Narayana College for violating rules that prohibit female students from using mobile phones and laptops between 6 and 10pm, also known as “hours of study.” The rule does not apply to male students.
The Kerala High Court ruled in Shirin’s favor on September 19, citing a 2016 UN resolution enshrining access to the internet as a fundamental right, and finding that in this particular case, “the right to have access to Internet becomes the part of [the] right to education.” The court also found that the administrators of the hostel, who would confiscate students’ electronic devices during these hours, violated their right to privacy, which is enshrined by the Indian constitution.
Being at the state level, the ruling has no bearing on the internet shutdown that has paralyzed the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir. But many Indians have pointed out the stark difference in adjudication of this fundamental right on Twitter.
It would bode well for the Supreme Court to take a leaf out of Kerala High Court's book and adjudicate on the Right To Access Internet for the people in Kashmir.”
— Manu Sebastian (@manuvichar) 20 de septiembre de 2019
On September 3, a Sudanese court ordered telecommunications companies Sudani and MTN to apologize to their customers for disrupting access to their networks at the behest of the military authorities in early June.
The shutdown, which went on for weeks, was the longest in Sudan’s history. The Transitional Military Council, which at the time was the de-facto ruler of the country, said it ordered the internet blackout because of security concerns. But the blackout also disrupted the sharing of footage and information pertaining to the dispersal of a June 3 sit-in by security and military forces, who were calling for a civilian-led transitional government. More than 100 protesters were killed in the crackdown.
Four journalists who worked for the Gam independent online news outlet were sentenced to 18 years in prison on September 9, after being arrested in January 2019. All were convicted on national security-related charges for covering workers’ rights protests at the Haft Tappeh sugar mill in Khuzestan Province. Three activists who participated in the demonstrations were issued similarly long prison sentences.
On September 17, Facebook published new information about its plan to establish an oversight board of experts who will be tasked with reviewing “tough” pieces of content posted to the platform and deciding how th company should treat such posts. Facebook says it will adhere to decisions made by the board (even if it disagrees) so long as they are technically feasible. We'll see how this plays out.
Deep Fakes and Cheap Fakes: The Manipulation of Audio and Visual Evidence – Joan Donovan and Britt Paris, Data & Society
Owning Ethics: Corporate Logics, Silicon Valley and the Institutionalization of Ethics – Jacob Metcalf, Emanuel Moss and danah boyd, Data & Society
Afef Abrougui, Oiwan Lam, Filip Stojanovski and Mohamed Suliman contributed to this report.

source: news-globalvoices

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


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Serbian journalists expose a ruling party bot application used to manipulate readers’ comments on media websites  · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Up-voted comments on a Kurir.rs article about president praising graduating medical students. First comment claims “The state increasingly pays attention to youth” and the second “Serbia's goal is to keep its expert young people in the country by providing good jobs.”
Activists of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), nicknamed ‘SNS bots’, have been using a mobile application to post thousands of ‘up-votes’ and ‘down-votes’ on comments to articles of popular media websites Kurir and Espresso, to influence the perceptions of their readers, revealed a research by the Centre for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS).
In an investigative story published on 4 September 2019, journalists Anđela Milivojević and Milica Šarić revealed that analysis of the source code of the mobile application called VotR2 showed that it enabled adding votes ‘for’ or ‘against’ readers’ comments, to make them either less or more visible to other readers.
As part of the ruling party's online strategy, members have been instructed to open fake user profiles to post positive comments about the SNS and its leader, the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, and to post negative comments and down-votes of critical articles and comments.
In 2014, a leaked PowerPoint presentation revealed that the party was seeking to establish information dominance in online debates by recruiting 500 members of 80 local party committees to troll critics and produce comments favorable to the government and the SNS.
CINS pointed out that an interview published on 9 August 2019 of a former member of SNS's troll army with news portal Južne vesti showed that the party continued to use “the organized bot system with intent to create a false image of satisfaction with the current government.” The interviewee, who spoke to Južne vesti anonymously, indicated that civil servants and employees in state-owned companies are forced into joining the troll army, and refusal can result in loss of livelihood.
Posledice? Naravno da ih ima. Uglavnom su članovi internet tima zaposleni u javnom sektoru i možete da zamislite koja tu posledica može da bude. Prestanak radnog odnosa ili šta već – kaže ovaj bivši bot.
Consequences? Of course there are consequences. The members of the Internet team are mainly public sector employees, and you can imagine the consequence [of dissent]. Ending of the working relationship and more, the former bot said.
A follow up article quotes the administrator of Južne vesti website who found out that the comments on this interview received a total of over 22.500 votes, all coming from a single network related to an IP-address, registered at the SNS headquarters in Belgrade.
Discovery of the mobile app indicates that the party upgraded its online tools arsenal for wider reach with increased intensity.
The icon of mobile app VotR2 as preserved on the archive website APKMonk.
CINS consulted digital security expert Jurre van Bergen, who works with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), to analyze the code of the VotR2 app, which was available on Google Play Store until January 2019. However, the code is still available on websites that archive apps, such as APKMonk, allowing experts to analyse it. Van Bergen concluded that “VotR2 has been specifically designed to manipulate the comments through the voting feature.”
The code analysis showed that after installing the app on their online phones, users would need to perform a password confirmation. Then the app continues working in the background while the smartphone remains active, posting pluses and minuses on the websites of Kurir and Espreso. The app restarts whenever the phone restarts, and continues receiving instructions on how to vote from the party, without any interference from the mobile phone's owner. It would post votes every six seconds, working down a list of links to individual comments received remotely.
The analysis of the up/down-voting app’s code showed that it has been controlled from a server with a specific IP address “77.46.148.99,” that since March 2016 has been registered by the Serbian Progressive Party. Registration record shows the name of the party in Serbian (Srpska Napredna Stranka) and the address of their headquarters in Belgrade (Palmira Toljatija 5).
SNS has not replied to CINS’ request for comment.
Van Bergen and other experts consulted by CINS opined that the targeted websites receive these votes as if they are sent from the mobile apps of Kurir and Espreso.
Nemanja Nenadić from anti-corruption organisation Transparency Serbia told CINS that the manipulation of user comments aims to deceive readers by pretending to represent the voice of “the neutral compatriot:”
Na taj način želi da se kreira utisak šta misli većina, šta je društveno poželjno opredeljenje. Pretpostavljam da sve to ima na kraju krajeva nekog efekta na birače, jer inače ne verujem da bi se vladajuća partija, i verovatno neke druge u manjoj meri, shodno finansijskim mogućnostima, ne bi se toliko trudili da to rade.
This is a method to manufacture an impression about majority opinion, that a certain position is socially desired. I suppose all of this has some effect on the voters, because otherwise I don’t think the ruling party, as well as some other parties to a lesser degree, depending on their financial power, wouldn’t invest so much effort in it.
Experts consulted by CINS opined that this level of access of the SNS app to the websites of Kurir and Espresso can only be gained in three ways: (1) receiving access privileges directly from website owners, (2) hacking the official mobile apps published by the media outlets, or (3) low level of protection of websites enabling manipulations.
Tanja Maksić, the vice president of the Association of Online Media said it would be “completely unethical” and “unacceptable” for the media to provide direct access to the ruling party's app.
Representatives of both media outlets contacted by CINS responded that they are not providing direct access to anyone, while one of them hinted that her technical team did not rule out the possibility of hacking against their website.
Digital security expert Van Bergen said that he did not find evidence of hacking. According to his statement for CINS, the controversial app is using a legitimate function from the website API enabling voting on the comments. “However they didn’t build adequate security measures to prevent manipulations with pluses or minuses on the comments,” he concluded.
Kurir and Espreso are now owned by one of biggest media companies in the Balkans, Adria Media Group. In January 2019 the Adria Media was bought by Igor Žeželj, owner of another portal called Mondo. Before the purchase, Mondo submitted an evaluation to the Commission for Protection of Competition [anti-monopoly regulatory body in Serbia] that estimated that the two websites together cover 16.4% of the market share in the online portal category in Serbia.
According to CINS, Kurir articles receive up to 10 times more comments than the articles on the website of their main competitor, Blic.
Experiences of other Serbian websites like Južne vesti, showed that news related to the current government receive most comments, pluses and minuses. “They are very sensitive to every news article critical of the government and such articles receive most reactions,” explained editor-in-chief Gordana Bjeletić. According to her, the number of up or down votes (pluses or minuses) did not increase the actual number of visits to their websites. In her opinion the party would not do it if there’s no effect “as their goal is to influence people, especially the undecided citizens who like to see what others think about particular issues.”
Transparency Serbia representative Nenadić added that if the media outlets enable such voting privileges for the political party, they would have to report it as “a specific kind of free service” which amounts to party donation.
Neither of the two affected popular media outlets published news articles or opinion pieces about CINS’ investigation.

author: Filip Stojanovski


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Broken bones, internal bleeding: Hong Kong police used ‘reckless, indiscriminate’ tactics during protests, says Amnesty · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

File photo: HK riot police/May James/HKFP.
This post was originally written by Jennifer Creery and published on Hong Kong Free Press on September 20, 2019. It is republished on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement.
A new report from NGO Amnesty International says that Hong Kong police have used reckless tactics and retaliatory violence in their crackdown on protesters over the summer, resulting in injuries such as broken bones and internal bleeding.
The report — based on 38 interviews with arrestees, medical workers and lawyers, as well as reviewed footage — detailed a “disturbing pattern” of improper police conduct during the city’s 15 weeks of protests, behaviour which Amnesty said sometimes amounted to torture. Nicholas Bequelin, the East Asia director at Amnesty, said:
The Hong Kong police’s heavy-handed crowd-control response on the streets has been live-streamed for the world to see. Much less visible is the plethora of police abuses against protesters that take place out of sight. The evidence leaves little room for doubt — in an apparent thirst for retaliation, Hong Kong’s security forces have engaged in a disturbing pattern of reckless and unlawful tactics against people during the protests.
In its report, the NGO cited excessive use of force, beatings, arbitrary arrests, degrading treatment, and delayed access to medical care and counsel as examples of such tactics, while identifying elite officers — known as “raptors” — as the main perpetrators.
Over 1,400 people have been arrested in Hong Kong’s summer of dissent, sparked by a soon-to-be-withdrawn extradition bill which would have enabled case-by-case fugitive transfers to China. The protests morphed into sometimes violent displays of unrest over Beijing’s encroachment and alleged police brutality, among other grievances.
Map showing the protest-related arrests Amnesty International documented from July to September 2019. Data sourced from Open Street Map, HKGISK. Photo: Amnesty International.
Amnesty interviewed 21 arrestees, 18 of whom said they were hospitalised as a result of their mistreatment, with three of them spending at least five days in hospital.
One man told Amnesty that, when he refused to answer a question during his arrest in the New Territories in August, officers beat him and threatened to break his hands if he tried to protect himself. He was quoted in the report:
I felt my legs hit with something really hard. Then one [officer] flipped me over and put his knees on my chest. I felt the pain in my bones and couldn’t breathe. I tried to shout but I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t talk.
The man was later hospitalised for several days with a bone fracture and internal bleeding. He also reported that an officer forcibly opened his eye and shone a laser beam into it, saying, “Don’t you like to point this at people?”
Lasers were typically used at protests to irritate officers and in August 2019, police arrested a student leader for possession of offensive weapons after he was found carrying ten laser pointers.
Another man, who suffered multiple fractures to his arm during his arrest in August, said that despite immediately asking to be taken to the hospital, he was denied medical care for five hours while in detention.
Two other interviewees described instances where they were zip-tied on the street and made to inhale tear gas for long periods of time.
Police representatives have consistently denied misconduct, saying that officers use the minimum force necessary and exercise a high level of restraint during protests.
At a recent press conference, Police Public Relations Branch Chief Superintendent Tse Chun-chung said that Amnesty’s report lacked context:
Those missing links, they basically did not mention clearly about the social environment in Hong Kong in recent months. I must re-emphasise that we are facing an unprecedented challenge to the rule of law.
Police are duty-bound to enforce the law impartially in these situations. Given this social environment, where a large number of radical protesters break the law recklessly, it is increasingly difficult for Police to enforce the law.
However, ahead of the report’s release, Bequelin said the abuses Amnesty recorded were in clear violation of international human rights law:
Time and again, police officers meted out violence prior to and during arrests, even when the individual had been restrained or detained. The use of force was therefore clearly excessive, violating international human rights law.
Given the pervasiveness of the abuses we found, it is clear that the Hong Kong Police Force is no longer in a position to investigate itself and remedy the widespread unlawful suppression of protesters. Amnesty International is urgently calling for an independent, impartial investigation aimed at delivering prosecutions, justice and reparation, as there is little trust in existing internal mechanisms such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

author: Hong Kong Free Press


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Zanzibar’s one and only music academy on the brink of closure · Global Voices
Amanda Lichtenstein

Students from the Dhow Countries Music Academy (DCMA) rehearse the qanun, flute, drum and piano at the Old Customs House, Stone Town, Zanzibar, 2019. Photo courtesy of the DCMA.
Thousands of visitors to the historic city of Stone Town, Zanzibar, have followed the sound of music to the Dhow Countries Music Academy (DCMA), a music school that promotes and preserves the islands’ musical traditions of the Swahili Coast along the Indian Ocean. Since 2002, the school has promoted and preserved the Zanzibar's unique mix of Arab, Indian and African cultures through music.
After 17 years, the school faces a financial crisis that threatens its closure. Nearly 70% of its 80 full-time students can't afford to pay their tuition, which comes to about $13 USD per month, according to an official DCMA press release. While the school has received support over the years from international donors and diplomatic missions, they face a gap in funding that may force them to shut their doors at the historic Old Customs House.
Without crucial funds to continue, DCMA students and staff fear that the soulful sounds that flow through the hallways of this iconic institution that make these islands sing — may cease. The school not only teaches and promotes traditional culture and heritage through music, but it's also home to a community of young musicians who seek alternatives to making a living as creatives.
A DCMA student learns the qanun, a featured instrument in classical taarab songs. Photo courtesy of the DCMA.
“We [have started] to face a very challenging financial moment,” said Alessia Lombardo, managing director of the DCMA, in an official DCMA video. “From now to the next six months, we are not sure that we can guarantee the salaries to our teachers and staff.”
At the moment, 19 master teachers and small core staff have gone without salaries for over three months as the school struggles to secure strong funding partnerships and explore sustainable funding models for a school. While the archipelago is known as a tourist destination for its pristine beaches and luxury hotels, the majority of local people struggle with high unemployment even as poverty has slightly decreased, according to The World Bank.
For 17 years, the DCMA has worked tirelessly to promote and protect Zanzibar’s rich heritage and traditions through music. The birthplace of legendary taarab singers Siti Binti Saad and Fatuma Binti Baraka, or Bi. Kidude, Zanzibar is home to musical genres that emerged through cultural exchange and collaboration along the Swahili Coast for hundreds of years. Today, students can learn traditional musical genres like taarab, ngoma and kidumbak, along with instruments like drums, qanun and oud, as gatekeepers — and interpreters — of culture and tradition.
Neema Surri, a violin player at the DCMA, has been studying the violin since the age of 9. “I know many young people who would like to study music but they can’t afford the minimal tuition fee because they are poor and unemployed,” Surri said in the DCMA video.
Students at the DCMA rehearse at the Old Customs House, where the school is based, in Stone Town, Zanzibar, 2019. Photo courtesy of the DCMA.
After completing DCMA workshops, certificate and diploma courses, many DCMA students go on to perform on world stages as award-winning bands and solo artists. Zanzibar’s Amina Omar Juma, a former DCMA student and current DCMA teacher, recently returned from a tour in South Africa with her critically acclaimed, “Siti and the Band,” known for “fusing the roots” by blending traditional taarab sounds with contemporary, layered rhythms. She and other band members, also former DCMA students, released their first full album, “Fusing the Roots,” in 2018, going on to perform at Sauti za Busara, East Africa's largest music festival, that same year.
Here's Siti and the Band's “Nielewe” (“Understand Me”) and music video, depicting scenes from Zanzibar while telling the story of a woman who experiences domestic abuse and dreams of life in music, much like Omar Juma's personal story:
Over 15,000 visitors have passed through the academy’s iconic building to enjoy live performances, workshops and classes and interact with passionate DCMA musicians who represent the future of Zanzibar culture and heritage, according to the DCMA. Drawing from a complex history of Indian, Arab and African exchange, the school celebrates the influence of “dhow countries,” with inspiration from cultures that converged along the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.
The Omani Sultanate, a “major maritime force from the 17th to 19th centuries,” shifted its seat of power from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1840. From Stone Town, Omani kings oversaw elaborate systems of maritime trade, including cloves, gold, and textiles, powered by strong winds that set dhows — traditional Arab vessels — sailing across the Indian Ocean, from India to Oman to East Africa.
Young Zanzibaris recognize the importance of connecting with the past to determine their future and the music created today expresses that desire to bridge the old with the new. DCMA students and teachers recently formed “TaraJazz,” a blend of traditional taarab and modern jazz. Their violinist, Felician Mussa, 20, has only been studying the violin for 3.5 years; TaraJazz is one of the most sought-after bands on the islands, captured here by photographer Aline Coquelle:
#groovy #evenings with #Tarajazz #Taraab #jazz #gang @dcmazanzibar #alinecoquelle #Zanzibar #Music #beating #Heart #Stonetown #IndianOcean #Africa #Islanders
A post shared by  Aline Coquelle Photoreporter (@alinecoquelle) on
The Swahili coast tells the story of epic cultural exchanges and the DCMA continues this tradition through its musical collaborations. Every year, the school hosts an initiative called “Swahili Encounters,” matching well-known musicians hailing from Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America with DCMA students to create original musical compositions within a week-long period. At the end of the “encounter,” the newly-formed collaboration performs at Sauti za Busara, and many of these collaborations turn into life-time friendships that transcend the boundaries of language and culture, proving music is a universal language.
DCMA offers weekly live performances showcasing students’ talents and collaborations with visiting musicians, Stone Town, Zanzibar, 2019. Photo courtesy of DCMA.
The DCMA recognizes that music empowers and unites people across cultures — and it also employs talented youth living in a struggling economy with limited job opportunities. For the 1,800 students who have trained at the DCMA, this is the only musical home they know, where they can learn and grow as professional musicians and artists.
One traveler from Spain, who recently visited the DCMA, wrote on TripAdvisor: “Personally, meeting the musicians was the best piece of my time on this island.”
As Zanzibar’s tourism sector rapidly grows, the DCMA believes that music plays an essential role in the celebration, preservation and promotion of Swahili culture, heritage and history. Zanzibar is far more than its beaches and luxury hotels — it’s a place bursting with talent that stems from an extraordinary history of cultural connection and collaboration.
Editor's note: The author of this post has volunteered with DCMA.

author: Amanda Lichtenstein


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Trinidad & Tobago government unimpressed with BBC report on Venezuelan refugees · Global Voices
Jada Steuart

Screenshot taken from a promotional video for the BBC series, “The Displaced”, highlighting the episode titled “When 40,000 desperate Venezuelans hit a tiny island”. Source: BBC News’ official YouTube channel.
A recent episode of the BBC series, “The Displaced”, focuses on the lives of Venezuelans who have come to Trinidad to seek asylum, as well as the legislative measures taken to accommodate the more than 40,000 arrivals from the beleaguered South American nation.
In order for Venezuelan asylum-seekers to be recognised, the Trinidad and Tobago government began a registration process on May 31, 2019. Registering would give those on record the right to work in Trinidad and Tobago, thereby minimising any unscrupulous attempts at exploitation; since the process ended on June 14, anyone travelling from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago requires a visa.
Since the release of the BBC report, many — from the country's prime minister, Keith Rowley, to social media users — have voiced that it fails to accurately represent reality. According to the BBC episode synopsis, “life isn’t easy for those who arrive, and some locals have made it clear they’re not welcome.”
While the public response to the Venezuelan crisis has ranged from critical to open-minded, the episode appears to focus on the few instances of xenophobia:
So instead of showing the work being done from Living Water, Alice Yard or literally ANY OTHER group working with Venezuelans, they decided to choose the most ignorant and xenophobic person to represent our views. Absolute trash. https://t.co/Xw8cOxznp7
— Raisa???? (@not_reesah) September 17, 2019
T&T population: 1.3 Million number of protesters: 12 BBC: This is how TRINIDAD feels…madness oui
— Neferpitou (@christiari) September 17, 2019
The BBC interviewed controversial social media personality Kia Hosein (publicly known as “Kia Rankin Boss”), but many felt that the medial outlet failed to get credible — or at least non-controversial — sources:
Trinis: Trinidad media is so much shit!
BBC: *cites Rankin Kia Boss as a credible source*
— Single Tear GIF (@kwameweekes) September 16, 2019
“Rankin Kia Boss” – a reputable source.
Really BBC?!?!?! REALLY. https://t.co/M38xHuRAd1
— FemaleYeezy (@ariellesalvary) September 16, 2019
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Rowley said he would contact the United Kingdom government to “set the record straight”. He even got into a tiff with the British High Commissioner, Tim Stew, whose position on the issue was that his government was committed to a free press:
The Government have brought to my attention a BBC documentary on Venezuelan migrants.
As I have said, the UK’s commitment to freedom of expression means that the UK media, including BBC, are independent of the UK Government. pic.twitter.com/SnDUpRSOV5
— Tim Stew (@HCTimStew) September 17, 2019
Rowley responded via his Facebook page:
Independent?
The BBC gets billions of pounds from the UK Government to carry on their business. They mirror and reflect British Government policy.
The UK Government determines and causes all television users to pay a licence fee to them. They send coded messages around the world for the British Government.
That is not the response we want from him. He must respond to whether the BBC presented our Venezuelan situation in a truthful and professional manner.
Opposition politicians, however, felt that the prime minister was mishandling the situation.
The issue of asylum has become both political and emotional, causing divisions in Trinbagonian society. Many citizens are adamant that the country should live up to its neighbourly responsibilities in what has become a humanitarian crisis; others take a very nationalistic position and see the increase in Venezuelans refugees as a strain.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Trinidad and Tobago is very involved in the process of helping displaced Venezuelan citizens, but a lack of relevant, updated information on the most recent stats have left citizens unaware of the big picture. To compound the matter, recent newspaper reports of Venezuelans allegedly involved in criminal activity have further sowed doubt and fear.
Local filmmaker Rhonda Chan Soo has tried to shift the focus by producing a film that depicts the crisis through the eyes of Venezuelan asylum-seekers. “Nearest Neighbours” takes an intimate look at several Venezuelan families who made the decision to leave their home and come to Trinidad.
Speaking with Global Voices via email, Chan Soo said:
I hope that the film helps to portray a human side to the political crisis, and to help bring marginalised voices to the mainstream with dignity.
Taking a “day in the life” approach, the film tells stories from the point of view of asylum-seekers through a series of interviews where viewers catch a glimpse into their lives, fears and struggles. Chan Soo explained that in the early stages of filming, she noticed similarities emerging:
I chose to focus on families and the more commonly shared experiences […] as a starting point, and chose different voices to articulate an interesting angle on what I learned was a shared story.
According to Chan Soo, these experiences had more to do with “the practical challenges associated with not having a legally recognised status, including more common problems such as the difficulty of accessing education, exploitation at work and the more severe issues of arrest, detention and even sex trafficking.”
The film also illustrates the determination of the human spirit as parents and children carry on with their lives despite an uncertain future. In one scene, a local schoolgirl helps her Venezuelan friend read to the class, and the moment offers insight into the humanity of this crisis that the public often forgets.
Both documentaries hold up a mirror to Trinidad and Tobago's role in the Venezuelan crisis, each in its own way.
“Nearest Neighbours” will premiere in Trinidad the week of October 14, 2019, at the performance space Big Black Box.

author: Jada Steuart


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Russia’s return to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: Diplomacy or defeat? · Global Voices
BlueLink

“A wolf in sheep's clothing.” Allowing Russia back in the PACE may encourage other oppressive leaders, critics worry. Cartoon courtesy of Anna Tóth (annatoth.com).
This article by Pavel Antonov and Ksenia Vakhrusheva originally appeared on BlueLink, a regional e-magazine covering Central and Eastern Europe. It is republished here via a content-sharing partnership with Global Voices.
Amending the Council of Europe’s (CoE) sanctioning rules to restore Russia’s voting rights in its Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) has divided democracy and human rights advocates. In spite of criticism for the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the Kremlin’s human rights’ record, influential groups such as the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum have backed Russia’s return as a “last hope for Russian citizens seeking justice for human rights violations.” They call for new rules to enable the organisation to suspend or expel members who fail to comply with its principles.
At its summer session on 24-28 June 2019, the PACE passed a resolution which restored the credentials of the Russian delegation. Proposals by Ukraine to impose further limitations on Russian participation were rejected. PACE also passed tough recommendations that Russia should implement, including: releasing the 24 detained Ukrainian sailors; and immediate payment of all financial contributions to the CoE. PACE also requested Russia’s full co-operation with the investigations of the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines’ flight MH17 and the murder of Boris Nemtsov, and urged vigorous measures to prevent violations of the human rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex people, especially in Chechnya.
Critics, such as the US special representative on Ukraine Kurt Volker, saw the decision as abandoning the CoE’s own principles. Russia had been suspended from the voting rights in the PACE since April 2014 because of annexing the Crimea. Back then, most CoE members called the actions of Russia’s military forces in the Crimea a “persistent failure to honor its obligations and commitments” in a strong resolution. In response, Moscow ceased its membership dues, leaving a 53 million-euro-hole (58 million USD) in the CoE’s 2018 budget.
According to the former president of PACE Anne Brasseur, sanctions against the Russian delegation were taken after the annexation of Crimea, because it was “a clear violation of international law and that’s unacceptable”. But the CoE never excluded Russia formally. “[PACE] suspended their voting rights and then (…) [the Russian delegation] decided by themselves to leave, and even not to submit credentials later on. It was their own decision”, Brasseur explained for BlueLink Stories in a video interview at the General Assembly of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum in May.
PACE’s move was condemned strongly by Ukraine. “This is not diplomacy, this is a surrender,” the country’s envoy to the CoE Dmytro Kuleba commented for The Guardian. According to his tweet on the same occasion, five other countries opposed the decision, so the fight to keep Russia out of the Parliamentary Assembly is not over.
Concessions for Russia create concerns within the EU, as they may encourage other governments to cut corners around human and democratic provisions for their citizens. International organisations such as CoE and OSCE are “facing challenges from the interpretation of what they were made for and what the commitment that their (member) states have agreed to actually means to today’s world,” warned Aleska Simkic, Deputy Head of EU’s Delegation to Russia.
Recent suppression of independent candidates for the Moscow City Council elections sends a clear signal that the Kremlin has no intention of complying with CoE’s principles. But having Russia expelled from the CoE is the last thing rights and democracy activists in the country want. On the contrary, they need the international body as the last resource of international pressure against the Kremlin. In response to recently documented electoral rights violations by authorities in Moscow and St Petersburg, 40 civil society organizations and activists appealed to the CoE to discuss the situation and include information about it in its forthcoming assessment of Russia’s implementation of the European Charter of Local Self-Government.
An example of rights violations in Russia is the deny to independent candidates to run for the Moscow City Council in City Duma elections in September 2019. On August 10 in Moscow citizens rallied in support of opposition candidates. Photo: putnik / Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0)
Earlier, a CoE-Russia contact group of human rights advocates and the Board of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum appealed to all PACE members to return voting rights to Russian delegation. In a joint position, they called it “a logical final step” in the process of looking for a solution to the CoE-Russia crisis.
According to the civil society rights advocates, the resolution should not be seen as a threat to the future of CoE, but rather – as an opportunity to secure it. Its proposed amendments to the PACE Rules of Procedure do not eliminate, but only limit, the existing sanction mechanisms, they claim. Eliminating the opportunity to limit voting rights in the PACE, other member’s rights can be still suspended or withdrawn, ex. the right to table a motion for resolution or recommendation, to address questions to the Committee of Ministers, to be appointed rapporteur, to request an urgent or current affairs debate, to be candidate for elected posts within the Assembly, to be a member of election observation missions, to represent the Assembly in other Council of Europe bodies or at external events.
The human rights activists feared that not adopting any decision on the matter would most probably have led to Russia’s departure from the Council of Europe – with all the negative consequences this would cause for the Russian public and the CoE as a whole. “We are convinced that Russia’s departure from the CoE would not stop human rights violations and halt the authoritarian backslide in the country, or prevent Russian government’s aggressive behaviour in the international arena”, their statement said.
PACE’s June decision was formally justified as a means to enable Russia’s participation in the elections of the next Secretary-General. The Kremlin had called this a “crucial factor” for remaining a remember of the CoE.
Russia’s prolonged membership is beneficial for the country’s citizens who actively use the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – one of the CoE’s most effective mechanisms for human rights protection. In 2018 Russian nationals filed 11777 applications to the ECHR, which is 20 per cent of the total number. According to a report of Moscow-based human rights group Public Verdict, in 20 years of membership, the ECHR’s judges took 2013 decisions regarding Russia, imposing a total of 1.9 billion Euros (2.1 billion USD) in compensations. This suggests that remaining in the CoE is not exactly a victory for the Kremlin but rather a trade-off.
Instead of arguing about the symbolic importance of preserving the sanctions against Russia in the PACE and mobilising significant efforts for this, those who really care about compelling the Russian authorities to observe international law should rather focus on finding other, more effective ways and tools for ensuring that, the Initiative Group of Russian human rights defenders and the Board of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum believe.
The organisations stated that the continued membership of Russia in the CoE “should be actively used by all concerned parties as an opportunity to build up stronger pressure on Russia to ensure implementation of its obligations”. The organizations propose the development of new and more intense mechanisms to intervene with respect of Russia’s violations of international law, that should be applied in the Council of Europe, in particular with respect to Crimea and Donbas.
The withdrawal or lack of enthusiasm by Russia and some other member states for the values of human rights worries old-school European politicians such as Anne Brasseur as well. “It is not about the country, it’s about the protection of the citizens of those 47 member states where every citizen must have the guarantee to have the fundamental freedoms: to have freedom of expression; freedom of the media; freedom of association. And the CoE is really the organization which guarantees those fundamental freedoms,” Brasseur commented.
In response to the concerns over the weakening of CoE’s sanctioning rules, the human rights’ defenders call for a critical review and upgrade of the CoE’s toolbox to address grave and systemic violations of the organisation’s norms by member states. Following upon to the Committee of Ministers’ proposal to develop a new procedure for a coordinated response to such situations, would be much better and stronger than the existing symbolic sanctions within PACE, they pointed out. Such procedure should include a possibility for suspension or expulsion of a member state.
Developing such lines of action would demonstrate that the PACE has not just resorted to a short-term tactical solution to the crisis but is working on a longer-term strategy of responding to violations committed by Russia, and, potentially, by any other member states, signatories believe.

author: BlueLink


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A snapshot of climate strikes across Southeast Asia · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Filipino protesters in a human-Earth formation. Source: Facebook page of Scientia
Several actions were organized across Southeast Asia from 20 to 22 September 2019 in support of the Global Climate Strike. One of the aims of the global strike was to mobilize young people and put pressure on world leaders who were scheduled to meet at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York.
The protest actions in Southeast Asia highlighted various issues such as the impact of large-scale mining, haze pollution, and continuing dependence on fossil fuels. Like in other parts of the world, the climate strikes in Southeast Asia featured the active participation and leadership of young people.
Below is an overview of protest activities across Southeast Asia:
More than 200 people marched from the new Bogyoke Market to Sule Pagoda, and then gathered outside Mahabandoola Park in Yangon on 21 September. They urged the Myanmar government to declare a climate emergency, impose a moratorium on projects that harm the environment, and promote environmental justice.
Young environmentalists joined the protest in Yangon. Source: Facebook page of Climate Strike Myanmar
More than 600 young environmentalists in Manila participated in a human-Earth formation while carrying placards that call for climate justice on 20 September. They denounced the rising number of extrajudicial killings targeting environmental defenders and land rights activists under the government of President Rodrigo Duterte who came to power in 2016.
More than 150 young environmentalists held a die-in protest in front of Thailand’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment on 20 September. They submitted a petition asking the government to phase out coal and transition to renewable energy. A government official received the letter and lauded the concern of young people for the environment.
Young environmentalists rally in front of Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Source: Facebook page of Climate Strike Thailand
More than 300 people joined the protest organized by Klima Action Malaysia on 21 September. They linked the worsening haze pollution to the climate crisis and asked the government to probe companies responsible for financing the deforestation of lands in Malaysia and Indonesia.
#MYCLIMATESTRIKE – Malaysians march in solidarity with the worldwide climate strike movement. pic.twitter.com/TQfEgQxB8p
— Farhan (@lamkanahraf) September 21, 2019
my heart is full and content seeing so many people from all walks of life fight for climate justice but am i satisfied? am i comfortable? no. this is not enough. we want change. we want climate justice. and we want it RIGHT NOW. #MYClimateStrike #ClimateAction #daruratiklim pic.twitter.com/t3SQgyMO7D
— kitsch (@nightlockheart) September 21, 2019
Reports indicated that more than a thousand young people marched in Jakarta on 20 September. They criticized the failure of the government to stop the forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan which caused massive haze pollution not just in Indonesia but also in Malaysia and Singapore. The expansion of plantations and illegal land conversions are blamed for the raging forest fires in the country.
Jakarta’s #ClimateStrike is being led by the powerful voices of young people calling for fighting climate emergency & putting pressure on policy makers to act on climate issue
It’s not just that we need to listen to the voices of youth, it’s because the voices of youth matter pic.twitter.com/XHHf0pQzLB
— Luqman Hakim (@luqmanomen) September 20, 2019
we’re marching together with our posters and our heart to raise this awareness. WE SHOULD ACT! GOVERNORS SHOULD ACT! PEOPLE IN POWER SHOULD LISTEN AND ACT!#JakartaClimateStrike #JedaUntukIklim #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/UsEvEpnKRD
— Liz (@pixiefies) September 20, 2019
Singapore had a large turnout during its climate strike on 21 September at Hong Lim Park. An estimated two thousand people joined the action calling the government to decarbonize the economy and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Participants wore red to symbolize the climate emergency we are facing today.
Hello from Singapore! #sgclimaterally #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/ziM5H5an0p
— Charlotte Setijadi (@charlie_set) September 21, 2019
From yesterday's #sgclimaterally, photos taken by my friends. Organisers (and cynical hannah) expected 500 people to turn up – 2000 Singaporeans said fuck you haze and showed up. Feeling proud to be Singaporean today pic.twitter.com/BDsb2t4yJu
— Hannah Koh (@hh_koh) September 22, 2019
And finally, in Vietnam, environmental activists organized a climate protest in Ho Chi Minh City despite the political risk of such an action.
For the first time ever, people of Ho Chi Minh City took to the street to join the #ClimateStrike, to demand serious and urgent #climateaction needed for their city which is among the most impacted, threatened by both sea level rise and air pollution. #climatestrikehcmc pic.twitter.com/bstDXAjZUg
— Hong Hoang (@honghoang2tweet) September 24, 2019


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Altamira: the Amazonian city enduring forest fires, prison violence, and anti-indigenous threats · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

The city of Altamira, in the northern region of Brazil, is located in the heart of the Amazon. Image: Pablo Albarenga/Mídia Ninja, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Altamira, a city in the heart of Brazil's Amazon forest, is the country's largest by land area, and the third-largest in the world. It's more extensive than Portugal, Switzerland, or Iceland, despite a population of only 114,000. In 2019, Altamira made international headlines following reports of forest fires — it's the number-two city in Brazil in the number of wildfire spots in 2019. But that's not the only challenge faced by this city.
In recent years, Altamira has seen a spike in threats to indigenous lands and prison and urban violence. On July 29, 58 people were slaughtered in the city's jail following an internal dispute between inmates; 16 people were beheaded. Many of them were still waiting for a trial. Other four prisoners were killed inside a government car while it transferred them to another facility following the massacre. It was the second-largest massacre in the history of Brazilian prisons, only behind the Carandiru massacre in 1992, when 111 were killed.
At the beginning of September, Global Voices spoke with Father Romildo, a priest responsible for the Altamira's branch of the Catholic Prison Pastoral. He said that several families were still waiting to identify possibly-killed relatives.
The prison population in Altamira, he says, has doubled in recent years. While beforehand disputes were restricted to local gangs, now there are new and bigger players in town — such as Comando Vermelho, the main criminal group from Rio de Janeiro, and PCC, from São Paulo, and Brazil's largest criminal organization. He says:
Altamira virou um cenário de guerra. Todos os finais de semana nos deparamos com assassinatos, com furtos. A cidade foi ficando desordenada. Em detrimento a isso, percebemos que a população carcerária foi inchando. Tínhamos um presídio que não comportava o número de presos e foi aumentando.
Altamira has become a war scenario. Every weekend we see murders, robberies. The city has no order. Meanwhile, we noticed that the prison population swelled. Our prison was already overcapacity and the number of prisoners continued to increase nonetheless.
Romildo was born 46 km away from Altamira and moved to the city in his teenage years to study. Now, he works in an agroecological community and makes regular visits to the city’s prison. As many people from Altamira say, the roots of many of the current problems lie in the construction of the Belo Monte dam, a 7.3-billion-USD hydroelectric power plant inaugurated in 2016 in the Xingu River.
A dam has been prospected for the area since the 1970s, but it was only in 2011, during the leftist Worker's Party government, that construction began. The government justified the dam's development as a means to ensure Brazil’s energy security in light of the country's growing demand for electricity.
Romildo remembers:
Do dia para a noite, [a população cresceu]. Isso se deu por conta do empreendimento de Belo Monte, a construção da hidrelétrica que trouxe muitas pessoas, e a cidade inchou. Tínhamos uma infraestrutura que mais ou menos já era deficiente, não comportava as demandas da cidade, e com a construção isso piorou.
Tivemos na cidade de Altamira pessoas que vieram com um trabalho certo, mas também muitos aventureiros, pessoas que foram na esperança de encontrar trabalho e se depararam com dificuldades, especialmente, para achar aluguel. Os preços subiram. Quando se tem um empreendimento do tamanho de Belo Monte, a criminalidade também aumentou.
The population increased overnight. It was all because of Belo Monte, the construction of the dam brought many people, and the city swelled. Infrastructure was already poor, it did not attend all the city’s demands, and with the dam it got worse.
Many people came to Altamira with pre-arranged jobs, but there were also many adventurers, those who came with the hope of finding work but faced difficulties, especially with housing. The rent prices went up. With an enterprise of the size of Belo Monte, criminality also went up.
In the early 2000s, Altamira’s homicide rate was of 11,3 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants. In 2017, it was 135,5. It surpassed the homicide rate of Honduras, the holder of the highest homicide rate in the world on that year, according to the UN. The latest Atlas of Violence, a yearly Brazilian study on public security, places Altamira as the second most violent city in Brazil.
Indigenous people have suffered the most with the construction of the Belo Monte dam. In September, Brazil's Federal Police discovered a 15,000-hectare deforested area inside an officially-designated Indigenous Land in Altamira. In August, Xikrin leaders said they received threats by a 300-strong armed gang who were building houses inside their land.
In 2014, Eliane Brum, an award-winning Brazilian journalist that has been covering Belo Monte for years, interviewed Brazilian federal prosecutor Thais Santi, who is stationed in Altamira. Santi stated that judges used to say that they could not interfere in political or governmental decisions regarding Belo Monte, even when irregularities were evident.
Santi says she's seen communities being torn apart by the dam's construction, with a spike in alcohol addition and incidents of racism. Santi called the situation in the region “an indigenous ethnocide”:
Encontrei aqui a continuação do que eu estudei no meu mestrado a partir da (filósofa alemã) Hannah Arendt. Belo Monte é o caso perfeito para se estudar o mundo em que tudo é possível. A Hannah Arendt lia os estados totalitários. Ela lia o mundo do genocídio judeu. E eu acho que é possível ler Belo Monte da mesma maneira.
I’ve found here the continuance of what I’ve studied in my masters on Hannah Arendt. Belo Monte is the perfect case to study a world where anything is possible. Hannah Arendt studied totalitarian states. She studied the world of Jewish genocide. And I think it is perfectly possible to read Belo Monte the same way.
The Amazon fires that made headlines internationally in August seem to have been human-made, and possibly criminal. Local journalist Adecio Piram reported that farmers organized a “fire day” in the state of Pará on August 10, in which they set fire to an area around a federal road. Magazine Globo Rural later reported the case:
Já se sabe que mais de 70 pessoas – de Altamira e Novo Progresso —  entre sindicalistas, produtores rurais, comerciantes e grileiros, combinaram através de um grupo de WhatsApp incendiar as margens da BR-163, rodovia que liga essa região do Pará aos portos fluviais do Rio Tapajós e ao Estado de Mato Grosso. A intenção deles era mostrar ao presidente Jair Bolsonaro que apoiam suas ideias de “afrouxar” a fiscalização do Ibama e quem sabe conseguir o perdão das multas pelas infrações cometidas ao Meio Ambiente.
It’s known that more than 70 people — from Altamira and [the city of] Novo Progresso — among them trade unionists, farmers, merchants, and land grabbers, arranged via WhatsApp to set fire to the margins of the BR-163 highway, which connects that region to Pará ports in the Tapajós river, as well as to the state of Mato Grosso. Their intention was to show president Jair Bolsonaro that they support his ideas of “loosing up” inspections by Ibama [Brazil environment regulator] and maybe receive a pardon for past environmental fines.
Speaking with Rio de Janeiro O Globo, Rodolfo Salm, a professor at Pará’s Federal University (UFPA), said:
A verdadeira época das queimadas em Altamira não começou. A situação se torna dramática em outubro, novembro. Neste ano, a coisa vai chegar num nível apocalíptico.
The actual fire season in Altamira hasn’t started yet. The situtation becomes more dramatic in October, November. This year, it will escalate to apocalyptical stages.
Debora Alvares, a reporter for The Huffington Post Brasil, wrote about an encounter she had with local loggers, who she says have threatened her. She says:
Esse clima tenso no ar, misturado à fuligem, não parece ser exceção. Diferentes fontes em Altamira me relataram um recente ataque a carros do Ibama, instituto de meio ambiente, quando correu a notícia de que haveria mais inspeções nessa área ao norte de Altamira. Até uma ponte teria sido destruída por madeireiros.
Um dos problemas relatados por um fiscal do Ibama que entrevistei é o próprio acesso na região amazônica. Os trechos longos de estrada de terra na BR-230 dificultam chegar às áreas de mata onde ocorrem incêndios.
This tension in the air, mixed with the soot, doesn’t seem like an exception. Different sources in Altamira told me about a recent attack to Ibama cars after news of upcoming inspections in the area circulated. Even a bridge was allegedly destroyed by the loggers.
One of the problems reported by one Ibama agent that I’ve interviewed was access within the Amazon region. Long stretches of dirt on BR-230 itself make it difficult to get to forest areas where fires are taking place.
In an article published on September 13, Eliane Brum says that, after the fires, Altamira was filled with reporters, which gave the city hope to see its other problems gaining attention as well. In a year that has proven more difficult than usual to the city, Father Romildo sums it up:
Nós vivemos em Altamira o mundo do tudo é possível. Temos a impressão que vivemos um mundo sem lei.
We live in Altamira the world where everything is possible. We have the impression that we are living in a lawless land.

author: Fernanda Canofre


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How was Pope Francis’ visit to Mozambique? · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

Pope Francis visited Mozambique from 4 to 6 September, where he held a mass for 80,000 people in the Zimpeto National Stadium, in the capital Maputo, as well as had meetings with authorities.
Mass in Maputo [06.09.2019], screenshot from Youtube.
The country had not received a papal visit since September 1988, when John Paul II came.
Before his arrival in Maputo, Pope Francis shared a message of reconciliation and peace for Mozambique:
Dentro de poucos dias, terá início a minha visita ao vosso país e, apesar de não poder deslocar-me para além da capital, o meu coração alcança e abraça a todos vós, com um lugar especial para quantos vivem atribulados. Desde já vos queria deixar esta certeza: estais todos na minha oração. Anseio pelo momento de vos encontrar.
Tal como eu recebi (e agradeço!) o convite do senhor Presidente e dos meus irmãos Bispos para ir ter convosco, assim estendo o convite a todos vós, para vos unirdes à minha oração a fim de que o Deus e Pai de todos consolide a reconciliação, reconciliação fraterna em Moçambique e na África inteira, única esperança para uma paz firme e duradoura.
In a few days’ time, my visit to your country will begin and, although I cannot travel beyond the capital, my heart reaches out to and embraces all of you, with a special place for those living in distress. Right away, I would like to leave you with this certainty: you are all in my prayers. I am eager to meet you.
Just as I have received (and I thank you!) the invitation of the president and my bishop brothers to come to you, so I extend the invitation to all of you to join my prayer so that the god and father of all may consolidate reconciliation, fraternal reconciliation in Mozambique and throughout Africa, the only hope for a firm and lasting peace.
After landing at Maputo International Airport on the night of the 4th, the pope drove through the city’s streets in the popemobile, among the crowd who were waving and taking photos and videos.
The temperature that day was of 31 degrees during the day and 27 at night.
We have talked to volunteers who helped organize the audience.
Volunteers | Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, used with permission.
One of them was called Arcénio, 21 years old, a member of one of the churches in Matola, a city near Maputo. He said:
Eu estou aqui para servir ao povo. Fui escolhido na minha paróquia para ajudar a organizar a visita, e espero que seja um momento de paz e mais reconciliação para Moçambique. Estou feliz.
I am here to serve the people. I was chosen in my parish to help organize the visit, and I hope it is a moment of peace and more reconciliation for Mozambique. I’m happy.
Another volunteer was Helton, 19, a member of a Catholic church in central Maputo. When asked about the visit’s impact on the election, he replied:
Essa visita surge para abençoar a paz em Moçambique, e para mim não há relação com a política. Eu estou para servir ao Papa, por isso aceitei estar aqui hoje.
This visit comes to bless the peace in Mozambique, and for me there is no connection with politics. I am [here] to serve the pope, so I agreed to be here today.
Some commentators had warned that the visit, so close to the general election scheduled for 15 October, could interfere with the campaign.
Before the visit, the auxiliary bishop of Maputo Archdiocese, Antonio Juliasse, told the press that it should not be used politically:
Dentro do respeito de uns para outros, não se devem usar estes locais para momentos políticos. Não apenas verbalmente, mas devemos também ter o cuidado em não sermos portadores daquilo que nos pode dividir, em termos de roupa e outros materiais.
In respecting each other, these places should not be used for political purposes. Not only verbally, but we must also be careful not to be bearers of what can divide us, regarding clothing and other materials.
The professor of economics and researcher at the Institute of Social and Economic Studies (IESE), António Francisco, thinks that the pope's visit will be politically beneficial, especially for the party in power, FRELIMO. He wrote on Facebook:
Talvez um dia, quando escrever suas memórias, o meu xará esclareça porque ousou visitar Moçambique no início da campanha eleitoral de 2019. Nessa altura, espero que nos confidencie quem foi o anjo da guarda que lhe garantiu que nesta Paróquia do Índico os resultados eleitorais continuam a depender mais de quem conta do que de quem vota.
Perhaps one day, when he writes his memoirs, my namesake will clarify why he ventured to visit Mozambique at the beginning of the 2019 election campaign. At that time, I hope he will tell us who the guardian angel was who assured him that in this Indic Parish the election results still depend more on those who count than those who vote.
Pope Francis greets the crowd on 4 September 2019. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, used with permission.
The next day, 5 September, we left in the morning to better position ourselves in one of the streets where he was going to be. In the first few hours, we were able to photograph the popemobile, but it was empty.
Popemobile without Pope Francis, 5 September 2019. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, used with permission.
We continued waiting there. The pope came almost two hours later in a standard vehicle.
The streets of Maputo waiting to receive Papa Francisco. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, used with permission
Pope Francis greets the crowd, 5 September 2019. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, used with permission.
We tried to find out the reasons and we were told that the pope would be going to meet the president, and then he would leave in his usual means of transport for an inter-religious meeting with youths at the Maxquene stadium.
Pope Francis in an inter-religious meeting with young Mozambicans. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana, used with permission.
We talked about this meeting with Victor Fazenda, a Catholic and activist, who told us:
Ao longo da entrada do Papa ao pavilhão, logo que foi anunciada a sua entrada ao pódio, os presentes diziam e repetiam, provavelmente mais de quinze vezes, a palavra reconciliação, com as mãos sobrepostas, isto é, uma por cima da outra.
During the pope's entrance to the venue, as soon as his entrance to the podium was announced, those present said and repeated, probably more than fifteen times, the word reconciliation, with their hands superimposed, that is, one on top of the other.
Arlindo António, a Maputo city resident, used Twitter to highlight Pope Francis’ speech to young people:
Uma juventude a reinventar-se. Eis o grande dilema. Queremos uma juventude que seja alternativa e ganhe espaço próprio. Acima de tudo crítica. Impõe – se uma mudança de sistemas. Sem juventude não há presente e muito menos amanhã https://t.co/OwdEl1WRZa
— Arlindo António Chiu (@chiuiane) September 5, 2019
A youth to reinvent itself. This is the great dilemma. We want a youth that is an alternative and that gains its own space. Above all criticism. We need a change of system. Without youth, there is no present, and even less a tomorrow
On 6 September there was a public mass in one of the largest stadiums in the country, which reached its maximum capacity. It was not possible to access the venue to record or capture images. After Mozambique, Pope Francis went to Madagascar, and then to Mauritius.
During the mass in Maputo, he addressed several issues and, without mentioning the elections in particular, said:
Nenhum país tem futuro se o que o une é a vingança e o ódio. (…) Não há melhor maneira de guardar a esperança do que permanecer unidos, para que todos aqueles motivos que a sustentam se consolidem sempre mais num futuro de reconciliação e de paz em Moçambique.
No country has a future if what unites it is revenge and hatred. (…) There is no better way to keep hope than to remain united, so that all those things that sustain it can be increasingly strengthened in a future of reconciliation and peace in Mozambique

author: Dércio Tsandzana


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Caring for Myanmar’s orphaned elephants · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

A camp staff member bottle-feeds Ayeyar Maung. / Aung Kyaw Htet / The Irrawaddy
This article by Aung Kyaw Htet is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
When forestry staff found her deep in the jungle of the Irrawaddy Delta, Ayeyar Sein was three months old. One of her legs was caught in a steel trap laid by poachers. Workers from the government’s timber extraction enterprise saved her and sent her to an elephant camp in Bago Region for treatment. Now she is one of eight calves being sheltered at Wingabaw, Myanmar’s only elephant orphanage.
Another calf, Ayeyar Maung, endured a similar ordeal. Before his arrival at the camp, the six-month-old was snared in a wire trap. As he was stuck among a group of boulders in the same forest where Ayeyar Sein was found, his herd was forced to leave him behind. However, forest workers were able to free him and he arrived at the camp last year.
They are the youngest of the orphans at the camp; the oldest is nearly four years their senior. All have tragic backgrounds. Some were left by their herds, while others were orphaned when their parents were killed by poachers. At Wingabaw Camp, the motherless calves rely on baby formula provided daily by staff. They are allowed to roam in the forest in the morning and wash in a nearby stream before returning to the camp.
Currently, it is believed that Myanmar has nearly 1,500 wild elephants. But they are under serious threat from poaching, with elephants being killed at the alarming rate of one a week.
Bath time / Aung Kyaw Htet / The Irrawaddy
Elephant calves clamber up the bank of a stream near Wingabaw Camp after bathing. / Aung Kyaw Htet / The Irrawaddy
A camp staff member checks Ayeyar Sein’s body temperature on a thermometer. / Aung Kyaw Htet / The Irrawaddy
A staff member at Wingabaw Camp in Bago Region bottle-feeds milk to Ayeyar Sein, an orphaned elephant calf. / Aung Kyaw Htet / The Irrawaddy

author: The Irrawaddy


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Netizen Report: Anti-corruption protests across Egypt trigger internet blockages, arrests · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle, Netizen Report Team

Flock of birds. Photo by Christoffer A Rasmussen, via Wikimedia. Licensed to public domain.
The Advox Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in technology and human rights around the world. This report covers news and events from September 20 – 26, 2019.
A series of public protests in Cairo and other Egyptian cities have been met with restrictions on major social media platforms for mobile internet users throughout the country. Starting on September 21, local sources and technical testers reported that Twitter and Facebook Messenger became intermittently inaccessible on local internet service providers Telecom Egypt, Raya and Vodafone.
News websites including BBC Arabic and Al Hurra News also appear to be blocked altogether. Egyptian Streets reported that the Supreme Council for Media Regulations indicated that BBC was blocked due to the network’s “inaccurate” coverage of the protests.
Secure messaging apps have also taken a hit. On September 26, local activists reported that homepages for both Wickr and Signal were blocked in Egypt.
Although much smaller in scale than what Egyptians have seen in the past, the protests are the first substantial demonstrations to take place under president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has been in power since 2014. Local media report that dozens of protesters have been arrested. Amnesty International has confirmed 59 arrests, while local groups say they have counted hundreds more. Local contacts of Global Voices also report that police in and around protest areas are randomly stopping pedestrians and demanding to search their mobile phones.
Something serious is happening in Egypt. Small, and very brave, anti-Sisi protests broke out in Cairo in the last hour *and were not immediately and brutally crushed*. Meanwhile, Sisi is on his way to #UNGA74 . All this escalated in two weeks. I do not expect it to end tonight. https://t.co/gnjptAzj9J
— Amr Gharbeia (@gharbeia) September 20, 2019
The protests follow a series of videos posted on Facebook by real estate developer and actor Mohamed Ali, who has shown evidence that top-level government officials, including Sisi, have misused public money to build extravagant homes and hotels for themselves and their friends. Ali also says the regime owes his company several million dollars.
The allegations are painful to hear for Egyptians who bear the brunt of the country’s economic struggle — inflation, unemployment and other factors have left 32.5% of the population living in poverty.
The president, who is currently in New York for the convening of the UN General Assembly, has dismissed the allegations as “lies and slander,” and has blamed public displays of discontent on “political Islam.”
For young climate activists, including the now infamous Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, social media is a vital space for promoting the movement and encouraging others to join. But as Buzzfeed's Zahra Hirji reported this week, these voices — particularly those of girls and young women — are facing an ugly backlash online. One popular tactic is to reply to girls’ messages with links to graphic pornography. Other activists have faced sending death threats and doxxing attacks, and have had their accounts hacked.
Since August 2019, multiple sources have reported that on TikTok, a quick video-sharing app based in China, posts showing footage from protests in Hong Kong were being either censored or de-prioritized.
On September 25, The Guardian reported on leaked documents indicating that Tiktok’s parent company, ByteDance, has been instructing content moderators to censor posts that mention independence movements in Tibet, the 1989 massacre at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and other politically “sensitive” topics in China. Among other things, the documents instructed moderators to restrict posts that contain “criticism/attack towards policies, social rules of any country, such as constitutional monarchy, monarchy, parliamentary system, separation of powers, socialism system, etc.”
A spokesperson for ByteDance told The Guardian that these moderator guidelines had been retired in May 2019, and that the company is now recommending a “localized approach” to content moderation, wherein content is restricted in certain regions, based on political and legal circumstance. Launched in 2017, Tiktok launched in 2017 and is hugely popular among teens and younger adults. The service has 1.3 billion users worldwide.
Twitter announced on September 20 that it suspended more than 6000 accounts based in the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Ecuador. In Saudi Arabia, Spain and Ecuador, the company said the accounts had violated platform manipulation policies in their efforts to promote government or political party agendas. In the UAE and Egypt, the company suspended accounts had engaged in what appeared to be a coordinated campaign against Qatar and Iran.
Kenya’s High Court heard testimony from witnesses who criticized the technical infrastructure behind the country’s relatively new digital ID scheme, the National Integrated Identity System. Anand Venkatanatayanan, a cybersecurity expert who is well-acquainted with India’s Aadhaar scheme, told the court that, similar to Aadhaar, Kenya’s system is uniquely vulnerable to abuse because it is hyper-centralized. In India, multiple massive leaks have left tens of millions of residents’ personal data vulnerable to abuse.
As it currently stands, Venkatanatayanan said Kenya’s system “would pose a massive risk to personal security and privacy of Kenyans without demonstrable benefits. Further, it would create national security risks to Kenya which would be impossible to mitigate…”
In a win for online free speech in Pakistan, the Islamabad High Court ruled on September 21 that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) cannot circumvent due process when it seeks to block a website. The ruling resulted from a petition filed by the Awami Workers’ Party, after the party’s website was blocked without warning in July 2018, just weeks before a general election. The court ruling stated that in so doing, the PTA had committed a “flagrant violation of the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution as well as the settled law enunciated by the superior courts.”
MISSING LINK: Tibetan Groups Targeted with Mobile Exploits – Citizen Lab
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Hija Kamran, Oiwan Lam and Elizabeth Rivera contributed to this report.


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The little-known beauty of rice sheaf artistry from India and Nepal · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

A ‘jhutti’ made from rice sheaves. Photo by CK Kalyan Tharu. Used with permission.
Rice has been a diet staple in Asian communities for centuries, so it is no surprise that this important food source has been a feature of artwork in the region. While some artists have sketched and painted this grain, other communities have continued the little-known, age-old practice of weaving rice sheaves into beautiful forms to decorate their homes.
In the southern Indian state of Kerala, kathirkula – rice sheaves woven together into a bunch – is hung in houses and temples. It is believed to bring good health, wealth and prosperity to the home.
ŃĔĹĶÁŤĤĨŔ  is the dried rice seed.  Kathirkula (Bunch of Paddy) an ethnic image used for prosperity in homes.  Kathirkula is a plaited bunch of paddy earheads shaped like a bouquet and is usually hung in the houses of Kerala. #kerala #my #home #traditon #nelkathir #kathirkula #paddy #rice #bunch #hanging #home #decor #gods_own_country #village #nikon #nikond90 #d90 #nikonphotography #insta #just_for_fun
A post shared by  JiThIn JaCoB (@jithinjacob2700) on
Facebook page, R-Aadya also writes about hanging sheaves of rice in Kerala, India:
“Nelkathir” is a bunch of artistically plaited bouquet of rice seeds, usually hung in front of the entrances to old ancestral homes (Tharavadu) in Kerala.
This symbolizes prosperity in homes. It is linked to a traditional custom called “Illam Nira”-(House filling with Paddy). This ritual heralds the farming and harvesting in Kerala. […] This can also be seen in front of all temples in Kerala as a symbol of opulence.
Deepthi Menon (RCP)
A nostalgic symbol of a bygone era #Kathirkula . pic.twitter.com/AMX6Gysqwp
— Dhanya Madhavan Nair (@DhanyaMN) November 14, 2013
In the eastern Indian state of Odisha, jhoti or chita – a traditional Odia art made from rice paste – is drawn on walls and floors during festive occasions. During Deepawali, the festival of lights, motifs of paddy stacks or rice sheaves are drawn. The Odia Language and Culture Department states:
During this auspicious occasion, the mud walls and floors are decorated with murals in white rice paste or pithau. They are called jhoti or chita and are drawn not merely with the intention of decorating the house, but to establish a relationship between the mystical and the material, thus being highly symbolical and meaningful. […] For each occasion a specific motif is drawn on the floor or on the wall. For instance, in Lakshmipuja a stack of paddy or rice sheaves is drawn on the walls structured like a pyramid. […]
While jhoti are drawn on walls in India, a jhutti is made of rice sheaves in southern plains of Nepal just like Kerala’s kathirkula, but shaped into more intricate forms. After harvesting rice, select rice sheaves are woven into jhuttis and hung high on the meh (the bamboo pole to which the oxen are tethered while threshing rice). The Tharu people are especially known for preparing jhuttis for each variety of rice they harvest.
From left to right: kakahi – the comb, maur – the groom’s headdress, kauwa tholi – the crow’s beak and Patiya – the mat. Photo by CK Kalyan Tharu. Used with permission.
Jhuttis are of different shapes and sizes. They are inspired by the nature and the things around like, kauwa tholi – the crow’s beak, patiya – the mat, kakahi – the comb, jhunjhuna – the baby’s toy, bena – the fan, bakhari – the granary, maur – the headdress of a groom, among others.
The belief is that, after the rice is harvested, there remains nothing for the birds to peck at. The Jhutti became a symbol of love for nature among the Tharus as they were originally hung to provide food for the bird and Jhuttis made for each species of rice harvested.
In an interview with Global Voices, former President of the Siraha Chapter of Tharu Kalyankarini Sabha (a Tharu welfare organisation) Chandra Kishore Kalyan Tharu reiterated the importance of nature in the Jhutti making tradition:
Our ancestors loved and worshipped nature. They weaved Jhuttis so that the birds wouldn’t die of hunger after harvest.
A scanned news piece on a Jhutti Competition organized by Barchhawar Community Development Forum to revive the Jhutti making tradition, reported by Nepal’s Kantipur daily. Photo by CK Kalyan Tharu. Used with permission.
However, this beautiful artistry is being forgotten in Nepal and the younger generation has almost forgotten the art of making jhuttis. It’s the need of the moment to preserve this age-old tradition of weaving rice sheaves into beautiful art forms.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


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Cameroon’s amputee football team set to miss first international debut · Global Voices
Ekonde Daniel

The Cameroonian amputee football team hopes to get to Angola for their first international competition. Photo by Giovanni Wanneh, Kick442.com, used with permission.
The National Amputee Football team of Cameroon may miss out on their very first international tournament in Angola over lack of funding.
During the football match, the players who will represent #Cameroon in an amputee football match in Angola come September 2019 launched an appeal for support from people or organizations of good will to enable them to persuade their dreams .@CBMAustralia @lilianefonds#ANCP
— CBC Health Services (@CBCHSORG) August 27, 2019
Footballers with disabilities play on the National Amputee team Football team and the World Amputee Football Federation backs them as a global body for the sport. Seven players compete on each side – a goalkeeper and six outfield players, unlike non-amputee teams of 11 players each.
The fifth Cup of African Nations for Amputee Football, CANAF, will feature hosts Angola, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo and Cameroon, but Cameroonians fear they may not see out the event:
Cup of African Nations Amputee Football (CANAF) begins on September 30 to October 14 in Benguela, Angola. 10 teams participating in the tournament Nigeria, Angola, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Tanzania, Togo, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.@Iam_Jyde @hardz15 @BayoPsalm @HonseyjMr pic.twitter.com/UXSFFOBcu1
— 9aijasport (@9aijasoccer) September 9, 2019
“We have no source to finance our flights and may not go to represent the country,” Fon Dieudonné, a midfielder and an executive of the Cameroonian team told local media on Monday, September 23.
The Cameroon amputee team was only formed in March last year and needs international participation to get recognized by the World Amputee Football Federation. However, their road to the Angola finals has been daunting.
Training session in Bamenda. Next stop, Yaounde. Cameroon amputee football is getting better. Good job guys. Follow us to know more about amputee football in Cameroon/Africa. No one is left out pic.twitter.com/NYzfzt0jhg
— Amputee Football Cameroon (@AmputeeCameroon) May 28, 2019
“The training is going well but in very difficult conditions; we don’t have a stadium. We have no equipment – just three balls,” defender François Dim Baring told public media CRTV on September 13.
Making it to Angola is about more than just a game. It's about expanding the visibility and rights of people with disabilities. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the “leave no one behind” agenda created global momentum to ensure that people with disabilities can participate in all aspects of life without discrimination.
Twitter user Njobati Sylvie celebrates Cameroon's team for this reason:
#leavenoonebehind is coming to a reality as the amputees National football club comes to live in Cameroon. Social inclusion is very important in reducing inequalities #SDG10. #camputeefootballteam #sdgs4all. I am glad to be a part of this positive development. pic.twitter.com/pZZIYgJdK4
— Njobati Sylvie (Sysy) (@njobatisylvie) June 4, 2019
Despite Angola winning the 2018 Amputee World Cup in Mexico, many African countries struggle to make available resources for the disability sport. Nigeria’s amputee team engaged in crowdfunding last year in order to participate in the World Cup, having sat out the event in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
Believe pic.twitter.com/lqFoHB7VxN
— Amputee Football Cameroon (@AmputeeCameroon) June 2, 2019

author: Ekonde Daniel


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Global rally to urge U.S. congress to vote for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Online poster for the 929 global rally against totalitarianism via Twitter user: Hong Konger
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, a bill that was introduced in the United States Congress in June amidst the Hong Kong anti-extradition protests, has been approved by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The bill was approved on September 25, after a round of hearings attended by a number of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.
Having been passed by the two committees, the bill will need to be voted on by the full membership of the Senate and House of Representatives. Hong Kong protesters will stage a Global Anti-Totalitarianism Rally on September 29 to further advocate for the legislation:
#929GlobalAntiTotalitarianism HK is at the frontline of a global battle against an authoritarian China. Fight Against Tyranny, Stand With HK for Autonomy, Justice & Democracy! Join us on our global rallies! https://t.co/qJOIMiXcts???????????????????????????? ???????????? pic.twitter.com/mQW59ldxPw
— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 (@joshuawongcf) September 26, 2019
First proposed by Chris Smith and Marco Rubio, chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the bill was written to support Hong Kong’s freedom and democracy against Beijing’s encroachment. A revised version was reintroduced to the House Committee on June 13, after the anti-extradition protests broke out.
This is not the first time that the United States taken such legislative measures. Back in 1992, the U.S. enacted the Hong Kong Policy Act to ensure bilateral ties with Hong Kong in the areas of trade and economics, finance, aviation, shipping, and technology — unique treatment that is based on the condition that Hong Kong’s autonomy, fortified under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, continues to sustain.
But Hong Kong’s autonomy has eroded rapidly since August 31, 2014, when the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's national legislative body, imposed a pre-election mechanism that set limits for the 2017 Chief Executive election and the 2016 Legislative Council election in Hong Kong's Special Administrative Region. This was soon followed by other incidents: the abduction of Hong Kong booksellers, for instance, and the disqualification of lawmakers over oath taking.
Now, since the proposed introduction of the extradition bill would further undermine Hong Kong’s legal autonomy and affect foreigners who are travelling or residing in Hong Kong, the U.S. government saw the need to re-evaluate its relations with Hong Kong through this new legislation.
Under the drafted act, the U.S. Department of State shall report annually to Congress on Hong Kong’s autonomy and human rights status, and assess whether the U.S. should continue its unique bilateral relations.
The latest revised version further empowers U.S. authorities to sanction individuals who harmed the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, to the point where even their direct family members can have their visas voided.
For Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, international support is an important facet of balancing Beijing’s aggressive intervention of the city’s affairs and governance. After two massive protests on June 9 and 16, protesters used the G20 meeting in Osaka as an opportunity to secure support from the international community with the global #StandwithHK campaign.
Demonstrators staged a protest on June 26, where hundreds of protesters marched to 19 consulates of G20 nations urging their support against the extradition bill. Two days after, a series of crowdfunded  full-page ads calling on readers to “Stand with Hong Kong at G20” was published in at least 10 international newspapers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Japan Times, Sudeutsche Zeitung, and The Chosun Ilbo.
As the U.S. Senate and House Committee started deliberating on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act 2019, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists organized a series of lobby campaigns, including an online petition, a letter campaign, and a joint submission to the Senators and Representatives of the U.S. Congress by 22 Hong Kong professional groups.
On September 8, thousands of protesters rallied peacefully outside the U.S. consulate, urging American politicians to stand with Hong Kong. A number of activists, including student leader Joshua Wong, disqualified lawmaker Nathan Law, human rights activist Sharon Hom and Cantopop star Denise Ho, also traveled to the United States to attend a congressional hearing on September 17.
During the hearing, Sharon Hom presented an overview of Hong Kong’s struggle for a democratic system since handover to China in 1997, stressing that Hong Kong demonstrators are not only fighting for the democratic future of 7.4 million people, but “holding the regional and global frontline on preserving human dignity and rights for all people”:
The past ‘summer of discontent’ is in fact part of years of ongoing resistance by the Hong Kong people against Beijing’s encroachment on Hong Kong’s autonomy, rights, and freedoms. This peaceful resistance has included mass demonstrations against the proposed Article 23 security legislation (2003), brainwashing of the so-called patriotic education (2012), and against the gutting of promises of genuine universal suffrage (2014). […]We need to first address the tensions that were baked into the One Country, Two Systems framework […] the Hong Kong example proves that dictatorship and democracy cannot co-exist.
Denise Ho also pointed out that the current struggle in Hong Kong is not just for the sake of one city:
This is not a plea for so-called ‘foreign interference’, nor for Hong Kong independence; this is a plea for universal human rights. This is a plea for democracy. This is a plea for the freedom to choose […] If Hong Kong falls, it would easily become the springboard for the totalitarian regime of China to push its rules and priorities overseas, utilizing its economic powers to conform others to their communist values.
The rally is due to start at 2:30 p.m. Hong Kong time on Sunday September 29, 2019.

author: Oiwan Lam