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A Russian ‘Lady Cop’: Part Two · Global Voices
Olga Borisova

Photo: Instagram, edited by Kevin Rothrock.
Three years ago, Olga Borisova decided to join the St. Petersburg police force. Eighteen years old and, by her own description, a petite, fashionable young woman, she wasn’t your average cadet. After a little more than a year, she quit, and has since become an active member of the Russian democratic opposition. Earlier this month, Borisova wrote for the website Batenka.ru about her experiences as a police officer. RuNet Echo is publishing her text, translated into English, in three parts. This is the second installment. Read the first one here and the third one here. You can find her full story here in Russian.
“Remember, you don’t have holidays. Holidays aren’t for the police.” They gave me a uniform, and I stopped coming to work dressed in new Reeboks and a pink jacket. My dad drove me to the warehouse where I was issued my uniform. I’d never have been able to carry back home all those things myself. It was all on iron hangers that were ice-cold to the touch.
There was a parade uniform, a winter uniform, and a summer uniform. Dark blue. My favorite color. I ended up having to buy a lot myself at the commissary. (They didn’t make an extra small for police officers.) I brought it all home. I tried on the “vole”—the patrol-guard uniform: a dark-blue shirt, pants, and ankle boots. I took a picture of myself, posted it on Instagram, and wrote, “Hiya.”
Приветики
A photo posted by Борисова. (@borisssova) on
“VODKA AND ORANGE JUICE, WELCOME TO THE FORCE, YOUS,” the section commander told me. When someone got their first paycheck, they had to buy everyone drinks.
They called the two-story patrol-guard building “base.” On the first floor, there was just a watchman. On the second, there were offices and a large hall, where we presented our reports about completed assignments. There was also a rec room with a green leather couch and a refrigerator. People brought oatmeal and purée from home. The main thing people did there was drink and have all kinds of parties.
Sergeant Valya used to go around in denim miniskirts and she drank a lot. She was something of an assistant manager there. She gave me my pair of handcuffs, my rubber stick, and my service book. The stick attaches to the belt on your waist, but the stick was so long that it looked pretty ridiculous on someone my height. It almost dragged on the ground. I had to go to the commissary myself and buy one a little shorter.
A photo posted by Борисова. (@borisssova) on
So I became a junior sergeant. There were two gold bars on my uniform’s shoulder straps. The police academy admits cadets every three months, so you just start working, if you’ve finished basic training, but admission isn’t yet underway. When you’re just starting out, you’re very shy. A representative of law enforcement should, I thought, display a certain severity. But I didn’t have it.
“Police Junior Sergeant Borisova, your documents,” my partner Andrei would say, teaching me how to address people. “Now your turn. You’ll get it.” I imagined that I was playing some role.
“OLYA, YOU’RE A COP. YOU’RE A COP,” I told myself, and maybe thanks to some experience in theater, it worked.
“You are committing an administrative offense,” I said as confidently as possible, moving on to the next happy group of people drinking beer in the subway.
You’ve got to grasp that you have the right to demand things legally; you have the right to detain people. Now you are a representative of the authorities. Time passes and you get used to it. You start to feel more confident. You feel a duty to “maintain order” not just at work, but in your private life, too.
I wasn’t afraid to walk around outside at night: I knew all the “boys in blue” who were working the various beats, and I knew that at any moment I could call them. I knew that I wouldn’t be without protection. I think the moment you put on the uniform and feel the authority, that’s when the “professional deformation” starts. They can make you work overtime, and you get used to the idea that you have to do it. You can be standing outside at your post in the rain, feeling like a stray dog, but you keep working, putting up with all of it, because that’s what you’ve got to do.
Patrol officers go down into the subway to warm up.
“I swear to endure the hardships associated with law-enforcement service, to be an honorable, brave, and vigilant member of the force, and to safeguard all state and official secrets.” You knew where you were going.
If you work the day shift, you report to your unit at 7:30 a.m., and change into your cop uniform. Then everyone goes together to headquarters, arriving by 8 a.m., where you retrieve your service weapon. The captain then reads out a summary of the previous night’s patrols, while you take notes in your service book. Overnight, somebody stole a bike, so you write down the color, the bike’s model and series, the full name of the person who filed the police report, and the case number. Then everyone is dismissed, and you head for your station, or your beat. You can take lunch whenever. When you take lunch, you jump on the radio and tell the other on-duty officers. Every police station is linked to its own routes and there are clear boundaries.
Finally, you make it to your precinct. There it is—your territory where you’ve been charged with maintaining the public order.
Then some drunk in custody, or better yet a minor brought into the station because he was caught smoking in school, walks up and says, “Cops are shit. You should all be burned.”
I can’t even count how many times I heard people tell me, “Hey you, bitch, you got nothing better to do?”
If you work “on the ground” (meaning, if you’re working outside), you represent the police and are its very face. From talking to you, people will form their opinions about law enforcement. And I liked being an exception for some people. I was never rude to people in police custody, even when they said to my face that I should be set on fire for being a cop.
Sometimes, you stand outside in the rain for 14 hours, and then you go inside a store to get warm, because you’ve lost feeling in your hands and your nose from the cold. You’re ready to curse everything to hell, but then somebody smiles at you, and thanks you for helping them with directions to some place. And things become easier again.
We would go into the subway to warm up, rubbing the blood back into our feet, while sitting on the stairs, like a bunch of bums. I didn’t have any children waiting for me back home, but those who did explained that their mom or their dad had the same kind of work. On New Year’s, May Day, International Women’s Day, yes and even the Day of the Police, I was working at the station. In moments like that, you remember why you took the job. You remember what it’s all for. And it’s not the uniform, or the ability to make “lawful demands” of people. It sounds corny, but the truth is that I was there because it brought me pleasure to help people.
I drank a lot of Nescafe “3-in-1” coffees and ate a lot of muffins. There was a little store that had pastries just outside my precinct, which was tucked away in a typical Petersburg courtyard. Nearby there was a subway station that was a big thoroughfare for people—especially non-locals. In the middle of the day, guys would often come around and park somewhere around the corner and start “earning some dough.” They’d check the documents of anybody who didn’t look Slavic. If they saw anything that looked fake, they put the person in the back of their patrol car.
“No sweat, buddy. Now you’re going home. Where ya from? Tajikistan? Wanna go home? No? Well what are we gonna do, then? You got any suggestions?”
Later, one of these “cops” told me, “My little Marina has a bday coming up, and I’ve got to get her something, but payday isn’t anytime soon.” They thought Andrei, my older partner, who never took any bribes, was simply no good at the job.
You’ve probably never seen how cops cry.
With every day on the force, I came to realize that there was even less justice within the police than there is on the streets. I saw how they abuse both the honest and the dishonest cops simply “because they could.” It was a display of intoxicating power. It’s the opposite of how they lure you in, and smile so you’ll stay. There aren’t enough staff, they say. “There’s a shortage.” Someone is on vacation leave. Another person is taking sick time. Somebody’s on maternity leave.
The head of my unit was a 27-year-old senior lieutenant who we called “Sweetie.” He had this nickname on Vkontakte and among the staff sergeants, who all hated him. I heard a story about how, just a few months after his son was born, he burst into a bordello completely drunk, and lost all his documents in the mess. Afterwards, Sweetie started to “jerk me off”—that’s a term in the police. It means he started criticizing everything I did.
Once, after a station inspection, he ripped into me about the loose stitching on my service book. (Issuing stitched service books, incidentally, is the sergeant major’s job.) He claimed that I undid the threading myself. Then he left, and I went out back with a colleague and started crying, not understanding why he was yelling at me.
Забудьте вашего супермена гейского, встречайте русского полицейского!
A photo posted by Борисова. (@borisssova) on
After one of these encounters, I called the senior lieutenant a piece of shit in the presence of his assistant. Naturally, he reported me. And that evening I got a phone call from a not-very-sober senior lieutenant, who was trying to understand why he was a piece of shit. I told him that I didn’t understand why he behaved the way he did. “You’re not supposed to understand anything,” he answered. “You’re supposed to take orders.”
“Why have you detained so few people?”
“Because there’s no quota system in Russia.”
For an answer like that, they’ll cite you for a broken locker in the next inspection, and the next thing you know a report is sitting on the senior lieutenant’s desk. A couple of reports like that, and it’s “goodbye, duty to the Motherland.” Because there’s no quota system in Russia.
Other than the usual arrests, like detaining somebody in the subway for walking around with an open can of beer, there was one time I took part in a controlled purchase. It was a methadone prostitute named Katya with a decent sense of humor. We moved in and detained her just as she dug out the “stash.” Then she decided to “phone a friend” [and snitch on her supplier]. She didn’t do any time, and a couple of months later her kidneys gave out and she died.
There was also one time when we rescued an elderly sick woman who’d fallen out of her walker and lost consciousness inside her locked apartment.
And there was another time when we responded to a fire alarm, cordoning off a building. They evacuated the burning building, and it was our job to make sure that nobody got past the police tape. Don’t let anybody in, where it’s dangerous. I saw a woman begging to be let across. She was nearly blind, and she kept crying, “My dog is still in there. I need to go back for her.” She started writhing around hysterically, and begging on her knees. We needed to calm her down, so I decided to find out what kind of dog it was. It turns out it was a dachshund—a brown one. So I went inside behind the tape and Tanya the scared dachshund lept into my arms, and I returned her to her owner.
There was one time we couldn’t save a man. He’d taken out a big loan for his business, and then he couldn’t pay it back. He wrote a note and went out onto the stairwell balcony, hopping the fence. We tried to talk him down “from below” with a megaphone. I wasn’t there, but I followed it on the radio. I listened to a conversation between two on-duty officers:
“So what’s going on over there?”
“We’re talking.”
“Got it.”
Twenty minutes later, I heard this:
“Now what’s going on?”
“He jumped.”
His wife is still paying off his debts. In the police report, his suicide was recorded as “fell from a great height.”


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Amazingly Restored 3D Stereographic Images of Japan · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

“Broomseller. 1892-96 large, hand-tinted albumen image by T. ENAMI. Catalog Number 584. From Flickr user Okinawa Soba (Rob). Image license: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Prolific Flickr user Okinawa Soba has posted a large collection of restored and colorized images he says were “found amongst boxes of junk that are otherwise wasting away in a dark corner of my room.” In reality, Okinawa Soba (a Flickr handle used by ‘Rob’, an American resident of Okinawa) has scoured second-hand shops and antique markets to find prints of pioneering Japanese photographer T. Enami.
Hundreds of restored T. Enami prints are available in 20 collections of photos on Okinawa Soba's Flickr profile; in fact, the collection is so large that he recommends starting out by looking through the photos and descriptions at a sister site, www.t-enami.org/services. The photos depict postcard scenes and 3D stereoscopic images from the Meiji Era of the late 19th century to the Taisho Era of the 1920s. Stereoscopy is a technique used to create a three-dimensional effect with an image, generating the illusion of depth to a flat image. There is even a collection devoted to T. Enami himself, and his studio.
The T. Enami Photographic Studio on Benten Street, Yokohama ca.1892-3. From Flickr user Okinawa Soba (Rob). Image license: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
T. Enami started practicing photography in Japan in the final decades of the 19th century. Japan had just been “opened up” to the west following the “bakumatsu”, or end of the Edo Period, in 1868.
“Full crop of rice , just before reaping. Lantern slide, ca.1897-1900. From Flickr user Okinawa Soba (Rob). Image license: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.”
There was a deep fascination with Japan in countries all over the world, which fueled demand for the prints and images that allowed T. Enami to make a living.
“Ad For Boxed Set Of T. Enami Stereoviews Of Japan In The Sears, Roebuck & Co 1908 Catalog.” From Flickr user Okinawa Soba (Rob). Image license: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
About T. Enami, Okinawa Soba says:
According T. Enami (T probably stood for Toshi), was the ‘trade name’, or ‘artist name’ of Enami Nobukuni (江南 信國).
Why didn't he use his real name ? I don't know. Go ask Mark Twain, er, I mean Samuel Clemens.
In any case, and by any name, Enami was truly a ‘photographers photographer’ who in his youthful 20s was a student and assistant to K. Ogawa, and a hard-working professional until he died at age 70 in 1929. […]
It's amazing to me that a man born in 1859 during the old Edo-Bakumatsu period of Japan—and who probably wore the classic ‘top-knot’ as a youngster—would go on to become a credited, contributing photographer to National Geographic Magazine during his lifetime…and a whole lot more than that as well.
Soba laments that Enami has not received the same recognition awarded to his contemporaries:
Although still not (yet) considered by ‘scholars’ to be one of the illustrious ‘Rat Pack’ of early Japanese commercial photographers that included Shimooka, Ueno, Kimbei, K. Ogawa, Suzuki, Esake, Tamamura and others, the body of T. Enami's work is never-the-less filled with valuable and instructive examples of early photography that — for better or worse — provide a practical window into the highly competitive world of Japan's Meiji-era studios.
Okinawa has uploaded an extensive collection of T. Enami's stereoscopic images of scenes from all over Japan, including members of an indigenous Ainu community on the northeast island of Hokkaido.
Glass stereoview of Ainu by T. Enami. From Flickr user Okinawa Soba (Rob). Image license: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Apparently, T. Enami was also employed by the Japanese government, and took photos of Japanese expeditionary forces abroad. According to Okinawa Soba:
Enami served his country in 1904-05 as an Imperial Army war photographer. He traveled widely in all theaters of the war, photographing subjects in China, Korea, and on the Japanese home-front.
“A posed view of Japanese troops in China during the Russo-Japan War — a rare glass stereoview by T. Enami.”  From Flickr user Okinawa Soba (Rob). Image license: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
T. Enami continued with his photography into the Taisho Era of the 1910s and 1920s. His style transformed from taking carefully staged photographs suitable for postcards, to more realistic “street photography” scenes.
“The little thread winder of old Japan.” From Flickr user Okinawa Soba (Rob). Image license: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Okinawa Soba reports that during T. Enami's career,  his prints were republished around the world in illustrated publications and guidebooks about Japan; Enami even received special recognition by the Japanese government for his images. The legendary photographer is now known for three separate series of numbered views: ca.1892-99 Large Albumen Prints, ca.1900-07 Stereoviews, and ca.1912-16 Street Photography. However, Okinawa Soba says that only printed catalogs for the first two series have been re-discovered so far.
T. Enami's Yokohama studio was reportedly destroyed in the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake. The photographer died in 1929 at the age of 70 and his surviving image transparencies were entrusted to his son.
“The Imperial Hotel — Frank Lloyd Wright's Masterpiece in Tokyo. Ca.1924-28 Photo by T. Enami. Lantern-slide image probably printed by his son after 1929.” Image from www.t-enami.org. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
In his Flickr album Processing, Printing, and Conservation, Okinawa Soba, the photography enthusiast who remains so passionate about Enami's legacy, actually reveals a bit about himself:
Okinawa Soba is an old ‘Darkroom Guy’. I have an interest in exposure times, negative and print development, and image conservation — things that must be considered even before you take the picture.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Nevin Thompson


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Amidst Soaring Road Fatalities, a Tragic Accident Spawns Strange Jamaican Tales · Global Voices
Emma Lewis

Flat Bridge, Jamaica. Photo by Jozef.sovcik, own work, used in the public domain.
Jamaican drivers are not generally known for careful or courteous behavior — speeding and a disregard for the rules of the road are unfortunately all too common — resulting in high numbers of fatalities which have climbed steadily since 2012. In the past two weeks, the island has suffered from a series of accidents with multiple casualties, with a grim tally of 22 deaths. However, one major accident in particular has sparked both serious discussion — and a flurry of outlandish speculation rooted in Jamaican folklore.
The latest tragedy occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning (July 17) at Flat Bridge, which crosses the Rio Cobre in the parish of St. Catherine. An overcrowded, medium-sized SUV, with eight people aboard, apparently overtook a line of vehicles waiting at the traffic lights as they turned from amber to red. The car reportedly skidded and plunged into the river, which is quite deep and slow-moving near the bridge because of a dam further downstream. Six people lost their lives, one 19-year-old survived and the driver miraculously escaped, but fled the scene, turning himself into the police the following day.
The Flat Bridge has a special place in Jamaican history and culture. It lies at the end of the picturesque Bog Walk Gorge, with the Rio Cobre on one side of the road and a steep wall of rock on the other. The banks of the Rio Cobre include remarkable limestone rock features. The bridge itself was built with slave labor around 1724, and many slaves’ lives were reportedly lost in its construction.
The accident is certainly not the first in that particular spot. The bridge is a simple flat structure, without a railing or parapet, built close to the surface of the river, which is deep and prone to flooding — but this latest crash has sparked a discussion on whether it should be replaced or fixed in some way. Vice Chair of the National Road Safety Council, Dr. Lucien Jones, came down on the side of restructuring it:
#FixFlatbridge #RealFast This must never happen again #SixDead is a NationalDisaster @gleaneronline @djmillerJA @AbkaFitzHenley @Petchary
— Lucien Jones (@lucienforJesus) July 17, 2016
He later suggested:
@djmillerJA last Monday 197 people had died on our roads. One week later 214 #Madness all possible solutions need to be discussed
— Lucien Jones (@lucienforJesus) July 18, 2016
Since his tweet, another accident in the same parish has claimed four more lives — but many Jamaicans reacted to his suggestion with some annoyance. By all accounts, the driver was reckless and has now been charged with six counts of causing death by dangerous driving and driving without a license.
Radio talk show host Emily Shields echoed the sentiments of many, tweeting:
We have a man who had no licence; fitted 8 people into a Vitara – and we are having a discussion about the bridge?#Trumped
— Emily Shields (@emilymshields) July 19, 2016
One Twitter user weighed in on a poll asking whether the bridge should be replaced:
@LoopJamaica its probably the best Bridge ever built in Jamaica (300 years). Respect the Bridge & It will respect you
— RealRenk (@Ryan_X2) July 18, 2016
Another tweeted:
@SatariDemetra @Petchary I am more about people stop speeding in the gorge than having to eradicate a piece of our history.
— Wil Possible (@wilwyse) July 18, 2016
Dr. Jones later offered several proposals on his blog, concluding:
Although there is no ‘silver bullet’ that can immediately prevent any further loss of lives on our roads, there are enough projects and proposed initiatives […] which, if successfully implemented, can make a difference. For many, those measures will be far too late. However, for other disasters ‘waiting to happen’, if we as a nation can find the political will to take the hard decisions, and provide the necessary investment, who knows how many lives we can save in the future.
Popular television current affairs show All Angles discussed the issue in detail with the head of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) Traffic Division, who is currently conducting non-stop media interviews. Producer and avid tweeter Giovanni Dennis weighed in:
We r in dialogue with NWA 2 erect more signs in the Gorge to warn motorists – SSP Calvin Allen, JCF. #TVJAllAngles pic.twitter.com/CtRmLIKb1j
— Giovanni R. Dennis (@GiovanniRDennis) July 21, 2016
But a few days after the accident, more fanciful stories have begun to emerge. All the passengers were members of the Mount Maria Zion Truth Fellowship Spiritual Church of God in rural St. Catherine. The car was owned by the church's pastor, Bishop Stephen Rickets, who died in the crash along with his two sons. They were allegedly on a “duppy-catching” expedition (a duppy is a ghost or spirit). Neighbors have had contradictory and sometimes extraordinary stories to tell about the pastor and his church, which is in the Revivalist tradition that developed from myalism, a folk religion focused on the power of African ancestors that typically involves drumming, dancing, spirit possession and animal sacrifice.
Opinions on the church and its leader seem divided, with some finding the family strangely mysterious and others, upstanding.
Besides the alleged activities at the church — reminiscent, to some, of obeah (a folk religion that is still practiced in some parts of the Caribbean) — the bridge itself is the stuff of history and legend. Historian Lance Neita recorded, among other stories:
Flat Bridge also featured during the 1976 State of Emergency when the late Prime Minister Michael Manley warned the House after an announced arms discovery that “it would only take four sticks of dynamite to render Flat Bridge impassable”. “Nonsense”, asserted a friend as I got carried away with the argument. “All it takes to block Flat Bridge is a good shower of rain.”
There is another point of interest on the approach to Spanish Town, where Jamaica's original Golden Table [the story is here] is said to have surfaced repeatedly in a spot in the river between Angels and the river dam.
Clinton Black in his Tales Of Old Jamaica records the story of the 24 steers and six screaming slaves who were dragged under the water at that spot as they tried to harness the legendary table on the instructions of a plantation owner.
So the river road is not without its fair share of superstition. On a certain day at noon, legend has it that the Flat Bridge is a gathering place for the ghosts of the departed slaves who died during its construction.
Another well-known myth is that of the River Mumma or River Maid, who sits by the river and waits to pull people in:
It is believed that mermaids, or ‘River Mummas’ as they are called in Jamaica, live in a bottomless hole just below the bridge. Many believe that the mermaids are the reason each attempt to establish railing on the bridge has proven futile.
One regular tweeter scoffed:
@Petchary Weeeell a lot of people died to make it, but mostly now it's just stupid people killing themselves
— Game: Blouses (@askanonpro) July 22, 2016
Emily Shields continued to put up a staunch defense of the bridge:
I want justice for Flat Bridge
Just because it has remained silent over the years, it has become a soft target!#JusticeForFlatBridge
— Emily Shields (@emilymshields) July 19, 2016
Meanwhile, the Flat Bridge keeps its secrets (and its growing number of duppies) to itself, still inspiring a mixture of respect for its history — mingled with a little trepidation — among Jamaicans young and old.

author: Emma Lewis


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Iraq’s Marshlands, Nearly Destroyed Under Saddam, Are Coming Back · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

A woman in Iraq’s southern marshes gathering reeds. The flexible reeds are used to build arched reed houses in a design unchanged for thousands of years as well as burned for fuel. While men in the marshes fish, women and girls do most of the manual labor including cutting and transporting the reeds. Credit: Jane Arraf
This article by Jane Arraf originally appeared on PRI.org on July 19, 2016, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
It’s easy to believe, when you’re in Iraq’s southern marshes, that civilization really did begin there.
Sunlight sparkles as herons dart from the reeds to spear fish, while women in long wooden boats glide through the water. The wetlands span thousands of square miles in the middle of desert. Some students of ancient history believe the marshes, lined with reeds, teeming with fish and filled with birds, are the site of the biblical Garden of Eden.
On June 17, the UN cultural agency, UNESCO, added the marshlands and the ancient Sumerian cities that once flourished among them to its list of World Heritage Sites. The listing recognizes the area’s role in human development and its unique ecosystem. It also includes three Sumerian capitals, including Ur, believed to be the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims.
This region was the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, where the world’s first known cities sprang up near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Sumerian clay tablets from more than 5,000 years ago portray arched houses built from reeds — the same way they are still built today.
Women gather reeds in Iraq's southern marshlands. Most people have added outboard motors to the traditional boats but there are few other conveniences here. Most are without electricity and there are few schools or clinics. Credit: Jane Arraf
But the marshes that survived for thousands of years have taken a beating in recent decades. Iraqi governments since the 1950s began draining parts of the marshes to expand agriculture and drill for oil. In the 1980s, at war with Iran, Saddam Hussein sped up their destruction so the marshes couldn't serve as a refuge for fighters. A decade later he punished Shiites from the south for a failed uprising by driving them from their homes there.
The marshes today remain one of the poorest areas in Iraq. Residents living on tiny floating islands fish, tend water buffalo and gather reeds. There is almost no health care and few schools.
But since Saddam was toppled in 2003, there have been efforts to restore the suffering marsh ecosystems.
Locations of the Ahwar of Southern Iraq, World Heritage Site. Source: UNESCO. Click on the map to see the full interactive map at PRI.org.
Iraqi American environmentalist Azzam Alwash and Nature Iraq, the group he founded, have set up an eco-camp in the heart of the marshes. Visitors can stay in modernized reed houses, go out on boats, and eat breakfasts of water buffalo cream and flatbread baked over reed fires. The marshlands are on a main migratory bird path from Africa. With the water and fish stocks restored, pelicans, flamingoes and marbled teal ducks fill the skies.
The marshes are in one of the safer parts of Iraq, just a few hours from Basra, but there are few foreign visitors.
“We have so much potential for archeological tourism and eco tourism but unfortunately this area of development has been stunted because of the reliance on oil,” says Alwash. “It is our curse as far as I am concerned.”
There are still threats to the marshes — primarily from agricultural runoff as well as drought attributed to climate change. Turkey and Syria also limit water flowing into the marshes with dams upstream.
Inhabitants of the marshes – known as the Ma’dan – share the floating islands where they build reed houses with domesticated water buffalo, usually a household’s most valuable possession. Bufallo milk, a staple of the diet here, is also boiled over reed fires and turned into a thick cream to be sold. Credit: Jane Arraf
Alwash says he feels vindicated by the UNESCO listing. But he says more important than world recognition is the commitment made by the Iraqi government to protect the area.
“A few years ago, people were looking and laughing at me saying ‘why do you want to restore the marshes? These are backward people’ … and now all of a sudden people are saying ‘fantastic, marvelous.’”

author: PRI/PRX's The World


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The Anti-KFC Protests Spell Trouble for Chinese Authorities Trying to Confine Nationalism to the Internet · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Protests outside KFC. The banner said, “Boycott Japanese and American products, I am Chinese and will be a model. Kick KFC and McDonald out of China.” Photos from letscorp's Twitter.
For years, authorities under President Xi Jinping have stoked nationalistic sentiments in China as part of a larger campaign to push Chinese Communist Party ideology. Part of that effort includes “civilization” volunteers, who are recruited by the Communist Youth League and tasked with spreading the party's message online.
“Online” being the key word. It seems protesting in the street is a step too far for the Chinese government, which finds itself at the moment in the odd position of denouncing demonstrations against American fast food chain KFC — fueled by the very brand of aggressive nationalism they helped foment.
Since July 16, Chinese people in at least a dozen towns and cities have protested in front of KFC restaurants because they are seen as representing the interests of the United States. Many in China think US meddling helped lead to an embarrassing ruling on July 12, in which an international tribunal shot down Beijing’s extensive claims over the South China Sea.
Videos showing protesters confronting KFC customers have also gone viral on social media, where the rallies were organized.
The call to protest can be traced back to Zhu Jidong, the deputy director of the National Cultural Security and Ideology Construction Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The center organizes training courses for online commenters and is active in delivering ideological instruction on social media through its official account, @IdeologyTorch (思想火炬).
In reaction to the South China Sea ruling, Zhu suggested in a July 13 post on Weibo two days of boycott against American fast food companies:
#思想微評#[舉國不去肯德基和麥當勞消費：你能做到嗎？]舉國上下在某一天集中做一種舉動，就會形成大的震憾：倡議這個周六、周日（7月16日和7月17日），舉國不去肯德基和麥當勞消費，只須兩天，世界將為之嘩然。這個倡議，兩天時間，不會傷害任何人，但可以表明中國人的決心和態度！
#Mini Comment on Ideology# National boycott against KFC and McDonald's. Can you do this? The whole nation taking the same action on the same day will create a shock. Proposed for this Saturday and Sunday (July 16 and 17), national boycott against KFC and McDonald's. It takes two days to shake the world. This proposal will only take two days and it won't harm anyone. But it is an action to manifest Chinese determination and attitude.
On the same day, Global Times, which is owned by the official newspaper group of the Chinese Communist Party, published commentary saying that the South China Sea ruling spurred a new wave of patriotism.
Meanwhile, the Communist Youth League published a Weibo post citing research that says Chinese media outlets are “controlled by capitalists” which has resulted in homogeneous opinion in the public sphere. As the current ideological battle being waged online in China has “patriots” and “red” culture on one side and “US sympathizers” and “liberals” on another, some interpreted the post as suggesting that people take revolutionary action in response to the South China Sea arbitration against capitalistic liberal forces’ attempts to suppress patriotic sentiments and reactions.
Around the same time, an adapted version of Zhu Jidong's push for boycott quickly went viral on social media such as messaging app WeChat. Many assumed that these calls to action were coming from the Communist Youth League's online civilization volunteers because Zhu Jidong is a member of the League's think tank.
On July 16, as shown in video clips recorded by citizens, some patriotic youths started harassing customers at KFC asking if they had heard of the South China Sea arbitration and telling them to leave. The online call for boycott soon developed into street quarrels, fist fights and then widespread protests.
Some of the slogans used in the protests included:
你们吃的美国肯德基，丢的是老祖宗的脸。
将来打仗的话，每一颗炮弹都是你们赞助的。
如果吃了肯德基，将来都是汉奸。
Those who eat in the American KFC is trashing the face of your ancestor.
If there is war in the future, you are sponsoring their bullets now.
Eating in KFC makes you a Chinese traitor.
The real-life protests crossed a line set by the party and the government. On July 16, the Communist Youth League attempted to cut its ties to the demonstrations, claiming that they were initiated by “fans of the US” on Weibo.
But the KFC rallies continued and by July 18 had spread to more than a dozen cities. Worries swirled that if the mobilization got out of control, it could threaten the country's economic security.
To cool down the patriotic sentiments, propaganda authorities issued censorship instructions to all media outlets (via China Digital Times):
Once again, for the near future, do not hype or spread information related to illegal rallies and demonstrations. Pay close attention and delete inflammatory information.
On the same day, Hu Shijun, chief editor of Global Times, also tried to distance the publication from the protests by calling the participants “SB,” meaning “stupid ass.”
But the censorship instructions and public disavowals didn't stop the movement. On July 19, photos showing a group of primary school kids protesting outside a KFC restaurant in Shandong province went viral on social media.
Later, netizens discovered that the protest was led by a teacher during the students’ social learning program, which is organized by Tsingda Xuexi, an educational institution also affiliated with the Communist Youth League. Moreover, protesters were not only targeting KFC, but now also other US brands like Apple.
The party's opinion channeling machine then kicked into full gear to try to contain the situation. Major news portals published editorials denouncing the protests. The English-language editorial of state-owned newspaper China Daily questioned, “Why target firms for the sins of US and Philippines?“
A Chinese version of the piece, written by an author using a pseudonym, labelled the protests as gaojihei (高級黑), meaning “second-level smearing” or patriotism taken too far. China Daily's Weibo account distributed it on July 19 with the title, “Visiting KFC and McDonald's = unpatriotic hypocrisy? We would be part of the second-level smearing!” A brief introduction read:
【吃肯德基麦当劳=虚伪不爱国？我们才不当高级黑！】爱国是不吃肯德基和麦当劳，是打人、砸车、抢东西？当缺乏常识的人，热衷于做别人的老师时，那就是愚昧的开始。少一点冲动，多一点常识。少一点抵制，多一点实干。这便是正确的爱国方式，你的样子，就是中国未来的样子。
Visiting KFC and McDonald's = unpatriotic hypocrisy? We would be part of the second-level smearing! Patriotism is boycotting KFC and McDonald's? Patriotism is to beat up people, smash cars and rob? When people without common sense are eager to become the teacher, this is the beginning of a dark age. Less impulse, more common sense, less boycott, more concrete practice. This is the right way to love the country. Your face is the future face of China.
The article explained why a boycott would not work and how it could harm China's own economy:
在经济全球化的今天，衣食住行涉及的大大小小产品，几乎全是你中有我、我中有你的“混血儿”——国产家用电脑的CPU多是美国产的，而美国波音747的客机里也会有中国生产的零部件。
至于麦当劳和肯德基，我们早就成了他们的股东，抵制他们就是抵制我们自己。
更重要的是，麦当劳和肯德基涉及的上下游行业太多，那么多的中国老百姓在这条产业链上工作，他们没饭吃了你来养？
We are living in a globalized era, everything produced is a co-production — local computer brands have CPUs made in the US and Boeing 747s have parts made in China.
As for KFC and McDonald's, we are already part of their shareholders, boycotting them is boycotting ourselves.
Moreover, KFC and McDonald's have a stake in other industries, how many Chinese are working in the production chain, who will feed them if they lose their jobs?
The KFC protests reveal that authorities have been playing with fire in their ideological campaign — if people enacted the beliefs that have been pushed on them, such as kicking out all foreign “enemies,” in the real world, China's economy would suffer the consequences.
The party and the government are well aware of the paradox, and that's why the line between online and offline nationalism must remain firm, journalist Song Zhi Biao argued:
线上爱国与线下爱国是根本不同的，这是共青团中央、环球时报、人民日报、胡锡进、诸多五毛大V深知的、而且是非常显著的界线。如果要跨过这条界线，需要许可，绝对不能擅自跨越，否则就是不守规矩，是要负责的。但爱国群众心里无界，不听招呼盲打盲冲。
官媒及传统爱国势力一致否定肯德基爱国事件，否认这些群众是由他们发动的，甚至不顾自个那些赫然在目的煽动性微博，竭力甩锅，乃至于把黑锅推给传说中的公知 […]
Online patriotism and offline patriotism are different. The line is clear to the Communist Youth League, Global Times, China Daily, Hu Shijun and government opinion leaders. The line cannot be crossed without prior approval [from the top] or else someone has to take responsibility. However, the line does not exist among the patriotic masses; they would just do what they think is right.
State mouthpieces and patriotic organizations all spoke out against the KFC protests, denying that they had a role in the protests even though they had distributed so many posts and incited nationalistic sentiments. They even created a conspiracy theory that the liberal public intellectuals were behind the protests. […]
Chen Pokong, a US-based political commentary writer, echoed Song's comments and saw the protests as an inevitable outcome of online nationalism:
既不能打仗，又不能抗议。于是，爱国贼们转谋下策。呼吁抵制外国商品，成为发泄手段之一。近些年来，爱国贼们一直忙不迭地呼吁。因为钓鱼岛，呼吁抵制日货；因为美国巡航南海，呼吁抵制美货；因为南海争端，呼吁抵制菲律宾货、越南货；因为萨德导弹防御系统，呼吁抵制韩国货……于是，摆样子的相片里，抗议的横幅越拉越长：“坚决抵制美日韩菲越货……”
口号喊得震天响，然而，现实生活中，抵制外国货的中国人，寥寥无几。于是，有些爱国贼们跑到肯德基和麦当劳等美式快餐店，高举红旗，高唱国歌，堵住门口，不准顾客进入。
[The reality] is that there is no war, and they are forbidden to have proper protests. Hence the patriotic thieves look for other ways to manifest patriotism, and boycotting foreign brands is one of the most frequently used tactics. In recent years, they have kept advocating — they boycotted Japanese products because of Diaoyu Island disputes, they boycotted US products after the US navy entered the South Sea, they boycotted Philippine and Vietnamese products because of the South Sea disputes, they boycotted Korean products because of the missile defense system… That's why in the photos, you can see the list of boycotted products keeps growing longer and longer: “We are determined to boycott the US, Japanese, Korean, Philippine and Vietnamese products….” The slogans are loud, but in reality very few Chinese people take action in a boycott. That's why some patriotic thieves decided to wave red flags and sing national anthems outside KFC and McDonald's fast food restaurants, blocking the entrances.
While official government sources blamed the protests on “second-level smearing” fueled by fans of the US, and others argued they were a spontaneous movement, some still
While the official patriots said the anti-KFC protests are second level smearing fueled by the U.S fans, others believed that the protests are spontaneously organized, some still believed the Chinese Communist Party and the government orchestrated the entire thing. On Twitter, @SANDY666712 wrote:
你们看中国多民主、多自由，多有人权！今年围堵肯德基，那些挑头的爱囯贼，其实并非老百姓！他们多是奉命行事的公安、居委会的大妈以及中学校的师生等。然后政府才好出来装逼，发新闻通稿严禁游行捣乱等等，暗中操纵，悄悄钓鱼。这套把戏其实就和文革一样，捉鬼放鬼，都是政府搞鬼，都是做给外界看的
— 上官長風 (@SANDY666712) July 20, 2016
Look, China is full of democracy, freedom and human rights! This year, those who lead the protests against KFC are not ordinary people. Many are police, aunties from the party's residential committee and secondary school teachers and students who receive instruction from their seniors. Then the government steps in, releasing press releases and public notices to stop the rallies. They are manipulating from behind the scenes and benefiting from the action. Such tactics were used during the Cultural Revolution [a period of social and political upheaval in the 1960s and 1970s], they caught and released the ghosts who are controlled by the government. The performance is for outsiders.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
A Russian ‘Lady Cop’: Part Three · Global Voices
Olga Borisova

https://globalvoices.org/2016/07/23/a-russian-lady-cop-part-two/
Three years ago, Olga Borisova decided to join the St. Petersburg police force. Eighteen years old and, by her own description, a petite, fashionable young woman, she wasn’t your average cadet. After a little more than a year, she quit, and has since become an active member of the Russian democratic opposition. Earlier this month, Borisova wrote for the website Batenka.ru about her experiences as a police officer. RuNet Echo is publishing her text, translated into English, in three parts. This is the third and final installment. Read the first here and the second here. You can find her full story here in Russian.
March 2014 came along, and I left the city for a TsPP (professional training center). When I got there, the men in charge made my drunk, insecure bosses look like loving parents.
Future cops from all over the city are made on the parade grounds. You’ve got to look sharp. The man in charge walks up and down the line with his hands behind his back. They assign you courses and they put you into a squad. You get a schedule of classes. On the one hand, the first day is a lot like the first day of school. Everyone looks good, and everyone is a bit nervous. On the other hand, it’s probably what the first day in the army looks like, too. They select the squad leader from the more experienced staff. Our leader was a man named Vitya. He was plump as a pastry.
The whole experience was pretty fun. There was flirting and there were flings. You made friends and passed notes in class. It was all like being in school. Police academy. Firearms training, drill instruction, tactics in maintaining public order, physical training, legal training, medical training, psychological training. In psychology, we once watched the film “The Major” with Yuri Bykov. Some future riot police officer brought it in on a flash drive. Morning formation, daytime formation, and evening formation. Lunchtime formation. Marching in lockstep. If somebody in the squad “stepped” badly, the whole squad could be left to march until eight in the evening. That’s how they developed discipline. Don’t ask questions. Just take orders.
You’re not allowed to paint your nails. You’re not allowed to wear jewelry. Once, I showed up to formation with long press-on nails painted aqua blue. Then the course officer somehow noticed me, a short woman four rows back, as if he could sense my panic.
“Junior Sergeant Borisova!”
“Present!”
“Step forward!”
“Yes sir!”
Coming to the front of the formation and marching two steps forward, like they taught us, I turned and faced the squad. The colonel then walked up to me, grabbed my hand, and showed my manicure to everyone in class, saying “What is this?!”
The whole class waited to hear what my punishment would be. I didn’t flinch, making “big eyes,” I turned to him and said, “But, comrade colonel, it’s the color of the uniforms.”
I watch as a hundred police cadets tried to contain their laughter. The colonel was in a good mood, and he liked my joke. He smiled and said, “I expect those to be gone by tomorrow.” And I answered, “Yes sir.”
покоряем массовые мероприятия
A photo posted by Борисова. (@borisssova) on
But there were also times when he spent a half-hour chewing out somebody in front of everyone for one little mistake in their uniform. Showing everyone who’s boss. And so, well after all your classes had ended, you spent 40 minutes standing still, in melting heat or freezing cold, and you wait for the colonel to finish his ego trip, so you can go home.
During my training, one of the cadets lost his mind. He was living in the barracks and one day he just didn’t get out of bed and come to class. First, the squad and even the squad leader tried to rouse him. Then the colonel came. And then the center’s director. But even then, the guy just stayed in his bed silently, staring up at the ceiling. They took him to a hospital, and then to a mental ward. They dismissed him for health reasons, and now he’s registered with a psychiatrist. His story turned out to be pretty cliché, too: his father was a police officer, and he insisted that his son follow in his footsteps, to keep up the family trade. The guy had no wish to be in the academy. In our class on tactics in maintaining public order, he got four straight D’s. He worried that he wouldn’t live up to his father’s hopes, but being a cop wasn’t the life he wanted for himself.
I liked the practical exercises in firearms training the best. I was a good shot. Once the colonel-instructor looked at my target, and called to the riot police cadets, who liked to flaunt their skills more than anyone, and he said, “Look over here and learn something, boys!”
A video posted by Борисова. (@borisssova) on
Apart from being able to handle a weapon and knowing the necessary laws and regulations, the most important professional skill you’re taught is obedience. I was struck by how they rewarded the dumbest guys who couldn’t recite a single criminal statute, just because they were loyal to the bosses—for ratting out other cadets, for being ready to carry out any order, for “offering to be of service.”
Classes go for four months, then there are final exams, then you take the oath, and poof now you’re a certified cop. And you head back to your own precinct.
In the meantime, a lot of good people had left. But there were still some, like my partner Andrei, who never took a bribe, who did his work honestly, but the captain saw him as weak and he saw himself as strong, taking every opportunity to humiliate him. I worked with Andrei most of all. We’d talk often, and I’d ask him—a 23-year-old young man, who’d aged nearly a decade after just five years on the force—why he put up with it all. “Eh, big deal. That’s the cost,” Andrei told me.
That was the moment I understood that “professional deformation” isn’t just developing the habit of noticing anyone walking around with open cans of beer (I still can’t turn it off); it’s also learning to “swallow” personal injustices and later injustices aimed at others. Those who don’t learn to swallow it don’t last long. And [President Medvedev’s] police reforms, because they added to the number of inspections, gave cops like my boss even more levers for filtering out the “defiant” ones.
To summarize, here’s the conclusion I drew two years ago: the people on the force can be divided into two categories: rats and wimps.
Люблю эту девочку) всем футбол!
A photo posted by Борисова. (@borisssova) on
My story in the police, which lasted one year and three months, ended with my realization that I didn’t want to become a wimp. Many people observe the injustices perpetrated by the authorities, but too many people don’t understand how much injustice goes on inside the system itself on a daily basis.
So I quit.
Two years passed, and I found myself in Montenegro, working on an art project together with my friend Masha Alekhina [of Pussy Riot]. By now, I had some experience doing election work for the opposition; I’d helped with dozens of trials against opposition activists and artists; I’d put together my own political art performance; and I’d helped organized a signature campaign to help my friend in the opposition get on the ballot.
I stepped onto the balcony, and fired up my iPhone screen. I had a new message on Vkontakte. It was from “Sweetie.”
“Olya, please forgive me for everything. If you’re ever in Petersburg, come visit, and I’ll tell you the news about how I’ve got my own office now. They got rid of the precinct chief, and now it’s that other one. And remember Yulia from criminal investigations? They’ve brought two charges against her. It’s half her own fault, but, you understand, I can’t discuss the details here.”
I looked at the screen and saw that there was still more.
“Every day, I go to bed and think that today there was a little less bad than good. Of course, every day doesn’t turn out that way, but still. And if you’re mad at me for any reason, I’m sorry,” he wrote.
“I don’t get offended that easily,” I answered, and I dropped the phone back into my pocket.

author: Olga Borisova


text:
Calls for the International Community to Intervene as Gambia Continues to Imprison Dissidents · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh who has been in power since 1994 is widely accused of human rights violations. Public Domain photo by the White House uploaded online by Wikipedia user Alifazal.
On July 20, 2016, a Gambian High Court sentenced the leader of the main United Democratic Party (UDP) (currently in opposition), Ousainou Darboe, and 18 other opposition activists to three years in prison for — among other charges — participating in a demonstration without a licence. They were arrested on April 19 in the capital, Banjul.
The opposition has denounced the trial, while human rights organisation Amnesty International has noted that these prison sentences for opposition leaders continue the downward spiral for human rights in The Gambia.
Among those convicted is Fanta Darboe Jawara — a naturalised US citizen who, while visiting the country, took part in the protest led by her uncle. The ruling is attracting attention in the United States, where four Maryland congressional members have expressed outrage over her conviction.
In April 2016, the country witnessed a series of unprecendented protests that started with a peaceful demonstration calling for electoral reforms to take place prior to the country's upcoming December 2016 election. The demonstration was led by Ebrima Solo Sandeng, the youth head of the main opposition party, UDP. Many opposition politicians believe that the existing electoral laws favour the incumbent president Yahya Jammeh, and would like to see them changed. As things stand, it is difficult to challenge him — individuals require as much as 500,000 Gambian Dalasi (about US$11,280) to register a political party or run as a presidential candidate in The Gambia.
By the end of the protest, security forces rounded up and detained Sandeng and other UDP supporters. Sandeng and two other UDP members died in police custody within 48 hours of their arrests. This led to new demonstrations, led by Darboe, who demanded the release of the remaining protesters.
The United States, the United Nations and other international organisations have repeatedly called on the government to respect the rights of citizens to peaceful protest. President Jammeh, who has been in power since 1994, is widely criticised for mistreatment of journalists, opposition members and members of the LGBT community.
In its 2014 submission to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Gambia, Amnesty International noted: “Since Gambia’s first Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in 2010, the human rights situation in the country has deteriorated. The government continues to stifle freedom of expression and commit other human rights violations with impunity.”
Both Gambians and netizens outside of the country have taken to Facebook and Twitter to condemn the conviction.
Calling for international organisations to intervene, the Media Foundation of West Africa shared an infographic showing abuses committed by Jammeh's government over the years:
Here's why ECOWAS, AU and the international community need to call President Yahya Jammeh to Order @saineymkmarenah pic.twitter.com/4fyYcDjZPz
— Media Foundation-WA (@TheMFWA) July 22, 2016
Niamina Nko also called for the international community to take action:
#GambiaRising #Gambia # shut down all Gambian embassies around the world
— Freedom 4 all (@NiaminaNko) July 21, 2016
Oumie Andrews made reference to the fact that the hearing was made before non-Gambian judges:
#GambiaRising #FreeFanta #GambiaStateOfEmergency stop #NigerianMercenaryJudges illegally jailing innocent Gambians pic.twitter.com/3wpzsT8uGw
— Oumie Andrews (@OumieAndrews) July 21, 2016
Jammeh's government has a policy of hiring Nigerian judges and magistrates; Gambians in the United Kingdom made their views known about the practice:
#GambiaRising: In UK, Gambians protest, deliver petition at Nigr HC urging halt to #Jammeh use of mercenary judges pic.twitter.com/c0Mx2uABPO
— Sanna Camara (@maimuhyai) July 22, 2016
A user using the handle ‘YesWe Can’ lamented:
The sentencing of #LAWYERDARBO and his executives is a travesty… but then all we're going to do is NOTHING. #GambiaRising #Gambia #Africa
— YesWe Can (@YesWeCan_Gambia) July 20, 2016
An online Gambian newspaper seemed to suggest that the judges who presided over the trial were more concerned with money than anything else:
#Gambiarising: when money becomes everything to judges, justice becomes the first casualty @NigeriaNewsdesk #Gambia pic.twitter.com/usoinOqlld
— Gainako Editor (@dbaldeh) July 21, 2016
On Facebook, a user using the name ‘Che Guevaara’ complained about the hypocrisy of the Africa Union (AU):
The AU does not condemn a Dictator when he is oppressing his people but it will condemn when the Dictator is overthrown.
Commenters from other African countries also weighed in on the situation. Adomati Robert from Uganda pointed out that in African countries in general — not only in The Gambia — opposition parties are not treated fairly:
I'm a Ugandan but I see no difference in political crisis with that of Gambia and other politically oppressed African nations where opposition parties are seen as a threat to the political security of the ruling government. This is a way of defending selfish interests of the greedy leaders. When the rich robs the poor, it's called ‘defense’ and when the poor fights back it's called ‘offense’.
A commenter from Zambia, Eugine Mwambila, said the same treatment of opposition politicians is happening in his country:
african leaders dont want to be opposed,our african democracy is a sham,Uganda,Egypt,Zimbabwe,Angola and the same is happening in my country Zambila the opposition is being threatened with jail terms,there is need for Amnesty and other international Ngo z (sic) to help this man,
However, Cheikh Bamba came out in defence of President Jammeh, referring to him — with tongue firmly in cheek — as “this dictator”:
This so-called opposition called UDP is a group of disgruntled figures with ties to the former super corrupt regime and hardcore tribalists
This dictator out perform the previous 30 years corrupt government and the colonial system combined
The real farce is the daily fabricated stories regarding the Gambian situation

author: Ndesanjo Macha


text:
Samia Yusuf Omar Earned Fame as a Runner, But Died as a Refugee. A New Comic Honors Her. · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

“An Olympic Dream,” a new graphic novel about Samia Yusuf Omar, was first released in English in April 2016. Credit: Courtesy of SelfMadeHero
This article by Daniel Gross originally appeared on PRI.org as part of the Across Women's Lives project on July 19, 2016. It is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
The terrible news reached Teresa Krug by way of a somber YouTube video: Samia Yusuf Omar, a Somali sprinter who competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, had drowned while trying to cross the Mediterranean. Omar had made her name as a sprinter. When she died as a refugee, athletes and journalists were stunned.
“It was just this disbelief that an Olympic athlete would be in the position of being a refugee,” said Krug, a freelance journalist who befriended Omar in Somalia. “If this person couldn't make it, what kind of hope is there for other people?”
Omar's life has now been adapted into a nonfiction comic, “An Olympic Dream,” by the German illustrator Reinhard Kleist. Four years after Omar's death, her story is more relevant than ever. The refugee crisis continues, and the summer Olympics are fast approaching. This year, there will even be a team of refugee athletes.
By focusing on Omar's remarkable life, not just her death, “An Olympic Dream” humanizes a crisis that too often seems abstract. Kleist's empathetic and emotional portrait of Omar, which draws heavily on Krug's reporting, makes the case for new types of journalism focused on people, not just politics.
Detail, “An Olympic Dream.” Credit: Courtesy of SelfMadeHero
At the start of “An Olympic Dream,” it's 2008 and the family of Samia Yusuf Omar is looking for a television. They wander around the Somali capital of Mogadishu until they find one. On the flickering screen, they watch Omar line up on a track in Beijing. She looks thin. When the starting gun fires, Omar lags behind. She wins the hearts of the crowd not because she does well in the race, but because her determination shows through anyway.
When Omar returns to Somalia, she keeps training. Kleist's drawings are dynamic and at times dramatic: In one panel, Omar runs through the crowded streets of Mogadishu, dodging religious hardliners from al-Shabab. When she runs on the bombed-out track of Coni Stadium, she gets flashbacks to Beijing. Two children count off her times in lieu of a stopwatch.
Mogadishu is no place for an Olympic athlete, and Omar eventually decides to leave her life and family in pursuit of a dream. She travels to Ethiopia to find a team. “This had become her single mission in life,” Krug remembered. “To find a coach and make it to the Olympics.”
Detail, “An Olympic Dream.” Credit: Courtesy of SelfMadeHero
Kleist made the unusual decision to narrate much of his book through Facebook posts, which are loosely based on interviews with Krug and Omar's sister. “I want to start training again,” reads one post. “I keep thinking about Beijing. Where I stayed, I could see the Olympic flame. It was like seeing the world.”
It's an elegant approach to dramatize a story that was so often filtered through the prism of social media. After Krug helped Omar create a Facebook account, they used the platform to stay in touch. Their last contact was a message Omar wrote to Krug, explaining that she had left Ethiopia for Libya, and was hoping to cross to Italy.
Omar's journey from Ethiopia to Libya now seems unsettling familiar. She pays human traffickers who take her on a dangerous journey through the desert—a route that thousands upon thousands of migrants have taken. Kleist's scenes of the desert are harsh and lonely. A dozen people squeeze into a little car, which speeds through the endless desert trailing a long cloud of dust.
Detail, “An Olympic Dream.” Credit: Courtesy of SelfMadeHero
Scenes like these aim to help readers deeply imagine a crisis that has started to seem impersonal. “We don't even take notice of the number anymore,” writes Kleist in his introduction. Too often, he says, we forget “that abstract numbers represent human lives.”
In 2012, Krug wrote for Al Jazeera about her reactions to Omar's death. She felt “denial that I'd never seen her again, anger that I hadn't done more to help her, or that the media — members of my profession — only cared now that she was gone.”
Krug is skeptical that much has changed since then. In 2015, thousands of African migrants died while trying to cross the Mediterranean. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled their country and face similar risks.
Detail, “An Olympic Dream.” Credit: Courtesy of SelfMadeHero
Still, Krug is enthusiastic about new approaches to nonfiction storytelling like “An Olympic Dream.”
“I didn't realize the power, maybe, of a book like this,” she said. “Even as journalists, you get fatigued. We need to be pursuing other ways of presenting stories.”
Detail, “An Olympic Dream.” Credit: Courtesy of SelfMadeHero


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With Trepidation and Excitement, Pokémon Go Finally Launched in Japan · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Playing Pokémon Go while driving a car in Japan. Caption: “POPULAR — On the first weekend after its release, Pokémon Go fever sweeps the Japanese archipelago, along with problems. Screencap from ANN official YouTube channel.
After a viral launch in the US and most of the world, the Pokémon Go mobile augmented reality game finally launched in the birth place of its Pokémon characters: Japan.
The game, which Apple confirmed has broken its App Store record for downloads in the first week of release, is generating massive excitement from players and some businesses in Japan, and causing trepidation from others, who fear the game will disrupt their lives.
The game launched five days behind schedule in Japan on Friday, July 22 2016. Reportedly, the delay was stoked by fears that Japanese Pokémon Go servers wouldn't be powerful enough to cope with demand, after a leaked email revealed the locations where Pokémon was launching.
Pokémon Go is a free-to-play, location-based augmented reality game that was first launched in most of the world on July 6, 2016. Developed by Niantic Labs, players use a mobile device, connected to the internet to find and capture Pokémon characters in real-world settings.
The Pokémon franchise was created in 1995 by Japanese video game designer Satoshi Tajiri. Pokémon Go is based on the Pokémon multimedia juggernaut of anime and video games that first became popular in the late 1990s, where human players must find, capture and battle with fictional creatures called Pokémon, known as ‘Monster Balls’ in Japan.
The Friday, July 22 release in Japan resulted in immediate, widespread interest all over the country.
ピカチュウを沢山捕獲出来るという新宿御苑、ポケモンGOプレイヤーが殺到しとんでもない事にｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ pic.twitter.com/dvSmSS8EsX
— ポケモンGO情報局【PokemonGO】 (@pokemongohaijin) July 24, 2016
I heard that Pikachu could be caught in Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden [a popular park in central Tokyo], but there is just a huuuuuuge crush of people here.
Whenever a particular location became known as a hot spot for capturing rare and coveted Pokémon characters, it would become quickly overrun.
池袋西口公園、マジで大変な事になっているｗｗｗ#ポケモンGO pic.twitter.com/gNOjZWTsqA
— ポケモンGO情報局【PokemonGO】 (@pokemongohaijin) July 24, 2016
There is just an incredible amount of people in the park on the west side of Ikebukuro Station [in central Tokyo].
Neighbouring businesses also stand to benefit from the craze:
ポケモンGO聖地として認知された名古屋の鶴舞公園、本日もプレイヤーが殺到しコンビニの商品が徹底的に駆逐されるｗｗｗｗ#ポケモンGO pic.twitter.com/2QoYlwwehY
— ポケモンGO情報局【PokemonGO】 (@pokemongohaijin) July 24, 2016
After Maizuru Park in Nagoya has developed the reputation as the “holy land” of Pokémon Go, people have flooded into this convenience store, literally cleaning off the shelves.
Thanks to the mobile, ubiquitous nature of the game, Pokémon characters can be encountered almost anywhere where there is a GPS signal.
ケーシィ普通に乗客やん　pic.twitter.com/rrsWCOZPix
— モモ (@mm_tr_28) July 23, 2016
“Casey” is taking the train like the rest of us.
Other PoGo players in Japan have noticed that where you play the game makes a big difference in terms of how many of the creatures you might actually be able to catch:
Playing Pokemon Go in the countryside versus Shibuya. pic.twitter.com/PB2QRJg7Mu
— Japan Trends (@JapanTrends) July 25, 2016
Syrian artist's  @KhaledAkil viral images that have been using Pokémon Go images in July to raise awareness of the war in Syria have also been widely shared in Japan since the game launched on Friday.
シリアのアーティスト @KhaledAkil による作品、 ポケモンGo #PokémonGo でシリアの惨状を知って欲しい #Syria #PokemonGO pic.twitter.com/vZsTmeGUvX
— フィフィ (@FIFI_Egypt) July 24, 2016
Syrian artist @KhaledAkil has created Pokémon artwork to remind us of the ongoing calamity in  #Syria #PokemonGO
Just like in other countries around the world, there are some people that regard the massive popularity of Pokémon Go with alarm. Some religious sites in Japan such Izumo Shrine have banned the game.
On the other hand, Pokémon Go seems to be creating some absurd situations at other religious sites. One player noticed a very odd sort of Pokémon to be found at Yasukuni Shrine, which is devoted in part to memorializing Japan's World War II dead:
Yasukuni Shrine gym is ruled by a pokemon named “Long Live China!” Didn't see this coming! https://t.co/O5sn7DTknR pic.twitter.com/nJLB1XFa9g
— Yuji Nakamura (@ynakamura56) July 25, 2016
Some businesses take a more playful approach to encouraging proper etiquette and responsible gameplay.
Sign at Imayo Tsukasa sake brewery, Niigata: don't catch Pokemon here; they're crucial to the brewing process. pic.twitter.com/97qEw61bcd
— Eleanor Goldsmith (@zaichishka) July 22, 2016


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A School in Timor-Leste Is Fining Students for Speaking One of the Country’s Two Official Languages · Global Voices
Dalia

“If a student speaks Tetum, they get a $1 fine.” Photo: Timor Post, July 13 edition
The board of the Fatumeta Basic School, in Dili, has decided to start enforcing a rule against students speaking any language but Portuguese, including Tetum, while on school grounds.
According to the newspaper Timor Post, the director of the school, Fernanda Belo, argues that students should only speak Portuguese. Those “who do not speak the language,” she says, are better off “remaining silent.” According to the newspaper, students caught speaking any language other than Portuguese are “fined.” Written in Tetum, the Timor Post quotes Belo as saying:
Ami ko’alia ona ho inan-aman katak alunus sira tama iha resintu eskola ne’e labele ko’alia tetun, hotu-hotu ko’alia lian português, sé maka ko’alia tetun sei multa dollar 1
The school director emphasizes that the “parents agreed to the rule” and justifies imposing the fine in order to help students to speak more Portuguese.
After gaining independence from Indonesia in 2002, Timor-Leste adopted Portuguese and Tetum as the country's official languages. A decade later, however, studies indicated that only 15 percent of the population spoke Portuguese:
Apesar de fazer parte da CPLP, Timor-Leste é um dos países com menor penetração da Língua portuguesa. Por todo o território falam-se cerca de 20 línguas e dialetos para além do Indonésio. Apenas 15% da população fala Português.
Despite being part of the CPLP, Timor-Leste is one of the countries with lower penetration of the Portuguese language. Throughout the country, about 20 different languages and dialects are spoken, in addition to Indonesian. Only 15 percent of the population speaks Portuguese.
The Fatumeta Basic School's rules, however, appear to violate the country's laws on teaching. The President of the Alola Foundation and the goodwill ambassador for Educational Affairs, Kirsty Sword Gusmao, told Global Voices that the school's policy of fining Tetum speakers is being reviewed:
Ha'u sei refere asuntu ida ne'e ba Sra Vice-Ministra Ensinu Báziku tanba regra/sansaun hanesan ne'e la han malu ho Dekreto Lei kona-ba Kurrikulu Foun Ensinu Baziku nian.
I will refer this matter to Mrs. Deputy Minister for Basic Education because this rule/sanction does not correspond with the Law for Basic Education Curriculum [of Timor-Leste].
Kirsty Sword Gusmão. Photo in public domain.
Gusmão explained:
Sra Diretora Eskola Fatumeta ne'e mak tenke simu multa tanba viola Dekretu Lei 4/2015 Kurrikulu Ensinu Báziku ne'ebé determina: a) prosesu hanorin lian tenke hahú ho oralidade no depois mak hakat ba lee no hakerek (art. 11-1) b) progresaun husi Tetun ba Portugés (hahú hanorin literásia Tetun) (art. 11-2) c) karga oráriu literasia Tetun no Portugés iha siklu 1 la hanesan (Tetun mak barak liu) no iha siklu 2 hanesan  d) objetivu final aprendizajen komponente literásia atu iha báze mak’as lian ofisiál rua (art 11-2) (la iha objetivu atu hanorin lian inan/nasionál seluk) e) uza lian instrusaun sei lalenok progresaun (hahú lian instrusaun ne’ebé uza mak Tetun no depois mak hahú móis hanorin komponente kurrikular seluk ho lian Portugés (art. 14-2 no 3) Viva lian-Tetun!
The Fatumeta School Director is the one that should be fined for violating Law-Decree 4/2015 of the Basic Education Curriculum, which requires (a) the learning process has to start orally, and then reading followed by writing; (b) the progression from Tetum to Portuguese (begins with the teaching of Tetum literacy) (article 11-2); (c) the hours of Tetum and Portuguese literacy in the first cycle is not equal (Tetum will be higher) and in the second cycle it will become equal; and (d) in order to end the learning of the literacy component, it will need to first establish the basis of the two official languages (article 11-2) (no need to teach other maternal or national languages). Long live the Tetum language!
Global Voices also spoke to João Paulo Esperança, a Portuguese linguist who has lived in Dili for many years. Esperança says the situation at the school needs to be confirmed, and then a response may or may not be necessary:
Penso que primeiro há que confirmar qual é a situação real nesta escola, mas eu, pessoalmente, não concordo com políticas escolares que proíbam os alunos de falarem a língua que quiserem no recinto escolar, fora da aula. E pode haver também famílias sem possibilidades económicas de pagar estas multas. Mas creio que não é com má intenção que alguns diretores e professores tentam implementar medidas destas. Antigamente as escolas em Timor usavam muito os castigos corporais, a língua de ensino era o português e, depois da invasão, o indonésio, e os alunos eram punidos fisicamente por falarem outras línguas; era essa a experiência pessoal da maior parte das pessoas, mas a pedagogia moderna recusa que se possa bater aos alunos, por isso alguns professores tentam usar essas multas como um castigo alternativo. Quanto à tentativa de criar uma escola de imersão em língua portuguesa, isso terá provavelmente a ver com o facto de as escolas vistas como modelo em Timor também o serem, e isto inclui, por exemplo, a Escola Portuguesa, as Escolas de Referência e o mítico Externato de São José. Aliás, ultimamente tem surgido uma tendência que nos devia fazer pensar: muitos pais da classe média-alta que não conseguem vaga nessas escolas de imersão em língua portuguesa aqui em Díli estão a colocar os filhos em escolas filipinas de imersão em língua inglesa.
First, we must confirm the true situation at this school, but I personally do not agree with school policies that prohibit students from speaking the language they want to use on the school grounds, outside of class. And there may also be families without financial means to pay these fines. But I think it is not with an evil intent that some principals and teachers try to implement these measures. Previously, schools in Timor often used corporal punishment, the teaching language was Portuguese (and, after the invasion, it was Indonesian), and students were punished physically for speaking other languages. This was most people's personal experience, but modern pedagogy refuses such measures from the past, so some teachers try to use these fines as an alternative punishment. As for the attempt to create an immersion school in Portuguese, it will probably have to do with the fact that schools, seen as model in Timor like the Portuguese School, the Reference Schools and the mythic Externato S. José are committed to everyone speaking Portuguese inside the classroom [without the fines]. And this, lately, has led to a trend that should make us think. Many parents of Dili's upper-middle class, whose children cannot gain admittance to these immersion schools in Portuguese, are putting them in Filipino immersion schools of English, instead.
Estanislau Saldanha, the president of the Permanent Council of the Board of Directors of DIT – Dili Institute of Technology, also believes the strict language policy is illegal:
Desizaun nee viola konstituisaun RDTL konaba lian ofisial no viola lei base edukasaun konaba lian instrusaun iha eskola. Nunee viola direitu estudante nian hodi expresa no aprende iha lian nb fasil no tulun sira atu aprende kontiudu siensia nb lais.
This decision violates the RDTL Constitution in relation to the official language and also violates the basic law of education regarding the language of instruction at school. Therefore, it violates the right that students have to express themselves and learn in an easier language that supports them to learn science materials in a faster way.
Virgilio da Silva Guterres, the president of Timor-Leste's Press Council, says the interests of teaching science should prevail:
Eskola Fatumeta nee keta eskola lian portugues karik? Eskola nia objetivu nee atu aprende siensia. Lian, portugues ka ingles, nudar meiu ka instrumentu atu aprende., la'os objetivu. Ita labele uza labarik sira nudar objetu retaliasaun ba regra sira nebe uluk aplika ba ita. Eskola Soibada, Colégio Maliana, no Ossu nia regra vale no aplicável iha sira nia tempu. La'os ba tempu hotu-hotu. Husu Diretora eskola revoga regra nee.
The School of Fatumeta is meant to be a Portuguese language school? The aim of the school is to teach science. Using Portuguese or English language as a means or instrument to learn it, the goal is not the language itself [but learning science]. We can not use children for retaliatory aims with rules that once applied. The rules of the school Soibada, Maliana and College Ossu were valid and applicable in his time [but] not for all time [for today]. I ask the school principal to revoke this rule. [During the Portuguese colonisation, these schools used to apply education rules under the retaliation of a dictatoship period]
Kashogy Junior, whose younger brothers study in a primary school in Dili, wrote on Facebook:
Mana, questão sira nene dala ruma atu leva ba mesa discução mos aluno sira iha duvida, Tauk hetan terminação estuda nian, ka hasai husi escola, tauk sira hetan transferencia ba escola seluk nebe mak sira la du'un gosta, e barak tan. Em tão, buat hotu lakon deit iha anin leten :). Istoria barak, so que ita mos hanoin ru-rua fali atu halo qeicha. Estudante sira ne balun em tão foti ne hansan “Joke” wainhira hetan sanção.
Sometimes students are afraid to raise these questions because they fear being expelled from school. They are afraid of being transferred to schools they don't want to attend, as well. So concerns “go up in smoke,” though there are many stories. Students think twice before they complain about anything. Some students play ironic jokes with the situation when they are sanctioned.
The Timor Post's report has had a profound impact on Timorese society. Fining students for speaking Tetum has produced particular shock among the public because Tetum is one of the country's official languages.

author: Dalia


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Disturbing Abu Ghraib-Style Abuse at a Juvenile Facility in Australia’s Northern Territory · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Screen Shot from ‘Australia's Shame’ – ABC Four Corners program
After disturbing images of Abu Ghraib-style treatment of children at a juvenile detention facility in Australia's Northern Territory aired on a national TV show, many Australians are calling for political accountability and a broad review of detention conditions across the country, especially for its most vulnerable population: Indigenous children. Others are saying local media and rights groups in the Northern Territory have been reporting the abuse for years, but it was largely ignored by the public and the government.
Despite covering over 1,349,129 square kilometres (520,902 square miles), the Northern Territory only has a population of 243,700; a third of whom are Indigenous Australians.
Four Corners, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation weekly current affairs show, which aired extensive footage taken at the Don Dale facility in 2014 in an episode titled Australia's Shame, shows young offenders as they are “stripped naked, assaulted and tear gassed.”
After the show aired, the Australian government announced that it is setting up a ‘Royal Commission’ to look into abuse of children at the Don Dale youth detention centre. A Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry with considerable powers. In Australia, Royal Commissions have successfully investigated police and government corruption and organised crime. Prime Minister Malcolm Turbull, when announcing the Royal Commission, commented: “We want to know why there were inquiries into this centre which did not turn up the evidence and the information that we saw on Four Corners last night”. Since 2011, at least three inquiries have looked into youth detention in the Northern Territories (NT) but their reports led to little effective action.
Introducing the 50-minute TV program, Four Corners presenter Sarah Ferguson says:
The image you have just seen isn't from Guantanamo bay…. or Abu Ghraib.. but Australia in 2015… A boy, hooded, shackled, strapped to a chair and left alone. It is barbaric.
This is juvenile justice in the Northern Territory, a system that punishes troubled children instead of rehabilitating them – where children as young as 10 are locked up and 13 year olds are kept in solitary confinement.
Most of the images secured by Four Corners in this investigation have never been seen publicly. They are shocking – but for the sake of these children who are desperate for the truth to be known, we cannot look away.
Some viewers tweeted that they couldn't watch it:
@Doc_Samantha I couldn't bring myself to watch #4corners – the suffering of children in Syria and NT images and descriptions enough!
— Anne Frandi-Coory (@afcoory) July 26, 2016
Immediate online responses captured the widespread horror and distress of viewers. Samantha Thomas’ tweet was typical:
I can't stop thinking about #4corners Have felt sick for those kids all day. 😢
— Samantha Thomas (@Doc_Samantha) July 26, 2016
Hilly expressed a shared sense of shame:
Australia's Shame #4Corners#StopTheAbuse #AustraliasShame #CallintheAFP@TurnbullMalcolm #ArrestTheBastards pic.twitter.com/CIsqRDl99d
— Hilly (@Hillyhobbit) July 25, 2016
Aboriginal people had made many complaints over the years.
Aboriginal people have been talking about this sort of treatment for years. We need more people to listen when we talk. #dondale #4Corners
— Ryan Griffen (@RyanJGriffen) July 26, 2016
@JaneCaro I tweeted this so many times back in April and May – Media and PM were aware and did nothing pic.twitter.com/v9VBDOp3zD
— Close Manus & Nauru (@I_stand_for) July 25, 2016
Many people felt that the scope of the Royal Commission should be as broad as possible:
The Royal Commission needs to be broader than NT and look at the incarceration of Indigenous children in all states. #4corners
— Jenny Noyes (@jennynoise) July 25, 2016
Australia's offshore asylum seeker detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island were also highlighted.
A royal commission should be broadened to include Nauru/Manus and reports of other cases in WA and Qld #4Corners https://t.co/8mHzFgQJmW
— pennysdrpped (@Pennysdrpped) July 25, 2016
Political accountability has been a priority amongst viewers. The minister in charge of corrections in the Northern Territory has been relieved of that responsibility by the Chief Minister. Many tweeters want to see more action:
Corrections Minister Elferink sacked but retains his other portfolios! Why? Elferink is criminally negligent https://t.co/v7B0L9Rp6b #auspol
— Η Kιβωτός (@RCKsOpinion) July 26, 2016
There is no doubt that the #NT govt is culpable. The chief minister needs to take full responsibility and resign. #4Corners #thedrum
— Dave (@tevitag) July 26, 2016
What did Nigel Scullion, NT senator and federal indigenous affairs minister since September 2013, know? #DonDale
— Amy Feldtmann (@AmyFeldtmann) July 25, 2016
Facebook censorship has been questioned following its removal of part of the video, apparently because of nudity:
This is the #4Corners footage that #Facebook deleted.#Dondale #Aboriginal #Indigenous #children #childabuse #auspol https://t.co/bi8VBCoh6j
— Kim Bullimore (@rafiqa65) July 26, 2016
The full Four Corners program can be viewed here.

author: Kevin Rennie


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Is Malaysia’s Prime Minister at the Centre of a Billion Dollar Corruption Lawsuit in America? · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

This ‘Malaysian Official 1′ meme adopts the logo of 1Malaysia, a program of Prime Minister Najib Razak. Source: Facebook
After the Department of Justice in the United States filed lawsuits accusing Malaysian officials and their associates for laundering more than one billion US dollars through American institutions, Malaysians are wondering if ‘Malaysian Official 1,’ who is cited 36 times in the 136-page lawsuit, is actually their Prime Minister Najib Razak.
The prime minister controls the 1Malaysian Development Berhad (1MDB) investment firm, which is at the centre of the lawsuit. His stepson is also one of the accused. The lawsuit aims to recover 17 assets in the US, which have allegedly been acquired through 1MDB funds. The lawsuits claims 1MDB funds were spent on hotels, fine art, luxury real estate in New York, Los Angeles, and London, and even on the 2013 Hollywood film “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
This is not the first time that Najib Razak's name has been implicated in a corruption scandal. Previously, he has been accused of pocketing more than 600 million dollars through anomalous transactions. After he was linked to several large dollar bank accounts, he claimed the funds were a political donation from a royal family in Saudi Arabia.
US officials said the lawsuit is the “largest single action ever brought under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.” They vowed to return the funds to the Malaysian people:
The Department of Justice will not allow the American financial system to be used as a conduit for corruption. With this action, we are seeking to forfeit and recover funds that were intended to grow the Malaysian economy and support the Malaysian people. Instead, they were stolen, laundered through American financial institutions and used to enrich a few officials and their associates.
Many Malaysians believe the text of the lawsuit provides enough evidence against Najib.
I don't see how MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1 could be anyone other than Najib in US DOJ case against 1MDB pic.twitter.com/z6xPE9OCh8
— Khairil Yusof (@kaerumy) July 20, 2016
#MalaysianOfficial1 Why is it so hard to find this guy? pic.twitter.com/v67tTpNHZa
— David Teoh (@dteoh) July 22, 2016
DOJ stands for the US Department of Justice.
Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is calling for the resignation of Najib, urged the US to name Najib in the lawsuit:
If the US really believes in eradicating corruption and money laundering which involves their country, they should not be shy about naming names and letting due process to take place.
When the thief is in charge of the police and the prosecuting agency, only foreign intervention can bring about justice.
Member of Parliament Lim Kit Siang advised Najib to address the allegation that he is the ‘Malaysian Official 1′ mentioned in the lawsuit:
Let me clearly and formally declare that I am not the “Malaysian Official 1.”
Will the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak similarly state his position – to formally deny it or confirm whether he is referred to as “Malaysian Official 1” and if the latter, what he proposes to do about the DOJ action.
Najib’s camp is insisting that the name of the prime minister is not part of the lawsuit, which means there’s no basis in accusing him of corruption in relation to the 1MDB scandal.
Some supporters of Najib are partly admitting that “Malaysian Official 1” could be referring to the prime minister, but they claim that the information presented by the US government is incorrect.
The hashtag #MalaysianOfficial1 trended after netizens reacted to the US DOJ report. Some even launched a campaign calling Internet users to search for the real ‘Malaysian Official 1’.
I respect the position of PM but I've lost my respect for the man currently holding the position… #MalaysianOfficial1 @Malaysia_Gov
— Nelson Pung (@NelsonPung) July 23, 2016
I'm angry that the money is used like a personal bank account. More angry the fact that Malaysian Official #1 is an untouchable here #1MDB
— Awang Bawang Ilyas (@BawangByte) July 20, 2016
I am not Malaysian Official 1. Are you ? pic.twitter.com/fBwzBo6dMl
— Haissazc Hisham (@HaissazcH) July 21, 2016

author: Mong Palatino


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Political Conflict Triggers Turmoil in South Sudan, Leaving Hundreds Dead · Global Voices
Pernille Baerendtsen

Salva Kiir, president of South Sudan, waits to receive Omar al Bashir on his visit to the southern capital Juba. Photo by Al Jazeera English via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The tensions within South Sudan’s so-called “transitional” government, which was formed on April 29, reached a boiling point earlier this month when an altercation involving President Salva Kiir and the Vice President Riek Machar, who have long been political rivals, swiftly unraveled into an armed conflict that lasted for several days and left hundreds dead.
A South Sudanese journalist in Juba told Global Voices that he spent his time confined to his bathroom during the worst part of armed violence that followed:
Wa wa wa it was terrible this morning, now I can hear guns cracking a big gun far. It is a game of wait and see. Right now I'm in the bathroom cos the bedroom is full of windows. It is a déjà vu.
To many this was indeed déjà vu, a repetition of other sudden eruptions of violence confining people to their homes, or forcing them to flee for safety. Many compared it to December 2013, which marked the beginning of a new period in South Sudan’s history of increased political instability despite having maintained a relatively peaceful environment since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between South Sudan and Sudan in 2005.
Following the recent outbreak of violence, South Sudanese media veteran Alfred Taban, a former BBC correspondent who is currently editor-in-chief of the Juba Monitor, was arrested on July 16 by agents from South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS).
Shortly before his arrest, Taban had called for the removal of both President Salava Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar in an editorial. Taban was still behind bars as of July 26, and has not yet been charged.
Local media rights advocates are calling for his release:
If you are making decisions that affect the people's lives, the people have the right to speak their minds #FreeAlfredTaban
— إيڤا (@Evalopa) July 18, 2016
“Be brave, always stick to the truth” Alfred Taban's usual advice to South Sudanese journalists #FreeAlfredTaban pic.twitter.com/gj9CcNSolN
— AMDISS (@AMDIS20) July 21, 2016
As is often the case in such conflicts, it has been difficult to get reliable and comprehensive information about what is happening in different parts of the country, with media coverage of specific events coming out in bits and pieces. Radio Tamazuj is regularly reporting on the conditions of the people arrested and detained at NSS headquarters, which is located in the area of Jebel Kujur mountain on the outskirts of Juba.
After a particularly violent episode in Malakal, pastor Monsignor Racco Taban, head of the diocese of Malakal, could not contain his anguish and in early July he went on air with the following message:
We are ruled really by monkeys. We are ruled by monkeys. We have to be very clear: We are ruled by monkeys… Devils! These are devils! We are ruled by devils. And we are very sorry for them.
On July 22 Amnesty International reported that one person had died in NSS custody. It also reported that two were released and 30 people were still being “arbitrarily detained at the NSS headquarters.” According to Amnesty International:
The NSS Act of 2014 grants the NSS sweeping powers to arrest and detain, without ensuring adequate judicial oversight or safeguards against abuse of these powers. The Act does not specify that detainees may only be held in official places of detention or guarantee basic due process rights, such as the right to counsel or to be tried within a reasonable period of time. The law effectively gives a carte blanche to the NSS to continue and extend its longstanding pattern of arbitrary detention, with total impunity.
As the instability continues, many are wondering if the independence that South Sudan has enjoyed since 2009 was really worth fighting for.
The Republic of South Sudan became Africa’s 55th—and the world’s newest—country on July 9, 2011, following a peaceful secession from Sudan through a referendum in January 2011. However, internal conflict broke out in December 2013, and the country's development faced a severe setback. Warring partners signed a Compromise Peace Agreement on August 27, 2015, the implementation of which has been slow and problematic.
On July 8, 2016 severe violence erupted again in the capital of Juba. Though the fighting subsided after about five days, the political situation is fragile, with little hope of a compromise between opposing parties. The situation has caused an increase in internally displaced persons, as well as refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries.

author: Pernille Baerendtsen


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So Long, Phone Companies. Mexico’s Indigenous Groups Are Getting Their Own Telecoms. · Global Voices
Giovanna Salazar

Rhizomatica members demonstrate how to operate a communal cell phone. Image from Rhizomatica Wiki under Creative Commons license.
Members of the Mixe, Mixteco, and Zapoteco people will soon have their own mobile cellular telephone network that will allow at least 356 municipalities in the States of Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz, to access mobile-telephone services and the Internet.
The new services are the result of a July 5 plenary resolution by the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones, or IFT (Federal Institute of Telecommunications), that granted for the first time in Mexico's history two licenses to operate a telecommunications network for social indigenous use to the nonprofit organization Telecomunicaciones Indígenas Comunitarias A.C. (TIC A.C.) (the Indigenous Community Telecommunications).
On that topic, the Federal Institute of Telecommunications stated:
Con estas concesiones se habilitará a su titular [TIC A.C.] a prestar servicios de telecomunicaciones para la promoción, desarrollo y preservación de sus lenguas, su cultura, sus conocimientos, promoviendo sus tradiciones, normas internas y bajo principios que respeten la igualdad de género, permitan la integración de mujeres indígenas en la participación de los objetivos para los cuales fue solicitadas las concesiones y demás elementos que constituyen las culturas e identidades indígenas.
These two licenses will enable Indigenous Community Telecommunications to provide telecommunications services for the promotion, development, and preservation of their languages, culture, and knowledge, promoting their traditions and norms based on principles that respect gender equality and allow the integration of indigenous women into the participation of the objectives for which the licenses were requested along with other elements that make up the indigenous cultural identities.
According to Redes por la Diversidad, Equidad y Sustentabilidad, A.C. (Networks for Diversity, Equality, and Sustainability Nonprofit Organization), the network Telefonía Celular Comunitaria, (Communal Cell Phone) (which has been acquired, managed, and operated since 2013 by the Villa Talea de Castro community in the northern mountain range of Oaxaca) is directly responsible for this effort to provide connectivity to indigenous communities at affordable costs.
Photo taken in Villa Talea de Castro, courtesy of Daniela Parra and used with permission, REDES AC.
As Global Voices previously explained, prior to 2013, the 2,500 inhabitants of Villa Talea de Castro relied on high-cost landline phone booths. After the large cell phone companies repeatedly refused to provide them with service, the community got together and—with the technical and legal assistance of the NGO Rhizomatica—it managed to install its own local cellular network, providing the community with “unlimited local calls and messages, long distance and international calls at a cost of up to 98 percent less than [that] offered by other telephone service providers.”
Once the cellular network went into operation, the local radio station (“Dizha Kieru,” or “Nuestra Voz” in Zapotec language) together with Rhizomatica started to explore new ways to promote citizen journalism and community communication. This project was supported with a small scholarship from Rising Voices in 2013, in accordance with the announcement of the winners for that year:
La estación de radio, junto con la organización Rhizomatica, formará a los residentes locales para convertirlos en recolectores de noticias comunitarias a través del reportaje en persona o a través de mensajería de texto o llamadas de los ciudadanos. El equipo de Dizha Kieru, que administra tanto la radio como la estación GSM reunirá, sintetizará, editará y enviará los reportes noticiosos a los residentes dos veces al día a través de mensajes de texto masivos […]
The radio station, together with the organization Rhizomatica, will train local residents to become community news gatherers through in-person reporting or through collection via SMS or phone calls from citizens. The Dizha Kieru team, who run both the radio and GSM base-station will collect, synthesize, format, and send out the news reports to residents twice a day via mass SMS […]
This first local cellular network functioned as a pilot project that was then replicated in other communities. The following video recounts the initial stages of this project:
According to the statement issued by Networks for Diversity, Equality, and Sustainability, the 16 rural and indigenous communities that up until that time formed part of the community telephone network, formed a co-op with Rhizomatica and created the Telecomunicaciones Indígenas Comunitarias, A.C. (Indigenous Community Telecommunications nonprofit organization), in order to take the next step toward getting the licenses from the IFT and operating a telecommunications network for social indigenous use, which was recently authorized.
Rhizomatica marked the authorization with a celebratory tweet:
Finally! Mexico's @IFT_MX just granted our local nonprofit TIC AC the world's first permanent social-community-indigenous GSM concession.
— Rhizomatica (@rhizomatica) July 5, 2016
Erick Huerta, a TIC A.C. consultant and member of the IFT Advisory Council, recognized the long battle that the towns and indigenous communities have had to fight in order to acquire, manage, and operate their own network:
Este hecho histórico es sólo un pequeño paso de un sueño que empezó a realizarse hace muchos años y que se construye día a día en las comunidades indígenas de nuestro país quienes, bajo sus propios principios, generan formas de atender sus necesidades con sus recursos, en esquemas de colaboración y apoyo mutuo, invirtiendo la lógica de dependencia por la de autonomía.
This historic act is just one small step towards a dream that started to take place many years ago and that is created one day at a time in the indigenous communities of our country who, from their own principles, generate ways to attend to their needs with their resources, in collaborative frameworks and mutual support, exchanging the logic of dependence with autonomy.
This is how the Indigenous Community Telecommunications network came to be the new telecommunications service provider managed both by and for the indigenous communities. With that it is hoped that instead of seeking economic profit the objective will be to serve the people, encouraging Internet access for the communities, supporting their dynamics, processes, and full exercise of their rights. A network that, without a doubt, goes beyond technology.

author: Giovanna Salazar


text:
This Classic Ukrainian Cartoon Can Help Parents Talk About Human Trafficking · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Screen shot from “How the Cossacks Rescued Their Fiances” (1973).
‘Traditional’ bondage in Mauritania; forced prostitution in Europe; and bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan. In 2016, an estimated 45.8 million were subjected to some form of slavery in 167 countries, according to the Global Slavery Index.
Even though slavery continues to plague us, discussions about human trafficking or slavery are seldom part of mainstream public discourse, and rarely do these conversations cater to children.
But an episode from a classic Ukrainian cartoon series broke taboos around addressing human trafficking as early as 1973. And now thanks to YouTube, almost half a century later, “How the Cossacks Rescued Their Fiancees” (Как казаки невест выручали), from the “How the Cossacks..” series, is making a global comeback. Single episodes of the series, uploaded to the video streaming site, have received as many as a million views.
The episode on human trafficking has been viewed more than 500K times and intertwines folklore and social commentary in a way that can be used as a conversation starter about the broad area of kidnapping and slavery.
This episode is a little over 17 minutes long, but well worth your time, as the director Vladimir Dahno combined classic animation techniques with a hilarious storyline and an excellent musical score. This episode follows three Cossacks who pursues a gang of girl-kidnapping pirates through various countries, which include satirically stereotyped depictions of Greece, Egypt and India. The use of dialogue is minimal, making this episode accessible to worldwide audiences of all ages.
If you liked this episode you might want to check out this list from UA Post: 10 Ukrainian cartoons that will make your children smarter.

author: Filip Stojanovski