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#MarginalizedAadhaar: Is India’s Aadhaar enabling more exclusion in social welfare for marginalized communities? · Global Voices
Subhashish Panigrahi

Ramani, a Lanjia Sora language speaker walking in her home in Rayagada district, Odisha, India. (Image by author, CC-BY-SA 4.0 License)
This post was first published at Yoti as a part of Subhashish Panigrahi's Digital Identity Fellowship. It has been edited for Global Voices.
The recent State of Aadhaar report that claims statistically that the Indian digital identity has mostly been beneficial with a negligible exclusion is in sync with the makers of the technology and largely the Indian government. However, perspectives reflected through interviews with marginalized communities and other stakeholder experts prove otherwise.
The report claims that 92 percent of the 167,000 surveyed people are “satisfied with Aadhaar’’ and 90 percent “trust that their data are safe in the Aadhaar system.’’
The report, however, did not address surveillance and risks to the right to privacy, which is crucial to the human rights and digital rights of India's population of 1.3 billion people (1.23 billion out of the total 1.3 billion people have enrolled for Aadhaar by 1 January 2020). The report was published by international consulting firm Dalberg Global Development Advisors with support from Omidyar Network.
The Indian government also often puts the state's national security above such individual rights, a concern that has recently been amplified with the ongoing discussions around the Personal Data Protection Bill of 2019 (read the proposed bill here) which can give the government agencies to access people's private data.
Aadhaar is a unique 12 digit number provided by a public organization Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that Indian residents can obtain by providing their biometric data and demographic data. Aadhaar is tied to a range of citizen beneficiary services, and logistical and technical issues have led to the exclusion of many marginalized communities. Similarly, the use of personal data in Aadhaar for authentication by public and private entities have raised serious human rights issues.
Unique Identity (UID) is used to tag Indian citizens with Aadhaar by centralizing a range of personal data (including biometric). Contrary to a popular misconception that Aadhaar is yet another “card” that provides the Indian citizens a form of identity, it is merely a number.
The 20 individuals — whose interviews form the basis for this report — are from communities that are marginalized on the basis of social and economic factors and are based in the Indian states of Odisha and Uttarakhand in four different locations. Five (25%) of the interviewees were women and two of those women were illiterate, whereas the male interviewees were all literate. Interviewees from Odisha were from two adivasi (indigenous) communities — Lanjia Sora and Jurai Sora, and the interviews from Uttarakhand were from low economic groups.
The other set of interviewees were key stakeholders including human rights lawyers and activists, litigators, ethnographers, and academic and other researchers.
As Aadhaar has been and is being linked to many citizen beneficiary services, authorities tend to use fingerprint scanning-based identification and authentication. Services like state pension or rations (food, fuels and so on) — or even subsidized healthcare — are received by individuals who are generally marginalized on the basis of age, literacy, access to public information in one’s own language, etc. Illness or manual labor can cause loss of or change in fingerprints which one might have to update periodically. Such a case can make a fingerprint-based authentication to fail.
‘‘For someone already part of a public system and already receiving their benefits, the complexity of getting everything connected through Aadhaar becomes burdensome,’’ shares a researcher-interviewee (who did not want to be named) who was studying the receipt of public benefits such as pensions and Public Distribution System (PDS), a federal government initiative to provide food and essential commodities to people in need with the objective of eradicating poverty) in rural Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. He adds, “people who do manual labor, or have an illness, or are in old age (or any of these combinations) often find their fingerprints are not detected or authenticated’’ while emphasizing how authentication using a mobile number or biometric (it has to be either in the case of Aadhaar) has many flaws, an issue researcher and human rights lawyer Dr. Usha Ramanathan and advocate Rahul Narayan also highlighted.
According to Dr. Ramanathan: “maintaining a valid mobile number or maintaining the same phone number used at the time of enrollment, failure of updating the number has led to exclusion’’ is a huge challenge, ‘‘the techno-utopians’’, the tech-savvy group behind Aadhaar – because of their own privileges, and lack of knowledge of ground reality – fail to understand.’’
Noted litigator Shyam Divan calls the Aadhaar system “dehumanizing’’ as it enables denial of rations to the poor over failure in fingerprint-based Aadhaar authentication. By November 2018, Right to Food Campaign activists in the Indian state of Jharkhand reported that 17 people had died in Jharkhand alone because of their failure to link their ration cards to Aadhaar – even though the State of Aadhaar report states that 80% of people feel that “Aadhaar has made PDS rations, MGNREGS schemes, or social pensions more reliable.” It is important to note that the failure, however small it might look in percentage terms, is massive in reality when you consider there are 1.3 billion people in India. “It took a year to get my Aadhaar card,’’ shares Manjula, a Lanjia Sora homemaker from the Gajapati district of Odisha who is in her early forties.
Former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani who led Aadhaar's development in 2008-2009, detailed its three main pillars — Unique, Ubiquitous and Universal. Dr. Ramanathan, who was part of some of the discussions led by Nilekani was early to recognize that Aadhaar is not what it was designed for. He explained:
“It was clear from the beginning that the people who would suffer the most are the poor. As an untested technology that is being imposed on people, the whole project was shot from the shoulders of the poor without knowing if such an ID would work or not. Aadhaar is not a card but a number attached to a biometric. If the biometric doesn’t work, the number doesn’t work,” Dr. Ramanathan added.
Rahul Narayan, a lawyer in the Indian Supreme Court, feels that Aadhaar's design has a striking and dangerous similarity to the governance structures Stalin or Hitler created. Narayan is frenzied by the idea of accumulating personal data collected by public and private services using Aadhaar.
Lack of access to information surfaced as a huge marginalization factor in the field interviews. Ramani, a 70-year-old Jurai Sora lady from the Rayagada district of Odisha recounts how she and other illiterate folks from her village suffered during Aadhaar enrollment. They relied on bilingual officials and others for help in translation. “Public announcements are made by Endia,’’(originated from “India”, refers here to a bilingual person who brings public announcements to the people) shares Dinabandhu, an elderly Lanjia Sora male.
In a country with over 700 languages (only 22 are officially recognized) and a 74.8 percent literacy rate, only about 12 languages are used in the official implementation of Aadhaar. The claim of 92 percent of Aadhaar holders being satisfied with it and 90 percent of them trust that their data is safe with the government in State of Aadhaar seems highly ambitious and impractical.
Despite huge efforts to make Aadhaar the go-to ID verification for many public and private services, Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act 2016 – which addresses the use of authentication as a proof of citizenship and domicile – was called “unconstitutional” in an Indian Supreme Court verdict issued in December 2019. Many communities during these interviews were happy to have an Aadhaar “card’’ to themselves as an entitlement, and they now failed to imagine their lives without one.

author: Subhashish Panigrahi


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Pakistan’s draconian rules on social media take activists by surprise · Global Voices
R Umaima Ahmed

Image via Pxfuel. CC0
On January 28, the Pakistan federal cabinet approved the “Citizens Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules, 2020,” without consulting other stakeholders or informing the public as The News International, an English-language daily, reported on February 12, 2020. The rules and regulations have been inserted in the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016.
These set of rules will regulate all social media activities online and the social media companies would be obliged to disclose any information or data to investigation agencies when requested by the authorities. They would also be required to remove content deemed unlawful by the authorities. If platforms fail to comply with the rules, they risk being blocked and fined. It is not clear when the new rules will go into effect.
This took Pakistani activists by surprise:
#Pakistan Approves Broad New Restrictions Over #SocialMedia would dramatically change the way companies such as @Facebook and @Twitter operate in the country #censorship https://t.co/NWvhu9efB5
— Farahnaz Ispahani (@fispahani) February 13, 2020
According to Secretary Ministry of Information Technology Shoaib Siddiqui, the new rules require “social media companies and platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Dailymotion, Twitter and others to open offices in Pakistan and register in the country within three months.” These platforms will have to remove any “unlawful content’’ pointed out to them in writing or in an electronically signed email within 24 hours, and in emergency cases within six hours.
According to the rules, social media means “any social media application or service or communication channel dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content, sub-content sharing and collaboration’’ and a social media company refers to “an entity that owns or runs or manages those online Systems.’’ According to the rules, such companies “shall take due cognizance of the religious, cultural, ethnic and national security sensitivities of Pakistan.’’
A National Coordinator will be appointed by the Minister of Information Technology and Telecommunication “who will be assisted by a committee comprising of stakeholders (the rules did not specify these stakeholders) as notified by the aforesaid Minister.’’ According to the rules, the Coordinator's functions will also include writing instruction in relation to the regulation of social media:
advis[ing] the Federal or Provincial Governments, and issu[ing] instructions to departments, authorities and agencies, in accordance with requirements of National Security in relation to management or regulation or functioning of social media companies. The departments, authorities or agencies shall act in compliance with the said instructions. Such instructions may include actions related to blocking of unlawful online content, acquisition of data or information from social media companies, and other such matters;
According to rule 6, “social media companies shall provide to the Investigation Agency designated or established under section 29 of the Act subscriber information about the subscriber, traffic data, content data and any other information or data.’’
Rule 7 mentions that “in case a social media company fails to abide by the provision of these Rules, the National Coordinator may issue instructions for shutting down the respective service or blocking of the entire Online System and levy a fine up to 500 million Pakistan Rupees (3.24 million US dollars).’’
All major digital rights activists and many social media users in Pakistan have rejected this step and condemned it saying that this is a new attack on freedom of expression, privacy, and digital rights of Pakistanis. The rules were passed secretly in the cabinet and parliamentarians will not be debating it.
Local human rights organization Bytes for All (B4A) expressed its concerns:
Bytes for All has serious reservations over the Citizens Protection Against Online Harm rules. We believe they aim at granting access to State to personal data of citizens and curb their speech. Moreover, it will have serious implications on internet based businesses in country
— Bytes for All, PK (@bytesforall) February 14, 2020
Digital Rights activist Nighat Dad mentioned that the brand new regulations will give the government dangerous powers to control social media. According to her the definition of extremism, faith or tradition mentioned in the rules can be misinterpreted to name any on-line content material unlawful or extremist or anti-state. Section 2(d) of the rule states:
“Extremism” means the violent, vocal or active opposition to fundamental values of the state of Pakistan including the security, integrity or defence of Pakistan, public order, decency or morality, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.
Media Matters for Democracy stated:
The scope and scale of action defined in the rules appear to go way beyond the mandate given under the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organization) Act, 1996 (XVII of 1996) and the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 (XL of 2016). We remind the government that anybody creating Rules under a law has to treat them as subordinate legislation and thus, the prescribed Rules cannot exceed the power of the parent Acts, i.e. the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organization) Act, 1996 (XVII of 1996) and the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 (XL of 2016).
While Digital Rights Foundation said:
The Rules are a blatant violation of Article 19 (freedom of speech and information) of the Constitution.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) is concerned that the rules will enable the designated authorities to control freedom of expression and opinion in the guise of protecting “religious, cultural, ethnic and national security sensitivities.’’
Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq of opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) tweeted saying:
Parliamentary oversight allows both NA & @SenatePakistan to review rules & regulations; an important component of delegated legislation.
Also, any draconian/repressive rule that stifles freedom of speech, Article 19, falls under the purview of Human Rights committee https://t.co/sHJPyBFOWN
— Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq (@AyeshaRaza13) February 13, 2020
Journalist Talat Hussain made angry comments:
#Pakistan is being thrown behind the iron curtain of one of the most draconian #socialmedia #censorships of modern times. A new authority & legal framework put in place will choke & shut down posts on fb, youtube, twitter reducing the country to a Burma or #3rdReich. Heil! Heil! pic.twitter.com/iMvMXvzH45
— Syed Talat Hussain (@TalatHussain12) February 12, 2020
The Asia Internet Coalition, an industry association comprising leading internet and technology companies including, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google, also expressed its concerns:
The Asia Internet Coalition submitted its initial response to Pakistan’s Citizens Protection Rules (Against Online Harm). In the submission, AIC expressed sincere concern tht unless revoked, these rules will severely cripple growth of Pak’s digital economy https://t.co/lAJn5vxxjS
— Taha Siddiqui (@TahaSSiddiqui) February 16, 2020
Google, Facebook, Apple & others:
“As no other country has announced such a sweeping set of rules, Pakistan risks becoming a global outlier needlessly isolating and depriving Pakistani users and businesses of the growth potential of the internet economy”https://t.co/e7seEXjzzr
— Fahad Desmukh (@desmukh) February 16, 2020
Despite the outcry, the Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry defended the government’s decision mentioning that it was enacted to regulate social media to tackle harmful content and fake accounts.
This is not the first time that social media and its users in Pakistan have been under fire by the government. Recently Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) drafted a policy proposing to license and regulate Over the Top (OTT) Services and Web TV and asked for public feedback, sparking a public outcry.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: R Umaima Ahmed


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China travel ban heightens threats to Australia’s trade, tourism and education sectors · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

QANTAS staff disinfect aircraft used for coronavirus evacuation mission from Wuhan – Screenshot Nine New Australia video
The impact of the coronavirus COVID-19 has not only aggravated Australia’s economic situation but also strained relations with the Chinese government. Goods and services exports to China represented 32.6 percent of total exports in 2018-19. Education and tourism are part of the services sector.
The extension by the Australian government of a travel ban on people coming from mainland China has deepened this crisis. The ban does not apply to Australian citizens or permanent residents though those brought back on special flights from Wuhan have been placed in quarantine.
The ban has plenty of support on local social media despite its effects on the economy:
Wrong! Australia has 2 protect its people. That’s the first priority for @ScottMorrisonMP government. PM took the right decision. China puts 56 million people under a strict lockdown to prevent spreading of Coronavirus infection. Australia is fully justified in doing what it did. https://t.co/e75WqdCWTj
— Yadu Singh (@dryadusingh) February 14, 2020
The hypocrisy from China is gobsmacking. China itself in internal lockdown because of a virus it tried to coverup and *refused to share with WHO* criticises other countries protecting their own borders & people. Australia must not relax the travel ban. #Coronavirus #Covid19 https://t.co/Ashnji91VG
— ?????????? ?? ?? (@correzpond) February 13, 2020
Keep the ban! Stop worrying about the bottom line and our economy all the bloody time and do what is right for Australia because if you allow China to start coming here again when the coronavirus is still large there will be no economy, the disease will be everywhere ! Man up!!
— Vicki Meyer (@VickiMe875) February 13, 2020
However, not everyone is impressed by the government’s actions:
I cannot believe how poorly this has been handled. Next time I watch border force it will be with head in hands at the inadequacy of our governments leadership. #Dim or what
Coronavirus: Australia extends travel ban on people entering from China for a week https://t.co/rtvuZt9zaz
— Neil Ewins ? (@neilorange63) February 13, 2020
Tourism was already suffering because of the national bushfires disaster. Chinese visitors made up approximately 15 percent of total tourists in 2019, spending over $AU 12 billion [USD 8 billion]
However, suggestions that the ban should be lifted to help tourism are not popular with everyone:
I strongly disagree it. Protecting Australia and Australians safe, security and well-being is the No. 1 task for Australia government and all Australians. Putting a China tourism ban in place is an effective way to achieve that goal. https://t.co/oU1plWd9GY
— Richard_Xiankai (@Richard_Xiankai) February 16, 2020
The ban has also caused a panic in the education sector as 100,000 Chinese students, half the 200,000 enrolled in Australia, were back home when it was imposed. It has been estimated that the $AU 37 billion [USD 24.7 billion] university and training sector could take a $AU 8 billion [USD 5.4 billion] hit in the first half of 2020. Since the United Kingdom and Canada do not have bans, there are fears that students will go elsewhere with the possibility of losing 30 percent to competitors.
A positive sign has been China's move to relax Internet restrictions so that students can study online. This is an unprecedented step as China strictly controls access to the internet as the country has self-imposed a Great Fire Wall that censors a number of non-Chinese sites and platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. Australian universities have been putting hundreds of programs online so students can commence their courses this month.
Despite being major trading partners, Australia/China relations have suffered numerous tensions in recent years. The exclusion of Chinese telco Huawei from Australia’s 5G network rollout is one sore point among a growing list of issues causing discord between the two nations.
The Chinese reaction to the ban has been measured, expressing “regret” at the decision and calling it an “overreaction”.
This tweet underlines the reality that Australia is unlikely to be uppermost in the minds of China's leaders at the moment:
#Coronavirus is more than a minor cold for the Chinese economy; for China to instantly create a large hospital to deal with it, sums up China’s knowledge of the outbreak and potential to spread. They’ve got more to worry about than another week’s travel ban to Australia. #AusPol
— Richmond Millier (@RichmondMillier) February 14, 2020
Meanwhile accusations of racism related to the virus have brought mixed responses on social media. Former race discrimination commissioner, Tim Southphommasane, was in strong agreement with concerns raised by the Chief Medical Officer:
Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy speaking out against the rise of racism connected with the coronavirus. Good on him. Let’s hope certain media outlets won’t now denounce him for “race baiting” or being a “race hustler” https://t.co/3nmawZaKVo
— Tim Soutphommasane (@timsout) February 11, 2020
Chinese Australian Erin Wen Ai Chew regularly speaks out against racism on her Facebook page. However, the closure of Melbourne’s Shark fin restaurant prompted this plea:
I am most disappointed in our own Chinese/Asian Australian community who have fallen for the fearmongering from the Australian Government and the tabloid media hysteria and racism over the coronavirus.
As a whole Australia is disappointing and have let Chinese/Asian businesses down. This is the result of the ignorance and what false mass hysteria can do. This is not saying that the threat of the virus “isn't dangerous”, but it is saying that we in Australia are over reacting and as a Chinese Australian I feel we have let our own businesses down.
I will definitely keep supporting our Asian/Chinese businesses, I suggest all of you do too!
It seems that not everyone will be heeding her request:
Sorry but avoiding asians in Australia at the moment is not racism, it is a safety precaution. Asians have a much higher risk of having close contact with people who have recently returned from mainland China and that is where the outbreak originated. Playing it safe isn’t racism
— Here Fishy Fishy (@realFishyFishy) February 11, 2020
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shared a different view of Scott Morrison’s government’s handling of the crisis in a radio interview with the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “…we have seen very few expressions of genuine solidarity, sympathy and support from the Australian government to the Chinese people.”
Rudd is also a former diplomat specialising in Chinese matters, but was not diplomatic in his attack on Peter Dutton, the Home Affairs minister: “Dutton has a long history of… dealing with race related questions with less than… appropriate sensitivity.”
He cited the decision to quarantine Wuhan evacuees to the remote detention centre on Christmas Island as an example, suggesting Dutton would have picked a different location “for white people”. His comments met with online opposition:
All you’re doing is slanging abuse and partisan talking points. Rudd’s criticism of him here is inane and disgusting.
I support Dutton’s policies and denounce false and therefore vile inferences of racism against him.
— Steve Phillips (@rumpletig) February 13, 2020
The travel ban extension is for one week. It will be interesting to see if the Chinese government does more than express regrets if it becomes a weekly occurrence.
the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus

author: Kevin Rennie


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For Rohingya refugees, ID systems have brought coercion, violence and denial of ethnic identity · Global Voices
Shafiur Rahman

A Rohingya woman from Myanmar holds a SweTinSit photo. Seven of the people pictured were killed in military “clearance operations’’ in northern Rakhine state in August 2017. Photo courtesy of Shafiur Rahman.
Taslima was dreading the day. It was SweTinSit, an annual population census conducted by Myanmar government officials in northern Rakhine state. Military, police and customs officials would be sweeping through, collecting data on Rohingya families – monitoring the birth of children, photographing family members and listing their names. This was in 2016, when tensions in Rakhine were escalating.
For many Rohingya people, like Taslima and others in her village of Tula Toli, the SweTinSit (or “Map Record Check,” in Burmese) was a mandatory and intense audit, and always unpredictable. If one is absent during a SweTinSit, their relatives can be subject to extortion, imprisonment, arbitrary taxation, or worse. The year before, a relative of Taslima's was raped by a military officer.
In the SweTinSit of 2016, Taslima's brother-in-law had gone to work outside the village, to repay a debt. Fearing that he would be arrested for his brother's absence, Taslima's husband disappeared for the three days it took for the census to be completed in Tula Toli. Taslima paid a fine of 300,000 kyats (US $208) for her brother-in-law and a further fine of 200,000 kyats (US $138) for her husband.
Officers warned her that if her husband did not return while the census was still underway, there would be further consequences. In the early hours of the very next day, Taslima says that four men, including the village chairman Aung Ko Sein, entered her hut and raped her in front of her two young children.
I met and interviewed Taslima in 2018, after she, along with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims like herself, had fled from Rakhine state to Bangladesh.
At this time, the lists and the photographs produced during SweTinSit amounted to the only forms of official Myanmar government documentation that many of them had. Authorities do not grant citizenship to Rohingya people born in Myanmar territory. In government documentation systems and rhetoric, Rohingya are referred to as “Bengalis,” erroneously suggesting that they are migrants from Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, photos and lists from SweTinSit have become portable memories of loved ones, thousands of whom perished in the so-called “Clearance operations.” These documents also are potentially the most compelling claim to citizenship that Rohingya refugees possess, given that many of these records stretch back decades.
Once they had arrived in Bangladesh, at the Balukhali camp, Taslima learned that her household family members would need to register with camp authorities in order to receive food tokens. To register, Taslima and her family members were told to submit their information, fingerprints, and an iris scan, all of which would be collected and logged in biometric “Smart Cards.”
Speaking with others in the camp, Taslima and her husband heard different views on the Smart Cards. But concerns grew stronger, and the opposition to Smart Cards germinated and spread. Many refugees refused to believe that the card was just a practical necessity for aid management and delivery, that it had no social or political meaning.
On Twitter, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi called the Smart Card a “personal document which is also a tangible sign of dignity and hope.” But many Rohingya disagreed. At the heart of their suspicion lay the fact that the cards did not include the word “Rohingya,” although the database for the Smart Cards does include this information. The card itself describes Rohingya cardholders as “Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals.”
One might imagine that to be called a “Myanmar National” would be favourable for many Rohingya, who for decades have struggled against the Myanmar government’s refusal to grant them citizenship.
Nay San Lwin, a prominent Rohingya activist and coordinator of the diaspora group Free Rohingya Coalition, told me:
It is not standard practice [to include one's ethnicity on an ID card]. But the people in the camps felt very strongly about their ethnic name given their experience of being labelled “Bengali” in Myanmar. They wanted to secure their Rohingya identity on a card finally. They thought it would amount to some international recognition of Rohingya ethnic identity.
And for many, the decision not to include the term “Rohingya” indicated deeper collaboration between the Bangladeshi and Myanmar governments.
For many, an even more worrisome aspect of the process was that the database registration form included the option to share one’s information with Myanmar authorities. This suggested that Smart Card biometric information would be shared with Myanmar for repatriation, an abiding goal of the Bangladesh government for over four decades.
Many feared that data from the Smart Cards would be integrated into the Myanmar government's National Verification Card system, a failed attempt (separate from the SweTinSit process) to register Rohingyas as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh formally. The registration form included a question, “when did you arrive in Myanmar and by which route,” with the answer often pre-filled. For Rohingya people, NVC cards marked them as foreigners and deprived them of their rightful status as citizens of Myanmar. They even termed it the “genocide card.” Except for those who were coerced to do so, Rohingya people refused to register for the card.
Within six months of the August 2017 influx of over 700,000 Rohingya people into Bangladesh, Myanmar dispatched its Social Welfare Minister, Dr. Win Myat Aye, to the camps of Bangladesh, to “convince” the refugees to return. His delegation argued NVC cards would help verify the identity of refugees returning to Myanmar. He pledged that cardholders would be granted freedom of movement, access to healthcare and education, and permission to cross the border.
With the introduction of the Smart Cards, activists feared the shared data of their Smart Cards would again allow Myanmar to propose the much-hated NVC card to them, only this time with UN entities conferring legitimacy upon it.
One group within the camp, called the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, vocally opposed the Smart Card, and organized some mobilisation against it. The organisation came under pressure from the authorities, thus the protests were not that widespread, and were later called off in December of 2018. The group leader, Mohibullah, saved face by claiming that the name Rohingya will be included in the process, but this was not an actual win for the protesters — the name had been in the database field since 2017, when the cards were first introduced. To date, the name Rohingya still does not appear on the actual Smart Card.
The Smart Card registration process has also been harrowing for many refugees. In 2018, I began hearing reports of various types of “irregularities,” coercion and beatings. In interviews I conducted, witnesses reported incidents at the point of information collection, and beatings meted out by officials.
On 10 October 2018, several women in Musini camp recorded video interviews in a distressed state describing their rough treatment, including beatings, by the camp authorities the day earlier. Nay San Lwin, of the Free Rohingya Coalition, decided to take the videos and show them personally to the then Bangladesh Foreign Secretary, Shahidul Haque. He complained that refugees were being beaten for refusing the Smart Card.
Soon thereafter, Nay San Lwin was barred from the camps, and Bangladesh intelligence agencies began to monitor his movements. The head of the country's office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, Abul Kalam, issued a swift denial of the violence.
Taslima's family received their Smart Cards in July of 2019, long after the agitation against the cards had ceased. Taslima says she still felt some trepidation when they had their biometric data collected.
“I had to stand in line the whole day,” she said. “They told us they would withhold rations and that we couldn't stay in the camps. So we had no choice.”
When I told that her Smart Card will hold information about her for years, maybe decades, Taslima looked puzzled.
“They are going to know everything about us,” she said. “But they never told us anything. They also took our photographs – just like in Burma.”

author: Shafiur Rahman


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Japan edges ever closer to a COVID-19 epidemic · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

The cruise ship Diamond Princess, which has been in quarantine in port in Yokohama since February 4, 2020. Screencap from Nippon TV YouTube channel.
February has seen Japan edge ever closer to experiencing a COVID-19 epidemic as the country now hosts the second-largest cluster of confirmed cases in the world, after the People's Republic of China.
As of February 17, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that there were 59 confirmed cases and one death in Japan of COVID-19, the disease caused by the strain of coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. In 33 of the 59 cases, infection occurred outside of China, meaning the virus is now being spread person-to-person in Japan.
While Singapore has a higher number of infected individuals than Japan (75 as of February 17), the official WHO statistics for Japan do not include the cluster of COVID-19 infections on the Diamond Princess, the cruise quarantined at a berth in the port of Yokohama since February 4.
As of February 17, there were 454 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the Diamond Princess’ 3,700 passengers and crew. As a 14-day quarantine progressed with an increasing number of passengers falling sick despite their isolation, pressure has mounted on the Japanese government to resolve the situation.
On February 16, with the sickest passengers having been removed from Diamond Princess to be treated in hospital in Japan, some foreign nationals started to be repatriated and flown home by their respective governments.
Matthew Smith, an American passenger with a large following on Twitter, decided to remain on the ship rather than return on the repatriation flight to the United States. Smith stated he chose to stay in quarantine on the Diamond Princess because American cruise ship passengers who had tested positive for the virus were “mixed” with healthy passengers on the repatriation flight, increasing the risk of infection and defeating the purpose of the quarantine.
Smith also highlighted the plight of the ship's crew, who has been exposed to the virus as they served the needs of passengers since February 4, and will likely need to be quarantined themselves:
But I also believe this is the first step toward transitioning from quarantine of the remaining passengers to quarantine of the crew themselves.
— Matthew Smith (@mjswhitebread) February 18, 2020
On February 10, some Indian members of the crew posted a Facebook video in a plea to be released from the ship, stating there was little to no information about how many crew members were infected.
Diamond Princess crew members make a video pleading for help from the Indian government on February 10, 2020. Screencap from YouTube. The original Facebook video can be found here.
Meanwhile, the likelihood of a potential epidemic within Japan has slowly started to sink in. On February 13, an 80-year-old woman died, becoming the country's first victim of COVID-19.
Quite a bit of disagreement on the front pages today over how big a deal to make of the first coronavirus death in Japan.
Asahi and Sankei went biggest, giving it the full white-on-black treatment with reasonable point size. pic.twitter.com/S8JJpILE2I
— Gearoid Reidy (@GearoidReidy) February 14, 2020
The next day, the Japanese government set up a special task force that included infectious disease experts to deal with the potential spread of the coronavirus. At the same time, Health Minister Kato Katsunobu declared Japan had entered a “new phase” of the outbreak.
An unattributed photo of the grim faces of the task force was widely shared on Twitter:
コロナ対策本部の顔ぶれが絶望的な件 pic.twitter.com/4DsfreuZwS
— らぐなす(*･ω･)ﾉ?✨ (@Ragnaaas) February 16, 2020
A look of despair on the faces of the coronavirus task force.
Prominent events in Japan are being canceled. By February 14, Japan's largest camera trade show was canceled due to the outbreak. The Tokyo Marathon has also been closed to all registrants, save for Olympic hopefuls. There will be no refund of registration fees. Other events, such as tech conferences, are also being paused.
Meanwhile, Japan's booming tourism industry has been walloped by a travel ban the Chinese government has imposed on its citizens.
Various reports coming in of confirmed tourist booking cancellations. Probably just the tip of the iceberg.
Niigata – 3,000
Tochigi – 2,000
Kitakyushu – 2,200
Kurashiki – 1,200https://t.co/BTDECrHVGm
— Mulboyne (@Mulboyne) February 14, 2020
After the Japanese Health Minister advised people to “avoid public places,” Japanese businesses have struggled to cope with the outbreak. Employers such as online publisher Cookpad and national telecom provider NTT are making arrangements for employees to work from home — a practice that is almost unheard of in Japan.
According to FNN News, however, due to the relative inflexibility of workplace rules around sick leave, some of those infected by the coronavirus may be faced with staying home and not getting paid, or going to work when sick.
「新型コロナウイルスに感染しており、都道府県知事が行う就業制限により労働者が休業する場合は、一般的には「使用者の責に帰すべき事由による休業」に該当しないと考えられますので、休業手当を支払う必要はありません。」←つまり、有給を使い切ったら仕事に行け、と。馬鹿なのか。 https://t.co/Ksrd23kV6b
— Kan Kimura (@kankimura) February 14, 2020
If a worker gets infected by the coronavirus and is required to stay away from work as required by prefectural workplace restrictions (put in place to deal with the coronavirus), the absence won't be regarded as “mandatory, as directed by the employer.” So, (in this case) employers would not be required to pay infected workers their normal salary. < — This means that once your paid leave is all used up, you'll have to go back to work. How stupid is that?
Amidst the threat of a looming epidemic, the Japanese government's greatest concern appears to be ensuring the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, due to open on July 24, go ahead. Both the International Organizing Committee (IOC) and the government of Japan insist the Olympics will go on as scheduled, despite the threat of the coronavirus.
There is also increasing pressure for Japan to close its air and sea borders with China, despite being applauded so far for its heart-warming support of China compared to the United States.
After Japanese navy ships were turned away from Micronesia and the Marshall Islands because of fears of the disease, Sato Masahisa, Japan's bellicose and ultraconservative junior minister of foreign affairs, and a member of the government's COVID-19 task force, suggested that urgent debate is needed about restricting travel into Japan from China.
日本は感染国とみなされる。そんなバカなと思っている方も多いと思うが、これが現実。残念だが、日本が拒否したクルーズ船と同じ扱い。この現実を踏まえて対応しないと、東京五輪への影響もでかねない。遅いとの指摘もあるが、国内対策と同時に中国からの入国制限も喫緊の課題 https://t.co/HpUlJOHdxh
— 佐藤正久 (@SatoMasahisa) February 14, 2020
Japan is now regarded as an “infected country.” There might be a lot of people who think the idea is crazy, but it's now the reality. Japan is being treated just like that cruise ship [turned away from Hong Kong, Thailand and Cambodia]. If we don't do something about the situation, the Tokyo Olympics will surely be impacted. While it may be a bit late to point this out, at the same time we are taking plans domestically, we also need to urgently consider limiting entry to Japan from China.
Most Japanese people, however, are trying to navigate day to day life under the looming shadow of an epidemic. One woman, for example, has thought about how to wear a mask while wearing glasses:
ニュースサイトしらべぇ
警視庁考案
メガネが曇らないマスクの付け方
マスクを付けると
メガネが真っ白になって
不便だなと思っていたのだが
これは素晴らしいアイデア??
マスクの上部を内側に折るだけで
曇りを防げるのならば簡単だし
付け心地に影響なし
今後マスクを付ける時は
これを実践しよう pic.twitter.com/ngZPNF64fH
— ジェームズ・Ｔ・カーク２世 (@kirk2_thegod) January 30, 2020
[…] Here's a way to prevent your glasses from fogging up while wearing a mask. […] It's really awesome: just fold the top of the mask inward! It's an easy way to prevent fogging up, and feels comfortable.
the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Life on the margins: The Lyuli people of Uzbekistan · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

A young man from the Lyuli community in Uzbekistan's southern province of Surxondaryo. Photo (c): Aleksandr Barkovsky. Used with permission.
Uzbekistan was the cradle of several empires and nations in Central Asia, a characteristic that is reflected in its multiethnic population of over 30 million. While ethnic Uzbeks comprise the majority, there are close to 50 other groups, including the Luli or Lyuli. This small community lives on the margins of Uzbek society, often discriminated because of their ethnicity.
The Lyuli are believed to be distantly related to the Roma and Sinti people of Europe and the Middle East, but their origins are obscure. As such, there is currently little consensus on how to best describe this community in English. In Russian, the most commonly used term is “цыгане” — usually translated into English as “Gypsies”, which is widely considered derogatory and has largely been replaced by the word “Roma.”
According to a 2019 study conducted by Uzbek researcher Kamilla Zakirova:
Central Asia's [Roma] are usually called Lyuli. The Lyuli describe themselves using the term Mughat, an Iranian term meaning “fire cult followers,” which is applied to Zoroastrians. They have inhabited the territories of Central Asia for centuries, ever since their ancestors migrated from the Punjab in present day Pakistan. There are no accurate contemporary data on the Lyuli population because it does not participate in the government conducted census and many members of the Lyuli population never obtain legal documents.
I interviewed Aleksandr Barkovsky, a conceptual artist and activist who, himself an ethnic Russian, took a personal interest in the Lyuli, and made a series of short videos about the community. The interview has been edited for brevity.
What is the main social issue the Lyuli face today?
Александр Барковский: Проблема образования – негласное решение с обеих сторон о недостижимости образования и отчасти его ненадобности. причины этого происходят по вине обеих сторон, как цыган, в основном из-за их патриархальных принципов, когда глава клана авторитарный мужчина имеет единственное право голоса и принимает решение не в пользу получения образования, а чаще всего в пользу сложившихся правил диаспоры. В обществе доминирует идея того, что цыгане «люли» сами сделали свой выбор не в пользу получения образования и давать им возможность учится и получать различные профессии не имеет никакого смысла. Хотя при опросе самих цыган «люли» можно узнать, что среди них есть большой процент желающих изменить свою судьбу. Взрослые цыгане говорят, что хотят для своих детей «лучшей судьбы» и понимают, что этого можно добиться при получении хорошего образования.
Aleksandr Barkovsky: The issue of education. There is an unspoken consensus that education is unattainable and partially not needed. The reasons for this lie on both sides, as the Roma people maintain patriarchal traditions and thus the head of the clan, a man who concentrates all the authority, makes decisions not in favour of education but in favour of the rules established in the community. Most people think that as the Lyuli choose not to pursue education, giving them a chance to study and learn different skills is meaningless. Yet if one surveys the community, one can find many Lyuli who want to change their lives. Adults say that they want “a better life for their children,” and understand that the only way to achieve that is to get good quality education.
FN: Does that mean Lyuli children really have no access to education?
AБ: Большая проблема цыган «люли» это дети лишенные детства. В семьях цыган «люли» детей рожают много, но выживают из них только половина иногда меньше. Уже с первых недель жизни мать берет ребёнка с собой в город где она ходит целый день летом под палящем солнцем зимой под снегом, в одной руке держа ребёнка, а другой прося милостыню. Таким образом ребёнок можно сказать что с молоком матери уже впитывает в себя картину мира попрошайничества, лишений, унижений и бесконечных побоев.
AB: One of the biggest problems is the fact that Lyuli children are deprived of their childhood. Lyuli families have many children, but only half or even less survive. From the very first weeks of infancy, the mother takes her child downtown where she walks under the scorching sun or in the snow holding her kid in one hand and begging with the other. As a result, children absorb with their mother's milk an image of the world that dominated by begging, deprivation, humiliation, and constant beatings.
Lyuli boy attending a school for the community in the southern province of Surxondaryo. Photo (c): Aleksandr Barkovsky. Used with permission.
FN: What is the status of women in the community?
AБ: Статус женщины в цыганском обществе не равноправен статусу мужчины. Женщина не имеет те же права, но имеет много различных обязанностей. Цыганские женщины вынуждены рожать много детей хотят они этого или нет, и только так они могут получить уважение в цыганском обществе, когда первый вопрос, который задают цыганской женщине это сколько у неё детей? Единственный шанс на образование, которое она может получить это получить его до замужества, что бывает крайне редко. Так же существует огромная проблема ранних браков среди цыган, когда девушку уже в 14-15 лет отдают замуж.
AB: Women do not have an equal status to men in Roma society. They do not have the same rights, but they have many obligations. They have to give birth to many children whether they want to or not —a large family is a way to gain respect among the community, and the first question [women] get is how many children they have. The only chance for female education is before marriage, and that is extremely rare. Particularly because marriages are held at a very young age; girls are married at the age of 14 or 15.
A Lyuli couple in a tent camp outside Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan. Photo (c): Aleksandr Barkovsky. Used with permission.
FN: Does religion play an important role in the life of the Lyuli Roma?
AБ: Цыгане «Люли» позиционируют себя как мусульмане сунниты, читают намаз и отмечают все религиозные исламские предписания и праздники. В светском же исламском обществе узбеки так и таджики дискриминируют их как единоверцев, считая их «не истинными» мусульманами из-за их языческого прошлого, кастовой системы, огнепоклонничества. Понимание ислама цыганами «Люли» носит скорее контекст народного ислама с элементами языческого прошлого которые и по сей день имеют место в жизни цыган.
AB: The Lyuli Roma identify as Sunni Muslims. They observe prayers, as well as all the other religious requirements and celebrations. In lay Muslim society they face discrimination from Uzbeks and Tajiks, who do not consider them “real” Muslims because of pagan elements to their religious practices, their caste system, and worship of fire. The Lyuli community's understanding of Islam is more about a popular Islamic spiritualism combined with elements of the pre-Islamic past, which remain to this day in the lives of the Lyuli Roma.
Lyuli family in a Russian Orthodox cemetery in Tashkent at Easter, when it is tradition to eat near gravestones. Photo (c): Alexander Barkovsky. Used with permission.
FN: What is the government's approach to the social issues faced by the community?
AБ: Проблема социальной незащищенности цыган «Люли», от части в том, что о них никому ничего не известно в обществе. Где они проживают и в каком количестве? От суда следует что власти могут вести любую политику по отношению к цыганской диаспоре и это всегда будет оставаться незамеченным. Поэтому для соблюдения их конституционных прав, необходима прозрачность ситуации и максимально возможная её информативность.
AB: The main reason why the Lyuli Roma lack social protection is the simple fact that nobody knows anything about them. Where do they live? How many of them are there? Whatever policy the government implements, it will have no effect. That's why in order to protect their constitutional rights, what's needed is transparency and more information.

author: Filip Noubel


text:
North America has mustangs, Bosnia and Herzegovina has the wild horses of Livno · Global Voices
Balkan Diskurs

Wild horses of Livno in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photo by Armin Durgut/Balkan Diskurs, used with permission.
This story by Sanela Tufekčić was originally published on Balkan Diskurs, a project of the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC). An edited version is republished by Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement
The foothills below Mount Cincar, not far from the town of Livno in southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), have been home to around 400 wild horses for nearly 50 years. The animals have managed to adapt to the harsh weather conditions and survive poachers and predators for all these years. In a landscape of vast pastures and forests, these majestic animals are a unique phenomenon in this part of Europe.
Up until the 1950s, their ancestors were used for agricultural purposes, but when their owners began using more mechanized means of agricultural production, the horses’ upkeep became too expensive and they were abandoned.
Although the wild horses of Livno gather mainly in the Krug plateau area below Mount Cincar, they have also been spotted traversing the Borova Glava mountain pass on the border between the Livno and Kupres regions.
In the summer months, people who travel across the Cincar Mountains have the chance to see the horses as they make their journey to find sustenance. The horses must also cross the main road, along which there are two watering holes — the only source of water in an area with no rivers or lakes. Because water is so difficult to find, the watering holes were created especially for the horses by members of the Borova Glava Mountaineering and Ecological Society.
Wild horses of Livno at a watering hole. Photo by Armin Durgut/Balkan Diskurs, used with permission.
Horses’ karst habitat is generally deprived of water sources, so they congregate around the available water holes, created and maintained by environmental activists. Photo by Sanela Tufekčić, CC BY 3.0.
Crossing the main road, however, presents its risks. In July 2015, a municipal vehicle carrying the mayor of Knin, a city in neighboring Croatia, struck one of the horses, leaving it with a broken leg. It is very difficult for a horse to recover from a broken leg, so, as is often the case in this situation, the animal had to be put down.
But this otherwise tragic event had a silver lining. The incident brought a lot of public attention to the herd, and Livno’s Borova Glava Mountaineering and Ecological Society has since taken additional measures to ensure that the horses are protected and cared for.
A Livno wild horse foal. Photo by Sanela Tufekčić, CC BY 3.0.
In 2013, the Livno local government passed a regulation that makes hunting the horses illegal. Previously, poachers were killing horses for their meat, but since the regulation was passed, there have been no reports of poaching. Animal predators still present some problems for the horses, however, and there have been a few cases of wolves attacking the herd.
The regulation was temporarily suspended in December 2017, when the municipality asked state institutions to contribute funds for the protection of the horses. The reason was increased demands for damage compensation by drivers who had traffic accidents involving the herd. The risk increases during the winter, as the horses come to the road to lick the salt used by road workers to melt the ice.
Livno’s wild horse population has increased from 286 in 2013 to 418 in 2019, with 65 new foals born in 2019 alone. They have become an attraction for a large number of visitors who come watch and photograph them.
The horses currently have 145 square kilometers designated for their grazing and living, which is sufficient to sustain the current population. The creation of a new watering hole, located at the base of Mount Cincar, is also underway.
Wild horses grazing on Mount Cincar near the historic town of Livno. Photo by Sanela Tufekčić, CC BY 3.0.
Livno wild horses grazing on Mount Cincar, near the clouds. Photo by Sanela Tufekčić, CC BY 3.0.
Livno’s wild horses have become one of the area’s most popular tourist attractions and many visitors from across the world come to see one of the few instances of wild horses that still exists in Europe. Seven different herds have been identified and some horses have broken away from their herds to wander across the landscapes alone.
Wild horse of Livno on Cincar Mountain, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photo by Armin Durgut/Balkan Diskurs, used with permission.

author: Balkan Diskurs


text:
Holy controversy over proposal to mention God in Russia’s constitution · Global Voices
Maxim Edwards

Domes of the Church of Our Holy Lady's Robe in the Moscow Kremlin, 2015. Photo CC BY NC-2.0: Michael Wong / Flickr.
In Russia, everything seems about to change so that everything can stay the same. In an address to the Federal Council in December, President Vladimir Putin suggested an overhaul of the country's constitution. The consensus among analysts is that the amendments, which envisage a transition from a semi-presidential to a parliamentary system, are intended to allow Putin to maintain power after his last term in office ends in 2024.
In mid-January, Putin established a working group of public figures to assess proposals for amendments, and by the end of the month had submitted a bill to parliament including several amendments. Over 22,000 citizens have already signed an open letter decrying what they call a “constitutional coup.” Although parliament has given tentative approval to the idea of strengthening its powers, it remains to be seen precisely which other amendments will make the final cut, as they will be voted on as one package. A parliamentary vote to that end could be held in April, but there is still less clarity over the prospect of a national referendum to enact the changes, as Putin supports.
What can be said with more certainty is that the prospect of altering Russia's constitution has opened Pandora's Box — everybody from the parliamentary opposition to ultra-conservative activists has an opinion and a suggestion. The working group has so far received over 500 of them. These have ranged from a demand to enshrine Russia's role in ending the Second World War in the document to honouring the country's nuclear arsenal in a constitutional clause. There are proposals to ban civil servants from holding foreign passports or residence permits. There are rumblings about declaring Russian legislation above international law. There are calls about introducing the role of “Supreme Ruler of Russia” into the constitution, though Putin's spokesman says the president has no opinion on that issue.
And then there is a proposal by Patriarch Kirill. On February 1, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church stressed that the Almighty should be mentioned in the constitution's preamble, given that “most Russians believe in God,” and not only Christians. If the God was mentioned in the country's national anthem, he continued, the constitution should follow suit. Last week, members of the working group confirmed that they have not yet discussed the patriarch's proposal — but that hasn't stopped the rest of Russian society.
The Russian Orthodox Church has significant clout in Russian society, which has led to some resentment. Sociological surveys appear to indicate that Russians have returned to religion, but not necessarily to church. Despite a resurgence in religious identification in the post-Soviet states, regular religious observance remains low across the region.
To this day, Ukraine is the sole post-Soviet state which includes a constitutional reference to God — supporters of the patriarch's call have often pointed out that several comparatively “liberal” European states, including Germany, Ireland, and Norway, have done the same. Indeed, the most significant mention of specific religions in Russian legislation came in a 1997 law on freedom of confession, which stressed the “special contribution” of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism to Russia's culture and history. For traditionalists, that fact alone could sit uneasily with the customarily close relations between ruler and church in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
So there are several tensions at play. In his February 2 column for the Russian service of Deutsche Welle, commentator Konstantin Eggert considered the juxtaposition between Russia's religious revival and the secular heritage of Soviet rule. For now, concluded Eggert, it suits the regime to portray opponents to moves such as these as “leftist atheists,” but eventually the state would come calling for even more robust support from the church — potentially at the expense of the church's legitimacy.
Конституцию 1993 года писали советские интеллигенты, не имевшие ни малейшего представления о религии. Нынешняя острая реакция на слова предстоятеля РПЦ – продукт идейного хаоса, царящего в головах значительной части теперь уже постсоветской, в основном, хотя и не исключительно, оппозиционной интеллигенции. Эти люди, как и при Советах, путают светскость с государственным атеизмом.
The constitution of 1993 was written by Soviet-era intellectuals who didn't have the smallest understanding about religion. The charged reaction to the words of the Orthodox Church head today is a product of the chaos of ideas which rules the minds of a significant proportion of a post-Soviet, and mostly but not exclusively opposition oriented, intelligentsia. These people, just as they did under the Soviets, confuse secularism with state atheism.
Russians across the political spectrum have long viewed this constitution, passed under President Boris Yeltsin, with unease. Today liberals despair of Putin's motivations for changing it, but they have complained about the extraordinarily wide ranging powers it offered the president. Conservatives and “patriotic nationalists” bristle at its overtures to the “international community,” the fact that it makes no reference to the Russian ethnic community, and its enshrinement of the country's multiculturalism and (now diminished) federalism.
The working group on the constitution contains several public figures in the latter camp. One is the nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, another is the senator Andrei Klishas, a driving force behind the country's “Sovereign Internet” initiative. Nevertheless, the move has divided members of the group; the athlete Sergey Burlakov goes even further and supports declaring Russian Orthodoxy the state religion. Mikhail Emelyanov, the deputy head of the Duma's committee on legislation, described any state religion as unconstitutional, but believes that a nod to the divine in the preamble would not contradict Article 14, which establishes a division between church and state. Lawmaker Pavel Krashennikov noted simply that if God exists, he exists regardless of whether he is mentioned in Russia's constitution.
Given Russia's conservative turn in recent years, it was perhaps inevitable that such perspectives would loom large over any rethinking of the constitution. Konstantin Malofeev, a prominent champion of hardline traditionalist causes, even proposed defining marriage as between a man and a woman in the constitution's preamble. Putin did not expressly support or rule out that amendment, but strongly expressed his opposition to same-sex marriage in a meeting with members of the working group on the constitution on February 13. “There will only be mum and dad,” said Putin, “not parent number one and parent number two.”
In any case, critics tend to object to the patriarch's proposal as a distraction from more pressing issues for ordinary Russians:
Новая Конституция РФ начнётся со слов: “И Бог сказал – “Я русский” (а вторая глава со слов – “Денег нет”).
The new Constitution of Russia begins with the words “And God said: I am Russian.” (Article Two will start with the words “and there's no money”)
— Tolkovatel, Telegram, February 1, 2020
Вариант новой редакции статьи 39 Конституции:
"Социальные гарантии: Бог подаст. Аминь!"
— ZloyYoungMan (@ZloyYoungMan) February 11, 2020
Here's an edited option for Article 39 of the constitution:
“Social guarantees: God will provide. Amen!”
Meanwhile, the patriarch has found support for his proposal among Russia's communists. Party leader Gennady Zyuganov endorsed the move on February 11, pointing out that the “moral foundation of communism is built on the Bible.” Even Tsargrad TV, an arch-conservative, Orthodox television network funded by Malofeev, ran an article addressing the seeming inconsistency, pointing out that Joseph Stalin eventually came to recognise the patriotic virtues of the church and sought a rapprochement with its leaders in the 1940s.
Zyuganov's words may appear puzzling to foreign observers. It is important to remember that in contemporary Russia, nostalgia for state socialism as much reflects discomfort with the perceived social liberalism of post-Soviet life as much as a yearning for the social stability of the Soviet era which preceded it. But that hasn't stopped social media users from mocking the communists’ perceived inconsistency:
Когда ты коммунист, а в конституции до сих пор не упоминается бог pic.twitter.com/EjcygCLhnx
— вася огонёк любит вас (@tadapampam) February 11, 2020
When you're a communist but there's still no mention of God in the constitution
Perhaps this trenchant criticism is less a dig at Orthodox theology or at faith in general, but a reflection on who looks out for ordinary Russians today. God, or the state? Who deserves their trust, or even their faith? The writer Dmitry Bykov recently addressed this issue in a poem for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Curiously, he gave his support.
Да, я бы вписал в Конституцию Бога,
И в этом не вижу особенных драм.
Без Бога все как-то уж вовсе убого,
Как брошенный дом, как без купола храм.
Пускай атеист нас злорадно осудит —
Навек ослепил его разума свет, —
Но пусть он хотя б в Конституции будет,
Раз больше в России нигде его нет.
Да, я бы вписал в Конституцию Бога,
Туда же, где наши долги и права,
Поскольку не зрю объясненья иного
Тому, что Россия покуда жива.
Yes, I'd write God into the constitution,
I don't see any cause for drama,
Without him there's just destitution,
A derelict house or church: bad karma.
God has a place in the constitution,
Where else? He's left Russia far behind,
Let atheists have their retribution,
And mock or sneer; they're still blind.
Yes, I'd write God into the constitution,
Source of our duties and rights,
For I see no other explanation,
Why Russia staggers on, in spite…
— Dmitry Bykov, Novaya Gazeta, February 8, 2020

author: Maxim Edwards


text:
Indonesian superhero cartoon fights for the environment and the Balinese language · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Luh Ayu Manik Mas. Source: Facebook.
Luh Ayu Manik is a cartoon 8th-grade girl from Bali, Indonesia who transforms into Luh Ayu Manik Mas, a superhero who uses her powers to help protect the environment. Mas means gold in Balinese.
Her character is Indonesia’s first teen environmental superhero, and she was developed by artists as part of a project to promote environmental awareness as well as the Balinese language. An estimated two million people speak Balinese in Indonesia which has a population of 261 million. Due to government regulations, Balinese language TV programs are aired in Bali for only half an hour a day, while schools limit instruction in Balinese to only two hours per week or less. While these regulations are intended to boost the use of Indonesian as a national language, they also make it more difficult to promote the use and development of local languages such as Balinese.
What makes the character's story even more interesting is that her adventures are crowdsourced through social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This means internet users, especially students, can propose themes and stories that can be incorporated into the cartoon by writers and artists working for the Luh Ayu Manik Mas project.
The project was initiated by BASAbali Wiki, a digital platform promoting the Balinese language. BASAbali Wiki Director of Communications Ni Nyoman Clara shared more details about the project through an email interview with this author:
The inspiration for the creation of the superhero character of Luh Ayu Manik Mas is the strong, tough and resilient Balinese women who themselves are like superheroes. Luh Ayu Manik is a 14-year-old junior high school student who turns into a superhero when she faces environmental and other issues. The goal of Luh Ayu Manik Mas is to engage the public in using and valuing Balinese and other local languages alongside national and international tongues.
One of the stories featured Luh Ayu Manik Mas and her friends fighting illegal loggers and another story tackled plastic pollution. In both stories, Luh Ayu Manik transformed into Luh Ayu Manik Mas who battled against polluters depicted as monsters. The webtoon offers translations in English and Indonesian.
As part of promotions for the digital cartoon, Luh Ayu Manik Mas hosted the Asian Language Digital Activism Twitter account for one week last October 2019.
Om Swastyastu!?
Hi! I’m Luh Ayu Manik Mas, the Heroine of Bali
My friends call me Iluh?
Let’s follow my wonderful journey by following this twitter account @LuhAyuManikMas1 ?? pic.twitter.com/qvICCrZ1fb
— Asian Language Digital Activism (@AsiaLangsOnline) October 8, 2019
The character shared the story of how she and her friends encountered illegal loggers in the forest.
Iluh and her friends were going to plant many trees in the forest. There were chrysolite (cempaka), bunut trees and others. We prepared for the hoe and shovel. Would you join us to plant those trees ??? pic.twitter.com/k7JHiMVEfc
— Asian Language Digital Activism (@AsiaLangsOnline) October 9, 2019
The project was warmly welcomed by the Balinese community. BASAbali Wiki also shared that Luh Ayu Manik Mas is now being incorporated into the classroom:
The public was is very enthusiastic about Luh Ayu Manik Mas. Her books have already been used to teach Balinese teachers about creative writing and other skills. We will continue to reach out to the public through on the ground workshops in and in social media to elevate the value of local languages.

author: Mong Palatino


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Inflation and corruption rattle Nigeria’s economy · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

A Nigerian man leans on a white wall. Photo by Muhammadtaha Ibrahim Ma'aji from Pexels.
Rice. A bus ticket. Nigerians are feeling the squeeze of rising prices for everyday staples.
In January, the inflation rate in Nigeria jumped to a record 12.13 percent, the highest since May 2018, according to Nairametrics, a financial online news portal that released the report on February 18.
Nigeria's economy went into recession in 2016 due to a fall in the international price of crude oil from “highs of about $112 a barrel in 2014 to below $50″ in United States dollars, according to the BBC.
The country pulled out of the recession in “the second quarter of 2017,” according to Premium Times, and the International Monetary Fund further asserts this positive outlook:
Economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2017 was positive for the third consecutive quarter, driven mainly by recovering oil production. The economy — excluding the oil and agricultural sectors — saw a first modest year-on-year expansion, after seven quarters of contraction.
Nigeria, — Africa's most populous country — is not only shackled by an economic dip, but also held hostage by corruption — particularly in the public sector.
Transparency International, a global anti-corruption movement based in Berlin, Germany, releases a year Corruption Perception Index (CPI) to rate the level of corruption for 180 countries around the world. CPI grades countries on a score of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. The 2019 CPI ranked Nigeria, the 146th most corrupt country the world, with a score of 27 out of 100. This showed a fall from the 2018 ranking in which Nigeria held the 144th position, with a score of 26.
While countries can improve their CPI rating by “reducing big money in politics and promoting inclusive political decision-making are essential to curb corruption,” the CPI 2019 score for Nigeria shows little promise of this.
The Nigerian government faulted the CPI as baseless because it does not reflect realities on ground. Attorney General and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami said that in regard to the fight against corruption, Nigeria has “been doing more, we have done more and we will continue to do more,” reports the Cable, an online newspaper.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria's anti-corruption agency, also decried Transparency International's “bogus and ambiguous criteria:”
EFCC Slams Transparency International over Poor Rating on Nigeria
Rating Baseless, Illogical
Restates Commitment to Corruption Fight
The EFCC vehemently condemned in strong terms, the 2019 Corruption Perception Index, CPI recently released by Transparency International, TI… pic.twitter.com/QgeoL0adY1
— EFCC Nigeria (@officialEFCC) January 23, 2020
However, about 80 percent of netizens who voted in a Twitter poll by Abuja-based Premium Times agreed that corruption had worsened in Nigeria in 2019:
Do you agree with Transparency International that corruption has worsened in Nigeria in the last year?
— Premium Times (@PremiumTimesng) January 26, 2020
Corrupt leaders are the reason why “we are on our knees,” quipped Ononogbo, a Twitter user:
Wow! Nigeria is a just a powerful country! Out corrupt govt is the reason we are on our knees! https://t.co/BV2F1jIYtW
— Ononogbo Victor Feechi (@whizSweetvic) February 16, 2020
SERAP, a Nigerian civil society group, quipped that the scores are “hardly surprising:”
Nigeria’s score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2019 is hardly surprising but suggests that the fight against corruption in the country has not improved, and in fact remains at the level of the 2015 ranking in which Nigeria also scored 26.
— SERAP (@SERAPNigeria) January 23, 2020
The main opposition party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, said that the ranking “speaks volumes” that the current government which rode to power “on an anti-corruption mantra, has ended up becoming the most corrupt in the history of our dear nation.”
The ranking suggests that the Nigerian government has done little in the much purported fight against corruption. Journalist Adedolyin Shittu warned that denying the score results does no good — rather, it will “exacerbate the corruption crisis the country is facing.”

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


text:
Nigeria’s Victor Olaiya: Trumpeter and ‘evil genius’ of highlife music (1931-2020)  · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Screenshot of a video about Victor Olaiya's history of album covers, by Andrew MusicOdyssey via YouTube.
Editor's note: This essay was written by Dami Ajayi and first published in the Lagos Review. This version was lightly edited and published here with permission by Dami Ajayi.
Victor Abimbola Olaiya, highlife maestro, trumpeter, vocalist and band leader, died in the afternoon of Wednesday February 12, 2020. He was 89 years old.
An accomplished trumpeter, Olaiya was one of the key figures of highlife, the popular dance music that became the rave on the West African Coast from the 50s.
Did this thread in 2018 on Highlife music and I recall it as I do a thread this morning on the Evil Genius of Highlife music himself, Victor “Papingo Devalaya” Olaiya.
Olaiya was born in Calabar to Yoruba parents and was a very brilliant chap growing up, with a love for music. https://t.co/N9zXX480yP
— Demola Olarewaju (@DemolaRewaju) February 14, 2020
Highlife as a musical form originated from Sierra Leone and Ghana, but it was in Ghana that it gained its name as a ballroom dance enjoyed by the “elitist natives.”
In 1952, Olaiya formed his own band called the Cool Cats, which was later renamed the All Stars Band.
Victor Olaiya's All Stars Soul International (CD digipack + 16 page booklet/Heavy vinyl LP gatefold) Vampisoul, 2009-04-21. Image credit: Paris DJs, used with permission.
Emmanuel Teytey Mensah, a Ghanaian pharmacist — famed to have knocked out his incisors for the greater calling of blowing the trumpet — is often seen as one of the founding fathers of highlife music. Another founding father was Bobby Benson whose Jam Orchestra was the stomping ground for some of the finest highlife musicians Nigeria has ever had.
A young Victor Olaiya played in Bobby Benson’s Jam Orchestra.
Historians are not exact about how highlife music became a Nigerian staple, but by the late 40s and 50s, this music held Nigeria’s nightlife by the scruff of the neck. Hotel dance halls and night clubs had resident bands and Saturday nights were special.
By the 50s, Victor Olaiya was already a highlife music star. A young Fela Kuti had a stint as a trumpeter in Olaiya’s Cool Cats band before his own career as a band leader took off.
Victor Olaiya played at the Independence Ball before important dignitaries.
If there is any music that encapsulates the nostalgia and optimism of Nigeria’s independence, it is highlife music. Imagine the piquant tunes of the trumpet piercing the night as the Union Jack was lowered and Nigeria’s National Flag was hoisted, fluttering bi-colour, triband and proud.
Screenshot of Victor Olaiya's album cover from YouTube video by Andrew MusicOdyssey.
When this optimism was dashed in the ethnic flavoured coup and countercoup that devolved into a civil war, highlife music also tracked this era.
War hardly provided an opportunity for nocturnal pleasures because curfews emptied the streets of people.
There was also the fact that a fine proportion of highlife musicians and instrumentalists were also from eastern Nigerian, hence their relocation behind the tentative territories of Biafra which brutally shrunk in a war that left millions of people dead.
Even though highlife music seemed intertwined with politics, it was in itself, deeply apolitical. It had no pretensions about what it was: it was dance music for dance halls, for socialites, for nocturnal men and women, for wiggling waists, for quivering buttocks and for theatrical leg works.
Victor Olaiya held Lagos down when the city became empty of highlife stars.
He had an honorary army title and his band played for the Nigerian troops to entertain them during the war. In terms of honour, he was also conferred an honorary doctorate degree at the First Jazz International Festival in Prague. By far his most enduring honour was being called the “evil genius” of highlife for his ability to keep people on their feet.
His style of music features a unique way of playing the trumpet and his ability to sing in several Nigerian languages made his highlife a somewhat nationalistic endeavor. The Stadium Hotel in Surulere, Lagos, perhaps so named for its proximity to the National Stadium, was a famous highlife spot during his active years.
Today, it stands in a state of quaint disrepair yet quite functional for the old heads and unusual young oddballs and inquisitive creatures who fancy highlife music.
Since old age and ill-health left Victor Olaiya a shadow of his old self, Bayowa Olaiya, banker by day and son of Victor Olaiya, holds court and renders some of the finest tunes of his now deceased father.

author: Guest Contributor


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Trinidad & Tobago Carnival’s steel pan competition in photos · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Renegades Steel Orchestra on stage at the National Panorama Semi-Finals in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on February 9, 2020. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
One of the highlights of Trinidad and Tobago's annual Carnival celebrations is the Panorama competition. It's a musical contest that pits the country's best steel orchestras against one another as they play a specially arranged instrumental rendition — marked by original variations — of a popular calypso or soca music tune.
The competition has been held every year since its inauguration in 1963, save for 1979, when it was boycotted as a symbolic gesture of support for the steelband movement pioneer Rudolph Charles, and his fight to gain respect and better recognition for pannists.
The bands compete in small, medium and large categories. There is also a single pan category and Panorama competitions for both primary and secondary schools.
In recent years, rather than have every stage of the competition hosted at a big venue like the Queen's Park Savannah in Port of Spain, judges have been visiting the pan yards — the community spaces where bands are headquartered — to grade them during the preliminary round of the competition. These events always attract a lot of public patronage, with pan lovers visiting several pan yards over the course of the season, supporting their favourite bands and sizing up the competition.
Carnival's most popular pan-related event, though, is the Panorama semi-finals, where steelpan enthusiasts can enjoy a wide cross-section of performances from the spectators’ areas, and even get in and amongst the bands on what is known as “The Drag” — the area leading to the main stage where the bands line up in order of appearance and practice their drills. Fans and supporters also help roll their instruments — which are mounted on clusters of wheeled platforms with canopies — to the stage, where bands battle for a place in the finals of the most prestigious prize in steel pan music.
As she is every year, photographer Maria Nunes was on hand at the Queen's Park Savannah on February 9, 2020 for the National Panorama Semi-Finals, which featured the medium and large steel orchestras. Here's a taste of the atmosphere was like Nunes’ spectacular photos, presented here with permission:
A woman plays the bass pans in the Trinidad All Stars steel orchestra as the band practices on “The Drag” before taking the stage at the Panorama semi-finals. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
The Trinidad All Stars steel orchestra, on stage at the 2020 National Panorama Semi-Finals in Trinidad and Tobago. The band played Naila Blackman's “More Sokah”, arranged by Leon “Smooth” Edwards and placed fifth out of 14 large bands. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
Desperadoes, one of the most popular large bands, takes the stage at the 2020 Panorama semi-finals. “Despers”, as they are fondly called, also performed Nailah Blackman's “More Sokah”; their arranger was Carlton “Zanda” Alexander and the band copped second place.
Desperadoes supporters help carry the steel pan racks off the stage at the Queen's Park Savannah after the band performed at the National Panorama Semi-Finals on February 9, 2020. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
Arranger Len “Boogsie” Sharpe conducts the Phase II steel orchestra during the 2020 National Panorama Semi-Finals. The band performed Olatunji Yearwood's “2020 Vision”, placing fourth. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
The Phase II front line, comprising players of tenor pans and double seconds, are full of joy as they play their piece at the 2020 National Panorama Semi-Finals in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on February 9. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
The “engine room” of a steelband, comprised of percussive instruments, is the section that establishes the rhythm and pace of the performance. The band is Supernovas: their song of choice for the 2020 pan semi-finals was “Dear Promoter”, a collaboration between soca singers Voice and Kes, arranged by Amrit Samaroo. The band placed sixth. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
Another female bass player, this time from the band Tropical Angel Harps, gives it her all at the Panorama semi-finals. The band's musical choice was Nailah Blackman's “More Soca”, arranged by Clarence Morris, which earned the group tenth place out of 14 large bands. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
Renegades, another steelband with a large following, performs Skinny Banton's “Wrong Again” at the National Panorama Semi-Finals on February 9, 2020. The piece was arranged by Duvone Stewart; it won the favour of the judges, who ranked the band in first place. Photo by Maria Nunes, used with permission.
The large band Panorama finals is scheduled for February 22, 2020.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Pipeline problems for indigenous peoples on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula · Global Voices
Maxim Edwards

Nenets reindeer herders in the tundra of the southern Yamal Peninsula, 2014. Photo: Sergey Popov / Wikimedia Commons. CC BY SA 4.0
The Yamal Peninsula contains some of the biggest known reserves of natural gas on the planet. This remote peninsula in the Russian Arctic extends for 700 kilometres into the Kara Sea, and now several pipelines, offshore gas fields, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals have made it their home. Those tens of millions of cubic metres of natural gas have attracted Russia's state-owned gas companies and several international investors; in 2008, Gazprom announced its Yamal Project, to unlock the region's hydrocarbons on a vast scale.
Yamal is also home to 15,000 people, 10,000 of whom are Nenets reindeer herders.
Russian indigenous rights activist Dmitry Berezhkov
Indigenous rights activists have also raised concerns about what this large-scale energy extraction could mean for the Nenets and other indigenous peoples of Russia's far north. Dmitry Berezhkov is a member of the Itelmen people from the Kamchatka Peninsula and the former vice-president of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), a Moscow-based NGO. Berezhkov says that he was pressured by the Russian security services in the capital into framing RAIPON as a threat to the state. Berezhkov moved to Norway to continue his activism but was arrested by Norwegian police in 2013 after a meeting of the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples, based on an extradition request from Russia's general prosecutor, which had accused him of fraud. Eventually, a Norwegian court ruled that the request was politically motivated, and Berezhkov received asylum in Norway. The activist lives there to this day, where he runs the Arctic-Consult NGO.
RAIPON still operates in Russia, though there have been reports of political pressure on the organisation. Starting in 2012, RAIPON faced pressure from the authorities and demands for its closure, earlier this month, Russia's Ministry of Justice banned the CSIPN (Centre for Support of the Indigenous Peoples of the North), a project which RAIPON helped found, as a “foreign agent” due to its links with Canadian indigenous rights organisations. Pavel Sulyandziga, an outspoken indigenous rights activist from the Udege community and a prominent candidate for RIPON's vice president, fled Russia in 2017 to seek political asylum in the USA. RAIPON's offices in the regions were closed down, the organisation was declared a “foreign agent” and its donors “undesirable organisations.”
I spoke to Berezhkov about the consequences of natural gas exploitation for indigenous people in Russia's north. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maxim Edwards: What does the future hold for the indigenous peoples of the Yamal Peninsula?
Dmitry Berezhkov: More gas fields are being developed, further to the north and east of the peninsula and towards the other side of the gulf of the River Ob. The gas pipeline network is like an octopus; it spreads across the land. And for every pipeline and for every road, they take another piece of land away from reindeer herders. For now, reindeer herders try to use the rest of the land, but that means their herds may become smaller, and they are now starting to compete with each other for pastures. The problem is developing gradually, it gets a little worse every year.It's like a game of chess, they build one pipeline, then the herds move elsewhere.The growing infrastructure means that reindeer herders have to find new areas to graze, and if there are none, they have to put pressure on the same areas with even more reindeer. For example, the herds eat reindeer moss (Ru: Ягель), and the increased competition means that less of it is left. And less food for reindeer could mean smaller herds, and slaughtering animals which can't be fed. Either the government will sponsor a programme to kill reindeer, or the flocks will die out because of starvation. I don't know. But I think that over the next one or two decades, a huge number of reindeer will die in the Yamal. More indigenous people will settle in the villages, which can lead to social diseases, alcoholism, and other things like that. They will lose their language and traditional livelihood. I think that's the future.
ME: It seems to me that this is not just about preserving traditional lifestyles, but about the rights of indigenous people as citizens. For example, many of these areas are protected; when a pipeline is being built on the land, are the Nenets able to say “no”? Are they asked?
DB: There are some attempts to organise on the regional level. There's a reindeer herders’ union, for example. The problem is that all these organisations and their leaders are heavily influenced or controlled by the state and the oil and gas companies. They're happy to organise festivals, reindeer herding celebrations, sport events, cultural and linguistic events. But if there's a conflict between the interests of reindeer herders and the interests of the gas and oil industry, practice shows us that these organisations don't or can't protect indigenous people's interests. And it's difficult for Nenets people to organise given that they're spread over huge territories. They're nomadic. They follow their herds; they may have to travel hundreds of kilometres away in a few days. The lifestyle leads them to follow clan or family ties first. Occasionally several dozen people might meet, but they can't meet in very large numbers because their herds will eat all the food around. Reindeer have to be spread over huge territories to make herding sustainable.
ME: How have local people responded to these changes?
DB: Last March, some Nenets held a tribal meeting to discuss important issues, as well some political disputes. But then the leader of the district branch of one of these community organisations, which I would call pro-government, wrote a letter to the police saying that the meeting was against Russian law, as it had been held without seeking permission in advance. The funny thing is that [Vladimir] Putin has often said that protests bother other people — passengers, traffic, etc — so you have to coordinate in advance with authorities. But this meeting was in the tundra, there was nobody for kilometres and kilometres around around except for these reindeer herders! Police opened an administrative case [against the organiser Eiko Serotetto], but there was a lot of media discussion and [last May] they quietly dismissed the case.
ME: What does that mean for the relationship between the gas companies and indigenous peoples? There have been cases like that of Sergey Kechimov, the shaman and reindeer herder who tried to resist Surgutneftegaz's plans for oil extraction near a lake sacred to the Khanty people. In 2015, Kechimov was arrested for attacking an oil worker on grounds which human rights defenders considered dubious.
DB: The situation differs by region. In the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, where Kechimov was from, the companies were obliged to sign some agreements with indigenous communities. The problem in the Yamal is that firstly, regional law means that these are more voluntary agreements, and secondly, about half of the population, which have most of the reindeer, are private reindeer herders. They don't depend on and don't connect with any community organisations or with villages, companies, or local administrations: they continue a traditional lifestyle. This is the status quo, and it suits everybody. It's good for the reindeer herders because they don't depend on bureaucrats and just follow their herds. It's good for the bureaucrats because they don't have to care about these reindeer herders. It's good for the companies, because when we ask why less and less land is available for reindeer herders, and its quality is getting worse, they can say that it's the herders’ fault because they have too many reindeer.
So in the Khanty-Mansi region, families can sign agreements with the energy companies: they agree to step away from their traditional lands and receive some financial support. The sum may not be like in the fairytales which Gazprom, Rosneft, or Lukoil tell at international fora, but it is something. Problems arise when there is no longer any traditional land left to give. That was the situation for Kechimov; he simply had no other land to move on to. This is because oil extraction started much earlier in the Khanty-Mansi region. But in the Yamal, there is land left. There's gradually less and less of it, but there are places left to go. Another difference is that natural gas doesn't pollute the land as seriously as oil, which damages the environment much more quickly. But that doesn't mean that there aren't conflicts in the Yamal. Kechimov's case showed us that when the government and the energy companies are united, they can resort to any means, including criminal prosecution, to make families either sign agreements or leave their land.
ME: What other problems do these big pipeline projects present for indigenous communities?
DB: The Yamal's reindeer herders are facing a perfect storm. A lot is changing. The energy companies attract migrant workers, who settle in the region. If they have no work between shifts they go and fish in the rivers, drink in the village bars, sometimes have relationships with local women, which can be a source of tension. And of course there's the effect of global climate change. People in the Yamal have already died or been seriously ill due to anthrax, or the “Siberian plague”, being released from melting permafrost. The changing climate means that unusual rainfall freezes quickly and forms ice over the snow, which prevents reindeer from grazing. Poaching by energy workers is a big issue, as is pollution. This means there's double the pressure on local wildlife, alongside temperature changes in the rivers due to global warming. For example, there's a local fish, the muksun, which is a delicacy in local cuisine and provided good income to local Nenets people who sold them to the workers. But now, there are almost no muksun left. Wealthy oil and gas executives who developed a taste for the fish have to buy it from Canada!
ME: How easy is it to find out about the situation in such a remote and inaccessible region? Can the internet help?
DB: It's not difficult, it's more or less impossible. Personally, I can't go back to Russia, but I try and follow all the newspapers and TV reports closely, and of course people discuss these problems on social media. According to Russian law, all areas around the edge of the country's landmass count as border regions. This includes the Yamal, as it's located in the Russian Arctic. To go there, you need an invitation from a local resident or organisation, which is of course signed by the FSB [Russian security services.]
So when the companies and the authorities say that they spoke with the reindeer herders and that the herders agreed to everything, it's hard to really know how that discussion went. Officials could have just come to their campsites with a piece of paper and said “you need to sign this.”
From a practical point of view, it's wise for any reindeer herder to just sign any such paper. Because high bureaucracy can't help you, but it can certainly hurt you. For example, we have some cases when a police helicopter comes to a nomadic camp and tells them “you're catching too much fish, and that makes you a poacher.” They can come to nomadic camps and ask why they don't keep their guns in a safe, as demanded by Russian law. Even if you're a reindeer herder.
Nobody will touch you if you mind your own business, but if you raise your voice, you could face trouble.


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Two Iranian rights activists revisit the November 2019 internet shutdown · Global Voices
Fred Petrossian

A collage of portraits of Iranian citizens murdered by the state. Source: https://iranintl.com/
The scale of the internet shutdown that started in Iran at midnight on November 15, 2019 marked a dark chapter in the country's history of censorship and bloody repression. The shutdown took place during the uprising sparked by the government's announcement of a sharp increase in petrol prices and which would result in the killing of as many as 1,500 protesters.
The internet shutdown was meant to halt the spread of information, as demonstrations in several cities very specifically targeted figures such as the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and President Hassan Rouhani. Initially only a partial disruption, the authorities then cut access entirely for four days, leaving Iranians without internet connectivity for a whole week before restoring access.
Confirmed: Internet access is being restored in #Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests; real-time network data show national connectivity now up to 64% of normal levels as of shutdown hour 163 ??#IranProtests #Internet4Iran
?https://t.co/XQmiaOlRL7 pic.twitter.com/eimWEIEmrI
— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 23, 2019
Later, in December, internet service was disrupted again ahead of more planned anti-government demonstrations
Since the protests have abated, the authorities have continued to exercise their control over the internet, and there is no indication they will loosen their vice-like grip on online information control any time soon.
To understand how Iranian human rights and cyber activists deal with these challenges, Global Voices interviewed Azadeh Pourzadd, a leading human rights researcher and director of the Siamak Pourzand Foundation, and Mehdi Yahyanejad, a leading defender of internet freedom who co-founded the organization NetFreedom. Yahyanejad also co-founded Balatarin, a Persian-language social and political link-sharing website and launched the Toosheh project, a method to stream data files to Iran via satellite.
Global Voices: How did human rights groups and defenders learn about the ongoing repression in November when the Islamic Republic shut down the internet?
GV: To what extent was Iran's attempt to block the country's internet during the protest movement in November successful?
Mehdi Yahyanejad: They were successful in disconnecting Iranians from the outside world. There were a few people who had access through their business servers or through some government ministries but majority of people were left without internet access. This helped the regime to cover up the massacre of the protestors. Hundreds of protestors were killed in a matter of three days and most of the world was not aware of what happened. The extent of killings became evident after the internet was established.
GV: How do you rate the performance of Iran's “intranet” (the Iranian government has also called it “national internet” or even “halal internet” from time to time) during the period when the country was deprived of internet access?
MY: The Iranian government has invested heavily for more than a decade in developing a national internet system that can work without a connection to outside world. In practice, a lot of services broke down. There were reports of hospitals not being able to process patients’ payments and people not being able to pay their bills online. Also, most Iranians are using messaging apps based outside of Iran such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger. Iranian government tried to use this opportunity to push messaging apps based in Iran. People didn’t welcome this move and didn’t switch to using the apps based in Iran because they do not trust them.
Pourzand: I am not an internet freedom expert. But as a civil society and human rights advocate doing research on available tools for advocacy, I have inferred that the “halal internet” serves as a control tool, as most Iran-developed websites and apps collect intelligence for the use of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Therefore, while it may have some use for absolutely apolitical uses, it does the opposite of serving as a mobilizing tool that connects citizens in the times of political upheavals, or a platform for them to express the grievances.
GV: What can be done to overcome the increasing control of the internet by the Iranian state?
Pourzand: We have to engage in continuous advocacy with various multilateral and UN mechanisms to increase pressure on the IRI regarding its violation of freedom of expression and internet freedom. But we also have to plan alternative ways of safely staying in contact in case of crisis. For instance, in terms of information dissemination, radios became important during the November protests. Therefore, while continuing to use available technology safely and responsibly for the purpose of advocacy, we have to also include low technology tools as mitigation tools for human rights violations documentation and advocacy in times of crisis, to make killing protestors and others more difficult to impossible for the Islamic Republic of Iran. We have to find ways not to allow them to get away with shooting people as they wish, detaining them and torturing them and calling them rebels or agents of enemy states.
Yahyanejad: We need more research and development of technologies that can work in an intranet or offline environment. Establishing connectivity while the internet infrastructure is down is a challenging problem and requires significant resources and talent. At the same time, we need to increase the cost of internet shutdowns for governments by condemning them internationally. Also, in the tech community, the actors in these internet shutdowns need to be isolated and not receive invitations to major conferences or platforms such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The US government rightly put targeted sanctions on the Iranian ICT minister who was instrumental in the internet shutdown in November.

author: Fred Petrossian