text:
Environmental risk posed by Venezuelan oil tanker highlights importance of transparency and public participation · Global Voices
Cari-Bois News

Screenshot of the FSO (Floating Storage and Offloading Unit) Nabarima, the vessel in danger of sinking and creating a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Paria, taken from a video uploaded by Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, the Trinidad and Tobago-based non-governmental organisation that raised the alarm about the situation.
This article was originally published on Cari-Bois News. An edited version is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
The unrelenting public campaign around the troubled FSO Nabarima over the past few months has underlined two critical features of Trinidad and Tobago’s sustainability journey. First of all, the power that activist groups and citizens have in the palm of their hands, through social media and other digital platforms, is immense and far-reaching. Secondly, keeping information under wraps, to be dispensed intermittently, is not the way that 21st-century governments pursuing a sustainable development agenda ought to interact with their public.
One might argue that one of the main reasons the initial public outcry championed by activist group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) became the furore it did, was because of the public’s perception that FFOS and other civil society groups were shining a light in the darkness of state secrecy. This juxtaposition is how any good story captures one’s imagination—it immediately sets up the villain and the hero. This massive public outcry and push for government action is something that also seems familiar today and feeds into the growing sense of social justice towards more participatory democracies. From #BLM to #EndSARS, people are not settling for one-sided information channels. As people become less satisfied with the information in the public domain, the barriers preventing them from collecting and communicating their own information get lower and lower each day.
However, the lack of information from the halls of government does nothing except undermine the good work that the government has actually undertaken around the Nabarima situation. The Ministry of Foreign and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Affairs’ diplomatic initiatives with the Venezuelan government and other interested jurisdictions have recently come to light, with the minister revealing that several diplomatic notes and other interventions were part of a process that started in August. Most noteworthy was his recognition of the importance of the civil society public pressure on the government’s continued action. It was also clear that the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries (MEEI) and other key state agencies responsible for environmental management had been hard at work applying good science to oil-spill modelling and other mitigation activities, behind the scenes.
Why then, were the two complementary streams—the public’s desire for transparency and the government’s own attempts to be proactive–allowed to crash into one another, resulting in what appeared to be narratives of governmental irresponsibility, activist ego games, partisan politics and American hegemony in Caribbean affairs?
The key word here is transparency or lack thereof. People are more likely now to engage in co-collection of information and the collaborative dissemination of this information. This is the reality of the world in which we live. The inability of governments to be able to support this co-creation of knowledge will catalyse nothing more than ongoing and growing distrust of their citizens.
The FSO Nabarima, as well as the degrading infrastructure of decades of oil and gas industry scattered around Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, poses a significant environmental threat to the entire Caribbean region. The public’s reaction, both home and abroad, was an important indicator that people are recognising the critical importance of our natural environment to our continued safety and security in a world that is being hit by health, economic and social crises, all within the most existential threat of all—climate change.
In Trinidad and Tobago, the principles of public transparency and accountability in environmental issues are enshrined across the board, with one of the more robust environmental legislative and policy frameworks in the region. Transparency and accountability can be found in the right of any citizen to bring direct party action in The Environmental Commission, to legal obligations for public participation in the Environmental Management Act and the enshrinement of these principles in the National Environmental Policy. However, as the Stockholm Environmental Institute puts it, “public input does not improve the quality of decision-making if the right people are not in the room (i.e., those with unique information) or decision-makers do not actually take that information into account […] public participation can breed distrust and conflict if the public does not perceive the process as fair.”
Omar Mohammed (third row, third from right) and other civil society representatives in Trinidad and Tobago advocate for their country to sign the Escazú Agreement. Photo courtesy Omar Mohammed, used with permission.
The government must, therefore, create and allow the space for civil society’s vigorous attempts at increased transparency and accountability, and must fully commit to a modern and transparent government. Many avenues are available for it to do so while improving its own capacity to deliver on its promises. Two such opportunities follow.
First is acceding to the Escazú Agreement (Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean), which is the first human rights treaty for environmental issues that speaks directly to ensuring access to information, citizen participation and access to justice in environmental matters. Trinidad and Tobago has not yet acceded, with one more signature needed for the agreement to enter into force.
Second is the revisiting of the Open Government Partnership, an international movement “based on the idea that an open government is more accessible, more responsive, and more accountable to citizens, and that improving the relationship between people and their government has long-term, exponential benefits for everyone.” Trinidad and Tobago committed to join the OGP in 2012, saying that “the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago advocates that inclusivity, participation and transparency are the pillars of effective democratic governance.” However, in December 2019, Trinidad and Tobago was removed as an OGP country due to lack of action.
We will not be able to achieve the goals of environmental sustainability that we as a country have set out to achieve if we do not lean into transparency and accountability–both of which foster greater public participation. No longer do we live in societies that are satisfied with top-down, monolithic decision-making about things that impact our lives. If development is intended to “leave no one behind,” which the Sustainable Development Goals are premised on, development needs to be co-created. However, this co-creation cannot happen unless we all commit to a country that is built on transparency, participation and accountability.

author: Cari-Bois News


text:
Freedom in sight for Kaavan, ‘the world’s loneliest elephant’ · Global Voices
R Umaima Ahmed

An elephant in a Pakistan Zoo. Image via Wikipedia by Mfawadazhar. CC BY-SA 4.0
Kaavan, Pakistan's only Asian elephant, has been kept confined at Islamabad's Marghazar Zoo for over three decades.
Animal rights activists have long highlighted the poor treatment the elephant has received and in 2015 started a campaign to rescue Kaavan from the zoo which was endorsed by pop star Cher. In May 2020, Islamabad High Court ruled in favour of relocating Kavaan from Islamabad to a suitable sanctuary.
In 1985, the Sri Lankan government gifted Kaavan, then a young calf, to Pakistan in an effort to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries. In 1990, Kavaan was joined by a mate named Saheli, who came from Bangladesh. Saheli died in 2012, turning Kaavan into “the loneliest elephant.” He started showing signs of lethargy, stress and later aggression, which led his keepers to chain him.
Journalist Kasim Abbasi tweets:
Kavaan declared as the ‘World’s loneliest elephant’ in The Guardian newspaper. https://t.co/SaPQ1OIJT6
— Kasim_Abbasi (@KasimAbbasi4) September 6, 2020
In 2015, a student called Samar Khan launched an online petition to have Kaavan's chains removed and highlighting the elephant's poor condition and state of isolation. Khan also created a Facebook page titled “Free Kaavan The Elephant” to share news about the elephant's plight.
Cher has been campaigning for Kaavan's release through her foundation Free The Wild, which aims to protect wild animals in captivity.
In July 2020, in an emergency meeting at the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB), the Pakistan Government proposed to relocate Kaavan from Islamabad to The Cambodian Wildlife Sanctuary, where he will be in the company of over other 80 pachyderms and be cared for by wildlife experts.
The relocation will be undertaken with the help of Four Paws International, an Austrian animal welfare organization who have supported the rescue of over 30 zoo animals in Pakistan.
The crate to transport Kaavan to Cambodia has already been built with the support from Free The Wild and adorned with traditional artwork.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! #KAAVAN‘S CRATE!#Kaavan #FreeKaavan #nature #Islamabad #Pakistan #elephant #Zoo #Islamabadzoo #wildlife #margallahills #wildlifeonearth #sanctuary #fourpaws #freethewild #suzie #bubloo@ftwglobal @fourpawsint @anikasleem @FaisalAminKhan @aminattock pic.twitter.com/PFfOPSgRdQ
— ? Friends of Islamabad Zoo (FIZ) ? ? ? ? ? (@IsbZooFriends) October 24, 2020
On May 22, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) ordered the IWMB to relocate all animals in the Marghazar zoo to sanctuaries, including Kaavan.
High court ordered to relocate all 800 Animals&Birds to respective sanctuaries
Incompetence of Islamabad Zoo mangt&designated wildlife board already killed lion, lioness, ostricth, neel gaye, zebra many more animals in Capturing/Transportation process /1https://t.co/RiSZAF8bVU pic.twitter.com/SqA5JLLbqV
— Sunil Jamil (@SunilJamill) July 30, 2020
Of the 917 animals and birds in the zoo, 513 went missing during re-location and ten others died, including two lions who expired after inhaling smoke from their handlers had lit to scare them. The rest were successfully relocated by the IWMB.
Bablo and Suzie are finally going to Jordan.
Export permits are being issued.#suizeandbablu #kavaan #islamabadzoo #happyness pic.twitter.com/5OlpzvddnB
— Ammar Hunzai (@ammarkhans) October 22, 2020
Experts from Four Paws came to Pakistan in August 2020, and since then Egyptian Dr. Amir Khalil, director of Four Paws had been working with Kaavan, training him, singing to him and playing with him. Khalil, who assessed the conditions at Marghazar and deemed them dangerous for the animals, has been leading the campaign for their relocation.
Relief for #Kaavan in sight as Cambodia issues relocation permit
?Kavaan to be moved to a sanctuary in Cambodia within a month. The Cambodian government on Friday issued a permit for the transfer of Kavaan from the Islamabad zoo to a local sanctuaryhttps://t.co/Ue26wpNnwi pic.twitter.com/UtGBQ7iwMW
— OPEN?UNIVERSITY of ELEPHANTS (@OElephants) October 26, 2020
Animal activists in Pakistan have long worked to create better conditions for zoo animals, and also to end dog culling and other forms of brutality. Faryal Haque, an animal activist from Islamabad, told Global Voices that:
Kaavan has come back to life because of Four Paws and efforts of Dr Amir Khalil. They have become good friends. But it is a pity the way animals in the Islamabad Zoo were kept. It is time to put an end to these zoos and move towards digital zoos and let animals live in their natural habitat.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: R Umaima Ahmed


text:
Hong Kong police to launch hotline for public to report violations of the national security law · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Screen capture of HK police's website through which the public can report protest activities to authorities.
Hong Kong police's national security unit will soon launch a new multi-platform channel including email, messaging apps, and a telephone hotline for the public to report on people suspected of violating the national security law (NSL), according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
If confirmed, this new development strongly indicates that the NSL will likely not target “a small number” of individuals, as Carrie Lam once promised, but surveil Hong Kong residents on a massive scale.
The SCMP reports that the informants’ identities would be kept secret and all intelligence gathered would be handled by the national security police.
A government source told the SCMP the setup would “create a deterrent effect for potential suspects, as there will be eyes and ears everywhere.”
Currently, a number of pro-Beijing politicians, organizations and groups in Hong Kong have set up similar, private hotlines and websites that encourage the public to report on suspects of violating the NSL. Those include, for example, platforms for the public to report school teachers who they believe have engaged in “professional misconduct.”
The Hong Kong police did set up a similar platform in September through which the public can inform authorities about protest activities. The police say the platform has received 1.2 million reports since it was launched, and that they have assisted on the arrest and prosecution of individuals. As of October 28, 10,144 individuals have been arrested since the anti-China extradition protests broke out in Hong Kong in June 2019.
The current proposal seems similar, but of a larger scale. It'd be handled by the police’s national security department, which has zero public accountability: By the national security law itself, the department does not respond to public complaints, including those made by the Legislative Council. This means that the public would have no way to find out how the department uses the intelligence it gathers.
Hong Kong Watch, a UK-based human rights group, described the potential new development as “dystopian:”
Hong Kong police to set-up a multi-platform channel to encourage informants to report national security crimes.
This is a terrifying and dystopian development.https://t.co/S31FNz9lw6
— Hong Kong Watch (@hk_watch) October 28, 2020
Under @hk_watch’s thread, many described the report system as “Cultural Revolution 2.0” — during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, Chinese Communist Party Leader Mao Zedong mobilized grassroots citizens to report on their friends and families’ ideological leanings.
@Stand_with_HK, an activist outlet, compared the new development to the Soviet Union's Stalinist era:
Technology may help make surveillance efficient, but human surveillance is straight out of an old playbook:
Stalin's regime relied heavily on “mutual surveillance,” urging families to report on each other in communal living spaces and report “disloyalty.”https://t.co/BBLmuNfNVe
— Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong. 重光團隊 (@Stand_with_HK) October 30, 2020
Benjamin Cheung, lecturer on social psychology at the University of British Columbia, considered the chilling effects of this “hotline”:
“National security” is so vaguely defined, so time to flood the hotline w complaints like “I know someone inciting hatred against the HK/CCP govs. Carrie Lam & the rest of the DAB r constantly stirring shit up like a bunch of 搞屎棍. They're making ppl really hate the gov.” https://t.co/XvuF7YXxqS
— Benjamin Cheung | 張煦 | 장후 (@UBCDrBenCh) October 28, 2020
And Hong Kong-based activist outlet @HKGlobalConnect pointed out:
The NSL targets only “a small group of people” but let’s set up a national security reporting hotline so that no one would ever feel safe anywhere anymore with “eyes and ears everywhere”.https://t.co/q5DUYrEinZ
— Hong Kong Global Connect (@HKGlobalConnect) October 29, 2020
Democratic Party Lawmaker James To says that this Cultural Revolution-style of report system would lead to distrust and eventually social disintegration.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
A new magazine tells chilling stories from Russia’s remote regions · Global Voices
Maxim Edwards

Mountain road in the Republic of Khakassia, Russia. Photo by James Zwadlo for Holod Media. Used with permission.
Holod is possibly the coolest thing on Russia's independent media scene today.
The independent online magazine, whose name translates as “coldness”, has captivated Russian audiences with its deep longform stories from far-flung regions, which are often covered only superficially by federal media. These stories are appropriately chilling, seeking to raise awareness of manifold social and economic inequalities in the world's largest country.
Holod shot to fame in August 2019, as a mini-site featuring one article about a murder from Khakassia, a region in southern Siberia. A man from the regional capital of Abakan killed four local women and raped many more, under the nose of law enforcement. He was known to police, but evaded punishment for his crimes.
Taisia Bekbulatova worked on the story for three months after she left Meduza, an independent publication where she had worked as a news reporter for two years. She was previously a political correspondent for Kommersant, a national business daily.
Bekbulatova has since assembled a small team of professional journalists and editors. Over the year since it was founded, Holod has already won three prizes from Redkollegia, one of Russia’s most prestigious journalism awards.
I spoke to Bekbulatova about Holod's goals, outlook on Russia, and her hopes for the project's future.
Maxim Edwards: Your project, as you've described it, is inspired by “Russia as our fatherland, an icy desert on which a dashing person walks. These are big stories about Russia and the dashing people who inhabit it.” Could you elaborate on this, and explain the publication's name?
Таисия Бекбулатова: Это название так долго жило в моей голове, что я даже не помню, как оно возникло. Холод — это ощущение от России, со всеми ее бескрайними просторами и безысходностью. У Георгия Иванова есть стихотворение про Россию со строчкой «И не растают никогда снега». Оно похоже по духу на те истории, которые мы пишем.
Taisia Bekbulatova: I've had that name in mind for so long that I don't even remember how it came about. Holod refers to a sense about Russia, with its endless expanses and despair. Georgy Ivanov has a poem about Russia with the line “And the snows will never melt”. It's similar in spirit to the stories we write.
ME: Holod's first story was about a serial murderer from Abakan in Khakassia, a region many Russian readers are probably unfamiliar with. It seems to me that Holod is trying to reinvent regional-focused journalism in Russia, a trend which other sites such as Meduza, TakieDela, and Batenka have also followed. What's the state of reporting on Russia's regions, and what could be done better?
ТБ: Россия — огромная страна с сотнями историй, которые любой хороший журналист должен бы быть рад осветить. Но у нас почти уничтожена качественная региональная журналистика (за исключением нескольких отличных изданий), и они остаются без должного освещения. «Холод» пытается бороться с этой ситуацией. Я изначально решила, что писать только на темы, которые интересуют москвичей, в такой стране просто глупо. Но получился интересный эффект — москвичей, как оказалось, тоже очень интересуют истории про остальную Россию. К сожалению, несмотря на усилия нескольких качественных федеральных медиа, которые интересуются жизнью регионов, их проблемы все равно во многом остаются без внимания. На мой взгляд, решить эту проблему нельзя без развития сильных региональных СМИ.
TB: Russia is a vast country with hundreds of stories which any good journalist should be happy to cover. But with the exception of a handful of excellent publications, high-quality regional journalism has largely been destroyed here. Holod is trying to fight that tendency. From the very start, I decided that it was simply stupid to only write stories which interest Muscovites. However, it turned out to have an interesting effect — it turned out that Muscovites are actually very interested in stories about the rest of Russia. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of several high-quality federal media outlets which do show an interest in the lives of people in the regions, their problems largely remain ignored. As I see it, that problem cannot be resolved without the development of strong regional media.
ME: You don't shirk from covering depressing and often disturbing stories about the reality of life for many people in Russia today. It seems that you are not just motivated by “stories about dashing people”; you've published about sects, transgender rights, domestic violence, alcoholism, and incels. There seems to be a social sensitivity here, about inequality, injustice, hopelessness, and perhaps hope. What drives your work, and are there specific areas of focus?
ТБ: Мы делаем медиа про реальную Россию, и это невозможно делать, не освещая те тяжелые истории, которые в ней происходят. Россия — страна бедная, с высоким уровнем насилия и крайне ограниченными свободами. Невозможно это игнорировать. Мы стараемся писать про тех, кому не хватает силы голоса, чтобы громко говорить о себе самостоятельно. Это ситуации несправедливости, равнодушия, опасного неравенства человека и государства. Вместе с тем наше внимание привлекают и другие темы — в первую очередь, это интересные общественные феномены и истории отдельных отчаянных людей: от инцелов — до человека, который 30 лет изучал белых медведей, и от сект — до полицейского, который выбросил свои награды, возмутившись насилием со стороны ОМОНа по отношению к протестующим.
TB: We're a media outlet which deals with the real Russia; that work is impossible without covering the difficult stories which come to pass here. Russia is a poor country with high levels of violence and extremely limited freedoms. That's impossible to ignore. We try to write about those who lack the power to speak loudly about their problems by themselves. These are situations of injustice, indifference and the dangerous power imbalance between the individual and the state. At the same time, other topics do attract our attention — interesting social phenomena and the stories of desperate individuals. We've written about everybody from incels to a man who studied polar bears for 30 years, from sects to a policeman who threw away all his service medals. We've written about the appalling violence used by riot police against protesters.
ME: Holod is also known for its success with podcasting; Route 161 has proven to be incredibly popular. What is the role of podcasts in the Russian media landscape today?
ТБ: Российская аудитория пока не открыла для себя в должной мере подкасты, даже очень популярные подкасты слушают, как правило, несколько десятков тысяч человек. С миллионными прослушиваниями на западе это не сравнить. Пока производство подкастов остается во многом имиджевой историей. Мы сделали «Трассу 161» в первую очередь потому, что нам самим хотелось попробовать создать качественный тру крайм подкаст — в России этого жанра почти нет. Мы не ожидали такого успеха. Зато сейчас вышел уже второй сезон — «Объездная дорога» — на этот раз про ангарского маньяка, который убил больше 80 женщин.
TB: Russian audiences have not yet discovered podcasts to the fullest extent. Even extremely popular podcasts are usually listened to by tens of thousands of people. That cannot be compared to those in the West, which have millions of listeners. So far, podcast production in Russia is largely seen as a way to improve the brand. We launched Route 161 chiefly because we wanted to make our own, proper, high-quality podcast. We didn't expect it to be this successful. But now we've already released our second season, called The Bypass, about the maniac in Angarsk who murdered more than 80 women.
ME: What success has Holod had with crowdfunding and other methods of self-sufficiency, and are there lessons for other Russian independent media here?
ТБ: Поддержка читателей нам уже очень сильно помогает. Пока содержать редакцию на эти средства невозможно, но мы уже можем организовывать за счет них командировки, платить гонорары авторам и иллюстраторам и т.п. Мы планируем перейти на полностью краудфандинговую модель в скором будущем. Мы видим благодарную реакцию аудитории, и рассчитываем на ее поддержку.
TB: The support we already receive from readers helps us a lot. However, for the moment it's impossible to fully support our newsroom with these funds, but they do help us organise business trips, pay fees to authors and illustrators and so forth. In the near future we plan to move to a fully crowdfunded model. We can see how grateful our readers are and we're counting on their support.
ME: What are your plans for the future of Holod?
ТБ: Не так легко строить планы, если речь идет о медиа в России. Но у «Холода» сейчас одна цель — стать главным качественным журналом в стране.
TB: It's not so easy for media in Russia to make plans. But Holod has one goal — to become the country's leading, high-quality [online] magazine.

author: Maxim Edwards


text:
One young man’s protest against Nepal’s COVID-19 response · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

Iih, the curious traveller turned activist. Photo from Iih's Instagram. Used with permission.
On October 22, 25-year-old Nepalese activist Iih reached the town of Sauraha after walking 167 kilometres for four days from the capital Kathmandu, along with a fellow group of acquaintances. Once there, they distributed supplies to over 75 local families who work in the tourism sector, a major source of revenue in this town, which was badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This wasn't the first time Iih walked long distances in Nepal, nor the first time he made headlines for his unconventional protest tactics.
Born Ishan Adhikari, Iih dropped out of Kathmandu's prestigious St. Xavier's School at age 14 and set out on walking all over Nepal. In 2015, he walked across the southern plains of Nepal for 37 days, covering 1,203 kilometres. Between 2017 and 2018, he travelled across the country from east to west, covering an astounding 6,000 kilometres in 225 days. At some point along his journey, he decided to abandon his birth name, adopting the moniker of Iih.
CK Lal, one of the most read columnists in Nepal, wrote about Iih:
The choice of Ishan's nom de plume is dissent in itself. The word Iih in Nepali stands for “this” and its Sanskrit meaning implies the deity of desire […] a mischievous interpretation of Iih in Nepali is akin to showing the middle finger, probably to the established order of the state and society.
Now enjoying a large social media following, Iih first became known in Nepal in 2016, when he was arrested for splashing red paint on the walls of Singha Durbar, Nepal's government seat, in protest against police violence.
This year, he turned his tactics towards Nepal's poor COVID-19 response.
Iih being taken to a press conference on August 9, 2020. Photo by Sanjib Chaudhary. Used with permission.
Nepal registered more than 170,000 COVID-19 infections as of November 2. The highest single-day spike in cases took place on October 10 and October 21, with over 5,000 new cases registered each day.
Iih has been critical of the government's response to the pandemic since Nepal declared a nationwide lockdown in March. At that time, the government had been testing suspect COVID-19 cases with RDTs, which are less effective in detecting the SARS-CoV-2, and only carrying out PCR tests after a positive RDT sample.
Iih then organized the #EnoughIsEnough campaign, which staged several protests nationwide since June. The campaign demanded expansion of testing, discontinuance of RDTs, the rectification of quarantine strategy, transparency and accountability regarding the use of COVID-19-related funds, protection of frontline workers, relief for vulnerable populations, among other issues.
Talking to OnlineKhabar, Iih said:
… I posted a story on Instagram, asking, “If anyone wants to come to the street, send me your Facebook ID, I will make a Facebook group and add you.”
About 400 youth sent their IDs saying that they are ready to come to the streets. […]
So, before I did anything, those 400 started inviting other friends to the group called ‘Enough is Enough’.
Iih was arrested in one of the #EnoughIsEnough protests in June:
Nepal Police arrested Ishan along with two others from Maitighar, but hundreds of others continue the protest #EnoughIsEnough #HappeningNow pic.twitter.com/dzfYyUzOPj
— Dewan RAI (@rdewan) June 13, 2020
This short documentary by Vice Asia documented some of the demonstrations this summer in Nepal:
In June, the always-walking Iih sat down for Satyagraha, a form of hunger strike, in protest against the government's COVID-19 measures. He ended the 12-day strike after authorities signed a 12-point agreement with the #EnoughIsEnough campaign pledging to implement a better response.
घरमा बसेर तपाई यसरी #MySatyagraha वा आफ्नै भाषामा #मेरोसत्याग्रह अनी Enough is Enough Nepal लेखेर प्लेकार्ड बनाई फोटो खिची समाजिक सञ्जालमा पेस्ट गरेर पनि तपाईले हाम्रो ‘सरकारलाई कोभिड-१९ को सबल व्यबस्थापन को माग गर्दै’ भईरहेको सत्याग्रह लाई साथ दिन सक्नु हुन्छ ! #EnoughIsEnough pic.twitter.com/jeIOerew7y
— Enough Is Enough Nepal (COVID-19) (@EnoughisEnoughN) June 28, 2020
You can support the Satyagraha demanding the government for better COVID-19 management staying at home by writing #MySatyagraha in your own language on a placard, clicking a picture of it and posting it on social media.
The #EnoughIsEnough protest & Nepal government’s agreement, signed today: pic.twitter.com/iQGu8Ndscx
— Kashish Das Shrestha (@kashishds) July 7, 2020
Iih started another Satyagraha on July 17 after the campaign perceived the government had failed to improve its COVID-19 measures. He broke the fast on August 9 after authorities signed another 12-point agreement with the campaign.
Iih continues his journey helping the needy and demanding the government it cares for its citizens.
He writes on his Instagram account:
“How far would I travel
Just to be where you are?
How far is the journey
From here to a star?

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


text:
Sora, an indigenous language from India, is getting a new typeface · Global Voices
Subhashish Panigrahi

Indian type designer Sony Salma has created a new typeface for the Sorang Sompeng alphabet, used to write India's Sora language.
The Sora (Saura) script Sorang Sompeng and its equivalent Odia and Latin characters. Image via Wikipedia by Hpsatapathy. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sora, also known as Saura, is an indigenous language spoken, according to the 2011 Indian Census, by about 409,549 people in parts of the eastern Indian state of Odisha and the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. Latin and Odia alphabets are used for Sora along with Sorang Sompeng, and its limited usage is partly explained by the competition with those two majority writing systems.
The Sorang Sompeng or Sora Sompeng alphabet was originally invented by Malia Gomango in 1936. His son-in-law Mangei Gomango was instrumental in promoting it by setting up a letterpress which produced many books.
The alphabet has been used primarily in religious contexts, and that is still the case for those who practice the traditional Sora faith. But as many Sora speakers converted to Christianity and Hinduism over time, and the Bible and other religious texts were translated using Latin and Odia, Sorang Sompeng was gradually sidelined.
In 2012, the alphabet gained a boost by its inclusion in Unicode, a universal encoding standard that allows seamless and cross-platform use (unlike predecessor encoding standards, such as ASCII).
Also in 2012, Salma created her first typeface for Sorang Sompeng, which is now broadly used in print and digital publications despite its low overall adoption.
She hopes her new typeface, which will be available in November 2020, will boost the use of this alphabet among native speakers even more.
Most indigenous communities such as the Sora are under-resourced; only a few can count with experts like Salma. Efforts such as hers help communities to preserve oral knowledge in written form and use the internet to exchange knowledge in their own languages.
On behalf of Rising Voices, I interviewed Salma to learn more about her work in supporting the Sora community.
First of all, I belong to the Kondha community of Odisha and I am not a native Sora speaker. I got curious after learning about the Sorang Sompeng script and started creating a digital font back December 2012. With no prior experience in type design or any contact with other type designers, I did my own desk research online to learn the basics of type design. I put that to use and referred a Sora book for inspiration that was printed in letterpress. I traced the visual style of the characters and placed them on an existing OpenType Font (OTF) by replacing the existing glyphs. The font was mapped on the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) encoding which is outdated now. In the last eight years, the font has been used by the Sora people for printing books, calendars and invitation cards.
As a Masters in Design student at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, I got the opportunity to work with noted typographer and type researcher Prof. Girish Dalvi, and I am currently working on a newer version of my old typeface under his guidance.
A computer keyboard with stickers of Sorang Sompeng characters pasted on keys to help users for typing in Sorang Sompeng. Image by Sony Salma (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
: The typeface that I made back in 2012 is used by many on their computers. Google’s Noto Sans Sora typeface is underway and existing cross-platform input tools like Keyman Sora Basic keyboard can be used to type in Sora. Meanwhile, I invited some of the community experts to review my second typeface, and it is going to be available soon. The Sora community will soon have multiple good quality and modern Unicode-compliant typefaces to choose from.
As a majority of the mobile users are on Android devices, having Sora included in the popular Gboard app would see more mobile use of Sora, especially among the young speakers. Many users currently find it hard to install the Keyman mobile app due to its multi-step app installation process.
Participants of a recent meeting organised by Sony Salma to collect feedback on her upcoming typeface. Image by Sony Salma (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
: Though it is hard to say much about any organised or centralised decision-making process, there are multiple organisations which are working for the promotion of both the language and the writing system. One of them is Matarvanam Vigyan Prachar Ashram that is headed by Dinansmi Gomango, son of Mangei Gomango. There are probably other initiatives by the Sora diaspora in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
: Most efforts to promote reading and writing in Sora are by a handful of individuals and organisations that are under-resourced and have limited bandwidth. They have designed books for learning the Sorang Sompeng alphabet, numeral system, folklore and poems. Some Sora teachers also try to teach Sora to young Sora speakers outside the school curricula.
The success of these efforts can be in multifold if combined with policy-making such as the recent National Education Policy 2020. The policy emphasises on the use of mother tongue or local language as the medium of instruction untill the fifth grade and recommends continuing the same untill the eighth grade and beyond.
High-quality educational content in Sora in all mediums — print, audio, video — will be needed to implement this policy. This requires the policy-makers, educators, designers, and even informal systems like Anganwadi to work together.
Just digitising the script is never enough. So, I wanted to help the Sora people to document their culture and traditional practices including the use of different herbs as medicine, recipes, and their ways of farming. I want to build or explore a platform to create a knowledge repository of the Sora community. I also want this data to be collected by people in the community. I am personally keen to find a way to annotate this data and use it for training Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence models to further the development of advanced linguistic tools.

author: Subhashish Panigrahi


text:
How YouTube helped a Hong Kong protester become a Trump supporter · Global Voices
The Stand News

Steve Bannon, former White House advisor, and Elmer Yuen, a popular YouTube commentator on the relations between Hong Kong, China, and the United States. Screen capture from Elmer Yuen's Youtube Channel.
The following post is a partial translation of a feature story published on the Stand News on November 2, 2020. It is published on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement.
There have been a number of pieces published on anglophone media analyzing the phenomenon in which Hong Kong pro-democracy activists root for of U.S. President Donald Trump to be reelected.
Chan Lai Chung, 61, is one of those supporters, and this is her story.
When the anti-extradition protests broke out in 2019, Chan was living in the city of Zhongshan in China with her sisters. As soon as she had a chance, she went back to Hong Kong to join the demonstrations — and never set foot on the mainland ever since.
Chan not only took part in the protests but also became a court observer and frequently paid visits to arrested activists in correctional facilities. She looks and sounds heavy when she talks about the arrests: “We don't have guns and cannons in Hong Kong, so if the international community doesn't speak up, we can't do anything.”
Chan first started thinking about international lobbying in September 2019, when Hong Kong activists Joshua Wong and Denise Ho attended hearings in the U.S. Congress concerning the Hong Kong Democracy Act, a law that requires the U.S. government to impose sanctions on China for violations committed in Hong Kong.
As the protests has subsided in 2020, she started spending more time on social media platforms. A few months ago, she got to know the YouTube channel “Father Yuen, Yuan Gong Yi Political and Economic Commentary.” Offering political commentary on the United States, China and Hong Kong in Chinese, the channel amassed a following of 175,000 since it was created in May.
“Father Yuen” is 71-year-old businessman Elmer Yuen Gong Yi, whose daughter Erica Yuen is the chairman of the People Power, a pro-democracy political party founded in 2011 which has relied on online radio and social media to reach out to its supporters. In early June, Elmer Yuen left Hong Kong for Washington, D.C., where he started to meet with U.S. political figures as a private diplomatic lobbyist.
While he had not been a high profile activist in Hong Kong, Yuen was quickly granted access to U.S political circles, meeting important political activists such as Wei Jingsheng, Mike Pompeo's China policy consultant Miles Yu, and Trump's former White House advisor Steve Bannon.
As the National Security Law was enacted in Hong Kong in July, Yuen decided to stay overseas. By August, he had more than 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, including Chan.
“I really enjoy listening to Father Yuen,” she says, “he has drawn a road map and led me along”. Every day, apart from attending protesters’ trials in courts, Chan spends her time watching political YouTube channels, she says.
When asked about the U.S. elections, Chan answered: “Trump supports Hong Kong, Biden supports China.” When asked to explain, she says: “Trump proved to be tough with China by starting a trade war, while Biden says he will lift the tariffs imposed on China.”
In August, Biden was asked in an interview on NPR whether he'd “keep the tariffs  Trump imposed on Chinese-made goods, to which he appeared to say he wouldn't.
Chan says that in order to defeat the Chinese Communist Party and save Hong Kong, Hongkongers must support Trump's re-election.
Her YouTube recommendations include news reports from the Epoch Times, Voice of Hope, and Radio Free Asia (RFA). The first two channels are Chinese-language media outlets funded by Falun Gong, a Christian group from China forced into exile by the Chinese government in the 1990s.
A recent investigation by the New York Times revealed that the Epoch Times’ support for Trump boosted its influence among right-wing readers in the United States.
When asked about the latest news she has learned about the U.S election, she pointed to a news report in the Epoch Times’ YouTube channel YouTube. The headline of the 25-minute report is “Biden’s 5 million bribe / Joe Biden spies on his son and brother, the family is in chaos / New York Time has been infiltrated? / Xi Jinping attempts to subvert the U.S with 600 organizations! / The 0 patient is man made? Story behind the Covid 19 outbreak in Xinjiang”  and its content is full of unverified claims, conspiracies and disinformation.
When asked about her knowledge of Joe Biden, Chan said “Biden’s son has something with his niece,” likely referring to a hoax that falsely alleges that inappropriate photos of Joe Biden's 16-year-old grandaughter Natalie Biden were found on the computer hard drive of the presidential's son Hunter Biden.
The New York Post, a conservative U.S. tabloid, recently reported that it obtained from Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani a computer hard drive supposedly belonging to Hunter Biden, which contained private emails suggesting that Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Most of the mainstream media in the U.S. questioned the story's credibility and didn't follow up on it. The pro-Republican Wall Street Journal, which also has had access to the hard drive, only published a short article stating that the allegations against Biden have not been proven.
But on Yuen’s YouTube channel, Giuliani's character was praised, the content of the hard drive called “evidence.” The Epoch Times also published a number of videos taking the emails as hard evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter's Ukrainian dealings.
“Father Yuen said the majority of the media in the U.S has suppressed the hard drive news,” Chan says. She adds that almost half of the U.S. media, including CNN, “have been bought by China.” Chan says she never reads English-language news.
A few days ahead of the U.S presidential election, Yuen quoted Trump in his YouTube video titled “China will own the United States if Biden is elected.” In fact, soon after Yuen launched his channel, he claimed that China's President Xi Jinping had set up a 1.5 billion USD fund for Biden’s son to manage.
Chan says she agrees with Yuen that Trump “cannot lose.” She is glad that “Father Yuen” has helped her understand geopolitical issues and believes that he should be the chief executive upon Hong Kong’s “liberation” from China.

author: The Stand News


text:
Rohingya denied of the right to vote in Myanmar, again · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Rohingya Internally Displaced Persons in Myanmar. Photo by Evangelos Petratos, Rakhine, Myanmar, June 2014. From the Flickr account of EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Myanmar continues to deny citizenship and voting rights to Rohingya despite appeals from human rights groups to make the November 8 election more inclusive, credible, free, and fair. Myanmar has more than 130 ethnic groups but refuses to recognize the Rohingya.
Myanmar was under a military dictatorship for several decades until it transitioned to civilian rule by holding an election in 2010. During that time, the Rohingya were allowed to vote and three Rohingya candidates won and became Members of Parliament.
However, the military-backed government used the 1982 Citizenship Law to exclude the Rohingya in the 2015 election. The law is described as discriminatory since it requires individuals to present “conclusive evidence” that they or their parents entered the country before 1948.
The 2015 election saw the historic landslide victory of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). But instead of reversing the discriminatory policies of the previous military regime, the NLD-led government continued to isolate the Rohingya and was even accused of abetting the atrocities committed by ultra-nationalists against the persecuted ethnic group.
As the country inches closer to another national election in November, the “political disenfranchisement” of the Rohingya continues. At least six Rohingya candidates were barred by the Union Election Commission (UEC) from participating in the election because of citizenship issues. The UEC cited an election law requiring candidates to prove the citizenship of their parents as a basis to disqualify the Rohingya.
Roughly 1.7 million Rohingya will be unable to cast their votes. This includes the one million Rohingya forced to flee Myanmar in 2017 because of military operations and are currently residing in refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.
Several Rohingya groups in Bangladesh wrote a letter urging the UEC to uphold their right to vote through the overseas voting mechanism:
As citizens of Myanmar, we hold the right to vote. We had the right to vote until 2015 when we were blocked. The Myanmar government has stripped us of our citizenship and ability to participate in political life.
Tun Khin from the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK pointed out that the Rohingya had previously voted in Myanmar:
My grandfather was a parliamentary secretary in Myanmar. We have voted in this country, our home, for decades before the government decided to exclude us in 2015. Many Rohingya supported Aung San Suu Kyi in the last election, but discrimination and genocidal policies have only worsened since the National League for Democracy took office.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the NLD leader and Nobel Laureate who fought the military dictatorship and was an icon of the pro-democracy movement.
Saed Makhlaswi, a resident of Rakhine State, told Nikkei Asia news about the exclusion of the Rohingya from the election campaign activities:
We are not considered as citizens. Even though some of us have eligible documents to have the chance to vote, there is no preparation of the ballots nor voter registration in our area. It is like the election is not going to happen in our area.
mVoter 2020, a voter education app developed in partnership with UEC and International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) under the European Union-funded STEP Democracy program, was criticized by activists for highlighting the race and religion of candidates and their parents in the election database. A Rohingya candidate was listed in the app as a Bengali, a derogatory term used by authorities to identify the Rohingya.
Candidate Aye Win: “There’s nothing I can do…They’ll just describe me as they like. But I’m a #Rohingya, of course.” He is described as “Bengali Bamar” on mVoter app, project by @Int_IDEA @Asia_Foundation UEC & EU. This violates human rights https://t.co/3UhnwV80uS pic.twitter.com/Vk6EAMb9ys
— Justice For Myanmar (@JusticeMyanmar) October 1, 2020
Justice For Myanmar, a website blocked in Myanmar for its critical reports against the military, said the app “explicitly directs Myanmar voters to consider race and religion, when they should be considering candidates based on their merits and political platform, regardless of cultural background or religious belief.” It added:
Instead of providing access to much-needed, accurate information for voters, the mVoter 2020 app risks inflaming ethnic and religious nationalism during the election. The publicising of candidate race and religion would be unacceptable to voters in donor countries, and is unacceptable in Myanmar.
The Stockholm-based International IDEA, one of the groups which launched the app, had decided to withdraw its association with the mVoter2020 app.
Ethnic conflict has led to violent clashes in recent years. The Rohingya were often targeted by ultra-nationalist Buddhists who spread hate speech in attacking the ethnic minority. Yee Mon Htun, a member of a research team which released a report about the need to counter hate speech ahead of the election, highlighted the seriousness of the problem:
Hate speech in Myanmar has been designed to provoke, incite violence, discrimination and hatred that has in turn fueled violations of its ethnic and religious minority communities’ human rights and in the case of the Rohingya, it has enabled genocidal violence and atrocities.
It is not only the Rohingya who will be unable to vote on November 8. The UEC has canceled voting in 56 townships citing security risks. This decision, which will disenfranchise at least 1.4 million voters, has been criticized as arbitrary and lacking in transparency.
Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, assailed the restrictions placed on minority groups:
We have serious concerns about the human rights situation in Myanmar ahead of its general elections on 8 November. These include violations of the right to political participation, particularly of minority groups — including, disproportionately, the Rohingya Muslim and ethnic Rakhine population in Rakhine State.
Human Rights Watch warned that excluding the Rohingya will make the election less credible:
It’s appalling that Aung San Suu Kyi is determined to hold an election that excludes Rohingya voters and candidates. She knows that real democracy cannot flourish in an apartheid regime imposed on the Rohingya.
And finally, research and advocacy group Progressive Voice blamed the military for creating instability in the ethnic communities:
While the situation of armed conflict is certainly serious in Rakhine State and other ethnic states in Myanmar, what the UEC does not mention is that it is the military offensives and militarization of the Myanmar military that creates this insecurity cited
That many people living in Rakhine, Shan and Kachin States are not able to vote is added to by the blatant disenfranchisement of the Rohingya, who, despite being able to vote in 2010, have been barred from voting in 2015 and this upcoming election.

author: Mong Palatino


text:
In the Balkans, COVID-19 measures may not apply to religious leaders · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Screengrab from a widely shared video by Twitter user @DoturLui.
The Balkans reacted in outrage at the sight of thousands of people queuing to kiss the mortal remains of the Bishop Amfilohije Radović, the 82-year-old head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro who died of COVID-19-related causes on October 30.
Mourners came, for the most part maskless, to the bishop's wake and funeral at Podgorica's Serbian Orthodox Cathedral by the thousands. In the small, little-ventilated room where his body lied in an open casket, priests and nuns recited litanies for several hours throughout the weekend of November 1.
Footage that circulated on social media showed that the ceremony disregarded the government's safety measures against COVID-19, including the prohibition of large gatherings, mandatory mask-wearing in all public spaces, and physical distancing of at least 2 meters.
Appeals by the medical community for clerics to at least veil the body with a closed casket were also ignored. Many of the funeral's attendants were families with young children.
Montenegro, whose population hovers above 622,000, has registered over 20,851 COVID-19 cases in 2020, with 326 deaths.
This tweet includes a video of the wake on October 30:
Cijepljenje Srba iz Crne Gore protiv koronavirusa. #EKSKLUZIVNO #koronavirus #COVID19 #AmfilohijeRadovic #CrnaGora #Srbija #vaccine #COVIDVaccine #herdimmunity pic.twitter.com/bljjfMc4Uq
— Dotur Luiđi (@DoturLui) October 30, 2020
Inoculation of Serbs in Montenegro against the coronavirus. #EXCLUSVE …
Two high-ranking clerics who have attended the funeral have since tested positive for COVID-19: Patriarch Irinej, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, and Amfilohije's heir apparent in Montenegro, Bishop Joanikije.
Amfilohije's funeral is an example of high-profile clerics consistently interfering with COVID-19 prevention measures in the region, especially in the Western Balkans.
Amfilohije himself led a pilgrimage to Ostrog Monastery in May with hundreds of worshippers despite a ban on all public gatherings in Montenegro. At that time, the bishop said that the pilgrimage could even “heal the virus that has conquered the world today.”
In Serbia, the Episcope of Valjevo Milutin Kneževićsaid on March 15 that “if there's faith, the body and the blood of Christ can vanquish any disease” when referring to the Holy Communion, a Christian ritual in which, in some Orthodox traditions, worshippers drink consecrated wine from a shared spoon. He contracted COVID-19 and died two weeks after giving that statement at age 71.
Despite the obvious risks it poses, the Holy Communion continued to be practiced in churches across the Balkans during the spring, when COVID-19 was rapidly spreading in the region. At that time, many religious leaders denied the ritual's dangers in the current circumstances, when not falsely flaunting its supposedly healing powers.
On social media, users have shared videos of Easter rituals that took place at that time:
Postuje se distanca i savet vlade pic.twitter.com/XQCQYOPjr9
— Džamburu Banbutto (@dzamburubanbuto) April 19, 2020
How the personal distance and government advice has been respected.
In Belgrade's Temple of Saint Sava, more than 20 church employees tested positive for COVID-19 in April, including the Episcope Stefan Šarić, who serves as a Vicar to the Patriarch.
Current official figures for COVID-19 in Serbia are 55.676 infections and 861 deaths.
Meanwhile, in Greece, where the Orthodox Church is also very influential, at least one priest was arrested for violating lockdown rules. In the Western Balkans, however, a religious figure is still to face prosecution for similar actions.
In countries with sizable populations of different faiths, such as North Macedonia, religious institutions have frequently pointed fingers at each other for violating prevention measures, at times using the perception of a double standard as an excuse to disregard the rules as well.
Cartoon by Naum Jamovski, used with permission.
For instance, after a massive Orthodox Christian procession in the city of Struga on May 6, which glaringly violated emergency regulations against public gatherings and physical distancing, the Islamic Community of Macedonia (IRC) held an urgent meeting deciding to reopen the mosques which had been closed since mid-March.
As the holidays associated with Ramadan approached, the IRC chief, Efendi Sulejman Rexhepi, threatened to revoke support for the COVID-19 measures unless the government provided financial relief to the organization, which suffered from a decrease in donations during the lockdown.
Macedonian Orthodox Christian Bishop Timotej — whose domain, in the southwest, includes the key religious center of Ohrid — voiced a similar message as he lamented that the lockdown had also affected Easter celebrations, which generate, he says, half of the church's annual income.
At the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when Ramazan Bayram, or Eid al-Fitr, is traditionally celebrated with large family gatherings, Rexhepi caused a scandal when he declared, outside of a packed mosque, that the virus was “dead,” and that the faithful had nothing to fear. The video below includes footage of that moment:
In the end of May, the highest body of the ICR dismissed Rexhepi from the position of chief with no official explanation. Previously, Rexhepi has been repeatedly criticized for his statements and social media behavior, as he frequently posted photos carrying firearms and dead animals. Days before he was dismissed from the ICR, local tabloids reported that he had recently married a 24-year-old woman (he is 74).
In 2019, Rexhepi spoke in an ethnic Albanian village that it was “impossible to cohabitate” with “these savage people without an identity,” supposedly referring to ethnic Macedonians. Despite the public outcry, North Macedonia's Prosecutor's Office at that time decided not to press charges against him, on the grounds that he didn't use the word “Macedonians.”

author: Filip Stojanovski


text:
Mexican lawmakers approve same-sex marriage in the state of Puebla · Global Voices
Melissa Vida

Screenshot of Puebla Congress's Ordinary Meeting on November 3, 2020, Periscope
On November 3, Puebla became the 19th Mexican state to recognize same-sex marriage in the country. Thirty-one congresspeople out of 39 raised their hand to pass the legislation under the gaze of nearly 20,000 viewers on Facebook Live and Periscope. The meeting was held virtually to respect social distancing measures.
Puebla's recent ruling in favor of recognizing same-sex marriage follows in the footsteps of 18 other Mexican states such as Mexico City, Jalisco, and Quintana Roo.
In 2015, the Mexican Supreme Court delivered a groundbreaking ruling which provided the legal basis for courts throughout Mexico to approve same-sex marriage. Since then, a series of federal appeals have ruled in favor of same-sex couples, including a 2017 Supreme Court ruling which struck down Puebla's same-sex marriage ban.
In the Americas, the first countries to recognize same-sex marriage were Argentina in 2010 and Brazil two years later. Today, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, the United States, Canada, and overseas European territories recognize the union.
In December 2019, Celeste Ascencio from the ruling party MORENA launched a process to amend the Mexican Constitution and make same-sex marriage legal nationwide in Mexico. This process is still pending.
In 2016, one out of seven polled Mexicans disagreed with the right for LGBTQI+ people to get married. The percentage fluctuates over time, with some years showcasing more approval than others. On Twitter, however, reactions were overwhelmingly positive at the news:
#SíAcepto ??
Con 31 votos a favor, 5 en contra y 3 abstenciones, #Puebla aprobó el #MatrimonioIgualitario ?
❤????? ¡Amor es amor! ❤????? pic.twitter.com/XgEOPDpiDs
— Luchadoras (@LuchadorasMX) November 3, 2020
#YesIDo ??
With 31 votes in favor, 5 against and 3 abstentions, #Puebla approved #SameSexMarriage ?
❤????? Love is love! ❤?????
Bravo!!!
El Congreso de #Puebla aprobó la iniciativa de reconocer el #MatrimonioIgualitario. pic.twitter.com/6Y35qVHgYH
— Monique (@monica_ds01) November 3, 2020
Bravo!!!
The Congress of #Puebla approved the initiative to recognize #SameSexMarriage
Hoy se ganó una de las tantas batallas por las que hemos marchado año con año. Ahora el #MatrimonioIgualitario es una realidad en #Puebla.
31 votos a favor ??
5 en contra
3 abstenciones
Todas las personas, todas las familias, todos los derechos. #MatrimonioIgualitarioPuebla pic.twitter.com/vuyADDRIzZ
— Lexemio Aguirre (@lexemio) November 3, 2020
Today, one of the many battles for which we have worked on year after year was won. Now #SameSexMarriage is a reality in #Puebla.
31 votes in favor ??
5 against
3 abstentions
All people, all families, all the rights. #MarriageEqualitarianPeople

author: Melissa Vida


text:
Northeast Tobago named a UNESCO ‘Man and the Biosphere Reserve’ · Global Voices
Cari-Bois News

Nature enthusiasts trek along the Gilpin Trace Rainforest Trail at the Tobago Main Ridge Forest Reserve, which was first established in 1776. Photo by Aivar Ruukel on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
This article was written by Sean McCoon and originally published on Cari-Bois News. An edited version is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
The designation of Northeast Tobago as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Reserve has led to celebration among advocates of sustainable development in Tobago, who say the island stands to benefit enormously from the coveted title.
This distinction, which the Man and the Biosphere International Coordinating Committee announced on October 28, places Northeast Tobago on a list of 714 UNESCO biosphere reserves worldwide. Other biosphere reserves include famous destinations like Mount Olympus in Greece and Komodo National Park in Indonesia.
A biosphere reserve is an area that recognised for its unique biodiversity, valued environment and the sustainable way of life practiced by its human inhabitants. UNESCO awards the designation with a view to fostering a more harmonious relationship between man and nature. This is achieved by reconciling human activity with the conservation of biodiversity, and by establishing a scientific basis for the sustainable management of the biosphere’s natural resources.
Northeast Tobago's Main Ridge Forest Reserve, widely known as the oldest tropical rainforest reserve in the western hemisphere, played an integral part in the area receiving the UNESCO designation.
This rainforest, located in Tobago’s Main Ridge — a long, narrow, raised land formation with sloping sides that's considered to be the island's backbone — presents a rare, largely intact Caribbean island ridge-to-ocean ecosystem.
Northeast Tobago’s UNESCO biosphere reserve spans 83,488 hectares, with a marine area of 68,384 hectares, and is teeming with life. A range of 1,774 different species of flora and fauna, across 19 different types of habitats, call the biosphere home. The area is shared with 10,000 Northeast Tobago residents who live within the biosphere and who, in many cases, depend on conservation of biodiversity to sustain their livelihoods.
The biosphere features 41 endemic species and as many as 83 of the species living there appear on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. The most outstanding species in the biosphere, according to UNESCO, is the Campylopterus Ensipennis, more commonly known as the White-tailed Sabrewing Hummingbird. This rare and stunning creature, endemic to Tobago, was once believed extinct after Hurricane Flora destroyed most of Tobago's rainforest habitat in 1963.
White-tailed Sabrewing hummingbird (Campylopterus ensipennis) at Gilpin Trace, Main Ridge Rainforest Reserve, Tobago. Photo by Steve Garvie on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Since then, the rainforest has made a remarkable comeback: Tobago’s UNESCO biosphere reserve is now the largest such site in the English-speaking Caribbean, spanning 15 communities — from Belle Garden in the east, to Moriah, in the northern part of the island. The only UNESCO biosphere reserve in the region that is more expansive is the Archipel de la Guadeloupe, located in the French overseas territory.
On its website, UNESCO describes biospheres as learning places for sustainable development that provide “local solutions to global challenges.” The designation is meant to encourage research that uses a combined approach between natural and social sciences to improve human livelihoods and to manage natural and controlled ecosystems. Once every decade, UNESCO conducts a periodic review on the functioning of the reserves and the involvement of native populations.
Environmentalists in Trinidad and Tobago are hopeful that the title of UNESCO biosphere reserve will incentivise locals to diversify the economy toward sustainability in order to retain the designation for future generations.
Aljoscha Wothke, the chief executive officer of Environmental Research Institute Charlotteville (ERIC), described the programme as a “tool” that Tobagonians have to “pick up and use” — meaning that the government, private sector and civil society would all have to work together for the MAB designation to be successful.
Ancil Dennis, Chief Secretary in the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), welcomed the news of North East Tobago’s designation as a UNESCO biosphere reserve, calling it proof that sustainable development for Tobago is paramount:
This man and biosphere designation is only an opportunity for us to improve the management and protection of our natural and cultural heritage — two areas that have always been extremely important to us here in Tobago.
In other THA video celebrating the milestone, spearfisher Ojani Walker said Tobago's UNESCO designation was a great incentive for the recovery of beaches, reefs, and the environment, while certified tour guide Darlington Chance believed it would bring a lot of interest to Tobago and help generate income for the island's tourism sector. “If we don’t protect [nature], we will not have it,” he added, as he laid out his vision for a sustainable future.
Also featured in the video series was Patricia Turpin, vice president of the nongovernmental organisation, Environment Tobago. Having lived in Northeast Tobago for the last 45 years, she called on fellow residents to “work together with those who are running this programme” to conserve the beauty and biodiversity of the area, even as the island grapples with the effects of the climate crisis.
As far as environmentalists are concerned, the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve designation should inspire both an urgency to conserve and a sense of national pride for every citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.


text:
October – A bleak month for freedom of expression in Sri Lanka · Global Voices
GroundViews

Type of Violation in October 2020. Image via Groundviews.
This post by Ruki Fernando originally appeared in Groundviews, an award-winning citizen media website in Sri Lanka. A shortened and edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
October was a bleak month for freedom of expression in Sri Lanka with four cases of assault against five provincial journalists. All five journalists had to be hospitalised. Media organisations issued statements condemning these incidents and protests were held in the aftermath of at least one incident.
There were also other violations. One person was arrested for exercising her right to freedom expression online. An indirect threat was levelled against those criticizing the army for alleged shortcomings in their treatment of suspected COVID-19 patients. The month saw the passage of the 20th Amendment to the constitution, which according to human rights groups is detrimental to democracy.
This article offers a snapshot of challenges to freedom of expression in Sri Lanka during the month of October. It is based on conversations with some of those affected and information provided by journalists, media organizations and media reports. It lists incidents against freedom of expression with basic details on each incident and quotes from victims, concerned groups and experts.
Attack on journalist in Moneragala district
On October 3, Derana TV journalist Mr. Indunil Wijenayake was assaulted by sand miners while covering an illegal sand mining operation in Moneragala district in the Southeast of Sri Lanka. He was treated at the Moneragala District Hospital. His camera was damaged during the attack. Indunil mentioned that two persons were arrested for the assault and later released on bail. After a hearing on October 27 at the Moneragala Magistrate Court (case no. 96/297/2020), the hearings have been postponed until January 2021. The Free Media Movement of Sri Lanka condemned the incident and called for justice.
Attack on journalist in Trincomalee district
On October 11, Mr. M. H. Yusuf, a provincial correspondent for Independent Television Network (ITN), was assaulted while reporting on an accident in Trincomalee District in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. During the assault, he also lost his camera. A complaint was lodged with the Agbopura police (complaint no. CIB 132/71). Yusuf mentioned that three persons were arrested and presented before the courts for an identification parade but he was not able to identify them as he had been nervous at the time of the incident and there had been many people. The Muslim Media Forum condemned the incident.
Attack on two journalists in Mullaitivu district
On October 12, two Tamil Guardian correspondents, Mr. Kanapathipallai Kumanan and Mr. Shanmugam Thavaseelan, were verbally threatened and physically attacked while investigating an alleged timber trafficking operation in Mullaitivu district in the Northern province of Sri Lanka. The journalists’ attackers wiped most of the documentation they had taken of the deforestation and removed their memory cards. The attackers also stole their money and jewellery and filmed the journalists on their mobile phones while accusing them of trespassing. After the incident, Kumanan and Thavaseelan were admitted to Mullaitivu Base Hospital for treatment. Members of the Jaffna Press Club protested about the attack in front of the Mullaitivu District Secretariat, police station and District Forestry Office.
According to a media report, one suspect who has permanent residency in Norway has been given bail while the three other suspects have been remanded in custody. The incident was condemned by several media organizations such as the Jaffna Press Club, the Muslim Media Forum, the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association (SLWJA) and the Free Media Movement of Sri Lanka (FMM).
Assault on journalist in Gampaha district
According to Mr. M. H. K. Jayantha, President of the Gampaha District Journalists Collective, Mr. Manoj Edirisinghe, a Sirasa TV correspondent residing in Mirigama, was assaulted and had to be hospitalized for several days with injuries to his face and an eye. The incident occurred on October 19 when the journalist was returning home after work. A suspect has been produced before a Magistrate and has been remanded until November 3. The incident has received some media coverage.
Arrest for posting a video on Facebook
The police arrested a woman on or around October 18 for uploading a video on Facebook with content that is alleged to have hateful content against the Catholic Archbishop of Colombo. She was remanded until November 2 for having committed offences under the Computer Crimes Act and Article 291A of the Penal Code.
The Administrative Secretary of the Archdiocese issued a statement saying that the video released on social media had false, unfounded, insulting and misleading content and that complaints had been lodged with relevant institutions.
Threatening remarks to critics by the Army Commander
The Commander of the Army, who also heads the COVID-19 prevention centre, made threatening statements after facing criticism in the media and complaints to the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) for the Army’s alleged mistreatment of apparel workers suspected of having COVID-19. The complainants to HRCSL had made the Commander a respondent. The Commander termed the allegations “unfounded and fabricated” and stated that “all those intentional fabrications bear the hallmarks of a precursor to a bigger future machination the interested elements are now mapping out in order to tarnish or ridicule the role of the troops”.
20th Amendment to the constitution
The 20th amendment to the constitution was passed in parliament on October 22. The amendment enhances most of the constitutional and executive powers to the Sri Lankan President which was previously abolished in the 19th amendment. This weakens the powers of the Prime minister's office and the cabinet. Before its passage, the amendment was criticized as a threat to democracy, human rights and freedom of expression by the Free Media Movement of Sri Lanka and human rights lawyers.
Unethical reporting by media
During September, Ethics Eye Facebook page and Twitter account highlighted unethical reporting by various media outlets on topics such as COVID-19 patients, suicide and sexual abuse. There were also derogatory references and negative portrayals of women, non-Sri Lankan citizens, drug users, ethnic and religious minorities. Ethics Eye, a research-based public education platform which monitors violations of media ethics in the Sinhala & Tamil press, noted media outlets’ failure to consider ethics in reproducing violent images, pre-judging the guilt of the accused and exposing private and personal information. The Director-General of the Government Information Department noted violations by the media of recommendations issued in relation to coverage of funerals of those succumbing to COVID-19 and requested the media to abide by these recommendations. The College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka called for regulations to control the illegal disclosure of COVID-19 patients and their contacts by the media.

author: GroundViews


text:
Bullets, blood and death: The untold story of what happened at Lekki Toll Gate in Nigeria, Part I · Global Voices
Premium Times

Victims of the October 20 shootings at Lekki Toll Gate, Lagos, Nigeria. Image by Premium Times, used with permission.
Editor’s note: After days of extensive reporting, Premium Times (PT) can now paint a clearer picture of what happened at the Lekki Toll Gate on October 20. This story, written by Nicholas Ibekwe and originally published in PT, is republished here through a partnership sharing agreement. Read Part II of the story here.
At about 6:45 p.m. [West African Time] on October 20, men in military uniform arrived at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, in three Toyota Hilux vans and almost immediately began shooting into a crowd of peaceful protesters waving the Nigerian flag and reciting the national anthem.
The protesters were at Lekki Toll Gate as part of a mass, youth-led movement against police brutality, known as #EndSARS, demanding the dissolution of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a tactical unit of the Nigerian Police, whose members were accused of atrocities including extortion, rape, abduction, torture and extrajudicial killings.
Protesters and other witnesses at Lekki Toll Gate claimed several people were injured and killed in the shooting.
A popular Disc Jockey, DJ Switch, who streamed the incident live on Instagram, told Premium Times that the soldiers took the dead away. She also claimed that a team of police officers arrived later to mop up after the soldiers.
She said the military initially prevented first responders and ambulances from reaching the injured but later allowed them through. She also said she saw at least 15 corpses and claimed that security agents took the bodies away.
Amnesty International claimed 10 people were killed during the shooting at the toll gate, and two others at the Alausa protest ground, both in Lagos, Nigeria.
However, Lagos State Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, who described the shooting as a “dark note in the history of the state” and blamed the shooting on forces beyond the “direct control” of his government, originally said no lives were lost in the shooting.
He later admitted in an interview on October 22, that two persons died from the incident — one of them from blunt force trauma.
On Monday, October 26, during an interview on CNN, Sanwo-Olu continued to discredit witness accounts about the number of dead and wounded. He said he found no bloodstains when he visited the scene:
What has happened is that there have been so many footages that were seen, that people have shown, but we have not seen bodies,” he said. “We have not seen relatives, we have not seen anybody truly coming out to say I am a father or a mother to someone and I cannot find that person. Nobody has turned up. I have been to the ground, there is no scratch of blood anywhere there.
Despite accounts by witnesses and video posted online, the Nigerian Army denied that its personnel fired upon protesters.
The army initially claimed its troops were not at Lekki that night. However, it later admitted that soldiers were deployed at the request of the Lagos State government. The army, however, insists that its personnel did not open fire on the protesters, let alone kill anyone.
As part of the #EndSARS movement, protesters across Nigeria asked for investigations into the allegations against SARS personnel as well as the immediate suspension of officers accused of committing atrocities.
For at least 10 days, protests — especially in Lagos and Abuja — were conducted peacefully, despite attacks on protesters by suspected pro-government hoodlums.
In one instance in the Ketu area of Lagos, on October 19, rival street gangs capitalized on the protests to attack one another.
On the morning of October 20, the protests in some parts of Lagos, especially at Orile and Mushin, turned violent after police officers shot some protesters. The Orile and Mushin police stations were razed by angry mobs. At least one police officer was lynched, and several others injured in the riots that ensued.
In a move to check the violence that was beginning to spread across the state, at around noon on October 20, Governor Sanwo-Olu announced a statewide curfew.
Protesters at Alausa and Lekki Toll Gate — both epicenters for demonstrations — defied the curfew but remained peaceful.
Just after 3:30 p.m, officials believed to be from the company managing the toll gate, Lekki Concession Company (LCC), arrived and removed equipment initially thought by activists to be CCTV cameras. Authorities later claimed that the CCTV cameras at the facility remained intact and that its footage would be released to the panel probing the shooting.
LCC officials accused of removing cameras at the Lekki toll gate, Lagos, Nigeria. Image from Premium Times, used with permission.
Protesters who survived the attack said lights, including streetlights and a large electronic billboard which illuminated the toll gate area, were turned off just before the attack to possibly provide a cover for the brutal assault on peaceful protesters.
The advertising company that owns the electronic billboard at the Lekki toll gate, however, said it deactivated its facility in compliance with the curfew declared by Governor Sanwo-Olu, unaware that tragedy would later strike at the location.
Premium Times newspaper’s investigative team set out to unravel what actually happened on the evening of October 20, at Lekki Toll gate, during the shooting and the hours that followed.
Sodiq Adeoye, an employee of research firm SBM Intelligence, informed PT reporter Nicholas Ibekwe after the shooting that some residents found [graphic video, viewers discretion advised] a body floating in the lagoon just behind their houses in the highbrow neighborhood of Admiralty Way, Lekki Phase 1, about two kilometers from the Lekki Toll Gate.
Adeoye said the residents suspected the floating body could be one of the protesters fired upon by soldiers.
At PT’s request, Adeoye sent a brief time-stamped video of the corpse floating in the water. A Google map coordinate he sent indicated that the body was floating close to Bay Lounge, an upscale restaurant.
At around 6:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 24, PT reporter Ibekwe drove to the Nigerian Army Post Exchange (NAPEX) Car Park Jetty in Victoria Island, where he and his team hired a boat to search for the body.
As the boat approached the banks of the lagoon, Ibekwe realized that those living in a nearby Lekki Toll Gate shanty, shown in the video below, likely witnessed the October 20 crackdown and had information.
When Ibekwe visited this community, residents immediately offered up gruesome details of what they had witnessed, as evident in this video:
Some residents claimed they were there at the time of the shooting and suffered bullet wounds and other injuries while running for their lives when the shootings started. They also alleged that several people were killed and injured by soldiers. They also corroborated the story told by DJ Switch and other protesters that after the shooting, soldiers took deceased bodies away.
One anonymous source told PT:  “Even the one that died in our presence, wey be say the ekelabe [“policemen”] carry am go. They shot am there.”
Even the one that died in our presence, the policemen carried him away. They shot him there.
A second source who goes by Ray told PT:
Let me tell you something. This is my country. I am not afraid of anything. Let me say what I saw on that day. I was here from the beginning to the end of everything. What the soldiers and police did was absolutely wrong. Why would soldiers come and shoot on us when we were having a peaceful protest?
When asked if he saw soldiers carry bodies away, Ray responded: “Of course, I saw dead bodies. They packed bodies. They came with their vans. Their trucks.”
Ray expressed displeasure that Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari did not mention the Lekki shooting in his broadcast to the nation on October 22. Ray also said that  Sanwo-Olu visited Lekki Toll Gate early Wednesday morning and saw some of the dead.
Why is Sanwo-Olu denying? Because immediately after, when [the Lekki shooting] happened Sanwo-Olu himself came. He came. He parked at the toll gate. He saw some dead bodies on the ground. Why is he denying?
Ray’s account was also corroborated by other residents.
Residents also alleged that after the soldiers who initially opened fire on the protesters left the scene, police officers, led by Chief Superintendent of Police Raji Ganiyu, and the divisional police officer (DPO) of the nearby Maroko Police Division, arrived at the scene and continued to attack defiant protesters.
Bullet shells collected from Lekki Toll Gate by residents of the shanty. Image by Premium Times, used with permission.
One anonymous resident said in Nigerian Pidgin: “DPO of Maroko we see am face-to-face wey e blow one person head pull the skull off. Pistol. E wear white and white.”
We watched the DPO of Maroko as he blew the skull off one person’s head with his pistol. He was wearing a white native attire.
Some residents showed PT spent bullet casings they collected at the toll gate after the shooting. According to the group that spoke with PT, they accuse Ganiyu and his team of shooting and killing some protesters, including a man with mental illness who was often seen around the area.
“What of the mad boy, wey! He [was] shot for our front here. Close range. There was a guy that was abnormal, he sat at that speaker. [DPO] just came immediately, saw the boy, the boy didn’t do anything. He didn’t run, he didn’t harass him, he just removed his pistol and blew the boy’s head,” said another anonymous resident.
Ganiyu declined to respond when reached for comment and redirected all requests to the Lagos police public relations department.
Also, public relations officer Muyiwa Adejobi said that any questions about the Lekki Toll Gate shooting would be decided by the judicial panel of inquiry set up by the state government to investigate alleged atrocities committed by law enforcement officers.
“No comment on this for now,” he told PT.
After speaking with several shanty residents, PT’s investigative team left in search of the floating corpse. About 300 meters after the toll gate on the Lekki-Ikoyi Bridge and about 100 meters from Bay Lounge, they saw the [graphic video, viewers discretion advised] corpse floating near the lagoon banks.
The swollen, decomposing corpse appeared to be a male with a slight beard, wearing blue denim jeans and a flimsy white singlet, with a rubber band on the left wrist. He is believed to have died in the Lekki Toll Gate shooting.

author: Premium Times


text:
Bullets, blood and death: The untold story of what happened at Lekki Toll Gate in Nigeria, Part II · Global Voices
Premium Times

Victims of the October 20 shootings at Lekki Toll Gate, Lagos, Nigeria. Image by Premium Times, used with permission.
Editor’s note: After days of extensive reporting, Premium Times (PT) can now paint a clearer picture of what happened at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, Nigeria, on October 20. This story, written by Nicholas Ibekwe and originally published in PT, is republished here through a partnership-sharing agreement. Read Part I of the story here.
Over a 10-day period in October, massive protests in Nigeria were held throughout the country against police brutality.
On October 20, a shooting occurred at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, where protesters had gathered as part of the mass, youth-led movement against #EndSARS, demanding the dissolution of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a tactical unit of the Nigerian Police, whose members were accused of atrocities including extortion, rape, abduction, torture and extrajudicial killings.
Residents reported that when the shooting started, a stampede occurred. They said some of the protesters ran into their community to take cover from flying bullets.
PT reporter Ibekwe spoke to a mother who showed him bruises on her daughter’s knee, which she claimed she got during the stampede.
They said some of the protesters ran into the lagoon in the panic that ensued. Agboola Kapko, a fisherman who lives in the community, explained how he rescued some protesters who ran into the lagoon.
I dey for that side [points] before dey start to shoot. Many people run enter water. I can’t leave them like that to die so I help many people comot for inside water and they come safe. I carry many people go another way, go put dem and they follow that way go.
I was at that side [points] before the shooting started. Many people ran into the water [canal]. I couldn’t leave them to drown, so I had to help as many people out of the water to safety. I carried many people to another place, we kept them there and they walked out from that path.
Kakpo’s wife showed Ibekwe her bruised, swollen hand. She said she sustained the injury when she fell while trying to run from the shooting.
During a CNN interview on October 26, Lagos State Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu said that when he visited the toll gate, he did not find a “scratch of blood.” However, verified video and photo evidence as well as witnesses and victims’ accounts, contradict the governor’s claim.
In one graphic photo circulating online, a young man is shown wearing a zip sweatshirt over a Versace T-shirt, with his head lying in a pool of blood. Witnesses said that the man was shot in the head by  police officers who arrived after soldiers left the scene.
Photo verification tools such as Google and Bing reverse searches and TinEye image search indicated that the photo had not previously appeared anywhere else online.
In one video, protesters were seen tying a tourniquet to the bloodied leg of a victim with a belt. The unidentified man wriggled in pain. He had been shot in the leg. In yet another video, a bloodied man laid lifeless, with the Nigerian flag on his hand as a man tried to revive him.
Footage posted on Twitter of the desolation at the Lekki Toll Gate the morning after the attack indicated a man showing a large bloodstain patch at the scene of the shooting.
This video was shot on 21st October, a day after the #LekkiMassacre. An eye witness walks around the Lekki Tollgate, showing blood stains of victims.#leadership #sanwoolu #SoroSokeGeneration #Rinu WE WILL NEVER FORGET
Rest In Peace #LekkiTollGateShooting #BlackTuesdayNigeria pic.twitter.com/UQsvDlCuLT
— Elevation News Today (@ElevationToday) October 27, 2020
Photo of Nicholas Okpe lying in the ICU of the hospital. He was shot at Lekki toll gate. Image by Premium Times, used with permission.
Nicholas Okpe was an active protester and volunteer during the #EndSARS demonstrations when he was shot at Lekki Toll Gate on October 20.
When PT reporter Ibekwe visited Okpe at the emergency unit of Grandville Hospital in Ajah, he could barely sit up and wore a patch on his right chest where a bullet pierced him. A tube attached just under his right rib cage drained blood and puss into a container placed on the floor. The bullet was still lodged in Okpe’s chest, awaiting consultation.
Ikemefuna, a doctor caring for Okpe, said he was in a critical state when he was admitted and that he was lucky to be alive. “He is getting better. He is not on oxygen anymore. God, so good it [the bullet] hit him on the right. It pushed his lung to the side. He still needs further review,” she said.
He told PT that his case was so critical that three hospitals rejected him before Grandville accepted to treat him. The ordeal has been traumatic.
“I’m passing through a lot of pains. I am always in pain. Anytime I cry out they will just give me pain killers and they will go. When that pain killer expires the pain will come again. My head is just too heavy for me with pains,” he said.
Okpe also said he saw the soldiers take aim at CCTV cameras at the toll gate before he was hit.
Grandville Trauma Centre, Ajah, Lagos, Nigeria. Image by Premium Times, used with permission.
Raymond Simon, a church instrumentalist, was not a protester at Lekki Toll Gate, but his desire to help put his life at risk. Simon told PT he was at a rehearsal that evening and was returning home on his motorcycle when he decided to take some of those injured during the shooting to hospitals.
Returning to the scene after making a third trip from nearby Reddington Hospital, he was ambushed by police officers at the toll gate who viciously attacked him.
One police officer tried to shoot him but a fellow officer pushed him away. Simon said another officer with a bayonet attached to his rifle aimed to stab him in the neck, but he quickly moved his head and the blade hit his chin.
“After I was stabbed, they abducted me alongside a corpse. They were driving us around the area and I suspect they were looking for where to abandon the corpse. When they got to Ilasan area [a residential community in Lekki, Lagos], they pushed me down. My hands were tied to the back,” he said.
He said the police officers drove off with the other presumably dead person. He later managed to find his way to a hospital where he received care before being discharged.
He said his motorcycle was stolen during the attack.
The Nigerian government claims that protesters who were injured would be treated fully free of charge, but PT spoke with several injured protesters whose accounts contradict this claim.
PT spoke with protester Divine Bassey, who said his right hand was wounded when a bullet pierced it while at Lekki Toll Gate, but that he received no formal medical care for the injury.
And PT also spoke with protester Patrick Ukala, who was shot in his right arm during the Lekki Toll Gate shooting. Ukala told PT the bullet is still lodged in his arm, pending an X-ray, which has been difficult to get due to a lack of equipment at Grandville hospital, where he originally received care.
The victims said the state government has not contributed a dime to their treatments.
And when PT reporter Ibekwe visited Okpe at Grandville Trauma Center, he met a team from the Lagos State Ministry of Health, which came with its media crew to interview the victims. Okpe said that was the last he saw of any government official.
“Since the day you saw those people [officials of the Lagos Ministry of Health] there they have never come there, nor did they speak with the doctor. Finally, the doctor has asked us to leave.”
Okpe was discharged with the bullet still lodged in his chest. He also has not been operated on to remove the bullet in his arm.
When Grandville Trauma Centre was reached for comment, Doctor Adebayo, a hospital employee, confirmed that all victims of the Lekki Toll Gate shooting had been discharged.
“Some that need extra consultations with specialists, we sent them there. We didn’t operate him [Okpe] here. Probably, they will operate [on] him wherever he goes [next],” she said.
Some hospital owners in Lagos complained to PT that the Lagos State Ministry of Health was using its Health Facility Monitoring and Accreditation Agency (HEFAMAA), the organisation responsible for registering healthcare facilities in the state, to intimidate them.
They said HEFAMAA sent out an online questionnaire requesting details of injured #EndSARS protesters were treated at their facilities, a move they said could be used to “arm-twist” them into providing information which might breach doctor-patient confidentiality.
They said they were particularly worried about the section of the form requesting their registration numbers.
When reached for comment on Wednesday, October 28, Lagos Ministry of Health spokesperson Tunbosun Ogunbanwo asked for questions via SMS but was yet to respond at the time PT published this story on October 31.


text:
Myanmar candidates and parties turn to religious nationalism ahead of elections · Global Voices
Juan Cebu

This is the campaign poster of independent candidate U Kyaw Soe Htut in Yangon. The manifesto vows to peacefully solve the national security problem with the slogan “No Rohingya.” Complaints have been filed against the “No Rohingya” message, but the election body has not taken action so far. Source: Unverified Facebook page of U Kyaw Soe Htut
Myanmar election monitors have been identifying the use of religious-nationalist messaging by major parties and candidates in the lead up to the November 8 elections.
The Union Election Commission’s Code of Conduct for Political Parties and Candidates clearly states that race and religious-based campaign messages are prohibited. Nevertheless, party candidates have used religion to persuade voters through their offline speeches as well as on their official Facebook Pages. Myanmar has a Buddhist Burmese majority and a large number of ethnic minority groups.
There are 90 parties competing in the election but the two major contenders are the ruling party National League for Democracy (NLD), led by the country’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), led by former Military General Than Htay.
This is Myanmar’s third election since the democratic transition in 2010. USDP assumed power in 2011 under the presidency of a former military general, Thein Sein. A series of Buddhist-Muslim conflicts broke out between 2012 and 2014, mainly in the western state of Arakan.
In 2015, NLD won a landslide victory during the second general elections under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2017, the Myanmar military conducted a military clearing operation against the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), displacing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya and forcing them to seek refuge in the neighboring country of Bangladesh. In 2019, Gambia lodged a genocide case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the military’s treatment of the minority Rohingya Muslims. The Myanmar government has denied that it committed genocide.
Rohingya people are not recognized as an ethnic group under Myanmar’s current discriminatory citizenship law. In fact, the government has persistently refused to use the word Rohingya, and instead adopts the word “Bengali” to denote that they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh. A million Rohingya have been disenfranchised again from voting in this year's election.
Some of the candidates and supporters of the two parties have emphasized Buddhism in their online and offline campaign messages, while some rally-goers have been explicitly using slogans like “vote to protect your religion.”
In a monthly online monitoring report of official election profiles and pages on Facebook by Loka Ahlinn, the organization found that the USDP, the NLD, and the People’s Pioneer Party (PPP) have released the most religious-based campaign messages through their official channels between the period of September 8 to October 7. The report notes that religious nationalism appears in the form of candidates portraying themselves as patrons of Buddhism, or explicitly appealing for nationalist actions to protect Buddhism.
Individual supporters have also used the same narratives to promote their chosen party. For example, influencer Zarni Htike, who has over 200,000 followers on Facebook, frequently uses nationalism to promote the NLD. Meanwhile, Nanmyamya Miemie Zaw, who is the spokesperson of the USDP, regularly uses religious rhetoric to persuade voters on Facebook. On October 24, Nanmyamya Miemie Zaw wrote:
ဘာသာရေးနဲ့မဲဆွယ်နေတာ
မဟုတ်ဘူး။ ကာကွယ်နေတာ။
[We are] not campaigning with religion. We are protecting.
In addition to the contenders’ official social media accounts emphasizing Buddhism in their online messages, examples of religious-nationalism have been observed at campaign rallies.
On October 25, a complaint was lodged against the USDP by the NLD for using a song in a rally which included lyrics such as “vote USDP to prevent our religion from disappearing.”
The next day, NLD again pressed charges against USDP rally-goers in the Mandalay region for playing a parody song that included lyrics accusing NLD of being a “religion destroyer” as well as insulting Aung San Suu Kyi. The song also included racist hate speech against Muslims. “Religion-destroying party” or “သာသနာဖျက်ပါတီ” is a reflection of broader racist conspiracies that accuse the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi of supporting Muslims.
On November 3, a group of nationalists in Yangon and Mandalay started a campaign by handing out pamphlets that included the message “vote those who can protect race and religion.” The campaigners claimed that they were not affiliated with any party.
At the same time, on Facebook, numerous unofficial groups, pages, and fake profiles of party supporters have been explicitly echoing messages of religious nationalism and attacking other parties using hate speech against Muslims. For example, a study by Burma Human Rights Network on online hate speech during the election period revealed that Muslim conspiracies are used to undermine NLD. Conspiracies range from Aung San Suu Kyi selling the nation to Muslims to NLD bringing “illegal Bengali Muslims” into the country.
On October 13, a USDP candidate in the Magwe region used false and racist information against the Rohingya in his campaign speech. He said that the current government has allowed illegal “Bengalis” to stay in Arakan state.
Meanwhile, an independent candidate Kyaw Soe Htut, representing the Latha township constituency of Yangon city, has publicly set up a campaign billboard stating “No Rohingya.” Although complaints were filed against the candidate, the Union Election Commission has not yet taken action.
The PPP, also an important contender in this year's vote, has also pursued religious-nationalist politics during the campaign period. Party leader Thet Thet Khaing has publicly used controversial racist words like “kalar,” which refers to Muslims and people of Indian descent in Myanmar. She has also said that PPP policy stands against using the name Rohingya in her viral media interview video.
While some candidates have used religious-nationalist themes in their campaign, there is at least one candidate, from the Democratic Party for a New Society who has spoken strongly against discrimination and called for amending the citizenship law.

author: Juan Cebu