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COVID-19 in Palestine: Living between hope and fear · Global Voices
Sylvain Keller

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip wave the Palestinian flag. Photo by Hosny Salah via Pixabay, no attribution required.
The Gaza Strip, an overpopulated and impoverished Palestinian territory governed by Hamas leaders, faces particularly vulnerability in the COVID-19 pandemic. The West Bank, where the Palestinian National Authority holds power under the banner of Mahmoud Abbas, faces a similar situation.
What makes the situation in both places particularly worrying is a highly concentrated population with very limited economic opportunities.
On March 5, 2020, the West Bank reported its first COVID-19 cases. By April 30, there are approximately 340 cases and 2 deaths reported.
On March 22, the Gaza Strip reported two cases involving people returning from Pakistan, raising fears of a potential humanitarian crisis. By April 30, the cases have risen to 12, increasing the fear that the virus could spread, although no deaths have so far been reported.
Local authorities took rapid and direct measures to slow the spread of the virus. With mounting cases reported in neighboring Israel, massive gatherings were banned. The Health Ministry exhorted Gaza inhabitants to wear masks, albeit without enforcement.
Authorities in Gaza also imposed a partial travel ban and since late March, all persons returning to Gaza are required to stay under quarantine for 21 days. To implement this policy, makeshift quarantine centers have been set to accommodate returnees:
#Coronavirus quarantine center being built in Gaza pic.twitter.com/BPoWZ87lV0
— Asaad Hanna (@AsaadHannaa) March 24, 2020
Palestinian authorities closed all mosques and imposed social distancing measures. On April 23, one Palestinian was condemned to six months in jail for violating quarantine measures.
In the West Bank, according to Palestinian authorities, workers returning from Israel are the main source of infections, forming at least a third of all reported cases. About 150,000 Palestinian workers have returned to Palestinian territories and self-quarantined themselves.
Coinciding with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan on April 24, 8,000 workers returned from Israel through border checkpoints, sparking concerns about possible unreported cases. Local authorities took restrictive measures to limit movements while imposing a two-week quarantine for those who cross the border with Israel.
Numerous workers found themselves out of work overnight due to imposed measures and business closures. This had a direct impact on the poverty rate in the territories. According to local authorities, 53,000 Palestinians have fallen below the poverty line since Mohammed Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, announced a state of emergency on March 29.
Densely populated, impoverished areas are also a point of concern. In the Gaza Strip, 2 million inhabitants are spread over 300 kilometers In the city of Jabaliyah, for example, 115,000 people are crammed into a 1 x 2-kilometer area. Nearly 80 percent of the population relies on foreign aid and the unemployment rate is an estimated 40 percent.
One Gaza resident noted the difficulty of the situation: “We usually receive funds, donations and food, but this year everything will be different because of the COVID.”
Local health workers also worry about a lack of equipment to deal with a potential outbreak. One health worker in Gaza recently pointed out:
We don’t have enough hospitals, or ICU [intensive care unit] beds, or mechanical ventilators. I understand those facts.
The lack of medical equipment is particularly striking in Gaza, with fewer than 100 ventilators reported, limited hospitals and a lack of ICU beds. According to local authorities, Gaza has around 120 ICU beds, but most are already occupied by non-COVID-19 patients.
In a press conference, local authorities appealed to the international community for personal protective equipment and other medical supplies. Electricity is usually only available half of the day — limiting activity in hospitals.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has taken several steps to fill these gaps. On April 1, the organization began home deliveries of food aid to 240,000 families.
On April 14, Palestinian authorities launched a relief plan dedicated to poor households funded, in part, by the European Union. As a result, 134 shekels ($38.30 United States dollars) will be distributed per person. Adnan Abu Hasna, a UNRWA spokesman in Gaza, said they made an appeal for an emergency budget of $14 million USD to fight the coronavirus in the 58 Palestinian refugee camps. But so far, only 30 percent of that amount has been secured.
One Palestinian company based in Gaza started producing masks and medical equipment last month. By April 7, the company has produced 150,000 masks and 5,000 gowns. Local distribution rapidly extended to the West bank and now, the company is directly selling masks to the state of Israel, which became its main customers.
Elsewhere in Gaza, startup company Tashkeel 3D has produced hundreds of medical face shields by using 3D printers. Following pleas made by restaurant owners to local authorities, restaurants were allowed to reopen on April 29, while observing distancing rules.
Amid the crisis, cooperation between Israel and Palestinian authorities has been noted. Nikolay Mladenov, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, recently pointed out that the COVID-19 situation is an “inspiring example of cooperation across conflict lines.”
As an occupying power, Israel has been prompted by international nongovernmental organizations and local organizations to relax the blockade imposed on hygiene kits and to enable the free flow of essential cargo.
With about 15,147 cases and 198 deaths reported, Israel is seriously affected by the virus and braces for a potential second wave coming directly from the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
On April 15, the Israeli finance minister, Moshe Kahlon, promised a financial loan granted to the Palestinian territories, to “help them facing the crisis.” Authorities are discussing ongoing measures with the United Nations to ensure revenues granted by Israeli authorities will not dip below $137 million USD during the next four months.
On April 12, the Israeli army implemented testing procedures at the military laboratory Tzirfin for Gaza residents. However, due to a lack of coordination, the initiative was rejected by the Israeli government.
Examples of cooperation can not hide looming tensions between the two governments.
On April 21, the newly formed Israeli government officially stated its willingness to start the annexation of the West Bank. In response, Palestinian authorities threatened to cancel all bilateral agreements between the two countries.
Hamas authorities who oversee the Gaza Strip also stated that if Gaza did not get the medical equipment it needed, it would “stop the breathing” of 6 million Israelis, threatening to launch an attack on Israel.
A deterioration of the political situation could adversely impact the COVID-19 crisis and directly impact local civilians in both territories. Residents of both Israel and Palestine now hang in the balance between hope and fear.

author: Sylvain Keller


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Nigerian atheist faces death threats for blasphemy against Islam · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Mubarak Bala's public Facebook profile.
Mubarak Bala, a self-identified atheist, was arrested in Kaduna, northwest Nigeria, on March 29, 2020, for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammed, reports the Punch, a Nigerian daily.
Bala was arrested following a petition to the police commissioner of Kano, northwest Nigeria, on April 27, by a group of lawyers who accused him of “provocative and annoying” Facebook posts against Muslims, according to Zikoko online portal in reports here, here and here. They said Bala was:
…calling the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (PBUH), [Praise Be Upon Him] all sorts of denigrating names like pedophile, terrorist among other statement that will definitely incite Muslims to take laws into their hands, which will ultimately result in public disturbance and breach of the peace.
Bala is expected to be prosecuted for blasphemy under the Penal Code of Kano State. If convicted, he is liable to a two-year imprisonment with fine or both.
Bala, 35, chemical engineer and leader of the Nigerian Humanist Association, is not new to controversy.
In June 2014, Bala’s family forcefully confined him to a psychiatric hospital in Kano for renouncing Islam, according to reports by the BBC. He was released 18 days later from the Kano Psychiatric Hospital.
Recounting his ordeal in the hospital to Humanist Voices in 2018, Bala said that he was “drugged by force” with medicines meant for “psychotic and schizophrenic patients.” The drugs “induced a lot of weird feelings that almost drove me crazy,” he said.
Screenshot of Mubarak Bala's Facebook post
Therefore, his recent Facebook comments are not surprising, based on his past. On April 26, Bala shared this on his Facebook wall in the Hausa language, which translates: “There is no difference between the Prophet TB Joshua (S.A.W.) of Lagos and Muhammadu (A.S.) of Saudi Arabia, it is better for our Nigeria to be terrorism.”
TB Joshua refers to an evangelical pastor of The Synagogue Church of all Nations, Lagos.
Apparently as a result of the backlash his post generated, Bala shared another Facebook post stating: “if you cant take blasphemy against Islam, criticism of its doctrines, this page is not for you…”
Sahara Reporters, an online newspaper, reported that Bala has been receiving death threats “from extremists” including a “serving policeman identified as Abdulsamad Adamu.” Adamu is a sergeant in the Bauchi State Police Command, northeast Nigeria.
Bala’s lawyers have asked for a transfer of his case from Kano to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, over threats made “directly” on the life of their client before his arrest “via phone calls” and “on social media.”
Blasphemy is an offense punishable in both the customary (secular) and Sharia (Islamic) court systems in Nigeria.
The customary system, under Section 204 of Nigeria's criminal code entitled “Insult to Religion,” states:
Any person who does an act which any class of persons consider as a public insult on their religion, with the intention that they should consider the act such an insult, and any person who does an unlawful act with the knowledge that any class of persons will consider it such an insult, is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to imprisonment for two years.
Kano State operates under both legal systems.
However, Section 38 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria guarantees the rights of every Nigerian to exercise freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Similarly, Section 39 also grants every Nigerian the right to freedom of expression.
Meanwhile, #FreeMubarakBala has been trending on Twitter, with divided opinions about the arrest of Bala and the impending blasphemy charge.
Writer Gimba Kakanda described Bala’s arrest as “an overkill”:
The arrest of @MubarakBala on charges of blasphemy is uncalled-for. I don’t subscribe to provoking the sensibility of any religious group and I’ve told him it’s unfair that he does that, but arresting him is an overkill. He’s not a threat to Islam. He should’ve just been ignored. pic.twitter.com/jANzGIs6Ns
— Gimba Kakanda (@gimbakakanda) April 29, 2020
“Criticizing a religion is not a criminal offence,” wrote this netizen:
Nigeria is a secular state and freedom of speech is one of the fundamental characteristics of a modern democratic state.
Criticising a religion is not a criminal offence.
So every right minded person should put aside their religious views and lend a voice to #FreeBalaMubarak.
— Obi Of Onitsha?? (@cliqik) April 29, 2020
This netizen questioned the need for enforcing blasphemy laws in 2020:
The only reason you still enforce blasphemy laws in 2020 is because your religion cannot withstand the slightest enquiry.
— Girl de Maupassant (@somiscellany) April 29, 2020
However, some disagreed.
This netizen wrote an extreme comment on Twitter that insults to the Prophet Muhammad warrant execution:
And this netizen called human rights activists hypocrites when it comes to religion:
Screenshot of a tweet by Sarki @Waspapping_ [2:42 PM · Apr 29, 2020]
When someone insults our Prophet you'll say its freedom of speech
But when we insult gays/lesbians you'll say its discrimination
You right activists are hypocrites, have always been and will always be#FreeBalaMubarak
— Umar Al Asad (@alpha_keyboard) April 29, 2020
Nigeria, with an estimated population of 200 million people, has two major religions: Christianity and Islam. Muslims and Christians make up 50 percent and 48 percent of the Nigerian population respectively.
The north is predominantly Muslim while the south of Nigeria is chiefly Christian. There are few traditional religious adherents in both parts of the country.
Atheism is not popular, although there have been some popular Nigerians who openly profess their non-belief in any religion.
Some young Nigerian atheists have been ostracized by their families for denouncing religion. It is particularly grim in northern Nigeria. A 2010 Pew Research study shows that a majority of male Muslims in northern Nigeria (58 percent) support the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion.
Nonetheless, these seem to be extreme cases.
A member of the Atheist Society of Nigeria in a 2018 interview with Business Insider by Pulse online magazine admitted that some “still feel” shocked at meeting Nigerian atheists. However, most “Nigerians are tolerant and love to speak their minds when they disagree with you.” Consequently, their lack of belief has ignited “plenty of discussions” and “very few instances of being threatened or bullied.”

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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Pandemic pushes more than 34,000 Venezuelan migrants home · Global Voices
Estella Porras

Screenshot of a video from Euronews, published 13 April 2020.
Crossing borders on informal foot trails or in buses and trucks, tens of thousands of exiled Venezuelans are attempting to return to Venezuela. Migrants say this mass return from neighbouring countries such as Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia is due to lack of work, difficulties paying daily rents and the struggle to make a living during the crisis caused by COVID-19 in these countries.
According to Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, 500 migrants are arriving at the border city of Cúcuta every day intending to return to Venezuela. As of 15 April, a total of 34,000 people had passed through the city since mid-March.
This mass homecoming is extraordinary given that nearly 5 million Venezuelans have emigrated in the last four years because of economic collapse, hyperinflation, public health insecurity, and shortages of services in Venezuela.
Up until a month ago, official data showed that more than 1,8m Venezuelan migrants were living in Colombia, whilst the governments of Peru and Ecuador estimated the number of Venezuelans residing in their countries to be 800,000 and 400,000 respectively. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in these countries do not have the correct documentation, making them vulnerable to labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, and xenophobia.
The precarious situation of Venezuelans living abroad has worsened with the lockdown and isolation measures taken by the governments of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru in order to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Business closures and obligatory confinement have had a severe impact on Venezuelan migrants, most of whom make a day-to-day living in the informal economy.
Despite the border closure ordered by the Colombian government, hundreds of Venezuelans in Ecuador thronged at the border bridge between Ecuador and Colombia demanding to be allowed into Colombia and to continue the 1,800-kilometre journey northwards towards the border with Venezuela.
Rumichaca. Frontera Ecuador- Colombia. “ Queremos ir a casa”, corean los migrantes venezolanos. pic.twitter.com/j6pZL9CT03
— Patricia Villegas Marin (@pvillegas_tlSUR) April 5, 2020
Rumichaca. Ecuador–Colombia border. “We want to go home”, chant Venezuelan migrants.
Meanwhile, in the areas bordering Venezuela, the Colombian government has set up humanitarian corridors with health control measures in place to make it easier for the migrants to return to their country.
Alcalde de Cali (Colombia), @JorgeIvanOspina , informó que se estableció un corredor humanitario para trasladar hasta Venezuela a cientos de migrantes provenientes del Ecuador.
“En este instante sale el 1er bus con ciudadanos venezolanos hacia la frontera”pic.twitter.com/AWyNrYBRGc
— TITO RODRIGUEZ (@TITORODRIGUEZZ) April 14, 2020
Mayor of Cali (Colombia), @JorgelvanOspina, reported that a humanitarian corridor had been set up to transfer hundreds of migrants coming from Ecuador to Venezuela.
“At this moment the 1st bus of Venezuelan citizens is leaving for the border”
Although some regional authorities have provided buses and trucks to transfer Venezuelans to the Colombian border cities of Cúcuta and Arauca, the majority of the migrants who are trying to return face transport difficulties. So they set out on their exodus on foot or try to hitch a ride on the highway.
#6Abr #Táchira #Frontera Grupos de migrantes venezolanos continúan cruzando las trochas para llegar a la frontera y así poder arribar al Terminal de Pasajeros de San Antonio.
Reportó: Jonathan Maldonado (@ponchogocho) pic.twitter.com/CKmP6mxeU7 – @lanacionweb
— ElCacao (@ElCacao_) April 6, 2020
#6Abr #Táchira #Frontera Groups of Venezuelan migrants continue using trochas [informal crossings] to arrive at the border and then reach the San Antonio [bus] passenger terminal.
Reported by Jonathan Maldonado (@ponchogocho)  – @lanacionweb
Hundreds of migrant families are currently held up in the middle of their journey. In Bucaramanga, a city 200 kilometres from the border, they can be seen installed with their few possessions in the Parque del Agua (water park) awaiting transport to Venezuela. The local government has hired buses to move the migrants and to avoid, in the words of the governor of the Santander department, the risk of the virus spreading in the region.
There are situations where migrants know that they cannot return but do not have the resources to stay. This is the case of Eduardo José Rondón and his wife, who arrived in Colombia four months ago on foot from Puerto Orzar, in the east of Venezuela. They settled in Bucaramanga, a city close to the border, where he earned a daily living looking after vehicles in a car park.
Eduardo Rondón told Global Voices that he cannot return to Venezuela because his wife is pregnant and due to give birth in a few days’ time.
“They have promised to attend her in the hospital [of Bucaramanga]”, Rondón told Global Voices, adding that his wife wants to stay in Colombia to have her baby in a place she considers safe.
However, they face a dilemma: “we are going to be evicted from our room because we haven't paid rent for several days. But there's no money for food either! I don't know what we're going to do.”
The government of Venezuela launched the “Return to the Homeland Plan” in August 2018. This is described as a diplomatic and economic strategy to facilitate the repatriation of Venezuelan citizens in economic need who wish to return to their country. Under this plan, hundreds of families have returned by plane and bus from various countries including Brazil and the Dominican Republic.
However, migrants who succeed in crossing the Colombia-Venezuela border via unofficial crossings or by bus are faced with a dire reception, as can be seen on social media in the Venezuelan city of San Antonio. The writer and political consultant Gustavo Azócar describes it as “chaos”:
San Antonio del Táchira: cientos de venezolanos retornados de Ecuador y Colombia siguen llegando al terminal de pasajeros sobrepasando la capacidad de respuesta de las autoridades. El caos es total. pic.twitter.com/Oy6XEUruwM
— Gustavo Azócar A (@GustavoAzocarA) April 9, 2020
San Antonio del Táchira: hundreds of Venezuelans returning from Ecuador and Colombia keep arriving at the passenger terminal, overwhelming the authorities’ capacity to respond. It's total chaos.
Venezuelan authorities, according to official media, are carrying out health checks and transferring returnees to temporary hostels so they can spend two weeks in isolation. But there have been complaints of logistical failures and inadequate food supplies for the repatriated migrants, who in some cases feel that confinement conditions amount to mistreatment.
Estás son las condiciones fuera de las medidas de protocolo de la OMS/OPS para aislamiento por #COVIDー19 que se encuentran los migrantes venezolanos que regresan de #Ecuador / #Colombia
Puesto fronterizo Tienditas #Cúcuta/ #Táchira #6Abr
? #Video pic.twitter.com/RBl2BgkXEu
— Ronald ZirLara (@RonaldZirLara) April 6, 2020
These conditions faced by Venezuelan migrants returning from #Ecuador / #Colombia break WHO/PAHO protocol measures for isolation due to #COVIDー19
Tienditas border post #Cúcuta/ #Táchira #6Abr
In Colombia, following harsh criticism of a lack of leadership and national co-ordination to support Venezuelan migrants during the pandemic, president Iván Duque stated that his government will continue to support the migrant population residing in Colombia, especially the most vulnerable. He asked for patience whilst humanitarian aid is distributed. He also condemned the discrimination and xenophobia against Venezuelan immigrants: “They need the best of  our Colombian solidarity.”

author: Estella Porras


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Trinidad & Tobago ranks second on a COVID-19 ‘lockdown rollback checklist,’ but caution remains · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

A screenshot of the title page of the study by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), which assessed the readiness of various countries to relax COVID-19 physical distancing measures.
In a press conference on April 29, 2020, Terrence Deyalsingh, Trinidad and Tobago's minister of health, highlighted a study conducted by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), which provided “a cross-national overview of which countries meet four of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) six recommendations for relaxing physical distancing measures”. On the list, Trinidad and Tobago ranked second, just after Vietnam. The only other Caribbean nation in the top 10 is Barbados.
While this may be welcome news in terms of how effectively the government has been coping with the pandemic (as of April 30, the country recorded 116 COVID-19 cases, with 72 patients discharged and eight deaths), the minister has said that the study's findings should not lure citizens into a false sense of security.
The study itself also laid out the challenges the researchers encountered in collating the available data:
While the OxCGRT data cannot fully say how ready countries are to leave lockdown, it does provide for a rough comparison across nations. Even this ‘high level’ view reveals that few countries are close to meeting the WHO criteria for rolling back lockdown measures.
At the time of writing [April 23, 2020], only a handful of countries are doing well at the four ‘checklist’ criteria OxCGRT is able to track.
A screenshot of the table from the study by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), which shows Trinidad and Tobago in second place re: preparedness to roll back some of its imposed COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions.
Naturally, one of the variables to be considered is that the study was unable to secure data for two categories that help the WHO determine whether or not a country is ready to roll back lockdown measures: vulnerable settings and preventative measures in workplaces. The other four criteria — controlled cases, success with testing, tracing and isolating, the management of imported cases and community understanding — were ranked on a grid ranging from “less” to “more ready to exit lockdown”. Of these, Trinidad and Tobago's performance was slightly lower when it came to testing and community understanding.
Social media users were quick to weigh in. On Facebook, Tenten Allegra warned:
It does *not* at all mean that it is time to end the restrictions. That will be decided by the CMO, the panel of experts in charge and all our boxes in this table need to be solid blue. No country is truly ready to lift restrictions but it *does* mean that in terms of ability to *begin* getting life forward to the new normal, we are in one of the best positions in the world to **consider** easing the lockdown come May 15th. That's something to feel encouraged by. Keep up the good work!
May God bless our nation! ?????
Dr. Roshan Parasram, Trinidad and Tobago's chief medical officer, has already advised of a “new normal”, even as restrictions may be lifted bit by bit. The country's current restrictions stay in place until May 10, 2020.
Attorney Emir Crowne, however, was a bit more sceptical of Minister Deyalsingh's assessment:
When Minister Deyalsingh said — in the context of clearing up misinformation no less — that Trinidad & Tobago ‘ranked second’ by ‘the University of Oxford’, here is what he neglected to mention:
1) The ‘ranking’ is based on a research note prepared by the Blavatnik School of Government. It is not peer-reviewed. It is not a ‘report';
2) ‘Because the data only measure four of six recommended actions, we should be cautious about inferring what countries are ready to rollback lockdown from this measure.’ (from the research note itself) […]
Founded in 2010, the Blavatnik School of Government is a school of public policy that forms part of the University of Oxford's Social Sciences Division.
In examining the list, blogger and Global Voices’ Jamaica-based contributor Emma Lewis noted:
Trinidad and Tobago is ranked second […] as ready to lift its lockdown. Another CARICOM country, Belize, is not far behind in fifth place […] Barbados is in tenth place. Aruba, Guyana, Bermuda, Dominican Republic and Cuba (in that order) are in varying states of readiness. Jamaica, according to this survey, is the third lowest-ranking Caribbean country in terms of being prepared to lift an economic lockdown. Dominica, whose economy was battered and hardly recovered from devastating natural disasters, is the lowest ranking [Caribbean territory]. Cuba, which has its own peculiar set of economic challenges, is the second lowest. I did not find every Caribbean country on the list — perhaps reliable data is not available.
Concerned about the Jamaican government's apparent eagerness to get the economy up and running, Lewis continued:
I would like to give the prime minister some unsolicited advice: Deal with the virus, first. Get things under control, as the WHO suggests. Then and only then will we be ready to go back to what you call the ‘new normal’, which I am afraid will inevitably and quickly become ‘business as usual’.
Likewise, for many in Trinidad and Tobago, there remains a high level of caution around the lifting of restrictions — but there are also calls to get the nation's economy moving safely again. Social media users like journalist Judy Raymond, however, have observed people seemingly reverting to “the old normal”.
The country will reassess its position come May 10. In the meantime, the battle against COVID-19 continues.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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COVID-19 diaries from Wuhan: Surrounded by walls of glass · Global Voices
Winston Chiu

A cleaner wears torn protective gear. Photo credit: Guo Jing. Used with permission.
The following post is the eleventh in a series of diaries written by independent filmmaker and feminist scholar Ai Xiaoming and feminist activist Guo Jing. Both are living in Wuhan at the initial center of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are the links to the first, second,third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth part of the series.
Check out Global Voices’ special coverage of the global impact of COVID-19.
This installment was written between March 11 and March 14, 2020. The original Chinese diaries are published on Matter News.
今天，人们还在接力转发《发口肖子的人》，版本越来越多，英文版、日文版、越南语版、盲文版、甲骨文版、16进制编码版、摩斯电码版、空白版……这是封锁下的艺术，简直是一种世界奇观。人们转发的不再是文章本身，而是在表达情绪，有对审查的愤怒，有对发哨人的敬佩，有坚持发声的不屈。
People keep sharing the article “The whistleblower” today, and we have it in different languages: English, Japanese, Vietnamese, braille, oracle bone script, Hexadecimal code, Morse code, and blank verison with no word… This is a collective work of art in the lockdown, like a world wonder. People are not only forwarding the article itself, but their emotions — their anger towards censorship, their respect towards the whistleblowers, and their insistence on speaking out.
[Editors Note: “The whistleblower” is an interview with Dr. Ai Fen who was the first person to distribute the lab report on the novel coronavirus. The article was quickly taken offline by government web censors and people started distributing the posts in different language versions to circumvent the censors.]
我的封城日记没那么好运，接连被连刪了两篇。我在公号上至少传了十多篇文章，一半不见天日。有关博客，我先后做了三个，早已去向不明。有的文章，连一个晚上都没有活过。不能得到众多的点赞就算了，这样耗费一个又一个白天黑夜，所为何来？
我家有个小平台，平时与客厅相隔的玻璃门都开着。有一天我不知门已关上，兴冲冲地闯过去。结果？倒退五步抱头歪嚎。
每天写公号的感觉，就是这么回事。你就算一身是胆，胸怀绝技，四面透明的玻璃幕墙罩着你。你去撞，只管撞……
My diary about the Wuhan lockdown is not that lucky. Two of them were deleted one after another. I have submitted more than 10 articles using my Wechat public account, but half of them have failed to publish. I have opened three blogs, and all of them have been taken offline. Some of my articles did not even survive one night. I don't expect them to get a lot of attention, but what's the point of spending day after day writing and uploading articles that won't even survive online?
I have a small balcony at home. I usually keep the glass door between the balcony and the living room open. One day, I was not aware that door was closed and bumped onto it. The result? I stumbled five steps back, held my head and moaned.
This is how I feel every day when I struggle with my Wechat public account. Even if you are courageous you are surrounded by walls made of glass. You try smashing through them, but they are always there.
People picked up delivered food at the gate. (Photo credit: Guo Jing. Used with permission.)
封城前，偶尔到野外露营或者去郊外游玩，静谧中的鸟语花香会让人欣喜。现在每天在鸟叫声中醒来，却没有轻松愉悦的心情。
昨天小区群里有人发了肯德基的团购，我有点心动。可是，家里的菜都还没吃完，坏了太可惜，就想着先把家里的菜吃完。
Before the lockdown, I would sometimes go camping or hiking. I enjoyed being surrounded by birds, flowers and nature. But now when I hear birds singing in the morning, I am not in the mood to enjoy it  anymore. Yesterday someone initiated group buying from Kentuckey Fried Chicken. It was tempting. However, I still have some vegetables at home. It would be a pity if they were to rot so I decided to eat the vegetables first.
有个朋友把我拉进一个群，群里的人在分享最新的交通管制信息，交流“离开”的经验。湖北除武汉外的县市开始放松了一些管控，已经有人迫不及待地想要离开，有人为了复工，有人为了团聚，有人只是想离开。当然，也有人想回湖北的，但很多火车票不卖到湖北地区的票。
离开要有通行证和健康证明，可是各个县市乃至村子的开放程度和政策不一样，有的通行证只能在市里活动，有的地方开通了城际巴士，有的地方可以自己驾车走高速出省。
出了湖北，能不能进入别的省市又是一个问题，进入也需要工作单位或社区开的接收证明。有的省份不承认在支付宝上申请的绿码（健康码），有人开车上了高速，到了目的地却下不了高速，去江西、四川、重庆的群友都遇到了这样的情况，他们被迫原路返回。
有的地方可以接受进入，却要求隔离14天。温州、台州、广州要求集中隔离，自己出钱，每人每天300元；东莞、杭州要求集中隔离14天，政府出钱。
没有统一而稳定的政策，人们的出行很难有保障，往往只能自己亲身试验，试验就会付出一些不必要的成本。
昨天12点多睡觉，楼道里有窸窸窣窣的声音，搞得我半天才入睡。早上7点多，楼道里又时不时地传来开门声，我就被吵醒。我的小区旁边正在修建地铁，封城前，晚上工地上也会有轰隆隆的机器声，可我基本不受影响。现在我的感官似乎时刻在寻找信息，很难关停。
有个上海的朋友说，自从她家附近有人确诊之后，她老是听到救护车的声音。
My friend added me to an online group where people share the most up-to-date traffic information and their experience of “leaving” Hubei Province. Aside from Wuhan, some cities and counties in Hubei Province hae started to loosed their control. Many people cannot wait to leave, because they want to return to work or to reunite with their families and friends. Some people just want to leave. Of course, there are people planning to come back to Hubei Province, too. However, many train stations do not sell tickets coming into the Hubei area.
If we want to leave, we need to have a pass and a health certificate. However, every city, county and village has their own set of rules regarding people's mobility. Some pass holders are only allowed to move inside the city. Some pass holders can take the intercity buses. Some pass holders are allowed to drive their cars on the highways to leave the province.
Even if we leave Hubei Province, whether we can enter another province or city is still in question. People need to obtain a certificate issued by a business unit or a residential district to enter a province or city. Some provinces do not recognize the green code (healthy code) on Alipay. Some people can drive on the highways, but they are not allowed to leave the highways when they arrive at their destinations. Several people in the group have had this kind of experience when they went to Jiangxi, Sichuan, and Chongqing. They are forced to drive back.
Some places allow people to enter, but they needed to be quarantined for 14 days. Wenzhou, Taizhou, and Guangzhou request centralized quarantine, and people need to pay a RMB 300 yuan (US$ 42.5 dollars) quarantine fee per day. Dongguan and Hangzhou also request centralized quarantine for 14 days, but their governments pay for the quarantine.
If there is no standardized policy, it is difficult to plan ahead for travel. People have pay for the cost of trial and error.
Last night when I went to bed, at around 12, there was some noise in the hallway. I had difficulty falling asleep because of the noise. This morning at around 7, I woke up to the sounds of doors opening in the hallway. Before the lockdown, the metro station near my community was being renovated. The construction was very noisy at night, but I was not affected. Now my sensory organs are hyperactive in search for external information, and it is difficult to turn them off.
A friend in Shanghai told me that she always hears the sounds of ambulances after someone in her area turns out to be COVID-19 positive.

author: Winston Chiu


text:
Baloch journalist found dead in Sweden · Global Voices
Qurratulain (Annie) Zaman

Sajid Hussain, 39, was a prominent journalist hailing from Balochistan. Screenshot from YouTube by Balochistan Times.
Baloch journalist Sajid Hussain was confirmed death by Swedish police after his body was found in a river outside the city of Uppsala on April 23. The police said that their initial investigation did not show ‘ any foul play’ and that they would continue their investigation and further autopsy results were expected, however Baloch and Pakistani activists are pointing fingers at the Pakistani intelligence services.
Hussain, aged 39, was pronounced dead by the Swedish Police after he went missing on March 2nd from Sweden where he was living in self-imposed-exile. The police found his dead body on April 23 and were recently able to match his finger prints, confirming his death to his family and colleagues on Friday, May 1, 2020.
Thread:
Body of #SajidHussain, our varsity friend, and a fellow journalist, has been found today in Sweden. I am sharing some of his explosive journalistic work (among many others) published in The News about #Balochistan that has landed him into trouble. 1
— Zia Ur Rehman (@zalmayzia) May 1, 2020
Prior to his death, Hussain was the editor of The Balochistan Times, a news website currently blocked in Pakistan. According to rights groups, the Pakistani government routinely blocks websites and information coming out from Balochistan.
The Balochistan times tweeted screenshots of its story on the death of its editor:
Screenshots of the sad news for those who can’t access our website from Pakistan
Sajid Hussain found dead pic.twitter.com/Fyb5Igp1hq
— Balochistan Times (@BaluchistanTime) May 1, 2020
Reuters Pakistan bureau chief Gibran Peshimam, who previously worked with Sajid, tweeted an old picture of Sajid from his wedding in Balochistan.
Sajid. My friend.
Not like this… https://t.co/le5dFowgeC
— Gibran Peshimam (@gibranp) May 1, 2020
Mama Qadeer, a leading human rights activist from Balochistan who in 2014 marched on foot for +2000km from Quetta to the capital Islamabad against enforced disappearances in the region tweeted:
It is a sad news for us, renowned Journalist Sajid Hussain, the chief editor of @BaluchistanTime is no more among us.
His dead body was discovered from a river in Uppsala, Sweden.
The unfortunate death of Sajid left a vacuum in Baloch Society which will take years to be filled. pic.twitter.com/PkCcL9fTCJ
— Mama Qadeer Baloch (@QadeerMama) May 1, 2020
Hussain was a young and bright journalist from Balochistan, a conflict zone in Pakistan that has seen more than 6 insurgencies since 1947. For decades, the Baloch nationalist movement has been fighting for cultural and economic rights, and greater political autonomy, including “outright secession and the creation of an independent state of Balochistan.” Dissident voices and young intellectuals in the region are subjected to enforced disappearances, torture and even murder. Others are forced into exile. Since 2010, the bodies of hundreds of Balochistan’s “missing people” have turned up bearing torture marks, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). In 2013 alone, 116 bodies were found across the province, 87 of which were identified by families who accused Pakistan’s security agencies of abducting their loved ones.
Hussain left Pakistan in 2012 after unidentified people stole his laptop and notes which is a modus operandi of spy agencies. He then moved to Oman then the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Uganda for his safety, before applying for refugee status in Sweden in 2017. His wife and two kids were expected to join and reunite with him this summer.
He moved to Uppsala from Stockholm to start a new chapter in his life. Last time he was seen was when he boarded a train from Stockholm to Uppsala on March 2.
When the journalist went missing, Reporters without Borders (RSF) pointed fingers at the country's notorious spy agency ISI for his disappearance. “Considering the recent attacks and harassment against other Pakistani journalists in Europe, we cannot ignore the possibility that his disappearance is related to his work,” Erik Halkjaer, the president of RSF's Swedish section, said in a statement on March 30.
“He left and we were relieved that at least he would be safe,” recounts his brother Wasif Khalil about his departure. But that was not the reality.
While it still remains a mystery what happened to Hussain, Baloch and Pakistani activists are pointing fingers at the military, which has previously been accused of targeting dissidents living abroad.
Taha Siddiqui, Pakistani journalist in exile and founder of safenewsrooms.org said:
In the past, the Pakistan army has suggested killing dissidents abroad and it seems like they are now putting that plan in action. This is following the Saudi, Chinese, Turkish and Russian playbook. They have been doing this in the West against their dissidents. I hope the Swedish police can solve this but hostile intel agencies usually work without leaving traces. As an exiled journalist myself, I have been advised by Western law enforcement agencies too to stay vigilant in France.
Siddiqui narrowly escaped abduction in 2018 in Pakistan, and blames the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for the attempted abduction. He left the country immediately after that attack. He was informed by the French Police of serious threats against his life in France.
In recent months, several Pakistani activists and bloggers living in Europe have also claimed to have been targeted for speaking up against human rights violations in Pakistan.
An RSF report published in February said a Rotterdam-based Pakistani blogger, Waqqas Goraya who was kidnapped and tortured while in Pakistan three years ago, was attacked and threatened by two people believed to be Pakistani intelligence agents.
An old interview of former president General Pervez Musharraf has resurfaced on Twitter in which he mentioned killing voices of dissent living in exile. The interview was conducted in 2017 in Dubai, where Musharraf has been living since 2014 to ‘seek medical treatment.’ In December 2019, Musharraf became the first army general in Pakistan to be sentenced to death, after a special court declared him a traitor for suspending the constitution in November 2007 when he was president. However, he still retains support within the current Pakistani government and military. His sentence was overturned in January 2020 by the Lahore High Court.
Dr. Allah Nazar Baloch, President of BSO (Baloch Students Organisation) mentioned the reference and video of the interview:
The death of Sajid Hussain is a huge loss for Baloch nation and journalism. Swedish authorities must trace all the links behind his two month’s disappearance that lead to his untimely death. Musharraf's words should be included & analyzed in the investigation. @SweMFA pic.twitter.com/LaHvZ5g5YI
— Dr Allah Nizar Baloch (@AllahNizarNizar) May 1, 2020
Malik Siraj Akbar who is a journalist from Balochistan and took refuge in the US wrote a heartfelt obituary and highlighted asylum- seekers predicament:
Sajid’s case has drawn attention to another critical issue: asylum-seekers’ relationship with their home countries. People apply for political asylum not because they hate their country or have committed a crime there. They depart because their government failed to protect them, and they face persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion
Pakistan dropped three ranks down to 145th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2020 World Press Freedom Index. According to RSF, the media is ”under the military establishment's thumb.” The influence of the military on free speech and press has increased dramatically since Imran Khan became prime minister in July 2018.

author: Qurratulain (Annie) Zaman


text:
China and Australia brawl over call for independent investigation of COVID-19 origins · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism & Investment Simon Birmingham celebrating Australia-China ties, Beijing August 2019 – Courtesy DFAT Flickr account (CC BY 2.0)
The Australian government has triggered a major clash with Beijing by questioning the origin of COVID-19 — Prime Minister Scott Morrison and some of his senior cabinet members have publicly called for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus.
Although it has been seen by some as a thinly disguised attack on China, there has been considerable support down under. Morrison has called on Australia's allies to reform the World Health Organization and conduct an investigation of the coronavirus source.
Australia already faced a bleak future in its economic relations with China as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. The shutdown of travel in early March was an early cause of strain between the countries. The lack of Australian government support for temporary visa holders such as international students and graduates has threatened the university sector.
The Chinese ambassador Cheng Jingye’s response was swift. He suggested that Chinese consumers and international students boycott Australian goods and services — especially the trade, tourism and education sectors, which have been vital to Australia's prosperity in recent decades.
A political and diplomatic brawl followed, with the Chinese embassy releasing alleged details of a conversation with Frances Adamson, the head of Australia’s Foreign Affairs and Trade department (DFAT). The release was contentious for two reasons. It was meant to show that the Australian government was backing off. It also breached customary diplomatic protocols.
The Chinese embassy claimed that:
She also admitted it is not the time to commence the review now and Australia has no details of the proposal. She further said that Australia does not want the matter to have any impact on the Australia-China relationship.
DFAT neither confirmed nor denied the claim:
The department will not respond by itself breaching the long standing diplomatic courtesies and professional practices to which it will continue to adhere.
This tweet was a typical reaction:
Hope Australia stands firm and doesn’t buckle, also should start looking at other markets to replace China as much as possible, as for the ambassador who tried to intimidate us? He’s a bloody bully and should publicly apologise.
— Christine (@Rackapuzz1957) April 28, 2020
The editor of Chinese state media Global Times, Hu Xijin, added fuel to the controversy on Chinese social media platform Weibo:
Australia is always there, making trouble. It is a bit like chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes. Sometimes you have to find a stone to rub it off.
This brought an angry response from many Australians online:
Australia is “gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe”, huh?
Ok, well, it’s time for Australia to rethink trade and other agreements with China if they don’t like criticism for their handling of a global pandemic. Honestly what a rubbish statement
https://t.co/vzPknZS7Xr
— Angela Allan (@MissSoot) April 29, 2020
This tweet was mild compared with some social media posts that displayed open racism and sinophobia [fear or dislike of China]. This advanced Twitter search covers the immediate period after Hu Xijin’s comments were publicised.
In contrast, others questioned the benefits of Australia's close ties with the United States government:
Coronavirus: Australia to call China's bluff over economic boycott threat
We’ll see if America comes to our rescue when we once again bites the hand that feeds us.
Morrison really has become Trump’s deputy sheriff and to our detriment
https://t.co/yTBY89pTZv
— rob stary (@robbulldog) April 28, 2020
Retired Australian diplomat Bruce Haig called for diplomacy rather than chest-thumping from Australian politicians:
In terms of our relationship with China and America, the boat must be balanced if Australia is to get through the uncharted and rough waters ahead.
At The Conversation, Tony Walker argued that Australia’s economic over-dependence on China needs to be reassessed to give itself a few more options to avoid political blackmail:
…it affords the Chinese what Australian policymakers should recognise as an unacceptable level of leverage, even a stranglehold, in times of stress.
…It is hard to escape the conclusion that Australia’s China policy is in the hands of amateurs, or ideologues, or both.
Some of the contentious issues between the two countries were summarised in a Global Voices story in late 2019. However, recent research at the Australian National University questions whether these squabbles have had any long-lasting economic consequences:
What will be the impact of the current diplomatic spat between Australia & China?
Research from @vishesh053 shows the effect of diplomatic conflict between China & major partners including Australia is usually minimal. Story by @ErykBagshaw & @Gallo_Ways. https://t.co/faFBeDkYS3
— ANU Crawford School (@ANUCrawford) April 29, 2020
Here is that research from ANU. It found that across 20 years, political shocks between Australia and China only resulted in three months of trade disruption before it started returning to normal transmission. #coronavirus https://t.co/Px8MNxAyTQ pic.twitter.com/Mf2hlQjdsp
— Eryk Bagshaw (@ErykBagshaw) April 28, 2020
Meanwhile, there was some commentary by Chinese citizens on Weibo. Some, including Tong Da Huan, supported an independent inquiry:
病毒起源是科学问题。追踪源头，利于切断传播途径，为后来积累经验。不是又说源于美国吗？一定要调查清楚
The origin of the virus is a scientific question. Tracing the origin can help blocking future outbreaks and inform the science sector on how to combat new viruses. They are saying that the virus comes from the US too? We must have an investigation to clear things up.
There was some mockery in reply to Tong’s post:
人家要调查你老婆是否有出轨，你愿意接受调查吗？
If someone else wants to investigate if your wife is having an affair, would you accept that?
There were also some comments reflecting the Chinese government's position, such as this one referring to the 2019-20 bushfire disasters in Australia:
你们国家是以什么身份来调查中国病毒起源？如果你们可以调查的话，那中国是不是可以对澳洲大火起源发起调查，并因为你们的疏忽造成了全球生态自然环境遭到破坏，有可能会释放北极病毒对你们索赔？
Your country is in no position to investigate the origin of the virus in China. If you are allowed to investigate, China should investigate the fires in Australia and ask it for compensation over negligence that leads to global environmental disaster. [Global warming] may lead to the release of an ancient virus in the Arctic and we could ask for your compensation?
In a bizarre episode, Australian iron ore billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest embarrassed Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt at a joint media conference about the mining magnate's sourcing of 10 million virus test kits. Forrest invited China's Victoria Consul General Long Zhou to the presser — without telling Hunt — and copped a hammering on social media for it. This tweet summed up the responses:
#abcnews what on earth is tax-dodging fraud Twiggy Forrest doing telling Premiers to step up their game and telling citizens to “get back to work” while praising his own shopping expedition in China, while Morrison is attacking China .. who is in charge here? #coronavirus
— grace pettigrew (@broomstick33) April 29, 2020
For a timeline of the unfolding story, please see: ‘Chewing gum stuck on the sole of our shoes': the China-Australia war of words.
We may have to wait until after the pandemic to see if this is more than just a war of words.

author: Kevin Rennie


text:
COVID-19, locusts and floods: East Africa’s triple dilemma · Global Voices
Amanda Lichtenstein

A desert locust swarm in Kipsing, near Oldonyiro, Isiolo county, Kenya. The current situation in East Africa remains extremely alarming as hopper bands and an increasing number of new swarms are forming in Kenya, southern Ethiopia and Somalia. ©FAO/Sven Torfinn, used with permission.
COVID-19, desert locusts or torrential rains and floods — where should East Africa focus its attention among this “triple threat”?
As the rains coincide with planting season across the region amid various coronavirus restrictions, this question — albeit, somewhat rhetorical — is on a lot of people's minds.
On April 22, journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo posited this particular polemic on Twitter:
#covid19africa, torrential rains & killer #floods/Climate change; and #locusts in East Africa. If we had to fight only one, which should it be? Which one will kill us less? #EastAfricanDilemma
— Charles Onyango-Obbo (@cobbo3) April 22, 2020
Out of 779 respondents, 45 percent said that if they had to pick one crisis to fight, it would be the coronavirus. Cases have soared across the continent over the month of April, upending lives due to various preventive measures — like lockdowns and travel bans — that have essentially halted economies and markets.
But the locust plague across the Horn and East Africa posed a threat to food security long before the coronavirus shifted the world's focus — 33 percent of respondents said that locusts were potentially more deadly than the virus or floods. And 22 percent said that torrential rains and flooding, largely attributed to rapid climate change across the continent, is a threat to East African lives. Severe flooding has wiped out crops, driven food price hikes and sent residents “scrambling for survival,” from Somalia to South Sudan to Democratic Republic of Congo.
The truth is that this crisis trifecta — the virus, locusts, and floods — is not mutually exclusive. In fact, each is inextricably linked.
The locusts — primarily affecting central Kenya, southern Ethiopia, and Somalia, at this time — are the result of “unusually wet weather over the past 18 months that created perfect breeding conditions,” according to Bloomberg.
The largest locust outbreak in 70 years occurred in January 2020 among several East African nations, destroying over 25 million hectares of crops. Now, experts say that the second wave of hatched locusts from the offspring of the first could be 20 times larger — and more menacing — than the first wave.
Desert locust swarms fly in northeastern Kenya. Ravenous swarms threaten the entire East Africa subregion, March 31, 2020, Kipsing, close to Oldonyiro, Isiolo county, Kenya. ©FAO/Sven Torfinn, used with permission.
“Coronavirus could kill, but hunger kills many more people,” said Akinwumi A. Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank. Adesina wrote that desert locusts can “consume crops in one day that can feed approximately 35,000 people,” and in East Africa, where approximately 20 million people are already food insecure, the effects could be devastating.
Taming the locusts has required copious amount of pesticide — and political will. But with the second wave of “LOCUST-19″ looming, East African nations have turned their attention to confronting COVID-19, implementing travel restrictions that directly impede the ability to mitigate the locust swarms that can travel up to 150 kilometers in 24 hours, munching through food meant for humans. Analysts say this means that many farmers will likely not see a harvest in June.
Donors pledged or provided $153 million via the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to help governments purchase pesticides, helicopters and other essential materials needed to fight the second locust outbreak, but “supplies purchased by the agency did not start to arrive until mid-March when a second generation of the ravenous insects was beginning to hatch,” according to The New Humanitarian.
National Youth Service officers observe some desert locust as part of a biology lesson during training on desert locust control at Kenya's National Youth Service Training College in Gilgil, Kenya, February 13, 2020. ©FAO/Luis Tato, used with permission.
The maddening buzz of locusts is the song of climate change.
“This particular outbreak began with heavy rains from two cyclones in May and October of 2018 that hit the southern Arabian Peninsula. This allowed two generations of desert locusts to form into swarms. Each generation can be 20 times bigger than the previous one,” wrote Matt Simon with Wired.
And just like the coronavirus, “the terrifying reality is that if you don't stop a locust swarm early, there's very little you can do to stop its spread,” Simon said.
Netizens like Namaiyana on Twitter rightfully point out that the poorest people will feel the brunt of these crises:
Floods, locusts, covid19, foods and locusts again – these are the climate catastrophes that East Africa is currently facing, and yes it’s the people who live on less than a dollar a day that feel the full brunt of these crisis. #FridaysForFuture
Pic: Alfy Alfredoh pic.twitter.com/Sk0phYKiQm
— Namaiyana (@fazeelamubarak) May 1, 2020
When the town of Uvira in South Kivu, DR Congo, experienced torrential floods in late April, it affected the lives of at least 80,000 people — sweeping away homes and claiming the lives of at least 25 people in a single day, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Most people in South Kivu had already been displaced by violence. Now homeless, it's nearly impossible for many to “shelter-in-place,” as DR Congo also attempts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
On the island of Unguja, part of the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, heavy rains brought the most extreme flooding some villages have seen since 1978, as reported by politician Simai M. Said:
Comforting my constituents in the village of Ubago after severe floods. The last recorded such heavy rain around the area was 1978.  #Tunguu #Mpakabas
Geplaatst door Simai M Said Mpakabas op Zondag 3 mei 2020
Sadly, these disasters have largely fallen under the radar due to the world's laser focus on the coronavirus pandemic:
While the world is focused on #COVID19, my hometown #Uvira, Eastern DRC, is almost wiped out by floods. Dozens of children and women have died. Humanitarian aid is desperately needed. #JeSuisUvira #IamUvira. pic.twitter.com/MtbREhTrO5
— Bukeni Waruzi (@bukeniwaruzi) April 19, 2020
This “crucible season” of the coronavirus plague exposes all kinds of contradictions, according to Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, who wrote an eloquent letter titled “The Pestilence, the Populists and Us” in The Elephant, an online portal.
The “favored self-delusions and mythologies we hold about ourselves and the place of the ‘other’, has frayed and in some cases, fallen apart in a very public way,” she wrote. “I expect a massive re-orientation, reshaping, reconfiguring of the world.”
Indeed, tackling East Africa's current dilemma — three overlapping crises at once — requires creativity, resilience, leadership and substantial investments in “reconfiguring the world.”
Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, recommends several life-saving policies to enact now across Africa to stem the collective blow of the coronavirus, locusts and floods: One, establish a tax-free “green channel” in Africa to expedite the free flow of food and pesticides; two, put measures in place to prevent food price hikes and anti-hoarding policies and release food from government-held grain reserves; and three, invest in food production technology that is both safe and innovative.
Focusing just on the coronavirus in East Africa — and not also on the desert locusts or massive flooding due to climate change — is not an option. The future depends on it.

author: Amanda Lichtenstein


text:
Mozambique gets creative with handmade anti-virus gear · Global Voices
Alexandre Nhampossa

Cloth masks, reusable protective equipment, and traditional baths to relieve minor symptoms — these are some of the solutions found by Mozambican authorities and citizens as cases of COVID-19 continue to mount in the cash-strapped country.
There have been 80 cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Mozambique so far, according to the Ministry of Health, and no deaths. Seventy-two of those cases were the result of community transmission, while 57 are in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, the country’s epicentre of the disease. Nineteen patients have recovered to date.
However, given the health system’s limited testing capacity, those numbers are unlikely to reflect reality. As of the May 4 the country of 30-million had carried out only 2,589 tests by the Mozambique's National Institute for Health.
As with other developing countries, Mozambique's health system suffers from a shortage of essential equipment, such as ventilators — there are only 35 in the whole country.
The authorities are therefore trying to delay the peak of the disease, which some models estimate to hit by mid-year, until January or February 2021 so that the health service has enough time to gather resources and improve their understanding of the disease.
In the meantime, the government has declared a state of emergency and initially adopted some drastic measures, such as banning the popular motorcycle taxis. However, following violent protests against the measures by taxi drivers, the authorities relented and relaxed the policy, allowing the motorcycle taxis to operate on the condition that drivers and passengers wear masks. Masks were also made obligatory on all public transport.
But with actual surgical masks selling for between 50 and 100 meticais (almost 1 US dollar each), they're inaccessible to a majority of Mozambicans.
Improvised mask from a plastic bottle in Mozambique – Jornal da Noite, April 14.
The government has then advised people to make homemade masks using capulanas –  a traditional Mozambican cloth generally worn by women –  and other readily available materials.
However, authorities have made no plans to help fund this homemade production and promised to distribute only 12,000 handmade masks – equivalent to one mask for every 2,500 people.
The Center for Democracy and Development, a local development organisation, criticized the government’s approach:
A verdade é que, mais uma vez, o governo impõe medidas restritivas sem criar a logística necessária para o seu cumprimento efectivo por parte da população.
It's clear that yet again, the government is
imposing restrictive measures without thinking about the logistics necessary for its effective adoption by citizens.
Meanwhile, the Centro de Integridade Pública (CIP), a local NGO, has began distributing free homemade masks to local market workers, in addition to raising awareness of their importance.
According to the lusophone media organisation Agência Lusa, CIP’s masks are made from capulana and are lined with a starched cotton cloth that has the good capacity for filtering air particles.
A picture of a mask made with capulana (local cloth) in Mozambique. Photo by the Centro de Integridade Pública, published with permission.
Health professionals are also affected by the shortage of protective equipment. To get around this, a group of doctors from the country’s best hospital, the Hospital Central de Maputo, have resorted to making gowns, caps, masks and protective covers for shoes and boots.
According to the hospital, the production of this equipment is only possible thanks to the involvement of staff with connections in the tailoring industry.
Espera-se se com este material de protecção individual haja redução considerável dos riscos de contaminação a que o pessoal médico está sujeito.
We hope that this personal protective equipment considerably reduces the contamination risks that medical staff are subjected to.
The equipment can be sterilised so it can be used more than once and is also cheap to produce.
In an interview with Mozambican television, Health Minister Armindo Tiago recommended steam baths to relieve minor symptoms of COVID-19 for the time being.
Steam baths are a common practice in Mozambique and involve inhaling the vapours from a blend of herbs or medicinal plants — usually eucalyptus and guava leaves — in boiling water. The leaves are mixed in a basin, and the person taking the bath covers themselves with a blanket for a few minutes and breathes deeply.
As shown by Verdade newspaper, the leaves used to make the aforementioned steam bath are already available for sale in various cities throughout the country, for the price of 50 meticais (less than 1 US dollar):
Empreendedorismo #covid19 no epicentro do novo #coronavirusMOZ cada molho de eucalipto 50 metical #Maputo #Moçambique pic.twitter.com/bfliNZhKV8
— Verdade Democracia (@DemocraciaMZ) April 12, 2020
#covid19 entrepreneurship at the epicentre of the new #coronavirusMOZ each eucalyptus leaf is 50 meticais #Maputo #Moçambique pic.twitter.com/bfliNZhKV8
— Verdade Democracia (@DemocraciaMZ) April 12, 2020

author: Alexandre Nhampossa


text:
Netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand brew ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ against Chinese speech police · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

‘Milk Tea Alliance’, image from the Stand News. Used with permission.
The strident efforts of Chinese patriots to police speech on Twitter — a platform that ordinary Chinese are barred from using — has spawned an unintended consequence.
Meet the “Milk Tea Alliance,” a pact formed between netizens from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand in order to peg back Beijing's bullies on the platform.
The Alliance emerged last month after crossfire between mainland Chinese online patriots and Thai netizens.
The spark was a set of four photos showing city skylines that popular Thai actor Vachirawit Chiva-aree or Bright (@bbrightvc) retweeted. One of the skylines was Hong Kong's. The tweet noted fatefully that the photos were taken in “four countries.”
Chinese patriots swarmed the now-deleted tweet, which they interpreted as showing support for Hong Kong independence. Although Bright quickly apologized, calling his retweet “thoughtless”, the patriotic trolls decided to go further, and dug into his social media histories.
That brought them to Bright's female friend Weeraya Sukaram, or Nnevvy (@nvy_weeraya), on Twitter, who had shared a post speculating that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan virology lab.
The patriots also unearthed an Instagram post from 2018, in which Nnevvy responded to Bright complimenting her for her “Chinese” look by stating that she preferred “Taiwan style.”
The Chinese online patriots interpreted Nnevvy’s comment as anti-China and pro-Taiwanese independence and began trolling Nnevvy with the hashtag #Nnevvy.
Eventually Nnevvy had to protect both her Instagram and Twitter account.
Since 2014, the Chinese government has been tightening control over an already suffocated information space.
Non-mainland Chinese pop stars and other celebrities enjoying success in the Chinese market are increasingly expected to promote a positive image of China, or at least be in sync with Beijing's official narratives.
This new emphasis has seen stars from both Taiwan and Hong Kong coerced into declaring their love for China in recent times.
Chinese online patriots have provided important assistance to the state censors in this effort.
Typically they find celebrity speech that deviates from official discourse, report it to authorities and call for public boycotts.
This kind of speech policing has now been extended to Twitter, despite the fact that the platform is not available to Chinese internet users without proxies.
For example, the general manager of Houston Rockets Daryl Morey set off an online firestorm last year when he tweeted in support of Hong Kong's anti-extradition protests.
The tweet quickly prompted a crisis between China and the US National Basketball Association (NBA) for whom the Chinese audience is a vital market.
Morey was forced to apologize.
Bright became a popular actor in China after the Thai romantic comedy “2gether” began airing online there.
Not satisfied with generating a backlash on Twitter, Chinese patriots reported Bright and Nnevvy's politically incorrect speech on Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent with 300 million active monthly users, and other Chinese platforms.
There they called for a boycott of “2gether,” while also mobilizing Chinese netizens to teach Thailand users the One China principle on Instagram and Twitter.
Below is a tweet typical of the Chinese patriot response.
#nnevvy
There is only one China ?? There is only one China ?? There is only one China ?? There is only one China ?? There is only one China ?? There is only one China ?? There is only one China ?? There is only one China ??
— Mable (@Mable66401914) April 11, 2020
The resistance to this campaign began with tweets from individual Thai netizens posting under the #nnevvy hashtag. Themes ranged from COVID-19 to Chinese leader Xi Jinping's Winnie the Pooh complex.
I truly support “One China” Policy.
I mean, One China, not two nor Three.
So we can have One Taiwan, One Hong Kong, One Tibet and so on. #nnevvy
— ตำปูพริก7เม็ด (@TampooPrick7Med) April 14, 2020
Teach me how to eat bat
— Shipper? (@Tichaploy) April 11, 2020
my country is poor but your country is pooh https://t.co/Q8KXdmAFk4 pic.twitter.com/JTEnV3ZBQO
— ??????ทิฟชอบเฟยแมวเต็งหนึ่ง (@tiffanywilsonxo) April 11, 2020
Many Thai netizens also pointed to the lack of internet freedoms in China:
Hi Xi Jinpooh
Your citizen use VPN to watch something that forbidden in china and follow thai actor,Not only that they threaten his gf’s privacy.
#nnevvy
— คุณนา-ยอง พรีบั้มหนูอี๊ด4แสนบั้ม (@Stone_nayouung) April 11, 2020
Plz, Chineses if u can go out from china network .Go and see what's going in the “REAL WORLD” not what your gov want u to see and believe them. Also respect human rights to speak, not just spread shit into people who aren't think as u .#China #taiwannotchina #HKnotchina #nnevvy
— เลงผอด (@Malangpod) April 11, 2020
As the Chinese patriots decried poverty in Thailand and mocked Thailand's government in response, many Thais applauded them ironically.
If you said Thai gov & ? is so fucking bad
Yes I couldn’t agree more ? you're absolutely right 555555555555??? #nnevvy
— จีจี้นังมุ้กอบ (@yasaranaehaimak) April 11, 2020
The Chinese patriots then resorted to typing codewords including NMSL, which means “your mother is dead,” in the comments to such posts.
Thai netizen @sleepless posted a keyboard picture to laugh at the Chinese state-sponsored commentators, who are known as Wumao (50 cents):
คีย์บอร์ดของ Wumao (IO จีน) pic.twitter.com/cTmzVETxLg
— ????????? (@sleeplessbkk) April 13, 2020
As the battles escalated, netizens from Hong Kong and Taiwan began to mobilise in support of Thais.
By mid-April this solidarity found expression as The Milk Tea Alliance.
#nnevvy ตอนแรกๆโดนจีนถล่ม แต่พอใต้หวันและฮ่องกงมาช่วย5555
มึงโดนแล้ว pic.twitter.com/W2A1QENcQT
— ก็มาดิครับ (@PH9SvBNAIoaBJZD) April 13, 2020
#MilkTeaAlliance For the win ??????#Taiwan #Thailand #Hongkong#Milktealogy pic.twitter.com/7G0tG0kX6x
— Tpagon ‘Champ’ W. (@tpagon) April 15, 2020
The three-week-old alliance that began as a response to speech policing from mainland Chinese patriots now offers promising foundations to fight other battles in the region.
One recent and ongoing Milk Tea Alliance-led campaign is boosting an online petition against China’s Mekong Dam project, which has allegedly caused serious droughts in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. The petition has over 52,000 signatures as of this publication.
Get a taro milk tea today. ?#ชานมข้นกว่าเลือด
Dear all #MilkTeaAlliance member,
Please sign the following petition to #StopMekongDam.
China’s Mekong Dam causes drought by limiting the river's flow. We should stop it.
Thank you! ????????https://t.co/rYNkpPm5tJ pic.twitter.com/twaDIzX0GB
— Cha ✋☝ (@chahongkong) April 17, 2020

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
The coronavirus pandemic intensifies Islamophobia in India · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

Muslim men in the streets of Lal Darwaja, in Ahmedabad, India. Image via Flickr by Juliana Cunha. CC BY-NC 2.0
Check out Global Voices’ special coverage of the global impact of COVID-19.
Along with its more than 37,000 positive COVID-19 cases and over 1,200 deaths so far, India finds itself battling against another threat. Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a country-wide lockdown on March 25, 2020, instances of Islamophobia have intensified and many leading news channels stand accused of adding fuel to the fire.
This sudden uptick in COVID-19-related Islamophobia is related to a gathering organised by the Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim missionary group, which took place in India's capital a day ahead of the nationwide lockdown on March 24. The event was largely blamed for the increase in India's COVID-19 cases.
While Islamophobia against India's Muslim population has increased slowly since Modi came to power in 2014 — with multiple lynchings, riots, and mob attacks recorded — troll armies used the Tablighi Jamaat meeting to target Muslims on social media and elsewhere.
Leaders from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) referred to the Jamaat meeting as a “Talibani crime” and “CoronaTerrorism”. The resulting #CoronaJihad hashtag soon went viral and fake news plagued social media spaces.
Complicating matters were accusations that India's right-wing groups, including those linked to the BJP, spread rumors and harassed innocent people as part of an alleged campaign to blame the spread of COVID-19 on Muslims.
The fallout is proving disastrous, as some Indian hospitals have already begun refusing to admit Muslims. On April 19, as coronavirus-related Islamophobia surged, local media reported the deaths of two newborn babies after hospitals in Jamshedpur refused to admit their Muslim mothers.
Another Muslim woman, Rizwana Khatun, who showed up at a Jharkhand hospital pregnant and bleeding, miscarried after she was denied treatment. She was allegedly asked to clean up her own blood.
Meanwhile, the tone of the anti-Muslim commentary caused many from the Gulf region, including the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Government of Kuwait, a royal princess of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and a number of Arab activists, to protest:
Khaled Al-Suwaifan, Lawyer and Member of the Board of Directors of the Kuwait Bar Association tweeted:
We call on international organizations, especially the United Nations, the Security Council, the Organization of islamic cooperation and all human rights organizations, to intervene immediately to stop the violations committed against our Muslim brothers in India #India
— خالد السويفان (@alsuwaifan) April 20, 2020
Activist Afreen Fatima wrote:
Valentis Hospital in Meerut (Uttar Pradesh) has put out an advertisement in local Hindi newspaper stating that it will not treat Muslim patients. Religion discrimination is not just done here, it is celebrated and advertised! Please spread the word in global community. pic.twitter.com/gThIKq7iFQ
— Afreen Fatima (@AfreenFatima136) April 18, 2020
The advertisement states that Muslims will not be admitted to the hospital unless they provide proof that they have tested negative for COVID-19.
This particular hospital mentioned that Muslim patients will be charged for expensive COVID-19 tests. Test kits can cost as much as 4,500 Indian rupees (approximately 60 United States dollars), a huge sum for many who eke out a living by doing manual labour, which typically pays around a minimum wage of 176 Indian rupees ($2.3) for an eight-hour workday. According to a government order, testing in government facilities are free and the government will reimburse private labs for testing the 500 million people the fee of each test — 4,500 rupees covered by a flagship public health insurance scheme.
Despite the initiation of police investigations, reports of discrimination against Muslims have also surfaced regularly across the northern and western parts of the country. News channels — including Times Now, Republic TV, and India TV — have run regular shows demonizing the wider Muslim community, by linking it to the Tablighi event:
Muslim Are Facing Worst Things In The Country
No Muslims Vendor Can Enter Into Hindu Majority Area
Different Wards For Hindu-Muslim in Gujarat Hospital
Meerut Hospital Denied Treatment To Muslim By Issuing Notification #Islamophobia_In_India pic.twitter.com/VNUxUaJslA
— Sanwar Ali (@AdvSanwar) April 21, 2020
Despite mounting ostracisation, ten Tablighi Jamaat members donated blood plasma in order to help doctors treat infected patients. Many others have also come forward to help:
Yesterday, hundreds of Tablighi Jamaat members, who were fasting donated plasma at Sultanpuri quarantine centre in Delhi. This is the very same Muslim group that is being vilified & scapegoated day in & day out by media and the ruling govt. pic.twitter.com/pYiIhi0q8i
— IndianAmericanMuslimCouncil (@IAMCouncil) April 27, 2020
Jamaat chief Maulana Saad Khadavli, who faced legal charges over the event, recently appealed to COVID-19 survivors to donate blood plasma. He also urged all Muslims to stay home and pray during the holy month of Ramadan:
Despite Ramadan ?, tablighi members are donating blood plasma for people infected with covid as hospitals are struggling for donors. These same Tablighis were accused of all kinds of nonsense by govt & the media. Prayers for all! pic.twitter.com/bjBseQJFKY
— Salman Nizami (@SalmanNizami_) April 26, 2020
New Delhi's Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has also asked that everyone who recovered from the virus — irrespective of their caste or religion — come forward and donate plasma.
After two Hindu holy men were killed by a mob in Maharashtra during the lockdown period in April, a video of the incident went viral. Tweets claiming they were murdered by Muslims gained prominence, with some of them even targeting Chief Minister Uddhav Thackerey, who — after breaking ties with BJP — formed a coalition government with the left-centrist groups Indian National Congres and Nationalist Congress Party.
The communal polarisation people have been experiencing in the wake of COVID-19, is summed up by this tweet:
Modi Sarkar has always tried to #DivideAndRule
Initial incidences of Covid19 were blamed on Jamat & given Muslim Twist
Gujarat Hospitals seperated patients into Hindu & Muslim
Lynching of Hindu Sadhu at Palghar was narrated as conspiracy against Hindus
This madness must stop!
— Koomar Shah (@KoomarShah) April 24, 2020
Some columnists have been trying to focus attention on the issue. Apoorvanand wrote in the Indian Express:
In the seven decades of Independent India, Muslims have systematically been forced into ghettoes. There were already two zones of sensibilities in India — Hindu and Muslim. The current crisis is being used to deepen the divide.
Sagarika Ghose wrote in the Times of India:
Scientists are working to find a vaccine for coronavirus, but who will cure the communal virus? It can only be cured if each of us journeys inwards to find humanity within, to treat fellow human beings as equals. After all, this is the teaching of every great religion, whether Hinduism or Islam. If even a global pandemic which knows no boundaries cannot end religious hatred, what can?
As India grapples with the prejudices the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light, it must confront its own complicated history — because even if political groups discriminate, this virus does not.

author: Vishal Yashoda Manve


text:
The first recorded two-headed banded kukri snake discovered in Nepal · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

A two-headed common krait.Photo provided by Kaligandaki Hospital and Kamal Devkota. Used with permission.
Dicephaly, the condition that causes a snake to be born with two heads, is already very rare. But when villagers from the Nawalpur District of central Nepal captured a two-headed banded kukri snake (Oligodon arnenis) in October 2018, they hadn't the faintest idea that it was the first of its species.  A recent report published in the April 2020 edition of IRCF Journal confirms the discovery.
Two-headed banded kukri. Photo provided by Kasara, Chitwan National Park, Nepal via Kamal Devkota. Used with permission.
Police officers rescued the snake from the villagers while they were taking it to the capital city Kathmandu and transferred it to park rangers from the Chitwan National Park who released it into natural habitat.
The banded kukri snakes are named after their sharp, flattened, curved teeth which they use for slicing reptile eggs. They are found in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan and Nepal.
Two-headed snakes are born due to many reasons like incomplete division of embryo, a fusion of two embryos, temperature, environmental factors and many others. The disorder occurs in just one out of every 100,000 snakes in the wild, and in one out of 10,000 snakes born in captivity.
Because the snakes have two heads, they have two brains and two distinct personalities but in most cases, one head dominates the other. Dicephalic snakes have very little chance of surviving in the wild as the heads might fight with each other for food. Also, the two heads make them less agile when catching prey and more susceptible to predators.
Two Headed Snake
It's called dicephaly
it happens when an embryo in the early stages of development divides possibly induced by sudden temperature changes,
environmental pollution, or inbreeding.
Whatever the cause,
these unlucky creatures don't live long. pic.twitter.com/NDK5o8WMeM
— Einstein (@Einstein2020) November 26, 2019
While images and sculptures of snakes or serpents are often found adorning the temples and water spouts in the Kathmandu Valley, two-headed snakes are an incredibly rare occurrence. The two-headed banded kukri is only the third twin-headed snake documented in Nepal. The first dicephalic snake – a juvenile checkered keelback (Fowlea piscator) – was documented by Mishra and Shah in 1983, while the second case – a common krait (Bungarus caeruleus) – was found in May 2018 in the Kawasoti Municipality of Nawalpur District in central Nepal. It was the first record of dicephalism of a krait in Nepal, and it was studied by Board Member of Nepal Toxinology Association and Save the Snakes Project Manager Kamal Devkota and his team.
Two-headed common krait. Photo provided by Kaligandaki Hospital and Kamal Devkota. Used with permission.
Devkota spoke with Global Voices about how rare it is to find a two-headed snake:
Herping [searching for snakes] is not an easy task. In my decade-long career, I have found other interesting cases of snakes but you always don't get what you want. Likewise, these dicephalic snakes are found opportunistically while surveying snakes rather than following any specific methods.
According to Devkota, up to 90 snake species have been recorded by various authors in Nepal, among which 18 are considered venomous. While many people, especially in the lowlands of Nepal, die of snakebites every year, a snake has its own role in the ecosystem added Devkota who has been working on human-snake conflict mitigation.
[A snake] plays a vital role to maintain the food web in nature. It also helps to increase the farmer's productivity in the field by eating mice, frogs and other harmful insects. From snake venom, we can produce many different types of medicine, including anti-venom.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


text:
‘While I breathe, I hope’: In conversation with Ali Gharavi of the #Istanbul10 · Global Voices
IFEX

Editor's note: This interview is republished through a partnership between Global Voices and IFEX. Read the full interview here.
A picture of #Istanbul10. Photo credit: Amnesty International via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 4.0].
Ali Gharavi is a strategy and holistic security consultant working with human rights defenders, their organisations and communities. He is one of ten people — including İdil Eser, former director of Amnesty Turkey — who were arrested in Turkey in July 2017 at an information management and well-being workshop on Buyukada island. The hashtag #Istanbul10 was used in the sustained advocacy efforts that called for the dropping of all charges against them and their immediate release.
In March 2020, ahead of an anticipated – but since postponed – verdict hearing, Ali spoke with IFEX Regional Editor Cathal Sheerin about how his experience being arrested in Turkey and jailed for four months has affected his life and informed his work.
I feel a combination of anticipation and anxiety. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions over the last almost three years and the verdict was supposed to have been reached at the last hearing. In terms of realistic outcomes, we’ve talked about two or three possibilities with our families, lawyers and the authorities in Sweden. I’ve been trying to keep my wits about me and not putting all my eggs in one basket, but we’re pretty optimistic that the outcome could be acquittal.
I’m only nominally optimistic really because these things can turn on a dime. At the hearing before the last one, the prosecutor said that – of the ten of us plus Taner Kılıç – he would accept acquittal for five because of lack of evidence, but the rest he wanted to convict. I was in the acquittal group. All of us are quite adamant, however, about not having this ‘split’ decision.
It’s really hard to say. Two of us in the acquittal group – Peter Steudtner and I – are not Turkish, so it’s possible that they want to remove the international angle from all of this. However, that’s just my speculation. It’s actually quite arbitrary, and I think this is partly because they have no evidence. It might even be a way to ramp this down: Let’s acquit half of them now and then acquit the rest in a trickle.
What has been the impact of your arrest, detention and trial on your family and friends?
This is a really important question for me, because we always tend to concentrate on the person who’s at the centre of the crisis. However, I compare the experience to a cluster bomb, where the first detonation is our arrest and the subsequent explosions take place in our families, among our friends and at our work as people discover what has happened. It’s not just confined to the ten or 11 who are in prison – it spreads like a virus, infecting everyone it comes into contact with. My partner went through great trauma, as did other members of my family, because of this. It can be all-encompassing for some people, as it was for me.
It changes one’s life. You become a different person because of the trauma you endured: four months of being in various Turkish prisons leaves its footprint; and then, for your partner, there’s not knowing where her loved one is for two months, whether he is alive or not.
My wife, Laressa Dickey, Peter’s partner, Magdalena Freudenschuss, and our colleague, Dan O’Cluanaigh, ended up creating a de facto response organisation that helped coordinate and inform the activities of all the other advocacy groups, such as IFEX. We called it the ‘Family Unit’ and its activities were informed by the work that Peter, Dan and I do – holistic security – which is about being actively aware that a crisis has many different aspects, including the digital footprint, physical security, health and psychological well-being.
The ‘Family Unit’ did strategic planning and set objectives, such as caring for the families of the incarcerated and providing systematic communications so that each family had all the relevant information about their loved ones. They also developed protocols with our lawyers; some of this was as mundane as giving the lawyers our shoe and underwear sizes so that they could buy things for us. It’s basic, but that’s the stuff that makes it easier for the lawyers to do their actual work. The lawyers became the only mode of contact with us; my own lawyer is now my dearest friend because he was my lawyer and also my personal shopper, confidante, adviser and therapist.
Ali Gharavi. Photo credit: Annie Game
How aware were you when you were detained of the advocacy that was taking place on your behalf? What impact did it have on your morale?
Maintaining my morale was one of the biggest challenges for me. I was held at four different sites. At one point, they transferred us to the anti-terrorism headquarters for interrogation, which sounds like – and was – quite a harrowing experience. Then my family heard that, because of overcrowding, they’d placed me in a two-person cell with four others, two of whom were ISIS members.
Obviously, when you hear that, it sounds like the most horrendous situation, but in reality it was actually a very supportive environment. Those two supposed ISIS members were actually just two religious boys who’d grown beards. I walked in to this very compact area where they’d all heard that these ‘super-spies’ were coming, and this young nineteen-year-old supposed ISIS member started speaking to me in German, knowing that I’d lived in Germany. He said: “You’re our elder, you’re our uncle, this is your home, whatever you want we’ll provide.” The moments which – from the outside – looked quite devastating, were sometimes actually moments of amazing solidarity.
Most of our incarceration was spent in a maximum security prison. Because they supposedly thought we were super-advanced spies they put us in the Number Nine Prison, which has extra security. I had only one hour a week to see people – usually my lawyer or sometimes a diplomat.
You begin to forget what the outside looks like and you assume that the outside doesn’t remember you either. But every week my wife would email details to my lawyer of everything that was being done for us, so that my lawyer could print it all out and pretend that it was a legal document (because that was the only thing I was permitted to look at).
I’ve done letter-writing campaigns in the past, and I never knew for sure if they had any effect on the people who were in jail, but having been on the inside, I can say that those moments were life-saving. Sometimes my lawyer would search for my name on Twitter and print out all the tweets that had been posted that week about me; there was also this Twitter campaign, #haikusforAli, and demonstrations in Brussels, sit-ins in front of embassies.
All of those moments reminded me that people on the outside were thinking of me and mobilising. I’m not exaggerating when I say that those were the things that saved me when I was in the depths of an abyss.
The kind of work I’d been doing was intended exactly for this kind of situation, where you need to pay attention to the whole person, not just their devices or the organisation’s activities. Because of my incarceration, I now understand that at a molecular level. For me, the whole experience has placed a higher premium on understanding people – who they are, where they are – as a big part of how we can actually help them regardless of whichever aspect of their work we’re trying to assist them with.
One thing the experience revealed was how inadequately resourced and researched care and crisis response is: how do you care for not just the person incarcerated, but also his family, the community around him, his colleagues?
Once the crisis is ‘over’ the assumption is that life goes on as usual, whereas there’s actually recovery that needs to be done. Often there’s also a massive financial burden due to legal costs and the inability to work for a while. After my release I went to Berlin and arrived into a very supportive debriefing environment. It’s a very privileged situation to be in – those ten days were very helpful in making me understand that I’d be going through this trauma and recovery and that it’s not just business as usual. There was a crowd-funder created for me so that I didn’t just have to drop back into work, and there was physical and psychological therapy too.
I knew it intellectually, but now I know it viscerally, that just because you get released the trauma doesn’t just go away. It takes years to be functional again. People assume that when you recover you’re going to go back to being who you were, but that’s not true.
It would be very difficult for me to feel safe there, but I would go, if only in order to ‘get back on the horse’. If the verdict doesn’t go the way we expect, then I’d be incarcerated if I turned up there, so I obviously wouldn’t return. I love Turkey – the people and the environment – and I feel like a big part of my life and friends is now off-limits to me. But I dream of when I’ll be able to go back, hug the people who were inside with me and eat baklava with them. As Cicero said: ‘While I breathe, I hope.’
The humanity of what I experienced in detention was humbling. Regardless of why those people were incarcerated with me, they – that young 19-year-old who spoke to me in German, and others – were an amazing source of inspiration and support. During the toughest times I’d be angry with them, but they were amazingly unwavering. I’ve heard via word of mouth that those two supposed ISIS members are now back with their families and all is well. I owe them a big debt of gratitude.
Most of the time I was incarcerated alongside political prisoners who faced trial on specious charges, or who had been (and continue to be) detained for years on end as they wait for an indictment. And now we hear that despite the mortal threat of COVID-19 sweeping through the prison system, those prisoners will stay behind bars.

author: IFEX


text:
Are Japanese ‘murder hornets’ invading North America? · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Japanese giant hornet attacking a hive. Photo courtesy Stephen Wheeler.
In early May, the New York Times reported that the United States faced yet another new threat besides the COVID-19 pandemic: “murder hornets” from Asia. The story quickly sparked an explosion of “murder wasp” stories and social media conversations around the world. As a viral idiotic stunt on YouTube from 2018 resurfaced and surged in popularity, some reporters reassured readers that “‘murder hornets’ are unlikely to murder you personally,” while others asked just what exactly is a “murder hornet”, anyway?
According to the Times report, the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) is now present not only in the northwest corner of Washington State, but also just over the U.S.-Canada border to the north, in White Rock, a suburb of Vancouver. In September 2019, an Asian giant hornet nest was discovered and destroyed on nearby Vancouver Island as well.
A dead Japanese giant hornet, or O-suzumebachi (オオスズメバチ) in Japan. Photo by Nevin Thompson.
It's a mystery how the Asian giant hornet arrived in western North America. The hornets can be found in Taiwan, China, South Korea and in Japan, where the insect is known as o-suzumebachi (オオスズメバチ), which roughly translates as “great sparrow wasp”.
The hornets are about 5 cm in length, and defend themselves from predators such as bears by biting and spitting venom, and with a powerful sting.
In Japan, the giant hornets prey on honey bees, which means they pose a significant threat to apiaries in Washington State, British Columbia and other parts of North America.
The New York Times story almost immediately sparked confusion. Some took issue with the claim that the hornets “kill up to 50 people a year” in Japan (the figure is actually 12 deaths a year, according to Japan's Ministry of Health, pointed out by a commenter on Twitter).
Entomologists in Canada, who have been investigating the presence of the hornet for at least a year, also downplayed the potential threat to humans.
Did a murder hornet write this https://t.co/SP9zRSZoRG
— Jimmy Thomson (@jwsthomson) May 4, 2020
However, for many Japan-watchers, the most confusing part of the Times story was just where the name “murder hornets” came from.
Martin Fackler, the former Tokyo bureau chief of the New York Times, noted that, in Japan, hornets are called suzumebachi — a “bee” (hachi) or hornet the size of sparrow (suzume).
Fackler and New Yorker contributor Matt Alt deduced the term “murder hornet” turned up in the New York Times as the result of a sort of “reverse telephone game”:
Yeah, I did a quick search in Japanese for variants of satsujinbachi (殺人蜂), which seems to be the origin of “murder hornet,” and the term was probably originally a direct translation of the English “killer bee,” though Japanese tabloids now use it for Asian giant hornets, too. https://t.co/mlE8KpKNmu
— Martin Fackler (@martfack) May 4, 2020
“The Japanese giant hornet warns you it will attack by grinding its jaws together,” says Stephen Wheeler, a beekeeper in Japan, in an interview with Global Voices. “Single Asian giant hornets aren’t a problem if you encounter them, though. Freeze, don’t try and swat at it, and back off.”
Wheeler fights a battle every year to keep his bees safe from giant hornets. Since 1993, Wheeler has lived on Awaji, a largely rural island to the west of Kobe and Osaka at the eastern end of the Inland Sea. Wheeler has been beekeeping on Awaji for about eight years, and currently rents farmland for growing bee-friendly trees for reforestation
“A neighbour gave me two old hives which I placed at a friends coffee shop, and I was lucky enough to catch my first two swarms of honey bees,” says Wheeler. “I keep the Japanese honey bee (Apis cerana japonica) and when swarms escape from strawberry farms, I keep the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) too.”
Wheeler documents life on Awaji, including keeping bees, producing honey, fending off wasps and generally investigating insect life on his blog.
“Managing an Asian hornet attack with sticky pads.” Image courtesy Stephen Wheeler.
Unfortunately, over the past winter, Wheeler lost all of his bee colonies, as he explains in a video blog.
“It was a downward spiral,” says Wheeler. “Yellow hornets in the summer, giant hornets in the autumn which means the bees can’t leave the hive to forage. Honey and pollen reserves dwindle, the bees can’t keep the hive in tiptop shape, and stress settles in. The hive succumbs to wax moth or a mite problem, they all just evacuate, which in autumn is a death sentence in and of itself￼.”
There will be no bees left, Wheeler says, to survive the winter and continue on with the colony in spring.
Wheeler has documented a variety of tactics in his fight against the Asian giant hornet on his YouTube channel. Here, he explains how the hornets release pheromones to summon help, and how to use this behaviour against them:

author: Nevin Thompson