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Since George Floyd’s murder, black Barbadians are becoming more vocal about racism · Global Voices
Stacey Phillips

Protestors attend a solidarity march in Bridgetown, Barbados, on June 13, 2020, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and opposing racism and police brutality in Barbados. Photo courtesy Bazodee Magazine, used with permission.
The killing of yet another African-American man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota has triggered intense backlash worldwide.
Far beyond America, protests exploded with the voices of those who had finally had enough, including the citizens of Barbados — an island still struggling with stark racial disparities rooted in its deeply-ingrained colonial history.
Since the abolition of slavery across the British colonies in 1843, and independence from Great Britain in 1966, Barbados’ black majority has made undeniable progress economically, socially, and politically; however, during a study on white identity in the Caribbean some white Barbadians asserted that there is no such thing as white privilege.
Despite this perception, the country's racial tensions have continued to fester, and in light of the international attention surrounding George Floyd's murder, can no longer be ignored.
Social media in Barbados has become a crucial tool used by black Barbadians to speak out against the systemic and interpersonal racism that many attest have stained their psyche. Hashtags such as #ScreenshotARacist, #DoTheWork, #BlacketyBlackBlackBlack, and #SupportBlackBusiness all encapsulate the collective rallying cry of black Barbadians who are boldly speaking out against racial inequity.
Apart from the 1937 Barbados Riots, which some pan-Africanists argue should be referred to as the “People’s Uprising”, the country has seen little political and social unrest.
However, these riots were pivotal: spurred by the deportation of Clement Payne, well regarded by black Barbadians as a labour leader who championed the formation of trade unions, the riots contributed to reform that would eventually lead to independence in 1966.
In “Crisis of an Intellectual Tradition”, Professor Ian Boxhill posits that, as a result of being colonised solely by the British and having a relatively passive black populace, “countries like Barbados […] did not have enough turmoil in them […] They seemed too consensual oriented or just plain too quiet” — and in an article on race relations in Barbados, retired educator Ralph Jemmott suggested that “the black educated middle class, by and large, tends to stay away from mass civic engagement on issues of race”.
This perception of Barbadians of colour upholding the status quo — despite the social and economic inequalities perpetuated by systemic racism — is a notion that has been eloquently dispelled by many, including activist Luci Hammans during the Black Lives Matter march in the capital, Bridgetown, on June 13, in which she proclaimed:
As we marched today, we took steps of resilience, because to protest in Barbados needs permission and requests […] the Public Order Act was created to stop Black Power protests in Barbados, and to appease the political and economic elite in 1937, because we were not passive then and we are not passive now!
Many black Barbadians have experienced first-hand the emotional ravages of interpersonal racism. Systemic racism, however, represents another level of pain and rejection, manifested by societal institutions that perpetuate racial injustice despite being established to serve all citizens.
Characterised by the rules, codes and practices — both covert and overt — that create advantages and disadvantages based solely on race, systemic racism amplifies the challenges that people of colour experience. In Barbados, this is glaringly obvious when it comes to education, healthcare, social mobility, and crucially, intergenerational acquisition of wealth.
While some social media users contributed to a resource list advising “ALL white or ‘pass-fuh-white’ Bajans, and other white people living in Barbados” how to be anti-racist, several white Barbadians took to social media to assert that black Barbadians were jumping on a bandwagon in the form of the Black Lives Matter movement, and that the American brand of racism had nothing to do with Barbados.
On Facebook, Risée Chaderton-Charles responded:
It is quite fascinating to see white/white adjacent Bajans and those seeking the shelter of their privilege try to convince themselves and us that the real reason there is racism in Barbados is because “the blacks” just won’t play nice with them and simply ignore the things they say.
Apparently racism was well on its way to being solved in Barbados until upstart activists—influenced by America and her completely unrelated racism of course—started “bullying” good, kind, decent people who “don’t see colour” and whose magically lily white circle of close friends was just a matter of happenstance.
I swear this is PhD level gaslighting.
At the same time, however, many younger white Barbadians lent their support to the Black Lives Matter march in Bridgetown.
Younger black Barbadians — educated, conscious, articulate and impassioned — did not respond with the passivity so often ascribed to previous generations. Instead, they galvanised their voices to express their sense of injustice, and began a deeply insightful and potent level of digital activism.
Just as importantly, there were calls for the black community to recognise the power it has to influence the local economy. In response to suggestions that pledging to support black-owned businesses for a day in a show of solidarity was tantamount to promoting hatred of whites, Facebook user Shaka Mayers quipped:
This was said elsewhere but it bears repeating:
White People: “Black people should show more unity amongst themselves and support one another.”
Black People: “We're holding one day where we do nothing but support one another.”
White People: “THAT'S RACIST!”
Yuh can't ****ing win ?
Barbadian activists also took part in the international Blackout Day on July 7, and used Facebook to shine a spotlight on black-owned businesses as they pledged to “use economic power to fight racial injustice and economic disparity”.
In response, some businesses notorious for valuing the tourist dollar over local spend suddenly seemed to recognise the economic sway of the black Barbadian majority, and quickly back-pedalled in an attempt to retain customers. One such establishment, which made an attempt to overhaul its social media image, swiftly met with a stunning digital rebuke — highlighting the fact that black Barbadian activists are not easily swayed by empty promises, and remain committed to the cause of dismantling systemic racism.
Their message is clear: no longer will they tacitly accept the status quo — the unravelling of the racist tapestry of Barbadian society has begun, and it will not stop until they have woven a new reality of equality and equity for all Barbadians.

author: Stacey Phillips


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Tears and rage after Congress rejects franchise renewal of the Philippines’ biggest media network · Global Voices
Kodao Productions

An ABS-CBN worker raises her fist during a protest condemning the non-renewal of the network's franchise. Photo from the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, used with permission.
This article by Raymund B. Villanueva is from Kodao, an independent news site in the Philippines, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. With research by Jo Maline D. Mamangun.
“Ma, hanggang August 31 na lang po ako sa ABS-CBN,” Jon Montesa, TVPlus brand communications manager, told his mother upon learning of his retrenchment last Thursday, July 16. (Mom, my ABS-CBN employment ends on August 31.)
For additional context, read the statement of journalists condemning the Congress decision to reject the franchise renewal bid of ABS-CBN. The closure of the media network reflects the decline of press freedom under the government of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Like Montesa, hundreds of other workers had to inform their families that their worst fears as workers of the Philippines’ biggest media network had come true. Throughout the day, tears flowed in the many offices inside the ABS-CBN compound as unit heads delivered the sad news to their colleagues.
Montesa blamed the 70 legislators who voted to deny the Philippines’ media network a new franchise to continue operating last July 10. He added:
Hindi lang trabaho ang kinuha nila sa amin. Pangarap at kinabukasan. ‘Yun ang ninakaw sa amin. I've worked so hard for this. ‘Di ko naman nakuha ‘to sa isang iglap lang eh. Pero sa isang iglap lang, mawawala na ang lahat. Hindi kayo makatao.
In my nearly five years in the network, I never thought I would say this to my family. They not only took away our jobs. Our dreams and future, these are the things they took away from us. I’ve worked so hard for this. I did not get it easily. But it’s gone in an instant. You are inhumane!
It is not only ordinary employees like Montesa who are being given their dismissal slips. Even those who have been on millions of television screens for decades and expected to survive the bloodbath of jobs have been retrenched. Award-winning broadcast journalist and news presenter Ces Oreña-Drilon tweeted:
This was one of the toughest days I had to face. Telling fellow kapamilyas that they would lose their jobs by end of August. I lost mine too. https://t.co/s19MXXvjvy
— Ces Oreña-Drilon (@cesdrilon) July 16, 2020
Kapamilya, which means family member, is ABS-CBN's brand name.
Thousands more are expected to be dismissed until August as the company scrambles to stop the financial hemorrhage it had been suffering since the Philippine government issued a cease and desist order on ABS-CBN’s operations. The network is reported to be losing around 30 million pesos (600,000 US dollars) a day since May 5 but with its franchise denied by Congress, it could no longer keep all of its more than 11,000 workers. “We should consider ourselves lucky if 50% of us are retained until the end of the year,” a source told Kodao.
Radio channel MOR 101.9 DJ Czarina “DJ Chacha” Balba said it is not only at the network’s corporate headquarters in Quezon City that the retrenchment is ongoing.
There are many MOR radio stations in the entire Philippines. It is not only here in Manila that colleagues are losing jobs. Yesterday, our bosses informed us the MOR network only has until August 31.
Balba revealed this is her first job after college and she considers it her “first and forever love.” She said it is not all about her salary but the despair of leaving what she considers her home in the past 12 years. She added:
On top of that, you would no longer be working with your friends nor would you be allowed to visit them because it is prohibited (because of the pandemic).
The loss of income is harder for most employees, on top of the bleak prospects of finding new employment while the coronavirus pandemic rages worldwide. An ABS-CBN employee told Kodao she is now watching YouTube videos on soap-making, thinking of joining the online selling community once retrenched. Upon learning of Congress’ rejection of ABS-CBN’s franchise, employee Jonathan Samson announced he is selling his beloved collection of scooters. Broadcast journalist Adrian Ayalin is not among those dismissed this week, but it does not insulate him from uncertainty and the pain. He wrote on Facebook:
Friends if there are communication-related job opportunities you know of, please (message) me. My Kapamilyas who were retrenched are in need of jobs right now and it is really difficult for them to look for new work in this time of pandemic. And who knows, I and my other colleagues might be next. So we need as many job opportunities as possible.
ABS-CBN Supervisory Employees Union president Raul de Asis lays the massive loss of jobs squarely on President Rodrigo Duterte’s feet.
Aaminin ko sa lahat na talagang ibinoto ko ang Pangulong Duterte. Yung mga kasamahan natin sa probinsiya, sa RNG (regional network group), ibinoto din siya…Talagang iniisip nila na ibinoto natin ‘tong presidenteng ito, na gaganda ang buhay natin lahat, giginhawa ang buhay natin lahat. Pero hindi alintana na ganito na ‘yung mangyayari sa aming lahat na sumuporta sa kaniya.
Ito ba ang kapalit ng aming pagboto sa kaniya? Kikitilin ang aming hanapbuhay? Gugutumin ang aming pamilya? Hindi na kami makatulong sa aming mga kamag-anak at kapatid at magulang? Sobrang masakit po.
I admit I voted for President Duterte, along with our colleagues from the RNG (regional network group). We thought our lives would be better if we voted for him. We never thought he would do this to those who supported him.
Is this what we get for voting for him? Killing our jobs? Making our families go hungry? We will no longer be able to help our relatives, siblings and parents. This is beyond painful.
In a speech before soldiers in Jolo, Sulu last week, Duterte admitted wanting the network closed. But even before the network’s franchise bid was formally rejected, Duterte’s close ally Senator Ronald dela Rosa had already warned that ABS-CBN employees should start looking for other jobs.
The shock of losing jobs and the shutdown of their company prodded employees to react in various ways. Balba asked:
[M]ay iba pa pong department ang ABS-CBN na stop operations muna. So ipagdasal niyo po ang ibang empleyado na kagaya naming lahat.
Other departments will stop operations. So, pray for the other employees who will be jobless like us.
Oreña-Drilon for her part stayed hopeful:
Babangon din ang mga #kapamilya. (We will rise up.) This may be our darkest hour. But don’t lose hope.
Many, like Montesa, however, have held nightly noise barrages at ABS-CBN’s Sgt. Esguerra gate since July 13, heavily filling the air with the banging of gongs, clanging of makeshift noisemakers and sounding horns of cars driving around the network compound in a two-hour motorcade. Enraged, they vow to make those responsible for their uncertain future pay.
Ako, #KapamilyaForever. Kayo, hindi forever. #ManiningilAngKasaysayan
I am Family Forever. You are not forever. History will make you pay.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Kodao Productions


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Black Lives Matter forces an IBM U-turn on facial recognition · Global Voices
Rémy Vuong

Facial recognition technology analyses the structure of faces to allow identification of individuals. Image used with permission. Source: Pikrepo
In the midst of the recent Black Lives Matter protests, which raised questions about policing and racism in the United States and elsewhere, technology company IBM announced its withdrawal from the general-purpose facial recognition market. Could this be a turning point in the use of such technologies—fraught with drawbacks— by security services?
The news has gone almost unnoticed.
On one side of the story lies the bungled COVID-19 health crisis. On the other, protests and anger ignited by shocking police violence, that revived the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide. Caught between the two, IBM declared on June 8, its decision to abandon the marketing of facial recognition software, having been driven by the protest actions into honouring its ethical charter.
“Technology can increase transparency and help the police to protect communities, but must not promote discrimination or racial injustice”, Arving Krishna, the company’s CEO notably commented.
The announcement has garnered few reactions, except from a few political economy analysts, technophiles, and activists. And yet it could indicate major changes in the influence which technology exerts on our lives.
Facial recognition software permits individuals to be identified from photos or videos in an automated way. To achieve this, it relies on two pillars: a reference dataset of pre-recorded images, and large processing capacity. Both are areas which have seen phenomenal progress recently, owing to innovations in Big Data and in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Scaling-up facial recognition massively has thus become a possibility.
For several years, examples have mushroomed worldwide. As far back as February 2005, the police department of Los Angeles was using a system developed by General Electric and Hamilton Pacific. It’s a practice which has since become generalised, and accelerated. In 2019, China had a total of 200 million video surveillance cameras on its soil. An even denser network is under preparation in Russia. Not to mention the initiatives of cities like Nice, which is currently testing [fr] the technology, or London, where cameras analyse the faces of passers-by (without informing them) with the aim of locating people being sought by the authorities.
Authorities justify such automated surveillance by security imperatives: in late 2016, the International Criminal Organization, Interpol, claimed the identification of “over 650 felons, fugitives, persons of interest or missing persons […]”. It is all done in the name of the struggle against criminality, terrorism, or more recently the spread of coronavirus.
But as with other advanced technologies, facial recognition is a double-edged sword. The progress it brings is accompanied by threats, particularly to civil liberties.
Several digital rights organizations have been alerting the public opinion to potential threats and abuses enabled by facial recognition. Among them, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and La Quadrature du Net. The latter is co-ordinating a campaign called  Technopolice [fr], an initiative which logs and exposes automatic surveillance plans in France, and calls for systematic resistance.
The most prominent harm of using facial recognition tools is bias. These tools identify and verify people based on exposure to sample data: so-called training data sets. If these are incomplete or lacking in relevance, the tool will make poor interpretations. It’s called learning bias.
To demonstrate such bias, last month, Twitter users tested an AI that reconstructs portraits from pixelated images,and published their anomalous results online. There were significantly more failures with Afro-American or Hispanic subjects, such as Barack Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The dataset, which consisted almost solely of portraits of white people, had wrongly nudged the reconstructions in the direction of the most likely typical profiles.
This Image of a White Barack Obama Is AI’s Racial Bias Problem In a Nutshell https://t.co/88Sl9H0lEp
— adafruit industries (@adafruit) June 27, 2020
When using AI to identify people from images rather than to enhance them, the analytical process will probably show a similar bias.
Imaginons que vous décidiez d’évaluer la dangerosité, le risque de criminalité d’une personne, à partir de paramètres tels que l’âge, le lieu de résidence, la couleur de peau, le diplôme le plus élevé… et que pour entraîner votre logiciel, vous utilisiez les données fournies par les centres de détention, les prisons.
Alors il est fort probable que votre logiciel minimise fortement les risques pour les personnes blanches et l’augmente pour les autres.
Suppose you decided to assess the level of risk of a person’s criminality, based on parameters like age, home address, skin colour, highest academic qualification… and, to train your software, you used data supplied by detention centres, or prisons.
Then it’s highly likely your software will seriously downplay the risks for white people, and elevate them for others.
Source: https://intelligence-artificielle.agency/les-biais/ [fr]
The facts speak for themselves. In London real-time facial recognition shows an 81% error rate; in Detroit, an African-American man spoke up about his wrongful arrest because of a faulty identification.
Not only is facial recognition fallible, it worsens discrimination, as confirmed by an inquiry by the investigative site ProPublica back in 2016.
Google Photos tagged two African Americans as “gorillas” […] a recruitment aid tool used by Amazon disadvantaged women
Source: « IA : la reconnaissance faciale est-elle raciste ? » Orange Digital Society Forum [fr]
See
For police forces, often the object of accusations of discrimination, facial recognition is an extra, highly inflammable element.
The death of George Floyd in an incident of police violence, on May 25, in Minneapolis, sparked a wave of demonstrations in the United States initially, then across the world. They started off denouncing discrimination targeting ethnic minorities. But an escalation of violence led the demonstrators to demand the de-militarisation of law enforcement agencies, chanting the slogan “Defund the police”. By extension, the tools of widespread surveillance have also come under scrutiny, as well as the private companies which provide them. So, now, under pressure from Black Lives Matter activists, the company IBM has announced its partial withdrawal from the facial recognition market.
It is no accident that Big Blue [IBM’s nickname] has been the first to react. The firm has a long, sometimes shameful history, which it had to learn to come to terms with. Back in 1934, it collaborated with the Nazi regime via its German subsidiary. Much later, in 2013, it was implicated in the case of the PRISM surveillance programme, exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Perhaps for this reason, it has been able to finesse its role in the current conflict between a security-driven state and human rights activists. Of course, it’s possible to come up with a far more rational argument for IBM’s strategy, eager to protect itself from future judicial proceedings and their financial cost.
Nonetheless, the reorientation of its activity is real enough, and it has sparked an initiative which is being followed by other industry giants. Microsoft declared on June 12 that it would refuse to sell its facial recognition technology to police agencies; Amazon, under peer pressure, ended up declaring a moratorium on its Rekognition tool.
The need for a statutory framework has become obvious. In his announcement, Arvind Krishna, IBM CEO, called on the US Congress to “open a national dialogue to see whether, and how, facial recognition technologies are to be used by law enforcement agencies.”
This call has been heard. Members of Congress introduced on June 25 a bill to ban the use of facial recognition by the police. A day earlier, the ban was endorsed in the city of Boston by its City Council.
No doubt this is just the start of a long political and legal battle, to bind the use of facial recognition into a procedure respectful of citizens. But for the first time, human rights defence movements seem in a position to influence the Big Tech companies and the political establishment, in the direction of the shared aspiration of a technology profitable for everyone.

author: Rémy Vuong


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Ecuador’s transgender community decries lack of government aid during pandemic · Global Voices
Carlos E. Flores

“I DON'T WANT TO DIE FOR BEING TRANS”: Rashell Erazo during a march for LGBTIQ+ rights in 2018. Photo used with permission.
This article is part of our special coverage of LGBTQI+ pride.
In Ecuador, the transgender community is surviving the pandemic thanks to solidarity from their peers, as LGBTQI+ advocates claim the State is failing to respond sufficiently – or respond at all. At the time of writing, Ecuador has approximately 74,000 confirmed cases and over 5000 people have died from COVID-19 as the country tries to restart economic activity.
Ecuador's legal framework has protected people of all sexual orientations and gender identities since 2008. However, the trans community is being faced with a dire situation, as Rashell Erazo told Global Voices. Erazo is the president of the Ecuadorian LGBTQI+ organisation ALFIL and the national representative for Redlactrans (the Latin American and Caribbean Trans Network).
The lockdown has affected the trans population disproportionately, due to the community's vulnerability in terms of labor in the services sector and discrimination in public health. For this reason, Erazo believes that the LGBTQI+ community should be classified as a “priority population” according to the definition in several rulings by the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also called on its Member States in April 2020 to guarantee LGBTQI+ people's rights as part of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Erazo condemns the fact that Ecuador is not helping this group and she is now looking to take legal action against the State.
She describes the State's lack of response as essentially trying to force the Ministry for Economic and Social Integration (MIES) to deliver humanitarian aid to the transgender community. She reveals that NGOs have presented a list of 100 people within the transgender community who are living in extreme poverty to MIES so that the government could provide them contingency payments in response to the pandemic – which consist of a transfer of $120 for 950,000 people. Yet, none of the trans people have received assistance.
In Ecuador, solidarity is coming first and foremost from the trans community itself. Rashell Erazo discussed the situation and the actions planned by the trans community in Ecuador via Whatsapp with Global Voices author Carlos Flores. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Carlos Flores (CF): What is the situation facing the trans community during this pandemic?
Rashell Erazo (RE): Desde el 16 de marzo que comenzó el estado de excepción (vía decreto ejecutivo) se podría decir que la pandemia ha venido a visibilizar más la invisibilización de la población trans. Esto en todos los contextos que nos engloban como la pobreza extrema y la supervivencia laboral (el subempleo), alrededor de lo que nosotras transitamos que son el trabajo sexual, la peluquería y labores manuales. Por decreto ejecutivo han sido consideradas como no esenciales y esto ha vulnerado cada uno de los espacios de supervivencia de la población trans, obligándonos a violar el decreto ejecutivo porque no era posible continuar [acatando al decreto], al cabo de un mes del estado de excepción, sin tener el sustento diario. Es dramático. Hay personas que dicen que todos estamos siendo comparados, pero no se puede comparar una población con un perfil de alta vulnerabilidad y exclusión que vivimos con el resto de población cisgénero y heterosexual.
Rashell Erazo (RE): The state of emergency was introduced on 16 March (by executive degree), and since then it has been clear that the pandemic is bringing to light exactly how invisible the trans population is. This is without mentioning the other struggles that we face, like extreme poverty and workplace survival (under-employment), which for us often involves sex work, hairdressing or manual labour. As a result of the executive decree, these have been deemed non-essential and this has put the trans population's safe spaces at risk, forcing us to violate the executive decree because it was impossible to carry on, a month into the state of emergency, without a livelihood. It's dramatic. Some people are saying that we're all in the same boat, but you can't compare a community that is as highly vulnerable and excluded as ours with the rest of the cisgender, heterosexual population.
CF: At the end of March, Guayaquil was hit by the pandemic. How did the trans community deal with this?
RE: Nosotros hemos tenido contactos fraternos con los grupos LGBTI, como Plan Diversidad o Casa de las Muñecas. Creo que la situación de las compañeras ha sido dramática. En principio tuvieron que resistir con todas sus fuerzas para acatar el Estado de Excepción por la gravedad que implica el azote de la pandemia y la proyección brutal de la curva de contagio. En Guayaquil hubo formas de solidaridad entre nosotras, ya que esperar que el Estado reconozca los convenios internacionales, como el exhorto de la CIDH indicando que en esta pandemia el Estado debe considerar a las poblaciones LGBTI como atención prioritaria, eso no ha ocurrido. No tenemos conocimiento que se haya registrado un alto número de compañeras que se hayan afectado. De hecho no podemos ni siquiera saber cuántas compañeras trabajadoras sexuales, no solo en Guayaquil sino en las principales ciudades, puedan estar contagiadas con Covid. El acceso a las pruebas es prácticamente nulo para la comunidad LGBTI.
RE: We've had messages of support from LGBTI groups, like Plan Diversidad or Casa de las Muñecas. The situation for sex workers has been dramatic, I think. First, they had to fight with all their strength to comply with the State of Emergency because of the gravity pandemic and the serious predicted contagion curve. There were signs of solidarity among us in Guayaquil, since waiting for the State to recognise international conventions, like the appeal from the IACHR that the State must consider LGBTI groups a priority for assistance during this pandemic, has come to nothing. We aren't sure if they've recorded a high number of sex workers affected. We actually can't even be sure how many sex workers could be infected with COVID in Guayaquil or in the bigger cities. The LGBTI community have practically no access to tests.
CF: What actions are going to be taken against the State to fight for a specific policy, now that the pandemic is expected to continue for several more months?
RE: Se hacen acciones paliativas como entregar un kit de alimentos que a veces soluciona temporalmente el problema de alimentos de las compañeras, pero esa no es responsabilidad nuestra como organizaciones de la sociedad civil sino del Estado. Hay que estar muy claros que es el Estado el que tiene la responsabilidad por velar en el tema de ayuda humanitaria y de facilitar la subsistencia de las personas. Tenemos un alto índice de desempleo entre las que nos contamos las mujeres trans y que el Estado limite el derecho de poder realizar el trabajo sexual callejizado, pues, lógicamente estaríamos pensando en juntarnos con organizaciones que manejan el tema legal.
Podríamos estar articulando algún tipo de acción contra el Estado, primero, por mantener en la indefensión total a las poblaciones de atención prioritaria, no atenderlas, especificados en los lineamientos nacionales e internacionales. Si por estos 60 días que ha decretado el gobierno puede volver a recrudecerse el tema de la limitación de derechos, de movilidad y demás, nosotras creeríamos que podríamos optar por una demanda internacional ante la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos porque es una evidente violación del derecho al trabajo, al alimento, a la movilidad. El Estado, y concretamente el Gobierno de Ecuador, no puede seguir ignorando a las poblaciones históricamente maltratadas y que seguimos en resistencia. Hay instrumentos legales que nos amparan.
RE: Palliative actions are being taken, like delivering food parcels, which sometimes temporarily solve problems like the sex workers’ lack of food, but this shouldn't be our responsibility as civil society organisations; it should be the responsibility of the State. We have to recognise that it's the State who should be responsible for providing humanitarian aid and ensuring everyone has provisions. There is a high level of unemployment among trans women and the State limits our right to solicit sex work on the streets, so it makes sense that we're thinking about joining forces with organisations who would handle the legal aspects.
We could take some kind of action against the State, first for the way they have left these high-priority populations totally helpless and provided none of the assistance specified in national and international guidelines. If, during the 60 days that the government reserves the right to limit rights of mobility etc., we believe we could bring a case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because it's an obvious violation of our right to work, to food and to movement. The State, specifically the Government of Ecuador, cannot continue to ignore these historically mistreated communities and we will continue to resist. There are legal instruments that support us.
Erazo is continuing to fight with other organisations to ensure that the State fulfills its obligation to help the LGBTQI+ community. “We aren't inherently vulnerable; it's the State that makes these populations vulnerable,” she concludes.

author: Carlos E. Flores


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Female genital mutilation likely to rise in the Middle East amid COVID-19 pandemic · Global Voices
Saoussen Ben Cheikh

Screenshot from a Guardian YouTube video about female genital mutilation.
COVID-19 has deeply affected women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from increased domestic violence to job loss. But there is also one less visible area where women are affected: female genital mutilation (FGM), due to disruption in prevention because of the pandemic.
In April, the United Nations announced that “due to pandemic-related disruptions in prevention programs, two million FGM cases could occur over the next decade that would otherwise have been averted.”
Female genital mutilation includes “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The practice, rooted in extensive traditions, cultural and religious beliefs throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia, is typically performed by traditional midwives or healers using knives, razors or glass.
FGM, also known as genital cutting, is widely considered as “one of the most extreme manifestations of violence against girls and women,” and yet it is widely underreported in the Middle East. It is estimated that it affects at least 200 million women worldwide.
The issue is explained in this UNICEF video:
In the MENA region, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a problem that primarily concerns Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Iraq and Djibouti.
Carlos Javier Aguilar, Regional Adviser Child Protection, explains more.
Watch and share?help #EndFGM ? pic.twitter.com/OrjJvIQl8R
— UNICEF MENA – يونيسف الشرق الأوسط وشمال إفريقيا (@UNICEFmena) February 7, 2020
Somalia has the highest prevalence of FGM with an estimated 98 percent of females between 15 and 49 years who experienced genital cutting. In Djibouti, an estimated 93 percent are affected, Egypt, 91 percent, Sudan, 88 percent, Mauritania, 69 percent, Yemen,19 percent and Iraq, 7 percent, according to the latest figures released in June by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
The practice varies according to social class, ethnicity and education in each country, with notable differences between urban and rural areas. FGM more often occurs among the poorest, least educated families in rural areas. In Yemen, FGM is concentrated in coastal regions but less common in the north. In Iraq, the practice is more prevalent in northern Kurdish provinces. In Egypt, it is markedly higher among girls living in upper Egypt.
In Mauritania, more than 90 percent of women from the poorest families have endured FGM compared to 37 percent of women from the richest families.
The scale and scope of FGM may be underestimated because the “official global picture of FGM/C is incomplete,” according to a joint report from March, authored by Equality Now, End FGM European Network and the US End FGM/C Network. The report revealed “growing evidence that the ritual is also practiced in other regions including the Middle East and Asia,” and the “world woefully underestimates FGM.”
Small sample researches have recently shown that FGM is also practiced in Iran, along with Gulf states such as Kuwait, the UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. Divya Srinivasan from Equality Now told Reuters that “she was particularly surprised at the results of small studies from places like Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are not normally countries that come to mind when you think of FGM.”
The report, published during the peak of the COVID-19 crisis in the Middle East, was not picked up by the Arabic speaking media or translated into Arabic, with little coverage of FGM in Arabic at all. This lack of public awareness may perpetuate the perception that FGM is not an issue of concern.
In the Middle East, taboos around women’s bodies and sexuality prevent open, public discussions about sensitive issues like FGM, often tied to cultural, religious and traditional beliefs.
In Egypt, for example, Christians and Muslims both “believe that circumcision of girls prevents them from vice and makes them more attractive for future husbands; mothers fear that their daughters can’t get married if they have not been cut,” according to a report by Stop FGM Middle East, a campaign created in 2013 to raise awareness about FGM and whose aim is “to get the message out that FGM exists not only in Africa, but also in many countries in the Middle East and Asia”. The organization lobbies for more data on FGM and has created a survey toolkit to help individuals and groups create small-scale surveys on FGM.
Unless there is a critical incident that makes headlines, such as the recent FGM-related death of a 12-year-old girl in southern Egypt in February, people tend to avoid the topic.
Ghida Hussein, an Egyptian student researching FGM, told Global Voices:
As we don’t talk about it, it is as if the problem doesn’t exist. FGM is often practiced silently behind closed doors. It is happening far from the more educated urban centers of power where activists and politicians are seated. FGM is a controversial sensitive issue and unless there is international attention and funding, it is not seen locally as a priority by an overwhelming male political class.
Breaking the taboo and speaking out about FGM can expose human rights defenders and victims to hate speech and backlash.
In Oman, Women's rights activist Habiba al Hinai, founder of the Omani Association for Human Rights (OAHR), conducted a survey in Oman in 2017 and found that 78 percent of women have been cut.
After publishing her findings online, Habiba received attacks and threats:
I posted my results online and the response was huge. I was attacked by religious conservatives who say female circumcision is a form of Islamic worship.
In Oman, where FGM is not officially recognized, there is no protection or support for victims. Habiba added in the report:
How can you ask a survivor to speak out against FGM and then face all the consequences —criticism and online defamation, her family and her tribe may disown her, maybe her husband will divorce her — without proper support. I don’t expect these women to speak out and face society.
In Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, FGM is only banned in medical facilities, but not in homes. In Mauritania, there are legal restrictions, but not an outright ban. In Iraq, FGM is outlawed in the Kurdish Autonomous Region but is still legal in central Iraq.
There have, however, been some major breakthroughs to eradicate FGM. Following years of advocacy from women’s rights organizations, Egypt banned the practice in 2008. Sudan, in a political transition after 30 years of dictatorship, is the latest to outlaw FGM in April.
But law enforcement remains a major challenge because FGM still has a high degree of acceptance and prevalence.
Although laws are an important deterrent, they are not enough. States need national, comprehensible strategies that include input from police, judiciary, clerics, health care providers and education to civil society.
A series of regional crises and authoritarian rule has delayed reforms, limiting campaigns and resources to tackle women’s rights violations.
Now, with the world's attention shifted to COVID-19 and its economic impact, many programs that advocate for women’s rights and provide social services to vulnerable women are postponed or no longer a priority. With more families falling below the poverty line and girls taken out of school or forced into early marriage, FGM is also likely to continue to take place without notice in the region.

author: Saoussen Ben Cheikh


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Students lead mass protest against dictatorship at Thailand’s Democracy Monument · Global Voices
Prachatai

Protesters gathered at the historic Democracy Monument. Photo from Prachatai.
This article is from Prachatai, an independent news site in Thailand, edited and republished by Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
The student group Free Youth Movement organized a public demonstration at the Democracy Monument on the evening of Saturday (July 18) to protest against the government and call for the dissolution of parliament and constitutional amendments, and for the authorities to stop harassing citizens exercising freedom of expression.
Before the start of the protest at 5 p.m., more potted plants were added to the decorative garden surrounding the Democracy Monument, filling the space on the footpath. A row of uniformed police officers also stood behind the fence surrounding the monument.
READ MORE about Thailand's political crisis, the rise of the military-backed government, and 2014 coup
A police crowd control unit was seen near the monument at around 6:30 p.m. while a Prachatai reporter also spotted a water cannon truck heading towards the protest site at around 7 p.m.
A large number of officers were deployed around the area, as well as stationed inside Satriwithaya School. At one point during the evening, protestors also shouted out that they saw officers on the upper floors of a school building.
Officers clashed with protestors early on in the evening as the group tried to remove the metal fencing placed around the protest area.
At 9:20 p.m., plainclothes officers attempted to take away two protestors, claiming that the content of their banner was an offense against the monarchy, but other protestors stopped them and forced the officers to leave the scene.
Uniformed officers stood behind the fence around the Monument. Photo and caption by Prachatai.
During the protest, student representatives took turns giving speeches, including Student Union of Thailand (SUT) President Juthatip Sirikhan, student activist Parit Chiwarak, and student activist Jatupat “Pai Dao Din” Boonpattaraksa, as well as a student from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, who said that the 2014 coup reflected that the lack of people’s representation had damaged the rule of law and national prosperity.
Panupong Jadnok, one of the activists from the Eastern Youth Leadership group who protested in front of the DVaree Diva Central Rayong Hotel during Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha’s visit on July 15 also joined the protest.
Another summons was delivered to my house today. If you think that you can use these summonses to stop me, you think wrong. People like me are born only once and die only once. I was just holding up a sign saying ‘“Don’t let your guard down, dad’ and you can’t take it. If you can’t take it, then you shouldn’t be prime minister and should just resign.
Human rights lawyer Anon Nampa also gave a speech, leading protestors in a chant in support of political refugees either dead or living, prisoners convicted under the lèse-majesté law, and Tiwagorn Withiton, the Facebook user who posted a picture of himself wearing the viral “I lost faith in the monarchy” T-shirt and who was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital last week. Anon said:
We are calling for the dissolution of parliament because this government came from an unfair election. After the election, the Future Forward Party was dissolved. We are calling for state officials to stop threatening citizens, to not be a slave to dictatorship, and to draft a new constitution, because no constitution anywhere gives a dictator the power to appoint 250 senators to vote for himself to be prime minister. That is shameless.
At 7 p.m., the organizers asked the protestors to turn on the flashlights on their phones and hold them towards the Democracy Monument. According to the organizers, this activity lasted 112 seconds.
At 8:45 p.m., representatives of the Free Youth Movement read out a statement, in which they make the following three demands:
-The dissolution of the Palang Pracharat-led parliament which has failed to handle the Covid-19 situation;
-An end to harassment by the authorities of people who are exercising their freedom of expression;
-The replacement of the current constitution, which favors the regime, with a new one which is meant for the benefit of the people.
They also announced that they will give the government two weeks to respond to their demands, or they will escalate their activities.
Protesters turning on the flashlight of their phones and holding them up towards the Democracy Monument. Photo by Prachatai.
The student group Spring Movement also joined the protest, handing out yellow “missing person” posters with the pictures and names of victims of enforced disappearance, such as Somchai Neelapaijit, Haji Sulong Tomina, Surachai Sae Dan, and Siam Theerawut.
The main protest took up about a quarter of the Democracy Monument roundabout, in front of McDonald’s and Satriwithaya School, and grew from around 500 protestors at the beginning to around 2,000. The hashtags #เยาวชนปลดแอก (#FreeYouth) and #respectdemocracyTH trended on Twitter, as they were used to share information about the protest.
Around 9:30 p.m., two men were seen running through the crowd and tried to tear down the organizers’ tent, causing a disturbance among the protestors before security personnel were able to control the situation and take the two men out of the area.
The organizers previously announced that they would stay at the Democracy Monument until 8 a.m. on Sunday (July 19). However, at midnight, they decided to conclude the protest for safety reasons.
The “missing person” posters handed out by a group of members of Spring Movement. Photo and caption by Prachatai.

author: Prachatai


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The 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre: Remembrance amid genocide denial · Global Voices
Mirza Hota

Illustration by Zoran Cardula, an artist from North Macedonia, marking the 25th anniversary of Srebrenica genocide, featuring the symbolic white flower. Used with permission.
Last week's 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide was marked by, among other things, a long-overdue verbal recognition from several world leaders.
Heads of state or high government representatives gave video messages marking the 1995 genocide of over 8,000 people—mainly Bosniak men and boys—captured by the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska under the command of Ratko Mladić and paramilitary units that came from Serbia.
These statements, issued instead of physical presence at the commemoration because of COVID-19, included contributions by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Spain’s Pedro Sanchez, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former US President Bill Clinton, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Prince Charles, and even former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has long been criticized for failing to recognize the extent of Serb-nationalist atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Other figures included the Swedish PM Stefan Löfven and NATO Chairman Jens Stoltenberg of Norway.
Today we honour the memory of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide in 1995. Foreign officials will take part in the commemoration in Potocari via a video message. Follow the link below for Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s statement. https://t.co/e39HJMOIuD
— Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs (@SweMFA) July 11, 2020
It was particularly important for Sweden and its government to make a clear stand, given last year's scandal involving the Austrian writer Peter Handke, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature by The Swedish Academy.
Handke has used his books to advance the Serb-nationalist narrative about the wars in former Yugoslavia, and his recognition by the Academy prompted protests by survivors and by journalists who had covered the Bosnian War—using the hashtag #BosniaWarJournalists.
Intellectuals and activists also criticized the granting of the Nobel Prize to this Milošević regime apologist; this was considered a slap in the face of the victims’ families.
(A fresh controversy arose this year with the news that a sculpture of Handke is to be erected in Banja Luka, the main city in Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.)
Top political figures from countries in the Balkan region also issued video messages to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide.
Milo Đukanović, the president of Montenegro said in his video message that the criminal idea of exterminating another nation that exists in “Great Power” ideologies has been present in the Balkans too, referring no doubt to the recent “Greater Serbia” ideology.
In his official statement, president of North Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski noted that:
The Memorial Center and the Mothers of Srebrenica, through a clear message, testify of the collective past and are the conscience of our generation. They do not incite hatred, nor do they seek revenge, for it deepens injustice. They only seek truth and justice as a precondition for peace.
History, not only in the Balkans, teaches us that the idea of ethnically pure territories always leads to tragedy. And the recent Balkan wars have shown that genocide, after the Holocaust, can be repeated. If one generation does not speak, the next will forget, thus leaving a fertile ground for new conflicts.
This was in sharp contrast to Serbia and Republika Srpska, where no official statement came from the Serbian government. However, last year Ana Brnabić, the current PM, said she had no plans to visit the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Potočari and that it would be good if “we could stop reliving misunderstandings from the past.”
Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said that he was against a law that criminalized genocide denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because “the narrative about a genocide in Srebrenica was suspicious,” repeating the well-worn Serb-nationalist trope about the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia being anti-Serb.
Several activists and NGOs in Serbia did commemorate the genocide, however, including the Women in Black, a group of anti-war activists, who gathered at Republic Square in the capital, Belgrade. The women had to be protected by riot police from a group of nationalists who approached them chanting the name of Ratko Mladić, the Serb general found guilty of genocide in Srebrenica.
Trg Republike pic.twitter.com/MDCrn2XIGG
— Јамичоче (@lukubracija) July 10, 2020
Serbia's relationship with its recent past is exemplified by the impunity of its war criminals. The regional network of non-governmental organizations Youth Initiative for Human Rights issued a report warning that two ultra-nationalists and convicted war criminals—Dragan Vasiljković and Vojislav Šešelj—were running in the June 2020 elections.
Vasiljković had claimed that he would fight for “persecuted Serbs in Croatia, Kosovo and Montenegro,” as well as try to get Milorad “Legija” Ulemek and Zvezdan Jovanović released. The pair are serving sentences for the assassination of the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in 2003.
The report also pointed out that the Serbian Defence Ministry had promoted books that deny Bosnian Serb atrocities as well as Yugoslav Army crimes in Kosovo in 1999. For years Serbia has also been accused of harboring Serb war criminals from Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Novak Đukić, the Serb general who was found guilty of ordering the attack on Tuzla in May 1995 killing 71 civilians, mostly youngsters. After his sentencing, Đukić fled to Serbia and has been seen around Belgrade.
On July 9, two days before the commemoration of the genocide in Srebrenica, Serge Brammetz, the chief prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, warned the world in a Guardian op-ed that “a number of alleged genocidaires have fled to Serbia and found safe haven there, including political leaders and military commanders.”
Brammertz also wrote that “genocide denial and the glorification of war criminals inflict tremendous suffering on the survivors and their families. Leaders in the region have publicly denied the genocide, even calling Srebrenica a hoax and a lie. War criminals convicted by the ICTY are often hailed as heroes by prominent figures, while victims’ suffering is ignored, denied and disparaged.”
The baton, Brammetz added, has now been passed to regional courts. He praised Bosnia and Herzegovina, but noted that “3,000 more cases are yet to be processed, including in relation to Srebrenica.”
With the culture of denial deeply entrenched in both Serbia and Republika Srpska, the prospect of bringing these war criminals to justice looks grim.

author: Mirza Hota


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Chinese netizens rebrand Xi Jinping’s international relations strategy as ‘wolf warrior’ style diplomacy · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Xi Jinping and Donald Trump both participate in the current Sino-US diplomatic battle. Photo from StandNews, used with permission.
To mark its central role in international relations, China continues to highlight the importance of its diplomacy. The latest episode took place in July 2020 with the inauguration of the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Research Center. Yet, as some Chinese netizens point out, China's diplomacy has made a number of powerful enemies as a result of its assertive, and often aggressive stand that is thus dubbed by Xi's critics as “wolf warrior” diplomacy.
Established by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the center aims at developing and studying a form of diplomacy based on Xi Jinping's thinking and statements. Wang Yi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said in his approximately 5,000-word inauguration speech on 20 July 2020:
今日之中国，正前所未有地接近实现中华民族伟大复兴梦想，前所未有地走近世界舞台中央。…面对风云激荡的国际形势，习近平总书记以伟大战略家的远见卓识，准确把握人类社会发展规律，全面判断国际形势走向和我国所处历史方位，提出了一系列富有中国特色、体现时代精神、引领人类进步潮流的新理念新主张新倡议…
Today’s China is unprecedentedly close to achieving its dream of a great revival of the Chinese nation, and approaching the center of the world’s stage… Amid a rough drift in the international world, Chief Secretary Xi Jinping, with his great strategist vision, has grasped the law of the development of human society and made a comprehensive judgement of the world’s future direction, and the historical position of our country. He has provided a set combining theory and practice, that manifests its Chinese character and the spirit of our times, to lead the human world into a progressive stage…
Wang also mentioned China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its success in creating opportunities in the current economic chaos caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as one of Xi’s accomplishments.
But Wang Yi’s speech has little connection to what many countries experience in their relationship with China. Indeed, many describe Beijing's international strategy as a form of “wolf warrior” diplomacy.  The term comes from the 2015 popular Chinese movie “Wolf Warrior” — a patriotic action movie that is remembered for one of its famous punchlines: “Whoever offends China will be eliminated, no matter how far away” (犯我中華者 雖遠必誅).
The assertiveness of the “wolf warrior” style has been employed by a number of Chinese diplomats. For example, in March, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian spread a conspiracy theory on Twitter according to which the US Army could have brought COVID-19 to China. This came as a response to US President Donald Trump's earlier use of the term “China virus” to describe the novel coronavirus.
In February, China’s ambassador to Sweden, Gui Congyou said explicitly that “we treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies, we have shotguns” when commenting on China’s abduction and 10-year jail sentencing of publisher Gui Minhai, who was born in China but is a Swedish citizen.
Some also describe China’s aggressive diplomacy as “hostage diplomacy”. The detention and subsequent charge with espionage of Chinese Australian writer Yang Hengjun in January 2019 was viewed as a consequence of the counter foreign interference laws enacted in November 2018 in China.
A more obvious example of the diplomatic hostage was the detention in December 2018 and later the indictment of two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, on espionage charges. The move is widely viewed as a retaliation on the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada on request of the US authorities.
As the recent enactment of national security law in Hong Kong has undermined the “One Country Two Systems” commitment under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and extended extra-territorial jurisdiction to the arrest of foreign citizens, a number of countries including Canada, Australia, the United States and Britain have canceled extradition arrangement with Hong Kong.
Furthermore, Trump also signed an executive order to suspend special treatment for Hong Kong, meaning U.S policy that applies to mainland China on issues such as visa application, punitive tariffs and sensitive technology export will now be extended to Hong Kong.
In addition to the conflicts with Western countries, China has clashed with its immediate neighbors in recent years.
Since 2013, Beijing has started the construction of an artificial island in the South China Sea in the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands regions. This move has intensified territorial disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia.
In the East China Sea, China and Japan both claim rights over a set of desert islands called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, where both engage in regular naval activity. In the Taiwan strait, China has adopted “a grey-zone conflict tactic” by holding its military exercise in the vicinity of Taiwan's air space and waters.
All those moves could rapidly escalate into violent clashes as demonstrated very recently in the fight between Chinese and Indian soldiers in the disputed territory of Ladakh on June 15. The incident caused the death of 20 Indian soldiers, and is the first deadly clash between the two countries in at least 45 years.
None of the above challenges to China's diplomacy were mentioned in Wang Yi’s speech. Chinese netizens, on the other hand, have composed their own list of Xi’s diplomatic achievements on Twitter to reflect the reality China is facing. EvanLi2020 wrote:
“一带一路”，无底债务
“中国制造2025”，帮着美国赶紧抓捕
武汉肺炎，全球点燃
香港国安，世界不安
中印边境，石头相碰
“习近平外交思想研究中心”，就是好！
专家学者，欢聚一堂，恰似猪狗，不知羞耻？ pic.twitter.com/vSPtFXN2dp
— 壮飞 Flying in Rain (@EvanLi2020) July 21, 2020
One Belt One Road led to an unfathomable debt.
Made in China 2025 helped the U.S to arrest those who had been recruited by China under an innovation program called the 1000 Talents Plan.
Wuhan pneumonia ignited the whole world.
Hong Kong’s national security made the whole world insecure.
The China-India border turned into a stone clash.
Hurray to Xi Jinping diplomacy research center!
So many experts happily get together. Do they even know what shame means?
Hongkonger @wwp_5110 highlights the dimension of China’s money diplomacy:
Xi‘s Thoughts on Diplomacy all about giving MONEY around the WORLD
— wwp (@wwp_5110) July 21, 2020
Political dissident @chanweijian2011 says the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry has turned into the Ministry of Making Foreign Enemies:
习近平外交思想研究中心成立。习的外交不就是红卫兵式的战狼外交吗？一骂，二谎，三泼，四吹牛，研究个狗屁，听命就是了。习上台以来外交部的功能基本上已经消退，成为中宣部的一个对外机构，或者是部队前线快板队。中国三十多年来顺风顺水的外交已经终结，外交部成为交恶，结仇，喊打，喊杀的断交部。 pic.twitter.com/idzGCtoT3I
— 陈维健 (@chenweijian2011) July 20, 2020
The Xi Jinping’s Diplomacy Thought research center was inaugurated. Xi’s diplomacy is nothing more than Red Guards-style ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy. Its four elements are cursing, lying, acting in a shrewd manner, and bluffing. WTF is this so-called research? Just listen to the orders. The function of the Foreign Affairs Ministry has been dissolved and it has turned into a branch of the propaganda department doing cheerleading work. This is the end of the good old days in diplomacy. The Foreign Affairs Ministry has turned into the Ministry of Making Foreign Enemies:

author: Oiwan Lam


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In Liberia, a new mobile phone tariff collides with digital rights · Global Voices
Albert Baron Ansu

Liberian capital Monrovia. Credit: blk24ga via Wikipedia / CC BY 3.0.
This article is part of UPROAR, a Small Media initiative that is urging governments to address digital rights challenges at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Liberia plans to enforce a new tariff that will further increase revenue by implementing a mobile phone company surcharge.
Facing harsh economic conditions due to the pandemic, internet and voice call users have taken their pent-up anger to the streets on June 25, setting up roadblocks, burning tires and chanting anti-government songs related to the tax surcharge. The Liberian National Police arrested a few protesters during the protest.
Several opposition leaders oppose the surcharge, saying that the additional fee will stifle the digital rights of everyday Liberians.
In 2018, the Liberia Telecommunication Authority (LTA) issued an order that imposed price floors and surcharges on net voice calls and data, essentially putting an end to three-day free calls and data bundles that used to cost $1 United States dollar.
The cost-prohibitive surcharge will make it harder for everyday Liberians to get online, limiting digital access at the height of a pandemic when citizens need reliable information more than ever.
Liberia’s two main service operators — Orange and Lonestar — are also opposed to the surcharge. In fact, Orange Liberia’s Chief Executive Officer Mamadou Coulibaly was arrested by the National Security Agency in connection with the protest action. He has since been released pending further investigation.
Orange last month filed a writ of prohibition to have the Supreme Court put an injunction on the enforcement of the surcharge but it was denied until a full bench meets on the case, quoting presiding Justice Jamesetta Howard Wolokolie.
Both Orange and Lonestar have contributed significantly to the government through their taxes over the years. From the days of former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to now-President George Manneh Weah, there has been a pattern of tax levy increases when the government is desperate to wrestle out of budget shortfalls.
Lonestar was launched in 2000 and became a subsidiary of the South African MTN Group in 2006. At first, a sim card sold for $65 USD, and users had to finish the credit within a few days or return the balance once it expired. Today, the cost of a sim card is about $1 USD, making it much more affordable for the average user.
As internet usage skyrocketed in Liberia and cheap smartphones began to flood the market, a Facebook frenzy gripped the country.
Between 2000 and 2020, internet penetration grew by 125 percent with 624,610 active internet users, and 537,000 Liberians on Facebook.
Over the years, companies have tried multiple strategies to attract new users. Comium, eventually coopted by Lonestar, introduced cheap phones dubbed “bonanza” or “give-away” deals with preloaded sim cards.
Celcom, now known as Orange, competed with Lonestar by mounting towers and establishing substations throughout Liberia. Orange won awards for its outstanding service and the Liberia Revenue Authority (LTA) awarded it as the highest tax contributor nationwide.
The two companies introduced modems, Wi-Fi internet products and internet bundles.
A mobile phone scratch card vendor in Liberia in 2009. Photo by Erik (HASH) Hersman via Flickr / CC BY 2.0.
As Lonestar and Orange continued to compete for customers, a national conversation began to emerge regarding the fairness of freebies and special promotions that Liberian users grew to love.
In 2016, Lonestar shareholder Benoni Urey wrote a letter to then-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf expressing concern that these freebies like “three days of free calls” could potentially undermine national revenue maximization
“In Mr. Urey’s letter of complaint, he indicated that the government had lost a total of $22 [million] for the operating years of 2013, 2014 and 2015 due to long-running and unending promotions,” according to FrontPage Africa.
In response, then-President Sirleaf met with the LTA and submitted a bill that amended the revenue law, imposing “an excise tax of 1 cent US on each minute of call made over the GSM networks,” in addition to the 15-percent tax for goods and services already collected by mobile phone companies, according to FrontPage.
Some speculated that Urey, an opposition leader with the All Liberian Party who contested the 2017 elections, was concerned about Lonestar’s dwindling revenue, and was lashing out against Orange for making headway in its quest for new subscribers.
Following the Supreme Court’s denial of Orange’s application to block the surcharge, the government suspended LTA head Ivan Brown. A government press release explained that Brown was “suspended for his conspiratorial and unethical activities as chairman of the LTA.’’
The decision may be linked to an alleged telephone conversation between Brown and Henry Costa, a self-styled political commentator and a trenchant critic of the current Weah administration.
In an interview with Blast TV on June 9, Costa clarified to the interviewer that he “did not record Brown,” but he did ask the LTA boss directly about the surcharge.
Costa supposedly asked Brown: “What are you all doing about his surcharge? Don’t you know our people cannot afford this thing? It’s going to kill the people…’’ He further warned: “George Weah is trying to stifle our voice; he’s trying to deny us access to information. It will get so expensive; you will not be able to go on Facebook.”
Costa, the head of the opposition bloc Council of Patriots (COP), staged a series of mass anti-government protests before fleeing the country last year.  His Roots FM radio was shut down by the government last year due to supposed licensing issues and the case is in court. But Costa continues to mobilize citizens to oppose the surcharge on GSM operators through his radio’s online broadcast.
In mid-June, ruling party lawmaker Acarious Gray called a press conference issuing an ultimatum: Either companies comply with the new surcharge or pack up. Gray also said that he would introduce bills to restrict GSM companies from imposing further fees on services without the knowledge of the Liberian legislature.
The surcharge issue has opened a pandora box of concerns and conspiracy theories.
Many citizens question whether the government’s real interest is generating more income at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, or gagging social media ahead of midterm elections set for the end of 2020.
These fears are not unwarranted given Liberia’s recent history of shutting down expression. On June 7, 2019, access to social media platforms and apps was disrupted during a mass protest over millions of missing dollars. Critics suspect the government was arm-twisting operators behind the scene.
Counselor Negbalee Warner, dean of the Grimes School of Law in Liberia, reflecting on the measure that ended the three-days-free calls, decried the incident as unsupportive of Liberia’s Freedom of Information law.
Warner argued that “with these increases, most people will face limitations on their right to ask questions from relevant custodians of information and be able to share such information on social media in exposing corruption,” during a keynote speech at United Methodist University in Monrovia, on International Right to Know Day, on September 28, 2019.
Meanwhile, everyday mobile users continue to monitor the situation and brace for the unknown. By all indications, internet and voice call usage will plummet. It is not a favorable time for operators and users alike.

author: Albert Baron Ansu


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Liberian fishing communities stand up to Chinese supertrawlers · Global Voices
Amanda Lichtenstein

Liberian fishermen sit atop at local Kru canoe used for fishing. Courtesy of the Environmental Justice Foundation.
The arrival of six Chinese supertrawlers in Monrovia, Liberia, last month has sparked outrage among the country's small-scale canoe fishers.
These supertrawlers are capable of catching 12,000 tonnes of fish a year, which is about twice the nation’s sustainable catch of key species that local fishermen depend on for their livelihoods — potentially decimating vital fish stocks in just a few years.
Local community fisheries have joined The Liberia Artisanal Fishermen’s Association in calling on the government to consider the livelihoods and food security of coastal communities and reject the request for fishing licenses.
According to a joint statement released in partnership with the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), Liberian fisheries legislation only requires that these enormous vessels do not “threaten the sustainability of a fishery resource” in order to get licensed by the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority.
Fishing without a license comes with a fine of up to $1,000,000 United States dollars under Liberian Fisheries Regulations, but illegal fishing has long persisted in Liberian waters due to a lack of monitoring and policing.
Jerry N. Blamo, president of the Liberia Artisanal Fishermen’s Association, stated:
We sincerely hope that the government will respect Liberian law and protect the interests of local coastal communities and our shared marine environment. Our waters support local jobs and provide good quality food, but granting these massive supertrawlers fishing licenses would destroy that.
In Liberia, about 80% of the people depend on fish for essential dietary protein and the sector provides full- or part-time employment for approximately 37,000 people, according to the joint statement.
When fishermen go out on local-style Kru canoes, they can catch an average of 500 kilograms per year. In comparison, the supertrawlers are capable of catching 2,000 tonnes of fish per year of key, bottom-dwelling species that are most important to fishermen. This is a direct threat to Liberians, many of whom already live with chronic poverty and food insecurity: Half of all Liberians live on less than $2 USD a day.
Some coastal counties, where the project’s target groups are based, suffer from higher levels of poverty and food insecurity, such as Margibi, Grand Cess, and Robertsport, where over 25 percent of households are food insecure, compared to 16 percent nationally, according to the joint statement.
To make matters worse, the supertrawlers have arrived amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which threatens to plunge millions of the world’s poorest into famine.
Charles Simpson, president of the Grand Cape Mount County Community Management Association, in northwestern Liberia, said:
Over the last decade, we have worked extremely hard to stop illegal fishing and overfishing. We slowly see more fish for local fishermen to catch and women to process. These supertrawlers would unfairly compete for the same fish as local fishermen and reverse all of that progress. We are calling on the government to safeguard Liberian coastal communities by refusing fishing licenses for these vessels.
Liberia is now the third West African country to witness a sudden increase in Chinese industrial trawlers in the last six months. In fact, the arrival of these supertrawlers is a part of a major influx of industrial fishing vessels across West Africa, with many linked to China’s growing distant water fleet.
These six supertrawlers allegedly attempted to trawl in Mozambican waters before heading to Liberia, according to the joint statement.
“The growth of China's industrial fleet in West Africa is deeply worrying. Many of these countries have small-scale fleets that are vital to local livelihoods, stability and food security. They have almost no chance of competing with supertrawlers that are able to hoover up a vast amount of fish and move on,” said Steve Trent, executive director of EJF.
In Senegal, 52 vessels applied for licenses in April, which would have put an enormous strain on local marine resources. In a victory for local fishers and sustainable fishing, these were rejected by the government on World Oceans Day.
In Ghana, three new trawlers from China still await a decision from the government, and local canoe fishers have stated their serious concerns.
Trent says that Liberia's “National Fishing and Aquaculture Authority [NaFAA] has played a positive role in combatting illegal and unsustainable fishing,” and encouraged authorities to continue to safeguard Liberia’s fisheries.
This is not the first time that Chinese supertrawlers have attempted to fish in Liberian waters. For many years, small-scale fishing communities have fought against illegal and overfishing practices that have threatened livelihoods along with its rich marine ecosystem.
Foreign supertrawlers also come from other parts of the world, such as Russia and the European Union, according to a 2019 BBC report, but three-quarters of all foreign boats in West African waters are from China.
In 2010, Liberia established an “artisanal fishing zone” to protect the rights of canoe- and small-boat fishermen, which helped to replenish depleted fish quantities and improve the quality of the catch.
P. Nyantee Sleh, president of the Montserrado County and Bomi County Community Management Associations, also in northwestern Liberia, said:
Small-scale fishing is an important source of jobs for people here in Monrovia, and across the country. In earlier decades, local fishermen could not earn a livelihood because of rampant overfishing, but in recent years things have improved. These supertrawlers would be a big step backwards — harming jobs and future food security.
For now, the six supertrawlers have applied for their fishing license and are docked in Monrovia port, awaiting the government's decision.

author: Amanda Lichtenstein


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Out of work, out of options: Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand scrape by during COVID-19 · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

A Myanmar migrant worker who lost her job at a sewing factory due to the coronavirus outbreak, leaving her without  any income to pay for daily expenses or support her child and family. Mae Sot, Tak, Thailand, May 2020. Photo and caption by Jittrapon Kaicome/The Irrawaddy
This article by Jittrapon Kaicome is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, edited and republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
READ: As of September 2018 there are over 2.2 million people Myanmar workers officially registered in Thailand.
With the decline in the Thai and worldwide economy, businesses and factories have closed and migrant workers have been among the first people laid off. As Thailand has entered the worst economic recession in its history, migrants who normally work for daily wages are facing tough times.
After Thailand announced an Emergency Decree to control the outbreak of COVID-19 in late March, the country closed its borders, leaving millions of migrant workers stranded in the country. Some workers were later able to head back across into Myanmar but many are still in Thailand, trapped without jobs and few options to help them get by. Myanmar migrant workers in northern Thailand are among them.
Myanmar migrant workers along the border collect cassava, one of the few things they can do to earn income after losing their jobs in February due to the coronavirus outbreak. Phop Phra, Tak, Thailand, May 2020. Photo and caption by Jittrapon Kaicome/The Irrawaddy
These workers are also faced with the challenge of overcoming local language barriers. Many lack the technical and computer skills to access useful information and guidance or support. They have limited rights to access government social welfare schemes, including those intended to help people through the coronavirus crisis. Their lives hang on uncertainties.
Along the Thailand-Myanmar border in Tak Province, villages went into lockdown and the crisis forced migrant workers from Myanmar to abandon their farms, becoming largely dependent on food handouts. They said the amount of rice handed out wasn’t enough to feed them, lasting only around three days.
Twenty-six-year-old migrant worker Cho Zin Win said
The villagers have come to buy sacks of rice on credit five times already, and it will take at least a year for them to pay back the installments.
Myanmar migrants in a village along the Thai-Myanmar border have been affected by the lockdown over COVID-19 and receive food handouts. Phop Phra, Tak, Thailand, May 2020. Photo and caption by Jittrapon Kaicome/The Irrawaddy
In the city of Chiang Mai (located northeast of Thailand) during lockdown, it became a common sight to see people, a mixture of local people and migrant workers, lining up for food handouts.
A visit to one of the construction camps in Chiang Mai showed that business closures have forced the wives of construction workers out of their jobs as housekeepers at hotels, while only a few of their husbands have been hired. Some families have less than 1,000 baht left (US$32.08), but they still have to bear the burden of expenses and debts.
Ma Su Lwin is a Burmese migrant worker who gave birth during the coronavirus outbreak in Thailand. She lost her job at a factory after it closed, leaving her without money to pay for her childbirth or to raise a newborn baby. Mae Sot, Thailand, May 2020. Photo and caption by Jittrapon Kaicome/The Irrawaddy
Kham Kheng Wong-Ong, 27 years old, is a Shan migrant (from Myanmar) working as a housekeeper in Chiang Mai. Speaking in tears, she said:
Since my workplace was closed, I don’t have much money left, I don’t know where to find work. I live in a construction camp with my 4-year-old son. My husband is a daily wage construction worker. We don’t even know when he will be laid off. We have to bear the burden of all the expenses such as electricity, school fees, food and also medicine.
Migrant workers at this construction camp work for a Chinese company but their pay has been docked and is always late. They don’t want to make any claims against their employer because they are afraid they will get fired. If they are thrown out of the job, they won’t be able to find other work and won’t be able to return home because borders are closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. Chiang Mai, Thailand, March 2020. Photo and caption by Jittrapon Kaicome/The Irrawaddy
By July, restrictions on businesses were lifted and most businesses reopened. But with the economic collapse brought by the coronavirus crisis, businesses are still unable to hire back many of their workers. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in the country—if not more—are still unemployed and many are unable to adapt to the economy’s “new normal.”
Myanmar migrants affected by COVID-19 come to receive food handouts organized by a multi-ethnic brotherhood led by Johny Adhikari at Wat Sai Moon Temple. Chiang Mai, Thailand, April 2020. Photo and caption by Jittrapon Kaicome/The Irrawaddy

author: The Irrawaddy


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A never-ending cycle of doctors’ strikes and funding debacles leaves Nigerians at the mercy of the pandemic · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Doctors walk past women with lying in a ward of the Lagos Island Maternity Hospital in Lagos, Nigeria, via Flickr photo by Sunday Alamba/Commonwealth Secretariat / CC BY-NC 2.0.
Doctors in Lagos State embarked on a three-day strike from July 13 to 15, to protest the absence of adequate safety and welfare measures for doctors working with COVID-19 patients.
The Premium Times online newspaper reported that Oluwajimi Sodipo, head of the Lagos Doctors Guild, announced the strike at a press briefing on July 12, in protest of the disparity between COVID-19 hazard allowances for Lagos doctors and their colleagues in federal hospitals.
Doctors working in Lagos coronavirus isolation centres also lacked sufficient Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), health insurance and were also owed two months’ salary, Sodipo said. The Guild exempted doctors working in the state isolation centres from joining the collective action.
As of July 21, Nigeria had recorded 37,225 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 15,333 recoveries and 801 deaths. Lagos State, the country’s most densely populated state, is the epicentre of the disease, with 13,538 confirmed cases, 1,964 recoveries and 176 deaths.
The Lagos State government on July 13 appealed to the frontline medical workers to return to work. The doctors suspended their strike on July 16, due to the “positive disposition” shown by the Lagos State government to their demands.
Strike action by Nigerian medical doctors has become an annual occurrence in Africa’s most populous country. Their grievances are always the same: a demand for increased welfare measures and protection in order to do their jobs better.
The sequencing of the government's response is equally predictable: initially, it’s high -handed, with a threat to sack the striking doctors if they don’t return to work. Then it usually backfires, forcing the government to back down and concede to the doctors’ demands.
This pattern of events has remained consistent even in the face of a global public health crisis.
In mid-2014, Nigerian resident doctors (those undergoing specialist training) went on strike during the Ebola epidemic over welfare demands. The Nigerian government responded by terminating their appointments, then later soft-pedaled and blamed the media for misrepresenting the facts of the matter.
Nigerian Resident doctors @nard_nigeria are starting their strike today,after weeks of trying to get the government to act
Support them ,put your tweets where your mouths are
They are the lifeblood of our hospitals , especially for specialised services.
— Femi (@0gbeni) June 15, 2020
Six years later, on June 15, resident doctors again went on strike during a major public health crisis to protest poor working conditions and inadequate — or unpaid — welfare measures provided for those working on COVID-19.
Twitter user Dr. Nma Halliday sarcastically compares the ridiculously low monthly health hazard allowance given to Nigerian doctors (60,000 naira, or about $144 USD per year) with the annual newspaper and hardship allowances paid to Nigerian legislators, which amount to 1.2 million naira ($3,000 USD) and 1.24 million naira ($3,200 USD] respectively:
Before you remind doctors to take quaker oat for breakfast, just remember that the newspaper allowance for the lawmakers is 1.2 million naira & Hardship Allowance is 1.24 million naira.
But a doctor’s hazard allowance with covid19, HIV, Hepatitis B etc is 5,000 naira only? Wawu
— Nma Halliday MD (@nma_halliday) June 20, 2020
True to form, the government threatened yet again to sack the doctors when negotiations ended in a deadlock on June 17. But the doctors resisted the intimidation and stood their ground. The strike was eventually called off on June 22, following the intervention of state governors and federal legislators.
University College Hospital, Ibadan is the first teaching hospital in Nigeria via Hizick27 / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-4.0.
During Nigeria’s COVID-19 crisis, some government funds, allegedly given to a teaching hospital in southwestern Nigeria, became an object of controversy. What started as a routine press briefing about the matter quickly degenerated into denials and counter-accusations.
On June 23, Akinola Ojo, health commissioner in Oyo State, southwestern Nigeria, announced that the state government had spent 2.7 billion naira ($6.9 million USD) in their fight against COVID-19. According to the financial daily BusinessDay, Ojo stated that part of the expenditure included the 118 million naira ($304,000 USD) “given” to the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan “as support.”
But the following day, on UCH’s Facebook page, the hospital denied having received any COVID-19 funding from the Oyo State Government. Spokesperson Toye Akinrinlola suggested that due to confusion between the names of the College of Medicine Ibadan and UCH, the College of Medicine Ibadan was the likely recipient of the government funds.
This suggestion was “emphatically and categorically” rejected by the College of Medicine’s management, which stated that it had not received any such funding from the state government.
Though separate institutions, the College of Medicine and UCH are intertwined. The College is part of the University of Ibadan, while UCH falls under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Health, but students from the College of Medicine and other healthcare specialists from sub-Saharan Africa undertake clinical training at UCH.
On June 24, the Oyo State government insisted that the funding in question had gone to UCH’s virology department, and described attempts by UCH management to “disown” its own clinical virology department that also provides “teaching and research” services to the College of Medicine as “self-serving, artificial and contemptuous.”
The following day, the media office of the governor of Oyo State tweeted a screenshot of a press release in which the head of UCH’s Department of Virology acknowledged receiving financial support from the state government for the fight against COVID-19.
COVID-19: Virology Dept affirms Oyo govt's support, appreciates Makinde
…As govt insists total support to UCH, Virology Dept stand at N118.9m pic.twitter.com/oGZIvjMHGR
— GSM MEDIA OFFICE (@GSMMEDIATEAM) June 25, 2020
The controversy stems partly from the fact that there are two laboratories approved by the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to conduct coronavirus tests in Ibadan, Oyo State: the laboratory of UCH’s Virology department, accredited on March 28, and the College of Medicine’s Biorepository and Clinical Virology laboratory, approved on June 9.
Both laboratories are based in the same facility.
The Biorepository laboratory was commissioned on April 17. This molecular pathology lab was initially conceived as a tissue bank, and its foray into the coronavirus testing appeared to signal internal wrangling — possibly a battle for supremacy between the College, UCH and its virology unit.
It has since been confirmed that UCH’s virology department was the recipient of the state government funding but the entire process lacked transparency.
The fact that UCH management and the College “disowned” the virology department suggests that they were not privy to the funding.
Why did the virology department act independently? Into which department’s bank account was the said donation from the state government deposited? We may not have heard the last on this controversial donation.
In the final analysis, scenarios such as doctors’ strikes and funding debacles are bound to recur until the root cause of the problem — inadequate funding —is exorcised from Nigeria's public health system.
It is untenable that doctors and healthcare workers on the frontline of a pandemic should be paid peanuts while politicians who risk little or nothing earn fat allowances.
Same people that cut the healthcare budget in the middle of a pandemic, and are threatening to sack doctors for going on a strike?
Nigerian politicians are unrepentant money embezzling thieves and not even a public health crisis can change them. Know this and know peace. https://t.co/Xlho01UOLV
— Mmek (@Simmbie) June 18, 2020
Also indefensible is the fact that some public hospital administrators seem uninterested in serving the common good, choosing instead to engage in petty rivalries, to the detriment of the health of their patients.
Until something gives, ordinary Nigerians are left at the mercy of a ravaging pandemic.

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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COVID-19 in Europe: The price of being rich · Global Voices
Ian Inkster

Photo: Public domain from Pikist.
By Ian Inkster
In most of the Western media, the focus on the COVID-19 attack has concerned government policies, their character, efficacy, and extent—as well as their economic cost. Debates on lockdown, face masks, social distancing and the tragedies within care homes and among migrant workers have dominated the discussions, and few steady, general conclusions have been drawn—some governments do better than others; Germany appears to be a star in Europe; East Asian nations seem to deviate from most generalisations, and so on.
In this piece, I’ll make a brief attempt to unfold an underlying factor generating a neglected trend that seems to offer a far better explanation than observed differences in government policies for the varying experiences of nations. For European nations, our argument measures the price of being rich in a world dominated by COVID-19.
The eight richest nations of Europe, each with populations over 10 million, have now in total registered over 1.4 million COVID-19 cases since the European inception of the virus in France on January 24. This total of 363 million people has suffered (as of July 13) an average of 4,442 cases per million and 520 deaths per million. This compares with the world average today of 1,682 cases per million and 73 deaths per million. Rich nations suffer far worse than the rest of the world; for instance, the huge Asian portion of the world, incorporating 2.8 billion in India and China alone, has registered 3 million COVID-19 cases, compared to 2.6 million cases in a European population of some 740 million.
This is a huge divergence of experience at the present stage of the pandemic, and it runs counter to the common sense that would presume that the huge resources of rich nations would dampen the effects of COVID-19, particularly its mortality rates, compared to the poorer nations of the global south. The possible explanations are very wide-ranging, but none have the dramatic impact of the demographic effects of varying income levels. The rest of this column demonstrates this through the use of the data from our eight rich nations.
It is well known that COVID-19 has a very particular demographic characteristic. The virus generally is harmless to the young, infects the middle age groups, and both infects and frequently kills those of the population over 65. We do not know the exact age demarcations, which will require future post-mortem epidemiology. There is some evidence that those even aged up to 20 or so may generally be immune to the virus, but also that those over 60 may be especially vulnerable, not only to infection—they are by far the ones most likely to die from the virus directly or from complications resulting from pre-existing immune deficiency.
As wealthy nations with high per capita incomes, the eight nations of our sample have long ago passed a demographic transition in which the number of young people falls as a proportion of the population, just as the proportion of the elderly rises. There are many reasons for this historically, but principal among them is the substitution of high incomes and greater consumption for having children, who in times of poverty would have worked to earn income or act as familial insurance for poor families whose main breadwinner became unable to work. Again, higher incomes, better nourishment and medicines meant that people lived far longer than before. In short, in our world today, rich nations have few children and many old folk, poor nations have many children and few old folks.
The extent of this difference is startling. For our eight rich European nations the proportion in their combined populations of those aged 0-14 averages at 16 per cent, the proportion of those 65 and over is 19.9 per cent. We may compare this with two large low-income groups: 16 nations with an average purchasing power parity per capita income of US$ 8,500 defined by the World Bank as “lower-income”, and a group of 29 nations with an average per capita income of US$ 2,500, defined as “low income.” For the first group, the proportion of the aged 0-14 is 32.9 per cent, the proportion of those over 65 years is 6.7 per cent. Today they register COVID-19 statistics since the inception of the disease of only 523 per million, compared to the 4,442 of Europe; and 28 deaths per million compared to Europe's 520. Compared to rich Europe, poorer nations have larger numbers of young people and lower numbers of the old and they have much less severe effects from COVID-19.
For the poorest group of 29 nations, the effect of age differences is staggering. With a very large proportion of young people (43.8 per cent of the total population), and a much smaller proportion of aged folk (3.1 per cent), their present cases per million figure stands at only 165, their deaths per million at 3.78. In summary, the 1.2 billion people of the 29 lowest income nations of our world face a present risk of infection that is 165/4,442, that is, around 4 per cent that of our eight European nations. In terms of mortality, with deaths per million averaging at 520 among our rich Europeans, and at 3.78 amongst our poorest 29 nations, the risk of death for the poorest lies at around 1 per cent that of the richest.
Even if everyone East of Suez is fudging their figures; even if all governments that are not European liberal democracies are either completely inefficient at data collection or command the absolute obedience of their population in conforming to a package of ideal policies; and even if the present state of things will alter as the virus rages on over our earth, it seems that there is presently a cost to being rich in a COVID world. The cost arises with this virus especially, because higher incomes mean fewer children and more elderly people, and this age distribution runs smack into the face of an overwhelming force of nature.
Within an income group such as rich Europe or poor Africa, policy may make some real difference—thus the cases of Germany or East Asia, which seem to be beating the trend. Both have high incomes and the age distributions of rich nations, and both have had better COVID-19 outcomes. But we must also then admit that apart from policy, there are also immutable differences in borders, population density, and air pollution levels, and degrees of connectivity between nations, and these may well create some meaningful variations within income groups of nations.
But none of this alters the basic case that rich European nations have the highest incidence and mortality from COVID-19 while having massive social and physical infrastructures. In whatever way they may have used or misused such advantages in their policies, the results cannot presently match those of the poorer part of the world. It seems clear that in a COVID-19 world a global division is occurring that is principally based upon income and age structures.

author: Ian Inkster