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‘We’ve got two sessions’: China promotes communist party meetings with English-language rap video · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

Screen capture from ‘Two Sessions’ video.
The following post is originally written by Holmes Chan and published on Hong Kong Free Press on 4 of March, 2019. The edited version is republished on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement.
The Chinese state news agency Xinhua published an English-language rap video on March 4 promoting the country’s annual “two sessions” – the National People's Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
This year, the “two sessions” began on March 5. Released just a day ahead of the political conference, the music video, which was composed and performed by Chinese rapper Su Han, depicted the “two sessions” as an opportunity to showcase China’s strengths.
“See we’ve got two sessions, let me show you Chinese manners. Tramp the bygone cession we’re the fortitude presence [sic],” the lyrics go.
The video features snapshots of China’s recent achievements, including its moon lander, poverty alleviation efforts and the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer.
Lyrically dense and often grammatically questionable, parts of the ditty verge on incomprehensible.
“It’s like a summertime paradise, likewise butterflies in twilight. See the Larch rolling miles upon miles, when we meet satisfied Popeye,” one line goes.
“Never gonna be the earth invader forcing it into hunt in Cretaceous. Gotta be the Ready One Player when in front of dirty polluter,” read another. “Eject all the rapaciousness like shaking off nephrolithiasis.”
Nephrolithiasis, also known as kidney stones, is a disease that affects the urinary tract.
On Twitter, the “two sessions” rap video was greeted with some eye-rolling, as well as some genuine surprise. Below is one of the Twitter discussion threads on the political propaganda:
I still don’t understand the reference to Popeye and Ready Player One in the “Two Sessions” rap. Spielberg eating spinach inside the Great Hall of the People? pic.twitter.com/hpHPgxPXuH
— Nathanel Amar 馬泰然 (@nathanelamarHK) March 4, 2019
“Fasten your seatbelts and watch China’s latest burst of raw, undiluted soft power,” wrote Adrian Zenz, a scholar who researches China’s re-education camps in Xinjiang.
But some found the quality better than expected.
This is much better quality than I’d expect from a Two Sessions rap song made by Xinhua ?
— William Nee (@williamnee) March 3, 2019
In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has been using popular musical genres such as rap in an effort to get its message across to westerners.
In an effort to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty, Xinhua produced a track praising the city’s “One Country, Two Systems” policy of autonomy. And in 2016, a music video promoting Xi's “Four comprehensives” mixed Beethoven with hip-hop beats. Chances are strong that “Two Sessions” is just the latest in an ongoing series of such productions.

author: Hong Kong Free Press


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Censored on WeChat: Chinese megastar Fan Bingbing’s tax evasion scandal — and her disappearance · Global Voices
Wechatscope

Fan Bingbing and Hugh Jackman at X-Men Singapore Gala Premiere in 2014. Photo by Avery Ng (CC BY-SA 2.0)
With more than 1.0825 billion individual users, along with more than 20 million registered public accounts, WeChat has the largest number of domestic users and the most extensive coverage of any social media service in China. As such, it has become a chief component of China's rigorous censorship regime.
In 2017, our team at the University of Hong Kong built a technical web “scraping” system for studying censorship on WeChat's publicly accessible pages. Throughout 2018, we tracked more than 4,000 public accounts covering daily news and preserved censored posts in a publicly accessible database, WeChatscope. This article is the fourth part of a partnership series with Global Voices.
One of the top ten censored topics in our 2018 WeChat database was Chinese megastar Fan Bingbing.
The film and television actress went missing following allegations that she had misled authorities in order to avoid paying taxes on her earnings from the major film, Cell Phone 2. Three months later, she reappeared and was fined the equivalent of US $129 million for tax evasion. She subsequently offered a public apology in which she admitted her wrongdoing and attributed her professional success to the state and party.
Fan's case highlights the importance of the entertainment sector as a major front in China's ideological struggle. In recent years, propaganda authorities have encouraged production companies to produce patriotic films and pressured celebrities of the sector to show their patriotism on Weibo.
But it is difficult to “tame” award-winning directors and celebrities who have a strong presence in the international film market. Fan was seen as a celebrity who could not be touched, but this notion was shattered by her disappearance. By targeting Fan, Chinese authorities successfully demonstrated that no one in the sector can be exempt from their “social responsibility”.
During this time, posts on WeChat that speculated on her whereabouts were censored and Fan was derided in official state rhetoric.
Fan became a hot topic on social media after former Central Television host Cui Yongyuan reported that she had signed a so-called “yin-yang contract” in May 2018. He obtained copies of two contracts Fan had signed for Cell Phone 2. One was for US $1.56 million, while the other was US $7.8 million. Fan had only declared the first contract to tax authorities. Fan's office later released a statement accusing Cui of insinuation and defamation.
The term “Yin-yang contract” refers to the existence of two contracts. One is an “official” contract of the actor's fee for income tax reporting purposes. The other states the actual earnings, which are usually higher than the official contract.
After Cui’s exposé, rumors and discussion about Fan and the entertainment sector spread rapidly on social media.
As the incident continued to develop Chinese authorities announced near the end of June plans to place a cap on actor payments in the entertainment industry, limiting actor compensation to 40 percent of a film or program's total production cost, so as to crack down on tax evasion and “money worship” in the industry.
Speculations about Fan's disappearance mounted on social media, but were quickly censored. China Digital Times obtained evidence that, during the same period, propaganda authorities instructed social media companies to censor all mentions of the tax allegations against Fan Bingbing.
Even standard posts speculating on Fan’s status were deleted. For example, a post entitled “Police authorities step in to investigate on “Yin-yang contract” case, Fan Bingbing and her brother were restricted from leaving the country” (警方介入阴阳合同案 ，范冰冰姐弟被限制出境) was published on July 28 and removed on the same day. Related discussions on social media also were censored.
There has been no official explanation of what happened to Fan during the months of her disappearance.
Two months after Fan's disappearance, a survey released by the Beijing Normal University and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences stressed that only nine out of 100 television and film personalities were “socially responsible” and Fan Bingbing was ranked the lowest among the 100.
Chinese Communist Party spokespeople have often used the concept of “social responsibility” to criticize celebrities for not following the Party leadership. At a 2013 forum, the State Internet Information Office told Weibo celebrities to bolster their social responsibility and deliver more positive and constructive messages on social media. This was followed by a series of arbitrary arrests and prosecutions for online “rumor mongering”.
The result of social responsibility survey appears to have been intended to re-shape public opinion about the role of celebrities in society, and to set the stage for Fan Bingbing's public re-appearance.
On October 3, state-affiliated Xinhua news reported that Fan Bingbing had been order to pay about RMB 884 million yuan in overdue taxes and fines. A separate editorial on the official news outlet stressed that “everyone is equal before the law, there is no ‘superstar’ or ‘rich and powerful’, no one can despise the law and hope to be lucky.”
On the same day, Fan reappeared on social media with a letter of apology for her failure to “set right the relations between the interests of the state and society and that of [sic] my own.” She stressed:
There would not be today’s Fan Bingbing if there have not been the good policies of the party and the state, in addition to the support of the audience…I want to assure everyone that after this rectification, I would play with the rules, abide by the law and take my responsibilities seriously.
The news of Fan's tax evasion penalty and her apology pushed “Fan Bingbing” to become the hottest topic on social media and search engines. Yet many Chinese social media users were not happy about the outcome. As expected, her fans were sad to see their idol being humiliated publicly. Others criticized the punishment, saying it was too light.
Again, the propaganda authorities stepped in to curb political expressions and public criticisms. Posts that suggested the Fan Bingbing incident was engineered by the state were deleted on WeChat. For example, this post “Celebrities like Fan Bingbing were dumbfounded. The state has taken action; Cui Yongyuan strikes hard. A even bigger storm is approaching!” (范冰冰们傻眼！国家动手，崔永元出拳，更大风暴到来了！) was published on October 9 and deleted on October 12.
In addition, posts said the penalty was too light were also deleted. “How come Fan Bingbing is free from jail sentence? Nine hidden rules in the criminal law. Must read” (范冰冰不用坐牢了？刑法九大潜规则，不看肠子都悔青) was published on October 4 and deleted on October 5.
After the announcement of Fan’s punishment, a campaign was launched to recover all back taxes in the entertainment industry. The National Taxation Administration stressed celebrities from the entertainment sector would face criminals if they failed to pay back all the taxes by December 31, 2018.
All told, the Fan Bingbing incident, the newly introduced production budget guidelines in June and the social responsibility survey seem to suggest that the propaganda authorities were trying to make an example out of the actress amid the tax evasion investigation, in an effort to establish the CCP’s leadership of the entertainment sector.
Since her apology, Fan Bingbing has clearly dedicated more attention to her “social responsibilities”. Last November, after Taiwanese director Fu Yue spoke out during the Golden Horse Awards, saying that her biggest hope for “our country” was to be regarded as an “independent entity” — referring to Taiwan's movement for independence from mainland China — Fan Bingbing was the first celebrity to share a patriotic post in response.
The actress promptly shared a post published by the Communist Youth League of China on Weibo, which read: “Not one speck of China can go missing.”

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Wechatscope


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Queer women in Russia’s North Caucasus ‘face sexual violence, forced marriage, and murder’ · Global Voices
OC Media

Image featured on OC media.
The following is a version of a partner post that first appeared on the website OC Media.
Queer women in Russia’s North Caucasus face attempts to ‘cure’ them, beatings, rape, forced marriages, and murder, according to a recent report interviewing a number of queer women from the region. While some gay men have been able to flee, the report said women were less able to do so as their money, movement, careers, and private lives were controlled by male ‘guardians.’
A report on the persecution of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women in the North Caucasus was released in December by Queer Women North Caucasus (QWNC).
With the support of the German Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Moscow Office, QWNC interviewed 21 women (17 lesbian, three bisexual, and one transgender woman) in the North Caucasus. Most of the respondents were from Chechnya, with others from Daghestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia.
Nine of the women interviewed said they had experienced sexual violence from their husbands, and eight claimed to have entered a marriage against their will.
According to the report, news of a woman’s queer orientation or transgender identity was always met with psychological and physical violence, and can easily escalate to murder.
“I promised father not to kill you. I beg you, please shoot yourself, just shoot yourself,” one woman remembered her brother begging her after she had been outed as a lesbian.
Out of the 21 women interviewed by QWNC, eight knew someone among their friends, relatives, or neighbours killed by their male family members for behaviour that “humiliated the family.”
All respondents of the QWNC report confirmed that they had experienced physical and psychological violence from early childhood, suggesting a wider atmosphere of violence against women and young girls within the region.
One interviewee, who was sexually harassed by her uncle, remembered that family members accused her of ‘sexual debauchery’ after she told them what had been happening.
Multiple women said their family tightly controlled their freedom, including their freedom of movement.
Having clothing chosen for them, being restricted from communicating with other men, and not being allowed to leave the house in the evening are common conditions placed on women in the North Caucasus
One Daghestani woman recounted her story of being beaten up on the street by her husband for accidentally unveiling her hair from underneath her hijab.
The report said that fleeing the family and the region was complicated for queer women in the North Caucasus. Apart from the challenge of becoming economically independent, it said women who flee are usually reported and brought back to their families — even from abroad — and face prospects of isolation, violence, and even death.
The report said that women in the North Caucasus typically are not asked whom they want to marry, or even if they want to marry at all, leaving them with little control over their matrimonial status. Even rumours or a call from relatives can trigger marriage plans.
Respondents told researchers that a bride’s father or brother, the customary ‘guardians’ of a woman, can sign on behalf of the bride, and women frequently are not even given a copy of the marriage certificate.
QWNC’s report recounted stories from queer women who suffered repeated beatings and rape after entering unwanted marriages.
“The first rape occurred a few days after the wedding,” one Chechen respondent reported. “I told him that I didn’t want to have sex with him. But the third day after the wedding he did it. That’s the custom. He covered my nose and mouth with his hand. I started choking. Blood started to flow. I don’t remember, why the blood started — because of my screams or from [him] hitting my face.”
According to the report, if a woman succeeds in dissolving an unwanted marriage, she has no option but to return to her original family, often facing worse treatment than before.
In addition, it said victims find it difficult to address law enforcement agencies, as they do not expect to be protected.
The report included the story of a woman who was harassed and blackmailed by local police after she sheltered a lesbian woman who had fled home.
The research paper reported that several queer women among those interviewed chose to enter sham marriages. Such a union usually involves a gay or bisexual man who is not suspected of having a non-heterosexual orientation.
One respondent’s account indicated that queer women are not free from their controlling family members even after getting married.
An interviewee from Chechnya recalled her brother, who worked with the police, being suspicious of her sham marriage. He reportedly promised to check that she got pregnant after she married a man he suspected to be gay.
That respondent, in addition to several others, also claimed that the authorities keep a list of local queer people, which can be used to harass or blackmail queer women at any time.
A fake marriage is a strategy to avoid violence, but this does not occur in all cases. One Chechen woman discussed in the report how her “husband” also turned out to be restrictive, even forcing her to terminate a pregnancy.
“Harsh patriarchy is channelled not only through heteronormative men but also gay and bisexual men. They continue attempts to totally control wives, to apply violent practices,” reads the report.
The fate of queer people in the North Caucasus received attention in international coverage after the 2017 report from the Russian LGBT Network and the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta broke the news about the mass detentions and killings of gay people in Chechnya.
However, news outlets focused mostly on local queer men.
At the end of the report, researchers asked the queer women what they had planned for the future.
“I’ll be seeking a husband-friend, will give a birth to a baby, and then no one can harass me,” one Chechen respondent said.
“I’ll become a wife and will move far away, living with my family, with my best friend, who will cover me. He will take my love as his second wife.”
According to the researchers, they lost contact with one woman following her interview and another, who had previously attempted to flee her household, died, according to her family, “from poisoning” before publication.

author: OC Media


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Russia’s latest ‘anti-fake news law’ is so bad even Kremlin pranksters hate it · Global Voices
Alexey Kovalev

Russia's ‘anti-fake news’ law passed in the Russian parliament thanks to the overwhelming majority of the ruling United Russia party, despite the unified opposition of the Communist and Liberal Democratic parties // duma.gov.ru, under CC4.0
Russia has officially outlawed fake news.
On March 7, the State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament, approved a package of laws aimed at curbing dangerously irresponsible “fake news” and public dissent against the authorities. Pending approval from the upper chamber of the parliament, the Council of the Federation, and then a signature from President Vladimir Putin, the bills will become law.
The first bill (part of a package of amendments to Russia's media law and administrative code) was steamrolled through parliament in less than three months since its filing in December 2018. The bill defines “fake news” as “deliberately misleading messages of public importance…disguised as genuine public announcements,” and prohibits the act of circulating this type of information with the clear intention of provoking public disorder or other serious disturbances.
The bill provides a schedule of fines, based on the severity of infraction: Private individuals can face fines from 30 to 100 thousand rubles ($455 to 1525.) Legal entities can be fined up to 1,5 million rubles ($22,660) for the most egregious cases resulting in grievous bodily harm, death, mass unrest or damage to critical infrastructure. This is enough to blow an enormous hole in a medium-sized newsroom’s budget.
On the face of it, the law looks reasonable. There is indeed an argument to be made that fake news on social media can cause mass panic or escalate to situations of mob violence and even lynching, as has happened in multiple cases in India, Sri Lanka and beyond. Ironically, at least one recorded attempt at provoking panic and confusion — and also involving critical infrastructure — was traced to the infamous Russian “troll factory” by New York Times Magazine reporter Adrian Chen back in 2014. So the fears of Russian legislators’ that the same weapons could be turned against Russia are not unfounded.
But certain provisions in the new law indicate that the real targets are those online news outlets still not fully controlled by the state or its subsidiaries. The law stipulates that if news websites publish content that violates the law, they should be given a warning and 24-hour grace period to remove the offending content. But this courtesy only applies to news websites with a government-issued broadcasting license. Others who do not have a license — as is the case with many smaller news websites — will be blocked immediately by their hosting providers at the request of the attorney general’s office.
Few journalists believe that the state’s own media outlets will be the target of this new law. A skeptical Vasily Maximov quipped:
Прямо так и вижу, как огромные штрафы один за другим сыплются на Первый канал, Россию-24, НТВ, РИА-Новости, RT, Звезду и остальных фейкометов масштабом поменьше: pic.twitter.com/IcMmWSYW4Q
— VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) 7 марта 2019 г.
Yeah, right, I can just see crippling fines raining down on Channel One, Rossiya 24, NTV, RIA Novosti, RT, TV Zvezda [TV channels and news agencies owned directly or indirectly by the Russian government] and other, smaller fake news firehoses.
The new law is so universally disdained that even the Kremlin’s loyalists can’t withhold their disgust. Lexus the Prankster, aka Alexey Stolyarov, one member of a duo of prank callers who have made a career of phoning the Kremlin’s opponents and publishing recordings of their conversations with figures such as Boris Johnson, tweeted on March 7:
Сегодня Госдума приняла позорный закон, к которому мы, к счастью, в этом виде не имеем отношения. Год назад они приглашали нас в качестве экспертов по его разработке.Свои материалы мы передали главе комитета Левину. Вместо этого, они (не знаю, кто исполнители) взяли и испоганили
— пранкер Лексус (@Lexusprank) 7 марта 2019 г.
Today, the State Duma passed a deplorable law, thankfully no longer connected to us in its current form. A year ago they invited us as experts to help them put together a draft. We shared our insights with [Leonid] Levin, the chair of the committee. Instead, they (I’m not quite sure who is actually responsible for the execution) took it and twisted beyond any recognition.
Alexander Kots, a war reporter for the staunchly pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, wrote on his Telegram channel that law's fines are extreme enough to deter media houses from publishing:
Госдума приняла-таки антифейковый закон для СМИ, в котором прописала для редакций многотысячные штрафы за распространение фейков. Суммы такие, что в региональных редакциях стажерам придется почки продавать, чтобы расплатиться. Поэтому наказание называют больше профилактическим. Чтоб неповадно было.
The State Duma did indeed pass the anti-fake news law for the media today. Newsrooms can be now fined for the multiples of thousands of rubles for spreading fake news. The figures are such that interns at regional newsrooms will have to sell a kidney to pay it off. So they call it more of a prophylactic measure. To serve as a warning to others.
Kots also notes that there is no clear legal distinction between genuinely malicious disinformation (a rash of which was seen after a shopping mall fire in Siberia that killed 60 people) and less clear-cut cases where there is genuine confusion or conflicting messages or versions of the same event.
В качестве примера приводится “Зимняя вишня” и разогнанный фейк ублюдка Вольнова о количестве погибших. Тут, видимо, угроза массового нарушения порядка в виде несанкционированного митинга горожан. Но это откровенный фейк.
Не очень понятно, как теперь быть с версиями, допустим, катастроф или других трагических событий. Их же через различных экспертов выдвигается бесчиленное множество каждый раз. Несет ли в себе высказывание предположения одну из перечисленных угроз.
As an example, they [proponents of the law] cite the Winter Cherry case and that fake about the casualties that bastard Volnov was pushing. There evidently was a threat of mass unrest at an unsanctioned rally held by the [concerned] citizens. But that was clearly a case of fake news.
But it makes less sense in cases where there are different versions of the same, say, natural disaster or other tragic event. Each time there’s a confusing chorus of experts putting forward an infinite number of conflicting versions. Does every piece of conjecture carry the same threat?
Other journalists felt there was little to discuss seriously:
Ура, депутаты фейковые новости запретили, значит, теперь все в интернете правда
— Kirill Artemenko (@be_art) 7 марта 2019 г.
Hooray, the [Duma] deputies banned fake news, so everything on the internet is true now!

author: Alexey Kovalev


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US envoy visits Haiti as leaders juggle solutions to address national crisis · Global Voices
Joseph W. Alliance

Under Secretary of State USA David Hale (centre) meets with Haitian President Jovenel Moïse (second from left) and other political, private sector and civil society leaders on March 1, 2019, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Screengrab from a YouTube video by News Haiti.
Haiti's violent street protests over rising food prices halted in mid-February 2019 after government leaders announced measures aimed at addressing the crisis.
Amidst such uncertainty, David Hale, the United States Undersecretary for Political Affairs, visited the struggling nation on March 1 to meet with political leaders, the private sector and civil society:
Under Secretary Hale & President @moisejovenel met in #Haiti to discuss the need for inclusive national dialogue to strengthen democratic governance & accountability in the fight against corruption. https://t.co/Uil1omotVt pic.twitter.com/OBlPQiQKcz
— Department of State (@StateDept) March 2, 2019
While the US state department signals US interest in playing a benevolent role in helping the country address the crisis, events one week prior saw the same state department maneuvering to repatriate five American citizens and two permanent residents from Haiti to the US after being arrested for the possession of illegal weapons.
The fact that the men have not been charged is clouding the message of the visit. Moreover, the revocation of visas of some members of the opposition by the US embassy in Haiti is seen as plain interference and undermines Washington's image as a credible mediator to the crisis.
#Haiti: Disgusting. The U.S. cancels the visas of certain opposition leaders as part of the American effort to maintain @moisejovenel in power. @USEmbassyHaiti continues its interference in #Haitian affairs. @ChallengePetro https://t.co/wUMTGOnCMS
— James North (@jamesnorth7) March 4, 2019
Andre Michel, a high-profile member of Haiti's radical opposition, reiterated that President Jovenel Moïse's resignation is key to addressing the crisis and that Washington's support for an “inter-Haitian dialogue”  led by the president reflects its misunderstanding of the crisis on the ground.
Hale's visit may have provided Moïse with a diplomatic boost, but it's uncertain whether he will be able to rely on Washington's ambivalent support to stay in power and bring lasting solutions to the country's profound crisis.
One of the key solutions put forward by Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant — to reduce the price of rice on the local market — has not gone into effect, as prices did not drop as far as expected.
Local rice growers are furious over the government's decision to subsidise rice importers in order to flood the market with cheap rice as a way to soothe social tensions.
Haiti's Foreign Affairs Minister Bocchit Edmond recently met USA Rice Federation leaders in Arlington, Virginia, inviting American farmers to dump cheap rice into the Haitian market for people to access at affordable prices.
Citizens, however, view the move as the same old “short-termism” that has destroyed the country's agrarian base and strangled the local economy instead of focusing on efforts that could help reduce Haiti's dependency on United States imports:
#Haiti is the second largest export market for U.S. #rice growers. @moisejovenel pleaded to them directly to raise exports and lower prices. The rice growers said no. Why did a country once self-sufficient in rice get into this crisis? @ChallengePetro https://t.co/MAIjuEldjA
— James North (@jamesnorth7) March 1, 2019
Haitian rice growers produce only 80,000 metric tons of rice per year, while the country imports about 500,000 metric tons annually, with 90 percent of those imports originating from the US. Local producers feel hurt that the government has not used that opportunity to boost local production as one of the prime minister's promised measures.
Meanwhile, President Moïse, who has faced his harshest test since being sworn in as Haiti's 42nd president in February 2017, went ahead with the installation of the Committee for the Facilitation of the Inter-Haitian National Dialogue as a way to tackle the crisis and put the country back on track.
But Moïse’ troubles really began back in July 2018, when citizens flooded the streets of Port-au-Prince to demonstrate against the government's attempt to raise fuel prices. Beyond the country's socio-economic crisis, Haitians were angry about the alleged corruption surrounding the country's involvement in Venezuela's PetroCaribe regional energy programme, a preferential rate scheme hailed as a model of south-south cooperation and a financial boon for Haiti's development when it joined in 2006.
This all came back to haunt Moïse in the form of the #Petrochallengers who have protested against years of corruption that has led to US $3 billion in losses:
And with this photo @GibszZZz  unleashed a movement “Kot kòb Petwo Karibe a?” Where is the PetroCaribe money? pic.twitter.com/7lpyvKSoxs
— France Francois (@1stClassFrance) February 13, 2019
Moïse appointed Ceant as prime minister in September 2018 with the hope of confronting the crisis, but demonstrations continued throughout the rest of the year, reaching a fever pitch between October and November.
Now, the crisis has deepened as socio-economic conditions go from bad to worse — and though the protests have halted,  Haitians’ claims  for a “tabula rasa” (clean slate) which, for many, mean not only Moïse's resignation — but a profound system change — could be a driving force for how the situation continues to unfold.
The #PetroChallengers, along with groups in the political opposition, has demonstrated no interest in being represented in Moise's working group for dialogue between political stakeholders and civil society. They criticise the committee for its lack of proper representation and two of its original members have already opted out. In this way, the #PetroChallengers may have the president exactly where they want him.
The February unrest has impacted the country in many ways. Haitians suffered a shortage of basic necessities during the protests, increasing the economic stress on an already vulnerable population. According to an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report, at least 27 people died and more than 77 were injured during the protests. Major airlines, including Jet Blue, Air Canada and Air Transat, have either reduced or suspended international flights to the country.
Even the traditional national carnival has been retracted this year by the Haitian government. The pressure to deliver has never been so high during Moïse's first two years in office.

author: Joseph W. Alliance


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With hundreds of political prisoners still in jail, the Nicaraguan conflict is far from over · Global Voices
Elisa Marvena

Main image of the campaign for the release of political prisoners, from the “For a Free Nicaragua Without Political Prisoners” collective. Used with permission.
Nicaragua made front-page news in April 2018 as demonstrators protesting social security reforms clashed with police on the streets of Managua, leaving two dozen people dead. Today, activists have shifted their attention to campaign for the release of political prisoners, who are estimated to number in the hundreds.
While the Nicaraguan government announced in a sudden move on 7 March that it had released 100 prisoners, many questions remain. The released prisoners have no indication, so far, of whether their charges have been dropped. And activists estimate that several hundred other people remain behind bars.
The protests began in the spring of 2018 in reaction to a government decision announcing changes in the pension system. This first wave of protests was followed by repression; the situation then escalated to many protesters being wounded or murdered. This in return led to demonstrations demanding the resignation of President Daniel Ortega and of vice-president Rosario Murillo.
After those street demonstrations ended, police repression and political arrests forced many people to remain inside their homes. Feminist activists and human rights defenders, as well as journalists, have continuously been targeted or have been forced to leave the country to continue their work in exile.
Given the lack of official data from Nicaraguan state agencies, the estimated numbers of dead, wounded and political prisoners change depending on the time period, and the organizations that provide them. In September 2018, an Amnesty International report indicated that 300 people were imprisoned for their participation in the protests. In November 2018, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) reported that there were more than 600 political prisoners in the country.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) counted 325 deaths in December 2018, before it was expelled from the country by President Ortega.
The situation of people in prison following the protests is complex, especially since the protests themselves were declared illegal in September 2018. A report by Amnesty International documents cases of arbitrary detention without due process. This means that large numbers of people were detained without being told the reason for their arrest, and are still being kept behind bars without a trial. According to Nicaraguan law, a detained person has the right “to be [released] or placed at the order of a competent authority” within 48 hours of the arrest.
The figures of political prisoners seem to have increased: in January 2019, the support committee for the families of detainees, called “For a Free Nicaragua Without Political Prisoners,” registered and located 767 people behind bars. The group also shares profiles and testimonies both on Facebook and Twitter, and details the situation of political prisoners and their families for non-Nicaraguan audiences:
The majority of the political prisoners are young people, many of them students. Most of them are held in the capital city of Managua, at the police jail ‘El Chipote‘ or the state penitentiary ‘La Modelo‘. Female political prisoners are largely held at ‘La Esperanza’ women’s prison. Conditions at the Chipote jail are horrific and stories of torture and (sexual) abuse rampant. At La Modelo political prisoners are purposely kept separate from the regular prisoner population in the maximum security pavilion known as ‘La 300’. They are thus purposely kept in isolation and, even though not yet convicted, kept under a regime meant for long-sentenced prisoners with disciplinary issues.
Amnesty International‘s report also highlighted testimonies of torture and intimidation. The report illustrates irregularities in the detention process and supports allegations of sexual abuse as well, such as in the case of C.D., a 19-year-old woman:
C.D. describió que durante el interrogatorio escuchaba gritos desgarradores de una mujer, y la amenazaban diciéndole “vos estas aquí y ella allá, pero si no hablas, vos vas a estar con ella”. Tras devolverla a la celda, en horas de la noche, habría llegado un hombre encapuchado y vestido de civil a interrogarla, y la habría amenazado diciéndole […] vos decidís [o te mato o te violo].
C.D. described how during the interrogation she heard the heartbreaking cries of a woman, and how she was threatened [by authorities] saying “You are here and she is there, but if you do not speak, you are going to be with her”. After she would return to the cell, in the middle of the night, a hooded man dressed in civilian clothes would come to interrogate her, and threaten her by saying: “[I can kill you or I rape you], you decide.”
A group of prisoners in the La Esperanza (in Managua) prison explained the conditions of their imprisonment during the visit of several Members of the European Parliament (MEP). Socialist MEP Ana Gomes shared the videos of the testimonies on social networks:
Inside the prison cell, they explain how they were arrested and that they are accused of carrying chemical weapons, nuclear bombs … absurd!!!! pic.twitter.com/6qyp1ADvn8
— Ana Gomes, MEP (@AnaGomesMEP) 28 de enero de 2019
The complaints do not seem to have gone unnoticed. Relatives of the prisoners in La Esperanza prison reported that a large number of them had been severely beaten and that some have been disappeared. It is suspected that these attacks may have taken place in retaliation for public complaints.
“Nicaragua Libre Sin Presos Políticos” is a group that advocates for the freedom of these students through online activism, sharing profiles, testimonies and making alliances with other groups that continue to share these stories online. They have published some of the stories explaining the causes imprisoned activists care about, their advocacy work and the circumstances in which they were arrested.
Most campaigns for the release and reporting of abuses against political prisoners can be followed through the hashtags #SOSNicaragua and #Libertadparalospresospoliticos (freedom for political prisoners):
THIS IS #Nicaragua #SOSnicaragua #Libertadparalospresospoliticos pic.twitter.com/tZ3uayHQos
— SophieMorgan (@lincapeur) February 13, 2019
Other campaigns on Twitter are denouning detentions and disappearances, as well as the precarious conditions of many of the detainees, as does the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders organization:
?179 organizaciones exigimos #LibertadRuthMatute‼
?Es presa política en #Nicaragua desde octubre de 2018
⚠Sufre una grave afección cardíaca y su vida corre peligro
▶https://t.co/oPAT4UogKV@NilsMelzer @ForstMichel @DainiusPuras @JoseAGuevaraB @mbachelet @PauloAbrao @CIDH pic.twitter.com/G6n1ruVQpY
— IM-Defensoras (@IM_Defensoras) 31 de enero de 2019
179 organizations demand #LibertadRuthMatute!
She is a political prisoner in #Nicaragua since October 2018
⚠Suffers from a serious heart condition and her life is in danger

author: Elisa Marvena


text:
A palace on stilts: Guyanese novelist Wilson Harris returns to life in Trinidad & Tobago’s Carnival · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Tekel “Salti” Sylvan portraying “The Peacock becomes the window to the universe”, designed by Alan Vaughan from Moko Sõmõkow's 2019 Trinidad and Tobago Carnival presentation, inspired by Wilson Harris’ “Palace of the Peacock.” He placed second in the King of Carnival competition. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
By Andre Bagoo
The great poet and novelist Wilson Harris died exactly one year ago. Or did he? Like one of his characters, Harris has come back. He has returned in the form of a band of moko jumbies — a motley crew of painted spirits striding high above us on wooden stilts, roaming the concrete jungle of Port of Spain, haunting Trinidad’s Carnival.
This is “Palace of the Peacock”, a mas[querade] by Alan Vaughan’s Moko Sõmõkow band, based on Harris’ dense, beautiful and wildly ambitious novel of the same name.
Watching the moko jumbies leave their mas camp at Erthig Road, Belmont, the mood of Harris’ novel is palpable. Just as the book’s band of crusaders embark on an epic quest, these masqueraders set out for the wide green expanse of parkland at the centre of the city, the Queen’s Park Savannah.
Why a novel? Why bring a “mas” based on a book? And a book by an author with a style as dense as Wilson Harris’?
Why? Because this is a book that teaches us to levitate.
Everywhere in Harris’ book, we are asked to look up. At the sky, at the sun, at swinging gates, at trees, birds, waterfalls, stars, comets, at dangling nooses, up ladders, and even at houses built on stilts. So, too, do we now look up to these mokos.
But as is typical of Harris, nothing is one thing or another. What is dead is also alive; what is up is also down: “The whispering trees spin their leaves to a sudden fall wherein the ground seemed to grow lighter in my mind and to move to meet them in the air” (“Palace of the Peacock”, p. 28).
The book’s plot has been the subject of endless critical debate. Ostensibly, a band of adventurers are on a quest, journeying through the rainforests of Guyana to find Mariella, a fabled woman, a symbol, maybe a Helen, a patriarchal fantasy figure who turns everything upside down.
Yet “every boundary line is a myth,” (22) the character called Donne warns. We are in the landscape of the mind, a “chaos of sensation” (24), a “masquerade of appearances” (13). To make sense of the words of “Palace of the Peacock” we have to cut through it diagonally or else we drown.
Harris’ surreal book is not prose. It is a book-length poem; a rich pelau in which the twins of past and present are blurred, as the Mayans might blur them. People appear, each a “character-mask” (8), each both dead and alive.
Says the narrator: “I dreamt I awoke with one dead seeing eye and one living closed eye.” Dreaming and awake, traveling yet not moving. Slowly, the novel reveals its secret. Its subject emerges, like the star-studded peacock that gives the book its title, at the very end, making it plain we have been reading a self-portrait in the form of a written mas.
Here is a book that challenges the idea of the novel, turning it into a Carnival of the soul. It seeks now, through this band of moko jumbies, a new audience. And it finds it.
Moko Somõkõw designer Alan Vaughan as ‘The Sun Rises and Overwhelms the Sinnerman’ during Trinidad and Tobago's Senior King of Carnival Preliminaries at the Queen's Park Savannah on February 21, 2019. Photo by Shaun Rambaran, used with permission.
On the first night of the Kings and Queens of Carnival competition at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Vaughan crosses the stage. He’s plucked a single line from the novel and built a costume around it. “The Sun Rises and Overwhelms the Sinnerman” is a coruscating metaphor prancing to Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman.” Like a blinged-out version of Peter Doig’s 2007 painting “Man Dressed As Bat”, Vaughan is gorgeous, radiant, yet gloriously ambiguous as he looks down on us, a giant studded moth with eyes lined with red. Your blood flows faster.
Vaughan does not advance to the next round, but fellow band members do. One goes on to win the Queen of Carnival title, another places second overall. The sign of a renaissance?
Moko jumbies have a long history. The word moko has been linked by some to Orisha traditions in Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Guinea, and Senegal. Moko is a deity of fate and retribution, while jumbies, or ghosts, are understood to be a Trinidadian inflection. Moko jumbies emerged as a popular character in Trinidad Carnival in the 1900s.
But while mokos hark back to West African traditions, today stilt-walking is accessible to all within Trinidad’s multicultural society. You can even learn to become a stilt-walker, with groups such as #1000mokos hosting regular classes at contemporary art space Alice Yard in Woodbrook, Port of Spain.
And in recent years designers have been pushing the moko jumbie to its limits. In 2015, Stephanie Kanhai became the first to win the Queen of Carnival title with “The Sweet Waters of Africa,” designed by Vaughan. The next year, Peter Minshall made a sensational return to the King of Carnival competition with “The Dying Swan: Ras Nijinsky in Drag as Pavlova.”
The power of Minshall’s design was the way it incorporated the rigid wooden stilts as a part of the mas, turning them into a ballet dancer’s legs en pointe and fusing African and European traditions in a way that also pointed to Carnival’s queerness.
Trinidad and Tobago's 2019 Queen of Carnival: Shynel Brizan portraying “Mariella, Shadow of Consciousness” from Moko Sõmõkow's “Palace of the Peacock.” Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
This year, Peacock’s queen “Mariella, Shadow of Consciousness,” played by Shynel Brizan, wins the Queen of Carnival title, with Brizan becoming a kind of Madonna figure, embodying the novel’s character. She is at once bold yet vulnerable, a phantasm.
And marching alongside her is Tekel ‘Salti’ Sylvan, who places second in the King of Carnival competition with “A Peacock Becomes the Windows of the Universe,” a maelstrom of blue, purples, and gold, topped with a fancy sailor flourish: a window warped like a satellite dish to form a strange crown. In the preliminaries, Sylvan’s face is painted white with a shock of red across his lips.
Also in this holy procession is Russell Grant, in a moko that might as well be Vigilance, another indigenous character in the novel who acts as a kind of gatekeeper and observer. When the band hits the road on Carnival Monday and Tuesday, there's a group of trusty troops to support it on the ground.
Moko jumbies might look to the past, but this band’s inhabiting of Harris’ novel opens up fresh possibilities. It’s a perfect marriage between one imaginative world and another; a kind of meta-fiction or cosplay in the extreme. And what a procession it all amounts to!
The players leap from the writer’s mind and into the streets walking through crowds of people, like Moses parting the sea.

author: Guest Contributor


text:
Blackout in Venezuela: How long will it last? · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle

Residents started a fire after a blackout had gone for six hours in Caracas. March 7, 2019. Photo by Luis Carlos Diaz via Twitter. Used with permission.
For nearly a day's time, most of Venezuela has been without electricity.
At approximate 4:50 p.m. local time on March 7, full-scale power outages in the capital Caracas and at least 22 other states have left homes, businesses, public services, and hospitals without power. By the early hours of March 8, journalists and civilians in the country who were able to use mobile data began reporting online that generators and other back-up supplies of power were running low.
Officials in the government of embattled president Nicolás Maduro say the outage is the result of “sabotage,” calling it an “electrical war” perpetrated by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, with the backing of the US government. Guaidó fired back, saying that “the only sabotage here is being done by the usurper of the Venezuelan people,” in a reference to President Nicolás Maduro, who opposition leaders say “usurped” the presidency through an illegitimate election process.
Blackouts are nothing new in Venezuela — in the midst of the economic, social and political crises that have engulfed the country in recent years, citizens have faced regular power outages. But the broad coverage and duration of this one are unique.
In addition to leaving residents without access to light, refrigeration, medical technology and transportation powered by electricity, the blackout has also precipitated an almost total shutdown of communication systems in the country.
Volviendo al origen. En el barrio cerca de casa encendieron una fogata tras más de 6 horas de apagón. pic.twitter.com/eTDoaRPRWc
— Luis Carlos Díaz (@LuisCarlos) 8 de marzo de 2019
The technical testing group NetBlocks, which measures internet connections and outages in countries around the world, published test results showing that internet activity has plummeted, and incidentally offered some concrete data on the impact of the outages.
Venezuela network connectivity, March 2019. Image via Netblocks.
Public protests and confrontations between the Maduro-aligned military and opposition leaders backed by the US have come in waves since mid-January when Guaidó openly challenged Maduro's legitimacy and declared himself interim president, on constitutional grounds.

author: Ellery Roberts Biddle


text:
Four years on from student’s shocking murder, Turkish higher education disavows gender equality · Global Voices
Sevgi Yagmur Bulut

Özgecan Aslan's murder sent shockwaves through Turkish society but getting gender equality on the policy agenda is still an uphill struggle. Image by Voice of America, reused by Wikipedia, public domain.
When a long search for the missing 20-year-old university student Özgecan Aslan ended with the discovery of her charred body in a riverbed in the south-central city of Tarsus in February 2015, the news sent shockwaves through Turkish society.
A 26-year-old minibus driver, Suphi Altindoken, confessed to the murder. According to his own testimony, he first tried to rape Aslan and then stabbed her to death when she fought back. Following the attack, Altindoken, his 50-year-old father Necmettin Altindoken and his friend Fatih Gokce burned Aslan's body in order to dispose of the evidence.
The brutality of Aslan's death shone a torchlight on gender-based violence in Turkey and caused a surge of public indignation.
Calls for justice for Aslan and her family were quickly accompanied by demands for action to prevent violence against women and build gender equality into the national education system.
On December 3, 2015, Suphi Altindoken was sentenced to 27 years in prison, while Necmettin Altindoken was sentenced to life imprisonment. Gokce received 24 years imprisonment.
But on April 12, 2016 the younger Altindoken was killed in jail and his father seriously injured by a prisoner called Gultekin Alan, who said his attack on the pair was motivated by his obsession and revulsion over the Özgecan Aslan tragedy.
Yekta Sarac, the President of Council of Higher Education (YÖK), meeting with female rectors of Turkish universities for the March 8 International Women's Day, 2016. Erçin Top for Andolou news agency.
Hopes for institutional support for gender equality had received a major boost earlier that year when Yekta Sarac, the President of Council of Higher Education (YÖK), met with female rectors of Turkish universities to mark International Women's Day on March 8, 2016.
The main outcome of the meeting was to affirm the ‘Higher Education Institutions Gender Equality Attitude Certificate’.
The document had been in the works since the year Aslan died, and stated that the higher education regulator would incorporate gender equality and justice across its work, that universities would hold gender equality lessons, seminars, and panels and that universities would ensure safe campuses for women.
There were always fears that the certificate would remain symbolic in nature but on February 19, 2019, YÖK stunned gender equality advocates by disavowing the document's very foundations.
Sarac, still the council's president, was quoted by the Cumhuriyet media outlet as citing “different perceptions” of gender equality as a reason for revising the document.
2015 yılında hazırlanan bu tutum belgesinde kadına yönelik her türlü eşitsizlik ve adaletsizliği önlemeye yönelik yürütülen bu çalışmalar ‘Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği’ kavramı adı altında dile getirilmiştir. Ancak gelinen süreçte bu kavrama, murat edilenin dışında farklı anlamlar yüklendiği ve bu yüklemelerin ‘toplumsal değerlerimiz ve kabullerimizle mütenasip olmadığı ve toplumca kabul görmediği’ hususunun göz önünde bulundurulması gereği ortaya çıkmıştır.
The Certificate, which was prepared in 2015 and sent to all universities in order to prevent inequality against women, was framed according to the term ‘Gender Equality’. However, in this process, it emerged that the concept (gender equality) has different meanings other than the ones that are being implemented. We need to consider that these meanings are not appropriate for our values or accepted by our society.
Sarac went on to suggest ‘gender equality’ would be removed from the concept note and that universities should focus instead on ‘family':
Bugün itibarıyla tutum belgesinde ‘toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliği’ kavramı çıkarılarak güncelleme yapılmasına ilişkin çalışmalar son aşamasına gelmiş olup yakında üniversitelerimize duyurulacaktır. Kadın çalışmalarına yönelik derslerin müfredatını ‘Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği’ değil ‘Adalet Temelli Kadın Çalışmaları’ anlayışı içerisinde belirlemeye ve verilmekte olan ders, konferans ve seminerlerde Türk toplumunun aile kavramı başta olmak üzere sahip olduğu üstün değerlerin öne çıkarılmasına özen göstermesi gerekmektedir
From today, we are removing the term ‘gender equality’, revising (the certificate) and sending it to all universities again. It is necessary to use ‘Justice-Based Women's Studies’ rather than ‘Gender Equality Studies’.  We need to pay attention to the importance of Turkish society and the family concept in lectures and seminars.
Women organisations and social media users reacted with outrage to Sarac's comments that appeared to imperil the very future of academic fields like gender studies and implied the government sees women largely as homemakers.
Some Twitter users argued that YÖK was bowing to the pressure of conservative media, which has targeted the certificate as a “deviant” document that encourages same-sex relations and bears the imprint of a debauched West.
The University Women Collective, founded in 2007 by women university students, protested in front of YÖK's building on March 1.
One banner held up by a protester read: “Get your own social values, equality is ours.”
Üniversiteli kadınlar #YÖK önünde Yekta Saraç'a seslendi: “Tacizden, tecavüzden, şiddetten ibaret olan eril,toplumsal değerleriniz sizin olsun, eşitlikten kazanımlarımızdan vazgeçmiyoruz!” pic.twitter.com/jIxW3wVOH6
— Kadın Kolektifi (@kadinkolektifi) March 1, 2019
Women university students’ call to Yekta Sarac: Get your own social values that consist of harassment, rape, violence, we will not give up our gains in equality.
Another organisation, the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey made on February 26 an announcement demanding YÖK reconsider its decision, while on February 25, the Feminist and Queer Researchers Network published a statement condemning Saraç's words that “showed that the government would not give up patriarchal practices.”
Feminist ve Queer Araştırmacılar Ağı toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliği ile ilgili YÖK’ün açıklamasına dair bir metin yayınladı: “Toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliği ilkesiyle bilgi üretmeye devam edeceğiz!” pic.twitter.com/IE6Ivn8at6
— maçakızı (@felidae__) February 25, 2019
The Feminists and Queer Researchers Network has published an announcement on the statement of the Higher Education Council on gender equality: ’We will continue to produce knowledge through the principle of gender equality!’
Aslan's murder, while chilling in its particular barbarity, pointed to an alarming trend of lethal violence against women in Turkey that has only worsened in the years since.
We Will Stop Femicide Platform’s Gülsüm Kav claimed this month on Twitter that in the first two months of this year alone, 74 women were killed in Turkey.
That figure puts 2019 on course to reach the 440 femicides recorded for 2018, a total which represents a 45 percent increase on the figure for 2015, the year Aslan was killed.
Türkiye’de Ocak’ta 43 kadın, Şubat gibi kısacık bir ayda 31 kadın olmak üzere, 2 ayda 74 kadın öldürüldü…Biz; bu ülkenin kadınları, bir yas ilanı bile çok görülenleriz. Ama ahdettik; bizi yok sayanlara inat, kendi mücadelemizle kadın cinayetlerini durduracağız. https://t.co/aZvHTddGWo
— Gülsüm Kav (@GulsumKav) March 2, 2019
We have vowed, in spite of the ones who ignore us, that we will stop murders of women with our own struggle.

author: Sevgi Yagmur Bulut


text:
How Kyrgyz authorities almost banned a women’s rally on International Women’s Day · Global Voices
Aisha Jabbarova

A rally for International Women's Day in Bishkek. Photo by Aisha Jabbarova. Photo taken in front of the statue in Bishkek of Kurmanjan Datka, a Kyrgyz female clan leader born in the 19th century.
Authorities in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek walked back a hastily-imposed ban on a rally on International Women's Day which went ahead uninterrupted despite provocations from pro-patriarchy vigilantes.
Bishkek officials had briefly on March 6 imposed a ban on a rally that has been organised by the Bishkek Feminists Initiative (BFI) annually on March 8 since 2016 to honour International Women's Day — a public holiday in most ex-Soviet countries.
The capital's municipality initially cited “personal safety of citizens” as a reason for the ban and did not elaborate further.
But then officials surprisingly reversed the decision just a few hours later following coverage by local media and vigorous criticism on social networks like Facebook.
In the end, the rally saw around 150 people march in the city centre and call for an end to violence against women while urging equal rights between genders.
Participants also chanted slogans such as “end corruption”, “safety and diversity”, “clean city”, “schools without sexism”, “safe space for women”.
A rally for International Women's Day in Bishkek. Photo by Aisha Jabbarova. Largest banner reads: “I am proud of being transgender.”
The rally was attended by people from different walks of life and highlighted the diversity of society in Bishkek that nationalist groups — often operating with significant political support — have attempted to pin back in recent years.
Nazik Abylgazieva, an activist from the local Labrys LGBT organization said it was “important to attend the rally despite the pressure and attempts to ban it.”
“I joined the rally to demonstrate that I will not be silent, even though there are attempts to exclude me from all societal processes as a member of LGBT community,” Abylgazieva said.
A rally for International Women's Day in Bishkek. Photo by Aisha Jabbarova. One banner reads: “Every fourth woman is a victim of violence. What more is needed?”
International Women's Day remains one of the most important dates in the calendar in countries such as Kyrgyzstan, which was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union before independence in 1991.
But many feminists complain that the day has been reduced to a flower-giving ceremony, reinforcing patriarchal views of women as homemakers and shedding the emancipatory origins of the date.
I want you to remember where the 8th of March came from. It is a day for women and girls rights, human rights. It is not just a day when we pay more attention to women, it's a day, when all of us should stand for equal rights. #InternationalWomensDay #humanrights pic.twitter.com/kCv6HFm5dS
— Shamil (@shumbro) March 8, 2019
Reflecting this trend, Kyrgyzstan's neighbour to the south, Tajikistan, rebranded the day as Mother's Day in 2009. In the country's vast neighbour to the north, Kazakhstan, women have been effectively banned from holding March 8 rallies for several years now.
Long-reigning Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev regularly rings in the holiday with a barrage of sexist jokes.
A rally for International Women's Day in Bishkek. Photo by Aisha Jabbarova.
Thus the BFI's annual March 8 rally, taking place in the least authoritarian of the five Central Asian “Stans”, has political overtones.
This year, according to Bektour Iskender, the founder of the Kloop media outlet, who attended the rally, the demonstration was for “human rights, and the rights of all those discriminated against.”
Abylgaziyeva of Labrys echoed those sentiments in her interview with Global Voices:
Among my acquaintances are sex workers, HIV positive women, women who have history of drug abuse, doctors, teachers, actresses, musicians, artists, women of all backgrounds. However, we are all united by one thing – by the fact that we are being beaten, raped, and our rights are being limited. By attending the rally I am challenging myself as well as the system.
Guliaim Aiylchy, BFI's chairperson, told Global Voices that holding the rally was important in and of itself:
If we don't rally today, five years later, the right to (rally) will be taken away from us.
While Kyrgyzstan remains the most democratic country in its immediate region it is one full of worrying trends in terms of discrimination and violence against traditionally marginalised groups like the LGBT community.
Women's rights are also a battleground in a country where kidnaps for marriage and violence against women are prevalent and often go punished.
In recent years, socially conservative positions have been reinforced with tearful consequences thanks to groups like Kyrk Choro, a patriot movement that had pledged to break up this year's March 8 rally on the eve of holiday.
Kyrk Choro shot to notoriety in 2014 thanks to video-taped raids on nightclubs and karaoke bars where the group shamed local sex workers for fraternising with non-Kyrgyz clients.
Members said they had notified the municipality of their intention to break up the rally, a fact that may have moved authorities to ban the event to begin with.
A rally for International Women's Day in Bishkek. Photo by Aisha Jabbarova. One of the banners reads: “The best present you can give me is my rights.”
On the day itself, individual members of the group showed up in small numbers — seemingly only to give flowers to participants. The event was well policed.
But the presence of so-called ‘patriot’ undercurrents in society has left many already vulnerable groups feeling more targeted than ever.
A transgender woman named Lola told Global Voices on the eve of the rally that attending the event was important “to be visible, to be heard”, but that she was not sure whether she would join the gathering.
I don’t know whether it is safe for me or not. It is difficult for us [transgender people] to go out. We don’t trust anyone any more. We are attacked frequently. Often times there is a risk for us. Some people don’t consider me a human being.

author: Aisha Jabbarova


text:
How an Uyghur activist felt the long arm of the Chinese Communist party, in Canada · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

The man who filmed Rukiye Turdush was captured on video as he left. Youtube screen capture.
The following post is originally written by Holmes Chan and published on Hong Kong Free Press on 3 of March, 2019. The trimmed version is republished on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement.
For two decades Rukiye Turdush thought she had left China behind but, last month, the country finally caught up with her.
The Uyghur-Canadian activist was speaking at Ontario’s McMaster University on February 11 when she was interrupted by a shouting Chinese student. She was addressing the plight of over a million Muslim Uighurs, who have been detained en masse alongside other ethnic minorities by the Chinese government in Xinjiang and allegedly subjected to human rights abuses.
What began as a brief confrontation soon hit the national headlines, after it was revealed that Chinese students at the university were in contact with Beijing’s embassy in Canada.
For Turdush, 48, the impact is also personal: the incident brought back memories of her traumatic departure from China in the 1990s, and cast doubt on the future of the Uyghur community in Canada which she has helped shape.
Turdush’s journey to Canada was prompted in part by her brother’s death in 1992. At the time, Uyghurs in Xinjiang – also known locally as East Turkestan – were on the receiving end of aggressive population and economic policies enacted by the Communist Party of China, which prioritised Han Chinese interests to an extreme. She explained:
The people were dissatisfied with [Han Chinese immigration] because they see the dominance of land and economic segregation…My brother protested with a few friends… I heard later on that hundreds of soldiers came fighting those five, six protesters and my brother didn’t run away and was killed on the scene.
Just before she emigrate to Canada in 1999, she had encountered another brush with China’s discriminatory and abusive policies towards Uyghurs.
On the night before her flight, she was carrying her infant son and found herself repeatedly turned away from hotels in Beijing because of her ethnicity. Eventually, she found a place to stay but was abruptly woken up in the early hours by soldiers in uniform.
“Chinese soldiers – not the police – burst into the hotel room and my baby started to scream,” she said. Soldiers held her at gunpoint, searched the room and then evicted her, she said. “Even now, many years later, if I hear loud noises at night I wake up, I’m shaking.”
After arriving in Canada, Turdush studied international relations and social work, eventually getting a licence as a counsellor. Nowadays she works as a part-time social worker, and also spends time on activism, research and community-building.
She said the Uyghur community in Canada used to focus on culture rather than politics – but that all changed in 2017,
Since 2017 [the Chinese government] started to arrest everyone in East Turkestan so, right now, everybody – everybody – is involved in politics… even those who don’t usually speak out against China have found their extended family being targeted. I asked my dad, how many of them are inside, and he said, you have to count how many are outside, because all of them are inside.
Turdush’s appearance at McMaster University in Ontario came immediately after the emergence of #MeTooUyghur, an online campaign that demands accountability for missing family members.
The Chinese government had just put out a video debunking the reported “death” of notable Uyghur musician Abdurehim Heyit, and the Uyghur community was hoping to pressure China into more transparency.
Online activism was not new to Turdush, as she had been making YouTube videos on the plight of Uyghurs for years. She also had experience with speaking engagements, so when students from McMaster University invited her to a campus talk, she agreed.
Her presentation at McMaster on February 11 was an overview of the mass incarceration of Uyghurs in Xinjiang – citing satellite photos and other academic and journalistic sources. During her talk, Turdush said she spotted a Han Chinese audience member, who she believed to be a student, filming her and making faces.
She said she did not object to being filmed as it was not a closed-door event, but the man had a “sarcastic smile” and “hateful expression” that left her uncomfortable.
When it was time for the hour-long question-and-answer session, she asked the Chinese student if he had any questions, to which he said “no.” Turdush then asked the man what he thought about the presentation.
“He just [repeated] two words: ‘you, McMaster,'” Turdush recalled, which she took to mean that the man disapproved of her speaking at the university.
“I said, ‘You see, this is the typical Chinese behaviour that is controlled or brainwashed by the government’… and then he said the f-word,” she added. After the man left, Turdush resumed the talk.
A Washington Post report later published interactions within a WeChat group of Chinese students at McMaster, where a user known as “Mr Shark” drew the students’ attention to a brochure of Turdush’s talk.
According to the report, people in the chat expressed condemnation and disbelief, with some saying that they should contact the Chinese consulate. However, Mr Shark told the Post:
We study-abroad students don’t know anything about politics, we just know our personal interest and our sense of belonging to our nation… If other people hurt us, smear us, we have to counter-attack.
The day after the event, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association – along with some other McMaster student groups – issued a joint statement decrying the talk as “promoting ethnic hatred” and separatism. It also asked that the university uphold its “duty of supervision” and ensure that, in the future, Chinese students’ “dignity won’t be infringed.”
Turdush said she had strong suspicions about the Chinese government’s involvement, which stemmed from how closely the students’ statement resembled the official line:
The language of the statement has a lot of echoes of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s usually the CCP that uses that kind of language, like: the people are happy over there [in Xinjiang], they have a good relationship, living in harmony.
The Chinese embassy in Canada denied any involvement, but nevertheless praised the students’ actions as “just and patriotic.” It further defended the students’ behaviour on the grounds of free speech.
The incident may have started as a debate over free speech, but as it turned out, there was also the looming threat of physical action.
The National Post in Canada reported that a person in the Chinese students’ WeChat group tried to identify Turdush’s son, who she had previously said was a student at McMaster. The user wrote: “Find out about her son.”
A McMaster University spokesperson has declined to confirm whether Turdush’s son was a student, but said that “student health and well-being is a top priority for the university.”
As the media spotlight fades following the incident, Turdush said that the university has a duty to follow up on the incident, if for no other reason than to ensure that its standards for academic freedom were not compromised by Chinese influence.
It is important to pay attention to China’s efforts to export authoritarianism, and push back its attempts to legitimise human rights abuses against Uyghurs, she said.


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March 7th: The day Gandhi preached non-violent revolution in Myanmar · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

A photograph of the last meeting between U Nu and Mahatma Gandhi, taken at Birla House in Delhi, India on December 4, 1947. Photo and caption from The Irrawaddy.
This article by Wei Yan Aung is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule, arrived in Myanmar on March 7, 1929, to collect donations from Indian nationals for the Handloom Association of India, and share his experiences with the Burmese people.
He addressed people at Jubilee Hall and Fytche Square (now Mahabandoola Park) in Yangon. He held talks with Buddhist monks at Shwedagon Pagoda:
I am glad to find you telling me that the hponegyis (Buddhist monks) are leading the political movement in Burma, but you have a serious responsibility upon your shoulders when you undertake leading a political battle.
History shows that the clergy has not always interfered with the political matters to the benefit of mankind. Very often unworthy ambition has moved the clergy of the world as it has moved unscrupulous men to take part in politics, and if now you hponegyis aspire to lead the political movement of this, one of the fairest lands on the face of the earth, you are shouldering a tremendous responsibility.
In his two-week visit, he visited several towns in central and lower Myanmar. In Mandalay, he said:
In India it is a common saying that the way to swaraj (which means independence for India) is through Mandalay. The British government has taught you too a great lesson by incarcerating one of India’s great sons here.
The way to swaraj is the way of suffering—indeed no country has come to its own without suffering.
Indian political leader Subhas Chandra Bose was imprisoned in October 1924 in Mandalay for two and half years due to his defiance of colonial rule. During his visit, Gandhi said:
I have no other and no better guidance to offer to you than to commend to your attention the general principle of non-violence, in other words, self-purification.
He wrapped up his third visit to Myanmar on March 24. Prior to the 1929 visit, he had been in Myanmar in 1902 and 1915.
Gandhi’s preaching of non-violence later influenced Burmese State Councellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in her fight for democracy. Gandhi Hall and Gandhi Hospital became significant places in Myanmar’s political and healthcare systems. U Nu, who became Myanmar’s first prime minister, paid a visit to Gandhi in New Delhi in 1947 before his assassination the following year.

author: The Irrawaddy


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Netizen Report: Activists reject EU plans to pre-censor copyright violations, ‘terrorist’ content · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

March 2, 2019 demonstration in Berlin against Article 13 of the new EU Copyright Directive. Photo by Tim Lüddemann, (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)
The Advox Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in technology and human rights around the world. This report covers news and events from February 29 – March 8.
An estimated 5,000 people braved freezing temperatures in Berlin on March 2 to protest a proposed EU copyright rule that could radically shift the dynamics of posting and sharing content online.
The latest draft of the EU Copyright Directive would require internet platforms like YouTube to install “upload filters” — a technical mechanism that would block users from uploading copyright-protected content, effectively imposing a system of “prior censorship” on major internet and social media platforms.
Demonstrators carried colorful signs reading “We are not bots,” “Diesel filter instead of upload filter,” “Save the Internet” and chanted the lyrics of the song “Wir sind keine bots” (We are not bots) made by YouTuber Willboy specifically in opposition to the provision. The song was released on Friday, a day before the demonstration, and became a viral hit with over half a million views in just a few days.
Whether or not the Copyright Directive is approved, digital rights advocates will have more battles to fight in the near term, when it comes to policy proposals seeking automated technical solutions to online content challenges.
A European Commission committee tasked with addressing “terrorist content” online has proposed a similar solution that would obligate online platforms to begin using automated tools to “detect, identify and expeditiously remove or disable access to terrorist content.”
The draft regulation demands more aggressive deletion of “terrorist content” (which remains vaguely defined) and quick turnaround times on its removal. But it does not establish a special court or other judicial mechanisms that can offer guidance to companies struggling to assess complex online content.
Instead, it would force hosting service providers to use automated tools to prevent the dissemination of “terrorist content” online. This would require companies to use the kind of system that YouTube has already put into place voluntarily, which has been known to censor documentation of human rights violations and war crimes.
Both this EU proposal and the Copyright Directive put a lot of faith in these tools, showing little concern for the consequences they may carry for free expression, journalism, and public information.
At a public conference in January, Evelyn Austin, from the Netherlands-based digital rights organization Bits of Freedom, expressed deep concern about policies that move in the direction of automated prior censorship:
We see as inevitable a situation in which there is a filter for copyrighted content, a filter for allegedly terrorist content, a filter for possibly sexually explicit content, one for suspected hate speech and so on, creating a digital information ecosystem in which everything we say, even everything we try to say, is monitored.
Dozens of human rights activists and journalists in Egypt have suffered phishing attacks since the beginning of this year, an investigation by Amnesty International has found. The emails used a technique called OAuth Phishing, which relies on malicious third-party applications that deceive the user into granting access to their accounts.
The attacks coincided with a number of political events, including French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit, and happened amid President al-Sisi’s intensifying crackdown on civil society.
After more than five years in jail, Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan, was released from prison in Egypt on March 4. Shawkan was detained in August 2013 as he was photographing the Rabaa El Adaweya sit-in, in which supporters of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi gathered to protest a military coup that ended his presidency on July 3 that same year. Egyptian security forces dispersed the sit-in and killed at least 817 people and injured many more, according to Human Rights Watch.
Shawkan, who was working for Demotix at the time of his arrest, spent almost four years in pre-trial detention before his sentencing.
Also on March 4, in Algeria, a Skikda court reduced the prison sentence of blogger Merzoug Touati and set him free. Touati has been in jail since January 2017 for reporting on anti-austerity protests. He was sentenced to ten years in jail in May 2018, after he was found guilty of providing “intelligence to agents of a foreign power likely to harm Algeria's military or diplomatic position or its essential economic interests,” for conducting and posting online an interview with an Israeli official.
His release comes amid an ongoing protest movement in the country. Since mid-February, Algerians have been demonstrating in the streets, protesting the country’s economic decline and demanding that Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika withdraws from upcoming national elections.
Digital activist Sharofiddin Gadoev is back in Europe again, after being abducted to Tajikistan, seemingly with the cooperation of security officials in Russia, where he traveled to last month.
A member of Tajikistan’s digitally active, perennially harassed foreign-based opposition, Gadoev appeared in a bizarre video on February 15 stating that he had arrived in Tajikistan of his own free will and was cooperating with authorities. When diplomats from the Netherlands – where Gadoev has asylum status – inquired about the activist’s well-being, Tajikistan’s officials confirmed he had been arrested for unspecified crimes.
Luckily, however, Gadoev had previously made another video in which he asked supporters to disregard anything he might say in the event that he was forcibly extradited to Tajikistan, confirming that he had had no plans to travel there. The release of this eerily prescient video on February 19, combined with pressure from Western diplomats and international rights organizations, appeared to prompt his release on March 2 by Tajik authorities – as dramatic and unexpected as his capture.
As military tensions between Pakistan and India have soared in the aftermath of the deadly February 14 bombing in Pulwama, India and subsequent retaliations on both sides of the border, disinformation about the conflict has overwhelmed the internet. Fact-checking groups in both countries have been working to keep up with an onslaught of falsified information and doctored images. Writing for the New York Times, Farhad Manjoo described the online media response:
Whether you got your news from outlets based in India or Pakistan during the conflict, you would have struggled to find your way through a miasma of lies…
Many of the lies were directed and weren’t innocent slip-ups in the fog of war but efforts to discredit the enemy, to boost nationalistic pride, to shame anyone who failed to toe a jingoistic line. The lies fit a pattern, clamoring for war, and on both sides they suggested a society that had slipped the bonds of rationality and fallen completely to the post-fact order.
Tanzanian authorities placed independently-owned newspaper and news site The Citizen under a seven-day suspension on February 27, alleging that the outlet had violated prohibitions on publishing false information and statistics. The allegation stemmed from a February 23 story about the falling value of the Tanzanian shilling.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, International Federation of Journalists, and the Federation of African Journalists all condemned the suspension.
Rights organizations are petitioning to stop the rollout of Kenya's new national digital ID register, arguing it violates Kenyans rights to privacy, equality, non-discrimination, and public participation.
The National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS) merges several different registers, including those that collect information about births and deaths, immigration status, passport details, and driving history. It also gives the government the authority to collect the GPS location of a person's home, and biometric data such as DNA. The law makes no provisions for the protection of all this data.
A law introduced in Ecuador's legislature would penalize internet users for sharing “false” information on social media. In addition, the Law on the Responsible Use of Social Networks would allow victims of “abusive publications” — defined as posts that use information from someone's profile without permission or that damage a person's honor, dignity, good name or privacy — to file legal complaints against their author.
On a better note, the law would also require any individuals or companies that want to capture and store personal data to get users’ permission first.
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, L. Finch, Talal Raza, Chris Rickleton and Taisa Sganzerla contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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One year without internet in Chad: Citizens have been offline since March 2018 · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

The National Centre of Culture in N'Djamena, Chad. Photo by Notrchad. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
For nearly one year's time, citizens in Chad have been unable to access the internet, in spite of the UN Human Rights Council resolution of 1 July 2016 condemning any government that intentionally prevents or disrupts online access.
Service providers attribute the disruption to technical problems, but organizations like Internet without Borders say that the government has ordered mobile phone companies to cut internet access. It appears that the government is attempting to muzzle citizens’ freedom of expression and to prevent the free circulation of information.
In Chad, the number of citizens with internet access is proportionally the lowest in Africa. On average, 37.4% of people in the continent have access to the internet. In Chad that rate is only 5%.
Pablo Michelot, editor in chief of l'Encre Noir, a current affairs website for the black community, addressed the subject in a recent blogpost titled “The world is a village from which Chadians are excluded”. He commented:
Depuis près d’un an maintenant, les réseaux sociaux sont verrouillés dans la République du Tchad suite à une recommandation du pays d’Afrique centrale de reconduire le Président Idriss Déby au-delà de 2030. Selon le dirigeant du pays en 2016 “le Tchad ne peut pas se concentrer sur un système qu’un changement de pouvoir mettrait en difficulté.”
For more than a year now, social networks have been barred in the Republic of Chad, following the country's move to keep President Idriss Déby in office beyond 2030. In 2016, the president said that “Chad cannot focus on a system that runs into difficulty when power changes hands.”
The number of social media users is rising in other African countries, but in Chad it is a different story. In the twelve months to January 2019, social media use has fallen by 150,000 users, or 54%.
A poster calling on the government of Chad to “stop internet censorship” and “reopen access to social networks”. Reproduced with permission from the Africtivistes blog.
Human rights activists say they are the real targets of the shutdown. The NGO Frontline Defenders commented:
There is a systematic ban on protests conducted by those whom the government sees as critical of any of its policies. Civil society actors and trade unionists holding unauthorized protests have repeatedly been the subject of police brutality.
…There is frequent interference with the work of journalists, especially those reporting or commenting on human rights issues. Freedom of expression is curtailed and on several occasions in the past five years, .. amidst tense political moments.
On 19 January 2019, Internet Without Borders launched a global campaign with the hashtag #Maalla_Gatetou, which means “why pull the plug?” in Chadian Arabic. The online campaign, coupled with marches in Paris and N’Djamena, aims to show the level of anger towards social media censorship among citizens.
Abdelkerim Yacoub Koundougoumi, Head of Central African Section for Internet Without Borders explains:
La cyberbrutalité et le verrouillage de l’espace numérique par les autorités tchadiennes démontrent clairement la montée des pratiques autoritaires sur l'Internet. Si rien n’est fait, les bienfaits d’Internet pour le progrès démocratique dans le monde, notamment en Afrique, seront réduits à néant
Online repression and digital lockdowns clearly show that the Chadian authorities are taking an increasingly repressive approach to the internet. If nothing is done, we stand to lose the democratic progress that the internet has secured in countries all over the world, especially in Africa.”
Internet users have taken to twitter to express their anger. Here are some recent tweets on the hashtag #Malla-Guatétou:
#Maalla_Gatétou #Tchad #Shutdown #SocialNetworks
Si je comprends bien , l'impact des réseaux est tellement puissant que face aux kalachnikovs meurtrières de Déby,on trouve le combat déloyal ?
Kalachnikov 0 # clavier 3
Voilà le score du match.@KOUNDOUGOUMI @CrieurP #africtivistes
— Crieur Public (@CrieurP) January 19, 2019
If I understand correctly, the impact of social networks is so powerful that they are seen as having an unfair advantage over Déby’s murderous Kalashnikovs? Kalashnikovs 0 Keyboards 3. That's the match score.”
ils ont compris qu'ils ne peuvent tenir le peuple en joue pendant tres longtemps. le CLIC et plus puissant que leur CLAQUE !
— ABDELKERIM YACOUB KOUNDOUGOUMI (@KOUNDOUGOUMI) January 19, 2019
They have understood that they cannot take aim at the people for long. CLICKS are more powerful than their CLOUT.”
Cela fait plus de 300 jours que les tchadiens lambda sont privés d'internet. Les dirigeants africains doivent savoir qu'internet est un outil de travail, donc ça sert à rien de le couper en essayant de faire taire les gens qui sont contre leur politique. #Maalla_Gatetou pic.twitter.com/OCLzzKPdm9
— Mohamed Ag Allou?? (@Medall333) January 26, 2019
Ordinary Chadians have been deprived of internet for more than 300 days. African leaders have to know that the internet is a tool for work, so there is no point in shutting it down to try to shut up people who oppose their policies. #Maalla_Gatetou”
Campagne contre la censure d’internet au Tchad. C’est bientôt 10 mois que le pouvoir a privé les tchadiens de réseaux sociaux. https://t.co/yh7mGfDj2b #maalla_gatetou pic.twitter.com/CwRPmta1Vc
— Africanhiphop (@africanhiphop) January 28, 2019
Campaign against internet censorship in Chad. The government has been preventing Chadians from accessing social networks for nearly ten months.
http://www.voice4thought.org/campagne-contre-la-censure-dinternet-au-tchad/… #maalla_gatetou “
Observers across Africa are concerned by the situation in Chad. Writing on tsa-algerie.com, Algeria-based blogger Yacine Babouche, wrote:
Le sujet est important et va au delà du Tchad. De Nombreux Etats africains ont désormais systématiquement recours à cette forme de censure. L'histoire d'Internet a montré que l'Afrique est un laboratoire des pires pratiques lorsqu'il s'agit de violer les libertés chèrement acquises.
Ne pas laisser passer au Tchad, c'est ne pas laisser passer ailleurs.
It is an important issue that reaches beyond Chad. Many countries in Africa are now using this form of censorship systematically. The history of the internet has shown that Africa is the testing ground for the bad practices that violate hard-won freedoms.
Not letting it happen in Chad means not letting it happen elsewhere.”
The rates for connecting to the internet in Chad are also among the highest in the continent, rising to as much as 20 times the rates in other countries in the region.
In February, Internet Without Borders began the second phase of their global campaign against social media censorship in Chad (#Acte2).
A week of action to mark one whole year without internet access will take place from 19 to 28 March. The NGO  posted on Facebook this video message appeal by Bintou Datt, a values coach for women in business:
Hello, my name is Bintou Datt, creator of women's values, alter-globalist activist and pan-africanist. We are the people, we are young, we have fundamental human rights. I'm appealing to young people in Chad. Let's rise together to defend our rights, to defend what is lawfully and rightfully ours. Today, with the disappearance of these young people from social media, we feel cut off from our friends, from our families, from ourselves and our inspiration. We cannot communicate and yet it is the simplest thing. It is the most basic of rights we can claim, but they cut us off from our friends. So dear young people, dear sisters, dear men and women, young and old, let's rise together to lift this censorship and say “Stop. That's enough. No more.” End the censorship of the young people of Chad. Long live freedom of expression. Long live international solidarity. Long live solidarity among the peoples, which, for me, is the only way. Let's rise up together. Let's take what is rightfully ours, let's take what is our right. Access to information. Let's rise up together. Hand in hand. Let's fight to take back what belongs to us. Let's fight to take back control of our lives. That will not happen without access to information or access to communication. Let's rise up to speak with one voice. The young people in Chad. Thank you. End censorship.

author: Abdoulaye Bah


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Russia sends an official implicated in a sexual harassment scandal to the 2019 UN Commission on the Status of Women · Global Voices
RuNet Echo

Leonid Slutsky representing Russia at the 2017 OSCE PA winter meeting // OSCE PA Flickr under CC2.0
Russia will send a delegation to the 2019 UN Commission on the Status of Women, to be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on March 11 to 22  — but the leader of said delegation has raised a few eyebrows.
Leonid Slutsky, a member of the far-right populist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) in the State Duma, has been at the center of a scandal since March 2018, when several women reporters working in parliament accused him of sexual harassment.
Хватающий журналисток за лобки депутат Леонид Слуцкий расскажет в ООН о положении российских женщин и за счет бюджета прокатится в Нью-Йорк pic.twitter.com/zAk4uBOk3d
— Рогозин-на-орбите (@LyapunovS) 8 марта 2019 г.
Leonid Slutsky, a parliament member prone to grabbing women reporters by the crotch, will be reporting in the UN about the status of women in Russia during his taxpayer-paid trip to New York
The Russian delegation includes four women representing the main parties in the Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian legislature. Leonid Slutsky (pronounced SLOO-tski, not to be confused his namesake, the football coach) has been a legislator since 2000 and now chairs the Duma’s foreign relations committee. As such, he is mandated to represent Russia at various international parliamentary assemblies and other events and forums.
While only three women came out with public accusations against him, it was alleged that there were more victims who didn’t wish to come forward out of fear of retraumatization or the general desire to forget the incident and stay out of the story.
One of the accusers, Farida Rustamova of BBC Russian, had a tape of her encounter with Slutsky. During an interview in his office at the Duma, Slutsky made several lewd remarks towards Rustamova and then proceeded to grab her by the genitals despite her vocal protests. She presented a transcript of the tape at the Duma's ethics committee — which refused even to consider the evidence against Slutsky and cleared him of any wrongdoing.
When it became clear that Slutsky would not be held responsible for his alleged actions in any way, dozens of independent Russian news outlets declared a boycott of the Duma, pulling out their reporting and pledging to withhold any coverage of the parliament not connected to the harassment scandal. However, the protest eventually fizzled out, and most of the publishing houses resumed their coverage, with some reassigning women journalists who reported not feeling safe in the parliament’s halls to different beats.
The independent Journalists’ and Media Workers’ Union filed a petition with over 700 signatures to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly demanding Slutsky’s credentials to be revoked, only to be told that it wasn’t up to the assembly to decide who represents a certain country. And since there is no law in Russia under which Slutsky could be charged with sexual harassment in the workplace, it’s unlikely that any other international organization will review his membership there, either. It’s also unlikely that such a law will be passed any time soon: only one woman legislator of the Duma raised the possibility of resurrecting a 15-year-old bill that would criminalize sexual harassment in the workplace, and there hasn’t been any progress since.
It’s notable that Oksana Pushkina, the only Russian parliament member to support other women accusing her colleague of harassment, was not included in the delegation to the 2019 UN Commission on the Status of Women. Instead, it’ll be Tamara Pletnyova from the Communist party, who vocally rallied behind Slutsky during the scandal. Pletnyova is known for her conservative views and has made a number of controversial remarks recently: she advised Russian women against interracial sexual relations during the 2018 World Cup and said gays were “sick” and needed to be “cured” during an interview on national television.
Россия набрала 73,1 балла из 100 в рейтинге равенства прав мужчин и женщин. Она находится на предпоследнем месте среди постсоветских стран. Хуже ситуация только в Узбекистане pic.twitter.com/EG8Cf2WHhz
— Настоящее Время (@CurrentTimeTv) 8 марта 2019 г.
Russia scored 73.1 points out of 100 in the gender inequality index. It stands next to last among all post-Soviet countries, with only Uzbekistan faring worse.
Considering Russia’s far-from-stellar record in protecting women’s human rights and ensuring gender equality, Slutsky’s appointment as the head of a national delegation to a global forum on the status of women can only be regarded as an act of cruel trolling.

author: RuNet Echo