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Tajiks Angry at Government Re-Formatting Their Quaint Capital · Global Voices
Abdulfattoh Shafiev

Tajikistan's parliament. Wikipedia.
An appeal created on Avaaz October 13 is calling on ex-Soviet Tajikistan's president and the mayor of the capital city Dushanbe to reverse a decision to destroy administrative and cultural buildings in the heart of the city in order to free up space for new skyscrapers.
The appeal sparked a wave of discussion on Facebook among young people whose cherished adolescence was closely linked to these Stalinist era buildings.
Rahima Tuychieva said:
Без этих зданий Душанбе потеряет душу! историю! и будет таким бездушным и каменным городом!
Dushanbe will lose its soul and history without these buildings and turn into a soulless and stony city.
Lidiya Isamova chimed:
эти здания помнят многих великих людей нашей страны, как можно вырывать страницы своей же истории, вы ведь не вандалы, ГОСПОДА, ПРИНИМАЮЩИЕ РЕШЕНИЯ!!
These buildings recall many great people from our country. How can we snatch pages from our own history? Those people taking these decisions, are you not vandals?
Dushanbe is a relatively new city, built just under a century ago, when the Soviets were fashioning a republic for the Persian-speaking peoples of Central Asia.
Most of Dushanbe's buildings of administrative and cultural significance are thus Russian-built, employing a blend of classic European style mixed with more ‘national’, or oriental flourishes.
With more buildings retained from the Stalinist period, when form still had a place alongside function in Soviet town-planning, Dushanbe has a certain charm as a city when compared to some of the former communist competition.
But the city's General Plan threatens to consign much that makes the city unique to the scrapheap, with demolition plans for key city landmarks drawn up long ago and the national elite obsessed by huge Dubai-like architecture.
So now, in a country where participating in even a modest street protest might cause you to spend nights behind bars, Tajiks have taken to Facebook to fight for the national teahouse, the old Presidential palace, the Dushanbe city hall, the Parliament, and two city theatres.
Rohat teahouse. Photo from Panoramio by the user Maris Teteris. Permission to use.
Rajab Mirzo raged:
Чойхонаи Рохат ин на танхо бинои зебои милли, балки хотирае аз овони самимияту арзони ва бакадрии инсонхост. Касри Президенти имруза факат еддошт аз гирдихамоихову хунрезихои аввалин надорад, дар ин макон таърихи давлати имруз Точикистони мустакил бандубаст шуда. Бинои парлумон барои хар точику точикистони аз он чихат арзишманд аст, ки Эъломияи Истиклолро дар он кабул кардаанд. Сафхахои китоби таърихро наканед!
Rohat teahouse is not only a beautiful national building, but a memory from more sincere, humane and affordable times. The Presidential palace recalls not only bloody protests, but also the first pages in the creation of modern Tajik statehood. The Parliament building is valuable to us because the Independence declaration was developed and adopted inside it. Do not wipe out pages of history!
And Zarina Khalilova implored:
Чайхана “Рохат”, театр им.Лохути, “Зеленый театр” и пр., это – моя Родина, мой город, мой дом! Это воспоминания, детство, юность, первое свидание… Это – ДУША города, в котором ты родился и сформировался. Это – отчий дом!!! Это – прошлое, которым дорожишь, которое греет душу. И пусть сохранится его ДУША!
Rohat teahouse, Lohuti theatre, and all the rest are my homeland, my city, and my house. These are my memories, my childhood and adolescence, my first date… This is the soul of the city where I was born and grew up. This is my father’s house. This is the past I hold dear, the past, which warms my soul. Let its spirit be preserved!
In addition to plenty of statuses on profiles and discussion threads in groups, the movement to preserve Dushanbe's modest history has a special Facebook page and the petition on Avaaz already signed by dozens.
But the same government that has already built Central Asia's biggest library, biggest teahouse and biggest mosque has little sentiment when it comes to older, quainter structures.
The Ministry of Culture said on October 13 that the Parliament and the Presidential Palace are both among a quintet of buildings of historical note in Dushanbe.
Yet a day before this statement was made, Nurali Saidzod, deputy head of the construction and architecture committee told journalists, that none of the to-be-demolished buildings have any historical value:
Чайхана «Рохат» не имеет никакой уникальности. Если вы увидите эскизы того, что будет на ее месте построено, то вы то же самое скажете
Rohat teahouse has no uniqueness. If you had seen the blueprints of what will be built in its place, you would say the same.
Dushanbe at night by Bahrom Jalilov. Used with permission.
The argument over the historical buildings marks a rare mobilisation of civil society in a country where people are used to keeping their mouths shut and sidestepping politics whenever possible.
But that is no consolation to a population that feels increasingly out of touch with the place where they were born.
Michelle Zarina Gerber complained:
Я вообще не узнала город. Да, он чужой, не мой родной Душанбе. Теперь я по нему не скучаю. Зачем скучать по чужому городу и чужим людям?
I don’t recognize this city. This is an alien city, not my Dushanbe. Now I do not miss this city. What is the point of missing an alien city and an alien people?

author: Abdulfattoh Shafiev


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200 Days of War in Yemen · Global Voices
Noon Arabia

Air strike in Sana'a, May 5, 2015. Photo by Ibrahem Qasim. CC 2.0.
Many are likely unaware, thanks to the mainstream media's lack of coverage, that Yemen has been at war for almost seven months. In fact, it has been 200 days since a Saudi-led coalition started airstrikes on March 26, 2015, to repel the advance of the Houthis (a group affiliated with the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam), and imposed a naval blockade on its main seaports. Many Yemenis, however, would likely disagree about when the war actually started. For some, the war began on September 21, 2014, when the Houthis captured the capital Sanaa.
The latest humanitarian report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), issued on September 29, 2015, indicates that hundreds of civilian homes and infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, have been destroyed by explosive weapons, and civilians have been driven from their homes, since the conflict began. In the last few months of war, the following figures have been reported:
No. of deaths 5,248
No. of injuries 26,191
No. of IDPs 1.4 m
Affected population 21.1 m
People targeted 11.7 m
The report also indicated that there were more recorded civilian deaths and injuries in Yemen due to explosive weapons during the first seven months of 2015 than anywhere else on Earth. The vast majority of these deaths and injuries occurred in populated areas.
In Yemen, 95 percent of deaths are due to use of explosive weapons in residential areas. UNOCHA / Twitter
Beside the massive civilian death toll in the past seven months, Yemen's infrastructure has also been destroyed.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reports:
310 civilian infrastructures were partially or completely destroyed by coalition air strikes and ground fighting throughout Yemen, which include 160 private homes and 150 civilian public infrastructures.
53 health facilities were damaged or affected.
96 schools were damaged, while 67 were used by armed groups in 18 affected governorates.
At least 15 heritage sites, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site of Old Sana’a and the Seera Castle in Aden were damaged by the armed conflict
The sites were not only damaged by coalition airstrikes, but also by rocket attacks, artillery shelling, and ground fighting by the Houthis. Some sites were also used for military advantage by the Houthis and military units loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is fighting on their side.
Yemen depends on food and fuel imports to meet the basic needs of the population. More than 90 percent of Yemen's food supply is imported. The war and naval blockade imposed by the coalition has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation, creating a dramatic shortage in food, fuel, and medicine. The Houthis, on the other hand, have laid siege on the city of Taiz, as they'd done before in Aden, blocking drinking water, food and medicine from reaching the city as reported by Muwatana Organization for Human Rights (Mwatana). The humanitarian crisis is deepening as the war continues, with estimates that as many as 21 million Yemenis—80 percent of the population—are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Both parties of the conflict (the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis supported by Saleh) have violated international humanitarian law and international human rights law, as reported by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
At the 30th session of the Human Rights Council, a UN draft resolution by the Netherlands asked the OHCHR to dispatch a UN mission to report on the human rights situation in Yemen, trying to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding any violations of international law. Saudi Arabia blocked the proposal, however, offering its own resolution, which lacked mechanisms for investigating any violations of international law that a fact-finding mission might uncover.
While this war's figures and statistics are astounding, there are also, of course, personal tragedies—stories of loss and suffering that go unreported. The war in Yemen is killing people, destroying homes, and more, and it's also tearing apart the country's social fabric.
SupportYemen has been busy documenting how the conflict has opened cracks in Yemeni society:
Yemenis on Twitter have used the hashtags #200Days and #Yemen200DaysofWar to share thoughts about the war.
In her tweets, Nadwa Al-Dawsari remembers how the war started when the Houthis captured the capital, Sanaa, and later led to such suffering in Taiz, when the Houthis laid siege and cut off drinking water.
It is not #200days of war because war did not start in March 26, 15. It started in Sep 2014 when #Houthis took over Sanaa by force. #Yemen
— Nadwa (@Ndawsari) October 11, 2015
#Taiz is still under siege. Women traveling around n a hope to find some drinking water. #Yemen #YemenCrisis #200days pic.twitter.com/W6slOMx8ik
— Nadwa (@Ndawsari) October 12, 2015
YemenPosts, Yemen's Top English news source, tweeted a series of disturbing figures caused by the war.
5882 civilians KILLED in 200 DAYS of war in #Yemen #اليمن pic.twitter.com/X6dRxU9bk1
— Yemen Post Newspaper (@YemenPostNews) October 11, 2015
26250 civilians escaped death & injured in 200 days of war in #Yemen #اليمن pic.twitter.com/YUqP8QJIaX
— Yemen Post Newspaper (@YemenPostNews) October 10, 2015
200 DAYS of WAR in #Yemen 100,000 airstrikes & nearly 30,000 killed or injured pic.twitter.com/fiY2wpoL3Z
— Yemen Post Newspaper (@YemenPostNews) October 10, 2015
71300 HOMES destroyed in 200 days of war in #Yemen #اليمن pic.twitter.com/EwXtpvCaxC
— Yemen Post Newspaper (@YemenPostNews) October 11, 2015
274 factories/companies DESTROYED in #Yemen during 200 days of war #اليمن pic.twitter.com/oEKyWpDric
— Yemen Post Newspaper (@YemenPostNews) October 11, 2015
Nasser Maweri shared an article about the brutality of war and the dangers children face.
#200Days Six Months of Brutal War in #Yemen Puts Millions of Children in Danger http://t.co/D5Jw8D05aV via @HuffPostUK
— Nasser Maweri (@NasserMaweri) October 11, 2015
Sadeq Al-Wesabi speculated about the war's real winners and the social ramifications for Yemenis.
The only winners of #Yemen200daysOfWar are weapon dealers, black market traders and qat sellers #Yemen
— Sadeq Al-Wesabi (@sadeqalwesabi) October 11, 2015
#200Days of deep social division among Yemenis that cannot be healed for many years to come #Yemen #Yemen200
daysOfWar
— Sadeq Al-Wesabi (@sadeqalwesabi) October 11, 2015
Ahmed Jahhaf shared the feelings of many Yemenis who have been enduring the war.
#200Days Of War, Losses, Horror & Continuous Suffering In YEMEN #Yemen200daysOfWar pic.twitter.com/VQ98sVlulL
— عشوائيات قلم Jahaf (@A7medJa7af) October 11, 2015
Ahmed Ali Ahmed chimed in with the following tweet.
#200days of slow destruction of every beautiful thing in Yemen . Of scary sounds like the one I am hearing now waiting for our turn #Yemen
— Ahmad Ali Ahmad (@jaguarofYemen) October 11, 2015
Ahlam Hashem described the harsh living conditions in the absence of basic necessities, such as electricity and fuel, as a throwback to medieval times.
#200days of reliving the Medieval era #Yemen
— Ahlam (@Ahlam8Hashem) October 11, 2015
Mohamed Al Muntasir and Mohammed Al-Hajjaji tweeted about Houthi aggression.
Houthis hijacked the state, terrorized & starved millions, massacred thousands, while their cult followers cheered on. #200Days #Yemen
— Mohamed Al Muntasir (@arabianofelix) October 11, 2015
#Yemen200daysOfWar of #Houthi continuous killing & destruction of Yemeni souls & belongings in the name of fighting #America & #Israel !
— Mr Mohammed (@M_alhajjaji) October 11, 2015
Hisham Alomeisy, a political analyst who lives in Sanaa, summarized his entire experience in a single tweet.
After #200Days of war? 84% of #Yemen pop need humanitarian aid 5000+ Killed Social fabric shred Cities, economy, infrastructure destroyed..
— Hisham Al-Omeisy (@omeisy) October 11, 2015
However much longer the war in Yemen lasts, the loss of life and damage to the country have already set the nation back tremendously. These wounds will persist for decades to come, whether the conflict lasts another 20 days or 200.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Noon Arabia


text:
Advancing Technology in a Digital India · Global Voices
Nikhil Dhingra

Narendra Modi meets Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook on September 27, 2015. Screenshot from Youtube / Great Indian Politics.
Last time Narendra Modi was in the United States (shortly after being elected Indian Prime Minister), fireworks, holograms, and vibrant speeches followed him wherever he went. Modi's second trip to the US has been rather different. This time, he's come to ensure that India is not left behind in the fast-paced technological age.
In the United States, Modi is exploring how social-media websites like Facebook can be used as tools for governing and diplomacy. Earlier this month, Modi met with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, to discuss how India's integration into the digital world. He has met with a number of other representatives from different technological companies, as well, including a panel discussion and dinner with over 500 technology leaders from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and Cisco.
Modi has said he is pursuing what he feels is necessary to integrate India fully into the technological world. His vision includes connecting all schools and colleges to broadband Internet (he announced a plan to extend WiFi coverage across 500 railway stations in India with Google’s collaboration), launching a social media app to help the Prime Minister stay in touch with the Indian people, and identifying applications of technology that would make different aspects of governance faster through the use of the Internet.
Modi isn't alone in his support for such projects: Paul Jacobs, a chairman for Qualcomm, has pointed out that more than 60 percent of India currently owns mobile phones and that the “affordable smartphone revolution” could lead to over 250 million units being sold by 2020. Jacobs also announced a $150-million fund to be used to foster Indian start-ups, in addition to a “Design in India” initiative that would “create a local ecosystem for productive design.”
Modi coined the term “Digital India” to describe what he hopes India will look like at the end of this campaign. The country's Department of Electronics and Information Technology has created a Facebook page for the term, attracting more than 866,000 likes. The page reiterates the Prime Minister's hopes for “transforming India into a digitally powered society,” though there is little in the way of an explanation of how these goals might be accomplished.
Modi’s official website offers equally vague details about the Digital India project. Some of the main goals include (but are not limited to) high-speed digital highways connecting the nation, a lack of barriers when accessing certain information, and more channels on social media for active dialogue between the government and citizens.
Modi has already begun seeking more dialogue on social media, promoting on Twitter the potential benefits of the project:
At Digital India dinner we could see a perfect picture of India-USA partnership in the digital economy. This will benefit the entire world.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 27, 2015
Highlighted steps taken by the Govt. to mitigate poverty through technology & how technology is transforming lives of 1.25 billion Indians.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 27, 2015
The Digital India Twitter account has been equally active, informing its followers about new initiatives that the government hopes will improve communication across the nation. Specifically, the Twitter account reports that the government is in the process of creating a universal emergency response number:
Coming soon! A single emergency number: http://t.co/UST9svRixl (Via @ India Today) #DigitalIndia pic.twitter.com/lxm8WFWeYd
— Digital India (@_DigitalIndia) October 1, 2015
Many Indians seem not to share Modi's excitement about his project's chances of digitizing the nation. Some, such as Varinder Bansal (a researcher at CNBC-TV18) and Sukhdeep Mangat, believe that Digital India's promises aren’t being kept:
@HathwayBrdband promise 50 Mbps and do not even deliver 5. worst is customer care who doesn't respond at all.Is this “digital india” promise
— Varinder Bansal (@varinder_bansal) October 1, 2015
Thanks for making digital india much better 😑 2mbps for 1 Gb only 😤😤 @bsnlbroadband #DigitalIndia @narendramodi. pic.twitter.com/GXjVWjST30
— SukhdeepSinghMangat (@sukhdeep_mangat) October 3, 2015
A more prominent group of Indians seems to believe that the program as a whole is completely unnecessary, while much of the country's people are still starving in the street, in need of shelter, water, and other basic amenities. People like Sabena Siddiqi, a section editor for Al-Rasub online newspaper, points out how a lack of Internet access is the least of India’s worries, worrying that Modi has convinced himself that Digital India will solve all the country's problems:
#ArabsSpeakForIndianMuslims #Modi thinks he is some kind of medieval mad king from prehistoric times pic.twitter.com/xDgBzblBWH
— سبینا صدیقی (@sabena_siddiqi) October 9, 2015
While many Indians seem to feel that the country could be focusing on more important issues, there's no single consensus about which issues do deserve precedence over others. Some people, like Srikanth from Hyderabad, believe that the Indian government should prioritize farmers over computers:
I support this—> Green India before #DigitalIndia pic.twitter.com/fKvga5jgqq
— Srikanth (@Modi4India) October 2, 2015
Others, such as Nimit Walia, agree with Siddiqi and believe that many more useful campaigns could be created before Digital India:
Ok, the Digital India campaign is great How about we also start “WellFedIndia” “EmployedIndia” and “HealthyIndia” campaigns? #DigitalIndia
— Nimit Walia (@nimitwalia) October 3, 2015
Haroon, a political commentator from Lahore, points out the irony of Digital India’s effort to create a more prosperous India:
Features of #DigitalIndia : Women urinate in public, no toilets. Meat is banned. No religion allowed but Hindutva Rape is OK Blame ISI 4 all
— Haroon رشید (@HaroonRsh) October 9, 2015
Despite all of the hatred towards the new Digital India program, people like Vinay Singh point out the irony in protesting the initiative on Twitter:
Every time you protest against #DigitalIndia using a digital media platform, irony does a somersault and jumps off a cliff, laughing.
— Vinay Singh (@SinghIsSaying) October 2, 2015
While Digital India has the potential to connect millions of people through a more reliable and intertwined network, many Indians appear to believe that India has a long way to go before it can worry about issues as modern as Internet access. Nonetheless, the initiatives surrounding a more Digital India have already begun; only last week, the Indian Space Research Organization announced a partnership with the National Highways Authority of India to create better roads throughout the country, using ISRO-aided satellites to monitor Indian road construction.
Now the country will just have to wait and see if Modi’s dream of a more connected India yields a more prosperous society, or only causes further problems.

author: Nikhil Dhingra


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Brazilian Students Protest Against Government’s Closure of Public Schools · Global Voices
Raphael Tsavkko Garcia

Students protest in São Paulo. Photo by Mídia Ninja
Thousands of students took to Paulista Avenue in São Paulo on October 9, 2015, to protest against the possible shutting down of hundreds of state schools and relocation of students within the district. According to the protest's organizers, at least 5,000 students were in the streets. Police responded with a heavy hand and four people were arrested — among them, a teacher and a photographer.
The proposal, announced by the state governor Geraldo Alckmin, displeased students, parents and teachers, who marched against the government's refusal to negotiate alternatives. Students also protested in other parts of the capital São Paulo as well as other cities in the state, such as Osasco, Ribeirão Preto and São Bernardo, but in these cities there was no police aggression.
With the restructuring proposed by the government, schools will offer only one of the three levels of education in the Brazilian system, instead of offering primary through secondary education all under the same roof. In Brazil, basic education is divided into three cycles: 1st to 5th grade, 6th to 9th grade (both called elementary school) and the final three years (“high school”).
Currently, many public schools in São Paulo offer more than one cycle, but that would end under the new plan. According to the Department of Education, up to a thousand schools and about two million students could be affected by the measure.
State authorities say the restructuring is due to the decrease in São Paulo's population of school age throughout the last several years — according to the Department of Education, the state system has lost 2 million students since 1998. But experts argue the changes are simply budget cuts by a different name.
Photographer Caio Castor is detained by the police. Photo by Rafael Vilela / Mídia Ninja.
Journalist Antônio Martins explained the consequences of the proposal:
A “reorganização” pretende eliminar a possibilidade de uma escola oferecer, ao mesmo tempo, vagas no ensino fundamental e médio. Nenhuma justificativa pedagógica é apresentada para esta cisão. As implicações, porém, tem caráter claramente discriminatório.
Os alunos das unidades que deixarem de atender ao grau de ensino em que estão serão transferidos. Só terão vagas asseguradas em escolas localizadas a até 1,5 km de suas residências. Isso obrigará centenas de milhares de jovens da periferia a deixarem escolas centrais — normalmente melhor estruturadas e equipadas. Estas, em muitos casos, fecharão por falta de procura, já que nas regiões próximas aos centros, a população têm idade média mais alta e tende a procurar o ensino privado. Ao invés de melhorar a qualidade do ensino em toda a rede estadual, para atrair este público, o governo Alckmin parece interessado em descartar suas melhores unidades.
The “reorganization” intends to eliminate the possibility for a school to offer, simultaneously, places in both elementary and high school. No pedagogical justification is given for the split. The implications, however, have a clearly discriminatory bias to it.
Students at schools which will cease to provide their level of education will be transferred. They will only have guaranteed seats in schools located up to 1.5 kilometers from their homes. This will force hundreds of thousands of young people from the suburbs to leave central schools — usually better structured and equipped. Those, in many cases, will close due to lack of demand, since in the central regions the population's average age is higher and tend to seek private education. Instead of improving the quality of education of the whole state system, precisely to attract this audience, it seems that the Alckmin government is interested in getting rid of its best schools.
For example, imagine a student residing in the suburbs who is starting 6th grade in 2016 at a school in the central region. With the restructuring, that school will cease to offer the second cycle, and the student will have to transfer — and he or she will only have a guaranteed place at a school in the outskirts of the city.
In Brazil, the majority of students attending public schools come from low-income families (as a result, many of them reside in the outskirts of Brazilian's large cities), while upper middle-class families tend to enroll their children in private schools.
Mashup made by the Iconoclastia Incendiária page on Facebook in protest against the governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin. The image reads: “Then I'll get your dreams and your future and crush it like this”
The Facebook page “Não fechem minha escola” (Don't close my school), created earlier this month after the announcement of the reorganization, posted several photos of the demonstration this week at Avenida Paulista.
Collective Território Livre (Free Territory), which covered the demonstration, released a video on Facebook that shows when police began to rush into the crowd, batons in hand, and go after a particular protester, shoving others out of the way.
And they also explained:
O vídeo prova que a PM começou o conflito de forma totalmente gratuita, arrancando uma máscara laranja de um jovem (máscara que nem cobria o rosto dele de verdade). Desde quando é crime colocar uma máscara na cara? O intuito da PM era provocar e dividir o ato em dois, para ter maior controle. Provocar para acabar com o ato, essa era a tática de hoje. Foi assim que o governador mandou seus homens agirem.
No vídeo é possível ver também a agressão fortuita ao fotógrafo Caio Castor, que estava cobrindo o ato a trabalho e acabou preso (em outro video mostramos o momento da sua prisão). Fora Alckmin, inimigo da juventude!Não ao fechamento das escolas! Ocupar, se quiserem fechar! Viva a luta dos secundaristas!
The video proves that the military police started the conflict without provocation, yanking a young student's orange mask (which didn't even really cover his face). Since when is it a crime to put a mask on your face? The military police's intention was to provoke and divide the demonstration in two for greater control. Provoke to end the demonstration — that was the tactic today. This is how the governor sent his men to act.
In the video you can also see the random assault against photographer Caio Castor, who was covering the demonstration and was arrested (in another video we showed the momen of his arrest). Alckmin out, enemy of young people! No to the closing of schools! Occupy if they want to close! Long live the struggle of the students!
Activist Igor Carvalho denounced Castor‘s arrest; the photojournalist was later released by police:
O companheiro Caio foi preso agora pela manhã quando exercia o livre direito de registrar a, sempre violenta, ação policial, durante os protestos contra o fechamento das escolas estaduais em SP. Mais uma arbitrariedade da polícia do Alckmin.
Our comrade Caio was arrested this morning when exercising his right to freely register the always violent police actions during the protests against the closure of state schools in São Paulo. Yet more arbitrariness from Alckmin's police.
Território Livre posted the moment of Castor's arrest. The footage shows him on the ground, surrounded by police. One of the officers has his arms locked around Castor's neck, restraining him:
O fotógrafo estava a trabalho, cobrindo o ato dos estudantes secundaristas contra o fechamento das escolas por Alckmin. Por que a PM optou por prender apenas um professor e um fotógrafo? Isso foi deliberado. Prender menor de idade dá muita dor de cabeça e pega muito mal. Por isso a PM optou por causar para prender de forma totalmente gratuita alguns maiores de idade. Assim ela tenta botar medo nos menores de idade. O fotógrafo Caio já havia sido esganado por um policial momentos antes (veja video do início do conflito). Abaixo a ditadura! Viva a luta da juventude! Não ao fechamento das escolas!
The photographer was working, covering the demonstration of high school students against the closure of schools promoted by Alckmin. Why did the military police choose to arrest only a teacher and a photographer? That was deliberate. Arresting underage people brings a lot of headaches and makes the police look bad. So the military police chose to make a scene in order to arrest people of legal age. So they try to put fear in the minors. The photographer Caio had been strangled by a police officer moments before his detainment (see video of the start of the conflict). Down with the dictatorship! Long live the struggle of the youth! No closing of schools!
Castor also recorded when police began to lash out from another angle, and his camera captured the moment he was arrested.
Sociology professor Luis Carlos de Melo was also arrested during the demonstration as the video from the same collective shows. In total, four people were arrested.
The DAR – Desentorpecer a Razão collective questioned the police action against the students. The image reads: “In which of the photos do you see armed terrorists?”
Amanda Gomes Lemos, a journalism student who also covered the protest, questioned the police about the reasons for the arrests and aggression:
Em certo momento, resolveram atacar um garoto em específico. Resolvi perguntar aos policiais o motivo da agressão e a resposta foi: “ele está cobrindo o rosto com uma bandana”.
Eu, que também estava de bandana vermelha para evitar efeitos de possíveis bombas de gás lacrimogênio, respondi: “Por quê? Eu também estou do mesmo jeito e vocês não estão me agredindo”.
O policial, sorrindo, explicitou: “porque ele é negro”.
At one point, they decided to attack a boy in particular. I decided to ask the police the reason for this and the response was: “He is covering his face with a bandana.”
I, who was also wearing a red bandana to avoid possible effects of tear gas, replied, “Why?, I'm also wearing it but you are not attacking me.”
The officer, smiling, explained: “Because he is black.”
Students protest in São Paulo. Photo by Midia Ninja. The poster reads: “More schools, less racism. We are all blacks.”
New demonstrations have been called for against both the closure of schools and police repression of the right to protest.

author: Raphael Tsavkko Garcia


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Egyptian Facebook User Sentenced to Three Years in Prison for Putting Mickey Mouse Ears on Sisi · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

This photoshopped photograph of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Mickey Mouse ears has landed Facebook user Amr Nohan to three years in prison, according to reports
An Egyptian Facebook user has reportedly been sentenced to three years in prison by a military court for drawing Mickey Mouse ears on president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and posting it on the popular networking site. Amr Nohan allegedly was charged with the all too common “attempt to overthrow the regime.” Online comments indicate that Nohan is a conscript, and that is why he was tried at a military court.
Many Egyptians have reposted the Sisi/Mickey Mouse photograph, expressing their outrage over the sentence.
Tarakiyee notes how the Sisi/Mickey Mouse image is being widely shared after the sentence:
Amr Nohan was tried by Egyptian military court and sentenced 3 years for a photo. Ppl are reposting #StreisandEffect pic.twitter.com/Hxkng5wQmy
— Tarakula (@Tarakiyee) October 11, 2015
@Hon__3 ridicules how fragile the regime is when it is threatened by a photoshopped image:
كلمني اكتر علي هشاشة نظام شايف ان مجرد صوره بتسخر منه ممكن تهدد عرشه #الحريه_لعمرو_نوهان pic.twitter.com/npUdWVtlx2
— المواطن X (@Hon__3) October 10, 2015
Talk to me some more about a fragile regime which thinks that a photograph that ridicules it can overthrow it
@shai_sada quips:
تلت سنين .. في ودان ميكي امال لو كان بؤ بطوط بقي ؟؟ #الحرية_لعمرو_نوهان pic.twitter.com/4PvYZfJdep
— شاي سادة بزيادة (@shai_sada) October 10, 2015
Three years for Mickey Mouse's ears. What would have happened if he got Donald Duck's beak?
Shaima Elbanna tries to reason:
#عمرو_نوهان تخيل لما تقضي 3 سنين من عمرك في السجن عشان صورة رفعتها عالاكونت بتاعك نعم يا سادة انها الدولة العبيطة pic.twitter.com/aXkXH84QAK
— shaimaa elbanna (@shosho_elbanna) October 9, 2015
Imagine when you spend three years in prison for a photograph you uploaded on your account. Yes, this is the stupid country
There is little more information about the case at the moment, apart from these and other comments on Twitter. Supporters are drawing attention to Nohan's case under the Arabic hashtag #الحرية_لعمرو_نوهان which translates to #Freedom_for_Amr_Nohan.

author: Amira Al Hussaini


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German Lawmakers Squish Into a Rubber Dinghy to Better Understand Refugees · Global Voices
Katrin Zinoun

Parliamentarians in a rubber dinghy in Berlin. Photo: Chris Grodotzki / jib collective for SeaWatch. Used with permission.
Parliamentarians of the German Bundestag experienced on October 13 how it feels to be on a precarious rubber raft together with another hundred people.
The private initiative Sea Watch was behind the haunting campaign, which seeks to draw attention to the situation of refugees who cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.
Lawmakers who were willing to participate gathered on the riverbank of the Spree in Berlin to climb into the dinghy. Lisa Paus, a parliamentarian from Germany's Green Party, tweeted about the event. She referenced a Doctors Without Borders member speaking about his experience on board with Sea Watch:
Ärzte ohne Grenzen berichten über #seawatch und schreckliche Eindrücke bei Seenotrettung #refugeeswelcome pic.twitter.com/esnPEt023M
— Lisa Paus (@lisapaus) October 13, 2015
Doctors Without Borders report about #seawatch and dreadful impressions during sea rescue #refugeeswelcome
Sea Watch explained on their website that the campaign was timed with the launch of the second phase of the European Union's “Operation Sophia” against human traffickers, which will allow armed forces to board and seize ships suspected of smuggling people across the Mediterranean. The Bundestag approved the deployment of up to 950 soldiers for the task earlier in October.
Sea Watch's central aim is to save lives in the Mediterranean; so far, the organization has rescued 2,000 people from distress at sea. Meanwhile, the European Union's main concern since the end of “Operation Mare Nostrum” in late 2014 is to secure the borders and take action against human traffickers.
Not all politicians were on board with the organization's event. Paus quipped that Christian Social Union's (CSU) chairman Horst Seehofer, who has condemned the government's policy on refugees as being too lax, was no where to be found:
#seawatch lehrreiche Aktion. Scharfmacher @seehofer hat sich leider nicht an Bord getraut [ma] pic.twitter.com/HBZlaiyaOn
— Lisa Paus (@lisapaus) October 13, 2015
Educational campaign. Agitator @seehofer unfortunately did not dare to board himself
One parliamentarian of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) wrote:
Absolut makaber und geschmacklos, #seawatch spielt mit Abgeordneten auf der sicheren Spree vorm #DBT Flüchtlingsboot pic.twitter.com/UTxeV2lPDC
— Gerold Reichenbach (@g_reichenbach) October 13, 2015
Absolutely ghoulish and vulgar, #seawatch plays refugee boat on the safe Spree river with parliamentarians at the German Bundestag
On the same day, Sea Watch announced it would be expanding its efforts to Lesbos, Greece:
Legale Wege. Jetzt! Ansprache und Bekanntgabe: #SeaWatch wird Rettungs- & Beobachtungsmission auf #Lesbos starten. pic.twitter.com/3fqf5MfHnY
— Seawatch (@seawatchcrew) October 13, 2015
Legal ways. Now! Appeal and announcement: #SeaWatch will start rescue and observer mission on #Lesbos.

author: Katrin Zinoun


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Marlon James Makes Jamaica Proud With His Man Booker Prize for Fiction Win · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Jamaican novelist Marlon James at the Calabash Literary Festival in 2007. Photo by Georgia Popplewell, used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.
Last year, just after Jamaican author Marlon James‘ new book “A Brief History of Seven Killings” came out, I remember having a conversation with Marina Salandy-Brown, the founder of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, one of the Caribbean region's most lauded literary festivals. She was practically giddy over the brilliance of his writing and made this stunning prediction: “I think he has a real shot at winning The Man Booker Prize.”
On October 13, James was indeed named the winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
The Man Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards. Quite apart from the £50,000 prize money that goes along with it, Man Booker acknowledges each year the best English-language novel — in the opinion of its judges — that is published in the United Kingdom.
“A Brief History of Seven Killings” uses the assassination attempt on Bob Marley, referred to as “the singer” throughout the novel, as an anchor point from which to explore issues of race and class in Jamaica, as well as the entangled political relationship between the United States and the Caribbean which helped to create an island embroiled in gang warfare and gun violence. The book is intricately crafted, with more than 75 characters, and intense; the strength of the narrative caused the Man Booker judges to come to a unanimous decision in less than two hours.
Social media users and literary enthusiasts across the region were buoyant at the news. On Facebook, Charlene Thompson saw the win as a major accomplishment for the region:
Congratulations Marlon James! You've made a region and a people proud! #manbooker2015 #jamaica #caribbeanrising #smallbuttallawah
Miss Kitty The Fluffy Diva acknowledged the magnitude of James’ win:
Amazing!!! Congratulations to author Marlon James for being the first Jamaican to win the Man Booker prize!!!
#BigDeal #Proud #JamaicaToDiWorl
Even James himself, in a public post on his Facebook page, still could not quite grasp what had just happened. Posting a photo of his Man Booker trophy, he commented:
Holy shit.
Several people also acknowledged that as a gay Jamaican man, James’ win was also a triumph for the LGBT movement in Jamaica.
Regional literary bloggers were quick to comment on James’ award, but by far, Twitter was where most of the online discussion was happening. Prior to the announcement, fellow author Sharon Millar tweeted that the good wishes of the region were behind him:
The whole Caribbean is rooting for @MarlonJames5 #ManBooker2015 #@ManBookerPrize
— sharon e millar (@ChutneySharon) October 13, 2015
Jamaica-based blogger Annie Paul was exuberant upon hearing the news. She captured the spirit of celebration on the island in this tweet:
Quoting the gr8 Faith Smith on @MarlonJames5‘s win “We run the fastest and we write the bestest!” Woohoo! go deh Marlon #ManBooker2015
— annie paul (@anniepaul) October 13, 2015
While James himself seemed surprised that he won, his fans were not:
Any novel that has the line 》》We be top ranking bad man.《《 should win every prize. #MarlonJames #ManBooker2015
— Musharraf A. Farooqi (@microMAF) October 14, 2015
So amazing this win by #MarlonJames !! Book on my b/side table waiting 4 some free time.Meantime i'll celebrate a great Jamaican's success!
— Kamina Johnson Smith (@kaminajsmith) October 14, 2015
LOVE that my timeline is buzzing with love for #MarlonJames Breathtakingly accomplished writer,in both ambition and execution #ManBooker2015
— Crystal Mahey-Morgan (@CrystalMMorgan) October 13, 2015
Writers — both published and aspiring Caribbean writers — took heart at James’ accomplishment:
“Ten years ago I'd given up on writing. It was a novel that had been rejected 70 times…” Marlon James #ManBooker2015
— Daniel José Older (@djolder) October 13, 2015
What a time to be alive and writing! #MarlonJames @ManBookerPrize
— Ayanna Gillian Lloyd (@AyaRoots) October 13, 2015
It is also a time for joy. In the words of Twitter user Rahawa Haile:
Excuse me while I spend the next half hour scrolling and faving and blinding those nearby with the light beaming out of me. #marlonjames
— Rahawa Haile (@RahawaHaile) October 13, 2015
HBO has already optioned “A Brief History of Seven Killings” with the idea of developing a television series. But you might want to read the book first.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Myanmar Activist Faces 5 Years in Jail for Facebook Post Mocking Army Uniform · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

An image posted to Chaw Sandi Tun’s Facebook page has caused controversy. (Photo: Chaw Sandi Tun / Facebook)
This edited article by Salai Thant Zin is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news site in Myanmar, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
A young woman was brought to trial in Myanmar after sharing a satirical post on social media deemed to be insulting to the country's military.
Twenty-five-year-old Chaw Sandi Tun, also known as Chit Thami, took to Facebook to share a digital photo collage that juxtaposed Aung San Suu Kyi wearing a green traditional htamein, with military Commander-in-Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing and other military service personnel donning newly redesigned uniforms that are a similar shade of green.
The post compared the new military garb to the apparel of the renowned opposition leader, who chairs the National League for Democracy (NLD) and once served nearly two decades of house arrest under the former military junta.
A text transposed on the image read:
[They] like the color of the longyi of Aunti Suu [Aung San Suu Kyi], so they had it tailored and are now wearing it.
A screencap of Chit Thami's Facebook page
The image hit a nerve in Myanmar’s conservative society, where it is considered an insult to imply that a man would wear htamein, the woman’s version of the traditional Burmese sarong known as longyi.
A Myanmar army general staff officer, Lt. Col. Kyaw Htin of the Southwest Command in Pathein, filed the suit against Chaw Sandi Tun on October 12 under Article 34d of Burma’s Electronic Transactions Law. The vague provision, which carries penalties of up to five years in prison, outlaws altering digital information in such a way that would defame “any organization or any person.”
After her arrest on October 12 at a meditation center in Yangon, Chaw Sandi Tun was taken to the Maubin police station where she has since been in custody. She was brought to trial at noon the next day and will return on October 27, according to a member of the local students’ union that is assisting her case.
Chaw Sandi Tun, who earned a Bachelor’s degree in technology, is a former member of the Maubinn District Students’ Union and took part in student demonstrations against a new National Education Law earlier this year in Irrawaddy Division. She has since resigned from the students’ union and joined the local chapter of the NLD, and now works on the party’s election campaign.
The head of the Maubin police force, Lieutenant Thein Aung, told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that he could not provide any comment or further clarification about the case because he “didn’t get permission.”
Chaw Sandi Tun is at least the second person to be arrested this year after sharing a satirical online post viewed as critical of the military. In February, police arrested Aung Nay Myo, a freelance photographer in Monywa, after he posted a satirical photo on his Facebook page that reportedly mocked Myanmar officials. He was released after three days of interrogation.

author: The Irrawaddy


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So You Want to Conduct Open-Source Research · Global Voices
Aric Toler

“Dreaming” by a4gpa. October 3, 2009. CC 2.0. Edited by Kevin Rothrock.
This article is part of a larger guidebook by RuNet Echo to help people learn how to conduct open-source research on the Russian Internet. Explore the complete guidebook at the special project page.
Before diving into the specifics of investigating open-source data on the RuNet (Russian-language Internet), it's useful to understand the general verification processes that are applicable to all sources of open-source intelligence (OSINT). For a comprehensive treatment of the verification of digital open-source intelligence, you may want to see the Global Voices social media verification guide or the Verification Handbook, written by journalists from a variety of traditional media outlets, such as the BBC, and emerging projects, like Storyful.
These general instructions address specific ways to assess the reliability of photographs, videos, and human sources. While most of the advice applies to any area, we focus specifically on Russian-language evidence and sources.
Contents
There are countless ways to verify an image, depending on the various elements of the source. One of the most common ways to verify a photograph is by geolocating the image, which involves confirming or rejecting a photograph's location by matching visible elements to outside sources, such as road signs, topographical features, and landmarks. Another way to verify claims about an image is to verify the time that it was taken, either through seasonal differences (for example, is snow visible in a photograph supposedly taken on the day after reports of heavy snow?) or specific times, by measuring observable shadows. These two verification methods—geolocation and “temporal” location—will be covered in extensive detail in a future installment of this series.
As detailed in the two broad verification guidebooks cited in our introduction, the quickest way to verify a photograph’s uniqueness is by conducting a reverse Google Image Search or a TinEye search. Let's take a couple of Russia and Ukraine-specific examples to verify media content through these reverse image searches.
As described by StopFake and other outlets, several pro-Russian and separatist media outlets have used decades-old photographs to depict what they claim are recent events in the the war in eastern Ukraine. For example, in the below article on the pro-separatist website RusVesna.su (meaning “Russian Spring”), a photograph of military equipment on fire is juxtaposed with a story about fighting in eastern Ukraine on June 25. The photograph is presented without context, and two logos are plastered onto it, including the Web address of RusVesna.su, implying that the site’s photographers recorded the image themselves or hold the rights to the photograph.
This photograph, as many have pointed out, is actually from Tiananmen Square in 1989. A reverse Google Image search of this image will reveal this fact, when the search dates are restricted to resulted published before the Ukrainian conflict.
How do you conduct such a search?
Go to images.google.com, and click the camera icon, in order to search by image:
You may need to take a screenshot of the photograph you want to search. Either upload the photograph (a screenshot or the actual saved file will both work) or enter a URL that directly leads back to the image file (such as .jpg, .gif, .png—just not the entire webpage that hosts the image). When conducting a reverse image search, be sure to find the highest resolution copy available, as it will bring the most results.
After modifying the search's date parameters, it becomes clear that this image likely comes from China and appeared online before the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
TinEye works roughly the same as a reverse Google Image Search, but will usually return fewer results. The mechanisms are the same as Google Image Search, where you can either upload an image file or provide a URL.
There are various free tools that will analyze a photograph’s metadata and compression information, allowing further verification of an image’s veracity. The results are not always clear, however, and depend on the copy of the file uploaded. For example, a JPEG that has been resized, recompressed, and changed from the original file will have much less reliable data than the original full-resolution image recorded by a camera. Still, if you would like to try to analyze an image through ELA (error-level analysis) or its metadata, visit findexif.com, fotoforensics.com, and Izitru.
Instead of digital forensic tools, you can also rely on the naked eye. The easiest way to detect a Photoshopped image is by examining an image's shadows and reflections. The Moscow Times, StopFake, and many others have noted that Russia’s Investigative Committee used a Photoshopped image of Donetsk in flames on the cover of a book entitled The Tragedy of Southeast Ukraine. When examining this image—which was also used in a news article on the site Politnavigator.net—it is clear that the reflections in the water are incorrect.
The incorrect reflections in the water are evident across from the rising flames, especially the leftmost column of fire and smoke. Note how a building is reflected in the water beneath the left-most flame, while the fire is not. As discovered by StopFake, the flames were artificially added to a normal picture of the Donetsk cityscape.
Just as with many hoaxes in the English-language corners of the Internet, a simple reverse Google Image Search or critical eye can stop many falsehoods in their tracks.
Unlike images, there are no services available for reverse video lookup. This means that when you find a video, there is no fast solution for verifying its original source. However, there are still ways to carry out a reverse-verification of a video to see if supposedly new evidence is actually rehashed material.
The closest thing to a reverse video search is by capturing a screenshot of the video at a particular moment, and then conducting a reverse Google Image search of that screenshot. Additionally, you can take a screenshot of the video’s thumbnail and reverse search it, hoping to find a copy of the video elsewhere on YouTube or another video hosting service. A more detailed description of how YouTube generates its thumbnails can be found here.
This video on Vkontakte, Russia's most popular social network, is titled “SHOCK!! July 19, 2014 at 3pm, a BRUTAL shelling from a GRAD of the city of Gukovo.” The video, posted on July 19, 2014, is apparently from Russian state television channel Rossiya 2, and shows soldiers loading missiles into a Grad multiple launch rocket system and firing them. Without any specific identifying features, it is hard to verify the time, location, and original source of this video based on context clues alone. However, by taking a screenshot of particular moments in the video, we can find the original video source.
The best places to take screenshots are the very beginning and very important or unique moments. The first video frame does not return any helpful results, but a screenshot of the moment of the missile launch yields multiple search results:
Following the first link gives us a video uploaded in October 2013 of Russian soldiers conducting training exercises in 2009 with the Grad multiple-launch rocket system. Clearly, this video does not show Ukrainian soldiers shelling Russia on July 19, 2014, as the original user claimed.
Once you verify that a video is unique, the location and time of the photograph should be verified to greatest extent possible. In April 2015, wildfires ravaged much of Siberia, including the region known as the Zabaykalsky Krai. A video emerged on YouTube and Russian social networks, including Odnoklassnki, showing a hellish scene of cars driving through thick smoke. Reverse image searches did not reveal any duplicates of this video after it was posted on April 14, meaning this video could not be verified debunked using this method alone. The time stamp on the video itself checks out, showing April 13, 2015; however, this information could be modified or digitally added, and is thus not a reliable means of verification. An inspection of the license plates in the video showed that the code was 75 (top right, after НК):
Cross-referencing the license plates codes in Russia shows that this code is indeed local to the Zabaykalsky Krai, lending additional credibility to the video. Additionally, the user who uploaded the video to YouTube has one other upload from months before the wildfire video—a local news broadcast segment for Khakassia, located not far from the Zabaykalsky Krai. With all of these factors combined, there is no open-source information available that leads us to think this video was fabricated or falsely represented.
Verifying the reliability of sources on social media is not too different on the RuNet than it is with the rest of the Internet, but there are some special considerations one should make. While there are a number of “bots” that send out identical tweets in every language, there is an especially large concentration of them on Twitter writing in Russian. This trend is particularly true with politicized events, as both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian headlines are spammed across hashtags and keywords, making open-source investigation more difficult.
In the screenshot below, we see that an identical tweet has been sent by dozens of Twitter bots at the same time. The tweet reads “A source says a bomb threat has been called in at two hotels in Moscow,” with a number of people with generic Russian names spreading the information.
This bomb threat did actually take place, but these bots are not reliable sources of information. So, how do you find out if a source is a real person, or just a bot? Other than the context clues of the account’s tweets, such as sending out thousands of tweets with only a handful of followers, you can reverse image search the user's avatar.
Most bots and other unreliable sources—both in Russia and elsewhere—will use stolen photographs of other people as their avatars. For the Twitter bot @PatnietecnAmwa (or “Mashka Ya,” indicating that the woman’s name is Mariya), a quick investigation of the account's avatar reveals that the Twitter account is likely not operated by a human.
After copying the URL of the avatar (or just clicking “Search Google for this image” in the Chrome Web browser), paste the link into a reverse Google image search to find similar pictures elsewhere online.
Here, we see that the avatar of “Mashka” is actually a woman named Dasha Makarova, and that the Twitter user’s avatar was almost certainly stolen from the woman’s VKontakte page.
To find the original source of this tweet, search the headline on Twitter and find the first person who tweeted those exact words on the day of the flood of bot tweets. The original source of this tweet comes from @_ainequinn, a more reliable user than the other bots, as he has over a thousand followers.
However, we still must verify the information in this tweet, even if the source seems to be reliable. The photograph shared by this user shows a scene that seems to fit the situation: emergency responders, a bomb-sniffing dog, and a truck with the word “MOSCOW” (Москва) on its side. A reverse image search reveals, however, that this photograph is commonly reused in reports about emergency responses in Moscow, appearing in various news stories as far back as 2011.
While the more human-seeming Twitter account appears to be a more reliable source of information than a horde of bot accounts, the photograph that accompanied the tweet is generically used and not truly from the scene of the bomb threat. Thus, as we see from these examples, it is always necessary to verify specific pieces of information using all available means.
The next installment in this guidebook will be an introduction to Russian social networks and the unique Russian and Ukrainian usage of Facebook and Twitter.

author: Aric Toler


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‘Symphony for Peru’: Educating Children Through Music · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Children of Symphony for Peru in concert. Photo: Flickr / Miraflores City Hall (CC BY 2.0).
Renowned Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez heads an organization called Symphony for Peru, inspired by the National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela. The group provides musical training disadvantaged children.
Flórez's organization has been active for five years already, and the results so far have been positive. According to a report by Peru's Bureau of Studies for Development, “participants develop a higher self-esteem, greater tenacity to achieve goals, increased creativity and better ways of living together in society.”
Writing for En busca del milagro peruano (Pursuing the Peruvian Miracle), Pablo Macalupú-Cumpén says Symphony for Peru uses music to foster values that last a lifetime:
[Sinfonía por el Perú] formar con todo el rigor posible a cientos (quizá ya sean miles) de niños en todo el país, y la mejor manera de hacerlo es con música, porque la música, como dijo el psiquiatra inglés Anthony Storr, tiene la capacidad de transformar nuestra existencia por completo.
[Symphony for Peru] intervenes and reforms children as rigorously as possible—hundreds (maybe even thousands already) of children nationwide, and the best way to do it is with music, because music, as English psychiatrist Anthony Storr said, has the capacity to transform our existence completely.
There are currently about 800 children participating in Symphony for Peru. They come from four different areas of the country, according to Development Effectiveness Overview (an annual report produced by the Inter-American Development Bank to show the results and impact of its work):
The project established four musical centers in four very different areas in Peru: the marginalized, urban ghettos of Trujillo (coastal), Huancayo (mountain), Huánuco (rainforest), and Manchay-Lima (desert). Each center brings music to almost 200 children and adolescents living at or below the poverty level. […] The setting of the program helps children build their self-esteem, encourages them to have goals in life and to achieve those goals, promotes improved school performance, strengthens family ties, and facilitates positive involvement in their community.
Twitter users have also been busy discussing and even promoting the planned activities of Symphony for Peru:
Convocatoria para Sinfonía por el Perú – Núcleo Huánuco http://t.co/t3uvWBHkyN
— FastBrother (@FastBrother) septiembre 2, 2015
Call for Symphony for Peru – Huanuco Core Group.
Talento desde Perú! “El Cóndor Pasa” interpretado por @SINFONIAperu #ElSistema Sinfonía por el Perú @Coro… http://t.co/JzodU7UrH9
— Sistema Global (@Sistema_Global) septiembre 2, 2015
Talento from Peru! “El Cóndor Pasa” performed by Symphony for Peru.
Sinfonía por el Perú: el poder de la música que genera desarrollo sostenible. http://t.co/ysywhqgIeR — zeeveraldo (@zeeveraldo) septiembre 1, 2015
Symphony for Peru: the power of music that generates sustained development.
SINFONÍA POR EL PERÚ – NÚCLEO TRUJILLO EN EL CULTURAL http://t.co/UQv2WVts7j — El Cultural (@ElCulturalPeru) agosto 26, 2015
Symphony for Peru – Trujillo Core Group at the Cultural Center.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


text:
What’s Personal When You’re Syrian? · Global Voices
مرسيل شحوارو

“They wanted to deny families the right to hate a regime that has killed, jailed and kidnapped their children.” A scene in Salaheddin, Aleppo, Syria. PHOTO: Freedom House (CC BY 2.0).
This post is part of a special series of articles by blogger and activist Marcell Shehwaro, describing the realities of life in Syria during the ongoing armed conflict between forces loyal to the current regime, and those seeking to oust it.
I see my psychotherapist on a weekly basis, without any of the feelings of shame widespread in our society regarding this practice. But I have a barrel of guilt inside me that is wearing away what is left of the love of life in my heart.
Wednesday at noon is the time I steal away from work to talk about almost everything in life. At the end of the session, the psychotherapist tells me: “But you don't talk about anything personal.” And I am taken by surprise, overtaken by the silly desire always to appear that I am right, or gain the upper hand in any argument (as a close friend tells me I always do), to show my therapist that he is wrong.
I fail!
I am not sure exactly what constitutes “personal” and “public” in a Syrian's normal existence. My friends are the friends of resistance—our lives are intertwined as a result of prison and escape and the memory of our martyred friend. The only person left in my family that I am in touch with is my sister, who was forced to be displaced for security reasons related to me. Her displacement is part of the Syrian hemorrhage to the rest of the world.
My work is a continuation of the coordination for the revolution.
And even my attire reflects my gender in meetings in which I betray my right, as a woman, to appear more serious according to general society norms. Or perhaps it is the opposite: a reflection of my freedom in the face of inexcusable interference in women's privacy.
My body? I am not sure whether I love it or not. It is part of my beliefs that beauty comes in different sizes, contrary to the media’s uniform categorisation of what beauty is supposed to be.
I live in a town I don't know how to make peace with. It is the closest to Syria and the most workable among the choices available. My feelings towards it are irrelevant when it comes to “the greater good of the cause.”
All that I read is about the revolution or the revolutions of others, and sometimes about their wars—my current fixation, for example, is reading about the Lebanese civil war. All that I write is about the revolution and how it rages inside me.
Some time ago I went out on a date with a man. He started the conversation, perhaps to appease me, by asking if I knew whether the Geneva III talks will be held soon. I had forgotten what it is like to meet someone normal and talk about normal things. I don't even know the latest songs, except for the revolutionary songs produced over the past five years.
There is nothing “personal” at all.
Even my disclosure, in the first paragraph, about going to a psychotherapist, is to encourage people like me to admit their depression. It is a constructive disclosure. There is an armed thug in my head and my happy thoughts are littered with bombs. A thousand checkpoints and snipers stop memories from flowing.
At the beginning of the revolution, Bashar Al Assad's supporters used to accuse us of saying that our opposition to the regime is “based on personal feelings.” They wanted to deny families the right to hate a regime that has killed, jailed and kidnapped their children. But how to disentangle the personal from the public in your animosity towards those who want to kill you just because you attempted to assert your personal and public rights?
After this brainstorming session I can't be angry with my therapist, and I avoid his gaze. He is absolutely right: I have to stop my peaceful debate and confess that I am afraid of my personal thoughts.
I smile coyly, as I usually do, when he successfully overcomes my attempts at outsmarting him. He conquers all my attempts at pretending I am strong and all my dark sarcasm and elicits a true answer:
Am I now beyond reflecting the revolution, instead reflecting the war and, like the war, full of disease and death? My feelings of guilt prevent me from screaming that a healthy revolution is first and foremost the work of healthy people. I am afraid of Marcell, of her loneliness, or her confused value compass, of her relationship with a God she used to turn to for everything before the war. I am afraid to meet her and become terrified.
He asks me, for our next meeting, to look for personal spaces I can have fun in. I sense—and I am someone who loves challenges—that this may be one of the most difficult tasks I have to face this year.
Personal? Like what?

author: مرسيل شحوارو


text:
A Devastating Earthquake in 1985 Gave Rise to an ‘Awakening’ in Mexican Society · Global Voices
Mas de 131

Security forces moving through Mexico City in the days after the earthquake. Photo courtesy of Union of Neighbors and Victims of the Disaster September 19 (UVYD-19 in its Spanish acronym), used with permission.
Following a powerful 8.1-magnitude earthquake on September 19, 1985, and an aftershock the next day, the people of Mexico City created truly democratic spaces and a widespread “social insurgence” as they took their city into their own hands, devastated by thousands of casualties and millions of dollars in losses.
Through the strength of their grassroots efforts, the residents of Mexico City proposed and enacted new organizational procedures, enabled new processes for building awareness, and even provided the pivotal challenge that led to the collapse of the political power enjoyed in Mexico City by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, in Spanish), which had maintained its control over public life and Mexico's capital city throughout the 20th century.
Alejandro Varas, a sociologist and member of the Union of Neighbors and Victims of the Disaster September 19 (UVYD-19), says the most significant outcome of the disaster was “the self-organization, as a fruit of the self-governance and self-reliance over public and private institutions.”
Neighbors from different districts, especially people from the Tlatelolco, Roma, Centro, Doctores, and Morelos neighborhoods, had to reach common agreements, draw up lists of needs and resources, and provide their own communication services. Locals from unaffected areas and university students formed groups to go into the affected areas, becoming rescuers and organizing shelters, supplies, and the distribution of provisions.
“You need to establish relationships with your environment, in order to reach shared goals—to save lives, to recover belongings, to arrange guards—all of it had to be pulled up by the bootstraps and all of it was done by the neighbors,” Varas explains.
The chronicler Carlos Monsivais speaks of an “awakening” in his 2005 book “Not Without Us: The Days of the Earthquake”:
Ante la ineficacia notable del gobierno de Miguel de la Madrid, paralizado por la tragedia, y ante el miedo de la burocracia, enemiga de las acciones espontáneas, el conjunto de sociedades de la capital se organiza con celeridad, destreza y enjundia multiclasista, y a lo largo de dos semanas un millón de personas (aproximadamente) se afana en la creación de albergues, el aprovisionamiento de víveres y de ropa, la colecta de dinero, la localización de personas, el rescate de muertos y de atrapados entre los escombros, la organización del tránsito, la atención psicológica, la prevención de epidemias, el desalojo de las pirámides de cascajo, la demolición de ruinas que representan un peligro.
Facing the remarkably ineffective government of Miguel de la Madrid, as paralyzed by the tragedy, and facing the fear of bureaucracy, as an enemy of impromptu actions, the whole of society across Mexico City organized itself with speed and skill, and with a core that stretched across upper and lower classes. Throughout two weeks, roughly one million people scrambled to create shelters, to supply food and clothes, to collect funds, to locate missing people, to retrieve the remains of the deceased and to rescue the survivors trapped in the rubble, to organize transport, to provide psychological counseling, to work to prevent health epidemics, to remove the mounds of gravel, and to demolish the ruins that posed hazards.
In that same year, the Common Disaster Victim Coordinating Council (CUD) was started, and produced project proposals to rebuild the city. Also, the Council for Urban Struggles and the National Coordinator for the Urban Popular Movement were formed. These grassroots organizations broadened the demands of the “damnificados de la vida” (Victims of Life), a term that took root during that time, referring to those who had become homeless or displaced, not only due to the earthquake but also because of economic reasons.
With the opposition's victory in the elections of Mexico City by way of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), many members of these grassroots organizations subsequently entered the Mexican government.
The UVYD-19 began on October 5 and held as many as three meetings a day, in the morning, afternoon, and evening. If someone approached them to participate, they would encourage that person's neighbors to join and organize, also. Months later, the tactics of UVYD-19 demonstrated that art and culture could be avenues for creating strategies to lend durability to the demands of the Mexican people.
“In the organization there were people coming from all political parties. But the way it worked was that approvals were given in the meetings, and they formed commissions to report back to everyone, and the people themselves granted approval or not,” remembers Alejandro Varas.
Also noteworthy was the labor rights struggle of the garment workers in factories in the Lorenzo Boturini and Colonia Obrera districts. The Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska interviewed the garment workers, and in her 1988 book “Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Tremor,” she affirms “the earthquake revealed the exploitation of the garment workers.”
The writer interviewed the survivors of 800 shops that were destroyed, and describes how the bosses treated their equipment relative to their teams of 600 workers. She also profiled the protection of buildings that the government had wanted to demolish by force, as well as the authoritarianism and closure of citizens’ access to election officials, as citizens’ movements emerged. Additionally, she portrayed how concerts were organized (giving birth to the music groups Maldita Vecindad and Hijos del Quinto Patio), how Catholic mass services were coordinated, and how the Hospital Juarez was defended by the staff and neighbors after the catastrophe.
Confrontation between security forces and garment workers in Mexico City. Photo: Frida Hartz, courtesy of the Union of Neighbors and Victims of the Disaster September 19 (UVYD-19), used with permission.
Up until that time, Alejandro Varas recounts, “there was no citizen participation in the governing process.” Faced with an emergency, any dialogue was available exclusively through the PRI. If you wanted to talk with someone it was through deputies and chapters of the political party and regional delegations. The model of participation was through a “jefatura de manzana” (a neighborhood organization model ruled by a block leader), a rigid hierarchy of leadership. Officials were not chosen by the people, but instead appointed from above.
Moreover, Mexico City was the only territory that did not have its own ruling authority, since the department chief or regent (at that time, Ramon Aguirre) was appointed by the president of the republic. The regent appointed the heads of the branch delegations. All of this toppled, along with the buildings, when the earthquake struck.
The 2008 documentary “The Earthquake of Mexico” shows interviews with people from diverse backgrounds who experienced the tragedy. The journalist Humberto Musacchio says in the video that within a few days the citizens held the power in their hands, managing their own health and organizational structures.
After the earthquake, the first thing Miguel de la Madrid did was send the military out into the streets, a move which was widely rejected by the population. The soldiers did not allow the rescue workers to pass through their lines. The soldiers would say they did not need any more help, and they tried to sideline those citizens involved in shelters and rescue efforts.
Manuel Camacho Solis, secretary of Urban Development at the time, admits in the video that the president was worried and thought that the displaced disaster victims might take over the soccer stadiums heading into the World Cup projected for Mexico City in 1986.
Even though many of the changes that were stirred up remained in the electoral arena, Varas emphasizes that over the entire city there are two blueprints: the first belongs to international real estate capital investment companies and their projects, and the second has the imprint left by the movement of 1985: “self-organization and confidence in ourselves.”

author: Mas de 131


text:
A Landslide in Guatemala Killed More Than 200 People This Month. Here’s How You Can Help the Victims. · Global Voices
Mary Aviles

El Cambray Dos in Guatemala suffers a landslide after heavy rains. October 1, 2015. Photo: Flickr / Conred (used under Creative Commons license).
Thanks to years of deforestation and recent heavy rains, a landslide hit El Cambray Dos (a town nine miles outside Guatemala City) on October 1. A week later, the death toll was more than 200, with another 300 people reported missing and 230 displaced. The mudslide also left dozens wounded and caused extensive property damage.
According to the BBC, local residents were warned in advance that the area's terrain was at risk of landslides. Intense rains this season and last, however, already affected areas home to roughly half a million people. The particularly bad weather changed the timetable for the anticipated landslide, which ultimately came much earlier than expected.
The Guatemalan Red Cross has put in place various measures to help the victims.
¡#CruzRojaGt agradece tu apoyo! pic.twitter.com/F72qQmCVS5
— CruzRojaGuatemalteca (@CRGuatemalteca) October 6, 2015
Thank you for your support!
We would like to thank all of the kind-hearted Guatemalans who put their faith in us to deliver all of the aid received at our collection centre. Although we are not yet receiving provisions, our brothers at El Cambray Dos still need our help supporting them financially:
Accounts you can donate to:
Acc No: 171578032 Banco Reformador
Acc No: 3033699352 Banrural Bank
On behalf of the Guatemalan Red Cross’ Emergency Relief Fund
Donations can also be made through our website: www.cruzroja.gt
You can request a donation receipt for your payment.

author: Mary Aviles


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It Looks Like Snow, But That Fluffy Stuff on Bangalore’s Lakes Is Much More Toxic · Global Voices
Rezwan

It's not snow, but foam covering the water. It's the way water flows in the 130-year-old Bellandur lake. The place has a heavy pungent smell. Image from Flickr by Kannan B. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
No, it's not snowing in Bangalore. What's floating on top of some of the polluted lakes of India's third largest city is actually toxic froth.
The foam is largely being produced in a lake called Bellandur, into which raw sewage and chemical waste have long been pumped without effective water treatment. When it rains, the toxic water from the lake forms a layer of thick white foam, which is often picked up by the wind, sending it airborne and spreading it among the localities around the lake.
What you’re seeing is water rich in ammonia, phosphate, low in oxygen, forming extremely #toxic froth #bangalore pic.twitter.com/KBKU4FENZ6
— swati sambyal (@swatissambyal) October 10, 2015
Can this be true ? Are we living on earth or in hell ?Frightening.And unseen air pollution too is equally harmful. http://t.co/EGkqO4QxMU
— Shailaja Chandra (@over2shailaja) October 9, 2015
Bangalore, once known as the “city of a thousand lakes”, now consists of only a few dozen live lakes. Most of these water bodies are interconnected, but there are no rivers close by to move the waters and the filth. The effect of rapid urbanization has taken a heavy toll on these once beautiful lakes, and now only about 17 lakes are operational, compared to 51 healthy lakes in 1985.
Some of the old lakes were converted into bus stands, golf courses, playgrounds and residential colonies. The lake systems receive over 130 million gallons per day of mostly untreated sewage from homes and industries all over the city. Thanks to the pollution, Bangalore has earned a new nickname: the “land of a thousand sewage tanks.”
@TrafflineBLORE it doesn't snow in Bangalore, so we gave special effects on our lakes to froth to look like snow..
— Srikanth (@srikanthban) October 8, 2015
Byramangala Lake in Bidadi, spitting froth, thanks to entire Bangalore affluents @thebetterindia @BangaloreLakes pic.twitter.com/j9KOhKRvpr
— Paayel Sengupta (@chabiskut) October 1, 2015
Life In Bangalore uploaded a video to YouTube in May 2015 showing how the polluted froth is floating in Bellandur lake:
Debasish Ghosh, an IT professional and photographer from Bangalore, published a photo essay in the Guardian. According to him:
Bellandur Lake, in India’s technology capital, now carries huge volumes of snowy froth which blocks the adjacent canals. After a downpour, the mass of lather in the canal rises so high that it lands on the roads and causes inconvenience to those travelling on two wheels.
This froth, which would otherwise have been a sight to behold, has a pungent smell and causes irritation on contact with skin. Although the residents have raised their concerns to the authorities, the government has not taken adequate measures to curb the problem.
In May, in two lakes the white foam caught fire because of the huge amount of industrial waste in the water including detergents, oil and grease.
A Facebook page named Save Bellandur, Save Bangalore is trying to raise the voices of the local residents to pressure the government to stop the pollution and clean up the lakes. Sanchita Jha posted minutes of a meeting on October 11, 2015, attended by more than hundred activists and members of the local press which reveals that:
* Huge [froth] at outlets, was forming even back in 2000
* More than 40% of Bangalore sewage enters the Bellandur lake via many inlets like direct drainage; storm water drains (SWD) filled with industry affluent carried all the way from different parts of the city.
* Pumping stations of sewerage treatment plants attached to Bellandur lake are either not functioning or not up to the capacity of incoming water.
* Due to its size and level of contamination of Bellandur lake, it has been continuously ignored/neglected/feared by government authorities.
* The air is contaminated and also due to lot of mosquitoes from lake, there are around 5-10 Dengue cases reported daily.
* The toxic smell around the lake is so bad that it turns silver articles to black!
Sanchita also requested that people sign a petition and spread the word to stop the pollution. Siddaramaiah, the chief minister of Karnataka, finally responded and instructed local authorities to visit the spot and tackle the problem.
I have spoken to BBMP Com & have asked him to take steps to permanently curb Bellandur lake pollution. @bbmpadmn pic.twitter.com/qn0YS2Ckyb
— CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) October 8, 2015
The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) is setting up lake protection watchdog committees across the city, involving local residents as stakeholders, to do more to stop the pollution. But Bangalore resident Ashlesh Garate reminded on his Facebook that in 1999, the High Court ordered civic authorities to clean Bellendur lake, yet the lake remains polluted 17 years later. It remains to be seen just how long it will take to clean Bellandur and stop other lakes in Bangalore from being polluted.

author: Rezwan


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Kyrgyz Civil Society Forces Parliament’s Hand in #120Seats Campaign · Global Voices
Akhal-Tech Collective

Collection of Twitter images under the #120кресел hashtag.
Kyrgyzstan, one of the few corners of ex-Soviet Central Asia where civil society can still effect change, did itself proud this week.
Following a social media-driven campaign to prevent the government spending around $40,000 on new seats for the incoming sixth convocation of the Kyrgyz parliament, the parliament's administration has squashed the tender for the seats and decided the old ones are fine after all.
Some context is needed here.
Firstly, many Kyrgyzstanis had a difficult time believing that the smart-looking chairs bought for parliamentarians in 2010 were actually worn out, as one parliament official had argued.
Kyrgyz MPs are notorious for not showing up to work, with half the parliament frequently absent from sessions. This means  some of the chairs will have hardly seen any action at all in the past five years.
Secondly, a number of people suspected potential corruption surrounding the tender for the chairs in a country where graft is commonplace.
Thirdly, $40,000 is not a trifling sum in a country where the average wage hovers somewhere around $200 per month.
What emerged in response to news of the tender was the #120кресел hashtag, with which Kyrgyz citizens posted pictures of all kinds of chair photos and ironic comments.
Many of the images featuring the hashtag were a non-too-subtle nod in the direction of the chasm separating privileged lawmakers from the common folk.
Collection of Twitter images under the #120кресел hashtag.
Later there followed an even more poignant response to the tender announcement: a petition that grew up on Avaaz.org demanding government use the funds to update equipment in cancer treatment centres instead of spending them on chairs.
The authors of the petition, which had around 250 signatories at the time of writing, wrote:
Та легкость, с которой выделяются средства из госбюджета в сумме 2.6 миллиона сом на обновление кресел, говорит о том, что у онкобольных в нашей стране есть надежда на получение адекватного лечения. Надо всего лишь разумно распорядиться народными деньгами.
The ease with which funds are allocated from the state budget to the tune of 2.6 million soms [around $37,000] to upgrade chairs, suggests that cancer patients in our country still have hope of receiving adequate treatment. You just have to dispose the people's money wisely.
The noisy campaign did not go unnoticed by international media, winding up on the BBC's News from Elsewhere blog.
Bektour Iskender, co-founder of the local youth media portal Kloop.kg claimed the parliament's decision to drop the tender for the seats as a victory for the public over officialdom:
Одна из лучших новостей недели и маленькая победа гражданского общества над дуростью некоторых парламентских идей. Надеюсь, что далеко не последняя подобная победа.
One of the best pieces of news this week and a small victory for civil society over the foolishness of some parliamentary ideas. I hope that it is far from the last victory of this type.
Two years ago Global Voices covered a similar kind of campaign in Kazakhstan that came as a response to a minister's gaffe at a time when the Kazakh parliament was debating a bill on raising the female pension age. The campaign did achieve amendments to the bill, but the government remains committed to raising the pension age over time.
This week, Global Voices looked at an online attempt to save historical buildings in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, which looks doomed to fail in a country where civic-minded initiatives face an ever more constricted political space within which to work.
Sadly, in the region's two most relentlessly authoritarian states, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, such campaigns would struggle to even get off the ground.

author: Akhal-Tech Collective


text:
Ladies, You Can Wear Men’s Briefs as Shirts to Save Money. Just Ask This Russian TV Show. · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

A scene from Healthy Living, starring Elena Malysheva. Screen capture: YouTube.
The Russian economy has fallen on hard times. Oil is cheap, Western sanctions have cut off access to foreign credit and hi-tech imports, Moscow’s military interventions in Ukraine and now Syria are costing who-knows-how-much money, and women are being encouraged to don men’s underwear as shirts. What was that last thing, you ask? Yes, a daytime television show on Russian network TV aired an episode earlier this month explaining how Russian women can save money by altering men’s underwear into tank tops.
The show is called Zhit’ Zdorovo (“Healthy Living”) and it stars Elena Malysheva, a therapist/teacher/doctor/professor who educates viewers about how live a more healthy and sustainable lifestyle. The program airs on Pervyi Kanal (Channel One), Russia’s largest state-owned television station.
The episode about transforming men’s underwear into ladies’ shirts was the first installment in the debut of a new segment called “We’ll Survive These Troubles!” where Malysheva offers viewers tips about how to get more out of household items. In subsequent installments of this series, she has showed her audience how to “get a second life out of a children’s backpack” and how to waterproof sneakers.
“This is our answer to our compatriots’ suffering because of prices, the crisis, the ruble’s fluctuations, and so on,” Malysheva told viewers, decked out in an orange dress and orange shoes. Later in the episode, when handling a pair of men’s underpants, it’s also apparent that Malysheva wears an Apple Watch Sport, which retails in Russia for a minimum of 23,990 rubles ($388). It’s unclear if Malysheva recommends any underwear-based substitutes for smart watches.
In the episode, Malysheva and her team of scrubs-wearing assistants take scissors to a pair of briefs and then pull them over a young woman from the audience. She smiles onstage, as Malysheva points out that the garment also makes an excellent swimsuit.
On YouTube an excerpt of Malysheva’s show featuring her instructions to women about wearing men’s underwear has attracted more than 46,000 views, including 76 “upvotes” and 220 “downvotes.”

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Netizen Report: #TakeBacktheTech Campaign Stands Up to Online Misogyny (and Misinformation) · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

The Association for Progressive Communications, a pioneer organization in the technology and human rights community, is facing ongoing harassment directed at “Take Back the Tech,” a campaign intended to increase conversations and awareness about gender-based harassment online.
Prominent themes in the attack included suggestions that the campaign is nothing more than a “bitching session” about gender disparity in technology industries; cartoons depicting leaders of the campaign and other prominent online feminists such as Anita Sarkeesian accepting money from powerful companies and the UN; and multiple comparisons between the campaign and Germany under Hitler.
The attack evidently was triggered by a report on “cyberviolence” against women released in late September by the United Nations. The report contained numerous inaccurate citations and omissions, supported dubiously-sourced claims about links between violence and video games, and proposed censoring sex-related content online, such as pornography. The report immediately garnered criticism from gender and online rights advocates, arguing that it not only undermined the legitimacy of their work but also seemed to trigger yet another wave of misogynistic harassment against them. Prominent advocates like Sarkeesian and APC have worked actively with the UN on this issue, but had no role in writing the report.
“px plz” by xkcd. CC BY-NC 2.5
The trolls involved in this attack should not be confused or conflated with more legitimate critiques about the potential censorship implications of seeking to diminish misogynistic speech online. Indeed, Take Back the Tech's leaders have long debated the challenges that the issue poses for free speech. But they agree that when online harassment escalates to threats of real-life harm — examples range from Afghanistan to Brazil to the US — it should be treated as a threat, not a simple exercise of free speech.
Two Lebanese Facebook users were arrested and detained on charges of sectarianism, libel and defamation for posts they wrote on the social media site. Michel Douaihy spent nine days in jail for criticizing the punishment given to the cleric Ahmad Al-Assir. Mohammad Nazzal, a journalist for Al-Akhbar newspaper, was convicted on similar charges, but was sentenced to six months in prison.
A few days later, an Egyptian Facebook user was reportedly sentenced to three years in prison by a military court for drawing Mickey Mouse ears on president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and posting it on the popular networking site. Amr Nohan allegedly was charged with the all too common “attempt to overthrow the regime.”
Myanmar activist Chaw Sandi Tun is facing court proceedings for posting a digital photo collage that juxtaposed female political opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi with high level military service personnel, all male, donning newly redesigned uniforms. By comparing the new military garb to Aung San Suu Kyi's sarong-like dress (both were a similar shade of green) the post insinuated that military officers were dressing like women, which is considered an insult in Myanmar society. Military officials are seeking to prosecute Chaw under a vague provision of the country's Electronic Transactions Law, which carries penalties of up to five years in prison for altering digital information in order to defame “any organization or any person.”
The Facebook account of Peruvian news site La Republica was suspended on October 11 after receiving a flood of abuse complaints, most of which concerned an article about legal investigations into the financial and political activities of family members of legislator and presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president and convicted human rights violator Alberto Fujimori. Although the page has since been reactivated, it left the staff of La Republica rattled. “Despite these acts of censorship , we are and will be strong advocates of freedom of expression and press freedom,” they wrote.
Apple blocked access to Apple News for all users connected to Chinese telecom networks. Overseas users from countries that have access to Apple News will receive an error message when traveling to China, saying the app is not supported within the country. According to the New York Times, the move is likely an attempt by Apple to circumvent compliance with Chinese censorship rules, which would require the company to remove articles deemed sensitive by the government from the Apple News feed.
On October 13, a new data retention law came into effect in Australia that requires telecoms and Internet service providers to store extensive user data records for up to two years. The law requires blanket retention of metadata from phone calls, SMS messages, emails, and Web browsing histories, but as privacy activists and even some opposition legislators have pointed out, the law is full of holes and should be relatively easy to circumnavigate for most users. Given Australia’s intelligence alliance with the United States, however, Australian netizens may soon opt to go the extra mile to protect their personal data from prying government eyes.
The final leaked text of the Intellectual Property Rights chapter of the recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations suggest that some of the most expansive copyright language made it into the final version of the treaty. According to analysis by the EFF’s Jeremy Malcolm, there are a number of onerous provisions in the treaty: while obligations to the rights of the public are non-binding, almost anything that benefits rightsholders is binding in the treaty. The language also provides for the extension of the copyright term to life plus 70 years and includes a prohibition on the circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) technologies, even when no copyright infringement is committed.
Juan Arellano, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Lisa Ferguson, Sam Kellogg, Weiping Li, Leila Nachawati and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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São Paulo Will Host the 2016 World Social Forum on Migrations · Global Voices
MigraMundo

In 2014, the Forum was held in Johannesburg. In 2016, Brazil will once again host the event. Credit: Rodrigo Borges Delfim/MigraMundo
As the largest city in South America, in a place where history is intimately linked with migration, São Paulo will host the seventh edition of the World Social Forum on Migrations (WSFM, or FSMM in its Portuguese acronym) in 2016. The announcement came from the International Committee of the WSFM, the organizers of the event.
This will mark the second time the Forum on Migrations makes its home in Brazil. Previously, Brazil had set the stage for the first edition of the WSFM in 2005, in Porto Alegre, a city that had also hosted the first edition of the annual, larger World Social Forum in 2001. Since debuting in 2005, the biannual editions of the smaller World Social Forum on Migrations have taken place in Madrid, Spain, (2006 and 2008); Quito, Equador (2010); Manila, Philippines (2012) and Johannesburg, South Africa (2014).
The new WSFM logo, displaying São Paulo as the 2016 host.
Credit: Divulgação
“The forum represents a recognition of the struggle over many years of social movements in the city, above all, that of immigrants, who are increasingly taking on more leadership roles. I believe migrants will be the key players in this process,” says Paulo Illes, immigration policy coordinator for the municipality of São Paulo and member of the forum's organizing committee.
The exact dates and location have yet to be determined, but the event is being planned for mid-2016. The slogan for the newest edition of the WSFM will be: “Migrants: building alternatives to disorder and the global capital crisis” (Migrantes: construindo alternativas frente à desordem e à crise global do capital, in Portuguese).

author: MigraMundo


text:
Did Pelé Stop the Bloodiest Civil War in Nigeria’s History for 48 Hours? · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

A malnourished refugee during the Nigerian Civil War. A Nigerian blockade brought on devastating famine in Biafra during the conflict. Public Domain photo by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
For many years, it has been widely reported by major news networks such that Pelé, the kind of soccer, stopped the Nigerian Civil War when the two sides put down their weapons to allow Nigerians to watch him and his Brazilian club Santos play.
The Nigerian civil war was fought between 6 July 1967-15 January 1970 over the secession of the state of Biafra from Nigeria. It was one of the bloodiest civil wars in Africa.
But media often credit Pelé with ushering in a ceasefire, albeit a temporary one. The US magazine TIME, for example, reported in 2005:
Although diplomats and emissaries had tried in vain for two years to stop the fighting in what was then Africa's bloodiest civil war, the 1969 arrival in Nigeria of Brazilian soccer legend Pele brought a three-day ceasefire. Both the government and the breakaway Republic of Biafra accepted a truce to allow his team, Santos, to play two exhibition matches against local teams. For 72 hours, football was more important than war.
But did Pelé really stop the Biafran war in Nigeria? That is the question Olaojo Aiyegbayo (@olaojo15), a writer based in Huddersfield, UK, went to the archives to find the truth.
Pele in a Santos FC jersey in 1970. Public Domain photo by El Gráfico.
In a blog post on Africa is a Country, Olaojo Aiyegbayo explains that the main purpose of the African tour was to make money for the club through appearance fees. The tour took the team to Congo, Nigeria, Mozambique, Ghana and Algeria.
So did the war stop? The story, according to Aiyegbayo's research, was a myth. Despite appearing in major international news networks, it was never reported in local newspapers that covered Santos’ tour. Pelé himself did not mention the ceasefire in his 1977 autobiography “My Life and the Beautiful Game”. However, he mentioned it in his 2007 autobiography “Pelé: The Autobiography”.
Aiyegbayo quotes Pelé from his 2007 autobiography:
“But the Nigerians certainly made sure the Biafrans wouldn’t invade Lagos while we were there.” He recalled “a huge military presence on the streets” and protection by the army and police during their stay in Nigeria.
He also said in his book that the Santos’ business manager assured the players that the Nigerian civil war would be stopped for their exhibition match and it wouldn’t be a problem for the authorities.
However, Aiyegbayo notes that Pelé didn’t raise his doubts about the ceasefire story during his 2011 interview with CNN. Read Aiyegbayo's full myth-busting account on the Africa is a Country blog.

author: Ndesanjo Macha