text:
Guinean Filmmaker Paul Théa Speaks About His ‘Slave Route’ Project · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

Paul Théa in his studio. Image published with permission.
Through his films featuring victims and their families, Paul Théa has long been involved in telling the stories of the horrors of Guinea's Camp Boiro. He has recently started a project documenting the slave route from where slaves were captured in the coastal regions of Guinea to their final destination in North America.
Global Voices (GV): Recently we've seen you post very enthusiastic messages on Facebook about reclaiming an old building. What is that all about?
As I was saying earlier, the slaves transported to South Carolina and all along the East Coast came from many different origins. They created the Creole language to understand one another and kept their African cultures, which they defend jealously to this day. Gullah is a corruption of Gola, a cultural group from Sierra Leone, and Geechee is a corruption of Kissi, another group from Sierra Leone and Guinea. They call themselves the Gullah/Geechee Nation and have a chief who goes all over the world to promote their culture, their language which is dying out, and to defend their rights, because they are also losing their ancestral lands.
PT: The Ministry of Tourism understands the importance of the slave route as a product that can attract tourists to Guinea. The way that leaders of the department acted to help me obtain the site proves that. I will present the project in Guinea in October after my trip to South Carolina, and at that moment I will talk about the level of collaboration with the insitutions.
Paul Théa is a filmmaker, radio and TV presenter, and communications specialist. He studied Economic and Social Administration at the University of Montpelier, France; IT Administration at Toulouse's Institut de Promotion Commerciale; and TV and Radio in the US. Théa's films can also be found on his YouTube channel.

author: Abdoulaye Bah


text:
How an Indian Village in West Bengal Successfully Campaigned to Get Its Own Ambulance Service · Global Voices
VideoVolunteers

The ambulance availability in India is inadequate. Image from Flickr via user Jenny Mackness. CC BY-NC 2.0
This post was written by Alankrita Anand and originally appeared on Video Volunteers, an award-winning international community media organization based in India. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.
In India, there is tremendous shortfall in emergency medical services (EMS) in urban and rural areas. In rural and remote areas critical patients risk their lives due to the lack of affordable ambulance services. This article tells the story of how a video report by VideoVolunteers community correspondent Bikash Barman depicting the problem made it possible to produce an ambulance at a nearby health facility.
The delay in arrival at a public health facility, in seeking care and the delay in provision of adequate care has been identified as central causes of maternal mortality and need to be addressed to ensure that India meets Goal Three, Target 3.1 of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals which seeks to “reduce the global maternal mortality rate to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030.” While the World Health Organisation stipulates one ambulance for every 100,000 people in the plains and one ambulance per 70,000 people for more sparsely populated areas, a study conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) revealed that in New Delhi itself, there is one ambulance for every 144,736 people. Far from the national capital, the condition worsens in India’s rural areas.
In West Bengal, there are 788 ambulances against the ideal number of 913. A study in the Purulia district of West Bengal found that over 60% of pregnant women in the district died in healthcare facilities while 12% were declared dead on arrival, attributing this to the lack and inefficiency of government ambulance services. The lack of ambulance services in Kalpani village of Coochbehar district led to a high rate of home deliveries, which can pose a threat to the life of the mother and child in case of high-risk pregnancies. The village is surrounded by the Torsa river on three sides and boats do not ply in the monsoon. The village does not have a Primary Health Centre either and in the monsoon months, it becomes difficult to get to the nearest hospital, making it particularly difficult for women to access maternal health care.
On December 11, 2016, Minoti Karji, a resident of Kalpani went into labour. Repeated calls to 108, the ambulance helpline went unanswered and eventually, a private vehicle was hired for 700 rupees, a hefty sum for most residents of the village. According to a UNICEF study on maternal and perinatal death, the high cost of transportation often deters poorer families from accessing healthcare. In cases of emergency, precious time is wasted over deciding whether to spend on a private vehicle or not and the loss of time leads to deaths.
In Karji’s case, the family did manage to take her to the hospital in time but she was told that she still had over a month for her delivery and was discharged the next morning despite being in pain. Karji delivered her baby later that evening. Karji was furious that she still had to give birth at home, which is often risky, despite having spent out of her pocket to get to the hospital in the first place. She didn’t have the money to hire another private vehicle to go the hospital and so, gave birth at home.
After the incident, Bikash Barman took up the issue of maternal health care in the village and decided to first take up the issue of unavailability of ambulances through a video in December 2016.
For the next six months, the community with support from Bikash and White Ribbon Alliance (WRA), a non-profit that is working on addressing the issue of high rate of home births in Kalpani, pursued the case. The video became an important tool for reaching out to stakeholders across the board: it was first screened at a meeting of the gram panchayat (village governance) in the presence of the village headman. Soon, the village headman along with ASHA workers (community health workers) from Kalpani and WRA decided to take up the issue with local member of parliament (MP) Partha Pratim Roy, who asked the gram panchayat to file an application. The panchayat submitted the application in February itself. By March, the village got its own 24/7 ambulance and the service was finally inaugurated on June 2, 2017. Bikash says that buying and registering the vehicle took some time. Nonetheless, the availability of the service is a huge relief for the residents of Kalpani. Minoti Karji is visibly happy that maternal and child care is now within reach.
The story of Kalpani is an example of how a community with support from civil society and a willing state can ensure delivery of maternal health care services even to the most remote areas. While in the case of Kalpani, the state authorities did act; examples from other parts of the country show how communities and organizations have come up with alternatives in the absence of support from the state. In Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS) runs buses connecting villages to health centres at 40 paise (1 US Cent) per kilometre. A public-private partnership model is also being followed in some states; Deepak Foundation is in partnership with the government of Gujarat and provides ambulance services for pregnant women in Baroda. Alternative models range from practical to shocking. In Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, residents have put together the most rudimentary means of transport for those in need of healthcare: a bamboolance or a bamboo stretcher. While innovations of this kind are a boon in remote areas, they cannot replace essential public services.
Minoti is relieved that Kalpani now has a dedicated ambulance service. Screenshot from YouTube Video
Moreover, the availability of ambulances is only one part of the problem. In the above video, Bikash reports that the village does not have a private health clinic and the river has no bridge to take the residents to the town either. Even when Karji did make it to the hospital in a private care, hers was a case of medical negligence. Despite the community health workers insisting that she was in labor, the doctor sent her away and asked: “Am I the doctor or you?” A clear breach of medical ethics is evident here, Bikash says that nothing can be done about the way doctors treat patients from poor and marginalized backgrounds.
According to the WHO, five women die every hour in India from childbirth complications and the majority of these deaths are preventable. The example of Kalpani is a success story at the outset but multiple aspects of maternal health care need to be taken care of. Under the government’s MMR reduction programme, the Janani Suraksha Yojna, ambulance services are to be made available to women in need within 30 minutes of their call. This is but the first step and a futile one if the hospital does not have the required facilities or is negligent of the patient’s needs.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: VideoVolunteers


text:
Jailed for Journalism: A Profile of Detained Reporters in Myanmar · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

(Left to right) The Voice Daily chief editor Kyaw Min Swe, Myanmar Now chief editor Ko Swe Win, The Irrawaddy senior reporter Lawi Weng, DVB senior reporter Ko Aye Nai, and DVB reporter Pyae Phone Aung. / The Irrawaddy
This edited article is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, and is republished by Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
The arrest of esteemed investigative reporter Ko Swe Win at Yangon International Airport on the evening of Sunday July 30, 2017, temporarily raised the total number of journalists detained in Myanmar for doing their job since June to five.
Out of the five, Ko Swe Win, the chief editor of news agency Myanmar Now, is the only one who is not being sued by the military—instead, a follower of the banned nationalist group Ma Ba Tha is prosecuting him for posting on Facebook an article which criticized ultranationalist monk U Wirathu.
Ko Swe Win has since been granted bail from Maha Aung Myay Township Court in Mandalay, but his four colleagues are still imprisoned.
All of the arrests are directly linked to the work of the reporters, exacerbating fears of a clampdown on independent media and casting serious doubts over whether the country is opening a new chapter on press freedom.
Former political prisoner Ko Swe Win, 39, was a senior reporter for The Irrawaddy from 2010-2012. Last year, he was honored by the government for his reporting on the abuse suffered by two child maids in a Yangon tailor shop. He was charged under Article 66(d) after Mandalay resident U Kyaw Myo Shwe, a follower of ultranationalist monk U Wirathu, claimed the chief correspondent insulted the monk in a Facebook post. Later in March 2017, Ko Swe Win faced a second lawsuit for comments made at a press conference concerning the Article 66(d) charge. That same month, the journalist was threatened by three unidentified men.
U Kyaw Min Swe, 47, has worked for The Voice Daily for 18 years and is currently chief editor. He was arrested, along with satire columnist Ko Kyaw Zwa Naing, after the Myanmar language publication printed an article which questioned the country’s military policies and the peace process. The pair were charged under both Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Act and Article 25(b) of the Media Law, after Lieutenant Colonel Lin Tun of the Myanmar Army filed a suit against them at the Bahan Township police station on May 17, 2017. Ko Kyaw Zwa Naing was later released. [UPDATE: Kyaw Min Swe was released on bail on August 4.]
Since joining The Irrawaddy a decade ago, Lawi Weng, 39, has been at the forefront—and often the frontline—of reporting on ethnic conflicts in Myanmar. In the past year, he has reported on the Northern Alliance offensive in northern Shan State and clashes between the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army and the Myanmar Army-aligned Border Guard Force in Kachin State. On July 28, 2017, the judge presiding over the case accepted the bail request and said he would rule at the next court date on Aug. 4. [UPDATE: The court denied the petition to release the accused.]
Veteran reporter Ko Aye Nai, 52, has been working for DVB for 11 years, some of them spent in Chiang Mai, Thailand, while the news outlet was in exile. He, along with Lawi Weng and Ko Pyae Phone Aung, were charged under Article 17(1) of the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act for contacting an ethnic armed group, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and were placed in detention in Hsipaw prison. They face sentences of up to three years. “We don’t even have a pen sharp enough to be a weapon,” he said at the first court hearing. “We can die any time by stepping on landmines or being shot. We take risks for our work.”
24-year-old reporter Ko Pyae Phone Aung joined DVB one year ago. The journalist's first appearance as a video broadcaster was initially scheduled for July 11, 2017, but he was arrested on June 26, along with Ko Aye Nai and Lawi Weng in Namhsan, on the way back from covering a drug-burning ceremony held by the TNLA to mark the United Nations’ International Day Against Drug Abuse.

author: The Irrawaddy


text:
Japanese Politician Pressures School Principal About the Use of History Textbook that Explains the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

”Let's make sure our children have a textbook that tells them the truth about history.” (Stock photo). Image from Wikimedia user Japanexperterna.
On Friday, August 4, 2017, the topic of history textbooks took over Japanese Twitter. The phrase “why was this textbook selected” (教科書なぜ採択) briefly trended on Twitter after a local newspaper in Kobe in western Japan reported that a local politician and member of the government questioned how and why a prestigious middle school chose a new history textbook, prompting fears of political pressure over the education system. A subsequent hashtag also briefly trended, “they included descriptions of the ‘comfort women'” (#慰安婦の記述を残した).
In World War II, up to 200,000 women from more than ten countries across Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. These women were euphemistically called ianfu (‘comfort women’) in Japanese, and have long been a source of political controversy.
According to a story published on August 4 by the Kobe Shimbun, Moriyama Masahito, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who serves as a deputy justice minister and represents the affluent city of Nishinomiya to the east of Kobe, asked why Nada Middle School had chosen a textbook called “Studying Human History Together” (ともに学ぶ人間の歴史).
灘中に「教科書なぜ採択」盛山衆院議員ら問い合わせ（神戸新聞NEXT） – https://t.co/6V0bZ2mCCr 唯一、#慰安婦の記述を残した 中学歴史教科書『ともに学ぶ人間の歴史』（「学び舎」出版） pic.twitter.com/wH8FDqga1v
— 由比 周也 (@syuya_yui) August 4, 2017
Moriyama Masahito asked Nada Middle School “Why was this textbook selected?” (Reported by Kobe Shimbun NEXT)
“#they included descriptions of the ‘comfort women‘” Middle school history textbook “Studying Human History Together”, Manabisha (Schoolhouse) edition.
Nada Middle School is affiliated and co-located with a prestigious high school in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, that routinely sends its graduates to top-ranking universities in Japan and abroad. In fact, Moriyama is a graduate of the school, and, as an “old boy” and member of the government, can be expected to wield considerable influence at the school.
As Kobe Shimbun observed:
インターネット上でも「政治圧力ではないか」と問題視する声が上がっている
On the Internet, worried voices wondered:  “Isn't this political pressure?”
According to Kobe Shimbun, Moriyama had a problem with the fact the history textbook selected for Nada Middle School described the ‘comfort women’ issue. During World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army had forced women in several Asian countries, known as ‘comfort women’, to work in military-run brothels.
However, the problem Moriyama and others have with the textbook is not that it mentions the ‘comfort women’ issue. Instead, according to the Kobe Shimbun article, the problem is that the textbook includes a short description of the Japanese government's 1993 “Kono Statement.” In the Kono Statement, the Japanese government acknowledged that the Japanese army coerced women into working in brothels, but some conservative politicians and commentators in Japan such as Moriyama still dispute the Japanese government's role.
According to Kobe Shimbun:
同校が採択したのは、「学び舎（しゃ）」の歴史教科書「ともに学ぶ人間の歴史」。教科書は現役教員やＯＢらが執筆し、他社で記述がない慰安婦問題に言及。１９９３年に河野洋平官房長官（当時）が元慰安婦へのおわびと反省を表明した「河野談話」を載せ、併せて「軍や官憲によるいわゆる強制連行を直接示すような資料は発見されていない」と現在の政府見解も取り上げている。
Nada Middle selected Gakubisha's history textbook “Studying Human History Together” (ともに学ぶ人間の歴史). The textbook was written by current faculty and alumni of Nada High School, and includes details of the ‘comfort women’ issue that are not included in other (middle school) history textbooks. Then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei published regrets to former ‘comfort women’ in a document known as the Kono Statement.
At the same time, the current Japanese government's position is that “there is no evidence of Japanese military or government coercion.”
Kobe Shimbun noted that Nada Middle School's new textbook had been approved by Hyogo Prefectural Board of Education for use in schools, although Nada Middle School was the only school to use the textbook. Other observers have noted that, despite perceptions from outside of Japan and pressure from right-leaning politicians, Japanese history textbooks offer a rather dry chronology of events without much interpretive narrative.
Moriyama was not the only Japanese politician or alumnus of the school to complain about the textbook. Kobe Shimbun noted that a year ago, Wada Yuichiro, a member of the Hyogo Prefectural (state) Assembly representing a ward in Kobe, had also complained to the school principal, Wada Magohiro about the selection of the textbook. In a letter published onto the Internet (the full letter can be read here), the principal said he felt “unfairly pressured” (謂れのない圧力) from both politicians, as well as a letter-writing campaign protesting the textbooks that saw at least 200 postcards sent to the school.
According to Kobe Shimbun, both Moriyama and Wada have denied any connection to the letter-writing campaign, while Moriyama has stated he was simply making his feelings known as an “old boy,” rather than as a member of the government.
While criticisms over the selection of the textbook at Nada Middle School have been ongoing for about a year, Kobe Shimbun first reported on the controversy on August 4, shortly after Wada Magohiro published his letter. The Kobe Shimbun story quickly became a national story, getting picked up by Yahoo! News and other outlets, as well as on blogs and by Japanese Twitter users.
One Twitter user observed that the feud over textbooks at Nada Middle School comes at a time when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government is being hammered in opinion polls in part because of a shady land deal that benefited ultra-conservative and ultra-nationalist organization Moritomo Gakuen that teaches emperor worship.
灘中に「教科書なぜ採択」盛山衆院議員ら問い合わせ（神戸新聞NEXT） – Yahoo!ニュース https://t.co/d5agT416R8
森友案件以降、政治的に好ましくない教育内容には介入して良いというコンセンサスが得られていたのではなかったか？？？
— しわすみ (@s_w_s_m) August 4, 2017
Moriyama Masahito asked Nada Middle School “Why was this textbook selected?” (Reported by Kobe Shimbun NEXT)
I thought that ever since the Moritomo Gakuen issue the consensus has been that political intervention in education is undesirable???

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Maitree Express: The Friendship Train Between India and Bangladesh · Global Voices
Rezwan

Grand Opening of Maitree Express II – traveling from Khulna to Kolkata. Screenshot from YouTube Video by user BDRailFan. April 8, 2017
By reinstating two railway routes from the British colonial era, India and Bangladesh are hoping for increased friendship and peace between its citizens. The Maitree Express, which started operations nine years ago, is slowly winning the hearts and minds of travelers by providing affordable and regular transport between the two countries.
Bengal is a large geopolitical area in the Indian sub-continent; with more than 250 million Bengalis, it is one of the densely populated regions of the world, united by language and culture, but divided by religion. The first blow was the partition of Bengal in 1905, announced by the British colonial rulers, which separated the largely Muslim eastern areas from the largely Hindu western areas. Bengal was reunited in 1911, but Hindus and Muslims soon began to demand the creation of two independent states inside Bengal.
Map showing the location of East Bengal and West Bengal. Image by Goran via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0
In 1947, Bengal received its fatal blow: it was divided in two countries, India and Pakistan, solely on religious grounds, as part of the Partition of India. West Bengal remained under India and East Bengal became East Pakistan, which was liberated from Pakistan in 1971 and became Bangladesh.
The Eastern Bengal Railway (EBR) was one of the pioneering railway, operated fr 1857-1942, in Bengal and Assam provinces of British India. pic.twitter.com/8elXWA2jjD
— drm rangiya (@DRM_RNY) October 4, 2016
Before the partition of India in 1947, regular passenger services used to connect Kolkata (Calcutta) to cities like Khulna and Jessore in East Bengal, as part of the Eastern Bengal Railway. After the partition, the railway suffered greatly — visa restrictions were introduced, and the lack of border stations with proper customs and immigration facilities led to the shutdown of services. The remaining train services between India and Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) were suspended during the 1965 India-Pakistan War. Expensive air travel and limited bus services were the only means of transport between the two Bengals ever since.
After four decades, the Maitree Express I was launched on April 14, 2008, following years of negotiation between India and Bangladesh. Maitree means Friendship, denoting the significance of this train service to the foreign relations between both countries:
Two nations + one Train…… Maitree express 13109_13110 pic.twitter.com/IxbNhJBiwF
— Aishik Bhattacharjee (@AishikBhattach4) July 21, 2017
Maitri-Express-Train -Bangladesh https://t.co/EYvz3MVl68 pic.twitter.com/Ipc46l3uLk
— Badar Shakeeb (@badarshakeeb) November 3, 2016
The service started running twice a week, with a travel time of 13 hours, including two stops at the Gede and Darshana border stations for immigration and customs formalities. Now, the train operates with air conditioned coaches six times a week from both sides, with a travel time of 11-12 hours for about 450 kms of tracks. (This Facebook page gives updates of the train service.)
The price of the AC First Class ticket from Dhaka-Kolkata (or Kolkata-Dhaka) is about US $27 and the AC Chair Coach is approximately US $17 (inclusive of Value Added Tax and other taxes). This is much cheaper than a typical economy class airfare between these two cities, which costs around US $100 for a one-hour flight.
To meet the growing demand, a second train (the Maitree Express II) was inaugurated in April 2017, connecting Kolkata with the Bangladeshi city of Khulna, thereby reinstating the historical Barisal Express route. The 176 km-long train journey includes 96 km on the Bangladesh side.
The Kolkata-Khulna ( Maitree Express) train has been relaunched 52 years after the Indo Pakistan War 1965.Cheers! pic.twitter.com/Whvg0pJMkj
— Brainware (@BrainwareTweet) April 10, 2017
Because the Maitree Express unites people from the two Bengals, a lot of emotions are involved. Affordable transportation has proven it has the power to unite people from both countries, and give them the opportunity to visit their ancestral lands and meet friends and family on the other side of the border. On Facebook, Bangladeshi journalist Fazlul Bari shared one such experience in a train station in West Bengal, describing a woman who migrated from Bangladesh when she was in her teens:
স্টেশনে বসে যখন লোকাল ট্রেনের জন্য অপেক্ষা করছিল তখন একটা ঘোষনা এলো ‘’দুই নম্বর প্লাটফর্ম থেকে একটা ট্রেন সোজা চলে যাবে দয়া করে নিরাপদ দূরত্বে সোরে দাঁড়ান ‘’। তখন দেখে ট্রেনটা ‘ মৈত্রী এক্সপ্রেস ‘ কলকাতা টু ঢাকা বাংলাদেশ লেখা আর ট্রেনের গায়ে লাল সবুজ বর্ডার টানা। ট্রেনটা ২-৩ মিনিট মত দাড়িয়ে ছিল। [..]
সঞ্চিতা বলল এটা দেখে মুহূর্তের মধ্যে যেন তার ভেতরটায় এক অজানা, স্নিগ্ধ, মনোরম, অনাবিল, আনন্দের ঢেউ খেলে গেল! দিশা তাকে কিছু একটা জিজ্ঞেস করতে চেয়েছিল। ও তখন দিশা কে থামিয়ে দিয়ে ওর কানের কাছে মুখ নিয়ে বলতে লাগলো ‘’দিশা, দেখ! এটা আমার দেশের ট্রেন। এই ট্রেনে আমার দেশের লোক রয়েছে। সেই দেশ যেখানে আমি জন্মেছি , বড় হয়েছি। যে দেশ নিজেকে চিনতে শিখিয়েছে। নিজেকে , নিজের দেশকে, দেশের মানুষকে , ভালবাসতে শিখিয়েছে। আমাকে অনুভূতি দিয়েছে , অনুভব করার শক্তি যুগিয়েছে । এই ট্রেনে যারা আছে তাদের হয়তো আমি চিনিনা কিন্তু এরা তো আমার সেই চেনা দেশের লোক। সেই চেনা দেশেই থাকে । তাই এরা ও আমার আপনজন। এদের একটু প্রাণ ভরে দেখতে দে’’।
She was waiting in the station for a local train and there was an announcement on the loudspeaker: ‘Maitree Express will travel through Platform 2, please keep a safe distance.’ She looks at the train marked ‘Kolkata to Dhaka, Bangladesh’ and there are red and green borders on the coaches. The train stopped only for 2-3 minutes. […]
Sanchita said she felt an unknown, smooth, pretty, peaceful and pleasing chill of joy inside her body watching the train. Her daughter Disha was going to ask something. Sanchita stopped her and said: ‘Disha, look, this is a train from my country. Inside it are people from my country, where I was born and raised. The country which enabled me to discover myself and express love for my country and people. It enabled me to feel and gave me the power to feel for it. I may not know the passengers of this train but they are from the country I know. So they are close to me. Please let me watch them for a bit.’
MD Arif Hossain lamented on Facebook about his hobby of keeping the train window open to watch outside:
পহেলা বৈশাখ থেকে শুরু হয়েছে মৈত্রী এক্সপ্রেস এর ফুল এসি ট্রেন। আমার মতো ভ্রমণ পাগল মানুষের জন্য মনে হয় একটু সমস্যাই হয়ে গেল।
এসি বগির জানালার কাঁচের ভেতর থেকে প্রকৃতি দেখা আর টেলিভিশনের সামনে বসে প্রকৃতি দেখা একই ব্যাপার, দুটোই খুব দূরের মনে হয়
The Maitree Express trains are now fully air conditioned since this Bengali new year (April 14). I think this will be a problem for travel enthusiasts like me.
To watch the scenarios of nature through the glass window of an air conditioned coach is like watching a television screen. Both seem unnatural.
On various social media channels, some people have been sharing their experience of taking the Maitree Express or trainspotting. A Rahman Atik shared a vlog on YouTube about his experience of traveling from Dhaka to Kolkata on the Maitree Express:
The Maitree Express will soon be inaugurating a non-stop service — passengers will be allowed to complete immigration and customs services at their point of departure, allowing for a comfortable and hassle-free journey, and reducing travel time from 12 hours to six or seven.

author: Rezwan


text:
Pesesín and His Neighbours: A Tale of Community Spirit in Spain · Global Voices
Lourdes Sada

Pesesín, the goldfish who united a community of neighbours through their collective efforts to look after him. Photograph taken from ‘La Crónica del Pajarito’ and published under the Creative Commons license.
One of the most talked about stories on Spanish social networks demonstrated what it takes to bring neighbours together. The story's thread has made Pesesín the most famous goldfish in Spain.
On July 2, 2017, the residents of a block of flats in Gijón (Asturias, Spain) stumbled upon a goldfish bowl, a tin of fish food and a note in the hallway of their building. The note said:
Me voy unos días de vacaciones y no me dejan llevar a PESESÍN. Necesito vuestra ayuda para que le deis de comer, solo se le debe echar una vez al día. Dejo la comida y un cuadro para saber cuándo comió.
MUCHAS GRACIAS
I'm going on holiday for a few days and I can't take PESESÍN with me. I need you to help feed him, he only needs to be fed once a day. Here's the food and a chart to keep track of when he was fed.
THANKS A LOT
On the note, there was a chart that the neighbours could use in order to record when he was fed, which started on Sunday July 2 and ended on Thursday July 13. Without any hesitation, the neighbours adopted the goldfish, feeding him and noting each feed time diligently. They even left notes and instructions for their fellow neighbours:
The note that was left with Pesesín that outlined the instructions for taking care of him. Image shared by Nuria on Twitter.
‘¡No echar tanta comida!’
‘Agua cambiada el viernes 07/07′
‘Se le cambió el agua a Pesesín el lunes 3 y mientras tanto estuvo nadando un poco en el lavabo (1°D), pasolo estupendo!’
‘Don't give him so much food!’
‘Water changed on Friday 07/07′
‘We changed Pesesín's water on Monday 3 and whilst doing so he was swimming for a while in the sink (apartment 1°D) He had a great time!’
It also seems that on Sunday there was a mini-crisis when Pesesín's food ran out. But this was quickly resolved by the neighbours in apartment 4°, who bought another tin.
One of the neighbours, Nuria, found the story amusing and decided to share it on Twitter:
Alguien de mi edificio se ha ido de vacaciones y ha dejado en el portal a su PEZ para que el resto de vecinxs lo cuiden mientras tanto pic.twitter.com/WE70D1TXjo
— Nuria (@Nuria_GMz) 11 de julio de 2017
Someone in my building has gone on holiday and left their FISH in the hallway so that the rest of the neighbours can look after him
Y nada es muy guapo y está ahí a lo suyo nadando tranquilo etc y todo el bloque está intrigadísimo con quién lo ha dejado ahí.
— Nuria (@Nuria_GMz) 11 de julio de 2017
He's a very attractive fish and is there swimming peacefully whilst the whole block is extremely curious as to who left him there.
What Nuria didn't expect was the response that her tweet received. It quickly went viral, with more than 60,000 retweets and 100,000 likes. Soon, Pesesín became a trending topic on the social network — and not only in Spain. The tweet also grabbed the attention of users from Argentina, Mexico and Colombia.
Many Twitter users reacted to the news by praising the community that looked after the fish:
Me encanta que vecindario más majo donde vivir que me mudo jajaja me encanta pesesin
— Estefania (@fanny15715) 12 de julio de 2017
Love this, what a nice community to live in, I'm moving there! I love Pesesín!
Quédate con la persona que te cuide y se preocupe por ti tanto como los vecinos de @Nuria_GMz cuidan y se preocupan por pesesín.
— guido (@GFioravantti) 12 de julio de 2017
Stay with the person that looks after you and worries as much about you as the neighbours of @Nuria_GMz care for and worry about Pesesín.
Me muero con la historia de pesesin! Todos los vecinos cuidando del pez de la vecina. Aún hay esperanza en el mundo.
— Carol (@srta_estivbi) 12 de julio de 2017
I'm cracking up listening to the story of Pesesín! The whole community looking after their neighbour's fish. There's still hope in the world.
Quando vuelva el vecino #pesesín tendrá un acuario pro con chorros, plantas y un Bob Esponja de plástico.
— Puropoliester (@Puropoliester) 12 de julio de 2017
When the neighbour gets back, Pesesín will have a new fish tank with jets, plants and a plastic Spongebob Squarepants.
Other users rightly criticised the recklessness of the fish's anonymous owner, highlighting — in some cases — the double standards we apply to animals:
Muy gracioso lo de Pesesín pero dejar el pez en el portal para que te lo cuiden los vecinos es tener un morro impresionante.
— Un muchacho (@AlexSegurola) 12 de julio de 2017
Very funny story about Pesesín, but you must have real nerve to leave a fish in the hallway for your neighbours to look after.
Muy bonita la solidaridad vecinal, pero la dueña una gilipollas irresponsable que no merece tener a su cargo ni a Pesesin ni a nadie. #Jeta!
— Rut Carrillo M (@Rilwenrut) 13 de julio de 2017
What wonderful solidarity among neighbours, but the owner is an irresponsible idiot and doesn't deserve to look after her fish or anything else for that matter.
Viva la hipocresía! Si #Pesesin hubiese sido un perro o gato alabaríais que lo hubiesen dejado en la escalera con comida???
— PeeWee (@PeeWeeTuit) 13 de julio de 2017
The hypocrisy! If #Pesesin were a dog or a cat, would you condone leaving them alone in the stairwell with food???
Esto es la versión beta. El año q viene os deja al abuelo para q lo cuideis entre todos.
— Soy un bot (ijo) (@CaosAzucarado) 11 de julio de 2017
This is just the beginning. Next year, you'll be left with the grandfather to look after together.
The national police also weighed in on the debate.
¡Siempre hay una alternativa al abandono animal! Un vecino caritativo… o toda la comunidad?.
Besines para #PESESIN ?
? #animals https://t.co/xLrwq6b80d
— Policía Nacional (@policia) 11 de julio de 2017
There's always an alternative to abandoning an animal! A caring neighbour… or the whole community?. Neighbours for #PESESIN ?
Pesesín himself, who has a Twitter account, gave his opinion on his unexpected rise to fame:
Splash.
— Pesesín (@SoyPesesin) July 12 2017
At the end of the week, we met Yurena, Pesesín's owner. Stunned by the fame that her pet had garnered, she explained her side of the story during an interview with the Spanish TV channel Cuatro TV, in which she said that a trip came up with her parents, but she couldn't take the fish with her. After asking friends and acquaintances [to take care of him] without any success, she decided to leave him in the hands of fate…and the solidarity of her neighbours.
After seeing Pesesín looking well, Yurena felt immense gratitude towards her neighbours and wanted to express her thanks by leaving another note in the same spot that goldfish bowl had been during her trip:
A thank you note from Pesesín to the neighbours that had looked after him so well. Image shared by Yurena Sabio on Twitter.
MANY THANKS TO ALL THE NEIGHBOURS!
On behalf of Pesesín and with special mention to those who changed the water and bought food. Although the food that was left was meant to last a few months and now I need to put him on a diet for a few days, he has loved getting to know you.
On Pesesín's story's thread, a Twitter user took advantage of the good nature that the police usually show on the microblogging site, making this suggestion:
¡Hola,@policia!
Me gustaría que la próxima trama policial que tengáis la llamaseis «Pesesín».#elcasoPesesín
Hello, @police! I would like you to call the next police investigation you have, “Pesesín”.#Pesesíncase
To which the popular account replied:
???… ¡¡Trato hecho!! Prometemos la operación “Pesesín” cuando pesquemos? un pez gordo!! https://t.co/hsuI9rvib2
— Policía Nacional (@policia) July 13 2017
???…Done deal! We promise to call the operation ‘Pesesín’ when we catch a big fish [a big criminal]!

author: Lourdes Sada


text:
Sexual Harassment and Abuse of Power Threaten the Careers of Many Medical Students in Paraguay · Global Voices
Kurtural

Photo: Protest taking place at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción. Published with Kurtural's permission.
The following is a re-edited version of María Dominguez‘s piece, published originally by Kurtural in their series “El país de las mujeres” (A women's country). In the original version, there are more details about the legal issues that make it diffcult to bring sexual harassment perpetrators to justice.
“It’s just a kiss. No one will know.”
Carolina Wolf is a medical student and delegate of her class at the Asuncion National University School of Medicine (UNA) at its extension campus in Santa Rosa del Aguaray, 250 kilometers north of Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital. She was sitting in the car with Gustavo Rodriguez Andersen, a faculty member of her university, on a rainy night.
Andersen had invited her to attend a conference with him at Asuncion, so she could train her classmates later. At the end of the event he offered her a ride, but before that, he drove around campus for a while, and finally stopped next to a sugar cane plantation, a “dark place”, as Wolf remembered.
“My neck is hurting me,” said professor Andersen.
Wolf looked at him and saw that he was touching himself. “The only thing on my mind at the time was my family. I took my cell phone and started showing him pictures of my mom, dad and siblings to try to distract him,” said the student later. Then she asked him to take her to a nearby food store where someone else would pick her up. When they arrived, Andersen insisted again. He approached Wolf, grabbed her neck, tried to kiss her. There was a struggle.
Wolf broke away from him, got out of the car and walked to the store. She was scared. She called her boyfriend and asked him to come and pick her up. “I told him to never let me come by myself to the university again,” she said.
After that incident Andersen did not try to kiss Wolf again, but he was abusive to her in a different way. “He used to yell at me in front of the entire class, I was speechless when he talked to me. He used to tell me that I was dumb, an idiot and stupid, and all just because I am a woman,” said Wolf.
Wolf did not know how to explain what was going on to her family. She did not say a word about it to anyone. “No one would stop him from being abusive to me; if another student ever tried to say anything their career would be over,” she said.
In September of 2015, UNA’s students finally spoke up about the irregularities at the university. Allegations and charges against dean-level positions and others holding high academic roles at the university became public. The hashtag #UNANoTeCalles (#UNA Don’t Keep Quiet) became a trend on social media during that time. In the middle of that broken silence, Wolf learned that one of her classmates had also been sexually harassed by Andersen.
For me, that was a slap in the face. I still blame myself for not going to the authorities when he attacked me. I knew that he was a powerful man within the university, but I could not stop thinking of what happened to my classmate, so I decided to act and I reported my incident to the authorities,” she explained.
The school of medicine at UNA receives a large amount of state funding through its link with the public hospital network in Paraguay. In the specific case of the extension campus at Santa Rosa, the students’ legal advisor, attorney Guillermo Ferreiro, thinks that this campus was created with the intention of having a place to appoint favorite faculty and administrative members to high-paid positions. “The School of Medicine has become a tool for political domination,” said Ferreiro.
Meanwhile, Minami Akita, a surgery tech student, says that teachers at the school of medicine “owe favors to one another”. Their biggest focus is to get promoted and earn contract positions at the university and/or the hospital. “There is express faculty,” says Akita, referring to staff who are given positions without meeting all the necessary criteria, with the intention that “The Claque” — the power control group at the university — secures a certain number of voters to maintain its authority within the organization.
During the student strike and #UNANoTeCalles campaign, it was said that certain positions at the university were for sale. “Men were asked for cash in exchange for appointing them to certain positions; women, on the other hand, were asked for sexual favors,” says Akita. Because of this, and the fact most of the university's leadership positions are occupied by men, Akita believes that the School of Medicine exercises dual oppression against women.
During their promotion of #UNANoTeCalles social media campaign, Akita and her group received several complaints about the university’s wrongdoings; at least five or six out of every ten complaints were due to sexual harassment. One of the most remarkable stories was about a surgical tech student who acted in some way as an agent, behaving as a pimp would. In the operating room, she negotiated with students about attending private parties with certain teachers. At these events, students would exchange sexual favors for jobs at the hospital. Sometimes, it was the surgeons themselves who would make the offers directly to the students, while working with them during medical procedures.
During the #UNANoTeCalles movement, students’ family members came to the university to protest against the abuse, harassment and aggression that the students were victims of, and that — for the first time — were becoming public knowledge. One of them was Dr. Graciela Escobar, an anesthesiologist who also graduated from UNA, and mother to one of the leaders of this student movement at the school of medicine.
In recent months, students’ families have embarked on a “crusade against harassment”, as Escobar calls it, by hearing the severity of the witness testimonies.
Using Wolf’s case as a starting point, they have been asking senators and representatives to act as intermediaries in a debate to establish new protocols against harassment and gender-based discrimination at institutions of higher education. “We’re asking for a new protocol to deal specifically with harassment cases across all campuses of UNA, and that includes a system that keeps victims from being re-victimized by having to tell their story over and over again. We want student affairs offices to have psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, and that these offices can receive these types of complaints and handle them properly with the corresponding authorities”, says Escobar.
In the midst of all these efforts against impunity, there is the possibility of reopening Carolina Wolf’s case. On May 30, 2016, the Court of Appeals overturned the dismissal of Andersen’s charges made earlier in February. This change may lead to a new hearing of the case with a different judge and district attorney.

author: Kurtural


text:
Thai Journalist and Two Other Critics of Military-Led Government Face Sedition Charges Over Facebook Posts · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

From left to right: Pravit Rojanaphruk, Watana Muangsook, and Pichai Naripthaphan.
In the past week, three Facebook users in Thailand were charged with sedition over posts criticizing the military-led government.
Veteran journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk, Watana Muangsook of the Pheu Thai political party, and former energy minister Pichai Naripthaphan were informed by the police about the sedition charges.
The military grabbed power in 2014 and continues to rule the country through a Constitution it passed in 2016. Aside from strictly regulating the media, it has been aggressively prosecuting individuals accused of either insulting the monarchy or criticizing the junta. Thailand implements a Lese Majeste (anti-Royal Insult) law, which critics believe is being abused by the army to silence dissident voices.
Pravit, a senior reporter for the news website Khaosod English, wrote on August 1, 2017 about how he learned of his sedition case:
I received a call from the Deputy Superintendent of the Technology Crime Suppression Division informing me at about 6.40pm that a police of the rank of Police Lieutenant Colonel is charging me of violating sedition law through an estimate 5 Facebook postings. I insist that I criticize the military regime in good faith […] I will continue to criticize the illegitimate military regime until they take away my smartphone.
The police didn’t inform him which of the Facebook posts he wrote have been deemed seditious by the government.
Pravit was previously ‘invited’ by the army to undergo an ‘attitude-adjustment’ session. This unusual detention is the army’s way of dealing with perceived critics in the media and academe.
If found guilty, Pravit can be detained for up to 20 years.
Correction: Aft consulting @TLHR2014 again, possible maximum imprisonment term is 20 not 60 yrs. Should I celebrate? #Thailand #sedition pic.twitter.com/pi49iH5OLn
— Pravit Rojanaphruk (@PravitR) August 4, 2017
Pichai, meanwhile, served under the former prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, who is currently facing a corruption case. According to Khaosod English, Pichai posted the following status update on Facebook, which he claimed he wrote with ‘sincere intentions’:
If the government does not solve it in time, the economic situation will keep deteriorating, like a frog in a pot that gradually boils. I hope the Thai government and Thai people will realize this in time, and be the frog that leaps out before the water boils.
Watana is another member of the Yingluck admnistration who is accused by the police of misleading the public about the justice system and the military-led government through a post he uploaded on Facebook.
Both Pichai and Watana were members of the ruling party before the military staged a coup in 2014.
The two politicians were charged in the same week that Yingluck faced the court on corruption charges related to a rice subsidy scheme, prompting some to wonder whether the charges are meant to silence Yingluck's supporters.
News about the filing of sedition cases against junta critics prompted some Twitter users to comment about the restriction of free speech in the country:
How can anyone be accused of sedition 4 opposing an illegal govt that came to power unconstitutionally by overthrowing a democ elected govt?
— JQ Public (@JQP6) August 5, 2017
One tweet mentioned Prayut, the former army chief who led the 2014 coup and is now the country's prime minister:
cartoon of the day – Pravit vs Prayut  @PravitR @suranand @Reaproy @SZarifi @G_Garachon pic.twitter.com/SQYOdfLXZa
— stephff cartoonist (@stephffart) August 3, 2017
The filing of these three separate charges — in the past week alone — against prominent critics of the junta, adds to the growing uncertainty as to whether the military-led government is ready to restore civilian rule and democracy in the country.

author: Mong Palatino


text:
‘They Can’t Stop Us’ — World Mourns Execution of Palestinian-Syrian Activist Bassel Khartabil Safadi by the Assad Regime · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

Photo of Bassel used on social media in his honor, based on a Tweet he sent on December 17, 2011. Used with permission.
On August 1, 2017, Noura Ghazi Safadi revealed that her husband, the famous Palestinian-Syrian open web activist Bassel Khartabil (aka Bassel Safadi), was executed by the Assad regime days after being taken from Syria's notorious Adra prison, where he was held, in October of 2015.
Bassel was a close friend of many in the Global Voices community and participated in our 2009 Arab Bloggers Meeting. We had been calling for his release since his disappearance in 2015.
Bassel could trace his origins to Safed, a Palestinian town in the Galilee region of historic Palestine, and one of the many areas from which Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias in the context of the creation of the State of Israel, an event Palestinians call the ‘Nakba’, or ‘Catastrophe’ in English.
He was well-known for his advocacy of online access and open knowledge to the Syrian public, as well as bringing open-source software to Syria.
In two separate statuses, one in Arabic and one in English, Noura wrote:
Words are difficult to come by while I am about to announce, on behalf of Bassel's family and mine, the confirmation of the death sentence and execution of my husband Bassel Khartabil Safadi. He was executed just days after he was taken from Adra prison in October 2015.
This is the end that suits a hero like him.
Thank you for killing my lover.
I was the bride of the revolution because of you.
And because of you I became a widow.
This is a loss for Syria.
This is loss for Palestine.
This is my loss…
The news of Bassel's execution mobilized many from the Syrian and/or open source and free Internet advocacy movements.
Palestinian blogger and Global Voices contributor Budour Hassan said:
مافينا نشيعك يا حبيبي
مافينا نزغردلك يا شهيد
مافينا نحط ورد على قبرك يا باسلنا
— Budour Hassan (@Budour48) August 1, 2017
We can't walk in your procession our dear. We can't celebrate your martyrdom. O Martyr, we can't put roses on your grave, O Bassel.
آااااااااااااااخ يا باسل ونورا كسرتو ظهرنا
يا عجزنا وقهرنا
— Budour Hassan (@Budour48) August 1, 2017
O Bassel and Noura, you broke us. We are so helpless and defeated.
Hassan had written an article in late 2016 entitled ‘Syria's Desaparecidos‘, in which she speaks of Bassel as a symbol of Syria's “third alternative”:
Much has been said about the lack of a ‘third alternative’ in Syria, which has been cast by western media as a binary conflict between a military dictatorship and Islamists.
Bassel and Noura opposed both while also rejecting foreign intervention, as do thousands of Syrians who are still languishing in the Syrian regime’s jails. Surrounded by some terrorists in suits and others with long beards, and betrayed by a fragmented opposition handcuffed by donor states and driven by foreign agendas, there are Syrians who want to reclaim a country they could call home; a country where they wouldn’t have to choose between assorted evils; where they don’t have to choose between death by beheading or shelling or starvation.
The New Palmyra online community platform, which Bassel founded, released this statement:
#NEWPALMYRA Statement on the Death of our Founder Bassel Khartabil #FREEBASSEL https://t.co/PYrECfZJcB pic.twitter.com/uetx24Mb6S
— #NEWPALMYRA (@NewPalmyraOrg) August 3, 2017
Murhaf Fares, from the Oslo-based Syrian Peace Action Centre, who is in exile, reflected on Bassel's death by mentioning two schoolmates from Damascus University that are still missing to this day:
Waseem Abu Zenah a unique person in every sense of the word. He died under torture in April 2014; here's his story: https://t.co/WXYK87uy2U
— Murhaf Fares (@Murhaf) August 2, 2017
Humam was arrested by Assad's security forces in September 2012. Almost five years now and no word of Humam. pic.twitter.com/GtZ5sa6xfW
— Murhaf Fares (@Murhaf) August 2, 2017
Over 60 Syrian organizations honored Bassel and demanded that all prisoners of conscience be released in Syria. Their demands were translated by Global Voices contributor and co-founder of Social Media Exchange, Mohammad Najem, who was a good friend of Bassel's:
60 Syrian organizations support Bassel in a press release and request 7 demands https://t.co/uAUdmeiDFD pic.twitter.com/drlRjLdTqh
— Mohamad محمد (@monajem) August 4, 2017
Najem would send Bassel books to read and Bassel was particularly happy to receive a book by the Persian poet Rumi. Najem shared the letter on social media:
Today, we officially lost a brilliant man, and a friend. RIP @basselsafadi pic.twitter.com/yrTWJFo1nj
— Mohamad محمد (@monajem) August 1, 2017
Najem also revealed that he was running the @MeInSyrianJail Twitter account on behalf of Bassel:
A project I did with Bassel, from jail he shared tweets, and I posted it. We agreed on the username, hashtags.. He also wrote blogposts. <\3 https://t.co/k2xy2yqUO1
— Mohamad محمد (@monajem) August 3, 2017
Washington Post's Liz Sly revealed that Bassel was one of her unnamed sources in the early months of the revolution, reflecting that she can now reveal that information:
Bassel Safadi was quoted unnamed in many of my early stories about the Syrian protests. It's tragic to be naming him because he is executed
— Liz Sly (@LizSly) August 3, 2017
Amnesty International's Senior Director of Research, Anna Neistat, said that “Bassel Khartabil will always be remembered as a symbol of courage, who peacefully fought for freedom to the very end”, adding that his death is “a grim reminder of the horrors that take place in Syrian prisons every day”:
The tens of thousands of people currently locked away inside Syrian government detention facilities face torture, ill-treatment and extra-judicial executions. These cruel acts undoubtedly amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Bassel Khartabil will always be remembered as a symbol of courage, who peacefully fought for freedom to the very end https://t.co/xmHrRIy2mh pic.twitter.com/XbxTcA2HuZ
— kristyan benedict (@KreaseChan) August 2, 2017
Palestinian activist Mariam Barghouti described Bassel's death as “a terrible loss”:
A terrible loss. Hundreds others were also executed at the hands of this terrible regime. #Syria https://t.co/TGmttCuk4I
— مريم البرغوثي (@MariamBarghouti) August 2, 2017
Salim Salamah, a Palestinian-Syrian activist and refugee now living in Sweden, reminded us that an estimated 3,000 Palestinian-Syrians have been killed by the Assad regime:
3: At least 3000 Palestinian Syrians were murdered at the hands of the Syrian regime
— Salim Salamah سليم (@Salim_SYR) August 1, 2017
The Free Internet community also mourned Bassel with several statements. The Jimmy Wales Foundation announced:
Jimmy Wales and The Jimmy Wales Foundation are strongly condemning the criminal execution of Bassel, an innocent activist, and sending our deep condolences to Bassel’s wife and family.
Ryan Merkley, CEO of Creative Commons, reacted with shock:
With sadness and outrage we learned today that our colleague Bassel Khartabil was murdered by the Syrian regime. https://t.co/091RlgmuAo
— Ryan Merkley (@ryanmerkley) August 1, 2017
Access Now used the #WhereIsBassel hashtag, which was the one used when Bassel first went missing:
We extend our deepest sympathies to family and friends of technologist & activist Bassel Khartabil #WhereIsBassel https://t.co/6GtemoDDZO pic.twitter.com/isRxEfiXHy
— Access Now (@accessnow) August 1, 2017
The MIT Media Lab, which had offered Bassel a research scientist position in the Media Lab’s Center for Civic Media, also acknowledged the great loss. It turned out that they had made the offer around the same time of Bassel's reported execution:
MIT Media Lab mourns after reported execution of Syrian activist https://t.co/K16dZIQpvp via @BostonGlobe
— Joi Ito (@Joi) August 4, 2017
As Bassel was a Wikimedian, the Wikimedia Foundation also mourned him:
“We can’t fight jail without memory and imagination.” @Wikimedia mourns the loss of Bassel Khartabil https://t.co/pcNO3MhQxH
— Katherine Maher ? (@krmaher) August 4, 2017
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a number of letters that Bassel had sent to them. In one of them, dated March 15, 2015, from Damascus Central Jail, he wrote:
As long as you people out doing what you are doing, my soul is free. Jail is only a temporary physical limitation.
EFF is honored to share the letters we received in 2015 from activist Bassel Khartabil, whose death in Syria was confirmed this week. pic.twitter.com/kaeY7Fj4YF
— EFF (@EFF) August 3, 2017
In the subsequent Twitter thread, the EFF explained Bassel's role in promoting the open internet in Syria:
Bassel created Aiki Lab, Syria's first hackerspace, in Damascus in 2010, and helped open the internet to the Syrian people. He worked with global contacts, including EFF activists, to advance freedom of speech and access. He received a number of awards including the 2013 Index on Censorship Digital Freedom Award for using technology to promote an open Internet. Among many, many accomplishments, he was a contributor to Mozilla and Wikipedia, and he was the Syrian lead for Creative Commons.
Bassel's commitment to free expression, an open internet, and open source software is an example for all of us. https://t.co/e2CorleEcz
— EFF (@EFF) August 3, 2017

author: Elia J. Ayoub


text:
A Team of Women Is Unearthing the Forgotten Legacy of Harvard’s Women ‘Computers’ · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Curator Lindsay Smith Zrull places a glass plate photograph of a section of the sky onto a lightbox. Smith Zrull recently discovered boxes of notebooks belonging to early women astronomers who studied the glass plates as early as 1885. Credit: Alex Newman/PRI
This story by Alex Newman originally appeared on PRI.org on July 27, 2017. It is republished here as part of a partnership between PRI and Global Voices.
In a cramped Harvard University sub-basement, a team of women is working to document the rich history of their predecessors.
More than 40 years before women in the US gained the right to vote, women labored in the Harvard College Observatory as “computers” — astronomy’s version of NASA’s “Hidden Figures” mathematicians.
Between 1885 and 1927, the observatory employed about 80 women who studied glass plate photographs of the stars, many of whom made major discoveries. They found galaxies and nebulas and created methods to measure distance in space. In the late 1800s, they were famous: newspapers wrote about them and they published scientific papers under their own names, only to be virtually forgotten during the next century. But a recent discovery of thousands of pages of their calculations by a modern group of women working in the very same space has spurred new interest in their legacy.
Surrounded by steel cabinets stuffed with hundreds of thousands of plate glass photographs of the sky, curator Lindsay Smith Zrull shows off the best of the collection.
“I have initials but I have not yet identified whose initials these are,” Smith Zrull says, pointing at a paper-sized glass plate crowded with notes taken in four different colors. “One of these days, I’m going to figure out who M.E.M. is.”
A dozen women computers hold hands in this 1918 photograph, which Smith Zrull calls the “paper doll” photo. To the far right is Edward Pickering, who hired the women computers. Credit: Courtesy Harvard College Observatory, Plate Stacks
Each glass plate is stored in a paper jacket and initialed to show who worked on it, but for decades no one kept track of the women’s full names. So Smith Zrull started a spreadsheet about 18 months ago and adds initials when she discovers new ones and then tries to locate the full names in Harvard’s historical records.
“I’m slowly starting to piece together who was who, who was here when, what they were studying,” she says. Smith Zrull has about 130 female names and about 40 are still unidentified.
Not all are computers. Her list has grown to include assistants and, in some cases, astronomers’ wives who helped with their husbands’ work.
Curatorial assistant Anne Callahan inspects a plate before it is cleaned for scanning. She makes sure the metadata from the paper jacket is properly entered into the computer before the plate goes to be wiped down and then scanned. Credit: Alex Newman/PRI
“We know there were at least 80 women who worked in this space on these glass plate photographs, which is a pretty amazing number considering women were still trying to get social approval to go to college, let alone work in the sciences,” Smith Zrull said.
In the Plate Stacks at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics — the modern version of what was once called the Harvard College Observatory — Smith Zrull oversees a digitization project to make the glass plates available to the world. Since 2005, a custom-built scanner has been making its way through the collection of more than half a million plates from 1885 to 1993. The team scans 400 plates per day — they’re at about the halfway point now — and Smith Zrull estimates about three years of scanning remains.
Last fall Smith Zrull turned her attention to about 30 notebooks in the plate stacks belonging to the women computers.
“I started to realize a lot of these books were missing,” she says. “I started doing a little bit of digging and eventually came across some proof that we might have boxes in storage off-site, which is very common for libraries around Harvard.”
Smith Zrull found 118 boxes, each containing between 20 and 30 books. Inside were more notebooks from the women computers and notebooks from astronomers who predated photography and made hand-drawn sketches of planets and the moon.
“People didn’t know they existed when they were in storage,” Smith Zrull says. “As different curators came and went here, I suppose people forgot they were there. Now that we know they exist, we can make them accessible to the public, they can be cataloged in a library so people can come across them.”
The books had moved from one library to the plate stacks to another library to a book depository, essentially lost to history until Smith Zrull began looking for more information on the women computers.
To resurrect their legacy, she enlisted the help of librarians from the Wolbach Library in the Center for Astrophysics. The librarians prepared to manually go through the boxes and begin the labor-intensive process of cataloging them. Project PHAEDRA (an acronym for Preserving Harvard’s Early Data and Research in Astronomy).
Then Smith Zrull made another discovery in the plate stacks: a handwritten catalog of the books from 1973.
“At some point in 1973, someone who we assume is named ‘Joe Timko’ went through all of these boxes at an item level and recorded as much information as he could find,” says head librarian Daina Bouquin. “We have no sense of why this was done or what became of the person who did this, but we thought, ‘OK, we’ve hit pay dirt.’”
This is the envelope Smith Zrull found in the plate stacks that included a handwritten catalog of all of the women computer's notebooks. A person named Joe Timko painstakingly went through the collection in 1973. Credit: Alex Newman/PRI
Then someone found a typewritten version of the 1973 catalog, adorned with a Post-it saying “Finally done! Rachel.” On the very last page was a handwritten path to a computer file, a spreadsheet on a Harvard server that hadn’t been accessed since 2001.
The discovery sped up the digitization project by months, if not years.
“We went from having absolutely no metadata, like 30 characters on each box, to having item-level, machine-readable, type-written metadata that we could then edit and clean up and turn into real records,” explains Bouquin. “Thank you Joe Timko and possibly Rachel, wherever they may be.”
The library has completed transcription of about 200 volumes. Right now, notebooks from two women are listed on the Smithsonian Transcription Center website. There are many more to come — nearly 2,300 out of a total 2,500 books — but the work has begun. Bouquin hopes the public will help transcribe the books, but anticipates it will still be years before everything is readable.
“You’ll be able to do a full-text search of this research,” Bouquin says. “If you search for Williamina Fleming, you’re not going to just find a mention of her in a publication where she wasn’t the author of her work. You’re going to find her work.”
Bouquin, left, and Smith Zrull, right, hold up an original image of Williamina Fleming posing in the plate stacks in a 1891 photo that was the first photo used in bestselling author Dava Sobell's 2016 book, “The Glass Universe.” Smith Zrull says they know the 1891 image is posed because a window is closed and the tool Fleming is using to study a plate only works with window light. Credit: Alex Newman/PRI
Fleming is the first famous woman computer. Fleming emigrated to the United States from Scotland in the late 1870s. While pregnant, she was abandoned by her husband and found work as a maid in the home of Edward Pickering, the observatory director. In 1881, Pickering hired Fleming to work in the observatory. She would go on to discover the Horsehead Nebula, develop a system for classifying stars based on hydrogen observed in their spectra and lead more female computers.
Wolbach Library unveiled a new display case in early July showcasing Fleming’s work. The case includes pages from her diary as well as her work on the plates showing the nebula and the log book containing that discovery.
The display case in Wolbach Library includes pages from a journal kept by Fleming; a portrait of her that librarians chose because she describes buying a hat (but not necessarily the one pictured) in the diary; and one of the recently-discovered logbooks, opened to the page where she noted the Horsehead Nebula for the first time. Credit: Courtesy Daina Boquin, Wolbach Library
“When the [Horsehead Nebula] was discovered, it was just a little ‘area of nebulosity in a semi-circular indentation,’” says librarian Maria McEachern, who has helped the team sort through the notebooks to find the more interesting pieces. “That’s how it was described at the time. It wasn’t until years later that it became known as the Horsehead Nebula and one of the male scientists at another institution who named it was the one who got credit for it. It wasn’t even until recently that people have been doing more scholarship and finding out that, yes, she’s the one who really found it.”
But Fleming was just the first of many to become famous.
Pickering hired Henrietta Swan Leavitt in 1895. She was tasked with measuring and cataloguing the brightness of the stars. Her major discovery: a way to allow astronomers to measure distance in space, now known as “Leavitt’s Law,” an attempt to give her credit for her work.
Annie Jump Cannon joined the observatory in 1896 and worked there until 1940. Cannon created the Harvard Classification System for classifying stars, which is the basis of the system still in use today.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin came to the Observatory in 1923 and earned a doctorate from Radcliffe in 1925, but she struggled to get recognition from Harvard. For years she had no official position, serving as a technical assistant to then-director Harlow Shapley from 1927 to 1938. It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that she became a full professor and later, the first woman to head a department at Harvard.
Payne-Gaposchkin’s notebooks will be the next set scanned and submitted for transcription. (Leavitt and Cannon’s notebooks are in the process of being transcribed.)
“I like to think resilience goes a long way, but I think some of these women go a little above and beyond what we think of when we think of overcoming things,” Bouquin says.
Both Bouquin and Smith Zrull said they want to give young girls more role models like the Harvard computers — role models who weren’t well-known when they were young.
“Yes, look at Sally Ride, look at modern women who people associate with the space-based sciences, but go back further,” Bouquin says. “They’ve always been there. As long as they could be, they were there.”
Smith Zrull — who hated history as a teen — said she struggled to find women who encouraged her.
“It really took me a long time to start to find women who I felt were like me, who did important things,” Smith Zrull said. “I think more women need to know, you’re not alone, you can do it.”

author: PRI/PRX's The World


text:
Despite Pressure From China, Taiwan Finds Ways to Participate on the World Stage · Global Voices
I-fan Lin

“Light Chang is visiting the US from Taiwan, proudly displaying the flag of Taiwan as he rides his loaded touring bike from coast to coast.” Photo and description credit: Mark Stosberg. Cropped. Originally shared under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Taiwanese who wish to take part in international organizations face an enormous hurdle called the One-China Policy, which China uses to prevent their participation.
So what is it exactly? In short, the One-China Policy means there is only one state called “China”. But there are two countries in the world bearing that name, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC), so the international community must choose one over the other.
The government of the ROC, which is the official name for Taiwan, ruled the territories of mainland China from 1912 until 1949, when it lost the country's civil war to the communist PRC forces. Subsequently, the ROC relocated their capital to Taipei. They continued, however, to represent China in the United Nations until 1971, when the body forced them to give up their seat to the PRC (Resolution 2758).
Since then, the PRC has regularly leveraged its influence in the world to isolate Taiwanese based on the “One China Policy”.
Over the years, more and more Taiwanese prefer to have one China and one Taiwan instead of two Chinas or one united China. Nevertheless, the PRC is determined to have Taiwan in the near future, so they oppose any moves to formalize Taiwan's self-rule. Beijing even prefers that Taiwan use the name Republic of China as they can then accuse any country who supports Taiwan's independence of interfering with the internal affairs of China.
The PRC has become a non-negligible superpower through its economic and military growth in the last decades, and the country has used its international influence to further put the squeeze on Taiwan. For example, Chinese physician Margaret Chan served as the director-general of the World Health Organization from 2006 to 2017. In 2010, she reaffirmed the Memorandum of Understanding between the WHO and the PRC, a document signed in 2005, which stated that the approval of Beijing is required for any involvement by Taiwan in the organization’s activities. Furthermore, she specifically requested their members to call Taiwan a province of China.
In addition, Fang Liu, who became the secretary-general of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 2015, and Meng Hongwei, who was elected as the president of the Agency Executives of the International Police Organization (INTERPOL) in 2017, are two other Chinese in high-ranking jobs in international organizations.
Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that the ROC's application to join the World Health Assembly, the ICAO, and INTERPOL in 2016/2017 were all rejected despite the support from the US and the EU. Moreover, Taiwanese journalists were expelled from the ICAO, and Taiwanese NGO representatives were told that Taiwanese are not allowed to join the World Health Assembly even with a valid observer pass.
Despite the tremendous pressure from China, Taiwanese keep finding ways to be involved in the international arena. Taiwan has participated in the Olympic Games since 1984, in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation since 1991, and in the World Trade Organization since 2002. And in 2016, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations held its first official dialogue with Taiwan on trade.
In the events listed above, Taiwan participates as a sport entity and an economic entity, since it isn't recognized as a state. Taiwanese hope that in the future they can also participate in other arenas as a health entity (in the WHO) and a cultural entity (in UNESCO).
In 2003, for example, because of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, several countries supported Taiwan’s application to participate in the World Health Assembly. In response, China’s diplomat Sha Zukang said during the debate there was no need, since China was taking care of the health issues in Taiwan.
The reality, however, was that during the outbreak, it was the United States’ Centers for Disease Control, not China, that dispatched its experts to Taiwan to connect WHO and Taiwanese officials. Yu-Chen Tsai attended the World Health Assembly in 2003 when he was the vice president for internal affairs in the International Federation of Medical Students. He wrote on his blog:
幾年來，看著台灣政府跟非政府組織對加入世衛組織的努力，我也衷心的希望，不管世衛組織的未來將面臨多大的挑戰，台灣的兩千三百萬人，都不應該缺席。
I have seen the efforts that the Taiwanese government and NGOs make to participate in the WHO. I sincerely hope that no matter what challenges WHO will face in the future, the 23 million people in Taiwan should not be absent.
After Margaret Chan was succeeded by Tedros Adhanom in 2017 as WHO director-general, there is hope among Taiwanese that the Memorandum of Understanding between WHO and the PRC can be reviewed.
Taiwan is home to an impressive amount of cultural heritage. For example, in contrast to its size, Taiwan hosts one of the most important museums in the world: the National Palace Museum, which is sometimes referred to as “The Louvre of Chinese Art”. Taiwan’s indigenous culture also plays an important role in Polynesians’ history. And its written language preserves the traditional Chinese characters that the PRC has moved away from.
But Taiwan is not a member of UNESCO, and therefore cannot apply for its World Heritage or Intangible Cultural Heritage designations.
Taiwanese artists and researchers still find ways to work with the world. OISTAT, the International Organization of Scenographers, Theater Architects and Technicians, is an NGO sponsored by UNESCO, and it is one of the rare international organizations that has Taiwan as a full member. Moreover, OISTAT moved its headquarters to Taiwan from Netherlands in 2006.
And the international non-profit World Monuments Fund listed the Rukai tribe’s old settlement, Kucapungane, in Taiwan in their World Monument Watch in 2016.
In a forum reported by Taiwan indigenous TV, Hui-Chen Lin, a professor in the Department of Architecture and Cultural Heritage at Taipei National University of the Arts, said that no matter if Taiwan is a member of UNESCO, Taiwanese should preserve their culture heritage, and maybe someday it can be introduced to the world in a formal way:
因為我們現在不是(聯合國)會員，所以我們在國內，先把台灣很有價值的東西，先把它安排好，準備有一天，可以把它指定世界遺產。
Because we are not a member of the [UN], we should preserve this valuable heritage in Taiwan and prepare to make them world heritage someday.
Wan-Jung Wei, the general manager at OISTAT, shared on Facebook her views about Taiwan operating in the international space:
是的，大部分的時候，我們需要努力「走出去」。
是的，大部分的時候，我們常常被擋在門外。
慢慢地，我們忘記，我們也是「國際」的一份子，沒有我們，「國際」終將缺一角。[…]
「國際」不是窗戶外面的世界，
「國際」是魚缸裡的水，我們都是水裡的魚。
Yes. Most of the time we need to make our way out.
Yes. Most of the time we are blocked by the door.
Slowly, we forget that we are also part of the world, and there will be a missing piece in the world without us. […]
‘The world’ is not the world outside the window.
‘The world’ is the water in a fish tank, and we are all fish in this tank.

author: I-fan Lin


text:
Secular Voices in the Balkan States Oppose Religious Education in Public Schools · Global Voices
Marko Angelov

Collage made from school textbook cover pages. From left to right: ‘With Christ through Life’ (Croatia), ‘Orthodox Catechism’ (Serbia), Ethics of Religions in Macedonian and Albanian (Macedonia), Getting to Know Religions (Macedonia).
Humanists and activists from former Yugoslav republics warn that the expansion of religious education in public schools threatens to undermine the secular character of their countries.
During the period of socialism (1945-1990) Yugoslavia enforced some limitations to the work of religious institutions, including the nationalization of lands owned by churches. However, since for the most part the officials of these churches and Islamic communities cooperated with communist authorities, the state tolerated and sometimes even supported the work of the religious sector. But religious education was confined to religious institutions, similar to the concept of Sunday School in the U.S.A.
During the period of transition towards democracy after 1990, the political influence of religious institutions became stronger. Most Balkan nationalist ideologies considered having a particular religious identity as an essential element of cultivating a more solid kind of patriotism. This partly explains why surveys in post-communist states showed high levels of religious sentiment among the people.
Except for Slovenia, Albania and Montenegro, Balkan countries have introduced some sort of religious education in their school curriculum. This remains a subject of controversy and sometimes heated debates on social media in Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For starters, the term for religious education in Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian (“vjeronauk”, “veronauka” and “веронаука” respectively) is derived from combining the word “faith” (vjera or vera) with the word “nauk” or “nauka”, which in the past was applied to “learning”, but in contemporary language chiefly means “science”. Thus it can be translated literally as “religious science.” Critics claim this creates confusion in understanding the differences between religious teachings and the actual scientific disciplines such as physics or biology.
Zašto se zove veronauka kad to nije nauka nego verovanje znaci treba veroverovanje da se zove
— yankee (@_therealshady_) April 21, 2017
Why do they call it ‘religious science’ when it's not a science, but a subject about beliefs. So it needs to be called ‘religious beliefs.’
Croatia was the first former Yugoslav republic to introduce religious education in public schools during the 1990s. The classes promote the teachings of Roman Catholic Church, the majority religion in the country.
The subject is an elective, but without an alternative – the children whose parents decide to opt out of it usually have to wait out in the empty hallways or school library for the duration of the class. In some cases, due to peer pressure, children of atheists, Orthodox Christians or Muslims attend this class and various related religious activities like Christmas plays.
The Croatian NGO Center for Civil Courage had been publicly demanding educational reforms related to this subject. The group explained why it thinks some aspects of religious education in public schools are not helpful to children. Below is the group's statement sent to Global Voices through email:
The biggest problem of such teachings is reflected in the expansion of hatred and intolerance toward others and toward those who are different – from the attitude toward homosexuals (they are likened to pedophiles), people of other nationalities, other religions, to the attitude towards unbelievers.
For example, in the textbook “With Christ through Life” for the 8th grade, young believers (about 86% of all primary school children) are taught that atheists are people brought up without God and therefore are willing to create something (horrific) like the Auschwitz (despite the fact that Auschwitz was conceptualized by those brought up with the idea that God exists), that atheists are absolutely unacceptable, that they are egoistic fools whose number should be gradually reduced through the imposition of Christian belief, the so-called “civilization of love”.
Auschwitz was part of the network of concentration camps used by the Nazis and Fascists during World War II for the extermination of ‘undesired’ populations in Europe, such as Jews, Roma, Slavs, as well as political opponents, LGBT people and people with disabilities. Historical records show that most members of these regimes publicly claimed they belong to some religious communities, and at times even received open support from some priests.
The Center for Civil Courage has published segments of the textbook on their Facebook page, including English translations of the controversial claims.
Lesson on atheism from Croatian textbook on religious education, illustrated with the painting “The Scream” by Edvard Munch, with annotations by Center for Civil Courage. Click to enlarge.
Second page of the lesson on atheism from Croatian Religious Education textbook, illustrated with the painting “Anxiety” by Edvard Munch, with annotations by Center for Civil Courage. Click to enlarge.
The NGO has lodged an anti-discrimination complaint with the competent authorities, but only the Ombudsman for Children recognized the problem and reported it to the Ministry of Education and the Croatian Conference of Bishops three years ago. This didn't result in any reform of the textbook or the curriculum.
The new Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Croatia, Blaženka Divjak, who assumed office in June 2017, stated in her latest interview published August 2, 2017, the the issue of religious education is not part of the reforms that the ministry will be implementing. She said it's up to the schools to review the teaching of this elective in a manner that won't negatively affect the students, as well as to “nurture an atmosphere of tolerance within the schools.”
The right-wing government that ruled Macedonia from 2006 till the spring of 2017 introduced the subject of religious education as an elective in public schools in 2008. It has two versions reflecting the teachings of the two biggest religious organizations in the country: Macedonian Orthodox Church and the Islamic Community. A subject named “Getting To Know Religions” was presented as a secular alternative.
Parents criticized the religious education class because it required the children to declare their religious identity, leading to traumatic experience for kids who found themselves in the minority among their peers.
In 2009, the Constitutional Court struck down the article enabling religious education from the Law on Primary Education for violating the secular character of the state. Authorities replaced it with a subject named “Ethics of Religions” supposedly as an objective introduction to the topic.
However, parents who read the textbook of “Ethics of Religions” discovered that it's the same textbook from the repudiated religious education class, promoting Orthodox Christianity and additional lessons on Islam and Judaism. Jovan Petrov noted that instead of providing a comprehensive historical overview of religions, it promotes indoctrination ‘in a sheep's clothing.’
Using a PDF version of the textbook available online, Mr. Petrov identified segments of the text where even the name of the old subject has not been replaced.
Само еден доказ – запазете го скринов… Дали е ова тешка религиозна индоктринација на 6одделенци? Го заборавиле „веронаука“ патем :) pic.twitter.com/kcTWyhhIJZ
— Jovan Petrov (@jp_euro) June 8, 2017
Tweet: Just one piece of evidence – consider this screenshot… Is this hardline religious indoctrination of sixth graders or what? They even forgot to replace the word “religious education” with the name of the subject, BTW :)
Textbook text: “With the help of your religious education teacher select and read some segments from the book of Luke the Apostle: Works of the Holy Apostles. Find out how joyful and responsible the apostles were while spreading the evangelical truth about Christ. May such feelings wash over you every time you speak about God.
Image: Map of geographical region of Macedonia with a cross connecting some cities of historical and religious significance.
A word search of the PDF reveals that the textbook “Ethics of Religions” does not mention the existence of atheism at all, nor does it mention other religions with hundreds of millions of followers such as Hinduism or Buddhism, or any other religious practice or belief.
Meanwhile, the textbook for the ‘alternative’ subject “Getting To Know Religions” is written with a more objective language, but has a similar focus on the three monotheistic faiths that have followers in Macedonia. It mentions the term “atheists” once, in the “Glossary of Less Known Terms” at the end of the book. It also has a section about magic as a precursor to religions, illustrated with a photo from a movie about Harry Potter.

author: Marko Angelov


text:
Syrian Town of Arbin Picks Up the Pieces After Deadly Airstrike During Truce · Global Voices
Mona Bibi

Two of the injured being treated at a hospital in Arbin. Photo taken by Qusay Noor. Used with permission.
Warning: This post contains graphic photos.
Despite a truce, warplanes hit the Syrian town of Arbin, in the countryside of Damascus, on July 24, 2017, killing 11 civilians and wounding at least 30.
The city is a supporter of the revolution that began in Syria six years ago and remains outside of the control of Bashar al-Assad's forces and militant groups like ISIS. Located seven kilometers north-east of Damascus, Arbin is the first village of Eastern Ghouta, neighboring the Damascene neighborhood al-Qaboun on one side and the villages of Zamalka, Harasta, Madyara and Hamoriah on the other side.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the warplanes belonged to either the Assad regime or its ally Russia. A Russian military official, however, called reports of the airstrike “a complete lie”.
Global Voices spoke to Qusay Noor, a citizen journalist and photographer who is based in Arbin and who got in touch shortly after the bombing. He told us that the airstrikes initially hit the city not too long after sunset, around 7:30 pm, causing widespread panic, before hitting again at around 11:30 pm. Residents reported similar information to news agency AFP.
The following photos of the aftermath of the airstrikes were taken by Noor and used with permission. Global Voices received nearly 100 photos but refrained from publishing the most graphic ones as they are available on Noor's Twitter profile. The photos show the destruction inflicted on civilian infrastructure as well as the injured and the dead.
Arbin after the bombing. Photo by Qusay Noor. Used with permission.
Arbin after the bombing. Photo by Qusay Noor. Used with permission.
Arbin after the bombing. Photo by Qusay Noor. Used with permission.
AFP added that:
An AFP correspondent who visited the town's hospital early on Tuesday saw at least five small bodies laid out on the floor, wrapped in white shrouds. Two of them were toddlers.
Citing the Arbin Local Council, Qasioun News Agency and Aldorar Alshamia Network also reported that one of the air raids was loaded with eight vacuum rockets.
Statement in Arabic by the Arbin Local Council. Released on Facebook. Click for larger version.
The attack was carried out after Russia announced a ceasefire deal on July 22 between Assad's government and the Local Council of Eastern Ghouta, which includes the Arbin Local Council (councils like these were set up in rebel-held areas to fill in the vacuum created by the government's absence). On July 23, 2017, the Ghouta region was described as being largely “calm” despite two reported violations by the regime.
In a statement, the Arbin Local Council said:
We condemn the terrible international silence regarding the massacres perpetrated by Assad's militias and the governments that support him in Eastern Ghouta, including the latest one on July 24th, 2017.
They also insisted on two points:
1- There is no military presence within the city of Arbin.
2- This act is in violation of international norms and laws, a breach of the ceasefire agreement
The Council also held a press conference on July 25, 2017 denouncing the “massacre” and calling on the international community to interfere as a guarantor of the ceasefire agreement, stating its responsibility to protect civilians.
It wouldn't be the first time that Assad's forces assaulted the town. Indeed, Arbin has been targeted repeatedly by the regime and its allies in the past six years, and has also endured human rights violations by rebel groups.
The “Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution” project, among others, documented several of these actions committed by the regime against Arbin since 2011, and in particular bombings since 2012. Here are some of them:
According to the Center for the Documentation of Violations in Syria, an estimated 1,139 people from Arbin have been killed as of March 1, 2015.

author: Mona Bibi


text:
Afghanistan’s Government Stood by as Militants Unleashed Hell on a Hazara Village · Global Voices
Nicole Valentini

A map indicating Sar-e-Pol province, Afghanistan.
The provincial council of Mirzaolang village in the Afghan province of Sar-e Pul convened several times to demand help from the central government before their village was overrun by Taliban-aligned militants. The help never came.
By the time hundreds of Taliban from the Afghan provinces of Ghor, Faryab, Badghis, and Jawzjan, were gathering under the command of Sher Mohammad Ghazanfar, a local warlord, it was already too late. After closing all the roads leading into the village, the militants began to kill and abduct residents. The governor's office says at least sixty residents were killed and as many as 150 families abducted, with some 47 girls still unaccounted for.
The violence that the village populated mostly by citizens from the ethnic Hazara group witnessed on August 5 was shocking but also sadly predictable. Neighbouring villages were already under Taliban control and residents knew it was only a matter of time before the group moved on Mirzaolang.
A number of media have claimed the attack on Mirzaolang as a “joint operation” involving fighters from both the Taliban and ISIS, but many observers are skeptical about the extent of ISIS presence in the country.
Among the naysayers are Afghanistan's former intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, and US general John Campbell, who has gone on record as saying that disaffected Taliban fighters are likely just “rebranding” themselves as ISIS in “an attempt to attract media attention, solicit greater resources, and further increase recruitment.”
At any rate, the attempts of local security forces to peg back the militants were fruitless. After 48 hours of intense fighting, the surviving soldiers had no choice but to leave the village to the Taliban. As the battle raged they called for reinforcements from the government, but their pleas went unanswered.
In an official statement, NATO Ambassador Cornelius Zimmerman expressed his concern over the killings and the fate of the hostages.
#NATO SCR very concerned about reports of civilians killed in Sar-e Pul. Violence and destruction stand in the way of Afghanistan’s future. pic.twitter.com/nJ8UjQfQvm
— NATO in Afghanistan (@NATOscr) August 7, 2017
Sar-e Pul's governor Mohammad Zaher Wahdat told journalist Mukhtar Wafayee that he had done everything he could to save civilians’ lives and that he had begged the government repeatedly to send reinforcements, before, during, and after the massacre.
Wahdat added that victims’ bodies are still lying on the streets since the Taliban have forbidden residents from burying their loved ones.
Militancy has seen an uptick in Afghanistan in recent years, amid a reduced US military presence and the failure of the administration of President Ashraf Ghani to cement authority over the country. In this sense, it is hardly surprising that the Taliban are making gains in several parts of Afghanistan, even as the militant movement itself has been dealt a blow by infighting and the emergence of rival groups.
But the sheer brutality of the attack in Sar-e Pul, going beyond anything the Taliban has done in its recent raids, can be understood only in the light of deeply disturbing ethnic prejudices towards the Hazara group that populate villages such as Mirzaolang.
From the moment the Taliban emerged as a movement, and especially after coming to power in the mid-1990s, it reserved a special barbarity for the Hazara people.  The Sunni militant group views Hazaras — mostly Shia Muslims — as heretics. Taliban-led violence against the group peaked in 1998, during  a massacre in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
But despite the Hazara people's long-term opposition to the Taliban, the group has not always been able to count on support coming from the corridors of power in Kabul, where it is weakly represented, either.
An example of a struggle waged by Hazaras for greater recognition from the government was the Enlightening Movement that emerged last year as Kabul policymakers plotted to reroute a strategic power line initially slated to run through a Hazara-populated region. The protests met with tragedy when a suicide attack on demonstrators resulted in nearly a hundred deaths on July 23, 2016.
To counter the risk of the massacre in Mirzaolang getting buried under other negative news headlines coming out of Afghanistan, journalists and concerned citizens launched a campaign on Twitter under the hashtag #MirzaOlangMassacre. Their aim is to spread awareness about what is going on in Afghanistan, and to pressure the government to intervene in order to help the families affected by the violence.
As of this writing, investigative journalist Wafayee, whose blog has been a key source of updates for the story, has reported that some of the families taken hostage during the Mirzaolang attack have been returned to safety, but that the 47 girls are still being held as hostages. This information has yet to be verified by the Afghan authorities.

author: Nicole Valentini


text:
In Highly Criticized Stunt, Chinese Reporter Drinks River Water to Prove It’s Clean · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Screen capture from video livecast of a swimming event in Guangzhou. Via Weibo.
During a live-streamed video of a swimming event in the Zhujiang, known in English as the Pearl River, a reporter from the Southern Metropolis Daily drank a few mouthfuls of river water to prove that it was clean.
The screen capture of the livecast has gone viral on social media. In a number of media workers’ WeChat groups, journalists have called it an unprofessional and propaganda that has shamed the whole news media industry.
The swim was held on July 25 near Sun Yatsen University Pier in China's Guangzhou city at the lower course of Zhujiang. The annual event was under the theme “Everyone, Work Out and Stay Healthy” (全民健身.全民健康) and about 2,000 people participated.
A number of Chinese state-affiliated media outlets featured the event and Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily broadcast it live. While doing so, the reporter said in front of the camera that the river water looked clean and transparent and drank a few mouthfuls to prove his point. According to discussions on social media (as reported by Hong Kong online media outlet HK01), the journalist actually drank from the water three times: in his first attempt, the camera happened to move away; the second was broadcast to the public, and the third was to pose for photos.
Zhujiang is the third longest river in China and its mouth is located at the most industrialized and polluted Pearl River Delta. Even though efforts were made between 2007 and 2013 to clean up the river, the water quality in the lower course of the river is still poor and far from being suitable for drinking.
The reporter's action has hence stirred a lot of frustration among media workers’ social circles on WeChat. In one of the groups, a reporter pointed out that Southern Metropolis Daily was one of the most critical media outlets in China just a few years back, but now it had devolved into a “positive energy” propaganda machine.
The criticisms from fellow media workers are also being shared by netizens. On one of the news threads on Weibo, many said the water-drinking stunt was unprofessional:
此风不可长！记者不是政客，媒体的公信力是最重要的
Such act should not be encouraged! Journalists are not politicians, credibility is the most important thing for a media outlet.
这个记者上位上得肯定快，来来来，环保局有个位置，来上班
This reporter can definitely advance in his career. Come, there is a position in the Environmental Bureau. Come take the position.
叫珠江水有点甜的升官了。此人莫非都想行此路？
Those who claimed that Zhujiang water was sweet advanced in their careers, this guy wanted to follow their example.
如果他吃一坨屎 能证明什么？
可以证明。屎可以吃
What can he prove by eating faeces?
He can prove that faeces is edible
他肯定没见过江边浮着的涨得跟气球一样的老鼠和死猪
Quite sure that he has never seen the dead rats and dead pigs floating like balloons in the river.

author: Oiwan Lam