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For Cuba’s transnational families, a little internet goes a long way · Global Voices
Periodismo de Barrio

Illustration: MONK (Periodismo de Barrio). Used with permission.
Gathered around a tablet at a public outdoor wifi hotspot in Cuba's capital city, Havana, a family of six takes turns in front of the screen. They each talk quickly, fearing the call might cut out.
“Brother,” says one man to the man on the screen, “the two pairs of shoes you sent worked for me, but the colored underpants didn't. Remember everything has to be new and white.” The man needs the garments for his initiation as a santo, a devotee of the Santería religion. The brother promises he’ll go out and buy the right things. “There's stuff I still find difficult because of the language,” he says.
Conversations like this can be overheard in wifi parks throughout Cuba. According to the Center of Demographic Studies (CEDEM) at the University of Havana, one in three Cubans has a family member living overseas. CEDEM economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos predicts that by 2030 Cuba will lose more than 40,000 people per year to emigration, out of a population of 10 million.
And in many instances, emigrants are a primary means of financial support for family members who remain in the country. The Miami-based Havana Consulting Group reports that in 2017 US$3.575 million was remitted to Cuba from the United States alone.
Today there are 635 public wireless internet hotspots throughout Cuba, connecting families in unprecedented ways.
At a hotspot located in a park opposite Havana’s Américas Arias Maternity Hospital, dozens of women come and go, looking happy or worried; some talk and laugh on the phone while others cry inconsolably.
“I think I'm going to go on WhatsApp now to tell him that I'm pregnant,” one woman tells another.
Illustration: MONK (Periodismo de Barrio). Used with permission.
In 2017, the Center for Psychological and Sociological Research carried out a study on Cuba's new family dynamics. According to head researcher Milagros Samón, “transnational families” are very common in Cuba, where a family member has emigrated seeking a better quality of life. “Most of the time,” says Samón, “the family member providing money for household and other needs continues to be the head of the family and the primary decision-maker, despite being overseas. These wifi hotspots shorten this distance, which makes these processes more natural.”
In another conversation we overhear in a public wifi park, a junior high school student has just spoken just to her mother.
“She punished me,” she tells her friend. “I can't go to the party on Saturday.”
“But how is she going to punish you when she's away?”
“She controls everything from there.”
The girl relates how her sister sends her mother her grades, and how her mother passes information to her aunt, who comes to the park at night to get online.
“If they find out that I kept quiet they could take the X-box from me. They’re always threatening to take away my phone and games.”
Under a streetlight in another wifi park, 56-year-old Rosa connects with her family through the internet almost every night for 30 minutes. Rosa has one daughter in Miami who regularly visits Cuba, and a son in Texas whom she hasn't seen since 2012.
“Calling my family keeps me healthy,” Rosa says. “When there was no wifi in Cuba I could only talk to them on birthdays or at the end of the year. I missed out on so much.”
Rosa recalls the first time she experienced a video call and saw her son in real time using IMO, a mobile app. They spoke for three hours until the phone battery died.
Rosa says she wanted to take it all in, as if she were there with her son. “Let me see you. Show me your house, the children's bedroom, the food you have in the refrigerator,” she told him. On the call, she laughed to stop herself from crying, because even though she was happy, all she could think about was the moment when her son—who’d left Cuba illegally—would return. In early 2018 the government announced that Cuban citizens who left illegally would be allowed to return, including people who’d defected while abroad, such as doctors and athletes.
In a 2016 Master’s thesis titled “Transnational Motherhood”, sociologist Deborah Betancourt notes that “so-called ‘transnational families’. . . are understood as those family groups that in spite of geographical distance between the emigrant and their family, the relationships are not fractured, but reinforced. Such relationships are based on two elements of great importance: communications media and remittances.”
Photo by Ismario Rodríguez (Periodismo de Barrio). Used with permission.
In 2013, the Ministry of Communications published Resolution No.197/2013, approving the marketing of internet access. Until then, the internet could only be accessed from certain hotels at a rate of more than 4 Cuban convertible pesos (CUC) per hour (US$4).
In 2015, Cuban citizens could finally access wifi hotspots when the Cuban telecommunications service provider Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A. (ETECSA) announced the launch of 35 public hotspots. ETECSA announced last December that mobile internet services would be introduced later this year.
Internet access in Cuba currently costs 1 CUC per hour (US$1) a price that continues to increase in relation to the average Cuban monthly salary of 30 CUC (US$30).
At night in a wifi hotspot park, a woman is frantically circling the area, crying, a cell phone to her ear. She pleads with the person on the other end of the line for more information:
“Where were you? Do you know any of the boys who died? . . . What is the media saying? .  . I haven't seen what that imbecile Trump said, I've only just heard about it.” The conversation is punctuated by screams, sobs, scoldings. “How is someone your age able to get a rifle?. . . I'm going to call you every day. Pass me to your dad, please.”
Later, when we spoke with the woman, we learned that her 17-year-old son lives in Broward County, Florida, where earlier that day, a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took the lives of 17 students. Her son goes to a different high school, but when she heard the news, she panicked. She was desperate to hear her son's voice.
This is an edited version of a story originally published on Periodismo de Barrio.

author: Periodismo de Barrio


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Four women icons of the Syrian revolution · Global Voices
Leila Nachawati Rego

Four revolutionary women found missing or dead in the fight for justice in Syria. Clockwise from top left: Fadwa Suleiman, Razan Zeitouneh, Lama Albasha, May Scaff.
In 2011, Syrians took to the streets to protest for justice. Seven years later, and with more than 500,000 killed, media attention to Syria has dwindled. This is the story of four Syrian women whose personal histories challenge us to not to forget the revolution and what it stands for.
Fadwa Suleiman. Photo by Rami Jarrah. Used with permission.
Fadwa Suleiman, an actress from the city of Aleppo, was one of the most recognizable faces in Syria for years. In 2011, when protests erupted in the city of Homs, she became a revolutionary icon. Surrounded by protesters, the image of Fadwa with short hair and a Palestinian keffiyeh presented a powerful contrast to her glamorous appearance of just months before. Even her voice, whose sweet cadences had seduced a whole generation of Syrians, sounded different as she raised her voice, hoarse with passion, to galvanize the citizens of Homs, asking them to continue the movement of civil disobedience that inspired resistance against what many saw as a growing dictatorship. The fact that she—like Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad—belonged to the Alawite sect challenged the official narrative that aimed to discredit the protests. Fadwa eventually fled to France after the authorities announced their intention to find and capture her dead or alive.
May Scaff. Photo shared on her Facebook page.
May Scaff was also an actress. I remember the look of fascination my partner gave her in the summer of 2008 in Baal's Cave, the Damascene bar that we frequented. “It's May Scaff. I love her,” he told me, making me jealous of the beautiful woman who laughed and danced, surrounded by friends. I told her this story when we finally met in 2013 in Amman, at a meeting of Jordan-based Syrian human rights defenders, and I remember she laughed heartily. Over food and drink, we had long conversations about the present and future of the country, back when we were still hoping for justice. In the last photos of her, nearly seven years after the start of these protests in which she had actively participated, her face had hardened and her hair was almost entirely gray. It was hard to recognise the relaxed beauty of another time.
Razan Zeitouneh. Photo used with permission.
Razan Zeitouneh is a symbol of Justice with a capital J for Syrians abandoned to their fate. A well-known human rights lawyer specialized in human rights, she defends political prisoners and founded the Human Rights Association in Syria. Razan also coordinates the Local Coordination Committees. Her work has made her a target of both Assad's regime and the extremist groups that attempted to hijack the popular uprising. When Syrians imagine a future Syrian Minister of Justice, Razan's name is often mentioned.
The student Lama Albasha. Photo shared by her friends on Twitter.
Lama Albasha was born in 1992 and studied at the University of Damascus. In images her friends shared on social media she’s posing for the camera, wearing a white blouse and white trousers layered with a bubblegum-pink skirt to match her polka-dotted slippers, her hand on her hips. Her sunglasses are perched liked a diadem atop her hijab, a popular look among Syrian women. In another image, she's in the foreground, in dark clothes with a Palestinian keffiyeh around her neck. She is looking at the camera and smiling. I read that she was detained in November of 2014 in the city of Tal, the neighborhood where she sat on one of the local councils set up after the uprising's earliest stages in 2011. She had responded to a call from a woman saying she was interested in private lessons in English which turned out to be a trap. She was captured and turned over to the government's security service.
Three dead, one missing
The actress Fadwa Suleiman died in Paris in August of 2017 after a long battle with an illness. In her last interview, she said: “Even if they erase everything, we must not let them erase our dream. If there's only one Syrian left, I am sure that he or she would build the Syria that we love. Syria isn't a country, it isn't a geographical entity. It's an idea. The noble revolution of the mind and soul that will last in time and space.”
The student Lama Albasha is one of the thousands of names on the infamous ‘death list’, a catalog of those executed or who have died under torture in government prisons. Prisons such as Saydnaya, which Amnesty International described as a ‘human slaughterhouse’. Lama's family learned, on accessing the general security register on July 31, 2018, that she had died years ago in prison, alleged of a heart attack.
The lawyer Razan Zeitouneh has been missing since December 2013. “Those like us who document deaths, we do not cry,” she wrote, before being kidnapped by a group of masked men in Douma in the suburbs of Damascus. Just a few days later, the United Nations announced that it was giving up on counting the victims of war in Syria, citing an inability to keep up.
The actress May Scaff was found dead on July 27, 2018, in the apartment, she shared in Paris, the city where she sought refuge in her final years. “I will not lose hope and I ask you never to lose it,” were her last public words on social media. “Our country is called Great Syria, not Assad's Syria.”
This piece was originally published in Spanish in El Diario. It was translated into English and given additional context by Joey Ayoub.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Leila Nachawati Rego


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Netizen Report: Bangladesh protests trigger mobile network cuts, journalist arrest · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Traffic in Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital. Photo by Mashrik Faiyaz via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Students in Bangladesh are demanding safer roads — and directing traffic — in response to a bus collision that killed two students who were walking beside a busy road on July 29.
Protests began peacefully but turned violent on August 3 when rumors of rape and kidnapping triggered confrontations between police and protesters, with police resorting to tear gas and rubber bullets.
The rumors primarily traveled through WhatsApp groups and coincided with infiltration of protesters by the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the youth arm of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League party.
At the same time, the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission ordered service providers to reduce mobile phone network signals so that only 2G networks were operational. This did not cut off messaging services, but it also made it impossible to share multimedia and live video, which many protesters were using in an attempt to show what actually was happening and to debunk false claims.
Among those who were sharing video online was photojournalist Shahidul Alam, who was covering the protests on Facebook Live. On August 5, plainclothes police officers abducted and later arrested Shahidul. He was beaten while in police custody and later hospitalized.
A deafening boom that interrupted a speech by Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has become the latest cause for media suppression in the country. Multiple mainstream media outlets have since reported that the sound and subsequent panic was caused by a drone carrying explosives, in what may have been an attempt to assassinate Maduro. But local accounts of the details of the incident contradict one another. Journalists have paid a heavy price for trying to find out what really happened — 11 reporters have since been arrested and forced to destroy photos and video taken at the event.
One of Venezuela’s most popular independent news sites, El Pitazo (The Whistle), was taken down for the third time in 11 months. The site is no longer accessible on any of Venezuela’s major internet service provider networks, and its owners have received no notification regarding the ban from telecommunications regulators. The news outlet has created multiple alternate domains in previous instances, but these too have been blocked.
Meanwhile, news outlets that produce print versions are struggling with chronic shortages of newsprint in the country. Caracas Chronicles blog reports that 40 newspapers have discontinued their print editions since 2013. And these days, even pro-government newspapers are finding themselves short on paper.
The Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) changed the routing or pathway of internet protocol addresses for the Telegram messaging app for one hour on July 30. The change sent users’ traffic to the TCI instead of to Telegram’s servers, rendering the app unusable, even when users employed censorship circumvention tools such as virtual private networks.
Targeting and arrests of Instagram users in Iran have also persisted following the May arrests of Instagram celebrities. Eight female Instagram models and 38 behind-the-camera crew members were arrested in the southern Hormozgan province on July 16.
Malaysia’s newly-elected government made big promises to overhaul the country’s outdated and authoritarian laws affecting free speech, but these have yet to come to fruition. While there have been some improvements — news sites like Sarawak Report have been unblocked, and sedition charges against popular cartoonist Zunar have been dropped — old habits die hard. Lawyer and activist Fadiah Nadwa Fikri was summoned by the police in late July for questioning the role of the monarchy in politics on her blog. Fadiah is now under probe for posting allegedly seditious online content.
Alongside Kenya, India, Mexico, the US and dozens of other countries, social media bots and influencers-for-hire are increasingly a necessity for Indonesian political parties. In late July, The Guardian reported that bots and fake accounts were used to influence voters in the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election. Influencers used a range of tactics, from repurposing articles to discredit opponents, to fabricating positive coverage of their candidate, to innocent posts talking about food and music in an effort to make accounts appear “authentic”. Research by CPIG (in Indonesian) on the issue, locally known as the “Buzzer Phenomenon”, highlighted the fact that there are no rules in place to curb such practices by political candidates.
It was revealed in March 2018 that Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL group, had a hand in influencing previous elections in Indonesia. Although there is no evidence that people associated with SCL were involved in the most recent elections, the group’s approach may have had some influence on tactics that were employed this time around.
A report by The Intercept published on August 1 cited interviews and internal documents indicating that Google may soon launch a censored version of its search engine in China. Google left the Chinese market in March 2010 following criticism for complying with the government’s censorship regime. This hasn’t changed — if anything, it has become more stringent — but Google’s priorities apparently have.
Google has offered no specific information on the move to the public, and Chinese authorities have denied that any big changes are on the horizon. US Senators have appealed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai to re-think the move and answer several questions about the company’s intentions, citing China’s human rights record.
Mahsa Alimardani, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Marianne Diaz, Rezwan Islam, Oiwan Lam, Elizabeth Rivera, Juke Carolina Rumuat, Taisa Sganzerla, and Laura Vidal contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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Russians are facing criminal prosecution for sharing memes online, thanks to anti-extremism laws · Global Voices
Christopher Moldes

A meta-meme circulating on Russian social media. COP looking at MEME: “Is this a criminal case?”
Imagine you’re online and you see an amusing Game of Thrones meme likening the resurrection of one of the main characters, Jon Snow, to the resurrection of Christ. Chuckling to yourself, you re-post it on your social media page and promptly forget about it.
A few days later, the police raid your apartment and charge you with extremism. In addition to facing years in prison, you’re frozen out of your bank accounts.
Welcome to the reality that unsuspecting social media users across Russia are now facing as authorities ramp up their campaign against online extremism.
Though prosecutions for online posts are nothing new in Russia, this latest round has attracted special attention because many of them are based exclusively on memes. Daniil Markin, a 19-year-old resident of the town of Barnaul, was recently charged under Article 148 of the Russian Criminal Code, for “insulting the feelings of religious believers” for posting several memes on religious themes, including the aforementioned Jon Snow meme.
As a result of the charges, he has been added to a national register of extremists and had his bank accounts frozen. In an interview with Meduza, Markin said:
Я считаю, что для определенного процента людей это могло показаться оскорбительным, но не настолько, чтобы заводить уголовное дело.
I can see how for some people this could be offensive, but not so much that they could press charges.
Markin’s situation isn’t unique, not even in his city of Barnaul. In a June 23 Twitter thread, fellow Barnaul resident Maria Motuznaya described how a group of policemen came to her apartment with a search warrant, interrogated her about memes she had posted (some of which were racist, others offensive to religious sentiment) and confiscated her phone.
While Motuznaya initially laughed it off, the police taunted her, telling her that another woman had also thought it was a game until she was put behind bars for three years. Motuznaya was later charged with extremism under Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code.
While the memes Markin and Motuznaya posted could easily offend religious sentiments, they did not represent a direct threat, incitement to violence, or promotion of an extremist or violent ideology. And the Russian internet is full of memes like this. So what tipped off authorities? And how did they so swiftly identify Markin and Motuznaya?
Both cases began with tips from a pair of students at a local higher-ed institute. Neither defendant knew these individuals personally. Because of this, Markin feels there’s something more to his prosecution.
Оперативники обнаруживают меня каким-либо образом, предлагают студенткам написать заявления за определенные „плюшки“ на учебе или даже финансовую помощь.
The officers find out about me somehow and suggest that these students file a complaint for extra study “perks” or even financial support.
The situation may be less of a coincidence than it seems. Pressure on police in Russia to weed out extremism has created many situations in which authorities choose a target and then seek out justification for prosecution.
Motuznaya also suggested an ulterior motive during her interrogation. She had previously made several posts about Alexey Navalny, a Russian opposition figure known for his anti-corruption campaigns. It is unclear whether this had any bearing on her arrest.
The theory of memes-as-pretext, however, seems more and more plausible. Just recently, a journalist from the city of Tuva was arrested for posting two articles in 2014 that were accompanied by photos of Adolf Hitler and Nazi youth groups. This journalist had an activist past, as she wrote on issues affecting quality of life in the city and was campaign manager for Ksenia Sobchak, a liberal candidate in the 2018 Russian presidential elections.
Social media companies also play a pivotal role in identifying these memes and the people who post them. Vkontakte, one of the two most popular social networks in Russia, has been under fire for “ratting out” their users to the authorities and readily giving away their personal details for prosecution. Under Russian law, administrators of social networks are obligated to gather and store users’ personal information for six months, and provide access to these materials when requested by the authorities. For years, Vkontakte has been only too eager to comply with such requests.
An avalanche of recent negative coverage of criminal cases against social media users prompted the tech giant Mail.Ru, which owns Vkontakte, to release a statement condemning the practice of jailing people for memes. Observers were quick to point out Mail.ru's hypocrisy.
As Mediazona, an independent online outlet focused on police brutality and political show trials in Russia, put it:
ВК (главный помощник в уголовных делах за репосты) выступил против дел за репостыhttps://t.co/GEqpHzNNWN pic.twitter.com/qMhVWPM4td
— Медиазона (@mediazzzona) August 6, 2018
Vkontakte (which provides most of the assistance in criminal cases for sharing [of memes]) condemns criminal cases for sharing.
Why has Barnaul become such a flashpoint for these types of cases? The regional office of the Investigative Committee, Russia’s main federal investigative agency, has since 2016 been leading a campaign to tackle online extremism among young people. Nationwide, human rights experts estimate that roughly 5000 people have been arrested for sharing some type of “extremist” content online.
In July 2018, a public-service announcement video was released explaining efforts at clamping down on extremist behavior online. The announcement defined this behavior as, among other things, anything promoting separatism, religious discord, or hatred towards others on ethnic or religious grounds.
The video ends with the following appeal:
Ведь человечество — это содружество разных культур, каждая из которых интересна и духовно богата. Нет плохих или хороших, мы — единое целое.
After all, humanity is a community of different cultures, each of which is fascinating and spiritually rich. There aren’t bad or good ones, we are all one united whole.
At face value, this might be a laudable sentiment. But why the sudden interest in meme-based posts? Ilya Shepelin, a correspondent for the independent Russian news outlet Dozhd, explained it this way:
Бюрократия.

Два года назад в Алтайском крае зарегистрировали экстремистских преступлений на 10% меньше, чем следовало. 26 вместо 29. В результате «край оказался в немногочисленной группе регионов, показавших отрицательную статистику по выявлению преступлений».

Просрали цифры, получили нагоняй от федерального министерства — и ух, как взялись за работенку. Ни одной картинки с патриархом и Игрой престолов не пропускают, на всё заводят дела.

И в 2017 году край показал резкий рост «выявленных экстремистских преступлений» почти вдвое больше — на 73%. Теперь седьмое место среди регионов России. Есть чем гордиться.
Bureaucracy.
Two years ago, when the Altai region reported on extremist crimes, they registered 10% less than they should have. 26 instead of 29. As a result, “the region found itself among a small group of regions showing that instances of extremist crimes had fallen.”
They fudged the numbers and got a scolding from the federal ministry, and man, how they went to work. They don’t let a single image of the patriarch or Game of Thrones pass by, they’re pressing charges over everything.
And so in 2017 the region showed a dramatic increase of “instances of extremist crimes”, almost two times more, 73% more. Now they’re seventh among Russia’s regions. Something to be proud of.
The ramifications of these “extremism” charges, which fall under criminal code articles 282 and 148, continue long after one’s sentence has ended. When charged under these articles, an individual is permanently placed on the federal register of terrorists and extremists. Once on the list, one cannot withdraw more than 10,000 rubles (around 150 US dollars) at a time and cannot use their credit or debit cards.
These two consequences combine to create an unsavory third problem: being officially labeled a terrorist makes potential employers extremely hesitant to hire you. And if they do, they are obligated to jump through extra regulatory hoops just to pay taxes related to your employment.
Because of this, those on the list often find themselves punished with poverty and diminishing prospects both in terms of career and even housing. Who would rent to, much less give a mortgage to, an official terrorist or extremist?
As one human rights lawyer put it,
About a quarter of the cases of persecution “for words” under extremist and terrorist articles are criticism of the authorities, separatist propaganda, criticism of the annexation of Crimea and so on. 75% of the rest of the cases are likes and reposts on social media.
With the increase in prosecutions over meme-sharing the issue itself has of course become a meme of its own.
Below, one user employed the “Is this a pigeon?” meme to demonstrate how memes have become the basis for criminal cases:
Теперь как-то так pic.twitter.com/al0ZEUPegA
— Michael Avrinsky (@gsl2k10) 4 августа 2018 г.
Now it’s something like this.
Meme captions: “Me” on the man, “meme” on the butterfly.
Bottom text: Is this a criminal charge?
Another used characters from the sci-fi movie Interstellar, toying with the film’s idea about space travel and time-dilation to reference the surreal situation in Barnaul:
Via Лепра pic.twitter.com/bC8ZtS5Vrz
— Барнаул.фм (@barnaulfm) 8 августа 2018 г.
Background sign: Barnaul.
Bottom text: One meme here is equal to seven years.
Others went for an even more meta approach. Well-known Russian blogger and Twitter user Anatolii Kapustin wanted to draw attention to the fact that memes can lead to jail time now, and created the Twitter account “Text memes you can be jailed for”, which draws on actual memes that have triggered extremism charges and are now being assessed in court.
Kapustin describes image memes in text format, using direct quotes from court documents, as a way to post memes while avoiding criminal charges. Here are a few examples:
Картинка №71: Фотография, на которой изображен патриарх Кирилл, освящающий помещение. Фотография сопровождается текстом: «Патриарх Кирилл привез в центр МВД новейший компьютерный антивирус»
— Текстовые мемы за которые ты сядешь (@text_ments) 3 августа 2018 г.
Image #71: A photograph showing Patriarch Kirill [note: head of the Russian Orthodox Church] blessing a room. Text: “Patriarch Kirill brought the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) the newest anti-virus.
Картинка №61: изображение Сталина и Муссолини, сопровожденное надписью: “Фашизм самая страшная идеология ХХ века”
— Текстовые мемы за которые ты сядешь (@text_ments) 1 августа 2018 г.
Image #61: An image of Stalin and Mussolini with the caption: Fascism is the most terrifying ideology of the 20th century.
Картинка №41: Фотоизображение мужчины негроидной рассы текстом «Да ты же просто робот, имитация жизни. Разве робот может написать симфонию, сделать шедевр?», под которым находится изображение персонажа с текстом «А ты вообще негр.»
— Текстовые мемы за которые ты сядешь (@text_ments) 30 июля 2018 г.
Image #41. A black man with the text “You’re just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony, create a masterpiece?. Below, another character, with the caption: “And you’re just a [racial slur].”
Картинка №33: Изображение мужчины, держащего кроссовок сопровожденное надписью: «в трёхсотый раз повторяю: Нью Бэллансы были созданы специально для Русских националистов!..»
— Текстовые мемы за которые ты сядешь (@text_ments) 30 июля 2018 г.
Image #33: A man holding sneakers with the caption: “For the 300th time, New Balances were created specially for Russian nationalists!”
The range of themes reflected in these memes, from despicably racist to lightheartedly irreverent, demonstrates that the authorities’ anti-meme-extremism campaign is too broadly defined to be effective at actually removing threats and incitement to violence from online platforms.
Even if the anti-extremism campaign’s goals are taken at face value, the fundamental question (here and in many other countries) remains: What role should law enforcement play in ensuring hateful and objectionable content is deleted from social networks?
In the Russian case, with authorities’ reliance on disproportionately harsh jail sentences and seemingly indefinite financial repercussions, it is clear that Vkontakte’s abdication of its role in self-moderation is hurting its users. Rather than handing over users’ data so that authorities can prosecute them for racist and “edgy” memes, the company should be more proactive in monitoring posts and taking down content that can easily be described as offensive, in a consistent, transparent and accountable way.
It wouldn’t be easy, but as the global debate over moderating social networks continues, the alternatives currently available, arrests or rampant toxicity, show that they’ve got to try.

author: Christopher Moldes


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Condemnation of independence activist draws a red line for Hong Kong’s press freedom · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

Foreign correspondents’ club. Hong Kong government photo via HKFP.
This post is a roundup of reports published between August 4 -10, 2018 on Hong Kong Free Press. The republication is based on a partnership agreement.
A recent war of words between Hong Kong's former chief executive and the local Foreign Correspondents’ Club shows how Beijing is forcing Hong Kong journalists, both local and international, to toe its political red line.
The incident began when the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) announced on July 30 that political party leader Andy Chan Ho Tin would be giving a talk at the Club on August 14, entitled “Hong Kong Nationalism: A Politically Incorrect Guide to Hong Kong under Chinese Rule”.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China with more economic and personal freedoms than the mainland, a set-up known as “One Country, Two Systems.” In recent years, Beijing has pressured Hong Kong to pass new laws that strengthen the “One Country” part of the principle.
Soon after, a representative from the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China in Hong Kong visited the FCC and urged them to reconsider the decision.
Chan is the convener of the Hong Kong National Party (HKNP), which advocates for Hong Kong's full independence from China. Last month, the Hong Kong police society registration department issued a legal recommendation to the Security Secretary to ban the HKNP as a political party. Citing the Section 8(1)(a) of Hong Kong's Societies Ordinance, the department said this would be “in the interests of national security, public safety, public order, protection of freedom and rights of others”.
Upon reviewing HKNP's past activities and Andy Chan’s talks, police authorities concluded that HKNP was a threat to national security. The recommendation stated:
The HKSAR Government should not wait until a political movement has recourse to violence before intervening…Even if the political movement has not yet made an attempt to seize power and the danger of its policy is not imminent, the HKSAR Government should take preventive measures as HKNP’s movement has started to take concrete steps in public to implement a goal incompatible with the laws.
Police handed Chan a 900-page dossier detailing his and the party's activities and articulating their proposal to ban the group. Chan must respond to the dossier by September 4.
Announcement for lunch talk by Andy Chan. Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong website.
The visit to the FCC by China's Foreign Ministry was not necessarily an indicator of any problem. Media organizations in Hong Kong are accustomed to receiving “political advice” from Beijing representatives.
But tensions began to escalate when former Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung “CY” Chun-ying stepped in and slammed the FCC for crossing a so-called “red line”:
港獨是絕對的和清晰的紅線，因為主張香港獨立就是主張分裂國家，明顯的侵犯了中國的主權和領土完整。外國記者協會今天請陳浩天講港獨，明天請其他人講台獨、疆獨、藏獨，香港怎麼辦？
Hong Kong independence is clearly and definitely a red line. Advocating Hong Kong independence is equal to advocating the spit up of the country and is an infringement on China’s sovereignty and territorial completeness. Today the FCC invites Andy Chan to talk about Hong Kong independence, tomorrow it could invite others to talk about Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet independence. What would Hong Kong become?
In response to CY Leung's comment about the “red line”, Victor Mallett, the first vice president of FCC, reinstated the value of free speech.
Leung then issued an open letter on Facebook, in which he compared the hosting of Andy Chan to criminal and terrorist activities:
Presumably then you will defend your decision by also arguing that those who oppose Taiwan independence would be given equal opportunity to present their views. Following this logic, you most probably will not draw any line against criminals and terrorists. As I said, we ought to be gravely concerned.
He further claimed that FCC had been paying a “token rent”. In comments, his followers advocated that the Hong Kong government should take back the property.
Leung's claim was rebuked by former FCC board member Francis Moriarty as an ill-informed threat:
Leung is dead wrong about the rent…When I left the FC Board three years ago, we were paying in the vicinity of HKD $550,000 (USD $70,060) per month and were entirely responsible for the historic building's maintenance.
Chris Yeung Kin-hing, chairman of Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKAJ) saw Leung's comment as “blatant political pressure”:
Leung is essentially asking the FCC to cancel the talk by Chan and stop inviting similar guests in future, or else the lease might not be renewed or even be taken back earlier… That’s blatant political pressure.
But CY Leung’s argument has been echoed by many pro-Beijing media outlets and politicians. On August 8, a group of 30 protesters took to the street and demonstrated outside FCC in Central demanding the cancellation of Andy Chan’s talk.
Ex-leader CY Leung says he is not threatening press club over pro-independence speaker, amid fresh protest https://t.co/YtqKSZoVzv @IndexCensorship @IFEX @cnmediaproject #pressfreedom @FCCHK @krislc #hongkong @RSF_eastasia pic.twitter.com/4RoQ31VtbK
— Hong Kong Free Press (@HongKongFP) August 8, 2018
FCC has resisted the political pressure and the talk is still set to take place on August 14. Nevertheless, the political pressure has taken effect on other local media outlets.
The head of the city’s public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong Leung Ka-wing said in a regular meeting on 9 of August that the broadcaster should not be used to advocate Hong Kong independence and banned live streaming of Andy Chan’s speech at FCC. RTHK programme staff union explained that the decision on whether to live-cast an event or not is usually made by section head of different program teams after internal deliberation. It is unusual for the head to hand down a decision in this manner.
More than half of local media owners in Hong Kong also serve on Beijing-appointed government bodies such as the National People’s Congress. Even though there is no law in place to prosecute media outlets for featuring political dissents, the FCC saga sends a strong signal to media owners and their news management teams on where the “red line” lies. The effects are more than chilling.

author: Hong Kong Free Press


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His world was what it was: the enigma of V.S. Naipaul · Global Voices
Nicholas Laughlin

V. S. Naipaul reads at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad in April 2007. (PHOTO: Georgia Popplewell (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
He was the rare literary figure of sufficient notoriety that newspapers had kept draft obituaries on file for decades. When news broke on August 11 that V.S. Naipaul had died at the age of 85, press coverage was swift and voluminous. It was a front-page story in Trinidad and Tobago’s three daily newspapers, the Nobel laureate’s photograph blown up above the headlines.
On the social networks where most of T&T’s public debate now unfolds, some commenters pounced on the detail that the international press described Naipaul as a British writer. “He would have loved that,” was a typical response. For those who disapprove of Naipaul—and he courted disapproval—one longstanding grouse was his supposed disavowal of Trinidad, the island where he was born and grew up. We remember the sting of Naipaul’s statement on receiving the 2001 Nobel Prize: “It is a great tribute to both England, my home, and to India, the home of my ancestors, and to the dedication and support of my agent.” Full stop. So, to be elegised as British: surely that was his wish all along?
V. S. Naipaul's death makes the front pages of all three daily newspapers in Trinidad and Tobago. “For those who disapprove of Naipaul—and he courted disapproval—one longstanding grouse was his supposed disavowal of Trinidad, the island where he was born and grew up.”
But the facts are complicated. Born in a British colony, Naipaul was a British subject when he left Trinidad in 1950, 18 years old, on a hard-won scholarship to Oxford. He was permanently settled in London by the time Trinidad and Tobago became an independent nation in 1962. He was “British” all along, and at the same time he never really belonged in his adopted country. The evidence is plain to read in his books.
Naipaul was “Trinidadian to the core,” says Kenneth Ramchand, the eminent literary scholar. “Trinidad made him. It shaped him, and even when he was vexed with Trinidad, it haunted him throughout his career.” I’d go further and say Naipaul was the most Trinidadian writer Trinidad has produced, in all good and bad ways. “A House for Mr. Biswas” remains the closest thing we have to a Great Trinidadian Novel, with its unsentimental portrait of an Indo-Trinidadian family striving for a sense of coherence and self-determination in a small society “at once exceedingly simple and exceedingly confused.” “The Suffrage of Elvira” is the most valuable primer for anyone trying to understand T&T’s incorrigibly tribal politics (according to no lesser authority than the political theorist Lloyd Best). “The Loss of El Dorado” is still the most bracing and penetrating history of colonial Trinidad. And the picaresque stories of “Miguel Street”, Naipaul’s breakthrough book, have more pervasively influenced subsequent Trinidadian fiction writers than any other text.
Naipaul always portrayed his writing as a quest for self-understanding: “I had to do the books I did because there were no books about those subjects to give me what I wanted.” And “those subjects” are the historical circumstances into which he was born, in the Trinidad of 1932. In the essay “Prologue to an Autobiography”, he offered a summary:
“… there was a migration from India to be considered, a migration within the British empire. There was my Hindu family, with its fading memories of India; there was India itself. And there was Trinidad, with its past of slavery, its mixed population, its racial antagonisms and its changing political life; once part of Venezuela and the Spanish empire, now English-speaking, with the American base and an open-air cinema…. And there was my own presence in England, writing….
“So step by step, book by book … I eased myself into knowledge.”
“I am the sum of my books,” he said. And the self he created in his books was deliberately free of loyalties to anything but writing itself. He strove to achieve “a freedom from people, from entanglements, from rivalries, from competition.” He added: “one doesn’t have a side, doesn’t have a country, doesn’t have a community; one is entirely an individual.” This stance put Naipaul in conflict with many other Caribbean writers, and indeed with many Caribbean readers.
For decades, Caribbean literature has been animated by unresolved arguments about responsibility, language, authenticity — about how to be a Caribbean writer. Naipaul remained aloof from these debates. The relatively good-humoured satire of his early fiction set in Trinidad matured in the 1960s into a sharper, more pessimistic criticism of what Naipaul saw as the pretensions of post-Independence Caribbean societies—“half-made,” inhabited by “mimic men.” As he travelled more widely, he extended his scrutiny to other postcolonial nations in Asia, Africa, and South America. Nowhere did he pull his punches. He was accused of exaggerating the squalor of India, of hostility to Islam. His descriptions of black Caribbean people and Africans often seem to betray racial anxiety, if not outright prejudice.
And in a spirit of serious mischief, he baited his critics with outrageous remarks. In a profile published soon after Naipaul won the Nobel Prize, my colleague Jeremy Taylor listed some memorable slurs:
“Over the years, he has called people monkeys, infies (inferiors), bow-and-arrow men, potato eaters, Mr Woggy. He has described whole countries as ‘bush.’ Oxford University, where he earned his degree in English, was ‘a very second-rate provincial university.’ Africa ‘has no future,’ and as for African literature, ‘you can’t beat a novel out on drums.’ He once recommended that Britain should sell knighthoods through the Post Office (this was before he became Sir Vidia Naipaul).”
Trinidadians ought to recognise these provocations as his version of our very own picong, the mocking, merciless banter perfected by our calypsonians. We should understand his impish public conduct as Naipaul “playing himself,” as Trinidadians describe the performance of a carefully crafted persona that at once masks and reveals. His biographer Patrick French quotes the Barbadian writer George Lamming’s suggestion that Naipaul was “playing ole mas” — “masquerading or making trouble for his own entertainment, a Trinidadian trait.” French adds: “when he was being rude or provocative in this way, Naipaul was full of glee.” This is the irony that exposed the man behind the writer: he was never more Trinidadian than when he was bad-talking Trinidad.
And so the most thoughtful responses to his death have also been the most conflicted. No one can come away from French’s biography “The World Is What It Is” without feeling repulsed by Naipaul’s bigotries, his misogyny, his cruelties aimed at loved ones and strangers alike. But then there are his books, written in prose of beautiful rigour and clarity, their relentless probings sometimes finding an unexpected tenderness.
“No one can come away from [Patrick] French’s biography ‘The World Is What It Is’ without feeling repulsed by Naipaul’s bigotries, his misogyny, his cruelties aimed at loved ones and strangers alike. But then there are his books, written in prose of beautiful rigour and clarity, their relentless probings sometimes finding an unexpected tenderness.”
His lifelong subject was how the unfeeling forces of history — especially the huge movements of peoples between and within cultures, driven by the colonial enterprise — play out in the lives of ordinary people. He was fascinated by the making and remaking of the individual demanded by these dislocations. His family, the island of his birth, the far-flung places he travelled to, and his own misunderstandings and illusions were equally apt for scrutiny. And his books, at their best, give us portraits of our societies and ourselves which we can’t deny, even when we’d prefer to. There are books of Naipaul’s I hope never to read again, and books of his without which I can’t understand the world I was born into.
“Everything of value about me is in my books.” That may be the truest sentence Naipaul wrote. It’s not a question of whether the work justifies the sins of the man. That is too simple an equation. The power and, yes, the beauty of his writing is in some way the product of the writer’s flaws, and also in some way transcends those flaws, without absolving them. The moral algebra of art is difficult, and it should trouble us. There is no better example than the books of V.S. Naipaul. It is one of the reasons—the great reason—I feel compelled to read him.
Nicholas Laughlin edited a revised and expanded edition of V.S. Naipaul's early family correspondence, Letters Between a Father and Son (2009).
(Feature image by Faizul Latif Chowdhury, via Wikimedia Commons).

author: Nicholas Laughlin


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In Pakistan’s elections, animals were tortured for the sake of political stunts · Global Voices
R Umaima Ahmed

A dog was wrapped up in the banner of a political party and shot. Screenshot of a video uploaded on Facebook by the page Innocent Pets Shelter Welfare Society.
Activists in Pakistan tortured animals during and after the 25 July 2018 general elections in efforts to make political stunts, images shared the online show.
People were seen painting, beating and even killing animals that have been dressed to represent political opponents in a campaign that had already been marred by violence. Separate bomb attacks targeting political rallies claimed the lives of more than 150 people leading up the vote on July 25.
Former cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan is due to become Pakistan's next prime minister after his party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (“Pakistan Movement for Justice”, known as PTI) secured a majority of seats on the polls, defeating the former rulers of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
In a video [Warning: graphic content] that went viral on July 27, a dog wrapped with PTI flag is seen being shot three times by a man carrying the flag of the Qaumi Watan Party (QWP), while surrounded by what seems to be other supporters of the losing candidate.
Following the reactions on social media, the police of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province arrested two suspects in the city of Bannu, where the video was recorded, and later released a confession by the two men.
Responding within 12 hours, #Bannu Police worked throughout the night to arrest 2 culprits at 6:45am involved in torturing, killing the animal and making video of it. #KPPolice thanks Social Media users for raising the issue. pic.twitter.com/0SDSYEgAu9
— KP Police (@KP_Police1) July 28, 2018
The Prevention of Cruelty of Animals Act enacted in 1890 was amended earlier this year to include higher fines and up to three months prison time. This was the first time the updated punishments were applied.
The losing contender, whose photo is displayed on the party flag carried by the shooters, has since released a video (in Pashto, a language spoken by 15 percent of Pakistan's population) condemning the act and stating he has no connection with the men in the video.
He has also entertained the possibility of the video having being staged by his opponents to discredit him and demanded an investigation.
QWP candidate from Bannu in his video message said that the forceful change in the elections result and rigging hasn't made him as upset as that video by unknown cruel person shooting a dog with PTI flag pretending yo me his supporter. https://t.co/lSYiowwniF
— ارشد آفریدی (@Arshad_Afridi) July 27, 2018
On another photo that also made the rounds on Twitter, a man is seen holding a crow by its feet as a crowd celebrates the local victory of the PPP:
The anti PPP politician Arbab Rahim, is called “black crow” by PPP supporters due to his dark complexion.
In these photo PPP supporters are celebrating PPP's win by killing/torturing the crow. @imtiazchandyo pic.twitter.com/FFhA8QKB7T
— Qadeer Sarki (@QadeerSarki1) July 27, 2018
In Karachi, people wrote a rival candidate's name on a donkey and beat up the animal. Following heated social media reactions, the Foundation for Animal Rescue team took the donkey to their shelter, where he was named ‘Hero’.
With the upcoming elections looming upon us, no one is spared from the wrath of this time…not even the most helpless of animals. This is a hate crime. A #donkey beaten to pulp, punched in the face and abdomen several times, nose broken, kicked all ove.. https://t.co/OIKM2oRSuu pic.twitter.com/it2Fgct9DT
— ACF Animal Rescue (@ACFAnimalRescue) July 16, 2018
The donkey, unfortunately, didn't survive the beating.
Our Hero just passed away.
He was doing a lot better until yesterday, he managed to stand up on his own, eat powdered food although he had a broken jaw, and drink water on his own. He had been on IV drips, multivitamins and antibiotics. His external wo.. https://t.co/phhh7DKwiR pic.twitter.com/6MEI0Xitvy
— ACF Animal Rescue (@ACFAnimalRescue) July 23, 2018
Many people have expressed anger on social media overall the animal cruelty. Lawyer Yasser Latif Hamdani tweeted:
I would be incredibly proud of this country if the Chief Justice of Pakistan for once did the right thing and took Suo motu notice of the cruel inhumane killings of animals during and after this election campaign.
— Yasser Latif Hamdani (@theRealYLH) July 28, 2018
In the country's previous election, in 2013, a white tiger that was frequently paraded at the rallies of Mariam Nawaz — the daughter of Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N leader — died by heat exhaustion.
In this year's poll, a candidate of the PML-N has also paraded a lion in his constituency, also drawing criticism.
In an interview with Global Voices, Naeem Abbas, Advocacy Manager for the Brookes Pakistan, pondered on the reasons why abusers are not punished:
Animals have always been abused but this is the first time police have taken action in an animal abuse case. Also, we have a culture in which if someone is caught they get away by paying a bribe.

author: R Umaima Ahmed


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Lebanon ramps up interrogations of online activists · Global Voices
Timour Azhari

A July 24 demonstration against social media arrests in Lebanon. Photo by Hasan Shaaban, used with permission.
Lebanese security agencies are ramping up the interrogation and censorship of online activists and journalists over social media posts, and sparking renewed debate over the limits to freedom of speech in the country.
Over the past few weeks, at least 10 activists were interrogated by Lebanese security agencies, eight of them by the Internal Security Forces’ Cybercrimes Bureau, over Facebook and Twitter posts. This compares to 18 people summoned by the agency in the six years between 2010-2016, according to research by Social Media Exchange, a local NGO that works on internet policy.
Though Lebanese law contains protections for freedom of expression and freedom of the press, insulting the president, the Lebanese Army, religion or the flag can result in up to a three-year prison sentence and heavy fines. Slander, libel and defamation laws have also increasingly been used by politicians and representatives of big businesses to question and prosecute activists and crack down on critical online speech.
In most of these cases, the subject matter of the offending posts included calls for online activism, jokes or sarcastic comments about religious figures, and alleged criticism of the president and other politicians.
On July 17, activist and blogger Imad Bazzi was called in for interrogation by the bureau, over a post calling for online activism against the controversial Lancaster Eden Bay resort. The seaside developments project has been heavily criticized over the legally dubious manner of its construction and subsequent opening, on what is by Lebanese law designated as public land.
I received a phone call from Cyber-crimes bureau calling me in for investigation this Friday because of a facebook post on Eden Bay! an illegal resort built on public property. Welcome to #Lebanon land of free speech :)
— Imad Bazzi (@TrellaLB) July 17, 2018
After initially postponing the interrogation due to surgery, Bazzi was called in once again and attended his interrogation on July 27, refusing to sign a pledge committing not to criticize Eden Bay again, he told local news channel LBCI.
Maj. Gen. Albert Khoury, the head of the Cybercrimes Bureau, told LBCI that Bazzi had been summoned based on a complaint filed by representatives of the resort, who alleged he had caused indirect damages to its reputation. Bazzi had suggested to his followers to post negative online reviews of the resort, in what Ayman Muhana, the director fo SKeyes, described as legitimate online activism.
Journalist Mohammad Awwad was detained and questioned by General Security on July 20 over Facebook posts reported to be critical of politicians and religious leaders.
The Daily Star quoted Awwad as saying the officials included President Michel Aoun, the head of the Higher Shiite Council, the Sunni Grand Mufti and the Maronite patriarch. Awwad claimed that he had not addressed any of these officials in his recent posts, and said he was not informed of which posts exactly he was interrogated for, nor was he told who had filed the complaint against him.
“Social media websites are the only platforms of freedom available to us. If they are that bothered by it, let them shut down the internet in the whole country,” he was quoted as saying.
Facebook user Khaled Aboushy was interrogated on July 24 by the Lebanese Army Intelligence over an image he shared depicting President Aoun and his two son-in-laws Gebran Bassil and Chamel Roukoz -both prominent politicians- next to the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and his two sons Bassel and current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Aboushy captioned the post “whats the difference?”
Aboushy told SKeyes he was beaten upon his arrest and held for two days, only being released after signing a pledge not to criticize Aoun or Bassil again.
The pledges interrogators at the Cybercrimes Bureau often try to get activists to sign are widely reported to have no legal basis.
The Internal Security Forces’ Cybercrimes Bureau is the avenue through which most of these interrogations take place.
Established in 2006 to strengthen the Lebanese state’s online security capabilities in the digital age, the Cybercrimes Bureau has caused controversy over its apparent arbitrary enforcement of aged laws dating back to the 1943 Penal Code.
Many activists are being interrogated on the basis of articles 473 and 474 of that legal text, which say that anyone who ”disparages” the name of god or religion can be imprisoned for between one month and several years.
A March 2016 report by a Lebanese NGO focused on freedom of expression, the Samir Kassir Foundation’s Center for Media and Cultural Freedom (SKeyes), said the agency’s conduct often amounts to censorship of free speech.
Addressing how the Penal Code is used by the agency to target online speech, the report notes:
The law is being applied online, where the audience of defamatory speech has been multiplied by literal millions and any post, comment or even ‘share’ online can be deemed defamatory if the complainant is powerful enough and alerts the ISF
[…]
While Lebanon does not have explicit, stand-alone anti-cybercrime or anti-terrorism laws, the anti-defamation articles fulfill a similar purpose of both directly targeting activists and dissidents and, by using these cases to set an example, intimidating online journalists, bloggers and Internet users from speaking about certain subjects, thus paving the way for self-censorship and the chilling of speech.
SKeyes estimates that, over the past two years, arrests targeting activists and journalists increased threefold from 10 per year to 30.
Rights groups say the bureau’s censorship role has been particularly evident in recent weeks, with a flurry of activists being detained, forced to delete posts and sign pledges to refrain from publishing “slanderous” content again and, in one case, being prohibited from making any online statements for a month.
Jad Shahrour of the Center for the Defense of Media Freedoms in Beirut told Aljazeera that crackdowns on freedom of expression have been on the rise since Aoun’s term began in late 2016 and that 60 percent of activists interrogated by authorities were summoned following complaints from President Aoun and the FPM party, which has the largest bloc in parliament.
Online activist and comedian Charbel Khoury was briefly detained on July 20 over a sarcastic joke on the medical miracles performed by St. Charbel, a religious figure revered by many in Lebanon.
The activist was released after signing a pledge not to address religion in his posts and deactivate his Facebook account for a month. The complaint against Khoury was filed by a religious organization, the Catholic Media Center, The Daily Star reported.
In a related case, journalist with local Arabic-language daily Al-Akhbar, Joy Slim, was interrogated by the bureau over a joke she made on Khoury’s post. In a column for the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, she wrote about what she described as a “dystopian” experience at the hand of the authorities:
لم يكن ينقص التحقيق معي في مكتب مكافحة جرائم المعلوماتية إلا كاهناً ومذبحاً. أخذ الضباط في قوى الأمن الداخلي الذين حققوا معي على عاتقهم محاولة إعادتي إلى طريق الخلاص المسيحي. من أول الأسئلة التي طُرحت عليّ في التحقيق الذي استمرّ خمس ساعات، هو إذا كنت «معمدّة» (حاصلة على رتبة العماد)، إذ يبدو برأيهم أن أحداً لا يكتب نكتةً في موضوع ديني، إلا إذا كانت تسكنه «أرواحٌ شريرة».
Only a priest and an alter were missing from my interrogation at the Cybercrimes Bureau. The ISF officers who interrogated me troubled themselves and tried to return me to the Christian path of salvation. During the interrogation that lasted five hours, among the first questions were whether I was ”baptised”, as according to them no one writes a joke about religion unless they are inhabited by ”devil spirits”.
On July 24, two activists were summoned on the same day as a hundreds-strong public protest that took place in downtown Beirut, against the increased crackdown on online speech, under the banner “Against Repression.”
“I was brought up in a family where we used to talk about how all the Arab writers who were being oppressed would to come to Beirut for asylum,” Mariam Majdoline, one of the organizers, was quoted as saying by The Daily Star.
“You cannot bring us up with a mentality of freedom and then try to oppress us.”

author: Timour Azhari


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Romania’s paediatrician shortage crisis signals red flags about its healthcare system · Global Voices
Nevena Borisova

А typical Romanian general hospital building. This one is in the city of Roman, in the East of the country. Photo by Andrei Stroe, via Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0.
Since joining the European Union (EU) in 2007, Romania has been grappling with a huge emigration flow of medics, with child health care bearing the brunt of the widening gap of human capital.
Several hospitals in towns outside the capital Bucharest operate with only one pediatrician on duty. When they take a vacation, the unit has to shut down because replacements are ever harder to come by.
According to the Romanian Institute of Statistics data in 2017 and 2016, the number of doctors in the country only slightly increased since 2015. Most are not willing to take the pay cut or work with less-than-adequate equipment of countryside clinics. Instead, they prefer to work in larger cities or consider multiple offers for work abroad.
Romania's medical expenses per capita are already the lowest in the EU, while its infant mortality rate is the highest. The country is followed on both counts by Bulgaria, which also joined the EU in 2007 and faces similar trends with human capital flight.
In 2016, nearly 10 deaths per 1,000 live births were reported in Romania — a significant drop from 15 deaths per 1,000 live births recorded in 2003, but still well above the EU average rate of 3.7 per 1,000 live births.
Ioana Moldovan, a documentary photojournalist who reported on the pediatrician shortage, wrote on her website last year:
Romania has a population of almost 20 million. Doctors in rural areas are outnumbered by peers in cities two to one, while half of the population lives in the countryside. The health care sector is overrun with crises and never ending problems. In 27 years since the anticommunist revolution of 1989 the country has had at least 25 health ministers take office. None has so far managed to get Western care standards for patients.
In a statement for Global Voices, Dr. Constantin Giosanu, a pediatrician and coordinator with the IMED Foundation, acknowledges that most public hospitals in Romania receive financial resources from government funds, but:
…not as much as needed for proper work, the amounts come late and sometimes are inadequately used by the managers of those hospitals.
To make matters worse, Romania is also suffering the lowest proportion of nurses and midwives per head in Europe. They often work in hospitals without basic supplies, and specific treatment cannot be implemented unless patients provide the supplies.
Such stressful conditions and low salaries have led to bribery as a common occurrence in state hospitals. Patients have been known to give money or other “presents” to doctors and nurses to secure the care they need to survive.
In 2016, 77 oncologists in the country were charged with bribery for prescribing specific cancer drugs to patients in exchange for a holiday to India, according to an analysis by OpenDemocracy.
The city of Tulcea, with a population of over 70,000 people, only has 361 doctors, ranking near the bottom in Romania numbers of doctors per capita.
In August 2016, dozens of parents organized a protest over the desperate conditions of the pediatrics unit of their county hospital. Serving around 200,000 people, from Tulcea and its nearby villages, the hospital has only one pediatrician and the unit has to close whenever he is on vacation.
In 2017, the unit remained shut for nearly a year due to the total absence of qualified doctors. At the beginning of 2018, a pediatrician was finally employed and activity resumed, but with only one specialist on staff, families still have to wait for hours with their children for service.
Also in 2017, the hospital announced a shortage of doctors in all specialties. There were 33 positions open at the time, but no one had expressed interest.
Tulcea hospital manager Tudor Năstăsescu described the situation for ZF media:
Situaţia este exact ca în restul ţării. Avem probleme în toate specializările. Noi scoatem la concurs şi încercăm să ne comportăm bine cu oamenii care vin, să nu fie un stres în plus pentru ei, le plătim o chirie, dar nu mai interesează pe nimeni. Eu primesc lunar oferte de a lucra în străinătate.
The situation is exactly the same like in the rest of the country… We organize a contest, and try to behave well with the people who come, not to cause any extra stress for them. We offer to pay their rent, but they do not care anymore. I receive monthly offers to work abroad myself.
The situation is similar in other counties like Calarasi, Giurgiu, and Ialomita. Meanwhile, over 12,500 or 22 percent of all doctors in the country work in the capital city of Bucharest.
A similar history happened with the Drăgăşani Municipal Hospital in the western county of Valcea when it had to close their pediatrics section in July 2017 after the only pediatrician in the hospital took a paid leave for two weeks. With only two working ambulances in Drăgăşani, the community faced a high risk of becoming stranded in the case of an emergency.
How will Romania find its way out of this crisis? Dr. Giosanu has an idea:
I think it is up to the doctors and the press to educate [for long term] the population and patients to stop accepting corruption, poor health management, poor health services. In this way, the system will develop the same as the one in Western Europe.

author: Nevena Borisova


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The capture of Mozambique’s notorious criminal Nini Satar meets sceptical public reaction · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

During his first day back behind bars, Nini said that he would get out soon | First page of SAVANA, 3 August 2018 | Photo taken by the author
This case centers on Momade Assife Abdul Satar, better known as Nini, one of those sentenced for the killing in November 2000 of Carlos Cardoso, a Mozambican journalist who exposed a government corruption scandal and founder of the country's first journalist cooperative.
Nini's conditional release was revoked and an international arrest warrant was issued by Maputo City’s Judicial Court which was used to detain him in Thailand, on 25 July 2018.
He got a conditional release in September 2014 after completing half of his 24-year sentence. One of the reasons given by the prison management for recommending his conditional release was that he had shown remorse for his crimes.
But according to a communique released by the Attorney General's Office in 2017, Nini led a criminal organization and kidnapped Mozambicans with the intention of demanding huge amounts of money.
During his time outside the cells, Nini constantly posted on Facebook messages criticizing Mozambique’s justice system, as well as some political figures.
TV analyst Tomás Vieira Mário said that he did not understand the reasons which led to Nini’s release, and he even considered such a decision to be a failure of Mozambique’s justice system:
O que é comportar-se bem? Quer dizer o que precisamente? Quais são os referendos que são usados para alguém com crimes dessa natureza poder sair em liberdade condicional e depois mais tarde autorizar-se lhe que vá para o estrangeiro em termos mais ou menos indefinidos.
What is behaving well? What does that mean exactly? What are the choices taken which are used for somebody with crimes of this nature to be able to get out on conditional release and later be authorized to go abroad on more or less indefinite terms.
Return to prison
After his arrest in Thailand, he was found to be in possession of a false passport under the name Sahime Mohammad Aslam.
South African press reported that Nini is also involved in kidnapping cases, but this has yet to be confirmed by Mozambican authorities who are still waiting for an official statement from the South African government.
Although authorities have not discussed details, it is known that kidnapping is prominent in the charges which should once again bring Nini to the dock.
It should be noted that, in relation to these cases, a public prosecutor and defendants accused of direct or indirect involvement have already been murdered.
In a video uploaded to Youtube, one could see the moment when Nini left Bangkok airport to be extradited to Maputo:
On social media, Nini’s capture and extradition sparked debate, in particular many questioned the reasons behind his release in 2014 and his fugitive status, since Nini repeatedly made public appearances. Jenny Baptista, Facebook user, remarked:
Que notícia mais estúpida! Estava mesmo foragido o Nini Satar que quase diariamente postava de tudo no Facebook e algumas vezes com localização? Ja não sabem o que inventar?
What stupid news! Nini Satar was really a fugitive that posted everything almost daily on Facebook and sometimes with the location? They don’t know what to make up anymore?
Caliste Meque Meque, member of Renamo (main opposition party), even questioned if Nini could be considered a fugitive, as it was the Mozambican courts that approved his release:
Nini Satar saiu em liberdade condicional no dia 5 de Setembro de 2014, depois de cumprir metade da pena de 24 anos, em conexão com o assassinato do jornalista Carlos .Senhora procuradora, alguém em liberdade condicional é um fugitivo?
Nini Satar came out on conditional release on 5 September 2014, after completing half of the 24 year sentence, in relation to the murder of the journalist Carlos. Ms Prosecutor, is somebody on conditional release a fugitive?
Some, such as Eduardo Domingos, student at Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), used Nini’s capture to remind Mozambique’s political leaders to arrest other bigger and dangerous criminals working in the government.
O criminoso mais perigoso de Moçambique é aquele que endividou o país e a justiça tem medo de lhe prender. Criminoso mais perigoso de Moçambique é aquele que sem escrupulo diz que se tiver oportunidade faria dívidas ocultas outra vez para si e sua família.
Quem atormenta a justiça dum Estado e todas suas instituições esse sim é criminoso mais perigoso de Moçambique. O criminoso mais perigoso de Moçambique é aquele que mata nos hospitais centenas e centenas de pessoas por falta de medicamentos. Criminoso mais perigoso de Moçambique é aquele que condenou a desnutriçao cronica a 45% das nossas criancas.
Mozambique’s most dangerous criminal is one who puts the country in debt and is not ordered arrested by the courts. Mozambique’s most dangerous criminal is who, with no scruples, says that if he has the opportunity he would take hidden debts again for his family.
He who torments the justice system of the state and all its institutions is Mozambique’s most dangerous criminal. Mozambique’s most dangerous criminal is one who kills hundreds and hundreds of people in hospitals due to lack of medicines. Mozambique’s most dangerous criminal is one who condemns 45 percent of our children to chronic malnutrition.
Meanwhile, one Twitter user cited Nini's arrest in Thailand as a failure of the police in Mozambique and South Africa to capture the wanted man:
#Pakistani kidnapping kingpin Nini Satar operating in #Mozambique and #SouthAfrica arrested and being interrogated in Thailand. Mozambique and South African police failed to arrest him. This is what you call a professional police unit. pic.twitter.com/pOkMkul0o6
— Zamaanie (@Zamaanie) 2 août 2018

author: Dércio Tsandzana


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A Brazilian animation about drag queens is singled out, criticized on moral grounds · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

The animation Super Drags recounts the story of three youths who transform into drag queens by night. | Image: Netflix/ Public
In late May 2018, Netflix announced plans to launch Super Drags, the first animation produced in Brazil. The story features three youths who work in a department store during the day and by night transform into drag queen superheroes.
Fans expressed excitement, but various conservative groups targeted the series with fake news about its content. According to a report by O Estado de São Paulo, one social media user accused the cartoon of “provoking homosexuality (sic) in children” and “making apologies for lesbianism (sic) and other sexual practices.”
Netflix produces other animated series for adults such as BoJack Horseman and Rick and Morty, but Super Drags was the first to spark controversy.
The Brazilian Paediatrics Society (Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria–SBP) published an official statement condemning the animation, saying that it “regards with concern” that Super Drags’ will be available to children on Netflix:
A SBP respeita a diversidade e defende a liberdade de expressão e artística no País, no entanto, alerta para os riscos de se utilizar uma linguagem iminentemente infantil para discutir tópicos próprios do mundo adulto, o que exige maior capacidade cognitiva e de elaboração por parte dos espectadores.
SBP respects diversity and defends freedom of expression and art in the country, however, it warns of the risks of using clearly childlike language to discuss topics which belong to the adult world, which requires greater cognitive capacity and processing on the part of spectators.
The Federal Public Prosecutor (MPF) also asked Netflix not to list the series in the children’s category, citing its duty to “the protection of individual inalienable rights, broad or collective,” of children and adolescents.
However, Netflix never said the animation would be made available to children on its platform. O Estado do São Paulo published a piece to clear up the rumors to which Netflix reiterated:
Super Drags é uma série de animação para uma audiência adulta e não estará disponível na plataforma infantil. A seção dedicada às crianças combinada com o recurso de controlar o acesso aos nossos títulos faz com que pais confiem em nosso serviço como um espaço seguro e apropriado para os seus filhos. As crianças podem acessar apenas o nosso catálogo infantil e colocamos o controle nas mãos dos pais sobre quando e a que tipo de conteúdo seus filhos podem assistir.
Super Drags is an animated series for an adult audience and will not be available on the children’s platform. The section dedicated to children comes with the ability to control access to our programs which allows parents to trust our service to be a safe and appropriate space for their children. Children can only access our children’s category and we put the control in the hands of the parents over when and what type of content their children can watch.
Netflix emphasized that “questions of inclusion and diversity are extremely important” to the company, and it will launch the series later in 2018.
Brazillian netizens claim Super Drags had been singled out:
Se Super Drags é um desenho pra adultos pq a Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria está se incomodando? pic.twitter.com/B2hXiUrcer
— Carne de Segunda ?? (@carnedesegundaa) 20 de julho de 2018
If Super Drags is a cartoon for adults why is the Brazilian Paediatrics Society worrying itself?
engraçado, a sociedade brasileira de pediatria deveria então tentar barrar todos os desenhos para adultos que existem no netflix né? mas escolheram só a super drags pq será em? ???
— gabiol (@gabiol) 20 de julho de 2018
Funny, the Brazilian Paediatrics Society should, then, try to block all the cartoons for adults that are on Netflix, right? But they chose only the super drags because?
Twitter user Não Me Kahlo recalled older cartoons that were never targeted for censorship:
A Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria (SBP) “vê com preocupação o anúncio de estreia de um desenho animado cuja trama gira ao redor de jovens que se transformam em drag queens super-heroínas”. O desenho é o “Super Drags”, da @NetflixBrasil, uma animação para ADULTOS.
Also: ? pic.twitter.com/3d0ORya9pz
— Não Me Kahlo (@NAOKAHLO) 20 de julho de 2018
The Brazilian Paediatrics Society (SBP) “regards with concern the announcement of the debut of an animated cartoon whose plot revolves around youths who transform into drag queen super heroines”. The cartoon is “Super Drags”, from @NetflixBrasil, an animation for ADULTS.
Also:?
Prejudices against the series may be linked to deeply ingrained attitudes about gender expression within Brazilian society.
While some critics recognize the difference between drag culture as performance versus deeper debates about gender identity, the series touches a nerve regarding the nation's attitude toward lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI).
Brazil has one of the highest rates of reported violence against LGBTI people. According to the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals of Brazil, 179 transgender and cross-dressing people were murdered in Brazil in 2017.
In an interview with Nexo Journal, psychologist Desirèe Monteiro Cordeiro, who works with the Transdisciplinary Clinic for Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation, said she agrees with the need to protect children from sexually explicit and violent content but that criticism of the series has more to do with taboos:
Os rapazes se transformam em drags e ganham superpoderes. O Super-Homem também põe uma fantasia para combater o crime e isso não é uma questão (…) Se ainda não se sabe nada sobre a série, por que essa retaliação? Isso é censura. Se a criança não dormir às 20h e assistir à novela, ela também vai estar exposta a sexo e violência. É um conteúdo que não é pensado para a criança.
The boys transform into drags and get superpowers. Superman also puts on a costume to combat crime and this is not in question (…) If you still do not know anything about the series, why this reaction? This is censorship. If a child does not go to sleep at 20:00 and watches a soap opera, they will also be exposed to sex and violence. It is content which is not aimed at children.
Cordeiro also highlighted the importance of discussing gender and sexuality with children in a relaxed way:
Falar de identidade de gênero e sexualidade, homossexuais, travestis, transexuais, nas escolas ou onde quer que seja, não significa que tem alguém ali tentando incutir na cabeça das crianças que a diversidade sexual é linda e todo mundo tem que ser também.
(…)
Não é comum, mas existem crianças transexuais. Nesse caso, os outros pais devem conversar porque, no caso de uma escola, as crianças vão questionar. E geralmente elas lidam de um modo muito mais simples. Elas olham e perguntam se é menino ou menina. Dada a resposta, a vida segue e elas vão brincar.
Discussing gender identity and sexuality, homosexuality, crossdressing, transgenders, in schools or wherever you want it to be, does not mean that there is somebody there trying to instill in the children’s heads that sexual diversity is beautiful and that everybody also has to be like that.
(…)
It is not common, but there are transgender children. In this case, the parents must talk because in the school context, children will ask questions. And generally they deal with it in a much simpler way. They look and ask if they are a boy or a girl. Given the response, life continues and they go to play.

author: Fernanda Canofre


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Facebook bans 196 pages in Brazil, attempting to rein in abuse and disinformation · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

An advertising campaign by Facebook, urging users to avoid “fake” accounts, seen in Chicago, US. Photo by Kevin Tao via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
On July 25, 2018, Facebook banned 196 pages and 87 profiles based in Brazil, several of which were associated with the conservative group Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement, or MBL), which has played a pivotal role in the rise of online conservatism in Brazil. The pages had a combined total of 500,000 followers.
Shortly thereafter, MBL published a note calling the removals “arbitrary” and accusing Facebook of exercising a political bias against “right-wing leaders and institutions”.
The move comes as Facebook continues to face condemnation and threats of regulatory restrictions in the US, India and the EU, where allegations of disinformation and political agendas promoted by fake accounts reached a tipping point in early 2018. Just last week, the company removed multiple pages associated with the right-wing conspiracy theorist website InfoWars from its platform, reasoning that the website disseminates false information and encourages hate speech, both of which stand in violation of Facebook's policies. Major platforms including Apple and YouTube took similar measures on the same day, citing a similar rationale.
This is not the first time MBL has found itself at odds with Facebook's policies. In May, Facebook partnered with two fact-checking agencies in Brazil, Aos Fatos and Agência Lupa, both part of International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). Facebook’s move was met with a campaign by MBL, who called the move “an attack on freedom of expression”. They proceeded to discredit the agencies reputations and sharing personal posts and data off their staff in an effort to prove their “leftist bias”.
In an official statement following the removals in Brazil, Facebook claimed the decision to delete the accounts came after “a rigorous investigation” and that the pages and profiles were part of “a coordinated network that hid under the use of fake accounts and kept from the people the true nature and origin of its content with the purpose of generating divisiveness and spread misinformation”. The note continues:
As ações que estamos anunciando hoje fazem parte de nosso trabalho permanente para identificar e agir contra pessoas mal intencionadas que violam nossos Padrões da Comunidade. Nós estamos agindo apenas sobre as Páginas e os Perfis que violaram diretamente nossas políticas, mas continuaremos alertas para este e outros tipos de abuso, e removeremos quaisquer conteúdos adicionais que forem identificados por ferir as regras.
The actions we are announcing today are part of our ongoing work to identify and act against ill-intended people that violate community standards. We are acting only against pages and profiles that have violated our policies, but we will continue to watch for other types of abuse, and we will remove any additional content that we identify as having violated our rules.
MBL was at the forefront of the demonstrations in 2015 calling for the impeachment of ex-President Dilma Rousseff and represents a key player in the rise of conservative, right-wing political views in Brazil over the past five years.
The movement's growth over the past four years has accelerated thanks to Facebook, where MBL has more than 2.8 million followers.
Despite having described itself as a liberal movement – which in Latin America mainly means defending minimal government – MBL has consistently taken conservative stances, for example positioning itself against the legalization of abortion and education policies regarding gender in school.
An in-depth 2015 report by Agencia Publica identified an association between MBL and the US-based libertarian organization, Students for Liberty, in what appears to have allowed Students for Liberty to receive donations from US groups including the Koch brothers.
One especially prominent example of MBL's online disinformation tactics emerged after the March 2018 murder of Rio de Janeiro city Councilwoman Marielle Franco, who was an outspoken advocate for human rights protections and criminal justice reform.
False rumors that Franco had been involved with drug trafficking groups started to spread through the internet just a day after her death.
A crucial node in this groundswell of fake news was an article published by Ceticismo Político, a relatively small right-wing website with 25,000 followers on Facebook. MBL, with its million-strong following base, shared Ceticismo’s publication, boosting its reach into the hundreds of thousands of shares on Facebook and millions of impressions on Twitter.
At the time, Facebook banned Ceticismo Político’s page, but didn’t touch MBL’s. While MBL denied any ties with Ceticismo Político’s owners, an investigation by O Globo newspaper suggested that the groups were in constant communication with each other.
Facebook provided MBL with fertile ground for amplifying and spreading these lies. As journalist Denis R. Burgierman observed in a piece for Nexo, Facebook's technology rewards and amplifies speech that seems to spark interest — even if that “interest” is not authentic:
Só que essa estratégia é imperfeita porque o algoritmo pode ser enganado: com dinheiro, movimentos sociais podem ser falsificados. Uma maneira de fraudar o Facebook é criar um ecossistema falso: centenas de páginas e perfis que na verdade estão todos sob um mesmo comando, e que compartilham conteúdos ao mesmo tempo, para se fingir de multidão. Isso é um jeito de ludibriar o algoritmo, fabricando a sensação de que algo interessa a muita gente…
The problem is that this strategy is imperfect, because the algorithm can be tricked: with money, social movements can be faked. One way of fraud it is to create a false ecosystem: hundreds of pages and profiles, that are actually under the same command, sharing content all at the same time, to pretend a crowd is doing it. This is one way of cheating the algorithm, fabricating the feeling that a topic interests a lot of people…
When Facebook changed its the algorithm in late 2017 in an effort to give preference to personal posts instead of commercial pages, MBL felt its engagement falling. In March, a report by O Globo newspaper revealed that the group was using an app called Voxer to share its content inside the network. Voxer created post in personal timelines as if they were spontaneous. The app was banned by Facebook after for violating its rules.
After a federal prosecutor demanded the information from Facebook, the company published a list of all the usernames and pages that it banned in this recent effort on August 6.
Pablo Ortellado, a philosopher and professor at University of São Paulo analyzed the list as follows:
O conjunto sugere uma prática altamente sofisticada de atrair usuários com temas populares, do futebol ao funk, passando pela busca de emprego e o humor. As páginas provavelmente alternavam publicações de todos esses temas com links de notícias e desiformação…enganando os usuários e o algoritmo da plataforma. (…) E é ainda bastante provável que o Facebook tenha derrubado apenas o pedaço da rede que estava ligado com esses perfis falsos, já que a página principal do MBL ficou no ar — se isso for mesmo verdade, a rede do MBL no Facebook pode ser muitas vezes maior.
The set of pages and profiles suggests a highly sophisticated practice of attracting users with popular themes, from football or funk music to job posts and comedy. The pages were likely alternating between posting links related to these themes and links to news and disinformation…[thus] tricking users and the platform’s algorithm. […] It is also likely that Facebook took down only a chunk of the fake profiles network connected to MBL, since their main page is still available — if that is true, MBL’s network inside Facebook might be much bigger.
Since the removal of pages and profiles, several right wing outlets and personalities have accused the company of censorship.
But for Miguel Lago, political scientist and one of the founders of the NGO Nossas Cidades, the platform that “gestated MBL” is not censoring it:
O Facebook não está ferindo a liberdade de expressão de nenhum deles. É um princípio básico o de que toda argumentação deva ser bem fundamentada. A liberdade de se expressar não pode ser usada como desculpa para professar mentiras impunemente.
Facebook is not hurting freedom of expression to anyone of them. It is a basic principle that all argumentation has to be well substantiated. The freedom to express oneself should not be used as an excuse to profess lies unpunished.
While it is true that Facebook and other similar platforms enable free speech at an unprecedented scale, they are typically unable to consistently enforce their own policies related to abuse, hate speech and disinformation. With consistent enforcement, pages like those of MBL or Alex Jones’ InfoWars might never have lasted on Facebook, as moderators would have swiftly seen that they were violating the company's policies.


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#FreeKhayrullo: Human rights groups demand justice for Tajik journalist facing trial · Global Voices
Chris Rickleton

A FreeKhayrullo campaign image from Ukraine. Shared by @MAjourno.
Khayrullo Mirsaidov was one of the few civic voices that Tajikistan's authoritarian government could not break in the latest, most brutal phase of a multi-year crackdown on free speech and opposition.
A well-regarded independent journalist and the former leader of a now-dissolved local comedy troupe, Mirsaidov is currently serving a 12-year jail sentence on dubious charges.
In November 2017, after Mirsaidov penned a letter to Tajik leader Emomali Rahmon complaining about officials’ rent-seeking behaviour in his home province of Sogd. He was later himself charged with embezzlement, misuse of state funds, and false reporting to the police.
In the letter, Mirsaidov noted that a regional official had asked him for a $1,000 bribe in order to disburse funding for Mirsaidov's comedy troupe, which represented Tajikistan in tournaments in Russia and was partly government-funded.
Rather than pay to play, Mirsaidov chose to blow the whistle and inform the official's superiors, including the all-dominating Rakhmon. The 40-year-old journalist was held in pre-trial detention from December 5, 2017, and was finally tried for and convicted of the charges on July 11.
Khayrullo Mirsaidov. Image by Antuan Veselov. Used with permission.
Mirsaidov's lawyer was set to appeal his case before a judge on August 15, but the hearing was deferred until August 22. Dozens of rights groups and hundreds of people with ties to Central Asia and Tajikistan have joined a campaign spearheaded by Mirsaidov's friend and fellow journalist Michael Andersen to #FreeKhayrullo.
Our little angel says: #FreeKhayrullo and all @political_prisoners in @Tajikistan
Many thanks to this angel and her parents!
Vienna, Austria pic.twitter.com/Vj5oGZovMW
— Humayra Bakhtiyar (@HumayraBakht) August 6, 2018
#Таджикистан: Узник совести Хайрулло #Мирсаидов был приговорён к 12 годам тюрьмы. Вместе с 12 другими правозащитными организацими мы требуем его немедленного освобожения! #FreeKhayrullo https://t.co/fp5nBihjVj pic.twitter.com/rFgqJ0jbBt
— Marie Struthers (@struthers_marie) August 13, 2018
# Tajikistan: Prisoner of conscience Khairullo # Mirsaidov was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Together with 12 other human rights organizations, we demand his immediate release! #FreeKhayrullo
#FreeKhayrullo my support message pic.twitter.com/DSPSxtD9CX
— Shahida Yakub (@shahidayakub) August 2, 2018
British artist @TONYDENTON1 painted a portrait for our #FreeKhayrullo campaign ?
➡ @HughPhilpott @USEmbDushanbe @EUSR_CA@OSCE_RFoM @RebHarms @monaeltahawy @KenRoth @ClancyReports@astroehlein @dw_freedom @KeohaneDan @danbbaer @XSovietNews @sidlowe @katypearce @Rachel_Denber pic.twitter.com/xZsFqPxatc
— Michael Andersen (@MAjourno) August 14, 2018
Andersen recently wrote a widely-shared and moving tribute to Mirsaidov, whom he had worked with on several documentaries and media development projects, on the Open Democracy website. Mirsaidov had reported on corruption in Tajikistan and other social and political topics for outlets including Tajikistan's privately owned Asia Plus website, and the German media giant Deutsche Welle.
In his essay, Andersen wrote that Mirsaidov had regularly done “what most journalists claim they do, but few of us actually do – namely, speak truth to power” and condemned the “lame response from Western politicians and governments” to Mirsaidov's persecution.
After remaining mostly silent on the case prior to conviction, the embassies of the United States and the United Kingdom in Tajikistan released statements highlighting their “grave concern” over Mirsaidov's sentencing in July.  On August 14 the British embassy issued a call to release Mirsaidov.
#FreeKhayrullo #TheRightThingToDo I share my view https://t.co/SBdozoiemp pic.twitter.com/vHKcdNsA2C
— Hugh Philpott (@HughPhilpott) August 14, 2018
Campaigns such as #FreeKhayrullo have proven effective in the past. In 2014, Global Voices’ former Central Asia editor Alexander Sodiqov was held on treason charges while conducting social research in eastern Tajikistan.
With support from university students and professors in Europe, Asia and North America, the energy of the #FreeSodiqov campaign — combined with the sheer absurdity of the charges — moved major media outlets including the BBC and the New York Times to write about the case.
Just weeks after it began, Alex was released from jail. He was later allowed to leave the country to reunite with his family in Canada, where he has been living ever since.
Journalist Michael Andersen, a good friend of Mirsaidov's, has led the #FreeKhayrullo campaign. Screenshot from video by RFE/RL's Current Time service.
#FreeKhayrullo has not yet earned the same media coverage as #FreeSodiqov, but it is growing in reach and is reminiscent in many ways.
The noise for the campaign, necessarily, is coming from outside Tajikistan. While private media outlets in Tajikistan covered both cases, they are under threat of closure from authorities if they cover sensitive issues in a way that angers the government. Civil society must also tread lightly. In recent years, Tajik lawyers have been jailed simply for representing opposition politicians in court.
Even for Tajiks living abroad there are costs to campaigning on behalf of their compatriots.
Just ask Shabnam Khudoydodova, an activist based in Europe, who has supported #FreeKhayrullo and other campaigns.
Her 10-year-old daughter recently became the subject of her own mini-campaign #FreeFatima after Tajik security agents hauled her and Khudoydodova's elderly mother off a plane leaving the country in order to punish Khudoydodova for her activism and prevent her family reuniting.
Within less than a week of the hashtag appearing, however, authorities had allowed Khudoydodova's mother, daughter and brother to leave the country.
Story of @khudoidodova by @hrw @steveswerdlow #FreeFatima #Tajikistan pic.twitter.com/G0PHXUcoF3
— Human Rights Tajikistan (@HumanRightsTJK) August 4, 2018
Mirsaidov's case is complicated by the fact that he has already been sentenced. But the international spotlight does raise the stakes for the Tajik government.
Like many of the world's lesser-known authoritarian countries, Tajikistan's obscurity affords its government some additional space to be repressive without scrutiny. By this grim logic, it is sometimes easier for a regime to make a concession regarding one miscarriage of justice in order to prevent others from gaining fresh attention.
Although online campaigns cannot prevent Tajikistan's general trajectory away from human rights, they can still secure small victories.
Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, International Media Support, Article19 and the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia are among the many groups campaining for Mirasaidov. Find them on Twitter and support the campaign using the #FreeKhayrullo hashtag.

author: Chris Rickleton